Ep. 950: Getting Paid to Hunt Deer on an Island

This is an I Heart Podcast, Guaranteed Human. If you've ever wanted to try on first light gear before buying it, well, now you've got a whole lot more places to do it. For the first time ever, you can find a first light at every shield's location and select Academy Sports and outdoor stores, plus retailers across the country. Try it on, get your sizing right, and find the gear that works for you before hunting season. Get to firstlight.com/stores to find the first light retailer closest to you. First light, go farther, stay longer. Welcome to the news show everybody. This week, we've got bubbly Doug Durin on a Wisconsin David vs. Goliath Powerline story. We've got Nantucket will seriously pay you to hunt deer, seriously. We've got the Trump administration has taken steps to increase access, so that's good. We've got Spencer Diggs in, Spencer Diggs in on Jinseng poachers. An interesting legal argument about elk tags has emerged in New Mexico, Randall and I signed our first doctor's note getting a kid out of school and more. I'm going to skip our news because what I was going to talk about in our news, no, I'm just going to top it right now, fill play the thing. This is a dumb one. This is a dumb one, but hear me out. The reason is our news is because zero day I was driving down the road with my friend Jeremy Romero, and he brought up an issue that he found a solution toward that is always, this is an issue that's always chapped my buns, and he kind of solution for it, but I got give a little background. First off, Jeremy's from New Mexico, New Mexico, they do not do a thing called bonus points, so just to step this back for a minute. If you imagine, you know, most of the country, like if you want to go deer hunting, go to the gas station or the sportiest store and you buy a deer tag, there's no limit on how many deer tags are available. Anybody that wants one can get one. But when you get into certain things where you have more certain areas and certain wildlife species where you have more demand than supply, you need to create a system by which you award hunts, right? Like if everyone that wants to go hunt a big horn and Montana went and shot a big horn, they'd all be gone, and we'd be in the whole a million big horns. So you got to have a system by which you hand these opportunities out, and there's these things called tag draws, okay? So let's say you live in I don't know, you live in Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, you live in Wyoming. You want a hunt in Alaska? You want a hunt in Wyoming, and Wyoming they say like, hey, we got, there's 100 elk tags for this mountain range, and you know, a couple of thousand guys put in for them. So most of those people, let's just keep the number simple. There's a single tag available for a mountain range in Wyoming, one tag, 100 guys want it. 99 of those guys are, they come up empty handed. So what the state does to reward them at least for their efforts is they give them a thing called a bonus point. So then the next year, keeping it as simple as possible, the next year those previous 99 guys, now their name is in the hat two times, right? This is how this whole preference bonus point thing generally works. What can happen to a fellow is you can play the game for so long, I've played this game for a very, very long time that you wind up with enormous amounts of bonus points. So you get where you have like, I have some, for some draws, I have 20 bonus points. So you want to get the best, most premium hunt you can get because you've got so much invested in all these damn points. And now then it'll happen to realize you could go hunt elk in some other mountain range. And if you have five points, you're going to draw it. It makes sense, you guys really know all this. But you'd be like, you'd be like, it only takes five bonus points to win that out permit. And then you want to be like, well, I'm not going to do that because I have 20 bonus points. I'd be like, in your mind psychologically, you're thinking I'd be wasting all this so you want to keep your 15. And so you don't do shit. You don't do anything because you'd like, you look at it like money, some cost fallacy. But here's Romero's, the Romero proposal. He thinks states, so if you work at a state while they've agency hear me out, he thinks it should be your bonus points should be like poker chips. When you're playing poker, you don't always take all your chips and slide them out. It seems to me like this, I'm not done laying the proposal out, I think I know where it's going. We'll just have a little patience instead of you needing to be, it's binary. It's like, it's like all your chips are in or none of your chips are in. He feels you should be able to have 20 bonus points. He feels you should be able to slide five out and make a bet. This seems like it'd be a very popular idea among people with 20 bonus points. And that's why I'm talking more and more premium opportunities, go to fewer and fewer people. Yeah, what would this solve for? It would solve for a problem I'm having right now. Where? Eye-borne, where I have a thing, it actually is Wyoming. I have a giant pile of poker chips, but there's a thing I want to go do that I would be effectively for it. Once I have the slide, all my poker chips in on a small bet and like, I'm some picture that the state is my opponent. I'm sliding 20 out. And he's like, I'll put out five. Do you follow me? Yeah, yeah. It's called the Romero Poles. So Jeremy came up with it's just for you. And this is how you solve. Point three points. No, this is for him. Point three points. He plays the game. He plays the game. And he's like, this is what's chap in my buns, like mine. Our buns are chap by the same thing is we want to be able to play a couple. Would it change your opinion on this if I told you that this would make things exponentially worse for your kids? No. Wouldn't it? I'm not sure that it would. Yeah, would. Like, I think we need a statistician in here to tell us like if it actually would make it harder. It would definitely. I mean, I shouldn't say exponentially because I draw that tag and I'm still sitting on 15 points. Yeah. Yeah. So he draw next year. He draw next to premium tags. Yeah. I like that whole years, if I like that hunt the next year and we want people with four points are never going to get you know, like if you look, I think you the question could be answered by how many points are people dying with because that'd be the only way to like, like that would be the Delta. Okay. Where do all those points go when you die? I don't know. We need a statistician to write in a little grave. I don't think we need it. I don't think we need a statistician to write in. I was so many points. They're going to have to put a grave next to my grave to hold all my points. It's like, I'm going to have a headstone. Let the highest to it is going to be like his point. That's the highest point. The edge to get more tags and family and stuff. I sort of see that as how many points you died with instead of a year, instead of like what year you were died and were born and all that would just be like the points you've accumulated that you died. You took to the grave. We'll get Brianna on that. And to be clear, while 20 points is a lot, there's a lot of steves and journeys out there. Yeah. Like, have 20 points to use some. And we want to find a way to hoard even more. Yeah. And we want to have our cake. And then we want to be able to eat it too. Yeah. And a little bit of your cake. Yeah. It wouldn't mind. Matter of fact, I'm just going to have some of your cake, I think. It's clever. The Romero proposal. I wish you guys hadn't shot it down because I think I had a lot of state directors excited about implementing this. And then you guys started shooting holes in it. I had it. I don't know if it's quite at proposal stage yet, but I had an idea to help. You know how we're discussing what the proper age is for youth hunting or like to be a mentored hunter. Yeah. Because I was noticing that with my kids, the weight of the gun gets very heavy after a while. And I was thinking, well, I wonder if that could be a solid threshold because we also have this like three year old, this supposedly wielded a 12 gauge and thought it was shooting at a turkey. Right? Well, the person should be able to display like the ability to carry and handle said weapon. Man, Jan, he's going to have the ADA compliance people after him. Bad. I can't even imagine the mean things he's going to be hearing about himself. Okay. Well, just an idea. That was not yet at the proposal stage to be clear. Yeah. Just an idea. Someone, you know, writing in their little boys got like only one arm, something they're gonna be mad at. He needs pistol brace. Well, there's there's always exceptions, you know, you get a special, you get a special permit for that. That's true. That's true. So yeah, you got to be like, Hey, when you can carry that thing three miles up and down, come talking about hunting. Your news, Phil. That's right. Your news brought to you by banish suppressors holding my hot, little hand. And we just, um, y'all didn't want to talk about this, but I nixed it. But we just said you thung. A lot of quiet rifle fire in that youth camp. Yeah, I don't think I heard, heard another shot in the old days. You'd be like, Oh, there's Yani Rippen or Yani's kids are ripping, but now you don't know nothing. You got a way to get back to camp because everybody shoots suppressed. Yeah. Everybody comes back. No, we're here gun shots. It's usually a volley and I think it's usually upland bird hunters. Um, here's what we're going to do. We got to, so one day it occurred to us. No, a guy wrote in I think. Yeah, saying, well, you guys are doctors, um, Randall's a doctor. I have an honorary doctorate, which is doctor. Yeah, which, you know, it's just cut to the short and add up. You know, abbreviate that to doctor. A guy wrote in, he's wondering if we could write him a doctor's note. Yeah, episode 930. He wrote in, uh, Steve said he'd happily give him a doctor's note or anyone else who needs time off school or work. So a bunch of folks wrote in, um, I was gone for a while. So we missed a bunch. I'm sorry for that. Hopefully worked out your boss name had a baby. His wife had a baby. Yeah. Um, here's one from Jacob Flora. Okay. Stephen Randall, you want to read a situation? Well, I'll read it and then you diagnose. Well, I like how he spelled my name off right off the bat. He spelled my name was interestingly. He said he spells everything wrong. Dear Mr. Renelle. On the most recent episode of the news show, you guys were talking about being open to writing doctors. You know, for absences from school, well, my school only allows five absences a year without a doctor's note this season. I'm supposed to go on a black bear hunt in West Virginia, but I would still like to hunt the Ohio right. I was wondering if you and Dr. Randall would be round Randell would be willing to sign one for me. It's a mistake many have made the dates would be November 2nd to 5th. Thanks. No problem. So I'm sitting here on our new form. Steve Renella honorary D and Randall Williams, PhD, meat eater occupational health. To whom it may concern, this letter is to certify that. What's this kid's name? Spell it wrong. Jacob Flora. Yeah, I'm going to do I'm going to do I'm going to do them dirty just back again. Oh, this is the pen you gave me. Oh, no, it's got a cap on it. Isn't like a pen. That's brand fresh new pen. You know how they do that? No, I've never seen that. When they're signing something first one. Oh, geez. No, it's going to look like shit. According to AI, okay. Simply lying about being a doctor and casual everyday conversation is not a crime. However, the moment a personation crosses into advertising services. Diagnosis illnesses. It's very clear on this form. This letter's not here. Yeah, I'm just ready to certify that Jacob Flora was obsessed by our offices on. What's the day's date? 21st of October, 1021, 26. Diagnosis, serving fixation syndrome, acute, barometric sensitivity, pre funnel. Are you checking these? No, I don't think for a period related loss of indoor tolerance. What did that last one mean? Barometric, the paramet the brown weather, good weather, good weather, fish and weather coming up. Cold water onset fever, dietary wild protein deficiency. Unsuccessful prior season unresolved. Pre-seasonal hyper arousal, seasonal migratory restlessness. Salmoned emergence response. Adverse weather, water, foul dependency. Fluorescent light intolerance occupational under harvest chronic stage three. Oh, it's tough. What would this guy? I think he's got server fixation. Pre-seasonal hyper arousal. Can we fill in some sort of split personality disorder? There's no other around here. He could certainly have you could write that in multiple diagnoses. But I think pre-seasonal because this is all coming up pre-seasonal hyper arousal. Yeah, clearly. Well, photo period related loss of indoor tolerance, certainly. I'm going to he's got some of that I'm going to put him in there and he's got like a little trace of that pre-seasonal hyper arousal. You give it that that doesn't like two things. Yeah, I like his days. I like his days. I like his days. He's picking. He needs to be skew some school for the period of second to the fifth. November two to five. And then now you can see the long range forecast. It looks like November two through five in the Midwest is going to be pretty good. It's got right here. Honorate doctorate of forestry and conservation. I'll sign that. In a Randall doctorate history. I don't think he's going to be having any problems on our schoolhouse. No, no. You should also tell your school. Listen, man. I'll tell you it. Listen to me. Jacob. Whatever class is spelling. Do they still have? If they got spelling class, you might want to visit them on lunch break a couple times. I would tell your school that this seems like an unusually conservative absence policy. And had we had such a policy in my school growing up. I never would have struck school, man. You'd think of school that strict. That kid to be spelling like a madman, don't you? I mean, does spell. He wouldn't be spelling like. No, I'm trying to. Yeah. Oh, check this. Oh, let's hit the news, Phil. Oh, yeah. There you go. So you know how we have meat eaters land access initiative will Trump stole that idea. Some people are mad about Iran. Some people are mad about diesel prices. Some people are mad about Kimberly Gillfoil. Some people are mad about peddling influence. I'm mad that he stole our LA idea. In all seriousness, we recently covered Trump's executive orders on hunting and fishing. And here's where one of those. This is an interesting email floating around where one of those is where the rubber. You know, the old term where the rubber is met the road. And that analogy, the rubber would be. Scrap that analogy. Okay. We're see here. Here's a first little emergence of public emergence of those executive orders coming into play and check this out. So this is an email floating around. Someone forwarded it to me. The email reads in September. President Trump signed executive order one four four two nine titled re invigorating America's hunting heritage. Directing federal land management agencies to quote improve public access to difficult to access federal lands and waters. By prioritizing practical access opportunities. So the letter goes on to explain I'm pair I'm jumping between paraphrasing and reading in line with this the bureau of land management is currently seeking. Land and water conservation fund acquisition projects. Including easements. That open up dingle act nominated lands and other landlock public parcels to more hunting and fishing opportunities. I'm going to step away from the reading and just explain this from this point forward. This letter is going out to you know folks like us. Folks like you. Seeking out parcels that you're aware of landlock parcels are difficult to access parcels you're aware of where you might have identified. And they point out this has to be the case where you may have identified a willing seller. So let's say there's a lake. There's no public access on the lake. Right or let's say there's a chunk of the just a chunk of state lamb there's no way to get on it without trespassing it's asking people. If you know a willing seller or property owner who might be interested in an easement or who might be interested in outside sale they are actively looking for those opportunities to take. Land and water access fund money which comes from offshore oil leases. To take that money and secure those parcels to open up access. We've solicited these when I when I joked about them stealing our idea. We've solicited these. We've looked for these tips before other we're not the only ones us other organizations have looked for tips like this before like hey if you over fine you know. A little 40 acre chunk or a 10 acre chunk or five acre chunk that if if it was turned into an access point and easement it would get you on to a lake it would get you on to a river would get you on to public land. Let us know because we raise funds and have funds to help purchase those parcels. But here they're actively the administration through the BLM is actively seeking out these chunks of land. So if you have one of these spots. What's new about this that there's that they're actively soliciting. sitting it. But the the dingal act is 2019. I'm aware. And that's part of the dingal act. I know, but the active solicitation, but the executive order points out to prioritize it. And upon that executive order, here is emails going out, yeah, actively hunting for such opportunities. Part of the thing we brought up when the part of the thing we brought up when the executive orders came out is a lot of the stuff sounds great, but what do you do, right? You know, with language like prioritize, right? Or, you know, consider, prioritize. So one might ask, well, what does all that really mean in the end to prioritize or consider? So it's an ongoing thing, but it's just I found it interesting that there's active solicitation to the public trying to hunt down opportunities. These kind of things have always happened. It's not like, it's not like there's this new mechanism, but it's saying we have direction to get serious about this. Do you have potential opportunities? Got you in mind. But in keeping, like all through that executive order was a lot of stuff like no big government, no big government. So it's funny is in this, there's this flyer in this flyer. It says if they are not a willing seller, it basically says, if the person you're looking at is not a willing seller, stop now, leave them alone. It's like an all caps. It's like a, it's like a Trump truth social post where he uses all caps. It says, it says final landowner step two, final landowner that is willing to sell BLM, Bureau of Land Management legal rights for public access. This is direction to the public. If the landowner is not willing to sell land and or water or interest there in, then all uppercase stop. The BLM cannot proceed without a willing seller. It makes it look like an acronym because every other all caps in this is BLM, LWCF, STOP, you know, Steve tops out, that isn't pipe. I'll call it on you that. First people now. So there it is, dig in, man. Here's your, you know, here's your call to action, find those parcels. You only need to tell us about, tell them government about them. Is it, are other agencies besides BLM, BLM in on this? I don't know. This is just the only one I've seen where it's like floating around where they're, they're like taking an active step to seek the South and also to educate people about this being a thing. We want to throw out the contact that they have on here. Yeah. Yeah. Cause maybe you own the spot. Yeah. Maybe you own a spot that you're like, and you're willing to sell. Cause I'm not, listen, I'm not here to pressure you. I know when to stop. But it's also not, it's not just sales to reach out to. It's access. Not to over simplify it, but like access easements. Yeah. Robert Wondell, Wondell are Wondell at BLM dot gov. He's the public land access program manager and LWCF lead R W A N D E L at BLM dot gov. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors hunting trips, remote cabins, quiet mornings in the woods, places people go to get away. But instead, get more than they bargained for. And then all of a sudden, my buddy is radiating back and saying, you know, we're hit on bring guns. I believe someone at the cabin knew something happened to know who throws their dead family member in a suburban and drives him straight to the funeral home. The husband of this dead wife immediately calling his mistress from the funeral home. When Brian finally gave up to body, his body was found on my turkey lease. So for four or five or six years, I sat probably within a hundred yards of my body. Murder, disappearance, betrayal, and questions that refuse to stay buried. I'm Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails. Get season three now, wherever you listen to podcasts. Plus, check out the brand new Blood Trails TV YouTube channel. There, you can find video versions of every episode that feature images from each story, recorded interviews, maps, and much more. We'll also be dropping bonus content between seasons. So make sure you're subscribed. That's @BloodTrailsTV on YouTube. You know, we're going to have a lot of the stuff of roots that they took. They, they pile them up like how you'd see, you know, some officers show you the incredible drug bust that they have. It's just like an overwhelming mountain for post and for you people that aren't watching and are only listening. If this wasn't, this looks remarkably similar to the crown of thorns. What's that creature in Harry Potter? Sorry. Mandrake. Yeah. That's what's thinking. That's well. The roots of ginseng, which are sometimes referred to as green gold currently sells for about $800 per pound. And it takes about 200 roots to make a pound. So these poachers had roughly $3,000 worth of ginseng. Most of it was likely headed overseas. Officials estimate that 85% of North America's ginseng harvest goes to Asian markets. China is specifically the world's leading consumer of the plant. They use it in teas, soups, alcohol, cosmetics, supplements, and more. The list of supposed benefits include increased energy, immunity support, heating and cooling effects, sharpened focus, lowered blood sugar, reduced inflammation, and it's supposed to solve erectile dysfunction. Here is a picture of one of these pills. Yeah, the man root ginseng power. This is the ginseng male enhancement pill that the FDA put out a PSA for in 2016 advising Americans do not buy this. It's a giant yellow pill that the label says is quote, for your ultimate sexual pleasure, powerful libido, natural vigor and effective enhancement. And then here's the really alarming one, lasting five days, it says, wow, I'm not trying it, but in high school, you know, we buy horny goat weed from the gas station bathroom that they would sell in the thing there. It didn't seem to have any effect on, you know, like a thriving 17-year-old. But here's the thing I don't understand about. Yeah, well, just the pill that you go in, can I ask you my questions? Yeah, go for it. I got a lot more, but we can pause. Let me write them. Okay, let me just wedge one in here. Yeah, please. Why would someone want to want something more than they do? If someone was selling a pill that says this pill will make you want a nicer car. He'd be like, I'm not going to take that pill. Like, I don't want to want a nicer car. Maybe it's like, like, why would you why would you want to want something more? Maybe it's like, that's an enjoyable thing. So, like, this pill will make you want to cook really good meals. No, I don't know. I think I'd have that pill. But, but yeah, that's the interesting, because if it was a pill, this pill will make you want to cook. You'd have to be like, do I wish I wanted to cook more? Yeah. This will make you go to the gym and run. That's what this pill will do. I think it's, uh, imagines like that. Like, pre-workout. Well, no, no, you're not, I can't explain. So, this is the ginseng male enhancement pill. We're looking at a picture, but right now, an FDA lab in San Randall. Yeah, yeah. I was saying we're saying. Okay. I just say we're just saying. You're, you're, it's a pretty strong market, though. It is, but I don't understand what, I'll say it one more time. The same way I said it before. I don't understand wanting to want something more. Now, where are you getting that from that label? I think he's saying you don't want to have sex. Why would you take a pill that makes you want to have sex? It's like, it's like to have a powerful, it'd be, it'd be like, let's say you had, maybe it's causing an issue. You had a personal life. Oh, that maybe your wife wants to buy a new car. I just can't imagine. Of all my, my, your wife is going to leave you if you don't buy a new car. I wish, I wish I'd chase my wife around the house even more. Yeah. Your wife, your wife is going to have someone else buy a new car. Yeah. Your current car just ain't cutting it. You know what I wish. Yeah. Now the FDA, they did a lab analysis on this pill, and they said structurally very similar to Viagra. So that's like a minor endorsement, but it also contained a pile of undeclared ingredients that can lower blood pressure to dangerous levels. So don't, don't eat that pill in saying power acts. Now, this relationship between North American Jin Singh pickers and Asian consumers is an old one frontiersman, such as Daniel Boone and David Crockett, both supplemented their income with Jin Singh harvest with their root boarding ships that were bound for China. One Daniel Boone story tells of the time that he was headed up the Ohio River with 12 large barrels of Jin Singh. It said that he hired singers, which are ginseng diggers to gather a large supply for him, which he then planned to sell to merchant ships in Philadelphia. But disaster struck near Point Pleasant, West Virginia when his boat capsized. Boone did manage to recover most of his roots, but they were no longer dry. And because of the water damage, he only received about half of the market value for them. The location for where that happened is somewhat disputed, but, but some of us say it was on, it was that point. The moth man might have had something to do with it, maybe Steve has a question you wrote down. Do you want to, you want to ask it? This is for later. OK, I don't want to do you really? Ginseng is, of course, native to North America with its historic range, being basically everything east of the Mississippi River, where it really thrives is in the Ozarks in Appalachian regions, those dense forests have the perfect ginseng growing conditions with mild temps and above average rainfall. Now, the reason that it's so valuable is because of its scarcity. And it's so scarce because it takes about 10 years for a ginseng plant to reach maturity. And they can live to be 75 years old. Their greatest threats are poachers habitat loss invasive species, climate change and get this one white tail deer. Ginseng leaves are a preferred food source among white tails. And because deer populations in the east are about twice the size they were pre-European contact. White tails require more food than ever, so they get some of the blame for disappearing Ginseng populations. Now, back to our great Smoky Mountains poachers. This sort of headline is surprisingly common there. And it's not just a matter of the National Park Service being overly protective. Just in the state of North Carolina, this year alone, officers have charged 71 people for illegal ginseng harvest, leading to more than 6400 plant seizures. Residents are allowed to pick it, but just like game and fish, it is heavily regulated. You can only harvest ginseng from September one to December 31, making their ginseng season shorter than their deer season. As for those kind of daily favorites. I didn't see one on that. Their rules, it's basically like you can only pick between here and here. You have to have land on a written permission and then it seems like everything else is a suggestion. It's like don't take it from plants that are immature, don't take it from this kind of landscape. So I didn't see anything about a daily limit. I'm getting to the end here. As for those confiscated routes, rangers will attempt to replant them. It's estimated that about one-third of them will survive. No news yet on what specific charges or penalties the Great Smoky Mountain ginseng poachers will face. What do you got to see? Who exactly are they selling these to? Did they release that? No, they haven't even said the names of these folks. This news out of the Great Smoky Mountains was from September 30. They haven't even said what charges they'll face yet. So it's not clear to me what the market is to get it from some, you know, blue jeans, shorts, well, and wearing fellow in Great Smoky Mountains to the Chinese market, I don't know. Well, I have an idea. First, I want to clarify, this is embarrassing to say. I have never looked down on the ground in all my life and said, oh, there's a ginseng plant. We lived in the wrong areas. I know, yeah, but I've hung out all over. I've never been with a buddy, man, like a Kevin Murphy type, who damn sure knows ginseng. He's never said, oh, hey, look, so on my life to do list, I'm like a travel for this. Yeah, I would like someone to someday go, hey, that's a ginseng plant. I'm with you. That might point to his rarity. Now, if you, if you like, in trapper magazines, when you get to the back of a trapper magazine, there's always a lot of ads, often you will see ginseng buyers. Really? But what I'm guessing is, these poachers, what I'm saying is probably that they're, it's probably very seamless. It's like, you collect it in a legal spot, but it's probably very simple. Like once you, once you leave and you're on the road, I wonder if you just find possession because you'd be like, you know, it's, it's not that you can't have it, you can't have it from there. So when you go sell it totally, you'd just like, you know, you're selling like L Sheds, you're not going to say to the buyer like, oh, hey, and buy the way. Yeah. I stole those awesome guys plates. Yeah. You're just going to sell them like you sell everything. And while it's heavily regulated to gather them from the wild, you can legally grow these things and sell them on your own. And there is like a whole industry around that, but the value is so much less. I think it's like $30 a pound compared to $800 a pound for the roots. So just the market in general is not interesting. It makes you less lustful, if it's a must, yeah. If you wish you want something that you don't want, but you just wish you wanted a teensy bit more, you might consider domestic, yeah, Jinseng. Yeah. I think you just wish you wanted to teen you a bit more. Here's my question. Yeah. Okay. This is an interview question. Okay. I'm interviewing you. I love it that you do. Why do you like poaching stories? This one was given to me, but you like, but you like a poaching story. Well, this one, this one hits a lot of, this one checks a lot of boxes. Keep telling me. I think the poachers are interesting, so that that's just generally like poachers. I'm interested in them foraging, I like foraging, I like national parks. So that's like three things that I'm like, yeah, that's all the history, history, history. Yeah, but you were doing a poaching story the other day that did not involve a national park. No, but endangered species. I like endangered species, I share, you know, any sensibilities that talks about like the protection or the, the not protection in the case of poachers of endangered species. Do you ever think in the back your head, you're not like thinking in the back, you're like, man, I wish I had, speaking of wishing you had things you don't, that you're like, I wish I had the gumption to go be a poacher. No, I'm too nervous for, I get, I get, I'm just too nervous to be that guy. You're like everything above, you like everything on the, on the, on the, up and up. Oh, man. You know, I was me too. Oh, go ahead. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say I jumped a couple fences back in my day following friends and boy, I couldn't handle it. Just takes off the phone. He still is asleep. No, over it. No. Nice sleep, great. The older you, I find the older you get, the less you like looking over your shoulder. You know, um, consider what he just said and what I said. We have a guest coming up. You should see if he wants to come and hang out. That sounds good. We should go gin sink foraging too. I've never seen this stuff. I'd like to do it. I'd like to eat some. We have another guest, uh, Tiger lady. That'd be another good one. He might like that. And once it gets outside in North America. Oh, that's true. This is the other one's very North America. Okay. You'll like it. Count me in. Um, yeah, I did a little bit of that. Cook it up. Real blind spot for me. Uh, have you, have you ever laid eyes on a plant? That's embarrassing. No. No, you look at the, the range map and it's just like, you know, like I said, yeah, everything east, not our zone, not in Florida. I noticed. Mm-hmm. That's my zone. Over to you, Johnny, Colorado. In Colorado, a group of people masquerading as hunters and anglers oppose amendment 83. The ballot measure, which aims to make hunting and fishing a constitutional right in the state. A group called Colorado Hunters and Anglers for sensible wildlife conservation is spending big bucks to fight amendment 83. The majority of the funding for the group comes from Wayne Paselli's center for a humane economy. Paselli, am I pronouncing that right? Man, I don't know. All right. Never mind. Sounds good. Pasell. You say it with confidence. Paselli served as president. I bet he's Pasell of the HSUS. I can tell that. I just do not like this guy and he don't like me, which is the, yeah. Yeah. You guys would be good for a debate. Longer. He was the president of the Humane Society of the United States for 14 years. Is it an outright anti-hunger that does not mean he likes dogs. Mm-hmm. That is true. Humane Society is an anti-hunting organization. HSUS. HSUS. HSUS. That's right. It is not the same thing as the Humane Society in your neighborhood. Yeah. They raise a lot of money from people thinking they're doing a solid for dogs. But then they turn and use it for animal rights activism. Are they, are they like cousins or anything? Those two organizations? No. There's a split. So your local humane society shelters are no longer HSUS. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, he's an outright anti-hunger having helped a band of hunting in Michigan. The center for a humane economy was also one of the largest donors to the 2024 group cats aren't trophies that tried and failed to pass Proposition 127 in Colorado, which would have banned Bobcat mountain line hunting in the state. Now, the group's main argument against amendment amendment 83 is that it would, under the wording, traditional methods, allow for the re-institution of hunting practices banned in Colorado such as the use of steel, jawed, leg hold traps, spring bear hunting, baited bear hunting, and wildlife killing contests. This is far from the truth. To make these activities legal would require the voters to vote at a 55% threshold in favor of. But I wish they were, I got about it. I wish they were right. Please do. I, if you told me that passing this amendment, yeah, I know would provide. out of avenue to undo those bands. That would make me like it more. You know, it's interesting because when I had that long chat, I think I told you guys, I sent out that text to my family group and friends in Colorado. And then on the heels of that, I had about a 90 minute conversation with my aunt who wanted to know what, how I felt about 83. And in there, we had to discuss a lot about like, like, I think I told you this about like what she thinks poaching is, right? I said, well, no, not what poaching is trophy hunting, right? She's like, well, that's just when people just take the head and take it home, put it on the wall and just leave the mean. I said, well, that's illegal. You know, you got to get stuffed first. Yeah, it's poaching. And so then we got to talking about how she's seen that the, the people that are anti 83 are saying that it's going to bring back all these other things that she doesn't like. And so then I got into a, why don't you like how and hunting? Why don't you like spring bear hunting? And then so I had to go through and explain that actually when you're, or bait, let's say baited bear hunting, it's a better way to preserve more cubs lives because the, the anti say that baited bear hunting in the spring when you, you're going to end up killing mom and you have orphaned cubs that then just, you know, you know, famished. Because you can watch these animals, you can see if it's a cell or if it's a board, you can see if there's cubs or not, et cetera. Anything with hunting bears with dogs, right? They're in a tree. You can assess the situation. You don't have to make us. So anyways, a lot, a lot of, a lot of misinformation, a lot of propaganda out there. But I need now, before you proceed, I need to now clarify. But it is correct. It is that 80, like passing 83 does not undo any of these ballot initiatives. I'm just pointing out that I wish you wish it, but it's an empty wish because it's, there's no legal avenue for it to undo that. No. Interestingly, though, there isn't a legal avenue to undo all those things. But because it's so like, impossible that it would pass, no one has tried to do it. But right now, if we wanted to start a group that would try to push for the re legalization of spring bear hunting Colorado, there is a process to do it. And then you'd have to get the voters to vote for it. But it's just, it's like, people don't see that as a plausible outcome. So no one has tried it. Yeah. 83 would not make that any easier or change any of that. You'd start to go through the exact same process if you want to try to re legalize these things. Let's see. So the use of the term traditional methods, which is what the people against 83 are saying is the big problem. That wording is in the amendment to preserve the methods that are currently available to hunters and anglers and to prevent further erosion of opportunities. The wording traditional methods has been used in 14 other states with constitutional rights to hunt and fish. I've said it before, it won't be long until they say it's not ethical to have your lab flush a fesit. Right now they take away spring bear hunting. They will come for your fesit flushing lab. But there's been, there's been bills proposed in the past. It would remove dogs from that, that using dogs for hunting is unethical for upland bird. I mean, it's been, it's been pitch. It hasn't been passed. But there's been attempts to just bucket all dog activities. They've been proposed. Okay. I hadn't seen that. So I'll leave you with this. Ask yourself why would a group with hunters and anglers in their name take hunts funds, sorry, not hunts. Take funds from one of the largest anti hunting organizations in the country. There is a dude, you'll see his name pop up in a lot of this. They kind of have this, they have like a stooge who has a hunting fishing background. And you'll often see this guy's last name's Washburn. He's attached to this. He was attached to the cats aren't trophies thing. And he's this guy that runs around being like, Oh, no, no, hunting means all this. He's real important to me. But he somehow over the decades has become a animal rights activist and anti-hunter. But he still kind of carries the torch as a hunter like he's still like to identify as a hunter to give his perspective some merit. So Washburn is in bed with these people. What's problematic about this individual is you'll often see. This is where it's personal for me. You'll often see that he'll be identified as as one of the founders of Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. Now, apparently, he clarifies at times that's not, he clarifies that's not true. Other people do that. But this guy, TRCP was founded by a guy named Jim Range. That's the founder of TRCP. When you see this dude described as some kind of 20 year ago founder at TRCP, he most certainly was not. What is his connection? Anything? Yeah, he had a connection set on the board at a time. But when people talk about the founder of TRCP, the founder of TRCP is a man named Jim Range. It is not a split. There's not like a, Oh, and other people. It's Jim Range. Okay, whatever his adjacency was to range, I've been with that organization as a board member for a great many years. And I've been there. I have listened to a hundred stories about the founding of TRCP and Jim Range. And this cat's name has never come up in any of those things. He somehow is drifted to the point where he aligns himself with these active and I hunting orgs. And one of his things to say is like one of his gripes with amendment 83 is it says that it's like a, that it applies the word management technique to certain wildlife species. And he's pointing out, well, maybe it's not best to manage them through hunting, meaning like you shouldn't be able to hunt bears. You shouldn't be able to do this. You shouldn't be able to do that. And so that's his great. But he often tries to establish like some teensy level of hunting bonafides that he that he doesn't have. This dude is in bed with the animal rights movement. Same thing with this cat. We used to report on a lot, Samantha Miller, you know, I'm a hunter. It's like a kind of now and then under very, very specific sets of circumstances in order that you can go to these meetings and say that if you're an animal rights person, then you wanted to boost your profile and gain a lot of credibility and like shape your professional trajectory upwards. The best thing you could do is go out there and shoot a duck. Yeah. No one doesn't want. And that's really something I like to do the hunter. Yeah. I think that they like to do that phasant move. Because it's kind of like they're like, well, it's not native. It probably is brought up in a box. Yeah. You know, you do that like, and then you go get a phasant. Some guy let go out of a box. And then you tell your wife like your wife's like, I can't believe you did that. They're like, wow, it's kind of like a chicken. I mean, it was raising the box. Yeah. So don't be fool. If you're a Colorado, it might be fool back crap and get out there and vote. Yeah. Colorado hunters and anglers for sensible wildlife conservation be very skeptical of what you see from them. Just think about it like this. Why would a group of Colorado hunters and anglers oppose codifying the right to hunt and fish in Colorado? I was going to make some analogies, but I don't think you need one. This is from Eric. Maybe like weed smokers against legalizing weed, which I can see because you like hiding the bushes and stuff like that. I can see that. This is from Eric's bio on Colorado hunters and anglers.com. You're talking about, do you say founder? He co-founded and led the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. That's the second sentence of his bio. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So we know where that comes from. Apparently, he's tried to create a little distance between himself and that and that descriptor. If you want the real dope, go to savethecolorado.com. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors hunting trips, remote cabins, quiet mornings in the woods. Places, people go to get away, but instead get more than they bargained for. And then all of a sudden, my buddy is radioing back and saying, you know, we're hit on bring guns. I believe someone at the cabin knew something happened to know. Who throws their dead family member in a suburban and drives him straight to the funeral home. The husband of this dead wife immediately calling his mistress from the funeral home with Brian finally gave up the body. His body was found on my turkey lease. So for four, five or six years, I sat probably within a hundred yards of Mike's body. I'm Jordan Sillers and this. is Blood Trails. We'll also be dropping bonus content between seasons, so make sure you're subscribed. New Mexico outfitter tags over to Yani. Never gonna get into Nantucket, dear. Do we want to go out of order to make it like West East, West East? Randall, why don't you take New Mexico out for your tags? - Yeah, okay. - Sorry. - Oh, yeah, oh. Oh, you're done. You did your story. - Johnny's done. - Over and out. - Got it, got it. - I want to go out of order. 'Cause I, you know, like New Mexico in Colorado, you know, they touch each other. I want to jump over to Nantucket. - Yeah. - And I reminded Nate of that famous Limerick. It was a man from Nantucket. Go ahead, Nate. - Manchins falling into the seas. Alpha Gauss syndrome spreading like wildfire. Native plants on the edge of extinction. What's the common denominator? White tail deer running rampant in Nantucket. - Got it. - And now-- - Did you write that? - I did. - That was great. - And now-- - Can I grab you about the boo boo there? - Yeah. - You can get paid 150 bucks for every white tail deer you kill. and donate on one of the richest islands in America. - Damn. - This is incredible. - Let's go. - Laila's got to pay to do that. - I know. - Now you can make, you can be like Daniel Boone. No, no, no, no, no, I'm talking about Digg and Jinsink. Commercial D-owner. - D-owner. - There are many nuances to this. We will try to hit all of them. This story, James Smith, from the email inbox, wrote in to alert us. And a few things, there's a lot of elements. So to keep in mind, I just kind of want to bracket this. First off, the nan-tucket deer problem is nuts. It's a 48 mile square mile island with more than 125 deer per square mile. - That is unbelievable. - Whoa. Can I get just some back? - Yeah, it's a perspective. - 30's a lot. - 30's a lot. - Most land managers, like 20. Most land managers would be like 20, 30 is like, damn. - And is that 125 deer for every one of those 48 square miles? - Some go up to 150. And there's like, there's the suburban thing, there's like, you can think of it. - There are a ton of deer. - Well, many tons of deer. Thank you. Tons of concern over AlphaGal, Lime, and also environmental degradation, not just like, you know, begonios or whatever. The second thing is, this island is developing a holistic approach, encompassing Massachusetts wildlife, local nonprofits, landowners, and alternative funding programs. They've all band together to provide cash incentives for venison donations, unlimited antlerless tags, earn many more buck tags, private land access. - Earn a bunch of bucks. And other hunter incentives. Finally, the thing to keep in mind is it's actually increasing deer harvest. The venison stays on the island and feeds the local population. And wealthy non-hunters that come to Nantuck in the summer are increasingly supportive of these hunters. And in this situation, there's natural barriers that can curb the concern about market hunting, which is kind of top of mind for all of us. So for anyone who lives probably not in Massachusetts, you're asking what is Nantucket? It's, as I mentioned, a 48 square mile island, about 30 miles off the Massachusetts coast. Phil's got a picture. He's gonna run for us real quick, just a Google Maps screenshot. You can see in that job, Phil. There in the Atlantic. He's even, he's known as Phil's hovering this course. - Oh, what a guy. - Over the area of interest. - Technology these days. - Yeah. - You can see Philly down in the bottom of the house. Phil's worked all week. Hovernet cursor over to that. - That was rude. - He's breaking the sweat. Mains up there in the top right. You can see Lake Ontario, top left, and then Nantucket in the bottom right. Approximately 50% of that island is protected open space. The other 50% is pretty developed. And most of that is huntable in some form. There's archeological evidence of deer. They were gone by European contact. And in some way, they were reintroduced in the early 1900s. - Well, that's nuts. That's time of European contact. If you landed on Nantucket, there were no deer there. - Yeah, there's some interesting art. It's not super clear, but there's some interesting articles that, and there's some genetic testing that, there's legend that one deer was brought over. He was swimming and some fisherman picked him up and brought him. That he was lonely. And two dudes, or people from Michigan, brought two doves from Michigan. And that has created the stock on Nantucket. - God, it'd be kidding. - It's kind of true. - It's interesting. There's more genetic, - One more genetic bottle Nantucket. - Yeah, most of you. - Yeah, man. - But they're doing pretty dang good. - So Nantucket Historical Association says that they were there, but natives drove them to be extirpated from the island. So there's between 6,000 and 8,000 deer, 100 to 150 per square mile. Like we said, 20 is a lot. And then the demographics of the island itself, the median home price is $3.5 million. The year-round population of the island, think of it as like the working population, is the townies, about 15,000, and then it spikes to 60,000 in the summer. And there's this huge disparity between the two groups, economically, lifestyle, probably culturally and politically. But there's two different groups of folks. The players that are involved in this situation, there's four that you need to know. Martin Feahan, he is the Massachusetts state biologist. He manages the herds, manages the extra tags that earn many more bucks. He oversees the Hunter Share the Harvest Program, which is a state-run venison donation program. He's generally a great dude, talk to him, he's awesome. The second one, Nantucket Conservation Foundation. This is a nonprofit private organization focused on the ecological health of Nantucket. They're the ones running the pilot program that reimburses you $150 per deer for every deer you donate to the Hunter Share the Harvest Program. They also are the largest landowner on the island, and they own approximately 8,000 acres, largely open, like 7,000 of those are open to hunting. There's a map, if you pull it that way from there. - Whether there's some giants on this island or not. - Yeah, there's some big bucks on this island. I look forward to that part. - If you, yeah, so this is a map of their properties, the red is closed, the green is open, so it's pretty significant. The third player, and just to reiterate, that is a nonprofit funded by private dollars. The third player, the Nantucket Land Bank. This organization manages the deer processing facility that turns your donated deer into edible meat. Distributes the processed venison to the Nantucket Food Pantry and Nersh Nantucket, and they own about 3,500 acres with hunting access. - They own this land too. They are different entity that owns the land. They are funded by attacks on real estate transactions with, and those dollars specifically go to environmental projects and conservation. It's like similar to the wheat tax we have in Montana. So Phil, if you'll go to that next one, it's similar map, and this is the land bank properties, open and closed to hunting. The dark brown, I think that's brown, is it red? Whatever the darker color is that's closed as the lighter color is open. And then fourth is act deer. And that is a group of landowners that reimburses fairy costs, provides private access and recruits other landowners to allow hunting on their properties. - Okay. - These dudes serious about getting some deer feed though. - They are. And so the problem, if we go back, is 7,500 deer, they're spreading alpha-galan lime. They're crushing native vegetation, and they're actually increasing erosion. There's all these articles about Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket houses falling in. Those deer walk across, and this is from the biologists, isn't just like some crackpot. When they walk across those the edges, they'll create these points, like a deer trail. And that's where the erosion will generally happen. There's 7,500 deer. 1,500 is the theoretical target population. That's like 30 deer per square mile, basically 20 and 30. That's very unlikely they get there, just because of the suburban nature and whatnot. They historically kill 900 deer a year and to start moving that number from 7,500 down to 1,500, they need to kill 2,000. So they need to double their harvest per year, per year. And that's just to start moving in the right direction. They've tried a ton of things, and the incentives that they've tried, and that they've found is kind of the magic sauce here, is they have $30,000 in private money, or 200 deer at $150 a pop, for every donation. The Hunter Share The Harvest Program is free. It's paid for by those tax dollars. And all that food stays on the island and feeds food insecure folks. If you donate 2 deer, you earn an additional any sex tag. So your tag, your license comes with two bucks. You can buy an additional doe tag for $10. When you donate 2 deer to this program, you get an additional buck tag, basically, every time. You can also-- and you can just get doe tags. You can get antler of this tag as many as you want on the island. There's unlimited antlers on the island that's been since like 1998. The seasons of double, it goes now from September 21st to February 14th. There's a fairy reimbursement up to $500. There's bumper stickers that if you participate, the state sends you a bumper sticker. There's custom hats that the island pays for, that you get a custom hat if you participate in the program. And then-- - Just gets better. - Okay, no, I'm going, dude. - Fe-han, he, he, because it's a state run, dear donation program, he manages, not only can he ditch you more tags for donations, he manages your contributions and he sends you a report of how many meals you provided to the community from all the dear you donated. - I kind of want to go out here now. - It sounds like a blast. - I'm out next, right now. - Sounds like a blast. - Let's, do not be sure we can cut this segment out of the podcast. - Spots, people always talk about spot burnin', spot burnin' and then tuck it, man. - So, I'll get to that, I'm gonna get to that. - The wasn't man-in-tucket, hauled his meat to town, to bucket. (laughing) - And hauled his hunting gear in a bucket. - Seems like it's paying the ass to get to. - Oh, buddy, yeah, but they pay you $500 back. - You know how much a fairy round trip with a truck is? - No. - $600. - Okay, so $100. - No camping on the island. - Ooh. - Oh yeah, so I'll find the right landowner. - Yeah, we'll figure it out. - I'm just saying, for the average guy, like the obvious, and what listeners highlight it is, like, hey, is this allowed? Are we gonna, like, whack all these deer? What's gonna happen? You cannot make money off this. The pro, what the programs do, 'cause in the fall, most of the hotel shut down, 'cause it's summer island. Then you're stuck with expensive Airbnb's, which, if there is a hotel open, you probably can't man it mess with your deer there. You can't camp, so you can't take a truck camper, they like, it's a close to the band, truck top campers, stuff like that. - What? - And so you're looking-- - One of the band truck campers. - You're looking at a thousand bucks a night to stay there and hang out, basically. - Why can't you camp at one of your landowners, please? - You could camp at a landowner, if you had a landowner hook up. But for the masses, this isn't gonna be some giant draw, like, there are significant barriers to entry. Who shot this big stack of bucks in this photo? - So I'll get there. - Look at that. - Last, okay, well let's hit the big stack of bucks. The way most deer are killed is the shotgun season in early December, where they do, like, 50 person drives. Like, the biologist was saying, like, I grew up, and he's that, he grew up in Wisconsin, 50 person drives. - You've never seen drives like this. - Drive the whole island. - Well, drive, and so there's like these big grassland, kind of, these kind of savannas that they maintain, it's a little artificial because it was, it's to recreate the goats that used to run there, and now they mow 'em and whatnot. And then there's all the scrub oak that they hang out in. And so you just have dudes push this, and you will stack deer. I mean, there's pictures like this all over. - We could all get out there and have a place to stay. - Man, it would be so fun. - Like, like, take advanced deer drive strategies. - If you're an in-tucket landowner, take that monocle out of your eye, put down your money bags, and let's plan a drive, man. - So, I think we should bring Doug Durn as like the drive master. - Yeah. - Because-- - The coordinator. - Drive coordinator, 'cause he would want to make it more of a mooch. Not a drive, a mooch. - I understand. - I've got a lot of buckshot. - Yeah. - My house. - This would be the most fun thing in the world. - I wanted to do that. - And then all that money we'd make. - I want some of the contributors that I spoke to most of the people at these orgs. And they're awesome. They all, they all like get it. They all care. I think we would do a follow up at the end of the season and see like, what are the results? How did it happen? Is the trend increasing? Are we getting to that 2000? - That 900 is gonna go up. - Yep. - I don't know that it'll hit 2000 unless we can get this mooch to lose. - Cut me loose. - So, they have funds for 200 deer, basically. The residents have already expressed, they have a desire to fund this more because they're seeing it is so successful. But also one thing that Mr. Feahan, Martin, that he highlighted is all these trends were going, mostly these incentives existed before the financial incentive that was piloting this year. So we're like three weeks old on the financial side. He was like the trends were already going up. All these other incentives were working. So it's not just the dollars. The results so far, last year was a record harvest. Over half the deer killed on the island are being donated and eaten by folks on the island. Right now for 2026, they're already above trend for the first few weeks in just archery, they're forecasting another record a year. And like I said, deer drives is when you're gonna make your money. That's when you're gonna stack them up. - You know how much is sitting right there in Bounty Month? - Tell me. - That was the cause. - They're probably, it's not about reimbursement. - It is a donation. - You donate a thing and they will reimburse you. - Yeah, they're not. - They're not like in the word Bounty. - But just to, just to, what's the take here? - Well, that's $23, $3,600 in Bounty Month land right there. That's what to do it. Cover three nights on the island. Shooting Randall's ammo, so we don't have-- - Where are these big mega giants you were talking about? - We'll get, you just say mega giants. There's two. - He says something similar. - There's two that are big. We'll get to it if I can finish real quick. The things that matter, actually Randall, if you'll pull up a big old giant send a film. This matters 'cause like, it's bucking a lot of the trends of issues we're having with white tail over population. Non-hunter acceptance is increasing. They didn't hire sharp shooters to come in. They're leveraging the hunters that already exist. The private dollars are what's funding these financial incentives. You can imagine it's generally a wealthy donor who probably doesn't live there in the fall. And those are benefiting the working class that do live there year round. The state-managed Venice Indonation Program is significantly more effective than nonprofit versions. Not because nonprofits are bad or anything. It's because the state has the ability to leverage additional tags and additional resources that a nonprofit would. And then the alternative funding method, which we always love to highlight through the tax on real estate sales is what's allowing the meat to be donated and eventually eaten by folks on the island. And I think the coolest thing to highlight is that Venison is becoming and has become a primary protein source for year round residents in one of the richest places in the US. You know, like most people on the island are eating Venison in one way or another. In a place you would not expect to be eating Venison. And so the real question is like, can this be replicated? Is this a tool we can adopt for CWD? Is this just like a weird thing that can happen on NANDtucket? I don't know. - No, not that it can't, I'm skeptical that it would be any widespread models. I think here you have an exceptionally wealthy population of people that are dealing with a very acute crisis where their grandkids, their children, whatever, are reluctant to go outside 'cause Lyme is so prevalent. They're getting alpha-gal syndrome, the tick stuff's out of control. You know, like it's very, very nimby. And I think that there's a lot of areas in the country where you could point and say, hey, we have a real problem with CWD for instance. And they would say, show, how's that my problem? Show me the problem. It doesn't resonate with them. But I think here on NANDtucket, it's resonating with them. The actual residents are feeling the effects of insane deer densities. So I think that it's personal for them and they are people of means, right? And you have these organizations that own this land that can be opened up to hunt. And that's not always the case. So I would say, I would say, cool idea. I don't, and maybe in here and there, maybe on Martha's Vineyard, which has a similar problem. Sure. But generally, no. Martha's Vineyard is, they actually, they created this idea and there's a similar model and then tech it has taken it. I just, what I thought was that deer having a deer tag? I don't know. I was just going through photos and I didn't notice that. But this buck was spotted just swimming off the coast of NANDtucket. It's a lot of cool pictures of white-tailed deer with the ocean in the background. My take away to respond to your comment, my takeaways. CWD, I think to make this effective across more jurisdictions, CWD would have to jump to a person. And then people would start caring about it. And nobody wants that. Well, then they would just say, I'm not going to eat deer meat. Well, then you'd have to change the donation. It would, it would get all squirrely. But until that, I just don't think there's an impetus for it. I think it would work, it would work on really rich islands. Fire island? Yeah, I can sit in the name. I'll kind of run it out of islands. But yeah, it's a good island play. It would be maybe, it's a good island move. These deer should pat themselves on the back. It's rare that they become such a problem that they can like get an entire community to agree that like, we got to get rid of these things. If it gets bad enough there, maybe the little owl Spencer and his truck camper does. Yes, sure. They really brought the town together. But man, that big buck, that big buck drive, dude, if you could drive the whole island. You'd want to bring in some of them dudes fought on like Okinawa and whatnot. Snapshooters? Just to be like, hey, man, how do you run like something like this? I'm a fibious assault. Yeah, how do you run like just really getting in there on an island? You know, we need some Marines, some Zodiacs. Yeah, we need some Marines. Not calling the army this time. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Hunting trips, remote cabins, quiet mornings in the woods. Places, people go to get away. the husband of this. so I did wife immediately calling his mistress from the funeral home. - What Brian finally gave up the body, his body was found on my turkey lease. So it was for four or five or six years, I sat probably within a hundred yards of Mike's body. - Murder, disappearance, betrayal, and questions that refuse to stay buried. I'm Jordan Sillers, and this is Blood Trails. Get season three now wherever you listen to podcasts. - Uh, Phil, did you get that picture I just sent you? - Yeah, yeah. - That's this one that's bought to pop up some Arthur's Vineyard Buck. - Well, that is. - I don't get that. - You take some of it. - Oh, yeah. - Okay, 'cause the, your take buck, I don't know what I'm looking at. That's a buck. - That's a big dog. That's Arthur's Vineyard. - Yep. - Good job, young fellow, you're using a real bow. - You know, stand up bow. What are they calling them bows? - Very cool. - Very cool. Look at that young guy. That's a nice buck, man. And he's got 150 bucks land lying in this pocket now. No, 'cause he might not be from the pay place. - No, Dan Tuckett has 100 bucks for a buck and 150 for a doubt. - Yeah, and what's interesting, the last point I have about this, it's a different click with me. Should you go to Dan Tuckett and shoot a deer and say, "I'm gonna eat this one myself." You're out. No one's giving you 150 bucks. - Nope. You gotta donate it. - You gotta donate it to get the money. - But I, especially on those drives, I think you are, there's a guy already, I didn't have a chance to talk to him. I'm hoping to get him on next time. A guy's already killed, donated eight. Steve, this might be a case where you could have your cake and eat it too. - But I think that they should also be, I don't think they should be discriminating against deer meat eaters. I think it should be, "Hey, man, donate it or bring us like it's ear, it's left ear, it's tail, and we'll give you 150 bucks." - So the bell helped them avoid the bounty. - Yes, allegations. That's the skill, if you bring us a skill, we'll give you 150 bucks. - Before this, the precursor for this was a private citizen who was doing it, she had a similar program, but she said your third deer, and on, she would give a hundred bucks per deer, and he just didn't move the needle. I think dudes who are whacking all these deer, they're eating, they're eating their deer and they're donating. - You can only eat so many deer, right. If you're like a single guy, I'm kinda out of touch on this issue, 'cause we have a family of five. If you're a single guy, how many deer can you eat? If you eat at home every night, how many deer you going through? - Two? - Three or a single deer? - A way more than two or three, I don't think. But I don't know what the number is. I would love if you're a single dude hunting on the antucket and whacking deer right in. Tell us how many deer you eat. That was when we were rich and deer meat, as single guys, our mantra was like, burgers for lunch, steaks for dinner. - Yep, two meals a day. - Not just one meal a day. - Living the dream. - That was a great report, man. - Thank you. - Real good report. - Big shout out. - Big shout out to all those organizations. Listen back, if you want to hear their names, do a net deer drive. - Antucket concentration windows out of those sweet houses on accident. Oh, no, people, I mean, I'm not saying that should happen. I'm just saying like, that's a problem I could have met. - You remember how we covered Massachusetts, the changes of the laws, the Sunday hunting and the 250 foot standoff. This has, there's pretty significant impact for this island, if that goes through. Talking to the biologist. - It would shut the harvest down. - No, it would increase it remarkably, 'cause you mean getting rid of it? - No, 'cause right now the laws being proposed is it would open up Sunday hunting and it would reduce the standoff from 500 feet to 250. - God, a huge impact on these two islands. - Which is like a lot more opportunity. - You think of like a weekend warrior is gonna go there like Friday to Monday or whatever. He can't hunt Sunday. There's no point, you know? - Martin Feahan, Nantucket Conservation Foundation, Nantucket Land Bank, and Ac Deer. - I'm not even gonna, I'm just gonna leave it be there. And I'm not even gonna get into the, 'cause like, because I feel that it's so limited, I'm not gonna get into the doom and gloom about incentivizing, about making a market dynamic for dear me. I'm not even gonna get into right. What I'm doing right now is in a poffesis. I'm bringing something up by saying I won't bring it up. So I'm not even gonna bring it up. So I'm not gonna bring up what this would mean for wildlife management in America if you were monetarily incentivized to go out and harvest wild game. Like I don't even want to get into it. I'm not bringing that up, but think about it. - Can you Mexico? - Yes, please. All right, so a couple, I guess it was maybe two months ago, I covered a court case in New Mexico that had to do with fraudulent tag applications. And as part of that discussion, I talked about how exceptional in a bad way New Mexico is among Western states for resident hunter and tag allocation because they have an outfit or set aside. They also have landowner transferable landowner tags. And in that discussion, I sort of hinted that this thing was coming. But the headline this week is, I guess it was last week, the Attorney General of New Mexico, Royale Torres released his Attorney General opinion that the 10% set aside of hunting tags in New Mexico for outfitters is unconstitutional. So he has issued, it's the legal opinion of the state's chief lawyer. It's not a binding policy change or anything, but he has looked at the law and he's looked at the constitution and there's a big long opinion that you can read. - But they don't, of course correct, you can sue them. - That's right. And so this is, I spoke with the AG's office this morning and they pointed out this is not like a, they have an ongoing process where lawmakers can point out things that the state's doing and ask for the AG's opinion. So this was part of a process. It wasn't like a special investigation that they did, right? But it's a part of their state governance process. And lawmakers on April 29th of this year sought an Attorney General opinion on two questions about tag allocation. And they observed that one, there's this, there's this 10% set aside of tags for outfitters. And this is controversial because, especially among state residents because they believe it's a carve out to wealthy non-resident hunters. And like earlier when I saw that supply and demand issue, here you have New Mexicans, people from New Mexico all that was trying to get tags coming up empty handed. But meanwhile they're, yeah. And this is, outfitters are getting the tags. - And this is something that, when I spoke to the Attorney General's office, they actually said, you know, the Attorney General wanted to get his son out elk hunting and couldn't get him a tag. And so this is something that had actually affected him personally. You know, like it's not an unfamiliar scenario for hunters in New Mexico to think of tags they want and that other people are getting because of these programs that they have. So the questions that these lawmakers asked and Nathan Small, representative Nathan Small was one of those lawmakers who asked for the Attorney General's opinion. They asked about the license, the 10% set aside. And then there's also a thing that New Mexico Department of Wildlife does where they combine units for big horn sheep licenses in order to create essentially more places where you can pull 10% from. 10, you know, create more pools where you can pull 10% from. And they asked about these questions individually and together what are the constitutional implications in relation to a provision in the New Mexico State Constitution that it's called the anti-donation clause. And this bans the state from making gifts or donations to private persons, associations or corporations. So the Attorney General's opinion is 13 pages. And in brief, he finds that the anti-donation clause "convays exclusive access to a public resource without a constitutionally adequate considerations." And then he, that's looking at the outfitters side and then the big horn hunt lumping is, quote, infected by anti-donation clause issues. And eventually, the opinion concludes a state program that transfers the exclusive right to broker access to a public resource without genuine consideration. And at the expense of the residents that resource belongs to, bears the character of a donation in substance and effect. The New Mexico Constitution prohibits it. And, you know, he's, he was quoted in the paper or in a statement. He says, "Hunting hasn't just been a sport in New Mexico, it's a way of life that tradition is being sold out from underworking New Mexicans right now broken. system that's wealthy out of stateers by their way to the front of the line while our own families wait year after year for a tag. So, as I said previously, it's it's an opinion of the state's chief lawyer. It's not binding, but the legislature will convene on January 19th. And the attorney general's office is hopeful that they will address this legislatively through statute. The Nathan Small is one of the law makers who asked the attorney general to review this issue. He said that they plan to address this. It's still given the election season. They're not really putting draft legislation out there yet, but it seems like everyone in New Mexico that I talked to is expecting that the legislature will take this up. The and the outfiter set aside, it seems really would require really would require statute to change. That would require statute to change that. The big horn unit lumping. The department could maybe address through administrative rulemaking, but they really need to legislate you to step up and address this issue or else, yeah, litigation either from the attorney general or private parties could sue and save my rights under the Constitution or being violated. So this is. I mean, there's a lot of numbers to run through here. And I don't know that that's going to help clarify things, but I think that the takeaways are. This is really good news that lawmakers and the attorney general are taking action against. This unfair tag allocation. You're going to opine on this. This is not just the facts. No, I think I mean, I'm prepared to opine on it. You know, one of the interesting questions when I talked to Jeremy Romero, he was saying, you know, even if they do away with this 10% allocation, it's like, okay, well, now you have. This additional 10% of tags. Do they. Do you split those between residents and non-residents? Do you just dump all those into the non-resident pool? I mean, those are all things that will that'll be determined. Somehow I thought. I don't even know why I thought this. I thought it was six four. It could be. No, I'm not necessarily. Yeah, until that's that's. I believe that's what they're anticipating it will be. But it's not in any drive. So six percent increase. If they did it that way. Yeah. So that is 6% increase in tags available to residents of 4% increase of alt tags available non-residents. And what's what's appealing about that scenario is so right now. There's a 6% non-resident. Carve out and then on top of that, there's this 10%. Of outfitter tags. And then the remainder is. Resident or I should say the remainder is. Divided into other pools, right? Like the landowner tags and all that. But. If you were to divide it six four. And add that 4% to the pre existing 6%. It would bring it to 90 10. Which is a pretty standard. Yeah. Ratio for big game. Across the west. But there's some squirreliness with this program. That I wasn't aware of. If you I believe that you only need to use the outfitter services. For a capped period of time two or three days. So when you apply and get the outfitter. Yeah. If you apply and get the outfitter tag. Yeah. If the outfitter like packs you in somewhere and hangs out for a day or two. You then hunt on your own. Yeah. It's two or three day capped. So you could make a two week whatever 10 day hunt, whatever. You're not even with the outfitter. You're not paying for the outfitter the whole time. You're paying for the outfitter for a couple of days. Yeah. Squirrely little detail. And and one of the things that the attorney general pointed out in the in the opinion is that. The. You know, outfitters are paying fees to be licensed or registered. And they're essentially paying collectively. So it's $150,000 in outfitter fees as a as a whole. I think it's $500 to register for an individual outfitter. And then the benefit that they're getting from the state. In terms of the value of those tags is $15 million. Wow. So it's so it's essentially saying. How can this not be considered a gift or a donation in violation of the constitution? If they're they're they're paying in a dollar for every hundred dollars. They're getting back from the sugar. That's interesting. I will point out too because I also talked to folks who are. Deeply invested in just the broader landscape of this non resident resident issue in New Mexico. And you know, the vast majority of those privatized tags. Are not from the outfitter pool. Like the out like if you got away with if you did away with all the outfitter tags tomorrow. New Mexico is still like grossly. In it's still like this huge exception when you look across western states at the number of transferable tags. Oh, it's like giving out to private entities. Well, that's why that's when I. That's what I'm going to Chris the ball for you. My this is my this is my this is my hypothesis. That this is a an initial play right. And what will come up for discussion next. Is that in New Mexico they have these transferable open unit. Elk tags. Yeah. Where a rancher if he owns a specified acreage. He gets handed out tags by the state and he can sell those out tags. But when someone buys that Elk tag from that rancher, they can hunt anywhere in the unit. I've bought these. Yeah, bought one of these. So it's like, you know, you could be like, Hey, hate the game. Not the player or whatever. I bought these. It is. It's a squirrely system. And it just is. But that's the system. I heard on this. I want to cover. I don't know. It's true. Like you know the Vermejo Ranch Ted Turner's Vermejo Ranch New Mexico. My understanding is they is that they are given a hundred. Yeah, landowner Elk tags. Yeah, it's. New Mexico issues. Just under three quarters of all transferable private landowner tags in the West. Seriously. Can I give you the split from. And one one more point on this. So the other, when you talk about the two in conversation, the out the outfitter tags and the landowner tags. I mean, the big difference is there is that. The outfitters and guides are. Promote primarily like working class New Mexicans. Business owners. When you get into the landowner thing, you're talking about some of the wealthiest like you bring up Ted Turner, some of the wealthiest entities in the state who have a lot more pole. So this is, this is definitely the, the easier of the two hurdles. It's interesting that they would have said which of these do we bring up first. Yeah, and again, it's just my hypothesis that's going to be the next discussion is what do we do about this huge pool of transferable open unit tags. And I asked if I asked, I asked whether or not the same argument could be made about landowner tags and the attorney general's office basically said that's, that's not how this works. We were asked to look into two different questions relating to these specific programs and so they can't really very different. They can't crystal ball it right. Very different, very, very different things, very different setups. They derived from different statutes. It's all very complicated, but for people in New Mexico that want an elk tag that want to hunt elk in their home state. It's the same. It's, it's kind of six in your crawl the same way. No, no. New Mexico wildlife federation, 40% of all elk licenses in New Mexico are allocated to private landowners. Of those 75% approximately go to non residents. And 20% of those are unit wide tags, which means they can run right away. Only 20% of those, I didn't know that. Still big, big chunk. Okay. Okay. Hmm. So yeah, I mean, it's obviously this is big news. And it's, it's interesting to see an attorney general's office talking about fairness in tag allocation. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't going to opine out of you opine down to school. Op-ed. Yeah, man, stepping in there, getting all controversial. What Brian finally gave up to body is body was found on my turkey lease. So for four or five or six years, I sat probably within a hundred yards of. of my body. But a lot of guys, either there's a lot of listeners in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, or it just is a huge issue, where a lot of guys are writing in about this big-ass power line. They're fixing to cut through Wisconsin's Driftless Area. The lovely and beautiful fill is going to pull up if you're watching. He's going to pull up a photo. This is the first time hearing about this. Steve, give me one second here. Nate really shit the bed on this particular segment. It's right there. It's, can you pull it up? I thought you were just-- I wanted to graph it. I wanted to graph it. This shows dude stacked up. You know what, if you show how big a mammoth is, you got like two dudes standing there. Yeah, man. That would show dudes all stacked up, showing how high these things are. This is a huge power line. Huge. I don't see the image. Regardless, move on. I'll get it up eventually. Nate, can you send it to me please? Imagine, if you will, a power line of enormous dimensions, OK? So it's one of those giant, giant power lines. 200-foot tall towers. The right-away strip is just under 100 yards wide. So now picture this soccer coming in through your zone. 100 yards wide. The contested portion of this thing is about 140 miles. It runs from Marion, Minnesota near Rochester to Bell Center, Wisconsin, Crawford County. In Wisconsin, it goes through Vernon and Crawford counties. Crosses the Mississippi River near Genoa. And everybody's arguing about the route this is going to take. Now, this thing won't be-- this thing is so big. This thing won't be cranking electricity till 2034. All right, there it is. There it is. Look at that guy's house. Imagine being a soccer. It's like that power line. If it was animated, that tower would reach down and pick that dude's house up. Yes. Picture it as a monster, which it's shaped like. Would pick that dude's house up and throw it if it were animated. Part of the problem with this power line, was that funny? I just like that you had to-- You had to count that there. Of course, if they were to come to line-- Yeah, it's clarifying for listeners that as currently configured, it is not capable of picking a house up throwing it. It has Kaiju energy. The other type of transformer. Part of what is burned in Wisconsin ites asks is on this whole thing. Is this moving power across the region, not to the region? So Wisconsinites reasonably are like, hey, what's in it for me, man? This is bringing power from one set of people to another set of people mowing through all our area. And it's not even doing as any good. And a lot of opponents are pointing out that Wisconsin's electric demand has been flat for about 20 years. So they're just having a hard time picturing why life needs to now be upended by this power line through an area where it's going to cross Boku cold water trout streams, including the kick of poo water shed. And it's in the Mississippi flyway, which if you're a dark and goose guy, the Mississippi flyway is not looking for more problems, bird flight obstructions. Here to tell us a little more about it, because he's been on the ground is the most civically minded individual that I hang out with. Doug, Doug Durn from Driftless Area, Wisconsin. Doug goes to meetings about stuff. When there's a meeting about deer management, Doug goes. When there's a meeting about big power lines, Doug goes very civically engaged. And Doug's going to give us a little local flavor about what exactly is going on and how people are receiving this. Doug, thanks for coming on. Well, thank you for having me. Yes, it's kind of interesting. There's the two segments. There's the B-E-C-I line that you're talking about. And then the continuation of that, which actually would go through Rich London, Salt, Vernon, and Monroe County. It's sort of all tied together. And the issue that we're having at this point is that at the end of the July 1st part of August, we landowners found out of it. And they got letters that said, we're going to be coming through your area. And there are always proposed lines. And then suddenly, it's going to be approved by the PSC early in 2027. So as you can imagine, there are a lot and a lot of questions about it all. It's one of those things where you don't want to be that guy who says not in my backyard. But I would say a couple of things about it. One of them is that, first of all, there's a several power lines that are already going through the driftless that are transmission lines taken power to other parts of the country. And this is a part of the Midwest, the Meso, the Midcon, an independent system operator grid. So this is a big grid issue, right? And where they're wanting to put it is really the big part of the problem. There's a hierarchy in the state of what you're supposed to be considering when you're doing this. The first one is to use existing utility corridors. The second is to use interstate highways and state highway corridors. The third is railroad corridors, which there are that are being used, but then also that are decommissioned. And then the fourth one is a new route. Well, when this was proposed and the information came out to the landowners, it's like they skipped all the first three went right to number four. And it feels like there's a steamroller coming through the driftless. Like, we're going to do this. This is how it's going to happen. And it's been a-- interestingly, it's been a really uniting thing in the driftless area. There's a lot of divergent ideas about everything. A driftless area, politics, and such. But this is something that people of all political and other stripes have gotten together and are behind. Not even the-- there's a faction that says no way, no how. We've already done our share. We've already got lines going through that are for this transmission grid. There's that faction. And there's others that are saying, let's slow it down. Let's take some time to look at this and have a thoughtful plan if this is going to happen. And it just doesn't feel like that's the interest. I had a state senator stopped by the other day to an event that I was at. And I talked to her about it. She said, I found out about it. The same day that landowners found out about it. Doug, why did they skip the one, two, and three? If you're going to do a power line, do it where you already have a power line, or do it along the side of a highway, or do it along the side of a set of railroad tracks, why did they skip all that and just decide that they wanted to just cut it through a bunch of farm ground? I wish I knew the answer to that, Steve. And that's why we're asking-- that's why the folks at, especially at NO765.org are saying, let's take a step back. Let's think about this process a little bit more. And that's one of the questions that hasn't been answered, along with some others, like me, like you said earlier, that this isn't for people of the driftless area. This is going through the driftless area. This isn't for us. It's through us, right? And that's a problem. I think that you know enough about the driftless. It's some pretty generous people here, and we're willing to help out. But it feels like we've helped out with these other lines and now they just want to do this, again, without really much of a deliberative process. And there's big money behind it and all of that. I mean, the other question is, I have is why can't they bury this land? Turns out they could. Oh, really? Yeah. And well, it's done all over the world, and in some places in the United States, there's a big chunk of power going through there. But they could do that. And it just doesn't seem to be any-- or if there has been any consideration to that, it's not one that's been made clear to the public, or are elected officials. Like I said, my state senator was here and she's like, I don't really have any more information than anybody else. So there's a lot of protesting. And I mean, you can't drive around without seeing signs about it. And people are writing me and saying, why isn't Renella talking about this? Do you like this mysterious area? I'm like, you know, you should probably ask him that question. So I mean, I'm directly some of that traffic for you, of course. One of the things that I wanted to point out to you is that one of the proposed lines-- remember that first time you came out and you and Moe and Dan Doty came out. We shot that first episode, sort of at the end of the season. And then we went down to Kiefer's old formerly Kiefer's farm. But we went down to Kiefer's farm. And we shot that little TRCP video about the conservation reserve program, about changing and land use. And look at here the Brook Crow to come back. One of these proposed lines was right up that valley. Oh, is that right? Yeah, I mean, right through Kiefer's old farm. I mean, he sold his farm, but-- Oh, my God, really? God, that changed that place, man. Holy smokes. I mean, imagine that, right? And I mean, there's all of these environmental concerns. And none of them seem to be-- they certainly haven't been addressed to the public. And so this seems like this were being steamrolled here. One of the odds-- one of the odds that when something like this is happening, I don't want to say when something like this has happened, we'll stick to this power line. One of the odds that they sort of imagine this as an initial offer, where they're saying, let's test the waters, man. We'll put it out there and see how much blowback there is. And then we'll land where else. But let's just start by saying the thing that's most profitable, easiest to do, and see if these people fight back or not. But in the back of their minds, they know it's not going to work the way they want it to work. Yeah, it's almost like that. This is almost like it's their first position we'll see. And some of the evidence of that is if you flip through the maps and everything of the thing, you'll see that there are like four different routes that are proposed. And it's almost like, let's see where the most resistance or the least resistance is to it. And it's almost like one landowner might say, well, as long as they don't come through mine, it'd be all right. People aren't buying that, man. They are united against the idea of it to begin with. Man, this is a funny thing. I thought it was hilarious. I sat down at one of these meetings and sitting next to me is an office doc dude. And I'm like, what are you doing here? You don't use electricity. And I said it just like that. And he looked at me and said, well, they want to put this line through my land. So you can imagine how I feel about it. Oh, is that right? No kidding, man. Yeah. So the irony of that, talking about not for it, but through it, the irony of that, dude, not even using any juice and having that thing running through his place. Yeah. Is that thing homing and crackling all the time? Yeah. So those are the issues. And at the end of the day, the biggest issue is the biggest issues are, it's not for us. It's through us. Wisconsin's use has been flat. It doesn't seem to me that it's, or anybody else, that it's been very well planned. And then we could get into bigger discussions about what are we doing about energy conservation? What are we doing about alternative energies? And should we be thinking about more regional generations? Well, you know, this power's going to Chicago. And, you know, East is like, well, put that, put it that way. The projected use in Wisconsin is pretty much flat forward, except for one thing. And that is, if there's a bunch, if there are AI data centers built here, it's already been one is under construction. And it's, and the future ones are being flat. So this stuff is all tied together, you know? I mean, we all want to use electricity. We all got to have electricity. But it's a bigger conversation. And it just seems like, you know, it seems like my friend, Ken Butcher, said, if you don't, if things are going to change, you can't keep doing things the same way. And that's sort of it. You know, why aren't we, why aren't we thinking about what the other possibilities are here? And it just, I think there's, I mean, I'm just like a one point. I think you said at a $1.3 billion project, there's a lot of steel involved when you look at these things. And I don't know, man, it just seems like, to me, we need to step back, take a break, do some real thoughtful deliberation and some environmental, more environmental impacts. And, you know, think about these bigger things. So that's what the group, no 6, 765.org is all about. Yeah, tell me, say that name again for people that live in this area. And they want to check this thing out. I mean, you're definitely getting a biased perspective. But tell me the name of the group. Yeah, it's called no 765.org. No 765.org. Yeah, I don't think they're going to articulate the yes side. But I guess the yes side is someone's going to make a bunch of money. And some dudes far away are getting some power. So this will tell you the local side. I think if you go onto the website, though, and start looking around on there, that there are some discussion about need for power, understanding that there needs to be transmission. It just becomes a question of whether this is the right place or not. Yeah, dude, if you went through life, if you went through life, if people in this country just always took the attitude of, well, we need this. We need that. We wouldn't have nothing but concrete and roads at this point. There would be nothing left. We're at a point in our nation's history. I always talk about this. For a long time, we had wild places because we hadn't gotten around to developing them all yet. And then things shifted. And now we have wild places in nature and wildlife habitat because people fight for it. Like our focus used to be fighting to conquer it. Now the focus is shifted. Now you got people that fight to preserve it. So yeah, I get the whole we need this and need that argument. If they always want, there wouldn't be nothing left anywhere. Oh man, thanks for coming on, dawg. Thanks, Doug. Yeah, digging that, digging that grateful dead deal you got on there. Covered. Yep. Doug's got a shirt, you know, like, grateful debt. What do you normally see inside the grateful dead head thing with a skull cut off? It's a lightning bolt. There's normally a lightning bolt in there. One, Doug, sure, it's the great lakes to find it, to heavily focus down Wisconsin. It's like, yeah, nice shirt, Doug. Look at the skins on there too, Steve. Yeah, a little bit of it is where I grew up is, which is cool. Yeah. All right, Doug. Love you. Yeah, I love you too. Thanks man. Exactly. All right, our last segment is sports ball fights football season is here and we are going to predict the winner of some games this season, but we're not basing this on talent or coaching or home field advantage like every other analyst. We are picking based on the merits of their animal mascot, thanks to draft kings for sponsoring today's segment. This week, Steve is going to predict how it would go if a cardinal fought a Bronco, just like is what is going to happen here in week seven in the NFL season, right? Steve, who would win that skirmish? I don't want to handle it that way. Yeah, I think it should be how many cardinals it would take. No, I don't want to handle it that way. We did this before and I was wrong. I'm not going to talk about, I'm not going to talk about between a cardinal and a Bronco. Okay. Who would win a fight? Yeah. That's stupid. Okay. Good feedback. Well, it's just not what I want to do. Yeah. More interested in who should win. Yeah. All right. Hmm. Who should win? From a moral perspective? Yeah. Moral and otherwise. Okay. So as I've painted out for it, when I had deal with something with these Broncos for it, when I, like I know the Bronco can mean different things to different people. Hell, some people think it's a vehicle. OJ Simpson. When I think of, yes, there's one, for instance, the late OJ, did he control? At the time or two. The kind of Bronco I'm talking about is a feral horse, which is causing enormous while, as I mentioned before, causing major wildlife issues in the Arab West where we have some poorly crafted legislation that has made wild horse, feral horse management ineffective and our hands are tied and we're losing native wildlife to feral domestics. And that's when I think of Broncos, that's what comes to mind. Yeah. I don't like that. I don't think they should win often. You're always going to pick against the Broncos always, always, always, always. I don't care what, maybe there's some situation, like if you were like, who should win like famine, global famine or the Broncos, I don't know, poachers or Broncos, but that's not what we're talking about, cardinals and Broncos. Here's why a cardinal should win. This is, I like to do a thing. I'm sitting there. the turkey woods in the morning at daybreak. So it's dark just coming on daylight. And like the world this springtime, late April or early May, like the world is waking up. If you're a bird man, you don't need an aid to know what I'm going to say. But if you're not a bird man, download Merlin, the Merlin app and turn it on. And I'm going to make, I don't care where you live. Well, maybe I do a little bit. Most places that you live, the first thing that's going to happen in the morning, before it's even light, when there's just like an in the cold gray lighted on, the first thing you're going to hear. It's a cardinal. He's always there ready to start the day. Wow, he's an early riser. He's got a beautiful call. If you got your app open, your bird ID app, and you just sitting there watching it, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. He's going to beat the crows. Yeah. Now, crows will be the turkey, but no one beats a cardinal. Yeah. And that means that there's a dead loved one nearby. I think that's what they say when you see a cardinal. Boy, wait a minute, bring it down. I don't. Brow that down. Well, Tom about Cardinals. Now we got to check. I was trying to paint a beautiful picture. Yeah, keep going. Cardinals dead love. There's grandpa just flew by. We're back in a red cardinal, especially shortly after a funeral or during a difficult moment, is often interpreted as a sign a departed family member or friend is nearby. Oh, I love that. I thought there was like a body behind a tree trunk yourself. Yeah. I thought he's going dark, you know, like I just stepped on something squishy. Not a like it. That's how he's talking about. Just being greeted in the morning in the turkey woods by that cardinal, just ambitious. And they're beautiful. Compare that to some bronco, drinking out of some dried up, water hole, stepping over the dead bodies of big desert big horns. Yeah, we think all to win. You're going to be in a real pickle when we got colts versus broncos. Then what? Ty, I'll tell you, but I'm not good. I don't want to spoil it. So that's who needs the witness. Now, I'm not telling you who's going to win. A cardinal needs to win. Okay. Cardinal is a bet. It's just a better creature. One app, every sport, all 50 states, new draft kings, customers sign up with code meat eater, spend just five bucks, get 200 in rewards within 21 days, includes all markets that's code meat eater in partnership with draft kings. Thanks again to draft kings for sponsoring today's segment. Gambling problem called 1-800-Gamber, 1-800-My-Reset, Connecticut called 888-789-7777, visit ccpg.org. On behalf of boot hill casino in Kansas, a tax pass through may apply in Illinois, 21 and over, void in Canada. Bed with draft kings sportsbook to get bonus bets that expire in seven days or trade with draft kings predictions to get predictions dollars that expire in one year. Event contract trading involves risk of loss. Predictions offer void in New York, nonwithrobble rewards issued as $50 click to claims every seven days for 14 days. Terms at dkng.co/offer, limited time offer. Nationwide based on sportsbook predictions and free-to-play sports contest availability varies by state. [Music] Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. The husband of this a dead wife immediately calling his mistress from the funeral home. When Brian finally gave up the body, his body was found on my turkey lease. So for four or five or six years, I sat probably within a hundred yards of Mike's body. That's @BloodTrailsTV on YouTube.