Ep. 936: Something From The White House That We Can All Applaud

Steve Rinella and the MeatEater Crew Discuss: Trump’s executive orders on hunting and fishing; Etsy loves Epstein but hates squirrels; a new U. S. record whitetail and a Pennsylvania state record elk; a little more on Yellowstone wolves (yes, it never ends), Congressman Ryan Zinke on the A River Runs Through It Act; and more! Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Steven Rinella?

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• 1:39Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show, everybody. We got a doozy for you. This week, we've got big, great news from the White House, which is very nice, and a welcome break from a string of bad news from the White House. We've got a new U.S. typical whitetail deer record, which nudges out the Huff Buck, who we interviewed here on the podcast, so condolences to you, Huff. We got a dude in Pennsylvania put on a onesie and shot a new Pennsylvania state record elk with a crossbow. We got Etsy really is the devil. We've got fresh wolf news, and we hear from U.S. Representative Ryan Zinke about a piece

• 2:17Steven Rinella?

  of legislation called, get this, a River Runs Through It Act, which is artful naming. But first, back to that giant buck.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  All right, earlier this month, Boone and Crockett announced that there is a new USA record for typical whitetail deer, and it's a buck that was killed 35 years ago. Here's how that came to be. Sam Iupa of Northern Illinois was out pheasant hunting on November 28, 1991. Sam's passion was bird hunting, and he considers himself just a casual deer hunter. He said he'd always buy deer tags, but he like never put much time or effort into actually deer hunting. However, it was actually pheasant hunting that helped him kill what would end up being the new USA record. Here is Sam telling the story of that hunt via Boone and Crockett. Bill.

• 3:09Speaker 05

  Okay, I was hunting herds. Around 3:30, we put the dogs up. I had to stand there because I saw a lot of scrapings and a lot of deer tracks. I said, I'm gonna go into deer stand. This was around 3:30 in the afternoon. Just before sundown, this deer come walking down the trail. He stopped, he looked around, walked a little bit, and stopped again, looked around. I lifted up my slug shotgun, I took one shot. He jumped up to the air, came down, went over the hill. Stood in my stand for another 15, 20 minutes, came down, saw the blood, went over the hill, and there he was laying dead on the other side of the hill.

• 3:51Speaker 05

  Called my buddy, and we helped process the deer at that time.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  Now, that's a deer hunting story, just no nonsense.

• 3:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, man, just, he cuts all the bullshit out, you know what I mean?

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Guys would take longer to tell you about a doe that they didn't kill. That's just how quick.

• 4:06Steven Rinella?

  Totally.

• 4:06Speaker 04

  And this is the USA record.

• 4:08Speaker 06

  Plus, it doesn't seem like he was out there after a record, you know?

• 4:11Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:11Speaker 06

  It's like the Hanson buck.

• 4:13Steven Rinella?

  Unbelievable deer. So, but hold on a minute.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:16Steven Rinella?

  Okay, you're gonna get to all this, because this is a long time ago.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:20Steven Rinella?

  What a giant. That's bigger than one laying in my yard.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, he's that big. And what Sam doesn't mention in that clip is how the gun he killed it with, a Remington 870, was also his pheasant hunting gun that day. So he just went home, swapped out his bird shot for slugs, and then went deer hunting. That's, that's how it goes down.

• 4:37Speaker 06

  So he wasn't even using a rifled slug barrel, it was just a smooth bore.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  So Sam kills that buck with very little fanfare. He skull caps the deer, nails it to a plaque, and hangs it in his basement.

• 4:48Speaker 06

  There he is.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  At that point, the buck basically disappears for three decades. Then, in 2023, Sam has an electrician at his house to do some work. The electrician's name is Don. Don starts working in the basement, and that's when he spots the deer, and he can't believe his eyes. Don goes to Sam, he's like, Sam, where the hell did this deer come from? And Sam tells him the story, how he killed it 30 years prior, and that's when Don tells Sam, hey, this might be the Illinois state record. And so Don pleads with Sam to get the buck scored, because he thinks it might dethrone the Mel Johnson Buck, a very famous whitetail. It was the Illinois state record of 204 inches that has stood since the 1960s.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  So Sam gets the buck roughly scored, and it's even bigger than anyone imagined. Initial measurements show that this deer is actually of world record caliber, not just state record size. So the buck has now, at this point, like, kind of entered the public eye, and an antler collector in New York hears about it through the grapevine. He drives 600 miles to Sam's house to see the rack and ends up purchasing it

• 5:55Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 5:56Speaker 04

  from him for an undisclosed mount.

• 5:58Steven Rinella?

  Oh, come on, really?

• 5:59Speaker 04

  So the rack sits in the basement for 30 years. Antler collector hears about it. Prior to it being officially scored, antler collector goes and buys it from Sam.

• 6:07Steven Rinella?

  Man, I bet Sam got screwed on that deal, man.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  I'm guessing he didn't get his top dollar at that point. That would be my assumption.

• 6:15Steven Rinella?

  Dude.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  The antler collector then has it officially scored by Boone and Crockett, and it comes out to a typical score of 207 and 7/8.

• 6:25Steven Rinella?

  Even with those big old drop tines?

• 6:27Speaker 04

  Even with those droppers. It made it the new Illinois record by 3 inches, the new USA record by 2 inches, but it fell short of the world record that was killed in Canada by about 6 inches. Here are some highlights of the rack. The gross score was 233 and 7/8 inches. It had 13 points.

• 6:49Steven Rinella?

  Hold on, back up.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:50Steven Rinella?

  Why is it all stuffed now?

• 6:52Speaker 06

  Because they do that.

• 6:53Steven Rinella?

  The antler collector went and got it stuffed?

• 6:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, that's totally, I don't think.

• 6:57Speaker 06

  Buy a cape and put it on.

• 6:58Steven Rinella?

  And I get all that, but I mean, why?

• 7:01Speaker 04

  Because it looks bad.

• 7:01Steven Rinella?

  What's wrong with the way Sam had it?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, just so you can look at it on a, on a whitetail, a whitetail's

• 7:07Steven Rinella?

  It's not his body.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Whitetail's hide that's not his. This is just like, what happens with these things, you know?

• 7:12Steven Rinella?

  No, I have them.

• 7:13Speaker 06

  Man, the brow tines are what got him the record, I think.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  Brow tines, 13 inches each were the brow tines. That's probably the highlight of the rack, the first thing you notice. The buck had 13 points. The frame is a 6 by 5. Two abnormal points on the left antler. One of those is a 7-inch drop tine. Inside spread of 20 inches. The biggest mass measurement was 6 inches, and each antler measured over 100 inches on their own.

• 7:40Speaker 06

  Man.

• 7:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 7:42Speaker 06

  God, we would have counted them little points where I came from.

• 7:45Steven Rinella?

  Well, if you can hang a ring on it. The whole rule is, if you can hang a wedding ring on it, if Fred Trost from Michigan can hang a wedding ring on it, it counts, man. Here's the deal, man, like, here's where your reporting is really falling short for

• 7:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 7:59Steven Rinella?

  That antler buyer, I feel like he's screwed. What's the guy's name? Sam?

• 8:04Speaker 04

  No.

• 8:04Steven Rinella?

  The hunter?

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Sam was the hunter. The antler buyer was something Martin.

• 8:07Steven Rinella?

  I'm afraid that Sam got boned, because I was just reading about it. My kid was reading me this, our kids get this Kitty News magazine. My kid the other night was reading me a story about some kid goes into a thrift shop and buys a warm, a Lakers or like a Lakers warm-up jacket for a couple bucks, and it, and then it sold at auction for $86,000, because it was Wilt Chamberlain's warm-up jacket. I feel that he pulled one of those. I hope not. But did he pull a one of those on that dude?

• 8:38Speaker 04

  No one's gonna tell me the price. I asked some of these folks in the past what they got paid for their racks, and usually NDAs come with these things. It's like, it's like going to a yard sale in Michigan and finding

• 8:50Speaker 06

  Old man Rinella's tree stand.

• 8:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but that dude's giving me that back.

• 8:55Speaker 06

  Yeah. I know, but he probably got it for a steal.

• 8:58Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 8:59Speaker 06

  Probably worth some money. I don't know. You might, you might be signing an NDA.

• 9:03Steven Rinella?

  When I get it back, we're gonna talk about it on the news show. Anyway, this is great. This is great.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  There's a few more wrinkles to this story. Again, it is the world's second biggest typical whitetail ever kid, killed. However, when it was killed, it was actually the world record because the Mylhaunson buck wasn't shot until 1993. So two years after Sam Ayupa killed this deer. So that, that thing sat in his basement for two years as the world record whitetail without anyone knowing that it even existed.

• 9:30Steven Rinella?

  God, this guy got extra screwed out of all of his money. If he'd have known that, he would, he would have sold that thing for, he would have sold that thing for a quarter million dollars.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  Uh huh. Yep. Another interesting detail, although it took over 30 years for the buck to resurface. It turns out this deer wasn't a complete unknown. A shed hunter actually picked up the buck's right side that would have been from the deer's 1989 rack. And another shed hunter picked up the buck's matching set that were from the 1990 rack. So the season prior to it getting killed, and those antlers had some global fame in the whitetail world. Because the 1990 left shed measured 105 inches, making it the second biggest shed of all time.

• 10:10Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 10:10Speaker 04

  And.

• 10:11Steven Rinella?

  Why is that glued to a skull?

• 10:13Speaker 04

  Again, people just want to see it on a rack or on a hide. And so the, the shed person who found these two matching sets, put them on a skull. That was not the deer's skull. Steve's looking at a picture right now of the, the shed hunter. So second.

• 10:28Speaker 06

  Giant.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Second biggest shed of all time. And it wasn't until recently that this, it, it wasn't until recently, this deer was known as the James Albring buck. Named after the man who found the 1990 matching sheds, sheds. But of course, it is now the Sam Ayupa buck, the guy who killed the thing.

• 10:45Speaker 06

  Unbelievable. They don't know exactly how old it was, do they?

• 10:48Speaker 04

  No, but he, he throws a pretty similar rack from like 89 to 90 to 1991. It looks like he's still on his way up. So I would guess when he was killed.

• 10:59Speaker 06

  Five.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  Six and a half, probably six and a half or seven and a half is when they'll start to go downhill.

• 11:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but the Hanson buck was only four.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Is that what they said?

• 11:08Steven Rinella?

  World record was four. Isn't that crazy?

• 11:10Speaker 04

  It is.

• 11:11Speaker 06

  That is crazy.

• 11:12Steven Rinella?

  So, so this dude. This dude unknowingly.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Had the world.

• 11:16Steven Rinella?

  Down on his mantelpiece with his, next to pictures of his kids graduating high school.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  Not even on his main floor in his basement.

• 11:23Steven Rinella?

  In his basement, next to like, and there's a picture of it, next to his pictures of his kids graduating from high school. He had for two years, the world record whitetail.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  He did. And I, I don't know this detail. I just assume it's an unfinished basement. Like, you know, it's within a couple of feet of like some ductwork.

• 11:38Speaker 06

  It wasn't next to his kids, pictures of his kids. It was next to the breaker box the electrician was working on. That makes you think how many world record bucks are out there right now that we don't know about.

• 11:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, there's that great story about this dude that had the biggest, the, the guy that holds the Idaho mule deer record. He shot it years ago. I think his name was Ernie or something like that. Shot it years ago. Remarked that it looked like a screwy buck, quote. Threw it in his barn and then a long time later, someone's like, hey, you ever have that measured?

• 12:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 06

  And it's still.

• 12:11Steven Rinella?

  And this dude was out pot hunting. He's like, no, I was going out to get some deer meat, shot it, thought it looked like a screwy buck.

• 12:16Speaker 06

  I'm sure there's stories like that all over the place.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  The world record desert bighorn sheep was killed in Baja, California in 1940 by a Native American who was just meat hunting. He didn't even take the skull from the field. It was a, a, a rancher who found the skull out there, brought it back to the ranch. Sat it there. A year later, some other hunter comes in who does kind of is aware of these things. And he's like, where did that thing come from? And they're like, oh yeah, some, uh, some native fella killed it here last year. Turned out to be the world record and, and nobody had any idea.

• 12:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 12:51Steven Rinella?

  You know, I was telling Spencer the other day and he didn't seem that interested in it.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  No, what?

• 12:55Steven Rinella?

  Um. If I could see any, any buck in, in, in the world, it would be this buck. So you know Colonel Dodge? Like Dodge City?

• 13:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:06Steven Rinella?

  Dodge City, everybody thinks is named after Colonel Dodge, but it was already named Dodge City when Colonel Dodge got there. But like Colonel Dodge. Uh, big hunter. This is back in the, you know, he's big hunter, you know, in the mid to late 1800s.

• 13:22Steven Rinella?

  He's down in Texas. I think he was down in Texas when it happens and shoots a buck, a mule deer. And he's like, this was a buck the likes of which no one had ever seen. But I lost it in the fire.

• 13:34Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 13:35Steven Rinella?

  So you wonder like, what was up? I don't know. Maybe it's a dink. I don't think it's a dink. Cause at that time, like all that unhunted ground, you know? And he's like talking about, no one's seen a buck like this. Like what was that buck?

• 13:48Speaker 06

  Yeah. But back then, a lot of people didn't even care about it.

• 13:51Steven Rinella?

  I know, but he did. So he's just like, the fact that he in his memoir is like, dude, this was a smoking buck. You gotta wonder what that buck was. He says, interested, Brody's interested.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  I'm into it. I'm into it.

• 14:03Speaker 06

  Well, you see, you see those old timey black and white photos of people having, you know, the buck pole photos.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  They're not even smiling.

• 14:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. And every single deer there is like a giant.

• 14:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Or they got all these deer hanging on a pole, like laying off in the background of some giant that's like off to the side, you know?

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Now, one final thing. If, if all of these numbers are like, if, if this isn't your language. And, and this is making you dizzy in the words like typical and non-typical and deductions, and it seems kind of convoluted. That's because it is. Here, here's a great example of how complicated and ridiculous, uh, big buck measurements get. We had Dustin Huff on the podcast in 2022.

• 14:42Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  It was in 2021 when he killed his famous whitetail that he named Moose. The title of the podcast was episode 338, the biggest buck in the USA. And that was an accurate title until 2025. Here's what happened. Every three years, the official awards program judges panel from Boone and Crockett gets together for a meeting. And it's at this meeting that they verify the scores of all of the biggest animals that were entered into the books. Since the last time that they met three years prior. Well, at the 2025 triennial panel, the group of judges remeasured Dustin Huff's buck and wound up giving it an official score of 205 and six eighths.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  This was five inches smaller than previous scores and it wound up making it three eighths of an inches. Three eighths of an inch smaller than the James Jordan buck. Thus Dustin's deer went from number one in the USA to number two.

• 15:37Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know that.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  And of course, with the addition of Sam Ayupa buck, Huff now sits at number three. So I talked to Dustin about this earlier this week. He's still, of course, like thrilled that he killed the deer. Doesn't care if it's one, two or three. But he said how the whole process has made him wonder if there's a better way to measure the size of deer antlers where there's not so. So many things that are, uh, you know, just like left up to judgment calls. And, and you have to wait 60 days. Well, actually you have to wait three years until this panel can get together. It's all very complex.

• 16:07Steven Rinella?

  Do you want to know what it is?

• 16:08Speaker 06

  And you get different guys scoring them.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  Well, which I know what Steve's answer is going to be. Here's what, here's what Dustin wants to be. Dustin would love it if there was a 3D scan that could be done. That throughout any like human error, there would be no more judgment calls. It would take into account all of the mass measurements rather than just eight of them, like the Boone and Crockett system. Uh, and, and maybe if that program existed, we would look at the top 10 deer in the USA all different. Because of how it would, you know, take into account the actual size of the.

• 16:40Speaker 06

  That's basically the same thing you're gonna say, isn't it?

• 16:42Steven Rinella?

  Well, I was just gonna say, just to be, just to be provocative. I was gonna say, I've always been curious about water displacement.

• 16:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. It's the same thing.

• 16:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like dunk them in a tank of water.

• 16:53Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 16:53Steven Rinella?

  And, and, but then you're throwing out all this non-typical, typical thing and all that. So maybe like for non-typical, you, you dump it in a tank of water, measure the volume of antler. And that's like the deal. And you could shoot some big crazy club horned buck. That's the problem, right?

• 17:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:10Steven Rinella?

  If some dude shoots some big crazy buck that's got like a weird growth on it and it winds up being like, ha, number one.

• 17:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:16Steven Rinella?

  But it doesn't even look like a deer.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:17Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 17:18Speaker 04

  So, uh, new USA record buck.

• 17:21Steven Rinella?

  All right, man.

• 17:27Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'm waiting for Phil.

• 17:29Speaker 06

  Oh, normally you go, now let's move on to.

• 17:35Steven Rinella?

  Okay, you podcast listeners that, that remember back to a very popular episode we did called,

• 17:44Steven Rinella?

  well, with, I don't remember what the whole thing was called. It was with the author, Brian Burrow. It was episode seven forty and it was about the gunfighters, about the gunfighter era and about the weird thing that he explores in his book and he talked about on the podcast is why do all of the gunfighters come from Texas or have passed through Texas? What was it about Texas that produced all the famous gunfighters? Well, check this out. It was so popular and such an intriguing idea of the history of the gunfighters that Brian Burrow is coming on to our podcast

• 18:25Steven Rinella?

  network and launching a podcast called The Gunfighters. It drops weekly on Tuesdays on the Gunfighters feed. It's out now. So check out that podcast, The Gunfighters, which is the story of all the great gunfighters. Also, we keep talking about this pre-sale and all that BS. Okay. The live tour tickets are just like regular old on sale.

• 18:55Steven Rinella?

  If you want to come see us in the live tour, it's on sale. December fourteenth, we're going to be in Grand Rapids, Michigan. December fifteenth, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. December sixteenth, Madison, Wisconsin. December seventeenth, Des Moines, Iowa. December eighteenth, Minneapolis, Minnesota. December nineteenth, Fargo, North Dakota. Meat Eater Live, the Christmas tour.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  I've heard that the Fargo venue is the hottest one right now. If you're thinking of going in Fargo, you better get your tickets.

• 19:27Steven Rinella?

  You know why I was worried about that one? Because all these other places, I got buddies there and I couldn't think of many buddies in Fargo. So who's gonna buy the tickets?

• 19:35Steven Rinella?

  My mom's not there.

• 19:37Speaker 04

  All right. Our next segment is sports ball fights. Football season is here and we are going to predict the winner of some games this season, but we're not basing this on talent or coaching or home field advantage like every other analyst. We are picking based on the merits of their animal mascots. Thanks to DraftKings for sponsoring today's segment. This week, Steve is going to predict how it would go if a Bronco fought a Ram. Steve, who would win that skirmish?

• 20:03Steven Rinella?

  Well, there's, there's who would win? If I picture a Bronco and a Ram fighting, there's who would win and who needs to win?

• 20:14Speaker 04

  Okay, explain.

• 20:15Steven Rinella?

  I'll explain. And they wound up being the same answer. When a Ram, if these guys measured the impact of, I think it was, I can't remember if it was big horns or dolls, but they measured the impact. You know when they jump up the butt heads?

• 20:34Steven Rinella?

  When those things butt heads, they measured how much force it is. It's something like, it's something like fifty times the amount of force it would take to shatter a human skull.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  Jeez. A devastating car accident.

• 20:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Meaning if you sat there and got strapped in and let a big horn ram do his thing where he gets up on his back feet and gets wheeling head and does it, you're a dead man.

• 21:05Speaker 06

  Even if he got a football helmet on, probably.

• 21:08Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. No, you know what it is? It's not, I remember now it's twenty X. Twenty X what it takes to crush a human skull.

• 21:15Speaker 06

  I wonder how they measured that?

• 21:17Steven Rinella?

  Force? I don't know, same dudes that figure out car crashes? I don't know. It's a good question.

• 21:22Speaker 06

  Car crashes a little more.

• 21:24Steven Rinella?

  They got all these, they got all these, they got all these sponge. If you, if you look at the skeletal structure on them, underneath there is like these like, these sponge structures that are like shock absorbers. Anybody that's heard it, it sounds like a twenty-two going off. I mean, it really does. Like you could be out in the woods in November.

• 21:42Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 21:42Steven Rinella?

  They, oh, someone's shooting a gun. It's like, no, it's big horns hitting heads. So if you strapped in some Bronco, a horse, strapped them into a thing and let a Ram smoke them, dead. That's who would win. Now here's why they, it needs to be that way. Cause when I hear the word Broncos, now a lot of cowboy guys are going to hear the word Bronco and they're thinking like, you know, riding around on horses. I hear the word Bronco and I'm thinking feral horses.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:11Steven Rinella?

  Or, or quote, quote unquote, wild horses.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  Something that wandered off some BLM land in Nevada.

• 22:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And, and because of some poorly construed legislation back in the seventies, we've created a problem where we now have a infestation of wild horses and burrows, AKA Broncos,

• 22:36Steven Rinella?

  running around on desert big horn habitat and using up food resources and water resources that should be going to native wildlife. That's what I think when I hear the word Bronco.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  So these actual Rams should be fighting these Broncos.

• 22:50Steven Rinella?

  These Rams should be fighting these Broncos. If they, if they could smoke them, they'd smoke them. But they need to win because there is an existential fight in the American West, Nevada, Utah. Okay. There's an existential fight in the American West between Rams and Broncos.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  Okay. So there's just a lot at stake for.

• 23:09Steven Rinella?

  So there's a lot going on.

• 23:13Speaker 04

  You're taking a Ram.

• 23:15Steven Rinella?

  Dude, they would and they have to.

• 23:19Speaker 04

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• 24:01Speaker 04

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• 24:15Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us. They're everywhere.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  We think they're murder wantons. 911 Nashville returns.

• 24:25Steven Rinella?

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 24:31Steven Rinella?

  All sins swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues for Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 24:44Speaker 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 plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star Trust Pilot 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.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate. An available multi-sensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and scents to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator trademarks of Ford and affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 25:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay, your news.

• 25:48Steven Rinella?

  You know, I'm not going to play it, Steve, because you don't like it and I need to think of a new one. I thought about just going. Just play it just so people can see how bad it is. Yeah, sure. I'd love to. Just to remind people how dumb it is. It's like a non thing. It's, it's not that bad. Do it again. Okay. When I say three, because I, no, no. Oh, sorry. It's so dumb and so short, you don't even know that it happened. Okay. Ready? Okay. I'm gonna count to three. Okay, here we go. Okay. One, two, three.

• 26:19Steven Rinella?

  There's like the little.

• 26:21Speaker 06

  It's, it's below Phil's normal, uh, high standards.

• 26:25Steven Rinella?

  Yes. Like if I said to my ten-year-old, I'm like, hey, make a little thing. And he made that, I'd be like, oh, it's so cute. Good job. But it's like, Phil, Phil's like, got a career of great things he's made. It's just his worst thing he's ever made. As long as you hang it up on your fridge, Steve, that's all I care about. What? Yeah. I don't know. Well, honestly, I don't think it's that bad. No, here's the thing. I, I said it last week when I was putting these together, that was the one where I was like, eh, I can do better, but we record in five minutes. So I ran downstairs and I can do better. Phil, share with, share with listeners. Yes. Share with listeners the quote that you looked up yesterday. Oh, there can be no deep disappointment without a deep love.

• 27:07Steven Rinella?

  Martin Luther King Jr. I thought he was talking about America. Phil said he was talking about the church. But I'm saying that talking about Phil. No, no.

• 27:21Steven Rinella?

  No great disappointment without deep love. So like he, like, you know, everybody's got their worst stuff. You know, it's like some, not all Stones albums are great. Yeah. Steel wheels. It's like, come on. I love music. That's Phil's steel wheels.

• 27:39Speaker 06

  I went to that, that concert, not impressed.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  I love music from the seventies and I heard someone express one time how like amazing and phenomenal and they just like didn't miss in the seventies with the music. And someone was like, well, no, you're only hearing what survived the seventies. There was actually a lot of bad music in the seventies. It just doesn't get played on the oldie station today.

• 28:00Steven Rinella?

  That's funny you mention that because my favorite thing in the world to do is goof on Seth about how little Seth knows about seventies rock and roll. It's just like, it's a joke that never gets old. It happens a lot lately. Yeah. Goofing on Seth about him not knowing who wrote famous seventies songs is the, is the best thing I could do with my time. I haven't found a way to make. It came up daily when we were in Florida last week.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. When you guys get to travel again in a few days.

• 28:25Steven Rinella?

  We know. We're going, hey Seth, you know who this is? No. That's just what we do for hours. I can bring back a Gordon Lightfoot parody again if he wants.

• 28:35Steven Rinella?

  All right. Brought to you by Banish. I'm holding a Banish can right here and, um,

• 28:40Steven Rinella?

  with kitty deer season coming up, this is becoming a very important part of my arsenal. Yep. Dude. I mean, I like it for me, but if I'm hunting with my kids, I especially like it because it makes them like shooting. It's great. Um, so hit it Seth. Etsy. We're back with more Etsy. Hypocrisy. Um, was it the last one where I talked about the Etsy thing with fur?

• 29:05Speaker 04

  I think so. Last week was was the AMA with Steve, but I think it was the week before that.

• 29:08Steven Rinella?

  Before that, okay. It's totally coincidence that I'm holding this squirrel. Did you buy that on Etsy? No, but it's isn't it bizarre that now, okay, now. Yeah. On Etsy, you would not be able to sell a squirrel. I didn't even grab it for this reason. On Etsy, you would not be able to sell a roadkill squirrel koozie. Yep. But I thought, oh, go ahead. Um, well, so the, uh, a United States Fish and Wildlife biologist wrote in. Who chooses not to be named. Yep. Does not want to be named, but, um, they wrote in with, with this email. I listened to your Etsy hypocrisy piece with great interest.

• 29:50Steven Rinella?

  Under the migratory bird protection act, it is illegal to possess most native, uh, bird feathers. Under the Lacey Act, it is illegal to move protected animal products across state lines. Cites strictly regulates foreign birds across national borders. However, if you start poking around on Etsy, you will find many stories. Stores. Or stores where bird feathers are for sale that clearly violate at least one of the above acts or cites. Um, try searching for burrowing owls or barn owl. Um, some of the stores say the feathers are ethically sourced, um, or from captive birds.

• 30:34Steven Rinella?

  Um, but that makes no difference according to the laws when people don't get permits. And they both, and they both, the buyer and the seller need them. Um, and Etsy does not bother with it. And they ban ethically legally sourced fur and fur products. The hypocrisy makes me sick.

• 30:56Steven Rinella?

  You know, some more hypocrisy on Etsy now that I'm on this whole thing about just how like misguided this fur ban was and counterproductive and, and contradictory of any kind of regulatory structure and what's actually going on with these wildlife species in America is that you can go on there. And you can go on Etsy and buy a, you know, the bust is like a, like a carving, like decorative busts, like carvings of people's like shoulders.

• 31:23Speaker 06

  Like the marble ones.

• 31:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay, there's this whole industry on there. You can buy Sean Combs busts. You can buy Jeffrey Epstein busts. You can buy sculptures of Sean Combs and Jeffrey Epstein with their arms around each other. You can buy spring break, 2000 Epstein Island t-shirts. There's this whole genre of products on Etsy, which capitalizes on the pain and suffering and exploitation of young women. And Etsy is like, oh, that's cool. That's totally cool. What we don't want you doing is selling a koozie made of, of, of squirrel fur that you harvested legally with a license that funds your state fish and game agency. It is so dumb and sickening.

• 32:10Steven Rinella?

  Um, you know, it's interesting. I just saw right now is that you can buy large barn owl pellets. So you can buy fur, but it has to be eaten by an owl and then thrown up.

• 32:24Steven Rinella?

  The fact that they caved that just makes like someone, we got to hear from someone that's working on this. There's someone working on Etsy alternative. It's just like a more, this, this than like an alternative to Etsy where you can support a company that's not so immoral and hypocritical and full of shit. Um, yep. Man. There's all kinds of feathers and stuff on it. You can buy Canadian goose wings or Canada goose wings. Cause it's not fur. It's not mean.

• 32:52Steven Rinella?

  All right, the news. You got a good one for this film? Oh, this is good.

• 32:57Steven Rinella?

  What happens in the end there?

• 32:59Speaker 04

  I think he gets eaten by a cat or something.

• 33:02Steven Rinella?

  What does the machine that's going?

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Well, it's the, it's the, it's the Morse code machine that.

• 33:06Steven Rinella?

  Is eaten by a cat?

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Well, it's, see, it kind of morphs into a nuthatch. So I, I, I tried to find a bird that sounded like Morse code and I'm, I'm more.

• 33:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So that bird, that bird is then eaten by a cat.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  By a cat.

• 33:24Steven Rinella?

  Understood.

• 33:26Speaker 04

  I can add like a little hiss in there too, make it more obvious.

• 33:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay, out of, now, we, we, we talk about like some, like a really good piece, like a, a pretty complex, long piece of great news for hunters and anglers that came out of the White House. All right. Now let me, let me adjust my fonts here because I'm blind. You know, I'm gonna put my, I'm gonna put my glasses on.

• 33:48Speaker 06

  Getting serious.

• 33:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, getting real serious. Okay, here's the deal. Here's the deal. Now, these are executive orders. A couple of weeks ago, they had in the White House, they had this like party. I saw this invitation floating around. They had this like reception, like celebrating American hunters and anglers. Um, and, uh, you could get invited. I wasn't invited. I'll say hi about that. I have friends that were invited. They went, um, I wasn't there. And out of this, out of this meeting came a couple of executive orders that are like really sharp. And they're good. Um, and they're nuanced and it, and these are lists, like these, these big lists of fixes that are coming out of the White House to fix certain management issues. Okay.

• 34:33Steven Rinella?

  Um, there's, there's a fishing one and a hunting one. The fishing one that came out of the White House is like an executive order. Okay. Restoring American saltwater angling and recreation. All right. Let me give you with a little, how this, how this kind of thing words out and what it looks like. It starts out by saying, by the authority vested in me as president, by the constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered, colon.

• 35:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Now it starts out, this, this executive order starts out with an approach that I'm sometimes uncomfortable with, but it's very common and it comes from enemies and allies alike. And it's this approach where you say, you're like, hey, nature is worth a bunch of money. And hunters and anglers spend a bunch of money. Therefore, these things are important, right? And I'm always like, the reason I say I'm uncomfortable with that approach is while true, I don't think that those things need to be economically important to be valuable. So I'm like, I'm like, yes, that, that's all great, but that's not the final point. Okay. So that's why I say I'm uneasy with that, but it happens all the time. Everybody does it. They mean well.

• 35:52Steven Rinella?

  Um, it's more of a intellectual argument around that. Uh, but again, these executive orders are like, are all great news with one potential exception that I'll get into. Um, but, but the order goes on. Okay. From there it goes on to, for a sentence like this. All right. It says, America's outdoor recreation sector, so this is outdoor recreation sector, generates over 1.2 trillion dollars annually and supports over five million jobs. To ensure America's recreational fishing remains strong. So this is an important sentence here. That I want people to pay attention to. It says this, to ensure America's recreational fishing remains strong.

• 36:37Steven Rinella?

  Federal fisheries management must appropriately prioritize both recreational and commercial fishing. So it suddenly kind of sets up that there is an emerging rub between recreational and commercial fishing.

• 36:55Steven Rinella?

  Which we'll get to because it's saying, it doesn't say to ensure America's recreational and commercial fishing remains strong. It's not what it says. It says to ensure America's recreational fishing remains strong. Federal managers must appropriately prioritize both recreational and commercial. Just give you another little more flavor for how this thing reads out and then we'll get into the points. Okay. It says, this order modernizes federal management by shifting the federal posture from restricting recreational access to fishing to actively empowering affiliated industries and coastal communities. It is the policy of the United States to elevate

• 37:40Steven Rinella?

  the marine recreational fishing industry as an important consideration in all federal ocean coastal and public land decision making. So that's kind of like the, that's like the overriding gist, the thrust of it.

• 37:55Speaker 06

  Can I ask a question?

• 37:57Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 37:58Speaker 06

  Do you think this is linked to the red snapper thing?

• 38:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, give, give me a minute.

• 38:02Speaker 06

  All right.

• 38:03Steven Rinella?

  It's way more complicated than that.

• 38:05Speaker 06

  I'm just wondering.

• 38:06Steven Rinella?

  Yes, it gets into that. What, what the tricky part of this is in, in, in doing my research on this executive order, I had to talk to a lot of people who deal in these certain things that we're going to get into to, to be like, what, what are they trying to fix? Like it proposes fixes, but it doesn't get into what the rub is. So you have to a little bit track down and you'll find experts in these fields. They're like, oh, well, here's where that comes from. Here's what that, here's the annoyance that that is trying to address. Because the order is, you know, it's like seven or eight pages, right? So it doesn't give the whole background, but if you get into these, you can find out

• 38:45Steven Rinella?

  here's the annoyance that this is addressing, or here's the specifics that this is addressing. And I'll try to provide some of those where I can. Okay. Here's some more language from this. So I can't go through the whole thing and read you the whole thing. It would take forever. I'm going to read you some key parts. Section three. Okay. Again, this is from the president of the United States. This is from Donald J. Trump. Uh, section three. It begins like this, modernizing data collection infrastructure for recreational catch and effort estimates. It says, to resolve chronic inaccuracies and latency in federal commercial catch and effort estimates.

• 39:25Steven Rinella?

  The federal government must transition away from antiquated data collection and sampling practices. Basically it comes down to this and, and, and if your mom and dad work at Noah, like all respect. But basically it comes down to a, an educated perspective that Noah has in large measure shit the bed on fisheries data collection. All right. They're relying on these old systems of like random Creel surveys. You know, you have a guy go down to the dock and say, hey, what'd you catch randomly? Okay. Or these mail in questionnaires where fishing season ends and like

• 40:05Steven Rinella?

  tons of time goes by and you get a mail in questionnaire and they're asking you to try to remember back to such and such date and how many fish you caught. Their system that they're using to measure how much people are fishing and how much they're catching, was built around this idea of establishing these very long-term trends. Okay, so they're sort of looking at like over time, what do the trends look like? And meanwhile, they're getting their asses kicked by the states, who are doing a much better job of finding out what is happening on the water and in the water at any given moment. A thing that's not brought up here, but that drives this is this whole red snapper debacle,

• 40:48Steven Rinella?

  where NOAA is trying to assess red snapper stocks through these antiquated systems. And they're not, they're just not getting an accurate picture of what goes on in the ground. And they're getting a picture that contradicts the picture that the states are getting, who are otherwise managing all the fisheries. And it leads to these kind of crazy seasons, seasons that are a couple of weeks long, seasons that are a couple of days long, and creates this kind of like Bonanza atmosphere. And then even then, they don't know what's actually happening in the water. Okay, so it's given them, like the order is giving them a little bit of a nut tap and saying, there's people that are doing this better than you, that they're better staffed. This is not in the order, but it's true, they have like a better rapport with anglers,

• 41:32Steven Rinella?

  and you're getting beat up on this. Instead of mailing papers off through the postal service that are going to end up in like junk mail piles, how about using a thing that this order specifically addresses? How about using apps?

• 41:46Steven Rinella?

  Mandatory or optional where appropriate, apps where people are telling what is happening on the water right now? When am I fishing? How many fish are we seeing? So that you can make educated management decisions and have like adaptive management strategies that play into what's happening. The same way, if you think about in hunting, the same way you have all these quota systems, you can turn on a hunt and you can monitor what's going on and then make adjustments.

• 42:17Steven Rinella?

  So that's what that one is coming from. Then there's this other fisheries one here. It says, "To address the decline of iconic recreational fisheries, such as the Atlantic stripe bass and other depleted stocks, the secretary shall generate a list of key species to use in partnership with the recreational angling community, charter captains and state agencies to gather," the important words here, "to gather real-time data, deploy advanced tagging technologies and improve catch and release mortality estimates."

• 42:55Steven Rinella?

  And I've tried to find from people when they say improved catch and release mortality estimates. Let me check my text messages. I'm waiting on some info.

• 43:05Steven Rinella?

  I don't think I'm going to get it in time. No. What I'm wondering on this, my guess, my gut on this is that they're saying that, on things like stripe bass, I wouldn't be surprised if they're saying these guys are killing way more fish than they think they are.

• 43:21Speaker 06

  I'm sure.

• 43:22Steven Rinella?

  I don't think it's the other way around.

• 43:24Speaker 06

  And it may be that they're saying, why have a catch and release season? And just, just have a limit, very limited catch and kill.

• 43:32Steven Rinella?

  I think that, because if you look at, well, it's, the stocks are depleted. We're going to make this super narrow, like with stripe bass, stocks are depleted. We're going to make this super narrow slot limit.

• 43:43Speaker 06

  Right.

• 43:44Steven Rinella?

  Where you can keep a stripe bass between 30 and 32 inches. Everybody runs out, they want to get a keeper stripe, stripe bass. They run out and catch three dozen fish, turn them all loose, get their one slot fish. And they're like, I killed a fish. And I think that the answer is, buddy, you killed 10 fish, man. You killed, you killed 10 fish.

• 44:06Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 44:07Steven Rinella?

  And so like getting an accurate sense of what's happening when you create these situations where you're generating all this catch and release effort, thinking you're saving fish, when you might be smoking fish. So that my, I don't know, I haven't verified it with anybody. I was hoping to get a text in time verifying this. That's what I think is happening right there.

• 44:28Steven Rinella?

  So again, also updating management, like, like updating data collection. It's all good stuff.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder women. 911 Nashville returns.

• 44:47Steven Rinella?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 44:52Steven Rinella?

  All sins swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville, all new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 45:05Steven Rinella?

  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 plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews,

• 45:21Speaker 02

  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. Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate, an available multi-sensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit Lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 46:05Steven Rinella?

  Then there's more stuff about a direction from the Interior Department

• 46:13Steven Rinella?

  to do that, that, that money thing that I talked to earlier, like how big is this industry? Basically saying, um, that they want to, well, I'll just read the words. "Within 180 days of the date of this order, the secretary shall develop a comprehensive five-year strategic plan with clear implementation milestones to improve the collection, analysis and application of recreational fisheries economic data to support fisheries management. This plan shall ensure that the economic impact and value of recreational fishing, blah, blah, blah, is fully accounted for in federal fishery management decisions and harvest opportunities."

• 46:58Steven Rinella?

  Because what you're going to do is this, earlier I said, this thing without saying it, I believe that this thing is setting up a potential, I don't want to say a conflict, but a potential reckoning between recreational angling and commercial angling. Where commercial angling has always had this value around economic output. And I think that, not I think, what this is saying is we need to look at how big recreational fishing is and what it is as an industry. So in these areas where we're looking at recreational use versus commercial use, they don't mention this, such as the trawl industry in Alaska, for instance.

• 47:41Speaker 06

  Or like commercial king salmon and recreational king salmon.

• 47:45Steven Rinella?

  They're saying, we're saying, oh, no, no, the commercial fishing is jobs. Recreational fishing is people messing around, having fun. And they're saying, let's get a full picture of what this industry looks like, because you might find in time that that's a bigger industry. That it's better for the, it's better for the country as a whole to support recreational more. This doesn't say that. This is me editorializing on what it says. Now here's where things get really good.

• 48:11Steven Rinella?

  Section six, fast-tracking artificial reefs and habitat creation. I don't want to spend a ton of time on this one, but it's this. You get all these offshore oil rigs. And over the years, there has just been an ever-evolving sense of what should happen with these offshore oil rigs. Sometimes they're using them to make this program called Rigs to Reefs. Right now, what they've been doing over the last bunch of years is just harvesting these reefs. So you build these oil rigs, they go offline, and these things have,

• 48:47Steven Rinella?

  some people are out there going to contest this, but, but they're wrong and I don't even care what they say. These things have created a fishery. They've created habitat in a habitat desert.

• 48:58Steven Rinella?

  Seth can back me up. Anyone who's ever jumped in on an oil rig

• 49:04Steven Rinella?

  and jumped in where there's not an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico will tell you, they have created, I mean, they are an artificial reef. They have created and maintained a fishery. These rigs create biodiversity and these rigs create biomass. They've been operating on a program recently where they take these things called rig reapers. They remove the whole damn rig down to subsurface and take away every scrap of anything and call that good news. And it pisses off the fishermen in these places who are like, you're hauling away all the habitat. Like, don't even burden the conversation with why those rigs are there in the first place. They're there now. They provide habitat.

• 49:47Steven Rinella?

  And this is saying, this is a program, the federal outer continental shelf reef in place program to facilitate the conversion of decommissioned offshore oil and gas and other use structures.

• 50:07Steven Rinella?

  There's an interesting carve out for, for wind energy, which Trump hates. But anyways, everything but wind energy, which kind of cracks me up. So everything offshore, other than shit built for wind energy, which Trump hates, into permanent artificial reefs through reef in place, topple in place or other approved reefing methods.

• 50:32Steven Rinella?

  That's great news. There's just no two ways about that one being great news. Here's another one. I mentioned earlier, the Wild Horse and Borough Protection Act, where you create some legislation and it winds up coming around to screw you because no one can see into the future. And you shouldn't make binding resolutions. Sometimes.

• 50:49Steven Rinella?

  Here's a big one. Section seven, managing predators. And it is looking at shark and pinniped depredation on fishery species. There are a lot of places in the country where the shark is shark populations are out of hand. Now, people can, people can look and be like, well, how can that be true? I hear, all I read about is sharks being depleted. Yes, it is a big planet. Three fourths of the earth is covered in ocean. There are plenty of places in those oceans where sharks are depleted. But I'll point out, you can only hunt elk on about 14% of native elk habitat. The fact that elk are not recovered in southern Wisconsin, does not mean that elk are not recovered

• 51:32Steven Rinella?

  in Colorado. It's just a big place. And so this is opening up some latitude to look at shark, shark depredation, and take appropriate management efforts, and probably, what this is getting at without saying it, is loosening up shark harvest regulations. It seems like every other year, you're reading about some state that says total ban on shark harvest. You shouldn't be doing that stuff, because it's not like adaptive management. And this seeks to address some of that.

• 52:00Steven Rinella?

  Um, projects for increasing fish abundance.

• 52:04Speaker 06

  Can you back up? You didn't address the pinniped thing, which I think is kinda important.

• 52:08Steven Rinella?

  Super important. I should have talked about the pinniped thing. A great pinniped example would be trying to recover salmon in the Columbia watershed. The problem, one of the problem, not, not the problem for Pacific salmon in the lower 48. Okay, the problem for Pacific salmon in the lower 48 was the construction of dams. Which have all these obvious problems with, you have, you have anadromous migratory fish, dams obstruct it. They keep fish from going upstream, and they keep young fish from coming downstream. That's the core, primary issue. Um, and trying to work around that and find

• 52:51Steven Rinella?

  a way to move forward on fish recovery, while dealing with the dams being present, there's all these steps you can take. But there's a big thing happening is, over the decades, sea lions have figured out that if you want to kill a ton of salmon, go to a dam.

• 53:09Speaker 06

  Yep, the dams are great for them.

• 53:11Steven Rinella?

  Because the fish, even when there's structure there, fish ladders and things, the fish pause at the dams. And sea lions, just through word of mouth, have learned to come, you're gonna think that I'm lying, I'm not. Sea lions have learned to come from literally hundreds of miles away to bitch slap salmon at those dams. And you got strong sea lion numbers, but people are like, oh, no, no, you can't mess with sea lions because of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. And the Marine Mammal Protection Act becomes an impediment to restoring salmon. So you have healthy sea lion populations now, which you can't mess with. And you have

• 53:53Steven Rinella?

  salmon, which you're trying to help, but now you can't help them because you're stuck and got screwed by this other piece of legislation called the Marine Mammal Protection Act. And it's trying to do some necessary work to allow, again, like nuanced, thoughtful, adaptive management practices and get out from under a lot of like, very burdensome, counterproductive regulations. It's all, it's, it's, it's, it's good stuff. And I haven't even gotten to the main thing. I'm trying to move fast now. Projects for increasing fish abundance. Yes. And it's all, the big one on this is that section eight, projects for increasing fish abundance. Um, here's the key sentence. There's always habitat stuff going on. Here's the

• 54:35Steven Rinella?

  key sentence. Agencies are encouraged to transition habitat restoration metrics toward production-based goals. Which is saying, if you're gonna go do aquatic habitat projects, we want you to measure, is it producing fish? Good stuff. Um, and then the end always cracks me up. The final thing in all these orders. The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of Commerce. I don't know what that means, but I think it's cute that they end these all

• 55:14Steven Rinella?

  that way. Donald J. Donald, it's signed off, Donald J. Trump, the White House, September 17th, 2026. Now, the other executive order, it's twin cousin. It's fishing cousin. Executive order, reinvigorating America's hunting heritage.

• 55:34Steven Rinella?

  Starts out similar way. This one's more flowery. This was a different writer. This writer starts out, section one, purpose and policy, section one. It's very flowery.

• 55:43Speaker 06

  Trump didn't write this?

• 55:48Steven Rinella?

  He says, I think if he wrote it, there'd be the word, um, there's a word, uh, an enigma. So, American hunters, anglers, and landowners are the greatest conservationists the world has ever known. Hunting promotes healthy and robust animal populations, conserves our, conserves our beautiful wildlife for future generations, and ensures that every American can enjoy our rugged, diverse, and untamed frontier areas.

• 56:17Steven Rinella?

  It says, our forefathers looked with awe on our vast prairies, towering mountains, serene deserts, coastal paradises, and rushing rivers. It says, that same awe, not the language you'd expect from the White House. It says, that same awe motivates millions of Americans to invest billions of dollars and countless hours into stewarding our land and conserving our wildlife. Now, again, this, this is all or 99% good news. And I'll tell you where the 1% might be a little bit weird. But the above stat, I have to point out, in celebrating

• 57:01Steven Rinella?

  these executive orders, I have to point out that there's a rub here. There's like a contradiction here. Okay. Because it's talking about the awe, the wilderness quality, okay, untamed frontier. The same email, I got some, a bunch of people sent me this executive order. I also got this executive order from the external affairs team at the White House. And in this thing, in this email, in the body of the email, there's a reminder about a bunch of things that came out of the White House that I feel were assaults on the untamed frontier areas. Okay. Also coming out of the White House was an executive order to unleash American energy, right? That opened up hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands and waters

• 57:45Steven Rinella?

  to energy development, and also took out a lot of regulatory checks on those developments. Not great for hunters and anglers. In August 26, Department of Agriculture took action to rescind the 2001 roadless rule. All right. On 45 million acres of national forest system. Really bad for hunters and anglers. So, that untamed wilderness, those are things that people do to tame the untamed wilderness. It's spirit of the unwild. But I don't want that to totally detract from all of the good news found in here. There's a sentiment expressed

• 58:24Steven Rinella?

  in this executive order up top that is puzz, not puzzling, but it says, despite this legacy, accessing federal lands for hunting has never been harder. Hunting opportunities in our nation have declined due to the federal government's regulatory overreach, confusing and inconsistent access policies, and heavy-handed restrictions. Okay. But then right off, it gets really detailed with really great news. It's just good news. All right. It instructs, within 90 days, the Secretary of the Interior is directed to allow for hunting within the Castle Mountains National Monument and Craters of the Moon National Monument in Preservan,

• 59:09Steven Rinella?

  Idaho. So boom, right off the bat, when I'm saying good news, it's like boom. There's 21,000 acres of new hunting access in California, and potentially hundreds of thousands of acres of hunting access in Idaho. When these monuments were created, they did the worst thing you can do with a monument, which is hand them over to the park service. The park service then puts park rules on them and cuts out hunters. The order is guided by an idea that unregulated hunting is incompatible, or sorry, the park service perspective is that, uh, regulated hunting is somehow incompatible with monument status, which is totally bogus. And the order confronts this head on. It says, I have determined that appropriately managed

• 59:54Steven Rinella?

  hunting would not put the objects of historic and scientific interest that these monuments protect at risk.

• 1:00:04Steven Rinella?

  Boom. It's like, it is, it's flawless. The only flaw it has is that it didn't strip gates of the Arctic, the gates of the Arctic National Park away from the park service.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  Are you familiar with Craters of the Moon?

• 1:00:20Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  It's like very barren land.

• 1:00:24Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  This feels like, how many elk or deer are actually going to be killed there?

• 1:00:30Steven Rinella?

  Doesn't matter.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  Single digits.

• 1:00:31Steven Rinella?

  Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  I'm just saying.

• 1:00:34Steven Rinella?

  You think some dude hunting is gonna mess up those rocks?

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:00:38Steven Rinella?

  There's no reason, there's no reason that they should have ever gone and said, you know what's not compatible? With all these really hard rocks is hunting.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  It's just.

• 1:00:49Steven Rinella?

  It doesn't matter.

• 1:00:50Speaker 04

  To say that it's opened up like hundreds of thousands of acres in Idaho to hunting would be like, well, now we're gonna let people elk hunt in Florida, you know?

• 1:00:58Steven Rinella?

  No, it's not like that.

• 1:00:59Speaker 04

  There's just like.

• 1:01:00Steven Rinella?

  You think, I don't really, I don't, I'm not even like interested in your opinion on this. To be frank, it doesn't matter.

• 1:01:10Steven Rinella?

  Why would you have excluded it in the first place? If there's nothing there, especially?

• 1:01:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, go for it. It's just like, there's not gonna be a lot of elk and deer killed there.

• 1:01:20Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you what, if you came and said to me, hey, you know what, we're gonna for a year, give you exclusive access to this hundreds of thousands of acres, I'm gonna go kill a Boone and Crockett mule deer.

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

  Somebody's going to, yeah.

• 1:01:31Steven Rinella?

  Yes. It doesn't matter. It's not your call to make.

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  These are gonna be the good old days of Craters of the Moon hunting for like these next couple of seasons.

• 1:01:40Steven Rinella?

  Craters of the Moon is like a geologic feature. I'm not talking like a little crystal sitting there on the pedestal. It's a geological feature.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Miles of lava rock.

• 1:01:48Steven Rinella?

  Lava rock.

• 1:01:49Speaker 06

  I see what you're saying, Spencer, but mule deer, elk and coyotes roam the area. Pronghorns also cross the monument. Predators include bobcats, mountain lions, red foxes and badgers.

• 1:01:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, Spencer, what he's saying doesn't matter.

• 1:02:03Speaker 04

  I'm guessing the state already has their boundaries drawn for units this year. Like I, I would assume no big game is gonna be killed there in 2026, but I don't know.

• 1:02:12Steven Rinella?

  Might miss the season.

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Steven Rinella?

  But it's, it's great news because it is bullshit that hunters got pushed out of those areas. It has no impact. It has no impact. Okay, there's all, there's, here's another thing.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  It's, it's a funny one to choose, that's all. There's a hundred fifty national monuments or something to be like, go hunt Craters of the Moon. All right.

• 1:02:34Steven Rinella?

  I expect more to come.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:02:35Steven Rinella?

  I expect more to come. Like I said, a really good move, but it's been explained to me that it would take an act of Congress. Gates of the Arctic National Park should have never been handed to the park service, ever. It's a park that gets about like a visitor a year.

• 1:02:52Steven Rinella?

  I was reading this, being like, please, please, please. But someone said, it's not, it's not an executive order thing.

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Castle Mountains I'm not familiar with. Maybe that place is crawling with.

• 1:03:02Steven Rinella?

  Listen, I got a friend, I have a dear friend.

• 1:03:06Steven Rinella?

  And one day I was trying to explain to him, God, we're gone. This segment's going too long. I have a dear friend, and one day I was explaining to him, I was trying to explain to him, he's, he's like, he's like a absolute, he's like a Republican absolutist. And I was trying to explain to him one time, I'm like, yeah, but like, there's a lot of issues where, there's a lot of issues where Democrats tend to have our side on habitat protections. And like, and I get it, I get it, but it's just more complicated than what you're making it. And he said to me, I'll never agree with what you're saying. He says, Democrats have taken away from me everything in this world that I love.

• 1:03:47Steven Rinella?

  And when he told me the things that he loved, one of them was hunting in the Mojave Desert.

• 1:03:53Steven Rinella?

  So.

• 1:03:57Steven Rinella?

  No matter who's, whether you got Republicans or Democrats, there's always little gifts they can give you. The same way when you're a kid, you know what to go to your mom about, and you know what to go to, to your dad about.

• 1:04:09Steven Rinella?

  Right? You learn. This would be a good thing to go to my ma about.

• 1:04:15Steven Rinella?

  This would be the kind of thing I go to my dad about. Republicans and Democrats are like that. Hunters in Anglers, one's your ma, one's your dad. This is the, I don't wanna say the dad stuff.

• 1:04:27Steven Rinella?

  This is the one of them stuff. This is the one of them stuff. All right, where are we? I'm trying to move fast.

• 1:04:36Steven Rinella?

  All right, here's the potential rub. Here's a potential rub.

• 1:04:41Steven Rinella?

  Allow for the construction, repair and maintenance of infrastructure that provides access to federal land for the purpose of outdoor recreation and wildlife management.

• 1:04:51Steven Rinella?

  The second thought, that is followed up by this line, improve public access to difficult to access federal lands and waters by prioritizing practical access opportunities.

• 1:05:06Steven Rinella?

  It then lists good things. It lists, including voluntary access easements, land exchanges, cooperative agreements with state and local governments, and other tools

• 1:05:21Steven Rinella?

  that respect private property rights. Here's the only area in all this stuff that could be causing trouble because I would hate for the sentiment here to get hijacked by people who just want more roads. And they'll get those roads any way they can get them. If someone's like, dude, I wanna build roads because I have in my mind that we're gonna do a mine down the road, and I'm like, I'm just like a pro road guy, I look at wilderness as wasted real estate, they might look and go like, oh, sweet.

• 1:05:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:05:47Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna tie my shit into this.

• 1:05:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, attacking the, like, the federal wilderness area program, like, that's scary.

• 1:05:56Steven Rinella?

  But it's not.

• 1:05:59Speaker 06

  I know.

• 1:06:00Steven Rinella?

  If you're, if you're, and I, that makes me nervous, but there's nothing in here that says that's what's gonna happen.

• 1:06:07Speaker 06

  It doesn't have to say it.

• 1:06:08Steven Rinella?

  It's the only, like I said, this is either 100% good news or it's 99% good news. And I said, where do the 1%? That's the part, that's the sentence that I'm like, huh, I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:06:35Steven Rinella?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 1:06:41Steven Rinella?

  Hell, since swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

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• 1:07:54Steven Rinella?

  Here's a good one.

• 1:07:56Steven Rinella?

  This is just like a, okay. Encourage the use of qualified volunteers to manage wildlife populations and invasive species. Great. Put hunters into the game. When you got, when you're hiring sharpshooters to go kill whitetails in suburban areas because the suburban people are afraid of dudes hunting deer with their bows, screw them. Or when they're trying to get mountain goats out of certain parks, you gotta jump through all these hoops. All these different programs of like, if you have hunters that wanna go do it, let hunters that wanna go do it, do the work rather than paying government agents to go do it.

• 1:08:28Steven Rinella?

  Put the stuff in people's freezers instead of putting it in landfills. Sure. Um, there's some other stuff. There's some great stuff for veterans in here.

• 1:08:37Speaker 06

  The, that permit the use of traditional lead ammunition?

• 1:08:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh, did I miss that one?

• 1:08:41Speaker 06

  I'm assuming that's directed at like wildlife refuges where you can't.

• 1:08:46Steven Rinella?

  But you're, you're ahead of me.

• 1:08:48Speaker 06

  No, no, I mean, I know. You jumped, you jumped way ahead, I thought.

• 1:08:53Steven Rinella?

  Authorize the use of assistive technology on access trails and hunting locations, okay? Handicap restrictions, like, of, of, of a veteran that's a double amputee having access opportunities through, when, when people say assistive technology, that is technology's meant to support handicapped individuals. Who's gonna argue against that? It's good news. It's good news for veterans and others. Permit the use of traditional lead ammunition and tackle.

• 1:09:23Steven Rinella?

  Pretty much yes, pretty much yes. The fishing sinker thing is a joke.

• 1:09:30Steven Rinella?

  The fishing sinker thing's a joke. There are some areas where, there are some areas in condor recovery areas, there are some areas where we should not be using lead ammunition in condor recovery areas. Because when you have such a small population of birds, a couple of those birds dying from lead is a population level impact. Where you have a demonstrable population level impact from consuming lead, lead should be looked at and restrictions should be considered where it's population level impact.

• 1:09:59Speaker 06

  But if it's a wildlife refuge in Nebraska, it says you gotta use

• 1:10:05Speaker 06

  non-lead ammunition for deer hunting?

• 1:10:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 06

  That's kind of dumb.

• 1:10:09Steven Rinella?

  When no one can point to any population level impact. You'd be like, cars hit more hawks than get killed by lead ammunition, but we're not talking about banning cars.

• 1:10:16Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:10:17Steven Rinella?

  Um, there's another one. It's just really like, this must be someone, this is, there's one of these in here that's gotta be that someone's just got a case of the ass about something. Listen to this one. This has gotta be coming from some guy that had like someone's ear. And he's like, you know, it burns my ass. Cause listen to this one. Um,

• 1:10:39Steven Rinella?

  agriculture, the secretary of agriculture shall review high demand forest service administered river access lotteries and shall initiate the reform of such lotteries to prioritize US citizens, including prior unsuccessful applicants and prohibit the use of automatic computer entries into the lot lottery. Amen. It's ridiculous that Americans are waiting in line for permits to float their own rivers and those permits are going to foreigners. Hundred percent.

• 1:11:17Steven Rinella?

  But just again, it's gotta be someone with just, he's, there's some dude that can't get a, can't get a Grand Canyon permit. And he's like, how in the world is some dude from Paris floating down that river?

• 1:11:31Speaker 04

  That's what I'm saying about Craters of the Moon. There's some guy who knows about a 400 inch bull. Like one of a dozen elk that lives there. Who's like, you know, we should actually allow some hunting there.

• 1:11:42Steven Rinella?

  It burns his ass.

• 1:11:43Speaker 04

  He's gonna get that, that Whopper bull.

• 1:11:45Steven Rinella?

  But I still like that stuff. There's one about, uh, it took me a long time. Max, uh, the, the one and only Max Bart, the smartest man in the duck swamps. Track this one down for me. There's one about season setting for migratory waterfowl. It's largely a cler, it's a clerical issue. I don't wanna, he, he reached out to some contacts and one of the contacts, I didn't tell him I was gonna read his thing. I'm not gonna say his name. One of Max's contacts in the duck conservation world said to Max this morning, my understanding is this just cuts out.

• 1:12:23Steven Rinella?

  Um,

• 1:12:26Steven Rinella?

  basically the, the, the way, I don't even wanna read his thing, cause it's long. Basically migratory bird seasons always get canceled every year and they have to be reset every year. And it creates this whole clerical issue. It's cleaning up a clerical, it's, it's cleaning up a season setting, behind the scenes paperwork issue that isn't gonna be felt by waterfowl hunters. It's just an annoyance. Here's a big one though.

• 1:12:53Steven Rinella?

  Maybe the, nah, not the biggest one. Maybe the biggest one. Within a year of this order, I don't know why it takes a year. Within a year of this order, the secretary of the interior shall encourage state fish and wildlife agencies to promote and expand Sunday hunting opportunities on state and federal lands. Amen. That stuff's a joke. I understand that as states have taken steps to loosen Sunday hunting restrictions, there's can be a lag where those restrictions are sort of encoded into land management agencies and a state might loosen and the federal or state management agency might not follow suit quickly.

• 1:13:36Steven Rinella?

  Like their Sunday restrictions stay after the states goes away, but that just, that stuff has to be just like flat out, Sunday hunting restrictions just have to go away. They will. They're going away. Uh, growing a new generation of hunters. Interior's got, no, secretary of labor, secretary of education, they got 90 days

• 1:14:01Steven Rinella?

  to clean up messes they've created about federal education funding for archery and hunter education programs in schools. One of the things they're talking about is this whole like, this whole anti-gun thing has created this problem that like you can't train kids in hunter safety in schools because somehow something to do with dumb thing with guns.

• 1:14:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Steven Rinella?

  That's gotta go away. I took, my hunter's ed was through my school. Just, it was very easy to do. You did a hunter's ed through school.

• 1:14:30Steven Rinella?

  Um, within 180 days of the order,

• 1:14:35Steven Rinella?

  identify opportunities, incentives to assist states in cultivating hunting traditions among American youth and veterans.

• 1:14:43Steven Rinella?

  Um, and again, opportunities in adaptive sports grant program. So, yes.

• 1:14:52Steven Rinella?

  Helping disabled handicapped individuals have hunting opportunities. Promoting robust game species populations, all kinds of good stuff in here.

• 1:15:01Steven Rinella?

  Helping people, helping landowners with voluntary removal or reductions of barriers to wildlife movement and habitat connectivity. You got a rancher, he's got antiquated fencing, he's got whatever. It's a barrier to wildlife habitat. He wants it cleaned up, doesn't have the means to get it cleaned up. Let's get it cleaned up.

• 1:15:23Steven Rinella?

  Reduction of invasive species, habitat degradation, disease and other factors contributing to population declines. So just getting after it, um, taking care of some of this stuff. The details are missing. The money is missing, but the directives are clear. It's good, the directives are good. We'll see if it gets carried out.

• 1:15:41Steven Rinella?

  Targeted management. Here's a tricky one. I'm surprised that like the Guardian and Washington Post aren't having a total shit fit about this one. Targeted management of predators, competing species and other population limiting factors. Okay. Uh, use of prescribed fire, vegetation management, water development, grazing, agricultural practices, appropriate habit, habitat management tools.

• 1:16:08Steven Rinella?

  And seeking voluntary agreements with landowners and agriculture producers around habitat improvements.

• 1:16:15Steven Rinella?

  There's a big thing about increasing wild game donation. Uh, it's just not my thing.

• 1:16:20Speaker 04

  That one's way cool.

• 1:16:20Steven Rinella?

  I eat that stuff. What's that?

• 1:16:22Speaker 04

  That one's way cool.

• 1:16:23Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Tell everybody about it.

• 1:16:24Speaker 04

  Well, they, uh, they promote that wild game should be given to schools and, uh, fed to kids.

• 1:16:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. Emergency, emergency food assistance program. So that's.

• 1:16:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that would help with the whitetail deer overpopulation issue.

• 1:16:38Speaker 06

  Well, that's what they talk about in the next one.

• 1:16:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay. No, you're right. It does. I'm sorry. I should've been more enthusiastic. Cause even uses, it, it, the, the words are carefully chosen, chosen. Um, they're saying use Pittman Robertson funds to manage hyper abundant populations of wildlife, especially whitetail deer.

• 1:17:01Steven Rinella?

  Through activities that facilitate the donation and processing of wild game for consumption in schools and food banks. Okay. You're right. I'll just get toward the end. I'm very aware of how much time I burned up. That's good stuff.

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  I, I just think it's like a creative thing. A lot of this is like, uh, it feels kind of common sense. Like, yeah, it should've always been that way.

• 1:17:17Speaker 06

  Yeah. Like what were those sharpshooters do? What has happened to the meat from the sharpshooters? Probably nothing.

• 1:17:22Speaker 04

  This, this is fun.

• 1:17:23Steven Rinella?

  And as much as in these areas that have hyper abundant whitetail populations to the point where it's causing habitat degradation and disease transmission, the more you can lubricate the wheels for people to get those deer off the landscape and put to good use.

• 1:17:35Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:17:35Steven Rinella?

  Sure. You're right. I don't know why I poo-pooed it. And again, the cost of publication is, or shall be borne by the department of interior.

• 1:17:42Steven Rinella?

  Commerce had to pay for the other email.

• 1:17:46Steven Rinella?

  Interior pays for this email. Cool.

• 1:17:51Speaker 06

  Under the wolf desk?

• 1:17:53Steven Rinella?

  Take my glasses out.

• 1:17:55Speaker 06

  Um, we hit Molly's pack. I don't know. How long ago was that? Month ago? Couple of weeks ago?

• 1:18:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:18:01Speaker 06

  Um, Molly's pack is, uh, Yellowstone National Park's last original wolf pack from the introduction that occurred. They're, they're lineages from the, the original introduction in the mid 90s.

• 1:18:15Steven Rinella?

  I don't wanna get into it, but.

• 1:18:16Speaker 06

  And it, no, okay. Let me, let me at least get through this part. Um.

• 1:18:22Speaker 06

  Molly's pack is mostly, they left, months ago, they left and went on to public land in the Shoshone National Forest. Uh, five adults, five pups, uh, in the Shoshone National Forest and the Abzorka Range. Um, they're named after a, uh, US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Molly Beatty, who died of cancer during that original introduction. Um, but, and everyone was worried they left that their hunters were going to get them. Wolf advocates are very up in arms that Wyoming should somehow change their wolf hunting regulations to like carve out exceptions for Molly's pack. Um,

• 1:19:09Speaker 06

  people were going crazy about it.

• 1:19:10Steven Rinella?

  I gotta butt in. I gotta butt in. Can you imagine how stupid it is to say, oh, Bob the elk is over there. We need to change the state's hunting rules so that nothing happens to Bob the elk.

• 1:19:28Speaker 06

  Yep. Yep. Oh, I'm like, for sure. It was, it was crazy.

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  It would never happen.

• 1:19:34Steven Rinella?

  No, it's like ridiculous.

• 1:19:36Speaker 06

  Anyway, they're mostly back in the park. Um, five adults, uh, five pups were about six months old and that's when they're like old enough to kind of cruise and, and travel with the adult wolf. So they're back in there. Um, the worry from the wolf advocates was that Wyoming's wolf hunting season, uh, opened on September 15th and they were still kind of out there outside of the park.

• 1:20:06Speaker 06

  These, it's interesting to me that they're, they're quick. These wild, there's wolf advocates, very quick to point out, it comes up all the time that Molly's pack matriarch is, is 12 years old. So like one of the oldest wolves on record, but they, some, for some reason that makes them even more special.

• 1:20:26Steven Rinella?

  She's walking dead.

• 1:20:27Speaker 06

  Right. She's two and a half times older than the average lifespan of a wolf. Um, so cool for her, but, um, I don't think, you know, you carve out exceptions for animals based on how old they are.

• 1:20:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Be like, it's like Biden should stay president because he's so old.

• 1:20:46Speaker 06

  Um, so the, the local hunt area, do we have that map? Yeah, there it is. So they were in the Clark's Fork Wolf Hunt area in Sunlight Basin. Um, reached its, uh, four wolf limit within days and got shut down. So that, you know, they're, they went back in the park. They made it back without getting killed. Um, I, there, I, I didn't get the picture, but in an article I read, there was a picture of the, uh, trailhead in Sunlight Basin packed with hunters, horse trailers. Like they were in there looking for him for sure. Yeah.

• 1:21:24Steven Rinella?

  Because that one dude was offering bounties on hunters.

• 1:21:27Speaker 06

  Well, no, no, oh, you're, there was the other dude who, who like publicly said, he is going after the matriarch. He's going to get the ma, which I thought was kind of, kind of weird. Um,

• 1:21:41Steven Rinella?

  Are you serious? Like dudes were like, but it was also general big game or not. It was archery season.

• 1:21:46Speaker 06

  Hmm. Yeah. But like, it was packed. Like.

• 1:21:52Steven Rinella?

  I'm not saying it's not true.

• 1:21:54Speaker 06

  Right, right, right.

• 1:21:54Steven Rinella?

  I, I, I believe you.

• 1:21:57Speaker 06

  So, um, the Wyoming Fish and Game Agency, they, they like to point out that wolf hunting is a notoriously difficult pursuit. On average Wyoming's hunters devote about 500 days of effort per animal they kill. Like, which I mean.

• 1:22:14Steven Rinella?

  There's 500 days worth of hunter effort for every wolf that gets killed.

• 1:22:19Speaker 06

  Like, so that means like you're spending how many years trying to get one? Cause you're not hunting 500 days in a row.

• 1:22:26Steven Rinella?

  You're, you're reading that wrong.

• 1:22:27Speaker 06

  Oh, I got you. Five, so 500 hunters one day or?

• 1:22:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like 500 days. So if you look up all the days of hunter effort.

• 1:22:36Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:22:36Steven Rinella?

  And all the wolves killed, you have five, like hun, hunters collectively are spending 500 days a field for every wolf killed.

• 1:22:44Speaker 06

  Um, however statewide, um, 10 of the 22 wolves that can be killed in the trophy management area that surrounds the park, um, they, they were killed in the first week of the season. Um, so they, they, they got after it pretty quick. Um.

• 1:23:02Steven Rinella?

  But no one got this big famous wolf.

• 1:23:04Speaker 06

  No one got her or kids or brothers or sisters. Um, so if they stay in the park, they're off limits, but who knows? They, they may run into trouble if they wander out.

• 1:23:16Steven Rinella?

  I had said it on the show and then I saw it quoted in the Idaho Statesman or something where it was like, man, I don't like Wyoming can't capitulate, but I bet there's, and I was like, I hope those wolves go back where they came from. Just to avoid all the BS.

• 1:23:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. It would, it would be like national level craziness if it, if it did happen.

• 1:23:38Steven Rinella?

  It'd be like that Cecil the lion program all over again, man.

• 1:23:41Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah. Right. You know, and if one of the, if one gets shot near the border of the park, I, you know, maybe that won't be such a big deal, but we'll see what happens. If a collared one gets shot, it's gonna, people are gonna raise hell about it. There you go. That, that kind of saga is kind of over for right now.

• 1:24:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. We'll talk about it again in like nine months.

• 1:24:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 06

  We're going from Yellowstone National Park all the way to Pennsylvania. Yeah. And we're going to talk about elk that were introduced to Pennsylvania from Yellowstone National Park.

• 1:24:16Steven Rinella?

  Little detail there, man.

• 1:24:17Speaker 06

  Um, Michael, uh, Scabarla of Port Manteel to Pennsylvania killed a big old giant bull elk.

• 1:24:25Steven Rinella?

  My goodness, did he?

• 1:24:26Speaker 06

  Um, the elk was eight by eight typical that scored a 400 and two green, it green scored 428 inches. This, this elk was taken, um, on September 15th during the archery season and he shot it with a crossbow. Um, and it's potentially, well, it, I say potentially because it's green scored, it hasn't, hasn't had the, the time to dry yet, but it's gonna be the new. It's not going to shrink 50 inches. The last.

• 1:24:57Steven Rinella?

  Previous holder get it with a bobo or was he using a crossbow?

• 1:25:01Speaker 06

  Uh, I don't know that. But the previous.

• 1:25:04Steven Rinella?

  He shattered that dude.

• 1:25:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. The previous, uh, archery state record for, for Pennsylvania is 381, little over 381. Um, which this is green scored at 428. The, by the time it shrinks, I don't know how, I don't know how many inches it loses when it shrinks, but it's going to blow that out of the water. And it's, it's going to be the number one typical firearms, um, category elk too, which is 407 inches. Which is surprising that the, it's only 407 for firearms. We were talking earlier that the next world record could definitely come out of Pennsylvania.

• 1:25:42Speaker 06

  Yep. Um, but so the, for the archery season this year, there was only, um, what was it?

• 1:25:53Speaker 06

  Fifth, there's 15 bull tags for the archery season, um, were issued to 50,000 lottery applicants.

• 1:26:02Steven Rinella?

  God, that's why I don't draw it.

• 1:26:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's why.

• 1:26:04Steven Rinella?

  I was wondering why I don't draw that.

• 1:26:06Speaker 06

  Um, Phil, hit, hit the next photo.

• 1:26:10Speaker 06

  So this is.

• 1:26:10Speaker 04

  I showed that one earlier.

• 1:26:12Speaker 06

  On his, his apparel, Steve?

• 1:26:15Steven Rinella?

  Get a onesie on. Dude, that's the greatest suit in the world.

• 1:26:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. This photo was sent to me through a friend, um, that, that this one was, I think kind of making its rounds, but, um, yeah, giant elk. Oh, but Phil, if you go to the video. Oh, sure.

• 1:26:37Speaker 06

  This is a bull that I got trail cam video of on my family's property. Damn. That's the world. Which I think will blow that one out of the water.

• 1:26:46Steven Rinella?

  It is, on this trail camera that Seth has set up on his grandpa's place, it is non-stop. And his grandpa's been putting in since they brought elk into the state. Look at that thing.

• 1:26:56Speaker 04

  That was two weeks ago.

• 1:26:58Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:26:59Steven Rinella?

  Dude, it's just like, you can't keep track of all these bulls coming through there. That's called pond cam.

• 1:27:04Speaker 06

  Yep. That's pond cam. But yeah, those bulls come in there to, to wallow and drink and.

• 1:27:10Steven Rinella?

  Seth gets videos of them coming and just ripping bugles in front of the camera, like insane bulls that you'll never see.

• 1:27:16Speaker 06

  I know. I'm, I'm waiting right now for a video to come through of a bull that's just bugling right in front of the camera that I was hoping would come through before.

• 1:27:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like a bunch of like, I don't know, 390s, 400 inch bulls.

• 1:27:29Speaker 06

  Yep. Uh, but this bull was killed in, uh, Center County, which is same county where that trail cam video was. Um, and.

• 1:27:41Speaker 06

  Let's see, he was, he was, so this guy's a professor at Penn State. He, he didn't have a whole lot of time and, and drew a tag of a lifetime. So he went with a guide, um, trophy rack lodge. And, uh, they hunted for a couple of days, ran into, uh, several bulls bugling the one morning. And, uh, this bull ended up coming in, he shot it forty some yards with his crossbow.

• 1:28:09Steven Rinella?

  Dude, I'd give up two of my kids. One of them.

• 1:28:12Speaker 06

  Which ones?

• 1:28:14Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to get into that.

• 1:28:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:28:16Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to feel bad. I'd give up two of my kids. I'd keep one, give two away from one of them elk tags.

• 1:28:23Speaker 06

  Um, yeah. And you know, the, the general or, you know, the regular firearm season is yet to happen in Pennsylvania. So I'd be curious to see if this one gets, this record gets broken. It's possible.

• 1:28:35Speaker 04

  Yep. Wearing a vintage camo pattern that I can't identify. I've, I've been trying to, uh, reverse Google image search end for like 10 minutes and I, I can't come up with.

• 1:28:45Steven Rinella?

  Dude, it's a great one. It's a great onesie, man. You know, it'd be sweet if he gave us that onesie for the auction house bodies.

• 1:28:50Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, that'd be great.

• 1:28:51Steven Rinella?

  Like, if he would, if you're listening.

• 1:28:54Speaker 04

  That might be the only camo he owns.

• 1:28:55Steven Rinella?

  If you're listening, no, here's the deal. If you're listening, if you send us that onesie for the auction house bodies, we will send you a complete.

• 1:29:05Steven Rinella?

  We'll send you a complete cold weather and complete warm weather kit. If you'll send us that onesie for the auction house of oddities.

• 1:29:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, that would be great.

• 1:29:14Speaker 04

  I need to identify what this pattern is.

• 1:29:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So if you're listening, I have a deal for you. All right, we're going to end the show with an interview with, uh, Montana representative, a former Navy SEAL, Ryan Zinke, who's going to talk about, he, he came into the studio. Um, the other studio and we sat and talked about something called a river runs through it act. And the conversation mostly gets into the question of, um, how can you find compromise solutions for vexing land management issues? So check that out. See you next week.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

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  Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder wantons.

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  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:30:08Steven Rinella?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 1:30:14Steven Rinella?

  Hell, since swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

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  Ryan Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

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• 1:31:29Steven Rinella?

  All right, everybody, we're jumping over to a conversation with, uh, Ryan Zinke. So Ryan Zinke is a congressman for Western Montana. Former Secretary of the Interior, retired Navy SEAL commander. Um, throughout his career, this guy has been very tangled up in public lands issues, outdoor issues. Um, he's joining us here in the twilight of his congressional career, which ends what, this January? It does. And you're a free man in January? Uh, I am free of this vocation. Free of this vocation, January. Uh, we, we had, uh, Representative Zinke on before. He was Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnerships. Yeah. He won the James D. Range Award in 2025, and I was present there as a board member.

• 1:32:14Steven Rinella?

  Um, and, and actually was there to help hand him the award. And that was around his work on public lands advocacy during some, uh, important times around public lands. This year, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's Excellence in Advocacy, that's 2026 reward and award. And Safari Club International's Legislature, Legislator of the Year Award in 2026, so garnering a lot of recognition for his work on public lands issues from the hunting and angling communities. And what we're going to talk about right now is a thing that I've been reading about. I don't fully, totally understand it all, but it's been passed around a bit. Is the, a river runs through it act. Absolutely.

• 1:32:59Steven Rinella?

  Tell me about this. And I, and I know from that this issue is a long, has had a long simmer. It has had a long issue. Over 20 years into making around Sealy Lake, the swan, big bear wilderness, uh, scapegoat. And then, then it combined the Lincoln area that they've been working about 13 years. Okay. And this is a made in Montana solution, you know, and, and you, you, we live in a political environment where it's so partisan. And we fight about everything. But in Montana, you know, our public lands, the debate has always been on how to management between, how to manage it between the mirrors that, you know, wilderness.

• 1:33:43Steven Rinella?

  And let's say the Pinchos with, with multiple use. And then you have extremes on both sides, uh, on it. But this is, this is a solution that looks at landscape and understands the importance of the outdoors. Reason why we live in the West is because we have outdoor experience. And, and we were given the outdoors experience largely from the great ones, Roosevelt and Pincho and Mirror. Looked at the landscape and said, this needs to be protected and, and cultivated for the next generation. So what this bill does is it takes a look at wilderness areas. It takes a look at wilderness study areas.

• 1:34:24Steven Rinella?

  And when you have the wilderness society in the same room as the snowmobilers, you got the backpackers. You got, you got the outfitters, uh, you got the logging guys, and they all came together and said, you know what? Uh, the outdoor experience is different for all of us, but all of us, you, you understand the importance of it. So can we look at better ways of management? And so we had Tracy Manning from the Wilderness Society and we had the snowmobile guys. Sitting in the same room said, you know what? That's worked together. From the snowmobile perspective, they want public access. And they want corridors rather than going to point aid and turning around and coming right back the same trail.

• 1:35:06Steven Rinella?

  So they want trails connect. Well, you know, so do a lot of people. So do a lot of people that do, you know, skiing and hiking and, and et cetera. And on our forests themselves, I think there was a concurrence that we shouldn't allow them to burn down every year, all the time. Can't we manage our forest better? So from a logging perspective, you know, you can go in and harvest timber. You can cut a road in temporarily if you're going to do a prescribed burn. Because a prescribed burn, so it doesn't get out of hand, requires safety equipment. And so when you do it, you do it right with the right science, the right people, the right equipment, you get the burn done.

• 1:35:48Steven Rinella?

  And then you can remove the road if necessary. But a lot of it is focuses on public access. So what, what were the, but on that thing there, what were the Wilderness Society people in the room for? Well, because we, we looked at areas, remember when a wilderness study area. Yeah. That's it. This is what I want to talk about. This, this could confuse people, but I'm sure you could explain it. Yeah. Wilderness study area is administrate, administrative in, you know, a category, not by Congress. But as a wilderness study area administratively put in place, but you have to manage it as if it is a wilderness. Yeah. And Congress is the only one that can designate a wilderness. Yeah.

• 1:36:29Steven Rinella?

  So Congress actually is going to do their job and look at some wilderness study areas that were probably, well, according to this bill, they looked at them carefully. They should not be designated as a wilderness, but you can, you can do backpacking, you can do outfitting, you can cut a trail. You can, you can manage the forest better than letting them burn down. There's areas. Around the scapegoat and around the Bob Marshall, it makes sense. The wilderness study areas. That's permanently put this in part of wilderness because that's what wilderness is for. Yeah, can I, can I butt in on this? Cause this is important. I just want to make sure people get, people that live outside of the West get this distinction.

• 1:37:09Steven Rinella?

  Where wilderness with a capital W is like federally designated wilderness. So when we say wilderness, we don't just mean like the woods or the mountains, but like it's a federal designation. And we're going to manage it as a wilderness. Uh, no wheels, no combustion engines. There's a lot of restrictions on a wilderness because primarily lightest touch, let nature take its course. Yeah, but within that, for years now, we've had these study areas or what was the term? It's a wilderness study area. Yeah, the study areas and they're sort of, and I don't know if it would be, if it's how you would describe it, but a lot of the study areas are sort of in limbo.

• 1:37:50Steven Rinella?

  And there, there are plenty of people who would like to see all the study areas go the other direct, go one way. There are plenty of people who would like to see that all them go to wilderness and then there are the prag, the pragmatic ones. Who envision that at some point in time, there will be some compromises made. That's right. And they will ease into, that they will be moved into the wilderness category. Or they'll be moved into a more general national forest category. And so here and there now and then you see little chunks of this puzzle get resolved because the, the limbo can't last. It should not last. It should, but it should be based on, again, this is a Montana made solution.

• 1:38:30Steven Rinella?

  So you had, you know, the local ranchers, you had the timber folks, you had the snowmobiles, you had the wilderness people, you had the recreational people all come together and say, you know, we honor the landscape of these two important areas. So how do we make sure that we can harvest timber? How can we make sure the previous wilderness study areas, uh, how, how do we make sure that they're, they're protected? And, and manage, because there's a reason why they became wilderness study areas to study. To determine whether or not they meet the requirements and conditions to actually be a wilderness. Congress makes that decision, but uh, out in the West, what can happen is you have a superintendent

• 1:39:14Steven Rinella?

  that puts something in a wilderness study area, you know, designation. And then it stays there forever. Yeah. And And people get uneasy about how it's going to break. Well, and there's restrictions. So you, you won't be able to take a vehicle in, you won't be able to take a snowmobile in, you won't take a wheel in. Or if you were to do a prescribed burn, you put, you can't put the safety equipment in. Or if you're going to do trail maintenance, uh, you're not going to be, uh, you're not going to allow to use a chainsaw, for instance. As you'd have to do a buck saw, it takes a lot of buck sawing, you know, to clear a trail after, after a windstorm, as you know. Yeah. So what this does is it looks at a landscape, you know, view.

• 1:39:56Steven Rinella?

  It brings corridors for wildlife movement back and forth. It looks at trailheads to make sure the trails connect between the, being the different categories of land. Uh, but it really is a, a solution. It's not perfect. Uh, but this 20 years of, of effort of people working together and how do you, how do you break through the partisan lines? Well, you find something that you're passionate about on both sides. And then you get together and then you have to work through trust. Uh, because now you're working together for a common goal and you're going to have to trust the, the, your, your groups in there to make sure they articulate what's important to them. But also they're wanting to give a little.

• 1:40:41Steven Rinella?

  And in every case in this, you know, this bill, which is, you know, river runs through it, that paints a picture as well. Is that there's something for everybody. Someone gave up a little, uh, in order to gain a lot. Yeah. And again, it's, it's about understanding how important the outdoor legacy is. And I think this will, can be a model for naturally, for, you know, national use. Cause there are issues in Utah, there's issues in Idaho in the West. There's always issues between a lot of it is how to manage our lands. I think this is a pretty good model of how constructively get to a solution that benefits everybody.

• 1:41:20Steven Rinella?

  With the, with this, with this arrangement, as you, as you're talking to people about it, you got guys like me and I would have been. If, if, if I was emperor of the, the, the nation, I would have just from my perspective, I would have said like, I'm going to take all experimental wilderness and I'm just going to make it all wilderness. Cause I'm a big wilderness guy. You got other people who would have wanted to go the other way and like ditch it all. If, if you look at the, in, in striking this compromise, who do you feel? How, of the people that are still not happy? Which is just margins. But who is most not happy?

• 1:42:00Steven Rinella?

  I would say most not happy are the people that believe the federal government shouldn't have a federal estate at all. Okay. Uh, and then on the other side is, is that public lands, uh, are really not for the public. They're for other species. Yeah. Uh, you have those two extremes. Yeah. Now, I don't know, you know, we're And each would like their position articulated differently, but from your, yeah, I understand what you're saying. But I'll get, I gave you an example. Uh, the Wilderness Society, uh, I know, on a wilderness study area. Uh, looked at it and said, no, this, this is going to be wilderness. Well, this is, this is our position. They, the snowmobiles said, you know what? We would like to transit across this to connect our trails.

• 1:42:44Steven Rinella?

  Now those are two different views. Yeah. You know what happened? They came together. Yeah. They said, you know what? This is a great corridor to bring, to bring back and forth. And oh, by the way, this other area, we're going to designate that and, and connect it to the Bob Marshall because it makes, it makes sense to protect that watershed. Yeah. And then on, on designation of, let's say outfitting. Well, outfitters need to go in there, but they also need a trail cleared. So they can use trail clearing method, you know, during the season. All right. And, and to make sure that the trail and public access is, is there. And that's an important part. Uh, of it, looking at the landscape, but the, at the end of the day, you know, these two areas are special.

• 1:43:29Steven Rinella?

  You know, Lewis and Clark had much the same view in a lot of these different areas. And now what we have done is we've, we've looked at what's important, how to manage it and make sure that your children and your children's children can have the same landscape view that was given to us that, that Lewis and Clark shared. Understood. I think that when it comes to the kind of compromise you're talking about. Kind of the best way is articulated to me down the road. And this, this isn't so much the particulars of this arrangement, but just the, this, this idea of compromise. Would be people would look at the wilderness study areas. And you'd be like, well, why not just wait? Why not just wait until the right moment?

• 1:44:13Steven Rinella?

  When they can all be wilderness and people go, you might wait for that moment and wind up, that you wind up in the opposite moment. Right? Like waiting isn't a guarantee that it's going to go how you want it. And so people are, you know, I've had a lot of people explain to me. A, a great compromise now where everybody can have a voice is better than the alternative of trusting that you're going to hit where it's going to go all your way. Cause then it might go all the other way. So if we can find opportunities to find a, a solution that is acceptable to a broad group. Like there's an argument that those are the moments to seize upon. Well, and you know, again, we were given what we have.

• 1:44:57Steven Rinella?

  I think the challenge in the next hundred years is how to manage it. Yeah. Next hundred years is looking at wildlife corridors to make sure winter ranges connect to summer ranges. Correct. To make sure that you have movement, but also public access. And on some of these wilderness study areas, there's, they're managed for a healthy forest. Um, but, but the consensus was all groups, left and right and middle, you know, don't want to see these catastrophic forest fires. You know, burn at the scale they're burning and the, and the heat. I mean, in some cases, these forests are burning so high, you're not going to see a regrowth of forest for generations. Yeah. Uh, they have sterilized the soil. Is that really necessary? Well, let's look at the American conservation ethic.

• 1:45:43Steven Rinella?

  Best science, best practices, greatest good, longest term. That's the American conservation ethic. So how do we, how do we get there? So we don't have these catastrophic fires? Well, we'll, we'll look at the, at the geography and say, you know what? This area needs to be thin. Do we want to do it mechanically? Do we want to do it, uh, harvesting timber or is a prescribed burn more appropriate? But a prescribed burn, let's make sure it's a, it's a prescribed burn and not an out of control burn. Yeah. Like we did with the Wheeler home, you know, in the glacier park and they had, you know, a recent fire in, in, uh, the Grand Canyon. Which burned up, you know, historic, you know, sites and, and buildings. I don't think we want to go there again.

• 1:46:27Steven Rinella?

  So we can use best science and best practices and come up with a solution. So we have a healthy forest. And those areas that need to be protected in a different degree in wilderness, lightest possible footprint, you can still hunt. Uh, you know, you can graze in a lot of wilderness. But sometimes grazing isn't going to reduce the, the load of dead and dying timber and, and fuel. So it may be a prescribed burn is, is more appropriate. Again, when you do a prescribed burn, you should do it with the right safety equipment to make sure it stays in that prescribed box. Yeah. And doesn't get out of hand. That may require a temporary road. Uh, to be put in, a temporary road would be, be removed.

• 1:47:10Steven Rinella?

  After the prescribed burn, at least so you can get the equipment in there or evacuate, you know, the firefighters are in the ground, you know, doing that burn. So tell me how something like this, tell me how something like this works from this point. Because you go in, you go in, there's this long simmering issue, people want it resolved. You talk to the local people and get these different user groups that you're talking in. And you're like, I understand you, you ideally would want this and you on the other side would ideally want this. Here's a, here's a workable solution that addresses everybody's concerns. Then what? You give it a name, you know?

• 1:47:52Steven Rinella?

  Well, you put in a bill, it's interesting as a representative. You represent. So when you represent, you not only represent the people that voted for you, but you also represent the people that didn't vote for you. You represent the people who will never vote for you. So it's important as you represent people, because it is about people, you listen. And when such a diverse group of people, again, from the snowmobilers and motorcycle guys, the wilderness to timber guys, to outfitters, they're all saying the same, same beat, the same message. You know, it's time to then take that, those elements. And when you put it into a bill, what does that mean?

• 1:48:35Steven Rinella?

  That means you, you look at the legal review, you look at what, what other, other laws it affects. So you put it in a bill that's ready, ready to pass. And with this, in this particular case, it's more Montana centric. So how do you get it passed? Well, there's two, two senators, we have two congressmen. You know, all the should, should get behind the bill. And all this should convince our, our peers that this is important to them too. Because That's the part that seems hard to picture is that you, you then got to go to DC. And there's 98 other senators that aren't really aware of the issue. And there's 300 and what?

• 1:49:19Steven Rinella?

  And a couple of them likely will be opposed to anything that's then federal land other than divesting. Sure. And then you got, I don't even know the number anymore, hundreds of people that are otherwise unfamiliar. And you got to say, hey, um, can I get everybody's attention on this thing? Well, you're That you didn't know about till yesterday or today. And then, and then make time for it. Well, I'll give you an example. Never in my life did I ever think that public lands would be at risk of being sold.

• 1:49:50Steven Rinella?

  The argument and the debate has always been about how to manage it. Yeah. But never, never divesting on scale. Yeah. Well, it came up this Congress. There were, there was an effort that nearly succeeded in selling off a lot of our public lands without, you know, public input review, all those types of things. And I, you know, taking a step back, why? You know, I, I thought it would be easy. I led the charge to save it. And I, I thought it was going to be like going up San Juan Hill. I had, had a bunch of guys behind me. Yeah. A little thin. Yeah. And because, you know, public lands is different from different people. If you live on the east and you say, we're not talking about our national parks. Don't worry, our national parks are, are, are, are free of this. Totally different.

• 1:50:35Steven Rinella?

  They're, they're protected. Well, if you're living in the east, a lot of your public access and public lands is parks. Cause they don't have the huge, you know, tracts of BLM land, you know, Bureau of Land Management land or US Forest Service land. So primarily your, your public, your outdoor experience is national parks. Well, that's great, but when you're out west, national parks are a part of the outdoor experience and certainly not the whole. In Montana, you have more forest service than you, than you do parkland. And when you add the CMR, Charles M. Russell and BLM, a lot of Montana's land is not in a park category. Yeah.

• 1:51:18Steven Rinella?

  And, but I was surprised at, at how few initially picked up the charge on, on, look, we're not going to sell our public land. Yeah. Now, in, in, you know, truth, when I was secretary, I divested, I added, I subtracted, I exchanged. But the process was public input, looked at it. If a school needed to expand a gym that say in, in New Mexico, okay, that 40 acres makes more sense for a school. Or there was a runway that need a little more runway because the jets are bigger. Okay. But those are, there's a case by case. Yeah. And there's a process for that.

• 1:51:59Steven Rinella?

  There's a whole process that looks at whether subsurface and Indian rights and, and all those type of things. But I think our public lands, uh, you know, this is, I think, why, uh, it turns out I came back to Congress for this purpose and God had a, had a mission for me. And the mission in this case was to lead the charge and make sure our public lands, you know, in the next generation are as strong as they were in the last generation. When you, when you, there are not, there are some very vocal Republicans who are generally antagonistic to the public estate. Like, like philosophically, philosophically, they're troubled by that the federal government would own so much land

• 1:52:44Steven Rinella?

  or, or own such a heavy proportion of certain states. Often they will express a frustration about

• 1:52:53Steven Rinella?

  that on these places, ma- management tools, and that could mean a bunch of things to different people. They will often express that like management isn't occurring, they're not being properly managed. Right. If, if you look at That's legitimate, by the way. I'm saying if you look at, I guess the question is, how honest are they? Cause it, cause if you look at like what you're doing here, where you're, you're looking at this river runs through it act and you're looking at management issues and you're, and you're looking at fire mitigation issues, timber harvest, timber reduction, right? Does that really, do you think that you'd have some colleagues who would look and be like, yes, that's what I mean? Or do you feel that they're, that, that they're just using that as a red herring?

• 1:53:37Steven Rinella?

  Well, that's a example of Libby, Montana. Okay. You're in a sea of trees as far as the eye can see and you can't harvest a one of them. Lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, judges that, that would side on, uh, for grizzly bears, even though grizzly bears have recovered. Yeah.

• 1:53:57Steven Rinella?

  They like cuts and But they just, they, they, they, they don't look at timber as a legitimate purpose in the woods. Yes. And in this case, we had the timber guys coming to look, you know, the, those, those trees are going to come out of the woods one way or another. Yeah. You can mechanically bring them out, you can prescribe burn or you can have these catastrophic burns. Yeah. So wouldn't it be better? It's gonna happen. Wouldn't it be better to manage how to remove the timber, where, look at the, the, the, the interfaces where you might have a fire, thin that area out? Because, because when the forest burns, like if, you know, I fish, you fish, you know, a lot of sediment will go in, in those streams and that's not good. Yeah.

• 1:54:42Steven Rinella?

  And the habitat that we're all trying to preserve burns to the ground and that's not good either. Yeah. And in some cases, these forests are so hot, it sterilizes the soil. Generationally, you won't have recovery of, of, of canopy. Yeah. And you get, to, to add to that, you get situations where you have this massive monoculture and you don't have edge habitats and all these other things. Absolutely. Then you have disease that runs through, if it's a, you know, mono tree out there, you have disease that affects a tree, then the whole forest is going to go. Yeah. You know, but there is frustration out there. They watch our, our public access to be, you know, diminished.

• 1:55:23Steven Rinella?

  They look at the forest burning up year after year after year, lack of management, sometimes lack of leadership. And I understand the frustration, you know, if you're, if you're on a county road and all of a sudden you have BLM where the lights on and you're thinking, well, there must be a lost kid someplace or maybe it's a, it's a bear. They're going to warn you about, no, they're going to give me a speeding ticket on a county road. You know, a, a lot of people deservedly so are a little upset about that. Yeah. But I give the analogy of, of, okay, you have a hotel and it's terrible management. Well, you don't sell the hotel. Yeah. You get new management and you get a, you get a constructive way to manage your forest, you know, back to where they're healthy again. I think everyone wants to walk through a forest that's healthy.

• 1:56:08Steven Rinella?

  Some forest walking through should be the lightest touch because nature has its bounty and glory. So, you know, that's why we have wilderness. Now, should we let, you know, Bob Marshall burn down the ground all the time? And, and well, you know, that's a discussion that we need to have on, on fire management, uh, on it. In this particular case, we looked at, for instance, wilderness study areas and said, you know what? Uh, a road or a prescribed burn or a management of trails, I think makes more sense. Making sure that there's a parking lot someplace where people can park and have access to go into. That makes sense.

• 1:56:49Steven Rinella?

  In some cases, um, you know, some of the roadless rules, should it be a roadless rule? Well, let's look at it, but let's look at it case by case. Let's not do these broad canvases of we're just gonna put in roads or we're gonna remove roads in every inch of federal state. Now, let's use best practices, greatest good, longest term, but good science. Why do you need the road in there? Should it be during hunting season? Should it have a covert? Should it be used for a fire? Should we maintain it in case of a fire? All those things need to be considered to make the right decision. Yeah, we have. Oh, can I do one last super quick question? Yep.

• 1:57:32Steven Rinella?

  We'll do as quick as possible. Uh, Chris, what's gonna happen? Is this thing gonna pass? Are you gonna get, are you gonna, is it gonna come up for a vote and it'll pass? Look, I'm, we have two Navy SEALs. We got, we had Tim, she, he, the Senator, myself, you know, we don't give up. So, but I, I, I think this has enough momentum behind it and enough of passionate people that have worked, you know, 20 years. And I'm fairly confident at the end of the day, this president or next will sign a river runs through it. Great. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for explaining that. Love to hear from, um, you know, uh, someone that's been involved for such a long time on natural resources issues and, and explaining all that process, people come together.

• 1:58:15Steven Rinella?

  I gotta tell you, you're knocking it out of the park. Uh, you, you deliver a message that's gotta be delivered and, and people are enthusiastic about, about you and, and your effort and thanks. Thanks for coming on, man. Appreciate it. And I know you gotta run, so we'll let you go.

• 1:58:55Steven Rinella?

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