Ep. 939: Fat Buck, Wet Buck, and The Strangest Bad Public Land Idea

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. The best part of a Whitetail sit is often the part you have to earn. The temperature drops, nothing's moving, and climbing down starts sounding pretty good. The difference between seeing it through and climbing down early is about heart, but it's also about heat. That's why first light built whispered down. With 900 fill power, muscovy down, box bathful construction, and quiet water-resistant fabric, it delivers serious warmth without weighing you down. First light whispered down, pack light, stay longer. Check it out now at FirstLight.com Welcome to the news show folks, we've got a great show for you today, we've got one of the strangest bad public land ideas in recent memory. We've got a big old fat, fat buck that one of you listeners killed in Minnesota. We've got a story about some hunter harassment justice in Alaska, and we've got a pre-recorded interview from Steve with Iowa Goobinatorial candidate and meat eater podcast guest Rob Sand. In our script here, that is described as an interview pertaining to a big wet buck, but because I haven't seen the interview, I don't know what that means yet. But first, Brodie's got a story from us out of Wyoming about an elk hunter who got sighted and then unsighted for a grizzly bear stealing his carcass. Yep, we're going to have a little round table discussion about this one. So, Ron Niziolek, I think I'm pronouncing that close anyway, experienced bow hunter from Cody, Wyoming on September 19th, he was hunting with his last year, yeah, last year. He was hunting with his buddy Adam Miles, Northwestern Wyoming, like very high density of grizzlies. He was hunting in a spot, he's hunting before, so he knew the deal there. Late afternoon, he shoots a bull, who had the picture, Phil? Nice bull. Nice bull. He shoots that bull late at, it's late in the afternoon, so they watch it walk off and bed down about 100 yards away, but by this time it's like very close to getting dark and they don't want to mess with cutting it up and, you know, potentially run into a grizzly at night, so they just leave it and then they come back in at first light with pistols drawn. And they find the bull dead right where it was laying, only it was partially consumed by a grizzly bite marks, guts ripped out, bear poop all over the place. So Niziolek was concerned about potentially contaminated meat and the possibility of the bear returning, which is very legitimate, like that bear was probably close by. You know, you guys ran into a similar situation in Alaska while back, I think his concerns were warranted, so they decided against skinning and quartering it. They photographed the bull cut off its head, punches elk tag and just left the carcass. And on the way out, he warned other hunters and cowboys tending cattle in the area about the carcass, you know, in case a grizzly came back, but he didn't report the incident to Wyoming fishing game. So little time passes and a Wyoming game warden Jordan winner investigated the carcass after receiving some tips from other hunters that, you know, saw a headless elk carcass and, you know, rightly so, called it in Thanksgiving, so almost two months later, the winter interviews Niziolek confiscated his elk skull antlers and cell phone as potential, potential evidence. I'm assuming enough like a poaching, you know, investigation. And February 26th, Wyoming game of fish issues Niziolek to misdermeners citations, wasting a game animal, taking parts from a wasted big game animal, 450 bucks and 900 bucks or, no, 450 each 900 combined Niziolek contest both citations rather than paying the fine. So it's going to court at this point. August of this year, the case goes before a jury in Park County and prosecutors argued that Wyoming law requires it's a want waste law typical retrieve all edible portions of the animal quarters backstrap's tenderloins. The game warden testified that Niziolek should have packed out the meat regardless of suspected contamination and then figured out later if it was edible or not. Niziolek says spending 90 minutes processing a bear claimed carcass posed an unreasonable safety risk and his attorney also raised concerns about game and fish providing requested interview recordings, only a day and a half before the trial. In the end, the verdict finds Niziolek not guilty of both charges and his skull and antlers are returned. Some interesting points that came out of this, Wyoming game of fish is own hunting and bear country educational video warns hunters against attempting to drive a bear away from a carcass has claimed. And Niziolek argues he was following this advice. Also cited concerns about contamination from the grizzly saliva urine feces and recalled an early warning from a game warden against salvaging bear fed meat. He acknowledges that in hindsight he should have contacted like game and fish like immediately about what happened. But he hopes this case prompts clearer agency guidance regarding situations like this. This case does not change anything as far as it acquitted Niziolek but it doesn't change anything about Wyoming's meat salvage regulations. So my thoughts here that yes, he should have called it in but like he shouldn't have gotten cited their own their own educational video warns hunters not to do that. So he's kind of following the advice he should. But do you feel like he did everything he could the day he shot the bull? Well, that's that's the thing you know they could have certainly packed it out. I don't think it's unreasonable to leave an elk overnight in grizzly bear country if it's dark. You know why you're increasing the chances that there's going to be a bear on it. Sure. But like, you know, yeah, maybe they could have said you should have cut it up. You should have got it out of there. But they were also waiting for that elk to die. Like they could they couldn't have gone in and killed it at night, right? It was still alive when they left. I don't know. I mean, I think if they if it's partially you have an arrow in it and you're waiting for it to die, can you go in there after shooting hours and fling more arrows? I don't I don't know what the answer is. And I would that's a gray area. So like if you don't know, you can't go do it as someone who hunts in grizzly country. I would be very leery of shooting an elk at last light knowing if I'm not going to get it out that night. Sure. It wasn't at last light. It was, you know, still late afternoon, you know, it took it didn't die right away. So like choices were made, but I think to me, the issue here is that the game warden that cited him is like kind of contradicting what Wyoming game and fish his own advice is. And that's a problem. Yeah. Like there needs to be like consistency there. Yeah. I think once the bear had claimed the carcass, yeah, I agree with you completely. The question isn't again, the details aren't in the story, but the question is like the events leading up to that, did they take the proper. But what what details aren't in the story, they were waiting for the animal to die. And they can't like had like, were they watching it literally at 100 yards and it was, it's head was up and it got dark. They watched it, they watched it bed down. Yeah, I got that part. But then did they watch it until dark? Yeah. They waited. They felt like they did not want to risk field dressing at at night. Anyway, it's a kind of they wouldn't know that they could even feel dressing if the things alive. It's a very common practice to leave an animal overnight, like for an un gutted, I don't think so at all. I've never heard of that. Like unless you're like completely sure that it's, wait a minute, if you shoot a white tail at night at last light and you're not sure if it's, if it's dead or not, then it's a common practice. But like if you're dead, then you don't do that. you wouldn't know it. he's dead. Right. Exactly. Which I'm saying is that I'm not getting the mark. What do you think? I see what both of you are saying. I think like if it were me in this situation, based on what we're hearing, I would wait for as long as I possibly could to see if this thing actually dies. And if it actually is dead, then I think, you know, your face with this dilemma, which is do I kind of take care of the things as fast as possible before things get dicey or do I risk the diceyness in the morning? And I guess you guys have more experience hunting and grizzly hunter than I do, but probably dealing with the diceyness in the morning is is a safer bet. Yeah. And the thing was like out in the open, you know, you could see it from a long ways away. You can see where it died. So, you know. Yeah, I guess my my other thought here is like there should be, I don't know if you want to make it a requirement or not, but like I do think reporting that to fish and game when you have a bear on a carcass, not only just to absolve yourself of any sort of legal issues, but it's also a safety issue. Like if you're near a trailhead, and you leave a carcass, like I know, I know of a case where somebody, I know we got the animal out, but the gut pile was right nearby. And he called, he called just to say, Hey, there's a gut pile in this area, which is near hiking. Yeah. And then he actually got cited. Oh, really? Yeah. For leaving. He got cited for leaving bear attractant near near trail. And Mont fish parks and wildlife will put up notices. Yeah. Exactly. So like I don't blame the investigator for thinking that there's something fishy when someone calls in an elk missing ahead. Sure. Yeah. And the they never got a call about a bear taking the carcass. Like there's things that could have been done to lead to different outcome, but I also don't think this guy was like up to no good or anything. You know, and it does talk a little bit. It's just a sticky situation. Yeah, it does talk a little bit in the article about how this like in this area, like it's not uncommon for this thing to happen. So I think that might be his justification for this thing. And you know, the bears are certainly not that scared of people. And they're just going to roll in and grab that elk regardless. Yeah, I'm not saying the guy didn't do anything wrong, but I feel like there needs to be some consistency between what the game is doing and what the state is saying. Well, I also think like some clarity could be needed, not just in Montana, but elsewhere. If it's not right there around, you know, the wanton waste issue after consumption by another animal, like what point are you clear of that? If a bear or a lion or coyote comes in and eats half the animal, are you required to take the little scraps and hope it's okay? Right. I haven't read anything that's super clear about that before. No. I'd like to know if the whole contamination thing. Like are you basically then at this point, just worried that there's bacteria that comes from the bears, saliva and mouth and claws or to stuff feces. Yeah, they lay down on those things. Yeah, roll around on them. Yeah, I don't think that'd be good for it. Just saying. Yeah, I've always thought like that the, you know, it's typically defined as edible portions of certain body parts. And it does make sense that they don't want to line out each and every possible scenario, but I do think like your best judgment. And then I've, you know, like if I've shot something and there's a chunk of meat that's just totally, like, not worth carrying out, like, not, obviously not like a whole quarter, but like part of the quarter and I'm going to carve it off. I'll take pictures of of what I leave behind. Really? Yeah, in case any, but if case you get to the trail, I'd and someone's like, looks like you, like, quartered that thing a little thin, you know, like a top shelf to be something like that. I'm like, no, here's, here's what the carcass looked like. Here's the, here's the part that is not with what I would ordinarily pack out. And here's why, yeah, I've seen people leave whole front shoulders. Yeah, because they say they're shot up. Yeah, it's, which to get in trouble. Yeah, I always think like it's, everybody has a phone on them. Everybody, if you, like, if you're doing the right thing and you have reasons for what you're doing and you're within the, like, within the law, I just don't want to leave any questions as to what happened. Randall's a smart guy. Better safe than sorry. Don't end up in. There you go, folks. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we think about that. Well, thank you, Brody. This was a story that, like, definitely as someone who hunts in Grizzly Bear Country, it makes you revisit your thinking on all these things and how you approach it. But now to on to our news. And ladies and gentlemen, in the event that you're watching on YouTube, you may have noticed that there is, in fact, a fifth member of our broadcast team today. We're joined here by Brian Burrah. I'm told that that's Burrah. You know, that is the way the family pronounces it. But if you say burrah, nobody knows how to pronounce it. So so when we're introducing ourselves, we'll say burrow. Okay. Well, well, you're on your home turf now at this point. So we'll call it burrah. Well, and I feel like your family now. Yeah. Yeah. Part of the meat eater family gunfighters with Brian Burrah is out now. This is our newest podcast. It's on the history podcast feed that was formerly the American West. Brian, you've, this is not your first time in the studio here. You were on the main meat eater podcast. Last summer came in and talked with Steven and all y'all. Yeah. Yeah. So give folks a taste of what this podcast is all about. The gunfighters. The this is a nonfiction historical narrative. Really the first narrative history of what I call the gunfighter era, which is a period from 1865 when the first kind of nationally known gunfight was widely reported until the end of it, which I put an arbitrary date on, but I feel like it it's it's right to end the era 1901 when butch and Sundance got on a freighter in Brooklyn and headed down the South America at that point. The you know, the all the major gunfighter figures from Wild Bill Hickock to Billy the Kid to Wyatt or pretty much moved on in one way or the other. So I wanted to tell a story of that 35 year period in one single story and it's a lot of fun. Yeah, so this so you published a book last year by the same name and then this podcast is sort of an adaptation and expansion of that material for exactly I came on and we all talked about it and I know my sales numbers certainly went up and I gather y'alls y'alls numbers looked a little bit better. So Steven reached out at some point and said, Hey, could we turn this into a conversational podcast where we tell the stories, the accurate stories of history in a fun way and that's we are in the process of of making those. I mean, I mean, Montana this week doing 10 of them and we've got too already out. I think maybe the third one came out this week. They come out so fast you lose count and there'll be 26 and all and we're tremendously excited about it. Yeah, so it's very it's similar sort of in the format to what Dan was doing with the American West and that a lot of that was adaptations of things that he'd written previously and it's a biweekly. I think that's correct. If it's every week, it's every week. It's every week. Oh my goodness. I know. Well, I really too bad we can't go back and change that but it's every week. 26 episodes video on YouTube and Apple podcasts and the video is is unlike anything that we've done here at Mediter if you want to tell me this is unlike anything I've done before. I was I was very happy coming in and being the elderly voice of an author on a podcast and now suddenly I'm looking up and there's photos flying around and illustrations and some of you guys doing voice over talent and then every now and then you see this kind of old guy on camera and it's like much more akin to television than it is to a podcast. If that's what turn you on. I mean, I'm really enjoying it. Yeah. No, it's been fun to sort of watch from the outside. I think we've all dipped our toes a little bit in the voice acting realm but check it out. I think there are three episodes. I look this morning. I think there's three episodes out now. You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts by searching gunfighters. Again, check out the video on YouTube and Apple podcasts. Can we talk about your next project or should we keep that hush hush? We can do anything you want to Randall. I really like this. So now we have to. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So after the gunfighters, you were just telling us that you have a new project on your horizon. I'd like to give a little tease of that. Well, gunfighters, you know, I, I was in New York for 30, 35 years and I came back out to Texas where I grew up and I decided to write about gunfighters and I thought, no, it's the 21st century. I'm writing kind of humorous, if you will, way about gun violence. What could go wrong? It is a very funny book. And then the book comes out and I can't say it became a thing but let's just say the reception was very generous. And so the publisher turned around to me a week after I turned it in and they say, we love what you did with gunfighters. We love that you've kept it conversational and fun and accessible for people who maybe don't love thick history books. How would you feel about doing this for pirates? Yes, and I've been I've read everything about pirate since I was I was 11 since I discovered them. And by pirates, I don't mean global all pirates. I mean, what we call the golden era of piracy, which is 1650 to 1725. So it's essentially every pirate you've ever heard of, Blackbeard, Captain Kid, Henry Morgan. And I'm telling it in the spirit of the gunfighter, I'm telling it as a single story, set over 75 years with the true stories of a lot of pirates you've heard of and a lot that you have it. And I mean, it's the most fun you can have if you close on doing stuff like this. I mean, they actually pay me to do this. I mean, I'd be reading this stuff anyway. And so now all I'm doing is turning around and telling them, you know, in a conversational way is a story and it's just, it's fun. I'm still stunned 50 years after I started doing this, they still pay me to do it. - Yeah, well, I'm tremendously excited for the pirate book. I'm excited for gunfighters as well. But the pirate book is really interesting. - The next time I come in, Randall, you'll have to tell me what to call it because all my friends are giving me these awful titles like Argan, you know, Yamadie and you know. - That's good. I'm just telling you. - I've got to come up with something credible in respect. - Yeah, yeah. - The podcast version of the pirate book with Randall being a pirate voice actor, I think that will be spectacular. - Okay, I've got to figure out how to fit pirates into the four verticals. But I think we can make a case somehow. - Well, Brian, we are thrilled to have you join the Medieter family here and everybody's enjoying the gunfighters and it's great to have you back in the studio. Four time, New York Times bestselling author, Brian Burrow, the gunfighters, it's out now. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts and check out video on YouTube and Apple podcasts. - Thanks for having me. - Thank you sir. - Pleasure. - Yoni, it's White Tail. Are you ready? - Yep, ready. - Yoni, it's White Tail, we keyed it. - Yoni, it's White Tail, we here at Medieter. Tell us all about that. - That's right Randall, White Tail, weeek. - Wow, look at that, I'm here for it. - Well, I did that for Mark for all you guys. You guys know, most of you know, I think. - Yeah, 'cause you've been telling everybody. - I'm now announcing some volleyball games over at Bozeman Heights Law, so I'm very jealous. - Having a great time with it, bring the hype. - The guy ahead of me, I have extremely big shoes to fill. The guy ahead of me was so good that Montana State University stole him. And he's now announcing over there. Yeah, so, yeah, this guy supposedly could sing the National Anthem by himself. Like, you know, into the mic in front of a crowd. I'm like, yeah, that part of that toe area of the shoe, I'm not gonna fill, but maybe calling the game, I can do well. - Good retirement plan for you. - Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I hope that the kids that I'm announcing for it, that they get a kick out of it. - Maybe next year, you can announce the fish eater classic. - Ooh, okay, that could be there for that. - All right, September 28th to October 4th. This is Whitetail Week here. This is meant to just get everybody fired up for Whitetail season, which I am now. Now that I've got a whole month's worth of elk hunting out of the way, I am extremely excited just to go and read some sign and climb into a tree and just sit there and not have to hike up and down 2,000 feet every morning and evening. Oh, I got a can just not coming up. Went my good buddy and colleague Brett Reeves, which is gonna be extremely fun. And I actually, this is an older video of him. This buck is so reliable. - Pull this up now. - What's that? - Do you want me to pull it up right now? - Yeah, please. This buck is so reliable, I think I might have to call him steady-eddy. - Oh my goodness. - Is that a little drop? - Yeah, it is. - Oh, I think it's, I think it's velvet. - Oh. - I thought this was a little tiny thing sticking off that. - Very soon after he pealed his velvet. But this isn't, like I said, it's an older video but is the best one where he just like stops full frame, picks his head up so you can get a real good look at him. But he's almost on like a daily pattern by that camera. - Well, when you first got this picture, Yana, you texted me and you said is this a day one shooter? - Yeah, in Kansas? - Yeah. - And we had a little discussion, but that was a month ago. - Yeah. - Where do you stand on a noun? Do you think that's still a day one shooter? - Day one shooter. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have, it can be easy for me to get like too big for my bridges sometimes in this sense where I'm like, "Whoa, I want to hold out for this and for that." Then I'm thinking like, no, I haven't even killed a buck like close to that caliber. So why on earth would I pass them just because I'm hanging a tree in Kansas? Amen. You can still sit in the tree for the rest of the trip. - It's not the same Randall, you know that. (laughing) The highlights of Whitetail Week is the ultimate Whitetail giveaway, which is headlined by a guided hunt with Jordan Bud and Mark Kingon. This is something you can't buy folks. I wish I could win this because after my Wisconsin hunt last year, which I just went live on YouTube, I appreciate everybody that's already watched. I'm just like filled with gratitude that so many people would watch me not kill a deer, but hopefully it was entertaining for you. But after you see that, you'll say, yeah, Yani needs could use some help from Mark. And you think as a colleague of his, I would get like more tips and sometimes spent with Mark, becoming a Whitetail deer hunter. So I don't know, maybe I just need to plan a hunt with him. - You know, I actually invited you to come hunting me last year and you stood me up at the last minute. - At the last minute? - Yeah, we had the tailgate tour together. I was like, hey, at the tailgate, let's go deer hunting together. - We're gonna go to Michigan. - Yeah, I was gonna take my deer camp. - Oh, instead I went to my deer camp and we weren't spray weeds. - You are 100% right. I'm sorry about that. Work had to get done. So yeah, you can win a hunt with Jordan Bud and Mark Kingon on Jordan's place over there in Nebraska. It sounds like an awesome time. On top of that, all their prizes included in the giveaway. A math useful, a tethered saddle, a meat, the company meat, MET grinder, which also grinds me a grinder. A grilla smoker, sig binoculars, whisper light. Sorry, this one is a tongue twister for me. First lights, whisper down. Was there an old product used to be called whisper light? - MSR whisper lights. - Yeah, that's it still. - I was just using that still. Crispy boots and last but certainly not least, non-next membership. Like I said, it's the ultimate giveaway. Keep an eye out on all of the meat eater channels this week to get you fired up for deer season and head to the meat eater store to sign up for the ultimate white tail giveaway. Mark, you wanna add anything to my little promo here? - I would just say, I had to do a bunch of videos about this so I happen to have all of this very top of mind. But more than $23,000 worth of prizes. So you listed a lot of great stuff, but there's just so much more. - I was adding that up in my mind, knowing that I'm ineligible for when I get some price back. - So it's pretty sweet, but a key thing to remember is that you don't need to buy anything to enter. It's free to enter the giveaway. But if you do happen to go on first letter of the meat eater store or anything and you need something right now and you purchase a new jacket or game bags or whatever, you get extra entries into the giveaway this week. Two X or something significant. So if there was something you needed, this is a good time to do it because you're just gonna get that many more opportunities to win all this other free stuff. - Tell me about this hunt. - So I don't know a whole lot. These kinds of things just kind of come out of nowhere as you know, Randall. But what I do know is that Jordan's got an incredible place there up in the north-ish, northwest-ish part of the state. I love hunting Nebraska. I've hunted out there three or four times for white tails. Really cool mix of wide open vistas. You can see a lot, but then good thick cover along the river bottom. So, especially late November. You know, we're gonna get a lot of deer cruising, these tight funnels. You're gonna see a lot of deer. There should be great activity. I think this is a muzzleloader hunt is what I recall hearing. So you're gonna be able to reach out there and touch one if you want. I think this can be a lot fun. - Yeah, even though that muzzleloader hunt, if it is, is December early in Nebraska. Brody, I think you've hunted that. They're always run. - Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a great, great time to be there. I love that season. - Very excited about it. So yeah, sign up. Let's go hunting. - It's Steve Ronella here, and it is White Tail Week at Me Eater. That's right. The most anticipated week of the year. White Tail Week at Me Eater. Both seasons are open, boxer making rubs, and all week we're going deep on the most hunted big game animal in America. We're also running the ultimate White Tail giveaway. The sort of, the premier part of this package is you win a hunt with Mark Kenning and Jordan Bud at Jordan Bud's Family Ranch in Nebraska where I have hunted. Jordan is cool as hell. Her family's ranch is cool as hell. It is great hunting. You're gonna have a blast. Plus, get gear, free gear from over 20 brands. So keep an eye on Me Eater channels all week and head to the Me Eater store to sign up. No purchase necessary. Get all your rules at the Me Eater store. Now on to your news. - Still sticking with that one, huh, Phil? - Yeah, Steve's gone. And honestly, I'm kind of just kidding. I'm kind of planning my feet now. - That's not really how you change it. - I like it, Phil. I like it. - What, was that a pigeon? - Yeah, that's right. - Yeah, it was a pigeon delivering a piece of mail, you know? - I get it. - As pigeons do. - It's not really a hitter. - It doesn't hit hard like when Spoon Phil sings. It makes me think that I'm going out to my, you know, I, I did say this, I didn't say this last week when Steve was bitching about it, but after months of radio live and my drops getting progressively more involved and frankly obnoxious, I, for the news show, I wanted them to just like be in and out, quick, quick hitters that don't distract from what we're doing here. And this, this pigeon drop has sparked more distraction and, and, and side conversation that any of my radio live drops have. So I think I just made a grave miscalculation. Don't stand your ground. Well, we'll get, we'll get used to it. Okay, since it's white tail week, we've got a couple stories from our listeners about. You guessed it. The most popular game animal in the whole damn country, the white tail deer. At first we got Brody with an email about a huge buck out of Minnesota. This is a wonderful story. This is great. This is great. Pull up that first picture, Phil, so people can gock at the thing while I'm reading. Do you want to tell me now what makes this story one or four after you tell us about it? After I tell you, I don't like, I just think it's a great story. The email is great. This is from Max in Minnesota. We got this email on September 21st. I shot this buck yesterday evening at 20 yards, just 30 minutes from Minneapolis. With an hour and a half left of shooting light left, I climbed into the sand and saw this buck at 7.30, made a perfect shot and he didn't go more than 60 yards. When I walked up and finally saw him on the ground, my excitement faded and panic started engulfing my mind because I didn't know how I was going to move it by myself. I could only drag it five feet at a time when I typically can get 20 to 30 yards pulling the buck by the antler. I assumed it was somehow a loss of strength due to aging or something dumb like that. I feel you. I wrestled the buck into the tractor after gutting it and got it on ice. My good buddy stopped by to help me today and we truly didn't know how big it was until two of us couldn't lift it off the ground using a pulley and rope. With its butt still touching the ground, we saw 260 on the scale and we knew we were in different territory. After hooking up the rope to the tractor and lifting it that way, it hit 329.48 and that's what the tenderloins cut out. The photo of the buck with the tractor, there it is, is the best way to see the size. The antlers look small in the tractor photo because of the enormous body size. I truly wish I took a picture of the rope swing we made to get this thing off the ground because it obviously looks sketchy just showing a picture of the scale. Got that picture, Phil. But I do have witnesses that would vouch for every detail. It's an unbelievable animal and I'm beyond lucky to see something like this. I mean, how can you not like that story, honestly, just a great story. What's your favorite part of this, Johnny? I have my notes about the story itself, everything, whatever it's interesting, it's a giant body deer that's interesting to me. I don't know, otherwise I was kind of like, oh, okay, you shot a really big, heavy buck. I mean, that is really, I thought you had something you were excited about. I almost can't, I have a hard time believing it, not that I question his validity, but that's just unbelievable. I've got it. I got it and gutted and without the tenderloins, that's insane. I mean, a really big buck is 200 pounds. I believe every word. I believe it. I'm not saying I don't believe it, but it's just wild. Oh, it's crazy. One thing I love is the photo with the tractor, Phil, if you'll indulge me, the blood and the John Deere green and the grass. It's just a very striking, striking image. That bright red lung blood there. Yeah, where's the red? That's right. I'm blood. Mark's like color blood. Is that thing to sleep in there? I'm not really color blood. The blood, the blood is where it should be, Mark. I'll just say the blood is where it should be. I can't see that red. My second favorite part of this is anytime I'm picking up here, it was 32948. And with its butt still touching the ground, they got 260 on the scale. So that's what? Like 70 pounds. I'm feeling like I need to start weighing myself with my butt still touching the ground. There's all sorts of great secrets. And I also like the idea of you can't trust a scale with how to picture the full context. Maybe I'll just start weighing myself and snap in photos. There you go. There's just one foot on the scale. This is fabulous. This is fabulous. I like that this guy wrote in to just tell us about a heavy ass deer. He has great Whitetail Week story, great job, Max. Another Whitetail email for Yannis and Mark will probably jump in here too. You want to go ahead and read that, Yannis? Yeah, sure. Ben Geals wrote in, "Good morning. I have a correction for the new show episode 926. At the opening of the show, Yannis is talking about clearing buckthorn. Steve then said that nothing wants to eat it and the others agreed. This is not true. Both deer and rabbits eat the bark and shoots of buckthorn. I came about this knowledge while fessant hunting in central Minnesota late in the season during a hard winter. I found a bunch of spots in the snow that looked like someone spilled blue gatorate. But there was rabbit and deer shit in the same spots. So after some research, it turns out that the bark of buckthorn contains a phytochemical called emotent. The emotent ends up in the urine and turns blue when hit by and/or - I can't quite understand that sunlight, but let's just say when it's hit by sunlight, it turns blue. While it isn't a preferred food source, buckthorn absolutely gets eaten by both deer and rabbits in the winter when other food sources are scarce. I think that was a trivia question at some point. Really? I do. What color is the urine of an animal that's been eaten buckthorn? I must have been in that episode. Question. I do remember something. I've read it wrong. Something about this. And sure enough, Brody, did you editorialize that and write, sure, shit, he's right and here's a picture to prove it? Who found the picture? Where did you find that? Just looked it up online. There's a bunch of them. It does look like blue gatorade. What's crazy is I have hunted around buckthorns so much in my life. I've never once seen blue piss. Here's the deal. I think like, if he's correcting us on saying that nothing eats it, yes. But I think we were saying like nothing wants to eat it. I think we are also correct in saying that generally vegetables. It's not quite like kids, not kids or Randall, not one of the vegetables, but I texted Matt Ross from the NBA. He said generally anything with glossy leaves has low palatability ratings for deer. The glossy surface is a defense mechanism against herbivores among other things causing low digestibility. It doesn't mean they won't eat it. If it's all there is, they will. For example, Rhododendrons have glossy leaves and can be hammered especially in the winter. Buckthorn forage nutrition value is fairly poor too. One of the reasons it out competes native region, like when you're trying to regenerate native plants is because it's not selected as a browse. I think for us, when we're just generally saying like nothing wants to eat it, it's got very low wildlife value. I feel like that's a true statement. And I'm going to stick by that. I'm going to continue killing it because it is the scourge of the Midwest and other areas. It's like, sure, in extreme scenarios, when there's nothing else left. Because there's too much buckthorn and nothing else can live. The animals are like, well, I have to eat this. My piss is going to turn blue, dang it. Yeah. On the back 40 project we did back in the day. I don't know if you recall that from our squirrel hunting adventures, Yannis. But that was one of the major issues on that property was just rampant buckthorn. So multiple wildlife habitat specialists that came out to look at that place with me. That was one of the first things that says, you got to get rid of that. Very low wildlife value, very aggressive. And yeah, so interesting to point out, but I think, like you said, generally what you mentioned holds true. Yeah. Do you able to get a handle on it? Definitely not. Entirely. We tackled pockets of it. I think if we still had that property, it'd be a project we would still be doing today. And I actually think that the National Deer Association, which tickled over, they have continued to do that work in the years since. Yeah. And now embarking on a project with the NRCS, and they're going to help me with my, what glossy buckthorn because it's going to be years of work, it's nice to have the help. And though, and then you'll never see any more blue raspberry snow cones on the ground. Yeah. I mean, it's cool. That is. I'm hoping it's never see blue, blue piss. They need to rename that plant like buckthorns, not a good name for it. No, it's. Yeah. And just blue piss, it'd be interesting the story of how it got that name. You know, I believe because there's something segments into like, like it splits and it makes it looks like a, like a buck horns on. I can't remember if it's the way that the leaf splits or, or something on it splits and makes it look like a little buck going on it. That's, that'll lead to another correction in the road probably future episodes. Thank you, Ben. Now on to the news. Do we have time for Phil to explain that sound bit? It's been done before the audience has heard it. I'll talk to you about after the show. Okay. Thanks, Phil. I'm first up here. This is just a quick story, but this was first reported in the Juno Empire by Jeffrey Kenneth. There is a woman, Janet E. Lopez, who was charged in Juno district court last week, I believe, with three counts of obstructing or hindering lawful hunting. The incident in question happened on June 18th along Glacier Highway. None of this has been proven in court yet, so these are all allegations. But according to court documents, there are three archery hunters, about 300 yards off the road. They're making a stock on a black bear when, when, when, Ms. Lopez stopped to ask them what was going on. They told her they were bear hunting. And so she drove up and down the road, honking her horn, eventually spooking the bear off. Those guys ended up calling it a day because she kept honking her horn. And eventually the state troopers looked into it, or wildlife troopers looked into it, and she told them she likes to watch the local bears and has even named them. So if she has that relationship understandable that she would not want to see one killed by the roadside, she was charged with three counts of obstructing or hindering lawful hunting, one charge for each of the three hunters whose hunts were impacted by her actions. So always, always nice to see the process and the law working on the issue. Sometimes it goes the way the, you know, way the hunter. Well, I think it's good to know here is that most everybody listening to this, it is not going to be going, oh, I better not honk it while life when there's hunters around trying to spook the game, but it's good to know if something like this happens that, you know, you have a lot of power, and it's your right to be hunting, and that you should engage with, you know, local law enforcement, gay, more than whoever, and report this kind of behavior because it is completely illegal in all states. You cannot, you cannot, you cannot harass hunters. The thing that struck me most about this whole story is if there's one place in the United States where you would think you would probably not have to deal with hunter harassment. It would be Alaska. I mean, everybody's putting some kind of game meat in their freezer or fish in their freezer, whatever. It's just, it's just weird, but, you know, yeah. My reaction to this story was I wish we had more laws like this pertaining to watching things on phones without headphones, having phone calls on speaker phone, behavior and movie theaters. Just, why don't we just have general laws interfering with my daily, that's a joke, by the way. I'm not a big, big gov guy, big gov over each guy. Yeah. I had something somewhat similar to this happen to me. Really? When I was like 16, 15, 16, I bow hunted behind my parents' house where we lived. We had three and a half acres of land and I would go and bow hunt for white tails in the mornings and evenings after school. And on one particular day, I got back from the hunt and my sister said, "Did you see anything?" I said, "No." She said, "Yes, because I went down there and have been spraying perfume." She didn't want me shooting there and so unbeknownst to me, she was going and spraying perfume throughout my hunting grounds. I hope you caught her. I think I knew you had a sister until just now. No, no. Well, it's got sister. Because she screwed up his white tails. Does she not hunt? She doesn't talk to her anymore because he called the game and never here, never once since. She's in jail. She does not hunt. Oh. Yeah. Can't say that I've run into anything like that. Yeah, I can't. I don't think I've had any kind of hunter harassment. I mean, other than not hunting and then saying that I'm a hunter and then being harassed a little bit. You know, when I was flying to Austria, I didn't talk to the people next to me on the plane until we had landed and we were pulling our shit out of the overhead bins, you know? And then all of a sudden they became interested and talked to me. I was in the same mindset that I had maintained throughout the flight. But she was like asking me what I was doing and for whatever reason I actually didn't lie. I said, yeah, I'm here. I'm visiting friends and I'm hunting and I told them all about it and she goes, well, that all sounds fantastic except for the hunting part. And then I just shrunk back down into my seat. I thought, why didn't I just lie to her, you know, any event? That's sometimes those lead to great conversations sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. And had you guys struck it up mid flight at midnight, you know, and you both had to get up to go pee or something, then by the time you landed, she might have been pro hunting. Yeah. That's true. Missed opportunity. One more regret that I'll carry with me. Yani speaking of government overreach, Randall. There was a proposal that the Montana Official Wildlife Commission rejected that would have required hunters and travers to carry bears, brain, bear country. Conference, including bear, ecologist Mike Bader argued the mandate would improve public safety and reduce defensive grizzly bear deaths, noting 30 grizzly deaths and 251 conflicts this year. Opponents and commissioners criticize the proposals and unnecessary government mandate noted that existing public education training efforts are already effective. Critics also argued the petition unfairly targeted hunters and trappers, while ignored other public land users. And despite the rejection, organizers plan to continue advocating for the bear spray requirements to enhance the safety. Who's got thoughts on that one? I think the main point is unfairly targeting hunters and trappers. To me, that's that's the big thing. Yeah, and I don't know that this year's 30 grizzly deaths and 251 total conflicts have to do with encounters on the trail or in the woods, bears do not have a lot to eat right now. And there's a lot of bears getting into town and garbage. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I also just think any sort of mandatory, you have to carry bear spray. Well, tell me what you don't archery hunt, but what do you do during I carry bear spray and a handgun? Okay. What do you do? Well, if I were, if you're going to make, if you're worried about like a hunter and archery hunter encountering a grizzly and then turning to his side arm instead of his bear spray, if you make him carry bear spray, he's still going to go to the side right, like you, they have to be willing. People have to be educated and willing participants and something like that to work. So just strapping a can on your chest isn't going to change outcomes on the ground. No, not at all. And yeah, like if they're going to do this, it's like share anybody that goes out on the public lands, right during grizzly bear season should be carrying bear spray. Right. And how would you even begin to police? Oh, yeah. You know, no, it's like, it's a bummer to even have to kind of think this, but you can't help to be like, Oh, are they like a little bit trying to be anti hunting here? They might not even be trying to be anti hunting, but they might have an anti hunter bias, right? So they're looking at what's going on there saying, well, it's the hunters who are doing this and causing these problems because they're unnecessarily creating conflict being out there doing their thing. Sure. It's a hunter's like killing grizzly bears without actually killing grizzly bear. You know what I mean? Yeah. But, I mean, to Randall's point, you know, in Montana up here, something like 50, 60 grizzlies get killed every year and most are not hunter conflict, most are, you know, wild surfers, chicken coops, all that car, car is the whole nine yards. Yeah, better time and resources would be better spent addressing those sorts of conflicts. Yeah. I mean, education, right? I mean, there's a good amount of that, but certainly, let's spend the money on more of that. Yeah, or they could spend this time and effort to squash this idea coming out of Washington DC. I said, I had, I had a better one. Oh, okay. You could try it. Let's try it again. Yeah. What do you got, Randall? I sort of lost my wheels. They were. I was going to say speaking of misguided to something, something, something, but that was really good. Yeah. Bravo. Thanks. So one of the craziest stories of a several year period of pretty crazy public land related stories. I saw this come across my news feed this past weekend. That are the Washington Post reported that the major league baseball league contacted the Trump administration about hosting an MLB game at a national park. And then as recently as just this past week, an agency official was at Grand Teton National Park scouting it for possible locations to build a baseball venue of some kind to possibly host a park or host a game. So according to this article, National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lans visited the park in recent days and looked at three different possible locations for a baseball park within the park's boundaries. And the idea here, at least from the MLB, is that they're trying to have more of these kind of themed special games and special locations. I'm all for that. The field of dreams. The field of dreams. The field of dreams. One and I was supposed to be temporary, but then they made it a permanent. Yeah. and of the uh. College basketball games on the aircraft carriers Michigan state did that. Yeah. Yeah North Carolina Michigan state. That was the game You know it's way cheaper is like bubble heads of anime characters That's the theme I can give not really a draw there Phil. Okay. Yeah, maybe in your world So so yeah, this news dropped on Saturday in the subsequent days There's been all kinds of outcry from you know national parks advocates conservationist tourists They're in the park a number of journalists went in the park and asked people they were hiking you know the Jenny late trail or different things about that Of course my first gut reaction was this seems Just I don't know aborant to consider like just this absolutely stunning natural landscape the the t-tons are just one of the most incredible Vistas we have in our national park system and then to to put a baseball stadium there would just be Like building a baseball stadium in a cathedral something like that So when I first saw that be cool. I wanted to throw up in my mouth I do want to fact check a little here though because we all saw this pop up on social media we saw these articles and It must be noted that the White House issued a statement that clarifies at least their position on this Which is that you know they confirmed that the MLB did send a request asking about this possibility But it did say that this this is not a presidential directive nor is it being directed by the White House It's also not being driven by the department of the interior Therefore, this is not a White House or administration priority They clarified that there have been no decisions made park service has not granted any permits And that if the MLB wants to go on-site visits of national parks that's their prerogative But they are denying that there has been any active scouting done by the administration itself So but there is this deputy director Who has gone and visited three sites at Grand Teton Supposedly and like their statement This is like it was coincidence that he was there visiting these places at the same time. I yeah I mean, I think what's what's what's not said in that statement is the most glaring part of it They're saying We didn't come up with this idea The White House isn't pushing this idea The interior isn't pushing this idea and it's not a priority for us They didn't say this will not happen. Yeah exactly In a in a sane world Whoever MLB reached out to about this idea would have shut it down at this point And said I'll save you the embarrassment like I'm not going to bring this to my superiors But obviously They're not at the point yet where they can say this is Out of the question there are plenty of places they could build a stadium. Oh, it doesn't need to be in Grand Teton National Park especially in that valley if you wanted those views There's there's plenty of flat ranches Where the building would probably be easier and you'd still have the view of the Teton. Yeah, and let's let's not Yeah, don't do that. Yeah, yeah, honest The thing that strikes me is And look man like I'm like I'm a baseball fan like my kid plays baseball with Three weeks ago. We were in Seattle and went and saw two games I feel like the MLB should like read the room a little bit better and like The amount of money that would be spent to build this stadium like what else could they do with that money? They could I don't know donate it to like youth baseball programs around the country and prove or something like talent funnel for US-born players Anyway, can you imagine the blowback the MLB would get if something like this went through in a national park setting like that I mean it would just be all I also just think it speaks to like the The gulf in this country between people who get the public lands issue and people who don't yeah And also You know Misconceptions about what the national parks are yeah, it's like right like they're not like they're sure There are there are national parks that are like a parking lot and you go up and you look at something and it's like a historic site or whatever But that is not granted and no and that like the throw away Culture idea of this like we're gonna have a game in a national park. It's like You're gonna build a stadium for one game and yes, maybe they come back for additional games, but It's just like you use your head dude on the moon. Yeah, yeah That would be something special. Are you in on moon ball? I think how far that ball would go Yeah, you could hit a home run from the moon to the earth. Yeah, we won't even have to do steroids anymore It'll still be exciting to watch it'll be better than the McGuire Sosa glory days Solving all the world's problems right here folks. Yeah, keep us updated on that mark. Yeah, we'll do Yeah, hopefully there's hopefully no more updates. Hopefully this thing dies I know I hope it dies with a whimper and we just never hear anything about it again. Yeah, thanks cross. It's wild With that we are on to Steve's interview With Iowa gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand about a big wet buck Thanks for listening folks. We'll see you next week It's Steve Ronella here, and it is white tail week at me eater. That's right the most anticipated week of the year White tail week at me eater both seasons are open boxer making rubs and all week We're going deep on the most hunted big game animal in America We're also running the ultimate white tail giveaway that the sort of the premier part of this package Is you win a hunt with mart candy and Jordan Bud at Jordan Bud's family ranch in Nebraska where I have hunted Jordan is cool as hell her family's ranch is cool as hell. It is great hunting. You're going to have a blast plus yet gear Free gear from over 20 brands So keep an eye on me eater channels all week and head to the meat eater store to sign up. No purchase necessary Get all your rules at the meat eater store Okay, I'm on right now with Rob Sand now if you're in Iowa, you know exactly who Rob Sand is if you're outside of Iowa And you're thinking to yourself, why do I know that name you might remember him because he's uh He's a he's many things, but one of those many things is Iowa's state auditor, but the most important thing about Rob Sand From my perspective as he's probably the only I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he is the only suburban archery deer hunter Running for governor right now. I mean, I'm not like an expert on the subject, but I would have heard if there were more Um, and yeah Rob Sand is Iowa state auditor Running for governor or even if you hadn't heard even if you hadn't heard, I bet I would have heard you would have heard Because someone would have said to you hey man, you know how like you're running for governor and you're a suburban deer hunter Well bill yeah over to bill over and whatever state he is too Uh, yeah, an episode 809 Rob came on I've been reading about Rob um in the newspapers And when I when I would read about Rob Sand the newspapers it'll often include his love his love of the hunt So I took an interest in him. He came on episode 809 And he told he told a great story about a deer called the 209 guess how big that deer was Um, and how he got it through like a suburban hunting program and in the end of the episode He shared with me that he was trying to he was fixing to get it shoulder mounted In a way where it would look like it was wet because he was wet when he got it and I thought this was the worst idea in the world Filky pulled him out Feels gonna pull up an image of the mount um There you can see I did not do that. Are you happy with it? It looks great I'm I'm so happy with it. It looks great. I did not make it look wet It was it was what is three wet things uh when I shot it, but it looks great just the way it is because I was you know these days You think you know if somebody wants to hear the story they can listen to a podcast on it It's not like they need to look at it and be like oh must have been raining out But what I was suggesting to you is that when you wanted it to look wet Just take a wet rag and wetten it up a little bit You can tell I had a guy I had a guy reach out on Instagram and he had he had he had he sent me some kind of a beeswax product Oh, where he was he was kind of he was kind of like I've done this before it looks cool Here's what it looks like and I got to be honest Like the antlers that he because he'll he's a shed he was a shed hunter And so he would he had this beeswax product that he would put on the shed to make him look kind of wet. Oh I really couldn't tell the difference. Yeah, I really couldn't really I couldn't tell much of the difference I mean if you're looking at this picture of this mount right now. Oh You're seeing you know some some shiny bone that might might maybe could be wet But I'd kind of the end of the day was like you know and I don't think it's going to look that much different and One thing I know is it looks good if I do it the way I always do and I don't want to screw it up So I got into your head you're saying and you did what you took my instructions and did not make him I like people. I welcome people in I like I like hearing other people's opinions That's part of this entire campaign for governors. Maybe we should all work together Where's the 209 I want to talk about this campaign deal and what that's all about. Yeah, where's the 209 hanging If anybody wants to come to what I like to call the public sector Cabela's that's room 11 of the Iowa capital building It is in the state auditor's office right there. If you are an Iowan you can come if you're not an Iowan But you happen to be in Des Moines you can come you can check it out It's in there with the other mounts that I've taken with my over the years. A Buffalo, three bucks that measure between, no, sorry, four bucks that measure between one fifty three and one fifty nine. And then a few assorted smaller ones that are all at least one twenty five. And then the man and then the man the two are nine. And the big boy, you know, that's right. So when you came on the show, you were, you were in a position. And like I said, I got introduced you because people would send me articles about you. And it would point out that I knew, you know, you were a state auditor and you were politically involved, but it would be articles and these people that wrote these articles would always be like urban journalists. And it would write about this Rob San character. And it's like, you're like, that you had like your family had, you know, you had like agricultural connections from working jobs and you were a kid, you were a hunter. And so people would be like, Oh, I bet Steve would like this guy. And, um, and I had you on and I did. And at the time you, you hadn't gone through your primary yet. So walk, walk us through all that all went and we're at where things stand right now because I keep reading about you still. And people like your, your campaign is working. Yeah. You know, we didn't end up having a primary on the ballot. And there was a gal that was running who had said, you know, I'm running to and she didn't end up getting on the ballot. And so it was just me. You were the only name on there. Only name. I think, yeah, it was the only name on there. Yeah. Okay. And then you won the campaign. Yeah, well, it wasn't, it wasn't really contest, you know, in the end of the day. And then the campaign, you know, I, a big piece of it to me is I always go everywhere and I talk to everybody. And so we did a hundred public town halls last year. We had finished them by the time I talked to you. We're like 90, we have like number 94 tonight. We're taping this on a Monday. We got one in in Ames tonight. So we got like six more of those. We'll do plenty of other events, but, but Steve, when we do these events, we have people come into the room, raise their hand for what party they're in and ask them to applaud their neighbors that are in the political parties. And we ask them to sing America the beautiful together to prove that Democrats and Republicans can work together. And when we get to the Q&A part, I always make a point of handing the microphone to somebody who raised their hand to say they're Republican. To be clear, I'm a Democrat. And so by handing the microphone to somebody who said they were Republican, I can, I can demonstrate with my work, my actions, not just my words, how serious I am about the idea that we should work together. And sometimes they're like, I didn't really bring any questions. And other times they asked me, you know, maybe something of a gotcha question. They were there as someone who's a little antagonistic. That's okay. But the point of this to me is to be like, this is real democracy. Like we should be getting in the same room. We should be talking to each other. We should be focusing on the areas we agree. And what I've been saying lately is left wing, right wing, same bird. You know, like we just, we know that it makes more sense to work together. We know that no one has a monopoly on good ideas. And if you're willing to work with each other, then every once in a while you say, okay, broken clock is right twice a day. You have a fair point. Let's add what you're doing to what we want to do and do something we all think is going to do better than what we're doing right now. That's just common sense stuff. And I think people are hungry for common sense these days. You know, you, so you're running for this office as a outspoken outdoors. I mean, you don't shy away from being an outdoors. You don't view it like a, you know, you don't view it like being a deficit or something. You ought to hide for fear that people are going to disapprove. And I think part of part of that because you're so open about what your interests are. A part of your campaign is wetlands, wetlands, conditions, conditions of weapons. And I would tell me about that. So, so I always got a water quality crisis tied to that connected to that is the fact that we're last year, number one, this year, number two and cancer growth. Like we have too much nitrate in our water. We've got other issues in our water. And we also are, we're 49th for publicly and Steve 49th. And that does, I had a guy asked me a bunch. Yeah. So I looked it up. I had a guy asked me is that he's like, is that include state local and federal? And I said, good question. I looked it up. Yes, it does. We have almost the least public land of any state. And think about this for a second. We got a big water quality problem. We got, we're 49th for public land. We got people who leave the state for outdoor recreation opportunities. Call me crazy. If we did a massive wetlands restoration, we could fix all three of those problems with the same solution. Because nothing filters water better than nature's water filter. That's just the truth. If you want to clean your water up, you ought to put it in a wetland. And I like to say there's four and a half F's for things you can do with a wetland. You can take a field trip. You can foul hunt. You can float. You can fish and you can photograph photograph. I call half an F. That's fair. Basically, you just drew a circle with those four and a half F's that includes pretty much everybody. Who doesn't want to do one of those things? You might want to photograph the duck before I shoot it. You know, the more wetlands we have across the state, the cleaner water we're going to have. And then fewer people are going to leave. We're not going to offer them mountains. If they want the mountains, they're going to come out to Bozeman or they're going to go out to Colorado. But if we want to offer them a stream where you can see the bottom of it, where it's fun to just stand there and catch a quad to have the way I did when I was a kid or better trout fishing or better fishing and lakes too. You know, we can get there. We can get cleaner water. We just got to put a little effort into it. I think a lot of people view and if they have this view, I'm not critical of it. They would say, you can't make a wetland, it just is right. What does it mean to create wetlands? Like I think people's heads sure that like God makes wetlands. Man doesn't make wetlands. What does that mean? I mean, to me, obviously there's a different level where to some folks, the idea of wilderness and something that is truly pure and just is this kind of like their highest end. And I love that idea. We're not going to have that here. Iowa is one of the most terraformed places on the planet, meaning mankind in Iowa as much as anywhere else has said I'm going to take this land and make it this. Back into a wetland, right? I mean, at the end of the day, what we're talking about is taking some of the lowest pieces of land, some of the most saturated pieces of land. And instead of running crops on them, like actually do the restoration work, remove the tile from that wetland area and. Put in place like the right soils, the right plants to make it be what it used to be. If it wanted to be a wetland, there's a place in the geography that wants to be a wetland, then take it and make it so that it can be a wetland again. It's rather than wetland creation, what I'm talking about is wetland, wetland restoration. That's right, that's right. And you, you just mentioned how you have a very low percentage of public land, right? What does it look like to do wetland restoration in a landscape where there's very little public land? This has to involve, I'm guessing this has to involve a plan of incentivizing landowners to allow, in some cases, you know, small portions, large portions of agricultural production areas to be restored to wetlands. What I want to do, first of all, you got to take a watershed approach, because if you're, if you're aiming to clean up water, if you just do a scatter shot thing, one size doesn't fit all. And you want to have an area, I mean, you know, science, you want to have an area that you tested and then an area that you didn't so that five, 10 years later, you can say, look, now the waters cleaner over here, because we did all this work, let's expand that program and do it over there. And that helps you measure the impact of what you're doing, which to me helps the public understand that you're treating them right, you're taking care of their tax dollars, you're cleaning up their water, you're giving them more fun places to play. What I specifically, what I want to do is basically a reverse auction, so I have the state say, you know, put out a form that just says, hey, landowners in Iowa, give us the GPS coordinates on your plot, tell us the lowest price per acre that you will take. And then once we collect all those effectively bids, but it's bids to sell, not bids to buy, you collect all those bids, and then you overlay that on a GIS map so that you're looking at what are our most targeted areas, which of these places that have been offered to us give us the most bang for the buck and go from there. So at the end of the day, and you got it, again, this is going to have to be within particular watersheds to start, because I want to be able to, I want to be five years down the road and be able to point at it and say, hey, look, look, look at how much better we're doing here, look at how much better we're doing there in these two watersheds that we started with, let's, let's keep going. Yeah, I think what I think is voluntary, which I think is important. Yeah, what I was going to point out is like a lot of conservation projects that I applaud would wind up being situations of willing seller, willing buyer. So I think a lot of people here are agricultural lands that must be in their company. with eminent domain and taking people's farms but in this case you're often looking at places it probably have low output are probably variable in production because there's always the risk of flooding anyways and places where someone could pull it out of their holdings and know that it's not turning into a strip mall it's not turning into something next to them they don't want but it's getting reverted to an area that's probably going to add value to surrounding landscapes it's going to add wildlife to surrounding landscapes and you create a situation where a bunch of people win and you know how this works I mean if you got a if you're in a small town that happens to have good hunting nearby your restaurants in your hotel are just going to be that much busier because of it and so if we see that kind of restoration where people like hey there's this big new wetland in north central Iowa you know yeah that's going to be good in that area and you might be a hotel that's 30 miles away or a restaurant that's 30 miles away that's just a 30 minute drive in Iowa you know so you still might be benefiting from that too the other piece of it is we've got this state program you know one of the issues with CRP nationally is you you don't really allow grazing on it but there's a lot of compatibility with grazing and with wildlife and so we've got a state program called the working lands program yeah where again it's designed to take some of that lower CSR CSR's corn suitability rating but it's lower CSR land it maybe it's a steep grade and so it's highly erotable again maybe it's just sort of wetter or maybe it's right along the river but the working lands program helps folks take that land it's more highly erotable and turn it into grazing land so you do you know a shortgrass prairie great if you're grazing on shortgrass prairie you're going to have more habitat maybe it's it's fescent instead of ducks but that's still beneficial for folks no matter what it is they want to do it still helps clean up our water and still helps growers and producers with profitability because you're not telling them like we are with CRP like well you can't do anything with yeah it gives people the middle step and for for for listeners that talk about we're talking about the CRP conservation reserve program which critics would say oh it's paying farmers not to do nothing but what what it does is it creates a economic incentive and maybe that's even too strong word but it makes it financially viable for landowners to put areas of their property on hold and let the soils rebuild and create wildlife habitat where it's not such an economic hit to them to enroll it people don't get rich off CRP but in some cases it's like a more flexible system would get more people to be able to participate in conservation and still run working properties and like you're saying grace cap yeah yeah and especially right now you know we got so many people out there who are really hurt farm income has gone down about 50% on average and the other piece of this is what I'd love to do is you know if you're if you're saying oh well this is only a small acreage well put a few cattle out there I want us to do more support for local and regional food systems so if you've just got a small head a cattle or if you want to I don't know what you want to graze out there but even if it's a smaller amount you're not going to have enough to have do a commercial slaughter you do local slaughtering at a locker and sell to local school districts that's keep that helps keep that money here locally helps reinforce local rural economies and that helps everybody win too when you're when you're out there I'm sure I'm guessing you got to talk about all kinds of stuff that is really on people's minds and that doesn't really not that it doesn't interest us here but it's just outside of our focus on the show but I'm sure you're out there talking about gas prices and grocery prices and all this kind of stuff because you got to be but when you go out and you're doing your town hall meetings and you're talking to constituents um how much interest how much tolerance is there for discussions about conservation issues like when you start talking about wetlands of do people tune out when you start talking about CRP do they tune out or are not interested in Iowa right now and this is a hot topic and people really like our plan you know I've got people who are on the ag side and people who are on the conservation side and people who are just on the hunting side and then just people who don't do any of those things but they want better water quality all of them are like this is a good idea you got a good plan and it's partially because we got this water quality crisis you know we have a lot of beach closures that are state parks every year so I want to I want to fix this stuff and so do other people so it's actually what I feel it and it's not just duck hunters that are thinking about this correct correct and so actually when I do my town halls and I say I want to I want to have the biggest wetlands restoration uh anyone has ever seen sometimes we get applause on that you know people are people really want to see improvement in water quality and to me the number one way to do that that gets people excited is more wetlands yeah um so one's the election what date this year I should know this I should know this too November 3rd I think November 3rd so like first so first Tuesday after the first Monday whatever that is okay so you're you're your poll your poll you're you're I know you I know you don't pay attention to this people do you're polling well your view is that you need to be out there laying it making your case you don't care what the polls say and that's not what you're here to talk about you're polling well and let's say let's just say the voters of Iowa send you to the governor's office on November 3rd what is your what is the day that you have the report to work the day I would switch jobs uh I think is the 14th of January oh I know it's in January I know I get two months to like you know taking that so yeah that's that's what I'm getting the right I get the right Steve I get the right yeah on November 2nd it's too late I don't know the morning of November 3rd it's too late like it's what's done is done so you could you know you could physically be in a trance this year on the third what's that oh yeah no I'll be I'll be out there I'll be out there after the third but you're you have a point I could go out on election day and you know what's kind of the die is cast at that point I don't know if I'll do that I'll probably be a little bit too ENC but that'd be that'd be pretty cool to fill a tag on the same day you'll be calling your wife from the stand being like hey did I win yeah I actually so funny story I ran for real election in state honor in 22 and it was super tight and the guy that I was running against didn't even we knew we were gonna win we knew we had a big enough lead that even in a recount it's like okay buddy you got a lot of space you got to make up here so we were pretty comfortable and I found out that I won when I was field dressing a buck when a reporter called me to be like hey your opponent conceded he's like where are you right now what are you doing I'm like I'm in I'm in Madison County field dressing a nice buck you should have seen the this this space in the oak leaves that I put that arrow through like he he came in probably and this is a tree I've said in many times it's a great spot but I'd never actually I never actually had taken a buck out of it before he came in and the wind was just right and he's heading towards me and he kind of looks around a little bit and I'm like I'm I'm shooting this buck if I get a shot and he pauses dead straight on not quartering towards just dead on it's probably 25 yards away and I can't he stands there for a while I can't tell if he's gonna turn and go or keep coming but I'm ready and he ends up kind of doing I guess like a receiver you'd say like a button hook you know kind of comes in a little bit further and does a full turn around and I just had this one little window and I gave a little bleat and got him to pause right in that window and just poke that arrow right through and then you want the and then you want the election to cope with it's like and then I'm in the election and and and and he and he he took off and he went down he only he I mean didn't go 20 but he went down in a pine grove where the dirt was so soft I didn't actually hear him hit the ground yeah and so I stayed in that tree I'm I'm not patient I've had problems in the past where I'm too excited and I get down too early I stayed in that tree plenty long and then was just a price to see like oh he's right here but I didn't I didn't he actually like hit the ground and plowed like his his antler was actually a little bit under the dirt like like something from the cartoons man the bulls charred himself the down yes yes yes yeah oh that was a fun day and then I got to talk to you about this before we started recording but you you you're enjoying this you're enjoying this process you like getting out and talking to people yeah I mean there's downsides but I like I like people in general I really like Iowans I like talking to people that I've never met before I'm a curious person I like to ask them about it themselves and you know when we go to town halls the the fun part to me is the answering people's questions and and also hearing them tell stories one of the things I'm proposing this race is actually we require elected officials to do truly public tone halls. You've got two weeks advanced notice. You got to tell people, this is the date, this is the time, let everybody in that's behaving themselves. You know, it's got to be a mixed political company and ask and answer non-pre screened questions, real questions. And so we get these rooms together. It's usually 40% of the room isn't a Democrat. And you get people get to be heard by their neighbors. It's not just by me. And I think that's just a good thing to do when you're lose. I'm proud to be doing it the way that I, I think I can look back at this win or lose. And so you know what, we did it the right way. I'll tell you what, where I'm sitting right now, man, just as an American. Anyone that is honestly talking about turning down the hatred and turning down the vitriol and turning down the divisiveness has my year. I appreciate that. It's just, it's got to happen. It's, it's got to happen. So I appreciate you talking about that. Definitely appreciate you talking about wetlands. And, um, and I love talking about bucks. Your mount looks great. I'll be watching, um, I'll be watching what happens. And I want to thank you again for taking the time to come talk to us, man. No, thanks for having me back. Ladies, gentlemen, here and from Rob Sand, stay auditor in Iowa and currently running, um, for the governorship in Iowa. And on November 3rd. We'll find out what's going to happen there. And on November 4th, we'll wait for a deer report. [LAUGHS] It'll probably be quiet, but I'll be out there. All right, man, thanks so much for coming, man. And check it back in. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks, Steve. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] It's Steve Renella here, and it is Whitetail Week at Me either. That's right. Whitetail Week at Me either. Both seasons are open, boxer-making, rubs. And all week, we're going deep on the most hunted big game animal in America. We're also running the ultimate Whitetail giveaway. The sort of the premier part of this package is you win a hunt with Mark Kenney and Jordan Bud at Jordan Bud's Family Ranch in Nebraska, where I have hunted. It is great hunting. You're going to have a blast. Plus, you get gear, free gear from over 20 brands. So keep an eye on Me either channels all week, and head to the Me either store to sign up. Get all your rules at the Me either store. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.