Ep. 845: Can Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Be Saved?

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Karl Malcolm https://www.instagram.com/karl.d.malcolm/ of the Ruffed Grouse and American Woodcock Society https://ruffedgrousesociety.org/ and Brody Henderson https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/?hl=en. Topics discussed: Forest health issues; less and less access to good ruffed grouse and woodcock hunting; the story of population decline due to habitat; scaling up conservation work into outcomes; financial woes; technology and glowing woodcock; definitions of birders; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 0:33Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. When you're miles deep in the mountains and carrying everything you need on your back, your boots aren't gear you think about, they're what you depend on. That's why Western hunters trust Zamborland. And man, I'm telling you, I've been running around in some Zamborlands.

• 1:14Steven Rinella?

  They are so comfortable and just well-built and feel great in the hills. Family-owned and handcrafted in Italy through three generations, Zamborland boots combine nearly a century of boot-making expertise with premium materials and new innovations for any pursuit, game, and terrain. They're comfortable, supportive, resolable, and built for the long haul. From rocky desert to steep shale slopes, Zamborland's perfected their craft to ensure your success. Head to zamborlandusa.com for handcrafted boots for every season. Zamborlandusa.com You're gonna love getting your feet into a set of these.

• 2:04Steven Rinella?

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F I R S T L I T E dot com. Hot damn, we're joined today by one of the greatest guests. Oh, man.

• 2:46Steven Rinella?

  I mean, for like, in terms of just consistent performances over the years, dude. One of the greatest guests of all time, greatest guest.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:55Steven Rinella?

  I mean, like, I'm not talking about just of guests. Do you feel like I'm buttering him up a little much?

• 3:01Speaker 04

  You're going big. I didn't expect this.

• 3:04Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  Normally, he tries to knock you down first and then it'll build you back up.

• 3:11Steven Rinella?

  If you took all the greatest guests.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 3:15Steven Rinella?

  And then had a showdown. Among those guests. Carl would emerge top, maybe not the top, but like he would.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  He might be too nice to make it to the top.

• 3:29Steven Rinella?

  He'd be up there. Carl Malk, wildlife biologist. Long history at the, every time you've ever been on, I think you've been on, no. Every time you've ever been on, you've been on as a guy from the Forest Service.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  That is true. That is true. Yep, you and I started doing podcasts not long after I joined federal service, which was back in late 2011.

• 3:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, okay. But Carl's got a very deep history in all things outdoors. Grew up big time hunter, big time angler, got into things like, um, weird stuff, man. Like got into doing, um, deer work.

• 4:12Steven Rinella?

  On uh deer work on air airport runways?

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, wildlife damage management.

• 4:19Steven Rinella?

  Wildlife damage management. Got so into muskrat trapping, I don't know if you know this, Brody.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:25Steven Rinella?

  Phil probably knows about this. Got so into muskrat trapping that he used to put in a bid to lock down a chunk. Oh, don't tell me I can't think of.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  A chunk of marsh?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Horicon marsh.

• 4:38Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna do it.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Horicon marsh.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Well, that's a famous one, isn't it?

• 4:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  In the world of muskrat trapping.

• 4:44Steven Rinella?

  Some of the best muskrats on the planet.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:46Steven Rinella?

  Carl used to bid, he used to put in a bid to get his own private chunk of the marsh, the Horicon marsh, during the, during the mini boom.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:56Steven Rinella?

  The mini boom of like 2011 to 2014.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  Did you have like trapping rivals, like trapping wars?

• 5:01Steven Rinella?

  No, he had his own, he had his own section.

• 5:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, with my dear, my dear buddy.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  People like didn't come in and try and poach your, poach your ground.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  The federal, the federal agents out there.

• 5:12Steven Rinella?

  Stay close to that mic or Phil's gonna make, oh, you already got your headphones on, nevermind.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  The, uh, the federal agents there do not mess around and these boundaries are very clearly defined. That was with my, my dear buddy, Jacob Zeisky.

• 5:22Steven Rinella?

  Where we got, how many muskrats were you guys catching?

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Hundreds, hundreds, yeah, and uh.

• 5:28Steven Rinella?

  During the mini boom?

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, cuz they would do a sting out there, the federal agents would do a sting out there. There's a highway that cuts east west across Horicon Marsh and there's so many muskrat trappers going across this bridge. Federal agents would put a road killed muskrat out there and see who would stop to pick it up. Cause that was one of, one of the ways that they could pinpoint folks who were not following the rules. Cause it was technically illegal to gather up a road killed muskrat.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Hmm, that seems kinda cheap.

• 5:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh my.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  That seems kinda cheap.

• 5:57Steven Rinella?

  Come on, man.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  I knew, I knew, I knew what your sentiments would be on that, but.

• 6:00Steven Rinella?

  But the point.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would rolls of parks, that situation. The point, the point is they, uh, they, they strictly enforce those boundaries.

• 6:09Steven Rinella?

  Uh, I, I, I gotta return to that in a minute here to tell you something interesting. Reason Carl's, what we're here to talk about is rough grouse and also, and also American woodcock. Because Carl's now the VP of Conservation at the Rough Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society. And what we're here to find out about is this, are rough grouse screwed? If so, how screwed?

• 6:34Steven Rinella?

  And what like, why?

• 6:39Steven Rinella?

  What's it gonna take? What is the, what is the future of the bird? In America?

• 6:46Steven Rinella?

  Before, we're gonna get into all that, but before we do, I gotta tell you a funny story. My friend Stu, who's a trapper in Southern Illinois, he's been on the show, Stu Miller's, Stu Miller, Coon Creek Outdoors. He makes some of the best, if you wanna see good fur handling information online, I don't think anybody has better fur handling information than Stu Miller from Coon Creek Outdoors. Like, if you were like, how do you skin and flash and stretch an otter, raccoon, coyote, whatever? Stu is, has a phenomenal series on YouTube. Anyhow, he was traveling in Kansas, you know, skunks are real high right now.

• 7:24Steven Rinella?

  All they want is the tail.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 7:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Stu said when he was in Kansas, he was seeing dead skunks on the side of the road. Roadkill skunks on the side of the road, minus their tail. Now, everybody's used to seeing deer on the side of the road, somehow minus their head.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:41Steven Rinella?

  But, but, skunks minus their tail on the side of the road.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  I just saw a nice skunk on the side of the road yesterday.

• 7:47Steven Rinella?

  Dude, because it could be thirty bucks laying there. This month, the tail. And if you cut the tail and you learn what you're doing, you can cut it without getting into the sacks. But I wonder how many guys hop out and cut a little too close to the base.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:01Steven Rinella?

  And have just a mess that they are not

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Was it worth the thirty bucks?

• 8:05Steven Rinella?

  Ready to deal with. All right. Grade, like, like, how are? Just, before we get into all the details, like, in the, in your organization?

• 8:19Steven Rinella?

  What is up with rough grouse right now? I mean, why are we seeing, like, like, there, there's states that had rough grouse seasons that don't have rough grouse seasons, like restrictions are down.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:30Steven Rinella?

  It just doesn't, you know, it just doesn't feel like we're in the good old days of rough grouse hunting.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  That is true.

• 8:36Steven Rinella?

  In much of the country.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  That is true, and I think, you know, as we get into the topic at hand, I wanna just kinda like zoom back, and we're gonna be talking about rough grouse and American woodcock. Over the course of this conversation, but I really want to frame it in terms of what's going on with forests and forest habitat and kind of the history of these forested ecosystems. We'll focus primarily east of the Mississippi River, which is sort of the core of what we think about being habitat for rough grouse and American woodcock and the upland bird hunting tradition that goes with it, recognizing there's certainly plenty of forest grouse west of the Mississippi as well. We can talk about that, too. But I think the history

• 9:17Speaker 03

  of these forests and what the status of rough grouse and American woodcock today tell us about the status of these forests is the most important part of this conversation. Because I think, you know, I'm somebody who loves these birds. There's plenty of people out there who do. But there's a lot more people that really appreciate forested ecosystems and being able to understand the dynamics of those places and understand what we can and should be doing differently to make sure that we leave these places better than we found them is a much bigger and deeper and more significant conversation than just what's the letter grade of current status for rough grouse and American woodcock. And those two things are inextricably linked. So I really want to anchor into kind of the history and

• 10:01Speaker 03

  status of forests. But to answer your question.

• 10:04Steven Rinella?

  Well, I want to say that opening bit where you're saying we can't talk about rough grouse without talking about forests and forest health.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:15Steven Rinella?

  Now, if I had sat down in my chair and the first thing out of your mouth was we can't talk about rough grouse without talking about mosquitoes and West Nile virus, or we can't talk about rough grouse without talking about avian influenza, like I wouldn't have been surprised.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Well, those things, we can talk about all those things. And I think.

• 10:35Steven Rinella?

  But you teed it up like it's, we're talking about.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  We're talking about forests for sure. And I love the fact that you're bringing up, you're bringing up West Nile virus, you're bringing up avian influenza. West Nile virus, by the way, way bigger deal for rough grouse. And I want to talk a little bit about the sort of moderating or mediating effect that good habitat can have on helping. A species like rough grouse while facing a stressor like an expanding disease, which which West Nile virus is. And there's some really interesting interconnections between habitat, rough grouse abundance and distribution and climate as well. It's one of the really great examples of how

• 11:20Speaker 03

  shifting climate can influence a disease vector that has very clear ramifications for the status of a species that many people care a lot about. But at the bottom line,

• 11:34Speaker 03

  the story of how these forests have changed, and I think even just the misconceptions of what these forests are, is something that

• 11:44Speaker 03

  I think we can turn some light bulbs on for folks.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Can I tee you up like about with this whole thing, but like going back in time like?

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Why was it? Cause like rough grouse, like I feel like the pinnacle of their like popularity and like king of the forest or, you know, their nickname and all that like that's like in the past, that reputation that they had, I don't think it's like a thing with hunters like it used to be like, why was it like when my dad was? Like he was a big rough grouse hunter, like, and why was it so good in the seventies? When he was out there in Pennsylvania and there was just grouse everywhere?

• 12:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like ammo ads, shotgun shell ads were like the the featured critter. It was like, if you go back far enough, the featured critter was cotton tail rabbits and stuff. But there's a point when like ammo ads, it was like grouse.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  The king of the game birds.

• 12:36Steven Rinella?

  Which which I was raised to call pats.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:38Steven Rinella?

  Partridge.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's good debate. We grew up just, I was a little bit north either in the northern.

• 12:43Steven Rinella?

  Within that, like what is within that?

• 12:47Steven Rinella?

  You probably got a way to hit this, but like, what is the sort of timeline? And then also, where are we talking about?

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 12:54Steven Rinella?

  That might be the best thing.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:55Steven Rinella?

  Just real quick.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:57Steven Rinella?

  Where are we talking about?

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think focusing the conversation on the midwestern United States, down into Ohio, Indiana, across into the mid-Atlantic and up into the Northeast, Maine continues to have tremendous grouse hunting, and down into the Appalachian Mountains as well. You know, a lot of people associate ruffed grouse, rightly so, with the presence of aspen. Aspen's one of those species for grouse that provides tremendous cover and also availability of food. But if you start looking at more southern grouse habitat, essentially, if you have good structure, if you have high stem densities, and if you have the sun hitting the forest

• 13:38Speaker 03

  floor and promoting robust availability of various massed species, you could have grouse all the way down into northern Georgia.

• 13:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  But the general storyline, Brody, we could talk about Pennsylvania a little bit as an example, where just in the span of the last handful of decades, many states, particularly at the southern extent of their range, are seeing grouse decline rapidly.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  And it's noteworthy, you know, a lot of folks understand the dynamics around sage grouse decline. Like sage grouse get a lot of attention, rightly so. Sage grouse habitat, sagebrush ecosystems are tremendously imperiled for a variety of reasons. That story is out there.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  And it's noteworthy to me that you have this species, to your point, Brody, that like, in your dad's generation, in our, in our, in our fathers' generations,

• 14:32Speaker 03

  grouse were a big deal. And I think- The simplest and best answer to why that's not the case is that fewer and fewer people have access to robust populations. Now, where I spend a lot of my time grouse and woodcock hunting, which is across the northern tier of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, we are still in the good old days. It's phenomenal. And I had, I had great rough grouse.

• 15:02Steven Rinella?

  Good old days relative even to the good old days.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, and, and there's a cyclical dynamic at play with, with grouse, woodcock. So, so just a sort of, if we step back and look at the big picture, the general story is one of decline for both of these species, having nothing to do with hunting pressure, having everything to do with habitat, and also some of these other variables, like we can talk about the disease issues. But habitat is the bottom line. And at the southern extent of their range, where we start getting into some of the more acute issues with disease dynamics, the influence of climate. So Pennsylvania, for example, there's a really important elevational gradient at play here,

• 15:46Speaker 03

  where, you know, you can think about grouse contracting northward, so sort of retreating from a latitudinal perspective, but then there's also this elevational retreat that's occurring where grouse are being pushed higher and higher.

• 16:03Steven Rinella?

  Because it's one of the same.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Right, right, exactly. Because those climatic variables are influencing the availability of, of habitat. And in the case of West Nile virus, the presence of the mosquitoes that carry West Nile is influenced by longer, wetter summers. So you have the disease sort of marching up slope as climates continue to.

• 16:30Steven Rinella?

  You mentioned aspens for grouse, like, like.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  Can you give people like, what is like the ideal chunk of rough grouse habitat? What's it look like? Cause you hear like early succession a lot, like things like that. Like if people aren't seeing them or around them as much anymore, like what does a good chunk of grouse habitat look like?

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, if I have one word to answer that question, the answer is diversity. Young, young forest habitat, super important. Yes, early succession habitat is very important and a lot of the work that we do at the Rough Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society is focused on trying to get more early succession habitat on the ground. The reason for that is not because early succession habitat is the only thing that matters. The reason for that is that we are limited in early succession habitat. We're an organization that's very interested in overall forest health. And in terms of these eastern forests, the bottom line there is diversity of habitat. We want young forest, we want middle aged forest, we want old forest, and we want these

• 17:35Speaker 03

  things in a juxtaposition where an individual grouse, because these birds have a very strong site fidelity, they do not travel to great distances, but having the access to these different age classes over the course of their life cycle for foraging, for raising their broods, for escaping predators. It's that availability of diverse habitat within a small area. And being able to maintain that over time is a huge part of the challenge, right? So if we go back, if we go back and think about what these forests were like centuries ago, this idea of diversity is critically important.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  And I think one of the, I'll give you two misconceptions when it comes to forests. Number one, I think a lot of people, when they step into the forests like where we grew up, Steve or where you grew up, Brody, Michigan, Pennsylvania, you know, you walk into the woods and it's this peaceful, serene, beautiful place. And it's easy to fall into the trap of failing to recognize the complexity, for one, the interconnections among different species in that system. And then also the fact that there is a constant battle playing out among all of these species

• 18:59Speaker 03

  at a time scale that makes it hard for us to perceive. So, everybody in the forest, woody vegetation, grasses, forbs, shrubs, all the plants from the understory to the canopy are duking it out in real time for access to nutrients, access to sunlight. And historically, in these forests, there were a lot of drivers of disturbance that are gone now. And this is one of the things that I think is both most interesting and also saddest to contemplate when you think about the forests of the eastern United States. And again, I'm thinking like east of the Mississippi River.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  And when the first European settlers arrived on the east coast, they did not arrive to some massive, homogeneous, pristine, untouched forest. What they arrived to was a very complex system that had a tremendous diversity of drivers influencing the structure of that forest. And it included wildlife that we all, I think we can think about these species in their own right, but we don't often think about them as drivers of ecosystems. So, species like elk, species like bison, species like beavers, species like passenger pigeons,

• 20:24Speaker 03

  and also the people who are already here burning these landscapes to benefit those species I just mentioned, particularly elk and bison, but maintaining the landscape in a way that made their lives possible. So, you have all of these interesting connections between those inhabitants of the North American continent that have been tremendously disrupted. So, elk largely gone from the east, although amazing work being done. Of course, we're all familiar with Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. The work that they're doing with state agency partners to bring elk back, that's phenomenal. RMEF is a great partner of ours, by the way. A lot of partnership opportunities there. We're talking about elk habitat and grouse habitat in the same breath.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Bison gone, passenger pigeons, gone, gone, right? And beavers, like, nothing like they were at European contact with this continent. And then indigenous fire largely gone. So these five drivers that created all of this heterogeneity, all of this diversity in structure. And the one that I really wanted, like, we can, if any of those geek either of you guys out and you want to dig deeper into any of them, we can, we can dig deeper. But I want to talk about passenger pigeons just for a minute.

• 21:43Steven Rinella?

  Please.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Because I think a lot of folks, you know, we all, if you're a nerd around conservation and wildlife in America, we all know the stories of like the sky blackening and the rivers of birds and John James Audubon and others trying to come up with estimates of the billions of passenger pigeons, like one in four land birds in North America being a passenger pigeon, right? Just like, you can't wrap your head around it. Those are all stories that are really familiar to us. But I want to, I want to flag one of the most sort of haunting books that folks probably haven't heard of, written by a guy named Peter Matheson called Wildlife in America.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  And in that book, Matheson does a phenomenal job of capturing the stories in, in just the most haunting and poetic language around the loss of, of wildlife on this continent over the span of the last handful of centuries. And, and one of the things that's most memorable about that book for me is the way that he talks about the passenger pigeons and them as a driver of disturbance. And this is the important part. And there are stories like up around Petoskey, Michigan of these.

• 22:57Steven Rinella?

  That's where the last big shoot was.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  Well, and, and these nesting events that would span for.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Tens of miles in length and multiple miles in width, where the forest was absolutely inundated and in some cases decimated by the presence of nesting passenger pigeons. So they would come through and these were birds that were heavily dependent on mast, species like oak, species like beech, species like American chestnut. And there's a whole other story of loss, right? The loss of chestnut to the blight, starting in 1904. But the passenger pigeons, they'd find a place where they had the resources that they would need to nest. They had the structural support with the tree canopy. They had availability of mast, et cetera.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  And they would arrive in such numbers that they would physically level portions of the forest. Like if you were out there during one of these nesting events, you would just hear for miles in any direction, the sound of branches breaking, of trees falling, of guano raining down to the point where the forest floor would have inches of accumulated droppings that would be so high in nutrient content that that would have its own set of effects on vegetation, like basically killing the understory because it was so nutrient rich with all this pigeon guano raining down.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  And the birds themselves would reset succession in those places where they would nest. The next year, they're not coming back to nest in that same spot again. But years down the line, those systems would recover and promote the availability of the very habitat features that the passenger pigeons need to thrive. So if you step back and think about the continental scale of that species interacting with the land, it's not unlike a beaver or any other ecosystem engineer where they're influencing their own habitat in a way that benefits themselves over time, over generations, right? But also influences the structure. To the advantage of all of these other plant and animal species that occupy that habitat.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  And that's just one of the five examples that I gave you. Mm hmm. You know, we could talk about bison and their wallowing or their, their, the fact that they established these movement corridors that were the precursors to a lot of our roads and highways, right? They would call them roads. Exactly. The traces, right? The buffalo traces, they would leave, they would leave a path of disruption. And so this idea, and this is one of the biggest challenges, if you think about current condition in these systems now and trying to get good habitat back on the ground for species like rough grouse and American woodcock. There's this misconception of what forests are, which I touched on, like failing to see

• 25:58Speaker 03

  the fact that all of these species are out there, that the vegetation is battling for resources in real time.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  And the reality that for thousands of years, for hundreds of thousands of years, prior to European settlement of this continent, these forests were tremendously disrupted by a whole host of drivers that have been eliminated from the system. So what that means in terms of current context is if we're taking a hands-off approach to these systems, we are, we are starving them of the things that they need, the things that the forest needs to provide the types of habitat and diversity, not just for rough grouse and American woodcock, as much as I love those two species, but for a whole host

• 26:52Speaker 03

  of plant and animal species. And this is why, if we look at landbird conservation more broadly, I've got a copy of the 2025 U.S. State of the Birds Report here in front of me. Any bird species that depends upon that diversity of habitat in a forested context is struggling. Like, we are seeing tremendous loss. Like, think about whippoorwills, they're a good example. When you grew up, you're hearing that, "Whippoorwill, whippoorwill," call. Woo woo! Yeah. And, and now, if you hear one, you're like, "Ooh." You know? That was like the sound of summer in our childhoods, right? They have dropped off a cliff. And, and we could go through the list. Golden winged warblers are one that's commonly brought up. So.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  It's important to recognize, and I think from the standpoint of our organization too, there's an advantage of being able to sort of hitch our wagon up to these two iconic upland game bird species. But I also want to make sure that people understand the why of our work is about much more than thinking about having lots of grouse and woodcock to hunt. What we're trying to do is find ways to redeem our responsibilities to the places that we love and help leave these forested ecosystems in a state that's going to be better for wildlife and for people into the future. So that's, I think, a good entry point into this conversation about current condition

• 28:24Speaker 03

  for those couple of species. Mm-hmm.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 28:57Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. Holy smokes, I've been running around in some Zamberland boots and my God, are they comfortable. Damn, out of the box, ready to wear. I can't believe I haven't done it before. And the hunting tradition, right, has always been about knowledge and skills handed down from one generation to the next.

• 29:43Steven Rinella?

  Whether it's field memories with your parents or sharing the experience of a first hunt with your own kids, that shared connection is something the family at Zamberland Boots truly understands. Since its founding back in 1929, three generations of Zamberland family bootmakers have refined their craft in the mountains of northern Italy, maintaining a tradition of handcrafted construction durability and performance for the toughest conditions. Each Zamberland boot combines exceptional materials, patented technologies, and the latest innovations from partners like Vibram, Gore-Tex, and Boa. Because a

• 30:24Steven Rinella?

  quality boot is an investment in your feet, Zamberland hunting boots are resolable with original outsoles, keeping you comfortable for a lifetime of use. Zamberland's wide range of hunting and hiking boots is available at zamberlandusa.com and select retailers, including the newest drop, the Lightweight Full Protection 8-Ax 6 Boa and Coyote Camo. To explore Zamberland's handcrafted hiking, hunting, and work boots, visit zamberlandusa.com.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  You, uh, you mentioned disturbance being important. And like, if you talk to a couple of my buddies in Pennsylvania that are still like, diehard grouse hunters despite the fact that they might only flush a few birds in an entire season.

• 31:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Like, it's always like, they don't log enough. They don't log enough. They don't log enough. Like, is that like, and I know like, West Nile and avian flu like, play a role, but like, is that perspective from just like a grouse hunter? Is there a lot of truth to that?

• 31:32Steven Rinella?

  There is. And I think the language is really important, too. And I'm just thinking about the way that we frame up this work. And, and, you know, logging, logging can be a terrible thing, and it can be a tremendous thing. And part of the problem is, when it comes to social license and public discourse around what doing right by these forests means.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  There's not enough time or effort put into having like a really thoughtful nuanced conversation about what it is we're talking about. So logging, like, let's talk about logging. Part of the challenge and like I'll

• 32:14Steven Rinella?

  Just to clarify, we're talking about logging. You're talking about that there's these historic forest disturbers.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:23Steven Rinella?

  Passenger pigeons, fire.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Bison, elk, beaver.

• 32:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Beavers, large animals that are like out disturbing forests.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:32Steven Rinella?

  Grazing, bowling stuff over, knocking stuff down, clearing stuff out.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:37Steven Rinella?

  Um, and over time, we've developed a system where we have, one, a lot of those places become paved over.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:45Steven Rinella?

  Or grassed over, or golf course over, or parking lot it over.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:49Steven Rinella?

  Or subdivisioned over. And so they're out.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:52Steven Rinella?

  That's all just out.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:54Steven Rinella?

  What remains is woodlots. At times, woodlots that aren't having habitat disturbance on them.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 33:04Steven Rinella?

  They grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 33:07Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 33:08Steven Rinella?

  So when we talk about, just for people, just for listeners to understand. When we talk about logging, I mean, Carl will get into it, but what we're talking about is like a, a modern disturbance driver.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 33:22Steven Rinella?

  Right? So when Brody's saying if a, if a rough grouse guy, if, if a rough grouse hunter or a guy in lower, you know, the northern lower peninsula of Michigan where I grew up, when we bitch about that there's no logging.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 33:35Steven Rinella?

  What we're saying is there's, it's not that we, you know, it's not like, you know, I used to cut firewood, I used to be a tree surgeon. I understand the siren song or the chainsaw. Right? Nothing brings an old man out of his house. Yeah. Nothing brings an old man out of his house like hearing chainsaw down the road. There's so, but when people talk, they're not, they're not lamenting. The act of logging.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:58Steven Rinella?

  They're not necessarily lamenting the loss of jobs around logging. What they're talking about is they're lamenting what happens after you log.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:07Steven Rinella?

  Which is you invite a lot of sunlight onto the forest floor and it grows up thick.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:14Steven Rinella?

  The kind of stuff where if you're out walking around with your wife, you just go around.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:18Steven Rinella?

  You go around it.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Unless she's grouse hunting with you, man, you might go through.

• 34:21Steven Rinella?

  Unless like, yeah, the kind of stuff that the only business you have going through it is grouse hunting.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:26Steven Rinella?

  Like that thick.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 34:28Steven Rinella?

  And that, so we talk about logging, we're talking about is the thick. The, the period of, Kaurak tells how many years, it's a long time.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:36Steven Rinella?

  It's enough to like, kind of get used to it, where you have a, a thick stuff.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I, I really appreciate this question because I want to, I want to go back to this idea of the forests that were, you know, pre, pre-European settlement, all that disturbance happening. And then there's a really important story that we can't lose track of where this word logging, right? What I want to get at is the idea that not all, not all logging is the same.

• 35:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, sure.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  And so if we go back to this arc of time, uh, post-European settlement and think about the things that happened on these forests from east to west and the wholesale liquidation of forest resources, I mean, like the, the most sort of vivid, powerful example of intensive resource extraction that you can imagine, right? This is when the white pines of the lake states are, are childhood home range, Steve. When those forests were being liquidated.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  This is the chapter of the northeast and, and mid-Atlantic and the, the declining chestnuts being felled.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  And all of the clearing for agriculture and all the fragmentation that was happening, the forests just being liquidated, building the cities of, you know, Chicago, all the lumber that was being shipped across the Great Lakes to, to build these exploding communities. It was a period of tremendous exploitation of the land. And I think that's one of the problems is when people think about a word like logging, what a lot of folks hear is exploitation. All right. So it's important to honor the reality that in a lot of places, in our country, we do not have a long history, man. We're talking about a few centuries here. And so for, for the majority of that time, we have not had our act together in

• 36:44Speaker 03

  terms of how we think about logging, being done in service to the land as opposed to being a source of exploitation of the land.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  So I wanted, I want to make sure we, we, we paint this picture with a lot of intent. And we have to own the fact that places, like I'm thinking about the Monongahela National Forest as an example right now in West Virginia, where on forest service land, like there was clear cutting, there was a tremendous amount of erosion, there were huge impacts to these incredibly biodiverse streams, a legacy of terrible management, you can't even call it management, a legacy of exploitation of forest resources. And if I think back

• 37:37Speaker 03

  to like, I remember being in maybe sixth or seventh grade and them talking about logging the rainforest, right? And how much rainforest is being lost in Brazil? And, you know, every day, there's this many square miles of rainforest being cut down.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  Spotted owl on the north, the northwest.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Sure, sure. The spotted owl wars, man, like Pacific Northwest, this tension between trying to keep an imperiled species on the landscape and that industry that's like the backbone of those rural Northwest communities.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  So there's all this history that gets wrapped up in this word logging, right? That you have, you have to be eyes wide open about. And I think it's also a fallacy to suggest that all logging that's happening today is good logging. There are plenty of examples where people are high grading forests. They're just basically thinking about, they're thinking about what value can be taken from this land now? As opposed to thinking about what forest conditions for the future am I trying to create? That's a very important distinction. And that's not to say that it's impossible to extract value, like monetary value from a forest?

• 38:49Speaker 03

  And also put that forest on a trajectory to be healthier as a result of that intervention? That is a hundred percent possible. In order to do that, though, you need robust industry, like there has to be a market. You cannot move habitat without being able to move wood. And the forest products industry is in, in a difficult state of affairs right now. So there's a lot of smart people putting a lot of thought into how to revitalize the forest products industry. But just in the past week, I read in my home state of Wisconsin now, there's, there's a little mill up in the town of Mozenee. Where, by the way, I chased a couple of bears around as a grad student right there in Mozenee.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  They are shutting down a couple of their, their paper production machines. And, and there're going to be jobs lost, there's going to be an impact at this Mozenee mill. And that's just the most recent in a long string of mill reductions, mill closures. The disruption of these, these forest products industries that are important for so many reasons. But one aspect of it is this relationship between habitat and rural economies. So being able to find ways to

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Reinvigorate the forest products industry and there's some cool examples of things on the horizon, things in the works, things like mass timber, trying to, trying to replace steel in the construction of high-rise buildings with mass timber. And there's, there's an amazing building in downtown Milwaukee that was just constructed using essentially replacements for where you'd have steel beams, using these laminated wood products. So that's an example. There's a push to find ways to convert woody biomass into sustainable aviation fuel. That's

• 40:46Speaker 03

  a budding industry. There's some amazing work going on, looking at very high-quality packaging being derived from molded wood fiber. So trying to replace all the plastic that we have everywhere around us all the time. Basically, anywhere you see plastic, there's probably a potential to replace that plastic with a molded wood fiber product. So there's, there's reasons for optimism, but in terms of the overall picture of, of the forest products industry, there's a lot of reason for concern right now and a lot of reason for, for action in terms of policy, in terms of having conversations with the public around the importance of

• 41:30Speaker 03

  these concepts. But this idea that logging has the potential to be good and, and grouse hunters grumbling like, man, there hasn't been enough logging. What I hope they mean is, and what I think they mean, and what I mean when I say that, is there hasn't been enough active forest management where we are thinking both about what value are we extracting from these systems? And, you know, I would argue even more importantly, thinking about our long-term commitment and responsibility to these places and what are we leaving behind? I think that's the key question. If you're focused, if you're focused more on what you're taking than what you're leaving behind, you're probably looking at it from, from a more extractive standpoint. If you're thinking about both of those things in concert, that's a beautiful

• 42:14Speaker 03

  space to operate. And I think we've got a ton of examples of the kind of work that we're doing on public land, on private land with a lot of partners to derive both forms of value.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:25Steven Rinella?

  You think about our, oh.

• 42:27Speaker 04

  No, go ahead.

• 42:27Steven Rinella?

  No, think about our mutual friend Doug.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 42:31Steven Rinella?

  No, he needs to make, he manages a family farm.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:36Steven Rinella?

  Spending their family a long time. He needs to make the farm pay.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:40Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 42:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:40Steven Rinella?

  They do timber harvest.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 42:42Steven Rinella?

  This is very small scale in terms of talking about the entire, everything east of the Mississippi. It's a little, it's a little teeny chunk.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  It's a perfect little anecdote.

• 42:50Steven Rinella?

  But when you're looking at what Doug's gonna cut, he's explaining to you what it's gonna look like in five years.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:59Steven Rinella?

  Do you follow what I'm saying?

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 43:01Steven Rinella?

  He's like, he's got, he's got a dollar figure rolling through his head, but he's like, and it'll be like this.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:09Steven Rinella?

  And then I'm gonna do.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:10Steven Rinella?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 43:11Speaker 03

  I do. And Doug, you know, I was just with Doug this past weekend. We're both up in Minneapolis at Pheasant Fest. Um, and I was talking with Doug. Doug is, Doug is absolutely emblematic of that philosophy where, yeah, he's got the farm. He needs to make it pay. Um, he agonized over decisions about whether to cut down some of the oak trees that they harvested that were, you know, there for generations prior to him showing up. But he's making those decisions with, with an eye on the financial side of it, which is a hundred percent

• 43:49Speaker 03

  his responsibility and also thinking about that, that legacy, you know, it's not ours, it's, it's our turn.

• 43:57Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  What is he doing to make sure that the folks who have the next turn are grateful in hindsight?

• 44:03Steven Rinella?

  Let's be clear too. Doug agonizes over what to do about mud puddles.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Well.

• 44:09Steven Rinella?

  But.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  He goes, well, on the one hand. But, but he's coming at, he's coming at it from that space, man. And I think, you know, that, so on the private land context, this is one of the things, this is one of the reasons why I think there's a lot of, a lot of room for optimism and hope is you have so many people who cherish these forests for which they have personal responsibility.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  And there's, there's value in the forest products and there's a need for good intervention in those systems. And again, this isn't a new thing, right? It's not a new thing for humans to be looking at the land and trying to figure out how to engage with it in a way that makes the land better and makes the humans' lives better. That's actually, like, that's, that's the story of our species for. Millennia, right? We've been in the business of manipulating the ecosystem to benefit ourselves. Unfortunately, we're at a period in human history now where fewer and fewer of us have those levers of responsibility at our fingertips.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  And there are also a lot of people who have those levers of responsibility at their fingertips who don't know what to do. Right? They don't, they don't know how to care for a forest. They haven't been taught that. You know, the, the expertise that somebody like Doug has, the training and the knowledge.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  He is an outlier in that regard, but where I, where I think he is not an outlier

• 45:41Speaker 03

  is in having a desire to do the right thing for the forest under his purview. I think a lot of folks want to do the right thing, but don't know where to start. So for an organization like ours, being able to work with those private landowners and help them think through how to generate revenue from their forest, but doing that through the lens of what are they leaving in terms of future habitat value? That is a really cool service and, and, you know, we're doing that in a private lands context as well with, with agencies like the Forest Service, like state departments of natural resources where we're helping them implement their management plans, which are always rooted in this idea of sustainable and wise use, but also desired future conditions.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  So those are really good spaces.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  So where does though, like, where does the wildlife component come in? Like from fishing game agencies, like are they, are they like, we want to improve this for grouse and everything else. But like, say Pennsylvania game commissioner, they come to you guys and say, this patch of forest like used to be good for grouse. We'd like it to return to being good for grouse. Like, is that stuff that you guys do, like working with game agencies?

• 46:57Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 46:58Steven Rinella?

  But wasn't it historically though?

• 47:01Steven Rinella?

  If you think of the metaphor of like, you know, people say like the, the tail wagging the dog.

• 47:08Steven Rinella?

  For a long time,

• 47:11Steven Rinella?

  the, the, the dog, the dog was industry. They inadvertently, they accidentally created great habitat.

• 47:25Steven Rinella?

  I would say with the history, this, this big chunk of ground, right? Like that we would walk over and hunt as a kid. It had always been the property of the summer camp.

• 47:35Steven Rinella?

  I'm sure historically it had been logged, but it hadn't been logged in forever. And it was giant oaks with canopies that interlocked.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:44Steven Rinella?

  And there was no, now and then a little sassafras, maybe a big white pine, but for the most part, it was just wide open. And the ground was covered in like inches of oak leaves. It had squirrels in it, but there was nothing, there was not much in there.

• 48:02Steven Rinella?

  It sold. The first thing they did was do a timber harvest.

• 48:08Steven Rinella?

  A couple of years after that timber harvest, the first time we ever, ever saw a deer in there. The first time we ever, ever saw a roughed grouse in there.

• 48:19Steven Rinella?

  All kind of grapevine, multiflora rose. Thickets.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 48:24Steven Rinella?

  And then wham, houses. But you, but you, it was like, no one was saying, hey, I'm gonna go do timber stand improvement.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:33Steven Rinella?

  On the old summer camp.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:36Steven Rinella?

  It was inadvertent.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 48:39Steven Rinella?

  So people, when we talk about like the return of logging or Forest Service products. We're talking about like, like making the dog healthy.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:50Steven Rinella?

  But on the other hand, you hear a lot about like, like habitat work. But imagine habitat work is limited in scale because it's not financing itself.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Hmm. Yeah. I see where you're going. Yep.

• 49:02Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I'm saying? So is it more, so in restoring forests or restoring forests that have successional forests where you have these patchworks of different things happening?

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 49:13Steven Rinella?

  Like, can you even get at, can you scale conservation work? Or will that never work? You'd have to scale industry.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. I love the language of making the dog healthy again.

• 49:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 03

  I think that's a really good way of looking at it.

• 49:29Steven Rinella?

  Because that's what Brody's bringing up. He's bringing up, well, how about when the dog wags, when the tail wags, dog, when we do like habitat work.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:36Steven Rinella?

  Which wound up being like a little chunk.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:38Steven Rinella?

  Or whatever. I don't know.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  Maybe not. I mean, maybe like if agencies are flush with money.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. Man, there's a lot of different directions we could go here. So, so let me just focus in on this idea of trying to scale up conservation outcomes in forested habitats.

• 49:55Steven Rinella?

  I like that. Conservation outcomes.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 49:58Steven Rinella?

  Accidental or on purpose.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  It's expensive work.

• 50:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  You know, like a lot of the things that we do, um, we're involved in

• 50:07Speaker 03

  non-native invasive species control, like buckthorn removal or timber stand improvement treatments, um, prescribed fire. Just to give folks like a sense of the cost of some of these treatments, imagine anywhere between like $500 an acre and a couple thousand bucks an acre to do a treatment, right?

• 50:26Steven Rinella?

  Like no one's making profit.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  No, this is, so this is where there's, it's non-commercial work. Like if we're, if we're contracting or if we're going in and trying to like have people in there with like a hand-felling crew with chainsaws trying to implement a habitat project where there's not a commercial angle. It is expensive. It is tremendously difficult to scale that up.

• 50:47Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:48Speaker 05

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 51:16Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. When you're miles deep in the mountains and carrying everything you need on your back, your boots aren't gear you think about, they're what you depend on. That's why Western hunters trust Zamberland. And man, I'm telling you, I've been running around in some Zamberlands.

• 51:57Steven Rinella?

  They are so comfortable and just well-built and feel great in the hills. Family-owned and handcrafted in Italy through three generations. Zamberland boots combine nearly a century of bootmaking expertise with premium materials and new innovations for any pursuit, game, and terrain. They're comfortable, supportive, resolable, and built for the long haul. From rocky desert to steep shale slopes, Zamberland's perfected their craft to ensure your success. Head to zamberlandusa.com for handcrafted boots for every season. Zamberlandusa.com. You're gonna love getting your feet into a set of these.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  I'll give you a contrasting model that I think is really powerful and really cool. We've got a number of national forests where we're partnering on stewardship agreements, where the Forest Service has the ability to hand responsibility over for the administration of timber sales to a nonprofit organization like ours. We can administer the timber sale, generate revenue through the timber, cover all the administrative costs of handling the sale, and then also have, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars left over

• 53:20Speaker 03

  from the value in that timber that we can put right into the ground.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  And the feds aren't after that money.

• 53:26Steven Rinella?

  Why are they letting you do that? That's great, but I can picture a hundred reasons they're not gonna wanna do that.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Well, so think about it, think about it. They, they have...

• 53:36Speaker 03

  More work to do on these forests than they can get done. Okay. They have backlogs of habitat need. They have limited capacity. And the way to look at it is not that somehow a nonprofit organization like the Rough Grouse Society is somehow benefiting in isolation. The way to look at it is we have such alignment with the Forest Service in mission delivery that we are joined at the hip trying to implement the Forest Service's mission. We are there providing additional capacity. Yeah. And that revenue, to be clear, that revenue is not coming to

• 54:21Speaker 03

  the Rough Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society. It might, it's paying for our staff time to help do that work. Like, we have, as an example, we have an amazing young forester on the Green Mountain National Forest, a young lady named Mellie Napper, who's been administering timber sales on the Green Mountain National Forest. And she basically functions as a Forest Service employee. She's there at the office. She's out painting the sale. She's administering the sale, interacting with the folks who are executing on the sale. She's fielding questions from the public. She's talking to reporters about the why of the work. She's representing our organization and the Forest Service. And even more importantly, she's representing the story about why this work is so important, which is a win for everybody involved.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  And in a period of time where the Forest Service cannot hire additional people, they don't have enough people to implement their mission. Yep. Being able to work with a partner to fill some of those gaps, that is a win for the Forest Service.

• 55:15Speaker 04

  When you guys do that, does the logging, like, whoever gets the the actual logging work, the concession for that, do they do that work differently than they would if they weren't working through you? Like, if they're just like, Forest Service timber sale, we're going in and we're getting our stuff versus Forest Service timber sale through the Rough Grouse Society?

• 55:39Speaker 03

  No, they do it the same, and here's why. In order for that sale to move forward, it has to be cleared through the exact same process that any other activity on the Forest Service.

• 55:52Speaker 04

  So they're not going in, you're not like, this is kind of the habitat results we're looking for in advance?

• 55:58Speaker 03

  No, and in this case, like, so this, this example on the Green Mountain National Forest. Where is that?

• 56:03Steven Rinella?

  That National Forest.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  It's in Vermont.

• 56:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  And the, the decision in that case, I might have a word slightly off, but I believe the name of this project is the early succession habitat creation project.

• 56:17Steven Rinella?

  Love it.

• 56:18Speaker 03

  The Forest Service.

• 56:19Steven Rinella?

  Gets right to the point.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and, and, you know, in Forest Service parlance, you have what's called an interdisciplinary team that gets together to develop a proposed action. So you have biologists and soil scientists and silviculturists and folks who are experts on heritage and our responsibilities to archaeological resources, et cetera. Everybody gets together and, and looks at a piece of ground and says, all right, what do we want to do here? In the case of a project like this early succession habitat creation project, the biologists are the ones in the driver's seat there. It's a veg management project, right? There's, and there's valuable timber being harvested, but the whole focus is on what kind of trees, like what are we leaving behind in the, in the wake of this treatment?

• 57:04Speaker 03

  And that's, that's, that's the language that we use. It's a treatment as opposed to an exploitation of a resource, right? So in that case, you have the sale, you have someone bid, right? It's open to public bidding. You have an operator.

• 57:17Steven Rinella?

  Business coming in to bid.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're there to make money.

• 57:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  Right? And, and they are there to make money and also they are the source of capacity to implement the veg management outcome. Period. Without industry, we cannot get the work done. But in this model, you're leveraging the value in the timber to pay for all of those administrative costs. And then you have this surplus of value, and this is the really cool part. And in some cases, we're talking literally hundreds of thousands of dollars from some of these timber sales, where you then turn around and say, all right, with this money, what, what other good things do we want to do on the forest? So it could be things like replacing undersized culverts at road stream crossings to promote aquatic organism passage. It could be paying for decommissioning roads that are resulting in stream sedimentation.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  It could be helping cover the costs of a prescribed fire. It could be helping treat non-native invasive species, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So in that model, the Forest Service is relying on partner organizations like ours to unlock the value in the timber in a way that leaves the forest habitat better.

• 58:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  So that to me, like, that's the dog. As healthy as the dog can be and the tail also like really benefiting from the healthy dog, but you gotta have industry there to be able to have.

• 58:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, on the Green River Forest, what is the product there? Green Mountain, what is the product they're cranking out? That's like dimensional lumber?

• 58:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:41Steven Rinella?

  Well, probably hardwood.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  They're harvesting hardwood there primarily.

• 58:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Okay, so like veneer logs and trim and whatever else?

• 58:49Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 58:50Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Got it.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean pulp, you know, the pulp market has been one of the real weak spots. So.

• 58:56Steven Rinella?

  Why, why is that?

• 58:58Speaker 03

  Well, huge part of it.

• 58:59Steven Rinella?

  Cause like we're, we're, we're, you know, you know, we grew up in the same area.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:03Steven Rinella?

  When stuff got, when stuff happened there, it was pulp.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, cut and pulp, man.

• 59:07Steven Rinella?

  Like all that great rough grouse country and like the UP or Northern Lower Peninsula was like.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Cut and pulp.

• 59:13Steven Rinella?

  It was pulp and you were looking at stuff. You weren't look, when you were a kid and you were looking at logging, you weren't looking at old growth logging.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:21Steven Rinella?

  You were looking at stuff that had been logged several times.

• 59:23Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, second growth, third growth, I mean, in those forests.

• 59:26Steven Rinella?

  But that's making paper.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  Making paper and you know, I'm, I'm, I'm old school, I'm sitting here, I've got like stacks of paper around me from stuff I printed off, you know, notes and things for the conversation today, but this is rare, man, like when's the last time you bought a newspaper? Right? I mean, now like the thing in terms of.

• 59:45Steven Rinella?

  Cause they, and also they taught you to think it was bad.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  Well, that's true, you know, like going, I think about this every time I'm in the bathroom and you got.

• 59:52Steven Rinella?

  Both sides, save a tree.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  You got paper towel and you got the, you got the electric hand dryer, right?

• 59:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  I've gotten in the habit of going for the paper towel every time, man, like use up some of that paper towel.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the, you know, now like one area where there's still, I would say like robust and growing demand, like cardboard boxes for Amazon, right? Like there's a portion of the industry where.

• 1:00:17Steven Rinella?

  Packaging.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  We're making a lot, we're shipping a lot of stuff around, but when it comes to, when it comes to like newsprint, I mean, newsprint's basically dead, right? Like if you've got a subscription, like pick your favorite newspaper, you're probably looking at it on your phone as opposed to waiting for the kid on his bicycle to throw the paper against your door. On a Sunday morning, right? So it's it's it's been a tremendous disruption to the demand for pulp and a lot of those pulp mills have have closed down just in the span of the last, I mean, I told you about the one in Mozeni just in the last week, but if you look at the last decade, we've lost a tremendous amount of pulp capacity. But on the wildlife side, you think of it in terms of demand for those habitat outcomes to be implemented, right? So there's this really important connection.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  And just to hammer this one more time, like without robust forest products industry, the ability to deliver habitat outcomes at scale is is tremendously compromised.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  So there's just not a situation where like wildlife management agencies or the Forest Service or whatever are just gonna like go in and chop trees down just for the sake of chopping them down?

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  So so now we start getting into this whole other realm that I think is also very timely and very important. And we could have a whole other conversation on this one, but it just in terms of thinking about conservation funding and the constraints that a lot of state agencies are starting to feel, Steve, you and I've been sharing materials and texting back and forth a bit about the financial woes of some of the some of the states that are near and dear to our hearts, some thinking specifically about Michigan and Wisconsin as a couple of examples right now, where just trying to make ends meet under a funding model that was built on the backs of hunting and fishing license sales, where that model is, from my perspective, starting to unravel, there are cracks in the foundation starting to show.

• 1:02:12Steven Rinella?

  Carl believes that that that declining numbers of hunters

• 1:02:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:19Steven Rinella?

  is of is like an existential threat to conservation.

• 1:02:23Speaker 04

  I mean, I agree. I'll give you a kind of a different scenario. In Pennsylvania, there's shitloads of state game lands

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:33Speaker 04

  that the game commission, you know, owns and manages. And they have like historically had tons of fracking leases

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 04

  on those

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:02:43Speaker 04

  lands and that like they're flush, like they have the money

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:02:48Speaker 04

  that they can put into potentially projects like this. I understand that's like probably the rare case as far as these agencies go, but.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  It, it, you know, it's something to think about.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  It is, it is. And I, you know, I would, I would rephrase your characterization of my perspective on this a little bit, Steve. I think.

• 1:03:07Steven Rinella?

  Well, hold on, I did, I did a great job.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  I'll, I'll push back. I'll push back a little.

• 1:03:13Steven Rinella?

  Well, I did, I said like half a sentence.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  You, you said, I, that I, Carl, believe declining hunter participation poses an existential threat to conservation.

• 1:03:24Steven Rinella?

  You need to clarify that?

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Steven Rinella?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  What I think is the declining participation in hunting is representative

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  of a broader trend that is a real threat to conservation.

• 1:03:44Steven Rinella?

  What's the broader trend?

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  So from my standpoint, I look at, I look at

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  hunting in particular, but really like a whole suite of outdoor activities that are

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  pathways to people having a connection to the land as being sort of the backbone of conservation. Like, if you don't have people who feel a sense of connection to the natural world.

• 1:04:14Speaker 04

  Just less people around who give a shit.

• 1:04:16Speaker 03

  Right. That's a blunt way of putting it. But it's like, if, if you, if, if you don't have people who feel that sense of responsibility,

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  that is an existential threat. I think the, the hunter participation piece, and, and I, and I do believe, and I'm obviously biased here, but I think these activities of hunting and fishing and trapping and procuring food from the land in any form, it's one of the most just obvious.

• 1:04:50Speaker 03

  Deep, significant kinds of a relationship that you can have to a place. It's, it's, it's so visceral, right? It's a very personal visceral connection to the land. Which is not to say that it's the only way to develop an appreciation for place. I don't believe that at all. I think there's, there are a lot of different pathways to caring for the land. But the fact that we see these declines in participation in activities like hunting, which are, I believe, among the most strong and meaningful relationships to the land that a person can have. That is representative of this broader trend of disconnection and apathy around conservation. And that, I believe, is an existential threat.

• 1:05:32Steven Rinella?

  I want to comment on that, but I want listeners to understand very well that this is Steve talking and not Carl talking.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:05:39Steven Rinella?

  I don't want Carl to get rolled up in this.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  You should say, "Hi, Steve Bernadette."

• 1:05:42Steven Rinella?

  Hi, Steve.

• 1:05:45Steven Rinella?

  I don't know if you read it. There was a, I think it was in the New York Times, there was an op ed. Where the guy's arguing, he's like, he's arguing that part of the, he argues that as the Republican Party has moved away from conservation, particularly under the Trump administration. And he's like, because you don't have those old style hunting and fishing, like in that circle, aren't like, the old style hunting and fishing Republicans.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  Mike Lee don't care about hunting and fishing.

• 1:06:22Steven Rinella?

  These are Florida golfers. Do you know what I'm saying? And he was kind of saying that like, that like this, like it's kind of like, this is a moment of kind of like the indoor Republican. You following me?

• 1:06:34Speaker 04

  That's interesting.

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

  I'm following you.

• 1:06:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Steven Rinella?

  And had a bunch of examples, but it's like, they just.

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  They don't know.

• 1:06:40Speaker 04

  Connection.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  They don't know.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  They don't care.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 03

  They're not, their vacation isn't fly fishing.

• 1:06:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 03

  Like out in Jackson Hole, like their vacation is West Palm Beach.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Or Palm, whatever the one, I can't remember, what's the nice one? Is it West or?

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  I don't know. Never been.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  There's one that's like super swank, either Palm Beach or West Palm Beach is super swank.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Speaker 03

  And one's not, like Jeffrey Epstein lived the one, but kind of. Did his pursuits in the other one. I can't remember how it all worked.

• 1:07:12Speaker 04

  Well, like what you're talking about, like they lack a connection and it ties into this too, whether it's Republican or Democrat, like. There's like, when I grew up, people knew what a rough grouse and a woodcock were.

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  It was a pet.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  I mean, but like you could ask someone.

• 1:07:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  Anywhere on the East Coast or the Midwest and they, they might have no, they'd be like, I don't know what that thing is, what they look like, you know?

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Exactly. And I think. You know, this idea of.

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  Finding. Opportunities for folks from. Whatever political persuasion, but also. Whatever. Sort of circumstance.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  In which they enter their human experience. So. Whether you're born in a rural community, whether you're born in an urban community, whether you're born in a conservative family or a liberal family.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  This idea of. A sense of connection to place and a sense of responsibility to place and also to community. You know, we talk a lot about in this country, we, we talk a lot about. Rights. Right? Rights are a big deal and they are.

• 1:08:28Speaker 03

  But. The flip side of. All of these rights that we have are certain unalienable rights as Americans.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  We don't spend enough time thinking about responsibilities and what it means to go through life in a way where we are enjoying the rights that we have been given, but also asking ourselves, what are we doing to redeem the responsibilities that we have as members of our community?

• 1:08:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  But those are, I think, big, important questions that in the conservation space, it's like, if you, if your community extends to the places and the species that you interact with, whether it's as a hunter or otherwise, it frames your worldview such that decisions around policy, you start thinking, you start thinking in terms of what kind of world do you want to create, what kind of world do you want to leave behind? And that, that framing, to me, is one of the keys to success in terms of having a really vibrant, healthy culture as a nation, which I would suggest we've got some room to improve right now on that front.

• 1:09:42Speaker 03

  So just thinking in terms of how are we positioning ourselves to take care of the things that take care of us?

• 1:09:49Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:09:49Speaker 03

  How are we showing up in our community?

• 1:09:51Steven Rinella?

  There's a, there's an education component to it.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:09:56Steven Rinella?

  You, and I don't want to hover too long on this thing about declining hunter participation in the Midwest or wherever, but a thought on it.

• 1:10:05Speaker 03

  Nationally, but.

• 1:10:07Steven Rinella?

  Nationally, okay. You'll say, you're like, well, it's, it's, it's a part, it's a part of people disentangling themselves, stepping away from caring about wild landscapes. There are plenty of people that, that aren't going to come out of those backgrounds that would, that would say, oh, I love seeing wildlife.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:32Steven Rinella?

  I love walking in the woods.

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Steven Rinella?

  But what they don't know, because they weren't culturally educated around like a hunting, angling, outdoor background, what they don't know is they don't know how to look critically at what they're seeing.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:10:46Steven Rinella?

  Meaning, if they see someone cutting a tree, boom, that's bad.

• 1:10:51Speaker 03

  Right, 100%, 100%.

• 1:10:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay, if they walk through a big, closed canopy forest, it's easy to walk through, and it's really pretty because there's a bunch of big trees.

• 1:11:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Steven Rinella?

  They love all that stuff, but they don't know. They're not looking at it.

• 1:11:11Steven Rinella?

  And I'm not saying there's only one way to get there. They're not looking at it with a hunter's eye.

• 1:11:18Steven Rinella?

  Or an educated eye about what are you not seeing?

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  Yes, that is true.

• 1:11:25Steven Rinella?

  Right? You're you're seeing handful of woodpeckers up in the top.

• 1:11:30Steven Rinella?

  Some squirrels, not many. Right? But they're like, this is perfect. It's a big woods.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:39Steven Rinella?

  Like, i- i- it takes, I don't know, a a level of exposure. And some kind of like professional understanding a little bit. To start to to move not just from caring about places. But to like, understanding them.

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Steven Rinella?

  Well. Because a lot of people care. They just don't care in the right way.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:12:02Steven Rinella?

  It's like the kind of people who think that the way to support wildlife is to be an animal rights activist.

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:12:06Steven Rinella?

  In their mind, they're like, well, of course it is.

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:12:09Steven Rinella?

  They don't understand the damage they do.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  Yes, I I agree with that point. I also think there are.

• 1:12:18Speaker 03

  There are a lot of non-hunters who care about these concepts and are very supportive of hunting. In fact, there are more non-hunters who are supportive of hunting than there are hunters.

• 1:12:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  So. You know, we have to be careful of painting with too broad a brush. I I agree.

• 1:12:35Steven Rinella?

  I'm not, but I mean, we're met, we're in some ways, I'm not countering you. I'm saying in some ways, we're saying, we're talking about the same kind of thing.

• 1:12:41Speaker 03

  And I I want to dig into it a little bit.

• 1:12:42Steven Rinella?

  There's an instinctive. I I, what I'm saying is, I don't think that we're gonna run out of i- if if, let's say hunting does decline. Or declines long term or something. We're not gonna run out of people who would tell you they love wildlife. I picture we run out of people who, knowing what that, we run, we risk running out of people who understand what that means.

• 1:13:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:06Speaker 04

  There'd still be a lot of people around who care about the Yellowstone version of wildlife.

• 1:13:10Steven Rinella?

  They would tell you like, "I love wildlife." It's like, "But you don't understand it."

• 1:13:16Speaker 05

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:13:44Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. When you're miles deep in the mountains and carrying everything you need on your back, your boots aren't gear you think about, they're what you depend on. That's why Western hunters trust Zamborland. And man, I'm telling you, I've been running around in some Zamborlands.

• 1:14:25Steven Rinella?

  They are so comfortable and just well-built and feel great in the hills. Family-owned and handcrafted in Italy through three generations, Zamborland boots combine nearly a century of boot-making expertise with premium materials and new innovations for any pursuit, game, and terrain. They're comfortable, supportive, resolable, and built for the long haul. From rocky desert to steep shale slopes, Zamborland's perfected their craft to ensure your success. Head to zamborlandusa.com for handcrafted boots for every season. Zamborlandusa.com You're gonna love getting your feet into a set of these.

• 1:15:07Speaker 03

  The language that comes to my mind is, I'm thinking about, rather than focusing on like a particular activity, whether it's hunting or wildlife viewing.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  This idea of thinking in terms of encouraging experiences for people that foster a sense of connection and responsibility to a place, because if you have that sense of responsibility and you want to execute on that, you need to know what the place needs from you.

• 1:15:37Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  And I think hunting is hunting is a phenomenal gateway to just like experiencing in a visceral way, a sense of being part of a system, right? It's like you are, you are not observing, you are a participant actively engaged in a system, which is something we have been doing since the beginning of our species existence. But I think in terms of messaging.

• 1:15:59Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  As you were talking, I'm just looking back at this, this 2025 State of the Birds report. And it, it talks in here about there being 100 million Americans engaged in birding and the economic impact of that, et cetera. So, well, give me a moment here, man.

• 1:16:18Steven Rinella?

  That just makes me roll my eyes so bad.

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  I'm not surprised, I'm not surprised to hear that, but listen, here's the thing, here's the thing. So here, here, let me give you like a sense of some of the organizations.

• 1:16:26Steven Rinella?

  You don't want to know why I'm rolling my eyes? Okay, go ahead.

• 1:16:29Speaker 03

  So listen, listen.

• 1:16:30Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell Brody later.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  I, I do, I do want to hear your thoughts on this, but I want to give, give some shout outs. So organizations, including American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ducks Unlimited, National Audubon Society.

• 1:16:42Steven Rinella?

  Can you tell me again how many birders there are?

• 1:16:44Speaker 03

  100 million. But, and, and that includes.

• 1:16:47Speaker 04

  80 million of those are watching birds in their backyard.

• 1:16:50Steven Rinella?

  What does that mean?

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  It means people.

• 1:16:52Steven Rinella?

  It means when someone asks you, you say you like birds?

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Steven Rinella?

  Okay, sure.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  That's, that's, I, I think that's an important data point, man. I believe that's an important data point. And guess what? That includes virtually all.

• 1:17:02Steven Rinella?

  So there's, so there's over 200 million people in this country who don't?

• 1:17:05Speaker 04

  I get what you're saying. It's at least people that are interested, that are aware.

• 1:17:10Speaker 03

  People who have enough interest to be like, yeah, birds are cool.

• 1:17:12Steven Rinella?

  But what a low, are you, what?

• 1:17:14Speaker 04

  I would also, I would also.

• 1:17:15Steven Rinella?

  Part of why I roll my eyes, what an, what an extraordinarily low barrier to entry. Do you like birds? Yes. Okay, I'm gonna put you down on my list of birders.

• 1:17:24Speaker 04

  And I would say like, you were talking about hunters versus non-hunters earlier, like a hunter. A good chance he's gonna walk around a chunk of woods and be like, man, there's no rough grouse here. There's no wood guck here.

• 1:17:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 04

  A lot of those hundred million birders, they wouldn't.

• 1:17:41Steven Rinella?

  I would at least be like, okay, but to be on my list, do you have a bird book? And like, you gotta like, there has to be some.

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  Show them a picture of a cardinal and an oriole.

• 1:17:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, test them. So check their book shelves. There's gotta be something other than being like, I like birds.

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  Listen, the reason I'm bringing this up is not to get you all fired up about the data.

• 1:18:01Steven Rinella?

  Cause I live with four birders.

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  Sure. And, and by the way, the, the report also talks about like, including virtually every hunter, like what hunter's gonna say, you know?

• 1:18:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  No, when I'm out elk hunting, I always avert my eyes when I see a Lewis's woodpecker.

• 1:18:16Steven Rinella?

  Damn birds.

• 1:18:17Speaker 03

  Right? Those damn birds keep interrupting my elk hunt. Right? But, but.

• 1:18:21Steven Rinella?

  That's why I rolled my eyes.

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  I, so I'm not surprised you did, but the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  there are going to be times where these concepts that I think we hold dear around people's connection to place.

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  Having the voices of other organizations in this space with us who are coming at it from a different lens.

• 1:18:48Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:48Speaker 03

  So like American Bird Conservancy is a great example. That is, that is a nonprofit where there is so much alignment in terms of what we want to get done on the ground.

• 1:18:58Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:59Speaker 03

  And they're talking to a slightly different audience.

• 1:19:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:01Speaker 03

  And they are a hundred percent supportive of the kinds of hunting that we're talking about, sustainable, responsible.

• 1:19:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:10Speaker 03

  Relationship based. There's no, there's no mismatch in terms of what we want to see happen. And it's rooted in good science. And so like the state of the birds report, you can go ecosystem by ecosystem through the country and talk about the status of, of sea ducks, western forest birds, shore birds, dabbling, whatever you want to look at.

• 1:19:34Speaker 03

  The point I want to make here though, is when it comes to.

• 1:19:40Speaker 03

  A very troubling picture in terms of bird conservation, including but not limited to rough grouse and American woodcock in the eastern forests of the United States. We know what we need to do in these systems. Like, we know, we have the science to tell us what we need to do. It's a matter of figuring out, how do you scale up and have those outcomes delivered? And we're watching, as these species, whether we're talking about whippersnappers or woodcock, we're watching, not even a gradual, like, in the span of our lifetime, we're watching these declines happen before our eyes because of our inability to take care of these habitats.

• 1:20:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Speaker 03

  So having an organization or a chorus of voices that are coming from different perspectives and talking to different audiences, and obviously, the Rough Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society, we're a very proud hunter-conservationist-oriented group, but I would offer that anybody who cares about forest health should be really happy about the work that we're doing, whether they ever want to pick up a shotgun or not. Like, we're in exactly the same business as the Audubon Society, American Bird Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy. Like, we're partnering with these organizations to try to get the same things done.

• 1:20:48Steven Rinella?

  That's, I understand what you're saying, though. I didn't mean to hack on all those guys. I understand what you're saying in that if you can get, again, the 100 million, come on, but whatever how many are truly there, 10 million?

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  If it's less than one in three people who are into birds in the country, I don't think that's like a jaw dropping.

• 1:21:07Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm saying where, no, no. Okay. Let's say you got, let's say you polled Americans and said, "Do you like the thought of a beach?" Okay?

• 1:21:20Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:21Steven Rinella?

  And 200 million are going to be like, "Yeah, yeah, sure." I'd be like, "Hey, when was the last time you were at a beach?" Right? It's a smaller number. Okay. And then be like, do you plan your schedule around visiting a beach every year? Now there's a smaller number.

• 1:21:40Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:21:41Steven Rinella?

  Somewhere within that hundred million is hiding a, a, a number of like

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  Diehard.

• 1:21:48Speaker 04

  Hardcore beachgoers.

• 1:21:50Steven Rinella?

  Birders.

• 1:21:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, hardcore birders.

• 1:21:53Steven Rinella?

  Or hardcore beachgoers who are like, no, next weekend I'm flying down to Florida to go to the beach. I'm like, that's.

• 1:21:59Speaker 03

  I'm waxing my.

• 1:21:59Speaker 04

  But to be.

• 1:22:01Steven Rinella?

  Faking as we speak, like that's a beachgoer.

• 1:22:04Speaker 04

  To be fair to Carl, though, like hunters suffer from myopia just as much as everyone else, right? Like, I might be aware of this, this bad thing that's happening to Ralph Kraus and Woodcock and not be aware of a bunch of other things that are happening with other species that the hardcore birders might be aware of.

• 1:22:26Steven Rinella?

  I know, but the reason, and we spent way too much time in this, but I have to have my, I have to have my point here. The hunt, I don't think, oh, they, if I thought to myself, oh, thank God, there's a hundred million diehard birder allies out there wanting to fix America's forests. That'd be great, but I don't think that.

• 1:22:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Steven Rinella?

  I think, yeah, it's probably like maybe 10 million.

• 1:22:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Steven Rinella?

  Maybe as many as there are hunters, like, like birders.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Birders who are like showing up thinking about.

• 1:22:56Steven Rinella?

  Fixing America's forests.

• 1:22:57Speaker 03

  Ready to.

• 1:22:58Steven Rinella?

  Because when you go out and just ask people like, do you like seeing a bird? You're not collecting.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, I hear you.

• 1:23:06Steven Rinella?

  People who want to fix America's forests.

• 1:23:08Speaker 03

  Right. But so a counterpoint to that argument is if you were to ask the question about caring about fixing America's forests, you might find a lot of other allies who care about it for reasons other than birds.

• 1:23:20Steven Rinella?

  I know, and bring them on. I just couldn't have you say that number without commenting.

• 1:23:24Speaker 03

  I, I, I, but I, I'm not surprised that that.

• 1:23:28Steven Rinella?

  Here's a, here's a way to change.

• 1:23:29Speaker 03

  Generate.

• 1:23:29Steven Rinella?

  Here's a way to change.

• 1:23:30Speaker 03

  Let's hear it.

• 1:23:33Steven Rinella?

  I picture there's two things happening.

• 1:23:34Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:23:35Steven Rinella?

  With habitat.

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:23:36Steven Rinella?

  There, okay, be like, there's loss, meaning irrevocable harm.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:23:43Steven Rinella?

  Development.

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:23:44Steven Rinella?

  Right? And then neglect.

• 1:23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. Good word.

• 1:23:49Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:23:53Steven Rinella?

  Can.

• 1:23:56Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. What like, how do you picture the relationship between those two numbers? Like, meaning for every hundred acres of subprime bird habitat in the eastern US. Right? For for every hundred acres of prime habitat that's been lost in the last 50 years. What is the ratio of acres lost to irrevocable damage?

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Steven Rinella?

  Pavement, whatever. And what is the acreage lost to mismanagement? Or neglect?

• 1:24:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm not going to hazard a guess on that, but I but those are those are the two keys. And I think one thing that. I could put a little bit finer point on here. I mean, we we know. All of us have the stories of the places where we grew up playing the the woodlot that you described with the oak trees getting cut. And then all of a sudden, boom, houses popping up. We've all got those stories.

• 1:24:51Steven Rinella?

  It makes me depressed every time I visit my mom.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  I listen, there's a place, there's a place where I had my. My sort of illicit campground along a trout stream in Lelandau County that. The last time I went and checked it out, there was a trampoline sitting where my fire pit used to be. So we've all got those places, right?

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  We know we're losing ground to development, of course.

• 1:25:20Speaker 03

  Fragmentation, etc. The story of the I like the word neglect because I think a lot of folks, you know, if you're driving through. The forests of the eastern United States and looking out your window, you're like, yeah, you know, there's there's a lot of forest here. What we have is a lot of the.

• 1:25:38Speaker 03

  The forests that have regrown after that era of exploitation.

• 1:25:43Speaker 03

  And so we have a tremendous amount of like middle aged forest. Okay. That is very homogeneous. How old is middle aged forest? Like eighty to one hundred and twenty years old.

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:25:54Speaker 03

  Okay. Mm hmm. I mean, yeah, so I'm I'm using like some some non-precise, non-scientific language. But if you think about the timeline of when these forests were slicked off, when the when the the era of exploitation and liquidation of our timber resources occurred, a lot of what we have now is the growth that has replaced.

• 1:26:14Speaker 04

  If you were standing in a middle aged forest, what would you be seeing?

• 1:26:17Speaker 03

  Well, that's so that's great, especially in these in these landscapes. I'll tell you a few things you're gonna see. You're gonna see. Take me to Indiana. A canopy overhead that is allowing very little sunlight to hit the forest floor. You're gonna see very little understory plant diversity or community.

• 1:26:36Speaker 04

  There's leaf litter on the forest.

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  A lot of leaf litter, and I'll throw I'll throw a cool term out here and a shout out to one of my retired Forest Service colleagues, a guy named Greg Nowacki, who coined this term mesification, which refers to the increasing sort of moisture tolerance of a forest over time. So a lot of our forests in the east, when you think about that era of all this disruption occurring, the passenger pigeons, the bison, the elk, you had forest where things were drier as a result of more sunlight hitting the forest floor. So in places like Indiana is a perfect example, where the the species of woody vegetation that are less tolerant of shade, so like oaks are a prime example.

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  We we historically had tons more oaks on the landscape, much more fire maintaining those oaks. If you just take a hands-off approach in those systems, remove all those drivers of disturbance, you'll start.

• 1:27:36Speaker 03

  A successional process where in the understory you'll start getting shade tolerant species like red maple is a good example.

• 1:27:42Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:27:43Speaker 03

  That'll come up in the understory. And then if the oaks are dropping their acorns in a sea of red maple seedlings, those oak seedlings are going to be outcompeted because they don't do as well in the absence of direct sunlight. So you have a canopy come up eventually to where red maple will be the dominant species and the oaks will not come back. So that transition from shade intolerant to shade tolerant species, which corresponds to increasing moisture content in the understory, that's mesification, referring to a more mesic site as opposed to a more xeric site. So a mesic site is more moist, a xeric site is more dry.

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  My good buddy Greg Nowacki was the one who kind of termed this mesification idea through his research, looking at that change over time. So if you're in this forest stand, you're going to have a very consistent aged overstory, like all the trees came up in the same cohort, made it to the canopy, they're now shading out the understory. You don't have the robust grass, forbes, shrub understory. You don't have a lot of mid canopy complexity.

• 1:28:51Steven Rinella?

  Squirrels see you way too far away.

• 1:28:53Speaker 03

  Squirrels see you way too far away. There's, and you're not going to have, you're not going to have nesting habitat for a whole species, a whole cadre of species of birds that require that diversity. And also like the understory plant community, the pollinators, you know, we could talk about rusty patch bumblebee comes to mind, a species listed under the Endangered Species Act where we're not talking about birds anymore, we're talking about insects, but it's the same story of disturbance being a limiting factor. So the forest is going to have a closed canopy, it's going to be real shady, it's going to look the same as far as you can see. And I think if folks pay attention as you're driving through a lot of these eastern forests, you're going to notice some of those characteristics.

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  And I'll throw one more thing out there for you now that's very different from what things looked like three or 400 years ago on these landscapes, and that is an overabundance of whitetail deer, which are not a replacement for the elk and the bison. The browsing dynamics of whitetail deer in these systems are a very different driver of disruption ecologically.

• 1:29:56Steven Rinella?

  They don't let any oaks come up.

• 1:29:57Speaker 03

  They're not letting any of those species. Join the, you know, the older age classes. So this is where you get into maybe another feature that you're going to see in a lot of places is a pronounced browse line from whitetail deer. Which is a whole other set of ecological issues. So this is where, you know, we can't fall into the trap of thinking, oh, well, we've got deer and so maybe deer are playing the role that elk or bison did. Deer in the absence of sufficient predation are another driver of a decline of ecological integrity in these systems. So that's, I think, a good picture of what you'd see. And then the other piece is, if you are one of these, maybe 10 million diehard birders and you're out there with your Cornell Lab of Ornithology app and you're listening to the birds, you're going to hear

• 1:30:42Speaker 03

  very little diversity in those systems as well, for a variety of reasons. But the structural complexity lacking being one of the keys.

• 1:30:49Speaker 04

  I wanted to ask about the woodcock, because you guys just recently kind of took woodcock under your, officially under your umbrella.

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  Um, are they, are they more at risk for these kinds of problems because they migrate? Or are they better able to deal with these problems because they migrate? Because rough grouse, like you said, like, small home range, right?

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:31:13Speaker 04

  Woodcock might fly 900, 1,000 miles twice a year.

• 1:31:17Speaker 03

  Brody, you're the man. I'm so glad we could talk about woodcock a little bit, man.

• 1:31:20Steven Rinella?

  Timber doodle.

• 1:31:21Speaker 03

  Timber doodle, mud bat, man. Bog partridge, bog sucker. The names go on. Uh, yeah, the timber doodle. Um, thank you.

• 1:31:30Speaker 04

  Because if you ask my buddy in Pennsylvania I was talking about, he would be like, holy crap, is the woodcock hunting good these days?

• 1:31:37Steven Rinella?

  Well, is it really?

• 1:31:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:31:39Steven Rinella?

  So here's the thing. Trust him with his own beak.

• 1:31:43Speaker 03

  Listen, woodcock, man, should do a whole separate episode just on woodcock. Um, listen, here's the thing.

• 1:31:51Speaker 03

  A really cool aspect of working for this organization is you have the opportunity to focus on this high site fidelity, king of upland game birds where, you know, everything we've been talking around about forest diversity and managing it at a tight local scale is the key. And then you get to shift gears and talk about a migratory upland game bird that is just this like bizarre, amazing outlier.

• 1:32:15Speaker 04

  Birders love them because they do that cool little dance.

• 1:32:17Speaker 03

  Well, the whole sky.

• 1:32:18Steven Rinella?

  Watch them do that on the gas line.

• 1:32:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20Steven Rinella?

  You could go down to the gas line like not a mile away from the house and watch them.

• 1:32:24Speaker 03

  They are, they are so damn cool. They might be.

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  They're like breeding flight or they call that?

• 1:32:28Speaker 03

  One of my, I half jokingly sometimes say to folks on our team at RGS and AWS, I'm like, you know, people think I came for the rough grouse, but I'm really here for the woodcock, man. So I think the answer to your question, Brody, is the fact that woodcock operate ecologically at a continental scale, you need, you really need those habitat elements to be in the right places at the right times at a, at a scale that makes, it makes the system much more fragile to disruption, right? And we're seeing that in terms of woodcock declines. So I'll give you like a, a quick stat here that's helpful. State agencies, state fish and wildlife agencies are responsible for developing state wildlife action plans in order to qualify

• 1:33:13Speaker 03

  for federal funding through Pittman Robertson Act. So every state fish and wildlife agency has a state wildlife action plan. And one of the things that happens in these state wildlife action plans is they go through all the species and they try to identify what ones warrant listing as a species of greatest conservation need. That's an indicator that a particular critter is in some level of, of decline or, or threat. And for rough grouse, there are currently 18 states that have rough grouse listed as a species of greatest conservation.

• 1:33:47Speaker 04

  Didn't Ohio just do something with?

• 1:33:48Speaker 03

  Ohio, we, Ohio is, is right now considering what to do with their hunting season. And there's a proposal on the table, just in the next couple of weeks, they're going to be talking about a proposal to reduce the rough grouse hunting season to include just a handful of properties where we know we still have grouse on the landscape versus just closing it outright.

• 1:34:12Speaker 03

  But back to this idea of the state wildlife action plan, so 18 of them have rough grouse listed, 29 of them have American woodcock listed as the species of greatest conservation need. And that includes Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, like states where we're sort of in the bread basket of upland bird hunting. And this year, one of the highlights of the time I've been with this organization was I had a chance back in December to go down to Louisiana, flew down to Baton Rouge and had a chance to spend some time with folks from the state agency down there. And we went out and banded, we banded 53 woodcock one night on one of their state game areas, which was an absolute blast.

• 1:34:50Steven Rinella?

  Caught them home.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  Oh, man. It's, it is such a cool example of technology in action. So the biologists down there, and I'll give a shout out to Richard Temple at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. He and the team from the state, first they have a drone with infrared and they fly it over these open fields at night. And infrared camera can, I mean, these woodcock glow, like they blow up out of the background. And then the drone also has a spotlight on it. So they can hover, like, I don't know, 100 feet above the field, see where these woodcock are.

• 1:35:35Speaker 03

  And then they can, they have a camera with such incredible resolution that you can like, you can see the woodcock blink from the drone.

• 1:35:44Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:35:45Speaker 03

  And if a woodcock defecates, you can see like the heat of the splash at a woodcock's backside. It's like, it's just incredible view of the field. And then we go out with like a four wheeler and spotlights on the ground. And basically it's like a deer in the headlights. You shine a spotlight on the woodcock and you can take a fishing net or even you can grab them by your bare hand with a, with the spotlight shining on the bird.

• 1:36:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:36:10Speaker 03

  And then we're. Aging them and sexing them and releasing them. And I have to say, like, after having a lot of woodcock, like dead woodcock in my hands, or having a woodcock that's crippled and you're dispatching it, to have these little woodcock that we're banding and releasing, watching them fly away out of my hands was, it was pretty damn cool, man. So we did all this banding work, and then also did some hunting. I was down there for the opener of the woodcock season, got to hunt with a guy named Paul Frisherts and Keen Jones, who are a couple of guys down there looking to kind of resurrect an American Woodcock Society chapter, and their bevy of pointing dogs.

• 1:36:51Speaker 03

  But the coolest part about all of that experience was when the biologist, this guy, Richard Temple, showed me the map of the band return data. So all these woodcock that they're banding right there on Baton Rouge, he puts up this map of where the bands have been returned from, like hunters have shot a woodcock that's banded and they call it in, just like what we're used to with ducks and geese. And there were a couple of points that were within like 15 miles of my family camp up in the Western U.P. No, really? Like, right where I grouse and woodcock hunt, man. So these birds, you know, you're down here like worried about your dog running into a cottonmouth, there's alligators hanging out in these like bayous, hanging out with all

• 1:37:32Speaker 03

  these great Cajun, Upland bird hunting guys, but it's exactly, exactly the same individual birds that were chasing around like in October up in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota. Here they are down in, you know, the Gulf Coast in December. So I had that experience, and then I'm flying back, you know, I'm on my trip from Baton Rouge back up to Milwaukee, and I'm looking out the window, just watching the miles, right, pass under the plane, and I'm thinking about this, these little birds, like just making that journey, and then they're also nesting, like they're, they're laying eggs and hatching chicks during their return migrations north, too.

• 1:38:14Speaker 03

  So you've got the, you've got like the, the summer ground in the north, you've got the wintering ground, and then there's all this stopover habitat where we know these birds are nesting. Part of the reason we know that... Is this amazing collaborative called the Eastern Woodcock Migration Research.

• 1:38:29Steven Rinella?

  They're not nesting in their northern chunk?

• 1:38:31Speaker 03

  They do most of their nesting in their northern chunk, but what what the recent research has demonstrated is that there are hens rearing clutches, rearing chicks during this. You know, it's not like a cut and dried, like I'm going back to Minnesota to lay my eggs, right? Like, it's happening over that latitudinal gradient north.

• 1:38:55Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:38:55Speaker 03

  Um, and so I've been, you know, academically, like, oh, yeah, they're migratory. And your buddy, him talking about, man, the woodcock hunting sure has been great lately. It's like, yeah, it might be like Monday, there's woodcock everywhere and then Tuesday, like, they're gone, right? And anybody who's hunted woodcock, when you, when you hit these migration events, it can be, like, you can't, you can't walk without bumping birds. Like, I've had, I've had situations where, you know, I'm hunting pointing dogs. I'll have a dog on point, a bird goes up, shoot the bird, dog goes to retrieve the bird, but like points another bird on its way to get the dead bird, or it's bringing a bird back and pointing another bird on their, like.

• 1:39:37Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:39:38Speaker 03

  When you get into these flights, it can be amazing. But the big picture in terms of woodcock numbers is a gradual decline continentally. So you need the good habitat in the north, you need the good habitat in the south, you need the habitat along the way. And, um, one of the really exciting things is this, this work being led out of the University of Maine, the Eastern Woodcock Migration Research Cooperative. Uh, the two leads, uh, Dr. Eric Blomberg and Dr. Amber Roth are, um, leading a collaborative to try to understand

• 1:40:14Speaker 03

  the use of habitat during this migratory period. And they've put out at this point over 700 backpack transmitters on woodcock. They and their collaborators, lots of other academic institutions. One of our team members, one of our forest conservation directors, Sarah Serv, has been a collaborator in this work.

• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  They've got like 30,000, uh, actually close to 40,000 GPS coordinates of migrating woodcock now. So we can see at the flyway scale, like here are places that are very important for us to think about providing habitat, uh, whether it's along the Atlantic coast or along the Mississippi flyway.

• 1:40:54Speaker 03

  Being able to target these treatments in a way where you're providing key habitat in places where it might be limited.

• 1:41:01Speaker 03

  And it gives you just some tremendous insights into the trials and tribulations. I mean, one thing, if folks are interested in looking at recent news stories, these big spring storms, or I guess late winter storms is a better way to describe it, obviously, that have happened on the East Coast. There have been some tremendous woodcock casualties as a result. There's a, there's a point in New Jersey called Cape May, which is sort of like a funnel along the Atlantic Flyway that is notorious for getting lots of, lots of young woodcock and into that area. And that's a place where a couple of big storms ago, between frozen ground and snowfall and really cold temperatures, they had hundreds of woodcock die on site, like freezing and

• 1:41:46Speaker 03

  starving on site during these migration events. So that all paints a picture of just how demanding for a bird of that size these seasonal migrations are. Like, any bird that makes it through one of those cycles and is able to reproduce and rear offspring, it's a hell of an accomplishment.

• 1:42:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, like, you know, a two, three-year-old turkey's an old ma- like, gobbler's an old man. Like, how long, like, rough grouse and woodcock, like, I assume, like, not many make it past the first year.

• 1:42:19Speaker 03

  No, very high mortality from, from one age class to the next, for sure.

• 1:42:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and in the case of woodcock, you know, the migration poses a whole set of risks that rough grouse aren't subject to. You know, they're flying into windows, they're flying into buildings, they're getting smoked by owls. A lot of the movement that woodcock are engaging in during migration is happening at night as well. So they, yeah, they're subject to very high mortality. And certainly in the case of grouse, too, like, there's nothing in the woods that eats meat that doesn't want to eat a grouse, right? Like, a grouse is a snack for anything out there. So, very high mortality during that first, basically, if you look at from year zero to one, one to two, two to three, every one of those stages, you're, you're seeing very high mortality for both of these species.

• 1:43:09Speaker 05

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:43:39Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. When you're miles deep in the mountains and carrying everything you need on your back, your boots aren't gear you think about. They're what you depend on. That's why Western hunters trust Zamberland. And man, I'm telling you, I've been running around in some Zamberlands.

• 1:44:20Steven Rinella?

  They are so comfortable and just well-built and feel great in the hills. Family-owned and handcrafted in Italy through three generations, Zamberland boots combine nearly a century of boot-making expertise with premium materials and new innovations for any pursuit, game, and terrain. They're comfortable, supportive, resolable, and built for the long haul. From rocky desert to steep shale slopes, Zamberland's perfected their craft to ensure your success. Head to zamberlandusa.com for handcrafted boots for every season. Zamberlandusa.com. You're gonna love getting your feet into a set of these.

• 1:45:01Speaker 04

  I had a question I wanted to ask you. That actually has to do with turkeys and maybe a conspiracy theory.

• 1:45:09Speaker 04

  Is there any correlation between like the rise of the wild turkey? Like the comeback?

• 1:45:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Speaker 04

  And the fall of the grouse? Because it's kind of like happening at the same time, right?

• 1:45:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've heard those stories. And I think my answer to that is when it comes to thinking about drivers of either success or failure for both rough grouse and wild turkeys. And like pick your, pick your hunted species. If you want to just look at this, at this from the lens of hunting, I mean, whitetail deer, you mentioned your story from Michigan, Steve.

• 1:45:44Speaker 03

  We're dealing with species that evolved with forests where disturbance equals habitat, period. So when we talk about doing things that are good for grouse or doing things that are good for turkey, or doing things that are good for whitetail deer, we're talking about benefiting the forest and the rising tide lifting all boats. And this idea of like, oh, we've got turkeys back on the landscape. Now that's going to be terrible for grouse. My answer to that would be if we have good habitat and a good juxtaposition of that diversity that's accessible to turkeys and to grouse, there may be some fluky case where a turkey disturbs ground, a ground nest. I'm sure that happens. I mean, turkeys are, they're, they're a source of disturbance and disruption. They're clawing and digging. And I have no doubt that that has happened and does happen.

• 1:46:28Speaker 03

  But nest mortality is par for the course. There's a whole host of other things out there that are taking out nests, too. We should never expect rough grouse or woodcock to, you know, succeed in every nesting attempt. But if we have really good habitat, and if we have lots of females attempting to nest, we're going to have lots of birds. So I would, I would debunk that a bit and say focusing in on habitat.

• 1:46:56Steven Rinella?

  It brings up, there's, there's an interesting point to it that, that, there's an interesting point you make that I hadn't thought of. A lot of times we, because we focus on like as hunters or anglers, or whatever, you focus on your favorite game species, right? Meaning like you might look, maybe you bass fish some lake and you kind of track like what's going on with the bass in that lake. And you'll, you'll have pet theories about what impacted bass, right? Or you might look at like, what's impacting mule deer?

• 1:47:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:29Steven Rinella?

  And you look and it's like you find this suite of factors that maybe like pertains very particularly to mule deer.

• 1:47:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:39Steven Rinella?

  Or some things that pertain very particularly to elk, right?

• 1:47:45Steven Rinella?

  It's interesting to think of what the woodcock and rough grouse decline. As being that like, we know those ones and love them. But what we're talking about is like land birds.

• 1:48:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Forest health.

• 1:48:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:03Speaker 03

  What we're talking about is forest health.

• 1:48:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:04Speaker 03

  And these are.

• 1:48:05Steven Rinella?

  Because I think that you tend to like, in my mind, like if I'm, you know, whatever, if I'm talking about black tailed deer on some island in Alaska. I'm usually looking at, well, what is impacting black tailed deer?

• 1:48:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:18Steven Rinella?

  Right? It's interesting to take a thing like this and be like, what is impacting birds?

• 1:48:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:48:26Steven Rinella?

  One of which, or two of which are these ones that you're intensely focused on. But that, that unbeknownst to you, they're, they're going away as well. You know?

• 1:48:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:48:40Steven Rinella?

  But you missed it. You missed it. Cause you're just thinking about the ones you are looking for.

• 1:48:45Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:48:46Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 1:48:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. And even if you want to get into some of the specific drivers, like just briefly back to this idea of the West Nile virus as a, a cause of decline. There too. The idea that you can really focus on habitat quality to help kind of buffer the impact of that disease agent. If you think about a bird that's like, I'm getting at this idea of cumulative effects, right? If you have a bird that is struggling to

• 1:49:16Speaker 03

  take in enough calories. And it's also subject to slightly higher predation risk because it doesn't have the structural complexity to hide from death from above, you know, hawks, owls, or coyotes, fox, whatever. Um, and then on top of that, you add a disease that's further weakening that bird versus a bird that is diseased, but also has really good forage, really good habitat. It's not any one of these things, right? It's, it's, it's very rare in ecological science to be like, nope, there's the cause, there's the effect. Right? Much more often, it's these complex interconnections and, and feedback loops and death by a thousand cuts as opposed to, well, here's the one thing that explains it all.

• 1:50:01Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:50:03Speaker 03

  But in the case of these eastern forests, it's like the one thing that explains it all is that we have not done a good job of maintaining the diversity and disturbance. And that includes everything ranging from driving passenger pigeons to extinction, extirpating eastern elk and bison up through. I love, I love the word you used neglect because I think that is a perfect label for many of our eastern forests is that they have been neglected. And part of the tragedy is that now you have people who I think their hearts are in the right place, but they're strongly advocating for continuing to neglect the forests that they claim to love.

• 1:50:48Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm. Like me getting mad at Yanni for cutting down all those trees on his place.

• 1:50:53Speaker 04

  Neglect by inaction, just letting them sit.

• 1:50:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, this idea that, this idea that, and I think this is, this is such a powerful, it's such a powerful thing to really think about because a lot of folks who I believe have their hearts in the right place, they think about human beings as being only capable of making things worse in the environment.

• 1:51:22Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:51:23Speaker 03

  Like, we're the problem. Too many people, you know, all we do is pillage and pollute. And when you really start looking at our history as a species and you start looking at, at all the different cultures and relationships that people have to different ecosystems around the planet and thinking about it more carefully, for the vast majority of our existence, we have been in the business of actively taking care of the places that support our existence. We have been, we have been dependent on the action that we take mediated through the land for our very survival. So this idea that somehow you step back and take a hands-off approach, nature will take

• 1:52:08Speaker 03

  care of itself, that ignores the reality that we are fundamentally a part of nature. Right? So it, it,

• 1:52:20Speaker 03

  It's a troubling worldview at the deepest of levels because it it takes this role that we should be embracing and points to that as if it's a problem.

• 1:52:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:33Speaker 03

  The only thing we can do is make things worse in the environment. That is just simply not the case. We have been in the business of interacting with and being a part of these systems. And that's the thing, man, the more I'm thinking through this, that's the problem is it takes us and removes us from the system. And we, you know, we we look over there, there's nature, don't mess it up as opposed to we are in this thing. And if you want to zoom back to like a global scale, whether you live in an urban environment, whether you live in a rural landscape, whether you're in a flavella somewhere in South America or whether you're living in remote Alaska, all of us are existing within this closed system, right?

• 1:53:15Speaker 03

  And we're all making decisions individually and cumulatively that influence the trajectory of that closed system. So approaching it in a way where you're actually embracing the fact that you have a responsibility to take action to try to make things better for the future as opposed to, well, that's nature over there. I'm over here doing my thing. Let nature figure it out. Like, that is a very deeply flawed worldview, in my opinion.

• 1:53:39Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:44Steven Rinella?

  When we talk about the Anthropocene, meaning that like the Anthropocene is this concept that, you know, like we think of the Pleistocene as the Ice Ages that was followed by the Holocene.

• 1:53:58Steven Rinella?

  Then we very quickly enter the Anthropocene, meaning that humans, when people use that term, what they're saying is that humans are the dominant force, the dominant global force on habitats, the dominant global force on ecology, right? We're the dominant force.

• 1:54:19Steven Rinella?

  Part of recognizing that is is is needs to be.

• 1:54:26Steven Rinella?

  Embracing that role.

• 1:54:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Steven Rinella?

  To be like, okay, if that's the case, then maybe we need to be the dominant force of good as well.

• 1:54:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love that.

• 1:54:34Steven Rinella?

  In some places.

• 1:54:35Speaker 03

  I love that.

• 1:54:35Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 1:54:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, there's no more powerful ecosystem engineer than Homo sapiens. Right? Like, we have been manipulating the face of this planet to benefit ourselves for forever. But we have, we have absolutely reached a point in our history as a species where

• 1:54:54Speaker 03

  we have, we have these controls at our disposal and we can either do things that will promote a future of continued prosperity, or, and in a lot of places, this is already reality, we've gone so far down this path of manipulating the system for short-term gain that we've compromised the ability of those systems to be a source of prosperity to us. So there's a lot of cleanup work to do in those places. But I think what you just said is, is a super important message. It's like, we need to acknowledge that reality and then approach that with a focus on what are our responsibilities in light of that reality?

• 1:55:35Steven Rinella?

  Do you think that, how, how relational is it? Like, do you think that, um,

• 1:55:42Steven Rinella?

  when I say relational, it's a terrible word choice. How much do you think a habitat project? Let's say you do, you do a habitat project on a thousand acres. Can you do a habitat project on a thousand acres and then come back a couple of years later and be like, oh, the grouse are back?

• 1:56:02Speaker 03

  Really depends on where you are.

• 1:56:04Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:56:04Speaker 03

  Um, I think in a lot of places, the answer is going to be no. Once grouse are gone and you lose like a, a source population and they do this, they have this life history trait where, um, you know, they hatch in the spring, the broods kind of stick together. If you think about bumping into grouse early season when you're hunting them, oftentimes you'll flush like broods of birds, you'll get almost like a covey.

• 1:56:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:27Speaker 03

  Flush of grouse. But then they get into a dispersal mode mid-fall and birds start striking out to.

• 1:56:34Speaker 03

  Essentially occupy new territory, spread their genes across the landscape, avoid competition, avoid inbreeding. So they will cover considerable distances to pioneer unoccupied habitat. But if you do a restoration project in an area where there's no source of rough grouse, they're not gonna, they're not gonna find it.

• 1:56:56Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:56:57Speaker 03

  And we're not, there's a very poor track record of trying to relocate grouse into previously occupied habitat.

• 1:57:04Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 1:57:04Speaker 03

  They don't, they don't do well. So being able to hold on to grouse where we still have them and then focus on trying to restore habitat around the places that are occupied is a much better course of action.

• 1:57:16Steven Rinella?

  We had a researcher, we had a deer, you know, does a lot of work with cervids on the podcast one time, and he was talking about when you look, like, let's say you're mule deer hunting, and you look and that perfect stuff, and you're like, God, it seems like they'd be here, it looks like it would be perfect.

• 1:57:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:32Steven Rinella?

  He's like, it might be, they're just not there.

• 1:57:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:36Steven Rinella?

  Something happened to, they have a lot of fidelity to their area, something happened to that group.

• 1:57:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:42Steven Rinella?

  And it might be a long time, it might be perfect, it might be the most perfect mule deer country in your area, but there's just not any there.

• 1:57:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:50Steven Rinella?

  Cause they don't, they haven't colonized it.

• 1:57:52Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:57:54Steven Rinella?

  They got their own, the ones nearby have their little plan, and they're not looking for a new spot, and it can take a long time to put them back when you have an event.

• 1:58:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:03Steven Rinella?

  Carry them away.

• 1:58:04Speaker 03

  Yep, I think there's some applicability there, and that's in, obviously, direct contrast with Woodcock where they're.

• 1:58:10Steven Rinella?

  They're gonna find it.

• 1:58:11Speaker 03

  They're gonna find it, which is one of the advantages, we've talked about some of the disadvantages of being a migratory species, but an advantage is you're surveying that landscape with fresh eyes every year and taking advantage where habitat's popping up.

• 1:58:24Steven Rinella?

  It's interesting to me that putting grouse out on the ground doesn't work like putting turkeys out on the ground.

• 1:58:29Speaker 03

  They have not done well with reintroduction.

• 1:58:30Steven Rinella?

  What do you think it is? Cause they just don't, they don't carry with them like a sort of generational land use plan?

• 1:58:38Speaker 03

  It's a good question, man, I wish I knew, I wish I knew more about the constraints on survivorship of translocated grouse.

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  I know that it has been attempted in many settings and I'm aware of no successful reintroduction efforts.

• 1:58:55Steven Rinella?

  They gotta do their own thing.

• 1:58:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:57Steven Rinella?

  So you gotta preserve those pockets.

• 1:58:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, and build out from there. And, and you know, we do have just some tremendous strongholds still. But the thing that, the thing that is both, both like most frustrating and most encouraging is that it's not, we're not scratching our heads like, man, if we could just figure out.

• 1:59:17Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:59:17Speaker 03

  Right? It's like, we know, we know it needs to be done. And, and it's also a set of actions that is broadly beneficial beyond these two iconic species. So that's where like the idea of trying to get some coalitions built around leaving those conditions, like the partnership with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the partnership with American Bird Conservancy. We have

• 1:59:48Speaker 03

  a shared vision of what needs to be done.

• 1:59:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, tho- those kind of things are frustrating in their own way. I think when you look at big conservation problems, you have the ones you'd be like, like acidification of the oceans. You know, you're like, good luck with that. Do you know what I mean? Like something that would call for sort of like a global change in, in the habits that would impact every person on the planet.

• 2:00:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:00:16Steven Rinella?

  You know, like, that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. But then you got conservation problems where you're like, dude, it's right at our fingertips.

• 2:00:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:25Steven Rinella?

  It's right at our fingertips. It's not even like,

• 2:00:29Steven Rinella?

  it's so achievable.

• 2:00:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:00:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You know, King Sam and people are like, they don't even know where to begin.

• 2:00:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:35Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean with King Sam? It's hard to know where to begin.

• 2:00:37Speaker 04

  It'd be a bummer to see like that species, that hunting opportunity like blink out in your lifetime. Because so much of it has gotten better over time, right? Like, if you're an elk hunter, it's a pretty good time to be an elk hunter, whitetail hunter, you know? You name it. It's pretty good, but to see, like, do you envision the trend being more states closing seasons or restricting seasons?

• 2:01:05Speaker 04

  Or status quo?

• 2:01:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, I think we're on a trajectory where we're likely to see continued loss of opportunity.

• 2:01:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:01:12Speaker 03

  And, you know, a couple of examples, New Jersey's a state where they had a season that's been closed, like 2019 for that one. Indiana lost its season in 2015 and now ruffed grouse are listed on the state endangered species list in Indiana. Missouri, no season. Ohio flirting with potentially a steeply restricted season.

• 2:01:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania had an early and a late and they got rid of one, maybe the late season, like after Christmas.

• 2:01:42Steven Rinella?

  God, Michigan's still just got a doozy of a season, man.

• 2:01:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:45Steven Rinella?

  It's long.

• 2:01:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Hunt them right up through the end of the calendar year.

• 2:01:50Steven Rinella?

  And September 15, right?

• 2:01:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 2:01:53Steven Rinella?

  Opener?

• 2:01:53Speaker 03

  A sacred day for those hillbilly kids of the Northwoods, man. You just take that day off of school, go squirrel hunting and grouse hunting.

• 2:02:05Steven Rinella?

  Those are all restrictions that came out like in our lifetimes for sure.

• 2:02:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:09Steven Rinella?

  What else, what else you got on that list?

• 2:02:12Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I just, I think.

• 2:02:16Steven Rinella?

  There's not, but, but speak to the fact that this is all southern extent, right?

• 2:02:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:21Steven Rinella?

  Is it because it was the poorest populations?

• 2:02:24Speaker 03

  Well, I think.

• 2:02:24Steven Rinella?

  It was just kind of naturally borderline, it was naturally fringe habitat?

• 2:02:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're starting to get, you're starting to get into the areas where the,

• 2:02:35Speaker 03

  if you look at the distribution of Aspen, I made the comment earlier that Aspen is not the key, but it's a really important aspect of grouse habitat in many places. You're starting to get into areas where that species is not available to provide food and cover. You're also looking at places where these forest change dynamics that we've talked about, mesification, lack of disturbance, that is absolutely the case. One of the most compelling examples of that, going back to Doug Durn, the Driftless Area in southwest Wisconsin, if you look like 25, 30, 40 years ago, grouse numbers in southwest Wisconsin were off the charts, like phenomenal grouse, rough grouse habitat. Now it's unusual to hear.

• 2:03:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I talked about the.

• 2:03:15Speaker 03

  A drumming grouse in the Driftless Area. So.

• 2:03:19Speaker 04

  So what, what happened? Just the habitat?

• 2:03:21Speaker 03

  Habitat changed? Lack of?

• 2:03:22Speaker 04

  Changed or it's gone?

• 2:03:24Speaker 03

  Um, gone for now. And the problem is, you know, like we were just talking about with the sort of mule deer story there. Um, if you get to the point where the habitat's gone long enough and the population is dwindled to the point. You're, I'm not going to say you're never going to get them back, but you are facing a very steep uphill battle at that point.

• 2:03:42Speaker 04

  So for like, the northern populations, like whatever, northern Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota. Where they're doing well, is it just like, why are they do- like, is it just that stuff's not getting messed with? It's the right habitat and it's staying in the right habitat? Like, because if it, if this good habitat depends on disturbance, like what kind of disturbance is going on up there that keeps things?

• 2:04:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, you're, you're right. You're right in the core of their range in terms of climate, in terms of the vegetation community. You know, I'm thinking, I'm envisioning this spot right now in the, in the UP where it's just like this tangle of 15, 10 to 15 year old aspen, understory of witch hazel. It's like every, you've got like winter green. It's, it's just food everywhere. Cover's phenomenal. Typically you have a good snowpack and rough grouse will burrow into the snow and seek thermal refuge in cold conditions. So having that snow cover is a big deal. If you have crappy snow, snow years, grouse are at higher risk of freezing in cold temperatures.

• 2:04:48Speaker 04

  That's not good news around here.

• 2:04:50Speaker 03

  You know? So, so you're in a really sweet spot. It's like you're right, you're right in the wheelhouse of where those birds evolved to be. And, um, so now I'm thinking about some very cool work that's been happening in the central upper peninsula of Michigan, looking at the management of these remnant boreal forest ecosystems where you're kind of on the fringe for, like I'm thinking about snowshoe hares as well, right?

• 2:05:15Speaker 03

  Populations of snowshoe hares, ruffed grouse, a whole host of species that have significance from the standpoint of food and medicine for tribal communities. So there's some really cool work. My buddy Eric Clark and collaborators from the Sioux-Saint Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians working on the Hiawatha National Forest to get more fire back into those systems to promote the diversity of habitat. And if you go back, there are places where, particularly in red pine, you can look at the dendocrinology, like the tree history of fire activity in those systems. There's a place called Bethler's Marsh as an example on the Hiawatha National Forest where

• 2:05:57Speaker 03

  red pine dendocrinology data shows how frequently fire was burning through those systems prior to European settlement. And it was very high frequency, so very often fire, at a low enough severity that the trees were surviving it. And as they've been starting to get some of those fire regimes back into those systems,

• 2:06:20Speaker 03

  with the tribe really leading that work,

• 2:06:24Speaker 03

  the grouse response has been phenomenal. But it's also great habitat. Like they're doing a lot of work trying to keep moose on the landscape, right? We haven't talked about moose at all. A lot of the work that we're doing, thinking about rough grouse habitat in those northern lake states, a ton of it is also phenomenal moose habitat. Yeah. There's a collaborative up on the Arrowhead in Minnesota focused on moose habitat. We're right in the mix partnering with the Forest Service, partnering with the state, partnering with the tribes, trying to get moose habitat on the ground. You call it whatever the hell you want. Yeah, it's great moose habitat. It's also great for all these other species that we're talking about.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:07:29Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. Holy smokes, I've been running around in some Zamberland boots and my God, are they comfortable. Damn, out of the box, ready to wear. I can't believe I haven't done it before. And the hunting tradition, right, has always been about knowledge and skills handed down

• 2:08:12Steven Rinella?

  from one generation to the next. Whether it's field memories with your parents or sharing the experience of a first hunt with your own kids, that shared connection is something the family at Zamberland Boots truly understands. Since its founding back in 1929, three generations of Zamberland family bootmakers have refined their craft in the mountains of northern Italy, maintaining a tradition of handcrafted construction, durability, and performance for the toughest conditions. Each Zamberland boot combines exceptional materials, patented technologies, and the latest innovations from partners like Vibram, Gore-Tex, and Boa.

• 2:08:56Steven Rinella?

  Because a quality boot is an investment in your feet, Zamberland hunting boots are resolable with original outsoles, keeping you comfortable for a lifetime of use. Zamberland's wide range of hunting and hiking boots is available at zamberlandusa.com and select retailers, including the newest drop, the lightweight, full-protection, 8ax6 Boa and Coyote Camo. To explore Zamberland's handcrafted hiking, hunting, and work boots, visit zamberlandusa.com. I think two of those northern latitudes you get, I don't really, it's just something I sort of noticed and suspect, I guess, is it?

• 2:09:37Steven Rinella?

  And those northern latitudes with the really deep snow, different vegetation regimes, whatever, good habitat lingers a long time.

• 2:09:45Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:09:46Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, like, it's a, it seems like successional forest is a slower process.

• 2:09:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09:52Steven Rinella?

  Then it might be in other places.

• 2:09:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, those sites like.

• 2:09:55Steven Rinella?

  I mean, you think of places that that stayed good. I can think of like good grouse spots that have just stayed good for forever.

• 2:10:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:02Steven Rinella?

  Then I can think of good grouse spots. It was like they were very ephemeral.

• 2:10:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:06Steven Rinella?

  They were good for a minute.

• 2:10:08Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:10:08Steven Rinella?

  You know, so there's a couple of things going on. They were good for a few years, but places seem like you're like, should we shut grouse out of there for 20 years?

• 2:10:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So we talk about like site index or site, site richness, site quality, and, and that takes into account. It's basically like the capacity of a particular place to grow vegetation. And there's obviously a strong climate component to that. There's also a really strong soil component to that. And a lot of the places, when I think about really good grouse and woodcock habitat, places where I grew up hunting, you're dealing with pretty poor soils too, right? It's not like, it's not like you, you expose the earth to the solar rays and you get like a jungle immediately growing. It's a, it's a more drawn out process. And that's in contrast, and I'm thinking back to the time down in Louisiana, uh, this past winter.

• 2:11:00Speaker 03

  And the site richness on those sites is like off the charts. So they'll, they, the amount of effort and, and investment that they have to, uh, make in order to keep woodcock habitat on some of those state game lands.

• 2:11:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 2:11:16Speaker 03

  It's crazy because like they'll mow it and the next year it's like a jungle has reemerged, right? So you're, you're pointing to something that's.

• 2:11:22Steven Rinella?

  And a lot of that northern grouse habitat, like in the upper Great Lakes region, um, you'd be like, wonder why no one's farming this, but because you can't.

• 2:11:30Speaker 03

  Dude.

• 2:11:30Steven Rinella?

  Because the Norwegians try it, man.

• 2:11:33Speaker 03

  There were a lot of, there were a lot of.

• 2:11:34Steven Rinella?

  Grow there.

• 2:11:35Speaker 03

  A lot of frustrated potato farms in the U P, man.

• 2:11:37Steven Rinella?

  A deal I've noticed too, man, you probably have seen this, like I'm thinking of in the county where I grew up and around that area. A lot of times, a good grouse pocket.

• 2:11:49Steven Rinella?

  Would be centered around, this is gonna sound weird, it'd be centered around Christmas tree plantations.

• 2:11:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Doesn't sound weird.

• 2:11:55Steven Rinella?

  Cause when you'd go out and hunt in late season, like you go home for Christmas break or something.

• 2:11:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:00Steven Rinella?

  And you go out.

• 2:12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:02Steven Rinella?

  All the grouse are in the Christmas tree plantations.

• 2:12:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:05Steven Rinella?

  And it'd always be that around those big blocks, like, you know, whatever, you got like 10, 20 acres of Christmas trees or something.

• 2:12:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:12Steven Rinella?

  It would always be good grouse.

• 2:12:13Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:12:15Steven Rinella?

  But there's a certain look to those areas too, but I'm just saying it would be like, that was sort of like a real holding.

• 2:12:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:21Steven Rinella?

  Position.

• 2:12:21Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:12:22Steven Rinella?

  I could think of one on, I, I can think of one of these that was on public land.

• 2:12:26Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:12:26Steven Rinella?

  A Manassas National Forest, it was a pine plantation.

• 2:12:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:29Steven Rinella?

  Always good grouse in that area, cause they had that, like you said, their homebodies.

• 2:12:33Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:12:34Steven Rinella?

  And they had that like feature.

• 2:12:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:12:36Steven Rinella?

  And this other on this dude's place, he used to grow pumpkins and I, he'd hire me for a couple of days a year to pick pumpkins and bring them down and sell them. But, um, he had a pine tree plant, a Christmas tree plantation.

• 2:12:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:46Steven Rinella?

  And always good, whether they were in there or not.

• 2:12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:50Steven Rinella?

  And it was just that, like, I think of them in there, like, it's where they go to survive the cold.

• 2:12:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Totally. So, so I love that. And, and one of the things when I'm looking for grouse, like really good grouse habitat, having a component of conifer in the mix.

• 2:13:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:04Speaker 03

  Is awesome. You know, it might be spruce or fir. Um, but in terms of shelter from predators and also in terms of thermal protection.

• 2:13:16Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 2:13:16Speaker 03

  Um, and, and hiding from precip, too. Like, they do not like getting wet.

• 2:13:20Speaker 04

  Oh, man, they can disappear in those, those tree, that, those conifers. You get, get a kid trying to find one that's perched up.

• 2:13:27Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, cause they're not sitting way out, they'll sit up close and toward the thing.

• 2:13:31Speaker 03

  Totally. So that's where you get like, if you're in a hunting scenario, taking turns flanking, like having one dude on the backside.

• 2:13:38Speaker 04

  Sometimes they just don't budge, man.

• 2:13:41Speaker 03

  That's true. And oftentimes, you know, you'll hear, you'll hear him flush and you'll never see him, but.

• 2:13:45Steven Rinella?

  Dude, the guys, when you're hitting those patches, I'm talking about the dudes that are gonna get the shooting are the dudes on the outside, man.

• 2:13:51Speaker 03

  Right. That's what I'm saying. So that's the flank.

• 2:13:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the flank. And you, and you wanna kinda go like, if you picture a Christmas tree plantation, like, a lap, picture a laptop computer.

• 2:14:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:14:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay, and you got your pushers and you're pushing it the long way.

• 2:14:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:14:07Steven Rinella?

  A lot of guys are gonna make the mistake of having their pushers out, like you're entering one end of the laptop.

• 2:14:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:13Steven Rinella?

  Your pushers are, and you've got your sitters.

• 2:14:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:16Steven Rinella?

  You're thinking you're gonna position them off the points, off the other end of the laptop.

• 2:14:20Speaker 03

  Strategy, man, that's, that's all wrong.

• 2:14:21Steven Rinella?

  A good trick is to have a guy mid laptop.

• 2:14:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:24Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:14:25Speaker 03

  The one.

• 2:14:25Steven Rinella?

  Cause the bird, the bird doesn't conceptualize in that pine tree path the way you are.

• 2:14:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:14:30Steven Rinella?

  Like you think he's gonna go to the end.

• 2:14:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:14:33Steven Rinella?

  And then hop out.

• 2:14:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:14:34Steven Rinella?

  You know, but they're blowing out sides, man. You gotta have a guy inside.

• 2:14:37Speaker 03

  That's what I'm saying, flank. Like, you'll never hear me talk about a stander. A flanker is somebody mobile.

• 2:14:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's moving.

• 2:14:43Speaker 03

  They're flanking, and maybe a few steps up ahead.

• 2:14:46Steven Rinella?

  And he's recognizing those gaps in the trees that he knows they're gonna use to get out of there, man.

• 2:14:50Speaker 03

  The other thing that's nice is then you can be within eyesight of each other too, so you can take your shot knowing where your buddy is.

• 2:14:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:56Speaker 03

  Cause a lot of times in grouse habitat, like you can, if you're more than like thirty yards from your friend, you're not gonna be able to see him.

• 2:15:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:02Speaker 04

  Carl, I had one more question for you.

• 2:15:04Speaker 03

  Let's hear it.

• 2:15:05Speaker 04

  It's like, I'm surprised it didn't come up, cause it like, it usually comes up in these kinda conversations, which is like predators and predator management.

• 2:15:14Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:15:14Speaker 04

  Like.

• 2:15:15Steven Rinella?

  Does it matter on grouse?

• 2:15:18Speaker 04

  Cause I know a lot of grouse hunters be like, raccoons are eating, or whatever.

• 2:15:21Steven Rinella?

  Do they?

• 2:15:22Speaker 04

  I don't know. I like, I feel like that's things they.

• 2:15:24Steven Rinella?

  But there's something there with turkeys, but anyways, yeah.

• 2:15:27Speaker 03

  Man, so.

• 2:15:28Steven Rinella?

  What, what, who's killing grouse?

• 2:15:29Speaker 04

  Like, nobody traps anymore. That's part of why, you know?

• 2:15:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, everybody's killing them, man. Like grouse and woodcock are delicious. Uh, they are little nuggets of energy on the landscape waiting to get eaten, and the nests too. And these systems are full of things that are gonna eat them, and that's okay. Uh, the lever that matters is the habitat piece.

• 2:15:53Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:15:53Speaker 03

  To be thinking about like, oh, if I kill all the coyotes, kill all the fox, or these possums getting nests, or whatever, that is, like, that is.

• 2:16:02Speaker 04

  It's not gonna move the lever.

• 2:16:03Steven Rinella?

  You want people to stay focused.

• 2:16:05Speaker 03

  I want people thinking about habitat, man.

• 2:16:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:16:07Steven Rinella?

  Let all, let all the other stuff sort itself out.

• 2:16:09Speaker 03

  And, and, and the thing is, man, we know, we know this.

• 2:16:12Steven Rinella?

  We had a guy in your seat, came on top, same conversation, Bob White Quail.

• 2:16:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:18Steven Rinella?

  He was, your thing with habitat, he didn't do what you're doing.

• 2:16:24Speaker 04

  Oh, he downplayed that.

• 2:16:25Steven Rinella?

  Quail, and he was like, parasites, parasites, parasites, parasites.

• 2:16:29Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:16:30Steven Rinella?

  And man.

• 2:16:33Steven Rinella?

  We got just more negative feedback and pissed off people.

• 2:16:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:16:40Steven Rinella?

  Because he jumped to a, he had the audacity.

• 2:16:47Steven Rinella?

  To talk about.

• 2:16:48Speaker 04

  He also had a product he was.

• 2:16:51Steven Rinella?

  That he worked on.

• 2:16:52Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 2:16:53Speaker 03

  Let me, let me throw a couple of things in response.

• 2:16:55Steven Rinella?

  But I'm saying, he, he shifted and people were like, you gotta stay on the habitat. You can't talk about, right? And people were pissed.

• 2:17:04Speaker 03

  They should be. Here's the thing. Here's the thing, man. Let's talk about parasite loads.

• 2:17:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:17:09Speaker 03

  Not unlike the conversation around West Nile. A lot of these birds are, are gonna pick up all sorts of maladies.

• 2:17:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:17:18Speaker 03

  Diseases, parasites, et cetera.

• 2:17:22Speaker 03

  Having quality habitat is gonna mediate those effects. It's like the thing to do. And, and since you brought up quail, I want to just like briefly point out

• 2:17:35Speaker 03

  the fact that we spent a lot of time talking about eastern forests. And I'm, again, I'm looking at the state of the birds report in terms of declines.

• 2:17:44Speaker 03

  Eastern bird, eastern forest birds, 27% decline over the course of the last 40 years, looking at this graph from this report. That there are two categories that have steeper declines that I want to highlight. Arid land birds and grassland birds.

• 2:18:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:18:06Speaker 03

  So, grassland birds in particular, and I want to tie this back to the conversation about quail.

• 2:18:14Speaker 03

  We have talked today about the importance of markets and being able to move wood and not being able to move habitat without being able to move wood. One of the challenges with grassland ecosystems is, is figuring out how those ecosystems can pay their way. Right? This is where the farm bill and programs like CRP incentivizing stewardship. And there's.

• 2:18:38Steven Rinella?

  Which isn't paying their way in the same way.

• 2:18:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:18:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And.

• 2:18:42Speaker 04

  Those are long-term investments.

• 2:18:43Speaker 03

  Long-term investments. And there's, there's just some amazing success stories of, of ranchers taking a long view on habitat and trying to, you know, trying to do right by grassland birds and also right by their herds and their bottom line. And it's harder in a system where you don't have the timber helping with those economics.

• 2:19:08Speaker 03

  But I want to just highlight, you know, folks

• 2:19:12Speaker 03

  have opportunities to be really involved with moving the needle. And I'm thinking back to last week being at Pheasant Fest. You mentioned quail decline and quail in a lot of places, in most places, continue to struggle. And in fact, that's one of the reasons Woodcock are getting more attention is people who have historically loved hunting quail and have pointing dogs and all that. They're like discovering Woodcock as an alternative in some places where quail, like in the quail stronghold. But I just want to highlight the experience of last week being up in Minneapolis at Pheasant Fest. So hosted by Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, another organization that's really dialed in on this habitat piece in a different system. Right? Thinking about these grassland systems.

• 2:19:59Speaker 03

  And

• 2:20:01Speaker 03

  I'm a big proponent for folks to think about being affiliated with lots of different organizations and finding ways to support the missions of lots of different organizations. And I couldn't be more impressed with how Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever rolled out a red carpet for our organization and a whole host of other like prairie grouse organizations. We had this little corner, not a little corner, we had a great space at the, at Pheasant Fest to talk about grouse conservation, both forest grouse and prairie grouse. And the thing I love about what Pheasants Forever is doing is taking the stance like, I think it'd be really easy for folks to imagine there being a lot of competition among conservation organizations.

• 2:20:46Speaker 03

  It does not have to be that way, man. There's so much work that needs to be done across these different ecosystems. We've got a niche with thinking about forest grouse, thinking about Woodcock, but I've already told you like there are other nonprofits, American Bird Conservancy, Audubon Society, TNC. There's so much work that needs to be done that from my perspective, there's, there's no excuse for there to be a sense of competition among these organizations. We've got to be taking the tact that I saw last week from Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever where they're creating a space to try to elevate the missions of all these different organizations. So. My hope is that-

• 2:21:25Steven Rinella?

  Well, it could be that it's, it could be that there's a problem where the efforts are too scattered and not, and not streamlined.

• 2:21:32Speaker 03

  Well, that's, there, there is a risk there. And that's where I think having some strong alignment among collaborators and keeping your eye on the prize and finding ways to leverage the strengths and expertise of different partner organizations. I mentioned Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation earlier, another group where, you know, they've got a strong presence in the West. They want to be able to implement work in the East. We can help them do that. So we're able to funnel some of their conservation investments through our organization. So I just, I hope as folks are thinking about all of the needs,

• 2:22:17Speaker 03

  taking some time to learn about the bigger picture and not just, not just focus on one ecosystem or one species, but think about these big concepts of what these landscapes need from us and then finding ways to align and become a member of communities with organizations that are trying to drive that. And I want to throw one other thing out that I'm really excited about right now in terms of collaboration. And that is when we were at Pheasant Fest, one of the coolest things happened in there was we had a partnership with the Aldo Leopold Foundation at Pheasant Fest. So anybody who was joining RGS and AWS as a conservation member,

• 2:23:00Speaker 03

  they were all getting copies of the Sand County Almanac through the Leopold Foundation. And

• 2:23:09Speaker 03

  I think that's a significant collaboration because what we are, what we are doing with our work and what I've been trying to communicate through the conversation today. Is that the significance of this effort is much, it's about much more than just having really good grouse and woodcock hunting, right? We're asking, we're trying to approach these big questions around responsibility to place and thinking about showing up in community in a meaningful way. And for anybody who's familiar with Leopold's work, those should sound like familiar concepts. And so this idea of highlighting those ideas and that legacy through the work that we're

• 2:23:49Speaker 03

  doing and trying to be exemplary ambassadors of that land ethic in action is something I'm really excited about. And so just in the last week, we've gotten a further commitment from the Alder Leopold Foundation for anyone who joins our organization in our membership drive right now, that deal is going to continue.

• 2:24:11Steven Rinella?

  Oh, is that right?

• 2:24:12Speaker 03

  Online, yeah. So.

• 2:24:14Steven Rinella?

  So tell them the deal.

• 2:24:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so if you go, we've got a, we've got a slick little URL now to use, which is roughed.org and make sure you spell roughed. R U F F E D, roughed.org and you'll get.

• 2:24:28Steven Rinella?

  That's your guys' website now?

• 2:24:29Speaker 03

  It's, this is, this is a tight little URL that will take you to our.

• 2:24:33Steven Rinella?

  Rough, roughed.org.

• 2:24:35Speaker 03

  It'll take you to our membership campaign right now.

• 2:24:37Steven Rinella?

  Not roughed like roughed you up, but rough, right? A rough around your neck.

• 2:24:40Speaker 03

  R U, R U F F E D dot org and get a copy of a Sand County Almanac and get yourself a cool trucker hat with the grouse and woodcock on it and get newsletters from both the Leopold Foundation and the Rough Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society. And, and the thing I want to highlight here, like, memberships are great, but what we're really trying to figure out is building, this idea of building community around taking care of the land. That's what we're about, taking care of these forests. And we do that with memberships. We also have people who are volunteering and I want to, I want to say a huge thank you to everybody who volunteers to support our mission.

• 2:25:23Speaker 03

  We have tremendous, we have folks who have been volunteering for this organization for decades, hosting banquets, fundraisers, all that kind of stuff, just pouring a ton of time and passion. We had volunteers at Pheasant Fest helping staff our booth. So I want to say a huge thank you to the, the volunteers who are part of this organization. We have some incredibly generous private philanthropists who support our mission.

• 2:25:46Speaker 03

  But this idea of just having a community of people who are affiliated with the work that we do and want to see these forests left in a better condition than we found them, that's what we're trying to build. And I think in the conservation space, with some of the trends that we've talked about around declining participation, like what is the future of, of the funding model for conservation in this country? These questions about how do we build community around these ideas of responsibility to place? I think that, that is where the answer lies. And so we want to be one of the leaders, along with our partners, in helping drive that kind of community building. So, rough.org, check it out. Join us.

• 2:26:24Steven Rinella?

  Thank you, Carl.

• 2:26:26Speaker 04

  Thanks, Carl.

• 2:26:27Steven Rinella?

  And again, this is Carl Malcolm. He's the VP of Conservation with the Ruffe Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society. Thanks so much for coming on, man. And please go check out, it's so easy to remember, Ruffe, R U F F E D dot org. Get yourself a membership, Ruffe Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society. Get perhaps the greatest, not even perhaps, the greatest conservation book ever written.

• 2:26:57Speaker 03

  I won't argue with that.

• 2:26:58Steven Rinella?

  The greatest conservation book ever written, San County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. And Carl doubles as a Leopold expert, for you guys that, you guys know that, if you watch me either the TV show and have listened to Carl's past appearances on this podcast. Again, thank you, Carl.

• 2:27:16Speaker 03

  Appreciate the opportunity, Steve. Good to see you.

• 2:27:45Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone

• 2:27:56Steven Rinella?

  In your family, served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. Holy smokes, I've been running around in some Zamberland boots and my God, are they comfortable. Damn, out of the box, ready to wear. I can't believe I haven't done it before. And the hunting tradition, right, has always been about knowledge and skills handed down from one generation to the next. Whether it's field memories with your parents or sharing the experience of a first hunt with your own kids.

• 2:28:36Steven Rinella?

  That shared connection is something the family at Zamberland Boots truly understands. Since its founding back in 1929, three generations of Zamberland family bootmakers have refined their craft in the mountains of northern Italy, maintaining a tradition of handcrafted construction durability and performance for the toughest conditions. Each Zamberland boot combines exceptional materials, patented technologies, and the latest innovations from partners like Vibram, Gore-Tex, and Boa. Because a quality boot is an investment in your feet, Zamberland hunting boots are resolable with original outsoles, keeping you comfortable for a lifetime of use.

• 2:29:21Steven Rinella?

  Zamberland's wide range of hunting and hiking boots is available at zamberlandusa.com and select retailers, including the newest drop, the lightweight, full-protection, 8ax6 Boa and Coyote Camo. To explore Zamberland's handcrafted hiking, hunting, and work boots, visit zamberlandusa.com. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know those little promises you make to your future self? Tomorrow, I'll put my phone away earlier, or stop rehearsing arguments in the shower. Tomorrow, I'll stop saying yes to everything, or stop overthinking that conversation. Most of us aren't trying to become completely different people. We're just hoping to feel a little better every day.

• 2:30:05Steven Rinella?

  That's what's great about BetterHelp. With them, better is personal. It's matching with a therapist who gets you and having someone in your corner. Better doesn't have to come from major victories. It can be from the small habits you create and how you honor your needs on a daily basis. So many of us are great at prioritizing even the smallest things for our loved ones. But what about ourselves? With thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries, BetterHelp is making therapy more accessible so more people can keep moving forward, one conversation at a time. Better is personal. Therapy should be too. Visit betterhelp.com to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com.

• 2:30:50Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.