Episode 561 - Elena Rubino || Trophy Hunting Perceptions

Summary

Blood Origins Podcast Episode 561 - Elena Rubino || Trophy Hunting Perceptions

Introduction

In Episode 561 of the Blood Origins podcast, host Mike Axelrod welcomes Dr. Elena Rubino, a distinguished conservation social scientist from the University of Arkansas at Monticello. The episode delves into Dr. Rubino’s insightful research on the public perceptions of trophy hunting, exploring how societal views shape conservation efforts and the efficacy of communication strategies in altering these perceptions.

Guest Background

Dr. Elena Rubino’s Journey into Conservation Social Science

Dr. Rubino begins by sharing her academic and professional journey. She holds an adjunct professorship at the University of Arkansas at Monticello and identifies as a conservation social scientist. Her work intersects human behavior, natural resources, and conservation management, employing theories from economics, psychology, sociology, and political science to understand and influence conservation outcomes.

“Human behavior change for improved conservation outcomes is really what underpins all of my research,” (06:20).

Her initial exposure to trophy hunting was during her master's studies at the University of Delaware, where she explored the feasibility of legalizing the sale of invasive axis deer meat in Hawaii—a pivotal moment that introduced her to the complexities and benefits of controlled hunting practices.

Research on Trophy Hunting Perceptions

Dr. Rubino discusses her PhD research at the University of Florida under Dr. Elizabeth Panar, focusing on wildlife ranching in South Africa. Her fieldwork coincided with the high-profile Cecil the Lion incident, providing a unique perspective on how media portrayals impact public perception.

“I saw Cecil the Lion handled from a public perception side of things and communication side of things,” (16:00).

This experience underscored the importance of effective communication in shaping the narrative around trophy hunting, motivating her to investigate American perceptions of the practice.

Survey Methodology

To understand U.S. residents' perceptions of trophy hunting, Dr. Rubino conducted a comprehensive survey involving 2,000 participants through a Qualtrics panel. The survey was meticulously designed to align with demographic metrics from the 2020 U.S. Census, ensuring a representative sample.

“We went out to 2,000 US residents. It went through a Qualtrics panel,” (36:19).

The survey encompassed general wildlife conservation attitudes, perceptions of hunting, and specific attitudes toward trophy hunting. Additionally, it included a messaging experiment that tested the impact of framing trophy hunting in terms of ecological and socioeconomic benefits.

Key Findings

1. Low Approval for Trophy Hunting: The survey revealed a significantly low approval rate for trophy hunting, ranking between 1 and 2 on a 1-5 scale.

   “When those scores in terms of legitimacy, credibility, and trust went up, approval for hunting, trophy hunting specifically went up. So that was kind of the checkbox there.” (38:44)

2. Higher Approval for General Hunting: In contrast, general hunting practices received a more favorable response, averaging around 3.5 on the same scale.

   “Approval for hunting generally as like that final measure and that was maybe like 3.5, something like that.” (40:09)

3. Effectiveness of Framed Messaging: Messaging that emphasized ecological and socioeconomic benefits led to a slight increase in approval rates compared to a control group, indicating the potential of targeted communication.

   “Both of those benefit related messages resulted in a higher approval rate in the post test compared to the control.” (51:07)

4. Limited Impact of Value Priming: Attempts to prime respondents based on their values, a strategy effective in climate change communication, did not yield significant changes in perceptions of trophy hunting.

   “We just didn't see that here in this study.” (51:55)

Communication Strategies

Crafting the Narrative

Dr. Rubino emphasizes the critical role of effective communication in altering public perceptions. She advocates for storytelling that highlights the conservation and community benefits of trophy hunting, rather than focusing solely on the act of killing.

“Talk about the chase. Talk about the time that you spent with your family and how you got to bond with your friends...” (49:50)

Blood Origins’ Approach

Mike Axelrod shares Blood Origins Inc.’s strategies for engaging with and reshaping public narratives around hunting:

• Gentlemanly Conduct: Maintaining a respectful and factual tone in all communications.

  “We have very much adopted an attitude of gentlemanly. We've been accused of being gentlemanly, which is fine.” (28:00)

• Honest Responses: Acknowledging negative images and reframing the conversation to emphasize positive outcomes.

  “If there's the classic photograph... we'll respond saying, yeah, it's a terrible picture...” (28:00)

• Consistent Messaging: Continuously planting positive narratives to shift the overall sentiment in social media spaces.

  “We're planting seeds constantly.” (25:36)

Elena’s Personal Experience

In a revelatory turn, Dr. Rubino shares her recent decision to become a hunter herself, aiming to enhance her credibility and understanding of the hunting community.

“I've gone and I've shot two small female white tailed deer and process them myself and eaten everything.” (52:28)

She reflects on the potential impact of this choice on her professional credibility and personal philosophy, underscoring the complex interplay between personal experience and professional advocacy.

Conclusions and Implications

The conversation concludes with a consensus on the necessity of proactive and positive communication to improve the public’s perception of trophy hunting. Both Dr. Rubino and Mike Axelrod agree that reframing the narrative to highlight conservation successes and community benefits is essential for garnering broader support.

“The social license to operate is so important... You don't have to be a part of it, you don't have to agree with it whatever, but you have to be okay with it being here.” (34:35)

Notable Quotes

• “Human behavior change for improved conservation outcomes is really what underpins all of my research.” (06:20)
• “There are legitimacy, credibility and trust are basically kind of these three levels to this pyramid.” (35:24)
• “Making sure that people are aware of... properly resonating with people.” (22:53)
• “We have this idea that killing is fun in the moment it may be, but actually afterwards it means it's over.” (47:13)

Where to Find More

Dr. Elena Rubino encourages listeners to explore her research through Google Scholar and her personal website rubinoresearch.com.

“Please drop me an email. Would love to chat, would love to collaborate.” (58:24)

Final Thoughts

This episode of Blood Origins provides a profound exploration of the societal perceptions surrounding trophy hunting and emphasizes the pivotal role of communication in bridging gaps between conservation goals and public opinion. Dr. Rubino’s research offers valuable insights and actionable strategies for advocates aiming to foster a more informed and supportive community around hunting practices that benefit conservation efforts.

Transcript

[Mike Axelrod]

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[Elena Rubino]

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[Mike Axelrod]

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[Elena Rubino]

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[Mike Axelrod]

Dr. Elena Rubino is a professor at the University of Arkansas, Monticello. When I was doing some research for an upcoming documentary that we're going to be working on around Rhino trademark, I found her TED Talk that she did at the University of Arkansas, Monticello and it fascinated me and I just reached out and I love the fact that in this day and age you can just find people, connect with people and they'll be willing to come on your podcast. So Dr. Robino joined me today, but not to talk about rhino trade, but rather a survey that she undertook around the perceptions of trophy hunting. Little did I know that she had done this kind of work and naturally I was super curious about it. And so Dr. Rubino and I get into a conversation around the perceptions around trophy hunting, which I think you will find extremely fascinating. And you'll find the results of her work extremely fascinating because it ties in with literally everything that we're doing at Blood Origins. So enjoy. So there's a reason why I started Blood Origins, and that reason is simple, is that I wanted to convey the truth about hunting.

[Elena Rubino]

It brings awareness to non hunters that.

[Mike Axelrod]

It'S more than just killing animals.

[Elena Rubino]

How do I start it? Brittany My name. Does my hair look okay?

[Mike Axelrod]

My name is Mike Axelrod. Start again. Yeah, I hated it too. Braxton, you said something in the card of me. You said that you were living on borrowed time. There's a perception around who hunters are, what we're supposed to be. And a. A feminist that works for a nonprofit that is a hunter that has only eaten wild game for the last 20 years is likely not the thing that people think about when it comes to a hunter. So, you know, it's funny how this world of social media works. You know, back in the day, you didn't have social media. You don't have YouTube. You didn't have things in which you can connect with people very quickly. So we've been doing. And not that we're. It's germane to today's conversation in terms of the topic of video that I watched you.

[Elena Rubino]

You.

[Mike Axelrod]

But I was just scrolling through YouTube trying to find as many rhino documentary pieces that I could find as we're getting into the rhino documentary p. Business, and I came across a TED Talk that you had given a TED Talk at your university, Monticello, A.R. university of Arkansas, Marcello. And it's on the rhino trade. And I was like, a professor is in Arkansas talking about, like, rhino horn trade. And so I just randomly reached out, I got your email. I was like, man, hey, why don't you come on the podcast? I'd love to have good conversations with good people. And you're like, well, do you want to talk about rhinos or perceptions of trophy hunting?

[Elena Rubino]

I was like, we do it all here.

[Mike Axelrod]

I'll start with perceptions. I'll take perceptions for 500, Alex, please. Dr. Elena Rubino, welcome to the book Origins podcast.

[Elena Rubino]

Thank you very much. Excited to be here.

[Mike Axelrod]

First podcast. You've done a couple of podcasts before.

[Elena Rubino]

First one.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, you're my second. Please don't take this as derogatory, but I'm popping somebody's cherry for the second time today on a podcast.

[Elena Rubino]

What a day.

[Mike Axelrod]

What a day. Exactly. I can give up after today. Go. You know. Yeah, it's just. It's a. It's a beautiful format to have really good discussions in. And you can have longer form discussions versus just like a five minute video, eight minute video or something like that. Introduce yourself who you are, what do you do, and then I'll ask them, oh, you can continue if you like. But how the hell did you get involved in trophy hunting as a professor in Arkansas?

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, sure. So, Elena Rubino. I am on the research side of what I do. I'm an adjunct professor at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, and I'm a conservation social scientist by training. So very generally I'm interested In the intersection of humans and natural resources, whether that's wildlife or habitat and conservation and management and kind of, I guess, to help paint the picture of what conservation social science is, because I know that that's. It sounds kind of nebulous. I like to say think about kind of your typical social science college majors, so like economics, psychology, sociology, political science and so on. Right. I use theories and methods from those disciplines to explore people's perceptions, their decision making, maybe preferred communications regarding conserving natural resources. So that's basically what I do. Human behavior change for improved conservation outcomes is really what underpins all of my research, that that's what I'm interested in. So I feel very lucky in that a lot of my colleagues, you know, focus on maybe a certain taxa, maybe a certain region. There are people everywhere doing all sorts of things with natural resources. So I get to be involved in projects in the us, in South Africa, in Nepal, Singapore, you name it. There are people interacting with natural resources. So I get to kind of bounce around and be involved in a whole bunch of cool stuff.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, it's funny. Where did you do your PhD and all of your education before you you got a professor position at the University of Arkansas, Monticello.

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, so. And I guess that ties in well with your question about how, how I got involved in this stuff. It was in a very roundabout way. Started college at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. I was an environmental studies major. Very much wanted to go the field biologist route, kind of more ecology oriented. And my parents told me I better do a double major with a real major. So I added economics into the mix of things and I found that I was really, really interested in kind of the micro level decision making that people go through. Money makes the world go round. So, you know, at the end of the day, it was people kind of dictating these decisions. Usually there's a financial component, as I have learned later on in my studies, sometimes that's more important than not. But the econ side of things really kind of like drew me in. And I don't want to say overpowered the ecological stuff, but I was like, wow, there really is a balance here in kind of. And an opportunity in how we can pair economics and pair sound environmental science. And that kind of pushed me in more of a policy direction. So for my master's degree at University of Delaware, wound up kind of going wildlife policy. And actually that was kind of my first foray into the hunting space. I was looking at how you could, or if there was potential to kind of like Legalize the harvest and this sale of invasive axis deer meat in Hawaii, because that's like a huge deal there.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, through Maui Nui venison. Right?

[Elena Rubino]

Exactly, exactly. So that was kind of my.

[Mike Axelrod]

You said that was your first. That was your first, like intersection with hunting. Were you not a hunter? Let me ask this. Maybe it's a better question. Historically, you're not a hunter. Look, guys, I'm a hunter, right? And when I go hunting, I like to figure out how to get my trophies back home as expeditiously as possible. Well, you don't have to look much further than Safari Specialty Importers. We know that trophy importation can be quite a headache. That's why Safari Specialty Importers strives to make it as easy and hassle free as possible. They have access to a bonded warehouse, you won't be charged storage fees, and you get a dedicated team that's readily available and will update you at every step in the process. They'll even go one step further. Safari Specialty Importers is working with us at Blood Origins and they are going to donate $100 from every shipment that they work with to conservation projects that include anti poaching, community development and wildlife conservation. At the end of the day, choose to spend your money with a team that's dedicated to you and is dedicated to helping show how hunting is a great conservation model. Hassle free logistics, fuel and conservation. Go with Safari Specialty Importers. Did you know that in 42 states it is 100% legal to buy a suppressor and protect your hearing? Silencer Central pioneered the simplified silencer buying process. It allows you to buy a suppressor online or over the phone. You go through all the paperwork with a certified expert and that suppressor ships directly to your front door. I don't even believe it, but I've done it and it's come to my door. You can buy a suppressor and have it shipped to you. They offer the best in service, a suppressor expert to make sure you get the suppressor you want. And from there they take care of everything. They take care of the paperwork, the applications to the atf. They even set up a free trust if you want one. And if you don't have the money, put down an interest free payment plan. It's incredible. You get access to your own customer portal online and it tracks your progress. So why not go get started today? Go to silencecentral.com or call 866-811-6536. And with today's fast approval times, you're actually going to be shocked at how quickly your suppressor arrives at your door. Bushnell has been a longtime supporter of Blood Origins. And in keeping with the spirit of our collaboration, we've come up with an amazing idea. Bushnell is eager to help you get set up for conservation success. That's right. They want to help you. The conservation and research community is dominated by good people doing good things and investing significant time and effort for the benefit of habitat and the species. So what do you need to do? Pretty simple. Send us your conservation story and. Or your conservation wish could be managing whitetails. It could be understanding your environment or species or something else related to conservation. What would you be able to do if you had a great trail camera setup? We will select the best story every other month and send you a camera bundle. Cell camera, normal SD camera, SD cards, as well as optics. Everything you need to get set up for success. I can't wait to see what you submit. You can email [e-mail] DM US, message us whatever you want. We are not hard to find. Good luck.

[Elena Rubino]

No. So I, I'm like suburban Jersey girl. My parents certainly never hunted. I, I don't think I met a hunter until probably grad school or at least that I knew of. Was not, yeah, was certainly not involved in that space at all like growing up. So yeah, my master's work was kind of the first time where it was like, okay, here's hunting. And to be honest, I would have, I wouldn't have labeled myself like a rabid, like anti hunter by any means. Okay, certainly. And actually kind of going back to my economic stuff, I worked on a project when I was doing my undergrad, you know, little honors thesis and stumbled upon this article related to trophy hunting and like what a like mind blowing moment for me to learn. Right? Here's someone like very conservation oriented, would say like environmentalist to learn that there was a side of the world where it was a good thing that people were hunting giraffes, hunting elephants, hunting lions. And to like read about this, it was, it was absolutely mind blowing at age 20 or 21. And so that seed was kind of planted in my head of like.

[Mike Axelrod]

So the article was a positive article around trophy hunting?

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, it was a, it was some academic piece. I honestly don't know what it was. But it was a peer reviewed journal article basically about how, oh, trophy hunting, you know, this is a way that, you know, we've seen population increases. I couldn't even tell you what the species was, where it was it was a very long time ago at this point, but that was, that was kind of like the first time I was like, wow. Yeah. Because had you asked me, is it good to shoot giraffes? We've been like, no, like, of course that's not good. Right. Of, of course we shouldn't be shooting elephants. Right. They're in danger. This is bad to read something in a peer reviewed article. And of course, Right. I was working on a school project, so it was all very science oriented. But yeah, I was like, wow, this is, this is like shocking to me. And so then to.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, but it speaks to obviously later, things that we're going to talk about later and things that you do now as a career, how much influence a piece has socially.

[Elena Rubino]

Yep.

[Mike Axelrod]

On you and your thinking changed my worldview entirely.

[Elena Rubino]

It just, yeah. Flipped me upside down in a way that I didn't think was possible coming from, you know, a very, I mean, I knew as a child, like I wanted. The environment was so important to me. I loved being out in nature, wildlife. These are all good things. Right. And I know that this is something that you've talked about kind of on your other podcasts and it's what I think about all the time is how people have these, these good intentions and how a lot of people are kind of on the same side. Right. A lot of us are all pushing for wildlife, pushing for nature, and we kind of, I think, stray along the way. But yeah, it, it was incredible to me. And so then moving on to my master's, I have this opportunity to, yeah. Look at this feasibility of legalizing the market for access deer meat. And yeah, that was, I think, kind of the first time. Very importantly, I dug into the North American model for wildlife conservation and kind of what that even is as a paradigm that we use here. Because I never had, you know, kind of like the formal knowledge and the formal thought process to think about it and then to kind of learn about it in a formal way and then immediately look at it with this critical lens of like, well, wait a second, because of this paradigm, we can't do these things related to invasive axis deer that I think we should be doing is like, you know, like immediate tension with this model. And of course that led to, you know, related to my trophy hunting work later on where I was like, okay, this thread kind of going through my career. It was, it has kind of been cool to follow.

[Mike Axelrod]

Now what'd you do as a PhD?

[Elena Rubino]

So started my PhD at Florida, University of Florida under Dr. Dr. Elizabeth Panar. Who specifically brought me in to work on wildlife ranching in South Africa. I had done a very brief amount of fieldwork in South Africa as an undergrad, looking at bat echolocation and foraging behavior, so very much on the ecological side, but fell in love with South Africa and knew that that was a place that I wanted to return to at some point. So I saw Dr. Pinar and, you know, she was looking for someone for this wildlife ranching stuff. And I was like, man, that sounds incredible. And yeah, that. I mean, that was the turning point in, I guess my career really went over there for a field season in 2015 and got to a see what trophy hunting brings on the land in terms of these benefits, ecological and socioeconomic. And also being there when the whole Cecil the Lion thing was happening and kind of just right. Being in the thick of things, being in very much working in the trophy hunting space at that time and wildlife ranching in general, and seeing how Cecil the Lion was handled from a public perception side of things and communication side of things. I wasn't even there thinking about communications per se, but in the years after that, I was like, wow, there's so much opportunity here.

[Mike Axelrod]

And in this time, obviously, South Africa and Africa gets under your skin. She's just a. She's something that you can't scratch an itch away, you know, away from it. During this time, still, as a PhD student, you're still not a hunter, and I assume you're not a hunter today.

[Elena Rubino]

You know, I actually, within the past year have started white hunting.

[Mike Axelrod]

Okay, okay, okay, okay. But before, you were still not a hunter. You're in the African environment, not as a hunter.

[Elena Rubino]

Nope.

[Mike Axelrod]

And you're. Are you. Where are you. Are you situated with an outfitter? Are you bouncing between outfitters or different ranches?

[Elena Rubino]

Basically bounce bouncing between people. We were there conducting interviews with various wildlife ranchers. So sometimes it was with ranchers themselves who basically just leased their property. And they were like, you know, I'm not like, the land is mine, but other than that, I have someone else kind of dealing with these operations. Certainly some people would connect us to outfitters and actual, you know, professional hunters. And a whole bunch of times, I mean, that was the fun part. Most of my day was spent actually, like in an office calling people, doing some interviews. But then every once in a while, you know, some, oh, hey, come out onto my property. We're doing a golden wildebeest capture today. Awesome. I'll be there. You know, crazy stuff. And so certainly some. Some outfitters were like, hey, you know, come along. We'd love to show you this piece of property, you know, that we're doing whatever with. So bouncing around between a whole bunch of different people, people doing a little bit different things. Met with someone who would work with, like, animal byproducts and taking off, you know, animals from meat on the land. And he was fantastic. He, like, brought us this great eland steak for someone to cook up. Brought. So, yeah, it was, I mean, an incredible thing to be experiencing at, what, 24 years old did you interact with.

[Mike Axelrod]

Did you get to see people hunt and kill things? I'm just wondering, and my gut says no, but I wondered if that would have changed perceptions at all of the situation.

[Elena Rubino]

Not freshly killed. Did get to go through, like, a mobile abattoir, which was really cool, and see, you know, animals in the process of being processed, but didn't actually see anyone hunt and kill an animal, like, right in front of me.

[Mike Axelrod]

Mm. Mm. So you finished your PhD. What was your PhD in? Was. It was utilization. Is that what you were talking about with these wildlife ranches? The utilization. The game industry. Wildlife industry in South Africa.

[Elena Rubino]

So that was really just more of kind of a side project. My actual thesis was on the rhino horn trade. Utilization side of things. We'll get to that next time.

[Mike Axelrod]

Cool. Well, we'll. We'll save that one for a different podcast. Um, so have you continued that thread of sort of understanding? Because, again, I think this is a field that has sort of emerged very much in the last, you know, 10 to 15 years. I would say maybe, maybe longer, 20 years. And I forgive any social scientists that are listening to me right now, but when I was in university in South Africa, going through my bachelor's, my honors, my master's, before I came to the States in 2003 to do a PhD, I don't think I ever heard the word social science.

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, and. And that's exactly why I wanted to kind of like, define it in the beginning, because it's not. It's. It is a relatively new field, I mean, within the past 30, 40 years. So certainly.

[Mike Axelrod]

So maybe I'll ask a tough question to start with, which is always what I like to do. If perceptions and social science and people like talking about activities is so important, why. Why do more people not know about the benefits of the activity of hunting than not?

[Elena Rubino]

I would say that means that we're not doing a good job getting that information out there. And in fairness, I mean, there's. There's always like, two sides to the coin, right? There's like the awareness side of things, which is usually a much larger side. I mean, think about how many people are out there, right? And how many. Like I know that there's tons of podcasts and there's tons of videos, right? The problem with a lot of that type of media is you have to be seeking it to go and learn about the thing. Right. Uh, it's very rare that. Right. Someone as a non hunter, I mean, I just kind of like stumbled upon this, right. Like through like this weird series of events. Here I am, um, by no means was I ever going out of my way to look for this information. And there are plenty of people like me that did not have that weird series of events happen to them where they wound up learning about all this stuff. Um, yeah. And I mean, perceptions are, they're so important. And I think that that's, that's one thing that I just kind of want to drive home. A lot of times my colleagues coming from more of an ecological side of things, maybe, like why do we care about perceptions? A lot of times they're not even true, right? Like what people think is not correct. Perceptions are everything because that's a huge component of what's driving people's behavior. And at the end of the day, most people recognize that human behavior is, is very, very important. But those perceptions, whether they're right or wrong, are what's kind of tilting people in one direction or another. And there's lots of other things that go into to behaviors and decision making, but perceptions is a huge part of that. So making sure that people are aware of. And again, the flip side of the awareness coin is that making sure that what we're saying gets out there, that we're saying the right messages and that the messages that we're giving are, are, you know, properly resonating with people. Because we can sit here and talk all day about this stuff. And if people are pushing back on that, if they don't believe it, if they think that, you know, we're lying, we have a bias, a slang, you know, whatever. People push back on information all the time. And especially in this day and age with all the misinformation that's going on, it makes it really, really hard. Communicating and changing people's perceptions, changing their minds about things, changing their decision making and ultimately their behavior is incredibly difficult. It's, I think about it 247 and I don't have the answer to any.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, that's what we were built for, right? That's why I built this thing that we're doing right now, seven years ago, five years now as a nonprofit. But, and I would say that in the beginning, I'll give you a perfect example. You know, I agree, perception is 9/10 of the law, right? It doesn't matter if you've said it once, if, if somebody else has seen something else. They've created this idea, this perception of hunting, of hunters, who you are, what you do, you know, and unfortunately the hunting community, to your point, I think for the better part of 40 years, number one, we didn't adjust ourselves to the social media info, you know, camera that's on the back of this thing since 2005 kind of thing. We never adjusted our, our communication style. And so there's just been this, you know, Cecil the Lyon. One picture went around the world in two minutes flat because of the social media cease of the lion happened in 1995, it would not have been Cecil the Lion. And so I, you know, when I first started, we have this, there's this group on Instagram that they're really just a money making scheme and we can, it's a topic for another day about, you know, NGOs that are just money making schemes. But these guys were just pure like moneymakers. They were selling T shirts to ban trophy hunting. And we would get tagged into the post. They would buy ads on these huge nature based accounts that were like 6 million strong. And it would, and I, and I dug so deep into this, I was pulling, I was buying ads myself to, to put my narrative out there. I wasn't selling anything, but found out how much it cost was like $300 for a 24 hour ad. These guys are posting multiple ads on multiple accounts every week. So they must be making money, they must be selling T shirts. I found an address to their business in the uk, but their IP address is linked into India. And for a good two and a half years, I was the lone dissenting voice on these Instagram platforms in a, in a sea of a thousand comments saying how vile these people are. You know, we push back so hard that we must have been bad for business. We started getting blocked and whatnot. And then they changed their model from T shirts to jewelry. And now like happened like two weeks ago, I got tagged into one of these jewelry things and I went, all right, here we go again. And I went in there and before I commented, I started scrolling and there must have been 70% of the comments on there were actually positive for hunting.

[Elena Rubino]

Get out.

[Mike Axelrod]

And I was like. And none of them were following us. But I know that for four years I have been pushing a narrative into these spaces not to change the person's mind that's posting it, but that a hundred thousand people are watching and reading and I'm planting seeds constantly. And I wish I had been, you know, the scientist that I am. I wish I had taken data from day one to today because it would have been a fascinating like again, social experiment to say, I don't, I can't prove that what I've been doing for years did this, but if I had taken from day one to day 900 the percentage of positive comments on these big nature accounts, they have significantly changed it.

[Elena Rubino]

It's huge. And I'm, I'm so glad that you're doing that. And I mean, I'm sure, right, this is, this is a collective action kind of thing where people are pushing back on those narratives. And I think also part of it is doing it in the right way. Right. Like it's, and I understand it's very frustrating to basically have people constantly bashing you and what you do and especially, right, like, you know, my family's been doing this for however long. This is essentially like a cultural thing to me and for people to just, you know, hammer on it all the time. And so I understand the reflex to push back in this aggressive, negative way. And that's, it's, it's just the feedback loop, right, where oh yeah, these hunters are exactly the way I say they are. Look at them, they're all being nasty, they're all being rudd. And so it, it takes a lot of, I think, maturity and you know, just a awareness to be like, hey, let me take a step back, approach this from a level headed way, from ideally a scientific way. And a lot of my work, right, focused on communications is how data is not necessarily the thing that changes people's minds, but I think that the medium that you're communicating in that can have more or less of an effect and certainly the type of person that you're dealing with. So presenting some data, presenting some stats, presenting the story, I think is a huge part of it. That storytelling aspect, it's all ways that we can push back on this without the immediate fiery response that elicits the, oh yeah, well, these guys are just the jerks that I thought they were.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, 100%. We have very much adopted an attitude of gentlemanly. We've been accused of being gentlemanly, which is fine. This is what I want. I want to be seen as respectful, I want to be seen as factual. I want to be seen as intelligent. I want to be seen as sort of turning the other cheek when I'm called every name under the sun. And the other thing that we've noticed works very well is being very honest in responses. So if there's, you know, there's the classic photograph of a big fat white American sitting behind a lion holding his rifle, we're never going to get rid of that image. And that image circulates every so often and like, look at this disgusting human. Look at this gross picture whatnot. And I'll respond saying, yeah, it's a terrible picture. You're right. You're absolutely correct. And it's almost like they're like the, they're like, oh, he's actually agreeing with us. What this a hunter agreeing with us. And then I say, but let me talk to you about. Let me tell you the benefits that came from that quote, unquote disgusting individual. So, yeah, you're. You're nailing it exactly. What, what we're. What we're after. So have you, have you, as you've obviously progressed beyond the PhD, you're a professor now in the University of Arkansas, Monticello. Is that your focus of your research now is social perceptions? Are you focusing specifically on hunting still and trophy hunting, or you're just all over the show in the environmental space?

[Elena Rubino]

I'm a little bit all over the place, certainly depending on, you know, what funding needs are there. A lot of my work now is more. I don't want to say Arkansas centric, but southeastern US Centric. But the, the trophy hunting perceptions thing was really. That was kind of a pet project of mine that I was able to bring a fantastic graduate student on Eden Rosing, who's now doing her PhD. She was wonderful. And she, as an undergrad, looked at some deer hunting like a very. She. She'll say it herself.

[Mike Axelrod]

A very good, very American centric. The trophy hunting was American centric.

[Elena Rubino]

Yes. Yeah. So. So thi. This line of work that I had put together was specifically looking at us, like US Resident perceptions of trophy hunting because of the experience that I had when I was in South Africa. Coming home then. Right. So that happened, what, summer of 2015, something like that. Coming home and having everyone, you know, all my friends, all my family. Oh, what were you doing this summer? Oh, I was in South Africa working on trophy hunting. Oh, my God. Isn't that so awful? Isn't that so disgusting? Right? It's the immediate response and you're like, oh, man. So having lots of conversations with people to explain Those benefits explain what I saw on the ground, which was incredible to see. Like the actual, I mean, you can talk about it as much as you want. You can even show pictures as much as you want. But being there, say it all the time.

[Mike Axelrod]

We say it all the time. We're like, you know, at the end of many discussions and conversations when they're like, we just, I just don't like it. I said, fine, but the door is open for you to come see it. Because when you are sitting across from someone who's lost a loved one from an elephant, or you're sitting there and you watch a group of school children receive their hot meal because the venison got delivered from the hunting outfitter, it will change your life like it changed yours.

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, it, it really, I mean, there's nothing else like it. And I would try to show with pictures. And going back to that kind of perceptions and communication side of things, I found that most people, in having an actual conversation, oh, I didn't know, I didn't know about those benefits. I didn't know that people actually used the meat from, from what they killed. I didn't know that in paying for, you know, this one animal to get shot, it created, you know, it generated an incentive for this whole piece of property to be conserved. Right. Like it's, People don't know that. And that's the awareness thing. And they only know, yeah, I saw the giraffe get shot and the rich white guy behind it, or, you know, whatever it is, they see the image and they're gonna piece together whatever narrative kind of makes sense in their mind because for a very long time, and probably still we're a minority voice that's trying to get this message out. But it's, it's not out there as much as, you know, the prevailing narrative. So to me, once I had those conversations, I can tell you like 90% of the speak people that I spoke to. Oh, I didn't know that. That actually kind of changes how I'm viewing about this now. There's always, I, I, there's always, you know, some people that, from a moral perspective, and that's where my rule of thumb is, this conversation is kind of over. Because the lens that I look at it, a very like kind of conservation oriented lens is, well, the individual of that, you know, one animal that was shot, you know, the cost of that is not there. There's so much benefit from everything else that occurred from that, from a moral perspective when people are saying, well, but that one animal, you know, still, it's an equal playing field. That's not my lens that I look at it through. And I can't write like, I'm not going to tell you that your lens is bad, that my lens is better. So at this point, the conversation is usually over with and. And hopefully I gave them some food for thought. Maybe the more they hear other people with that similar kind of lens, maybe it'll change their mind. But at a certain point, the values and kind of the moral lenses are two different.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah. I think the biggest. Not biggest is not the right adjective. I think the best outcome I typically will get to. And maybe the final outcome before it gets to that, like, you know, I just morally don't agree with you. I was like, well, okay, then we're never going to agree. All right. Is. I don't. That is the response is I don't like it, but I understand it.

[Elena Rubino]

Yep.

[Mike Axelrod]

And I'm like, you're my guy, you're my girl. Because I don't expect you to like it. I'm not asking you to like it. I'm not asking you to love it or do it. I'm just asking you to see beyond this lens that you have or this sort of hurdle that you have about liking it or loving it, but agree that it's a good thing for what I just showed you, for the people, it's a good thing for wildlife, it's a good thing for communities. Those are the things that I want you to agree with me on and you don't. That's the beauty about. And that unfortunate. Is a symptom of today's society. Right. Is that you're not allowed to more often than not like something. Sorry. Dislike something, but agree with their opinion.

[Elena Rubino]

Sure. You know, and. And that's where. So this line of research that I. I have been working on is grounded in this idea of the social license to operate. Right. And so that's. It stems from basically, like mining communities and. Right. This idea that a lot of people don't. They recognize there are a lot of bad things that come with a mine being operated in your. In your town, in your city, whatever it is. But there are kind of certain steps that have. You have to go through for this mine to, for people to. To really feel like, oh, yeah, like, like we're. We're good with this. We're okay with being a mining town because of the set of benefits that we go through. And there's legitimacy, credibility and trust are basically kind of these three levels to this pyramid. And what we did was we looked at that from a trophy hunting, you know, side of things. Right. So this social license to operate is so important. And that's why just because you live in the mining town doesn't mean that, you know, you want to work in the mine, that you want to own the mine, whatever. But you recognize there are benefits that come from having this mine here. So we're generally okay with that. And you know, eventually we think it's legitimate. We think that there's credibility to it and we trust these people. So we'll have that industry here. And it's the same exact thing with trophy hunting. And it's why it's so important for those, for people to have, you know, for those perceptions to work their way up the pyramid because that's what allows trophy hunting. Again, you don't, you don't have to be a part of it, you don't have to agree with it whatever, but you have to be okay with it being here.

[Mike Axelrod]

So what did you put in place? I'm assuming it's finished now, right?

[Elena Rubino]

Yes, Yep. The survey and the study are all, all done. We have a couple papers published from it and a couple kind of in the process.

[Mike Axelrod]

Okay, so you did, it was a survey methodology. How did you, how did you put it out? And let's just start there.

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah. So it went out to 2,000 US residents. It went through a qualtrics panel. So basically they go and make sure that these set the, the sample of people that they're sending our survey to are in line with, I think it was the 2020 U.S. census. So. Right. In terms of the gender split, the age split, education split, things like that. And it, it was sent out online.

[Mike Axelrod]

So 2,000 people received the survey. And what was the survey? Give me an idea of what kind of questions they were they were responding to.

[Elena Rubino]

Sure. So we kind of worked them through. First, some questions first. You know, we, we kind of have to be a little bit clever about how we frame these things. Right. So first it's, it's. This is a survey about wildlife conservation. Right. Very not controversial. People that, you know, people should be kind of willing to take a survey on this. So there were some very general kind of conservation related questions. Just looking at attitudes, mostly trying to ease people into the survey. Then we went on to ask about kind of perceptions about hunting and attitudes towards hunting.

[Mike Axelrod]

And you use that as an adjective. You didn't say perceptions of trophy hunting or did you just say hunting itself?

[Elena Rubino]

But we worked our way to hunting specifically. So first we're looking at. And basically we were kind of recreating. I know you're familiar with Dr. Duda's work and Responsive Management's work related to hunting kind of started with that mostly because that gave us a nice kind of comparison where we could basically double check. Okay, here's what we saw. We know that this is what Responsive Management tends to get. Are we seeing, you know, that these are comparable results? Which we did. So that was great. And kind of very similar sets of questions related to, you know, regulated, legalized hunting. You know, the important keywords there. Moving on into, you know, perceptions about, well, when you hunt these species, what happens? When you hunt in these, with these methods, what happens? Then we tightened the reins a little bit and brought it down to trophy hunting. And we put together basically this messaging experiment where we looked at how framing, Framing the idea of trophy hunting, how that might change people's acceptance of. Of trophy hunting at the end of the day.

[Mike Axelrod]

And I assume those frames were very much. Were they. Were they tied to benefits and consequences? And like what you just said, right, the. What did you say? Credibility, trust. Was that built into those kinds of things? And legitimacy.

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, yeah. So there. The survey was very, very involved, and there's kind of different pieces to it, but basically we were looking at, first off, could we model approval and acceptance of trophy hunting using those three measures, essentially. And the answer was yes, which wasn't particularly surprising, but it makes sense within this social license to operate framework. So, yes, basically, when those scores in terms of legitimacy, credibility, and trust went up, approval for hunting, trophy hunting specifically went up. So that was kind of the checkbox there. And then from a message testing side of things. Right. Because that's kind of one set. The first set of questions is, well, is there acceptance for trophy hunting? Right. Is there a social license to operate in the trophy hunting realm? Yes, it's very weak, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone. People are not generally oppressive, proving of the idea of trophy hunting, but made sense in terms of.

[Mike Axelrod]

What was that percentage? Did you find? What was it? You know. Oh, boy, I printed super low, like less than 10%.

[Elena Rubino]

So in. I don't have those percentages. I can tell you on a scale of 1 to 5, we were in like the. Maybe like the 1.5 area, something like that.

[Mike Axelrod]

Okay.

[Elena Rubino]

I. Yeah, it was somewhere between 1 and 2.

[Mike Axelrod]

So.

[Elena Rubino]

Very low.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Elena Rubino]

Which again, not very surprising. And those numbers, when we asked, we didn't ask in. In terms of those three measures related to hunting generally, but we did look at approval for hunting generally as like that final measure and that was maybe like 3.5, something like that. So a little bit above neutral into that approval range. So just goes to show you, when, when you talk about regulated, legalized hunting, broadly speaking, Americans are very much on board. There's very much a social license to hunt. When you talk about the social license to trophy hunt, that's where that approval really, really, I mean it's, it is in the disapproval range of things.

[Mike Axelrod]

Is it? And, and in your opinion, why is there the, why is there a difference?

[Elena Rubino]

People have a problem with, with the motivation is really what it is. Interestingly, we did find, and this was just kind of like a little.

[Mike Axelrod]

Do you think that they are assuming motivation for normal hunting is what is.

[Elena Rubino]

For meat is for maybe wildlife management, you know, kind of the personal protection is another big one. And because we did, we looked at each of those motivations and sure enough, oh for me, everyone's on board, right? Like oh, go ahead, yeah, shoot the white tailed deer for meat. Well, if you say it happened to be a big buck whitetail deer where you ate the meat, but it was also for a trophy, right. It, those measures are helpful, but they also don't get at the fact that these things are not mutually exclusive. So it's very, very difficult to parse out those motivations. At the end of the day, we do that in a survey, but realistically, you know, that's, that's not how real life works. And those motivations, you have so many, right? Oh, I do it to spend time with my grandkids. People are all for that, but you know, heaven forbid.

[Mike Axelrod]

But do you think the trophy hunting motivation in people's minds, is it because people think trophy hunting, is it because there's a fun component to it, a recreation component to it as the motivation? Yeah, we know what the actual motivation, like what is the trigger motivation of that trophy that people are like, not good.

[Elena Rubino]

I think the idea of killing for fun is something that people kind of feel is icky is my guess. I think also. So in fairness, in our survey when we were specifically asking about trophy hunting in that message testing experiment, we put the context as southern Africa may have specifically been South Africa, but it was certainly southern Africa oriented, which I think also changes people's minds, which is kind of absurd when you think about it, right? Like people don't have the same like, oh, like white tailed deer, some other trophy hunting, that acceptance maybe is a little bit higher compared to an elephant or something like that, right? Like people Hear endangered species, they hear elephant. I'm sure they think charismatic megafauna. Right. These are all things that drive down that, that approval for trophy hunting.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, it all goes back to. And again, this is, you know, Shane Mahoney has said you have to worry about motivation. I'm a bit of a different beast in that I can't affect somebody's motivation. Right. People. I would say the vast majority of people that go to hunts in Africa go because they. It's going to be an adventure of adventures and the hunt itself is fun. That's why you go do it. Right. You go do it because of the people and the places and the stalk and the adventure and the adrenaline and whatnot. And unfortunately that fun moniker is also tied or outside of the hunting space. That fun moniker is tied in with killing of an animal and that you are finding it fun to kill that animal. And I think we as again that's why we exist. I think we as a hunting community have done ourselves a disservice in truly explaining. I'll say one thing that will go right against that is yes, it's fun, but honestly, when you think about the whole philosophical purpose of hunting, it's defined by chasing and stalking and there's inherent failure in it. But there's also the finality of hunting is killing, which is actually anti climatic because you're a hunter, you like to hunt. And yes, the purpose of hunting is to kill. Otherwise we would be going, we would be hiking. But the idea that killing is fun in the moment it may be, but actually afterwards it means it's over. And what you've been building on and working on for two years is over. And in most societies that thing when it's over is not. The fun's gone because of that. The thing that you say is fun. The other thing that I think we've, we've. Which may help the whole situation and I've been having these conversations the last two days is, you know, tied in with trophy hunting is this idea that, and maybe you explore this a little bit is how unethical hunters are and how cruel we are. And you know that we have no morals when it comes to wildlife, wherein it's the exact opposite. Like tell show me a community that cares more about wildlife and I'll stop hunting. You can't, because we, you know, when you think of an animal welfare chart, what are the things that you're looking after, looking out for, for animal welfare? Well, number one, let's just talk about the hardest part, which is the Kill. Show me a community, even in the abattoir community, that's killing animals all the time, that they practice killing. And why do they practice killing? Because in the. In the. In the action of hunting, to succeed in hunting means killing the animal. So you want to be as successful as you possibly can be, which means you need to be as efficient as you possibly can be, which means you have to be as lethal as you possibly can be, which means you're actually constantly thinking about animal welfare. And if. Because if you weren't, you just haphazardly just shoot an animal wherever. Because we don't care if we. If we get it or not. Again, it's the opposite. The habitat that we're protecting, the habitat that we're creating, especially in America. Think about the private whitetail landowner that's constantly improving his habitat. For what reason? To give the deer the best habitat they possibly can. It's like a farmer and their cows. Same scenario. But have we ever heard the hunting community champion those ideas, those ideologies?

[Elena Rubino]

You're absolutely right. I mean, right, the idea of, like, hunting versus shooting. And, And. But I mean, everything you just said there is, is what needs to be communicated, and not just from, you know, these NGOs, from people with podcasts, right? Like, just the average hunter. The average hunter who posts the selfie of them next to the deer with. I actually in. In one of my classes with my students, I put up these two pictures, right? And one of the pictures is this guy, like, I don't know, he's got a backwards hat, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He's got this deer in the back of a truck. There's blood everywhere, the deer's tongue is hanging out, right? And, like, immediately, one of my students is like, hey, that looks like my cousin. I was like, guys, like, this is. This is not. Like, the whole idea is this is not the image that we're going for versus, however, this, you know, kind of like what you were describing before, like, like the fat old white guy who, like, not a speck of dirt on him behind, like this huge buck, right? And from the hunter perspective, they're looking at the guy on the left with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, like, hey, that's me, the guy who was out there in the woods, you know, doing the thing, you know, And I. I think we just need to do a better job because most people will look at that hunter on the right, pristine and everything, and, oh, that. That's what a hunter should look like. And from a hunting community Perspective. Maybe we have different ideas about those two images, but if the one on the right is, is generating a more positive sentiment from people, maybe we can watch what we're putting on social media. By all means, put up the picture of, of the deer and maybe tuck its tongue away and clean up a little bit of the blood. But also talk about the chase. Talk about, you know, the time that you spent with your family and how you got to bond with, you know, your friends who you haven't seen in five years. Talk about all that stuff. Talk, talk about when you're doing a nice trophy hunt, the, the land and how, oh man, I was on this gorgeous piece of property. The owner said it used to be completely overrun by sicklebush when he bought it and now he goes and, you know, does all this management of the land and you know, look at the land now. Those are all things that we can talk about and we don't. And I feel like that's just, I mean, talking about a disservice that the hunting community does to itself. To me, that's one of those things is sharing that story, sharing the, you know, the, all the benefits that come with those hunts that people aren't going to know about unless we're sharing them. And I think particularly in that moment of, of that picture because if people see the pictures, you know, add, add this story to those pictures. Tell your side of things.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, a hundred percent, 100% from the study. I know we've, we've talked a little bit of, of the conclusions and results. What were the, like the major things that came out of what you found?

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, so major things were from a kind of baseline perspective, that low social license to trophy hunt was certainly a big one on the communications in that.

[Mike Axelrod]

Survey you didn't test. And maybe it was just too much for the survey. I would have in my brain. If you were looking at messaging of trophy hunting and you asked somebody before the message, what is your. We did process what did it change at all based on different messaging.

[Elena Rubino]

Yes. So a very classic pretest post test design. Right. We looked at the change and of course. Right. Recognizing that this is within a survey in, you know, a two minute time frame, not a whole lot can change. Right. This is not going to be some like profound thing, but we did see a difference in basically a control versus a message about the ecological benefits. And then there was a message about socioeconomic benefits. And both of those benefit related messages resulted in a higher approval rate in the post test compared to the control.

[Mike Axelrod]

Statistically increased okay, sweet.

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, so, so we are seeing some, some benefits certainly to, to talking about those benefits, which makes sense. There was also part of the survey where we were looking at people's values and if we could kind of prime for people's values, if that would ha, if that would change how people were, how those messages resonated with people. And actually that's where we didn't see any statistically significant differences there. So at least, you know, in the purposes of this study that wasn't maybe a route to go. But we pulled that from a lot of climate change literature, which is. Right. Another kind of controversial environmental related topic where tapping into people's values has been shown to kind of nudge people in a certain direction. We just didn't see that here in this study.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, cool, cool. Let me ask this question personally. Obviously, as you're doing these social experiments around hunting, especially this trophy hunting, when you were a non hunter at the time, do you think that your colleagues and the broader public now will view you differently, that you have decided to become a hunter?

[Elena Rubino]

That is, I wrestled with that. I really did it. I had been interested in hunting and I don't know, maybe my motivations will matter to people, maybe they won't. From a. Right, just a green source of protein. I was like, wow. And also for me, from a wildlife management side of things, you know, going to New Jersey, going back home to see my parents and just the devastation that an overpopulation of white tailed deer has on the ecosystem is like tragic to me. Just, you know, growing up in that place and now coming back 20 years later, it's night and day, there's zero understory whatsoever. Um, so all of those motivations were important to me and for a while, for, for about a year I was interested in it, but I was like, man, does that, you know, reduce my credibility as someone who talks about hunting? Maybe it does. I, I, I don't know. I have never gone what I would say. Trophy hunting as general e. Right. As, as nebulous as, as that term is. I have gone and I've shot two small female white tailed deer and process them myself and eaten everything. There's still stuff in the freezer. So if that matters. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, I've certainly, I spent a lot of time actually thinking about that.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's an unfortunate situation that we find ourselves in with the, the moniker of trophy because number one, I think the, the word trophy has been bastardized. By those against hunting. Okay. I don't think people in America, maybe when they go to Africa they do, because I see African outfitters talking about, you know, we've got some good trophies here. I don't hear of people in the States going, I'm going out trophy hunting today. They say, I'm going out to, I want to kill a big buck. They don't. There isn't that moniker here around it. Okay. But when somebody pushes back on us on social media, a hunter, and goes, I'm not a trophy hunter, I'm a meat hunter. I always sort of lead them through a series of questions because I believe everyone is a trophy hunter, even you. Because here's why. Trophy is an associated value on something that you prize. Sure. And that, that prize, typically the bastard size version, is very large antlers or horns on an animal. And again, maybe we've done a terrible job of explaining. Isn't that the, you know, don't you want to take the old curmudgeonly male out of the population when it comes to ensuring a functioning, ecologically healthy, functioning population? Regardless, that's for another podcast for another day. But so I'll say to somebody who's a meat hunter that says, I'm a meat hunter. Like, okay, okay, okay. So when you go out hunting, the very first deer that comes out, you shoot it, right?

[Elena Rubino]

Well, oh, for, like, for me, no.

[Mike Axelrod]

No, no, I'm generally, no, no, I'm just saying. Generally. I'm just saying this is the sequence of questions that I put someone through. And more often than not, they go, no, you know, a baby came out with a mom. I didn't shoot them. Oh, a little spike came out. I'm not going to shoot that because I want it to grow. And then a big doe stepped out and I killed that one. I said, huh, okay, so you, you decided, you, you valued a selection process by which you decided. I'm selecting that one sounds like a trophy hunter to me.

[Elena Rubino]

It's, it's that, it's the motivation problem. Right. It's, I, I, I don't know it. And, and, Right. That's why I try not to get. I, I, I, I don't really see the purpose a lot. Like, I mean, I get from, like the scientific side of things, we do a lot with motivations and how, you know, people can be segmented based on motivations and, you know, we can do whatever from that great but grand scheme of things. The outcome at the end of the day is the outcome, and that's what is Most important to me, and I mean, same thing from a pure trophy hunting side of things. At the end of the day, the outcome was you shot the one elephant and that led to this set of conservation outcomes for the landscape and the population of elephants. That's. That's what I'm most interested in. And what. I think that from a communication side of things, we should be focusing on. But you're right. I mean, getting tied up in motivations, it's. It's hard. It's. And. And again, I mentioned before, like, mutually exclusive motivation. Like, that's. Yeah, that's not a thing. Oh, I'm. I'm going out just to shoot the biggest buck with the biggest horns. I. That's not most people.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, it's fascinating, man. I really appreciate you, you know, for being your first podcast. You know, it's just like a. It's just like a lecture. Right.

[Elena Rubino]

It's easy. My students know. Don't. Don't give me a soapbox to get on, because I will go.

[Mike Axelrod]

I like it. Well, we've got plenty of soapboxes to offer you, so. No, I really appreciate you coming on and. Yeah. Talking about your trophy hunting research thus far and what you found. Did we miss anything?

[Elena Rubino]

I don't think so. Covered a lot here.

[Mike Axelrod]

Oh, good, good, good. Well, we'll definitely have you back and talk about rhino trade and anything else you want to talk about. Just think of this as an open platform. You're like, hey, I got to talk about something. I want to. I want to get on a soapbox and I want you to challenge me on my soapbox. I said, no, I can do that.

[Elena Rubino]

Oh, beautiful.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, thank you so much. Where can people find some of your research if they're interested?

[Elena Rubino]

Yeah, I Google Scholar. Just Elena C. Rubino or Elena Rubino. It would probably come up as well. I have a website, rubinoresearch.com that has all my contact information and things like that. So please drop me an email. Would love to chat, would love to collaborate. Yeah, very much. An open book.

[Mike Axelrod]

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you, Elena. Thank you so much for your time.

[Elena Rubino]

Thanks so much. Have a good one.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, that's it for today. I appreciate you listening, as always. Leave a review, share it with your friends, and most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth around hunting.

[Elena Rubino]

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[Mike Axelrod]

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[Elena Rubino]

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[Mike Axelrod]

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[Elena Rubino]

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[Mike Axelrod]

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[Elena Rubino]

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