Guys, welcome to the J. Scott Outdoors podcast.

My friend Stephen Ronella of the Meat Eater

had a pretty good statement I thought

and I asked for permission to play the statement on my podcast talking about the Bearsiers National

Monument and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.

As you know, President Trump just reduced the size of those monuments.

And I thought Steve, although we don't agree on all issues or every issue, I thought he had a pretty good take on the Bearsier

National Monument and Grand Staircase National Monument Reduction.

So enjoy it.

If you want more from Stephen, obviously you can go to

Mead Eater.com.

You can listen to the Meadiator Podcast and of course the media television show which is on

Netflix and I appreciate his take and I appreciate you guys the support of this podcast.

At Mead Eater, we've been getting flooded with comments and questions about the Trump administration's decision to drastically reduce the size of the Bears ears in Grand Staircase Escalante monuments.

Now I've been slowed away in on it only because my opinions on the subject lack the sort of pugnacious absolutism that most people are

hungry for in situations like this.

But I'm disappointed with the decision.

The two monuments protected hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine wildlife habitat that was open to hunting and fishing.

Now, many hunters have pointed out that hunting and fishing rights on these lands were tenuous,

and there's some truth of that.

We've had other monument designations that eventually resulted in hunters being locked out

of lands that they had traditionally utilized.

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