The Mick & Pat Show - Mountain Spirit with Paul Navarre Part 1

0:02 What caught my attention was not only his rounded top tan hat, and it had this beautiful beaded hat band and I went wow, there's got to be a story behind that. This medicine bag that was in my pocket was starting to glow and I felt a warmth on my leg, and so I snuck up on him and got within five yards and I could see his antler tips welcome to the Mickey Pat show. I'm Mick and I'm Pat and we have a special guest here today that has taken time to join us and record. We kind of been talking about this, since we've been talking about hunting so much recently, but we're joined by the.

0:49 If I remember correctly, paul, you were on the board for the Colorado Bowhunters Association. I did that for seven years, Mick. I was on the board of directors and I was also the DOW liaison for six of those years. So I would attend all the Wildlife Commission meetings and then write an article in the CBA magazine to inform our members what was going on at the commission meetings and how that might affect archery and hunting in Colorado. Awesome. And so yeah, paul Navarro, and what do you do now, paul? I mean, you know I'll let you kind of say, you know, like I believe you're retired right. I've been retired. I'm 84 years old.

1:29 I'll be 85 in March. I retired 22 years ago, but not from life, heck, yeah, yeah. So after high school, went in the Air Force, six years of college, got a master's degree in regional planning a lot of outdoor activities, biology, geography, geology was hired by the state of South Dakota as a regional planner. Loved South Dakota with its pheasants and its deer and its waterfowl. Came back to Ohio years later and became a sales rep for a furniture company. Did that for 20 years. Got my kids out of college, daughter married and then Tricia, my current wife of 42 years.

2:15 We moved out here to Colorado and bought a tourist lodge on Lake Granby and we did a bed and breakfast, restaurant, tavern for 10 years. Sold it two months before 9-11, stayed on the lake for a year and then moved to Fort Collins 22 years ago. I've always been very active with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and DOW back then and was attended a lot of commission meetings and know a lot of the staff. And actually actually a year ago I was the volunteer to be the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Sportsperson's caucus rep on the roundtable which we'd meet with the staff and discuss various things in the Northeast area.

2:56 So I've been involved that way and I keep abreast of what's going on all the time on the conservation side and even on the statewide side also. It's like it's kind of like you know you've almost like when I hear your story, kind of background I know that was a very synopsis version, but it's almost like you've lived a whole nother uh career, lifetime, after hanging up the bed and breakfast, you know, I just think it's pretty cool. Um and I, and you know, we met uh at a coffee shop. I was walking in with my wife Uh, we have, we have nicknames for our wives on the show. We call it my, I call her Billie Jean, um and uh. We were walking in and I just heard you telling this story and I saw the uh barista just kind of wrapped up in it.

3:39 And then, uh, you complimented my hat and I I was very you hat and I was very, you know, I was very touched and I could see that you had photos out of the hunt that you had just been on recently, and so after hearing your story I just thought, man, dude, this is a guy who I think Pat would love to to hear from as well and I think our viewers would love to hear from. So, yeah, we're just really excited to have you on, paul, and we'll be going through some questions today, but again it's you know nothing with too organized and we're just really excited to have you on, paul, and we'll be going through some questions today, but again it's you know nothing too organized and we're pretty much just going to go with the flow. But, pat, do you get the first question that you kind of want to touch base on? For sure? for sure. Yeah, I think that I want to start with kind of some of the stuff you shared with us before we hit record, which would be you know what?

4:21 What was your? What's your hunting background, upbringing? Like you know, you mentioned some of those different states already, but, yeah, tell our listeners about how you got into hunting and where you were born and how that, how that kind of, has affected a lifelong pursuit. Well, sure so in 1940, and you got to remember that's when I was born, in March of 1940. You got to remember that was before the Second World War started in Europe. Yeah, that's crazy. That was before there was any smartphones. That was before there was any television. We had radio. We had newspapers. We had two cent stamps to mail people because we had write a letter, actually write a letter, and send it through the postal service.

5:04 So a lot of things were happening back then. My parents were born in 1913, 1940. Dad was born in Toledo, ohio. My mom was a farm gal 11 children in Pittsburgh, kansas, and what I remember a picture of her beautiful gal standing there in the yard with a shotgun and a brace of rabbits in her hand when she was 19 years old. And and they you know, they were raising a cow. They probably had some pigs and some chickens and they'd go out and shoot a couple rabbits. And so they grew up in a rural area in Ohio and also Pittsburgh, kansas. And so I grew up in a rural area in Ohio with no television, with no smartphones, with no organized sports except at high school.

5:49 Kids went out and did what they had to do in the out of doors and I've always been an outdoor guy. Lived on Lake Erie. When I was nine years old, could hear the water crashing on the rocks 200 yards from the house, get me up in the morning and everybody I knew kids all had a bike. You better take the fenders off because if you left them on, you were a sissy. We had a dog. I had a black, a golden retriever back then named Lassie, because this was during the Lassie time. We all had a .22 or a shotgun and we'd go with chuck hunting. We'd go squirrel hunting, we'd go squirrel hunting, we'd go rabbit hunting. We'd go shoot a duck. Once in a while We'd bring it home, we'd clean it and Mom would cook them.

6:33 And Dad was a hunter. He was more of a social hunter. He'd go with the guys. He'd go out to the duck marsh. He'd go deer hunting with the guys. They'd stay in hotels or motels around, you know, in new york and pennsylvania, but I've always enjoyed the outer doors and, of course, because kids would fish nearby. Can I ask a question on that? I'm just curious, as children I imagine. Was there not like a like official tags that you guys needed or anything for, like small game collection and harvesting or anything like that? As? kids. Well, there was when you became aged. You had to have a special license. Oh okay, all right. And sometimes you know kids cheat. You know, yeah, you know you, you might shoot a robin with a 22 or a slingshot or which you know we know better than do that, so probably that was out of ignorance, but once my dad gave me a 12 gauge shotgun to gee, he gave me a hand-me-down shotgun winchester model 97 pump.

7:30 That was too long to everything and he gave that to me and I remember the first rabbit I ever shot with it and I can still remember that. So I grew up in the hunting atmosphere in the rural areas. We worked on the farms, farms for extra money, at a buck an hour, 75 cents an hour, detasseling corn, picking raspberries, strawberries, potatoes, coming home at the end of the month week with maybe 30 bucks which our parents would take half of it and put it in a piggy bank. But we could go buy a new baseball glove. And I was a sports guy, played football, terrible at basketball, ran track and yeah so that's awesome. And then after high school you mentioned you told us you joined the force, the Air Force.

8:14 I did yes, yes, yeah, and it was during that time. You also, if I remember right. That was when you took your first with a recurve. Yes, exactly. What was your air force experience like? It's also my uh, my uh, from my air force family. My grandpa, great grandpa, were, you know, in both in and that's how, that's how I actually came to be was because they were on the same flight crew and then one guy married the other guy's daughter and so so wonderful. So now here I am, but, um, so the uh, what was that? That experience, and during that time is kind of like the Air Force was so in its infancy too, is kind of a new, exciting thing. And also and then you were, you also got to do this Tell us about your recurve hunt and what the Air Force is like for you as well.

8:58 Sure. Well, I graduated from high school in 1958 and I was not college material at the time high school in 1958 and I was not college material at the time. I got A's in shop and maybe C's and this and that Excellent. And I wasn't good in math and chemistry I never took. But one of my idols in the area was a game warden and I thought, god, that'd be so cool to be in the outer doors and be a game warden. But I wasn't college material. I just didn't have the background for that and maybe I didn't know how to study properly it's hard to tell in high school. And so I went in the Air Force and this was in 1959 now, when there were some recessions going on and people weren't doing very well and my dad was a sales rep for a furniture company and doing fair but not great, and my sister was at Ohio State.

9:48 She was 20 months older than I am, so I knew my parents couldn't afford to college education. So I went in the Air Force, just to grow up maybe. And I went in the Air Force and I was stationed in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, right off Lake Superior, at KISO Air Force Base, which is now defunct, you know probably the county bought it for a dollar but it was a SAC base and I was a radar operator. So I went to Biloxi, mississippi. First of all. I went to Lackland Air Force Base for basic training and scored very well with the rifle the M1 or M2 we use at the rifle range and then went to Biloxi, mississippi, to do radar school, electronic school, and then was stationed in the Upper Peninsula.

10:29 Our SAC base was a radar operator and we were inland from Lake Superior and we were right in this big high plateau in the Upper Peninsula where the base was and gee, there were deer there, okay, lots of deer in the woods around it. So I've always been an archery hunter, even as a kid growing up I always kind of took the side of the Indian culture. You know, riding around on my bike with my mom's lipstick on me as war paint and a little hatchet in my hand at eight years old and building tree huts and you know doing things like that. So I bought a bow at the base BX, a 50 pound maybe it's 45, 45, 50 pound Ben Pearson bow Bought some wood arrows with some feathers on it and a three blade bodkin head and went out in the woods and that second year I was out there I shot a doe deer woods.

11:25 And that second year I was out there I shot a doe deer and when I got back I carried it out off base over the fence four strand fence back to the base and from then on I was called Robin Hood. That was my new moniker. Here comes Robin Hood carrying the and luckily Sergeant Kearns was a guy, an NCO, from Oklahoma, and he was a hunter. So I called him up and we butchered the deer and we put it in his freezer and he would invite myself and my roommate over for dinner. So that was kind of nice and I was a member of the sportsman's club and so I got the only deer with the bow and I also got the biggest deer with the bow. So I got a $20 prize for doing that and that was my first deer ever in 1962. That's 62 years ago.

12:07 Yeah, okay, well, and there was no one, or maybe there was, but did you just decide one day you're like, all right, well, I'll give it a shot, do this bow hunting. Or did you have anyone kind of help teach you like the basic principles and stuff for deer hunting with a bow, or was it all just kind of stuff you applied from growing up as a kid and learning? Well, it stems from this as kids and this was before compound bows, sure, and this is around the time when Fred Bear started making news about his exploits around the country and the bear bow manufacturing. He was a advertiser for Ford Motor Company and he had a boy who was actually making bows for him in the Detroit area.

12:48 But he decided to go to Michigan and start a bow manufacturing company where they would be making them en masse, and so that's how he started his bow business, fred Bear, and so he was an icon, and so there were stories about Fred Bear. So he was an icon, and so there were stories about Fred Bear. Also, when I was growing up, things to do in the marshes we would club carp as they came in the Lake Erie marshes to spawn. We'd go out there with our dogs and we'd have a pitchfork, we'd make a little gig spears, we would take a hoe and maybe sharpen the edge. And you know, kids, what we did we'd come out of the marshes with blood suckers on us and fall.

13:32 You know that's what we did. Once in a while I would look into my mom's drawer for a knife and go oh, she wouldn't miss this. I think I'll take this long butcher knife and put barbs on it and tie it to a broom handle and that will be my spear. Well, she caught on to that real quick, matter of fact, maybe after the second knife disappeared. So they took me down and bought me a fiberglass Shakespeare bow and an arrow and a string that attached to this reel that you hooked to your bow. And that's how he became a bow shooter for carp Nice and that's how he started and I'd shoot carp and I even shot illegally a northern pike once.

14:17 But then, when I went into service, I knew about bow hunting and it just seemed logical to go bow hunting. That's awesome and it was a nice time to do it in the fall. So that's how I got involved in it. Were you just wearing, like your Air Force M81 camo? That's interesting because so think about Fred Bear. So I had my black brogans on, I had my green flight pants. I went, maybe to who knows, Sears and Roebuck or JCPenney or somewhere in Marquette, michigan, and bought a Woodlands camo pullover shirt with a little hood on it and I had this floppy hat To camo my face and my hands. I took burnt cork.

14:58 Oh nice, that's what Fred Bear did. He put burnt cord on his face and he put it on his hands to camouflage that shiny skin. And that's what I did and that's what I had. None of this modern camo like we have today, but I have some of that. That's awesome. I think that's just really cool, especially to someone like me who's never gone deer hunting, to just hear, like you know, in the modern day and age everyone's trying to sell a product Right and so, like there's so many people trying to sell you like on the best cutting edge thing before you even know like the fundamentals and experience that. And so I think it's just cool to hear, like how you know you, just you, you had the disciplines and you kind of had the conception of you know what it would look like and you just went for it.

15:40 Um, it's just cool to hear that that you know. That's kind of really similar to like how I remember my childhood and like, um, you know, we did like rabbit hunting and, uh, bird hunting and you know we would kill the rabbits in the garden for my grandma and we'd use our pellet rifle and you know bows and it was, it was really fun and it's just kind of cool to hear that, like you know, you had the same kind of disciplines growing up and that that was an easy avenue getting into the sport I think the the, uh, the time period I grew up and there was a lot of people that's still living in the rural area. Yeah, and they understood the balance of habitat yeah if they had a cattle ranch, they understood they could only have so many cows on that land. If they had chickens, they could only have so many in the yard, because that was the balance of how many critters they could have on that piece of land.

16:27 And then people grew up, like my mom, butchering things, so they knew life and death and they were experiencing that. They didn't go to a grocery store and go back in the meat counter and find this sanitized piece of meat that had no blood or no gore on it. It was all saran wrapped and when you ask people where did it come from, they don't know. Okay, and but I know where and my mom knew and my dad knew when they went hunting where that animal came from and so I know where. When I eating my, the wild game that I eat, I know exactly where it came from. It doesn't have any growth hormones, it doesn't have any antibacterial shots in it and things like that.

17:11 It's all wild game, the natural things, and the meat is wonderful. And so I grew up in that atmosphere and I grew up in the rural area and I think people that are living in the cities today just don't understand that cycle of wildlife and how they go through their lives and how they can be harvested legally to maintain a balance. So I grew up in that atmosphere. You know it was a time a time, I think when hunting wasn't a politically polarizing thing either, like where it'd be assumed which side you stood on. It's still not true, you know, there's still, you can still hunt, and be what you want to be.

17:55 Be whatever you want to be but there did take the through that, like probably the eight, like the 70s, 80s. They're kind of this bent into like um, you know, uh, uh, elmer fudd, you know, out there just killing it. You know what I'm saying. This is like it. It's over time to become more uh it's become more one-sided right and versus like a thing where people maybe would understand. Well, I remember getting on my bike after a football game friday night and I'd get on my bike with my 22 and and right out of of where I lived and across the highway and down some state highway with a .22 over my shoulder and nobody was saying, oh, here's a kid heading for the high school to eliminate his buddies or do this.

18:38 They knew that. Oh, here's a guy that's going to go hunting. Or if you went over on Farmer Jones' property he would see you out there and he'd go hey, paul, having a good time, having a good time. But today there's so much social media out there and, of course, the challenge of oh, the challenge of. Sifting through it. Well, yes, the lies or the BS. Well, not only that, but there's been some really negative experiences going on in communities with firearms. Yeah, okay, and I'm a legal firearm owner. I respect firearms, I know how to handle them properly, and there's a lot of bad people out there that hit firearms and, unfortunately, do bad things, and I always call them the 10 percenters, whether they're on the highway screaming past you at 90 miles an hour in a 50 mile an hour zone, or whether they're stealing from your house or breaking in your car or cheating on their taxes or poachers.

19:35 There's always those 10 percenters that the rules don't abide by that and those are the ones you hear about. There's a lot of great good people out there doing wonderful things, kids included, and I meet them every day. Because I'd like to ask people simple questions. If I'm in a coffee shop, whether I'm at Owl Cafe, or if I'm at Meal my Pies where I'm at Starbucks, a simple question. They're reading the paper. I said is there any good news today? And an hour later you can have this wonderful conversation and find out who were there. I met a guy this is going to be off subject a little bit Just before I got here. I'm sitting there reading a book on Crazy Horse, okay, and I looked up, the guy next to me had this big scar down the back of his head.

20:22 Before I left, I said excuse me, but tell me about the scar on the back of your neck. He says I broke my neck and I almost died and I broke all three one, two and three and I saw and I I should he should be dead. I said how did this happen? He says I was on a fat tire mountain bike and it got slippery and I crashed and landed on my head and when I landed. I knew I broke my neck Holy smokes and he had all this stuff done and the odds of him surviving that medically I mean almost 90% good was almost zero.

21:03 And here he is alive and he went through that and so I would have never known about this person. Because of what? I just ask him a simple question, because I don't have a smartphone and I don't text people. I talk to people and so I met him and I met Kovson Friar Martinez, the Indian that gave me the medicine bag, and I just met you. Yeah, simple questions, it's just. I enjoy talking to people. Yeah, yeah, well, and I don't know, is that a good transition, you think, pat? To the next one. I think I've got a few more things before we roll into that. Sure, I feel like in myself I struggle with people just being objects to move around in my day.

21:47 You know, if it's at a barista, it's just a person to pour me a cup of coffee. The car in front of me is just someone who's driving too slow and I got to get around them. That's not who I am, but in the modern culture we live in, it is just very easy. We don't even live in that big of a town. It's not a small town but it's not a giant big city. It's like the uh, more and more you see that where I think people just have lost and are losing that, um, that connectivity via just simple questions, asking stuff and um and how a simple question to somebody can, you know, move you into a conversation or can make their day or make them feel known or help you learn something you would have never known.

22:30 Well, and I try to make a point of Tricia says Paul, you'd talk to a tree? Oh yeah, why not? And so maybe I'll learn something. And I've had a couple of people say, Paul, thank you so much for coming up and engaging me. And there was a homeless gal at Starbucks this morning. All of her bags of stuff were there and I said good morning to her and she looked at me and put a smile on her face and she was going through. I can't imagine what she's going through in her life, but maybe just me recognize her as a human being and saying hello, just acknowledging. And as I'm walking down the street at Fort Collins or anywhere and someone's coming towards me, I normally say hello and sometimes they look up shocked that someone has actually spoken to them and if they got their face and fingers down in their iPads and doing texting somebody, they're not recognizing what's going on around them.

23:32 I'm trying to be aware of all the time. Being a hunter, I think I've got the ability to see what's going on around me. I'm always aware of what's going on around me, so, and I'm hearing things that maybe other people don't see or hear, and maybe I'm seeing things that other people don't see just because I'm aware, and I'm using my eyes and my ears and not only my mind and my body to move forward, but I'm looking around me all the time, for good and bad things so yeah, no, I think that's a good point and you, uh, you've been on a journey. Now for you, you, you moved to Colorado in in the early 90s, yes, and I guess really that would be, if I'm not mistaken, that's when you're kind of started this journey towards the 10 whether you knew it or not then of these, these 10 big game species well. And that's all interesting because after I gave up my sales job and got my kids out of college and daughter married, I had come out to colorado in 88 and 89 as a non-resident from Ohio to elk hunt.

24:25 And I think anybody from the Midwest who hunts deer has a dream about going out West whether they're from Wisconsin or New York or somewhere to go out West and go elk hunting. And here in Colorado we've got close to 300,000 elk in our state. That's almost one in every five elk. In every state that has elk we have one in five or one in four elk in our state. That's almost one in every five elk. In every state that has elk we have one in five or one in four elk in this state. I didn't know that. I didn't know we had that many. Yeah, it's probably. It's gone anywhere from a high of 320 to around 280,000. So around in that period of time. And so that was my dream to come out here and I had the money to do it.

25:06 Back then the non-resident license was $250. Now it's almost $700, but inflation and da da da. So I came out here and I hunted up on the flat tops and I'm a solo hunter. So what I did is I contacted, with my background of natural resources. I contacted the division of wildlife, then DOW that's what they were and talked to Larry Green over there and I said, larry, I'm from Ohio and I'm trying to get some information about the flat top wilderness area. What can you tell me about it? He says well, I'm a bow hunter and I've hunted up in there, but remember, you can't take any vehicles up there. You can't even take a up there. You can't even take a bicycle. You can't even take a one-wheel cart.

25:48 Anything that's mechanical you can't take in the wilderness area. He says I would recommend that you hunt this area instead of going up there, because then if you get an elk down you could get a packer to come up and help you. So that first year I did that and I actually missed an elk at close range, hit a little limb and ricocheted. But that got me so excited to come out the next year and I finally killed my first bull elk in 1989. Okay. And that got me really excited. And that, probably what region of Colorado was that in? That was down north of Dot Zero, north of Glenwood Springs, okay, and up in the Flat Top Wilderness Area on the south side of the flat tops Awesome, and that's one of the largest elk herds in Colorado, the northwest region.

26:32 There's more elk than anywhere else and that used to be over the counter area. Now it's a limited draw, okay, and I haven't hunted there, but I hunt other places. Sure, I do. Very well, I've killed 15 elk with my bow, wow, yeah. That's a pretty good take. Well, last year I got a nice cow elk just 80 miles west of here in the same area. I killed my moose this year, and that's another story. And then the year before that I didn't get one, but the year before that I got a nice bull elk on the flat tops with my recurve and because that was, I wrote a story for the Colorado Bowhunters magazine about bucket list bull. Because you have things on your bucket list what you would like to do in life, sure, and one of my bucket list subjects was to kill a bull elk with my recurve bow.

27:18 And so I did that and I wrote a story for the Colorado Bowhunters magazine. And so that's how I kind of came to Colorado and that's how I started hunting, got excited about that. And then this Big Ten. We have 10 big game species here in Colorado. This is, of course, a non-test. This is just for our folks who are hunting illiterate. Will you just go through them? Sure. I will. So let's start with both species of deer. We have white-tailed and mule deer, then we have the elk, then we have the elk, then we have the pronghorn. It's not an antelope, it's a pronghorn Antelope. There's no antelope in North America.

27:59 Yeah, okay, see, there's a pronghorn, and then so that's four, and then we have the mountain lion, we have the bear, so there's six, and then we have the bighorn sheep and the mountain goat, so there's eight species, and Colorado Bowhunters, which have been around for 75 years and is the voice for bowhunting in Colorado, and I would encourage everybody that's a bowhunter to join the Colorado Bowhunters coloradobowhuntingorg. We're a wonderful organization. Anyway, the last two. So you get those eight first, and then the last two is the moose and the desert bighorn sheep. Now, what's different about the desert bighorn sheep?

28:42 It's a lottery and not a preference point draw. So some of the animals are over-the-counter, which means you can just get a tag. In other ones it's all about supply and demand, like sheep and goats and even moose, where you have to apply for a few years before you can get a license because you're gathering preference points over the guy behind you with less preference. But the Desert Bighorn is a lottery where you could draw the first year or never, and there's only 15 tags and there's 25,000 people applying for them, so the odds are really, really slim. There's only three guys that have taken all 10 species.

29:22 So when I first heard about the Big Eight, I was at a CBA banquet first year I ever came to Colorado or second year, joined them right away and was at a banquet and I was hearing some guys talk about the big eight and I thought they were talking about football and as I listened more, they were talking about wildlife. And then I learned about the big eight species and that some of them had killed one or two of those species and maybe some three or four. And so when I completed the eight and it was the ultimate goal was what's neat about all these animals? They all live in different habitats, from the pronghorn way down on the prairie to the bighorn sheep and the mountain goat that are living up at 12,000, 13,000 feet, and they all need the same thing.

30:14 They need escape routes, but they need food, shelter and water, and so they're all different. So as a hunter, to be good about this, you need to learn about those animals and what are they doing when you're hunting them. Is it pre-rut, is it during the rut, is it post-rut, is it during the rut, is it post-rut? What are they doing during the time when you're actually hunting them? And how can you change your ways of hunting them? Are they callable, are they decoyable? Are they stockable? Where are they banded up? Are they singles? So you learn all about this, and each animal is slightly different. So that's the challenge. And then the meat is all this meat is wonderful, whether it's big horn, sheep or mountain goat, some better than the others. And but that was the challenge of going, and, luckily and good enough, in 11 years I took the big eight species, my moose tag this year, and we can tell that story a little bit later.

31:08 Sure, and that's been a wonderful hunt, and we'll explain that a little bit later. And then the last one, and, being at 85 in March, I might just have to age out of this and not get it, but a miracle happened on my moose hunt when I got that tag. So maybe another miracle in the next couple of years will happen, hopefully that that desert bighorn will show up. So that's how I learned about the big eight, and they're all. Let me stress this, though it's just not happenstance that we have a wonderful amount of big game species in Colorado. All these animals are scientifically managed by state wildlife biologists who are in the field every day and are looking out for the welfare of these animals in the correct population and the habitat that supports them, and they use hunters as that tool to maintain that viable population.

32:01 So everybody in Colorado can enjoy wildlife, whether they're wildlife watchers, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk. People go into Rocket Mountain National Park and love to hear the elk, but they're there for a reason. In the numbers that are there and around the state and we see deer along the highways we see other animals in good abundance because they're being managed properly for their environment and, yes, hunters are using them as food source, but they're illegally taking those and they're all restricted to certain numbers that they can take out of certain areas. So it's all being scientifically managed properly 1950 or sooner, the the you might, your chances of getting into these animals would have been quite a bit slimmer, especially in the even more walking back into, you know, early 1900s, the populations were, um, nothing like what they are today.

33:02 You know because, because we hadn't managed them. You know because we had no doubt about it. The way that, um, we do now, and so that north american model for managing wildlife is, I think it's, uh, something a lot of people don't really understand or know about. They think that they'll, especially, you know, if you come from just like the, a big city in the, and you don't realize that, um, there's been a lot of work going into, you know, conserving what we have out here and really, you know it's not like there is no there. We have kept wild places wild, but there is no place in america where we, especially lower 48, where we haven't put our hands in it or around it to keep it what it is or to improve what it is, you know, and so you don't just come out to the wild to see an elk from the like as if, as if you were a pioneer or something right now it now.

33:52 It's something that's special that we've kept, you know, and kept in up well, and, and there's no doubt about it. So, for an example, let's take the population of cal of colorado. I was born in 1940 and there was 1.1 million people in colorado okay now think about what was going on in in 1940 in colorado, where people were living and what were they doing here? They were logging, they were mining, and then, of course, people had stores and the ski areas hadn't even been developed back then. And then when Trisha and I moved here in 1992, 91, there was 3.2 million, all right. And now here we are in 2024, there is five point going on 5.8 million, all right. And now here we are in 2024, there is five point going on 5.8 million people in Colorado, and they're predicting, you know, another million in the next 20 years and maybe even more.

34:41 Yeah. So we're trying to maintain the division of wildlife Colorado parks and wildlife. We're trying to maintain viable wildlife populations through using science based on the habitat and also based on well based on science, and so I'm struggling a little bit. So the populations are threatened by the overabundance of people, building infrastructure, habitat loss. Yes, yeah so, and you can look up on the front right here out of Fort Collins and look up on the foothills and maybe 30 years ago there weren't any houses up there, and now all along the skylines and in there there's houses.

35:28 And then look on the interstates what's going on there? Migration corridors and roadways, on and on and on Sure. So that's one of the biggest downfalls of wildlife is how they can move from one area to another and then where they used to have good food and water. That water is being used up more and more and more and I know right over here around fort collins we have some deer. I've seen I goose hunt locally with my bow, within five minutes of my house, and I've seen bobcat there. I've seen mountain lion uh, coyotes neighbor saw two mountain lion cubs run across the pasture a couple years ago.

36:11 Maybe some turkeys Not turkeys yet, but white-tailed mule deer, eagles, on and on and on. So we have wildlife right here and I bet, I know right now that within 10 miles and maybe even 5 miles of where we're sitting right now there's a mountain lion somewhere Down along the river and I've seen trail camera pictures on people's backyards. Yeah, the ring camera doorbells, right yeah, right, showing you where they're walking. Yeah, yeah. So wildlife is around and it's here every day, but it has to be controlled because the human population is growing and we're using up the wildlife spaces and so we need trained biologists within Parks and Wildlife to manage that wildlife so everybody.

36:57 And then we need hundreds of dollars to buy licenses to hunt legally, to fund the infrastructure of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. We're talking about law enforcement, we're talking about gasoline vehicles and regional managers and staff and on and on and on to do this. And it takes money, and hardly any of that money it comes from general fund, it comes from hunting and fishing and licenses. Yeah, it's like 98%. Well, not quite that. Maybe 70 to 80%, because we get some from Go Colorado funds, we get some from the Pittman-Roppert Act which puts a tax on archery and firearms and ammunition. That's 11 percent. It's given back to the state based on the number of hunters and fishermen, and maybe 1 percent comes from the general fund, and so that's, that's the whole package.

37:45 One thing I just did find ironic was how many people I know who are very pro-conservation. I would say like I don't want to throw a blanket, like environmentalists yeah, they're environmentalists in that like they're actually anti-people. They're anti-people expansion but they're pro-conservation and they're very anti-hunting. But so many of them elected out of the colorado parks and wildlife fee for their license registration renewal oh, yeah, and I just always thought that was so ironic, like it's only, like I think I refer, remember right 50 bucks on top of your car registration each year. Now, and it's just crazy to me that, like so many of those people are the ones that elect out of it, and it's like like that's one of the best ways If you don't believe in hunting, that's one of the best avenues you can do just passively to help support Colorado Parks and Wildlife Conservation is just let that be renewed on your car registration each year.

38:42 But to still be in if you put your money where your mouth is Exactly, yeah, it's called Keep Colorado Wild. Yeah, and it adds what? $30 or something. Maybe it's $30, $50. I can't remember exactly. Well, and a big portion of that goes to parks yeah, for renewal, for maintenance, et cetera. Maybe a small portion goes to wildlife management, okay Okay, but a big park goes. There's so many people now want to go out into Colorado and enjoy, and years back back the parks used to just be full on weekends. Now they're in the summer, they're full year around and you hear people. So many people are not so many people, but, uh, you hear 10 or 20 people drowning in some of the state park yeah because they just they're not outdoor people.

39:26 they're going out and doing stupid things and kayaks and without life vests those paddle boards. man, I'm anti-paddle board, by the way. Really, just because so many people are irresponsible, it's like a fad. Get on a paddle board and they don't realize you should still have a life Because you're out in a lake and that thing, wind kicks up, turns into a sail and you have no life jacket. That thing's gone. Colorado, get the paddleboard off Amazon and get out in the middle of Lake and that's what's. You know just not having everything else in our lives is made so safe. You know, like every, every little thing we do, you know every in a building, every step is marked with a yellow strip and the stoplight tells you to stop going so you don't get ran over by a car.

40:07 You don't have to have any really personal awareness looking out around you. Like you were saying earlier, being a hunter, you get a sense of awareness around you. You don't have to carry this awareness around you because we've insulated it. But then you go to a wild place and all of a sudden that's all gone. Well, what's interesting? I've been a boater all my life. My dad had a boat and I boated on Lake Erie for walleyes, and then I had a 25-foot well-crafted sportsman on the Great Lakes for salmon and steelhead, and I had a canoe and now I have a kayak. I know some people who are very jealous of what you just said yeah, I mean I did all that type of fishing. I've steelhead fished in Michigan with the fly rod. I've gone out to Oregon and Washington steelhead. You know I just love the outdoor fishing aspect of it and the challenge of doing it right.

40:51 But we're blessed here in Colorado, for sure. We have got thousands upon millions of national forests which you can walk in and there's no fences, yeah, and you can just wander around. And for a hunter, that's great, for recreation, it's great around. And for a hunter, that's great for recreation, it's great. For campers, it's great. Uh, we have blm lands. We have state lands, a huge portion of of lands here in in colorado that do that, yeah. Um, we have state, uh, waterfall orowl areas where I hunt on the South Platte River and I was out there just last week trying to get my dog his first mallard of the year and we finally had a mallard, a dracon hen, come in and I shot one of them and they made a nice retrieve, nice, you know.

41:44 And we ate the duck, it was delicious the next day and the dog got a good experience. The duck, it was delicious the next day and the dog got a good experience. And so we're blessed here in Colorado with a lot of areas to recreate in. But it has to be managed properly, not only for wildlife, but the trails have to be managed properly. You just can't have walking trails with electric bikes on them and motorcycles on them and ATVs on them and everybody that's in the outer doors wants a piece of the pie. And that's the challenge. With the Wildlife Commission and the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service and the Parks and Wildlife Commission and all the staff, how are you going to balance all this out for everybody to enjoy, whether're hunters or non-hunters?

42:30 We don't have that many. I'll give you a little statistics about anti-hunters versus non-hunters versus hunters, sure so hunters nationwide only make up about five percent of the population and I would expect this, as a population grows exponentially, that percentage will come down a little bit or maintain about 5%. Here in Colorado it's about the same. As our population goes from a million to 2 million to 5 million, that population of hunters will probably stay at around 5%. Wow. Okay, so where was I going to go?

43:11 I'm having a senior moment, oh, with anti-hunters and hunters or non-hunters. So non-hunters, so anti-hunters, make up maybe 3% or 4% of the population, but they seem to have a big voice and there's a lot of emotion going on with hunting, sure About I don't want to do it, so you shouldn't do it, we think it's unfair, so you shouldn't do it. But Colorado Parks and Wildlife and DOW at the time did a survey of what they felt was a good number of non-hunters in Colorado and the non-hunters came back on their survey saying we support hunting if it's done in fair chase and the meat is utilized, all right.

43:52 Yeah, and so as far as I know, all this wildlife meat that I've been eating over the years 13 elk and bighorn, sheep and mountain goat and all in all is delicious. Yeah, and I know how to cook it properly. Yeah, and I brought you guys. What did I bring you today? Oh, a huge gift Moose burger. Moose burger, moose burger. Yeah, I can't believe it. I don't know if I've ever had moose in my life. I'm stoked. I'm so excited. And the butcher added about 5% kidney fat to it. Delicious, which is a pure fat. That's really good to help bind it all together. Yeah, but we have. So the fair chase. It all depends on back in the day fair chase was. I mean, I have a dog that flushes pheasants.

44:34 I use a dog to flush pheasants. I use a dog to get my ducks back. People have dogs that chase rabbits and hunt. We use dogs to tree mountain lions Because probably that's if you're going to manage mountain lions and they're very nocturnal and they're very secretive If we're going to manage them to good numbers, which we have in Colorado we have a very vibrant mountain lion population in Colorado Then dogs are one of those that help maintain that goal. To tree the cat so a hunter can then disperse and harvest that cat. I did it with a bow. Other guys will use a rifle.

45:15 Do you mind, while we're here on that subject, just saying what that looks like, Because I think a lot of people have incorrect images in their minds of what they think bringing the dogs to hunt mountain lions with You're using the term tree a cat, which I think a lot of people might be confused Like, wait, are they chasing a mountain lion up the trees? I thought the dogs surrounded it and tore it apart. You know, a lot of people have a bad image. I think as far as I know, most of the lions that are killed, harvested are treed All right, Because the mountain lion wants to get away from these specialized dogs that trail them on dry land in some areas where there's no snow or in the snow.

46:01 When I shot my mountain lion it was 10 below zero in January and we had to wade through the snow. The dogs had treed the lion and we had to wade through the snow almost a mile to get there and I made a good shot on the lion. He was dead before he hit the ground. They had tied up the dogs and we brought the lion out. I had a beautiful mountain lion rug made in remembrance of that lion to honor him. We ate the meat and it helped in conservation to maintain the numbers. I am sure that there's videos out there.

46:42 Sometimes all these videos that are circulating out there show some things that you know shouldn't be shown. Sure, okay, could be an elk with an arrow in it. That happened over at Estes Park a few times. An elk walking around Okay, that's bad publicity, you know. I'm sure a mountain lion could get away from the hounds and just roll back into a cave, all right, like bears. It's illegal to shoot an animal inside of an enclosure like that a burrow cave.

47:22 That's right, that's right in a den or a cave like that. So most often that cat will get away and cats will kill the dogs. And that's the process of if you're a houndsman, you're going to lose some dogs because these cats will try to defend themselves. Where the red fern grows. There's a reason we all read it as a kid right. No, and so I would say the vast majority of mountain lions that are killed are treed and then are shot out of the tree. Now, to some, that's just the way it is, and to me that's just the way it is, because I know this being a mountain lion. They're very secretive, they're nocturnal, they're very difficult to ever see.

48:05 Even though you're in the woods, there's probably one watching you somewhere, because there's at least 3,000 to 4,500 mountain lions in Colorado, based on Colorado Parks and Wildlife data what we know of meaning also kind of what we know of too, because they are so sneaky too, like those numbers could be higher, could be higher and and could be, could be lower, yeah, but at least a minimum of 3,000, yeah, so. so, yeah, that's. And if we're going to manage the cats, there are certain ways to do it, and that's one way that will give us success on maintaining those lands. Now, you got to remember this, though the mountain lion hunt is in the fall after the elk season, so it's in late November, probably December, january and February.

48:54 There's a quota system for mountain lions statewide. So let's say the quota is 500 lions, 600 lions. It's not only based on the males, but it's based on female quotas, all right. And every game management unit has a certain quota in it. So let's say, in Larimer County, they know we have a certain amount of lions and we can keep that level. Let's say there's 10 here or 20 here, and we want to maintain that 20. But now we know there could be 25, so we're going to have five lion tags available. So they're over-the-counter tags.

49:35 I can go and buy 20, guys could buy tags, but you have to call the Division of Wildlife every morning 800 number to make sure that quota hasn't been used up in that particular area. If it has, then you have to go hunt another area. And then there's a quota on females too. So they don't want to keep hitting the females because they'll tree just like a male, but they want to make sure there's a good balance in females because they want to maintain a healthy population of lions. They know they're beneficial to the environment. Yeah, they know, they're beneficial to the environment. Mark Vieira, who is the mountain lion cat specialist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, has given seminars along the Front Range this fall I mean last summer.

50:22 I went to the one and they talked about his studies and what they want to do statewide and in some areas they wanted to depress the lion population because they think they have more than they need. They want to increase them in some areas and along the front range they want to maintain what they have. All right, right and he gave these studies and they were pretty well attended. Now they were well attended by those people that were interested. Now, people that are against that type of hunting might not have tended. They're just going to use their emotions. They're going to look at the cats and how they're hunted and say bad, bad, bad. And that's what Bell Initiative 127 is all about.

51:06 Right Is do we allow the scientists with the parks and wildlife to maintain a healthy population because they're viable in our environment, not to have so many that they're going to be detrimental to not only humans, because there has been three or four people that have died of mountain lion kills, been killed and actually some people that have been maimed by mountain lions in our town in the last three years. Yeah, yes. And then they have to balance all the other wildlife that mountain lions get on, whether it's mule, deer or elk or other species. So they got this big balance. They have to do Definitely. And I wanted to speak to the hound piece for a second to our listeners to help them understand a couple things about how it might be even more fair chase and better for the animal and better for the environment to hunt with hounds, the fair chase topic being, you know, people say that's not fair to just treat it with a dog.

52:01 Well, that guy, a true houndsman, has spent a most times a lifetime learning how to train his dogs and investing in those animals, learning how to do it right, going out and finding a you know a track, getting them in a tree. That's not, it's not. You don't just let your, your poodle out and they just get a mountain lion in a tree. Right, there's. There's a lot of work and effort and heart that goes into that. And then and then, once you've done all that years and years of of work, you know, or your upbringing or things like that now you, now you have a lion in a tree and every year there's tons, I'd say you know, in lots of cases more mountain lions are treed than are killed.

52:44 Yeah, so so you go out there you can tree a mountain lion. Yeah, you know you disturb their, you're disturbing them a little bit, but but you're leaving them in the landscape by one. You can, once you have it in a tree, you can determine is this a male, female big thing, is this a mature tom or is this a barely a year old cat? That I'm going to leave, you know, and you can back off and leave it back off and leave it versus. Um, you know, if you, if it did, if it's a, it's the early morning, first light, and a mountain lion walks out and you have a tag and you take a shot at 100 yards, 200 yards, which is very rare to even have that experience, to see that. But identifying and knowing that creature and taking the time to, you know, for the population's benefit, making the right call.

53:26 The tree is the way to go, yeah, as well as also an ethical shot on an animal clean an animal that's in a tree, not moving. Only you know, call it 20 yards away, max kind of you know shooting up is, you can make a much more ethical kill on that animal too. It versus shooting a moving mountain lion far away and you get up to it and you realize it's a, basically a kitten or a, or a mom with cubs, that sort of thing. So the the hound thing is really just you know so many people just they just don't understand the how much these hunters actually do care about the animal and their dogs too and like it's. It's so much goes into it. It's so much harder than anybody knows. It's not the easy way out, you know it's just a.

54:07 It's a. It's a really key tool in using for wildlife management. Well, it really is. And when the ballot initiative 127 first came out, it said banned trophy mountain lion hunting. And that word was taken away from the ballot because it had to go through a ballot issue committee and the wording had to be understandable before it went to the Secretary of State. And what is a trophy hunting? And so what is trophy hunting? And can the voter recognize what is trophy hunting? And so there's been a lot of interest from hunting groups and outside organizations to prevent this ballot from going forward, and so we got the word trophy taken out of it.

54:55 Now the people that are in favor of banning still use that word in their advertising. And what was interesting recently is that on that same website, cats Aren't Trophies, they started pointing fingers at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Mule Deer Association, the Bighorn Sheep Society and pointing fingers at those trophy hunters of these organizations using that same word. And here are three organizations that spend millions of dollars, millions of man hours to keep those animals on the planet Bighorn sheep, elk habitat.

55:38 They're the best people out there to keep these viable populations. And here's an organization that is using pointing fingers at these bad trophy hunters for contributing money to defeat their bill yeah and the other thing is they claim that I mentioned a little bit this before we don't eat the meat. but we a lot of them do, and we do eat the meat. And mountain lion meat is very good if it's done properly, like if you're going to shoot a raccoon or a muskrat or a deer or an elk. It all has to be done properly. And the mountain lion meat that Trish and I ate, it was done in a variety of ways.

56:21 You just can't throw it on the barbie and expect it to be a beefsteak, because it isn't, but it can be done. And then I've got, like I said, I've got this beautiful mountain lion rug at home that honors that animal and I remember that wonderful hunt and I paid part in conservation and the money for the tag went to more science of that land and we have a healthy population, as our DOW or our Parks and Wildlife biologists say we do well, I think, paul, on the mountain lion subject too, one thing I again, you know I'm not a very versed hunter. I do believe you know pretty much everything you said and I agree with it.

57:04 But I was surprised to find out that mountain lion hunting was already outlawed in California, where there's always been, from what I understood, a pretty strong population of mountain lions, pretty sustained one, and that they also are far more butted up against cities in California. And the crossover seems to be even higher and more severe. And I think, just you know, to give reference to our audiences, um 2024 has already been a pretty, um, substantially lethal year for people and mountain lions.

57:45 And regarding to like the past crossing in california, um, there was, uh, actually just a september five-year-old that was attacked by a mountain lion that they believe was starving because she wasn't able to feed on proper diet and there wasn't proper life, like you know, um environmental, uh animals for her to feed on, and so she ended up attacking a child. And then there was also the two brothers, grown men, who were attacked and one was seriously injured, the other was killed by a mountain lion that, um, I don't, can't remember. They said it was a female or male, but saw them as prey and um, that is something I think a lot of people aren't aware of. When we start talking about, um, you know, outlawing or banning the right for hunters to hunt these animals and help control the population and sustain the environment and ecological impact of that and removing that, I don't think a lot of people are aware that already California has done that and within the same small window of time, we're seeing a result of a destabilization of the environment and these animals encroaching more, um, like cities and stuff where people are just not ready to face those consequences of a mountain lion eating your cat, your dog, uh, attacking your child.

59:04 And it's not that these animals are evil I'm not saying that by any means but it's definitely clear that, like, if colorado isn't very wise about this, you know, we could really see the similar situation here, even in our local community here, where we've seen mountain lion attacks, um, and that's with a population that's already being, you know, controlled and mediated pretty well. So I just want to give you an opportunity to kind of speak to that, because I think there's a lot of like things where people either like no, that's not real, they don't attack people, or a lot of people are very fearful of them and think of them as malicious predators, and I was just hoping you could kind of speak to the consequences that we see elsewhere.

59:48 Well, the mountain lion ban in California started during the Reagan administration and then, I think in 1990, they banned all mountain lion hunting in California. Started during the Reagan administration and then, I think in 1990, they banned all mountain lion hunting in California. Even if you live in California and legally take a mountain lion out of state, you cannot bring a part of that, a hair or a tooth or a claw of that mountain lion back into the state. So the state then has mountain lion issues. So the state then has mountain lion issues. People will get attacked on their bike trails. Some, as you mentioned, some people might run into a mountain lion and get killed, and so the Division of Wildlife will be called in and they'll have to track that mountain lion down. Hopefully they'll find one that did the attacking and they'll put it down, and so that is the way they're doing it in California.

1:00:37 No doubt mountain lions are a fantastic species, and if we had the same amount of mountain lions in California or Colorado as we would have had in 1900, when there was only a million people here, as we would have had in 1900 when there was only a million people here, there was a lot more habitat for lions to live in. But here we have a tremendous increase of the human population, the loss of habitat, and what's also happening is that as people move up in their foothills and honor their private property, they don't allow hunting, and so that increases the especially the deer population in those areas. And so what mountain lion or large predator, maybe even the wolf, would move into that area seeking a better food source, and so there's going to be more mountain lion human encounters closer to the home than ever before.

1:01:30 And so there's 15 states that allow mountain lion hunting. Nebraska just opened up their season, and they're not doing it on a malicious basis. They're doing it to control the populations, because they have other wildlife populations they want to control. We know that a mountain lion to eat, to feed its young, will kill, let's just say, a minimum of two deer a month. Some people say every 10 days. Wow, I think that's a lot higher than a lot of people think, yeah. And so Division of Wildlife here. Colorado Parks and Wildlife claimed that there's 3,000 mountain lions, and that doesn't include the cubs, we're talking about mature animals.

1:02:12 They have to balance the mountain lion population with the human population, the other wildlife populations that the mountain lions will prey on, whether it's a deer or elk, and that's a big balancing act. And so they're the ones that need to control this and they use hunters as a tool to do that. I can't ever. Hunters in Colorado will kill 500 mountain lions a year and they've been doing that for years, and so there's a viable, strong populations of mountain lions a year, and they've been doing that for years. And so there's a viable, strong populations of mountain lions in Colorado, balanced in with all the other wildlife.

1:02:55 And that's the challenge how can you balance these 10 populations of wild animals so that everybody can be able to that there are viable populations, not only for wildlife watchers to see and for hunters to use as a tool to bring that meat home and utilize. The last mountain lion I saw. I was coming back from a Walden area ice fishing last winter and I was coming by, passed through Mishawaka up the Poudre Canyon and I was about a mile this way to Fort Collins, right at last, light light and a full grown mountain lion ran right across in front of my truck and ran right through somebody's yard. I drove down the road a mile and I said I better turn around.

1:03:39 I came back parked, knocked on their door and they were friendly people and I said you just had the privilege of a full grown mountain lion running through yours. Do you have any dogs or cats out? And they said no, but we have in the past. They said thank you very much. The last mountain lion I saw was I was near Meeker, coming back from Meeker when I was elk hunting, took a couple of days off so I could go to a hotel and freshen up, and a mountain lion ran across in front of me. Then the mountain lion that I called in with a predator call and saw and I was basically it's going to be its meal, but it saw me draw my bow and escaped. And then I had a mountain lion down in Arizona go by me at 20 yards.

1:04:19 So those are the only four mountain lions I've seen in 30 years of hunting in Colorado and so they're around and they have a tendency to keep hidden and they're nocturnal mostly and so a lot of people will never see one, but they're around and the population just needs to be controlled. We can't control the recreationalists. We can't control the human population True, we can't control, basically, changing climate, yeah, okay, we can't control that much energy development.

1:05:00 All those things will affect wildlife. But we can help control the wildlife populations based on all those other factors, true, to have a viable population so everybody in Colorado can enjoy and residents and non-residents can enjoy the populations. And I think on that too. You know, just educate me on this, but you know, I remember growing up in south of Denver in like the Littleton around Chatfield Reservoir area, and it was at least two, three times a bear was killed because it had returned to that chatfield roxborough kind of neighborhood hounds ranch and eating trash and uh, I don't think they uh respect like the animal's um death and like make uh, you know they I don't think they stuff the bear, I don't think they save its meat and reuse the meat.

1:05:52 When the state kills it, right, it's all essentially trashed and gone and tossed away. So when people are like, oh, we don't want you trophy hunting, you need to, it's not respect to the animal. It's also not respect to the animal when it's just killed and thrown away by the state that is having to do it out of a mandatory population control right. Well, and that is true, there is dumping grounds that highway departments take kills that are killed on the highway. It's amazing. I was going to look this up before I came, but I did, I did, but I know. For an example, in Michigan, over 40,000 deer are killed on the highway by automobiles in Michigan every year, and that includes what that causes is about five or six human deaths and then injuries.

1:06:44 And here in Colorado there's bear killed on the highway, there's mountain lions killed on the highway, there's elk killed on the highway, deer pronghorn you see them all the time. And all that meat, all those animals die because of automobiles. Yeah, and nobody thinks about that. Yeah, but, uh, people that don't like the aspect of hunting. But we're, we're lucky enough in colorado that the anti-hunters are small but very vocal group and nationwide, uh, these organizations are strong because they can play on people's emotions and not the science. They usually have a pretty good financial backing too, I think from other lobby organizations Huge, huge financial.

1:07:31 I think the other thing before we just get to this incredible story with the moose hunt, that I just want to. We thought about and we're talking about it while we were on break, but I would just like to hear your opinion on the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado. And then also, you know, I guess I'm just curious, like, do you think there's ever like a timeline where the wolves become a big 11, you know, and they become a lottery tag for the wolves in Colorado at some point? I'll say this just so you know like I don't have a firm stance one way or the other on the reintroduction of wolves. I know pat at one point had mentioned pat, you were on the fence of if it should be allowed or not.

1:08:12 Right, or yeah, well, by. For me it was because the since it was torn, because I was hoping that through the reintroduction law they would put in good protections for ranchers that weren't already there and stuff, but because it's already happening. I've heard wolves coming in from Wyoming when I've been out backpacking hearing them. So since it's happening anyways, hopefully if it's going to pass, that they'll have good legislation to help ranchers, help wildlife and and have a good management plan. But then there's a huge conversation around reintroduction or then repatriation, almost like a natural natural letting them come back in.

1:08:53 So there's tons of talks around this and things like that. But yeah, as far as we most recently was it last year or two years ago that we let those wolves out. I think it was a full two years ago, right. And I talked to a hunter last week who saw the black wolf chasing 20 cows 20 cow elk. Well, I was going to say too, we go up to Granby Grand Lake area a lot, yes, and it's crazy how many of those farmers in Fraser have had to file for recompensation because they've really stocked those livestock herds up there quite a bit over the last two years already. So, like I said, I don't have a strong, I just would love to hear your opinion on it.

1:09:37 Well, let's look at it historically. People have always claimed I've been in Colorado since 91. And anytime the subject of wolves come up somebody might say, oh yeah, I saw a wolf. And other people might say, are you sure, was it just a big coyote? And the Division of Wildlife might say, oh, there's no evidence that there's wolves in Colorado. And so that's been going on all through as long as I've been in Colorado. Early it's through the 90s. And then when they planted, when they reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone in Montana, wyoming and Idaho, federal government did this under the Endangered Species Act.

1:10:23 They wanted to reintroduce wolves to those states, even though Montana and Idaho already had some wolves, and maybe Wyoming outside the park a little bit, maybe a few. So they brought in 34 wolves to reintroduce them to Yellowstone and also 32 wolves into Idaho, that area, to not only reintroduce them to their historic range but also maybe to help manage the large elk herds around Yellowstone which there's no hunting. Three and a half million acres of wilderness area, the large elk herds around Yellowstone which there's no hunting, three and a half million acres of wilderness area.

1:11:09 So let's put that aside for a second. So in the early 2000s, a female wolf with a collar on her migrated all the way down from Yellowstone, traveled 1,200 miles by GPS collaring and ended up getting killed on the highway this side of Glenwood Springs. So the Division of Wildlife, maybe even the governor at the time, said maybe now is the time to put together some type of plan about if wolves migrate naturally into Colorado. So how are we going to do this? Well, let's get a citizens committee together. So they interviewed, people applied, they interviewed and they had a group of, I'll say, 20 people from a variety of aspects of life in Colorado, maybe some people who were well aware of wolves, some not, some community members, some commissioners, on and on and on County commissioners, and they talked about what if wolves come in Colorado naturally?

1:12:14 What are we going to do? Because, other than those three states above us, nationwide they are controlled by the federal government as endangered species and even here in Colorado they're endangered species. So if they come into Colorado, they're an endangered species, which means no hunting, no trapping. So what are we going to do if they come in? Well, under that guise of that they can't hunt them and we'll let them. This plan was basically this We'll let them come into Colorado and do what wolves do. They'll set up home, they will mate, they can have their cubs and we'll let them naturally populate Colorado naturally.

1:13:06 If one or two wolves, or a pack, gets in trouble, we'll use the lethal methods to manage those wolves that could be trapping. Maybe we'll take them somewhere else. If they get in real bad trouble, then we'll have to take them out. Else, if they get in real bad trouble, then we'll have to put, we'll have to take them out of the populations. Yeah, so that was basically the plan. That was early 2000s. Yes, yeah, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife signed off on that resolution. They said we agree, we agree with this. We look at the study. This is what these 20 people came to. They had public meetings, they came to this conclusion.

1:13:47 This is what we're going to do and this is basically in a nutshell. And the commission signed off and it's on record that they support that plan. Even though they support that plan, support that plan. So the pro-wolf people who want to put wolves back in their historic range across the country it's a big range, it is Okay. And so they said well, once we have them in Yellowstone and Montana and Wyoming and they're going to migrate into some other states, all the way over to California and Washington and Oregon, we were going to still push that issue more and more to get more wolves on the ground.

1:14:28 And every time the feds said this basically, the three states above us. Once you get to this population of, let's say, two to three hundred wolves in your state, once you have so many mating pairs and so many pack sizes, we will allow you to manage the wolves through hunting. And so that exists today. But before that happened, the pro-wolfers said wait a minute, we see some chinks Is that the right word? Some red flags in your plan, and they got the judge in the area to agree with that, and so now we have almost 2,000 wolves in those three states. Wow, all right. I didn't know it was that many Way past the number. Way past the numbers of what the fed said.

1:15:10 But the feds, the state, said okay, we have a management tool, we'll allow wolf hunting with permits during the elk seasons and once that quota gets filled then we'll stop the wolf population hunt. So that was critical there. And so the pro-wolfers said about Colorado, and I'll quote we've been waiting long enough for the wolves of Yellowstone to migrate to Colorado to formulate a good population. But we've waited long enough because they have to go through the gauntlet of Wyoming.

1:15:51 And what that meant is that Wyoming their plan to the federal government was we're going to protect wolves around Yellowstone and to an area outside of Yellowstone, but everywhere else in Wyoming they're an open predator. Like a coyote or a crow. Yes, that's exactly right. We've been long enough, so we're going to put this on the ballot. And so they did. It was Bell Initiative, I think 115, I believe it is 99% of that money came from out of state. Wow, it came from the Tide Foundation in California, which is basically a brokerage money company that people say oh, I've got this money.

1:16:37 I donate to a viable cause. Here's the money. But I don't want transparency on who I am, but use it where you think it's fit. They donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for the campaign to get it on the ballot wow, that feels illegal it feels like that should not be allowed the zoo and aquarium fund, the zoo and aquarium phone. Donated hundred thousand dollars or more to get this on the ballot. Donated $100,000 or more to get this on the ballot. The. Sierra Club of. Colorado donated. They used to be a hunting organization or pro-hunting, but they're not anymore. They did that.

1:17:18 There was a biodiversity guy out of Boulder that donated money. A podcast guy who wrote the book the Four Day Workday. Week. Yeah, tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss. Yeah, he challenged his members. Who was listening to him? He would donate $100,000 if they would match it. Wow. All right, and so he got involved in this. So that's where that million and a half dollars came from, most of it up from out of state to get the Bell Initiative. They were saying we know more about Colorado's wildlife management than your local guys do.

1:18:02 We know more, I'm sure, but in reality they were trying to push their agenda nationwide. Yeah. And that's where it's going today. So I went to, I sat in and they started putting together the wolf information plan. They brought in experts from the northern states Wyoming, montana and Idaho to come down and sit with the local biologists and they also brought in a sportsman's advisory group that sat in and they were exchanging ideas on how to make this plan work for Colorado, because under the ballot initiative they were mandated to do it. It wasn't Parks and Wildlife's idea because they were totally against it, but they were being forced to bring wolves into Colorado with a plan.

1:18:52 So I attended those meetings up there just because I'm interested in getting the information from the horse's mouth and not from social media a lot of times when you don't get the whole message. And I went to a lot of the meetings, the final testimonies. The plan called for four stages. We're going to we have, when we get this amount of wolves 200 in the Colorado we're going to go from endangered to threatened wolves 200 in the Colorado. We're going to go from endangered to threatened and then should we have any population control. And that was phase four. The commission could have ruled on that right then that yes, we're going to have phase four, we're going to allow population control, we're going to allow so many wolves in Colorado and we're going to use hunting as that means to do that.

1:19:40 That was voted out because so many people there were people at this big room for and against it. The commission said you know, I might understand why the commission didn't want to handle it that evening, before any rules were reintroduced, maybe it'd be better to see what happens in the future and let other commissioners and legislators handle it. So I can kind of see that side of it. But I testified to have population limits and also type some type of control. But there is no population of wolves control. There's no population limits of wolves in Colorado today. All right, and there's no hunting of wolves in. Colorado today. Yes, all right, and there's no hunting of wolves.

1:20:23 Because in the ballot initiative it's stated and probably people that voted for yes or no never even saw this in the ballot it says the gray wolf will be categorized as a non-game species. That was in the ballot initiative. What does that mean? There's no management and there's no hunting. Wow, and they knew how to get those wordings in there. All right, so they did that. Of course they said we'll only have reintroduced the wolves west of the Continental Divide. Well, we know, as soon as the wolf hits the ground they'll travel 50 miles or 100 miles, eventually Go wherever they want. And now some have been seen in Larimer County. Oh yeah, so little by little, who knows where the wolf population will be in 20 years?

1:21:06 I'm going to give you a comparison. So when I was in the UP of Michigan in the Air Force and then in college, and I graduated up there and left in 1971, they brought in the Division of Wildlife, brought in into the UP of Michigan 12 wolves from Wisconsin. Really Were there any wolves in Michigan before? that no, no. Wow, because I'm looking at wolf numbers nowadays, so this is pretty crazy, okay, okay. And so and they disappeared, some were trapped, some were shot, some got hit by a mobile. They just didn't happen. So now, based on the divisional wildlife in Colorado, I mean in Michigan, in UP, there's a minimum of 660.

1:21:51 Yeah, that's what it says. That's what it says. See, 660 wolves in the UP of Michigan. Now they feed on deer, they have moose in the upper peninsula and there's probably some livestock and then small game also yeah so now think about this the up of michigan is one-third the size of western colorado. There's no hunting of wolves in the up of michigan and they've got, let's say, 600 yeah no hunting 600 wolves. The up is is one third the size of Western Colorado. Yeah, so if you extrapolate that data and say the UP, the Western Colorado is three times as large as UP and they have 600 wolves.

1:22:34 That means theoretically, with all the livestock and the wild game we have, we could have 1800 in western colorado in the next 30, 40, 50 years which is also crazy because the popular people who don't know I feel like so many people don't remember that michigan has, you know, the upper peninsula. But the upper peninsula has a population of what maybe 400 000 people total year round and, like Western Colorado, has way more than that. You know what I mean. Easily, probably, like what I would imagine Western Colorado slip, because when we a lot of people don't realize, like when we're talking about Western Colorado, that includes anything past pretty much the foothills.

1:23:16 And it does. And then just think about all the recreational is coming, so it doubles and triples our population, like on average, you're going to have like easily what probably 20 million people move through that area in a year, as like tourism and stuff like that, it's certainly good. So who knows how many wolves will be in population and who knows how they're going to control them in the future? Don't know, I won't be around, sure, yeah, we don't know. So how are they affecting? So what's happening in Western Colorado as far as the wolves go is that, yeah, ranchers are trying to be educated about mitigation areas.

1:23:58 Bring in guard dogs, bring in range riders, do fencing, do flagging, do noise making, on and on and on. What's interesting is that the money that's being spent on the wolf management in Colorado is coming from the general fund, not from hunting and fishing licenses, which is good, yeah. Fund. Not from hunting and fishing licenses, which is good, yeah. And so all taxpayers in Colorado are paying for the wolf management in Colorado. Okay, they're paying for the compensation of domestic animal managers on their ranchers. In some areas some ranchers will be more affected than others.

1:24:43 Some wolves will be targeting domestic animals more than others. But we've got 60,000 antelope, we've got statewide, we've got 250,000 deer, we have close to 300,000 elk, and then we've got already bears and mountain lions and coyotes as predators, and we're going to have now wolves that act in packs and they know what they're doing, and so it's going to be a crapshoot of what happens in the future. Sure About wolves in Colorado. How many they're going to allocate, how many are going to be the population is going to be. A crapshoot of what happens in the future. Sure About wolves in Colorado. How many they're going to allocate, how many are going to be the population is going to maintain.

1:25:27 I have no idea. Yeah, but I think personally it was a terrible idea to let them forced introduction of wolves in the Colorado. Yeah, let them come in naturally and set up home like they did up in Walden. But look what happened in Walden recently. That pack was not part of the reintroduction. Those came down from Wyoming. They discovered that there was a female and male after a couple of years and then they had pups. They put GPS collars on them. A couple of them wandered outside of colorado into wyoming and they were killed legally. I think what they have done recently with the couple pups and maybe one of the adults is they trapped him and put him in a enclosure unbeknownst to where anybody so, and they're going to transport him somewhere because they got in so much trouble up in the Walden area of killing guard dogs and of killing livestock.

1:26:29 All right, and so that's going to happen on a mini basis. But once the wolves get established in Colorado, it's going to happen on a larger basis, regardless of whether there's range riders. Just think of all the national forests where there's grazing rights and where I hunt up in the flat tops. I'll go up there and I'll see 30, 40, 100 cows just wandering around, feeding off of the natural vegetation, and the rancher has a permit to allow them to do that. He has grazing rights and he pays so much money for that them to do that. He has grazing rights and he pays so much money for that. And if there's wolves in the area, how can you protect those, that cattle? So some people could care less.

1:27:09 They say, oh, cattle are just a scourge of the earth, we don't want them around anyway. You know, I mean there's all all sorts of answers to that, but uh, I feel bad about the Western way of life in Western Colorado, how these people have, from generation to generation, have had their ranches and they have horses and they've had sheep and have cattle and have turned that into a lifestyle, and then now we have a wolf. Here's what's interesting about the wolves. So when Parks and Wildlife went out to find wolves to bring into Colorado. Well, the natural place would go to hey, wyoming, montana and Idaho. The governors in those three states says I'm sorry, we're not going to give you any wolves.

1:27:53 Yeah, I remember that. We are focused on our plan. We want to maintain our plan. We want to maintain hunting as a tool to maintain our wolf population and we're not going to jeopardize that by giving you any wolves. So, they didn't. So Parks and Wildlife goes holy moly. Where are we going to get wolves? So they went farther west to, I'm going to say, oregon. I think you're right. Yes, and they brought in 10 wolves and they introduced them on state land over near State Bridge, okay, and they put them on state land and they dispersed them. There was a ruling, too, that wolves could not be reintroduced within 50 miles of any state borders, or even 50 miles of the northern tribe reservation.

1:28:46 Oh nice. Well, they know that wolves, as soon as they hit the ground, will travel 30, 40, 50 miles. So going out of state or staying in state or staying out of the Indian reservation has the wolves don't know any boundaries, yeah, and so they collared all these wolves and it has a general idea about watersheds or where these wolves are, and you can go on the wolf page of Colorado Parks and Wildlife and see where the wolves have migrated to. They won't tell you where the individual wolves are, but they'll at least show you the drainages they are and everything north of I-70, from Larimer County out west to Steamboat. Wolves have been in that area. From Larimer County out west to Steamboat, wolves have been in that area. And so again, it's going to be hard to tell what's going to happen in the future, how the wolves will impact our wildlife, from our moose populations to our bighorn sheep populations, to our elk populations, our deer populations.

1:29:43 Moose were introduced to Colorado in the 70s, just over 80 miles west of here, near Gould and Walden, yeah, and now we have over 3,000 moose in Colorado in our huddle bull population. They're doing great they are. But they're doing great. They are and uh, but they're solitary animals. And I've seen videos of Yellowstone of wolf packs attacking a cow moose with her calf and knowing how to get that calf away from the cow and then dragging up in the banks and devouring it right there on the camera. And we've spent thousands and thousands of millions of dollars bringing in moose in the Colorado and devouring it right there on the camera.

1:30:23 And we've spent thousands and thousands and millions of dollars bringing in moose into Colorado and maintaining them. The same thing is with the desert bighorn sheep, which is only like maybe less than 500 of them in here in Colorado. Wow, okay, we've spent millions of dollars. And we know the mountain lion is one of the major predators on sheep and I'm sure wolves will get involved somehow in that aspect too. So what will that mean in the future? If wildlife populations start coming down? How will that affect hunting in Colorado? Will they start saying, well, we can't give out as many permits as we did in the past because we don't have the populations now and so we don't know how that's going to all pan out, but it's going to be an interesting study and results in 10, 20 years and I feel for the ranchers that are going through this right now.

1:31:24 Yeah, Well, hey, thanks for sharing that. I think that was really informative and I mean, that was definitely the most clear timeline and just clarification of the situation that I've heard, especially as other people have had a lot of opinions on it and I haven't ever heard anyone with an opinion that could explain it as well as you have. Hey folks, we hope you enjoyed part one of Paul Navar's interview. I enjoyed listening to his thoughts on the North American model of conservation, as well as hearing some of his hunting stories and his life story background. For the next episode, part two, we're going to be getting to hear a really special story about his his moose hunt this past year, and I think that it's going to be something you're not going to want to miss.

1:32:16 So tune in next time for Paul's Moose Hunt.