Ep 14: Randy Newberg on Hunting & Conservation

Welcome to the Rewild Gear Podcast. Modern life, society, and responsibilities have domesticated us, but now it's time to rediscover your adventurous side. Whether that's camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, or just spending time in the great outdoors, this is the podcast for you. Join us as we get back to the wilderness and rewild. Welcome to the Welcome to the ReWild Gear Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Spears, and I'm here today with Randy Newberg. I'm so excited about this episode. Randy has been called the voice of public land hunting in the US. He's a conservationist and advocate for wild lands and wild animals. His TV show Fresh Tracks with Randy Newberg airs nationally on the Sportsman's Channel, and his podcasts Hunt Talk Radio and the Elk Talk Podcast are 2 of the top-ranked hunting podcasts in the country. Randy's platforms are designed to show average hunters the remarkable experiences that are available for the price of a tag, the gas to get there, and the effort invested. Whether it be bugling elk or speeding pronghorn, rifle or bow, Randy will travel the far corners of the West in search of food and adventure. He lives in Bozeman, Montana with his wife Kim, where he volunteers for many national and regional hunting conservation groups, including serving on the board of directors of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. When not hunting, Randy and Kim spend the summer traveling the High Plains in search of western walleye. Andy, welcome to the podcast. So happy to have you here today.

Oh, Seth, thanks for having me. We've been talking about this for a while, and I'm— if I'm blushing, it's because when you asked me to send you a bio, I sent you an old bio. Wait, what? I tweaked it a little bit. I already got 2 demerits for sending you an old bio.

Well, how about this? I'll let you redeem yourself and give us your new and updated one.

All right. My new and updated bio is we are no longer on traditional outdoor TV. So I'm not on the Sportsman's Channel anymore. You can find me on YouTube at Randy Newberg Hunter. And we're working on some other distribution platforms. So I'm sorry about that. And the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, you have term limits. And so I've— I'm now termed off the board. So I gotta update that. I gotta just delete that one. I can't believe it. I do so many podcasts. I have my own podcast and you think I would be on top of it better. If you could, I don't know if your camera sees right now, but I am almost sweating. I'm blushing so bad for that.

Oh, not a problem.

Amateur hour.

Yeah, not a problem at all. It's always easier to update someone else's bio than it is your own, I think.

Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. Of course.

Of course. I'm so happy that you're here today. Randy, just to kind of get started, um, let's, let's dig into your background story and kind of how you got to where you are today. You know, you're pretty well known in the hunting industry, um, as being like a western-style hunter, but I'm sure you didn't start out having a TV show and all these podcasts and things like that. So I'd like to dig in and just kind of get your origin story.

Yeah, my, my hunting story starts almost in Finland where my grandparents, great-grandparents came to northern Minnesota and That's where I was born in northern Minnesota in a little small logging town called Big Falls. And everybody there was in— it wasn't a matter of a hobby of hunting, fishing, foraging, whatever. It was a function of this is what we ate. Very often, if you would've looked at what's on our plate at the dinner table, you would've had something that we got via hunting, fishing, foraging, gardening, or some other natural connection to food. And so that's just how I've always been. I've always accepted this responsibility for my food and enjoyed all the other values that come from natural foods. And I moved to Montana in 1991, and I've been here for 30 years. And when I moved here, we have all this amazing public land, and we took big pay cuts to get here. And my wife said, look, Do you realize how much money we're leaving on the table to be able to hunt and fish and enjoy the outdoors of Montana? You better get involved in the policy part of this. So that kind of got me over into the policy world. And from the policy world, I just got drawn into TV and all this other media stuff, not because I know what I'm doing, but as they say, beware the man with the bigger mouth. He probably has a smaller brain. Uh, I, that, that's kind of how I got there. And I, our, our platforms are about those things you mentioned, conservation, public lands access, and the, the natural process of going out and acquiring your own food. And what a, what a life. I mean, what more could I ask for?

That's great. And I love how you got started just on the meat side of things and not necessarily just for the trophy side, which, you know, there's nothing wrong with, uh, going out after big antlers. I mean, you've got some nice ones hanging up there behind you.

Yeah.

And so that's fun and that's always a goal. But, you know, focusing on the food side, which that's how we were originally hunters to begin with.

Yeah. And it just, I, again, going back to growing up, I did not understand anything related to the pursuit of an animal based on its trophy or its antlers or whatever else. It was all about, boy, that's a pretty fat buck. Good thing you shot him before the rut. He's going to be better tasting buck. Or we hunted rabbits, we hunted grouse, we hunted a lot of small game. And fishing was just a matter of let's keep these small little males because we know that'll sustain the fishery and we can keep a lot of them. And so I'm thankful that I came at it from that standpoint. Because it's just natural for me to view it that way. There's nothing artificial about how I look at it. It just— that's what I grew up doing. Yeah.

What was the first animal that you hunted?

Let's see, that would be ruffed grouse. In northern Minnesota, they call them partridge. My dad said, you got to watch those people who call them ruffed grouse. They're city slickers from down by Minneapolis. So that was the immediate assessment my dad made of anybody. He, he was a logger, so he'd stop these people on the logging road and size them up, checking out their vehicle. Did they have dogs? What kind of shotgun? But if they said ruffed grouse, that was like just city slicker. You lost all your street cred with my dad if you use the term ruffed grouse instead of partridge.

Gotcha. So it sounds like your father was pretty instrumental in you getting into hunting.

Yeah, he, he was, uh, his father on my mom's side, she had 6 brothers. So I have 6 uncles. Her, her, uh, grandfather or her father, uh, was into, uh, everybody there, the neighbors, the school teacher, the hardware store owner, the, it was just what we did. I, I, I can't think of any mentor I had in my life growing up who was not a hunter.

Wow.

And that's, that's what I wanted to be. And now if you look at my business card, instead of saying Randy Newberg, CPA, it says Randy Newberg, hunter. I've met my life dream there. I'm now, uh, that's my lifelong pursuit.

Amazing. That's great. So you're a CPA. And so that's, is that the career that has primarily paid the bills over the years?

Oh yeah. Yeah. People ask me, Randy, how do I get your job? Get to hunt so much? I always tell them, well, have a good day job and don't quit it. Uh, Yeah, I've been a tax specialist. My specialty is trust and estate work. And here in Bozeman, Montana, I've been able to build a practice. I sold it a few years back and dabble in it a little bit still. My wife is looking for a good tax accountant if anybody knows one. But yeah, that's— I spent 33 years as a CPA and I thought, you know, that's enough. Time to go do the fun stuff.

So, yeah, exactly. So I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that most people who see your shows or listen to your podcast and see you as this very successful hunter and public figure, they think that that is very lucrative and that that pays the bills. But what I'm hearing you say is that that's not the case.

My wife would say this is the best job I ever bought. And I say that somewhat tongue in cheek because I run this business the way I do for a reason, because I don't need to make money at it. Don't get me wrong, someday if I can figure out a way to do it the way I want to do it and make a fortune, I'm going to apologize to nobody. But the why on our board right over here next to me says to promote self-guided public land hunting and create advocates for that cause. What I have discovered is creating advocates isn't the most profitable endeavor in the world. So fortunately, the CPA world was really good to me and we have other sources of income where I don't need to make a living at this. So it's very, what would you say? It gives me a level of freedom that maybe some other people don't have.

Yeah. So you're not just relying upon how successful the hunt is, which probably increases the number of viewers and downloads and all of that.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, we're here to tell stories. If we get one, good. If we don't, well, a lot of times people get more entertainment out of the mistakes we make than the successes we have.

I think that's true in a lot of areas of life. We learn more by, by our failures than our successes at times.

Oh yeah, that absolutely for me. I mean, I, here I am, I produce instructional elk hunting content. The first 6 seasons, I never killed an elk when I moved out west. Wow. You talk about mistakes. I invented new ways to mess up an elk encounter. But like you said, those were the, those were the teaching moments. Now looking back, I'm so thankful for those 6 years of struggle.

Yeah.

I learned so much.

Tell me about one of those learning moments, one of those experiences where you screwed up and just didn't get the elk that you thought you should have.

This is— everyone will be able to relate to this, right? You hunt hard all day, you're wore out, you're tired, you let your guard down, you're walking back to the truck, and it's borderline blizzard. You can't see that well. And I get to probably— I'd say I know I'm about 3/4 mile from the trailhead. And I look off to my left and there are 2 bulls standing there. And do you think I'm ready? No, I'm fumbling and they take off and I chase them. But then it's like, here it was, it was all downhill to the truck from there. And I messed it up. I still remember looking over at that bull, especially the larger of the 2. And he's just looking at me like, are you for real, man? You, you, and most people would be shooting at us and they took off. It's, uh, And you always hear the story of the big one that got away, right? And so I really don't even tell the story that much other than my wife knows about it because I came home that day, just, I was about ready to sell my rifle and take up golf or skiing or something. But yeah, it was again, a classic example. Don't let your guard down because as quick as you relax mentally, that's when an opportunity is going to present itself. An opportunity is worth nothing if you're not prepared to capitalize on it.

That's good advice for sure. Randy, would you consider yourself more of a rifle hunter or a bow hunter?

More of a rifle hunter. I, I grew up where my dad had a negative, uh, impression of archery hunting.

Really?

My dad, he would say, oh, you just want to go wound things. That's what, that's what he would say. But that was, that was a function of his lack of understanding about archery and how effective archery gear can be. Uh, I bought my first bow in 1995. I believe it was. And I never released an arrow until— I know, I take that back. I released one arrow between 1995 and 2008 because I still had this little demon standing on my shoulder, and it was my dad saying, oh, are you sure you're gonna make a lethal shot? And I passed so many opportunities, it got to the point where people would quit hunting with me. Like, Are you ever going to shoot at anything? And so finally I got over that. But yeah, I'm definitely a rifle hunter more so than I am an archery hunter.

It's interesting how there's all these competitions in the hunting community between, oh, you're a rifle hunter, oh, you're a bow hunter, and how they go back and forth as far as who is, who is the more real, the realest hunter or the most authentic one and whatever you want to call it. You have any thoughts on kind of those? Their squabbles.

I, I, yeah, I, I just laugh at it all. I, I, for me, I, I have zero concern about what a person decides to carry in the woods with them. A bow, a crossbow, a muzzleloader, a shotgun, a rifle. It makes no matter to me. Uh, as long as you're out there, you're doing what you love to do for the, for your own reasons. That's all I care about. The rest of it is just we must be bored and we want to have something to debate.

Probably a little bit of human nature there.

Yeah, or it's some sort of justification of our own way of doing it and we want some affirmation that our method or our style is better. I don't know.

Probably the ego just getting in the way. They're wanting to be right.

Yeah, yeah.

Randy, tell me what it's like behind the scenes when filming a hunt. I think when we're watching it on TV, and, you know, whether that's your show, whether that's Meteor, that's whether that's any of these hunting shows, we see a lot of the successes and some of the failures. But I'm sure there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that nobody ever sees, and probably some very hilarious things and probably some very frustrating things as well.

Oh yeah, we, we have a motto in our group that if you didn't get it on footage, it didn't happen, or bad audio means bad video. So those are 2 things that force us to have to focus on a pretty high production level. And we have 2 camera guys out there all the time. And so you think about, all right, I've got all that extra noise, all that extra sand movement, all that. But I've expected that we're going to blow I don't know, 4 to 6 opportunities a season because of filming. And the last 4 or 5 years, we've not met that goal. We've been less than that.

Really?

Yeah. I'm somewhat thankful for that, that we have an amazing crew. They're all hunters for the most part, and they understand the story we're trying to capture. So that's really helpful. But behind the scenes, the amount of work that goes into it, we're getting like this time of year, we're applying for tags, we're getting public land film permits, we're writing production books, we're building out storyline and script and what's going to happen if, okay, we show up and there's a blizzard. Well, we can't talk about this story then, we got to switch gears. And so we're trying to give ourselves all these alternate paths and just the coordination of the calendar. Everybody says, oh, I'd love to have your job. Well, I say this knowing full well I have the best job in the world. But after 70 days in a tent, starting mid-August, when it's late November in Montana and you look at the forecast and it's going to be 0 degrees and you're going in a backpack scenario and you're going to sleep in a cold tent again for 5 more days, the luster, the shine has kind of wore off. And so that starts affecting how you're producing content. You and the crew have seen more than enough of each other. They're like, I wish Randy would just twist a knee or something so we could go home. And then you've been going on pretty marginal sleep. You don't get a lot of sleep. And in the early seasons, the sun's up so early and it's rising or going down so late that your nights are very short. And then you're eating marginal foods. And we go, we give ourselves 5 days. So travel 1 day, hunt 5 days, travel home. And usually we only have 2 days in between those.

Wow.

So it's not like we're getting a bunch of downtime to relax and get caught up. And so everybody's pretty well had enough of it by end of November, early December. So behind the scenes, it starts out with this rah-rah enthusiasm. Boy, we're gonna really do it this year. And by the end of the year, or by the end of the season, November, We look like we've been rode hard and thrown in the ditch or something.

Wow. So I want to dig in a little bit more about how you're planning this out beforehand as far as the storyline and some of that, because I was under the impression that, you know, you're going out for a hunt and then you're adapting it as you go, but it's not pre-written. So how does that work? I'm fascinated by the logistics of things like this.

Yeah, it's, uh, it— and Not everybody does it this way. So I'm blessed to have some amazing people who work for me right across the street here at the Montana State University Film School. So I have 5 people working for me who have master's in film, and they go to school and learn how do you film stories, how do you create true stories, not just wing it. So we sit down and we storyboard all this stuff. And I'll use an example. I finally drew a mountain goat tag in this area that I elk hunt. a lot. Well, 3 years ago we were in there and we saw this really dirty brown-looking mountain goat. Usually they're this beautiful snow-white color. And at first I thought it was a grizzly bear. I told the crew through the snow, I'm like, oh, that's a grizzly bear. And then the snow quit blowing and cleared off. I'm like, oh man, that's a mountain goat. Look at him. And so we called him Grubby. So I continued to apply for a tag there. Finally this year I drew it. So the storyline we're putting together starts back in 2018 and It's even before that, when I first started hunting this area in 1993. So we're building the storyline around all that, how things have changed, how the landscape has changed. There used to be a lot of bighorn sheep in this area. They mostly died off of disease from domestic sheep. And now they've been replaced by these beautiful white mountain goats as they're the more abundant cliff-oriented high alpine species in this area. So we have a conservation story, we have a landscape story, we have a story about the species, we have a story about me being there for the last, well, over almost 30 years now.

Wow.

And how all that changes. And then we do have the, let's let it adapt. So if we show up and we run into a grizzly bear, this is in grizzly country, that's going to be a A sidebar to the story of, you know, we're hunting wild, crazy places. So some of the last places in the lower 48 where grizzly bears are very abundant. So that's one of the alternatives or one of the tangents we possibly have. Then we have the whole idea of what if we get so much snow we can't get in there? Okay, then what's our plan? What's our story? I'm not going to risk an avalanche to go find a mountain goat. I want to live to see the next day. So I just use this as one example of how we're building out these storylines and, and how it takes form. But when we're out there, there is a lot of what you mentioned, Seth. There is a lot of this adapt and, and make the best of what's happening while we're there.

Can you give an example of one of these stories, like over the years where you had the plans in place, everything storyboarded out and you're like, this is what we're going to do. And then something happened where it totally changed everything in the entire direction.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Wyoming, 2011, had a really great elk tag. Show up, 65 degrees, everything's going to be wonderful. Uh, wind starts blowing that afternoon before season opens. We end up with 30 inches of snow. It clears off and the temperatures go to 10 below zero.

Holy crap.

Yeah. I can't get, I can't get back to my camp with my truck because like a knucklehead, I thought, well, Beautiful weather. I left my chains back here in Bozeman, Montana.

Oh, no.

So a game warden who has chains on tows me up this little hill that I'm just burning and spinning out. I get on a road, I just go to— I'm busting through drifts. I finally get to Casper, Wyoming, buy some chains, which makes me feel stupid. I got great chains at home 400 miles away, but You know, by chance.

Getting pretty good there.

Yeah, we go in there and it's all we can do to get the truck up to where our camp is. I run into some old boys who— they're with a group of trucks where one would run into the snowdrifts, the other trucks would pull him back, and they'd keep doing this until they could break trail. Well, I'm talking to this little boy, he's like, you need a psychiatrist, not a— I asked him, have you seen Something. And he said, Shawn, you need a psychiatrist. Finally, we get to our camp and the camera guy, he's freezing to death. He normally films skiing stuff in California. And so he did a remarkable job for how bad out of his element he was. And so he ended up having to go home. No, didn't even see an elk on those 4 days. It took us 2 days to get camp extracted. So there you go. A week later, the snow melts off. I grab another camera guy. We go down there, we leave Bozeman early in the morning, and by dark that night, I have an elk on the ground. That's like, wow, who'd have thought that? So those are, those are just things that it— there's always 2 to 3 hunts a season where something like that just goes 180 degrees from what you expected.

But that's what makes it fun, right? Because you just don't know. It's, it's that unknown.

Oh yeah. I think those are the stories that appeal to people. In Arizona, we had one where really big elk, biggest elk we've ever seen on camera. It's me and my son. We only have one camera guy and we split up the last day. My son and the camera guy go the direction I think the elk is going to be. And I make this loop. I'm going to spook the elk to him. Well, I peek over the ridge and out on this windy slope, Mr. Big is standing there. And as I'd been leaving, the camera guy hands me this little camera, our spare camera. He says, if I hear a shot, it better be on footage. So I'm over there trying to get everything adjusted 300 yards away and get the camera through this little shooting lane. And then I move off to the side because I have to find another shooting lane. Well, in the time I find my shooting lane, the elk moves out of the camera view. So I got to run over 20 yards to the camera, readjust it, come back. And in all this, I forget about the crosswind. Oh no. And 2 shots go right in front of the chest of the bull. And everybody loves that episode. They're like, man, I have missed one. Like, you know, something went wrong. I didn't give the whole story about me moving back and forth and the distraction because when I first saw him, he was standing perfectly broadside. It was like exactly what you want. Well, by the time I— it takes me 10 minutes to get the camera set up. Now he's quartering away from me. It's like— But showing the audience how that happens and not being bashful to show that I missed a really, really large elk, I think it gives a bit of realism to, yeah, to what we do. And people are like, ah, it's nice to know somebody isn't that worked up about being the world's greatest hunter.

Oh, for sure. It seems like logistically that, especially if it's just you with a camera and when you have to set it up and then, you know, you're talking into the mic just so you're getting that audio and everything as well. That's a lot to remember or think about as you're trying to make sure that you're lined up on him, that, you know, the distance and like all the logistics of that.

Yeah, I have self-filmed 3 hunts and only one of those did I have success. All the rest of them I should have. If I would have had another camera person with me, we would have had success. Uh, and the one where we had success, it was just by accident. I had the camera all set up And the deer walked. It was a whitetail deer. He walked right up to this tree I had the camera on and he starts rubbing his head like they do in November. All I had to do is turn, hit the power button on the camera and the focus. And he just stood there for the longest time. It's like, man, he read the script finally. Uh, so it's, it's really hard to do by yourself.

Yeah. Well, 1 for 3 in baseball, you're in the Hall of Fame. So.

Well, that's true. Yeah. Everyone forgets that Babe Ruth struck out over 3,000 times. They just remember he hit 714 home runs.

Yeah, exactly. Randy, western hunting is so different than East Coast hunting. And growing up in the Midwest and in Minnesota, I'm guessing you started off with whitetail. How did you learn to go out west and hunt elk and mule deer and all of these, these bigger species where it's so much more wide open and you're not just sitting in a stand or in a blind? What was that experience like?

It was a huge learning experience. That's why I say I spent my first 6 years and I never filled an elk tag. Yeah, deer are Mule deer, whitetail deer, they don't have the big home ranges that elk have. They don't have the ability to escape to ridiculously difficult terrain that elk do. I know that if I tip over a deer in 2 trips, I can probably drag half of him out each time. An elk, it's like, what am I going to do with a 600-pound animal? So I was hunting in all the wrong places, worried about an elk spoiling if I couldn't get it out in time. Well, that became its self-fulfilling prophecy that I was not going to have an elk spoil because I was hunting in places where elk weren't. And so for me, the— I had to take what is it that I know applies. And as you start doing this a lot, you realize a lot of what you do in whitetail hunting really does apply to elk hunting. But how do I take the bits that don't apply And learn that and adapt to it. And the biggest thing for me was I, I just was overwhelmed by where to even start. They, you know, you look at mountain ranges, it's like there's a lot more places where elk aren't than where they are. And how do I find the places where they are? And, and they don't just come walking to you. They're, they're not that habitual. Like, say you're in a tree stand whitetail hunting, and you know every morning there's kind of this pattern of they're leaving the feeding area, going to their bed, and they almost reverse that in the evening. Not elk. They're just as random as random gets. And so there's— all of their needs, whether it's food, water, sanctuary, are dispersed all across this really large landscape. Whereas when I hunted whitetails anyhow, their needs that they had, whether it was food, whether it was bedding cover, were in very small places and quite predictable. So it was easy to figure out what they were going to do. You were dealing with 50 acres, 100 acres, whatever. All of a sudden you're dealing with a 10,000-acre drainage. It's like, hmm, where do I start? So that changes it a little bit. That was the hard part for me, was to get my mind around the intimidation or get enough knowledge so that I wasn't intimidated.

That makes sense. And I'm guessing that that process of gaining that knowledge just took Time. That's 6 years, like you said.

Failures, a whole lot of failures. And then once I broke it down to, for me anyhow, something that was simple, that was translatable no matter what season of the year I was hunting, I used a fishing— I used the same tactics I use for fishing and applied the same pattern, same everything. And all of a sudden I'm finding elk quite easily. It's like, well, why didn't I think about this 6 years ago?

So if you were going to give advice to someone who is a typical whitetail hunter and then they want to get into western-style hunting, what's the best advice you can give to them so they can skip that learning curve or help to alleviate it a little bit anyway?

Yeah. Boy, where to start with that? I have a pretty long list of things I'd tell them. If they're hunting public land, which is what I hunt, and you're going to be hunting a highly pressured animal, I would say think about what that animal needs at the time of year you are hunting them. And I'll give an example. A lot of people come out west on a July vacation with the family and they see some elk way up high and they're like, oh, that's where— when I— my tag is in late October. When I come back out here, I'm going up there. Well, guess what? Those elk had a need of a certain food type in July. That need in October is not that food. It's sanctuary, getting away from hunters. So there isn't going to be an elk anywhere near where you saw them in July. They're going to be 8, 10, 5 miles away, whatever. So people come out and they think, oh, these animals are really habitual, like whitetails are. I know where they're at. And they show up and they don't see anything. So I, for me, I had to make it this simple. What are the needs? Either food, water, possibly breeding as a seasonal need, but also in the later rifle seasons, sanctuary, survival. And where do they go at that time of year to satisfy that primary need? And that's as simple— I mean, in a lot of ways, it's kind of like Whitetails, right? You have your, your early season, your pre-rut, your peak rut, and post-rut. And whitetails are using the landscape slightly differently in each of those periods. Elk, same thing applies other than they're using it way differently between each of those 4 periods.

That's good advice. A lot of work too.

But yeah. Probably worth what anybody paid for it. Probably worth less than what anybody paid for it.

Randy, it's very obvious that you love the elk Oh yeah. Why is nature so important to you? What is it that really just calls to you?

You know, that's, that's a— I get asked that a lot, and I ask myself that a lot, and my wife asks it. What is it about you that you have to be outside? And all I can figure is, again, it goes back to your upbringing, and the things that bring you successes bring you pleasures. The things that you maybe know more than some of your peers bring you pleasures and confidence. And I think just growing up on the banks of the Big Fork River and being allowed to fish and get lost and build fires and do the things that every kid dreams they get to do, that's what I got to do every day. My mom knew if she couldn't find me, all she had to do is walk down to the river and I would be there. I'll have been there for 10 hours with a fishing pole. And so your memories start The positive things in your life of, oh, I had success and I drug this smallmouth bass up to the local bar and showed all the guys and they made a big hero of me. Or I shot 2 snowshoe hares with my .22 and now everyone in town is like, boy, that Randy Newberg kid, boy, he's a dead eye. You know, so you have all these things and then you have maybe some of your peers who were into other activities. who come and rely on you for information or knowledge about, hey, I'm going deer hunting this fall. I've never been deer hunting. And so you help them. So I think a lot of that is just where we found successes and comfort early in life. And then also the food aspect. There's nothing that excites me more than taking care of food that I've harvested. And in my family, once you were 8 or 10 years old, you were the person— if you were good at it, you were in charge of filleting the walleyes. And they got inspected by dad and grandpa and all the uncles. You know, did you get all the bones out? Oh, it doesn't look like you wasted anything. That was like this validation, this ability to take care of the meat, which was the end product of our pursuits. And they trusted you with it. This is the most important job of the hunt. Or of the fishing excursion, and they trusted you. And so it just created this whole circle that I can't, I can't unravel anymore. I'm, it's, I'm so wound up in all those pieces of it that I don't think it's separable from who I am. Sure. Oh, that's great.

You mentioned water, and as far as being down, you know, like the river's edge and fishing and all that, and I've talked to a lot of people over the years, and there's always something about water and how that just kind of calls to us, especially just remembering as a kid and even today, little streams, babbling brooks, or a big roaring river, the ocean. There's something about water that just kind of calls us. What do you think that is?

I, I don't know what it is, but I know exactly what you're talking about. Uh, you know, the Big Fork River comes through our little town called Big Falls. There's a big change in the Canadian Shield elevations there, so there's a large waterfall, uh, in our town. That's why it's Big Falls. And all these little eddies and these whirlpools, and it has this tannic acid color to it, so you can't see in it real well.

Yeah.

It was almost like this mysterious— you'd see a flash of a fin of something and you'd be like, was that a muskie? Was that a walleye? Was that a sucker? And you'd see beaver using the rivers and the creeks and the waterfall. It just became this place of Wow. Wherever there's water, I, I, if I'm also, uh, and here's an example I think people can relate to. If you're on a hike and you come to a creek, you don't just walk across that creek and keep hiking. You always stop and you look around. There's something about that creek that draws your mind of how deep is it? How clear is it? Is there, what kind of birds are here? It's just something about it that I, I can't explain. And growing up in a place where fishing is as much of the culture as it is in northern Minnesota, there's all of that that goes with it. I mean, you fish in the ice, you sit there.

Yeah.

My dad and his brother had what's called the spearing shack where you spear pike. You use a decoy and you cut out this 4 by 8 hole in the ice and it's like no windows, nothing. It's dark in there. You sit there in the wintertime and you do that stuff. That's like, there's got to be some fascination with water if you're willing to sit on a frozen lake waiting for a pike to swim by. But I'm completely there. As a kid, our family, my mom's side, they homesteaded on this lake. And so the family cabins were on this lake and the bluegills and crappies would come and build their little nesting areas off the end of the dock. And I would sit there with just a plain hook and a worm, and those bluegills and sunfish would come and bite my hook. To this day, I can sit there all day long and do that and be fascinated 50 years later.

Amazing.

I wish I knew. I don't have the explanation. I can just relate to what you're saying.

Totally. Yeah. I know you've had quite a few health challenges over the years. How has How has the outdoors and nature in general affected that both in a positive and a negative way?

Oh yeah, I would say just about all in positive ways. I have a bum liver. I call it a bum liver. I have a blood clotting issue, and in 2004, I ended up with such a large blood clot, it ruined the plumbing in my liver. Any doctors or medical professionals listening to your podcast, when I say I don't have a portal vein, They're going to be like, what? No portal vein? How does that work? It doesn't work very well, let me put it that way. And I wasn't aware of what it had done for a while. So I was really sick with a lot of side effects of not having the proper diet, proper everything that is necessary for someone with a highly compromised liver hepatic situation. And so I lucked out, ended up back at the Mayo Clinic and they got me straightened out pretty much. But that blood clotting process, we still don't have it solved what it is. I've since had a TIA, which is a blood clot in your brain. If it goes away within 24 hours, they tell me it's a TIA, not a stroke. And then I had one in my heart, ended up getting a heart cath.

Wow.

11 o'clock at night, I'm laying in bed and it's like someone jabbed me in the chest with a spear. And I sit up and my wife is like, what's the matter? I'm like, I don't know, I'll sleep it off. Well, I didn't sleep all night. Next morning I get up, I'm really bad and I'm thinking I have like, I don't know, a rib that's messing me up or something. So I go to get my dog and we're going to go jog this off. Well, I go over to the kennel, get the dog, and I make it to the end of the driveway. Now I'm down on my knees. I can't move. So I come in the house and my wife is like, you ready to go to the doctor yet? Yep, I'm ready. So they call it a— what is it? Myocardial infarction or whatever. MI, a heart attack. I say it was just a blood clot in my heart. So when they go in and do the heart cath, the cardiologist watches our content. He's like, what are you doing here? I said, "I don't know, Doc. I hope you're going to tell me." And you're awake when they do the heart cath, and he's like, "Okay, here." Da da da. He's like, "You got the arteries of a thirty-year-old. Don't worry about it. You just got to get this blood clotting thing under control." So yeah, that's those are things that make it a little more difficult for me. Sometimes people will look at the footage and say, "Randy looks drunk today." Yeah, if you were carrying the toxin loads that I am on a lot of days, like I get about. 25% of the blood flow to my liver that you get.

Oh man.

So if you think about, uh, your liver is very important of getting rid of lactic acids and all these other toxins that come from exertion. Uh, if you couldn't get rid of those or you could only get rid of about a fourth of them, yeah, there's days where I look kind of messed up. And, uh, but you know what, I get up every morning and I'm so lucky and thankful for the life that I have and the health that I have. I, I live my life by a motto that That says, hunt when you can because you're going to run out of health before you run out of money. And that applies to way too many people that we can all— there's not a person listening who it doesn't come to mind somebody who either is not with us anymore or they don't have the health to go and do what they wanted to do. They were always, someday I'm going to do that someday. Well, I don't believe in someday. I'm going and doing it. And so having these health scares has actually been a blessing from that standpoint, even with the challenges it presents for me. Wow.

Yeah, no, that is a great quote. Hunt when you can. You run out of health before you run out of money. Yeah, that's really good advice.

I mean, if you're into skiing or fishing or golfing, whatever, just remove hunt and put whatever other activity, because that's— I live— I try to live a life that way because I don't— my biggest— I have no regrets in my life right now. My biggest regret would be is that I decided, I'm just going to take advantage or take for granted the value of good health, and I'm going to defer this or I'm going to defer that. And then I never got to do it. Wow. So yeah, I'm, I'm not that guy.

That's great advice. Take life by the horns and just run with it.

Yeah. Yeah. So as my grandma used to say, when you get up in the morning, if you think it's going to be a good day or a bad day, you're probably right.

Yeah, for sure.

And so I wake up, I tell people at my little coffee shop I go to here in Bozeman, They're like, how are you doing today? Every day I say, I'm perfect. And they're like, perfect? Oh yeah, yeah, I'm absolutely perfect. I'm 56 years old. I've never had a bad day and I'm not starting habits like that this late in life.

That's amazing.

And they look at me and they're like, man, I'm so glad you come in here. You make us smile every morning. I'm like, all right, mission accomplished.

Your positivity is infectious. I love it.

I was hoping, Seth, when you were out here, we were going to get a chance to go to the Daily Cow Bar.

I was so looking forward to that.

And then our backpack Yeah, it's crazy. We just finally warmed up here yesterday. Really? It was, my wife and I were up fishing earlier in the week and it was 38 degrees blowing 20 miles an hour and raining. Wow. That was absolute misery.

Yeah.

It's like, I came here to have fun, honey.

Yeah, 'cause we were supposed to be out in the backcountry all last week backpacking. And then my buddy Jordan Resner, former podcast guest who I think you know as well, he had a really bad injury. He called me like the day before we're supposed to leave. He's like, Seth, I think we got a problem. We got so much snow, we're going to be backpacking in waist-deep snow and we're going to be cold and wet the entire time.

Yeah. So it would have been misery.

Yeah. So the trip has been postponed till August and then we're going to be doing a lot of fly fishing.

Okay. Well, next time you're out here, daily coffee bar's on me.

Oh, for sure. I can't wait.

Right.

Randy, conservation is extremely important to you and really important to us as well. But I'd love to hear your opinion on what the biggest threat is today when it comes to protecting the outdoors or species or any of that when it comes to the conservation side.

Boy, that's going to take me a long time to answer, but I'll try to do it briefly. I think we are a society that's disconnected from the natural world. As we're an urbanized society, we lose our connection to that natural world. We don't understand that turning up the air conditioner requires electricity that comes from natural gas that's generated in Wyoming, and there's some poor sage grouse or some poor antelope that's paying the cost for that. And as a result of someone who lives a— and Aldo Leopold used to talk about how the heavy burden that comes with living a life with an environmental conscience is you realize that the human condition Imposes a toll and extracts a toll on the landscape and the wild things that you don't see if you live a life not connected to that natural world. So I think urbanization and its consequences of having a society that has lost its connection, not completely, but losing its connection to the importance of clean air, clean water, wild productive landscapes. That's the biggest issue that we face from a conservation standpoint, because when a society loses that, it loses its concern and it's no longer expressed in how it has its policy priorities, its funding priorities, it's all these things that are required for conservation to happen. They start falling by the wayside. So it's— It's a big challenge and they aren't making any more high-quality habitat.

Yeah, that's true. And do you think that the habitat issue is the most important side of this as far as like the land or some of the animals where we've either hunted them to extinction or we're clearing out their habitat and so we're losing them? Yeah, there's a couple sides of that.

Yeah, it's definitely the habitat side of it. Clean air, clean water, clean productive lands are absolutely critical. But I'll use my little valley here in Montana, the Gallatin Valley. We are forcing the elk, the deer, the whatever further and further to the fringes of their habitat through human development. I go back home to the Midwest where I grew up. Minneapolis, compared to when I went to college there in 1984, has usurped so much of the landscape. It's ridiculous, but it's understandable. And so what happens when you displace that deer or that turkey or that songbird or that mink or that skunk? They're gone forever.

Yeah.

And as we put demands on our food systems to produce more and more food, more and more food, because we're, in my lifetime, if I live long enough, we're going to be at 400 million people on this Right here in this country and 8 billion on this planet. What happens when those mouths need fed? We create more or create— we sacrifice more wild habitat places for more agriculture. And it's not the farmer's fault. He is feeding the world. He's responding to a demand. And so we have rules and laws in place now where you're never going to see a species hunted to extinction Fish to extinction, trap to extinction. Those days of the passenger pigeons and all those of the 1800s, those days are behind us. But we will eventually ruin the habitability of the landscape for these wild things.

Yeah.

And that's why I spend a lot of my time, talent, what little talent I have, and treasure advocating for those things because they are that important to me. And people ask me, well, where do you get this missionary zeal for clean air and clean water and productive lands? Well, if your life was about natural food like mine has been for 56 years, this is the equivalent of my grocery store. This is the equivalent of my own garden.

Yeah.

I'm going to take care of it. I want it to be as productive as possible. I was 5 years old when the Cuyahoga River started on fire in Cleveland, Ohio.

Wow.

And I don't really remember that, but I do remember the big push in the society of we need cleaner air, we need cleaner water, we need to quit littering, we need this. And so for most of my life, our air got cleaner, our water got cleaner. We had a collective consciousness about the conservation of our landscapes that I worry we might have flattened out. And once you flatten out, you start going back downhill.

Yeah, that's a good point. I went to college in Steubenville, Ohio, which is right in the Ohio Steel Valley. And when I would wake up in the morning and the air was just so polluted where they would offload the smokestacks, like, from the steel mills, and you would just get nauseous from the smell of it. And Steubenville was constantly voted the worst air quality in the country. I haven't been back in years. But I've been told it's improved somewhat, but not just primarily because of the shutdown of the mills and just we're not producing those things now. So it seems like it's very much a balancing act as far as to have, like, production and things in the— in this country, manufacturing and whatnot, but also being able to protect our water and air and land and all of that. And I don't know where that balance is sometimes because it's really hard to do.

It's super hard to do. And, you know, let's use Florida, for example. You look at the amount of nitrates in their water system. And what is happening to the ability of their water systems to be productive natural water courses. It's gone because of how bad we've affected that. And you could look at agricultural runoff in a lot of other places in the country with the same thing. We as a collective society are the ones placing these demands for resources, for food, for more our own space. Okay, we want, you know, our own piece of paradise. And the one writing the check for that are the wild things. Yeah, I don't care if it's songbirds or foxes or whatever, they're the ones writing the checks that we're cashing.

And for generations.

Yeah. Oh, for sure. So I get pretty wound up about that, Seth. Yeah, if you ever want to have me on a podcast about just that topic, anytime, any, any place, I I want to make sure that when they put me in the pine box, that— my grandma had another great saying. She said, the number of people who come to your funeral depends on the weather that day, so don't live your life for them. Live your life for yourself. But if they do put me in the pine box, I hope that I can say I did my darndest to try and make it a little bit better, and I tried to give back more than I took.

Yeah, 100%. That's great.

Great.

You mentioned Florida and the water, and I live in Florida now, and one of the things that I'm fascinated by is what's going on in the Everglades with all of the boa constrictors where they've let loose and they are completely taking over and destroying the ecosystem as far as— because they now have no predators. Do you have any thoughts on that and ways to turn that around other than just try to hunt them as much as possible?

It is so classic, right? The human influence on natural cycles results in these type of invasive species, whether they're terrestrial species, aquatic species, plant species. I mean, you look at the West, people say, well, why are we on fire so much anymore? Well, it's, yes, we have a changing climate, we have all these other things, but we also have a lot of invasive plant species in the West. that benefit from heat more than our native species, plant species, and they benefit from fire. So they create these fire cycles. It's called cheatgrass. And we can go on and on about all these kinds of things, just like you're saying in Florida. We have so many invasive species. We would look at the Great Lakes, all of the ballast water that's been dumped by foreign vessels into the Great Lakes, and now they have zebra mussels. They have these— I'm trying to remember what that little fish is, gobies or something like that. And the native systems are not built to sustain or withstand the competition from these invasive species. And it doesn't matter what type of plant or animal or fish it is. Look at the Asian carp in the Ohio River.

Yeah.

We— and none of those came here other than through human transport. Wow. So yeah, it's unfortunate, but I don't know what the answer is, but you guys got a problem on your hands.

Yeah, for sure. You know, we're also seeing that as far as invasive species, like in the South and the Mid-South with kudzu. You know, there's kudzu. Are you familiar with this?

No. What's kudzu?

Kudzu. It's a type of vine. It's this crazy vine, um, that just grows like mad. I believe it was imported from Japan originally or somewhere in Asia, and it has just taken over everything. It is a huge snake habitat and just takes over roads and forests and everything, and nothing really kills it.

Wow.

Crazy. Yeah. Kudzu, I believe.

Huh. Never heard of it.

Yeah. So you see it Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, all of them in that area.

Yeah. We've got, you know, Russian thistles here, spotted knapweed. We got so much of our productive of premium wildlife habitat has been taken over by these invasive plant species that our native animals can't utilize. So habitat that's full of invasive thistles or knapweed or whatever is like having no habitat at all. Yeah, because elk or deer or whatever can't utilize it.

Yeah, exactly. Randy, what has been your most memorable outdoor experience? You spent a lot of time in the great outdoors, and what's the most memorable one that you had, either positive or negative?

It's pretty easy. Uh, it's the first year of hunting with my son. Uh, that's a no-brainer. He shot a whitetail doe, and I was doing flips and cartwheels and jumping up and down, and he looked at me like, Dad, it's just a deer. I'm like, no, son, it's, it's not just a deer. It was— for me, this was the next passing of the baton, if you want to call it that. It was this generational transfer that my dad and uncles gave to me and my grandfathers had given to them. And I can't disconnect my outdoor pursuits from the people I get to share them with and the landscapes I get to explore while doing it. And so So yeah, that whitetail doe that day was just— yeah. Oh man, I get so excited thinking about it right now. And another one would be when he shot his first elk. My brother had come out from Minnesota and we did the traditional camp. It was the year after my dad had passed away. And so, you know, there was still some voids there for my brother and I. And my son shoots his first elk and—

Amazing.

Yeah, it was like someone wrote the script and the elk Read the script and it's like, oh gosh, it never works as good. So it'd be one of those, I'm sure.

I had a similar experience actually 2 years in a row. So in 2019, I, I didn't grow up hunting as a kid. I picked it up kind of later in life. I was in my 20s, I guess, when I first started hunting. And so 2 years ago, I, we, we've been doing a deer camp, whitetail camp back in Kentucky every year for the past 6, 7 years now. And so 2 years ago, my dad came out and it had been just my brothers and our Our sons and I. And then my dad came out 2 years ago and I helped him get his first deer. And so it was a little buck and, you know, I would prefer that he would not have shot something so small, but it was, it was great seeing him get his, his first whitetail, which is amazing. So it was almost like I got to father my father. And then last year, my son, he got his first deer and it was, it was a little buck as well. And I've just never been so happy as far as— and so proud of him, just, you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

Lined it up in the stand and—

Yeah. And now I think about my son, he's 31, and yesterday he texted me, he's going out for the last day of turkey season. He lives out in Oregon and his connection to the outdoors is exactly what mine was. And that's hopefully, uh, if he ever gets around to getting me some grandkids, uh, uh, we can continue that That, yeah, that generational transfer.

So, Randy, what's an outdoor experience that you would never want to repeat?

Hmm. Well, that's, uh, you know, there's certain things you live through where you say, oh, it's not that bad now, but at the time you're pretty sure that the end is near. Uh, my Uncle Elton and I were up in Canada. When you grew up in northern Minnesota on the Canadian border, you'd let all the, as my dad called them, city slickers come up north and fish your spots, and then you'd go up into Ontario and go fish their spots. And we went to this lake called Manion Lake, and we had a little 12-foot boat, little 5-foot Johnson Seahorse motor. We're out there fishing, and it was hot and muggy. And then it just started getting really cool and cold. And we looked over to the southwest and here is a tornado coming across the lake.

Oh.

And we're like, uh-oh. I mean, it was, it had a wall of clouds. It's like your classic, you know, that you'd see in Kansas, right? Dorothy and Toto go flying by. So there was this little island. We zoom over there. We dump everything out of the boat. We grabbed the boat and we put the bow of it facing into the storm upside down. There's just rock about 3 feet tall. And so the bow is leaned up against that rock and we crawled underneath it. And the wind and hail and lightning, I thought, this is it. This is the end. I'm 14 years old and this is all I'm going to get to see. And then when the storm passed, the lake The lake was white because there's so much hail floating in it.

Oh, wow.

And finally, some old French guys found us out on the island while we were picking up the pieces of most of our stuff had been blown into the lake. And they saw us and they knew we were out there because back at the campground, my aunt had said, oh my goodness, these guys are out there. And they're like, you need any help? No, we'll be— just tell them we'll be— we're working our way And then it started becoming a little more funny of, oh, we survived. But I will tell you that at the time, I did not think we were going to survive it. Just this little round rock out in the middle of nowhere with some scrubby jack pines on it. And we were underneath there holding on, me and my uncle holding onto that boat to dear life, hoping it wasn't going to blow away.

Wow.

Oh yeah, when we got to the campground, these great big, you know, 36-inch caliper Norway pine were busted off, and it was like, it was a real deal. So I don't care to repeat that one again.

That's a good story though. Great, great to tell the grandkids one day too, huh?

Yeah. That's great.

Randy, what gear do you consider essential whenever you're going out in the wilderness on a hunt or Just even a hike?

This isn't a piece of gear, but I think having your mind right is the most important thing. That's— I always say invest in your mind and your body and worry about the gear later. When it comes to gear, and I'm probably going to say the most important thing for me are my boots because with Without high-quality boots, my feet are going to get chewed up and I'm not going to be able to go anywhere. Boy, I could rattle off so many things. Depends on if I'm going for a hike, going for a long backcountry excursion.

Sure.

Hydration for me with my liver condition, I'm very seldom anywhere without adequate hydration or means to filter water. That would be big.

We love talking about gear, so get specific on what you like to use. Brands and everything is fine.

Oh, you want brands? All right. So my boots, I wear Kenetrek boots. I've been wearing them since the company started, long before I had these platforms, and they work great for what I do. And then as far as water filtration, I use either a Platypus gravity filter If I have a lot of people with me, I use a Katadyn Base Camp water filter. And then I also have— Katadyn makes these little 1-liter BeFree with the— they're like a little rubberized water bladder with a built-in water filter.

Okay.

Oh my gosh, that is— whoever invented that should be president. It is so slick. So when I'm doing hikes, I, you know, it weighs maybe 2 ounces, maybe 3 at the most. So I always have that in my pack. I always have a little bit of homemade— I have my own little homemade fire starter kit. Adventure First Aid Kits makes these really quick and easy first aid kits. You probably want to augment a few things to them depending on how many people and what you're doing, what activity. But I always have something like that with me. me. And I'm still an old school guy who has a compass stashed away somewhere.

Yeah.

I learned how to navigate the flat, big North Woods with a compass. And so if GPS technology went away today, I'd say, dang it, I lost all my waypoints, but I could still navigate. Whereas I think a lot of younger people who did not have the benefit of their dad being a logger who, you know, they were cruising timber for logging sales. It was all based on compass. Uh, so I, I always have a little compass tucked away in there in case something goes snare wire. Uh, my knife, probably. I mean, and this is a shameless plug, I spent 3 years working with Gerber building a set of knives called the Randy Newberg Series knives. And it reflects 30 years of elk hunting successes and failures. These are knives that were built for the specific purpose of elk hunting. And so I'm pretty particular about my knives and what I use.

Yeah.

But those are the things that come to mind. Backpacks, I, you know, when I'm hunting, I'm never without my Mystery Ranch backpack. Clothes, layered clothes. You know, everyone sees our content, they know I use Sitka gear because it's super high performance and it's all about layering. And I don't care what brand of clothing you use, layering is absolutely essential in places like the mountains where you're going to have big diurnal temperature changes throughout the course of the day. You might have different exertion levels, you might have different weather patterns. Layers are just absolutely critical. I'm lucky that at this point in my life, I've upgraded my gear to what I absolutely need and what I think is the absolute best for what I do.

Yeah.

I started out, my first hunting boots when I moved to Bozeman, Montana were Converse All-Stars. I hunted elk and I hunted antelope and I hunted deer in the old leather Converse All-Star that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird used to wear. Oh my goodness. And it didn't even dawn on me until my crew, they were looking at old photos about a year ago and Jonathan says, what's the deal with the Converse All-Stars? I'm like, it's all I had. That's what I hunted in. So my first backpack was my JanSport book bag from college.

Wow.

And so I made it work. So in my mind, it's more important that you invest in yourself and your knowledge than it is the latest and greatest piece of That's great advice.

Speaking of brands and gear though, what companies do you feel like are doing just a great job when it comes to either the quality of their gear or the conservation side?

Yeah, for me, that's a big part of any brand that I'm associated with. They know my connection to conservation. So if they don't have a strong conservation focus, we usually don't have that great of a relationship. I just, it's just who I am and what I'm about, what my audience is about. I've mentioned a couple of them, Sitka Gear is always, John Barklow, who is, he and Eric, who are their 2 product designers, they're geniuses. I mean, Eric has an engineering degree in fabrics. I did not know there was an engineering degree in fabrics.

Wow.

I guess Syracuse University has something like that. They're doing remarkable stuff and they're heavily committed to the conservation.

space.

Canitrek boots are always pushing the envelope on, on new boots, new soles, new, new fit for your feet. They're really good. Mystery Ranch again is just, you know, when you have as many users of their product as Mystery Ranch does in the wildland fire business, but more importantly, their biggest group of users are in the military, you get the benefit of a lot of really good ideas that then make it to our consumer side that we use in the hunting space. Yeah, it just, you know, Yeti, they're such big supporters of all the conservation groups. It's a great deal. Got a Yeti right here. There you go. And so for me, those are the kind of things. Leupold, again, the optics company They have huge military contracts. And so all this military technology that's over there gets migrated over to their consumer side, and I get to be the beneficiary of so much of that. And they quietly behind the scenes are supporting all these conservation groups. Nosler Ammunition, they license, they have certain products that a percentage of every sale of certain items of their partition bullets, some of their Accubonds, certain calibers and cartridges goes to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Oh, wow.

And so when companies are doing stuff like that, that means a lot to me, and I'm, I'm big supporters of them. And the downside is, when you ask me that question, I know I'm forgetting a few, and I, I feel bad when I, when I forget somebody. But, uh, the point, point of all that is, I don't know how you can be in the outdoor space space and not be connected to the conservation. It's this circle, right? You got to keep the circle moving.

Yeah.

And some of these companies don't have to pay the excise taxes like firearm and ammo companies have to pay the 11% excise tax. So a lot of these companies are saying, all right, we're not subject to that tax. How do we do more? How do we do our part even though we don't have to? And some of their competitors choose not Yeah. And I hope that people who are buying product and using product look at who's paying the freight, who's helping out, and they make, they make some decisions accordingly.

Yeah. I had a conversation with Jared Frazier, the executive director of 2% for Conservation, about this very thing and about how the companies that are really doing a good job of giving back and helping to promote conservation efforts and those that Because either they're publicly traded or the parent company that owns them, they're more worried about the bottom line than doing the right thing. And that was pretty interesting.

No, I mean, Jared, that group, I'm glad you brought it up, 2% for Conservation. It's, you know, you give 1% of your money and 1% of your time, and that's where the 2% comes from. And when that was founded, the 3 founding partners are the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Wild Sheep Foundation, and Sitka Gear. And I have very strong relationships with all 3 of them. I'm a big advocate for all of them, and I appreciate what they do. And, you know, from that, I think that was 5 years ago when that started, Jared has grown 2%. We just, here we call it 2% because we're members of it. Yeah, we joined too. Yeah, and he's done amazing things with it. I'm really happy to see it going the direction it is. And people think that 2% takes your 1% of money. They just connect you with conservation groups and say, here's the group, give them your— here's groups that you can do your 1% for. Don't give us the money. People think that they have this big pot of money that 2% is spending. No, they're just connecting companies and people with the organizations that are doing the conservation.

Yeah, they're doing great work. Really appreciate what they're doing over there.

Yeah.

Randy, is there a book or books that have had a major impact on your life?

Oh boy. Yeah, a lot of them. The one in the outdoor space that's had the greatest impact on my life, and I've read it so many times, is the San County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. He came through the ranks of the US Forest Service in the 1920s and '30s, was a professor at the University University of Wisconsin, and he wrote this remarkable book that's still today, I think it got published in the 1940s, and it just is so reflective and so insightful about the impacts human society, even back in that time when there were 160 million Americans instead of 330 million Americans, he's making these astute observations of what we are doing to the landscape and how the geese or the deer or the grouse is paying the price for this. And I read it again this winter and it's like every time I read it, I get more out of it. And you can get it now on Audible, a downloaded book. If you get a chance, if you're into the outdoors or conservation, And just, it's a, it's an easy read. It's only, I don't think, a couple hundred pages, but it's so compelling and it's written in such an easy style to listen to or to read that I've, I find myself reading it and it's like, what have I been doing for the last 45 minutes? And it's, I don't know, that's, that's the book that, and when I first read it in college probably shaped my view of what my role is as an individual and as a member of a collective community, what our role and responsibility is to the wild things and the wild places.

Yeah, no, that's great. That's a great book. Is there a podcast other than your own that you really enjoy?

This is where I'm, Seth, I'm embarrassed to say I don't listen to a lot of podcasts. Yes. And I don't watch a lot of other outdoor video. And here's why. I don't want to feel that other people and their ideas and their view of the world is influencing the messages and the stories I'm trying to tell. I want mine to be authentic and unique. And some people might say, well, that's just a lazy out there, Newberg. And maybe that is, but I I'm not a big consumer of podcasts for that reason. And same with video though. I don't watch a lot of video just because I don't want it to influence the stories I'm trying to tell. Yeah.

No, that's great. I totally get that. Randy, what's one piece of advice that you would give to our audience?

Be uncomfortable. Someday I'm going to do a t-shirt or a bumper sticker that says, uncomfortable is good Or, you know, seek discomfort or whatever. Because I— what I have found in my life, my personal life, my expansion of how I view the world, my physical discomforts that eventually build confidence while I'm out in the wild world, I think being too comfortable is not good for us. I, I think we should have our mind and our our views kind of pushed and stretched a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

I think our bodies need to be pushed and stretched so that we learn from that. Our bodies adapt to that. Our bodies get to the point of, hey, I can deal with this cold, I can deal with this exertion, I can do whatever. And I think our minds are the same way. When usually when I'm uncomfortable mentally, it's because I don't have the knowledge. That I don't have life experiences that gave me the knowledge and insight to be confident, so I end up being uncomfortable. Through that discomfort, that's your mind telling you, "I'm uncomfortable because I don't know." Well, you know a little bit more, and you learn a little bit more. You learn a little bit more, and pretty soon you go from being uncomfortable to being confident and somewhat knowledgeable. And so I try to— when I feel that I'm just on cruise control and life is just too stable, too easy, I go seek some discomfort and it drives my wife nuts. She'll say, you can't leave well enough alone, can you? And that's just me now having reached the point in my life where I worry that if I think I have the answers or that I know everything or that I can do everything, That's a false sense that I've built about myself for my quest for comfort. And so be just, be uncomfortable.

That's really good advice. In a former life, I was the assistant director of admissions for a small liberal arts college.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I was having a conversation one day with the, one of the biology professors. He was like the head of the department. And we were talking about just learning in general. And he said something that really struck me, very, very similar to what you're saying. We only learn when we're getting out of our comfort zone. Because if it's easy, and we're just going through the motions and just taking the information in, but it's not challenging us, or we don't— it's not hard, we're not actually learning anything. We're just confirming what we already believe or know. But it's only when it's hard and difficult and challenging, and getting out of that comfort own, that we're actually learning and growing and expanding.

Yeah, that would— you and he said it a lot better than I did, but I don't know about that. But I just thought yours was very good. It's— I think one of the fulfillments of life is to learn and to expand in what we're capable of and what we're able to understand. And I've never been able to move myself forward by just saying, I got it all figured out here. Don't, don't bother me with that. That makes me uncomfortable. Or, oh, I'm not going to go climb that mountain. That's just too much discomfort. Every one of those times where I've felt I've made progress as a person, physically or mentally, is because I pushed myself to be uncomfortable.

Yeah, that's great. Randy, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for being here today. Where can people find out more about you or follow you online or your time to promote whatever you want to, want to mention here?

Well, I appreciate that. Uh, I'm easy to find. Uh, if you come to Bozeman, just look at the Dairy Queen. I'm usually down at Dairy Queen. Uh, but no, on Instagram and Facebook, it's Randy Newberg Hunter. Uh, not Randy Newberg CPA, Randy Newberg Hunter. Same on YouTube, our YouTube channel. And like you'd mentioned, I do the Hunt Talk radio podcast and the Elk Talk podcast. Those are places to find us. I have a website called randyneuberg.com where that's the easy place to find me. It has vectors taking you to all of our content. And then we're working on some other platforms right now that I'll be excited when I can tell you about those ones.

Yeah, super.

But right now they're not live, so no sense in promoting them. I really appreciate that you'd reach out to me. I was like, really? Why would he have me on the podcast? I'm just like a two-bit hillbilly from Big Falls, Minnesota who lucked out and landed in the best position in the world.

Indeed. And I think there's a lot of people that are going to learn a lot from your words of wisdom and your very infectious positive attitude. So thank you so much for being here today, Randy.

Thank you, Seth. Have a great day. Have a great day.

You too.

Thanks for listening to the Rewild Gear Podcast. You can check out the show notes for today's episode at rewildgearpodcast.com. If you're ready to spend more time in the wild, our line of high-quality, minimalistic outdoor gear can help you do just that. Check us out at rewildgear.com.