One Hell Of A Life Outdoor Podcast
The One Hell Of A Life Outdoor Podcast hosted by father-son duo Tony Vogel and Tristan Vogel, Owners of Zero Duck:30 and Zero Buck:30 . Our passion lies in bringing every hunter the REALITY of what it REALLY takes to hunt their target animal while equipping them with the knowledge to be a successful hunter and promoting the lost "old school values" that laid the foundation for the sport we love so much today.
One Hell Of A Life Outdoor Podcast
Travis Thompson on Conservation, Corridors, and Commitment
Travis Thompson shares his journey as a fifth-generation Floridian dedicated to conservation through All Florida, his duck guiding business, and his work with the International Order of Theodore Roosevelt. His passion for protecting wild spaces while respecting private property rights shapes his approach to Florida's conservation challenges.
• Working in conservation through three roles: All Florida organization, Duck Ranching guide service, and the International Order of Theodore Roosevelt
• Securing Florida's constitutional right to hunt and fish as the 24th state to have this protection
• Navigating the balance between responsible development and conservation in Florida's growing landscape
• Explaining how the Florida Wildlife Corridor protects 10 million acres with a goal of 18 million acres
• Creating partnerships between landowners, hunters, and conservationists to keep land wild while generating revenue
• Celebrating the restoration of Florida's black bear hunt as a conservation success story
• Managing land for duck hunting that unexpectedly provided habitat for 10% of North America's endangered Snail Kites
• Encouraging everyone to find their personal "conservation ethic" beyond social media activism
• Supporting complementary organizations like Ducks Unlimited and Delta Waterfowl for their unique conservation roles
Check out All Florida at allflaorg to learn more about conservation initiatives in the Sunshine State and follow Travis Thompson's work protecting Florida's natural resources.
I've been southbound. I've been hellbound riding on a midnight train going too fast. Now think I'll slow down standing in the pouring rain what's going on, guys?
Speaker 2:tristan and tony back with another episode of the one hub life outdoor podcast. Let's go. Today we got tra, we got Travis Thompson on the podcast and, if you've been following us for a while, back to the OG Zero Duck 30 Days. We had Travis on and talked a lot about the Florida waterfowl situation and a lot of different things really. But Travis is really big into the conservation space. He is the owner of All Florida or allfloridaorg, which they play a big role in the conservation conversation there in Florida and then other parts of the United States, and we're excited to have Travis on today to kind of just share what he does and, you know, share the good word of conservation. And, travis, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3:No, I appreciate you guys having me back once every three years.
Speaker 4:That seems like not not often enough, dude, I feel like we're getting some shade thrown at us for the whole three-year thing I know, I know we definitely know we're what we were doing, what we were trying to do, travis, was be respectful of your time yeah because this guy like, listen y'all, you want to talk about a straight beast mode for conservation.
Speaker 4:This is, this is the person. Um, I mean, he's so inspirational and once you start following him you can't stop. Uh, travis, thank you for being such a voice, and not just the waterfowl industry but just total conservation, and in consideration and and putting forth all the efforts and hours and I know your family has felt that, you have felt it and you're just a grinder dude and man thank you for doing what we all wish that we had the guts and stamina to do.
Speaker 3:No, I appreciate that. Thank you, Tony. Thank you guys for having me back on. I pick on you, but I love you.
Speaker 4:You can pick on me, I'm easy, I'm bald, oh man.
Speaker 2:Well, travis, could you give everybody just a little background about who you are and what you do? Obviously you're a waterfowl guide. You got allfloridaorg and I didn't even know this until I listened to the Bear Grease podcast that you basically kind of got like three jobs going on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you basically kind of got like three jobs going on, yeah, so, so that's a great um. I grew up a fifth generation Floridian kind of grew up in a house that was all about conservation but also hunting and fishing, um, and I'll start saying this more and more. But but a conservationist to me is a is an environmentalist that carries a gun, carries a fishing pole, carries a rifle, um, and and so I've got kind of three approaches to how I make my living. Well, two and a half, I'll say. So. You mentioned All Florida. That's our organization here in Florida, it's allflaorg. If you go to allfloridaorg, that's a school in southeast Florida they will not help you with conservation stuff. And then we do anything that touches conservation in florida. We we try to play a role in it. So that's everything from ag and ranching to prescribed burns, fisheries, hunting, um. We even under under the all florida umbrella I don't know if you guys follow, but we have a thing called the florida gallery. That's celebration of florida artists and that's one of our projects that we do. So we do a lot of stuff there. We're in a lot of rooms.
Speaker 3:I'm actually doing this interview from at the time of the recording from the sea trout symposium in daytona beach, getting ready to spend the day tomorrow working on feature out regulations and science and, uh, learning everything I can about that, because it's an important fishery down here. That's, that's one thing, that's a. That's a. That's my passion project. Um, and then I also have a.
Speaker 3:A duck ranching is is our duck hunting operation. It's called duck ranching, with no g? Um, if you message me there, there's a high likelihood I'm not going to get back to you anytime soon, because we need some rain, we need some water, we need some ducks and, uh, it is a? It, when we have it right, it's the largest waterfowl hunting operation in the state of florida. There's been years where we've just run hundreds and hundreds of people through it. Uh, but, la nina, years are tough for us, so we're kind of watching the tropics right now and praying for rain down south florida, um.
Speaker 3:And then the other thing that I do, kind of my day job, is I I work for the International Order of Theodore Roosevelt, which is a nonprofit that I kind of met up with those guys back during the constitutional right to fish and hunt in Florida, so we at All Florida partnered with them on getting that done. They're amazing. They are working on constitutional rights to fish and hunt in other states around the country and so, um, I go to some of those states and help try to build out grassroots and work on the language and see if we can't protect hunting and fishing in other places. So that's me in a nutshell. Those are the the three things you'll find me doing at any given time well, you know there's a lot.
Speaker 2:There's a lot to unpack there. You know, and I want to unpack you know, honestly, all of it. But I think start, you know, cause it was kind of the last thing you talked about there is. Can you explain Travis to you? Know people that have never heard of the Florida hunt and fish or the right to hunt and fish, not just in Florida, but you know wherever that's been put into place, why that's important, especially in a state like Florida with all the development.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, to fish and hunt. Florida is the 24th state to have that. So at IOTR, the goal there is to get it in every state we can. So Florida is the 24th state to have it. And what it does is it doesn't really change the way we manage fish and wildlife, but it does ensure that hunting and fishing will always be considered for forever. So it's a perpetual protection for hunting and fishing. So the way I like to describe it is it doesn't change anything today but provides a very important backstop or protection long-term, to ensure that we have hunting and fishing.
Speaker 3:Uh, when we, when we passed in florida, you know a lot of people said we don't need that, fishing's never going to be any danger, hunting's always going to be around. We don't know what the state's going to look like in 50 years, 70 years, 100 years, especially at the rate that we're growing and developing. So getting that right in sconce in the constitution, you know vermont passed it in 1777 because they had the forethought to think, hey, what if it becomes unpopular to have hunting or fishing 200 years from now? So we'd love to see that, you know, at IOTR, we'd love to see that passed in every state.
Speaker 3:I spent some time this past year working in Maine. They don't have a constitutional right to fish and hunt. So we're looking at that and I know we're talking about it in Ohio like getting ready to look at. Can we run a constitutional right to fish and hunt in Ohio? So some other states where it would be awesome to get that on the books and get a grassroots community of sportsmen around advocating for it and getting it passed on the ballot. So stay tuned there.
Speaker 2:More to come. That's awesome, awesome stuff. You know, one thing I heard you guys talking about in the Bear Grease podcast, which I thought was important, and I'd love to hear how you know the role that you play with not only your your main job there, but with all Florida. You know you were talking about good versus bad development. And then the other thing was you you know the key to it's good when you have land that is being making money via agriculture, or you know running a quail farm on it, or you know guiding duck hunts, because it's kind of like keeping that, keeping a barrier between that land becoming developed, keeping a barrier between that land becoming developed. So will you kind of just touch on? You know, in Florida I feel like a lot of people that aren't in tune with what's going on in the state don't really understand the development problem and I like the way that you guys are talking about good versus bad development is one of the things you try to work with, like these developers on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like, okay. So I think if you ask anyone what the biggest conservation threat in the state of florida is, they would say growth, development, and then they'll go and complain about it someplace and go home to their house. That is in a development, right? There's a little bit of a hypocrisy in that, in that conversation right off the bat, right like, but at at the same time we all want places where we you and I we want to be able to go duck hunting, we want to be able to go bass fish or snook fish or whatever it is. But there's people that want to be able to go bird watch or camp or hike or be with nature. And we know that in every society historically, like I'm talking, you can go back to the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, whatever. Taking care of your natural resources is going to determine success or failure of your society. So we believe that there is a right and wrong way to grow and that can be.
Speaker 5:This fall, elevate your outdoor pursuits with Williamson Outfitters offering professionally guided experiences along Florida's Forgotten Coast. Whether it's coastal duck hunting, inshore fishing, gator hunting or flounder gigging, every Williamson Outfitters experience is guided by a seasoned licensed captain, delivering world-class adventure with local expertise. From small private groups to large corporate retreats, our fleet of well-equipped boats and experienced guides deliver first-class outdoor adventures for sportsmen of all ages and experience levels. Call or text 850-251-8650 or visit wwwfloridaduckscom to book your trip Williamson Outfitters, making the forgotten coast unforgettable.
Speaker 3:I'll say it, maybe in an unpopular way it's art, not science. So what we seem to be at a fever pitch in Florida right now with is every time somebody talks about a new development, people lose their mind because they don't want any more developments. But that becomes a problem for things like private property rights. That becomes a problem for your tax base. It becomes a problem for, I mean, not all development is bad. You can go to some smaller communities where they you know we always make fun of a Dollar General being the first thing that opens up. But I remember a little town where when a Dollar General opened up, those people were happy because they had a place they could go get milk and bread. That wasn't just the 7-eleven like. It's a little bit of like I say art, not science. So I don't want to say all development's good development. I want to say all development's bad development. But there is a a nuance to that conversation and if we, if we say all development's bad and we hate all developers, that takes away any incentive for developers to work with us on solutions. And there are plenty of developers out there that when they look at a subdivision they may say you know, we're, we're happy to develop 60 of this property or 70 of this property, leave 30 of it wild and maybe we could work with conservationists and determine what that 30 looks like and we end up with a wildlife corridor that goes through an area that has people living in it and you can have hiking trails and biking trails and the ability for people to interact there, but also the people, for the ability for people to see wildlife and that wildlife is enabled to traverse in a safe way to where you get. The idea of a corridor is for wildlife to be able to pass through, so you can get genetic diversity, you can get prey species moving around, you can get predator species moving around. It's a it's a really important thing.
Speaker 3:So I think we've gotten really, I'm to say, dumb as a social media world, in that we're like we got to stop development, stop all development, no more development, right, and that's not true and that's not really like when you sit back and think about it at all, but sounds kind of silly. So we've got to figure out ways that we want to work with developers, we want to work with development to ensure that our state, as it continues to grow, it grows with development and conservation in mind and that's. I don't know if I said that. Well, but that's kind of the challenge that we face and you see these movements online of you know we want all developers out of this. We want all developers out of that. And don't get me wrong, I've been frustrated with developers in my life plenty of times. But the fact is, we're going to continue to grow as a state. We need to influence how we're going to grow as a state and grow well, not stop growing.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that it's coming, whether you're ready for it or not.
Speaker 4:So it's like, why don't we, instead of building fences, let's build tables and see where we can, where we can, you know, work as a team here? Well, and look at it from like here's a here's a take is. Look at it from, like the big dollar developers, right, they know what their assessment is of land, like for for real, like if you're a major developer. You know, like in that area, what the percentage of of true chance of develop. You know, like in that area, what the percentage of of true chance of develop. You know we're going to buy this, own that, whatever it is.
Speaker 4:They've done an assessment. They know what the potential return is, or nobody's investing in it, right? So, like he's saying, you know, if we keep that at a balance to where they can have a little bit and we get to have a little bit, they're always nobody's getting away with it anymore without like preserving something. Like just where we live, tristan and in florida, you know they're in, and uh, we lived right off there off uh county road 210, you know, in st john's and it wasn't a lot, but we heard some wood ducks and we saw some frogs and some snakes and some deer and things like that and it was kind of a cool little area that everybody kind of just in the community cherished a little bit and said, hey, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:You know, we got some wildlife that use this, you know yeah, when I was, when you were saying that travis I, that was. That's exactly how our, our neighborhood used to be, or still is yep over there by bartram trail.
Speaker 3:High school is pretty cool you know, the other side of this too is, I think, florida. People from florida that live in florida is like 30 of the state or something it's not very high. Yeah, so nobody's from here, but I know a lot of developers that are from here, not a lot I know a handful of developers that are from here.
Speaker 3:Those are people that want to go fishing. They grew up fishing, they grew up hunting. They grew up with a grandfather that worked cattle, or even on a cattle ranch themselves. Do I want them helping to decide what this looks like, or do I want a developer from New Jersey helping decide what this looks like? Yeah, I for sure. If I'm making choices, I'm not demonizing all developers. I want the first guy, not the second guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a really good point and just from my observation too, it's always rare when you meet somebody from Florida, in particular somebody that's a fifth generation Floridian. You don't run into that a lot, so it's cool to hear that on the developer side, that you've ran into that several times.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the other thing I'll say is we all get frustrated. It's cool to hear that on the developer side that you've ran into that several times. Yeah, the other thing I'll say is we all get frustrated because we're growing so fast and we do see this race to urban sprawl, but sometimes what we don't see is well. First I'll say this the second paragraph of our state constitution says private property rights shall be held sacred. That's a pretty important line, and when people, when people say, well, we should just stop all development, I would love to know how they're getting around that. Because you as a private property right, you as a private property owner, do have some level of influence over what you can and can't do with that property, and and it's I mean private property rights rights are almost the pinnacle of rights that the state gives you. So that's step one in this. And then step two in this is if you poll on private property rights, if you were to ask the average Floridian how important do you think private property rights are, I bet you'd get 70, 75% say that's the most important, regardless of political affiliation or anything else. Everyone likes to believe that this is my house, this is my yard, this is my land, this is the thing that is mine, and nobody should be able to tell me what I can and can't do with it. But then we want to tell you you can't develop it, you can't change it, you can't do this, you can't do that.
Speaker 3:So I think I sound like I'm overtly defending development. I'm not. I think we have to be willing to work together versus being combative and adversarial, because I don't think all development is good development. I think we've done some really, I'll say, unsuitable land use in some of the stuff that we've done in Florida, but I think we've created a system where we've got a land race. That we've done in Florida, but I think we've created a system where we've got a land race.
Speaker 3:And I don't know how popular this opinion is, but I wonder why we don't spend conservation dollars sometimes instead of acquiring land that's remote. Why aren't we incentivizing development in places that need better development? And I'm not saying it's all one way or all the other, and I'll probably get some hate mail for even saying that, but at the end of the day, if we could incentivize development in places that do the development, upgrowth, redevelopment, um, those are where we could spend dollars, and by doing so, I'm not saying we're decreasing someone else's land value, but we might be holding the land value stable to where the impetus isn't as important for me to buy this cow cattle pasture you know that's outside of town and develop it, because now we can add 600 new residents into a downtown area or into an edge area or into an area that's an inholding, that's that's completely surrounded by development, where we can do development there, like not all development's bad development right yeah, no, that's, that's a really good point.
Speaker 2:Do you think, um, when you like, look at the state as a whole? I mean, you're somebody who covers, you know virtually the entire state and I would say largely. My uh, view of the state has been largely along corridors. You know 95, i-4, 75, um just going from one place to another. But I know you've seen a lot of the state. I mean, do you feel like the? I guess the amount of I don't I don't have a better word than drama, that's not really what I want to call it but the amount of attention this development crisis gets, I mean, is it, is it completely warranted from what you're seeing out on the landscape, or do you feel like it's one of those things that people are just being extra precautious on?
Speaker 3:I would say it's art, not science. So there's not one size fits all, not one recipe. First off, amateur hour driving 75, 95.
Speaker 3:That's amateur hour you got to get on the back roads. Second off, I just think we live in an outraged culture and we love to form moms on social media, we love to form moms in general, and that's not going to move the needle. And it's funny because we've talked a little bit at the beginning, at the outset of this, about the fact I run a conservation organization called all florida. I could fundraise for it way easier saying hey, hashtag, stop development, stop moving to Florida, stop spraying our lakes, like I could go for some radical ideas that I even know are far-fetched and can't happen, but people will give money to that, right. But the fact is where we're going to get the most movement is in the middle, somewhere where we can figure out solutions. We can come up with solutions working collaboratively, collaboratively together.
Speaker 3:So there's a development we're looking at in Polk County right now. Um, it's called the Stonebridge development. I think it's a really bad development. I don't remember the specifics, but I think it's 5 000 acres, 3 500 houses. They're expanding a city. Um, it just doesn't seem like a warranted, well thought out development. But they're asking for zoning changes, etc. Um, there's some rules and regulations around how that all has to happen. I could bore everybody to sleep around that. I just don't like that development. I don't think it's a good development.
Speaker 3:The same time, there was a lot of outrage recently about a development adjacent to Payne's Prairie in Gainesville. It was like an 80-acre development. It had already been zoned for development, or the landowner was asking for it to be zoned for development, but it was not within the Payne's Prairie footprint of the state park. It was adjacent to it and there's development on one side of it, development on the other side of it. Do I want them to develop that in my heart? No, I don't. But at the same time I'm not going to die on that hill.
Speaker 3:So there's nuance to this conversation a little bit. But you can get radical environmentalists and say we have to stop every development at all costs. Well, first off, no, you're not going to. Second off, that's not true. It's just not true. You don't need to stop all development at all costs. And I go back. I can't believe I'm this much defending development on this conversation. But you go back to the outset of this. You all live in a house somewhere in florida. That was wetlands or woods or scrub at some point. I'm not saying we get to destroy all the rest of it. But there has to be some nuance to this conversation.
Speaker 2:There has to be a little bit of um, a little bit of yeah, like you get this one, but we're going to get this one over here and we're going to, we're going to trade and swap and work together to figure out what the solution looks like yeah, and I I think um, just on a a positive note of how you know outside looking in development, has, or you know the state has done a really good job cooperating with um, which I know you've played a big conversation in some of this stuff travis with these wildlife corridors and um, you know, outside of what I heard you guys talk about on bear grease, you know the path to the panther thing.
Speaker 2:I was following that you know, just thinking that the whole time was super interesting and how they were able to pull that off and um, I'd like to kind of touch on that because I mean it's like, from a positive standpoint, what, what has been able to be done, you know, in terms of the, not just what the panthers were able to do, but securing those acreages for black bears to move through, and um, all of that, I think didn't you guys say it was like in the millions of acres that are basically conjoined together on that wildlife corridor?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So if you're, if your listeners don't know about the Florida wildlife corridor, let me let me back up and I'll answer your question. But let me start by saying this we love to complain about the things that are wrong. So, again, this development, that development, this golf course, that golf course. And again, I'm not that's case by case what's good, what's bad, but florida has, uh, seven million, six, six point, eight million acres of public land. It's got the most public land east of the mississippi river.
Speaker 4:That's crazy, wow it's in the teens that morning and maybe you're chasing ducks or geese, but now it's september and it's 85 degrees and you're hunting early teal or geese as a waterfow. You need dependable weather protection that will not break the bank. Founded in 1996, frogtogs is not only the leader in breathable wader technology, but a company you can depend on to keep you warm and dry head to toe, no matter your hunting environment.
Speaker 3:That's substantial right. So for a state that we're complaining about a whole bunch of stuff, that's a pretty positive thing at the outset, right, right, um. So then, if you go beyond that, if you look into the wildlife corridor, the film you're talking about was done by carl ward and his team. It's called path of the panther. It's I said it was on national geographic. It was produced in conjunction, I think, with national geographic, but it's on disney plus. If you have disney plus, you can watch it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and what the idea was is if we could create these green corridors, these green infrastructure that allowed wildlife to traverse it, um, you get what I mentioned earlier the genetic diversity. You get prey species that are able to spread out, you get prey species that are able to spread out, you get predator species that are able to spread out, and you have a better natural state for everyone. We look at it like, obviously, this is a hunting podcast. We look at it through the lens of hunting and fishing, but it's not just limited to hunting and fishing, it's all the other species that go along with it. And so if you have these geographically isolated populations and let's say, you've got a population of 30 bears and they can't trade with another population of 30 bears. At some point they can get a disease, they can die out, they get hit by a car, you can have some kind of mortality that ends up jeopardizing them. By creating the corridor situation, you're able to allow those bears or those panthers or the whitetail or whatever it is, to traverse these corridors and genetically spread out.
Speaker 3:And that's not to say corridors are the only way to do conservation, but the highest return force is on that. So the Florida Wildlife Corridor ultimately we want to have 18 million acres protected. Wow, today we have 10 million acres protected in it, and these are rough numbers. Don't at me if it's 10 million, 500,000. Roughly 10 million is protected. So that means we got to protect another 8 million acres. Now that's land that isn't developed yet, but the idea there is a lot of that is working land. So we're going to purchase conservation easements or basically get a landowner to sell us the development rights off their property so they don't ever develop it.
Speaker 4:Or donate it to conservation right.
Speaker 3:Anybody can donate land anytime to conservation, but most landowners like that's their inheritance, that's their investment, that's their. They need to make money coming out of it so they could sell it to the state or the feds, in an outright purchase or for a less purchase. They could donate it or they could sell in this case, the conservation easement off of it. A lot of what we work on at All Florida is the idea of making it easier for a landowner to keep their land wild. So hunting is an important tool in that. Because if you're a landowner and you have 10,000 acres, you've still got to pay taxes on it. Well, you can get ag exemptions or you can get you know whatever the exemptions are. Then you could sell a hunting lease on it so you could make a revenue stream off of that. There's plans out there for payment for ecological services where they give you a dollar amount for having viable panther habitat on your land. Maybe it helps offset the depredation on your cows or whatever. You can sell timber off of it. You can do agritourism. There's things like gopher tortoise mitigation where you could become a recipient site and we could relocate gopher tortoises. If you have suitable land for that. The idea is your land is worth. Let's say you've got 1,000 acres and it's worth $25,000 an acre to a developer, $25 million that your land's worth. Well, the state's not going to give you $25 million but we might give you $5,000 an acre or $10,000 an acre. Sure, would you like to keep your land and continue working cattle, and we can give you $5 million, $10 million, something to that effect. That's the compromise solution that an easement gives you. And so if you look at the corridor, what we're doing is we're trying to the term is encumber, we're trying to encumber the remainder of the corridor so it doesn't get developed. Now, every year there's money put into programs like Florida Forever get developed. Now, every year there's money put into programs like florida forever. That's land that can be acquired for wmas or state parks or you know that's public lands acquisition. Then you've got your private land stuff, which is your rural and family lands, the numbers like that, and and those are used to acquire, like these working land easements, and all together, it all comes together and works ag ranchers, timber hunters, hunters all of this fits together to protect this wildlife corridor that's going to allow wildlife to flourish and thrive. So when you step back, we definitely want to complain about the growth of development, and I don't like the traffic that's in my town and that it takes me longer to get to dinner now. At the same time, we just acquired 6 000 acres for the corridor there. We just acquired 917 acres for the corridor over here. We just acquired 3 000 acres for the corridor over there.
Speaker 3:This is going to take all of us working together to figure out how to solve this thing, and I backed up to what I said a minute ago it ain't all bad. We definitely tend to hang up on the things we see as the wounds. As aldo leopold said, we see the world of wounds as you learn more about it. But the fact is it ain't all bad. We've got a lot of good stuff happening in in the state and we should talk more about that and celebrate that more and and again, try to work together, and that's what I see groups like the florida wildlife corridor foundation. I see groups like that really trying to work together to bring all the stakeholders together the landowners together, the environmentalists together to try to celebrate and work on keeping Florida wild.
Speaker 4:Well, and you know, I've seen this firsthand, travis and one of the cool things about agreeing with the developers you're bringing in folks that they're not hunters, right, of course, we all know that hunters have been such a big part of conservation, but, um, what happens is it's like I'm going to use guana river um, wma is an example.
Speaker 4:If you go there during the summer and the spring and stuff when it's not hunting season, there's so many people that love that, um, that land, you know they're just using it to take their kids on a stroll, go on a hike, teach them about a frog, a toad, whatever it is. You know, just, you know fishing, whatever it might be, and the thing that I think that we like and I'm just saying hunters in general, not you, because I know you got your eyeball on this but it's just that those folks why we help come in conjunction with developers. Those folks become ambassadors of that property and we're all joining arms with that right, and I just think that that I just wanted to point out how that falls into the balance. I think that sometimes we overlook it as hunters yes well, you know every green space out there.
Speaker 3:I'm sitting in a hotel room on daytona beach right now and I'm I'm watching.
Speaker 3:I'm watching a squirrel play right now some little kids may see that squirrel and fall in love with that squirrel and wonder about wildlife. Like the ability to see wildlife isn't isolated just to the corridor, just to a wma or whatever. That's the importance of urban parks and things like that. People can connect to wildlife in places. I'm from Florida. I've fished in plenty of retention ponds and plenty of canals and things that are completely surrounded by development and been able to touch something that was wild and it helped me fall deeper in love with it. So what you're talking about is exactly the same right as people buy houses and move to Florida about is exactly the same right as as people buy houses and move to florida. What I really try to want to, what I want to bridge, is that disconnect between them and wild florida. How do we get them to care about wild florida? And often what they do is they they kind of.
Speaker 3:Again, they fall into this trap of I moved here, but I don't want you to develop across the street from where my house is right, even though that's part of a planned development that was mapped out before your house was even built.
Speaker 3:Again, not all development is good development, but I definitely think we have to take a step back and look at how we can work together and get more people to fall in love with, whether it's taking your kids to the beach Again, I'm sitting in a high-rise hotel, this whole beach is lined by hotels but a kid down there at the beach again, I'm sitting in a high-rise hotel, this whole beach is lined by hotels but a kid down there the beach could find sand fleas or catch a fish or, uh, see seashells or whatever, and fall in love with something. That's part of wild florida and I think that's what you're describing, tony is this, this connectivity that we have, no matter where it's at, to the wild places in the state, and we need more of that. We need to celebrate more of that. We need to talk more about that and, and and pursue it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, no doubt about it, man, no doubt about it one.
Speaker 2:Um, well, I want to, I want to touch on the guana thing, but just kind of one thing I'm seeing in our state like so the braves are doing something with um, go outdoors or georgia outdoor, you know, department of natural resources. They're doing like a interactive thing at the, at the ball game, like to your point Travis that's a perfect example of like typically.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm sure there's some outdoorsmen and stuff there to go to it, but there's going to be a lot of kids exposed right there in Cobb County. You know that wouldn't have the opportunity to learn about the outdoors. So, like those little things, just seeing a squirrel or just having somebody talk to you or whatever it might be, can kind of you never know what kind of love that could instill in somebody well, look at how joe rogan explains how my, how kindergarten, his version of enjoying the outdoors was the first time that he went and did it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it really.
Speaker 2:He was just like, oh my gosh well, I think you know, I had no idea that I could like like this so much you know well, I think, isn't that some of the enjoyment we all get in, like bringing somebody new into the outdoors? It's like they point out things that like and I've got the experience with my wife in the last few years but they point out things that you just kind of like you're just so focused on. You know you've been years since you've looked at something that way, you know, and it's just kind of a good reminder of of that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure, a different perspective.
Speaker 2:Travis, you know talking about. He, my dad, brought up Guana and I'm just curious. I know a couple months back or a few months back, there was talk about the North part of Guana being susceptible.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and this conversation about development.
Speaker 2:What's the um? The latest on that?
Speaker 3:yeah, so that that died. Um, yay, what they what they wanted to do. What they wanted to do was a land swap. Um, and land swaps are a pretty common practice. This is the, this is the bad side of it. Um, and what you saw was exactly how it's supposed to work.
Speaker 3:The public any developer I don't care who they are, any developer is going to look at a piece of land and say, hey, how can I maximize the return on that? How can I develop that? Or I've got 10,000 acres over here. If I give you my 10,000 acres, would you let me have this 500 acres or this 800 acres? So, here, if I give you my 10,000 acres, would you let me have this 500 acres or this 800 acres? That's kind of the nature of business to some degree is trying to maximize your return on your profits and negotiate better deals. We've all met somebody out there that they're in it for the art of the deal. They want to make every deal they can, and always come out ahead.
Speaker 3:What happened with Guano? That was a bad idea, and before it even got to the consideration phase, it was killed by public pushback on the idea of a land swap. So there are situations, though, where you come and you've got a parcel of land that's an inholding or whatever, and you say, hey, I'd like to develop that land and I'll give you five acres for every acre. You give me right there. And you say, hey, I'd like to develop that land and I'll give you five acres for every acre. You give me right there, and you can put it into conservation or whatever you do. So not all land swaps are bad. I think what I'm trying to hit on over and over here is the idea of nuance in this conversation, like, not all land swaps are bad. The Guana land swap was a bad land swap. Nobody was on this side of it except the developer that wanted to get it done.
Speaker 3:Um, and I think that became readily and quickly apparent to uh, the, the art which is the. Uh, I can't remember what that stands for. I'm blanking out, it's been a long day, but the arc is the, the planning commission, that at the state level that does review the review council, acquisition and Review Council is the name of it. They review all land purchases, land swaps, and they determine, like is this suitable for the state? Is it bad for the state? There's a representative from FWC. There's a representative from FDACS, there's a representative from DEP, there's some out large representatives, there's somebody that represents the timber industry. So, generally speaking, arc is going to try to look at it through a lens and get it right. I don't even know where the members of ARC were going to land on Guana because it never got to them. It got pulled before it ever got to them. So that's how aggressive and well the public sentiment and Al Pride did on that.
Speaker 2:Do you feel like I feel like there's been several things, not just with Florida, but you know the whole thing being blown up with the public land sale, but several things in Florida in particular.
Speaker 2:Like I feel like I kind of have a little bit of a renewed hope in terms of, like, what hunters are able to accomplish when they kind of or just I guess it's not just all hunters, you know any outdoorsman or anybody that loves public lands, the idea of it or any of that um, what can be accomplished when people come together. Because I think the pessimist in me was thinking, you know, before the last couple years and seeing several things, like man, I just feel like less and less people. Because you look at the duck hunting numbers, you look at I think there's a small uptick in bow hunting, but like you look at some of these numbers that are going down because the boomers are dying and stuff like that, and you're like man, it's just like less of a, at least in the hunting world, less of a voice in those conversations which I'm sure we kind of touched on the first time you were on. But do you have kind of a renewed faith and like what?
Speaker 3:can be done when people band together, after what you guys in particular have been able to do in florida. Travis, yeah, yeah, I absolutely do. If you look at and I talked about this with with clay, you referenced that podcast, I talked about a little bit with him but if you look at, like in the hunting space, what are the four biggest most recent wins? Um, you'd say defeating prop 127 in in colorado, which was gonna ban cat hunting as the ballot box, not using science, it was gonna ban cat hunting based on a vote, which is emotion, not science, driving wildlife policy. Bad. Yeah, um, you look at, the restoration of the florida black bear hunt huge victory, a thing that Clay and I talked about.
Speaker 3:We thought we'd never see that again. You look at the defeat of the Mike Lee public lands sale and then you look at Florida's right to fish and hunt, which again. First phone call Representative Melo and I had with the sportsman's lobbyist and another fellow. The conversation was there's no way you can get this passed in Florida. And it passed with 67%.
Speaker 3:So I don't know how you look at all of that and then you look at what I said about. Florida has six and a half million acres of public land and we've got 10 million acres conserved in the corridor with a target of 18 million. It ain't all as bad as we think it is. But I will say this, and I'm going to say this and definitely get an email or two it is easier to raise money when it's bad and, if I can tell, you a story.
Speaker 3:That's bad. It makes it easier to raise money and I and I frankly I mean forgive me, but I call bullshit on that like yeah, we do, we have problems, absolutely we do. We have some things that we need to show up for, absolutely we do. Isn't that our job to show up for? Like we talk about being advocates, we talk about being in the arena and standing in the fight and like that's what we're supposed to do. Like I have recently been involved in.
Speaker 3:I've gotten kind of tagged because I got involved in the alligator alcatraz thing because from a conservation standpoint, I didn't like that. I don't have, I don't, I don't wade in on immigration issues, I don't wade in on a whole bunch of stuff. I'm not qualified for that. I can have an opinion as a human, but I'm not qualified as an expert on that. But from a conservation standpoint, I've got questions about it.
Speaker 3:And when did it become unreasonable for some somebody to ask those questions? I don't think it is like let's, let's dance, like yeah, dance. And would it become unreasonable for you in a position of power to listen to your constituent asking questions? And I think what we've seen is I don't think it's a problem. I definitely think there are some elected officials out there that don't like to hear from constituents. They don't like people to ask questions, but I think, by and large, when you look at our elected officials, a lot of them don't mind you asking those questions, they don't mind having the hard conversations with you about it, and I think we should reclaim that and have more of that. So I'm optimistic, I'm very optimistic, and I also think we do hard things all the time. We put a man on the moon 50 years ago.
Speaker 3:You're telling me we can't. Just because we pass this bad legislation this session doesn't mean it's that way forever. Why can't we bond together and band together and undo it for next session? Why can't we, you know, reclaim that land? Why can't we do this? Why can't we do that?
Speaker 3:I think we need to believe a little bit more in, like, the power of us as a group of people. And the other thing I'll say, tristan, as you talked about the Michael E deal we give the hunting community a lot of credit there and I, I 100 give the hunting community a a lot of the credit there. But I think we're so much stronger together and I think there is a lot of the environmentalist community that does appreciate fishing and honey. Right, the evidence I'll use for that is the right to fish and hunt passed in florida at 67. So it got donald trump won the presidency. There are a million more people that voted for the right to fish and hunt than voted for donald trump. Wow. So that tells me there are a lot of people that don't agree with who we elected as president that do agree with. Hey, we should have this right to fish and hunt.
Speaker 3:And the reason I'm saying all that is not to get into politics of. It is to say, when you look at the mike lee land sale, it wasn't just hunters, it wasn't just anglers. There was a broader group of people that care about conservation. That includes hunting and fishing. That bonded together. The reason the wildlife corridor is a success and is going to continue to be a success is it doesn't say we want to protect ag and ranching and timber, but we don't, we're not interested in hunters being a part of that conversation because we like dead animals. The reason it works is because consumptive users are part of it and it's a it's a conservation tool. So this is a broader thing. Yes, we're going to win because we've got good momentum, we've got a solid team and we're building that team out better and better every day. But the way we're going to win is finding those friends of ours that maybe they don't carry a shotgun but they believe that we should be able to carry a shotgun and do conservation work.
Speaker 2:Well, and I would venture to say you might actually know a number on this Travis, but you say 67, 67 in florida. I mean I gotta think that maybe 25 and that's being maybe aggressive are either a hunter and angler in the state. I mean, how many people actually you know either hunt or fish in the?
Speaker 3:state. Oh no, no, it's way lower than that. Full 22 and a half million people, four million fishing licenses, including out of state. There you go 250,000 hunting licenses. So you're talking a percent of a percent.
Speaker 3:There's no reason to pass that unless people fundamentally believe in the importance of it as a conservation tool. And I say this all the time. I'm going to say something similar to this or close to this when I when I did that podcast with clay. But if you want there to be bears on the landscape, allow hunting for bears, and we'll ensure that bears exist on the landscape. If you want there to be ducks on the landscape, allow hunting of ducks, and I'll make sure there are ducks on the landscape. Gators, fish, redfish, snook, tarpon, whatever it is. Allowing that consumptive use to touch it ensures that it exists. And there's people out there who will say, well, that's silly, that's imperialistic, that's whatever. Shouldn't the animal have the right to exist just because it should exist? Yeah, let me take you to Narnia through this closet and we can all sing kumbaya when we're done, because it's a fairyland.
Speaker 4:Narnia yes, I love narnia, like that's a.
Speaker 3:That's a fairy tale. Man like that's, I get it, but that's some soft, squishy stuff. That's not true. And look, we get down to five bears. Yes, we need to step in and make sure there's protections to to ensure that bears are brought back and restored or whatever the thing is and I shouldn't have even said bears there but we are going to make sure that these species exist as game species. That's like the North American model of conservation. It's the most successful conservation model in the history of the world. It's taught in every wildlife ecology class in the country. Successful conservation model in the history of the world. It's taught in every wildlife ecology class in the country. Like to to ignore the importance of hunting as a tool. To ignore the importance of hunting and keeping things wild is to like literally handy do you want coffee that doesn't suck?
Speaker 4:get the duck dirty, duck. Coffee is made specifically for the waterfowl enthusiast. Enjoy flavors like morning wood, dark dynasty, cinnamon, teal, snickerdoodle and First Flight to unlock the flavor that you'll enjoy in the blind for years to come.
Speaker 3:Cap yourself in the conversation and I don't know why anyone that understands wildlife, ecology or wants wild places would be against hunting and fishing as practices. So I'm optimistic because I think what we're seeing is that conversation begin to ebb back our way. I mean, there's no tidal waves anymore, but I think we're seeing it start to ebb back our way and I'm really hopeful we're going to continue to see it and we're going to bring more people that are willing to have conversations around the acceptance of hunting. You know, like, not necessarily more people getting out and carrying a shotgun and hunting although I think that's great and everybody should do it but more people that are willing to say you know what, I don't hunt. But I understand why hunting is so important, because it's going to make sure I get to go to this park or I get to go to this WMA and see the stuff that I care about, seeing the wild stuff.
Speaker 2:Um, it's going to exist because of hunters, largely I think you know, you and clay touched on a good point. Um, you know about loving, loving the resource, and you were just saying that, you know. I mean, if you wanted to stick around, you know, basically allow it to be hunted, because we, as hunters, protect the resource so addicted bro well and like the other day so my wife, we got, fortunately we kind of live.
Speaker 2:So we live in Duluth which is in the northeast side of Atlanta and um it's it's largely, you know, suburbia type or you know that kind of environment a lot of a lot of your ranch style houses are built like in the 70s, that are being remodeled and that kind of thing. Nice, mature neighborhoods, yeah but you know it's, it's not a lot, it's not like you're necessarily in your like.
Speaker 2:You know you got 100 acres out back but we're lucky there's we're lucky enough where we live across the street from 55 acres that basically I don't know a long story short on why there's that land there.
Speaker 2:But, um, basically to preserve the land and for tax reasons they made it like a nature preserve and yada, yada, yada, it's still privately owned but we see a ton of deer and a lot of absolute monster deer and a lot of young deer. So we're driving home the other day and there's a fawn stand in our neighbor's front yard and we're talking me and my wife are talking about how cute it is and uh, my wife's you know a hunter, so she gets it. But she's like how could you like, how could you hunt something like that? I'm like you like I love that fawn more than somebody that that does it. But what you got to realize is like, kind of what you were touching on travis going through narnia is that if you take that deer in three, four years, whatever two years I'm not, it's your trophy, whatever you want to do but that deer is going to have a lot easier of a of an end to its life than it would be just by Mother Nature.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and be respected and everything else.
Speaker 2:And it's kind of like the sacrifice of one thing for the greater good of everything. But that was kind of just my I thought when you guys talked about that, Clay, I was like when you and Clay talked about that, I was like, yeah, I totally resonate with that.
Speaker 3:So there's two things you said there that struck me. One is the, the uh, we deal. When we talk about wildlife ecology and management of a species, be it through hunting or whatever, we're managing at the population level, not at the single animal level. This is part of the problem with what I'll call the disinfication or the anthropomorphization of wildlife. Wait, wait.
Speaker 4:It's easy, Travis. Please say that word one more time for our listeners.
Speaker 3:Anthropomorphization. Don't ask me to spell it.
Speaker 4:I'm so confused.
Speaker 3:It's giving personification to an animal, it's giving it a name. It's giving it qualities it has a family, and so that deer, if you guys that deer, if you guys name that deer, you will feel sorrow for that deer when it gets hit by a car, or you see it on the back of a truck or whatever else. You develop an attachment to that specific animal.
Speaker 3:But deer as a whole, white-tailed deer as a whole. You don't have the same attachment to them as a species. You have a specific attachment to that one. You don't have the same attachment to them as a as a species, right? You have a specific attachment to that one. You don't have a specific attachment to all of them, right? Um, that's one thing that, as you, as you kind of talk through that, that really stuck out to me is like we do that and we see that and people want to. They want to name the bear and they don't want you to hunt their bear, diesel the lion. Remember, remember that conversation. Yeah, yeah For sure.
Speaker 3:The other thing that stuck out to me as you were talking about that is there's a famous quote it was in Outside Magazine, it was by a guy named Tom McQueen, and he tells the story of a hunter runs into a farmer and the farmer says why would you ever want to kill a deer? And the hunter is like, like you wouldn't understand, I don't want to, I, you just wouldn't understand. The farmer's like no, you need to tell me why would you ever want to kill the deer? What did you ever do to you? And the hunter says I can't talk to you when you're like this and the farmer goes why would you kill the deer? Like what would you be willing to die for the deer? And the hunter says, if it came to that, and it's, that's a really dramatic way to look at it, but it's true, like the love that you have for that animal, that species, that the care you have, what it provides for you and your family is.
Speaker 3:It is an intimacy that is hard to communicate to someone that does not hunt, right? Yeah, and I don't care if it's a wood duck, and you guys, you guys are duck hunters. I'm a duck hunter, I don't care if it's a wood duck. When I get a wood duck in my hand, every wood duck I ever hold, I'm like dude, this thing belongs in a museum. Yes, I don't care if it's a hen, I don't care if it's a drake, I don't care what it is, I turn it over and look at it. I'll spread its wings out.
Speaker 3:It's god of art bro. I have been in on the killing of probably thousands of wood ducks and the next wood duck I shoot I will do the exact same thing I have done with the previous thousands of wood ducks that I've shot Yep, yep. And it's going to provide a meal for me. It's going to provide a conversation and a story around a dinner table, like community thing, with, with whoever I share it with. It's going to provide, I mean, the feathers I may save for flies or I may send to somebody to tie flies with, I may mount it, like everything about that. That interaction that I have is an intimacy that somebody with a pair of binoculars or a camera cannot understand yeah, dude, dude, I totally agree.
Speaker 4:Um, I don't want to. I've been, I've been holding on to this one and somebody for 80 with that has adhd. It's been very difficult, um, but, but I've been holding on to this one. Going back to the whole bear thing in florida, which I just, to me, is an incredible victory, because the first year we moved there, right before that, um, it was open, there was a great harvest, it was a good number, um, and it was no, it was after that oh was it after we were there for about three years and okay, all right, 2015.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, older we get, we can't remember this shit anyway. Um, it's a great victory for bringing it back, but let me ask you this, and this might be kind of a tough question to answer what do you think that the bear attack had to do with public interaction into the approval process? Psychological value.
Speaker 2:Back to the bad news.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, exactly I mean, do you think that it was just good timing? I mean to me, me I felt like every hunter I knew in florida was like let's go. And I'm like, but listen, there's somebody got injured yeah, that was a terrible.
Speaker 3:That was a terrible thing and I really encouraged all the hunters I knew did not talk about it because it had nothing to do with anything.
Speaker 3:Well, we don't like throwing negative stuff, you know well, and and if you believe in the North American model of conservation, there's seven tenets that go to it. Don't ask me to quote them all, but I could get probably close but one of those is that science drives wildlife policy and emotions should never drive wildlife policy. So any creeping in of that by either side and I saw it try to be used by both sides, but the hunting community, I think, did a good job of tamping it down. But for a minute there the reaction was oh, we just said a fatality from a bear. We should leverage that on the fact that we need to know how it works yeah, that's not how it works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, bears are either a sustainable, renewable natural resource or they are not so you see same thing with shark attacks and stuff. Really, I mean it's exactly right, it's a reactional emotional thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I actually, and that's how we've wiped out species honestly is uh, I mean, we don't do that as a society anymore. I think we've got a little bit less. Yeah, we've gotten less barbaric example we've gotten less barbaric with it, but it used to be like we're man, you're done. I mean seriously, I mean that's the way it was, you know, and thank god we're not that way anymore.
Speaker 2:Well, I think as a whole you know, like you guys were talking about, um, when we moved up here to georgia and we're starting to set up trail cameras up and publicly and close to like basically you know the quote, the mountains, you know, up in that area we were seeing more black bears on trail camera than we were deer and I'm like, okay, do I need to be, like you know, carrying like a my glock out here? We're bow hunters. So I'm like you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2:So I did some research on it and, uh, basically, on average in the us quote, there's like one and a half people that are killed by a shark per year and it's less than that for black bears yeah now there's a lot more people that are frequently frequenting areas where sharks are than black bears, but that just goes to show like how docile black bears are and how not a threat to like actually killing you they are.
Speaker 4:but I just they're scared of you. I mean it's and I think you can just wrap that Tristan really into the whole predators thing. I mean, if you watch anybody that hunts Kodiak brown bear, if they smell you most of the time they're gone there. They don't want to have anything to do with you, you know? I mean, but there's going to be, as as we continue to grow together as civilizations and getting in their worlds and things like that, of course there's going to be more things yeah, but if you compare I don't know the numbers, but brown bear to black bear there's oh yeah, it's a big difference, I mean I mean a brown kodiak.
Speaker 4:Brown bear or kodiak uh bear doesn't go around going. Yeah, I'll just live off blueberries, I'm fine with that.
Speaker 2:That's why they say if you run into a brown or grizzly bear to play dead versus a black bear, get big, but anyway.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but no. But you know, I think I underestimate coyotes a lot, to be quite honest, and I think people underestimate the power of a bobcat in many ways. I mean, it's only because social media we've seen some of these things where you see a bobcat jump out of a tree and take a whole deer down and just wipe it out. You're just like wow, how is that even possible?
Speaker 2:Travis back to with the black bear thing. You mentioned Disneyfication of an animal and I mean there can't be more of an animal that we see here in the United States that's felt that more so than the black bear. And of course Florida's got Disney. Was that the biggest hurdle to getting this thing back going?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the biggest hurdle was really public sentiment finding the and I don't know the governors, unfortunately the governors don't include me in their thinking but the right political climate to bring it back and you could ask Travis in a vacuum. I don't love that, that's true, but it is true. We live in a world that's full of people and there's going to be influences on those things. So, um, you got, you had so much pushback after that first hunt that that had they continued to hunt the next year and the year after that. The year after that, the pushback probably dies down in fervor, but by stopping it it definitely created a rebound effect where it emboldened the anti-hunting community to push back on it. Um, we did a really good job as a state of working together to figure out what the solution needed to be, what the hunt needed to look like when it came back. And so it did come back and I'm honestly surprised, like I mean, I told you five years ago, I wasn't sure the appetite was there to ever bring the hunt back. And um, here we are.
Speaker 3:So, social science, human dimensions, the idea of what people do or don't think, um, I really like. I've always been a guy that's like oh man, I don't want social science involved in wildlife decisions. But social science is like the idea, or the human dimension side of this is like um, you guys, you guys, like the turkey hunt, sure, yep, every turkey, every turkey quota in florida is allowed, I think, two birds. That's not true, but almost all of them are allowed two birds. Um, we could double the number of opportunities by cutting that in half and giving one bird per person, right? Same number of turkeys would still die, but we would double the number of opportunities.
Speaker 3:What I just described to you is not a biological thing. Biological is how many turkeys are going to die. Human dimensions, social science is what's hunter satisfaction? Land on right, maybe it's one turkey, maybe it's three turkeys, maybe it's five turkeys, and we cut the number way down. So those are human dimension solutions. Those are not, those are not biological solutions. But again, if every hunter's successful, x number of turkeys are going to die, are you?
Speaker 2:right, that's like arkansas that's what I was about about to bring up I don't want to cut off your train of thought uh no, you're fine, well, okay, so you know, one of the hot topics right now is arkansas, considering, you know, going to a draw in some places.
Speaker 2:And I've always one of the things that I've always felt that florida my dad too was super unique about is, like these waterfowl opportunities where you know, basically, like you know, you talk about your broad moors, your, you know tm goodwin sta, stuff like that where, for the somebody that doesn't have all the time in the world, I mean, if you're lucky enough to pull one of these lottery hunts, I mean you essentially have, you're gonna see ducks and you have an opportunity to harvest a decent amount of ducks. And I've always looked at, uh, the lottery system as, uh, as a positive thing from that aspect.
Speaker 4:Oh, I think they've been a leader in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think well, in terms of waterfowl, I don't know how other states handle it, but, like you know, you mentioned the turkey thing and obviously Florida's thing is everyone wants to come here and kill an Osceola turkey and I feel like there's like some parallels between Arkansas. You know you're wanting to go hunt the public timber.
Speaker 2:Iowa big bucks and people. Those same people still want to come and get their Osceola in Florida. And I guess from a Florida residence perspective, travis, this is kind of like a loaded kind of question, I guess. But do you feel like, at least for like, how would you feel, for example, if they made out of satyrs, where you could only kill one turkey and maybe it was a draw to even come to Florida? I mean, from my perspective as an out of stater now, I wouldn't have a problem with it, because when, if I had a better odd chance of on public land harvesting said turkey, because it was a little bit more restricted, I would be like sweet and kind of the same way I kind of feel with some of the land in Arkansas. I don't, I don't think all of it should be a lottery, because there's something to be said for going out on public land Tradition, yeah man.
Speaker 3:But you know the opportunity to apply for some places where it's like man, if once in five years I pull that, you know it's going to be a hell of a hunt. You are asking the wrong guy that question. The reason I'll tell you that is I don't. I want opportunity access open, yeah, and I want good conservation practices in place. Whether or not we can hunt alligators 24 7, I don't care, whether or not like so to. So to me that's a hill that I just don't have a. I don't even have a thought on it. And that's crazy, because I have a thought on everything. I don't have a thought on it, like I can't even put together rational words on how I feel about it.
Speaker 3:I am typically a guy that says I want the ability to go to other states and hunt, so I want people to have the ability to come here and hunt, yeah, but also, you know we're sitting here talking about our podcast.
Speaker 3:I ran a pretty big podcast for a long time. Yeah, I watch lots of youtube shows where they come and they hunt on public land and they teach you how to pull quota permits and there's organizations out there that'll teach you how to do that. I think it's really interesting to me when I watch demonization of out-of-state hunters or pushback on out-of-state licenses. That's led by folks that are capitalizing on going out of state and running hunts or coming into my state and running hunts. So I just think that's one of those things that I just can't get worked up over. The solution to yeah. I think whatever we end up doing today, we'll change it in 10 years and then 10 years after that we'll come back to whatever we're doing today, because I don't think there's a perfect solution to it. I think it's one of those things that you just got to kind of add that flow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's definitely a nuanced thing and I totally respect like I would never want it to be a situation where you can't go to a state and you cannot have plenty of opportunity to just walk out on the landscape, on public land, and be able to target whatever it is but and select opportunities, which I couldn't tell you what that would be in any state. I think it's cool for select opportunities yeah, yeah now, hey, travis.
Speaker 4:So I told tristan I said number one question I want to ask travis in this, this actually, that I will give my boss credit to um with dealing with with potential customers. He said one of the best questions you can ask somebody and I'm just on this kick with it is what keeps you up at night. Well, that's what. I want to hear.
Speaker 4:I want to. That's what I want to hear for Travis Thompson, when you're laying there, I mean, dude, you're, I listen, I have so much ADHD that I try to comprehend how much information you can process. And, dude, thank God there are people like you that can do what you do, and I don't have the capacity. I just don't. I mean I really don't. I'm being honest with myself, that's my weakness. I mean I really don't. I'm being honest with myself, that's my weakness, that's what it is. But for you, you know, like obviously that's a. You know, you shake the magic eight ball and it changes all the time. You know, but like what is that thing for you?
Speaker 3:Man, that's a loaded question, tony, because I don't. I think I'm so in it on the conservation side that I don't obviously like. There's some big wins and I party hard when we have a big win, yeah, but the fact is, um, if you'll forgive me, let me, let me just rattle for a second oh yeah, dude, that's, I'm a big.
Speaker 3:I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of the concept of game theory, and if you've never read the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, it's a great starter book on game theory and in that book he talks about how there are games and there are infinite games. A game that's defined would be a game, or a finite game would be a game, like baseball. You play nine innings, you get three outs per half inning, you get 27 outs a game. The team with the most runs on the scoreboard and this is how you score runs wins. That doesn't exist in conservation. Yes, right, some days we pass a constitutional amendment, other days we get a black bear hunt, other days we reopen an oyster fishery or we change shrimp regulations or we keep something from ever happening that you'd ever see the light of day on.
Speaker 3:I have moments where, whatever inning we're in or whatever the current situation is, I'm cognizant of and it'll keep me up at night for a night or two. But, generally speaking, we come up with some strategies and we go and we execute those strategies. Yeah, the goal is not to win or lose, because there's no end to this game. Right, the end is a meteor hits the planet or I die. Yeah, but when I'm gone, if the meteor doesn't hit, somebody else is going to be playing the conservation game.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, for decades and decades. I hope and pray. There's a whole bunch of people doing it. So when you ask what keeps me up at night, like from the conservation side, not a lot keeps me up at night. I think during Amendment 2, yeah, there were nights when I was eating Tums and thinking, gosh, almighty, are we going to get everybody to vote for this or not? Like, that kind of stuff happens in the moment, but long term it doesn't. But long term it doesn't. I will say what. What I worry about right now is is what I see as a mob movement in the social media world and it doesn't keep me up at night, but I'm aware of it and that's things like reforming the fwC commission or this anti-development.
Speaker 3:All development is bad development stuff. Because where I see that in a game theory lens is those people are playing a finite game. They view it as a win or a loss with whatever they're looking at. So if they can reform the FWC commission, they win, but they don't understand the next seven moves that are going to have to come after that and when they reform the FWC commission. That means they're going to turn into a statutorily created agency, or they're going to make it elected positions, or they're going to make it a different type of constitutional agency that has different definitions around who they don't do and don't appoint.
Speaker 3:All of those are moves in the game that are going to require counter moves back from us. And so this isn't checkers, where you just jump the piece in front of you, which is how they're playing it. This is chess, where you need to think six, seven, eight, nine moves ahead and we. I think there's no strategy involved in that, there's no critical thinking involved in that. It's emotional and reactionary, and so I don't know that it keeps me up at night, but it's definitely a thing I think about quite a bit, because I think it's so short-sighted, I think it's so poorly executed and I think the unintended consequences that those people don't realize that they're playing with. If it ever gets traction, if it ever gets movement will have a domino effect for someone like me, and then I will be up at night because we'll have some problems, or I'll go work, you know, in the private sector and make money instead of doing this.
Speaker 4:Well, I will tell you this, based on everything I know about you, I'm happy that I waited to talk about this because without the weight of people like you and us, as media outlets like ourselves, right now in this podcast, we're talking about how Travis does so much for conservation Sometimes you don't know what your fit is. As you develop as a hunter, as an outdoors person, you, just you, just enjoying it. However, you enjoy it, right. But as you kind of go down that road, you're like man, I want to be the best duck call maker, or I want to plant the best millet field best duck call maker, or I want to plant the best millet field, or I want to share that experience with a young child, or whatever it is.
Speaker 4:You hook on to this little passion piece, right, I want to be a, a waterfowl biologist yeah whatever that passion is, what I love love about having Travis on here and Travis and you being so such a strong piece in what you do is that it's going to. Somebody is going to listen to this, whether it's us or somebody else that you're influencing, and they're going to go. I want to be Travis Thompson. I want to be that like that's the piece. Like me personally. I always attach to the biological side of waterfowl and deer and everything Like I want to know, like when they hatch, when they drop their antlers, all this stuff right, I'm like into that, me personally. But sometimes you don't know what you don't know and you get into this and you hear something like travis and you go son of a gun. That's where my passion is. You know what I mean and applaud to you for kind of creating that sector for somebody to fit their passion into. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:no, and I appreciate you saying that immensely, tony I hope no little kids want to grow up and be me, because god, almighty prayers for your parents. But the, the. It really is like aldo leop everybody when they read Aldo Leopold and they talk about Aldo Leopold, he had a thing he called the land ethic and I've often said what I want to leave behind is a thing called a conservation ethic and that can look very different for every person out there. So it's really hard. People will message me and say, hey, how do I get involved in conservation? What do you care about? Whoa? Yeah, what a big question. Message me and say, hey, how do I get involved in conservation?
Speaker 3:what do you care about, whoa yeah so, like it's easy for me to and and often they'll say, hey, I want to get involved in conservation, but I'm not sure about going to a meeting. Okay, well, that's because that's not for everybody, although I think more people shouldn't attend meetings and figure out how to get engaged in that. But like, what is it that you care about? You care about fish. Do you care about ducks? Do you care about it that you care about? Do you care about fish? Do you care about ducks? Do you care about birds? Do you care about turtles? Do you care about dirt? Do you care about water? Do you care about plants? Do you care about stars? And like, there's all sorts of aspect to this and all of us are different.
Speaker 3:My buddy, when we did Cast a Blast Nate would, uh, cast a cast a blast nate would always say, people are whole ass, people, true, we, we. We talk about it as though you know one size fits all and it's a recipe and you could just go figure out this thing and I don't think anything's a recipe. I mean, I don't think anything is a recipe and we do. We definitely boil it down to hey, you can come to this banquet and pay your 75, but now you're doing conservation and that's not reductive to banquets, right.
Speaker 4:But you might not connect to that right.
Speaker 3:But it might not be your thing, Like there's so much out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's why there's different denominations in church, right, I mean?
Speaker 3:honestly, it's exactly right it is.
Speaker 4:It is exactly I mean it just hit me. It is exactly. I mean it just hit me. Praise you, jesus, baby Jesus. But no, but seriously, really, I mean it comes down to that that we don't want to we us as as as believers, we don't have to say anything about any believer Right, we just like my grandpa you say, just go to church. I never knew how powerful that was, but it's the same thing Like get involved but it's the same thing like get involved.
Speaker 3:It's it's when I say a conservation ethic, for for me I'm super good on policy and advocacy and I do good public speaking like public speaking is not a fear for me. But I know people that petrify, lock up when they talk about public speaking. Sure, like they cannot do it. I would not recommend that they go do public speaking like that's a terrible idea. Yeah, I mean, I'm all for people working with their figures or whatever, but that's a terrible idea. At the same time, there's people out there that build gun boxes or they go and just pick up trash on a lakefront or whatever. That's their conservation ethic and that's how they enter and exit the conversation and that's how they enter and exit the conversation. But I'm going to tell you what is not a conservation ethic is just reposting stuff and shouting stuff on social media.
Speaker 4:I told you guys he was going to get your ass. This is what I love about you, travis, is that you're bold enough to say look, step up to the plate.
Speaker 3:Look, yeah, like I, my dad, my dad was. I love my dad, but my dad, you know, taught me a lot of things and instilled a lot of things to me, and one of those is doing the right thing is never the wrong thing. And when I watch stuff like what unfolds in conservation, like I said, it's not all bad. In fact, most of it's pretty good but at the same time, when I see something bad, I've never been afraid to say hey, I don't agree with that. It doesn't mean I jump up and down and yell and pitch a fit, but I definitely have never been afraid to say what I think and that's always served me well in my life. Don't know that it serves me well, necessarily, with all politicians, and don't know that it serves me well in fundraising, but uh, it served me well in my life, so I'm gonna keep doing it um, you know, two kind of two things kind of come to mind travis.
Speaker 2:You know, I one thing I've said before on this podcast is like if I think, as somebody like you mentioned, there's like no, you know, perfect kind of fit to it and like there's been times where I'm like this is kind of like overwhelming to like even think about some of these things for me. But like, um, what it kind of boils down to me is like you know, if you're listening to this and it's like okay, what's one thing you could do this season? There's a lot, you know. Obviously, you know you could go volunteer to help band, whatever you know know. But one thing that's always at boiled it, when you like really boil it down, is like if you strive to take somebody new hunting that has to take their hunter safety certification, has to buy a hunting license, has to. So basically, now you got dollars going into pitman robertson and then you're going into getting the state involved in terms of getting the licenses. That's something simple, if you're listening to this, that you're like man, what is something as a hunter I can do like to make you're?
Speaker 4:introverted right, you just want to do something, just get somebody buy a duck stamp hunting. You know, buy, buy, buy a duck stamp, even if you don't hunt.
Speaker 2:I mean little examples, yep, um, and you know the other. The other thing is um, shoot, now I'm drawing a blank. This was the one that I was more interested in hearing what you had, what Travis, shit, damn it. Now I'm drawing a blank on what I was going to say about that. Maybe it'll come back to me. But you know one thing I had written down Travis hopefully that'll come back to me because it was kind of in the same vein and I really wanted to hear your thoughts on it. But you same vein and I really wanted to hear, um, your thoughts on it. But you know one thing since the last time we had you on um I don't believe at the time you had the duck ranching thing going on.
Speaker 4:You were talking a little bit at the beginning about managing that land and he was just getting kind of started, I think a little bit with it yeah, and I, I, you know, I definitely want to hear a little bit about what it's like, you know, working with um, I think it.
Speaker 2:I think it's your friend, matt, right? Um, matt Pierce, yes, sir, yeah, and um, but one thing that was really cool is the whole snail kite thing that you guys did on that property and like I didn't even know what a snail kite was, but then all of a sudden I'm invested in like seeing all this snail content out of duck ranching and you know so I just thought that was, that was cool.
Speaker 2:So I'd like to hear a little bit about what it's like managing that land. I know you said this year is a tough year, and then also, if you wouldn't mind giving us a crash course on snail kites, yeah, I guess to compound that there's a lot of biodiversity there.
Speaker 4:That one thing is off of another thing, so it comes from a tadpole to a whatever what's that been like yeah, so, so I'll.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you the key to managing land well is to have a uh rancher in your, in your camp, that knows how to manage land. That's the, that's the expertise I have on managing land. I mean fair enough. It's funny because we have learned so much together over this and matt is an expert at raising cattle and he's an expert at reading land and he's taught me so much. That's matt pierce, p1 cattle company. I'll give you a quick example of one of the things we learned.
Speaker 3:The first time we ever did a duck hunt together we weren't together, matt was at a gator game and he's like all right, these are, these are where all the ducks are, these impoundments, these fields, and I'm like awesome, dude, we're going to wreck them. So Matt's like well, I'll get all the cows out of here, you know Friday, so that they're not in the way for your hunters. I was like awesome, that sounds great to me. So he moved the cows from pasture A to pasture B. Well, saturday morning we go in there to hunt. Guess where all the ducks went? Pasture B, they went with the cattle. That's exactly right. And we adapted and had a good hunt because we figured that out pretty quickly. But what we learned was where the disturbance happens is where the birds want to be. And so you got cattle out there creating disturbances and ducks follow them around and sail kites follow them around and everything else. And we we learned a lot about what we could and couldn't plant when we could, it can't, could and could not plant it, how we could do with pumps, how we could do with moving water. You know, it was literally just a trial and error, but I had a huge advantage because I have this guy that understands land through a different lens than I ever possible. I mean, I'd have to build a time machine, go back to school, go to school for ag ranching, learn all that stuff and then practice after 25 years to catch up to where matt is man, like it's just not possible. And he's. He's got some stuff where he can help me curve some of those. But I like he's just so good at this, like reading grass, reading what's growing, how it's growing, what water's doing, how it's going to move, um, and then so if you, if you take all that, if you want the snail kite story, um, snail kites are an endangered bird in north america and there's about Audubon estimates there are about 3,000 of them left in the United States and all of those are in Florida.
Speaker 3:So we see them periodically when we hold water in impalements. We'll see, you know, we'll see actually quite a few of them, but it was 10, 15, 20. We had this year where the water level got right, and these birds, they have such a selectivity. They will feed almost exclusively on apple snails and we have an invasive apple snail in Florida and they're the ones that lay pink eggs. When you see snail eggs in Florida, they'll be white eggs or pink eggs. So these are the ones that lay the pink eggs, these apple snails. You can look across our field and we had the water level exactly right and it had a pink sheen to it because there were so many eggs on our millet that we were growing holy cow.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, it was like it when it would blow in the wind. It kind of looked like it was kind of shimmery pink. So when those snails hatched, those birds found them and we had, um, over 10 percent of all the snail kites in north america on our singular property. So we did a, we did a count and of the 3 000, we had over 300 there and so I called us fishing wildlife and I'm like, hey, um, you know, there's a lot of snail kites here. What should we actually? Matt? First Matt and Audubon said yeah, they do that, and that was kind of it. We were like, no, we're not taking that answer, audubon, um. So I called, I called FWC and I called um US Fish and Wildlife. I'm like, hey, we've got a lot of snail kites here and the, the lady at US Fishing Wildlife is like do you know what a snail kite looks like? When I told her, I was like there's hundreds of them. She's like do you know what a snail kite looks like? But when I called Tyler at FWC, he's like I want to come see this. So we, uh, we set up a day. They came out, uh, university of Florida came out on them and, uh, this is the same thing. The girl from the university of florida. She's like do you, do you know what a snail kite is? Because you said there were hundreds of them. I was like, yes, ma'am, you just sit tight.
Speaker 3:So we, uh, we drove them in and obviously there were a few flitting around that you could see as we kind of drove through our gate. But we turned a corner and they were all sitting in a tree and I said I said do you see that tree full of snail kites? And she goes those are vultures. This is a bird scientist. She goes those are vultures. I was like no, those are all snail kites. I said there's one vulture and one cormorant in it, the rest are snail kites. And she gets out her binoculars, she goes oh my gosh, that's a Christmas tree if I've ever seen one. And she started sitting in that single tree.
Speaker 3:Wow, they said, uh, are there any nests out there? And I was like man, I wouldn't know a snail kite nest if it fell. It hit me in the head like I just don't know what they are like. I don't know, sure, probably nest. So they started looking and like well, there's a nest and there's a nest, and there's a nest and there's a nest, and we started counting and I think we ended up with I'm gonna hit you with a number and I think it's right I think we had 68 or 62 nests or 72 nests, something like that. It was in the sixties. Um, we had that many nests and then we banded roughly the number of nests. That many babies Cause there's usually three babies for nests, so are chicks or hatchlings or whatever they call them Um, we banded roughly that many. I think we banded like 62 or 68, because there were some of the nests where we couldn't get to them. They were too high up, or the nest failed or a predator got to them, or they hatched and flew away before we got to them. So, all in all, we guess that we produced probably 100 new snail kites with our 300 snail kites. So we positively affected the population in the state by like 13 percent just with this property that we were managing for hunting and cattle.
Speaker 3:Wow, which is to me the conservation story in all this. Yeah, um, matt leases that property to run cattle on. It's a wre, a conservation easement, so we were able to store water on it. We store the water so that we can hunt ducks. Those two practices created a perfect situation for snail kites. It's a danger bird that no one's ever going to hunt, no one's ever going to pull the trigger at or anything else. Created a perfect situation for those birds to thrive and produce. You know probably a hundred chicks that year that went off and did snail kite things and hopefully are making baby snail kites wherever they are. Now we can't recreate that. Next year we will probably be able to recreate it. It will not be a La Nina year. We'll probably be able to recreate that nesting for those snail kites again. It's a really cool conservation story and it's how it's supposed to work.
Speaker 2:That's awesome man, that's, yeah, that's, that's really cool. I'm glad that, uh, you shared all that, because I didn't realize the the depth of all of it just from social media. It's just like, oh wow, these are cool endangered birds, you know that kind of thing, but yeah, it's really neat. Um well, travis, you know, obviously, we know you're a busy guy and we'd love to. We could probably honestly talk to you for four hours and like keep asking things.
Speaker 2:but, um, you want to be respectful of your time too. And uh, we got this segment. We're doing like listener question, listener question of the week and uh, basically, you know, we highlight whoever asks the question and we send them like a little care package and that kind of thing. But I, uh, I thought this one would be a good one to include you on too, because, uh, the question was what outdoor experience as a child has influenced your trajectory slash, path forward as an adult, and I'm like, if there was a, this would be a good person to ask that I feel like, especially as a fifth generation Floridian, yeah, you know it's funny, I would say.
Speaker 3:the thing that's influenced my trajectory the most as an adult is twofold. One, it was not an outdoor experience. My sister and I joke still to this day. We joke about the lectures that dad would give us at the dinner table and he would lecture us on wastewater and conservation and the environment and and he probably wasn't lecturing, he's probably just talking but we called them lectures because they were so boring and both of us were like dude, we're never going to have anything to do with any of this when we get to be grown ups it's like your dad telling you to shut the light switch off.
Speaker 4:Right, shut the light off, yeah exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3:But it wasn't like that. It was just like it wasn't even a lecture. It was just like it wasn't even a lecture. It was just like man, we put a spray field in and we're recleaning this wastewater to a tertiary treatment and we're doing this. He was excited and like telling us about it was a lecture. It was like about his day. But me and him would look at each other and be like this is lecture number 87. 87. So that's part of it is like.
Speaker 3:I grew up in a house with where that was always part of the question and both my mom and dad were from very much hunting families. My mom I've never known her to hunt anything, but her dad was an avid bird hunter, one of the best foil hunters I've ever met in my life. So we we were kind of in it to win it from the beginning, in that both of my parents had kind of this conservation ethic. They cared about wildlife, they cared about wild florida, they cared about the outdoors. When we went on vacation we didn't go.
Speaker 3:I went out of state twice as a kid, but before I turned 18 I went out of state twice and both of those were to see relatives in mississippi. Um, we never traveled except in Florida. We went to deer camp, we went to turkey camp, we went to Boca Grande and snook fished or Little Gasparilla and snook fished. So it's hard to say a singular moment. I mean, I've got lots of great stories of being a kid and growing up in that space and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and catching redfish and smoking all the things. But the what my parents taught me was how special this place is and I fell in love with florida and it's it's inescapable inside me. And so whenever I see inescapable inside me, and so whenever I see you, both you guys and I'll say specifically Tristan, I know that you fell upstairs, you married out of your league, but if somebody's messing with, her you are not going to sit idly by and handle it.
Speaker 3:Right, right, go if you, if you go out to a bar and some guy goes up talks to her, you're going to bristle, but you're not going to just punch him, right, you're going to go over there and be like, hey, she's with me. Um, I feel a protectionism of florida in that way what a great way to say because I was raised to fall in love with it.
Speaker 3:And and the other thing that I say you mentioned you mentioned Christianity a minute ago, tony. Yeah, there's a term in Christianity called a cradle Christian, where you know, you just kind of raised in the church and you don't go through adversity the same way, you just kind of like you don't even know, you just are kind of a cradle Christian, you just are born that, born into it almost.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love the the term a cradle conservationist and that's what I kind of term what I was brought up as, and not every.
Speaker 3:The vast majority of people are not going to have that situation. I know people that work at DEP, that hunt and have kids, so maybe their kids have the same experience I do but, like, the vast majority of people aren't going to get that. I very much got that experience because, again, when we went to deer camp, my mom was right there in deer camp and she'd drive us up and down the trails in my grandfather's Jeep looking for deer, looking for foxes, looking for squirrels, looking for all sorts of things. Even if I wasn't out hunting, I was out in the woods doing stuff with those people. So it's hard to say, you know, know there was this one moment or this one trigger point, because it was just a multitude of little bitty incremental steps that were applied to my life for a long period of time. That ended up with me and if you'd asked me at 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, no way am I working in conservation and environmental stuff. That's boring, that's what my dad did.
Speaker 4:And here we are. Do you know what you are? You are a conservation evangelist. I love it, bro. It just hit me.
Speaker 2:I'm like put that under his title that might be as good as duck ranching with the logo and all oh man.
Speaker 4:Dude, it just hit me and tristan's looking at me. He's like we're trying to wrap it up and be respectful of your time and I'm like I have to say this well I.
Speaker 2:Well, before I get off off topic, real quick, john williamson submitted that question, so thank you for uh submitting that. Thank you, john, but I remembered what I was going to ask earlier and I I you have as much time to answer this as you want. Travis, I don't want to rush you off, but if you got to get going, I completely understand, no you're good guys, I'm good.
Speaker 2:One of the things I wanted to ask is you know, I feel like the delta water files and the ducks unlimited of the world get this like. I think if people aren't seeing like a direct like, okay, they're building a new impoundment in my backyard. I think a lot of people get, um, just just feel like they're like man. I'm not going to giving them any more of my money.
Speaker 4:They're not church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and I I've always like, obviously, if you look into what these companies or these organizations are actually doing, there's a lot more to the picture but, I feel like, um, there's just a lot of people that don't get like the full picture of that and I figured there would be nobody better to ask than I know. You've mentioned before how big a of a role delta's played in standing with you on on issues in florida, but I would just love to hear your two cents on that okay, let me say it this way I love both of those organizations, big fan of both of those organizations, member of both of those organizations.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna tell you you need both of those organizations, yes. And here going to tell you you need both of those organizations, yes. And here's why Because people hang up on the wrong thing. And at the end of this, I'm going to tell you why. You can give me money. But people hang up on the wrong thing.
Speaker 3:And where they hang up is this Ducks Unlimited does incredible wetlands restoration work. Incredible wetlands restoration work. Incredible wetlands restoration work. They helped write NACA, which is the National Wetlands Conservation Act. I'm missing an A in there somewhere, but it's close to that. But DU helped create this policy where the federal government would fund wetlands restoration. And then, because they helped write the policy, they also developed a way that they could get grants or funding out of the policy to go do the wetlands restoration. And then, because they helped write the policy, they also developed a way that they could get grants or funding out of the policy to go do the wetlands restoration, because who better to do it than this organization that helped write the policy? And there's people out there that are skeptical and say, well, they're double dipping.
Speaker 3:Okay, whatever Come up with a better solution then, yeah, like, come up with a better solution then, but get off my yard because at the end of the day, ducks unlimited there is no one better to do that than to you, right? I mean period, full stop. Delta is going to step into the arena every day for duck hunters. Now ducks unlimited will sometimes dabble into that, but where ducks unlimited is at its most effective is in doing wetlands restoration, protecting wetlands Like that's in their slogan or mission statement or whatever. Versus Delta is going to show up for the duck hunter. Without DU doing land restoration, we're not going to have ducks, we're not going to have places to hunt going to have ducks. We're not going to have places to hunt. Without delta showing up for the hunter, we're not going to have policies and and procedures in place that allow the duck hunter access to the access to things.
Speaker 3:So I need both of those organizations to exist and operate at full capacity to be successful. As a waterfowler, yeah, like delta out in the midwest is going to put a bunch of ducks over decoys. They're going to work on hen boxes or hen houses and predator control. Du is going to work at more land for national wildlife refuges and more more, uh, private land holdings that are developed into wetlands, restoration, and people are going to say, oh, they're just doing that, so they get a private land dollar. No, dude, the more habitat that exists, the more ducks that are going to exist, yep, like it's the end. So if you think you're going to get tribal about it and I'm going to be I can say this. You guys can't, but I can say this the most tribalism I see is from members, not staff members. Those organizations are like oh, I'm gonna be you guy, you can't be delta, I'm a delta guy, you can't be delta, I'm a delta guy. Baloney dude.
Speaker 3:You need both organizations and you need and maybe your heart is with one or the other, that's fine. I'm totally down with that. If you're a private landowner and you want to put an easement on your property and you want to work with du, I totally understand why you would be all du all the time. If you're a public land duck hunter and you're fighting for access and fighting to get new quota permits and fighting to get season changes or whatever, I see why you might be more Delta than ducks. But at the end of the day, there doesn't need to be this tribalism where the other one is the enemy or the other one is bad or anything else.
Speaker 3:The reason I couch all that under the umbrella is so much of the work that we have to do is behind the scenes. Yes, so much of the work. People want to contribute to policy or contribute to programs. They want me to put together a youth fund and they'll give us money. They want me to put together a women's fund and they'll give us money. They want me to put together this fund or that and they'll give us money. They want me to put together this hunt or that hunt or this program or that program.
Speaker 3:That's what they want to see, because that's a tangible thing they can look at. But at the end of the day, where hunters and anglers do get their ass kicked is they're not in the right rooms in Tallahassee or DC or Atlanta or you know. They're not in the capitals and they're not fighting on the policies that are going to make sure that they're always represented.
Speaker 4:And that's what you do, dude, I can't know.
Speaker 3:That's what we do.
Speaker 4:Yes, I can't.
Speaker 3:The Florida level. That's what we do. Yes, you do. And when we fall, we we will often get the first phone call and fight through it. And when we call and we say, hey, you know, ed at Ducks Unlimited or Cyrus at Delta, we need your help, those guys are always right there. They're our brothers in arms and they jump in the trenches with us. Yeah, but from a position in if you're in the state of Florida and you want conservation to get done, fund Delta, fund Ducks, fund all Florida, if you're on the fishery side, fund cca, like you don't have to love everything that all those organizations do. But I'm telling you as a guy that spends we're recording this in august, and it is the end of august. We're recording, I think, on on the 24th, 25th. I've slept in my bed four nights this month, wow.
Speaker 4:Holy smoke.
Speaker 3:We're up and down the state and those organizations I just mentioned, I see them all over the place. Yeah, I see them all over the place.
Speaker 4:Well, and can I add just this Travis and I and forgive me, I'm not trying to to to jump ahead of anything here, but you know, if you're a new person and you're just trying to figure out, I'm just like trying to side with the average person that doesn't have a lot of money to donate to conservation or sometimes they might see, like, man, you know how can my few dollars make a difference? You know, man, there's so many programs you can get involved in if just putting your physical efforts in place. You know, I know here in Georgia we got WMAs that have monthly like trash pickup. You can just go get involved that way. If that's all you can afford, don't let it overwhelm you Don't feel like you have to have thousands of dollars. Don't feel like you'd be intimidated to go to a Ducks Unlimited banquet or anything like that. Nobody's going to make you spend your money. Go there and just evaluate and find what you find the passion in and and give whatever you have. It doesn't have to be anything is appreciated, anything.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, like, and since we're talking about this, tristan has been one of our donors since, like, the first time we did a podcast. Like he gives us a little bit every month and it's it's. You have no idea how far that goes for tanks of gas driving up and down the road, or lunches when you're. I mean, we're not eating at roost chris, right, we're eating at subway brother so like it really is helpful.
Speaker 3:Keeping the people that fight for the things that you care about in the rooms where you can't be is critically important, and that doesn't always translate into rosy programs, but it definitely is a thing that everybody needs to be funding, everybody needs to be fighting for.
Speaker 2:And on that note, travis, if you wouldn't mind, you know kind of plug off Florida and plug kind of your, your, you know your two minute commercial on all Florida and kind of what, um, what you guys are doing and what, uh, you know how people can get involved and connect with you there. But also on, you know, travis Thompson.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all Florida you can. You can find us at all FLAorg Um. You can read about some of the stuff we've done there. But you can also find us on social media all F-L-A-O-R-G no dot. Or you can find me at Travis Thompson.
Speaker 3:But our goal is we do three things we do education, we do advocacy and we do policy. So policy means we're going to go into those rooms in Tallahassee or FWC meetings or TEP or whatever and we're going to fight for policies that we think make conservation in Florida better. Advocacy is we're going to do that in the public arena, like we're not doing it behind closed doors, we're not writing bills. We're actually going to go show up and speak up In Florida. That's primarily through like FWC meetings or public forums, county commission meetings, et cetera. And the last thing we do is education, not just of the public and not just through social media and outreach those ways or doing podcasts and things like this, but also we show up at schools and we have partnered with some county school districts and farm bureaus around the state where we teach kids about the Florida wildlife corridor. We teach them about hunting as a tool of conservation and to date I think we've taught about 7,000 kids in the last year third and fourth graders in the state of Florida. So you want to talk about a tangible thing that you can see, that is moving the needle in a major way. We won't see the results of those seeds that we've planted for years to come, but when those kids are 25, 30, 35 years old, I'm hopeful that they remember that we built this giant puzzle and we took it to their school and showed them how to put it together and how to walk the corridor. And you know all the, all, the, the, the importance of touching a duck feathers or a duck band or an alligator skull or you know, the pelt of a squirrel or any of that stuff. We're able to tangibly bring conservation to those kids and that's, that's a thing. That's like a really cool thing.
Speaker 3:Again, it's not a singular program. We do. We partner with the school districts and kind of help figure out where we fit in with them, with the farm bureaus and organizations like that, and wherever we can find a crack, we're going to stick our nose under the tent and see if we can get in there. So it's really, it's really a powerful thing and we're really proud of it. We're growing, we're a new organization.
Speaker 3:We've been around about three years but we'd love for, we'd love to have people support and ultimately what we want is people's trust. You know I said earlier we were one of the organizations that led on on the right to fish and hunt. But we've led on a bunch of things We've we've. We fought initially on restricted hunting areas. We fought over uh stopping the oil drilling in the Appalachian polar river. We've been involved in things like the land swaps and we show up in every room. We try to have people in as many rooms as we can up and down the state all the time, uh representing conservation in Florida. So we appreciate you guys giving us some some time and and, and, like I say, being supporters of us for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely man, and I still got the sticker on my camera case. And everywhere we go I got an all Florida sticker.
Speaker 3:People always ask about it yeah yeah, I got to get you to do one. I'll send you guys a new one. I'll send you a couple of hats too.
Speaker 2:Sounds good man.
Speaker 4:Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:We'd like to return the favor and send you a koozie. And uh, I've been southbound, I've been hellbound. I'm on a midnight train going too fast now think I'll slow down standing in the pouring rain.