Ep. 845: Can Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Be Saved?

Welcome to Meet Eater's 12 and 26

“presented by Multi-Mobile and On-X Maps.”

12 of Meet Eater's biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long-form episodes, so you get more of what you love.

The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba.

If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree.

Check it out now on Meet Eater's YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. This is the Meet Eater podcast coming at you sure lists a fairly vote bet in the in my case underwear. Meet Eater podcast.

You can't predict anything. We're out to you by first-light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First-light builds. No compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer.

No shortcuts just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's f-i-r-s-t-l-i-t-e-e.com. Hot damn we're joined today by uh one of the greatest guess. Oh man.

I mean for like in terms of just consistent performance and over the years, dude. One of the greatest guess of all time greatest guess. Wow. I mean like, I'm not talking about just of guess.

Do you think I'm buttering him up a little much? He's you're going big. I didn't expect this. I don't know.

I was normally he tries to knock it down first.

Maybe he knows he's back up. Yeah, definitely. If you took all the greatest guess, oh man. And then had a showdown among those guess. Yeah.

The car would emerge. Top. Maybe not the top but like he would. He might be too nice to make it to the top. He'd be up there.

Carmel, like wildlife biologist.

“Long history at the every time you've ever been on, I think you've been on.”

No, every time you've ever been on, you've been on as a guy from the Forest Service. That is true. That is true. Yep, you and I started doing podcasts. It's not long after I joined federal service, which was back in late 2011.

You know, okay.

But Carmel's got a very deep history and all things outdoors.

grew up big time hunter, big time angler. Got into things like um weird stuff, man. Like got into doing um deer work on deer work on airport runways. Yeah, wildlife damage management. Wildlife damage management.

Got so into muskrat trapping. I don't know if you know this bro. Do you know, Phil Pride knows about this. Got so into muskrat trapping that he was to put in a bid to rock down a chunk. Oh, don't tell me I can't think of it.

A chunk of marsh or a kind of bush. That's going to do it for a kind of marsh. Well, that's a famous one. Yeah, yeah. Investment in the world.

Regardless of the best muskrat. That's on the planet. Yeah. Carmel has stood in that bid. He used to put in a bid to get his own private chunk of the marsh.

The horror kind of marsh. During the during the mini boom. Yeah. The mini boom of like 2011 to 2014.

“Did you have like trapping rivals like trapping wars?”

No, no, no, that's the same section. Yeah, with my dear people like people like didn't come in and no, no, no, they had to have the federal agents out there. Say close that microfilms. Oh, you already got your hands on there. The federal agents there do not mess around in these boundaries.

Right. Very clearly defined. I was with my dear buddy, Jacob Zisky. How many muskrats were you guys catching? Hundreds.

Hundreds. Yeah. And during the mini boom. Yeah, because they would do a sting out there. The federal agents would do a sting out there.

There's a highway that cuts east west across Horkon, Marsh. And there's so many muskrat trappers going across this bridge. The federal agents would put a road killed muskrat out there and see who had stopped to pick it up. Because that was one of one of the ways they could pinpoint folks who were not following the rules. Because it was technically illegal to gather up a road killed muskrat.

That seems kind of cheap. Oh, my god. That seems kind of cheap. Come on. I knew what your sentiments would be on that. But the point out it rolls apart that situation.

Yeah, the point at the point is they strictly enforce those boundaries. I got to return to that in a minute here.

Reason Carl's.

What we're here to talk about is rough grouse.

And also, and also, American Woodcott. Because Carl's now the VP of conservation at the Rough Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society. And what we're here to find out about is this. Our Rough Grouse screwed. If so, how screwed?

And what like, why? What's it going to take? What is the future of the bird in America? We're going to get into all that before we do, I'll tell you funny story. My friends, Stu, who's a trapper in Southern Illinois. He's been on the show. Stu Miller's Coon Creek outdoors.

“He makes some of the best. If you want to see good fur handling information online,”

I don't think anybody has better fur handling information than Stu Miller from Coon Creek outdoors. Like, if you were like, how do you skin and flash and stretch and otter or raccoon, coyote, whatever? Stu has a phenomenal series on YouTube. Anyhow, he was trapped in Kansas. You know, scones are real high right now. All they want is the tail. Interesting. Stu said, when he was in Kansas, he was seeing dead scones on the side of the road.

Roadkill scones on the side of the road. We might as their tail. Now everybody's used to seeing deer on the side of the road. Somehow minus their head. Right. But yeah, scones minus their tail on the side of the road. Yes, your dad. Because he could be 30 bucks laying. There's one of their tail or bill. If you cut the tail and you learn what you're doing, you can cut it without getting in the sex. But I wonder how many

guys hop out and cut little too close to the base. Yeah. And have just a mess that they are not. Was it worth the 30 bucks? Ready to deal with. Great. Like, how are just before we get in all the details like in the rough in your organization? What is up with Rough Grouse? Right now. I mean, why are we seeing like, like, there's states that had Rough Grouse seasons that don't have Rough Grouse seasons. Like restrictions are down. Yeah. It just doesn't. You know, it just doesn't

feel like we're in the good old days of Rough Grouse hunting. That is too much of the country.

“That is true. And I think, you know, as we get into the topic at hand, I want to just kind of”

like zoom back and we're going to be talking about Rough Grouse and American Woodcock. Over the course of this conversation, but I really want to frame it in terms of what's going on with forests and forest habitat and kind of the history of these forested ecosystems. We'll focus primarily east of the Mississippi River, which is sort of the core of what we think about being habitat for Rough Grouse and American Woodcock and the Upland Bird hunting tradition that

goes with it, recognizing there's certainly plenty of forest grass west of the Mississippi as well. We can talk about that too. But I think the history of these forests and what the status of Rough

Grouse and American Woodcock today tell us about the status of these forests is the most important

part of this conversation. Because I think, you know, I'm somebody who loves these birds. There's plenty of people out there who do, but there's a lot more people that really appreciate forest ecosystems and being able to understand the dynamics of those places and understand what we can and should be doing differently to make sure that we leave these places better than we found them is a much bigger and deeper and more significant conversation than just what's the letter

grade of current status for Rough Grouse and American Woodcock and those two things are inextricably linked. So I really want to anchor into kind of the history and status of forests. But to answer your question, well, I want to say that opening bit, were you saying we can't talk about Rough Grouse without talking about forests and forest health? Yeah. Now if I had sat down on my chair

in the first thing out of your mouth was we can't talk about Rough Grouse without talking

about mosquitoes and west now virus or we can't talk about Rough Grouse without talking about avian influenza, like I wouldn't have been surprised. Well, those things, what we can talk about

“all those things and I think you teed it up like we're talking about forest for sure and I love”

the fact that you're bringing up West now virus, you're bringing up avian influenza, West now virus by the way, a way bigger deal for Rough Grouse and I want to talk a little bit about the sort of moderating or mediating effect that good habitat can have on helping species like Rough Grouse while facing a stressor like an expanding disease which which West now virus is and there's some really interesting interconnections between habitat, Rough Grouse abundance and distribution

a disease vector that has very clear ramifications for the status of a species that many

people care a lot about but at the bottom line the story of how these forests have changed and

“I think even just the misconceptions of what these forests are is something that I think we can”

turn some light bulbs on for folks. Can I te you up like with this whole thing but like going back in time like yeah why was it because like Rough Grouse like I feel like the pinnacle of their like popularity and like king of the forest or you know their nickname and all that like that's like in the past that reputation that they had I don't think it's like a thing with hunters like it used to be like why was it like when my dad was like he was a big Rough Grouse hunter like and why

was it so good in the 70s when he was out there in Pennsylvania and there was just Grouse everywhere.

Yeah like ammo ads shot by Shell ads were like the featured careers it was like you go back far enough to create your career was content to rabbits and stuff but there's a point when like ammo ads is like Grouse the king of the game bird which which I was raised to call paths yeah cartridge yeah there's good debate we grew up just I was a little bit northy there in the northern Lord with within that like what is within that you got you probably got a way to hit this but like

“what is this sort of timeline and it also where are we talking about hmm that might be the best thing”

yeah just real quick yeah where are we talking about yeah so I think focusing the conversation on the Midwestern United States down into Ohio Indiana across into the mid Atlantic and up into the Northeast main continues to have tremendous grouse hunting and down into the Appalachian mountains as well you know a lot of people associate rough grouse rightly so with the presence of Aspen Aspen's one of those species for for Grouse that provides tremendous cover and also

availability of food but if you start looking at more southern Grouse habitat essentially if you have good structure if you have high stem densities and if you have the sun hitting the forest floor and promoting robust availability of of various mass species you can have grouse all the way down into northern Georgia but the general storyline roadie we could talk about Pennsylvania a little bit as an example where just in the span of the last

handful of decades many states particularly at the southern extent of their range are seeing grouse decline rapidly and it's not where the you know a lot of folks understand the dynamics around sage grouse decline like sage grouse get a lot of attention rightly so sage grouse habitat sage brush ecosystems are tremendously imperiled for a variety of reasons that story is out there and it's not worthy to me that you have this species to your point brody that like in your

dad's generation in art in our in our father's generations

“grouse were a big deal and I think the the the simplest and best answer to why that's not the”

case is that fewer and fewer people have access to robust populations now where I spend a lot of my time grouse in woodcock hunting which is across the northern tier of Michigan was constant in Minnesota we are still in the good old days it's phenomenal and I had I had great rough grouse days relative even to the good old days yeah I mean and there's a cyclical dynamic at play with with grouse woodcock so just a sort of a if we step back and look at the big picture the general

story is one of decline for both of these species having nothing to do with hunting pressure having everything to do with habitat and also some of these other variables like we can talk about

the disease issues but habitat is the bottom line and at the southern extent of their range

where we start getting into some of the more acute issues with disease dynamics the influence of climate so Pennsylvania for example there's a really important elevational gradient at play here where you know you can think about grouse contracting northward so sort of retreating from a latitudinal perspective but then there's also this elevational retreat that's a current where grouse are being pushed higher and higher is one of the same right right exactly

because those climatic variables are influencing the availability of habitat and in the case of

summers so you have the disease sort of marching up slope as climates continue to you mentioned aspens for grouse like like can you give people like what is like the ideal chunk of rough grouse habitat what's it look like because you hear like early succession a lot you're like things like that like if people aren't seeing them around them as much anymore like what does a

good chunk of grouse habitat look like yeah if I've one word to answer that question the answer is

diversity young young forest habitat super important yes early successful habitat is very important in a lot of the work that we do at the rough grouse society in American Woodcock society is focused on trying to get more early successful habitat on the ground the reason for that is not because

“early successful habitat is the only thing that matters the reason for that is that we are limited”

in early successful habitat we're an organization that's very interested in overall forest health and in terms of these eastern forests the bottom line there is diversity of habitat we want young forest we want middle aged forest we want old forest and we want these things in a juxtaposition where in individual grouse because these birds have a very strong site fidelity they do not travel great distances but having the access to these different age classes over the course of

their life cycle for foraging for raising their broods for escaping predators it's that availability of diverse habitat within a small area and being able to maintain that over time is a huge part of the challenge right so if we go back if we go back and think about what these forests

“were like centuries ago this idea of diversity is critically important and I think one of the”

I'll give you two misconceptions when it comes to forests number one I think a lot of people when they step into the forest like where we grew up Steve where we grew up brody Michigan Pennsylvania you walk into the woods and it's this peaceful serene beautiful place and it's easy to fall into the trap of failing to recognize the complexity for one the interconnections among different species in that system and then also the fact that there is a constant battle playing

out among all of these species at a time scale that makes it hard for us to perceive so everybody in the forest would you vegetation grasses, forbs, shrubs all the plants from the understory to the canopy are duking it out in real time for access to nutrients access to sunlight and historically in these forests there were a lot of drivers of disturbance that are gone now

“and this is one of the things that I think is both most interesting and also saddest to contemplate”

when you think about the forests of the eastern United States and again I'm thinking like

east of the Mississippi River and when the first European settlers arrived on the east coast

they did not arrive to some massive homogeneous pristine untouched forest what they arrived to was a very complex system that had a tremendous diversity of drivers influencing the structure of that forest and it included wildlife that we all I think we can think about these species in their own right but we don't often think about them as drivers of ecosystems so species like elk species like bison

species like beavers species like passenger pigeons and also the people who are already here burning these landscapes to benefit those species I just mentioned particularly elk and bison but maintaining the landscape in a way that made their lives possible so you have all of these interesting connections between those inhabitants of the North American continent that have been

tremendously disrupted so elk largely gone from the east although amazing work being done

of course we're all familiar with Rocky Mountain elk foundation the work that they're doing with state agency partners to bring elk back that's phenomenal RMEF's a great partner of ours by the way a lot of partnership opportunities there we're talking about elk habitat and grass habitat and the same breath bison gone passenger pigeons gone gone right and beavers

largely gone so these five drivers that created all of this heterogeneity all of all of this

diversity in structure and the one that I really want to like we can if any of those geek either you guys out you want to dig deeper into any of them we can we can dig deeper but I want to

“talk about passenger pigeons just for a minute because I think a lot of folks you know we”

all if you're a nerd around conservation and wildlife in America we all know the stories of like the sky blackening and the rivers of birds and John James Audubon and others trying to come up with estimates of the the billions of passenger pigeons like one in four land birds in North America

being a passenger pigeon or I just like you can't wrap your head around it those are all

stories that are really familiar to us but I want to I want to flag one of the most sort of haunting books that folks probably haven't heard of written by a guy named Peter Mathison called wildlife in America and in that book Mathison does a phenomenal job of capturing the stories in just the most haunting and poetic language around the loss of wildlife on this continent over the span of the last handful of centuries and and one of the things that's most memorable about that

book for me is the way that he talks about the passenger pigeons and them as a driver of disturbance and this is the important part and there are stories like up around Potoski Michigan of these

“that's what the last big shoe was well and and these nesting events that would span for”

tens of miles in length and multiple miles in width where the forest was absolutely inundated and in some cases decimated by the presence of nesting passenger pigeons so they would come through and these were birds that were heavily dependent on mast species like oak species like beach species like American chestnut and there's and there's a whole other story of loss right the loss of chestnut to the blight starting in 1904 but the passenger pigeons

they'd find a place where they they had the resources that they would need to nest they had the structural support with with the tree canopy they had availability of mast etc and they would they would arrive in such numbers that they would physically level portions of the forest like

“if you were out there during one of these nesting events you would just hear from miles in any”

direction the sound of branches breaking of trees falling of guano raining down to the point where the forest floor would have inches of accumulated droppings that would be so high in nutrient content

that that would have its own set of effects on vegetation like basically killing the understory because

it was so nutrient rich with all this all this pigeon guano raining down and the birds themselves would reset succession in those places where they would nest the next year they're not coming back to nest and that same spot again but years down the line those systems would recover and promote the availability of the very habitat features that the passenger pigeons need to thrive so if you step back and think about the continental scale of that species interacting with the land it's not

unlike any abeaver or any other ecosystem engineer where they're influencing their own habitat in a way that benefits themselves over time over generations right but also influences the structure to the advantage of all of these other plant and animal species that occupy that habitat and that's just one of the five examples that I gave you you know we could talk about bison and they're wallowing or they're the fact that they establish these movement corridors that were the precursors to a

lot of our roads and highways right they would call roads exactly the traces right the buffalo traces they would leave they would leave a path of disruption and so this idea and this is one of the biggest challenges if you think about current condition in these systems now and trying to get good habitat back on the ground for species like rough grass in American woodcock there's this misconception of what forests are which I touched on like failing to see the fact that all of these

species are out there that the vegetation is battling for resources in real time and the reality that for thousands of years for hundreds of thousands of years prior to European settlement of this continent these forests were tremendously disrupted by a whole host of drivers that have been

a hands-off approach to these systems we are we're starving them of the things that they need

“the things that the forest needs to provide the types of habitat and diversity not just for rough”

grass in American woodcock as much as I love those two species but for a whole host of plant and animal species and this is why if we look at land bird conservation more broadly I've got to copy the 2025 US state of the bird's report here in front of me any bird species that depends upon that diversity of habitat in a forested context is struggling like we are seeing tremendous loss like think about wipper wells they're good example when you're up you're hearing that

wipper well wipper well call yeah and and now if you hear when you're like oh you know that was like the sound of summer in our childhoods right they have dropped off a cliff and then we could go through the list golden wing world where there's a one that's commonly brought up so

“it's important to recognize and I think from from the standpoint of our organization too”

there's an advantage of being able to sort of hitch our wagon up to these two iconic upland game bird species but I also want to make sure that people understand the why of our work is about much more than thinking about having lots of grass in woodcock to hunt what we're trying to do is find ways to redeem our responsibilities to the places that we love and help leave these forested ecosystems in a state that's going to be better for wildlife and for people into the future so

that's it that's I think a good entry point into this conversation about current condition for those couple of species. Welcome to meat eaters 12 and 26 presented by multi-mobile and on x maps 12 of meat eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026 these are

long-form episodes so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in

Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on meat eaters youtube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. You uh you mentioned disturbance being important and like if you talk to a couple of my buddies and Pennsylvania that are still like

die hard grass hunters despite the fact that they might only flush a few birds in an entire season.

Yeah. Like it's always like they don't log enough. They don't log enough. They don't log enough. Like

is that like and I know like West Nile on avian flu like play a role but like is that perspective from just like a grass hunter is there a lot of truth to that?

“There is and I think the language is really important too and I'm just thinking about”

the way that we frame up this work and you know logging can be a terrible thing and it can be a tremendous thing and part of the problem is when it comes to social life essence and public discourse around what doing right by these forest means there's not enough time or effort put into having like a really thoughtful nuanced conversation about what it is we're talking about. So logging like let's talk about logging part of the challenge and like

I'll just just clarify we're talking about logging you're talking about there's these historic forest disturbers. Yeah passenger pigeons fire by sea elk beaver. Yeah beavers large animals that are like out disturbing forest. Yeah grazing, bowling stuff over, knocking stuff down, clearing stuff out. Yeah and over time we've developed a system where we have one a lot of those places become paved over. Yeah or grass over or golf course over or parking lot at over. Yeah or

subdivision over and so they're out. Yep that's all just out. Yep. What remains is woodlots. Sometimes woodlots that aren't having habitat disturbance on them. They grow grow grow grow. Yep. Right. Yep. So when we talk about just for people just for listeners I understand we talk about logging I mean Carl get into it but we're what we're talking about is like a modern

grow is hunter or a guy in lower you know the northern lower peninsula Michigan where I grew up

when we bitch about that there's no logging. Yep. What we're saying is there's it's not that we you know it's not like you know I used to cut fire what I used to be a tree surgeon. I understand the siren song or the chainsaw. Right. Nothing brings a new man out of the house. Yeah. Another brings an old man out of his house like here in chainsaw down the road. So when people talk they're not they're not lamenting the act of logging. Right. They're not necessarily lamenting the

loss of jobs around logging what they're talking about is they're lamenting what happens after you

lock. Yeah. Which is you invite a lot of sunlight onto the forest floor and it grows up thick.

Yeah. The kind of stuff where if you're out walking around your wife you just go around. Right. You go around it unless he's dressing with you. Yeah. The kind of stuff that the only business you have going through it is grows hunting. Right. Like that thick. Right. Right. And that. So we talk about logging where top mount is the thick. The period of cargo tells how many years. It's a long time. Yeah. It's enough to like kind of get used to it where you have a thick stuff. Yeah. Well,

I really appreciate this question because I want to I want to go back to this idea of the forests that were you know pre your appearance settlement all that disturbance happening.

“And then there's a really important story that we can't lose track of where this word logging.”

Right. What I want to get at is the idea that not all not all logging is the same. Yeah. Sure. And so if we go back to this arc of time post European settlement and think about the things that happened on these forests from east to west and the wholesale liquidation of forest

resources. I mean like the the most sort of vivid powerful example of intensive resource extraction

that you can imagine. Right. This is when the white pines of the lake states are childhood home range Steve. When those forests were being liquidated. This is the chapter of the northeast and in mid Atlantic and the declining chestnuts being felled and all of the clearing for agriculture and all the fragmentation that was happening. The forests just being liquidated. Building the cities of you know Chicago all the lumber that was being shipped across the Great Lakes to build these

“exploding communities. It was a period of tremendous exploitation of the land and I think that's”

one of the problems is when people think about a word like logging. What a lot of folks here is exploitation. Right. So it's important to honor the reality that in a lot of places and in our country we do not have a long history and we're talking about a few centuries here and so for for the majority of that time we have not had our act together in terms of how we think about logging being done in service to the land as opposed to being a source of exploitation of the land.

So I want to make sure we paint this picture with a lot of intent and we have to own the fact that places like I'm thinking about the Mananga Hila National Forest as an example right now in West Virginia where on Forest Service land like there was clear cutting there was a tremendous amount of erosion. There were huge impacts to these incredibly biodiverse streams. A legacy of terrible management. You can't even call it management. A legacy of exploitation of forest resources.

And if I think back to like I remember being in maybe six or seventh grade and then talking about logging the rainforest and how much rain forest is being lost in Brazil and you know every day there's this many square miles of rainforest being cut down. Spot it out on the north. Sure sure. The spot it all was man like Pacific Northwest this tension between trying to keep an imperiled species on the landscape and that industry that's like the backbone of those rural

northwest communities. So there's all this history that gets wrapped up in this word logging right

“that you have to be eyes wide open about and I think it's also a fallacy to suggest that all”

logging that's happening today is good logging. There are plenty of examples where people

what value can be taken from this land now as opposed to thinking about what forest conditions

“for the future am I trying to create? That's a very important distinction and that's not to say”

that it's impossible to extract value like monetary value from a forest and also put that forest on a trajectory to be healthier as a result of that intervention. That is a hundred percent possible. In order to do that though you need robust industry like there has to be a market you cannot move habitat without being able to move wood and the forest products industry is in in a difficult state of affairs right now. So there's a lot of smart people putting a lot of

thought into how to revitalize the forest products industry but just in the past week I read

in my home state of Wisconsin now there's a little mill up in the town of Mosini where by the

way I chased a couple bears around as a grad student right there in Mosini. They are shutting down a couple of their their paper production machines and they're going to be jobs lost. There's going to be an impact at this Mosini mill and that's just the most recent in a long string of mill reductions mill closures the disruption of these these forest products industries that are

“important for so many reasons but one aspect of it is this relationship between habitat and rural”

economies. So being able to find ways to reinvigorate the forest products industry and there's some cool examples of things on the horizon things in the works things like mass timber trying to trying to replace steel in the construction of high rise buildings with mass timber and there's

there's an amazing building in downtown Milwaukee that was just constructed using essentially

replacements for where you'd have steel beams using these laminated wood products so that's an example there's a push to find ways to convert woody biomass into sustainable aviation fuel that's a budding industry there's some amazing work going on looking at very high quality packaging being derived from molded wood fiber so trying to replace all the plastic that we have everywhere around us all the time basically anywhere you see plastic there's probably

a potential to replace that plastic with a molded wood fiber product so there's there's reasons for optimism but in terms of the overall picture of of the forest products industry there's a lot of reason for concern right now and a lot of reason for action in terms of policy in terms of having conversations with the public around the importance of these concepts but this idea that logging has the potential to be good and and growhouse hunters grumble and

like man there hasn't been enough logging what I hope they mean is and what I think they mean and what I mean when I say that is there hasn't been enough active forest management where we are thinking both about what value are we extracting from these systems and you know I would argue even more importantly thinking about our long-term

“commitment responsibility these places and what are we leaving behind I think that's the key”

question if you're focused if you're focused more on what you're taking than what you're leaving behind you're probably looking at it from from a more extractive standpoint if you're thinking about both of those things in concert that's a beautiful space to operate and I think we've got a ton of examples of the kind of work that we're doing on public land on private land with a lot of partners to derive both forms of value yeah I think about our oh no go ahead but you know if they

think about our mutual friend Doug yeah yeah no he needs to make he manages a family farm yeah spending their family a long time he needs to make the farm pay yeah right they do timber harvest absolutely this is very small scale was in terms of talking about the entire everything each of the miss sippy yeah it's a perfect little tea jump yeah what when you're looking at what Doug's gonna cut he's explaining to you what it's gonna look like in five years right do you

follow him saying hundred percent he's like he's got a he's got a dollar figure rolling through his head but he's like and it'll be like this yes and then I'm gonna do yes you're on saying I do and Doug you know I was just with Doug this past week and we're both up in Minneapolis at Fescent Fest and I was talking with Doug Doug is Doug is absolutely emblematic of that philosophy where yeah he's got the farm he needs to make it pay he agonized over decisions about

for generations prior to him showing up but he's making those decisions with with an eye on

the financial side of it which is a hundred percent his responsibility and also thinking about that that legacy you know it's not ours it's it's our turn real what is he doing to make sure that the folks who have the next turn are grateful and hindsight let's be clear to Doug agonizes over what's you about mud puddles well but it goes well on the one hand but but he's coming at

“he's coming at it from that space man and I think you know that so on the private land context this”

is one of the things this is one of the reasons why I think there's a lot of a lot of room for optimism and hope is you have so many people who cherish these forests for which they have personal responsibility and there's there's value in the forest products and there's a need for good intervention in those systems and again this isn't a new thing right it's not a new thing for humans to be looking at the land and trying to figure out how to engage with it in a way that

makes the land better and makes the humans lives better that's actually like that's that's the story of our species for millennia right we've been in the business of manipulating the ecosystem to benefit ourselves unfortunately we're at a period in human history now we're we're fewer and fewer of us have those levers of responsibility at our fingertips and there are also a lot of people who have those levers of responsibility at their fingertips who don't know what to do right they

don't they don't know how to care for a forest they haven't been taught that you know the the expertise that somebody like Doug has the training and the knowledge he is an outlier and that

“regard but where I where I think he is not an outlier is in having a desire to do the right thing”

for the forest under his purview I think a lot of folks want to do the right thing but don't know where to start so for an organization like ours being able to work with those private landowners and help them think through how to generate revenue from their forest but doing that through the lens of what are they leaving in terms of future habitat value that is a really cool service and and you know we're doing that in a private land context as well with with agencies like the

forest service like state departments of natural resources where we're helping them implement

their management plans which are always rooted in this idea of sustainable and wise use but also

desired future conditions so those are really good spaces so where is the like where is the wild life come on upon it come in like from fishing game agencies like are they in while are they like we want to improve this for grass and everything else but like say Pennsylvania game commissioner they come to you guys and say this patch of forest like used to be good for grass we'd like it to return to being good for grass like is that stuff that you guys do like working with game agency totally

but was historically though if you think of the metaphor of like you know people say the the tail wagon the dog for a long time the the the dog the dog the dog was industry they inadvertently

“they accidentally create a great habitat i think of the history this this big chunk of ground”

right like that we would walk over and hunt as a kid it always been the property of the summer camp

I'm sure historically had been law I would have been logged in forever and it was giant oaks with canopies the interlocked yeah and there was no now none of the sass of grass maybe big white pine but for the most part it was just wide open and the ground was covered in like inches of oak leaves it had squirrels in it but there was nothing there was not much in there it sold the first day it did it was do a timber harvest a couple years after that timber harvest

the first time we ever ever saw deer near the first time we ever ever saw rough grass in there all kind of great vine multiple rose thickets and then wham houses but you but you it was like no one was saying hey I'm gonna go do timber stand improvement right on the old summer camp right

service products we're talking about like like making the dog healthy yeah yeah but on the other hand you hear a lot about like habitat work but imagine habitat work is limited in scale because it's not financing itself yeah I see where you're going yep jump saying so it's more so in restoring forest or restoring forest to have successful forest where you have these patch works of different things happening yep like can you even get at can you scale conservation work

or will that never work you'd have the scale industry yeah I love the language of making the

“dog healthy again yeah I think that's a really good way of looking at it because it's a brody's”

bringing up he's bringing up well how about one of the dogwigs bring the tailwigs dog that when we do like habitat work yeah which would want to be like a little chunk yeah or whatever I don't know maybe not I mean maybe like if agencies are flush with money well yeah and there's a lot of different directions we could go here so so let me just focus in on this idea of trying to scale up conservation outcomes and forest of habitats I like that conservation outcomes yeah and it's expensive

it's expensive work yeah okay like a lot of the things that we do we're involved in non-native invasive species control like buckthorn removal or timber stand improvement treatments prescribed fire just to give folks like a sense of the cost of some of these treatments imagine anywhere

“between like five hundred dollars an acre and a couple thousand bucks an acre to do a treatment right”

like no one's making profit no this so this is where there's it's non-commercial work like if we're if we're contracting or if we're going in and trying to like have people in there with like a hand feeling crew with chainsaws trying to implement a habitat project where there's not a commercial angle it is expensive it is tremendously difficult to scale that up welcome to meet eaters twelve and twenty six presented by multi-mobile and on x maps twelve

of meat eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout twenty twenty six

these are long-form episodes so you get more of what you love the first one up is my

baited bear hunt in manitoba if you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like you'll love this episode my favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree check it out now on meat eaters youtube channel and be on the lookout for more twelve and twenty six in the coming months I'll give you a contrasting

“model that I think is really powerful and really cool we've got a number of national forests”

we're partnering on stewardship agreements where the forest service has the ability to hand responsibility over for the administration of timber sales to a non-profit organization like ours we can administer the timber sale generate revenue through the timber cover all the administrative costs of handling the sale and then also have in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars left over from the value in that timber that we can put right into the ground

and if they're not for that why are they letting you do that that's great bugger picture hunt resources are going to want to do that well let's so think about it think about it they they have more work to do on these forests than they can get done good they have backlogs of habitat need they have limited capacity and the way to look at it is not that somehow a non-profit organization like the rough grass society is is somehow benefiting in isolation

the way to look at it is we have such alignment with the forest service in mission delivery that we are joined at the hip trying to implement the forest service's mission we are there providing additional capacity yeah and that revenue to be clear that revenue is not coming to the rough grass society and American woodcocks society it it's paying for our staff time to

help do that work like we have as an example we have an amazing young forester on the Green Mountain

National Forest young lady named mellie napper who's spent administering timber sales on the Green Mountain National Forest and she basically functions as a forest service employee she's there at the office without painting the sale she's administering the sale interacting with the folks who are

about the why of the work she's representing our organization and the forest service and even more

“importantly she's representing the story about why this work is so important which is a win for”

everybody involved and in a period of time where the forest service cannot hire additional people they don't have enough people to implement their mission you know being able to work with the partner to fill some of those gaps that is a win for the forest service when you guys do that does the logging like whoever gets the actual logging work the concession for that do they do that work differently than they would if they weren't working through you like if they are just like

forest service timber sale we're going in and we're getting our staff versus

forest service timber sale through the rough grass society no they do it the same and here's why

in order for that sale to move forward it has to be cleared through the exact same process that any other activity on the forest so they're not going in that you're not like this is kind of the habitat results we're looking for no in this case like like so this this example on the green mountain national forest where is that national forest it's in Vermont okay and the the decision in

“that case I might have a word slightly off but I believe the name of this project is the early”

successful habitat creation project love the forest service yeah and and you know and in forest service parlance you have what's called an interdisciplinary team that gets together to develop a proposed action so you have biologists and soil scientists and silva cultureists and folks who are experts on heritage and our responsibilities to archaeological resources etc everybody gets together and and looks at a piece of ground and says all right what do we want to do here in the case

of a project like this early successful habitat creation project the biologists are the ones in the driver seat there it's a veg management project right there's it and there's valuable timber being harvested but the whole focus is on what kind of trees like what are we leaving behind in the wake of this treatment and that's that's that's the language that we use it's a treatment as

“opposed to an exploitation of a resource right so in that case you have the sale you have someone”

bid right it's open to public bidding you have an operator business coming into bid yeah they're there to make money yeah right and and they're there to make money and also they are the source of capacity to implement the veg management outcome period without industry we cannot get the work done but in this model you're leveraging the value in the timber to pay for all of those administrative costs and then you have this surplus of value and this is the really cool part and in some

cases we're talking literally hundreds of thousands of dollars from some of these timber sales where you then turn around and say all right with this money what what other good things do we want to do on the forest so it could be things like replacing undersized culverts at road stream crossings to promote aquatic organism passage it could be paying for decommissioning roads that are resulting in stream sedimentation it could be helping cover the cost of a prescribed fire it could

be helping treat non-native invasive species etc etc etc so in that model the forest services relying on partner organizations like ours to unlock the value in the timber in a way that leaves the forest habitat better you know so that to me like that's the dog as healthy as the dog can be and the tail also like really benefiting from the healthy dog but you got to have industry there to be able to yeah the green river forest what is the green of the green mountain what is the product

they're cranking out that's like dimensional lumber yeah they're hard they're harvesting hard with there okay I'm really yeah okay so like veneer logs and trim and whatever else yep you know god yeah mean pulp the you know the pulp market has been one of the real weak spots so why why is that well huge because because like we're you know you know we've been growing same area yeah when stuff got one stuff happened there was pulp right yeah cutting pulp man like all that great rough

grass country like the UP or northern lower peninsula was like cutting pulp it was pulp and you were looking at stuff you weren't looking when you were a kid and you were looking at log and you weren't looking at old growth logging right you were looking at stuff that had been logs several times right

yes second growth third growth I mean and those forests but that's making paper making paper and

you know I'm I'm old school I'm sitting here I've got like stacks of paper around me from stuff I printed off you know notes and things for the conversation today but this is rare man like when's the last time you bought a newspaper right I mean now like the thing in terms of because they did and also they taught you to think it was bad well that's true you know like go

and you got the you got the electric hand dryer right I've gotten the habit of going for the paper tall every time man like use absolutely that you know now like one area where there's still I would say like robust and growing demand like cardboard boxes for Amazon okay like there's a portion of the industry where we're making a lot we're shipping a lot of stuff around but when it comes to when it

comes to like news print I mean news prints basically dead right like you know if you've got a

subscription like pick your favorite newspaper you're probably what looking at it on your phone is opposed to waiting for the kid on his bicycle to throw the paper against your door on a Sunday morning right so it's it's it's been a tremendous disruption to the demand for pulp and a lot of those pulp mills have have closed down just in the span of the last I mean I told you about the one in Mozane just in the last week but if you look at the last decade

we've lost a tremendous amount of pulp capacity but on the wildlife side you think of it in terms of

demand for those habitat outcomes to be implemented right so there's this really important connection

and just to hammer this one more time like without robust forest products industry the ability to deliver habitat outcomes at scale is tremendously compromised so there's just not a situation where like wildlife management agencies or the forest service or whatever are just going to like go in and chop trees down just for the sake of our shop and them down so so now we start getting

“into this whole other realm that I think is also very timely and very important and we could”

have a whole other conversation on this one but it just in terms of thinking about conservation

funding and the constraints that a lot of state agencies are starting to feel Steven I've been

sharing materials and texting back and forth a bit about the financial woes of some of the some of the states that are near and dear to our heart something and specifically about Michigan and Wisconsin is a couple of examples right now where just trying to make ends meet under a funding model that was built on the backs of hunting and fishing license sales where that model is from my perspective starting to unravel their cracks in the foundation starting to show

and it probably is that that declining numbers of hunters right is of it is like an existential threat to conservation I mean I agree I'll give you a kind of a different scenario and Pennsylvania there's shit loads of state game lands that the game commission owns and manages and they have like historically had tons of fracking leases on those lands and they're like they're flush like they have money yep that they can put into potentially projects if I understand that's like

probably the rare case as far as these agencies go but yeah you know it's something to think about it is it is and I you know I would I would refraze your characterization of my perspective on this a little bit Steve I think oh I did a great job I'll approach back I'll push back a little I said like half a sentence you said I that I Carl believe declining hunter participation

“poses an existential threat to conservation you need to clarify that yeah okay go ahead”

what I think is the declining participation in hunting is representative of a broader trend that is a real threat to conservation what's the broader trend so for my standpoint I look at I look at hunting in particular but really like a whole suite of outdoor activities that are pathways to people having a connection to the land as being sort of the backbone of conservation like if you if you don't have people who feel a sense of connection to the natural

world just last people around to give a shit right that's a blunt way of putting it but it's like if if you if you don't have people who feel that sense of responsibility that is an existential threat I think the the hunter participation piece and and I and I do believe and I'm obviously biased here

“but I think these activities of hunting and fishing and trapping and procuring food from the land”

in any form it's one of the most just obvious deep significant kinds of relationship that you can have to a place it's it's it's so visceral

way to develop an appreciation for place I don't believe that at all I think there's there are

a lot of different pathways to caring for the land but the fact that we see these declines and

“participation in activities like hunting which are I believe among the most strong and meaningful”

relationships to the land that a person can have that is representative of this broader trend of disconnection and apathy around conservation and that I believe is an existential threat. I want to comment on that but I want listeners to understand very well that this is Steve talking to not Carlton okay I don't want Carl to get rolled up and just say I steeper now I see I don't have you read it there was a

I think it was in the New York Times there was an op-ed with the guys arguing he's like

he's arguing that part of the he argues it as the Republican party has moved away from conservation particularly under the Trump administration he's like because you don't have those old style hunting fission like in that circle aren't like the old style hunting fission Republicans these are likely don't care about hunting these are Florida golfers do you know I'm saying and he was kind of saying it like like this like it's kind of like

this is a moment of kind of like the indoor Republican you following me I'm following you and I had a bunch of examples but it's like they just they don't know they don't care yeah they're not their vacation isn't fly fission yeah we got a jacks and hole like their vacation is West Palm Beach right or punt whatever the one I can't remember what's the nice one is a

western bad I've never been there's one that's like super swank either Palm Beach or West Palm Beach

a super swank yeah and ones not like Jeffrey Epstein lived the one but kind of did his pursuits in the other one I can't remember how it all worked but like what you're talking about like they lack a connection and ties into this too whether it's Republican or Democrat like there's like when I grew up people knew what a rough-grouse and a woodcock was a pat I mean but like you could ask someone yeah anywhere on the east coast of the Midwest and they might have no they'd be like

“I don't know what that thing is what they don't like you know yeah exactly and I think”

you know this idea of finding opportunities for folks from whatever political persuasion but also whatever sort of circumstance in which they enter their human experience so whether you're born in a rural community whether you're born in urban community whether you're born in a conservative family or a liberal family um this idea of a sense of connection to place and a sense of responsibility to place and also to community you know we talk a lot about in this country we we talk a lot

about rights right rights are a big deal and they are but the flip side of all of these rights that we have are certain uniliable rights as Americans um we don't spend enough time thinking about responsibilities and what it means to go through life in a way where we are enjoying the rights that we have been given but also asking ourselves what are we doing to redeem their responsibilities that we

“have as members of our community yeah but those are those are I think big important questions”

than in the conservation space it's like if you if your community extends to the places and the species that you interact with whether it says a hunter or otherwise it frames your world view such that decisions around policy you start thinking you start thinking in terms of what kind of world do you want to create what kind of world do you want to leave behind and that that framing to me is one of the keys to success in terms of having a really vibrant

healthy culture as a nation which I would suggest we've got some room to improve right now on that front so just thinking in terms of how are we positioning ourselves to take care of the things that take care of us good how are we showing up in our community there's an edge there's an education component to it for sure you and I don't want to hover too long on this thing about

national you okay you'll say you're like well it's it's a part it's a part of people

“disentangling themselves stepping away from caring about wild landscapes there are plenty of people”

that that aren't going to come out of those backgrounds that would that would say I love seeing wildlife I love walking in the woods yeah but what they don't know because they weren't culturally educated around like a hunting angling outdoor background but they don't know as they don't know how to look critically at what they're seeing yes meaning if they see someone cutting a tree boom that's bad right 100% 100% okay

if they walk through a big closed canopy forest it's easy to walk through and it's really pretty because there's a bunch of big trees yeah they love all that stuff but they don't know they're not looking at it and I'm not saying there's only one way to get there they're not looking at it

“with the hunters eye or an educated eye about what are you not seeing yeah yes that is true right”

you're seeing handful woodpeckers up in the top some squirrels not many right but they're like this is perfect it's a big woods yeah like it it takes I don't know a level of exposure and some kind of like professional understanding a little bit to start to to move not just from caring about places but to like understanding though yeah well because a lot of people care they just don't care in the right way right so they kind of people who think that the way to support wildlife is

to be an animal rights activist right and their mind they're like of of course it is right if they don't understand the damage they do yes I agree with that point I also think there are there are a lot of non hunters who care about these concepts and are very supportive of hunting in fact there are more non hunters who are supportive hunting than there are hunters yeah so you know if be careful of painting with two broader brush I agree I mean we're meant we're in some ways I'm

not countering you I'm saying some ways we're saying we're talking about the same kind of thing and I want to say there's like there's an instinctive I what I'm saying is I don't think that we're going to run out of if let's say hunting does decline or declines long term or something we're not going to run out of people who would tell you they love wildlife I picked we run out of people who knowing what that we've run we risk running out of people who understand what that means yeah

there's still be a lot of people around who care about the Yellowstone version of wildlife they would tell you like I love wildlife it's like but you don't understand it Welcome to meat eaters 12 and 26 presented by multi-mobile and on-ex maps 12 of meat eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026 these are long-form episodes

so you get more of what you love the first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba if you've ever

wondered what a baited bear hunt is like you'll love this episode my favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree check it out now on meat eaters youtube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months the language that comes to my mind is I'm thinking about rather than focusing on like a particular activity whether it's whether it's hunting or

wildlife viewing this idea of thinking in terms of encouraging experiences for people that foster a sense of connection and responsibility to a place because if you

“have that sense of responsibility and you want to execute on that you need to know”

what the place needs from you and I think hunting is hunting is a phenomenal gateway to just like experiencing in a visceral way a sense of being part of a system right it's like you are you are not observing you are a participant actively engaged in a system which is something we have been doing since the beginning of our species existence but I think in terms of messaging as you are talking I'm just looking back at this this 2025 state of the birds report and it talks in here about

they're being a hundred million Americans engaged in birding and the economic impact of that

I'm not surprised to hear that but listen here's the thing here's the thing so here let me give you like a sense

you don't want to know what I'm rolling my ass okay go ahead so listen listen here I'll tell you wrote a letter I do want I do want to hear your thoughts on this but I want to give it give some shout out so organizations including American bird conservancy Cornell Lab of Ornithology ducks on limited national autobons society you tell me get how many birders are hundred million but and that includes 80 million of those are watching birds in their back what does that mean it means people

“means when someone asks you you say you like birds yeah okay that's that's I think that's an important”

data point man I believe that's an important data point and guess what that includes virtually all

there's so there's over 200 million people in this country don't I get what you're saying

think about these people that are interested that are who have people who have enough interest be like yeah birds are cool but what I would I would I would I would I would I would I would I would roll my I wouldn't it what an extraordinarily low barrier to entry do you like birds yes okay I'm gonna put you down on my list of birds and I would say like you were talking about hunters versus not hunters earlier like a hunter a good chance he's gonna walk around and

chunk of wasn't be like man there's no rough grass here there's no wood got here yeah a lot of those hundred million birders they wouldn't I would at least be like okay but to be on my list do you have a bird book and like you got to like there has to be some show in picture of being hard no in an Oreo yeah test them so the check their book shelves there's got to be something other than being like I like birds listen the reason I'm bringing this up is not to get you all

fired up about the data why look with four birders sure and and by the way the report also talks about like including virtually every hunter like what hunter's gonna say you know right no when I'm

out elk hunting I always avert my eyes when I see a Lewis is what damn birds right

“those damn birds keep in her after you I elk hunt right but but that's why I roll my eyes”

I so I'm not surprised you did but the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think there are going to be times where these concepts that I think we hold deer around people's connection to place having the voices of other organizations in this space with us who are coming at it from a different lens so like American bird conservancies a great example that is that is a non-profit where there is so much alignment in terms of what we want to get done on the

ground and they're talking to a slightly different audience yeah and they are a hundred percent supportive of the kinds of hunting that we're talking about sustainable responsible relationship based there's no there's no mismatch in terms of what we want to see happen and it's rooted in good science and so like the state of the birds report you can go eco system by ecosystem through the country

“and talk about the status of of sea docks western forest birds shore birds dabbling do whatever you want to”

look at the point I want to make here though is when it comes to a very troubling picture in terms of bird conservation including but not limited to rough grass in American woodcock and eastern forest of the United States we know what we need to do in these systems like we know we have the science to tell us what we need to do it's a matter of figuring out how do you scale up and and have those outcomes delivered and we're watching as these species whether we're talking

about wipper wells or woodcock we're watching not even a gradual like in the span of our lifetime we're watching these declines happen before eyes because of our inability to take care of these habitats you know so having an organization or or a chorus of voices that are coming from different perspectives and talking different audiences and obviously the rough grass society in American woodcock society were a very proud hunter conservationist oriented group but I would offer that anybody who cares about

forest health should be really happy about the work that we're doing whether they ever want to pick up a shotgun or not like we're in exactly the same business as the Autobahn society American bird conservancy the nature conservancy like we're partnering with these organizations to try to get the same things done and that's I understand what you're saying no not I mean the hack on all those guys I understand what you're saying in that if you can get again the hundred million come on

but whatever how many are truly there ten thousand less than one and three people who are into birds in the country I don't think that's like a job saying where no okay let's see you got let's see you pulled Americans and said do you like the thought of a beach okay and 200 million

right it's a smaller number okay and it'd be like do you plan your schedule around

“visiting a beach every year now there's a smaller number sure somewhere within that hundred million”

is hiding a a a a number of like die hard bird each goers yeah hardcore birders or hardcore beach goers we're like oh next weekend I'm flying down to Florida to go to the beach I'm waxing my suit to be fair to Carl though like hunters suffer from myopia just as much as everyone else right like I might be aware of this this bad thing that's happening to rough crowds and woodcock and not be aware of a bunch of other things that are happened with

other species that the hardcore birders might be aware of but the reason and we spent way too much time to say I have to have my point here the hunt I don't think oh if I thought to myself oh

thank god there's a hundred million die hard birder allies out there wanting to fix America's

“forest that'd be great but I don't think that yeah I think yeah it's probably like maybe 10 million”

yeah maybe as many as there are hunters like like birders yeah birders who are like showing up thinking about how far is it because we go out and just ask people like do you like seeing a bird you're not collecting yeah yeah yeah people who want to fix America's forest right but so a counterpoint to that argument is if you were to ask the question about caring about fixing America's forests you might find a lot of other allies who care about her for reasons other than birds I don't

bring them on I just couldn't have you say that number without comment I I but I did I'm not surprised

that that here's the here's the way to change sorry that here's the way to change this here I picture there's two things happening okay with habitat okay they're okay be like there's loss meaning irrevocable harm yes development yeah right and then neglect yeah good word okay can I don't know like how do you picture the relationship between those two numbers like meaning for every hundred acres of sub prime bird habitat in the eastern U.S. right for for

every hundred acres of prime habitat that's been lost in the last 50 years what is the ratio of acres lost to irrevocable damage yeah pavement whatever and what is the acreage lost to mismanagement mm-hmm you're neglect yeah I'm not gonna hazard I guess on that but but those are those are the two

“keys and I think one thing that I could put a little bit finer point on here I mean we we know”

all of us have the stories the places where we grew up playing that the would lot that you describe with the oak trees getting cut and then all of a sudden boom houses popping up we've all got those stories right we depressed every time I visit my mom I listen that there's a place there's a place where I had my my sort of illicit camp ground along a trout stream in Lelandau County that the last time I injected out there was a trampoline sitting where my fire pit used to be

so we've all got those places right um we know we're losing ground to development of course um fragmentation et cetera the story of the I I like the word neglect because I think a lot of folks you know if you're driving through the forests of the eastern United States and looking at your window you're like yeah you know there's there's a lot of forest here what we have is a lot of the the forests that have regrown after that era of exploitation

and so we have a tremendous amount of like middle-aged forest okay that is very homogeneous very much middle-aged forest like 80 to 120 years old okay I mean to yeah so I'm I'm using like some some non-precise non-scientific language but if you think about the timeline of when these forests were slicked off when the when the the era of exploitation and liquidation of our timber resources occurred a lot of what we have now is the growth that has replaced

if you were standing in a middle-aged forest what would you be seeing well that's so that's great especially in these in these landscapes I'll tell you a few things you're going to see take me to Indiana a canopy overhead that is allowing very little sunlight to hit the forest floor

is leaf litter on a lot of leaf litter and I'll throw a throw a cool term out here and a shout out

“to one of my retired forest service colleagues got him Greg Noaki who coined this term”

misification which refers to the increasing sort of moisture tolerance of a forest over time so a lot of our forests in the east when you think about that era of all this disruption occurring the passenger pigeons the bison the elk you had forest where things were drier as a result of more sunlight hitting the forest floor so in places like Indiana's a perfect example where the the species of woody vegetation that are less tolerant of shade so like oaks or a prime example

we historically had tons more oaks on the landscape much more fire maintaining those oaks

if you just take a hands-off approach in those systems remove all those drivers of disturbance

you'll start a successful process where in the understory you'll start getting shade tolerant species like red maples a good example you know that'll come up in the understory and then if the oaks are dropping their acorns in a sea of red maple seedlings those oak seedlings are going to be out competed because they don't do as well in the absence of direct sunlight so you have a canopy come up eventually to where red maple will be the dominant species and the oaks will not come back

so that transition from shade intolerant to shade tolerant species which corresponds to increasing moisture content in the understory that's mesification referring to a more music site as opposed to a more it's zero excite so a music site is more moist a zero excite is more dry my good buddy Greg Noaki was the one who kind of termed this this mesification idea through his research looking at that change over time so if you're in this forest and

you're going to have a very consistent aged over story like all the trees came up in the same cohort made it to the canopy they're now shading out the understory you don't have the robust grass for a shrub understory you don't have a lot of mid-mid canopy complexity squirrels see a way too far away squirrels see a way too far away there's and and you're not going to have you're not going to have nesting habitat for a whole a whole a whole a whole cadre of species of

birds that require that diversity and also like the the understory plant community the pollinators you know we could talk about rusty patch bumblebee comes to mind a species listed under the endangered species act where we're not talking about birds anymore talk about insects but it's the same story of disturbance being a limiting factor so the forest is going to have a closed canopy

“it's going to be real shady it's going to look the same as far as you can see and I think if folks”

pay attention as you're driving through a lot of these eastern forests you're going to notice some those characteristics and I'll throw one more thing out there for you now that's very different from what things looked like three or four hundred years ago on these landscapes and that is an overabundance of white tail deer which are not a replacement for the elk and the bison the the browsing dynamics of white tail deer in these systems are a very different driver of disruption

ecological and the oaks come up they're not letting any of those species join the you know the older age classes so this is where you get into maybe another feature that you're going to see in a lot of places is a pronounced browse line from white tail deer which is a whole other set of ecological issues so this is where you know we can't fall into the trap of thinking oh well we've got deer and so maybe deer playing the role that elk or bison did deer in the absence of sufficient

“predation are another driver of a decline of ecological integrity in these systems so that's I think”

a good picture of what you'd see and then the other species if you are one of these maybe 10 million

diehard birders and you're out there with your Cornell lab of ornithology app and you're listening to the birds you're going to hear very little diversity in those systems as well for a variety of reasons but the structural complexity lacking being one of the keys I wanted to ask about the wood cut because you guys just recently kind of took wood cut under your officially under your umbrella yeah are they are they more at risk for these kinds of problems because they migrate or

they better able to deal with these problems because they migrate because rough crafts like you said like small home range right right woodcock might fly 900 a thousand miles twice a year rode you the man I'm so glad we could talk about woodcock a little bit man timber doodle timber doodle mud that man bog partridge bog sucker the names go on yeah the timber doodle thank you

is the woodcock hunting good these days well it really yeah yeah so you really birds we can cross them with his own beak listen woodcock man should do a whole separate episode just on woodcock

“um listen here's the thing a really cool aspect of working for this organization is”

you have the opportunity to focus on this high site fidelity king of king of upland game birds where you know everything we've been talking around about forest diversity and managing it at a tight local scale is the key and then you get to shift gears and talk about a migratory upland

game bird that is just this like bizarre amazing outlier birders love them because they do that

cool little dance well you know you can do that on the sky yeah you don't go down to the gas line like not a mile away from the house yeah they are they are so damn cool they're like might be flight or they call that one one of my I have jokingly sometimes say to folks on our team at RGS and AWS and like you know people think I came for the rough grass but I'm really here for the woodcock man um so I think the answer to your question brody is the fact that woodcock

“operate ecologically at a continental scale you need you really need those habitat elements”

to be in the right places at the right times that a at a scale that makes it makes the system

much more fragile to disruption right and we're seeing that in terms of woodcock declines so I'll

give you like a quick stat here that's helpful um state agencies state fishing wildlife agencies are responsible for developing state wildlife action plans in order to qualify for federal funding through pitman Robertson so every state fishing wildlife agency has a state wildlife action plan and one of the things that happens in these state wildlife action plans is they go through all the species and they try to identify what ones warrant listing as a species of greatest conservation need

that's an indicator that a particular critter is in some level of decline or or threat and for rough grass they're currently 18 states that have rough grass listed as a species of greatest in Ohio

“just do so much Ohio we Ohio is is right now considering what to do with their hunting season and”

there's a proposal on the table just in the next couple of weeks they're going to be talking about a proposal to reduce the rough grass hunting season to include just a handful of properties where we know we still have gross on landscape versus just closing it outright um but back to this idea of the state wildlife action plan so 18 of them have rough grass listed 29 of them have American woodcock lost all this real greatest conservation need and that includes Michigan

Wisconsin Minnesota like states where we're serving the bread basket of upland bird hunting and this year one of the highlights of the time I've been with this organization was I had a chance back in December to go down to Louisiana food under baton rusion had a chance to spend some time with folks from the state agency down there and we went out and banded we banded 53 woodcock one night one of their state game areas which was an absolute calm oh man it's it is such a cool

example of technology in action so the biologists down there and I'll give a shout out to Richard Temple at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries um he and the team from the state first they have a drone with infrared and they fly it over these open fields at night and infrared camera can they mean these woodcock glow like they blow up out of the background and then the drone also has a spotlight on it so they can hover like I don't know

100 feet above the field see where these woodcock are and then they can they have a camera with such

incredible resolution that you can like you can see the woodcock blink

from the drone god and if a woodcock defecates you can see like the heat of of the splash you know the woodcock specs it's like it's just incredible view of the field and then we go out with like a four wheeler and spotlights on the ground and basically it's like a deer in the headlights you shine the spotlight on the woodcock and you can take a fishing net or even you can grab them by your bare hand with the

spotlights shining on the bird oh really and then we're aging on and sexing them and releasing them and uh I have to say like after having a lot of woodcock like dead woodcock in my hands or or having a woodcock that's crippled in your dispatching it to have these little woodcock that we're banding and releasing but watching him fly away out of my hands was it was pretty damn cool

opener of the woodcock season got to hunt with a guy named Paul Frischerts and keen Jones who are

“a couple guys down there looking to kind of resurrect a American woodcocks society chapter”

and their bevy of pointing dogs but the coolest part about all of that experience was when the biologist this guy Richard Temple showed me the map of the band returned data so all these woodcock that they're banding right there on Baton Rouge he puts up this map of where the bands have been returned from like hunters if shot a woodcock that's banded and they call it and just like what we're used to with ducks and geese and there were a couple

of points that were within like 15 miles of my family camp up in the west of really like right where I grew up in woodcock hunt man so these birds you know you're down here like worried about your dog running into a cotton mouth there's alligators hanging out and he's like biused hanging out with all these great cage and upland bird hunting guys but it's exactly

“exactly the same individual birds that were chasing around like an October up in Wisconsin Michigan”

Minnesota here they are down in you know the golf coast in December so I had that experience and then I'm flying back you know I'm on my trip from Baton Rouge back up to Milwaukee and I'm looking out the window just watching the miles right past under the plane and I'm thinking about these little birds like just making that journey and then they're also nesting like they're they're laying eggs and hatching chicks during their return migrations north too so you've got the

you've got like the the summer ground in the north you've got the wintering ground and then there's all this stop over habitat where we know these birds are nesting part of the reason we know

that is this amazing collaborative called the eastern woodcock migration research they're not

nesting in their northern chunk they do most of their nesting in the northern chunk but what what the recent research has demonstrated is that there are hands rearing clutches rearing chicks during this you know it's not like a cut and dried like I'm going back to Minnesota to lay my eggs right like it's happening over that latitudinal gradient north you know and so I've been you know academically like oh yeah they're migratory and your buddy him talking

about man the woodcock hunt sure has been great lately it's like yeah it might be like Monday there's woodcock everywhere and then Tuesday like right gone right and anybody who's hunted woodcock when you when you hit these migration events it can be like you can't you can't walk without bumping birds like I've had I've had situations where you know I'm hunting pointing dogs I'll have dog on point a bird goes up shoot the bird dog goes to retrieve the bird but like

points another bird on its way to get the dead bird or it's bringing a bird back and pointing

another bird on their like yeah when you get into these flights it can be amazing but the big

picture in terms of woodcock numbers is a gradual decline continental so you need the good habitat in the north you need the good habitat in south and you need the habitat along the way and one of the really exciting things is this this work being led out of the University of Maine the eastern woodcock migration research cooperative the two leads doctor Eric Blomberg and Dr. Amber Roth are leading a collaborative to try to understand the use of habitat during this

migratory period and they've put out at this point over 700 backpack transmitters on woodcock they and their collaborators lots of other academic institutions one of our team members one of our forest conservation director Sarah serve has been a collaborator in this work they've got like 30,000 actually close to 40,000 GPS coordinates of migrating woodcock now

“so we can see at the flyway scale like here places that are very important for us to think about”

providing habitat whether it's along the Atlantic coast or along the Mississippi flyway being able to target these treatments in a way where you're providing key habitat in places where it might be limited and it gives you just some tremendous insights into the trials and tribulations I mean one thing if folks are interested in looking at recent news stories these big spring storms or I guess late winter storms is a better way to describe it obviously that have happened on the east

coast there have been some tremendous woodcock casualties as a result there's a there's a point in New Jersey called Cape May which is sort of like a funnel along the Atlantic flyway that is notorious for getting lots of lots of young woodcock and into that area and that's a place where

they had hundreds of woodcock die on site like freezing and starving on site during these migration events

“so that all paints a picture of just how demanding for a bird of that size these seasonal”

migrations are like any bird that makes it through one of those cycles and is able to reproduce and rear off spring to hell of an accomplishment yet like like you know two three-year-old turkeys an old man like godlers an old man like halla like rough grass and woodcock like I assume like

not many make a pass the first year very high mortality from from one age class to the next for

sure yeah and and in the case of woodcock you know the migration poses a whole set of risks that rough grass aren't subject to you know they're flying into windows they're flying into buildings they're getting smoked by owls a lot of the movement that woodcock are engaging in during migration is happening at night as well so they yeah they're subject to very high mortality

“and certainly in the case of grass too like there's nothing in the woods that eats meat that”

doesn't want eat a grass right like a grass is a snack for anything out there so very high mortality during that first basically if you look at from years zero to one one to two two to three every one of those stages you're you're seeing very high mortality for both of these species welcome to meat eaters 12 and 26 presented by multi-mobile and on-ex maps 12 of meat eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout twenty twenty six these are

long form episodes so you get more of what you love the first one up is my baited bear hunt in

Manitoba if you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like you'll love this episode my favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree check it out now on meat eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more twelve and twenty six in the coming months I had a question I wanted to ask you that actually has to do with turkeys and maybe a conspiracy theory um is there any

correlation between like the rise of the wild turkey like the comeback yeah and the fall of the grass because it's kind of like happening at the same time right yeah I've heard those stories and I think my answer to that is when it comes to thinking about drivers of either success or failure

“for both rough grass and wild turkeys and like pick your pick your hunted species if you want to”

just look at it at this from the lens of hunting I mean white tail deer you mentioned your story from Michigan Steve we're dealing with species that evolved with forests where disturbance equals habitat period so when we talk about doing things that are good for grass or doing things that are good for turkey or doing things that are good for white tail deer we're talking about benefiting the forest and the rising tide lifting all boats and this idea of like oh we've got turkeys back on the

landscape now that's going to be terrible for grass my answer that would be if we have good habitat and a good juxtaposition of that diversity that's accessible to turkeys and to grass there may be some fluky case where a turkey disturbs ground around this I'm sure that happens I mean turkeys are there they're a source of disturbance and disruption they're clawing and digging and I have no doubt that that has happened and does happen but nest mortality is par for the course there's a whole

host of other things out there that are taken out nests too we should never expect rough grass or

woodcock to you know succeed in every nesting attempt but if we have really good habitat and if we have lots of females attempting to nest we're going to have lots of birds so I would I would debunk that a bit and say I focusing in a habitat it brings up there's an interesting point to it that there's an interesting point you make that that I hadn't thought of a lot as a week because we focus on like as hunters or anglers wherever you focus on your favorite games species right mean you

like you might look maybe you bass fish some lake and you kind of track like what's going out the bass and that like um and you'll you'll have pet theories about what impacted bass right you might look at like what's impacting mule deer yeah and you look and it's like you find this sweet of factors that maybe like pertains very particularly to mule deer yeah or some things that pertain very particularly to elk right it's interesting to think of what the woodcock and rough

grouse decline as being that like we know those ones in love them but what we're talking about is like

is because I think that you tend to like in my mind like if I'm you know whatever if I'm talking

about blacktail deer on some island in Alaska I'm usually looking at well what is impacting blacktail deer yeah right it's interesting to take a thing like this and be like what is impacting birds right one of which or two of which are these ones that you're intensely focused on but that that unbeknownst to you they're they're going away as well you know yes yeah missed it you missed it because you're just thinking about the ones you are looking for you know right yeah

“and even if you want to get into some of the specific drivers like just briefly back to this idea”

of the west now virus as a cause of decline there too the idea that you can really focus on habitat quality to help kind of buffer the impact of that disease agent if you think about a bird that's like I'm getting at this idea of cumulative effects right if you have a bird that is struggling to take in enough calories and it's also subject to slightly higher predation risk because it doesn't have the structural complexity to hide from death from above you know hawks owls or coyotes fox whatever

and then on top of that you add a disease that's further weakening that bird versus a bird that is disease but also has really good forage really good habitat it's not any one of these things right it's it's it's it's very rare in ecological science to be like there's the cause there's the effect right much more often it's these complex interconnections and and feedback loops and death by a thousand cuts as opposed to well here's the one thing that explains it all you know but in the

case of these eastern forests it's like the one thing that explains it all is that we have not done a good job of maintaining the diversity and disturbance and that includes everything ranging from driving passenger pigeons to extinction extrupeding eastern elk and bison up through I love the word

“used neglect because I think that is a perfect label for many of our eastern forests is that they”

have been neglected and part of the tragedy is that now you have people who I think they're hearts are in the right place but they are strongly advocating for continuing to neglect the forests that they claim to love let me get that yeah and you've cut down all those trees please neglect by in action just let them sit yeah this idea that this idea that and I think this is this is such a

powerful it's such a powerful thing to really think about because a lot of folks who I believe

have their hearts in their right place they think about human beings as being only capable of making things worse in the environment we're the problem too many people you know all we do is pillage and pollute and when you really start looking at our history as a species and you start looking at at all the different cultures and relationships that people have to different ecosystems around the planet and thinking about it more carefully for the vast majority of our existence we have been in the

business of actively taking care of the places that support our existence we have been we have been dependent on the action that we take mediated through the land for our very survival so this idea that somehow you step back and take a hands-off approach nature will take care of itself that ignores the reality that we are fundamentally a part of nature right so it it it it's a troubling worldview at the deepest of levels because it it takes this role that we should

“be embracing and points to that as if it's a problem you know the only thing we can do is make”

things worse in the environment that is just simply not the case we have been in the business of interacting with and being a part of these systems and that's the thing man that the more I'm

thinking through this that's the problem is it takes us and removes us from the system and we you know

we we look over there there's nature don't mess it up as opposed to we are in this thing and if you want to zoom back to like a global scale whether you live in an urban environment

whether you're living in remote Alaska all of us are existing within this closed system right

“and we're all making decisions individually and cumulatively that influence the trajectory of”

that closed system so approaching it in a way where you're actually embracing the fact that you have a responsibility to take action to try to make things better for the future as opposed to well that's nature over there I'm over here doing my thing let nature figure it out like that is a very deeply flawed worldview in my opinion hmm when we talk about the Anthropocene meaning that like the Anthropocene is this concept that you know like we think of the place to seeing as the ice ages

that was followed by the hall of scene then we very quickly entered the Anthropocene meaning that humans when people use that term what they're saying is that humans are the dominant force the dominant global force on habitats the dominant global force on ecology right we're the

“dominant force um part of recognizing that is is is needs to be embracing that role yeah”

to be like okay if that's the case then maybe we need to be the dominant force of good as well

yeah love that in some place you know yeah I mean there's no more powerful ecosystem engineer

than homo sapiens right like we have been manipulating the face of this planet to benefit ourselves forever but we have we have absolutely reached a point in our history as a species where we have we have these controls at our disposal and we can either do things that will promote a future of continued prosperity or and in a lot of places this is already reality we've gone so far down this path of manipulating the system for short-term gain

that we've compromised the ability of those systems to be a source of prosperity to us so there's

“a lot of clean up work to do in those places but I think what you just said is is a super important”

message it's like we need to acknowledge that reality and then approach that with a focus on what are our responsibilities and light of that reality do you think that how how relational is it like do you think that um when I see relational it's a terrible word choice how much do you think a habitat project let's say you do what you do a habitat project on a thousand acres can you do a habitat project on a thousand acres and then come back a couple

years later and be like oh the browser back hmm really depends on where you are good um I think

in a lot of places the answer is going to be no um once grouse are gone and you lose like a

a source population and they do this they have this life history trait where um you know they hatch in the spring the breads kind of stick together if you think about bumping into a grouse early season when you're hunting them oftentimes you'll flush like breads of birds you'll get almost like a cubby you know flush of grouse but then they get into a dispersal mode midfall and birds start striking out to essentially occupying your territory spread their genes across the landscape of

void competition avoid in breeding um so they will cover considerable distances to pioneer unoccupied habitat but if you do a restoration project in area where there's no source of rough grouse they're not gonna they're not gonna find it and we're not there there's a very poor track record of trying to relocate grouse into previously occupied habitat they don't do well so being able to hold on to grouse where we still have them and then focus on trying to

restore habitat around the places that are occupying around a course of action we had a researcher we had a deer you know does a lot work with servants on the podcast one time and he's talking about when you look like let's say you're meal your hunt and you look in that perfect stuff you know like God it seems like they'd be here it looks like it would be perfect yeah he's like it might be there's not there yeah something happened to they have a lot of

fidelity to their area something happened to that group yeah and it might be a long time it might be perfect it might be the most perfect meal to your country in your area but there's just not any there yeah because they don't they've they haven't colonized it yep they got their own the ones nearby have their little plan and they're not looking for a new spot and they can take a long time to put them back when you have an event yeah carry them away yep I think there's some applicability

going to find it which is one of the advantages we've talked about some of the disadvantages of being

a migratory species but in advantages you're surveying that landscape with fresh eyes every year and taking advantage where habitats popping out it's interesting to me that putting grouse out on the ground doesn't work like putting turkeys out on the ground they have not done well with reintroduction what do you think it is because it's they just don't they don't carry with them like a sort of generational land use plan it's a good question man I wish I knew wish I knew

more about the constraints on survivorship of translocated grouse I know that as it has been

attempted in many settings and I'm aware of no successful reintroduction efforts they got to do

their own thing yeah so you got to preserve those pockets yeah and build out from there and you know we do have just some tremendous strongholds still but the thing that the thing that is both both like most frustrating and most encouraging is that it's not we're not scratching our heads like man if we could just figure out oh right we know we know it needs to be done and it's also a set of actions that is broadly beneficial beyond these two iconic species so that's where like

the idea of trying to get some coalitions built around leaving those conditions like the partnership

with the Rocky Mount Elk Foundation the partnership with American Bird Conservancy we have

a shared vision of what needs to be done yeah those kind of things are frustrating in their own

“way I think when you look at big conservation problems you have the ones you'd be like like a”

certification of the oceans you know you go like good luck with that do you know I mean like like something they would call for sort of like a global change in in the habits that would impact every person on the planet you know like I ain't gonna happen anytime soon then you got conservation problems where like to his right are fingertips yeah this right are fingertips it's not even like it's so achievable right yeah you know you can't say I mean people are like they didn't know

to begin yeah do I mean with King Sam it's hard to know where to begin it'd be a bummer to see like that species that hunting opportunity like blink out in your lifetime because so much of it has gotten better over time right like if you're an elk hunter it's pretty good time to be an elk hunter you know you name it it's pretty good but to see like do you envision the trend being more

“states closing seasons or restricting seasons or status quo yeah I think I think we're on a”

trajectory where we're likely to see continued loss of opportunity yeah and you know a couple examples New Jersey's a state where they had a season that's been closed like 2019 for that one Indiana lost its season in 2015 and now rough grass were listed on the state endangered species list in Indiana Missouri no season Ohio flirting with potentially a steeply restricted season yeah I think Pennsylvania had an early in the late and they got rid of one maybe the late season

like after Christmas got Michigan still just got it doozy of a season man yeah it's long yeah hunting right up through the end of the calendar year and September 15 right yeah that's right opener I sacred day for those hillbilly kids of the Northwoods man he's take that day off a school go squirrel and and grow something um those are all restrictions that came out like in our

“lifetimes for sure oh yeah what else what else you got that list uh well I just I think it's not”

but but speak the fact that this is all southern extent right yeah because it was the poorest populations well I think it was just kind of naturally borderline it was naturally fringe habitat yeah yeah I mean you're starting to get you're starting to get into the areas where the um if you look at the distribution of aspen I made the comment earlier that aspen is not the key but it's a really important aspect of grass habitat in many places you're starting to get into areas where that

species is not available to provide food and cover um you're also looking at places where these forest changed dynamics that we've talked about misification lack of disturbance that is absolutely the case one of the most compelling examples that going back to Doug Durin the driflissarian southwest Wisconsin if you look like 25 30 40 years ago grass numbers in southwest Wisconsin were off the charts

a drum and grass in the drifliss area so yeah to what what happened just to have a habitat change

“lack of changes are gone gone for now and the problem is you know like we're just talking about”

with the sort of mule deer story there um if you get to the point where the habitats gone long enough

in the population is dwindled to the point you're I'm not going to say you're never going to

get them back but you are facing a very steep uphill battle. So for like the northern population like whatever northern Wisconsin main Minnesota where they're doing well is it just like why are they like is it just that stuff's not getting mess with it's the right habitat and it's staying the right habitat like because if it if this good habitat depends on disturbance like what kind of disturbance is going on up there that keeps things yeah well you're right you're right in the

core of their range in terms of climate it's just of the vegetation community you know I'm thinking I'm envisioning this spot right now in the in the U.P. where it's just like this tangal of

15 10 to 15 year old aspen under story of which hazel it's like every you've got like winter green

it's it's just food everywhere covers phenomenal um typically you have a good snow pack and rough grass will burrow into the snow and see the thermal refuge in cold conditions so having that snow covers a big deal if you have crappy snow snow years grass are at high risk of freezing and cold temperatures it's not good news around here you know so so you're in a really sweet spot it's like you're right you're right in the wheel yes of where those birds evolve to be and um so now I'm thinking about

some very cool work that's been happening in the central upper peninsula Michigan looking at the management of these remnant boreal forest ecosystems where you're kind of on the fringe for

“I think I'm thinking about snow shoe hares as well right populations of snow shoe hares”

rough grass um a whole host of species that have significance from the standpoint of food and medicine for tribal communities so there's some really cool work my buddy Eric Clark and collaborators from the Susaynry tribe of Chippewa Indians working on the high-o-authentational forest to get more fire back into those systems to promote the diversity of habitat and if you go back there are places where particularly in red pine you can look at the dendocrinology like the tree history

of fire activity in those systems there's a place called betchler's marsh as an example on the high-oauthentational forest where red pine dendocrinology data shows how frequently fire was burning through those systems prior to European settlement and it was very high frequency so very often fire at a low enough severity that the trees were surviving it and as they've been starting to get some of those fire regimes back into those systems with the tribe really leading that

that work the grass response has been phenomenal but it's also a great habitat like they're doing a lot of work trying to keep moose on the landscape right we haven't talked about moose at all a lot of the work that we're doing thinking about rough grass habitat in those northern lake states a ton of it is also phenomenal moose habitat yeah there's a collaborative up on the arrowhead in Minnesota focused on moose habitat we're right in the mix partnering with the forest service

partnering with the state partnering with the tribes trying to get moose habitat on the ground you call whatever the hell you want yeah it's great moose habitat it's also great for all these other species that we're talking about welcome to meat eaters 12 and 26 presented by multi-mobile and on x maps 12 of meat eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout

2026 these are long form episodes so you get more of what you love the first one up is my

baited bear hunt in manitoba if you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like you'll love this episode my favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree check it out now on meat eaters youtube channel

“and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months i think two of those northern”

latitudes you get i don't really just like just something i sort of noticed in suspect i guess is it and those northern latitudes are the really deep snow different vegetation regimes whatever good habitat lingers long time do you know i mean like like it's a it seems like successful for us is a slow process yeah then it might be another places yeah i mean the sites like i mean just take a place is that that stayed good i think of like good grau spots that have

a femoral yeah yeah they were good for a minute totally you know so there's not many things i mean they're good for a few years but places seem like you're like should we shot grau side of there for 20 years yeah yes we talk about like site index or site site richness site quality and and that takes into account it's basically like the capacity of a particular place to grow vegetation and there's obviously a strong climate component to that there's also

“really strong soil component to that and a lot of the places when i think about really good”

grau's and woodcock habitat places where i grew up hunting you're dealing with pretty poor soils too right it's not like it's not like you you expose the earth to the solar rays and you get like a jungle immediately growing it's a it's a more drawn in the process and that's in contrast i'm thinking back to the time down in Louisiana this past winter and the site richness on those sites is like off the charts so they'll they the amount of effort

and and investment that they have to make in order to keep woodcock habitat on some of those state game lands oh it's crazy because like they'll mow it and the next year it's like a jungle has been emerged right so you're you're pointing to something that's in a lot of that northern grau's habitat like in the upper great lakes region um you'd be like wonder why no one's farming this but it can't do yeah the northern region there were a lot of things grow there

a lot of frustrated potato farms in the UP man a deal i've noticed too many privacy in this i'm thinking of in the county where i grew up in the around that area a lot of times a good grau's pocket would be centered around this is gonna sound weird it'd be centered around Christmas tree plantation oh yeah doesn't sound weird because when you go out and hunt in late season like you go home for Christmas break or something yeah and you go out yeah all the

grau's through the Christmas tree plantations yeah and it always be that around those big blocks like

you know and whatever you got like 10 20 acres of Christmas trees or something yeah it would always be good grau's yeah but there's a certain look to those areas too but i'm just saying it would be like that was sort of like a real holding position i could think of one on i could think of one of these that was on public land a manicine national forest was a pine plantation yeah always good grau's in that area because they had that like you said they're home bodies and they had that like

feature yep and it's all around this dude's place he's a girl pumpkin's nice he'd hired me for a couple days year to pick pumpkins and bring them down and sell them but um he had a pine tree plant a Christmas tree plantation yeah and always good whether they were in there or not yeah

“and it was just that like i think of them in there like this where they go to survive the cold yeah”

so totally so i love that and and one of the things when i'm looking for a grau's like really good grau's habitat having a component of conifer in the mix is awesome you know it might be spruce or fur um but in terms of shelter from predators and also in terms of thermal protection you know um and and hiding from precept too like they do not like getting them and they can disappear and those those three that those conifers get get a kid trying to find one that's

perched up all yeah yeah because they're not sitting way out they'll sit up close and towards the totally yeah so that's where you get like if you're in a hunting scenario taken turns flanking they have in one dude on the backside sometimes they just don't budge man that's just true

and oftentimes you'll hear you hear him flush and you'll never see him but do the guys when

you're hitting those patches i'm talking about the dudes that are going to get the shoot

“or the dudes on the outside right that's what i'm saying so yeah and you want to kind of go”

like if you picture of Christmas tree plantation like a lab picture laptop computer okay okay and you got your pushers and you're pushing it the long way yeah a lot of guys are going to make a mistake having their pushers out like you're entering one end of the laptop yeah your pushers are and you got your sitters yeah you're thinking you're going to position them off the points off the other end of the laptop strategy man that's good trick is to have a guy

middle laptop yeah yep the one because of burnout this life is a conceptualized and have pine tree past the way you are like you think he's going to go to the end right and then hop out right you know but they're blown outside so yeah and you got a guy that's why i say it's flank

like you never hear me talking about a standard a flanker is somebody moving yeah his movement

they're flanking and maybe a few steps up ahead and he's recognizing those gaps and trees that he knows they're going to use to get out of there man the other thing that's nice is then you can be with an eyesight of each other too so you can take your shot known where your buddy is right because a lot of times in grass habitat like you can if you're more than like

question for it it's like i'm surprised it didn't come up because it like it usually comes up

“in these kind of conversations which is like predators and predator management like there's a matter on”

grass because i know a lot of grass hunters be like raccoons or eating or whatever do you know i don't know i like i feel that thing saying but there's something there with turkeys but anyways yeah man so what who's killing ever i'm saying it more that's part of why you know yeah everybody's killing man like grass and woodcock are delicious they are little nuggets of energy on landscape weight and to get eaten and the nests too and these systems are

full of things that are going to eat them and that's okay the lever that matters is the habitat

yes to be thinking about like if i kill all the coyotes kill all the fox or these possums getting nests or whatever that is like that is not going to move the lever i want people think of my habitat man yeah let's let all the others have sorted self out and in the thing is we had a guy and we had this we had a guy in your seat came on top same conversation bobwhite quail yeah he was your thing with habitat he didn't do what you're doing oh he'd downplayed it on

quail and he was like parasites parasites parasites and man we got just more negative feedback and pissed off people yeah because he jumped to a he had the audacity to talk about he also had a product he was that he worked on yes let me let me throw a couple things in some sand he he shifted and people were like you got to stay on the habitat you can't talk about

“right and people were pissed they should be here's the thing here's the thing man let's talk”

about parasites loads okay not unlike the conversation around west now a lot of these birds are going to pick up all sorts of maladies diseases parasites etc. having quality habitat is going to mediate those effects it's like the thing to do and since you brought up quail i want to just like briefly point out the fact that we spend a lot of time talking about eastern forests and i'm again i'm looking at the state of the birds report in terms of declines

eastern bird eastern forest birds 27% decline over the course of the last 40 years looking at this graph from this report that there are two categories that have steeper declines that i want to highlight arid land birds and grassland birds so grassland birds in particular

“and i want to tie this back to the conversation about quail we have talked today about the”

importance of markets and being able to move wood and not being able to move habitat without being able to move wood one of the challenges with grassland ecosystems is is figuring out how those ecosystems can pay their way right this is where the farm bill and programs like CRP incentivizing stewardship and there's which isn't paying their way in the same way right

and those are long-term investments and there's there's just some amazing success stories of

ranchers taking a long view on habitat and trying to you know trying to do right by grassland birds and also right by their herds and their bottom line and it's it's harder in a system where you don't have the timber helping with those economics but i want to just highlight you know folks have opportunities to be really involved with moving the needle and i'm thinking back to last week being at fuzzent fest you mentioned quail decline and quail

in a lot of places in most places continue to struggle and in fact that's one of the reasons woodcock are getting more attention is people who have historically loved hunting quail and have pointing dogs and all that they're like discovering woodcock as an alternative in some places we're quail in the quail stronghold but i just want to highlight the experience of last week being up in Minneapolis at fuzzent fest so hosted by fuzzents forever in quail forever

another organization that's really dialed in on this habitat piece in a different system right thinking about these grassland systems and i'm a I'm a big proponent for

the missions of lots of different organizations and i couldn't be more impressed with how

fuzzents forever in quail forever rolled out a red carpet for our organization and a whole host of other like prairie grass organizations we had this little corner not a little corner we had a great space at the at fuzzent fest to talk about grass conservation both forest grass and prairie grass and the thing i love about what fuzzance forever is doing

“is taking the stance like i think it'd be really easy for folks to imagine they're being a lot”

of competition among conservation organizations it does not have to be that way man there's so much

work that needs to be done across these different ecosystems um we've got a niche with thinking

about forest grass thinking about woodcock but i've already told you like there are other non-profits american bird conservancy auto-bance society tnc there's so much work that needs to be done that from my perspective there's like there's no excuse for there to be a sense of competition among these organizations we've got to be taking the tact that i saw last week from fuzzents forever in quail forever where they're creating a space to try to elevate the missions of all these different

organizations so my hope is that it could be that there's a problem where the efforts are too

“scattered and not not streamlined well that's there there is a risk there and that's where i think”

having some strong alignment among collaborators and keeping your eye on the prize and finding ways

to leverage the strengths and expertise of different partner organizations i mentioned Rocky Mountain Foundation earlier in other group where you know they've got a strong presence in the west they want to be able to implement work in the east we can help them do that so we're able to funnel some of their conservation investments through our organization so i just i hope as folks are thinking about all of the needs um taking some time to learn about the bigger picture

and not just not just focus on one ecosystem or one species but think about these big concepts of what these landscapes need from us and then finding ways to align and become a member of communities with organizations that are trying to drive that and i want to throw one other thing out that i'm really excited about right now in terms of collaboration and that is when we wrap peasant fest one of the coolest things happened in there was we had a partnership with the Aldo Leopold Foundation

at peasant fest so anybody who was joining our GSM AWS as a conservation member they were

“all getting copies of the sand county almanac through the Leopold Foundation ok and um i think that's”

a significant collaboration because what we are what we are doing with our work and what i've been trying to communicate through the conversation today is that the significance of this effort is much it's about much more than just having really good growth in woodcock hunting right we're trying to approach these big questions around responsibility to place and thinking about showing up in community and a meaningful way and for anybody who's familiar with Leopold's work those should sound like

familiar concepts and so this idea of highlighting those ideas in that legacy through the work that we're doing and trying to be exemplary ambassadors of that land ethic and action is something i'm really excited about so just in the last week we've gotten a further commitment from the Aldo Leopold Foundation for anyone who joins our organization in our membership drive right now that deal is going to continue oh alright online yeah so let's tell him the deal yeah so if you go we've got

it we've got a slick little URL now to use which is rufft.org and make sure he's very roughed are you FFED rufft.org and you'll get uh this you guys website know it's this is this is a tight little URL that will take you to our rufft.org it'll take you to our membership campaign right not rufft like rufft yet but rufft right rufft.org and get a copy of the sand county allmanac and get yourself a cool trucker hat with the grass and woodcock on it and uh getting newsletters from both

the Leopold Foundation and the rough grass society in American woodcocks society and and the thing i want to highlight here like membership's are great but we're really trying to figure out

taking care of these forests and we do that with memberships we also have people who are volunteering

“and I want to I want to say a huge thank you to everybody who volunteers to support our mission”

we have tremendous we have folks who have been volunteering for the organization for decades hosting bank with fundraisers all that kind of stuff just pouring a ton of time and passion we had volunteers at Feasant Fest Helping Staff are both so I want to say a huge thank you to the

the volunteers who are part of this organization we have some incredibly generous private

philanthropists who support our mission but this idea of just having a community of people who are affiliated with the work that we do and want to see these forests left in a better

“condition than we found them that's what we're trying to build and I think in the conservation space”

with some of the trends that we've talked about around declining participation like what is the future of of the funding model for conservation in this country these questions about how do we build community around these ideas of responsibility to place I think that that is where the answer lies and so we want to be one of the leaders along with our partners in helping drive that kind of community building so rough dot org check it out join us thank you Carl thanks Carl

and again this is Carl Malcom he's the VP of conservation with the roughed grass society and the American woodcocks society thanks so much for coming on man and please go check out

“so easy remember rough are you ff eddy dot org get yourself a membership rough grass society in”

America woodcocks society um get perhaps the greatest not even perhaps the greatest conservation book I've ever written I want to argue with that the greatest conservation book I've ever written um san kani almanac but all the leopold um and in Carl doubles as a leopold expert for you guys that you guys know that if you watch me either the TV show and have listed Carl's past appearances on this podcast again thank you Carl appreciate the opportunity you could see it

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