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Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Zack Williams

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

4.6853 Ratings

Overview

Hunting. Angling. Public Lands. That's the meat of what BHA's Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is about, and we cover the gamut. With guests that range from outdoor writers to backcountry hunters to legendary anglers, we seek to uncover the stories, the truths, the controversies, and the epic conversations that our public land heritage provides.

201 Episodes

Wilderness meets Modern Society -- Seth Kantner Part II

Wilderness meets Modern Society -- Seth Kantner Part II Alaska’s Seth Kantner is back with us, as promised, for part two. Seth was born in a sod igloo on the Kobuk River in the 1960s and has been hunting, trapping, fishing, and making a life on the land there ever since. He is the author of the novel Ordinary Wolves, considered one of the most powerful, gritty, and true-to-life Alaska books ever written. His non-fiction books, Shopping for Porcupine, Swallowed by the Great Land, and A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou, illustrated with the photos that have made him a world-renowned wildlife photographer, chronicle a life, a people and a landscape tangled in the conflict between the oldest powers of nature, wildlife and wilderness and the storm of changes wrought by the modern Anthropocene. Through it all, he’s maintained his profound sense of wonder, and his equally profound sense of humor. He even found time to write a children’s book (Pup and Pokey) about the mishaps and adventures of a wolf pup and a porcupine surviving on the tundra. Join us for a freeform conversation with one of the most unique voices of our time.   --- The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson.  Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists.  BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE. Follow us: Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org Instagram: @backcountryhunters Facebook: @backcountryhunters

Transcribed - Published: 4 February 2025

Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands -- Part II with John Leshy

As promised, John Leshy is back on the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast to discuss his recently published and definitive book, Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands. Our Common Ground is the most comprehensive and incisive history, both legal and political, ever written about the American public lands. It is an absolute must-read for anyone who loves our national forests, parks, grasslands or BLM lands, especially right now, when the entire institution of the American public lands is being questioned by so many- most of whom have no idea what they are putting at risk. John Leshy is a former General Counsel of the Department of Interior and the Harry D. Sunderland Distinguished Professor of Real Property at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. He has been deeply engaged in public lands policy and law for over fifty years. --- The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson.  Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists. www.backcountryhunters.org  

Transcribed - Published: 21 January 2025

Haunted by Alaska: Bjorn Dihle on Life, Bears, and Mystery (ep. 195)

Bjorn Dihle has lived his entire life in southeast Alaska, hunting and fishing from the Tongass National Forest to the northern Brooks Range and beyond. He is a family man, a wilderness and wildlife guide, a conservationist, and a contributing editor at Alaska and Hunt Alaska magazines. Bjorn is the author of the books Haunted Inside Passage, Never Cry Halibut, and A Shape in the Dark: Living and Dying with Brown Bears. Listeners might also know his work from his riveting story in Outdoor Life, entitled The Infamous and Murderous Sheslay Free Mike, about a mysterious and thoroughly-unhinged trapper that haunted the wilds of the Taku River country in the 1970s and 80s. Join us for an episode that veers from the usual nuts and bolts of life, hunting and fishing and conservation, and into the shadows of the paranormal, the places out beyond the light of the campfire, where anyone, and anything, might be lurking and watching.    --- BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE. Follow us: Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org Instagram: @backcountryhunters Facebook: @backcountryhunters  

Transcribed - Published: 7 January 2025

They Gave It All Away: The 1872 Mining Law with John Leshy

“It is astonishing that this law has escaped fundamental change.” John Leshy, author of The Mining Law: A Study in Perpetual Motion The 1872 Mining Law represents one of the most extraordinary give-a-ways of American assets in the history of our nation. It has been the target of reform and repeal almost from the very moment it was passed. No other nation on earth allows the mining industry to simply extract the public’s wealth without paying. The cost of administering it- the legal process of giving away America’s public lands and minerals- is astronomical. It has been used by grifters and scammers to privatize millions of acres of public land. It has resulted in an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines on public lands, $35 billion in cleanup costs, and over 10,000 miles of waterways forever impacted or ruined. Billions of dollars’ worth of gold, silver, and other minerals are taken out each year – nobody even knows the extent, because there’s no regulation to make them report the totals. Even the mining industry, until recently, was embarrassed by it. As the US sees a new boom in mining on public lands- lithium, cobalt, the rare-earth minerals in such furious demand by the alternative energy and EV industry, the 1872 Mining Law should be the first item on the agenda of reform. But nobody is even talking about it. Why not? Please join us for a conversation with law professor and former General Counsel of the Department of Interior John Leshy, who literally wrote the book on the Mining Law, and has over fifty years’ experience in public land law and policy. Leshy is also the author of Our Common Ground: a History of America’s Public Lands, and will be returning to the BHA podcast to discuss that book in a few weeks.

Transcribed - Published: 24 December 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. #193: NO to Alaska's Ambler Road

Alaska’s proposed Ambler Road is back on the table, and Americans are once again asked a fundamental question about what we value and what kind of world we will pass on to our children.  We covered the Ambler Road controversy in Episode 168 of the podcast, and a quick re-listen to that episode will be handy for getting the information we need to make informed decisions in this coming time of decision and consequence. Here’s a quick breakdown of the issue: The proposed Ambler Road is a proposed 211-mile industrial corridor through public lands along the southern flanks of the Brooks Range and one of the last and largest protected roadless areas on earth. The road would be built from the Dalton Highway at Mile Marker 161 to the Ambler Mining District on the Ambler River, passing through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, bisecting the migration route of the embattled Western Arctic caribou herd and crossing nearly 3,000 streams and 11 major rivers including the Kobuk and Koyukon. Our guest today is Seth Kantner, who was born in a sod igloo on the Kobuk River in the 1960’s and has been hunting, trapping, fishing and making a life on the land there ever since. He’s a renowned wildlife photographer and a commercial fisherman, best known for his extraordinary novel Ordinary Wolves, his non-fiction books Shopping for Porcupine, Swallowed by the Great Land and A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou, and a children’s book, Pup and Porcupine. We thought that, with all the controversy over the Ambler Road, we should find a person who could speak to what was there in that country now, and what is truly at stake if the road project goes forward. We’ll have Seth back to talk about subsistence hunting and trapping and life in the Arctic, but for now, let’s address this pressing issue of the Ambler Road.  

Transcribed - Published: 10 December 2024

REBOOT: Ron Mills, Legendary Montana Outfitter (Ep. 44)

We're spending Thanksgiving week with our families and bringing you one of our favorite podcast episodes from the archives: Ron Mills, an outfitter, hunting guide and packer in the Bob Marshall Wilderness since 1959! Ron has authored a new book called Under the Biggest Sky of All, 75 Years on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, a raucous and astoundingly funny account of his adventures as a guide, horseman and packer, farrier and ranch hand in some of the wildest country left on the planet. (Hal wrote the forward to the book, as seen in the spring 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal.) Ron and Hal discuss the book, life in the saddle and in 20 different camps across the Bob, and what it is like to work with a man who turns out to be a coldblooded American serial killer.

Transcribed - Published: 26 November 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 192: Healing Waters and Veterans' Journeys

Almost ten years ago, career firefighter and paramedic Beau Beasley embarked on a journey to tell the true stories of America’s veterans, honestly and in their own words. He was a respected outdoor writer and flyfishing guidebook author, and was deeply affected by the friendships he’d made through his involvement with Project Healing Waters, an organization that connects veterans with fishing and other outdoor opportunities. “I had no idea what I was doing when I took this on,” Beau says. “I only knew I had to do it.” Beau’s book “Healing Waters” holds the stories of 32 American military veterans who, through flyfishing, rod building, flytying, and being part of a vibrant outdoor community, “came across from the dark side of the river to the light.”  By turns harrowing, tragic, and joyful, these stories cut to the bone, portraits of the price that some of us are willing to pay for this mighty experiment in freedom and responsibility that is the United Sates of America. Join us, and please, if you are a veteran, or know a veteran, who could benefit from this book or this connection to Project Healing Waters, listen and pass it on.   ______ THE VOICE FOR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS, & WILDLIFE. www.backcountryhunters.org

Transcribed - Published: 29 October 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 191: The Fight for Clean Water After the Kingston Disaster with Jared Sullivan

Episode 191 with Jared Sullivan, former editor of Field and Stream and Men’s Journal, on his new book, Valley So Low, about the 2008 coal ash disaster near Kingston, Tennessee, its catastrophic aftermath on the health of those who cleaned it up, and holding our federal agencies accountable. In 2019, Tennessee native and former Field and Stream editor Jared Sullivan reported on the aftermath of massive coal ash spill from the TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant. That spill- at 1.1 billion gallons, the largest coal ash spill so far in history -  flooded homes, obliterated a portion of the Emory River and sent poisons into the main Clinch River. It never should have happened- the coal ash pit was unlined, its dam was absurdly weak, the toxic ash should never have been stored there in the first place. But the real tragedy went far beyond the ruin of the rivers and lands.   The writing of the story introduced Jared to the many hardworking Tennesseans who worked in the multi-year effort to clean up the spill, and who were poisoned by the mercury, radium, arsenic and other heavy metals and chemicals present on the jobsite. Jared’s new book Valley So Low is a legal thriller about a David vs. Goliath fight for justice, about federal agencies, lies, and lack of accountability, and the true human cost of treating our world like a dumping ground. Any opinions expressed within this podcast do not necessarily represent those of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. ___ BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE. Follow us: Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org Instagram: @backcountryhunters Facebook: @backcountryhunters  

Transcribed - Published: 15 October 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 190: The Battle for Mobile Bay

Blaring headlines: “Battle lines hardening in dispute over Mobile ship channel deepening project” “No more federal mud dumping' — Standing room only at Baykeeper town hall” A newly deepened and widened shipping channel created by the US Army Corps of Engineers makes Mobile, Alabama, the second fastest growing port in the US – the amount of cargo handled this year more than doubled from previous years. Some of the world’s healthiest commercial and recreational fisheries, vibrant towns, waterfront properties that date back centuries, all because of the health of one of the most beautiful and historically and ecologically-important bays in the world.    90 million cubic yards of mud, dredged and disposed of over the next 20 years. Already the impacts on seagrass and reefs and fisheries are severe. Join us to find out what’s going on, from the locals with everything at stake: William Strickland, Mobile Baykeeper, and fishing guides Capt. Patric Garmeson, and Capt. Richard Rutland.   ___ BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE. Follow us: Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org Instagram: @backcountryhunters Facebook: @backcountryhunters

Transcribed - Published: 1 October 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. #189: Utah Wants Your Public Lands

Utah files landmark lawsuit challenging federal control over most BLM land Yes, it is to retch over. Once again, the Utah legislature is coming for America’s public lands, this time by way of a lawsuit filed against the US government to lay claim to 18.5 million acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Utah has a new website called “Stand for Our Land” designed to support the lawsuit – it’s a slick campaign, maybe the slickest yet- and chock-full of the half-truths and outright falsehoods long devised and parroted by the generations of would-be landgrabbers before them. Some say this is just more performance politics, another ploy to lock-in votes from a mouth-frothing base that demands raw meat, however illusory, to stay motivated. It is not. Utah is a complicated place, and the motivations and legal mechanics of this lawsuit need to be understood by every American who loves our public lands and our freedom to experience them, and who believes that freedom should be safeguarded for the future. Know what is happening. Join Utah BHA leaders Caitlyn Curry and Perry Hall, and BHA CEO Patrick Berry, for the inside look at what is happening, what is at stake, and exactly what is coming down this road. “Once more into the breach!” as Henry the Fifth commended his valiant soldiers, and so must we, defenders of public lands and our American birthright, go, yet again, and as many times as it take. ___ www.backcountryhunters.org

Transcribed - Published: 17 September 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. #188: Hunting on the Ballot with Gaspar Perricone

From ballot initiatives that mandate wolf-reintroduction or banning the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats, wildlife management decisions are increasingly being made by voters instead of biologists. It is called “ballot biology” and it is a result of some highly motivated anti-hunting and animal rights groups reaching out to a ballooning demographic of non-hunting, often urban, voters who may be well-intentioned (“protect mountain lions and bobcats from being slaughtered!”) but who don’t know how wildlife is managed, how it was restored from near-extinction, or who pays for habitat and biologists and all the moving parts of the world’s most successful wildlife model. Only about 6 out of every 100 Colorado residents buys a hunting license- if it becomes a contest of us against them, a hot culture war decided by votes, we will lose. The wildlife will lose with us. There is trouble ahead, and a new and formidable challenge for all of us who love hunting and wildlife. Join us for an interview with Gaspar Perricone, who is on the frontlines of this battle in Colorado, and has a plan to win it. ___ BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE. Follow us: Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org Instagram: @backcountryhunters Facebook: @backcountryhunters

Transcribed - Published: 3 September 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 187: The Lost Tale of Prospect Bluff with Archeologist Jeffrey Shanks

Join Hal and Florida archeologist Jeffrey Shanks for a lost tale of British Marines and Jamaican privateers, American maroons, Creek Indian warriors, rogue Choctaws, religious prophets, and the bloody and tenacious struggle for freedom. The Apalachicola National Forest in Florida’s Panhandle holds some of the most remote swampland wilderness in the US, forbidding blackwater mazes of cypress and black gum and tupelo, whining with biting and stinging insects, the natural home of alligator and cottonmouth, redbreast bream and bass. It also holds some of the most fascinating and complex history in America. On the far western edge of north Florida’s Apalachicola National Forest, there is a place called Prospect Bluff, a slight rise in the land that overlooks a channel of the mighty Apalachicola River itself. It’s the site of Fort Gadsden, a modest construction that played a small role during the First Seminole War, and then was abandoned during the American Civil War. In 2018, Hurricane Micheal, a Category Five storm, wreaked havoc on the Panhandle and on the Apalachicola National Forest. On Prospect Bluff, massive oak trees, three hundred years old and more, were uprooted. Forest Service and National Park Service archeologists surveying the damage to the site found curious artifacts in the excavations left by the roots of the toppled trees. At some point, lots of human beings had lived here, and they had built a powerful fortification. They had farmed and traded and been well-prepared for war, which did indeed come to them. The story that came to light is one of the most complicated and fascinating episodes in American history, with echoes and ripples out as far as the Bahamas, Trinidad, Sierra Leone and Nova Scotia, where the descendants of the men and women who fought and died at Prospect Bluff are living right now.

Transcribed - Published: 20 August 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 186: Woniya Dawn Thibeault, Winner of Alone: Frozen and Author of Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey

Woniya Dawn Thibeault, winner of Alone: Frozen, author of Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey In 2019, primitive skills instructor and master hide-tanner Woniya Dawn Thibeault was selected for the Alone Season Six challenge. She and nine other contestants were dropped off along the East Arm of the Great Slave Lake, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, in late fall, with the arctic winter closing in. It was a grim and unforgiving landscape unlike anything she’d ever encountered or even imagined. Her life there became a slow-moving race with starvation and brutal cold, fishing, eating grubs and running snares, perfecting her shelter and learning, learning, to listen to the earth for whatever it might offer her. Thibeault survived 73 days, becoming the second-to-last contestant, drawing on every reserve of tenacity and skill to meet the challenges of each day. Gaunt, near physical collapse and fifty pounds lighter, she tapped out and returned home to California. Her convalescence took months, and she re-entered her life an entirely changed person. And then she did it again. ____ Enter the MeatEater Experience Sweepstakes: https://go.bhafundraising.org/meateatersweeps24/Campaign/Details

Transcribed - Published: 6 August 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 185: ALDO LEOPOLD AND AMERICA'S 1ST WILDERNESS

The Wilderness Act was passed by Congress in 1964, and has protected over 109 million acres of American public lands (53% of them in Alaska) since then. But the idea was born in 1924, with the vision of none other than Aldo Leopold, who was then the Supervisor of the Carson National Forest, and had spent almost fifteen years working on and exploring the wild public lands of New Mexico. Leopold argued that among the resources the Forest Service was mandated to safeguard for the American people were open spaces for hunting, fishing and real adventure. He argued, eloquently, that these values existed in abundance on the unpeopled lands of the Gila National Forest, that they were becoming more and more rare across America, and that the US Forest Service could choose to protect them for future generations. This year, we celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Gila Wilderness. The Gila was America’s first public lands’ wilderness, and the ideas and arguments that created it provided the template for all that we understand as federally designated wilderness today. How did this come to be? Join us- Hal, Karl Malcolm, US Forest Service ecologist, hunter and wanderer of the Gila, and Curt Meine, conservation biologist and author of Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, and Senior Fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation. A wilderness area, Leopold wrote, was “a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks' pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man.” ______ Enter the MeatEater Experience Sweepstakes: https://go.bhafundraising.org/meateatersweeps24/Campaign/Details

Transcribed - Published: 23 July 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 184: Save the Cutoff with Texans Bud Morton and Dustin Baker

The bitter tide of privatizing public lands and waters is rising fast across America. Only the actions of quietly heroic citizens can stop it. Nobody who hunted and fished the Cutoff wanted to tell the world about it. The Cutoff is also known as Creslenn Lake, a twelve-mile stretch of what used to be the Trinity River (it was “cut off” by a long-ago flood control project) between Navarro and Henderson Counties about an hour and half south of Dallas, Texas. The Cutoff has been a locals’ top destination for crappie fishing, duck hunting, jug lining and just enjoying this wild corner of Texas, through multiple generations (check out the Save the Cutoff Facebook page for the comments). Nobody dreamed that one day, a local landowner would simply declare the miles of public water his own fiefdom, hiring guards, closing roads, building illegal fences and excavating -- also illegally -- thousands of yards of dirt to block any hope of access. This is a David versus Goliath story, a battle fought on behalf of us all, by a very small band of hardworking rural Texans who simply will not lay down and take it. Learn more: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/local_outdoorsmen_rally_to_save_the_cutoff https://www.facebook.com/p/Save-the-cut-off-100078227846990/ https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/east-texas-cutoff-trinity-river-land-dispute/ ---- BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE. Follow us: Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org Instagram: @backcountryhunters Facebook: @backcountryhunters TikTok: @backcountryhunters

Transcribed - Published: 9 July 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 183: Tony Jones, The Reverend Hunter

Tony Jones, host of the Reverend Hunter podcast, and author of The God of Wild Places: Rediscovering the Divine in the Untamed Outdoors and eleven other books, outdoor writer, hunting mentor, guide in the Boundary Waters, father of three, hunter, fisherman, seeker. When Tony Jones was growing up, all he ever wanted was to know and preach the Gospel, and to one day have his own church and congregation. He accomplished that goal, beyond his wildest dreams. He was a star in the pulpit, and as a scholar, with degrees from Dartmouth, from Fuller Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from Princeton’s Theological Seminary. He wrote influential books (including The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life) and lived an orderly life of service, study, scholarship and meditation, in a quiet home with his wife and children. But life is not orderly. As Tony writes in his blistering and thought-provoking journey The God of Wild Places, we are nature, and nature is unruly, unpredictable and beautiful in its ruthlessness. Join us, for an interview and a conversation about losing faith, and finding it again, in the whirlwind of the natural world. More about Tony: https://reverendhunter.com/

Transcribed - Published: 25 June 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 182: Putting Conservation Back in the Foundation of Hunting and Fishing with Mark Kenyon

Michigander Mark Kenyon is the host of the Meateater podcast Wired to Hunt, and the author of the definitive book on the American public lands, That Wild Country. Mark is at work on another book about the future of American conservation, and the hunting and fishing that do not exist without it. He’s also hunting and fishing and gardening, raising outdoor kids with his wife, and establishing himself as one of our country’s leading voices in conservation, public lands and the outdoors. Mark has a concrete plan to put conservation back in the foundation of hunting and fishing, and he outlines it right here- don’t miss this conversation.

Transcribed - Published: 12 June 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 181: The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation with Jon Gassett and Patrick Berry

A conversation with Jonathon Gassett, Ph.D., former Commissioner of Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, Southeastern Representative of the Wildlife Management Institute, National Conservation Leadership Institute and Patrick Berry, former Director of Vermont fish and Wildlife Department and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers “Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it.” Why does the US and Canada have a tradition of public hunting and wildlife conservation based on the public ownership of wildlife? Why don’t we hunt elk in fenced enclosures in Wyoming, as many hunt whitetails in Texas? Why are we not like Scotland, where hunters pay to stalk red deer on huge private estates? How about South Africa, where almost all “hunting preserves” are high fenced? Why do we have what we have? Why is it imperiled from all sides right now? Political attacks on Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration funds from the right, ballot initiatives to ban mountain lion hunting and take away the authority of wildlife biologists from the left. The wholesale dismantling of state fish and game agencies by both left and right. Scorn for the public trust. Hunting and the conservation upon which it is based is under massive fire from all sides, and from a growing apathy and indifference of masses of Americans who don’t have access to it, and so don’t understand or care about the careful stewardship of wildlife and fisheries that created a miracle of restoration almost 100 years ago. Today’s podcast episode is a conversation with experts at a time of crisis.

Transcribed - Published: 29 May 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 180: 20 Years of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers with Ben Long and Patrick Berry

20 Years of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers with Ben Long and Patrick Berry Ben Long is a founding board member of BHA, the author of the Hunter and Angler’s Guide to Raising Hell, and a lifelong hunter-conservationist of the old breed. Ben came to Rendezvous this year to meet with new BHA CEO Patrick Berry of Vermont and help chart a course for the future of the most dynamic hunter and angler conservation organization in history. Join us as Hal, Patrick and Ben look back at the origins of BHA, the people, the fire, and the issues, and revel in the memories of where we’ve been and celebrate where we’re headed. Recorded live at the BHA Rendezvous in Minneapolis.

Transcribed - Published: 14 May 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 179: Justinn Overton, Executive Director of the Coosa Riverkeeper

Alabama’s iconic Coosa River was recently named America’s fifth most endangered river. It’s vast watershed, all 280 miles of tributaries and lakes, begins in the mountains of north Georgia and flows south through the very heart of Alabama. The Coosa, like so many American rivers today, faces intense pollution from industrial-scale poultry production and other agricultural runoff, as well as an array of other threats. The Coosa is also one of Alabama’s most popular rivers for fishing, powerboating, kayaking and swimming. To clean it up, and keep it that way in the face of everchanging and growing challenges, the river needs tireless defenders who can be out on the water, day after day, mile after mile, in every season. Join us today to meet one of them, award-winning Coosa Riverkeeper Justinn Overton, born and raised on the rivers of Alabama, an outdoorswoman, hunter, forager, and a fierce advocate for the waters of her home.

Transcribed - Published: 30 April 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 178: One of the West’s Most Powerful Voices for Conservation: Tom Reed

Tom Reed, of Harrison, Montana, is a founding board member of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and a true son of the Western plains and Rocky Mountain wilderness. Born in Colorado, Tom worked as a horse and mule packer and a small-town reporter in Wyoming, edited a bass fishing magazine in Arizona, spent years with Wyoming Fish and Game as writer and editor. Throughout his life, he’s pursued the foundational passions that drove him as a youngster- horses, hunting and fishing, wilderness, dogs, good guns, family. And he’s written beautifully about it all, in books like Great Wyoming Bear Stories, Blue Lines, and Give Me Mountains for My Horses, and in hundreds of columns and stories for Trout magazine, Wyoming Wildlife, Mouthful of Feathers and many other publications. Join us in a conversation with one of the American West’s most powerful voices for conservation and public lands, recorded in Tom’s writing cabin on the backside of the Tobacco Root Mountains.

Transcribed - Published: 17 April 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 177: Salmon Source to Sea Expedition with Libby Tobey and Hailey Thompson

In April of 2022, Libby Tobey, Hailey Thompson and Brooke Hess skied into Marsh Creek in Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, towing their kayaks and a sled full of camping gear. The goal: trace the route of anadromous fish from the source of the Salmon River to the Pacific Ocean and advocate removing the four dams on the Lower Snake River that block that migration and are killing that river system. 78 days and 1000 miles away down the tiniest tributaries to the massive whitewater of the main rivers, through soul-killing paddling slogs in dead impoundments, portages amid highways and traffic, wind and sun, joy and tribulation, they found themselves on a spit of sand and mud at the mouth of the Columbia, drinking champagne amid wind-driven waves of salt water. Hal caught up with Libby Tobey in Idaho and with Hailey Thompson in Alaska for an account of the adventure, and a discussion of what is at stake in the debate over the fate of the lower Snake River dams.

Transcribed - Published: 2 April 2024

Bonus Episode: The Public Lands in Public Hands Act

Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Representative Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) are co-sponsoring The ‘Public Lands in Public Hands Act” which would ban the sale or transfer of most public lands managed by the Department of the Interior or the Department of Agriculture (which includes the vast majority of federal public lands – Bureau of Land Management is under Interior and the National Forests are under Agriculture). The bill also requires Congressional approval for disposals of publicly accessible federal land tracts over 300 acres and for public land tracts over five acres if accessible via a public waterway. Are we witnessing the beginning of a bipartisan consensus on the value of our federal public lands? What motivated these two Western Congressmen to draft and sponsor this bill? Does it have a chance to become law? Join us for the answers to these questions and a lot more. Read the bill here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12Z21FJ6XLZwyma9qaDajehFH1luY2xxa/view Read the press release from New Mexico Representative Gabe Vasquez: https://vasquez.house.gov/media/press-releases/vasquez-introduces-bipartisan-public-lands-public-hands-act Read the press release from Montana Rep. Zinke: https://zinke.house.gov/media/press-releases/zinke-introduces-bipartisan-public-lands-public-hands-act

Transcribed - Published: 27 March 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 176: Deer in the Southwest with Jim Heffelfinger

Jim Heffelfinger, Arizona Game and Fish Wildlife Science Co-ordinator, Chairman of the Mule Deer Working Group, wildlife conservation professional, author of Deer of the Southwest. Coming at you live from the 2024 Mule Deer Expo in Salt Lake City, Hal catches up with one of America’s rockstars of wildlife conservation and research, Arizona’s Jim Heffelfinger. The conversation roams and wanders, from mule deer and blacktails, habitat and CWD, to Mexican wolves and hunting javelina, with a side trip into the mystique and glory of the Colt 1911. If you have half as much fun listening to it as Jim and Hal had recording it, this episode will rank among the best ever. Also, this episode celebrates the publication of the comprehensive textbook, Ecology and Management of Blacktailed and Mule Deer of North America, which Jim co-edited. Hal and Jim forgot to talk about the book, but it is a crucial resource for anyone interested in the current state and likely future of our mule deer and blacktails.

Transcribed - Published: 19 March 2024

Ep. 175: Outdoor Investigative Journalism: From Lyme Disease to Endangered Species with Jimmy Tobias

Journalist Jimmy Tobias started out working on backcountry trails for the US Forest Service and Montana Conservation Corps. Since then, he has become one of America’s hardest-hitting investigative reporters specializing in public lands, conservation, and the outdoors. Tobias’ story about the link between ecosystem disruption and tick-borne illnesses, “How Lyme Disease Became Unstoppable,” was published in June 2022 in The Nation. That story was the original inspiration for this interview, but Hal and Jimmy range far afield, from ticks to endangered species protection and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which promises to dismantle federal public lands and their management once and for all. Join us.

Transcribed - Published: 5 March 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 174: Venomous Snakes, Local Hunting and more with Dr. Chris Jenkins

Join Hal and BHA North American Board Member and CEO of the Orianne Society Dr. Chris Jenkins for a fascinating conversation about everything from public lands and local hunting and food to Dr. Jenkins' specialty: venomous snakes. An episode you don't want to miss!

Transcribed - Published: 20 February 2024

Bonus Episode: The Largest Public Lands Conservation Opportunity in Our Lifetime

The largest public lands conservation opportunity in our lifetime is at hand. The Bureau of Land Management is finalizing plans for the long-term management of an expanse of public lands in Alaska that is larger than the state of Ohio. There are 28 million acres at stake, an unfathomable wealth of wildlife, big game, fisheries, waterfowl, and the headwaters of rivers like the Kuskokwim and the Yukon. These are known as the D1 Lands, protected from mining and energy development by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. In 2020, the management of these lands was thrown into limbo. Now, the BLM is asking for the American people to determine the future of these lands. Join us to learn more, as Hal interviews Alaskan Rachel James, of Salmon State. And then be sure to comment through BHA's Action Alert.

Transcribed - Published: 8 February 2024

Episode 173: BHA 2023 Federal Policy Roundup with BHA Government Relations Manager Kaden McArthur

Learn more about what goes on in the halls of Congress as Hal sits down with BHA Government Relations Manager Kaden McArthur to discuss the 2023 wins BHA played a role in achieving for the conservation of our public lands and waters.

Transcribed - Published: 6 February 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 172: We Can Do This, One Person at a Time with Douglas Tallamy

Douglas Tallamy, Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, University of Delaware Any hunter, angler and/or student of the natural world is bound to be more than a little gobsmacked by the rate of development and growth that we see all around us: Bozeman, Atlanta, Boise, Moab, Salt Lake City, Huntsville, Austin, the Gulf Coast, Phoenix, Chattanooga, Asheville and beyond. Is there any hope for the wild places and the world we love? Hell, yes there is. And it will be done by each and every one of us – yard by yard, deck by deck, square foot by square foot. The possibilities are endless. Doug Tallamy, of the Homegrown National Park movement is the author of Nature’s Best Hope (with a companion volume for younger readers and Bringing Nature Home. Doug has a plan to create 22 million acres of native plant communities that will restore whole kingdoms of birds, insects, reptiles and other wildlife, at almost no cost, and with no need to beseech the government or beg alms of the powers that be. Join us, for a damn good time, and learn about a work that anyone can love and a movement that everybody can be part of. If you hang around to the end, you’ll get outlandish insect tales, for no extra investment. And because this interview was so much fun, we’ve got another one scheduled with Doug to talk about his new book on Oak trees – all 600 species of them – and his obsession with the mysterious universe of gall wasps. Your mind will be blown.

Transcribed - Published: 23 January 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 171: The Conservation History of George Washington Carver with Mark Hersey

Join Hal Herring and Mississippi State University environmental history professor and author of My Work is that of Conservation, An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver Mark Hersey for a fantastic American conservation story that has never been more relevant than it is right now. If you finished seventh grade in an American public school, you learned about George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery in Missouri and grew up to be one of America’s leading scientists and agronomists, working from his laboratory at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Carver was a friend and advisor to U.S. presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, and sought out as counsel by some of the best minds in agriculture across the world. Carver was also one of America’s pioneers of the science of ecology and a cutting-edge conservationist who advocated for the restoration of whitetail deer, quail and fisheries, long before such ideas became mainstream. His conservation vision was forged in the fire of his own history and in his life’s work in Alabama’s post-slavery Black Belt and along the Fall Line, known then as “the most destroyed land in all of the South” -- a place where poverty, injustice and hunger were closely tied to the abuse and collapse of the systems of the earth. Don't miss Hal's fascinating conversation with Mark Hersey.

Transcribed - Published: 9 January 2024

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 170: Poet, Author, Hunter, Angler and Forager Erin M. Block

Listeners to the BHA Podcast & Blast will likely know Erin Block from her brilliant short essays at MidCurrent, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Field & Stream, and TROUT magazine, where she is an editor-at-large. Some might know her books on the the art of making bamboo fly rods (The View from Coal Creek), or By a Thread: A Retrospective on Women and Fly Tying. Some might follow her Instagram, a powerfully understated immersion in foraging, wildlife and birds, hunting and fishing and gardening. Erin’s writing comes directly from the well-spring of her life, and like the chronicle of any real life, it is always about more than meets the eye. Hal talks with Erin from her cabin in the Colorado Rockies, about her new book of poetry https://www.middlecreekpublishing.com/how-you-walk-alone-in-the-dark , the ancient art of ekphrasis, which may be finding its truest heights right now, a special old Savage shotgun and a whole lot more. Grab a cup of coffee and join us.

Transcribed - Published: 26 December 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Episode 169: Mouthful of Feathers

If you are an upland bird hunter with a yen for great writing and vividly lived experiences, you have probably been reading the Mouthful of Feathers crew -- Tom Reed, Marissa Jensen and Greg McReynolds -- on the internet since 2009. Whether you have or have not, you are in for a treat. Join us for a celebration of wild birds and wild dogs and their first publication, in a book that you can hold in your hands, of the best of the best of the Mouthful of Feathers short essays and stories. The book is the perfect off-season reading: 20 writers from all walks of life and all over North America. It’s old friends and old and young dogs, venerable old double barrels and pawnshop pump shotguns with stocks cracked from a tumble down the chukar’s steepest basalt. It’s bobwhites and sharptails, Huns and timberdoodles and Mearn’s, from the southern longleaf to the rain-soaked poplars of Michigan, the Sandhills to the Madrean Sky Islands. And the conversation in epidode 169 of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ Podcast & Blast is one hell of a good time.

Transcribed - Published: 12 December 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 168: Paving Paradise: Alaska’s Ambler Road

The proposed Ambler Road is a proposed 211-mile industrial corridor through public lands along the southern flanks of the Brooks Range and one of the last and largest protected roadless areas on earth. The road would be built from the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District on the Ambler River, passing through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, bisecting the migration route of the embattled Western Arctic caribou herd and crossing nearly 3,000 streams and 11 major rivers including the Kobuk and Koyukon. Tune in to learn about this proposed project from three deeply concerned Alaskans while there is still time for hunters and anglers like you to make your voices heard.

Transcribed - Published: 21 November 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 167: BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 167: Public Lands, Wild Game Cooking, Hunting, Angling and Conservation – Live from the Texas Hill Country

Public Lands, Wild Game Cooking, Hunting, Angling and Conservation – Live from the Texas Hill Country with Chuck Naiser, Jesse Griffiths and Riverhorse Nakadate The Podcast and Blast has gone to Texas! Host Hal Herring takes the Podcast & Blast on the road to the sunbaked Texas Hill Country to record a live episode at Star Hill Ranch in Bee Cave. It’s a packed house at the Texas BHA gathering for a conservation conversation fueled by extraordinary food, ice cold beer and a rip-roaring good time. Riverhorse Nakadate is a writer, poet and musician telling the story of public lands, flyfishing and conservation from the Texas Gulf Coast to the Boundary Waters. Jessie Griffiths is a visionary wild game chef, forager, hunter and angler, restaurateur and author. Chuck Naiser is president and founder of Flatsworthy, a coalition of sometimes conflicting stakeholders committed to solving the major challenges of a booming Gulf Coast and has been a renowned fishing guide and a successful battler for conservation on the Texas coast since he took a leading and often dangerous role in the “Redfish Wars” of the late 70s. He’s as plain-spoken and passionate as ever, at a time when his wisdom and experience are needed more than ever. Join us for a conversation with the three recent Texas BHA Public Lands and Public Waters Leadership Award recipients.

Transcribed - Published: 24 October 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 166: Steven Hawley, Author of Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World

Listeners of the podcast will remember a number of dam-focused episodes over the past few years, Free the Ocklawaha (Florida) and Snake River Dams (Idaho, Columbia River basin) to name just two. But the issue of dams – the blocking of the arterial systems of the earth – is not about just a few high-profile cases. More than 800,000 dams across the planet have destroyed river systems, extirpated vast runs of native fish, displaced millions of human beings and drowned priceless farmlands, forests, prairies and wetlands. The delusion that we can plug living river systems and somehow turn them into money has perverted politics and economies and stolen the wealth of nations, hoarding it into the hands of the privileged and well-connected few. The story of dams – an incredible tale of careless hubris, blatant corruption and tragically bad ideas – is one [stevenhawleyauthor.com]Steven Hawley has been chronicling its unfolding for decades now, long enough to see a new clarity rising, and with it a growing movement to remove old dams and restore the free-flowing energies and arterial systems of our planet. Hawley’s new book, Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World, chronicles this history and future. Each success (and there are many of them) brings into stark focus the path forward, restoring rivers and fish runs and floodplains, reawakening the deep relationship between humankind and the waters that sustain us. Join Hal and Steven for a spirited exploration of one of the most critical issues of our time.

Transcribed - Published: 10 October 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 165: Public Lands Stewardship in California and Colorado

Coho salmon habitat, wetlands conservation, the removal of abandoned fences that kill hundreds of migrating mule deer, pronghorn and elk every year. Marine Corps helicopters and bighorn sheep, fish counts, bowfishing for alligator gar, restoring native plants on burned-over public lands. A ton of good work is getting done on our public lands and waters, and people are having a blast doing it. This is the reality of BHA’s hands-on conservation: projects done by real people; sweat, dust, sunshine and rain; like-minded folks coming together, seeing new country and leaving it quantifiably better than we found it. Hal joins Britt Parker, BHA’s habitat stewardship coordinator in Colorado, and Devon O’Dea, BHA California coordinator, to talk about the latest projects, check out the big future, and learn how you can get involved.

Transcribed - Published: 26 September 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 164: Dave Simonett of Trampled by Turtles

Dave Simonett of Trampled by Turtles is a Minnesota fisherman, hunter and dog man, a former roofer, and one of America’s most profound songwriters and hardest-touring musicians. Hal and Dave spent a morning fishing Montana’s Big Blackfoot this summer, throwing spruce moth bugs for cuttbows and browns, and then caught up in the afternoon for a conversation at the KettleHouse Amphitheater in Bonner, Montana. Dave was getting ready to rock a sold-out crowd in the beautiful summer gloaming, with the river running fast and cold in the near distance. Sometimes, it just all works out. Join us.

Transcribed - Published: 12 September 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 163: The Southeast Grasslands Institute

The longhunters of the 18th century knew it well. The Native nations of the Southeast knew it better yet, lived upon its bounty of bison and elk, and maintained it with fire and the deliberate cultivation of hundreds of species of plants. It was the Southeastern Grasslands Complex, known now only from the oldest maps. But remnants exist, of the most vibrant American ecosystem ever recorded, and Dwayne Estes and Jeremy French from the Southeastern Grasslands Institute are here to talk about the current successful efforts to understand it…and bring it back.

Transcribed - Published: 30 August 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 162: Ben Long, The Hunter & Angler Field Guide to Raising Hell

There is a dire misconception these days that hunting and angling are somehow the birthright of Americans – and that these life pursuits and passions of ours belong to us by dint of benevolent magic or extraordinary good luck. American hunting and fishing do not exist because of magic or luck. We have what we have because our forebears raised relentless hell to restore our wildlife and protect our lands, waters and air. Ben Long, hardcore hunter, angler, conservationist, writer and longtime BHA leader, has produced The Hunter & Angler Field Guide to Raising Hell to re-awaken that spirit right now…when the need has never been greater. In the tradition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the epic of compression that launched the American Revolution, Ben’s Field Guide is a concise user’s guide to the institutions – from federal agencies to the courts – that help us protect that which we refuse to relinquish, and that which we will pass on to the generations that follow us. To whom much has been given, much is expected. Join us, in the fight, and for this conversation.

Transcribed - Published: 14 August 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 161: Texas Chef & Sportsman Jesse Griffiths

Texas hunter and fisherman Jesse Griffiths is the author of Afield: A Chef’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish and The Hog Book, the definitive text – artwork is closer to the reality - on hunting, butchering and cooking feral hogs. The Hog Book won the prestigious James Beard Award in 2022, a fitting tribute to a man on the cutting edge of wild game and fish cookery. Jesse is co-owner of the Austin, Texas, New School of Traditional Cookery and the restaurant Dai Due, whose name is drawn from the Italian proverb, Dai due regni di natura, piglia il cibo con misura: “From the two kingdoms of nature, choose food with care.” Join us for a conversation with one of the most visionary chefs in North America, talking hogs, turkeys, panfish, hunting and fishing and foraging for food, and a life defined by the earth and her seasons.

Transcribed - Published: 1 August 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 160: Mitch Reid with The Nature Conservancy

Mitch Reid is a native son of the Alabama Wiregrass, where he grew up fishing and hunting his home country in the headwaters of the Choctawhatchee River. After a military career with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, he came home to raise his family and continue to serve his nation by working with The Nature Conservancy to protect and restore the lands and waters of the place he loves the most in the world. Alabama is No. 1 in aquatic species diversity, with more than 4,000 known species. It is also No. 2 in the nation for species extinction. The time for action is right now. Huge projects are underway in Alabama, from restoration of coastal estuaries and marshes to protecting some of the most diverse hardwood forests and most biologically rich and intact rivers left on Earth. One of the most important watershed restorations in the U.S. is underway right here – reconnecting the mighty Alabama River and its thousands of miles of tributaries to the Gulf of Mexico – Gulf walleye, sturgeon, vast runs of mullet and other catadromous fish … they were all here, all the way up the Cahaba, the Coosa, the Tallapoosa. And they can be again.

Transcribed - Published: 18 July 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 159: Game Warden, Author and Conservationist Sam Lawry

Arizona game warden and author Sam Lawry is retiring from his second career as the executive director of the Teller Wildlife Refuge on the Bitterroot River of Montana. This BHA podcast is being released to honor Sam and in appreciation of his life as one of America’s premier conservation leaders. Sam served 23 years as a game warden in Arizona (the subject of his excellent and funny book, Stories of the Past: An Arizona Game Ranger Remembering the Outlaws), was chairman of staff for the North American Wetlands Conservation Council and the Pacific Flyway Council, western director of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, and has devoted most of his life to teaching young people about wildlife and conservation. Join Hal and Sam as they talk about outlaws, waterfowl hunting, Arizona, the Bitterroot, active habitat restoration, and a life spent completely immersed in hunting and fishing. If you have not heard of Sam’s Warden Wisdom on Instagram, now is the time to check it out.

Transcribed - Published: 5 July 2023

Ep. 158: Hunting at American Prairie

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 158: Hunting at American Prairie American Prairie is 455,840 sprawling acres of Montana grasslands and breaks that represents one of the largest expansions of publicly accessible hunting opportunities in the West— and one of America’s largest public/private land conservation projects. A longer story deserves to be told about American Prairie – how their work began and also what their plans for the future hold. This discussion features AP’s Director of Public Access & Recreation Mike Quist Kautz and Director of Bison Restoration Scott Heidebrink, who are here to talk history, bison, cattle, grasslands, watersheds, and hunting and the logistics of getting 1000 pounds of meat and 150 pounds of hide out of the field. Listeners who want to apply for a bison permit on AP lands, or who might be interested in the Block Management Program hunting access opportunities on AP lands, won’t want to miss this conversation, recorded at AP headquarters in Montana.

Transcribed - Published: 21 June 2023

Ep. 157: Kevin Garrad, Founder of Wild Response

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 157: Kevin Garrad, Founder of Wild Response Growing up in rural England, Kevin Garrad was a child of the wild moors, a ferreter and a trainer of lurchers, a hunter of invasive minks, and destined to be a soldier. Fast forward to an early-in to the U.S. military just out of high school and eight deployments in 18 years, including a decade in the U.S. Army Special Forces during America’s longest wars. Now “retired” to the bush in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, Kevin is the point man for Wild Response, an organization that equips and trains the roaming, high-risk game rangers who are protecting the bitterly imperiled wildlife of these last iconic wild landscapes, often at the risk of their own lives. Internationally recognized man-tracker, soldier, medic, teacher and passionate conservationist of wildlife and wild places, Kevin has an utterly unique tale to tell. Join us!

Transcribed - Published: 6 June 2023

Ep. 156: Bob Lee, Florida Backcountry Lawman

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 156: Florida Backcountry Lawman Bob Lee You may remember Bob Lee from Free the Ocklawaha River!, where he and Hal first met. Bob is one of the leading voices for the removal of Rodman Dam and the reconnection of the Ocklawaha River to the St. Johns and the Atlantic Ocean. He knows of what he speaks: Bob Lee was the game warden for this part of the American backcountry – the oldest of Old Florida – for over 30 years. He wrote about his adventures in his excellent first book Backcountry Lawman and expanded on that success by gathering other Florida warden tales in Bad Guys, Bullets, and Boat Chases. Artifact hunter, historian, fisherman and hunter of both man and beast, Bob Lee is a master storyteller with a lifetime of rollicking adventures to draw from. Join us for the ride.

Transcribed - Published: 23 May 2023

Ep. 155: Chris Dombrowski, Montana Fishing Guide and Writer

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 155: Montana Fishing Guide and Writer Chris Dombrowski Chris Dombrowski is a professional fishing guide of over two decades on the rivers of Montana, an acclaimed poet and the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Alluring Fish, which is about, among many other things, the pursuit of bonefish in the Bahamas. Chris’ latest book is The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water, which manages to be a deeply honest memoir, a celebration of the joys and terrors of family, and a love letter to the landscape and rivers of the American West, all at the same time. Join Hal and Chris for an intense conversation about fishing, life and literature, recorded live at the 2023 BHA North American Rendezvous.

Transcribed - Published: 9 May 2023

Ep. 154: The Legal Fight Over Corner Crossing Comes to a Head

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 154: The Legal Fight Over Corner Crossing Comes to a Head The future of public access to public lands access is being decided in Wyoming with the ongoing saga of the corner-crossing hunters and their legal travails. We all have a dog in this fight – and never more so than right now, given the accelerating trend of huge expanses of private land being consolidated, with public lands enclosed or access blocked to members of the hunting and angling public. Join us at the 2023 BHA North American Rendezvous as Hal discusses the implications of the Wyoming battle with Eric Hanson, an attorney who has assisted BHA in its support of the four hunters, and Sawyer Connelly, a former BHA staffer and legal scholar: Learn the latest on the legal case and also, for the hardworking optimists, a possible solution from Sawyer to the dilemma of access to the checkerboarded public lands in the West. You heard it here first!

Transcribed - Published: 25 April 2023

Ep. 153 - The MT Legislature, The Weed Tax, and The Conservationists

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 153: The MT Legislature, The Weed Tax, and The Conservationists Montana's legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, but the amount of work that goes into a single abbreviated session is mind-blowing. In just a few short months during its 2023 session, more than 200 bills dealing with fish and wildlife management, public access, conservation funding, and fair chase hunting and fishing opportunities will have been introduced and considered in Helena. On this week's Podcast & Blast, we sit down with Jake Schwaller and John Sullivan of the Montana BHA board and Kevin Farron, BHA regional policy manager, to discuss a few of these bills, how best to make your voice heard, and why BHA members from across the country need to stay vigilant and engaged when the sausage is being made in their own state. Join us as we explore what Costco has to do with Montana's new pheasant stocking program, how nonresidents who own land in Montana will be given up to five deer and elk tags, and how recreational marijuana is funding - or was funding - the state's best conservation tool: Habitat Montana.

Transcribed - Published: 11 April 2023

Ep. 152 - Murder of the Grand Kankakee Marsh

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 152: Murder of the Grand Kankakee Marsh “I have never yet found a place that equaled the Kankakee swamps for the variety of game to be found there.” – J. Lorenzo Werich, 1920. Few know the history now. None who experienced it are still alive to tell us the tale. But it was once known as The Everglades of the North, a million acres of marsh and swamp in Indiana and Illinois, with thousands of people living on the wealth of its fish and game, flocks of waterfowl darkening the skies, passenger pigeons, deer and black bear, beaver and muskrat and otter. For decades it was the so-called “pantry of Chicago,” providing wild game to markets and restaurants, furs to the garment and hat industries, tons of cut reeds for packing materials, and millions of board feet for lumber for houses, including fueling reconstruction after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Then the huge steam-powered dredges came, and the murder of the Grand Kankakee Marsh began. Can we ever put to rights what we once so thoughtlessly sundered? Join us for a conversation with Hal and two of Indiana’s finest storytellers and conservationists: Jeff Manes, a former steelworker turned columnist for the Chicago Tribune who grew up fishing and hunting the swamp, and Jim Sweeney, of the Porter County Chapter of the Izaak Walton League and Friends of the Kankakee.

Transcribed - Published: 28 March 2023

Ep. 151 - Bill Avey, 40 Years in the Forest Service

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 151: Bill Avey, 40 Years in the Forest Service Retired Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Bill Avey is here to give us a clear view into the workings of the U.S. Forest Service – and what is arguably, for a public lands hunter or angler, the most important agency in America. Hal and Bill became friends on a snow survey ski trip through the Bob Marshall Wilderness in 2015, lost touch, then met again on a jury duty call-up last summer. It was a lucky meeting for Hal and for this podcast: Bill Avey has given his life to America’s public forests, and he knows the strengths and weaknesses, the joys and tribulations, of his agency and the work it does, from the roots to the crown.

Transcribed - Published: 14 March 2023

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