Ep. 638: If You Hunt or Fish on Public Land, You Better Listen Up

Steven Rinella https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork talks with Brad Brooks https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fbradabrooks%2F%3Fhl%3Den&is_from_rle, Dave Willms nwf.org/halttheheist, Brooklynn Stevens https://www.instagram.com/406.boneworks/, Ryan Callaghan https://www.instagram.com/olcal406/, Randall Williams https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/?hl=en. Topics discussed: The Sicilian coming out of Steve; the Mayor of Flavortown; Brooklynn’s overstuffed garage of skulls; a correction on “over and out”; using waterpiks on nasal cavities; the sage brush rebellion; the state of Utah suing the Federal Government; being a measured guy; acquiring and holding public land; and more. Outro song "Country Symphony" by Pick & Howl https://www.pickandhowl.com Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:43Speaker 02

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

• 0:49Speaker 03

  We're the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything.

• 0:54Steven Rinella?

  The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com.

• 1:14Steven Rinella?

  Oh, for months, all summer, all last summer, still now, I've been working on a new project that I haven't talked about before, because it's kind of, it's a little bit, it was secrecy, but it's no longer secrecy. I did a new show, I'm doing a new show with History Channel, which premieres Tuesday, January 28 at 10:00 PM Eastern. Okay, so we filmed eight one-hour standalone episodes of a new show called Hunting History with Steve Rinella, and we dive into eight, what we call, outdoor mysteries. Okay, so the premiere episode has to do with details surrounding the disappearance of the skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

• 1:59Steven Rinella?

  So the only unsolved skyjacking in American history. We dive into the disappearance of D.B. Cooper. We're doing an episode on the lost colony of Roanoke. We did an episode on...

• 2:12Steven Rinella?

  One that was close to home to me is that kind of blows my mind. The first ship, okay, the first ship ever built to operate on the upper Great Lakes was, if you ever heard of a dude named La Salle, like La Salle was the first guy to descend, the first European to descend the Mississippi down to the Gulf of Mexico. Well, La Salle built this ship above Niagara Falls, a fur trading vessel. Okay, in 1600s.

• 2:40Steven Rinella?

  That thing's missing. And what's crazy is there's still people trying to look, a competitive search of people still trying to look for and find his missing ship, which is somewhere in the Great Lakes called the Griffin. Did an episode on that. Did an episode around first humans in North America. So check it out. Hunting History premieres on the History Channel at 10:00 PM Eastern on Tuesday, January 28. Thank you.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Cal, if you were, if someone were to ask you,

• 3:19Speaker 05

  Come on, man.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  What political office Guy Fieri holds, what, what town, what would you say?

• 3:29Speaker 05

  Boy, it'd be awesome if it was like health inspector.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  No, no, what town? What, what town?

• 3:35Speaker 05

  The contentious language was elected official.

• 3:39Speaker 06

  Elected official.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  We all know.

• 3:41Steven Rinella?

  He's, it's, it's, it's, it's just, I wasn't even there.

• 3:44Speaker 05

  Is he a mayor?

• 3:46Speaker 03

  He's the mayor of Flavortown.

• 3:47Steven Rinella?

  Oh, Flavortown, nice. If he says elected official, he, he has to admit that it was wrong. How many points did you win by?

• 3:53Speaker 05

  One point. One. So yeah, it was the game.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  I said, if, if we, if we were to ask, what animal is the king of the jungle?

• 4:04Steven Rinella?

  The elected king of the jungle?

• 4:06Speaker 03

  I mean, it's, that's what, it's a bad analogy, man. It's not, it's not the same.

• 4:10Steven Rinella?

  What if? Turn the machine on, Phil.

• 4:14Speaker 05

  Machine's on.

• 4:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, now, none of this happens where we start a show and there's already a conversation occurring. In the old days, in the old days, we would just start. No one even knew when it started. Phil wasn't even born yet.

• 4:31Steven Rinella?

  Now, we start it, don't we Phil?

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. I think it uh, it introduces a lot of fun energy.

• 4:39Steven Rinella?

  When I just, oh, you're contradicting what I'm saying. What does?

• 4:45Speaker 05

  I think people like when you say like, turn the machine on, people have sort of an anticipation. They're anticipating, they're in the middle of something. I want to hear what's going on.

• 4:52Steven Rinella?

  Moments ago, in this very studio, I wasn't there for it. There was a trivia tournament. In the trivia tournament, the host says, I don't want Randall to say it because he, he's like the other side of the fight. Can you do the question, Phil, just for listeners? So Meat Eater Trivia, we've got a great show coming up for you today, ladies and gentlemen. Meat Eater, and Meat Eater Trivia, it was just happening here a minute ago, this question was read.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  Yes, the official wording was, rock star chef Guy Fieri is an elected government official of what municipality?

• 5:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Randall says, Flavortown. Okay, everybody else has shit fit because of the word choice, elected.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  When I think of Guy Fieri.

• 5:44Steven Rinella?

  It's not Fieri for starters, it's Fieri. Like, there's a guy named Eddie, you owe him a fee, Fieri. Really? Yes, that's what he says.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  This is the Sicilian coming out in Steve right now.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Well, well, when I think of Guy, when I think of Guy, the first thing that comes to mind is his, his trademarked nickname, the mayor of Flavortown.

• 6:07Steven Rinella?

  That's his nickname?

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. If you, if you, uh, if you pull up his bio on Instagram, it's the first thing that it says.

• 6:15Speaker 06

  So I think a better question would have been.

• 6:17Steven Rinella?

  This is Brad Brooks.

• 6:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, okay.

• 6:19Steven Rinella?

  Brad Brooks came up from, from Idaho to talk about this. He's something of a guy, Fieri expert.

• 6:26Speaker 06

  A lot of people say that about me, Steve. Um, a better question would have been like, what is his, uh, trademark nickname that?

• 6:38Steven Rinella?

  Denotes a sort of governmental position.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  But I think that would have been too obvious. This is a fun, this is a fun question.

• 6:47Steven Rinella?

  It's not fun for me.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  What if you said, what a mythical place is a state of mind where fun and food meet in perfect harmony?

• 6:55Steven Rinella?

  And he's the, and he's the, and what position does he hold in this? Like, would you say that, if you, if you said, like, pick, okay, like, Jimmy Buffett is the elected official of what municipality? I'd be thinking, well, shit, did he get into politics? I would be thinking, oh, Margaritaville.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  I mean, if he's known as the mayor of Margaritaville.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  But it's not an elected position. I, like, oh, okay, Guy Fieri's downtown Flavor Town.

• 7:26Steven Rinella?

  It's tongue in cheek.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Uh, not in Montana. It is in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and a bunch of other locations. Is there some sort of election that's going on?

• 7:35Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. And was it rigged?

• 7:38Speaker 03

  I think Spencer, I think Spencer, Spencer made a, he made a clumsy attempt to not use the word mayor in the question.

• 7:48Steven Rinella?

  Here's where the problem comes up to me, and we'll get on with the show eventually. We just punt it. Crin, let's just punt the episode, and we'll stay on this for two hours. The problem for me winds up being that he used such formal language, and if I had been in the room, I would have gotten it wrong, because I would have been thinking, what the hell town is he from? And maybe he was elected.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  So that's what I said to, that's what I said in the moment. I said, because Spencer used important sounding words, you guys thought it was a real thing.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  I thought he was like an honorary doctorate, like some town had given him like an honorary mayoral position. You know, that's what I thought.

• 8:23Speaker 07

  See, that's clever.

• 8:24Steven Rinella?

  And that's what I. What'd you write down?

• 8:26Speaker 06

  Atlantic City.

• 8:27Steven Rinella?

  Why that?

• 8:28Speaker 06

  I just, can I be honest? Pulled it out of my ass. I was just like, East Coast guy.

• 8:33Steven Rinella?

  He reached into his butt and Atlantic City was in there.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Well, I, I initially thought Flavor Town, because that's the only word I associate with Guy Fieri. And then I, I took 10 seconds to think about it, and I thought, oh, yeah, he's the mayor of Flavor Town. Now this makes sense.

• 8:48Steven Rinella?

  I would have had, you know that there's a sports expression about leaving it all on the, uh, field?

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:56Steven Rinella?

  I'd have left it all on this mic. If I would have been in that room.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  I think everybody in the room at in the moment recognized that that would have been the case. And it's it's good that you weren't there because there was quite a stink in your absence.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  I'd be worried for Spencer's well being had you been in the room. And within arms reach.

• 9:18Speaker 06

  Yanis almost quit.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, he almost walked out.

• 9:22Speaker 06

  He almost walked out.

• 9:23Speaker 07

  Wow, got that.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  When I set.

• 9:24Steven Rinella?

  I would have done that with him like a little protest.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 9:27Steven Rinella?

  I've done that with him.

• 9:28Speaker 05

  When I set super early alarms for turkey season, I name them and often it's like. Turkey Town, USA. Gobblerville, right? And so now I'm going to be like, now, who would be the elected official of Gobblerville?

• 9:44Speaker 03

  I always.

• 9:45Steven Rinella?

  You know, when you're doing a protest and you walk out.

• 9:49Steven Rinella?

  Do you say, hell, no, we will go?

• 9:53Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 9:56Steven Rinella?

  I could picture protests where you're not going to leave. But a protest where you leave what you chant.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  I don't it depends on what you're leaving. Like if you're leaving an airplane that's going to take you somewhere. Or a bus, you know, like.

• 10:09Steven Rinella?

  Hell, no, we will go.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  If you march off of a vehicle that's about to move you, I think the we won't go still holds.

• 10:16Steven Rinella?

  That's true because it's leaving.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:18Steven Rinella?

  Brooklyn, how's business been, man? We're good. I'm starting the actual show now. Phil, you didn't like any of that? You can start the machine now.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  It's all staying in.

• 10:26Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Uh, Brooklyn's here. The second time you've been on the show, introduce yourself, Brooklyn.

• 10:31Speaker 07

  What do you want me to say?

• 10:32Steven Rinella?

  Do you like Brooklyn or Brook better?

• 10:34Speaker 07

  Doesn't matter.

• 10:35Steven Rinella?

  Doesn't matter. Where's your new job at, though? You got a part time job you're working down at?

• 10:39Speaker 07

  The Meat Eater flagship store.

• 10:41Steven Rinella?

  Do you like working down there?

• 10:42Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:42Steven Rinella?

  You do? Um, do you field a lot of dumb questions when you're down there? Or how do you rate the clientele?

• 10:48Speaker 05

  What's the hot gossip down there?

• 10:52Speaker 07

  I'm not really sure, to be honest. Um. She stays out.

• 10:54Speaker 07

  A lot of people think it's a restaurant.

• 10:58Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 10:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, like they'll walk in.

• 11:01Steven Rinella?

  They'll be like, I have a five o'clock reservation.

• 11:03Speaker 07

  Well, they'll like walk in and they just kind of like stand at the front and just like stare and then they'll just walk out.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  Next time, go, uh, are you ready to be seated up? And then just walk them back to the TV and back.

• 11:14Steven Rinella?

  You don't try to sell them when that happens? You don't try to sell them something real quick?

• 11:18Speaker 07

  No, because you just kind of like. It happens in like a span of 10 seconds if that.

• 11:23Steven Rinella?

  So you can tell like that person didn't know what they were coming to.

• 11:27Steven Rinella?

  When you're down there, do you engage with the customers?

• 11:29Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Someone was across the street and overheard a passerby saying, I bet that place is good steaks.

• 11:37Steven Rinella?

  Depends, they do. So how many hours you working down there?

• 11:44Speaker 07

  Uh, just a couple of days a week. I'm not sure hour wise.

• 11:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay, and then you're still running your skull cleaning business?

• 11:49Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 11:50Steven Rinella?

  And you've been on the show before about your skull cleaning business?

• 11:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 11:53Steven Rinella?

  Here, here you have my daughter's buck from this year.

• 11:56Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 11:57Steven Rinella?

  Impeccably clean. Can I take a look?

• 11:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 11:59Steven Rinella?

  In fact, Brooklyn was set to come on the show a week ago. And didn't do it.

• 12:04Speaker 07

  Cause she's a perfectionist.

• 12:05Steven Rinella?

  Because she was is too much, perhaps too much of a perfectionist and didn't want to come down because it wasn't ready yet.

• 12:13Steven Rinella?

  It's not overboiled, I can tell you that.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  No obvious residue sticking to it, no smell.

• 12:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, he had a, he had a funky tooth.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  I saw that.

• 12:26Steven Rinella?

  It's not like all crumbly from getting overboiled, beautifully bleached.

• 12:32Steven Rinella?

  You didn't bleach way the hell up the antler.

• 12:35Speaker 07

  No, no, I hate doing that.

• 12:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you didn't make it that this is all crumbly and nasty. It looks perfect.

• 12:42Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 12:43Steven Rinella?

  Are you getting much business for your skull cleaning business?

• 12:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm really busy.

• 12:47Steven Rinella?

  You're real busy? This is the busy time of year.

• 12:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, my garage is way overstuffed.

• 12:53Steven Rinella?

  You got a lot of work.

• 12:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 12:55Steven Rinella?

  Is it bad that you're here because you don't want more work or you always looking for more work?

• 12:58Speaker 07

  No, I'm always looking for more.

• 13:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so tell people how they come and find you to bring you a skull. You should talk about your pricing a little bit too, just so people know. Or don't you want to get into that?

• 13:09Speaker 07

  For, just as deer, just standard year, um, 125 elk, the 165, that's just basic. Analep is same as deer, 125.

• 13:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 13:21Speaker 07

  You can, I'm on Instagram at 406boneworks.

• 13:26Speaker 07

  Or I think the, if you go to the meat eater store, I have a, a few flyer down there.

• 13:32Steven Rinella?

  I saw that flyer in the window. I was dropping off some ammo there today and saw the flyer.

• 13:35Speaker 07

  Were you?

• 13:35Steven Rinella?

  That was a good idea.

• 13:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:38Steven Rinella?

  And then people can send it to you?

• 13:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, you can just message me and I'll tell you where to drop it off.

• 13:43Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Uh, we're gonna pass this around and we're gonna do a thing. Uh, you can, you know, Nate that we work with? That pointed out to me that ten four isn't a thing? Oh. Oh, no, no. Yeah. Sorry.

• 13:55Speaker 06

  Full time.

• 13:55Steven Rinella?

  Over and out. Have you been all your whole life heard people say over and out?

• 13:59Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:59Steven Rinella?

  You can't say over and out.

• 14:01Speaker 06

  Wait, why not?

• 14:02Steven Rinella?

  It's because you're contradicting yourself. Over means it's your turn to talk. Out means we're done. So he's sort of like, it's sort of like saying, what do you think, Bob? I'm out.

• 14:12Steven Rinella?

  You can talk to yourself.

• 14:14Speaker 06

  It's like the old like.

• 14:15Steven Rinella?

  No, he's out of the military.

• 14:17Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 14:17Steven Rinella?

  He said, if you can make this correction and broadcast it to the world, ham radio operators and Bradley fighting vehicle people will forever thank you. You do not say over and out. You just say over.

• 14:30Speaker 06

  Over.

• 14:31Steven Rinella?

  Or out.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  What about him protest if you?

• 14:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah, because he caught me saying over and out. He's like, over, like you're saying, like I say, um, what's your phone number? What, what's the name of your company? Brooke, over.

• 14:49Steven Rinella?

  No, you say, you gotta say something. I can't see you because we're on the radio.

• 14:53Speaker 07

  A four six bone works.

• 14:55Speaker 06

  Now.

• 14:56Speaker 07

  Over.

• 14:56Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh. Out. Click. Yep.

• 15:00Speaker 06

  Hey, Brooke, can I say, I think you're, I think you should charge more for your work right here. This is like.

• 15:05Steven Rinella?

  Well, it's not your turn to comment. Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 06

  Oh, okay.

• 15:09Steven Rinella?

  Nate came to me and said, he also came to me today to say this. You know, I like to do one to 10, rate things on a one to 10.

• 15:17Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 15:17Steven Rinella?

  He says, it's a lot better to go negative five to five. Cause he go, a one sort of leaves us like, nah, right? How was the restaurant? A one. Picture that it's a negative five.

• 15:30Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 15:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's good. So he's like, don't do one to 10, negative five to five.

• 15:35Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 15:35Steven Rinella?

  So we're gonna pass this around. You're gonna assess the work.

• 15:39Speaker 06

  Negative five to five.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, Brad, I'd also hold that comment. I have a few skulls that I plan on.

• 15:45Steven Rinella?

  He thinks that after a respectable, after a respectable period of time for, for Randall to submit his specimens, he thinks that a price increase might be in order.

• 15:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  I, I've got a question for you, Brooke, about, so I was texting with you a little bit when I was like trying to boil this coyote skull. And anyway, I definitely overboiled it, uh, and the teeth fell out. And so I've got a second one to do.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  I tried doing it like a couple of times. Yeah. It just, I don't know. There's, so I've got a second one I can work with. But with the first one, when I was trying to clean out the nostrils, I like jammed a chopstick in there and I probably, probably shouldn't have done that. Cause there's like that really cool, I don't know. What do you call it? Like filament type stuff that's delicate?

• 16:31Steven Rinella?

  Like, what do you call them?

• 16:33Speaker 07

  Uh, I just call it nose curls or nasal cavity.

• 16:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like what would you, what would you do for like a coyote? Would you like poke those out? Cause they're so delicate or?

• 16:43Speaker 07

  No. So I was actually after my last podcast, a guy had emailed me and he did like a bobcat or something. And he told me to, for those smaller skulls to use a water pick because it's like a mini pressure washer.

• 17:00Speaker 05

  I have one of those.

• 17:02Speaker 07

  And so that's what I do on bear to, for Spencer, actually I just finished a muskrat. So that's muskrat's the smallest I've done, but it works from bear to muskrat.

• 17:15Steven Rinella?

  What do you charge him for a muskrat?

• 17:16Speaker 07

  I can't remember. Cause I've never done.

• 17:19Steven Rinella?

  Thirty bucks?

• 17:19Speaker 07

  I think it was like 40 maybe.

• 17:21Speaker 06

  Good.

• 17:22Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So, uh, we're going to go around the room for a score.

• 17:27Speaker 06

  Uh, I'd give you a four out of, we're the same as camera.

• 17:30Steven Rinella?

  Negative five to five.

• 17:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. I give you a four, mostly.

• 17:33Steven Rinella?

  Same as a nine.

• 17:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 06

  And then part of that, I'll just say that like, I've done, I haven't done enough taxidermy to know what a, what a five would look like, but I think that's really good and really clean. The teeth aren't loose. The nasal cavity looks really in good shape. Like it's really good. But you gotta have something to work for, so can't be perfect.

• 17:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 06

  How old are you?

• 17:59Speaker 07

  I just turned 18.

• 18:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So if you had a five.

• 18:02Speaker 06

  You got nothing else.

• 18:02Steven Rinella?

  Meaning a 10.

• 18:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 18:04Steven Rinella?

  What the hell would you wake up for tomorrow?

• 18:06Speaker 07

  True, true.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  Now you know what it's like to be one of my kids.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  I'm just gonna totally disagree. I think it's a five. I think we should tell everybody it's a five. And I agree with Brad, you should be charging more.

• 18:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I, I, I, listen, I'm into her for 120, I guess it's not gonna change. You're not gonna proact, you're not gonna like retroactively.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  I'm saying, I, I paid like a hundred and 50 bucks or a hundred and 60 bucks for an elk in 2019. And inflation's been rampant. That's all we've heard about an entire, right?

• 18:37Steven Rinella?

  No, this is, this is toppling administrations.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  It's toppling. So you should be raising your prices by 30, 40% and

• 18:47Speaker 03

  you turned that around in a week. There should be an expedited rate.

• 18:50Steven Rinella?

  The normal thing is, they're like, uh, you know, my dad used to have a joke, you know, I don't know what the hell it went. Like you call the guy that's fixing your shoes. And it's been like three years. Oh, I'm just finishing them up right now.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:04Steven Rinella?

  You know, however it went. But the turnaround time is amazing.

• 19:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, I try to keep it. I mean, like I'm a hunter myself and so I know, like you want your stuff back. You want your head back.

• 19:17Speaker 07

  That, and I don't like all of the heads stinking in my garage. So I'm gonna try and get them done as fast as I can. So they don't stink up my garage.

• 19:25Steven Rinella?

  This is your parents garage too, right? How do they think about this little business?

• 19:32Steven Rinella?

  They give it a negative?

• 19:34Speaker 07

  Probably. They don't mind it. They kind of think it's funny. Um, I don't know. I recently started getting into more tanning and so I have a lot of hides. And I had freezer, all my hides stuffed in the freezer. So I recently had to buy my own freezer because I didn't like it in the freezer.

• 19:49Speaker 06

  So your overhead's going up. It's me, so you get it.

• 19:54Speaker 07

  Within the cupping years, they will. Yeah. Everyone tells me to.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  And expedited pricing. Turn around a week.

• 20:00Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you thought about that? Charging for the promptness?

• 20:05Speaker 05

  That's smart, Dave.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:06Steven Rinella?

  If you said to me, let's say you stuck with current pricing and you'd said to me like it's 125 bucks expedited as 135. You're just like making up, like it could have been more. I'd be like, yeah, I'll do that.

• 20:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:19Steven Rinella?

  And you don't even have to tell them that you would have done it just as fast no matter what.

• 20:23Speaker 07

  True.

• 20:24Steven Rinella?

  Then the guy that doesn't pay for it, he's going to think, my God, imagine if I had paid for it.

• 20:30Steven Rinella?

  How fast that would have been.

• 20:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:32Steven Rinella?

  Randall?

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I'm of mixed opinion here. I initially, my initial reaction was a four. Because I have a hard time giving a perfect score, you know? I think, I think of these things similar to Brad. You gotta always have room for improvement. But I don't know what I would do, what I would want differently if that were my deer skull. I think it looks fantastic.

• 20:55Steven Rinella?

  He'd be like, I would, I would have liked the antlers to get bigger.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 06

  What do you charge for that? How much does that cost?

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I mean, it looks great. It doesn't stink. It's clean. It's bright.

• 21:10Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  We should all be so lucky to have a deer that looks like that.

• 21:13Steven Rinella?

  Damn straight.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  She gets a five from me. I know she's super detail oriented about it. Hear about it from her mom all the time. She likes picking.

• 21:22Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:23Steven Rinella?

  What's the business called again?

• 21:25Speaker 07

  406 Bone Works.

• 21:26Steven Rinella?

  I'd call it Straight Fives.

• 21:32Speaker 06

  And then parentheses.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  From negative five to five.

• 21:36Speaker 07

  You can add four and zero and six and be like 11.

• 21:40Speaker 06

  Parentheses, that's the top score.

• 21:42Steven Rinella?

  I'd rather send it to a place that gets all tens. Like, well, hold on. It started at negative five.

• 21:47Speaker 05

  I got a upcharge for you.

• 21:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 05

  Okay. And I think this would revolutionize the world of European mounts. Is if you, yeah, for a couple bucks extra, I will, uh, apply something, you'll have to figure this part out, to the nose area.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 22:06Speaker 05

  That your dog will not chew on it.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 22:09Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 22:10Speaker 05

  Many, many good Euro mounts.

• 22:11Speaker 06

  Are you looking at me?

• 22:12Steven Rinella?

  You get the sour apple spray. You get like the sour apple spray.

• 22:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 05

  Many a good animal, uh, has been, had its face chewed off before it can be a real pretty.

• 22:21Speaker 06

  And I've told you, I'm sorry many times about my puppy last year, Ryan.

• 22:25Steven Rinella?

  That's a good point. This pulls you into chemistry.

• 22:27Speaker 07

  You can try using vinegar.

• 22:30Speaker 05

  That's up to you.

• 22:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like you said, you got to figure it out.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  I always, I always call that the, the unintentional skull plate conversion. Rolls off the bookshelf, you know, or a dog gets a hold of it. It's skull plate now.

• 22:43Steven Rinella?

  Dude, yeah, I had one. I had a nice whitetail hanging in a area where, like in a breezeway. And now and then you get just this insane wind. If, if someone opened, if the garage doors open on one end and someone opens the door on the other end, and that thing has more times,

• 23:00Steven Rinella?

  boom, falling down and it now is basically like a, it's like it's gotten a lot smaller.

• 23:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:07Steven Rinella?

  It's just pieces of bone. I come home, you know, and on my desk are little chunks of bone.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  And there's no point in an antelope Euro mount if the nose is chewed off.

• 23:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  Like it's just not. Yeah, there's nothing, nothing.

• 23:22Steven Rinella?

  This is what happened to yours.

• 23:24Speaker 05

  I, I mean, this has had to have happened to your animals or your others.

• 23:29Steven Rinella?

  Sounds like you guys have some past history.

• 23:31Speaker 05

  That was last two years.

• 23:32Speaker 06

  Are you still bitter about this?

• 23:33Speaker 05

  No, I'm not. It's still looking.

• 23:35Speaker 06

  Cause you sound like you're upset about it. So what happened? Just to clear the air is Ryan shot a very nice buck. I took it home. I had a, a new puppy and she, uh, got into both our deer, but she chewed more of Ryan's nose than mine.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. The crazy thing is she opened the door where the skulls were. Got into the secured area where they they were because you know, obviously you wouldn't put them someplace where a puppy could get to them.

• 24:02Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, of course.

• 24:04Speaker 05

  So a very special dog, you know?

• 24:07Speaker 03

  I've always said she's smart.

• 24:08Steven Rinella?

  I remember this happening now. This is all coming back to me. I remember this happening. I've never heard about this before.

• 24:13Speaker 05

  I feel like it's a very common thing. Anyway, it would be a great way for you to be like, yeah, your mount's done for a couple of extra bucks.

• 24:20Steven Rinella?

  For forty bucks, you'll dip it in like whatever the hell dogs hate.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  That's what happened to uh, that's what happened to Chili's first antelope.

• 24:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  His his roommate's dog chewed it on.

• 24:30Steven Rinella?

  You know what you might put on there? They make this thing for little kids. I didn't know about this. You know if a kid winds up chewing his fingernails too much?

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:38Steven Rinella?

  They make this shit you put on his fingernails. And they about vomit.

• 24:43Speaker 07

  Really?

• 24:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. It's bad. So you take you tell them, I need forty bucks to dog proof it. Put that shit all over it.

• 24:55Steven Rinella?

  Unless something tastes it, they don't know. And that dog gets his tongue on that. You got a dog?

• 24:59Speaker 07

  I do.

• 25:00Steven Rinella?

  Get a bottle of this stuff and swab his tongue with it and see what he does.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  The only thing is, my dogs like throwing up.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Just based on the frequency with which they do it. I'm not sure that would be a huge deterrent.

• 25:15Steven Rinella?

  Try that.

• 25:16Speaker 07

  Will do. I've never heard of this.

• 25:17Steven Rinella?

  I have a dog. I'll put it on my own dog and I'll report back to you.

• 25:19Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 25:20Steven Rinella?

  But she just had surgery, so I'm gonna wait till she feels better. She's very depressed. She's got around with that humiliating cone on. All the things she normally does, she can't do. She thinks she's in trouble constantly. Cause like she can't do any of the fun stuff she normally does. She's totally depressed. She's probably gonna kill herself. Later I'll hit her with that stuff. Right now. Right now it'd be like, it'd be like too much. It'd be too much. She'd jump off a dog cliff.

• 25:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 25:43Steven Rinella?

  Uh, thanks for coming in. Remind people how to find you. You can stay and hang out, but remind people how to find you.

• 25:48Speaker 07

  Um, through Instagram, four oh six bone works or just word of mouth really. People have my phone number and just. I don't want to put my phone number out there.

• 25:58Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, don't, but put it out there like this. Go like, like, put it out there like, here's how to find me. By God, what is it?

• 26:04Speaker 07

  Through Instagram.

• 26:04Steven Rinella?

  Okay, and they do what?

• 26:06Speaker 07

  Just message me.

• 26:08Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so message Brooke at Instagram. Find her on Instagram at?

• 26:12Speaker 07

  406 Bone Works.

• 26:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, support young business, American entrepreneurial ship.

• 26:16Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 26:16Steven Rinella?

  How do you say that word?

• 26:17Speaker 06

  Entrepreneurship.

• 26:18Steven Rinella?

  Preneurship, American elbow grease.

• 26:21Speaker 06

  Real entrepreneurs.

• 26:21Steven Rinella?

  Straight fives.

• 26:23Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 26:24Steven Rinella?

  And, uh, and, and keep, keep, I hope your business keeps blooming.

• 26:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, for sure.

• 26:30Speaker 07

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• 26:57Speaker 05

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• 28:20Steven Rinella?

  There was a thing we were gonna talk about, but I kinda wanna get to the main subject. Brody, the other day,

• 28:27Steven Rinella?

  um, we were doing the live show and we were doing our thing about where you in indefensible law.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:33Steven Rinella?

  Like, if you could just make a law that's totally indefensible, um, but it would satisfy some pet peeve.

• 28:40Steven Rinella?

  Brody was saying why he's floating, maybe it should, maybe it would be illegal to catch and release fish.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:46Steven Rinella?

  And we had a laugh about that. And then someone wrote in and says, in Germany, um, in most parts of Germany, it is a lea- it is illegal to, to catch and release a fish.

• 28:59Steven Rinella?

  They don't want you doing it for that reason. If you catch it, eat it. I don't know if this is true.

• 29:07Steven Rinella?

  A guy named Lucas says it is.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  With a K?

• 29:10Steven Rinella?

  I got it.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Yes, it is with a K, so you know you can trust it, yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  That's German.

• 29:17Steven Rinella?

  All right, uh, I, I want the main show. Uh, Brad, you mind introducing yourself for real? Then Dave, can you introduce yourself?

• 29:23Speaker 06

  Uh, yeah, Brad Brooks, uh, founder, CEO of a company called Argali. We're a back-up hunting gear and equipment company. Um, for this, I, for this gig, um, I also worked, uh, stint in, uh, public lands too, so.

• 29:37Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. And Dave, you've been on the show probably four or five times.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, not as many as, uh, folks like Heffelfinger.

• 29:46Steven Rinella?

  No, you've probably been on as many as Heffelfinger.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  I don't know, he gives me a hard time.

• 29:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  It's like he has.

• 29:50Steven Rinella?

  No, you're right. You're neck and neck with Heffelfinger.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  We might be. But he writes in a lot. But he writes. So his presence is more about.

• 29:56Steven Rinella?

  He's better about writing in.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, David Willms, I'm, uh, based in Wyoming. I work for the National Wildlife Federation now. I'm, uh, our associate vice president of public lands and also oversee our hunting angling advocacy work as well.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  And prior to that, worked for governor of Wyoming, worked for the attorney general's office, did work with our state gaming fish department, have been a, an attorney for. I won't say how long, long enough now.

• 30:24Steven Rinella?

  Long time.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, long time.

• 30:25Steven Rinella?

  Since you were a child.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Feels like it. I mean, look at my pictures and it looks like it too.

• 30:30Steven Rinella?

  And of course, Dr. Randall's here and also joined by Ryan Callaghan, and we're here to discuss the subject of great importance that has been brewing in the background. Like, I've been hearing about it and hearing about it and you're hearing about it. We keep saying we want to do something about it. I kind of thought it would go away. By now, you're probably dying what we're talking about. Who wants to dying to know dying to know what we're talking about? Who who wants to who wants to take take this and run with it? The the high level what we're talking about?

• 31:00Speaker 05

  I'll do the the quick overview.

• 31:02Steven Rinella?

  So the quick and dirty. What is happening?

• 31:04Speaker 05

  Okay, so this would all fall under Sagebrush Rebellion, we could call it. This bubbles up about every 10 years, it seems like, but it's a movement from certain players. This in this occasion, the state of Utah kicked it off with this idea that really falls back to like, the federal government can't own land. The arguments kind of, they're all variations of that, and the motivation is the fact that the states want more land because they're of great economic value. So the state of Utah currently is suing the

• 31:49Speaker 05

  federal government over unincorporated lands that belong to the Bureau of Land Management or fall under the management of the Bureau of Land Management. About 18 and a half million acres in that fall in the state of Utah's borders.

• 32:06Steven Rinella?

  Eighteen and a half million acres?

• 32:08Speaker 05

  Yes. Yep. And they are suing the federal government, saying that that land, it's illegal for the the BLM to control that land. And the state of Utah wants that land to basically do it as they please. And and there's some versions of what that is. But they do use in their lawsuit, the the word divest, which means sell. So there's.

• 32:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, basically, they're gonna hold the acres that are of the greatest economic importance and divest the rest, which would be sell off the rest of those public acres. And then, kind of, the ball of wax grows from there as far as what the implications of this lawsuit could be, but if the federal government can't maintain and own Bureau of Land Management land, what does that mean for US Forest Service land, Bureau of Reclamation, and on down the line?

• 33:29Steven Rinella?

  So, the lawsuit that Idaho's, or that Utah's, the state of Utah is filing a lawsuit saying BLM land is somehow, that they don't have the authority to own it, therefore it should belong to the states. They're focused particularly on BLM. Is this true? For now?

• 33:47Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 33:48Steven Rinella?

  Why do they feel that BLM land is fundamentally different than any other land management agency?

• 33:53Speaker 05

  That's a great question. You want me to take the first?

• 33:57Speaker 06

  You're the lawyer here.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  I'll take it.

• 33:59Steven Rinella?

  Why, why, why are we talking about Bureau of Land Management land?

• 34:04Speaker 05

  That's a great question. It's because that's what they've told us to talk about.

• 34:07Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  Right? So, here's the way I describe the case to people. First of all, the lawsuit's been filed in front of the United States Supreme Court, right? But, and they've asked, the state of Utah's asked the United States Supreme Court to accept what they call "original jurisdiction," which means, in an original jurisdiction case, you bypass federal district court, federal appeals court, you go right to the US Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court serves as the trial court.

• 34:31Steven Rinella?

  How, how often is that successful?

• 34:33Speaker 05

  Well, I can tell you-

• 34:34Steven Rinella?

  To have them not defer it down court?

• 34:36Speaker 03

  So I can tell you, I I've been involved in a couple. I was, the last one I was involved in was actually a case, the state of Montana sued the state of Wyoming, and it was original action number 137 in the history of the country, the 137th original jurisdiction case in the history of the country. That was about 10 years ago. There have been a handful since then. It doesn't happen often. There's a high bar to accept jurisdiction. It's typically state v. state, or state versus federal government, and it tends to fall on, in these instances, on issues of constitutional questions where there's immediate massive economic harm if we don't resolve it right away, or some other really high bar.

• 35:13Steven Rinella?

  Got it, like, who won the presidency?

• 35:16Speaker 03

  That's a pretty high bar.

• 35:17Steven Rinella?

  Might be like a thing like, we're just gonna have to take this on out.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. So that's the ask, right? And in it, they they ask for the Supreme Court to accept jurisdiction and hear this case. And the argument is, these 18 and 1/2 million acres of BLM lands, of these unappropriated lands, that it is unconstitutional. They're making a constitutional argument. They're saying it's unconstitutional for the United States to hold land in perpetuity. And this is why it's interesting to me that they focus on 18 and 1/2 million acres. Because what they fundamentally arguing is saying,

• 35:58Speaker 03

  look, the United States is only able to own the land that is, that it's expressly authorized to own under the Constitution. They cite, and I'm sorry to get super wonky, but they'll

• 36:10Steven Rinella?

  Please, don't get as wonky as you want, because I was just gonna ask, why can't Maryland sue and take the White House?

• 36:14Speaker 03

  There you go. You're asking the right question, right? So, under Article 10, which is what states often reference, Article 10 of the Constitution, is, all of the powers that are not expressly articulated in the Constitution are reserved to the state.

• 36:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  And what Utah says is, the express authority to own land, for the federal government to own land, is only found in one place, in the Enclave Clause. That's, this is their argument. And in the Enclave Clause, the only property that the federal government can own are, and I'll just be very general, because there's, there's a series of words, but it boils down to military installations and Washington DC. And so outside of those two things, the argument from Utah is the federal government cannot own any other land but but those lands.

• 37:05Steven Rinella?

  Military bases in DC.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, effectively, right? And so then to then argue that they're limiting their lawsuit to 18 and a half million acres of just BLM is something that I'm it's like mental gymnastics for me because as the lawyer in me says, you know, I'm looking at facts and law, right? And I'm saying if it if their argument is true and it is and it is unconstitutional to own any lands besides military installations in Washington DC, then why in the world would they only be entitled to the 18 and a half million acres?

• 37:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, why wouldn't Wyoming make a play for Yellowstone National Park? What a windfall.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Right?

• 37:50Steven Rinella?

  I mean, maybe that'd be like one chunk of public land that if they took, the state would actually make money off it.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  Probably. Yeah. I mean, you'd think so, at least tourism alone, dollars alone, right? But so that's the thing I like to start off with. I'm a pretty, you know, I'm a pretty measured guy.

• 38:09Steven Rinella?

  Too much so.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe, maybe so.

• 38:12Steven Rinella?

  But that's why you get to keep coming back on.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  You did go with a five. I did go with a five. That was but it was a measured five. There's qualified, yeah. It's like there's room for improvement. You could charge more. Sure, sure. For your services. But your work is so good, it's a five. Yeah. But I so I'm very measured, but then I look at this and say, it's not hyperbolic to say that all 640 million acres are at stake in this of public lands in the United States are at stake in this litigation because if it is unconstitutional to own lands in perpetuity, then it's unconstitutional on all lands except those expressly authorized by the Constitution, according to Utah.

• 38:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like Gettysburg.

• 38:56Steven Rinella?

  Wouldn't Gettysburg be not listed?

• 39:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think so.

• 39:03Steven Rinella?

  It's a, I mean, what's it's a.

• 39:04Speaker 06

  National monument, national monument or?

• 39:06Speaker 03

  National historic park.

• 39:07Steven Rinella?

  Do they give you constitutional authority to own a monument? Probably not.

• 39:10Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  I mean, according to that lawsuit.

• 39:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, according to the lawsuit.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  I mean, I would argue yes.

• 39:17Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, I'm saying if you, if someone was literally, I, I, like, I'm not a constitutional scholar, so. I don't know if that surprises you, but if you were to look at this, this thing they're pointing to that says what kind of land they could own. I'm just trying to capture the extent of like, sort of the bombshell you're dropping.

• 39:35Steven Rinella?

  To be that not just BLM, but you could say the same thing about national parks, you say the same thing about national monuments, you can say the same thing about whatever.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  National forests.

• 39:43Speaker 06

  National forests.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  US Fish and Wildlife Service lands, Bureau of Reclamation lands.

• 39:48Steven Rinella?

  So is there in this suit, and you, there's a lot we got to get into here, like other states joining all that, but in this suit, is there any articulation about why we're talking about BLM? Like, what is it about the Bureau of Land Management that to them seems?

• 40:07Steven Rinella?

  That to them seems like riper for exploitation than, than if they were going after Zion.

• 40:14Speaker 06

  After with.

• 40:14Steven Rinella?

  National Park.

• 40:16Speaker 05

  I mean, I think it's the unincorporated like, like how the BLM came to be is it was kind of like all the, the undesigned land that was left over. So there's like a low hanging fruit. Type of deal, but also Utah on BLM ground has a real history back and forth of like a lot of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase, Escalante. That is BLM land that then went into a monument status and then was, went back to a non-monument status. And that's where you hear like a lot of that, um, oh yeah, that is public, but you can't access it.

• 40:54Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  Type of talk.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, the, the national forest system as we know it was set aside as forest reserves, right? Like we've always had, the federal government has always acquired new land through purchase or military conquest, basically, right? But. Most of the public land system as we know it, those chunks of public land were set aside for a certain purpose. And BLM is essentially what was left over. That wasn't, you know, either reserved or disposed of. So it's sort of like the accidental.

• 41:27Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Historically speaking, it's sort of like accidentally, the federal governments. Cause in theory, it should have all been disposed of.

• 41:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, if you were gonna take the argument, like, why are we here? Like, what is our, right? It's, it's exactly that. It's, we had a system where as states were originally admitted into the Union, they required to disavow any claims to lands that were within their borders that were unappropriated lands. And at the time, we're talking in the 1700s here, we're talking at the time, unappropriated meaning lands that weren't already in private ownership. The state had to, had to disavow claims to them and it would go to the federal estate. And then the federal government set up a whole series of laws for how they were going to dispose of these lands.

• 42:18Speaker 06

  It's the way I, it's the way I describe it. You know, we had things like the, there were, there were laws that gave land to veterans of wars, early wars. There were, you know, we all know about Homestead Act. There were a series of, well, bequeaths to the railroad as they, you know, to connect the east to the west. So they're, they're actually-

• 42:39Steven Rinella?

  The railroads were compensated-

• 42:41Speaker 06

  With land instead of money.

• 42:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like you get the land your tracks on and then-

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Checkerboard.

• 42:47Steven Rinella?

  Everything within 20 miles, you get half of it or whatever the hell.

• 42:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we had this system that ran for, you know, until 1976, really. And starting in, really, I was gonna say 1891, it's really starting in more like 1876, which I think is when Yellowstone was first created. Right? That was sort of the first time that the government said, okay, not this. You know, we're gonna try and sell a bunch of stuff, but not this. And then 1891 comes the Forest Reserve Act. And Congress again says- There's a lot of economic value to this timber. We're seeing in some places unsustainable timber harvest. We need it for expansion for home building, rail building. We're going to reserve all these timberlands. Okay, so now we start establishing the national forests. Then we roll into the early part of the century and we have the Antiquities Act

• 43:36Speaker 06

  and we start seeing more monuments and parks created. And we're still having homesteading during this time. And we have the Taylor Grazing Act that comes into place to into play to deal with, how do we manage grazing on some of these lands? But you can still homestead. And then 1906 rolls around and we pass the Federal Land Planning, Management Act. Right, Policy and Management Act, shoot.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  Policy.

• 43:56Speaker 06

  Thank you. I always mess it up and I've been in this space for 20 years.

• 44:00Speaker 05

  Well, you can't, bless your heart for avoiding the acronyms.

• 44:03Speaker 06

  I try to avoid the acronyms, right?

• 44:05Speaker 05

  Doing a great job.

• 44:05Speaker 06

  So 1976 happens and and all the land that has not been put into national parks or monuments or wilderness areas or, you know, list the whole list of the things, national wildlife refuges. The federal government says, they're looking at it and they're seeing there's a lot of value to these lands, too. Nobody was homesteading them. It looked like for the longest time it was viewed as sort of trash land, but they're starting to realize there's a lot of value here. There's oil and gas resources that are, you know, pretty incredible. There's recreation resources that we're starting to see there's value to. And so they pass this law.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  This uranium stuff that was pretty scary, turns out pretty valuable.

• 44:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, and so they pass this law that says, once and for all, it's the policy of the federal government to keep this land in the federal estate. And it effectively ends the homesteading. Like, that's when the Homestead Act really formally ended. It was like 1976, not that long ago.

• 45:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 06

  And you can look at that law and it matches pretty perfectly to when the Sagebrush Rebellion starts to kick off. Because this argument is, no, no, you were always supposed to get rid of that land. You were always supposed to get rid of that land. And now you're saying it's the policy of the federal government to only get rid of it in very limited circumstances and in very small amounts if it goes through this long process. And that's not what we signed up for. You need to be getting rid of it. And so these iterations of this, you know, as Cal was saying, these iterations of the Sagebrush Rebellion started coming around really in political cycles, you know, like every, it's like a sine wave, you know, every 10 years or so.

• 45:42Steven Rinella?

  So the logic a little bit is it was like it's last in, first out.

• 45:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  I think that's fair. Can I just say though, like, I, I want to make, I think it's really important though to point out, like, there isn't, in most people's mind, and maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, like, an open legal question about whether or not public lands are constitutional. I think there is like, this assumption that some people have, that like, hey, this has like, been an open question, and we just want to push for, you know, some clarity on this, right? Like, like, I don't want there to be, I don't think it's appropriate, or not, uh, I don't want to put words in your mouth here, Dave, but like, I want to make sure people understand though, because that, what you're not saying, and tell me if I'm wrong here, is that there isn't an open legal question since Flippma passed in 1976 about the constitutionality of beeland lands.

• 46:34Speaker 06

  With one exception, and it's the exception that Utah's putting out there. So, there have been a series of cases that have said, under the property clause of the Constitution, the federal government can, can own land, can manage it, can exclude people, can, can regulate, you know, take, for example, can save this forest, we're not going to hunt it, hunting on it right now. It's the stuff that's used today when there's a fire and they administratively close it, and you're like, well, can't hunt there this year, right?

• 47:04Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 47:05Speaker 06

  Like, the Supreme Court has weighed in, there's a mountain of case law on that. What Utah is arguing is this very narrow piece. They're, they're saying, we agree with that, we're not contesting those cases. But what we're saying is, that the court hasn't actually addressed the question of whether they can do that in perpetuity. The, the, the argument there, and I'm just putting, I'm just saying what their claim is.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Sure, I know, yeah, I'm asking you for your opinion, though.

• 47:31Speaker 06

  I'll get to that.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Because I'm asking for your opinion, I want to ask you, you know what I mean?

• 47:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I want to make sure people understand what Utah's saying.

• 47:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay, when, I, I really appreciate this, because I like to hear, uh, you know, people should understand the argument.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 06

  Right, exactly. So, so the argument is, yes, the federal government has the authority to manage lands.

• 47:54Speaker 06

  As long as it takes to dispose of them. And if it takes 30 years to dispose of them, they can manage them like any other landowner for that 30 years. This is the argument Utah effectively makes. They're just saying the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in on this very narrow issue of can they hold those lands in perpetuity? And that's what the claim is. And I think they wrote their complaint that way because it gives them the highest likelihood that a court accepts jurisdiction. Or if they don't, because if the court doesn't accept it, Utah will probably turn around and file this case in federal district court in Utah and just go through the normal process. And they're setting it up to hopefully have the Supreme Court accept what's called a petition

• 48:37Speaker 06

  for cert, which would be when it goes through a normal appeals process, would they accept the appeal and hear the case then? So they're setting up what we would call a case of first impression is what they're trying to set up to increase their chances that the Supreme Court will take the case on a very narrow issue that the court has never weighed in on.

• 48:59Steven Rinella?

  And to be clear, Utah is trying to set, they're trying to go to the US Constitution, or sorry, they're trying to go to the US Supreme Court. So they're not, this is not necessarily about what is going on in Utah, because if the court finds in their favor, it finds in everybody's favor.

• 49:16Speaker 06

  That's my argument.

• 49:17Steven Rinella?

  Other states, every other state that has BLM land would be able to be like, well, that applies to me as well. Why would it somehow be specific to Utah?

• 49:25Speaker 06

  But I say not just BLM land. This is where I keep having to dive in and say, not just BLM land, all public land.

• 49:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So if you look at it like, how many acres of BLM land, of like, how many acres of public BLM land are in Utah? How many acres of BLM public land are in the US in general? Like, if this was to be found true, how many acres of hunting and fishing ground are at risk?

• 49:51Speaker 06

  Well, so if you're just doing on BLM, I don't have the exact numbers on me. Maybe somebody else knows them off the top of their head. I think it's over 200 million acres. If you're talking, does it apply to all lands, federally owned lands that are not military installations or the capital? We're talking 640 million acres. We're talking about one-third of the landmass of the country.

• 50:15Steven Rinella?

  My daughter's BAC here.

• 50:18Speaker 06

  BLM?

• 50:19Steven Rinella?

  BLM.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's like the it'd be like if you sold some land to your neighbor, right? And then you went, you know, you wanted to like build a driveway or something and you said, oh, I can do this because the original transaction is void, right? And like it's ultimately, if you have to accept the argument for this part, it applies to the whole thing. Because what they're arguing is that the federal government cannot possess land with these few exceptions. So it's like there's, there's no, I mean, it's my understanding of it is that if the court were to find that argument compelling, there's no like safeguard.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  The floodgates are open, right? Like all of a sudden that would void the forest reserve system, you know, like

• 51:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's nothing in the Constitution that says

• 51:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's nothing constitutionally different about every other type of federal public land that we know of.

• 51:23Speaker 06

  Right.

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• 53:13Steven Rinella?

  One of the things about this, this current legal push is it winds up, it's, it's, you're, you're shooting for the same thing as you've always shot for. This is just the latest way you're trying to do it. I think so. Okay, so, so if we, let's go back to 2014, 2015. You're talking about the 10-year cycle. Let's go back 10 years. The conversation was around, and it was coming from Utah as well. The conversation was around like divestiture, or there was this like excess. How do they put it? The excess public lands?

• 53:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, unincorporated.

• 53:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, unappropriated is the land that they use.

• 53:53Steven Rinella?

  There was a push where they carved off a chunk of land that they felt was like, like some, some level of excess public lands, correct?

• 54:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, the, the lands that hadn't been, in their eyes, set aside for some other public purpose, like a national park, or a wilderness area, or a national conservation area, national forest, right? The ones that didn't have that specific articulated congressional designation for a specific purpose, they're saying, well, that's what we're, that's what we're after. It's what's left.

• 54:26Steven Rinella?

  That was the 2014 argument.

• 54:28Speaker 06

  That's the same one today.

• 54:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so that, that was the, but no, there was a bill.

• 54:31Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 54:32Steven Rinella?

  Like, like, it was, it was like sponsored by Jason Chaffetz, right?

• 54:37Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:38Steven Rinella?

  And there was a- How does no one remember what the hell this was? It was like the

• 54:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it was, I think it was like the divesting public lands act or something like that.

• 54:47Steven Rinella?

  But they had a word like excess or?

• 54:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, they were trying to identify uh chunks of ground that weren't um all that important to the public and and sell those.

• 54:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and it was putting it forward as a bill that these would be sold. Uh, when I say that this is the same, you're driving toward the same goal, you're just taking different attitudes about it. Like, let's say I really wish, uh, I definitely don't. Let's say I really wanted to get rid of my neighbor. And one year I try where I go back into, um, you know, I go back into when he initially did his permitting. Did he make any mistakes? I'm like, okay, he didn't make any mistakes. I still want to get rid of my neighbor. I'm going to go back into his criminal record. Maybe there's something there. No. Okay, I'm gonna um, has, is he up on his taxes, right? Meaning, my goal is to get rid of the neighbor.

• 55:40Steven Rinella?

  Definitely don't want to do this. My goal is to get rid of the neighbor. I'm just gonna keep trying things.

• 55:47Steven Rinella?

  Utah's been pursuing this for a long time, right?

• 55:51Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 55:51Steven Rinella?

  Is this a fun, like, do you feel that this approach is somehow more sound, is gonna have a different result than the other ways in which they've attempted to take federal public land and make it something that they can sell and privatize?

• 56:09Speaker 05

  Here's why it's different.

• 56:10Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 56:11Speaker 05

  They've invested, I can't remember, Brad, you know the number.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  It's like 20, the, yeah, I know what you're gonna say. It's about $20 million has been approved with taxpayer dollars. Utah taxpayer dollars, $20 million for a PR campaign to support the lawsuit.

• 56:27Steven Rinella?

  So you, so Utah's tax money is paying their own way toward not having their public lands?

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Correct. Absolutely.

• 56:35Speaker 05

  A hundred percent, although it's a campaign that the ads are.

• 56:39Steven Rinella?

  Talk about like, talk about losing control of your tax money. Like, I got no good idea. I'll pay my taxes, then you take my tax money and make it that I don't have any public lands.

• 56:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, although they're they're using kind of a rebranded keep it public campaign.

• 56:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 03

  I mean, you're talking Washington Post ads, podcast ads, like there's, I mean, they're going. It's a pretty serious PR campaign.

• 56:59Speaker 06

  Yeah. So there, that's one thing that's different is they're investing in this. But I, I argue they're not investing in a PR campaign for the litigation.

• 57:08Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 57:08Speaker 06

  Right? You don't need a PR camp. The law is what the law is. You're going to run through the judicial process. Maybe you run a small PR campaign in state to, to convince your constituents that this is the right legal move to make.

• 57:22Steven Rinella?

  Yo.

• 57:23Speaker 06

  But like Brad said, they're running a PR campaign nationally. They're, they're doing like, I don't know if this is a hundred percent true, but I got texts from friends of mine in DC during the presidential debate that said, I'm seeing ads on my phone and during the debate in my neighborhood about this. Like it's, it's their-

• 57:41Steven Rinella?

  How do you sell the idea to a guy in DC? What are you telling him that he's going to care about?

• 57:45Speaker 06

  Well, I think you're trying, I think you're trying to do a couple of things. It's who's in DC.

• 57:52Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm saying, what do you, let's say, let's say you're in, you're in Utah.

• 57:57Speaker 06

  Right.

• 57:58Steven Rinella?

  And you get campaign money and your cronies and things are in development and other issues. And you guys are looking at all of the land that will never be generating money for you, generating business for you, generating profits for you, generating profits for the state. And it's sitting there. How would, if you were ever going to take a message and bring it to a guy in Illinois, what would you ever tell the guy in Illinois that would make him think, yes, I wish there wasn't a bunch of federal public land in Utah?

• 58:29Speaker 06

  So I, I think it's, it's this, it's the overall political message of the 10th Amendment should matter. And so who are you appealing to in DC? It's the center of power in the country. It's where, it's where your, your senate, your house, all of the thousands of staffers that work for them live.

• 58:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like John Roberts is washing his dishes and in the background, this ads like subliminally.

• 58:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, but not just the justices.

• 58:54Steven Rinella?

  Their court argues in them and he's like, you know, by God.

• 58:57Speaker 06

  Not just the justices though. Remember you're going to have a, a senator from Utah that is going to have an extreme amount of power over natural resource issues in this country, starting in January. You know, Senator Mike Lee. Yeah, I don't, you know, when we're having this conversation, I don't know what it, how it's going to pan out, but he's in line if he wants it to be the chair of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Environment Natural Resources Committee.

• 59:18Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 59:18Speaker 06

  So he'll have an incredible amount of power on controlling what type of legislation is heard in the Senate by the committee and what gets passed through for votes. He can hold up packages, public lands packages, he can do all sorts of things. So there's an opportunity to, through this campaign.

• 59:33Speaker 05

  And for folks who don't know, Senator Lee has been like very prominent in what would be considered like an anti-public lands group. Like, he has been pro-

• 59:49Steven Rinella?

  Anti-federally managed public lands.

• 59:51Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 59:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 06

  So it's, I've viewed this lawsuit as, they want to, they want to win the lawsuit. Obviously, they're going down this route. If they, if it doesn't go to the Supreme Court, they'll likely file in federal district court. Lawsuit buys you time, too. Lawsuit creates uncertainty because you don't know what's going to happen in the legal process. It, and it locks things up and creates time to address whatever your concerns might be. So there's actually, you know, sure, they want to win the lawsuit, but they also view this as an opportunity to get political outcomes that they want, and they know that they have people from their state that are going to be in positions of power. And now, you know, we don't know yet how, what the administration's going to look like,

• 1:00:33Speaker 06

  you know, but, but there might be opportunities to move legislation that could be very favorable to Utah in a, in a new Congress. And so, yeah, you're going to run a PR campaign there to try and influence all those folks to, and if you have a, somebody from Illinois that is, likes the idea of local control.

• 1:00:54Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:00:55Speaker 06

  And that, that's the message, is we don't want a big bloated federal government, you know, this is about local control, the power, the power of the people is best at the most local level, we can be, you know, better managers at the most local level, and it's an opportunity to say, this is a way to deal with big government, shrink the government a little bit. And that's the other piece I- Think of this, of this, of this play, there's the legal play, there's the political play. You don't spend $20 million on a, on a legal campaign. You spend $20 million on a long play that includes, you know, changing hearts and minds and a political campaign.

• 1:01:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, and the management, right, is the, the other one, which kind of ties in to, to both, but it's, well, who manages land better? Right? And, and that's something that you've heard over and over and over again is, well, the feds don't manage that as well as the state does. Or, everybody knows, public land is not managed anywhere near as good as private land. Right? And that's something that we hear over and over again.

• 1:02:01Steven Rinella?

  I, in, in terms of laying out everybody's like biases and, and what they're after, and you've done a good job of making, of presenting an argument. You know, even though you're not necessarily here to represent Utah's position.

• 1:02:14Speaker 06

  Not necessarily?

• 1:02:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Speaker 06

  I'm not here.

• 1:02:17Steven Rinella?

  But you're not here to represent their position, but you're explaining their position.

• 1:02:20Speaker 06

  Trying to explain it.

• 1:02:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and, and I feel, and I'll do the same on my position. Okay, because this is one of those things where I think that everybody is driving at what they find to be beneficial. I, there's, there's some, there's some things that happen and it transcends. There's some things that happen in the political sphere and the social sphere where you get into these issues where there's a higher, you know, you're arguing a higher morality. It, it could be, it could be like a higher Christian morality, it could be a, a humanitarian morality, whatever. Where you step outside of personal, you step outside of what's good for an individual. Right? And you go to like, like what's good for sort of America, you know, the capital A.

• 1:03:07Steven Rinella?

  This, like, I, I don't want to present like overwhelmingly like, there's a moral components, but there's also a big part of like, there's a bunch of people pushing a certain thing they would like to see happen.

• 1:03:22Steven Rinella?

  I find that, uh, I'm totally open to the idea that federal land management, and having a vast public estate and a bunch of public ground for people to recreate on, I'm open, like, I understand. It, um, it, it slows economic activity.

• 1:03:41Steven Rinella?

  Lots of stuff slows economic activity, right? Like having Gettysburg, you could build condos and sell them for a ton of money. Having the Gettysburg Monument slows economic activity. There's things you could do with that that would be more money than what they're getting out of them. Right? If you divided up and sold it as condos, it'd be more income than you get from charging people to go to Gettysburg. So we don't make all of our decisions based on what makes the most fiscal sense in the moment.

• 1:04:10Steven Rinella?

  By having public lands, you have places for like people to go out and be free. One of the things I like about BLM land is you're kind of, there's no place to be more free than you're on BLM land. You generally do more stuff more often. You seldom get where like, you know, in Southeast Alaska, deer season opens on August 1, but on Tongass National Forest land, it opens August 15th. Stuff like that doesn't usually happen on BLM land. Like BLM land is kind of like.

• 1:04:42Speaker 06

  It's your land.

• 1:04:43Steven Rinella?

  It's come one, come all, man. Like if you're worried about, can I sleep here? BLM land probably can sleep there at night.

• 1:04:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's libertarian paradise.

• 1:04:49Steven Rinella?

  It's libertarian paradise. Um, and I know that there's things you could do with it. Like you could sell it and make condos and mine it and whatever the hell. And someone's going to make some money right now. But all in all, considering that the country's going to keep existing for, you know, hopefully thousands of more years, it'll stay like that. It'll be a place where Americans can go be Americans. And, and that is the thing that like I believe in protecting. If you came and told me, if, if somehow like I had the word of God, that Utah would wrest control of BLM lands and not change a thing. They'd be like, no, no, no, we just want it to be that when you look at a map, it says.

• 1:05:34Speaker 06

  It's a different color.

• 1:05:35Steven Rinella?

  It says Utah Bureau of Land Management, but we're still going to have it be that everybody can hunt and fish and camp and do what they want. It's just, we just, it really means a lot to us that it says Utah on it. I think most people would be like, oh, that's cool. Not my fight, but that's not what we're talking about. No.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:05:53Steven Rinella?

  No one wants it. The state doesn't want it because they want to have it be a libertarian paradise. Even libertarian's a little off because libertarians would argue that you shouldn't be able to have it. So, A, A, it's America's, you know, like, America's playground.

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  America's, it's like the sandbox. You just go out there and.

• 1:06:13Steven Rinella?

  It's, it's a place to go be American. It's the most American place to be American.

• 1:06:19Steven Rinella?

  They don't want it because that's what they want to keep happening. They want it because they want to develop it. Right?

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 1:06:26Steven Rinella?

  I mean, like, therein lies the issue. It's not who owns it. It's like, what are you going to do with it?

• 1:06:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, I mean, it's hard for me not to get really pissed off when I talk about this shit because, so unlike my friend, Dave over here, I don't have to pretend to like be friendly to the state of Utah, which I appreciate your.

• 1:06:46Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I'll, I'll say.

• 1:06:49Steven Rinella?

  He's doing the Lord's work.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  I know. He is. He is. I appreciate it.

• 1:06:52Steven Rinella?

  When I hear a story, when I hear a story about like someone's like, oh, you know, his wife is terrible. She's the worst. I'd be like, I'd have to talk to his wife. I don't know.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  You gotta be objective.

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  But like, the thing is, is like, when you look at, well, a couple of things I want to say, like, what's different between this time and last time? They realize people that don't care about public land, they don't use public land. So, the, the guys that, the, it's mostly guys, right? That want, that are trying to do this, they don't do the things that we do. So they don't, there isn't a value to them for public access, for hunting, fishing, ATVing, motorcycle riding. They do not care about those things. It's not, it's not a part of their lifestyle, so they don't care, right? But what they astutely recognized last time, so last time around. They really tried to frame this issue as like a states' rights issue. Who do you hate more, the state government or the federal government?

• 1:07:48Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  And I think if you ask that question, most people are like, or who do you trust more? State government or federal government? Most people would say, well, I trust whoever my state government more because they're closer. Federal government means to me, Washington DC. Now, I could quibble with that and say, well, most of your land managers that actually work on this public land, they live in your state, in your communities, right? But that is a, I think just a common refrain from people. It's like, well, I trust the people around me more. They tried to frame this issue, this is about a states' rights issue versus a federal rights issue. It didn't take hold. And so the astute thing they're doing this time is they realize, we not only need to win a lawsuit, we need to win the court of public opinion here. So let's take a bunch of taxpayer money and spend it on a, which I think is a smart

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  move, on a PR campaign to explain to people why they should hate public land too. And really try and reframe this as an issue that's not about access, which is what it's about.

• 1:08:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  That's what it's about. And let's frame it as an issue that's really about federal government overreach. Because that is a winning argument in a lot of western states. And I understand that, but that's not the issue.

• 1:08:57Steven Rinella?

  No, it's definitely not the issue. It's like many other things. We were talking with CR Day, we were sitting here talking about Buffalo management, bison management, elk management, bison management. Where you're like, oh, bison, we don't want them coming into the state because they carry brucellosis. You're like, well, I don't carry brucellosis, but yeah, but we like those.

• 1:09:25Steven Rinella?

  So are we talking about brucellosis or are we not? No, we're not talking about brucellosis. We're talking about grazing lands. We're talking about fence integrity and grazing lands, but instead, we're going to pretend to talk about brucellosis. I think here we're pretending to talk about like a rights issue.

• 1:09:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Steven Rinella?

  What we're talking about is developing land.

• 1:09:45Speaker 03

  When I want to get my five-year-old to eat her vegetables, I'll tell her it's like, you know, oh, I put some sugar on that. Or we, you know, we put some jelly on that. And she'll be like, oh, really? And I'll be, you know, like, yeah, I'm straight up lying to my kid. But it's, that's what's going on here, right? Like, they're telling you, it's, they're trying to reframe this whole issue away from the thing that they know everybody cares about, which is access. So, smart move on their part to be like.

• 1:10:09Steven Rinella?

  To say, oh, no, no, no, no, it'll all still be avail, it'll all still be public.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  It'll also, but when you start, um, this is something that, you know, you and I talked about years ago. But when you start really, if you really understand constitutional mandates in Western states, you know that almost every Western state, uh, has a constitutional mandate to manage state lands. So if they do go to the states, right? Um, there are constitutional mandates that require states to manage for the maximum economic return on state lands for the beneficiaries, which are the residents of the state. Okay, constitutional mandate, can't get out of it, even if you want to.

• 1:10:47Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:10:47Speaker 03

  So what's gonna happen if states get a, get a hold of the land? It isn't that hard to connect the dots. So I think Utah understands that they need to re, try and reframe this debate and not, they don't want people to understand that, right? They don't want people to know that. They don't want people to think about it. So let's just talk about this in a different way. Let's talk about it as like, uh, federal government overreach. Just talk about it, let's say there's, try and create this constitutional question that doesn't exist really, right? So let's like, reframe this issue. And I think the other thing is like, even if they lose the lawsuit, which is very, you know, they, they're very likely going to lose lawsuit or not, not get granted original jurisdiction, right? Is that what it's called? Or?

• 1:11:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, like I said, they're very, they're asking for the court to accept jurisdiction to hear the case.

• 1:11:33Speaker 03

  Okay, so if they lose that, what's gonna happen though is.

• 1:11:36Speaker 06

  Then they'll file in federal court and.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  This is a long.

• 1:11:39Steven Rinella?

  Climb the ladder.

• 1:11:39Speaker 06

  And climb the ladder.

• 1:11:40Speaker 03

  But this is a long-term play. This isn't going away, like.

• 1:11:43Steven Rinella?

  No, it's been going on since, what was the, it's been going on since?

• 1:11:46Speaker 06

  1976.

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

  It's going on, but, but I think this, like, what I'm saying is like, over the. Several years, like I think this is just tip of the iceberg.

• 1:11:53Speaker 06

  I agree.

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  I think this is a part of a longer term strategy here where they're like, you know, they've got folks, you know, they're trying to reframe this debate to make this a friendlier political issue for the people in office. So that Congress can also try and take some action. I don't know what that's going to look like. But if I were their political advisor, I'd be like, hey, guys, here's what we're going to do. We're going to have a, there are three powers of government here. Let's try and go after all of them and see what sticks. Okay, let's talk about Congress. Let's talk about the courts. Let's go after the, you know, the presidential office, what we can do there. Let's have a three pronged approach and let's see what we can do to really stir the pot and rake, you know, and see what happens. So like, I think the PR strategy is a part of a much like more involved strategy.

• 1:12:35Speaker 03

  So if I was betting money right now, I'd say even if they lose the lawsuit, like we're going to keep seeing different things happening. They're going to, that are going to be poking around the edges of the public land system in different ways to see what's going to, see what they can get away with.

• 1:12:46Speaker 06

  Well, and what I'm saying is the lawsuit's going to be out there for years.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:12:50Speaker 06

  Like it create, the lawsuit is what creates the space for all of that other stuff. The, like what I said before, creates that uncertainty. So makes people maybe willing to agree to things that they maybe wouldn't have otherwise agreed to. Because you have somebody like Justice Gorsuch, for example, whose mother was the EPA administrator under the Reagan administration was a huge part of the sagebrush rebellion, right? And they're looking at the makeup of the Supreme Court and saying, we have a puncher's chance if it gets there.

• 1:13:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna.

• 1:13:21Speaker 06

  That's where the politicos say they have a puncher's, may have a puncher's chance if it gets there. And so that's where the PR comes in as well to try and squeeze out some, even if, even if the end result isn't a transfer or wholesale transfers or sale of public lands, it might be overhauling how we manage public lands.

• 1:13:39Speaker 05

  Sure. And, and that's like, I mean, when I look at the lawsuit, I think there's two things that are striking to me. One is what we talked about earlier, how it's sort of the most.

• 1:13:51Speaker 06

  Explosive approach that they've tried because if they win there. The, you know, the barn doors are open, right? Like it means the federal government can't legitimately own land. If the, if the court finds in its favor. I mean, the other thing about it that's striking is it's a very narrow question. That has to do with textualism. And if, if the current composition of the Supreme Court looks at. The clause about, you know, military installations in Washington DC. Like to me, it's not an open and shut case that they're going to toss it out. I'm admittedly just an amateur legal scholar here, but.

• 1:14:35Speaker 06

  You know, like, like what they're, they're asking them to do is say, hey, look, look at the constitution. It doesn't say anything about federal public lands. In fact, the constitution says the federal government can only own these types of lands. Ergo, all this stuff needs to go away. And I, when I think about it, I'm like, I don't know, is that so far fetched to think that if they do? Uh, if, if the Supreme Court.

• 1:15:01Speaker 06

  Grant cert that the Supreme Court's going to throw it out. That to me seems like wishful thinking.

• 1:15:09Speaker 06

  I, I, I don't know how to, like, I, I think it's a legal stretch. Right? But.

• 1:15:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Do you mind, do you mind getting into the plausibility of it?

• 1:15:19Speaker 05

  Well, okay, I don't think we've introduced the fact that, that Utah started the lawsuit. And now a bunch of other states have.

• 1:15:28Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:15:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, jumped onto this. So everybody needs to be aware of. That's again, why we're talking about this, right? There's a bunch of eastern states and.

• 1:15:37Steven Rinella?

  To hell they got, what do they have they need to do with them?

• 1:15:40Speaker 05

  I, I, I don't understand what, what the deal is, but.

• 1:15:45Steven Rinella?

  They want Gettysburg.

• 1:15:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. But out here in the West, Idaho and Wyoming. Wyoming's kind of hilarious to me in a lot of ways because.

• 1:15:59Speaker 05

  You can't even camp on Wyoming state lands.

• 1:16:02Steven Rinella?

  Nope.

• 1:16:02Speaker 05

  And they're like, we want our chunky Yellowstone National Park. We want Tetons. We want wilderness areas.

• 1:16:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Speaker 05

  As state lands.

• 1:16:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, there's stuff in this, in this state, there's restrictions on state lands about camping. If you want to trap on state lands, you gotta go try to get some special permit to do it. You gotta put signs up telling everybody that's what you're doing.

• 1:16:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:16:21Steven Rinella?

  Can you imagine, dude?

• 1:16:22Speaker 05

  And in this state, we have a current plan paid for by the taxpayers of Montana that has already analyzed state lands for sale. That just came out a couple of months ago. So.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  Well, the, the thing too that is, so again, back to the constitutional mandates in western states. The other thing that's interesting about most state governments is you're not allowed to deficit spend. Right? So you're not allowed to. So you have to run, um, so federal government can deficit spend if they want to. States can't. Um, we had a real bad fire this year. There's something that gets brought up a lot, right? So three, I think it was like $3 billion were spent of federal dollars fighting wildfires this year.

• 1:17:04Speaker 05

  Oh yeah. $50 million fire is very common.

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  Very common, right? So like if you're a state and you have a catastrophic wildfire year, which you can't forecast or foresee, you just have to deal with it when it's happening.

• 1:17:16Steven Rinella?

  I'm forecasting right now. There will be more, there will be more of those.

• 1:17:20Speaker 03

  I'm gonna write that down, Steve. Take, I'll take that bet. No. Uh, but like you, you're gonna, what are you gonna do? You're gonna tax your citizens, raise property taxes, raise sales tax. You gotta raise revenue. And, uh, last time I checked, like people weren't wild about their property taxes going up or sales tax or any other tax. So you're gonna look around at your assets you can liquidate. First thing you're gonna look to is like, what the hell can we sell around here? You know, if my house, if I was like going broke, I'd start looking around my house. I wouldn't sell my kids, but I'd start looking at the furniture, whatever else I had. I wouldn't.

• 1:17:52Steven Rinella?

  Pets?

• 1:17:53Speaker 03

  Pets, absolutely. But my guns and bows will go last. But like, you know, you start looking at what you got to sell. And if what you have is a bunch of valuable real estate, like for sure, you're gonna sell it. And that's the, um, I mean, and there is a long history of every state in this country selling lots of public land. Utah has sold more than 54% of its state lands. More than half of what it was given to statehood.

• 1:18:17Steven Rinella?

  So you know, I can really make this strike home. If you're one of our many listeners in Texas, I want you to ask yourself, how much, uh, public land access do you enjoy in Texas?

• 1:18:29Steven Rinella?

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• 1:20:27Speaker 05

  So, uh, the Utah deal, just because they are pretty tidy numbers. Um, they got right around $2 billion for, uh, the state lands that they sold. They did some trading with the, uh, feds.

• 1:20:43Speaker 05

  And got some coal claims and got a $50 million check and, but it all comes down to a little over $2 billion for their, uh, little over 4 million acres of state land that they've already sold, um, which is about $500 an acre. Now, the recreation economy in Utah is about a little, somewhere between like 8, 9 billion dollars a year, which is recreating on federally managed public ground by and large.

• 1:21:18Speaker 05

  I don't think, every time I've had this argument in the past with, with folks that really want to make this happen, it is akin to having an argument with like an animal rights activist, where it comes down to, well, we, we, because it's ours, we should have it.

• 1:21:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Speaker 05

  And like, you want to go down the economic path? Let's talk about the economic path. You want to go down the management path? Let's talk about the management path. There's not a good argument and it always comes down to, well, it's ours because we want it. And it's ridiculous and like we've said before, it, it often, you're having that argument with people who think they have all these silver bullets, uh, about how poorly the, the forests are managed and all the things, but they cannot say it properly because they don't go out and use them. They're not on the landscape. They are the super removed entity making these big decisions, which is oddly enough

• 1:22:21Speaker 05

  the argument that they use to try to steal the public land.

• 1:22:24Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:25Speaker 05

  And it's, it's happening again and people need to plug in. I think a huge issue that we have is people don't know how to contextualize 640 million acres.

• 1:22:39Speaker 05

  You can't hunt and fish on all 640 million acres of federally managed lands because of national parks, parts of refuges. There's infrastructure there. There's buildings and bathrooms and, and all the things. So it's not 640 million acres. We have, what is it? 359 national parks, I think, of which you can hunt on at least a portion of 59 of those national parks. But there's more privately owned acres in the United States set aside for private wildlife

• 1:23:23Speaker 05

  enjoyment than in the entire national park system. So when we talk about, oh, 640 million acres, that's a lot. Think about the national parks right now. Think about Western national parks where there's reservation systems and overcrowding. And then think about just removing a handful of those.

• 1:23:44Steven Rinella?

  Well, yeah, but I mean, it's not, not, not to contradict that, but you could be like, well, how many kids? There's 100 million kids in the US. Who cares about 20 of them? Like, well, the, the parents of those 20. So it's like, it doesn't need to be, you know, when people start losing access to the place that, that where, where they hunting fish and their grandpa hunting fish and their, you know, generation hunting fish, that part matters to them. And that part is going to inevitably get rolled up into this stuff.

• 1:24:12Speaker 05

  And it, and it is inevitably going to be worth more and more and more and more. And, you know, Teddy Roosevelt knew that. He saw all the things that, that we see today, just at an earlier time. And, and he said over and over again, we are not managing these lands for us. We're managing these lands for the generations to come. And we need to make sure that the things that we enjoy today are here for those generations. And in large part, it was because if people don't get to see them get some understanding, then they will be sold off. And. I think all of us need to figure out, and you know, when, when Trump was running for office

• 1:24:54Speaker 05

  the first time, we have him on record twice with different hunting publications because just like this election.

• 1:25:00Steven Rinella?

  I sat in a room and listened to him say it.

• 1:25:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Steven Rinella?

  So I'm not, he said, quote, "I'm not going to sell off your public lands."

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  Yes. Yep.

• 1:25:07Steven Rinella?

  2015, Las Vegas, Nevada.

• 1:25:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, man.

• 1:25:11Steven Rinella?

  Nope, January 2016.

• 1:25:13Speaker 05

  And.

• 1:25:13Steven Rinella?

  January 2016 is Las Vegas.

• 1:25:15Speaker 05

  Um, it's because the sportsman's vote was important then, it's important right now. Um, but man, these groups are funded really well and they can take this public land message that was very, very effective back then and twist it right now to where people say the thing. But in Utah, they're like, yes, we got them because what we're talking about is state management of those lands and sell the sale of a lot of those lands. And again, $500 an acre for the millions of acres that they've already sold. Like if you can get $500 an acre for anything, you buy it right now.

• 1:25:59Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna say, can I buy a bunch of this?

• 1:26:02Speaker 06

  You might be able to actually just hold on just a little bit.

• 1:26:05Speaker 03

  Give it nine months.

• 1:26:06Steven Rinella?

  Well, I, I, there's, there's something I need to do here because when I hear about the loss of public access, however it happens, okay, I, I have like, like an emotional visceral reaction where I do not want to see, um, my, my, my hunting and fishing brethren lose access to the places they like to hunt and fish, guy. But I also don't want to be hyperbolic here. So I want to like nail, narrow in on, focus on a, a point we've been raising as a sort of hypothetical and why, and I'm trying to ask you, this is you, Dave, I'm trying to ask you like, is this, is this question about BLM land somehow being different?

• 1:26:47Steven Rinella?

  I, if, if I was sitting here talking to the architect of this suit.

• 1:26:53Steven Rinella?

  Would that individual, and we're not, so I'm just holding you to the fire here. Would that individual say, no, this would not extend to national forest. This would not extend to Indian reservations. This would not extend to refuges. This would not extend to national parks. Because there's something distinct about BLM. Right? Would they tell me that? Or is it really that if the Supreme Court says the BLM

• 1:27:24Steven Rinella?

  can't exist, like they can't hold land? Is it really logical that someone would then say, okay, I'll see you next Monday? Because we're going to talk about national forest land.

• 1:27:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, let me unpack that just a little bit.

• 1:27:39Speaker 06

  I don't believe it's hyperbolic.

• 1:27:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:27:42Speaker 06

  I'm not a guy that does a lot of hyperbole.

• 1:27:44Steven Rinella?

  No. That's my problem with you.

• 1:27:46Speaker 06

  I know, right? You need more of it from me.

• 1:27:50Speaker 06

  I tend to be a pragmatist.

• 1:27:52Steven Rinella?

  Let's get the, who's the one guy, the real measured guy who tries to be real fair all the time?

• 1:27:58Steven Rinella?

  Give like really solid information. We bring you into the hot takes.

• 1:28:03Steven Rinella?

  But. Hot takes of Dave Will. It depends.

• 1:28:08Speaker 06

  But this is why I say this. I'm not a guy that's, that's usually very hyperbolic. I'm mentally flipping you off right now.

• 1:28:17Speaker 06

  But I'm not, I'm not very hyperbolic. But I look at this and say, one, yes, they would absolutely come in here and say, this only applies to the 18 and a half million acres they apply to. In their own complaint, they say it only applies to these because they're these unappropriated lands. And they say these other lands have been appropriated through acts of Congress. So we're not asking for those.

• 1:28:38Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:28:38Speaker 06

  So they'd tell you that. I'm telling you, when I read that. If it's unconstitutional to own lands in perpetuity that aren't specifically enumerated in the Constitution, then that would mean it's uncon- that Congress can't come in and pass a law that says, "We're going to create a national park," and all of a sudden it's constitutional to own that.

• 1:29:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the same way they couldn't tomorrow, um, without doing a constitutional amendment, they couldn't vote to ban certain constitutional rights.

• 1:29:09Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:29:09Steven Rinella?

  Like, if the Democrats took control of the House and Senate, presidency, they couldn't say, "It's illegal to own a gun."

• 1:29:14Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:29:15Steven Rinella?

  It's a whole of the battle.

• 1:29:16Speaker 06

  Right. So, I- I'm looking at it and saying, "Public lands, all of them are at risk with this lawsuit regardless of what Utah tells you, what- what their lawyers might tell you, and regardless of what they wrote in their complaint, regardless of what their PR campaign says." And I come out at this and I say, uh, and this is to build off of something Brad said earlier as well, they're running this PR campaign that's saying, "Your land's not going anywhere. We're just going to manage it and you're going to have all this access." But if you actually read the complaint that they filed with the- the Supreme Court, and you- and you look into what they allege the harm is, what- what's the harm they're suffering?

• 1:29:53Steven Rinella?

  It's gotta be economic.

• 1:29:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, but what is the economic harm? The- the things they raise are, "We can't tax that land and we can't use eminent domain on that land to move transmission lines or roads or other infrastructure because it's federally owned." And my retort to that is, "Well, if it were transferred to you, you wouldn't be able to tax, you're not going to tax yourself, and you wouldn't need to use eminent domain."

• 1:30:17Steven Rinella?

  The state doesn't pay itself for its own holdings.

• 1:30:19Speaker 06

  Right, you wouldn't need to use eminent domain to run transmission lines across state land, you'd just do it. The only reason you'd need those authorities if you're- is if your intent in the end is to sell it. And just because you have an administration right now and a law in place in Utah right now that says, "We're not going to sell it, and here's how we're going to manage it," doesn't mean that this transfer happens and a new administration comes in.

• 1:30:45Speaker 06

  Or the politics in Utah change and they just changed the law, the state statute. And then say it's, it's the priority of us to make as much money off of this land as possible. And we're going to turn around and sell it.

• 1:30:55Steven Rinella?

  This gets, this gets to the thing about when you're talking about something that you're not actually talking about. And it's got, I, I think that like anyone that's being intellectually honest. And if we had someone in who's the architect of this lawsuit, if they were being intellectually honest, they would have to admit that this is about divestiture and sale and development.

• 1:31:15Speaker 06

  Even one of the other, so there were amicus briefs filed, right? Thirteen additional states through either their attorney general, governor, or legislature filed amicus in support of Utah saying, take the case. In one of them, there was a footnote in one of the briefs that it, I'll just paraphrase, paraphrase. We think we want national parks too.

• 1:31:38Speaker 05

  That was Wyoming, right?

• 1:31:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right. The legislature, the legislature.

• 1:31:41Steven Rinella?

  God, what a, what a gold mine, man.

• 1:31:44Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:44Steven Rinella?

  To hit yellow, Wyoming picked up Yellowstone, dude. Cause think about, you could do like, if you did condo stuff and you did a hundred year leases even on condos. I mean, you could develop, you could develop Yellowstone National Park and just make gold. Literally, cause you could mine a lot of minerals, do big developments, put in ski hills.

• 1:32:10Speaker 05

  But the size.

• 1:32:10Steven Rinella?

  Imagine if you could buy your own hot spring and shit. The other, what a gold mine.

• 1:32:14Speaker 05

  The crazy thing too is.

• 1:32:15Steven Rinella?

  I'd want it too. I do want it.

• 1:32:17Speaker 05

  If the state of Wyoming had to manage Yellowstone tomorrow, like body for body, dollar for dollar, what the federal government does. I mean, to double state government.

• 1:32:28Steven Rinella?

  If you hadn't found whatever hosers ran Big Sky. Okay. Whatever people originally put Big Sky together and like did a bunch of land swaps, got this hill, Yellowstone Club, all this bullshit, right? Golf courses all over the place. If you went and got that crew and you said, listen, man, we just got possession of Yellowstone National Park. What do you boys have in mind? They're gonna come up with a plan. They're gonna come up with a plan that makes a little jingle.

• 1:32:58Speaker 06

  Everywhere.

• 1:32:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, hot water slides, hot water slides.

• 1:33:01Speaker 06

  Could you imagine a water slide?

• 1:33:02Steven Rinella?

  So when parents gotta get on the water slide with their kid, they're not, the whole line as they climb that ladder, they're not being like, oh, it's gonna be so cold. I know that feeling. You get up there and it's hot water coming down that slide.

• 1:33:12Speaker 06

  You know, on the plus side, I might, my dream trip has always been to backpack into, or horseback into the thoroughfare. And then pack raft thoroughfare creek down into Yellowstone Lake, but that's illegal because you can't be on, have a floatated, floatating, flotation device on, sorry, a raft or anything like that on rivers or streams in Yellowstone. So maybe if the state took it over, I could actually fulfill my dream.

• 1:33:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So now.

• 1:33:39Speaker 06

  You heard it here first.

• 1:33:40Speaker 03

  You're not necessarily supporting this argument, but.

• 1:33:44Steven Rinella?

  No, it's a gold mine. It's a gold mine.

• 1:33:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Steven Rinella?

  Well, do, well, are you gonna be able to hunt it?

• 1:33:51Steven Rinella?

  For a minute?

• 1:33:52Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, that's one of the things that kills me right now, man. I, I feel like it's, uh, somebody's like trying to sell you a car.

• 1:33:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:59Speaker 05

  And you're like, well, what about the warranty? They're like, oh, don't worry about that. There, there will be one.

• 1:34:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:05Speaker 05

  You're like, okay, well.

• 1:34:06Steven Rinella?

  The manager's drawing it up in the back right now.

• 1:34:08Speaker 05

  How are the, the, are the tires in good shape? Oh yeah, it's got tires. Okay, well, what kind of gas mileage? Oh, we'll get to that.

• 1:34:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:18Speaker 05

  You know, and you're like.

• 1:34:21Steven Rinella?

  So you're sure everything's good, right?

• 1:34:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. Should I be buying this car? And because it's not a who manages it best argument. It's not a, um.

• 1:34:34Speaker 05

  I mean, all it is again is just coming down to, we want it because we want it and we're gonna make a bunch of money off of it. I mean, that's all there is to it. And, and you know, it was hard to talk about this stuff during the election cycle because people were so charged up and they're like, oh God, if you're voting for public lands, you can't have your second amendment rights. Or you're voting for transvestites, or you're voting for this. And you know, and it's like, no, no, no, no. If you stop and think about it right now, you have your guns and you have public lands and access to them.

• 1:35:10Speaker 05

  All good.

• 1:35:11Steven Rinella?

  How did that happen?

• 1:35:11Speaker 05

  How, how did that happen? Uh, it's because we demanded to have it, right? And that's exactly what we need to keep doing. And unfortunately, like, I swear to God, every 10 years, we need to re-educate everybody and say, "No, no, no, you have got to stand up and make a big stink of it about this. It is absolutely not a real thing that you have to give up rights over here in order to have access to public ground." I mean, if you guys remember the monuments rescinding

• 1:35:43Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:43Speaker 05

  fight and all the jack wagons coming out. I think it was like Sean Hannity, right? It was like, "Monuments in Utah, you can't physically touch them."

• 1:35:55Speaker 05

  Right? And people were like, "You can't, you can't even walk on them." There it is. Sean Hannity, wherever the hell he lives. And people in Utah, God knows what, right? They're like, you're like, "What are you talking about?"

• 1:36:08Steven Rinella?

  Get his loafers, he get his loafers all dirty?

• 1:36:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, Christ almighty, yeah. I mean, it just, it, it, it's so bizarre. It, it's like, I, I, we just had this great talk, um, with, um, Field and Stream Australia.

• 1:36:23Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:36:23Speaker 05

  Which is like, uh, kind of akin to like a Delta Waterfowler, Ducks Unlimited group. And, and talking with those guys, it's like a dystopian future of what the US could be. Where there's, there's protesters out in the marsh stealing your ducks before they hit the water, um, trying to flare birds and, uh, you know, really aggressive gun laws. And, and they have this whole experience that we could learn a lot from. And for years, they've been telling folks in the US, and they were very, very interested in the banning mountain lion fight.

• 1:37:05Speaker 05

  And they're interested in this public lands argument that's coming up again because they're like, "Well, boy, once the hunters went away, there was nobody telling people that the, that marsh was of value. And now that marsh is ag land."

• 1:37:24Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:26Speaker 05

  And so now that we've actually gotten better regulations for duck hunters and now it's a not a future in question for at least the next couple of years, there's no duck hunters coming back because the marsh is gone in in this part of Victoria.

• 1:37:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Speaker 05

  And, you know, it's like firearm possession has gone way, way down because people are like, well, why do I need firearms when people are out there harassing me when I try to go hunt? Like, the, it's all out there and it's a, it's an amazing horrifying tale, but it's like, when you see this stuff, you see the mountain lion bands, you see this argument that, uh, like, people will literally email me and be like, you just don't even have a clue of how many public acres there are. That's the issue. I'm like, no, I do. I do, and it's not that much. Like, do the math in the United States.

• 1:38:27Speaker 05

  Like, we're hanging on to a very small amount.

• 1:38:32Speaker 03

  What do you think would happen, um, something I've been thinking about this is like, if one of the, one of the things we all hear a lot about is like, just hunter crowding, right? Too many people in the field. Um, or, you know, people get frustrated by it everywhere you go. And I'm talking about the West, in the West in particular. But, the reason, part of the reason that there are so many people hunting is because, well, A, people wanted to do it, and there's a lot of tags available in a lot of Western states. What do you think would happen with just the amount of tags available? Like, opportunity to hunt? Let's talk, like, forget access, right? What do you think would happen with, like, tag availability? I'm asking an honest question.

• 1:39:11Steven Rinella?

  I've no idea. I don't, I don't either. I don't know what the implications would be.

• 1:39:14Speaker 03

  Well, like, if, if-

• 1:39:15Speaker 05

  Would the tags become unlimited and good luck finding access?

• 1:39:18Speaker 03

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:39:19Speaker 06

  Or you get more fragmentation and development and, and animal numbers drop and tags drop.

• 1:39:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. I don't know. I just think about what is the potential opportunity loss for hunting in an already, like, finite environment where people are frustrated? Like, what is that gonna look like and under this scenario?

• 1:39:37Speaker 06

  Can I also point out one legal piece that we haven't talked about? We've made some assumptions here. We're talking as if the result of this would be that land would be transferred to Utah and then they would sell it. Because that's what they've asked for and we presume that the court would give them what they ask for. That, you know, in their complaint, they say dispose of lands in accordance with state law. And I frequently have to remind people that the federal courts are applying federal law and the United States Constitution. And that if they side with Utah, they actually would have to dispose of the lands in accordance with federal law, not state law. And that could mean it's the federal government selling the lands. And Utah may not be the high bidder.

• 1:40:21Speaker 06

  Like, right now, the process that's laid out in, in FIPMA is for, for sell of lands is you have a bidding process and you have to, you have to sell them for the fair market value of the land, but there's a bidding process. Maybe they're not the high bidder. Maybe we wind up having to go to the Elon Musk Arches Park. I mean, it's like, there's, that's a piece that we're not talking about.

• 1:40:44Steven Rinella?

  The architects of this would be like, "Dad, we didn't think of that."

• 1:40:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, because the state of Utah is not entitled to those lands legally. They, they're trying to make the argument that they are, but they, in their own constitution, as a condition of statehood, which every Western state and like, I have a spreadsheet of all the states with this. Almost every state, as a condition of statehood, had to give up all claims to, and it actually, they use the term unappropriated lands in these constitutional provisions. But unappropriated lands at the time meant non-privately held lands. So they had to give up claims to those as a condition of admission to the Union. So they, you know, they don't have a legal claim.

• 1:41:29Speaker 06

  They forever gave up their legal claim to those lands. They're trying to say there's this constitutional loophole, I guess, like, you know, we've always interpreted this constitution wrong and it, and, and so the lands, the federal government can't own them, and so by default, they should come to us.

• 1:41:44Speaker 05

  And that's why a giant mining firm from Australia owns Southern Utah.

• 1:41:50Speaker 06

  And that's the risk. I've had, I had somebody write to me recently and said, you know, one of the big risks with this case is just that. You have a lot of people that are concerned about, you know, foreign governments buying up land in the United States. And what's going to happen if Utah wins this and they, and the result isn't the transfer of the land to the state, the result is the federal government has to sell those lands? Who's going to buy them? And it could be foreign governments. We don't know who's going to buy them. Maybe Utah buys it. Maybe California buys all this land in Utah.

• 1:42:24Steven Rinella?

  Honestly, though. They go to the Supreme Court and they'd be like, I wanna, I just wanna undo all of the stuff I just did.

• 1:42:34Speaker 05

  There's a hot take for you. Right? Yeah. I don't think, mean, water rights, right? They just buy up the Colorado River Basin?

• 1:42:41Steven Rinella?

  I never thought that California would buy it.

• 1:42:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:44Speaker 03

  I don't think that the, if I can speculate about what success looks like for these guys, I don't think they care if, I mean, it would be great if, if you're a state of, you're the guys in the state of Utah, you're like, ideal scenario, best case scenario, we get the land, we get to sell it and make some money, right? We're happy. But if they, I don't think they really care. I think it's more-

• 1:43:05Steven Rinella?

  Oh, because it would enter, it would enter into, it would generate the kind of economic activity they're looking for.

• 1:43:09Speaker 03

  That philosophically-

• 1:43:10Steven Rinella?

  Like right now, yeah.

• 1:43:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, that they agree with philosophically, which is like, there's a philosophical problem they seem to have with the idea of public land, when you come down to the intent of it. So like-

• 1:43:20Steven Rinella?

  Like if a bunch of big guy guys had it, they'd be glad.

• 1:43:21Speaker 05

  They could tax it.

• 1:43:22Speaker 03

  I think they'd be happy. They could tax it. Yeah. If the Chinese government bought it, like, I don't know if they'd be happy or not.

• 1:43:28Steven Rinella?

  It'd be a bittersweet.

• 1:43:29Speaker 05

  They'd still be able to tax it.

• 1:43:30Speaker 06

  Bittersweet. They'd still tax it. Yeah.

• 1:43:33Steven Rinella?

  Cal brought up a really good point. I'm gonna verge into ground, I'm gonna verge very briefly into territory that I don't like to on this podcast, but, but Cal made a point about talking about this after the election. Like, I'm speaking very, I'm not speaking for anybody in the room but me, but I'm speaking very personally. After the election, there were so many areas I was happy about. Like, I was very happy about border security. I was very happy about crime. I was very happy about free speech issues. I could go on and on and on of stuff that I was elated about. But part of my head was like, you know what, though? This ain't gonna be good for public land.

• 1:44:16Steven Rinella?

  And I think that voters and like Americans voters, whoever have to realize no political party is ever gonna do everything you wish it did. You will always make a compromise. And if anyone thinks deep, when a, when a political party gets together and they have a convention and they lay out their like the planks and their platform, you will never find representation of all of your ideals and all of your dreams within two political parties in this country. That they decide the agenda. It's never going to be that they all line up and it, you, you do not need to sit and think that I have to support everything the party says.

• 1:45:01Speaker 06

  Apparently you haven't read the 1836 Whig Party Platform.

• 1:45:07Steven Rinella?

  You like.

• 1:45:08Speaker 06

  Gives me warm fuzzies.

• 1:45:10Steven Rinella?

  You don't.

• 1:45:13Steven Rinella?

  I was trying to do an impassioned speech.

• 1:45:15Speaker 06

  He ruined it.

• 1:45:15Steven Rinella?

  Great joke though. You like, you have to like, you just look and admit, no party will represent all, represent all of your interests. So if you get the party you want, there's still work after the fact to go like, okay, now I need to make micro adjustments. Like I got who I want, like, you know, I have who I want in the White House. I have who I want in the Senate, whatever. But these people that I support, I'm talking about whoever's out there, these people I support have to ease off this issue. Cause this is not representing me, it's not representing other constituent members. And remember, we, we, we went through this, uh, we went through this 10 years ago. I remember all these surveys of what percent of hunters in Utah hunt on public land?

• 1:46:00Steven Rinella?

  What, what percent of Montanans hunt on public land? What percent of people in Wyoming hunt on public land? Want to be like, like 68% of hunters or something like that? Like in this day, I think it was like 68 or 70% of hunters hunt on public land.

• 1:46:14Steven Rinella?

  And, and hunters, like, you know, th- this is not a, uh, this is not like a rule, but it's generally true. Hunters have generally, like hunters generally vote Republican.

• 1:46:29Steven Rinella?

  We need to convince them to, to, to, to not go down this path.

• 1:46:35Speaker 06

  I don't think the hunters need convincing.

• 1:46:36Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no.

• 1:46:37Speaker 06

  Right? You're talking to politicians.

• 1:46:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, hunters need to say like, listen, man, I got you. Border security, I'm with you. The whole list of things I'm with you. But listen, this public lands thing, um, this is not for us.

• 1:46:48Speaker 06

  It shouldn't be a political issue at all. And that.

• 1:46:50Steven Rinella?

  Everything's political.

• 1:46:50Speaker 06

  All the, well, but the polling data suggests it's really not for public lands. Like support of public lands is, it's like nonpartisan. Everybody supports it.

• 1:47:01Steven Rinella?

  That's why it's become a word. It's, it's a little bit.

• 1:47:05Steven Rinella?

  Years ago, we went to Rob Bishop's office in Utah and had a conversation on, on this podcast with Rob Bishop. And, and, and, um, very respectful. He was, he was great. Okay. It was a very respectful conversation about some things we don't agree on. Um, I would do it again with his, with his current counterpart.

• 1:47:22Steven Rinella?

  And it was funny because everyone likes the word access. Right? We sort of agree like, we like, just like, just like conservation. Like, what the hell does that mean?

• 1:47:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:31Steven Rinella?

  You know, everybody's like, are you for conservation? No, no politician in America is gonna say, no. I hate conservation. Everybody's like, yeah, because I know what I mean when I say it. And then it's not what you mean when you say it, but when I say it, I know what I mean. And, and Rob Bishop kept talking about access, access, access. And you think he means like increasing, like that there'd be more land for the public to use. What he means is basically, yeah, access for semi trucks.

• 1:47:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:58Steven Rinella?

  Do you mean, or whatever? I, I, I put words as well, but you know, like when he says like, everyone's like, I'm pro access. Oh, me too. Me too. What kind of access in particular? What, well, here's what I was talking about. What are you talking about? I mean, like that you can drive your truck more places. Everyone likes access, right?

• 1:48:14Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:48:15Speaker 05

  So I think, I think he used recreational vehicles. So like, like if you can't drive that up there and hook it up.

• 1:48:21Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:48:22Speaker 05

  That's not access to me.

• 1:48:24Steven Rinella?

  So, so you get these words that get squishy. And I think it's like after that big public land shootout from 20, 10 years ago. Most politicians are like, man, okay, there's one lesson I learned here. Do not get labeled an anti-public lands person. So it hasn't changed what you're after, but you're like, okay, so from now on rhetorically, I have to be more careful.

• 1:48:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Steven Rinella?

  And I have to say. This is for public lands, meaning. For me.

• 1:48:58Steven Rinella?

  I'm pro public lands. For me. Right? And people are like, oh, yeah, he's pro public lands. He said so. It's like, he wants some too.

• 1:49:09Steven Rinella?

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• 1:50:57Speaker 05

  I think to your earlier point about like, the election is not, it doesn't end there, right? Like, this is where conservation groups especially are very effective, because like, they're...

• 1:51:08Speaker 05

  They're getting ready to work with the new administration. And like, there's, there's multiple ways that you can apply pressure to decision makers. And there's one way, like in the last big cycle, I mean, there's this huge public outcry, right? And like, you saw rallies and you saw people taking their shots at Jason Chaffetz, but I think too, like, this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of like, having policy groups lean in and have conversations with, with decision makers and try to get them to see all the different sides of the issue. So, um, yeah, it's like, you can't ever sort of step back from the policymaking process for four years. Um, as a, as an engaged hunter or angler, right?

• 1:51:53Speaker 05

  You gotta support the groups that are working on your behalf. You gotta talk to your lawmakers when you have a chance. Um, cause like, we're all sort of enjoying the, uh, no more, uh, marketing calls from campaign offices.

• 1:52:10Steven Rinella?

  I know.

• 1:52:10Speaker 05

  My mailbox hasn't seen a flyer in days. It's fantastic. Just bills and, and, uh, you know, credit card bills. Yeah, yeah. But, but like, like, it, we're just now getting started on this stuff, you know, like in terms of, as a country, like, this is, the road is way far ahead of us, even though we feel like we can kind of get a break from politics.

• 1:52:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:31Speaker 05

  And what, as we've been seeing it on our TVs for the past year.

• 1:52:34Steven Rinella?

  I, I read all through the campaign, like, I read voraciously, like, uh, I, I, I follow it as an American. I follow as someone who's just like, I'm just interested in politics. Um, maybe I missed it. I don't think that this issue came up.

• 1:52:48Speaker 06

  It came up in a way.

• 1:52:49Steven Rinella?

  Did it? Tell me.

• 1:52:50Speaker 06

  Housing.

• 1:52:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:52:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:52:52Speaker 05

  And that's how the Montana deal went.

• 1:52:54Speaker 06

  Yeah. So it, it came up in the context of we need more housing in this country. And it actually came up in one of the, I think it was in the presidential debate even of, uh, there are all these public lands out there that, and I can't remember the exact way it was phrased, but it was like, they're not being used for anything right now. We, we should be using them to address the nation's housing crisis. And you You can see in Utah, places maybe like the Wasatch Front where there's a lot of overcrowding starting to occur. You could, in Las Vegas area is another great example where you're going to see pushes for using public lands. And, and it could be bipartisan for housing.

• 1:53:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:37Speaker 06

  And we have to have a serious conversation about.

• 1:53:40Steven Rinella?

  If the Democrats win, it'll be thousands of tiny homes. If the Republicans win, it'll be eight really big homes.

• 1:53:48Speaker 05

  But you know, the, the feds worked with the state of Nevada and, and they, they did give up some BLM land there in Vegas. So it's not like.

• 1:53:58Speaker 03

  There's a process.

• 1:53:58Speaker 05

  There is, there is a process, right?

• 1:54:00Speaker 03

  It does happen occasionally. And you know, that's something that frankly, this is what Congress exists for. I mean, there have been plenty of, to your point, Nevada bills that protected public land and gave land specifically to be sold for development around Vegas. I don't think many, I don't know if you guys remember Harry Reid?

• 1:54:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, Harry Reid, back when he was in charge of Senate, like he was the, he was the unofficial king of doing these, these big land deals. So what a point is like, there's a process. If there are legitimate issues like housing crisis or whatever, like there are ways you can go about. Addressing those issues in a reasonable way. I just want to say one thing that you said, C, which I think is really important. I think too often people assume that whoever they support politically is like, they're going to represent my a hundred percent of what I believe a hundred percent of the time. I can just check out after I voted. And I think people, especially on this issue, like if you're hunting fish, if you like to ride dirt bikes, whatever you like to do on public land,

• 1:55:01Speaker 03

  park your ATV or your RV or whatever, like you really do need to pay attention to this issue because it's not going away.

• 1:55:09Speaker 03

  And like I said, I think one of the really annoying things to me is when I look at the people that are behind this, I've never seen one of them holding a gun out on public land. Maybe they do, like Jay, remember that photo of Jason Chaffee?

• 1:55:21Speaker 05

  Very natural, very natural looking with his wiener dog.

• 1:55:26Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? It's like, I don't think, they don't do the things that we do.

• 1:55:30Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:55:30Speaker 03

  They don't understand. And so like, help them understand. It's an opportunity. They may not want to understand, but make them understand. That's our job. That's your job. They work for us.

• 1:55:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. When you're, when you're, if you're sitting at home thinking like, how could I ever?

• 1:55:46Steven Rinella?

  You know, go again, or how could I ever like go against some aspect of the political party I involved in, ask yourself this, when you read about, when a campaign's going on, and you read about those million dollar a plate dinners, every one of those people going to those dinners is saying, when they get their chance, they're saying, we could really use some help on it.

• 1:56:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:56:11Steven Rinella?

  Every one of them. It's a caveat, like, or it's conditional.

• 1:56:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, I just got this one thing.

• 1:56:17Steven Rinella?

  I could really use some help.

• 1:56:19Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:20Steven Rinella?

  Um, I remember I went to a dinner one time, and I, I was sitting next, I had dinner, and I was sitting with a senator from Wyoming, and he was being, he was being awarded a prize for having really done this kind of like, very like, esoteric sort of legal maneuver, which helped the bison meat industry. Okay? And they were honoring him at the dinner, because he had, they had this like, economic annoy, they had this annoyance, this sort of like regulatory annoyance, okay? And, and they were thanking him for the help on this regulatory annoyance. Um, he didn't campaign on that. It might not have been aware of, but people come and say, I love you, man, I love you, here's some money, I could really use some help on whatever.

• 1:57:03Steven Rinella?

  There's nothing wrong with going to your party that you voted for, your representatives you voted for, and says, man, most everything you're talking about is great, man, we could really use some help on this public lands issue, because we hunt that shit.

• 1:57:13Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely, you can go to the vote, party that you didn't vote for too, be like, you know, hey, I gotta be honest, I didn't vote for you on this, here's part of what you do that, that I, I do agree with, get on board with this, and, you know, you might have my vote in four years, or whenever that terms up. Like, there's nothing that says you have to vote for the person to go visit their office. There's no prerequisite.

• 1:57:36Speaker 06

  And money doesn't, you don't have to donate either. I want to make sure, like, money.

• 1:57:40Steven Rinella?

  Certainly helps. I'm not saying, I'm just trying to help people understand, that's what those conversations are, those conversations aren't, do everything you're doing, it's like, do all that, but also this. Hey, tell me about where you grew up.

• 1:57:52Speaker 06

  But I wanted to say, like, I, I worked for, for a governor, former governor, right? And, hearing from people, particularly in state, I, I mean, we took calls from people out of state, but it really mattered, when people called from in-state, and had an issue that they really cared about.

• 1:58:13Speaker 06

  It mattered to the governor, it mattered to us as his staff. It could have been one person calling in and they might raise an issue that we hadn't even thought about.

• 1:58:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:24Speaker 06

  That's a great point, we'll get on that, right? It's, but when you start hearing from a lot of people, when it's this tidal wave coming at you of people, like particularly in these western states where it's a tidal wave of hunters coming at you saying, you know, here, here's what we want to see. They take it really, really seriously. You don't have to be a big donor, you don't have, heck, you don't even have to say if you voted or not.

• 1:58:49Steven Rinella?

  I think it helps to be a big donor.

• 1:58:51Speaker 06

  You keep saying that, I'm telling you from my position is, I, maybe, maybe it did behind, and I didn't know about it, but it mattered, anybody that called it mattered. And I guess my point is, you know, people out listening and whatnot, right? Like, picking up the phone and calling your governor's office or calling your congressional delegation, like, that matters. You can build relationships there, you can get information there, and it can make, it really can make a difference.

• 1:59:17Speaker 05

  And it's not scary, it's, it's an easy thing to do.

• 1:59:20Speaker 06

  For sure.

• 1:59:20Speaker 05

  Shockingly easy.

• 1:59:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, Cal, that's the first thing Cal does every morning when he wakes up.

• 1:59:25Steven Rinella?

  Lets his, you know, is very good about letting.

• 1:59:28Speaker 05

  Hello, Cheryl.

• 1:59:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, letting his elected representatives know, it's great. When I brought up, like, it was, like, how much it was or was not a big campaign issue in the presidential election, I was kind of getting at this idea that this might still be regarded as, with the incoming administration, new, new senate, house, this still might be, you know, this could be regarded as a fringe issue, right? Like, it could be that the jury's still out on this. Like, if you went to the Trump administration and said, "Love everything you're doing, but chill out about the border," you're not going to get anywhere, right? Like, that's, that's, that stone is, that's been cast, right? He, that was run on.

• 2:00:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:00:07Steven Rinella?

  The issue of, of, of like, hey, you came out against this in 2015, you, you like, verbalized opposition to divestiture of public lands in 2015, how much ever you, you know, like, you knew enough to bring it up.

• 2:00:24Steven Rinella?

  You guys didn't do a bunch around that and like we would really appreciate not having to go down this path again of talking about fewer acres to hunt and fish on.

• 2:00:31Speaker 06

  Do you remember the Return Act?

• 2:00:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:34Speaker 06

  That, you know, the act that was introduced, what, a couple of years ago now that would have gutted Pittman Robertson and all the money that goes into state wildlife agencies? And how hunters went apoplectic over that? And because of that, and they flooded offices of sponsors of that and co-sponsors of that bill dropped off before the phone was hung up. They're like, oh, man, I did not realize what I signed up for. Get me off of this thing. I think this has to turn into that. Like, I view this as one of those, you know, the hunting community viewed the Pittman Robertson Act as one of the, like, it's the most, one of the most fundamental tenants to support the North American model is having the, the resources to do it, right?

• 2:01:19Speaker 06

  And, and not having money diverted to other purposes. It has to be the same thing for, in my mind, for public lands, like hunters and anglers have to go apoplectic over this. So it's something that, that politicians just don't want to touch. Right now, you have 13, well, 14 states, counting Utah. You have 14 states that have said, we think the court should take a look at this. That's making it more mainstream than I want to see it.

• 2:01:48Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 2:01:48Speaker 06

  Right? And so I kind of analysis, make the analogy of like, this should be like that Return Act. Like, this, this is so fundamental to who we are as a country and what we do and, and, you know, our livelihoods and, and personal endeavors and so forth.

• 2:02:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02:04Speaker 06

  Like, it's that important that it should be taken that seriously? It shouldn't be allowed to get legs. It should, it needs to stay on the fringe and it shouldn't be allowed to get legs. So there's me making an opinion, like, I came off the fence for you.

• 2:02:15Speaker 05

  That's awesome. Good job. From the top rope.

• 2:02:18Steven Rinella?

  There's, there's, there's an opinion I want to clarify here, too, because I just want to make sure that, like, I'm clear of what I'm getting at. If, if the state, if a state was suing... Because here's a state and they said, you know what we want to do? We want to, we want to give a sort of toned down wilderness act protection to all BLM land. We don't think that you're protecting it enough for future generations. And we have this whole system by which we're going to take this land from you, the BLM, and we're going to create wilderness areas all over the place. I would be like, that's a great idea. I hope they win that lawsuit.

• 2:02:59Steven Rinella?

  To me, it's not, it's not, I should just be clear, like, to me, it's not who has it.

• 2:03:07Steven Rinella?

  It's what is allowed to happen there and what is not allowed to happen there.

• 2:03:13Steven Rinella?

  It's like, it's not whose name is on it. It's what is the way, what is the most likely path that would be that me, my kids, future generations, wildlife in perpetuity, has a place to exist.

• 2:03:29Steven Rinella?

  Right? And it's like, I'm going to go with whatever I think is the greatest chance to create continued habitat, continued access for people to pursue outdoor activities. And I just feel like, and when I see kind of the arguments and the players, I question that, I feel that this is not moving in that, this is not going to move in that direction. I feel that this is going to move to fewer acres of wildlife habitat, fewer acres of public land for people to recreate on. It ain't going to be good.

• 2:04:03Speaker 03

  Agreed.

• 2:04:04Speaker 05

  Well, yeah.

• 2:04:07Speaker 05

  We used to talk about this just all the time, right? And we'd, we'd go out and lobby in DC and talk to people. And it's interesting because we have somebody who represents the nonprofit space. And then we have a business owner, entrepreneur, right? And this is something that I used to get tapped with all the time, right? It's like, hey, can you come join this fly-in to DC? Because all it is is individuals, nonprofits, we need the business aspect, right? And I would go in on behalf of First Light and say, hey, we're this Idaho business. This is how many people we employ. This is roughly how much buying and selling that we're doing, our economic impact. I'd try to frame up.

• 2:04:50Speaker 05

  And then I would tell them about our origin story on public lands. Be like, our whole thing is selling to people who have these big places to go out and push themselves. Like, we love the people that sit in box blinds. I've had a lot of fun sitting in a box blind. But the reality is, you don't need this stuff. We want you to get it, but you really don't need it in a heated room on stilts, right?

• 2:05:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:24Speaker 05

  This is how the stuff was developed. It's part of our experience by going out and trying to go deeper or push harder, get to the top of the mountain faster on public lands. That's why we developed this clothing line. This is why we keep developing this clothing line. This is how our brand is growing by talking to people about public lands and engaging them where they want to be. And don't jeopardize this because you're going to kill this business and you're going to kill our economic impact.

• 2:05:57Speaker 03

  Talking your own language.

• 2:05:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. And that is, it's pretty funny. You can see the more rooms you go into, it's like they're checking the box, right? It's like, okay, I heard from the nonprofits, what else you got? Oh, what's your deal? It's like, they kind of glaze over if it's another nonprofit person. And they're like, oh, okay, that's different. What's that? And it's like, okay, got the carpenters, great. And move on, move on, you know?

• 2:06:23Speaker 03

  I think that's why maybe I take it so. Personally, this issue is, I hunt private land. I've got a lease in Oklahoma. I like hunting private land too. So it's not like I don't hunt private land. But my, you know, the ideas, I mean, I have been on, the ideas for my products, the ideas for my business have all been forged on public land. All my best ideas have happened on hunting trips in, on public land. It's the only place I have to think, get away from crazy world, right? I think that's like a common thing. And so just, you know, yes, would it affect like businesses like ours, like in First Light and others? Like absolutely. It's undeniable. But it's more than that for me. This

• 2:07:07Speaker 03

  is personal. You're talking about coming after like my sanctuary. And that's what like is so visceral for me with this issue. Because it's, yes, those are all true. But I think people tend to even like tune out the business argument. They're like, how many billions of dollars are recreation, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I don't care. I care about that. But ultimately, what I really care about is like, you're coming after my home. And that pisses me off, right? So you're coming after the thing that I really care about. I can deal with losing money. I can't deal with losing my home. And neither can my kids. So like, just keep your damn hands off of it.

• 2:07:41Steven Rinella?

  That's the thing. When, when people, when defenders of, when public land defenders, when wildlife habitat defenders go down the path of talking about money.

• 2:07:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:51Steven Rinella?

  I always am like, like, I'll let them do it. If they win, if they win, I let them do it. But I'm always like, a little bit like, man, I'll be careful. You're treading in some dangerous territory. Because are you telling me that if wildlife didn't make financial sense, you wouldn't wind it around anymore?

• 2:08:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:08:09Steven Rinella?

  Like, watch the language, man. Because you could tell me that wildlife costs money, and I'd be like, okay.

• 2:08:18Speaker 03

  Work it out the checkbook.

• 2:08:19Steven Rinella?

  Whatever.

• 2:08:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:21Steven Rinella?

  Doesn't change my mind about it. So I'm always like, a little bit like, hey, you know, tread lightly about this whole financial thing.

• 2:08:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's emotional. It should be emotional.

• 2:08:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Because if someone said to me, it wouldn't take very long for them to convince me, they'd be like, you know, those kids of yours are costing you a lot of money.

• 2:08:37Steven Rinella?

  I would be like, oh shit. All right. Take them away.

• 2:08:42Speaker 03

  I think you never looked at it like that. I mean, I think you said it like what everything doesn't have to justify itself economically to exist in this world. Right? Um, and yeah, that's why I'd be able to.

• 2:08:53Steven Rinella?

  No, it's like at your convertible. I mean, not yours, but.

• 2:08:56Speaker 03

  I mean, I'd love to have one, right? Brad's Miata.

• 2:09:01Speaker 06

  Chrysler Sebring.

• 2:09:04Speaker 03

  Could you imagine that hunting rig? That'd be amazing.

• 2:09:06Speaker 06

  That would be sweet.

• 2:09:08Steven Rinella?

  Guys, I got, I'm going to bring something full circle. I'm going to give you a chance, but we started out this show talking about the podcast trivia. And then, and then we got a bunch of kids coming in here in a minute to record our, our kids trivia tournament for our kids podcast. So, um, um, we're going to wrap it up in a minute, but I want to give you guys a chance to have in your, we, we used to do a thing in the old days where you get a closing thought.

• 2:09:31Speaker 03

  The long, long ago. I remember that. I remember that too.

• 2:09:34Steven Rinella?

  And, um, I'd like to extend that courtesy to you guys, um, in our, in our waning minutes here, if you have a closing thought, um, and, uh, if you could, within that closing thought, someone could have the, the, uh, also do like a little bit of here's how to follow along with what's going to happen with this whole thing.

• 2:09:52Speaker 03

  You, you want to, you want me to go first or what?

• 2:09:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I already, already did mine. Mine was the one I was talking all about how, uh, when I was talking all about how.

• 2:09:59Speaker 03

  Everybody got teary eyed.

• 2:10:00Steven Rinella?

  You can vote for a party and then go say, but dude chill out about this public lands deal.

• 2:10:06Speaker 03

  Um, I think I've already said mine. This is personal, should be personal for you. Stay vigilant. Um, and if I may, um, I still, I think there's an open question around whether or not Guy Fieri is the mayor of Flavor Town.

• 2:10:19Speaker 06

  I was going to go back to Flavor Town with my closing thought.

• 2:10:23Speaker 03

  Well, Randall, you should have gone first.

• 2:10:24Speaker 06

  I was going to do it.

• 2:10:24Speaker 03

  This is a Flavor Town issue.

• 2:10:27Speaker 06

  I think my, my closing thought, I said at the very outset of this, which is we know Guy Fieri is the mayor of Flavor Town.

• 2:10:33Speaker 03

  I don't know. I think we might have some hanging chads in that vote.

• 2:10:38Speaker 06

  Bush v. Gore, another original cert.

• 2:10:41Speaker 03

  It went right, that went right to the Supreme Court.

• 2:10:43Steven Rinella?

  Well, I, I made a reference to that. You didn't catch. I said, who's the president?

• 2:10:47Speaker 06

  Oh no, I caught that.

• 2:10:48Steven Rinella?

  Why are you going back and redoing my line?

• 2:10:51Speaker 06

  Well.

• 2:10:51Steven Rinella?

  Cause you're just doing it for all the people that didn't catch it?

• 2:10:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:10:54Steven Rinella?

  You're trying to take credit.

• 2:10:55Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's.

• 2:10:56Steven Rinella?

  Been a while since Bush v. Gore. Yeah, okay. Plus, I wanted to show that I could think of another. Can I share a Bush v. Gore story? We're going, we're going on a hunting trip. This is before, like, you couldn't, no in reaches and stuff, okay? Whatever the hell year that was. And we're going on a hunting trip and we're like, everybody's like, okay, well, as soon as the election, everyone wanted to see the election. Cause we're going sometime around that window. So. The, the morning after the election, we're going on a long trip in the back country. I'm like, damn, how could it be that you don't know who the president is? And there's no way to talk to anybody for four or five days. And then like the whole time just dying to go find out. And come back like, they still don't know.

• 2:11:37Steven Rinella?

  We didn't miss anything after all.

• 2:11:41Speaker 06

  Alright, so.

• 2:11:42Speaker 05

  Mr. Hot Take himself.

• 2:11:43Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm gonna have another hot take. I feel like, I feel like now I'm just.

• 2:11:48Steven Rinella?

  Two in one day.

• 2:11:53Steven Rinella?

  That should be the thing with Dave. We have David and he has to give an opinion and take a shot.

• 2:12:00Speaker 06

  Just see where we are now.

• 2:12:01Steven Rinella?

  Just till he's pounded, just try to get him to pound the table. Solve the world's problems. If toward the end of the night, he pounds the table, we'll know we won.

• 2:12:10Speaker 06

  My, so I guess. My closing thought is a, a thought and then a hot take and then a, you said where, where you can.

• 2:12:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, how do you, how do you pay attention?

• 2:12:18Speaker 06

  How do you pay attention? Yeah, so.

• 2:12:21Speaker 06

  The thing I'd say is. Apathy is not an option. Like, you know, apathy and thinking this is just gonna go away. Saying, ah, this is just a fringe issue. This lawsuit doesn't really have any merit. It's gonna go away. When you take that position, you wind up in a, in a spot where bad things happen.

• 2:12:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:12:42Speaker 06

  Right. And so, you know, I, I think it's incumbent upon everybody to really be vigilant and diligent. And I go back to this. You, you have to be in touch with your delegation. You have to be in touch with your governor's office. You have to be in touch with. If you're supporting, you know, a nonprofit like mine or other nonprofits out there, be in touch with them. Let, let people know. This matters to me and I want. I want you to be engaged in this to make sure that our public lands aren't sold or transferred. Because if you don't, if you just take the position of, eh, you know, we've been through this before. This might be the last time you have to go through it, right?

• 2:13:22Speaker 06

  And you might not like the outcome. So that's sort of my, um, I, I would call that my plea to people. You know, you asked me before, what do I think the likelihood of success on the merits is? You know, I don't know. I think there's a strong argument that the property clause, and we never talked about it, but the property clause of the constitution gives the federal government the authority to manage lands in perpetuity. I think there's a very, very strong argument to be made there. There's some lowercase law that supports that interpretation. There's some dicta in some US Supreme Court cases that it support that interpretation. So I think there's a path to victory to protect public lands in the legal context.

• 2:14:06Speaker 06

  But it's not a foregone conclusion. But you have to be diligent on the political side too. Because there, there are going to be efforts to strip things away and to transfer and, you know, all those things. So do that. My, here's my little bit of hyperbole or, you know, because I'll have one. I analogize this to, this is going to age me a little bit. Remember that movie Ocean's Eleven?

• 2:14:30Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. Never saw it, but yeah, familiar.

• 2:14:33Speaker 06

  What were they?

• 2:14:33Steven Rinella?

  I'd like to see it.

• 2:14:34Speaker 06

  You never saw it? What were they?

• 2:14:36Speaker 05

  They're thieves.

• 2:14:37Speaker 06

  Right. But they were super sophisticated, creative thieves, right?

• 2:14:43Steven Rinella?

  Professional.

• 2:14:44Speaker 06

  Charismatic, professional, really invested in it, right? I, and here's, here's where it comes. Like, I'm just going to call this, like, halt the heist. That's kind of what this is. This feels like a really sophisticated heist of our public lands. Maybe that's as hyperbolic as I can get.

• 2:15:04Steven Rinella?

  Not bow.

• 2:15:05Speaker 03

  And I also remember Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen. I mean, there are some other parallels we could draw there.

• 2:15:11Speaker 05

  They're, they're going to come and get it.

• 2:15:13Speaker 03

  I think it's well founded.

• 2:15:14Speaker 06

  Right. And so I say that to say, you know, and this will be the, the total selfish plug here. Like, if you want to follow more and learn more about what my organization, National Wildlife Federation, is doing, you can just go to NWF.org backslash halt the heist.

• 2:15:31Speaker 06

  And

• 2:15:32Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you've already made it.

• 2:15:33Speaker 06

  We've already made it.

• 2:15:34Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 2:15:34Steven Rinella?

  There you go.

• 2:15:35Speaker 06

  And all kinds of resources will be there for you.

• 2:15:38Steven Rinella?

  Halt the heist.

• 2:15:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's exactly right.

• 2:15:40Speaker 03

  I already trademarked that before you said it, though, so.

• 2:15:44Speaker 06

  Today.

• 2:15:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15:45Speaker 06

  I looked it up yesterday.

• 2:15:46Speaker 03

  He's a lawyer.

• 2:15:47Steven Rinella?

  I'm sorry, man, yeah.

• 2:15:48Speaker 03

  He is a lawyer.

• 2:15:48Steven Rinella?

  I'm the business guy.

• 2:15:49Speaker 03

  Was there another phrase that gave you the inspiration for that? It's on the tip of my tongue.

• 2:15:53Steven Rinella?

  He's like, just a little alliteration going on.

• 2:15:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's some parallels you could draw, but if you wanted to go that way.

• 2:16:02Steven Rinella?

  Halt the heist.

• 2:16:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, so that's my.

• 2:16:05Speaker 03

  I'll sell it to you, though. I'll sell you the.

• 2:16:08Speaker 06

  I don't know how you. Did your brother say something?

• 2:16:11Speaker 03

  I don't want to disclose my method, but I'm offering to sell it to you.

• 2:16:15Speaker 06

  It's not worth anything right now.

• 2:16:18Steven Rinella?

  No, it is now.

• 2:16:18Speaker 06

  Now it's worth it.

• 2:16:19Speaker 03

  Now it's worth it.

• 2:16:21Steven Rinella?

  We were joking there, Dick, because I came up with a slogan, but I didn't have an organization for it. And it was, uh, today's children are tomorrow's enemies.

• 2:16:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:16:31Steven Rinella?

  It just came to me at dinner with my wife and, um, and I thought.

• 2:16:35Speaker 06

  That sounds like something she would have been really on board with.

• 2:16:40Steven Rinella?

  And I was like, what organization could use that slogan? And then my, my friend Savannah said it could be one of those book burning. Um, one of those book banning organizations could use that slogan. There are kids now, but they'll read these books and they'll be enemies tomorrow.

• 2:16:57Steven Rinella?

  Well, thanks, thanks, guys, for coming on, man. Oh, and to follow it, give, give the URL again?

• 2:17:01Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Um, N W F dot O R G backslash halt the heist.

• 2:17:07Steven Rinella?

  All right, thanks. Brad Brooks, Dave Willms, thanks for coming out, man. Men?

• 2:17:12Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 2:17:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, thanks for having us.

• 2:17:13Speaker 03

  Appreciate it.

• 2:17:14Steven Rinella?

  Thanks a lot.

• 2:17:54Speaker 05

  Where all the thunderstorms Used to help us roll the corn? Where's my country symphony? That old tin roof is playin' for me.

• 2:18:30Speaker 06

  Roosters used to fill the fields.

• 2:18:34Speaker 06

  Flushin' cabbies at the brush and seal. Gone just the troughs can't stay filled. Walked a mountain ain't out of single bird's wing. East dimensions eighty-two.

• 2:18:50Speaker 06

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• 2:19:05Speaker 05

  Where all the thunderstorms Used to help us roll the corn? Where's my country symphony? That old tin roof is playin' for me.

• 2:19:40Speaker 05

  Where all the thunderstorms Used to help us roll the corn? Where's my country symphony?

• 2:21:21Steven Rinella?

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• 2:22:03Steven Rinella?

  years of use out of a set. Visit weathertech.com for your holiday shopping today.

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