The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
Habitat Over Predators: Why Deer Numbers Rise Or Fall
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What if the biggest lever for stronger deer herds isn’t predator control, but the ground under their hooves? We dig into fresh data, field studies, and on-the-ground observations across California, Oregon, and Washington to challenge a common assumption: that coyotes, bears, and cougars are the primary drivers of deer declines. Yes, predators take a heavy toll on fawns, but when landscapes lack protein-rich forage, edge, and cover, mortality stays high even where predators are scarce. The thread running through it all is habitat.
We break down population estimates for elk, deer, bears, and cougars, then zoom into unit-level realities like hoof rot in Southwest Washington and how aging forests reduce carrying capacity. The research is striking: in California chaparral, fawn-to-doe ratios jumped from 85:100 in tall, dense stands to 147:100 where prescribed fire and reseeding created a patchwork of grasses and legumes. Even two years after wildfire, ratios rose to 116:100. That mosaic of cover and fresh browse turns out to be a recruitment engine, and the same principle holds in timber country where rotational logging creates productive early-successional forage near security cover.
We also talk age structure and why older does matter more than most people think. Mature mothers pick better nurseries and keep movements tight, boosting fawn survival. Predator control has a role—especially targeted coyote work near fawning windows—but without habitat, gains fade. With habitat, regulated hunting becomes a precise tool for balance, helping prevent density-driven disease and keeping herds resilient.
Our takeaway is simple: build coalitions around habitat first. That message resonates with hunters, hikers, and conservation-minded voters alike and delivers more deer, healthier ecosystems, and better seasons. Join us as we connect the dots between policy, science, and practical land work—and help spread the word. Subscribe, share with a friend who hunts, and tell us: what habitat project would you champion where you live?
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Welcome back to the Blacktop Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. I'm Dave. Alright, so this week we are actually recording the first morning of the Powallop Sportsman Show. So if you hear some background noise, that explains that. But we're gonna finish up our what turned into a two-part series for too many hunters and not enough deer. So last week we looked at too many hunters, are there too many hunters? And realizing that the numbers of hunters have dropped dramatically in the past few years.
SPEAKER_02:I didn't expect that.
SPEAKER_00:And then we looked at some possible why it feels like there's more people. Well, there's less hunting grounds, I would say, but less access. And I thought about this afterwards, after we talked, that when we went up on state land, which means you have access to everywhere in there, we passed a couple of people that day, two or three.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, all the time, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But if we had all had to park at the gate, it would have looked crowded.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right.
SPEAKER_00:You know, or if there were a gate there. And when we're all hunting timberlands, it's gonna feel crowded. Sierra Pacific or Warehouser, probably not Warehouser because they do that limited system. Anyway, this week we're gonna look at not enough deer. And a lot of this has been spurred by talking to Paul down in California about their deer populations and how they've dropped off. But wondering if that's the case everywhere. And I was also wondering about uh I first started looking up information about predators and how many predators were taking out animals, and I came across a couple of really interesting articles that made me think that it's not a predator issue. While there are more predators, and I pulled up all the numbers, so in these studies, I think they listed like 29 different studies, they always list predators as the number one cause for mortality for deer, mostly for deer, is what I was looking at. Now, one study that they did in Delaware, and this is on the Meat Eater website, and it's What is Killing America's Fawns by Patrick Durkin, and it's on the Meat Eater website. And they pointed at a study that was done in Delaware, and there are no predators. Yet the mortality rate was almost identical to areas with predators. Just a couple of percentage points less.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00:So they theorize that while predators are the number one cause of predation where there are predators, that it's due to them eating the weak, the frail, the sick, the ones that were going to probably die anyway, and not make it through the first summer. Or not make it through the first even winter. Right. And that would explain why the numbers end up being about the same. And part of it I was looking up because I was curious, I started looking up how many bears, because that's what I've heard that that since they've curbed bear hunting, running hounds on bears, baiting bears, and running hounds on cougars, that those numbers would ex would have exploded and they have gone up, but that they were the number that they were the reason why deer populations drop off. Well, looking at it, I think in that same article that I had mentioned that it was 73% coyotes, and other studies that I saw, it was 50% of fawns are eaten by coyotes. And the rest are so this one, it was 73% coyotes, 14% bear, and 13% bobcat were the ones that ate the fawns. So not a cougar issue. So they might be a predation issue for full-size deer, but not necessarily for the fawns. But thinking about like bear and talking with Heather, like the smell of that particular time of year triggers them that fawns are dropping. Probably the same with coyotes with their sense of smell. And so they know that time of year when things start, and it's not, it doesn't have to be that they're smelling fawns or the afterbirth or anything like that. It can be they know fawns are in the area because this starts blooming and this is very fragrant, and they smell that. And they associate that with yeah, and it could be dropping calves and fawns. And I'm theorizing that because of what we read about the orbital glands when they do a rub on a tree, uh huh, that they're picking those soft, fragrant trees to enhance the effects. So that's why they're using the smell of other things. That's my thought. That might be what's going on. So anyway, I looked at numbers about big game populations, and I looked at elk deer, black bear, and cougar for California, Oregon, and Washington. Same reasons why I only looked at those three states that I mentioned last week, just because of I'd say the way we manage game in a way is similar because of the government structure. Right. Yeah. So California, elk, there were only 1,500 to 2,000 back in 1980. And in 1970, they said there was only about 500 total in the whole state, and now it's up to 5,700. Oregon estimated 100,000 elk and 117,000 now. So elk numbers have gone up. Now, I wonder if they've taken into account if this is might be like 2020 or something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that that that is really hard for me to believe being having hunted with the wolves in Oregon. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And it's and so I would say take these numbers with a grain of salt because they might be pre wolves coming in to some areas. And for those, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because I know you used to hunt well in Oregon, everything on the east side is a draw now. And it used to be for Archery over the counter for 98% of it. And now it's a draw because the numbers have dropped.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Washington, uh, 40 in 1980, the elk population estimate was 40 to 50,000, and now it's 45 to 55,000. So up slightly, although recently with and I think it was through predation and the hoof rot in our area. They've you what was it, the five county area that you had just read a study about the intelligence? Oh, five games.
SPEAKER_02:Five T GMUs that were in southwest Washington, they did a study, four-year study, and when they started the study, they estimated there was 5,600 head of elk combined in those five units.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. And after four years, the estimation of that herd in those five units had dropped to below 1,500. That's terrible.
SPEAKER_00:Was there any mention whether increased predation or they attributed it to both Hoof Rot and Predation.
SPEAKER_02:And man, they put under predation, but it wasn't the top predator. They had Cougar Bear as the top predator for the elk numbers diminishing in those five units.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:But Hoof Rot played a huge role in that too. That's not to be taken lightly because when you're looking at the numbers and you stop and you think a hoof rot has decimated herds, not just one or two. It has decimated whole herds.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So in areas that had two or three herds, there's virtually no elk.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And we've just anecdotally, I've seen that because I'm not one to go out and necessarily spot elk, but I've noticed that, yeah, not seeing them nearly as much as I used to. We used to back 10-15 years ago, I would say. And we won't get into speculating why that is, why there's hoof rod. That's another another episode. So going on to deer, in California, I saw that in one s particular study, or one estimation that in 1980 there was or 1970 there was one and a half to two million deer in California. And now they place that number at 500,000 to a million, which is that's a really poor guess or estimate.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right.
SPEAKER_00:I would that's a huge gap. But overall, those numbers have dropped to half or less than half of what they used to be. Oregon, 450,000 deer. Now it's sits at 460, 485, and this is all species. So this is mule deer, black tail, white tail, if they have white tail. And Washington, I couldn't find a formal estimate in 1980, but currently 300,000 deer is where they place it at. Now all the studies, all the when I was doing the research, everything that I read said that numbers bottomed out back in like the 60s because it was pre-management, where they took management of wildlife seriously. And I know now that they have management in place, and so we just recently had that bill that is is going through the Washington State Senate and House that enforces them to actually follow that game management plan. And I know California is going through like they have a game management plan, but they're not in they're not following through with it.
SPEAKER_02:They haven't incorporated it in the Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And this is a part where it just gets we have to hold their feet to the fire so that they are again going back to not enough hunters. So do they have to listen to 0.7% or 2.3% of the population? Right, right. And so this is where bringing in those allies end up becoming important. So then now let's look at black bear. No official count in California in 1980. Currently there's 60,000 plus. Of course, that plus could mean anything. Yeah. A lot of black bear down in California.
SPEAKER_02:60,000 is a lot. Oregon plus.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So Oregon, there was 18,000 estimated in 1980, and now it's 44,000. So that's a significant jump because that is a lot more of them eating fawns. Just a lot more of them out there. And then I don't know, you can't bait anymore. You can't bait bear and Oregon or run hounds.
SPEAKER_02:Idaho and Utah, I believe, are the only two that you can do any of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Can you run hounds down in Oregon? Not in Oregon. Not anymore. Okay. So Washington. Yeah, Washington was no help. No official count for 1980, and currently they just say stable and abundant.
SPEAKER_02:Now see, that flies in the face of what one of the biologists, I can't remember if it was biologists or on the game committee that was touting that our bear are in jeopardy in the state of Washington. That absolutely contradicts. Was that a biologist? I can't remember if it was a biologist.
SPEAKER_00:A game commission.
SPEAKER_02:It was during that whole spring bear, just before they took it away from us. They were saying that our bear population is in jeopardy, that it's dwindling, and it's like anybody who spends any time out there know that there's a lot of bears. That's an absolute farce. There is a ton of bear out there.
SPEAKER_00:So stable and abundant.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. That's more accurate than what we were hearing.
SPEAKER_00:But there there is a certain point, and we'll I think we'll get into talking about this later, about carrying capacity of the of what you're of the habitat.
SPEAKER_02:Of the habitat.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So there is a certain point where there really can't be any more bears.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Because the carrying capacity of that habitat cannot support more bears. But that is true for all species. Deer, elk, everything. They hit a certain point and they actually start seeing more die-off of fawns because there's just not enough food. They end up starving to death. So last thing we'll look at here, pull up my last paper, cougar mountain lion. California, 1980, the 4,000 to 6,000 were the numbers I was seeing. And then now six to seven thousand. Although it was interesting that the numbers, I think, when MCBA did down Mendocino County did a study on cougar, they were really, really low down there. I think they only saw one or two in like 600 acres or something. It was a pretty or even less. It was a pretty low number. But we all pretty typically will see them. We'll get them on our cameras quite a bit. So Oregon low thousands, currently six to seven thousand. So things the state of Oregon, half or a third the size of California, and they have the same amount of cougar. And Washington, they've gone from 1,500 to 2,000. Now it's estimated 1,800 to 2,500. So they've gone up and down.
SPEAKER_02:I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:How I'm I'm trying to sit here and not say anything, but how you're telling me it went up by 500 cats? I mean, we're getting picks all the time on our trail cameras. Whereas before, maybe one guy got one three seasons.
SPEAKER_00:And two or three of us had our sets blown up this year. Oh, yeah. I did for Cougar. Every year. Every year. And with Washington, those numbers, part of me wonders if some of that isn't a holdover. And I know we've swapped out three of the game commission people who were real sketchy whether they should be on a game commission. Right. And we've got three new people who look from reading their bios that they actually are fishermen hunters. Whereas previously, and the current whatever, the head of that board, yeah, she loves kayaking and hiking. No hunting. And yeah. So there's an agenda. And so when they release this information, that's why I say take it with a grain of salt. So bear, stable and abundant. That's not wanting to admit to a problem.
SPEAKER_02:It's like we'll give you a piece, we'll give you a portion of the truth, but we're not going to give you the whole truth.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And so overall, with looking at looking at those numbers, there's just uh it does go back to yes, predator numbers have gone up, but are they the reason? Are they overabundantly eating off the fawns and the deer? And looking at that study, that might not be the case. Now they did say, I think they referenced in that study that in certain areas, like coyotes will, and they are the number one predator for fawns, but they can you can increase if you go in and wipe out do targeted hunting and trapping of coyotes. You can increase for a short period of time the number of fawns that survive. And I think it's the same thing with all predators. But from those numbers, it doesn't seem like the predator numbers might not be as much of an issue. But I was as I'm digging through this, it what is our best chance if we are to advocate for something? Is it should we put in all of our energy into lowering the amount of predators, or should there be other things that we should concentrate on more of our energy on or concentrate on first?
SPEAKER_02:That's a good question.
SPEAKER_00:And so that's where some other information that came up that was really interesting with the habitat related to habitat and how many fawns there are. So this one, Fire FX Information System, Robert Aynes, it was a study on the it was a USDA, but it was on the deer in California, mule deer, and it but it had a little blurb in it, a paragraph about blacktail. And it said, in California chaparral, which is habitat, the blacktail deer fawn dough ratio was 85 fawns to 100 in dense tall chaparral. It was 147 to 100 in areas where repeated prescribed fires and seeding of grasses and legumes resulted in a mosaic of grasslands with scattered areas of dense chaparral. And it was 116 to 100 in an area burned in a summer wildfire two years previously that had large areas of small shrubs and very little herbaceous cover. So Tabor suggested this was one of the people who did this study, that a diet low in protein and phosphorus resulted in low opulation and reproductive rates of black-tailed deer living in dense chaparral. So this is true everywhere as far as and this is what this is kind of my where I wanted to go with this is should we be looking primarily at good habitat and creating good habitat? So just to thinking about that mosaic of grasslands, and it's interesting that they use that phrase because when we went to we saw Nathan Endicott down at a show down in Albany, and he talked about how he really liked areas, hunting areas where there had been a mosaic burn.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And so this is where they go in and it's controlled fires, which half the time get out of control.
SPEAKER_02:Explain mosaic burns, Aaron, to our listeners.
SPEAKER_00:So this is areas where the real dense chaparral, some real dense manzanita and taller stuff. So there's patches of that, but it burns off the shrubs. And then they go in and replant the grass and legumes. So good feed. Uh-huh. And so the mosaic, it's just a mosaic where there's a little patch here and it's all scattered about.
SPEAKER_02:Where it burns like a stream where it winds in, and not it's not your regular forest fire where everything is parraf, it's just and you're on the lunar skate kind of thing afterwards. This is where a stream it meanders through an area, and so some is burnt, some isn't.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So the keys being they need that cover from weather and predators, that real thick, dense cover, and they need fresh young feet. So they can't, and this is true in Washington as well. So if you go into these old growth forests, a lot of times the only thing growing on the ground is ferns. They'll eat, deer will eat ferns, but it's not one of their preferred foods. Right. And so there's just not as enough food, therefore the carrying capacity reduces. Well, the dense tall stuff, where basically it's just let to grow and nothing is ever done to the forest, there's no fires ever. There are 85 fawns to 100 dose. But these mosaic burns, if you step in and work on the habitat, 147 fawns to 100 dose, that's an 80% increase.
SPEAKER_02:So 85 to 100 is is really good. Yeah, I'm thinking that's a really good ratio. But then you step it up to 147?
SPEAKER_00:147, which that means does more does are having twins.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Whereas before it was Which is a signal that they're healthy.
SPEAKER_00:That they're healthy. And even in where it's just been like burned through, it's still 116 fawns to 100 does two years later. So that and that was the area Joe talked about where he'd gone through and there'd been a fire that book went through there a couple years ago. So he thought there wouldn't be any deer hunting in that area. And it turns out that actually is better than looking at regular old growth. And so the chaparral, California chaparral, that's your scrub oak, manzanita, small, the small shrubs. But yeah, you want that mix of where they have that dense cover. And we kind of have that with in Washington, I will say, with the logging companies, because of the patchwork logging that they do, they have what you refer to as the up-and-coming, and this is stuff that they'll walk through, and you can go and you might see nighttime rubs made in there. They're not spending the day, but then it gets to a certain point of Jack for John Fur, that becomes their core batting area. And they will wander through taller stuff, timber, to go feed or whatnot, but that's their primary place to hang out. But it's there's always a rotation, there's always going to be new growth in there, but that real short stuff also lets sunlight in so that there's a lot of growth. And so getting back to carrying capacity, I've wondered, and I don't know if you've ever seen anything with carrying capacity for Washington. And I'm asking this thinking about White Tip. When you look at like Pennsylvania, and there's a couple of million deer in Pennsylvania, or something crazy, some crazy huge number. Well, I gotta think our feed. Is pretty good here. So our carrying capacity should be like we're not even close. I would think.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, it's a rainforest and it's all great is green and at least for the west side.
SPEAKER_00:But even the east side. It's especially if you go up north along the east side. Not necessarily all the farmland in the middle, but I just it makes me wonder if yeah, are we at our carrying capacity or not? Another interesting thing that they were talking about is, and that was in the study of California, and I think it was another actually another article that I read on Meat Eater, but talking about the age of the dose. So you want dough. If you want to increase your population, you need older does. So when they're when they hit four years, their fawn survival rate goes up because they know to because they tend to have drop their fawns in areas where there's more food close, so they don't go wandering off further looking for food where young fawns don't get it. Right. And I think they said yearling fawns, real young fawns are just terrible mothers.
SPEAKER_02:Yearling does.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yearling does. But there is an aspect of that to me makes sense because thinking about like when you and Osha were first parents with Leah, it's like you just you don't quite know what's gonna happen. Right. And then you by the second one, and by the third one, they're playing with knives and pistols at three. Yeah, yeah. Because it just I know what's gonna happen here, so I know what my response can be. But they said that if you actually want to drop a population of deer, like you have too many deer in an area, go kill older does.
SPEAKER_02:Older does.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And if you want to increase, target younger does. So if you're a meat hunter and there's not a whole lot of deer in your area, granted there's not as much meat on a younger doe as an older one, but you want those older does because they're more likely to be healthier, taking care of their fawns better, producing better. All of this to say is that it seems like so think going back to those numbers, 85 versus 116 versus 147. So what is the number we should be striving at? As if we're talking about preservation of hunting. We want as many dozes or fawns as possible.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So habitat, because the bear, the predators can only eat so many. And then there's a point where they just stop. It's like a two-month window where they're just feasting. If you give uh if there's more out there, yeah, they'll eat more, but if they're eating a certain percentage, say it's 45%, 45% of 85, and 45% of 147, there's gonna be more doughs left over. Right. So it seems like, and this is not to take away at all of the predator issue, and hunting predators and the fact that you know that they take away spring bear not because there's dwindling numbers, it's it was a political reason, the ideology of the people who were in charge at the time. But if you want more deer out there, it's it comes down, I think, to a habitat issue. And that's where the focus should be. Now, getting back to talking about last week and how we talked about not enough hunters and wanting to bring more people in, do you think as hunters, and I'll ask Dave, I'll ask you this, if I said, if I wanted to bring you in to support, to get more deer, to support the wildlife, because I want to hunt, we're gonna take out predators. If I approach you and I said, we're gonna do that by killing a whole bunch of animals, or I said, We're gonna improve the health of wildlife by improving their habitat, and not even talking about predators, what argument are we going to get more allies with?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, absolutely. And improving the habitat every time.
SPEAKER_00:And that is and that's there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but uh you know, I think that the opposite side of where we're at has spun it such that the second response is cruel and inhumane. Yeah, you know what I mean. They put a bad connotation to it, and uh and and man, the the the public the effort that they put in to to cause the public to see it that way has been tremendous and it's been very effective. Especially when it comes to voting time.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And so thinking about just even pointing out like wolves. I did, I ran numbers on wolves, and uh at the time, this was a few years ago, because I kept seeing the argument they deserve to be here. And it's like, well, you also didn't bring back 50 million buffalo, but yeah, that's a big huge food source. But the wolves, there were 1,541 wolves totaled that they said in Idaho. And this is the numbers in Idaho dropped off. So I started looking into how many elk, because that's their preferred food, is elk. So how many elk do 1,541 wolves eat per year? 27,000. Which means at minimum you need 27,000 surviving calves to replace what they've eaten, because they're going after adults, they're going after big, big elk. And some of it is just with with wolves, is hunting for sport. Like they'll train their pups that I've seen. Right. And so they'll just kill animals for the training purposes. And I think that's as far as predators of just saying, look, they wipe out all of this wildlife, and there's just not this there needs to be a balance. It's all checks and balances, and you can't just it's it can't be one all one way, yeah, free for all hunting, or and it but it can't be don't even walk out in the woods. Don't shoot anything, don't shoot anything. And one of the things, and this is kind of my argument for predators, is reduce the predator, like, because you can't control how many, uh, how many fawns a coyote or a bear or a bobcat or how many deer or elga cougar is gonna eat or a wolf is gonna eat. You can't control that. They're wild animals, they're going to do what they're going to do. What you can control as a predator are humans. So, are there too many predators? Well, you can up the response for the human predator to go in there and reduce those numbers. Are there not enough now? And it's the balance is out of whack. Okay, well, you just reduce it for a while. But you can do that with humans, you can't do that with wildlife. A potential argument for, but and that's what it comes down to is like you're saying, it's very loud voices in the anti-hunting community. And I've definitely forever I've seen that. Well, that means there needs to be some loud voices on our side, and there needs to be a lot of voices, and just and I would say we're not typically not even really loud, but just getting that message out there of being more on the off being more on offense with the message as opposed to defense. Right.
SPEAKER_02:Because right now I think proactive instead of reactive.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think that's where we're at with a lot of issues that we have that we are we react to their oh, you can't hurt these poor little fuzzy bears. Look at these baby bears walking around. Well, we're not shooting the baby bears, we're shooting the mummy and daddy bear.
SPEAKER_02:And and let's not look at it like that. Let's just look at it from an environmental point of view. Exactly. The conservationist point of view. If you're saying it so what we're not even tapping on here is the disease factor of all of this. If there's an overpopulation of any one of these animals, any one of these species, then disease enters the picture. And it's a very brutal, drawn-out, painful death for these animals.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Versus using a tool that we have in our toolbox, so to speak, is hunters, outdoorsmen, sportsmen, and you can, like you were saying, you can limit how many are taken that way. And you can keep that balance. It's an easier way of keeping that balance so that everything prospers. You know what I mean? That we don't see disease come into the area. And there are diseases that we can't that we can't avoid.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02:You know, EHD. That's mosquito larvae, and that just wipes out kids altogether. But in the areas where they have that, those deer balance back relatively quickly if given the chance.
SPEAKER_00:If given the chance. And it was the same thing with the hair loss.
SPEAKER_02:Right. It's wept foods southwest Washington, and guys went four or five years and not even seeing a deer. And now those numbers are coming back.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But it's stifled because the number of predators that are out there and the mismanagement, I believe, in some areas, not all areas. I'm not going to talk bad about the Washington Game Department. They're going to do what they can do. Nobody wants to see the fisheries, fish hatcheries close down, or game wardens losing their jobs or whatnot, because that that all helps all of us in the long run.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And they're working in the parameters of the people that are voted into office.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:They are given the rules to follow and they follow them. You know, hopefully. But and at times, as we've seen with the game commission, they were potentially acting outside of those rules.
SPEAKER_02:Washington's kind of a an odd duck in way. You don't see other states having game commissions.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, really?
SPEAKER_02:It's run by the biologists. Which Oregon is they're almost a crowd and copy of each other, Oregon and Washington, and Oregon has almost three times as many.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, as far as habitat. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it's because the biologist makes the laws down there. Up here, it's different. You've got to have the people who know what they're doing be the ones that establish how things are.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So ultimately, I would say with last week and this week, my goal is to how do we have a bigger, louder voice? And so that's why I've put forth the ideas that I have about not enough hunters and looking at we talk about as hunters, we talk about predators. But should we be talking about habitat? Because that's an easier topic to have allies with. And ultimately, we if we end up with more animals because we talked about habitat as opposed to predators, well, that's the end goal, is there's more opportunities to hunt. And so that's the goal. But it's finding that common ground. And that's where I'm coming from is what makes us most successful. And it might not be what we think is the primary issue, it's the issue that's going to make us successful. And to me, that becomes a habitat issue. That seems to be the linchpin on what will make us most successful, what will get us the best results. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so this was a couple of days of just reading the article afterwards.
SPEAKER_02:I enjoyed it. This is really eye-opening for me personally, and I know that there's a lot of guys out there that have been in the same boat that I've been in, thinking that predators is and I'm not saying that I left that boat because I still think predators are a problem. I think some of these numbers I don't know if I trust them.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I don't think I trust them either.
SPEAKER_02:But it brings up a topic where it's like, no, we have to address all of it. We can't just address part of it. It has to be looked at in a big picture kind of way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You know what I mean? So I thought it was good.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Well, thank you all for listening for another week. Hopefully, we'll keep you for next week. So by the time you hear this, we'll be wrapping up here at the Pio Alop show. We will be down at the Portland show in two weeks. February, I don't know, like Second week of February. Second week of February. The week after Super Bowl weekend. We get that weekend off. So if you could all like, subscribe, follow, share, do all those things on your platforms and help push our show out. That would be great. And we look forward to talking with you here at the show. Until next week.
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