The Loophole

The Experiment

The Atlantic and WNYC Studios

President, Policy, Documentary, Joe, Law, Wnyc, American, Presidency, Supreme, Society & Culture, Congress, The, Racism, Court, State, History, Biden, Government, Race

4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Mike Belderrain hunted down the biggest elk of his life, he didn’t know he’d stumbled into a “zone of death,” the remote home of a legal glitch that could short-circuit the Constitution—a place where, technically, you could get away with murder.

At a time when we’re surrounded by preventable deaths, we document one journey to avert disaster.

• Mike Belderrain is a hunter and former outfitter in Montana.• C. J. Box is the author of more than 20 novels, including Free Fire, a thriller set in Yellowstone National Park. • Brian Kalt teaches law at Michigan State University. He wrote a 2005 research paper titled “The Perfect Crime."• Ed Yong is a staff writer for The Atlantic.

Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast or write to us at [email protected]. Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

This episode was produced by Julia Longoria and Alvin Melathe, with editing by Katherine Wells and sound design by David Herman.

Music by water feature (“in a semicircle or a half-moon”), r mccarthy (“Big Game,” “She’s a Gift Giver, She’s a Giver of Gifts,” and “Melodi 2”), Ob (“Ell” and “Ere”), Parish Council (“Mopping”), h hunt (“11e”), Column (“Quiet Song”), and Bwengo (“Première Mosrel”); catalog by Tasty Morsels. Additional audio from Montana State University Library’s Acoustic Atlas, the National Park Service’s Sound Library, C. J. Box, CNBC, C-SPAN, Vox, NPR’s All Things Considered, Idaho News 6, @ItsKeyes, and C-SPAN’s Book TV.

Transcript

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0:30.0	Hi Mike, this is Julia Longoria from the Atlantic and WNYC. How you doing? I'm doing good. How you doing? Good.
0:41.0	We are going to just kind of jump in. Are you ready to go back in time? Sure. Okay, cool.
0:49.0	What do we do? Who were you in December of 2005? I was a real rowdy guy, I guess you could say. Why do you think you were rowdy at that time?
1:02.0	It does like beat people up. 15 years ago, Mike Beldrain was a little rough around the edges.
1:09.0	So you know, someone was an asshole in the bar, I'd go have a beer by you and tell you to say something to me and then it'd be all bad for you.
1:14.0	He was a bit of an asshole. There were a lot of things that pissed him off, but there was one thing that he loved completely.
1:23.0	I mean, I lived to hunt elk, literally. I lived to hunt elk.
1:30.0	He lived in Montana, not far from Yellowstone National Park, where elk are everywhere and Mike had the hunt down to an art form.
1:41.0	Elkutton's hard, but if you could call good, I'd guarantee my hunters a shot at 30 yards and closer.
1:48.0	What is that? I'm like from Miami, Florida, I live in Brooklyn, I got nothing.
1:54.0	That's right. What does that mean? So you have a cow call, you imitate a cow call and you call them in.
2:01.0	So you make the sound of a cow because like the elk are looking for cows with whom to mate?
2:09.0	Is that what it is? Okay, pretty terrible way to die.
2:17.0	Can you do it for me? No.
2:24.0	So why, you might ask, are we talking to this self-proclaimed asshole about killing elk?
2:31.0	It's because of this one particular elk, a star crossed elk, that changed the course of Mike Beldrain's life and walked him right into a hole in the US Constitution.
2:47.0	It started one snowy morning in December of 2005. Mike set out on horseback just outside Yellowstone National Park.
2:56.0	Lots of mountains and lots of snow and trees, open country.
3:01.0	Eventually he spotted a group of elk off in the distance, but he set his sights on this one particular elk.
3:09.0	That was the biggest bull I'd ever seen. He was a trophy, trophy bull that I've been chasing all my life.
3:15.0	It was his white whale, his trophy bull. How did you feel at that moment?
3:21.0	A adrenaline like you wouldn't believe. Happy and nervous together.
	...

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