Case Against R3

[lastlight]

Matt has had the better foresight of the Rinellas. The HOC article is puke worthy, I never got a single handout from any mentor or my father and got myself into hunting with determination. To think any other person no matter what color you are cant do the same in this country is a sorry excuse and that type of mentality wont make it in the wilderness. If you need coddling and reassurance thats its ok for you to be in the woods then the woods just simply arent for you. After all, there are grizz out there that will eat your ass while your awake to witness it. Teach mental toughness first. You think as a black man David Goggins is running around making excuses and crying why me? That dude would kill in the elk woods and Id gladly help him pack out meat.

How in the ever loving hell Matts article got turned into a race issue is exactly the problem with our soft society today.

 

[RobertD]

Enjoying reading everyone's thoughts.

I think ultimately we have to work towards emphasizing stewardship of the resource as a core aspect of the hunting identity. Buzz and Hunting Wife both make convincing arguments that inspired some of my thoughts here.

I'm interested in how to make political advocacy a core component of the hunting identity. To put it in rough terms, how can you promote advocacy and conservation as part of what makes you a "real hunter?"

To me that's the only way forward, because it fights both to expand and improve the resource while legitimizing hunters' relationship with the resource in the eyes of nonhunters.

The future is going to be weird, and for hunters to survive as a small population in a large whole that moves further into a technology-driven world, we will need to be able to demonstrate that our system is the key to sustaining the resource.

I think a lot about a phrase "stewards of the land," that was introduced to me as I was growing up hunting. We need to talk about both political and physical stewardship successes as goals to seek as hunters, right up there with getting a DIY animal or drawing a glory tag.

 

[Deleted member 16014]

I think it’s a great topic to bring to light and I’m glad Meateater published it. They knew good and well they’d catch heat, good for them for doing it anyway. I do not agree with everything in it.

Some of the rebuttal points are good as well, and I’ve got room for the whole discussion. We’re all victims of our own experience, the best we can do to understand the is educate ourselves and genuinely try.

I’ve personally gotten burned on recruiting and helping some newer local hunters and it’s soured me. Good guys and good friends in a regular context, but folks who don’t really want to learn the craft, they want to go get some animals killed using my hard earned knowledge, my dialed in rifles, my maps, and relying on my reading the regs to know what’s what. And yeah, I’m kinda sick of it...just to roll up and see them headed to an area I took them with their other buddies in tow. They heard killing XYZ is what you do to be western, so that’s what they want to do.

I’ll help just about anyone who shows genuine interest in studying animals, habitat, and legitimately learning along with me. But I’m done “recruiting” my non-hunting friends who just want the result, just for the sake of recruiting them. Maybe that’s my fault for not setting up clear enough expectations up front.

I’m not anti-recruitment, but when Matt is talking about people getting into it for shallow reasons, that’s definitely out there. Show me a program that helps people truly fall in love with mule deer, elk, whitetails, whatever...how they move, how they use different forages, how they evade predators, how they digest food, how they raise young, how they interact with cover, etc. THAT is a brand of recruitment I’ll support all day long, and those are the hunters I want on my side to go to bat for hunting and conservation for the next 50 years.

 

[Nameless Range]

Interesting conversation. I think both opposing viewpoints and the discussion are meaningful, and my comment here will be a lazy one.

-I do not believe we will ever increase access and animal populations to such a degree that our hunting experiences will become "less crowded", to offset even a marginal increase in hunters that theoretically R3 will achieve. That's not an argument against increasing access, fighting for habitat, etc. Just that in the big picture, I think every thing will be dinks and dunks in comparison to what already exists moving forward. Does that mean it is all downhill from here?

-I would be very interested in a study surrounding advocacy. What makes advocates? Something that has exploded in popularity over the last couple decades is Mtn Biking, and I would argue Mountain Biking has the most effective advocacy going for it right now in terms of an outdoor endeavour that for when it is needed, the folks who participate in it show up.

-Is there any model of hunting that could survive not having a very small number of advocates? I can think of other outdoor endeavours, such as mountain climbing, that do not have a future in question, but do not have many advocates at all relatively. I understand how much this is sort of irrelevant, as hunting involves killing a public resource, is controversial, etc. But in my perfect world hunting would be something done by few that no one cares about.I acknowledge that this is likely unachievable.

-Maybe Meateater just doesn't care that much about advocacy. Perhaps bitter is the right word, but I was pretty disappointed that the largest negative change to elk management in my life dang near came to be(and still may), and I didn't see a soul from that cohort at the capital speaking up for elk. When they moved to Bozeman, they brought a small army with them and created a bunch of new Montanans who often speak loftily of hunting, none of which could be bothered to drive an hour and a half north. Instead, a handful of guys and gals who had to take a day off of work were there. I'll admit,I found it a bit alarming to see how thin the walls that protect hunting as it is are.

Maybe it is a wrong side of the bed situation this morning, but I am not worried about creating more hunters in Montana right now. Though it wouldn't take much for my inner-cynic to believe that nationwide, the future of hunting as we know it is bleak. Both urbanization and commercialization are two fronts that battle will be fought on.

If I am honest, I feel that very human propensity to hold conflicting viewpoints. I want hunting to perpetuate and I want hunters to be a diverse contingent in both demographic subset as well as viewpoints, but I also want to take my son hunting in 3 years and I want as little competition for us as possible so that he can feel what I felt once and fell in love with.

It's a tough one.

 

[longbow51]

I've thought about this quite a bit this weekend. Watched one of Rinella's early shows; he's in Alberta hunting moose. I was very busy back then, wasn't watching any TV, and so didn't catch it the first go-around. Wearing generic clothes, shooting a right-hand rifle, making a tarp tent with a piece of plastic. Leaky borrowed canoe. Now he's all in First Lite, Vortex and Weatherby. Don't begrudge him his success, but maybe a bit too polished? Maybe that's what Matt is reacting to.

Then I was thinking about sentinel events, like the development of lightweight (for those days) backpacking gear by the likes of Kelty and Sierra Designs, coupled by the publication of The Complete Walker by Colin Fletcher. Add a generation of hippies who wanted to get "back to the land" and the backpacking boom was on.

Years later, the staid Rod Lavers and Virginia Wades of the world of tennis gave way to the cool kids on the block; Jimmy Connors, Chrissy Evert, Bjorn Borg. And one of the greatest con men of all time, an over-the-hill Bobby Riggs with his ridiculous lobs somehow persuaded the world that playing against the top women players was worthy of big money. Tennis courts were booked weeks in advance for years.

Then, The Complete Book of Running by James Fixx, along with the first good running shoes, by New Balance, Brooks, and Nike.

This summer, in spite of Covid, we saw an enormous wave of new campers in Montana. How do we know they were new? Because they didn't know crap (or for that manner, where to). Pitched cheap tents anywhere. Fires with green wood. Trash everywhere.

I saw this on the Western Mountaineering site (as I'm sure most of you know, very high quality sleeping bags and prices to match) :

"We’ve had a lot of people reaching out to us asking about product availability lately; the past 6 months or so have seen the largest demand for our bags that we’ve ever experienced, and some models are getting hard to come by."

So is this the first glimpse of a new sentinel event which will define a decade or two, with increased demand for public land? I sure don't know, but I do know we are herd animals. Maybe, just maybe, with all that's going on right now it's OK to hit pause for a bit. On recruitment, not on expanding access.

 

[Nameless Range]

Interesting conversation. I think both opposing viewpoints and the discussion are meaningful, and my comment here will be a lazy one.

-I do not believe we will ever increase access and animal populations to such a degree that our hunting experiences will become "less crowded", to offset even a marginal increase in hunters that theoretically R3 will achieve. That's not an argument against increasing access, fighting for habitat, etc. Just that in the big picture, I think every thing will be dinks and dunks in comparison to what already exists moving forward. Does that mean it is all downhill from here?

-I would be very interested in a study surrounding advocacy. What makes advocates? Something that has exploded in popularity over the last couple decades is Mtn Biking, and I would argue Mountain Biking has the most effective advocacy going for it right now in terms of an outdoor endeavour that for when it is needed, the folks who participate in it show up.

-Is there any model of hunting that could survive not having a very small number of advocates? I can think of other outdoor endeavours, such as mountain climbing, that do not have a future in question, but do not have many advocates at all relatively. I understand how much this is sort of irrelevant, as hunting involves killing a public resource, is controversial, etc. But in my perfect world hunting would be something done by few that no one cares about.I acknowledge that this is likely unachievable.

-Maybe Meateater just doesn't care that much about advocacy. Perhaps bitter is the right word, but I was pretty disappointed that the largest negative change to elk management in my life dang near came to be(and still may), and I didn't see a soul from that cohort at the capital speaking up for elk. When they moved to Bozeman, they brought a small army with them and created a bunch of new Montanans who often speak loftily of hunting, none of which could be bothered to drive an hour and a half north. Instead, a handful of guys and gals who had to take a day off of work were there. I'll admit,I found it a bit alarming to see how thin the walls that protect hunting as it is are.

Maybe it is a wrong side of the bed situation this morning, but I am not worried about creating more hunters in Montana right now. Though it wouldn't take much for my inner-cynic to believe that nationwide, the future of hunting as we know it is bleak. Both urbanization and commercialization are two fronts that battle will be fought on.

If I am honest, I feel that very human propensity to hold conflicting viewpoints. I want hunting to perpetuate and I want hunters to be a diverse contingent in both demographic subset as well as viewpoints, but I also want to take my son hunting in 3 years and I want as little competition for us as possible so that he can feel what I felt once and fell in love with.

It's a tough one.

It would be fair to point out that my assessment of Meateater regarding advocacy and not being where I expected them to be isn't a fair one in the age of Covid. I know a few folks for whom Covid was reason enough to not be in the capitol that day. Like I said, stream of consciousness from the wrong side of the bed. Don't wanna come off as holier than thou.

 

[RobertD]

It would be fair to point out that my assessment of Meateater regarding advocacy and not being where I expected them to be isn't a fair one in the age of Covid. I know a few folks for whom Covid was reason enough to not be in the capitol that day. Like I said, stream of consciousness from the wrong side of the bed. Don't wanna come off as holier than thou.

Fair and honest addendum to your own point.

Still the benefit of a group like Meateater shifting gears away from just recruitment and towards advocacy would be huge. They've brought plenty of new hunters into the fold I'm sure, and though they're not exactly strangers to advocating the NAM and conservation, I think the reach their platform has would do wonders if they started emphasizing advocacy amongst their fan base so to speak. So in a way yours is a very fair point IMO.

 

[MTelkHuntress]

I find myself conflicted in some ways with all these articles. I've spoken to several people who are extremely pro R3 and I can't help but notice how its "our way or no way" kind of attitude for some people. Absolutely we need more hunters but we can't be so selfish as to sell cheap opportunity. We need to be making public lands better, not worse. We need to educate new hunters on what conservation means, not just a word to throw around to feel good about ourselves. We need to actually put effort and money into better habitat and access. All the access means nothing if there's no wildlife on it because of poor habitat and overcrowding. Maybe that looks like season structure changes as to give the wildlife a break and not be under constant pressure.

I completely understand that BIPOC do have challenges, but I think there is some initiative that does need to be taken on their part. They have to have some sort of interest in the outdoors and I find that's often fostered through friends and outdoor groups. It's great that HOC has mentors to teach people and maybe mentors need to be more involved with not just teaching how to hunt but also being an advocate. I have several friends who are minorities that completely got into hunting by themselves. Perhaps they are the outliers but it can be done. They were very unaware of the issues hunters face such as these garbage bills in Montana lately, so that's where I come in to supply facts and resources. Education is a very powerful tool. This legislative season is a great example of what hunters can do when they get together. Imagine if we had even more of a presence, what kind of changes could be done. But Buzz brings up a great point, do we really need more hunters for advocacy when current hunters aren't as involved as they could be? On the flip side, more new hunters does hopefully increase the odds that some will want to be more involved with actions to increase public access and habitat.

We also need to listen to one anothers experiences as well. My elk hunting experience is going to be way different than someone who hunts a region with more elk or someone who hunts mule deer in eastern Montana or even another state all together. We can't just discredit people because we don't experience their struggles or successes.

Selfishly, I love not seeing other people in the field. It's a wonderful experience to not see another human for days and really enjoy the exploration and discovery aspects of hunting. With the human population ever increasing, I can imagine this will become harder as well, not just from recruiting new hunters but people who are born into a hunting family as well as other people enjoying in the outdoors. Change is difficult but it will happen whether we agree or not.

Habitat and public lands is a finite resource. We can't just keep taking and not give back in some capacity. There has to be some balance and since I dont know all the answers (very far from it), I will continue to listen to those who have different experiences and opinions. Maybe hunting is all down hill from here, but that doesn't mean we shouldnt try to make it the best it can be, not just for current hunters but also future hunters. As much as I disagree with some aspects of the article, it does start a very important discussion.

 

[TOGIE]

I'm starting to see the concept that R3 simply for the sake of R3 doesn't make much sense.

It's almost like saying we gotta cook as much food as we can, without even knowing how many people are showing up for dinner. But gosh darn it better have a buffet 3 miles long just in case!

Or more akin to the hunting issues would be never changing how much food you cook but always trying to invite as many people as possible. Great dinner party bro.

I also see that while trashing R3 is explicitly not a race issue IMO, it is most certainly is an unintentional affront to organizations representing people of color and minorities trying to increase the participation in hunting by people of color and minorities, especially with as much following as MeatEater has. It's just a touchy area unfortunately, it just is. If you read HOCs response they very clearly state that they don't think Matt is trying to be racist or insensitive to minorities or people of color, they're just pointing out this problem and hope that he can think about it more carefully going forward. Great this conversation is happening. We absolutely cannot just roll our eyes and say "my goodness why does everything have to turn racial?"

I say kudos to Matt and Steve for putting this out there. I'm sure Steve knew the dangers of such and he went for it. Can't have progress without conversation, and especially without disagreement I think. Echo chambers are never helpful, and it takes guts not to be one sometimes.

I think we do need R3. But as is evidenced by the many comments before me, we need something more nuanced that just praying for exponential growth in hunter numbers and thinking our problems as a user group will be solved.

 

[SAJ-99]

Prior to what 2015? a lot of states didn't require you to buy a license to participate in the draw, prior to 2000? How prevalent was out of state hunting? In the 80s AK was selling 5,000 NR licenses now they are selling 10,000 NR.

The direct funds from licenses is needed by wildlife agencies and the formula for PR fund allocations include number of licensss sold and hunter education programs. So inflating numbers to boost payments is in their best interest (and maybe even a side benefit of educated hunters).

 

[Kearnsie14]

Great discussion. A few thoughts:

1) I liked the Matt R. article. It at least caused everybody to have the broader discussion instead of unquestioningly pushing ahead with R3 with little thought as to the consequences.

2) The strain on the resource points are very well taken. It won't do to recruit more new hunters if the resource can't handle it and eventually implodes.

3) The point about hunters who are advocates vs. those who aren't is also a great point. If new hunters (or existing hunters) aren't advocates that help to expand the resource then it does little good to recruit more new hunters that aren't advocates, further straining the resource.

4) The Field and Stream article made some good counter-points. I did feel like they attempted to "blacken" Matt R. with an allegation of selfishness when it comes to wanting solitude in hunting spots. My response to that is...what hunter doesn't want that? Taking an angle of impugning his motives seems to me to get us off track from the more important problem solving aspect that his article invites and further, is disingenuous.

5) The HOC article was obviously borne of frustration and I don't begrudge her the opportunity to vent those frustrations. However, I don't think some of her rebuttal was fair to Matt R or the Meat Eater people. First, I don't think the racial aspect ever even entered Matt R's mind (which she acknowledges is probably true), nor did it enter mine when I read it. Second, she expresses her disappointment that Meat Eater gave Matt R. a platform from which to publish his article. I strongly disagree with de-platforming anybody, whether I agree with them or not. If I disagree, the answer is to express my counter viewpoint, not de-platform the other person. I think de-platforming takes us to dangerous places. Third, she prescribes a menu of "options" that Meat Eater can choose from when responding to her. I don't like the idea of pigeon holing anybody or otherwise manipulating the other party into pre-defined categories that I get to unilaterally define. That unfairly handcuffs the other person in his response. I'd much prefer to give my concerns (which she did) and allow the other party to have the courtesy of an open ended response.

 

[Big Fin]

I was on the road when this article came out. It has populated my emails since then.

I think it is good that Meateater let Matt give this perspective. As I read it, I was waiting for the end conclusion that would emphasize the importance of improving access and finding new places to get hunters in the field, keeping hunter density to levels where guys like Matt wouldn't feel like they do.

We built these platforms on public land advocacy, mostly focused on access to public lands. We've advocated for LWCF, opposed state transfer, worked on tons of land exchanges, and many things related to public lands. Yet, access can also be to private lands. It can be easements. It can be state access programs like WIHA, BMA, HMA, Access Yes, etc. It can be opening access to inaccessible public lands.

The hunting experience depends on two basic foundations - Access to a place to hunt (land) and access to the opportunity to hunt (tags/licenses). One without the other is neither.

I think some were left with the premise that Matt sees this as too many hunters. Whether that is what he meant, or just what some perceive from his article, "too many hunters" comes down to hunter densities - the number of hunters using the same land at the same times.

We can improve and protect access, though it is much harder and way more expensive. Access is something far harder than increasing interest in the outdoors. A once-in-a-century pandemic got more people outside than all the R3 or "Take a Kid Fishing" effort the agencies have done in my lifetime.

Yet, the pandemic did nothing to increase or protect access. Every year we lose private acres to development, new ownership that doesn't allow hunting, bad hunter behavior that causes lands to be closed, financial incentives that landowners find more appealing, and a host of other reasons.

Every time we lose access, it displaces hunters to other areas. It increases hunter densities on the existing accessible lands. The hunter densities are what I read as Matt's frustration. I wish he had expanded on how to create more access, as that is another way to address hunter densities.

I agree with what many have said on this thread. Hunting has its swings in popularity. The fair weather newbs come and go, continuing the peak/valley curve of hunter numbers and license sales (two different metrics). Some of them will stick with it and be long-term hunters. They will carry the torch of advocacy and be the future conservation leaders. I want those people to be part of the hunting community. Even the newbs who drift off to the next fad are of ancillary benefit if they get exposed to hunting, fishing, shooting, and gain understanding of the reality of those activities.

R3, or whatever one wants to call it, is the easy work relative to access. Protecting and increasing access is the hard work. It requires a lot of effort, a lot of money, persistence, and relationships. The cause of access isn't helped by legislatures who want to defund access programs or eliminate the use of easements. The cause of access is inherently at risk in a society of property rights where owners of much of the access (and not just east of the Rockies) are looking to maximize the financial returns of those property rights.

I was in Portland all last week. I did four Q&A sessions. In every session the topic of access came up. The OR and WA folks all cautioned me about how crowded their public lands got five years ago when the timber companies started leasing to private parties or charging more than many were willing to pay for a seasonal pass. The adjacent public lands saw huge jumps in hunters, hikers, campers, bikers, and other public land use. Densities are now far higher than they were prior to that.

As one person said, "We didn't know how good we had it when that private land access was free. Now we know. Had we known then, we hopefully would have done something to keep it that way."

Not much he/they can do now. But it is another lesson for those of use facing some of the same issues, whether private timber lands, private ranches, etc. I think of the public lands of NW Montana adjacent to previously accessible lands formerly owned by Plumb Creek. I think about every big ranch that might allow access of be enrolled in Block Management-type programs, which when sold will likely congregate more hunters on public lands.

Even within states, we have places where the hunting gets depleted and folks go to other parts of the state and crowd those public lands. I think @Randy Hodges opined that the best thing to reduced public land deer hunting pressure in Regions 6 and 7 of Montana would be to improve the deer hunting in Regions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The same idea to reduce public land elk hunting pressure in Regions 3 and 4 would be to improve elk hunting in Regions 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7. That is where access equates to hunter density and is heavily impacted by wildlife management policies.

When I talk to Midwest hunters, it is almost as if they have given up on access. Leasing of prime lands and development are gobbling up ground with dollars they can't compete with, so they either quit or they just hunt out west. I understand why they do it, but it would be nice if they and their states could find ways to combat that lost access.

I had hoped Matt would connect more of the dots showing his frustration with hunter densities is multi-faceted. We are losing access, so to maintain hunter density on the fewer accessible acres, it would require fewer hunters. I would prefer that we keep hunter numbers robust and work on improving public hunting access, thus keeping hunter densities similar.

The NSSF studies continually show that the most common reason hunters quit, why they don't hunt as much as they previously did, or why a person from a hunting family doesn't get into hunting, are all related to access problems. For any of us frustrated with hunter densities, we can all help toward improving that by increasing accessible lands on which to hunt. Access is a hard problem to solve, but if we don't solve it, the recruitment, retention, and reactivation will have provided no benefit to the long-term future of hunting.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

Response from Steve

MeatEater Founder Steven Rinella Addresses R3 Op-Ed

I recently caused quite a stir among our audience with an op-ed published to our website. The piece, titled “The Case Against Hunter Recruitment,” was written by my brother Matt Rinella. It focuses on Matt’s distrust with what is known in the hunting industry as R3. While it sounds like a droid...

www.themeateater.com

 

[Nick87]

Response from Steve

MeatEater Founder Steven Rinella Addresses R3 Op-Ed

I recently caused quite a stir among our audience with an op-ed published to our website. The piece, titled “The Case Against Hunter Recruitment,” was written by my brother Matt Rinella. It focuses on Matt’s distrust with what is known in the hunting industry as R3. While it sounds like a droid...

www.themeateater.com

I font follow eather of the rinellas but after reading matt sounds like a good guy.

 

[one ate E grain]

I can think of other outdoor endeavours, such as mountain climbing, that do not have a future in question, but do not have many advocates at all relatively.

The Access Fund https://www.accessfund.org/ advocates for climbing at many different levels including state legislatures and in Washington DC, their annual funding in 18 was over 3.4 million dollars. If you look at their board and list of staff members I'd think just about everyone is a volunteer with the exception of marketing and development. The Access Fund plasters their name so many places I'd imagine there isn't one climber in the US who hasn't heard of them. They work directly with the Park Service, USFS, and BLM, as well as all the state agencies.

The fund stays away from all discussions of ethics, and advocates for all types of climbing.

 

[one ate E grain]

I read the essay by Matt, and it's rebuttal last week when I saw it linked via other sources, more on that below.

What I liked about what Matt had to say is that he argued against what I'd always believed. I love having my own beliefs challenged by a well written thoughtful piece of writing. I kept finding myself having to agree with Rinella, and laughing at myself. It's true that hunters are being squeezed into ever smaller amounts of land to hunt. Private land is increasingly posted, ranches and land are leased, public lands become over used by other user groups. I doubt getting more people interested in hunting is going to change any of that.

If I had to make a chart of recent wins vs losses for the hunting community the win side would be very sparse, and the losses side would be full, and once we lose the right to say, trap, or hunt bears in the spring, it never comes back.

What did bother me, a lot, was leveling the charge of racism against Matt Rinella based on absolutely nothing. It was an essay about hunter recruitment, not critical race theory. Leveling an accusation of racism is beyond the pale, and it was done by a prominent outdoor writer from Outside who now resides in your great state (rather MT than CO I say)

 

[longbow51]

When they can't refute your argument intelligently, they always go for the race card.

 

[madplume]

MeatEater Rebuttal

“Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.” - El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) If you mention the name, “MeatEater,” to a hunter, they’ll know exactly who you’re talking about...

www.huntersofcolor.com

I read this yesterday, pretty fair rebuke IMHO.

For everyone complaining the this response took the racial perspective, the platform is Hunters of Color. Their focus is hunters of color, their response was within their focus, hunters of color.

 

[LuketheDog]

Can we all just take a second and recognize the irony in what Meateater posted?

The mainstreaming of hunting via Meateater, Fresh Tracks, podcasts etc. Has done more to generate new hunters than even the very best and most organized R3 efforts.

What Steve is saying when he says he is beginning to adopt his brother’s ideology is that he wants to hunt and fish and he wants everyone else to pay to watch him do it. I’ve listened to every podcast he has published since the beginning and they have grown more and more celebrity personality centric and more entitled with each episode.

Apparently you haven't done much homework on their guests, the list is far broader than you give them credit for...

 

[TOGIE]

dang, i never saw that. sounds like Wes didn't even read the HOC article he is referring too. i gotta admit that tweet kinda riles me up. how does a tweet like that do anything helpful?

i woulda thought he had a critical thinking side to his brain.... guess not. grandstanding, posturing, and polarization get the "likes" i guess.

doesn't matter, the rest of the adults in the room can work on having a mature conversation working on the issues while he does his tweeting