24 Byron Pace, Podcasters, Film maker and Journalist

Byron Pace takes us on a captivating journey through his remarkable career as a filmmaker, conservationist, and storyteller. From stalking deer in the Scottish Highlands to documenting elephant relocations across Africa, Byron offers refreshing authenticity in discussing the complex realities of wildlife management and conservation.

Our conversation begins with the origin story of his pioneering "Into the Wilderness" podcast, which emerged in a landscape virtually devoid of outdoor podcasts eight years ago. Byron shares how his focus evolved from purely hunting-centered discussions to broader conservation issues, gaining perspective through documenting wildlife management across multiple continents. His thoughtful approach to contentious topics demonstrates a rare ability to bridge divides between polarized groups in the conservation world.

The heart of our discussion explores Byron's latest documentary project, "Paid in Blood," which follows the dramatic relocation of elephants from drought-stricken Namibia to the Democratic Republic of Congo. This project showcases the uncomfortable realities of conservation work - including difficult decisions about culling wildlife during droughts and the occasional losses that occur during high-risk conservation operations. Byron's unflinching commitment to telling the whole truth about conservation, rather than sanitized narratives, sets his work apart.

We also dive into his work with Modern Huntsman magazine, which has become a refuge for serious long-form journalism about conservation at a time when many publications are shifting toward clickbait. Byron shares striking economic insights from African conservation, noting that in some reserves, "72 photographic tourists generate the same income as one hunter" - illustrating why hunting remains a crucial conservation tool in many contexts.

Throughout our conversation, Byron articulates how short-term political thinking undermines effective conservation, which requires generational commitment. Whether discussing Scotland's deer management challenges or rural communities facing disconnected urban policies, he brings clarity to complex issues that affect both wildlife and people.

What makes this conversation particularly valuable is Byron's willingness to question his own assumptions and evolve his thinking based on new information - a quality essential for anyone serious about conservation. His work represents a refreshing alternative to the polarized debates that often characterize conservation discussions.

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Transcript

Introduction and Welcome

Speaker 3 0:23

Hello and welcome to the Outdoor Gibbon podcast, episode 24. Well, it's quite a fitting episode because actually we are now in the year of 2024. So perfect timing really to start the year off with a fantastic guest I managed to get a hold of. It's only taken 12 months Byron Pace. He's a busy man to track down and to actually tie down to an audio desk or even a desk anywhere in the UK Because most of the time he's been traveling and doing a lot of filming and documentaries all over the world. But anyway, we have that coming up in this show a bit later on.

Speaker 3 1:02

As with all New Year's, I'm sure everybody's been out there and they've made their resolutions and plans and things to do and what they want to achieve. This year I think I haven't really made that many. I've still got to just nail this Chinese water deer down. It's proven a bit of a tricky one at the moment, just timing wise, really getting down the country because obviously there's none in Scotland. I haven't made any of the plans at the moment. As always, the year will start and before I know it I'll be halfway through and quick enough we'll be at the end again. I think the only thing that's set in stone is a trip down to the stalking show in Staffordshire in April to catch up with people.

Speaker 3 1:38

So this interview that you're about to listen to it has wide and varied topics, initially talking about the into the wilderness podcast that byron and his brother set up, moving on to some of the filmography he's done and other parts in modern huntsman. Then we go on to talk about his latest project called paid in blood movement of elephants from around in africa because drought it's quite poignant. They're obviously having drought over the last few years and if you look out the window at the moment, the weather for January has probably been the wettest it's ever. Well, december January, I should say, has been the wettest it's ever been. Just on the news today more flooding, and this time it's not just in Scotlandland, it's covered the whole country and I think we even touch on that power outages and stuff.

Origins of Into the Wilderness Podcast

Speaker 3 2:27

So, uh, sit back, enjoy this podcast and any feedback let us know. Hello and welcome to the Outdoor Gibbon podcast. Finally, after a long time, I have managed to get onto this podcast, the one and only Byron Pace. Most of you will know him from things like Into the Wilderness podcast, the Modern Huntsman, and you'll have seen him on other platforms and videos and filmography. Welcome, byron.

Speaker 2 3:14

Thank you. Thank you for persevering with me for probably what has been a year, I would guess, to get me a desk in well, in my own country. I was gonna say that's where I am right now, so I'm at home.

Speaker 3 3:27

Well, as I say, you couldn't really have got this any better. I think we are on the second day of 2024, so literally the start of the year. We we've managed to pin you down to get this recorded.

Speaker 2 3:38

Which is good, because I think probably January is the only full month of this year I'm gonna be home, so you've done well.

Speaker 3 3:44

Well, I think you've been. You've been fairly busy, so obviously a lot of people will know you from sort of, I think, how it all started the Into the Wilderness podcast. Yeah, so just take us back to how did people ask how I start my podcast? How did you guys start yours?

Speaker 2 4:11

start yours, uh. The podcast started, I think, about eight years ago and it coincided with me starting a film production company with my brother, um daryl uh, who worked. We worked together for quite a number of years and it was actually his idea to start a podcast. He was a big podcast listener and at that time, if you cast your mind back to eight, nine years ago in the uk, certainly there weren't really any outdoor podcasts there was no, there was nothing no, um, there was uh, you know, there was a handful in the states, but nothing like what there is now, and there was one or two across europe.

Speaker 2 4:40

It was really an empty space, and so he said, well, why don't we do that? We're in that arena anyway because we're filming it. I've been involved in the outdoors field sports world for a long time, since in my late teens, writing for different publications. We're always meeting really interesting people. Why don't we have a podcast? Okay, let's do it, daryl. I had never listened to a podcast before. It was really him that made it happen.

Speaker 3 5:07

I was going to say I think your podcasts were what pretty much kept me sane. Moving to Scotland, the nine and a half hours of driving Scotland's not that bad. No, it was the nine and a half hours driving up and down the motorway most weekends and I would download a whole load of your podcasts onto the iPad, bang them in the truck and it was almost like you guys were just sat in the car with me and the fantastic guests you had all the way up all the time.

Speaker 2 5:30

Would that be near the start?

Speaker 3 5:31

That was right near the start, yeah.

Speaker 2 5:33

Wow, yeah, I cringe to actually think about listening back to some of those early podcasts, but everyone has to start somewhere and that's where it started for us, and we worked together both on the podcast and on the film side for many years. Eventually we ended up parting ways. My brother's now a policeman up in Aberdeen. He has a family and a beautiful little niece who I'm actually seeing tomorrow. In the last couple of years we paired our business right back down to just being me and the work that I'm doing now yeah, because you you got to a point where you you were sort of you had a lot going on.

Speaker 3 6:09

You had the into the wilderness podcast. You were doing stuff on some of the scottish estates up here. Uh, you had a whole load of merchandise and things like that going out yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 6:20

I mean that again, daz was a big driver of a lot of the ancillary stuff because he loved that kind of shit. Most of the merch stuff was his idea, the coffee was kind of his stuff and we ran with it. But also at that time we were building a business. So what does that business look like? The core of it was filming in field sports primarily, and then we had a podcast which wasn't really monetized at all at the start and it's still even to this day, even after many, many years and a reasonable listenership, it's still incredibly hard to monetize podcasts. And then all of those little components that we were doing, including guided hunting, all just added to making it viable, because it was very or we found it very difficult and it's still to this day is very difficult.

Speaker 2 7:09

If you are, even if you're very good, if you do one thing, if you're just I say just in inverted commas just a photographer, just a filmmaker or just a writer, it's I've, I've always found it very hard to make just one of those things work, which is why I I do a lot of things, probably not as well as I should, because I do a lot of things rather than just doing one, although one of my focuses in the last sort of two to three years has been to pare some of that down and really focus on the thing that I I want to do more than anything else, which is which is making films.

Speaker 2 7:43

So I have started to dedicate much more of the time that I have to that. I don't do a lot of writing anymore. I used to write a hell of a lot. I mean, there was a time there probably was a period of about five years where you'd struggle to find somebody who was writing more words in UK field sports publications than I was. I doubt there was. If there was anyone, there was maybe one or two people.

Speaker 3 8:09

I was going to say you always used to be in field sports magazine and things like that. Uh, yeah, and sporting rifle was a big one.

Speaker 2 8:16

And then I wrote in countrymans and a number of other publications around the world as well, all in field sports. I was a rifle reviewer for many years, um, and then I kind of drifted away from that like that sort of high volume writing and it was a hell of a lot of fun, but I'm talking like when I was in my mid-20s. So, um, it served a, it served a purpose and it was, uh, fulfilling something that I was really passionate about at the time, because I love to hunt and I love to fish and I loved rifles. I still love rifles. I just now I can geek out about camera gear more than I can about the latest guns.

Speaker 3 8:50

So let's just drag you back, because a question I ask every guest on here is is sort of what's your earliest memory and how did you get into field sports? Because it's kind of everybody has a different sort of entry point.

Speaker 2 9:03

Yeah, that's pretty easy for me. That was my dad when I was. My earliest memories are shooting crows with an air rifle in the Black Isle up in Scotland on a farm. I can't remember the name of the farm, but the farmer. Sadly he passed away many years ago. His name was John Greger and he let my dad come there and shoot rabbits.

Speaker 2 9:29

Oh, fantastic, and shoot crows and it was just. It was a typical like northern Scottish farm. You know cattle I can't remember there was definitely cattle. I can't remember there being any sheep and a very typical farmer in that part of Scotland as well. So you know as rough but equally as kind as they come.

Speaker 3 9:48

Yes.

Speaker 2 9:49

And I was a tiny little kid, I mean, by the time I was six years old I had moved to where kind of in the area that I live now. So this is from like three to five. Okay, and those memories crawling through the long grass in my onesie camo outfit with a plastic retractable knife in my pocket, crawling up behind my dad to go and shoot rabbits was that. And then in the same area so we're talking like north of Inverness, in the hills above Loch Ness, pike fishing, pike fishing in very small little lochs, throwing spinners and catching pike. So those are my very, very earliest memories doing things in the sort of field sports arena.

Speaker 3 10:36

Oh, fantastic. So yeah, real sort of young age getting in there and being introduced to it Very much.

Speaker 2 10:43

Yeah, no very much. And it soon became the case that there was really nothing else that I wanted to do um. It was, I mean, through my. As soon as I got into my teenage years. That allows you to have a bit of independence, like pre being able to drive um, but that sort of period leading up to there I, if I wasn't at school or swimming, I used to do a lot of competitive swimming. At the time I was probably on the river fishing, or I was up on one of some of the farms that I still hunt to this day, or near where my parents live um hunting rabbits or roe deer or whatever fantastic because, yeah, because obviously that that probably ties into why some of the the guests you've had on the podcast over the years there's always it's always been a connection.

Speaker 3 11:30

I think it's not like it's a difficult to have that conversation about hunting and fishing. When you actually do it. It's so much easier to be able to, to interact with a guest that that enjoys doing it yeah, and, and that was, you know, that was very much a focus of the podcast.

Speaker 2 11:47

Uh, at the beginning it was never going to be a hunting podcast, which is why we picked the name into the wilderness um, it was supposed to be basically a love of the outdoors and a love of nature, but in in the early years, a lot of the guests were people who did do a lot of hunting and we talked about hunting and hunting ethics and that sort of thing. And that definitely changed over the years, not because I don't want to talk about it anymore. I just have found other, deeper interests in the conservation space where I'm talking to, uh, where more of the conversations are about the sustainable use of natural resources as a whole, not just specifically in the hunting arena on, that plays an important role and you see that, particularly where I spend a lot of time in Africa, which is a lot of conversations that I have, but much bigger picture than that and a lot of that has taken me and a lot of that has taken me, a lot of those conversations and people I've interviewed have started being at home and then ended up being abroad, because I spend so much time abroad filming. But this year, as you probably saw, I sort of I came back to kind of where it all began, but with a higher level of production, which is kind of always my aim when I'm taking on new projects is to try and raise the bar from whatever it was I did last time was I did this whole series within the podcast called the British Uplands, which was this sort of deep investigation into the British Uplands, but again it wasn't really hunting focused at all.

Speaker 2 13:19

It just so happens that the British Uplands there is a lot of field sports activities that take place, and so a huge amount of the topics that we discussed from tree planting to peatland restoration, to how rivers are being restored, to predator control are all impacted or all effect or are all done by areas that are used for field sports.

Speaker 2 13:41

So there was a kind of subtle connection there and that was quite deliberate, because I think one of the kind of failures of the field sports community in trying to have conversations about what we do in a public arena is that you go there with the flag flying high, it's like and that's not about like hiding who you are, it's just like I'm here and I have an agenda and I'm here to defend my position, rather than saying like come into my world, like open the door, and it's a slightly different approach I completely agree with you on that and I think I think you're probably taking it a different, a different route into that, but actually opening it up and actually trying to introduce people to the whole picture, whereas exactly you just hit the nail on the head the field school sports community at the moment, uh, they kind of hold a shield up and go nobody's going to break through our barrier, and I think that's very defensive to anybody.

Speaker 3 14:36

That's, we don't open the conversation, do we?

Speaker 2 14:41

no, and it's also, it's always in defense of something. So if you look at that series that we did well for a start, um, I brought in someone who is not involved in that world or whatever, and I hired an editor who, as ex bbc and currently a lecturer at a university up in Scotland, to check me, to check my bias, because there's so little point putting out. You can put out the best series, podcast or film series or whatever you want in the world that's driven with an agenda from a shooting organization or any organization for that matter. But if that is the angle that you're coming from, you're coming there with this massive baggage of biases. So if your aim is to try and get people to come with you on a journey of discovery so that we can discuss and talk about, hang on. So maybe that isn't a good idea or you know, damn, maybe I've been wrong this whole time. Maybe this is another concept that I need to think about, about how we manage our landscape. You're never going to do that if it's coming from a place that has an agenda.

Speaker 2 15:52

I think there's a huge danger and I've seen this with a number of people and or organizations, old and new, where it starts with absolutely the best of intentions, and the best of intentions are still there, but they become propaganda machines. Yeah, they don't even realize that they've become propaganda machines and they just they get patted on the back because they're reinforced. And I have to be I'm trying to be conscious of it, but you get patted on the back when it reinforces things that people believe in and then you start to drink the kool-aid rather than being continually critical, like if you, if you look at that, uh, the upland series, look, I don't know what percentage of it was actually related to any hunting stuff, but it was maybe 30 percent yeah, no, absolutely the rest was way, way bigger picture stuff, and that's actually what's more important.

Speaker 3 16:47

It's far more important that's going to protect the whole field, sports society, rather than just the hunting part, because actually people can connect with that easier. Your BBC viewer, for example, who sits there and watches one of the wildlife shows, suddenly realizes oh, there is more to it than just going out and shooting the countryside up yep, totally.

Speaker 2 17:12

And then you bring in and we, the sort of field sports, have definitely done this, so this wasn't exactly me breaking new ground, but you bring in voices like tim adams, who was previously river cottage and now he's also up in scotland now, speaks so brilliantly and he's a game chef and he's massively passionate about this incredible resource that we have on our doorstep and is able to give his point of view because he's a chef and people relate to that because it's food and that was a nice little inroads.

The British Uplands Conservation Series

Speaker 2 17:43

And sarah roberts, my, my friend, who's a journalist again, like she's a more marine sharks world than she is terrestrial and doesn't hunt or fish or do anything like that. Um, she just was there with a curious mind and she was just asking the questions that you ask if you're a journalist, and I think that's why we uh, I think we came up with a really nice outcome off the back of that, which was very listenable. Like I had somebody from the RSPB actually email me off the back of that series to say there was stuff in there I didn't know. You really opened my eyes. It was really well done, really balanced. You know more of the stuff. It would be great.

Speaker 3 18:24

That's fantastic.

Speaker 2 18:25

I'll take that for the win.

Speaker 3 18:27

Oh, totally Absolutely, and especially if you've got another big organization like that turning up and going. We tell everybody we're the best at this, but actually we've just learned something from it. You can't ask for better can you?

Speaker 2 18:38

Yeah, it's cool, it's cool and that's all I want from any of this stuff is really to be able to bring people into a room that wouldn't normally sit in the room.

Speaker 3 18:48

Yes.

Speaker 2 18:50

You know, be able to have a civil conversation and I think, as is often the case in the conservation world, in the conservation world in any part on any continent, clashing groups actually what kind of want the same outcome.

Speaker 3 19:05

it's just that they disagree, in a very polar way often, about how to go about it I think, I think so and I think yeah, I think it's the defensive reaction just a human nature. We'll all jump with a very defensive way when we're trying to defend something and I think, unfortunately a lot of people then they get very stubborn and their backs get up and you never go forward.

Speaker 2 19:27

You just sit there and always trying to get your point across yeah, no, totally it is, which is frustrating and we need to move past that from both sides. You know it's. It can be very difficult to have a discussion where with anybody who has an incredibly entrenched view and isn't willing to you know, isn't willing to give ground or willing, in my mind, one of the most important things as a journalist is you have to be willing to be wrong yes, yeah, you have to.

Speaker 2 20:00

You basically have, you have to be prepared that maybe, yeah, you're going to find out something that is going to make you change your position, because you've just suddenly got a piece of information that you didn't have before. And now you have to say I believe this thing because before, because this was the information I have. Now, I've learned this. Do you know what? I wasn't wrong before because I was making it with the information I had, but my position has now changed because I have a more complete view, or, at the very least, I've learned something which is now making me question what I previously thought.

Speaker 3 20:34

No, absolutely.

Speaker 2 20:35

And that critical mindset we all need to have on both sides of the fence.

Speaker 3 20:39

And I think that is exactly right, and unfortunately, until well. Well, the shooting community needs to actually act together and work together, because that's the biggest. We're falling apart from the inside and then it it creates more of a more stress because the outside world gets to see that, that this community is not one anyway no, no, I don't really know how to solve that, to be honest.

Speaker 2 21:03

No, but I think the work you're doing.

Speaker 3 21:06

At least it allows it to come from a different angle, which then allows people to look in and go oh, hang on a minute. Yeah, there is something else going on here.

Speaker 2 21:16

Yeah, it's a hard balance between holding on to the things that are important but also be willing to change and understand that sometimes the win is getting ahead of change that is going to be forced upon you anyway. You're in control rather than waiting five years thinking you can hold on to a position that's absolutely not tenable and then you're gonna lose anyway and you have zero control. Like I can see and people as my gamekeeping friends will hate on me for this, but I can see that it's already happened in some places. I can see that happening with the snaring position. Yeah, you know it's a very controversial subject. There's some places I don't think you can't even do it in wales anymore no, wales, it's been completely banned and it's on.

Speaker 2 22:09

It's currently in review, I think, in yeah, here, here and I totally get it. It's um, you don't want to like. It's just one thing after the next, like what's the next thing that you lose, which was a component of ways that we used to manage the countryside. But I think if people were to take an honest, long-term view on it, I don't know if it's something that's savable, and that is no statement about whether it should or shouldn't happen. I'm just making that comment from a public perception point of view. I think even if you had the best orators to talk about it and how it can be used as a tool and a restraining device rather than a snare, I'm not sure whether the public are going to buy into that and ultimately, the politicians don't care. The politicians care about getting votes and we've seen that time and time again. They don't care. The politicians care about getting votes and we've seen that time and time again.

Speaker 2 23:04

They don't really care. I've become incredibly cynical about politics the last couple of years, but I really don't believe that, paul, the politicians, generally speaking, care at all about what the truth is. I think they care about getting their seat back more than anything else.

Speaker 3 23:21

You're absolutely right. It is. It's bums on seats for them, and if they can, if they can win a group of people over that will keep them in, then they'll sing whatever you want them to sing they will yep, they will keep singing that song and then they'll change that song.

Speaker 2 23:37

You know if they, if suddenly the tide changes we see it too often, you know to. It's a very obvious statement, I think. I think, generally speaking, the public have lost faith in politicians.

Speaker 3 23:48

I think we're in an era right now of probably the largest number of completely useless politicians in both all of our parlance in the uk than my in my whole life, which is really sad and unfortunately that has a massive effect on the management of everything from the whole, from from the whole of the countryside which we're talking about, the country sports, just down through the country, down through everything we do everything.

Speaker 2 24:15

Yeah, I mean just you. You look at, you know flooding. Really, we've just seen massive flooding in the country. We really need leadership to help solve some of these problems. I tell you, a great piece of leadership would be don't build houses on floodplains.

Speaker 2 24:32

Well that's the fact that councils and I realize this is a slightly off topic from the countryside, but it's all linked because this is all rivers that start in the uplands and a lot of those uplands are managed for or were in the past, if they're not now managed as hunting estates. So we're talking about tree planting and contour planting and drainage of the moorland from farming back in the 70s, not for draining of grouse moors, which is often misquoted. So it is all linked. Alongside big shifts in climate patterns, which means that we're seeing larger volumes of rain over shorter periods of time. But leadership would say like you, look at Brecon, which is near where I live it's actually where I went to high school there's a place called River Street. Funny enough, it's on a river. It has flooded probably eight times that I can think of in my lifetime and this time was probably the worst and it happened after and I might be wrong on this number, but I think it was a 13 plus million pound flood defense system.

Speaker 2 25:32

That's right, so not an insignificant amount of money. It failed the second time the river flooded.

Speaker 3 25:38

Yeah.

Speaker 2 25:40

Don't put those people back in those houses.

Speaker 2 25:42

No, no they could have used that money that they used to build those flood defences to put those people who live in those houses in another part, like build new houses for them or subsidise new housing for them, and leave that place for the river to do what rivers do, which is flood. And you look up and down our country no, and this isn't just picking on scotland, this is that. I live here. It's the same is true all over the uk. We've historically and continue to build houses on floodplains and then wonder why they get flooded, and then we all pay for it you and if you don't live in a floodplain, don't know. If you live in a floodplain, I don't. I live on the side of the hill, I live on the top of the hill insurance.

Speaker 1 26:21

Yeah you live in a floodplain. I don't, I live on the side of a hill.

Speaker 2 26:22

I live on the top of a hill. My house insurance, yeah, you live on a hill. That's a much better place to live, like we all pay for it with the insurance on our houses.

Speaker 3 26:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2 26:28

Even though you wouldn't think it was directly, you're not in a flood risk area. Those insurance companies are still having to pay for those houses to be fixed, linked. And that kind of difficult leadership, as one example, just because it's something that happened three weeks ago we don't see in this country at all no, that they won't look.

Speaker 3 26:49

They won't look at that. We'll look at something completely different and we'll we'll forget about the domestic issue and we'll we'll look at another how we can send fun, fun funds for aid in a country.

Speaker 2 27:00

Meanwhile we've got people you know drowning like you know. There's been like six people drowned it's been ridiculous in the last six months.

Speaker 3 27:07

It's been unbelievable well, I I was. I was out stalking on the hills in the first storm, the red weather warning, because I was up up in the angus glens I think we were trying to organize getting a podcast recorded with you.

Speaker 2 27:17

Oh, that's right.

Speaker 3 27:18

Yeah, yeah and the devastation I had no power.

Speaker 2 27:20

I think that time that's why I couldn't do.

Speaker 3 27:22

I had no power that's your jenny had burnt out or something like that.

Speaker 2 27:25

Yeah, it did bloody hard, which I fixed. Yeah, I thought I'd fixed yesterday and now, much to my disappointment, it's still not working.

Speaker 3 27:32

Oh no, but again you look at it and you just look at the. The main a90 was closed for five days because of the, the flooding and the damage and you think that's a main trunk. Nothing got up to Aberdeen because of that and there were no diversions. And you said you talk about Brecon, everything went through Brecon.

Speaker 2 27:51

I know Poor bloody sods who live there.

Speaker 3 27:54

Yeah, every Arctic, everything you could think of was trundling through that tiny place and it's just, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 28:01

It is, but you know a lot of that. And it's just, it's crazy. It is, but you know a lot of that and we can get back to other topics after this. But I look at like so that a lot of the reason that that road was closed was because of the bridge at Furnaven.

Speaker 3 28:13

That's right. Which is the?

Speaker 2 28:14

southeast that runs underneath it, now near my parents. So that's a. I don't know when that bridge was built, but it's a fairly modern bridge. Don't know when that that bridge was built, but it's a fairly modern bridge. It's very standard. You see them all over the place with those medium-sized rivers. They're just basically concrete platforms that were put across with hard angular edge cast concrete bases on either side. I don't even think there's like a. There's no middle support in there because it's not very long and of course it's going to fail over time. Like you look at it and you think this is such a shit design.

Speaker 2 28:46

And then you, you near where my parents live or where I grew up, is an old railway bridge, uh, that has long since been decommissioned when they reduced the number of uh lines. It was a line that used to run, I think, from um brecon into edsel and I don't know where it went once it. Once it went past edsel, but it was that line that would have then, I think, from um brecon into edsel and I don't know where it went once it. Once it went past edsel, but it was that line that would have then hooked up to montrose. So there's been no tracks on it the whole time.

Speaker 2 29:10

We've lived this over like 35 years, but the pillars for that bridge are still there and those the pillars for those bridge were probably built 100 years ago or maybe longer haven't been maintained because there's no railway on it. In the same period of time, whenever they were lifted, I think, which was back in the 70s, that bridge is still standing and there is. I bet you that bridge is as good as the day that it was built, because I can see it and you see where the foundations go into the river. So I don't know, I'm not a structural engineer, I can't say for sure, but you look at it and you thought this was really well freaking designed.

Speaker 3 29:49

Well, they thought about it. Yeah, they really did, even the shape of it, you know it's shaped like a boat.

Political Challenges in Conservation

Speaker 2 29:51

It's designed to get the water, to cut water, yeah, to cut water around it.

Speaker 2 29:53

And you and you look at the like, yeah, it's just ridiculous, and and I you see that so much with this uh, the sort of the modern age of quick, quick building and not taking a hundred or a thousand year view on it, and that is something that does go back to conservation.

Speaker 2 30:08

I was actually when I released the upland series. I managed to wrangle a spot on the nine show, which is a scottish um like current affairs program recorded out of glasgow, and and I can't remember exactly what the question was they asked me at the end, but it was something about like, what am I, what do I see as the biggest issues around? You know, conservation in Scotland, and that was one of the things I said was that the problem is that we as a society and as the people making decisions and those people with the funds to make things happen, but particularly political decision making the time horizon is too short it's a four to five year time horizon, not a 10 to 100 to a thousand year time horizon no, absolutely, if you want conservation to work, you're delusional if you think it's going to work in a political cycle.

Speaker 2 31:04

You need at least a decade, and that's not even long enough. We need to take the you know the mindset of a lot of sort of uh native populations views about how they looked at the land at the time. If you were to go back, which which was sort of seven generations.

Speaker 3 31:22

Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2 31:23

How do my actions now impact the seventh generation from now? Yeah, absolutely, if we took that view, we'd be in a way better position than we are today.

Speaker 3 31:34

It's almost like you look at the whole rewilding and replanting schemes and the trees and everything like that. They're not. Most of the trees that are planted in Scotland, unfortunately, are planted for a cash crop 30-year cycle. That means that somebody's planning their pension out of planting some trees, unfortunately, probably with a tax break with a tax break no inheritance tax and all the rest of it.

Speaker 3 31:55

But again, everything then suffers. So we can. We can drag this around the the complete change now we've had in the scottish deer season there are no stags out of season or no male deer is out of season.

Speaker 2 32:09

But that's not actually dealing with a population growth, that's just something that ticks a box it's freaking wild, like when I because I've been out away so much the last, uh, couple of years With some things, I've been a little out of the loop. I know that that was on the table. I didn't know fully when it had been implemented and then I found out recently or this year it had been implemented and I read some of the DEAR reports when it came out and I was having conversations with the likes of Dr Lindsay Sivright, who's big in that world, so I have kind of been part of those debates or know kind of what's going on. But when you hear that they implement something like this and you know that the justification for them implementing that is to reach these higher targets for the number of red deer particularly I mean, it's all deer species in Scotland- but red deer is the focus to reduce the population of red deer cull particularly.

Speaker 2 33:03

I mean it's all deer species in scotland, but red deer is the focus to reduce the population of red deer in scotland. It's just laughable, because did any of those people know anything about population dynamics? Because you do not. You basically need to do high school biology to know that if you want to control the populations of species, you control the females. It has nothing to do, it has almost nothing to do with the population of males, and yet they've made this call on the back of total bullshit. Frankly, that's what they've done. And so how do you articulate this to the public? You won't be able to, because the public? Why should they care that much about it? What we've had is we've had a government supposedly acting in the best interest of the people, the people that vote them in and what I'm about to say isn't a judgment on whether we should or shouldn't cull more deer, so just put that aside for one second.

Speaker 2 34:07

But they've implemented a policy that is based not on science and is based on lies let's open the mail season because it's going to reduce populations. It's fundamentally not true and that is what we're dealing with here, and so like that is. When you see things like that happen, it doesn't give you a lot of faith in the right decisions being made no, no, no, not at all, and actually it's kind of scary.

Speaker 3 34:37

The nicest part was to see that many of the estates and the deer managers are singing from the same book, and it's like there's no point in carrying on shooting a stag after the rut when they're in such poor condition. We need to give them a chance to recover. However, there are don't get me wrong, there are scrupulous, uh sporting agents out there that think, well, it's another quick book I can make.

Speaker 2 35:00

I can keep shooting stags for longer yeah, you know, and there is something to be discussed in that, and this doesn't sit particularly well with a lot of like traditional estates, but I think some of the more progressive minded stalkers and deer managers would be willing to talk about the fact that we are shooting a lot of stags in terms of meat production and food into the food chain at the worst time of year absolutely they're in the middle of the rut and then that, like, right until when the old season disappeared, I don't want to eat that stuff, like I want to eat it two months before and then not again until the season opened oh yes

Speaker 2 35:44

you know, like july the following year, and so there is an issue there and, like you, speak to the game dealers, they're saying we're getting the vast majority of our, or a large proportion of our, protein intake of carcasses during the months of september and october during the rut, which has been a lot of hunting. That's going on and I totally get it and it's super exciting to hunt at that time of year. It's also easier because the males have one thing on their mind and the clients coming in, that's what they want to do. They want to go and hunt stags and it is all part of the management system. It all plays a role.

Speaker 2 36:25

However, we're living in a time now where we have to think about the whole cycle, and the whole cycle is once that animal is dead, it goes into the food chain, and that wasn't a problem, and I'm regurgitating information here rather than pretending like I have a deep-seated knowledge on this. This is just, from speaking to other people about it, part of the problem that we have now and why this is compounded. At the same time. It's kind of happened almost exactly the same time the scottish government decided they wanted an extra hundred thousand deer through. The system is we've left europe and pre, whereas before it was very easy to send that venison for that six, seven, eight weeks maybe that we don't really have a palate for and they sent it to europe and they made it into sausages and salamis and stuff, which is great, and it's great for that, but we just we don't eat much of that by comparison to the Europeans.

Speaker 2 37:11

So now, what do you do with all of that venison that is shot at a time of year where you're not actually getting great value on the carcass because they're not in great fettle, because they're not really eating anymore, because there's something else in their mind and I also get that. Um, so that is a positive of the the change in the season. It's just that that is not the reason that the season was changed no and exactly.

Speaker 3 37:40

And to be honest, the game dealers didn't help us because obviously during that stag season you go from £1.35 a kilo and I think we dropped to 90 pence a kilo for a stag. It's almost to the point of, by the time you're trying to get those beasts away, there's no value in that venison. Yet you still go into a lot of shops and things like that. Pick up a piece of venison, oh, it's not from scotland, it's new zealand venison.

Speaker 2 38:06

Excellent yeah and I. So I asked a game dealer about this. I said you know, I'm sure you, you know, I hear that you guys get a lot of heat from the stalkers who are bringing carcasses. Like why are you giving me nothing for my venison? We're being told, shoot more. And like why what's the point? I'm getting nothing for these carcasses? Um, and, of course, well, one on a in a bigger picture, not just talking about the stags.

Speaker 2 38:31

Of course that is going to happen. We have a drive pushed by government to shoot more deer. What do you think is going to happen? Basic supply demand you should know this at high school. It's going to depress the prices. The prices can only go one way unless it coincides with investment, which should come from government. If this is what they want to happen, investment should come from government for marketing for venison, to make it one more affordable, but also make people realize that it's this amazing resource that we have as a country. Of course they're not doing that. The game dealer told me that the venison body, the Scottish venison body, had a budget of and I don't know if this is true, this is just what I was told had a budget of 15,000 pounds for marketing for the year and I said to him they might as well dig a hole and put that 15,000 pounds in a hole, because 15,000 pounds for marketing doesn't do anything.

Speaker 2 39:22

It's completely pointless if you compare it to all of the other things that you're competing against. But I pressed him about the price issue and he was just saying the problem is that we are being paid nothing because of course they're a middleman, they're processing but they're not actually putting. Some of them are different if they do some direct sales, but a lot of them are doing some processing and then handing it on to a retailer absolutely and that retailer is making a massive markup but paying less, or the same, or whatever it might be.

Speaker 2 40:00

So I I want to believe what I was told, because I'm just I hope that people don't lie. Um, you know, there's a lot of game dealers out there, particularly probably the smaller ones, although those that still exist, who you know. They're also struggling because, on the other hand, they are suddenly being told oh, you need to process 20 or 30 or 40 percent more deer than you did last year. Yep, oh, how long is that going to last? For? Well, I don't know. Like, once you know, once the number is down, then it's going to come down. So, hang on. You're saying to me I need to bring in more stuff, maybe expand a bit of my factory so that I can process 40% more animals for a business that is going to disappear in three or four years time.

Speaker 2 40:44

Well, that's madness absolutely like this is this, who can win? But that's government's fault. Like that is government's implementing a policy without fully thinking through the consequences for the people who live in the countryside, for the wildlife, um, for animal welfare and also just the economics of the countryside but I think I think a lot of it goes back to we we've I think it's come up many times in many podcasts I've done.

Speaker 3 41:13

We've become very disconnected from the countryside and most people would go into the supermarket and rather pick up a piece of chicken or I was chatting somebody the other day nobody in Scotland really likes eating lamb, so they won't go for lamb, they go for a piece of beef or something like that, but they have no qualms as to where it came from. They just want something that's good value for money, whereas things like pheasant partridge venison if that was actually presented properly, it's a phenomenal, it's absolutely phenomenal food it really is.

Modern Huntsman Publication

Speaker 2 41:47

It's criminal that it's not more available, particularly given how much there is of it. I mean my, and I'm sure there's a lot, of, a lot of people you're probably the same in the countryside who are like this, but I doubt there's maybe bacon in my freezer. There's now no longer a piece of lamb that I was given by a farmer because we just ate that at christmas, I think. Everything else in there is venison, partridge, ducks, pheasant, I think that that's it.

Speaker 3 42:20

That's the only stuff that is in my two, two chest freezers sounds about the same, apart from a wild boar that I've still got some bits of that. I got in Inverness.

Speaker 2 42:28

Oh, fantastic. I am partial to a bit of wild boar, but that would be a good addition.

Speaker 3 42:32

Exactly? No, absolutely, but it's great food, you know.

Speaker 2 42:35

It's great food. It really is, and we should be eating more. We should be eating more pheasant and partridges. I mean there's plenty of it, but again, we don't. Just generally speaking, the public don't have a palate for it. It's smaller, it's more fiddly. I don't think it's any more difficult to cook. I mean it makes bloody great curries with no effort whatsoever. It's just the same as chicken, but I have never actually looked. I wouldn't be surprised if, by the time it makes the supermarket shelves because of the extra processing, it's probably more expensive than chicken, is it?

Speaker 3 43:07

It probably is, and it doesn't look as good, it doesn't look as plumped up because it's not pumped full of water and it's not cooked in a broiler shed, kind of thing.

Speaker 2 43:18

So we could probably go on about this for a long time.

Speaker 3 43:25

Let's drag you out of there and let's talk about modern huntsman. I think you're on um volume 11.

Speaker 2 43:28

Now volume 11 is out and volume 12. Uh, we're a little bit behind with volume 12 uh, but it's I about three hours ago I was on an editorial call about volume 12, just putting the stories together. So yeah, that is uh still going strong uh in in a world that is very hard for publishing. It's it's definitely not an easy uh arena to be in like high-end, essentially book publishing, um the sort of biannual publication that we have. But yeah, it's uh. Every volume, I think, gets better and the caliber of writers and photographers that keep coming to the table, volume after volume, is always incredible.

Speaker 3 44:13

Well, it's obviously a testament that you've managed to get to volume 12 now. I remember when it first started and you were talking about getting the first edition out and you could do special offers and all the rest of it. But there you go. Testament says it's obviously a very good publication. You've got to 12 and people are still wanting to purchase it and preorder it.

Speaker 2 44:34

Yeah, it's been really enlightening, as you get feedback over the last couple of years and, I think, probably one of the most important things. So I should say that I didn't start the publication at the beginning. What you're talking about in volume one was I uh saw that there was a kickstarter, for I already had the podcast and my brother and I invited tyler sharp, who's the current editor-in-chief of the publication on the podcast, to ask him like, hey, what's this about? Uh, this looks cool. And we became friends after that and then I ended up writing for the publication. Then I became much more involved in the conservation editor of it and I've been involved in a lot of stuff ever since.

Speaker 2 45:16

Um, so that's, that's, that was how it came into being. Um, at the beginning we were just a big supporter of it and we bought a bunch of copies back when we sort of retailed it out of the uk. Now everything's shipped out of the us because it's a lot, a lot simpler, but one of the coolest things about it the mission of that publication has been to bridge that gap in many respects, write and print stories that could be read by anybody.

Speaker 2 45:47

Yes, it is a publication where you will read stories about hunting and you will read stories about fishing, but you'll also read stories about regenerative agriculture and, um, I mean, I wrote a story about commercial whaling right um, so the the spectrum is is, and there's amazing chefs in there.

Speaker 2 46:05

The spectrum is vast, but it is anything that is to do with how we exist and also consume in the natural world, with a focus on the sustainable use of all of our natural resources, and we found that in the last, I would say, 18 months to three years, there's a lot of Nat Geo, either actual Nat Geo photographers and writers or Nat Geo type people who are either published in the New York Times or the Atlantic or whatever it might be. Coming to the publication because they're feeling like and this is particularly true in the last 12 months publication because they're feeling like and this is particularly true in the last 12 months. Um, probably can't say too much on that, but, um, there's a lot of these writers.

Speaker 2 46:50

I mean high, high caliber people like the best in the world right, yeah like massively respected award-winning, are saying I don't know where the work that I want to do lives anymore, because there are a lot of publications and outlets that have started to shy away from actual, real storytelling yeah and it's.

Speaker 2 47:15

It's really sad because there are some journals out there that have been on the go for so long where they were the home. If you wanted to read stuff, that sort of unseen world, and you could pick it up and you'd read it and you're like I I'm getting an insight into the world I didn't know like the no bullshit serious journalism and it's it's filtered, like I know for a fact that a very big, probably the most well-known publication in the world for outdoors type or just human interest journalism, canned 300 stories that were in the works in the last year.

Speaker 2 47:59

Some of those stories, some of the writers and photographers have been working on for three years good grief and they just and I know, and I know what one or two of those stories were and they're brilliant, like serious shit, like tackling the, the, the issue with elephant population numbers in northern botswana and the hunting around that. That is like one of them um, and it's just not palatable, it's like it doesn't sell and so we're going to can these stories even though they paid for them. We want shorter form clickbait type stories, because that's the arena that we're living in and it's an incredibly sad state of affairs and there's very few um publications left that are doing this longer form serious journalism. Hopefully, modern huntsman is and can continue, can continue to be one of the places where that exists um, but they are, you know, rapidly decreasing by the day but I think I think we see it on every platform.

Speaker 3 49:02

It's like now, instagram is that's my main main platform, because obviously everybody got fed up with Facebook Facebook's like your family, but Instagram you got away with actually posting quality photos with information, and now all I ever seem to get is oh, this has been, we can't share this to your non-audience because blah, blah and we seem to be. You say about people wanting clickbait. It's, it's almost. Rather, make everybody happy and smiley and don't talk about the real world and don't tell them that there's actually something going on out there.

Speaker 3 49:35

But yeah it's we're losing it, we're losing. We're losing every platform. Even take away the hunting, just actual, genuine facts are being diluted, absolutely I was.

Speaker 2 49:46

I was talking more generally, like right across the board, about about a non-diluted, um honest, authentic journalism and it's quite, it's frustrating, and I like I'm working on a couple of projects this year, uh, with one or two different people um covering some pretty serious topics, and we're looking at inspiration for the type of filmmaking that we want to do for it and looking at those films that exist documentary films that exist that we can use as a showcase to say this is how it should be, and most of them are old, yeah, like a lot of them are from the 70s and 80s. Um, there's a couple of exceptions to that, like, there's a recent uh documentary called retrograde, which was by probably the greatest modern day documentary filmmaker, slash director, a guy called matt heineman. Uh, retrograde is about the last nine months, as we've all pulled out afghanistan okay, and it's an incredible documentary.

Speaker 2 50:51

I think it's one of the best documentaries in the last 10 years and it's an at geo doc, yeah, so you know good on them for like embracing that, I'm assuming helping funded and getting it in front of people. So it's not that everything new is shit, but it's just the. It's just that there's a lot less good stuff.

Speaker 3 51:12

There's a, you know, there's a lot of like ice road truckers, you know, and I live in alaska or whatever the hell those shows are, and there's a lot less retrogrades but but even when you look at that stuff you look at sort of the, the alaskan ideas and the stuff they do it's so heavily edited that you don't actually it's always a snippet and you never actually see what they were doing with the fish wheel or how they did that on the homestead.

Speaker 2 51:36

Well, I don't watch that stuff so I wouldn't know. You sound like you do, yeah yeah, no, absolutely it's but it's what you sound like you do.

Speaker 3 51:45

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, it's just one of those things. It's. You know what it's like, abedincha nights coming very quickly, so if you're not out doing something, you've got to watch something else. But I think the world has become yeah, very much. Just uh, they want something, it's a quick fix, it's the happiness idea all the time it is, yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 52:02

We need to get back to it. We need to get back to showing things that are true but not necessarily comfortable, and that actually was. I mean, I hope I'm not going to struggle to find a home for it, but it's one of my concerns about the.

Speaker 3 52:16

You mentioned the documentary that I've just finished that's just what I was, I was coming on to.

Paid in Blood Documentary Project

Speaker 2 52:21

Let's talk about the latest thing perfect segue, then, because that is uncomfortable, because it it is conservation reality, um, the. The premise of that story, which started back in 2019, was an elephant relocation from Namibia to the Democratic Republic of Congo, at a time when Namibia was in its seventh year of drought.

Speaker 2 52:48

And there was just it was devastation there. It was so dusty and the game was just dying. And this reserve, the Okinyati Reserve in Namibia, had a problem with their elephants because they had too many of them particularly they had too many anyway, but particularly too many in a drought situation and they were essentially destroying the habitat or what was left for themselves and everything else that lived there. So they needed to find a home for some of them and eventually they did. They were adamant that the elephants would not leave Africa because, believe it or not, there was offers from china, saudi arabia, and they wanted elephants and they could have easily signed those deals. But they were like no, our elephants are staying where they belong.

Speaker 2 53:39

A lot of people don't want elephants because the elephants are a pain in the ass. They destroy a lot of habitat, they're very like heavy on the terrain and unless you have a huge area, it's just really not suitable and those places that want elephants probably already have them. So although the world thinks that, I think a lot of people would say probably, oh, they're endangered, we've almost lost them all. It's yes, in places they have lost almost all of them, if not all of them in entire countries, but in places that have them there's a lot of them yes, in dense density.

Speaker 2 54:11

So they found this home for them and I went to document the story of this relocation, uh, which happened by boat all the way up the angolan coast, three and a half a thousand kilometers up the congo river, but into their new home, um, but the story actually ended up being well.

Speaker 2 54:31

That was part of the story and it was a big part. It was kind of it's the thing that takes you from the beginning of the film to the end. The film is really about the main character and that this lady called netta olivso, who has this incredible life story. That kind of starts when she was very young and she got married to a guy, um, who passed away about 15 years ago now, yeah, and all of soson and he was like 28 years older than her, but they just had this incredible relationship that was entirely focused on conservation and for wildlife and he was quite a well-known guy in his own right back then in the conservation space in africa. He if ever you've seen helicopters pushing wildlife into like funneled nets, into the back of trucks. That's the olufsa method of game capture and he invented that back in the 60s right right.

Speaker 2 55:25

so that's him, um, and I ended up being able to access a lot of the archival footage of all of that, but she's a really remarkable person, incredibly strong but sensitive at the same time in terms of her care for the wildlife in her charge.

Speaker 3 55:46

Yep.

Speaker 2 55:47

And so it became really a story about her and her fight to keep the animals in her reserve and look after them and the people that are there as well. Um, and then there's we. Uh, that's not. There's an accident that happens, not related to her but related to the story, um, which happens near the end of the film. But I won't give too much away, but that's essentially what that was. But I was very, I really wanted to make something that pulled no punches.

Speaker 3 56:18

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

Speaker 2 56:20

We lost an elephant on the way on that journey. An elephant calf died. Sadly, it happens, if you try and do great conservation things and establish a nucleus of elephants in a country that had lost almost all of its elephants and they hadn't seen elephants for generations and you do what they did, you're taking a risk. If you don't take risks, you never win, and etta says that in one of her interviews. You have to take risks to win, and that risk is sometimes people's lives, because it's bloody dangerous doing what they do, and sometimes it's animals' lives.

Speaker 2 56:58

But it's not and Alex is my friend, it's actually Annette's son. He often quotes his father, his late father, which is that it's not about the ones you take out, it's about the ones you leave behind.

Speaker 3 57:10

Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 57:14

And if you're looking at, if you're really a conservationist, the individual doesn't matter. That doesn't mean you don't care about animal welfare, but it means that your bigger picture is the continuation of the species, and this is what a lot of animal rights type organizations fundamentally cannot get their head around. So there, during that period of drought, yes, they were sat. They got rid of a bunch of elephants. Up to congo they sold some various different species of antelope to other places that wanted them. They also shot a shitload of game I'm sure they did yeah thousands yeah, and turned it into meat and it never got wasted.

Speaker 2 57:48

It wasn't like it was stuck in a hole. People ate it, but they had to because there is a limited amount of resources in a defined area. We're talking about a huge place. It's like 40 000 hectares, so 100 000 acres, like the same size as some of the biggest estates that we have in this country. Um, so it's a massive place, but it's still a defined area, and so there's still a an amount of resources there to be consumed by the wildlife that lives there, and you have to make these difficult decisions. I mean, there was a time where I think they had two trucks low bed trucks driving from South Africa to Namibia, and they live like two thirds of the way up the country of Namibia with lucerne on it every week to feed their game At huge cost to them.

Speaker 3 58:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 58:40

Because like that was like, as Annetta says, in the docs the animals would get the shirt off their back. Yeah.

Speaker 3 58:51

They would get everything until they can't give anymore I think people, exactly as you say, people don't see this picture. I can tell you can. You can tell that story. You talk about africa and all the rest of it, but it happens up here in the highlands. Guy, there are stalkers out there that will go out in the winter and they roll out bales of hay to feed the reds if the snow is on the ground, because there is no food resource for them and people are, oh, but you just go and shoot them. It's like no, but we are. We actually look after them. We look after everything you've. The, the pheasant feeders are all out there feeding the roe. They're feeding the wild birds. It's one of those things I think.

Speaker 2 59:27

Every, every keeper is naturally a conservationist but gets tarred very quickly with the brush of just being a murderer yeah, a lot of that is because of um, public, a public perception perpetuated by some, I don't even I'm not even going to use his name because of, uh, recent legal allegations, not against me, but against people that I know um, but because of high-profile individuals perpetuating lies. Essentially, it doesn't help, and if you have a platform, people believe you because you're the character. And if you have a platform, it's because you have people following you, for whatever reason, through your career, which means that you can say things that are not necessarily true and people are going to believe you because it's you.

Speaker 2 1:00:16

And anybody that has a platform has a huge responsibility any kind of a platform, actually but obviously it means more if you've got millions of people that follow you to really think carefully about what you say and what you do, because people are looking at you sometimes for guidance in a way of how to think, because not everybody's thinking for themselves.

Speaker 2 1:00:37

They're taking their actions based on people they assume or think must know more than them yeah, yeah, no just because you're a public figure does not mean that you really know what's going on, and you might just be perpetuating your own agenda or some sort of personal fight that you have against a certain way of life no, absolutely, and I don't think I'm gonna get myself into trouble with that right I've said I I think you were pretty clear.

Speaker 3 1:01:04

No, no, there were no names mentioned, so we're good but going back to africa again, africa is always one of those hot topics that comes up because all, ever, all people ever, ever see is national press throw things up about trophy hunters and stuff like that, whereas you've just explained a whole different side of it. To protect the species, you sometimes have to move things and shoot stuff, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 1:01:27

Yeah Well, I mean, interestingly, that place that I'm talking about is both a photographic tourism reserve and a hunting reserve in the same place, and I don't know what the numbers are today, but I know when I've spoken to Alex in the past and when he's podcasted with me, I think it was something like it took, and this is such a great case study because it's happening. We hear these numbers sometimes but they're not necessarily in the same place, they're not exactly directly comparable. So this is in the same location 72 photographic tourists have to pass through their reserve to get the same level of income as a single hunter.

Speaker 3 1:02:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:02:09

So you think about the feeding.

Speaker 3 1:02:17

yeah, so you think about the uh feeding by the way those 72 people are being fed a lot by the hunters who are shooting stuff.

Speaker 2 1:02:21

Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, because it's all game. That's on the menu, obvious it is. Why the hell are you going to bring in sheep or cows or whatever when you have all this amazing game resource? It doesn't make any sense. Um, that's 72 beds that are slept in, with all the associated washing and energy usage, carbon footprint to get there on the planes and cars and all that. Or one person that comes and hunts and shoots a dozen animals for the week that are going to be consumed anyway.

Speaker 3 1:02:49

No, exactly, it's a totally different world, but people don't get that. There's a place for both. Yeah, there's a place for both and they do both. No, it's just, it's a totally different world, but people don't get this place for both.

Speaker 2 1:02:55

Yeah, yeah and they do both and it's great. The, the. It's just that, the, the realization, that sort of realization and then acknowledgement that maybe there's something in that is very difficult, it's very difficult to get to a position to be able to have those conversations in the first place, and particularly from the hunting community, because that kind of stat example gets used a lot, not that exact one, but very similar ones, and so it's. It's seen now, just like I was saying earlier, like a propaganda message. Yes, just the same, as people who are vehemently against trophy hunting will also give you a bunch of stats, some of which might very well be true, I don't know, um, but then they're twisting that bit of data so that it serves the purpose of what they're trying to showcase but any bit of data put in the wrong context can be incredibly dangerous and even just removing certain words from from the, the data, the data file, can change it completely.

Speaker 2 1:04:01

Totally. Yeah, it's a frustrating world we live in with that, where people it'd be great if but that. That is the problem with statistics, of course.

Speaker 3 1:04:08

Yes.

Speaker 2 1:04:09

Yeah, statistics. Statistics in themselves don't really tell you anything. Because you have to, you have to really ask the question who is giving me these?

Speaker 3 1:04:21

the interpretation of the data is is the most important fact, and if you interpret the data incorrectly, you can make things look drastic you, you really can.

Speaker 2 1:04:31

Yeah, you can, um, but africa gets. It seems to have cooled off a bit in the last year or two, uh, but it's. It's often the focus for anti-hunting sentiments and I think it's because it's an easy target there. Some of the most charismatic species in the world exist on that continent, uh, some of which are huntable species and so and people don't like the idea well did.

Speaker 3 1:04:56

Disney's. Disney did did a fantastic job of making them all doe-eyed and and pretty and and of course that has had a huge effect on what people see it does, although I was just.

Speaker 2 1:05:08

We were just having this discussion today because I don't know if you saw the um. Some of the very early mickey mouse sketches just became public domain this week oh really okay, yeah, because they're.

Truthful Documentaries and Filmmaking

Speaker 2 1:05:17

I think they're like pre, like they're 1928, I think the original ones right so they've just become into this period where the sketch is a public domain so you can use the artwork without licensing. And in 1930 there was a cartoon or a sketch series I'm not entirely sure whether it was a cartoon or just a sketch series of mickey mouse goes moose hunting oh, really fantastic yeah, but unfortunately it's not public domain yet because it's still got a couple of years, but as soon as it does, I think that would make a brilliant reprint oh, totally, but I guaranteed it will be disappeared out the way somewhere I might try and find it now.

Speaker 3 1:05:54

Yeah, I would say you need to get hold of that and hold on to it right now.

Speaker 2 1:05:57

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:06:00

Because you've been up for several awards, obviously with different things like the podcast and other videos. Oh, let's quickly dive back. Where will the Paid in Blood film be available?

Speaker 2 1:06:12

Good question. So I did just over the festive period it was still ongoing at the moment um as sort of a pre-screening, which is not really a public release. It was really just a lot of people. Some people supported me on that um for post-production from a year ago, some people from even further back than that um, and I wanted a way to for all the people who had given me money and some of that might have even just been like five dollars or some people who contributed a lot more um for them to be able to see it now that it was done. So I released a pre-screening which allowed people to continue like supporting this last little bit of post-production film festival submissions and stuff at the moment which is still open, which is on my website, um byronpacecom under paid and blood um. That'll close fairly soon because, like I said, that's not a public release. That's only for people who help support it because and the reason for that is that um it's going into the film festival run this year.

Speaker 2 1:07:10

So it can't have been publicly released. And then, at the same time as it's going through film festivals and I don't know which ones it's going to get into yet, because I'm literally only submitting this week- all right I'm trying to find a distribution for it on a mainstream platform, but that's it's a hard task. It's not impossible, um, but we'll just have to see. You know, I would like it to live somewhere where everybody can watch it, and it would be great if it was a platform that people know the name of.

Speaker 3 1:07:40

I was going to say yeah.

Speaker 2 1:07:41

We'll see what happens, but it will be in film festivals this year and, whatever happens at the end of 2024, it'll be released in some way to the public. Just hopefully it's with a proper sort of distribution deal somewhere. But if they keep an eye on my Instagram whenever there's film festivals that it does get into and it's showing which should hopefully be in a couple of different places around the world, then I will let people know.

Speaker 3 1:08:07

Okay, Well, as I say, I'll put in the description your website link and stuff like that. That'd be great put in the description, your website link and stuff like that for people to see. So you've also worked with some well, as I say, some absolutely fantastic, I think, david.

Speaker 2 1:08:22

Attenborough. You've had on videos with as well and stuff like that. Yeah, mr Big D, what a gentleman he was. That was for a project probably actually one of the last sort of projects I worked on with my brother. Um, it was for. They've changed their name now.

Speaker 3 1:08:38

They're now called wild fish I was going to say it was something to do with salmon, wasn't it? Or something like this.

Speaker 2 1:08:42

Yeah, it was for an organization. It was actually for the international year of the salmon, but the organization that commissioned me was salmon and trout conservation, which is now called Wild Fish. They do a lot of anti-salmon farming campaigning. Well, that's what a lot of their focus is now. So, yeah, that was International Year of the Salmon and somebody at the organization I was commissioned by had sort of some tenuous connection to him, and so he agreed to do the narration for this short two-and-a-half-minute film. That was really just to say salmon are amazing, they're endangered, we need to support them, and we got the job to make that film.

Speaker 2 1:09:20

He agreed to do the narration and actually on this the bookshelf that's behind me I've got a couple of letters from him, because he doesn't do email okay or maybe he does now, but he didn't four years ago, and so, in order to communicate with him, you either had to have his home phone number or, uh, write a letter to him fantastic so I was writing, I think, two or three letters back and forward to arrange that a suitable time for us to come down and interview him in um rich. I think it's richmond park there's beside um that part, it's that part of london yep yeah yeah and um uh, and then eventually I got a letter back.

Speaker 2 1:10:04

He's like here's my number.

Speaker 2 1:10:06

Give me a call one evening oh, fantastic so I gave him a call it's like it's only david, sir David Attenborough, and we arranged it all and I eventually went down and picked him up from his house and we drove into the park and set up this interview. Well, actually, before that we had a script because it wasn't a very long piece that I had written, kind of in collaboration with the organization I was working for. I said, look, this is kind of what we needed to say, but you know, in your own words. So we sat for and I've got a picture somewhere that my brother took of him and I sitting at this table in an office inside the park, like rewriting the script so we rewrote the script and then, yeah, we went out and sat beside this pond and recorded it and he delivered in true david attenborough fashion oh, absolutely fantastic, but it's things like that

Speaker 3 1:11:00

it's yeah, who? Who would think that you started off recording a podcast and then you're, you're talking, you you're recording things with, like, sir david attenborough I know it know it's kind of crazy, but he really was so humble and such a gent.

Speaker 2 1:11:17

It's like, well, who the hell am I?

Speaker 2 1:11:20

He was asking my opinion on lines and I was just like, does it really matter what I think? I don't think it does, but you know, and maybe he genuinely cared, I don't know but it certainly felt like he cared and it was just. You know, there was no sense whatsoever as of I'm david attenborough, not at all like he could have been anybody in that room collaboratively working on something that he wanted to be good and that was really nice. And I got a chance to ask him because at the time when I did that, I just started reading Sir Peter Scott, a lot of Sir Peter Scott.

Speaker 3 1:11:58

OK, right, right.

Speaker 2 1:11:59

Although old wildfowling books and Sir Peter Scott famously started the WWF massive hunter, they omit that from his bio on the WWF website Love to wildfowl, also one of David. After's best friends, yeah yeah, so I asked him a little bit about Sir Peter Scott, which was quite cool, and then we went and did the interview.

Speaker 3 1:12:21

Oh, fantastic, absolutely fantastic. So what is coming up in the future for yourself? Is there any new projects, any new things happening?

Speaker 2 1:12:32

It's kind of an interesting point right now because it's been the busiest year of my life, 2023. Finishing Paid in Blood was a big part of that, because unless somebody's made a feature doc before, I don't think they'll understand how much work is involved. It's just mind-blowing. But on top of that, I shot a short doc. I don't think they'll understand how much work is involved. It's just mind-blowing. But on top of that, I shot a short doc with a friend of mine in Chad about another relocation of Antelope, and then I had a couple of other documentary projects in Tanzania and Namibia and Zimbabwe and then some other parts of the world. So I was away a lot, but I'm tonight.

Speaker 2 1:13:16

When I finish speaking to you, I've got one more edit to do to finish the last commitment for 2023 oh, fantastic, and then my, my deck is, I think, completely clear, completely clear of everything that I started in 2023 and I've never been in that position before. It's always had stuff hanging over me. So I'm looking into 2024, hoping that paid in blood does well, hopefully gets picked up somewhere, and then that acts as a catalyst and a springboard to do more of that kind of filming, because that longer form non-scripted documentary is very time consuming to shoot in the field.

Speaker 3 1:13:58

Yes.

Speaker 2 1:13:59

But it is the kind of documentary that I love to do, and whereas that one until post-production, when I got some post-production funding help from very kind individuals prior to that, I'd funded all of it myself and a huge chunk of post-production as well. I can't do that again.

Speaker 3 1:14:18

I was going to say that must be quite. It must bite hard when you're having to chill out.

Speaker 2 1:14:25

Yeah, it does. I mean I love what. Fortunately, I love what I do. And even if I was a multimillionaire which I'm not I would still do this. I would just pay more people to do things to make my life easier for me, but I'd still do this, and so for me it was something I wanted to do anyway, but also I saw it as a sort of a career building exercise. You know, I could, you can pay to go and do a course on something to increase your knowledge base, or I go and pay to help myself finish a film, which is increasing my knowledge base and gives me something to then step up on.

Speaker 2 1:14:57

So I'm hopeful that something comes of that in 2024, um, and it will be like an ongoing process. But I'm just about to go to brazil with a friend of mine who has got um some funding for a feature film.

Speaker 3 1:15:13

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 1:15:14

A scripted. It's based on a true story but it's a film which I am not shooting. But there's a documentary component of that and then the initial mood boarding and plates and stuff that are going to be shot to establish what this film can look like. I'm doing with him next month so I'm really excited about that because I've never been to brazil before. So we're going to be in the amazon, which is going to be incredible, um, and then I have, um, another cool project.

Speaker 2 1:15:47

Actually, a friend of mine who's been on my podcast before, luke oppenheimer, who was actually one of the very kind supporters of my film, helped make it happen. He's finishing his own project in kyrgyzstan multi-year photography book project. Okay, his photography is insane. It's, you know, world-class, like old school film photography that has heart and soul, like a lot like it used to, and what is lost in a lot of imagery today. And he's just he has, he tells me, like half a dozen images that he has still has to get for his books. He's flying all the way across the world to go and get essentially I mean he'll take a shitload more than that, but essentially he there's half a dozen images that he really needs and I'm going to go with him to shoot a short doc.

Speaker 2 1:16:33

When I say short, I mean like four or five minutes right right um on him about finishing the process and it's going to showcase in an art gallery in new york in may along with his work oh, fantastic wow so that's yeah, that's the two, that's the things that's on my table that I can talk about, and then I don't know. I'm actually trying to work out right now. If I could tell any story, what would that be?

Speaker 3 1:17:05

I was just going to say you're not thinking of doing anything sort of back in Scotland looking at the hill or something like that, or trying to put a story together out there.

Speaker 2 1:17:16

Yeah, I'd like to you know the the upland series was that podcast was was a lot of work, uh, and we were really fortunate to be able to get some resources to be able to make that happen, and I think a lot more could be done on that.

Speaker 2 1:17:30

The sad frustration about trying to do stuff like that at home is it's just like there's no money no, no it's and I'm not saying that because I'm like greedy and want to be paid lots of money, I just like literally there's none like. I would love to be in a position where I can just, you know, self-fund projects all day, like I did, with a lot of pain and blood, but I can't, and a lot of the things that. If I wanted to make commercial project, um, film projects in scotland, because some brands to selling a gun and they want a bit of advertorial type, let's make a slick thing or a rucksack or you know, pick your piece of item, I can do it all year. I can have the meetings. Some of them would come off. I could make those films, but who cares? I just don't want to because I've done a lot of it in the past.

Speaker 2 1:18:25

That's kind of how we built the business at the beginning and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. There's lots of people who enjoy doing that. From a filming standpoint, I don't really enjoy it that much. I don't think I'm that good at it by comparison to documentary work. But also it's to sell a product and frankly it's kind of meaningless. It's very meaningful to the company selling the thing, but to the filmmaker journalist that wants to do documentary, it's only a paycheck.

Speaker 3 1:18:52

I was going to say it's not the story, was gonna say it's it's not the story yeah, it's not the story.

Speaker 2 1:18:56

So there are some brands out there and I wish there were more who are really willing to embrace the idea that they will support a story because the story is great and they want to be connected to that story, even if it's not about the thing that they're selling. I would say, like mystery ranch in the us are quite a good example of that.

Speaker 2 1:19:18

They do a lot of support of the wildfire teams right there's been some short docs about the wildfire firefighters and, yeah, okay, like they're walking, they've got a mystery ranch rucksack on, but they're not doing overt like how great is this? And the zippers pulling and all that kind of stuff. It's just that they're supporting the thing because these people are amazing and they're doing great things. We support their work and so we're supporting a story about it.

Speaker 2 1:19:43

Simple as that no, no, no, absolutely yeah, and we, we need more of that here. So, yeah, I would. I would love to um do more, but I just I'm not entirely sure how.

Speaker 3 1:19:55

I think it's a tricky one because you watch social media as it is at the moment and you've got, as you say, manufacturers get out there and do stuff. Now I've seen some of the Scandinavian manufacturers have taken it to the next level and they've done it's almost a bit of a documentary, but it's a lot of product placement at the same time. But there's so much. I think we need to get more information back out there about what goes on.

Venison, Food Systems and Challenges

Speaker 2 1:20:20

Yes, you can have the products in the background, but actually, well, let's look at the classic example is look at clarkson's farm, what he's done for farming brilliant, absolutely fantastic, yeah, and that's and that's taking a slightly different mindset about it because, like I mean, obviously clarkson's a huge character and it's hugely entertaining, which is why it's been so successful. But in the hunting space, a lot of brands will want to make, uh say, it's a rifle manufacturer. They'll want to make a film where somebody actually goes out and uses yes the thing the rifle.

Speaker 2 1:20:59

We don't need any more of that no, no, no you know we need documentaries talking about inappropriate tree planting in the uplands, or um the impact of wind farms on peatlands, or um what's going to happen when we do remove deer from the landscape, and yeah, maybe you could integrate some sort of rifle in that, but it's we need. There's also it's like how much traction does that stuff get if you just release it as a short instagram video or something on youtube?

Speaker 3 1:21:33

I think for it to kind of be taken seriously, we need to find out a way to do a clarkson's farm type series that is in the mainstream yes, yeah, yeah, that it is like look, yeah it has the credibility, then it has to be an estate, or it has to be something or an individual to actually be able to go through the whole year explaining everything and showing not just the hunting side, but to show the whole process, Everything from oh look, they're building a new wind farm, or we've got cables coming through, or this. That exactly.

Speaker 2 1:22:13

Yeah, we need the whole thing and I think it could be done really well. The characters are key, as they are with everything. You need strong characters that are entertaining to be able to captivate people or people with a great story. I mean, I'd love to be part of that. It's something that I have thought about a lot over many years. I'm still not quite sure how to do it.

Speaker 3 1:22:36

No, but these places have fantastic characters that have absolutely wonderful stories. But it's how you get them behind the camera. That's where most of them feel terrified. You point a camera at them and that's it. Because I managed to get a guy who's a very good, he enjoys his cooking and it all started during lockdown. So he came up, he did his, he basically recorded a day on the grouse, he went out for his first stag with me and he's produced some short films out of it and I tell you what cool it really has gone down well for somebody who has a huge following that are basically foodies. They've actually seen the process and and that's actually worked really well oh, that's cool.

Speaker 2 1:23:20

Who's that?

Speaker 3 1:23:21

uh, so the guy's called alex and he's the hunter gatherer cooking on on youtube oh, okay, I think I've come by it, yeah and if you go and search his youtube channel you'll see, obviously, my face on there quite a bit for his, his trip to.

Speaker 3 1:23:33

He basically did a trip to scotland. He was coming up here to go and visit a salmon farm and I I threw a sort of a handout to him and said, look, if you're coming to scotland, why didn't you come up on the the 12th of august, come out on the glorious 12th? Well, let's just say this year's glorious was not a glorious 12th, it was absolutely miserable. So we got to test his kit out and and see a very wet day, but we did walked up grouse rather than driven grouse, so really, really nice way of doing that, took some grouse home and the next day was absolutely fantastic. The weather came right and it was a case of right. We're gonna stalk a nice bit of land. So we stalked out onto um just south, an area just near glen proson so we said okay, right at the back of my house almost pretty much so.

Speaker 3 1:24:17

Yeah, about balnaboth we stalked up there, walked him around, um, got him into a herd. Uh, all we spotted to start with was hinds had him in and I was like, well, we'll just take something. Well, because it's your first, first ever deer, this was um, and we got him in on a knobber and then, all of a sudden, this three-legged deer walked across. He got to take that. So, in terms of the harvest, everything he did, it wasn't just pulling the trigger. There was a reason for taking that animal off the hill, documented it. I then butchered it up, packed it, all that vac, packed it, sent a whole lot down to him. He's cooked it barbecue, fiery fire, cooked it, and it's the process totally yeah and in and that's.

Speaker 3 1:24:59

I think that's that's more important than actually just taking a guy and shooting the biggest stag on the hill yeah, no, the more people can uh embrace that whole process and I think we are moving more towards that.

Speaker 2 1:25:13

I think the modern kind of evolution of stalking is people more interested in. They're just as interested in everything that happens after the trigger is pulled as before and that's great, like, that's a, that's a very positive move of what has happened in the last decade.

Speaker 3 1:25:31

That's certainly what we want, and I get a lot of people asking can they come out? Because it's the whole process. Pulling the trigger is a very clinical act. Anybody could do that Realistically. It's like shooting a piece of paper. If you say to them just squeeze the trigger, bang. It's the lead up to it, the stalk in all the skill you require in the field, craft and the extraction and the processing of the product and actually being able to take that home. Now is getting more and more important to people to be able to take that product home, that venison, and serve it to their friends and family.

Speaker 2 1:26:02

Totally, especially with the price of food, which has become completely insane.

Speaker 3 1:26:07

Yes, yeah, yeah, no. And, to be honest, we've been looking at a spin on this, whether or not it's a way of you offer people they come up for the stalk, but the package price is you get to take your animal away.

Speaker 2 1:26:22

I think that's what we did when we were doing the hunts and it makes perfect sense to me. I think that everybody who comes and hunts, the difficulty as I'm saying that I'm correcting myself, the difficulty is a lot of people who come and hunt in Scotland don't live here, and I mean don't live in the country of the.

Speaker 2 1:26:43

UK, never mind, not in Scotland. But if you do live here and you're coming to hunt, I think that they should just build it as part of the package price again, knowing that the Germans that come and the Americans that that hunt, they're not going to take any game away. But when somebody more local comes and does shoot something, you should offer them the carcass. It should just be built into the, the business operations of the whole year. The most people are not going to take something away because they're not from the uk.

Speaker 2 1:27:11

Yeah, yeah but those that do. You shouldn't then have to charge them extra. And if they want a second one, great Like, charge them the carcass price for the game dealer. But just build it in, because it's not actually really about the money, it's more the mindset.

Speaker 3 1:27:27

I've always thought, and the reason I always started taking a lot of novices out was always because they could go back to London, they could sit in a bar, they could say to somebody I've went stalking to Scotland, I shot a deer, and then they can actually justify everything they did and explain the whole process, whereas people would go, oh, you're just, you've just gone and shot Bambi, but they went. Well, actually, no, the reason I did it.

Speaker 2 1:27:48

You want to come for dinner exactly do you want to come for dinner?

Speaker 3 1:27:51

you'll have some of the best tasting meat in the world and I'll explain to you why I needed to shoot that particular stag roe whatever it was that they did take and they can educate. It's kind of increasing your demographic of people that actually understand what's going on.

Speaker 2 1:28:07

Absolutely, it's really important.

Speaker 3 1:28:10

And I've seen a huge increase and and since that, a lot of the social media this this year a lot more interest in people either wanting to come up to stalk, take a hind people from different parts of the world.

Speaker 2 1:28:22

So, yeah, it definitely has worked yeah, in a in a time where we are as society apparently anyway, are becoming more conscious of our impact on the environment and the land, it is the perfect time to also embrace being part of the land more which is really understanding where your food comes from and taking responsibility of where it comes from.

Speaker 2 1:28:50

I had a very interesting conversation with a vegetarian in Chad from France part of the team that I was there with and I just happened to be sitting beside her at dinner one night and I couldn't understand why there was almost nothing on her plate. Like we're in the middle of the desert, right. So this is like very rough cooking, not a lot there, no menu, you get, you eat what gets put down in front of you. It's just like, well, you can not have the protein, but then you're just having rice with sauce and, uh, we got into this quite deep debate because I was just curious. I don't know, it wasn't an initial criticism I just wasn't sure why she wasn't eating, why she barely had anything on her plate, and it came down to this like animal welfare aspect and then which I totally get, you can't really argue against that unless it's wild, you know, unless it's wild resource, but you don't really know the animal welfare of a lot of farmed produce.

Speaker 3 1:29:49

so that's totally fair.

Speaker 2 1:29:51

But then when, when I started to dig a bit deeper in some of her reasoning reasonings, like so much of it was just completely logically flawed because it assumed that she'd had no blood on her hands from the choices that she was making but she probably had more than I did and then once I started, once I started to give, like feed her little bits of information, I think she suddenly had this realization, is like, well, if that's my justification, I can't eat anything. And it's amazing how many people really just haven't really thought like that next layer down no, they don't.

Speaker 3 1:30:23

They don't, and I think that's society. It's not just it's, it's a society-based thing. You could take it on all levels, even electric cars, they they don't get me started they draw a line and they that line says, once it touches my plate or I get in it, it's, it's perfectly good, I'm saving the planet. But they fail to to look back at the how it gets to that point.

Electric Cars and Rural Realities

Speaker 2 1:30:48

And especially when you talk about the vegans, the vegetarians um, there's no blood on their hands, but there's so much that they don't realize the, the doc that I would love to make, but I don't know how to get funding for it, so if anybody has any ideas or a bunch of money they want to give me to do it, that'd be great. Is uh on on lithium mining and rare rare earth metals, because I'm I've seen enough in different parts of the world that I've been in, some of which is where this comes from, because none of it is coming from here, or very little of it anyway, to know that I think a lot of the stuff that we're being told about the impact of batteries as a store of energy for green energy is bullshit.

Speaker 2 1:31:30

Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, it's fundamentally flawed and it's so obvious now that it's making me think. It's making me almost like air towards conspiracies, because some of it is just so out there to see the the impacts and how it's just not going to work in the way that governments think it's going to work, that either they're stupid or there's something that we don't know and somebody is making a lot of money out of pushing an agenda that cannot work yeah, and I think it's the latter.

Speaker 2 1:32:13

I think that there's. I think that, like so many things, it starts with absolutely the best of intentions. I think that the best um outcome is to embrace all of all, like I have solar and battery yeah, no, absolutely yeah but I think the battery cars are, for for most people, a stupid idea.

Speaker 2 1:32:34

But I'm not some sort of denier. I'm doing all the things that I can to reduce the impact and use all the renewables that I can, but also acknowledging the fact that super clean diesel engines for a lot of people are probably the most environmentally friendly thing that you can do. Running a car, owning the same car I have a 1972 Series 3 Land Rover that I use.

Speaker 3 1:32:58

I was going to say do you still have that Land Rover?

Speaker 2 1:33:00

Yeah, I still have that. And I have another Land Rover from early 2000s that I hope to keep for the next 30 years if I don't get taxed off the road by some stupid policy. That car has been built. Yeah, that energy to build that car is now a sunk cost, the energy to build a lot of these lithium, and I'm just in the process. Like I wish I could spew you a bunch of numbers to give you, but I don't. I've listened to a bunch of numbers. I haven't managed to log all this stuff in my head yet, but it's not cut and dry the way that a lot of organizations and governments are making it. It is simply not. And I think that we're going to end up crushing not just rural communities but communities all over the country by ill-conceived and ill-thought-out legislation around hitting targets that don't make a lot of sense.

Speaker 3 1:33:56

Well, was I not quoted something the other day regarding China, and are they not opening one coal-fired power station? It was either a week or a month.

Speaker 2 1:34:07

Yeah, I think there was a time certainly, where they were doing that and you have to look at it and go.

Speaker 3 1:34:11

So you, you, the, the. The policy is to to make the uk fully electric, ban all our fuel cars, which doesn't work for anybody that lives in the northeast or anywhere in scotland.

Speaker 3 1:34:20

Well, yeah, pretty much northeast scotland yeah um, it's fine if you live in a town or or somewhere where access to public transport is available, but up here it's. It's crazy. And then we've got the rest of the world. That's still going well. We're going to carry on making these for you, so we'll just carry on banging all your carbon out. That uh that you're.

Speaker 2 1:34:41

You're stopping using it's also a pretty pointless endeavor prior to setting up a network that can actually charge them and a consistent system for generating electricity ie nuclear that can power all of this battery-powered stuff. And then you look at a very old country with very old networks and very old towns and a lot of people who own cars park their cars on the street. How the hell are they going to charge all their stuff without? I mean, I tell you exactly how they're charging it right now, with trip hazards over every pavement.

Speaker 2 1:35:26

Yeah that's how they're doing it. So you know when is when is the Scottish government or the British government going to build a new nuclear power station? Because what happens when the wind stops, you know one day? Everybody just not going to charge their cars. So it's just. I think electric cars are great for in town. They're brilliant. If I lived in town and I had a nine to five, I'd own an electric car and I drive that to work every day and it'd be fantastic. But that's not the vast majority of people and I don't think it's a solution for everything, and I think it was. It's very, it's quite. It's just like political point scoring to say, oh, we're going to ban combustion engines by 2030, now 2035. Because they're already realizing how stupid the idea is, rather than saying there's a place for both right now yeah, exactly until we come with a hydrogen fuel cell or something.

Speaker 2 1:36:20

Right now there's a place for both. And this like did you, um? Did you hear about what happened with the councils up here when they tried to, when they blocked in all of the? Um the fireplaces in all the council houses?

Speaker 3 1:36:34

yeah, there's bankery. Yep, yeah, yeah, just so this was three.

Speaker 2 1:36:38

I think three years ago it was that other big storm that washed out the d?

Speaker 3 1:36:43

that would. That would have been caravan, so that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's the one that went. That was that wasn't arwen, was it? Uh, no, it was before. Before arwen, we had a massive, the massive flood that came down yeah pretty much wiped out the D, all the bridges, everything. Relocated half half of the D into fields it did basically, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:37:01

so when that storm, just prior to that storm, happening in the months, just to encapsulate the stupidity of councils and governments and just not living in the real world at all, just in their frigging ivory towers in the center of big cities, these council houses, because obviously they don't really have control other than legislation which they're busy trying to put in, no new wood-burning stoves in some houses, but they don't have that much or they have less control over private-owned houses.

Speaker 2 1:37:32

So these were council houses and a lot of those old council houses had open fireplaces or fireplaces that had been converted to wood burning stoves already, and they decided that as part of their green um agenda that no one should have fireplaces anymore. So they start I don't think they finished the campaign, but they started to block in all these fireplaces. People couldn't have fires. Then that storm came. We lost power that year. I think I didn't have power for more than two weeks.

Speaker 3 1:37:58

it was in two different. That's right.

Speaker 2 1:38:00

Yes, two weeks in total, a lot of those houses the power was for heating was electric, so the only way that people had to heat their house was the electricity, which didn't work, um, and the grid was down, or the fireplace, which was now blocked up yep and that kind of mindset I think encapsulates the incompetence of government here right now and and and gives me so little faith in the, the people in power, making decisions on our behalf.

Speaker 2 1:38:31

because what kind of an idiot thinks that in fairly rural Scotland it's not super rural, but it's pretty rural where you know storms might happen Sometimes the power goes up. The power in the last three years has been horrific.

Speaker 3 1:38:46

It's been horrendous yeah.

Speaker 2 1:38:47

It's unbelievable the amount of power outages there's been. Like my generator has been on loads Well until it died. It's been on loads and well until it died. Um, it's been on loads in the last three years. Um, the you would knowingly or incompetently put people's lives at risk by reducing, by removing a source of heat in their houses is actually criminal like, and I bet you those people probably got pay rise rather than losing their jobs.

Speaker 3 1:39:16

But it went the same with Arwen. When we got hit with Storm Arwen what was that? Back end of 21, I think nobody knew that the whole north-east of Scotland was without power, in devastation and I think it was only on day seven. It made national press and suddenly and more people knew via my instagram feed down south I had got I had a chap send me two generators, palletized them and posted them up and said if you can use these anywhere, please do um amazing but nobody knew that we we existed up here.

Speaker 3 1:39:53

We were just without power and left yeah, yeah, just abandoned yeah, yeah, but there you go, it's a.

Speaker 2 1:39:59

It's a sim. It's a symptom of a failing. It's a.

Speaker 2 1:40:02

It's the symptom of a failing system yes, yeah, yeah, but I think that that kind, that kind of example and that disconnectedness with the center of edin, the center of Glasgow or any of the cities. Really, although a lot of our kind of like Inverness is kind of it is a city, but it's barely a city. It's so rural, but that's where all the decisions and that's where all the votes are, and so you're having things being done to you without really without any real consideration how that's actually impacting people's lives.

Speaker 3 1:40:37

It's becoming very expensive to live but I think, dragging this back into what we were talking about, this this all goes hand in hand with the conservation issues and why the rural community and the way the country deals with the countryside is so poor yeah, no, it is, and I it's hard to know how to address that.

Speaker 3 1:41:01

You have to let, you have to make your voice heard and yeah, I, I don't know, maybe we just need better relationships with our local mps or msps but I think you've got a platform going forward that you've built over the last 10 years, which I think may well be that platform that gets more information out there From what you've built and developed. I think you're the unbiased independent. That's why I was asking about whether you're doing anything on the home turf rather than the foreign turf.

Speaker 3 1:41:34

I think the Byron Pace and Into the Wilderness and the Modern Huntsman and all of that way will dry. It could be the face that the the rural community needs to actually get us back on the map it would be nice if that was the case, and it is.

Speaker 2 1:41:53

It is absolutely something that has been on my mind and there's a very, you know, there's a very good reason why I went from, like I was saying right at the beginning of this, really quite a long time ago now since we started this podcast, um, when I was writing a lot of stuff in the field sports arena, where I pretty much have disappeared from it for the last five years in the uk in terms of writing and stuff, and it's because I realized that if I really want to make a difference, um, you have to be taken seriously by everybody yeah and, if it is very, first of all acknowledge your biases.

Closing Thoughts and Future Projects

Speaker 2 1:42:31

I'm not trying to hide where my journey to here, but I'm also trying to at least give myself the space where I could have a discussion on the nine show or I can create something that isn't immediately going to put people's backs up, so that they'll at least engage with it and watch. And it's very difficult to do. If you're a columnist in the shooting times and now you want to go and have a discussion with the broader public, because immediately you're a Byron Pace, you know, writer, weekly writer in the shooting times, there's nothing wrong with writing in the shooting times, but it becomes a barrier. It absolutely becomes a barrier for you.

Speaker 3 1:43:12

Yeah, you're tied with a brush. At the end of the day.

Speaker 2 1:43:14

You are yeah, that's just life, that's just how it works.

Speaker 3 1:43:18

Unfortunately. I think that's why it's like if we could get you more mainstream, but we've got people out there that represent supposedly the field, sport, industry and community. But unfortunately, I think, as you said we talked about earlier on, it's the agenda based, it's the number of likes, the popularity, and that doesn't help us in terms of where we're trying to get a message across.

Speaker 2 1:43:44

Yeah, it's a. I'm sure there's much smarter people about um pr who, well, you would think that you would think that we would have. We would have embraced like a big pr firm now to be able to rectify that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 1:43:55

But yeah, there's other groups of people against them, not just the hunting field sports space, but any um, if you can go, if you could, if you can be the one to put your hand out and say you know what we, we want to change. I want to work with you. I want to work with you for a better future for everybody.

Speaker 2 1:44:33

Let's see if we can do that, because while there's very, very loud people on both sides of any argument, the vast majority of people are silent and they're in the middle yes, yeah those are the people that you have to bring with you and you can leave the the unnamed, violently loud people to I don't know like shout in a dark room somewhere, but have a discussion with you.

Speaker 3 1:44:57

Know people who are prepared to sit down, have a coffee with you or a beer no, I, I completely agree, and I think I think we we've probably we've nailed this a few times now, so I think we're approaching the 1 hour 45 mark, I think it's.

Speaker 2 1:45:11

This is the longest podcast I've done in a long time.

Speaker 3 1:45:13

I was gonna say it's mine are normally an hour long, but I've had a couple of two hours. But I think what we'll do is we'll probably we'll draw it to a close now, because I think we could probably talk all night. But I know you're absolutely.

Speaker 2 1:45:24

I know you're a busy man.

Speaker 3 1:45:25

I've got some editing to do tonight, so I'm gonna go do that now so I'm very conscious of time, so I'm just gonna say I think, yeah, fantastic, I'll try and get as many links in there. If there's stuff I've missed, uh, let me know. People can go and look at byron's instagram feed, go and visit the, the website, and uh, yeah, thank you very much for your time well.

Speaker 2 1:45:47

Thank you so much for having me on your show well, no, thank you.

Speaker 3 1:45:49

Oh, thank you for coming on, and it has been a long journey to get to this point.

Speaker 2 1:45:54

I appreciate it, thank you.

Speaker 3 1:46:09

Well, thank you for listening. I thoroughly enjoyed actually being able to interview somebody that I've listened to for a long, long time with the podcasts. It was really nice to get him on and the wealth of knowledge and experience is outstanding. The things he's doing and some of the stuff that he's trying to get the education on is absolutely astounding. So we really do need to support, obviously, byron and filmmakers like him that are actually getting the message out there, because I think that's what's going to change how people perceive the field, sports and the things we do, and without supporting these guys and and helping them build this platform, we're not gonna it's not going to survive. So, looking forward, we've got our next guest, which is jason doyle, talking about seeker deer in ireland and some of the hunting he does, so that will be released shortly. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you on the next one.