00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to the whitetail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. 00:00:19 Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on the show, I am joined by Andrew McKean for important conversation about the future of our hunting community and culture. All Right, welcome back to another episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camel for Conservation Initiative, which is a program that sends a portion of every sale of First Light Specter Camo to the National Deer Association should help them with their mission to do good things for the future of deer, deer hunting and deer hunters. And today we are having a discussion that is very relevant to the future of deer and deer hunters and the deer hunting community, which is a part of this ongoing series this month revolving around the culture of hunting. And we kicked this off a couple of weeks ago with Dan and Tony and a whole bunch of riffing and wondering and spitballing about a series of different topics that all kind of fit into this idea of our culture, everything from the technology we use and the and the ways that we hunt, and the ways we talk about hunting and the ways we showcase it, the many different disagreements we can sometimes have within our different kind of microcultures of the world of hunting. There's there's there's a whole lot to it. And I think that that first episode with Tony and Dan and myself was kind of just a kicking off point, a whole bunch of different questions and concerns and thoughts. But today I wanted to take it to that next level with somebody who I think can bring to bear a level of experience and leadership within the community of hunters that can can point to us maybe in a better direction. And that's why I wanted to bring Andrew McKean onto the show today. Andrew is, without a doubt, one of the leaders of our hunting community. He has worked at Outdoor Life for many many years now, once as their editor in chief, now is their Hunting and Conservation editor. He has been one of our foremost thinkers and speakers about everything from actual hunting practices to the intersection of hunting and gear, to public lands advocacy, wildlife management policy, and a whole lot more in addition to that. And he simply is one of the wisest folks within this world that I know of and who I frequently turned to and look to his thoughts and guidance on many of these things. And so that makes him, in my opinion, the perfect person here today to help us take this discussion to the next level. And that's exactly what we did. Andrew had a lot to contribute to this series of ideas in this conversation that we're having over the course of the month, and I couldn't be more excited to share that conversation with you. I really got a lot from this one. I think you will too. Yeah, we're not talking about how to kill more deer, how to kill bigger deer to have more success this coming season, which I know we'd like to have those types of conversations as often as possible. Right, that's the kind of thing that gets excited, you know, to get out there and to listen to these podcasts. But this month where we're talking about the culture of hunting, This is really important stuff. This is the glue that binds it all together. This is the foundation that all of our opportunities rest on. If we don't have a strong hunting culture, if that's not right, then nothing else is going to operate SMOOTHI either. It's kind of like and I'm just this has just coming to me as I'm thinking here. But you know, if your marriage isn't right, if there's something not right in your relationship with your significant other, it takes away all the good stuff across the rest of your life. Right, how many of you can relate to this. You got in a hunting trip, but you just came off of a fight with your wife or or whatever it is, and then the whole time you're out there on your hunting trip, you can't actually enjoy it because you're worrying about this other stuff going on. You're thinking, you're stewing, You're concerned about this other thing. Right. If you can't get that stuff right, then the rest is lacking a certain something, And that I think is very much the case within the world of hunting. If there are if there's miscontent, if there's malecontent, if there's concern, if there's this kind of toxic thing floating around the culture of our hunting community. It's going to take away from our own enjoyment of hunting and our ability to hunt in the future, and our ability for this thing to be as good and fulfilling as it possibly can be, and possibly for us to even be able to partake in this thing in the future. So that's why these conversations I think are important not just to have on this podcast, but for us all to continue out beyond them. These types of conversations are useful and good for us to have, not just between me and someone on the show, but between you and your buddy, or you and your dad, or you and your brother, or you and your wife, whatever it is. These types of chats are really really healthy for us to engage in, and I'm hoping that this series here this month will help kickstart more of that at the diner, at the bar, at the deer camp, wherever it is. I hope you will continue this conversation yourself, think about these issues yourself, and that's the kind of thing that I think will lead to a more positive future for all of us moving forward. So that's my pitch for you today. I don't know if I'm going to get any takers, but I'm hoping so. And before we get to my chat with Andrew, I do want to give you a quick heads up on something related to someone I mentioned at the very beginning, which is the National Deer Association. They've got a big old sweepstakes going on right now, which I just want to give a friendly plug, which is there United for Deer Sweepstakes. They've got a whole bunch of different big gear packages they're giving away, and you can enter to win stuff like a ten thousand dollars gift card from Academy Sports, a UTV package from Tracker, an Elk hunting package, a deer hunting package, both of which include big old first light gift cards, all sorts of prizes from folks like Vortex ELPs, Leopold, bog weatherb Vortex pH Outdoors. The list goes on and on and on. You can enter at different price points and man it all those dollars go to support the National Deer Association and they're very, very good work. Full disclosure. I am on the board of directors, so I am biased, but I have been a member for fifteen plus years, maybe almost twenty years now, and they're one of those organizations that I believe in more than almost any other. You know that if you've been listening for the years, I've talked to folks and we've brought folks on from the NBA year after year after year because they are tremendous recent source and tremendous advocates for deer and deer hunters. So here's an opportunity to support them, to give back and make sure these folks can continue doing that good work. So heading over to Dear Association dot com if you're interested in doing that, whether it's participating in the sweepstakes or just giving them the donation becoming a member, it is all worthwhile and I would encourage you to do so if you're interested. So with all that said, let's get to the main meat and potatoes of our podcast today, my conversation with Andrew McKeen. All right here with me back on the show after a long absence. Is Andrew McKean. Andrew, great to see you. 00:08:46 Speaker 3: Oh, that's great to see you. It's been way way, way too long, and we've resolved that we're like equal opportunity. Yeah, we're both to blame. 00:08:56 Speaker 2: Well that Well, it's so funny because you are someone who I don't think I've ever told you this, but I feel like you are such a kindred spirit in that whenever I hear you talking on another podcast or whenever I read of one of your articles, I just find myself like nodding along, just saying that yes, yes, yes, like all the time. There are plenty of people that I see on social media or read their stuff or see their stuff, and in my head, I'm just thinking no, no, no, but you you are are yes, yes, yes. I find so much. I've learned so much from you over the years, Andrew, and I have found guidance from you, not just in like how to hunt, but how to conduct ourselves as hunters, how to advocate as a hunter and a conservationist. So I just want to open this by thanking you for the leadership and example you have shown all of this over your years doing this work. So thank you for that, and thanks for being here and being a part of this. 00:10:04 Speaker 3: Man. Well, I didn't expect that. It almost feels like, you know, when's the memorial service, But I'll take it. It's funny, like I actually deeply appreciate that for a maybe unexpected reason, and that is I was talking to a friend the other day who was the subject of kind of accolades and like public recognition, and Hugh like, I don't quite know how to take it. But our conversation was like men in general don't know how to take a compliment and will either like deflective way from it or we'll like laugh about it. But that is super meaningful and I am grateful to you for that. 00:10:39 Speaker 2: So thanks, Well, you're welcome. It's well deserved, and you are joining me here, I think in a really important part of this series that we kicked off, and I know you're aware of the series, the series on kind of the the culture of hunting and the state of that culture. And in our first first episode, as you know, I was joined by my pals Tony and Dan, and we just kind of rift on this topic and kind of just I don't know if word vomit is the way right way to describe it, but it kind of is. We kind of just kind of purged all of our thoughts and our questions and our concerns and our initial gut reactions and stuff like that, and maybe that was a good place to kind of set the stage as like the everyman kind of thought, like, here's a bunch of different thoughts, a bunch of things we're throwing at the wall that we're thinking about, that we're worried about, that, we're excited about that, we're concerned about. What is the state of the hunting culture and what does that mean? And how do we define it and how do we what are these things are going to influence it moving forward? And I came out of that conversation with with without any clear answers, but with a lot of questions. And what you I think bring to the table is a level of experience. And I joked before we start recording that you have this kind of elder statesman kind of thing that you bring to the table. And I suppose that's what I'm getting at here, is that I think you might be able to help center us a little bit in some of these questions that were brought up last time around. So that's a very long winded way of getting to what I'm trying to get to here in Angel What I'm trying to get out, well, you can you can you can respond if you want to tell me to not call you elder again, if you want to. 00:12:32 Speaker 3: Know what I was going to say, and I hope this that doesn't derail what you're about to say, is that what I really liked about that initial conversation was it felt to me a lot like ones that I've had sitting on a tailgate, where you know, it's a little bit of like blue sky or maybe starry sky after a hunt. Maybe it just and it's not bellyaching it by any means, but it's like, I think there was a level of concern and a level of like worry, but also kind of like collective recognition that these were unresolvable questions that I think is a really important way into it, because I hope you're not setting me up for failure, like you know, I'm the guy who's got the answers to all these unanswerable questions, because I think that's actually the promise of what you're trying to do. And the thing that I really appreciated about it is a lot of these are unanswerable. They're super contextual or super individual. But I applaud you for asking the question as we were talking before we hit record, is like, I think the actually the way you describe this as a health check is really healthy because I think it doesn't intend to be the the all knowing muse or the oracle of these things. But I think it's really important that we every now and then just stop and like examine ourselves, like, yeah, it's a health check. 00:13:58 Speaker 2: Yeah. And the more I think about this set of topics, the more I think that the most important thing is not necessarily to come to an answer on any of these things. It's simply that we need to be engaged in the conversation. If we can constantly be engaging and discussing and assessing the health of like these different aspects of our culture, is this a good thing? Are we on the right path? Are we sure this is what we want to be? As long as we are constantly as a community having those conversations, I think that's that's a good end goal, versus just blindly charging down, you know, into the future, without thinking about what and why we're doing these things. So I think that's maybe why I'm hoping all this matters for whatever it's worth. So so with that, I'll said, Andrew, you mentioned the health check, and I brought this up with Dan and Tony last time. What would yours be if you were to if you the doctor today, and if we had to just if you had to arbitrarily put a an A to F grade. So I guess, teacher, you're the teacher, the professor here, and you're going to put a stamp of grade on the health of our hunting culture. What would your gut reaction be, What would be that instant analysis, quick grade you would give us or not us? But well, I guess, so what. 00:15:25 Speaker 4: Would that be? 00:15:26 Speaker 2: And then describe to me why why you feel that way? 00:15:32 Speaker 3: You know, my my view of the world is often in sort of shades of gray. I'm not very much of a polar person, and so my initial reaction is to answer that with a C. But I'm not going to do that. It's actually a strong B. And I'll justify that on a couple of reasons. One is I've done so much gear testing over the years with a whole like platoon of graders, and what I recognize in that is that there's a human tendency to want to like gravitate to the middle of everything, and when you start to average middling grades, you get the most middlesome grade of all. And so in some ways I'm hoping like to pull the average maybe one way or the other a little bit, because as you ask more people of this and everybody sort of descends to the middle, it's not that useful. So maybe I'm gaming the system just a little bit too. But I'm actually pretty optimistic about a few things. Yeah, we've got some things to resolve within our community, and I think some things just to be aware of and to recognize, But overall, I still maintain that what we do and what we promise as a community is the essence of America and is the essence of I think a lot of hopeful parts of our wider culture. And so I think unless this isn't anything like I sort of like salute at sunrise every morning, like, but I think it's really an important thing to recall why we do this, how we do it, and the implications of what we do. It's so easy for us to be sort of self critical about the problems within our culture, but I think that maybe diminishes the wider value of what we do, whether it's the larger conservation mission that we're on, whether it's like the ecological benefits that are downstream of what we do. I think those are all really part of our culture and and it's an important part of defining and also defending what we do. 00:17:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. Is there any specific example of something right now within our culture that you know would help illustrate part of this hope that you have. Is there something that really stands out as a shining star of like, man, this is something that is a that is above a B plus it's an us within our hunting culture and this is why we should feel this way. 00:18:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, and maybe this is a you know, this might be an artifact of being a resident of a rural western town where I think the I think the communal membranes are a lot thinner than other places. But Hunter Education season is about to start, and I'll tell you what, there is nothing that's more restorative in your sense of like why we do this and like our role as gatekeeper of our communities, which I think we all do to various degrees. I'd actually like to come back to that with like various degrees of welcomingness. Sure, but to go to a hunter education class and stand in front of a bunch of eleven year olds or sit in the back of the room and watch a bunch of eleven year olds like squirmy, fidgetingly in their chairs, but so excited about like the ticket to this, you know what, demounts to a lifetime of opportunity that they're to get into their terrified The only thing I can think about is what's the minimum score I can get on the test and still pass. I don't think we've in my class, we've ever failed a kid ever, Like it just doesn't happen. But they don't know that. Yeah, but that just like that that palpable energy and expectation that we I think as kind of calloused members of this community forget about. That's a I mean that that that's a strong be maybe even higher, Like that's a big reason to believe. 00:19:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a great it's a great point. 00:19:42 Speaker 4: One of the big. 00:19:46 Speaker 2: Overarching kind of umbrellas or clouds that I think rests over top of any conversation around the culture of hunting is something that we spend a lot of time talking about with Dan and Tony the other day, That being this idea of balancing this sense of like, hey, we need to self. I don't know if police is the right word, but we need to self kind of regulate our community and our culture versus any kind of self policing or regulating is tearing us apart, right When you have a culture like ours, which is so diverse and so passionate, and we all kind of come to hunting from a different place, with different goals, from different regions, different perspectives, etc. And then there's so many different aspects of what might fall into the bucket considered culture. We've got things like the technology and gear we use. We've got things like the practices and the ways we hunt. We've got things like how we talk about hunting, how we share our hunts, how we develop content around it. We've got things like what policies we support, the ideologies, etc. There's all these different aspects of this soup that we consider the culture of hunting. With all of that being the case, it's it's very easy for any assessment or exploration of the culture to become divisive. How do we in any kind of way do that? How do we in any kind of way affect the culture of hunting in a positive way moving forward without it becoming a you know, negative, tearing each other down kind of thing. How do you balance that out well? 00:21:31 Speaker 3: Way to start with the easy questions. You know, in some ways, I think you're the thesis is kind of wrong. I don't know that we and I don't know that we have a culture, a single culture of hunting. And I think that's actually one of the problems that we're seeing is we've got one of my concerns with the larger the way we communicate within the larger community. I would call it, not just even the political community, the I mean every community you name. It is that we we talk to each other all the time, at the at the at the risk and and and we don't talk to people who either don't agree with us or are not even in the room. And so the problem with that, I one of the big problems I see with the kind of Balkanization of hunting now is that we are in smaller and smaller self described communities and in each with its own culture too, right, and social media does nothing but just amplify those silos. And so I think, actually you mentioned public policy, which is maybe the best, the best sort of arena or the best venue to talk about a cultural expression of what we do and air values, because that's something that transcends these small little like colonies that we've developed. You know, are you an upland bird hunter? Are you a side by side pointing dog upland bird hunter? You know, like we we have the and an amazing ability to like refine ourselves into smaller and less relevant subsets all the time. And so I do think that's a problem, that is a problem. We've got to be able to talk across these divisions, these sort of self imposed divisions, But I don't see us doing it very easily or very often. You know, I think it's one of the great values of some of the groups like BHA, who are not necessarily specific species specific, but even within BHA, you know, there's almost there's some some purity tests of sort of inclusion that they are the members throw up unbeknownst to the to them to themselves. But we can recognize it if we're on the outside of it. Oh it's a cool kids club. We don't really belong with that. So that in itself, that sort of health check, if you want to use to continue to use that sort of barometer aspect of things, I think is a really important one. We got to we got to quit just judging ourselves on the expectations of our little communities and judge judge ourselves on these sort of ever bigger communities, which you know, the political community is probably the best way to judge it, because there's a score that's being kept every time there's a vote. That's a really circular way of answering your question. 00:24:22 Speaker 2: You make an interesting point, and I agree with you. But what do you say to the person who challenges any type of direct critique or not even critique. But I guess this is what I'm getting at. If I care about the culture of hunting, if I care about the future of hunting, I might say, like, hey, if I see someone poking holes in the boat, you should say something. I should talk to this person, or we should address an issue that I think is going to negatively influen It's the future of hunting, right, So let's just take an example. Let's say there's I don't know, we'll use a micro example. If I see an individual that I know in real life who is doing something and posting about on Facebook that I think really negative shines negatively on hunting, I might think to myself, well, I think that's bad for the future of hunting. I think that's bad for everything that's going on right now. So I would like to talk to this person and say, hey, this thing you're doing and the way you're showing it on there is maybe not such a good idea. So like, that's an individual example of a way of trying to address like something that I think might negatively influence the future. Now, if you were to scale that out and say, like, oh, I see this thing in the larger hunting culture, I'm worried about how that might impact the future of hunting. If I were to publicly say that, you would get lots of lots of folks saying, hey, you are not allowed to challenge any that anyone does something or challenge this kind of thing because you are tearing down other hunters or you are in some kind of way dividing hunters, creating divisions. We need to stand together, we need to all band together because there's so many outside pressures coming for hunters. And there's truth to that. I'm not saying there isn't. So I guess what I'm getting is how do we in any kind of way And maybe your answer was this, just have the conversations, But but what do you say to this basic premise which is like, you can't critique, criticize, or at least raise questions about certain things within the hunting world because that's you know, damaging us from the inside or creating false divisions when sometimes there are things maybe we need to be talking about inside, Like yeah, I'm gonna stop rambling. I'll let you address that. 00:26:54 Speaker 3: Good now, I'm happy you sharpened that a little bit, because I think I think there are some huge problems that we are not addressing because it's this sort of u purity test is actually not a bad way to look at it. There's a purity test of inclusion in our community. 00:27:10 Speaker 4: That is. 00:27:12 Speaker 3: I'll use two like hyper relevant and frightening examples. One is trapping. What I see in the trapping community, and I am a not a life on trapper. I trapped as a kid. I still trap here. I can take or leave trapping kind of as I have time for it. It's not the sort of thing like that this is like central to my identity, but I definitely get it. I do it. What I see with trapping is it the conversation is being led by the most strident members of the trapping community. I don't think that's the right messager for the message, because what it does is that we've already entered a world that is really problematic for a lot of people when it comes to trapping, for you name it, because of the consumption aspect of it, because of the quazi commercial ass of it, because of lots of reasons. I don't agree with the statement that you've got to toe the line on raising the flag for trapping because as trapping goes, soda goes everything else. That may well be the case, but I think the people who should carry that message are actually the people who are less eager to talk about it because they have a level of authenticity and sort of personal resonance about the issue that's not it's not political, and it's not they're not trying to change anybody's mind. The second issue I think we need to talk all about a lot more in our community as guns is the social the powerful sort of toxic presence of guns in our society at large, and how that affects hunting. Like right, the party line is you can't say one negative thing about guns because if you know, if the anti is get one foothold into this. 00:29:02 Speaker 2: Wall, yeah, you've got a whole want. 00:29:05 Speaker 3: Right, exactly. And I am a great believer in guns and gun rights and all that stuff, but I think it's we we shouldn't not talk about it. I don't right agree, Probably very very few opinions are going to change within our world. But the very fact that we are open to talking about it, I think shows to people who are on the other side that this isn't a monoculture. This isn't just a whole bunch of people who have closed their ranks around something that they're afraid to talk about. I think we should welcome that kind of and and part of that welcoming is we need to welcome dissent. We don't have to agree with it. We can call it out when we see it, but we shouldn't censor it. And I think there's a lot of self censorship within our community. 00:29:47 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so, so okay, I really like where you're going with Andrew. For anyone, I guess, what are your thoughts or what have you learned over the years about having productive conversations along these types of lines. How can we as people within this community more productively discuss or debate or consider the things that we do as hunters, the ways that we do things as hunters, that the choices that we are making when it comes to all these different aspects that you could throw into the bucket called the culture of hunting, how do we do that in a better way as opposed to the way that I see happening on social media a lot, or you know that we imagine people throwing knives at each other metaphorically. 00:30:35 Speaker 3: Imagine is a good word, because I think what we do when we call out something that we don't like on social media or in the public arena is all we've done is declaring our own position on it. It's not a constructive way to change anybody else's mind because right all of a sudden, you've seen how this works. You've got a dogfight where people are eager to participate and align themselves with one side the other. But there's no in no way, shape or form, is that advancing the discussion at all? Is just flag flying. And so I think the worst thing to do is actually is to critique or call out somebody in a public forum. I think the way to do it is to call them or email them or I don't, but to do it on a personal basis. I think that does a couple of very meaningful things. 00:31:26 Speaker 4: One. 00:31:27 Speaker 3: I think it's a lot more resonant to somebody who is on the receiving end of that to say, you know, holy crap, I didn't. I wasn't not aware of that line that I crossed. But because of this person whose opinion I respect and who's articulated that in a good way, I might not change my mind, but I'm aware that I have like crossed the line. The alternative to that is you just dig in. I mean, that's all, you know. I love social media for so many windows into the world, but it is not a medium for any kind of discourse and it shouldn't be looked at that way at all. 00:32:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately a lot of folks turned to it in that capacity. But but I agree. How about we take a how would we look at this through the lens of a specific example, another specific example, and that being technology in hunting. I think that is one of these issues, not issues, but a category within this world of our culture that has forever probably caused some level of consternation throughout the hunting community every decade in some different form or fashion, And it seems like that's even more so the case now and likely will continue to be as technology within our world continues to accelerate. I thought you wrote a terrific piece about the use of thermal technology recently over at the over an Outdoor Life, where you explored this very thing. You talked about the the ramp an increase in the use of thermal technology, where things are headed, what that might mean for us, A variety of different people's perspectives on it, And I thought you did a very good job of kind of tackling something like this without stamping your flag on the ground and screaming like my way or the highway. But you also wrote rose some I thought important questions that I certainly that certainly resonated with me that I'll set when it comes to something like the use of thermal technology and how that might impact what hunting is in the future. What's what is your take on it? If you could share it for folks that didn't read the article. What are you what are your thoughts on this technology? What are your thoughts on what that means for the future? And is there anything we need to be doing or thinking about or or wrestling with as a community if this is where things are headed? 00:33:57 Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh man, how much time do we have and probably a Thermals are such a fascinating category for me for a couple of reasons. One is I backed into learning about thermals as an extension of my work with optics because they are they're you know, right there, they're adjacent. They're a way of interacting with the world through a visual medium. And at first they were in my experience with them, they were they were a little bit like toys, you know, they were kind of they were a little irrelevant because they were limited by their own lack of sophistication, you know, these smudgy sort of blobs that were, you know, vague suggestions of a distant animal. So at first was pretty easy to dismiss them a little bit as like irrelevant. That has changed in the last couple of years, and I'm guessing you've experienced something similar, which is there is a demographic in our world right now? Who about so my kids are my twin is there twenty three their buddies? Actually, after I wrote that piece, I must have gotten six or seven messages from them saying, hey, can you hook me up with thermals? Like the reason I mentioned that is, I think if if you are and I don't even I want to scribe, you know, sort of familiarity with it, but it really is, at least in my experience, a younger demographic who is very interested in in viewing the world and maybe participating in seasons and opportunities that are have really been off limit. I'm talking kind of night time hunting. If you kind of think about you know, I hope we get into this too, Like we have made our world so small in terms of exploiting available opportunity as hunters. Right the minute there's a season that we can like overloit, we are We're tending to do this, whether it's a an access opportunity right now, we're very like as a community, I feel like we are. Yeah, we're kind of an exploiting mode again, kind of selfishly like we want to We kind of see that there's competition and we've got the means and the abilities to sort of win that competition or at least we're going to give it a damn good try. So anyway, if you think about like the crowding issue, the one sort of place that we don't have crowding is it night that's kind of the new frontier of opportunity. And I think a lot of these kids are sort of seeing that, like man public land and in terms of the deer season and bird season is not that much fun. There's a lot of people out there. But if I get this magic tube and I put it on my gun, I can go hunt coyotes at night. I got the place to myself. And I think that's I think that's really important thing to recognize is it's a little bit of a vacuum that's being filled with this. The second thing is technology being what it is and doing what it does. It is getting way more sophisticated, way faster, as prices are coming down, as technology, as like the digital technology is getting better, and as like employing it within these sort of mobile devices is getting better. I mention that because it's no longer these sort of vague blobs out there, Like, you know, some of the best thermals that I tested this year have got high definition sensors paired with high definition screens. It's unbelievable the viewing capability of these things. You pair that with you know, real time video and image recording and the ability to share that out, and now you've got like a pretty disruptive technology that's out there, And what my piece was talking about a little bit is like, hey, buckle up, because I don't think we I think we're just in the dawn of seeing the leading edge of this sophistication of this category. We actually have an analog in the fishing world with this forward facing sonar that has really disrupted, especially the tournament fishing. These are expensive units and so it's not everybody who can afford it. But what I'm seeing in that world a whileye on bass fishermen, but also you know, saltwater tournament fishermen who got a lot of money on the line, is there's a real have and have not division that's being starkly kind of separated right now, where if you've got this technology, you're competing on an entirely different level than people who don't. What worries me a little bit when I extrapolate that experience on hunting is we already have these crowding issues I alluded to. We already have sort of this competition that is kind of breaking my heart when it's coming to its influence on hunting. And now you've got this technology that really does allow you to have an edge, a competitive edge on somebody else. If you don't have it, you are going to be sort of relegated to using your traditional field skills. Now how boring is that? 00:39:15 Speaker 2: Right? 00:39:16 Speaker 3: And so I just thought it was instead of like, and again, I didn't think it was my place to say this is right or wrong and apply that kind of value judgment to the category. I felt like it was my role in my job and this may define kind of my role in the community is to like raise awareness. And maybe that's kind of a limpristed, sort of half past way of interacting with the community. But I think there'll always been members of communities who have done that, and I guess I look at that in my role. Sometimes I have strong feelings about it, but I think if I voiced them in the context of that piece, all of a sudden, what I'm trying to do is marginalized because oh, McKean's all for thermals or McKean is all against thermals. But instead, what I hope it does is is just a thought starter. It's like, hey, let's think about how this is going to be used. And actually, just today I had a meeting of the Boone and Crockett Club's ethics committee where we talked about this. It's like, is it important for the club to impose it sort of you know, influence on the public policy of this, should these be regulated or is it enough to say, actually, the fair chase doctrine of the club already kind of talks about this. So anyway, that was a great example I think of a really disruptive and potentially divisive category of technology that if we're not thinking about it, we should be. 00:40:56 Speaker 2: So you had to be a little bit understated with your own perspective in that article, but you don't need to be understated with it on this podcast. If you were to have your druthers, or if you were to have some level of influence, or if you could in some kind of way guide us towards how to deal with something like this, this kind of disruptive technology that could dramatically change what the future of how we engage with wildlife is. I mean, there are many risks tied to it, not just in you know, what hunting is, but also if this kind of technology continues, will it just lead to reduced opportunity for hunters because they have to shut down seasons or change things, et cetera. Like there's a lot of downstream effects from this kind of technology. What do we how do we address that? I mean, I agree that increasing awareness about getting the conversation going, that's in a very important first step and I think that's what we're doing here today too. But also like now what, Yeah, that's. 00:42:09 Speaker 3: A great question. So I don't think that the category should be banned. I think it should be limited. I think it should be we should have a better idea of those downstream effects. But I think in terms of a technology, a rising technology, none of us should be surprised by this. One of the things that I've noticed just in terms of if you look at it, like I mentioned, I presented it as an adjacency to optics. The integration of electronics and optics has been a trend that we've really seen sharpening over the last four or five years, maybe a little bit longer. But in terms of like really getting is capable technology. So I think the fact that we're seeing like a digital rendering of our world through these devices shouldn't scarce them much. We've been seeing that in all kinds of other ways. I think where we should be concerned about it, though, is do we have an ability through the thermal part of that, or maybe it's night vision, or maybe it's I don't know, plasma of recognition stuff that we haven't even seen come down the line yet. Maybe it's, you know, a DNA identifier. Should we be worried about that affecting I would say what I would describe as sort of the democracy of the experience of hunting, and I would say, oh, heavens, yes, that's it's at that level. I think that we should be involved either regulating it, either highly regulating it, or creating a set of expectations where it can be used. I actually don't mind the Boone and Crockett Club's way of looking at it, almost like on a private sector thing, like we're not going to tell you can't use it. We are going to tell you that if you want to enter this animal and our record book, you can't use it. And I think that's maybe a soft boiled way to get into it. That's not a bad way to sort of test out some of these things. Let me give you another example of the downstream effect that you're talking about, and that's crossbows. I think there's a real sort of analog to the admin of crossbows and then the corporation of them in archery seasons. And you know, one of the things that has been shown in Ohio, which was an early adopter of crossbows, is yes, it increased participation. That's a good thing, but it also started to, you know, to change the composition of the mature buck harvest. More big bucks were being killed with crossbows than traditional bows. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but we should be aware of that. That should be a measurable thing and we should have mechanisms in place to address it. You know, whether it's shortening seasons, limiting opportunities having their own season with restrictions. I don't quite know what that, like prescription is, but those are all things I don't think we know at this point. How are thermalst being used. You know, it's easy to say, oh, it's the tool of poachers. I don't actually believe that personally. I think if somebody's going to poach, they're gonna poach no matter what. But is it helping hunters select for a different kind of animal or for a different experience, or is it allowing hunters to detect animals in places they wouldn't ordinarily have gone. I'll be honest with one of the things I would love to measure, because this is just rank speculation at this point, is I firmly believe that nighttime is an important reset time for wild animals, like there's there's we owe them the mercy of like not messing with them at night if we want them to stay in the countryside, and I think we do. I worry that if we start pounding animals at night, and not just shooting coyotes or non game species, but our presence in secure habitat that is nighttime for the animals that maybe we want to hunt regulated game animals, We're going to change their behavior and their distribution. That is not I don't think it's a good thing, but we ought to be aware of that before we start to say, here's what we need to do with this technology. 00:46:13 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:46:16 Speaker 2: So there are so many other examples of technology like this that are impacting hunting in one way or another, and we'll continue to do so. Right, we could talk about long range rifles, we could talk about sell cameras and live streaming cameras. Now, we could talk about who knows what the GPS mapping technology and all that, right, there's all these different forms of technology change over the recent years that are really changing the activity the pursuit, impacting success levels, possibly impacting you know, population levels at some point, like you mentioned, like we've seen examples of that in the past. In that article you wrote, our mutual friend Joe was quoted kind of saying like when it came to the forward facing sonar, like you can't put the genie back in the bottle, Like these technologies are coming or they're here, and you can't slow that locomotive down. Right, So there's one perspective on all this that says, like, you know, it's a lost cause bemoaning any of this, because like technology will do what technology will do, and capitalism and the market is going to determine where things are headed and you can either hop on board or you can put your head in the sand. So, just as a kind of a final bow on this whole technology thing, like like technology is such a huge influencer on what hunting is and what our culture is, and it is going to continue to be the case moving forward. And if it seems like this is something that's going to continue to change what this thing is, how do we or what levers of influence do we have honestly, other than like, let's talk about it, like we can. We can talk about these things. We can worry ourselves about these things. But if this stuff is concerning in kind of way, what can the average person do? If we think that is the case? 00:48:20 Speaker 3: Oh, I think we I actually disagree with Joe. This is Joe Cermelli that Mark was just talking about. Who was talking about the sort of inexorable advance of technology when it came to phishing, and that we need to just embrace it and accept it. I actually don't believe that. I actually I think we have an obligation to not only our community that you've mentioned before, but also people we've never met yet, people future members of our community, to retain the sense of self restraint and sort of this is a really weird word, but it's what popped into my mind, sort of decorum when it comes to hunting. You know, I don't know if it was Tony who was talking about the idea of restraint, and like the reward, the intrinsic rewards you get by limiting your ability are so much higher than sort of the external rewards of the trophy that you're actually after. And I think I think that's a super important perspective to share in the context of this, But I think we owe it to our community to it's called bullshit when it happens, and this, I think is bullshit in a lot of ways. We actually have an example. Do you remember, this is the Elder Statesman in me coming out. Do you remember, Sonny a thing called Tracking Point. This would have been you were just coming on the scene. This probably would have been ten or twelve years ago. And what it was was a rifle scope software combination that a lot with a laser range finder that basically allowed you to aim a gun with your like tablet and it and you know, it was a coordinated sort of set of all of this gear and it was inherited from the military. But it also it was so disruptive for that, I would say that time, but for any time that our community said no, that's a bridge too far and that there's no place for that, and somewhat that that opposition was somewhat couched in the sense of like critics immediately went to like remote hunting, like this could be something that you could use in the hunter wouldn't even have to be on the landscape. Right when we think about the advance of technology, that's not that far fetched. Our ability with remote cameras and remote sensing stuff like that's probably in the near term, like to popularize that kind of technology. What would we say, as a community, do you actually have to be present to take the animal? I would say, that's a pretty damn bright line. And that's what that tracking point sort of example sort of revealed. And the community came actually pretty unified and said no. And so I'm not scared of kind of the result. What I'm scared about in all this is not having the conversation. 00:51:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so let's let's pivot a little bit to another one of these categories of I guess whatever this giant cauldron that we're going to consider the related to the culture of hunting, and that would be another thing that we talked about last time, which is the rising. I mean, this is not a new thing at all now, but when you look at that actual let's let's pivot to something you wrote about relatively recently, which was the survey that came out I think earlier in the year that showed for the first time in a while a decline in public approval for hunting. We've seen in these surveys in the past that largely there is support for hunting, but trophy hunting not so much. That's always been one of those things that the non hunting public is not on board with. That continues to become more and more the case, and now we're seeing even just the general idea of hunting is losing support within the within the larger world. Zoom back into what the culture of hunting in these days, and in many ways you might say that the culture of hunting is increasingly becoming more one of trophy hunting, the glamorization, the idolization of big trophy everything. It's hard to avoid it. I am as guilty of it as anyone. I love a big buck as much as the next guy a girl. But we spent a lot of time talking about this last time, and we all know that there are risks and downsides and concerns when we reduce this pursuit in lifestyle and activity and thing that we do. When it's reduced to simply that thing, the antlers or the animal, the trophy, the size, the whatever. What's your take on where things stand when it comes to trophy hunting today and is that something you're concerned about at all? Is it overblown? Is it something that's just fine as it stands? Or if not, whoa where do we need to take things? 00:53:35 Speaker 3: This answer might surprise you. I actually am not as worried about it now as I was maybe five years ago. And I was not as worried about it five years ago as I was ten years ago. So I don't think this is actually anything new. In fact, I think I'm still worried about it. Don't get me wrong. I think this is an essential part of our conversation and we need need to talk about it. But in terms of it like singularly defining our community, either internally or externally, I'm not as worried about it. And if I follow sort of that continuum along, I think we're getting better at describing a trophy that's not just a visual representation of an animal and our visual representation of us with that animal. You know, maybe it's a little Pollyanna ish. I still see it. I still like it's still I still love to see big Bucks. I still have to see big antlers still. And as you know, that content resonates like it does better. And so from all of sort of the external metrics of reward, like we should do more of it because like Havelov's dog, it gets u you know, it's a feedback loop. But I do think there's that we're becoming better at redefining a trophy that's not just inches of antler. It's a trophy experience. It's a trophy day in the field. And I know those are all like soft boiled things, and they then they don't do as well, they take a little bit more time. I do think it's one place in our community where we can collectively clock our tongues at people who are such over egoists when it comes to a trophy, to say this is this is hurting everybody and have and and I think that's a great discussion to have, you know, like hopefully if you're sort of the offender of it, you defend yourself and say, well, you missed the point. Well, because social media often misses the point. So we need to do a better job of like putting that nuance in thing. What was the point if it wasn't just that. I do think the idea of pronouns in our world, the I and the and the me part is a huge part of what's gotten us in trouble with the lar larger world. If you look at that survey, going back to that, there's there's problems with trophy hunting, as there's always been in there deepening, but there's also problems with people who responded to that survey, with hunting that seems to be individual, individually rewarding. In other words, a hunter who says I only hunt to feed my family. The survey for the first time actually took a dim view of that, or a dimmer view than that. When hunters talked about like the larger public value of hunting, I hunt because you know, it prevents wildlife damage from my neighbor or for wildlife management reasons, those actually had relatively high approval ratings. So I think that sort of like that. Yeah, the I and the me part of hunting is a is something that we really need to be watching, whether it's a trophy animal that expresses that, or if it's something that says that, you know, this is so to me that you'd never understand it. You're doing a very bad job of communicating why that's socially important. 00:57:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, So is there anything and you guys have done a great job outdoor life and field and stream has done a good job of this, and we try to do it a mediator, that being showcasing by example, ways to talk about these things, ways to illustrate these things, ways to demonstrate hunting is more than just killing a trophy. Right, But is there anything that you have learned more recently or kind of fine tuned your thoughts around how we can do these things that you're talking about, how we can showcase, whether it be on social media or when talking to our non hunting friends, just to make sure that we are accurately portraying what hunting is in a way that is positively resonant with the outside world. That's more and more important. 00:57:54 Speaker 3: So I think part of the problem with it is like the immediacy of social media, Right, we cannot wait to post this experience that we're still like trembling over. And I think the immediacy of social media is actually part of the problem with it. Like I'll use an example, and this is definitely still like a it's a study in progress. I shot the best white tail with my bow that I've ever shot this past fall. I haven't posted one thing about it I was so, I mean it was like, so I hunt just from the ground, like it's part of it's like my ADHD. Part of it is like my fear of heights. Part of it. I don't know, there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into it. But I am wildly unsuccessful hunting white tails from the ground. But I know that going into it too. Like also I coach in the fall, so like my time like in the field is a little bit limited, and like all that is like by way of context. So like when I go hunting, I have the expectation it's going to fail miserably, but I still like try to like put the odds in my favor and work the wind and try to go out. Like I skipped cross country on this particular day, skip cross country practice because the wind was out of the southeast, which it never is, which meant I could approach this field from a different way. I used to think I was super invincible because for probably it was. I usually hunt just doze from the ground because I've all already given up on kind of the buck segment of the populash. No it's talking, but for probably five or six six straight successful kills. The deer did not jump my strength and I was like, well, I've got this figured out. 00:59:41 Speaker 2: And the. 00:59:43 Speaker 3: Next six like you know, things didn't go very well. What I'm getting at though, is like this time it all worked out, and like if there was ever, like ever an achievement to crow about from the top of the tallest cotton would this was it. It was really funny, Like I part of it's my age, and part of it is the context. Like I need, I need to think about this. I cannot wait to tell this story. It worked out like unbelievably well, and most of it was my great abilities, but some of them was just rank luck. But to me, what I hope that what I'm trying to say is the quick hit that I would have gotten from like celebrating that success immediately. I feel yet to be proven that it's actually a much richer and deeper experience when I finally tell this story and all of the context around it, that to me makes it a story worth telling. 01:00:41 Speaker 4: Yeah, and I bet there is. 01:00:57 Speaker 2: Something similar true for folks that even aren't creating content to the degree that you are right, I'm guilty of the quick hit. Like I'm so excited to share with the world what's going on too. But I have found, like in a smaller scale, when I've held back a few days and just enjoyed it for myself before I let the world in on it, and then all the corresponding noise that comes with that that I'll sometimes let myself be affected by, I'm always happier just to enjoy it myself. Like the outside noise is never actually a good thing, even though our like dopamine craving inner lizard wants you to do that. And so I think you bring up a really really good point, and we would probably all be a lot healthier and happier if we could resist that urge more often. 01:01:53 Speaker 3: So I again, this is you've You've done something, probably really dangerous. So I'm kind of just thinking as the thoughts or saying as the thoughts come to me. But I think one of the things, I again, this is going to be a little trial balloon. If we have to delete the entire thing, that's great. But I think the problem I have with social media is actually it's a supercharger of this idea that we have as a community. Wait till you hear the word too, you're going to be like, yeah, this word actually came up in the context of state agencies when they were like looking ahead to the future of like are we losing hunters? Are we going to have less engagement of hunters? And the word that they use was relevance. And I think social media is like, this is this supercharger of relevance, and we feel more relevant in the moment when we post. So that's that quick hit you're talking about, Like that that dopamine, that like that feedback loop. That's like a self congratulatory or it like it it confirms our relevance in the world. And I think that idea of relevance is super super dangerous because I think what it does is it's given us a ready excuse to say, well, like we just talked about reach and engagement and audience size and like all of the things that in our digital world are proxies for relevance are pretty easy to gain in a lot of ways. I just don't I think they're I think they're really perishable. Yeah, And I think sort of the larger sort of like idea of relevance and longer term relevance is something that that is not that's earned. I guess I'll just say that. 01:03:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, so. 01:03:57 Speaker 2: Adjacent to this side of the equation and but very very related to this whole social media influence over our culture. We have the specter of anti hunters and all sorts of things in the you know, for many, many years, but in the last years so there's been a lot around predators. Right There's there's a lot of buzz these days about ballot box biology and the initiative in Colorado right now, and things have happened in Washington and elsewhere where. There are folks coming at predator hunting or trapping, as you mentioned earlier, real threats to opportunities for hunters. At the same time, there has forever but continuing now, been plenty of anti predator vitriol coming from within our community. So you've got you've got worries about anti hunters trying to take away opportunities to hunt for predators or to trap. And then you've got hunters within our community who seem to hate predators sometimes too. I just had a friend send me a picture that is not too terribly unique, sent me a picture of this post on Facebook of eight guys in Michigan up in the up. As I understand it with white hoods over their heads while holding a dead wolf and rifles pointed at it. And that was shared on Facebook relatively recently. So there's this kind of imagery out there, right. We all seen the shoot shovel and shut up stickers, and you hear about everyone smoke a packa day. You're in Montana, you see it all the time. I'm sure there's a tremendous amount of I don't know what's called oedan like hate sometimes around carnivores within our community too. So you've got these these two different things kind of going on where we've got folks worried about taking away the opportunity to manage predators. You also have this we hate predators kind of thing within the community, and it creates this feedback loop of sorts where I find it's becoming self defeating within our community. This is I'm guilty of this, Andrew, where I start talking and I ramble on about a thing without getting too a question, but I'm getting I'm going somewhere with this. All of this has me worried about our culture within hunting when it comes to both the our ability to manage predators in the productive way. Also all of this stuff impacting the pr of hunting and the image of hunting and stuff. So we've got is like very real concerns about non hunters influencing a hunting opportunities. But then we also have groups within our hunting community who are presenting ourselves, I believe, so poorly in showcasing what looks like we cannot be trusted to responsibly manage predators because we just want to wipe them out. What's your take on this? How do we approach the whole predator conundrum as a hunting community and culture. When it seems like they are they're are a suite of species that deserve to be in the landscape and are a part of the natural world and operate important functions within an ecosystem. We should be able to manage them and have them be a part of the hunting way of things. But it seems like there's no easy middle ground that everyone can agree on. It seems like you hate them or you love them, you're a crazy liberal or a hard line far writer who wants them all gone. It's just this incredibly polarizing topic, and I think it's one of these things that's going to have an outsized impact on the future of hunting anything. I'm going to stop talking and just lets you address any one of the many things I just threw in the air there. 01:08:13 Speaker 3: If you're guilty of rambling without asking a question, I am guilty of rambling without answering the question. Boy, you nailed it. In fact, I think predators are such an interesting category because they do they have the outsize influence on both sides of the equation for sure. I'm going to use just one tiny, like very personal example to what that I hope is kind of illustrative, and that is, in my county, we have a government trapper who, like a lot of Western counties, he's hired by USDA's Animals Services or Wildlife Services, and I think last year he shot like twenty five hundred coyotes, mostly from the air. And I don't think I've seen more coyotes than I have seen this winter. The main point being, like our sort of cultural fixation, and certainly within our communities you've described it of like predators are bad, predators are actually taking opportunity away from us has been like baked into so much of our mindset. I honestly do not believe it In fact, in my personal experience, what I have noticed is, you know, the better habitat you've got, the better prey base you've got, the better more predators you're going to have. And I think I think that's something that we need to start to just recognize it when we see it. Is we've got great hunting. We also have a lot of raccoons around, you know. Yeah, I would say there's a obviously there's a tipping point, and I think we're seeing it with you know, quail and some upland bird species for sure. But my main point being, I think we have allowed ourselves a blind spot when it comes to predators, whether you to you know, the cultural part of predators or whatever, But I firmly believe that predators make our world a richer place. Like they're just it's a more interesting place. I mean, I live and hunt in a in places with grizzly bears, you know, and grizzly bears are working into the sort of my homeland of the Missouri River breaks. I fully expect it's going to change the way I l hunt within my probably near near term. It's going to save my lifetime, but it's going to be way quicker than what you know. I hope my lifetime extends to I used to say ten years now like they're they are in the breaks. 01:10:37 Speaker 2: They're in the APR now, huh. 01:10:38 Speaker 3: Yeah. And I'm concerned about how it's going to affect things, but I can't In some ways, I can't wait because I think it's going to make for a much different, yeah, but richer experience of dealing with them. 01:10:50 Speaker 2: And so. 01:10:52 Speaker 3: I think if we I think this is actually one of the elements where we have the ability as a hunting community to make positive in roads with the non hunting community by saying, actually, we are at we want the same things here. It may be a question degrees and sort of numeric tolerance, like I don't want I want to see grizzly bears managed. I want to see wolves managed. I think the greatest gift we can give to a wildlife species is actually managing them through hunting to welcome their place on the landscape and actually build advocates for their presence there. And I think that message is one that if we can actually have a conversation, then take the shrillness out of it. I think there's a lot of shared values with people who want to see many more predators, but also recognized and when they really are introspective about it, they recognize human presence in these places is not going to allow for unmanaged predators numbers that there's going to have to be management, and that's where we meet in the middle and figure it out. 01:11:58 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:12:00 Speaker 2: So the larger issue, though not larger issue, but the parallel issue to this tolerance of predators on the landscape by hunters as you're discussing and management of them. The flip of that is what we're seeing in places where there is the ability to manage these critters. Now there's this risk that we might be losing that opportunity in places like Colorado. I know you've been following, You've seen what's been going on there, You've seen what's going on in other states. How do you see us as a hunting community best addressing those kinds of things moving forward? Because this isn't going to be the end of it. This is going to be something will continue to have to address for many years. I'm sure I personally believe that Step one is doing what you just said. When it comes to predators, we need to demonstrate to the non hunting public that we can be a part of the solution that managing predators. Hunting predators is not a death sentence to them as a population. It is a boon to them, actually, because if hunters are advocates for these species, it leads to better things for the species long term. Right. We've seen that with so many other animals. Why couldn't that be true for wolves or grizzly bears, et cetera. And when we have these things like the Facebook picture I told you about, I think that's the kind of thing that leads to ballad initiatives getting support. So all that said, what else can we be thinking about or doing differently or talking about differently to ensure that we don't have more of these Colorado ballad initiatives down the road, or that we can defeat them when they do pop up when they do. 01:13:47 Speaker 3: I actually comment on the Colorado issue that I think has been I haven't heard it articulated, and it's you know, it's an itchy thing to say, but I think it's influencing this discussion. And that is we as a hunting community have allowed mountain lion hunting as a specific, very narrow subset to be dominated by a very specially specialized and special interest group of often commercial outfitters. Yeah, there's tons of guys who are running dogs who are not outfitters, but a it's a pretty specialized thing. The reason I mention it is I think the mountain lion hunting community in Colorado, but anywhere else that it's done, and it's done appropriately and managed, and I'm a big fan of it. But the takeaway is it's a guy who usually a guy who just showed up to shoot a mountain lion out of a tree. There is very little experience that they've had with the resource with the experience, and I think that's the client. I think that's an achilles heel of this whole argument, and it's an easy one for the antis to exploit. So I think we need to do a better job of marginalizing that part, maybe sort of like I wouldn't say canceling it by any means, but making it less visible and amplifying the part of that of these amazing dogs that are doing remarkable athletic and instinctive things that they are not unlike your dog at home that also has these tendencies that we have sort of bred out of them. But here's a dog that's living its best life and managing a public resource that without management would be problematic. I think we could bring in all of the secondary things of it, But what I really worry about is we've given ammunition to the anti is to say, I mean, look at this. This is just you're commercializing a resource and exploiting a resource for people who you know, have no business being in the woods. I believe everybody has a business being in the woods. But the filter that we have allowed to be sort of like draped over this, I don't think is healthy for continuation of that activity. 01:16:03 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:16:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, there's you mentioned something that the word ammunition, like giving ammunition to the and to hunting world is something that so much of this discussion on culture is actually related to right. So much of the future of hunting, whether we want to admit it or not, is dependent on whether or not we continue to be accepted by the general public. Right, this is a privilege that we have to hunt. I know we like to think it's a right, but it's not a right. It's a privilege currently, and that means that we need to conduct ourselves in such a way that we continue to earn that privilege and demonstrate our role here in America to be able to hunt, and that can easily disappear with bad apples continuing to be the only thing sometimes that these folks see. So we need to be very, very careful. And I think that's why there's this need to have conversations on these types of topics where we are willing as a community to gather around and like I had this analogy last time with Dan and Tony. You know, I would much rather deal with our dirty laundry as a family around the table versus like this being out in the public square. Like, let's all get around the table. It's Thanksgiving, let's hash it out together. And yeah, we're going to disagree in some things, and we're gonna approach things from different perspectives, and yeah, you might throw some turkey at me one time, but like, let's let's handle it as a family, though not as enemies, not as two different political parties. No, like, we're going to figure this out together and make sure that this family can continue to function as a family moving forward and keep this thing together. That doesn't mean though it's gonna be kumbaya every second, right, But I much rather do that than have some outside arbitr arbiter coming in and making decisions for us. I guess is what I'm getting at, and and I hope that this all leads to something positive like that down the road. 01:18:14 Speaker 3: Is this a setup for an intervention? 01:18:15 Speaker 4: Like? 01:18:16 Speaker 3: Is there something you want to tell me? 01:18:18 Speaker 2: No? No, But but it is a setup, Andrew for you to escape this because I know you've got a hard stop coming up relatively soon, and I want to be respectful that No. 01:18:30 Speaker 3: I appreciate that, but I can't let this go without like, I think that's I I could not agree with you more. I mean, I think that's one of the things that we've like recognized in each other. The critique I would have of that, though, is in that example, like we want to have a more sustainable I can't remember the words you use, but you know, a productive family. I think that implies that we share a common view of what our goal is, like what we should be trying to aspire to. I think the problem that we're in right now, and the reason that this discussion so vital is I don't think we have that. I don't think we know exactly what we're aspiring to is it sustainability, is it continuing these traditions to the next generation? Like what actually is it? Is it opportunity for all? And I think we kind of founder when it comes to that, right, and that's that's well, I want the opportunity to hunt trophy bucks, you know, and however I can manage them, and that should be my sort of right, you know, or opportunity or ability. I guess now I'm kind of tripping all over my tongue. But I do think that's a problem that we don't have a singular view of what we're aspiring to. And I would just say one more thing. One of the things in just human history that has brought people together is a shared enemy and this conflict and is shared purpose around a conflict. And I think we have plenty of shared enemies, but I don't think we recognize them collectively. And I'm not saying we need to go out and invent one, but I do think that when we as a community see a threat from outside, we tend to gather around our community and maybe excuse some of the foibles from some of our members because there's this bigger thing that we're fighting. And I don't think that's all wrong. I don't think that's a bad thing. 01:20:50 Speaker 2: Okay, to your previous assertion, which is true, which is that we do not necessarily all know what we're trying to aspire towards. What should we be aspiring towards If you were to, you know, being one of our whether or not you want to admit it or not, you are a leader in this community and a lot of folks look to you, what would be productive future and state be that we should be aspiring towards working towards that way as a culture could be moving in the direction. 01:21:31 Speaker 3: Of such a good question. I mean, we have got to be able to sustain our kind of everything, our ability to manage wildlife. Iink we need to be able to sustain our traditions that we inherited from people who came before us. I think we need to be and sustain is I think the right word. We may not grow it, we may not lose it, but I think we need to sustain and what we have in perpetuity, Like we need to be thinking about the things that we do that like that have quantit viable damage to our ability to keep doing this. And so when you talk about you know, our obligation to the community to call out somebody who's who's jeopardizing that or lessening that sustainability. I think that I think that's what we do need to do. I think I think we can see it. I'll go back to that hundred education class that I started this with. It's like, you know, in some ways, we as leaders in this community know the threats, and we know all the many ways that we can lose what we have. Those kids sitting the hundred education class have absolutely no idea kind of what's ahead of a good, bad, and indifferent, and I do think to us it's our job is sort of like far sears to like to point out that we've got problems coming up, or we've got problems here that we've got that there are problems in our world. So that's kind of a clumsy way of saying, but I think the the ability to sustain our traditions is probably the better, the best way to put it, because I do think they are uniquely ours. Think every generation has had this obligation, but ours just feel a little bit more on the surface and a little bit more the threats are a little bit nearer at hand. 01:23:38 Speaker 4: Yeah, So if there was one final. 01:23:44 Speaker 2: Thought you want to leave folks with when it comes to this overarching discussion of where we are as a hunting culture. Is there anything we haven't touched on, or anything that you would like to just circle back to and put a pin on for folks as we leave today, any thing you want to make sure that we keep in mind moving forward. 01:24:04 Speaker 3: I think it really does come back to that, like talk to people, like be a member of a community, whether that's getting to know what your neighbor's needs are or the values of your church or I think that's what we've lost in so many ways, and that's what social media is attempting to sort of fill, is this like ability to communicate with each other, and it's doing it so ineffectively, but just the yeah, the ability to like talk to people is like a lost art these days, and it's I see it in myself. It's so much easier just to hide behind a screen and like email somebody. But I don't think you really get at those sort of intersections of shared values. And even in a small town in rural Montana, I see we we talk beyond each other kind of constantly. But I think there's so much at stake there, whether it's hunting access that you are granted by your neighbor, whether it's understanding you know that their appreciation for you in the community. It's that feedback loop that we are getting. And we're now accustomed to getting those sort of quick, caffeinated hits from social media, but boy, the satisfying ones are what you're you and I are talking about. It is like pushing pause, taking time to put things in context and then communicating them. 01:25:35 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:25:36 Speaker 3: Wow, that's a really should be pithy, right, should be like right on point. That one was a little bit of like a tombstone. 01:25:43 Speaker 2: No, but it rings. It rings very true. There's there's a lot, a lot of truth to that. And uh man, that's the kind of thing we need more than ever these days. Andrew, thank you so much for doing this, for for sharing your thoughts on all this, for just catching up a little bit. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this. Outdoor life dot com is that the best place folks should be heading to find any of your work? Is there anything in particular you want folks to be keeping an eye out an article or a piece of work that you're particularly excited about. 01:26:18 Speaker 3: That's a great question. No, just go you know, I'm all over the place, so yeah, if not there elsewhere. But outdoor Life is kind of my homeland and it's a it has been for a long time, and it's it's a great venue for actually to have extensions of just what you and I have talked about. 01:26:33 Speaker 2: So yeah, thanks, Well, like I said earlier, your your your archive with outdoor Life is uh, it stands stands at the very top of the top of the top. There's a lot, a lot of great work there that I've thoroughly enjoyed. And if you guys have any extra time in your hands after this, just go to outdoor life dot com click on Andrew's author name and you'll see pages and pages of articles and there's a lot of really. 01:27:00 Speaker 4: Good ones, so check them out. 01:27:02 Speaker 3: Thanks Mark, all. 01:27:04 Speaker 2: Right, and that's a wrap today. Thank you for being here, Thanks for engaging on this set of topics. Like I mentioned at the top, let's not stop here. Let's take these conversations and continue them yourself in your own life, chatting with your buddies, chatting with your family, chatting with friends, discussing these things that the idea here is not that me and Andrew, or me and Tony and Danner or anybody else are going to solve this all ourselves. We're just hoping to catalyze further conversations in the community. This is a jumping off point. You are the one. You and your friends and family and your community are the ones who will actually help determine what the future of our hunting community and culture looks like. So have those conversations, hash these things out, think about this yourself. All of that's going to help point us towards a more positive future. 01:27:59 Speaker 4: I appreciate you. 01:28:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very proud to have you part of this community and thankful for uh for it And until next time, stay Wired to hunt. 01:28:12 Speaker 4: M m HM