Ep. 875: Grizz Attack, Mountain Lions Rebound, and a $44K Walleye

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast – Episode 875: Grizz Attack, Mountain Lions Rebound, and a $44K Walleye

Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Steven Rinella
Featured Guests: Randall, Phil, Chris, Eli, Sam Forsteg

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Episode Overview

This action-packed episode of The MeatEater Podcast delivers a medley of outdoor news, conservation issues, wild foods, and hunting–all with the group’s signature blend of irreverence and sharp insight. The crew is joined by guest Sam Forsteg, a former smokejumper and union leader running for Congress, who provides inside perspective on federal land management, fire crews, and challenges facing America’s public servants. The episode covers everything from grizzly attacks in Montana and mountain lion comebacks in the Midwest, to a $44,000 tagged walleye that (almost) changed an angler’s life, along with extensive debates on conservation, policy, and the wild mishaps of the outdoor world.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Public Lands and Conservation Fundraising

[03:19 - 04:15]

• Tucker Town Campaign:
  The hosts promote efforts to save public land near the Tucker Town Reservoir in North Carolina, once managed by Alcoa, from private development.
  • Matching Donations: Every contribution matched dollar-for-dollar up to $200,000, in partnership with OnX.
  • Link for Donations: Themeateater.com Land Access 2026

2. Noteworthy Outdoor News

[04:52 - 07:50]

• Extreme Long-Range Shooting Competition:
  Phil shares his experience at Wyoming’s KRG Extreme ELR match, finishing 118th out of 137, with longest shots over a mile (23:23 yards in practice).

  • “There were only three people who hadn’t shot this exact match before and I was one of them… I exceeded my expectations.” – Phil [05:58]
  • Trivia Fun: Hosted ballistics trivia, which was later praised by a ballistics expert.

• Norwegian Wood Book & Firewood Fetishism:
  The crew humorously dissects a book about Scandinavian wood-chopping culture and marvels at firewood-stacking photos.

3. Wildlife Wrangling: The “Swan Patrol” Saga

[13:44 - 16:48]

• Listener Letter – North Carolina’s “Swan Patrol”:
  A group of older locals cordon off lake banks, feed massive amounts of corn to waterfowl, capture and relocate wild birds by car—legally questionable and potentially harmful to wildlife behavior.
  • “You’re not allowed to tamper with the wildlife to this extent. No, you’re not.” – Randall [14:55]

4. In-Depth: Wildland Firefighting and Federal Land Policy with Sam Forsteg

[17:04 - 42:32]

Sam’s Background:

• Former Smokejumper: Parachuted into wildfires for cost-effective early containment.
  “Speed, range, payload... The idea is they don’t want anyone who’s going to end up in the program who might be a risk to themselves or anybody else because there’s four of you in the woods.” – Sam [18:22]
• Union Leader: Vice-president, National Federation of Federal Employees – Forest Service Council.
• Congressional Candidate: Running in Montana’s Democratic primary.

Dissecting Life as a Smokejumper:

• Weeks of rigorous, risky training; 130+ parachute jumps, 34 into active fires
• “You should be ready to be out there for two weeks... If you’re making it to two weeks, you probably didn’t catch that thing.” – Sam [22:52]

The Grim Realities of Public Land Jobs:

• Low Compensation:
  • “My starting wage was $15 an hour as a smokejumper.” – Sam [23:44]
  • Mass Layoffs: 360 Forest Service jobs cut in Montana—“The most efficient workers we got… people who actually do the damn work.”
• Systemic Issues:
  • Underfunding leads to inefficiency rather than actual savings; leads to more contracting, ballooning federal costs.
    • “It created a lot of inefficiencies, sort of accidentally made all these inefficiencies… like people are taking watch parts and flicking them out–not realizing they make the thing tick.” – Randall [32:07]

Federal Policy, Privatization, and The Future of Land Management:

• “There's a lot of ways to sell off public land. Selling off the acreage is just one.” – Sam [28:40]
• Legislation and reorganization, like closing regional Forest Service offices, can pave the way for less effective, less local management—making public lands vulnerable.

Sam’s Political Ethos:

• “The average Congressperson’s worth 12 to 15 times the average American right now... I think where we’re missing is sending working people to Congress so we can fight for ourselves.” [36:12]
• Push for positive, “civil discourse” and bipartisan cooperation on basic issues like healthcare and homelessness.

Memorable Quote:
“I think that lived experience influences the policymaking you’re doing and where you’re going to be looking to cut, if you are going to be making those cuts.” – Sam [36:12]

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5. Wildlife and Outdoor Incidents

Grizzly Bear Attacks

[49:47 – 52:46]

• Two separate attacks:
  • One fatal in Glacier National Park – first since 1998.
  • Two brothers mauled in Yellowstone (both survived).
• “First fatal attack in Glacier since 98… I can’t believe they went that long without.” – Eli [50:49]

Record Waterfowl Over-Harvest

[52:46 – 55:48]

• Two hunters caught with 223 ducks over the limit in Montana; one day they shot 120 ducks—both “impressive and very bad.”
  • “That is some very good duck hunting... but also very, very, very bad.” – Randall [55:01]

6. Mountain Lions: Midwestern Comeback

[56:54 – 61:00]

• Minnesota researchers confirm first mountain lion reproduction in the state in 100+ years.
• Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin also seeing signs of recolonization.
• “[Mountain lions] were historically native… overhunting, habitat loss, predator eradication campaigns... now they’re coming back.” – Chris [58:36]
• Texas Changing Reporting Rules:
  • Proposal to require reporting of all mountain lion takes within 24 hours sparks concern among hunters and trappers, seen as “a step toward ending the take”—reflects debates over management and data gathering.

7. The $44,000 Walleye–A Tale of Heartbreak

[65:56 – 81:21]

• Iowa Great Lakes’ Walleye Weekend:

  • 2,300 entrants, chance at $44k prize for catching a tagged walleye.
  • Heartbreak x2:
    • (1) 3:00 AM: First “winner” brings in last year’s tag.
    • (2) 10:00 AM: Second group discovers their eligible tagged fish only after it had been iced—tournament rules require a live fish.
      • “The fish is stone cold dead… the rules explicitly state that a fish must be alive.” – Eli [74:41]
      • Community and anglers were devastated. Tournament director awards them consolation rods.

• Rule Conflict:

  • Iowa’s invasive species laws require boats be drained, making it hard to deliver live fish–sparks local debate for future rule changes.

8. Walleye Spearfishing Controversies in Michigan

[92:19 – 100:45]

• Michigan expands spearfishing opportunities for walleye, lake trout, pike—over major opposition from angling groups and some tribes.
  • Extensive stats dispel fears:
    • 4,000 spearfishing permits issued; only 200 people actually took fish; only 430 walleye speared annually vs. 900,000 taken by rod-and-reel.
      • “If people want to go in the water and risk shallow water blackout and get all cold, let ‘em... it does not matter.” – Randall [99:21]
• Call for Future Salmon Spearfishing: In jest, Randall advocates for expanding the model.

9. Alaska Land Transfers

[87:16 – 92:19]

• 1.4 million acres of BLM land along the Dalton Highway transferred to the state, part of Alaska Statehood Act’s ongoing process.
  • Potential for Energy Development: Some concern about suitability and effects on public land access and projects like the Ambler Road.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Sam Forsteg’s personal motive for running for Congress:
  “When I called our Congressperson Zinke’s office four or five times, I got crickets. So I decided, if he’s going to take my coworkers’ and members’ jobs, I’m going to come take his.” [24:58]

• Randall on nature documentary narration:
  “My only beef with [Attenborough] is how many nature documentaries he has ruined with his narration… He is a one man wildlife footage ruining machine.” [45:40]

• On extreme shooting:
  “My longest shot was 13:53 [yards]… I had three hits over a mile in practice.” – Phil [06:52]

• $44k Walleye heartbreak:
  “The fish is stone cold dead… the rules explicitly state a fish must be alive to count.” – Eli [74:41]

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Timestamps by Segment

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-------------|---------------------------------------------------------| | 03:19–04:15 | Save Tucker Town Land Campaign | | 04:52–07:50 | Extreme shooting; long-range ballistics trivia | | 13:44–16:48 | The “Swan Patrol” in North Carolina | | 17:04–42:32 | In-depth: Smokejumping, land policy (Sam Forsteg) | | 49:47–52:46 | Grizzly attacks in MT/Glacier/Yellowstone | | 52:46–55:48 | Record 223 ducks over the limit (Montana) | | 56:54–61:00 | Mountain lions reclaim MN, MI, WI; Texas regulations | | 65:56–81:21 | Walleye Weekend, the $44k heartbreak; rule conflict | | 87:16–92:19 | Alaska BLM–to–State Land Transfers, Ambler Road | | 92:19–100:45| Michigan walleye spearfishing controversy & stats |

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Final Thoughts

This episode stands out for its blend of rich storytelling, on-the-ground policy perspectives, and the raw, entertaining camaraderie of the MeatEater crew. Whether discussing the gritty realities of fighting wildfires for low pay, the intricacies and ironies of wildlife regulation, or the heartbreak (and humor) of tournament fishing, the show educates and entertains in equal measure. If you care about public lands, wildlife, and the future of hunting and outdoor culture, this episode is a must-listen.

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For full details, stories, and laughs, listen to the episode in its entirety or check the MeatEater Podcast archives for show notes and resources.

Transcript

[Steve Rinella]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

[Randall]

FirstLight's fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days, in real use, hard wearing where they need to be, versatile where it matters. No shortcuts, just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out First Light's new fieldwear [e-mail] welcome to the news show. On this week, we talk to a former smoke jumper who wants your vote. Spencer catches. I mean, reports on a $44,000 Iowa walleye. Some weird old people are being weird about swans and other waterfowl in North Carolina. We've got a few grizzly tacks here in Montana going down, including a fatality. Spear fishermen are coming for your walleyes in Michigan, and I'm joining them. And Dr. Randall reports on public lands transfers in Alaska, plus a whole lot more. Welcome. But first, as always, our news. Who starts?

[Chris]

Hey.

[Phil]

Please subscribe to the Meat Eater podcast YouTube channel. It helps us a lot. And you'll be the first to know when new shows drop.

[Eli]

Drop.

[Randall]

Well, you just read that.

[Phil]

That's at the Meteor Phil. What's that?

[Randall]

No, it's. It's just the Mediator Podcast network.

[Phil]

Oh, that's right.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It's just really helpful for our network if you all subscribe.

[Randall]

Yeah. Do a solid. Do a solid for your fellow me eater.

[Sam Forsteg]

Roast.

[Randall]

We got a new episode dropping today. Me and Yanni have a showdown and me to roast, and me and Yanni's wives judge it. You know, someone pointed out to me, they said they'd never tell anybody this, but they said someone that watched the cut said your wife hacks on your cooking. Because she does. But he says she gets visibly defensive when someone else hacks on your cooking.

[Chris]

Interesting.

[Randall]

Which I haven't watched to take note.

[Chris]

You know, I like that you guys film that, man. Giannis just. Giannis did not have a lot of good things to say about you. He said you were just, like, scattered all over the place, trying to do too much at once.

[Randall]

He said that?

[Chris]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

This is all getting cut out, by the way.

[Phil]

We can't.

[Randall]

We can't spoil the episode. Who's do so our Save Tucker Town campaign. Who's got the. The. Oh, the donation deadline is May 14th.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So just. Just pay attention to that. And we've just got a couple more

[Randall]

days, so again, help me.

[Phil]

They're at $163,000 raised out of the $200,000 goal which will be matched by 100,000 for Meat Eater and 100,000 for Monarchs.

[Randall]

And what's the closest, what's the closest municipality here? How do we say in your neck of the woods?

[Phil]

It's southeast of Salisbury, North Carolina, northeast of Charlotte.

[Randall]

Okay, so two things out of North Carolina today, just as a recap, halfway

[Phil]

between Winston Salem and Charlotte.

[Randall]

Alcoa, who's heavy aluminum, heavy Luna business. Alcoa owned a bunch of land near the Tucker Town reservoir. They'd always manage it as public land. Alcoa wants to divest of that asset. Okay. So one option when divesting from an asset is they we'll just sell it off and then people are going to buy it and it'll become like houses or you contribute to the effort to like buy it and make it permanently public land. So we're at Meat Eater working with Onx and we're doing a matching thing. Your donations come in, we match them dollar for dollar up to the point that we hit 200 grand. No. Is that right? 200 grand of matches? Yes, something like that.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes.

[Phil]

We have 200,000 in matching funds.

[Steve Rinella]

So you guys can go to Theme Eater.com and search Land Access. And, and our Land Access 2026 page will pop up and there's a link to make a donation there.

[Eli]

I killed a big old whitetail buck on some former Alcoa land.

[Randall]

In North Carolina?

[Eli]

No, different state.

[Randall]

Did you really?

[Eli]

It's hanging in the meat eater store.

[Randall]

What state?

[Eli]

Texas.

[Randall]

Why are you being weird about it?

[Eli]

I don't know.

[Randall]

You're a spot burned. Texas.

[Phil]

Alcoa is 10 acres there.

[Eli]

This is why I told you Texas and I decided it was okay. It used to be alcohol.

[Randall]

I heard on that podcast there's a deer in Texas.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yep.

[Randall]

Go down there. Randall. Yeah. Did you win?

[Phil]

No, I didn't. I didn't.

[Randall]

That's a. Talk about a spoiler alert.

[Phil]

Yeah. Yeah. I went down by the time you're listening, this would be the weekend before last to the very southeastern corner of Wyoming just across from the Kansas or I'm sorry, the Nebraska border journey.

[Randall]

Turkey's gobble.

[Phil]

Nope.

[Randall]

Not a single gobble the whole time.

[Phil]

Nope. Nope. Yes. Shot. The KRG Extreme ELR match hosted by High Plains Precision.

[Randall]

So that's extreme extreme long range. Extreme extreme long range. Yes.

[Phil]

Yes. And this is something that there's a lot of very dedicated practitioners of the, of the discipline. And I went down there with zero preparation or training. I finished 118 out of 137 and I was gunning.

[Randall]

You beat some guys.

[Phil]

Yeah. And actually.

[Randall]

Yeah, but you were like, you're competing against like military snipers.

[Phil]

Yeah. And just mostly enthusiasts. But I had. There were only three people who hadn't shot this exact match before and I was one of them. So I like to think of it as.

[Steve Rinella]

That's great. That's like, that's like.

[Randall]

It's not about who beat you.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, that's great.

[Randall]

It's about who you beat.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gunning for number 136 and I surpassed my hopes and expectations.

[Randall]

How many people did you beat?

[Phil]

19.

[Randall]

I feel like you could have said, you could have said 21. I went down there and bested. Oh, I bested 19 competitors.

[Phil]

Hold on, I'm doing all my math wrong.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But like in some other world that's

[Randall]

like your place really high. Yeah, I'd say nothing more. Yeah, I bested 19 competitors.

[Phil]

So there's a couple ways of looking at it. Either I exceeded my expectations or I came in near the very tail end of the finishers. I hit like between 23 and 24% of my points and the winner only got 70% of the points available.

[Chris]

So what was the longest shot you

[Phil]

made in practice or during the match?

[Randall]

During the match.

[Chris]

Practice.

[Phil]

During the match. My longest shot was 13:53.

[Steve Rinella]

Holy.

[Phil]

That was my, my first, my longest

[Chris]

go over a mile in practice.

[Phil]

My longest first round impact. Yeah, I went twice. Well, I had three hits over a mile in practice. The Longest one was 23. 23.

[Randall]

You hit at that?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Oh, I was saying to him that it's long when there's no year that was that year.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Cuz he's talking about other distances that had years. Yeah, like 1985.

[Phil]

1933.

[Randall]

Yeah. But then you get into thing that a year that hasn't happened. That's a long ways a shot.

[Phil]

It is.

[Randall]

And then you're like into like 20, 27.

[Phil]

But another way of thinking about that 95 yard shot is so much further removed from where we are today that it, it maybe that's more alien than like 20, 29. But yeah, it was good. I had a great time.

[Randall]

Did you go by yourself?

[Steve Rinella]

That's long.

[Phil]

I did.

[Randall]

Did your wife go?

[Phil]

No, she found out how far away it was and she didn't go and she backed out. Yeah, so did Phil. Actually. I had a couple people that wanted to go and then they found out I was driving nine hours and they didn't go.

[Randall]

But why'd Phil back out?

[Phil]

It's just Basically, the drive time.

[Randall]

Is that true, Phil? Yeah, I thought it'd be a fun time. There was karaoke to be had, so, you know.

[Phil]

Yep. Lost my voice.

[Chris]

That was a big carrot for me.

[Randall]

And I just.

[Chris]

The drive was too much.

[Randall]

Is the karaoke rolled into the shooting contest.

[Phil]

It's sort of a natural outgrowth of the we. We also did trivia. I hosted trivia on Friday night with. With the Match director.

[Randall]

What?

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah. This is the whole thing. I got it when I was deer hunting last year. I got a message on Instagram from Jose Gardner, friend of the program, and he said, look, I host this match in Wyoming in May, and I think you'd have a good time. Plus, I've always wanted to have ballistics related trivia. And I said, I'm in.

[Randall]

Who wrote the trivia? Him?

[Phil]

No, I did. I did most of it.

[Eli]

Did you said it'd be too hard for us because it's all about long range shooting. We're too dumb.

[Phil]

But a man who wrote a book on ballistics told me it was good afterwards.

[Randall]

The trivia.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Did you have anything in there about the Coriolis effect?

[Phil]

I did.

[Randall]

Oh, I. Proud of past.

[Phil]

Have you seen the movie Shooter with Mark Wahlberg?

[Randall]

No, I have not.

[Phil]

It's a key plot point.

[Randall]

Quick thing. I've talked about this book two times on the show, but I didn't know what it was. I knew that there was some kind of firewood book, and I knew that it had something to do with the Northern Europeans. I'm holding it in my hand. Jim Zumbo gave it to me. This is a fetishist text. If you have a firewood fetish, this book is for you. But finally, the mystery is solved. Norwegian Wood, Chopping, Stacking and drying look kind of redundant.

[Eli]

Yeah.

[Randall]

H. I think it's Norwegian wood.

[Chris]

Right, that. Then that's what it is.

[Randall]

Oh, that makes more sense. The title. Okay, that's true. I was. It could be titled Norwegian Wood Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way. Or you could read it Norwegian Wood Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way. Either way, I would have never had a redundancy of words between my title and subtitle.

[Steve Rinella]

Maybe it's.

[Chris]

Maybe it's a translation.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And there's no better word.

[Randall]

But I'm telling you what, man. If you get your jollies off looking at expertly stacked wood. Phil, where. How do we. Where can I put just. No, point it. Point at the camera in front of you. Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

Can you zoom in on that not an interesting thing.

[Randall]

If I had that, I'd say no one burned any of that shit.

[Steve Rinella]

Should.

[Randall]

Can they see it? Good. Can I see what they see or can't you do that?

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh, yeah, I can. I can show you that.

[Randall]

I want to see if there's. Oh, they can see it. Yeah. That's nothing. Look at this.

[Phil]

I like how he's used all those pallets.

[Randall]

This dude built a house out of firewood. Wait a minute. Where's this guy?

[Sam Forsteg]

Is that house meant for burning or living?

[Randall]

Yeah, that's what we were talking about. You could tell. You could tell a guy like, hey, man, just step into that little house there and make yourself comfortable. Can I show this one, Phil? Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Wow.

[Randall]

There's nothing yet.

[Phil]

Damn, that's nice.

[Randall]

Nothing, because wait till I find the house.

[Steve Rinella]

Maybe that needs to be the new calendar.

[Randall]

Yeah, there's some dudes in here that can stack some wood, man. But there's a guy that made a. Damn it. And also, just a quick note.

[Sam Forsteg]

The title is, I think, a play on the Beatles song Norwegian Wood. So I don't think it's a translation thing. Great song. Yeah, kind of a bummer.

[Randall]

The Buddy Rich Big Band has a Just Face Melting cover of it. If you like jazz, just throw that out there. Did I ever tell you that jazz.

[Phil]

Oh, Norwegian would parenthetically.

[Randall]

Look at this.

[Phil]

The bird has flown.

[Randall]

Can you zoom in on this one film?

[Phil]

Yeah, sure, Silo.

[Randall]

Wow. That's a stack of firewood.

[Steve Rinella]

Damn, those people are talented.

[Phil]

Long winters.

[Randall]

Well, Jim Zumbo, I never found the house. There's a house made out of firewood in there. Jim Zumbo said he has firewood OCD when he was on the show. He has like a problem with firewood. And so I think he does this kind of deal.

[Steve Rinella]

Maybe we should do sheds at his place. Oh, meteor sheds.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Why has no one done that?

[Steve Rinella]

Well, there you go.

[Chris]

Corinne, great idea.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I'll just call him. Probably love to do it.

[Randall]

Okay, Randall, me again. Are you doing this? Oh, yeah.

[Phil]

For those of you that are gearing up for this spring, summer or even getting a jump start on the fall, don't miss out on our upcoming spring sale starting this Thursday, May 14th. We'll have discounts on First Light, Phelps FHF and up to 50% off logo wear on the meat eater store. We'll have. There's a punctuation missing there. Anyway, there's incredible.

[Randall]

Same guys, this Norwegian book title.

[Phil]

Daily deals and new products for you to check out. The daily deals. I understand it's like a. A different thing every day. And when we're. When they're gone, they're gone. So just keep checking in. Starts May 14. It's the spring sale.

[Randall]

When did you become the guy who

[Sam Forsteg]

reads the copy in the spring?

[Randall]

I don't know. I like it, though.

[Steve Rinella]

I like it. Yeah.

[Phil]

Okay.

[Randall]

Listener wrote in. This is more news from North Carolina. Did you got more you want to add?

[Phil]

No, I just like to do more ad reads.

[Randall]

Okay.

[Chris]

I think you should do it in the.

[Randall]

Maybe he can do them till he gets good at him.

[Phil]

I think you should do it in Harvey's. I'm all in.

[Chris]

I think you should do it in the Ken Burns voice.

[Phil]

Yeah, we could do all kinds of different voices.

[Randall]

A guy from North Carolina wrote in lake.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

What do you think it is?

[Eli]

We agreed.

[Randall]

Junaluska, western North Carolina. There's a lake owned by the World Methodist Organization. Now follow along here.

[Eli]

Okay.

[Randall]

This is called. This is about a thing called the Swan Patrol. The lake is approximately 200 acres and is the only major body of water within almost three counties. Okay. It's deep in the Appalachian range. You're not allowed to hunt on it, but guys like to fish it. For the last several years, this writer says, this listener says a local group that has been dubbed the Swan Patrol has taken up the responsibility of feeding, herding, trapping, and relocating local waterfowl. The World Methodist Organization has granted the Swan Patrol permission to rope off exceptionally large sections of the lake's bank to allow a safe nesting area for the birds. The Patrol not only does this to the small population of mute swans that live at the lake, but also to all. But also to all types of waterfowl, including ducks, geese, and coots. They regular go out in a group of up to five to six people and feed the birds massive amounts of corn. He's saying they're having such an impact that the birds don't migrate out of there. They just stay there to eat the corn. He says, I know the lake has a right as property owners to restrict bank access, but everyone's questioned around here is if they're allowed. Allowed to tamper with the wildlife to this extent. No, you're not. One instance that caused much discussion locally was when a Swan Patrol captured a swan that accidentally went over the dam. They corralled it into a dog crate and moved it back to the upper part of the lake. Then it happened again. He says he's seen them load wild mallards into cages in their cars to take them to other parts of the Lake. Is this legal? No.

[Chris]

First of all, how does a swan accidentally go over a dam?

[Randall]

Like, maybe that's probably their perception.

[Phil]

It's full of corn.

[Chris]

Trying to like.

[Randall]

Yeah, it's their perception.

[Chris]

Step out.

[Randall]

He says, I will mention.

[Eli]

Like.

[Randall]

He tells you he's going to mention it, Then he mentions it. The writer says, I will mention. This group does consist of members with ages raining, ranging from the 60s to their 80s.

[Chris]

Yeah, that's ageism.

[Randall]

It is kind of.

[Chris]

I don't like it. I experience it here.

[Randall]

Yeah. Cuz like, I could be like with those dudes and I might just seem like slightly younger.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Chris]

But you know.

[Randall]

Yeah, that's not a thing. Like, just for the. That's not a thing you're allowed to do.

[Chris]

He's got a point, though. People that age like to tinker with,

[Randall]

mess with stuff they like to tinker. Okay, we got a special. We got a special guest in the studio tonight, joined by Sam Forsteg.

[Sam Forsteg]

Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me, guys.

[Randall]

Yeah, man. So what you're doing and the reason you're here. Well, you're here for a couple reasons. One, you're here because you're running in the primary.

[Sam Forsteg]

That's right.

[Randall]

The.

[Chris]

The.

[Randall]

So for background, if you listen to the show, some time ago we had on a representative, Ryan Zinke. He's leaving. And so there's going to be like, things are getting spicy. Oh, yeah, there's a vacancy. You're running in the primary. Seeking the, the. The prime. The Democrat primary.

[Sam Forsteg]

I am.

[Randall]

For the western Montana thing.

[Sam Forsteg]

That's it. Montana's first.

[Randall]

What caught me, what caught my interest is your background. That. And you might get sick of people saying this, but it just kind of. It's like said, every time I see your name, it's thrown in there. How you were a smoke jumper.

[Sam Forsteg]

Smokejumper. Yeah. Union leader. I thought you were gonna bring up the sauna, but yeah.

[Randall]

What about the sauna?

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh, we got a hell of a sauna in the backyard. You'll come over for the next. Yeah.

[Randall]

Oh, no.

[Sam Forsteg]

You think the Scandinavians are particular about wood shopping? Oh, you're talking about a sauna.

[Randall]

You're a woodman too.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

So I keep saying this, that you're running and that you have no political experience. This is your first time. This is your.

[Sam Forsteg]

This would be your first time run for anything more than vice president of my union's local.

[Randall]

Okay. So I don't mean no political experience, but on the national state. Yeah. And then spent all that. Spent four years as A smoke jumper.

[Sam Forsteg]

That's right.

[Randall]

Tell people what a smoke jumper is.

[Sam Forsteg]

Well, we parachute out of. Parachute into wildfires to stop before they grow. An idea is speed, range, payload. That's how you sell the program. We can get there quick fix wing airplanes, put them out while they're small so you don't end up spending, you know, tens of millions of dollars fighting a wildfire. And yeah, I spent eight years doing wildland fire and the last four is a smokejumper.

[Randall]

I never thought of that as a cost saving measure.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah, that's the idea before it's on

[Randall]

the national news and stuff.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah, I mean ideally you get four guys on the ground, you can put something out at a quarter acre, it's a lot cheaper than you wait till you gotta bring a bunch of heavy equipment, hand crews, all the rest in. Yeah, yeah.

[Randall]

How did you wind up with forest service?

[Sam Forsteg]

Well, I graduated, um, over in Missoula.

[Randall]

Okay.

[Sam Forsteg]

Hold it against me. And I worked two or three jobs at a time.

[Randall]

I went to school there.

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh you did?

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

Really? Oh, you got your mfa?

[Randall]

Yeah, that's right. Well, yeah, I mean. And also he also got honorary degree.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah, well, we both bleed maroon. Yeah, I loved it there. Did not love having to work two or three jobs at a time the whole time. And I still had debt on the back end, so I figured I'd do wildland fire for a couple years, pay my debts. And when I heard you could get paid to jump out of airplanes into public lands, I figured I had to stick around long enough to do that.

[Randall]

Is there an elimination process with that? Like how do you go about getting in there?

[Sam Forsteg]

There is. So it usually takes folks till their 5th or 6th year and fire to get picked up by a jump program. Rookie training is a six week process.

[Randall]

Like you apply for the program. Yep.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah, so I applied for three years running before I got picked up my fifth year.

[Randall]

Really?

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Fighting fire the whole time? Yep.

[Sam Forsteg]

I started over in Lincoln. That's how I knew you know how far north that little habit goes and did three years in the Swan Valley in Condon on a hand crew.

[Randall]

Okay.

[Sam Forsteg]

And then I got picked up for as a rookie candidate. And about 50 or 60% of people make it through. There's about a 40 or 50% attrition rate. Washout rate.

[Randall]

Homit. So you get accepted to a program and then there's a washout rate within the program? Yeah, like once you're accepted.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And what, what, what, what mechanism do they use to, to, to find people's limits?

[Sam Forsteg]

Well, so we the kind of standard six week program is a week of hell week where they are just torturing the hell out of you. Depending on the base, you might have a 24 hour line dig. Everybody's got to go through a 110 pound pack test, 85 pound pack test over rough terrains or going over five, 6,000ft elevation. And really they just kick the shit out of you for about a week. You got to go through units week. It's a whole lot of the technical side of parachuting. Making sure you can hook up a parachute harness without any errors. Suiting up in under two minutes, rappelling out of what would be a tree if you were to tree up. And then four weeks of jump phase. And so there's a lot of, a lot of spots where you can mess up and there's not a lot of room for error. The idea is they don't want anyone who's going to end up in the program who might be a risk to themselves or anybody else because there's four of you in the woods. You don't, you don't want to have to be calling life flight or anything like that.

[Randall]

How many times did you jump in on fires?

[Sam Forsteg]

I got 34 fire jumps total and 130 some altogether.

[Randall]

Really? How many states?

[Sam Forsteg]

I think eight states I got to jump in. I was, I was lucky. Yeah. All over the west.

[Randall]

So you got the jump. You're jumping into places you never been, obviously.

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh, it's some of the most beautiful corners of the country. Even Canada, you know, back when they had their big fire season a couple years ago and you got, you jumped into Canada.

[Randall]

Yep. Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

When they had that, you know, terrible fires.

[Eli]

He's.

[Sam Forsteg]

Was that 23? I want to say. Yeah, I was lucky enough to be on the first wave. American jumpers to go up in 13 years and really? Yeah, four fires all over. And it was, I mean that I think they, you know, 10x what they. Their previous record had been for acres burned. It was just unprecedented.

[Randall]

You jump in on a plane, then get picked up in a helicopter or walk out to a road or.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah, I mean the pack out is the famous way to get out of there. So you're jumping in, you see a smoke jumper, it looks like you got a big diaper you're wearing. That's your packout bag. So got about £110. If you're not ordering a chainsaw, Powerhead is going to be another 25 and usually schlep that stuff out of there and find A ride.

[Randall]

So they'll often tell you to walk. Like to walk out.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah, I mean, that's the standard procedure. If you can get a helicopter and get a rockstar exit. Absolutely. But I mean, the idea is self sufficiency. I mean, that's. You talk about cost savings. I mean, something a lot of folks don't know about jumpers is we manufacture almost all of our own materials, so everything short of the canopy is made manufactured in house. Our Kevlar jumpsuits, the bags that we're carrying, those packout bags. Yeah. A lot of sewing that goes on in the off season.

[Randall]

What was the farthest you ever had to walk to get out of there?

[Sam Forsteg]

I think my longest pack out was six miles. Okay. So I got.

[Randall]

Not like. Not like terror. I. I thought if you'd have told me 30, I wouldn't have been surprised, but.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Randall]

I don't know. I don't know what kind of stuff you were doing.

[Sam Forsteg]

It's 30. I'm calling a helicopter. £110 is a lot. Yeah.

[Eli]

Did you ever have to sleep out there while fighting a fire?

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh, yeah. So if you're jumping, you should be ready to be out there for two weeks.

[Randall]

What?

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. And that's. That's the expectation. Two weeks you can extend to three. If you're making it to two weeks, you probably didn't catch that thing. And you're calling in a bunch of other resources to fight this fire.

[Chris]

Really?

[Eli]

What's the longest you did spend out there?

[Sam Forsteg]

You know, I had 31 days straight, which was kind of skimping to a

[Randall]

place you parachuted into.

[Sam Forsteg]

We parachuted into the Three Sisters wilderness a couple. Couple years back, spent just over two weeks out there, and then got rolled into a complex. I ended up managing a little task force. Heavy equipment. Yeah.

[Randall]

So you, like, whatever. If you got a girlfriend or something, you're like, hey, I'll be back, like, later or not.

[Sam Forsteg]

The divorce rate is high. Yeah.

[Randall]

For wild and later or maybe in a few weeks.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. It's tough staying in touch with your family. And that's the hard thing about wildland fire, Whether you're a jumper or on a hotshot crew or an engine.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

I mean, there's just not a lot of consistency. And you got to give up your summers, you know, if nothing else. And the only way you make money, especially if you're making 15, 16 bucks an hour, which was. I mean, my starting wage was 15 bucks an hour as a smokejumper.

[Randall]

Is that right?

[Sam Forsteg]

You only make money if you're making overtime. So if you're not on a fire, you're going broke.

[Randall]

15 bucks an hour.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. Yeah. And that, I mean I see ads

[Randall]

outside of the McDonald's better now.

[Sam Forsteg]

More than that, it's tough.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Full time at DQ and Livingston's. 20.

[Sam Forsteg]

Well, and a lot. 18. That's what got me into this. A lot of it is. I mean our public lands employees are not paid crazy wages by any means. I mean when I started I was making 1270 an hour on the engine and that was the going rate. I didn't hit 15 until I was a rookie smokejumper and when I was vice president of my union last year, well, that's when all the Doge cuts and all the rest started. And they ended up firing 360 people in one day. Two Valentine's Days ago, 85% of them are making less than 20 bucks an hour.

[Randall]

That's the new Valentine's Day massacre.

[Sam Forsteg]

It is, absolutely. And there's a lot of inefficiencies in the federal government. Believe me, I've seen them. It's not people making 13 bucks an hour swinging a tool to keep a trail clear or road clear.

[Randall]

Yeah, right.

[Sam Forsteg]

And it's all the most efficient workers we got. They had GS2s that they were firing in Montana. I mean that's $11 and some change. Keeping a trail clear, you know. Yeah, it's a, it's absurdity. And these are the people who actually do the damn work. And that's who is losing their jobs, having their lives turned upside down. And when I called our congressperson Zinke's office four or five times, I got crickets. So I decided if he's going to take my co workers and members jobs, I'm going to come take his iconic

[Randall]

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[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Like you left being a smokejumper and then came in and did a union representative for who?

[Sam Forsteg]

So our union is the National Federation of Federal Employees.

[Randall]

Okay.

[Sam Forsteg]

We.

[Randall]

So not just fire crews.

[Sam Forsteg]

No, it's a Forest service branch of the union, the Forest Service Council, our locals, the Lolo National Forest, the Bitterroot and the Custer Gallon out here, which we just organized last year, and some of the regional offices that are getting shut down right now as they consolidate down to Salt Lake City and Denver and all the rest. That's about 800 public servants, federal employees. And yeah, a whole lot of those folks lost their jobs. And we lost about a quarter of the agency in the state last year.

[Randall]

And you were in this. You were in your role when that was going on?

[Sam Forsteg]

I was. I mean, I stepped into it beginning of January. So I stepped in just in time for all these cuts to start coming down.

[Randall]

What was that like?

[Sam Forsteg]

It was chaos. And it was heartbreaking. I mean, truly, I I was. We were getting stories and calls from members like Gal Cara down in the bitterroot. She was 15 years into her civil service. She was an archaeologist down in Hamilton. She got fired one day with no notice, no cause, because she just happened to have taken a lateral transfer in the last year so she could do more remote work while she went through chemotherapy. Cara was not getting rich. I. You know fella down in Ennis on the Custer Gallatin who got a text while he's in line at the airport for his mother's funeral. Tell him that he's lost his job. And he was only a GS5. So he's losing the job. He was only making 16 bucks an hour at in the first place. And it's. I mean it is so aggravating because these folks were not making a whole lot to begin with. And again because this is not where the damn inefficiency is. Right. These were the people doing.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

Keeping all of these things together. And there are a lot of ways to sell off our public land. Selling off the acreage is just one of them. Right. The plan right now for the Forest Service is to be. Is to draw it down to one third of the staffing levels we were at a year and a half ago. You got one third of the people managing all the same lands. That's a hell of an excuse to turn around and say like, well, why ain't that trail clear? It's not working. We gotta.

[Randall]

Yeah. To then point to the ways it's not working out.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Yeah. I hear that. I hear that all the time. I don't know that I'd be curious what you guys think about this.

[Sam Forsteg]

I don't know.

[Randall]

I hear that, but I don't know that that will be the playbook.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Randall]

I don't know. I hear it like the logic would go. We don't need to spend a ton of time on this. But people will express the logic would be deprive the land management agencies of funding have then watch how chaos ensues, fires mismanagement. And then someone can say look how bad they're doing. What. What a. What a disaster. We need to do something about this and put this in the hands of someone that can better care for it.

[Sam Forsteg]

Sure.

[Randall]

Like I hear it. I'm not saying it won't happen. I just don't know if that. What that'll be the.

[Sam Forsteg]

Sure. The rhetoric.

[Chris]

You don't think someone like Mike Lee might make that argument?

[Randall]

Yes, because he makes every argument. Last time it was. Was that it was illegal Immigration, it was wanting to, like, do things 100 miles into Montana because of illegal immigration across the Canadian border. So, sure, there's some grasping at. Yeah, well.

[Sam Forsteg]

And I'll tell you, okay, sure.

[Randall]

Yes.

[Sam Forsteg]

And I mean, Mike Lee's gonna go for. He wants the acreage. Right. He wants the land itself.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

But what I see on the ground is, I mean, this is. It's not new. They're just stepping up the pace of this. And I mean, I was on a fire this summer. We jumped a fire outside of steamboat springs, and 12 of us jump in. This thing goes to 500 acres. And so we're calling a bunch of resources in. At three days in, I'm managing a task force of hand crews, and we put in an order for the most. Some of the most basic firefighting implements, pumps and hoses. And they tell me, well, we're not getting those till the end of shift tomorrow because they just shut down the gear cache here in Steamboat. So we got to overnight airmail, the pumps and hoses from Denver. It'll get here tomorrow. We got to have someone drive it up to the line. We'll get it tomorrow night. So not only is the firefighting itself taking longer, but we're paying so much more to overnight airmail. Thousands of pounds of equipment that used to be stored right there. I mean, that's the point of a gear cache.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

And those, I mean, those examples are legion. You know, when I'm putting an order for a hand crew, it's early July, and you want a hot shot crew that is the most capable 20 people you're going to find for firefighting. And they tell me, well, we don't. We don't have any hot shot crews available. So instead of one hot shot crew, we're going to order three contract crews because they have less capabilities than a hot shot crew. So on paper, it looks real good to say, well, one for one, one crew, one crew. But in reality, if you're on the ground, you bet you're ordering more, more crews, and we all end up paying so much more. And that's, that's, that's what I mean when I say another way of selling these things off. Right.

[Randall]

That's one of the things I came to see about the, like over the months or over the weeks about the Doge cuts was you came to see ways it brought to mind, you came to see that it created a lot of inefficiencies, like sort of accidentally made all these inefficiencies. And it reminds me of this Passage in an elder Leopold Sand County Almanac where he talks about, he's talking about ecology, but he's saying people are taking like watch parts and they don't understand what the parts do and they're flicking them out.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And then someone later's like, you know, being like, dude, that little thing you threw out, that's like turn that, that makes the whole thing click.

[Sam Forsteg]

That cog was important.

[Randall]

And so we've had other. We had a guy from White River National Forest on who took the, took the buyout left, but he's a supervisor, White Rift National Forest, man. He came in and told us just, just like insane stories about things that were supposedly going to help or ways in which he was forced to make cuts that turned around and cost money, cost time, created problems from just having this like what turned out to be like a very ham handed approach.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. I mean, you want to know the biggest way that we end up spending more money is if you don't have ground resources to fight a fire. If I jump in there and we're losing this thing because the wind's blowing. Well, my best option is to call in air resources. So you end up calling. I mean, if I'm on the ground, I can't get a hotshot crew. That's when you got to call in a large air tanker to drop fire retardant at 7,000 bucks a pop. And I've stood on fires and watched more money than I will make in my lifetime fall out the bottom of a large air tanker to put retardant along the side of a wildfire. And you know where that money goes? Well, it goes to the, the contracting service, River Aerospace, that just so happens to be owned by the third richest man in the United States Senate, Tim Sheehy. And you, you don't have to look too far to see where the incentive structure is. Maybe we're spending more money. It's going to a different place. I'd rather have that money staying here for someone making 15 bucks an hour on the district or on the fire crew than paying to a contractor where it's just getting sucked out of all our pockets as taxpayers.

[Randall]

You know, what do you think drives people, like the time you spent there, what do you think drives people to, to take a job where they're, I don't want to say compensated poorly, but take a job where the compensation isn't the point? Do you know what I mean?

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. I mean there's like.

[Randall]

What drew you to it?

[Sam Forsteg]

I love, I love, I love being on public Lands. I like stomping around in the woods if you can get paid to do that, especially in remote places. That's the dream job. Right. I'm sure all of us can relate to that. Beyond that, it's, you know, they call it being a public servant. It's similar to why a librarian. Librarian would work in a position where they're not getting rich or. My dad's a public school teacher. Right. There's school teachers in the state making a starting wage of 39,000, $40,000 an hour. Right now. You know, it's. There is a sense of service to it. Right. And there's a. There's something rewarding about being able to look back and say, I've been swinging a tool for the last nine days and running a saw and I just tied in that fire line and that fire is not going to burn over that thing. Right. And there are fewer and fewer jobs every year where you can really look at the labor and the fruit of your. What your hands have done and see what you've accomplished.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

You know, that's a, that's a rare pleasure that you can't find very often in this world.

[Randall]

I haven't watched everything you've done and you know, been to your talks and stuff. I followed enough to know that you're like, you're kind of pitch to voters in the state is really. Is really geared toward working. Like, you spent a lot of time talking about work. The working class.

[Sam Forsteg]

Working class, absolutely.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. And I, I mean, when I got.

[Randall]

You feel like that's like that's your background, that's your people.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

I think that's what we're missing. Right. I mean, the average Congressperson's worth 12 to 15 times the average American right now. And you wonder why there's not a sense of urgency to address all these basic issues that so many of us are living with on the ground. And I mean, I got to the end of the last fire season and yeah, I have just watched the agency I work for be gutted in the name of efficiency. And I see inefficiencies. Federal hiring is pretty damn inefficient. It takes nine months to get somebody hired on a $15 an hour job on a trails crew or a fire crew. That's inefficiency. Right. Workman's comp or hr. You got people spending dozens of man hours just to chase down a workman's comp claim for somebody who broke their back parachuting into a fire. You know, like that is inefficient the guy making 13 bucks an hour swinging a tool is not inefficient. And whether it's fire or any other job, you can tell the difference when somebody making the calls has never been on the ground doing the work. And that's what it feels like in this country right now. You know, people are struggling to afford a roof over their head or healthcare or all the rest. And the people who are making the decisions have not experienced that. You know, I mean, I, when I was a kid, my belly was full because of food stamps for a while. My dad was getting his feet underneath them. Thank God. You know, there's not a lot of people in Congress who've ever lived through that or who've been working three jobs at a time and still come up short on rent like a lot of people in this state, in this country are. And I think that that lived experience influences the sort of policy making you're doing and where you're going to be looking to cut, if you are going to be making those cuts.

[Randall]

Are you, let's say you get the nomination. Are you sweating it for when the whole part of the campaign comes when it's just all like negative, negative, negative, and people are attacking you left and right, does that make you nervous?

[Sam Forsteg]

You know, I'll say we're in a primary right now. The election is June 2, so everybody make sure you register. But I mean, every time I, you know, get a new. A big endorsement or we, you know, have more support kind of bubble up or a social media video pop up, the negativity starts already. And we're really, I'm making sure to make this a positive campaign and talk about. I'm so tired of all of politics where it's just anger, anger, anger, and people screaming into a cell phone screen like that doesn't get us anywhere. That gets us to a Congress that's the least productive in American history right now in terms of bills passed. And I. The policy experience I do got is I did some organizing and advocacy between fire seasons. I worked for the state library Association, a group of homeless shelters, just trying to do good where I could between seasons. And they still get things done at the Montana legislature. You got to pass a budget. It has to be balanced. They got to pay for everything. And even, you know, we had the first Republican super majority in state history in 2023, and we managed to get some aid for homeless shelters passed because we're in Bozeman, right? You have people living on the back of their cars and trailers who've been living here their whole life. That's not a partisan issue. And you don't get those things done by standing in a room and screaming at everybody about everything you disagree with. You gotta, you have to be able to talk past that. And that just feels like a lost art in modern politics.

[Randall]

I read somewhere that you were saying when this is all done, you know, that you don't have to go back out and look for a job.

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh yeah, I'm broke. I'm broke. But that's the point, right? I think we need some broke people in politics.

[Eli]

Yeah.

[Randall]

No, no, man. Like, yeah, you'd be like, you'd be like looking in the help wanted ads.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. And I want to be clear. Nothing wrong with success. You don't have to villainize prosperity for any of this. No, but it ain't what we're missing when again, like the average congressperson is worth 15 times as much as the average person. We have a lived experience gap in the halls of power in our decision makers. And I actually think that if we, you know, one of the things I talk about, what I learned in my advocacy time, is there are dark, smoke filled rooms in politics. It's called a conference committee. Anytime the two chambers of the House and the Senate pass a different bill, well, they have to reconcile. And that ends up with eight or 10 people in one room making all of the decisions for what is going to become law. And if every single person in that room is worth, you know, multiple millions of dollars, well, you bet they're going to be a whole lot more willing to give away the money we're spending on food stamps or SNAP benefits. They're going to be able to, they're going to be willing to give away the people who are making 14 bucks an hour because they don't know that those are the people that make this thing work. And there are so many ways that we could find efficiencies in our government. We have not found them at all. We're going to have a lot of rebuilding to do, you know, public lands and everywhere else. And I would just offer that if we want a government that actually works for working people who are getting the short end of the stick on a lot of this stuff, we should send working people to Congress so we can, we can fight for ourselves. And the way we win this is we don't pick our own multimillionaire to go fight all the rest of them. You know, that's not our champion and it has not been working for, for too long. Whatever Party's in power.

[Randall]

I told you when we met over the phone, I said you and me probably disagree on 50% of things. I don't know, some amount.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Randall]

But I think that. I think where we're pretty much aligned is I imagine you're not going to want to entertain ideas about large scale public land transfers.

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it scares the hell out of me, this notion under the Forest Service reorg of shutting down nine regional offices and turning it into 15 state offices. Like, I don't know if they'll ever be successful in a land transfer effort, but I hope to hell they won't be. And that does not seem like a move towards efficiency. It seems like a move towards, again, taking decision making further away from where the actual work on the ground is going on.

[Randall]

Yeah. I don't want to say this is the motivation, but it looks like sort of cast rating. But I haven't heard. No one's tried to sell me on it yet.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Randall]

I've only had people tell me all the ways it's wrong.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. I haven't heard. I haven't heard the benefits of it.

[Phil]

No.

[Sam Forsteg]

I mean, somehow we're moving decision making for the Forest Service further away from the decision makers in D.C. and further away from where the work's happening. Right. Not only do we lose the historic regional office in Missoula, we also lose the DC Office, where if the chief needs to get a message up the chain, you would think he could go across the street and talk to somebody. We're losing all that,

[Randall]

man. Thanks for coming and joining us.

[Sam Forsteg]

Thanks for having me.

[Eli]

So.

[Randall]

So the primary is. The second.

[Sam Forsteg]

Primary is June 2nd. If anyone is curious. You can go to Sam from montana.com and see what we're all about. Got policies, endorsers, all the rest on there. And, you know, you mentioned that we probably. Yeah.

[Randall]

Oh, I was to say, I watched one of your videos where you did a house tour. He lives out of. His house is like. I mean, it's bigger than this, but it's like this studio fire hair. And he's got his bookshelf next to his stove. And he's like, it's very convenient.

[Sam Forsteg]

That is efficiency. That is what we need.

[Randall]

I could just reach right over here, grab a book.

[Sam Forsteg]

Two more steps, you're in the bathroom. Yeah. No steps wasted. And. Yeah. And I'll. I will just add, you said we probably disagree on 50% of things. Maybe it's less than that, but I'll

[Randall]

just take it a ballpark.

[Sam Forsteg]

I don't know yeah.

[Randall]

We haven't talked. We talked about land management, and we talked about, you know.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. What I found is you agree with. I find I agree with a lot more than I would expect until I meet somebody. And part of what we're doing in the campaign is a series of civil discourse conversations. So I just sat down with Michelle Binkley. She's a Republican legislator in the Bedroom Valley. And we talked about the fact that we do not agree on everything. And that is okay, because Michelle knew what it was like to be on the verge of homelessness raising two boys. She has worked as a waitress for 15 years in the Valley. And we agree on getting people basic healthcare. We agree on making sure that people living on the streets have access to mental health services. Basic things like.

[Chris]

Like that.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

And I actually think that is as. As important as the policy specifics is just getting back to a place where we can talk past our differences. Yeah. Find the things we agree on. Because there's all these 80, 20 issues where we agree on all the basics, and we just spend our time yelling about the stuff. We.

[Randall]

Calling everybody evil.

[Sam Forsteg]

Exactly.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah. Very. There are very few people in this world who do not think that they're bringing the good in the way that they see it, you know?

[Randall]

Well, dude, thanks for coming out. Appreciate taking time to come talk to us.

[Sam Forsteg]

Likewise, Steve. I appreciate it. Oh, yeah, thanks.

[Randall]

Okay. Got a couple quick news flashes.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. Today. Well, actually, now that you're listening to this, it's probably just a couple of days before it is Steve's favorite person's birthday party or birthday. Sorry, not party. Hopefully he's throwing himself a party.

[Randall]

That was good.

[Steve Rinella]

It's Sir David Attenborough turns 100 years old. What a milestone. So we gathered a couple of interesting facts about him. He has more honorary degrees than anyone else.

[Randall]

I want to listen. Like, here's the dirty secret of the honorary degree. This is coming from an honorary degree. You're blowing up your whole thing, Steve, right here. What it means is you were invited to do a commencement address. So another way to put it was he doesn't pass up a chance to do a commencement address would be another way of putting it.

[Steve Rinella]

Right. So he has passed up. He has not passed up 31 more commencement address invitations.

[Randall]

I'm done with commencement addresses. Mark my words.

[Phil]

I hate to do this, but according to the Guinness Book of World records, he's about 120 honorary degrees short.

[Randall]

I know. Ken Burns is way high.

[Phil]

I figured, like, Gaddafi and Saddam had a lot of honorary degrees or one of the most.

[Randall]

I mean, who's winning?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, shoot.

[Phil]

The Guinness says it's the Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, who's the former president of Notre dame.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Actually 32 doesn't seem like a really.

[Phil]

Nelson Mandela maybe is one of the Most. More than 50.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, there we go.

[Phil]

King of Thailand has a lot to.

[Steve Rinella]

Randall, thank you for correcting me at the spot. Yeah, we don't have like 100 emails.

[Phil]

Yeah, no corrections on this one. We already nipped it in the bud.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. He's had dozens of species named after him, including. I went through a whole. A whole list of them, but this one was really cool to me. It's called Nepenthus attenboro, or Attenborough, which is a giant carnivorous pitcher plant. So we're looking at a picture here. Imagine a like bright lime neon highlighter green and kind of purple red vat looking plant that holds about 1.5 liters. It's been observed to have trapped and digested a shrew. And this was discovered in 2007 in a remote area on a Philippine island. What else? He is one of the most, if not the most, Randall, feel free to check me on this.

[Randall]

Well, who.

[Phil]

Who.

[Randall]

By whose measurement?

[Steve Rinella]

There are a bunch of websites that

[Randall]

I looked at that say he's one of the most traveled people in history.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, Yeah. I think this was Nat. Gee, it may have been Nat Geo.

[Randall]

That sounds like a shot.

[Steve Rinella]

I didn't pull up all my sourcing.

[Randall]

The dude never passed a driver's test.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, that's a different thing.

[Randall]

No fly everywhere. No, he never. It's like he never passed driver's test. He's just been. He's been. With all due respect, I don't want to hack on an old guy. Let me just come out. I'm not going to say any of the bad stuff about him except this.

[Eli]

Okay?

[Randall]

My only beef with the guy, like, I'm sure he loves his country. It's not my country, so I don't care. But I'm sure he loves his country, which gets, you know, points, I guess, I suppose. Even though it's not ours. My problem with this is how many nature documentaries he has ruined with his narration. That's what it sounds like all the time. He is a one man wildlife footage ruining machine. That's my grip.

[Steve Rinella]

But I guess so many people would disagree because they keep hiring him and

[Randall]

get that job over and over again. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I've been to like, I'm a Morgan Freeman fan. He's cranking out Narration now. And they make him do the same annoying thing.

[Steve Rinella]

So maybe it's like the way that they're.

[Randall]

Dude, if the minute they get Larry the Cable Guy to start doing those, I'm all in. Larry the Cable Guy was like, if Attenborough. I don't know how old the brother's gonna live. Let's say he lives another 10 years. If in 10 years that when he's 110, if he stops ruining nature movies. And they just had Larry the Cable Guy do them. Same footage, same material. Larry the Cable Guy does them, they would be good. That plant just ate a shrewd. Yes, it's the same footage.

[Phil]

Like 10 years ago, there was. There was a wildlife documentary series. And I can never remember what it. Who actually narrated Dog did it. There was one. I want to say it was like it wasn't actually Sam Elliott, but it was like this young American's heading out on the open range for the first time. And it's like a little bison standing up. But it all sounded like a drummy.

[Steve Rinella]

Hold on.

[Randall]

That would drive me nuts.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm gonna move through the rest of these quickly. But one last thing. Maybe it's just the genre and. And Happy birthday, David Attenborough. We talk about you all the time on the show.

[Randall]

Thanks for listening.

[Steve Rinella]

There we go. But shouldn't we as like a new whole, you know, video show thing that we do is like film some nature documentaries and have, you know, different, you know what, voice them.

[Eli]

Why don't you.

[Steve Rinella]

That should be a new thing.

[Randall]

You voice. Here's how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it like this. You're gonna be watching the amazing footage. I'm gonna come in now and then and be like, that's a blue shark.

[Chris]

You're gonna narrate it the same way you narrate it to your family at home.

[Randall]

Yeah. I'd be like. I'd be like, no, no, no. Those are rainbow smell. I'm gonna say stuff like that because that's all I'm wondering. It's like when I'm watching, I'm like, I just wanna know what it is. I don't wanna hear you do like verbal gymnastics of throwing your voice all over. I just wanna know, is that a blue shark?

[Steve Rinella]

But I think we should do blue sharks.

[Randall]

Thank you.

[Steve Rinella]

It's like, shut up, Steve. Series of the same video. The Randall series of the same video. Right, Perfect.

[Chris]

You remember that show, what's called, like

[Phil]

Mystery Mystery Science Theater.

[Chris]

Yeah. Where they like comment on a movie as they're watching it. What you should do is comment on a narration as you, you know how they like to like be like, oh, the two animals love each other and blood. They like make them like people and

[Randall]

little fella taking a stroll orcas.

[Chris]

Because I know when, when you're watching that stuff with your family, they're like, they don't actually do that. That's not true.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I think we've got, we're on to something here. Okay, moving on. So we've talked about this before. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and whether or not on a state level they'd be able to manage Atlantic red snapper. And that's now the case. So those four states have extended seasons. I'm not going to go through all the details, but like last year in 25, the season for commercial snapper was two days. Before that it was just one day. And this year it's about a month, month and a half in most of these states. So greatly expanded number of days to fish snapper.

[Chris]

Recreational recreational.

[Steve Rinella]

Sorry, sorry, I said commercial recreational. Okay. Some bear attacks, one unfortunately we've discovered has ended in the death of a hiker. This take, this took place in Glacier national park, which is in Montana. The body of a hiker was found after being reported missing on the Mount Brown Trail about two and a half miles up that trail. 50 miles from the trailhead.

[Randall]

No, no, no, he was 50ft from the trail.

[Steve Rinella]

Sorry, I just said miles. My goodness. 50ft off the trail. And when he was found, it looked like the injuries that he or she. Because they haven't released the identity of the individual, the injuries made it seem as though there, there was an encounter with a bear. So that was just the other day.

[Eli]

First fatal attack in Glacier since 98. I can't believe that you're just drawing

[Randall]

like an arbitrary line. Like there's been plenty of fatal attacks in like northern continental divide, sure.

[Eli]

But I can't believe they went 28 years without.

[Chris]

When was Night of the Grizzly 60s,

[Randall]

was it 60s, 50s?

[Eli]

I don't know.

[Chris]

Was it that long ago?

[Randall]

Be easy to find.

[Steve Rinella]

And the other incident happened 67, just in our backyard in Yellowstone. There were two hikers that have. They happened to be brothers and they were mauled initially. One in serious condition, one in critical. I think reports say that they are both probably going to make it there in a hot. In a hotel, in a hospital in Idaho. And they were, they were both airlifted, so hopefully they make it.

[Randall]

And you know, this one they do. Like the last time you Know, and it's usually some long time ago.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

The last time someone was. So it's the spring, right? The last time someone was injured by a bear in the park was the fall. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. So September 25th. So. And then the last fatality in Yellowstone from a bear was 2015. So much more recently than the last fatality in Glacier now closed down a

[Eli]

section of the park. I was fishing in that closure area three days before this.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, no kidding.

[Randall]

I don't think they should do that.

[Steve Rinella]

They closed a big. They closed a big area. It's like I was just looking at the map. Like maps on five by like almost 20.

[Randall]

That's ridiculous.

[Steve Rinella]

Mile area. That was, that was the other day. So I'm not sure how long they'll continue to keep that closed. It's. It's just temporary. But that. That area is closed to visitors.

[Randall]

Two guys got. It's pretty crazy. Two guys in Mont got charged with having 223 ducks over their limit. Two guys are hunting in the sun river in January and they again, they're hunting on private land and a game warden sees them. He goes up to see what they got going on. Two guys, okay. Daily bag limit of seven ducks. These two guys have 66 ducks laying there. Then they go to one of the guys shops and they had. That brought the total up. When they go to his shop and see like his butchered. Partially butchered and butchered ducks brings them up to 223 ducks. He had two days in January when they killed 120 ducks. His claim was that it had been a slow year. It had been a slow year and he was just trying to get stocked up.

[Chris]

I understand trying to explain yourself, but it ain't like that's gonna get you out of it.

[Randall]

Oh yeah, okay, I understand.

[Phil]

Give me your best. Give me your best shot here.

[Steve Rinella]

You don't just.

[Randall]

He's like. Yeah, he's like sitting in like a mountain of dead ducks. Give me your bet. Like help me understand what I'm saying. Yeah, it's been a slow year.

[Chris]

And to be fair, like, I'm not justifying this in any way at all, but it's actually impressive that they were like butchered and stored.

[Randall]

Yeah. What's impressive? This is the thing people always overlook on stories like this. I feel, and I hesitate to even say it. What's impressive. This is the thing you shouldn't say. But. But I'm just going to say it. That is some very good duck hunting.

[Chris]

Yes.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

That is one of them days they

[Chris]

Must have hit a migration, like, perfectly.

[Randall]

Most of my brain goes toward you sons of bitches, but a part of it goes to what in the hell spot they got.

[Chris]

Yeah, again, it's been a slow year.

[Phil]

And then it got really, really.

[Randall]

That is an amazing two guys to get a 66 duck morning is a unbelievable day of duck. Well, maybe they must have been having such a good time.

[Chris]

The funny thing is that's a slow day down in South America when those guys are shooting hundreds of them a day.

[Randall]

Yeah. Unbelievable hunting these guys. And it also probably, I hate to say it, probably good wing shooting. I'm gonna stop probably.

[Steve Rinella]

Unless they're just water neighbors somewhere in Bozeman. Maybe someone, maybe someone feels like getting a tip from them to pass to you.

[Randall]

So, yeah, unbelievable day of hunting, but

[Phil]

also very, very, very bad.

[Randall]

Also very bad. But within that, I recognize what an unbelievable day of hunting. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go. I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests. Right. That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I help with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at phelpsgamecalls.com I think you'll be glad you did. And you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

[Chris]

Moving on to mountain lions. Pretty cool story out of Minnesota. They discovered what they. They discovered the first, like, set of kittens. It says breeding mountain lions, but I like, they can't necessarily confirm that the breeding took place in Minnesota. If you want, you got that video.

[Randall]

I have a feeling it took place thereabouts.

[Chris]

Yeah, I mean, but some people, like, she could have walked in. Okay, but this just happened in it. In April, researchers from the University of Minnesota's Voyagers Wolf project, which is Voyagers National Park. But this was. This video was taken just south of the park. First confirmed evidence of Mountain lions reproducing in Minnesota than more in more than 100 years.

[Randall]

Look at that.

[Chris]

And like, obviously they knew.

[Randall]

Right? No arguing with that. Right.

[Chris]

Where those things were.

[Randall]

That's not a Mississippi jaguar either. I mean, that's a mountain lion.

[Chris]

Yeah. So it's a female and three, like sub adult.

[Randall]

No way.

[Chris]

They believe that these kittens were probably born seven and nine months ago. So fall, fallish of 2025. Minnesota's had no documented cougar reproduction for over a century. They've seen, they're seen occasionally. Often. Like we hear this story over and over again. Like transient males wandering in from places like South Dakota. The South Dakota mountain lions seem to get around a lot, but that's all

[Randall]

deer hair all over the ground.

[Phil]

You see a hoof flapping.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Look at that, man. What a cool freaking cat.

[Chris]

Yeah. So they were historically native to Minnesota, became locally extinct because of same old reasons, honey. Overhunting, habitat loss, predator eradication campaigns, poisoning campaigns. Yeah. And since the early 2000s, they've been seeing them now and then, like I said, coming in from, from western states. And it's kind of a connection to a broader recovery in the Midwest and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. What was it, Steve, last year? You got the.

[Randall]

I can't remember if it was last year, the year before. But yeah, some cats, some, some kittens showed up in Michigan.

[Chris]

Kitten 1. So that was the, the first one. They found some kittens. And this was in the. Up in Michigan.

[Randall]

And we're looking at a picture of a kitten hiding under a truck tire.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Eli]

And very cute little kitten.

[Chris]

At one point they, they saw these things and then they, they were seeing them without the mom around. So they're like, oh, you know, they probably died. They probably didn't make it. Well, fast forward to this past winter and you can't. At the very top of the screen,

[Randall]

you can see us. Oh yeah, yeah.

[Phil]

So it like.

[Chris]

And it's saying that's them.

[Randall]

So it's, it's the damn man running a logging road.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Chris]

So Wisconsin, they're seeing more lions. So like they're coming back and it's a pretty cool story.

[Randall]

Bring them on, dude. And then long is like, bring them on. And then when there's a stable good population, bring on a mountain lion season. And I'm happy.

[Chris]

Yeah, man. And the way I look at is maybe those extinct eastern cougars are gonna come back someday.

[Randall]

Like all those dudes back. All Those dudes back 20 years ago, all over those areas that sounded crazy. It would see them and the people would be like, you're nuts.

[Chris]

Yep.

[Randall]

And they're right. But at the same time, in Mississippi, you are crazy.

[Chris]

Yeah. Yeah. But like, Pennsylvania, New York, like, you could. You could see them get into, like, the eastern continental divide in the Appalachians and doing fine.

[Randall]

Yeah, man. That's crazy.

[Chris]

Yeah. It's a cool story.

[Randall]

And. And here's my message to Americans. No, you will not be killed by a lion. That's my message.

[Chris]

And this story loosely ties into another mountain lion story that came in. We had a fan write in about it to have us cover it. He was pretty worked up about it. In Texas, they're looking at changing a little bit how mountain lions are managed. And the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is urging commissioners to adopt a new reporting system for mountain lions in the state, which would basically be, if you kill a lion, you got to report it within 24 hours. And I think now mountain lions are kind of handled like vermin in Texas.

[Randall]

Like, Texas, weirdly. And I don't know. I think that Texans don't. I'm not sure a lot of Texans are aware of this. You are an anomaly.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Mountain lions are generally across their range in North America. Highly managed mountain lions are generally managed as a big game species. Just if you're in Texas, and I'm not telling you not to be worked up about this, because I'll get to that in a minute, but if you're in Texas, this is a message to you. Like, here we have regional and unit quotas that when those quotas get filled and they have female male components to them, it doesn't even matter if the season's over, the quota gets filled. It just shuts down. It is. There's, like, mountain lion tag draws.

[Chris]

Yeah. And generally, like, you're only allowed one a year. No matter. Like, in most states.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

You gotta, like, put in for a permit. Wyoming manages them like a big game animal. Idaho manages them like a big game animal. Colorado manages like a big game animal. So a little bit, it's like, yes, you have to report them. I hunt turkeys in Wisconsin. You have to report a Turkey. You have 24 hours or 48 hours to tell them you got a turkey. So, like, the simple fact that you'd have to report a lion is not unusual. No, it's unusual that your state manages them like opossums. Yep. Like, there's no close season, no bag limit. And here's where I empathize with Texans that are worked up about this is my understanding from private conversations with people who are in the know is that this is coming from. You always gotta look at where is it coming from. Like if it was houndsmen and mountain lion hunters saying, you know what, we should all get together and have a reporting structure, then you'd be like, okay, these are probably guys you could trust. And you know, you know, who's it coming from? What I've been told privately is this is coming from people whose aim it is is to end the harvest or killing of mountain lions. And so that's why people are suspicious.

[Chris]

That's what like it says hunters and some hunters and trappers have been vocally opposed to it because they see this as a step towards ending the take of mountain lions in Texas. Which, man, if you're going to fight that battle, Texas is probably not the state to fight it in.

[Randall]

But no, no, I sit on both. I'm, I sit on the fence on this one like, because like report like there's a certain size of something like 100 pound cat. If you've killed a hundred pound cat, it just isn't surprising to me that they would want to know like that the state fish and game agency would be curious to know that you killed a big game animal. That answer, it's not like this is not a shocking thing.

[Chris]

Probably because of how they've been managed historically in Texas, which is not managed, the fish and game department probably doesn't have a lot of information on them to begin with. And this is a good way to start gathering some data on mountain.

[Randall]

But if it's coming from people who are like, our goal here is to end mountain lion hunting. Step one is to do this thing, make it harder so that we can get some reporting and then use that reporting to turn it into how there aren't many lions around or whatever.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And it's gonna, you're gonna be damned if you do, damned if you don't. If that's where it's coming from. If it's coming from an anti hunting org or anti hunting people, they're gonna, they're gonna screw you either way. You're all going to report and they're going to be like, my God, Texans are slaughtering a thousand mountain lions a year. Or none of you report and they're going to be like, my God, there's no mountain lions.

[Eli]

Yep.

[Randall]

Like there's no. If it's coming from the wrong place, you cannot win.

[Chris]

Yeah. But again, I just feel like Texas, good luck fighting that battle, you know, if that's where it's coming from.

[Randall]

My message to Texans is. I don't know. I don't know what to think about that.

[Eli]

I'm going to tell you about walleye weekend. Last weekend, May 2nd and 3rd, was walleye weekend at the Iowa Great Lakes. The Iowa. I'm sorry, the Iowa Glacial Lakes. The Iowa Glacial Lakes are in northwest Iowa. Refers to a chain of lakes with the headliners being Okaboji and Spirit Lake. Those are the two biggest natural lakes in the state. Those lakes are known for two things. One is they have a very strong boat culture that gets a lot of bachelor and bachelorette parties to wind up there. Here is me at a bachelor party there.

[Randall]

What's on your face?

[Eli]

I was trying to figure that out. I think we were playing beach volleyball that day and being dumb.

[Phil]

You're smudging.

[Eli]

So I don't know what was on our face. This was probably circa 2013.

[Phil]

Is that a kg?

[Chris]

Hey, look, were you of legal drinking age back then?

[Eli]

Yes. I would have been freshly 21, I think. Wearing a Stephon Marvel Timberwolves jersey. Yeah. So that's. Thank you. That's. That's one thing that Okoboji has going on. The other is they have really great fishing, like some of the best fishing in the state. Multiple state records have come from Okoboji and Spirit Northern pike, smallmouth bass, muskie, tiger muskie, white bass, freshwater drum. All of those Iowa state records were caught in these two lakes. Here is a picture of the state record muskie that was caught by Kevin Cardwell on Spirit Lake.

[Randall]

Didn't let that go.

[Eli]

No, that, that muskie, 50 pounds, like

[Chris]

an alligator musk, is native.

[Randall]

Is that a tiger muskie or a muskie?

[Eli]

That is a standard muskie. But the tiger muskie, state record also came.

[Randall]

Yeah, but that's a bullshit fish. I mean, with all due respect, I've caught him. It's a bullshit fish.

[Eli]

Just, just a hybrid. But it just.

[Randall]

With all due respect, with all due

[Chris]

respect, they, they can control like rough fish population.

[Randall]

I know, but it's a, it's a make believe fish.

[Sam Forsteg]

It is.

[Chris]

I don't, I'm not.

[Randall]

It's a make believe.

[Eli]

I would imagine they are native to Iowa. Brody. Because the Mississippi river border.

[Chris]

I was thinking, because he's from South Dakota.

[Randall]

I know every time he says something, I feel like he's talking about South Dakota. He could be showing like jungle pictures and I'd be like, I didn't know that was in South Dakota.

[Eli]

So, so I, you know, the, the Spirit Lake and, and Okoboji, they got Good fishing and good bachelor parties. Walleye weekend. Now, it's been going on for 40 years. It's put on by the Iowa Great Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce.

[Randall]

Is it, you're thinking glaciers?

[Eli]

Greatly. I don't know, glacial. Okay, it's the Iowa.

[Phil]

It is the Great Lake.

[Randall]

We should have had Rob sand report this.

[Eli]

Iowa Great Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce. They've been doing this for 40 years. Last year they had record breaking attendance. 2300 participants from 22 different states. It cost $30 to enter. And that entry fee puts you in the running for a bunch of raffle prizes, door prizes, big old trophy that they give out at the end of the weekend, and then all sorts of contests. Here's some of the contests that you're entered in. Heaviest northern pike. Heaviest walleye. Heaviest stringer of three walleye under 19 inches. Heaviest stringer of fun.

[Randall]

Back up. The heaviest stringer of three walleye under 19 inches.

[Eli]

I'm assuming this plays to their limits. Like Your limit is three walleye and you can only have one over 20 inches. Something like that. I assume that's.

[Chris]

I think it plays the people shoving sinkers in their stomachs.

[Randall]

It just plays into a very boring weigh in.

[Eli]

They have all kinds of contests. My favorite one, what was the biggest pike this year? Wasn't big. It was like £9. So that's not a real special pike. My favorite one of them all though is the heaviest stringer of 10 bullheads. That's one of them.

[Randall]

That's good. I like that. What'd that come in at?

[Eli]

I will get to that later here. I don't want to ruin that part of the story. The real prize though, and this is

[Randall]

why everyone enters, is it bullheads under eight inches?

[Eli]

No, no, just any bullhead. The real prize, this is what gets them, you know, to have 2,300 people sign up. It's a chance to catch one of the 10 tagged walleye. Now, these 10 walleye are tagged with what's known as a floy tag. It's a little wire tag. It's like an inch or so depending on the fish in the state. It has a series of numbers on it usually goes around the dorsal fin of a fish. It resembles like electrical wiring.

[Randall]

I was just going to say it looks like a chunk of wiring hanging out of the fish.

[Eli]

Yeah. Or a cord from a wire.

[Randall]

Showing pictures. Maybe there's a wally dog in there.

[Eli]

Yep. Typically Floyd tags, they don't contain any micro data. These are not chipped things. It's just basically an ID Tag. The numbers that you see on the exterior of the tag, that's. That's what you get with these things. Now the tagging is done by the dnr and these fish are released about a week before walleye week starts or walleye weekend starts. They're released in both Okoboji and Spirit Lake.

[Randall]

Are they catching local wally dogs?

[Eli]

Yes.

[Randall]

Tagging them, then putting them back?

[Eli]

Yes.

[Randall]

They're not bringing out of town wally dogs in there.

[Eli]

I think these are walleye from Spirit.

[Randall]

Could that be like a little weird? If the DNR is all hungry, he doesn't know what's going on.

[Eli]

I'm guessing they're not pulling. Typically, states don't have like a brood stock of walleye. They're going out and they're getting their walleye wild and getting their eggs that way. Now the tag is done by the DNR and then they're released a week beforehand. 10 of these walleye between Spirit and Okoboji. And if you win the grand prize this year, that was $44,000 for catching one of these tagged fish. And if multiple people catch a tagged fish, the pot gets split between them. That rarely.

[Randall]

I was thinking that could get expensive.

[Eli]

It could. What I've learned is that their $44,000 prize is insured by a third party in case this were to come to fruition. That way they're not always sweating what they're going to pay this.

[Chris]

What's the time frame for catching it?

[Eli]

So test starts at midnight on Friday and it ends at noon on Sunday. So you have 36 hours.

[Chris]

So, like, you can catch a tag fish a month later and be like, give me my money.

[Eli]

There is a side pot that happens. You pay an extra $20. And if you catch one of these tagged walleye throughout the rest of the summer, I think you have until August. You get a much smaller prize, but they're still relevant. But this 36 hour window, this is where when you want to catch one of the 10 tagged walleye, this feels

[Randall]

to me ripe for like a really smart person to figure out what's up and rig it, because all they're doing is they're logging that tag number. Someone has access to that tag number.

[Chris]

You don't think you'd have to provide the tag.

[Eli]

You bring the fish in.

[Randall]

I know, but when they let them go, someone knows the tag number and it's not released to the public because then you'd have all kind of walleye with that tag number. Someone knows. Maybe they got some way that, like, they Only know half of it and someone else knows half of it. I'll have to ask around.

[Eli]

I don't think it would benefit you, though. Again, there's no micro data. There's no, like, chipping these walleye.

[Randall]

All you need is a tag with that number and put it in a walleye and go, Ha.

[Eli]

Okay.

[Randall]

If.

[Eli]

Yeah, if the DNR wanted to help cheat the contest. So I'm saying they could rig it some way so 36 hours and the to win the $44,000 grand prize. Now, people take this very serious because of the pop that's available, and they start fishing at midnight when walleye weekend begins. Well, this year, walleye weekend starts with a lot of excitement. At 3am which is three hours into the contest, a tagged walleye gets caught. The anglers immediately head to the bait shop. They have their fish verified to claim their prize. But it turns out this tag was from last year's event, 2025.

[Randall]

So last year's, she.

[Eli]

She's holding a 2020 heartbreaking tag.

[Randall]

So she went in there thinking she had that much money and didn't.

[Eli]

Did not count. The really heartbreaking thing is the Floyd tag was the same color. So, like, seeing the yellow Floyd tag, it's like, we did it. We got the $50,000 walleye. Let's go claim our prize. So a real devastating start for walleye.

[Randall]

That could be right back to drinking, man.

[Eli]

Now it gets worse. It gets worse, it gets worse.

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh, no.

[Randall]

I can't handle the heartbreak.

[Eli]

Seven hours later, at 10am, a second tagged walleye shows up at the bait shop. Here's what happened. The anglers said they started fishing at midnight. They caught a limit, or roughly a limit. I couldn't get the exact details and how many walleye, but they had a number of walleye. They head home around 4am after four hours of fishing, they throw the walleye on ice, go to bed. They get up at 9am to clean their fish, and it's then when they realize that one of their fish is

[Randall]

tagged because they were drunk.

[Eli]

They didn't previously. Maybe I don't know what that'd give me back. But they find that when they go to clean, one of their 15 inch walleye has a tag on it. So this time, the Tag is from 2026. So it's an eligible fish. But here's the problem. The fish is stone cold dead. And the rules explicitly state that a fish must be alive to count in the contest.

[Randall]

What?

[Eli]

Phil has a picture of the flyer for us. And this is just Page one. I highlighted the three spots where it says, this walleye must be alive. All fish must be alive, while I must be recently caught alive and tagged. So it, it, it. They. They mean it when they put in the rules that your fish has to

[Randall]

be alive and that fish is deader.

[Eli]

Yeah, very dead. He was thrown.

[Chris]

To be fair, it's a walleye. Come on.

[Randall]

I mean, who. You know, I would have guessed that. Rules is rules. That was one of last year's. Yeah, it rules. His rules.

[Eli]

It was a 20, 26 fish. It was thrown on ice. Poor guys didn't realize it, though.

[Chris]

They were hauling them in so fast they weren't looking for tags.

[Randall]

Then what happened?

[Eli]

Well, I talked to Mason from Stan's Bait and Tackle. He was the one who checked in both the 2025 walleye at 3am and the dead walleye at 10am he personally knows the anglers who caught the dead walleye and they want to remain anonymous. But I got a lot of details from Mason. He said the anglers were aware of the rule. They pretty much knew when they brought the fish in that they weren't going to get their $44,000 prize, but they went and registered anyway. Then someone from the Chamber of commerce showed up and confirmed the bad news that this fish was no longer eligible because it was dead. Mason said the anglers were pretty bummed and that they had basically accepted their fate before they even got to the bait shop that morning because they knew what was up. There's also this other wrinkle in this story. The two men didn't know which one of them caught the walleye.

[Phil]

Yeah, I was gonna say.

[Eli]

And this was going to create another issue.

[Randall]

They're drunk. They're just throwing walleyes onto a cooler.

[Eli]

This creates some other issues. It's an individual tournament, not a team tournament. And then they also administer a lie detector test. And under this scenario, neither one of them would be able to firmly say that they legally caught this fish during the tournament hours. So the whole thing was layered with problems. Again, Mason said that these guys knew they messed up and they didn't really hang their heads too much. He said they planned to get the walleye mounted, actually to commemorate the experience that they had.

[Phil]

Remembering the giant missed opportunity.

[Eli]

That's right.

[Randall]

See that walleye?

[Phil]

A life changing amount of money.

[Randall]

You kids would have gone to college by having thrown that walleye on. Yes.

[Eli]

And actually the community has handled the news worse than those anglers did.

[Phil]

Oh, yeah.

[Eli]

Phil is now going to play for you a clip of Someone from the chamber of Commerce making this announcement at walleye weekend. I want you to listen to how the crowd reacts, just how devastated they are. This video is via Travis Chin. Take it away, Phil.

[Sam Forsteg]

Got a call from Mason at stands yesterday afternoon. Have a tag walleye coming in. Good news, bad news. Good news. Tag walleye coming in. Bad news, Walleye is dead on the rule sheet. All tag fish, all fish must be alive. So that fish was not alive. It unfortunately, the folks fished until 4, 4:30 in the morning, went home, took a nap, got up to clean fish. Oh, crap, we've got a tag walleye. So we felt extremely horrible about that. The other issue is it's an individual tournament, right. This isn't a team tournament. They didn't know which angler caught the fish, so that's a double. Oh, okay. Mason is here from Stance, and they don't want to be recognized, but they're going to get a prize that Mason is providing on behalf of Stance bait and Tackle. So let's give Mason a big hand.

[Eli]

Just a lot of sad news folks had delivered.

[Randall]

I would have. I feel like I would have. If I was that guy, I would have told the story in a different order. Do you know what I mean?

[Eli]

Yeah. Okay, give us an example.

[Randall]

I would have done, like a narrative. He told.

[Eli]

He.

[Randall]

He spoiler alerted his story. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm gonna tell you I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not gonna go. I'm not gonna win a turkey calling contest. It's just not gonna happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts atphelps game calls dot com. I think you'll be glad you did. And you'll find out that the Steve Ranella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

[Eli]

Now, here's. Here's, like, the biggest reason folks are upset. It's something Mason told me has been talked about for years. The rules of the tournament conflict with Iowa's AIs Aquatic Invasive Species Rules. This is from page 18 of the 2026 Iowa DNR Fishing Handbook. In big red letters, it says, quote, help stop the spread of aquatic invasive species. It's the law. Then below that, they explain the clean drain dry regulations and say, drain water from all equipment, motor, live well, bilge, transom well, ballast system before you leave a water body. Drain plugs must be removed at the water access and remain open during transport. So as you can see, that makes it really difficult to deliver the chamber of commerce a live walleye. When they're making you pull plugs, they

[Randall]

should say, unless you have a $44,000 Wally dog, then it's okay. Yeah.

[Eli]

Despite this, to Mason's knowledge, this has never happened before. This has never been a problem where dead walleye shows up during the contest. But as you can see, he's.

[Randall]

He's nitpicking.

[Eli]

Make it hard.

[Chris]

So no one won a big prize.

[Eli]

Nobody. Nobody has won it. No. But Mason has said that they've been mumbling about this problem for years, that the community at large, and that he actually heard that this week there's going to be a meeting to talk about these clashing regulations that they have. You know, maybe this $44,000 walleye is what's going to finally inspire a change to allow an angler to bring in a legal walleye that's not transporting water from a lake. You're not supposed to.

[Randall]

God, man.

[Chris]

What happens?

[Randall]

That story's got layers, dude.

[Chris]

What happens to prize money if no one wins?

[Eli]

So it increases the next year? Actually, yeah. The weekend tournament's over again. If you paid the extra $20, you have a chance to catch one of these walleye later this summer. It's a much smaller prize at that point. And my understanding is the prize money will increase next year because of that.

[Randall]

You know, you talk about that insurance outfit that insures those kind of things. Yep. I was at this event one time, and they were. You could roll. It was a conservation Org event, and you could roll dice. To win a truck, brand new truck, I think you had to take a five or six pack of dice.

[Eli]

Okay.

[Randall]

And roll all one of a kind, which is. I looked it up at the time. It's not going to happen, but I've seen it happen.

[Phil]

You have Yahtzees?

[Randall]

No, no, it wasn't. It was. I think it was six shake a day is five.

[Phil]

Five? Yeah.

[Randall]

Yeah, I think it was six. Anyways, they had. The insurance guy was there. I was shooting the Breeze with him. You know what he did? He's got these dice or they got. He's got this thing out.

[Phil]

He had.

[Randall]

He weighs. He weighs all the dice, inspects all the dice. And he took a caliper. A digital caliper.

[Eli]

Love this.

[Randall]

To the dice. No, you have to.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And no one even came close to winning that truck.

[Eli]

I paid for shake a day for the table at the bar, and this was a few months ago, and Randall won the damn thing. And so we, like, started going crazy. It was a $70 pot.

[Phil]

So I bought the most loaded nachos I could for the table. And then I thought the server wanted to cash us out. And I gave her all the cash, which included a rather generous tip. And I said, you know, the rest is for you. And she said, I know. And then it was too late to take it back. It was the most sort of passive aggressive in that moment.

[Randall]

I went from, why was she mad at you?

[Phil]

I went from feeling very large to very small.

[Randall]

And then why was she upset?

[Phil]

But I don't know.

[Randall]

Were you guys being rude? No, we were.

[Phil]

I thought we were.

[Chris]

No, the place is out of business now, so.

[Randall]

Yeah, I'm surprised. So you guys went out drinking without me?

[Eli]

Yeah. Yeah, we did.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Eli]

There were other co workers.

[Randall]

A lot of stuff happen.

[Eli]

You should feel even worse than you just seen.

[Randall]

I think that happens a lot.

[Eli]

Yeah.

[Phil]

You want to go out drinking?

[Randall]

No.

[Eli]

What was never acknowledged. If that pot had been like $1200, Randall.

[Randall]

What.

[Eli]

What percentage would I get of that for buying your $1 shake a day?

[Phil]

I would have. I would have ordered some sort of strange curiosity off ebay for you. That's related to rocks or made up animals.

[Eli]

Yeah. Because I. I would have felt entitled to a little bit of that.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Yeah, yeah. I want to be asked to do stuff, but I don't want to be asked. You know, I'm just gonna say no.

[Sam Forsteg]

Yeah.

[Eli]

Now, at the end of the video earlier, you heard the dude in the mic say that Mason from Stan's Bait Shop gave the two anglers a prize because he felt so darn bad for them. Mason didn't need to do that. These prizes come from the chamber of commerce. And he said that Mason, that they felt like, you know, they deserve something, so he gave him a couple St. Croix tournament rods.

[Sam Forsteg]

Oh, great.

[Eli]

Which is like, that's a great walleye rod worth north of, you know, 300 bucks. So good on Mason.

[Randall]

Awesome.

[Phil]

That's a great tackle shop.

[Eli]

And while I had Mason on the phone, I asked him for a fishing report so I could deliver, you know, some real information to our Iwegian listeners. Here it is. Spirit Lake has been pretty good for 12 to 14 inch walleye, but you need to do a lot of sorting to find the bigger ones. There's some good crappie and perch fishing, too. Okoboji guys are doing real well on 17 to 19 inch walleye. Some 20 plus inchers being caught. Not quite as much action as Spirit, though. The panfish and bass bite has been hot lately for either lake. He recommends trolling crankbaits in 8 to 15 foot of water. Sweet spot seems to be around the 10 to 12 foot range. He says guys are also finding success pitching jigs around the basins in 18 to 20ft of water. So there's your mid May fishing report.

[Chris]

I was excited.

[Eli]

It was Great Lakes. Now to circle back. What I found to be the most interesting part of the contest is the 10 stringer bullhead contest. The winner this year had a bag of 14.32 pounds. That means his average bullhead was about one and a half pounds. That is a lunker bullhead, Chris Daisy. He was the champion for the fourth year in a row. Here's a post game press conference interview that Dave Mashoff got with Mr. Bullhead Champion. Play it, Phil.

[Randall]

We're here at the 44th annual Great

[Eli]

Walleye Weekend, and the heaviest stringer of Bullhead was 14.32 pounds, won by Chris Daisy of Spirit Lake. And this is the fourth year in a row that you've won that category.

[Randall]

Chris, what's the secret?

[Phil]

Lots of fish and lots of night crowers and lots of sore fingers.

[Eli]

Well, what were you using for bait on those bullheads?

[Phil]

Mostly night crawler leadhead just casting up

[Randall]

underneath the tubes there at Buffalo Run up on the grade.

[Eli]

Does that seem to be a pretty hot spot?

[Randall]

No, it was. This was a hard year for bullheads.

[Phil]

It took a lot of fishing, a lot of sorting.

[Eli]

What do you attribute the tough go for?

[Randall]

My grandpa used to bring me up here as a little kid, so I

[Phil]

just keep it going.

[Randall]

You said it was kind of tough fishing for the bullheads.

[Eli]

Colder water or what do you attribute that to?

[Randall]

I think it is a lot colder water. We had a cold snap up here,

[Phil]

so it slowed everything down.

[Randall]

I mean, the big walleye were biting

[Phil]

good this weekend, but everything's slot fish, so had to go for something.

[Eli]

Well, congratulations again. Fourth year in the row on the heaviest stringer of a bullhead. 14.32 pounds. You don't want to see Chris Daisy, entering your bullhead contest.

[Randall]

He's going to clean up, I'll tell you that.

[Eli]

Interviewer this is Dave Mashoff.

[Randall]

Dave Mashoff, See that move he did? He asked the guy a question the guy didn't understand and answered something different.

[Chris]

He didn't.

[Randall]

So he just very smoothly did his question over again with different words and then nailed it the second time and never, it never phased him.

[Eli]

Yeah, yeah. Kept on trucking, you know, I mean

[Chris]

professional hard hitting journalism there.

[Randall]

Yeah. He's never like, hey, you misunderstood or you know, he just is like bam.

[Chris]

That's an underrated fish, man. The bullhead.

[Randall]

Yeah. Randall, that was a great segment that had a lot of layers to it like, like money won and lost. Yeah.

[Phil]

Well, the Department of Interior announced this week that they're officially conveyed OR have conveyed 1.4 million acres of BLM lands along the Dalton highway to the state of Alaska. Phil, do you have the. So, so what we're looking at here on the screen is a map of the great state of Alaska. And you can see the Dalton highway running there from, goes from Fairbanks up. I don't really know if it officially starts in Fairbanks, but basically goes from Fairbanks up to Prudhoe Bay up like across the North Slope.

[Randall]

Well, yeah, no, it does, yeah. So I mean the pipeline goes all the way down.

[Phil]

Right, right. So anyway, basically you'll see this called a public land transfer. And that's exactly what it is. However, under the terms of the Alaska Statehood act, that law authorized the transfer of approximately 105 million acres of federal land to the state of Alaska. And not all of that land has been transferred up until now. So there's, I think what I saw, there's approximately 5.2 million acres that the state was entitled to. And the state has wanted lands along the Dalton utility corridor. The utility corridor is essentially a 244 mile strip of ground along the pipeline that was set aside by the Nixon administration in the 70s with public land, I guess ordinance just PLO 550-5180. And it was a buffer zone. It also importantly connects a bunch of other public land. So it's, it borders the Knutty National Wildlife Refuge, the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, and both the Gates of the Arctic national park and anwar. So it's essentially strip, a long strip of BLM land that's now been transferred to the state for energy development. And the way this basically went down was they had passed a resource management plan for these BLM lands in the past few years. Congress used the cra, which is the Congressional Review act, the same thing that they did with the Boundary Waters to nullify that resource management plan. And then Secretary of the interior Bergam revoked PLO 5150 and 5180 in February, I believe. And then finally they, they did this transfer. So it's been a long sort of slow running process that led up to this. It wasn't really something that was like out of the blue overnight. The state has always wanted these lands for resource extraction.

[Randall]

I mean, and it's an industrial.

[Phil]

Yeah, I get.

[Randall]

It's an industrial corridor as is.

[Chris]

It's called the haul road.

[Randall]

Yeah, right, right. It's like a road that parallels a giant pipeline. Yeah.

[Phil]

And so, so I mean I talked to several people about this and their take was it's a bummer that they gave them basically everything that they asked for because some of it really isn't suitable for resource extraction.

[Randall]

But they're not going to restrict, the state's not going to restrict access off that.

[Phil]

No, no, the state is entitled to make these claims. One concern, it doesn't green light Ambler Road, but it removes one of the barriers to building the Ambler Road. And so again that's the 200 mile road that would cut west across the Brooks Range. And so it's, you know, there's kind of two different, kind of two different takeaways. One is like, yeah, ideally maybe this wouldn't have happened. But at the same time the state is entitled to these lands under the, the statehood act.

[Randall]

And so they will eventually get, they will eventually do their claims.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah. And so it's kind of, you know, wait and see what happens. But again like also keep your eyes on, on Ambling.

[Randall]

There was some of that, there was some of that transfer down where we hang out down in Southeast. Yeah, I mean the state has, you know, I've hunted off that highway a fair bit, but always north of that. Always north of those new lands.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah.

[Randall]

Because they own right over the crest of the, over the. So that there's the seeding. The land they're seeding is on the north side of the Brooks Range and we used to hunt off that Hall Road north of there yet.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah, it's. And it's like a popular walk in area for caribou hunting.

[Randall]

Yeah, we would canoe in, but yeah, you can't, you can't fire a rifle within five miles of that pipeline. So it's a big bow hunting corridor through there.

[Phil]

So that's the, that's the news in Public lands this week.

[Randall]

Okay. Over to Michigan. Over to Michigan. They have expanded the controversial. For no reason. They have expanded walleye spearfishing in Michigan. So in 2021, the state came in and created a spearfishing season for walleye, lake trout, and northeast northern pike. And they did this experimental thing where they created two zones. They made a zone in Lake Michigan. Everything south of the southern pier in Grand Haven, South Lake Michigan only, not the interior waters, was open to walleye spearing. And then they took an area in Lake Huron. It was south of Thunder Bay. They made it open for spearing lake trout, walleye northerns, fish that previously you had not been able to do underwater spearfishing. You could underwater spear. You could. You could through the ice, spear northern pike, but you couldn't underwater spearfish. A lot of walleye fishermen had a conniption about it. What they did was, because they're like, they're going to kill all the walleyes. So what they did was you had to get a special walleye per. You had to get a special spearfishing permit, and you had to report all your harvests. Okay. They did it for their three years. They had another year with reporting. And now they have greatly expanded spearfishing opportunity. Underwater spearfishing opportunities.

[Chris]

You may not know this, but, like, for the.

[Randall]

The who might not.

[Phil]

You.

[Chris]

I'm gonna ask you for all the, like, thousands and thousands of walleye rod and reel anglers that were mad about the spear fishing. Do they know how many.

[Randall]

How few people actually, I'm gonna tell them. They're gonna know in a minute. They're gonna know some stats.

[Chris]

I want to know.

[Randall]

They're gonna know some stats. The controversy is not over. Yeah. With these proposals. So a friend of mine, Jonathan Durka, was. Is like a spear fisherman who's, like, really been ushering this process. I wound up speaking to two commissioners in Michigan over the last months before this happened. I did phone calls with two commissioners and wrote letters pleading for these expansions. And they've done the expansions. Can you. Can you pull up the expansion map? These are the Michigan waters. You're not allowed to speak. You're allowed to spearfish underwater. Spear fishing for walleye, northerns and lake trout. So you got basically, like, from Chicago, so the Illinois, Michigan line, or there's the Indiana, Michigan line up to. It's like a little wedge Indiana in there between Illinois and Michigan along the shoreline.

[Sam Forsteg]

You can.

[Randall]

You can underwater spearfish from the Indiana, Michigan line up to. Up to the 45th parallel is where they draw that line, and then all the inner, you know, Grand Traverse Bay is out. So the 45th parallel runs south, runs across the state south of Traverse City. There's a little wedge down in Erie.

[Chris]

Yep.

[Randall]

Kind of like south of Detroit down to the Ohio state line. You could spearfish.

[Chris]

That's right where the. Is that where the St. Clair river pops?

[Randall]

Yeah. That's big. Yeah, it's just right there. Huron. You could do Huron. All inside the thumb from Thunder Bay, basically. Thunder bait down to the bottom of Lake Huron out to the Canadian border in northern Lake Michigan. They opened a big stretch along the southern Upper Peninsula offshore with some key areas removed. And they opened up a bunch of Lake Superior on the nor off the northern coast of the Upper Peninsula, minus some. Some big spawning grounds out there that are closed. So that's great news. However, the Chippewa Ottawa tribes are protesting not the expansions. They've written a letter of protest saying they want to bring back reporting and they want to bring back the special license because they're saying there's no way to know how many people are out there doing this.

[Steve Rinella]

This.

[Randall]

Well, check this out. Okay. When they open up the spear fishing license, you had to go get a free certificate. You had to get like a spearfishing stamp. Okay. Guess how many people went and got a spearfishing stamp.

[Chris]

43, 112.

[Randall]

Way 14.

[Phil]

4,000.

[Sam Forsteg]

Okay.

[Randall]

Out of those 4,000, guess how many shot a fish? 4, 500, 200 shot of fish. Out of those 200 spear fishermen that shot a fish, those 200 people killed a total of 430.

[Eli]

Wow.

[Chris]

Couple.

[Randall]

They killed 430 walleyes.

[Chris]

There's probably like half a dozen that are really laying into them.

[Randall]

My buddy, you pulled him out. The number probably drops down to three 30s.

[Chris]

So.

[Randall]

So with the Chippewa auto tribes are saying, well, they're doing so much to promote underwater spear fishing. It's going to blow up if they don't have reporting. And so we need to know what they're up to. Well, angler hours on underwater spearfishing isn't going up. It just goes down, down, down as people realize what a it is.

[Chris]

Yeah, the barrier to entry thing is, it's like, it's not something everybody's going to go do.

[Randall]

4,000 guys thought they'd go. 200 guys went. Annual angler hours went from 2, 300 to 1900 to 1,400.

[Eli]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And I'll bet the fourth is out that it sucks. I'll bet the cold. You can't see Anything. It's. It's cold.

[Chris]

And the 4,000 were like. People were like, yeah, I'll get it.

[Eli]

It's free.

[Chris]

Yeah, a lot. They weren't ever going to go.

[Randall]

So again, they killed these fishermen. One of these years, these fishermen kill 430 walleyes. Now, allow me to ask. What? Okay. Oh, let me back up. Angler effort sitting at about 1400 hours of spearfishing angler effort. Guess how much many man hours of rod and reel effort occur in Michigan? 1.4 million. 1.4 million man hours of fishing effort versus 1400 of spearfishing effort last year in Saginaw Bay. They killed. In Saginaw bay, they killed 500,000 walleye spear fishermen statewide. 430, the Detroit and St. Clair rivers. 400,000 walleye. So between Saginaw Bay, which is that little thumb notch, and then down there on the bottom of that little spear fishing area, 900,000 Wally dogs, spear fishermen. 340.

[Chris]

No, no, my buddy spear fishermen. 430, my buddy on the St. Clair. Right, right there in that St. Clair. They're out there hammering them right now,

[Randall]

you know, and that, that Saginaw Bay fishery, eight walleye a day, 13 inch minimum. Day eight a day, 13 inch minimum. They are. Listen, I don't care how you feel about dudes swimming around underwater with a spear gun. It doesn't matter. It does not matter. I will be there in June, hitting it hard.

[Phil]

We should do it.

[Randall]

I'm going to kill all your walleyes.

[Phil]

We should do a T shirt with you in a wetsuit and fins and

[Randall]

it does not matter.

[Phil]

Or don't worry about it.

[Randall]

It does not matter. If people want to go in the water and risk shallow water blackout and get all cold, let them. The question is this. Since it does not matter, I look forward to Michigan passing a salmon spearfishing season. That will be the most awesome thing on the planet. Cannot wait.

[Chris]

Would you hit them, like, right outside the river Mouse or where would you.

[Randall]

I'm thinking flashers.

[Chris]

Oh, he'd go down and.

[Randall]

No, I think you'd free drift. Yeah, I think you just free drift with flasher chains. Maybe some chum. If you can chum. You can't chum. But maybe they'd let you chum. But they're not gonna let you chum. I think you'd have to use a string of flashers. Yeah, dude. Ultimate challenge, man.

[Chris]

Big old.

[Randall]

And people be like, they're gonna kill all the salmon.

[Chris]

Salmon.

[Randall]

And then the annual report will come in. It's like. They got two. They got two. All right, thanks for joining the new show.

[Phil]

They got two.

[Steve Rinella]

This is an I heart podcast.

[Randall]

Guaranteed human.