Matt Rinella knocking it outta the park

[Nameless Range]

This is where Matt Rinella is setting on the shore watching the boat sail over the horizon. Hunting quietly is not going to save deer in eastern Montana from five weeks of OTC rut hunting and doe permits by the truck load.
The biggest wave of new hunters I ever experienced was in early to mid 90's. The wave caused by Randy and others was more of a ripple on an already flooded field.
By the late 80's deer on the Custer had fully recovered from the bad winters in the late 70's and some road closures also helped. Nineteen eighty seven was the best year I ever saw. By 1989 word of quality hunting was getting out. There was no social media, other then a brag board at Big Bear. It was just word of mouth. By the mid nineties hunters were everywhere. It wasn't just roadhunters or newbies, It was hunters that got after it like @Greenhorn and @Bambistew. Would be cerious to know how they learned about the Custer without social media. Hunting quitly is not going to save us from all the advancments in technology and popultion growth. Only regulation is going to do that.

You are absolutely right about this, but I do want to throw one observation out there.

In the last decade of myself trying to pay attention, I've gone to Season Setting meetings, the legislature, the commission, and commented when I thought it mattered - in person or over the wire. Montana has been flooded with "Hunting Influencers" - the only few I see getting involved with regulations in any sort of consistency is Randy and Matt and sometimes Ryan Callaghan. I had hopes that the Meateater Empire coming to Bozeman would bring some well-known faces - business owners - to where the sausage is made when the botulism has taken over. I ain't seen em yet, and when public comments are turned loose for the public to read, there's a bothersome silence.

 

[TOGIE]

You are absolutely right about this, but I do want to throw one observation out there.

In the last decade of myself trying to pay attention, I've gone to Season Setting meetings, the legislature, the commission, and commented when I thought it mattered - in person or over the wire. Montana has been flooded with "Hunting Influencers" - the only few I see getting involved with regulations in any sort of consistency is Randy and Matt and sometimes Ryan Callaghan. I had hopes that the Meateater Empire coming to Bozeman would bring some well-known faces - business owners - to where the sausage is made when the botulism has taken over. I ain't seen em yet, and when public comments are turned loose for the public to read, there's a bothersome silence.

now, just a little devils advocate - is citizen involvement in the legislative/regulations/public comment side of things the only way to be involved in and doing work for conservation?

i'm not one to be talking, to be sure. my involvement level sucks on all fronts, other than sending some lengthy, albeit respectful, e-mails to my commission.

 

[Nameless Range]

now, just a little devils advocate - is citizen involvement in the legislative/regulations/public comment side of things the only way to be involved in and doing work for conservation?

i'm not one to be talking, to be sure. my involvement level sucks on all fronts, other than sending some lengthy, albeit respectful, e-mails to my commission.

It sure isn't. A lot of other ways to be in Conservation. I'm no shining example either.

I wasn't talking about Conservation broadly, and was more speaking to antlerradar's very correct assertion that regulations are our only way out of this at this point. It always seems to be the same few dozen schlubs commenting - some doing good work for the conservation orgs and others taking the day off of work. I would really love to Steve Rinella, whose content I like, show up and comment against bad ideas with potential, but for some reason I've yet to see it.

We are also told that often times, folks are doing things "behind the scenes". I just can't really accept that with much seriousness. Folks should put their name into what they believe. IMO, Randy has really shown the way.

 

[TOGIE]

It sure isn't. A lot of other ways to be in Conservation. I'm no shining example either.

I wasn't talking about Conservation broadly, and was more speaking to antlerradar's very correct assertion that regulations are our only way out of this at this point. It always seems to be the same few dozen schlubs commenting - some doing good work for the conservation orgs and others taking the day off of work. I would really love to Steve Rinella, whose content I like, show up and comment against bad ideas with potential, but for some reason I've yet to see it.

We are also told that often times, folks are doing things "behind the scenes". I just can't really accept that with much seriousness. Folks should put their name into what they believe. IMO, Randy has really shown the way.

can't disagree at all with that.

steve is extraordinarily influential. if people watched a commission meeting and saw him standing there advocating for the resource, perhaps at the expense of opportunity, it would be pretty powerful.

i can't imagine more people wouldn't start doing the same if that happened. or, perhaps, they'd just start showing up to see if there would be a rinella v. rinella mid commission brawl.

powerful messages either way.

 

[Treeshark]

Have to give Steve a bit of credit though, he made noise on the corner crossing issue recently when many others were afraid to touch it with a ten foot pole.

 

[Ben Lamb]

@antlerradar throwing out some wisdom.

now, just a little devils advocate - is citizen involvement in the legislative/regulations/public comment side of things the only way to be involved in and doing work for conservation?

i'm not one to be talking, to be sure. my involvement level sucks on all fronts, other than sending some lengthy, albeit respectful, e-mails to my commission.

As someone who has spent 20 years in that field, I wonder this all the time. I do believe that citizens working together without the involvement of politicians or the agency (at least on the first, critical stages) is crucial to any conservation effort to work. Attending Gov't meetings is a big part of the conservation success story. When our grandfathers and great-grandfathers & mothers fought to restore wildlife in the first few decades of the 20th century, they did so with out much thought of what they get out of it. It was a mission to right a wrong.

Now we tend to deal with issues of abundance in wildlife species that we've put the lion's share of our conservation ethic into (game species). We (hunters) left behind nongame species because we didn't see much value in them.

I do think that social media is watering down what Conservation truly is. When we have slogans about stuff rather than actually promoting the work being done to increase the public estate to ensure better outcomes for wildlife, when we work with landowners to find better solutions for problematic species like wolves, bears, and yes, elk, we are following the edicts of Roosevelt and Leopold. Randy is the only one I've seen in this business who sticks his neck out routinely for real conservation efforts, rather than reverting to slogans. People want to know why Randy has such rabid friends and followers? Because he puts his money, time and efforts where his mouth is, and he doesn't grandstand about it. Humility and grace are weaknesses in so much of modern hunting. The new model is to elevate the hyper-partisan approach in politics to declare enemies and allies, rather than neighbors and cousins.

Humans have evolved to value the dopamine hit of social media malarkey, and now there's a 21 page thread about the issue. If that's not "Case in point," I don't know what is.

To that end - are the influencers dumbing us down? By and large, I do think so. I don't want Cam to give away a Raptor, I want him to sit down with guys who think differently than he does, and then be the leader he claims he is.

Have to give Steve a bit of credit though, he made noise on the corner crossing issue recently when many others were afraid to touch it with a ten foot pole.

Corner crossing isn't conservation. It's access. There is a big difference here, especially when you consider the other perspective and what we could gain and/or lose by "winning" on corner crossing.

 

[TheTone]

now, just a little devils advocate - is citizen involvement in the legislative/regulations/public comment side of things the only way to be involved in and doing work for conservation?

i'm not one to be talking, to be sure. my involvement level sucks on all fronts, other than sending some lengthy, albeit respectful, e-mails to my commission.

A person could get a job doing natural resources work like Matt does

 

[gouch]

This is where Matt Rinella is setting on the shore watching the boat sail over the horizon. Hunting quietly is not going to save deer in eastern Montana from five weeks of OTC rut hunting and doe permits by the truck load.
The biggest wave of new hunters I ever experienced was in early to mid 90's. The wave caused by Randy and others was more of a ripple on an already flooded field.
By the late 80's deer on the Custer had fully recovered from the bad winters in the late 70's and some road closures also helped. Nineteen eighty seven was the best year I ever saw. By 1989 word of quality hunting was getting out. There was no social media, other then a brag board at Big Bear. It was just word of mouth. By the mid nineties hunters were everywhere. It wasn't just roadhunters or newbies, It was hunters that got after it like @Greenhorn and @Bambistew. Would be cerious to know how they learned about the Custer without social media. Hunting quitly is not going to save us from all the advancments in technology and popultion growth. Only regulation is going to do that.

I once had a honey hole that we referred to as the land of monster bucks, because of all the big bucks in the area. It also happened to have the largest concentration of elk of anywhere I have ever seen. there was me and my friend and a fairly large camp, all from the same family, that hunted the area regularly. Then there would always be a few transient hunters come through from time to time. Then one day I was taking my bow for a walk hoping to come across one of those monster bucks or perhaps a nice rag horn to shoot, when I heard what sounded like a herd of buffalo stampeding, combined with an English fox hunt. Suddenly I was surrounded by elk everywhere, running for their lives as if they were in some kind of Steaven King novel. then five camouflaged two legged creatures carrying bows, one of them blowing the elk bugle that I had previously mistaken for a fox hunt bugle came running up to me. They stopped to catch their breath and excitedly told me about the herd of over one hundred elk they had just spooked. (No shit Shurlock) As we spoke, they said they belonged to an archery club and told me the name of that club. I didn't pay attention, so I don't know the name. They said there was a meeting on Tuesday, and I should come and that I should join that club, but I have never been one to join clubs, so I declined. Well apparently, at that meeting Tuesday, they told everyone about my sweet little honey hole, and everyone told everyone else, because the next weekend there was a camp on every flat spot within miles.

The elk disappeared pretty fast, and the deer weren't far behind and after a decade or so the hunters gave up as well. The deer never did really come back but after a few years the elk seemed to be recovering and I had a couple of years that almost seemed like the good old days before the elk started to disappear again. So, word does travel fast as there are way too many people out there that took their mommies advice seriously when they were told to share their toys.

I never share my toys.

 

[geetar]

Remindeded me of this. Maybe won't resonate with the western guys as much as the midwest guys, but you get the point.
View attachment 305027

We need more tailgate photos of bucks that have been killed and less posed / staged photos of bucks that have been harvested.

 

[TOGIE]

To that end - are the influencers dumbing us down? By and large, I do think so. I don't want Cam to give away a Raptor, I want him to sit down with guys who think differently than he does, and then be the leader he claims he is.

excellent post, per usual ben.

and this brings us right back to the other portion of this topic: cam has gone off the rails - matt invites him over for a level headed and intelligent butting of heads, if you will. cam gives him a public middle finger and threatens to sue him. reminds me of fred eshelman for some reason...

cam claims to not want to be some big ambassador or voice for the hunting community, he's just a guy (false humility) - i've literally seen it come out of his mouth in a video clip. he then says people like steve should be and are because they're good with their words. you can't say that kind of stuff then continue to put on the big giant clusterf*&k show he's putting on. he's an ambassador and voice for hunting whether or not he wants to be and his denial of that is pure ignorance at best and it's borderline malicious at worst.

 

[Ben Lamb]

excellent post, per usual ben.

and this brings us right back to the other portion of this topic: cam has gone off the rails - matt invites him over for a level headed and intelligent butting of heads, if you will. cam gives him a public middle finger and threatens to sue him. reminds me of fred eshelman for some reason...

cam claims to not want to be some big ambassador or voice for the hunting community, he's just a guy (false humility) - i've literally seen it come out of his mouth in a video clip. he then says people like steve should be and are because they're good with their words. you can't say that kind of stuff then continue to put on the big giant clusterf*&k show he's putting on. he's an ambassador and voice for hunting whether or not he wants to be and his denial of that is pure ignorance at best and it's borderline malicious at worst.

The question then becomes, how do you influence the guy to move into a better direction?

I'd hazard a guess here that the mean girls episode has probably cemented his approach, rather than alter it.

And while I respect what Matt is trying to do, he's feeding this beast as much as anyone for the same thing: Growing the reach.

 

[atlas]

Trapping has been around forever. The general public doesn't have to watch the videos. Same way I don't watch videos about shit that bothers me or I don't want to see.

It's not like these videos are being played on TV at your local bar... they're YouTube videos...

I was getting lost in the instagram algorithm yesterday and saw this. Videos are getting played at the bar but they probably have a greater reach on the internet.

This is likely the guy who set the trap and either was targeting wolves or didn't want this wolf or was making a how to release video but either way the video got co-opted from it's original purpose. Now it's supposedly a video of a hero saving a wolf from a trap.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0reyr-uDiR/

Get a load of the comments and description. This is probably a very helpful video if you needed to ever release a wolf from a trap. But as you can see here its doing more harm than good.

 

[gouch]

excellent post, per usual ben.

and this brings us right back to the other portion of this topic: cam has gone off the rails - matt invites him over for a level headed and intelligent butting of heads, if you will. cam gives him a public middle finger and threatens to sue him. reminds me of fred eshelman for some reason...

cam claims to not want to be some big ambassador or voice for the hunting community, he's just a guy (false humility) - i've literally seen it come out of his mouth in a video clip. he then says people like steve should be and are because they're good with their words. you can't say that kind of stuff then continue to put on the big giant clusterf*&k show he's putting on. he's an ambassador and voice for hunting whether or not he wants to be and his denial of that is pure ignorance at best and it's borderline malicious at worst.

Thank you TOGIE. Your post just made me realize why I can't stay away from this thread.

It takes me back to when I was just a little boy sitting cross legged on the floor listening to my mommy and aunt Thelma at the kitchen table drinking coffee and discussing the convoluted lives of them folks on " General Hospital."

 

[brocksw]

The question then becomes, how do you influence the guy to move into a better direction?

Get Elon Musk to buy all the private ranches Cammy hunts and blacklist him?

 

[bigsky2]

You are absolutely right about this, but I do want to throw one observation out there.

In the last decade of myself trying to pay attention, I've gone to Season Setting meetings, the legislature, the commission, and commented when I thought it mattered - in person or over the wire. Montana has been flooded with "Hunting Influencers" - the only few I see getting involved with regulations in any sort of consistency is Randy and Matt and sometimes Ryan Callaghan. I had hopes that the Meateater Empire coming to Bozeman would bring some well-known faces - business owners - to where the sausage is made when the botulism has taken over. I ain't seen em yet, and when public comments are turned loose for the public to read, there's a bothersome silence.

Agreed. And none of those that you mentioned commented on this year's season setting.

 

[Nameless Range]

Agreed. And none of those that you mentioned commented on this year's season setting.

Are emails sent directly to commissioners turned loose as public comment? I feel like I have written commissioners via email, and not the dept website (though I typically do both), and subsequently not seen my comments. I could be wrong.

 

[bigsky2]

No, I don't believe they are. It is entirely possible that those people sent emails directly to commissioners rather than submitting comments through the FWP website. However, comments on the commission amendments that were supposed to be e-mailed to the commission email address (not individual commissioners) were recently released on FWP's website, and I didn't see any of their comments in there either.

 

[Straight Arrow]

No, I don't believe they are. It is entirely possible that those people sent emails directly to commissioners rather than submitting comments through the FWP website. However, comments on the commission amendments that were supposed to be e-mailed to the commission email address (not individual commissioners) were recently released on FWP's website, and I didn't see any of their comments in there either.

Did you know there is a separate FWP Commission meeting thread?

 

[bigsky2]

Did you know there is a separate FWP Commission meeting thread?

Yep, I was just answering Nameless's question.

 

[KingOfTagSoup]

Have to give Steve a bit of credit though, he made noise on the corner crossing issue recently when many others were afraid to touch it with a ten foot pole.

Yes if anyone has time I highly recommend listening to the Meat eater podcast where they interviewed the corner crossing lawyer. Very insightful and important for anyone who hunts public land