Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcasts and Blasts

Latest Episodes:

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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