Ep. 658: Are Governor's Tags Un-American: REDUX

Steven Rinella https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork talks with Gray Thornton https://www.wildsheepfoundation.org/about/staff, Brody Henderson https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/?hl=en. Topics discussed: Governor’s tags vs. conservation permits; the one thing Steve doesn’t have an opinion on; the class/economic aspect; Dave Chapelle on SNL; the average male sheep off take; suspiciously philanthropic; when the four biggest sheep are killed in an avalanche; 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

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• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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  This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. Okay, everybody, welcome to our governor tags, our governor's tags on American redux. Is that the right use of redux? Remember they did Apocalypse Now and they recut it and called it redux?

• 3:01Speaker 03

  I do.

• 3:02Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. It's a redo.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  Do-over.

• 3:08Steven Rinella?

  Well, where we ourselves are in the hot seat, we did an episode, our governor's tags on American and, and, you know, the episode was phrased as though it was a question, but I think there was an override, there was overriding sentiment in the room about, you know, it's hyperbolic language, overriding sentiment in the room of, I would say, a tipping, a governor's tags, the sentiment in the room is that governor's tags tipped on American. We were called out on this by Gray Thornton from the Wild Sheep Foundation, which is

• 3:50Steven Rinella?

  the preeminent wild sheep conservation organization in America, and in all fairness, does more than any entity in putting wild sheep back on the mountain, keep them wild sheep on the mountain. So, we had to hear him out, and he's here today to tell us where we went wrong, in his opinion. Gray, I want to keep the, I want to keep it, I want to keep all this fair.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:16Steven Rinella?

  So, I want, who gets to, who gets to say, just to bring people up to speed? Who gets to say, who gets to describe what a governor's tag is?

• 4:29Speaker 04

  I'm happy to give it a shot.

• 4:30Steven Rinella?

  Give it a shot. And then if you do it and I don't like it, I'll give you, I'll give you a thumbs down.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  You know, here's the good thing is, Stephen, this is your show.

• 4:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  So I'm just honored to be here.

• 4:44Steven Rinella?

  No, they can.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't know if I called it out. We just wanted to point out some things that we would have liked at least, at least had stated. So.

• 4:54Steven Rinella?

  I, I get criticized about something or another every day.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  You and I both.

• 5:00Steven Rinella?

  Now, most of them, I kind of like laugh them off, but your criticism of some of the comments that were made on that episode struck me so much that I emailed you within seconds of reading them. So like, you know, when you get, you know, if you get called out in a way where you're like, okay, all right, you know? I get a mean email every day from my friend Doug and, um, you know, I usually ask him, I usually reply by asking if he's seen any turkeys around.

• 5:30Steven Rinella?

  How's the turkey's looking? Uh, in other news, but, uh, no, no, I, um, yeah. Tell everybody what a governor's tag is.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, so.

• 5:38Steven Rinella?

  Well, let's talk about what it is before we talk about what it ain't.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Um, well, first of all, where did they come from? And so the first governor's tag was actually given to what was then the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, now Wild Sheep Foundation in 1980.

• 5:55Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 5:56Speaker 04

  Um, by Governor Ed Herschler from Wyoming.

• 5:59Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  And a lot different than they are today, but the idea from Ed's perspective was, hey, we have these highly coveted, uh, tags, opportunities. Um, we've got this fairly new organization, Foundation for North American Wild Sheep was founded in 1977. So three years later, what if we gave one of these tags, they sold it at auction and we just mandate that they dedicate all the funds to wild sheep conservation in Wyoming? So that's how the whole process started.

• 6:36Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Um, and so back then, yeah, it's, it was a governor's tag. And so.

• 6:41Steven Rinella?

  Because the state wasn't able to, the, the state didn't have the mechanism to sell it themselves.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  Um, no. So they kind of look at a, you know, at a NGO as, you know, we're the ones that can put on the party, put on the show. Uh, and there's, there's a number of us out there that are doing it. Um, but it was kind of a changing point for wild sheep conservation funding. Uh, bottom line, FANAS or, you know, now Wild Sheep Foundation is in, is in existence because sheep weren't a priority. They didn't pay their way. Um, too few, uh, and unlike elk, unlike mule deer, unlike whitetails, unlike, you know, even turkeys, um, not enough of them the, to fund their conservation. So for many agencies, they really weren't a priority.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Do you, do you mind explaining what that means by not enough to fund their conservation? You know, for example, let's, let's look at Montana. We'll, we'll look at, um, 2023 data, 2024 data. Um, 658, 656 tags made available. Uh, 558 to residents that brought in, and this is, this is 2023 data, 69,750 bucks. You're talking sheep now, right? Sheep. Big horn sheep tags. Okay. Um, 98 non-resident tags brought in a little over a hundred and 22,000 dollars. So a hundred

• 8:08Speaker 04

  and 98,000 dollars total for big horn sheep conservation from the sale of tags. For the, from the sale of 600 tags? Yeah. Not, not a lot of money. Um, you know, I started really looking at this 10 years prior, back in 2014 and looked and thought, cause I was, I was fortunate enough to take a, a big horn in our limited area, um, in 2014. I paid. Congratulations. Oh, shit. Crazy. You know, I was, I was a, I was a non-resident hunter. I paid 750 bucks. Uh, coincidentally that year at our show, the Montana tag sold for 480,000 dollars in 2013.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  So I was looking at the funding model going, this is kind of interesting, you know, how relevant are these tags to wild sheep conservation? How relevant is Wild Sheep Foundation to the wild sheep economy? Because we're, we're one of the organizations that sells the most. So I did kind of a deep dive and I had a couple of our biologists look at WAFWA data. And, you know, I think back in 2014, it hasn't changed too much. I think it was about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars came to the state on the, the non auction or raffle tag. Uh, well, hell, you can't, you can't buy a pickup truck and fund a biologist for that. So how the hell are we going to fund wild sheep conservation?

• 9:33Speaker 04

  And that's really what Ed Herschler was looking at back in 1980 is that they don't pay their way. They're just, there's, there's so few of them and the revenue's so, stream is so small from the, whether they're LEH tags or not.

• 9:49Steven Rinella?

  What's LEH?

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Limited Entry Hunting.

• 9:51Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  You know, what, what, what most of us in North America see is, well, we got to apply for a sheep tag. Um, you know, we're blessed in Montana, the only, only lower, lower 48 state that you can, in effect, buy an over the counter sheep tag. Pretty fricking cool. We got to protect that. Um, Alaska, obviously you can buy over counter, um, doll's tag, although now that's every third year for a non-resident. Uh, Canada's where you can, you know, you just buy over the counter for Canadian residents. You know, we obviously have to have an outfitter. Um, so it was a unique funding model. And it's, it's certainly grown. Um, you know, and Wild Sheep Foundation, quite frankly, has been, you know, kind of the premier, um, governor's tag.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  And now we like to call them conservation permits because that's really what they are. Um, because they're not only governors, um, British Columbia has a minister's license. Alberta has a minister's license. Tribal tags, we sell, we sell tags for the Tags Pueblo, for the Navajo Nation. We've sold them for the Wallapai. Um, we've sold them for the Kwani First Nation up in, uh, up in Northwest, or I'm sorry, in Yukon. Um, so it's, you know, we, we, we lump them into a little, I think, more descriptive, um, definition called a conservation permit, which I think really identifies what they are. And Stephen? Back in 2014, when I, when I asked our conservation guys to do this deep dive,

• 11:20Speaker 04

  they used Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agency data, WAFOA data, and found that 73% of all wild sheep agency funding came from either a auction tag, conservation permit, or a raffle tag, with the majority of the money coming in from an auction tag. Fast forward 10 years later, we're still, you know, still quantifying the data. Right now, it's about 83% in the United States.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Of sheep money?

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Sheep conservation funding at the agency level come from either an auction or raffle tag.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  So is it, like, when one of these tags, conservation permit, governor tag, whatever you want to call them, gets sold, is it mandated that that money goes to wild sheep conservation? Or is it diluted at all?

• 12:15Speaker 04

  Brody, that's, that's the million dollar question. The easy answer is yes. Now, it's, you know, the proof's in the pudding and in the implementation. You know, one of the misnomers is, you know, I mean, we just, we just had our convention in Reno. We sold 30 tags. We're going to direct about $6.8 million to state, provincial, tribal, territorial, and federal agencies to the sale of those 30 tags. By statute, Wild Sheep Foundation has to direct those monies to the agency. What the agencies do for it, a little deeper dive, and I'd like to jump into that.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  But a misnomer is, oh, my God, Wild Sheep Foundation got all this money. No. Arizona, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of any, any special tag, conservation permit that we sell, go back to the state. Arizona Game and Fish. Nevada, 100% goes back to Nevada Department of Wildlife. The average that we would retain is about 10%. If you look at, look at all the agencies. If you look at just this last two weeks ago at our sheep show.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  7.3 some odd million. We're going to keep 600 and some odd thousand. It's 8.9% coming back to the Wild Chief Foundation from the sale of those tags. Again, some of them are 100% to the agencies. Most of them are on 10. British Columbia is 15% that we can retain. Alaska, interesting enough, has a different kind of a rule, but the monies have to go back to Alaska NGO. So we sell the conservation permit. 100% goes back to our Alaska chapter. I think they keep 15% and then they direct the rest to State of Alaska.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  So I could certainly show you where Wild Chief Foundation directs our monies. I mean, this year we're budgeting about 2.7, 2.8 in grant aid going out of a 3.7 million that will fund education, conservation, you know, education, youth education, engaging women, disease research, but so much of what we do is grant aid out. An agency or a chapter applies for a grant, we give that money away. We keep 600 and some odd thousand dollars from these permits. We're giving away 3.7. You know, it's not a, it's not a moneymaker for us, but it is a hell of a moneymaker for the agencies.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  And that's, that's what we're trying to, to focus on. And, you know, if there's a better way to do it, we're all ears. Because our focus is that ram, you or lamb on the ridgeline. And how do we put money into the agency to affect their conservation, their enhancement, their repatriation, the restoration, habitat and all that. So did I, did I pass? Do we call it a conservation permit?

• 15:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm happy with the definition of a conservation permit. Uh, one of the things... So this is something I said. If you look at our thing, Corinne.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Which one?

• 15:44Steven Rinella?

  There's a quote, they made an extra tag.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, you were, you were, I think you were trying to figure out, like.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  I think what you were saying is it wasn't coming out of the same pool that people draw from.

• 15:56Steven Rinella?

  Whose side was I on when I said that?

• 15:58Speaker 03

  There, I think it got suggested.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  You were on the right side, because that's absolutely correct.

• 16:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  You qualified that you were like undecided and split down the middle.

• 16:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Oh, no, I said, this is one of the few things. No, I remember. I said, this is one of the few things in life I don't have an opinion about. I'm too torn.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yep, yep.

• 16:15Steven Rinella?

  I'm too torn.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  We can, we can bring in some of Cal's arguments later. I think that's, that's interesting.

• 16:20Steven Rinella?

  Uh, okay. So let, let's, let's dive into one of the, let's dive into one of these, these aspects of governor's tags. It gets people riled up.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  Right. Conservation permits, you mean?

• 16:32Steven Rinella?

  Sorry. Conservation permits. I'm gonna call them governor's tags.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 16:36Steven Rinella?

  Just because that's, well, no, I'll try to.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  But maybe we should be thoughtful about that.

• 16:39Steven Rinella?

  Because if I say governor's tags, other guys know what I'm talking about. If I say conservation tag, they're not gonna know what I'm talking about. The, the rebranding is a complete.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  It's kinda like the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of America.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  But then it doesn't, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that we should stick with.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Stick with governor's tags. But when we go to, when we go to B C or I'll call them a minister's permit. Where we're talking tribal, I'll call it a tribal permit.

• 17:04Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 17:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:04Steven Rinella?

  Um, you know, there's an outfitter, uh, there's a guide that, so. I'm talking about Gulf of America.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  I kinda felt like you wouldn't let that just go.

• 17:18Steven Rinella?

  There's a, there's a, so sometimes when we spearfish down in Louisiana, we stay in this place. And next to the place is the, the Gulf of America Charter.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:28Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Oh, that's the name of their outfitter.

• 17:30Steven Rinella?

  That was named, that, that was my first, because this is years ago. That was my first awareness. And I just like chuckled about the Gulf of America.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  He was ahead of the game.

• 17:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he was way ahead of it. So it must've been brewing a long time. I, I got like, I'm, I'm totally fine Gulf, I'm, I'm totally fine Gulf of America. Um, Denali, I feel like that's pretty, um, solidified in Alaskan culture.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:55Steven Rinella?

  Like even, even, even the politicians in Alaska are like, what?

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:59Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know there was a problem with the name. I do remember it being McKinley.

• 18:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay, here's one. Here's a governor's tag argument that folks make when they're arguing about this. Oh, you know, you know, they want to think about this in all fairness.

• 18:18Steven Rinella?

  We have to get into the fact that there is a class. There's a class issue here.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, without question.

• 18:24Steven Rinella?

  So the other night, Saturday, two Saturdays ago, I didn't watch it, but I watched on YouTube. David Chappelle did the opening monologue on Saturday Night Live. And Chappelle was talking about the LA fires. And he was talking about reading commentary and news articles of people saying, you know, I'm glad those rich Californians' houses are getting burned down. And he said, Chappelle says, that's why I hate poor people. They can't see beyond their own pain.

• 19:02Steven Rinella?

  So there is a, there is a class issue to this. Like, anything to do with wealth, access, any kind of financial privilege, right? Is going to generate animosity, right? You hear someone went to Yale. There's a judgment. Like, if that's not part of your family trajectory, there's a judgment.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it doesn't matter. In America, it doesn't matter if you're talking about sheep or like, real estate or whatever. It's like.

• 19:40Steven Rinella?

  There's like, he paid blank million for that house. Boom.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:44Steven Rinella?

  Like, there's a judgment, right? You, and so we need to get there. Like, I'd like to get there on the issue of just like a perceived sense in America. Like, I guess globally, historically, a perceived sense that there's like two playing fields. And that the people of wealth have access to things that people don't have. And implied in that is some sort of sense that most people that have wealth don't deserve it. So that's just burning, that's simmering underground, and we'll remember to get to it. But let's start with another, let's start with a less philosophical point. Because this is just like a factual point.

• 20:28Steven Rinella?

  Give me a, how many, how many tags did Montana issue for Big Horns?

• 20:32Speaker 04

  One, uh, one for auction, one for raffle.

• 20:35Steven Rinella?

  No, no, I'm sorry.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  Oh, six hundred, uh, in 2023, it was 656 total.

• 20:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay. There is a perception that.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:44Steven Rinella?

  That it would have been, sorry, tell me the number again.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  656.

• 20:50Steven Rinella?

  656, yeah. So through the public draw, they issue 656 Big Horn tags. There's a perception that the number would have been 657.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 21:03Steven Rinella?

  So that one other, we should use a state that doesn't have nearly as many because it's so many. There's, there's seems like there's a lot of, what's a state that doesn't have shit for Big Horn tags?

• 21:12Speaker 04

  Nebraska.

• 21:14Steven Rinella?

  Well, I don't want to go that extreme. Texas has a, has a Big Horn tag?

• 21:18Speaker 04

  One or two, maybe.

• 21:19Steven Rinella?

  All right, six, okay.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  But yeah, no, I, I, I see your point.

• 21:22Steven Rinella?

  There's a perception that it should have been 657.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 21:25Steven Rinella?

  So some lucky guy, some, some would be lucky guy that would have gone down and did the draw, got screwed out of his Big Horn tag.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 21:36Steven Rinella?

  But they auctioned it off to the highest bidder.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 21:40Steven Rinella?

  So we've seen a diminishment of the public pool. Now, I want you to tackle whether that's true or not, but then that's going to bring up a broader question.

• 21:52Steven Rinella?

  If, if they create an extra tag to facilitate a conservation tag auction, that makes me feel like the number of tags they're issuing becomes kind of arbitrary. Like, how do you create an extra tag if the number of tags that are being distributed is like a biologically driven reality? Meaning if it, how did it go from 656 to 657?

• 22:23Speaker 04

  So I got a, I think an answer that you're going to appreciate. You know, again, I'll go back to the unlimited area. You know, we've got three to four to five, kind of depending on the year, unlimited areas. Um, you know, our guru in this state, the biologist Sean Stewart, um, you listen to him talk about the, the allocation, the quota for those. It used to be three in some, now it's pretty much two. We all know there's some years that they take three, four, five, sometimes six. You know, so you might have a quota of two, but there's six taken legally.

• 23:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Can you explain how that happens?

• 23:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:05Steven Rinella?

  Just for people to...

• 23:06Speaker 04

  That's, well, so there's a, there's a 48 hour window when the season closes. Um, you know, in my particular case, I took a ram. I was the second ram taken in 2014 in the unit I was hunting. Um, tried to close the season by sending an in-reach in. Uh, they don't accept that. So, you know, went through my wife, who then called Fish Wildlife Parks. They go, no, Gray's got to call you.

• 23:31Steven Rinella?

  You have no cell signal.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't have a cell signal. I don't have a sat phone, so I'm using in-reach and, and, you know, long and short, Sean finally went, oh, wait a minute, I know who that guy is. And oh, by the way, he's with Jack Atchison. If there's anyone that knows sheep, it's Jack. And, uh, yeah, we're going to close the season. But in that case, there was another 24 hour delay and another sheep was taken. So three sheep were taken legally in the unit on a quota of two. There's been times where, you know, five people shoot a sheep in one day. You've got a, you've got a, you've got 48 hours to report that to either a conservation officer or a game warden or a biologist. So there's that lag period.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  You listen to Sean Stewart and he's, he'll tell you it's biologically insignificant. So that, that third, fourth, fifth, even sixth sheep is biologically insignificant in, in the overall scheme of the unlimited units that he's responsible for. So we take that. Stephen, go back to, you know, the state of Montana and you're, you were absolutely correct. It is by typically by the legislature, an authorized additional tag to what game and fish is going to say, hey, this is, this is what our, our off take is going to be. The

• 24:56Speaker 04

  typical off take for bighorn sheep males that's considered sustainable is from a, from an allocation standpoint is two to 3%.

• 25:08Steven Rinella?

  Of males?

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Super conservative.

• 25:10Steven Rinella?

  Wow, that's, that's low, right?

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Super conservative. So that's what the state's going to allocate or the,

• 25:18Steven Rinella?

  Is it really that low?

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:20Steven Rinella?

  Cause I know like, there's like a, I know this is, this is really hard to, people are going to argue about these numbers all the time.

• 25:26Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 25:27Steven Rinella?

  But I've heard with deer management, 13%, 20%, not just the males, but the herd.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  Right. And, and you know, and now think of recruitment, you know, to, to increase a herd, you need recruitment of 20, 22, 23% whether it's bighorn sheep, whether it's elk, whether it's mule deer, whether it's whitetail.

• 25:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  Well, now we're harvesting and if, and if you look at the, again, WFAA data, it's like one to 3% is the average male off take.

• 25:56Steven Rinella?

  No kidding.

• 25:57Speaker 04

  So, so we're already managing to a super conservative harvest.

• 26:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  So Montana does, then the legislature comes through and said, hey, we're going to, to raise money for Montana Fish Wildlife and Park. We're going to authorize one auction tag, one ravel tag and add two. So if we can go back to Sean Stewart's presentation where he's saying, hey, look, even in the three to four to five unlimited areas with a, with a quota of two per unit, if they go over one year by two or three or four, biologically insignificant, I'm not concerned about. So to your point, um, we're already managing super conservatively on bighorn sheep. That those one to two, Wyoming's got five, Nevada, you know, five bighorn sheep permits they authorize on auction. Uh, they

• 26:47Speaker 04

  then have, you know, they have their commissioner tags, but those aren't for bighorn sheep. Those are elk, mule deer, pronghorn, um, moose, I think. There, there's a moose tag, not, not a commissioner. So. You were absolutely correct that these are additive. And what's amazing is when you look at, you know, and you,

• 27:09Speaker 04

  we sold, you know, we're $192,000 in Montana in 2023. We sold the tag. We directed $288,000 on the auction tag to Fish Wildlife and Parks. That adds to their 192. We did a raffle back then, too. It was 125. So 125,000 for a raffle. We double it, more than double it for the auction tag, and then add that to

• 27:38Speaker 04

  the resident license. Still not a lot of money.

• 27:43Steven Rinella?

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• 28:28Steven Rinella?

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• 29:05Speaker 02

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• 29:20Steven Rinella?

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• 30:37Steven Rinella?

  So hit me with the, hit me with the amount, uh, hit me with the amount that went in the, the tag and license fees for the public draw versus like the amount-

• 30:49Speaker 04

  Hundred, hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars, two hundred and fifty in 2023 for six hundred and fifty-six tags.

• 30:57Steven Rinella?

  And then the auction tag.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  Then we add one more auction tag. We added another two hundred and eighty-eight. Added one raffle tag, a hundred and twenty-five. So, so I guess the, you know, but you're, you're so right. I mean, so here's the, here's the thing that, that I guess frustrates us on this side.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  There's not a financial argument that you can make to say that it's the wrong thing to do.

• 31:26Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  So it really is a social justice argument. And, and so, uh, you know, I can, I can show all the statistics that'll say that, look, uh, and, you know, it's additive, it's not, it, it's not, you know, I'm a regular guy. Um, am I going to be able to buy one of these tags? Nah, not unless I rob a whole hell of a lot of liquor stores or win the lottery.

• 31:51Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  Um, but I'll tell you what I'm thrilled with, and that is that somebody is willing to do that. And because of that money, it's offering more opportunity for regular guys and regular gals like me. So, you know, that's, that's the crux of the argument. And then I, you know, when we dive into the social side of it, because there is, it's a, and it's sad, I mean, if, it, it, you know, if, if, I mean, I drive a 2017 Toyota pickup truck. You know what? It works. Got 156,000 miles on it. I drive by somebody who's got one of those new GMC AT4s.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Boy, that looks slick.

• 32:39Steven Rinella?

  You must have been looking.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  Do I have to have that? Am I, you know, am I envious? Well, I, I don't know. It's like, well, maybe one of these days, but my truck still pulls my trailer, I'm okay. Um, so I look at these guys or gals that are buying these tags and I'm, I'm grateful because it's wildlife philanthropy.

• 32:59Steven Rinella?

  Let me hit you with this, though.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 33:02Steven Rinella?

  One's good. Okay, where, is 10 good? Like, like if it's, if it's financial, if it's strictly financial, how far would you extend that logic? Like, if there's 600 tags, would you start to feel uncomfortable if we auctioned 500 of them?

• 33:20Speaker 04

  You know what you're gonna have is law of diminishing returns. And, and we saw that in Alberta, where they thought, you know, Alberta was, you know, that's where the big sheep were. And so

• 33:30Steven Rinella?

  Like in a very specific place too, right?

• 33:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, yeah, it was and it was Cataman, you know, it was around the Cataman mine.

• 33:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  And so they're basically, you know, park sheep coming out if they come out or they can just hang and you could sit there and there are a guy there's, you know, there's a specific rock. I think it's called Hot Rock or something like that, that these people would literally beeline from the trailhead, get to Hot Rock and then just wait and see if these big rams would come out of the park. I think it's Jasper National Park. And sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. But they're big sheep and you know, the, the prior hunted, you know, hunted world record was taken there. And so that's where people were chasing that tag and that's where those dollars went. Well, Alberta at one point thought, hmm, you know, maybe we can, maybe we can make even more money.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  So they started adding more and more auction tags and even, even some more LEH tags to that same area. And then you had a hunting experience that wasn't exactly the, the most enjoyable. Everyone's making a beeline for Hot Rock and then they're all sitting around the rock waiting, you know, for a big sheep to come out of the park. So I'm, I'm, I'm being a little facetious, but you know, that's basically it. So you can have a law of diminishing returns. Really interesting this year. Arizona last year chose their commission.

• 34:54Steven Rinella?

  That's my next question. You're going to, you're doing my next question?

• 34:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, Arizona Commission chose.

• 34:59Steven Rinella?

  Yep, did Arizona get rid of governor's tags?

• 35:01Speaker 04

  They did.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  They did.

• 35:03Steven Rinella?

  Take it away.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  They got rid of governor's tags and they're going to a raffle.

• 35:09Speaker 04

  So while Sheep Foundation was given the last Desert Big Horn sheep tag to sell on auction, unless there's a commission change and you know, I mean, it's politics at this point. Um, we were also given a pronghorn antelope tag.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Last year we sold the Arizona tag, I think it was for 420, 400 and I think I have that data. What did we sell that tag for? Uh, yeah, 430, $430,000. 100% of those dollars go right back to Arizona Game and Fish. This year we sold it for five, $500,000. Crazy. You want to really go nuts? We sold the Arizona pronghorn tag in 2024 for $95,000.

• 35:53Speaker 04

  A pronghorn tag, the last one gonna be on auction, sold for $215,000. 100% of those dollars go right back to Arizona Game and Fish. Now, now it's gonna go to raffles. We all know that you're not gonna make the same amount of money. Organizations, NGOs in Arizona, um, balked and didn't even apply for these tags. While Sheep Foundation looked at it and said, you know, I mean, we could, we could thump our chests and go, aren't we great? You know, we're, we're selling these tags for unbelievable amount of money. You're not doing what we want, so we're not gonna play your game. We didn't. We thought, no, let's, let's have a seat at the table. We'd rather be at the table and talking and doing something good for wildlife.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  So we applied for their bighorn tag and we're gonna raffle that off. I think it sold at Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society, who, who we partner with in Arizona. Um, on, on the desert bighorn tag, on the Arizona pronghorn tag. Uh, Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society sold the bighorn tag last year at their, their banquet in May, 350, 360,000 dollars. We'll probably through a raffle be able to direct 125, 150,000 to Arizona Game and Fish. Versus the 350 or 360, and then you compare it to the 500. And then we get into the equity of raffles and that's, that's a question I'd love to ask is,

• 37:24Speaker 04

  you know, those that think that raffles are equitable, need to look a little deeper dive there. A Washington resident can't purchase an online raffle outside of his or her state. Cause of gambling law? Gambling law.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Steven, is this a similar thing, what we went through and we both purch, we weren't physically in the state of Arizona?

• 37:46Speaker 04

  I don't know if that was a gambling law or just a rule.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  No, it's so in Washington, it's, it's their, it's their state gaming commission. They regard that as gambling? Yeah. And it, you know, now if you're in state, you can do an in-state, but if we're out of state. We can't, we can't sell, we've, Arizona got burned on this. Arizona has a super tag. Yep. And they've pretty much, they used to sell that. I buy those. You know, they did exceptionally well on those. They were selling them out of state. They got a call from the Gaming Commission of Washington State saying, "Hey, you're selling to Washington residents." Yeah, we sure are. You know, great opportunity for them. We're raising money for wildlife conservation. And they said, "Uh-uh, you're violating our state gaming laws." Oh my god.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  "You gotta refund that money." Um, Corinne and I were talking about the pandemic. Uh, Wild Chief Foundation got kinda clever during the pandemic. We're all fighting to figure out, "How the hell are we gonna raise money?" Um, we, we actually sourced out of DOA, um, a, a virtual- DOA Qatar? Yeah, it's a, a virtual expo thing. Um, rather interesting. We had to change all the avatars. There were no blonde people in, in this, uh, in this expo thing, but it's a whole- And no cowboy hats, so no ball cap. So, you know, Brody, they, you know, we could not find a ball cap in, in this, uh, this cutter, uh, application, but I digress a little bit.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  But what, what was really interesting is so we said, "Okay, we're basically selling a ticket to sit in front of your MacBook or your PC and watch our show." Our auctions online, those are easy to do. Expo, a little more difficult. And you know what? And to incentivize you to buy this ticket, we'll put you in a drawing for a desert big horn sheep hunt. Fair enough, you know, all you have to do is buy the ticket and you're, you're in the drawing. And somebody where, is gonna win a desert big horn sheep hunt.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  I get a call from Washington Gaming Commission. And they said, "Hey, you're, you're conducting a raffle?" And I went, "Man, we're not conducting a ra-" What, you know, what are you, I finally figured out what, I said, "Oh, wait a minute, our, our, yeah, no, you've got some registration thing. You're giving away a desert big horn sheep hunt." Yeah, yeah. He said, well, you can't do that in Washington. You're based in Montana. I said, wow, actually, we're kind of clever. We, we run our programs for our raffles out of Wyoming, but this isn't a raffle, so this is just a registration thing. He says, you're still breaking our gaming laws. You, but there's been a complaint against you.

• 40:21Steven Rinella?

  Oh, my God, really?

• 40:22Speaker 04

  We had, we had to refund $27,000 in registrations. We had to, to make, to make, to make it at least fair to our Washington folks that wanted to participate. We just said, hey, we're refunding your money. And if you want to attend our virtual convention, you can do so for free. Well, that happened in Arizona.

• 40:42Steven Rinella?

  These are the people that banned fishing during the pandemic.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, go figure. So, so the, the laws are so crazy. Um, you know, look at, you know, Montana's an interesting one. We accept on raffle, checks, cash, debit cards, not credit cards. So if you're conducting a raffle in Montana, you got to make sure that your system knows that that, that visa that somebody just sent you was a debit card, not a credit card. And we've been stung on that one. Arizona got stung, their super raffle got stung really, really bad by Washington. So now, and Brody, I think you touched on it. Uh, now Arizona is only conducting their, I, I forget what they're calling it now.

• 41:28Speaker 04

  It's not the, it's not the super tags, but in-state. So now you have, uh, and, and Steve, you had touched on that, you know, now you have.

• 41:35Steven Rinella?

  Me and Krit got boned out of a hundred bucks apiece.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  Went towards conservation, quit your complaining.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  Raffles aren't as, raffles are not as equitable.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  Donated.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  As they may sound.

• 41:46Steven Rinella?

  Let's back up to Arizona. Uh, cause really this decision that came out of Arizona drove this whole conversation.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:54Steven Rinella?

  Right. I mean, we've definitely, over the years, have touched on it. I have always been like, uh, I've always been torn by the issue, recognizing the money, but then also, you know, like I, I recognize the tremendous amount of money that goes to conservation. And I also recognize the kind of populist rage against like, who the hell has $400,000 to buy a sheep tag? And why does he get one, but I don't? I recognize both sides of this. But what really fueled this renewed conversation was Arizona's decision, the commission decision. Um, and it came to a vote and they said that going into the future, we're going to step away from. Doing auction tags.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:34Steven Rinella?

  Like, what's your understanding of, of, of that process? Like, like, what were the inputs they were looking at? Was it, was it primarily social pressure?

• 42:44Speaker 04

  I, I, I would say it's social pressure is probably the, the biggest one.

• 42:48Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Um.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  The revenue side was certainly expressed. Uh, I was actually asked to do a, a, a video for their commission by the chair.

• 43:00Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Uh, we did, we did a six-minute version. We did cut it down to a three-minute version, talked about, you know, how much money is raised, uh, for Arizona. Um, you know, what will happen to a bighorn sheep? But, you know, now you look at that pronghorn, $215,000. What will happen to pronghorn conservation? What's gonna ha- you know, i- is there anyone in this room that can tell me that there's an agency that has too much money from a wildlife agency standpoint?

• 43:26Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  You know, maybe, maybe a few government agencies we'd like to cut out. But, you know, from a wildlife agency i- in, in the United States, everyone's clamoring for more dollars. You know, we need more biologists, we need more trucks, we need more uniforms, we need more habitat improvement, you know, all of that. So, it wasn't a money thing. It was a, it was a, there was some pressure from some groups that really do think the raffle, uh, is the way to go because of, Stephen, exactly what you said. It's a, it's a, it's an envy thing. It is a polarization thing. Um, and we see it in all walks of life, whether, you know, whether it's a guy that's, you

• 44:10Speaker 04

  know, lauding and applauding somebody's home in Pacific Palisades being burned because, you know, he or she is pursued to be rich and I'm not.

• 44:18Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  Um, you know, I, I don't buy into that, but I, I recognize it. You know, I recognize. There's also, and it's been said, well, this is, you know, this is a, uh, this is against the North American wildlife conservation model. Shane Mahoney and I are really, really close friends and we share a stage around the world on giving speeches and the like. I used to, in my presentations, call the, you know, this, this auction tag, governor's tag, special permit, conservation permit, I used to call it a bastardization of the North American egalitarian model. I said, ah, you know, this is, but it raises all this money. You used to say that. I used to say it. And I said, oh, it's a bastardization of the model, but it works.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  How long ago was that?

• 45:04Speaker 04

  Shane and I were in my drift boat on the Yellowstone, eight years ago, he and his wife. He's, you know, said, hey, let me float you down the Yellowstone. You're such a busy guy. Why don't you fly fish a little bit? And, you know, typical, typical Shane, he just kind of puts the rod down. He's looking around. And then there's that voice of Moses. You know, gray, I want to tell you something. You're wrong. I went, all right. Wrong a lot, every single day. What am I wrong at this time? He goes, you know, I've, I've heard you on stage call this governor's tag, conservation permit model, a bastardization of the North American model, and you're wrong. I said, well, you being the foremost spokesperson

• 45:48Speaker 04

  for the model, tell me why? And he says, you know, one of the pillars of the model is state and agency determination of how is the most efficient way for them to raise money for wildlife. If a state determines that a auction tag, or a raffle tag, or come up with ever, whatever program it is, is the most efficient, efficient mechanism, well then that's consistent with the model. We just did a, a permit discussion, uh, at our, at our sheep show in our Full Curl Cinema, had Shane, uh, my, uh, EVP of Conservation, Corey Mason, myself, doing a Q and A afterwards. And Shane said it again. He goes, you know,

• 46:34Speaker 04

  This is consistent with the model. The challenge is the social license. And Steve, it's what you said, and you cannot discount that.

• 46:47Speaker 04

  You know, I could certainly talk about a way to look at it that maybe will sway some views on it, but there is just a built in, you know, even though it's additive, even though it's driving 83% of the conservation dollars for wild sheep at the agency level in our country. There's still this, well, so what? I don't care about the money. Uh, it's just not fair. Some, somebody is, is able to buy something that I can't. Well, um, you know, I guess I look at that. And I mentioned the term wildlife philanthropy.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  You know, you look, you look at a high net worth individual. And we applaud when there's a name on a hospital wing because they donated a potload of money to that hospital. Or they donated to feeding the hungry. Or, uh, or to the welfare of pets or a football stadium or an art museum, and we applaud that philanthropy, you know, philanthropy. Well, this, in my opinion, is wildlife philanthropy. Why don't we applaud that?

• 48:02Steven Rinella?

  Because they're getting, because they, they would get, they would get universally applauded if they weren't taking the tag. If some guy got up at sheep at your, at your convention in Reno and some guy said, hey, man, no strings attached. I don't want shit for it. Here's $500,000 from wild sheep in Arizona.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  500,000 for raffle as opposed to-

• 48:22Steven Rinella?

  That'd be the, that'd be the response. I mean, like, if you're actually asking the question, that would be why. And it again, it's like-

• 48:28Speaker 04

  So the name on the building doesn't, doesn't, isn't, isn't an accolade too. And I get it.

• 48:33Steven Rinella?

  No, I mean, it is. But when it's in a market, but I don't think like if Verizon underwrites a sports stadium as a marketing play, I don't think that Verizon is applauded.

• 48:47Steven Rinella?

  No, they're recognized. It's like, it's like, sort of, there's a, there's a quid pro quo to it. It's like, yes, they're underwriting the sports stadium, but it's like a marketing expense. So, um, if you could somehow get into a guy's head who's buying a sheep tag for $400,000, and he was gonna go write the check anyway, um, because he believes that much in, in wild sheep. But then, like, as a little added perk, uh, got a tag too, I think that that would, that would diminish some of the social condemnation. But I don't think people are looking at it. If talking about people who feel burned by governors' tags, I don't think they're looking at it that it was a donation.

• 49:30Steven Rinella?

  I think they're looking at it that it was a purchase.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  I think you're looking at the psychology of it.

• 49:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, right, and they are, they're certainly getting a benefit back.

• 49:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  Even if they don't take the sheep. And, and that certainly happened. I mean, I, I, you know, a good friend of mine from Texas, you know, back in the day in Alberta, I think he, I think he bought the tag, he bought it two or three times and didn't take a sheep once.

• 49:58Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  There was another guy that was always chasing him, he's since passed, and I think he, he bought it at least three times, didn't take a sheep twice.

• 50:11Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 50:11Speaker 04

  So, I see your point, and it's, and it's,

• 50:14Steven Rinella?

  And it presumably had opportunities to get ushy.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  You know, well, you know, but you're getting an opportu-, well, you're getting an opportunity, um, with no, with no guarantee. And I, I look back, you know, I look back on the guy that, that ended up buying that, that record Montana tag in 2013, because I, you know, I, I felt that my $750 tag back when Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks had $120 in revenue coming in from me, you know, and others, us regular folks, and they got, 90% of $480,000 that my ability to hunt sheep in Montana was because some crazy guy

• 50:59Speaker 04

  was willing to spend that money. He made an interesting comment to me. I, you know, I thanked him and he says, "Gray, here's the deal. I give to my church. I give to..." He had another, he had another, um, you know, kind of pet charity he gives to. And he goes, "And I give to wild sheep conservation." Yes. Now, does he get a spiritual benefit from giving to his church? You bet. Um, does he, you know, it's a little bit more than my 20 bucks in the tray. Um, does he get a benefit satisfaction out of giving to, you know, in this case, they were homeless

• 51:41Speaker 04

  shelters or something like that? Sure. Uh, does he get a benefit from buying that sheep tag? Yes, he does. But I know I did too. As the regular guy, I benefited because he chose to direct his philanthropy towards conservation, not a football stadium. So, that's a good point though, Steve.

• 52:04Steven Rinella?

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• 52:46Steven Rinella?

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• 52:55Steven Rinella?

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• 53:26Speaker 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.

• 53:41Steven Rinella?

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• 54:22Steven Rinella?

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• 54:33Steven Rinella?

  Let's change, let's change course a little bit.

• 54:40Steven Rinella?

  In conversations with people who are suspicious of, critical of, of auction tags, a common thing people point out is, and I've pointed it out myself, is that in some cases, you get a season that's way longer. You bet. Like, potentially 365 days long. Yeah. You sit outside of the unit thing, so Joe Blow draws a tag, and he might have, he might have an area 10 by 20 miles, whatever the hell, smaller, that's his hunt unit. Um, the auction tag holder can hunt any unit that's open in the whole damn state. Right?

• 55:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 55:21Steven Rinella?

  And so people look and they'll be like, why is that? Why this amazing perk? To wealth like even once we have the tags are like, I won mine on the open tag allotment. He bought his, but his is better than mine.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  And something to build on what Steve is saying, like I once listened to a con- conversation at a Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation thing in Colorado where someone had drawn a Bighorn ram tag in a unit where there was only one tag. And he spent a bunch of time scouting and there was a real big one.

• 55:59Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna ask you to tell the story.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  He on his, on his way in scouting one day.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  Kind of a posse of dudes are coming down the trail and he's like, hey, you know, they strike up a conversation. He's like, I, I got, I drew the tag. I'm looking for this ram. And they were basically like, don't bother. Like we're, we're guiding the governor's tag guy. And they know when the season opens. And they're like, we're going to get that thing before you ever have a chance to get it. I, it wasn't like an impolite conversation, but it was like, yeah.

• 56:39Steven Rinella?

  Cause he had his team of, he had his team of guides.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. So there's like a social conflict there too.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  You bet. And, and, and that. That in my opinion is the dirty underbelly.

• 56:51Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 56:52Speaker 04

  And, and is something that if, if we are to retain the social license to have these. We need to be able to answer those. And I, I would say right now, we don't.

• 57:09Steven Rinella?

  Well, can't, why can't you answer it this way?

• 57:11Speaker 04

  Well.

• 57:11Steven Rinella?

  Let me provide you with a hypothetical answer, not hypothetical, but I mean, wouldn't it be? If we as hunters are agreeing that.

• 57:22Steven Rinella?

  Auctioning off a tag for several hundred thousand dollars.

• 57:28Steven Rinella?

  Creates more sheep opportunities for everybody. Potential leads to bigger bighorn populations. So that there's more tags available in the general draw. We got healthier sheep herds. We got healthier sheep hunting. Um, if we can make that tag. Even more valuable. And it's still only costing us one sheep. Why not do everything we can do to make it more valuable?

• 57:55Speaker 04

  Well.

• 57:55Steven Rinella?

  Like, like if you said, if you auctioned a tag off and you go, you got seven days.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:59Steven Rinella?

  All of a sudden. The price is probably going to plummet.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Without question. And so.

• 58:04Steven Rinella?

  So, I mean, but I feel like, I'm not saying that that's ultimately the answer, but that's kind of how I look at it would be. Well, if we're going to do it, we're going to give away a sheep tag. Um, I don't know, get the most money you can out of the sum of bitch. And if you need to make the season longer and that jacks it up by a hundred thousand dollars.

• 58:22Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, and, and you nailed it. And if, you know, going back to the, the prior podcast and the, and the title, you know, our governor's tags on American, well. Um, no.

• 58:35Steven Rinella?

  Good title.

• 58:36Speaker 04

  No. Um, you know, these conservation permits and these governors tags are absolutely American. Because it's based on supply and demand and a, and a, and an interest in.

• 58:50Speaker 04

  Capitalistic.

• 58:53Speaker 04

  Process. Now, you know, that, that was my argument as well. It's against the egalitarian North American model. Shane, Shane corrected me. Um, but Stephen, you're absolutely right. But the, the, the dirty underbelly is. Perception.

• 59:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  And, and if, you know, Arizona is a 365 day. Um, you know.

• 59:17Speaker 04

  Being intellectually honest, um, you know, we, we like to give breeding populations time off, you know, now Montana hunts during the rut for mule deer. Uh, we off, you know, we archery hunt in the rut for elk and others. Um, typically big horn sheep are not in the rut. There's some that, seasons that there, there, there could be. Certainly these, these conservation permits that either are extended season, earlier season, or any unit opens it up to going right back to that social question, social license question on, well, how come it's that much different? Well, how, why is it that much different? Because

• 1:00:01Speaker 04

  that's what, that's what increases the price. Classic example is, is Alberta. Okay. Um, you know, they, they made, which, you know, some could say were some mistakes, um, you know, back in the nineties and they were just offering too many tags. Um, price started to go down and they're going, geez, you know, we used to be the big dog. Now Montana is, uh, now New Mexico is, um, Arizona was, I mean, it, you know, it's Colorado was last year. I mean, it's, it's kind of amazing when you, when you look at, you know, where the big dollars are coming in on these, on these conservation permits. But, um, two years ago-

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  Can I, can I stop you for, does the dollar, does the amount change based on where the big ram is that year?

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  With that question.

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, with that- That's on my mental list of things to bring up. Which is, which is a dirty underbelly. Um, you know-

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Can I also ask, with the fewer, of, of, a lower number of available tags per state, does the number also go up?

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  Um, probably. I couldn't, I couldn't, you know, what, what we're seeing now is, um-

• 1:01:13Speaker 00

  Just kind of like the

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  You know, you look at, you look at what's, what's been really interesting is, um, you know, kind of ground zero for disease, uh, has been in the Tri-State area. Idaho, um, Washington, Oregon. Um, our chapters in the region, the agencies in the region, wild sheep foundations pumped millions of dollars into disease research into kind of some novel separation policies and some draconian policies like test, test and remove. Uh, we kind of You're talking pneumonia, correct? Yeah, yeah. Mycoplasma pneumonia is a setup agent. It's a pathogen. And what it, what it does is it can lead to ammonia. Okay. Uh, pneumonia, um, primarily comes from domestic sheep, also domestic goats.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  It can be within a wild sheep population. So it can be endemic, uh, once they get it from a, you know, from a vector, a source, domestic sheep or goat. Um, well, we've, we've done collectively a pretty damn good job of, of, at one point we eliminated, uh, mycoplasma pneumonia from the Hell's Canyon complex. Um, better lamb recruitment, um, big rams, uh, big, you know, and that's just, that's just healthy sheep. Mm-hmm. Now Oregon tag selling like crazy. Idaho tag selling like, you know, new state records taken in Oregon, Idaho, Washington. So, you know, there's just this dynamic, but

• 1:02:39Steven Rinella?

  So the buyers are, they're like, this is a point I, I think that is important to get, cause

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  They know.

• 1:02:45Steven Rinella?

  It's important to cover because it's part of what, it's, it's part of the social conversation being

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Steven Rinella?

  When, when, when an auction tag comes up, oftentimes the buyer is basically buying an opportunity to go get a specific sheep that he has been made aware of by his outfitter.

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Steven Rinella?

  They're like, look here, we got a 200 inch ram.

• 1:03:17Steven Rinella?

  You'll get to get it before the public. Um, we here, here's a dossier. Here's all the photos of it. You buy it, you hire us, our guy, our guys will keep an eye on it. We'll put six, seven guys out and watch it. You show up, boom, it's yours. Cause we're already on it. And that burns people's ass.

• 1:03:39Speaker 04

  It does, and that, and, and I would call, you know, in that scenario, that is a dirty under Bella belly. But now you've got another scenario and.

• 1:03:47Steven Rinella?

  But is that the, but that, but again, is that the tag's fault?

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  No, it's not. It, it's, it's, it's the, it's our fault. It's, it's the, you know, let's, let's push the envelope on fair chase. Um, which we need to clean up now, you know, here's, here's the, here's a flip side of that. And I'll tell you a little bit about the guy that, that bought the 1.3 million dollar New Mexico tag two weeks ago.

• 1:04:19Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  1.3?

• 1:04:21Speaker 04

  1.3. So.

• 1:04:23Steven Rinella?

  A New Mexico sheep tag went for 1.3?

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  Desert big horn, right? Rock him out. Oh, it was rocking.

• 1:04:29Steven Rinella?

  Was that a new record?

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  Absolute new record.

• 1:04:31Steven Rinella?

  It, it. Holy cow.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  It.

• 1:04:32Steven Rinella?

  Has he gone in for a specific sheep?

• 1:04:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's going in first, but I'm going to tell you a story about him and what he said. So.

• 1:04:40Steven Rinella?

  Holy smokes.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  1.3 million.

• 1:04:42Steven Rinella?

  Now that's at a point where that's getting, that's getting suspiciously philanthropic.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  So, yeah, so, you know, almost. Almost, Steve. So there, there was a period of time where, you know, everyone was chasing very, very large stone sheep.

• 1:05:01Speaker 04

  Um, so the B C minister's license, which is kind of a unique license because, and there is a raffle tag too, but there's one, there's a, there's a minister's license on auction. There's a minister's license on raffle. The minister's license in B C, you can hunt, they've got four, you know, subspecies, if you will, but you know, three species. They've got doll sheep, stone sheep, big horn sheep, but a big horn sheep, they got California big horn and Rocky Mountain big horn.

• 1:05:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I got confused. I'm sorry.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  So there's, there's a, there's a subspecies of big horn sheep called California big horn.

• 1:05:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but who, who has all of them?

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  British Columbia.

• 1:05:37Steven Rinella?

  They have those?

• 1:05:38Speaker 04

  The only thing they don't have is desert, but they have four. Four wild sheep species, dolls, stones, dolls, and it's a teeny little area up in the far northwest corner, adjacent to Alaska, lower part of Alaska. So they have dolls. They are, you know, the location for stone sheep, other than fanning up in the Yukon. They have California bighorn that's primarily-

• 1:06:03Steven Rinella?

  That's what I was unaware of. Is that like on the west coast or something?

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  It's in the Fraser River Valley.

• 1:06:08Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:06:09Speaker 04

  And then, and then bighorn sheep, around Ferney and the like.

• 1:06:12Steven Rinella?

  I had no idea.

• 1:06:13Speaker 04

  So, um, so you can buy that tag and you can choose. You can choose which sheep you want to hunt. So, um, you know, years past, it used to be they'd chase a bighorn. Now it was, hey, we're gonna, you're gonna be able to hunt early and late for, um, stone sheep. And stone sheep was the hot item. Uh, that, that permit went for 300 some odd thousand dollars. Um, there was a sheep that, you know, a couple of big ones that people were know, you know, knew that were around. This guy knew that they were around. Um, all killed in an avalanche.

• 1:06:54Steven Rinella?

  Seriously?

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  C'est la vie. So now let's go back to the, let's go back to the, yeah, it's like a pile of four sheep killed in an avalanche, all four of the big ones. It's like, hey, that ram you were chasing, no longer. But congratulations, that's philanthropic.

• 1:07:12Steven Rinella?

  Did he petition for a refund?

• 1:07:15Steven Rinella?

  You gotta be kidding.

• 1:07:16Speaker 04

  No, no refund.

• 1:07:18Steven Rinella?

  Can I, can I, I gotta explain something to folks. So I'm, I'm trying to keep this real one-on-one. Uh, just to point out something obvious. The reason 365 days a year is enticing for sheep is because they don't shed their antlers. We just pointed out. So like, if you're, if you're hunting elk, let's say you're buying a governor's tag for elk, like that elk's gonna get maximum size and get hard antlered in September, late August, early September, and he's gonna drop his antlers down the road in March, right? So, um, if you had 365 days and maybe you do, it doesn't really matter.

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:07:53Steven Rinella?

  Because you're chasing a, how many months is that? September, October, November, December, January, February? You, you got half, half the year he's gonna have-

• 1:07:59Speaker 04

  That and any antlered species could just- Bust them up.

• 1:08:04Steven Rinella?

  That's, yup, and he could also snap them.

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Steven Rinella?

  And, and, and a lot of those big bulls, especially in the, in the desert southwest, do snap them off. So like, but a sheep, I mean, by the time he's the kind of sheep we're talking about, this sheep is nine years old, 10 years old, 11 years old, but he's got him, he's carrying his rack year round. You shoot him in April, he's got the same, he's got.

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:08:24Steven Rinella?

  The same attributes as if you shoot him in November.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  Their horns, not antlers. So, you know, they, they wear their life on their head.

• 1:08:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  Um, so let's, let's now go to the gentleman that bought, you know, which is now the record for any, any permit.

• 1:08:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Um, 1.3 million. Um, I, I was visiting with him last week, thanking him, you know, wow, uh, incredible. Um, you know, how the heck did that happen? I mean, 300,000 is a lot of money. 1.3 is.

• 1:08:53Steven Rinella?

  I like what you said. It's just a film for our.

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  Kind of pretty close to, you want to wing, you want to wing on that hospital. Um, and he says, you know, I knew it was going to go over a million dollars. Um, I wanted to go over a million dollars. I'm happy, you know, season opens August 1st for me. I sure hope a mountain lion doesn't get it, but it is what it is.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  That's.

• 1:09:20Speaker 03

  Famous last word.

• 1:09:21Speaker 04

  Philanthropic. That is a guy and he's done very, very well, obviously in life. Um, and crazy enough, I think there were three bidders in at 1.2. So.

• 1:09:33Steven Rinella?

  And at one point, those guys like enough is enough.

• 1:09:36Speaker 04

  Just amazing. I mean, you can imagine the energy in the room when you see that.

• 1:09:41Steven Rinella?

  Tell me, tell me about the sheep.

• 1:09:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was like.

• 1:09:43Steven Rinella?

  What's the sheep they know about?

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  Why so much of this year and not after that sheep last year?

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  There's a, you know, 200 points is kind of the.

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  The holy grail. And so there's, there is a.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Speaker 04

  You know, there is the thought that the largest bighorn in North America is in New Mexico.

• 1:10:02Steven Rinella?

  Is alive right now.

• 1:10:03Speaker 04

  So there you go.

• 1:10:03Steven Rinella?

  Yep. And he's got a price on his head.

• 1:10:05Speaker 04

  And, and so. Well, yeah, let me ask you. Is that unseemly? Well, I guess, but you know, Steve, you pointed out that, hey, if the, if the goal is to raise the most money for the resource, well, this is how we're going to do it. Now we just need to make sure that. It's ethical, you know, the, the view and Brody, I think you, you touched on it. If there's like 10 guys, you know, out on a mountain and they're, you know, there's camping on the sheep. It, it doesn't smell right and it doesn't look right.

• 1:10:36Steven Rinella?

  But it's not illegal.

• 1:10:37Speaker 04

  No, it isn't.

• 1:10:38Steven Rinella?

  You're never going to get there. You're never going to enforce. You're never going to create a, um.

• 1:10:47Steven Rinella?

  You're never going to create a secondary set of laws that someone's going to have to apply to. Now, let me give you a, for instance, me and Brody go hunting with our little kids. Okay.

• 1:10:58Steven Rinella?

  Some of them at a certain age, they, they can shoot before they're like terribly hopeful.

• 1:11:06Steven Rinella?

  Right? They don't know. Even when we leave home, a 10 year old, they're not even really aware of what direction you're headed. Okay. So we're out with our kids, so and so sees a buck. He tells another grown up, he sees a buck. You know, we, we tell the kid, you know, you dragged the kid out of their sleeping bag. We gotta start walking. They don't really know, right? Eventually you're like, there he is. Get him.

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:11:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So would someone go, that's unethical. That kid, that child.

• 1:11:40Speaker 04

  Didn't work for it.

• 1:11:40Steven Rinella?

  Glassed. They didn't scout. They didn't glass that buck up. Right?

• 1:11:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:11:47Steven Rinella?

  So you're never going to get there where you're going to come in and, and be that, uh, operating within the confines of the law, we would expect it to be different. Meaning if I apply for 25 years and I draw a bighorn tag and all my buddies at work, and I could see this happening.

• 1:12:04Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:04Steven Rinella?

  All my buddies at work are like, oh man, what a riot. And three of us go up in jet boats, right? And we pour the coals to it, glassing for sheep. And one of my buddies comes into camp. He's like, we found a giant. Um.

• 1:12:19Speaker 04

  You're not going to be like, I want to find it myself.

• 1:12:21Steven Rinella?

  I'm not going to wind up being like raked over the coals about it. It would be like, no, they went up, but there, but there's a thing that happens where there's like, there's already a financial bitterness. And then on top of that, there's a added bunch of.

• 1:12:38Steven Rinella?

  What seems to be like shortcut taking, right? And it tarnishes the thing.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Steven Rinella?

  But, but in people's eyes, but then in all fairness, like, are you really gonna make a separate set of game laws?

• 1:12:53Steven Rinella?

  For, for an auction tag holder? That you wouldn't make for a guy that bought a, but that, that bought an elk hunt from an outfitter?

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  Well, they do, in some cases, they do make a separate set.

• 1:13:03Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, they extend, they extend the seasons and like. But, you know, and, and that does, it, it just, it gets back to this. You know, what is the public perception?

• 1:13:14Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:14Speaker 04

  And what's, what's, you know, what is the real grind? And again, I, you know, there's organizations that are, well, we just have to go to, you know, raffle tags, cause that's, that's more equitable. Well, so then the person wins the raffle tag. Is there also a team of? Guides that go in?

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  Probably so.

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Speaker 03

  In some cases, yeah.

• 1:13:35Speaker 04

  So what's, you know, what's, what's the difference there? You know, I, I, you know, and there, there are crazy things that have happened. I've, I've heard of the raffle tag winners outfitter calling the conservation permit outfitter saying, I'll tell you what, if your guy writes my guy a check for X amount of dollars, we'll let you go after that guy and we'll go after a second.

• 1:14:05Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:14:06Speaker 04

  Ah. Now, that to me stinks. Ah. And that's almost extortion.

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:14:11Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:14:12Speaker 04

  And, and so. You know, and it's, and this gets back to the social thing too. You know, any time that. You know, a super high price is put on a resource.

• 1:14:27Speaker 04

  There's going to be challenges to that, you know, and, and we, we know it. So, you know, where the Wild Sheep Foundation looks at this is okay. We're raising the most money for a resources, a resource that's got challenge, you know, whether it's disease in the lower 48, whether it's drought in the southwest, whether it's super heavy wet snowfalls up in Alaska in the Yukon, uh, and she, and doll sheep are starving. And in some mountain ranges, we've lost 40 to 50 to 60% of the population. How do we bring them back? You know, we're always looking for, okay, how can we raise the most money to do it?

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  How can we put that money on the mountain? How, you know, how are we going to fund, um, you know, disease research? So we see it, we do it, you know, Wild Sheep Foundation's directed since, you know, that first governor's tag, you know, Ed Herschler's Wyoming governor's tag that sold for $23,000 in 1980. We have put about $89 million back into agencies for wild sheep conservation, just on the sale of conservation permits. So it's very, very effective. What I think we should be, instead of us arguing on the, well, you know, that guy or gal gets a privilege that I don't, um, I would like us to do a better job

• 1:15:54Speaker 04

  of making sure that the dollars that are directed to the agencies are going where they should. And, and Steve, I think you asked that question early on and we didn't touch on it because there's some agencies that do an exceptionally good job and are very transparent of where that money goes. And there's some that aren't so. Um, Wyoming, Wyoming has the Wyoming Governor's Big Game License Coalition. So all the, you know, the five sheep tags, you know, any of the, the elk tags, any of the moose tags go into this pool, but they're separated out by species. And then, and then stakeholders, you know, Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation has a seat on that.

• 1:16:34Speaker 04

  Uh, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has a seat on that. A Mule Deer Foundation has a seat on that, that, that coalition. The pronghorn guys, you know, all the little critter groups have a, have a seat. They then evaluate projects that are that are brought before the big game license coalition to say, hey, we want to fund a sagebrush habitat project that's going to benefit mule deer, certainly, certainly sagehands, maybe less so on bighorn sheep. Well, sometimes that those stakeholder groups will go, you know, we got plenty of money on the bighorn sheep pool. Let's pull a little bit out and collectively, we agree, we're going to fund mule deer conservation.

• 1:17:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  British Columbia does the same thing with their habitat conservation trust. You know, the monies that we raise for the B C ministry go into this pool. There are a group of stakeholders, you know, Wild Sheep Foundation has a seat, but we, we have a representative that's from B C. And they, they make decisions on, on where those monies are spent.

• 1:17:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's transparent.

• 1:17:35Speaker 04

  Very transparent. Nevada, another one that does it really, really well. Some of them, not so well. And, and with all the challenges and.

• 1:17:42Steven Rinella?

  Can you say, can you give an example of a bad one? Or is that, is that not?

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  Probably not a good thing for me to say, because we partner with all of them. So let me just talk about the good ones. But there's some that could do better.

• 1:17:52Steven Rinella?

  We could do omission.

• 1:17:54Speaker 04

  We can, yeah, we could bleep it, maybe. But, you know, the, the, the fact of the matter is, you know, again, I can show your Wild Sheep Foundation spends our dollars. I mean, we do these conservation impact summaries, you know, we're, we're absolutely transparent.

• 1:18:12Speaker 04

  Agency's not so. So that's something that I think, you know, we as NGOs, whether it's Wild Sheep Foundation, whether it's mule deer, whether it's elk, whether it's, you know, any of the organizations that are selling these conservation permits and driving the money back to the agency. We need to do a better job of holding our agencies accountable, going, okay, where is the money?

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  Where is it going? And is it going to the resource that it should?

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's important. Like something you said that there's not enough sheep to pay for themselves. Like, I think a lot of people don't think about it that way.

• 1:18:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  But it makes total sense. Like, and you, like, a state like Montana or Colorado, you talk about elk, like, those things pay for themselves and more, right?

• 1:19:00Speaker 04

  Brody, I wrote a paper back in the 80s, before I was in the nonprofit, and I was, you know, it was kind of the economics of hunting. And, and at the time, and I don't know what it is now, but at the time, I was looking at Colorado. I used to, I lived in California, I'd drive out to Colorado to hunt elk. And at the time, I think, non-resident Colorado elk tags funded like 80% of Colorado fishing game back then. Now it's Colorado Parks and Wildlife. But, you know, I mean, elk paid the way. And, as, as we all know, you know, the non-resident tags, you know, pay the way, primarily, you know, Montana, you know, what was it?

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  $69,000, you know, $69,000 comes from resident bighorn sheep, 122 from non-residents, so. For a much smaller amount of tags. Yeah, almost double. I mean, you know, it's, it's, we pay 100 and, what, 125 bucks for a, for a sheep tag? You know, we can, we can buy an unlimited, you know, so we, we can have that tag in our pocket. But if you draw one of the limited, 125 bucks, it's 1,750 for a non-res. You know, so, that gets back to this, this social thing. And Steve, I, you know, I love it when you talk about it because,

• 1:20:20Speaker 04

  you know, look at, look at what's happened to our country. You know, we've, we've become so polarized. You know, we identify with pretty asinine things.

• 1:20:30Speaker 04

  You know, we, we allow the media to fester that polarization.

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  Even within our own community, we, you know, we, we identify by what rifle we use and we criticize others that don't. You know, we, we identify what fricking camo we use and we create communities that if you're not a part of it and you don't wear my camo, you're a bad guy. Uh, boots, you know, whatever.

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  We're so basic.

• 1:20:57Speaker 04

  And it's like, good.

• 1:20:58Steven Rinella?

  I'm not hanging out with no 300 Win Mag guy.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  Good God. But do we have like a, a name for the guys who have 6.5 Creedmoors?

• 1:21:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. The 6.5 Needmore.

• 1:21:14Speaker 04

  You know, and it's a great caliber. But I mean, it's, you know, we've taken the, around the campfire arguing on whether the 3006 is better than the 270 to this level is just fricking asinine now. And, and so, you know, we fostered and now we're doing, you know, we do the same thing on the funding. And, and I guess, you know, I would just hope that we could change the narrative, you know, and, and, and start, you know, let's deal with facts. You know, okay, the facts are auction tags bring in more money than raffle tags at a far more efficient way of, I mean, for Wild Sheep Foundation is gonna raffle off an Arizona Big Horn sheep tag. We get $0 for doing it, but we're gonna do it. We're

• 1:21:58Speaker 04

  gonna, we're gonna pay all that money to do it. We're gonna raise $125, $150,000 directed to Arizona Game and Fish. Well, we, we, we held an auction now, you know, yeah, that's expensive for us, but we're, you know, we're four nights of auction and we raised $500,000. So we know that it's the most cost effective is an auction tag. But we still get caught up in this social narrative. So what I want to really dive into and, and that is that How, how do we get beyond it? How do we get beyond criticizing that guy because he wears camo? Or we don't like his brand? Or that gal because she's shooting a 6'5" Creedmoor? And we don't like that caliber?

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  Uh, to, why don't we just focus again on that Ram, Lamb or U on a ridge line? And go, what's best for wildlife?

• 1:22:48Steven Rinella?

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• 1:23:32Steven Rinella?

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• 1:24:13Steven Rinella?

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• 1:24:21Speaker 02

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• 1:24:36Steven Rinella?

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• 1:25:18Steven Rinella?

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• 1:25:54Speaker 03

  What would the bighorn sheep landscape in North America look like without this money?

• 1:25:59Steven Rinella?

  Nailed it. Mic drop. Mic drop. Like, we wouldn't have them.

• 1:26:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:26:08Steven Rinella?

  Eighty-three percent of agency funding right now in the US comes from the, what happens when eighty-three, comes from an auction, tag or raffle tag, most of that, what happens when eighty-three percent of that funding goes away? Where's it gonna come from?

• 1:26:28Speaker 00

  Question. Do we have, over time, let's say the past 10 years, from states that have sheep, the amount of money, let's say collectively across these states from licenses, both in-state and out-of-state, and if that has gone up over the past 10 years or gone down as a sign of general hunter...

• 1:26:59Speaker 00

  Commitment to conservation of sheep.

• 1:27:02Speaker 04

  Absolutely on, on, now are you, are you saying total, you know, because we all know that revenue is generally going down because generally hunting numbers are going down. Yes, we saw during the pandemic a bump up. Yes, we see a, you know, the largest percentage of new hunters are women. Is, you know, is that a significant percentage of the current? You might be able to argue it, but it's significant, but. Here's the sad fact, and this gets back to impact. I can show you a nice linear upward trend on dollars going into wild sheep conservation.

• 1:27:47Speaker 00

  Collectively, across, okay.

• 1:27:51Speaker 04

  Collectively.

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  But the percentage of that, that is.

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  Oh, auction tax?

• 1:27:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:27:57Speaker 04

  A 10% increase over the last 10 years. It was 73% in, in 2014, 83% in the US in, so a 10% increase in, in auction tag revenues going to the agency.

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  And then, and licenses?

• 1:28:12Speaker 04

  Licenses not so, and that, you know, that, you know, that you could get US Fish and Wildlife Service data, and you know, again, there's been slight increases and then it kind of plateaus and then drops. My concern is, there's a linear growth in revenue going to wild sheep conservation, sadly, over the last, say, five years or so because of huge die-offs in Alaska and Yukon, some die-offs during disease, you know, from, in Texas. I mean, Texas had 1,800

• 1:28:52Speaker 04

  desert bighorn sheep five, six years ago, little over 500 now, all because of disease from Audad. Um, you know, there's 40,000 plus Audad in the state, free ranging, I'm not even talking about behind wire, and we've gone from 1,800 desert big horns to less than 600. That scares the shit out of me. And so, you know, I, the point there is.

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  It gets back to impact and what are we doing with it? And are we holding the agencies accountable? We can drive this money to them. Are we getting the bang for our buck? And, and that's for all of us to work on to ensure that we are. And, and, and money isn't everything. I mean, it's certainly a driver, but we have to make sure that we're doing as much as we possibly can effectively with that money if we know what to do. How are we gonna deal with snow load in March, April and Alaska? I don't know. You know, that I don't know. You know, I, I mean, it, it gets back to even some crazy ideas. We grow desert big horn sheep. We've done it in Texas.

• 1:30:06Speaker 04

  We've done it in Arizona.

• 1:30:07Steven Rinella?

  You mean just by putting water?

• 1:30:09Speaker 04

  Water, but we've actually, we actually intensively managed them in Texas to bring them from zero to 1800 to 2000. We did the same thing in Arizona.

• 1:30:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you mean like with, with release, with using release sites and stuff?

• 1:30:22Speaker 04

  Capt, captive bred and release.

• 1:30:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I got you.

• 1:30:24Speaker 04

  Done in Mexico.

• 1:30:25Steven Rinella?

  Like literally growing them.

• 1:30:26Speaker 04

  We've grown them. Sonora, Sonora is about 15,000 desert big horn sheep in the state of Sonora alone. 50% of them are behind wire. We have an initiative to say, hey, look, you know, let's use market forces to incentivize you to release them and not a put and take scenario, but release them and create free ranging desert big horn sheep in suitable habitat. And we've got, we've got great examples of people doing it. They're doing the same thing in Cohuila. They're doing it in Sierra Leone. They're doing it in Chihuahua. So we can do it with desert big horn sheep with some caveats or some, there's some challenges to it. You know, this is a, you know, this isn't, you know, raising whitetails in Michigan, but it can be done.

• 1:31:10Speaker 04

  Is that something that we could do in the northern climes? I don't know, but.

• 1:31:17Speaker 04

  You know, you have a 40 to 50% drop in doll sheep. You got probably a 10 to 15 to 20% drop in stone sheep populations for a whole variety of reasons. It's not over harvest. You know, it's more environmental factors or disease. What are we going to do? I'll tell you what we need.

• 1:31:34Steven Rinella?

  Man, this is a whole other, this is a whole other episode. But I think that if someone came in and proposed in Alaska doing like captive breeding, they'd be shocked. To juice, to juice doll sheep numbers. I think that that would be like, uh,

• 1:31:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:48Steven Rinella?

  You know, you'd have a bigger controversy on your hands than conservation tags. And your question like, how do you find peace with it? There's a thing with, there's a thing in rhetoric that I've just, that there's an observation of mine when it comes to debate and rhetoric.

• 1:32:06Steven Rinella?

  That I've pointed out a handful of times around conversations having to do with, with the impacts of a, of a border wall. Okay, between US and Mexico. And when there's talk of building an impenetrable barrier between the US and Mexico to, to try to get a grip on illegal immigration. There's this thing you bring up that one would bring up. You'd say, um, that would be detrimental. That would be detrimental to wildlife movements.

• 1:32:35Speaker 04

  You bet.

• 1:32:35Steven Rinella?

  So Jaguars, Desert Big Horns. Okay, that like, that's a thing to consider. Now someone can bring up, hey, let's consider this. And people that are like vehemently supportive of a wall would be angry

• 1:32:53Steven Rinella?

  that you brought it up. Right? They're like, well, you haven't lost your job. Okay, to, to, to an illegal immigrant. So they're angry that you're laying out all the facts for consideration. But in your own family, if you're proposing like, hey, should we go on vacation this spring? In that conversation, someone can say, well, you realize if we go on vacation this spring, that's going to mean that we are going to forego painting our house because it costs money. Now, the person that brings that up isn't attacked.

• 1:33:27Steven Rinella?

  It's like you're all airing the pros and cons, right? And then you come to an agreement, all the pros and cons considered, we come to an agreement. Even though it's going to be detrimental to wildlife movement, it is net positive to make an impenetrable barrier between the US and Mexico, let's say. Or even though we'll forego painting our house, we're determining it's a net positive that we go on a family vacation. I think ultimately the answer might be arrived at similarly around auction permits. It'd be like, it's imperfect. It's imperfect.

• 1:34:03Steven Rinella?

  One could argue that by auctioning off a tag, we're removing a, we're hypothetically removing a sheep from the pool. That's not perfect. The individual might use some hunting methods that aren't available to everybody else. That's imperfect, but net, net, all things weighed in, the money is worth it. Like, that's probably the best you're going to do. Like, I don't think you're going to get it to where some guy reads online that someone bought a tag for 1.3 million. I don't think you're going to get it where 100% of the hunters are. You're never going to get there.

• 1:34:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:34:41Steven Rinella?

  It's going to be that like the general sentiment is, eh, hate them rich guys. But, uh, but that's a shitload of money for big horns.

• 1:34:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:52Steven Rinella?

  And, and in the long run, it's probably going to mean more tags.

• 1:34:55Speaker 04

  Right. There's one, there's one more net positive impact and Steve, you're right. You're, you're absolutely spot on. There is another little thing that we have in this country that's not in others, which is the Pittman Robinson Act. And these, these tag purchases are non-federal dollars. So they're, they're subject and eligible for a three to one match with P and R Act. So, you know, we can, we can draw, you know, we can send 1.3 million, you know, we're going to, we're going to get 10% of us, 130, you know, 1.3 minus $130,000. We send that to New Mexico Game and Fish, they can apply for a three to one match from

• 1:35:36Speaker 04

  P and R Act dollars for wildlife restoration and turn that into, you know, five, a $5 million bump. So. Yeah, it is imperfect. It works, and I guess until we find something that works better. Well, why don't we live with what does work and it has worked really, really well from 1980 and the dollars are there. And argue over what caliber is better or what camo you can wear. That's a little bit more, you know, productive.

• 1:36:12Steven Rinella?

  I think one of the, one of the final points we had arrived at when we had this conversation

• 1:36:19Steven Rinella?

  was a sense of, you know, a, a, sort of a sense of hope or a call to action that people would

• 1:36:32Steven Rinella?

  open their checkbooks up, open their credit card balances up to support raffle tags and that you would arrive at a point where these raffle tags were netting equal to or more than auction tags. And I think you kind of touched on this early, but if we, you don't think we're there.

• 1:36:49Speaker 04

  Not yet, but you know, we during our, during the seminar, there was a guy adamant on, well, you know, are you, are you working on it? Well, yeah, we are. We looked at, we looked at our raffles that we do at the convention. And, you know, we were selling $40 tickets.

• 1:37:06Speaker 04

  We could not physically sell enough tickets in three day of expo to cover the costs. It really, you know, really, really make a profit, if you will, which our profit goes right back into sheep conservation on doing it that way. So we, you know, we, we played the capitalist again. We go, okay, well, we're going to sell these not for $40. We're going to sell a thousand tickets at $200. And then for the stone sheep, we're going to sell 500 tickets at $500. Is that too much? I think we figured out that it was, but you know, we increased our raffle take. So what I pointed out in this, in the seminar.

• 1:37:42Steven Rinella?

  That helped the raffle tag.

• 1:37:43Speaker 04

  Big time, big time. It, that, that helped.

• 1:37:46Steven Rinella?

  Five bucks a pop isn't good.

• 1:37:47Speaker 04

  We, we, we can't.

• 1:37:49Steven Rinella?

  You can't process it.

• 1:37:50Speaker 04

  You can't process enough and you know, $40 for us, we couldn't, we couldn't sell enough physically in three days to make it really profitable. You know, what you want to do is you want a keystone or you want to double your money on each one of these things. Well, you know, very, very rare these days for anyone to donate. There's a few, but donate a sheep pot. You know, you've got stone sheep hunts now selling for a hundred thousand dollars. Big horn sheep hunt selling for, you know, a hundred and ten. Uh, doll sheep used to be.

• 1:38:19Steven Rinella?

  You're talking about outfitted hunts?

• 1:38:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, forty five thousand dollars. So, you know, on a doll sheep hunt, we need to sell, we need to make, you know, we need to sell at least a hundred thousand dollars worth of tickets to double our money. A stone sheep, if we're buying it at face value, we got to sell two hundred thousand dollars. So, you know, we went to a, a different way. As I said in our seminar, if we can figure out a way to do it, again, let's be intellectually honest. If our goal is to raise the most money, if we can find a way to raise the most money with a raffle, we'll do it. Cause the objective is to raise mo- the most money for the resource and for the habitat.

• 1:38:59Steven Rinella?

  Can you, can you, uh, uh, humor this question for a minute?

• 1:39:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:03Steven Rinella?

  The one that just went for one point three million.

• 1:39:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:39:06Steven Rinella?

  Walk me through what would have, what would have happened? Walk me through if you had done a raffle in your mind, the best way to do a raffle from your learnings. What would have, what would that sheep tag have generated?

• 1:39:18Speaker 04

  Um, well, that was a big horn. So we, we sold a big horn in Alberta.

• 1:39:27Speaker 04

  We bought the tag for eighty, eighty thousand. It's, it's a hunt, it's not a tag. I mean, we actually bought an outfitted hunt for eighty thousand dollars and our objective was to sell two hundred thousand dollars worth of tickets and net. Uh, a hundred and twenty.

• 1:39:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:43Speaker 04

  So, you know, if, if we pay the outfitter eighty, we net a hundred and twenty. You know, theoretically, we could direct a hundred and twenty thousand dollars into big horn sheep conservation.

• 1:39:58Speaker 04

  We're, you know, we're going to direct one point three million dollars.

• 1:40:03Steven Rinella?

  But what if you take, but just take, I mean, I know you're trying.

• 1:40:06Speaker 04

  I can't figure out how to get a one point three million out of a raffle.

• 1:40:09Steven Rinella?

  But, but.

• 1:40:10Speaker 04

  Unless it's a nationwide lotto.

• 1:40:12Steven Rinella?

  But take a stab that not the hunt, not the guided hunt, but take a stab that had there been a raffle, just in your, just the best, you're, cause you're probably more qualified to answer this. Imperfect question than anybody else on, on the planet. Had that been a raffle, that tag, that New Mexico tag, had it been a raffle, what would it have brought in?

• 1:40:34Speaker 04

  Two hundred, two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

• 1:40:36Steven Rinella?

  You think so?

• 1:40:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:38Steven Rinella?

  Yikes.

• 1:40:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:40Steven Rinella?

  Darn. Really?

• 1:40:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:43Steven Rinella?

  Cause you've done a bunch of raffles.

• 1:40:44Speaker 04

  We, we do a lot of raffles, but you know, I mean, we could, yeah, probably two hundred, you know, maybe, you know, if, if you, if you could get people, hey, this is the biggest sheep in North America. This is what it's gonna be. How long are you gonna run the raffle? You know, I mean, my hip pocket is two hundred fifty, three hundred thousand, could we get a half million, maybe?

• 1:41:05Steven Rinella?

  That becomes a little obscure, though, that you'd be notifying raffle buyers about this sheep.

• 1:41:12Speaker 04

  Win a chance at the biggest sheep in the world. Yeah, and so.

• 1:41:16Steven Rinella?

  I can see you getting a real call from the Washington Gambling Commission at that point.

• 1:41:21Speaker 04

  And oh, by the way, Washington residents, Hawaii residents, um, you know, if we were gonna draw, this is a funny one in Nevada, if we were gonna draw the, the hunt in Nevada, Nevada residents aren't eligible to do it online, they have to buy it there. So, I mean, the laws are, Pennsylvania's got crazy laws, I mean, everyone's got interesting laws. We run our raffles, when we do a raffle, we run it out of Wyoming. We have an office in Wyoming, we run our raffles out of Wyoming because it's a little bit more generous on the, uh, our little, um, liberal, I guess you could say, on the, on the raffle laws. But we, you know, we have run afoul on Washington and got called out on it.

• 1:42:03Speaker 04

  We've run afoul even in Montana, where one of my employees was trying to do the right thing, she thought, by, well, shoot, you know, I'll just, if you want me to run your card right now, I'll just run it right now. She didn't know it was a credit card, not a debit card. I then got a phone call saying, hey, one of your employees, I'm with the Montana Department of Revenue, one of your employees just, uh, did an illegal raffle, uh, purchase for me. And I went, ah, you know?

• 1:42:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:31Speaker 04

  Do the right thing, get burned. But, you know, those are the things we're up against. But, there we go.

• 1:42:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. It was good talking about this, man.

• 1:42:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, this was, I, you know, I appreciate it. I'm honored to be on the program. Um, I really appreciate.

• 1:42:52Speaker 04

  You know, listening, looking at the facts. Um, what we have to really look at is, is the why. You know, why is it, why is it deep down inside we're envious of some, you know, something that somebody else can buy that we can't? And that's really what the nut cutting comes down to. You know, it's just this, uh, that's human nature. So all we can do is provide the facts, do our best, focus on a resource and be open to ideas. Come up with a better idea of how to fund it. We're all ears.

• 1:43:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, I could see that. If someone, if some mathematician came to you and said, um, Gray, that, that tag should have brought three million by my formula. You wouldn't, you'd take the call.

• 1:43:40Speaker 04

  I'd listen. Take the call. I would.

• 1:43:44Steven Rinella?

  All right. Well, I appreciate you coming on, man.

• 1:43:47Speaker 04

  Thank you very much. Appreciate you all.

• 1:43:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, thank you. Um, people can, uh, buy a raffle ticket perhaps next year?

• 1:43:55Speaker 04

  You bet.

• 1:43:56Steven Rinella?

  In Reno?

• 1:43:57Speaker 04

  You can, you can buy, uh, well, we have raffles that we're offering online all the time. So are our chapters. We try to obey obviously all the laws, but, uh, you know, if you look at, if you look at sheep hunting right now and how expensive it is, raffles are the best deal going.

• 1:44:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:14Speaker 04

  Um, from a, from a numbers standpoint, from an odds standpoint. So, you know, get in all the raffles you possibly can. Um, you know, and then also treat it like a portfolio. Uh, put some money away every month to buy that sheep hunt someday.

• 1:44:28Steven Rinella?

  Um, you know, I forgot to mention, you're the CEO of Wild Sheep Foundation.

• 1:44:33Speaker 04

  Yes, sir.

• 1:44:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay. And then, and then tell people real quick, if they want to get checked out on Wild Sheep, what's the best approach?

• 1:44:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, come, uh, we're, we're based here in Bozeman, um, world headquarters, but, uh, go to wildsheepfoundation.org, wildsheepfoundation.org and you can, uh, see what we do. Um, last year we directed 11.1 million dollars to programs benefiting wild sheep.

• 1:44:56Speaker 04

  Pretty impressive for an organization with only 11,000 members, so.

• 1:45:00Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 1:45:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, we're, I like to say that, you know, we, we may have a relatively small footprint, but we cast one hell of a long conservation shadow and we're proud of it.

• 1:45:10Steven Rinella?

  Great, man. Thanks again. Thanks a lot, Stephen. Appreciate it.

• 1:45:39Steven Rinella?

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• 1:47:09Steven Rinella?

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• 1:47:51Steven Rinella?

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• 1:48:13Speaker 00

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