Pod Insights The MeatEater Podcast Ep. 725: Dispatches from Africa - Steve's in Tanzania! About this episode Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Professional Hunter Morgan Potter https://www.instagram.com/morganpotterhunting/?hl=en of Robin Hurt Safaris https://www.robinhurt.com on Day 1 in the Luganzo Tongwe Game Reserve.
Topics Discussed: Tanzania's land management system; how regulated hunting in Game Reserves directly contributes to wildlife conservation and local communities; pursuing Cape Buffalo bulls; and more.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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3:07 Steven Rinella? All right, guys, we're coming at you virtually live, like damn near live from Tanzania in Africa. And if you listen to the show, you heard me complain about when we have to sit on episodes for various stupid reasons that I can't explain. And then release them later. These we're going to just release and as they happen, as we're in Africa, hunting with Morgan Potter from Robin Hertz Safaris. And so we're going to do little updates. Nothing major to update yet, but what we are going to do is kind of lay the, set the scene of where we're at and where we're not at. And there's a thing in when, if you study the writing process, one of the things they'll teach you is they'll teach you to go gross to close, meaning start with a wide view and narrow in. So start us with a wide view.
3:53 Steven Rinella? We're in Tanzania.
3:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:54 Steven Rinella? What does that mean? What does that mean when you're looking at the African continent?
3:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, so Tanzania is on, on the east coast, below Kenya, above Mozambique.
4:03 Steven Rinella? The Middle East is off to the northwest.
4:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, north, northeast.
4:09 Steven Rinella? Oh, sorry.
4:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, northeast. And then, yeah, so you've got Kenya to the north, Mozambique to the south. And then, yeah, I mean Tanzania shares borders with a bunch of countries, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and where else, Zambia.
4:24 Steven Rinella? Okay. And one of the things that, one of the most important things I think people should understand is, um, It it has part of the thing that every Americans heard of, including me. It has part of the Serengeti.
4:36 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah, it's got all of the Serengeti, which is contiguous with the Masai Mara, which is Kenya's component, the the border being the Mara River.
4:45 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
4:46 Speaker 02 So, yeah, the Serengeti is like we were talking about it. It's your like quintessential. You get a postcard from Africa. There's a picture of a flat top acacia on there. Lion sleeping underneath of it, big grassland in the background. Not where we are right now.
5:01 Steven Rinella? No, not where we're at. And and I um I keep remark I've remarked to you 10 times over the last few days that having been like raised on those wildlife documentaries and those images that are taken in that ecosystem.
5:18 Steven Rinella? I'm going to get to how different this is. But like having been raised on that, like that's sort of an expectation you wound up having where I sort of felt like other than the Congo, right, other than the jungle. I picture like that that's what Africa looks like.
5:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:32 Steven Rinella? The flat top acacias and the open grasslands.
5:35 Speaker 02 Yep.
5:36 Steven Rinella? And it was cool because prior to us starting hunting, we got to go look at some of that stuff.
5:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:41 Steven Rinella? And it is like, like you can see forever. There's like draughts hanging out, zebras wandering by. And even I knew we were going to come hunt. Eat, no, Western Tanzania.
5:56 Steven Rinella? I had no idea that was going to be like this.
5:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:58 Steven Rinella? Right? Like I if you showed me a picture where we're at right now, never in a million years. Guess, well, that must be Africa.
6:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. And I bet even um even if you looked at like regular photo tourism, the number of people that would get to experience this particular type of habitat and environment, like this part of Africa, would be just a vanishingly small number, like 5% or less.
6:24 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
6:24 Speaker 02 You know, the bulk of tourism is centered around that northern circuit. So north of Arusha there into the Serengeti and Gorogoro Crater, where we were, Lake Natron, Taringiri, these sort of areas that yeah, they do. They have that very quintessential like Africa look. Particularly East Africa.
6:41 Steven Rinella? And what is great, what's great about it and that stuff is it's really good wildlife viewing because you can see so far.
6:46 Speaker 02 Yep, you can see a long way and then being where it is with all that kind of volcanic activity in that part of the rift. The soil's very rich and the rainfall's quite consistent, so the game density there on those short grass plains is very high in comparison to here where we've got comparatively poorer soils, a lot sandier soil, a lot rockier soil. And um, and yeah, it's sort of a different rainfall pattern too. Consistent rain here too, but it's, it's a different kind of pattern to there.
7:15 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
7:16 Speaker 02 Um, and, and as a consequence, the game densities are just very different and the species are very different. Um, you know, a lot of that stuff's those desert adapted species. We talked about the Garanook, obviously Grant's gazelle, Thompson's gazelle. Um, you know, those kind of species that are very water independent and some of them can go pretty much indefinitely on metabolic water. Everything out here is a little thirstier.
7:38 Steven Rinella? Mm hmm.
7:38 Speaker 02 Including the species of plants.
7:40 Steven Rinella? Yeah, and thi- this is, this is like, I don't want people to get the idea that this is monotonous. It's anything but monotonous.
7:46 Speaker 02 No, no.
7:46 Steven Rinella? But and I'll have you walk through the different little habitat types that are here.
7:50 Speaker 02 Hmm.
7:50 Steven Rinella? But what, what do you call this that we're in now?
7:52 Speaker 02 So what we're in now is called Miombo, Miombo woodland.
7:55 Steven Rinella? Yeah, like, like it's like a woods and I, what I keep remarking to Morgan is like growing up in Western Michigan, when you get up in the upper sandy soils and you're just out in the woods and you got like, like scrubby little oaks and sassafras is very reminiscent of that in terms of the density of the trees, the height of the trees.
8:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:15 Steven Rinella? But then you go over that way, I think it's that way.
8:17 Speaker 02 Yep.
8:18 Steven Rinella? And you enter this, this valley of palms.
8:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:23 Steven Rinella? Eight foot high grass. And I was joking earlier, like from someone that just, just to go to off movie references and documentary references. You feel like you're in a Vietnam movie.
8:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, it's very reminiscent.
8:34 Steven Rinella? And that stuff. And then all of a sudden you roll over the hill and you're like, dude, I'm in Michigan.
8:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
8:38 Steven Rinella? No, it's very different stuff going on.
8:40 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Yeah, the diversity here is, is one of the special things about this concession. It's got with the river there. Um, it's got those kind of, yeah, that riverine habitat. Those flood plains.
8:50 Steven Rinella? And there's crocodiles.
8:52 Speaker 02 Crocodile hippos. And then you the real special thing that you've got there is that papyrus swamp, which is this is a massive tract of intact papyrus swamp. And then you've got this East African Sitatunga living in there, which is a very specially adapted antelope to be able to survive basically its whole life in papyrus swamps.
9:08 Steven Rinella? Yeah, I I think I think too that that is kind of cool and a little bit unexpected is. In certain areas around here, it's like a little bit of a working landscape, like there's there's commercial fishermen.
9:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:20 Steven Rinella? They'll use dugout canoes, fishing some of that stuff.
9:23 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:24 Steven Rinella? For a couple more weeks, there's guys out collecting wild honey.
9:27 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:28 Steven Rinella? That that'll be out here for a couple more weeks. I mean, like very widely dispersed, but you see. It it's not like just fantasy land, like you see like ways in which people use the landscape to to to get their living. And I know that brings up a lot of complications around poaching and other things, but it's like it's it's inhabited in a way, very sparsely, but it's inhabited.
9:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there there's no permanent settlement in here, but there are people that have permits. You know, as you saw today, when we ran into the honey guys, right, we stopped and checked their permits, make sure their paperwork's all square.
10:00 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
10:01 Speaker 02 Um, and we don't have a problem with that, you know, we're about these game reserves being a livelihood generator for local communities. And obviously, there's the benefits that they get from some revenue retention from hunting and our operations. But we don't want to keep people out of here entirely. We just, it has to be controlled and it has to be managed. So that fishery is very carefully controlled. Us, in conjunction with Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority. We're constantly making sure that that fishing is being done the right way, you know, not illegal nets being used. Um, other illegal methods, uh, you know, such as netting off the whole river or coming into the game reserve waters themselves. And that's really important to make sure those fish have a a sort of safe spawning ground.
10:44 Steven Rinella? Yep.
10:44 Speaker 02 And a bit of a reservoir, so they can then, those waters that are getting fished commercially can be kind of restocked by those game reserve waters. So it's beneficial to the fishermen to adhere to those rules too. Um, and then, yeah, the honey hunters, it's the same thing, as long as they're not interfering with our operations. And as long as they're not, you know, delving into other unlawful activities while they're here. We're very tolerant of that and we want to support those livelihoods and see people do well.
11:09 Steven Rinella? There's. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like there's like sort of like three types of types of land management here.
11:16 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
11:16 Steven Rinella? Which isn't totally dissimilar to something you'd find in the US where you have national park land.
11:23 Speaker 02 Right.
11:24 Steven Rinella? That doesn't have any of those activities on it.
11:26 Speaker 02 Right.
11:26 Steven Rinella? Right.
11:26 Speaker 02 Zero.
11:27 Steven Rinella? And it's just like it's just like photo tourism. We're near a national park. And roughly how many acres or how many square miles of the national park that's near here?
11:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a pretty big one. I'd say it's somewhere in that thousand square mile kind of range.
11:41 Steven Rinella? And Morgan mentioned to me when we got here that last year, the thousand square mile national park, what's it called?
11:48 Speaker 02 It's called Ogala National Park.
11:50 Steven Rinella? Had fourteen visitors.
11:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:54 Steven Rinella? So if you're looking for a very quiet national park.
11:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, yeah, again, I like, I'll chill for Ogala National Park all day. People should make a visit. It'd be great, but it, but it shows you.
12:07 Steven Rinella? It's so remote.
12:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's so remote. And again, for your average tourist who's not, who wants to see the big five, right? And a million wildebeest in a day.
12:16 Steven Rinella? Yep.
12:17 Speaker 02 This isn't the place to come.
12:18 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
12:19 Speaker 02 You're not gonna see that, you know, even, even us driving around today and it's been a bit of a, you know, we've been pretty focused on going places where buffalo hang out today.
12:28 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
12:29 Speaker 02 You know, we haven't been going to a lot of areas where you'll find a big diversity of species. So that's why it's kind of been a quiet day in that sense. But, I mean, you can have days like this where, you know, the mionbo is just a bit sterile sometimes.
12:40 Steven Rinella? Yep. Well, one, a thing I should clarify, and I've told you this, like a thing that drew me to wanting, that drew me to wanting to hunt Cape buffalo is it's the kind of thing you like get in there and shake hands with.
12:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely.
12:52 Steven Rinella? You know what I mean? Like you get in that thick stuff with it and they're like, they're dangerous and it's just like, that was exciting to me. It's like being in there. So I don't mind the thickness, it's just, it's just different than what I saw in the other park. But to get back to this land management thing, so you have a national park, which is kind of like, like for Americans, the picture, like picture a national park in the US, very similar model.
13:11 Speaker 02 Very similar model.
13:13 Steven Rinella? What is very different would be the game, like a concession or wildlife refuge. Like, I can't think, maybe you can't. I can't think of a way to explain that with an American analogy.
13:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's nothing in the US that would be like similar, that would be, yeah, that would be a good kind of analog for this. It's something that it goes way back. So we're in a, and within that category, there's sort of subcategories, right? So where we were in Masai Land is called a game controlled area. So that's got looser rules around land use. There can be some permanent settlement there. There can be some seasonal sort of settlement. There can be livestock grazing. There can be a few other activities that would not be acceptable here, given that this is a game reserve. And then you've got a couple of below game controlled area, you've got a couple of other tiers too, that are even more kind of loose as far as what's allowed in there, land use wise from local people.
14:12 Speaker 02 But we're very lucky that this area has been designated a game reserve by the Tanzanian government.
14:17 Steven Rinella? Lugano.
14:18 Speaker 02 Yep, Lugano Tongue Game Reserve is the full name of it. And it's, yeah, it's a magnificent piece of ground.
14:24 Steven Rinella? This is the size of Yellowstone National Park.
14:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, roughly the same size. Yeah, it's a huge chunk of ground. And yeah, just having that legal protection from the government gives us the ability to really make sure that those more destructive forms of land use, like livestock grazing, which isn't in of itself inherently destructive necessarily. It's just that here where there's such a big predator population, that inevitably leads to conflict. And that can be, you know, the predators can come off badly from that. You know, cutting trees is something we don't want to see here. This is a very important piece of intact woodland that's really supporting a lot of different species in the Mionbo and the kind of Mionbo edges. So we want to see that intact.
15:08 Steven Rinella? Yeah, just to touch on that for a minute for people is like, here you have elephant. Giraffe, zebra, I mean like here.
15:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, oh yeah.
15:18 Steven Rinella? Like if you sat here, you could watch, go by.
15:20 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
15:21 Steven Rinella? Elephant, giraffe, zebra, kudu, leopards.
15:25 Speaker 02 Lions.
15:25 Steven Rinella? Lions.
15:26 Speaker 02 Yep, eland, sable, roan, harder beast, topi. I mean, there's, there's a huge variety of species in here.
15:34 Steven Rinella? And for how big it is, you guys take so like, for how big it is, you guys kill such a small amount of animals that I feel like it's like, it's like from a management perspective, it's effectively equivalent to a park.
15:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, it, it really is.
15:47 Steven Rinella? It's not like, it's, it's, you know, it's like very selective, like you were, you were explaining to me here. Um, you guys are only allowed to kill male specimens of anything.
15:56 Speaker 02 Right, exactly.
15:57 Steven Rinella? You know, and it's like really small numbers, like a few of these, a few of those, a few of these.
16:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a handful of species and uh, we've, we've managed it that way deliberately. One of the great things about the Tanzanian system is we get a quota um, that's based on research. So right now we're actually working with um, Towiri, which is the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute. And um, some other sort of outside NGOs to do a study on predators in this area. Predators want, including ones we can't hunt, right? Like wild dogs, for example, which are entirely protected. So we're trying to get a handle on how many predators we've got here, which can better inform our offtake. And the great thing is we're only obligated to utilize forty percent of the quota that we're assigned. And we seldom go over that on any given.
16:43 Steven Rinella? Oh, they want you to use forty percent.
16:45 Speaker 02 That we're mandated to use forty percent.
16:47 Steven Rinella? Cause they're revenue.
16:47 Speaker 02 We're mandated to pay for forty percent. So we get it assigned a quota, but we have to utilize forty percent and we rarely go over.
16:54 Steven Rinella? Was that right?
16:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
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20:18 Steven Rinella? The land we're on, just I keep trying to make analogies to the U.S.
20:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:23 Steven Rinella? You could wind up thinking of it like, like in a way, you could think of it like national forest land.
20:28 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
20:28 Steven Rinella? Meaning we're on land that's owned by the federal government in Tanzania.
20:33 Speaker 02 Correct.
20:33 Steven Rinella? And the federal government in Tanzania has two objectives, like preserve wildlife.
20:38 Speaker 02 Correct.
20:39 Steven Rinella? Right? Like create wildlife habitat, preserve wildlife, but also monetize the landscape.
20:44 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
20:44 Steven Rinella? So they're able to monetize this huge chunk of ground simultaneously preserving wildlife by auctioning off these blocks.
20:56 Speaker 02 Correct.
20:56 Steven Rinella? To a safari company or however you put like a, like a, like a hunting guide.
21:00 Speaker 02 Hunting operating.
21:01 Steven Rinella? In operation. Then they come in and say, okay, you, you operate within this piece of land. Our biologist will do some sort of assessment of what's there.
21:10 Speaker 02 Yep.
21:10 Steven Rinella? You're allowed this level of take. And then besides that you, besides that you're paying a fee to utilize the land, they're then saying every animal that comes off, the money is in our pocket.
21:23 Speaker 02 That's correct.
21:24 Steven Rinella? And it applies like a big value to the wildlife. And there's something that you had said that kind of like helps me, because this is all very new to me, but there's, there's a comment you made that helps me think about it is I was, I was talking to you about like, you guys eat a lot of game, you know, like every night we eat game.
21:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:39 Steven Rinella? Stuff you guys clients have gotten. And I was saying, well, when you guys want something to eat, can you just go get what you want to eat? And you were saying like, um, at this point, it's too valuable.
21:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:52 Steven Rinella? Like. That stuff, those animals are all assigned value by the government.
21:58 Speaker 02 Yep, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It makes no sense for us to utilize them that way. They're, they're far too valuable. So, yeah, that quota we do have and that we do intend to utilize, we're saving it exclusively for, for, you know, for our clients.
22:12 Steven Rinella? And that, and like, the, the value of the animals is, that's something that's set by the government.
22:17 Speaker 02 Correct.
22:17 Steven Rinella? Right, yeah. And a place can upcharge or not, but that's what they expect to see.
22:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they have their, their fixed amount that they want for each one of those species, which is great because the trophy fee, you know, to really like simplify it, big broad brush terms, the trophy fee pays for the conservation.
22:35 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
22:35 Speaker 02 Um, and that's, and the beauty of these areas is, out here, you know, as you've seen driving in here, really, there's a couple of little things, like there's a bit of mining, there's a bit of forestry going on in these areas, and there's some kind of more larger scale agriculture. But in general, the, the big competing land use here is subsistence farming, which is so, um, it's so marginal and so destructive. So for the government to have the foresight to say this area, if we protect it, is gonna be something that generates revenue, not just for central government, but for local communities as well, which can offset some of that need for constant subsistence farming. But aside from that, it also is something that's like infinitely renewable.
23:20 Speaker 02 You know, this doesn't, aside from our efforts to preserve the area, which is all kind of baked into, to our costs, you know, it's a, it's a cost to doing business, putting in these roads, you know, maintaining the area so that it's accessible and we can conduct anti-poaching, we can conduct our safaris efficiently. Aside from all that, the government doesn't need to invest in these areas, really. I mean, they, they have a budget and they do do a lot to, to help support us in protecting the area, and that's kind of something we do together. But in general, it's not a high investment thing, but it's got a very good return.
23:53 Steven Rinella? You, you, uh, you returned me to something I was trying to, I wanna, I wanna talk about anti-poaching in our, in our game worn that we're hanging out with.
24:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
24:02 Steven Rinella? Uh, but I wanted, I was talking about those three use types.
24:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:06 Steven Rinella? I was saying like national park, which would be very similar to what an American would imagine a national park would be. A concession, which is different than what you'd picture. And then the third category being like, sort of like, un, an undesignated landscape.
24:23 Steven Rinella? That, and this is gonna be very weird to Americans. It's like an undesigned na- landscape that has like very unregulated subsistence farming activities.
24:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:34 Steven Rinella? Meaning it's like, like if you, if you go back and imagine um, the, the, if you go back and imagine the American frontier of the Appalachian region in seventeen seventy, seventeen eighty.
24:49 Speaker 02 Yep.
24:50 Steven Rinella? It's like, like, like in Boone and guys like that, it's basically what they did.
24:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:54 Steven Rinella? Like they just kind of go into a place.
24:57 Speaker 02 Yep.
24:57 Steven Rinella? Chop a bunch of stuff down, burn stuff, grow a crop, deplete the soil, bump along.
25:02 Speaker 02 Yep.
25:03 Steven Rinella? Grow a corn crop. And, and um, it's kind of, it's still like that, like you just have like communities.
25:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:09 Steven Rinella? And I can see that if you didn't have, and flying over it, you see that they're gigantic, you see geometrical shapes.
25:20 Speaker 02 Yes.
25:22 Steven Rinella? That are gigantic though. It'd be like you'd look in like, for as far as you can see, you see a straight line. And it winds up being where stuff is slash and burn ag.
25:30 Speaker 02 Yep.
25:30 Steven Rinella? And livestock grazing, and it comes up to like a game reserve. And then it's like, then it's like wilderness.
25:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:36 Steven Rinella? And then, you know, ten minutes later, whatever, five minutes later, you fly over the other edge and it goes back to like slash and burn ag.
25:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:43 Steven Rinella? And livestock grazing.
25:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, that's one of the issues that we have is that there isn't really a buffer anymore. You know, it's that, that human kind of activity is right up against our boundaries.
25:53 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
25:54 Speaker 02 Which is a, is an opportunity and a, you know, and a sort of risk. The risk is if, if those communities aren't being properly served, if they're really struggling, there's always that temptation for encroachment as far as pushing livestock in here, um, pushing agriculture in here, poaching activities like that. But if those communities are properly served, they could be great partners for conservation too. They can really help us out in protecting these areas long-term. Policing outsiders that might be coming in, looking to do criminal activity. And, and a great source of, um, you know, of employees uh, and people that we can just generally cooperate with. So we see that not in such a negative light. It, it presents both an opportunity and a risk.
26:38 Speaker 02 And we're just always trying to tweak our operations and adjust our kind of posture to where those communities are on side, they're seeing the benefits and they're working with us rather than we're kind of like at odds.
26:51 Steven Rinella? Let's touch on another, another aspect, then we'll kind of, we'll, we'll close up with what our objective is going to be over the next few days. But here's another aspect that would like, that like blow Americans minds.
27:02 Steven Rinella? We're in a, what anybody would define as a wilderness area.
27:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:05 Steven Rinella? Okay. You guys have, you call them roads, you guys have trails.
27:09 Speaker 02 Yep.
27:09 Steven Rinella? Like if you didn't tend to this in two years, it's gone.
27:12 Speaker 02 It's gone, yeah.
27:13 Steven Rinella? So you guys have a trail network. You have a camp. You have vehicles.
27:17 Speaker 02 Yep.
27:18 Steven Rinella? So what the Tanzanian government's able to do is they're able to put a law enforcement officer, like a game warden.
27:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:27 Steven Rinella? With you in your truck.
27:29 Speaker 02 Yep.
27:30 Steven Rinella? So his responsibility is like, what are you up to? But also you provide like the infrastructure and transportation for him to then patrol the wilderness. And like today, we went out and ran into some dudes doing wild honey.
27:42 Speaker 02 Yep.
27:43 Steven Rinella? And like, the guy with us.
27:45 Speaker 02 Yep.
27:46 Steven Rinella? Carrying an AK-47.
27:47 Speaker 02 Yep.
27:47 Steven Rinella? Like asked them for their honey license, which he produces out of his pocket.
27:51 Speaker 02 Yep.
27:52 Steven Rinella? And checks his paperwork, you know?
27:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:54 Steven Rinella? And it's just like, it'd be like, if, if someone said like, hey, while you're hunting in the US, or someone said, hey, while you boys are elk hunting, do you mind giving our game warden a ride around so he can see what's going on? You know, just be like, it's like completely like.
28:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
28:09 Steven Rinella? It's impossible to picture, but it's like, it's such a different but interesting system.
28:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:13 Steven Rinella? Like you make, like you make it possible for, for wildlife law enforcement to occur in this area.
28:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:21 Steven Rinella? And otherwise it probably wouldn't.
28:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. Well, we, and, and that's always been a big thing for us. Our relationship with Taraw, which is the, the agency that he comes from, is about cooperation. We want to do things together. Our, our goals are very much aligned. When our business works, their revenue looks good and their outcomes as far as wanting to see habitat restoration and, and stable or growing numbers of wildlife and intact wilderness, they're meeting their goals too. So very much everything we do here is in collaboration with them. Right down to, I mean, and you know, right down to the fact that, yeah, the, the relationship with him's not adversarial. I'm not like.
29:01 Steven Rinella? He jumps out and looks for tracks.
29:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's jumping. He's really keen. He's really invested in our success because that's where that's where their bread's buttered, right? And then even our anti-poaching patrols behind the scenes, that's done totally in cooperation with Tawa as well. That's a joint venture between us and them to everyone's mutual benefit. So yeah, that's one of the really nice things here. These law enforcement guys to us, they're not like the fun stoppers, you know, they're there to help us.
29:26 Steven Rinella? Another fun one that I think would be just surprising, I can think of one example in the US, I'm sure there's more, but like there's some, there's some black bear units in Alaska where if you hit the bear, that's your tag.
29:43 Speaker 02 Yep.
29:44 Steven Rinella? Okay, you touch the bear, that's your tag.
29:46 Speaker 02 Yep.
29:47 Steven Rinella? Here, if you wing it.
29:50 Speaker 02 Yep, that's it.
29:51 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
29:52 Speaker 02 Comes off your licence, winged lost.
29:54 Steven Rinella? Yep. And that's like, that's, that's the hunter's chance.
29:58 Speaker 02 There's no being like, well, let's go get another one. No, no, I mean, there are things where you have multiples on licence, but, but you're still paying for that first one.
30:05 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
30:05 Speaker 02 And, and so that's another great reason to do your, do your practice.
30:10 Steven Rinella? Yeah, take your time.
30:10 Speaker 02 Before you come, take your time. And, and if you don't feel good, you know, don't pull the trigger.
30:14 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
30:14 Speaker 02 That's a big one. I can, I can bring my, my clients right up to that point, but once, once it comes to pressing that trigger, that's all on you. So.
30:24 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
30:24 Speaker 02 But we won't have any issues there.
30:25 Steven Rinella? Um, I don't plan on it. Okay, so explain where, how this is going to play out over the next few days? Like as we try to get a buffalo.
30:35 Speaker 02 Yep. So yeah, we're early season here. The cover's still really thick. Um, a lot of thick vegetation, a lot of tall grass. So that's kind of got a double edged quality to it where we, um, we're gonna, it's gonna make it easier for us to sneak up on them, but it's gonna make it harder for us to find them.
30:50 Steven Rinella? Mm-hmm.
30:50 Speaker 02 So we're really focusing on finding tracks. Um, and that means getting up early, well before dawn, transiting through those less productive areas and getting to kind of buffalo hotspots, which at the moment is these little valleys that kind of feed down to the Ugala River. And those, those valleys hold buffalo. And in there, we have roads that kind of transect them. Um, a lot of those roads unfortunately right now are still pretty wet. So that's why we've done a lot of walking today, just trying to kind of find those tracks on foot. But in an ideal world, we'd cut those tracks where they've crossed one of our roads or where they've come from water. Um, or we'll find them on foot if need be. And once we find a good viable track, you know, this morning we had a bit of an issue with.
31:32 Speaker 02 There was tracks mixed in with other tracks and the buffalo had been feeding and a herd had crossed over the bulls and then the bulls had crossed back over the herd. And it was just extremely difficult to sort out to where it didn't seem like a good use of time.
31:44 Steven Rinella? Um.
31:45 Speaker 02 But eventually, if we keep at it, we're gonna find a set of tracks. Where there'll be some feeding, but then we'll see where they've lined out to go look for shade. And look for a place to lay down and ruminate during the day. And we're gonna get on those tracks and follow them till we find those buffalo.
31:58 Steven Rinella? Yeah, that's the part that excites me, man.
32:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's gonna be.
32:01 Steven Rinella? It's so hard to picture.
32:02 Speaker 02 Oh, and it's it's a different feeling. I mean, it's been cool today to look for tracks and see old tracks and different tracks. But when you're on a track that's really got some substance to it, like you've got something to really chew on. And you see the guys are on it and they're following it and they're engaged. That's a different feeling and I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to feeling that vibe.
32:20 Steven Rinella? Uh, take a stab out here. How many miles might you cover today?
32:26 Speaker 02 It really depends on what you're doing, but I bet in some of these days we'll do hundred, hundred and twenty miles in the car. And then, you know, probably.
32:34 Steven Rinella? All on trails.
32:35 Speaker 02 Oh, all on trails and then anywhere from. Four to twenty on foot.
32:40 Steven Rinella? Um.
32:40 Speaker 02 Just depending on how, where we end up and how close we can get the car to come pick us up.
32:45 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
32:45 Speaker 02 We were kind of lucky today. We did a few miles and we were able to get the cars in front of us to where we didn't have to walk back to the rigs. So. That was really helpful, but it's not a guarantee.
32:54 Steven Rinella? That was a good trial run.
32:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was a good dry run. Yeah, I wish we'd picked up some fresher tracks in there, but uh, if we keep at this, it's gonna work.
33:00 Steven Rinella? And and final last thing, we're looking for like, we're looking for bulls.
33:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:05 Steven Rinella? That are like at the end of their life.
33:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And and they're in a non-breeding phase. So we're looking for bachelor solitary bulls or bulls that are in the company of a couple of other bulls. Outside of the herd, so they're in a non-breeding phase.
33:17 Steven Rinella? And they might be how old?
33:19 Speaker 02 Um, anywhere from eight to twelve.
33:22 Steven Rinella? Okay.
33:22 Speaker 02 Twelve would be the extreme upper end and then sort of an eight, nine year old would be right in that sweet spot that we want.
33:28 Steven Rinella? That's, you know, that's very similar to is um, is like doll sheep.
33:31 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
33:31 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
33:32 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting. So that's kind of when they're coming to the end of.
33:34 Steven Rinella? Yeah, a lot of doll sheep, like twelve is like really old.
33:38 Speaker 02 Yep.
33:38 Steven Rinella? Ten is kind of the sweet spot.
33:40 Speaker 02 Nice.
33:41 Steven Rinella? Yeah, for a big ram.
33:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, nice old bulls what we're looking for and we're gonna find him. He's out here.
33:46 Steven Rinella? Yeah. All right, we'll keep coming, we'll keep dropping more things and we'll cover all kinds of different aspects. We're going to talk to trackers, who are the stars of the show.
33:55 Speaker 02 Oh, absolutely. Hundred percent.
33:56 Steven Rinella? Trackers.
33:56 Speaker 02 Hundred percent.
33:58 Steven Rinella? Probably won't talk to any camera, guys. It's been proposed, but I don't think we're going to do that. We'll think of all kinds of interesting things to talk about.
34:07 Steven Rinella? Stay tuned.
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