Wild Dispatch: Field Standard Podcast

Industrial Trout & the Greenback | Road Note 001

Josh Crumpton — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 13:45:52 GMT

In this first Road Note, we cross the divide from the high-tech precision of modern industry to the layered, industrial history of the Colorado high country. Rolling east out of Montrose after Mayfly Dealer Days, Texas Josh looks past the anodized aluminum and sealed drags of the gear room to find the foundational stories of the water itself—from the 19th-century ambition of the railroads to the Greenback Cutthroat currently haunting the headwaters.

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In this Signal:

The Iron Horse Legacy: A look at the “industrial optimism” of the late 1800s and the era of “milk can” trout stocking that built the Colorado fly fishing economy from the back of a moving train.
The Resilient Ghost: The history of the Greenback Cutthroat trout—the native jewel declared extinct in 1937 that managed to survive in the high-altitude margins of the Rockies.
Succession in the Rockies: Reflecting on the change in the Southwest Colorado landscape, from the quiet, analog era to the high-velocity outdoor industry of today.
Fall TV Project Teaser: A first look at the new Field Standard television project launching this autumn—covering travel, fishing, cooking, and the conservation that defines our pursuit.

Chapter Markers:
00:00:04 | The Cold Open: East out of Montrose
00:01:37 | The Frequency: Signature Intro
00:02:31 | Industrial Ambition: The Railroad Trout
00:03:29 | Resilience in the Margins: The Greenback Ghost
00:04:56 | The Mobile Signal: Fall TV Project Teaser

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Lead Bans & Border Walls | The Wire 001

Josh Crumpton — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:03:44 GMT

In the first installment of The Wire, we track the legislative movements and conservation battles shaping our access to the outdoors. While our monthly episodes of The Field Standard serve as deep-dive meditations on heritage and philosophy, The Wire is our weekly pulse—a tactical briefing on the issues moving across the wire right now.

From the halls of Washington D.C. to the desert reaches of the Big Bend, the decisions made this week carry consequences that will be felt for generations. We don’t just report the news; we translate what it means for the person holding the fly rod or the shotgun.

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In this Wire:

The Lead Line: We break down House Bill 556 (the Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act) and its aim to prevent blanket lead bans on federal lands. We look back at the 1991 steel shot transition to understand the real-world economics of non-toxic ammunition.
The Boundary Waters at Risk: A look at H.J. Res 140 and the attempt to bypass 20 years of science to allow sulfide-ore copper mining at the headwaters of America’s most visited wilderness.
The Big Bend Waiver: Why the Department of Homeland Security is waiving 28 federal laws to fast-track a border wall through Big Bend Ranch State Park, and why local sheriffs are calling for better tech over more steel.
A River Reconnected: Celebrating a record-breaking year for American Rivers with 100 dams removed in 2025, restoring nearly 5,000 miles of free-flowing water.
Texas Giants: The 40th Anniversary of the ShareLunker program kicks off with back-to-back heavyweight bass from Lake OH Ivy.
Reprieve for Catalina: A major update on the Catalina Island mule deer eradication plan as a court-granted stay grounds the sharpshooters—for now.

The wood is dry, the signal is strong.

Resources:

Full Episode Transcript

The Wire 001: Lead Bans & Border Walls
Host: Joshua Crumpton

00:00:00 | The Frequency: A Weekly Pulse

I’m glad you found the frequency today. Last week we released episode one. Moving forward, you can expect shorter weekly recordings, keeping the signal active. Some weeks it’ll be a news dispatch like we’re doing today. Other weeks, we’ll dig into the archives for a bit of hunting history, or maybe a session of Wildly Gourmet. Our full length episodes will drop monthly. Look for episode two in April. But in between, like I said, we’ll be right here every single week with an update. Looks like there’s a lot moving across the wire. Decisions made this week in state houses and on federal lands will determine the opportunities we have for years to come. The wood is dry, the signal is strong. Let’s get rolling. This is the Field Standard Podcast, home of the sporting conservationist. And we’re broadcasting from the edge of the civilized world. I cut it up with a chance. Oh, there we go, boy! And this is your outdoor news, covering issues that impact your life, your hunting, and your fishing. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today, from West Texas to the boundary waters with stops along the way for little bass fishing and dam removals. But first, let’s start with a lead story coming out of Washington.

00:01:27 | The Lead Line: House Bill 556

This past Wednesday, March 18th, the House of Representatives passed House Bill 556, the Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act. The final vote was 215-202. It now heads to the Senate. This bill is a line in the sand. It’s designed to stop federal agencies from opposing blanket bans, specifically on lead ammunition and tackle on federal lands. Unless the ban is consistent with state law and supportive of site-specific peer-reviewed science. For those who’ve been in the field a few decades, this could feel like the 1991 Waterfowl Steel Shot Rewind. That ban wasn’t just a policy shift, it was a total culture shock. Now, when we talk about lead ban, there are two very distinct sides to this argument. On one hand, the proponent’s position is rooted in toxicology. Groups like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service point to decades of research showing that spent lead is being ingested by birds like loons and swans or scavengers like the California Condor. They argue that the population level decline is real, and that moving to non-toxic alternatives is the only way to protect the chain. On the other hand, the opposition says this is an issue of access and overreach. Hunters and state agencies argue that blanket bans are often political rather than biological. They point to the pocketbook reality. Non-toxic ammo is significantly more expensive. If you force a transition before the market is ready, you price people out of the field, which is what happened in 1991. And don’t forget, we’re the ones footing the bill for conservation. Every time you buy a box of shells, you’re paying that Pittman Robertson tax. That’s the engine that drives state conservation, and if we price hunters out, that engine could stall. Before we go further, in the spirit of full disclosure, let me say, I’m not a fan of federal overreach. But this one doesn’t really impact me, because for the most part, I’ve already switched to lead-free. Now let me tell you why I’ve been using tungsten steel blends, bismuth, and copper. I think the new technology for these shots makes them highly effective, and yes, the shot does cost more, but I just have to choose my shots more wisely. And most importantly, the food I put on my family’s plate is lead-free. This was my main reason for making the switch. Okay, before we close this story out, let’s look at the history here, because if you want to know where we’re going, you have to look at 1991. Before the ban, it was estimated that 1.6 to 3.8 million waterfowl died annually from lead poisoning in North America. These birds weren’t being harvested. They were ingesting spent pellets, mistaking them for grid. By the time the ban was fully implemented in 91, researchers saw a nearly 50% reduction in lead-related mortality almost immediately. But 91 is also famous for being the year active duck hunters bottomed out. In the 70s, active duck hunting community numbered around 2.4 million. By 1991, that number plummeted to 1 million. That’s a whopping loss of 50% of the hunting base in less than two decades. Back then, steel shot was two to three times more expensive than lead. Hunters feared steel would destroy their old barrels. It acted as a massive financial tax on the sport. Interestingly, one of the loudest arguments against the ban was crippling rates. The argument was that steel was not effective as lead and more birds would be crippled. Well, pre-band crippling rates were around 23%, post-ban they dropped to 15%. Could be only the best duck hunters were still hunting, who knows? Either way, reports say that a change in shot forced a change in behavior. Hunters began shooting at closer, more ethical distances. By the late 90s, the number of hunters climbed back up to around 1.6 million. In all fairness, this increase could be partially because the drought ended and water returned to the prairies. Wherever you land on this topic, it’s at a crossroads of science, tradition, and economics. And as I said before, the debate now moves to the Senate.

00:05:38 | Sulfide and Silence: The Boundary Waters

Moving north to the boundary waters. For those of you who haven’t been living and breathing this one, here’s the quick and dirty on the situation. This is America’s most visited wilderness, over one million acres of boreal forest, and a network of some of the cleanest lakes on the planet. In January of 2023, we thought the debate was over. The Department of the Interior signed a 20-year mining ban covering 225,000 acres of Superior National Forest. The ban was the result of years of science and over 675,000 public comments. But here’s a catch. The ban only protects the watershed, the land sitting right at the headwaters of the wilderness. There’s a Chilean-owned company called Twin Metals that wants to build a massive copper sulfide mine right there. Look, this isn’t about digging a hole in the ground, it’s about the chemistry. Sulfide ore doesn’t play nice with water. And in a place defined by its lakes, this is a recipe for a permanent disaster. When you mine sulfide ore, it hits the air and water. It creates sulfuric acid. If it leaks, it doesn’t stay on the mine site. It flows north, straight into the heart of the boundary waters. Pollution in this watershed would put clean water, wildlife, and the entire local outdoor economy at risk. Once polluted, these waters cannot be restored. Now, proponents argue this is an issue of national security. They say we need these minerals, copper, nickel, and cobalt, to power our electric grid and get away from foreign oil. They see the land as a lockbox that needs to be opened. But for the sporting community, this is about the health of America’s wild places, protecting clean water, and the durability of conservation protections. The House has already passed the House Joint Resolution 140 to kill that 20 year mining ban. Now it’s sitting in the Senate. And there’s a 60-day superpower clock ticking toward a late April expiration. The trick is that they’re using a legislative shortcut, the Congressional Review Act to wipe out decades of science. That should worry anyone who cares about stable policy. No matter which side of the aisle you’re on. Right now, Senator Smith and Clobuchet are bleeding that clock dry, hunting for crossover votes to kill that resolution before April. If they hold out, the clock expires, and the 20-year mining ban remains in place. If they don’t, the law essentially bars any future administration from passing a substantially similar rule. At that point, the only way to get those protections back is through a new and specific act of Congress. And do you want to know how the slang term, an act of Congress, came to be? It’s because getting 60 votes in Congress was historically difficult. And in modern politics, forget about it. This political maneuver sets a very dangerous precedent. Call your senator, tell them no on House Joint Resolution 140.

00:08:36 | Waiving the Law: Big Bend Ranch

Closer to my home in Texas, we have a shell game happening out west. Customs and border protection remove the physical wall from the Big Ben National Park. But as of today, the Department of Homeland Security is still fast tracking the 30-foot steel right across Big Ben Ranch State Park. And get this. To get those shovels in the ground faster, they’ve waived 28 federal laws. That’s right, that’s 28 federal laws. Clean Water Protections, Endangered Species Acts, just bypassed in the name of speed. Just last week, on March 12th, a coalition of 132 conservation groups and local Texas business set a formal letter to the Senate Committee on Appropriations. They’re demanding a total funding ban on the border wall construction for both Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park in the upcoming Homeland Security Appropriations Bill. Look, let me be clear. This is about border security. If a wall is truly what’s needed to keep our country safe, then we should do that. But my take, you can’t just skip the homework. If you’re going to build something that changes the landscape forever, you owe it to the land and the people to do the impact studies first. And honestly, these are the guys on the ground. The five border sheriffs in the big bin sector issued a joint statement opposing a continuous physical wall. They say a continuous wall just isn’t practical for this kind of terrain. And they’d rather see money go towards better tech and more boots. We need to protect the legacy of these wild places. We want the future generations to look back and say that we were responsible stewards. The goal is to slow things down so we can do the responsible thing and conduct proper impact studies. Call your representative and your senator. Tell them I’m a voter and a sportsman. I want a total funding ban on the border wall construction included in the next appropriations bill.

00:10:31 | Running Free: 5,000 Miles Unlocked

Let’s get to some good news. American Rivers just confirmed that 2025 saw 100 dams removed across 30 states. Think about that number. 4,893 miles of river finally running free again. That’s more than a record. It’s a total reconnection of a system. When you see a river finally unlocked, it’s like watching the veins of the country finally starting to breathe and move again. It’s a record for a reason, and it’s a massive win for anyone who carries a fly rod. We’ve now removed 2,350 dams since 1912.

00:11:08 | Heavyweight Rounds: The ShareLunker 40th

And here’s another little hit of Texas Pride. Sorry, playing a little favoritism to the Lone Star State. It’s the fortieth anniversary of the Toyota Sherlunker program, and Lake’s JB Thomas and OH Ivy are trading heavyweight blows. Tristan March of Atlanta reeled in a 13.65 pound bass on Sunday, and Carl Self of Spicewood followed with a 13.73 pounder on Monday night. Both within twenty four hours of each other. Think about that. Absolute giants. Back to back in less than twenty four hours. That’s a hell of a run for Texas Water. And it shows that the fortieth anniversary of this program is starting off with a bang. And let’s look at OHIV. Sixty-two legacy class fish in just six years. That’s not luck. That’s world class management meeting world class genetics. It’s the gold standard of sportsmen and biologists working together.

00:12:07 | The Reprieve: Catalina’s Mule Deer

Finally, I have a major update on a story we’ve been following closely. The plan to eradicate every mule deer on Catalina Island. The sharpshooters are officially grounded. A coalition of hunters and residents, the coalition to save Catalina Island Deer, filed a lawsuit to block the plan, targeting the Catalina Island Conservancy and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The court just granted a temporary stay, so for now, those helicopters are staying on the tarmac. No sharpshooters, no aerial gunning, at least until the court gets to look at the fine print and decide if the state unlawfully bypassed to the California Environmental Quality Act. It really comes down to finding the balance between long-term ecological goals and the immediate reality of the people who live on that land. The Catalina Island Conservancy has defended their plan, stating that the island’s natural ecosystem and thriving deer population are simply mutually exclusive. However, the state has mostly remained quiet publicly while moving ahead with the permit. And that silence is exactly what this lawsuit is targeting. And here’s the irony. The Los Angeles County Fire Chief is saying that without the deer, the fine fuel on the island will build up, creating a fire risk. So you might save a plant only to watch the whole island go up in smoke, as the fire risk to the city of Avalon spikes. This stay is a massive win for the local residents and hunters, who’ve been saying that management is way better than eradication. For now, the deer have a reprieve, and it feels like the reasonable people in the room, the ones asking for management instead of a massacre, just got a whole lot louder.

00:13:49 | Accountability: Holding the Line

And that’s the news for the week. I put links in the show notes. Do me a favor, go check up on your representatives, see how they’re voting, and hold them accountable for it. We’ll be back next week with more from the field. Until then, supporting conservationists, stay wild, stay free, and stay informed. And that’s the news.

About The Field Standard

From headwaters to coastlines, from high timber to prairie and everything in between, The Field Standard celebrates the history and heritage of a life lived outdoors while tackling the issues impacting our world today.

Host Josh Crumpton brings decades of experience from fine dining to field dressing, creating content for hunters, anglers, and conservationists who want more than gear reviews and grip-and-grin content.

Full episodes drop monthly, updates and content posted weekly.
The wood is dry, the signal is strong.

Connect

Instagram: @Texas_Josh
Website: Spoke Hollow Outfitters

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If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on your podcast platform. It helps us keep the signal strong.

A New Signal from the Edge

Josh Crumpton — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 13:31:33 GMT

Where the blueprints of conservation meet the realities of modern field craft

The cast iron stove in the bunkhouse takes its time warming up on cold mornings. Always has. There’s something about that gradual heat, the way it slowly pushes back against February’s grip, that sets the right pace for what matters. Some of you may remember The Bunkhaus Podcast. We let that fire burn down a while back. This morning, we’re lighting something new.

The Field Standard isn’t a revival—it’s an evolution. Built in the same room where bound volumes of Forest and Stream (1881-1894) line the shelves, where turkey calls hang next to leather-bound field notes, where the ghosts of conservation’s architects still whisper their instructions to anyone willing to listen.

What The Field Standard Is

This is a monthly podcast for hunters, anglers, and conservationists who understand that the “why” matters as much as the “how.” Each episode moves between practical intelligence and deeper purpose—from federal land policy to 8,000-year-old turkey calls, from tomorrow’s conservation battles to forgotten mentors who built the world we hunt in today.

The format pulls from what worked before while pushing into new territory:

The Wire: Policy and news that affects your boots on the ground
Hunting History: Stories of the people who figured it out first
Features: Deep dives into the characters and ideas that shaped conservation
Wildly Gourmet: Wild game cooking with the philosophy intact

Episode 1: The Architecture of the Wild

In this debut episode, recorded on one of 2026’s rare cold February mornings, we explore how the blueprints of American conservation still guide us today. From George Bird Grinnell—the forgotten father who taught Roosevelt about conservation—to brand new federal policies that could open millions of acres to hunting and fishing.

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Also available on:

This Episode Features:

The Policy Shift That Matters: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum just flipped the script on federal lands. The new default? Open to hunting and fishing unless specifically closed. We break down what this actually means for your access.

The Man History Forgot: George Bird Grinnell used a hunting magazine to save Yellowstone, mentored Theodore Roosevelt, and built the architecture of American conservation. Most hunters have never heard his name. That changes now.

From Wing Bones to Mouth Calls: The 8,000-year evolution of turkey calling, including how a rabid dog bite in 1920s New Orleans led to the invention of the diaphragm call.

Plus: California’s deer eradication controversy, and Oregon’s IP 28—the ballot initiative that would end hunting entirely.

A Moment from the Episode:

“Nobody handed me these rituals. I followed instructions left by people who understood that the wild doesn’t maintain itself, that someone has to do the work. That’s what this show is about, really. It’s for hunters, for anglers, for people who care about wild places and want to understand why they matter, not just how to use them.”

Another Essential Exchange:

“Grinnell spent his whole life building something most people would never even see—the architecture that lies underneath it. He didn’t need credit; he just needed it to work. That’s the thing about all of it. Someone did the groundwork before we even got here. He left us the instructions. Now it’s our turn to decide what to do with them.”

Where to Find The Field Standard

New episodes release monthly, crafted between hunts and conservation work on the ranch. Each one builds on the last, creating a body of knowledge for those who believe the sporting life demands both excellence and ethics.

Full transcripts & resources: Episode 1 Show Notes
Instagram: @Texas_Josh
Newsletter home: Wild Dispatch on Substack

The Field Standard broadcasts from the edge of the civilized world—a place carved out with chainsaws and held together by purpose.

The wood is dry. The signal is strong. Let’s get rolling.

The Architecture of the Wild

Josh Crumpton — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 04:08:53 GMT

Episode Description

From a rare cold February morning in the bunkhouse, Joshua Crumpton (Texas Josh) launches the debut of The Field Standard podcast. This episode explores the hidden blueprints of American conservation and the modern policy shifts affecting every hunter and angler in the field today.

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Episode Highlights

Federal Public Land Access: Deep dive into Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s Secretarial Order 3447 and the new “open by default” standard for BLM and National Wildlife Refuges
The Wire: Latest updates on the Catalina Island deer eradication approval and Oregon’s IP 28 ballot initiative
Tribute to Fox Haas: Honoring the 75-year turkey hunting legacy of the man who helped build Mossy Oak
Turkey Call History: From 8,000-year-old Native American wingbones to the rabies-inspired invention of the modern mouth call
Feature - George Bird Grinnell: The “Father of American Conservation,” mentor to Theodore Roosevelt, and the man who used Forest and Stream magazine to save Yellowstone

Chapter Markers

00:00:00 | The Bunkhouse: Rituals and Blueprints
00:03:41 | The Briefing: Turkey Calling and Conservation Roots
00:04:31 | The Wire: Federal Public Land Hunting and Fishing Access
00:06:10 | Tribute: Fox Haas and the Mossy Oak Legacy
00:08:14 | The Wire: Catalina Island Deer Eradication Approval
00:10:30 | The Wire: Oregon IP 28 Ballot Initiative Update
00:12:58 | Turkey Call History: From Wingbones to Mouth Calls
00:17:20 | George Bird Grinnell: The Father of American Conservation
00:30:28 | The Trail Out: Defending Wild Places

Resources Mentioned

Federal Policy: Secretarial Order 3447: Open-By-Default Public Land Access
Action Alert: Oregon IP 28 Signature Tracker & Opposition
Conservation News: Killing Catalina Documentary
Tribute: In Loving Memory of Mr. Fox Haas
History: George Bird Grinnell: The Father of American Conservation

Full Episode Transcript

Episode 1: The Architecture of the Wild
Host: Joshua Crumpton

00:00:00 | The Bunkhouse: Rituals and Blueprints
It’s a rare February morning in 2026. It’s actually cold enough to see my breath outside. Some of you might remember me from a podcast we used to do called the House. We’ve been quiet for a while now. Well, this is what comes next. This is the Field Standard podcast, and this is where we make it. I push into the bunkhouse and just stand there for a second.

The smell hits me—dry mineral. The way a room smells when it’s been closed up for a few weeks. We’ve been on the road hunting away from the home ranch and haven’t been back here in what seems like a minute. It feels good to be home. It feels good to slow down. And it feels good to be back in the ritual.

If you’re coming from the bunkhouse podcast, you’ll recognize some of what we’re doing here. We’re bringing back hunting history, little stories about people who came before us. The ones who figured things out, invented things, built the traditions we inherited. We’re bringing back the news to what’s going on in the world that hunters and anglers ought to know about—policy stuff, conservation stuff. But the way we talk about it, not the way a press release reads.

Man, this is one of my favorite rituals, lighting this old cast iron stove on a cold morning and nothing really beats it. I love watching the fire come up slow, gradually filling the room with warmth.

We’re also adding some new things. There’s a segment called Wildly Gourmet—Wild Game Cooking, but not just recipes. It’s the thinking behind the food. Why we cook. What we kill. What the table means, how a good meal is sometimes where the next hunter gets made. And we’ve got a new feature format. These are longer, deeper. Sometimes it’s me telling you a story—the kind of history that doesn’t make the textbooks. Sometimes I’ve been chasing something down, making calls, digging into something that deserves more attention. And sometimes it’s just a conversation. Me and someone who has something worth saying sitting down and talking it through.

There’s bookshelves everywhere in here. There’s mounts all over the wall. But what I came back for is on a shelf above my desk in the back room. The bound volumes: Forest and Stream, 1881 through 1894. Originals. Pages so brittle. And I turn them—clean hands and held breath. I’ve spent more hours with these than I can count. The advertisements are for shot shells that don’t exist anymore. Logs that burned down before my father was born. But the articles, the instructions—those are still good. How to build a turkey call from a wing bone. How to read water for trout. How to think about wild country as something that belongs to you only because you’ve agreed to defend it.

These are the blueprints, instructions for a life that someone else figured out a century before I was even born. Nobody handed me these rituals. I followed instructions left by people who understood that the wild doesn’t maintain itself, that someone has to do the work. That’s what this show is about, really. It’s for hunters, for anglers, for people who care about wild places and want to understand why they matter, not just how to use them. If you’re the kind of person who wants more than tips and tactics, if you want the why underneath the what? Then you’re in the right place. We’re putting out new episodes monthly. The show lives on Substack over at Wild Dispatch. That’s where you’ll find the show notes, recipes from Wildly Gourmet, all of it between episodes. If you want to follow along, you can find me on Instagram at Texas Josh. Links are in the show notes.

00:03:41 | The Briefing: Turkey Calling and Conservation Roots
This is the Field Standard podcast, home of the sporting conservationist, and we’re broadcasting from the edge of the civilized world. I cut it out with a chainsaw. Oh, there we go. This is way down there.

Welcome to the Field Standard podcast. I’m your host, Josh Crumpton. Spring is just around the corner. In fact, in many places that already feels like spring. They are changing. And that means the woods are waking up. Today on the program, we’re talking about the history of the turkey call, how we learned to speak a language that was never meant for us. We’re digging into the very roots of the sport and conservation movement, and the man who built the architecture of the wild. The wood is dry. The signal strong. Let’s get rolling.

00:04:31 | The Wire: Federal Public Land Hunting and Fishing Access
Here’s what’s happening in the great outdoors. News that might impact your life, your hunting, your fishing. So there’s a significant policy shift coming out of Washington that I want you to understand. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed secretarial order 3447. What it does—it flips the default assumption on federal public lands. BLM land, National wildlife refuges, Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs, even some national park units where hunting is already allowed.

The new standard is these lands are open to hunting and fishing, unless specifically closed. Not the other way around. This is a big deal. Now this doesn’t override existing closures or gut conservation safeguards. It’s not a free for all, but it changes the starting point. For decades, access decisions have been made piecemeal—region by region, agency by agency, no consistent philosophy. This says hunting and fishing are legitimate uses of public land. Period. Start there.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesbitt said he’ll personally review any decision that could impact hunting or fishing access. And he set a goal: all federal wildlife refuges and hatcheries open to hunting and fishing within two years, except where there’s a legal mandate, public safety issue or sensitive species situation. I’m not sure exactly what this could look like on the ground, but I can tell you this: I love the assumption that our lands are now dedicated to allow hunting and fishing on them as default. Whether it translates to new ground under your boots depends on implementation. But this policy shift is real.

00:06:10 | Tribute: Fox Haas and the Mossy Oak Legacy
I want to take a moment here. We’re about to do a whole segment on the history of Turkey calling—the wing bones, the box calls, the tradition that stretches back thousands of years. And last month, we lost someone who was a living bridge to that tradition. Fox Haas has passed away at 95. If you don’t recognize his name, you know what he built. Fox was father to the man that started Mossy Oak.

But before Mossy Oak existed, Fox was just a hunter. A serious one. Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1930. Killed his first Turkey in 1944 at 14 years old, and then killed one every year for the next 75 years, minus two years, when he was bedridden with tuberculosis and nearly died. 75 years of chasing turkeys in the woods. I don’t even know what that would look like as an adult onset hunter. I would have to live really a long time to do that. It’s just an impressive feat.

He was a member of the Choctaw Bluff Hunting Club in southern Alabama, rubbing shoulders with some of the earliest pioneers in Turkey hunting and conservation. In 1977, he pushed friends at Mississippi Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks to reintroduce turkey near his home in West Point. Those birds thrived so well they became a seed stock for northern Mississippi. That’s the kind of man he was. Not just a hunter, a builder. He encouraged his son to start Mossy Oak. When he retired, he came to work there full time. Couple of years ago, they released a vest in his honor. The Mr. Fox vest sold out immediately. One of them auctioned at NWTF for over $30,000. All of it went, you guessed it, to Turkey conservation.

What are we going to do when men like this are all gone? We’re all going to have to do a lot of growing to fill shoes this big. Mossy Oak put out a statement when he passed. They quoted him: “I believe it’s important to take care of the things we love. The good that men do will live long after they’re gone.” Fox was 95 years old. Rest easy.

00:08:14 | The Wire: Catalina Island Deer Eradication Approval
All right. Here’s another one that caught my attention. Catalina Island, 22 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. And there’s a plan on the table to eradicate every mule deer on the island. Knee jerk reaction: that’s total insanity. Who even came up with this plan? These folks, the Catalina Island Conservancy, which owns 88% of the island. They submitted a restoration management plan on January 30th. California Department of Fish and Wildlife signed off on it.

The plan calls for sharpshooters to kill all 1800 deer over the next five years. That’s right. All 1800 deer eradicated over the next five years. Now, the deer were introduced in the 1930s for hunting. The conservancy says they’re damaging native vegetation, competing with the Catalina Island fox, increasing wildfire risk. Their position is the island can have a functional ecosystem or it can have deer—not both. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, to be honest.

Here’s what’s interesting. Hunters are pushing back. Obviously, we don’t love the idea of eradicating a game population when hunting could manage it. But here’s the thing—non-hunters are pushing back too. Animal welfare groups. Local residents. The Catalina Island Humane Society called the plan immoral and unnecessary. Their representative said—now listen to this—”We’re fine with hunting. That’s the best option. We want ethical hunting.” When’s the last time you heard a humane society say that? Like never.

There’s a documentary called Killing Catalina that just came out. The filmmaker said he’s never seen a coalition like this. People on all sides of the political and environmental spectrum standing together against eradication. And it gets messier. The city of Avalon, which owns part of the island, passed ordinances prohibiting deer killing within city limits. They’re formally objecting to the plan. And guess what? Lawsuits are coming. So here you have two groups, very different sides of the coin, in complete agreement on something—that should tell you something. You guys really need to read the room. Meanwhile, hunters point out that when the state doubled available tags in 2020, the harvest rate hit 22%, and the Conservancy called it a failure. Now they’re back to locals-only hunts with 200 tags. You make that make sense for me? This is what happens when not all the stakeholders are in the room.

00:10:30 | The Wire: Oregon IP 28 Ballot Initiative Update
Speaking of ridiculousness, while reasonable people in California are finding common ground, there’s a ballot initiative in Oregon that shows you what happens when the other side goes off the rails. This is the absolute opposite side of the coin. This is when extremes become real extreme. Initiative petition 28. They’re calling it the ACT—People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions.

This is the third time they’ve tried this. Failed in 2022, failed in 2024. And now they’re back. What does it do? It would throw out every legal exception that allows humans to interact with animals. Hunting? Gone. Fishing? Gone. Trapping? Gone. But also livestock production, rodeos, pest control. The language is so broad that artificial insemination of cattle would be classified as—I’m not making this up—a sexual assault of an animal. This is so ridiculous that honestly, I don’t even know how to respond to it.

Oregon Hunters Association calls it an attack on the self-reliant lifestyle that would affect every Oregonian. The Farm Bureau says it would turn Oregon into a no-kill sanctuary state and force everyone to have meat and dairy shipped in from other states. Now, is this likely to pass? Probably not. Oregon has hunters, anglers, ranchers, farmers. But here’s the thing—they’ve already gathered 82% of the signatures they need. Oregon has a lower threshold than most states, which is why this keeps coming back up. David Michaelson, he admits it probably won’t pass. He told a reporter: “We’re aware it’s almost certainly not going to pass in 2026. But getting it on the ballot will make it more likely to pass in a future election. Our goal is to be persistent.”

So what does this tell you about their strategy? It says that these morons will not go away. They will keep coming back over and over and over again. So here’s my thought. Those non-hunting groups in California, the ones standing with hunters on Catalina Island saying hunting is the answer? Maybe we need to get them to make a phone call to Oregon. Because IP 28 is where it goes when reasonable people stop paying attention. And that’s the news.

00:12:58 | Turkey Call History: From Wingbones to Mouth Calls
This is hunting history. Brief facts for conservation-minded hunters and anglers just like you. Today we’re talking Turkey calls—a brief history of how hunters learned to speak a language that was never meant for human tongues.

So there’s this guy named Jim Radcliffe. This is the 1920s. He’s from Mobile, Alabama, and he’s stuck in New Orleans for three weeks because he got bit by a rabid animal. Now, rabies treatment in the 1920s—21 days, one shot a day. You can’t leave. You just wait. That’s three weeks in New Orleans. I can tell you this—I might leave with my rabies cured, but I’d probably be about 100 pounds heavier and I’m not sure my liver could make it through the ordeal.

So Radcliffe’s wandering the French Quarter, killing time between injections. Probably thinking about how he’d rather be in the turkey woods. And he comes across a street performer—a ventriloquist. The guy’s making bird sounds. No hands. No visible movement. Just something in his mouth pressed against his palate. And he’s throwing sounds that seem to be coming from absolutely nowhere. Radcliffe watches, and his mind goes to exactly where any hunter’s mind would go. He’s not thinking about songbirds. He’s thinking about turkeys. And he’s thinking, “If I could do that with a turkey call, my hands could stay on the gun.”

So he brings that idea home to Alabama. And that’s it—that’s where the mouth call comes from. Not some factory. Not a patent office. A hunter with rabies and time on his hands, watching a street performer and recognizing a tool.

I know the first turkey calls, however, were wing bones—hollowed bones from a turkey’s wing, cleaned and fitted together, played by sucking air instead of blowing. Native Americans figured this out thousands of years ago. We’re talking before pyramids, before Stonehenge, before written language. There’s one in the Smithsonian right now—8000 years old, still recognizable. You could probably pick it up and call a bird with it. 8000-year-old turkey bone. I’d take that in the woods and give it a shot. Probably couldn’t blow it any better than any other call, but I’d give it a shot.

So here’s the deal. Fast forward to 1881. A man named Charles Jordan publishes instructions for making a wing bone call in Forest and Stream, the biggest outdoor magazine in the country at the time. Jordan writes 21 more articles on Turkey calls over the next two decades. His surviving calls are the holy grail of the collecting world. Want to guess how much lettuce one of those calls will set you back? A few years ago, one of his original yelpers surfaced at an antique firearms sale in Texas. A collector verified the provenance and paid $50,000 for it. It’s in Charlotte now. Sits in a purpose-built room in a house—get this—a guy designed around his turkey call collection.

1897, Henry Gibson, an Arkansas farmer who also ran a fence company, patented the box call—cedar box, pivoting lid. That’s the template. Every box call since then, basically the same design. 1912, same year the Titanic sinks, a guy named Wade Saunders patented the first slate call, called it the Simplex Turkey call. 14 bucks a dozen.

See the pattern here? Something started to come together. So think about this—wing bones, 8000 years. Box calls, 1897. Slates, 1912. Mouth calls, 1920s. Every single one of them invented by someone trying to answer the same question: how do you make a sound a bird believes in? Every single one of them invented by a tinkerer, a hunter paying attention. Someone who listens to birds and bones. And in Radcliffe’s case, a street performer in the French Quarter.

The turkeys are American. The calls are American. And the tradition of building them, of trying to crack the code, speak the language, fool a bird that’s been fooling hunters for millennia—well, that’s American too. So this spring, you’re going to find me out in the woods with all those calls, trying my darndest to fool a bird like I do every year. Sometimes I get lucky and it all works out. And that is your hunting history.

00:17:20 | George Bird Grinnell: The Father of American Conservation
Kick back. Settle in. We’re about to take a deep dive. That magazine that published those turkey call instructions in 1881 was the same one being used to save the American West. Charles Jordan’s instructions for building a wing bone call ran alongside editorials about the slaughter of bison, the stripping of timber, the silence spreading across country that had been wild since before anyone thought to name it.

The magazine was called Forest and Stream, and the man who owned it understood something most Americans had not yet faced—the country was coming apart, one hide and one feather at a time, while the men in power just looked the other way. His name was George Bird Grinnell. Most hunters today have never even heard of him. By the time we’re done here, you’ll understand why that’s a problem and why everything you love about the outdoors runs through his hands.

Manhattan, 1857. This Manhattan looks nothing like the one you know today. A seven-year-old boy named George Bird Grinnell moves with his family to a property called Audubon Park. This is not a city block. This is estate land on the upper reaches of the island. Woods thick enough to wander for hours, streams still running clear. The kind of ground where a boy can disappear until supper and come back with mud on his knees and a bird’s nest mapped in his memory.

The land belonged to the late John James Audubon, the painter who gave America its birds. Audubon died six years before the Grinnells arrived, but his wife Lucy still lived on the property. She runs a small schoolhouse. His paintings hang on the walls. George enrolls, and Lucy Audubon becomes his first teacher about birds. She teaches him to pay attention to the wings, the songs, the weight of what her husband spent his life recording.

What young Grinnell doesn’t know is that he’ll spend the next 80 years defending what those paintings captured. He’ll dedicate so much of his life to protecting wild America that when he dies in 1938, The New York Times calls him the father of American conservation. Most hunters today have never heard of his name. And if you’re among those today, that changes.

Grinnell graduates from Yale in 1870. That summer, he joins a fossil hunting expedition to the Plains—Nebraska, Wyoming, Kansas, Utah. His first time west of the Mississippi. Somewhere in Nebraska, the locomotive stops. Not a station, not a signal. A herd of bison crossing the tracks. Grinnell watches from the window as they pass—thousands of animals moving like a dark river across the grass, so vast and so unhurried that the train simply waits.

On that trip, he meets Buffalo Bill Cody. He digs for fossils in the Badlands. He sleeps on ground that has never been fenced. And when he returns to New York at the end of summer, he’s not the same young man who left it. The West got into him, and it wasn’t going to let go.

He goes back in 1874, this time riding with George Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills as the expedition’s naturalist. A year later, he returns west again to survey Yellowstone, just three years after Congress declared it the nation’s first national park. What Grinnell finds is not what Congress imagined. Bison shot and left to stiffen in the snow, skinned for hides that would sell for $3 a piece back East. Elk and deer hauled out by the wagon load. Poachers camped openly along rivers because there was no one there to stop them. No rangers, no enforcement, no law with any teeth. Yellowstone existed on paper. The slaughter was what was happening on the ground. Grinnell walked through it all. He counted what remained, and he wrote it down. And he began to understand something most Americans had not yet faced—what was disappearing would not come back. The country he fell in love with on that first train ride West was bleeding out while the men in Washington argued about jurisdiction.

He finished his doctorate at Yale. But the West stayed with him—the bones bleaching on the plains, the silence where the herds used to move. In 1876, he took a job as a natural history editor at a weekly magazine called Forest and Stream. Four years later, he owned it. For the next 31 years, he ran what became the largest outdoor publication in North America. And he decided to use it. Forest and stream became a weapon. Grinnell went after market hunters stripping the plains for profit. He went after timber barons clearcutting forests. He went after railroads carving through country and calling it progress. He wrote editorial after editorial. He didn’t soften his language. He named names and he printed what the government would not say.

He sent his own reporters to Yellowstone, not for a week, for months at a time, to document the poaching everyone in Washington preferred to ignore. It paid off. In the winter of 1894, one of Grinnell’s reporters was camped in the park when the cavalry finally caught Ed Howell, the most notorious bison poacher in Yellowstone, standing over fresh kills, hides still warm, blood on the snow. The reporter was there. He got the story. He got the photographs. Grinnell printed them. America saw what had been happening in its first national park. Bison slaughtered in the open, poachers walking free because there was no law to hold them.

The outrage was immediate. Within weeks, Congressman John Lacey of Iowa, a hunter himself, pushed the Yellowstone Park Protection Act through both houses of Congress. President Cleveland signed it—the first federal wildlife protection law in American history, born from photographs published in a magazine by an editor who refused to look away. And that is what the press can do when someone decides to use it.

But the Yellowstone fight was not where Grinnell found his most important ally. That happened a year earlier, 1885. A 26-year-old politician from New York had written a book called Hunting Trips of a Ranchman. His name was Theodore Roosevelt, though not the Roosevelt that history would remember. Not the Rough Rider, not the president, not the face of the mountain. He was a young man who had gone west to grieve. His wife and mother died the same day in the same house. He found something in the Badlands that made him want to keep on living. And he wrote a book about hunting because he believed he had earned the right to say something about it.

Grinnell reviewed the book in Forest and Stream. He was not impressed. The review ran. Roosevelt read it, and sometime in the weeks that followed, he stormed into the forest and Stream offices in Manhattan and asked to see the man who’d written those words. What happened in that room was not a fight. It was a recognition. They talked about the West—what they both had seen out there. The herds shrinking, the country emptying, the slow mechanics of a world being unmade. They talked about what would happen if no one with influence decided to act. Somewhere in that conversation, two men who walked into a room as strangers walked out as allies. They would work together for the next 35 years.

First proof of that partnership came two years later, 1887—a dinner at Theodore Roosevelt’s home. Grinnell was at the table. So was General Sherman and a young forester named Gifford Pinchot, who would one day run the United States Forest Service. That night, they founded the Boone and Crockett Club. Grinnell and Roosevelt co-edited the club’s publications. They drafted legislation together. And when Roosevelt became president in 1901, Grinnell had already been shaping how he thought about conservation for 16 years. He didn’t stop once Roosevelt took office. He stayed in the room. He stayed in the ear.

But Big Game was not Grinnell’s only concern. The same year he met Roosevelt, 1886, he turned his attention to something else that was vanishing—birds. Not ducks and geese. Songbirds, herons, egrets, terns. Whole species disappearing into the millinery trade. Women’s hats—that’s where the feathers went. Piled high on wide brims. Whole wings, tail plumes. Sometimes entire birds mounted as if they’d dropped from the sky onto a lady’s head. Fashion. And behind that fashion was an industry built on slaughter. An ounce of heron plume sold for twice as much its weight in gold. It took four herons to produce that ounce. And the hunters knew the easiest time to kill them was nesting season when the adults would not leave their eggs. Shoot the parents, take the feathers, leave the carcasses to rot beside the nests full of chicks that would starve.

Grinnell had walked through the silence where the bison used to be. Now he watched the rookeries go quiet. He published an editorial in Forest and Stream. He proposed a new organization dedicated to the protection of wild birds and their eggs. And he gave it the name that meant something to him since he was seven years old, sitting in that schoolhouse in upper Manhattan—the Audubon Society. The magazine’s office became the society’s headquarters. No dues—Grinnell covered the expenses himself. Within two years, 50,000 Americans had joined.

Now he needed legislation to make it permanent. He turned to John Lacey again, the same congressman who pushed through the Yellowstone Act. Together, they shaped the Lacey Act of 1900, which made it a federal crime to transport illegally killed game across state lines. The market hunters who’d stripped the plains and emptied the rookeries could no longer escape justice by crossing a border. The era of market hunting did not end with a battle. It ended with a law drafted by a congressman who hunted and an editor who understood that the pen was the longer weapon.

The work didn’t stop there. Grinnell’s decades of writing against the feather trade became the foundation for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918. He explored the mountains of northwest Montana, named the peaks and glaciers himself, and spent 25 years fighting to protect them until President Taft signed Glacier National Park into law in 1910. In 1925, Grinnell became president of the National Parks Association.

Think about the reach of one life: Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, John Lacey, General Sherman, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Edward Curtis—the photographer who spent 30 years documenting Native American tribes before their way of life disappeared. Grinnell brought Curtis onto the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899. That invitation launched Curtis’s career. It happened because Grinnell saw something in him worth cultivating.

Every thread of American conservation runs through this man. And he spent his life making sure you would never notice. Roosevelt gave the speeches. Muir wrote the poetry. Pinchot ran the agencies. Aldo Leopold, still a young man when Grinnell was at his peak, would later get credit for ideas Grinnell had been putting into practice for decades. Grinnell built the architecture under them all. Then he stepped back into the shadows where he was most comfortable.

Every refuge you’ve ever hunted, every migratory bird law that sets your season, every piece of public ground that you’ve walked on without paying a fee—the idea itself that the sportsmen should lead conservation, that hunters are not the enemy of wildlife but its greatest advocates—that is his inheritance. That is what George Bird Grinnell left behind. The father of American conservation, the man most hunters have never heard of. Well, now you have.

00:30:28 | The Trail Out: Defending Wild Places
Well, folks, it looks like the stove is burning down and the light’s starting to change in the room. You know, I’ve been here a little bit longer than I meant to be, and that’s okay. That just happens sometimes. But it’s time for me to get out of here.

You know, let me leave you with this. Grinnell spent his whole life building something most people would never even see—the architecture that lies underneath it. You know, he didn’t need credit; he just needed it to work. That’s the thing about all of it. Someone did the groundwork before we even got here. He left us the instructions. Now it’s our turn to decide what to do with them.

This is the Field Standard and Texas Josh. Signal strong. Let’s get rolling.

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