Ep. 875: Grizz Attack, Mountain Lions Rebound, and a $44K Walleye

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en and the MeatEater crew discuss: Smokejumper Sam Forstag running for Congress https://samformontana.com/ in Montana; people getting weird about waterfowl in North Carolina; grizzly attacks at National Parks; spearfishing in Michigan; public land transfers in Alaska; a $44K walleye in Iowa; mountain lion populations rebounding; and more. 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.

• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 0:47Steven Rinella?

  We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 1:14Steven Rinella?

  Listen, we're all trying to save up for something. I got buddies saving up to buy their new house. I got people eyeing a new boat. I know buddies that are trying to switch out trucks and get an upgrade in their truck, whatever. People are always saving up for stuff. In reality, though, we see that it can be hard to actually save money. But that's what's great about the One Pay app. It makes saving money easy. First, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending. You choose categories, okay, like Walmart, gas, or dining, and then get rewarded when you spend in those categories. So you're rewarded for what you're already buying. And with high-yield savings, your money keeps growing.

• 1:55Steven Rinella?

  Download the One Pay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com/rewards/terms for redemption options and additional details.

• 2:19Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show. On this week, we talked to a former smoke jumper who wants your vote. Spencer catches, I mean, reports on a $44,000 Iowa walleye. Some weird old people are being weird about swans and other waterfowl in North Carolina. We've got a few grizzly tags here in Montana going down, including a fatality. Spear fishermen are coming for your walleyes in Michigan, and I'm joining them. And Dr. Randall reports on public lands transfers in Alaska, plus a whole lot more. Welcome. But first, as always, our news. Who starts?

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Hey, please subscribe to the Meat Eater Podcast YouTube channel. It helps us a lot. You'll be the first to know when new shows drop.

• 3:07Steven Rinella?

  Well, you just read that.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  That's at the Meat Eater.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Phil, what's the at?

• 3:14Speaker 04

  No, it's just the Meat Eater Podcast Network.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's just really helpful for our network if you all subscribe.

• 3:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, do a solid. Do a solid for your fellow. Meat Eater Roast, we've got a new episode dropping today.

• 3:30Steven Rinella?

  Me and Yanni have a showdown in Meat Eater Roast, and me and Yanni's wives judge it. You know, someone pointed out to me, they said they'd never tell anybody this, but they said, someone that watched the cut said,

• 3:48Steven Rinella?

  "Your wife hacks on your cooking," because she does. But he says she gets visibly defensive when someone else hacks on your cooking.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 3:56Steven Rinella?

  Which I haven't watched to take note.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  You know, after you guys filmed that, man, Yannis, Yannis did not have a lot of good things to say about you. He said you were just like scattered all over the place, trying to do too much at once.

• 4:10Steven Rinella?

  He said that?

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 05

  This is all getting cut out, by the way. We can't spoil the episode.

• 4:19Steven Rinella?

  Who's do, uh, so our Save Tucker Town campaign, who's got the, the, oh, the donation deadline is May 14.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. So just, just pay attention to that. And we've just got a couple more days.

• 4:29Steven Rinella?

  So again, what, help me.

• 4:31Speaker 06

  They're at $163,000 raised out of the $200,000 goal, which will be matched by 100,000 for Meat Eater and 100,000 for OnX.

• 4:42Steven Rinella?

  And what's the closest, what's the closest municipality here? Well, how do we say in your neck of the woods?

• 4:48Speaker 06

  It's, uh, southeast of Salisbury, North Carolina.

• 4:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 4:54Speaker 06

  Uh, northeast of Charlotte.

• 4:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So two things out of North Carolina today. Just as a recap.

• 5:01Speaker 06

  Halfway between Winston-Salem and Charlotte.

• 5:03Steven Rinella?

  Alcoa, who's heavy aluminum, heavy aluminum business, Alcoa owned a bunch of land near the Tucker Town reservoir. They'd always manage it as public land. Alcoa wants to divest of that asset. Okay. So one option when divesting from an asset is they would just sell it off and then people are going to buy it and it'll become like houses. Or you contribute to the effort to like buy it and make it permanently public land. So we're at Meat Eater working with OnX and we're doing a matching thing.

• 5:39Steven Rinella?

  Your donations come in, we match them dollar for dollar up to the point that we hit 200 grand. No. Is that right? 200 grand of matches.

• 5:45Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 5:46Steven Rinella?

  Something like that.

• 5:46Speaker 06

  Yes. We have 200,000 in matching funds.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  So you guys can go to themeater.com and search land access and, uh, our land access 2026 page will pop up. And, uh, there's a link to make a donation there.

• 5:59Speaker 07

  I killed a big old whitetail buck on some former Alcoa land.

• 6:03Steven Rinella?

  In North Carolina?

• 6:04Speaker 07

  No, different state.

• 6:05Steven Rinella?

  Did you really?

• 6:05Speaker 07

  It's hanging in the Meat Eater store.

• 6:07Steven Rinella?

  What state?

• 6:10Speaker 07

  Texas.

• 6:11Steven Rinella?

  Why are you being weird about it?

• 6:12Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 6:14Steven Rinella?

  Your spot burned Texas.

• 6:16Speaker 06

  Alcoa has 10 acres there.

• 6:18Speaker 07

  This is why I told you. Texas and I decided it was okay.

• 6:22Speaker 07

  It used to be.

• 6:23Steven Rinella?

  I heard on that podcast, there's some deer in Texas.

• 6:27Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 6:28Steven Rinella?

  Go down there. Randall, yeah, did you win?

• 6:32Speaker 06

  No, I didn't. I didn't.

• 6:34Steven Rinella?

  That's a spoiler alert.

• 6:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, I went down.

• 6:40Speaker 06

  By the time you're listening to this, it would be the weekend before last to the very southeastern corner of Wyoming. Just across from the Kansas, or I'm sorry, the Nebraska border.

• 6:52Steven Rinella?

  Did you hear any turkey's gobble?

• 6:54Speaker 06

  Nope.

• 6:54Steven Rinella?

  Not a single gobble the whole time?

• 6:56Speaker 06

  Nope. Nope.

• 6:59Speaker 06

  Yes, shot the KRG Extreme ELR match hosted by High Plains Precision.

• 7:06Steven Rinella?

  So that's extreme.

• 7:08Speaker 06

  Extreme long range.

• 7:09Steven Rinella?

  Extreme, extreme long range.

• 7:11Speaker 06

  Yes, yes. And this is something that there's a lot of very dedicated practitioners of the, of the discipline. And I went down there with zero preparation or training. I finished 118 out of 137 and I was.

• 7:26Steven Rinella?

  You beat some guys.

• 7:27Speaker 06

  Yeah. And actually.

• 7:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but you were like, you're competing against like military snipers.

• 7:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, and just mostly enthusiasts, but I had. There were only three people who hadn't shot this exact match before, and I was one of them. So I like to think of it as.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  Great. That's like, that's like.

• 7:43Steven Rinella?

  It's not about who you.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:45Steven Rinella?

  It's about who you beat.

• 7:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was gunning for number 136 and I surpassed my hopes and expectations.

• 7:53Steven Rinella?

  How many people did you beat?

• 7:55Speaker 06

  19.

• 7:57Steven Rinella?

  I feel like you could have said, you could have said.

• 7:59Speaker 06

  21.

• 7:59Steven Rinella?

  I went down there and bested.

• 8:01Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 8:02Steven Rinella?

  I bested 19 competitors.

• 8:04Speaker 06

  Hold on, I'm doing all my math wrong. Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Like in some other world, that's like.

• 8:07Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  And I'd just say. Really high.

• 8:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'd say nothing more.

• 8:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:10Steven Rinella?

  I bested 19 competitors.

• 8:12Speaker 06

  So there's a couple of ways of looking at it. Either I exceeded my expectations or I came in near the very tail end of the finishers.

• 8:22Speaker 06

  I hit like between 23 and 24% of my points. And the winner only got 70%. Of the points available.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 8:31Speaker 06

  So.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  What was the longest shot you made?

• 8:34Speaker 06

  In practice or during the match?

• 8:35Speaker 03

  During the match, practice.

• 8:37Speaker 06

  During the match, my longest shot was thirteen fifty-three.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  Holy.

• 8:41Speaker 06

  That was my, my first.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Did you go over a mile in practice?

• 8:45Speaker 06

  My longest first round impact, yeah, I went twice. Well, I had three hits over a mile in practice. The longest one was twenty-three, twenty-three.

• 8:54Steven Rinella?

  You hit at that?

• 8:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:55Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I was saying to him that it's long when there's no year that was that year.

• 9:02Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:05Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's talking about other distances that had years.

• 9:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:08Steven Rinella?

  Like nineteen eighty-five.

• 9:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, eighteen thirty-three.

• 9:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but then you get into thing that a year that hasn't happened, that's a long ways a shot.

• 9:15Speaker 06

  It is.

• 9:16Steven Rinella?

  Cause then you're like into like two thousand twenty-seven.

• 9:20Speaker 06

  But another way of thinking about that is a ninety-five yard shot is so much further removed from where we are today.

• 9:26Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:27Speaker 06

  That it, it maybe that's more alien than like twenty twenty-nine.

• 9:31Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 9:32Speaker 06

  Um, yeah, it was good.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  Did you know you had it in you?

• 9:35Steven Rinella?

  Did you go by yourself?

• 9:36Speaker 04

  That's a long time.

• 9:37Steven Rinella?

  Did your wife go?

• 9:38Speaker 06

  No, she found out how far away it was and she didn't go.

• 9:41Steven Rinella?

  And she backed out?

• 9:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, so did Phil, actually. Um, I had a couple of people that wanted to go and then they found out I was driving nine hours and they didn't go, but.

• 9:49Steven Rinella?

  Why did Phil back out?

• 9:51Speaker 06

  Uh, it's just basically the drive time.

• 9:53Steven Rinella?

  Is that true, Phil?

• 9:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wa- yeah, I thought it'd be a fun time. There was karaoke to be had, so, you know.

• 9:58Speaker 06

  Yep, lost my voice in karaoke.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  That was a big carrot for me and I just, the drive was too much.

• 10:02Steven Rinella?

  Does the karaoke rolled into the shooting contest?

• 10:04Speaker 06

  Uh, it's sort of a natural outgrowth of the, we, we also did trivia. I hosted trivia on Friday night with, with the match director.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  What?

• 10:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, this is the whole thing. I got a, when I was deer hunting last year, I got a message on Instagram from Jose Gardner, friend of the program. Uh, and he said, look, I host this match in Wyoming in May, and I think you'd have a good time. Plus, I've always wanted to have ballistics related trivia. And I said, I'm in.

• 10:37Steven Rinella?

  Who wrote the trivia, him?

• 10:39Speaker 06

  No, I did, I did most of it.

• 10:41Steven Rinella?

  Did you, did you?

• 10:42Speaker 07

  He said it'd be too hard for us because it's all about long range shooting.

• 10:46Speaker 06

  We're too dumb. But a man who wrote a book on ballistics told me it was good afterwards.

• 10:53Steven Rinella?

  The trivia.

• 10:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:54Steven Rinella?

  Did you have anything in there about the Coriolis effect?

• 10:56Speaker 06

  I did.

• 10:57Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I probably passed.

• 11:00Speaker 06

  Have you seen the movie Shooter with Mark Wahlberg? No, I have not. Oh, it's a key plot point.

• 11:05Steven Rinella?

  Quick thing, I've, I've talked about this book two times on the show, but I didn't know what it was. I knew that there was some kind of a firewood book. And I knew that it had something to do with the Northern Europeans. I'm holding it in my hand. Jim Zumbo gave it to me. This is a fetishist text. If you have a firewood fetish, this book is for you.

• 11:28Steven Rinella?

  But finally, the mystery is solved. Norwegian wood chopping, stacking and drying. But kind of redundant.

• 11:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:35Steven Rinella?

  Hum it.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  I think it's Norwegian wood, right? Then.

• 11:39Speaker 06

  That's what it is.

• 11:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that makes more sense.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:42Steven Rinella?

  The title, okay.

• 11:45Steven Rinella?

  That's true. I was, it could be titled Norwegian wood chopping. Stacking and drying wood, the Scandinavian way, or you could read it. Norwegian wood.

• 12:00Steven Rinella?

  Chopping, stacking and drying wood, the Scandinavian way. Either way, I would have never had a redundancy of words between my title and subtitle.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  Maybe it's been translated. Yeah, and there's no better word.

• 12:17Steven Rinella?

  But I'm telling you what, man, if you get your jollies off looking at expertly stacked wood.

• 12:26Steven Rinella?

  Phil, where, how do we, where can I put this?

• 12:28Speaker 05

  Just no, point at, point at the camera in front of you.

• 12:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:32Steven Rinella?

  Can you zoom in on that?

• 12:34Speaker 06

  Not an inch of it.

• 12:35Steven Rinella?

  If I had that, I'd say, no one burn any of that shit.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Should

• 12:41Steven Rinella?

  Can they see it good? Can I see what they see? Or can't you do that?

• 12:43Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I can. I can show you that.

• 12:45Steven Rinella?

  I want to see if there's. Oh, they can see it.

• 12:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:47Steven Rinella?

  That's nothing. Look at this.

• 12:48Speaker 06

  I like how he's used all those pallets.

• 12:50Steven Rinella?

  This dude built a house out of firewood. Wait a minute. Where's this guy?

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Is that house meant for burning or living?

• 12:56Steven Rinella?

  That's what we were talking about. You can tell. You can tell a guy like, hey, man, just step into that little house there and make yourself comfortable. Um, can I show this one, Phil?

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 13:05Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. There's nothing yet.

• 13:06Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  That's nice.

• 13:08Steven Rinella?

  Nothing, because wait till I find the house.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  Maybe that needs to be the new calendar.

• 13:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, there's some dudes in here that can stack some wood, man. But there's a guy that made a, uh, damn it.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  And also, just a quick note, the title is, I think, a play on the Beatles song, Norwegian Wood. So I don't think it's a translation thing.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Great song.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Kind of a bummer.

• 13:31Speaker 05

  The Buddy Rich Big Band has a just face melting cover of it. If you like jazz, just throw that out there.

• 13:37Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Did I tell you that jazz? Oh.

• 13:41Speaker 06

  Norwegian Wood parenthetically, the bird has flown.

• 13:43Steven Rinella?

  Can you zoom in on this one, Phil?

• 13:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  It was silo. Wow.

• 13:47Steven Rinella?

  That's a stack of firewood.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Damn, those people are talented.

• 13:51Speaker 06

  Long winters.

• 13:52Steven Rinella?

  Well, Jim Zumbo, I never found the house. There's a house made out of firewood in there. Jim Zumbo said he has firewood OCD. When he was on the show, he has like a problem with firewood. And so I think he does this kind of deal.

• 14:07Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  Maybe we should do sheds at his place.

• 14:11Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Meat eater sheds.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, why has no one done that?

• 14:14Speaker 04

  Well.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  There you go, Corinne. Great idea.

• 14:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll just call him. Probably love to do it.

• 14:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay, uh, Randall?

• 14:21Speaker 06

  Me again?

• 14:22Steven Rinella?

  Are you doing this?

• 14:22Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. For those of you that are gearing up for the spring, summer, or even getting a jump start on the fall, don't miss out on our upcoming spring sale starting this Thursday, May 14th. We'll have discounts on First Light, Phelps, FHF, and up to 50% off logo wear on the Meat Eater store. We'll have There is a punctuation missing. There. Anyway, there's incredible discounts.

• 14:45Steven Rinella?

  This Norwegian book title.

• 14:47Speaker 06

  Daily deals and new products for you to check out. Um, the daily deals, I understand it's like a different thing every day. And when we're, when they're gone, they're gone. So just keep checking in. Starts May 14th. It's the spring sale.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  When did you become the guy who reads the copy in the script?

• 15:07Speaker 04

  I like it.

• 15:08Steven Rinella?

  I like it though.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  I like it, yeah.

• 15:10Steven Rinella?

  A listener wrote in, this is more news from North Carolina. Did you, did you got more you wanted to add?

• 15:16Speaker 06

  No, I just like to do more ad reads.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  I think you should do it in the, uh...

• 15:21Steven Rinella?

  Maybe he can do them till he gets good at them.

• 15:22Speaker 06

  If we ever get an offer from Arby's, I'm all in.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  I think you should do it in the Ken Burns voice.

• 15:27Speaker 06

  Yeah. We could do all kinds of different voices.

• 15:30Steven Rinella?

  A guy from North Carolina wrote in, lake...

• 15:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:35Steven Rinella?

  Junealaska. What do you think it is?

• 15:37Speaker 06

  We agreed.

• 15:38Steven Rinella?

  Junealaska. Western North Carolina, there's a lake owned by the World Methodist Organization.

• 15:48Steven Rinella?

  Now, follow along here.

• 15:50Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 15:51Steven Rinella?

  This is called, this is about a thing called the Swan Patrol.

• 15:55Steven Rinella?

  The lake is approximately 200 acres and is the only major body of water within almost three counties. Okay? It's deep in the Appalachian range. You're not allowed to hunt on it.

• 16:07Steven Rinella?

  But guys like to fish it. For the last several years, this writer says, this listener says, a local group that has been dubbed the Swan Patrol has taken up the responsibility of feeding, herding, trapping, and relocating local waterfowl.

• 16:27Steven Rinella?

  The World Methodist Organization has granted the Swan Patrol permission to rope off exceptionally large sections of the lake's bank to allow a safe nesting area for the birds.

• 16:40Steven Rinella?

  The patrol not only does this to the small population of mute swans that live at the lake, but also to all... but also to all types of waterfowl, including ducks, geese, and coots. They regularly go out in a group of up to five to six people and feed the birds massive amounts of corn.

• 17:02Steven Rinella?

  He's saying they're having such an impact that the birds don't migrate out of there. They just stay there to eat the corn.

• 17:11Steven Rinella?

  He says, I know the lake has a right as property owners to restrict bank access, but everyone's questioned around here is if they're allowed to tamper with the wildlife to this extent. No, you're not. One instance that caused much discussion locally was when a swan patrol captured a swan that accidentally went over the dam. They corralled it into a dog crate and moved it back to the upper part of the lake. Then it happened again. He says he's seen them load wild mallards into cages in their cars to take them to other parts of the lake.

• 17:47Steven Rinella?

  Is this legal? No.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  First of all, how does a swan accidentally go over a dam?

• 17:55Steven Rinella?

  That's probably their perception of it.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  He's just trying to like.

• 17:59Steven Rinella?

  Yes, their perception.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Step out.

• 18:01Steven Rinella?

  He says, I will mention, like he tells you he's going to mention it, then he mentions it. The writer says, I will mention. This group does consist of members with ages ranging from the 60s to their 80s.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  That's ageism.

• 18:16Steven Rinella?

  It is kinda.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  I don't like it. I experience it here.

• 18:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, cause like I could be like with those dudes and I might just seem like slightly younger.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:27Steven Rinella?

  But. Yeah, that's not a thing like just for the, that's not a thing you're allowed to do.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  He's got a point though. People that age like to tinker with shit.

• 18:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. They like to tinker.

• 18:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay, we got a special, we got a special guest in the studio tonight, joined by Sam Forsteg. Hey Steve, thanks for having me guys. Yeah, man. So what you're doing and the reason you're here, well, you're here for a couple of reasons. One, you're here because you're running in the primary. That's right. The, the, so for background, if you'd listened to the show some time ago, we had on a representative, Ryan Zinke, he's leaving. And so there's gonna be like, things are getting spicy.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:11Steven Rinella?

  There's a vacancy, you're running in the primary, seeking the, the, the pri- the Democrat primary.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  I am.

• 19:17Steven Rinella?

  For the Western Montana thing.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  That's it, Montana's first.

• 19:20Steven Rinella?

  What caught me, what, what caught my interest is your background that, um, and you might get sick of people saying this, but it just kind of, it's like said, every time I see your name, it's thrown in there, how you were a, a smoke jumper.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Smoke jumper, yeah, union leader. I, I thought you were gonna bring up the sauna, but.

• 19:36Steven Rinella?

  What about sauna?

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Oh, we got a hell of a sauna in the backyard. You'll come over for the next.

• 19:40Steven Rinella?

  You got a sweet sauna?

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, no.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  You think the Scandinavians are particular about wood chopping.

• 19:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you're, you're.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Talking about a sauna.

• 19:45Steven Rinella?

  You're a wood man, too. Yeah, so I keep saying this, that you're running and that you have no political experience.

• 19:52Steven Rinella?

  Um, this is your first time, this is your, this would be your.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  First time running for anything more than vice president of my union's local.

• 19:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so I don't mean no political experience, but on the national stage.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Never ran for much, yeah.

• 20:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And then spent all that, spent four years as a smoke jumper.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 20:05Steven Rinella?

  Tell people what a smoke jumper is.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Well, we parachute out of, parachute into wildfires to stop them before they grow. Um, idea is speed range payload. That's how you sell the program. We can get there quick, fixed wing airplanes, put them out while they're small, so you don't end up spending, you know, tens of millions of dollars fighting a wildfire. Um, and yeah, I spent eight years doing wild and fire and the last four as a smoke jumper.

• 20:25Steven Rinella?

  I never thought of that as a cost-saving measure.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the idea.

• 20:28Steven Rinella?

  Before it's on the national news and stuff.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, ideally, you get four guys on the ground, you can put something out at a quarter acre. It's a lot cheaper than you wait till you gotta bring a bunch of heavy equipment, hand crews, all the rest then.

• 20:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Well, uh, how, how did you wind up with Forest Service?

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Well, I graduated U M over in Missoula.

• 20:43Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Hold it against me and I, I worked two or three jobs at a time.

• 20:45Steven Rinella?

  I went to school there.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Oh, you did?

• 20:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Really? Oh, you got your MFA's.

• 20:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Well, um, yeah.

• 20:50Steven Rinella?

  I mean.

• 20:52Steven Rinella?

  And also.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  He also got an.

• 20:57Steven Rinella?

  An honorary degree.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, we both leave room. Um, yeah, I, I loved it there. Did not love having to work two or three jobs at a time the whole time and I still had debt on the back end. So I figured I'd do wild and fire for a couple of years, pay my debts.

• 21:08Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  When I heard you could get paid to jump out of airplanes into public lands, I figured I had to stick around long enough to do that.

• 21:14Steven Rinella?

  Is there an elimination process with that? Like, how do you go about getting in there?

• 21:17Speaker 03

  There is. So it usually takes folks till their fifth or sixth year.

• 21:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  And fire to get picked up by a jump program. Rookie training is a six week process.

• 21:24Steven Rinella?

  You apply for the program?

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Yep. Yeah. So I applied for three years running before I got picked up my fifth year.

• 21:29Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:30Steven Rinella?

  Fight and fire the whole time?

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Yep. I started over in Lincoln. That's how I knew, you know, how far north that little app goes. And I did three years in the Swan Valley in Condon on a hand crew.

• 21:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  And then I got picked up for, as a rookie candidate, and about fifty or sixty percent of people make it through. There's about a forty or fifty percent attrition rate, washout rate.

• 21:49Steven Rinella?

  Homet. So you get accepted to a program?

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:52Steven Rinella?

  And then there's a washout rate within the program?

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 21:55Steven Rinella?

  Like, once you're accepted?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 21:56Steven Rinella?

  And what, what, what, what mechanism do they use to, to, to find people's limits?

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Well, so we, the kind of standard, uh, six week program is a week of hell week where they are just torturing the hell out of you.

• 22:08Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Um, depending on the base, you might have a twenty-four hour line dig. Everybody's got to go through a hundred and ten pound pack test, eighty-five pound pack test over rough terrains. You're going over five, six thousand feet elevation.

• 22:19Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  And really, they just kick the shit out of you.

• 22:22Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  For about a week. You got to go through units week. It's a whole lot of the technical side of parachuting. Making sure you can hook up a parachute harness without any errors.

• 22:28Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Suiting up in under two minutes, rappelling out of what would be a tree if you were to tree up. And then four weeks of jump phase. And so there's a lot of, a lot of spots where you can mess up and there's not a lot of room for error.

• 22:39Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  The idea is they don't want anyone who's going to end up in the program who might be a risk to themselves or anybody else.

• 22:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  There's four of you in the woods. You don't, you don't want to have to be calling life flight or anything like that.

• 22:48Steven Rinella?

  How many times did you jump in on fires?

• 22:50Speaker 03

  I got thirty-four fire jumps total and a hundred and thirty-some altogether.

• 22:54Steven Rinella?

  Really? How many states?

• 22:56Speaker 03

  I think eight. States I got to jump in. I was I was lucky. Yeah, all over the West.

• 23:00Steven Rinella?

  So you got the jump. You're jumping into places you've never been, obviously.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  Oh, it's some of the most beautiful corners of the country, even Canada, you know, back when they had their big fire season a couple of years ago and.

• 23:08Steven Rinella?

  You got you jumped into Canada?

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Yep. Yeah, when they had that for, you know, terrible fires, he was that 23.

• 23:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  I want to say, um, yeah, I was lucky enough to be on the first wave of American jumpers to go up in 13 years. And.

• 23:19Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, four fires all over and it was, I mean, that I think they, you know, 10x to what they with their previous record had been for acres burned to was just unprecedented.

• 23:28Steven Rinella?

  You jump in on a plane and get picked up in a helicopter or walk out to your road or?

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the pack out is the famous way to get out of there. So you're jumping in and you see a smoke jumper. It looks like you got a big diaper you're wearing. That's your pack out bag. So got about 110 pounds. If you're not ordering a chainsaw, powerhead is going to be another 25 and usually you should let that stuff out of there and find a ride.

• 23:47Steven Rinella?

  So they'll often tell you to walk out, like to walk out.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's the standard procedure. If you can get a helicopter and get a rock star exit, absolutely.

• 23:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  But I mean, the idea is self sufficiency. I mean, that's you talk about cost savings. I mean, something a lot of folks don't know about jumpers is we manufacture almost all of our own materials. So everything short of the canopy is made manufactured in-house. Our kevlar jumpsuits, the bags that we're carrying.

• 24:10Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Those pack out bags. Um, yeah, a lot of sewing that goes on in the off season.

• 24:14Steven Rinella?

  What was the farthest you ever had to walk to get out of there?

• 24:17Speaker 03

  I think my longest pack out was six miles.

• 24:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  So I got lucky.

• 24:19Steven Rinella?

  Not like, not like terror. I, I, I thought if you'd have told me 30, I wouldn't have been surprised, but.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:24Steven Rinella?

  Canada, I don't know. I don't know what kind of stuff you were doing.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  If it's 30, I'm calling a helicopter. 110 pounds is a lot. Yeah.

• 24:30Speaker 07

  Did you ever have to sleep out there while fighting fire?

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. So if you're jumping, you should be ready to be out there for two weeks.

• 24:36Speaker 07

  What?

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that's, that's the expectation. Two weeks, you can extend to three. Um, if you're making it to two weeks, you probably didn't catch that thing and you're calling in a bunch of other resources to fight this fire.

• 24:45Speaker 07

  Really? What's the longest you did spend out there?

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, I had thirty one days straight, um, which was kinda skimped.

• 24:51Steven Rinella?

  What, to a place you parachuted into?

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, we parachuted into the Three Sisters Wilderness a couple, couple of years back. Um, spent just over two weeks out there and then got rolled into a complex. I ended up managing a little task force, so heavy equipment, yeah.

• 25:03Steven Rinella?

  So you like, whatever, if you got a girlfriend or something, you're like, hey, I'll be back like later or not.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  The divorce rate is high, yeah, for Wild and Fire.

• 25:09Steven Rinella?

  I'll be back later or maybe in a few weeks.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, it, it's tough staying in touch with your family. And that's the hard thing about Wild and Fire, whether you're a jumper on a hotshot crew or an engine.

• 25:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  I mean, there's just not a lot of consistency and you gotta give up your summers, you know, if nothing else. And the only way you make money, especially if you're making fifteen, sixteen bucks an hour, which was, I mean, my starting wage was fifteen bucks an hour as a smoke jumper.

• 25:28Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 25:29Speaker 03

  You only make money if you're making overtime, so if you're not on a fire, you're going broke.

• 25:33Steven Rinella?

  Fifteen bucks an hour?

• 25:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, and that, I mean.

• 25:36Steven Rinella?

  I see ads outside of the McDonald's. Better now.

• 25:38Speaker 06

  More than now.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  It's tough.

• 25:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, full time at DQ in Livingston's twenty, hard times eighteen.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  That's what got me into this, a lot of it is, I mean, our public lands employees are not paid crazy wages by any means. I mean, when I started, I was making twelve seventy an hour on the engine and, and that was the going rate. I didn't hit fifteen until I was a rookie smoke jumper. And when I was vice president of my union last year, well, that's when all the Doge cuts and all the rest started and, um, they ended up firing three hundred sixty people in one day, two Valentine's days ago. Eighty-five percent of them are making less than twenty bucks an hour.

• 26:07Steven Rinella?

  Well, that's the new Valentine's Day massacre.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  It is, absolutely, and there's a lot of inefficiencies in the federal government, believe me, I've seen them. It's not people making thirteen bucks an hour swinging a tool to keep a trail clear or road clear.

• 26:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Right, and it's, it's all the most efficient workers we got. They had GS twos that they were firing in Montana, but, I mean, that's eleven dollars and some change keeping a trail clear. You know, yeah, it's, it's absurdity and these are the people who actually do the damn work and that's who is losing their jobs, having their lives turned upside down. And when I called our congressperson's inky's office four or five times, I got crickets. So I decided if he's gonna take my coworkers and members' jobs, I'm gonna come take his.

• 26:42Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. I travel quite a bit, and when I'm home, it's very easy to stay on a rigid food routine and eat the right kinds of food at the right time. But when you're on the road, it's hard to stay in your routine and like diet can really start to fall apart.

• 27:26Steven Rinella?

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• 28:10Steven Rinella?

  recovery and consistent training performance. Visit drinkag1.com/meateater and get an AG1 Pro Yeti Shaker in your AG1 Pro Welcome Kit. Again, that's drinkag1.com/meateater. Grab yours now. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off, and you're back to being good as new.

• 28:55Steven Rinella?

  I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  So when, uh, like when you left, what was the path with leaving that and getting involved and sort of, I don't, you don't call it the, the, like the policy end of things? Yeah. Like you, you left being a smoke jumper and then came in and did a, were a union representative for who? So our union is the National Federation of Federal Employees. Okay. We. So not just fire crews? Nope. It's, it's all, it's a forest service. Yep. Branch of the union, the Forest Service Council. Our locals, the low, low national forest, the Bitterroot and the Custer Gouten out here, which we just organized last year. Good. And some of the regional offices that are getting shut down right now as they consolidate down to Salt Lake City and Denver and all the rest. Hmm. Um, that's about 800 public servants and federal employees. And yeah, a whole lot of those folks lost their jobs and we lost about a quarter of the agency in the state last year.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  And you were in this, you were in your role when that was going on? I was. I mean, I stepped into it, uh, beginning of January. So I stepped in just in time for all these cuts to start coming down. What was that like? It was chaos and it was heartbreaking. I mean, truly, I, I was, we were getting stories and calls from members like, uh, Gal Kara down in the Bitterroot. She was 15 years into her civil service. She was a, an archaeologist down in Hamilton. She got fired one day with no notice, no cause, because she just happened to have taken a lateral transfer in the last year. So she could do more remote work while she went through chemotherapy. Um, Kara was not getting rich. I, you know, fellow down in Ennis on the Custer Gouten who got a text while he's in line at the airport for his mother's funeral,

• 30:37Speaker 03

  telling him that he's lost his job and he was only a GS5. So he was losing a job. He was only making 16 bucks an hour at in the first place. And it's, I mean, it is so aggravating because these folks were not making a whole lot to begin with. And again, because this is not where the, the damn inefficiency is, right? These were the people doing. Yeah. Keeping all of these things together. And there are a lot of ways to sell off our public land, selling off the acreage is just one of them. Right? The plan right now for the Forest Service is to be, is to draw it down to one third of the staffing levels we were at a year and a half ago. You got one third of the people managing all the same lands. That's a hell of an excuse to turn around and say like, well, why ain't that trail clear? It's not working. We gotta. Yeah. To then, to then point to the ways it's not working out. Yeah. Yeah. I hear that. I hear that all the time. I don't know that.

• 31:19Steven Rinella?

  I'll be curious what you guys think about this. I don't know. I hear that, but I don't know that that will be the playbook. Yeah. I don't know. I hear it like the, the, the, a logic would go. Mm hmm. We don't need to spend a ton of time on this, but the, the people will express that the logic would be deprive the land management agencies of funding. Mm hmm. Have then watch how chaos ensues. Mm hmm. Fires, mismanagement, and then someone could say, um, look how bad they're doing. What a, what a, what a disaster. We need to do something about this and put this in the hands of someone that can better care for it. Sure. Like, I hear it. I'm not saying it won't happen. I just don't know if that, if that'll be the.

• 32:05Steven Rinella?

  Sure. The rhetoric.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  You don't think someone like Mike Lee might like make that argument?

• 32:09Steven Rinella?

  Yes, because he makes every argument. Last time it was, it was, it was illegal immigration. It was wanting to like do things a hundred miles into Montana because of illegal immigration across the Canadian border. So sure, there's some grasping at straws.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:24Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'll tell you. Okay, sure. Yes.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  And I mean, Mike Lee's gonna go for, he wants the acreage, right? He wants the land itself.

• 32:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  But what I see on the ground is, I mean, this is, it's not new. They're just stepping up the pace of this. And I mean, I was on a fire this summer. We jumped a fire outside of Steamboat Springs.

• 32:38Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  And 12 of us jump in, this thing goes to 500 acres. And so we were calling a bunch of resources in that three days in, I'm managing a task force of hand crews. And we put in an order for the most, some of the most basic firefighting implements, pumps and hoses. And they tell me, well, we're not getting those till the end of shift tomorrow because they just shut down the gear cache here in Steamboat. So we gotta overnight airmail the pumps and hoses from Denver. It'll get here tomorrow. We gotta have someone drive it up to the line. We'll get it tomorrow night. So not only is the firefighting itself taking longer, but we're paying so much more to overnight airmail thousands of pounds of equipment that used to be stored right there. I mean, that's the point of a gear cache.

• 33:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  And those, I mean, those examples are legion, you know, when I'm putting in order for a hand crew, it's early July and you want a hotshot crew, that's the most capable 20 people you're gonna find for firefighting.

• 33:26Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  And they tell me, well, we don't, we don't have. Any hotshot crews available. So instead of one hotshot crew, we're going to order three contract crews. Because they have less capabilities than a hotshot crew. So on paper, it looks real good to say, well, one for one, one crew, one crew. But in reality, if you're on the ground, you bet you're ordering more, more crews and we all end up paying so much more. And that's, that's, that's what I mean when I say another way of selling these things off, right?

• 33:47Steven Rinella?

  That's one of the things I came to see about the,

• 33:51Steven Rinella?

  like over the months or over the weeks about the Doge cuts was you came to see ways it brought to mind. You came to see that it created a lot of inefficiencies, like sort of accidentally. Made all these inefficiencies. And it reminds me of this passage in, in Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac where he talks about, he's talking about ecology. What are you saying? People are taking like watch parts and they don't understand what the parts do. And they're flicking them out.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:19Steven Rinella?

  And then someone later is like, you know, being like, dude, that little thing you threw out, that's like turn, that, that makes the whole thing click.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  That cog was important.

• 34:28Steven Rinella?

  And so we've had other, we had a guy from White River National Forest on, who, who took the, took the buyout and left. He's a supervisor of White River National Forest. Man, he came in and told us just, just like insane stories about things that were supposedly going to help. Or ways in which he was forced to make cuts that turned around and cost money, cost time, created problems from just having this like, what turned out to be like a very ham handed approach.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, you want to know the biggest way that we end up spending more money is if you don't have ground resources to fight a fire. If I jump in there and we're losing this thing because the wind's blowing, well, my best option is to call in air resources. So you end up calling, I mean, if, if I'm on the ground, I can't get a hotshot crew. That's when you got to call in a large air tanker to drop fire retardant at 7,000 bucks a pop. And I've stood on fires and watched more money than I will make in my lifetime fall at the bottom of a large air tanker. To put retardant along the side of a wildfire and you know where that money goes? Well, it goes to the, the contracting service, Bridger Aerospace, that just so happens to be owned by the third richest man in the United States Senate, Tim Sheehy. And you, you don't have to look too far to see where the incentive structure is. Maybe we're spending more money. It's going to a different place. I'd rather have that money staying here

• 35:45Speaker 03

  for someone making 15 bucks an hour on the district or on the fire crew than paying it to a contractor where it's just getting sucked out of all of our pockets as taxpayers, you know?

• 35:53Steven Rinella?

  What do you think drives people? Like the time you spent there? What do you think drives people to, to take a, a job where they're, um, I don't want to say compensated poorly, but take a job where the compensation isn't the point. Do you know what I mean?

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, there's a.

• 36:10Steven Rinella?

  Like what drew you to it?

• 36:11Speaker 03

  I love, I love, I love being on public lands. I like stomping around in the woods if you can get paid to do that, especially in remote places. That's the dream job. Right? I'm, I'm sure all of us can relate to that. Beyond that, it's, you know, they call it being a public servant. It's similar to what, why a librarian, librarian would work in a position where they're not getting rich. Or my dad's a public school teacher, right? There's school teachers in the state making a starting wage of thirty nine thousand, forty thousand dollars an hour right now. You know, it's, there is a sense of service to it, right? And there's a, there's something rewarding about being able to look back and say, I've been swinging a tool for the last nine days and running a saw and I just tied in that fire line. And that fire is not going to burn over that thing. And there are fewer and fewer jobs every year where you can really look at the, the labor and the, the fruit of your,

• 36:54Speaker 03

  what your hands have done and see what you've accomplished.

• 36:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  You know, that's a, that's a rare pleasure that you can't find very often in this world.

• 37:01Steven Rinella?

  I haven't watched everything you've done and, and, you know, been to your talks and stuff. I've followed enough to know that you're like, your kind of pitch to voters in the state is really, is really geared toward working. Like you spend a lot of time talking about work, the working class, working class.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I mean, when I got.

• 37:20Steven Rinella?

  You feel like that's, like that's your background. That's your people.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think that's what we're missing. Right? I mean, the average congressperson is worth twelve to fifteen times the average American right now. Um, and you wonder why there's not a sense of urgency to address all these basic issues that so many of us are living with on the ground. And I mean, I got to the end of the last fire season and yeah, I have just watched the agency I work for be gutted in the name of efficiency. And I see inefficiencies. Federal hiring is pretty damn inefficient. It takes nine months to get somebody hired on a fifteen dollar an hour job on a trails crew or a fire crew. That's inefficiency, right? Uh, workman's comp or HR, you got people spending dozens of man hours just to chase down a workman's comp claim for somebody who broke their back parachuting into a fire, you know, like that, that is inefficient. The guy making thirteen bucks an hour swinging a tool is not inefficient.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  And whether it's fire or any other job, you can tell the difference when somebody making the calls has never been on the ground doing the work. And that's what it feels like in this country right now. You know, people are struggling to afford a roof over their head or healthcare or all the rest and the people who are making the decisions have not experienced that. You know, I mean, when I was a kid, my belly was full because of food stamps for a while. My dad was getting his feet underneath them. Thank God. You know, there's not a lot of people in Congress who've ever lived through that or who've been working three jobs at a time and still come up short on rent, like a lot of people in this state and this country are. And I think that that lived experience influences the sort of policymaking you're doing and where you're going to be looking to cut if you are going to be making those cuts.

• 38:45Steven Rinella?

  Are you, um, let's say you get the nomination. Are you sweating it for when the whole part of the campaign comes when it's just all like negative, negative, negative, and people are attacking you left and right? Does that make you nervous?

• 38:56Speaker 03

  You know, I, I'll say we're in a primary right now. The election is June 2nd, so everybody makes sure you're registered. But I mean, every time I, you know, get a new, a big endorsement or we, uh, you know, have more support kind of bubble up or a social media video pop up, the negativity starts already. And we're really, I'm making sure to make this a positive campaign and talk about, I'm so tired of all, of politics where it's just anger, anger, anger, and people screaming into a cell phone screen. Like that doesn't get us anywhere. That gets us to a Congress that's the least productive in American history right now in terms of bills passed. Um, and I, the policy experience I do got is I did some organizing and advocacy between fire seasons. I work for the State Library Association, a group of homeless shelters, um, just trying to do good where I could between seasons. And

• 39:39Speaker 03

  they still get things done at the Montana Legislature. You got to pass a budget. It has to be balanced. They got to pay for everything. And even, you know, we had the first Republican super majority in state history in 2023, and we managed to get some aid for homeless shelters passed because we're in Bozeman, right? You have people living on the back of their cars and trailers who've been living here their whole life. That's not a partisan issue. Um, and you don't get those things done by standing in a room and screaming at everybody about everything you disagree with. You got to, you have to be able to talk past that. And that just feels like a lost art in modern politics.

• 40:09Steven Rinella?

  I read somewhere that you were saying when this is all done, you know, that you're gonna have to go back out and look for a job.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, I'm broke. I'm broke. But that's the point, right? We, I think we need some broke people in politics.

• 40:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, no, man. Like, yeah, you'd be like, you'd be like looking in the help wanted ads.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and I want to be clear, nothing wrong with success. You don't have to villainize prosperity for any of this.

• 40:30Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  But it ain't what we're missing. When, again, like, the average congressperson is worth fifteen times as much as, as the average person, we, we have a lived experience gap in the halls of power and our decision makers.

• 40:41Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  And I actually think that if we, you know, one of the things I talk about, what I learned in my advocacy time, is there are dark smoke-filled rooms in politics. It's called a conference committee. Anytime the two chambers, the House and the Senate pass a different bill, well, they have to reconcile and it ends up with eight or ten people in one room making all of the decisions for what is going to become law. And if every single person in that room is worth, you know, multiple millions of dollars, well, you bet they're going to be a whole lot more willing to give away the money we're spending on food stamps or SNAP benefits. They're going to be able to, they're going to be willing to give away the people who are making fourteen bucks an hour because they don't know that those are the people that make this thing work.

• 41:18Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  And there are so many ways that we could find efficiencies in our government. Um, we have not found them at all. We're going to have a lot of rebuilding to do on our public lands and everywhere else. And I, I would just offer that if we want a government that actually works for working people who are getting the short end of the stick on a lot of this stuff, we should send working people to Congress so we can, we can fight for ourselves. And the way we win this is we don't pick our own multimillionaire to go fight all the rest of them. You know, we, that's not our champion. And it has not been working for, for too long, whatever parties in power.

• 41:47Steven Rinella?

  I told you when we met over the phone, I said, you and me probably disagree on fifty percent of things. I don't know, some amount. But I think that, I, I think where we're pretty much aligned is I, I imagine you're not going to want to entertain ideas about large-scale public land transfers.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it scares the hell out of me, this notion of, under the Forest Service reorg of shutting down nine regional offices and turning it into fifteen state offices. Like, I don't know if they'll ever be successful in, in a land transfer effort, but I hope to hell they won't be. And that does not seem like a move towards efficiency. It seems like a move towards, again, taking decision-making further away from where the actual work on the ground's going on.

• 42:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I don't want to say this is the motivation, but it looks like sort of castrating. But I haven't heard, no one's tried to sell me on it yet.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:32Steven Rinella?

  I've only had people tell me all the ways it's wrong.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I haven't heard. I haven't heard the benefits of it. No, I mean, somehow we're moving decision making for the Forest Service further away from the decision makers in DC and further away from where the work's happening. Right? Not only do we lose the historic regional office in Missoula, we also lose the DC office where if the chief needs to get a message up the chain, you would think he could go across the street and talk to somebody. We're losing all that.

• 42:55Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 42:57Steven Rinella?

  Oh, man. Thanks for coming and joining us.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 42:59Steven Rinella?

  So the, so the primaries, the second?

• 43:01Speaker 03

  Primary is June 2nd. If anyone is curious, you can go to samformontana.com and see what we're all about. Got policies, endorsers, all the rest on there. And you know, you mentioned that we probably, yeah.

• 43:10Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I was gonna say, when I, I watched one of your videos where you did a house tour.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 43:15Steven Rinella?

  He lives out of his houses like, I mean, it's bigger than this, but it's like the studio.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  By a hair, yeah.

• 43:20Steven Rinella?

  And he's got his bookshelf next to his stove and he's like, it's very convenient.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  That is efficiency. That is what we need.

• 43:27Steven Rinella?

  I could just reach right over here and grab a book.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Two more steps, you're in the bathroom. Yeah, no steps wasted. And, uh, yeah, and I'll, I, I will just add, you said we probably disagree on 50% of things. Maybe it's less than that, but, um.

• 43:39Steven Rinella?

  I'll just take it to ballpark. I don't know.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:41Steven Rinella?

  We haven't talked, we, we talked about land management and we talked about, you know?

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, what I found is you agree with, we, I find I agree with a lot more than I would expect until I meet somebody. And part of what we're doing in the campaign is a series of civil discourse conversations. So I just sat down with Michelle Binkley. She's a Republican legislator in the Bitterroot Valley. And we talked about the fact that we do not agree on everything and that is okay. Because Michelle knew what it was like to be on the verge of homelessness, raising two boys. She, you know, she has, uh, worked as a waitress for 15 years in the valley. And we agree on getting people basic healthcare. We agree on making sure that people living on the streets have access to mental health services, basic things like that.

• 44:16Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  And I actually think that is as, as important as the policy specifics is just getting back to a place where we can talk past our differences.

• 44:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Find the things we agree on, because there's all these 80, 20 issues where we agree on all the basics and we just spend our time yelling about the stuff we don't.

• 44:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Calling everybody evil.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 44:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. There, there are very few people in this world who do not think that they're bringing the good in the way that they see it.

• 44:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Well, dude, thanks for coming out. Appreciate you taking the time to come talk to us.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Likewise, Steve. I appreciate it. All the way.

• 44:44Steven Rinella?

  Thanks.

• 44:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I got a couple of quick news flashes.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  Yep. Um, today, well, actually, now that you're listening to this, it's probably just a couple of days before. It is Steve's favorite person's birthday party, or birthday, sorry, not party. Hopefully, he's throwing himself a party.

• 45:03Steven Rinella?

  That was good.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  It's, uh, Sir David Attenborough, uh, turns 100 years old. What a milestone. Um, so we gathered a couple of interesting facts about him. He has more honorary degrees than anyone else.

• 45:19Steven Rinella?

  You, uh, I want to, like, listen, like, here's the dirty secret of the honorary degree. This is coming from an honorary.

• 45:26Speaker 05

  You're blowing up your, your whole thing, Steve, right here.

• 45:29Steven Rinella?

  What it means is you were invited to do a commencement address. So another way to put it was, he doesn't pass up a chance to do a commencement address. Would be another way of putting it.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  Right. So he has passed up, he has not passed up 31 more commencement address invitations.

• 45:48Steven Rinella?

  I'm done with commencement addresses. Mark my words.

• 45:50Speaker 06

  I hate to do this, but according to the Guinness Book of World Records, he's about 120 honorary degrees short.

• 45:57Steven Rinella?

  I know Ken Burns is way high.

• 45:58Speaker 06

  I figured, like, Gaddafi and Saddam had a lot of honorary degrees.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Or one of the most.

• 46:03Speaker 06

  Idi Amin.

• 46:04Steven Rinella?

  Who's winning?

• 46:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, shoot.

• 46:06Speaker 06

  The Guinness says it's the Reverend Theodore M. Hesberg, who's the former president of Notre Dame.

• 46:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, actually, 32 doesn't seem like a really, really large number. Maybe it's one of the most.

• 46:16Steven Rinella?

  More than 50.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  Okay, there we go.

• 46:18Speaker 06

  The king of Thailand has a lot, too.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  Randall, thank you for correcting me at the spot. So we don't have, like, 100 emails.

• 46:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no corrections on this one. We already nipped it in the bud.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  Okay, uh, he's had dozens of species named after him, including, um, I went through a whole, a whole list of them, but this one was really cool to me. It's called Nepenthes attinburrowi, or attinburrowi, which is a giant carnivorous pitcher plant. Um, so we're looking at a picture here. Imagine a, like, Bright lime neon, highlighter, green and kind of purple, red vat looking plant that holds about 1.5 liters. It's been observed to have trapped and digested a shrew. And this was discovered in 2007 in a remote area on a Philippine island. What else? He is

• 47:15Speaker 04

  one of the most, if not the most, Randall, feel free to check me on this.

• 47:19Steven Rinella?

  Well, who, by whose measurement?

• 47:22Speaker 04

  There are a bunch of websites that I looked at.

• 47:24Steven Rinella?

  That say he's one of the most traveled people in history.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. I think this was Nat Geo. It may have been Nat Geo.

• 47:31Steven Rinella?

  That sounds like a shot in the dark.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  I didn't pull up all my sourcing.

• 47:35Steven Rinella?

  The dude never passed a driver's test.

• 47:37Speaker 04

  Well, that's a different thing.

• 47:38Steven Rinella?

  No, it's not.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  He had to fly everywhere.

• 47:40Steven Rinella?

  No, he never, it's like, he never passed a driver's test. He's just been, he's been, with all due respect, I don't want to hack on an old guy. Let me just come out, I'm not going to say any of the bad stuff about him except this. My only beef with the guy, like, I'm sure he loves his country. It's not my country, so I don't care. But I'm sure he loves his country, which gets, you know, points, I guess, I suppose, even though it's not ours. My problem with this is how many nature documentaries he has ruined with his narration.

• 48:13Steven Rinella?

  That's what it sounds like. All the time. He is a one man wildlife footage ruining machine. That's my guy.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  But I guess so many people would disagree because they keep hiring him and those are wild.

• 48:29Steven Rinella?

  He just gets that job over and over again. And I'm sorry. I've been to, like, I'm a Morgan Freeman fan. He's cranking out narration now and they make him do the same annoying thing.

• 48:40Speaker 04

  So maybe it's like the way that they're, you know?

• 48:43Steven Rinella?

  Dude, the minute they get Larry the Cable Guy to start doing those, I'm all in. If Larry the Cable Guy was like, if Attenborough, I don't know how old the brother's going to live. Let's say he lives another 10 years. If in 10 years, that when he's 110, if he stops ruining nature movies and they just had Larry the Cable Guy do them, same footage, same material, Larry the Cable Guy does them, they would be good.

• 49:06Speaker 05

  That plant just ate a shrew, damn gum.

• 49:09Steven Rinella?

  Yes, it's the same footage.

• 49:11Speaker 06

  Like 10 years ago, there was, there was a wildlife documentary series and I can never remember what it, who actually narrated it.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Snoop Dogg did.

• 49:19Speaker 06

  There was one, I want to say it was like, it wasn't actually Sam Elliott, but it was like, this young American's heading out on the open range for the first time and it's like a little bison standing up, but it all sounded, it sounded like a Trump commercial.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  Okay, hold on.

• 49:32Steven Rinella?

  That would drive me nuts.

• 49:33Speaker 04

  I'm gonna move through the rest of these quickly, but one last thing.

• 49:36Speaker 06

  Maybe it's just the genre.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  Um, and, and happy birthday, David Attenborough. We talk about you all the time on the show.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  Thanks for listening.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  So there we go. Um, but shouldn't we as like a new whole, you know, video show thing that we do is like, film some nature documentaries and have, you know, different folks.

• 49:53Steven Rinella?

  You know what?

• 49:54Speaker 04

  Voice them. Why don't you?

• 49:55Steven Rinella?

  I admit, I will compete.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  That should be a new thing. You voice.

• 49:58Steven Rinella?

  Here's how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it like this. You're gonna be watching the amazing footage. I'm gonna come in now and then and be like, that's a blue shark.

• 50:08Speaker 06

  You're gonna narrate it the same way you narrate it to your family at home.

• 50:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'd be like, I'd be like, no, no, no. Those are a rainbow smell. I'm gonna say stuff like that. Cause that's all I'm wondering. It's like when I'm watching, I'm like, I just want to know what it is.

• 50:22Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm not kidding.

• 50:23Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to hear you do like verbal gymnastics of throwing your voice all over. I just want to know, is that a blue shark?

• 50:29Speaker 04

  But I think we should do versions.

• 50:30Steven Rinella?

  Thank you.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  It's like the Steve series of the same video. The Randall series of the same video, et cetera. Right?

• 50:38Steven Rinella?

  Perfect.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 50:39Speaker 06

  See who's the best. Do you remember, um, that show, what's it called? Like mystery?

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Mystery Science Theater?

• 50:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. Where they like comment on a movie as they're watching it. What you should do is comment on a narration as you.

• 50:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 06

  You know how they like to like, be like, oh, the two animals love each other and blah. They like make them like people and shit.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  This little fellow is taking a stroll.

• 51:02Steven Rinella?

  Orcas.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  Because I know when you're watching that stuff with your family, they're like, they don't actually do that. That's not true.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  I think we've got, we're on to something here. Okay, moving on. So we've talked about this before. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and whether or not on a state level, they'd be able to manage Atlantic Red Snapper. And that, that's now the case. So, so those four states have extended seasons. I'm not going to go through all the details, but like last year in 25, the season for commercial snapper was two days. Before that, it was just one day. And this year, it's about a month, a month, month and a half in most of these states. So greatly expanded number of days to fish snapper.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Recreation.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  Recreational, sorry, sorry, I said commercial, recreational.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  Okay, some bear attacks. One unfortunately, we've discovered has ended in the death of a hiker. This take, this took place in Glacier National Park, which is in Montana. The body of a hiker was found after being reported missing on the Mount Brown Trail. About two and a half miles up that trail, 50 miles from the trailhead.

• 52:31Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, he was 50 feet from the trail.

• 52:35Speaker 04

  Sorry, I just said miles, my goodness. 50 feet off the trail.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  And when he was found, it, it looked like the injuries that he or she, because they haven't released the identity of the individual. The injuries made it seem as though there, there was an encounter with a bear. So that was just the other day.

• 53:00Speaker 07

  First fatal attack in Glacier since 98. I can't believe that.

• 53:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but you're just like, you're just drawing like an arbitrary line. Like, there's been plenty of fatal attacks in like northern continental divide.

• 53:10Speaker 07

  Sure, but I can't believe they went 28 years without having one.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  When was Night of the Grizzly?

• 53:16Speaker 07

  60s?

• 53:17Steven Rinella?

  Was it 60s?

• 53:18Speaker 07

  50s, I don't know.

• 53:18Speaker 03

  Was it that long ago?

• 53:21Steven Rinella?

  Be easy to find.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  Um, and the other incident happened.

• 53:26Speaker 07

  Sixty seven.

• 53:28Speaker 04

  Just in our backyard in Yellowstone, there were two hikers that hap- they happened to be brothers. Um, and they were mauled. Um, initially one in serious condition, one in critical, I think, um, reports say that they're both, um, probably gonna make it there in a ho- uh, in a hotel, in a hospital in Idaho. And they were, uh, they were both airlifted, um, so hopefully they make it. Um, and.

• 53:59Steven Rinella?

  You know how this one, uh, they do like the last time, you know, and it's usually some long time ago.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:05Steven Rinella?

  The last time someone was, so it's the spring, right? The last time someone was injured by a bear in the park was the fall.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yep. So September twenty five. So, and then the last, um, fatality in Yellowstone from a bear was twenty fifteen, so much more recently than, uh, the last fatality in Glacier.

• 54:28Speaker 07

  Now closed down a section of the park. I was fishing in that closure area three days before this.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  Oh, no kidding?

• 54:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I don't think they should do that.

• 54:35Speaker 04

  They closed a big, they closed a big area. Um, it's like, I was just looking at the map, like.

• 54:41Steven Rinella?

  Maps on screen.

• 54:42Speaker 04

  Five by, five by like almost twenty.

• 54:45Steven Rinella?

  That's ridiculous.

• 54:46Speaker 04

  Mile area. Um, that was, that was the other day, so I'm not sure how long they'll continue to keep that closed. It's, it's just temporary, but that, that area is closed to visitors.

• 54:57Steven Rinella?

  Two guys got, um,

• 55:00Steven Rinella?

  this is pretty crazy. Two guys in Montana

• 55:04Steven Rinella?

  got charged with having two, two hundred and twenty-three ducks over their limit.

• 55:15Steven Rinella?

  Two guys are hunting in the Sun River in January. And they, again, they're hunting on private land and a game warden sees them. He goes up to see what they got going on. Two guys, okay, daily bag limit of seven ducks. These two guys have sixty-six ducks laying there.

• 55:33Steven Rinella?

  Then they go to one of the guy's shops and they had, that brought the total up. When they go to his shop and see like his butchered, partially butchered and butchered ducks.

• 55:45Steven Rinella?

  Brings them up to 223 ducks. He had two days in January when they killed 120 ducks.

• 55:53Steven Rinella?

  His claim.

• 55:56Steven Rinella?

  Was that it had been a slow year.

• 56:00Steven Rinella?

  It had been a slow year and he was just trying to get stocked up.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  I understand trying to explain yourself, but it ain't like that's gonna get you out of it.

• 56:09Steven Rinella?

  Like the words gonna be like, oh yeah, okay. Nah, I understand.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Give me your best, give me your best shot here.

• 56:17Speaker 04

  You don't just.

• 56:18Steven Rinella?

  He's like, yeah, he's like sitting in like a mountain of dead ducks. Give me your best, like, help me understand what I'm saying.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:24Steven Rinella?

  It's been a slow year.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  And to be fair, like, I'm not justifying this in any way at all, but it's actually impressive that they were like butchered and stored.

• 56:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. What's impressive? This is the thing people always overlook on stories like this, I feel. I hesitate to even say it. What's impressive? This is the thing you shouldn't say, but, but.

• 56:52Steven Rinella?

  I'm just gonna say it.

• 56:54Steven Rinella?

  That is some very good duck hunting.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 56:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that is one of them days.

• 56:58Speaker 03

  They must've hit a migration like perfectly.

• 57:03Steven Rinella?

  Most of my brain goes toward you sons of bitches. But a part of it goes to what in the hell spot they got?

• 57:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  Again, not, not.

• 57:15Steven Rinella?

  It's been a slow year and then it got really, really, really. That is an amazing two guys. To get.

• 57:26Steven Rinella?

  A 66 duck morning is an unbelievable day of duck hunting.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  Well, maybe you can find out where that was.

• 57:32Steven Rinella?

  They must have been having such a good time.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  The funny thing is, that's a slow day down in South America.

• 57:36Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  When those guys are shooting hundreds of them a day.

• 57:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, unbelievable hunting.

• 57:41Speaker 04

  These guys are neighbors.

• 57:42Steven Rinella?

  And also probably, I hate to say it, probably good wing shooting. I'm gonna stop.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably.

• 57:47Steven Rinella?

  Unless they're just water swatting them.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  There are neighbors somewhere in Bozeman, maybe someone, maybe someone feels like getting a tip from them to pass to you, so.

• 57:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, unbelievable day of hunting.

• 57:58Speaker 03

  But also very, very, very bad.

• 58:01Steven Rinella?

  Also very bad, but within that, I recognize what an unbelievable day of hunting.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:08Steven Rinella?

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• 58:51Steven Rinella?

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• 59:35Steven Rinella?

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• 59:44Speaker 02

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• 59:59Speaker 03

  Moving on to mountain lions. Pretty cool story out of Minnesota. They discovered what they

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  they discovered the first like set of kittens. It says breeding mountain lions, but I like, I can't necessarily confirm that the breeding took place in Minnesota. If you want, you got that.

• 1:00:19Steven Rinella?

  I have a feeling it took place there about.

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, but some people like she could have walked in.

• 1:00:24Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  But this just happened in April. Researchers from the University of Minnesota's Voyagers Wolf Project, which is

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  Voyagers National Park, but this was, this video was taken just south of the park. First confirmed evidence of mountain lions reproducing in Minnesota than more, in more than 100 years. They're there and like, obviously they knew.

• 1:00:51Steven Rinella?

  No arguing with that.

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  Right where those things were.

• 1:00:54Steven Rinella?

  That's not a Mississippi Jaguar either. I mean, that's a mountain lion.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it's a female and three like sub adult.

• 1:01:01Steven Rinella?

  No way.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  They believe that these kittens were probably born seven and nine months ago, so fall.

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  Fallish of 2025. Um, Minnesota's had no documented cougar reproduction for over a century. They've seen their scene occasionally. Often, like, we hear this story over and over again, like transient males wandering in from places like South Dakota. Um, the, the South Dakota mountain lions seem to get around a lot, but.

• 1:01:36Steven Rinella?

  That's all deer hair all over the ground. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:38Speaker 06

  You see a hoof flapping.

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Steven Rinella?

  Look at that, man. What a cool frickin' cat.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, so they were historically native to Minnesota, became locally extinct because of same old reasons, hunting, overhunting habitat loss. Predator eradication campaigns.

• 1:01:56Steven Rinella?

  Poisoning campaign.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  Yep. Um, and since the early 2000s, they, they've been seeing them now and then, like I said, coming in from, from western states. Um, and it's kind of a connection to a broader recovery in the Midwest. Um, and Michigan's upper peninsula, what was it, Steve, last year? You got the, the.

• 1:02:18Steven Rinella?

  I can't remember if it was last year or the year before, but yeah, some cats, some kittens showed up in Michigan.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Kitten one. So that was the, the first one. They, they found some kittens and this was in the U P in Michigan. Um, and.

• 1:02:32Steven Rinella?

  We're looking at a picture of a kitten hiding under a truck tire.

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 06

  Very cute little kitten.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  At one point, they, they, they saw these things and then they, they were seeing them without the mom around. So they're like, oh, you know, they probably died. They probably didn't make it. Well. Fast forward to this past winter and you can't, at the very top of the screen, you can see a head of a horse.

• 1:02:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  So it like, and it's insane. That's them. So it's, it's the mom.

• 1:03:03Steven Rinella?

  Damn, man, running a logging road.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. So Wisconsin, they're seeing more lions. So like they're coming back and it's a pretty cool story.

• 1:03:12Steven Rinella?

  Bring them on, dude. And then Long is like, bring them on. And then when there's a stable, good population, bring out a mountain lion season and I'm happy.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, man. And the way I look at is maybe those extinct eastern cougars are gonna come back someday.

• 1:03:28Steven Rinella?

  All those dudes back, all those dudes back 20 years ago, all over those areas.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  That sounded crazy.

• 1:03:33Steven Rinella?

  They would see him and the people would be like, you're nuts.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:03:37Steven Rinella?

  And they're right. But at the same time, in Mississippi, you are crazy.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. But like Pennsylvania, New York, like you could, you could see him getting to like the eastern continental divide in the Appalachians and doing fine.

• 1:03:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, man. That's crazy.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a cool story.

• 1:03:57Steven Rinella?

  And here's my message to Americans. No, you will not be killed by a lion. That's my message to Americans.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  And this story loosely ties into another mountain lion story that came in. Um, we had a fan write in about it to have us cover it. He was pretty worked up about it. Um, in Texas, they're looking at changing, um, a little bit how mountain lions are managed. Um, and, uh, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is urging commissioners to adopt a new reporting system for mountain lions in the state, which would basically be if you kill a lion, you gotta report it within 24 hours. And I think now mountain lions are kind of handled like vermin in Texas.

• 1:04:45Steven Rinella?

  Texas weirdly, and I don't know, I think that Texas don't.

• 1:04:50Steven Rinella?

  I'm not sure a lot of Texans are aware of this.

• 1:04:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Steven Rinella?

  You are an anomaly.

• 1:04:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Steven Rinella?

  Mountain lions are generally, across their range in North America.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  Highly managed.

• 1:05:04Steven Rinella?

  Mountain lions are generally managed as a big game species. Just if you're in Texas, and I'm not telling you not to be worked up about this because I'll get to that in a minute. But if you're in Texas, this is a message to you. Like here, we have regional and unit quotas.

• 1:05:26Steven Rinella?

  That when those quotas get filled and they have female and male components to them, it doesn't even matter if the season's over, the quota gets filled, it just shuts down. It is, there's like mountain lion tag draws.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. And generally, like, you're only allowed one a year, no matter, like, in most states.

• 1:05:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and you gotta like, put in for a permit. Wyoming manages them like a big game animal.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Colorado.

• 1:05:48Steven Rinella?

  Idaho manages them like a big game animal. Colorado manages like a big game animal. So, a little bit, it's like, yes, you had to report them. I hunt turkeys in Wisconsin. You have to report a turkey.

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:02Steven Rinella?

  You have 24 hours or 48 hours to tell them you got a turkey. So, like, the simple fact that you'd have to report a lion is not unusual.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:06:13Steven Rinella?

  It's unusual that your state manages them like opossums.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:06:18Steven Rinella?

  Like, there's no close season, no bag limit. And here's where I empathize with Texans that are worked up about this, is my understanding from private conversations with people who are in the know is that this is coming from, you always gotta look at where's it coming from. Like, if it was houndsmen and mountain lion hunters saying, you know what, we should all get together and have a reporting structure. Then you'd be like, okay, these are probably guys you could trust, and, you know, who's it coming from? What I've been told privately is this is coming from people whose aim it is, is to end the harvest or killing of mountain lions, and so that's why people are suspicious of it.

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  That's what, like, it says, hunters, some hunters and trappers have been vocally opposed to it because they see this as a step towards ending the take of mountain lions in Texas, which, man, if you're gonna fight that battle, Texas is probably not the state to fight it in, but.

• 1:07:16Steven Rinella?

  No, no. I sit on, I'm, I sit on the fence on this one. Like, because, like, report, like, there's a certain size of something. It, it, like, a hundred-pound cat, if you've killed a hundred-pound cat, it just isn't surprising to me that they would want to know.

• 1:07:37Steven Rinella?

  Like the state, that the state fishing game agency would be curious to know that you killed a big game animal.

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  That and

• 1:07:45Steven Rinella?

  It's not like this is not a shocking thing.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  Probably because of how they've been managed historically in Texas, the, the like

• 1:07:52Steven Rinella?

  Which is not managed.

• 1:07:53Speaker 03

  The fishing game department probably doesn't have a lot of information on them to begin with.

• 1:07:57Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:07:58Speaker 03

  And this is a good way to start gathering some data on mountain lions.

• 1:08:02Steven Rinella?

  But if it's coming from people who are like, our goal here is to end the mountain lion hunting. Step one is to do this thing.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Make it harder.

• 1:08:10Steven Rinella?

  So that we can get some reporting and then use that reporting to turn it into how there aren't many lions around or whatever.

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Steven Rinella?

  Um, and it's gonna, you're gonna be damned if you do, damned if you don't. If that's where it's coming from.

• 1:08:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Steven Rinella?

  If it's coming from an anti-hunting org or anti-hunting people, they're gonna, they're gonna screw you either way. You're all gonna report and they're gonna be like, my God, Texans are slaughtering a thousand mountain lions a year. Or none of you report.

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:40Steven Rinella?

  And they're gonna be like, my God, there's no mountain lions.

• 1:08:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:08:44Steven Rinella?

  Like, there's no, if it's coming from the wrong place, you cannot win.

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. But again, I just feel like Texas, it's good luck fighting that battle, you know, if that's where it's coming from.

• 1:08:55Steven Rinella?

  My message to Texans is I don't know. I don't know what to think about that.

• 1:08:59Speaker 07

  Uh, I'm gonna tell you about Walleye Weekend. Last weekend, May 2nd and 3rd was Walleye Weekend at the Iowa Great Lakes, uh, the Iowa, I'm sorry, the Iowa Glacial Lakes. The Iowa Glacial Lakes are in Northwest Iowa, uh, refers to a chain of lakes with the headliners being Okoboji and Spirit Lake. Those are the two biggest natural lakes in the state. Uh, those lakes are known for two things. One is they have a very strong boat culture that, uh, gets a lot of bachelor and bachelorette parties to wind up there. Here is me at a bachelor party there.

• 1:09:33Steven Rinella?

  What's on your face?

• 1:09:34Speaker 07

  Uh, I was trying to figure that out. I think we were playing beach volleyball that day and being, being dumb.

• 1:09:39Steven Rinella?

  You're smudging.

• 1:09:40Speaker 07

  So I, I don't know what was on our face. This was probably circa 2013.

• 1:09:44Steven Rinella?

  Is that a KG jersey?

• 1:09:45Speaker 03

  You look great. Of legal drinking age back then?

• 1:09:48Speaker 07

  Yes, I would have been freshly 21, I think, uh, wearing a Stephon Marbury Timberwolves jersey. Yeah, uh, so that's, thank you. That's, that's one thing that Okoboji has going on. The other is they have really great fishing, uh, like some of the best fishing in the state. Multiple state records have come from Okoboji and Spirit, um, Northern Pike, smallmouth bass, muskie, tiger muskie, white bass, freshwater drum, all of those Iowa state records were caught in these two lakes. Uh, here is a picture of the state record muskie that was caught by Kevin Cardwell on Spirit Lake.

• 1:10:20Steven Rinella?

  He didn't let that go.

• 1:10:21Speaker 07

  No, uh, that, that muskie.

• 1:10:23Steven Rinella?

  Fifty pound.

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  That looks like an alligator.

• 1:10:25Steven Rinella?

  Are muskies native? Is that a tiger muskie or a muskie?

• 1:10:28Speaker 07

  Uh, that is a standard muskie, but the tiger muskie state record also came.

• 1:10:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but that's a bullshit fish. I mean, with all due respect, I've caught him. It's a bullshit fish.

• 1:10:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, just a, just a hybrid.

• 1:10:37Steven Rinella?

  Uh, but with all due respect.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  With all due respect, they, they can control like rough fish populations.

• 1:10:44Steven Rinella?

  I know, but it's a, it's a make believe fish.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  It is. I don't, I'm not.

• 1:10:47Steven Rinella?

  It's a make believe.

• 1:10:48Speaker 07

  I would imagine they are native to Iowa, Brody, because the Mississippi River forms their border.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  Um, I was thinking, cause he's from South Dakota.

• 1:10:56Steven Rinella?

  I know. Every time he says something, I feel like he's talking about South Dakota. He can be showing like jungle pictures and I'd be like, I didn't know that was in South Dakota.

• 1:11:04Speaker 07

  Uh, so, so I, you know, the, the Spirit Lake and, and Okoboji, they got good fishing, good bachelor parties. Uh, walleye weekend now, it's been going on for 40 years. It's put on by the Iowa Great Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce.

• 1:11:18Steven Rinella?

  Is it gl- sure it's not Glacier Lakes?

• 1:11:20Speaker 07

  I think it's Great Lake. I don't know.

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  Glacial.

• 1:11:21Speaker 07

  Okay, it's, it's the Iowa.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  It is the Great Lakes.

• 1:11:25Steven Rinella?

  We should have had Rob Sand report this.

• 1:11:27Speaker 07

  Iowa Great Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce. They, they've been doing this for 40 years. Last year they had record breaking attendance, uh, 2,300 participants from 22 different states. It costs $30 to enter and that entry fee puts you in the running for a bunch of raffle prizes, door prizes, uh, big old trophy that they give out at the end of the weekend and then all sorts of contests. Uh, he, here's some of the contests that you're entered in. Heaviest Northern Pike, heaviest walleye, heaviest stringer of three walleye under 19 inches, heaviest stringer of five.

• 1:11:57Steven Rinella?

  Back up. The heaviest stringer of three walleye under 19 inches.

• 1:12:03Speaker 07

  I'm assuming this plays to their limits, like you, your limit is three walleye and you can only have one over 20 inches, something like that. I assume that's.

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  I think it plays to people shoving sinkers in their stomachs.

• 1:12:14Steven Rinella?

  It just plays into a very boring way in.

• 1:12:17Speaker 07

  They, they, they have all kinds of contests. My favorite one though.

• 1:12:20Steven Rinella?

  What was the biggest pike?

• 1:12:22Speaker 07

  Uh, this year wasn't big. It was like nine pounds. So that's, that's not a real special pike. Uh, my favorite one of them all though, is the heaviest stringer of 10 bull heads. That's, that's one.

• 1:12:31Steven Rinella?

  That's good. I liked it. What did that come in at?

• 1:12:33Speaker 07

  I, I will get to that later here. I don't wanna, I don't wanna ruin that part of the story. Uh, the real prize though, and this is why everyone enters.

• 1:12:40Steven Rinella?

  Is it bull heads under eight inches?

• 1:12:42Speaker 07

  No, no, just any bull head. The real prize, th- this is what gets them, you know, to have 2,300 people sign up. It's a chance to catch one of the 10 tagged walleye. Uh, now these 10 walleye are tagged with what's known as a Floyd tag. It's a little wire tag. It's like an inch or so, depending on, on the fish in the state. Uh, it has a series of numbers on it. It usually goes around the dorsal fin of a fish. It resembles like electrical wiring.

• 1:13:06Steven Rinella?

  I was just gonna say, it looks like a chunk of wiring hanging out of the fish.

• 1:13:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, or a cord from a lead ear, maybe.

• 1:13:11Steven Rinella?

  There's a wally dog in there.

• 1:13:12Speaker 07

  Yep. Typically Floyd tags, they don't contain any micro data. These are not chipped things. Uh, it's just basically an ID tag. The, the numbers that you see on the exterior of the tag, that's, that's what you get with these things. Uh, now the tagging is done by the DNR and these fish are released about a week before walleye week starts, or walleye weekend starts. Uh, they're released in both Okoboji and Spirit Lake.

• 1:13:34Steven Rinella?

  Oh, and are they catching local wally dogs?

• 1:13:36Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:13:37Steven Rinella?

  Tagging them and putting them back?

• 1:13:38Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:13:39Steven Rinella?

  They're not bringing out of town wally dogs in there?

• 1:13:41Speaker 07

  I think these are walleye from Spirit.

• 1:13:43Steven Rinella?

  Cause that'd be like a little weird.

• 1:13:44Speaker 07

  If the DNR is doing it.

• 1:13:46Steven Rinella?

  He's all hungry. He doesn't know what's going on.

• 1:13:48Speaker 07

  I'm, I'm guessing they're not pulling. Typically states don't have like a brood stock of walleye. They're going out and they're getting their walleye wild and, and getting their eggs that way. Um, now the tag is done by the DNR and, and then they're released a week beforehand. 10 of these walleye between Spirit and Okoboji. If you win the grand prize, this year that was $44,000, uh, for catching one of these tagged fish. Um, and if multiple people catch a tagged fish, this, the pot gets split between them. Uh, that rarely.

• 1:14:17Steven Rinella?

  I was thinking that could get expensive.

• 1:14:19Speaker 07

  It could. What I've learned is that their $44,000 prize is insured by a third party in cases were to come to fruition. That way they're not always sweating out they're gonna pay this out.

• 1:14:32Speaker 03

  What's the timeframe for catching it?

• 1:14:34Speaker 07

  Uh, so the, the contest starts at midnight on Friday and it ends at noon on Sunday. So you have 36 hours.

• 1:14:42Speaker 03

  So like you couldn't catch a tag fish a month later and be like, give me my money.

• 1:14:45Speaker 07

  There is a side pot that happens. You pay an extra $20 and if you catch one of these tagged walleye throughout the rest of the summer, I think you have until August, you get a much smaller prize, but they're, they're still relevant. But this 36 hour window, this is where, when you want to catch one of the 10 tagged walleye.

• 1:15:00Steven Rinella?

  This feels to me right for, um, like a really smart person to figure out what's up and rig it. Cause all they're doing is they're logging that tag number. Someone has access to that tag number.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  You don't think you'd have to provide the tag?

• 1:15:17Speaker 07

  You, you bring the fish in.

• 1:15:19Steven Rinella?

  I know, but when they let them go, someone knows the tag number and it's not released to the public. Cause then you'd have all kinds of walleye with that tag number. Someone knows.

• 1:15:30Steven Rinella?

  Maybe they got some way that like, they only know half of it and someone else knows half of it. I'll have to ask around.

• 1:15:36Speaker 07

  I don't think it would benefit you though. Again, there's no micro data. There's no like chipping these walleye.

• 1:15:40Steven Rinella?

  All you need is a tag with that number and put it in a walleye and go, ha.

• 1:15:43Speaker 07

  Okay. If, yeah, if the DNR wanted to, uh, help cheat the contest.

• 1:15:48Steven Rinella?

  So saying.

• 1:15:48Speaker 07

  They could rig it some way. Uh, so 36 hours. And, uh, the, the, to win the $44,000 grand prize. Uh, now people take this very serious because of the, the pot that's available. And they start fishing at midnight when walleye weekend begins. Uh, well, this year walleye weekend starts with a lot of excitement. At 3 a.m., uh, which is three hours into the contest, a tagged walleye gets caught. Uh, the anglers immediately head to the bait shop. They have their fish verified to, uh, claim their prize. But it turns out this tag was from last year's event.

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:16:21Speaker 07

  2025. So it doesn't count.

• 1:16:23Steven Rinella?

  Last year's?

• 1:16:24Speaker 07

  She, she's holding a 2025 tag.

• 1:16:28Steven Rinella?

  So she went in there thinking she had that much money and didn't?

• 1:16:31Speaker 07

  Did not count. The, the, the really heartbreaking thing is it, the Floyd tag was the same color. So like seeing the yellow Floyd tag, it's like, we did it. We got the $50,000 walleye. Let's go claim our prize. So a real devastating start for walleye.

• 1:16:45Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that put me right back. Drinking, man.

• 1:16:47Speaker 07

  Now it gets worse. It gets worse.

• 1:16:50Steven Rinella?

  It gets worse.

• 1:16:50Speaker 07

  No, no.

• 1:16:51Steven Rinella?

  I can't handle the heartbreak.

• 1:16:53Speaker 07

  Seven hours later at 10 a.m., a second tagged walleye shows up at the bait shop. Uh, here's what happened. The anglers said they started fishing at midnight. Uh, they, they caught a limit or roughly a limit. I couldn't get the exact details and how many walleye, but they had a number of walleye. They head home around 4 a.m. After four hours of fishing, they throw the walleye on ice, go to bed. Uh, they get up at 9 a.m. to clean their fish and it's then when they realize that one of their fish is tagged.

• 1:17:19Steven Rinella?

  Cause they were drunk.

• 1:17:20Speaker 07

  They didn't previously, maybe, I, I don't know, uh, what their BAC was. Uh, but they find that when they go to clean, one of their 15 inch walleye has a tag on. So, uh, this time the tag is from 2026. So it's an eligible fish. Uh, but here's the problem. The fish is stone cold dead and the rules explicitly state that a fish must be alive to count in the contest.

• 1:17:45Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 1:17:46Speaker 07

  So did Phil? Phil has a picture of the flyer for us and this is just page one. I highlighted the three spots where it says this. Walleye must be alive. All fish must be alive. Walleye must be recently caught alive and tagged. So it, it, they, they mean it when they put in the rules that your fish has to be alive.

• 1:18:04Steven Rinella?

  And that fish is dead or dead.

• 1:18:05Speaker 07

  Very dead. He was thrown on ice.

• 1:18:07Speaker 03

  It's a walleye. Come on. I mean, who, you know?

• 1:18:10Steven Rinella?

  Hey, rules is rules, man.

• 1:18:12Speaker 07

  That was one of last year's fish.

• 1:18:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Rules is rules.

• 1:18:15Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm. It was a 2026 fish. It, it was thrown on ice. Uh, poor guys didn't realize it until later though.

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  They were hauling them in so fast. They weren't looking for tags.

• 1:18:24Steven Rinella?

  Then what happened?

• 1:18:25Speaker 07

  Uh, well, I talked to Mason from Stan's Bait and Tackle. He was the one who checked in, uh, both the 2025 walleye at 3 a.m. and the dead walleye at 10 a.m. He personally knows the anglers who caught the dead walleye and they want to remain anonymous. Uh, but I got a lot of details from Mason. He said the anglers were aware of the rule. Uh, they, they pretty much knew when they brought the fish in that they weren't going to get their $44,000 prize. Uh, but they went and registered anyway. Then someone from the Chamber of Commerce showed up and confirmed the bad news, uh, that this fish was no longer eligible because it was dead. Uh, Mason said the anglers were pretty bummed, uh, and that they had basically accepted their fate before they even got to the bait shop that morning because they knew what was up. Uh, there's also this other wrinkle in the story.

• 1:19:08Speaker 07

  The two men didn't know which one of them caught the walleye. And this, this was going to create another issue.

• 1:19:14Steven Rinella?

  They're drunk, they're just throwing walleyes onto a cooler.

• 1:19:18Speaker 07

  This, this creates some other issues. It's an individual tournament, not a team tournament. And, and then they also administer a lie detector test. Uh, and under this scenario, neither one of them would be able to firmly say that they legally caught this fish during the tournament hours. So the whole thing was, was layered with problems. Uh, again, Mason said that these guys knew they messed up and, and they didn't really hang their heads too much. Uh, he said they planned to get the walleye mounted, actually, to commemorate the experience that they had.

• 1:19:46Speaker 06

  Commemorate the giant missed opportunity.

• 1:19:49Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 1:19:50Steven Rinella?

  See that walleye?

• 1:19:51Speaker 06

  A life-changing amount of money.

• 1:19:53Steven Rinella?

  You kids would have gone to college. If I hadn't just thrown that walleye out.

• 1:19:58Speaker 07

  And actually, the, the community has handled the news worse, uh, than those anglers did.

• 1:20:03Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:03Speaker 07

  Phil is now going to play for you a clip of someone from the Chamber of Commerce making this announcement at Walleye Week. And I want you to listen to, uh, how the crowd reacts, just how devastated they are. Uh, this video is via Travis Chin. Take it away, Phil. Got a call from Mason at Stans yesterday afternoon. Had a tag walleye coming in. Good news, bad news? Good news, tag walleye coming in. Bad news, walleye is dead.

• 1:20:31Speaker 07

  On the rule sheet, all tagged fish, all fish must be alive. So that fish was not alive. It, uh, unfortunately, the folks fished until four, four thirty in the morning, went home to their nap. Got up to clean fish. Oh crap, we've got a tag walleye. So, we felt extremely horrible about that. Uh, the other, the other issue is it's an individual tournament, right? This isn't a team tournament. They didn't know which angler caught the fish. So, that's a double, oh, okay? Mason is here from Stans and, uh, they don't want to be recognized. But they're gonna get a prize that Mason is providing on behalf of Stan's bait and

• 1:21:16Speaker 07

  tackles. Let's give Mason a big hand. Just a lot of sad news.

• 1:21:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:21Speaker 07

  Folks had delivered.

• 1:21:21Steven Rinella?

  I would have, I feel like I would have, if I was that guy, I would have told the story in a different order.

• 1:21:29Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:21:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, okay. Give us an example.

• 1:21:32Steven Rinella?

  I would have done like a narrative. He told, he, he spoiler alerted his story.

• 1:21:39Steven Rinella?

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• 1:22:21Steven Rinella?

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• 1:22:49Steven Rinella?

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• 1:23:32Speaker 02

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• 1:23:47Speaker 07

  Now, here's, here's like the biggest reason folks are upset and it's something Mason told me has been talked about for years. The rules of the tournament conflict with Iowa's AIS Aquatic Invasive Species Rules. This is from page 18 of the 2026 Iowa DNR Fishing Handbook. In big red letters, it says, quote, "Help stop the spread of aquatic invasive species. It's the law." Then below that, they explain the clean, drain, dry regulations and say, "Drain water from all equipment, motor, live well, bilge, transom well, ballast system. Before you leave a water body, drain plugs must be removed at the water access and remain open during transport." So as you can see, that makes it really difficult to deliver the Chamber of Commerce a live walleye when they're making you pull plugs.

• 1:24:31Steven Rinella?

  They should say, unless you have a $44,000 walleye dog, then it's okay.

• 1:24:37Speaker 07

  Yeah. Despite this, to Mason's knowledge, this has never happened before. This has never been a problem where a dead walleye shows up during the contest. But as you can see, Iowa's rules make it hard.

• 1:24:47Speaker 03

  So no one won a big prize?

• 1:24:49Speaker 07

  Nobody, uh, nobody has won it. No. But Mason has said that they've been mumbling about this problem for years, that, that community at large, uh, and that he actually heard that this week, there's going to be a meeting to talk about these clashing regulations that they have. Uh, you know, maybe this $44,000 walleye is what's going to finally inspire a change to allow an angler to bring in a legal walleye that's not transporting water from a lake you're not supposed to.

• 1:25:14Steven Rinella?

  God, man.

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  What happens?

• 1:25:15Steven Rinella?

  That story's got. Layers dude.

• 1:25:17Speaker 06

  What happens to prize money if no one wins?

• 1:25:19Speaker 07

  Uh, so it increases the next year, actually. Yeah, the, the weekend tournament's over. Again, if you paid the extra twenty dollars, you have a chance to catch one of these. While I later this summer, it's a much smaller prize at that point. Uh, and, and my understanding is the prize money will increase next year because of that.

• 1:25:36Steven Rinella?

  You know, you talk about that insurance outfit that ensures those kind of things?

• 1:25:39Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:25:40Steven Rinella?

  I was at this event one time and there you could roll, it was a conservation org event and you could roll dice to win a truck, brand new truck.

• 1:25:48Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:25:49Steven Rinella?

  I think you had to take a five or six pack of dice.

• 1:25:52Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:25:53Steven Rinella?

  And roll all one of a kind, which is, I looked it up at the time, it's not gonna happen.

• 1:25:59Speaker 07

  I've seen it happen.

• 1:26:00Steven Rinella?

  You have?

• 1:26:02Speaker 06

  Yahtzee's.

• 1:26:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I think, wasn't it, no, no, no, it wasn't, I think it was six. Shake a day is five.

• 1:26:08Speaker 06

  Five, yeah.

• 1:26:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I think it was six. Anyways, they had, the, the insurance guy was there. I was shooting the breeze with him. Um, you know what he did? He's got these dice, they got, he's got this thing out, he had, he weighs, he weighs all the dice. Inspects all the dice and he took a caliper, a digital caliper.

• 1:26:27Speaker 07

  Love this.

• 1:26:28Steven Rinella?

  To the dice.

• 1:26:29Speaker 06

  No, you have to.

• 1:26:30Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Steven Rinella?

  And no one even came close.

• 1:26:36Steven Rinella?

  To win that truck.

• 1:26:37Speaker 07

  I paid for Shake a Day for the table at the bar, and this was a few months ago, and Randall won the damn thing. Uh, and so we like started going crazy. It was a seventy dollar pot.

• 1:26:47Speaker 06

  So I bought, I bought the most loaded nachos I could for the table.

• 1:26:51Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:52Speaker 06

  And then I thought the, the, the server wanted to cash us out. And I gave her all of the cash, which included a rather generous tip.

• 1:27:03Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:03Speaker 06

  And I said, you know, the rest is for you. And she said, I know.

• 1:27:09Speaker 06

  And then it was too late to take it back. It was the most sort of passive aggressive. In that moment, I went from feeling.

• 1:27:15Steven Rinella?

  Why was she mad at you?

• 1:27:16Speaker 06

  I went from feeling very large to very small.

• 1:27:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but why was she, why was she upset? I don't know. Were you guys being rude?

• 1:27:22Speaker 06

  No, we were, I thought we were.

• 1:27:23Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:27:24Speaker 05

  The place is out of business now, so.

• 1:27:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:27Steven Rinella?

  I'm surprised, so you guys went out drinking without me?

• 1:27:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, we did.

• 1:27:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:31Speaker 07

  Yeah. There were other coworkers there, too.

• 1:27:32Steven Rinella?

  I think a lot of that stuff happens, to be honest with you.

• 1:27:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, you should feel even worse, you just seen the group.

• 1:27:35Steven Rinella?

  I think that happens a lot.

• 1:27:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:27:36Speaker 06

  It was never invited.

• 1:27:38Steven Rinella?

  Do you want to go out drinking?

• 1:27:39Speaker 07

  No. What was never acknowledged, if that pot had been like $1,200, Randall, what, what percentage would I get of that? For buying your $1 shake a day?

• 1:27:46Speaker 06

  I would have, I would have ordered some sort of strange, uh, curiosity off eBay for you.

• 1:27:51Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:27:52Speaker 06

  That's related to rocks or made up animals.

• 1:27:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, because I, I would have felt entitled to a little bit of that.

• 1:27:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I, I want to be asked to do stuff, but I don't want to be asked, you know? I'm just gonna say no.

• 1:28:03Speaker 07

  Yeah. Uh, now, at the end of the video earlier, you heard the dude in the mic say that, uh, Mason from Stan's Bait Shop gave the two anglers a prize because he felt so darn bad for them. Mason didn't need to do that. These prizes come from the, uh, Chamber of Commerce, uh, and, and he said that Mason, that they felt like, you know, they deserved something. So he gave him a couple St. Croix tournament rods.

• 1:28:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, great.

• 1:28:25Speaker 07

  Which is like, that's a great walleye rod worth north of, you know, 300 bucks. So good on Mason.

• 1:28:29Steven Rinella?

  Awesome.

• 1:28:29Speaker 06

  That's a great tackle shop.

• 1:28:30Speaker 07

  And while I had Mason on the phone, I asked him for a fishing report so I could deliver, you know, some real information to our Iwi-ian listeners. Uh, here it is. Spirit Lake has been pretty good for 12 to 14 inch walleye, but you need to do a lot of sorting to find the bigger ones. There's some good crappie and perch fishing, too. Okoboji, guys are doing real well on 17 to 19 inch walleye. Some 20 plus inchers being caught, not quite as much action as Spirit, though. The panfish and bass bite has been hot lately for either lake. He recommends trolling crank baits in 8 to 15 foot of water. Uh, sweet spot seems to be around the 10 to 12 foot range. He says guys are also finding success pitching jigs around the basins in 18 to 20 feet of water. Uh, so there's your mid-May fishing report for Iowa's.

• 1:29:13Speaker 06

  Excited.

• 1:29:14Speaker 07

  Iowa's Great Lakes.

• 1:29:15Steven Rinella?

  Sounds great.

• 1:29:15Speaker 07

  Now to circle back, what I found to be the most. Interesting part of the contest is the 10 stringer bull head contest. The winner this year had a bag of 14.32 pounds. Uh, that means his average bull head was about one and a half pounds. That is a lunker bull head. Uh, Chris Daisy, he, he was the champion for the fourth year in a row. Here's a post game press conference interview that Dave Mashoff got with Mr. Bull Head Champion. Play it, Phil.

• 1:29:42Speaker 03

  We're here at the 44th annual Great Walleye Weekend and the heaviest stringer of bull head was 14.32 pounds. Uh, won by Chris Daisy of Spirit Lake. And this is the fourth year in a row that you've won that category, Chris. What's the secret?

• 1:29:56Speaker 06

  Lots of fishing, lots of, lots of night crawlers and, uh, lots of sore fingers.

• 1:30:01Speaker 03

  Well, what were you using for bait on those bull heads?

• 1:30:04Speaker 06

  Uh, mostly night crawler, lead head, just casting up underneath, uh, the tubes there at Buffalo Run and up on the grade.

• 1:30:11Speaker 03

  So that seemed to be a pretty hot spot?

• 1:30:12Speaker 06

  No, it was, uh, this was a hard year for bull heads. It took a lot of, a lot of fishing, a lot of sorting.

• 1:30:19Speaker 03

  What do you attribute the, the tough go for?

• 1:30:21Speaker 06

  Uh, my grandpa used to bring me up here as a little kid, so I just keep it going.

• 1:30:27Speaker 03

  You say it was kind of tough fishing for the bull heads, uh, colder water or what, uh, do you attribute that to?

• 1:30:32Speaker 06

  I think it is, yeah, a lot colder water. We had a cold snap up here, so it slowed everything down. I mean, the big walleye were biting good this weekend, but everything is a lot of fish, so had to go for something.

• 1:30:43Speaker 03

  Well, congratulations again, a fourth year in a row on the heaviest stringer of a bull head, 14.32 pounds.

• 1:30:49Speaker 07

  You don't want to see Chris Daisy entering your bull head contest.

• 1:30:51Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:30:52Speaker 07

  He's going to clean up.

• 1:30:53Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you, that interviewer.

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  This is Dave Mashoff.

• 1:30:55Steven Rinella?

  Dave Mashoff?

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:57Steven Rinella?

  You see that move he did? He asked a guy a question. The guy didn't understand and answered something different.

• 1:31:02Speaker 07

  He didn't.

• 1:31:03Steven Rinella?

  So he just very smoothly did his question over again with different words. And then nailed it the second time and never, it never phased him.

• 1:31:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, kept on trucking.

• 1:31:12Steven Rinella?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  Professional hard hitting journalism there.

• 1:31:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's never like, hey, you misunderstood or, or, you know, he just is like bam.

• 1:31:20Speaker 03

  That's an underrated fish, man, the bull head.

• 1:31:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:31:24Steven Rinella?

  Randall, that was a great segment. That was, it had a lot of layers to it.

• 1:31:26Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:31:27Steven Rinella?

  Uh, like, like money won and lost.

• 1:31:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, uh, the Department of Interior announced this week that they're officially conveyed or have conveyed 1.4 million acres of BLM lands along the Dalton Highway to the state of Alaska. Phil, do you have the, uh?

• 1:31:48Speaker 06

  So, so what we're looking at here on the screen is a map of the great state of Alaska. And you can see the Dalton Highway running there from, goes from Fairbanks up. I don't really know if it officially starts in Fairbanks, but basically goes from Fairbanks up to Prudhoe Bay, like across the North Slope.

• 1:32:06Steven Rinella?

  Well, yeah, no, it does.

• 1:32:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, so.

• 1:32:09Steven Rinella?

  I mean, the pipeline goes all the way down.

• 1:32:11Speaker 06

  Right, right. Um, so anyway, basically, you'll see this called a, a, a public land transfer. And that's exactly what it is. However, um, under the terms of the Alaska Statehood Act, uh, that law authorized the transfer of approximately 105 million acres of federal land to the state of Alaska. And, uh, not all of that land has been transferred up until now. So there's, I think what I saw, there's approximately 5.2 million acres that the state was entitled to, and the state has wanted lands along the Dalton Utility Corridor.

• 1:32:50Speaker 06

  Uh, the utility corridor is essentially, um, a 244 mile, uh, strip of ground along the pipeline that was set aside by the Nixon administration in the seventies, uh, with public land, I guess ordinance, just PLO 550 and 5180. Um, and it was a buffer zone. It also importantly connects a bunch of other public land. So it, it, it borders, uh, the Kenutti National Wildlife Refuge, the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, and both the gates of the Arctic National Park and ANWR.

• 1:33:31Speaker 06

  Um, so it's essentially a strip, a long strip of BLM land that's now been transferred to the state, um, for energy development. And the way this basically went down was they had passed a resource management plan for, uh, these BLM lands in the past few years. Uh, Congress used the CRA, which is the Congressional Review Act, the same thing that they did with the Boundary Waters to, uh, nullify that resource management plan. And then, uh, Secretary of the Interior Burgum revoked, uh, PLO 5150 and 5180, um, in February, I believe.

• 1:34:11Speaker 06

  And then finally, they they did this transfer. So it's been a long, sort of slow running process that led up to this. It wasn't really something that was like out of the blue overnight. Um, the state has always wanted these lands for, uh, resource extraction.

• 1:34:28Steven Rinella?

  This, I mean, it it's an industrial, yeah, I get, it's an industrial corridor as is.

• 1:34:34Speaker 06

  It's called the Hall Road.

• 1:34:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, right. It's like a road that parallels a giant pipeline.

• 1:34:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so, so, I mean, I, I talked to several people about this and their take was it's a bummer that they gave them basically everything that they asked for because some of it really isn't suitable for resource extraction.

• 1:34:54Steven Rinella?

  But they're not going to restrict, the state's not going to restrict access off that.

• 1:34:58Speaker 06

  No, no, the, the state is entitled to make these claims. Um, one concern, it doesn't green light Ambler Road, but it removes one of the barriers to building the Ambler Road. Um, and so again, that's the 200 mile road that would cut uh, west across the Brooks Range. Um, and so it's, you know, there's kind of two different, kind of two different takeaways. One is like, yeah, ideally, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Um, but at the same time, the state is entitled to these lands under the, uh, the Statehood Act. And so.

• 1:35:36Steven Rinella?

  They will eventually get, they will eventually do their claims.

• 1:35:39Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. And so it's kind of, you know, wait and see what happens. But again, like also keep your eyes on, on Ambler.

• 1:35:47Steven Rinella?

  There was some of that, there was some of that transfer down where we hang out down in southeast.

• 1:35:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:54Steven Rinella?

  I mean, the state has, yeah. Uh, I've hunted off that highway a fair bit, but always north of that, always north of those new lands.

• 1:36:04Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. And it's.

• 1:36:05Steven Rinella?

  Cause they, they own right over the crest of the, over the, so that there's the seeding, the land they're seeding is on the north side of the Brooks Range. And we used to hunt off that Hall Road north of there yet.

• 1:36:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, and it's like a popular walk in area for caribou hunting.

• 1:36:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we would canoe in, but.

• 1:36:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:36:23Steven Rinella?

  You can't, you can't fire a rifle than five miles of that pipeline. So it's a big bow hunting corridor through there.

• 1:36:28Speaker 06

  So that's the, that's the news in public lands this week. Um.

• 1:36:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay, over to Michigan. Over to Michigan. Um.

• 1:36:41Steven Rinella?

  They have expanded the controversial for no reason. They have expanded walleye spearfishing in Michigan. So in 2021, the state came in and created a spearfishing season. For walleye, lake trout and northeast, northern pike.

• 1:37:02Steven Rinella?

  And they did this in experimental thing where they created two zones. They made a zone in Lake Michigan, everything south of the Southern Pier and Grand Haven, south. Lake Michigan only, not the interior waters. Was open to walleye spearing. And then they took an area in Lake Huron and it was south of Thunder Bay. They made it open for spearing, uh. Lake trout, walleye, northerns. Fish that previously you had not been able to do underwater spearfishing. You could underwater spear, you could, you could through the ice spear northern pike, but you couldn't underwater spearfish. Lot of walleye fishermen had a conniption about it.

• 1:37:46Steven Rinella?

  What they did was, cause like they're gonna kill all the walleyes. So what they did was you had to get a special walleye, you had to get a special spearfishing permit and you had to report all your harvests. Okay? They did it for their three years. They had another year of reporting and now they have greatly expanded. Spearfishing opportune, underwater spearfishing opportunities.

• 1:38:11Speaker 03

  You may not know this, but like for the, the.

• 1:38:14Steven Rinella?

  Who might not?

• 1:38:15Speaker 03

  You, I'm gonna ask you. The, for all the like thousands and thousands of walleye rod and reel anglers that were mad about the spearfishing, do they know how many, how few people actually?

• 1:38:28Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna tell them, they're gonna know in a minute.

• 1:38:30Speaker 03

  That's what I wanna know.

• 1:38:31Steven Rinella?

  They're gonna know some stats.

• 1:38:32Speaker 03

  I wanna know.

• 1:38:32Steven Rinella?

  They're gonna know some stats. The controversy is not over.

• 1:38:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:36Steven Rinella?

  With these proposals, so a, a, a friend of mine, Jonathan Durka was, is like a, a spearfisherman who's like really been ushering this process. I wound up speaking to two commissioners.

• 1:38:50Steven Rinella?

  In Michigan, over the last months before it has happened, I did phone calls to two commissioners and wrote letters pleading for these expansions. And they've done the expansions. Can you pull up the expansion map? These are the Michigan waters you're not allowed to spear, you're allowed to spearfish, underwater spearfishing for Walleye, Northerns and Lake Charles. So you got basically like from Chicago, so the Illinois Michigan line, or there is the Indiana Michigan line up to, it's like a little wedge Indiana in there between Illinois and Michigan, along the shoreline. You can, you can underwater spearfish from the Indiana Michigan line up to, up to the

• 1:39:34Steven Rinella?

  45th parallel is where they draw that line. And then all the inner, you know, Grand Traverse Bay is out. So the 45th parallel runs south, runs across the state, south of Traverse City. There's a little wedge down in Erie.

• 1:39:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:39:52Steven Rinella?

  Kind of like south of Detroit down to the Ohio State line, you can spearfish.

• 1:39:57Speaker 03

  That's right where the, is that where the St. Clair River pops out?

• 1:40:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's big, yeah, it's just right there. Huron, you could do Huron all inside the thumb from Thunder Bay, basically Thunder Bay down to the bottom of Lake Huron, out to the Canadian border. In northern Lake Michigan, they opened a big stretch along the southern upper peninsula offshore with some key areas removed. And they opened up a bunch of Lake Superior on the, off the northern coast of the upper peninsula, minus some, some big spawning grounds out there that are closed. So that's great news. However, the Chippewa Ottawa tribes are protesting not the expansions.

• 1:40:45Steven Rinella?

  They've written a letter of protest saying they want to bring back reporting and they want to bring back the special license because they're saying there's no way to know how many people are out there doing this. Well, check this out. Okay?

• 1:41:00Steven Rinella?

  When they opened up the spearfishing license, you had to go get a free certificate. You had to get like a spearfishing stamp. Okay. Guess how many people went and got a spearfishing stamp?

• 1:41:10Speaker 06

  Forty-three.

• 1:41:11Speaker 03

  Hundred and twelve.

• 1:41:12Steven Rinella?

  Way off.

• 1:41:13Speaker 03

  Fourteen.

• 1:41:14Steven Rinella?

  Four thousand.

• 1:41:15Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:41:17Steven Rinella?

  Out of those four thousand, guess how many shot a fish?

• 1:41:22Speaker 03

  Four.

• 1:41:22Speaker 06

  Five hundred.

• 1:41:23Steven Rinella?

  Two hundred shot a fish.

• 1:41:25Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:41:27Steven Rinella?

  Out of those two hundred spear fishermen that shot a fish, those two hundred people killed a total of four hundred and thirty.

• 1:41:36Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:41:37Steven Rinella?

  They killed four hundred and thirty walleyes.

• 1:41:41Speaker 03

  There's probably like half a dozen that are really laying into them.

• 1:41:46Steven Rinella?

  My buddy, if you pulled him out, the number probably drops down to three thirty. So, so with the Chippewa Auto Tribes are saying, well, they're doing so much to promote underwater spearfishing. It's gonna blow up if they don't have reporting. And so we need to know what they're up to. Well, angler hours on underwater spearfishing isn't going up. It just goes down, down, down as people realize what a bitch it is.

• 1:42:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, the barrier to entry thing is just like, it's not something everybody's gonna go do.

• 1:42:16Steven Rinella?

  Four thousand guys thought they'd go. Two hundred guys went. Annual angler hours went from two thousand three hundred to one thousand nine hundred to one thousand four hundred.

• 1:42:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'll bet the word is out that it sucks. I'll bet the.

• 1:42:32Steven Rinella?

  It's cold. You can't see anything. It's, it's cold.

• 1:42:37Speaker 03

  And the four thousand were like, people were like, yeah, I'll get it. It's free. A lot. They weren't ever gonna go.

• 1:42:43Steven Rinella?

  So again, they killed these fishermen, one, one of these years, these fishermen killed four hundred and thirty walleyes. Now, allow me to ask. What? Okay. Oh, let me back up. Angler effort, sitting at about fourteen hundred hours of spearfishing angler effort. Guess how much, many man hours of rod and reel effort occur in Michigan?

• 1:43:04Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:43:05Steven Rinella?

  One point four million. One point four million man hours of fishing effort versus one thousand four hundred of spearfishing effort. Last year in Saginaw Bay, they killed, in Saginaw Bay.

• 1:43:24Steven Rinella?

  They killed 500,000 walleye. Spear fishermen statewide, 430. The Detroit and St. Clair rivers, 400,000 walleye. So between Saginaw Bay, which is that little thumb notch, and then down there on the bottom of that little spearfishing area,

• 1:43:48Steven Rinella?

  900,000 wally dogs. Spear fishermen, 340.

• 1:43:55Speaker 03

  Oh, no, my buddy.

• 1:43:56Steven Rinella?

  Spear fishermen, 430.

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  My buddy on the St. Clair, right, right there in that St. Clair, they're out there hammering them right now, you know?

• 1:44:03Steven Rinella?

  And that, that Saginaw Bay fishery, eight walleye a day, 13 inch minimum.

• 1:44:08Speaker 03

  Eight a day.

• 1:44:09Steven Rinella?

  Eight a day, 13 inch minimum. They are, li- listen. I don't care how you feel about dudes swimming around underwater with a spear gun. It doesn't matter. It does not matter. I will be there in June

• 1:44:28Steven Rinella?

  hitting it hard.

• 1:44:29Speaker 03

  We should do a T-shirt.

• 1:44:30Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna kill all your walleyes.

• 1:44:33Speaker 03

  We should do a T-shirt with you in a wet suit and fins.

• 1:44:36Steven Rinella?

  Says it does not matter.

• 1:44:39Speaker 03

  Or don't worry about it.

• 1:44:40Steven Rinella?

  It does not matter. If people want to go in the water and risk shallow water blackout and get all cold, let them.

• 1:44:51Steven Rinella?

  The question is this, since it does not matter, I look forward to Michigan passing a salmon spearfishing season. That will be the most awesome thing on the planet.

• 1:45:03Steven Rinella?

  Cannot wait.

• 1:45:04Speaker 03

  You, would you hit them like right outside the River Mouse or where, where would you?

• 1:45:08Steven Rinella?

  I, I, I'm thinking flashers.

• 1:45:11Speaker 03

  Oh, you'd go down and?

• 1:45:12Steven Rinella?

  No, I think you'd free drift.

• 1:45:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:14Steven Rinella?

  I think you'd just free drift with flasher chains. Maybe some chum, if you can chum, you can't chum, but maybe they'd let you chum, but they're not gonna let you chum. I think you'd have to use a string of flashers.

• 1:45:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:25Steven Rinella?

  Dude, ultimate challenge, man.

• 1:45:28Speaker 03

  Big ol'.

• 1:45:29Steven Rinella?

  And people be like, "They're gonna kill all the salmon!"

• 1:45:32Speaker 03

  The salmon that don't belong there in the first place.

• 1:45:35Steven Rinella?

  And then Andrew Porto come in and say, "They got two!"

• 1:45:39Steven Rinella?

  "They got two!" Alright, thanks for joining the new show.

• 1:45:43Speaker 03

  They got two!

• 1:46:12Steven Rinella?

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• 1:46:55Steven Rinella?

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• 1:47:13Speaker 02

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• 1:47:28Steven Rinella?

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• 1:48:08Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.