Ep. 930: The Helicopter Elk Hunt Debacle

0:00This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to the new show everybody. This week we've got a market report on halibut prices and what those prices mean for dudes who fish. Former smoke jumper in public lands advocate, Sam Forstag is here to give us an update on his US House of Representative Race. Helicopter hunting in Wyoming goes all wrong for an outdoor life editor. Etsy becomes the devil incarnate. That's hyperbolic. And more. Not really though. But first on to our news. Our news. Guaranteed about our news. Quick, quickly. I was trying to explain something to Seth before the show but I didn't get time so I'm gonna tell him now. Are you aware that there's this whole thing going on? There's this whole thing right now of freeze drying beef guts

1:03and making dog treats out of them. I'm not aware. Are you aware? I've seen it. Liver, I've seen dried liver. Long liver kidney. Okay. I mean I've seen all sorts of dried stuff in like the pet store but it's only it's freeze dried. Freeze dried. Freeze dried for cats. There's minnows and chicken hearts. Well, great. Big cats. Yeah. And big cats guys. There's a thing I know about that I'm not even gonna talk about because I don't want to spoil it. But anyhow, I just seconds ago ordered us up a freeze dryer for the office here. Ooh. So we can make our dogs treat. So you know how we make videos where we have people try stuff. Oh. We're gonna save all the weirdest junk we can think of. Freeze dry it and then have dogs eat it and see what the dogs say about it. This is a good idea. But I'm gonna like picture that you have all this junk you freeze dried. And you let a dog smell it. So he knows you give him a whiff. Then you bring the dog out of the room.

2:04And you lay all we set up cameras and you lay it all around and we see what guts. What freeze dried guts do dogs really want? Yeah. And then you like ask the dog about it. You can do like eyeballs and tell me what. Kind of thing. And now that you can I'm gonna start making my own freeze dried backpacking food. Yeah. Yeah. I'm surprised you didn't say that first and then do the dog thing. But I see where your priorities are. I know, but I had to find a way to justify it. When our dogs die, when our dogs die, we can freeze dry them. Oh. It's never ending. Yeah. So this freeze dryer is going to become like a major YouTube fixture. Yeah. It's a great good investment. Do you have a dog in mind? That I'm gonna freeze dry. No, no, no. It's gonna be your tester. Just any and all this. All this place is this dog. Yeah. I'm bringing all those dogs. But there's some I would like put in tears as like these I trust more than this other batch of dogs. Oh, elaborate. I'd have to think about it. Well, like your dog is dumb. Very. He was he was hell on grass on set Monday, though.

3:05There you go. It'll be two to three weeks before we take possession of this freeze dryer. This is the most exciting thing I could think had ever happened to me. Getting a freeze dryer. I'm glad you're glad about it. I got the thing I'm a freeze dry dude. I'm not even telling nobody about it. Is it an animal product? It is. But I didn't know about doing menos, man. Mm-hmm. Old date. We've got to do it. So stay tuned for that coming up down the road. I was mainly just filling Seth in on this development. I like it. He's been the world's greatest video. I've several times in my life. Google freeze dryers. And just see how much they are. And then that's about as far as I get. I was pleasantly surprised to see they got a massive sale right now. Oh, guess what Steve paid. What did you pay? I could tell what I paid. Well, I thought it was for the office. You can't just, we talked about a pun gun that we bought. That was a stupid product. I don't want to talk about it yet, because it was more than I figured. But it wasn't like, that was the one. Was it more than the pun gun?

4:05No. How about the Warner Bratzler machine? Where's it from? Probably not ballpark. Okay. That was a waste of money, ultimately. But I think I'm more optimistic about this. I'm going to be a little bit different. No. No. That was a dumb, ultimately like a dumb purchase. We've got a new segment today called the market report. It's premiering today called the market report where we're going to examine weird price increases and decreases in other things of interest regarding wildlife resources and commodities. So think of the 2025 explosion in skunk tail prices. Or the black market boom for American eel alvers about a decade ago. Looking at when you see wildlife resources have a moment of weirdness. And we're going to talk about what drives those moments of weirdness. But today we're just going to, we're kicking off the segment. Brody's going to share something with us and this came from, we came back from Alaska, big, you know, annual fishing trip.

5:09And then I came, I remember who it was. I was in Costco. I was like, holy shit. Well, that was you initiated it. All of a sudden someone sends Brody sends a photo of Costco held the price. I was like, good lord. And I was like seeing that kind of stuff because it makes me feel like I'm being frugal. Yeah. I know. But this is one thing Kelsey says it's all the time. Like she, she brings up the price of the fish that we bring home and like to justify it as like we spend a bunch of money to go to Alaska and catch all these fish. I'm going to get to that later. There's something I tell her. We wouldn't buy that fish anyway. It's true. Yeah. But it's all just in your mind. Yeah. I know I'm not going to go down to Costco and buy a halibut. Like if I didn't go to Alaska ever again, I still wouldn't go buy halibut. I might get me a couple of big old jugs that I'll boil down there. But I'm not going to go down there and buy. Or you know those things, those peanut butter pretzels, everybody's.

6:09I just got it yesterday. I was by bucket of them. I could buy. I could buy their damn fish. Anyways, let her rip. Yeah. So you got the beginning of the story of me going to Costco after we got back from the shack. This year we caught so many fish. The fishing was so good at Steve's shack that we drove up the price of Costco halibut to 29 bucks a pound. The thing that was surprising to me about this, I thought it was more than that. Oh, it was a two pound piece. Yeah. Like I normally at halibut, you'll see like a like a square block of meat from a big old like worm infested 150 pounder. They don't get the good stuff at Costco. I think you might have something to say about that story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to name. I don't want to name the guy because he's in the biz. But I got a friend who is a. He charters, but also does some commercial fishing. He one day sends me a picture of just like one of those giants, you know, like 300 pound halibut.

7:13And I said, well, that'll feel I text. He texted me the photo. I text him. Well, that'll fill your freezer. He says, are you kidding me? That's the kind of stuff they have down at Costco, meaning the quality of a halibut is in the quality of a halibut's flesh. Sits in an inverse relationship to its size. Size goes up quality goes down. So he was just making a comment that Costco buys. Big cheap. Yeah, bad halibut. So you're not even looking at premium halibut. Yeah, and that's what it was surprising is that these these were packaged like two to three pound fillets that I'm guessing from halibut that were like 12 to 15 pounds alive. Like the ones we catch a lot. I was very surprised. Oh, so it wasn't like chunks that look like fire. No, no, it was like, you know, small stuff that's going across the fish clean table.

8:14Good. Yeah, yeah. Okay, take it back about Costco because I was just sitting here thinking how they're going to send us a cease and to cis letter. Yeah, but we're already clear. But it was still spending, right? Like still spending for halibut. Another surprising thing I saw there, I didn't send you guys the picture, but same day they had chunks of troll. It said right on the label troll caught King salmon for 18 bucks a pound. I was like, holy crap, that's cheap. So I don't know if that was like, that seems very cheap. I don't know if that was like lower grade stuff or it had been sitting in a freezer for a long time and they just broke it out. And they were sitting, you know, it was that's why it was cheaper because that's like very cheap for for King salmon. And we saw a bunch of those power trollers this summer. Yeah, chasing Kings and Kings. And the thing about Costco fish is like it's flash frozen. In some cases they have, I think they have their own processing facilities in Alaska where they package and freeze the stuff and then they thought out for display in the store.

9:20Well, they do. I think I'm pretty sure that's how it works. Well, that would make total. Yeah, for like a place like this display case that's always sitting there thought. Yeah, yeah. So if you want like the really good stuff like we got good fresh caught stuff. Either got to like catch it yourself like we did live close to where it lives or order it online. And this past weekend I was in Seattle with my family going to a baseball game doing some other stuff and we were down. Checking out the waterfront. There's several fish markets like touristy fish markets down there. Well, they throw the fish back and forth. Yeah, there's a few other ones. Yeah, but it's fun like people watching and stuff. And so the price is there. We're kind of what you'd expect like if you were going to order stuff online and have it overnight at your house. Halibut 42 50 a pound. And this is what you're talking Seth because like I brought back a couple of fish boxes worth of halibut so close to 100 pounds.

10:22So like the math is pretty easy 42 times 100. So like people it's not easy for me. It's like for grand. It's like for grand. So like people are always asking us like does. Wild game meat like offset the price of hunting. And it usually doesn't but I don't know there's an argument to be made here that maybe it does. It can't my boy was pointing this out to me their day where I had him pick up a. What used to be called in Montana the single single region antler lists white tail tag. It's got a different name now but it's the same thing right and it's it's. A resident tag like five bucks or something. It was $10 for a white a resident tag for a white tailed doe. Yeah. That like if you just shot the doe. Out your window or something or five of them or yeah. You don't go far. You're 100 and he got one very local.

11:22Right. It's like then you can be like man I'm looking all this money. I'm saying. Yeah. Because I just shot hundreds of dollars worth of medicines for the cost of an expandable broadhead and a $10 tag. Yeah. But when I drive nine hours to go kill me older but. Well, not another state. That's how I justified my Colorado tag to my wife. It came out without gear I'd already bought it was like two grand for the tag the gas everything. You're not going to get there man. What do you mean? No, it came out it came out it came I got about 200 pounds it came out to about 10 bucks a pound and I told her. Hey listen, if you go down to Whole Foods to buy organic whatever it's going to be 10 bucks a pound. Yeah, and I got an experience. Yeah, you should tell her say listen man, I either go on this hunt. Okay. Or I'm going to go down and buy 200 pounds a halibut. At the fish market and see that's right. And then we'll see who's yeah, but what I'm interested in and then we'll see who's right. What's the I never been to Alaska? What's the cost of like getting up there?

12:22Like what are you in to get up there and get a big. A couple of money. A couple of dollars. Yeah. A couple of dollars. Anyway, 42 50 for halibut. King salmon also 42 50. Ling cod and I don't understand this commercial fishery for Ling cod because you can't put gear out for them. So there's a whole commercial Ling cod fishery and how's it one washing just rod and reel. Yeah, there's like no, there's like specific gear they use. Yeah, but there's Ling cod. I was a little confused and then there's Ling cod from buy catch the maker. Yeah, yeah. They're speaking of buy catch. There was yellow. I there 30 bucks a pound. Pacific cod 25 bucks a pound. It seemed a little spending for these people got all wrong though on the market because Pacific cod should be the most of the bits you want. Yep. But it's just got a reputation as being like it's like the fact that you can get twice as much almost that that you can get twice as much cod is halibut for your dollar should leave you leaving the fish store laughing in the fish stores face.

13:23Yep. But meanwhile, I mean, while those commercial crab fishermen are using that stuff for bait pecan, you know, what was the tub of cheats and collars. Heads were a dollar pound collars were $5 pound and it was just like a random selection of. You just get to yeah, Brody's got a great photo of the tub. Oh, yeah, it's like the gut tub. Yeah. I don't know how much they sell that stuff, but I'd be buying some of it if I live there. Cut a quick favorite story. Yeah, we're cleaning. I want to say Jaguar sharks, but that's from life aquatic. We're cleaning leopard sharks. We're cleaning leopard sharks one time in San Francisco. We're at a boat ramp cleaning leopard sharks. Yep. And there's this guy. There's this guy. I feel I don't know, but my from my conversation with them, which we weren't really able to have. I feel like he was Chinese. He is going through all the bins of guts every is cleaning all their fish.

14:27And he's going through the bins of guts getting out the fins from the leopard sharks. And I, this is a long time ago and I wasn't like hip to the whole fin market. Right. So I go to him and I'm like, hey man, I'm trying to give him a big leopard shark flake. Like the whole side off a leopard shark. To which he's, he, because we can't speak to which he conveys like, no, I'm good. I'm good. I thought, I'm like, oh, jeez, man, he's digging through the trash poor guy. And I'm like, here's big old shark. The left, which I was like, nah, he's getting what he wanted. It was not interested in a play. He knew what he wanted. And maybe he'd be, and he was different with shark fins. But when we clean fish, when we clean fish in the Bahamas, the Bahamians will come down. And they just come down with their tools. And they stand there and they shoot the breeze of everybody, but they got their tools and they just are cleaning fish heads. Yeah, they wait for you to, as you claim, they're standing there being like, may I?

15:30Split them, de-gill them, quarter them and this cleaning them and bagging them up. Yeah, I mean, we do all right, keeping some collars at your shack, but not the heads, not the heads. No. And finally, the last thing in this fish market that I saw for Steve is the fishy lakes the most, but just can't seem to ever catch them is black cod, which was 2650 a pound. They had some big ones there, man. I think any of you seems cheap to just just the air dam talking to Justin, Kimmy Werner's husband, Justin. Yep. And they have a family place just north of us. I mean, same water, same water. They are knocking the piss out of them. I'm like, show me how to chart what you're fishing. Right. He's fishing the same shit I'm fishing. You should explain black cod a little bit for what's the stable fish. Yeah. So she like, it's like a fish made out of butter, butter, fatty. Oh, it's good. Yeah. So that was that. That's our market report for kind of like Alaska Northwest seafood.

16:31The next one I'd like to do just to keep this in your in your little noodle there is, let's do a roundup on what? Bluegill Flays, Perch Flays, Walleye Flays. The normal fresh water take. What does that market look like? Yeah. All that stuff has a commercial market. Yep. What does a dude pan for a pound of bluegill Flays or a pound of Canadian perch? You know, pound or walley dogs. Are you making money when you fish walleye? Right. Is that thing? No, especially when you throw them back. Yeah. He's just, he's basically obsessed up there just throwing $20 bills. Throwing $20 bills into the into the lake. Okay, up. Yeah. Okay. Now over to your news. Terrible. You know, I, I wasn't happy with that one either. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. Some of Phil's worse work. A man of normal genius. Hmm. But just not.

17:33Great work. I'll do better. Your news brought to you by banish suppressors, which I'm holding right now. I'm going to get my hot little hand. Let her rip. We had a listener write in and he says, dear Stephen Rinella on the meat eater crew. My school has a policy for the amount of school someone can miss before they lose the credits for a class. That amount is 10 days in the entire semester. Then you are ineligible for the credit in the class. I was writing to ask Mr. Rinella if he could write a doctor's note so that I can skip school and go on a pack trip to go elk hunting because I know he's got some sort of decorative doctorate of some kind. Please let me know before November 1st. This is when my tag opens. I'd be more than happy to write him a note. I will. We could do it one better. Because if they catch that mine's honorary, they might throw him out of school. But Randalls is real. We get two doctors. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Double up. He got a second opinion. You know, like, you know, we use the note where you public next door.

18:33And she, I think it's, she charges like 10 bucks. I'll probably, it's probably going to be like a, like a $10 fee to sign doctors notices. Yeah. So the point is we will rubber stamp your doctor's notes for to go hunting. Yeah. I will, I'll create a form. You, yeah, you write whatever you want and I'll sign it. Yeah. No, no, we'll have a form that people request. It is pre-signed about emotional health, being in touch with nature, etc., etc. And I'll just plug your name in and you can take that to your professor. It'll be signed by Stephen Rinalov. And they, you know, maybe, maybe what we do then instead of charged them 10 bucks, as they should just kick in on that little kitty we got going to get that dude's bison school age. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. When you max that out, it just goes to the LAI. LAI. There you go. No, I'll be happy to sign them. No, we'll have Randalls sign it too. Sounds like a double doctor. They can't refuse that. And Madison's on top of it two months ahead of time. He's writing in to ask for this. Oh, or she. So I ran up in this wall when I was in college, I ran up against his prom,

19:36where if I missed another day, it was November 15th, if I missed another day, I would, I could do no better than a C. And I went hunting anyway. Yes, these are great. Well, I went, listen to what happened though. Like in hindsight, I don't, there was probably no way. This is a long time ago. In hindsight, there's probably no way it was legal light. But I'm sitting there in the dark waiting for it to get light. And a buck is coming. And I'm not kidding, man. This is terrible. I got down on the ground and put my cheek against the dirt trying to skylight his antlers. That's too dark. Was able to find his throat patch in my scope. It was early to class. But in hindsight, but we didn't really like know about that kind of, it just wasn't the thing that was on our radar. Yeah. That there was shooting light and all that. But there was no way it was legal shooting light.

20:36And only like, it just wasn't the thing that my dad talked about. Yeah. Like legal. It just was not. No one talked about me, but it wasn't in the red book. Oh, absolutely. But it was also not a place I spent any time doing casual reading in the red books. So I recently heard someone say the best, um, get out of class email that you can write to a professor is say you got sprayed by a skunk. That's great. What are they going to do? What does it want to do? There's no proof. They're not going to ask you to come in. Um, that like that, that should work. There's going to be a lot of people getting sprayed by skunks, I think. This year. Unless I'm the professor. Hmm. I'm going to say, no, it's cool. Come on on. I love that smell. Come on down the fact. Cut in my office early. I like to visit about this. You want to be on the news show? Yeah. Yeah. So right in subject line, doctors note, include the dates in your name. Yeah. Happy to write those and we'll double doctor them. Yep. We'll double doc them. Hey, everyone. Big huge announcement.

21:36Me either live. The Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026. This time we're hitting the Midwest. Me either live. The Christmas tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. We got grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Join myself, Janus Putellis, Clay New, Cambrant Reaves, and Randall Williams for a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife conservation, and wild foods. Also, we're already stacking up some great special guests. I got my buddy, Bubbly Doug, making the appearance in Madison. Me either live is the best Christmas gift for any outdoorsman or woman in your life. Tickets go on sale September 25th, but sign up at the me either dot com slash tour and you'll get pre sale access to buy tickets on September 14th days before they go on sale

22:38to the public. We can't wait to see you there. I'm telling you, go ask anyone who has ever come to one of the me either live events and they will tell you, we laugh our asses off. We give away great prizes. We put on a solid show that I'm proud to be part of. Okay, order Spencer Newhart. Now, helicopter hunt, lay it out. I've got this story broken up into like three parts. I'm going to try to answer all your questions before you get to them, but just like trust that something hasn't come up yet. Hopefully it's going to be nice. I'm just going to sit back and enjoy about two weeks ago. This is why we're talking about this now on August 26th, 2026 outdoor life publishes an article from their hunting and conservation editor, Andrew McKin. Title, I was convicted of trespassing after covering public land access issues on our controversial Wyoming elk hunt subheader. We helicopter into otherwise inaccessible public land to hunt elk and highlight landlocked issues in the west, but I made a terrible mistake.

23:41Those are all Andrew's words. The hunt Andrew is referring to took place in Wyoming November, 2025. Andrew is there with three buddies David, Ben and Ryan, plus a film crew. They are recording the whole thing and using this as an example of how there are 16 million acres that we the public own, but we the public can't get to 16 million is the number from on X. Okay. That's been thrown around. David, one of the haunting buddies has been planning this hunt for quite a while. It's a special piece of public land that the public can't get to without crossing a little bit of private land. Thus it gives this rancher control of a whole bunch of public lands that he has paying hunters access via him. Got it. So he's outfitting. He's outfitting his land, but you can also reach this other public land. Yeah, he's not doing nothing wrong. Nope. This is legal that he's doing into something he's been doing for quite a while. So the only way to get this public again is by paying for a guided hunt or do what David

24:44and Ryan and Andrew did and that's having a helicopter fly you in. David spent over a hundred hours planning this hunt. One of the biggest obstacles was just simply finding a pilot to fly them in. At one point, he actually called a hot air balloon company and started asking them logistical questions about like if they thought he could pull this off. And at one point, the guy was like, David, you know, you can't like stir these things, steer these things, right? Like you're just going with the wind and it kind of brought the hot air balloon fantasy to an end. Well, how are those guys all still alive? The hot air balloon folks. Yeah. I don't know. I suppose they just like have a general idea about what the wind is doing that day or where they're going to come down at. Come on. They just land wherever I don't think it's that simple, but I think there's some amount of mystery about where hot. The point is to make this journey from a public road to the public land. The guy talking to David is like, I don't think I had to. He's not that precise. He can't be that precise. Yep. So finally, on the 27th pilot, the David calls, he found someone willing to take their

25:46business. And for about $2,000 per person, these guys could take a four minute helicopter ride into public land. That's how far I'm in. Two thousand dollars to get four minutes from a road to the public land. No. So that's the big deal. Now to go through the rancher to hunt there, as of 2024 pricing, I found on his website $6,500. So you're saving $4,500 doing the helicopter route. That's what they decided on. But that's that he's not just charging an access fee. It's got to be that it's a that it's a guided hunt. I don't know. His website is vague on details. You contact him, but he doesn't even really mention the public land on his website. He talks about all the acres of private he has access to. And how we kill this many trophy bulls. And these are your sleeping accommodations. But $6,500 versus two thousand, just if you want to get to this public land. So I'm going to tell the story in three parts. This is not how it happened in real time. But this is how this information was released to the public.

26:48So this is how I consume this story as it was happening over the last nine months. And if you're someone who isn't familiar with any part of the story at all, then you're going to consume it the same way that that me and the rest of the public who was following this did. Great. Part one. This one's got a lot of national attention right after it happened. But for a different reason than Andrew McKeein's trespassing. This was the elk hunt where a rancher went onto public land to the kill site of a bull. And that rancher tried hiding the elk's skull that he found there. To be clear, this was not Andrew's elk that we're going to talk about in a little bit. This was a different elk that was legally killed by another member of the hunting party. We covered this on our website. We had a media to radio live interview with David Fabian about this exact story. He works for Guns and ammo magazine. And he was the one he was one of the hunters there when this happened. He was holding the cell phone that sort of captured this encounter. Here's a quick recap of that encounter.

27:48That was day two of this helicopter elk hunt, David, who we see here and Ryan both killed really good bulls on day two on day three. They're still working on getting all the meat back to their camp. And while David and Ben are at David's kill site, they happen to spot someone at Ryan's kill site, which is a couple hundred yards away. And it's not anyone from their hunting party. They watch this person through their binos as this person carries the elk skull into a ravine. Ben and David, they rush over there and they confront this man as he emerges from the timber. This leads to what David Fabian called, quote, the strangest hunting encounter of my life. It turns out that this guy is the rancher who controls the access to this landlocked land. He was a 70 year old rancher. It's not clear to me if that's his exact age or just estimated, but he's an old time rancher and he is busted in the act of stealing their elk skull on public land, on public land,

28:50firmly in public land. Okay. David gets out his phone. He starts filming the interaction between them. The rancher starts off by just like straight up lying and being deceitful. And he says something like, I don't know what bull you guys are talking about. And eventually he does fest up to it and Ben says something like, why this happened? And the rancher answers, quote, because I don't want you guys hunting this outfit. So this is like the viral moment of this whole experience, sort of until now that we'll get to in a little bit. David said in our interview on Radio Live that the elk skull was hidden in a way that you basically had to be on top of it to see it. And the rancher watches them crawl into this ditch where he hid this skull. They get their antlers back and everyone kind of goes their separate ways. And after these guys, I see these guys don't skin their skulls off. That always kind of bothers me. They did it camp because if Phil goes back a couple photos, I think we see them skinned out. But at that point in the hunt, they were butchering too elk that day.

29:50Monitor detail. It seemed like they just hadn't gotten around to it yet. So they go back to camp. They get their meat and their skull back. They get service at that point. They call the game warden. Game warden is very interested in their story. And he says, I got a question here. Who's creepy hand is in the top left corner of that? I think it's either David or Ben handing down to get the skull from the guy from where he hid it at. So this is like showing us the place where he placed this skull to give him to give it back. Yes, he's giving it back. Handing it back. I understand. So the contact the game warden game warden says, I'll meet you guys, you know, like tomorrow. And we can talk about it then. So this interaction with the rancher went viral like like mega viral between the videos, the national media coverage, podcast coverage. This story gets told to millions of people. We're looking at the original Facebook post here, which has been ripped off a million times. But just this first one, 10,000 likes, 700 comments, 300 shares.

30:52And if like I said, this was like the defining moment of this whole thing. It was one of the defining moments of 2025. If the outdoors are something you're interested in, this probably came across your table at some point. If you want to hear more about this specific interaction, again, that was episode 813 of Media to Radio Live. We interviewed David for about 20 minutes. That's part one. Again, this happens on days two and three. Okay. Part two. We're going to back up today one before the helicopter even picks these guys up. Andrew McKean delivers this message to a cameraman. He says, quote, the thing that's really interesting about it and kind of catches in my throat a little bit is this feels like it's so aggressive, like a little bit kind of a thumb in the eye to the landowners who control the access and probably have for years. But this is kind of, but this is kind of like a measure of what's happened across the West, really, between the corner crossing issue, between people exploiting the resource

31:54one way or the other, either because they've got the access or want the access, there's kind of a land grab going on right now. So this is our testing of, I think, a way to like create access or provide access or get access. I don't even know what the verb really is. We're grabbing access is the way it feels from people who have always had it for a long time. So that is what Andrew says before the chalper even arrives to pick them up. So real some real foreshadow and going on there. It's the first day of the hunt and they could legally hunt on day one in Wyoming as long as they flew in and weren't doing any scouting. Again, the heli ride was four minutes, so no scouting done like they take off land set up camp and they start hunting. That afternoon, they spot some bulls and they get into position to kill one. Here's a screen grab from the video of the bull that Andrew eventually kills. And as they're waiting for the right moment, Andrew delivers another very foreboding message to camera. Here's a quote. So we're watching two bulls feed out of the timber.

32:54I'm pretty sure these are the two bulls we saw in the little clearing when we first got up above camp and glass them. One's kind of junior varsity, but one is a stud. They're at 400-8 yards right now. We got some mule deer between us and them that kind of had got us pegged, so we're just being super chill to see what they do. But the wind's good. I don't know. Everything is going right until it doesn't. We kind of got a tippy toe because there's some private like a quarter section up here. So we just have to keep watching to see where we are. Make sure that everything is good, but that just kind of adds one more little detail to it. So we're going to see how they're going to be in public. They're on public, but if they go a whole lot more south, they're going to be on private, and there's no marker. Andrew's quote, it's like the last thing he says, basically, before he pulls the trick. So Andrew gets slightly repositioned. He shoots the big bull three times. It looks like all three shots like land. We can't tell because of a camera cut, but it appears as though the bull runs about 50 yards between where shot one takes place and where the bull dies.

33:57And it's a wopper of an elk. This is a really big bull. So that's the end of day one. Day one, Andrew kills the giant elk, day two, David and Ben kill good bulls, day three. They have the encounter with the rancher who tries hiding the elk's skull. And day four, they fly back to their pickups. I got to stop you. What do you got? They walk up to this bull that's dead. There's no like, oh shit moment or no like maybe that's part three. I know. There, there are some disagreements or discrepancies between Andrew's account and the rancher who later gets interviewed by Cowboy, Daily State News. I believe from like where the elk dies at and where you see some of the footage of them doing like the gripping rins and just like high-fiving and talking over the elk. The elk has now moved about 25 yards, I believe. Andrew says the elk died on a steep slope and they just naturally wanted to get down to the flaspot. And it was here to do the rancher says that they moved it so fast that it's suspicious

35:02to him that he thinks they moved that bull pretty quick and they knew how it was he watching. No, but you watch the video and you see the elk die and there's still like it appears as though you're still looking at legal shooting lights while they're standing over the elk and it's slightly been moved. Again, Andrew says they were just sliding it down the hill to a more natural spot to gut. The rancher says they moved it so quickly that it seemed as though they knew there was a problem. Okay, so outdoor life, outdoor life who Andrew works for publishes a 25 minute video of the hunt on YouTube in March 2026. So about four months after the hunt takes place. Is that video like widely viewed? 230,000 people I think. So yeah, it's a popular video. And again, this video was like being talked about before it ever came out because the helicopter thing was unique because of the interaction they had with the rancher who tried stealing the skull. So this was like, you know, set up to be viewed by people at that.

36:04The rancher, the very same rancher who these guys interacted with on day three watches the video and he recognizes that Andrew's bull is standing on his private land when he shoots it and not only that, but the bull runs even farther into private land before dying. The rancher contacts a game warden. The warden comes out compares the video with Lamar's person. Him having this realization when he watches the video. By this point has he already been kind of like showcased and talked about the video comes out in March of the 25 minute hunt, the viral video of the rancher getting caught stealing the Elk School. He drops on like December one. So he's been building for four months. So at this point, he for months has been called out ridiculed about a thing that like viral

37:05means the guy should not have hit people's stuff. But he's been dealing with this. We'll address this in act three. Okay. So the rancher contacts warden. Warren comes out. He compares the video with landmarks in person. I read that he found like the land, the public land survey marker in the ground just to be certain. And the game warden determines that in fact, Andrew McKeein's bull was standing about 35 yards inside of private land when he shot it. How are they that have known this? How would McKee not know this? He doesn't know. No, there's no fences on his. He's got he's he's definitely running a GPS mapping plan. Understood. And he's talking about where the private land is. They said they felt confident in like the boundaries that they could identify in person. So so McKeein is now written a ticket for trespassing. He played no contest on August 24th to one count of title 23 trespass and one count of the

38:09use of a silencer to take big to take a big game animal while trespassing. He was fined $1,270 and surrendered his school to the state. Oh, so McKeein pleads no contest August 24th. It's then on August 26th, two days later when outdoor life publishes the article that I referenced earlier. It's titled I was convicted of trespassing after covering public land access issues on our controversial Wyoming. Elkont. What do you think that was mandated by the prosecutor? You think that was just trying to get out ahead of it? I'm guessing he had that in the can for weeks or months. This all didn't unfold for Andrew, you know, in the course of a week. If that rancher recognized it in March and the game wardens, you know, alerted immediately, I'm sure this was on Andrew's plate for for months at this point. That's a lot of stress. A little with man. So in the article McKeein takes responsibility for trespassing. He says it was an honest mistake. He says they studied the digital maps in the field and they thought the bull was standing

39:1130 yards inside of public rather than 35 yards inside of private. In the article, McKeein says he's, quote, deeply sorry. It was, quote, a profound mistake. Another spot, he says, quote, the most painful penalty is that in this case, I became part of the problem. Later in the article, he talks about following the rules and being an ethical hunter and how landowners deserve rights. And he says, quote, to now publicly admit that I failed to uphold those values, hurts beyond description. And as part of his conclusion, he says, quote, I will resign from my 25 year tenure as a Montana hunter education instructor, because I can't in good conscious teach perspective hunters about the importance of obtaining landowner permission with this incident on my record. I will accept judgment from friends, hunting buddies and a legion of online commentators who have never met me. Man. Right. So that's part two. Man. Again, the McKeein article. Here's part three. McKeein's article is published. I got a button. Yep. That, that was a noble acknowledgement.

40:14I know we're only in the part two, but that was a full throated. Yeah. I, I assume you read the thing, Steve, but it's, it's Bay. Okay. Yeah. He's, he like, I'm just, he's not trying to wiggle out. No, he owns it in the middle and he owns it at the end. The whole way through is like, man, I, I made a stupid mistake because he could have been like someone should have done a better job. You know what I mean? Yeah. Okay. One week after McKeein's article is published on September 2nd, Cowboys State Daily Post an article about the whole situation in the article, they provide an update on the ranchers own legal case and are able to interview him. So here's what we learn. Back in April, the rancher pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge for hiding the L.K. He was fined $220. So about $1,000 less than McKeein's fine for his two trespassing violations. Looking at the elk thief, or either rancher told Cowboys State Daily, quote, I saw where they had killed a big bull, I, I, I, I, I saw where they had killed a bull elk the day

41:15before on the BLM land within one half to three quarters mile from our buildings. I got upset and let my emotions get the best of me and took the elk head and packed it downhill and put it in a deep draw. I was in the wrong doing it. I eventually apologized. We shook hands and they got their horns back. So that was one of the ranchers quote in this article. The rancher said the fallout from the event led to harassment and death threats. He said he just stopped answering his phone this year. If it was a phone number, he didn't recognize another detail. McKeein says in the article that he attempted to reach out to the landowner in an attempt to meet and mend fences, but the landowner did not respond in the Cowboys State Daily article. He confirms that he got the letter and a voice mail from McKeein and decided not to respond. Here is the ranchers quote. He put me through so much misery last fall and last winter, I don't have any desire to get together with him. The last thing of note here is that the rancher says he's already aware of one group of

42:18hunters who have booked a helicopter to fly them in this fall and he suspects there will be more. I want to give my take away and then then you guys have at it. I feel bad for everybody involved. I don't think anybody came away from this feeling good or feeling like the winner, like both parties made pretty bad mistakes, both parties apologized and both parties had really severe consequences. It just ends up being a black eye for the public land hunters and a black eye for this kind of landowner who uniquely controls public land access. It's just like a rare lose lose. Go ahead, Brody. I mean, it's real easy to judge Andrew from afar. Things happen in the heat of the moment. Oh my God, it's just a good lesson to not mess with animals that are flirting the private property line. That's such a small margin of error.

43:20Walk away and find one that's half a mile from the line. That's my take away. I'd love to get in a helicopter and go hunt there. If that's the only way you're going to do it, great. But it's just too easy to screw up. And they say in the video that Andrew's like, we got to be careful because there's a quarter section, 160 acres. I went to ONX and I feel like I've sussed out where this whole thing played out. I'm sure the frustrating part for Andrew and the others in this party is they are in kind of like a sea of public land. And this 160 acres is when you look at it, you're like, oh, it's kind of meaningless. They could just find that bowl again tomorrow and I bet he's on the public. Or maybe they could wait 10 minutes. In this case, he was 35 yards inside the private. Yeah. But like Brody said, this is just like a familiar story. If you hunt in the West, you're used to being around on mark boundaries. You're used to being around convenient fencing where the property line actually cuts across

44:21like a steep bank, but they move the fence 50 yards one direction the other. And then that becomes like an unofficial property line. It's just something that like you're always dealing with these legal boundaries and it's a frustrating and like scary part of hunting within the margins. I'm constantly doubting where I'm standing versus what ONX is telling me. And it like ONX is probably dead nuts, right? But 30 yards man, that's just like, yeah. You're right. The whole thing's painful. I applaud not the right word because applause is not the right word. I understand and would have no hesitation to do a hunt where you were accessing landlock

45:22public land with a helicopter. Part of my comfort with it, right, is that I do a lot of hunting in Alaska where you use fixed wing aircraft to access stuff. And when you're flying along and fixed wing aircraft, you're often flying over land, you're not allowed to hunt, right? Flying over native corporation land, whatever, you land somewhere and you hunt and you don't even think about it. I think it seems surprising down here because it's just a thing that people hadn't thought of before. It's kind of a, it's this new idea, right? You do something so sort of extravagant and expensive as higher, in this case, rotary wing aircraft, which I'll point out would be illegal to do in Alaska because you have to use fixed wing aircraft for hunting in Alaska. I didn't know that detail. Yeah, you can't use, you can't, in Alaska, you can't do nothing around hunting with a helicopter. You can't supply a hunting camp with a helicopter in Alaska, only fixed wing. Is that something you ever hear about them talking to changers that just like part of the

46:25culture? No, because it would be, think about what it would mean for Dahlsheet. Think about what it would mean for everything. Yeah. There's like, do you just land on anything? I assume they just loved airplanes up there. No, no, no, no. Picture what it would mean. I get it. You find a bull. You find a bull moose. You're just going to land on it. You find a Dahlsheet. You're going to land on it. There's no more hikin' from the valley floor up to the top. You land it top. It'd be, I don't want to be hyperbolic again and say that it would be the death of big game hunting in Alaska, but it would have enormous, and even, even more, even with fixed wings, they bake that day delay in because you can still land in the path of a caribou migration, right? So, at least you give them a day buffer and, you know. But yeah, wildlife resources in Alaska are often protected by the fact you can't get a boat near it, and there's not an air strip near it. There's not a road near it. The minute you can just hop out of a helicopter on some marshland and chase a bull, it's,

47:27I don't want to say it's done, but it's done. Otherwise debating about this and that thing killed Alaska, you'd have a whole new, better argument about the helicopter's killed Alaska. So, and that wakes, I have like many decades of experience hunting in Alaska under those circumstances. The helicopter thing, I look at it, there's like an instinctive icky-ness to helicopters because I have the Alaska parallel in my head. I don't view it as wrong at all to use a helicopter to go hunt some land like public land. At all, wrong. There's no question about it. The point I'll bring up is if you are in a situation where you are showcasing, you're making a point about public private boundaries. You're making a point about access.

48:30You're making a point about landowner hunter relationships. You're selling your editors. Not on, hey, I want to go get a big bowl real easy. Me and my body's wanting easy two, three day hunger, we all get bowls. We're going to your editor and you're saying, oh, we're going to do this whole showcase project and talk about land borders. It just seems, and this is so obvious, but it just seems you would be behaving in a way where you were bulletproof. You wouldn't give yourself a 35 yard. Come on. Potential. Come on. My kid has found, not found, it's late, my daughter has the lawn mower around it. There's a giant bark in my neighborhood. It's like scared the shit out of me the other day. There's a giant bark, not giant, but a big bark. Like drop time giant. He's a giant bark. Does he actually have a drop time?

49:32Oh, yeah. One and a half of them, dude. Oh, a big drop time white tell you got a mo around. You know what they say? He's going to die old age. He's either going to die old age or get hit by a car. I know where he's going to die. I can tell you within 200 yards of where I'll find him someday. He's very headless on the road. Because he just, he's doomed. But my kid is baked up these various plans. You know, not even seriously, but he's just, he's mused about these various plans and I have explained to him, should that buck leave and go like, if on its route, it winds up out of city limits, you know, which is uncertain. And if you look at that area, I'm like, you would have to get permission from a lot of people. Because where you put the arrow into it, isn't where it ends. As evidenced by a fact that a deer he got just recently with his bow was 130 yards from

50:34where the arrow hit it when we found it. And I'm trying to invite him to go like, let's go look at what 130 yards looks like. Yeah. Oh, that's not the neighbor. In some cases, that's not the neighbor's neighbor. All right. So if your whole thing is that you're doing a thing about land borders and all that, why are you messing around within 30 yards of an animal that if you've hunted it a bunch can really, really take a hit. And it's a 160 acres, right? So 400 by 400 yards, right? Quarter mile. The things not going to be in there forever, right? Like, and you know they can take a hit. Yep. And to be like the thing you're talking about of making this, this like content around the idea of this is how difficult it can be to access 16 million of our acres.

51:36It involved outdoor life. It involved outdoor lives like social media. They're publishing team, they're video team. It involved David Fabian who works for a totally different outdoor company, Guns and ammo. So there's just like a lot of parties involved in making this thing just to show folks how big it was. Yeah. And to be clear, I've got friends that have had this problem happen. The fact that I haven't had this happen to me is just that I've just been lucky at times. You know, I've played the fence game. Like, you know what I mean? Oh, just jump the fence over on the place. We're allowed to get it. Yep. I'm just lucky that I haven't had this happen. So it's not passing judgment that it happened. If I had a buddy that had that happen to him, I would give it as much thought as it takes to go like, that's really too bad. You should be more careful next time. And they'd be like, yeah, no kidding. But just the point of what you're doing is that it just seems like you would have been

52:39so careful. So careful. Hey, everyone, big huge announcement. Me either live, the Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 2026. This time we're hitting the Midwest. Me either live, the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six Midwestern cities. We've got Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, Demolline, Minneapolis, and Fargo. Me and myself, Yanis Poutellis, Claynew, Cumbrant Reeves, and Randall Williams. For a night of laughs, trivia, free prizes, news, and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation, and wild foods. Also, we're already stacking up some great special guests. I got my buddy, bubbly Doug, making the appearance in Madison. Me either live is the best Christmas gift for any outdoorsman or woman in your life. Let's go on sale September 25th, but sign up at the Me either dot com slash tour and

53:42you'll get pre sale access to buy tickets on September 14th days before they go on sale to the public. We can't wait to see you there. And I'm telling you, go ask anyone who has ever come to one of the Me either live events and they will tell you we laugh our asses off. We give away great prizes. We put on a solid show that I'm proud to be part of. Wasn't there already a question about the legality of the helicopter involvement? Like if he was packing them in and he needed a guiding license? Well, that's a thing. Spencer might be able to speak this better, but that is a thing that people are poking at legally now. And I think guides and outfitters association and Wyoming, perhaps, is looking at this is when what is a helicopter operator becoming a outfitter? I would also, but then I would ask this question. If I take an Uber out to my hunting spots, is the Uber guy in trouble? And of course not. David, if I said, no, I Ubered out to my buddy's farm and hunted.

54:45No one would ever say, let's check with that Uber operator, make sure he's a licensed outfitter. It's like, come on. David who did most of the hunt planning here, he put the screws to like the planning portion of this. And that was something that he cleared with Wyoming official ahead of time. We're good to do this, right? And this guy is going to be okay. And so they were confident going in that like everything involving the helicopter itself was totally kosher. Yeah, I'll tell you one thing that could have happened also. And again, like I don't want these guys to think I'm passing judgment, but there could have been a situation where they notify it. Like, obviously the landowner is going to see that helicopter. But months before the hunt, they could have been like, look, we're doing this just so you know, we're going in there. And perhaps some of that tension would have been mitigated like as it happened. You know, I don't think they're, yeah, that would have been in hindsight, maybe a nice

55:46move. And I don't think there's any way on earth. There's no way on earth the machine was like, oh, I know it's on private, but I'm just going to try my luck and try to get down. There's no way. He made a mistake about it. He made a mistake. There's no way I think that he thought I'll just be clever and drag it out of the way. Yeah. It was a mistake. It was a mistake. And his apology is like I said, it is a full apology. Yeah. There is no, wow, you know, dammit. They should have moved the, you know, or someone should have put that marker more clear. You know, I mean, he didn't, in any way, try to put it off on somebody. Yeah, I wonder if it's a little bit of the, who says it? Durkin, that big bucks make people stupid. Maybe that bull made them stupid for a minute, you know? Mm hmm. Yeah, and like, like a lot of haunts in those final moments, it happens fast. Like, McCain delivers the message to camera about like we kind of got a tippy toe because of some of the boundaries.

56:47And then all of a sudden, the bowl is moving and McCain is moving. And like the shot happens and the whole thing, I don't know the real time of it, but you would figure just a couple of minutes to like make all of those calls. Yeah. And I'm sure they were obviously aware when it happened and like, oh, this could be close. Yeah. The sad part too is that the point they were not sad part or reality. Happier sad. I'm not going to wait on that. The reality is the point they were trying to make in the end. They obviously only resulted in them creating more of a question around. And ethics and conflict, right? It didn't clarify anything. It's like, you went to access some inaccessible public land and stirred some serious shit up and cause people to have opinions about it that probably didn't have opinions about it before. Yeah. Yeah. In a state where the whole corner crossing thing kind of just got settled.

57:47And now there's this to this issue to deal with. Yeah. You know, it's funny about stuff like that is the other day. I mentioned this before, but there a day we had a barren our, we had a barren our garage messing all around. I'm trying to get them out of there. And I'm thinking in my head, I told my neighbor, I was like, if I wasn't me out of shot it. Yeah. But like, I can't do that. Yeah. The stakes are because someone's going to be like, well, he had this and that and he attractants and his compost pile and he had a, they were cleaning grouse and I mean, so I'm like, I can't shoot it, but I would have shot it. Yeah. This, this isn't a lesson. It's just like an observation. The whole thing, but imagine if all of this would have went down with no cameras. Like the rancher, he wouldn't have been charged with anything because that would have been right, a totally different story being told by the hunters about like what happened and it's, you know, there's just no proof.

58:48And obviously, McCain would have been seen shooting 35 yards inside of the boundary. It's just like if that wasn't part of this whole thing, we wouldn't know any of this story at all. Nobody would have a charge. Again, there's no lesson there. It's just like 2025. I wonder what the pilot, if the pilot is interested in taking another call from another potential client or if the pilot is like, man, y'all, I don't know. Got too much heat. Well, the fact that it took him 20, 23. So I think there must be a lot of helicopter pilots in Wyoming that are like, you know, I live in this town. Yeah. I don't want to deal with that. Yeah, they're like, yeah, I'm going to stick to the flight scene and all that kind of stuff. But then pilot 27 is like, I don't know, four minute ride. Yeah. Two thousand bucks person for four minutes. That's a lot of that's a lot of money. Mm hmm. It feels like this is wrapped up now.

59:49Like I think this is the conclusion of it all, which obviously none of them wanted. But it's been playing out for nine months and it feels like it's come to an end. I respect that. I respect step in a way as a hunting instructor. But I also think that there'd be room to, um, there'd be room to just be a hunting instructor who's a real guy that made a mistake. Yeah, and be like, let me tell you about this kid. Yeah, he could, he could teach kids about that mistake. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm always talking about all the rules we broke as kids, man, like, I don't know. No cameras. Well, I'm taught, I'm telling about, I mean, I've written about them. Like we broke rules that we didn't even, we didn't feel like breaking them. So we didn't know that they ever, lots of times didn't know they were rules. Huh. What do you got, Seth?

1:00:50Nancy. Yeah, what? Yeah, this burns this, this, this burns my ass. So the Etsy, the Etsy fly, it's not, it's not a fly band. It's a fur band and people are using fur to tie flies. Yeah. So Etsy has started deactivating listings that contain animal products as of August 11th, 2026. Etsy updated its animal products policy to no longer allow items made with real animal fur, including common fly time material such as make fox rabbit, badger, coyote, raccoon. So I looked at the Etsy animal products policy and it says note this policy was updated on August 11th, 2026, right at the top. Okay. And then so the first thing you see is like endangered threatened in that risk wildlife

1:01:53products, which is like a no brainer. Yeah, it's table stakes. It's like no, no kid. Yeah. And it goes on to say like, you know, an important part of creating a sustainable future, protecting wildlife from extinction. Yada, yada, basically saying you can't sell anything that has anything to do with like sighties animals and stuff like endangered species act animals as it should as it should and it lists, there's a big list of animals, bats, bears, chinchillas, corals, crocodilians, elephant, you know, all the things. Pangolus or pangolins. And then I don't know the old. I couldn't find the old like policy, but there's a part at the end that says animal fur products. And says in addition to prohibiting products made from endangered and threatened species

1:02:56at sea prohibits products made from containing natural animal fur regardless of age or origin. This includes products like raw pelts, finished garments, accessories and personal care items made with real fur from animals such as make fox rabbit, badger coyote and raccoon dog. This does not include taxidermy by product materials such as leather, sheepskin, sheerling, cow hide wool or mohair or fur products from sellers registered with the Indian arts and crafts board. That's an interesting distinction. Yeah. So I got I got to do in some digging around and there's an organization called CAFT, the coalition to abolish the fur trade. They conducted a 58 day protest campaign across 17 cities that targeted at sea headquarters,

1:04:05board members and affiliates and the chicken shits cave. Yeah. This ban was announced after CAFT confronted the SECO at a Morgan Stanley investor conference saying that they continue or that they are continuing to profit off the bloody fur trade in front investors investors. So I went on Etsy to just look to see what's still there and there are like what like clouds or minnows that have like deer hair and stuff still on there. I don't know if it's like you know stuff that they haven't. I was looking at descriptions too and doesn't say like you know deer hair or anything like that. But there's still products on there that are made from you know animal products, but it's probably just stuff that hasn't been flagged. But we had a guy right in, but a guy wrote in that that ties flies and sells them on there and said that a lot of his listings have been removed.

1:05:07More some examples of flies that he's had removed. I don't know. It just said there was a screenshot of you know Etsy emailing him just saying like your listing has been removed. It didn't say he mentioned that it's just if you're if you mentioned the animal fur in it. So elk hair cats. Yeah like yeah like or muskrat whatever. And so him and a lot of his peers are just changing the descriptions. So hopefully the AI overlords don't catch it. I did find I did find on their um fesentails like the fly fesentail. Yeah. And that was in the description and that was still up. So I don't I don't know if they feather not for yeah feather. But but still I don't yeah I don't know where they draw the line. Yeah. I can't believe they would cave to something like that. Yeah. Now here's the other catch. Are they allowing people to sell? Can you still buy beaver wool felt cowboy hats?

1:06:11Um as far as I know I I don't think it's all yeah dude. Really? They got a whole ton of listings for them. I guess so. I guess so. I guess so. But you can't buy a beaver fur hat. But you can buy a beaver felt hat. It's okay if you take the fur and turn the fell. I'm sure there's all I'm sure you could find you go on there and just start looking around and find all sorts of examples like that. They also don't have a problem with like domestic animal products like they sell leather shoes and they sell jerky and like it's like why? I think it's just something that they they got a lot of heat and pressure from this this organization. They got called out in front of board members and investors and whatnot and they're just trying to do something to shut them off. And they capitulated. I bet you can buy Michael Jackson memorabilia on there. You're probably why is that okay? Yeah. That's the thing I wonder about all the time. Why is it okay to sell Michael Jackson memorabilia but not a beaver fur hat?

1:07:20Someone needs to make this is you know this is I'll never do this song a throw out a great idea for listeners. Someone needs to make a move a fake movie trailer. Okay. And it's like from the producers of Michael comes Jeffrey. And it tells the story of Epstein. Brags to riches but it just ends with him kicking it on an island. They're like he's made it. Yeah like he's made it. You know it's like I had my struggles but by god now I'm a billionaire. They leave out all the bets and then it just ends. Yeah. It'd be a really funny if I had time and an expertise I would make this fake trailer. But it'd be I would just mimic the Michael trailer but make it the Epstein. No Jeffrey the movie Jeffrey and it would just end with him being like I've arrived. You can sell it on Etsy. Yeah. That could sell my movie on Etsy. Man we covered this when they originally just banned fur like pelt.

1:08:24Yeah. And it's just hey all the fly fisherman man like that's why you should have cared then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a squeaky wheel thing. Yeah. When they were trying to plot when they were plotting that fur sale ban for Colorado just recently they knew they're like the pushback from cowboy hat people. So like the pushback from tourists. The people that sell to tourists. And the pushback from fly fisherman they like that pushback is going to sink this initiative. Yeah they carved out excellent. So they said oh if you want to tie flies with beaver fur cool. If you want to sell cowboy hats made from beaver fur cool but the rest of all y'all are out. And they they anticipated the pushback because like there's a specialness about a fly guy. Right they're like we don't want to mess with the fly fisherman because that's kind of like you know a certain class of individual that we don't want to tangle with.

1:09:26But these like lower class ultra rednecks who would run around like a fur hat screw those guys. But here at sea we're like they didn't take that approach. They didn't say tourist shops selling cowboy hats. You're cool um fly fisherman you're cool. And now maybe they'll get the iron of the fly fisherman and it will cause them to revisit. I don't know. In writing the intro for the show Steve declared that they were the devil. And then he immediately backed off and said well maybe that was hyperbolic. So where do you land now? Are they still the devil or are they not the devil? I think it's it's it's it's I think it's terrible that you would cave to something like that. And it's especially terrible that you would equate. The that you would even equate the contemporary market for fur products with some kind of

1:10:26biodiversity campaign or some kind of sustainability campaign. When we are talking about an industry that is tightly regulated. It's we're talking about animals that are IUCN species of lease concern. The the Wild West days of the fur trade. Imparaling wildlife species which was one which was absolutely the reality a long time ago. In fact, I've spent many many many days and hours making products. Our meat is American history series. Chromically the destruction of the fur trade. Right. I'm not whitewashing it. But those days aren't just done. They've been done. Those days are done. It is a tightly tightly regulated industry that has I basically zero ecological impact. And there is no questions of sustainability around regulated fur bears in this country.

1:11:29They're just isn't. It's like you're making an issue whether it isn't one. And you're catering to people that are just making like an emotional plea. And it opens you up to all the hypocrisy about the things that you therefore think are okay. To sell. So verdict is that they are a demon. That's it. Yep. They're not going to sponsor this show anytime soon. If they come I don't anticipate. I don't anticipate. I think we'll pass on that. I don't anticipate them sponsoring show. I don't run around calling things like the devil and stuff like that. So it's a little it's a little unusual for me. I would I would say that that that what they're doing is short-sighted and terrible. And really opens them up to some amazing like like incredible hypocrisies. That if they are morally if they're deciding that they're morally policing all of the things sold on Etsy. It makes me very curious what kinds of things are sold on Etsy.

1:12:31And then I must assume that the owners and investors and managers at Etsy are morally okay with those products. Yeah. Here's a Valentine's beef jerky flower bouquet for him. For him. All right man. Sam four steaks here. What's going on? Not too much. I'll tell you I was stopped by you. I'm not too long going. I think there's lots of students showing up after getting sprayed by a scum. Some of the guys sprayed by patchouli and some guys sprayed by scunks. Well I said that as a proud proud gris. Oh yeah. Yeah. Steve thanks for having me again man. Yeah. I was so excited to see you before you came out of you. You came out before and it was the primary season. Tell everybody about what happened there. Well I mean I'm running for Congress in the first district the western third of the state and we had a crowded primary. Four people running. Fellow is the former Democratic nominee for governor and we ended up pulling it out by just shy of five points.

1:13:32So pretty good margin. Yeah it is. I mean we're talking about this yesterday. In politics today that's a margin. Yeah. And I'll tell you the last poll before that had me at 13% and one of these fellows at 35. So it's an exercise and I mean what's possible when you get people excited and frankly people are excited just to have a normal working person running for Congress because you don't see that very often nowadays. When you look at those polls and I'm sure you well let me ask you do you obsess over or you just kind of run your campaign. No I don't. I mean I got deep deep frustrations with the way polling works in this country and I mean you look at the way some politicians talk and it's probably a string of 20 words that all poll tested really well and when you put them together it sounds like mush. You know and they end up saying things like public lands and public hands and what does that actually mean? Or it doesn't mean much the way they're legislating right now. Got it. So when you say you're skeptical of polls because a lot of these polls, a lot of polls people cite they're generating their own polls and I don't just think lately that seems like people in the political sphere doing maybe you can comment on this is they're

1:14:35running polls and then campaigning off polls that they make. Yeah. Yeah. It's weirdly deceptive. It is. It is. I mean I'll tell you as far as polls go the polling in this race right now has decided that he for what it's worth. We're at 44-44 right now with the other fellow in this race. But more than that it's I mean what I'm seeing on the ground. You know last three days we had about eight campaign events. Labor Day is big. I mean I was vice president my unions local and we got crowds as big as 200 showing up in places like white fish and really the thing I'm most excited about in this campaign. I don't know if you've seen it. We just had a former Republican governor endorsed the campaign five Republican legislators and we're doing these civil discourse town halls across the district too. We're I co-host it with one of the Republican legislators and we talk about the fact that kind of what we mentioned last time. You know me and Brian Putnam and Columbia Falls we don't agree on everything. But we agree on the basics. We agree should be able to work one good job and get by in that and there's nothing conservative about going into 40 trillion dollars of debt for example.

1:15:36And those are actually the most exciting part of a campaign to me like civil discourse ain't sexy. But it seems just as important as any particular policy we're fighting for. That's what I find. Some of the old definitions maybe that I was raised on. The old definitions about like what conservatism meant, what liberalism meant. It's muddy. It's become very muddy. Yeah, conservatism was supposed to be as I understand it about standing up for like our basic constitutional freedoms. And about the fact that government should have no business dictating your private personal decisions. I don't see a lot of that right now in the way the show is being run. Yeah. And as far as I'm concerned government's got no business telling you whether you can own guns or telling you how to make a decision with your doctor. Yeah. And government's got big jobs it should be doing which I would offer is making sure you can meet your basic material needs when the market's not meeting them and it's failing at those ones. So let's just get back to the basics here and talk about the fact that you know

1:16:36Debbie King Arthur Mobile Home Park just outside of town here. Well Debbie's place was bought up by another private equity firm. And she's watched her lot rent double in the last five years and she's got nowhere to go. That's the role of government I'd offer is making sure that we don't have elderly folks getting forced out onto the streets in a place like Bozeman. Not as you know wasting its time trying to insert itself into private decisions where well they got no role where I don't want a politician having any say and how I how I live my life. How do you feel that the time you spent talking about public lands issues and when we well we back up look when you came on before we talked a lot about what went on with land management agencies and what's going on with land management agencies in terms of funding in terms of staffing public land management issues in terms of the doge what turned into sort of a doge debacle around public lands management when you talk about these issues how is it how do you feel it's generally

1:17:39received by people because a lot of it's kind of you know the term wonky like like a lot of it's very policy specific does does your message about public lands and public lands management does resonate with people or are people or do people have that way low in their priority list around the state do you follow me I do I think in Montana this is pretty high on people's priorities and the thing I get the most is surprise I mean I you know I worked as a smoke jumper till eight months ago people are pretty surprised to learn that a smoke jumper makes 15 bucks an hour you're a year so it is yeah yeah people are surprised that you know when they fired 360 Montana's in the forest service 85% of them were making 1970 an hour or less this is not the way that any of these cuts are that our public lands agencies are really being talked about is you know the fact that well our public lands are more than a bunch of lines on a map yeah a lot of people bust and tail to actually maintain them and make sure you can make it up a road to a trail had to up a trail to

1:18:39actually access that forest and the those people often the lowest paid ones are the ones who've been taken the brunt of these cuts these reorganizations you know I could go on all day but the fact that there are big inefficiencies in the federal government like the fact that you know job posting is just closed three weeks ago for a firefighter position or forestry tech that's going to be starting this coming May that is inefficient um the inefficiencies are not the GS2s we we saw get fired last year making 11 bucks an hour that's actually out of for maybe inhumanly efficient if you're living in a place like majulla yeah hey everyone big huge announcement me either live the christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the christmas season of 2026 this time we're hitting the midwest me either live the christmas tour kicks off in December across six midwestern cities we've got grand rapids Milwaukee Madison DeMolline Minneapolis and Fargo join myself yannis poutellis clay

1:19:41new congruent reaves and randall williams for a night of laughs trivia free prizes news and opinions from across the worlds of hunting fishing wildlife conservation and wild foods also we're already stacking up some great special guests I got my buddy bubbly dug making the appearance and Madison me either live is the best christmas gift for any outdoorsman or woman in your life tickets go on sale september 25th but sign up at the me either dot com slash tour and you'll get pre sale access to buy tickets on september 14th days before they go on sale to the public we can't wait to see you there and i'm telling you go ask anyone who has ever come to one of the me either live events and they will tell you we laugh our asses off we give away great prizes we put on a solid show that i'm proud to be part of what what's it been like on the what's it like doing what you're doing i mean how you're 35 years old right 32 but my knees are in there for you okay so with my calculator

1:20:46your actual age and your knee age it lands i'm about right 32 years old that's the mean couple years ago you had it you had no idea this is gonna happen yeah no idea you're gonna be in this situation i thought i jumped till 57 till mandatory retirement yeah so so here you are lay out like what life um what is life like on the campaign trail now it makes fire season look easy i mean fire season was when i started two weeks on two days off um day off every two or three weeks but it's also getting to hear people's i mean most inspiring and vulnerable and terrible stories because a lot of people just want to be heard and i mean we're in a state right now where our congressperson this seat has not had a town hall in more than three years so people quite literally are not being heard yeah and people have big problems i mean it's it's the heartbreak and you know i was sitting down with Debbie the end of that conversation she said Sam when i was your age if old people had lived like this i would be so angry god yeah and we should be so angry um and we shouldn't just leave it to be an angry because it feels like everybody's angry on

1:21:49social media and screaming into their cell phone screen about everything that's wrong and complaining never solved a damn thing yeah like we actually it's our turn to step up and do something about it and stand up for our neighbors that's one of the things i've liked about watching watching you do what you've been doing is that um you just like talk like a you talk like a person you know i'm saying of like it's not done that's where you're saying no no you just talk like a person who is sharing their thoughts right and just and not so worried about being sedemps safe yeah which really starts to drive me crazy well i mean if i had to find what like modern politics feels like it feels like it can't curse on it feels like everybody's BS in us oh yeah like if especially the highest levels of office like whatever side you look at they're just walking the line of whatever's poll tested yeah and then and then it's no surprise when people get elected and nothing changes no and if it does it often is not changing for the better right like we're in a country we're half of america half of americans are making less than their parents are making at our age those are the

1:22:54kinds of changes we're actually seeing or on public lands right since we spoke last it's not just the cuts it's not just the people being fired well we've seen three million acres of protections rolled back down at bears ears and grand escalante in Alaska you saw five million acres rolled back where they're selling off for oil leasing now and it's not just the fact that they're rolling these back into place like Alaska or Minnesota they're selling it off at a discount i mean they slashed leasing fees royalty rates by half back in back what two february is ago they're running our public lands agencies like a private equity firm i guess just like those mobile home parks four thousand of which are now owned by private equity in montana and that is why you're seeing the rents double i mean the bunkhouse that i spent my first seasons two through four four working wild and fire on it's up in the swan valley and condon montana they are selling off those bunkhouses and what i would offer is the most beautiful piece of property in the swan i mean you got a view of condon

1:23:54condon peak in the swan mountains to the east there's an air strip across the way they're selling that off and the people on that hand crew while they're probably living in the back of their trucks and if there are bunkhouses they're leasing them up in big fork we're selling off properties across the board at our public lands agencies and then leasing those properties because it's cheaper in the short term but then we all end up paying so much more yeah for so much less in the long term the i've been i've been peat outspoken about this people within the uh our organization have been outspoken about the roleless rule um rollback yeah um and i think that's frustrated me about it is i find this is going to be kind of in your in particularly in your wheelhouse is i find that people that are advocating on stripping the roleless rule away and opening up a lot of these areas to industrial development of various sorts tend to be a little less than honest about what the primary motivation is yeah and they cite motivations that are sort of what i would regard

1:24:57them to be side benefits fringe benefits but they cite it as the main issue so people they're like we need to roll we need to roll back the roleless rule and open these lands up because of wildfires that was like dude please stop acting like that is the main thing you're interested in is wildfire you have a career in wildfire when when they're saying that like how how real is that when they're citing that that is the motivation is fire prevention oh it's an absolute red herring i mean 90% of fires that we see started are within well pretty damn close to a road so we punch roads back 20 miles you know further in well that's just more fires most wildfires are human cause in the west nowadays yeah um and i mean yeah the real reason is development but i would offer there are places where reopening roads makes sense um going with a broad brush and rolling back the roadless rule does not make sense yeah and when i go talk to loggers too or when i go to the

1:26:00the mill and deer lodge a few weeks ago and take a tour i mean there are big problems we need to solve so that we aren't left with zero milling capacity in the state of Montana the problem is not the roadless rule and they have enough time staying in the black trying to get a timber contract in the front country let alone trying to go 10 or 15 miles back like this is not going to be helpful for our saw mills you know six of which are left in a state that used to have 50 yeah um what this is is people who are running the show and do not actually understand how this works on the ground yeah we have we have thousands and thousands of square miles of roaded country that is not being properly timber li does not have proper timber management on it anyway oh yeah we got a six to eight billion dollar backlog of road maintenance in the forest service and i mean if we got six to eight billion dollars to drop that i didn't know about well i i would love to see it and that's maintenance for roads that are there yeah the ones that are currently open yeah and i i mean again like we we are way behind on our forest management right we have a backlog because of excessive fire suppression in part of fuel that needs burned i mean you know this right there's certain timber

1:27:03timber models that should be burned every 15 to 20 years and haven't burned in 50 plus the lodgepole pine can't reproduce with that exposure to fire um the answer is not rolling back the roadless rule the answer is not these categorical exclusions where you completely sweep away environmental protections it's making sure that you can get a timber contract in a year if it's challenged in court not in six years it's actually fully investing in the public servants to do that work because what we saw last year is you fire all the nipa planners you fire the soil scientists you fire the people who do the science when you're trying to get an environmental impact statement and then the plans you produce actually do not pass muster and so it takes longer to longer in court and when i sit down with a logger they tell me these cuts in the last year and half have been terrible for the timber industry because they're having a harder time actually getting a contract through in public and federal public lands um and i'd say that too i mean like wildfire always gets used as this excuse for these rollbacks yeah always it's yeah it drives me a little bit bananas man and the reason we need logging in this state responsible timber harvest

1:28:05is not wildfire like logging is not the answer to the wildfire crisis the reason we need it is because we build homes with wood let's be honest about that and wildfire if we want to get ahead of a wildfire crisis well maybe there's a there's a 10 to 20 percent role with responsible timber harvest in the front country the real answer is investing in fire mitigation and fuels reduction work and putting healthy fire on the landscape and that's the sort of thing that you're not going to have a profit margin on it's the sort of thing that you need to hire fuels crews and the sort of people they fired last year and the example i get people is we had a fire last year outside of helm bill it's they called the windy rock fires two thousand acres and helm bill is not the most populous corner of Montana that two thousand acre fire cost the state of Montana 56 million dollars that's all right 56 million bucks by my napkin math you could pay two thousand people 20 bucks an hour 365 days a year to stomp around the woods with a chainsaw and actually actively manage our forests and we don't care if you'll just throw 20 bucks an hour yeah like that is the investment you can make to actually save a whole bunch of money on the back end and to start getting ahead of this thing

1:29:06and that would save us money or leave more money in the state of Montana and create good jobs because we got these computers that can write their own code or legal briefs they cannot stomp around the woods with a saw and you know it wouldn't benefit someone who maybe owns a wild and fire contract in company you know someone like senator Tim she he who just saw his first profit margin in the history of his company last year but it would benefit us as taxpayers it would save us money and it would help us to actually start managing our forests wisely and effectively you know when you look when you look back on and you've been vocal about this when you look back on some people saw it immediately I took me a minute to see it took me a minute to realize what some people saw instantly was how ham handed the doge process was yeah it was like I don't know man I just kind of weirdly for a minute try to I paused to try to understand it right because of court like you said inefficiency is bad I pause and then and then kind of very

1:30:08quickly like oh no no this is totally ham handed yeah especially when I was talking especially when I started we kind of interviewed a guy leaving the white river national forest about what he had to do according doge cuts and just how much it set his agenda back how inefficient it was and became clear it was just a debacle and not only that I think the greatest testament to what a debacle it was was that the people that were doing it all fled DC yeah yeah they ran away you know is do you see in the pet do you see if you look forward do you see that will gradually um like correct all that or or did things happen even though it's sort of almost as is clearly as is possible it was declared a debacle I mean the the the formal understanding of what happened has become that it was crazy and there aren't that many people who would argue otherwise yeah they shut it down and there aren't people go there aren't people in the political

1:31:11sphere today citing it as an accomplishment it's it's either brushed under the it's either brushed under the rug nothing to see here or people are vocal point out how stupid it was or how poor the execution of the idea was do we gradually climb back out of that in particular I'm not talking about I'm talking about the aspects of doge that affected land management agencies and public land management agencies do we climb out of that or do you feel that there was a damage done that'll never be corrected I think it's not a foregone conclusion but I think we can climb out of it you know and I think we and people who actually do this work on the ground know where the investments would be to rebuild it in a way that works because I want to be clear this shit was not working perfectly before doge yeah I mean I ended the 2024 fire season on a fire in the middle of the three sister's wilderness where we got a satellite call saying the forest service is 20 million in the red and so half of the people on that fire going to be out of pace status the second you leave that fire

1:32:12good you're not even going to have enough time to get paid to go clean out your locker at the smoke jumper base um we need to rebuild this thing in a way that actually makes sense and does find efficiencies and that means well it's largely the the lower paid people in our land land management agencies I think we should talk really openly about the fact that we should have a big reinvestment and expansive investment and fuels mitigation and walking around the front front country making sure you have the people it takes to do a responsible prescribed fire in the fall and the spring when it's safe to do so um and actually clear out underbrush that's going to take a lot of manpower and it's going to cost a lot of money but it will save us so many hundreds of millions of dollars on the back end so we do not have these mega fires like the ones I've been on in the last eight years where I've been on five fires that have all been the biggest fire in that state's history just in the last five years and we all end up paying so much for it it means like it says in scripture I promise you'll pay every penny before you leave this place we're paying every penny right now we're just paying it in the crisis response mode of governance

1:33:13and that's the the least efficient way to govern I've talked to so many people friends of mine that work in different eight different agencies that kind of impact the world that we explore through the show and others um and so many of them are like man I would love to have a conversation about efficiency yeah and through my career I've seen a lot of opportunities to clean up efficient to help with efficiency but boy did they get it wrong yeah I think again and again and again they're like that it was it was having someone taking a quick glimpse into a world that I understand really well and declaring oh that should go and that should go and that should go and then sitting back saying man did you miss the bulls eye you missed the target when they did that stuff I think we need a real effort to government efficiency after this a good faith effort yeah if you want to tell people that this is still a country where we can make big investments and solve big problems you need to actually show folks that you're going to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars yeah use them efficiently and we did this in the 90s last time we had a balanced budget

1:34:17as a country and the Clinton administration had a well a government efficiency effort and it worked pretty darn well um we should do that again if we are able to gain power and win seats like this talk about how do we make sure that the federal hiring process doesn't take nine months for a GS4 who makes 16 bucks an hour because that's so many man hours that is so much lost talent we return direct higher authority that's one great example how do you make sure that a workman's comp claim for a smoke jumper who breaks their back on a practice jump like my good buddy did at a Grangeville does not take 18 months to chase down because again we're all paying for the hundreds of man hours it takes to chase that down for an obvious claim for somebody who broke their back in the line of duty um that beyond that I mean I'll tell you I was filling out I was looking at the federal job application three weeks ago right before it closed and we are adding questions like this four question loyalty test uh if you're filling out an application for a GS4 Forester someone who's just is going to be timber cruising you got to answer a question about what is what are your favorite two executive orders and how will you in this job further the advancement of that executive

1:35:21order it's insanity wow and I'll tell you what I was a GS4 once I had what had no business filling out an essay question about my favorite executive order like I was drinking monsters and wearing American flag bandana you want to talk about losing good talent like we're doing reverse civil service reform when we should actually be reform and how our civil service works and having less a political less political appointees instead of expanding them you know like these are big efficiencies that we could find the same goes for forest management for making sure you can get a timber contract in the front country um yes let's talk about that and I think the best idea is come from the people on the ground doing the work here's here's a tough question for you let's say you get sent to deep let's say the voters of Montana the voters western Montana send you to DC and how do you how do you save like how do you salvage your purity yeah no that's a real question and how do you keep how do you stay like no I'm here to talk about

1:36:23yeah the things we're talking about right now and there's going to be so much pressure for you to for you to take orders from someone who has a who has a high position in the party and they and they have the people they're beholden to and all of a sudden you want to talk about you know you're here to talk about fire land management affordability working class people and all of a sudden you're just talking about something dumb yeah that no one in Montana asked you to go talk about how do you like what are you going to do then and they want you to spend your time on dumb stuff I thought it would help says is I've been a DC twice and I think I'm going to hate it in that town okay and so I I'm not going there for a good time or a long time yeah like I I would love nothing better than to go win this seat all the people accountable who fired hundreds of my co-workers and union members in turn people's lives upside down working on tenants lives upside down and make sure that we still have a functioning forest service that I can go back to in four years

1:37:25yeah I mean I live right outside the smoke jumper base in azula and I got to watch the jump plane flying overhead and it kills me I would love to be there I'd love to be in their boots right now um but yeah after a year and a half of what people went through like I mean I had a member Cara in the bitter national forest she was 15 years into her service as a soil scientist she uh got the news on Valentine's Day two years ago that she was losing her job no notice not for for performance because she took a lateral transfer that year so that she could do more remote work while she went chemotherapy I got a guy in anis who is a member he got a text in line at the airport to go to his grandmother's funeral saying that he lost his job he's already locked out of his government devices and he was only a GS5 in the first place he's probably making 16 bucks an hour and he was the guy he's the guy who's making sure that your campgrounds are maintained um these people like we deserve not just efficiency in our government we actually deserve good wise investment or public lands and frankly the people who bent the knee and voted for all this

1:38:27when we could have been the most powerful state in the country there's a narrow majority in the house and like person who's a good representative in this seat should be standing up to either party when they're full of shit which comes from both parties we didn't get that yeah and like well if they're gonna come after my members jobs I'm gonna come and take his and they need to know that there's a cost for this and that our democracy still works and frankly they need to know that working people can still actually attain these offices because that is the most frustrating thing I see is you look at the well United States House of Representatives the average member of congress is worth four million bucks depending on the day and how good the stock market's doing what do you worth right now me I'm well I'm on and sure right now because I can't without joking the damn bill I've seen you place I mean I'm I'm barely getting by like most people and you wonder why I'm so far but this dude's got bookshelves in his kitchen oh yeah we're now we need a good dog yeah that's an endorsement now Joey I don't mean to ask you what you're worth yeah so you that's part of what's drawn me like

1:39:27part of what's drawn me do you like personality matters to me the way people talk matters to me and also my man is dude's a legit guy that like has just been around and seen stuff and got motivated about what he's seen and and motivate it just like motivated by things that didn't work and oh man like want to like help I like that stuff man well yeah thank you Steve it wasn't like a business it's not a business move no no yeah I I was just getting the first shred of financial security yet I'd ever had frankly um and my fourth year of jumping I mean your first year of jumping you're a rookie so you know it's not that fun because you're you're taking all the shit and you're waking up early for coffee and you're making extra food and all the rest and your second year your snow keens not much better and you know your third fourth year it starts to be more fun you start to be more comfortable under the parachute and um frankly I didn't have health insurance or a retirement plan till my six year of fire like I was finally on that path but if people like us don't actually step up and run for office then it's just these folks who are so

1:40:28disconnected that are making all the decisions sure and that's how we end up in this hole that they're digging on both sides and that's how they end up talking about shit that nobody's actually talking about on the ground here when you're just trying to meet your basic needs you see a lot of people enter politics that do it um it's like a thing they want to do kind of before they retire yeah it's like a it's like a project they need to get taken care of made my millions to really sort of like to really fill out the old CV you know and and your legacy move and so to see someone come at it from the other like the other end of the career thing and from such unusual position well yeah I hope we can I hope we can save it and I hope we can actually make the kind of reforms that we're talking about and make sure we don't I mean really lose what's left of the forest service in this state I mean this is a state we got the first smoke jumper base in history right in mazoolah modern wild and firefighting largely began in Montana um and we got national forests at

1:41:29beginning of last year that were reduced to one trail crew member for the entire bitter for example um and they're selling it all off at a discount so I yeah I feel hopeful right now that we can make this sort of change we need when I'm having those town halls with the Republican legislator and people are showing up and saying that they have either never been to a political event or that they voted the other way last year it makes me feel hopeful you know and um yeah I it sounds cliche but like truly I don't feel like the problem is in one party or the other part the problem is but isn't both parties I mean they're they're corporate bought off politicians in both parties at the highest levels right now because that is the way that our system has been designed and the only way we fix it is by actually stepping up and making sure that working people who know what it's like to be on the wrong end of this stuff our positions of authority to make decisions so we can fight for ourselves well keep being a person I won't make me make a sign same forest egg person long person I I'd be there when my dude you too I mean if anyone wants to look up any of the

1:42:31details too I mean the website sanfermontana.com the most inspiring thing is we got many thousands of volunteers got us through that primary and we're helping us right now um and I mean we have something like 27,000 people who've pitched into the campaign is all right and it's yeah it's people pitching 25 bucks because that's what they can afford or 50 bucks so that's what most of my friends gonna afford and that's the only way any of this stuff works well thanks for coming on again thanks for checking in thank you for having me yeah you got to make one promise though mm-hmm if you win you got to come back and do the final check in oh hell yeah we talked to you pre we talked you before the primary we've talked you after the primary we got to do a final check in and we can do one more two years later when I'm sick and tired of all this stuff that's gonna be same forest egg signs off that's right well no thank you for having me Steve um yeah I'll be back I'll tell everybody ballots drop in Montana October 10th absentee ballots voting is November 3rd you can register to vote until 30 days before the election in the state yeah he knows funny all this garbage but all this like consternation about mail and ballots dude I haven't been down

1:43:36that's all I ever do yeah does anybody here not mailed you do you guys all do the mail and you show up and like wait in line I haunt that week every single person always you go in person yep you get the sticker is it fun no I have a very complicated relationship with voting well do you not you don't do the mail in because you you because you don't trust it or you just like to go down well it's so complicated okay I don't need to get into it oh we don't need to get into it unless I get it so do you do mail in I've done both but mostly mail in because I'm hunting really same I kind of like walking in nerdy you walk in yeah I've done it yeah I think I've walked in like three or four times since I moved in Montana it feels like more of a civil duty but yeah obviously it's not as convenient you know when I think of walking in there all I can think about is all the times I had to go with my mom when I was a little kid waiting line while she voted and then also my mom used to work the thing right you know my mom took off work and thank lately blah-relections yeah she volunteered when I do the mail and I'm always worried like

1:44:40what if something terrible comes out about one of these guys yeah and I already sent my thing in if you walk in you're operating on like it's done you can make the final assessment but picture how embarrassing it be you vote for some guy and then like you send it off then meanwhile like comes out you know oh my god they found all these bodies in his yard and you're like duh oh no they found Sam's like a sneaky way of giving Sam some kind of like started modern ball they got bodies in your yard telling us we got one one we'll go take a month together yeah tell me now by the time this is all done yeah oh I do have one last question for you um this can be hard to answer this but you know what people do like people find crazy stuff mm-hmm if I were ran for office and I promise you it like I never will I would start I would announce my campaign with a list of every bad thing I ever said or did huh yeah just frontload it yeah I feel like listen it's more than you'd guess

1:45:42I have had social media since I was 12 years old so it is all out there in the open and it is embarrassing itself yeah is it nerve-racking it is yeah I mean the guy I'm up against so welcome the millennial generation you have a lot of public embarrassment yeah but no the guy I'm up against he had the NAI Super Pack dropped 600k just in month of May to get the fell I'm running against through his primary that really is a terrifying prospect I mean millions of dollars are raid to make you look like the biggest monster that they possibly can yeah but I think what you just said is the only way you get through it is just keep being a human and actually showing up and talking to people and like I think that all that noise is not going to work this time around because people are they're pissed and we are angry and we're sick and tired and I don't think a 10 million dollars worth of mailers is going to stop that go out of bill all right man thanks for coming on thank you brother I appreciate it good luck Sam thank you all thanks

1:46:47you this is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human