# Ep. 939: Fat Buck, Wet Buck, and The Strangest Bad Public Land Idea

An episode of [The MeatEater Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/960902903), 1 Oct 2026, 1 h 20 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/63aba8bc-2dc8-4f89-807a-ae280065a7cd/188add25-0876-4e24-a009-b4d50141a485/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3892b9a1-a960-4f9e-bee7-ae280065a7db

Randall Williams and the MeatEater Crew discuss: putting a baseball stadium in a national park; a very fat buck; a grizzly bear stealing an elk; Steve and Rob Sand discuss his very wet buck; Bryan Burrough shared about his new podcast Gunfighters; and more! Check out Gunfighters Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show, folks. We've got a great
[0:07] Speaker 1: show for you today. We've got one of the strangest
[0:09] Speaker 1: bad public land ideas in recent memory. We've got a
[0:13] Speaker 1: big old fat, fat buck that one of you listeners
[0:16] Speaker 1: killed in Minnesota. We've got a story about some hunter
[0:19] Speaker 1: harassment justice in Alaska. And we've got a prerecorded interview
[0:23] Speaker 1: from Steve with Iowa gubernatorial candidate and meat eater podcast
[0:27] Speaker 1: guest Rob Sand. In our script here, that is described
[0:30] Speaker 1: as an interview pertaining to a big wet buck. But
[0:33] Speaker 1: because I haven't seen the interview, I don't know what
[0:35] Speaker 1: that means yet. But first, Brody's got a story from
[0:39] Speaker 1: us out of Wyoming about an elk hunter who got
[0:41] Speaker 1: sighted and then unsighted for a grizzly bear stealing his carcass.
[0:46] Speaker 2: Yep.
[0:46] Speaker 3: We're going to have a little roundtable discussion about this one.
[0:51] Speaker 3: So Ron Niziolek... I think I'm pronouncing that close anyway. Uh,
[0:58] Speaker 3: experienced bow hunter from Cody, Wyoming on September 19th. Uh,
[1:04] Speaker 3: he was hunting with his last year. Yeah. Last year. Um,
[1:08] Speaker 3: he was hunting with his buddy, Adam miles, uh, Northwestern Wyoming,
[1:13] Speaker 3: like very high density of grizzlies. He's hunting in a
[1:16] Speaker 3: spot he's hunted before. So he knew the deal there. Um,
[1:21] Speaker 3: late afternoon, he shoots a bull, uh, You got the picture, Phil?
[1:26] Speaker 4: Nice bull.
[1:27] Speaker 3: Nice bull. Shoots that bull. It's late in the afternoon,
[1:31] Speaker 3: so they watch it walk off and bed down about
[1:34] Speaker 3: 100 yards away. But by this time, it's very close
[1:38] Speaker 3: to getting dark, and they don't want to mess with
[1:40] Speaker 3: cutting it up and potentially run into a grizzly at night.
[1:45] Speaker 3: So they just leave it, and then they come back
[1:48] Speaker 3: in at first light with pistols drawn. And they find
[1:52] Speaker 3: the bull dead right where it was laying only. It
[1:56] Speaker 3: was partially consumed by a grizzly bite marks, guts ripped out, poop,
[2:01] Speaker 3: bear poop all over the place. Um, so, uh, Nisiola
[2:06] Speaker 3: was concerned about potentially contaminated meat and the possibility of
[2:11] Speaker 3: the bear returning, which is very legitimate. Like that bear
[2:14] Speaker 3: was probably close by. Um, You know, you guys ran
[2:19] Speaker 3: into a similar situation in Alaska a while back. I
[2:22] Speaker 3: think his concerns were warranted. So they decided against skinning
[2:28] Speaker 3: and quartering it. They photographed the bull, cut off its head,
[2:34] Speaker 3: punched his elk tag, and just left the carcass. And
[2:37] Speaker 3: on the way out, he warned other hunters and cowboys
[2:40] Speaker 3: tending cattle in the area about the carcass, you know,
[2:43] Speaker 3: in case a grizzly came back. But he didn't report
[2:46] Speaker 3: the incident to Wyoming fishing game. So little, little time passes, uh,
[2:53] Speaker 3: and a Wyoming game warden, Jordan winner, uh, invested in
[2:58] Speaker 3: base investigated the carcass, uh, after achieving, receiving some tips
[3:02] Speaker 3: from other hunters that, you know, saw a headless elk
[3:05] Speaker 3: carcass and, you know, rightly so called it in, um, uh, Thanksgiving.
[3:13] Speaker 3: So almost two months later, the winter interviews, Nisiolik, Confiscated
[3:18] Speaker 3: his elk skull, antlers, and cell phone as potential evidence.
[3:23] Speaker 3: I'm assuming like a poaching, you know, investigation. And February 26th,
[3:34] Speaker 3: Wyoming Game and Fish issues Niziolek two misdemeanor citations. Wasting
[3:39] Speaker 3: a game animal, taking parts from a wasted game animal.
[3:43] Speaker 3: $ 450 and $ 900. No, 450 each, 900 combined. Nisiola contests
[3:53] Speaker 3: both citations rather than paying the fine, so it's going
[3:56] Speaker 3: to court at this point. August of this year, the
[4:01] Speaker 3: case goes before a jury in Park County, and prosecutors
[4:06] Speaker 3: argued that Wyoming law requires, it's a wanton waste law, typical,
[4:11] Speaker 3: retrieve all edible portions of the animal, quarters, backstraps, tenderloins.
[4:17] Speaker 3: The game warden testified that Niziolik should have packed out
[4:20] Speaker 3: the meat regardless of suspected contamination and then figured out
[4:26] Speaker 3: later if it was edible or not. Niziolik says spending
[4:32] Speaker 3: 90 minutes processing a bear-claimed carcass posed an unreasonable safety risk.
[4:37] Speaker 3: And his attorney also raised concerns about Game and Fish
[4:41] Speaker 3: providing uh, requested interview recordings only a day and a
[4:46] Speaker 3: half before the trial. In the end, the verdict finds
[4:49] Speaker 3: Snizzy Olick not guilty of both charges and his skull
[4:52] Speaker 3: and antlers are returned. Um, some, some interesting points that
[4:59] Speaker 3: came out of this, uh, Wyoming Game and Fish's own
[5:03] Speaker 3: hunting and bear country educational video warns hunters against attempting
[5:09] Speaker 3: to drive a bear away from a carcass as claimed. Um,
[5:13] Speaker 3: And Nisiola argues he was following this advice. Also cited
[5:19] Speaker 3: concerns about contamination from the grizzly saliva, urine, feces, and
[5:23] Speaker 3: recalled an earlier warning from a game warden against salvaging
[5:27] Speaker 3: bear-fed meat. He acknowledged that in hindsight, he should have
[5:31] Speaker 3: contacted Game and Fish immediately about what happened, but he
[5:38] Speaker 3: hopes this case prompts clearer agency guidance. regarding situations like this. Um,
[5:48] Speaker 3: this case does not change anything as far as it
[5:52] Speaker 3: acquitted Nisiolik, but it doesn't change anything about Wyoming's meat
[5:56] Speaker 3: salvage regulations. So, um, you know, my thoughts here that yes,
[6:04] Speaker 3: he should have called it in, but like he shouldn't
[6:07] Speaker 3: have gotten cited. Um, Their own educational video warns hunters
[6:14] Speaker 3: not to do that. So he's kind of following the
[6:17] Speaker 3: advice he should.
[6:18] Speaker 5: But do you feel like he did everything he could
[6:21] Speaker 5: the day he shot the bull?
[6:23] Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing. They could have certainly packed it out.
[6:28] Speaker 3: I don't think it's unreasonable to leave an elk overnight
[6:31] Speaker 3: in grizzly bear country if it's dark.
[6:35] Speaker 5: Well, you're increasing the chances that there's going to be
[6:37] Speaker 5: a bear on it.
[6:38] Speaker 3: Sure. But like, you know, yeah, maybe they could have said,
[6:43] Speaker 3: you should have cut it up. You should have got
[6:45] Speaker 3: it out of there, but they were also waiting for
[6:47] Speaker 3: that elk to die. Like they could, they couldn't have
[6:50] Speaker 3: gone in and killed it at night.
[6:52] Speaker 1: Right.
[6:53] Speaker 3: It was still alive when they left.
[6:57] Speaker 5: Uh, I don't know. I mean, I think if they,
[6:59] Speaker 5: if it's partially, you have an arrow in it and
[7:02] Speaker 5: you're waiting for it to die. Can you go in
[7:04] Speaker 5: there after shooting hours and fling more arrows? I don't,
[7:07] Speaker 5: I don't know what the answer is.
[7:09] Speaker 3: I would, that's a gray area. So like, if you
[7:11] Speaker 3: don't know, you can't go do it.
[7:14] Speaker 1: As, as someone who hunts in grizzly country, I, I
[7:20] Speaker 1: would be very leery of shooting an elk at last
[7:23] Speaker 1: light knowing if I'm not going to get it out
[7:25] Speaker 1: that night.
[7:26] Speaker 3: Sure. It wasn't at last light. It was, you know,
[7:29] Speaker 3: still late afternoon, you know, it, it took, it didn't
[7:33] Speaker 3: die right away. So like choices were made. Um, but I,
[7:39] Speaker 3: I think, To me, the issue here is that the
[7:43] Speaker 3: game warden that cited him is kind of contradicting what
[7:51] Speaker 3: Wyoming Game and Fish's own advice is. And that's a problem.
[7:56] Speaker 3: There needs to be consistency there.
[8:00] Speaker 5: Yeah, I think once the bear had claimed the carcass, yeah,
[8:04] Speaker 5: I agree with you completely. The question is, and again,
[8:07] Speaker 5: the details aren't in the story. But the question is, like,
[8:10] Speaker 5: the events leading up to that, did they take the
[8:13] Speaker 5: proper steps?
[8:15] Speaker 3: But what details aren't in the story? They were waiting
[8:19] Speaker 3: for the animal to die. And they can't, like, that happens.
[8:22] Speaker 5: So, like, were they watching it, literally, at 100 yards,
[8:26] Speaker 5: and its head was up, and it got dark? Yes.
[8:30] Speaker 3: They watched it bed down.
[8:33] Speaker 5: Yeah, I got that part. But then did they watch
[8:36] Speaker 5: it until dark? Yeah.
[8:39] Speaker 3: They waited. They felt like they did not want to
[8:42] Speaker 3: risk field dressing it at night.
[8:46] Speaker 5: Well, no, they wouldn't know that they could even field
[8:48] Speaker 5: dress it if the thing's alive.
[8:51] Speaker 3: It's a very common practice to leave an animal overnight.
[8:56] Speaker 5: Ungutted? I don't think so at all. I've never heard
[9:00] Speaker 5: of that. Unless you're completely sure that it's.
[9:04] Speaker 3: Wait a minute. If you shoot a whitetail at night,
[9:07] Speaker 3: at last light, and you're not sure if it's dead
[9:10] Speaker 3: or not.
[9:10] Speaker 5: Well, then it's a common practice. But if he's dead,
[9:15] Speaker 5: then you don't do that.
[9:16] Speaker 3: But you wouldn't know if he's dead.
[9:19] Speaker 5: Right. Exactly. Which I'm saying is that I'm not getting those... Mark,
[9:23] Speaker 5: what do you think?
[9:26] Speaker 4: I see what both of you are saying.
[9:28] Speaker 6: I think like, if it were me in this situation,
[9:31] Speaker 6: based on what we're hearing, I would wait for as
[9:33] Speaker 6: long as I possibly could to see if this thing
[9:35] Speaker 6: actually dies. And if it actually is dead, then I think,
[9:40] Speaker 6: you know, you're faced with this dilemma, which is, do I,
[9:43] Speaker 6: can I take care of this thing as fast as
[9:45] Speaker 6: possible before things get dicey? Or do I risk the
[9:48] Speaker 6: diciness in the morning? And I guess you guys have
[9:51] Speaker 6: more experience hunting grizzly country than I do, but probably
[9:54] Speaker 6: dealing with the diciness in the morning is, is a
[9:56] Speaker 6: safer bet.
[9:57] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[9:57] Speaker 3: And and the thing was like out in the open
[10:00] Speaker 3: you know you could see it from a long ways
[10:01] Speaker 3: away you can see see where it died yeah so
[10:05] Speaker 3: you know.
[10:06] Speaker 1: Yeah i guess my my other thought here is like
[10:10] Speaker 1: there should be i don't know if you want to
[10:13] Speaker 1: make it a requirement or not but like i do
[10:15] Speaker 1: think reporting that to Fish and Game, when you have
[10:19] Speaker 1: a bear on a carcass, not only just to absolve
[10:22] Speaker 1: yourself of any sort of legal issues, but it's also
[10:27] Speaker 1: a safety issue. Like if you're near a trailhead and
[10:30] Speaker 1: you leave a carcass, like I know of a case
[10:34] Speaker 1: where somebody, I know we got the animal out, but
[10:38] Speaker 1: the gut pile was nearby and he called He called
[10:43] Speaker 1: just to say, hey, there's a gut pile in this area,
[10:46] Speaker 1: which is near a hiking trail.
[10:47] Speaker 7: Yeah, and.
[10:48] Speaker 1: And then he actually got cited.
[10:50] Speaker 7: Oh, really?
[10:51] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[10:51] Speaker 3: For leaving.
[10:52] Speaker 1: He got cited for leaving bear attractant near a trail.
[10:57] Speaker 3: And fish parks and wildlife will put up notices.
[11:00] Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
[11:00] Speaker 3: Like, there is a, you know, watch out.
[11:02] Speaker 1: Exactly. So, like, I don't blame the investigator for thinking
[11:04] Speaker 1: that there's something fishy when someone calls in an elk
[11:08] Speaker 1: missing a head. Sure.
[11:09] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[11:09] Speaker 1: And the... they never got a call about a bear
[11:13] Speaker 1: taking the carcass. Like there's things that could have been
[11:15] Speaker 1: done to lead to a different outcome. But I also
[11:17] Speaker 1: don't think this guy was like up to no good
[11:21] Speaker 1: or anything, you know?
[11:22] Speaker 3: And it does talk a little bit.
[11:24] Speaker 1: It's just a sticky situation.
[11:26] Speaker 3: It does talk a little bit in the article about
[11:28] Speaker 3: how this, like in this area, like it's not uncommon
[11:33] Speaker 3: for this thing to happen. So I think that might
[11:36] Speaker 3: be his justification. Um, for this thing. And you know,
[11:40] Speaker 3: the bears are certainly not that scared of people and
[11:43] Speaker 3: they're just going to roll in and grab that elk regardless. Um, yeah,
[11:48] Speaker 3: I'm not saying the guy didn't do anything wrong, but
[11:51] Speaker 3: I feel like there needs to be some consistency between
[11:54] Speaker 3: what the game warden's doing and what the state is saying.
[11:57] Speaker 6: Well, I also think like some clarity could be needed,
[12:00] Speaker 6: not just in Montana, but elsewhere if it's not already
[12:02] Speaker 6: there around, you know, the wanton waste issue. after consumption
[12:08] Speaker 6: by another animal. Like at what point are you clear
[12:11] Speaker 6: of that? If, if a bear or a lion or
[12:13] Speaker 6: coyote comes in and eats half the animal, are you,
[12:16] Speaker 6: are you required to take the little scraps and hope
[12:18] Speaker 6: it's okay?
[12:19] Speaker 8: Right.
[12:19] Speaker 4: Um, I haven't read anything that's super clear about that before.
[12:22] Speaker 8: No.
[12:23] Speaker 5: I'd like to know if the whole contamination thing, like,
[12:27] Speaker 5: are you basically then at this point just worried that
[12:29] Speaker 5: there's bacteria that comes from the bear's saliva and mouth
[12:33] Speaker 5: and claws?
[12:33] Speaker 4: Sorts of stuff. Feces.
[12:35] Speaker 3: Yeah, they lay down on those things.
[12:37] Speaker 1: Roll around on them.
[12:38] Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't think that'd be good for you.
[12:42] Speaker 5: Just saying.
[12:43] Speaker 1: Yeah, I've always thought like the, you know, it's typically
[12:47] Speaker 1: defined as edible portions of certain body parts and it
[12:53] Speaker 1: does make sense that they don't want to line out
[12:56] Speaker 1: each and every possible scenario, but I do think like
[12:59] Speaker 1: your best judgment. And then I've, you know, like if
[13:02] Speaker 1: I've shot something and there's a chunk of meat, that's
[13:05] Speaker 1: just totally like not worth carrying out. Like not obviously
[13:10] Speaker 1: not like a whole quarter, but like part of the
[13:12] Speaker 1: quarter and I'm going to carve it off. I'll take
[13:14] Speaker 1: pictures of, of what I leave behind.
[13:17] Speaker 3: Really smart.
[13:18] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[13:18] Speaker 1: In case anybody, if case you get to the trailhead
[13:20] Speaker 1: and someone's like, looks like you, like quartered that thing
[13:23] Speaker 1: a little thin, you know, like top shelf to do
[13:25] Speaker 1: something like that. I'm like, no, here's, here's what the
[13:28] Speaker 1: carcass looked like. Here's the, here's the part that is
[13:30] Speaker 1: not with what I would ordinarily pack out. And here's why.
[13:34] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[13:34] Speaker 3: I've seen people leave whole front shoulders.
[13:36] Speaker 1: Yeah. Cause they say they're shot up.
[13:38] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[13:40] Speaker 3: Which could get you in trouble.
[13:41] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[13:41] Speaker 1: I always think like it's, everybody has a phone on them. Everybody,
[13:44] Speaker 1: if you like, if you're doing the right thing and
[13:47] Speaker 1: you have reasons for what you're doing and you're within the, like,
[13:50] Speaker 1: Within the law, I just don't want to leave any
[13:52] Speaker 1: questions as to what happened.
[13:54] Speaker 3: Randall's a smart guy.
[13:56] Speaker 4: Better safe than sorry.
[13:58] Speaker 1: Don't want to end up in.
[13:59] Speaker 3: There you go, folks.
[14:00] Speaker 5: Yep.
[14:00] Speaker 8: Yep.
[14:01] Speaker 3: That's what we think about that.
[14:03] Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Brody. This was a story that, like,
[14:07] Speaker 1: definitely as someone who hunts in grizzly bear country, it
[14:09] Speaker 1: makes you revisit your thinking on all these things and
[14:13] Speaker 1: how you approach it. But now on to our news.
[14:18] Speaker 9: All right.
[14:21] Speaker 1: And ladies and gentlemen in the event that you're watching
[14:25] Speaker 1: on YouTube you may have noticed that there is in
[14:27] Speaker 1: fact a fifth Member of our broadcast team today. We're
[14:31] Speaker 1: joined here by Brian Burra. I'm told that.
[14:34] Speaker 2: That's Burra You know, that is the way the family.
[14:39] Speaker 1: Yes pronounces it.
[14:41] Speaker 7: But if you say Burra Nobody knows how to pronounce it.
[14:44] Speaker 7: So so so when we're introducing ourselves, we'll say burrow.
[14:48] Speaker 1: Okay, and Well, you're on your home turf now at
[14:51] Speaker 1: this point, so we'll call it Burra.
[14:53] Speaker 2: And I feel like your family now.
[14:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, part of the Meat Eater family. Gunfighters with
[14:58] Speaker 1: Brian Burra is out now. This is our newest podcast.
[15:01] Speaker 1: It's on the History Podcast feed that was formerly the
[15:04] Speaker 1: American West. Brian, this is not your first time in
[15:08] Speaker 1: the studio here. You were on the main Meat Eater podcast.
[15:11] Speaker 2: Last summer, I came in and talked with Steven and
[15:14] Speaker 2: all y'all guys.
[15:14] Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah.
[15:15] Speaker 1: So- Give folks a taste of what this podcast is
[15:19] Speaker 1: all about, the gunfighters.
[15:22] Speaker 7: This is a nonfiction historical narrative, really the first narrative
[15:27] Speaker 7: history of what I call the gunfighter era, which is
[15:30] Speaker 7: a period from 1865 when the first kind of nationally
[15:34] Speaker 7: known gunfight was widely reported until the end of it,
[15:38] Speaker 7: which I put an arbitrary date on, but I feel
[15:42] Speaker 7: like it's right to end the era in 1901 when
[15:45] Speaker 7: Butch and Sundance got on a freighter in Brooklyn and
[15:49] Speaker 7: headed down to South America. At that point, all the
[15:53] Speaker 7: major gunfighter figures from Wild Bill Hickok to Billy the
[15:57] Speaker 7: Kid to Wyatt Earp, they pretty much moved on in
[16:00] Speaker 7: one way or the other. And so I wanted to
[16:02] Speaker 7: tell the story of that 35-year period in one single story.
[16:06] Speaker 2: And it's a lot of fun.
[16:08] Speaker 1: Yeah. So you published a book last year by the
[16:10] Speaker 1: same name, And then this podcast is sort of an
[16:13] Speaker 1: adaptation and expansion of that material for.
[16:16] Speaker 2: Exactly. I came on and we all talked about it.
[16:19] Speaker 7: And I know my sales numbers certainly went up and
[16:22] Speaker 7: I gather y'all's numbers looked.
[16:24] Speaker 2: A little bit better.
[16:25] Speaker 7: So Stephen reached out at some point and said, hey,
[16:27] Speaker 7: could we turn this into a conversational podcast where we
[16:31] Speaker 7: tell the stories, the accurate stories of history in a
[16:35] Speaker 7: fun way? And that's We are in the process of
[16:38] Speaker 7: making those. I'm in Montana this week doing 10 of them.
[16:42] Speaker 7: And we've got two already out. I think maybe the
[16:44] Speaker 7: third one came out this week. They come out so
[16:47] Speaker 7: fast you lose count. And there'll be 26 in all.
[16:49] Speaker 7: And we're tremendously excited about it.
[16:51] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[16:52] Speaker 1: So it's similar sort of in the format to what
[16:55] Speaker 1: Dan was doing with the American West. And that a
[16:57] Speaker 1: lot of that was adaptations of things that he'd written previously.
[17:00] Speaker 1: And it's a biweekly, I think that's correct. If it's
[17:05] Speaker 1: every other week.
[17:06] Speaker 5: It's every week.
[17:07] Speaker 1: It's every week.
[17:08] Speaker 8: Oh my goodness.
[17:08] Speaker 9: I know.
[17:09] Speaker 1: Well, I really too bad. We can't go back and
[17:12] Speaker 1: change that, but it's every week, 26 episodes, um, video
[17:17] Speaker 1: on YouTube and Apple podcasts. And the video is, is
[17:20] Speaker 1: unlike anything that we've done here at meat eater.
[17:23] Speaker 7: If you want to tell me, this is unlike anything
[17:24] Speaker 7: I've done before. I was, I was very happy coming
[17:27] Speaker 7: in and being the, you.
[17:28] Speaker 2: Know, elderly voice of an author on a podcast.
[17:31] Speaker 7: And now suddenly I'm looking up and there's, photos flying
[17:35] Speaker 7: around and illustrations and some of you guys doing voiceover talent.
[17:39] Speaker 7: And then every now and then you see this kind of,
[17:42] Speaker 7: you know, old guy on camera and it's like much
[17:44] Speaker 7: more akin to television than it is to a podcast.
[17:47] Speaker 2: If that's what turns you on. I mean, I'm really
[17:49] Speaker 2: enjoying it.
[17:50] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[17:51] Speaker 1: No, it's been fun to sort of watch from the outside.
[17:53] Speaker 1: I think we've all dipped our toes a little bit
[17:55] Speaker 1: in the voice acting realm, but, um, Check it out.
[17:59] Speaker 1: I think there are three episodes. I looked this morning.
[18:01] Speaker 1: I think there's three episodes out now. You can listen
[18:04] Speaker 1: to it wherever you get your podcasts by searching Gunfighters. Again,
[18:08] Speaker 1: check out the video on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. Can
[18:14] Speaker 1: we talk about your next project or should we keep
[18:16] Speaker 1: that hush-hush?
[18:17] Speaker 2: We can do anything you want to, Randall.
[18:19] Speaker 1: I really like this.
[18:21] Speaker 5: Now we have to.
[18:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So after the Gunfighters,
[18:26] Speaker 1: You were just telling us that you have a new
[18:28] Speaker 1: project on your horizon, and I'd like to give a
[18:30] Speaker 1: little tease of that.
[18:31] Speaker 7: Well, gunfighters, you know, I was in New York for 30,
[18:35] Speaker 7: 35 years, and I came back out to Texas where
[18:37] Speaker 7: I grew up, and I decided to write about gunfighters,
[18:40] Speaker 7: and I thought, you know, it's the 21st century. I'm
[18:44] Speaker 7: writing kind of humorous, if you will, about gun violence.
[18:50] Speaker 2: What could go wrong?
[18:50] Speaker 1: It is a very funny book.
[18:51] Speaker 2: And then the book.
[18:52] Speaker 7: Comes out, and I can't say it became a thing,
[18:55] Speaker 7: but let's just say the reception was very generous. And
[18:57] Speaker 7: so the publisher turned around to me a week after
[19:00] Speaker 7: I turned it in, and they said, we love what
[19:01] Speaker 7: you did with Gunfighters. We love that you've kept it
[19:04] Speaker 7: conversational and fun and accessible for people who maybe don't
[19:08] Speaker 7: love thick history books. How would you feel about doing
[19:11] Speaker 7: this for pirates? Yes.
[19:13] Speaker 5: And I've been.
[19:15] Speaker 2: I've read everything.
[19:16] Speaker 7: About pirates since I was 11, since I discovered them.
[19:19] Speaker 7: And by pirates, I don't mean global all pirates. I
[19:23] Speaker 7: mean what we call the golden era of piracy, which
[19:26] Speaker 7: is 1650 to 1725. So it's essentially every pirate you've
[19:29] Speaker 7: ever heard of. Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Henry Morgan. And I'm
[19:36] Speaker 7: telling it in the spirit of the gunfighter. I'm telling
[19:39] Speaker 7: it as a single story set over 75 years with
[19:43] Speaker 7: the true stories of a lot of you've heard of
[19:46] Speaker 7: and a lot that you haven't and I mean, it's
[19:49] Speaker 7: the most fun you can have with your clothes on
[19:51] Speaker 7: doing stuff like this. I mean, they actually pay me
[19:53] Speaker 7: to do this. I mean, I'd be reading this stuff anyway.
[19:56] Speaker 8: Oh yeah.
[19:57] Speaker 7: And so now all I'm doing is turning around and
[19:59] Speaker 7: telling them, you know, in a conversational way as a,
[20:02] Speaker 7: as a story. Um, and it's just, it's fun. I'm,
[20:06] Speaker 7: I'm still stunned 50 years after I started doing this, they, uh,
[20:09] Speaker 7: they still pay me to do it.
[20:11] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[20:11] Speaker 1: Well, I'm, I'm, uh, tremendously excited for the pirate, the
[20:14] Speaker 1: pirate book. I'm excited for gunfighters as well.
[20:17] Speaker 7: The next time I come in Randall, you'll have to
[20:19] Speaker 7: tell me what to call it because all my friends
[20:22] Speaker 7: are giving me these awful titles like arg and, you know, yeah,
[20:26] Speaker 7: maybe that's good.
[20:28] Speaker 5: I'm just telling you.
[20:29] Speaker 2: I've got to come up with something credible and respectful.
[20:31] Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah.
[20:32] Speaker 6: The podcast version of the pirate book with Randall being
[20:35] Speaker 6: a pirate voice actor, I think that will be spectacular.
[20:37] Speaker 9: We've got to figure out how to fit pirates into
[20:39] Speaker 9: the four verticals, but I think we can do that.
[20:40] Speaker 1: I think we can make a case somehow. Well, Brian,
[20:43] Speaker 1: we are thrilled to have you join the Meat Eater
[20:46] Speaker 1: family here, and everybody's enjoying the gunfighters, and it's great
[20:50] Speaker 1: to have you back in the studio. Four-time New York
[20:53] Speaker 1: Times bestselling author, Brian Burrow. The Gunfighters, it's out now.
[20:57] Speaker 1: Check it out wherever you get your podcasts and check
[20:59] Speaker 1: out video on YouTube and Apple Podcasts.
[21:01] Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.
[21:04] Speaker 1: Yanni, it's Whitetail. Are you ready?
[21:07] Speaker 5: Yep, ready.
[21:08] Speaker 1: Yanni, it's Whitetail Week. Yanni, it's Whitetail Week here at MeatEater.
[21:13] Speaker 5: Tell us all about that. That's right, Randall. Whitetail Week!
[21:20] Speaker 1: Wow.
[21:21] Speaker 5: Look at that.
[21:21] Speaker 4: I'm here for it.
[21:22] Speaker 5: Well, I did that for Mark. For all you guys,
[21:25] Speaker 5: you guys know, most of you know, I think.
[21:27] Speaker 9: Yeah, because you've been telling everybody.
[21:28] Speaker 5: I'm now announcing some volleyball games over at Bozeman High School.
[21:32] Speaker 5: That's awesome. I'm very jealous. And having a great time
[21:35] Speaker 5: with it.
[21:35] Speaker 1: Yeah, bring the hype.
[21:37] Speaker 5: The guy ahead of me, I have extremely big shoes
[21:39] Speaker 5: to fill. The guy ahead of me was so good
[21:43] Speaker 5: that Montana State University stole him. And he's now announcing
[21:48] Speaker 5: over there.
[21:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
[21:50] Speaker 5: Yeah, this guy supposedly could sing the national anthem by himself.
[21:55] Speaker 5: That's incredible. Into the mic in front of a crowd.
[21:57] Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah, that toe area of the shoe I'm
[22:01] Speaker 5: not going to fill, but maybe calling the game I
[22:04] Speaker 5: can do well.
[22:05] Speaker 3: Good retirement plan for you.
[22:08] Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I hope that the
[22:11] Speaker 5: kids that I'm announcing for, that they get a kick
[22:13] Speaker 5: out of it.
[22:13] Speaker 1: Maybe next year you can announce the Fish Eater Classic.
[22:16] Speaker 8: Ooh, okay.
[22:17] Speaker 5: I could be there for that. All right, September 28th
[22:20] Speaker 5: to October 4th is Whitetail Week here. This is meant
[22:24] Speaker 5: to just get everybody fired up for whitetail season, which
[22:29] Speaker 5: I am now. Now that I've got a whole month's
[22:32] Speaker 5: worth of elk hunting out of the way, I am
[22:34] Speaker 5: extremely excited just to go and read some sign and
[22:38] Speaker 5: climb into a tree and just sit there and not
[22:40] Speaker 5: have to hike up and down 2,000 feet every morning
[22:43] Speaker 5: and evening. I got a Kansas hunt coming up. With
[22:47] Speaker 5: my good buddy and colleague, Brent Reeves, which is going
[22:49] Speaker 5: to be extremely fun. And I actually, this is an
[22:53] Speaker 5: older video of him. This buck is so reliable. Pull
[22:57] Speaker 5: this up now. What's that?
[22:59] Speaker 9: Do you want me to pull it up right now?
[23:00] Speaker 5: Yeah, please. This buck is so reliable, I think I'm
[23:03] Speaker 5: going to have to call him Steady Eddie.
[23:05] Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness.
[23:06] Speaker 4: Is that a little drop?
[23:08] Speaker 5: Yeah, it is. No, I think it's velvet.
[23:12] Speaker 4: I thought there was a little tiny thing sticking off that.
[23:14] Speaker 5: Very soon after he peeled his velvet. But this is,
[23:20] Speaker 5: like I said, it's an older video, but is the
[23:23] Speaker 5: best one where he just like stops, you know, full frame,
[23:27] Speaker 5: picks his head up so you can get a real
[23:28] Speaker 5: good look at him. But he's almost on like a
[23:32] Speaker 5: daily pattern by that camera.
[23:34] Speaker 6: Well, when you first got this picture, Yanni, you texted
[23:36] Speaker 6: me and you said, is this a day one shooter
[23:38] Speaker 6: in Kansas?
[23:39] Speaker 9: Yeah.
[23:39] Speaker 4: And we had a little discussion, but that was, you know,
[23:42] Speaker 4: A month ago.
[23:43] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[23:43] Speaker 4: Where do you stand on it now? Do you think
[23:45] Speaker 4: that's still a day one shooter?
[23:46] Speaker 5: Day one shooter. Yeah.
[23:48] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[23:48] Speaker 5: It can be easy for me to get like too
[23:50] Speaker 5: big for my britches sometimes in this sense where I'm like, well,
[23:54] Speaker 5: I'm going to hold out for this and for that.
[23:55] Speaker 5: And then I'm thinking like, no, I haven't even killed
[23:57] Speaker 5: a buck like close to that caliber. So why on
[24:00] Speaker 5: earth would I pass him just because I'm hanging in
[24:02] Speaker 5: a tree in Kansas? Amen.
[24:06] Speaker 1: You can still sit in the tree for the rest
[24:07] Speaker 1: of the trip.
[24:08] Speaker 5: It's not the same, Randall. You know that.
[24:10] Speaker 2: I know.
[24:12] Speaker 5: The highlights of Whitetail Week is the Ultimate Whitetail Giveaway,
[24:18] Speaker 5: which is headlined by a guided hunt with Jordan Budd
[24:22] Speaker 5: and Mark Canyon. This is something you can't buy, folks.
[24:25] Speaker 5: I wish I could win this because after my Wisconsin
[24:28] Speaker 5: hunt last year, which just went live on YouTube, and
[24:31] Speaker 5: I appreciate everybody that's already watched. I'm just like filled
[24:35] Speaker 5: with gratitude that so many people would watch me not
[24:37] Speaker 5: kill a deer. Um, but hopefully it was entertaining for you.
[24:41] Speaker 5: But after you see that, you'll say, yeah, Yanni needs,
[24:44] Speaker 5: could use some help from Mark. And, uh, you think
[24:46] Speaker 5: as a colleague of his, I would get like more,
[24:49] Speaker 5: you know, tips and sometimes spent with Mark, you know,
[24:53] Speaker 5: becoming a better whitetail deer hunter. So I don't know.
[24:55] Speaker 5: Maybe I just need to plan a hunt with him.
[24:56] Speaker 6: You know, I actually invited you to come hunt with
[24:58] Speaker 6: me last year and you stood me up at the
[25:00] Speaker 6: last minute.
[25:01] Speaker 5: At the last minute?
[25:02] Speaker 4: Yeah, we had the tailgate tour together. I was like, hey,
[25:04] Speaker 4: after the tailgate, let's go deer hunting together.
[25:06] Speaker 5: We were going to go to Michigan.
[25:08] Speaker 4: I was going to take you to my deer camp.
[25:09] Speaker 5: Oh, instead I went to my deer camp. Because you
[25:11] Speaker 5: wanted to spray weeds. You are 100% right. I'm sorry
[25:17] Speaker 5: about that. Work had to get done. So yeah, you
[25:21] Speaker 5: can win a hunt with Jordan Budd and Mark Canyon
[25:24] Speaker 5: on Jordan's place over there in Nebraska. Sounds like an
[25:28] Speaker 5: awesome time. On top of that, other prizes included in
[25:32] Speaker 5: the giveaway. A Matthew's bow, a tethered saddle, a meat,
[25:36] Speaker 5: the company meat, M-E-A-T, grinder, which also grinds meat.
[25:39] Speaker 1: A meat grinder.
[25:41] Speaker 5: A grill of smoker, SIG binoculars, whisper light. Sorry, this
[25:46] Speaker 5: one is a tongue twister for me. First lights whisper down.
[25:50] Speaker 5: Was there an old product that used to be.
[25:51] Speaker 1: Called whisper light? MSR whisper light stove.
[25:54] Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a stove. I was just using that stove.
[25:55] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[25:56] Speaker 5: Uh, crispy boots and last, but certainly not least non
[26:01] Speaker 5: X membership. There's so much stuff. Like I said, it's
[26:03] Speaker 5: the ultimate giveaway. Um, keep an eye out on all
[26:07] Speaker 5: the meat eater channels this week to get you fired
[26:09] Speaker 5: up for deer season and head to the meat eater
[26:11] Speaker 5: store to sign up for the ultimate whitetail giveaway. Mark,
[26:15] Speaker 5: you want to add anything to the, to my little
[26:18] Speaker 5: promo here?
[26:19] Speaker 6: I would, I would just say I had to do
[26:21] Speaker 6: a bunch of videos about this. So I happen to
[26:23] Speaker 6: have all this very top of mind. But more than
[26:26] Speaker 6: $ 23, 000 worth of prizes. So you listed a lot of
[26:28] Speaker 6: great stuff, but there's just so much more.
[26:31] Speaker 1: I was adding that up in my mind, knowing that
[26:32] Speaker 1: I'm ineligible for winning this prize package.
[26:35] Speaker 5: So it's pretty sweet.
[26:36] Speaker 6: But a key thing to remember is that you don't
[26:38] Speaker 6: need to buy anything to enter.
[26:41] Speaker 4: It's free to enter the giveaway.
[26:43] Speaker 6: But if you do happen to go on First Letter,
[26:45] Speaker 6: the mediator store or anything, and you need something right
[26:48] Speaker 6: now and you purchase a new jacket or game bags
[26:51] Speaker 6: or whatever, you get extra entries into the giveaway this week,
[26:55] Speaker 6: like 2X or something significant. So if there was something
[26:58] Speaker 6: you needed, this is a good time to do it
[27:00] Speaker 6: because you're just going to get that many more opportunities
[27:03] Speaker 6: to win all this other free stuff.
[27:04] Speaker 1: Tell me about this hunt.
[27:06] Speaker 4: So I don't know a whole lot. These kinds of
[27:09] Speaker 4: things just kind of come out of nowhere, as you know, Randall.
[27:11] Speaker 4: But what I do know is that Jordan's got an
[27:13] Speaker 4: incredible place there up in the north-ish, northwest-ish part of
[27:17] Speaker 4: the state.
[27:18] Speaker 6: I love hunting Nebraska. I've hunted out there three or
[27:21] Speaker 6: four times for whitetails. Really cool mix of wide open vistas.
[27:26] Speaker 6: You can see a lot, but then good thick cover
[27:29] Speaker 6: along the river bottom. So especially, you know.
[27:32] Speaker 4: Late November, you know, you're going to get a lot
[27:34] Speaker 4: of deer cruising these tight funnels.
[27:36] Speaker 6: You're going to see a lot of deer. There should
[27:37] Speaker 6: be great activity. I think this is a muzzleloader hunt
[27:39] Speaker 6: is what I recall hearing. So you can reach out
[27:42] Speaker 6: there and touch one if you want. I think it's
[27:44] Speaker 6: gonna be a lot of fun.
[27:45] Speaker 5: I'm excited about it. Even though that muzzleloader hunt, if
[27:48] Speaker 5: it is, is December early in Nebraska. Brody, I think
[27:53] Speaker 5: you've hunted that. They're always rutting.
[27:55] Speaker 7: Oh, yeah.
[27:56] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[27:57] Speaker 3: It's a great, great time to be there. I love
[28:00] Speaker 3: that season.
[28:01] Speaker 4: Very excited about it.
[28:02] Speaker 5: So, yeah. Sign up.
[28:03] Speaker 4: Let's go hunting.
[28:06] Speaker 1: Now on to your news.
[28:11] Speaker 3: Still sticking with that one, huh, Phil? Yeah, Steve's gone.
[28:13] Speaker 5: And honestly, I'm kind of planting my feet now. I
[28:18] Speaker 5: like it, Phil.
[28:19] Speaker 3: I like it.
[28:20] Speaker 5: Was that a pigeon?
[28:21] Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so.
[28:22] Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a pigeon delivering a piece of mail,
[28:24] Speaker 5: you know.
[28:24] Speaker 4: I get it.
[28:25] Speaker 9: As pigeons do.
[28:26] Speaker 1: It's not really a hitter.
[28:28] Speaker 5: It doesn't hit hard like when Phil sings.
[28:31] Speaker 1: It makes me think that I'm going out to my
[28:34] Speaker 1: chicken pen to chase the pigeons away.
[28:36] Speaker 9: I didn't say this last week when Steve was bitching
[28:38] Speaker 9: about it, but after months of Radio Live and my
[28:42] Speaker 9: drops getting progressively more involved and frankly obnoxious, For the
[28:47] Speaker 9: news show, I wanted them to just be in and out.
[28:49] Speaker 9: Quick hitters that don't distract from what we're doing here.
[28:52] Speaker 9: And this pigeon drop has sparked more distraction and side
[28:58] Speaker 9: conversation than any of my radio live drops have. So
[29:01] Speaker 9: I think I just made a grave miscalculation. Don't stand
[29:04] Speaker 9: your ground.
[29:04] Speaker 3: Thank you.
[29:05] Speaker 5: We'll get used to it, Phil.
[29:06] Speaker 1: Since it's Whitetail Week, we've got a couple stories from
[29:10] Speaker 1: our listeners about, you guessed it, the most popular game
[29:13] Speaker 1: animal in the whole damn country, the whitetail deer. First,
[29:17] Speaker 1: we've got Brody with an email about a huge buck
[29:20] Speaker 1: out of Minnesota.
[29:21] Speaker 3: This is a wonderful story.
[29:22] Speaker 1: This is great. This is great.
[29:25] Speaker 3: Pull up that first picture, Phil, so people can gawk
[29:27] Speaker 3: at that thing while I'm reading.
[29:29] Speaker 5: Do you want to tell me now what makes this
[29:30] Speaker 5: story wonderful or after you tell us about it?
[29:33] Speaker 3: After I tell you. I just think it's a great story.
[29:36] Speaker 3: The email's great. This is from Max in Minnesota. We
[29:42] Speaker 3: got this email on September 21st. I shot this buck
[29:46] Speaker 3: yesterday evening at 20 yards, just 30 minutes from Minneapolis.
[29:50] Speaker 3: With an hour and a half of shooting light left,
[29:53] Speaker 3: I climbed into the sand and saw this buck at 730.
[29:56] Speaker 3: Made a perfect shot and he didn't go more than
[29:58] Speaker 3: 60 yards. When I walked up and finally saw him
[30:02] Speaker 3: on the ground, my excitement faded and panic started engulfing
[30:05] Speaker 3: my mind because I didn't know how I was going
[30:07] Speaker 3: to move it by myself. I could only drag it
[30:10] Speaker 3: five feet at a time when I typically can get
[30:12] Speaker 3: 20 to 30 yards pulling the buck by the antler.
[30:16] Speaker 3: I assumed it was somehow a loss of strength due
[30:18] Speaker 3: to aging or something dumb like that. I feel you.
[30:24] Speaker 3: I wrestled the buck into the tractor after gutting it
[30:26] Speaker 3: and got it on ice. My good buddy stopped by
[30:29] Speaker 3: to help me today and we truly didn't know how
[30:32] Speaker 3: big it was until two of us couldn't lift it
[30:34] Speaker 3: off the ground using a pulley and rope. With its
[30:37] Speaker 3: butt still touching the ground, we saw 260 on the
[30:40] Speaker 3: scale and we knew we were in different territory. After
[30:44] Speaker 3: hooking up the rope to the tractor and lifting it
[30:47] Speaker 3: that way, it hit 329.48. And that's what the tenderloins
[30:52] Speaker 3: cut out. The photo of the buck with the tractor,
[30:55] Speaker 3: there it is, is the best way to see the size.
[30:58] Speaker 3: The antlers look small in the tractor photo because of
[31:01] Speaker 3: the enormous body size. I truly wish I took a
[31:04] Speaker 3: picture of the rope swing we made to get this
[31:06] Speaker 3: thing off the ground because it obviously looks sketchy just
[31:09] Speaker 3: showing a picture of the scale. Got that picture, Phil?
[31:13] Speaker 3: But I do have witnesses that would vouch for every detail.
[31:17] Speaker 3: It's an unbelievable animal and I'm beyond lucky to see
[31:20] Speaker 3: something like this. I mean, how can you not like
[31:22] Speaker 3: that story, Giannis? It's just a great story.
[31:24] Speaker 1: What's your favorite part of this, Gianni? I have my notes.
[31:30] Speaker 5: About the story itself?
[31:32] Speaker 1: Everything. Whatever strikes your fancy.
[31:33] Speaker 5: I mean, it's interesting. I mean, it's a giant-bodied deer.
[31:37] Speaker 5: That's interesting to me. I don't know. Otherwise, I was
[31:44] Speaker 5: kind of like, oh, okay. You shot a really big,
[31:46] Speaker 5: heavy buck. I mean, that is really, really big.
[31:49] Speaker 1: I thought you had something you were excited about.
[31:51] Speaker 5: I almost can't.
[31:52] Speaker 4: I have a hard time believing it. Not that I...
[31:54] Speaker 4: Question his validity, but that's just unbelievable.
[31:57] Speaker 5: That's gutted.
[31:58] Speaker 4: 329 gutted and without the tenderloins? That's insane. I mean,
[32:02] Speaker 4: a really big buck is 200 pounds.
[32:04] Speaker 3: I believe every word.
[32:05] Speaker 5: I believe it.
[32:05] Speaker 4: I'm not saying I don't believe it, but it's just wild.
[32:08] Speaker 1: Oh, it's crazy. One thing I love is the photo
[32:11] Speaker 1: with the tractor. Phil, if you'll indulge me. The blood
[32:15] Speaker 1: and the John Deere green and the grass.
[32:18] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
[32:18] Speaker 1: It's just a very striking picture. striking image that.
[32:22] Speaker 3: Bright red uh yeah lung blood there yep where's the
[32:25] Speaker 3: red that's right i'm black mark's like color blood is
[32:30] Speaker 3: that thing just sleeping there i'm not really colorblind.
[32:34] Speaker 1: The blood the blood is where it should be mark
[32:36] Speaker 1: i'll just say the blood is where it should be
[32:37] Speaker 1: i can see that red my second favorite part of
[32:40] Speaker 1: this is any time i'm picking up here it was
[32:43] Speaker 1: 329 48 and with its butt still touching the ground,
[32:48] Speaker 1: they got 260 on the scale. So that's what, like
[32:51] Speaker 1: 70 pounds? I'm feeling like I need to start weighing
[32:55] Speaker 1: myself with my butt still touching the ground. There's all
[32:58] Speaker 1: sorts of great secrets. And I also like the idea
[33:00] Speaker 1: of you can't trust the scale without a picture of
[33:03] Speaker 1: the full context, maybe I'll just start weighing myself and
[33:06] Speaker 1: snapping photos.
[33:07] Speaker 3: There you go.
[33:07] Speaker 5: Sure. Just one foot on the scale.
[33:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, this is fabulous. This is fabulous. I like that
[33:11] Speaker 1: this guy wrote in to just tell us about a
[33:13] Speaker 1: heavy ass deer.
[33:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great Whitetail Week story. Great job, Max.
[33:17] Speaker 3: Another Whitetail email for Giannis and Mark will probably jump
[33:23] Speaker 3: in here too. You want to go ahead and read that, Giannis?
[33:26] Speaker 5: Yeah, sure. Ben Giels wrote in, good morning. I have
[33:31] Speaker 5: a correction for the new show, episode 926. At the
[33:35] Speaker 5: opening of the show, Giannis was talking about clearing buckthorn.
[33:39] Speaker 5: Steve then stated that nothing wants to eat it and
[33:41] Speaker 5: the others agreed. This is not true. Both deer and
[33:45] Speaker 5: rabbits eat the bark and shoots of buckthorn. I came
[33:47] Speaker 5: about this knowledge while pheasant hunting in central Minnesota late
[33:50] Speaker 5: in the season during a hard winter. I found a
[33:53] Speaker 5: bunch of spots in the snow that looked like someone
[33:55] Speaker 5: spilled blue Gatorade, but there was rabbit and deer shit
[33:59] Speaker 5: in the same spots. So after some research, it turns
[34:02] Speaker 5: out that the bark of buckthorn contains a phytochemical called emotin.
[34:07] Speaker 5: The emotin ends up in the urine and turns blue
[34:09] Speaker 5: when hit by and or, I didn't quite understand that, sunlight.
[34:14] Speaker 5: But let's just say when it's hit by sunlight, it
[34:16] Speaker 5: turns blue. While it isn't a preferred food source, buckthorn
[34:20] Speaker 5: absolutely gets eaten by both deer and rabbits in the
[34:23] Speaker 5: winter when other food sources are scarce.
[34:27] Speaker 1: I think that was a trivia question at some point.
[34:29] Speaker 3: Really?
[34:30] Speaker 1: What color is the urine of an animal that's been
[34:32] Speaker 1: eating buckthorn?
[34:33] Speaker 3: I must not have been in that episode.
[34:35] Speaker 5: I do remember something about this. And sure enough, Brody,
[34:41] Speaker 5: did you editorialize that and write, sure as shit, he's right,
[34:44] Speaker 5: and here's a picture to prove it?
[34:46] Speaker 4: Who found the picture? Where'd you find that?
[34:48] Speaker 3: Just looked it up online. There's a bunch of them.
[34:51] Speaker 1: It does look like blue Gatorade.
[34:53] Speaker 6: What's crazy is I have hunted around buckthorn so much
[34:57] Speaker 6: in my life. I've never once seen blue piss.
[35:01] Speaker 5: Well, here's the deal. I think, like, if he's correcting
[35:06] Speaker 5: us on saying that nothing eats it, yes. But I
[35:11] Speaker 5: think we were saying, like, nothing wants to eat it.
[35:13] Speaker 5: I think we're also correct in saying that.
[35:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, like vegetables.
[35:17] Speaker 5: It's not quite like kids or Randall not wanting to
[35:23] Speaker 5: eat vegetables. But I texted Matt Ross from the NDA.
[35:28] Speaker 5: He said, Generally, anything with glossy leaves has low palatability
[35:32] Speaker 5: ratings for deer. The glossy surface is a defense mechanism
[35:36] Speaker 5: against herbivores, among other things, causing low digestibility. Doesn't mean
[35:41] Speaker 5: they won't eat it. If it's all there is, they will.
[35:45] Speaker 5: For example, rhododendrons have glossy leaves and can be hammered,
[35:48] Speaker 5: especially in the winter. Buckthorn forage nutrition value is fairly
[35:52] Speaker 5: poor too. One of the reasons it out-competes native regen,
[35:57] Speaker 5: like when you're trying to regenerate native plants, is because
[36:00] Speaker 5: it's not selected as a browse. So I think for us,
[36:06] Speaker 5: when we're just generally saying nothing wants to eat it,
[36:10] Speaker 5: it's got very low wildlife value, I feel like that's
[36:13] Speaker 5: a true statement. And I'm going to stick by that.
[36:16] Speaker 5: I'm going to continue killing it. Cause it is the
[36:19] Speaker 5: scourge of the, of the, you know, Midwest and other areas.
[36:23] Speaker 5: And it's like, sure. In, in extreme scenarios where there's
[36:27] Speaker 5: nothing else left because, you know, cause there's too much
[36:30] Speaker 5: buckthorn and nothing else can live.
[36:32] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[36:32] Speaker 5: The animals are like, well, I have to eat this
[36:35] Speaker 5: and my piss is going to turn blue. Dang it.
[36:38] Speaker 6: Yeah, on the Back 40 project we did back in
[36:41] Speaker 6: the day. I don't know if you recall that from
[36:42] Speaker 6: our squirrel hunting adventures, Giannis.
[36:44] Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
[36:45] Speaker 6: But that was one of the major issues on that
[36:47] Speaker 6: property was just rampant buckthorn.
[36:50] Speaker 4: And so multiple wildlife.
[36:53] Speaker 6: Habitat specialists that came out to look at that place
[36:55] Speaker 6: with me, that was one of the first things that says,
[36:57] Speaker 6: you got to get rid of that. Very low wildlife value,
[37:00] Speaker 6: very aggressive. And yeah, so interesting to point out. But
[37:04] Speaker 6: I think, like you said, Generally, what you mentioned holds true.
[37:08] Speaker 5: Yeah. Were you able to get a handle on it?
[37:12] Speaker 4: Definitely not entirely. We tackled pockets of it.
[37:16] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[37:16] Speaker 6: I think if we still had that property, it'd be
[37:18] Speaker 6: a project we would still be doing today.
[37:20] Speaker 4: Oh, for sure. And I actually think that the National
[37:22] Speaker 4: Deer Association, which took it over, they have continued to
[37:25] Speaker 4: do that work in the years since.
[37:27] Speaker 5: Yeah. I'm actually now embarking on a project with the NRCS,
[37:31] Speaker 5: and they're going to help me with my project. Well,
[37:34] Speaker 5: glossy buckthorn, because it's going to be years of work.
[37:37] Speaker 5: It's nice to have the help.
[37:38] Speaker 1: And then you'll never see any more blue raspberry snow
[37:42] Speaker 1: cones on the ground.
[37:44] Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, as cool as that is, I'm hoping
[37:46] Speaker 5: to never see blue piss in the snow.
[37:48] Speaker 3: They need to rename that plant. Like, buckthorn's not a
[37:51] Speaker 3: good name for it.
[37:52] Speaker 5: No, it's, yeah, somehow. Just blue piss thorn.
[37:57] Speaker 4: I'd be interested in the story of how it got
[37:59] Speaker 4: that name.
[38:01] Speaker 5: You know? I believe because... There's something segments into like
[38:09] Speaker 5: it splits and it makes it look like a buck horn.
[38:12] Speaker 5: I can't remember if it's the way that the leaf
[38:15] Speaker 5: splits or something on it splits and makes it look
[38:18] Speaker 5: like a little buck horn on it.
[38:19] Speaker 1: That'll lead to another correction.
[38:22] Speaker 5: Probably.
[38:23] Speaker 4: Future episode.
[38:23] Speaker 1: Thank you, Ben. Now on to the news.
[38:28] Speaker 7: Hmm.
[38:32] Speaker 5: Gosh, do we have time for Phil to explain that
[38:35] Speaker 5: sound bit?
[38:36] Speaker 9: It's been done before the audience has heard it. I'll
[38:38] Speaker 9: talk to you after the show.
[38:39] Speaker 5: Okay, thanks, Phil.
[38:40] Speaker 1: I'm first up here. This is just a quick story,
[38:44] Speaker 1: but this was first reported in the Juneau Empire by
[38:47] Speaker 1: Jeffrey Kennett. There is a woman, Janet E. Lopez, who
[38:51] Speaker 1: was charged in Juneau District Court last week, I believe,
[38:55] Speaker 1: with three counts of obstructing or hindering lawful hunting. The
[38:59] Speaker 1: incident in question happened on June 18th along Glacier Highway.
[39:03] Speaker 1: None of this has been proven in court yet, so
[39:05] Speaker 1: these are all allegations. But according to court documents, there
[39:07] Speaker 1: are three archery hunters about 300 yards off the road.
[39:11] Speaker 1: They're making a stalk on a black bear. When Ms.
[39:15] Speaker 1: Lopez stopped to ask them what was going on, they
[39:17] Speaker 1: told her they were bear hunting. And so she drove
[39:20] Speaker 1: up and down the road honking her horn, eventually spooking
[39:23] Speaker 1: the bear off. Those guys ended up calling it a
[39:26] Speaker 1: day because she kept honking her horn. And eventually the,
[39:30] Speaker 1: state troopers looked into it or wildlife troopers looked into
[39:32] Speaker 1: it and she told them she likes to watch the
[39:36] Speaker 1: local bears and has even named them so you know
[39:40] Speaker 1: if she has that relationship understandable that she would not
[39:42] Speaker 1: want to see one killed by the roadside she was
[39:45] Speaker 1: charged with three counts of obstructing or hindering lawful hunting
[39:49] Speaker 1: and one charge for each of the three hunters whose
[39:52] Speaker 1: hunts were impacted by her actions. So always nice to
[39:58] Speaker 1: see the process and the law working the way they should.
[40:00] Speaker 3: Sometimes it goes the way of the hunter.
[40:02] Speaker 5: Well, I think it's good to note here that most
[40:05] Speaker 5: everybody listening to this is not going to be going, oh, well,
[40:10] Speaker 5: I better not honk at wildlife when there's hunters around
[40:13] Speaker 5: trying to spook the game. But it's good to know
[40:15] Speaker 5: if something like this happens, that you have a lot
[40:18] Speaker 5: of power and it's your right to be hunting and
[40:21] Speaker 5: that you should engage with local law enforcement, game warden, whoever,
[40:26] Speaker 5: and report this kind of behavior because it is completely
[40:29] Speaker 5: illegal in all states. You cannot harass hunters.
[40:35] Speaker 3: The thing that struck me most about this whole story
[40:38] Speaker 3: is if there's one place in the United States where
[40:43] Speaker 3: you would think you would probably not have to deal
[40:46] Speaker 3: with hunter harassment, it would be Alaska. I mean, every, like,
[40:53] Speaker 3: you know, everybody's putting some kind of game meat in
[40:56] Speaker 3: their freezer or fish in their freezer, whatever. It's just,
[40:59] Speaker 3: it's just weird.
[41:00] Speaker 1: But, you know.
[41:01] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[41:01] Speaker 1: My reaction to this story was, I wish we had
[41:03] Speaker 1: more laws like this pertaining to watching things on phones
[41:09] Speaker 1: without headphones, uh, having phone calls on speakerphone.
[41:14] Speaker 2: Amen.
[41:15] Speaker 6: Amen.
[41:16] Speaker 1: Behavior in movie theaters. Why don't we just have general
[41:21] Speaker 1: laws interfering with my daily... That's a joke, by the way.
[41:26] Speaker 1: I'm not a big Gov guy.
[41:28] Speaker 5: Big Gov overreach guy?
[41:30] Speaker 4: I had something somewhat similar to this happen to me.
[41:34] Speaker 1: Really?
[41:34] Speaker 9: Yeah.
[41:35] Speaker 4: When I was like 16, 15, 16.
[41:41] Speaker 6: I bow hunted behind my parents' house where we lived.
[41:43] Speaker 6: We had three and a half acres of land And
[41:46] Speaker 6: I would go and bow hunt for whitetails in the
[41:48] Speaker 6: mornings and evenings after school. And on one particular day,
[41:54] Speaker 6: I got back from the hunt and my sister said,
[41:57] Speaker 6: did you see anything?
[41:59] Speaker 5: I said, nope.
[41:59] Speaker 4: She's like, yes, because I went down there and have
[42:01] Speaker 4: been spraying perfume. She didn't want me shooting deer.
[42:05] Speaker 6: And so unbeknownst to me, she was going and spraying
[42:08] Speaker 6: perfume throughout my hunting grounds.
[42:10] Speaker 1: I hope you called her in.
[42:11] Speaker 5: I don't think I knew you had a sister until
[42:12] Speaker 5: just now.
[42:13] Speaker 2: No?
[42:13] Speaker 6: No.
[42:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got a sister.
[42:15] Speaker 1: It's because she screwed up his white tail hunts.
[42:17] Speaker 5: Does she not hunt?
[42:18] Speaker 3: He doesn't talk to her anymore because he called the
[42:20] Speaker 3: game warden.
[42:20] Speaker 5: Never once since. She's in jail. She does not hunt.
[42:23] Speaker 7: Oh.
[42:28] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[42:28] Speaker 1: Can't say that I've, uh, that I've run into anything
[42:30] Speaker 1: like that.
[42:31] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[42:31] Speaker 5: I can't, I don't think I've had any kind of
[42:33] Speaker 5: hunter harassment. I mean, other than not hunting and then
[42:38] Speaker 5: saying that I'm a hunter and then being harassed a
[42:41] Speaker 5: little bit.
[42:42] Speaker 1: You know, when I was, when I was flying to Austria,
[42:44] Speaker 1: didn't talk to the people next to me on the
[42:46] Speaker 1: plane until we were, had landed and we're pulling our
[42:50] Speaker 1: shit out of the overhead bins, you know? And then,
[42:52] Speaker 1: then all of a sudden they became interested in talking
[42:54] Speaker 1: to me. Um, I was in the same mindset that
[42:58] Speaker 1: I'd maintained throughout the flight, but she was like asking
[43:00] Speaker 1: me what I was doing. And for whatever reason, I
[43:03] Speaker 1: actually didn't lie. I said, yeah, I'm here. I'm visiting
[43:06] Speaker 1: friends and I'm hunting. And I told them all about it.
[43:09] Speaker 1: And she goes, well, that all sounds fantastic, except for
[43:12] Speaker 1: the hunting part. And then I just shrunk back down
[43:15] Speaker 1: into my seat. And I thought, why didn't I just
[43:17] Speaker 1: lie to her? You know, in any event.
[43:20] Speaker 4: Sometimes those lead to great conversations though.
[43:22] Speaker 1: Sometimes, sometimes.
[43:24] Speaker 5: Yeah, and if you had more time, had you guys
[43:25] Speaker 5: struck it up mid-flight at midnight, you know, and you
[43:29] Speaker 5: both had to get up to go pee or something,
[43:31] Speaker 5: then by the time you landed, she might have been pro-hunting.
[43:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Missed opportunity. One more regret that I'll
[43:38] Speaker 1: carry with me.
[43:39] Speaker 5: Speaking of government overreach, Randall, there was a proposal that
[43:45] Speaker 5: the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission rejected that would have
[43:48] Speaker 5: required hunters and trappers to carry bear spray in bear country. Proponents,
[43:54] Speaker 5: including bear ecologist Mike Bader, argued the mandate would improve
[43:58] Speaker 5: public safety and reduce defensive grizzly bear deaths, noting 30
[44:03] Speaker 5: grizzly deaths and 251 conflicts this year. Opponents and commissioners
[44:09] Speaker 5: criticized the proposal as an unnecessary government mandate, noted that
[44:12] Speaker 5: existing public education training efforts are already effective. Um, critics
[44:18] Speaker 5: also argued the petition unfairly targeted hunters and trappers while
[44:22] Speaker 5: ignored other public land users. Um, and despite the rejection
[44:27] Speaker 5: organizers plan to continue advocating for the bear spray requirements
[44:30] Speaker 5: to enhance the safety. Uh, who's got thoughts on that one?
[44:35] Speaker 3: The, the, the, I think the main point is unfairly
[44:38] Speaker 3: targeting hunters and trappers. Um, to me, that's, that's, that's
[44:43] Speaker 3: the big thing. Yeah.
[44:44] Speaker 1: And I don't know that, um, this year's 30 grizzly
[44:49] Speaker 1: deaths and 251 total conflicts have to do with, uh,
[44:53] Speaker 1: no encounters on the, on the trail or in the woods.
[44:56] Speaker 1: That's the bears do not have a lot to eat
[44:58] Speaker 1: right now. And there's a lot of bears getting into
[45:02] Speaker 1: town and garbage.
[45:03] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[45:03] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[45:04] Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I, I also just think any
[45:06] Speaker 1: sort of mandatory, like you have to carry a bear spray.
[45:09] Speaker 3: Uh, like, well, tell me what, tell me what you,
[45:14] Speaker 3: you don't archery hunt, but what do you do during the.
[45:17] Speaker 1: I carry bear spray and a handgun.
[45:19] Speaker 3: Okay, what do you do?
[45:21] Speaker 5: Both.
[45:22] Speaker 4: Both, if I were.
[45:25] Speaker 1: If you're worried about a hunter, an archery hunter, encountering
[45:28] Speaker 1: a grizzly and then turning to his sidearm instead of
[45:30] Speaker 1: his bear spray, if you make him carry bear spray,
[45:34] Speaker 1: he's still going to go to the side, right? They
[45:37] Speaker 1: have to be willing. People have to be educated and
[45:40] Speaker 1: willing participants and something like that for it to work.
[45:42] Speaker 1: So just strapping a can on your chest isn't going
[45:45] Speaker 1: to change outcomes on the ground.
[45:47] Speaker 5: No, not at all. And yeah, if they're going to
[45:50] Speaker 5: do this, it's like, sure, anybody that goes out onto
[45:53] Speaker 5: public lands during grizzly bear season should be carrying bear spray.
[45:59] Speaker 9: Right.
[46:00] Speaker 3: How would you even begin to police it? Oh, yeah.
[46:04] Speaker 5: No, it's like, it's a bummer to even have to
[46:07] Speaker 5: kind of think this, but you can't help to be like, oh,
[46:11] Speaker 5: are they like a little bit trying to be anti-hunting here?
[46:14] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
[46:15] Speaker 6: Well, they might not even be trying to be anti-hunting,
[46:18] Speaker 6: but they might have an anti-hunter bias, right? Right.
[46:21] Speaker 4: So they're looking at what's going on. They're saying, well,
[46:23] Speaker 4: it's the hunters who are, who are doing this and
[46:25] Speaker 4: causing these problems because they're unnecessarily creating conflict, being out
[46:28] Speaker 4: there doing their thing.
[46:29] Speaker 3: Sure. It's a hunter's like killing grizzly bears without actually
[46:34] Speaker 3: killing grizzly bears. You know what I mean?
[46:35] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[46:36] Speaker 6: But I mean, to Brando's point, you know, in Montana
[46:39] Speaker 6: up here, something like 50, 60 grizzlies get killed every
[46:41] Speaker 6: year and most are not hunter conflict.
[46:44] Speaker 5: Most are.
[46:45] Speaker 4: You know, wildlife service.
[46:46] Speaker 3: Chicken coops.
[46:46] Speaker 4: All that kind of stuff.
[46:47] Speaker 3: Garbage, whatever, yeah.
[46:48] Speaker 4: Cars, the whole nine yards.
[46:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, better time and resources would be better spent addressing
[46:54] Speaker 1: those sorts of conflicts.
[46:55] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[46:55] Speaker 6: I mean, education, right? I mean, there's a good amount
[46:58] Speaker 6: of that, but certainly let's spend the money on more
[47:00] Speaker 6: of that.
[47:01] Speaker 5: Yeah, or they could spend this time and effort to
[47:04] Speaker 5: squash this idea coming out of Washington, D.C. Man, what
[47:08] Speaker 5: a segue.
[47:09] Speaker 1: I had a better one.
[47:10] Speaker 5: Oh, okay. You can still go with it. Let's try
[47:12] Speaker 5: it again.
[47:12] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[47:13] Speaker 4: What do you got, Randall?
[47:14] Speaker 1: I sort of lost my wheels. I was going to say,
[47:17] Speaker 1: speaking of misguided, something, something, something, but we're already past it.
[47:21] Speaker 5: That was really good.
[47:22] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
[47:24] Speaker 5: Bravo.
[47:24] Speaker 3: Nice try, Randall.
[47:26] Speaker 6: So one of the craziest stories of a several-year period
[47:31] Speaker 6: of pretty crazy public land-related stories. I saw this come
[47:34] Speaker 6: across my news feed this past weekend. Saturday, the Washington
[47:38] Speaker 6: Post reported that the Major League Baseball League contacted the
[47:43] Speaker 6: Trump administration about hosting an MLB game at a national park.
[47:48] Speaker 6: And then, as recently as just this past week, an
[47:50] Speaker 6: agency official was at Grand Teton National Park, scouting it
[47:54] Speaker 6: for possible locations to build a baseball venue of some
[47:58] Speaker 6: kind to possibly host a game. So according to this article,
[48:03] Speaker 6: National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lanz said, visited the
[48:07] Speaker 6: park in recent days and looked at three different possible
[48:11] Speaker 6: locations for a baseball park within the park's boundaries. And,
[48:15] Speaker 6: and the idea here, at least from the MLB is
[48:17] Speaker 6: that they're trying to have more of these kinds of
[48:19] Speaker 6: themed special games and special locations.
[48:21] Speaker 1: I'm all for that.
[48:22] Speaker 3: The field of dreams, the field of dreams, one in Iowa,
[48:25] Speaker 3: which was supposed to be temporary, but then they made
[48:27] Speaker 3: it a permanent.
[48:28] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[48:29] Speaker 1: I was a big fan of the, uh, college basketball
[48:32] Speaker 1: games on the aircraft carriers.
[48:33] Speaker 4: Michigan State did that.
[48:34] Speaker 1: Yeah. North Carolina, Michigan State.
[48:36] Speaker 4: That was the game.
[48:37] Speaker 9: You know what's way cheaper is like bobbleheads of anime characters.
[48:42] Speaker 9: That's the theming I can give.
[48:43] Speaker 1: Not really a draw there, Phil.
[48:45] Speaker 5: Dang.
[48:45] Speaker 4: Okay.
[48:45] Speaker 9: Yeah, maybe in your world.
[48:47] Speaker 6: So, yeah, this news dropped on Saturday. In the subsequent days,
[48:52] Speaker 6: there's been all kinds of outcry about from national parks, advocates, conservationists,
[48:57] Speaker 6: tourists there in the park. A number of journalists went
[49:00] Speaker 6: in the park and asked people that were hiking the
[49:01] Speaker 6: Jenny Lake Trail or different things about that. Of course,
[49:06] Speaker 6: my first gut reaction was this seems just, I don't know,
[49:11] Speaker 6: abhorrent to consider just this absolutely stunning natural landscape. The
[49:17] Speaker 6: Tetons are just one of the most incredible animals vistas
[49:20] Speaker 6: we have in our national park system. And then to
[49:23] Speaker 6: put a baseball stadium there would just be like building
[49:28] Speaker 6: a baseball stadium in a cathedral, something like that. So
[49:33] Speaker 6: when I first saw that, I wanted to throw up
[49:36] Speaker 6: in my mouth. I do want to fact check a
[49:39] Speaker 6: little here, though. Because we all saw this pop up
[49:41] Speaker 6: on social media. We saw these articles. And it must
[49:45] Speaker 6: be noted that the White House issued a statement that
[49:49] Speaker 6: clarifies at least their position on this, which is that
[49:52] Speaker 6: they confirmed that the MLB did send a request asking
[49:55] Speaker 6: about this possibility. But it did say that this is
[49:59] Speaker 6: not a presidential directive, nor is it being directed by
[50:01] Speaker 6: the White House. It's also not being driven by the
[50:04] Speaker 6: Department of the Interior. Therefore, this is not a White
[50:08] Speaker 6: House or administration priority. they clarified that there have been
[50:12] Speaker 6: no decisions made, the Park Service has not granted any permits,
[50:16] Speaker 6: and that if the MLB wants to go on site
[50:18] Speaker 6: visits of national parks, that's their prerogative. But they are
[50:21] Speaker 6: denying that there has been any active scouting done by
[50:24] Speaker 6: the administration itself.
[50:26] Speaker 1: But there is this deputy director who has gone and
[50:31] Speaker 1: visited three sites at Grand Teton.
[50:33] Speaker 6: Supposedly, in their statement, it was coincidence that he was
[50:38] Speaker 6: there visiting these places at the same time.
[50:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think what's not said in that
[50:44] Speaker 1: statement is the most glaring part of it. They're saying,
[50:49] Speaker 1: we didn't come up with this idea. The White House
[50:52] Speaker 1: isn't pushing this idea. The Interior isn't pushing this idea,
[50:56] Speaker 1: and it's not a priority for us. They didn't say
[50:58] Speaker 1: this will not happen.
[50:59] Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
[51:00] Speaker 1: In a sane world, whoever MLB reached out to, about
[51:04] Speaker 1: this idea would have shut it down at this point
[51:06] Speaker 1: and said, I'll save you the embarrassment. Like, I'm not
[51:08] Speaker 1: going to bring this to my superiors, but obviously they
[51:13] Speaker 1: are not at the point yet where they can say
[51:14] Speaker 1: this is out of the question.
[51:17] Speaker 3: There are plenty of places they could build a stadium. Oh,
[51:21] Speaker 3: it doesn't need to be in. grand Teton national park,
[51:25] Speaker 3: especially in that Valley.
[51:26] Speaker 5: If you want those views, there's, there's plenty of flat
[51:30] Speaker 5: ranches where the building would probably be easier and you'd
[51:33] Speaker 5: still have the view of the Teton.
[51:34] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[51:35] Speaker 1: And let's not, let's not get too many ideas.
[51:37] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[51:38] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[51:38] Speaker 3: Um, the thing that strikes me is, and look, man,
[51:42] Speaker 3: like I'm at, I'm a baseball fan. Like my kid
[51:45] Speaker 3: plays baseball. We, three weeks ago we were in Seattle
[51:49] Speaker 3: and went and saw two games. Um, I feel like
[51:53] Speaker 3: the MLB should like read the room a little bit better.
[51:56] Speaker 3: And like the amount of money that would be spent
[52:00] Speaker 3: to build this stadium, like what else could they do
[52:02] Speaker 3: with that money? They could, I don't know, donate it
[52:06] Speaker 3: to like youth baseball programs around the country.
[52:08] Speaker 1: Improve our talent funnel for us born players.
[52:12] Speaker 4: Um, anyway, can you imagine the blowback the MLB would get?
[52:17] Speaker 6: If something like this went through in a national park
[52:19] Speaker 6: setting like that, I mean, it would just be.
[52:21] Speaker 1: I also just think it speaks to like the, the,
[52:24] Speaker 1: the Gulf in this country between people who get the
[52:28] Speaker 1: public lands issue and people who don't.
[52:31] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[52:31] Speaker 1: Um, and also, you know, misconceptions about what the national
[52:37] Speaker 1: parks are.
[52:38] Speaker 10: Yeah.
[52:38] Speaker 1: It's like, right. Like they're not like they're sure there,
[52:41] Speaker 1: there are national parks that are like, parking lot and
[52:43] Speaker 1: you go up and you look at something and it's
[52:45] Speaker 1: like a historic site or whatever but that is not
[52:47] Speaker 1: granted yeah.
[52:48] Speaker 3: No and that like the throwaway culture idea of this
[52:53] Speaker 3: like we're gonna have a game in a national park
[52:56] Speaker 3: it's like you're gonna build a stadium for one game
[52:59] Speaker 3: and yes maybe they'd come back for additional games but
[53:03] Speaker 3: it's just like use.
[53:05] Speaker 1: Your head do it on the moon.
[53:06] Speaker 3: Yeah yeah That would be something spectacular.
[53:10] Speaker 1: Phil, are you in on moon ball?
[53:11] Speaker 9: Think how far that ball would go.
[53:13] Speaker 3: You could hit a home run.
[53:14] Speaker 4: From the moon to the earth.
[53:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, we won't even have to do steroids anymore. It'll
[53:18] Speaker 1: still be exciting to watch. It'll be better than the
[53:20] Speaker 1: McGuire Sosa glory days.
[53:22] Speaker 4: Solving all the world's problems right here, folks.
[53:24] Speaker 3: Well, keep us updated on that, Mark.
[53:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll do.
[53:28] Speaker 4: Hopefully no more updates. Hopefully this thing dies.
[53:30] Speaker 7: I know.
[53:30] Speaker 1: I hope it dies with a whimper and we just
[53:32] Speaker 1: never hear anything about it again.
[53:33] Speaker 5: Fingers crossed.
[53:34] Speaker 1: It's wild. With that, We are on to Steve's interview
[53:39] Speaker 1: with Iowa gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand about a big, wet buck.
[53:46] Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you next week.
[53:51] Speaker 10: Okay, I'm on right now with Rob Sand. Now, if
[53:54] Speaker 10: you're in Iowa, you know exactly who Rob Sand is.
[53:56] Speaker 10: If you're outside of Iowa and you're thinking to yourself,
[53:59] Speaker 10: why do I know that name? You might remember him
[54:00] Speaker 10: because he's a... He's a... he's many things, but one
[54:05] Speaker 10: of those many things is Iowa's state auditor. But the
[54:09] Speaker 10: most important thing about Rob's hand from my perspective is
[54:13] Speaker 10: that he's probably the only, I'm going to go out
[54:15] Speaker 10: on a limb and say he is the only suburban
[54:21] Speaker 10: archery deer hunter running for governor right now. I mean,
[54:25] Speaker 10: I'm not like an expert on the subject, but I
[54:29] Speaker 10: would have heard if there were more, um, And yeah,
[54:32] Speaker 10: Rob saying is Iowa state auditor running for governor or.
[54:36] Speaker 8: Even, even if you hadn't heard, even if you hadn't heard,
[54:39] Speaker 8: I bet I would have heard.
[54:40] Speaker 5: You would have heard.
[54:41] Speaker 10: Cause someone would have said to you, Hey man, you
[54:43] Speaker 10: know how like you're running for governor and you're a
[54:45] Speaker 10: suburban deer hunter. Well, bill over to bill over in
[54:50] Speaker 10: whatever state he is to, uh, on episode eight or nine,
[54:55] Speaker 10: Rob came on. I've been reading about Rob, um, in
[54:58] Speaker 10: the newspapers, uh, And when I, when I would read
[55:02] Speaker 10: about Rob Stan, the newspapers, it would often include his love,
[55:04] Speaker 10: his love of the hunt. So I took an interest
[55:07] Speaker 10: in him. He came on episode eight Oh nine. And
[55:10] Speaker 10: he told, he told a great story about a deer
[55:12] Speaker 10: called the two Oh nine. Guess how big that deer was. Um,
[55:15] Speaker 10: and how he got it through like a suburban hunting program.
[55:18] Speaker 10: And in the end of the episode, he shared with
[55:21] Speaker 10: me that he was trying to, he was fixing to
[55:23] Speaker 10: get it shoulder mounted. In a way where it would
[55:28] Speaker 10: look like it was wet because he was wet when
[55:30] Speaker 10: he got it. And I thought this was the worst
[55:34] Speaker 10: idea in the world. Phil, can you pull up the mount?
[55:38] Speaker 10: Phil's going to pull up an image.
[55:39] Speaker 1: Of the mount.
[55:44] Speaker 8: As you can see, I did not do that.
[55:46] Speaker 10: Are you happy with it?
[55:47] Speaker 8: It looks great. I'm so happy with it. It looks great.
[55:51] Speaker 8: I did not make it look wet. It was wet
[55:55] Speaker 8: as three wet things when I shot it. But it
[55:58] Speaker 8: looks great just the way it is. And you know,
[56:00] Speaker 8: these days, if somebody wants to hear the story, they
[56:04] Speaker 8: can listen to a podcast on it. It's not like
[56:06] Speaker 8: they need to look at it and be like, oh,
[56:07] Speaker 8: it must have been raining out.
[56:08] Speaker 10: But what I was suggesting to you is that when
[56:10] Speaker 10: you wanted it to look wet, just take a wet
[56:13] Speaker 10: rag and wetten it up a little bit.
[56:18] Speaker 8: I had a guy reach out on Instagram, and he
[56:24] Speaker 8: sent me some kind of a beeswax product.
[56:27] Speaker 7: Oh.
[56:27] Speaker 8: He was kind of like, I've done this before. It
[56:31] Speaker 8: looks cool. Here's what it looks like. And I got
[56:33] Speaker 8: to be honest, like the antlers that he, because he's
[56:37] Speaker 8: a shed, he was a shed hunter. And so he would,
[56:39] Speaker 8: he had this beeswax product that he would put on
[56:41] Speaker 8: the sheds to make them look kind of wet.
[56:43] Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
[56:44] Speaker 8: I really couldn't tell the difference. Yeah, I really couldn't really,
[56:47] Speaker 8: I couldn't tell much of the difference. I mean, if
[56:49] Speaker 8: you're looking at this picture of this mount right now,
[56:52] Speaker 8: you're seeing, you know, some, some shiny bone that, might,
[56:56] Speaker 8: might maybe could be wet, but I'd kind of, at
[56:59] Speaker 8: the end of the day, it was like, you know,
[57:01] Speaker 8: I don't think it's going to look that much different.
[57:02] Speaker 8: And one thing I know is it looks good if
[57:05] Speaker 8: I do it the way I always do it and
[57:06] Speaker 8: I don't want to screw it up.
[57:07] Speaker 10: So I got into your head, you're saying, and you
[57:09] Speaker 10: did what you took my instructions and did not make them.
[57:11] Speaker 8: I like people. I welcome people in. I like, I
[57:14] Speaker 8: like hearing other people's opinions. That's part of this entire
[57:17] Speaker 8: campaign for governors. Maybe we should all work together.
[57:20] Speaker 10: Where's the 209? I want to talk about this campaign
[57:22] Speaker 10: deal and what that's all like, but where's the 209 hanging?
[57:26] Speaker 8: If anybody wants to come to what I like to
[57:28] Speaker 8: call the public sector Cabela's, that's room 111 of the
[57:32] Speaker 8: Iowa Capitol building. It is in the state auditor's office
[57:35] Speaker 8: right there. If you are an Iowan, you can come.
[57:37] Speaker 8: If you're not an Iowan, but you happen to be
[57:39] Speaker 8: in Des Moines, you can come. You can check it out.
[57:41] Speaker 8: It's in there with the other mounts that I've taken
[57:43] Speaker 8: with my bow over the years. A Buffalo, three bucks
[57:50] Speaker 8: that measure between, no, sorry, four bucks that measure between
[57:53] Speaker 8: 153 and 159.
[57:53] Speaker 7: Wow.
[57:55] Speaker 8: And then a few assorted smaller ones that are all
[57:58] Speaker 8: at least 125. And then the man.
[58:01] Speaker 10: And then the man, the 209.
[58:02] Speaker 8: And the big boy. Yeah, that's right.
[58:05] Speaker 10: So when you came on the show, you were in
[58:07] Speaker 10: a position. And like I said, I got introduced to
[58:11] Speaker 10: you because people would send me articles about you. And
[58:16] Speaker 10: they would point out, I knew you were a state
[58:18] Speaker 10: auditor and you were politically involved, but it would be articles.
[58:21] Speaker 10: And these people that wrote these articles would always, it'd
[58:24] Speaker 10: be like, urban journalists and they would write about this
[58:28] Speaker 10: Rob Sand character and his like you're like that you
[58:31] Speaker 10: had like your family had you know you had like
[58:33] Speaker 10: agricultural connections from working jobs and you were a kid
[58:37] Speaker 10: you were a hunter and so people would be like
[58:38] Speaker 10: oh I bet Steve would like this guy and I
[58:41] Speaker 10: had you on and I did and at the time
[58:43] Speaker 10: you hadn't gone through your primary yet so walk us
[58:49] Speaker 10: through how that all went and where things stand right
[58:52] Speaker 10: now because I keep reading about you still And people
[58:55] Speaker 10: like your campaign is working.
[58:57] Speaker 8: Yeah. You know, we didn't end up having a primary
[59:01] Speaker 8: on the ballot. There was a gal that was running
[59:04] Speaker 8: who had said, you know, I'm running too. And uh
[59:07] Speaker 8: she didn't end up getting on the ballot and.
[59:09] Speaker 10: So it's just me you were the only name on there.
[59:13] Speaker 8: Only name uh i think yeah it was the only
[59:15] Speaker 8: name on there yeah yeah okay uh and then you
[59:18] Speaker 8: won the campaign yeah well it wasn't it wasn't really
[59:21] Speaker 8: a contest you know in the at the end of
[59:24] Speaker 8: the day um and then the campaign you know i
[59:27] Speaker 8: had A big piece of it to me is I
[59:29] Speaker 8: always go everywhere and I talk to everybody. And so
[59:32] Speaker 8: we did 100 public town halls last year. We had
[59:35] Speaker 8: finished them by the time I talked to you. We're
[59:38] Speaker 8: like 90. We have like number 94 tonight. We're taping
[59:42] Speaker 8: this on a Monday. We got one in Ames tonight.
[59:46] Speaker 8: So we got like six more of those. We'll do
[59:48] Speaker 8: plenty of other events. But Steve, when we do these events,
[59:53] Speaker 8: we have people come into the room. raise their hand
[59:55] Speaker 8: for what party they're in and ask them to applaud
[59:57] Speaker 8: their neighbors that are in the other political parties. And
[1:00:00] Speaker 8: we ask them to sing America the Beautiful together to
[1:00:03] Speaker 8: prove that Democrats and Republicans can work together. And when
[1:00:06] Speaker 8: we get to the Q & A part, I always
[1:00:09] Speaker 8: make a point of handing the microphone to somebody who
[1:00:11] Speaker 8: raised their hand to say they're a Republican. To be clear,
[1:00:14] Speaker 8: I'm a Democrat. And so by handing the microphone to
[1:00:18] Speaker 8: somebody who said they were a Republican, I can demonstrate
[1:00:21] Speaker 8: with my actions, not just my words, how serious I
[1:00:25] Speaker 8: am about the idea that we should work together. And
[1:00:28] Speaker 8: sometimes they're like, I didn't really bring any questions. And
[1:00:31] Speaker 8: other times they asked me, you know, maybe something of
[1:00:33] Speaker 8: a gotcha question. They were there as someone who's a
[1:00:36] Speaker 8: little antagonistic. That's okay. But the point of this to
[1:00:40] Speaker 8: me is to be like, this is real democracy. Like
[1:00:42] Speaker 8: we should be getting in the same room. We should
[1:00:44] Speaker 8: be talking to each other. We should be focusing on
[1:00:46] Speaker 8: the areas we agree. And what I've been saying lately
[1:00:49] Speaker 8: is left wing, right wing, same bird, you know? Like
[1:00:54] Speaker 8: we just, we know that it makes more sense to
[1:00:57] Speaker 8: work together. We know that no one has a monopoly
[1:01:00] Speaker 8: on good ideas. And if you're willing to work with
[1:01:02] Speaker 8: each other, then every once in a while you say, okay,
[1:01:05] Speaker 8: broken clock is right twice a day. You have a
[1:01:06] Speaker 8: fair point. Let's add what you're doing to what we
[1:01:09] Speaker 8: want to do and do something we all think is
[1:01:10] Speaker 8: going to do better than what we're doing right now.
[1:01:12] Speaker 8: That's just common sense stuff. And I think people are
[1:01:15] Speaker 8: hungry for common sense these days.
[1:01:17] Speaker 10: You know, you, uh, So you're running for this office
[1:01:20] Speaker 10: as an outspoken outdoorsman. You don't shy away from being
[1:01:24] Speaker 10: an outdoorsman. You don't view it like being a deficit
[1:01:28] Speaker 10: or something you ought to hide for fear that people
[1:01:30] Speaker 10: are going to disapprove. And I think part of that,
[1:01:33] Speaker 10: because you're so open about what your interests are, a
[1:01:36] Speaker 10: part of your campaign is wetlands, wetlands conditions, the conditions
[1:01:41] Speaker 10: of wetlands in Iowa. Tell me about that.
[1:01:43] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[1:01:44] Speaker 8: So, so I always got a water quality crisis tied
[1:01:48] Speaker 8: to that, connected to that as the fact that we're
[1:01:50] Speaker 8: last year, number one, this year, number two, and cancer growth.
[1:01:54] Speaker 8: Like we have too much nitrate in our water. We've
[1:01:57] Speaker 8: got other issues in our water. And we also are,
[1:02:00] Speaker 8: we're 49th for public land, Steve, 49th. And that does,
[1:02:04] Speaker 8: I had a guy asked me once. Yeah. So I
[1:02:06] Speaker 8: looked it up. I had a guy asked me, he's like,
[1:02:07] Speaker 8: he's like, does that include state, local and federal? And
[1:02:11] Speaker 8: I said, good question. I looked it up.
[1:02:12] Speaker 5: Yes, it does.
[1:02:14] Speaker 8: We have almost the least public land of any state.
[1:02:17] Speaker 8: And think about this for a second. We've got a
[1:02:20] Speaker 8: big water quality problem. We're 49th for public land. We've
[1:02:25] Speaker 8: got people who leave the state for outdoor recreation opportunities.
[1:02:29] Speaker 8: Call me crazy. If we did a massive wetlands restoration,
[1:02:32] Speaker 8: we could fix all three of those problems with the
[1:02:34] Speaker 8: same solution. Because nothing filters water better than nature's water filter.
[1:02:38] Speaker 8: That's just the truth. If you want to clean your
[1:02:40] Speaker 8: water up, you ought to put it in a wetland.
[1:02:42] Speaker 8: And I like to say there's four and a half
[1:02:44] Speaker 8: Fs for things you can do with a wetland. You
[1:02:46] Speaker 8: can take a field trip. You can foul hunt. You
[1:02:49] Speaker 8: can float. You can fish. And you can photograph. Photograph,
[1:02:52] Speaker 8: I call half an F.
[1:02:53] Speaker 2: Yep.
[1:02:53] Speaker 3: Got it.
[1:02:54] Speaker 8: Yeah. That's fair.
[1:02:56] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[1:02:57] Speaker 8: And, like, this is basically you just drew a circle
[1:03:00] Speaker 8: with those four and a half Fs that includes pretty
[1:03:01] Speaker 8: much everybody. I mean, who doesn't want to do one
[1:03:03] Speaker 8: of those things? You might want to photograph the duck
[1:03:07] Speaker 8: before I shoot it.
[1:03:08] Speaker 4: Yep.
[1:03:09] Speaker 8: You know, the more wetlands we have across the state,
[1:03:11] Speaker 8: the cleaner water we're going to have. And then fewer
[1:03:13] Speaker 8: people are going to leave. We're not going to offer
[1:03:14] Speaker 8: them mountains. If they want the mountains, they're going to
[1:03:16] Speaker 8: come out to Bozeman or they're going to go out
[1:03:18] Speaker 8: to Colorado. But if we want to offer them a
[1:03:21] Speaker 8: stream where you can see the bottom of it, where
[1:03:23] Speaker 8: it's fun to just stand there and catch crawdads the
[1:03:26] Speaker 8: way I did when I was a kid or better
[1:03:28] Speaker 8: trout fishing or better fishing in lakes too, you know,
[1:03:31] Speaker 8: we can get there. We can get cleaner water. We
[1:03:33] Speaker 8: just got to put a little effort into it.
[1:03:35] Speaker 10: I think a lot of people view and, and, if
[1:03:38] Speaker 10: they have this view, I'm not critical of it, but
[1:03:42] Speaker 10: they would say, you can't make a wetland, it just is, right?
[1:03:47] Speaker 10: What does it mean to create wetlands? I think in
[1:03:49] Speaker 10: people's heads, God makes wetlands. Man doesn't make wetlands.
[1:03:55] Speaker 8: What does that mean?
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: I mean, to.
[1:03:59] Speaker 8: Me, obviously there's a different level where to some folks,
[1:04:03] Speaker 8: the idea of wilderness and something that is truly pure
[1:04:06] Speaker 8: and just is, is kind of like their highest end.
[1:04:09] Speaker 8: And I love that idea. We're not going to have
[1:04:13] Speaker 8: that here. Iowa is one of the most terraformed places
[1:04:17] Speaker 8: on the planet, meaning mankind in Iowa, as much as
[1:04:20] Speaker 8: anywhere else, has said, I'm going to take this land
[1:04:22] Speaker 8: and make it this. But you can make it back
[1:04:25] Speaker 8: into a wetland, right? I mean, at the end of
[1:04:27] Speaker 8: the day, what we're talking about is taking some of
[1:04:29] Speaker 8: the lowest pieces of land, some of the most saturated
[1:04:34] Speaker 8: pieces of land, and instead of running... crops on them,
[1:04:38] Speaker 8: like actually do the restoration work, remove the tile from
[1:04:43] Speaker 8: that wetland area, and put in place like the right soils,
[1:04:51] Speaker 8: the right plants to make it be what it used
[1:04:54] Speaker 8: to be. If it wanted to be a wetland, if
[1:04:58] Speaker 8: there's a place in the geography that wants to be
[1:05:01] Speaker 8: a wetland, then take it and make it so that
[1:05:04] Speaker 8: it can be a wetland again.
[1:05:06] Speaker 10: So rather than wetland creation, what you're talking about is
[1:05:12] Speaker 10: wetland restoration.
[1:05:15] Speaker 8: That's right.
[1:05:15] Speaker 10: And you just mentioned how you have a very low
[1:05:21] Speaker 10: percentage of public land.
[1:05:23] Speaker 2: Right.
[1:05:24] Speaker 10: What does it look like to do wetland restoration in
[1:05:31] Speaker 10: a landscape where there's very little.
[1:05:34] Speaker 1: Public land.
[1:05:35] Speaker 10: This has to involve, I'm guessing this has to involve
[1:05:39] Speaker 10: a plan of incentivizing landowners to allow, in some cases,
[1:05:45] Speaker 10: small portions, large portions of agricultural production areas to be
[1:05:49] Speaker 10: restored to wetlands.
[1:05:51] Speaker 8: So what I want to do, first of all, you
[1:05:54] Speaker 8: got to take a watershed approach because if you're aiming
[1:05:57] Speaker 8: to clean up water, if you just do a scattershot thing,
[1:06:01] Speaker 8: one size doesn't fit all, And you want to have
[1:06:03] Speaker 8: an area, I mean, you know science, you want to
[1:06:05] Speaker 8: have an area that you tested and then an area
[1:06:07] Speaker 8: that you didn't so that five, 10 years later, you
[1:06:10] Speaker 8: can say, look, now the water's cleaner over here because
[1:06:14] Speaker 8: we did all this work. Let's expand that program and
[1:06:16] Speaker 8: do it over there. And that helps you measure the
[1:06:19] Speaker 8: impact of what you're doing, which to me helps the
[1:06:21] Speaker 8: public understand that you're treating them right. You're taking care
[1:06:24] Speaker 8: of their tax dollars. You're cleaning up their water. You're
[1:06:26] Speaker 8: giving them more fun places to play. What I specifically,
[1:06:31] Speaker 8: what I want to do is basically a reverse auction.
[1:06:35] Speaker 8: So I have the state say, put out a form
[1:06:40] Speaker 8: that just says, hey, landowners in Iowa, give us the
[1:06:43] Speaker 8: GPS coordinates on your plot. Tell us the lowest price
[1:06:47] Speaker 8: per acre that you will take. And then once we
[1:06:50] Speaker 8: collect all those effectively bids, but it's bids to sell,
[1:06:53] Speaker 8: not bids to buy. You collect all those bids and
[1:06:57] Speaker 8: then you overlay that on a GIS map so that
[1:07:00] Speaker 8: you're looking at what are our most targeted areas which
[1:07:02] Speaker 8: of these places that have been offered to us, give
[1:07:05] Speaker 8: us the most bang for the buck and go from there.
[1:07:08] Speaker 8: So at the end of the day, and you got to, again,
[1:07:10] Speaker 8: this is going to have to be within particular watersheds
[1:07:12] Speaker 8: to start. Cause I want to be able to, I
[1:07:15] Speaker 8: want to be five years down the road and be
[1:07:16] Speaker 8: able to point at it and say, Hey, look, look
[1:07:18] Speaker 8: at how much better we're doing here. We'll look at
[1:07:21] Speaker 8: how much better we're doing there. And these two watersheds
[1:07:23] Speaker 8: that we started with, let's, let's keep going.
[1:07:25] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[1:07:26] Speaker 8: I think what, what, what I think is why it's voluntary,
[1:07:29] Speaker 8: which I think is important.
[1:07:30] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[1:07:30] Speaker 10: What I was going to point out is like a
[1:07:32] Speaker 10: lot of conservation projects that I applaud would wind up
[1:07:35] Speaker 10: being in situations of willing seller, willing buyer. So I
[1:07:39] Speaker 10: think a lot of people here, oh, agricultural lands, that
[1:07:43] Speaker 10: must mean they're coming with eminent domain and taking people's farms.
[1:07:46] Speaker 10: But in this case, you're often looking at places that
[1:07:49] Speaker 10: probably have low output, are probably variable in production because
[1:07:56] Speaker 10: there's always the risk of flooding anyways. and places where
[1:08:00] Speaker 10: someone could pull it out of their holdings and know
[1:08:05] Speaker 10: that it's not turning into a strip mall it's not
[1:08:08] Speaker 10: turning into something next to them they don't want but
[1:08:10] Speaker 10: it's getting reverted to an area that's probably going to
[1:08:13] Speaker 10: add value to surrounding landscapes it's going to add wildlife
[1:08:17] Speaker 10: quality to surrounding landscapes and you create a situation where
[1:08:20] Speaker 10: a bunch of people win.
[1:08:22] Speaker 8: And you know you know how this works i mean
[1:08:24] Speaker 8: if you got a uh If you're in a small
[1:08:26] Speaker 8: town that happens to have good hunting nearby, your restaurants
[1:08:29] Speaker 8: and your hotel are just going to be that much
[1:08:31] Speaker 8: busier because of it. And so if we see that
[1:08:34] Speaker 8: kind of restoration where people are like, hey, there's this
[1:08:36] Speaker 8: big new wetland in north central Iowa, you know, yeah,
[1:08:40] Speaker 8: that's going to be good in that area. And you
[1:08:41] Speaker 8: might be a hotel that's 30 miles away or a
[1:08:43] Speaker 8: restaurant that's 30 miles away. That's just a 30 minute
[1:08:46] Speaker 8: drive in Iowa, you know. So you still might be
[1:08:49] Speaker 8: benefiting from that, too. The other piece of it is
[1:08:52] Speaker 8: we've got this state program. You know, one of the
[1:08:54] Speaker 8: issues with CRP nationally is you don't really allow grazing
[1:08:59] Speaker 8: on it. But there's a lot of compatibility with grazing
[1:09:03] Speaker 8: and with wildlife. And so we've got a state program
[1:09:06] Speaker 8: called the Working Lands Program, where again, it's designed to
[1:09:10] Speaker 8: take some of that lower land CSR, CSR is corn
[1:09:16] Speaker 8: suitability rating, but it's lower CSR land. Maybe it's a
[1:09:19] Speaker 8: steep grade, and so it's highly erodible. Again, maybe it's
[1:09:22] Speaker 8: just sort of wetter, or maybe it's right along the river.
[1:09:26] Speaker 8: But the Working Lands Program helps folks take that land
[1:09:30] Speaker 8: that's more highly erodible and turn it into grazing land.
[1:09:35] Speaker 8: So you do, you know, a short grass prairie, great.
[1:09:40] Speaker 8: If you're grazing on short grass prairie, you're going to
[1:09:42] Speaker 8: have more habitat. Maybe it's pheasant instead of ducks, but
[1:09:48] Speaker 8: that's still beneficial for folks no matter what it is
[1:09:50] Speaker 8: they want to do. It still helps clean up our
[1:09:52] Speaker 8: water and still helps growers and producers with profitability because
[1:09:56] Speaker 8: you're not telling them like we are with CRP, like, well,
[1:10:00] Speaker 8: you can't do anything with it.
[1:10:01] Speaker 10: Yeah, it gives people the middle step. And for listeners,
[1:10:06] Speaker 10: we're talking about the CRP Conservation Reserve Program, which is
[1:10:10] Speaker 10: Critics would say, oh, it's paying farmers not to do nothing.
[1:10:13] Speaker 10: But what it does is it creates an economic incentive.
[1:10:18] Speaker 10: And maybe that's even too strong of a word, but
[1:10:24] Speaker 10: it makes it financially viable for landowners to put areas
[1:10:30] Speaker 10: of their property on hold and let the soils rebuild
[1:10:35] Speaker 10: and create wildlife habitats where it's not such an economic
[1:10:39] Speaker 10: hit to them to enroll it. People don't get rich
[1:10:41] Speaker 10: off CRP, but in some cases it's like a more
[1:10:45] Speaker 10: flexible system would get more people to be able to
[1:10:48] Speaker 10: participate in conservation and still run working properties.
[1:10:51] Speaker 1: And like you're saying, Grace.
[1:10:52] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[1:10:53] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[1:10:54] Speaker 8: And especially right now, you know, we've got so many
[1:10:56] Speaker 8: people out there who are really hurt. Farm income has
[1:10:58] Speaker 8: gone down about 50% on average. And the other piece
[1:11:03] Speaker 8: of this is what I'd love to do is, You know,
[1:11:06] Speaker 8: if you're if you're saying, oh, well, this is only
[1:11:08] Speaker 8: a small acreage. Well, put a few cattle out there.
[1:11:11] Speaker 8: I want us to do more support for local and
[1:11:13] Speaker 8: regional food systems. So if you've just got a small
[1:11:16] Speaker 8: head of cattle or if you want to I don't
[1:11:18] Speaker 8: know what you want to graze out there. But even
[1:11:20] Speaker 8: if it's a smaller amount, you're not going to have
[1:11:23] Speaker 8: enough to have to do a commercial slaughter. You do
[1:11:26] Speaker 8: local slaughtering at a locker and sell it to local
[1:11:29] Speaker 8: school districts. That helps keep that money here locally, helps
[1:11:33] Speaker 8: reinforce local rural economies, and that helps everybody win too.
[1:11:37] Speaker 10: When you're out there, I'm guessing you've got to talk
[1:11:40] Speaker 10: about all kinds of stuff that is really on people's minds.
[1:11:44] Speaker 10: Not that it doesn't interest us here, but it's just
[1:11:46] Speaker 10: outside of our focus on the show. But I'm sure
[1:11:49] Speaker 10: you're out there talking about gas prices and grocery prices
[1:11:52] Speaker 10: and all this kind of stuff because.
[1:11:53] Speaker 1: You've got to be.
[1:11:54] Speaker 10: But when you go out and you're doing your town
[1:11:57] Speaker 10: hall meetings and you're talking to constituents– How much interest,
[1:12:02] Speaker 10: how much tolerance is there for discussions about conservation issues?
[1:12:07] Speaker 10: Like when you start talking about wetlands, do people tune out?
[1:12:10] Speaker 10: When you start talking about CRP, do they tune out?
[1:12:12] Speaker 8: Or are Iowans interested? In Iowa right now, this is
[1:12:16] Speaker 8: a hot topic and people really like our plan. You know,
[1:12:20] Speaker 8: I've got people who are on the ag side and
[1:12:24] Speaker 8: people who are on the conservation side and people who
[1:12:26] Speaker 8: are just on the hunting side. And then just people
[1:12:29] Speaker 8: who don't do any of those things, but they want
[1:12:31] Speaker 8: better water quality. All of them are like, this is
[1:12:33] Speaker 8: a good idea. You got a good plan. And it's
[1:12:36] Speaker 8: partially because we got this water quality crisis. We have
[1:12:39] Speaker 8: a lot of beach closures at our state parks every year.
[1:12:42] Speaker 8: So I want to fix this stuff. And so do
[1:12:43] Speaker 8: other people.
[1:12:44] Speaker 1: So it's actually what I said.
[1:12:45] Speaker 10: People are feeling it. It's not just duck hunters that
[1:12:47] Speaker 10: are thinking about this.
[1:12:48] Speaker 5: Correct. Correct.
[1:12:49] Speaker 8: And so actually, when I do my town halls and
[1:12:51] Speaker 8: I say, I want us to have the biggest wetlands
[1:12:54] Speaker 8: restoration that anyone has ever seen, sometimes we get applause
[1:12:58] Speaker 8: on that. You know, people are people really want to
[1:13:01] Speaker 8: see improvement in water quality. And to me, the number
[1:13:03] Speaker 8: one way to do that that gets people excited is
[1:13:06] Speaker 8: more wetlands.
[1:13:07] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:13:09] Speaker 10: So when's the election? What date this year?
[1:13:10] Speaker 5: I should know this.
[1:13:12] Speaker 8: I should know this, too. November 3rd, I think.
[1:13:14] Speaker 5: November 3rd.
[1:13:16] Speaker 10: So like first.
[1:13:17] Speaker 8: So first Tuesday after the first Monday, whatever that is.
[1:13:20] Speaker 10: OK, so you're you're you're you're you're I know you
[1:13:23] Speaker 10: I know you don't pay attention to this. People do.
[1:13:27] Speaker 10: You're polling well. Your view is that you're going to
[1:13:30] Speaker 10: be out there making your case. You don't care what
[1:13:32] Speaker 10: the polls say, and that's not what you're here to
[1:13:34] Speaker 10: talk about. You're polling well. Let's just say the voters
[1:13:39] Speaker 10: of Iowa send you to the governor's office on November 3rd.
[1:13:44] Speaker 10: What is the day that you have to report to work?
[1:13:50] Speaker 8: The day I would switch jobs, I think, is the
[1:13:55] Speaker 8: 14th of January. I know it's in January. I know
[1:13:59] Speaker 8: I get two months to, like, you know, take a nap.
[1:14:02] Speaker 10: So, yeah, that's what I'm getting at.
[1:14:04] Speaker 8: I get the rut, Steve.
[1:14:05] Speaker 10: That's what I'm getting at.
[1:14:06] Speaker 8: I get the rut, yeah.
[1:14:08] Speaker 10: On November 2nd, it's too late.
[1:14:11] Speaker 1: I don't know.
[1:14:12] Speaker 10: The morning of November 3rd, it's too late. Like, what's
[1:14:15] Speaker 10: done is done. So you could feasibly hunt. You could
[1:14:18] Speaker 10: feasibly deer hunt this year.
[1:14:20] Speaker 8: I could be in a tree stand on the 3rd.
[1:14:21] Speaker 1: What's that?
[1:14:22] Speaker 8: Oh, yeah, no, I'll be out there. I'll be out
[1:14:25] Speaker 8: there after the third, but you're, you have a point.
[1:14:28] Speaker 8: I could go out on election day and you know,
[1:14:32] Speaker 8: what's kind of the die is cast at that point.
[1:14:34] Speaker 8: I don't know if I'll do that. I'll probably be
[1:14:35] Speaker 8: a little bit too antsy, but that'd be, that'd be
[1:14:37] Speaker 8: pretty cool to fill a tag on the same day.
[1:14:40] Speaker 10: You'll be calling your wife from the stand being like, Hey,
[1:14:42] Speaker 10: did I win?
[1:14:43] Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah. I actually, so funny story. I ran for
[1:14:47] Speaker 8: reelection as state auditor in 22 and it was super
[1:14:50] Speaker 8: tight and I the guy that I was running against
[1:14:54] Speaker 8: didn't even, we knew we were going to win. We
[1:14:56] Speaker 8: knew we had a big enough lead that even in
[1:14:58] Speaker 8: a recount, it's like, okay, buddy, you got a lot
[1:14:59] Speaker 8: of space. You got to make up here. So we
[1:15:02] Speaker 8: were pretty comfortable. And I found out that I won
[1:15:06] Speaker 8: when I was field dressing a buck. When a reporter
[1:15:10] Speaker 8: called me to be like, Hey, your opponent conceded. He's like,
[1:15:13] Speaker 8: where are you right now? What are you doing? I'm like, uh,
[1:15:15] Speaker 8: I'm in, I'm in Madison County field dressing a nice buck.
[1:15:19] Speaker 8: You should have seen The space in the oak leaves
[1:15:23] Speaker 8: that I put that arrow through, he came in probably,
[1:15:28] Speaker 8: and this is a tree I've sat in many times.
[1:15:30] Speaker 8: It's a great spot, but I never actually had taken
[1:15:35] Speaker 8: a buck out of it before. He came in and
[1:15:41] Speaker 8: the wind was just right and he's heading towards me
[1:15:44] Speaker 8: and he kind of looks around a little bit and
[1:15:45] Speaker 8: I'm like, I'm shooting this buck if I get a shot.
[1:15:49] Speaker 8: And he pauses. dead straight on, not quartering towards, just
[1:15:53] Speaker 8: dead on. It's probably 25 yards away. I can't, he
[1:15:57] Speaker 8: stands there for a while. I can't tell if he's
[1:15:59] Speaker 8: going to turn and go or keep coming, but I'm ready.
[1:16:04] Speaker 8: And he ends up kind of doing, I guess, like
[1:16:07] Speaker 8: a receiver, you'd say like a button hook, you know,
[1:16:10] Speaker 8: kind of comes in a little bit further and does
[1:16:12] Speaker 8: a full turnaround. And I just had this one little
[1:16:16] Speaker 8: window and I gave a little bleat and got him
[1:16:19] Speaker 8: to pause right in that window. He just poked that
[1:16:22] Speaker 8: arrow right through.
[1:16:24] Speaker 10: And then you won the election a couple minutes later.
[1:16:27] Speaker 8: And then I won the election. And he took off
[1:16:33] Speaker 8: and he went down. He only, I mean, didn't go 20,
[1:16:36] Speaker 8: but he went down in a pine grove where the
[1:16:39] Speaker 8: dirt was so soft I didn't actually hear him hit
[1:16:41] Speaker 8: the ground. And so I stayed in that tree. I'm
[1:16:45] Speaker 8: not patient. I've had problems in the past where I'm
[1:16:47] Speaker 8: too excited and I get down too early. I stayed
[1:16:49] Speaker 8: in that tree plenty long and then was just surprised
[1:16:51] Speaker 8: to see like, Oh, he's right here. But I didn't,
[1:16:53] Speaker 8: I didn't, he actually like hit the ground and plowed
[1:16:56] Speaker 8: like his, his antler was actually a little bit under
[1:16:59] Speaker 8: the dirt.
[1:17:00] Speaker 10: Like something from the cartoons, man, when the bulls charge
[1:17:03] Speaker 10: or something.
[1:17:04] Speaker 8: Yeah.
[1:17:05] Speaker 2: Yes.
[1:17:05] Speaker 8: Yeah. That was a fun day.
[1:17:08] Speaker 10: And then, uh, I kind of talked to you about
[1:17:11] Speaker 10: this before we started recording, but you, you, you, you're,
[1:17:15] Speaker 10: you're enjoying this. You're enjoying this process. You like getting
[1:17:18] Speaker 10: out and talking to people.
[1:17:19] Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, there's downsides. But I like people in general.
[1:17:24] Speaker 8: I really like Iowans. I like talking to people that
[1:17:26] Speaker 8: I've never met before. I'm a curious person. I like
[1:17:29] Speaker 8: to ask them about it themselves. And, you know, when
[1:17:32] Speaker 8: we go to town halls, the fun part to me
[1:17:35] Speaker 8: is answering people's questions and also hearing them tell stories.
[1:17:38] Speaker 8: One of the things I'm proposing in this race is
[1:17:42] Speaker 8: it actually would require elected officials to do truly public
[1:17:45] Speaker 8: town halls. You get two weeks advance notice. You got
[1:17:48] Speaker 8: to tell people this is the date, this is the time.
[1:17:51] Speaker 8: Let everybody in that's behaving themselves. You know, it's got
[1:17:54] Speaker 8: to be mixed political company and ask and answer non-prescreened questions,
[1:17:58] Speaker 8: real questions. And so we get these rooms together. It's
[1:18:02] Speaker 8: usually 40% of the room isn't a Democrat. And people
[1:18:07] Speaker 8: get to be heard by their neighbors. It's not just
[1:18:09] Speaker 8: by me. And I think that's just a good thing
[1:18:12] Speaker 8: to do, win or lose. I'm proud to be doing
[1:18:13] Speaker 8: it the way that I think I can look back
[1:18:15] Speaker 8: at this day win or lose, and say, you know what,
[1:18:19] Speaker 8: we did it the right way.
[1:18:21] Speaker 10: I'll tell you what, where I'm sitting right now, man,
[1:18:23] Speaker 10: just as an American, anyone that is honestly talking about
[1:18:32] Speaker 10: turning down the hatred and turning down the vitriol and
[1:18:37] Speaker 10: turning down the divisiveness.
[1:18:39] Speaker 8: Has my ear. I appreciate that.
[1:18:43] Speaker 1: It's just, it's got to.
[1:18:45] Speaker 10: Happen it's it's gotta happen so I appreciate you talking
[1:18:49] Speaker 10: about that definitely appreciate you talking about wetlands and um
[1:18:53] Speaker 10: yeah and i love talking about bucks your mount looks
[1:18:56] Speaker 10: great i'll be watching um i'll be watching what happens
[1:19:00] Speaker 10: and i want to thank you again for taking the
[1:19:01] Speaker 10: time to come talk to us man.
[1:19:04] Speaker 8: No thanks for having me back ladies and gentlemen.
[1:19:06] Speaker 10: Hearing from rob sand state auditor in iowa And currently
[1:19:10] Speaker 10: running for the governorship in Iowa. And on November 3rd,
[1:19:18] Speaker 10: we'll find out what's going to happen there. And on
[1:19:20] Speaker 10: November 4th, we'll wait for a deer report.
[1:19:26] Speaker 8: They'll probably be quiet, but I'll be out there. All right, man.
[1:19:29] Speaker 10: Thanks so much for coming by and checking back in.
[1:19:30] Speaker 1: Appreciate it.
[1:19:31] Speaker 8: Yeah, thanks, Stephen.
[1:19:52] Speaker 7: Thank you.

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