Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring (Backcountry Hunters & Anglers)

Striped bass are arguably the most important fish – culturally and economically – on the Atlantic seaboard. And right now, anglers are spearheading a push to conserve and rebuild striper populations, which have suffered in recent decades because of overfishing and poor habitat. What’s the future of this iconic Eastern species, and what opportunities can we create to ensure our continued ability to fish for striped bass? Hal talks with Mike Woods, chair of BHA’s New England chapter, recipient of BHA’s Jim Posewitz award and resident of Rhode Island, and Chris Borgatti, BHA’s New York and New England chapter coordinator who hails from Massachusetts, about the past, present and achievable future of striped bass fisheries in the eastern United States. As Chris says, “New England might not have as much public land as in the West, but what’s there is vital to the huge population centers in the East. And it makes the fight for conservation, habitat, access and opportunity even more important.” Join them for a far-reaching conversation that hits on all aspects of the outdoor lifestyle along the New England coast.

In a recent interview with Filson, Minnesota-born and bred photographer Lee Kjos was asked to describe his work in five words or less. Kjos replied: “Original. Authentic. Genuine. Unique, and bad-ass.” For anyone who has marveled at the understated power of Kjos’  hunting and fishing photography, those five words – each of them earned the hard way – sum it up. Although Kjos’ upbringing in the deep woods of Minnesota precludes him from ever saying it, those same five words could be used to describe the man himself. Join us as we discuss a life’s work of happy obsession behind the lens and across the planet, where sometimes the greatest photos and the greatest adventures – farm, family, waterfowl hunting and good dogs – are right outside your back door.

Hal sits down in Montana with Chris Parish and Leland Brown to talk copper bullets, lead fragments, falconry, raptors, condors, Mexico and California, a love of good guns, wild animals and wild meat – all following a long day of rifle shooting with everybody from the Hellgate Hunters and Anglers (a Missoula-based rod and gun club) to former U.S. Army snipers. Chris and Leland are co-founders of the North American Non-Lead Partnership, which educates hunters about the effects of the lead we shoot – on ourselves, on our environment and on the wildlife we love. 

Tony Latham is a retired game warden with 25 years’ experience working undercover on some of Idaho’s wildest public lands and in pursuit of some of the West’s nastiest wildlife criminals. Undercover work is a total immersion in a subculture: of cheap alcohol and casual violence, dive bars and broken people, slaughtered fish and wildlife, and coldly professional violators. The job exacts its own price, and nobody could ever say they do it for the pay. It’s only for the truly committed, those who believe in hunting and fishing and wildlife conservation as basic to the American way of life and who are willing to put their lives on the line to make sure it endures. Join us in Salmon, Idaho, to hear stories from the game warden and lifelong conservationist who risked it all to hold his part of the Thin Green Line.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 143: Feral Horses on Public Lands in Nevada

More than 82,000 feral horses roam U.S. public lands, about four times as many as the land and water can sustain. Almost all of them live in Nevada, the most arid state in the union, where their impacts are almost unimaginable: desertification and massive loss of wildlife, ranging from pollinators and other insects to sage grouse, elk, mule deer and pronghorn. The Bureau of Land Management is doing what it can to address this crisis, but the agency finds itself in an impossible position with an entirely misguided but powerful feral horse advocacy movement. However, a growing coalition of biologists and natural resource scientists, hunters and anglers, wildlife advocates and people who love the Nevada public lands (and the horses) are in a desperate race to solve this problem in a humane way – before it’s too late. Hal traveled to Nevada to talk with some of these experts: Mike Cox, state bighorn sheep and mountain goat biologist for the Nevada Department of Wildlife; Tina Bundy Nappe, an Eastern Sierra landowner and public lands advocate; Jim Sedinger, sage grouse biologist and retired University of Nevada wildlife ecology professor; and Bryce Pollock, a conservationist and hunter with the Nevada chapter of BHA.

The Bankhead National Forest in Alabama is a place of shadowed canyons and rushing coldwater creeks, crystalline waterfalls and bluff shelters blackened by the smoke from campfires over thousands of years. It’s an island of rare plants and wildlife and old growth trees in a state where coalmining and industrial forestry and now the sprawl of cities have radically altered the landscape. Come with us to Moulton, Alabama, and meet native son Joseph Jenkins, a biologist and herpetologist, hunter and angler, who is working to save two of the most imperiled and least known creatures in the forest: the flattened musk turtle and the Black Warrior waterdog. What is it like to spend one’s life working to save two species that almost no one would miss if they disappeared? What did Aldo Leopold mean when he said, “The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts”? How did the fine chisel of evolution result in these two highly specialized creatures living only here, in this last piece of public lands wild country, in a region facing total transmogrification at the hands of humankind?   

In this episode Hal catches up with T. Edward Nickens, editor at large at Field & Stream magazine and author of the Total Outdoorsman Series of books. Eddie is an old-school Southern gentleman and a consummate outdoorsman and conservation leader, and he writes about it all with the depth and passion of the greatest of the Romantic poets. Eddie and Hal had a huge amount of pure fun doing this podcast. “I’ve read his work with respect and admiration for 15 years,” says Hal, “but we’d never crossed paths until now.”   

In St. Paul, Minnesota, with bird dogs whining in the hall outside, Hal visits the headquarters of Pheasants Forever to interview a trifecta of America’s most committed and passionate upland bird hunters and habitat and public access advocates. Bob St. Pierre, PF vice president of marketing and communications, tells it like it is: “We’re in trouble. Habitat is being plowed under and wetlands drained, we’re failing to ensure the future of upland bird hunting, and with that failure we’re letting a whole host of ecosystems and wildlife – all of it hard earned in the wildlife restorations and conservation efforts of the last decades – go down. But we’re not going to let that happen.” Bob is joined by fellow PF staffers Andrew Vavra and Anthony Hauck, who tell us what it’s really like to hit the Rooster Road Trip: thousands of miles of travel, worn-out dogs, cold camps and bad motels, and a whole lot of public land bird hunting opportunities that way too many hunters are convinced do not exist. 

Hal Herring and longtime BHA member and British Columbian Bill Hanlon swap stories in Whitefish, Montana. Hanlon tells the tale of his incredible 1999 adventure that begins with a Dall sheep hunt in northern British Columbia and ends with a wild discovery of the remains of an ancient hunter. It's a story of one hunting culture connecting with another over the centuries and into modern times. This is a hunting journey like no other, and it's not to be missed. 

Texas hunter and fisherman Jesse Griffiths is the author of Afield: A Chef’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish and The Hog Book, the definitive text – artwork is closer to the reality  - on hunting, butchering and cooking feral hogs. The Hog Book won the prestigious James Beard Award in 2022, a fitting tribute to a man on the cutting edge of wild game and fish cookery. Jesse is co-owner of the Austin, Texas, New School of Traditional Cookery and the restaurant Dai Due, whose name is drawn from the Italian proverb, Dai due regni di natura, piglia il cibo con misura: “From the two kingdoms of nature, choose food with care.” Join us for a conversation with one of the most visionary chefs in North America, talking hogs, turkeys, panfish, hunting and fishing and foraging for food, and a life defined by the earth and her seasons.

We're spending Thanksgiving week with our families and bringing you one of our favorite podcast episodes from the archives: Ron Mills, an outfitter, hunting guide and packer in the Bob Marshall Wilderness since 1959! Ron has authored a new book called Under the Biggest Sky of All, 75 Years on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, a raucous and astoundingly funny account of his adventures as a guide, horseman and packer, farrier and ranch hand in some of the wildest country left on the planet. (Hal wrote the forward to the book, as seen in the spring 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal.) Ron and Hal discuss the book, life in the saddle and in 20 different camps across the Bob, and what it is like to work with a man who turns out to be a coldblooded American serial killer.

Epic floods due to the filling and draining of wetlands, duck numbers falling, fisheries collapsing, federal flood insurance $25 billion in debt, water pollution at levels not seen since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 – and all this before the recent floods in the Midwest. The common denominator is our failure to protect U.S. wetlands and rivers and streams. Yet the administration is considering a revised rule eliminating wetlands and stream protections under the Clean Water Act. Hal talks to Blan Holman, a lawyer at the Southern Environmental Law Center who specializes in water law, to try and make sense of it all.

Bill Cunningham caught his first cutthroat trout in Lolo Creek, a tributary of the Bitterroot River, with a willow stick, a hook and a piece of string at age five. That was 72 years ago. Since then, he has guided, hunted, fished and wandered from the Brooks Range to the Mojave Desert and beyond, all the while relentlessly, tirelessly fighting for wilderness, wild rivers and public lands. Listen in on this conversation with one of America’s most experienced and knowledgeable conservation advocates, recorded in Montana the day after Bill and Hal had summitted two 8800-foot peaks on one of Bill’s favorite traverses in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.   

Ashley and Jesse Kurtenbach are board members of the South Dakota Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. Join them as they sit down with Hal Herring on the heels of a snow goose hunt to explore a life of hunting and fishing on public lands and waters. 

Learn more about what goes on in the halls of Congress as Hal sits down with BHA Government Relations Manager Kaden McArthur to discuss the 2023 wins BHA played a role in achieving for the conservation of our public lands and waters. 

Blaring headlines: “Battle lines hardening in dispute over Mobile ship channel deepening project”

“No more federal mud dumping' — Standing room only at Baykeeper town hall”

A newly deepened and widened shipping channel created by the US Army Corps of Engineers makes Mobile, Alabama, the second fastest growing port in the US – the amount of cargo handled this year more than doubled from previous years.

Some of the world’s healthiest commercial and recreational fisheries, vibrant towns, waterfront properties that date back centuries, all because of the health of one of the most beautiful and historically and ecologically-important bays in the world.   

90 million cubic yards of mud, dredged and disposed of over the next 20 years. Already the impacts on seagrass and reefs and fisheries are severe.

Join us to find out what’s going on, from the locals with everything at stake: William Strickland, Mobile Baykeeper, and fishing guides Capt. Patric Garmeson, and Capt. Richard Rutland.

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Follow us:

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BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 134: Snake River Dams

We are teetering on the brink of what could be the greatest conservation success story of the past 50 years. The removal of four outdated and failing dams on the lower Snake River will restore the passage of millions of salmon and steelhead upstream into 5500 square miles of the most intact, coldwater spawning and rearing habitat in North America (almost all of it public land). If the dams are left in place, these same salmon and steelhead face inevitable extinction. It is a simple choice between vibrant, resilient life abounding, with all that entails – a resurrection of fisheries, economics, and the health of forests and wildlife that evolved with these fish – or a descent into the darkness of extinction and collapse. Which will we choose? Join Hal as he meets with Eric Crawford, North Idaho field coordinator for Trout Unlimited; Sam Mace, a fisheries expert who has worked with Save Our Wild Salmon; and Josh Mills, BHA development coordinator and board member of the Wild Steelhead Coalition, in this podcast recorded live at the BHA North American Rendezvous in May 2022.

If you live in Idaho, Oregon or Washington, take action now! Urge your elected leaders to support a science-based approach to conserving fisheries and supporting the economic health of communities that depend on them.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 157: Kevin Garrad, Founder of Wild Response

Growing up in rural England, Kevin Garrad was a child of the wild moors, a ferreter and a trainer of lurchers, a hunter of invasive minks, and destined to be a soldier. Fast forward to an early-in to the U.S. military just out of high school and eight deployments in 18 years, including a decade in the U.S. Army Special Forces during America’s longest wars. Now “retired” to the bush in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, Kevin is the point man for Wild Response, an organization that equips and trains the roaming, high-risk game rangers who are protecting the bitterly imperiled wildlife of these last iconic wild landscapes, often at the risk of their own lives. Internationally recognized man-tracker, soldier, medic, teacher and passionate conservationist of wildlife and wild places, Kevin has an utterly unique tale to tell. Join us!

Hal Herring sits down with Johnny Carrol Sain, a writer and native Arkansan who lives in Newton County, Arkansas. 

They discuss the legend of the Dover Lights, learning to fly fish, Ned Christie's troubles, 30 years of bowhunting, the author David Petersen, the spiritual nature of hunting, squirrel dogs, water quality in the South, the meaning of purple paint, Robert Redford's The Unforeseen, incentivizing conservation, crappie fishing and the wild breadth of the Arkansas River.

Ep. 122: Allen Morris Jones - Western Storyteller

2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of one of the most important treatises on hunting ever written. Allen Morris Jones’ book A Quiet Place of Violence: Hunting and Ethics in the Missouri River Breaks was once best known among a kind of chosen few outdoorsmen and women, those who relished the history of their pursuit and the philosophy of immersion into landscape, wildlife, blood and meat, and finality – and who wanted to ponder the deep why of what drove them. It was a book found in bloodstained packs, on sun-cracked truck dashboards, on cabin bookshelves beside great works of the distant past: Ortega y Gasset, Teddy Roosevelt, Grancel Fitz. In the past 15 years, A Quiet Place of Violence has found a vastly larger audience among a younger generation, hunters who are coming to the pursuit on their own, without the traditions and the answers of the past. Join us for an in-depth conversation with Allen Jones, on his work and his life, on hunting, writing, philosophy, and on the (possible) banishment of abstraction.     

Join Hal and writers David Quammen and Betsy Gaines Quammen for a bonus episode of the BHA Podcast & Blast. As we enter the season of giving thanks, of family in a time of social distancing, of reading good books by the fire, we hope you enjoy this wide ranging conversation, a love letter to writing and partnerships and the West.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 133: BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning

For Americans who live or venture west of the Mississippi River or north to Alaska, no public lands are more important, more abundant or more accessible than those managed by the Bureau of Land Management. We are talking about 247.3 million acres of public land (70 million of them in Alaska). In the Lower 48, this means elk hunting in the Missouri Breaks of Montana, Wyoming’s best pronghorn and mule deer country, quail hunting in the borderlands of New Mexico, and black bear or even bison hunting in the high desert mountains of Utah. The BLM manages the National Conservation Lands system, which includes millions of acres of America’s finest hiking, camping, wandering, canyoneering, rafting and access to rivers. The agency administers 18,000 grazing permits and is responsible for 700 million subsurface acres of publicly owned minerals. If it seems like an impossible task…well, sometimes it is. Today on the podcast we talk with BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning about the present and future of these lands – and how we can create a future in which politics is no longer the major obstacle to keeping these irreplaceable lands in public hands.    

It is 80 miles or so by boat down the intensely braided and ever-changing Yukon River to the village of Fort Yukon, Alaska (at the confluence of the Yukon and the Porcupine), where Hal meets Walter Peter, a Gwich’inhunter, trapper and fisherman – provider for his family and elders and others, taking meat and fish and whatever else the earth will give, eight miles above the Arctic Circle. Their conversation ranges from Native concerns over fish and wildlife management to climate change and opening the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – the birthing ground for the caribou herds on which the Gwich’in have depended for thousands of years.

Join Hal and BHA North American Board Member and CEO of the Orianne Society Dr. Chris Jenkins for a fascinating conversation about everything from public lands and local hunting and food to Dr. Jenkins' specialty: venomous snakes. 

An episode you don't want to miss!

Wilderness meets Modern Society -- Seth Kantner Part II

Alaska’s Seth Kantner is back with us, as promised, for part two.

Seth was born in a sod igloo on the Kobuk River in the 1960s and has been hunting, trapping, fishing, and making a life on the land there ever since. He is the author of the novel Ordinary Wolves, considered one of the most powerful, gritty, and true-to-life Alaska books ever written. His non-fiction books, Shopping for Porcupine, Swallowed by the Great Land, and A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou, illustrated with the photos that have made him a world-renowned wildlife photographer, chronicle a life, a people and a landscape tangled in the conflict between the oldest powers of nature, wildlife and wilderness and the storm of changes wrought by the modern Anthropocene. Through it all, he’s maintained his profound sense of wonder, and his equally profound sense of humor. He even found time to write a children’s book (Pup and Pokey) about the mishaps and adventures of a wolf pup and a porcupine surviving on the tundra.

Join us for a freeform conversation with one of the most unique voices of our time.

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Follow us:

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

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BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 147: Ted Koch on the Lesser Prairie Chicken and Grasslands Conservation

Will we act now to save America’s iconic grasslands? The southern population of the lesser prairie chicken has been listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as endangered, a listing that will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the fate of this gamebird and its habitat on the southern Great Plains. But this conversation with Ted Koch, a former endangered species biologist, executive director of the North American Grouse Partnership, and chair of BHA’s North American board of directors, is not just about lesser prairie chickens; it is about a resounding failure in conservation and an opportunity to forge a new path to honor and protect America’s grasslands and all their attendant species. As goes the lesser prairie chicken so goes the American grassland ecosystem, and there is absolutely no reason to accept the loss of either one.

Learn more about Backcountry Hunters and Anglers: www.backcountryhunters.org/

Montana-based multimedia journalist and Outside magazine correspondent Elliott Woods served as a soldier in Iraq and was an embedded reporter in Afghanistan, where he won a National Magazine Award for his work. His film about elk hunting in the Durfee Hills of Montana – a parcel of public land completely blocked by private land held by the billionaire Wilks brothers – was released in 2017. This podcast was recorded along the Flathead River.

Woniya Dawn Thibeault, winner of Alone: Frozen, author of Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey  

In 2019, primitive skills instructor and master hide-tanner Woniya Dawn Thibeault was selected for the Alone Season Six challenge. She and nine other contestants were dropped off along the East Arm of the Great Slave Lake, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, in late fall, with the arctic winter closing in. It was a grim and unforgiving landscape unlike anything she’d ever encountered or even imagined. Her life there became a slow-moving race with starvation and brutal cold, fishing, eating grubs and running snares, perfecting her shelter and learning, learning, to listen to the earth for whatever it might offer her. Thibeault survived 73 days, becoming the second-to-last contestant, drawing on every reserve of tenacity and skill to meet the challenges of each day. Gaunt, near physical collapse and fifty pounds lighter, she tapped out and returned home to California. Her convalescence took months, and she re-entered her life an entirely changed person.

And then she did it again.   

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Enter the MeatEater Experience Sweepstakes: https://go.bhafundraising.org/meateatersweeps24/Campaign/Details

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 135: Rue Mapp, founder and CEO, Outdoor Afro

Rue Mapp transformed her kitchen table blog into a national nature business and movement. Today, Mapp is founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro. For more than a decade, the nonprofit has continued to celebrate and inspire Black connections and leadership in nature across the United States. Mapp also is an award-winning and inspirational leader, speaker, public lands champion and author. Her first national book, Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors, will be released in the fall. Mapp is a National Geographic 2019 fellow, Heinz Awards honoree and National Wildlife Federation communication award recipient as well. Her work has earned international media attention from Oprah Winfrey, The New York Times, Good Morning America, NPR, NBC’s TODAY, Forbes and MeatEater. Be inspired by her wide-ranging conversation with Hal Herring, and follow her adventures @RueMapp.

The bitter tide of privatizing public lands and waters is rising fast across America. Only the actions of quietly heroic citizens can stop it.

Nobody who hunted and fished the Cutoff wanted to tell the world about it. The Cutoff is also known as Creslenn Lake, a twelve-mile stretch of what used to be the Trinity River (it was “cut off” by a long-ago flood control project) between Navarro and Henderson Counties about an hour and half south of Dallas, Texas. The Cutoff has been a locals’ top destination for crappie fishing, duck hunting, jug lining and just enjoying this wild corner of Texas, through multiple generations (check out the Save the Cutoff Facebook page for the comments).  Nobody dreamed that one day, a local landowner would simply declare the miles of public water his own fiefdom, hiring guards, closing roads, building illegal fences and excavating -- also illegally -- thousands of yards of dirt to block any hope of access. This is a David versus Goliath story, a battle fought on behalf of us all, by a very small band of hardworking rural Texans who simply will not lay down and take it.

Learn more:

https://www.backcountryhunters.org/local_outdoorsmen_rally_to_save_the_cutoff

https://www.facebook.com/p/Save-the-cut-off-100078227846990/

https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/east-texas-cutoff-trinity-river-land-dispute/

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Follow us:

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

TikTok: @backcountryhunters

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 130: BHA’s Armed Forces Initiative: Honoring and serving those who serve.

“Public lands are probably not the reason you would list for joining the Army or the Marines, but they’re the key piece of what makes America the greatest country out there,” says Trevor Hubbs, BHA’s Armed Forces Initiative coordinator. BHA recognizes that military members are a key constituency when it comes to the defense of our wild public lands and waters. The Armed Forces Initiative, or AFI, is booming. From Ft. Bragg to Camp Pendleton and everywhere in between, active duty military members and veterans are working together with local BHA chapters to get our fighting men and women out onto public lands and waters, teach hunting and fieldcraft skills, and hunt and fish, acknowledging that nobody gets service members like others who have served. Join us as Hal interviews Hubbs, along with AFI Liaison Leader Ryan Burkert and AFI Installation Leader Andy Ruszkiewicz. Learn about the mission, challenges and successes the AFI has seen during its first year-plus of existence and hear stories from the individuals who are playing a new and critical role in engaging military members in the conservation of our shared lands and waters.

Hal Herring talks with Randy Newberg, Land Tawney, and Mike Schoby from this spring’s Rendezvous 2017 in front of a live audience. The fellas discuss outdoor writing, the Smith River mine, hunting as participants, the vast diversity of our public lands, hunting internationally, that one place you’d hunt anywhere in the world, audience questions, and more.

Join Hal and Florida archeologist Jeffrey Shanks for a lost tale of British Marines and Jamaican privateers, American maroons, Creek Indian warriors, rogue Choctaws, religious prophets, and the bloody and tenacious struggle for freedom.

The Apalachicola National Forest in Florida’s Panhandle holds some of the most remote swampland wilderness in the US, forbidding blackwater mazes of cypress and black gum and tupelo, whining with biting and stinging insects, the natural home of alligator and cottonmouth, redbreast bream and bass.  It also holds some of the most fascinating and complex history in America.

On the far western edge of north Florida’s Apalachicola National Forest, there is a place called Prospect Bluff, a slight rise in the land that overlooks a channel of the mighty Apalachicola River itself. It’s the site of Fort Gadsden, a modest construction that played a small role during the First Seminole War, and then was abandoned during the American Civil War. 

In 2018, Hurricane Micheal, a Category Five storm, wreaked havoc on the Panhandle and on the Apalachicola National Forest. On Prospect Bluff, massive oak trees, three hundred years old and more, were uprooted. Forest Service and National Park Service archeologists surveying the damage to the site found curious artifacts in the excavations left by the roots of the toppled trees. At some point, lots of human beings had lived here, and they had built a powerful fortification. They had farmed and traded and been well-prepared for war, which did indeed come to them. The story that came to light is one of the most complicated and fascinating episodes in American history, with echoes and ripples out as far as the Bahamas, Trinidad, Sierra Leone and Nova Scotia, where the descendants of the men and women who fought and died at Prospect Bluff are living right now.

Host of BHA’s Backcountry College YouTube series, Clay Hayes is a traditional bowhunter, wildlife biologist, wilderness skills instructor, master bowyer, filmmaker and family man who splits his time between a homestead in the mountains of Idaho and the piney woods and swamp country of the Florida Panhandle where he was born and raised. Clay is also the winner of Alone Season 8, the reality TV survival series, where he survived for 74 days along the shoreline of Chilko Lake in British Columbia using a small selection of tools, his bow, the teachings of the great Stoic philosophers, and a combination of a little luck and lot of pure will.

Hal goes to Washington, D.C., with Land Tawney to hunt up Land’s sister Whitney, who has worked for Ducks Unlimited for seven years. More importantly, Whitney has just added a wild-eyed new conservation and hunting legend to the family line: a baby named Henry Philip who joins the group briefly in this ferociously wide ranging conversation about roots, family, waterfowl and elk – and making sure that what we love the most is around for the next generation.  

One of America’s great outdoor writers, Don Thomas has hunted, fished and explored the world over – including Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Siberia and the South Pacific – while chronicling his adventures in 20 books and hundreds of magazine articles. Don spent a career as a physician in rural Montana and Alaska (while also working as a commercial fisherman, bush pilot and guide) and now writes full time; current roles include co-editor of Traditional Bowhunter and editor at large for Retriever Journal, among others. Sit back and enjoy this conversation between two great storytellers as Don talks trad bowhunting for sheep in the Brooks Range of Alaska, scouting in Africa with Kalahari Bushmen, the ongoing fight for public access, and why he votes public lands and waters.

The decline in the numbers of American hunters and anglers is not just bad news for our connections to the natural world and for our heritage. Because the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation is based on the robust sale of hunting and fishing licenses, the decline is hitting us all right where it hurts most: in funding for habitat projects, public lands management, restoration,  scientific research, access, and on and on. What is the answer? Hal goes to the primary sources: Samantha Pedder of the Council to Advance Hunting and the Shooting Sports, Mark Norquist of Modern Carnivore, and BHA’s own Trey Curtiss, who runs BHA’s highly successful Hunting for Sustainability program.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 132, Corner Crossing in Wyoming with Ryan Callaghan, Liz Lynch and Jared Oakleaf

Most of us have been following the case: four hunters from Missouri who used a homemade ladder to cross from one section of public land to the next without setting foot on private land…and the hard-fought court cases that ensued in Carbon County, Wyoming. It’s a case that may define public access to public lands for decades to come. Yet it is more than that. It’s about the resurgence of privatization of public assets in America, a harsh echo from the Gilded Age. It’s a reminder that plutocracy never sleeps, that the public trust is never truly safe and that, as Frederick Douglass said best, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Come listen to this discussion, recorded live at BHA’s 11th annual North American Rendezvous with MeatEater’s Ryan Callaghan and Liz Lynch and Jared Oakleaf of the Wyoming chapter of BHA: It’s a deep dive into the Wyoming corner crossing case, 200 years in the making. It’s a story of old range wars, land giveaways and ancient doctrines of law. Explore with us the possibilities that “bruising someone’s airspace with the points of one’s hips or shoulders” can be an offense worthy of full-bore prosecution…at least in the eyes of some folks.

Coho salmon habitat, wetlands conservation, the removal of abandoned fences that kill hundreds of migrating mule deer, pronghorn and elk every year. Marine Corps helicopters and bighorn sheep, fish counts, bowfishing for alligator gar, restoring native plants on burned-over public lands. A ton of good work is getting done on our public lands and waters, and people are having a blast doing it. This is the reality of BHA’s hands-on conservation: projects done by real people; sweat, dust, sunshine and rain; like-minded folks coming together, seeing new country and leaving it quantifiably better than we found it. Hal joins Britt Parker, BHA’s habitat stewardship coordinator in Colorado, and Devon O’Dea, BHA California coordinator, to talk about the latest projects, check out the big future, and learn how you can get involved. 

Come with us to Birmingham, Alabama, to meet Nelson Brooke, the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, whose life is spent on the vast arterial network of some of central Alabama’s most beautiful – and imperiled – rivers and streams.

From his most recent book Go Wild: Free Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization, back to his rough-and-tumble newspaper days covering the scorched-earth timber industry of the 1980s, Richard Manning is the go-to investigative journalist for pivotal books about everything from the American prairie to the future of global agriculture. He's a lifelong hunter, a fisherman, the author of nine books and dozens of powerful magazine stories, and one of America's most innovative thinkers and writers.

 Hal Herring talks with Steven Rinella, author, hunter, and host of the television show MeatEater. 

The two outdoor writers discuss squid jigging, 9/11, fishing in the Lake Huron, trapping in Michigan, heading West, fish before dams, the recovery of multiple species, short-sighted conservation, what came before us, hunting as tangible goods, outdoor recreation, people as watermelons, unspoiled places, hunting in the jungle, native wildlife vs non-native wildlife, and much more. 

Hal Herring talks with Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and legendary outdoorsman, at the 2018 BHA North American Rendezvous in Boise, Idaho.

They discuss Chouinard's roots, hunting jackrabbits with goshawks, replacing stuff with knowledge, a business borne of necessity, Chouinard's climbing crew, rugby shirts and corduroy pants, the Patagonia method of management, the cure for depression, national monuments, an agricultural revolution and the joys of simplicity.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 138: Mississippi forester Alex Harvey

Come with Hal to southern Mississippi to talk with Alex Harvey, a registered professional forester in Mississippi and Alabama and a land management consultant, wildlife biologist and multi-generational conservationist, hunter and fisherman. Harvey is carrying on the outdoor traditions passed on to him from generations of his family, ranging from herbalism and foraging to rabbit, squirrel and deer hunting, cattle ranching, gardening, cooking and living a full and thriving life in the Southern outdoors. Alex is also the founder of Legacy Land Management, “forestry from the ground up,” helping private landowners, many of them Black, make the most of their properties for wildlife, timber and ecological resilience. 

Episode 191 with Jared Sullivan, former editor of Field and Stream and Men’s Journal, on his new book, Valley So Low, about the 2008 coal ash disaster near Kingston, Tennessee, its catastrophic aftermath on the health of those who cleaned it up, and holding our federal agencies accountable.

In 2019, Tennessee native and former Field and Stream editor Jared Sullivan reported on the aftermath of massive coal ash spill from the TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant. That spill- at 1.1 billion gallons, the largest coal ash spill so far in history -  flooded homes, obliterated a portion of the Emory River and sent poisons into the main Clinch River. It never should have happened- the coal ash pit was unlined, its dam was absurdly weak, the toxic ash should never have been stored there in the first place. But the real tragedy went far beyond the ruin of the rivers and lands.  

The writing of the story introduced Jared to the many hardworking Tennesseans who worked in the multi-year effort to clean up the spill, and who were poisoned by the mercury, radium, arsenic and other heavy metals and chemicals present on the jobsite.

Jared’s new book Valley So Low is a legal thriller about a David vs. Goliath fight for justice, about federal agencies, lies, and lack of accountability, and the true human cost of treating our world like a dumping ground.

Any opinions expressed within this podcast do not necessarily represent those of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers.

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 137: Marine Veteran and Storyteller Russell Worth Parker

Russell Worth Parker, known as Worth, is a retired Marine and a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. After 27 years in the Corps, he is home in Wilmington, North Carolina, hunting and fishing and being a husband and father – and has, as he puts it, “fallen backwards into a writing career.” Parker’s work has been published in The New York Times, Garden & Gun, The Bitter Southerner, Backcountry Journal, Shooting Sportsman, Salt Magazine and military websites such as SOFLETE.com. Join us for a full-tilt conversation that ranges from BHA’s Armed Forces Initiative to the Drive-by Truckers, Cormac McCarthy, veterans hunting Texas turkeys, traumatic brain injury and war. We also discuss the 80s classic film Red Dawn.

Jenna Rozelle lives in southern Maine, where she teaches classes on wild foods, forages, hunts, fishes and chronicles an existence spent close to the land. For her, hunting and fishing go hand in hand with foraging and land stewardship. A board member of the New England chapter of BHA and self described late-onset hunter, Rozelle tells Hal the story of her long and winding road to a gratifying relationship with harvesting wild creatures.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 155: Montana Fishing Guide and Writer Chris Dombrowski

Chris Dombrowski is a professional fishing guide of over two decades on the rivers of Montana, an acclaimed poet and the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Alluring Fish, which is about, among many other things, the pursuit of bonefish in the Bahamas. Chris’ latest book is The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water, which manages to be a deeply honest memoir, a celebration of the joys and terrors of family, and a love letter to the landscape and rivers of the American West, all at the same time. Join Hal and Chris for an intense conversation about fishing, life and literature, recorded live at the 2023 BHA North American Rendezvous.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 158: Hunting at American Prairie

American Prairie is 455,840 sprawling acres of Montana grasslands and breaks that represents one of the largest expansions of publicly accessible hunting opportunities in the West— and one of America’s largest public/private land conservation projects. A longer story deserves to be told about American Prairie – how their work began and also what their plans for the future hold. This discussion features AP’s Director of Public Access & Recreation Mike Quist Kautz and Director of Bison Restoration Scott Heidebrink, who are here to talk history, bison, cattle, grasslands, watersheds, and hunting and the logistics of getting 1000 pounds of meat and 150 pounds of hide out of the field. Listeners who want to apply for a bison permit on AP lands, or who might be interested in the Block Management Program hunting access opportunities on AP lands, won’t want to miss this conversation, recorded at AP headquarters in Montana.

Join Hal Herring and Mississippi State University environmental history professor and author of My Work is that of Conservation, An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver Mark Hersey for a fantastic American conservation story that has never been more relevant than it is right now. 

If you finished seventh grade in an American public school, you learned about George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery in Missouri and grew up to be one of America’s leading scientists and agronomists, working from his laboratory at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Carver was a friend and advisor to U.S. presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, and sought out as counsel by some of the best minds in agriculture across the world.    

Carver was also one of America’s pioneers of the science of ecology and a cutting-edge conservationist who advocated for the restoration of whitetail deer, quail and fisheries, long before such ideas became mainstream. His conservation vision was forged in the fire of his own history and in his life’s work in Alabama’s post-slavery Black Belt and along the Fall Line, known then as “the most destroyed land in all of the South” -- a place where poverty, injustice and hunger were closely tied to the abuse and collapse of the systems of the earth.

Don't miss Hal's fascinating conversation with Mark Hersey.

James Pogue spent two years as an embedded journalist with the American militia movement. He was at the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge with Ammon and Ryan Bundy, an experience that he recounts in his 2018 book, Chosen Country. During his time with the Bundys and other militia, he became deeply immersed in the debates over the public lands of the American West. James is an international conflict journalist and a contributing writer at Harper’s Magazine. He also has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, The New Republic and Vice. Check out Hal’s and James’ no-holds-barred conversation infused with the history and politics of American public lands and waters.

The Wilderness Act was passed by Congress in 1964, and has protected over 109 million acres of American public lands (53% of them in Alaska) since then. But the idea was born in 1924, with the vision of none other than Aldo Leopold, who was then the Supervisor of the Carson National Forest, and had spent almost fifteen years working on and exploring the wild public lands of New Mexico. Leopold argued that among the resources the Forest Service was mandated to safeguard for the American people were open spaces for hunting, fishing and real adventure. He argued, eloquently, that these values existed in abundance on the unpeopled lands of the Gila National Forest, that they were becoming more and more rare across America, and that the US Forest Service could choose to protect them for future generations.

This year, we celebrate the 100^th Anniversary of the Gila Wilderness. The Gila was America’s first public lands’ wilderness, and the ideas and arguments that created it provided the template for all that we understand as federally designated wilderness today.  How did this come to be? Join us- Hal, Karl Malcolm, US Forest Service ecologist, hunter and wanderer of the Gila, and Curt Meine, conservation biologist and author of Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, and Senior Fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation.  

A wilderness area, Leopold wrote, was “a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks' pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man.”

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Enter the MeatEater Experience Sweepstakes: https://go.bhafundraising.org/meateatersweeps24/Campaign/Details

BHA Podcast & Blast, Bonus Ep. 131, Sen. Jon Tester and the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act

To those outside of Montana, the Blackfoot River is the “Big Blackfoot” featured in Norman Maclean’s lyrical and tragic novel A River Runs Through It. For Montanans and generations of visitors, the Blackfoot is a state of being all its own, a big rowdy river of native cutthroats and bull trout, its waters born of both high-altitude wilderness snows and the tannin-stained, unfathomably rich chain of wetlands and lakes of the Clearwater drainage. It is a huge, complex and vibrant watershed, and as healthy as it is now, it was not always this way. Join us for an interview with Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester on why he is a die-hard supporter of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act, supported by three-quarters of Montanans – hunters, anglers, bikers, loggers, ranchers and others – and which will guide the management and ensure the long-term health of this irreplaceable part of our public lands and waters legacy.

Learn more and take action in support of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act right now. 

Podcast & Blast: Episode 149, Conservation in the 118th Congress with the BHA Policy Crew

As a wise man once said, You may not be interested in war, but when the times comes, war will certainly be interested in you. The same can be said about Congress. This week's episode with BHA's John Gale and Kaden McArthur takes us to Washington, D.C., with an exploration of the 118th Congress, where the hottest issues pertaining to our hunting and fishing and the conservation that makes it possible will be on the floor, in the offices, buried in reams of obscure paperwork and clouded by political shenanigans….John and Kaden clear the smoke, slash the fat, and let us all know what is going on, what is at stake, and who the players are as we make our way through 2023. We Americans consent to be governed, and this is a must-listen conversation about what we are consenting to, what we support and what we must resist.  

Iowa-based Phil Bourjaily is America’s shotgunner and one of North America’s foremost experts on shotguns and shooting. In addition to writing a monthly column – for nearly three decades – for Field & Stream, where he is shotguns editor, Phil has authored Field & Stream’s The Total Gun Manual (with fellow firearms writer David Petzal), Shotgun Guide, and other books. But he is also a writer’s writer, a dedicated coach of youth trap and skeet teams, and a hunter who spends countless days chasing upland birds every fall, waterfowl every winter, and Midwestern turkeys every spring. Listen to a conversation between two passionate shooters and masters of their crafts.

The American outdoor recreation industry is the largest industry on the planet – to the tune of $887 billion dollars annually – that until recently has not demanded political representation for its interests. And what are those interests? Clean water, public lands, public access, wildlife habitat, trails, sustainably managed lands and waters – the same elements that make for a strong, healthy and ecologically resilient nation, one worthy of the dreams of our founders and the hopes of our own children. This podcast is the first to bring together three heads of the new offices of outdoor recreation in Montana (Rachel VandeVoort), Wyoming (Dave Glenn) and Oregon (CailinO’Brien-Feeney).

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 148: Drew Phipps and the Restoration of the Candy Darter

America’s Midwestern rivers – the Elk, the Kanawha, the Ohio and all their vast systems of arterial tributaries – are home to a mind-boggling array of some of the most bizarre creatures on this planet. Among them, the candy darter, a tiny fish of such astounding beauty that its very existence begs questions about human perception, evolution and aesthetics: Why would a fish look like this? Why is it so beautiful? Join us for the return of one of the Podcast & Blast’s most popular guests, Drew Phipps of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Fish Hatchery in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where a successful program to restore the candy darter to its original riverine habitats is bearing fruit. Listen to the end for a bonus tale of a junk store “swan gun” brought back to life and into the turkey woods…a mammoth 10-gauge black powder market hunting relic, best test fired with duct-tape, prayers and a 20-foot piece of paracord while hiding behind a block wall. Do not try this at home or anywhere else.

Learn more about Backcountry Hunters and Anglers: www.backcountryhunters.org/

The Montana chapter of BHA works hard to uphold the gold standard in public hunting opportunities, with one of the longest elk and mule deer hunting seasons in the U.S., a wealth of public land, and one of the most innovative private land access programs ever devised. But the winds of change are howling. MT BHA fought back this legislative session against efforts to commercialize and privatize our public wildlife. BHA members testified before committees, published op-eds and mobilized more than 2,500 resident sportsmen and women to the tune of 57,942 letters sent to Montana's elected officials. Yet the war is far from over. Many of the same bad ideas are back in front of Montana's Fish & Wildlife Commission. Elk numbers are booming, hunting pressure on public lands is skyrocketing, and landownership patterns are changing, with fewer small-scale ranches and more vast “amenity ranches” – many of them purchased specifically for hunting and outfitting that emphatically excludes the public hunter. What is happening? Where are we going? What does this mean, not just for Montana but for the future of hunting in the fast-growing and fast-changing West? Andrew McKean and Randy Newberg join us for a spirited and sobering look at the place where politics and privatization meet the future of our hunting – and how we might affect that future if we have the knowledge and the courage to act. 

Outdoor writer and BHA Podcast & Blast host Hal Herring talks with Chris Hunt, Brett Prettyman, and Mark Taylor of Trout Unlimited. 

They talk the adventures they've had, the areas they work in, fly fishing blackwater swamps, grizzlies and cutthroats in Yellowstone, bucket biology, dead bodies on the Blue Ridge Parkway, whiskey & fly fishing culture, restoring habitat for native brook trout, the history of shad, dams and city ponds, the Clean Water Act and the myths around it, and much more. 

Everybody knows that wildlife in the United States is owned by all of us. Elk, deer and other species are held in the public trust, period. But what happens when publicly owned big game is commercialized – and when hunting opportunity for public wildlife is sold to the highest bidder? What happens when so-called “private land” licenses can be used on public land? Some Western states are grappling with those questions now, but New Mexico public land elk hunters have been living under these conditions for years. Hal takes a deep dive into the byzantine regulations of elk hunting in New Mexico with three local hunters – Joel Gay with NM BHA and Jesse Deubel and Ray Trejo with the New Mexico Wildlife Federation – including what lies ahead for New Mexico and what other states should consider before going down the same road. Tune in for this cautionary tale about the commercialization of a valuable public resource: elk. 

0:01:52 Intro
0:04:01 Background
0:14:45 Anti Donation Clause
0:18:20 IPRA and Obfuscation
0:20:13 Responsibility to NM Residents
0:24:28 The restoration paid for by public
0:27:35 High Quality of NM hunting
0:31:31 The low draw odds for the public
0:35:57 History of the draw odds and guide set-asides
0:44:11 Marketing property with Landowner Tags
0:46:04 Privatization of Public Resource
0:49:21 NM Depredation Law
0:52:33 NM Depredation Fund
0:55:29 Conservation is not convenient
0:55:59 The NM draw system is privatized, complex and obscure
1:01:03 Entitlements and Politics
1:02:52 What would a solution look like?
1:12:33 What can people do?
1:16:32 NM Legislative Finance Committee Audit
1:20:37 RAWA and NM Landowner Tag Funding
1:24:04 NM Game Commission Politics
1:32:34 NM 2021 Hunting Plans

Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Representative Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) are co-sponsoring The ‘Public Lands in Public Hands Act” which would ban the sale or transfer of most public lands managed by the Department of the Interior or the Department of Agriculture (which includes the vast majority of federal public lands – Bureau of Land Management is under Interior and the National Forests are under Agriculture).

The bill also requires Congressional approval for disposals of publicly accessible federal land tracts over 300 acres and for public land tracts over five acres if accessible via a public waterway.

Are we witnessing the beginning of a bipartisan consensus on the value of our federal public lands? What motivated these two Western Congressmen to draft and sponsor this bill? Does it have a chance to become law?  Join us for the answers to these questions and a lot more.

Read the bill here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12Z21FJ6XLZwyma9qaDajehFH1luY2xxa/view

Read the press release from New Mexico Representative Gabe Vasquez: https://vasquez.house.gov/media/press-releases/vasquez-introduces-bipartisan-public-lands-public-hands-act

Read the press release from Montana Rep. Zinke: https://zinke.house.gov/media/press-releases/zinke-introduces-bipartisan-public-lands-public-hands-act

Durrell Smith is a bird dog trainer, artist, podcaster and writer from Georgia. He founded the Minority Outdoor Alliance, a pioneering voice in connecting Blacks and others in the hunting community. “He lives what he speaks,” as Hal says of Durrell, who is also a bobwhite quail hunting fanatic, guiding and chasing birds largely on public lands. Through his work and pursuits, he is carrying on an incredible lineage of Southern quail hunting and dog training, giving voice to the deeply enmeshed and influential role of Blacks in Southern outdoor traditions. Listen as Hal and Durrell wander through the South, discuss Southern art and sporting culture, and consider the crucial role of diverse participants in keeping our outdoor heritage healthy and relevant.

Corey is the perfect match for the world’s leading hunting gear company (and Podcast & Blast sponsor): a hunter with both bow and rifle, angler with whatever gear is at hand, obsessed rock and ice climber, ski mountaineer and wanderer of the high places from the Adirondacks of New York state to the wildest and most windswept of the wild Rockies. Corey talks about how surviving in Montana led him to one of the toughest and most quintessential Western jobs: setting chokers, or “hooking” for a logging crew where the real value of bombproof, four-season gear became utterly clear to him.

Jess McGlothlin is a wanderer, paddleboarding on the jungle whitewater of the Peruvian Amazon, fly-fishing lost atolls in the South Pacific or watching the rivers of the taiga unfold beneath the rotors of a battered vintage Russian helicopter. She started her own company at age 13, was a professional equestrian in Sweden, lasted exactly four days of college, and has been weathering the travel bans of the pandemic by photographing and documenting the protests and riots here in the U.S. She is the sole proprietor and lone employee of Jess McGlothlin Media, an outdoor industry powerhouse. Listen to her conversation with Hal and be inspired to plan your next adventure.

Nathan “Shags” McLeod is the hunting- and fishing-est award-winning radio DJ you’ll ever meet and has spent the past 15 years building a huge audience from his base in central Missouri. His fans come for his classic rock and roll and for his no-holds-barred, straight-from-the-heart reporting on conservation and the hunting and fishing that conservation makes possible. Shags can catch fish and play music with the very best of them; unlike most of the best of them, he also can talk firsthand alien encounters and passages through dimensions of space and time.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 141: Public Lands Journalist Nate Schweber

A flamboyant Western politician, yelling hatred for the federal government, accusing anyone who questioned him of being a “communist,” secretly planning a takeover and selloff of 230 million acres of public land to his cronies. Sounds like today, yes? Well, it was 1947, and it almost worked. Montana-born, New York City-seasoned reporter and writer Nate Schweber uncovers the whole sordid, instructive history in his wild ride of a book, This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild, a chronicle of the life of one man, DeVoto, the greatest Western historian who ever lived, and his wife, Avis,  genius editor, publisher, devoted friend and promoter of the chef Julia Child, who stood up against some of the most powerful and corrupt forces of their time. And, with the help of the American people, they won. 

Jack Rudloe is one of the orneriest watermen on the Florida Gulf Coast, a time- and sun-honed fighter for clean water, intact forests and wetlands, and the myriad salt and freshwater life that depends upon it all. He is a world-renowned scientist and researcher, a commercial harvester of sea life, an unparalleled educator and the author of nine books and hundreds of articles. He and his wife Anne founded Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in the fishing town of Panacea in 1980. Hal and Jack talk about what it is like to have a inhabitant’s perspective on the saltwater that spans over 60 years, the connections between the blackwater swamps, rivers and ephemeral wetlands of the inlands to the health of the Gulf, alligators eating dogs, and what it costs a man and his wife and family and business to stand tall and speak out against the towering wall of powers that want to dismantle the Gulf Coast and the natural systems that make it one of the richest fisheries in the world.

Hunter, writer, thinker, scientist and wildlife expert, Shane Mahoney of Newfoundland is the foremost and most powerful voice of our time for hunting-based conservation and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Come and sit in on a conversation between two die-hard and lifelong hunter-conservationists for whom hunting and a life outdoors is as natural, and as necessary, as breathing.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert is petitioning the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop a new, state-specific Roadless Rule that would impact 4 million acres of National Forest lands in Utah. Does anybody in Utah want to protect roadless lands, which offer some of the world’s best backcountry hunting, hiking, fishing, skiing; some of the world’s most scenic places; and some of our most valuable fish and wildlife habitat? Yes, they do. Two of them are Utah BHA board member Andrew Wike, a hunter, climber and ski mountaineer based in Salt Lake City, and Andrew Rasmussen, field coordinator with Trout Unlimited, who lives in Logan. Surprises abound in this podcast, as well as a window into Utah’s rather unique politics.   

Hal Herring talks with David Ledford, president and CEO of the Appalachian Wildlife Foundation. 

They discuss Ledford's history as a biologist, the accidental wildlife boom on reclaimed mines, how the private sector works with conservation, tracking birds with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Kentucky's wildlife success story, the differences between mountain lions and bobcats, diversifying the future of coal country, fundraising for the Appalachian Wildlife Center and more. 

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), a hunter, angler, longtime conservation champion and BHA member, has introduced legislation known as the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (S. 2372). This bipartisan bill would dedicate nearly $1.4 billion annually to fund projects by state and tribal fish and wildlife agencies that benefit both game and non-game species. In partnership with a broad coalition of organizations, businesses and fish and wildlife management agencies that make up the Alliance for America’s Fish & Wildlife, BHA is working to advance this legislation, the product of decades of hard work by devoted sportsmen and women, conservationists and business leaders. In this special episode of the Podcast & Blast, Hal talks with Sen. Heinrich about why hunters and anglers have a major stake in the conservation of habitat relied upon by a range of fish and wildlife species. Learn more and take action in support of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.  

Jim Heffelfinger, Arizona Game and Fish Wildlife Science Co-ordinator, Chairman of the Mule Deer Working Group, wildlife conservation professional, author of Deer of the Southwest.

Coming at you live from the 2024 Mule Deer Expo in Salt Lake City, Hal catches up with one of America’s rockstars of wildlife conservation and research, Arizona’s Jim Heffelfinger. The conversation roams and wanders, from mule deer and blacktails, habitat and CWD, to Mexican wolves and hunting javelina, with a side trip into the mystique and glory of the Colt 1911. If you have half as much fun listening to it as Jim and Hal had recording it, this episode will rank among the best ever.

Also, this episode celebrates the publication of the comprehensive textbook, Ecology and Management of Blacktailed and Mule Deer of North America, which Jim co-edited. Hal and Jim forgot to talk about the book, but it is a crucial resource for anyone interested in the current state and likely future of our mule deer and blacktails.

Based out of Anchorage, Alaska, Heather's Choice is a backpacking food startup company dedicated to making delicious, ultralight, nutrient-dense meals and snacks for adventurers. Heather Kelly is an avid hunter, angler, backpacker and outdoor adventurer. Kelly launched Heather’s Choice Meals for Adventuring in 2014 to combine her love of sports nutrition and backcountry pack-rafting. Her emphasis has always been on high-quality, whole foods nutrition. With signature dishes such as smoked sockeye salmon chowder and blueberry buckwheat breakfast, Heather’s Choice has gained recognition as a healthy, delicious, portable food option for the backcountry.

Colorado’s state trust lands have been held in an iron fist by some of the most anti-public access policies and regulations found anywhere in the Western states. The battle has been simmering for decades: Clearly, Coloradoans were demanding change. Since 2012, BHA’s Colorado chapter has been leading the battle for increased access … and Colorado Parks and Wildlife responded, announcing last summer the opening of 500,000 acres of state trust lands for fishing and hunting over the next three years. Hal travels to Denver for a deep dive into these issues and questions with BHA State Policy Director (and obsessive waterfowler) Tim Brass and Liz Rose, a hunter, scholar and researcher who has helped BHA uncover the paths that can lead us to a better future for all outdoors people across the nation.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 144: Author and Historian Douglas Brinkley

Douglas Brinkley is the preeminent scholar and writer on the history of America’s public lands and conservation movement. Among his seven bestselling books of history are Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (2010) and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America (2016). His new book in this series, Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, will be available before Dec. 1, 2022. Brinkley, who is a professor at Rice University in Texas, is also the author of numerous books on the American presidency, the editor of Ronald Reagan’s papers, a Jack Kerouac scholar, and the literary executor for gonzo journalist and writer Hunter F. Thompson. Listen and enjoy as Hal takes a deep dive with Mr. Brinkley as together they consider the past, present and future of “the public estate of the American people.”

Tony Jones, host of the Reverend Hunter podcast, and author of The God of Wild Places: Rediscovering the Divine in the Untamed Outdoors and eleven other books, outdoor writer, hunting mentor, guide in the Boundary Waters, father of three, hunter, fisherman, seeker.

When Tony Jones was growing up, all he ever wanted was to know and preach the Gospel, and to one day have his own church and congregation. He accomplished that goal, beyond his wildest dreams. He was a star in the pulpit, and as a scholar, with degrees from Dartmouth, from Fuller Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from Princeton’s Theological Seminary. He wrote influential books (including The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life) and lived an orderly life of service, study, scholarship and meditation, in a quiet home with his wife and children. But life is not orderly. As Tony writes in his blistering and thought-provoking journey The God of Wild Places, we are nature, and nature is unruly, unpredictable and beautiful in its ruthlessness. Join us, for an interview and a conversation about losing faith, and finding it again, in the whirlwind of the natural world. 

More about Tony: https://reverendhunter.com/

This Thursday, Sept. 24, BHA and Patagonia are hosting an exclusive screening of Public Trust: The Fight for America’s Public Lands – just in time for National Public Lands Day. Join Hal, Public Trust director David Byars and producer Jeremy Rubingh as they discuss the years-long process of making this film, the places, the people, the adventures, mishaps and terrors, regrets and joys. This is the first BHA podcast recorded remotely – David is in south Georgia visiting family, and Jeremy is in his new home – a sailboat currently anchored in Puget Sound.  

Anthony Licata and Colin Kearns stand at the helm of the most iconic magazine titles in the outdoor industry. Anthony is the editorial director of Outdoor Life and Field & Stream where Colin serves as its editor-in-chief. In this episode Hal catches up with them in the midst of Shot Show, the day after the gang celebrated our public lands at the BHA bonfire in the Nevada desert. Join the trio as they reminisce about their adventures hunting and fishing North America’s wild landscapes, the sometimes torturous process of writing and editing, literature, authors, guns, conservation and the wealth that is our public lands and waters.

BONUS EPISODE! Here’s a special edition of the BHA Podcast & Blast, just in time for Pheasant Fest 2020! It’s guns, it’s dogs, it’s wild flushing roosters on the wind, it’s conservation and clean water and better farms…and it’s Howard Vincent, the grand leader of Pheasants Forever, laying down the history, the future and the now of American upland bird hunting.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 142: Ashley Peters, communications director, Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society

Ashley Peters grew up in rural Iowa, in a landscape of cornfields and monoculture agriculture. Looking for a wilder and wider life, she found her way to U.S. Forest Service trail jobs in the Minnesota Boundary Waters and in Alaska, to a degree in communications, and to conservation work ranging from the gator-bellowing swamps of Louisiana to the woodcock and grouse popple of the upper Midwest. Hal and Ashley talk the deep engagement and beginners' mindset of adult-onset hunting and fishing, the challenges of finding one's way to one's passions, and the swiftly-changing world of conservation, climate, wildlife diversity, and the business of somehow communicating it all clearly to a sometimes skeptical and indifferent public.

In April of 2022, Libby Tobey, Hailey Thompson and Brooke Hess skied into Marsh Creek in Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, towing their kayaks and a sled full of camping gear. The goal: trace the route of anadromous fish from the source of the Salmon River to the Pacific Ocean and advocate removing the four dams on the Lower Snake River that block that migration and are killing that river system.

78 days and 1000 miles away down the tiniest tributaries to the massive whitewater of the main rivers, through soul-killing paddling slogs in dead impoundments, portages amid highways and traffic, wind and sun, joy and tribulation, they found themselves on a spit of sand and mud at the mouth of the Columbia, drinking champagne amid wind-driven waves of salt water. Hal caught up with Libby Tobey in Idaho and with Hailey Thompson in Alaska for an account of the adventure, and a discussion of what is at stake in the debate over the fate of the lower Snake River dams.

Meet BHA Capital Region Co-Chair Samantha Flowers, BHA Pennsylvania board member Don Rank and BHA Regional Manager (and Pennsylvanian) Chris Hennessey, who are fighting the good fight to end Sunday hunting bans all across the Eastern United States.   

How does a 2013 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism find herself pulling a pulk (gear sled) on an ice fishing expedition into the frozen wilderness of the Boundary Waters of Minnesota? How does a cutting-edge multimedia journalist make a living these days while pursuing the stories and the adventures of which most of us can only dream? We ask Natalie Krebs, senior editor of Outdoor Life, these questions and discuss a lot more.

Hal Herring talks with historian and conservationist Lamar Marshall in Calloway, North Carolina. 

They discuss Lamar's work with members of the Cherokee nation to conserve the Bankhead National Forest, the Forest Service policing their own, good stewardship of the Earth, converting hardwood to loblolly pine, preserving cultural heritage on public lands, mapping historic trails in North Carolina, the importance of chestnuts, hunting and fishing in the South, homesteading, Lamar's favorite books, and much more. 

Public Lands, Wild Game Cooking, Hunting, Angling and Conservation – Live from the Texas Hill Country with Chuck Naiser, Jesse Griffiths and Riverhorse Nakadate

The Podcast and Blast has gone to Texas!

Host Hal Herring takes the Podcast & Blast on the road to the sunbaked Texas Hill Country to record a live episode at Star Hill Ranch in Bee Cave. It’s a packed house at the Texas BHA gathering for a conservation conversation fueled by extraordinary food, ice cold beer and a rip-roaring good time.

Riverhorse Nakadate is a writer, poet and musician telling the story of public lands, flyfishing and conservation from the Texas Gulf Coast to the Boundary Waters. Jessie Griffiths is a visionary wild game chef, forager, hunter and angler, restaurateur and author. Chuck Naiser is president and founder of Flatsworthy, a coalition of sometimes conflicting stakeholders committed to solving the major challenges of a booming Gulf Coast and has been a renowned fishing guide and a successful battler for conservation on the Texas coast since he took a leading and often dangerous role in the “Redfish Wars” of the late 70s. He’s as plain-spoken and passionate as ever, at a time when his wisdom and experience are needed more than ever.

Join us for a conversation with the three recent Texas BHA Public Lands and Public Waters Leadership Award recipients.

Utah files landmark lawsuit challenging federal control over most BLM land

Yes, it is to retch over. Once again, the Utah legislature is coming for America’s public lands, this time by way of a lawsuit filed against the US government to lay claim to 18.5 million acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

Utah has a new website called “Stand for Our Land” designed to support the lawsuit – it’s a slick campaign, maybe the slickest yet- and chock-full of the half-truths and outright falsehoods long devised and parroted by the generations of would-be landgrabbers before them.

Some say this is just more performance politics, another ploy to lock-in votes from a mouth-frothing base that demands raw meat, however illusory, to stay motivated.

It is not. Utah is a complicated place, and the motivations and legal mechanics of this lawsuit need to be understood by every American who loves our public lands and our freedom to experience them, and who believes that freedom should be safeguarded for the future. Know what is happening. Join Utah BHA leaders Caitlyn Curry and Perry Hall, and BHA CEO Patrick Berry, for the inside look at what is happening, what is at stake, and exactly what is coming down this road.    

“Once more into the breach!” as Henry the Fifth commended his valiant soldiers, and so must  we, defenders of public lands and our American birthright, go, yet again, and as many times as it take. 

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www.backcountryhunters.org

We hunters and anglers are often lost, these days, in a thicket of questions about public land and private land, loss of access, too much access, conservation priorities, conflicting desires and goals. One person who is forging a path through this thicket is Doug Duren, hunter-conservationist, multi-generational Driftless Area landowner in southern Wisconsin, and somewhat unlikely conservation and hunting media star. Join us for a deeply inspiring conversation about something overwhelmingly positive that is happening right now – when it matters – because, as Doug reminds us, when it comes to land, water and wildlife, “It’s not ours, it’s just our turn.”  

Join Us: Backcountry Hunters and Anglers

Journalist Jimmy Tobias started out working on backcountry trails for the US Forest Service and Montana Conservation Corps. Since then, he has become one of America’s hardest-hitting investigative reporters specializing in public lands, conservation, and the outdoors. Tobias’ story about the link between ecosystem disruption and tick-borne illnesses, “How Lyme Disease Became Unstoppable,” was published in June 2022 in The Nation. That story was the original inspiration for this interview, but Hal and Jimmy range far afield, from ticks to endangered species protection and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which promises to dismantle federal public lands and their management once and for all.  Join us.

Hal goes south to meet up with old friend and former U.S. Navy SEAL Madison Parker in the hurricane-battered backcountry of north Florida and talk about survival, spears and slingshots, pit bulls, blacksmithing, baskets, knives and traps, and that place where function becomes inseparable from art.

From ballot initiatives that mandate wolf-reintroduction or banning the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats, wildlife management decisions are increasingly being made by voters instead of biologists.

It is called “ballot biology” and it is a result of some highly motivated anti-hunting and animal rights groups reaching out to a ballooning demographic of non-hunting, often urban, voters who may be well-intentioned (“protect mountain lions and bobcats from being slaughtered!”) but who don’t know how wildlife is managed, how it was restored from near-extinction, or who pays for habitat and biologists and all the moving parts of the world’s most successful wildlife model. Only about 6 out of every 100 Colorado residents buys a hunting license- if it becomes a contest of us against them, a hot culture war decided by votes, we will lose. The wildlife will lose with us.

There is trouble ahead, and a new and formidable challenge for all of us who love hunting and wildlife. Join us for an interview with Gaspar Perricone, who is on the frontlines of this battle in Colorado, and has a plan to win it.    

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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Jessie Shallow, of Salmon, Idaho, is the partner biologist for the Mule Deer Foundation, working with state and federal agencies to restore mule deer winter range and other habitat in the wake of the last- decades’ massive range fires. Her family and personal roots are deep in the southern Idaho farmlands and wild country from the Owyhee to the Bitterroots. Jessie and Hal discuss the work they’ve done together over the past two years: This season MDF crews planted a record 196,000 sagebrush and bitterbrush seedlings on burned-over mule deer winter range and core sage grouse habitat. Join us to learn what is at stake here, what is being done, and what the future holds for this crucial conservation work.

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Hal Herring talks with Brandon Butler, Executive Director of the Conservation Federation of Missouri. 

They discuss Missouri's historic conservation ethic, Indiana's Kankakee swamp, bowhunting and Fred Bear, Brandon's place in eastern conservation and his first trip west, bringing back whitetails and turkeys, the special culture of the Ozarks, staying active in democracy and much more. 

Hal Herring talks with Mark Norquist of Modern Carnivore and Chef Lukas Leaf, both are BHA Minnesota Board Members and active volunteers in our Minnesota Chapter, and both have worked consistently on substantial issues in Minnesota's Boundary Waters. 

The trio discusses adult hunter education and the factors drawing in new hunters, the merits of wild game, venison's bad rep, foraging for mushrooms, mining the BWCA, the interconnectedness of the BWCA watershed, why dirt is important, and much more. 

Listeners to the BHA Podcast & Blast will likely know Erin Block from her brilliant short essays at MidCurrent, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Field & Stream, and TROUT magazine, where she is an editor-at-large. Some might know her books on the the art of making bamboo fly rods (The View from Coal Creek), or By a Thread: A Retrospective on Women and Fly Tying. Some might follow her Instagram, a powerfully understated immersion in foraging, wildlife and birds, hunting and fishing and gardening. Erin’s writing comes directly from the well-spring of her life, and like the chronicle of any real life, it is always about more than meets the eye.   

Hal talks with Erin from her cabin in the Colorado Rockies, about her new book of poetry  https://www.middlecreekpublishing.com/how-you-walk-alone-in-the-dark ,  the ancient art of ekphrasis, which may be finding its truest heights right now, a special old Savage shotgun and a whole lot more. 

Grab a cup of coffee and join us.