Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 192: Healing Waters and Veterans' Journeys Oct 29, 2024

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 or BHA's Armed Forces Initiative, listen and pass it on.

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THE VOICE FOR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS, & WILDLIFE.

www.backcountryhunters.org

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 191: The Fight for Clean Water After the Kingston Disaster with Jared Sullivan Oct 15, 2024

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.

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 190: The Battle for Mobile Bay Oct 01, 2024

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.

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. #189: Utah Wants Your Public Lands Sep 17, 2024

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.

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www.backcountryhunters.org

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. #188: Hunting on the Ballot with Gaspar Perricone Sep 03, 2024

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.

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 187: The Lost Tale of Prospect Bluff with Archeologist Jeffrey Shanks Aug 20, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 186: Woniya Dawn Thibeault, Winner of Alone: Frozen and Author of Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey Aug 06, 2024

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.

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Enter the MeatEater Experience Sweepstakes: https://go.bhafundraising.org/meateatersweeps24/Campaign/Details

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 185: ALDO LEOPOLD AND AMERICA'S 1ST WILDERNESS Jul 23, 2024

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.”

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Enter the MeatEater Experience Sweepstakes: https://go.bhafundraising.org/meateatersweeps24/Campaign/Details

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 184: Save the Cutoff with Texans Bud Morton and Dustin Baker Jul 09, 2024

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/

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

TikTok: @backcountryhunters

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 183: Tony Jones, The Reverend Hunter Jun 25, 2024

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/

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 182: Putting Conservation Back in the Foundation of Hunting and Fishing with Mark Kenyon Jun 12, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 181: The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation with Jon Gassett and Patrick Berry May 29, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 180: 20 Years of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers with Ben Long and Patrick Berry May 14, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 179: Justinn Overton, Executive Director of the Coosa Riverkeeper Apr 30, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 178: One of the West’s Most Powerful Voices for Conservation: Tom Reed Apr 17, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 177: Salmon Source to Sea Expedition with Libby Tobey and Hailey Thompson Apr 02, 2024

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.

Bonus Episode: The Public Lands in Public Hands Act Mar 27, 2024

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

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 176: Deer in the Southwest with Jim Heffelfinger Mar 19, 2024

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.

Ep. 175: Outdoor Investigative Journalism: From Lyme Disease to Endangered Species with Jimmy Tobias Mar 05, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 174: Venomous Snakes, Local Hunting and more with Dr. Chris Jenkins Feb 20, 2024

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!

Bonus Episode: The Largest Public Lands Conservation Opportunity in Our Lifetime Feb 08, 2024

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.

Episode 173: BHA 2023 Federal Policy Roundup with BHA Government Relations Manager Kaden McArthur Feb 06, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 172: We Can Do This, One Person at a Time with Douglas Tallamy Jan 23, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 171: The Conservation History of George Washington Carver with Mark Hersey Jan 09, 2024

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 170: Poet, Author, Hunter, Angler and Forager Erin M. Block Dec 26, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Episode 169: Mouthful of Feathers Dec 12, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 168: Paving Paradise: Alaska’s Ambler Road Nov 21, 2023

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.

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 Oct 24, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 166: Steven Hawley, Author of Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World Oct 10, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 165: Public Lands Stewardship in California and Colorado Sep 26, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 164: Dave Simonett of Trampled by Turtles Sep 12, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 163: The Southeast Grasslands Institute Aug 30, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 162: Ben Long, The Hunter & Angler Field Guide to Raising Hell Aug 14, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 161: Texas Chef & Sportsman Jesse Griffiths Aug 01, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 160: Mitch Reid with The Nature Conservancy Jul 18, 2023

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.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 159: Game Warden, Author and Conservationist Sam Lawry Jul 05, 2023

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.

Ep. 158: Hunting at American Prairie Jun 21, 2023

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.

Ep. 157: Kevin Garrad, Founder of Wild Response Jun 06, 2023

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!

Ep. 156: Bob Lee, Florida Backcountry Lawman May 23, 2023

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.

Ep. 155: Chris Dombrowski, Montana Fishing Guide and Writer May 09, 2023

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.

Ep. 154: The Legal Fight Over Corner Crossing Comes to a Head Apr 25, 2023

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!

Ep. 153 - The MT Legislature, The Weed Tax, and The Conservationists Apr 11, 2023

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.

Ep. 152 - Murder of the Grand Kankakee Marsh Mar 28, 2023

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.

Ep. 151 - Bill Avey, 40 Years in the Forest Service Mar 14, 2023

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.

Ep. 150 - Free the Ocklawaha River! Feb 28, 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 150: Free the Ocklawaha River!

Almost 60 years ago, the U.S. government, blinded by hubris, began work on the Cross Florida Barge Canal. Never heard of it? That’s because President Richard Nixon, seeing it for the financial and ecological monstrosity that it was, halted the project in 1971 before it was halfway completed. All that remains of the bad idea is Rodman Dam, completed in 1968 to raise water levels enough to make the canal usable. The Rodman Dam blocked the free flow of the incredible Ocklawaha River, inundated 20 mighty freshwater springs, flooded miles of timber and bottomland wildlife habitat and, most importantly, cut the Ocklawaha and its tributaries off from the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean, causing a cascade of losses to wildlife, water, fisheries and human beings. Now the time has come to remove Rodman Dam and restore these connections. Hal talks about the dam – its history and potential future – with Lisa Rinaman of the St. Johns’ Riverkeeper and retired game warden and author Bob Lee, who has spent his professional life protecting the game and fish of the Ocklawaha. Join us to consider one of the major restoration projects of our time.

Ep. 149 - Conservation in the 118th Congress with the BHA Policy Crew Jan 31, 2023

Podcast & Blast: Episode 149, Conservation in the 118th Congress with the BHA Policy Crew

As a wise man once said, You may not be interested in war, but when the times comes, war will certainly be interested in you. The same can be said about Congress. This week's episode with BHA's John Gale and Kaden McArthur takes us to Washington, D.C., with an exploration of the 118th Congress, where the hottest issues pertaining to our hunting and fishing and the conservation that makes it possible will be on the floor, in the offices, buried in reams of obscure paperwork and clouded by political shenanigans….John and Kaden clear the smoke, slash the fat, and let us all know what is going on, what is at stake, and who the players are as we make our way through 2023. We Americans consent to be governed, and this is a must-listen conversation about what we are consenting to, what we support and what we must resist.

Ep. 148 - Drew Phipps and the Restoration of the Candy Darter Jan 17, 2023

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 148: Drew Phipps and the Restoration of the Candy Darter

America’s Midwestern rivers – the Elk, the Kanawha, the Ohio and all their vast systems of arterial tributaries – are home to a mind-boggling array of some of the most bizarre creatures on this planet. Among them, the candy darter, a tiny fish of such astounding beauty that its very existence begs questions about human perception, evolution and aesthetics: Why would a fish look like this? Why is it so beautiful? Join us for the return of one of the Podcast & Blast’s most popular guests, Drew Phipps of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Fish Hatchery in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where a successful program to restore the candy darter to its original riverine habitats is bearing fruit. Listen to the end for a bonus tale of a junk store “swan gun” brought back to life and into the turkey woods…a mammoth 10-gauge black powder market hunting relic, best test fired with duct-tape, prayers and a 20-foot piece of paracord while hiding behind a block wall. Do not try this at home or anywhere else.

Learn more about Backcountry Hunters and Anglers: www.backcountryhunters.org/

Ep. 147 - Ted Koch on the Lesser Prairie Chicken and Grasslands Conservation Dec 21, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 147: Ted Koch on the Lesser Prairie Chicken and Grasslands Conservation

Will we act now to save America’s iconic grasslands? The southern population of the lesser prairie chicken has been listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as endangered, a listing that will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the fate of this gamebird and its habitat on the southern Great Plains. But this conversation with Ted Koch, a former endangered species biologist, executive director of the North American Grouse Partnership, and chair of BHA’s North American board of directors, is not just about lesser prairie chickens; it is about a resounding failure in conservation and an opportunity to forge a new path to honor and protect America’s grasslands and all their attendant species. As goes the lesser prairie chicken so goes the American grassland ecosystem, and there is absolutely no reason to accept the loss of either one.

Learn more about Backcountry Hunters and Anglers: www.backcountryhunters.org/

Ep. 146 - Lyndsie Bourgon, Author of Tree Thieves Dec 06, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 146: Lyndsie Bourgon, Author of Tree Thieves

Lyndsie Bourgon is a writer, oral historian, National Geographic Fellow and author of Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods. Join Hal and Lyndsie as they explore the many paths that led to her book on the booming trade in stolen timber and other forest products from America’s public and private lands. You will never look at a beautiful violin or guitar quite the same (“music wood’ is among the most poached and the most valuable), and you will be left pondering a very unsettling question: What is outlawry, really? From Robin Hood and Little John poaching the king’s deer in Sherwood Forest to a lone man illegally cutting shakes in shadowy Northern California redwood groves, through roadside burl merchants in dying towns surrounded by mountains laid bare by clearcutting for an insatiable global market, how exactly does one define a natural resources crime? Tree Thieves is not a simple true crime book with simple villains. It’s an exploration of humankind’s relationship to the natural world that sustains us.

Ep. 145 - Dr. Susan Leopold, Ethnobotanist Nov 22, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 145: Ethnobotanist Dr. Susan Leopold

Dr. Susan Leopold is an ethnobotanist who spent the early years of her career in the jungles of the Peruvian Amazon and Central America. An epiphany led her home, to Virginia and to the American heartland of the Ohio River, to study native plants, medicinal herbs and the natural and human history of this wild, diverse and beleaguered corner of our world. Leopold is the executive director of the United Plant Savers, a group dedicated to protecting imperiled native plants like ginseng and goldenseal – and to establishing new and sustainable economies where these and other plants can bolster rural economies and make peoples’ lives healthier and more prosperous. Come with us to meet and learn from a leader in herbalism, native plant restoration, forest farming, and, maybe, a new way of living in the heartland: one that draws its strength from the land itself.

Ep. 144 - Douglas Brinkley, Author and Historian Nov 08, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 144: Author and Historian Douglas Brinkley

Douglas Brinkley is the preeminent scholar and writer on the history of America’s public lands and conservation movement. Among his seven bestselling books of history are Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (2010) and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America (2016). His new book in this series, Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, will be available before Dec. 1, 2022. Brinkley, who is a professor at Rice University in Texas, is also the author of numerous books on the American presidency, the editor of Ronald Reagan’s papers, a Jack Kerouac scholar, and the literary executor for gonzo journalist and writer Hunter F. Thompson. Listen and enjoy as Hal takes a deep dive with Mr. Brinkley as together they consider the past, present and future of “the public estate of the American people.”

Ep. 143 - Feral Horses on Public Lands in Nevada Oct 25, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 143: Feral Horses on Public Lands in Nevada

More than 82,000 feral horses roam U.S. public lands, about four times as many as the land and water can sustain. Almost all of them live in Nevada, the most arid state in the union, where their impacts are almost unimaginable: desertification and massive loss of wildlife, ranging from pollinators and other insects to sage grouse, elk, mule deer and pronghorn. The Bureau of Land Management is doing what it can to address this crisis, but the agency finds itself in an impossible position with an entirely misguided but powerful feral horse advocacy movement. However, a growing coalition of biologists and natural resource scientists, hunters and anglers, wildlife advocates and people who love the Nevada public lands (and the horses) are in a desperate race to solve this problem in a humane way – before it’s too late. Hal traveled to Nevada to talk with some of these experts: Mike Cox, state bighorn sheep and mountain goat biologist for the Nevada Department of Wildlife; Tina Bundy Nappe, an Eastern Sierra landowner and public lands advocate; Jim Sedinger, sage grouse biologist and retired University of Nevada wildlife ecology professor; and Bryce Pollock, a conservationist and hunter with the Nevada chapter of BHA.

Ep. 142 - Ashley Peters - Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society Oct 12, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 142: Ashley Peters, communications director, Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society

Ashley Peters grew up in rural Iowa, in a landscape of cornfields and monoculture agriculture. Looking for a wilder and wider life, she found her way to U.S. Forest Service trail jobs in the Minnesota Boundary Waters and in Alaska, to a degree in communications, and to conservation work ranging from the gator-bellowing swamps of Louisiana to the woodcock and grouse popple of the upper Midwest. Hal and Ashley talk the deep engagement and beginners' mindset of adult-onset hunting and fishing, the challenges of finding one's way to one's passions, and the swiftly-changing world of conservation, climate, wildlife diversity, and the business of somehow communicating it all clearly to a sometimes skeptical and indifferent public.

Ep. 141 - Nate Schweber - Public Lands Journalist Sep 28, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 141: Public Lands Journalist Nate Schweber

A flamboyant Western politician, yelling hatred for the federal government, accusing anyone who questioned him of being a “communist,” secretly planning a takeover and selloff of 230 million acres of public land to his cronies. Sounds like today, yes? Well, it was 1947, and it almost worked. Montana-born, New York City-seasoned reporter and writer Nate Schweber uncovers the whole sordid, instructive history in his wild ride of a book, This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild, a chronicle of the life of one man, DeVoto, the greatest Western historian who ever lived, and his wife, Avis, genius editor, publisher, devoted friend and promoter of the chef Julia Child, who stood up against some of the most powerful and corrupt forces of their time. And, with the help of the American people, they won.

Ep. 140 - Far Bank’s Simon Gawesworth Sep 13, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 140: Far Bank’s Simon Gawesworth on public access to public waters…worldwide

Simon Gawesworth is a second-generation master flycasting instructor and world casting champion, author of three books on Spey casting, and currently works as the education and engagement manager for Far Bank. A native Brit, he has been working in the flyfishing industry in the U.S. for the past 25 years and fishing the fresh and saltwater globe from Tierra del Fuego to Montana to Christmas Island. Hal and Simon range far on this interview: through Simon’s work with Far Bank (which includes Sage, RIO, Redington and other brands dedicated to flyfishing education and conservation) to the near-total lack of public access to waters in Europe and Argentina. The talk is fly tackle for small streams in the southern U.S., leaders for topwater bass fishing, the highly specialized culture of competitive “coarse fishing” in the United Kingdom, and the fact that American anglers, whether they are wading the Madison for big browns, Spey casting for Oregon steelhead or rollcasting a 2-weight switch rod on a Mississippi creek for shellcrackers, seem utterly unaware of how good we have it, and how quickly it could all go…Euro on us. Join us.

Ep. 139 - Kyle Lybarger, Native Habitat Project Aug 30, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 139: Kyle Lybarger, Native Habitat Project

Kyle Lybarger, a 29-year-old consulting forester, father, deer-hunter, small creek addict and self-proclaimed “native plant nerd” of Hartselle, Alabama, is a major part of a new and wonderful current sweeping America. Kyle’s Native Habitat Project videos – simple, one-minute vignettes of obscure native plants, remnant grasslands and wildlife-vibrant native plant landscapes – have been downloaded millions of times. The Native Habitat Project is bizarre insects and forgotten plants, science from the heart and soul, love of place, sense of wonder, mostly right under our noses (some of Kyle’s most intact ancient grassland remnants were discovered by the local Dollar Store). For a nation exhausted by abstraction and thirsting for the irrefutably real, Kyle Lybarger’s life work is a tin cup of cold water from a deeper well.

Ep. 138 - Alex Harvey - Mississippi Forester Aug 16, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 138: Mississippi forester Alex Harvey

Come with Hal to southern Mississippi to talk with Alex Harvey, a registered professional forester in Mississippi and Alabama and a land management consultant, wildlife biologist and multi-generational conservationist, hunter and fisherman. Harvey is carrying on the outdoor traditions passed on to him from generations of his family, ranging from herbalism and foraging to rabbit, squirrel and deer hunting, cattle ranching, gardening, cooking and living a full and thriving life in the Southern outdoors. Alex is also the founder of Legacy Land Management, “forestry from the ground up,” helping private landowners, many of them Black, make the most of their properties for wildlife, timber and ecological resilience.

Ep. 137 - Russell Worth Parker - Marine Veteran and Storyteller Aug 02, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 137: Marine Veteran and Storyteller Russell Worth Parker

Russell Worth Parker, known as Worth, is a retired Marine and a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. After 27 years in the Corps, he is home in Wilmington, North Carolina, hunting and fishing and being a husband and father – and has, as he puts it, “fallen backwards into a writing career.” Parker’s work has been published in The New York Times, Garden & Gun, The Bitter Southerner, Backcountry Journal, Shooting Sportsman, Salt Magazine and military websites such as SOFLETE.com. Join us for a full-tilt conversation that ranges from BHA’s Armed Forces Initiative to the Drive-by Truckers, Cormac McCarthy, veterans hunting Texas turkeys, traumatic brain injury and war. We also discuss the 80s classic film Red Dawn.

Ep. 136 - Saving the Striped Bass with Mike Woods and Chris Borgatti Jul 19, 2022

Striped bass are arguably the most important fish – culturally and economically – on the Atlantic seaboard. And right now, anglers are spearheading a push to conserve and rebuild striper populations, which have suffered in recent decades because of overfishing and poor habitat. What’s the future of this iconic Eastern species, and what opportunities can we create to ensure our continued ability to fish for striped bass? Hal talks with Mike Woods, chair of BHA’s New England chapter, recipient of BHA’s Jim Posewitz award and resident of Rhode Island, and Chris Borgatti, BHA’s New York and New England chapter coordinator who hails from Massachusetts, about the past, present and achievable future of striped bass fisheries in the eastern United States. As Chris says, “New England might not have as much public land as in the West, but what’s there is vital to the huge population centers in the East. And it makes the fight for conservation, habitat, access and opportunity even more important.” Join them for a far-reaching conversation that hits on all aspects of the outdoor lifestyle along the New England coast.

Ep. 135 - Rue Mapp - Founder and CEO, Outdoor Afro Jul 05, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 135: Rue Mapp, founder and CEO, Outdoor Afro

Rue Mapp transformed her kitchen table blog into a national nature business and movement. Today, Mapp is founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro. For more than a decade, the nonprofit has continued to celebrate and inspire Black connections and leadership in nature across the United States. Mapp also is an award-winning and inspirational leader, speaker, public lands champion and author. Her first national book, Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors, will be released in the fall. Mapp is a National Geographic 2019 fellow, Heinz Awards honoree and National Wildlife Federation communication award recipient as well. Her work has earned international media attention from Oprah Winfrey, The New York Times, Good Morning America, NPR, NBC’s TODAY, Forbes and MeatEater. Be inspired by her wide-ranging conversation with Hal Herring, and follow her adventures @RueMapp.

Ep. 134 - Snake River Dams Jun 21, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 134: Snake River Dams

We are teetering on the brink of what could be the greatest conservation success story of the past 50 years. The removal of four outdated and failing dams on the lower Snake River will restore the passage of millions of salmon and steelhead upstream into 5500 square miles of the most intact, coldwater spawning and rearing habitat in North America (almost all of it public land). If the dams are left in place, these same salmon and steelhead face inevitable extinction. It is a simple choice between vibrant, resilient life abounding, with all that entails – a resurrection of fisheries, economics, and the health of forests and wildlife that evolved with these fish – or a descent into the darkness of extinction and collapse. Which will we choose? Join Hal as he meets with Eric Crawford, North Idaho field coordinator for Trout Unlimited; Sam Mace, a fisheries expert who has worked with Save Our Wild Salmon; and Josh Mills, BHA development coordinator and board member of the Wild Steelhead Coalition, in this podcast recorded live at the BHA North American Rendezvous in May 2022.

If you live in Idaho, Oregon or Washington, take action now! Urge your elected leaders to support a science-based approach to conserving fisheries and supporting the economic health of communities that depend on them.

Ep. 133 - BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning Jun 07, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 133: BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning

For Americans who live or venture west of the Mississippi River or north to Alaska, no public lands are more important, more abundant or more accessible than those managed by the Bureau of Land Management. We are talking about 247.3 million acres of public land (70 million of them in Alaska). In the Lower 48, this means elk hunting in the Missouri Breaks of Montana, Wyoming’s best pronghorn and mule deer country, quail hunting in the borderlands of New Mexico, and black bear or even bison hunting in the high desert mountains of Utah. The BLM manages the National Conservation Lands system, which includes millions of acres of America’s finest hiking, camping, wandering, canyoneering, rafting and access to rivers. The agency administers 18,000 grazing permits and is responsible for 700 million subsurface acres of publicly owned minerals. If it seems like an impossible task…well, sometimes it is. Today on the podcast we talk with BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning about the present and future of these lands – and how we can create a future in which politics is no longer the major obstacle to keeping these irreplaceable lands in public hands.

Ep. 132 - Corner Crossing in Wyoming with Ryan Callaghan, Liz Lynch and Jared Oakleaf May 27, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 132, Corner Crossing in Wyoming with Ryan Callaghan, Liz Lynch and Jared Oakleaf

Most of us have been following the case: four hunters from Missouri who used a homemade ladder to cross from one section of public land to the next without setting foot on private land…and the hard-fought court cases that ensued in Carbon County, Wyoming. It’s a case that may define public access to public lands for decades to come. Yet it is more than that. It’s about the resurgence of privatization of public assets in America, a harsh echo from the Gilded Age. It’s a reminder that plutocracy never sleeps, that the public trust is never truly safe and that, as Frederick Douglass said best, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Come listen to this discussion, recorded live at BHA’s 11th annual North American Rendezvous with MeatEater’s Ryan Callaghan and Liz Lynch and Jared Oakleaf of the Wyoming chapter of BHA: It’s a deep dive into the Wyoming corner crossing case, 200 years in the making. It’s a story of old range wars, land giveaways and ancient doctrines of law. Explore with us the possibilities that “bruising someone’s airspace with the points of one’s hips or shoulders” can be an offense worthy of full-bore prosecution…at least in the eyes of some folks.

Ep. 131 - Sen. Jon Tester and the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act May 03, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Bonus Ep. 131, Sen. Jon Tester and the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act

To those outside of Montana, the Blackfoot River is the “Big Blackfoot” featured in Norman Maclean’s lyrical and tragic novel A River Runs Through It. For Montanans and generations of visitors, the Blackfoot is a state of being all its own, a big rowdy river of native cutthroats and bull trout, its waters born of both high-altitude wilderness snows and the tannin-stained, unfathomably rich chain of wetlands and lakes of the Clearwater drainage. It is a huge, complex and vibrant watershed, and as healthy as it is now, it was not always this way. Join us for an interview with Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester on why he is a die-hard supporter of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act, supported by three-quarters of Montanans – hunters, anglers, bikers, loggers, ranchers and others – and which will guide the management and ensure the long-term health of this irreplaceable part of our public lands and waters legacy.

Learn more and take action in support of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act right now.

Ep. 130 - BHA’s Armed Forces Initiative Apr 27, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 130: BHA’s Armed Forces Initiative: Honoring and serving those who serve.

“Public lands are probably not the reason you would list for joining the Army or the Marines, but they’re the key piece of what makes America the greatest country out there,” says Trevor Hubbs, BHA’s Armed Forces Initiative coordinator. BHA recognizes that military members are a key constituency when it comes to the defense of our wild public lands and waters. The Armed Forces Initiative, or AFI, is booming. From Ft. Bragg to Camp Pendleton and everywhere in between, active duty military members and veterans are working together with local BHA chapters to get our fighting men and women out onto public lands and waters, teach hunting and fieldcraft skills, and hunt and fish, acknowledging that nobody gets service members like others who have served. Join us as Hal interviews Hubbs, along with AFI Liaison Leader Ryan Burkert and AFI Installation Leader Andy Ruszkiewicz. Learn about the mission, challenges and successes the AFI has seen during its first year-plus of existence and hear stories from the individuals who are playing a new and critical role in engaging military members in the conservation of our shared lands and waters.

Ep. 129 - Joseph Jenkins - Biologist, Herpetologist, Alabama Wanderer Apr 12, 2022

The Bankhead National Forest in Alabama is a place of shadowed canyons and rushing coldwater creeks, crystalline waterfalls and bluff shelters blackened by the smoke from campfires over thousands of years. It’s an island of rare plants and wildlife and old growth trees in a state where coalmining and industrial forestry and now the sprawl of cities have radically altered the landscape. Come with us to Moulton, Alabama, and meet native son Joseph Jenkins, a biologist and herpetologist, hunter and angler, who is working to save two of the most imperiled and least known creatures in the forest: the flattened musk turtle and the Black Warrior waterdog. What is it like to spend one’s life working to save two species that almost no one would miss if they disappeared? What did Aldo Leopold mean when he said, “The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts”? How did the fine chisel of evolution result in these two highly specialized creatures living only here, in this last piece of public lands wild country, in a region facing total transmogrification at the hands of humankind?

Ep. 128 - Jimmy Stiles - Alabama Herpetologist Mar 29, 2022

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 128: Alabama Herpetologist Jimmy Stiles

The Conecuh National Forest in south Alabama is known as the Heart of the Longleaf, a landscape of tall pine and wiregrass, restoration and recovery, humming with life and comprising a wild diversity of plants and wildlife found nowhere else. Field biologist, herpetologist, student of deep time, and full-time hunter and fisherman Jimmy Stiles lives and works in the Conecuh, leading efforts to recover the endangered indigo snake (North America’s largest and arguably most impressive snake species) and restore the longleaf forests that were once the southern U.S.-dominant ecosystem – all while having a rollicking good time way out there in the farthest reaches of the wild, hot, buggy and snaky Deep South. Hal caught up with Jimmy on Oak Mountain in Alabama this spring at the BHA Southeast Chapter Backcountry Jubilee.

Ep. 127 - Jack Rudloe - Florida Gulf Coast Writer, Naturalist and Advocate Mar 15, 2022

Jack Rudloe is one of the orneriest watermen on the Florida Gulf Coast, a time- and sun-honed fighter for clean water, intact forests and wetlands, and the myriad salt and freshwater life that depends upon it all. He is a world-renowned scientist and researcher, a commercial harvester of sea life, an unparalleled educator and the author of nine books and hundreds of articles. He and his wife Anne founded Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in the fishing town of Panacea in 1980. Hal and Jack talk about what it is like to have a inhabitant’s perspective on the saltwater that spans over 60 years, the connections between the blackwater swamps, rivers and ephemeral wetlands of the inlands to the health of the Gulf, alligators eating dogs, and what it costs a man and his wife and family and business to stand tall and speak out against the towering wall of powers that want to dismantle the Gulf Coast and the natural systems that make it one of the richest fisheries in the world.

Ep. 126 - Doug Duren - Hunter, Farmer, Land Manager, Conservationist Mar 01, 2022

We hunters and anglers are often lost, these days, in a thicket of questions about public land and private land, loss of access, too much access, conservation priorities, conflicting desires and goals. One person who is forging a path through this thicket is Doug Duren, hunter-conservationist, multi-generational Driftless Area landowner in southern Wisconsin, and somewhat unlikely conservation and hunting media star. Join us for a deeply inspiring conversation about something overwhelmingly positive that is happening right now – when it matters – because, as Doug reminds us, when it comes to land, water and wildlife, “It’s not ours, it’s just our turn.”

Join Us: Backcountry Hunters and Anglers

Ep. 125 -Mark Squillace - Attorney, Legal Scholar, Public Access Expert Feb 15, 2022

The forces of privatization are very definitely on the march. From hunting access and opportunity to the age-old conflict over who has the right to fish or swim or boat on our waterways, privatization is arguably the defining debate in the United States right now. Join us for the story of an 80-year Colorado fly fisherman who is attempting to halt this slide toward privatizing stream and river access in his state, maybe once and for all. Law professor, attorney and public lands and water legal scholar Mark Squillace of the University of Colorado Law School guides us through a fascinating legal case that has ramifications for stream access and other public trust conflicts across the U.S.

Ep. 124 - Randy Newberg and Andrew McKean - Elk Madness in Montana Jan 31, 2022

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.

Ep. 123 - Chef Eduardo Garcia - Co-Founder of Montana Mex Jan 18, 2022

Eduardo Garcia, one of the greatest wild game chefs of our time and the co-founder of Montana Mex, returns to the Podcast & Blast to talk, as always, about life – family, work, cooking, hunting, gardening, foraging, the discipline of awareness and the glories and struggles of the every day. On Feb. 10, Chef Garcia will be leading a Field to Table Experience with BHA. His new TV series, Zest for Life, is available now. Listen to Hal’s 2019 interview with Eduardo if you don’t know his story and then listen to this one, a conversation with a man who was struck down by an unimaginable accident while hunting and who worked his way forward: from the edge of death and the reality of loss, to a life more abundant.

Ep. 122 - Allen Morris Jones - Western Storyteller Jan 04, 2022

Ep. 122: Allen Morris Jones - Western Storyteller

2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of one of the most important treatises on hunting ever written. Allen Morris Jones’ book A Quiet Place of Violence: Hunting and Ethics in the Missouri River Breaks was once best known among a kind of chosen few outdoorsmen and women, those who relished the history of their pursuit and the philosophy of immersion into landscape, wildlife, blood and meat, and finality – and who wanted to ponder the deep why of what drove them. It was a book found in bloodstained packs, on sun-cracked truck dashboards, on cabin bookshelves beside great works of the distant past: Ortega y Gasset, Teddy Roosevelt, Grancel Fitz. In the past 15 years, A Quiet Place of Violence has found a vastly larger audience among a younger generation, hunters who are coming to the pursuit on their own, without the traditions and the answers of the past. Join us for an in-depth conversation with Allen Jones, on his work and his life, on hunting, writing, philosophy, and on the (possible) banishment of abstraction.

Ep. 121 - Melanie Vining - Executive Director, Idaho Trails Association Dec 21, 2021

Ep. 121: Melanie Vining - Executive Director, Idaho Trails Association

For a measure of sweat equity, an entire world of adventure awaits anyone who wants to work on American public lands. In today’s podcast, Hal catches up with Melanie Vining, an Idaho elk hunter, mom and mule packer who is the ramrod for the Idaho Trails Association, one of the major outfits bringing together volunteers with the tools, knowledge and support to get the work done on our BLM and national forest backcountry trails. This is a conversation about one of the most successful public land volunteer groups anywhere. It’s about how the work gets done, why we do it, and the fun and friendships that are the essence of the experience.

Ep. 120 - Dave Byrnes - Australian Outdoorsman Dec 07, 2021

Ep. 120: Australian Outdoorsman Dave Byrnes

Join us for a journey Down Under with Dave Byrnes, host and founder of Australia’s best hunting and shooting podcast, The Hunting Arete. Byrnes, of Newcastle, New South Wales, is a tradesman, father, aficionado of fine guns and wanderer of the wildest bush country of the strangest continent. We talk hunting tahr above the glaciers of New Zealand (ice axes required!), Sambar in the mountains of New South Wales, rusa, chital, fallow, hog deer, water buffalo, free range donkeys and run-amok feral camels. It’s wild ride of a conversation. Bring your translator if you don’t speak Aussie, and marvel at a whole ’nother world of hunting and conservation and public lands fights, right here on planet Earth.

Ep. 119 - Jessie Shallow - Mule Deer Foundation Biologist Nov 23, 2021

Jessie Shallow, of Salmon, Idaho, is the partner biologist for the Mule Deer Foundation, working with state and federal agencies to restore mule deer winter range and other habitat in the wake of the last- decades’ massive range fires. Her family and personal roots are deep in the southern Idaho farmlands and wild country from the Owyhee to the Bitterroots. Jessie and Hal discuss the work they’ve done together over the past two years: This season MDF crews planted a record 196,000 sagebrush and bitterbrush seedlings on burned-over mule deer winter range and core sage grouse habitat. Join us to learn what is at stake here, what is being done, and what the future holds for this crucial conservation work.

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Ep. 118 - Clay Hayes - Backcountry College Professor Nov 09, 2021

Host of BHA’s Backcountry College YouTube series, Clay Hayes is a traditional bowhunter, wildlife biologist, wilderness skills instructor, master bowyer, filmmaker and family man who splits his time between a homestead in the mountains of Idaho and the piney woods and swamp country of the Florida Panhandle where he was born and raised. Clay is also the winner of Alone Season 8, the reality TV survival series, where he survived for 74 days along the shoreline of Chilko Lake in British Columbia using a small selection of tools, his bow, the teachings of the great Stoic philosophers, and a combination of a little luck and lot of pure will.

Tony Latham - Undercover Game Warden Oct 26, 2021

Tony Latham is a retired game warden with 25 years’ experience working undercover on some of Idaho’s wildest public lands and in pursuit of some of the West’s nastiest wildlife criminals. Undercover work is a total immersion in a subculture: of cheap alcohol and casual violence, dive bars and broken people, slaughtered fish and wildlife, and coldly professional violators. The job exacts its own price, and nobody could ever say they do it for the pay. It’s only for the truly committed, those who believe in hunting and fishing and wildlife conservation as basic to the American way of life and who are willing to put their lives on the line to make sure it endures. Join us in Salmon, Idaho, to hear stories from the game warden and lifelong conservationist who risked it all to hold his part of the Thin Green Line.

Joel Gay with NM BHA and Jesse Deubel and Ray Trejo with the New Mexico Wildlife Federation Oct 13, 2021

Everybody knows that wildlife in the United States is owned by all of us. Elk, deer and other species are held in the public trust, period. But what happens when publicly owned big game is commercialized – and when hunting opportunity for public wildlife is sold to the highest bidder? What happens when so-called “private land” licenses can be used on public land? Some Western states are grappling with those questions now, but New Mexico public land elk hunters have been living under these conditions for years. Hal takes a deep dive into the byzantine regulations of elk hunting in New Mexico with three local hunters – Joel Gay with NM BHA and Jesse Deubel and Ray Trejo with the New Mexico Wildlife Federation – including what lies ahead for New Mexico and what other states should consider before going down the same road. Tune in for this cautionary tale about the commercialization of a valuable public resource: elk.

0:01:52 Intro 0:04:01 Background 0:14:45 Anti Donation Clause 0:18:20 IPRA and Obfuscation 0:20:13 Responsibility to NM Residents 0:24:28 The restoration paid for by public 0:27:35 High Quality of NM hunting 0:31:31 The low draw odds for the public 0:35:57 History of the draw odds and guide set-asides 0:44:11 Marketing property with Landowner Tags 0:46:04 Privatization of Public Resource 0:49:21 NM Depredation Law 0:52:33 NM Depredation Fund 0:55:29 Conservation is not convenient 0:55:59 The NM draw system is privatized, complex and obscure 1:01:03 Entitlements and Politics 1:02:52 What would a solution look like? 1:12:33 What can people do? 1:16:32 NM Legislative Finance Committee Audit 1:20:37 RAWA and NM Landowner Tag Funding 1:24:04 NM Game Commission Politics 1:32:34 NM 2021 Hunting Plans

Dan O’Brien, Bison Rancher and Regenerative Agriculture Visionary Sep 28, 2021

Dan O'Brien has been ranching for nearly 50 years and doing it in a way that improves wildlife habitat. Listen to this intense conversation with Hal Herring about the legacy he's helping to build with his herd and with his land.

Recovering America's Wildlife Act With Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) Sep 14, 2021

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), a hunter, angler, longtime conservation champion and BHA member, has introduced legislation known as the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (S. 2372). This bipartisan bill would dedicate nearly $1.4 billion annually to fund projects by state and tribal fish and wildlife agencies that benefit both game and non-game species. In partnership with a broad coalition of organizations, businesses and fish and wildlife management agencies that make up the Alliance for America’s Fish & Wildlife, BHA is working to advance this legislation, the product of decades of hard work by devoted sportsmen and women, conservationists and business leaders. In this special episode of the Podcast & Blast, Hal talks with Sen. Heinrich about why hunters and anglers have a major stake in the conservation of habitat relied upon by a range of fish and wildlife species. Learn more and take action in support of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.

Ed Arnett, chief scientist, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership Sep 08, 2021

Ed Arnett is the hunting-est, bird-doggingest biologist in America, chief scientist for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership as well as host of the national conservation TV series This American Land. Hal and Ed have been friends and hunted together for more than a decade. In this interview they sit down to talk sage grouse, fire, public lands and the future of sagebrush ecosystems, which also means the future of the myriad species – from pronghorn and mule deer to pygmy rabbits and Brewer’s sparrows – that make up the incredible tapestry of the American West. BHA and TRCP, along with a coalition of other hunting and fishing groups, are working together to advance a legislative approach to conservation of grasslands habitats, including the sagebrush shrub steppe. Learn more about the coalition’s work, and take action in support of grasslands conservation.

Wyoming wilderness guides and outfitters Meredith and Tory Taylor Sep 01, 2021

Meredith and Tory Taylor have been outfitters, guides and conservation leaders in the wild heart of Wyoming’s Greater Yellowstone for almost 50 years. Over those decades, they have explored places few others have ever seen, shown generations of Americans the wonders of hunting and fishing and wilderness, horses, wolves, storms and stars, wildflower meadows and summer snowbanks, tumbling whitewater creeks and towering black-rock peaks. Theirs is a marriage and an adventure partnership, based in their modest home and native plant gardens and horse pastures on the Wind River, carried as far afield as Outer Mongolia. Join us for a wide-ranging discussion of lives lived large, elk-fed, and mostly on horseback.

Jonathan Wilkins, founder, Black Duck Revival Aug 17, 2021

“I never found a place I belong, so I’m making one.” Jonathan Wilkins is the founder of Black Duck Revival, a hunting and fishing guide service and simple lodge – built by his own two hands from an old church building in Brinkley, Arkansas. Jonathan is also a father and husband, a next-level forager and cook, a writer and working man. As he wrote in an essay for Outdoor Life last winter, “I am a Black man. Actually, I am biracial, but I live in a place where that nuance of truth is, most often, not afforded me.” Jonathan’s story, and the story of Black Duck Revival, is an American journey, a reclaiming of heritage, a celebration of family, hunting and fishing in the beautiful and haunted lands of the mighty Arkansas Delta.

Migration corridors, desert elk, mule deer and Wyoming’s Red Desert Aug 03, 2021

The remote Red Desert is a place of dreams, albeit dreams sometimes replete with choking alkali dust, freezing winds, gumbo mud, and the scattered, bleached bones of the unlucky or unfit of all species. But it’s a place of elk, toad mule deer, herds of pronghorn and the thunder of flushing sage hens, too – all of which have to be able to move long distances to range and water and shelter from the mighty elements, in the age-old way of desert dwellers, if they are to survive. Join us with Josh Coursey of the Muley Fanatic Foundation and Joy Bannon of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation to learn about the work being done to identify and conserve the most critical migration paths, habitat and heritage of this last, great empty place.

Nephi Cole of the National Shooting Sports Foundation Jul 22, 2021

Recorded in-person at BHA 10th Annual North American Rendezvous in Montana, join us today for an in-depth conversation between two certified gun nerds, Hal Herring and Nephi Cole. Nephi is director of government relations-state affairs of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry’s primary trade association. Nephi has a serious conservation, shooting and outdoors pedigree – in addition to currently representing America’s firearms manufacturers and retailers, he has worked for the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service and spent six years as the senior policy advisor to Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, where he specialized in natural resources, outdoor recreation, water issues, firearms and energy. Anyone interested or engaged in America’s long debate over firearms and the Second Amendment can tune in here to understand the position of the largest firearms industry advocacy group in the United States.

North American Board Member And Heather’s Choice Founder Heather Kelly Jul 06, 2021

Based out of Anchorage, Alaska, Heather's Choice is a backpacking food startup company dedicated to making delicious, ultralight, nutrient-dense meals and snacks for adventurers. Heather Kelly is an avid hunter, angler, backpacker and outdoor adventurer. Kelly launched Heather’s Choice Meals for Adventuring in 2014 to combine her love of sports nutrition and backcountry pack-rafting. Her emphasis has always been on high-quality, whole foods nutrition. With signature dishes such as smoked sockeye salmon chowder and blueberry buckwheat breakfast, Heather’s Choice has gained recognition as a healthy, delicious, portable food option for the backcountry.

Wild Game Chef, Author And Outdoorsman Hank Shaw Jun 22, 2021

Join Hal as he sits down with renowned chef, author and outdoorsman Hank Shaw as they discuss hunting, fishing, foraging and preparing the wildest of wild game.

Archeologist Dr. Larry Todd Jun 09, 2021

Archeologist Dr. Larry Todd came home to Meeteetse, Wyoming, after a long career studying ancient hunting peoples all over the planet. Asked to do a quick archeological survey of some high-elevation public lands in Northwest Wyoming, he took a crew of students and headed out, convinced of lean pickings and a fast return to the comforts of home. After all, how many ancient hunters would choose to live at 11,000 feet, on barren ridges swept by winter snow and bitter wind, blistered by summer sun and relentless lightning storms? A week into the expedition, Dr. Todd and his crew found themselves in an unprecedented high-altitude treasure hall of artifacts, the record of thousands of years of habitation, drivelines and traps for hunting, ambush points, winter camps, kill sites of bison and bighorn sheep.

Legendary Outdoor Writer and BHA Board Member Eddie Nickens May 26, 2021

For more than 20 years, Eddie Nickens, a member of BHA’s North American board of directors, has been the premier storyteller and scribe of American hunting, fishing and conservation, writing for Field & Stream, Garden and Gun, Audubon and dozens of other publications. It’s a radical understatement to call him an outdoor writer, although the term fits the man who has published the best-selling behemoth of outdoor skills, Field & Stream’s Total Outdoorsman. In our conversation today, Hal and Eddie celebrate the publication of Eddie’s new book, The Last Wild Road, a collection of his all-time best stories from an unmatched life afield in the American wilds.

Mike Neiduski, the regional director of the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society May 11, 2021

On this second podcast focusing on the Eastern forests and upland game birds, Hal catches up to Mike “the Polish Hammer” Neiduski, the regional director of the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society, to talk habitat, public and private lands restoration, small scale timber harvest, and the heart-stopping explosion of wild birds flushing from dense cover, in front of the world’s best bird dogs- our own. The talk is public lands bird hunting from the Uwharrie National Forest to the Pisgah and the Nantahala, the Cherokee, and beyond. Join us for a conversation that springs straight from the wild richness of the southern forests, where there is a path to a better future for these iconic gamebirds.

Hunter, forager, and wild food educator Jenna Rozelle Apr 29, 2021

Jenna Rozelle lives in southern Maine, where she teaches classes on wild foods, forages, hunts, fishes and chronicles an existence spent close to the land. For her, hunting and fishing go hand in hand with foraging and land stewardship. A board member of the New England chapter of BHA and self described late-onset hunter, Rozelle tells Hal the story of her long and winding road to a gratifying relationship with harvesting wild creatures.

Todd Waldron, Northeast region forest conservation director for the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society Apr 14, 2021

Join Hal and Todd Waldron, Northeast region forest conservation director for the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society, for a discussion of the rich history of Todd’s home territory, a life of hunting and fishing public lands – from upland birds to whitetails, smelt netting to flyfishing for native brook trout – and what the future brings as we confront and overcome the obstacles to re-establishing the biodiversity and health (not to mention upland birds) of this last great wilderness.

Grahame Jones, Former Director of Law Enforcement for Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife Mar 30, 2021

Texas offers a diversity and abundance – of topography, fish and wildlife, and experiences – that few other states can match. Grahame Jones, recently retired as the director of law enforcement with Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, as well as chairman of BHA’s Texas chapter, knows this landscape intimately. Jones, a fifth-generation Texan, is a veteran of over 27 years in the field, starting as a game warden in the wild piney woods of east Texas and working his way up to chief of special operations, targeting big game poaching rings and illegal commercial fishing operations along the coast. Jones is one of Texas’ most deeply informed voices for coastal and other conservation. His passion comes from his early years hunting and fishing from Houston’s Katy Prairie to the Mexican dove fields in Tamaulipas – and from a lifetime spent in the woods and waters across his native state. Join Hal and Grahame for a discussion of critical conservation challenges, for edge-of-your-seat stories about backcountry Texas lawbreakers, and for an exploration of some of the best of the Lone Star State.

Dog Trainer, artist, writer and Minority Outdoor Alliance founder Durrell Smith Mar 17, 2021

Durrell Smith is a bird dog trainer, artist, podcaster and writer from Georgia. He founded the Minority Outdoor Alliance, a pioneering voice in connecting Blacks and others in the hunting community. “He lives what he speaks,” as Hal says of Durrell, who is also a bobwhite quail hunting fanatic, guiding and chasing birds largely on public lands. Through his work and pursuits, he is carrying on an incredible lineage of Southern quail hunting and dog training, giving voice to the deeply enmeshed and influential role of Blacks in Southern outdoor traditions. Listen as Hal and Durrell wander through the South, discuss Southern art and sporting culture, and consider the crucial role of diverse participants in keeping our outdoor heritage healthy and relevant.

Curt Meine, conservation biologist and Aldo Leopold scholar Mar 03, 2021

Curt Meine is a conservation biologist and one of America’s foremost conservation and environmental historians. He is the author of the definitive biography Aldo Leopold, His Life and Work and the voice of the outstanding Leopold documentary,Green Fire. Curt is also the co-editor of The Driftless Reader, a collection of writings exploring the cultural and natural histories of the Upper Midwest. He is currently a senior fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation and with the Center for Humans and Nature. He lives near Baraboo, Wisconsin, in the heart of the Driftless.

Wildlife biologist, Traditional Bowyer and Hunter Ron Rohrbaugh Feb 16, 2021

Author, conservationist and traditional bowhunter and bowyer Ron Rohrbaugh joins Hal on this week's Podcast & Blast.

Research Ecologist and Wildfire Expert Dr. Paul Hessburg Jan 19, 2021

Prominent research ecologist Dr. Paul Hessburg began his career decades ago as a U.S. Forest Service entomologist, studying the insects that kill trees on the grandest scale. Over the years, Hessburg broadened his scope, delving deeper into the greatest force for ecological change on Earth: fire and the age we live now in, the Age of Megafire, or the Pyrocene. Listen to this fascinating deep dive into how we got here and where we must go – if we hope to survive.

To get the absolute most out of this conversation, revisit BHA Podcast & Blast Episode 66, our interview with fire historian Dr. Stephen J. Pyne, who coined the term “the Pyrocene.”

BHA President and CEO Land Tawney Dec 29, 2020

Join Land Tawney for an end of year chat with host Hal Herring.

Alabama redeye bass angler Matthew Lewis Dec 15, 2020

When most of us think of Alabama bass fishing, we think of throwing crankbaits along the shorelines of Lake Eufaula or tossing a weedless frog on the grass at Guntersville. But Matthew Lewis of Auburn has a different obsession – flyfishing the rocky river shoalwaters and deep, shaded little creeks for redeye bass (Micropterus coosae) a ferocious, brilliantly colored native fish that redefines what Southern bass fishing is all about. Matthew is the author of the book Fly Fishing for Redeye Bass: An Adventure Across Southern Waters, and he wants to introduce Southern anglers to this fascinating fish and the experience of pursuing it. And at the same time, maybe – just maybe – building a constituency for protecting the waters where it lives, in one of the most biodiverse places remaining on earth, the incredible state of Alabama.

Bobwhite quail conservation with Michael Hook and Mark Coleman Dec 02, 2020

Some of us are old enough to remember the gloaming of hot summer days waning into twilight, listening to cicadas and the sweet, two-note call of bobwhite quail gathering for the night. A few of us of us know the intense excitement of coming up behind a bird dog on point and the explosive flush of a 40-bird covey suddenly in the air. Southern quail hunting was a culture and a way of life. Meet the folks on the front lines of restoring the bobwhite quail and quail hunting to public and private lands of the South.

Bonus Episode: David Quammen and Betsy Gaines Quammen Nov 25, 2020

Join Hal and writers David Quammen and Betsy Gaines Quammen for a bonus episode of the BHA Podcast & Blast. As we enter the season of giving thanks, of family in a time of social distancing, of reading good books by the fire, we hope you enjoy this wide ranging conversation, a love letter to writing and partnerships and the West.

Science writer and explorer David Quammen Nov 17, 2020

David Quammen is the foremost science writer of our time, specializing in the linked fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. His 2012 book Spillover – exploring how the destruction of natural ecosystems around the world leads to new viruses crossing over from wildlife to human beings – has made him one of the most sought-after and informed voices on the Covid pandemic. Join David and Hal for an engaging, thought-provoking and exquisitely timely conversation.

Historian, conservationist and writer Betsy Gaines Quammen Nov 04, 2020

Betsy Gaines Quammen is the author of the new book American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God & Public Lands in the West,which explores the intersection of religious belief and landscape. Quammen never set out to write about the Bundys, or Mormonism. But her interviews with Bundy family members and her exhaustive study of the history of the Latter Day Saints revealed a side of the anti-public lands movement that no other writer or scholar has even approached.

Alpinist and filmmaker Graham Zimmerman Oct 20, 2020

Graham Zimmerman is an alpinist, filmmaker and veteran of more than 30 international climbing expeditions. In the summer of 2019, Graham was part of a team that completed the first ascent of Link Sar in the Central Pakistani Karakoram via its Southeast Face. (It was a highly coveted prize; nine unsuccessful attempts had been made throughout the years.) Graham was born in New Zealand, raised in America’s Pacific Northwest, and has become, through his experiences in the great mountain ranges and glacier fields of the world, a leading voice for the climate change organization Protect Our Winters. Hal and Graham talk about how one trains mentally and physically for a brutal ascent like Link Sar, expedition planning, learning whitewater boating on the fly (in anticipation of an expedition where those skills will be a matter of life and death), adventure partnerships, and the work of the brilliant energy expert and economic historian Daniel Yergin.

Writer and adventurer Don Thomas Oct 06, 2020

One of America’s great outdoor writers, Don Thomas has hunted, fished and explored the world over – including Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Siberia and the South Pacific – while chronicling his adventures in 20 books and hundreds of magazine articles. Don spent a career as a physician in rural Montana and Alaska (while also working as a commercial fisherman, bush pilot and guide) and now writes full time; current roles include co-editor of Traditional Bowhunter and editor at large for Retriever Journal, among others. Sit back and enjoy this conversation between two great storytellers as Don talks trad bowhunting for sheep in the Brooks Range of Alaska, scouting in Africa with Kalahari Bushmen, the ongoing fight for public access, and why he votes public lands and waters.

David Byars and Jeremy Rubingh of Patagonia's "Public Trust" Film Sep 22, 2020

This Thursday, Sept. 24, BHA and Patagonia are hosting an exclusive screening of Public Trust: The Fight for America’s Public Lands – just in time for National Public Lands Day. Join Hal, Public Trust director David Byars and producer Jeremy Rubingh as they discuss the years-long process of making this film, the places, the people, the adventures, mishaps and terrors, regrets and joys. This is the first BHA podcast recorded remotely – David is in south Georgia visiting family, and Jeremy is in his new home – a sailboat currently anchored in Puget Sound.

Conflict journalist James Pogue Sep 09, 2020

James Pogue spent two years as an embedded journalist with the American militia movement. He was at the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge with Ammon and Ryan Bundy, an experience that he recounts in his 2018 book, Chosen Country. During his time with the Bundys and other militia, he became deeply immersed in the debates over the public lands of the American West. James is an international conflict journalist and a contributing writer at Harper’s Magazine. He also has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, The New Republic and Vice. Check out Hal’s and James’ no-holds-barred conversation infused with the history and politics of American public lands and waters.

Wilderness advocate and guide Bill Cunningham Aug 26, 2020

Bill Cunningham caught his first cutthroat trout in Lolo Creek, a tributary of the Bitterroot River, with a willow stick, a hook and a piece of string at age five. That was 72 years ago. Since then, he has guided, hunted, fished and wandered from the Brooks Range to the Mojave Desert and beyond, all the while relentlessly, tirelessly fighting for wilderness, wild rivers and public lands. Listen in on this conversation with one of America’s most experienced and knowledgeable conservation advocates, recorded in Montana the day after Bill and Hal had summitted two 8800-foot peaks on one of Bill’s favorite traverses in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Photojournalist, writer and adventurer Jess McGlothlin Aug 12, 2020

Jess McGlothlin is a wanderer, paddleboarding on the jungle whitewater of the Peruvian Amazon, fly-fishing lost atolls in the South Pacific or watching the rivers of the taiga unfold beneath the rotors of a battered vintage Russian helicopter. She started her own company at age 13, was a professional equestrian in Sweden, lasted exactly four days of college, and has been weathering the travel bans of the pandemic by photographing and documenting the protests and riots here in the U.S. She is the sole proprietor and lone employee of Jess McGlothlin Media, an outdoor industry powerhouse. Listen to her conversation with Hal and be inspired to plan your next adventure.

Writer and outdoorsman Malcolm Brooks Jul 29, 2020

Missoula-based carpenter, elk hunter and bird dog man Malcolm Brooks is the author of the epic novel Painted Horses, a wild and beautifully written story of romance and collision in 1950s Montana, where ancient pictographs in unexplored canyons whisper stories about to be forever lost beneath waters impounded in the frenzy of the dam-building era. Painted Horses has been described by Rick Bass as "Reminiscent of the fiery, lyrical and animated spirit of Cormac McCarthy's Borderlands trilogy, and the wisdom and elegance of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, Painted Horses is its own work, a big, old-fashioned and important novel." Hear what brought Brooks to this story and what drives him forward now.

Radio Show Host, Hunter and Conservationist Nathan "Shags" McLeod Jul 14, 2020

Nathan “Shags” McLeod is the hunting- and fishing-est award-winning radio DJ you’ll ever meet and has spent the past 15 years building a huge audience from his base in central Missouri. His fans come for his classic rock and roll and for his no-holds-barred, straight-from-the-heart reporting on conservation and the hunting and fishing that conservation makes possible. Shags can catch fish and play music with the very best of them; unlike most of the best of them, he also can talk firsthand alien encounters and passages through dimensions of space and time.

Investigative Journalist Richard Manning Jul 01, 2020

From his most recent book Go Wild: Free Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization, back to his rough-and-tumble newspaper days covering the scorched-earth timber industry of the 1980s, Richard Manning is the go-to investigative journalist for pivotal books about everything from the American prairie to the future of global agriculture. He's a lifelong hunter, a fisherman, the author of nine books and dozens of powerful magazine stories, and one of America's most innovative thinkers and writers.

America’s Shotgunner Phil Bourjaily Jun 16, 2020

Iowa-based Phil Bourjaily is America’s shotgunner and one of North America’s foremost experts on shotguns and shooting. In addition to writing a monthly column – for nearly three decades – for Field & Stream, where he is shotguns editor, Phil has authored Field & Stream’s The Total Gun Manual (with fellow firearms writer David Petzal), Shotgun Guide, and other books. But he is also a writer’s writer, a dedicated coach of youth trap and skeet teams, and a hunter who spends countless days chasing upland birds every fall, waterfowl every winter, and Midwestern turkeys every spring. Listen to a conversation between two passionate shooters and masters of their crafts.

Photographer Lee Kjos Jun 03, 2020

In a recent interview with Filson, Minnesota-born and bred photographer Lee Kjos was asked to describe his work in five words or less. Kjos replied: “Original. Authentic. Genuine. Unique, and bad-ass.” For anyone who has marveled at the understated power of Kjos’ hunting and fishing photography, those five words – each of them earned the hard way – sum it up. Although Kjos’ upbringing in the deep woods of Minnesota precludes him from ever saying it, those same five words could be used to describe the man himself. Join us as we discuss a life’s work of happy obsession behind the lens and across the planet, where sometimes the greatest photos and the greatest adventures – farm, family, waterfowl hunting and good dogs – are right outside your back door.

Clay Newcomb, journalist and owner of Bear Hunting Magazine May 19, 2020

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are not just words in the Declaration of Independence. They are words to live by, and perhaps nobody is living them harder or better right now than Clay Newcomb of the Arkansas Ozarks, owner of Bear Hunting Magazine. Clay is a mule trainer, a bear, whitetail and small game hunting obsessive, a dog man, archer, writer and filmmaker. But he is first and foremost a man of faith and family, and that fundamental strength is the foundation of a remarkable life of adventure, unfolding from his front yard in the Ozarks to the Rockies and beyond.

Angelo Baca, Navajo-Hopi filmmaker, distance runner, traditionalist May 05, 2020

Hal travels to the Bears Ears National Monument to meet with Angelo Baca, a filmmaker and storyteller who grew up in and around Blanding, Utah, and has roots in this country that go back, literally, thousands of years. For this conversation with Hal, he is home in Utah, where he continues to be one of the leading advocates for the Bears Ears National Monument and for Native American engagement in public land management decisions.

Rudi Roeslein, Energy and Conservation Visionary Apr 21, 2020

Rudi Roeslein came to St. Louis, Missouri, as a child from the refugee camps and ruins of post-World War II Europe. He became an inventor and an international industrialist who never lost his deep love for hunting and conservation. Rudi has invested $60 million of his own money creating successful renewable natural gas projects in north Missouri and pursuing what he calls “the 30/30 Vision” – a plan to restore 30 million acres of marginal cropland to native prairie in just 30 years. At a time when our American agriculture and energy sectors could be described as broken, this Missouri wild-card inventor is working non-stop to build a whole new future – one based on working with the powers and rhythms of the earth itself.

Maggie Carr, Wilderness Hunting Guide Apr 07, 2020

Born and raised in Choteau, Montana, Maggie Carr is a wilderness hunting guide, backcountry skier, skilled horse and mule packer and co-owner of the unique wilderness outfitting business DropstoneOutfitting, which offers packstring-suppported hiking trips in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and adjacent public lands of Montana. Maggie’s family has been here on the Teton River since her great-grandfather was a horseback doctor in the wild homestead years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hal and Maggie talk guiding and blizzards, hunting and grizzlies, why anyone would get into the business of outfitting.

The Editors Behind Outdoor Life Magazine Mar 24, 2020

What’s it like to be in charge of one of America’s oldest and most read hunting and fishing magazines? As the spring issue of Outdoor Life hits newsstands, we bring you the wild minds behind the stories: Senior Editor Natalie Krebs, Hunting Editor Andrew McKean and their venerable leader, Editor in Chief Alex Robinson. This is the work, this is the experience and the adventure, and, in today’s changing media landscape, this is the sacrifice and lack of security that comes with the dream job. Recorded live at the SHOT show in Las Vegas, just before the whole world went bat-soup crazy.

BHA Montana and the Fight for Public Access in the Crazy Mountains Mar 10, 2020

In the West, it’s called “the checkerboard” – one square mile of public land (640 acres, called a section) then one square mile of private – a direct result of frontier-era policies where the federal government gave away millions of acres of land, some to homesteaders but many to politically connected industries such as the railroads and timber companies. The idea, beyond just enriching a privileged few and scoring political power, was to encourage development of the West – timber for railroad ties and mining supports and lumber mills. The result, in our modern U.S., is a tangle of ownership and, sometimes, an access and land management nightmare. The Crazy Mountains of Montana are one such landscape, a garbled mix of public and private sections, and one where private landowners seem to be playing another old game from the frontier era: blocking access to public lands by controlling sections of private land

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 72: Celebrating Expanded Public Access to State Trust Lands in Colorado Feb 25, 2020

Colorado’s state trust lands have been held in an iron fist by some of the most anti-public access policies and regulations found anywhere in the Western states. The battle has been simmering for decades: Clearly, Coloradoans were demanding change. Since 2012, BHA’s Colorado chapter has been leading the battle for increased access … and Colorado Parks and Wildlife responded, announcing last summer the opening of 500,000 acres of state trust lands for fishing and hunting over the next three years. Hal travels to Denver for a deep dive into these issues and questions with BHA State Policy Director (and obsessive waterfowler) Tim Brass and Liz Rose, a hunter, scholar and researcher who has helped BHA uncover the paths that can lead us to a better future for all outdoors people across the nation.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 71: Matt Miller, outdoor writer and obsessed angler Feb 11, 2020

Hal meets with his old friend (and sometimes editor) Matt Miller in Matt’s hometown of Boise, Idaho, to talk about life and Matt’s new book Fishing Through the Apocalypse: An Angler’s Adventures in the 21st Century. Matt and Hal have known each other since they both started out writing for Bugle magazine before the dawn of the present century, and Matt – an obsessed fisherman, elk and deer hunter and mentor to a nascent fishing and hunting son – has traveled the world as the longtime science writer for The Nature Conservancy (as well as written for Field & Stream and other outdoor publications). If you think you are a fishing obsessive, it might make you feel better (or worse) to know that there are people many times more obsessed than you are, and some of them are probably even weirder than you. Matt fits right in.

Howard Vincent, president and CEO of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever Feb 04, 2020

BONUS EPISODE! Here’s a special edition of the BHA Podcast & Blast, just in time for Pheasant Fest 2020! It’s guns, it’s dogs, it’s wild flushing roosters on the wind, it’s conservation and clean water and better farms…and it’s Howard Vincent, the grand leader of Pheasants Forever, laying down the history, the future and the now of American upland bird hunting.

Christine Peterson, Wyoming outdoor journalist and adventurer Jan 28, 2020

Wyoming native and star outdoor reporter, with nine years of writing the outdoors column for the Casper Star-Tribune, Christine Peterson has been immersed in Wyoming’s hunting and fishing, mountains, rivers, plains and wilderness in a way few people will ever match. She talks with Hal about that life – the deadlines, the adventures, the stress and the love of newspapers and reporting – and her decision to leave it behind after the birth of her daughter Miriam, to take up freelancing full time and own the freedom to focus on a new life as an outdoor mother and writer.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep 68: Wildlife Migration Corridors and the Future of Western Wildlife Jan 14, 2020

This episode of BHA’s Podcast & Blast was recorded at New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado! We’re talking wildlife migration corridors, wildlife crossings and the future of Western wildlife with Colorado’s best and brightest. The numbers are sobering: 3,000 wildlife and vehicle collisions per year in Colorado, 600 collisions in one stretch of Highway 9 between Kremmling and Silverthorne alone, human lives lost, life-changing injuries sustained, millions of dollars in damages to vehicles, and thousands of wildlife slaughtered. Join Hal as he interviews Dan Prenzlow, director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Jessica Myklebust of Colorado Department of Transportation, and Luke Schafer, wildlife warrior of the West Slope from Conservation Colorado, about problem-solving for wildlife and human beings on an epic scale.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 67: Mark Kenyon, Founder of Wired to Hunt and Contributor at MeatEater Dec 31, 2019

We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.” –Wallace Stegner. This week’s podcast is an in-depth conversation with Mark Kenyon, Michigan-based hunter and fisherman, founder of Wired To Hunt, leading contributor at MeatEater Inc. and author of the new blockbuster public lands book That Wild Country. Mark and Hal talk hunting and fishing, reading and wanderlust, freedom, fatherhood, and Mark’s epic journey of writing a book that combines the best of everyman’s adventures with a powerful dose of history, conservation, and the nuts and bolts of our public lands.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 66: Wildfire expert, Dr. Stephen J. Pyne Dec 17, 2019

“Photosynthesis puts things together. Fire takes them apart.” – Dr. Stephen J. Pyne. While many people talk of the “Anthropocene” – the age of humankind, when nearly every natural process seems to be affected by the actions of billions of individual people – Stephen Pyne reminds us that we also are living in the Pyrocene, the age of fire, and that the history of humankind is inextricable from the history of fire, the most elemental and implacable force on this planet. Join Hal in Queen Creek, Arizona, for a conversation with Dr. Pyne, 15 years a firefighter on the crew of Grand Canyon National Park; a renowned writer, speaker and teacher; author of 35 books; and the world’s foremost scholar and historian of fire, about the Pyrocene, about forests and public lands, and about the future of life on this Earth.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 65: Carp Expert and Public Access Proponent Dan Frasier Dec 03, 2019

Imagine an undiscovered Eden in the heart of South Dakota, a major river lying untouched and forgotten for decades – with epic fishing amidst thunderous solitude. It exists, and Dan Frasier, a pioneer of fly fishing for big carp and author of an Orvis guide to carp flies, found it: 39 miles of the Missouri River, almost inaccessible to the public, almost unknown. He was sorely tempted to keep his discovery to himself. Why he did not is a message for all American conservationists.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 63: Brad Powell of TU and DJ Zor of Arizona BHA talk LWCF Nov 13, 2019

DJ Zor is vice chair of the Arizona chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, a public lands hunter extraordinaire and Navy nuclear sub veteran, and Brad Powell of Trout Unlimited is a 32-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service – former supervisor of the Tongass National Forest, the entire Northwest Region, the Davy Crockett National Forest in Kentucky, and so on … a pragmatic but firebrand conservation leader for five decades. Our conversation starts and ends with the Land and Water Conservation Fund and its critical role in safeguarding everything from urban ballfields to rural economies and public lands access, but hold on – they also talk Missouri (both DJ and Brad are native sons) Coues deer and javelina in the Superstitions, uranium mining, colonial economies and Arizona, the place where you can ski, hunt elk and antelope, shoot quail and go swimming in a creek, all on the same day.

BHA Podcast & Blast, EP. 62: Chris Parish and Leland Brown of the North American Non-Lead Partnership Oct 29, 2019

Hal sits down in Montana with Chris Parish and Leland Brown to talk copper bullets, lead fragments, falconry, raptors, condors, Mexico and California, a love of good guns, wild animals and wild meat – all following a long day of rifle shooting with everybody from the Hellgate Hunters and Anglers (a Missoula-based rod and gun club) to former U.S. Army snipers. Chris and Leland are co-founders of the North American Non-Lead Partnership, which educates hunters about the effects of the lead we shoot – on ourselves, on our environment and on the wildlife we love.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 61: Ron Boehme of The Hunting Dog Podcast and Ryan Busse of BHA Oct 15, 2019

Ron Boehme of Twin Lake, Michigan, has been hunting and training bird dogs since 1973 and is a senior judge with the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association. Ron is the host of the extraordinarily popular (and rightfully so – the podcast is a riot) Hunting Dog Podcast. He has a whole lot of knowledge and a whole lot of stories. Ryan Busse, chairman of BHA’s North American board, joins in because one cannot have a raucous conversation about bird hunting, dogs and guns without attracting Ryan, like a moth to a flame. Join us.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 60: Gwich’in hunter Walter Peter Oct 01, 2019

It is 80 miles or so by boat down the intensely braided and ever-changing Yukon River to the village of Fort Yukon, Alaska (at the confluence of the Yukon and the Porcupine), where Hal meets Walter Peter, a Gwich’inhunter, trapper and fisherman – provider for his family and elders and others, taking meat and fish and whatever else the earth will give, eight miles above the Arctic Circle. Their conversation ranges from Native concerns over fish and wildlife management to climate change and opening the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – the birthing ground for the caribou herds on which the Gwich’in have depended for thousands of years.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 59: Utah Roadless Lands at Risk? Sep 17, 2019

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert is petitioning the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop a new, state-specific Roadless Rule that would impact 4 million acres of National Forest lands in Utah. Does anybody in Utah want to protect roadless lands, which offer some of the world’s best backcountry hunting, hiking, fishing, skiing; some of the world’s most scenic places; and some of our most valuable fish and wildlife habitat? Yes, they do. Two of them are Utah BHA board member Andrew Wike, a hunter, climber and ski mountaineer based in Salt Lake City, and Andrew Rasmussen, field coordinator with Trout Unlimited, who lives in Logan. Surprises abound in this podcast, as well as a window into Utah’s rather unique politics.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 58: Chris Barkey of the Utah Stream Access Coalition Sep 10, 2019

Hal is traveling the Wasatch Front, snarled in traffic beneath the spectacular snow-covered peaks, still trying to understand Utah politics. How can a state legislature pass a law that makes it illegal for the its residents (as well as visitors) to fish or wade or swim in more than 90 percent of their own rivers and streams? What is going on here? We go “once more unto the breach” (to quote Henry V’s famous line inciting his warriors) with the Utah Stream Access Coalition’s Chris Barkey.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 57: The Outdoor Recreation Economy in the West Sep 04, 2019

The American outdoor recreation industry is the largest industry on the planet – to the tune of $887 billion dollars annually – that until recently has not demanded political representation for its interests. And what are those interests? Clean water, public lands, public access, wildlife habitat, trails, sustainably managed lands and waters – the same elements that make for a strong, healthy and ecologically resilient nation, one worthy of the dreams of our founders and the hopes of our own children. This podcast is the first to bring together three heads of the new offices of outdoor recreation in Montana (Rachel VandeVoort), Wyoming (Dave Glenn) and Oregon (CailinO’Brien-Feeney).

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 56: Fighting for Sunday hunting in the East Aug 27, 2019

Meet BHA Capital Region Co-Chair Samantha Flowers, BHA Pennsylvania board member Don Rank and BHA Regional Manager (and Pennsylvanian) Chris Hennessey, who are fighting the good fight to end Sunday hunting bans all across the Eastern United States.

BHA’s Podcast & Blast, Ep. 55: Randy Newberg and Land Tawney on the Crisis at the BLM Aug 13, 2019

Calling all American public land owners! The time for action is upon us. In wildland firefighting, a backburn is setting a fire to stop a fire … burning fuels ahead of a conflagration that must be stopped. This episode of BHA’s Podcast & Blast, featuring Hunt Talk’s Randy Newberg and BHA President and CEO Land Tawney along with host Hal Herring, is our version of a backburn. We are setting a fire in our country, raising a public land owner’s flag and marching on Washington, D.C. The administration’s appointment of William Perry Pendley, an outspoken proponent of selling off our American public lands, to head the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 248 million acres of our lands and waters, poses an unprecedented threat to our outdoor traditions and shared resources. We cannot allow it to proceed unchallenged.

BHA Podcast & Blast, EP. 54: Beretta’s Cory Mays and Dakotah Richardson Jul 30, 2019

When you are shooting a classic Beretta over and under shotgun at the trap range or in the field, you are handling a finely made weapon built by the same company that made the arquebus barrels used to quell the Ottoman Turks at the ferocious Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Heck, Beretta Arms was already almost 50 years old by then! The Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta, with its headquarters in Brescia, Italy (in the Val Trompe, a center of iron ore mining and smelting since the days of the Roman Empire), is the world’s oldest gun manufacturer and one of the world’s all-time finest. Hal talks shotguns, shooting, history and more with Beretta’s Dakotah Richardson, a former Olympic shotgunner, and Cory Mays, a Beretta gunsmith who literally grew up in a gunsmith shop.

R3: Recruit, Retain, Reactivate Jul 16, 2019

The decline in the numbers of American hunters and anglers is not just bad news for our connections to the natural world and for our heritage. Because the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation is based on the robust sale of hunting and fishing licenses, the decline is hitting us all right where it hurts most: in funding for habitat projects, public lands management, restoration, scientific research, access, and on and on. What is the answer? Hal goes to the primary sources: Samantha Pedder of the Council to Advance Hunting and the Shooting Sports, Mark Norquist of Modern Carnivore, and BHA’s own Trey Curtiss, who runs BHA’s highly successful Hunting for Sustainability program.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 52: Ashley and Jesse Kurtenbach, Hunters Jul 02, 2019

Ashley and Jesse Kurtenbach are board members of the South Dakota Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. Join them as they sit down with Hal Herring on the heels of a snow goose hunt to explore a life of hunting and fishing on public lands and waters.

Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico Jun 18, 2019

As the 116th Congress builds momentum, Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico traveled to Boise, Idaho, for BHA’s 8th Annual North American Rendezvous. One of the most enthusiastic sportsmen on Capitol Hill, he is also an indefatigable champion of public lands. During the ruckus of Rendezvous, Sen. Heinrich took time to sit down with Hal and talk desert ecotones, maverick tarantulas, migration corridors and the sage steppe, the state of hook and bullet advocacy in Congress, and the everchanging nexus between grassroots conservation movements like BHA and the legislative machine. Listen in for the senator’s take on the future of the public lands movement in North America.

Corey Piersol, SITKA Gear Customer Service Manager Jun 04, 2019

Corey is the perfect match for the world’s leading hunting gear company (and Podcast & Blast sponsor): a hunter with both bow and rifle, angler with whatever gear is at hand, obsessed rock and ice climber, ski mountaineer and wanderer of the high places from the Adirondacks of New York state to the wildest and most windswept of the wild Rockies. Corey talks about how surviving in Montana led him to one of the toughest and most quintessential Western jobs: setting chokers, or “hooking” for a logging crew where the real value of bombproof, four-season gear became utterly clear to him.

Eduardo Garcia, chef and co-founder, Montana Mex May 21, 2019

Chef Eduardo Garcia and Hal Herring sat down at the 8thAnnual North American Rendezvous to talk about wild landscapes, their outdoor pursuits and seizing the opportunities that life affords you.

Shane Mahoney, Conservationist May 07, 2019

Hunter, writer, thinker, scientist and wildlife expert, Shane Mahoney of Newfoundland is the foremost and most powerful voice of our time for hunting-based conservation and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Come and sit in on a conversation between two die-hard and lifelong hunter-conservationists for whom hunting and a life outdoors is as natural, and as necessary, as breathing.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 47: Drew Phipps, mussel biologist and upland hunter Apr 23, 2019

Hal catches up with Drew and his Llewellin setter, Penny, on the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, and they set out on a long hunt for ruffed grouse. The second half of this epic conversation is all about a lifelong pursuit of ruffed grouse and woodcock and the good dogs that make the chase a million times better.

Blan Holman, Southern Environmental Law Center Apr 09, 2019

Epic floods due to the filling and draining of wetlands, duck numbers falling, fisheries collapsing, federal flood insurance $25 billion in debt, water pollution at levels not seen since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 – and all this before the recent floods in the Midwest. The common denominator is our failure to protect U.S. wetlands and rivers and streams. Yet the administration is considering a revised rule eliminating wetlands and stream protections under the Clean Water Act. Hal talks to Blan Holman, a lawyer at the Southern Environmental Law Center who specializes in water law, to try and make sense of it all.

Anthony Licata and Colin Kearns of Field & Stream and Outdoor Life Mar 26, 2019

Anthony Licata and Colin Kearns stand at the helm of the most iconic magazine titles in the outdoor industry. Anthony is the editorial director of Outdoor Life and Field & Stream where Colin serves as its editor-in-chief. In this episode Hal catches up with them in the midst of Shot Show, the day after the gang celebrated our public lands at the BHA bonfire in the Nevada desert. Join the trio as they reminisce about their adventures hunting and fishing North America’s wild landscapes, the sometimes torturous process of writing and editing, literature, authors, guns, conservation and the wealth that is our public lands and waters.

Ron Mills, Montana Outfitting Legend Mar 13, 2019

Back by popular demand: Ron Mills, an outfitter, hunting guide and packer in the Bob Marshall Wilderness since 1959, returns for Round Two in the BHA Podcast & Blast! 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.

Madison Parker, founder, Bulletproof Primitive Supply Feb 26, 2019

Hal goes south to meet up with old friend and former U.S. Navy SEAL Madison Parker in the hurricane-battered backcountry of north Florida and talk about survival, spears and slingshots, pit bulls, blacksmithing, baskets, knives and traps, and that place where function becomes inseparable from art.

Natalie Krebs, Senior Editor at Outdoor Life Feb 12, 2019

How does a 2013 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism find herself pulling a pulk (gear sled) on an ice fishing expedition into the frozen wilderness of the Boundary Waters of Minnesota? How does a cutting-edge multimedia journalist make a living these days while pursuing the stories and the adventures of which most of us can only dream? We ask Natalie Krebs, senior editor of Outdoor Life, these questions and discuss a lot more.

Nelson Brooke, Black Warrior Riverkeeper Jan 29, 2019

Come with us to Birmingham, Alabama, to meet Nelson Brooke, the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, whose life is spent on the vast arterial network of some of central Alabama’s most beautiful – and imperiled – rivers and streams.

Ty Stubblefield, BHA chapter coordinator and new chapter development Jan 15, 2019

Hal comes down to Missoula to talk with BHA’s Ty Stubblefield (who hosts his own podcast, Shoot’n the Bull), about his roots in Oregon’s Umpqua Valley and his life there as a millhand, logging contractor, bowhunter and conservationist in the Coast Range. Now based in Florence, Montana, in the northern Bitterroot Valley, Ty is living the hard balance of family, work and a lifelong obsession with hunting in the farthest reaches of America's wildlands.

Tom McGuane, Legendary Writer and Outdoorsman Jan 01, 2019

Hal meets up with Tom McGuane in McLeod, Montana, on the Boulder River. They begin with an eye-widening discussion of how McGuane’s “The Heart of the Game” (widely recognized as one of the greatest-ever essays on hunting) came to be written and published in Sports Illustrated in the early 1970s. The stories – as well as the funny and thought-provoking observations – continue from there. The poet Jim Harrison once said, “Thomas McGuane writes better about fishing than anyone else in the history of mankind.” Start 2019 off right with this conversation between two lifelong sportsmen and masters of the written and spoken word.

BHA in the East: Chris Hennessey, Josh Kaywood and Jason Meekhof Dec 18, 2018

BHA’s Jason Meekhof of Michigan, Chris Hennessey of Pennsylvania and Josh Kaywood of Tennessee talk Eastern hunting and fishing, the explosive growth of BHA west of the Mississippi River, and the many challenges, threats and issues facing sportsmen in the eastern United States, including loss of access, dwindling numbers of hunters speaking out for wild places, and the role of public lands and waters in an increasingly privatized landscape. The conversation explores a history of triumphs in restoring fish, game and habitats and the extraordinary beauties of Eastern forests and wetlands (Kaywood is a passionate public lands waterfowl hunter in the Mississippi Delta), whitetails in the wild Adirondacks, and the powerful, centuries-deep Pennsylvania hunting culture.

Bob St. Pierre, Andrew Vavra and Anthony Hauck of Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever Dec 04, 2018

In St. Paul, Minnesota, with bird dogs whining in the hall outside, Hal visits the headquarters of Pheasants Forever to interview a trifecta of America’s most committed and passionate upland bird hunters and habitat and public access advocates. Bob St. Pierre, PF vice president of marketing and communications, tells it like it is: “We’re in trouble. Habitat is being plowed under and wetlands drained, we’re failing to ensure the future of upland bird hunting, and with that failure we’re letting a whole host of ecosystems and wildlife – all of it hard earned in the wildlife restorations and conservation efforts of the last decades – go down. But we’re not going to let that happen.” Bob is joined by fellow PF staffers Andrew Vavra and Anthony Hauck, who tell us what it’s really like to hit the Rooster Road Trip: thousands of miles of travel, worn-out dogs, cold camps and bad motels, and a whole lot of public land bird hunting opportunities that way too many hunters are convinced do not exist.

Ray Trejo, Gabe Vasquez and Fernando Clemente on the hunt for Mearns quail. Nov 20, 2018

Join Hal on a camping and hunting trip for Mearns quail deep into the Chihuahua Grasslands smack-dab on the Mexican border. With him is BHA member Ray Trejo, the huntin’est conservationist in New Mexico; Gabe Vasquez, the youngest member of the Las Cruces’ City Council and a New Mexico conservation leader; and Fernando Clemente, a self-employed wildlife biologist and habitat specialist who works on both sides of the border to restore wildlife and ecosystems on private lands and has deep insight into public lands hunting and management in the U.S.

Ben Long, Founding BHA Board Member Nov 06, 2018

A native son of the Palouse country in Idaho and a contributing writer to Outdoor Life, Ben Long is a founding board member of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, a former newspaperman and one of America’s leading conservation voices and strategists.

Steve Piragis, outfitter and Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wildnerness expert Oct 23, 2018

Steve Piragis, of Piragis Northwoods Company, is an institution in Ely, Minnesota: the grand old man of Boundary Waters outfitting and perhaps the most eloquent and knowledgeable spokesman for the region’s public lands wilderness since the legendary Sigurd F. Olson. Piragis and Hal meet in Ely to discuss all matters related to the Boundary Waters, including why anybody would want a Chilean company to build a vast copper-nickel mine on a river at the very edge of the most visited wilderness in the United States.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Episode 33: Rachel VandeVoort, Director of the Montana Office of Outdoor Recreation Oct 09, 2018

Rachel VandeVoort is a native of Whitefish, Montana, with four generations of family history in Montana. She is also director of the Montana Office of Outdoor Recreation. With a background working for Kimberand in the ski industry, no one could be better suited for this job. Hal goes to Whitefish to talk with Rachel about being a parent of wild outdoor children, outdoor jobs and the outdoor economy, guns, fishing and hunting on public lands.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Episode 32: Ryan Bronson, Director of Conservation at Vista Outdoor Sep 25, 2018

Hal Herring visits the headquarters of Vista Outdoor to talk with Vista Director of Conservation Ryan Bronson. Vista represents dozens of the most popular brands of ammunition, guns and other outdoor gear and clothing, including BHA corporate partners Savage Arms, Federal Ammunition and Camp Chef. Bronson, a wildlife biologist by training, brings a unique perspective to the role of hunting and shooting in restoring and building America’s wildlife.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Public Lands Month BONUS Episode: Ryan Callaghan and Kenton Carruth of FirstLite Sep 17, 2018

This bonus episode of the BHA Podcast & Blast is being released in celebration of Public Lands Month. Listen as Hal talks to Ryan Callaghan and Kenton Carruth about the founding of Firstlite, the confusing and alarming statements made by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah about public lands, and the coming together of outdoor enthusiasts by forging relationships with brands like Patagonia.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Episode 31: Hal visits the headquarters of Wild South Sep 11, 2018

Last winter, Hal met some Southern wilderness warriors in the small town of Moulton, Alabama, at the headquarters of Wild South, where the mission is simple: “We inspire people to enjoy, value, and protect the amazing wild and natural places that belong to us – the public.”

Elliott Woods, Montana-based multimedia journalist Aug 28, 2018

Montana-based multimedia journalist and Outside magazine correspondent Elliott Woods served as a soldier in Iraq and was an embedded reporter in Afghanistan, where he won a National Magazine Award for his work. His film about elk hunting in the Durfee Hills of Montana – a parcel of public land completely blocked by private land held by the billionaire Wilks brothers – was released in 2017. This podcast was recorded along the Flathead River.

Adam Gall, visionary fishing and big game guide Aug 15, 2018

After almost two years of trying, Hal catches up with Adam Gall, visionary fishing and big game guide who, with his wife Ana, started Timber to Table Guide Service based in Paonia, Colorado. Adam's dream: to create a guide service for people who may never have hunted before but who want to learn the entire process – from the rifle to the hunt to field dressing, butchering and cooking the very best wild game recipes. Adam’s business is about experience, the heritage of ethical hunting and conservation, and the freedom of the wild Colorado public lands where it all takes place. Hal and Adam talk guiding – Adam also has a more traditional guide service called Dark Timber Outfitters – big bulls, big mule deer bucks, big trout on the Gunnison, farming and gardening on the small scale, and a lot more.

The Tawneys in Washington D.C. Jul 31, 2018

Hal goes to Washington, D.C., with Land Tawney to hunt up Land’s sister Whitney, who has worked for Ducks Unlimited for seven years. More importantly, Whitney has just added a wild-eyed new conservation and hunting legend to the family line: a baby named Henry Philip who joins the group briefly in this ferociously wide ranging conversation about roots, family, waterfowl and elk – and making sure that what we love the most is around for the next generation.

T. Edward Nickens: Editor-at-Large for Field & Stream and Author of Total Outdoorsman Series Jul 17, 2018

In this episode Hal catches up with T. Edward Nickens, editor at large at Field & Stream magazine and author of the Total Outdoorsman Series of books. Eddie is an old-school Southern gentleman and a consummate outdoorsman and conservation leader, and he writes about it all with the depth and passion of the greatest of the Romantic poets. Eddie and Hal had a huge amount of pure fun doing this podcast. “I’ve read his work with respect and admiration for 15 years,” says Hal, “but we’d never crossed paths until now.”

Bill Hanlon and the Tatshenshini Remains Jul 03, 2018

Hal Herring and longtime BHA member and British Columbian Bill Hanlon swap stories in Whitefish, Montana. Hanlon tells the tale of his incredible 1999 adventure that begins with a Dall sheep hunt in northern British Columbia and ends with a wild discovery of the remains of an ancient hunter. It's a story of one hunting culture connecting with another over the centuries and into modern times. This is a hunting journey like no other, and it's not to be missed.

David Ledford, CEO and President of the Appalachian Wildlife Foundation Jun 07, 2018

Hal Herring talks with David Ledford, president and CEO of the Appalachian Wildlife Foundation.

They discuss Ledford's history as a biologist, the accidental wildlife boom on reclaimed mines, how the private sector works with conservation, tracking birds with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Kentucky's wildlife success story, the differences between mountain lions and bobcats, diversifying the future of coal country, fundraising for the Appalachian Wildlife Center and more.

Outfitters and BHA Life Members Barry Whitehill and Kai Whitehill May 22, 2018

Hal Herring talks with father and son team Barry Whitehill of Alaska and Kai Whitehill of Montana at the 7th Annual BHA North American Rendezvous in Boise, Idaho.

The outfitters and BHA life members talk with Hal about growing into an appreciation of wild places, snaring a rabbit, barbecuing iguanas, occupying ancient campsites, the unpredictability of The Grizz and an adventure worthy of a Stephen King novel.

Writer and Native Arkansan Johnny Carrol Sain May 08, 2018

Hal Herring sits down with Johnny Carrol Sain, a writer and native Arkansan who lives in Newton County, Arkansas.

They discuss the legend of the Dover Lights, learning to fly fish, Ned Christie's troubles, 30 years of bowhunting, the author David Petersen, the spiritual nature of hunting, squirrel dogs, water quality in the South, the meaning of purple paint, Robert Redford's The Unforeseen, incentivizing conservation, crappie fishing and the wild breadth of the Arkansas River.

Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard Apr 25, 2018

Hal Herring talks with Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and legendary outdoorsman, at the 2018 BHA North American Rendezvous in Boise, Idaho.

They discuss Chouinard's roots, hunting jackrabbits with goshawks, replacing stuff with knowledge, a business borne of necessity, Chouinard's climbing crew, rugby shirts and corduroy pants, the Patagonia method of management, the cure for depression, national monuments, an agricultural revolution and the joys of simplicity.

Lamar Marshall, Historian and Conservationist Apr 03, 2018

Hal Herring talks with historian and conservationist Lamar Marshall in Calloway, North Carolina.

They discuss Lamar's work with members of the Cherokee nation to conserve the Bankhead National Forest, the Forest Service policing their own, good stewardship of the Earth, converting hardwood to loblolly pine, preserving cultural heritage on public lands, mapping historic trails in North Carolina, the importance of chestnuts, hunting and fishing in the South, homesteading, Lamar's favorite books, and much more.

Lamar Marshall, Historian and Conservationist Apr 03, 2018

Hal Herring talks with historian and conservationist Lamar Marshall in Calloway, North Carolina.

They discuss Lamar's work with members of the Cherokee nation to conserve the Bankhead National Forest, the Forest Service policing their own, good stewardship of the Earth, converting hardwood to loblolly pine, preserving cultural heritage on public lands, mapping historic trails in North Carolina, the importance of chestnuts, hunting and fishing in the South, homesteading, Lamar's favorite books, and much more.

Brandon Butler of the Conservation Federation of Missouri Mar 20, 2018

Hal Herring talks with Brandon Butler, Executive Director of the Conservation Federation of Missouri.

They discuss Missouri's historic conservation ethic, Indiana's Kankakee swamp, bowhunting and Fred Bear, Brandon's place in eastern conservation and his first trip west, bringing back whitetails and turkeys, the special culture of the Ozarks, staying active in democracy and much more.

Tony Bynum, Professional Photographer and Conservationist Mar 06, 2018

Hal Herring talks with Tony Bynum, prolific professional photographer and conservationist. They discuss life in East Glacier, the fundamentals of photography, traveling in Africa, documenting prairie landscapes, the tenets of wilderness, going where no one goes, completing long-term projects, Tony's favorite shots, the combination of background and light, joining BHA, and much more.

Shootrite Academy's Tiger McKee Feb 20, 2018

Hal Herring talks with firearms instructor Tiger McKee in Langston, Alabama. They discuss their longtime friendship, why training matters, bench rest accuracy, the field as the final exam, confidence as a barometer, the four fundamentals of marksmanship, natural point of aim, the importance of dry-firing, Tiger's Shootrite Firearms Academy and much more.

John Snow, Shooting Editor at Outdoor Life Feb 07, 2018

Hal Herring sits down with John Snow, Shooting Editor at Outdoor Life. They chat about the longevity of Outdoor Life, fishing as a first love, tricking people into eating squirrel, the importance of day four in the backcountry, leaving New York City, the story behind the 6.5 Creedmoor rifle, monolithic bullets and choosing calibers, and much more.

Ryan Busse: BHA National Board Chair Jan 23, 2018

Hal Herring sits down with Ryan Busse, BHA National Board Chair. Busse lives in Kalispell, Montana and he's an avid fisherman, bird dog lover, and elk chaser. They discuss BHA’s contagious energy, raising conservation-minded kids, wandering the country alone, gerrymandering, natural resource issues in modern politics, the economic value of public lands, voting against our own self-interests, dreams of a new political life, Hal's suspicions of the liberal left, and much more.

Hunting for Sustainability: Jim Giese, Sawyer Connelly, and Trey Curtiss Jan 10, 2018

Hal Herring sits down with BHA's Sawyer Connelly and Trey Curtiss and with BHA member Jim Giese to talk about BHA’s Hunting for Sustainability program. They discuss Hunting for Sustainability and the program’s origin, Jim's evolution as a hunter, BHA's rapidly growing Collegiate Club program, learning to hunt on your own, Trey's 2017 bull elk, Sawyer's first deer, teaching others how to hunt, and much more.

Roy Jacobs of the Montana BHA Board Dec 26, 2017

Hal Herring sits down with Roy Jacobs, a hunter and longtime BHA member and Montana chapter board member in Pendroy, Montana. Hal and Roy talk about the history of Pendroy and northern Montana, relics of war on the Rocky Mountain Front, living and hunting in Africa, mosquitoes in Alaska, how gear has changed hunting, the evolution of bowhunting, traditional vs. compound archery, Montana's hunting seasons, how private landowners benefit wildlife, the necessity of protecting wilderness, Florida's backcountry, and much more.

Hunters Hannah Jean Nikonow and Liza Sautter Dec 12, 2017

Hal talks with hunters Hannah Jean Nikonow and Liza Sautter.

They discuss growing up as hunters, being Millennials, the political nature of hunting, hunting with your parents, hunters education, squirrel hunting, the Bitterroot Mountains, knowing your limits, flock shooting, the positive side of social media, and much more.

Kevin Timm of Seek Outside Nov 29, 2017

Outdoor writer Hal Herring catches up with his good friend Kevin Timm of Seek Outside. They discuss getting into fishing as kids, knowing the country, mountains vs. water, elk acting like bighorns, mountaineering in Colorado, peakbagging, being a mentor, giving up on elk, hunting with kids, building better tents and what it means to be “pure granola.” And so much more.

Ron Mills of Mills Wilderness Adventures Nov 14, 2017

Hal Herring talks with Ron Mills of Mills Wilderness Adventures.

They discuss Ron's guiding business, stories from the Bob Marshall Wilderness, what makes a good horse, how mules and horses differ, and much more.

Kris Millgate of Tight Line Media Oct 31, 2017

Outdoor writer and BHA Podcast & Blast host Hal Herring sits down with Kris Millgate of Tight Line Media.

They discuss the occupation of Malheur Wildlife Refuge and penguin walks on ice, being comfortable in the face of danger, Millgate's trajectory in the world of journalism, ecology as economy, childhood and public lands, trapping and tracking grizzly bears, what grizz smell like, predators on the landscape, wildlife management, living in small towns, honesty as the best policy, and much more.

Chris Hunt, Brett Prettyman, and Mark Taylor of Trout Unlimited Oct 17, 2017

Outdoor writer and BHA Podcast & Blast host Hal Herring talks with Chris Hunt, Brett Prettyman, and Mark Taylor of Trout Unlimited.

They talk the adventures they've had, the areas they work in, fly fishing blackwater swamps, grizzlies and cutthroats in Yellowstone, bucket biology, dead bodies on the Blue Ridge Parkway, whiskey & fly fishing culture, restoring habitat for native brook trout, the history of shad, dams and city ponds, the Clean Water Act and the myths around it, and much more.

Legendary Outdoors Journalists Rich Landers & Pat Wray Oct 03, 2017

Hal Herring sits down with Rich Landers of The Spokesman-Review and Pat Wray, freelance writer and author of multiple books, including A Chukar Hunter's Companion.

The three writers discuss the transition of traditional media and how to be a writer in today's climate, a journalist's responsibility, what it means to freelance, the world of upland hunting, catch and release fishing, hognose snakes, game management and wolves, the art of chukar hunting, bird dogs, and much more.

Mark Norquist of Modern Carnivore & Chef Lukas Leaf Sep 20, 2017

Hal Herring talks with Mark Norquist of Modern Carnivore and Chef Lukas Leaf, both are BHA Minnesota Board Members and active volunteers in our Minnesota Chapter, and both have worked consistently on substantial issues in Minnesota's Boundary Waters.

The trio discusses adult hunter education and the factors drawing in new hunters, the merits of wild game, venison's bad rep, foraging for mushrooms, mining the BWCA, the interconnectedness of the BWCA watershed, why dirt is important, and much more.

Jim Posewitz of the Orion Hunters Institute Sep 05, 2017

Hal Herring talks with Jim Posewitz, writer and ethicist, and founder of Orion: The Hunters Institute, as well as Andrew Posewitz and Land Tawney.

The four gentlemen discuss the history of conservation, Jim's first deer, why we see the animals we see on public lands today, balancing sports and hunting season, the North American Wildlife Conservation Model, the power of people within a democracy, trophy animals and what they represent, how to write a college paper, protecting fisheries in 1864, the pull of Montana and the West, and much more.

Anthony Licata, Editorial Director of Field & Stream Aug 22, 2017

Hal Herring talks with Anthony Licata, Editorial Director of the Bonnier Lifestyle Group, including publications Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Popular Science, and Saveur.

They discuss Licata's journey in the world of publishing, legendary outdoor writers, the importance of hunting and fishing with family, fishing stripers alongside humpback whales outside of Brooklyn, the art of being a modern generalist, BHA's hard hunting membership, the unlikeliness of American public lands, and so much more.

Steven Rinella of MeatEater Aug 08, 2017

Hal Herring talks with Steven Rinella, author, hunter, and host of the television show MeatEater.

The two outdoor writers discuss squid jigging, 9/11, fishing in the Lake Huron, trapping in Michigan, heading West, fish before dams, the recovery of multiple species, short-sighted conservation, what came before us, hunting as tangible goods, outdoor recreation, people as watermelons, unspoiled places, hunting in the jungle, native wildlife vs non-native wildlife, and much more.

Land Tawney, Randy Newberg, and Mike Schoby Jul 13, 2017

Hal Herring talks with Randy Newberg, Land Tawney, and Mike Schoby from this spring’s Rendezvous 2017 in front of a live audience. The fellas discuss outdoor writing, the Smith River mine, hunting as participants, the vast diversity of our public lands, hunting internationally, that one place you’d hunt anywhere in the world, audience questions, and more.

Land Tawney, President & CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Jul 13, 2017

Hal Herring and Land Tawney kick off BHA's first episode of 'Cast and Blast with discussions of a public land sheep hunt, hunting with your children, wolverines & other predators, our public lands heritage, and much more.

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