BHA Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

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

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

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

A new Congress and new administration bring a wealth of opportunities – and challenges – for those of us who care about America’s public lands and waters. Join Hal for a breakdown of U.S. conservation policy in this conversation with Julia Peebles, BHA’s D.C.-based government relations manager, and John Gale, BHA conservation director. What are the critical issues for BHA and public lands sportsmen and women right now? What policy objectives does BHA have its eye on in 2021…and beyond? Hear from two experts about the trials and travails – and excitement – of working in the fast-paced and ever-changing world of conservation policy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join Hal Herring and BHA President and CEO, Land Tawney, as they sit down with Todd Frank of local gear supplier The Trailhead and Marc Pierce of Highlander Beer to talk Montana history, the launch of BHA’s new beer collaboration and the importance of the Land and Water Conservation Fund to all who hunt, fish and spend time outdoors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back by popular demand: Ron Mills, an outfitter, hunting guide and packer in the Bob Marshall Wilderness since 1959, returns for Round Two in the BHA Podcast & Blast! Ron has authored a new book called Under the Biggest Sky of All, 75 Years on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, a raucous and astoundingly funny account of his adventures as a guide, horseman and packer, farrier and ranch hand in some of the wildest country left on the planet. (Hal wrote the forward to the book, as seen in the spring 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal.) Ron and Hal discuss the book, life in the saddle and in 20 different camps across the Bob, and what it is like to work with a man who turns out to be a coldblooded American serial killer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hal Herring goes to Washington, D.C., to talk with members of Congress about hunting, fishing and public lands and waters. Sen. Michael Bennet (D) of Colorado, Dr. Roger Marshall of Kansas (R), Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico (D) and Sen. Richard Burr (R) of North Carolina meet one-on-one with Hal, zeroing in on the Land and Water Conservation Fund and its importance to public access. BHA Conservation Director John Gale offers additional insights on the LWCF and why it matters to sportsmen and women.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hal talks with hunters Hannah Jean Nikonow and Liza Sautter. 

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

Hal Herring talks with Ron Mills of Mills Wilderness Adventures. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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