← The Origins Foundation Podcast
The Origins Foundation Podcast
Episode 604 - Jon Flocchini || State Of Bison
00:45:37
In celebration of National Bison Day (November 1st), Jon Flocchini, the generational farmer of the Durham Bison Ranch, joins Robbie to give a State of the Union on bison in the U.S. All Jon knows is bison, and he dives deep into the state of these iconic American mammals and the practices it takes to keep a herd of these majestic animals thriving for over a century. If you have been fascinated by bison or are interested in learning more, then this is the podcast for you.
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- [00:01]
A
John Flokini is the generational farmer of the Durham Ranch. The Durham Ranch has been. Is in Wyoming, and it's been in his existence since 1965 as a bison ranch. As you saw from the title of this podcast, this is the state of the Union as it relates to bison. I couldn't think of a better person to talk to than John. John's a bison rancher. It's been in his family. That's all he knows. And so we just take a deep dive into bison. We stand on a bunch of soapboxes as it relates to value and sustainable utilization. And it's just a really good discussion on all things bison. So I hope you enjoy. If you like the podcast, share it with your friends and feel free to talk about it. Talk about the podcast, talk about what you learned, because that's the only way that we can get our narrative and our information out to the general public. So enjoy. So five years ago, there was a reason why I started this movement. And the truth then is the truth now that we need to champion our narrative. We need to champion the truth around what we do and who we are. There's a sweet spot with a gun.
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B
You know, too heavy and it's a burden to walk with. Too light and you whipping it.
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A
Why is the project so important to the hunting community? Who.
- [01:19]
B
I think it's not only important, I think it's vital. I think it's just in time.
- [01:23]
A
It's like snakes and ladders. You guys are climbing the ladder and then somebody does something stupid and you just slide down. That is such an amazing analogy. Snakes and ladders.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, ivory, in my opinion, was the plastic of its age. Okay.
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B
The expenses were going up. It goes a long way with families. We have families that do need it.
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A
Me close this door because I have a little wiener dog. What? You are. You're laughing because I said wiener.
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B
I'm really glad you finished the sentence out.
- [01:53]
A
I'm sorry. The first happen. What are we doing here today? You're telling the whole world. John Flokini, not bikini Flokini. How are you, my friend?
- [02:16]
B
Doing well. How about you, Robbie?
- [02:18]
A
Oh, man. Can't complain. Can't complain. Where. Where are you right now?
- [02:22]
B
I am on the Durham ranch in. Well, south of Gillette, Wyoming. Up in the northeast corner of Wyoming.
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A
Okay, most important, have you got snow yet?
- [02:35]
B
We have. We've had. No, we actually have not had snow yet, which is unusual. We've had plenty of frosts, and we were down to 25 above, which is a hard Frost. But I still have a few things in my garden that are green.
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A
Okay.
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B
It's amazing.
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A
Yeah. You know, I'm allergic to the white stuff. That's South Africans. You know, that white stuff. You can keep all of that to yourself. Thank you very much. John. Welcome to the Origins foundation podcast. Obviously we have a lot of mutual friends in common, one of which is Jeremy Afflet. And you know, today we've, we've done one of these before. I can't remember who I talked to before, but really, you know, National Bison Day has, has essentially it will be gone when this podcast drops. And I know two or three years ago we got hot and heavy a little bit on bison. And thinking about it, I still totally believe that if there was a singular. And again, I've put this out there and I think somebody within the National Bison association shot my idea down completely right away. And I was like, okay, fine. But it's still a bloody good idea.
- [03:50]
B
Hopefully it wasn't me.
- [03:52]
A
Oh, it could have been you. And you could tell me that sounds like a idea right away as well. That's fine too. I just think that like a true moving the needle conservation movement in the United States would be, you know, you've got the million bison goal. How can you, you create almost like a, a trade transport, translocation paid system in which excess female bison, the odd bull bison, somebody pays to pick them up, somebody pays to move them, and you start repopulating these areas that used to have bison reservations, refuges, BLM areas with bison.
- [04:38]
B
Yeah.
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A
And, and you, and you get to that million bison mark very quickly and all of a sudden you've got all of this public land that now has bison. But now I look, I. Very oversimplified idea. I understand brucellosis and cattle and all.
- [04:54]
B
The things that go with it. Right? Yes. Yeah. Complicated issue. Not as simple as it would, you know, as you laid it out, definitely there would be a lot of dynamics in something like that. Now that said, I mean there are people, there are people working on this. You know, we're, we're expanding our herd. But, but you know, some of the limitations that we, that raised bison face, things like drought that we don't control and matter of fact, in 20 and 21, we, we cut 40% of our herd out. Uh, because back to that.
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A
What does that mean, John, when you cut 40% of your herd out, you slaughtered and sent to meat processors. Mo.
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B
Mostly we did, we did manage to sell some older mixed age cows to another producer, but at the time, the Droughts were so widespread nobody had extra grass and so people were not buying breeding animals. And so most of those went into the meat market. Which means you're, you know, when you take a producing female out of the mix, you have, you, you reduce your capacity, your productive capacity, the factory, if you will. And, and what is that factory?
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A
What's, what's the time associated with that factory, John?
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B
Well, a female bison naturally breath reads for the first time when she's two years old, okay? She'll have her calf as a three year old.
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A
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B
So a female calf, it takes at least three years to get her into production, but it takes another year or more for that calf to do something for you. If it's going to be a breeding animal, you need two years on it as a female to reproduce or to get pregnant and to have a calf as a three year old. But even for the meat market you're, you're looking at an another at least another year after the calf hits the ground, before it's able to be marketed for meat, before it's big enough basically to be marketed.
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A
Can the female get pregnant right away after giving birth? Does that happen?
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B
It does within a couple months depending on the grass conditions that, so it's, it's pretty much nutritionally based and one that's in you, you need female needs to be on the weight gain in order to, to come into heat, to breed. So all of that dependent on the environment that they're in. Make sure they're, they're doing well enough.
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A
Nutritionally to, to come out and gestation is 11 months.
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B
9 months.
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A
9 months.
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B
Same same as cattle basically.
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A
Okay.
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B
Okay.
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A
And a good average lifespan of a female bison.
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B
So it's, that's a good question. And the way I typically answer it is the books you can read where they can live to be up to 40 years old. If you are, if she's in a breeding herd and you're like in our situation we ask them to get pregnant every year. And so when, when that's happening. They're, they're not going to live as long for the most part. On average, you know, we'll have cows in the mid teens, maybe up to 20 years old. But that's, that's old for a producing cow that you've had. Breed and have a calf every year since they were 3 years old. Breed is 2, Cav is 3. So in the, in the wild, if you will, they, they don't breed or they don't have a calf every year. And so they can live longer because it's not as hard on their body. Their first instinct is survival of themselves. It's not to get pregnant. And so the conditions have to be right in order for them to get pregnant, so they live longer.
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A
Also.
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B
They'll live longer in different environments. Here where we're at northeast Wyoming, it's a, it's a semi arid environment, so relatively dry, short grasses dominate. And they wear their teeth down. Quite frankly, once they wear their teeth down, they can't eat enough to take care of themselves and raise a calf as well. That's when they start becoming open or non pregnant females.
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A
Gotcha. Gotcha. John, give me a little bit of background to you and the Durham ranch.
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B
Sure. So the Durham ranch came into my family. The bikini, I mean Flokini family. You got me doing it.
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A
You've already adopted us. It's brilliance.
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B
In 1965, my family was in the meat business. My grandfather immigrated from Italy to Northern California, then down to San Francisco and was a calf skinner for the butcher shops around San Francisco. And one particular company, the guys kind of took a liking to him. So they took him under their wings. They allowed him that put him to work full time. Then they allowed him to become a partner and ultimately buy the company out. And that was Durham Meat Co. Back in about 19, in the 30s, my grandfather purchased that company. And so that's the name Durham, where the ranch name comes from. It's based on the old breed of British cattle, the Durham breed, which is synonymous with shorthorn these days. But Anyway, Durham Heat Company dated back to the 1880s. This is the butcher shop in San Francisco that grew my grandfather, once he took it over, grew it, got his three kids involved as part of the operation. They ultimately moved down to the South Bay area, San Jose, and then ultimately moved. Sold out of that land in the South Bay in San Jose, moved to a facility up in Reno, Nevada where we had bought a company there called Sierra Meat. Well, it became Sierra Meat and Seafood, but a Sierra Meat company in the 1980s, that company dated back to the 1940s. But in the 60s, they were looking for ranches to buy, to just become more fully integrated with the, with the whole supply chain. And they came across this deal. They were looking for cattle ranches. Bison was not buffalo back then, was not even in their vocabulary. And they came across this deal, it sort of fell into their laps and they came up to Wyoming, checked it out, fell in love with it, thought what a great cool idea to market. There was bison on the ranch at the time. They originated out of Yellowstone national park back in the early 60s. And so really a unique opportunity. And yeah, and they, and they had the foresight to, you know, really ahead of the game to think about bison meat as, you know, something that could be popular amongst consumers. Back then it was, it was rare to see it. There was only specialty restaurants that were selling it occasionally.
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A
It wasn't, obviously the health fad movement.
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B
Wasn'T what it is, not even spoken about back then. It was just a novelty. Most people thought they were still, they were, they were extinct. You know, in the 1960s and even into the 70s, I, we, we started doing tours on the ranch and, and early on, maybe in the 80s, we would have people say, well, we thought these things went extinct, you know, and here we are looking at a couple thousand of them. Well, it's like, no, they sure didn't. They came close. But anyway, that's how the ranch came.
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A
John, in the 60s, in the 60s and 70s, what was bison? Was the classification already done? Were they classified as agricultural animals if they were on a farm? So you had the whole. No problems with cattle kind of, you know, processing of the meat.
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B
They were, it was very novel. There was only about 20,000. That's the numbers that I have heard back in the 1960s in existence, North America. And so they, they, they didn't know how to deal with them as far as an agricultural product or, or animal, livestock, if you will, they, they fell into gray areas. In Wyoming, I think early on the classification was if, basically if you saw a bison out somewhere just running loose, you could shoot it. It was free game. It might have been one that escaped from the Durham ranch, but it was free game.
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A
So.
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B
Now it varies depending on the state, whether they're classified as livestock handled by the state livestock departments, or if they're wildlife. And part of that depends on where they are. So.
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A
Interesting.
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B
Yeah, they still don't. We're up closer to 500,000 of them and they still don't know how to deal with them a lot of times.
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A
So let's just talk a little bit about that.
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B
Right.
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A
Because, you know, the IDEA you had 20,000 bison, obviously one of the, you know, not saddest conservation stories, but, you know, certainly has a turn in its story from nearly extinct to what it is today. But then you've also got this thing called the North American Wildlife model, which says that the wildlife of this country is a public resource and doesn't belong to anybody yet, like Africa, in a privatized wildlife model. Wildlife in South Africa, for example. I'll give you an example. 500,000 head of wildlife in 1970s, same time frame that we're talking. Right. Not the same numbers, but you're going to see the reflection here shortly. Today, 22 million head of wildlife because of the value that they bring from a privatization perspective. Sure, different model. Completely different model. But the bison industry has essentially adopted the same model. Privatize the herd, privatize the animal. And you've gone from 20,000 to how many now in private hands?
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B
Well, 450,000, roughly. I mean, there's nobody has their arms around the.
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A
How many, how many in public. How many in public lands?
- [19:46]
B
20,000, 30,000? Yeah, no, it's a great.
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A
You're 4,000% more in private hands than public vans. John, have we asked the question why?
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B
Yeah, I think there.
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A
Why is that? Why is there 450,000 in your hands and only 25,000 in public? Yeah, I know the answer.
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B
Tell me.
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A
It's because you value them more, right?
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B
Well, in that if it's. It's you, you know, the value is in the consumption of them. And so the, the more people eat them, the better their value is and the more they will be grown.
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A
I mean, it boils down to sustainable use. If you called sustainable use, wise use.
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B
Right. If you eat them, if people want to eat them, the value goes up and there'll be more people raising them. That's very true. So not that there isn't a place for pure conservation, for species, particularly a species that almost experienced extinction. And so, you know, there are, there is a place for that, but, you know, there's also the sustainability factor when you look at the numbers. I guess it's a numbers game, right? Where's the true sustainable number land? Is it in the government herds, the publicly owned herds, or is it in private hands? Now, there's a flip side to that argument, and that is, well, what if they fall out of favor? What if something weird came up and people no longer wanted to eat bison so they're not as valuable anymore. Well, people.
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A
Well, it's a shame because intrinsically. And here's where I'll have to step off my soapbox very quickly if that happens, fall out of favor. From a consumption, a meat consumption perspective. You've got a whole sector of this global society that is anti use, that is anti utilization of any natural resource. You can't eat a bison. You can't use or consumption or you can't use it. You can't use the fur on anything that you, you know, you can't hunt it. It has no, it couldn't. It can't have a value because it gets hunted. Well, if the scenario that you just suggested happens, are they going to step up and buy 200,000 bison? No, they won't. Can we put 200,000 bison into public landscapes? I believe there would be a value there. I think that if you had them again, why can't we do that? Because not the hunters. We're only 4% of. Of society. But 70% of society doesn't see a value for bison to be on the landscape. That's why there's only 20,000 right now.
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B
Yeah. I think there's people that would like to see more. There's no question about it. In fact there, there, there are arguments from that perspective. People would like to see more bison. You know, take the American Prairie foundation up in Montana. That's putting together large chunks of land. Tying together like the Charlie Russell. Yeah. Chunk of land. And, and they would like to populate it with bison. They're working on populating it with bison now. That's a ngo. But, but they are utilizing government land to graze the bison on. But yeah, I mean that's. And there are a lot of people behind that. There's a lot of money behind that. There are, there are wealthy people that would like more bison on public land. Not necessarily for hunting, not necessarily for consumption, but just to get them out there. Because they used to be there.
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A
Yeah. Aesthetically. Right. And from a societal acceptance like this is what our land should be. It's the most, you know, the free ranging bison, the symbol of the American west.
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B
Part of. It's that, that romance. But, but they are. And science is proving this out the impact of. And it's not just bison, but we're using bison, the large ungulate on the land, particularly in arid and semi arid environments. Without that impact, the land actually goes backwards and is less healthy. So in order to have healthy landscapes in these types of environments, you need an animal like a Bison, cattle can do similarly as long as the animals are being managed properly. So you know, there is that aspect to, to that to their argument as well. But you still, I mean, you have to have something pulling. Humans have been predators from the very beginning. The Native Americans were one of the largest predators to bison. You know, you had the wolf as the largest number wise, volume wise, as the largest four legged predator and humans were the biggest two legged, you know, there were the two legged predator. And so now we see ourselves as, as having taken over the role of the Native American as predator in the way we approach our, our landscape management with the bison. So we're still playing predator. We have to, we cannot remove the human as predator and still have things functioning appropriately or properly.
- [25:55]
A
Yeah, totally agree, totally agree. I think that, you know, I think in today's landscape, more so than ever because of the pressures from humans, the cutting up of habitats, the deconnecting of landscapes, the stewardship component, the heavy handedness of humans needs to be heavier than it's ever been from a management, stewardship perspective. Because we've had such an anthropomorphic influence on the landscape, it behooves us to steward it even more. And I think the idea that you can just, and I just posted a video today about it. The idea that you can, you can do something, take a step back and go, we're taking a hands off approach to this. Mother Nature's gonna do what she does. Mother Nature's a cruel bitch, like she will. She's a boom bust cycle bitch.
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B
Right.
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A
And like you talk about, you know, we live in a society of morals and rights and ethics and whatnot. And there is no such thing. Mother Nature does not understand that. Right. And you will know that very well when you see a pack of wild dogs eat something alive standing.
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B
Right, exactly, exactly. And so it brings to mind the way we are approaching our land management here at the ranch. We work with Mother Nature.
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A
How big's the ranch? How big's the ranch, John?
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B
Roughly 55,000 acres, about 90 square miles.
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A
How many bison do you have on it right now?
- [27:40]
B
2,500 ish. Somewhere in that vicinity. And we're working on trying to build the herd back up after the, you know, the 40% after selling it out.
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A
Right.
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B
And, and then there's always disease that we, we, you know, we dealt with some.
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A
What kind of disease do you deal with?
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B
Well, this one in particular is, is pretty nasty to bison and it's relatively new to bison or at least to the consciousness of bison managers. It's called Mycoplasma bovis, or M. Bovis for short. And I mean, it.
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A
It.
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B
If. If it's introduced, it can take up to 40 to 50% of a herd out. It's insidious. It's. It's actually a bacteria that has no cell wall, so most of the antibiotics don't touch it. There's not. Not many tools to try and fight it. Fortunately, there is some research going on right now at some universities that are trying to figure out why it's so different in bison than it is in cattle. Cause it will be a. It's a primary pathogen in bison, where in cattle most of the time it. It's a secondary opportunistic pathogen that will come in after they're weakened from something else. So anyway, that. That's one that has be.
- [29:03]
A
How does it get introduced into a place like yours? Is it just from.
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B
An infected bison has to come in from. From the outside. So, yes, an infected bison. They are finding that pronghorn have it. We have not fully figured out how it got introduced into our herd. We've done some DNA testing on the. The pathogen that was infected in our herd. And I don't know.
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A
It's.
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B
It's kind of complicated. I don't understand it fully.
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A
But you've had to deal with it yourself.
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B
Yeah, last summer, a year ago, we were dealing with it, and it's not pleasant. We ended up putting down many of the animals because they just get to the point where they're so sick they can't even stand up anymore. So we put them out of their misery anyway. Disease is an issue also that's impacted and mycoplasma in particular, that's impacted the bison industry over the last few years. That's taken out a lot of animals.
- [30:17]
A
Um, has it just come in in the last couple of years?
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B
Well, it's been probably well known for a while or what become known in the bison industry probably in the last 10 or 15 years. Prior to that, nobody knew. Nobody even talked about it.
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A
So you think it was prevalent 15 years before then?
- [30:39]
B
It. There's a possibility that it was there and people just weren't looking for it. They didn't know what they were looking at. It looked like other pathogens, they didn't. Hadn't really isolated it. And I. And I. I don't recall who is responsible for or, you know, figuring it out 10, 12, 15 years ago. But it was at. It was at a lab, you know, level, it was at institutional level that it became known and named and that the bison industry started talking about it. So anyway, that's another element that has impacted the population in, in North America for sure. Anyway, I forget what brought us down that track, but.
- [31:37]
A
No, no, no, no. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's good information. So obviously what's next? Like what's next for the bison industry? You're front and center. You are involved.
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B
Yeah.
- [31:51]
A
What's next, John?
- [31:52]
B
I know where I was going. We were talking about the health of the land.
- [31:57]
A
That's right.
- [31:58]
B
And human involvement and importance of human involvement in that. So we apply holistic management. It's one of the things that we learned about back in the 80s. Guy by the name of Alan Savory become friends.
- [32:15]
A
Yeah.
- [32:15]
B
In fact, he just turned 90 years old recently and he and I have exchanged a few emails just recently. In fact, I got one this morning in my inbox. He's trying to talk me into coming back to Zimbabwe and get, get on the Zambezi river with him and go tiger fishing. So.
- [32:35]
A
Have you ever done that?
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B
I have not.
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A
You better do it.
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B
I know, I know.
- [32:39]
A
You better do it.
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B
It's time to smell the roses is the way he.
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A
It is, it is incredible fishing.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Incredible fishing.
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B
Yeah. Anyway, holistic management and also ranching for profit, which incorporates the, the grazing. Well, most of the aspect of elements of holistic management are encompassed in ranching for profit and we, we ascribe to both of those methods. My youngest daughter just went to a week long ranching for profit course in Reno, Nevada here a couple weeks ago. All of our people on the ranch have done holistic management training. Majority of us have done ranching for profit training. And these are the, these are the types of things that are available to us, to us land managers out there that can help us, teach us, keep us on the right track with managing animals on landscapes in order to have those sort of a natural outcome where, you know, what we're shooting for is kind of what the settlers saw when they first came west, which was the stirrup high grass or you know, belly deep on a horse. Now that's not to say that it was always like that every year, in and out. But through, through Allen's work, you know, we've come to realize that it is possible to, you know, for sure to, to try and help affect the utilization of our rainfall that we get here, which is intermittent and short and you know, to try and fully utilize that more effectively, more efficiently. And that, you know, you do it on a micro Scale and you multiply that out and you have macro scales now where you're increasing carbon capture through millions of acres these days. The folks that are implementing these actions, these management tools.
- [34:55]
A
So are you implementing the high density rotational grazing that Savory advocates for?
- [35:02]
B
Yes, we try not to call it rotational because you think of a rotation as a set pattern. And it's one of the things we try and keep away from is a set pattern grazing the same area every year, et cetera, et cetera. So we try not to establish patterns because we think that is probably more natural, intermittent. But yes, we now we're not grazing as a high impact as the cattle producers because quite frankly, the bison are not comfortable that close, as tight as you can put by. Put cattle together. And so the impact, what we've experienced is slow, but it's in the same direction. It's improvement of the landscape, improvement of the water cycle, the mineral cycle, the energy flow, the diversity, the complexity, all of those things. We have seen and measured improvements over the time that we've been implementing them. And it's not hard. It's not rocket science, man. It's pretty basic.
- [36:16]
A
Yeah, yeah, it is pretty basic. So what's next in terms of if you looked across, you know, say, regionally in Wyoming or nationally from a bison perspective?
- [36:27]
B
Yeah, well, right now the, the bison industry is focused on trying to grow the herd to, to increase the population of bison. Particularly right now there's a shortage, there's a nationwide shortage, which has impacted the price of the meat, obviously the carcass prices, the wholesale prices have gone up pretty significantly in the last year. And it's all a supply and demand equation. The supply of bison because of drought, because of disease, because of. There are producers that have aged out, basically. They've. They've gotten to the point where they want to retire and they don't have anybody coming up behind them, so they're selling out. There's been that also. So all of those components put together, the bison herd has taken a decrease and the harvest numbers are down 25% year over year.
- [37:30]
A
Wow. Wow.
- [37:33]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [37:34]
A
So there's a need, there's an opportunity for people to grow and increase the population of bison for sure.
- [37:41]
B
Absolutely.
- [37:42]
A
How does. So what do you need for that to happen, though? Because you can imagine in a supply demand environment that we're in, I'm not giving away any more bison. Like that's like, that's money for me.
- [37:54]
B
Yeah, well, the biggest challenge there is, uh, where's the land? So people that own the land or.
- [38:01]
A
Oh, you're saying there's, there's land dropping out too because people are getting out of the.
- [38:05]
B
Well, partly that. But if, you know, if we want to expand the bison herds, a existing producer has a set land base. So you can only increase so much. Although through things like holistic management, you can increase your carrying capacity on the same number of acres if done properly. But in order to increase the overall herd size, landowners, land managers need to be willing to come into the bison business. They need to switch from, say, cattle to bison. And you know, a lot of cattle producers are multi generation land owners and they don't quickly switch. You know, I mean, it could take them a couple generations to switch a breed of cattle, let alone to switch, you know, species that they're grazing. So, so that is a limiting factor definitely is availability of land. And so, you know, and then again, unfortunately, the way it works is if you're going to grow bison, you need females. And right now you would have to be taking females out of the meat side of the equation, which shortens the meat component, increases more demand. Exactly. So, so it, it is a compounding effect when you're trying to grow a herd. If females are being used, which they are in, in the meat equation, then you have to pull them out of the meat equation in order to grow the herd. It's not an easy.
- [39:55]
A
I'm guessing that, I'm guessing the sale of live bison isn't as lucrative as the meat.
- [40:04]
B
Right now. No, but the sale season is just coming in. We're just heading into the sale season and I think we're going to see some pretty impressive gains in live animal prices.
- [40:17]
A
Okay. Yeah, because you know that that would also tip the scales. Right. Somebody would go, wow, okay, there's some decent money in selling live. I'm going to get out of the meat business and become a game farm.
- [40:31]
B
Yeah, you're right. And again, it's a difficult, it's a difficult equation because we are on both sides of it here. My family is, because we own the meat company that we're, we're selling the meat through and distributing the meat through. And so we, yeah, we want to see high prices off the ranch, but from the meat, meat company perspective, you'd like to get that bought as reasonably as possible in order to make money on the meat business side. So far right now, through this increase that we've all experienced this year, the consumer continues to be willing to pay more for the product out there in the marketplace, both in the retail side and in the restaurant side, there's going to be a point where you know it's going to hit, it's going to stop. Because at some point we've experienced it before, restaurants will say my customers aren't buying it anymore off the menu. I had to raise the prices so high my customers aren't buying anymore. So they take it off their menu and that becomes a problem.
- [41:49]
A
Yeah, yeah. I'm looking for, can you buy your product direct to consumer out of.
- [41:56]
B
We don't sell retail direct other than here on the ranch. We have a little gift shop that.
- [42:04]
A
Yeah, I'm looking and I went onto your website. I was like, I can't find.
- [42:07]
B
No, we don't do any Internet based sales. It's, it's okay. It's mainly wholesale to the, the food service as well as some retail.
- [42:21]
A
Perfect.
- [42:22]
B
And we ship it coast to coast.
- [42:25]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, John, I appreciate you giving us a little bit of insight. I, you know, I, I love, I love conversations like this because naturally I love to talk and I love to get on soapboxes. But I also love to learn about things that are, is in our industry, in our community. Just before I let you go, you do hunt on your property?
- [42:50]
B
Yes.
- [42:52]
A
People can buy hunts.
- [42:53]
B
We sell bison hunts, we sell pronghorn hunts, do some deer hunting and even have an elk herd. We don't sell the elk hunts. We don't have enough of them. And that herd comes and goes. But it's really cool. We do sell some combo hunts, bison and pronghorn because that's what we have the most of.
- [43:17]
A
Yep. So if anybody's interested, I just went on the website, super easy to find Durham Bison Ranch.com and you can find out everything about it. 55,000 acres, John. Anything else?
- [43:32]
B
Thanks, Robbie. I mean what a great opportunity and honor and pleasure to be able to speak with you.
- [43:37]
A
No, thank you, man. I appreciate meeting good folks like you, sir.
- [43:41]
B
Well, I look forward.
- [43:42]
A
It's a win win situation.
- [43:43]
B
I look forward to some follow up conversations and things together in the future.
- [43:49]
A
Absolutely, we'd love to do that.
- [43:51]
B
Cool.
- [43:52]
A
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.