Ep. 124 - Randy Newberg and Andrew McKean - Elk Madness in Montana

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Zack Williams

Outdoors, Wilderness, Sports, Fishing, Outdoor, Hunting, Sports & Recreation

4.6 • 853 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2022

⏱️ 102 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Montana chapter of BHA works hard to uphold the gold standard in public hunting opportunities, with one of the longest elk and mule deer hunting seasons in the U.S., a wealth of public land, and one of the most innovative private land access programs ever devised. But the winds of change are howling. MT BHA fought back this legislative session against efforts to commercialize and privatize our public wildlife. BHA members testified before committees, published op-eds and mobilized more than 2,500 resident sportsmen and women to the tune of 57,942 letters sent to Montana's elected officials. Yet the war is far from over. Many of the same bad ideas are back in front of Montana's Fish & Wildlife Commission. Elk numbers are booming, hunting pressure on public lands is skyrocketing, and landownership patterns are changing, with fewer small-scale ranches and more vast “amenity ranches” – many of them purchased specifically for hunting and outfitting that emphatically excludes the public hunter. What is happening? Where are we going? What does this mean, not just for Montana but for the future of hunting in the fast-growing and fast-changing West? Andrew McKean and Randy Newberg join us for a spirited and sobering look at the place where politics and privatization meet the future of our hunting – and how we might affect that future if we have the knowledge and the courage to act.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody, Hal Herring, Back Country Hunters and English, Podcasts and Blast.
0:05.2	This is an intro for today's podcast.
0:07.6	We talk about this a little bit in the very first of podcast, but this is an interview with Andrew with Andrew McCain and Randy Newburgh and it's
0:16.3	about the so-called elk wars or help management controversy in Montana but it goes so much further than that. This is a national story.
0:25.8	This is a national issue and it's about an increasing pushed to privatize our fish fishing game and to really cast aside the oldest
0:37.0	American traditions of people hunting and fishing out there, regular people like you and I not just the wealthy as in days of your in the
0:48.7	whatever Sherwood forest is what I think of it as an America becoming the version of what we fought to leave behind in England back in the revolutionary days.
1:00.0	So there is always going to be plutocracy, plutocrats are going to plut, and it is the
1:08.0	nature of us who are not
1:13.2	putocrats to push back against that and make sure that our birthright is not sacrificed
1:17.1	to the sound and fury signifying nothing of politics and whimsy.
1:23.7	With that said, Andrew McCain is a former Fish and Game Commissioner here in Montana.
1:29.5	You'll probably know him best as an editor at Outdoor Life, one of the most prolific outdoor writers of our time.
1:36.4	He has a ranch in Glasgow, Montana where he lives with his family.
1:39.6	He's also the proud coach, track coach of the Scotty's there at Glasgow and he is a tremendous asset to American hunting and to his community from macrocosmic to microcosmic.
1:51.6	He worked for Fish, Wildlife and Parks here in Montana for seven years as an outreach
1:57.6	communications guy and there's probably nobody that knows Western hunting as well as Andrew McKean. We're joined also by my old friend Randy Newberg.
2:08.0	I don't know if he needs an introduction, but I'll do it anyway. He's um
2:16.7	Randy is pretty much the voice of the public land hunter in America. He has some, on your own adventures and fresh tracks, TV shows. He has the podcast, which I call Randy Newburgh unfiltered, and it's a Hunt Talk
2:26.2	forum as well. Randy is one of the, you know, we talk a little bit about this on the podcast, but Randy was a great
2:36.3	friend of Montana Conservationist Jim Paszowitz, and I consider myself a Paszowitzian conservationist and Randy got, he had more years with Jim than I did and he is in some ways has picked up the torch from Jim Pazowich.
2:54.8	It's a heavy flaming torch indeed.
	...

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