The MeatEater PodcastSteven Rinella talks with Tyler Freel, Brent Reaves, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.
Topics discussed: Phil kissing; Tyler's Tundra Talk podcast; loud sandhill cranes; bull moose grunting; when Chris McCandless dies in your family's hunting camp bus; the crap people leave on public land; how the walleye cheater is also a deer poacher; cause for reflection on the things you did as a kid that were big no-nos; confessions; paying hunters to harvest bears in Japan; bounty fishing for pike minnow and winning $100,000; explaining "subsistence" hunting and who qualifies; the complexities surrounding land and resource management in Alaska; ANILCA; the Brooks Range; state vs. federal; and more.
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This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listeningcast, you can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for el First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I t E dot com. Start off, I will I. I don't know if you've been paying attention, but we've been taught. We've been covering Phil's play.
Yeah, people are definitely aware.
Listen, man, I was sitting next to a guy who was at that place because you heard about it on the podcast. Really sitting next to them.
Really what I bet the last thing that guy expected after hearing it on the podcast was like, I'm gonna go down that plate and sit next to Stephen Reel.
Well, he was actually next to my daughter Rosemary. It was me, my wife, my daughter, him, gotcha. So they struck up a convo and then at the end of the thing we took a picture and he said, yeah, I heard about on the podcast. Came down nice and Phil right there. Phil does kiss someone in that show, and Krin painted it out like it was gonna be real seedy. It made her uncomfortable.
It was it was just a little peck.
It was more in a peck, but it wasn't like how would you describe it, phil.
On like a scale, like from from a peck to a passionate French kiss. I put it at like I don't know, a three.
I was gonna say a three.
Yeah, okay, Well maybe it's different from show to show.
Oh do you bring it something brings Depending on how I feel, I'll mix, I'll slip in a little.
I won't tell every So.
Some nights you just bring it. Some nights you were like you weren't in the mood.
No, that's that would be inappropriate, so.
You would do it the same every time.
Mostly it made you uncomfortable.
Yeah, a little bit. I said before. It's like watching your brother like kiss someone.
It made me remotely uncomfortable.
Step and Steph enjoyed it.
I think.
I did, And then I got home my text Phyllis said I didn't think it was that sexy, And he said if he ever gets cast and something NC seventeen.
He'll let me know, he'll be the first to know.
So are you happy with holladall went Phil? Yeah? I think so.
It was a lot of fun.
Yeah, those all those people I worked with are super nice and had a really good time.
Yeah.
I can't.
I can't tell you what it was like to watch it, but I hope it was okay.
Our kids even liked it.
Don't you have another one coming?
Well?
Our eight year old he didn't give it the best review, sure, because he was ready to get going.
No, he was.
He probably wasn't interested in like the nineteen thirties Russian politics that make up a lot of the third act.
I can sense that he got a little lost. Yeah, he got a little lost and the stuff about the Russians are and everything. So he probably wouldn't give it the best review. But the other ones really liked it.
That's good, to be fair.
He'd rather be rolling around the mud.
Or something like that. It was cold outside, though, so I couldn't send them out there getting his boots, and then we got I got in a fight with my kids up at the concession booth. Oh what Yeah, embarrassed myself at the concession stand.
They wanted some candy.
Yeah, like, for whatever reason, the movie theaters the candies are huge boxes. Yep, they got Every movie theater in the world has the.
Same yeah, big box.
Yeah, like what it's like good? What's it good? And plannies yeah, pis. So we go up there and I'm like, what, pick one box out and they all grab a box. I'm like, no, agree on one box. And meanwhile it's people behind us in line. So Vince I said, never mind, put all those boxes down hard Bet went back to the seats. They didn't like that well, and then Ma went up and got it. It's just they wound up with I won. Essentially, I won because they wound up with one box, Okay, but I lost in one You came out even joined today by Tyler Freel Alaskan hunter trapper podcast or writer guy that shoots bears with a stick bow. Yeah, flesher what else?
I don't know, man, I do, I do, have do and have done. I guess a little bit everything. Uh.
You know, you host host under Talk and you cover Alaskan outdoor politics and not hunting and fishing yep, yep, A bunch of stuff like that.
Yeah, No, it's uh we I don't know. Try not to take take it too seriously. But we you know, just a bunch of uh myself and a bunch of buddies who you know, we live in Alaska and kind of offer a good perspective and talk shit about each other and share hunting stories and tips, and I figure, if it can be entertaining with a little bit of useful information, then uh, then that's a good goal.
So yeah, and you guys mix it up pretty hard. So you guys are into you're into a lot of the sophisticated stuff, yeah, which she.
Which yeah, oh yeah for sure. Which it makes it kind of tough because a lot of those, you know, are super serious subjects, and uh, you can you can dive way into any given one and as a whole, it's all just it's it's really more than any one person can keep track of, see kind of you know, you got to pick your battles. But I try to do my best to stay on top of of what's going on, stuff that comes up, and you know, I can write about that and my my day jobs a staff writer for Outdoor Life, so I you know, cover cover a lot of that stuff in there as well as you know, all my normal my normal duties.
Great, we're gonna getting all that. We're gonna cover a lot of stuff that's going on in Alaska today. So you've got any kind of interest in hunting in Alaska, wildlife management Alaska. We're going to get into that and hanging tune and we're gonna talk about Alexander super Tramp Boss. This is the weirdest deal, dude, I've like. So I'm just going to tease this. Then we're going to tell the story in greater detail, like everyone knows Crack hours. John Cracker is into the wild and they made that movie out of it.
Eddie Vedder made that song.
Made that song. I read that whole here. I read that whole book watching an avalanche slide for black Bears one day, read the whole book. I didn't read it till late in life. The bears didn't get one. But there's a bunch of sand hill cranes. It was the weirdest thing I always remember that day because there was there was nothing was melted off except that avalanche shooting sand hill cranees walking up and down that avalanche shoot.
Those cranes are a pain in the ass man, especially moose season right about the time stuff starts popping off. Oh my gosh, the crane show up and you can't hear nothing.
All day, isn't that wild?
Yeah?
Yeah, it's the time I see that.
It's the thing man.
Coming through some pass nearby. It's like, turn that off.
I have never seen that many sand hills, and they do that.
Dance, thousands of them a lot of time.
So funny you mentioned that man because like, like to the last two times we've been moose hunting, it was just like everybody like just stop that for a minute.
Well, and especially you know, you know it's you're working with limited time and every dead ass calm morning and evening. You know you're wanting like this is the time to get some sound out there, and those cranes won't shut up. It's it's really irritates again.
And you're hoping to hear that.
A lot of times.
You hit me with your bulgrount real quick. Yeah, that's just hit me with a volume though.
All right, I can't, I gotta I gotta sit up a little bit.
You get a little bit of I want to do two things. I wanted to hit me with some volume, and I want you to do like like our buddy, Honis can make a noise. It sounds like an oak way off. You know how you feel that noise before you hear it. I want you to hit me with some volume.
And hit me with a way off right, let's see.
Yeah yeah, now hit me with the ship. Is that a bull? Yeah? That's good, dude. All right. So this bus, so everybody knows that this kid, Chris McCandless was his name, His nickname is his chosen name. As Brosie Brody pointed out earlier, was Alexander Supertramp died in his damn bus. Uh by MacArthur right.
No, by Healey, by Hely, right outside of MacArthur.
Yeah what am I saying? By Healey and the bus sat out there and it became a tourist attraction. But get that bus. Your family had like camped in that bus. Oh yeah, way before any of this stuff went down.
Yeah. So from the time you know, that book became popular, I think it was maybe even I can't remember what year the book was, but it was right about the time we moved to Alaska because I I I was born in Colorado, but my dad was born and grew up in Fairbanks. And after his After my grandpa passed away in like seventy one, my grandma moved them back down to Colorado. So that's kind of why we were not there. But as soon as that book became popular, my dad would just be like, oh, yeah, that was our that was our camp. Like we spent many nights in that bus, and so that that was all it was for a lot of years, and yeah, became just kind of a deadly tourist attraction, which it's it's sad, and I mean not to make light of it, but uh, like people were constantly having to be get rescued trying to get out there because there, yeah, how did that bus get out in the first you know, all all this is like this, this whole story. So after people were tired of this shit, they ended up making the decision to helicopter it. Took a schnook and helicopter that thing out of there, and uh, the University of Alaska and Fairbanks got a hold of it and their plan is to display it at the museum there. And I had written a story about how that was like our family's hunting camp back in the day, and the gal that was in charge or is in charge of the bus for the museum got in touch with me, say, hey, well, you guys want to come check it out? And uh so we did. My dad and my uncle and I went over there and checked it out, and it was pretty, you know, pretty cool. They hadn't been in it since I think seventy two. Oh, And my dad's like, remember when Grandpa, or remember when Dad blew up the wood stove by starting by starting throwing gasoline there and there to get it going and blew the stack and blew the door off and anyway, so as we're sitting there talking too, my my Dad's like, I know, I know, mom. My grandma had eight millimeter footage of this some work. She had a bunch of eight milimeter videos that she had had taken and I ended up getting a hold of him and digitizing him. But uh so, all this and learning from the the kind of the history of that bus, they figured out I don't remember the exact year, it was maybe like sixty or sixty one, early sixties. What year was the bus manufactured, I don't remember, but it was a Fairbanks City transit bus for a while, and it was part of a project to improve the Stampede trail. They got a grant, which is a road that goes out across the Techlanika and goes out there, and so it was left out there by construction crew road constructions. A guy had that was working for that crew had bought it and outfitted it as like a bunk house to bring his family along for. It was like a whole summer project.
Well how did he get it in there? Though?
They drug it out there on a road and the road.
Yeah, but what's the whole deal? Here's what I understand about it. What's the whole deal with you gotta like cross the river to get to it? Yeah? Yeah, so is a winner road or what?
No, it was I don't know what time of year they maybe got across, got their equipment or cross there early in the spring or in the winter. But my dad they used to just drive across it in the fall after because it's a glacial fed river and after the water level start going down, they.
Just so it's like, yeah, so it's only tricky seasonally.
Yeah, yeah, which is kind of what got him in trouble. He came back and you know, tried to get out apparently and surprised the river's too high. But uh, yeah. So they drug it out there as probably as a bunk house for this guy's family, and it broke, axle broke or something happened to it, and they just left it and intact. And later in the sixties, my grandpa had been hunting up the Steeze Country in the forty Mile Country and got sick of people dealing with people, so he heard about this bus that was set up as bunk house and they started hunting out there, so through like the latter half of the sixties.
No kid. Yeah, And that dude died in that bus, right in that bus.
So when did he stop. He's in it as a hunting game.
I think seventy two was the last year, because the my grandpa passed away in seventy one, and I think it was seventy one, and my uncle has pictures where he went back out there the next the following year, I think they'd seed said they skipped a year, and then seventy two was back out there, and he has some pictures with like, you know, moose and caribou cut up all, you know, kind of right there.
Yeah. I looking at some of the photos right now. That's crazy.
It looks like some people were using it for target practice for yeah it uh.
Oh people shoot? Where is are there today? Like I believe the am things that have been shot? Oh we're just driving on some and like some BLM land And I was like you Al's had the plane ahead to shoot that much stuff?
Yeah, bring it seemed like a seventy two inch flat screen TV on public land just shot up.
That's great.
There was a trend for a while. We talked about this. There was a trend for a while out I know it's out Missoula where people come and shoot trees down, living trees, shoot until they fall over. So a couple of quick things, Tyler and I'll get back to this. Uh, the wall eye my favorite subject.
I'm so sick.
What mean you sick of these guys?
Just they just I'm not sick of them. I just can't wait to hear what they do next.
Well, you know, this is here's the thing, this is this is what this is what everybody saying, this is what everybody thinks. So everybody knows. Everybody knows. And we had the guy on there's the Walleye cheating scandal where the Jason Fisher who's been on the podcast it's conducting a walleye tournament. There's some fish that, yeah, do I relate? How what degree do I explain this?
He looked at He looked at their bag, knew they weren't four pounder like they weighed at seven.
He knew they were four.
Cut them open, and yeah. The guy's weighing fish all day long at the end of a tournament, and you just know what fish look like, like a twenty inch wall that weighs, this eighteen inch wall that ways at and some guys bring some fish up and you're like, oh, they got blank pounds of fish. But they weigh them up and it's like, wow, that's really heavy. Takes a leather man, which is sitting right behind Uncle Chastey in a display case, takes that leather man and cuts open the walleyes and they're pack full of weights and fish filets. These two individuals, what are these fellas' names?
Chase and I don't want to I think really the most important one is.
So these guys become real famous for this cheating deal. Then one of them gets in some other trouble soon after, he violates a restraining order and he equips his kid with a bunch of fake one hundred dollars bills and they go and sends them down to the bowling alley to buy stuff with the fake hunt our bills. It makes the news. Now he's in the news all over again, including at the meat eater dot com. He's in the news all over again. Also deer poaching. However, this is old, not new deer poaching. He's getting it. He's getting in trouble for stuff he did a long time ago. Like, for instance, let's say if I was twenty and I'd gotten in trouble for setting snares illegally, and then all of a sudden, my buddies are like, oh, you know what to one night we were out jack lighting cottontail rabbits, right and be like, you know, the guy got in trouble for setting snares, he's in trouble now for jack lighting cottondeal rabbits. And I'd be like, I did that before. So everybody's telling on me now about everything that's a situation he's in now, and I think I'm apologizing for I'm just saying now it's like now they're just you know what I mean, Like secrets are coming out.
Well, I thought I read something about this where he had gotten in trouble for this prior to the Walleye stuff. I think that's understanding, and that his license revoked.
Yeah, do you there? I jump it.
What are we buying one hundred dollars bills at a bowling alley?
It's a great question.
We're worried about all this stuff. That's issue me.
There's some other stuff in there too.
The real issue is uh he so it was incriminating about the counterfeit money. Is they have text exchange where his kid, he gives his kid this money and it's like it says, like not actual money. It says like it's like movie money, and like movie money looks pretty real, but it says you know, and what the hell says movie money on it? Something sends and then they text about it. He's like, dude, it worked. Great. Send someone. He's like, Bobby's gonna come by and get some more like it worked, you know, And they're celebrating that the counterfeit money was accepted.
But I just at this point, you know, it's not like a new you know, I thought there had been rumors about him being a poacher flying around for a long time.
Well he was I think I think he was a convicted poacher.
Yeah, and the scrutiny from everything else certainly didn't help his case. And like there's a lot of people eyeball.
On him that there's an age component because people in glasshouses. Right, So we broke all manner as youngsters in high school, we broke all manner of laws. Let me tell you, for instance, ignorantly. No, let me tell you for instance. I'm gonna tell this about a guy that's not alive anymore. Nothing you can do to him. Smelt dipping with Eric kern Okay, we're smelt dipping near White Lake Channel where some smelt were spawning up on the gravel bar. No one knew about not going into the creek, spawning along the shoreline. And here comes by a salmon feeding on smelt. Eric Kernan scoops it up and it is in the smelt net. Now there's no way in hell he's gonna let it go. But that's an illegal capture. He puts the salmon down his waiters. You want to talk about a mess. How old we were in high school? We were olden drive.
So Chase Kaminski is thirty six and he's accused of deer hunting between twenty thirteen and twenty twenty one. Twenty thirteen is ten years ago, which would make him twenty six time.
Too old for poaching. But let me just clarify, like I'm not saying, let me get to my broader point, and this isn't about me, this is Eric. Well, no, because in our time, we sold our smelt to a guy in high school tenth grade. I think sold smelt. That's illegal. Point being if I had gotten in trouble for something, all these infractions that seem like just minor issues, like Eric caught a sam and put in his waiters, dip smelt with the salm and nose first down into the ankle of his waiters for like whatever amount of time and then like took the salmon back out later. Okay, all this like stupid stuff that I would never let my kids do. But all this stupid stuff, if you didn't got in trouble and all of a sudden all this came out, you'd paint this really damning. You'd paint this really damning portrait of an individual who just had to be around a lot of like dumb decision.
Making around it or the ringleader of it.
I'm not condoning. I'm saying like it makes reading this, it makes me look and say, man, at a point, like when all the dirt comes out, all the dirt comes out, it winds up looking. I just would invite people out there who grew up in a rural atmosphere and grew up like like a redneck upbringing to think pretty hard. Okay, to think pretty hard.
Oh, they probably didn't when they were that age. They probably just did shit and didn't even think about it, think about it. I was on on nextually other day looking at all the old spots I used to hunt when I was real young and realize that none of that ship was public.
I thought it was all public back then. We thought public was that no one yelled at you when you were there, never got yelled at us.
I was like, oh, I'm gonna look at that old turkey hunting spot I used to go to all the time and realize that it was deep into someone at private property.
You know, Steve, we should start a new We should start a new segment called confession Confessions.
I don't and here I would, I wouldn't even know where to begin, but here's the thing about it. It was so unusual by it. So in those days, like you would have your mom, Your mom would apply for a dough tag.
Oh yeah, that was very common in my circle.
So my mom might draw dough tag and you get the the dope for mom. And I'm not like, I just don't want to act like I don't want to sit here now and act like I don't want to sit here now and act like things didn't happen. That happened. So with this fella now, with all this stuff coming on, I just beg it looks bad, but just think about your own life and think about the things you've done. And once it came to be like like, are you really telling me that if you like to drink? Are you telling you never drove home when you might have blown a drunk? But what does that look like when you get caught.
I don't think that's the same as this guy though, because he's just kept doing that shit and knew it was wrong, Like this wasn't like oh back when I was a sophomore in high.
School, you know, and cheating in him stuff and Walleyes full of Walleye flays is like on a whole other and like cheating people out of money and winning boats.
I think it's fair to say this guy's like a criminal, a great a dirt bag.
Yeah, I got another confession for you when I got my When I for Christmas, I got a Marl and for Christmas, I got that bolt Action Marl and twenty two mag that everybody had for a while. And pulled a car over next to this thing called Tamawalla Lodge and saw a fox squirrel perched up on a tree and shot it out of the car window and then ran and got it and jumped back over the fence. Do you feel a lot lighter someone had seen me do that?
You know what?
Like the list of things would have been illegal discharge of firearm like I don't know this insane looking rap sheet.
But also back then, like maybe that would have happened, but there was I also feel like there was a little bit more tolerance for that kind of.
Yeah, stay tuned for next week's edition of I'll make a list, because if I have a run for political office, I'm gonna do this anyways.
Yeah, it's better to preempt it.
The first thing I'm gonna do is, here's everything bad I've ever.
Said, now your planed, Steve, what you're gonna do?
If I do, that's what I'm gonna do. No one's gonna come and say, like he I'll be like, dude, So I'm I already told you every boy that, So I'm like, list, should I did this? Real bad tell us? Here's the thing that's even more surprising than the fact that that fella has been in a lot of trouble Japan. If I were to name for you place, if if I said you name for me countries that have a lot of bear attacks, it goes something like this America, and then they'd be like dah Canada, and then they Russia. They wouldn't know what to say. Oh yeah, you'd probably get Russia.
Russia.
Japan has had one hundred and sixty seven bear attacks this year.
That's a lot.
So you got to think about the positioning of Japan.
What kind of bears are those brown bears?
Oh okay, think about the position of Japan.
Like I thought they were black bears.
They got both. I think do they have black pers have black bears too? I don't know if they're not like American black bears, but some kind of.
Someone should look this up. I'm pretty sure that's correct. But if you imagine the illusions right like when you look at I wish we had this for scale. I mean, just how far the allusions stretch out? Sure, Like it's the width, like you imagine how big, Like you could fit Texas, California, most of Montana into Alaska and then the illusions basically extend Alaska by that distance. It's distance all over again towards Japan.
Yeah, and just looking at the map, it looks like it's about the same distance as it would be from the coast to California to Hawaii.
I mean, Japan gets a lot of the same kind of salmon run.
Yeah, that's yeah, that's what it's like a it's like a Pacific rim, you know. And so they have this like this suite of wildlife. Do you remember we had the bear researcher in general all around good guy, Carl Melkaman, And he talked when he talked about being researching bears in China, and he was saying, yeah, he's saying, man, the weird thing about is everything's kind of the same but a little different. So he said, like you look at a tree and be like man, it's a lot like our beech tree, and there'll be a grouse. Be like, that's a lot like our grouse. A little different. That's a lot like our grouse. And the bear is like, it's a lot like our black bear, but a little different, he says. But the whole thing would fly out the window when you're looking as a big golden monkey. He goes, we don't have one of those. But anyhow, they got this bear like like such a bear issue in Japan. Yeah, they look they're set to it that they've exceeded their twenty twenty record. Twenty twenty three has already passed up the twenty twenty record of one hundred and fifty eight bear attacks in Japan. Woman was just mauled to death. All these bear attacks three fatalities, including a seventy nine year old woman maul to death in her backyard. Bears outskirts of Tokyo. They say it was a poor crop of beech nuts. This is reported in Bloomberg. A poor crop of beech nuts has left led to more bear human interactions and they are offering like a compensation program to bear hunters five thousand yen for each bear they shoot.
Is that really?
What does that mean? Why do you have forty five dollars krinn, that's not what they're paying them.
Let me see, so yen is like it is like about one hundred and twenty five or so to the dollar.
Let me just check that.
Well, you just got to watch Seinfeld and get the creamer when he has the dudes that are millionaires that have a million yen and he consmits them to spend all their money and they end up sleeping into chest of drawers.
I would love to know, like.
What their current management system is as far as hunting goes.
Yes, five thousand yen is like thirty three bucks right now, that's the bounty, and there's yeah, and there's the Usuri brown bear in the Japanese or Asiatic black bear.
What does the bear cause in all the trouble? I remember Carl Malcolms saying the Asiatic black bear mixes it up lots of scrabby little bear.
Yeah, I can't, I don't see that.
I'm guessing that's the one. I'm only saying that that's the one because Carl Malcolm was saying, it's like a it's like a it's like a got a temper. It's like a fighting little bear.
Oh, there's a there's a picture in the Bloomberg article of a group of hunters searching for a brown bear that was on the loos in Sapporo a couple of years ago. So maybe it's about both of them, both both black and brown bear.
I mean, just don't picture iteez.
Well.
I think they have a commercial market for bear meat over there be anyway.
Yeah, we covered that. MM have a vending machine. There's a guy that you can buy bear meat out of a vending machine.
It was expensive, Yeah, I remember seeing that pop up.
Thousand yend just doesn't seem like a lot. I know that the that the dollar is strong to the end right now.
But still fifty bucks is like no, man, fifty bucks like that that'd be like just good, that'd be like a good price for like a rack. Like really, that's great fifty bucks for bare That's a lot of work, dude. Yeah, so but if you can turn around and uh also to do the sale right, speaking of bounties, that was Krin's transition like that, speaking of bonies. This this is this is one of those perennial stories that pops.
Up now and then but the numbers just keep getting higher.
Yeah, an angler earned. Can we get into the Can we get into our personal connection to this or you think we should not?
If you want to, I think that's fine.
An angler earned one hundred grand.
Now earned?
Okay, I don't know what he's got into this for overhead.
He's got a lot of time.
What kind of boat does he have?
So on the Columbia River in order to as part of a salmon restoration program. I'm a back way up. All the dam building we did on the Columbia has the long term impact of really imperiling a bunch of salmon runs. And you know, people say, some people when people look at I've gotten to this before, some people look at like why did the US win World War two? You know, and you can get in all these things like one way, we were able to produce more aluminum more quickly than anyone else. So we're, you know, we want that that's the limiting factor that allows to win World War two? How they do that well, because we had all these dams on the Columbia which generated so much electricity, and smelting aluminum requires a lot of electricity, and so we're you know, the long and short of it is, they damn the shit out of that river, and it's just the salmon runs are basically not salmon runs anymore. And there's all these efforts now to try to find some possible way to begin dismantling some of these dams. But it has all this implication for agriculture and shipping. It's one of the biggest problems that your kids will be hearing about. Your kids will probably hear a lot more about it than you will in your lifetime. As part of the salmon restoration program, they're trying to limit they're trying to kill off predators of salmon smoke, and.
The dam's also created ideal conditions for this pike.
You build a giant structure that impedes the movement of fish, and on top of that, you then create a reservoir system that gets loaded up with small mouth bass and pike minnows, and and that's stuff just hammers all the salmon smelt smolt that usually in the past we don't even really have to worry about paciforous predators. It's all part of big mass. So there's like the elephant in the room that's not really the accurate to put it, because people do talk about it. There's the core primary issue. The core primary issue is damning on the Columbia. You can love the dams or hate them, but it's like an objective reality that the dams on the Columbia are driving salmon runs to extinction. You can be like, eh, price you pay or whatever, but that's just the truth, however you feel about it. So, since you can't take care of the main issue, they're always trying to take care of like little minor issues. And one of the minor issues is predation on salmon small by pike minos. So they've set up a bounty program. What's the pike mental worth? They set up a bounty program where you can kill pike minos.
It's a varying rate, six of dollars a fish for the first twenty five over nine inches, twenty five to two hundred fish eight two hundred plus ten.
So a dude krin talk to the guy that runs the program. A dude netted himself. He caught ten thousand northern pike mentos, landed himself one hundred grand. So that becomes the headline. But I don't know what he's got in it. For expenses. Yeah, I mean, and we tried to get him to come on the podcast. But these guys that are making big that, these guys that are making living fish and pike mintos. What's funny is you think that like they would be like, well, here's how I do it. Let's get them all to save the salmon. But he doesn't want to damage the resource.
Right, He wants to make sure he's got it.
He doesn't want anyone to know how he does it because he doesn't want to damage the resource. They're supposed to Yeah, I'm sympathetic.
There's supposed to be some steep competition and all kinds of drama around, like who's known locally to be like one of the top.
Sounds like a reality show. We should do.
No, they've been approached in fact, But isn't it funny that this whole thing is to try to kill off pike mentals. And then there's the guy that figures out how to really do it, but he doesn't want to talk about it because he doesn't want everybody killing.
If we can test that, I.
Was going to suggest that, like they take off some time next season.
You can get you can do a little practicing for those things right here in Montano.
The weird deal is these northern pike mentals are a native fish.
Sure, and then uh, like Colorado, Utah, they're like a protected, threatened or endangered species.
They can't have.
You know, they're doing very poorly there.
Twelve thousand people are getting after it. Twelve thousand people are catching one hundred and fifty six thousand pike mentals. But one dude is catching ten thousand pike mentals. Dall's he doing? You know, netting? He's netting probably maybe a lot. Would that guy say? Is he rotten and reeling them?
Or That's the thing is like, what's the what's a legal method of take for this? Because like netting you'd have buyketch of.
But if you can person like purse seeing them where you can?
You know, I think they're hooking line and the man you think well. In Karen's notes from her conversation, she uses the term reeled.
Yeah are you?
Are you not just hammering away with facts right now? You're on the phone with the guy.
Yeah, But I just I just put some book points in there, So I probably wrote reel because he said real, Yeah, I don't think I just pulled that out of thin air.
So that's not what you're gonna say. I just for some reason, I thought.
I thought it was rotten reel catching for some reason.
Has pulled it out of.
Think it's something I think if it were rotten real I would take I would run a fly rig on the river where you got flies.
Up. This is the first year that someone that this is the first year that a single er angle that a single angler. I don't know if this is that true. The first year that a singler single angler earned a hundred k. The guy that earned a hundred k should really come on the show. I won't you ask you any specific questions.
He knows us, but he.
Knows he was flattered, right, yeah, yeah, it just come on and you can. We'll bleep out anything that you don't any trade secrets.
You know what we can do if we like record him in the studio. You know how like with those documentaries they just kind of do a silhouette. You can just totally like.
Getting the picture with a bunch of special forces dudes, how they like blur out their eyes will.
Blur out your We'll give you a mob. We'll give you a mob. Informant keep a low profile, blur out your eyes, any specifics about where you go or what you do. And in terms of like word getting out, dude, word is out. This is a widely reported thing. We'll give you like a bunch of free clothes, cook up some I'll have you for dinner. I'll have you for dinner. We'll give you a brand new play knife so you can flay your pipe. Mentals up and uh, and a wallet. You put all your money in wallets. Oh yeah, because you need it haul around all that money. Give two walts.
You might need a backpack that money.
We'll give you a backpack you put all your money in, and just come. We'll give you a duffel to put all your money in, and you come on the pod has to talk to us. In twenty twenty two, the rewards went like this, So the rewards for to five anglers. So the top five anglers in twenty twenty two sixty nine K, sixty three K, fifty six K, fifty four K, forty three K.
Then it really drops off. Then it really okaya, But I didn't know if it was like then by like twenty grand it drops off, but it drops off.
So was the one hundred k guy in that top.
K yes, okay, yes, so he's a command like the top couple are always our trading places.
Ten percent of the anglers catch eighty percent of the fish.
That's true in general with hunting. Yeah with yeah, hmm hundred command master angler one.
Hundred and fifty six thousand of those things they removed in twenty twenty three. Wonder if it's doing any good?
God love that a guy in the show Pike Mino's good.
I just want to know what else he's catching.
They used to eat him back way back in the day, the Mountain Man era.
You know what, it looks like it could be better than it is. It looks like you, like a wall I had sex with a sucker yet have teeth.
Speaking of that, I wonder if you could turn around and sell those to like, like uh for trapping bait or something trapping babe.
They sell them for bait up in Northwest Colorado for lakers and ship small ones.
My boys didn't get into the soccer fl a business. Speaking of what you guys sent in a picture and puts on. So we're trying to we're trying to like get everybody's great cell phone or sell not cell phone trail cam. Get everybody's great trail cam pictures. You know, it's so funny it guys sent a picture of three wild hogs all lined up in a exactly sensitive I'm being sensitive here to a family.
They're a vertic we lined up in.
A copulatory posture, free in a copulatory train. And the caption he wrote, I can't get over the cash he wrote, is try to add a small town. But it looks like a small town to me. I mean, this looks like a big city. It's like all the woods. All right. Back to our special guest, Tyler Freele, And here's where I want to start. Tyler, what in sam Hill is going on with doll sheep? Okay, doll sheep numbers and doll sheep closures and break the whole thing down to me and vast tracks of federal that you can't hunt, tell us.
The whole Danswerry.
All right, so you've covered You've covered this heavily.
Yeah I will, I'll do my best.
And yeah, what's a doll sheep?
Uh?
Well?
There, Alaska's native wild sheep thin horn, very similar to a stone sheep. They're predominantly all white. It's kind of their their characters. They're defining characteristic they live in, whether they say like officially seven or eight mountain ranges in Alaska, pretty widespread all the you know, pretty much all the suitable cheap habitat in Alaska has doll sheep on them, and the population you know, goes over into Canada and then transitions to stone sheep and then you know big horn sheep down below.
Yeah, that's a that's the thing i'd read. There's a book that are biologists out of Fairbanks put out. It's kind of like it like a magnum opus. There's some wildlife biologists, but he's kind of explaining that, you know, what's what's the sheep in Siberia snow sheep. Yeah, there's a couple of different subst You kind of imagine it's like band of this like band of sheep, ye, right, it would be uninterrupted. Yeah, so at a time, like if you went back to the places scene when you could walk from Siberia to Alaska, it's just like this band of sheep, and it would go from Siberia into Mexico. Yeah, right all down through like through Yukon territory. All the Canadian rockies down and this thing would kind of like peter out in Mexico, and it would they would if you were to walk that journey, you'd probably recognize this that they kind of like gradually changed. Yeah, you know, they started out big and burly and dark and they end up smaller and white. Yeah.
Small. Yeah, Well because the snow sheeper even smaller typically than dull sheep from what I understand, but which it may have been. This guy here, Wayne Heimer, who was a longtime sheep research biologist in Fairbanks, was kind of like the you know, one of the original cheap management and research by bile just uh in the state of Alaska at all.
You know.
Yeah, Tyler brought me this book, doll Sheep Management in Alaska from Place to Scene to Present by Wayne E. Heimer.
Yeah. So, uh, these sheep are all all throughout Alaska, and uh see where they're picking a spot to start with? Uh with the way the situation now, So it's a little bit of history, uh after statehood. Before statehood and Laska was a territory, Uh, efficient wildlife was managed by the Feds because it wasn't there. State didn't exist then and at state what.
Was the yeah, that's yeah. So so prior to statehood there was no sort of like territorial game management Agency.
No, it was all it was all the FEDS. And frankly, like I mean, he talks, Wayne talks in his book about how a lot of this management quote unquote was like guess work, Like they didn't really know nobody knew like what we really had except for certain you know, certain areas closer to populations, you know, towns and whatnot, and so into what we had in like the early on, I think even in the territorial days, they had like a three quarter curl rule for shooting rams, which that was just borrowed from big Horns. That's what they did for big horns. So they just this might work. And over, you know, over and over Wayne's decades of research, they developed like the full curl mature ramp theory that you know and kind of goes along with vlarious geists, you know, sheep sheep theories to develop the full curl management strategy, which you know is kind of all kind of if I don't remember touchback, I tend to my brain kind of fires off in different directions a lot of times. So so, uh, last it becomes a state, gets tied up to the wildlife and the duty to manage them. And the next like probably the biggest, well the biggest impact you know to hunters was Anilka and Anska the Alaska Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and then Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act, which those were a from what I understand, a trade off to get the Trans Alaska pipeline. So it was it was during the Carter administration. They wanted they discovered oil and prude O Bay needed a way to get that oil to market. So the Trans Alaska pipeline was the solution. And to get that, they the Carter administration wanted all this federal land set aside and you know, for conservation purposes to protect it, which I think is you know, a pretty good thing. So and I don't know all the details. I wasn't I wasn't around back then. This is uh I think it was finalized in nineteen eighty, but our two senators uh Ted Stevens and Gravel, I didn't like what Jimmy Carter wanted to take. I don't know all the details in that, but Carter basically told him, you're gonna give it to me or I or you're gonna come back in a year, begging for me to take it, and they said, you don't have Alas Wayne describes, they told Carter that you don't have the balls. Well, he'd had the balls, and he signed an executive order. I think it was using the Antiquities Act labeling or I don't know again details but basically took subsistence hunting as an described it as an iniquity in this executive order and locked up huge portions of Alaska immediately, like you know, you're going hunting there this fall, No, you're not. And my uncle describes this like he was going cheap hunting and he was gonna go sheep hunting the wrangles in a certain spot.
And this was a political move by Carter.
Yeah, to get a nilka, to get the land set aside that he wanted for anilka from one of like actually.
Leveraged, yeah, leveraged hunting access for a greater political vide.
Yeah.
And it and it was a big impact to the economy too. You know, it affected outfitters, resident hunters, everybody. And so my uncle describes it as, you know, he heard about this and then uh, you know went to state fishing game in the state's official position was non compliance. They told, you know, they told him, unless a FED sees us, see you pull the trigger, have a nice hunt.
Oh really, so these guys have been real legit.
Oh yeah, big time. And uh after a year that they uh yeah, they went and they gave him an ilka and so yep, they came back.
He was right, you know, he took and saw. They then they ended up settling where they got the corridor. I mean they run that. I mean just for just people understand. Like early we're talking about how big Alaska is. I mean, I don't know what it is top to bottom. Well, just like the Brooks Range, it's all the size of California.
Yeah, it's five, like five hundred miles from Prudo Bay to Fairbanks and so that that then it's got another yeah, another three hundred fifty you know, I mean maybe three hundred dish miles.
It depends on where you're measuring from to You could run the picture that you're you're trying to secure land, you're trying to secure rights to a corridor that is a thousand mile you know, almost one thousand miles.
I think it's I think it's I think the pipeline is eight hundred miles roughly. But so it was a big deal and they gave him a milka. And then so there were already some existing National parks Denale, which was McKinley at the time, and a few others. So this created a bunch of new national parks Wrangle, Saint Elias, and Gates of the Arctic National Park up in the Brooks Range and created and it created a lot of you know, also National Park Service managed preserve lands. It expanded and I believe it also expanded. An war was in existence at the time, but I think that expanded it. And you know, basically federal lie or created all these refuges, parks, preserves, all this stuff.
Yeah, is it kind of the way I've understood it. I never I never knew this thing about how they settled it. But the way I've understood it is that like that move forced a lot of people to decide how they're going to carve the pie up. Yeah, for sure, right, Like and they had like formalized ownerships. Okay, so all this federal lands, some will be this, some will be that the state's going to get this, Uh, and then are going to get there and and it forced a sort of codification of who owned what in that state.
Oh for sure.
Yeah.
And then and that's just the base layer to it. Then you get into another layer of like management styles and principles and uh what the word, you know what how to describe it? You get into the preservationists versus conservationist mentalities. Uh so anilka effectively, like I mean a lot of and there's still like the people that were around like do not like Jimmy You don't want to bring up Jimmy Carter around them because they've got some still source to a very sore and uh and a lot of peop but don't understand why. But that's that's why they just took it. And uh, you know the result of even just wrangle Saint Elias and gates of the Arctic National Park. Gates the Arctic at the time they figure had six thousand to ten thousand cheap, so just they cut a huge chunk out of what hunters could access.
The least visited national park. Yeah, it makes zero sense, but it's a national park. It makes zero sense, you know.
And a lot of this country I'm fully behind protecting it, you know, like I don't I don't want to destroy or see all that stuff destroyed. But let us use the freaking lands man.
Yeah, but it's been I mean hunting it has nothing to do with that.
No, no, it doesn't. It doesn't.
You know, like let let people like the most most ridiculous land use Oh for sure, we have zero implications.
You know.
Yeah, and in fact, you know, like where the world record doll sheep was killed is now in the Hard Park Wrangle Saint Elias National Park, and oh is it really Yeah, there's a guy a ram Glaciers where Swank killed that ram, and since that you would think, oh, well there's got to be all sort of those rams running around in there. And that's not the case anymore. Since that became a national park. I mean, people quit using it as much. There's still some subsistence allowances, like if you live in glenn Allen or some of these other little towns, you can hunt the Hard Park, but you can't. The access is extremely restricted.
Can you explain this is the term out here Alaskans use all the time. Can you explain hard Park? Okay, so yeah, yeah, no, so so explain it, like you're taught, like explain it, like if it was Yellowstone.
Yeah, so yellow says, I know nothing about Yellowstone. But you have Yellowstone National Park, which is hard National Park. You cannot hunt there. You gotta have a beare proof food container in your backpack, you gotta you know, all these The list goes on for rules.
It's the hard part, hard park.
So the preserve is technically part of the park, but it a lot has allowances for the general public to hunt. You know, they still got some some pretty silly rules. But you can hunt preserved the takeaways. You can hunt preserve land. You can't hunt hard park land generally.
You know, I'm a soft park man myself.
Oh I'm a.
The you guys got so many terms that like I'm just rattling off, and you know, I love it. I love it. But yeah, so when I hear when I'm talking to friends mine up there and I talk about like the hard part, you know, and I always look to people that I know have no idea what they're talking about, and I'm like, or if they're gonna ask what he's talking about, they never do.
No.
Well that and that like, I'm glad you asked that because with a lot of Alaskan issues. There's a big disconnect between understand like what some of the details and context of what goes on up there versus what the general sure outside as we call.
It, that's another term, the outside.
Yeah, like I'm a like, I'm a stranger in a strange land right now.
I saw their day that this country has. I'll tell my buddy Danny who's from Hawaii, Danny Bolton. I was telling them that this country hasn't effectively integrated Hawaiians and Alaskans yet because they're so bad. They're so bad at lower forty eight yard there, like, I don't give me the state that borders Illinois, I don't. I don't know.
Yeah, well I would be at that point if my kids weren't learning some geography.
Story and learn a thing or two about jo They got this.
States game that we've been playing, and yeah, luckily as a reference map. So anyway, so that's what a hard park versus soft park. Then you have wildlife refuges, which are in all all the parks and preserves are managed by the National Park Service. The US Fish and Wildlife Service manages refuge lands. And there's a ship pile of those.
About thirteen percent of the state, and that's been an issue we've spent a bunch I'm on covering over the years. Is the whip saw of the whip saw of the Feds overriding states wildlife management practices on refuge land ye meaning refuge and yeah, the whip saw of the Feds saying, well, we're gonna, we're gonna take away management practices you have traditionally exercised on portions of your land, like Obama brought it in, Trump brought it out.
That was the whole.
The most Yeah, it was.
It was like, it's such a yeah, so steer me back to sheep.
But this is all essential to understand this whole thing, which is a really complicated but interesting thing that I think. Remember earlier, I was saying, your kids are gonna hear a lot more about the dams and on the Columbia than you will, because your kids are probably gonna see a lot some of those dams come out. If you're listening. Now, that's just my crystal balling. My crystal balling is you're going to see that that what Tyler is talking about in Alaska is going to become more and more of an issue in the American West and elsewhere. Yeah, meaning this like this sort of going from an ethnic standpoint, who has access to.
You know well, and initially, you know when I was I was actually talking with Wayne about this the other day when they were first drafting a nilka, you know, because a nilka brings in subsistence use. Ye, And initially it was I Wayne said, initially the language was race oriented for subsistence use. And then they're not in our in our modern world like we that's not okay. And so they basically the primitive like search and replace with a location based or where you know where you live. So the funny story, I I actually was listening to that episode where you guys were talking about this, the latest back and forth.
Uh.
I was listening to it while I was sitting in a blind in Alberta over a bait pile, waiting for a pack of wolves. And I was interrupted by a pack of wolves that showed up. And despite my you know, my my delusions of being a frank laser, I only hit two of them. But uh so, the one thing you talked about the administration, the administrations I think do have something to do with it. But I think that it's more of a factor of what people in place at the agencies in Alaska are restricted from or allowed to do by an administration. Like I don't think Joe Biden's a mastermind, like yeah, decide there, like.
Yes, I'm den digging, you know, he's not like personally.
No, no. And but what it is is I think, well, in this case, it was the back of the back and forth is just exhausting. But you know when under under the Obama bomb administration, it was all preserve National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service managed lands and then it got reversed, and then this time I believe it was just the Park Service pushing it. But I think that's a matter of just the Park Service saying, look, we can get away with this right now, because they generally and I know there's a lot of good people work for the federal agencies to take with the grain of salt, but there's the axis of evil of sorts. The Park Service is kind of the most restrictive or worst one when it comes to allowing hunter access, and they've got a long history of let's say, managing to for minimum human interference with the landscape is like a politically correct way to put it, I think, And so they do that through regulation, you know, and some of it has you know, there's stuff you'd see in US Fish and Wildlife. But the key is, I think it depends. It's more depending on the people that are in place in different positions at these agencies in Alaska than an administration telling them.
But there is a there is a real trickle down because the heads of these agencies are appointed by the administration.
The Department, the Department of Interior, you know, Secretary of the Interior has does have a lot to do with it, and they'll know. I'm sure there's something.
In the head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Yeah for sure.
So in this all, this whole like appointed position thing trickles down to the Federal Subsistence Board and the issues like we're dealing with with them.
But we're gonna get into that.
Yeah, So that's where.
But you got to understand that this is great. Don't don't be embarrassed about the level of detail because it has a very complicated wildlife manage thing and it's educational.
Like sometimes I have to just take a break from it because it's it's just depressing an entire to keep up with all of it. It's and that's part of the tough thing about it. Like the fight is you can't. You can't, like it's too much for any one person to keep up with.
Like speaking of the fight, is this like while all this is going on, like is Alaska fishing games perspective? Like, man, this is just like not a fight we can win like that it's not.
Worth like they're they're trying, you know, like I think there are some I'm not wearing specifics of them, but there are, Like I know they have like lawsuits and they're like that's their only recourse, right, but their position is that it's illegal what the Feds are doing, that the state has title to all the wildlife and the responsibility for managing it. And it's just to me, looking at as each one of these federal closures rolls out, it just to me, it doesn't add up. And like we can get into that too, but like the A plus B equill see like does not equal see.
Well, we'll get to the get to the moves that are happening around doll sheep, so doll sheep, but also get into the you know, there's the issue of severe winners, severe winners, low numbers. But then there's also the suspicion that that's being there's also the suspicion that that's being like exploited for political game.
I think it absolutely is, but so doll sheet and like, you know, backing up into the doll sheet management, I did recently get to go to a presentation kind of on the status of everything and some of the history by one of our current cheap research biologists. He you know, that he laid out the history of since you know, since the data was being recorded of cheap hunter numbers and harvest. Harvest is basically the only hard data like that we could find in a lot of those years because it was before surveys, and surveys is another is another interesting kind of sidebar to that. But so cheap have had a lot you know, the like cariboos especially, they'll have population swings or any other big game animal in a like relatively natural state, their populations oscillate and sheep are very sensitive to weather conditions. They can't they don't dig for their food in the snow, so they're they're very dependent on wind blown slopes for their feed in the especially late winter, and populations have been like you know, there was a big crash in the third I think the thirties, and there's been isolated just total crashes. In nineteen ninety. There's an interesting diagram he gave of showing the uh, the number of sheep and sheep hunters climbing, climbing, climbing basically to double what it is now of harvests and sheep hunters. Wasn't really yeah, I mean it was well in this year. The last two years have been really low harvests, but uh, you know, the numbers climb, climb, climb of hunters and harvest. And then nineteen ninety it just like there was a huge crash in the central Alaska Range in nineteen ninety.
Oh, and you'll see that sheep population crash reflected in the harvest now and in participation as well.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, Like now there's there's half the sheep hunters participating now than there was like three or four years ago, and it was half the sheep or no, yeah, I mean it's the numbers have taken a hit. So the winters between twenty twenty two, so twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and then the following winter both had like real like pretty state wide tough condition winter conditions and it hit hammered on a lot of sheet populations. And it's not it's not great news, like they're the sheet populations are down pretty much statewide, and.
There's there's an additional there's an additional irritant about this as you're talking about the way populations can recover, but uh, it takes ten years ago trophy, Well, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean, it's it's like takes I mean, you you take a white tail buck, you can have a smoker white tail buck in four years. Yeah, but it's it's a slow process show.
And you know, and the way, you know, the full curl look under what we'd call full curl management, you know, whereas a ram is legal to kill once he's full curl or eight years old, and there's some other criteria, but basically eight year old rams are at the time in their life when they become dominant and take over most of the breeding, and then their mortality just shoots through the roof once they're eight Steve has said it at their and then they're dead. Basically once they turn eight, they're on borrowed time though.
Yeah, it's no, like there's no like old man period. No, No, it's like on top of your game if you like, if it'd be like if dudes died at like thirty eight.
I just turned thirty eight, so I yeah.
So Tyler, like, with these cheap declines, is there anyone like pointing finger at a finger at hunter harvest as any kind of impact or is that like not?
So that's yes and no, yes and no. So that that does play into some of the excuses used for closing these areas. And they're like some areas got hit harder than others in some areas already have been experiencing a ton of pressure compared soul like for the amount of hunters that are out there, Like, yeah, there's fewer legal rams running around, you know what Wayne Heimer the fishing game, Like all those biologists they and they are doing studies right now. Start they started a study this year to compare a hunted area versus a non hunted area that are basically side by side to compare this ram mortality. So some of these people are taking Geist's theory and what Heimer kind of verified that if you remove all the mature rams from the landscape. As you know, we're in Heimer's study area in central Lascarens during the three quarter curl days, like there was not any full curl rams running around really, and they observed like a higher mortality in younger rams, understandably because they did more. They're more disorganized, they're less you know, less Uh well, I don't even know that they're less able to cope with the circumstance the breeding, because the older rams tip off pretty pretty quickly too. But there, you know, nobody's buying it, you know. And the position is that hunting under a full curl reg regulation has zero impact on that recovery has zero impact. And even Heimer stuff showed it because they went from three quarter curl to know, with a lot of resistance, to seven eighths curl, which was kind of a compromise between three quarters and full and then they moved a full curl. And then you know, people were afraid that you make these restricts, these restrictions, there's gonna be a lot fewer harvestable rams. Well, after a few years, boom, then you're at a different level and it's a lot healthy in like this. I've only ever known that world during the full curl Yeah, me too, the full Curl era. You know, it's and I still kind of think of myself as a pretty young sheep hunter. I've been doing it for twenty years. Every year and I just feel every year I feel like there's more I got to learn about them. But uh so the hunt like it's in the federal side. People will argue, which I'll get into that. So you have the Federal Subsistence Board, which I think is kind of the more they get, the more the box has opened up and they can and you know, people are seizing these opportunities. So the Northwest art at Caribou Herd, I don't know if you guys have talked about that, that closure, which that's a closure that doesn't make any sense. They closed it to non locals because and that's a whole other layered thing. They closed it as non local hunters because.
It's basically like a quadrant of the state.
Oh yeah, huge huge. I think they didn't get it in the northern twenty unit twenty six, but a huge area. So they they we've on it.
Yeah, I've on a carribo that are closed now.
Yeah, the uh, the excuse was because the population is in decline, and it hit that, you know, their survey conveniently with a margin of error or the degree of certainty. The survey hit it on just under two hundred thousand animals, which a whole other entity called the work you know that Northwest Artcurred Working Group has in their kind of they have like a rubric for different management levels and intensity of management and suggestions. They're just like a consultation group made up of a lot of different parties that can make recommendations for management. They don't have management powers, but so it hit this two hundred thousand level and you're getting proposals from this you know, regional council that makes recommendations to the Federal Subsistence Board, which it's like a it's like a carbon copy sort of of the States model where they have regional Advisory account committees. These ones are councils. So they get this proposal to and they've happened, but they get this proposal to close the area to non local hunters because you know, they cite because the herds in decline. You so in theory, you know a reason would be to recover numbers, and because they assert that non local hunters are impacting and diverting the caribou's migration, which I wrote a story on this. I talked to the National Park Service biologists who did a lot of this study up there, and he said, there's no evidence to support it. And the driver, you know, if you learn anything about caribou herds and like a lot of animals, the drivers of populations are the mature cows. You know, mature cows have calves and caf recruitment. Those are the two most important things. So non local hunters kill about three hundred bulls per year, whereas they estimate they don't know, they estimate subsistence harvest at about like ten to fourteen thousand animals, which you know, like that subsistence resource is important. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking that, but just the equation doesn't make sense. And so they they and but they close it to non locals. They don't even make any recommendations to stop shooting cows and caps. So it just doesn't add up.
It's like that you're like, you you're taking advantage of the situation to remove an annoyance. Yeah, that has nothing to do with the resource.
And you can you know, I could get my ten, I could get My life would be better.
My life would be better if there weren't non locals here.
Yeah, and this and this is getting a little and I understand those sentiments, and they exist in a lot of places.
Out there, but it's ubiquitous.
You could get a little tinfoil hattie. But I've been told by guys like this that have been around, had seen this whole process that you know, you're not crazy to suspect that there's some interplay between the agencies and these committees and crafting these proposals. Oh you know, so and it gets worse. So the Caribo one happens, then, you know, all of a sudden cheaper in trouble.
So just to just to put like a very clear point on it, just the people that are follow who don't follow this issue, you're normally chinliehud. Okay, if you look at a normal wildlife resource, like from a lower forty eight perspective, you look at a normal wildlife resource, you might imagine the pie being divided up between what we'll call what they call recreational hunters and fishermen and commercial use. Okay, so let's say we're gonna go out to the East coast. We're gonna go to the East coast, Chesapeake Bay. We're gonna look at like some fishery. It'd be that there's the recreational harvest and the commercial harvest right, and those two on some resource, and those two entities are gonna be at odds. They're gonna be just generally gonna be arguing over who gets a bigger piece of the pie. Right, the commercial the recreational industries are gonna fight, like, we want more fish. You're messing up our fishing. You're inflicting our ability to make a livelihood. This tension always exists all over the place. In the in the Rocky Mountain less than lower forty eight, there's there's constant tension between you know, it's not ugly necessarily, but there's tension between outfitter okay and and non outfitted. So it's a it's a minor issue. But there's outfitters who are like, we would like to have more permits so we can do more guiding and have more clients. And then non guided hunters are saying, we would like to have greater animal tag allocation go to us and not peeling off so much for the guides or the conflict could be. We have you have state residents and non residents, and that's the sort that's attention, meaning state residents. Like you're giving you're letting too many non residents come in and hunt.
It's impacting side x percent of tags for non residents.
Yeah, like why I've been applying for a sheep tag for thirty years? How could a non resident get a sheep tag? And when I live here, I never got a sheep tag. All these sources attention. In Alaska, you have this additional layer of subsistence, so you know, the same way you have like local non local, commercial, recreational, you have this element of people that live in rural areas having a right to subsist and having a different set of regulations that would govern your fishing practices. For instance, where Seth Seth and I have shacks in southeast Alaska and we fish under a set of regulations, and but if if we were to move there and live there and make that our legal address, we would also fish under completely different right. We can set long lines for hal.
Of it right there and keep species that we can't keep.
We set like one hundred hooks, skate for black cod whatever, and right now you're allowed eighty year, but you could set you have unlimited black cod harvest if you live there. So it's just this added source attention. Oh yeah, for sure, and like like like fighting over the pie.
Yeah, and it's you know, as an example of how silly some of it is, Like it has nothing to do with how much wild game you eat. And I will you know, I say again, like I think protecting with your income, protecting the subsistence lifestyle and and just the ability to hunt is important. But I can't hunt spring waterfowl. I live right outside of Fairbanks. If I move thirty miles down the road, I can hunt spring waterfowl when they're all nice and fully plumed up. And it's a sort of subject. And I'm not even a duck hunter.
So at high level, like many issues, at high level, the sort of bifurcation of subsistence and non subsistence makes you get it makes tons of sense. But like anything, when you get down into like like, hm, you mean so if I move across the road, yeah, yeah, literally, and all I could make I could make I could have a salary of a million dollars a year and I could move across the road, I'd be subsistence.
Yep, yeah, exactly.
But I'm dirt poor on this side of the road and I'm not subsistent.
No, that's exactly how it is. And to complicate that, well, there's what FEDS consider subsist us and state. The state considers all residents of subsistence user, but they generally are. Their goal is to satisfy subsistence needs of state residents through the sport, hunting and fishing regulations. So they closed this, uh, the you know, the the northwest start occurred, you know, Unit twenty three for cariboo and moose. It's not completely closed.
Way, my big, big wrap up, my big explanation. Sorry, no, no, no, you brought me back on track. Okay, So, but like I mean thousands of square miles right, oh.
Yeah, yeah, I can't remember. At one point I added it up. It was like sixty million acres.
Or something like that. No, so, meaning so you're what you said.
They closed it for moose too, Yeah, for for moose, moose, and caribou for non locals during Basically it's not year round because like I in the winter could go up there and hunt caribou, but during the time when everybody is wanting to travel up there and hunt.
In the fall.
Yeah and uh, and they say moose are on the decline.
Decline out there. But in you know, carent had had given me an article by Seth Seth Cantner, who I think he lives up on the Kobuk and he has you know, has some books and like he offers like his perspective and you hear this a lot, and like the anecdotal stuff and observations over time I think are important. But you also have to look at the a larger context. You know, me and me in an outsider and if you know, I can understand someone living there who for years and years and years, there's thousands of caribou came right through this down this trail every single year. We could count on it, like I would feel very strongly about it too. But being on the outside, not really having any any fingers in that pie, you look at historically like, well that heard wasn't always that big, and in nineteen seventy five there was only seventy five thousand of them. I think it was the roughly date and number that I looked at because there you look at that. That working group has some newsletter publications and you can, you know, pretty easily skim valuable like details from that and some of the historical context. But they you know, they even have in some of their newsletters they have quotes from some of the elders that talk about remembering when there was no caribou out there and they just had reindeer, and then the caribou started showing up and pulling the reindeer. They would start shooting all the caribou that came because they didn't want to take the reindeer with them, and they did. But there there never used to be caribou come out there, at least for you know, X period of time. There never there never was caribou that came out on Seward Peninsula like that out of that herd. And the Park Service biologist Kyle Jolie I think was his name, he told me that, you know, because I kind of posed the questions like, well, what do you what do you think when you're or me? And he and he was very tactful in how he answered, not like definitively, but just giving me some context. You know, I'm like, well, do you know half expecting it to be climate change, because that's what a lot of people will will dive on to, you know, as you guys have been talking about that's the popular monetarily beneficial culprit.
But it's it's a catch all and is deserving of a conversation. It is, it's become a catch all to explain everything, and it doesn't explain It doesn't always explain everything.
No, And the way he put it was he said, think about this, he said, you know, he didn't blame climate change. He said, think about this that herd changes in size and number said. When a caribou herd, you know, grows exponentially, it expands its range. When it shrinks, the range change the range, and migration patterns shrink too. So that's just you know, in a lot of these issues, like the overall length of time, you look at and context. And I've learned a ton just by you know, reading about some of the cheap, cheap management history. But so this closure happens, and then we have a couple of bum winners and the sheep are hurting, and then up pops another proposal, which you know, I want to be cared because I don't know the guy, and I don't want to be careful. I want to be careful, not to not to just sling mud. But on paper, the Central Brooks Range closure is the result of one guy and he, you know, he's kind of a leader of a small community, and they're in Wiseman, and their council wrote this proposal that is not scientific at all. Basically says, I drive the road and all the and all the mature rams are gone. There's nothing left. And you know, and I think they have they have a pretty you know, it's right next to gates of the Arctic National Park and this is this is bordering hard Park National park land where only subsistence hunters can hunt. And I don't think there's not very many of them that do it, only like in isolate like at an Anactotic pass. You know, I'm sure those guys, those guys subsistence hunt some sheep. But and so they formalize this proposal, and the Federal Subsistence Board passes it, closing the whole Central Brooks Range on federal land. There's some small state land portions, but most of it just yeah, it locked up. And the only reason given is, you know that the sheep are on the brink and they need you know, we surveyed them, which the state and the FEDS do their aerial surveys differently, like that's a whole entire another subject. But they close all this up, which includes I mean, it's it's the most like user friendly kill. I killed my first sheep hiking in up there on that path in two thousand and four when I was eighteen, and so they closed like the best like walk in access opportunity. It's not that walking guys are killing a bunch of sheep. The success rates low just in general, and there's some areas that people will fly in that kind of within that you see, yeah, yeah, you know, but the opportunity is there. And they also close the five the corridor, which extends five miles on either side of the Dalton Highway. That's bow hunting only. And that's the heart of what like where he's talking about up there's no legal there's no mature rams left at least, you know, that's the way his proposal.
Reach for context like how many sheep, how many dollars sheep are in Alaska, and how many get killed by hunters a year?
So I couldn't I don't know that the like current and historic population estimates, but I can tell you at up to a peak in nineteen ninety, I want to say, it was like a couple thousand sheep getting killed a year, and then it's gone down to this year. They don't know that it's even gonna break four hundred.
Are you serious?
Yeah? But with that and you know, and it's been like the situation is not great. It's it's a hard time to be a sheep hunter in Alaska. But the relationship between there's a linear relationship between the number of hunters and the heart and the number of harvest, you know, uh Wayne, in my discussion with him the other day, he talked to one of the Wildlife troopers who you know, take it with a grain of salt, but their impression was that the success rate in Unit twenty A, which is Central Alaska Range, you know, it's it's a very hard hunted area, that the success rate was relatively pretty much like normal, you know, and the and the age structure of rams that's been getting killed is the same as it always has been.
My brother who lives in alask and he likes to hunt sheet he said, when you look at harvest data. A lot of times it tells you more about the weather than it does sheet.
But absolutely it can.
Meaning you know, we've hunted up there in years when you just have these massive systems that just make poor visibility.
Oh yeah.
And he's like, you'll you'll then see that reflected, and you'll see that reflected, and how many rams are getting no for sure broad and you can't and you look and you want to try to draw these sort of like population trends out of things that could have been like it was cloudy.
Yeah, or it was smoky, yeah, Like we had a lot of late wildfires this year and a lot of country was smoky. But over time, like the data, it's pretty consistent. It's not like an enormous amount of younger rams are getting clipped off or sub legal rams, Like the percentages are all pretty much in line with what they have been historically.
Do you think it would make it all if the stuff that is getting closed to if the stuff is getting closed to hunters, do you think it'd make it like this discussion of moot point, if it actually if sheep numbers improved, then they actually opened this landscape back up again, or do you think this is just like a play, and that's how it is now.
I think it's a play. I think theoretically if it in most sheep hunters, any serious sheep hunter, if there was strong evidence to show that, hey, if we stop hunting these sheep right now, we're gonna like the population is gonna recover quicker now that and you get into it, like you have to, you have to kind of define what you're talking about.
Because because they are still hunting.
Yeah, because well because talking to talking to a biologist whose interest is like maximum sustainable yield, you know, just wanting to have huntable populations and looking out for the well being in general of the of the sheep as a whole. He's gonna be talking about one thing. The guy, you know, the one of like the some of the very hardcore sheep hunters up there that are like intensively like self managing sheep they find and have been, you know, in spots, have been for years. You know, the guys that are saying like I don't want to shoot a ram unless he's ten years old and has reached his potential or he's genetically inferior, like, you know, they get really into it. You know, there may not be with a lot of pressure under the full Carol rule. There may not ever be a huge abundance of giant rams, but there's gonna be huntable rams, and even a lot of Like like Wayne and a guy named Joe Want have been doing age recording like age studies for harvested rams to show that in the you know, part of this age structure thing that if a rams harvested when he was ten, he was legal the year before, and he was legal the year before that to kind of get an you kind it's got an extrapolation, but you kind of have an idea of all right, well, how many more legal rams were out there after the season that they've just been able to pretty much punch holes in the argument that we're killing every ram is assusing we're clipping them all off.
Let me explain thing you said, because this is interesting too. A RAM can become legal, So in the general management area is a ram can be legal three ways. He gets full curl, and what that means is if you're looking at him in profile, his horn describes a three hundred and sixty degree circle. So like the imagine a curled RAMS horn, the tip comes around and appears from a side view to join up to the base, or he's eight years old, and that would be that you count annually because they don't always grow. They don't always grow in a tight curl like they can grow in his wide spy or they're never gonna hit full curl or not never. But yeah, they'll be eight years old.
But not full curl.
And the only way you know he's eight is there's these things called annually. They have a growth ring. And if you know what you're doing, and you really need to know what you're doing, like to shoot a ram off of growth rings, you gotta it's risky, you gotta study, You got to look at a lot of sheep and really know how to use optics and all that. But you can, theoretically, and now that's beyond theoretically, you can count growth rings and kill a ram that's eight years old. Thirdly, that ram can can braid off or snap off the tips of his horns, and it has to do it in a way that there's a thing on a ram's horn called lamb tip, so it's its first year growth. It used to not be clearly explained, but it's clearly explained in the regulation, it has to grind away or snap off that whole tip. If he does it on both sides, he's never gonna become full curl. Then he becomes legal. But young ones don't really do.
That, yeah or yeah, or you can't count on him because you could never fairly judge whether they would have been full curl or not. Like there's some slash like but yeah.
Generally, and that's called it double.
Broomer, and it's you know a lot of times older rams will be like that.
So so what Tyler's talking about is if you go and you look and be like people are shooting full curl rams, there's still legal that there's still legal lams on landscape. It meaning if you shoot a full full curl and he's and you count his age rings, his growth rings, he's got ten annually, he's been legal and not dead, yeah for two years.
And they'll also they'll also measure horn segments to show, you know, to show that, hey, this ram has been full curl, because you can look at him and judge like how long. But yeah, so so he.
Slipped through the cracks as they might look at a ram and be like he was managing to slip through the cracks as a full curler. Yeah. Yeah, so every ram that's full curls not getting killed.
No, not not not even remotely. You know, there may be on a macro level, there may be this creek there's no legal rams in right now. But on a large scale, yeah, that that regulation protects that, you know, younger age structure, younger rams generally, and uh, you know that like you get some weird sometimes, you know, you get a real young ram that just has tremendous growth. And I've told myself, I don't want to shoot another seven year old ram. But if there's a seven year old ram that I think is over forty inches, are probably gonna pop him, I'll make that sacrifice.
You're not interested in a seven year old ahead of tight That's just.
That's just legal.
When uh, when these closures are happening on federal land, what what's happening on state land with Alaska fishing game? Like are there have they adjusted their management style?
They're still you know, they're no, their management style is the same, and they're like there's different issues that can be contentious, you know, like gout, you know, guide a different guy out on state land Outfitters are not held to it. They're an exclusive area where only they can outfit there. So you get some conflict like that. But the takeaways that that you know in these areas for decades that full curl through a lot of big population swings and crashes and booms, has shown that it allows the sheep to recover back to that healthy level just by you know, you may you may, you may have hard hunting for a few years, but you have the opportunity to go and harvest a serp like a ram that is a surplus to the population, and not feel bad about it because you're not You're not having any any sensible effect on the population itself.
I want to hit another point here, which which I think is a little bit to the crux of the issue. You've spoken on it a bit, but I'm gonna tee this this comment up by I talk about something that happens in our own state here in Montana in the early two thousands, around two thousand, there's a region of the state, like the state's broken up in these seven The state of Montana's broken up into seven regions, and then each region is broken up into all kinds of units, so they can they can manage wildlife on a very micro level, and he's in you know, a unit. They use the term union district district. Sorry, regions are broken up into district. The district could be like a drainage, right, so you have broadly, it's the state of Montana, six hundred and forty six miles east to west. The state's divided into seven regions, and each of those regions has dozens of districts. Yeah, sometimes dozens of districts, meaning there's micro management occurring. In two thousand, two thousand and one, two thousand and two, in Region seven, they were giving out something like thirteen thousand pronghorn tags. Every one of those thirteen thousand people that would draw up prong horn tag could buy up to two dough tags pronghorned dotags. So in those years, I was going out pronghorn hunting usually with three tags in my pocket. Numbers are down, They're not down because the habitat destructure down because of weather issues, predation, weather like variables, right, not like not like wholesale destruction of habitat. And what is it now, seven thousand, nine thousand, Okay, no one's walking around with two dough tags in their pocket. Some number are walking around with a dough tag in their pocket, but they've cut almost in half the allocation. Now I'm not sitting here saying they're stripping my rights. It's like, I have a lot of faith that these allocations are reflective of the situation on the ground, Meaning I have state and I have faith in my state Fishing Game agency that my state fishing Game agency is doing a a generally great job of counting wildlife, making an assessment about what the harvest rate can be, and doing it. And I would look at be like, hey, my prong horn hunting opportunities, you know they've been cut in half, sure, but but go.
On, Well it's it's easy to look at it and be like, well, what they've cut dough tags? Right, So I feel like and general tags in general, the general tag is either sex. You can't just go buy do go kill those wholesale anymore, which is how you keep numbers where you want them, right.
Yeah, But what the point I'm making is there's been a massive reduction in the amount of prong horn hunting opportunities, but it's reflective of the situation on the ground. Meaning if we get like prime conditions and prong horned numbers. Skyrocket. I have a lot of faith that tag allocation, well, skyrocket. What we're talking about here with this is like is like a The problem here is people don't have that faith because rather than being like, oh, it's going to a draw, it's going to this is going to it's just like shutting down huge chunks of ground. Ye, And there's not a lot of faith that they're gonna turn it back on No's and it winds up being like one of these situations where like as you demonstrate non resident caribou hunters up in that northwest quadrant of the state killing three hundred bulls or something like that, it's insignificant, meaning someone's looking and they're saying, there's a thing I want to happen. I'm gonna use this. I'm gonna bullshit everybody and use this thing I want to happen and make a thing I want to happen happen. But I'm gonna do it under a dubious justification, meaning I'm gonna do it by talking about something other than what I'm talking about.
I think that's exactly what's happening.
And you don't. It's hard to have faith that that sheep numbers will improve and that five years so now they're gonna be like welcome back hunters.
Well and even and it was a two year closure, well, I mean, anything could happen, obviously, but I don't think anybody's expecting it to open up because it's not. And people hunters tend to, I think, you know, and cheap like we tend to want to grab it any solution that's going to flip a switch and make and bring it back, make it right immediately. And it's not going to happen like that. It's going to take a long time. But just by the nature of it.
Yeah, the only way to really find out on the issue is the wait and get out of these sort of like dull sheep dark ages and have some recovery and then stand back and say, okay, but if you're looking better, what's going to happen now?
But I think as far as if you're looking at what what we can look at to justify doing this or not doing this, We've been through cheap crashes and had even even through like more you know, liberal hunting.
Strategy them and you know, like it just the data that we have show in your implies shows whatever you want to say, concludes that hunting is just not doesn't have an impactful doesn't play an impactful part on the overall sheep as a whole.
Yeah, meaning you got you like, when you send a hunter into the mountains, that hunter can only get one thing. He can get a full curl ram. Yep, A full crew ram is a dead man walking exactly, not the thing that's driving that population.
The last number I can find is like roughly forty thousand sheep. And if they killed four hundred.
Yeah, and I'm sure it's not right. Yeah, No, it's a very small percentage of the sheep population that gets killed. And uh so if one guy you know, And this is why it's all very suspicious to me, and I think there's some cahoots. And my personal opinion is that the Federal Subsistence Board had their mind made up before they ever even got the proposal. Sure, you know, at the recommendation of one guy who's just says I drive the.
Road, and don't I've read writing about his reports.
Yeah, so it does. It doesn't add up. And you want to go a step further. This year twenty twenty three, a few days before the season, the Feds surveyed the Yukon Charle of the forty Mile Country Tannana Uplands, and the Park Service comes out with this announcement that they're requesting an emergency closure of the Federal preserve lands on the Charlie River in the forty Mile Country. And because they're mighty person and it was uh and it was a you know, as result before there's sheep, yeah for sheep, honey, because they're because their survey numbers were so low. And I'll just hint at Wayne Heimer, who's done flowing a lot of sheep surveys, and any guy who's flying surveys or if you're flying around a cub looking for sheep, you are not seeing all the sheep that are there. Wayne, like he you know, told me estimates Wayne that in his sheep surveys he figured he was seeing at most sixty percent of the sheep that were there. So there's that tidbit. There's just a lot of hard side of a mountain. Yeah, yeah, you know, And they're like I can sit at a mount look at a mountain, or up a drainage all day and not see a damn thing. And at eight o'clock in the evening.
Boop, sheep, sheep, sheep.
You know.
So it's fallible, but they they do this survey imperfect, but it's like the best thing you can do, yeah, for sure. And uh so they survey this and you and for people that don't know that Yukon Charlie area is kind of it's marginal sheep country. There's spots of sheep country and the population is historically like sparse, like it's there's been cheap there for as long as anyone has known. But they're not like concentrated. It's not like the last age.
You'd think that there weren't. Yeah, I remember being surprised with Pilot's pointing and saying, like I saw a ram there one time. That's a bit it had to walk through the timber to get.
There, well, and and that and something to consider when you're saying, you know, you've seen the conclusions they come to with this survey. Those sheep are sparse, and they're down in the trees a lot, and you just find them like talking, you know, I know old timers have hunted and flown it for fifty years, and like they're there. You'll find them in the weirdest spots. So you have all that to consider, but we need to close this area, and it averages one point four rams per year killed in the entire area.
Basically, you can they can say they saved that.
Yeah, it's again like there's nothing and not only not only well it is because not only it's an emergency closure, not that. I don't believe that they give much about public input anyway, other than they have to sit and listen to it. Sometimes no public input. They just closed it.
And it was funny my body flying through that country one time, my buddy showed me a spot where he picked up two dead heads.
Yeah, because he.
Saw all the blood and snow. Yeah, and some wolves that killed two rams. It's funny that little incident was more rams than hunters killed. Yeah.
Yeah, How it is.
How much of an impact I mean this subjec like, do you think wolves are playing on these sheep?
I think predation is is certainly an impact in fishing game is considering how how they do you know, you talk to you know, and and one of the things like that people ought to keep in mind. They closed the fishing game. State fishing game went along with closing the entire western half of the Brooks Range a few years ago due to you know, they had a weather event and sheep were low, and you know, at least, you know, you kind of got to take everything with a grain of salt. But you talk to some old timers, you talk who remember, well, all the outfitters up there used to go airplane the heck out of wolves every spring. Whether it was legal or not at the time, they just did it. And you know, whether that's the reason there was a big boom of sheep out there or not, you know, like you can take it for what it's worth, but it does play a factor, but it's it's kind of a case by case thing. You know, some coyotes in the Alaska Ranger a big sheep press editor, but brad winling our sheep. You know that current research biologist talked about a study over a couple of years that a guy did observing lambs. One year, the leading cause of mortality was drowning because there was a lot of runoff, you know, and then the next year it was golden eagles. Yeah, you know, so it's it all plays a factor for sure, and I think you know, predator control is the one button that could feasibly pushed, although I don't think it would in every case, would be would make.
The difference, It's not necessarily.
But so they closed. They closed it like a few days before the season for basically and there's not even an established subsistence sheep hunt in there. So why is the subsistence board closing an area that doesn't have a subsistence sheep hunt? They said, for you know, possible future subsist you know, just some bullshit reason and the subsistence to.
Keep to keep some aspirational sheep hunter from basically wasting his time in the area.
Yeah, yeah, you know, and uh and you uh you know, hey, when I man, I was on a roll, lost my train, you're doing so we uh you know, you close this area and uh boy, I'll get it. Reminds me of a sheep hunting presentation I gave one time where my computer quit working. I had, Yeah, it was sweating it then, but so where was that we you know, they closed this area. So the subsistence board, you might think, oh, well, that's like some like democratically elected type of thing. All this federal Subsistence Board is the heads of I believe, five agencies Park Service, Fission, Wildlife BLM, Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs. And then I think it's three people that they appoint or someone at interior points. So the voting majority of the Federal Subsistence Board making these decisions is just the agencies. It's just them doing what they want to do.
Essentially, this is my this is my last question on this subject, and this is like total gut. Do you think it's being driven Do you think it's being driven by anti hunting sentiment like what we're seeing in Colorado, what we're seeing in Washington, like by an animal rights agenda, or do you think it's being driven by a agenda of uh, I don't want to deal with other people.
I think I think it's a little bit of both, but the UH. And it goes back to this seemingly long standing mode of regulating to keep people, like for regulating for minimal human use of the landscape. You know, there was a excuse me, Dave's killer bread coming back to get me, Jill you But so like years I just an anecdote years ago, I remember one of the the refuge manager for Anwar was trying to ban vibrant bootsoles in antwar because they tear up the tundra. Hmm, when the impeliots, it's just still.
Get Did you get anywhere with that?
No? But no he did not, but got it.
Yeah. Like there's like a like a sentiment like that that like to look at the landscape and see human however ephemeral, yeah, and non permanent, but like to see that level of human use is sort of like falls outside of what they feel is the best.
Yeah. I I think that's that's probably the biggest way, which would be like a total preservation and it's a preservationist, you know. That's why you see kind of a tearing of it. You know, the Park Service is the quote unquote worst than you know, fish wild life then b LM unless you're unless you're a small time minor.
But but but hunting isn't you know, I don't even think like like the kind of hunting we're talking about isn't incompatible with like unless you're one hundred percent preservations hunting isn't incompatible with the preservations perspective.
You're preaching to the choir man.
But but I want, but I want to have time to I want to have time to jump into our thing. Give me your take. Give me your take on what should happen with.
Anwar as far as the oil drilling stuff.
Give me your take on how how people in your view, how should people sort of conceptualize anwar, and what's your take on what should happen in ant war.
You know, I'm not even convinced at this point that that we need to or should drill it. I'm kind of somewhere in the middle, you know, kind of undecided. I don't see an imminent need to drill it right now.
So you just you mean, from a national security perspective, from economy, oil prices, I think there's I think in Alaska.
Alaska is a resource state for sure, and there's a balance to be struck between development of those resources and what we want to keep as untouched or is what we perceive it to be untouched, you know, like the Aryan ant war that they you know, is kind.
Of up for so ant wir just just clarify Arctic National Wildife PRESU And so this there's been a long simmering the state.
People from the state have been pushing to open this area ten O two they call it, which was set aside as for potential oil exploration and drill and eventual drilling.
And I.
I don't want to talk out of my ass because I don't remember a lot of the details. But there was a book on the creation of ann War and how that area was not originally supposed to be part of it. It could have been folded in there with a nilka. I don't know, but the ten o two area, yeah, the ten o two so, and that area was our It was completely seismic surveyed in the eighties, like as a lot of Alaska people think of Alaska as being completely untouched. Man, there's seismic lines running everywhere. Yeah, and uh so straight straight yeah, well, excuse.
Me, Tyler got into a bread seed stuff in his throat.
It's ironic. We got a cop and then we got a coffin shaped table here, so as and as uh well, my good buddy and hunting partner, I call him doctor Frank Schultz. He's not really a doctor, but that's a whole nother story.
He was.
We recently discussed he would talk to someone who was actually I think it was there one of their family members were actually participated in this statewide survey. You know, seismic survey lines where they in the winter they wait for the ground to freeze and drop the dozer blade and go ye. But different, different kind of subjects. So I think the important thing, whether we end up drilling it or not drilling it, is just to look at a little there's a little more context around than what the general public knows. You know, you get a lot of or back when it when it was like kind of the hot button issue, you get a lot of like emotionally driven pictures and sure arguments made to be like well, you know, any reasonable person would oppose this, but you know they'll they'll say, like the caribou of great concern, which they are, but you know, there's these theories that it's gonna death to make the porcupine caribou herd if we if we move into that area, well there's drill pads like fifty miles away, and the the data or any like data we could look at fifty miles away, or I guess Pruto itself is more farther than that, but right next door. The central art occurred exploded during the expansion of prudo bait oil fields in the pipeline, and there was a lot of worries. There's a lot of worries about what would happen with them. I mean they built like sections of the pipeline that go underground for Caribo to cross, because that was a big concern. They didn't know what they'd never seen anything.
Like what they would do with the overhead structure.
And as you know, time has shown they don't care, and they'll in fact like flock to the pipeline and a lot of the oil field buildings because the windows run under them.
It's like it's like you almost take it like a like a propaganda photo that came out of that time would be Caribou getting in the shade of the pipeline.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. The love it, you know, and even even the you know Jim Reardon who wrote Alaska's wolf Man and wrote a lot of a lot of stories for Outdoor Life over the years. I have the original copy.
That's one of my favorite books of all time.
Oh me too, It's it's phenomenal. So one of he wrote an article kind of pre pipeline, like wondering what what the heck's going to happen? Yeah, yeah, it's a it was a two part story. I've got the original copies of them.
But uh, but the caribou that I mean, if caribou did well in prude Obey with the oil, it wasn't because of the oil. It was just because it's a cyclical Yeah, I think so, I guess someone could look at say it didn't have it didn't have obvious negative impacts on an already cyclical thing, and in fact we saw the up down cycle continued. Yeah, I think the I think you still saw good peaks, you know.
Yeah, I think at the very least you could say that that has shown that they're not incompatible.
Yeah.
So there's you know, and that's one of the big one of the big arguments. And in kind of looking researching this stuff, I uh, a guy had sent me a I think it was Environmental Impacts Impact Environmental Impact study by the American Ecological Society, and their assertion was that the three D seismic survey that would have to happen would be the riskiest part of the whole because they've got to roll this equipment around. But they did concede that that the environmental regulations for conducting that are so strict that they should it should keep you know, some of these things they're worried about happening from happening. And that's another thing that people don't understand quite how restrictive the rules are, even in existing oil fields and stuff. I haven't worked up there a bunch back in my my pipe covering days. I was on jobs up there and saw some of it. But a guy put put it to me was pretty good illustration. He said, if you're up you know you're up there, and you have a half million dollar piece of equipment, and a seagull lands and makes a nest on there, you can't touch that piece of equipment till that seagull's gone.
Mm hmmm.
It doesn't matter if you got to get another one shipped up there to use it for the time being, it doesn't matter. You can't touch it, you can't interact with it. Where's a reasonable person to be like, all right, sorry about your luck this year, mister Siegell. You know, I guess it would be missus seagull.
But miss.
I had to read strange times these days.
Did the Willow did the fact that they expanded into that Willow oil field? Did that take pressure off of the ant war conversation about whether or not to move into antwar it may have, you know.
And I think a lot of the uh, I think a lot of ant war is just like used for political jostling as much as anything. I don't know that there's like a very real, like realistic possibility that it's gonna happen anytime soon, And I don't know that it's needed, you know.
So so you feel it's like that argument is chilled out right now?
Oh yeah, for sure, you know, there's always going to be people that want it, but whether and there's always going to people be people who don't want it no matter what. But whether it even is like a relevant issue right now, Like I think there's a big it's a it's a in my opinion, it's kind of a distraction from I think the loss of hunting opportunity that's just like cascading throughout the state. Now, I was more of an important issue to me.
Yeah, I worry about both those things. And the reason I worry about them in tandem, and I don't think it's like I worry about them both, but I worry about them both from the same perspective, is that I want there to be as much wildlife on the ground as possible, and I want hunters and anglers to have maximum access to that wildlife. So the restrictions, the sort of the seemingly arbitrary kind of conniving restrictions on hunting access bothers me, as does the loss of wildlife habitat.
Ye.
So if I look at like from my perspective, if I look at a thing where you have a chunk of land that's not exploited and it's cordoned off, and there's a basic understanding of it being unexploited, even outside of any like super detailed understanding of where the boundary lines and how the boundary lines are drawn and any fuzziness about that, I would just look and say, like I will look from my perspective and say, theoretically, even though I'm even though I might not understand every nuance of every drainage and all that, I would say, if there's chunks of ground that aren't touched, I celebrate not touching them.
Yeah, And that's and that's a logical thing.
In terms of just maintaining in terms of maintaining wildlife habitat. Because however you play, I don't think I like toy with the global perspective but I more imagine, like I look sort of my perspective as very American, like like the United States of America, right, And of course you know, I pay extra concern around my immediate area, and I do a lot of hunting in a particular state. So I look at the wildlife politics in that state. I'm not in all asking, but I look at it as a place I love. It's part of a country that I love. And so I look at a thing like a wire, I'm like, man, I don't I don't want to mess with it. I don't want messic I don't want to mess with any of the areas we have that aren't developed. Yeah, Like, and it's just it's just for me, it's as simple. It's just as simple as if there's big chunks of ground that aren't developed. I just hate to see him developed. Yeah, because I think that down the road one hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, I won't be around. But when looking at when weighing it out, I'm like, two hundred years from now, that'll be celebrated like that, that that decision of restraint, and you look at like even to take something, and I don't want to make too much of a point about this. But you take something like what wrote what Theodore Roosevelt did when he was creating the National force system. He pissed everybody off when he did the Midnight Forest, which is what twenty some he created. Twenty some that they didn't call him national force at a time serves the exact number.
Uh.
Here, there was a there was a bill moving through Congress that was gonna make it that was gonna strip him of an ability to create national forests, and he was going to veto it, but he knew sentiment against him was so high that if he vetoed it, his veto would be overridden. So they call him the Midnight Forest because his ability to create these things would expire at midnight. He then goes and creates like twenty four or twenty seven more preserves, and then it wakes up in the morning and signs a bill saying he can't do it anymore, and what happens. They carve him on Mount Rushmore. So I'm just saying, like, like, over long periods of time, I think that that that that over long periods of time, that that desire to create undeveloped areas and protect undeveloped areas is celebrated. But I'm so myopic in my intro and so my opic and my views that if you do all that and make it that people can't hunt it, I look, it's not a win anymore.
No, I feel, well, yeah you did, but.
You threw out the baby with the bath water well and a lot of people. Man, it's a win in some like some hazy distant environmental way perhaps, but like, it's not the win I'm after. Yeah. The win I'm after is access for like access for people who hunt fish.
Yeah, you know, and sometimes that access is going to be tough, but at least you have the.
Opportunity theoretically whether or not you get, whether or not you go there or not. Like, I don't know. I still I never have hunted the Frank Church. Never hunted the Frank Church, the celebrated wilderness area that we have in the lower forty eight, I never hunted there. I wouldn't be surprised if I died. Never hunted there. I like it being there. I would be livid if they tried to strip hunting rights from it. But I've never been there. Yeah, Tommy, never, you know, It's just like I like knowing it's there. Yeah, and it's a win that it's there. It's a win that you can hunt it. Yeah.
I think that's a totally reasonable way to look at it too. I think just when and not arguing for or against because a lot of these projects, you know, these potential projects and whatnot that come up, I'm not even necessarily for them or against them, or I kind of lean. I lean that way where I don't want to see development that's not necessary or is going to be irresponsibly done or what that. But yeah, the uh, I feel the same way that what good. You know, not necessarily that it's not good to have that land, but if I can't hunt it, or you're taking my opportunity to hunt it, so you know, so a few guys can have a private playground understood.
Yeah, what was your take on this is kind of like another one that sort of went away. What was your take on Pebble Mind? That was the thing that generated enormous amounts of interest from out from outsiders.
Yeah, it was huge.
How did you sit on that?
I generally kind I just leaned against it. I didn't have like a firm but it's like, eh, you know, it just it seemed like talking to people who live in the area and like have a lot of vested interest, like personal interest, it probably was not the right thing to do.
Yeah, So, but you didn't you didn't view it as that this is the thing that will break a last No. So now what's your what's your take on do you what's your position on Ambler Road?
I would I'd say I'd lean more against it because I mean, well, for one, they're not going to offer any public access supposedly, but they did say that with the pipeline or the adult the know, the Hall road, initially that was not not a public access.
Road, and initially it was not planned to ever be.
No, it was just strictly an oil an oil company road, you know, or oil oil resources road. So yeah, at that point, you know, my outlook is like, well, do we really need this here right now?
And it's not going to increase your access anyway.
It's not going to increase my access. If there was like a firm plan to you know, to allow some hunter access, you know, yeah, I'd be okay for it, I'd be I would be more willing to that might yeah, at least create like a win. Yeah, for sure. Like there's there's a road outside of Fairbanks. You guys drove right by it to Pogo Mine, and it's not near as long a road or through as controversial a territory. I remember guys when they first put that road in, would take their four wheelers up there and sneak, you know, they weren't supposed to, they would. They couldn't do anything to you if you're off the road. They just couldn't catch you on the road speaking to some you know, some some sketchy stuff. And the hunt was up was pretty good up there for you know, till they really cracked down on it. But there's still no public access to that road. You know, Like the resources are important and access to them is important, but you know, it's just got to be balanced.
I think. So tell folks how to tell folks how to find all your work, because if you if you're interested in you know, I always use the term wildlife politics if you're interested in wildlife and management in Alaska. Plus we've spent all our time talking about like some controversial political stuff. But you're also very accomplished, avid hunter. Do you everything from fur handling, like I said, hunting bears, with long bows.
Yeah, we got to have him back to talk some fun stuff.
Talking about fun stuff. So, but tell people how to follow, like where to listen, how to follow your adventures.
Yeah. So I'm staff writer for outdoor Life, So outdoor life dot com and published on what on uh usually a couple of stories a week. I do like a triminted a lot of gun stuff, a lot of like gun reviews, stuff like that, but all dip into important you know, Alaska based issues and the odd you know, hunting story. Like the most narrative stories are like are my favorite.
Like most everything I read about the issues we've been talking about. Most everything I read is your work.
You're gonna sounds good because it's no nonsense.
No, And that's what you know. Which is funny is I'm staying with my coworker, our shooting editor, John snow here in town. He lives here in Bozeman, and uh like he's he's put a tremendous amount of work into me, and like this is how we're gonna be, this is the type of gun content we're gonna do, and just it's it's a lot of fun. I love my job, So old Life dot Com and Uh, I have my podcast is.
Called thunder Talk and that's your own podcast.
Yeah, that's mine. Okay, So it's uh, it's a fairly like it's just me and other hunters and from Alaska. I mean, we talk about Alaska last you know what we've been up to this last week kind of fixed you know, I had to fix this generator. Here's how I did it. There's a whole variety of just kind of you know, loose like casual stuff, but a lot there's there's so many people up there. I'm not that special up there, Like I'm just a dude. There's a lot of cool people who do a lot of cool stuff up there, and that's kind of what I want to share in my podcast. So it's called thunder Talk.
And yeah, to get one, but you guys have that you still do that mergery? Do those making my boots?
I have some stickers at I don't have, but I have.
Like the hoodies with Mickey What do you guys call them boots?
Yeah?
Yeah, no I can. Uh, I've been getting bugged to do another order of those, so I'll make sure. I'll make sure you get one right now.
You got your uh, you got your talks, thunder talks.
This is how I get all my clothes is I just do bulk quarters of clothes and sell some of them and then I don't have to buy clothes. But uh that's the old Skidu tundra one cylinder.
And tunder talk is anywhere you find podcasts. Anywhere you find podcasts, and you're on social media.
Social media, uh Instagram, primarily just at the Tyler freel because I couldn't think of something more.
Do you do you like or hate when people write you emails and hey, I want to come up? Where should I go?
No?
I get a lot. I get a lot of it. So that's kind of part of it. I mean, my that's my station is you know the type of stuff I do, And that's part of it. And I can't always get back get to everybody, but I try to give what help. I'm not gonna tell I'm not gonna tell you where I hunt where I don't.
You don't give cordon no no, but guidance.
But you know, logistical like get a lot of logistical questions stuff like that. So yeah, I'm happy to happy to entertain that stuff as best I can know. And uh, yeah, I do piss some people off occasionally, you said, you mentioned long bows. You would think that shooting a grizzly bear with a stone arrowhead.
Would be universally celebrated or.
Me, So you would think that would be more controversial than shooting one with a six or five creed more. But you would be wrong.
Seriously. Oh yeah, Oh you get more pissed.
Oh yeah, way more when it's on a video that I could tell you I shot this with a three thirty eight and you would believe me. Anyway, that's a whole other.
People are Yeah, people get annoyed. Well, we got to have you back on to talk about like the good not the good stuff.
We have the fun stuff. Yeah, not depressing talk about. So I'm sorry if I was waiting like.
It's not depressed. I think, like I I watched with fascination because I think that they're So it's just a really great lesson about It's a really great lesson about land access, land administration, the pushing pull of different interests. You can learn, you know, I mean when when it comes to fighting about wildlife, Uh, you'll learn the most watch in Alaska.
Yeah, I think so it's still pretty well has got like a.
Dozen big game animals. I mean, it's just like, there's a lot. There's a lot going on up there. If you're interested in how these battles get fought and won and lost. Look to Alaska, man, you know it's uh and and following your work's a great way to follow it. So yeah, I appreciate you coming on.
Man, but Alaska sucks. Don't tell your tell your friends.
Sure you should make it seem a lot worse.
Yeah.
Like, and then they closed the whole state to non resident All right, thanks a lot, ladies and gentlemen. Tyler Freil check him out. Uh he's at outdoor life dot com, thunder Talk, Instagram, Instagram, like at Tyler Freil at the Tyler Freeld one. Yeah, don't go to some bake Tyler Friel last week, thank you.
I love those dag big big white tails, those bag bi big white tails. I love those beach by a shot g e E tales. I love those beachy bi white tales.
Big white tails, big white tails, big white tales are great. Hold what fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day? Big white tales, big white tails, big white tails are great? Hold, what fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day, dashing through the woods for the morning light, turns grave across the fields and draws creep in all the way, climb into the tree. Big bucks are on the wave. What fun he is to sit and wait for my gosh don deer all day? Oh big, I'm sorry?
What is this?
Pisocado strings?
Who do you think?
I am?
Enya?
Get this add here?
I don't want to hear it.
Thank you?
Big white tails, big white tails, Big white tails are great. Hold fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day. I hope sand dreams are high the he's finally here. Mark said, it's the most wonderful time to kill the whitetail deer bingch points and pettings where you'll find me hang? It's want to feet in a tree, grunt tubes, my bowel inspector camos really campy be.
He or two ago?
I thought that this was fun, But now I'm frozen to my seat and the good times they are gone. I've ate up all my snacks, my hands and toes are numb, and we're gonna climb down from my stand. That son of a but decided to come.
I love those Beagy be whiteas those you rug Beagy Big White tales.
I love those Beagy Big Doug Yo eight shot g etails. I love those big white tails all day
