How Washington’s R3 Program Builds New Hunters And Anglers With Tom Ryle And Kelly Riordan

Conservation doesn’t run on vibes, it runs on people showing up year after year. That’s why we brought on Tom Ryle (WDFW marketing and creative media manager and Washington’s R3 lead) and Kelly Riordan (R3 hunting coordinator) to break down the R3 program: recruit, retain, reactivate, and the “why” behind it. Hunting participation has declined nationally since the 1980s, and Washington is staring at an aging-out curve that can shrink license revenue and long-term support for fish and wildlife management.

We talk about the real funding mechanics that many outdoors folks only half understand: license dollars, Pittman-Robertson excise taxes on hunting gear, Dingell-Johnson support on the fishing side, and how those dollars keep science happening in the field. We also dig into the group that decides a lot of Washington’s future at the ballot box: the huge middle that isn’t anti-hunting or pro-hunting, just curious and often uninformed. If we want healthy habitat, thriving wildlife, and durable public support, we have to connect more people to the outdoors in ways that feel safe, welcoming, and practical.

Kelly lays out how retention actually works through mentorship and community, including the ORAM pathway from awareness to confident participation. We get specific about opportunities like turkey clinics, butchering clinics, foraging education, shooting sports as a gateway, and how partnerships with NGOs, landowners, schools, and even city programs can scale impact. Tom also shares why mywdfw.org exists as a more approachable resource for new hunters and anglers who get lost on a big government website.

If you care about Washington hunting, fishing, wildlife stewardship, and conservation funding, this conversation gives you clear next steps to participate or help others start. Subscribe, share this with a buddy, and leave a review so more people find the resources and mentorship that keep the outdoors alive.

To reach out to Kelly Riordan: kelly.riordan@dfw.wa.gov

To reach out to Tom Ryle: tom.ryle@dfw.wa.gov

Nilch'i Wind Checks
Nilch’i Wind Checks - An easy to use, must have gear addition to our hunts

Dead Down Wind
Scent Elimination Products

Tinks
Tinks Scents

Blacktail Solution
Blacktail feed supplements. Use code BTCoach for 15% through March 31 2026

Bonded Outdoors
Personalized leather tags to remember your hunts

SkullCraft Collective
skull mounting systems Ghost Hook Sale until March 31, 2026

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introductions

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. And I'm Dave. All right. This week we are with Tom Rile, who's the WDFW marketing and creative media manager and the state R3 lead, and Kelly Reardon, the R3 hunting coordinator. So we are going to talk about the R3 program this week and hopefully how people could get involved and so that everybody understands it, the aspect of WDFW wanting to support hunters and anglers in the state of Washington, which is a great thing. So let's start out. If you guys well, how did you come to be involved with working with the R3 program?

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Maybe I'll turn it over to Kelly first. He's been here longer than me. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah, it's only been 13 years at Fish and Wildlife, 13 wonderful years. So I was talking earlier. I came in as a customer service representative here after a long career in the printing industry and started out, you know, just learning the ropes here. A few years later, the marketing division was created or marketing program. I was one of the first couple into that. And I was there for about 10 years. A few years back. 25 year strategic plan popped up as a major part of that. The R3 plan, a national movement was recognized by the Department of Fish and Wildlife. And we decided that we were also going to follow that uh pre-recruit, retain, reactivate plan.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah. In a nutshell. Yeah. Let's wrap it up. There we go. We're done.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I joined, so I was a consultant to the department on a website redesign project as a UX designer and all of that. And so I really didn't know I was going to end up working here. Spent most of my career in the tech industry, but lifelong hunter and angler from Washington. I've done a ton of volunteer work and bow hunter ed. I've been involved for a long time in the periphery with the department, going back to the late 80s, actually, on elk capturing and colouring and all of that, black-tailed deer, hair loss studies, spotted owls, bunch of stuff. So it was just kind of cool that the agency became one of my clients. And after a couple of years working with the consulting firm I worked for and a lot of the folks here on the web team, we we talked a lot about hunting and fishing. And they told me about the marketing team, and there was an opportunity to join the department, and I jumped at it because it's my passion. And really, I think for the listeners, R3 is this, some people call it the three R's. I've heard meat eater refer to it that way. Think of it as recruit, retain, and reactivate. And ultimately, we'll get into this, but marketing, for all intents and purposes, is R3.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Marketing is promoting these opportunities. It's doing the outreach, all of that sort of thing. So I joined the marketing team, led that team, and then a few years later, we we actually recognize through the strategic plan development for the agency, and that's a 25-year plan. And a lot of people in strategic planning might think, well, you can't write a strategic plan for 25 years. That's crazy. And I want to point out that in natural resources, it's important to really look out there. Oh, yes. Right? You've got to, you've got to have a long roadmap trajectory so that every few years you can check in on that and look at environmental factors, population, habitat connectivity, ocean temperatures, all of the factors that go into natural resource management has to be comprehended in that, including the social side, right? So the plan is structured that way. There's four key strategies in the plan. The number one strategy is to proactively address conservation challenges in the state. The second strategy is to engage communities, and that's hunters, anglers, and non-hunters and

What R3 Means In Washington

SPEAKER_02 3:45

wildlife appreciators. We need, this is a team sport when you talk about a state with over eight million people in it. We need to engage those communities through recreation, which is the hunting and fishing and the R3 component, wildlife viewing, trap shooting, shooting sports, all of that counts, and stewardship, right? And then we have deliver science that informs Washington's most pressing fish and wildlife questions into the future, and then model operational and environmental excellence. So those are the four pillars of the strategy. R three fits firmly in that second pillar, which is the engaging communities through recreation.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Now, when you engage communities, is it like the hunting community, the fishing community, things like that? But are you also, does it adapt to specific communities like how do I approach Bellingham versus how do I approach ocean shores versus how do I approach Tacoma? Do you look at it in that way as well?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Absolutely. And one of the one of the things that we've done very well is we've reached out both into the city and in the country areas. And just through institutional knowledge and growing up as a hunter and fisher myself, being able to speak with that diverse group of people and communicate with them, doing hunter education within Tacoma, tribal hunter education, things like that, being able to go into each different community and learning what's going on there and passing on this knowledge to them has been really crucial to R3 plan.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

So what was the I guess what I'm wondering, what was the driving factor to create R3? Because I know like Aaron and I have we've done an episode and just looking at the numbers and looking at because everybody wants to say, well, there's more hunters now than there's ever been. And it's like, I don't know about that. We did the numbers and everything. And yeah, we've seen a dramatic drop off right in the amount of people that are participating in outdoor recreational events such as hunting and fishing. Though those licenses have dropped down. Is this is this an attempt to try and regain those and and bring those numbers back up?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, so there's a couple of factors that we're looking at. One is the age out issue that we're going to be seeing. And there's Gen X and boomers and all that. Kind of grew up hunting and fishing in the outdoors. And the problem is that there's an age out problem. And what we're seeing is about after age 50, licensed purchasing just tanks. Well, behind that is a generation that wasn't necessarily raised on hunting or fishing. And so what we're trying to do is kind of bridge that gap that these younger generation, even 25 to 40 year olds, didn't grow up hunting or fishing. And so now we have to have a program that says, hey, come on, check this out and start hunting and fishing now that you're in that age. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

And I think to address your key question there, Dave, is that since the 1980s, hunting has been on the decrease across the United States. Yeah. And the North American model of conservation is built upon that license revenue and the excise taxes through Pittman Robertson Act for hunting and then the Ding Dingle Johnson Act in the fishing side. So there's an excise tax on boat fuel and fishing gear and hunting gear, tree stands, all this stuff. And that money comes back to the states based upon some mathematical models around license sales revenue. And that is a funding component. So when hunters often say, you know, we're paying for this, they literally are. We are all, we all are.

SPEAKER_04 7:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

And it is the funding model that has proven over time to be the most effective way to conserve natural resources in the states, in the United States. Yeah. So with that trend since the 80s of a decline, the R3 movement was born at a national level, and we work at the national level with our Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agency partners in other states. So we go to conferences, we get on Zoom calls, we have a lot of researchers bring in their studies, and we're all sharing knowledge to fit. Sorry to interrupt. What states are all part of that group that you just meant? Think of the 10 Western states as say Waffa, and I don't remember exactly where the lines delineate. Nebraska's on that call, I believe. They might be part of North, the Central, I forget. There's different flavors of AFA, which is the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. Okay. There's a Northeast, there's I don't remember all of them. Yeah. That being said, we uh we are literally trying to, as Kelly mentioned, there's a lot of social changes that have happened. I mean, you look at my kids are in their early 20s, Gen Z, they were born digital natives, as we like to say. They were born with screens. And when you watch a three-year-old walk walk up and try to touch a screen, it's because that's the only interface they ever knew. Yeah. So we're looking at things like people say, Oh, I don't want those kids on their phones in the hunting blind. Well, maybe they should be on their phones, right? If it means getting them out there, I'm on my phone. Yeah. Yeah. And let's not fool ourselves. Yeah, guys.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

A lot of solitaire and a lot of a lot of phase chain for me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

Those all day sits. Yeah. Don't tell me you're not on your phone.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Something to occupy your mind.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, your little Debbies are done by 8 a.m. Yeah. That's a little late, Tom. The point is, though, I think that we need to maintain a funding model for conservation in America. And R3 is one way that states are trying to do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Okay, so you you said that hunters and anglers, a huge contributor to that. Is it wrong for hunters and anglers to assume that they are the majority contributor to that? Or is there I guess what I'm trying to ask is is there for those that don't hunt or fish, is there a way that they're contributing to the same thing, or is it primarily hunters and fishermen outdoors people as far as their monies going toward this?

SPEAKER_02 9:37

I mean, every state's different with general fund versus licensed revenue funding, but in our state, licensed revenue funding is about a third of the funding for the operations for the department. So that's significant to keep the lights on here and to keep this these biologists in the field doing work. I think there is, I can't get into all of the funding on does the average person that you see at the grocery store contribute? The best way people can contribute, I know this for a fact, is to buy a license. We know that's the mechanism. So if people don't want to hunter fish, that's fine. But by simply purchasing a license or even a personalized license plate, there's revenue that comes back from that program with department of licensing. You get a wildlife plate, that money for that particular wildlife plate goes to that species. So the orca plates, the elk plates, the there are buckets of money that route that money in.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

But kind of circling back to that, if you think about the Dingle Johnson, Pittman Robertson, there is you know products out there that the non-hunter or anchor, they don't know that they're helping out, even though they may want to. You buy a tent, things like that. There's things that that you can purchase

The 25-Year Plan And Pillars

SPEAKER_01 10:45

or that non-hunters and fishers are buying that are still helping us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

See, that that's yeah, that's what I think that a lot of hunters and fishermen people rather get hooked up on as they think that they're the only ones contributing to this fund. In reality, they're not. They're probably the majority, but we still, like you were saying earlier, we need other people. We need everybody that that can to contribute to this as far as we're all in this together. Whether you hunt or fish or you don't go in the outdoors at all, we're all in this together as far as the future of our wildlife and the habitat that we have here in Washington State. We've got great habitat. Great habitat. And yet I look at Oregon, who has the same habitat, and there are factors that play into this because there are fewer people and whatnot, but it just seems, man, they've got so much more game over there. And I'm one as a lay person, I'm sitting there wondering, why is that? I mean, is that something that I'm mistaken on, or is there's is that something you guys can talk to or not?

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Technically, we're not probably qualified to talk to those points, but as I've lived in Oregon three different times during my life, and I've hunted and fished in Oregon, and it's 1.4 times the size of Washington in terms of landmass. Okay. There's about half the population, they're just over four million. We're over eight million, and they've got, I'm gonna say about double the big game species that we have deer.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Well, there's your answer right there. So I mean half the population and double the big game, and that's huge.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Yeah, and the landscape, right? And so that to me as a person on the landscape, that I look at those basic numbers and I think, of course. Right. So I think it a couple points I wanted to talk about from what you just said. So on the R3 plan, we have a focus on hunting and fishing, but we also have a focus on the supporters, the non-hunters and fishers. Because as we know, at the ballot box, you've got 10% anti-hunters, you've got 10% that are annual lifetime. The 80% in the middle, they're not anti-hunting, they're not pro-hunting, they're non-hunting, and they vote. And so there's a huge educational piece at play here where that's a ripe audience to educate about natural resource management and the role of hunting and fishing and conservation, and they're not confrontational about it, right? So it's a huge opportunity. And shooting sports. My daughter was on the rifle team at her high school here in Tumwater. And we think, wow, a high school has a rifle team. Well, that rifle team has produced Olympic athletes. So shooting sports are guns are not a dirty word, right? And yeah, so it's the shooting sports, I think, are a huge opportunity to recruit people into trap shooting is a lot of fun. I grew up doing that as a 12-year-old. I know you did. For sure. It's a segue into waterfowl hunting and pheasant hunting and upland bird hunting. And it's interesting because in in all the clinics and the seminars and the mentored hunts that we've put on in the recent years, we meet people all the time that, oh, I grew up waterfowl hunting. Oh, I grew up duck hunting, I only deer hunted. We didn't elk hunt. And or I didn't hunt at all. I'm 32 and I want to do this because this looks like it it gives me exercise, it gives me adventure, I love to backpack, I love berry picking. These things, it becomes the glue for a lot of people in their outdoor recreational pursuits.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

And I'd say we get a we get a fair number of those people who have never hunted before, and then they come to us, and we just want however to help them. And I think another big key is the community aspect, which is what we've really learned is creating that community with all of this. So thinking about I'm gonna steer back to our three here, but thinking about so reactivate the reactivate is the one I always forget about recruitment and retention. So, and then reactivate. So let's actually define so that people know what each of those specific goals are. If the goal is the right word.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Sure. We really focus on the ORAM model. That's the national movement, and it goes with the R3 plan, and it talks about the R3 part, and you get into it first with your recruitment, and that's your awareness. This is where we're marketing out to potential new people, folks that have just recently graduated on our education, and just making them aware that it's out there. That's maybe even a first hunting clinic, or it used to be a first fishing clinic. And then we want to make them have that decision to move forward. And that you were just talking about that sense of community. Every spring turkey clinic I do, whether it's youth or veterans or just open to first-time turkey hunters, there's that sense of community by the end of that. And that really drives that that momentum forward for them to say, Hey, I can try this again.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

And I think as far as from what we've seen, and I'm sure you you all have picked up on that. It's you can go so far as recruitment and getting new people in the door, but if you don't have that community, there's not a lot of people who want to go do this on their own. Right. And which is true, thinking back of a lot of what we've experienced, it's a thing that people did with their dads or their uncles or their grandfathers, or it's multi-generational hunts. And a lot of people who I know who have hunted for long periods, like their whole life, it's because of that. And both Dave and I know have those memories of I was more going fishing. I grew up on the Puget Sound than hunting. And we went out a couple, my dad was not a hunter. I've told many stories of him smoking cigarettes out in the woods, not much on the way of hunting, but we did a lot of fishing together. But it's always that that community, it's the community you're finding in your home first. And I know that works is retaining people. So are it now are there efforts, and we can go back to the ORAM, but are there efforts to specifically address community or it just happens?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Well, organically, of course it's gonna happen. You know, none of these mentors or mentees really know each other when they arrive to camp. And that's the I want to really quick just give a shout out to the First Hunt Foundation, is where we get most of our mentorship from. Okay. And these are vetted background checked mentors that come in and they have the ability just to say hi, shake a hand, look you in the eye. And I you don't always see that in a real community sense. And that their job as a mentor is not just take them out on a hunt. Oh, there's a critter, have at her. No, no, no. This is a multi-day, one-on-one. Most of these mentors, Tom and I as well, keep connections with our mentees for years. I'm still mentoring probably half a dozen or more. I talk to them once every other week or so. They just shoot me a message. But that's that mentor is that link that's gonna push that forward. So we're gonna keep them in the retention bucket because we don't want to reactivate. We want a lifetime license purchaser, someone who is gonna spend their life living the outdoor lifestyle, protecting our environment, being a conservationist, buying the ammo, buying the license. And there

Why License Numbers Are Dropping

SPEAKER_01 17:55

was talking about sense of community. There was a lot of talk about everything needs to be big, big programs, big things like that. And I I tend to not totally agree with that. I think those personal one-on-one connections and creating that sense of community is gonna be the driving force that makes these long-lasting hunters and anglers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

And just to clarify, the ORAM is the outdoor recreation adoption model, which is a model that was adapted by the kind of the architects of the R3 movement maybe 15 years ago. And at the federal level? Well, just at the national level. National level. Yeah, a guy named Matt Dunfey, he's now at the Wildlife Management Institute, is and some other key names in there. Great guys, really looked at this problem and tried to figure out how do we solve this leaky bucket syndrome of people aging out of hunting and fishing. We're not going to have a funding model at some point. And so this adoption model is built upon the recruitment bucket of activities, which is the awareness, finding people that have interest. You can see on the wall here, we have some of our marketing campaign materials that go out to let people know about bass fishing and and and other things, right? So once they have that opportunity to try something, they have to make a decision whether they're going to continue or not. Yeah. Right. And that's where our mentorship program with First Hunt Foundation, we all operate under their insurance policies. So we're able to just go out and then not think about, of course, we do safety, we do range days, we do all of the stuff, but we know that we can focus on that experience with that individual and make sure they understand and learn. Not just to go out and get their first antlerless deer or their first turkey. It's to learn how to go do this on their own, down to the socks they need to maybe purchase next time or all the tips and tricks that people can pass down. So that decision to continue is critical, right? And to do it alone, a lot of people need that mentor to hold their hand and go again. And maybe they have a friend, right? And this is where it starts to blossom, so to speak. And in the retention side, once you've got somebody living this lifestyle, there's a lot of things that can come in out of left field and disrupt that. You're if you're in the military, we have a lot of military personnel in our state. Yes, yeah. They move around a lot, right? And moving here, I used to teach bow hunter ed, and most of the people in my classes were from Alabama, Georgia, some other part of the country. And you you get moved here as a transplant, and you're looking at all this timber company land and gates everywhere. They stop hunting because they don't know how. They don't even know how to start.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

Yeah, it's we've we definitely have experienced that a lot because we work with some veteran groups. And they're like, What? Well, what are with these deer? Yeah. Because and it's we're still asking that question. It's and it's a huge, it's a huge thing with differences of boy, I could go get three a day, right? In certain states.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Here in Alabama. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

And and I remember we were talking, I think that it was one of the Carolinas. I remember talking to somebody, and he's like, Yeah. So you start out and you can have you can get six tags, and it's two bucks and four doughs. Yeah. And then once you fill all those, you can go get another two tags, like one buck and one dough. And then you once you fill those, you can go get two dough tags. It yeah, it's crazy. We get one. Yeah. And or two. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it, yeah, it's a very different experience.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

It is. And so uh my point to that is on the reactivation side, there's a lot of reasons people they might have a baby, right? Job, uh, even just moving from eastern Washington to Western Washington or vice versa. We also have a lot of people in our state from around the globe. We have biomedical centers in Seattle, we have Boeing, we have tech. There, this. This area brings in a lot of people from all over the world, and it's amazing. And one of the things that we didn't predict, there's no way to predict it. When we have a clinic on how to steelhead or a trout event or a turkey clinic, a seminar on spring turkey hunting, the diversity is insane. It's it's across the board, multiple languages, families. Again, you can't predict it, but it's really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

I want to definitely back that one up. I'm a mentor. I run I run these programs, but I'm a mentor myself. And it's more than 50% of a diverse group when I'm out there. And you listen to these experiences from people coming from other parts of the world and the challenges that they've had and just the society that they've come up in, and then to see what we have over here and the things that they can do in and to source their own food. You know, some cultures have specific ways you can make food and things like that. And myself integrating into that too, finding out these culture experiences. I never would have thought that was going to be part of this, but it actually has played a huge role in what I'm doing with folks from out of the country that have come here. They're now citizens, they want to try hunting, they want to try foraging, they want to do these things.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Yeah, it's really a two-way street learning experience because we're learning about these other cultures and they're learning about conservation and how they can contribute in Washington. And I think that's the value of this. It's a long game. R3 is not a quick win, like we're going to save conservation through this is a long game in investing in the public. And that includes that 80% in the middle who are curious, but maybe have never had the exposure. And we want to make sure that experience is positive, it's safe, and we want to break down some of maybe the old school stereotypes of hunting.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

It's really interesting. You mentioned that, and I was thinking I had a woman come up to me. I think we were at the Pewellop show, and she's, I'm married to a hunter. I don't know if I actually agree with hunting, but I have no say in it because he is a hunter. And so she actually just wanted to talk to me because there was no kind of her her thoughts. There's no real talking to my it's his thing, he goes and does it. But he just won't she just wanted to talk to another hunter and to get why do you do this? What's the draw? What's going on? And a lot of it was the conservation. And we found that, especially now, and we brought it up on other episodes, about this is it's kind of getting all of the groups on board with because I think everybody, almost everybody, really cares about there being healthy ecosystems. Absolutely. Whether you're hunting, but it's everybody cares that there are animals out there that aren't suffering. Right. But you think about just off the top of my head, the hoof rot, and people not not to really get into it, but people don't want to see animals suffering like that. So everybody's really, I think, invested in figuring out how to help animals and how to help. Okay, well, what could we do differently with the habitat? And I think that's where this is where, yeah, you know, this particular program is where you start addressing

Conservation Funding Beyond Hunters

SPEAKER_03 25:10

a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

And I think that's a super awesome message right there. We we all care. Yeah. Right. There's it doesn't matter what your political affiliation is or how you were raised, you don't want to see hoof rot. You don't want to see dead fish in a river. Yeah. And that's super awesome message to have out there because of course we promote that and it's a common ground talking point.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

But just watching wildlife. We got deer and we were talking earlier. We got bobcats and we get Kyle's going through our backyard all the time. The wife and I, if we have some somebody over the house, whether they're a hunter or a fisherman, or they just don't do any of that stuff, everybody stops and everybody watches because it gets everybody's attention. Everybody enjoys watching wildlife.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

And that falls under this too. I mean, it's not just the hunters and fish. It's if you enjoy watching wildlife, which is a common thread among us. Whether you're hunting or fish, this all plays a fact in it. You've got to uh put into the conservation side of it to keep this going. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

And it's funny teaching my better half how to hunt and do the outdoor lifestyle. I used to send her flower pictures when I was turkey hunting because I'm a nerd. I like plants and critters and stuff. I took her out for her first bird last year, and we're up on the hill, and she goes, Oh, there's that flower. Now I know why you're doing it because it's a whole field of them that she only got to see a picture of, and now she's made that connection to the outdoors.

SPEAKER_03 26:30

Oh, yeah. I'm always getting the wildlife pictures of as I'm sitting waiting for a deer to come by. I got the barred owl sitting up in a tree watching me and got really cool pictures of that. The porcupine that walked 10 feet from me, eight feet from me, just walked by me and got some video of that. Yeah, it's just all that's really cool. And sending those out and just saying, look, if you even if you weren't hunting, I think most anybody would have a blast just if you taught them how to sit still out in the forest and just let nature happen in front of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Just how that how cool that gets. I've I was talking to my wife about this the other day because I'm pretty much up early, I'm ready to go. Like I'm going all day. But during on fall, when I climb up into a tree stand and I can sit there for eight, ten hours or whatever watching maple leaves fall in late October. It's I can't even explain how that cleanses your soul, right? Oh, yeah. It makes you slow down, but I everything slows down for me. And the health benefits, like if wildlife appreciators, I think we all are wildlife appreciators, and that's a key audience here, right? Is that that bell curve in the middle? Everyone wants to see that doe and fawns on the side of the road. Or I had two black bears in my yard the other day, and we're making pizza, and I was like, holy cow, like I'm shaking after that, you know. And that is what wildlife does for people. Yeah, it's a health benefit. And we all want to see thriving habitats and ecosystems. It's not just hunters and anglers that are going to be able to foot the bill for that. It's everybody, and it's the behaviors. You know, if you're washing your car four times a day and all that soapy water is going into a drain, it's going to empty into your local cutthroat creek. You might rethink that, right? Like all of our actions and behaviors affect the natural world that we live in. And I think where hunters tend to get hung up is that I'm out there and I know. And yes, you're right. And there's a lot of people that city dwellers and daily commuters that may not think about habitat and wildlife the way that you do. But this is an opportunity to find those people, bring them into your world, share something, share the photos, share the experiences, tell the stories. That's how you build that support. And again, this is a long game, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:54

So and that's actually a very good point. It's why we take those, why I took the picture of that barred owl sitting up in a tree looking at me, why I took a video of the porcupine wasn't because I was going to go back and look at it. I wanted to share that with other people. Right. Yeah. Just to it's powerful. Oh, here's I just walking out, and this owl landed landed in a tree as I was walking out one evening and he just watched me. And I watched him, and we just looking at each other for five minutes. And then he takes off for this porcupine. Yeah. Just walking by me and eating, and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

You got to take it to the next step. And I know both Tom and I are guilty of talking to critters, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

I we have a fawn, we have a doe that's got her fawns tucked away, and I can I know she's nursing, and so every morning when I go outside, I'm like, where's your babies? Bring your babies. I want to see them babies, but she just looks at me. But I think that's what we all crave is those experiences with wildlife. Now, in the hunting realm, we're only doing that a few days a year. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? We all are wildlife appreciators and wildlife watchers. You can't put people in buckets. Some of the early work I did and research I did as to inform the website redesign on our website was to really survey the public about their relationship with the department and how what they thought the department did. Ironically, a lot of people think we're like the Department of Ecology. We clean up spills. No, we don't. We have spill teams that work with ecology and other organizations, but at the end of the day, it's interesting to me how little people know about what this department does, how it operates. And I think that's another element of R3 is educating people. We have a really robust volunteer program that people can get involved with. We have formal training that they can get involved with to be an ambassador for the agency and to let's let's actually get into that because that's on my list of questions here.

SPEAKER_03 30:52

So, what current events, and I'll just call them events, but they're you know, it could be more than that. What currently are you doing every year?

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Oh buckle up. Yeah, yeah, buckle up, buttercup. Yeah. We've talked a little bit already about like the turkey clinics and things like that. Sure, we do the clinics, but we also talking to your point about training the public on like legalities, special hunts, rules, regulations. I've gone into private businesses, outdoor type stores, and done special hunts, and people are just like blown away. Oh, this is how you do it. Of course, I'm not gonna dig in the weeds with wax or RCWs or anything like that, but just the general license questions, special hunt questions, and then that morphs into, oh, I want to come try turkey hunting or I want to try butchering. We do a butchering clinic, we do a few of those. And beyond the hunting side, we do foraging clinics. We all have seen chanterelles, we've all seen the red and white cap one, which we shouldn't be eating. But we want to educate those people on those type of things. You know, we're not just it's not just focusing on the hunters. Of course, that's my number one. That's what I want to do, that's what I'm going to do. Yeah. But there's other things out there, and it's important to me to talk about working with our NGOs out there, like the non-lead initiative. Every time you say that to a rifle hunter, they want to throw something at you. You know, you talk about non-lead. Well, we're not talking about we're gonna have to do it, we're just suggesting people try it. I watched a ballistic gel test on a lead round, and the dust from that lead round that went into that ballistic gel at 100 yards, it went three feet into that, which I would have never thought. And so it just makes you think I'm working with this NGO, he's coming in, he's giving me this information. I'm not giving up my reloading stash. I got thousands of dollars in that now. But then working with National Wild Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. All of these partners vent every clinic that I do. And then I see them on the national level. We have a national R3 symposium that once a year we meet up somewhere around the country, which is totally awesome because there's free food. But then we get to talk about what we're doing, and we get to share hey, we have a mobile trout pond that we take to these events that kids can catch their first trout. Then Virginia goes, I'm buying one of those, and we can bounce these ideas off on all of these different programs that we're doing. And it's not just going out, setting up a hunting clinic, and going, it's researching, it's working with our non-governmental organizations all year long. That's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

So can people find these? So I started I actually went in and the website and the mydea.org website. Are those events all found on there?

SPEAKER_01 33:21

So they're on the WDFW main website under Hunting Clinics. Now we always try to post those a whole month in advance. Now, keep in mind when these events, especially these turkey events, pop up, they're filling like fast. It's become very popular. Yeah. And I'm just one guy, I don't have the capacity to do

Mentorship And The ORAM Pathway

SPEAKER_01 33:40

tennis spring, maybe sometime with some support. But so when they do come up, Tom and I, we mark market them, he does most of that. And then for our off-season events and things like that, I usually post those a little earlier because they'll take a little more time to fill. I like to do the butchering clinics in the summertime. Yes, I know it's kind of stinky and it's hot and all that, but that's a great time to be teaching folks the middle.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

It's like a needed skill. Right, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Yeah, and and sorry if I can interrupt one thing. We didn't really talk about this, but we used to have an R3 fishing position. Kelly is in the R3 hunting position. His funding source comes from that Pittman Robertson those dollars. So our fishing coordinator retired. He was an amazing employee who did youth fishing events all over Washington, mostly Western Washington. But when he retired, there was not funding to backfill that position. So it's vacant. Oh. So we're not really supporting a ton of R3 fishing events from my team's perspective, but there are regional folks out in the different regions of the state. Some of them are still executing their own local fishing events with community partners and that's so like the regional WDFW offices.

SPEAKER_03 34:51

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Okay. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

So, Kelly, how many for the turkey? How many do you take on these hunts?

SPEAKER_01 34:57

So this was a wonderful year, by the way. I want to again thank First Hunt Foundation and everybody that showed up. But we did three clinics this spring. We did a youth-only one for the youth season, and then we did one open to any new turkey hunter, and then we did a veterans one. At each one of these events, again, I talked earlier about not doing these large groups. I like to do more personalized one-on-one mentoring, things like that. So for the youth, I think we did 10 kids for the open. I think we were around 20 or 25, and then for the vets, I think we did six or something like that. It was six. And looking back and sending those post-clinic emails, everybody always responds. And it's a great thing. For for a short-term spring event season, we reach out and we touch 60, 70 people and their families because the almost always the families come to. Unless, of course, I'm hitting on that mentorship with the 25 to 40 year old fellow that just shows up and wants to learn to hunt. Those are kind of of one-offs, but usually you're seeing families.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

So are is this a public land hunt or is this a private land? Is it west side, east side?

SPEAKER_01 36:00

So we focus in the northeast corner of the state and we work with our private lands folks, and we find properties where in the wintertime those turkeys were in there causing some crop damage or some hay damage. And we ask them permission. Hey, we have this event going on. And trust me, when it comes to especially new hunters, the landowners over there are fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

And so, yes, we're using private lands, but we're also all the time on a mapping application that's on your phone and looking at public sites and DFW other open public lands. So it's kind of a mixed bag.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

That's quite a few people for one season. That's that's a lot of time invested.

unknown 36:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Yeah, and these folks are getting the A to Z, right? This isn't show up and go on a little guided hunt when it in effect it's kind of what it is, but there's food, there's lodging, there's that you guys put on the hunters gathering, and Kelly and I presented there, and it's the same kind of immersive community building experience. And so people are coming out exchanging phone numbers, the mentor and mentee. I a little byproduct out of that. I'm not spring chicken anymore. And one of the mentees that I had, I mentioned something about elk hunting, and he wanted to learn elk hunting. And I said, Yeah, I said, I don't get into the backcountry like I used to because I'm getting a little older. And he said, Well, I'll pack your elk out for you. And I said, Be careful what you uh just gonna say, what are you doing? Did you give me his number?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

No, obviously never been elk hunting.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

And he's a big fella too. He looks like he could take at least a good hind and maybe a couple backstraps. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm but in all seriousness, it's it is a really kind of experience. They get to talk to landowners, they understand how to approach a landowner, even asking where we should park, are there gates that we need to be aware of? Are there livestock? So we teach them all these aspects. It's very, very specific so that we're equipping these folks to actually think about their experience and maybe go do it with a buddy or on being just good ethics, good hunter ethics.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

Yeah, I was just thinking that teaching them to be ethical hunters.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

The landowner relations is a huge component because we again, our state, nobody's making more Washington state. No, and our private landowners and those partnerships are key in building that relationship with the hunting community and fishing community. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 38:17

So if somebody wanted to help you out, they wanted to volunteer, what is the route that they would take to help out if they want to mentor people? Because and we're finding that people want to pass on. Well, some hunters want to pass on what they know to to others.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Sure. And so first off, I want to say something up. You can be a mentor if you know more than somebody that doesn't know hunting at all. Very true. Okay. Some people are worried about, oh, I can't be a mentor. I've only hunted for a couple of years. Well, guess what? Your sister who's never hunted before, she knows zero. Okay. So on the mentor side of things, I really encourage people to sign up with First Hunt Foundation. You will get a background check, you will be vetted, and then what what you do from there is you go on a dot on a map, and and non-hunters or mentees can look it up and they can contact you and say, Hey, I see that you are a grouse hunter. Can you mentor me in grouse hunting? And so that mentorship path is one way. The other way is the Department of Fish and Wildlife actually has a new volunteer program. It's absolutely fantastic. And just a little shout out, our volunteer gal got employee of the year for her work on that. So our new volunteer program on our main website, and that's not just three stuff. That's you can look at all the projects. If you want to go count reds in a river, there's a potential for that. If you want to go clip fins in a hatchery, there's a potential for that. But definitely you can sign up for our through the website on our volunteer program and go through the there's a little bit of training involved with that, and then you'll be in the list.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

And you had mentioned these trainings. Do are they at up here in Olympia or do they do them at some of the satellite offices as well?

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Uh most of this is online.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

Oh, online man.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

Yeah, if you go to the volunteer page on Department of Fish and Wildlife's website, you'll find all the information there. And again, shout out to Diane. I'm not going to say her last name, but she doesn't like she doesn't like the attention. She does not like kudos at all. Put a lot of work into this over the last few years, and it's really fantastic program. The other thing I would say, and I almost forgot this, you mentioned the mywdfw.org website. That we built that site separately from the main website for a couple of reasons. I won't get into a long story, but Oregon had the myodfw.com, and that was their recreational hunting and fishing kind of site. And I'm like, I've hunted Oregon and Washington, jump across the river all the time. What if we had a sister site, right? So we launched that as a way to put how to, where to mentor type content on there. So Kelly, me, others, we've got some biologists contributing. We've built out quite a list of content, an archive of content, monthly content associated with the opportunity that's happening right at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

So see, I don't think a lot of people realize that resource is out there. They do. That is awesome right there. That is huge.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

I didn't, and I've always I've just mentioned I've mentioned this often. I'm a fairly new to hunting. So before what was this, my third year deer hunting, and then I'd done grouse a few years before that, but grouse was just walking around with a shotgun on skinner roads type of type of thing.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

So they're pretty intelligent.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

It wasn't really yeah, we call that harvesting. A lot of skill involved with that. But it's interesting. So having just recently, because I didn't know about my wdfw.org before you had mentioned it to me, went through that. Much easier if you're new to navigate than WDFW because there's so much, and I'm one of those, and off-air you had mentioned, oh, you would like this person because of how they deep dive into things. I go down a rabbit trail on the WDFW website, and I just start so yeah, I could spend probably months on there before years before I finally have an idea. Try the search bar. And the reason for that is even with that takes me down, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

Yeah, the reason for that is is that our department does a lot. Yeah, right? Oh, yeah, a ton of different types of things from just and we're trying to figure out like I don't want to send a new hunter

Clinics Foraging And Where To Find Them

SPEAKER_02 42:30

to a website, a government website that is loaded with all this information so that it's just harder to find things. So we thought let's just make a similar site to what Oregon had in this R3 kind of umbrella, and let's really talk to these people like we would talk to them, and let's have a more casual, personable tone. Let's put our names on these blog posts and these contributions. And then I open up a volunteer project where I literally, you ask how people can get involved. I'm fine if people want to contact me directly, but I had a volunteer project where people could contribute because a lot of people do want to share. And I we don't pretend to know everything. And even what we do know in our experiences, they're just that, right? There's a million ways that you can catch a salmon or catch a steelhead or shoot a grouse or whatever. And if there are experts in foraging, if there are experts in dog training, or you know, that's a great place where people could share their knowledge with the public and I can publish that.

SPEAKER_03 43:34

Yeah, there's it's limitless with the topics you can go on. But even just thinking about this, just today I didn't realize the clinics that there was a spot on there for looking at what clinics are coming up. Because I was like, boy, I see because I read the R3 page and it mentioned all these things. Okay, I now I don't know where to go to navigate from there for finding out the clinics. Now I know about the hunting clinics. Because I saw in there, and I was just telling Dave about squid jigging. Yeah. In high school, I used to go out all the time squid jigging, love doing it. And I was telling Dave stories about when I did that in high school. But then I saw that listed on there that you at one point he was doing those. Yeah. I was like, okay, I'd be all over that event. So it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

And just not only that, just the volunteer opportunities. Yeah. Yeah. Personally, I'm going to volunteer to be the guy that does the draw results for all the quality hunts because I feel like I could do it fairly. You know, you can sign up and come observe that feedback.

SPEAKER_02 44:35

If you want to really be a witness, we have citizen witnesses. You can dial in. We actually had Casey Brooks was a couple years ago. Oh. He came called in to our Zoom call. And yeah, that's a transparent process, and we invite the public to participate it.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

I might, I honestly might be a little biased if my name doesn't get drawn for the mountain goat moose. It's a quality elk, you know.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Yeah. We have a roller right over there.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Have you ever seen a 56-year-old man cry?

SPEAKER_02 45:04

Yeah. Only here. Only here. Yeah. What else was I going to say about some of that? I don't remember. But yeah, I think that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Let me touch a little bit on the future of our three. Yeah. I talked a little bit about our partner groups and things like that. One of the one of the things that we've tried to do is reach out to schools and universities and colleges. And it's been a pretty tough nut to crack. Luckily, we had a postdoc from University of Washington who was focusing on the sea ducks and reached out and said, Hey, I'd like to start a little bit of a hunting program. And I said, Well, Matt, let's do this. And we launched UW Learn to Hunt. And so for the last two years, we've taken University of Washington students pheasant hunting for the first time, waterfowl hunting for the first time. We're going to do it again this year. And before that, they went through hunter education. So they got the full experience as well. It wasn't a consecutive day thing. We actually got to spread that out over some time. There was a shooting range, a skeet range involved in there. And so we have a couple of the colleges that are locked on now. In addition to that, there's actually a local middle school down in Mason County. They have an outdoor program as part of their seven periods of day classes. It's an entire semester class where they're learning about hunting, fishing, foraging, survival. And we went down there and certified that teacher as a hunter ed instructor. And now hunter education is part of that class as well.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Yeah, it's crazy that we're in a major university like that and learn to hunt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

Well, hopefully, hopefully that would open a whole opens up a bunch more doors as far as getting into high schools and whatnot like that on a broader scale. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

You know what I mean? Right. And Tom's daughter, she was on the rifle team. I grew up in a small community where there was a rifle and pistol team. It's not there anymore. Those things have gone away now. I've actually started seeing a resurgence of those in some areas. And I would hope, and just do a little shout out to any middle school, high school, college out there, get a hold of me if you're interested in doing something like that. Yeah, I think we have a trap team. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Oh, on the yeah, our local high school.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

What's interesting on education? I know Aaron and I have talked about education a lot offline. He was in education. My wife's been in education for years, but we actually have a whole conservation education program. And if you look at our main website and go to search for Wild Washington or K through 12 education, you'll see the curriculum. There's OSPI endorsed curriculum, conservation education. We're in the classrooms. We have a habitat at home program. So there's a ton of stuff that's happening within our agency to So we sorry to interrupt. Habitat at home, would that be like a curriculum homeschoolers could Habitat at home is more about whether you have a condo in Seattle and you improve your little mini space or you have 20 acres and you want to improve that for wildlife.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

Oh, it's about creating natural habitat or wildlife-friendly habitat in your area.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

And then the other curriculums were like high school curriculums. K through 12, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

You can go online and see that work, and it's it we've got an amazing team that's focused on that.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Oh, nice. And actually part of the R3 plan too. We're working with Seattle Parks this year. We're gonna do a nature walk and an archery shoot. And some of these first-time programs that that we're still getting into, people wouldn't think of that R3 is gonna be working with the Seattle Parks program. We're gonna take these kids are already part of a group, a summertime group, and we're integrating ourselves in as part of that curriculum.

SPEAKER_04 48:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 48:23

Okay, so I'm gonna wrap it up with this. So as I was reading through the website, so I came across this. This plan identifies R3 efforts for Washington, and partnerships are key to its success. WDFW will lead many aspects of this plan, but there's a sincere desire and need for partners to take the lead with support from WDFW. So I read that, and that raised the question in my mind, and we're gonna wrap up with this. What kind of partnerships does WDFW desire on the individual or business level? And then what does taking the lead mean?

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Yeah, and that that's a that's a great question. So, as an example, we've done a bit of talking about these turkey clinics that I've done. So we get these clinics up and going, we coordinate them, we get all the moving pieces together with the NGOs. We've done it for several years now. And then as an example, National Wild Turkey Federation, they've got several chapters around the state. So the one that's over on the east side of the state, the northeast corner there, they are integrated into that program. And then we back away and let them continue running after we've helped get it going, and they do a fantastic job. And so that's the kind of partnership that we're looking for because again, I'm only one dude. Yeah, and that gives me an opening to do the veterans hunt we did this year. National Wild Turkey Federation had the middle turkey clinic this year, and it was fantastic because I was able

Volunteering Partnerships And What’s Next

SPEAKER_01 49:45

to go out and do another one. And so the more NGO partnerships that we can have, and when I say NGO, I don't just mean Rocky Mountain Elk or Mueller Deer Foundation. I'm talking like schools we talked about earlier. It can be a private business. I will partner with private businesses. We partner with them for our statewide trout derby. All the big names, they come in and they give us donations for our trout derby. I'll let Tom talk a little bit more about that. But any private business, any individual and any NGO can reach out and we can partner with them and we can make a program out of many different R3 things.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Yeah, we've had a lot of different partners, like Tacoma Urban League.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

We've done Fish Tacoma and some big events like that. Yeah, they did a hunting 101 and then they also went through hunter education. I took I took the Tacoma Urban League to the sportsman show in Puallop, and it was this group of folks, and they had never been exposed to that, and they're in there at the measuring station for the elk and the deer, and they get to hold these giant elk, and these this is so a lot of these people have not been out of Tacoma. True. They've traveled up and down the I-5 corridor, but holding a six by rosy horns in your hand and something you've only ever probably seen on a movie, you can see it's it's the same as Tom sitting in his tree standing, getting that awe moment of just mind letting go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:01

So a lot of organizations, timber companies, all the non-government organizations is what that means. It's a non-governmental organization, NGO. So I've listed some here in our presentation that we did for you guys, but we're always open to anyone who's willing to partner. We can't do this alone. The department is struggling financially with the funding that we have, and we need to build a community around supporting this work and getting people outside. I think at the end of it all, we all live here. We're all taking up space, we're all having an impact on the landscape. And I think that in order to build the next generation of stewards, we have to get people to care. And when you're commuting to work and you're late for this and you're late for that, and you're stressed out, and you're you got youth sports and you've got all the stressors that we all have, it's easy to put all of this on the back burner and not think about it. We've found that when you connect people to nature in a direct way through a mentored experience, their first trout, holding their first set of antlers, whatever it might be, that starts to light that little spark, right? That connects them to it. And once you connect to something, you start to care about it. Yeah. And then you start thinking about it more, and it starts to the behavior change that's needed.

SPEAKER_03 52:21

Comes in with set obsession. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 52:24

And then yeah, then you start talking about, yeah, yeah. Then it gets then you end up like all of us, right? Yeah. We're just hopeless hunters and anglers that are trying to make it through the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Figure out how we can scrape every dime towards equipment.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

The next hunt or the next fishing trip.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 52:40

If someone wanted to talk to somebody about partnering and doing this, what's the best way to reach out? Reach.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

Yeah, you can you can send me an email if we want to add that to a little slide at the bottom of your podcast. We can do that.

SPEAKER_03 52:54

I will add contact information. I'll have these guys give me their contact information. It'll be in the description below. Guys, thank you for talking about all this. This has been a huge issue, I think, for us, and just with what we're doing with the podcast as far as wanting to teach people about hunting, fishing, not as much about fishing, but just connecting with the outdoors.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Very eye-opening. Very good. I mean, I uh the stuff that you guys went over as far as what you have on that site and all these opportunities. I hadn't, and I've been a lifelong hunter, so no idea. So thank you guys. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us on. This was awesome.

SPEAKER_02 53:33

Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, I think that's why we work here. I think we ultimately got to a point in our lives where we wanted to make a difference and try to give back. And it's not easy working for the government, state agencies. It's it the funding's all over the place. I feel so bad for a lot of our scientists. We're carpet dwellers, right? Like we work in an office and we get to to go and interact with the public. But the science, you know, we need that data. We need right, we need to be able to fund this agency to protect and preserve. That's our mission statement. Right. We've got to do this into the future, not just next year. So, yeah, we're hoping to make that change and connect with people at a personal level, teach them some new skills, and hopefully turn them into a lifelong contributor to conservation.

SPEAKER_03 54:20

Excellent. Okay, so if everyone, if you go on, like, subscribe, heart, do all those things that your platform asked for, we would really appreciate it. And we will talk

Final Takeaways And Listener Support

SPEAKER_03 54:30

to you next week.