Ep. 915: Dan Moultrie on the History and Ethics of Trail Cameras and Other Thorny Issues of Wildlife Management

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. This is the meat eater podcast coming at you shirtless severely bugbed and in my case underwear list. You can't predict anything. Raw to you by first light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First light builds, no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com, that's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Alright, join today by Dan Moultry, thanks for coming, Dan. Dan is an outdoorsman entrepreneur, conservationist, best known as the founder of Moultry. I'm a pioneer in commercial trail cameras and feeders. He served 12 years as chairman of Alabama's Department of Natural Resources, earned wildlife conservationist of the year from the state of Alabama. Guided big game in Alaska for many years remains very active in wildlife conservation. The first thing I want to ask you is I have to ask you a solution to a problem I have. We're down in Texas, at my buddy's ranch, okay? He's got oscillots on his ranch. These researchers were in and they had these little areas where there was oscillot activity. We picked an area that we knew there was oscillots hanging around and went in and hung their camera, but had a last minute mind change. We made a pin ahead of time, being like we're going to go put a camera at this pin, but then got there and didn't like it and wandered off and set a camera. We haven't got an onslaught yet, but every morning I wake up and I look at we got amazing things like all the time, big bark yesterday, amazing things all the time, but my buddy was out there. This is way down in Texas. My buddy's there. I'm like, hey, go to this pin and find the camera. He can't find the camera. He can't locate it again. I'm like, there's a bush. There's a lot of bush. And this camera is just plugging away, doing its job, it's still running. Is it a solar, solar, it'll continue running? No, I didn't put a solar on it, but it's like it's becoming joke. We're me and the guys that I set it with, I just constantly every day I'm like, oh, here's what happened in front of the camera. I would get a multiple time to go find that. That's apparently a really good spot for knowing those where it is, is it like, how do I find it? I don't like to be tough. I don't know. Do we have to be like an equivalent to an equivalent of finding my phone? They've never thought that some idiot would put one and not remember where he put it. Oh, that's a great question. That's good. That's good. We'll approach that. It's performing. It's performing away. I mean, I got pictures this morning. I got a big ol' nil guy walking past this morning. It's a great spot if I knew where it was. It's on a, it's on a, so we hung it like, when we hung it up, we hung bird wings from monofilm. I put all kinds of, I made a tree and I put all kinds of bobcat lure and bobcat piss. We scattered feathers everywhere and just tried to make it like the, uh, oscelots, like dream location. And at first, it was coyotes coming in all the time. The oscelots never shown, but it's, it's like, the greatest hotspot. Not a, no, no, I feather off. There was a feline. I feather off. I have the bobcat. It was the feather. It's so funny because that camera keeps like doing his job. The feathers are all gone. Nothing smells the tree anymore. But yeah, I can't locate it. I don't know. So I thought maybe you'd have a tip on how to find your camera. Go back and look. What the funniest part is as he's wandering all over looking for it, I told him, I said, man, I didn't get a picture. You looking for it. So you weren't in the right area because you think at least out of got a shot of you walking around trying to find it. So this camera's gone. It'd even be better if you had a picture of him looking for it. You say, I'll give you your warm, your warm. Yeah. So all we know is wherever you went, ain't the right area. That is great. So there might be one of your cameras is out there somewhere cranking away, but I can't recall. Like with the guys, the engineers and see if there's any way we zoomed out and find that exact one. Oh, I would love it if you could even give me a pointer like I kind of like it's so funny because three of us that said it, like, yeah, I don't really remember what we were thinking by. I remember we wandered off. You know, there's so many. And just like y'all doing that, you can't believe the calls, just like the calls you get from all your stuff. I guess what we're doing with the camera. Here's what we did. And it goes from a 40 year old woman putting it out that you see what time her kids come in from date and who she drags in with them to us all out to everything. And that's been one of the neatest deals. I know at your Christmas event, we had talked about how many pictures we were holding in the clouds. And in the billions and billions of pictures that's been made, a lot of those are hunting, a lot of them are wildlife, a lot of them are security, but it's that the entire gambit to see what that product has been used for. Yeah. It's off the spectrum. It's great. When you go into my buddy's hunt and shack, he's just got, it's just sitting on the counter. Yeah. Just the camera sitting on the counter. And he's got a note on the door says, your photo is already on my phone. That's exactly right. So he's like, turn around, turn around and go out. Almost in today with all the different camera companies and even just the numbers we put out. But you combine all the camera companies, you're out somewhere. You better know you're pretty good at odds. You're getting your picture taken to a lot of the stuff, the guy who in Colorado that he'd killed the girl years ago that they found in Florida, found her off a picture of a ultra camera. Is that right? Yeah. Is that guy? I can't remember if it was Wisconsin or Minnesota that killed a state representative in her husband. They were doing a big man hunt for him. It was a hunter. Yeah. A hunter called in. And he says, I got that guy right now on my property and they came out and apprehended him. Yeah. It's been a neat deal to see it for me, if I see the till now, it's baby, it's been neat. What like, what? I can't even remember it. Like, I remember it all coming to be, but what, if you had to go back to like, what is the genesis in your, like, what is the genesis of the trail cam as we know it? Jimmy, like, like, how did it, where did it even come from? Yeah. I tell you mine in hours and I think we were, the, you know, there probably were some people working on it after the time, but in the early 80s, we were carrying, here's where mine came from. We were carrying customers to Canada, Black Bear hunting, really into it. And everybody, and you've carried enough people hunting and you say, hey, what have you taken now? I've taken a black one with a chevron. I've got this in that. And if you got color phase bears, which we did, a guy always say, boy, I'd like a cinnamon bear. They always want a cinnamon. Oh, I take a red one. They always did that. And we were trying to find out what bears were on what baits to colors. If we had somebody that significantly wanted that color, you know, those earliest days, we would take big fish hooks, like tuna hooks, dull them down, weld them on the barrel. And at some point that bear is going to rub his arm across it and it's going to collect hair. We would get that hair and then, and if you saw the color phase, you knew, you didn't know if he was locked in on it, if you knew what had been by there. So, and we were getting into that, well, you know, that bear that comes by. He's a cinnamon, but he's a big old male, but he's he's not turned on. So you had to figure out time first. In the early days, there was a little, it looked like a wristwatch. There was a little clot. And it, when the string got pulled, when a bear broke a string, it would pull a plastic sliver out of that watch and it would stop the watch. And so you'd go stick the plastic sliver. This is in 79, 80, 81, and you slip it back in. Three M companies who ended up making that in the earliest days and probably was used for something construction. It probably wouldn't even design for hunting it back then and everything was taking ideas from other stuff. But you pulled the plastic back in and it would start blinking the time that it went off. So you would have. They were making it for what purpose? For, I don't know if it was for construction, for security or something like that, but you would know what time that had been broken. So you'd go back and this is the earliest days of bear baits and people doing that. I mean, when it seemed like it was taking off when that, that's out of hunting. You'd put it back in. You'd have the time. So you'd say, okay, the first bear broke string at 430 in the afternoon, typical bear feeding pattern coming in late afternoon. You could get the time. We had two deals. We wanted to know the times and we wanted to know the color face. And I've always been a Rugo Burk kind of guy building stuff all our, most of our products. especially the early days came from me going down shot welding it up, building it, getting it right, trusting it, starting again and making what we want. And I got a camera. I found one that had a, you're old enough to remember the days of film cameras. And a lot of these folks now, I hunt film. Oh, yeah. I'm talking about stuff like this with my kids, man. They kind of like, yeah, 12 pictures. And your choices were 1224 and 36 pictures. I had to go down like the drugstore. I like the Walmart, whoever had on the bed, the biggest problem with all that going away is you don't have those containers anymore. Everybody used to have great containers for everything. I'll take my official hooks, fish and sinkers. And I'll still say to my kids, I'll still talk to them. I'll be like, I'll still describe it. You know, you know, like a 35 millimeter film canister. And they're going home. But those are good containers. But there was a camera that had a single shot. And you probably own a, and then you had to hand roll it, but you got one shot. Yeah. I took me to carry you go like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I took one of those Victor, those biggest rat traps Victor might not do the little miles traps with the rat traps, because the, the tread along it would move. And I built it on frame and I despringed it, because if it hit it at the power, it is. It would have crushed the camera, but where it just had a nice to it, like you weaken the spray. Yes. And I lined it up with that button on the camera. And so first spring, first spring, not like through a string. So it would literally hit the button. It would hit the button, but it had to the, to where the bait goes, the string tide. And I will tell you the stuff about it. I don't want to act like I understand. Tell me about the string. The string went from where the bait, like if you put cheese on a rat trap, the bait holder. That's what holds the arm that trips it lets the turtle fall. Yeah. I got it. So the string would go to that and trapping. So bear it hit that. Yeah. Pulse it. It trips. So you're running like a piece of mono piece of mono approach to the bait area anywhere around it. Yeah. Just where it get on the main trail. You know, they're always on the chest high. Yeah. The little things aren't tripping. So it, yeah. So it trips it. Did hit that rat trap. One picture. First time I go into the bait and I go in and say, how are you holding the camera still? The camera was mounted. It's just the same way almost today. I put it on a strap right there where the tread was. So it was pointed at the bait and you secured it to a tree or whatever you had around there. Bear come down trips. It's gone. It turns on. We go in to check it the next morning. I go in and all this neat stuff, like I was telling you about the number of pictures and what mulfries grow into billions and billions and billions of pictures. Whatever has it been better? I walked in and saw that mono down and that treadle on top of that camera deal. First picture. I take it out. Go to the deal. We're up into the boggling. I mean, Canada. I carried it to the drug store and, you know, they go, you want one hour or three days. I said, I'll take one hour and this one and we get that very first picture. Every bit of it came from that and after that. When you were doing that, you were, did you think about, you were just trying to, you were just trying to hunt bears? I will. We were doing something bears. In fact, really and truly, probably I was more interested in the hunting side like you would have been than I was the business side of it. And for years, we had it. And one of the moguls in our industry got named Ray Mursky. I don't know if you knew Ray out of text is just, I mean, a mogul in the hunting industry. The hunting industry wouldn't be where it was today if it wasn't for Ray. And he was, he and I hunted together all the time and he saw that and I showed him some of those pictures and he goes, what do you have? And I was telling him how it works. And he said, you got to develop that for, he said, you know how good that would be. And I said, you really think that's how that will. And he said, he said, it'll be off the chart. I'll swing back to another comment here in a minute that proves Ray was smart about what he did. So we started developing, came up with one, came up with that was he, he's censored or motion censored, had our very first camera that we got. Go to see the buyers, our traditional buyers that were selling feeders and management stuff all over. I got hit with you really think somebody's wife's gonna let them put a $300 camera out in the woods, mulch. Yeah. I think so. Had trouble getting it, it was, it didn't take legs. And today probably besides, I don't know what I think cameras may be the part of the best selling item in our industry right now. The, the Ray Mercky comes back in. I've been to Walmart and showed it to the buyer. I just a little outside our deal. Ray was on sporting good boards up there. He got in front of those people, went back and he said, he asked, let me tell you all, I've been around this as long as anybody and, and Ray was so well respected. Want to say I'm Walton's closest friends. And he said, if you all put this in, he said, I think it'll be one of the biggest items ever in the hunting and fishing category. He foresaw that 40 years ago. But what, but that point, I mean, the rat trap contraption, we had gone by that and had an infrared switch on down infrared and motion switch. When it first came, when first, you go by trail cameras, infrared motion, first one by was, was infrared motion, but which is the same thing that trips your garage door. Yeah, absolutely. How did that work? It weren't really good. But did you guys, was it all contained by that point? It was all contained. Only pat, you know, I always viewed being in our industry, the sales and the marketing was aside. I never patented anything. All our stuff, I never patented. It's so, it's so, we were so on the front edge of the trail camera deal. I thought, you know what? It's going to be out in the weather, nothing envisioned of where it's going up. It is now. I thought the secret to this is going to be protecting it from the weather. And we had like a baseball cap hat over the camera box and it protected it. And we patented that. Only pat and I've ever held and had it. But who knows, after they got sealed up, it was a useless deal and didn't, you know, but I thought it would protect it. But that's kind of where it evolved. In fact, I had several guys that was testing them. They go, man, we sprayed it with water. And I'll win all in the front. I said, yeah, that's protected it from this way of water, not that way of water. But all that has developed from there. But so then we got, you know, that first generation turned into second generation, second generation to third generation, taken it from a, a infrared motion switch off a film camera. Remember every bit of this film. So you had to have massive battery draw to the early ones for film. Oh, everyone early commercially available. Everyone's that we sold the earliest ones were all film based. See, that's funny. Bring it up because like I'm trying to match up sort of my own awareness. And I have no recollection of seeing a film one. But here's what I do remember. I remember that you'd go out fishing, trolling salmon. Yeah. And you'd come home with a big scroll of paper. Yes. Because your sonar, your fish finders, exactly right. Had a scroll of paper and a pencil. Right. And you find in those spots and you could people would be walking around with those rolls of paper in their pocket and they'd open them up and show you fish marks. And you'd carry it around like that. I remember that, but I have no recollection of there being a trail camera with film in it. Do you remember at the earliest days of the shot show? I mean, this is back when I didn't know shots or exists. When we got into it, there was the Browning and Remington's and Winchester's. And we were so early in it. I mean, we're coming up on 50 years in it. There'd be like maybe Baker tree stands and some old, old, old categories. And but every year when you would meet in those earliest shot shows and you'd go to the show. And of course now, just like this morning, like me showing you the air heads early, everybody whips out the phone and whips to them. You would carry packs of photos that you had had enlarged or and you'd be at the show and people are whipping those out and got the got the photos and the trail cam photos. They're the trail cam photos. God, I have no like what year would that have been? You put a roll of film in a camera and hung it on a tree. That was in the 80s. That was in the 80s because we when we developed digital, we were the first in digital. We were all the way through. I think it's first cellular and and all that development came from everybody when digital cameras came. Everybody and you were old enough to remember this. Everybody had cameras and they were all filmed. Digital comes out and they're like, you mean, I don't have to buy more film. Sure, man. But the problem with digital, this was a this this light to have got us this worked us to death, figuring this out. That for a digital camera to work, it has to be on because I don't know if you remember the digitals when they would warm up. You'd hear it. And they'd warm up. Yeah. So by the time they warm up, the game had already gone by or it's good point. I can't forget about that noise. So when we were doing all the early prototypes and testings, Yeah, we had car batteries out there and they were draining car batteries down because it had to stay on the entire time You didn't have the the time you know how it one of the the selling items on cameras and air cameras or shutter speed Yeah, yeah, there was no shutter speed if you had to wait on that camera to warm up everything would have been by but got it Once we got that figured out then the digital came that that But you guys knew You guys knew that the film thing was done it. Oh, yeah, cuz like if can't like if people are done by and film for their normal cameras They're not gonna be putting them in trail cameras. No, that film is over one of the deals We would go by and and I was talking before any of your guys this morning about it You see so much item if you go to any sporting goods store or any of the the national chains You see 60 feet of an item they're selling that's something quite a bit of those you judge by square footage of the store Yeah, you going Walmart the impulse buyer for Walmart at that time was a guy named Clifford young And he was telling me how much if you go by the check out at Walmart his title is impulse buyer impulse bar And and and Clifford probably retired now, but he was in overall impulse items when you went through the checkout And if you think about what was there? There was film He had all three film. They had Mars candy bars. They had actually combs was on there Items that somebody's gonna pick up that they would go. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah I need to get that right there and he told me back then when I was showing him and he and I'd hunt together About the cameras. He said films dead. No tree. He said our sales on film is going like that. Oh, no kidding And so that that forced that and that guaranteed in the same deal you see that shell space going at all Walmart I guarantee it's changing Everyone big huge announcement me either live the Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026 this time we're hitting the Midwest me either live the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six midwestern cities We got Grand Rapids Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis and Fargo Join myself Yannis Putellis Claynew can Brent Reeves and Randall Williams for a night of laughs Trivia free prizes news and opinions from across the world's of hunting Fishing wildlife conservation and wild foods also were already stacking up some great special guests I got my buddy bubbly Doug making the appearance in Madison Me either live as the best Christmas gift for any outdoorsman or woman in your life Tickets go on sale September 25th, but sign up at the me either dot com slash tour and you'll get pre sale access to buy tickets on September 14th Days before they go on sale to the public. We can't wait to see you there And I'm telling you go ask anyone who has ever come to one of the me either live events and they will tell you we laugh our asses off We give away great prizes. We put on a solid show that I'm proud to be part of I just want to go back to the call to impulse buyer because you know like Infishing yet bobbers, mm-hmm and fly fisherman wanted to feel special So they named them strike indicators, right? Because they just wanted they couldn't handle it It seems that the dude that's the impulse buyer would want to rebrand his position Because most people have like I have a perception that an impulse buyer is Impulsive. No, no, they saw the way. Well, it's it's the The column like the I don't know man like the last minute thing you forgot. You needed buyer Because you'd be like, dude, I want to be an impulse buyer. Like I don't want to make it impulse purchase. That's that's impulsive Well, Walmart had a deal and we learned so much from every category, every Whether it was the Cabello's whether it was Don's where it was whatever in the industry and 50 years of learning and and working with all the merchants and everything's different Walmart had a deal and I don't know how many people knew about it, but it was and and we learned about it from the impulse guy They had an item every year. They call the VP item. You ever heard of that? What was all it volume producing item? Oh VP VP I VP I volume producing item They would pick one item a year. It was cranking volume that was cranking volume If you got you'll remember this you go through the check out at Walmart They had a huge drum probably a 30 gallon drum ring pops remember when all those kids at yeah VP item got it The only sporting item that ever made it that I know of we had a multi item as a VP I was it it was a when we came out with the demand feeders for the the For the that the deer would come up and activate it. Yeah, and it qualified because it was low price point high volume Lot people but people that won't pay five hundred dollars for a feeder if they pick and I forgotten what the retail was it on 15 dollars 17 dollars It fit that and it and it was all right. It was unbelievable I mean, but just so we learned that from them and and and That volume that you could reach with that we knew the cameras. We were on to something But we had to go through the generations of it. Just what you told me. Yeah, it hit me but hit me with that thing Because I kind of got you derailed a little bit when I was on the film thing But like if you when you if if people knew film and I don't even remember putting film in a trail camera But but what wound up being the solve For for having a but I'm saying for having a digital camera hanging on a tree that's just on all the time And it's and it you got a couple of those batteries in there and they're going to smoke through in two days that the solve was finding enough battery Power to keep that digital camera on but finding a digital camera that didn't use much battery power Yeah, and finally that we found those and got to two of those to meet so there would be for a while That was like powered by car batteries. We all our testing was going for car batteries and it's draining them like there's no Mostly, it was in those days. I didn't think we'd get over that home That was a very tough home in trail cameras to get over. Yeah Now with the like when you look at the solar stuff coming in What do you think is the lag? Okay, if you like if I if I'm thinking in my mind like when you first start seeing solar become popularized, right? What do you feel is the lag where like a thing will happen like battery technology rechargeable battery lithium? Solar, right? What is the lag between some user group somewhere? Identifying solar mm-hmm and then being like I'm probably gonna need to figure out how to bake that into a camera Mm-hmm, I mean like what like what is the delay like with it? We stay and I'm not I don't think I'm telling a trade secrets here that you know head and discussor that you don't know We stay about at least three years out on what we're developing. Okay The stuff we got coming in three years. It's gonna you you're not gonna. I'm a state. It's unbelievable We just introduced the solar edge for The technology on it It should be undrainable You ought to be able to put it out and don't ever touch it. Yeah I already kind of got that with one of the external solar panels. Yeah, the problem is the it's it's Bears love those things. Yeah. Oh, yeah I used to I used to joke with a lot of people. It's hard to teach us bears to tear off all that stuff So we thought but now I got it. So I'll tell you about that a funny situation. I put one on a I put one on a trail You know and um the first I'm not kidding the first image I got the first image of guys a bear coming down the trail right The second image I got is that camera aimed at the sky He don't he rolls the second image. I got is that camera aimed off in one part of the woods the third image I got is that camera aimed off another part of the woods and then from there was just But like what's funny is Once he does that He's done with it Yeah, oh, yeah, he's like I okay, I'm done with that now, but and then he put it back and he just walks by it walks back But the first time he's like what in the world is that because he didn't find the tree You know, I know you don't know as much black bear baiting probably seen by you see No, this is not where this was this bear has no idea But but he just still but he could smell your hand from yeah, and these people that run them were their bait sites And you see the you I see the shows on TV the bear climb and then a guy goes oh look at the bear coming up That bear's not going up that stand to get that guy He smells where those hands were on that day old owner and that he's falling off that trail To find the tree at the end of the trail. That's why that bear is going up there. There's no doubt There's no doubt. That's why they go and tear up the cameras. That's why we made he's more drawn to the smell of it than just the look of it Yeah, he's he smells where those people you know how good a bear's nose is yeah If that guy had been over there refreshing his bait bear on and he goes let's put up a camera There's no way if a bloodhound can sell it smell a human in 14 days track You think that bear can smell or somebody had had their hands and jelly donuts and then moved it to the camera That's why they're going to yeah in my mind and I don't know why in my mind it was like visually. I don't know what I wasn't able to interview him. In my mind, he's like, what is that? Yeah. When they first see it, that is. But, but there still could have had your human sense on it, that him saying, I wonder what that is. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that. Yeah. So you feel that I was going to say is it's already kind of there because I've had camera. I've had, I've had your cameras with a solar, with your external solar. You can kind of move up the tree. I've had them run for years. But, but the new stuff is so it. In fact, Ashley was asking me, I was trying to upgrade my camera supply because I'll be out to running our newest stuff and getting, and I was trying to count up how many cameras we got everywhere. And I mean, it's a bunch of, everybody always says, how many of you running? It's a bunch. But to get all the new stuff, the, the, the different in technology every year, right now Steve is off the chart difference. Our new stuff, eclipses the old stuff. But it's just like anything. That's what's new. That's what's come. That's what's been research. So we, we finally found the, the best of the best in the world, solar deal. We finally got engineers that figured out a better diagram of schematic to make it do this. It's improving every year. It's beyond where I ever imagined. And it's beyond where most people is. But the technology on it, don't mistake the technology put behind these cameras. It's a force. The team we've had there is off the, I mean hundreds and hundreds of people working on the technology out. And it's trying to bring us the new stuff off. It's, it's great. And it didn't, this is no selling deal. This is, it's just evolving now. We're right in the evolution of that getting to the best, to the best of the bad. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's all these, it makes sense because you're dealing when you're dealing in, you're using technologies that are of significance, like, like of significance to aerospace of significance to defense of, of significance to security. It's like, so you have a million, not a million, but a bunch of different industries being like, how do you make smaller batteries that last longer? How do you do? How do you use renewable, right? So there's all these inputs of like, of things, you know, and it comes from different areas. There's, there's inputs. We get from law enforcement. There's inputs. We get from military applications has been done. Look at, uh, uh, fishing. If somebody's fishing and GPS is taking them to their spot where they've built a reef, that wouldn't available to military discounted that GPS and, and for, you know, and went to newer technology where they put a missile through a wind data 1000 miles away. A lot of that's coming through our industry. You get to, we had, we had a military guy approach us. We went and so he said, what if I could show you that if there was fog or, you know, when you get camera pictures early in the morning and late in the afternoon, there's fog or rain. And he said, we've, we've got the technology. And this was a military guy application. He said, it'll shoot through the fog. You'll never have another fogged out picture. Yeah. And, and so that, because you know, it's like, like rangefinders. Yeah. Um, they hate the fog, man. Yes. Oh, I hate the fog and the bright. So I have the problem. You're trying to get an animal. You know, you may have, what, 15 seconds you're trying to get a range, especially if you're bow hunting and that sun reflecting and you get that to bounce back off that reflection. And you're just like, Oh gosh, I need to know the range. Yeah. But the same thing. And so that technology is out there and it's coming to our, our industry really well. When I think about the history, the history of trail cameras and like the impact trail cams. And I know, in my notes, I know that you brought it up as well is that it introduces whole world of finding out that something existed that you didn't know existed. I mean, if you're going to look, like like deer in particular. Okay. Yes. If you were to look at like, what does, if you said, like, what's changed everything? It's changed like home security. It's changed everything. But you're going to be like, but let's think of like discrete, single things that happened. It would be that it introduced the conversation of, I got a buck on camera. Right. That you had all of a sudden, but it didn't have to be that you had to be present to see it. And all of a sudden, people were aware that this stuff is going out and they didn't know what's going on. I made in my notes when I was coming out, we were flying out and I was looking through the items. I saw that you all want to talk about. And the same deal identified that the one thing I saw the camera do that I think some people might have missed. You didn't because you just talked about it. But especially in the southeast, those big deer out west, animals aren't harassed as much as they are in the southeast. Our populations are hard. They've been hunted longer. They're harder to have people and we talked about when you came down for the Christmas show in Alabama. The level, you almost have a lot of 160 deer running around here. They're not running around the south like that. When we came out with that camera, I can't tell you how many trades shows I went to and I'd have a guy came up and he goes, oh my gosh, we're never going to not use your stuff. Maltry said, you can't imagine this. I got a picture of a 150 on my property or 140 or whatever size. He said, I never have seen. We've never killed a deer that big. You know what it gave them, especially for the QDMA side of managing property. It gave them hope. They had no idea those deer were there. But you know what? Dogs running them, people hunting them, those deer go purely not turn off. They don't get seen. Guess what that camera did? Hey, you're holding a deer this size where people had no idea they were deer that size. They finally started. Yes, we do have them. That was one of the neatest deals about it. And that was multiple people telling me that. Yeah. That was like, that was an impactful thing to be that. And it's kind of like this thing you always run your head. Remember how some about so-and-ire for a minute of fish finders? So it just brings up this interesting conversation where these competing views of looking at this stuff were no doubt like every piece of technology that comes out. There will always be a person that that bemoans the technology. Yes. And then you always kind of, you always look meaning that they feel that something is dying with the technology. Right. Some skill is lost or some aspect of the experience is dying. I am that there's no doubt that the bolt action rifle at the time had us detractors, right? Those pencil fish finders that were there's like the piece of lead. There's no doubt. There's no doubt they had the detractors. But you look and you think of the ways in which the human mind, like the ways in which it changed your understanding of what's going on. Meaning take so-and-ire fish finders. You got on a lake. You're never quite clear of the contours of the bottom, of features of the bottom, that there's like an old shipwreck down there where fish like to sit, that fish sit oftentimes fish or 10 feet below the surface. You always visualize fish on the bottom. And so it's like a technology and someone's going to go like, oh, it's a crotch. But you'd also go, but, but I didn't understand the area. And now I have all this added understanding of the intricacies of what's going on there. And that makes the experience more valuable. Another example is we have a fish place in Alaska. We fisher all the time. We used to fish off charts, nautical charts that just had no contours. It was the ocean was a blank. Okay. And on that blank was just fathom numbers. No lines between fathom markers is just fathom numbers interspersed. And we were under the belief that in our area, like we knew they're to the west of us. But we were under the belief that we did not have link code. Maybe now and then somewhere to get a link. We were like, there's no link out around. Then out came like sophisticated GPS mapping systems with very detailed hydrographical markings. And all of a sudden, then it was like link code bananza. Yeah. Because they like a very specific thing. And so your view of the ocean went from being that it was sort of this unknown basin like thing, the only experience from the surface to being like, oh, right. It's like looking at a mountain, stuff travels the ridges like deer like the benches. And all of a sudden you understood underwater in the same way. And it heightened your appreciation for the ocean made you more effective, but sort of like gave you more info. And that's a good thing about cameras is like you're all sitting like, oh, I had no idea. I have a picture. I have a picture where I had no idea they're around. There's a place I hang out. We camp there all the time. I had no idea they're around. There's a Wolverine that lives there. And he comes through now and then I would not know. I would not know. If you didn't have like that, that Wolverine comes through there. had I not hung a camera there. So, like, so is it bad that I know? It was a good that I know. I love knowing that it's there. You know, a lot of our stuff, we've worked with different state agencies, state game and fish agencies. There was one of the states that was having to spend too much overtime on their wardens or our biologists to check traps. And so, we worked with them and put cameras on them. If a wolf got in a trap, it would go to the notification would go to the woman or a man that was on dispatch. If dispatch should call whoever was on duty, they were able to continue the program because if they were eating up all their their money, they had allocated for payroll to do that. And it worked great. You know, a lot of the states have 24 hour checkposses. You've got a set of foothold trap and check it within 24 hours. I like putting a camera on it because you don't know within seconds that you have that. That's funny because that's something that's not clearly articulated. You'll see regulations like in states that have check laws. I think that you'll see how they determine the different visually inspect like. Yes. It's a thing that needs to be clarified. Yes. Like what what inspection looks like. But all the and to what you were saying about fish finders, one of the items right now that's in the marine and fishing industry that's bringing up. I'm talking about it. You tell me about it. This springs game and fish meetings of all the states. Yeah, live. It's live scope. Yeah. Oh, we cover it. We cover the live scope conversation and it's a classic example. It's a classic example of two wildly different views. And like I'm of the age, I guess, where I look at live, I look at live scope, even though I got bodies. I've fished. I got bodies efficient. There's young guys running around this office that they're like they don't want fish without it. Yes. But I'm like, I mean, I don't know. You know, exactly the same page. I don't have one on my boats. I don't fish with live scope, but I fished with guys that have it. And it's incredibly effective. But I had one of the guys off late Martin down there and the tremendous crop elates. And he said, he said Mr. Maltry said, I need to talk to you said, if you all don't do something at game and fish about live scope, he said, there are going to be no crop. He left. He said, it's that effective. It's heavily being discussed. And again, where's that point? I don't know. It's I don't know where the point is. There's a huge age element to it. There's also. There's an age element to it. And there's also like a short memory element to it, meaning why is it so acceptable for me to use a fish finder, right? I'm totally like I use a fish, like when I'm out running, I got a chart. I got split screen. I got a chart. I toggle between different fish finders use. But then for some reason, I feel it's okay to question the validity of a one that's a little better or a lot better. But I'm saying, like, what about the guy that that when I when fish finders came out? What about the guy that's like, that's not fair. Oh, he's forgotten now. We constantly reset the clock. We are. And the eight, the technology and age and technology has come so fast so far. Now, I mean, I'm from the group there when we had the big great big giant cell phones and that age group. And now you've got them. And if you don't have something operating from your cell phone, so all that's changing. But you know, I think you have to have something that benefits the resource, but doesn't abuse the resource. I think that's key in that. Now, where is abuse the resource? That's where the ball just to whoever for each state have to decide. But that's one of the keys to me is, is it benefit the resource? And everything had to me when we were in all those years in gaming fish. Is it data based and does it benefit the resource? Got it. Yeah. That's where it's got to come from. Hey, everyone, big huge announcement. Me either live the Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026. This time we're hitting the Midwest. Me either live the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. We got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Join myself, Yannis Putellis Claynew, Cimbrant Reeves and Randall Williams for a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation and wild foods. Also, we're already stacking up some great special guests. I got my buddy, bubbly Doug, making the appearance in Madison. Me either live is the best Christmas gift for any outdoorsman or woman in your life. Tickets go on sale September 25th, but sign up at the Me either dot com slash tour and you'll get pre sale access to buy tickets on September 14th days before they go on sale to the public. We can't wait to see you there. And I'm telling you, go ask anyone who has ever come to one of the Me either live events and they will tell you we laugh our asses off. We give away great prizes. We put on a solid show that I'm proud to be part of. Let me lay out for you. I just like to get your opinion on this. Just we're sitting in the state of Montana right now. So the state of Montana has been, um, we have a great agency. We have a great agency, our fishing game agency. Um, like there's some agencies around the country where I think that the jet that hunters, anglers, they become suspicious other agency. They maybe feel that their agency doesn't have their best interests in mind. Right. Their agency perhaps like like is happening in Colorado, like is happening in Washington. The agency can become hijacked by people who are sort of adversarial to a natural resources perspective on fishing game management. They're uncomfortable with the idea of people viewing wildlife as a resource. Right. And so they lose the respect. But like, we have a great agency. Um, and, and I feel that they sort of operate with, with what I imagine to be generally operate with the best interest of hunters and anglers in mind. Like they make, they do a good job. They have jumped around on what are we going to do about trail cameras? What's the proper use of trail cameras? What's not? So it changes. There's been some changing in direction around two way communications as that's come in, right? So where we sit now is, um, we sit that I can, I'm a, I like, a trap. I'm a fur trapper. Just recreational hobby fur trapper. I saw your show in the day, a little stretching couch, hides and grading them. Oh, it was fantastic. Yeah, yeah, I love that stuff. And we're allowed. So because it's non. So we can't, we can't currently use a, um, what's the best way to describe like a digital, but, but sense your, like, what's the best terminology for when to sense your phone? You'd call it a, that's a cellular. Oh, that's cellular phone. But, I mean, sooner or later, you know, we'll have a different word for it. But for what now is cellular network, dramatically, that you don't have to retrieve it yourself in the woods. So currently cellular, which is the current way that it's transmitted. So we can't use a cellular camera for hunting game animals. You can use a, but I can use a cellular camera, um, forever, like, I can put it on a beaver, like a crossing and watch otters go by. I use it all the time. I'll put it on sat, right? I'll set a spot waiting for an otter to come through or something. I'll put a camera on it. I know exactly what's going on, right? Um, that's permissible. Like, as someone in the trail cam industry and a pioneer in the trail cam industry, how do you think about what goes to your mind when you look at states, particularly in the west, making regulations that kind of like, that, that, that impact your products and impact innovations you work on? Do you, do, do, do, do, just, do you sit back and watch it happen? Do you try to be responsive to it? Do you weigh in on it? Like, what is your view on it? It's, you know what? And I've got a lifetime of sitting on the hunting and fishing side. Mm-hmm. I've got 40, 35 years game and fish side. Yeah. So yeah, you were in game fish. Yeah. You were on the commission for 12 years. Yeah. So I'm on both sides of it. Yeah. And I, I, I won't tell you the, when we first started reviewing stuff like that, um, whether it be, go to the most controversial issues, go to, that are in almost all the states, go to high fences, go to dog hunting, go to anything that tests the theory of what we just talked about. Where is it do? The, the deal I want to add to that list, maybe we'll talk about it. Yeah. I think that right now, the hot one is going to be drones. It's drones that will remain drones. And I'm glad you're asking because I've got a lot of, I got a lot of thoughts on my, but you have to set the bar. And again, the job is to protect the resource. I can't hear what English say. That's the job. And so, How do you equate if something is good or bad with it? I always kind of define it as does the animal have a fair chance of its escape? You go look at almost any issue. Does that animal have a fair chance of escape? Let's say there's a water hole in Montana that there's no water for a hundred miles and there's 80 cameras on it that we've heard these stories about that and everybody's finding the exact times they come. Probably not. I'll agree with that. If I was on that commission, I'd vote absolutely not. Got it. If I'm using it to find out research to know if we've got the correct age class of almost everybody's managing by age class now. Yeah. On deer and elk and everything else hurts. Am I managing it right? Do I see two-year-olds, three-year-olds, four-year-olds? Do you have the bell curved for that? Yeah, that's using it responsibly. So there's a line in there, but I always too said, so GM makes automobiles. Somebody's mad and got road rage and runs somebody down. Is that using that responsibly? Yeah, not using that. Was that intended to be used for that? There's a lot of things product gets used for that's not intended. So let's go back to, does the animal have a fair chance of escape? That's kind of a good place to start. The one thing I learned that I didn't know about it. I was not, I'd never been in politics, food with politics, done anything in politics. Do not mistake, and it's in every phase of even gaming fish where it shouldn't be. It used to make me mad. I mean, this is gaming fish. We've got to make sure the resource is protected, and you see a group come in, and I always call them political footballs. That drone, that camera, that whatever. Hey, they've got five other issues that they promise their membership, that they want to try to get pushed through. Let's pick up a political football and play. We don't care if we lose or gain that. But if we do that and attach to the legislation this other, we may can approve this. If you look what gets to attach to legislation versus what the legislation was intended for, that's the way that stuff slips in. And I guess this is bad to say, but I'd warn everybody who's watching issues, watch out for what's being slipped in and watch out for what's being attached. They may seem like they may seem like they're more worried about your drone issues than anybody. When in reality, they know it's going to come and go, it's a political football. So that has to be looked at. Now, all that mixed up is going to make a cake somewhere down the road. Yeah, but it has to go through all that. I used to always say, somebody would bring us an issue. The game and fish that needs to be voted on by the advisory board. And somebody told it to me early on, but it's true. You push one cork under the water for more pop back up. And I don't care what the issue, it may seem like the greatest idea that's ever been you voted in 50% going like it, 50% not going to like it. Oh, yeah, every time. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're helping a little ladies, girls, street, somebody's going to say, oh, I don't like that. Oh, yeah, no, I understand. You know, on that point, how did you want to be in? How did you want to, like, what is the process of being a game commissioner? How did that happen for you? The, I had always been interested in it. We had just done our partnership with EBSCO. And EBSCO is the largest private health company in the state of Alabama. They were very backing in that they wanted people to be involved in their industries. And Governor Raleigh was just coming in running for, he was US Congressman coming in, going to run for the governor, Alabama. And he said, he said, would you be interested in cheering our game and fish? And I said, absolutely, I would. But again, these are secure term appointments in our state. And they're different in different states, but ours are secure terms on that chair position. And I said, I'd love to, I got with them. I said, hey, this is going to take a lot of time. And these are our non-pay position. These are total volunteer positions. Number one requested in the state of Alabama. Number one requested appointment is that appointment. Even more than the judges, even even more than the judgeships. Huh. So, oh yeah. And you've been down to Alabama. Because people have been, people have been hunting fish in their whole lives. They want to get in there and they want to get in there and make some change. Three things matter in Alabama that will get somebody elected to governor not. And of course, religion is always one of them. But hunting, fishing, and college football. Yeah. And our area of the country, and that change is different. You better be in line on those. You're going to lose a lot of votes. But, and so he, Governor Raleigh was generous enough to consider me. We had backing from a lot of people saying, hey, I think they do a good job. I felt qualified for it. I've been all over to every state and everybody in the United States. Hunting had been involved in one of the neatest deals about evolving the feeders and cameras and all the other Sandra products we did. People would say, Steve Ronaldo would call and say, hey, fly out here to my ranch. Let me show you how we're going to be using this. And everybody, all these ranches, we got to go visit. Everybody's got good ideas. Nobody has the lock on all the good ideas. And so, the secret is to go take some of those good ideas and bring them back and combine them all in game management to get to be a total game management company. Like, Maltry has. That's where that came from. I didn't come up with all those ideas. There's no way. All that from going its travel and seeing what people are doing. So, we did that. And we, I remember the very first day, Barnett Lawley was our commissioner. And it was commissioner and governor. And I would work very close together. And Governor Raleigh told me he said, look, in this deal, I know y'all haven't been in the political circle. He said, just remember this. Do the right thing. I got you back. I thought, this is great. That was the direction. Yeah. This is great. I do that. I always tried to do that. It got it. That boy, you have no idea how many skeletons in the closet with knives coming out as a cut you throw. You know, when you, when you mess with their little sandbox, it's different. So, there's a lot to be done with that. That probably the biggest deal we didn't know when he's, when he say, when you mess with their sandbox, you mean like different user groups. Like, you know, you know, like dog hunters are, I don't want, I don't want to say, I don't want to degrade any thing and say, like, well, not even them. It's clicky. It's, it's beyond. There's like, there's like, there's like click to say you got guys that like to whatever. You got guys like to set line catfish. And then the minute you poke into their world. Yeah, oh, they're, they're fired up. You know, you knock at Hornets Nest out of the tree. Yeah. And one of the biggest items we did, and it needed, and I, I was happy to see it be one of the very first items. And I don't know if you remember this. I remember you told me you'd been to Alabama, some, our quality of deer had eroded to almost nothing. You could kill legally in the state, Alabama, 117 bucks per year. I remember. Now, what that resulted in, it was hard to get good numbers. I worked closely with Dr. Ditch cough at Auburn University and they're deer labs and all the, and, and we would get good data input from all the different people that we could find that was, that were professionals, our experts in that group. The best we could figure was that 85% of the deer killed bucks killed in the state of Alabama at that time where a year and a half old. Our braille curve was out of white, totally because, and the viewpoint back then was people would go and they'd see a four point walk out. And I think Colorado's going through this same deal with their mule deer right now. But they'd see, and they'd think, I almost shoot it today. I'll kill the big one tomorrow. Guess what? There are no big ones. Yeah. We'd very, very few in the bell curve of the age class that would hit what, what people perceive as mature now, five and a half, six and a half, almost nine. We go in, we start to change that if, as a group of people in a state, if somebody has given them for the last 40 or 50 years that Alabama had, you can hunt every day of this season. You can kill 117 bucks a year and all of a sudden we're going to say, no, you know what? We'd probably like to change that to one or two. You think there was any pushback? Oh my god. Oh, it was unbelievable. We had the database, and I was looking at, well, people've read hanging. Oh, they're beyond hanging. I was looking at what Kentucky had gone and what happened in Kansas and factual things that happened in states and, and what, how Kentucky had improved their herd. Then you could go to the state of, of whoever or that whichever commissioner and you could say, hey, I think I could up our tourism in our state. If we had a better state for viable trophy deer, so there was different areas you had to reach to to get them back in you also, but I had settled on two was where I thought that should be, and the groups and the people that we had working on that, like lowering the annual limit from 117 bucks to 127 bucks to do now. So we're sitting up we're over the game and fish building and in commissioner lolly call he said, "Multry come on governor wants to show the state house and see he wants to talk to us and I'm thinking of great no telling what this is but I knew what I thought it was. We go in and go to Riley's big Alabama guy and he had a football he was pitching and he was sitting at his desk, pitching it up and down. He pitches it to me when I walk in. He goes, "Here y'all are fish and change our dear limit." And I said, "Yes sir." He said, "What do you think you're going to be?" And I said, "Well, we're looking at and all this is database. We've got data out to design but probably too dear." And I said, "Look down." He looked at him and says, "And he's such a great guy." He goes, "Do you know what y'all are doing to me politically change in the dear limit from 2017 to 2017?" And I said, "Well, it's all data driven. It makes us a better state. It makes the dear herd better. Everything about it's going to be better if we get from over-utilization of the resource to what can be managed for a reoccurring base on the resource." And he said, he listened to the whole spill and he said, "You know what, that's good but I've got to have three." And I thought, "I'm a whole my ground." You know, I really wanted to, I went to the other way. I said, "I really want to see it go to one." And he said, "You're like, "I already told you about this." He said, "No, no three. That's why today." And this is all what's discussed that afternoon has all. That's why today in Alabama, you killed two bugs per year of your choice. One deer has to have more than four points off one thing. That was because where we were and I said, "Look, let's do this. And that's how we got to the deer that had a little more requirement for it." But since that time, here's the coolest deal. The research that came out of Auburn and the universities and the biologists who were studying it, when we passed that, Steve, Steve, I remember growing up, that people never even seen them mature deer in Alabama. And they thought through the studies that we would say 50,000 bucks a year's life by passing that legislation. How long does it take to refill that curve? And you're talking about that whole group that was against you. And they go out and they see deer now that they've never seen. They're five years later seeing big bugs. We're putting book deer in the book that's never, that never happened in Alabama. This deer out regularly killed 160s, 170s, 180s now in Alabama. That's changed because it's got a healthy bill curve. Now those people are behind it. But I believe we know you won't change this. Isn't it funny to remember us about short memories, like people in wildlife who are short memories? Imagine if now a commissioner came in, and he said, "I'm thinking about bumping the deer limit to 117 people." You know what I mean? The same people with lose their mind that would have lost their mind when you went, you know what I'm saying? But people get used to the thing normal. But I want to tell you my kind of main Alabama hunting story from years ago. It has lots to do with forks. So my brother, Danny, he was studying aquatic entomology. He's a fisheries biologist. So he went to graduate school, Auburn. And he grew up in Michigan, which was a one-buck state. I mean, you get excited if you draw a doe tag in Michigan, one-buck state. I, when he was down there at Auburn, I was in Montana. Montana remains a one-buck state. It was a one-buck state then. And he moves down Auburn. He's shooting all these deer. Man, he's like, "I kill five bucks." I'm like, "Let me kill five." He goes, "You kill deer a day." So four of us, or three of us, three of bodies, right? We go down to hunt. We go down to Auburn to hunt. I think it was between Christmas and New Year's. And we just go out to ski, national forest. I mean, just wander out into the woods, dude, and set up on trails. And I remember hanging a tree stand in a magnolian thing, that was the weirdest thing in the world, you know? It's so like one day, the next day, the next day, the next day, we all got bucks. And I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. But my buck, always like tell a story. When I cut the cap, when I cut the skull cap off my buck and trimmed it down, I flew home with it. This is not a joke. I flew home with it in my shirt pocket. They had two little devil horns. And I trimmed that bone plate up when I was carrying around on my pocket. But it was just, he was killing. He was killing a lot of bucks, but it's just all just dinky little bucks, you know? It was at 85%. Imagine. But we still, I mean, I'm not to discredit that. We still had the time of our life. Oh, yeah. No, and that's saying deal. There was a lot of, don't think there were a lot of people that was enjoying that. But we only killed, we only killed, but just to be clear, we only got one, one each, but it was just like I blew my mind after living in the North. It blew my mind that there'd be such a thing as that, that you could just kill a deer a day. And one of the most controversial areas in those first years, going in was the dog deer hunting. Okay. And because it's been, and, and this is exactly like the drone issue, where do you draw the line? If somebody wants to use a drone for animal recovery, yeah, somebody wants to use a dog for animal recovery or the people that abuse that is their dog deer hunting. Our state allows dog hunting. It is an old hundreds of year old tradition in the southeast for dog deer hunts. One of the most expensive lodges to join that's probably over half me in a year to get in this place, they do dog deer hunts. And it's well received. But all that ties back to of of what you were talking about at the drone, you get a guy, if Steve Vanilla and it's different. Out west, there's a lot of federal property in Texas, Alabama, some of the southern states is probably 98, 99% private property. Yeah. So if Steve Vanilla spends a half million dollars a year developing his property, would it be legal or would it be responsible for somebody to build at least 20 acres next to you and release 20 dogs every weekend over that they know they're going off their 20 acres and going on your deal. So all the states have had to find that. Hey everyone, big huge announcement. Me either live, the Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026. Me either live, the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. Join myself. Yannis Puitellus Clay New, Combrant Reeves and Randall Williams. For a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife conservation, and wild foods. I got my buddy, bubbly Doug, making the appearance and Madison. I want to talk about dog. I'd love to talk about because I don't have familiarity. I want to talk about drones and I want to talk about dogs, but the fundamental difference between drones and dogs is ones like a historical, that is a traditional use practice. My grandad, my great grandad, it's the same deal where that's the story that gets brought to you. And that's what you hear. Like I'm totally unfamiliar. I've never hunted deer. I've hunted a lot of stuff behind dogs. I've never hunted deer behind in front of dogs, but that's one of those issues and I'd love to hear your perspective on it. Is this one of those issues where people point to it's not what's okay. It's what is naturally going to come from that. Meaning you doing dogs on your property is one thing, but it becomes it just doesn't work for you to keep them off your neighbor's property. And so when people criticize it, they're not criticizing the act. Some people are, but generally they're not criticizing the act in and of itself. They're criticizing what they know will come with it. Is it and I used to in a early dog day arguments go back to the resource again and I came up with it. I'm one of the meetings I said and the people always bring in the ethics. Do you think is it ethical to have that camera on that water hole with 80s deal? Is it ethical to do this or that? I would ask the question in the meeting Steve. Is it more ethical to push a deer or to pull a deer? Do you see what I'm saying? Sure. If I'm gonna plan a greenfield and I'm bringing them to me, a guy's got a argument. Well, that's unnatural. They're not greenfields naturally for deer and they're gonna come. So you're pulling them with that dog. You're pushing them. Yeah. You're driving them. Yeah. Of course I asked this one. That's why I don't want straight too far. There's a concept. There's a concept that's interesting in these discussions and I can't I wish I could remember the name of the guy that I first heard it but brought it up, but the argument would be Stop calling it stop talking about fair chase. Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint. It's got problems But fair talking about fair chase has problems because you like is is it fair? Like I said, is it more fair to create an environment they like? Yes Or is it more fair to have a thing that like repels them and you pursue them? But like he's this guy proposed Let's start talking about Fair share and we look at we have a we have we're dealing in wildlife management fisheries management. We're dealing at a finite resource But there's just there's numbers to it. There are x numbers of halibut. There are x numbers of crappy. There are x numbers of deer, right? There's a finite resource What is an individual's Share and within that meaning also what is your impact on the share? It's just it's a it's like a it's a concept that I think is worth thinking about Because it's like like what is your what impact are your activities having on the share and you could look in this in this view point You could look at a land manager Who's doing habitat work? Putting in food plots leaving quail habitat whatever doing improvements. Okay, putting in nest boxes and wrapping the in wrapping the tree and sheet metal. Okay It's like this dude is growing the share So if we're talking about fair share it changes the dynamic if he's also got a camera out Does that mean he's like is he is he negatively impacting the share? Do you know but if you have but if you have a if you have a use practice that is Hazing animals off good habitat You know having having like you know negative impacts on neighboring hunters impacting their ability to get their share Like maybe that's a better way of talking about this whole thing and I'm not saying I advocate one over the other, but it's just an interesting perspective It's very controversial when there's always a difference of opinions when we were researching I tried to get everybody You know how you own the argument and you know there's from being an author If you own the research you own the argument you know more about it. You've got it We put I pulled every state's legislation on dog dog hunting what not during those days Texas defined errors and some of the the research I'd pulled they had defined that they thought it took 10,000 acres to run dogs Okay, so they go in and say okay, if you own more than this then you could run that amount of dogs Is that because it was at least plausible for you to do it. Yeah. Yeah, don't worry I had one of the senators come up and he said look I'm with y'all on What's your beliefs or he said but every person that puts me in office has the the the most popular size track in the state Alabama is his 40 40 acres and under You go hold you gonna hold a pack of walkerhounds on 40 40 acres That'll keep busy about for about 96 So all that has to be and find the correct answer Their ways and that it will work. Yeah, and the the other deal that I probably said more at any meeting Boat group. I mean people are are to fist to cuffs in this deal, Steve And I would say you know what we got to learn guys and this is the thousand people in the audience We got we got to learn to be good neighbors Yeah, let's let's remember that and Because you're always going to join somebody and just because you like bow hunting. They might be avid gun hunter Yeah, we got to be good neighbors Everybody has their their way of doing I got a buddy that hates the the coyote dog guys I'm like, what's so bad about that? Is it what's bad about it as I can't be in my tree with a Place because it's not the thing. It's like just stop don't hunt my place. I used to when I'm hunting my place Hunter's hiding hunting. Yeah, it may not be their deal I you know, I never got it. I kept thinking we're going to pass some bow hunting legislation and when we pass crossbows Everybody that gets older Have bad shoulders they get doctors excuses to get crossbows and the bow hunters call it expose at that time You know for crossbows and when they were illegal before we passed them to be hunted with responsibly Uh, I had a guy that worked for me and I it never clicked with me And he said I hear y'all gonna pass some crossbow legislation. I said possibly I said fence what the boards viewpoint what items get brought up. I said, but it's a possibility He said they may be they'll never be true bow hunters. It hit me then I see me go deal. That's a group that they wear that badge of honor by godly I'm a bow hunter. Oh, yeah, and I told him I said look you better know This food at that time let I said less than seven percent of the people in the United States hunt I said it's going down. It went down to about three and a half percent I said you better embrace every person there is that we're caught with a bow No matter if you like the type bow or whatnot So we can get those user numbers back up. Thank goodness. That's been turned around and brought back the other way a little bit But that I in our sport especially Steve It's a little bit he sport Everybody knows everybody and everybody knows hey I'm hunting white mountain this week. Can you know he's at the best place of the best It's a small sport. Mm-hmm better be good neighbors. Yeah better get along and that that's what was driving that It's their group. They're proud of it. Oh, yeah, but I mean like like 90% of it is just in good humor But there is like a tribalism and and we like all around our office like we engage in all time just like You know what it's kind of like bass is like what you're into is dumb. See I'm okay This is like is the general joke, you know, I mean Absolutely gospel true. We got in and I don't know if you met him down there. It's a popular national radio show Rick and Bubba Yeah, nationwide. Yeah, we did that show. We had every two weeks of segment on we did that. We're saying I remember that for 20-something years. Yeah We got into one of the guys Bubba on that deal had said they had three million estimated audience and so we were going at all the you know There wasn't that many in Anchorage Alaskan list them, but they still listen to Anchorage Alaskan. Yeah And we that he said hey, I saw a black panther this weekend He said what do you think about that? And I said I don't think you saw a black panther. He said oh I did Absolutely, this is what started this whole deal. Mm-hmm. Oh, I did. I said no I said there's there's first there's no melanistic phase of panther. Yeah, I said secondly. There's no reading population. I've explained it's all thousand The closest panther to us is Florida panthers. There's not but estimated 200 and heard they estimate how many get there's 20 It killed a year 10 percent the herd is at 200. I said they travel sometimes come up. There's no way first There's no such thing as a black panther And if there was, it would be you talking about kicking over an ant bed Mm-hmm. This deal goes it comes number one segment on the show Number on every week the phones are to let you can't get a spot on the phone line in and so we start picking at him. I bring in the top of Gaming fish guys the top research file. This and everyone on said there's no way on and people start calling in those tea Hey, I don't appreciate it at all what y'all are saying about this I'm in a wedding a buddy of mine's getting married and I have a guy coming up There's probably 300 people at the wedding Steve. This is how it gets and so all this I bring this back when I tell you the story To all this has to be taken in when honey and fish and laws and rules are made and he comes up and shoves my shoulder And he said I tell you I don't like it. I go What do you talk about? He goes about the black panthers I said what are you what are you talking about? He said he said y'all making fun of that I said what I said to have you seen I'm trying to figure out now where he's coming from He said you think my mom all in my great-grandpa would have lied to me about see they told me they saw them all the time You're calling my family large, and I said well the research but they don't want to hear that They don't hear any of that they don't They've been told that story They spend there the entire time you're gonna net you never ever in a million years will change their mindset Of what is there or what what in there? I know it's y'all at game and fish y'all don't want all the hunters in the state know there's black panthers out there They'd start no we can't really close to it to every investigation goes it comes back from You're not gonna change that in we make a hat that's got a black panther on it just says believer on it For all those black panther believers out there You know it's funny about this like this conversation in trail cams, too, though Is like the big-foot people. Yeah. Oh, where the next book? We should like I don't I don't put black panther people and big they're different buckets There's like black panther people are like people of the woods Big-foot people are kind of like there's like a real kind of hippie element to big for people And there's like a backwards quality to a black panther guy. There's like different kind of guys But when you say to the big-foot guys Where's all the trail cam pictures of big-foot they got all they can detect them They're in another dimension and trail camers can't capture that dimension that Bigfoot's living, but everybody's going to find a way to get around that when the Black Panther argument was there and I said, let me, I can define that for you immediately and have absolute evidence that there's not one of the largest sports down south is raccoon hunting at night with dogs. Exactly. You've kept hunting, kept hunting all over exactly the same dog you hunt raccoons with that you hunt lines, why in the last 30 years have we never treated a lot? Oh, that's different. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Where is that different? Why are we talking about that? They discount it. But so all that, when you were asking that first deal about with the gaming fish and how we operate and all that, all that's got to be taken into account. Yeah, yeah. Because you got to make public hacking, got a guard resource, all that. So all that time is back in. I'm glad you saw some of that, that it's going on too. Yeah, I love, but I love that stuff and I want, I want to ask you something and it's fair to call you a technologist, I mean, your technologist, some, you know, some respect. Give me your take on, like, um, give me your take on drones, like, like, cause, let me just to set that up for listeners a little bit is, uh, when drones, like, very early in the drone thing, like, right when it became that you could get a drone, I remember, I think it was a one year, I might be off by a state or two, but it was within a, a 12 month window that 13 states came out and just very clearly, very early said that drones are not allowed in big game hunting applications. They all defined it in their own way, but basically it was like, couldn't use drones for big game hunting. Um, then it came a question, what about retrieval? Um, okay, so imagine you got it, you know, you got it at dusk, you hit a deer, you can't find blood. It's real thick. Well, just like how great would it be while that thing's still holding some body heat to put up a drone with thermal, fly it over the, you know, fly it over some crazy briar patch, and there's a little heat spot and boom, like, who wouldn't want to get to recover their deer? Right. Right. Right. Come in, like once the deer's wounded, it should be all in everybody. Like if you can get it, get it, I don't care if you need like an act of God, like, get the deer and get it. So then people will be like, but what, how do you unsee when you're doing that? How do you unsee what you see where you're like, Oh, that's where that big bump is, that's where he's bad and that cuddly rough, and if he's bedded there tonight in the morning, I know he's definitely going to go north out of there and there, right? So then you, you don't unsee it, right? I had a sim, just, just a further paint that picture for you, I had a similar thing like we're allowed, we're allowed to third week, we can thermal hunt for coyotes. There's no off time. I remember one time during deer season, me and my body are out thermal hunting coyotes at night, and I'm seeing boxed here, and I'm like, is it supposed to, you know what I mean? Do I unsee that? That's right. We weren't actively deer, anybody was like, but I could just say like, Oh, no, I'm hunting coyotes. Yeah, but I can't unsee what I saw. I was seeing boxed that I would not know they were there, okay? So as I, I'm just setting this all up to say like ask someone who deals in emerging technologies, employs emerging technologies, has been in the seat of needing to give legal guidance on emerging technologies like, yes, give me your drone, spiel, right? You ready? Yeah. I think the question has been solved for years, okay? You know who has the question, to me, this is kind of where I think that the drone needs to go. I'm not going to tell you the answer yet. I had a call from a guy several years ago. He said, Hey, he said, what should I do? Do I need to call a game or do I need to call what? I've got a drone on my greenfield, and it's come up to looking in the window of my shooting house. And I said, do you know who's it is? Yeah. He's just on a green drone. He's got the drone. It's not his drone, not his people come to find out it was a neighbor's drone. That neighbor was flying his greenfields pushing the deer off his ground. Oh, you kidding me. No, I'm telling you straight as a rope. So that, that goes on. You have drones, hey, let's see what he's doing over here. And they fly in unencumbered space, whether it's their property or not, their property. And I think there's some legal aspirations to airspace and what goes on. Here's what I think. My wife walked out there this, she was, she was come running in the house. We still know who we'll never find out who was. Someone had one of our house. Yes. She said, they want to see Steve. And I said, I'm gonna shoot it. Yeah. And then by the time I got out there, it was gone, you know, when I called on my buddy, the director of game fish, I said, Hey, here's what's going on this drink. He goes, does he have a clear shot telling him to put it on the ground? Oh, really? And look, we'll find out who's it is. But, but, but here's what I think, a good answer may last to you is, and you and I in our very first meeting talked about both of us were sucked into Alaska all those times. Let me tell you, fly that, let's look at flying shoot laws in Alaska. You fly, you don't hunt for 24 hours afterwards. You fly that drone. You don't hunt for 24 hours afterwards. You are somebody who's in control of that information of that drone. Go back to the truism of what defines ethics. Does the animal have a reasonable chance for escape? Yeah. You got 24 hours separated. That animal will move down. Yeah. Yeah. Say it was flying. Yeah. Say it's flying and flying. Again, do you unsee that? No. But does that give it, when you fly a float plane into camp and you see through Bull Moose in the bottom, you didn't choose the way that pilot that float plane did. Yeah. And then you fly on 10 miles from there, y'all hike back. Did you do that? No. Did you unsee that? No. Yeah. Did you know Moose were in the bottom? Yeah, they're going to be in those bottoms every time you go in there. So that's a great place. I haven't. I haven't. I haven't. Many times literally been in the situation is you're flying in on a normal route and you're commenting like, oh, my God, a bull. Yeah. That's it. Oh, it's like a bull. Or look at that barrel. That's like that. You can say what you want to say. No guy is going to be, well, let's pretend that Bull's not there. We'll wait our day. Yeah. But when I wait my day, I know that that bulls are so sure. So I would believe if we protect the resource with the drums, careful with the legislation and make it as a drone usable to recover an animal that's been shot, I'm 1,000% behind that. Is that legal to push animals off somebody else's property? I'm not legal with that. Let's protect people's rights. Let's be good neighbors unless you use it ethically, but go back to the flying sheet. You have that drone up a quick place to land on that until you could define legislation. You fly that drone. You don't hunt for 24 hours. Yeah. It's exactly like Alaska's flying sheet. Yeah. I wish there was a way, and I don't even know the ramifications of this because it's like a huge illegal conundrum and you wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to answer any better than probably anybody in the country because it's totally novel ground. Because I wish there was a way that it would be, you could fly it above ground. You have permission to fly it up. But that brings in, because this is FAA stuff, so that brings in this huge thing of like manned and unmanned, because of course you can't say to a plane that you can't fly overland you don't own. So how do you come in and say with a drone, like you can fly a drone overland that you have permission to fly it over? That to me would be so simple and easy, but impossible, probably guessing from a legal standpoint. I'm sure there'll be court cases and whatnot that would have helped define that of what can be legal and not legal on that. But I agree with you. That's kicking over a huge ant hill. But again, is it, is what you're doing, ethical helping you, does that give you a better edge over killing that animal than it is ethically bound for you to take that animal? Yeah. Just switching on that spotlight at nine off the side of the road when there's eight mule deer down the road here and the guy that kills that, yeah. He violated those animals rights of fair chase. Does the guy that see him in his headlights going home and goes back the next day because he knows those deer in that field. I don't see anything wrong with seeing them, but you're using it to take that animal in an ant that way. That's not right. Absolutely not. Yeah. Join myself. Yannis Putellis Claynew, congruent Reeves and Randall Williams for a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation and wild foods, also were already stacking up some great special guests. Me either live is the best. Ask Christmas gift for any outdoorsman or woman in your life. Tickets go on sale September 25th. But sign up at themeeter.com/tour and you'll get pre-sale access to buy tickets on September 14th, days before they go on sale to the public. And I'm telling you, go ask anyone who has ever come to one of the meeter live events and they will tell you, we laugh our asses off, we give away great prizes, we put on a solid show that I'm proud to be part of. Let me ask you this one and I'm not, and this is a promise to listeners. I'm gonna ask you a question. I'm not even gonna bore you with what I think about the whole thing. - Right. - Where do you sit right now? What's your take on CWD? Like where do you sit right now? - You know, that was in the infancy of that being followed when we were in office. And first you gotta believe, first I'm gonna tell you, I'm a believer CWD can be a political football. And I'm talking about from the federal all the way down to the state to the individual user groups. Do you believe starting out, and you're probably a lot more up to date on it than I am, even though I followed it pretty good, there's a point for our industry that I'm gonna bring up in a second with you that has to be looked at if you're in our industry. But do you think CWD was started at a sheep pin in Colorado where they put Mule Deere in after known scrapies sheep had been in that pin? Is that what started it? - I don't believe so. - That's what gets the wrap of started. - Yeah, I believe it was identified there. I honestly, I follow this closely. Like I don't know where it came from. - But that gets, that's kind of where everybody goes back to where it started. And if you look at the map of how I see WD spread, that looks like. I'm not saying I'm believing or not in that, that again, I watch for political. - I wanna hear people's takes. I guess I'm not gonna do the whole deal where I give my take. - Okay, well I want your take on one part of it at the end. So if you look, you got mad cow disease. You got a crutch-frill jatison in humans. You got scrapies in sheep. You got when the people, when you used to hear about mousse having circling disease and they talk about circling, that's CWD. Do you believe CWD is naturally occurring or did that come from something like the Colorado deal? That's a question that has to be decided. - Are you asking me that question? - Yeah. - This is one of the things I wish I knew most. And it would be, there's no way, well I shouldn't say, there's no way, it feels to me improbable that they actually found the first case. Like what are the odds that you found the first case? So it was identified on a captive deer in Colorado that identified. Did they find the first one? No, right, 'cause just what are the odds they found the first one? If you, if I could have one of the many questions about CWD, as I wish there was some way that you could go into museum collections of any servants, any North American servants from museum collections. And you can go back to like archaic period, whatever early modern and you could go in and take all these servid bones. And if there was some way to definitively, not the technology I don't believe is there, but there was some way to go in and say, we've checked all these bones and all these museum collections. It's not there. Like it's not there. We've checked thousands of bones. It wasn't there. And someone could definitively say that, it would change how I view it. Where I'm sitting, if I had to do, I always like to play this game. Like you, you, you're asked a question by an omniscient being. You're asked a question by like a God-like being who knows the truth. And there's no bullshit. It's just you got to answer the question. And they're like, has it always, has it been here for hundreds of years or has it been here for decades? - That's where you're occurring or not? - Where I'm sitting right now, if I really had to get it right or I'd die, okay? - Yeah. - I would go, I don't like it that you're putting me in this position, but I'm gonna go with hundreds of years. - Yep. - That's what I would say. - Mm-hmm. - But and then I'd be like, am I right? (laughing) - So that's in that, that's one of the questions, I think that needs to be studied and answered. - It changes everything. The, now let's go back to our industry that we love. - Mm-hmm. - The hunting and fishing. I don't care if you're a bird watcher, I don't care if you're a deer while, I don't care if you're a wildlife watcher that would never shoot an animal if you had to. You have equity in that the deer are healthy, the moose are healthy, any servant, it's healthy, okay? So the nuclear bomb that destroys what we and any nature person loves. - You know what I view that as? - Do I know the nuclear bomb is? - The nuclear bomb is if hunters kill servants that transfer to humans, that it's proven that that and that ends that game, that's the nuclear bomb for us. - Oh, I think that that, I think that that moment should have come. And I don't think, again, if I was in a situation, I don't think it's coming, I don't know. I'm just a guy sitting here. - You or I, with information to the public, that there'll be a million people listen to your stuff. I can't tell them to, if I thought it was coming, then I'm wrong in telling them and leading them to something dangerous. I don't see it coming either. - I don't think it's coming. - I dread that it, I would dread that it came. And I think that the minute the hunting public, the wildlife viewing public, the wildlife managers, the minute a deer is no longer a symbol of wildness and natural beauty and natural heritage. And a deer is a symbol of like a deadly disease factor which is already having with ticks a little bit, it'll be like a carrier of this terrible dementia, early death, Alzheimer's similarity type catastrophe. Right, and the deer is saddled with that. Yeah, that changes deer hunting in America. - It changes deer hunting. - Completely, completely. - Everything, so many managers, my period is changed. But again, if I had to sit here and guess, and like as someone that follows the news and follows the science, if I was forced into making a guess, I don't think it's coming. - And we had something not on that level that I've told a lot of people about testing a game and fish meeting, we're with the Department of Agriculture people, and been a lot of cases we studied wild hogs and one of the detriments to landowners and hunting people is the hog populations, billions and billions of dollars in damage every year. Everybody's coming up with a way they think they control pigs. I don't think that since the Spaniards let 'em out in the 1500s, I don't think there's a way to control pigs because you can't get ahead of 'em breathing that I see stay. It's gonna be extremely hard to do it. But we were sitting in that meeting, and they said, hey, we tested our, this is Alabama's wild hog population, they tested it. And they said in '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 100% of the hogs killed tested positive for brucellosis. So we're sitting in the middle of wild life and ag. And I said, well, I've been around this all my life. I said, tell me about brucellosis in this. And they said, well, here's what happens. And here's the way you get. I said, no, tell me the way you get it. And they said, it's not from the blood. They said it's in the genitals of the animal. And there's a little clear liquid or something that when you cut that, if you've got a cut on your hand, you're getting brucellosis. How do you fight that? It's gotta, you're gonna have to have a battery about cycling, and you start seeing these people then that do a lot of this whole kind. Oh, yeah, I had that. I went to the doctor and had that. End of the disease. And I asked the question. I said, I said, do we communicate that to the public? Coach Darius told me around Auburn football when he came in and his assistant coaches. He said, he could tell when there was an issue that he didn't want to off back. 'Cause he looked and every coach looked down at the table. I saw it that same day. There it is. And I said, I said, what are we doing on this? And that's when Alabama, we came out with Commissioner Olli came out and said, not only do we suggest being careful when you dress the wall hug, but we suggest you wear thick rubber gloves. The second state in the nation, right? Texas had already put that in their rugs. They said rubber gloves. We said thick rubber gloves. But to communicate high, it's transferred. That, but here we go back and it's the same with deer. And we go back to the political issue. [BLANK_AUDIO] to book the political football, you think the guys with the insurance commissions and the Department of Transportation want any more deer car collisions? You think they want any more hog car collisions? You think they want anybody to quit shooting deer or hogs that reduces those things? - Yeah, yeah. - That goes to every state, every state in the nation, every commission like that in the nation, all that's got to be looked at. And a lot of people will get on that issue and say, "Oh, they just don't like us doing that." Buddy, that's a lot deeper well than you think you'd do for different water out of them. - Yeah, I saw the dumbest headline this morning in Wired Magazine. It was Florida Panthers reduced deer car collisions. - Because there's some genius, as like, well, they eat deer. So they reduced deer car collisions. I'm like, you could have written that article long time ago, it wrote hunters on top of that headline. - What's those 200 Florida Panthers gonna do with? - That's not what I'm saying. - To me and white tailers. - Oh my God, man. You could be right or way better. Article and just change the first word to hunters. You have a way bigger impact. But hey, this is way off when we've been taught about this is a thing that I noticed. The thing you guys did mulchy that I don't get, maybe you can explain how this works. You know what, you used to have to buy, like if you had, let's say you have a Verizon phone. - Yeah. - Okay. You'd go and you'd get a camera, you'd get like a Verizon camera or whatever camera. But now you cameras just do whatever signals best. Okay, so for instance, we keep one in our fish act in Alaska just so we can see who's coming to going. I got on a tree and like if you come up on our beach and go toward our shop, it's got you. - Right, like I already got your picture. But that's eight, there's no Verizon signals, AT&T. So also you can be, you can hang a camera up and it just grabs whatever signals available. Is that like, do you have to arrange all that with AT&T and Verizon? Like how's that whole thing work? - Why is your phone not that way? - You know, it's a great, all that has to be negotiated and done, but I don't understand, I understand it from a business standpoint. If you got your turf, if your podcast are protected and you're only showed and nobody can come into your turf unless they sign up for your podcast or listen to it, that's your turf. - Yeah. - How about Verizon probably had spent billions of dollars protecting their turf? - Yeah, building and protecting it. - You think they want to be taken out by automated choice of an item? What if every cell phone did that? - Yeah, but how are you able to do it? I mean, it was great because it solved a huge problem, but how is it okay to, how are you able to do it? - You know what, I believe probably, and I don't know this, this is my guess. There's a lot of people, let me tell you, everybody emulsory smarter. I mean, they're smart, we got the smartest team, they're smart, smart folks. How they get that done, I don't know, but I think that probably somebody powers it, be thought, that's not gonna change anything. It little old cell can, they're not, how many of them are out there? - Got it. - They didn't know, and I don't add Christmas last year, we were holding 18 billion pictures in the cloud. No telling what that, that's probably double or triple that now. Now they're finding that out. I don't know, but I would like, would you not want a cell phone that was like a satellite phone that, anywhere you went, it paid the best signal? - So, I on here, I used to carry, I used to have two, 'cause 18T is great, and I'll ask 'em, so I used to carry on two phones. I called it my regular phone, and then my 18T phone. Now, I just paid two monthly things, which are not cheap, right? And I have them both, except two SIM cards, right? But then on the camera, I used to not put one up in 18T areas, because I got to, then I got to go buy it, like, whatever. And then also, and I saw you guys stuff that it, like, doesn't matter, just grabs the best signal. - That's great, best signal. - But I was like, well, how come. Why aren't phones that way? - Yeah, same deal. And think about Steve, everybody thinks, oh, we're just, you asked, we're worldwide. I mean, we go into Mexico or Canada, we have to be able to grab different signals. - Yeah. - I don't know what cell bases are there. - Oh, I got it. - But what was it when it had the, what was it, whatever years ago? - You would send people up and find out the major, you look to the carrier maps. You know the map that Verizon always shows, when they have our T-Mobile, use us, and it shows all the red is where you can get their signal on the screen. - So that's what you do to send where? - You go find out, you find out what the biggest base was, and that's the one you had to be a customer to. Or you find out if you had a, if the, let's say tractor supply in your area, if you're going to be your biggest vendor there, or Walmart or whoever, you find out who they had relationships with, and that's probably who you went with. - God. - But it was controlled by area size. - And then one day boom, it doesn't matter. - Yeah, look at it this way. If Walmart is selling cameras, and there's a carrier that only had, if AT&T doesn't have a 2%, and Verizon has 98% coverage, which camera, which phone do you think Walmart's gonna sell? They got to go with the better coverage. So you study that and do that, but it's sure a lot better being able to do it. I wish I could take credit for that, that wouldn't make States do that, but it was somebody smart and mulchy. - Oh, it was a good idea. I just wanted to, when you find out, I'll let you talk to you guys and find out. Tell them that I took notice. - I'll get to that point, yeah, that's good. - That was a great development. - Yeah, oh, that was huge. - You know, I get asked a lot and a lot of the podcast and stuff and being in the commercial side of selling the honey, being hunting and fishing my whole life, but the commercial side, right at 50 years, what's the biggest change? You saw, I always thought it was the compound bow. - Hmm. - Being able to see it come from recurve to long bow, or long bow to recurve to compound bow, round wheels, 65% let off. Popin' young boon and crocky, if you don't shoot it with, you can't go over this let off, then you got some bows, 100% let off, and it goes everywhere across the board. But look how many bow hunters there are now from the Fred Bear does, and I thought, you know, that may have been the, it's one of the biggest changes. - That's interesting. - I keep, yeah, that's what I truly believe. I was watching that the entire term of my industry involvement, I get pointed at it, maybe the camera's right there. - Yeah, sometimes to be cute, I'll say another one, and it's not just to be cute, there's an argument who made, I'll say the digital range finder. - Yes, absolutely, absolutely. - 'Cause the old days are like, well, if I zero my gun, three inches, I had a hundred, and you know, and like, and then. - I mean, for archery too, how many caddies on golf courses or golfers are using that range finder to find the distance to the pin, and they're supposed to be, you're not supposed to be. - Yeah, like the whole thing, oh, it's a good flat shooting rifle, like all that goes out the window. - Oh, yeah, no, that's fine. - I'll tell you exactly where the bullet's gonna be. It can arc all at once, I'll tell you right where it's gonna be. - I'm gonna tell you that, and we used to call them, I said, I was saying digital, not digital laser range, by the way. - Yeah, right, laser sight. We used to call the hunts where you could show up for a hunt and just pack a bag and just suitcase hunts where you didn't have to take a gun, but nobody ever trusted the guns. You go now, these guides and outfitters, they got nice farms and anybody, and they know every concept of minute of angle velocity, what the bullet does, they know how their binoculars are talking to their scope, and all that, that has changed the distance that people harvest game. I think this is in the last five year deal is off the chart now. I think there's a lot more animal shot at further distances than they used to be. - Yeah, it's gonna wind up. - It's gonna wind up, it's gonna wind up playing in, it'll wind up playing into what I talked about when I talked about the fair share discussion. - You knew where I was going. - I just, like yesterday I had a text exchange of the friend of mine that I'm gonna bow on elk with this fall, and he says, man, I feel great out to 60, but a lot of guys are saying 70 to 80. And I'm like, man, just shoot all you want at 70 to 80, but we're gonna rain it back. Come on, we're out there, man. 'Cause I'm like, I'll tell you something that's not fun, it's chasing Moonded elk, and they can take a hit, you know? - We make them, we bring them out to bar and I, the first thing they shoot, we wanna see 'em shoot, you watch how they handle it, you know all this, you watch how they handle them above, you look to their nervousness, can they handle the crowd watching them, does that get 'em shook up? If I have to shake some off, that elk bugling in their face is gonna shake 'em off. - Oh, that's a good indicator. - And you look at that indicator, then you look at the guy that stacks someone, you know, all the guides will be out there, there'll be six of us out there and everybody's like, I'm taking him, you know, they know, the guy can shoot. The deal that I went to a PSC, we went to a PSC antelope one year and they had some tremendous long-right shooters it's 30 years ago. and we were talking about hunting caribou and we were making those long shots and they said how do you train for that and I said I go to that target and shoot that that distance and I'll shoot 60 or 80 hours a day right before I go you know just to make sure it's dead on and the guy told me and this is really good advice he said if you want to shoot 60 shoot 100 yeah and you back back up and I tell most of our hunters are coming in if you want to get proficient at 50 shoot 70 and that target gets a lot easier to hit when you back it up like that but besides that besides repetition and doing it I don't know when he got and it's no different than y'all's weight room down there some of those guys can bench press 380 some of those archers can can make 70 yard shots exactly most of them can yeah there's guys out there that can shoot 70 better and you can shoot 30 go back to the ethical yeah but there's a lot of guys I know and like I but you know we've been guilt I've been guilty this and my kids and whatever like situations where the longest shot they ever took yeah the longest shot they ever took was that a deer right so yeah it's like what's what you train for what you practice for how comfortable you are you can't yeah you could you could never come in and say hereby I declare that people can't shoot more than the blank yards cuz it's different and if let's say you're in the 20th day except him or the elk or rutting so hard there in your face you to pry the guy up hunting because he can't shoot 40 but you're gonna shoot one at 10 yards that day mm-hmm every every situation yeah yeah you got to be comfortable yeah and I think they'll stoop guy watch his hat and keep the guy within his comfort right yeah and again all that being said on the ethical side of take care of that yeah well Dan mulch you thanks for joining man great talk about I love I have so much fun um I wake up in the morning I mean every morning I wake up in the morning and I open my mulch rehab I see what's going on with that camera I can't find we got I got just I got little projects going out with my friends all laughed because I got a camera called the beaver cam and it's a camera that sits between a creek and a pond mm-hmm and there's like a slide you watch them come down the slide dude I have every animal on the planet that walks you that that walks you I just love it man I love like finding out what's going on out there you know how many guy and especially in our industry but I always wonder any industry will be in a meeting somewhere and you'll see guys and you know they're hunting their kick back and they're looking at the phone paying attention what they're saying but they're looking how many of those guys you think they're looking at their mulch rehab looking like there's a bunch of buddy yeah my friend like I take my kids every spring to hunt um I take my kids every spring to hunt turkeys in Wisconsin for the youth turkey season anyways my buddy out there uh what what month is it what right now it's August early August he he took a he took a break you know from May but it's early August he it's already started he's like rope dragger rope dragger text to me images because they're like we're already thinking about next spring you know and it's just funny because I like like through that I'll kind of live you know like through those pictures and stuff we'll kind of like live this long fun kind of thing you know I mean you get to watch it brings it's like it brings a lot of I mean it's great because it tells you it's out but it just brings a lot of enjoyment it brings a lot of enjoyment sharing the just sharing the pictures man I want you to at some point if you can do it we we're almost everybody I think in the hunting industry one of our biggest achievements we've done at the state of Alabama is we have the governor's turkey hunt every year at one time I think it was probably the biggest hunting event in the nation I'd I'd hunted on the governor's hunting in in um for analog the analog hunt the oh the one shot yeah I hunted one shot the Wyoming yeah you know I got Charlie Daniels for those five days oh it was just it was that's the greatest five days it was unbelievable I was I when I did it I was on the actual governors deal so I was like hunting with the governors you know I was one of the sportsmen say when we did it there but but we do the governor's hunt we raise all our money for all our our our hunters helping to hungry the getting women into hunting the we have the largest two scholarships and wildlife at all the state universities that at Auburn and Alabama even though we like Auburn a little more than Alabama I'd say that but you saw you saw some of that when you down there but yeah but I want you to come hunt that hunt with us the governor's hunt we we hunt the governor's hunt every year well how many uh there must be a bunch of participating land on a lot of participation we'll run up to I think the probably the highest 130 or 140 farms in the state really but but it's quite the the every far what what we learned in growing that as a fundraiser was every person that owns a farm is proud of what they do got it and they want to show off those farms and they want to show they're the best game managers those they've been such a good job and let me tell you that's them in the best we I did a segment on CNBC about how successful it was because they all want to the best stewards and the best people in the state to talk about how great wildlife is in the state were the ones that had their farms giving way their hunts for this one yeah yeah with everybody that had come in but a lot a lot of people you need to come hunt that one with us one year I don't know what you guys do say I love what is it yeah it's usually the second third weekend of the season but okay and you tell me again the orgs you guys raised money for we raised money for hunters helping the hungry anything when we came into game and fish almost always that had been in the red we put it in the black with the governor's turkey was that right yes okay that's how big a fundraiser it is and and huge deal in Alabama and very well it's excessive governors pick it up yes successive governors pick it up it it was so successful at getting the people participating one of the governors came in and said everybody we go to raise money y'all have already hit them for for don't you money to be in this deal why don't we do that every other year so it doesn't fall on a year that the governor's going to be elected when they're raising money oh yeah yeah that's high-packed if you can't get it people they already gave man I want you to come down be my guess and and we'll we'll make a run it winning it and and it's it's it's a really good event I'm I'm I think and and I've seen all the different game and fish agencies coming from where we were to where it is I think Alabama has done just a tremendous job our game and fish department is off the chart good from our red sniper programs to our wildlife programs a lot of them could pay attention to what we've done I like to hear that man like like you heard me earlier you know acknowledging the work yeah of the state agency I feel that those guys a lot of those agencies I mean eat especially you know even the very well intentions very effective ones it's people's favorite thing to like trash on yeah but a lot of times they're trash not without having any idea the complexities and what goes into doing that's that work yeah absolutely you know if they got the if they got the right motivations and you feel that they're they're looking out for the best interests of outdoors men and land users and managers it's like give them a shout you know if they're doing good job yeah yeah so it's good to hear you compliment them because I feel like those guys get beat up oh they get beat up and and blame for everything but they do they just from the ball just shot all the way down to the guys that work the the state properties to the the wardens they do a fantastic yeah really really do a good job and and a lot of the states really really do there's some that pull up politics as we've talked about ease into but you know what that may change to you know well getting Dan mulchry thanks to coming on man it really really enjoyed it yet not here I told you the very first time I met you and this is a huge compliment to you listening to you talk about Alaska hunting anybody that has done Alaska hunting it's a different hunting and it's easy to tell a fraud oh and you know you know what I'm talking about say in five seconds you know if they're full of full of crap or not you speak from the hard you speak from what you know about and it's a joy to watch your show when you're when you're giving those shows oh thank you man appreciate it absolutely yes we'll keep coming yeah absolutely thank you don't forget airhead hunt I think I think I might have got your attention early I'm in next time you come on we're gonna talk but we're gonna show the arrowhead we're gonna bore everybody to show arrowhead pictures I bet we can I bet we'd we'd roll with that we'd do good thanks man thank you you this is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human