Ep. 64: United We Stand, Divided We Fall with Jim Huntsman
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I guess I am the guy with the white face here.

How's it going, man? Good, good. I would grow a really big beard, but every time I even get a little bit shaggy, everybody says, oh, hey, Santa Claus. Yeah. No kidding. I'd look like ZZ Top, man. I keep mine nice and trimmed. ZZ Top. Or old Bill Golden from the Oak Ridge Boys. He has a big beard and long hair. Oh, man. Yeah.

well hey i got i got jim on the podcast here tonight and we want to talk about something that's kind of been grinding my gears for a while i've been you know i've been kind of watching social media and whether it's a hunter posting or maybe maybe a fishing game entity they post on facebook or or whatever and they talk about hey it's time to voice your opinion on on

on different regulation changes or whatever but there's this big division and I think we see it everywhere America's divided right seems like if you like purple if you like green if doesn't matter it when people are taking a lot of sides and really divided right now in America and I don't think social media or media in general is helping things out so I thought I'd kind of talk to you about it and it kind of bothers me a little bit because

If you look at the overall picture, I think we're all in this thing together. We all want the same goals, but man, we get kind of caught up in all the bickering and back and forth on social media and commenting. And I honestly think there's some people on there that would never say the kind of things they say on social media to another person's face, but for some reason...

they start typing and, and they, they feel like, you know, they, they don't have to respect their human, their, their, their human counterpart. They don't have to respect their fellow hunter. And, uh, what are your thoughts, Jim? Well, uh,

I think that it's a bigger problem than what a lot of people are even giving it credit for. I think that this division is used against us by not only the hostile vegan crowd or the anti-hunting crowd. I think that it...

It creates like this disparity in beliefs and values that are going to be important when we have to come together when the anti-hunting movement grows larger and louder and more influential on the non-hunter. And so that...

You know, having that, what's the word I'm looking for? When people are mad at each other, they're going to not want to support each other. So like, for example, if there is some regulation being passed about a rifle season, for example, and the rifle hunters and the bow hunters have been bickering back and forth about

And they've got like this animosity buildup. Why is that bow hunter going to go help support that rifle hunter if there's some kind of regulatory or piece of legislation or commission decision coming down the pike? Because they don't like each other, essentially. And we're like looking at each other.

in the... It's misplaced anger and animosity when we have a much bigger threat and a much bigger problem and a much bigger enemy, you know, so to speak. So, yeah, I think it's a major issue. I remember, Dirk, when...

When I was a kid, there was this gas station in our town. And during hunting season, everybody would take like Polaroids or they'd go get pictures printed up. This was before like, you know, social media and all that. Obviously, we're talking like the early 90s, maybe even in the late 80s. I can't remember. But everybody would post the picture of their buck or elk or whatever on the wall in the entryway of this gas station. Everybody kind of stand around and look at this.

And I remember at some point, some jokester took a marker and blacked out a tooth on somebody's picture, right? Just being funny or whatever. But people, hunters back then, this was like the talk of the town and the cafe and all this stuff where people were pissed that somebody disrespected that hunter, that fellow hunter. Right.

And that was like the attitude back then. And all it was was probably some kid that decided that, you know, thought he was funny to black out a tooth. But people took that as a sign of disrespect. That was probably me. It was probably you. That's what I said back then. I was like nine years old. It was Doug Dunn. I'm a little bit of a...

Yeah, I was a little bit of a wiseacre. Well, I still kind of am. I would do it today. Dude, I'm in my 40s. I'd black out somebody's tooth in a funny picture. But, you know, it just kind of speaks to the difference in how respect levels were in terms of, you know, these are fellow hunters. They didn't care about the method of take in which they killed that buck.

They didn't care about brands that you wore or bows that you shot or whatever. It doesn't matter. The point was there was a lot of unification, and that doesn't exist today. Yeah, it's crazy. And the tangents people get on.

For instance, I've seen one here on Facebook the other day. It was Idaho Department of Fish and Game. They were wanting some public input on whether people wanted to continue using

number 11 musket caps or not. Is it number 11? No. Yeah. Number 11. Number 11 percussion caps. And good luck with that because you can't find them anywhere anyway. You can't buy them. Two falls ago, I was going to take advantage of the muzzleloader season. And I searched on the internet and locally thought, well, every little mom and pop gun shop somewhere should have a handful of these. I know. I just couldn't find them. Yeah.

And luckily a friend of mine gave me some of his, but, uh, so anyway, and they acknowledged that, that it was kind of a, they're hard to, hard to find these days. And they're, they're saying, you know, wanting public input. What do you think about going to the shotgun primers? Right. You know, can, are you guys against it or for it? And honestly, I'm, I'm for it just because of the fact that if you don't have musket caps, you can't make your musket go boom. Right.

Yeah, dead in the water. And then who knows, you know, ammunition and primers in general have been really hard to get. So anyway, so I supported that. I got online and went and took their survey, and there was a couple other questions on there. I think they talked about jacketed bullets, saboted bullets and such, you know, for the in lines or whatever. And, oh, man, it was a garage fire.

In the comments, people were mad, and then they're saying, you know, you guys are trying to put scopes on muzzleloaders, and you're trying to do this. Scopes were never mentioned in the questionnaire. But, you know, everybody seems to want to kind of roll downhill, go negative on it. But it was just crazy, you know, and then pretty soon people are bickering amongst each other, and then they're, you know—

"Well, have you ever killed anything?" "Yeah, I've killed a lot of stuff." And, you know, the conversation just degrades from there. Yeah. And you see that more and more, and it doesn't matter what it is, if it's just a tiny bit controversial.

If you were to post a picture of a wolf and, uh, you put that on your, your social media feed, um, you're going to have a lot of supporters, but eventually somebody's going to start throwing rotten eggs. And then, then the conversation just goes south really fast. And I think, you know, the anti hunters and the wolf loving community, they, I think they kind of band together. So they're like, Hey, go, go blow up this guy's picture, this guy's feed and,

Then you got, you know, those guys tag team each other and get in there and type a bunch of mean, hateful things. But I don't know. It feels like it seems like it's so easy to go down that road these days.

and get negative. And sometimes maybe I see something that upsets me on, on social media. Maybe someone did something, maybe some company did something that's a, Hey, well, I thought those guys were supposed to be hunters or I thought they supported gun rights or hunting. And now everybody kind of almost jumps to the worst conclusion really quickly seems like on some of these topics instead of like pushing pause. And I usually have to do that. I'm a little bit of a hothead myself and,

sometimes. And I have to push pause and be like, okay, well, what are the facts? Besides what this little thing I read on this little snippet on Facebook, Instagram, wherever. And let me do some research before I get an emotional response to it. Maybe there's more to it. And 99% of the time, you've just got a little snippet of what

the problem or the the situation actually is and then once once you were kind of read through it mull it over a little bit I have a lot more understanding and maybe I'm not so spirited on my on on the reply I would initially would have put yeah I think we're all guilty of that Derek I mean we we've all gotten on Facebook especially Facebook seems to be that one in Twitter and

seem to be like the most fiery where people get super emotional and have these these crazed responses and I'm you know I'm working on this one project so I you know as a test this was a total this was a non-serious post but as a test I

I posted the meat yield difference between my four and a half or five and a half year. I'm not sure how old this buck was. This buck I'd killed the meat yield of that one versus my daughter's spike. She just killed. And, and I, and I, everybody, anybody who's hunted, we all know it's obvious that

you know, these bigger, these more mature bucks, you're going to get a lot more meat, right? And so that's what I, that's exactly what I wanted to try and see how easily people are triggered when it comes to this hunting topic. Because let's face it, hunters are just, you know, we are passionate. We're emotional people. We get, you know, this stuff is important to us. And so I posted it and I took a picture. I put a picture of my buck and my daughter's buck and kind of put them together, you know,

And I like just basically reported the meat yield, purposely not advocating whether or not we should hunt big bucks, mature bucks versus little bucks or anything like that. I said nothing about that. It was just strictly like the facts of here's how much meat this buck gave. Here's how much meat this buck produced. And, you know, we butcher it all ourselves. So I was able to control all the weighing and everything.

And, um, man, not, not five minutes after posting that somebody went just absolutely berserk and, well, don't tell me what kind of buck I should, I should hunt and what I shouldn't hunt. And I'm like, man, I didn't, I didn't, I literally posted this to see what people would say in that, in that kind of response. And it's, uh, again, it's for something else I'm working on, but, um,

It's interesting to see, again, going back to what you said, we've all been there where we see something and we kind of have this knee-jerk reaction without understanding maybe the context in which something was posted, whether it was from a fishing game agency or somebody just sharing some of their success in the field or whatever. And people just have this reaction.

I don't know what it is about social media that makes people this way other than the fact that we're not sitting down face-to-face. Because if...

If we were sitting in a cafe or something, you know, if we were having breakfast together, we were sitting in a bar, having a beer, and talking about this stuff, and I showed somebody a picture of these two different bucks, and I said, hey, this buck produced, you know, whatever amount of meat, and this smaller buck produces this much amount of meat. The person sitting next to me is not going to freak out on me because we're face-to-face. And so this lack of...

being face to face. And it's this, you know, we all know hunters are just opinionated in general, just by our very nature. And we all have different experiences and we were all taught different things. And so, you know, if, if, if somebody like I looked up to my grandpa big time, if my grandpa said it, man, that, that,

His word was gold, and that is how things were, right? And so I have things from when I'm like five years old that I remember my grandpa taught me about hunting or fishing, especially because he was a big-time fisherman. And to this day, I have proven what he said was actually not entirely accurate, right?

But to him it was, and I still think he's right, even though I know it's not. Does that make sense how I'm explaining that? And so we get stuck in those... Oh, yeah. We get stuck in that...

Maybe what we were taught that what is there's like a fancy term for like cognitive dissonance or something where it's like we we think things are true that might not be true or we want to defend something that we've always believed because it's how we've done it. But because we're on social media, we have this ability to get super aggressive about it and not get punched in the face.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think some of that like is confirmation bias. You have an opinion on something, so you're always looking to confirm that opinion in everything you see. You know, for instance, I believe pretty strongly that every year during the year of the huckleberry, you know, when there's years of the, I call it the year of the huckleberry, when we have a bumper huckleberry crop, you know,

a lot of the elk don't beagle worth a crap in the places I hunt. And it's kind of a funny little term, but, you know, I think it all goes back to how much water is getting soaked into the ground. There's how much feed there is. And, you know, you have elk spread out all across the landscape instead of like on a dry year.

When things are a drought, you know, you only have feed in certain spots. Yeah. They congregate. There's more competition for those cows because all the elk are in that spot. Anyway, but no, you're right. You know, everybody wants to defend their opinion. Grandpa said this. Grandpa said that my dad, he was an avid sportsman about the most opinionated man you'll ever meet. Yeah. Yeah.

A lot of the things he told me growing up, you know, taught me, you know, I was like, oh yeah, my dad, he knows he's, he knew, but I've, I've dismantled a lot of those, a lot of those ideas of, of hunting and the way things work. Um, just, just through my own experiences and not on purpose. It just like, huh, that's just didn't turn out the way, you know, my dad saw things. And I think people, everyone sees things through a little different lens. Um,

Kind of like the old game, what is it, the telephone game, right? Somebody tells you something, you whisper into the person next to you's ear, and you tell them exactly what that other person told you, and you have a room full of people. So you go around six or eight people here, and by the time the message gets to the last person,

It's changed dramatically because the way people hear it, they process it, they paraphrase, they put it out to the next person, maybe in a way they think they're going to understand it in the same way they understood it. And it changes a lot. So I feel like everybody's so quick to judge another person's opinion.

And not like, well, why don't you tell me your opinion and listen and maybe analyze it and mull on it a little bit. But I feel like that instant satisfaction or gratification of firing back really quickly with that emotional response is really, it's damaging, honestly, to our hunting heritage.

Oh, absolutely. Because again, it goes back to that animosity thing and that resentment thing. How are we supposed to come together when, you know, you've got for, I'll use Washington as, as an example, you know, they've got this, this part of their commission are like hot, they're flat hostile towards hunters. Right.

And they're trying to push this agenda that is taking away, whether it's spring bear or any other predator-type hunting. They're trying to get rid of, like, mountain lion hunting and trying to change the model of wildlife management in the state of Washington away from, like, the North American model to something that they see as, like, this utopian leave-everything-alone kind of model. And...

And if we're over here, and the anti-hunters know this stuff. They monitor us. They watch this stuff. So we're over here. We're bickering about whether or not a 6.5 Creedmoor is deadly enough for an elk. And they're over here pushing things under the table through the commission saying, hey, this is how we can get rid of spring bear hunting. This is how we can get rid of all bear hunting and mountain lion hunting. This is how we could do away with...

with hounds, uh, and, and all these things that are precious to us, that, that they're, they're working on that, you know, that saying, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? They're taking bites. Meanwhile, we're just nipping at each other and, and, you know, Hey, you know, I don't care if you shoot a spike, you, you shouldn't, um, we, the,

you can't eat the horns. And then you got the other guy going, you know, Oh, well, because of you, there's no big bucks left on this mountain because you're killing all the spikes, you know? And, and,

And really, I hate that argument. I hate that particular argument more than any other because I have wanted to take a side on that argument, and I cannot find tangible information to back up either side of that. And so I have no strong opinion on it. And if I can't form a strong opinion on it, I just don't like the argument. And I think that people start forming these arguments and these opinions on things that really cannot be backed up.

And again, it's just this big distraction from a greater enemy and a greater threat. And we're wasting our time. It's going to come back and bite hunters right in the behind being this hostile towards each other. It's so unnecessary. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

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We have these bigger fish to fry than, like you said, the six fight Creedmoor conversation or traditional archery versus compound. You know, that's a very spirited conversation a lot of times. And within a niche, there's a lot of supporters within those niches, but they don't back up sometimes on both sides and think, okay,

Dang it. We're all hunters. I want to support hunters. You know, gee whiz, I decided I want to shoot a recurve bow and limit my shot distance or whatever. Maybe not. Maybe a person's an excellent shot with a recurve at a long ways away. But to sit there and throw rocks at a compound shooter for having sights or vice versa, you know, the compound shooters think they're superior or whatever. I mean, you could, if you search the internet, you can find every site

situation or scenario argued about. But in the, in the end guys and gals were, you're both bow hunters, support your bow hunters. Okay. Um, gun hunters versus bow hunters.

You know, within those conversations, you see somebody, if there was a question about what we should, what should we do with the bow season and the rifle hunters or maybe would say, oh, we, we want more rifle season during the bow season or, or, you know, or the bow, the bow hunters may want more bow season that would take, shorten the rifle season, but no, pretty soon the conversation degrades again.

And in the end, we're, they're both hunters, you know, bow or, and gun hunt. I mean, you're both hunting. I've always been an opportunistic hunter. I love hunting of all kinds. So I started out as a rifle hunter.

And then found out about bow hunting and I'm like, wow, I can hunt another month. I love hunting. I want to be in the woods as much as I possibly can. So I'll pick up a bow and wow, I can chase bugling bulls the month of September. This is awesome. Um, and then back when I was a kid, then you could, you could continue with the same elk tag. You could continue on from archery season to, to rifle season with that same elk tag. Things have changed a lot in Idaho, but

but it was like wow this is this is great i can i can hunt with a bow i can hunt with a rifle and if i don't get one with the rifle i can get one with a muzzleloader what really this is awesome like opportunistic um so i have i have a massive respect for for all of all of the hunting you know whether you know maybe it's a maybe somebody wants to use a crossbow that's not my cup of tea

But, you know, if you want to go lug one of them things around, I mean, by all means, go do it as long as it's legal, right? Yeah. As long as it's legal. We shouldn't poo-poo on other people's parades. Yeah, and you nailed it. And that's the thing, not to keep up bringing my grandparents up, but my grandma would say –

Mind your business and mind your manners. See, those two things hunters need to take into account when we're talking about like social media, because I think two things happen. I think like, like you said, I'm an opportunist as well. There was a time where I went to, I tried to be like this purest bow hunter, you know, all strictly archery. Everything I was going after was archery.

And that's great. I don't care if somebody wants to do that. I don't, you know, that's the great part about hunting is you have these options to worry about. But I think what happens...

And, like, social media is a really good place to air all this dirty laundry. But I think that somebody thinks about their, let's use elk hunting for an example. Somebody thinks about their archery season all year long. You know, maybe they get a new bow in December, in January or something. They get it all, you know.

It's set up for them and, and they start getting out there in the spring and flinging arrows and they, you know, go to some 3d archery shoots and they listen to podcasts and they watch a bunch of videos and, and they buy like the some of those online hunting courses and, and they're putting all this effort they buy a bunch of new gear new new camo new boots and

And they come around to season and they get in a situation where they're not hearing bugles and maybe their unit is really crowded. These are real problems. These are real problems. You'll go into an area that looks super elky on like Onyx and then you'll get there and it's like a desert. Well, like the aliens came in and abducted, they abducted all the elk.

you know, that you're not getting the sound and you'll go to another unit and it's like everybody and their dog and the governor and the governor's dog is there bugling for, for elk, you know, and, and they're just super swamped. I'm not saying those issues don't exist, but,

But I'm saying that people don't allow themselves to be flexible enough to adapt to whatever the situation is. And then, you know, season ends, they don't notch a tag. And the best place to air that dirty laundry is to make excuses as to why that happened by blaming the fish and game or blaming the rifle hunters or blaming the muzzleloader hunters or the houndsman or the bear baiters. You know, all these different hunters, these factions, if you will,

that make up hunting and they can use that as an excuse and they could take that pain and anger that builds up from not notching a tag and put some kind of label as to why it didn't happen outside of the fact that maybe you just didn't go far enough from the road. Maybe you didn't

weren't flexible enough to switch units or drive 30 miles down the dirt road and find an area that wasn't so crowded. Maybe those were some of the things that led to, you know, tag soup and not the fact that...

You know, I heard this, like perfect for this. Somebody was complaining about wolves killing all the elk in this unit that I know almost for a fact there's no wolves over there. And so it's like it's that kind of stuff, you know. And the other part, too, is what you were talking about when you're –

saying like you know you like to you enjoy the archery season and then going into the rifle season and the muzzleloader i like all those too because i i like the experience i love rifle hunting i think it's fun i i really enjoy rifle hunting it's a totally different experience and i love bow hunting too um but people have a tendency to want to blame the system for

versus blaming themselves. So if the seasons are not set to what you think they should be, that does not mean that every hunter out there thinks or agrees with your opinion on it because if you take 100 hunters, you're going to have 100 different opinions as to how that season should be set. And the better approach to it would be to...

So check out what those seasons are and work hard with those seasons. Don't work against them. Work to those seasons. Focus on how they are laid out. Okay, rifle season doesn't open until middle of October for elk. What are the elk doing in middle of October? What are they doing towards the end of October?

Um, you know, and, and, and focus on that, focus your energy on that instead of worrying about whether or not the entirety of the fish and game agency in whatever state you're hunting in is going to change that season because you don't like it. Yeah, absolutely. I have to look in the mirror. Um, Oh, me too. This season, 2023, my elk season here. Um, I wanted to choose a, a unit that was a little closer to home and, um, have the opportunity to hunt with my son some more.

And I didn't do all my due diligence. And, you know, I did my summer work, did scouting, you know, check the unit out and found elk. It's like, wow, this place is great. It's beautiful. Um, has a little bit of everything. There's back country. You know, if you want to pack in, if you want to try real hard and hike to the deepest holes, there's that. Um, if you want easier days where there's some roaded areas, there's that. Um,

So fast forward to opening day. Opening day was great. There was a few people around, but not too many. But after Labor Day, you know what happens there? Labor Day weekend, everybody shows up. And nobody went home, and more and more people came. And this place was a zoo. There were people everywhere. Literally every place that you could possibly camp, there was someone camped.

And immediately your mind starts racing like gee whiz, you know, the fishing game, they shouldn't sell so many tags in this unit. All those non-residents man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The funny thing is like I hardly saw any non-residents. They were all Idaho plates. Yeah. Now Idaho's had a big influx of people move in recently. That's true. Somewhere else. But we won't say that place.

But anyhow, I was just like, man, I need to cut the tags back here. And immediately, that was my first knee-jerk reaction. Then as you sit and dwell on it a little bit, it's like, no, dummy. You should have done your homework a little better. The fishing game provides all the information and data at your fingertips. I should have looked at how many tags they sold in that unit last year.

How many, and what was the harvest rate? What was this? What was that? You know, it breaks it down, you know, spikes. How many percentage of elk that were harvested were spikes? How many were six point or bigger? You know, there's a lot of data there in the hunt planner, but I, I, I overlooked that. That's my fault. That's one of those. Everyone else's fault for trying to go out and have a good time.

Yeah, and it's that same thing where it's the mistake I make all the time where you'll find a unit that seems like it's close and convenient to town.

And you'll look at it in the summer and nobody's up there. But come September, the place is packed because everybody else has the same mindset. They, you know, if you're hunting outside of like a big metro area, everybody wants that closer access. We don't want to drive six hours every time. It'd be nice to just drive an hour from home and get up in the sticks and find some bugling bulls. And so that's always a factor. And, you know, there's no getting away from it either way because like –

even if it's three hours from home, there's people that are going to be like, I'm going to get away from the crowds by getting further away from town. And it's still crowded, you know? And so it's, it's hard to, it's hard to say what's going to work, but, um,

I don't know. I guess that's why they call it hunting. And it's not, you know, we're not just going up to fetch an elk, right, and a couple hundred pounds of meat. We're going up there to hunt. And it's going to be tough. And what makes it tough are not just the elk and the terrain you've got to cover. It's the other hunters. It's the non-residents and the residents and the seasons that the Fish and Game Agency sets up. It's all that. And you have to play into that game because if you're not playing the game, you're not going to –

You're not going to be successful. And, you know, bitching about it on Facebook is not going to help you next year. Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like people don't like to look at the man in the mirror too often, you know, face the fact that, well, maybe I'm the culprit. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I should have planned better. Now, what are your thoughts on bad apples?

So we do have some bad apples in hunting. You know, you have people who are caught poaching, you know, the people who are maybe putting videos on there that maybe the general public's just not ready to see yet. Those are usually pretty, pretty polarizing as well. Yeah. And kind of a dumpster fire as well. What are your thoughts on that stuff? That's such a tough question, man. That's been a big discussion on my show. It's like, A, I'm,

Who decides what's okay to post? Because I have my opinions, and you're going to have your opinions, and maybe your opinion isn't the same. And everybody listening to this is going to have their own opinion.

In terms of the bad apples, I don't care if you're talking about a church, a company, an organization, a government entity, a knitting group club, or a bottle cap collecting club. There's always a percentage of bad apples that tend to shine that negative light on the rest of us, right? Right. I think I just told this story, but...

When I just got out of boot camp in the Marines, and you're all pumped up, you're all filled with pride and motivation. I'm a U.S. Marine now. I just got out of boot camp or whatever. And then I get out, and they give you this 10-day leave time.

To go home and walk around in your dress blue uniforms and flaunt the fact that you just became a Marine or whatever. All over in the newspapers was... The headline was, two U.S. Marines poached wild horses in like the Mojave Desert. Oh, geez. So...

Instead of saying that two guys went out and poached horses, they labeled it two U.S. Marines, and they were. They were Marines. They were stationed at a camp, peddled in or whatever, in California there.

And they went out and had killed some horses, you know, and the problem with that is that reflects on the entirety of the Marine Corps. So everybody thought that Marines were nothing but a bunch of innocent horse killers, wild horse poachers, you know, and this went on for like months. Everybody was talking about it. You know, it was national news.

And, and so that sort of thing, that, that same thing happens, um, on, in the hunting space. If we have somebody like, if you remember, if you remember back a couple of years, those, those, uh, those younger guys had, uh, wounded that little buck and the buck is struggling, but couldn't get up and they're over there like filming themselves kicking this buck, right?

And then there was this other video that came out where they had hung the carcass in a garage. And these young, again, young guys were pouring beer into the chest cavity and shooting like, what do you call that? Where you drink the beer really fast? Beer bonging. Yeah, beer bonging. That's what it was. I was drawing a blank. Yeah.

I've drank, I drank so much beer in my life. I can't remember cool terms like that. Beer bonging. And they were like bonging the beer out of the mouth of this, this buck hanging upside down in a garage. And then they put that, they chose to put that on social media because

Now, those two examples are super obvious things of stuff that we need to police ourselves on. We can't allow stuff like that to be posted because that reflects on the entirety of the hunting community. PETA is going to grab a hold of that video, and they're going to put it out to thousands, if not millions of people,

And say, look, look at what hunters do. Look at what these redneck hillbillies do to these innocent animals. And, and that, that message is going to, you know, then you're going to have some, some lady sitting on our couch watching a late night show. And this PETA commercial comes on and these, these hunters are kicking the crap out of a deer that's wounded and can't get up and it's making all this noise. And, and that is going to be her message.

representation in her mind that is going to be her perception as to what a hunter is so like two weeks later maybe she that same lady sitting in church and and the guy next to her is like yeah I can't wait for for church to get out so I can get up on the mountain and go deer hunting she's going to look negatively on that guy because she thinks he's going to go out there wounded deer and then kick it and punch it and film it and put it on Facebook so those are the obvious things that I think as hunters as a community we need to jump on that kind of stuff and

Those kids that were pouring the beer down the chest cavity, I hit them up all on Facebook, and I was trying to get them on my show. One of them responded, but they wouldn't come on my show. But those are the kind of people we need to police ourselves. It's the other stuff that is a much more difficult conversation. It's stuff that is like, and I bring this example a lot up on my show, where they've got a coyote in a foothold trap.

And they're filming themselves walking up to this coyote that's just freaking out, making all this noise, yipping and yapping. And that circle of death, he's going crazy in the circle of death. And the guys are laughing and making this big deal and this scene. And, oh, we're killing, or I'm sorry, we're saving a bunch of deer because we're going to get this coyote. And then, bam, they shoot this coyote. And then they post that video.

The thing is with that is there are some gnarly realities that come out of hunting and trapping. And we know that as hunters. We know the brutality that can come out of it. We don't have to show that stuff. We don't have to show that stuff. And I am not going to be like the judge and jury as to what we should and shouldn't post. But I think obvious things like that, we need to police ourselves and start...

reaching out to those kind of people and, you know, the proverbial, God, I can't speak tonight, man. Shake your finger at those kind of people and let them know, hey, man, that is not a good look for us as a community. You need to take that video down. And I am not saying, you know, your average person

kill shot with a bow or a rifle shot and stuff like that. I am talking about the extreme ones that the non-hunter, I'm not talking about the anti-hunter, we're not going to change their mind. It's the extreme, or I'm sorry, the non-extreme, non-hunting hunter

average citizen that doesn't have any real exposure to hunting that are going to see something and you have to really use common sense if some non-hunter sees this post are they going to think negatively or positively about hunters

And that is what's going to bode for us in the future when it comes down to who the stakeholders are in the future of hunting. And if it comes down to like a ballot initiative, you know, should deer hunting continue in America? You know, not that I think that's right around the corner, but I do think that that is in our future at some point. It's going to come down to like a vote, a populist vote.

And those people are going to remember those nasty videos that we posted of that poor coyote in that trap hold. I love hunting and trapping coyotes too. So don't anybody mistake me. I know the brutality that goes into it, especially when you're trapping them. But I don't show that stuff. I don't think I've ever posted one of my coyotes, and I've killed a lot of coyotes. And I don't care if you do. I'm not saying you shouldn't. I am saying in that context...

That's where we got to police ourselves, not showing them in that circle of death and everything else, you know, and showing that helpless coyote sitting there with his foot stuck in a foothold trap and a bullet going through his head. Why show that? Why do we have to show that? I don't know. What do you think? I think it's just too graphic. And here's here. I think as hunters, we sometimes forget our personal individual roots, right?

We don't forget. We take that for granted. So where you came from, what you've seen, what you've done in your life, you know, you've seen, you know, maybe you've done a lot of, you've run a trap line. Maybe you've shot and butchered a lot of animals, you know, in the woods, you know, cut them up into pieces, pack them out, you know, whatever. You grew up in the mountains, a small town. You've done a lot in the woods, in the backwoods. But what a lot of us don't realize, I think, is...

Not everyone has had those same exposures in their life. So a non-hunter, new hunter, maybe a hunter who's been hunting for 20, 30 years, they just never have seen something of that kind of a graphic nature or maybe haven't participated in anything similar to that to where they see it and it's disturbing. And as a non-hunter, if they've never been exposed to any kind of animal death,

then that would be a gruesome thing to witness, right? Absolutely. If you're a trapper and you've shot lots of coyotes, then you know what it's all about, right? Yeah. For instance, there was a video that kind of went viral on Instagram the other day. The guy was, he shot an elk.

He cut the head off and it was really steep country and is so steep rather than cut the meat off of the carcass right there and pack it on your back down this steep hillside. He rolls the elk, the headless elk down the hillside and it rolls and tumbles way down the hillside, saving him, you know, lots of work. Lots of, you know, you got to be a lot closer to the truck, you know, right.

But not everybody's ready to see that, you know, he videoed it, posted that video. Not everybody's ready to see it. You know, I don't personally, I don't have a problem with it. I thought it was, wow, that's ingenious. That's a good idea. I saw that. I saw that video and, and I thought the same exact thing you, I'd like, I'd do that in a heartbeat. I just wouldn't film it and put it on Instagram. Yeah.

No, no. And, you know, I don't think anyone, I don't think he was probably trying to disrespect the animal. You know, the animal's dead. He's taken his life. He's going to try to get that thing closer to, you know, his destination. And it was probably warm out. Let's get this thing down the hill quick as we can. You know, it's not a good look, though. Maybe I'm not going to share that kind of a video. Maybe I'm, you know, maybe some things...

can remain a little bit of a secret, right? You don't... And so I feel like... Because there was a... He got a ton of hate mail. Oh, tons. I read all those comments, man. Read all the comments, and people were very mad and upset. And I think, as I read through the comments, I'm like, you know... And that's what got me to thinking, like, not a lot of people...

have had the same upbringing or have experienced taking an animal's life even. There's a lot of new hunters. Maybe they've never even killed an animal, but they would like to kill a deer or whatever, but they haven't shot ground squirrels or coyotes or other deer or elk or whatever. They have no experience with that, and then they see that, and that's kind of one of the – it's kind of graphic and something really hard to digest if you've never –

thought about it or seen it. So, um, yeah, man, that maybe before posting videos like that, we, we, you know, I, I would censor myself like, Oh, this is cool until like, well, I don't think every, this is not something for everyone to see.

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And actually, I've always respected the way that you post. When you get an elk down, your posts are always super tasteful looking. Like, it's... There's just something... You always give reverence and respect to the animal in some way. You're not like...

laying down next to it, trying to give it a kiss in the ear or whatever some of these weird pictures people do. It's always just a good, clean photo. And it's honoring multiple things. You're honoring yourself as a hunter. You're honoring the animal. And you're honoring the experience that it was. But getting back to what we were talking about,

You nailed it, man, that there are people that go through this life that have no experience. You've got to remember there's a huge part of the population, even if they're meat eaters, they have never been on a farm. They've never seen something butchered. They've never seen something killed outside of maybe a spider getting stepped on, and even that bothers them. So I saw a post the other day, somebody was out muzzleloader,

had got a cow elk down and it was a big, beautiful cow elk. And they had a good shot of it. And it was kind of like, you know, the snow, light snow had fallen and they'd kind of staged the elk, cleaned it up a little bit. But the problem, see what hunters don't,

pick up on because this is something we've been exposed to for a long time. What we don't pick up on sometimes, and I'm guilty of this, is the bloodbath that ensues from a .50 caliber muzzleloader going through flesh like this, right? And so around this elk...

I mean, it looked like somebody brought in a garden hose full of blood, and it's up and down the tree, and it's all over the snow. And to guys like you and I, that's just normal. We expect that, right? And it's not bothersome. But think about the person that has never been...

And that has never been exposed to that. And how are they going to react? And we can be jerks and we could be, we could sit around and talk about how, well, I don't care how, how they are. I'm a hunter. They need to know how this is. This is this. I only care about what I post.

Okay. They need to toughen up. They need to toughen up and grow a pair or whatever. But you have to understand these people, it's not about that. Like I've never been to a place where they butcher cows and it would probably disturb me. And I raised cows when I was, I didn't personally raise them, but our family, we raised cattle and we would send them off and we'd never see them again. You know, I didn't go out there and butcher these things. And, um,

You know, so something like that, I imagine I might be slightly disturbed by seeing that, that, that rod or whatever go through their head. Um, but the, the other side to that too is, you know, have you seen that meme Dirk that has been going around where it's like, everybody's there at Thanksgiving and, uh,

It's like, oh, there's our deer hunter. And then the next person was like, oh, there was deer. I saw some deer in my yard. And somebody else was, did you bring me some deer meat? You know, that whole thing where you're sitting there and there's a family. Did you catch any deers? Did you catch any deers yet? And I always text you that. I think I text you that this year. How many elks have you catched yet, Dirk? Anyway, the...

But if you, as funny as that meme is, you have to think about those are the people when you post something that you've killed out in the field.

Those are the people that see that, that are sitting there, and they're the ones asking you if you catched a deer, right? And they don't have exposure to this life. They don't know how—they couldn't even begin to tell you how to gut a deer. They couldn't tell you how much blood is visible when you do gut a deer. They can't tell you how quickly a coyote will come and snatch your venison right out of your—you know, wherever you leave it if you're taking one load out. Right.

They don't know how all that stuff works. And it's not because they're stupid. It's because that's just not what they do. And so those are the people, when you post something, is one of the people at that table in that meme going to see that on Facebook while they're sitting there after dinner one night and think, man, that is some brutal shit. Why would somebody do that? And I think that we need to start having more conversations about what...

um that means and and what how we like kind of police ourselves and clean up our own house before we start judging these other houses like the hostile vegan crowd or the the anti-hunting crowd and all these other crowds that want to see our lifestyle taken away before we start getting after them we need to clean up our own house and and look at what the non-hunter is has been exposed to because we already have things like hollywood is against us

We have anti-hunting groups putting out propaganda. We have some hostile commissions on some of these wildlife agency boards. We have all these things that are against us, and we're just like playing right into their game plan. And I think that it's time to stop kind of pussyfooting around the fact that these conversations need to be had because the future of hunting really is at stake. And we are...

the ones that are solely responsible for any of the negative press that comes out of it. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think everybody just needs to, to like step back sometimes and think about when somebody voices an opinion or, you know, maybe they just said something on online, you know, and it's maybe not a method of maybe you don't like bow hunting or maybe you don't like traditional archers or maybe you don't like whatever, but,

And, but you have to think about that person and what, what part of hunting do you like? Um, well, I like this part and this is what's really important to me. And I am very passionate about it. Well, you have to understand that other person, they're just as passionate about what they like, um, as much as you're passionate about what you like.

Um, and it's all a form of hunting, right? So as long as it's, you know, as long as you're not shooting holes in the boat, you know, and as long as you're not being a bad apple, you know, if it's a legal method of take and the optics are good on it, we should support each other. Um, we should, you know, we should have each other's, we should have each other's back. We shouldn't be so quick to, to rain on somebody's parade because they don't shoot the same bow you shoot or the same rifle caliber or whatever.

whatever it is. Yeah. We shouldn't be so quick to rain on someone else's parade. We should, we should, you know, applaud them. If you, if you have something negative to say,

maybe you should think about it before you say it and maybe not say it. Just like let it go because really if – I learned this a long time ago on the internet. Like if you want to sit there and argue, you can argue for as much time as you want to sit at a computer and type the keys. And as fast as you can type them, people will do the same thing. Oh, I've been so guilty of that, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's not my first day on the internet, right? Back when I first got on the internet, I felt like I needed to –

to talk, to say some things, but honestly, sometimes, you know, it just ain't, it's not worth it. You know, the, the, the time to try to try, especially if you're going to say something negative. Um, I don't know. I think, I think if we can all just work together towards supporting hunting, all, all types that's legal, that's ethical, that's

and has good optics, you know, I think we should all kind of work towards that instead of trying to tear each other down over a caliber of cartridges and broadheads and lighted nocks and expandable broadheads and traditional bows and wheel bows. I mean, there's a million different things to argue about. Is there a worse... Public land versus private land? Yeah, yeah, private or, you know, high fence hunter versus public land hunter. And it's like...

The problem is we're breaking these down into these factions, and there's nothing worse than that post that you just mentioned. Hey, what's the best caliber for elk hunting, or what's the best caliber for deer hunting? Man, I cringe any time I see that because...

A, let me tell you something. I've been deer hunting since I was a kid, and I don't care. I don't care what caliber you choose. Everybody has their opinion. I have my favorite, but I've killed deer with all sorts of different calibers and all sorts of different ranges. It's really, that is such a question that is so dependent on the particular individual hunter. But back to you, but to your point that you just made, I think it's really important to

that we talk about that because those are some of the factions. We have your private land versus public land hunter. You've got your OTC versus your special draw or whatever. You've got your guided hunter versus DIY. You've got your high fence versus public land. There are a million different ways to break this down. But at the end of the day, I've always maintained that hunters are

We're looking for three things. And I don't care what your method of take is. I don't care if you're a rifle or a bow hunter or a fly fisherman versus a bait fisherman. Specifically for hunters, we're looking for three things.

And that is that primal connection to nature is one, right? And then you've got the meat in the freezer. You may not even know. You may not even know that. You might not even recognize that. But the reason why it is so exciting, and this is probably more specific for men's personalities, that is something that we seek and we almost require it in our lives. And that's why I think...

Well, that's a whole other podcast episode. So we're looking for that primal connection to nature. We're looking for meat in the freezer. And the third thing is we're looking for that memory. And those are the three things. That's it. That's all hunters are always looking for. Sure, are there variations out of that where, you know, somebody might go hunt and...

a brown bear that's not good eating or want to go hunt a wolf that's not good eating. Yeah, I get it. We don't need to nickel and dime. Again, that goes back into why rip this whole concept apart because the concept of what 99.9% of hunters are pursuing is

We are looking for that primal connection, which is adventure, that feeling of fulfillment when you get out there and it's yourself up against a wild beast and you're successful. That's that connection we're looking for because we're not participants in nature. We are part of nature when we are hunters. That freezer full of meat is a super important aspect. I am very serious about filling our freezer. We don't buy a lot of store-bought meat.

unless I have a really bad year. And that happens. And then that third thing, that memory, that memory could be anything from a big, you know, nice taxidermy mount on the wall, or it could be just something that's in your mind. You know, that memory 30 years from now, you'll remember getting your first cow elk with a muzzle loader, for example, or my daughter shooting her first spike, you

You know, it's buck or something like that, or it could be a nice Euro mount, or it could be like this bear rug or bear hide on the wall behind me. You know, those kind of things, those are the three things that hunters are pursuing. And it's consistent across the board in North America and Africa or anywhere else where anybody hunts. Those are the three things that we pursue, right?

And they are all three individually worth fighting for as themselves. But when you combine all three, it is worth it for everybody to keep that in mind. Because if you're some OTC DIY public land hunter, which I am, that's what I do. And you're giving somebody a hard time because they paid 30 grand to go hunt on a ranch. That outcome is the same for both parties if they're both successful.

that that primal connection is there sure one may have been a little bit harder but maybe not maybe not I've never hunted a high paid ranch so how do I know what if that hunt is harder than an OTC tag I don't know but

But the point is, is we're not going to judge it because we have the three same goals with the that that end game is the same for all of us. And when it comes to us picking a side, when the bigger threats come down the pike against the hunting community, we're going to be standing on the same side of the aisle. And I don't want to have animosity towards my brother or sister over there that may have had the money to go spend 30 grand on a hunt.

We're still going to be on the same team. We were on the same team and I'm not going to judge them for it. And that's how I feel about it. We'll see you.

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And that person that maybe threw down that big money to go hunt on a private land hunt, maybe they have some money to put towards a worthwhile project for all hunters in general. Maybe they want to donate money to a good cause that's going to fight against...

against anti-hunting. Yeah, we got bigger fish to fry. We want people, there's people that want to take away our hunting rights.

They, they want to take away the right to eat meat in general. I mean, there's, there's crazy radical groups everywhere. They want to put, they don't even think people should live in certain parts of the country. I mean, you, you name it. There's, there's, there's somebody that's got an organization trying to take away something. And as far as hunting rights and stuff goes, we all need to like put our sides aside, our differences aside and stand up together and be one voice. Um,

Um, and kind of push back against these anti hunters. Um, because if not, if you look like, if you rewind a little bit, if you go back to like when Washington and Oregon lost hound hunting back in the day, um, you know, back then hunters, there was no internet. There was no, there was no, um, good way for hunters to connect.

and to join forces. You just kind of heard about stuff in the newspaper, you know, and, you know, some people would go down to the town hall or go to the meetings and say, you know, we don't want you to do that. But it wasn't enough of a ruckus to stop that kind of litigation or legislation, keep those laws from getting passed, right? Well, now there's no excuse for it. Like there's, we have a lot of hunters,

all across America, there's social media to spread the word when things are going wrong. And then instead of like sitting here tearing each other down, there'd be a good opportunity to spend that time advocating for, for hunting. You know, don't waste your time keyboard warrior, warrior in it for, for, you know, cause you're against six, five Creedmoors, you know, take that time and, and advocate for hunting. Put your money where your mouth is, put your time where your mouth is. Join a conservation group.

Absolutely. I always look at it, Dirk, like it's like we're all on the same football team and we're getting to the Super Bowl. You know, the Super Bowl's coming up in a couple of weeks or whatever, and we go to practice or whatever. Maybe we go to some football camp or something like that. And like, you know, everybody's like,

They didn't like the jockstrap that the quarterback picked out. And so they're all kicking him in the knee. And so now his knee's all jacked up by the time the Super Bowl comes around. And that's kind of how I see it. And if you look at the other side, the folks that are anti-hunting guys,

Or like the hostile vegans because there's like a way to – and we don't have to get into all that, but they're separated and they're separate and they have different motivations. But like the anti-hunting crowd, they're not kicking each other in the kneecap, man. They're not fighting. They're not behind the scenes pulling each other's hair. They're not elbowing somebody in the face in public. Yeah.

and ripping each other apart. These folks are well-tuned into the fact that hunters are essentially ripping each other apart

It's almost as if they, I've heard, I've actually seen some of them say this. If you follow some of these, like I geek out on this stuff. I actually follow them in Facebook groups. I like disguise who I am and join some anti-hunting Facebook group, you know, and I'll watch them. And the comments that they make,

are literally, you know, even if we don't have the money to pursue this through litigation, the hunters are ripping each other apart anyway. They're fighting about such and such hunting season and stuff. And I've literally seen them write this kind of stuff in their comments. And they'll say stuff like, they're losing support amongst the public. They are...

public support for hunting for meat has dropped 10% in the last 20 years. And, you know, and they're putting all these little statistical data in there. And then they're backing that up with the fact that all we have to do is keep letting these hunters do what they do on social media and the general public's going to be turning against them anyway. And so that's why

These conversations are so important. It's not like this stuff is just, you know, Dirk and I sitting around making stuff up and creating problems that don't actually exist. These problems actually do exist, and they actually strategically plan for this kind of stuff to come after our rights as hunters and our future as hunters. And I am not going to sit around...

and risk my daughters' and my grandchildren's future of being able to do what I love to do

Because I chose not to say something about it because I was afraid of maybe being less popular or somebody disagreeing with me. It's time that we come together and defend our principles as hunters and be unified and not give a crap about what caliber somebody shoots their elk with. It's just, it's so silly that we do that. I don't get it. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. Everything you just said echoes my thoughts as well.

Well, Jim, man, we're pushing up to an hour here and it feels like we've been talking for about 10 minutes. If you guys haven't heard Jim's podcast, it's called The Western Huntsman. And he's got all sorts of guests on there. I've been on there a couple of times. He's got all sorts of different guests and all sorts of different topics. So if you like to listen about hunting stories or hunting tactics, or he does this really cool thing called the School of September where he talks about elk hunting.

elk calling tech tips and tactics by a bunch of different guests and, uh, and some, some constant conservation stuff too. He gets all sorts of folks on there. How do we best find your, your podcast and, and you on social media? Uh, well, they could just, the easiest place is on Instagram. It's at the Western Huntsman. Uh, and you can, you can find the podcast, um, anywhere podcasts are found or at the Western Huntsman podcast.com. Awesome.

Well, thanks again, Jim. Always a pleasure to get on here and talk with you. We need to connect some more again here real soon in the future. Maybe I can get on your podcast and we'll talk about some other fun stuff. Yeah, let's do it, man. I love chewing the fat with you anytime, brother. All right. Thanks, man.

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