This episode of the I Heart Podcast features a market report on wild seafood prices, particularly highlighting the steep cost of halibut and other fish at Costco—now priced at $29 per pound—despite being low-quality and sourced from poor fishing practices. The host contrasts this with premium, hand-caught fish from Alaska, emphasizing that such prices reflect supply chains and consumer perception over actual value. The segment also dives into a controversial Wyoming elk hunt, where a group of hunters used a helicopter to access public land. The incident escalated when a rancher tried to hide an elk skull, leading to national media attention. The hunter, Andrew McKean, was later convicted of trespassing after it was revealed the bull had died 35 yards into private land, prompting a full apology and resignation from a hunting education role. The rancher admitted guilt for theft and emotional overreaction, though he declined to reconcile with the hunters. The episode underscores the complexities of land access, ethical boundaries, and the risks of overreach in outdoor recreation. It also raises questions about the ethics of helicopter hunting, especially when used to access restricted public land, and highlights how such stories—amplified by social media—can expose deeper tensions between landowners, public access, and conservation values. The narrative ends with a reflection on the fragility of boundaries in hunting, where even small errors can lead to significant legal and moral consequences, and suggests that such incidents may be more common than acknowledged.
This is an I Heart Podcast, Guaranteed Human. Welcome to the new show, everybody. This week, we've got a market report on halibut prices and what those prices mean for dudes who fish. Former smoke jumper in public land's advocate, Sam Forsdag is here to give us an update on his US House of Representative race. Helicopter hunting in Wyoming goes all wrong for an outdoor life editor, Etsy becomes the devil incarnate, that's hyperbolic. And more, not really though, but first on to our news. Guaranteed about our news, quick, quickly, I was trying to explain something to Seth before the show, but I didn't get time, so I'm going to tell him now. Are you aware that there's this whole thing going, there's this whole thing right now of freeze-drying beef guts and making dog treats out of them? I'm not aware. Are you aware? I've seen it. Liver, I've seen dried liver. Long liver kidney. Okay. I mean, I've seen all sorts of dried stuff in like the pet store, but it's only it's freeze-dried. Freeze-dried. Freeze-dried, for cats, there's minnows and chicken hearts. Well, great. Big cats. There's a thing I know about that I'm not even going to talk about because I don't want to spoil it. But anyhow, I just seconds ago ordered us up a freeze-dryer for the office here. Ooh. So we can make our dogs treat. So you know how we make videos where we have people try stuff. We're going to save all the weirdest junk we can think of, freeze-dry it and then have dogs eat it and see what the dogs say about it. It's a good idea. But I'm going to like picture that you have all this junkie freeze-dried and you let a dog smell it. So he knows, you give him a whiff. Then you bring the dog out of the room and you lay all, we set up cameras and you lay it all around and we see what guts, what freeze-dried guts do dogs really want. Yeah. And then you like ask the dog about it. You can do like eyeballs. Tell me what. Kinds of thing. And now like that, you can, I'm going to start making my own freeze-dried backpacking food now and then. Yeah. Yeah, I'm surprised you didn't say that first and then do the dog thing but I see where your priorities are. I know, but I had to find a way to justify it. When our dogs die, when our dogs die, we can freeze-dry them. Oh, it's never ending. Yeah. So this freeze-dryer is going to become like a major YouTube fixture. Yeah. It's probably a good investment. Do you have a dog in mind? Do I'm going to freeze-dry? No, no, no. There's going to be your tester. Is it any in all dogs? Just all this place is this dog. Yeah. I mean, all those dogs. But there's some I would like put in tears as like these I trust more than this other batch of dogs. Oh, elaborate. I'd have to think about it. Well, like your dog is dumb. Very. He was. He was. He was hell on grouse on set Monday, though. There you go. It'll be two to three weeks before we take possession of this freeze-dryer. This is the most exciting thing I could think had ever happened to me getting a freeze-dryer. I'm glad you're talking about it. I got the thing I'm a freeze-dryer, dude. I'm not even telling nobody about it. Is it an animal product? It is. But I didn't know about doing menos, man. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, they. We've got to do it. So, so stay tuned for that coming up down the road. I was mainly just filling Seth in on this development. I like it. He's been the world's greatest video. I've several times in my life, Googled freeze-dryers and just see how much they are and then that's about as far as I get. I was pleasantly surprised to see they got a massive sale right now ago. Oh. Guess what Steve paid. What did you pay? I could tell what I paid. Well, I thought it was for the office. You can't just. We talked about our pun gun that we bought. That was a stupid product. I don't want to talk about it yet because it was more than I figured. But it wasn't like, was it more than the pun gun? No. No. How about the Warner Bratzler machine? Where's the fall? Probably now, ballpark. Okay. That was a waste of money, ultimately. But I think I'm more optimistic about this. One time it will be different. No. No. That was a dumb, ultimately like a dumb purchase. We've got a new segment today called the market report. It's premiering today called the market report where we're going to examine weird price increases and decreases and other things of interest regarding wildlife resources and commodities. So think of the 2025 explosion in skunk tail prices. More of the black market boom for American eel Elvers about a decade ago, looking at when you see wildlife resources have a moment of weirdness. And we're going to talk about what drives those moments of weirdness. But today we're just going to, we're kicking off the segment. Brody's going to share something with us and this came from, we came back from Alaska, a big, you know, annual fishing trip. And then I can't remember who it was. I was in Costco. I was like, holy shit. Well, that was you initiated it. All of a sudden, someone sends Brody sends a photo of Costco held. The price. That was like, good lord. And I was like seeing that kind of stuff because it makes me feel like I'm being frugal. Yeah. I know. But this is one thing Kelsey says it's all the time like she brings up the price of the fish that we bring home and like to justify it as like, we spent a bunch of money to go to Alaska and catch all these fish. I'm going to get to that later there's something I tell her. We wouldn't buy that fish anyway. It's true. Yeah. But it's all just in your mind. Yeah. I know. I'm not going to go down to Costco and buy a halibut. Like if I didn't go to Alaska ever again, I still wouldn't go buy halibut. We might get me a couple of big old jugs that I'll boil down there, but I'm not going to go down there and buy, or you know those things, those peanut butter pretzels everybody's on. I just thought I was yesterday. I could buy a bucket of them, but I could buy, I could buy their damn fish. Anyways, let her rip. Yeah. So, um, you got that at the beginning of the story of me going to Costco after we got back from the shack, um, but this year we caught so many fish. The fishing was so good at Steve's shack that we drove up the price of Costco halibut to 29 bucks a pound. The thing that was surprising to me about this, I thought it was more than that. Oh, it goes to two pound piece. Yeah. Like I normally at halibut, you'll see like a, like a square block of meat from a big old, like worm infested 150 pounder, like they don't get the good stuff at Costco. Um, I think you might have something to say about that. Can I tell that story? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to name, I don't want to name the guys. I don't want it because he's in the biz, but I got a friend who is a, he charters, but also does some commercial fishing. He one day sends me a picture of just like one of those giants, like 300 pound halibut. And I said, well, that'll feel, I text, he texts me the photo. I text him, well, that'll fill your freezer. He says, are you kidding me? That's the kind of stuff they have down at Costco, meaning the quality of a halibut is in, the quality of a halibut's flesh sits in an inverse relationship to its size, size goes up, quality goes down. So he was just making a comment that Costco buys big, cheap, bad halibut. So you're not even looking at premium halibut. Yeah. So surprising is that these, these were packaged like two to three pound fillets that I'm guessing from halibut that were like 12 to 15 pounds alive, like the ones we catch a lot. I was very surprised. Oh, so it wasn't like chunks that look like firewood? No, no, it was like, you know, the stuff that's going across the fish clean table. Good. Yeah. Okay. I take it back about Costco because I was sitting here thinking how they're going to send us a cease and desist letter. Yeah. But we're already clear. But it was still spendy, right, like still spending for halibut. Another surprising thing I saw there, I didn't send you guys the picture, but same day, they had chunks of troll, it said right on the label, troll caught king salmon for 18 bucks a pound. I was like, holy crap, that's cheap. So I don't know if that was like, that seems very cheap. I don't know if that was like lower grade stuff or it had been sitting in a freezer for a long time and they just broke it out and they were sitting, you know, that's why it was cheaper because that's like very cheap for King salmon. We saw a bunch of those power trollers this summer. Yeah. Jason King's. Yeah. Jason King's. And the thing about Costco fish is like, it's flash frozen. In some cases, they have, I think they have their own processing facilities in Alaska where they package and freeze the stuff. And then they thought out for the display in the store, well, they do, I think I'm pretty sure that's how it works. Yeah. Well, that would make totals. Yeah. For like a place like this. Cause in a display case, it's always sitting there thought. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you want like the really good stuff like we got good fresh caught stuff, either got it like catch it yourself like we did, live close to where it lives or order it online. And this past weekend, I was in Seattle with my family going to a baseball game doing some other stuff and we were down checking out the waterfront and there's several fish markets like touristy fish markets down where they throw the fish back and forth. That's the one. There's a few other ones. Yeah. But it's fun like people watching.
stuff. And so the price is there. We're kind of what you'd expect. Like if you were going to order stuff online and have it overnight at your house, halibut, 42.50 a pound. And this is what you were talking, Seth, because like I brought back a couple of fish boxes worth of halibut, so close to a hundred pounds. So like the math is pretty easy, 42 times a hundred. So like people, it's not easy for me. It's like four grand. So like people are always asking us like does wow game meat like offset the price of hunting. And it usually doesn't. But I don't know, there's an argument to be made here that maybe it does. It can't my boy was pointing this out to me their day where I had him pick up a what used to be called in Montana, the single single region antler list white tail tag. It's got a different name now, but it's the same thing. Right. And it's a resident tag for five bucks or something. It was $10 for a white resident tag for a white tailed doe. Yeah. That like if you just shot the doe out your window or something or five of them. Yeah. And you don't go far. Yeah. And he got one very local. Right. It's like then you can be like, man, I'm looking all this money. I'm saying. Yeah. Because I just shot hundreds of dollars worth of medicine for the cost of an expandable broadhead and a $10 tag. Yeah. But when I drive nine hours to go kill me older, but that's how I justified my Colorado tag to my wife. It came out without gear at already bought. It was like two grand for the tag, the gas, everything. You're not going to get there, man. What do you mean? No, it came out. It came. I got about 200 pounds. It came out to about 10 bucks a pound. And I told her, hey, listen, if you go down to Whole Foods to buy organic, whatever, it's going to be 10 bucks a pound. Yeah. And I got an experience. Yeah, you should tell her, say, listen, man, I either go on this hunt, okay? Or I'm going to go down and buy 200 pounds a halibut at the fish market and seal. That's right. And then we'll see who's. Yeah. But what I'm interested in. And then we'll see who's right. What's the, I've never been to Alaska. What's the cost of like getting up there? Like, what are you in to get up there and get a big old. I don't talk about money. Yeah. A couple dollars. Anyway, 4250 for halibut, King salmon, also 4250, Ling cod. And I don't understand this commercial fishery for Ling cod because you can't put gear out for them. So there's a whole commercial Ling cod fishery in Washington. Just rod and reel. Yeah, there's like, no, there's like specific gear they use. Okay. Yeah. But there's Ling cod. I was a little confused. And then there's Ling cod from buy catch to make it. Yeah. Yeah. They're speaking of buy catch. There was yellow eye there, 30 bucks a pound, Pacific cod, 25 bucks a pound. It seemed a little spending for Pacific cod. These people got it all wrong though on the market because Pacific cod should be the most some of the bits you want. But it's just got a reputation as being like it's like the fact that you can get twice as much, almost that that you can get twice as much cod. Yeah. Is halibut for your dollar should leave you leaving the fish store laughing in the fish stores face. Yep. But meanwhile, like meanwhile, those commercial crab fishermen are using that stuff for bait. Peacock, you know. Oh, what was the tub of cheats, heads and collars? Heads were a dollar pound collars were five dollars pound. And it was just like a random selection of. Yeah. Brody's got a great photo of the tub. Oh, yeah. It's like the gut tub. Yeah. I don't know how much they sell that stuff, but I'd be buying some of it if I live there. Can I take a quick favorite story in my? Yeah. We are clean and I want to say jaguar sharks, but that's from life of chronic. We are cleaning leopard sharks. We're cleaning leopard sharks one time in San Francisco. And we're at a boat ramp cleaning leopard sharks. Yep. And there's this guy. There's this guy. I feel I don't know, but my from my conversation with them, which we weren't really able to have. I feel like he was Chinese. He is going through all the bins of guts every is cleaning all their fish. And he's going through the bins of guts, getting out the fins from the leopard sharks. And I at this is a long time ago and I wasn't like hip to the whole fin market. Right. So I I go to him and I'm like, Hey, man, I'm trying to give him a big leopard shark. Flate like the whole side off a leopard chart. To which he's he because we can't speak to which he conveys like, no, zero interest. Yeah. Yeah. I thought, I'm like, oh, jeez, man, he's digging through the trash poor guy. And I'm like, here's a big old shark. The leopard shark's like nah, he's getting what he wanted. He was not interested in a play. He knew what he wanted. And maybe he'd be and he was different with shark fins. But when we clean fish, when we clean fish in the Bahamas, the Bahamians will come down and they just come down with their tools. Yep. And they stand there and they shoot the breeze of everybody, but they got their tools and they just are cleaning fish heads. Yeah, they wait for you to. As you claim, they're standing there being like, may I? Yep. Split them, digill them, quarter them, and this cleaning them and bagging them up. Yeah. I mean, we do all right. Keeping some collars at your shack, but not the heads, not the heads. No. And finally, the last thing in this fish market that I saw for Steve is the fish he likes the most, but just can't seem to ever catch him as black cod, which was 2650 a pound. They had some big ones there, man, I think any that seems cheap to just just the air down, I'm talking to Justin, Kimmy Werner's husband, Justin, and they have a family place just north of us. I mean, same water, same water. They are knocking the piss out of them. I'm like, show me out of chart what you're fishing. Right. He's fishing the same shit. I'm fishing. You should explain black cod a little bit for what to say. Yeah. So she like, it's like a fish made out of butter, butter, fatty. Oh, it's good. Yeah. So that that was that. That's our market report for for kind of like Alaska, Northwest seafood. The next one I'd like to do, just to keep this in your in your little noodle there, is let's do a roundup on what a bluegill flays, perch flays, walleye flays, the normal fresh water take. What does that market look like? Yeah. All that stuff has a commercial market. Yep. What does a dude pan for a pound of bluegill flays or a pound of Canadian perch? You know, pound or walley dogs. Yep. Are you making money when you fish walleye? Right. That thing. No, especially when you throw them back. Yeah. He's just basically obsessed up there, just throwing $20 bills. Throwing $20 bills into the lake. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now over to your news. Terrible. You know, I, I wasn't happy with that one either. It shouldn't be. Shouldn't be. Some feels worse work. A man of normal genius, it's just not great work. I'll do better. Your news brought to you by banish suppressors, which I'm holding right here, my hot little hand. Let her rip. We had a listener write in and he says, "Dear Steven Rinella, the meat eater crew. My school has a policy for the amount of school someone can miss before they lose the credits for a class. That amount is 10 days in the entire semester. Then you are ineligible for the credit in the class. I was writing to ask Mr. Rinella if he could write a doctor's note so that I can skip school and go on a pack trip to go elk hunting because I know he's got some sort of decorative doctorate of some kind. Please let me know before November 1st. This is when my tag opens. I'd be more than happy to write him a note. I will. We could do it one better because if they catch that mine's honorary, they might throw them out of school. But Randall's is real. We'll get two doctors. Yeah. Double up. He got a second opinion. You know, like, you know, we use the note where you public next door. Yeah. And she, I think it's, she charges like 10 bucks. I'll probably, it's probably going to be like a, like a $10 fee to sign doctor's notices. Yeah. So I, the point is we will rubber stamp your doctor's notes for to go hunting. Yeah. I will, I'll create a form. Yeah. You write whatever you want and I'll sign it. Yeah. No, no. We'll have a, we'll have a form that people request. It is pre-signed about emotional health, being in touch with nature, et cetera, et cetera. And I'll just plug your name in and you can take that to your professor. And it'll be signed by Stephen LF doctor. And they, you know, maybe, maybe, what will you do then instead of charge them 10 bucks as they should just kick in on that little kitty we got going to get that dude's bison school age. Yeah. There you go. You know, when you max that out, it just goes to the LAI LAI. There you go. No, I'll be happy to sign them. No, we'll have Randall sign it too. Sounds like a double doctor. They can't refuse that. And Madison's on top of it two months ahead of time. He's writing in to ask for this. I ran up in this wall. When I was in college, I ran up against his problem where if I missed another day, it was November 15. If I missed another day, I would, I could do no better than a C. And I went hunting anyway. Yeah, C's are great. Well, I went, listen to what happened though. Like in hindsight, I thought there was probably no way. This is a long time ago. In hindsight, there's probably no way it was legal life. But I'm sick.
sitting there in the dark waiting for it to get light. And a buck is coming. And I'm not kidding, man. This is terrible. I got down on the ground and put my cheek against the dirt trying to skylight his antlers. That's too dark. Was able to find his throat patch in my scope. It was early to class. But in hindsight, but we didn't really like know about that. It just wasn't the thing that was on our radar. Yeah, but there was shooting light and all that. But there was no way it was legal shooting light. And only like it just wasn't the thing that my dad talked about. Yeah, like legal. It just was not no one talked about me. It wasn't printed in the reg books show absolutely, but it was also not a place I spent any time doing casual reading in the reg books. Yeah. So I recently heard someone say the best get out of class email that you can write to a professor is say you got sprayed by skunk. What are they going to do? There's no proof. They're not going to ask you to come in that like that should work. There's going to be a lot of people getting sprayed by skunks, I think this year. Unless I'm the professor, I'm going to say, no, it's cool. Come on. I love that smell. Come on out in the back. Cut in my office early. I like to visit you about this. You want to be on the news show? So right in subject line doctors note, include the dates in your name. Yeah. Happy to write those. And we'll double doctor them. Yep. We'll double doctor them. 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've got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Join myself, Yanis Putellis, Clay New, Combrant Reaves, 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. Okay, order Spencer Newhart now helicopter hunt and lay it out. I've got this story broken up into like three parts. So I'm going to try to answer all your questions before you get to them. But just like trust that something hasn't come up yet. Hopefully it's going to sit back and enjoy about two weeks ago. This is why we're talking about this now on August 26th, 2026. Outdoor life publishes an article from their hunting and conservation editor, Andrew McKean title. I was convicted of trespassing after covering public land access issues on our controversial Wyoming elk hunt subheader. We helicoptered into otherwise inaccessible public land to hunt elk and highlight landlocked issues in the west. But I made a terrible mistake. Those are all Andrew's words. The hunt Andrew is referring to took place in Wyoming November 2025. Andrew is there with three buddies David, Ben and Ryan, plus a film crew. They are recording the whole thing and using this as an example of how there are 16 million acres that we the public own, but we the public can't get to 16 million is a number from on X. Okay. That's been thrown around. David, one of the haunting buddies has been planning this hunt for quite a while. It's a special piece of public land that the public can't get to without crossing a little bit of private land. Thus, it gives this rancher control of a whole bunch of public lands that he has paying hunters access via him. Got it. So he's outfitting. He's outfitting his land, but you can also reach this other public land. Yeah. He's not doing nothing wrong. Nope. No, everything is legal that he's doing into something he's been doing for quite a while. Yeah. So the only way to get to this public again is by paying for a guided hunt or do what David and Ryan and Andrew did. And that's having a helicopter fly you in. David spent over 100 hours planning this hunt. One of the biggest obstacles was just simply finding a pilot to fly them in. At one point, he actually called a hot air balloon company and started asking them logistical questions about like if they thought he could pull this off. And at one point, the guy was like, David, you know, you can't like stir these things or steer these things, right? Like you're just going with the wind and it kind of brought the hot air balloon fantasy to an end. Well, how are those guys all still alive? The hot air balloon folks. Yeah, I don't know. I suppose they just like have a general idea about what the wind is doing that day or where they're going to come down at. Come on. They just land wherever. I don't think it's that simple, but I think there's some amount of mystery about where hot. The point is to make this journey from a public road to the public land. The guy talking to David is like, I don't think a hot air balloon. He's not that precise. He can't be that precise. So finally, on the 27th pilot, the David calls, he found someone willing to take their business. And for about $2,000 per person, these guys could take a four minute helicopter ride into public land. That's how far I am. $2,000 to get four minutes from a road to the public land. No, really. To be legal beagle. Now, to go through the rancher to hunt there, as of 2024 pricing, I found on his website, $6,500. So you're saving $4,500 doing the helicopter route. That's what they decided on. But he's not just charging an access fee. It's got to be that it's a guided hunt. His website is vague on details. You contact him, but he doesn't even really mention the public land on his website. He talks about all the acres of privacy as access to. And how we kill this many trophy bulls. And these are your sleeping accommodations. $6,500 versus $2,000, just if you want to get to this public land. So I'm going to tell the story in three parts. This is not how it happened in real time. But this is how this information was released to the public. So this is how I consume this story as it was happening over the last nine months. And if you're someone who isn't familiar with any part of the story at all, then you're going to consume it the same way that me and the rest of the public who was following this did. Part one, this one's got a lot of national attention right after it happened. But for a different reason than Andrew McKean's trespassing. This was the elk hunt where a rancher went on to public land to the kill site of a bull. And that rancher tried hiding the elk's skull that he found there. To be clear, this was not Andrew's elk that we're going to talk about in a little bit. This was a different elk that was legally killed by another member of the haunting party. We covered this on our website. We had a media to radio live interview with David Fabian about this exact story. He works for Guns and ammo magazine. And he was the one he was one of the hunters there when this happened. He was holding the cell phone that sort of captured this encounter. Here's a quick recap of that encounter. That was day two of this helicopter elk hunt. David, who we see here and Ryan both killed really good bulls on day two on day three. They're still working on getting all the meat back to their camp. And while David and Ben are at David's kill site. They happen to spot someone at Ryan's kill site, which is a couple hundred yards away. And it's not anyone from their hunting party. They watch this person through their binos as this person carries the elk skull into a ravine. Ben and David, they rush over there and they confront this man as he emerges from the timber. This leads to what David Fabian called quote the strangest hunting encounter of my life. It turns out that this guy is the rancher who controls the access to this landlocked land. He was a 70 year old rancher. It's not clear to me if that's his exact age or just estimated, but he's an old time rancher. And he is busted in the act of stealing their elk skull on public land. On public land, firmly in public land. David gets out his phone. He starts filming the interaction between them. The rancher starts off by just like straight up lying and being deceitful. And he says something like, I don't know what bull you guys are talking about. And eventually he does fest up to it and Ben says something like why this happened. And the rancher answers quote, because I don't want you guys hunting this outfit. So this is like the viral moment of of this whole experience sort of until now that we get to in a little bit. David said in our interview on radio live that the elk skull was hidden in a way that you basically had to be on top of it to see it. And the rancher watches them crawl into this ditch where the he hid this skull. They get their antlers back and everyone kind of goes their separate ways. And after these guys, I see these guys don't skin their skulls all that always kind of bothers me. They did a camp because if Phil goes back a couple photos, I think we see them skinned out. But at that point in the hunt, they were butchering to elk that day. Minor detail. They seem like they just hadn't gotten around to it yet. So they go back to camp. They get their meat and their skull back. They get service at that point. that point they call the
Game Warden. Game Warden is very interested in their story. He says, I got a question here. Who's creepy hand is in the top left corner of that? I think it's either David or Ben handing down to get the skull from the guy from where he hit it at. So this is like showing us the place where he placed this skull. This is him giving it back. Yes, he's the rancher handing it back. I understand. So they contact the Game Warden. Game Warden says, I'll meet you guys, you know, like tomorrow. And we can talk about it then. So this interaction with the rancher went viral, like mega viral. Between the videos, the national media coverage, podcast coverage, this story gets told to millions of people. We're looking at the original Facebook post here, which has been ripped off a million times. But just this first one, 10,000 likes, 700 comments, 300 shares. And if, like I said, this was like the defining moment of this whole thing. It was one of the defining moments of 2025. If the outdoors are something you're interested in, this probably came across your table at some point. If you want to hear more about this specific interaction, again, that was episode 813 of Media to Radio Live. We interviewed David for about 20 minutes. That's part one. Again, this happens on days two and three. Okay. Part two. We're going to back up to day one. Before the helicopter, even picks these guys up, Andrew McKean delivers this message to a cameraman. He says, quote, "The thing that's really interesting about it and kind of catches in my throat a little bit, is this feels like it's so aggressive, like a little bit kind of a thumb in the eye to the land owners who control the access and probably have for years. But this is kind of, but this is kind of like a measure of what's happened across the West, really, between the corner crossing issue, between people exploiting the resource one way or the other, either because they've got the access or want the access, there's kind of a land grab going on right now." So this is our testing of, I think, a way to like create access or provide access or get access. I don't even know what the verb really is. We're grabbing access is the way it feels from people who have always had it for a long time. So that is what Andrew says before the chopper even arrives to pick them up. So real, some real foreshadow and going on there. It's the first day of the hunt and they could legally hunt on day one in Wyoming as long as they flew in and weren't doing any scouting. Again, the healthy ride was four minutes, so no scouting done like they take off land setup camp and they start hunting. That afternoon, they spot some bulls and they get into position to kill one. Here's the screen grab from the video of the bull that Andrew eventually kills. And as they're waiting for the right moment, Andrew delivers another very foreboding message to camera. Here's a quote. So we're watching two bulls feed out of the timber. I'm pretty sure these are the two bulls we saw in the little clearing when we first got up above camp and glass them. Once kind of junior varsity, but one is a stud. They're at 400 A.R. right now. We got some mule deer between us and them that kind of had got us pegged. So we're just being super chill to see what they do. But the wind's good, I don't know. Everything is going right until it doesn't. We kind of got a tippy toe because there's some private like a quarter section up here. So we just have to keep watching to see where we are. Make sure that everything is good, but that just kind of adds one more little detail to it. We're on public. They're on public. But if they go a whole lot more south, they're going to be on private and there's no marker. God, Andrew's quote. It's like the last thing he says basically before he pulls the trick. So Andrew gets slightly repositioned. He shoots the big bull three times. It looks like all three shots like land. We can't tell because of a camera cut, but it appears as though the bull runs about 50 yards between where shot one takes place and where the bull dies. And it's a whopper of an elk. This is a really big bull. So that's the end of day one day one. Andrew kills the giant elk day two. David and Ben kill good bulls day three. They have the encounter with the rancher who tries hiding the elk skull. And day four, they fly back to their pickups. I got I got to stop you. What do you got? They walk up to this bull that's dead. There's no like oh shit moment or no like maybe that's part three. I know. Um, there there are some disagreements or discrepancies between Andrew's account and the rancher who later gets interviewed by cowboy daily state news. I believe from like where the elk dies at and where you see some of the footage of them doing like the gripping rins and just like high-fiving and talking over the elk. Um, the elk has now moved about 25 yards, I believe. Andrew says the elk died on a steep slope and they just naturally wanted to get down to the flat spot and it was sure to do. Uh, uh, the rancher says that they moved it so fast that it's suspicious to him that that he thinks they moved that bull pretty quick and they knew how it was he watching? No, but you you watch the video and you see the elk die and there's still like it appears as though you're still looking at legal shooting lights while they're standing over the elk and it's slightly been moved. Again, Andrew says they were just sliding it down the hill to a more natural spot to gut. The rancher says they moved it so quickly that it seemed as though they knew there was a problem. Uh, okay. So, uh, outdoor life, outdoor life, uh, who Andrew works for, publishes a 25-minute video of the hunt on YouTube, uh, in March 2026. So about four months after the hunt takes place. Is that video, uh, is that video like widely viewed? Uh, 230,000 people, I think. Um, so yeah, it's a popular video. Um, and again, this video was like being talked about before it ever came out because the helicopter thing was unique, uh, because of the interaction they had with the rancher who tried stealing the skull. Um, so this was like, you know, set up to be viewed by people at that. The rancher, the very same rancher who these guys interacted with on day three watches the video and he recognizes that Andrew's bull is standing on his private land when he shoots it and not only that, but the bull runs even farther into private land before dying. Um, the rancher contacts the game warden, the warden comes out, uh, compares the video with a person. Um, him having this realization when he watches the video. Yep. By this point has he already been kind of like showcased and talked about the video comes out in March of the 25-minute hunt. The viral video of the rancher getting caught stealing the elk's skull, uh, that drops on like December one. Okay. So he's been building for four months. Yeah. So at this point, he for months, yes, has been called out, um, ridiculed, um, about a thing that like, by all means, the guy should not have hit people's stuff. Yeah. But he's been dealing with this. We'll address this in act three. Okay. Uh, so the the rancher contacts award warn comes out. He compares the video with landmarks in person. Uh, I read that he found like the, uh, the land, the public land survey marker in the ground, uh, just to be certain. Um, and the, the game warden determines that in fact, Andrew McKeen's bull was standing about 35 yards inside of private land when he shot it. How are he that have known this? How would McKeen not know this? Yeah. Nothing's marked. There, there's no fences. He's got, he's, he's, he's definitely running a GPS mapping plan. Understood. And he's talking about where the private land is. They, they said they felt confident in like the boundaries that they could identify, uh, in person. So, so McKeen is now written a ticket for trespassing. He played no contest on August 24th to one count of title 23 trespass and one count of the use of a silencer to take big, to take a big game animal while trespassing. He was fined $1,270 and surrendered his skull to the state. Oh, uh, so McKeen pleads no contest. August 24th. Uh, it's then on August 26, two days later when outdoor life publishes the article that I referenced earlier. Uh, it's titled, I was convicted of trespassing after covering public land access issues on our controversial Wyoming outcome. What, what, what do you think that was mandated by the prosecutor or you think that I was just trying to get out ahead of it? I'm guessing he had that in the can for weeks or months that this all didn't unfold for Andrew, you know, in the course of a week. If that rancher recognized it in March and the game wardens, you know, alerted immediately. I'm sure this was on Andrew's plate for, for months at this point. That's a lot of stress to live with, man. So in, in the article, McKeen takes responsibility for trespassing. Uh, he says it was an honest mistake. He says they studied the digital maps in the field and they thought the bowl was standing 30 yards inside of public rather than 35 yards inside of private. Uh, in the article, McKeen says he's quote, deeply sorry. Uh, it was quote a profound mistake. Uh, another spot, he says, quote, the most painful penalty is that in this case, I became part of the problem. Now later in the article, he talks about following the rules and being an ethical hunter and how landowners deserve rights. And he says, quote, to now publicly admit that I failed to uphold those values hurt beyond description. Uh, and as part of his conclusion, he says, quote, I will resign from my 25-year tenure as a Montana hunter education instructor because I can't in good conscious teach perspective hunters about the importance of obtaining landowner permission with this incident on my record. I will accept judgment from friends, hunting buddies, and a legion of online
commentators who have never met me. - Man. - All right, so that's part two. - Man. - Again, the McKean article. Here's part three. One week after McKean's article is published. - Kaka but in. - Yup. - That was a noble acknowledgement. I know we're only in the part two, but that was a full-throated. - Yeah, I assume you read the thing, Steve, but it's, okay, yeah, he's like, I'm just drunk. He's not trying to wiggle out of it. - No, he owns it in the middle, and he owns it at the end. The whole way through, he's like, man, I made a student mistake. - 'Cause he could have been like-- - Someone should have done a better job, you know what I mean? - Yup. Okay, part three. One week after McKean's article is published on September 2nd, Cowboys State Daily Posting article about the whole situation. In the article, they provide an update on the rancher's own legal case and are able to interview him. So here's what we learned. Back in April, the rancher pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge for hiding the LKED. He was fined $220. So about $1,000 less than McKean's fine for his two trespassing violations. Regarding the LK thief, or either rancher told Cowboys State Daily, quote, "I saw where they had killed a big bull." I'm gonna start this over. "I saw where they had killed a bull elk the day before on the BLM land within one half to three quarters mile from our buildings. I got upset and let my emotions get the best of me and took the LKED and packed it downhill and put it in a deep draw. I was in the wrong doing it. I eventually apologized. We shook hands and they got their horns back." So that was one of the ranchers quote in this article. The rancher said the fallout from the event led to harassment and death threats. He said he just stopped answering his phone this year. If it was a phone number, he didn't recognize. Another detail, McKean says in the article that he attempted to reach out to the landowner in an attempt to meet and mend fences, but the landowner did not respond. In the Cowboys State Daily article, the rancher confirms that he got the letter and a voice mail from McKean and decided not to respond. Here is the rancher's quote. He put me through so much misery last fall and last winter, I don't have any desire to get together with him. The last thing of note here is that the rancher says he's already aware of one group of hunters who have booked a helicopter to fly them in this fall and he suspects there would be more. I want to give my take away and then you guys have at it. I feel bad for everybody involved. Like I don't think anybody came away from this feeling good or feeling like the winner, like both parties made pretty bad mistakes, both parties apologize and both parties had like really severe consequences. It just ends up being a black eye for like the public land hunters and a black eye for this kind of landowner who uniquely controls public land access. It's just like a rare loose loose. - Go ahead, Brody. - I mean, it's real easy to judge Andrew from afar. Like things happen in the heat of the moment. Oh my God, it's just a good lesson to not mess with animals that are flirting the private property line. Like that's such a small margin of error. Like walk away and find one that's half a mile from the line. You know, that like that's my take away. Like I'd love to get in a helicopter and go hunt there. I, you know, if that's the only way you're gonna do it. Great. But it's just too easy to screw up. And they say in the video that Andrew's like, we gotta be careful because there's a quarter section, 160 acres. I went on X and I feel like I've sussed out where this whole thing played out. And I'm sure like the frustrating part for Andrew and the others in this party is they are in kind of like a sea of public land. And this 160 acres is it, when you look at it, you're like, oh, it's kind of meaningless. Like they could just, you know, find that bowl again tomorrow and I bet he's on the public or maybe they could wait 10 minutes. In this case, he was 35 yards inside the private. Yeah, but like Brody said, this is just like a familiar story if you hunt in the West. You're used to being around on mark boundaries. You're used to being around convenient fencing where the property line actually cuts across like a steep bank, but they move the fence 50 yards one direction the other. And then that becomes like an unofficial property line. It's just something they're like, you're always dealing with these legal boundaries. And it's a frustrating and like scary part of hunting within the margins. I'm constantly doubting where I'm standing versus what Onyx is telling me. And it like Onyx is probably dead nuts, right? But 30 yards man. It's just like, yeah. You're right. The whole thing's painful. I applaud, it's not the right word because applaud's not the right word. I understand and would have no hesitation to do a hunt where you were accessing landlock public land with a helicopter. Part of my comfort with it, right, is that I do a lot of hunting in Alaska where you use fixed wing aircraft to access stuff. And when you're flying along and fixed wing aircraft, you're often flying over land. You're not allowed to hunt, right? Flying over native corporation land, whatever you land somewhere in you hunt. And you don't even think about it. I think it seems surprising down here because it's just a thing that people hadn't thought of before. It's kind of a, it's this new idea, right? You do something so sort of extravagant and expensive as higher, in this case, rotary wing aircraft, which I'll point out would be illegal to do in Alaska because you have to use fixed wing aircraft for hunting in Alaska. I didn't know that detail. Yeah, you can't use, you can't, in Alaska, you can't do nothing around hunting with a helicopter. You can't supply a hunting camp with a helicopter in Alaska, only fixed wing. Is that something you ever hear about them talking to changers that just like part of the culture? No, because it would be to think about what it would mean for doll sheep. Think about what it would mean for everything. Yeah. There's a, like, you can just land on anything. I assume they just loved airplanes up there. No, no, no, no, no. Fix your word, it would mean. I get it. You find a bowl, you find a bowl moves, you're just going to land on it. Yeah. You find a doll sheep, you're going to land on it. There's no more hike in from the valley floor up to the top. You land it top. It'd be, I don't want to be hyperbolic again and say that it would be the death of big game hunting in Alaska, but it would have enormous, and even enormous implications. Even with fixed wings, they bake that day delay. Because like, you can still like land in the path of a caribou migration, right? So at least you give them a day buffer and, you know. But yeah, wildlife resources in Alaska are often protected by the fact you can't get a boat near it, and there's not an air strip near it, and there's not a road near it. The minute you can just hop out of a helicopter on some marshland and chase a bowl, it's, I don't want to say it's done, but it's done. People realize debating about like this and that thing killed Alaska, you'd have a whole new, better argument about the helicopters killed Alaska. So, and that wakes, I have like many decades of experience hunting in Alaska under those circumstances. The helicopter thing, I look at it, there's like an instinctive ickiness to helicopters because I have the Alaska parallel in my head. I don't view it as wrong at all to use a helicopter to go hunt some land like public land. At all, wrong. There's no question about it. The point I'll bring up is if you are in a situation where you are showcasing, you're making a point about public private boundaries. You're making a point about access. You're making a point about landowner hunter relationships. You're selling your editors, not on, hey, I want to go get a big bowl real easy. Me and my body's wanting easy two, three day hunger, we all get bowls. We're going to your editor and you're saying, oh, we're going to do this whole showcase project and talk about land borders. It just seems, and this is so obvious, but it just seems you would be behaving in a way where you were bulletproof. You wouldn't give yourself a 35 yard. Come on. Potential. Come on. My kid has found, not found, it's late, my daughter has the lawn mower around it. There's a giant bark in my neighborhood. It's like scared the shit out of me the other day. There's a giant bark, not giant, but a big bark like drop time giant, he's a giant buck. Does he actually have a drop time? Oh, yeah. One and a half of them. Oh, a big drop time whitetail that you got to mow around. You know what they say? He's going to die old age. He's either going to die old age or get hit by a car. I know where he's going to die. I can tell you within 200 yards of where I'll find him someday. Headless on the road because he just, he's doomed, but my kid is baked up these various.
plans, you know, not even seriously, but he's just he's mused about this various plans and I've explained to him, should that buck leave and go like, if on its route, it winds up out of city limits, you know, which is uncertain. And if you look at that area, I'm like, you'd have to get permission from a lot of people because where you put the arrow into it, isn't where it ends. As evidenced by fact that a deer he got just recently with his bow was 130 yards from where the arrow hit it when we found it. And I'm trying to invite him to go like, let's go look at what 130 yards looks like. Yeah. Oh, that's not the neighbor. In some cases, that's not the neighbor's neighbor. Yeah. All right. So if your whole thing is that you're doing a thing about land borders and all that, why are you messing around within 30 yards of an animal, that if you've hunted it a bunch, can really, really take a hit. And it's it's 160 acres, right? So 400 by 400 yards, right? Quarter mile. The thing's not going to be in there forever, right? Like, and you know, they can take a hit. Yep. And and to be like the thing you're talking about of making this, this like content around the idea of this is how difficult it can be to access 16 million of our acres. It involved outdoor life. It involved outdoor lives like social media. They're publishing team. They're video team. It involved David Fabian, who works for a totally different outdoor company, Guns and ammo. So there's just like a lot of parties involved in in making this thing just to show folks how big it was. Yeah. And to be clear, um, I've got friends that have had this problem happen. The fact that I haven't had this happen to me is just that I've just been lucky. At times, you know, I've played the fence game. Like, you know, I mean, oh, just jump the fence over on the place. We're allowed to get it. Yep. I'm just lucky that I haven't had this happen. So it's not passing judgment that it happened. If I had a buddy that had that happened to him, I would, I would give it as much thought as it takes to go like, that's really too bad. You should be more careful next time. And they'd be like, yeah, no kidding. But just the point of what you're doing is that it just seems like you would have been so careful, so careful. 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. We got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Join myself, Yannis Putellis, Clay Nuke, and Brent Reaves, and Randall Williams. 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. Wasn't there already a question about the legality of the helicopter involvement? Like if he was packing them in and he needed a guiding license? Well, that's a thing Spencer might be able to speak this better, but that is a thing that people are poking at legally now. And I think guides an outfitter's association and Wyoming, perhaps, is looking at this is when what is a helicopter operator becoming a outfitter. I would also, but then I would ask this question. If I take an uber out to my hunting spot, is the uber guy in trouble? And of course not. If I said, no, I ubered out to my buddy's farm and hunted, no one would ever say, let's check with that uber operator, make sure he's a licensed outfitter. It's like, come on. David, who did most of the hunt playing here, he put the screws to like the planning portion of this. And that was something that he cleared with Wyoming official ahead of time. Like we're good to do this, right? And this guy's going to be okay. And so they were confident going in that like everything involving the helicopter itself was totally kosher. Yeah, I'll tell you one thing that could have happened also. And again, like I don't want these guys to think I'm passing judgment, but there could have been a situation where they notify it. Like obviously the landowner's going to see that helicopter. But months before the hunt, they could have been like, look, we're doing this just so you know, we're going in there. And perhaps some of that tension would have been mitigated. Like as it happened, you know, I don't think they're, yeah, you that would have been in hindsight, maybe a nice move. And I don't think there's any way on earth. There's no way on earth that McCain was like, oh, I know it's on private, but I'm just going to try my luck and drag it down. There's no way. Like he made a mistake about it. He made a mistake. There's no way I think that he thought, I'll just be clever and drag it out of the way. Yeah. It was a mistake. It was a mistake. And his apology is like I said, it is a full apology. Yeah. There is no, wow, you know, dammit. They should have moved the, you know, or someone should have put that marker more clear. You know, I mean, he didn't in any way try to put it off on somebody. Yeah, I wonder if it's a little bit of the, who says it? The Durkin that big bucks make people stupid. Maybe that bull made them stupid for a minute, you know? Yeah. And like, like a lot of haunts in those final moments, it happens fast. Like McCain delivers the message to camera about like we kind of got a tippy-toe because of some of the boundaries. And then all of a sudden the bowl is moving and McCain is moving. And like the shot happens. And the whole thing, I don't know the real time of it, but you'd figure just a couple minutes to like make all of those calls. And I'm sure they were obviously aware when it happened. And like, oh, this could be close. Yeah. The sad part too is that the point they were not sad part or reality. Happy or sad. I'm not going to weigh in on that. The reality is the point they were trying to make in the end. They obviously only resulted in them creating more of a question around ethics and conflict. Right. It didn't clarify anything. It's like you went to access some inaccessible public land and stirred some serious shit up and caused people to have opinions about it that probably didn't have opinions about it before. Yeah. Yeah. In a state where the whole corner crossing thing kind of just got settled. And now there's this. Yeah. This issue to deal with. Yeah. You know, it's funny about stuff like that. It's the other day. I mentioned this before, but their day, we had a bear in our garage messing all around. And I'm trying to get them out of there. And I'm thinking in my head, I tell my neighbor, I was like, if I wasn't me out of shot it. Yeah. But like, I can't do that. Yeah. The stakes are because someone's going to be like, well, he had this and that. And he attractants and his compost pile. And he had a they were cleaning rouse and you know, I mean, so I'm like, I can't shoot it. But I would have shot it. Yeah. This this isn't a lesson. It's just like an observation. The whole thing. But imagine if all of this would have went down with no cameras. Like the rancher, he wouldn't have been charged with anything because that would have been right. A totally different story being told by the hunters about like what happened and it's, you know, there's just no proof. And obviously, McKean would have been seen shooting 35 yards inside of the boundary. It's just like if that wasn't part of this whole thing, we wouldn't know any of this story at all. Nobody would have a charge. I don't there's no lesson there. It's just like 2025. I wonder what the pilot if the pilot is interested in taking another call from another potential client or if the pilot is like, man, y'all got too much heat. Well, the fact that it took him 27 tries. So I think there must be a lot of helicopter pilots in Wyoming that are like, you know, I live in this town. Yeah, I don't want to deal with that. Yeah, they're like, yeah, I'm going to stick to the flight scene and all that kind of stuff. But then pilot 27's like, I don't know, four minute ride. Yeah, yeah. $2,000 per person for four minutes. That's a lot of that's a lot of money. It feels like this is wrapped up now. Like I think this is the conclusion of it all, which obviously none of them wanted, but it's been playing out for nine months and it feels like it's come to an end.
I respect that I respect stepping away as a hunting instructor. But I also think that there'd be room to there'd be room to just be a hunting instructor who's a real guy that made a mistake. Yeah, and be like, let me tell you about this kid. Yeah, he could he could teach kids about that mistake. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm always talking about all the rules we broke as kids, man, like, I don't know. No cameras. Well, I'm taught, I'm telling about, I mean, I've written about them. Like we broke rules. We didn't feel like breaking them. So we didn't know that they were lots, I didn't know they were rules. Huh, what do you got stuff? Yeah, what yeah, this burns, this, this, this, this burns my ass. Um, so the Etsy, the Etsy fly, it's not, it's not a fly band, it's a fur band and people are using fur to tie flies. Yeah. Um, so Etsy has started deactivating listings that contain animal products. As of August 11th, 2026, Etsy updated its animal products policy to no longer allow items made with real animal fur, including, um, common flytime material, such as make fox rabbit, badger, coyote, raccoon. Um, so I looked at the Etsy animal products policy, and, um, it says note, this policy was updated on August 11th, 2026, right at the top. Okay. And then so the first thing you see is like endangered threatened in that risk wildlife products, which is like a no brainer. Yeah, it's table stakes. It's like no, no kid. Yeah. Um, and it goes on to say like, you know, an important part of creating a sustainable future protecting wildlife from extinction. Yada, yada, basically saying you can't sell anything that has anything to do with, um, like sighties animals and stuff like endangered species act animals. Um, as it should, as it should, and it lists, it, there's a big list of animals, bats, bears, um, chinchillas, corals, crocodilians, elephant, you know, all the things. Pangolus or pangolins. Um, and then I don't, I don't know the, the old, um, I couldn't find the old like policy, but there's a, there's a part at the end that says animal fur products. It says in addition to, uh, prohibiting products made from endangered and threatens, and threatened species Etsy prohibits products made from containing natural, uh, animal fur regardless of age or origin. This includes, includes products like raw pelts, uh, finished garments, accessories and personal care items made with real fur from animals such as make fox rabbit, badger coyote and raccoon dog. Um, this does not include taxidermy byproduct materials, such as leather, sheepskin, uh, sheerling, cow hide wool or, uh, mohair or fur products, um, from sellers registered with the Indian arts and crafts board. Oh, that's an interesting distinction. Yeah. Um, so I got, I got to do in some digging around and there's an organization called CAFT, um, the coalition to abolish the fur trade. Um, they conducted a 58 day protest, um, campaign across 17 cities that targeted Etsy headquarters, uh, board members and affiliates. The chicken shits cave. Yeah. This ban was announced after CAFT confronted the Etsy CEO, um, at a Morgan Stanley investor conference saying that they continue, uh, that they are continuing to profit off the bloody fur trade in front of investors, investors. Um, so I went on Etsy to just look to see what's still there. And there are like, um, what like clouds or minnows that have like deer hair and stuff still on there. I don't know if it's like, you know, stuff that they haven't I was looking at descriptions too and doesn't say like, you know, deer hair or anything like that. But there's still products on there that are made from, you know, animal products. But it's probably just stuff that hasn't been flagged. But we had a guy right in, but a guy wrote in that that ties flies and sells them on there and said that a lot of his listings have been removed. More some examples of flies that he's had removed. Um, I don't know. It just said there was a screenshot of, you know, Etsy emailing him just saying like, your listing has been removed. Um, it didn't say he mentioned that it's just if you're if you mentioned the animal fur in it. So healthcare cats. Yeah, like, or muskrat, whatever. And so him and a lot of his, his peers are just changing the descriptions. Hopefully the AI overlords don't catch it. I did find, I did find on their, phasantails, like the fly phasantail. Yeah. Um, and that was in the description. And that was still up. So I don't, I don't know, today's feather not for yeah, feather. But, but still, I don't, yeah, I don't know where they draw the line. You know, I can't believe they would cave to something like that. Yeah. Now, here's the other catch. Are they allowing people to sell? Can you still buy beaver wool felt cowboy hats? Um, as far as I know, I, I don't think it's all yeah, dude. Really? I got a whole ton of listings for them. I guess I'm bitches, but you can't buy a beaver fur hat, but you can buy a beaver felt hat. It's okay if you take the fur and turn the fell. I'm sure there's all I'm sure you could find you go on there and just start looking around and find all sorts of examples like that. They also don't have a problem with like domestic animal products like they sell leather shoes and they sell jerky and like, it's like, why? I think it's just something that they, they got a lot of heat and pressure from this, this organization. They got called out in front of board members and investors and whatnot. And they're just trying to do something to shut them off. And they capitulated. I bet you can buy Michael Jackson memorabilia on there. A problem. Why is that okay? Yeah. That's the thing I wonder about all the time. Why is it okay to sell Michael Jackson memorabilia, but not a beaver fur hat? Yeah. Someone needs to make this is, you know, this is, I'll never do this song. I throw out a great idea for listeners. Someone needs to make a mood, a fake movie trailer. Okay. And it's like from the producers of Michael comes Jeffrey. And it tells the story of Epstein rags to riches, but it just ends with him kicking it on an island. They're like, he's made it. Yeah. Like he's made it. You know, and it's like, I had my struggles, but by God, now I'm a billionaire. They leave out all the bets. And then it just ends. Yeah. That'd be a really funny. If I had time in an expertise, I would make this fake trailer. But it'd be, I would just mimic the Michael trailer, but make it the Epstein, no, Jeffrey, the movie Jeffrey. And it would just end with him being like, I've arrived. He'd sell it on Etsy. That could sell my movie on Etsy. Man, we covered this when they originally just banned fur, like pelt. And it's just, hey, all the fly fishermen, man, like that's why you should have cared then. Yeah. Yeah. It's a squeaky wheel thing. When they were trying to plot, when they were plotting that fur sale ban for Colorado, just recently, they knew they're like the pushback from cowboy hat people. So like the pushback from tourists, the people that sell to tourists, and the pushback from fly fishermen, they like that pushback is going to sink this initiative. Yeah. They carved out it. So they said, Oh, if you want to tie flies with beaver fur, cool. If you want to sell cowboy hats made from beaver fur, cool, but the rest of all y'all are out. And they they anticipated the pushback because like there's a specialness about a fly guy. Right? They're like, we don't want to mess with the fly fishermen because that's kind of like, you know, a certain class of individual that we don't want to tangle with. But these like lower class ultra red necks who would run around like a fur hat, screw those guys. But here at sea, we're like, they didn't take that approach. They didn't say tourist shops selling cowboy hats, you're cool, fly fishermen, you're cool. And now maybe they'll get the iron of the fly fishermen. And it will cause them to revisit. I don't know. In writing the intro for the show, Steve declared
they were the devil. And then he immediately backed off and said, well, maybe that was hyperbolic. So where do you land now? Are they still the devil? Are they not the devil? I think it's, maybe devil. I think it's terrible that you would cave to something like that. And it's especially terrible that you would equate the, you would even equate the contemporary market for fur products with some kind of like biodiversity campaign or some kind of sustainability campaign. When we are talking about an industry that is tightly regulated, it's, we're talking about animals that are IUCN species of lease concern. The Wild West days of the fur trade, imparaling wildlife species, which was one, which was absolutely the reality a long time ago. In fact, I've spent many, many, many days and hours making products, our meat is American history series, chronically the destruction of the fur trade, right? I'm not whitewashing it. But those days aren't just done, they've been done. Those days are done. It is a tightly, tightly regulated industry that has basically zero ecological impact. And there is no questions of sustainability around regulated fur bears in this country. There just isn't. It's like you're making an issue whether it isn't one. And you're catering to people that are just making like an emotional plea and it opens you up to all the hypocrisy about the things that you therefore think are okay to sell. So verdict is that they are a demon. That's it. They're not going to sponsor this show anytime soon. If they come, I don't anticipate. I don't anticipate. I think we'll pass on that. I don't anticipate them sponsoring this show. I don't run around calling things like the devil and stuff like that. So it's a little, it's a little unusual for me. I would say that what they're doing is short-sighted and terrible and really opens them up to some amazing, like incredible hypocrisies that if they are morally, if they're deciding that they're morally policing all of the things sold on Etsy, it makes me very curious what kinds of things are sold on Etsy. And then I must assume that the owners and investors and managers at Etsy are morally okay with those products. Here's a Valentine's beef jerky flower bouquet for him. For him. All right, man, say him four steaks here. What's going on? I'm not too much. I'll tell you, I was just talking about you. I'm not too long going. I think there's lots of students showing up after getting sprayed by a scunk. Yeah. Yeah. You're getting it, something got sprayed by Petuli and some got sprayed by scunks. Well, I said that as a proud progress. Yeah. Steve, thanks for having me again, man. Yeah. I was so excited to see you before you came out of you. You came out before and it was the primary season. So tell everybody about what happened there? Well, I mean, I'm running for Congress in the first district, the western third of the state, and we had a crowded primary before people running. You know, when fellow was the former Democratic nominee for governor and we ended up pulling it out by just shy of five points. So pretty good margin. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about this yesterday. In politics today, that's a margin. Yeah. And I'll tell you the last poll before that, I had me at 13% and one of these fellows at 35. You're cheating. So as an exercise and what's possible when you get people excited and frankly, people are excited to just have a normal working person running for Congress because you don't see that very often nowadays. When you look at those polls, and I'm sure you, well, let me ask you, do you obsess over or you just kind of run your campaign? I don't. I mean, I got deep, deep frustrations with the way polling works in this country. And I mean, you look at the way some politicians talk and it's probably a string of 20 words that all poll tested really well. And when you put them together, it sounds like mush, you know, and then up saying things like public lands and public hands and what does that actually mean? Or it doesn't mean much the way they're legislating right now. Got it. So when you say you're skeptical of polls, because a lot of these polls, a lot of polls people cite, they're generating their own polls. And I notice the thing lately that seems like people in the political sphere doing, maybe you can comment on this, is they're running polls and then campaigning off polls that they make. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's weirdly deceptive. It is. It is. I mean, I'll tell you, as far as polls go, the polling in this race right now has decided that he for what it's worth. We're at 44, 44 right now with the other fellow in this race. But more than that, it's, I mean, what I'm seeing on the ground, you know, last three days we had about eight campaign events, Labor Day is big. I mean, I was vice president in my union's local. And we got crowds as big as 200 showing up in places like whitefish. And really the thing I'm most excited about in this campaign. I don't know if you've seen it. Um, we just had a former Republican governor endorsed the campaign five Republican legislators, and we're doing these civil discourse downhalls across the district too. Where I co-host it with one of the Republican legislators. And we talk about the fact that kind of what we mentioned last time, you know, me and Brian Putnam and Columbia Falls, we don't agree on everything. But we agree on the basics. We agree, we should be able to work one good job and get by in that. And there's nothing conservative about going into $40 trillion of debt, for example. Um, and those are actually the most exciting part of the campaign to me, like civil discourse ain't sexy. But it seems just as important as any particular policy we're fighting for. That's what I find. Some of the old definitions, maybe that I was raised on, the old definitions about, uh, like what conservatism meant, what liberalism meant. It's muddy. It's become very muddy. Yeah, I mean, conservatism was supposed to be, as I understand it, about standing up for like our basic constitutional freedoms. And about the fact that government should have no business dictating your private personal decisions. I don't see a lot of that right now. And the way the show is being run. Yeah. And as far as I'm concerned, government's got no business telling you whether you can own guns or telling you how to make a decision with your doctor. Yeah. Um, and government's got big jobs it should be doing, which I would offer is making sure you can meet your basic material needs when the market's not meeting. I mean, it's failing at those ones. So let's just get back to the basics here and talk about the fact that, you know, Debbie King Arthur Mobile Home Park just outside of town here. Well, Debbie's place was bought up by another private equity firm. And she's watched her lot rent double in the last five years. And she's got nowhere to go. That's the role of government. I'd offer is making sure that we don't have elderly folks getting forced out onto the streets in a place like Boasman, not as, you know, wasting its time trying to insert itself into private decisions where well, they got no role in where I don't want a politician having any say in how I how I live my life. How do you feel that the time you spent talking about public lands issues and when we, well, let me back up look. When you came on before, we talked a lot about what went on with land management agencies and what's going on with land management agencies in terms of funding in terms of staffing public land management issues in terms of the doge, what turned into sort of a doge debacle around public lands management. When you talk about these issues, how is it how do you feel it's generally received by people because a lot of it's kind of you know, the term wonky like like a lot of it's very policy specific. Does does your message about public lands and public lands management? Does it resonate with people or are people or do people have that way low in their priority list around the state? Do you follow me? I do. I think in Montana, this is pretty high on people's priorities. And the thing I get the most is surprise. I mean, I, you know, I worked as a smoke jumper till eight months ago, people are pretty surprised to learn that a smoke jumper makes 15 bucks an hour. You're a year. So did it is? Yeah. People are surprised that, you know, when they fired 360 Montanans in the forest service, 85% of them were making 1970 an hour or less. This is not the way that any of these cuts or that our public lands agencies are really being talked about is, you know, the fact that public lands are more than a bunch of lines on a map. It's a lot of people bust and tail to actually maintain them and make sure you can make it up a road to a trail, hide it up a trail to actually access that forest. And those people, often the lowest paid ones are the ones who've been taken the brunt of these cuts, these reorganizations. You know, I could go on all day about the fact that there are big inefficiencies in the federal government like the fact that, you know, job postings just closed three weeks ago for a firefighter position or forestry tech that's going to be starting this coming May. That is inefficient. The inefficiencies are not the GS2s we saw get fired last year, making 11 bucks an hour. That's actually how it offer maybe inhumanely efficient if you're living in a place like Mjoula. Yeah. This time, we're hitting the Midwest. We got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, DeMoyne, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Join myself, Janus Putellis, Clay Nuke and Brent Reaves 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. Meeter 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 meeter.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. What's it been like on the, what's it like doing what you're doing? I mean, 35 years old, right? 32, but my knees are in there for you. Okay, so if I calculate your actual age and your knee age, at least I'm about right. 32 years old, that's the mean. A couple of years ago, you had no idea this is going to happen. No idea you're going to be in this situation. I thought I'd jump till 57, till mandatory retirement. So here you are, lay out like what life, what is life like on the campaign trail now? It makes fire season look easy. I mean, fire season was when I started two weeks on, two days off. Day off, every two or three weeks. But it's also getting to hear people's, I mean, most inspiring and vulnerable and terrible stories. Because a lot of people just want to be heard. And I mean, we're in a state right now where our congressperson, in this state, has not had a town hall in more than three years. So people quite literally are not being heard. Yeah. And people have big problems. I mean, it's the heartbreak. And when I was sitting down with Debbie, at the end of that conversation, she said, Sam, when I was your age, if old people had lived like this, I would be so angry. Got it, Bill. And we should be so angry. And we shouldn't just leave it to be an angry. Because it feels like everybody's angry on social media and screaming into their cell phone, screaming about everything that's wrong and complaining, never solve the damn thing. Bill. It's our turn to step up and do something about it and stand up for our neighbors. That's one of the things I've liked about watching, watching you do what you've been doing, is that you just like talk like a person. You know what I'm saying? It's not kind of dumb, that's what you're saying. No, no, no, you just talk like a person who is sharing their thoughts, right? And just not so worried about being so damn safe. Yeah, which really starts to drive me crazy. Well, I mean, if I had to define what like modern politics feels like it feels like, can I curse on you? It feels like everybody's BS in us. Oh, yeah. Like if, especially the highest levels of office, like whatever side you look at, they're just walking the line of whatever's pole tested. Yeah. And then it's no surprise when people get elected and nothing changes. Yeah. And if it does, it often is not changing for the better, right? Like we're in a country where half of America, half of Americans are making less than their parents are making at our age. Those are the kinds of changes we're actually seeing or on public lands, right? Since we spoke last, it's not just the cuts, it's not just the people being fired. Well, we've seen 3 million acres of protections rolled back, bears ears and grand escalante. In Alaska, you saw 5 million acres rolled back where they're selling it off for oil leasing now. And it's not just the fact that they're rolling these back in a place like Alaska or Minnesota, they're selling it off at a discount. I mean, they slashed leasing fees, royalty rates by half. Back in, back to what, two February's ago, they're running our public lands agencies like a private equity firm. I guess just like those mobile home parks, 4,000 of which are now owned by private equity in Montana. And that is why you're seeing the rents double. I mean, the bunkhouse that I spent my first seasons two through for working wild and fire on. It's up in the Swan Valley in Condon, Montana. They are selling off those bunk houses. And what I would offer is the most beautiful piece of property in the Swan. I mean, you got a view of Condon Peak in the Swan Mountains to the east. There's an air strip across the way. They're selling that off. And the people on that hand crew, well, they're probably living in the back of their trucks. And if there are bunkhouses, they're leasing them up in Big Fork. We're selling off properties across the board at our public lands agencies and then leasing those properties because that's cheaper in the short term. But then we all end up paying so much more for so much less in the long term. I've been outspoken about this. People within our organization have been outspoken about the roadless rule, rollback. And I think that's frustrating me about it is I find this is going to be kind of in your, in particularly in your wheelhouse, is I find that people that are advocating on stripping the roadless rule away and opening up a lot of these areas to industrial development of various sorts tend to be a little less than honest about what the primary motivation is. And they cite motivations that are sort of what I would regard then to be side benefits, fringe benefits, but they cite it as the main issue. So people, they're like, we need to roll, we need to roll back the roadless rule and open these lands up because of wildfires. And I was like, dude, please stop acting like that is the main thing you're interested in is wildfire. You have a career in wildfire. When they're saying that, how real is that? When they're citing that that is the motivation is fire prevention. Oh, it's an absolute red herring. I mean, 90% of fires that we see started are within, well, pretty damn close to a road. So we punch roads back 20 miles further in. Well, that's just more fires. Most wildfires are human cause in the West nowadays. - Yeah. - And yeah, the real reason is development, but I would offer, there are places where reopening roads make sense. Going with a broad brush and rolling back the roadless rule does not make sense. And when I go talk to loggers too, or when I go to the mill and deer lodge a few weeks ago and take a tour, I mean, there are big problems we need to solve so that we aren't left with zero milling capacity in the state of Montana. The problem is not the roadless rule. And they have enough time staying in the black, trying to get a timber contract in the front country, let alone trying to go 10 or 15 miles back. Like this is not gonna be helpful for our saw mills, six of which are left in a state that used to have 50. What this is is people who are running the show and do not actually understand how this works on the ground. - Yeah, we have thousands and thousands of square miles of roaded country that is not being properly timberly, that does not have proper timber management on it anyway. We got a $6 to $8 billion backlog of road maintenance in the forest service. And I mean, if we got $6 to $8 billion to drop that I didn't know about, well, I would love to see it. - And that's maintenance for roads that are there. - Yeah, the ones that are currently open. And I mean, again, like we are way behind on our forest management, right? We have a backlog because of excessive fire suppression in part of fuel that needs burned. I mean, you know this, right? There's certain timber models that should be burned every 15 to 20 years and haven't burned in 50 plus. The lodge pole pine can't reproduce with that exposure to fire. The answer is not rolling back the roadless rule. The answer is not these categorical exclusions where you completely sweep away environmental protections. It's making sure that you can get a timber contract in a year if it's challenged in court not in six years. It's actually fully investing in the public servants to do that work because what we saw last year is you fire all the NEPA planners, you fire the soil scientists, you fire the people who do the science when you're trying to get an environmental impact statement. And then the plans you produce actually do not pass muster. And so it takes longer in court. And when I sit down with a logger, they tell me these cuts in the last year and a half have been terrible for the timber industry because they're having a harder time actually getting a contract through in federal public lands. And I'd say that too. I mean, like wildfire always gets used as this excuse for these rollbacks. - Yeah, it drives me a little bit bananas, man. - And the reason we need logging in this state for responsible timber harvest is not wildfire. Logging is not the answer to the wildfire crisis. The reason we need it is because we build homes with wood. Let's be honest about that. And wildfire, if we want to get ahead of a wildfire crisis, well, maybe there's a 10 to 20% role with responsible timber harvest in the front country. The real answer is investing in fire mitigation and fuels reduction work and putting healthy fire on the landscape. And that's the sort of thing that you're not gonna have a profit margin on. It's the sort of thing that you need to hire fuels crews and the sort of people they fired last year. And the example I give people is we had a fire last year outside of Helmville. It's, they call it the Windy Rock Fire, it's 2000 acres and Helmville is not the most populous corner of Montana. That 2000 acre fire cost the state of Montana $56 million. - That's all right. - 56 million bucks by my napkin math, you could pay 2000 people, 20 bucks an hour, 365 days a year to stomp around the woods with a chainsaw and actually actively manage our forests. And we don't pay our fuels for 20 bucks an hour. - Yeah. - Like that is the investment you can make to actually save a whole bunch of money on the back end and to start getting ahead of this thing. And that would save us money, or leave more money in the state of Montana and create good jobs. 'Cause we got these computers that can write their own code or legal briefs, they cannot stomp around the woods with a saw. And it wouldn't benefit someone who maybe owns a wild and fire contracting company. Someone like Senator Tim Shee, who just saw his first profit margin in the history of his company last year. But it would benefit us as taxpayers. It would save us money and it would help us to actually start managing our forests wisely. And effectively, you know, when you look back on, and you've been vocal about this, when you look back on, some people saw it immediately. I took me a minute to see, it took me a minute to realize what some people saw instantly was how ham handed the doge process was. Yeah. It was like, I don't know, man, I just kind of weirdly for a minute tried to, Bye.
paused to try to understand it, right? Because of course, like you said, inefficiency is bad. I paused and then kind of very quickly, like, oh, no, no, this is totally ham-handed. Especially when I was talking, especially when I started, we kind of interviewed a guy leaving the White River National Forest about what he had to do, according to Doge Cuts and just how much it set his agenda back, how inefficient it was and became clear. It was just a debacle. And not only that, I think the greatest testament to what a debacle it was, was that the people that were doing it all fled DC. Yeah, yeah, they ran away, you know? Is, do you see in the pet, do you see, if you look forward, do you see that will gradually like correct all that, or did things happen, even though it's sort of almost as clearly as possible, it was declared a debacle. I mean, the formal understanding of what happened has become that it was crazy. And there aren't that many people who would argue otherwise. Yeah, they shut it down. And there aren't people in the political sphere today citing it as an accomplishment. It's either brushed under the rug, nothing to see here, or people are vocal point out how stupid it was, or how poor the execution of the idea was. Do we gradually climb back out of that? In particular, I'm not talking about, I'm talking about the aspects of doors that affected land management agencies and public land management agencies. Do we climb out of that, or do you feel that there was a damage done that'll never be corrected? Yeah, I think it's not a foregone conclusion, but I think we can climb out of it. Yeah. And I think we, and people who actually do this work on the ground know where the investments would be to rebuild it in a way that works, 'cause I want to be clear, this shit was not working perfectly before Doge. Yeah. I mean, I ended the 2024 fire season on a fire in the middle of the Three Sisters Wilderness, where we got a satellite call saying the forest service is 20 million in the red. And so half of the people on that fire are gonna be out of pace status the second you leave that fire. Okay. You're not even gonna have enough time to get paid to go clean out your locker at the smoke jumper base. We need to rebuild this thing in a way that actually makes sense and does find efficiencies. And that means, well, it's largely the lower paid people in our land management agencies. I think we should talk really openly about the fact that we should have a big reinvestment, an expansive investment in fuels mitigation and walk around the front country, making sure you have the people it takes to do a responsible prescribed fire in the fall and the spring when it's safe to do so and actually clear out underbrush that's gonna take a lot of manpower and it's gonna cost a lot of money, but it will save us so many hundreds of millions of dollars on the back end. So we do not have these mega fires like the ones I've been on in the last eight years where I've been on five fires that have all been the biggest fire in that state's history just in the last five years. And we all end up paying so much for it. I mean, it's like it says in scripture, I promise you'll pay every penny. Before we leave this place, we're paying every penny right now. We're just paying it in a crisis response mode of governance and that's the least efficient way to govern. I've talked to so many people, friends of mine that work in different agencies that kind of impact the world that we explore through the show and others. And so many of them are like, man, I would love to have a conversation about efficiency. And through my career, I've seen a lot of opportunities to clean up efficiency, to help with efficiency, but boy, did they get it wrong? Yeah, again and again and again, they're like, it was, it was having someone taking a quick glimpse into a world that I understand really well and declaring, oh, that should go and that should go and that should go and them sitting back saying, man, did you miss the bullseye? You missed the target when they did that stuff. I think we need a real effort to government efficiency after this, a good faith effort. If you wanna tell people that this is still a country where we can make big investments and solve big problems, you need to actually show folks that you're gonna be good steward of taxpayer dollars and use them efficiently. And we did this in the '90s. Last time we had a balanced budget as a country and the Clinton administration had a, well, a government efficiency effort and it worked pretty darn well. We should do that again. If we are able to gain power and win seats like this, talk about how do we make sure that the federal hiring process doesn't take nine months for a GS4 who makes 16 bucks an hour because that's so many man hours. That is so much lost talent. We return direct higher authority. That's one great example. How do you make sure that a workman's comp claim for a smoke jumper who breaks their back on a practice jump like my good buddy did at a Grangeville does not take 18 months to chase down? Because again, we're all paying for the hundreds of man hours it takes to chase that down for an obvious claim. For somebody who broke their back in the line of duty. Beyond that, I mean, I'll tell you, I was looking at the federal job application three weeks ago, right before it closed. And we are adding questions, like this four question loyalty test. If you're filling out an application for a GS4 forster, someone who's just going to be Timbercruz and you got to answer a question about what are your favorite two executive orders and how will you in this job further the advancement of that executive order? It's insanity. Wow. And I'll tell you what, I was a GS4 once. I would have had no business filling out an essay question about my favorite executive order. Like I was drinking monsters and wearing an American flag bandana. You want to talk about losing good talent? Like we're doing reverse civil service reform when we should actually be reforming how our civil service works and having less political appointees instead of expanding them. Like these are big efficiencies that we could find. The same goes for forest management, for making sure you can get a Timber contract and the front country. Yes, let's talk about that. And I think the best idea is come from the people on the ground doing the work. Here's a tough question for you. Let's say you get sent to deep. Let's say the voters of Montana, the voters of Western Montana send you to DC. And how do you save like how do you salvage your purity? Yeah, that's a real one. And how do you keep, how do you stay like no, I'm here to talk about the things we're talking about right now. And there's gonna be so much pressure for you to, for you to take orders from someone who has a, who has a high position in the party and they have the people they're beholden to. And all of a sudden you want to talk about, you know, you're here to talk about fire, land management, affordability, working class people. And all of a sudden you're just talking about something dumb. Yeah, that no one in Montana asked you to go talk about. How do you like, what are you gonna do then? And they want you to spend your time on dumb stuff. I'll tell you what helps is, is I've been a DC twice and I think I'm gonna hate it in that town. Okay, and so I'm not going there for a good time or a long time, you know, like I would love nothing better than to go win this seat, hold the people accountable, who fired hundreds of my co-workers and union members in turn people's lives upside down, working in Montana's lives upside down. And make sure that we still have a functioning force service that I can go back to in four years. Yeah, I mean, I live right outside the smoke jumper base in Missoula and I gotta watch the jump plane flying overhead and it kills me. I would love to be there. I'd love to be in their boots right now. But yeah, after a year and a half of what people went through, like, I mean, I had a member Cara in the bitter national forest. She was 15 years into her service as a soil scientist. She got the news on Valentine's Day two years ago that she was losing her job, no notice. Not for performance because she took a lateral transfer that year so that she could do more remote work while she went on chemotherapy. I got a guy in Annas, who is a member. He got a text in line at the airport to go to his grandmother's funeral saying that he'd lost his job and he's already locked out of his government and devices. And he was only a GS5 in the first place. He was probably making 16 bucks an hour. And he was the guy who's making sure that your campgrounds are maintained. These people, like, we deserve not just efficiency in our government, we actually deserve good, wise investment or public lands. And frankly, the people who bent the knee and voted for all this, when we could have been the most powerful state in the country, there's a narrow majority in the house. And a person who's a good representative in this seat should be standing up to either party when they're full of shit, which comes from both parties. We didn't get that. Yeah. And like, well, if they're going to come after my members' jobs, I'm going to come and take his. And they need to know that there's a cost for this and that our democracy still works. And frankly, they need to know that working people can still actually attain these offices, because that is the most frustrating thing I see. Is you look at the-- well, the United States House of Representatives, the average member of Congress is worth 4 million bucks, depending on the day and how good the stock market's doing. What do you worth right now? Well, I'm on and sure right now, because I can't-- Without Joe, the damn most sure. I've seen your place, man. I mean, I'm barely getting by, like, most people. And you wonder why most people-- I robbed up four, but this dude's got bookshelves in his kitchen. Oh, you never know, we need a good book. That's an endorsement. Without Joe, yeah, I don't need to ask you what you're worth. So that's part of what's drawn me. Like, part of what's drawn me to you. Like, personality matters to me. The way people talk matters to me. And also, my man, this dude's a legit guy that, like, has just been around and seen stuff and got motivated by what he's seen, and just like motivated by things that didn't work. And I don't know, man, like, want to help? I like that stuff, man. Well, yeah, thank you, Steve. It wasn't like a business. It's not a business move. No, no. Yeah, I was just getting the first shred of financial security that I'd ever had, frankly. And my--
fourth year of jumping. I mean, your first year of jumping, you're a rookie. So, you know, it's not that fun because you're, you're taking all the shit and you're waking up early for coffee and you're making extra food and all the rest. And your second year, you're smoking is not much better. And, you know, your third, fourth year, it starts to be more fun. You start to be more comfortable under the parachute. And frankly, I didn't have health insurance or a retirement plan till my sixth year of fire. I was finally on that path. But if people like us don't actually step up and run for office, then it's just these folks who are so disconnected that are making all the decisions. Sure. And that's how we end up in this hole that they're digging on both sides. And that's how they end up talking about shit that nobody's actually talking about on the ground here when you're just trying to meet your basic needs. You see a lot of people and your politics that do it, it's like a thing they want to do kind of before they retire. Yeah. It's like a, it's like a project they need to get taken care of, to really sort of like to really fill out the old CV, you know, and your legacy move. And so to see someone come at it from the other, like the other end of the career thing. And from such unusual position. Well, yeah, I hope we can, I hope we can save it. And I hope we can actually make the kind of reforms that we're talking about and make sure we don't, I mean, really lose what's left of the forest service in this state. I mean, this is a state we got the first smoke jumper base in history right in Missoula, modern wild and firefighting largely began in Montana. And we got national forests at the beginning of last year that were reduced to one trail crew member for the entire better, for example. And they're selling it all off at a discount. So I, yeah, I feel hopeful right now that we can make the sort of change we need when I'm having those town halls with a Republican legislator and people are showing up and saying that they have either never been to a political event or that they voted the other way last year, it makes me feel hopeful. And yeah, it sounds cliche, but like truly, I don't feel like the problem is in one party or the other part, the problem is, but isn't both parties. I mean, they're, they're corporate, but off politicians in both parties at the highest levels right now, because that is the way that our system has been designed. And the only way we fix it is by actually stepping up and making sure that working people who know what it's like to be on the wrong end of this stuff are in positions of authority to make decisions so we can fight for ourselves. Well, keep being a person. I'll make a sign. Same for us day. Yeah, person, long person. I, I, I, I, I, I'd be doing my duty too. I mean, if anyone wants to look up any of the details to them and the website sanfermontana.com, the most inspiring thing is we got many thousands of volunteers who got us through that primary and we're helping us right now. Um, and I mean, we have something like 27,000 people who've pitched into the campaign. Alright. And it's, you know, it's people pitching in 25 bucks, because that's what they can afford or 50 bucks. So that's what most of my friends can afford. And that's the only way any of this stuff works. Well, thanks for coming on again. Thanks for checking in. Thank you for having me. You got to make one promise though. If you win, you got to come back and do the final check in. Oh, hell yeah. We talked to you pre, we talked to you before the primary. We've talked to you after the primary. We got to do a final check in. And we can do one more two years later when I'm sick and tired of all this stuff. It'll be, it'll be, same for steak signs off. That's right. Well, no, thank you for having me, Steve. Um, yeah, I'll be back. I'll tell everybody ballots drop in Montana, October 10th, absentee ballots, voting is November 3rd. You can register to vote until 30 days before the election in the state. Yeah, he knows funny. All this garbage, but all this like consternation about mail and ballots. Dude, I haven't been down. That's all I ever do. Yeah. The same way you're not male. Do you guys all do the mail and you just show up and like, wait in line. I haunt that week every single person. Yeah, I do. You go in person. Yep. You get the sticker. Is it fun? No. I have a very complicated relationship with voting. Oh, do you not, you don't do the mail in because you, you, because you don't trust it or you just like to go down. Well, it's so complicated. I don't need to get into it. We don't need to get into it. Let's not get into it. So do you do mail in? I've done both, but mostly mailing because I'm hunting. Same. I, I, I kind of like walking in their case. I did. Yeah. I've done it. Yeah. I think I've walked in like three or four times since I moved to Montana. It feels like more of a civil duty, but yeah, obviously it's not as convenient. You know, when I think of walking in there, all I can think about is all the times I had to go with my mom when I was a little kid and wait in line while she voted it. And then also my mom used to work the thing. Right. You know, my mom took to work on the thing lately. Blower elections. Yeah, she volunteered. When I do the mail in though, I'm always worried like, what if something terrible comes out about one of these guys? Yeah. And I already sent my thing in. If you walk in, you're operating on like it's done. You can make the final assessment, but picture how embarrassing it be. You vote for some guy. And then like you send it off. And meanwhile, like comes out, you know, oh my god, they found all these bodies in his yard. And you're like, duh. Oh, no, they found sand, they found sand. Was that like a sneaky way of giving Sam some kind of like story of modern policy bodies in your yard. Tell me now. We'll go take a month together. Tell me now by the time this is all done. Oh, I do have one last question for you. Um, this can be hard to answer this. But you know what people do? Like people find crazy stuff. Mm hmm. If I ever ran for office and I promise you it, like I never will, I would start, I would announce my campaign with a list of every bad thing I ever said or did. Uh huh. Yeah, just front load it. Yeah. I feel like listen, it's more than you'd guess. Well, I have had social media since I was 12 years old. So it is all out there in the open. And it is embarrassing itself. Yeah. Is it nerve-wracking? It is. Yeah. I mean, the guy I'm up against. Welcome to the millennial generation. You have a lot of public embarrassment. Yeah. Um, but no, the guy I'm up against, he had the NAI Super PAC dropped 600 K just in month of May to get the fell I'm running against through his primary. That really is a terrifying prospect. I mean, millions of dollars a raid to make you look like the biggest monster that they possibly can. Yeah. Uh, uh, uh, but I think what you just said is the only way you get through it is just to keep being a human and actually showing up and talking to people. And like, I think that all that noise is not going to work this time around because people are, they're pissed. And we are angry and we're sick and tired. And, um, I don't think a 10 million dollars worth of mailers is going to stop that. Uh, yeah. Oh, man. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. Good luck, Sam. Thank you, Sam. Thank you all. Thanks. [Music] This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Halibut prices at Costco have surged to $29 per pound, surprising listeners due to the low quality of fish—often large, cheap, and poorly sourced—contrasted with premium, fresh-caught halibut from Alaska.
A market report highlights absurd price disparities in Northwest seafood, such as $42.50 per pound for halibut and black cod, while commercial fish like Pacific cod are priced high despite being common, and crab parts sell at extreme prices (e.g., heads at $1 per pound).
A controversial Wyoming helicopter elk hunt led to legal trouble when a rancher attempted to hide an elk skull on public land, resulting in a trespassing conviction for the hunter, who later apologized and resigned from a hunter education role, while the rancher admitted guilt and faced a small fine.
Summary:
This episode of the I Heart Podcast features a market report on wild seafood prices, particularly highlighting the steep cost of halibut and other fish at Costco—now priced at $29 per pound—despite being low-quality and sourced from poor fishing practices. The host contrasts this with premium, hand-caught fish from Alaska, emphasizing that such prices reflect supply chains and consumer perception over actual value. The segment also dives into a controversial Wyoming elk hunt, where a group of hunters used a helicopter to access public land.
The incident escalated when a rancher tried to hide an elk skull, leading to national media attention. The hunter, Andrew McKean, was later convicted of trespassing after it was revealed the bull had died 35 yards into private land, prompting a full apology and resignation from a hunting education role. The rancher admitted guilt for theft and emotional overreaction, though he declined to reconcile with the hunters.
The episode underscores the complexities of land access, ethical boundaries, and the risks of overreach in outdoor recreation. It also raises questions about the ethics of helicopter hunting, especially when used to access restricted public land, and highlights how such stories—amplified by social media—can expose deeper tensions between landowners, public access, and conservation values. The narrative ends with a reflection on the fragility of boundaries in hunting, where even small errors can lead to significant legal and moral consequences, and suggests that such incidents may be more common than acknowledged.
FAQs
The market report examines unusual price fluctuations in wildlife resources and seafood, such as the surge in halibut prices at Costco and the low cost of troll-caught king salmon.
Costco halibut prices are high because they sell large, low-quality fish that are often from larger, less desirable specimens. The high price reflects a disconnect between the cost of the fish and the quality of the product, which is typically inferior to what is caught fresh in Alaska.
Larger halibut tend to have lower meat quality because the flesh becomes tougher and less flavorful as the fish grows bigger. Smaller halibut, like those caught in Alaska, are generally considered better quality and more desirable.
Yes, there is a commercial Ling cod fishery in Washington, where specific gear is used, and the fish are caught through regulated methods, despite the fish being difficult to harvest.
Using helicopters to access public land raises ethical and legal concerns, especially when landowners control access. It can lead to trespassing, boundary violations, and public controversy, as seen in the Wyoming elk hunt incident.
A group of hunters used a helicopter to access public land in Wyoming, where they killed a large bull elk. The rancher who controlled access tried to hide the elk's skull, leading to a public scandal, legal charges, and a fine for trespassing.
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