https://www.listennotes.com/e/3786ff37666942e48d08f9e2079f3b5e

[Speaking of] welcome to the Hunt West podcast. Here's your host, Jaden Bales.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to another episode of the Hunt West podcast. This is your host, Jaden Bales, and I'm really happy you're here for this second episode of the sheep stories from the Wyoming wild sheep foundations Expo just last week. Keep in mind, I apologize that the audio quality is not as Crystal Clear as this is because we recorded it on the of the expo. But I'm really excited to bring you this episode today. This is with Mr. Kevin Hurley. He's vice president for conservation emeritus with the Wild Sheep Foundation, that national organization. I kind of laid out a little bit of information about Kevin, what he's doing currently, and then I wanted to take a step back and like totally fill in all the gaps as to how he got to what he's doing now. We talked a lot about some old incredible stories. from backpacking for counting sheep in the 80s to plane crashes and multiple of them, matter of fact. And I'm really just excited to bring you this episode. Kevin is a great guy. He's doing some awesome work and he's dedicated his whole life to that, to the work of Wild Sheep Foundation. He calls it FaNas from back in the day. And I really am just really excited that you get to listen in on some great stories from Kevin Hurley. I hope you enjoy this episode. All right, Mr. Kevin Hurley, Vice President for Conservation Emeritus with the Wild Sheep Foundation.

It is.

How are you doing?

I'm well. Oh, I'm doing good.

So you and I sat down, oh, I think it was during COVID when I was with Wyoming Wildlife Federation and we talked some sheep stuff. And I feel like the world of sheep is constantly changing. There's always new stuff though. What have you been working on these days?

Oh boy, you know, I think back and I started in the sheep world in 1980. So, been a few changes in 45 years, but you're right. And we joke about our soap opera. As the sheep world turns, there's something new every day. So, of late, what I've been working on is I coordinate all the grant and aid funding for conservation projects for the National Wild Turkey Foundation based out of our headquarters in Bozeman. And so our grant and aid funding cycle is the month of July and so it's all electronic and so we have a new grant and aid platform that we're going to unveil. It's going to be quite similar in appearance but it should be more user-friendly so we typically get oh maybe up to 30 or more project requests for funding and then we spend the month of August evaluating the requests and then by the end of August our board takes action on our recommendations. So they usually ratify what we recommend and so all the grant and aid requests that National gets goes through our quite a rigorous review process, not only by conservation staff, but we have our separate advisory board. It's called CRAB is the acronym, but it's our Professional Resource Advisory Board. that looks at all the projects as well. And so independently they score them and rank them. We score them and rank them. Then we get together and compare notes and arrive at joint recommendations. If we advance, I advance to Gray Thornton, our President and CEO, and then he elevates them to the board. So besides actual conservation work, I spent a lot of time doing the grant and aid coordination.

So basically, like, to put it in the layman's terms, you're the man with the purse strings for the, the, the National Wild Sheep Foundation. What, what made it so you got to that point? I mean, obviously, you said you started doing this stuff in, like, 80. So there's a lot of space in between.

There is a lot of miles between 1980 and 2025. So I'm not quite the keeper of the purse strings. I'm the administrator of the purse round. Help influence. what kids funded. But ultimately it's our board, like any non-profit our board has the final say. So, but typically they ratify our recommendations. And so, you know, my time in the sheep world started when I came to Wyoming in pre-graduate school at the University of Wyoming. And I was- Where'd you grow up? I grew up on the Front Range of Colorado.

Okay, so you've been out west your whole life.

I spent time in Minnesota, I spent time in Michigan, I spent time in Wisconsin. But so when I, my senior year in high school, my dad took a job in Wisconsin, so we left Front Range of Colorado and moved to Southern Wisconsin. I really didn't want to go because I wanted to stay with my buddies. I was going to an all-guys Catholic school in Southwest Denver. Athletically and academically, it was a good place to be. who knows, but I did get to go to a co-ed public school in Wisconsin for my senior year, so I was like, what do I read? But anyway, so I spent after I graduated with a bachelor's, I went to work for the US Forest Service seasonally in Northern Idaho on the Clearwater National Forest at Orofino Ranger Station. Mainly work on elk and elk habitat. Timber sales and things like that. Thinking I should probably get a graduate degree. But long story short, I took four and a half years between undergrad and starting grad school. And when I went back to grad school, it was with a bit of a vengeance. You know, I had a blue flame turned up. And so, oh, I might not have been a great undergrad student.

You poured it on in graduate school.

Great days in grad school. Yeah. I moved to Wyoming. in 1981 to work on a milo project down in the southwest part of the state, the Carter's Leaks. But the funding fell through, and so I came anyways, even though my project had evaporated. And so Dr. Larry Irwin was my advisor, and I remember knocking on his door, and I'd never met him, but he looked up and said, Can I help you? And I introduced myself. He said, oh, you showed out. And I said, yes, sir, that's what I do. And so I met Tom Ryder, my lifelong friend there. He was the first guy, a year in grad school together. Tom spent his career with Game and Fish. We're still buds to this day. That's 30 years later. But anyway, so after I had to find a project, I started beating the streets, talking to Game and Fish headquarters in Cheyenne. and came up with a couple of Big One Sheet project ideas, one down in the Norris Platte, the Douglas Creek Herd, not, not with campers, on the Douglas Creek side of over south of Saratoga. And then there was another project working on what's called the Trout Peak Ferv, west of Cody between Cody and Yellowstone Park. And so I wrote up two parallel study plans and budgets, and I took them over to Gaming Fish in Cheyenne and talked to Harry Hardie, who was the chief of biological services then. I said, you know, which one of these projects would you guys favor if I can find some money? He said, the one about Cody, you know, the Douglas Creek herd was reintroduced. Big horn sheep in the Absarokas have been there for Ed Per, and so that was a higher priority project. And so it's interesting how the threads tied together. But Wyoming Governor Ed Herschler, he's the only three-term governor in Wyoming's ever had, and he and his folks came up with a novel idea back in 1980 to offer a Conservation permit. Special governor's tag is where people always call them the vernacular. But the agreement that he made with the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep or FNAWS, which is a mouthful. Yeah. Was, I'll give you this 100% fully donated tag, provided you spend that like amount on projects for bighorn sheep in Wyoming. And so they struck a deal. and so I benefited from early, early sales at Governor Special Tag.

And so, would you remember what those went for?

Oh man.

Right off the bat.

Yeah. I want to say it was in the below 20,000. Holy cow. You know, look at 'em now. But, and so that paid my graduate stipend. And so I moved, I didn't, the academic year 81-82, in Laramie. And then I moved to Cody in June of '82 and started Butte to Beatty as a study. And I read everything I could about that area. I mean, it's phenomenal country. And a guy like Teddy Roosevelt, who saw much of Western America, he always referred to that 50 miles between Cody and the East Gate of Yellowstone as the most scenic 50 miles in America.

Oh, wow.

And I remember driving Cody up over Dead Indian Pass looking into Sunlight Basin, which is, I think, the most impressive view in the whole state of Wyoming. It's like, wow, I get to work here. Yeah. Phenomenal. And so I started doing field work, looking at seasonal movements. I mean, there was really not much of even survey or inventory data. So I asked one of the game and fish guys in Cody, I said, how many big horn sheep did you see on the last flight? and the answer was six. And I said, six what? Like, six hours? And he said, no, six sheep.

Oh, man.

And whoever had done the survey had a tendency to get air sick, so they took off. And when it got bumpy after six sheep, he's like, I'm sick. Let's go back. I told him, no, they didn't really have a whole lot of information. So what I spent 30 months doing field work between June of '82 and approximately, you know, spring of August of '85. And man, I backpacked. That's fall I did. Backpack and look. You see, my job was to walk and look.

Did you have a spot and scope that you'd pack around with you?

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I had all my gear. a bunch of university gear. And then unfortunately, I had a university pickup, but living in Cody, somebody broke into my university truck and stole all my equipment. Oh, no. And a bunch of it was my stuff, but a bunch of it was the university's. You know, receiver, a tracking antenna, a dart gun, everything. Binoculars, spotting scope, my tent, my backpack. they took it all. And so I called my advisor down at Laramie and said, Larry, what do I do? And he goes, well, Kevin, the university is self-insured and I said, what does that mean? He goes, it means we don't have any money until we can find some money to replace your equipment.

You're SOL.

I don't know what to tell you. So I went into the foundation from North American Mountain Street Finale. I went into their office. and there was an interim director, a guy named Arnie Johns, and he was an old sweep runner from Northern Wisconsin or, I guess, Wisconsin. This was way before the internet, and I said, man, I'm dead in the water. They took my binoculars, everything. And Arnie goes, give me 24 hours to come back in. And so I went back the next morning, and he had made a bunch of phone calls. This is way before email. and he goes, I raised $2,500 for you overnight. Go buy a new backpack, go buy a new tent, go buy new binoculars, new spotting scope, and get back out there. Do what you're doing. That to me was a real seminal watershed moment for me because they didn't have to do that. But I thought, what a cool bunch of people that just stepped up and helped me get back to work. And so that was one of the First, you know, decision points. I've been a loyalist for 45 years, but I mean, that really did it for me. It's like, wow, what a great outfit.

So when you were backpacking for sheep, you said you had a dart gun and stuff. Like, were you basically like spotting and stalking sheep to do research on them?

Well, the basics were in the summertime, just inventory.

Okay. Just counting sheep.

Naively.

Did you sleep a lot?

Yeah, I slept like a baby. I naively looked at the paper map and I thought, okay, I'm gonna put a camp in over here on this high divide, and I'll just work along the top of the divide, and I can look at all these side drainages going down to the North Fork or going down to Sunlight Basin. Well, as soon as I got there, it was like, oh, crap. This country is too rugged. Yeah. and they absorb the volcanics. And so what I had to do is typically go up a drainage, get high, spend a day or two, then come back down, go over to the next drainages and go up and come out and tried and did some kind of a regular cycle or schedule. And so I was trying to document unduplicated sightings. And there were no marked sheep there at the time, no radio collars, no ear tags, anything like that. and so I spent a lot of time hunting the ground. But that was my job, was to walk, backpack, and look for shape. And so my first trip, I heard, did the grapevine that was a guy named Bob Modell who lived up Rattlesnake Creek. And now that I've known Bob for 45 years, we're very good conservationists, very involved with the Loon Crockett Club. And so I called Bob Mundell and I said, they tell me if I go through your ranch, I can save a whole lot of time and steps to get to Trout Peak. And he's like, sure. So I went up and met him and it saved me probably five or six hours of walking. Yeah. And so that got me started. And on the very first trip I took, and I went by myself, I didn't really know where I was going. I didn't tell anybody where I was going. So I'm backpacking and you know how they absorb the volcanic, sometimes you get a surface on it so that it's real hard, but that gravel rock, you know, you lose your footing. So I'm walking along the side hill and I lose my footing. I'm sliding down my ass, headed for a cliff, and I somehow was able to catch on. and I looked up the hill behind me back to the east and on the top of that ridge there's a half-curl ram who's standing there watching me like, what are you doing?

He's like watching this idiot fall down the mountain.

Yeah. And that again was one of those watershed moments where I said, okay, I guess I better tell people where I'm going and when I think I'll be back and yeah. And so you learn, you know, back then you're bulletproof, but I spent the summer in '82 '83 and '84 backpacking. You know, I don't even know how many hundreds of days in the year. In the wintertime, I was doing surveys on winter ranges and also radio collaring sheep and goats. And so, Dr. Tom Thorne, he was our wildlife vet for Game and Fish back then, and I was working out of the Cody office. I lived in a 16-foot trailer behind the old Game and Fish building in south of the airport in Cody and had straw bales around my university trailer but it was cold. Yeah, I bet. But I spent 15-16 months living in that before I moved into our house. But anyways, that was my job. So I would help anything that I could with the Game and Fish Department, check stations, sage grouse, whatever I could do to help them. Just to become known. Yeah. Because I think the apartment, like a lot of agencies, they don't typically hire somebody they don't know something about. Yeah. And so, you know, I worked out of the Cody office. A call came in, I would go with them to try and do something. I remember everything from muskrats to a badger in our gunny sack, you know, and then those kind of calls I would go help just to get the experience. but I did a lot of flying and trick swing. There was a good pilot out of Galveston, a guy named Bill Blake with a Supercub, and we flew aloft and so on.

How was the sheep herd doing back then?

Well, my Comaiest earned duplicated count, and it was, you know, I won't swear on a stack of Bibles that it was unduplicated, but as good as I could do, I figured they thought the estimate was around 750 sheep in that population. And again, from the North Fork to Sunlight and from rattlesnake mountain to the east boundary of the park. The highest number of unduplicated sightings that I could account for was about 443 sticks in my mind. I've still got my field notes from back on 45 years ago, but It's like, okay, so if I physically saw that many from the ground, how many did I miss? Were there portions of the unit that I didn't go into that had sheep in it? So, you know, I think five or seven hundred was probably a fair guess. But at part of the larger complex, the whole of SORICA range from the Montana border all the way down around the southeast corner of Yellowstone, we were over to Jackson. Hunteries one through five, Man, that was the stronghold of the mountain sheep. If you go back and read like Osborne Russell's 1842 Journal of a Trapper, he talked about the thousands of mountain sheep that he would see on those canyon walls. The entire Shoshone, Mountain Shoshone, Sheep Eater, Indian people, their whole culture evolved around Big Horn Sheep. You know, they'd hunt them. You'd drive traps, you know, they'd use the hair hides for clothing, the horns for bows, you know, bones for spoons. I mean, their whole culture evolved around it. So the Zoricas has been a stronghold for mountain sheep as far back as anybody could ever imagine. Other places, not so much. I think back to 1942, there was a publication by Game and Fish, it was their Wildlife Bulletin number one. by a guy named Ralph Honas and Ned Frost. Ned Frost had a bunch of descendants that lived in the Codi area, but it was more focused on the grawbot herd over by Jackson. But they had quite a bit in there about Park County and Rosaritas. But if the mountain Shoshone people, Native American culture, you just knew that was a stronghold for mountain sheep for thousands a year. And it's a lot of wilderness. It's almost all on National Forest. And so the Shoshone National Forest was the first National Forest in the system. Back in 1906, I think. It used to be the Shoshone Forest Reserve. And they changed it to Shoshone National Forest. And the Wapiti Ranger Station on the north fork, the very first Ranger Station in the US. Oh, really?

So all this stuff is like really baked into like the culture of how the whole West ended up being managed, at least as far as national forest lands are.

You know, and like I said, Roosevelt, who saw a lot of western US, he favored that country. We look at Buffalo Bill Cody and the Casa Blanca Lodge. Yeah. East Gage. Fabulous historic lodge. And what kind of digging furriers from Europe went through there and hunted with Buffalo Bill Cody. Of course, and when Yellowstone was established as the first national park in 1872, they weren't hunting in the park. Man, all that forest land around the park was like, partridge, thoroughfare, the Yellowstone, all that outside the park. So I've been really fortunate to spend my career working around what I consider the greater Yellowstone, when now there are after I left Wyoming, moved to Montana, now I'm back in Idaho where I came from when I moved to Wyoming. So I spent, I don't know, 48 years in the Crater Yellowstone area. I mean, to me it's the finest real estate on the planet.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with you. So while you were, you know, in, in Wyoming, obviously you were on the ground doing the work for counting sheep and the involved in management stuff. But were you getting involved in conservation projects then, too, outside of your work, or was it all baked in?

I was a little bit, but, you know, one of the biggest things I can recall is back then there was proposed seismic exploration for oil and gas. And in the absaroka volcanics, knowing what I know now, you know, they're not the sedimentary. traps like the Berthouze or other mountain ranges. And so the Forest Service was considering authorizing this seismic exploration. It would have been helicopters, you know, with explosives and chargers, those big thumper trucks, you know, that vibrate and they pick up all the sensors trying to map the underground stratigraphy. Well, they didn't want to do it during the summer when all the tourists are there.

Right.

And they didn't want to do it during the fall because hunting season around Cody, as you know, is such a big deal. And so they said, well, they can't really do it in the wintertime because of snow. So how about we do it in the spring before the tourists start arriving to and from Yellowstone. And based on the telemetry data, the radio collar data, the lambing timing, the chronology and location of dropping lambs, I was like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. March in April is not necessarily a good time to be doing this from a displacement standpoint of wildlife after they've made it through a tough winter. And so I got involved in sort of those, I won't say they're political issues, they're resource issues, but with the a lot of political intervention law, and so I found my data being used more and more to help defend the integrity of CNE Big Onweed habitat. So, yeah, there were early groups that formed around Cody, the Clark County Resource Council and things like that. And it was kind of funny because my older brother, he's a carbonated geologist and a petroleum engineer. He was working for Marathon out of Denver and Marathon proposed a well on Grace Creek, Half Lugert, Cody and Yellerstone. And so my data was being used to say why not to bullet my brother in his position with Marathon, he was like, yeah, here's why we can do it and it's not going to cause an impact. And so my mom used to joke that she was going to write a novel. I was going to be the good siren and he was going to be the dark siren, but that never happened. you know, Marathon did a good job. They had to fly everything in, which they opposed. Nobody wanted to see a Rhodes car going up off the north or Highway in the grace brick. And so, you know, cutting my teeth on those kind of resource issues, so to speak. And my time, you know, between graduate and undergraduate school, I'd worked seasonally for the U.S. forest service as a wildlife technician. And I remember multiple occasions going out with foresters, civil cultures, engineers, hydrologists, we'd go look at a timber sale and I would offer my input and I remember it happened a couple times where we would sit down after a couple days in the field, we'd sit down at a big conference table and start drawing maps or potential sales and cut blocks and I would give my input. and I remember to this day, one of the guys said, we'll write this up this winter. Kevin won't be here. If I would only work from May to November, it was seasonal, not permanent.

Yeah.

And I'm like, hey, I'm sitting right here. Hello. And I felt really disregarded. And. And I said, nobody's gonna do that to me. again. And so that's one of the reasons that Blue Flame turned on. I went to graduate school because I had been burned that way figuratively. And it's just like I felt an advanced degree and more experience. Well, I started graduate school when I was 27, which is older than most. Yeah, but it was. It worked for me for sure, so. But, yeah, I got involved with a lot of stuff from the Sheep Foundation, of of course, had moved their opera to Cody in September of '82 from the Twin Cities.

And they, It's like a really good timing right there, right?

Yeah. And I never got anybody to admit it, but I think they funded my project in Cody to help sort of grease the skids for their landing and arrival in Cody. So I moved to Cody in June of '82. Lloyd Zeeman and Gretchen Stark come from the Twin Cities. in September of '82, so I helped unload the boxes for their first office. And you're gonna know where I'm talking about, but where the old Cody rodeo ticket office was, down that long dark hallway in one of those buildings off of Main Street off Sheridan. And I helped set up their first office. Okay, so my history goes back a long ways.

Yeah. So one thing that can't get out of my mind though is, you know, if I was a sheep hunter, in 82 to 85, and I had one of those sheep tags. I know who I'd be calling. Did you. Did you go on some hunts in there?

I I didn't, but in 1985, I drew. Oh, really? An area two tag. And, you know, I drew it in a fair drawing, just like anybody would. And there was some resentment, there was some rumbling. It's like I had a couple outfitters that helped me a lot, but they were not happy. And what I heard them say was, while we're down here working all summer, you're out there. And I said, please don't say what I think you're about to say that I was screwing around. But they felt that was an unfair advantage because I knew something or a lot about where those sheep lived in and work. So I draw a tag in 1985, and I was finishing my Mastery, and I didn't have time to go. I want to make sure I got the day. Yeah. So in.

You had to finish up your Masters in, like, September, even though.

Yeah, I'm trying. I want to make sure I get the dates right because it was. It was 1985 where I drew. But anyways, bottom line, I was looking for one particular Ram that I'd seen, and I knew where he lived, but I could not find that ranch. And so I never filled my tag.

Oh, really?

And. Okay.

Did you backpack all this, or did you have friends with horses?

No, backpack. I took one horse pack trip and got spoiled because I went with my boss from getting a fish and we had a wall tent, we had steak for dinner. I'm like, I gotta go back to freeze-dried foods in my backpack. Well, I'm not doing this right.

Probably like an old frame pack that had bungee straps of everything on it. I had a nice JanSport pack and.

I still have it. Oh, really? I've saved it.

My son didn't want it, so now.

I'm hoping my grandson someday will use it. Well, if they don't want it, I'll take it. Yeah, I did not scar my tag in 1985 in Area 2 and people were like, what the hell were you doing if you couldn't even find a sheep? Did you learn anything? But I was holding out for one particular ram and I couldn't find him. So fast forward 12 years to 1997, I was working for Gamier Fish and I was managing Area 5, Frank Speakfurst, up the gravel, up the wood. And I drew a tag in there. I killed a 10 year old ram the opening morning and my buddy Ron Lockwood, Sam's dad, he's with me. He'd never been on a sheep cart and we're laying there in the rocks and we shadowed these rams for 36 hours at daylight. So I knew where to be on opening morning and he asked her, he's like, are you sure that's the hunt you want? The ram, you want to end your Terrible wings. So I killed a 10-gauge gram opening morning. He's like, this shape was easy. Yeah. Yeah.

But, but you guys have been in there scouting and stuff for a few days before.

I had.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, you know, and then other people said, oh, it's no fair. You get to fly that. And I said, now, wait a minute. I fly in January, but I hunt in September like anybody else would.

So you're not in the same spots.

I've asked this question. through the decades and not had anybody ever come up with a good answer. But I say, if you're sheep running or not, then people that manage your sheep and goat herding opportunities, they also like to sheep and goat hunt. Tell me the downside of that.

Yeah, yeah, there's not.

And wouldn't you rather have somebody that gives a rip about your passion also being passionate about that rather than being detached. And it's like, yeah, yeah, I'd never hunt one of those, but I'm gonna set your hunting season. Yeah. And so I still believe that to this day. It's like, you know, so when I got into a supervisory position and. And the guys who worked for me as District biologist, when I got to be the supervising biologist, they all hunted soup, not because I made them, because they wanted to, and I said, experienced it. So Doug McCorder, he came and volunteered with me in 1985 as a young kid from Wichita, Kansas. And we've been fast friends for 40 plus years and have done all kinds of sheep and goat stuff together. Tom Easley over in New Gravo, he died in that accident back in 2014. What's going on, Kevin? Good there. Cool to see you. and then Bart Curran. Yeah, I knew Bart and his dad Dick. He had worked for the BLM in Worland.

And Bart's retired, right?

Yeah. So when I knew I was getting promoted from Thermopolis to the Cody coordinator job, I called Bart and I was using Douglas as the biologist and I said, you, ought to think about putting in here. So I've already been looking. Cause I knew you'd get picked to be the coordinator. I move, but Bart's, you know, great friend. Doug's a great friend. Tom's in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, but yeah, so I still believe that strongly that the people that manage your hunting opportunities, if they don't like to hunt or are a non-hunter or an antler hunter, bad situation. Yeah.

And so I feel like that's what we run into in, not really in Wyoming. I haven't met a biologist who's not also interested and hunting in some way, shape or form. But I think a lot of other states, they end up with people who don't understand it or don't like it. And then that's when we get a whole cascading effect of issues.

It is. And so the best example I can think of, and Ron Markwood and I were best of parents for a lot of years, and Andrea Orabona, who was the non-game bird biologist for Ramona Game and Fish, not a hunter, but she drew a moose tag one year and Ron helped her somewhere down on near Kimberley. I don't remember which drain is there in. She wound up shooting a nice bull moose, not a great big monster, but a nice bull.

Yeah.

And I've got a photo of her smiling and proud of herself. And so here's a woman, non-game third biologist. And so whenever people would say, And these game and fish agencies, they just don't have people that hunt or fish anymore. I said, you don't have to worry about that NYL.

Yeah, that sure seems to be the case.

Andrea's picture, tell me that she's not a happy hound.

That's right, that's right.

You know, and I have seen that in my 45 years, it is changing. You know, there's more and more conservation biology graduates that aren't really disciplined in what I would call Fish and Wildlife Management is a traditional or old school kind of management approach. Not saying who's right or wrong, but it's different.

It's changing, yeah. And that's, I would need to get Sam Lockwood on the podcast, but I also had to, would have to gear up for a three hour podcast probably because he's a good friend of mine. No, that's a great example though. So, you did a couple sheep hunts in Wyoming. Two, three for myself. For yourself.

I mean, 85, unsuccessful and then 97 successful. But yeah, I went with other friends. Yeah. And so help them and sure.

Were there any of those other ones that stuck out? Like that was like a crazy trip or I mean, back then I would imagine maybe the bear problems weren't as bad or you're like, if it wasn't quite as.

The bears were around, but it's not.

Like it is now. Yeah, well, I was thinking about you backpacking around up there by yourself, and I'm, like, over here thinking, I don't know. I would want to spend 200 days.

In a tented Cody anymore by myself. Well, in 1984, and that was the year that the. The Swiss Miss got eaten in Pelican Valley in the park there, Virginia Frieden housing or some name like that. She got killed by a grizzly. and eaten over in Republican Valley. That was two weeks before this episode on retirement. A week later, the kid from New York State got drug out of his tent over Grant Village by a grizzly. And so the next week I had gotten special dispensation, special permission from Steve Malis, who was the poor supervisor on the Shishash. But I could get helicoptered in to the wilderness.

Okay.

And so I had two field assistants working with me and so we dropped them in one spot, one spot, or me in another spot. So I was up on the very top of Nipper Mesa looking over what was called Mount Pleasant, ahead of the Sweetwater drainage. And we were in radio communication with my technicians, so we said we were gonna check in at like 8 and 6, 8 a.m. at 6 p.m. And so they got picked up and taken out. I stayed in longer and right after this Swiss Roman got killed and New York kid got mauled a week later, I'm getting supper ready and I'm the high point on this ridge and there's no trees and I'm looking at a sow and two cubs through my spotting scope. over across the head of Steubner Creek, and I was talking to some seasonal forest service at the Sumite Ranger Station. And I still remember to this day, the guy asked me, it's like, well, what is that? Is it, are they yearling cubs or are they cubs of the year? And so I had bumped my spotting scope with my leg, and so I went to refocus, and I was looking at a sow that had this big golden stripe counter back, but the other one didn't have. And I was like, wait a minute. Well, there was two sets, two sows with two cubs each. Oh, geez. They were about maybe 100 yards apart, feeding on what we didn't know at the time were these Miller Moth, Army Cutworm Moth, insect feeding set, moth feeding sets. And so I watched these. six bears, and they were at my contour elevationally coming around the head of Snoot Wire. And I had, you know, I had my pistol that I carried. I don't think I had bear spray back then. And stashed my food up in the racks. And I thought, bruh, I hope I. Hope I don't have a problem. And I remember the last thing, and I turned my radio off, four sort. radio off just because I wanted to save the batteries. And the last thing I heard from the Sunlight Ranger Station was, well, we hope we talk to you in the morning.

Oh, nice.

Over and out. And I was like, oh, crap. And as it turned out, I didn't have any problem. But, man, that was a long night. And so, you know, I didn't sue that many Grizzlies back then in the early 80s, but now it's like, oh, and I remember I was the biologist in Tabopolis from 1987 to 2003 before I got promoted to Cody. And Bart came in, Bart Bogard came in after I was there. And Dave Moody and Mark Rossino and the bear guys over Lander, they were flying these high elevation moth socks up in the Tavaputs and the Mongus standing record that I ever knew of in the last few just in sort of lead in. But it's like, Bart, what's the most grizzly bears you've ever seen in a two hour fixed ring flight up high in the Absaroka? And he told me, 52 bears.

Oh, man.

In two hours. And now, being here in Casper this weekend, I just got here yesterday, but somebody is telling me that the current biologist in the North Lesser Woolly Mammoth versus living. But apparently she hiked in there this summer on Frank's Peak, which is a hot spot for bears. She saw 106 grizzlies.

In one hike?

In one hike.

Oh man.

And so it's like, I'll tell you, what's the estimate of grizzlies across the Greater Yellowstone? Maybe a little higher than... Is that what we think? You can count 106 in one spot? Oh man. From one hike? So to me, I never thought 52 would ever be exceeded and that was a flight. But anyway, so you know, I was doing all kinds of sheep were always my pet passion, but I had other duties and responsibilities when I was in Gillette when I started. And then, no, it was 1986 that I drew my first tag, not 85, because I had taken a forestry job over in Gillette.

Oh, okay. So you had to drive all the way.

Yeah, so I asked my boss, Avery in Sheridan, Roger Wilson. I said, Can I get some time off to hunt? It was the fall of '86. And he goes, We have work long out, because I started July 1, and by September one, he goes, you,'ve only worked two months, so no, you can't get two weeks off. Did you rather have the job or the sleep? And I said, well, clearly I'd rather have the job. And so I made three long weekend trips from Gillette back over, and I just couldn't get it done. And so it was 11 years later in '97 when I did. But anyway, so I did a lot of other kung fu help. Deer, White-tailed, Milberg, Moose, Waterfowl, you name it.

All the other things.

It's for biologist duties. And sheep are always my favorite. So whenever I'd get a chance, I'd work on sheep. But, you know, I unfortunately had two plane crashers, fixed-wing crashers, while I was doing Game and Fish survey work. First one was in December of '91, we were doing a winter Kronghorn survey south and east of Loreland.

So what happened with that plane? Well, the first one, yeah.

So we took off from Loreland and there was a little bit of wind, but in Loreland, quite a bit lower elevation. And so we flew south and east up the no water to the head of the no wood. and could tell it was a two-seater, not a super cub, but an Arctic turn, which has got a lot of glass and it's better visibility. But the pilot was trying to turn left downwind and he was fighting it. So he turned and he just went, you know, and dropped about 300 feet and hit with the right wingtip. Oh, sweet. I slid sideways, tore the landing gear off, broke the spar and, you know, it was a bow wing door and I'm a fairly big guy, but I got skinny and I got out. And so we were both old.

You guys are fine.

Well, well, we lived. Okay. With injuries that we survived. And so we were able to radio call back to the Worland hangar and they called the Orchard Ranch. Oh, yeah. Robbie Orchard was her friend. He was flying himself. buying his cattle that day. And so his wife Phyllis came up. There was a place called Lightning Ridge. And now they call it Hurley Peak. There was a little rock chimney there. And it was some kind of a wind shear. You know, it wasn't anything beyond that. It just, but we both survived with injuries. I had some neck injuries. Anyway, but.

Do you guys break some bones and stuff?

No, not that bad. and that was the day, that was in December of 91. In October of 91, the department had lost the two guys in the Vactor tree, Kirk Ember, Kevin Roy, and Ray Austin was the Wyoming. What's the largest search ever mounted in Wyoming's history? we couldn't find the planes. So four years later, some elk hunters, Centimopolis, in fact, where I kept my horses, Caster. So husband and wife, they were hunting with another couple up the soda fort, and they found the plane. And the guys, the husbands had gone one way, and the wives went. They came back at camp that night. Dan asks his wife, Michelle, it's like, did you see any out there? She goes, yeah, I got one. and he goes, where? She said, oh, it's up in the trees, up there by the plane. And Dan's like, what plane? What point?

Oh, wow.

And so they had just bowed in and anyways, but. So two months after that, I had my crash. And that day was a Saturday game and fish was given the game, Orlando's with jam in Shire. And so when I got back to Worland, to my truck, back in the day, we had bag phones, and so I called the Wildlife Division office and got through to Jay Lawson, who was the chief game warden then. John Talbott was the deputy assistant wildlife chief, and there was other guys in the room. And I called and they said, well, we're a little busy today. What's up? And I said, we just wanted you guys to know that I crashed this morning doing a phone home survey and it's like, wait, wait, put you on speakerphone. So there might have been six or eight guys in the room that were happing. And so everybody was pre-paranoid. Yeah. After that, October '91 crash, and then I crashed two months later. And so the department stood down on flying field allowance until we developed and adopted a really strict flight following protocol. That every 20 minutes you had to call in with a latitude, longitude and a direction of travel. Because what happened when Kirk and Kevin and Ray were killed, they were seen over an outfitter backcountry camp in the Thorofare at like 10:20 some morning and that's where the search started and they went to infinity. Oh.

They didn't have any place to start and in that backcountry, well they had.

A start but they had nowhere to go, how far out. And so once the department went to a 20-minute flight following protocol, it was like, okay, how far could you fly in 20 minutes? So that defined the radius of a search. And so, and that was unforgiving. If you didn't call in at 20 minutes, you got called by central dispatch and you had to break off your flight. recircle so you could get up and trip one of the recirculator tusks. And if you didn't call in at 20 minutes, they'd call you. And if you didn't answer, thinking, okay, behind a ridge or in some hole somewhere, at 40 minutes, they start launching frugs. So fast forward to August of 2002. Okay. Doing another. Crown Corn Survey, this one in August. So it's a pre-season agent sex classification survey. And it was a new pilot, new to us. He was experienced. He was 44 years old, came from Fargo, North Dakota, but he had been in Warland. He'd been flight instructor at Crop Duster, so he was an experienced pilot. I just don't think he had done very many wildlife surveys. uh-huh. And so I flew with them three different times. The game orders each fly were from once just to see if they got along, you know, and how they fit. And on my fourth flight with this pilot, Jeff Schroeder, we were in outside of Little Buffalo Basin, southeast of Metcalf. And it's a flight that Jerry Hyatt and I had done a dozen times. through the years, he was the pilot I crashed with the first time. So he's up high that morning doing a Brizzy Bear flight, got winded out up high, so he's sitting on the ground in Warroad, and I'm flying this Konghorn survey southeast of Mattitici, and Jerry was like, I'm at the hangar, and you guys should have been in radio contact the whole time. And so at 20 minutes when I didn't respond, All right. They started looking and launching people at 40 minutes. They launched search and rescue crews and gave fish people from Cody, from a teaching from Thermopolis, because we were somewhere around along a county line, but not sure where. Jerry jumps into the plane he'd been flying that morning, flies to our last reported location and resume the flight that he and I had done a dozen times. and so he found us, but we flipped over.

What happened? Yeah, he stalled.

And so, you know, pronghorn, they think they're the fastest animal on the continent. So they think they can outrun anything. So I had a tape recorder. That's how you usually classify. You start at the back of the line because we're always a mature buck. back there, guarding his flock or herd. And so I've still got the tape recording and I listen to it every now and then, but it's a buck, doe, fawn, doe, doe, buck, doe, doe, fawn, doe, doe, buck. And the pastor I'm talking means, Yavoh V'Avoh. And so the pilot could hear everything I was saying over the headset. And I think, because I was looking this way, I think he looked that way. And he pulled the stick and we.

Just just crashed right there.

We went in about a 65 degree angle upside down. Oh, geez. And he got killed. And I got really hurt. Pressured my ribs, fractured my arm. Most of the damage I took is right here. I crushed my whole orbital arch. Whenever I get a new dental hygienist, then they do a panoramic x-ray you can always hear them talking behind the curtain. They're like, oh, God. Look at the metal in this gun. We've got nine plates and 30 screws and takes. See, then, so that changed my world. That was in August of '42. 16 days later, I went back to work.

Did you get back in a plane? That was insane.

A trank, I was wired shut.

Really?

And my jaws were wired, tracheotomy, fracture, disarm, was in a walker. but Ron Markwood and I were here at this very venue to have to do the banquets for the Hunting and Fishing Heritage Expo. And I come shuffling in in a walker. There's 550 people in this room down here. Or no, that was out at the Parkway, I guess. And yeah, but I was trying not to show how that I was tough. I just wanted to show my co-workers here. It wasn't dead, like goes on. Keep going. And so Travis Barmantong, who was my family doc in Temecula, he's here. He's an avid wild sheep supporter. But I got, I could, you know, when we got banned on it.

Were you able to get to radio or anything, or you were pretty out of...

Helicopter, we always would were a flight hump. In a fixed wing we'd wear a head set. So when we flipped over, and again, I'm no big guy, but I broke the anchor points on the shoulder of the lap belt, hit the back of Jeff's seat, ripped all my ribs, perfect line across there. And then who leaned off the dash has a lot of sharp angles, and so I took most of the damage right here. So my one eye's gooped up, all I can see out of it, never constrict. It's always dilated.

Oh, I guess so. I can tell now.

Yeah. And so, like, healthcare professionals, when you go to them, they're like, hey, what's up with your eyes? Because they're unequal. And for you, yeah. And I've had an eye surgery in. Anyway. But, yeah. So I got, I could, I could hear a plane, and as it could imagine, we flipped over. So I was on the underside of the left wing. This arm was fractured. My flight suit was all bloody, but it wasn't my blood.

Oh, yeah.

Chuck was hanging upside down in this harness. Dead. I didn't know it, but I'm sure I was tugging on him. But then I hear a plane and I look up and this eyes crushed. I could see plane and Dury. I saw my white hairs. He said, he ragged the wings. And he circled for about a half hour, talking in the brown cruise. And then I heard vehicle coming and I heard Boise, well, somebody laid their band on my shoulder and it's off. Lights out. Really?

So you were conscious just until they got there?

Yeah, I just gave it up then. And so they took me off of there in some kind of a four-wheel drive ambulance out to the highway, put me in another ambulance and screamed To Cody, so I was probably 40 minutes, 40 miles away. But they took me right to the ICU, or I mean the ER, and Tim Fagan, one of the game wardens, good friend, he ran to Thermopolis and tripped up my wife at the time and my son who was 11. And they brought him right to me in the ER. And I had my sit in my house. Oh, they cared my son. But they went to, they sent the Life Flight helicopter down from Billings. to transfer me. And the way the story went was they motored me in there and they said, the wind has come off Cody, a notoriously windy place. He knew us. And. But he said, we can do this. So he ticked off a couple minutes later, he sat back down and said, I can't do this. When they put me in ground adLance, tricked me to Billings. I was in ICU for, like, eight days, had all the surgeries and then got transferred back to TimopOlois. Shriver's Bollinger in my dock. I said I needed to go to catch. And he's like, seriously? You're going back to work already? What are you going to do in Kafka? I said through, you know, wired shut. I said, I have to MC three banquets, then two seminars in Manabu for three days. And he's like, try again. What was he going to do in Casper? And I said, Show Feeds on Not Dead. He's a, he authorized that. And so I talked to Travis last night and you know, he's a real sheep supporter. But we chuckle about that.

That's crazy.

But anyway, so that changed, and physically it changed what I could do. But I think I got even more intense, and I've always been pretty intense with people that know me a long time. because I didn't know when my next craft was. And so I. I became a workaholic fanatic.

Dude, as most you could, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Because you don't know us. And it's like, you know, that cost me personally, you know, with my marriage and things like that, just because I was so focused on work and it's like. But I'm sure I short circuited my son, you know, when he was growing up, because I was working. all the time. But anyways, keep going.

Yeah, that's right. So you ended up after all that in Wyoming, you ended up in Montana next?

Well, what's interesting is I retired from David Fish at the end of January 2011. And back in 2007, there's an organization that goes back over 100 years. The acronym is WAFWA, but it stands for the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. And they have all kinds of special committees and working groups on western native trout, sagecrust, mule deer, mountain lions. Well, the issues in the West were getting so involved with mountain sheep, Jim Karpowitz, who had been a sheep biologist for Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, he worked his way up to the director. And in January of '07, Jim Carkwitz made a motion at the Waukon Winter Meeting that said, I will be the director, he would be the director sponsor of a newly formed Wild Sheep Working Group provided Kevin Hurley of Lima gave him a fish charity.

Okay.

And Terry Cleveland, who was my director at the time, he's like, done. And so I took on West-wide responsibilities. We were still working full-time for Wyoming Game and Fish, but half my interest was on sheep stuff outside of Wyoming and half inside. And so my sheep experience going back to 1981, 1982, I spent all those decades learning everything I could about sheep. Yeah, talking to people, reading, literature, you know, and so when it came time, I was really fortunate to be picked, drafted, wherever you want to see it.

Yeah, drafted.

To do that. But it was an opportunity that let me expand something that I really enjoyed doing. And so, but I was doing my regular game and fish job at the same time as the supervising, mild, the cody region. That was in 07 and 08. I said, I can't keep doing this, so. I went full-time sheep in '09 and '10. Again, half focused, half my focus was in-state sheep, half was out-of-state sheep. And so that Wauwautosa wild sheep breeder is still built 18 years later, and there's again four chairs ever. I got to be the first one for four and a half years. Clay Burroughs in Texas Parks and Wildlife. chared it for about five plus years. Mike Cox from the Bureau of Wildlife for about six years. When Daryl Lutz with the Illinois Department of Wildlife. Okay, cool. I know Daryl real well. So Daryl and I have worked together forever. And so I was just at the Waffle Wild Sheep Meeting in Provo this week. That's what I was doing. So I guess bottom line is I've had a lot of years and decades of wild sheep conservation and management. challenges and opportunities. And so the job I got with the Wild Seed Foundation kept evolving through time. And so when I went to work for them full time in February, I took one night off in retirement.

Yeah.

One night.

Is that what you said?

11 hours. Yeah.

11 hours. Okay.

So on February 1st, I'm knocking at the door at the Cody office for FANAS and. Nobody answered. I'm like, because I didn't have a key to get in. And so I waited in the parking lot and people started trickling in about quarter to eight. I'm like, let's go. What time do people get to work on it?

Got stuff to do, yeah.

And so, but, you know, it's been, it's just been an incredible opportunity. And I'm so grateful for people that have helped me along the way and given me opportunities. And so I'm an incredible loyalist. Yeah, you know, when they helped buy me gear to go back in the field in 1982, said, I spent a large part of my salary given back. We had all kinds of giving societies. And I'm in the, I'm right at the, near the top of the heap, but it's because I believe so much in their cause and their mission. And, you know, as we come up on our 50th anniversary in a year and a half, That's quite a mark.

That is a real milestone.

Simplest terms, our founders were a bunch of sheep hunters that had hunted all over the world. And they could see that sheep hunting license revenue was never gonna pay the bills. And so the Wild Sheep Foundation was formed in 1974. It was incorporated in 1977, so they would come up on our 50th. Or in that time, you know, we raised and directed more than $150 million to wild sheep conservation all around. And these governor's tags, it was always the vernacular. Conservation permits is a better, more apt descriptor of those. Those do so much good. And so I've got stuff I carry with me all the time in my briefcase, but what we have done. One of the things that I've done for the Shoot Foundation is oh, shoot. Can't. Yeah, here it is. The last couple years, we put together a conservation impact document. What projects did we fund? And what did we fund? What did we learn? What did we accomplish? And so. There's a sort of a composite map and this is a year old, but if you look the new one and I've got posters downstairs and posters over where Tim, one of my co-workers, has set up over $110 million since 1983. That's awfully good. By jurisdiction, so you can see in Wyoming where we're sitting at, $3.9 million, and that's grant aid funding for projects, but it's also Kermit proceeds returns. I was the beneficiary of early governor's tag proceeds in Wyoming. And I absolutely support that. If the agencies are transparent with what they do, and that's what I said this morning about the Wyoming Governor's Big Game License Coalition. And again, it's kind of hard to pat myself on the back, but that was my idea. And so I took that to Governor Herschler. or sorry, Governor Fredenthal, 18 days into his first term, and pitched an idea. And he said yes. And here we are 22 years later, and that Big Game License Coalition has generated millions of dollars for Wyoming hunters.

It's still putting good money on the ground.

Yeah. That may be the one work thing that I'm most proud of. Yeah.

Oh, that's great.

I watched it for over 20 years as other agencies mimicked Wyoming and started selling those special permits. But they were doing something different with the money, buying it into the resource where in the early years that money didn't necessarily go back to the sheep research. And after 21 years, I finally formulated an idea and I had an opportunity to present it to Governor Fredenthal's and he's like, done. Is it right? Do it transparently. If it crashes, it's not in my head. so anyways, but that's, you know, sort of a stone tablet. Yeah. History of what we've done. And so I've, I've gotten to work all across North America in every jurisdiction. We're on the Central Asia stuff. We're very active in mountain sheep and mountain goat Ibex work. Yeah. I haven't done it myself, but occurred all our staff is our Central Asia lead, but. you know, I'm just incredibly thankful for the opportunities I've had over the last 45 years. And I think I will do this until I drop over.

Yeah, I'm happy for it.

Yeah.

So as you think about, guys, my age, people coming up, you know, whether or not we get sheep hunting opportunity, specifically Ram hunting opportunity, is yet to be seen.

Right.

But what do you think are, like, the top couple, three, four things? that a guy like me can pay attention to or be educated about so they can make a difference with the sheep. I mean, it's a big question, but like, you know, a lot of us go like, well, where do we start? We don't have disposable income to be buying tags, you know, or whatever. That was always the saying, you know.

You need a 60 year old's bank account and a 20 year old's body to be a sheep plan. That's right. That's right. And, you know, there's some truth to that, but we've got Publications that we written in the past, it's called sheep hunting on a budget.

Right.

You know, sheep hunting on a budget volume two. It hasn't been updated in quite a long time, but, you know, it is, there's so much demand. Our founders knew that the demand was an upstrip with supply. And so to me, what a lot of states have done is both an auction permit and a raffle permit. so that, you know, the guy that's not the banker, but the deep pockets can also participate. And virtually every state that I am aware of, the province that has an auction tag also has a rattle tag. Right. You know, at our Sheep Show in Reno every year, our network has three dozen chapters and affiliates. There's all kinds of that. It's the Wymer chapter, and I'm life member number, I'm member number 2,000. you know, so I've been at this a while. Now we're over 735 life members or whatever. And so I. I do think you have to play the preference point game. Bonus points. You know, every state is different. I tell you, when I left Wyoming, it was still 75-25 issuance or sheep licenses to residents. versus non-resident so it was a three to one ratio. They always had to have hunting seasons and multiples of four. A couple years ago it went to 9010. Yep. So I wrote a screaming letter to my former headquarters in Cheyenne because as a now a non-resident my points stayed, but my opportunity got cut from 25% of the tags down to 10%.

Right.

I guess I didn't feel quite right, like a lot of non-residents, okay? But now Wyoming 9010 is more in line with most Western jurisdictions. And so, you know, I do think people need to start, a young guy like yourself, you know, I'm racking up points, because back then, when I drew in 97, you had to wait five years. So I started resuming riding points in 2002. But I think my sheep hunting days are over. But my son who's 34, he started buying points for him when he was 12 years old. And so he will draw at some point. Draw. And so one of the things that I see is there is a real need for view harvest. Right. In a lot of places in the West, if you look around, you know, we put together a document. I started it in 1996 and it was printed in 2015. So it took us 19 years to put this document together. But it's a record of every wild sheep translocation ever done. Over almost 1500 fencelines, over 22,000 animals moved.

Wow.

And see the opportunity and in a lot of places, is there where it went away, you know, by the 1950s, there are places didn't have a McDonald's. Texas, West Texas, Washington, Oregon, North Dakota, South Dakota. And so it's been a long, slow climb back and we're not there yet. If you think back to, like, Ernest Thompson Seton, 1928, he published the Lives of Game Males, heaver of early natures, and he guesstimated 1.5 to 2.5 billion sheep in the West. It's like he didn't fly, he didn't have computer battles, he didn't hike every one of those ranges. So that was a hip pocket guesstimate. And knowing what we know now about blind scale habitats, I'd say maybe it was 500,000 sheep. in the bust. Suffice it to say, right now there are fewer than 200, 000 now in sheep in all of North America, including Canada and Mexico.

Oh, geez.

Yeah. And so, you know, places that didn't have them got back in the sheep business through early efforts of agencies, but also conservations. Okay. And so, you know, a place like Texas, climb back. from none to over 1600, and now they're back down to about 400 to 500 because of disease. Respiratory pathogens are hell on matelshEet. And they're physically very tough, but respiratorially they're really wimpy. Right. So if you look at them sideways in a coffin, and they may sex something or kill all the dead, it's really, it's hard to dust yourself off and keep trying every time you do a transplant and it takes off, succeeds for a while, then it plateaus, and then it crashes. And then we go, okay, let's try that again. And so we've learned some things about pathogen profiling of your source sheet and target sheet, your recipient sheet. And so, you know, if we do then what we know now, we wouldn't have done some of the transplants. But I find it really hard to criticize the managers in the 50s and 60s and 70s because they were doing the best they knew at the time, you know, people were like, man, you should have never done that. Well, it was the best thing that they could think of at the time. And so we all learned from mistakes. And I remember in Wildlife 101, I learned the art and science of wildlife management, and they held a lot more art to it than there is psychology. Yeah, it's just a reality. It's a human dimension game, you know, I remember all undergrad, they never taught interpersonal relationships and effective communication and, and all the human dimensions type stuff. It was like, where, when the deer breed and, you know, what do rabbits do at, you know, Ecolodge, basic ecological knowledge. But now it's a lot of social people management. Yeah.

I mean, that seems to be at least two-thirds of it these days. Like, I mean, a lot of the, what we end up doing with our hunting seasons and whatever else is based on social pressure or not.

Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, I remember starting my Wyoming Game and Fish career, we had some of the Game and Fish elders come over from Cheyenne to layer me in and talk to us. And they'd say, look at all you wild and shining young faces. You're gonna save the world, aren't you? And they said, the best thing you can hope to do is slow down the decline of Wyoming. during your career that you will preside over the decline of wilds and we're like, oh man.

Thanks guys.

Let me find our butter knife and slice me a wrist or something.

Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, so it's got to be Wyoming. That's why after being gone 10 years from Wyoming and I get back here periodically, I really miss the wildlife here, miss the people here. I always say that if you live in Wyoming, you got to want to live here.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, I'm happy where I'm at now. Five years in Montana, five years in Idaho. But, man, I miss wild. And I miss each Wild Bar, because there's no place that I've ever experienced that has the visible Wild off that we do have here in Wyoming.

It's pretty incredible, man. That's why we just decided to make livings doing this kind. stuff, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, for, for the Wild Sheep Foundation, you know, it's absolutely been a huge part of my life. They've given me a ton of opportunities. I've tried really hard, earned my keep. Yeah. Paid back. And so, yeah, I probably will keep doing this as long as I draw breath. There you go.

What's your, what's your final thought for someone who's interested? in sheep, what should, you know, piece of encouragement or thing that they can do to help? Like one final thing?

Yeah, it's a paraphrasing church that it's like, don't ever give up, don't ever, ever, ever give up, you know, and saw. There's no magic bullets, there's no secret formulas, you know, it just takes a lot of commitment and that's one of the things that's really gratifying to me is the generosity of our members. A lot of them who never have hunted sheep and maybe never will hunt sheep. Right. If they're interested, they still want to put some leg, some effort. Or gray always says, time, talent or treasure. If you don't have all three, give what you can. We have your time. Is it your talent? Is it your sweat equity? But, man, it's, you know, I hope I got two little drink. sons six and three, it's like I'll never be around to go sheep hunting with them, but I wish I could.

Yeah, no kidding.

So I hope my son takes them. Yeah, it's they're just such a cool animal and I've had so many experiences. When I started, there was an old time outfitter in Cody named Bud Hall and I was 27 but I was still a green kid. and he invited me up to his cabin on Big Creek on the North Fork, and he had hand-built that hut. And Bud was about five-six, so all his doorways, I had to bend over to good inns, 'cause his roof was low.

And yeah, he built it himself, so he built it to his size.

Yeah. And I remember he told me, he said, Kid, you can take a horse anywhere an elk can go, and a man can walk anywhere a sheep can go. And so I remember starting when I watched our sheep, then I'd select. That'd be liar. Get rid of them.

That's funny.

Yeah. How we doing? Why went over?

Oh, we're a little over, but I just was enjoying all the. All the stories, so, man, thank you for spending your whole life doing this kind of stuff, though. I mean, it's like people like you who set up a foundation for the rest of us to keep coming and.

And.

Keep doing it, so.

Yeah, I enjoyed it. And, you know, there's so many people that I've learned from and that I respect, and. And I hope good things will be that way, sooner rather than later. You bet.

I know already do.

All right, JD.

Cool. Thank you. That's podcast.

Yeah.

Thank you for listening to the Hunt West podcast. If you like what you heard today, the best compliment you can give is to share the show with a friend. We will see you on the next episode, and we hope one day to see Hunt West.