Pod Insights The MeatEater Podcast Ep. 898: Marijuana Users Win In the Supreme Court, Sicilian Curses, North Carolina Elk Hunt About this episode Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en and the MeatEater crew discuss: marijuana users buying guns; Steve’s Sicilian swear words; logging after wind storms; the North Carolina elk hunt; the Colorado moose explosion; and more.
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Transcript 18,655 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:35 Speaker 02 Americans own 640 million acres of public land together. Right now, it's being torn up and privatized at the greatest rate in history. On Common Ground: An American Inheritance is a six-part documentary podcast about the immediate threats to America's public lands. It's the story of people refusing to let it happen quietly. Featured by Apple and a Signal Awards Gold Medal winner, listen to On Common Ground: An American Inheritance wherever you get your podcasts.
1:10 Steven Rinella? This week on the news show, Steve trespasses in Sicily, Brody runs his first marathon, and it looks like dope smokers can now get a gun without lying about it. A logging project that might not actually be about logging. Oregon finds a way to do something that more states need to figure out, which is finding additional sources for wildlife, funding, and habitat. New public lands in Ohio and Utah. North Carolinians are going to get to go elk hunting. Hunting rights are getting an unexpected boost in Massachusetts and more. But first, our news. I just got back from Sicily.
1:49 Speaker 04 Hmm. Oh, that's why Sicily's on the... The motherland. I had no idea.
1:53 Steven Rinella? My great grandparents are from Sicily. They're Sicilians. So, there's a couple of things that went on. As a kid, my main takeaways from this trip. My dad had a curse. Like, if you hit your... if you hit your thumb with a hammer sort of situation, he would say, well, I remember to be...
2:15 Steven Rinella? I remember it to be "Votanabi Shaku."
2:21 Steven Rinella? I have gone to a lot of Italians over the years and said, does this mean anything to you if I say votanabi sheku? And their eyes like, no, I don't know what that is. Once I was in Sicily, I didn't appreciate the difference between Sicilian and Italian. Huge difference between Sicilian and Italian. We had a tour guide, like you know, doing like a little tour around Old Town. And I'm chatting the tour lady up at the end of the tour and I said, maybe you can help me with something. Does it mean anything to you if I say votanabi sheku? And she says,
3:02 Steven Rinella? do you maybe mean Botana ru sheku? I'm like, that's it? And she, her response was, wow, that's a big one. I'm, I'm not going to tell you what that is. I'll write it down for you and you can look it up later.
3:18 Speaker 04 Hmm, bad words.
3:20 Steven Rinella? Terrible. Then I was talking to a guy, a youngster, 30 year old guy, long hair, man bun. I said to him, I'm telling him the story. He's Sicilian. I tell him and he's like, wow, yeah, that's a big one. It's a big one.
3:37 Speaker 04 Hmm, commonly used or no?
3:39 Steven Rinella? It would be. What you're saying is that there's a lady of the night with an equine clientele. I'll leave it at that.
3:50 Speaker 04 Wow.
3:51 Steven Rinella? But it's, yeah. Terrible. No wonder he just said that in Italian.
3:56 Speaker 04 Mm hmm. And he would say that in a moment of-
3:59 Steven Rinella? If he hit his thumb with a hammer.
4:01 Speaker 04 Like instead of saying mother.
4:03 Steven Rinella? Mm hmm.
4:04 Speaker 04 You say that.
4:05 Steven Rinella? Say horse. Yep. The other thing to happen, this is the, this is one of the, this is another, this is another Sicily highlight. So we go to, oh, another one is that we've been, I've been saying my name wrong my whole life. It's Rinella.
4:18 Speaker 04 I've been saying it right all along.
4:21 Steven Rinella? We go to this little dinky town. We're on this volcanic island. And here and there is like these little valleys. And sometimes it'd be a place where the volcanic crater like blew a wall out. And when it blew a wall out, it'd create like a little spot. You could put a town there and grow some grapes. Some of these places just have one road going in and a road and you know, that's it. One road goes down in there. So we have this, we have a driver and he takes us down to this little town, not far from Rinella, the town of Rinella. But we go down this, in this little village and we kind of want to walk. So he's like, well, just walk and I'll pick you up down in town.
5:02 Steven Rinella? So my wife and my kids are wandering all around and we eventually get where we just never run into the guy. Like there's not a lot to do and it's very, it's rural. And we wind up, there's these rock walls and there's this road, the road has signs. We come to where the road has these signs and I don't know Italian, but I know enough to know that these signs say private road. And I confirm. It's private road, like in eight different ways, private road.
5:29 Steven Rinella? We're standing there talking and this one old timer. Who's got like, he's just got a pair of shorts, no shirt, no shoes. He comes out of the bushes. And he's kind of like wondering what we're doing. And then I see him turn a ball valve to like irrigate something and go back into the bushes. My wife gets the driver on the phone. We clear up where we're at. The driver comes down. We climb in the driver's car. He drives into through the signs. I say to my kids out loud, I say, I guess it's okay to drive on a private road here. Cause I have a very familiar anxiety from growing up when you got stuck driving on a private road. We start driving down the private road and all of a sudden out of the bushes, here's this other old timer.
6:09 Steven Rinella? Mad. And I can't speak any Italian, but I've been in this situation. So I know exactly what's happening. Mm hmm. The guy comes to the window and his basically, he's basically mama mia, you know, he's like doing all the Italian hand gestures and he's pointing and without knowing any words, I know exactly what's transpiring. The driver is trying to take a like, what's the big deal? He's trying to do like a, what's the big deal? And the guy's trying to do like, I can tell. He's like, this is the 10th time this week. How many signs do I gotta put up? But I can't understand any of it, but I'm so familiar with the situation. And the guy's doing a like super cash. The driver.
6:54 Speaker 04 It's like trespassing is the universal language.
6:56 Steven Rinella? Yes. It was just, it was the best. And I, and like normally I'm high, I'm like, I'd be anxious in that conversation, but I'm just a dude paying for a ride. So I'm like totally divorced from it. And it was the first time I could ever be in a fight, a trespassing fight where I like had, my heart rate never went up.
7:15 Speaker 04 There's no consequences for you.
7:17 Steven Rinella? No, it was great just to be there and see it. We pull away and the guy doesn't speak much English. We finally get out of there. We go back out and turn around, go back out and he looks over his shoulder. He goes, no problem.
7:32 Steven Rinella? So how do you pronounce your name? Rinella. Now you know how Elliot Cowes feels. Yeah, I know. Everybody mispronouncing the name.
7:40 Speaker 04 Now those were your highlights. What would your kids say the highlight was?
7:43 Steven Rinella? Going, we went and watched a, we went and took a boat out and watched a volcano erupt for a couple of hours.
7:48 Speaker 04 Oh.
7:49 Steven Rinella? It erupts all the time. Stromboli. Stromboli. You can swim, lay on your back, watch it shooting lava out.
7:58 Speaker 04 How was the food?
8:02 Steven Rinella? Hit and miss dude, I hate to say it. I hate to say it. Hit and miss. Hit and miss.
8:06 Speaker 04 No, I mean, not every Italian probably makes great Italian food, right?
8:10 Steven Rinella? Hit and miss. Yeah, some real highlights. Marinated anchovies, not like salted salad, like a marinated anchovy. That's good. Some of their stuff is, yeah, hit and miss. Hit and miss. That's all.
8:26 Steven Rinella? Brody ran a marathon.
8:28 Speaker 05 I did. My first one. This past weekend.
8:31 Steven Rinella? Well, give me your biggest takeaway.
8:33 Speaker 04 Hold on before though, before you give the takeaway already, I want to know if my little, uh, message of inspiration at five o'clock in the morning, did that?
8:40 Speaker 05 Well, I didn't feel like, I didn't feel like you were inspiring me. I felt like you were trying to disagree with my strategy. So it didn't help.
8:50 Speaker 05 I went into that, what was your question?
8:52 Steven Rinella? Well, like what's your biggest takeaway? You ran, how many miles is that?
8:56 Speaker 05 Twenty six point two, but you all, here's the thing is, you, you don't know this because you don't run. You never run twenty six point two miles in a marathon. It's always like twenty six point five or twenty six point seven. Cause you're not running in a straight line.
9:10 Steven Rinella? That's a good point.
9:11 Speaker 05 So your watch is lying to you the whole time. So you're like, oh shit, I'm almost done.
9:14 Steven Rinella? You're doing an extra half mile of zigzagging.
9:16 Speaker 05 Yep.
9:16 Steven Rinella? Yeah. Trying to go around people or whatever. Go to get a drink.
9:19 Speaker 05 But it was like, it was cold and wet, but it was very great, positive experience. Like I loved it.
9:26 Steven Rinella? Did you have a number in your head?
9:28 Speaker 05 Yeah.
9:29 Steven Rinella? Did you hit the number?
9:30 Speaker 05 I did. Well, close, close. I was a little slower than, than, than number, but the main thing was, is I was like using this as a kind of a dress rehearsal for the one I'm going to do in September.
9:42 Steven Rinella? Why is that one different?
9:44 Speaker 05 Because like I was using this one to learn how to do it. Cause like you're in, like the longest training run I did was 20 miles. So like, you're in no man's land for a while during the race.
9:54 Steven Rinella? That's the farthest you ever ran.
9:55 Speaker 05 Yeah. You never run the actual, I mean, most people don't run the actual distance in training, but like I figured out fueling and hydration and pacing it like, so that was all perfect. And I didn't hit, many people hit what's called the wall between 18 and 20. They get hurt, they cramp up, the fueling's messed up and they just. They're dying, right?
10:18 Steven Rinella? Mm-hmm.
10:18 Speaker 05 That didn't happen. So like, that was the coolest thing. Um, couple of big takeaways was I learned an awesome trick, which is, you know those silicone straws, reusable straws?
10:30 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
10:31 Speaker 05 So you take one of those, they're bendy.
10:32 Steven Rinella? One of the things my kids own that annoys me.
10:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah. Um, so the aid stations, there's people like handing out Dixie cups of like Gatorade and water and stuff.
10:41 Steven Rinella? Okay.
10:41 Speaker 05 And trying to drink one of those while you're running sucks. Like, it's like hard, you can, you want to choke on it, you spill it. There's a trick where you bring, you cut one of those silicone straws in half and just shove it in a pocket.
10:54 Steven Rinella? Like a little shorty.
10:55 Speaker 05 You grab that cup, throw the cup, put the straw away. Oh.
10:59 Steven Rinella? Really?
10:59 Speaker 05 It was pleasant, man.
11:00 Steven Rinella? That's your takeaway?
11:01 Speaker 05 Other takeaways.
11:02 Steven Rinella? Ran 26 miles and that's what you got, that's what you came away with.
11:04 Speaker 05 He's got a life, yeah. Become a straw user. Yeah. Um, other takeaways, middle-aged lady runners are just like machines, man.
11:12 Steven Rinella? Really?
11:12 Speaker 05 They just fricking go.
11:15 Steven Rinella? Just better endurance. Something happens.
11:16 Speaker 05 By middle-aged, do you mean younger than ever or older than you?
11:18 Speaker 05 It's like a pain tolerance thing, dude. I think like, they could be younger, they could be older.
11:24 Steven Rinella? Do you regard yourself as a middle-aged guy runner?
11:26 Speaker 05 Still, yeah. I'm, I'm not in old age yet.
11:30 Steven Rinella? Hmm.
11:30 Speaker 05 Oh yeah, you still got 10 years till you're. Yeah, like, they just, they just go, man. Like, I paced off of a lot of middle-aged women runners because they're just very steady.
11:40 Steven Rinella? Hmm.
11:41 Speaker 05 So yeah, I'm gonna do another one. It was great. I loved it. Um, it's five, five plus months of training, which was the, the, like the.
11:49 Steven Rinella? Yeah, but you like gave up fishing in order to train.
11:51 Speaker 05 And turkey hunting.
11:53 Steven Rinella? Hmm. I don't really understand that. Isn't there a way to have both?
11:58 Speaker 05 For sure. I did a little, but, but, that's why I kind of like made the focus on this one. But then I wasn't gonna do the one in September and now I'm gonna do it. So.
12:07 Steven Rinella? You're gonna be like a big marathon guy.
12:09 Speaker 05 I don't know. Do another one. We'll see. It's not as far as Yanis runs.
12:15 Steven Rinella? How far did Yanis run?
12:16 Speaker 04 Did I, one more question. Did you ever hit, I know you didn't hit the wall, but did you ever hit what they call like
12:21 Steven Rinella? The fence?
12:22 Speaker 04 The pain cave sometimes?
12:23 Speaker 05 No, like I definitely was feeling it the last 10K, but like in a good way.
12:28 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:29 Speaker 05 The last couple, three miles, I was like, yeah, no, it was good. Maybe that means I didn't go hard enough.
12:35 Steven Rinella? Were you listening to some tunes like stroke or ace?
12:37 Speaker 05 I, I listened to tunes and I, I forgot my headphones, so I had to use my kids and only one of them was working. And that went dead a couple hours into the race. So I just raw dogged it as they say.
12:50 Steven Rinella? Yeah, I can picture saving stroke race for like the last mile, dude. Stroke race is born to race.
12:56 Speaker 04 See, in the morning, I texted Brody. I said, is it today or yesterday? He's like, man, I'm about to go. I was like, all right, you ready? He goes, yep. I'm just going to run like a, you know, smooth, consistent, steady. I said, screw that. I said, empty the tank, man. Let's go.
13:13 Speaker 05 And I just did not reply.
13:16 Speaker 04 And he didn't empty the tank.
13:19 Steven Rinella? You went and ran another super race?
13:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, ran another hundo in the, in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming.
13:27 Steven Rinella? Would your calls around your neck?
13:29 Speaker 04 No, I didn't bring my calls. That's this for later.
13:31 Steven Rinella? Maybe you were checking.
13:32 Speaker 04 No, I, I did, uh, when you finish, you actually get a belt buckle, which I forgot to bring, but they give you like this, uh, jacket, which I'll probably never wear again. It says Bighorn Ultra Run all over it.
13:44 Steven Rinella? That looked good on you.
13:45 Speaker 04 And I got this hat.
13:46 Steven Rinella? Wear it again.
13:47 Speaker 04 So, you know, when you get a hat for running a hundred miles, you gotta, you gotta sport, sport it around.
13:53 Steven Rinella? Was it different than the last time you ran a hundred miles?
13:55 Speaker 04 Yes.
13:55 Steven Rinella? Did you get better at it?
13:56 Speaker 04 Easier course by a lot. Like in the crazy mountains, you run on a lot of rocks, shale, like just rocks, like we call them baby head rocks. And they're just all over the place, which when you're 20 miles in and you're fresh, it's no big deal.
14:10 Steven Rinella? Little severed baby heads all over.
14:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's a good metaphor because we all know what that's like.
14:14 Speaker 04 But at 80 miles, uh, those things just are brutal because you just can't, you can't run on top of them. And then it takes a lot of focus to run between them and it just, it gets really hard, really quickly. This trail was like just smooth dirt pretty much the entire way.
14:32 Steven Rinella? If you get way into this, have you kicked around doing the Tussock 100 and doing a Tundra 100?
14:37 Speaker 04 No. Is that a thing? Did you just make that up?
14:40 Steven Rinella? No, I just made it up, but you could, that could be your deal. The Tussock 100.
14:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:44 Steven Rinella? Where it's 100 miles of Tundra.
14:46 Speaker 06 He's done two 100 mile races. I'm wondering when you think the threshold is where he'd get really into it. Like.
14:54 Speaker 04 Well.
14:55 Steven Rinella? What's the most times you've heard of anybody running 100 miles?
14:58 Speaker 04 I ran with a guy wearing a kilt, which at first you're like, come on, guy, wearing a kilt. I'm like, oh, I'll chat this guy up. Yeah, he said, he said his chafing is much better in the kilt. I think he said he was up into the teens now of hundreds done in a kilt.
15:14 Steven Rinella? Why can't he just wear a skirt?
15:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, you could wear a skirt.
15:16 Steven Rinella? Just like a tennis skirt.
15:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, totally.
15:19 Steven Rinella? Does it need to be plaid and made out of wool?
15:21 Speaker 04 Uh, he actually wears one made by that company, uh, is it 511 Tactical?
15:27 Steven Rinella? They're like, make it like an adventure kilt.
15:28 Speaker 04 Yeah. Did you, but did you hear about how it came about? It was like, uh, it was April's Fools' Day thing.
15:34 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
15:34 Speaker 04 And so many people were like, oh no, we want a camouflage kilt that like every like couple of years now they make a run in these kilts. Anyways, that dude was running his 76 100 miler.
15:46 Steven Rinella? What's that times 100?
15:47 Speaker 04 We were.
15:48 Steven Rinella? 7,600 miles of races?
15:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
15:50 Steven Rinella? He'd do the Tussock 100, dude.
15:52 Speaker 04 He probably could. Yeah. His goal was to get to, uh, 100 of them in a couple more years.
15:58 Steven Rinella? Yeah, the Tundra 100, the Tussock 100?
16:02 Speaker 04 I think getting into it is, I'm, I'm approaching that because, um, you, you finish one and almost the next day you're like, what I could have done better. Like, that's all you think about. You're like, oh, I had good parts and I executed. But all you can dwell on is like, oh, I had three to four hours of nausea where like, I felt like I was just going to puke the entire time. And like, everything shuts down. I wasn't moving. Like, what if I had those three to four hours back? How well would my time be? You know, what, what could have I done?
16:34 Steven Rinella? So this, this all makes me jealous because it makes me feel like a cupcake, dude.
16:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, honestly, it's not that hard. I mean, because you gotta remember, they call it ultra running, but it's more like ultra power hiking with some running thrown in. I mean, sure, there's the elites that might actually run the entire course.
16:52 Speaker 04 The guy set a course record that won, and I think he went just under 18 hours, and it took me 30. So he did it almost twice as fast as me.
17:01 Steven Rinella? What was the most you slept?
17:02 Speaker 04 I didn't sleep any on this one.
17:03 Steven Rinella? One bit, not one bit. Wait, when you're training, though, are you training? You sleep one bit.
17:07 Speaker 04 Not one.
17:08 Steven Rinella? Are you training power hiking or are you training running?
17:12 Speaker 04 Both. I mean, I just can't run up like our local hill here that we always run the M and then up towards Bald Mountain. I mean, you can maybe make it 50 yards running on those steep sections, but eventually you're just, you know, you're power hiking.
17:26 Steven Rinella? That's my wife found that mouse.
17:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's right. That's right.
17:29 Steven Rinella? If she was running, she would have blown right past it.
17:32 Speaker 04 So, yeah, you're trying to always push what that, like, what your slowest pace is, right? That's what makes your pace faster throughout the whole thing. And to do that, you train by doing intervals or little short runs up, you know, mountains. And so hopefully in a race, your base level power hike ends up being faster than it once was, so.
17:53 Steven Rinella? Well, congratulations, boys.
17:54 Speaker 04 Thank you. Yeah, thanks. It felt, it felt good.
17:59 Speaker 04 Yeah, but I'm ready to do another one for sure.
18:04 Speaker 04 I am, uh, was it the reason I was excited to do this run in Wyoming? Big Horn Mountains are in Wyoming is because I also drew a elk, an elk tag in Wyoming. Coveted elk tag in Wyoming.
18:17 Steven Rinella? Yeah, I thought you were like supposed to be like all buddies on Wyoming tags and stuff. Then you went like totally rogue. I didn't even know you went rogue.
18:24 Speaker 04 Well, I realized that especially on a hunt like this, it's better that like if you want, you can come and join me and help me out. And then when you draw the tag.
18:32 Steven Rinella? But you don't need two guys trying to hunt.
18:34 Speaker 04 No, because then it's just gonna, it splits your time and it gets complicated and every, there's too much, there's too much pressure. At least for me, I'm like, I have 16 years of applying, invested in this, and now I gotta split this hunt with Steve? I don't want to do that.
18:48 Speaker 05 I don't need him cramping my style.
18:50 Speaker 04 No.
18:52 Speaker 04 But if you want to come class for me and help me find a big bull, I'd be super stoked on that.
18:57 Steven Rinella? I probably got something I gotta do.
18:59 Speaker 04 But speaking of elk hunting.
19:00 Speaker 06 But he will take his waypoints when he's done.
19:03 Speaker 04 I can't believe that you guys haven't used this.
19:05 Steven Rinella? No, somehow I have.
19:06 Speaker 04 This is the Kyvin Bugle Tube, collapsible bugle tube.
19:10 Steven Rinella? Did you take that on your run? Cause it collapses?
19:12 Speaker 04 Mm-mm.
19:13 Steven Rinella? No?
19:13 Speaker 04 No. But if you didn't see it beforehand, Steve actually thought that it was a water bottle.
19:20 Steven Rinella? I thought it was for technical hydration.
19:23 Speaker 04 That's roughly, roughly, where's that camera? There it is. That's roughly the size it is.
19:28 Steven Rinella? Yep. So you can put it in a water bottle holder.
19:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, and it fits right in that pocket real nice. And so when you don't need it, the thing about when it, when you have a full, when you're carrying around something that's always out like this, like I always have to have a little bungee or string on it.
19:41 Steven Rinella? I think for the jackasses at home, you should explain that you're holding an elk bugle tube.
19:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, didn't I not say that already?
19:47 Steven Rinella? No, we haven't covered that yet.
19:48 Speaker 05 I thought he said Kyvin Bugle Tube right off the bat.
19:50 Steven Rinella? Oh, did he?
19:50 Speaker 04 It's a collapsible bugle tube. And when I'm normally running with a, you know, a full-length one that just stays like this, you gotta have some sort of attachment and you sling it over your shoulder.
20:02 Steven Rinella? Mm-hmm.
20:04 Speaker 04 For most of the time when you're on an elk hunt for, let's say, 12 hours, dawn till dusk, right? You're only actually elk hunting for two hours of it, where you're actually probably gonna be using your bugle tube. Maybe you pull it out midday once, blow on it, see if you get a response, right? So I've been using this for two years. I had a prototype two years ago, and then this thing's already been out for a while. So I had the same version that you could have last year in my pack. And yeah, it's just nice and tidy because you don't need to have some string, you know, looped around your neck. You just tuck it into your water bottle pocket on your pack, and when you need it.
20:41 Steven Rinella? Can you tell the difference with the sound?
20:43 Speaker 04 No, not at all.
20:44 Steven Rinella? The sound doesn't sound collapsible?
20:46 Speaker 04 You guys tell me. I think it sounds great.
20:59 Steven Rinella? God, man.
20:59 Speaker 06 Deep.
21:00 Steven Rinella? Gets the people going.
21:01 Speaker 05 Deep resonance there.
21:02 Speaker 04 Sounds pretty good, I think.
21:03 Steven Rinella? My headphones aren't sounding good.
21:05 Speaker 04 Anyways, that's the Kyven Bugle 2 from Phelps. Check it out. I'll be running it this fall on my super bitch in Wyoming elk hunt.
21:11 Steven Rinella? I don't want to give away details, but did you like feel like you were kind of scouting while you ran or just kind of more getting a flavor for the area?
21:17 Speaker 04 Flavor.
21:18 Steven Rinella? Flavor for the range.
21:19 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:20 Steven Rinella? Flavor for the range.
21:21 Speaker 04 I'm like within a couple hundred miles of where I'll be hunting.
21:26 Steven Rinella? They could feasibly wander over that way.
21:28 Speaker 04 I feel like, you know, you run.
21:29 Steven Rinella? Calling like that, they will.
21:30 Speaker 04 You run a hundred miles in Wyoming and then you kill the biggest bull of your life in Wyoming the same year. It's pretty cool.
21:38 Steven Rinella? Yeah. Um, just because it's my favorite thing. Do, Yanni knows how to make a noise of an elk real far away. Listen.
21:48 Steven Rinella? That's one way off. Yeah, I love that, man.
21:51 Speaker 04 You're like, was that?
21:52 Steven Rinella? He's close enough to go though. Uh, oh, this is a major correction because we really kind of screwed something up. I was all shooting my mouth off about New Mexico's, um, landowner tag program. And the guy wrote in, he was riled up.
22:07 Speaker 04 Very.
22:08 Steven Rinella? Rightfully so.
22:09 Speaker 04 Yes.
22:10 Steven Rinella? Rightfully so.
22:11 Speaker 04 But not just in an axe grinding kind of way.
22:13 Steven Rinella? No, no, no. He was trying to do the good thing for humanity.
22:15 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:16 Steven Rinella? He wasn't just trying to settle a score.
22:18 Speaker 04 Right.
22:18 Steven Rinella? He was riled up.
22:19 Speaker 04 He just came in with a correction.
22:20 Steven Rinella? Yeah, a great correction.
22:21 Speaker 04 Proper correction.
22:21 Steven Rinella? Yeah. So he's going to tell you about his correction. Here we go. Uh, it's truncated, but you'll get the idea. He writes in, for anyone unfamiliar with E plus or the elk private land use system, it's New Mexico's landowner elk authorization program. One thing that makes New Mexico confusing is that people often talk about E plus as though it's one program with one set of rules. It is not. The primary management zone is where nearly all of the conversations surrounding unit wide authorizations take place. It's also where most of New Mexico's elk hunting opportunities exist. Within that zone, qualifying ranches have two enrollment options, ranch only and unit wide. Ranch only authorizations work pretty much as people assume. The authorization is tied to a single ranch.
23:04 Steven Rinella? The hunter is limited to it and the landowner controls access. When a ranch voluntarily enrolls as unit wide, it earns the ability to receive and sell unit wide authorization. This is where it starts to get important. Yeah, this is where you guys went wrong.
23:18 Steven Rinella? They allow the hunter to legally hunt public land throughout the game management unit and every other unit wide ranch within that unit and any other private property where permission has been granted. In exchange, the ranch has to allow access to every hunter holding a valid elk license for that unit, with the exception of those ranch only license holders. That includes hunters who purchased a unit wide authorization from a completely different ranch and hunters who drew an elk for that unit through New Mexico's public draw. See, I've read this three times, I didn't get the public draw part. Yes, yep, exactly. So you guys made it out like they're just getting away with murder and they're not. Well, come on, was that?
24:00 Speaker 06 I like it, this is my segment and I skated through without anybody pointing the finger at me because I probably said the same thing.
24:07 Steven Rinella? I wanted to say the same thing over again, just so people get this. Because what we were talking about is, I said, a few years ago, I bought a, I bought a unit wide landowner elk tag in New Mexico. A thing I forgot is that it was pointed out to me that that ranch has no elk. Right. Like, you can go hunting all you want, you're not going to find an elk there. I had no idea that anyone that gets those can hunt any ranch that gets and sells unit wide tags. So when you go and say, I want some unit wide tags to sell, you're really opening your land up to a lot of not just people that bought landowner tags, but dudes that drew the units.
24:52 Steven Rinella? Yeah, it's, a thing that came up was like, how good are those ranches, though? That I can't answer. Yeah. That I can't answer. Yeah. Like, are a lot, like, are in this area, is there ever a dude, here'd be the question, maybe the same guy can write in? Are you aware of any ranchers who have Boku elk on their ranch during season? And do unit wide tags?
25:21 Speaker 06 I think he said in his email.
25:23 Steven Rinella? He says, he says, I don't do it.
25:27 Speaker 06 Yes.
25:27 Steven Rinella? So that leads me to believe he's got elk.
25:30 Speaker 06 I think he, but I think he said he had hunted.
25:32 Steven Rinella? Yes.
25:32 Speaker 06 He had hunted other ranches. When he drew a tag through the public draw, he had hunted ranches that had gotten unit wide tags. And he was like, use that access opportunity himself.
25:45 Steven Rinella? And yeah, and he pointed out that he doesn't put his own ranch in it. Now, my question would be, and this is a great letter. My question to him would be, are you doing it because you don't want dudes running around on your place or is it something different? I don't know. He also talked about. It's his place. That E plus is not perfect. We just had a mischaracterization of it. Oh, gross mischaracterization. That was, that was a omission. Yep. It was being wrong. We're, we're considering bringing back the correction segment. That's a great correction. That would have won. Phenomenal. Should have sent him some Tacovus. I failed to mention, uh, Jim Heffelfinger is here today.
26:23 Speaker 04 Hey.
26:23 Steven Rinella? Sitting quietly in the corner.
26:24 Speaker 04 How do you do? Haven't seen somebody in a while.
26:26 Steven Rinella? Good to see you.
26:26 Speaker 04 If we, uh, if Montana were to propose something similar to this E plus, seems like we kind of have a similar situation where it could help people out that are like own a bunch of land. They want tags on the regular and it would help put some pressure on these lands to move the elk around. I don't know. Would you guys support it?
26:44 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
26:45 Speaker 06 As he's laying it out, as he's laying it out, yes. Transferable tags? Cause 90% I mean, I believe 90% of these tags are not the unit wide tags. So I think most, most of the E plus tags are the ranch only tags.
27:00 Steven Rinella? I bought a unit wide.
27:01 Speaker 06 Yeah.
27:02 Steven Rinella? Hunted public land and was told that there's no, I didn't go look, but I was told by, not by the guy, but by other people like, there's no elk on that place.
27:10 Speaker 06 Yeah. I, I'm, I'm very leery of setting a precedent of, of transferable tags that are owned by private landowners.
27:19 Steven Rinella? Did I say yes? I should have said like, I don't know.
27:25 Steven Rinella? If it led to.
27:30 Speaker 05 If it led to access.
27:31 Steven Rinella? If it led to net access increase, then I'd be like, let's talk. I'm gonna go. Sort of in charge. I'm gonna go further. I said I was leery of it. I'm, I'm adamantly opposed to it. That was my recommendation at the end of the segment is I was saying, I'm not condemning what they do. And every, all these places have their own histories and how they came up. But I'm saying, if I lived in a state and we didn't have transferable landowner tags, I think my suggestion was if one were living in a state that doesn't currently have them and someone was proposing changing the status quo in order to make transferable tags, I would say, uh-uh.
28:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, I would not trade block management for this system. No way. I think they, they also have a block management system in New Mexico. I don't know anything about.
28:18 Speaker 04 Jim, you must have something to say about this.
28:20 Steven Rinella? I don't. I spent all my time with my sons and my dad hunting in Arizona. I'm not that familiar with even next door, their system. She does have something to say about it.
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29:50 Steven Rinella? Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Black Buffalo products are intended for adults aged 21 and older, who are consumers of nicotine or tobacco. Now, you know how long it takes to build something that actually holds up? Well, Black Buffalo spent 20,000 hours on it. 20,000 hours, working alongside American farmers, growing and barn curing leafy greens to mimic the taste and texture of real dip without the tobacco leaf or stem. That's not a shortcut. That's a commitment. They started this thing in 2015, right here in America, and they got it right.
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31:18 Steven Rinella? We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off, and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there. You're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners. Okay, they laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. Another piece of listener email real quick. This is just, this is just a heartwarming story. He says, "A few weeks ago, you guys were talking on the news show about Minnesota's sales tax for outdoor recreation, habitat, water and arts. I just wanted to share a little story about it."
31:59 Steven Rinella? What we're referring to is Minnesota developed an alternate funding mechanism, which was a, it's like a percentage of a penny.
32:10 Steven Rinella? Of sales tax that goes toward wildlife work and they're
32:18 Steven Rinella? they got a lot of money and they're doing great stuff with it, including buying a lot of new public land. Anyways, he says, my dad was huge on getting people to vote for it. He had hundreds of signs that he gave people and helped put them in people's yards. He was very excited to see that bill get passed. My dad, like any good old Dutchman, that's his racist thing, not mine.
32:42 Speaker 06 You know, the Dutch and their signs, geez.
32:44 Steven Rinella? Listen, my, here's what my dad knew to be true about, he called them Highlanders.
32:49 Steven Rinella? Didn't like them, not that he didn't like them. He knew that if you went to a Highlander's yard sale, they would overcharge. To the point where it wasn't even worth going to a Highlander's yard sale. He'd be like, yard sale, Highlanders?
33:04 Speaker 06 Yeah.
33:05 Steven Rinella? I'll pass. No deals, no deals to be had there.
33:10 Steven Rinella? So he's saying, my dad, like any good old Dutchman, didn't get rid of the signs after the election. And over this last 17 years, he's been using them for all kinds of things. He used, he uses his signs to pattern his shotgun. He included photos where he's got his shot up sign. And normally when someone shoots a scientist for something totally different, but this is a guy, this is the owner of the sign shooting his.
33:36 Speaker 05 Recycle, reuse.
33:38 Steven Rinella? He patterns his shotgun with his old signs. He stretches turkey fans with his own signs. When he needs to clean fish, he cleans fish on his own, his, uh, old signs. The last election, even though it's not even up for a vote anymore, he put his signs back out again.
33:52 Speaker 05 I like that. I like that a lot. Put them in your neighbor's yard.
33:56 Steven Rinella? That's the sort of victory laugh. He stuck them back out just to remind people about how they did vote to pass it.
34:06 Steven Rinella? That stuff's great. Uh, oh, yeah.
34:11 Speaker 04 When we did our yard sign, that one hanging up there.
34:13 Steven Rinella? That's a great sign. I use that for stuff.
34:15 Speaker 04 Remember, we were, at first, we were gonna do one side that was gonna be a target so that you couldn't get
34:20 Steven Rinella? Shoot, I don't even remember that.
34:21 Speaker 04 More use out of it.
34:22 Steven Rinella? Um, but I've used that material a handful of times. I wish I had a stack of those.
34:25 Speaker 06 Oh, they're great targets.
34:26 Steven Rinella? Yeah, wish I had a foresight to do that. Anyways, dope smokers, they can buy guns now.
34:31 Speaker 06 They can, yeah. It's been, uh, I mean, if you're paying attention to the news, there's a lot of action at the Supreme Court right now, as there is, uh, this time of year.
34:40 Steven Rinella? Yeah, they've been tearing a new one down at the Supreme Court, a lot of decisions.
34:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, so there's, there are two major, uh, Second Amendment rulings. This, well, I guess now it's July, so in June, uh, both went in favor of gun owners, um, and
34:56 Steven Rinella? Well.
34:57 Speaker 06 Well, yeah.
34:58 Steven Rinella? The, the one went in favor of gun owners, the other one went in favor of dope smokers.
35:02 Speaker 06 That's true. Dope smoking gun owners.
35:06 Speaker 04 I feel like we should not say-
35:07 Steven Rinella? The question, yeah, it prompted the question, and I want, I want to hear about the story, but it prompted the question. Well, tell the story, and then I'll tell the biggest thing that comes to my mind when I hear it.
35:16 Speaker 06 Well, so-
35:16 Steven Rinella? I'll tell you right now.
35:17 Speaker 06 So there's two, there's, there's, the case that was decided is United States versus H'mani, has decided on, on June 18th.
35:26 Speaker 06 Um, and before we get into that, there is another, in order to understand why the court did what it did, you have to look at this other case from 2022, which is the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruin. And in that case, it had to do with New York's handgun licensing system, um, where you had to show cause for why you needed a, a carry permit. Um, and the court struck down that New York law, and what it did in doing that was it established a new set of criteria by which the Supreme Court assesses the constitutionality of, of gun laws.
36:04 Steven Rinella? Okay.
36:05 Speaker 06 Prior to that New York State Rifle and Pistol Association case, what they did was they they asked whether the law burdened your Second Amendment rights and then weighed that weighed the individual's interest against the government's interest in public safety. And so they it was like a very much sort of facts of the matter weighing two sides. And in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, they instead established what's called the history and tradition test. So, under this framework, the court basically asks, does the Second Amendment cover the conduct in question here? And then it puts the burden
36:50 Speaker 06 on the government to show that what they're doing has is consistent with historical tradition of firearm regulation in America. And they basically are looking at early America and saying, is there something back then that that sort of can be used as precedent, although that's not how you'd use the legal language, but it basically is there something in the past that says this is what sort of the founders had in mind? Okay. So, in this in this Hwan in this H'mani case, the one that we're talking about with the dope smokers, this is a guy who his house was raided by the FBI in 2022 during
37:33 Speaker 06 a terrorism investigation. No, no charges came. Yeah, it's kind of interesting when you know, the there's not a lot of news coverage that gets into the full backstory, but he had he they found a gun. I believe it was a Glock 19. They found a little baggie of cocaine and they found some marijuana. He admitted to the FBI that he smokes marijuana or uses marijuana every other day. And so then he was charged. Every other day? Every other day. Not every day. Every other day. Huh. Consistent consistently recreationally, but not every day. Like. Odd numbers on the calendar.
38:10 Speaker 05 Never on Tuesday, Thursday.
38:11 Speaker 06 Yeah. And so he was, he was charged with three felonies. One for, you know, when you fill out a four, four, seven, three, when you're buying a gun from an FFL.
38:21 Steven Rinella? Randall likes to flex and he knows those numbers.
38:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, I learned a new one. This is nine, 22, G3. That's the, uh, that's the dope smoker clause under US code.
38:31 Steven Rinella? Yeah, anyone that goes and buy, when you go to buy a gun, they give you that little form.
38:34 Speaker 06 Yeah.
38:34 Steven Rinella? And you gotta go, uh, I believe it's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no.
38:39 Speaker 06 Yeah, they changed.
38:39 Steven Rinella? Something like that.
38:40 Speaker 06 They, they changed the questions around at one point and I noticed it. And I said something to the FFL and he's like, good.
38:46 Steven Rinella? No.
38:47 Speaker 06 Good eye.
38:47 Steven Rinella? Basically it's like, have you ever renounced your citizenship?
38:49 Speaker 06 Yeah.
38:50 Steven Rinella? Do you have a restraining order against you? Are you a fugitive from the law? Have you been dishonorably discharged from the military? And if any of those is a yes.
39:00 Speaker 06 Right.
39:01 Steven Rinella? Your, your, your, your, your purchase gets denied and they ask you, are you a dope smoker?
39:05 Speaker 06 Yeah, they say, are you an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana? Or any depressant or stimulant drug, unlawful substances, things of that nature.
39:18 Speaker 06 So he got charged with a felony for answering no. When the, they say you had weed in your house.
39:24 Steven Rinella? Yeah. Same thing happened to Hunter Biden.
39:27 Speaker 06 Yeah, and, and he got charged with a felony because when he answered no to that, that becomes part of the FFL's records. So he got another felony for his answer becoming permanent records that the FFL has to maintain.
39:41 Speaker 05 I'm assuming he was a legal owner of that Glock 19.
39:45 Steven Rinella? Well.
39:46 Speaker 06 Yeah, cause he filled out the form.
39:47 Speaker 05 Well.
39:47 Steven Rinella? He lied on it.
39:48 Speaker 05 But it wasn't like.
39:49 Speaker 06 It wasn't, no, yeah, he, he, he had filled out a four, four, seven, three. So anyway, he got hit with these three felonies, all stemming from the fact that he uses marijuana and he owns a gun. The court ruled unanimously for him in throwing out those convictions.
40:07 Speaker 06 Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion and he uses the history and tradition test that I talked about earlier. And it's kind of funny because what, what they looked at was they looked at old laws. The closest analog they could find were old laws that pertain to quote habitual drunkards.
40:25 Steven Rinella? Okay now, though.
40:26 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, there's all there's you can look at this on a number of different levels, right? Like, but he he says essentially, those laws only applied to people who were totally incapacitated by their drinking and not just users of alcohol. He said, you know, if you're you if it's just someone who uses like unlawful substances, it could be if you take your wife's Ambien every these are his I'm not just pulling drug references out, but he's like, he's like by the government's definition of an unlawful user, it could be someone who takes their wife's Ambien to get to sleep. It could be a college student who borrows a friend's Adderall to to study for a test or
41:06 Speaker 06 something like that. Like, they're very, they're very narrow, they could be very narrow instances, and the law leaves a lot of gray area. And so this is one of the issues with the laws that it's it's just vague. They didn't really address the vagueness question in this, which which leaves the door open for further. There are some people that would have liked the court to clear that up. Yeah, but they basically said that someone using an unlawful substance doesn't immediately forfeit their Second Amendment rights.
41:38 Steven Rinella? I read this thing, though. I read this the totally wrong way. I like I arrived in the same place a totally different way. When I saw the headline for this, in my mind, it was that now that though it's the weed's not federally legal, you have all these state legalities. So when I'm filling out that form, and I see a line and I'm in a like weed legal state. Okay, I'm in a weed legal state, filling out the form, and I see the form asking me, are you addicted to marijuana? Why doesn't it say, are you addicted to booze?
42:16 Speaker 06 Right.
42:17 Steven Rinella? So that's when I was reading like that, I was like, with with legalization.
42:23 Steven Rinella? And we're eventually headed to federal, it'll be decriminalized federally eventually.
42:28 Speaker 06 Yeah.
42:28 Steven Rinella? So I was like, why are you pointing out this one substance, but you're not pointing out alcohol? It's like, why? Because alcohol is legal. It's like, well, weed's legal.
42:36 Speaker 06 Right.
42:37 Steven Rinella? So they shouldn't be asking you about, oh, if you're, are you using a thing that's totally legal? That you can buy down the road? And if you are using this totally legal thing you can buy down the road? You can't get a gun? That to me is a more.
42:51 Speaker 05 But it's.
42:51 Steven Rinella? Compelling argument.
42:52 Speaker 05 They're not concerned with whether it's legal in a state. They're concerned with the federal law.
42:56 Steven Rinella? I know. Yeah. But I just.
42:58 Speaker 05 I get.
42:58 Steven Rinella? So when I encounter that question that all, when I, when I'm doing my FFL thing.
43:03 Speaker 06 Mm hmm.
43:05 Steven Rinella? Which is frequent, I always pause and say, how could that still be when it's legal? Or to make it consistent, you'd have to point out, are you addicted to alcohol?
43:16 Speaker 06 The interesting thing about 922 G3.
43:19 Steven Rinella? Okay.
43:20 Speaker 06 Is that the language comes from the Gun Control Act of 1968? And I was doing some reading and reading some congressional reports about this. And it seems like the way that made it in there was elected officials were just kind of like, well, this all makes sense. And, and just wrote that language without much debate or consideration.
43:42 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
43:42 Speaker 06 Because it is, it's just asking, do you use drugs or are you addicted to substances? Which are not, they're not things that are established in the legal process.
43:54 Steven Rinella? No.
43:54 Speaker 06 Right? Like, sure, a court could say you're convicted of illegal drug use, right? But you're asking someone to say something that there's no, there's no public process by which they've been determined to be an addict.
44:07 Steven Rinella? Yeah. It's not like you get like a card.
44:09 Speaker 06 Yeah.
44:10 Steven Rinella? You gotta go apply for an addiction card. You'd, like, if you said to me, you know, I used to like to pull a cork. If you said to me, are you addicted to alcohol? I would have been like, I mean, I drink every day, but no.
44:22 Speaker 06 Right, right. And the first, I mean, that's, that's the first step is denial, right? Like, that's, that's what's so funny about it is the government's asking you, are you addicted to a substance? Most addicts are probably gonna say no.
44:35 Steven Rinella? Hell no, not.
44:36 Speaker 06 Yeah.
44:36 Steven Rinella? I'm in total control.
44:37 Speaker 06 And then how does the court prove that you knew you were an addict? But even though you, right? So it's, but I could see if it said, if the form said, like, are you a user of an illegal, are you a user of illegal substance? But then picture this. If, depending on what state, give me a non-legal state, Texas?
45:01 Steven Rinella? No, this is, this happened in Texas.
45:03 Speaker 06 What was a non-legal?
45:04 Speaker 05 Wyoming, I don't think so.
45:05 Steven Rinella? Probably Utah.
45:06 Speaker 06 Okay, let's, let's just say, let's just, let's just go out on a limb and say marijuana has not been legalized in Utah.
45:13 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
45:13 Speaker 06 So if you're taking a federal form and the federal form said something to the effect of, are you a user of illegal or controlled substances? Such as blank, blank, blank. Here you have a situation where a guy in Utah has to say yes, but a guy in, but a guy in New York gets to say no.
45:30 Steven Rinella? On a federal form.
45:31 Speaker 06 Mm-hmm.
45:32 Speaker 05 What's gonna happen to that? Is that question staying on the form, Randall?
45:37 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, the, the court ruling doesn't change anything.
45:40 Speaker 05 Right.
45:41 Speaker 06 And, and another.
45:43 Steven Rinella? How could it not change anything? It's the Supreme Court.
45:46 Speaker 06 Well.
45:46 Steven Rinella? Where do you go from there?
45:47 Speaker 06 I mean, it doesn't rewrite the law, is what I mean. Like, the court has made a decision that if you're convicted under this, it's unconstitutional. But it doesn't actually, it doesn't automatically go into US code and rewrite it. One of the issues with this, and this is something that also came up in the, in the Hunter Biden case, is that it's.
46:09 Steven Rinella? Can I refresh people real quick?
46:11 Speaker 06 Yeah.
46:11 Steven Rinella? Hunter Biden bought a handgun during a period that he later admitted to being addicted to crack cocaine.
46:17 Speaker 06 Yeah.
46:18 Steven Rinella? In a book. We're not talking about, we're not talking about weed here, we're talking about crack.
46:22 Speaker 06 Right, but it's, it's, it's, like, it's vague enough that it's not, there aren't very many cases prosecuted under this part of the.
46:34 Speaker 06 You know, like, like whatever cases come up for lying on a 4473, this is a very small, like, single-digit percentage of them. And so he made the case, and Hunter Biden made the case, that they're being selectively prosecuted.
46:49 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
46:49 Speaker 06 Because it is vague.
46:51 Steven Rinella? And they don't, and they generally, I remember reading about this in Washington State, where you have a lot of people in Washington State being like, "We want more gun laws, we want more gun laws." But then someone pointing out, "You don't enforce the gun laws you had." And they went and looked at how many people they were prosecuting for lying on that FFL form.
47:05 Speaker 06 Yeah.
47:06 Steven Rinella? And they don't prosecute anyone for lying on that form. They've never gone after anybody for lying on that form.
47:10 Speaker 06 When the ATF, or the, I guess, yeah, it's ATF Internal Guidance, it actually says, like, using drugs, failing a drug test, or being charged with, with a crime having to do with drug possession or use, one of those three things does not constitute a violation. Like, if you were to say yes, and you'd use drugs, they say that's not a lie, right? Like, the ATF Internal Guidance actually has a fairly high standard for what constitutes lying on that form. Like, you might have failed a drug test once, but you can still answer no truthfully.
47:50 Steven Rinella? Correct. That's like, most of the things, most of the other questions are very binary.
47:54 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah.
47:54 Steven Rinella? Do you have a restraining order? There's not a lot of, like, there's not a lot of guys that'd be like, "Well..."
48:00 Speaker 06 Yeah.
48:01 Steven Rinella? Do you know what I mean? On Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yeah, you do or you don't, right? Like, have you ever renounced your citizenship? You'd be like, "Hell, you know, one time." Right? It's either did or didn't. So, I can see it.
48:12 Speaker 06 Yeah.
48:12 Steven Rinella? I was joking about dope smokers and all that.
48:15 Speaker 04 Well, I think you'd like to know that marijuana remains fully illegal for both rec and comprehensive medical use. Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, and Wyoming. Only four states left.
48:27 Steven Rinella? Utah's good. What's Utah got going on?
48:29 Speaker 04 I didn't go that deep.
48:31 Steven Rinella? Who makes it legal, who makes it illegal for?
48:34 Speaker 04 Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, and Wyoming. Completely illegal all the way around.
48:38 Speaker 06 Recreational and?
48:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
48:40 Speaker 06 Medicinal.
48:40 Steven Rinella? I feel like Wyoming's kind of got, like, a little bit more of a libertarian streak, but I guess not. My son used to work behind the gun counter at Sportsman Warehouse, and he said, "People come in, fill out the 4473, answer all the questions, and then he'd ask for an ID, and they'd pull out their medical marijuana card."
48:57 Speaker 04 There you go.
48:58 Speaker 05 As a joke?
48:59 Speaker 04 No. No, like, all right, we'll throw that form away.
49:06 Steven Rinella? Yeah, it's good they cleaned that one up. Oh, the other point I had, it's an easy point.
49:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
49:12 Steven Rinella? And I think that this is answerable is like,
49:15 Steven Rinella? if you had to encounter in a bad situation, a high guy with a gun or a drunk guy with a gun,
49:24 Steven Rinella? what would you pick? I think most people would pick the high guy.
49:27 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think there's like, it's been clearly established that like, drunks are violent.
49:33 Steven Rinella? Yeah, drunk guy with a gun. Same thing. They said like, hey, man, you can go, you can go confront that stoned guy with a gun. You can go confront the drunk guy with a gun. I'll take the stoner.
49:44 Speaker 04 Yeah. Same thing with being behind a steering wheel.
49:48 Steven Rinella? Who's better?
49:50 Speaker 04 Well, like, which one would you rather have driving next to you on the interstate?
49:53 Steven Rinella? That I don't know enough about. I don't know about that.
49:57 Speaker 05 I'd take the stoner.
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53:00 Speaker 04 Stoners to storm logging.
53:02 Steven Rinella? Hmm.
53:03 Speaker 04 Uh, I picked up this story from Nate because I, I saw, uh, windstorm logging and, you know, since I'm basically an expert on logging these days. Since we logged our 40 acres in Wisconsin a couple of years ago, I'm like, yeah, this will be easy.
53:18 Steven Rinella? It's right up my alley.
53:19 Speaker 04 Turns out not a story really about, it is about logging, but it's just so more complicated. So about a week ago, the Daily Montana reported. United States Forest Service announces emergency logging project over five million acres in Montana and Idaho. And.
53:39 Speaker 04 The basics are because of two major straight line wind events. USFS made a plan to expedite logging operations to salvage timber, reduce habitat for pine beetle type insects, citing safety concerns and limiting wildfire conditions. For those of you that don't know, a straight line wind event is like where you have is like, uh, the temperatures change rapidly and you have like really cold air rushing down, sometimes associated with moisture. And it basically just comes straight down and then shoots, you know, wind in straight lines, you know, every direction.
54:11 Steven Rinella? Is there a difference between a microburst and a straight line wind event?
54:15 Speaker 04 Uh, very similar.
54:16 Steven Rinella? Okay.
54:16 Speaker 04 When I was looking up straight line event, wind events, it looked like it was a synonym.
54:20 Steven Rinella? Yeah, we're just levels.
54:21 Speaker 05 How long ago was that?
54:23 Speaker 04 Microburst down. Oh, we had them here in Gallatin County. It was, it was December of 2025 and then, uh, I think, I think, uh, was it March or April of 26? And, uh, I can tell you because a snowmobile route that I like to drive and, uh, check for lion tracks on. I did two days of cutting in December to, so we could get through it with actually a friend of Jake's, Chase. And then late in the year, we had to come back and do it again because it just got wrecked by those.
54:55 Steven Rinella? I was on a trail the other day and it was, I was like, I pity the guy that gets up here on a mule.
55:01 Speaker 04 And the.
55:01 Steven Rinella? Like you just not.
55:03 Speaker 04 Mm hmm. The idea behind logging is they only have so.
55:06 Speaker 05 Much time to use that stuff before it goes bad.
55:08 Speaker 04 Well, here here's the deal. So to to really get into the weeds of this, you gotta go back about a year. Um, cause yeah, originally when I first read it, I'm like, great. We're making use of some timber that's already down. Preventing, you know, more pine beetles. Awesome. Uh, but if you go back about a year, March 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production. And basically in the four or so months following that, the USFS, BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service, they were all ordered to rework their processes. Um, to fast track logging projects.
55:44 Speaker 05 I remember that because it was like the anti Canada thing, right? Like, because we were using too much Canadian lumber.
55:51 Speaker 04 Shh. Yeah, I think one of the things that they say is that we should just be using more of our own lumber, right? So basically, the way they did that was that, um, like getting rid or at least minimizing like all the NEPA policies. Uh, which is National Environmental Policy Act, uh, rescinding the 2001 Roldis Rule, which that's like still in the works. Uh, reorganizing the USDA in general around like we we've talked about this before on this show, like where the headquarters are now, right? For the USFS, they've kind of gotten a lot of people out of DC and put them in regional places. Lot less people on the ground to help work through this stuff.
56:34 Speaker 04 Um, the key here is that, um, the order treats ESA consultation requirements as a source of delay for timber and forestry projects on federal land, and it directs agencies to speed those requirements up whenever the law allows. Farther, the ESA ESA has an expedited consultation process meant for genuine emergencies. The order directs agencies to use this emergency pathway to max to the maximum extent permissible to facilitate timber production. And if you remember what I said two minutes ago when I read that headline, this is an emergency.
57:11 Speaker 05 Mm hmm.
57:11 Speaker 04 Right? So.
57:14 Speaker 04 That's kind of where we're at. The backlash like has come because they basically slipped it out, this plan. It's like it wasn't brought out to any media. Some people got wind of it. And there was like a week long, uh, comment period, which is already passed. It ended on June 29th, a couple of days ago. So people are like pissed. So basically, I mean, I don't know what else there really is to report on it, other than like-
57:40 Steven Rinella? Do they gotta construct roads or not construct roads?
57:44 Speaker 04 Oh, 100%. And they're pissed along, like, correct me if I'm wrong, they're pissed along kind of partisan lines, correct? Oh, I would, I would imagine so. Yeah.
57:54 Steven Rinella? When I've seen, if they, if they weren't, we should figure out why that is and just trap it and bottle it up and sprinkle it on every other issue out there. Uh, I've seen, one thing that makes it not an emergency with an uppercase E, but an emergency with a lowercase e is sometimes this will happen when there's a big burn, is they'll want to go in, they'll be like, well, let's go do a timber harvest and harvest all the burned timber.
58:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
58:17 Steven Rinella? And all you, all the, the, all you gotta do, if you're, if you're an anti-logging organization, all you need to do is litigate it to stall it long enough for the stuff to dry and corkscrew. Cause the trees dry and twist and they're no good anyways.
58:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
58:34 Steven Rinella? So if you could be like, if you can hold them back for, I don't know what it is, six months, eight months, I don't know. If you can hold them back, then it's like, becomes,
58:43 Steven Rinella? there's no point to it because the timber's all gone. So lowercase e would be, if you're really gonna go utilize this for real, you gotta go now, or else you're not gonna be able to utilize it. It's gonna dry out.
58:54 Speaker 04 That brings up another tricky point in this is that the plan is like a five-year plan. And so some of the people against it are saying, oh really? It's an emergency, but we're gonna like, we have five years to get this timber. So I-
59:06 Steven Rinella? By then it's called firewood.
59:07 Speaker 04 Yeah. They're thinking that it's just really opening it up to like, just generally more commercial logging. Um, I talked to a guy, uh, that connected to the Forest Service.
59:22 Speaker 04 His questions, and that's what sort of I think what my takeaway is like, it's time to, it's just good to ask questions like what constitutes an emergency in this case, right? Like, if those trees are left, like, maybe there's more pine beetles. We don't know that for sure, right? It, we might have a severe winter for the, severe winters for the next four years. It might not happen, right? I think there's places where there's fallen timber over roads and near public use areas. Should that be cleaned up? Yeah, 100%.
59:53 Steven Rinella? Fire risk would be uppercase E.
59:57 Speaker 04 Sure. I mean, that's like another, like just a whole nother, you know, can of worms. Like, there's all kinds of forest management that, you know, has increased fire risk, you know, in our country. Um, so there is a line in there that says, in quotes, "And this project will contribute towards forest resilience, community protection, and ingress egress."
1:00:22 Steven Rinella? Ah, there's the old, there's the old sticker.
1:00:26 Speaker 04 So again, could be fine. Like, I want to state too, that for the most part, I'm like very pro-logging. Especially these days. I don't think I grew up that way, but the more I've, I've learned in, in my adulthood, like, I think logging can be great, right?
1:00:42 Steven Rinella? There's a lot of logging that needs to happen.
1:00:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, like, good for habitat, good for jobs, good for economy, all the above. But I think you gotta do it in the right way.
1:00:51 Steven Rinella? Yeah, it's like yelling at your kids. Sometimes you gotta yell at them.
1:00:55 Speaker 04 That's right. But you should do it in the right way.
1:00:57 Steven Rinella? Right way. Can't be yelling all the time.
1:00:59 Speaker 04 Yeah. Um, the person I talked to said, you know, think about trade-offs, right? There's salvaging timber and limiting bugs versus the additional road building, you know? What do all those things do?
1:01:12 Speaker 04 They felt like these days, you know, anything come out of the current administration can be regarded or regarding land management should be viewed with a high degree of skepticism because they felt like the economic bottom line is what's important to them and then discussing environmental trade offs is really just getting in the way. So as far as what we can do now, it doesn't like comment period's over, but I think you can still engage with the Forest Service and you can just pay attention and understand what the plans are and when you you're gonna see them probably in action and if they're diverging from what's supposed to be happening, you know, say something about it.
1:01:56 Steven Rinella? Interesting concepts in there.
1:01:59 Speaker 04 It's tricky, tricky, tricky, tricky.
1:02:04 Speaker 04 Moose, did Moose, did Moose like that kind of habitat, Brody?
1:02:09 Speaker 05 Sure.
1:02:10 Steven Rinella? They love it. You know, I'll tell you what they don't like is here's, but this is another thing. Just to go back to step away from Moose for a minute.
1:02:19 Steven Rinella? You get some of those areas, like what you're talking about where all that stuff blows down. If we're just talking about a habitat issue, you get some areas that it becomes not usable.
1:02:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:02:28 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:02:28 Steven Rinella? Game don't use it.
1:02:31 Speaker 04 Oh, for sure.
1:02:31 Steven Rinella? They can't get through it.
1:02:32 Speaker 04 Just match sticks on match.
1:02:34 Steven Rinella? Yeah, it's like you have, you can have huge areas become that like it's just too hazardous. They can't get in it and then it winds up being that nothing uses it. So in those cases, if you can do it without like just tons of excessive road building and then future and then future of like massive amounts of traffic, go clean those areas up. You're also making, besides the cuts make good successional forest habitat.
1:03:01 Steven Rinella? There's places, I mean, you can go look at places all day around here. There's too much blow down.
1:03:06 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
1:03:06 Steven Rinella? It's like there's too much blow down.
1:03:07 Speaker 04 And eventually, it'll eventually, it'll be good.
1:03:10 Steven Rinella? Yeah, it'll rot.
1:03:11 Speaker 04 And there's, I mean, I don't want to say big game maybe doesn't use it, but that doesn't mean that birds and small game aren't up in their.
1:03:19 Steven Rinella? And in a human lifetime, a human lifetime doesn't see this, but long term, sure, it decays and all that. Long, long term, but like, you know, if you're 40 and there's an area that's just too much blow down.
1:03:32 Speaker 05 You're not going to be hunting it when you're 50.
1:03:34 Steven Rinella? It's basically for you, A happening.
1:03:36 Speaker 04 No.
1:03:36 Speaker 06 Here's a transition. We were, I was hiking in Missoula like a couple of months ago with my brother and I couldn't believe the amount of blow down, like huge root balls just up in the air from that wind storm that is, and that same trail, he's been running into a moose. He's run into him three times now.
1:03:53 Speaker 05 Nice. Well.
1:03:54 Steven Rinella? He's drawn to that root wad.
1:03:56 Speaker 06 Tailor made, just, that's a transition.
1:03:58 Speaker 05 Thank you, Randy. We're, we're going to talk about moose in the southern Rockies. Shifting baseline syndrome of, of a Shires Moose in the southern Rockies. You've talked about shifting baseline syndrome a number of times, but if you're not familiar, shifting baseline syndrome occurs when each generation inherits kind of an altered perception of their world compared to the last generation. For example, like gradually forgetting what an ecosystem's original or formal state looked like.
1:04:32 Steven Rinella? Yeah. It's like people that, my favorite is when people say like, you know, boy, Montana sure changed a lot. I'm like, you should talk to the Blackfeet about that.
1:04:41 Speaker 05 Exactly. So yeah, everyone experiences it. They just like, forget what happened or they, they weren't like present when things were different. So like my former understanding of, of moose, Shires Moose in Colorado was, and along with a lot of other people was that they probably weren't, this is just what I always heard. They probably weren't native and occasionally they wandered into the northern part of the state historically.
1:05:08 Steven Rinella? Okay.
1:05:09 Speaker 05 A recent study at the University of Colorado Boulder and Nat Geo.
1:05:16 Speaker 05 They refute that belief, that moose are this like non-native, or even some people will even call them invasive species, which I don't agree with at all, the invasive part. And they did this, they refute this by tracing archaeological evidence, historical texts, indigenous oral histories, and archaeology.
1:05:40 Steven Rinella? Well, and dudes' old photos.
1:05:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, and we'll get to that, yeah.
1:05:44 Steven Rinella? Pictures.
1:05:46 Speaker 05 And you might like wonder like how this would even happen, like this kind of gap where people are like, oh, they were never here when they probably were. Like, this isn't hard and fast. They're not saying 100% that there was always moose in Colorado, but it's like leaning heavily in that direction. And one of the ways that they figure that this was able to occur, that people kind of forgot about them, is European settlers, like they didn't frequently record moose encounters in the southern Rockies, Colorado in particular. And then later, moose were likely, in those areas, were likely hunted to localize extinctions during like late 19th, early 20th century,
1:06:31 Speaker 05 like a lot of other species. So by the time like the 40s and 50s rolled around, Colorado wildlife managers just had no knowledge or experience with moose. And they just simply assumed that moose were not native to the state. They were never there. So the baseline was like incorrectly reset to support the idea that moose were historically absent. So when a introduction, or whether you want to call it reintroduced or introduced, there was a program established in 1978 in Colorado to cut moose loose. They were classified, they classified those moose as a non-native introduced species, not, not as a native species.
1:07:16 Speaker 05 So another like example of this shifting baseline syndrome with, with, for, that hunters can relate to, especially like people of our age would be wild turkeys. So like from the earliest 20th century to let's say, I, I would say like in my head, like around 1990, like close to the time I graduated high school is like when we just started like seeing turkeys in places we had never seen them before. But like hunters for generations were used to just, there was very few turkeys around. And then all over the damn place, they really quickly got used to having turkeys everywhere. And that's their baseline now. And now we're seeing these like declines in populations, like what's going on?
1:08:01 Speaker 05 So like that baseline might change in the future.
1:08:04 Steven Rinella? Yeah. You want to be like, what's going on is you got used to something that lasts at about three years.
1:08:09 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly, exactly. But like, I remember like turkeys being like unicorns, man. Like they just didn't exist where I grew up and now they're everywhere. But going back to this study, they, they, they are using archaeological remains, I said indigenous accounts and early written, written accounts. So there's a couple archaeological sites, one's located near Greeley, Colorado, which is pretty close to Denver. And it's moose remains dating back 9,000 years. Another one is Mesa Verde National Park, which is like southwestern Colorado. Moose bone specimens dating back a thousand years.
1:08:48 Speaker 05 And the idea is that like, because there's a kind of a time span between the, these dated remains, like that they're probably present throughout that time. There's more examples of, of bones and teeth and things like that. They do acknowledge like that they need to study these, these like remains for further biochemical and radiocarbon verification, but so there's like hard physical evidence. And then you go to like Native American oral histories, the Hickory Apache and the Northern Arapaho, they have language markers, like words for moose that show up frequently. They
1:09:30 Speaker 05 have stories and songs where moose show up. So there's like, that's some major evidence there. And then if you go to 19th century, early 20th century newspaper records and photo archives, you'll find more evidence. And they're like, do we have that map, Reva, that first one? There we go. So this is like, shows all these records of moose sightings at a time when, you know, there was supposed to be no moose in Colorado. Those are just like some of the recorded instances of confirmed sightings. Front range media, local newspapers, archives,
1:10:14 Speaker 05 and pioneer diaries throughout the 1800s frequently reported sightings along the front range, which is like not, you know, like the Denver area is not real close to the Wyoming border where they are considered native. And these historical accounts didn't like just note like wide ranging bulls, they documented cows and calves, which suggests a breeding population. And there is some photographic evidence too. There's a picture of a railroad worker from 1912. We got that picture, Reva. And he's standing over a dead cow and calf.
1:10:53 Steven Rinella? He was called a tie chopper.
1:10:55 Speaker 05 The tie chopper, yeah. Railroad lumber worker. Um, 1912, and that's fair play, which is like southwest of Denver, kind of in the middle of the state.
1:11:04 Steven Rinella? Can't argue that.
1:11:05 Speaker 06 Guy's got great posture, too. Straight as a board.
1:11:08 Speaker 05 Um, then there's a, there's a Milton Estes. I did not know that's who Estes Park was, was named after. But that's like a, that's a town right on the border of Rocky Mountain National Park.
1:11:19 Steven Rinella? This old, careful, creep back up for a minute.
1:11:21 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
1:11:22 Steven Rinella? This, this tie chopper.
1:11:24 Speaker 05 The, yeah.
1:11:25 Steven Rinella? Had to shoot the cow and the calf, huh?
1:11:27 Speaker 05 Well, shot the cow and then the calf would just stand there. They had a hungry railroad.
1:11:30 Speaker 06 Well, they're not native, you know?
1:11:32 Speaker 05 They had some hungry railroad workers, man. Um, but there, yeah, gentleman named Milton Estes. Uh, strikes me as like an, an old time, like whatever railroad baron or some, something like that.
1:11:44 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
1:11:45 Speaker 05 Um, he shot a bull near Estes Park and, and that, that area where he shot that bull is now named Moose Park.
1:11:52 Speaker 06 1863.
1:11:53 Speaker 05 Yep.
1:11:54 Steven Rinella? Can I, can I share something with you real quick, the, the blackfoot word? I was looking at this stuff because I remember it was cool. The blackfoot word for moose, sixsisso. I don't know, that's my just rough pronunciation. You know, uh, what it translates to? Um, black going out of sight.
1:12:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, that makes sense. That is.
1:12:14 Speaker 06 Good, man.
1:12:14 Speaker 05 Yeah, uh, Arapo, it's Henen, Henen he, Henen he translates to big man. I like that. Um, the other one I cannot, there's no way I'm going to pronounce which it references the moose's large, flat nose.
1:12:30 Speaker 06 Hmm.
1:12:30 Speaker 05 Um, but anyway, uh, so there's your evidence that, that there's probably, moose were probably in the southern Rockies in, in Colorado. And that they're probably native. Um, if you look at what's happened since, um, we got a map from 1982, which is after the introduction started in Colorado. It's a teeny weeny little spot there in the, in, uh, the flat tops area of Colorado where they, they cut some moose, uh, loose in, in the late seventies. And then you fast forward to the next map, which is 2015. And it's like.
1:13:09 Speaker 06 Damn.
1:13:09 Speaker 05 They're all over the place. And that was 10 years ago.
1:13:12 Speaker 04 Have they made it into New Mexico yet?
1:13:14 Speaker 05 I'm sure, I mean, they're so close to the border, they got to at least end up down in there at some time. Um, and yeah, this map was 10 years ago. That population.
1:13:25 Speaker 06 But not moose.
1:13:27 Speaker 05 That population has increased even more in the past 10 years. So this shifting baseline syndrome, it kind of shaped decades of wildlife management and public perception of moose because they were viewed as non-native. So recognizing them as natives could impact like future management decisions.
1:13:48 Steven Rinella? Initial introduction of 24 animals, estimated population of 3,500.
1:13:52 Speaker 05 3,500, 670 moose tags was by far out of the western states, like more available moose tags than than any other state.
1:14:00 Speaker 04 Is that something that CBW is considering is?
1:14:03 Speaker 05 I don't think they've got this. This study just came out like CPW is not even involved with it yet. I don't know if they'll like formally recognize them as natives.
1:14:14 Speaker 04 Was there a said reason for the study? Someone was just like?
1:14:18 Speaker 05 I think because it was just for the longest time, it was just this unknown. It was like, are they, aren't they?
1:14:22 Steven Rinella? They probably, they probably knew a lot about it and it burned their ass. They were calling them non-native.
1:14:26 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
1:14:27 Steven Rinella? Yeah, there was a similar case with bison in the Grand Canyon area where the park service considered them non-native and there's about three manuscripts now that do the same thing. They'll look at archaeological evidence and, and document that they were native. It was at the fringe of their range in the plains, but. And then, then, then you do this, you go, well, sure, but not a lot.
1:14:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
1:14:47 Steven Rinella? But, but also it looks like they've got a lot of evidence for, for moose, but the, the 9,000 year old, they need to stop using those kinds of things because we had, we had mammoth 8,000 years ago on Wrangell Island.
1:14:59 Speaker 05 Right, right.
1:15:00 Steven Rinella? That's not really something. There was like caribou in Ohio.
1:15:04 Speaker 05 Yeah. And you know, bones can have a way of showing up in weird places, but I think they got a solid case for what they're saying.
1:15:10 Steven Rinella? When you're going to, when you mark stuff back, it's like, march it back. Everybody's got their own pick. But if I also got that, I'd be like, hey, we're going to go back to European contact.
1:15:19 Speaker 05 Well, yeah. And one of them, they did have thousand year old, which is a lot, lot closer.
1:15:23 Steven Rinella? But yeah, go back to European contact and see what's going on. They had a ton with different dates. I feel like that's always a good baseline.
1:15:30 Speaker 04 This is working in my favor because I think I've got like 15 points or so now.
1:15:34 Speaker 05 I got quite a few.
1:15:36 Speaker 04 Moose in Colorado.
1:15:38 Speaker 05 Just hope them wolves don't eat them all.
1:15:39 Speaker 04 Ooh, you're right.
1:15:41 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:15:42 Speaker 04 Thought about that.
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1:18:40 Speaker 04 Well, speaking of growing populations, what do you got Nate?
1:18:45 Steven Rinella? North Carolina elk season coming at you in 2027.
1:18:50 Speaker 04 North Carolina opener.
1:18:51 Steven Rinella? Yeah, man. So here's the deal. Elk, eastern elk, they're extirpated in North Carolina in 1800. And Reva, if you can pull up that blue map. This is the most depressing map in the world. It's so sad, man. Look at that. We're looking at his current versus historic elk range. Basically, if you're listening. You're in elk country. Unless you live in Texas or Cal- well, California. Not even. Unless you live in the lower nine tenths of Texas. The Atlantic coast.
1:19:22 Speaker 04 What's, is that the Great Basin that's, that's between California and Nevada there where they weren't?
1:19:28 Steven Rinella? Eastern California, Western Nevada. And so you'll see if you look real close in Western North Carolina, there's a tiny little blue dot. And that is where in 2001, North Carolina introduced a herd of 52 elk in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Following about 15 years of population growth, 2016, the state agency created a framework for hunting and 2018, general assembly made a resident and non-resident license. Now, that's great, but take a guess at how much that not that resident elk license is. That's beefy. That's a beefy price. Throw a number out there if you haven't seen it. I've been looking at it the whole time. $500 for a resident license.
1:20:09 Steven Rinella? That's, that's like, that's cheap, non-resident, but that is about, that is about 450 bucks more than I would picture it being.
1:20:17 Speaker 05 Listen, I don't think it's expensive to get the opportunity to hunt.
1:20:20 Steven Rinella? Well, you must be relative to other opportunities it's expensive.
1:20:23 Speaker 05 I, it doesn't, doesn't bother me.
1:20:25 Steven Rinella? Well, you must be from California. I'm not saying it bothers me. You could almost hunt for a decade in Montana.
1:20:32 Speaker 05 It's a, but there's not many of them there.
1:20:35 Speaker 04 It's gonna, the only, like, I agree with you, Brody, because I feel like, oh, it's a great way to raise money, but it is definitely going to limit opportunity at 500 bucks.
1:20:44 Steven Rinella? You can't do that to some kid. Some 14-year-old kid draws it. He's gotta come up with 500 bucks.
1:20:48 Speaker 05 Eh, he starts a GoFundMe, he'll be fine.
1:20:51 Steven Rinella? Listen, if you're a 14-year-old kid and you draw it, we'll buy it. Yeah, there you go. But you gotta be a resident. 14? I choose my words very carefully. 14-year-old resident elk hunter in North Carolina. If you draw as a resident in North Carolina and you're 14, we will buy your license.
1:21:09 Speaker 06 And Yanni will come bugle for you.
1:21:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, if 15, you're, you're screwed.
1:21:14 Steven Rinella? 15, you're out. At the time of draw, 14 at the time of draw. Well, you'll probably get some California 14-year-olds writing in because their resident elk tag is 595 bucks. It's, it's rich. It's a lot. Utah's 314, Arizona's 135, so North Carolina, a little spendy. As a non-resident, which they will have tags for, potentially, a thousand bucks. Yeah, stick it to them. Stick it to them. They're already spending all kind of money. Exactly. Like, they're, like, that's a, by the time they spend all the other money, that won't even matter. So that takes us to today, House Bill 747, which passed the House with only one dissenting vote, and it's being considered by the Senate, and that would authorize two
1:21:56 Steven Rinella? tags, one by raffle and one by auction, for the 2027 hunting season, which stretches from October 1st to November 1st. Just to have that tag. Oh dude.
1:22:08 Speaker 05 So those license prices don't mean anything anyway.
1:22:10 Steven Rinella? So, what do you mean? Cause you're not gonna win it?
1:22:14 Speaker 05 Cause you're gonna get it by.
1:22:16 Steven Rinella? So your raffle?
1:22:17 Speaker 05 I got you.
1:22:17 Steven Rinella? So your, the raffle rules, 20 bucks per ticket and you can buy a max of 30.
1:22:22 Speaker 05 Hmm.
1:22:23 Steven Rinella? Okay, so you could put 500 bucks in. So they're, they're, they're, they're, not auctioning, they're doing a draw. Mm-hmm. For how many? For one. One. Then that's a raffle. It's a raffle.
1:22:35 Speaker 05 One 500 dollar elk tag.
1:22:39 Steven Rinella? It could be a thousand if a non-resident wins it.
1:22:41 Speaker 05 Right.
1:22:41 Steven Rinella? So there's two permits. They're doing one by auction, one by, oh, oh, but then, so if you win, then you gotta pony up 500. Then you gotta pony up.
1:22:48 Speaker 05 I got you. I'm surprised that for one tag that's in the draw that they're letting, uh, non-residents in.
1:22:54 Steven Rinella? Yup. Um. Dude.
1:22:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, they should have a.
1:22:58 Steven Rinella? So actually, real quick, real quick. Carolina. Real quick. This is from a place of love. That's not true, if you're gonna make a statement on that. Cause half of the raffle tags gotta be reserved for not North Carolina residents. And so in this first draw, that raffle will go to North Carolina residents. Okay. The auction, which is how the other permit's going, facilitated by a yet to be determined nonprofit, that one is just your typical governor's tag auction type deal. This is the message for North Carolina. It's not too late. Yeah. If you have two elk tags, you cannot auction one of them off.
1:23:34 Steven Rinella? You are getting off on the wrong foot.
1:23:36 Speaker 05 Yup.
1:23:38 Steven Rinella? You are getting off, this is, you are setting a terrible, this is from a place of love. You are setting a terrible precedent that you're gonna build a public elk herd. Your lawmakers are setting a terrible precedent. You're gonna build a public elk herd, issue two tags and one, half of it goes to the highest bidder? Come on.
1:23:58 Speaker 05 I'll play devil's advocate though. There, there.
1:24:01 Steven Rinella? Come on.
1:24:01 Speaker 05 The people are gonna say, what an opportunity to raise 500,000 dollars to go to.
1:24:06 Steven Rinella? I don't care. 25 first. Those tags.
1:24:09 Speaker 05 That's the argument.
1:24:10 Steven Rinella? Both those tags, raffles.
1:24:13 Speaker 05 Yup. I'm just saying what the argument's gonna be.
1:24:15 Steven Rinella? I would say both those tags, raffles.
1:24:19 Steven Rinella? Raise a bunch of money like that. You can't, it can't be that the, the sandwich shop guy, or whoever that always buys all these buys this. It's funny you mention that because they, they did a survey in 22 about just elk support in general and 61% of the folks are all for regulated elk hunting of like local landowners. 19% approve of non-North Carolina residents elk hunting. Yeah, that's great. They're, they're making a huge mistake to auction. I'm not even getting into the resident, non-resident thing. Auctioning off 50% of your thing to the highest bidder and removing 50 cent, 50% of the tags from 99.99999% of North Carolinians
1:25:04 Steven Rinella? or Americans in general and handing it off to the highest bidder is just shitty. It's stupid.
1:25:11 Speaker 06 We need a billionaire in North Carolina to step up, buy that auction tag.
1:25:15 Steven Rinella? And raffle.
1:25:15 Speaker 06 Just, yeah, or just make sure it doesn't go to a non-North Carolinian.
1:25:20 Steven Rinella? It's just terrible. They shouldn't be doing that. Do, do a raffle, do a draw.
1:25:27 Steven Rinella? Don't do that. Moving forward, they have a rule where if they add another, they have to add an additional raffle tag before they add another auction tag. Okay, sure. But it could just grow. That's good. Equally. It could just be like two and two and four and four. You can't auction. This is, there should be a t-shirt that says, you can't auction half your opportunity.
1:25:49 Speaker 05 You come from a big auction state. Jim, what do you think about that?
1:25:52 Steven Rinella? A former auction state. Our, our commission stopped auctioning and we do raffles for those. We don't have an auction tag anymore.
1:25:59 Speaker 05 Nice.
1:26:01 Steven Rinella? I'm not anti-auction tag. I'm anti-having half and whatever the numbers, I'm anti-having half of your tag allocation go to the highest bidder. Auction states usually take what? One in a hundred? Like a percent?
1:26:17 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:26:18 Steven Rinella? A percent? 2% of the opportunity to the highest bidder? Okay, sure. That's fine. 2%? 50%?
1:26:26 Speaker 06 I could see it being a, if it was a one-time deal that was just like, this money is to get the elk management, give it some legs, right? Like I could, but, but to just have this be the perpetual allocation is not.
1:26:40 Steven Rinella? Here's what I'd do. I'd sell it to the highest bidder and then raffle that money off.
1:26:47 Steven Rinella? You buy a raffle to win all that money. I like that idea.
1:26:54 Steven Rinella? Or something like that.
1:26:55 Speaker 05 Nate, what's with this don't name elk thing? I really like it.
1:26:58 Speaker 06 This is the best part is you go on, on North Carolina's state agency and they have all these recommendations on being elk smart, be elk aware, yada, yada. One of the bullet points is I quote, "Don't name elk. Characterizing elk or any wildlife by naming them degrades their wild essence. The very reason people are drawn to elk is their unaltered independence from humans. Personifying elk as humans takes away from their truly wild nature."
1:27:27 Steven Rinella? I agree that non-hunters have no business naming elk. Coming from a guy who just named a mouse. Yeah. Non-hunters should not name them, but if hunters can't call them old picket fence or old drop tine, how are you supposed to know what you're talking about?
1:27:42 Speaker 05 Colorado's got a whole anti-poaching law named after an elk, the Samson Law.
1:27:47 Steven Rinella? Oh, really?
1:27:48 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:27:48 Steven Rinella? Yeah, but non-hunters shouldn't name them like old cutesy, whatever they name stuff. No. Yeah, I'm a hundred percent against naming animals, researchers naming individual animals. And I have graduate students that start naming things and I tell them, you not naming animals. Scientists don't name animals, but that's a different wrinkle. I hadn't thought about hunters naming. All of their target bucks a different name. I didn't think of that. I mean, you can only say that one buck. There could only be so many bucks that are that one buck.
1:28:19 Speaker 06 Moving into another state that's near and dear to my heart, Ohio, a active listener and burgeoning conservationist Josh Sheehan wrote in about a 12,000 acre purchase of private land for state recreation in Ohio. I think, I think that's super important because Ohio is one of the lowest rates of public land in, in the U.S. It's like 2.5%. And they've, they've just passed, they just passed, the governor signed it, a $4 billion infrastructure bill, which covers parks and public buildings, museums, 100K for the Johnny Appleseed museum, 25 million for Central State.
1:28:53 Steven Rinella? Did you gesture toward me when you said that?
1:28:54 Speaker 06 Yes, because of the recent podcast. 25 million for Central State University, which if you're from Southwest Ohio, you'll know why that's funny. But 25 million of it is for buying state land and that can be matched with 25 million in Pittman Robertson funds. And they're looking at about 12,000 acres in the southeast of Ohio, the basically the fracking capital of Ohio, which we'll get into. There's a number of public state pieces that people already hunt, that they're adding acreage to. Richland Furnace, Shawnee, Tarahalo, Conklin Cooper Hollow, and it's just going to broaden public access.
1:29:39 Speaker 06 The interesting tidbit here is that they're prioritizing sustainable timber management, soil and water preservation, and public recreation. Where it gets a little weird is that this is where a lot of fracking goes on. And so you have, there's a little bit of questions about are they just getting more land to frac? It's unclear. That process will play out over the future, the coming years. But I called, I called one of my buddies who's down there in Ohio, and I've hunted in this area too. And worst case, I mean, you hear stuff like fracking, oh no, it's all just this cloak and dagger, whatever. But we've hunted on fracked land, you know? If you, if you have a 12,000 acre fracking operation, you know, they plunk down 40 acre
1:30:23 Speaker 06 little hubs and then you hunt the rest of it. And so I'm kind of sitting here like, okay, even if it does end up going and getting fracked, at least it's public that I can go hunt now. You know, and Egypt Valley, Salt Fork, Jockey Hollow, those are all examples of that, that it's still good access. But keep your eyes, and that money then, you know, there's a royalty portion of it that goes to purchasing more. And where this original 25 million dollars came from is partly from these gas royalties. And so it's just nuanced, but it is exciting that a state that doesn't have a lot of public land can get more of it. And it's going to happen.
1:31:00 Speaker 06 Finally, another great news story from state levels Massachusetts, modernizing their hunting laws.
1:31:05 Steven Rinella? Assholes.
1:31:06 Speaker 06 Those are assholes. Um, the governor put forward a note to update outdated laws, outdated hunting laws and reduce the deer population. And she says it's specifically in relation to the spread of alpha gow. Uh, these three, these three initiatives she's got is removing the Sunday hunting ban because they're between them and Maine. They're the last two with Sunday hunting bands, removing the permanent disability requirement for crossbows. So anyone can shoot a crossbow and then reducing the archery hunting setback from 500 feet, which it is currently to 250. The, the interesting tidbit here-
1:31:42 Steven Rinella? I get very excited about number one.
1:31:44 Speaker 06 Yup.
1:31:46 Steven Rinella? Decreased enthusiasm on number two. Real excited about number three.
1:31:51 Speaker 06 Totally agree. Crossbows are a complicated issue. Um, but yeah, doubles your, the Sunday hunting ban. It, it cuts your weekends in half. So doubling your opportunities is great. Um, and the setback, I, at first I didn't really think that that was a big deal, but when you throw the numbers to it and Reva, if you can pull up that, that green and red map, um, if you were to drop, like, let's say you have a piece of woods and you drop a building in there and it's by statute, you cannot hunt with archery tackle within 500 feet of it. You lose 18 acres. If that's reduced to 250 feet, that standoff, you lose four and a half acres. And so applied to a pretty suburban area where these, where whitetail are generally doing well and where
1:32:31 Speaker 06 there's a lot of concern about, uh, tick-borne illness as well as CWD transmission, um, it has a significant impact. And so looking at that map, all that green is what it currently, this is, this is a township, uh, Norton. All that green is what's currently open to hunting with a 500 foot standoff. On the right is what it would be with a 250 foot standoff. Now that it gets more complicated. There's local rules and whatnot, but the base, this is the baseline.
1:32:55 Steven Rinella? Yeah. You never think of those, I shouldn't say never. You don't think of those standoffs as really reducing huntable ground, but then you look at that map right there and it's, it's like, it's shocking how much it does. And I'm no math wizard. Um, I would've thought 500 feet, 200 feet. I would've thought it would've been 50%, but it's the, it winds up being different.
1:33:14 Speaker 06 So if you-
1:33:15 Steven Rinella? At 500 feet, you lose eight- 18 acres, a 250 foot standoff, you lose four and a half acres.
1:33:21 Speaker 06 And so just, just applied to this township of Norton, right now it's, it's about 19,000 acres, the whole town. Off limits at 500 feet is 13,000 of those 19,000 acres. At 250, only 9,000 is off limits, or about half. So your huntable acreage at the five, as it can't stands currently is 5,600 acres. If you reduce that to 250, it goes almost to 10,000 at 9,700, or 52% of, of the area.
1:33:47 Steven Rinella? What an interesting way to increase access.
1:33:49 Speaker 06 Yeah. Especially at a place where whitetail are crushing it.
1:33:52 Steven Rinella? Let's run the numbers with a one foot restricted area.
1:33:56 Speaker 06 You have to give me some time on that.
1:33:58 Speaker 05 How does this?
1:33:59 Steven Rinella? Can't shoot within a foot of that guy's house.
1:34:01 Speaker 05 This is coming from the governor.
1:34:03 Speaker 06 So that's the interesting tidbit. She is a governor known for anti-gun legislation. She's also getting reelected this year. And so a thought is that she's pandering to hunting organization and hunters who are a swayable demographic traditionally by giving some, some, throwing some bones to the archery hunters.
1:34:23 Steven Rinella? Take them bones.
1:34:24 Speaker 06 I know, man. I know.
1:34:26 Steven Rinella? Or you'd have your cake and eat it too. Take them bones and then don't vote for them.
1:34:29 Speaker 06 If you, if you want.
1:34:32 Steven Rinella? So there's a lot of ways to play this.
1:34:33 Speaker 06 The bill's, uh, passed the house. It's sitting with the senate. They're, they're trying to reconcile. Um, but you know, just follow it. Uh, Sportsman's Alliance has got a call to action. Um, check it out on their website. Really good coverage there. Um, and it's just, it's good stuff. You know, take, take what you can get. Um, and finally, like Steve talked about, Oregon raised their overnight lodging tax by 1.25% for conservation. It's great.
1:34:57 Steven Rinella? That's great.
1:34:58 Speaker 06 Alternative funding mechanisms.
1:35:00 Speaker 05 Did you see what Gianforte said to the people in Oregon that came up with the, the hunting, hunting ban legislation?
1:35:06 Steven Rinella? He had message for them?
1:35:07 Speaker 05 He said, don't come to Montana.
1:35:11 Steven Rinella? I keep wanting to do a, if we had better production capabilities and actors and stuff that worked here, I wanted to do a skit series where that guy, you know, that little Moby looking dude?
1:35:21 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:35:21 Steven Rinella? The vegan guy that, that pushed for that? Did he, where the day after the election, he goes out to ranches to inform them that they, that they have to wind down their operation?
1:35:33 Steven Rinella? It's like, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but ranching is now illegal.
1:35:41 Steven Rinella? You boys are gonna need to wrap it up.
1:35:46 Speaker 05 Give me that cowboy hat.
1:35:47 Speaker 06 He'd only make it to one or two range.
1:35:51 Speaker 06 So, these are just generally good news stories coming from the state level, especially when there's, there's chicanery happening at the federal level. So, stuff to get excited about and stuff that you guys can, can really have an impact on if it's, if it's in your home state.
1:36:07 Steven Rinella? The, the, the funding, and I don't like when people say alternate funding mechanism. I should point out for, for listeners, the standard funding mechanism for wildlife at the state levels, hunting licenses, tags, stamps, fishing licenses, like hunting licenses, fishing licenses, excise taxes on sporting goods, pay for your state level conservation. When people say an alternate funding mechanism, sometimes what they're getting at is this idea that we should ditch all that stuff and have something different. I like to think of these states that are doing supplemental funding mechanisms. And there's novel ways of doing it. And, and what, what happened where you do a percent, like a, a fraction
1:36:50 Steven Rinella? of a percent of state tax puts a state in a position where it's being like, doing great wildlife work and doing public land acquisitions. Hell yeah, man.
1:37:01 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's like, it, it basically puts an extra dollar 25 on your taxes per night when staying at like an Airbnb or a hotel.
1:37:09 Steven Rinella? Yeah, and most of those are people that don't even live in that state, so screw them.
1:37:11 Speaker 06 Yeah, and it raises 38 million bucks.
1:37:14 Steven Rinella? Uh, here's a, here's a good one from Utah. This is, this is an interesting one. Um, this is, this is another bit of like, this is a kind of public land going public land, okay? The information I'm going to share with you is taken from Utah's Department of Natural Resources website. So, this is in the Book Cliffs area.
1:37:33 Steven Rinella? In the Bookcliff's area, they have this 50,000 acre parcel of state-owned land, but it's in, it's a, it's part of the school trust land, okay?
1:37:45 Steven Rinella? Historically, if you go into the eastern states where you have townships, so six, 36 square mile townships, like you got counties and the counties are broken up into townships, each township is six miles by six miles. Historically, you'd be like, well, how are we going to pay for public schooling? Well, you'd say, one section out of each township, so one square mile out of every 36 square miles will be given to the state to monetize in order to pay for public education. In the western states, you have a similar thing, but it's not as rigid in terms of the township things, but you have what we call school trust lands. In Utah, they have this big chunk of school trust land. And the school trust program works where it needs, they have the option, they have
1:38:30 Steven Rinella? the mandate to leverage their school trust lands for purchase or for profit, right? What do you can, what can you do to get the most money off them? But they had this chunk where there's no roads. It's a roadless piece of school trust land. And they realized the best way to derive value from this 50,000 acres of roadless school trust land, the best way to derive value would be to sell it and then take that asset and invest it. And that's going to do more than what other kind of other business you do, mining, logging, whatever on that land. So this is, this is a weird deal, like the state moving money around. So here you have the state school trust land holds 50,000 acres.
1:39:13 Steven Rinella? The state legislature goes and creates a pool of money. What was the, what was the price? You see the price here? I got high. 50 million? 50 million bucks, okay?
1:39:23 Steven Rinella? The state legislature goes and creates a pool of money, 50 million dollars, so that they can go pay the other state agency, the schools trust agency, the 50 million dollars to then turn it into a state game area.
1:39:41 Steven Rinella? And they're even calling it, they're saying it'll remain a roadless state game area. So it's a really novel way. It was already public. It'll stay public, but now you've had that the school trust fund gets its money. So basically the Utah taxpayer just paid 50 million bucks into its own public school fund. And what they got out of it was 50,000 acres of protected habitat and a really good wildlife area. There's a hook I didn't realize. I read a summation to this in a lot of places. The hook I didn't realize is that um, they are not handing over mineral rights.
1:40:27 Steven Rinella? The state is not handing off its mineral rights to this piece of land. Trying to find this graph where it mentions this, excuse the sloppiness. I got it highlighted there. Okay. In the, in the press release on the DNR's own site, it says, "It's important to remember that trust lands," that's capital T L, so the school trust land thing, "will retain all subsurface mineral rights and the access necessary to develop those resources in the future, if that option is financially viable." So they've sold the land to the Utah taxpayers.
1:41:07 Steven Rinella? They now have this land, but the school trust people are saying, "Unless down the road, we decide to industrialize it and mine it. Till then it's yours." Which fortunately- It's great. It's, might not happen. It's just an interesting little wrinkle. I, if I was the state, I would go to the state and say, "Can we revisit the, the, the mineral right bit of this? Is this a deal killer for you?" Like- Walk across the hall to that office and be like, is it a deal killer? If we take the subsurface rights?
1:41:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:41:46 Steven Rinella? But still, it's, you know, I still applaud the measure. Cause this is coming from a state where there is, which has a history of being not entirely friendly to federally managed public land. So this is great. A deer doesn't care if it's on state rolled wilderness area or federal wilderness area. The deer doesn't care. He loves it either way. It's great. The subsurface thing is, is odd. We'll see if in some decades they, they realize that the place is full of tungsten. And, um, you know, the place is full of tungsten and all of a sudden they're like, hey, you know, we gotta have an awkward conversation about that land he bought from us.
1:42:22 Speaker 04 You keep shooting that punt gun, they're gonna need some more tungsten.
1:42:25 Steven Rinella? That was bismuth. That was bismuth. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, it's a news show. Thanks for coming on, Jim Heffelfinger.
1:42:32 Speaker 04 Thank you. Thanks for having me.
1:42:34 Steven Rinella? Great. Uh, join next week and, um, this is the only place where you can get news that ain't fake.
1:42:39 Speaker 04 That's our tagline. All right. I like it.
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