#1,067 The Taylor Grazing Act & Cattle in the West with Tim Murphy

0:00I'm just fine, Matt. Thanks for inviting me. I've been looking forward to getting down here to Eagle for quite some time. Well, I, I'm just tickled that you made a down man. Um, you are one of the fishing game commissioners appointed directly by the governor, correct? Correct. You have a huge history with our landscape, with fire management, with, with all kinds of things that led you to be a real area expert, a huge contribution on the commission. But I actually asked you to come on because I, I went on a cattle drive the summer. It was the best time ever, ever. So great. And in going, I was, you know, I always have questions. And the people I was with were explaining, um, you know, essentially sagebrush, um, you know, different stages of it. What eats it? What most things don't eat it. Why, you know, all of these different things. I'm like, wait, who regulates this?

1:04Why don't you guys just burn? Cause I don't know anything. I was like, why don't you just burn the whole thing like you can't burn the whole thing? I was like, why can't you burn the whole thing? So, uh, through all of my dumb questions, somebody starts referencing the Taylor grazing act. Like, what's the Taylor grazing act? They're like, it's the thing that regulates our grazing requirements. And then all of a sudden I start hearing about carrying capacity and they start talking to me about, uh, durations of time that you have to have land that you can take cattle once you go. Like all these different things. I'm like, what? Because again, as an average person, especially one that, for a large portion of my life, didn't know anything about ag or ranching. I, you know, the, the, the fight against ranching and beef and things of that nature was always like, Oh, they abuse land. Oh, it's so bad. It's like, no, man, there are some real checks and balances that exist that I didn't know. Apparently are encapsulated in the Taylor grazing act. I got connected with you and asked you to come on to talk about this. I appreciate it. So listen, man, we both have hot coffee. You have the floor, sir. And you make good coffee by the way, just

2:07for you. Yeah. I appreciate it. Let's walk into the Taylor grazing act briefly, Matt. And then I'd like to pivot just a short period on the Homestead Act because that really set the stage for why we have a Taylor grazing act. And I think we'll understand that in just a bit. So 1934, uh, FDR signed the Taylor grazing act. It effectively ended unregulated use of the public domain. There was a tragedy, the comments that had been accruing, not unusual under any system where there are no rules basically. And I'm exaggerating a little bit, but there was free grazing out there and people were utilizing that. And this is, I'm sorry, in around, all right, what time frame are you talking about? The Taylor grazing act signed in 34, Senator Ed Taylor, heard from his constituents and he also knew from personal experience that, that use, use of the land off the homesteads was causing over grazing. Gotcha. And

3:08there was no fun. There was no funding to do anything about it. So he started formulating this back in, oh, probably 1905, six. Okay. And I'll get into that. Okay. So it ended the unregulated use of the public domain. It aimed at stopping over grazing on the public domain, put a fee system in place. And it effectively ended the homestead era and we'll go back, we'll back into that. It also provided the foundation for what became the Bureau of Land Management some 12 years later in 1946. And I shared with you their first logo. Sure, sure. Yeah. Very interesting. So let's now go into the homesteading act. All I did was tee up the Taylor grays. What it was for ending unregulated use, having a fee system in place, ending over grazing and putting some regulation on how the grazing was to take right. Because we had the American public land that was just being utilized, however, by

4:09people. And that had, understandably, the very basic observation led to very real problems on the public land. Yes. And let's be clear, there were these, these were not outlaws. These were families like your family and my family, who left in many cases, tough conditions somewhere in the country and you know, saw opportunities. This was moving west. And so when there are no rules, the old common saying tragedy in all the comments took place because we're as my granddad would say, he homesteaded it in my grandma at T Pot Dome, Wyoming way back then you would get what you can and can what you get. Because you know, there's no side boards on that. Whatever you can pull in to help your family get by is what was going on. Then there were thousands of people doing that and tragedy in the comments. So homestead act. It wasn't actually called an act, but starting way back Abe Lincoln, he insured, President Lincoln insured that Civil War vets got some land that they could live on and

5:11own and have a patent for. But after that, there were a series of homestead acts, particularly three of them. One, and as they moved west, the acreage got larger. So 160 acres and 320 acres. People were still farming on that. By the time expansion in earnest, there were plenty of people ahead of this. But when lots of folks started coming beyond the hundredth meridian. So just east of Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, semi-arid lands, dry lands, Congress had the stock raising homestead act. And that's what I'm focusing on. And 640 acres was the wreck end about what you need it. And that was right. Sounds like a lot of land, right? It's a square mile. It's a section on a map. When you bring a family out, say, sent, well, where my grandfather homestead, Tee-Pot-Dome Wyoming, very dry, low production, sagebrush grass, really good for livestock. He needed that 640 acres to raise some grass

6:14hay to keep animals through the winter. Milk cow, garden, home. And by the way, the home, the requirement under the law was it could be no smaller than 12 feet by 14 feet. Oh, my God. And I think this studio is 12 by 14. And my grandad's homestead, seeing I've got some old black and white's with my dad and his sister standing out front with a horse, it wasn't much bigger. I'll bet you theirs was maybe 16 by 20. And I know it had a curtain down the middle for privacy. Folks were carving out a new living, a new way of life. And it worked. But as he used to say, you get what you can and can what you get, he would have to graze off that 640 in order to make ends meet. Sure. And it was free. Why wouldn't you? No one's being an outlaw back then. So he would essentially have like what would be understood back then on an area that was designated for him. Yeah. The six of the six 40 you would you would go to the local courthouse. You would file for a homestead that

7:15there was there was a whole form. Well, isn't much of a form like today. You fill out the form. Then you had to build your cabin 12 by 14 minimum. You had to work on the land for five years. You had to that was called proving up. It was a term. So to prove up, build the cabin, work on the land for five years and engage in agriculture. In this case, the stock raising homestead act that land was not suitable. There were no ditches back then. There wasn't a lot of irrigation. So it was it was dry, range land. So that's what they did. And then you you got a you got a patent. See if I want to move on from there. So we proved up. Oh, there were exceptions. Veterans were able to get get the land without the five years. And then there was a preemption clause. I think it was called the preemption clause. And that was if you had the money, you didn't have to wait five years. You could wait six months and pay a dollar and two bits for each acre. A dollar 25 times 640. Imagine the beginning of the 20th century. There were a whole lot of folks with that kind of right

8:19money. But some did. So that's that's kind of a just a little look at the stock raising homestead act. Why 640 and back east it was fewer acres. It progressively got drier and it just made sense to have got more land. Water determined settlement patterns. So where whether it's my granddad or yours or anyone here in the treasure valley, a live stream dependable spring seaps, all determined where people homesteaded. And that settlement pattern is reflected today. You know, look, when you drive to Winamucca on a cold, beautiful winter day or up to Stanley or Macau, where you see the haystacks, where folks feed and cattle, where do you see the elk in the Pronghorn antelope on those bottoms? They're very productive. So but this this rush to get everything done caused that tragedy, the commons and the very individuals who were enjoying the fact that they were able to make a new life for themselves started asking their representatives,

9:20senators and representatives in western states to bring some regulation in. And of course, if you were the first guy on that stream, you're going to want the preference on that stream under the regulation. So that, you know, the tads were grazing sagecrick for a couple of years before the Taylor Grace, excuse me, before the homestead act. And it already made a nice life for themselves. They didn't live in a tiny cabin, but they're getting by and their herds growing. One day, horse rides up to the new Murphy place. They just got there a year before filed for homestead. Murph, those are your cows north of Vermillion Creek? Yeah. Well, we've been grazing there for four years now. We have a preference. You don't have any right to be there. Now, of course, by law or regulation, there were no rights. It was sure. It was first in time people interpreted it first and right. It's not like water law. In fact, then there just were no regulations. So you're you're pushing for some regulation. You're going to your congressman. And you're hoping

10:22that when those regs come out, your preference gets recognized. And I'll get to that in a few minutes. Come, come back to the mic, Tim. You're going out here like you're trying to be anywhere. Butterfly. Okay. And you can take it with you wherever you go. Just you're good. Okay. So the people that were there recognized immediately like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's got to be something. We got to get some kind of formal agreement or regulation. Yes. Yes. And for the most part, people respected their neighbors. There were taffy pulls amongst neighbors. Like the one I just described, you knocked on my door, your dad, your granddad, knocked on my granddad's door. In most cases, that was worked out because there was enough land. Okay. I'll go west to Salt Creek. And you stay north of Vermillion Creek. And that worked out. There were taffy pulls that never ended. There was worse than that. There were some range wars in the west and all that boiled up to looking towards the Taylor grazing act. I do want to stay say before I totally leave the homestead

11:24that I think it's important to say that the homesteading era, a lot of folks benefited. I just used a euphemism, the Todd family and the Murphy family. But it impacted Native American lands. Great. It accelerated disposition and fragmentation of tribal lands, privatization of ancestral territory. I realize that's all history now. I'm not trying to grind on that. I just believe when we talk history of Western expansion, homesteading, Taylor grays to today, we need to recognize that our neighbors, tribal neighbors, there was a lot of disposition of lands back that. To that point, that portrait is Chief Bocahtello, made by none other than our Tallah Samson, who was on the Hat Committee. And he painted that. He's an incredible artist and brought me, crout me. Could you believe that? He's kind of painter and makes it look like a photograph. That's pretty darn it. It's incredible.

12:28He gave me that. And I put it up and I look at it every single day. There's this problem with the history of your recounting. We need to acknowledge people were moving west into other people's backyards. And Chief Bocahtello, in particular, when you do research on him, you find out that he was one of the key and very famous Chiefs that was advocating for communication. Obviously, there were conflicts and violent conflicts. And that was not great. But he even to his end, where he ended up dying on a reservation, was still advocating for people, communicating like people, trying to work this out. And he passed away in the late 1800s. And then you cut to the existing infrastructure and lineage that you know, the Western, western expansion led to today. And then I arrived. Right. And we're sitting in dry creek ranch, which used to be a ranch. And when Governor Little

13:34came in and didn't interview in 24 years, like I used to run sheep or my family would run sheep over this exact ground. And there's just this, there's this difficult thing where it's like this never ending turn and turnover and change of human beings. And we can segregate each other, saying like, hey, Native American versus European American or Western expansion. Right. We can segregate further Idaho, inverse X California. Or will I ever be an Idaho or will I always be a california like we can keep going. But it's it's it's not a new discussion. It's not a new argument. We're I'm not going to be the last person to ever move here. I'm not going to be the last person to feel like things have changed since I moved here, which they have. Downtown Eagle looks totally different than when I moved here, you know, to or scheme before and a half years ago, right. It's astonishing. It's just such. And I'm aware that I am part of the, you know, this large treadmill of problem, right. Because it's always a problem.

14:39Like when anything changes, it's a problem for someone. And I'm part of the problem like I'm sure if I didn't move here, you know, maybe this place wouldn't be a ranch still or, you know, things would be more affordable for people that were here. You know, all these, it's just it's such a knot that there's no real solution. Right. You and I were not involved in the Westward expansion. We did not displace Native Americans. You were born into this. I was born where I was born. I didn't ask to be born there. You didn't ask to be born here. And here we are still trying to reconcile and deal with the ever changing landscape that we're experiencing. It's it's just such it's almost like it's the never ending human story. Yeah. As as we evolve and try to mend and I will, you know, the development where we're sitting right here is pretty high density. What I do like though is it's in it's in very close proximity to downtown PoiCe when you think about it and look from an aerial map. And that's good. Trying to fill in an area that's already fragmented. If it's already fragmented and I don't

15:42mean fragmentation is a big negative. I mean, you know wildlife habitat. If that is what it is, then filling it in makes total sense and having walkable places like this that you can go and see neighbors and get business done versus going out to what I talked about earlier. Those early homesteads that are now still far from downtown Boise and fragmenting that then we all lose because those are the sinew that those lands are the sinew that really connect wildlife corridors and movement of air and water quality and all that. Lastly on the on the tribal note, a couple times it happened twice. So folks with homestead there were there were native tribal folks that were displaced. And where they were displaced to got displaced again in a couple instances because more land was needed for more homesteading. Or gold was found. Yes, a lot of they're like, hey guys go over there and they're like, we don't want to go over there but like we don't want to get into a war. Okay, we'll go over there and we take the tribe over there and then they find

16:44something in the area they stuck us that they really want and then they invade again. So thank you. Thank you for providing that time because if we're going to talk Taylor Graze and homesteading there's a piece of history that's very important. That's our tribal neighbors. I believe in Idaho particularly the word neighbor in Idaho is a verb. And to this day I see it and we need to just need to roll per sleeves and always work on it. Where those neighbors you and me live in a couple counties apart or our tribal neighbors and just try to work together. I believe BLM still works with the Shopai on the wings and roots meetings and those are meetings formal slash informal where once a month we would meet with the Shoshone Pai leadership. And it was an exchange of here's what's going on in BLM, here's what's contemplated and then we would hear from the tribes from their perspective what they thought about that. And it caused no

17:44little adjustments sometimes. A lot of the information was not available on books because they don't want it on books. It was private to that tribe but they would let us know maybe you should move this development by development. I mean a pipeline or a power line being approved. And great respect evolved from that. And that's when I say neighbors a verb that's an example the wings and roots of working like neighbors. Yeah. I've had a chairman Mason from the Shopai has come on the show before and I've hung out with him multiple times. No Brian Mason. Brian Mason. Yeah. He's a man. He's got every time I you know our time is done. It's like I have so many more questions. Yeah. You know anyway, start interrupting that. That's that's quite all right. Okay. So Taylor grazing act and we teed it up Matt where we had the strategy the comments going senators like Senator Ed Taylor is from the East slope of Colorado. He heard it big time. He got it. And the tragedy aside from

18:47neighbors bumping heads about who was there first you also have over grazing over so you have a ever growing concentration of people trying to graze a limited amount of land. And everybody trying to get the most possible that they can get out of that land. And because some of the areas yes might be homestead areas but some of the areas were just these wild areas are like listen. Just I mean it's there for the taking either either my cow eats it or his cow eats it damn it. I'm getting my cow there first or whoever I was raised. So you had this ever increasing pressure and demand on an existing landscape that was like what what the heck is happening and no regulation or or whatever and because there was no regulations like look if I don't take the dollar off the ground someone else is going to take it so I might as well take it. And that led to the a frenetic kind of push that led to over grazing and problems within the landscape. And these were no easy going landscapes to carve out a living starting from scratch showing up with a family and trying to go so of course you went out and got the resources that you could and it was not illegal I always

19:49want to underscore that there were no rules back then. An item just hit me and I forgot it excuse me um let's see here. I'm sorry in a repressor the tragedy the commons kind of hit hit word and Senator Taylor started realizing hey there's a real problem brewing in the west with these unregulated lands ever increasing populations ever increasing pressure and this is not good it's not good for people and it's certainly not good and it's in addition to the grass neighbors having some diffugalties yeah happy pulls also there were places many of them have died now but when I heard stories from the oldest ones of my childhood and through the university Wyoming where I went to school there were places throughout the homesteading west where when you walked out into the range it was very quiet the tragedy the commons didn't just deal with grass and forbs and grazing matter

20:54had to do with wildlife people needed a deer there were also commodities production of deer feeding minors things like that so without rules can you imagine it's not just over grazing on grass there's over harvest on animals I don't really have a picture of that but I can show you numbers but I remember those stories a lot of times would be very quiet out there and you know you obviously had problems with beaver populations that you know where the fur trade was an enormous thing and but you also had market hunting right where it's like people I mean sure you had all kinds of taxate taxation on resources as people just came into this area they're like wow well but why not just take it so they did and so starting about I don't know 19 five through eight senator Taylor really had an an eye on this thing he pushed it 1910 he was getting traction and then 1910 a couple of things one it was the peak of a drought on the from from the Rocky Mountain front all the way to the west coast huge drought we know that night I hope because we all know about the 1910

21:59the big burn fire yeah and or that was an artifact of several years of drought and I didn't know that and yes and and but it was all over the west so between between drought low productivity on the ground and commodity prices have had dove Ed didn't shelve it but he kind of calm down this is senator ed Taylor took some years and in the mid to late 20s he resurfaced it again resurfaced when I say by it I mean the the idea that we really need to have regulation on on the range then in 1934 he got it across the line FDR signed the bill and although it took 10 years and 10 years took 15 years or so to do that implementation was far more logistically and operationally difficult and I'll get to that and I think it's also not not the same thing but I think here in Idaho when senator Simpson got the Boulder White clouds Hemingway wilderness passed I think

23:01that was at least a 10 year effort of his you know and it's all about timing and the times and what people want to listen to and he had some really good draft legislation early on and several factors beyond anyone's control happened he he put it to the side brought it back kept it going out they're talking to people very similar implementation listening to people and building a draft piece of legislation that that fits the times and fits what people are looking for and fits the ground okay so he got it across the line implementations a kind of a story of western pragmatism I can't think of a better way to encapsulate it so he from FDR Senator Taylor they gave the assignment to secretary Harold Icky's he was the secretary interior at the time say make it happen so Icky's reached out and found this fellow on the west loppa Colorado he and Senator Taylor found him

24:01Farrington Carpenter went by fairy Carpenter he's a ranchers a lawyer he got it he was living in that right he was on a homestay and so he he took the assignment the assignment was you're the first director of what became the grazing service I think they called it the grazing district but it was the grazing service back then he was glad to take it on very quickly he found out how difficult it was going to be one he was given no budget by congress here's this with nothing he was given 11 employees the 11 employees were all borrowed from agencies ranging from the USGS to the FBI really and they're on loan and they did not have a background in this there was no budget he had borrowed employees there were no credible surveys of the land as far as what's the juxtaposition and the the layout of where the homesteads are and and where grazing was taking place and what what class of livestock number season of use there was no information inventory or surveys or maps

25:02yeah there were crude maps but it didn't show the information that would be needed to implement the Taylor grazing act so when I said it was a kind of a story of western pragmatism fairy Carpenter Carpenter he he decided to put aside looking for surveys and inventories because they're talking years to get that time so he went right to work he took his employees in himself and he held town hall meetings town by town by town he got a boost when he was in mild city where I was a BLM district manager for some years that's where the tongue river meets the Yellowstone River so that greater country down to the northern Cheyenne Crow and Wyoming border crow agency and he met the Metz Pa pumpkin Crick grazing association there was no other grazing association this was serendipity these men and women were having the same taffy pulls that I used the analogy of the Todd family the same ones but some magic happened and they figured it out they got together

26:03they had their own meetings I don't know schools wherever people's houses and said you know the the Todd's have been grazing between Vermillion and Salt Crick we all know that let's let's just call that a preference area that term started being used and there were there were struggles well now he didn't graze all the way to to Salt Crick we know that and they worked it out they were a community and they worked it out they also worked out some in common grazing areas where there'd be more than one family running and that was all acceptable when it was acceptable then they agreed on that they draw the boundaries and they voluntarily established a rule set they did and they did no keyboards back in those days no keyboard warrior no texting no texting we're meeting we're meeting a Todd's place you had but you had to go to the church you got to go to the school building school room and just be an honest person and now you know this was a culture where not all pending on how far they were away but many helped with each other's brandings they were there

27:04for each other's marriages they were there to help one another so although there were taffy pulls and disagreements they worked it out at Taylor interviewed and saw how that worked got a good idea that was his template so his town hall meetings followed suit they'd bring oil skin maps or you know canvas maps and grease pencils literally and and have those interviews the same thing and people would give testimony of where they were grazing their neighbors are in the room so there were checks and balances you know if you're trying brides full that yeah yeah yeah and I'm sure there were some I'm sure some of them were hot I don't have examples but and some of them were easier it just all depended and then he set up grazing districts larger areas let's say at an area the size of south west Idaho and within those were these allotments where there was the Smith allotment and the Jones allotment the Todd and the Murphy and those lines were drawn and it was respected he then working back through senator ed Taylor they put in a grazing fee a Taylor understood that

28:12how tenuous it took him up to 15 years even get it and then trying to implement an act with no budget at all other than loaned people and and the goodwill of fairy carpenter they set the grazing fee very low to start there was a lot of change going on you can imagine at the time and that was five cents an animal unit month an animal unit month is a cow and her calf or five sheep or horse for a month the amount of forage that they consume five cents and I think it was about somewhere between nine and eleven years later it went to six cents and now it's higher but and I hope we get into that discussion as well so in the funds the the the necessity for these funds was essentially one we can't just borrow people indefinitely and I have to assume two in the absence of a way to enforce the the rules that everybody agreed to you effectively have no rules that's

29:13so we need a free for all right and and you see this this was a beautiful example that I learned years ago about big game in Africa like drafts okay we love drafts we don't want to kill drafts we don't want poachers killing drafts damn poachers right fine and to protect drafts we got to kill a couple because what you do funding funding if you're like all right look we need five million to actually have enforcement to prevent poachers from coming in so what we're going to do is we're going to sell five draft tags we got enough drafts we can lose five of them we're going to sell five draft tags for a million bucks each now again you might say equity blah blah I don't care about that we're in Africa I'm trying to preserve a big game we're going to sell at least five tags now people get mad at that even though it's like okay now we have our five million dollars now we have enforcement now we have people that are out there stopping poachers okay fine and people might say you shouldn't kill any kills zero drafts you should give out zero drafts that's fine too now

30:13we we generate zero dollars and we have the hey don't go poach laws but guess what no enforcement now we have no enforcement so now the poachers have free reign and they go out and they do all these terrible things so you have to drive some manner of revenue to have an enforcement mechanism to preserve the integrity of the rules got it many parts of Africa have that model and it really works well for them it's brought many species back from the edge of extinction and we've all seen those how counterintuitive it's like there are only a hundred of these left kill one of them kill one of them get ten million dollars so you know and you know like you don't want to lose the rhino but you also want like each of those other ninety nine now get an individual dude with with a gun tracking them 24 hours a day so nobody can get them that you know that's that's a that's a tough road to hoe their wildlife management I've got some some incredible poverty you know and that the drive to take that natural resource and turn it into money I can understand it's quite

31:14difficult like it yeah but I get that people are trying to feed themselves so that model works for them and we have a you know we have a the North American model here we have a different one in it church works for us um anyway back to you you start out at five dollars and five five cents an animal excuse me five cents and animal in the month 50% would go to the treasury 50% returned to the land to start as you know get get this funding in place now that that has increased come but if you're going to say Mike to you you you don't have to come forward just take it with you wherever you go it's it's it's great it's like a backpack okay keep going let's see um so that Matt that that covers the intro the Taylor the homestead act and what led to this this push why we want the very agency that was part of the tragedy the commons came forward and said we want to see regulation on the ground because not only not only for the conservation of the ground which

32:14we're there interested in but the stability of the industry that was dependent on that public domain that was another driver the Taylor grazing act to stabilize the industry dependent you cannot have a stable industry under a tragedy the commons it just won't go and so fast forward to today we not only have that um I am not a businessman or a bank or certainly but when you have a stable ranching operation with a 10-year grazing permit that doesn't mean it's guaranteed it's a preference to graze and get off reauthorized every year but that is that is a document that you can bring and get loans and all this helps to stabilize the industry so uh Taylor was very successful fairington carpenter pulled it off his pragmatism town by town he took the blueprint from the mitspa pumpkin creek grazing association which by the way is an aside uh my family we live there for a short period when i was the mild city district manager for BLM right where the pumpkin creek came

33:17into the tongue river and that was the center of this grazing association and of course i'd read about it when i was at university of Wyoming never thought i'd see the land so every morning i woke up i was right there it's kind of where the template for the Taylor grazing act took place it i probably boring for most people but it it was interesting for me i love that i love that man um okay so again stability of the industry dependent on those public lands or right public domain and conservation preservation of this natural resource this is the piece and again i know nothing about the Taylor grazing act but this is the piece that really sparked my interest immediately when they're like no no no there are limits to how many animals you can run there are requirements that you can only go for a certain amount of time there are checks and balances if you're abusing that limit or if you're doing something damaging to land you can have your lease terminated you have to have local land where the animals can go at some point so that prevents you know like

34:23out of state people or whatever just from gobbling up all of the all of the the leases right um all of these things were baked into the Taylor grazing act in order to maintain the value of this public resource that is being leased out and again multi-use so you want to go hike find go hike whatever but it's being leased out to private individuals but they don't just get to abuse the hell off they don't get to do whatever they want they have to maintain a certain level of of integrity with their operations that leaves the resource intact that's correct no that's correct and the BLM in 19 always forget a lot of my numbers is 78 the BLM came forward through the federal policy and management at flippant federal land policy management act and one of the highlights in that act was secretary you shall go out and inventory those lands that you're managing and and inventory those lands I was one of those early folks when I got out of college

35:24um we did inventories not only the diversity of plant life but what was the production of that what could it sustain in the way of wildlife could it sustain in the way of sharing that with livestock and others so when you said you were given a permit there actually it's a 10 year grazing permit establishes the number the kind of livestock and the season to use and then every year it's reauthorized although you have a permit that's not guaranteed you got to stay in good graces every year it's re it's it's reissued by paying a bill and getting that preference re-upped every single year it's science-based enterprise there were a range conservationist biologist soil scientists others out there doing inventories are they are they ever up to date hardly because like always this is vast federal lands and the agencies have never been funding and I'm not necessarily lobbying to see them funded at 100 percent but there's always a lag there but I think the point is and you made it is it's science-based and and and adjustments can be made and we're make there I'm sure there'll be

36:30adjustments uh through time fires you know fires and it's anticipated but year to year we hope it doesn't happen when it happens adjustments need to be made in the short term and this is one of those things um and you know as you're talking about this is that and as I've learned more about what fishing game does and you know that's not necessarily the topic of today but I had a friend who was bemoaning the federal government spending and tax structures and grant structure he's like you go out you you work your whole adult life he was kind of this financial mentor mine he's like 60 something he's like I work my whole life pay all these taxes and then I find out the entirety of the sum of taxes that I paid got fired off in some grant to somebody somewhere tracking some butterfly and he's like this he's like what are we doing what are we doing with this money right and he's kind of going off and you know we were drinking beers at the time and I was like kind of laughing at him but man the more I've learned about something as seemingly as an

37:34oculus is like one type of butterfly or one type of insect or one type of this or one type of that and then understanding it's like listen that thing that thing actually affects this thing over here which affects this thing over here which and all the way down the line if this thing goes that thing over there that you really care about that could be a really bad thing and at the heart of this you do need field workers you do need the biologist you do need conservation officers figuring out okay we need to get as scientific and technical and and data rich as possible with this so we can make the best possible policy for boots on the ground to sustainability with us and although you may not understand why we're following the butterfly I promise you you want to stake on your table and and whenever possible know know that hear that sounding years before significant action is needed so you're not abruptly writing a change I mean any business would want to know a trend that's happening as early as possible so they can skate

38:38to where the puck's going to be and not at the last minute try to get there right right so these non-game species whether it's a butterfly burrowing out any kind of invertebrate to find funding to help see those trends early in the process and then connecting the dots what does that mean what does that mean to pronghorn antelope what's it mean to elk what's it mean you name it having that early allows the agency department of fish and game to get in position and curtail problems inhabit that early on it's the kind of money that not like the person you were talking to instinctually why butterfly or why burrowing out why this why would you're able to preclude I'm not going to go and say catastrophic that would be if you just ignored everything all the time but sure but preclude a downward trend in other species that's a good investment of money and how about this the the spotted hour okay nobody saying that the spotted hour then deserve to

39:41have a spot on the planet right spotted out endangered species great and there was some study saying hey why is the spot all out is spotted out going away and there were some people that came up with the answer okay we think it's habitat degradation or elimination okay and then they make policy okay but turns out the barred owl is the thing that actually was driving down the spotted owls populations and then the ramifications of the policy around habitat degradation and elimination had you know those had significant effects on our on our timber industry and all these other things so it's not that it's not that the people that came up with the habitat idea were wrong it's that they had insufficient or imperfect data that was then resolved by other people that figured it out and that's not to say they should have had twice as much money and they would have got it right correct correct the first time but it's also to acknowledge like listen this is all really complex and it's not as easy as just saying cut down the trees maybe you needed more more

40:45and better research maybe they were pressed for time they're like okay well we think our best guess is this or the data is pointing towards this but we don't know for you I don't know but the point is that there are things that do actually require conservationists and biologists and people out I was I was out at the black uh black foot uh come on wildlife management area right out near Poca Tello and we're doing a show on this you know deck of you know this old sheep her cabin by the way no mosquitoes out there why because I have sparrows everywhere it was a wildest thing like there there are a lot of birds flying around there I've got I've got eight swift next swift nests around my house that I I built and put in there because when the night crews done the bats are done yeah the day crew shows up the swifts and and it is reduced the mosquitoes and everything else I I literally came home and I was like huh we got to build bird houses everywhere everywhere but again you you go out there and it's amazing that they're like yeah and we we're not getting bit by

41:45anything he's like you walk a mile that way there aren't we don't have all the sparrow bird nests he's like you're gonna get bit by bucks like you better have some kind of spray but you go out there and you know do all this work go see the management area and you know askin and habitat restoration and at the end the the you know fishing game guys that were hanging out with their like all right we got to go do we got to go do a survey where like put the kayaks in the back like you're getting on kayaks like what it was a beautiful day I'm like I want to go kayaking they're like yeah we're taking we have to get this data off of this thing for this other thing and they're like we have to actually physically go out into the water and survey this all I hear is kayak on the river I think that's great but they're like without this data we will have an imperfect picture of what's going on there thank you for bringing up the non-game species I as a fishing game commissioner I'm very supportive of of that programs for for a variety of reasons species diversity also as I said the canary and the coal mine type thing what what signals are we getting from using some funding and some very smart staff to determine those trends early before we have to probably

42:47spend more money than we would have had otherwise if we didn't have those signals are you just before one more thing are you familiar with the the vulture crisis in India I'm not oh my so I had Chris Perishon from the Peregrine fund okay comes in tells me the story about vultures in India I was like how are you saying right now so this is the story is like listen India has they they have large carrying piles right and it might be you know they treat their bovine friends very differently than we treat them like they die whatever and when they die they're not consumed they go out to like these large piles and they very much enjoy their bovine friends and because of that they don't want the stuff so they would give them a certain type of medicine when they got sick to keep them you know like like we might give our our you know dogs right take my dog to the vet the vet it's like hey you got kennel cough or something go ahead and feed him this whatever so they treat the animals with this then the animals die eventually and they you know get discarded these piles they don't consume them vultures would come down vultures would come down

43:51and eat the dead carry it as as you would expect for you to problem is the medicine they were giving the cows started killing these giant flocks of vultures okay now you might say all right I really like vultures anyway they look kind of goofy and now you've eliminated the cleanup crew and you have disease problems I'm guessing yes because what happened when the vultures went away well the wild dogs came in wow dogs had fleas and they had rabies and they had all of these other diseases all of a sudden India spending billions of dollars on these diseases that are being driven by these cleanup crews because they the vultures died off because of this damn medicine they gave the cows right so of course they figured this out through study and biologists and like oh my god all right get rid of that medicine they find a different medicine vultures come back all the disease goes away but it was understanding that relationship between the cows the medicine the vultures the dogs

44:51the disease and then reverse engineering that if they had known ahead of time and said okay we can take care of this point the suffering of these animals that we don't want to suffer these cows that we are sacred to us if they had understand okay but what happens downstream they wouldn't have had these billions and billions of dollars and human suffering that went out because of the disease and then have to reengineer it so yes again back to your point yeah is it did India implode no it's not catastrophic it's not like they all the cows died or all the people died but man the amount of turmoil and suffering and money that was spent because they didn't understand the downstream effects was very significant good that's a good one to cover yeah and again I'll underscore I likely spend most of my time as a commissioner on game species right but I I work very hard to ensure that I'm spending strategic time and focus time on our non-game species for the reasons we just covered right it's really important that the India examples is a good one right to be

45:55informed on that maybe we could pivot since we came up to date on the Taylor grazing act well before we go there the the the the grazing service in the land office so after during the home stedding there was one agency out there and that was the grazing service excuse me excuse me the land office and and their job was to have a land office in not every county but some court houses you know all right guy with a little shade deal and he's he's getting the filings it was really no one out there managing and then fast forward in 1946 the BLM was created by putting the grazing service in the land office together and now they were they were really given no mission at that time they had three thousand acts from 1872 mining law to to now Taylor grazing act and other things to manage and they they figured out how to manage it but there really was no coherent direction from Congress in 1946 wasn't until the mid-70s under federal policy management act

47:02that the BLM got some mission and we talked about the grazing permits and the preference in the annual fees the grazing fees over my career you know I've certainly heard debates lots of debates some very heated on the federal grazing fee this year my memories correct it gets shorter every year I get older it's a dollar 69 in animal unit month so that's a cow her calf five sheep or a horse so from zero to five cents to what it is dollar 69 in Idaho my numbers are sometimes a couple years old because I'm as a commissioner I'm not keeping up on BLM grazing but I'm going to say with pretty much confidence that it's somewhere between eight the average range 18 to 24 some less than that some greater per cow per month on private land got okay so both so public dollar 69 and average on private for an animal unit month is between 18 and 24 okay 18 to 24 and some higher

48:07and some lower but I'm at that's the average range that that I knew some some several years ago so roughly 12 times as much on private yeah and so it's it's understandable that people say why is it so low there's there's lots of good research from the university Wyoming University Idaho here Neil Rimbuy ag economist can it's all peer reviewed you can look at it but what doesn't show up when you have those two bottom lines is the non fee costs so when when you you and a non fee cost is something that's included in the 18 to 20 dollar yes that is not included very representative so when you pay that the the the person owning that that pasture and that private range land is providing not only the water they have a water right the pipeline repairing the pipeline keeping water in the tanks fences fences break I'll go through them whatever happens your apartment's getting maintained there on the public landside you're paying

49:13the dollar 69 and there's lot and and I'd I'd encourage your viewers who who are hearing this saying I don't believe that to it's very easy to find the research and they'll be I'll make it real simple because I like the columns that there's one column that is private grays and I just told you what the average is there and then there's a column that's the federal grazing and the lines are very clear the non fee costs for items like fence maintenance loss cattle salt placement labor are so much higher under BLM that's not a bad thing it's it's what it takes to run that ground and those same things are happening on private ground but they're in they're embedded into that that monthly or annual lease that the private individuals charging that's embedded in there where with BLM it's only charging for the AUMs as a nominal fee and then permatee the term for the

50:13the ranch that's using that grazing allotment that preference they're responsible for all that maintenance in there and you know anyone who's driven ridden hiked out in the Ys knows fix and fence in that country is going to be a lot more expensive than doing it in a pasture anywhere else a bottom pasture so when you add all that up the bottom line on those two columns come within a buck or two of each other so if we're going to have a debate or an argument I think it's important that we we count up all the factors and not just say $16 I's way lower than $18 well of course it is but but let's really take a look at what the business is spend on both sides of the ledger and it's it's almost identical um the one one thing I don't know how you would manage to quantify this in dollar values but I would have to imagine if you're doing private grazing you're paying your 18 to 20 dollars an hour you're and let's say I'm paying you I got my you know heard and you you're like yep come on

51:16give me 19 bucks you know animal you whatever I look at you I'm like all right but you're not going to have dudes on like Polaris is driving through here either right I'm like let's you know like the multi use aspect of it it's like what is the value of having land that is both being used to graze and I can go hiking I can go do whatever well in the market figures that out you know and and not all private land is the same I'm sure there are private land less sores that are taking perfect care of the water in the fences and others not so much we've all rented houses right growing up there's sure it's not all the same but the market figures out what that's worth that's why I say the range the average range you know 18 to 24 there's there's different we could think about I hope you'll entertain this analogy it's but it's kind of like like renting a unearned furnished house where there is no door or the door is unlocked that's better put your shirt on furnished home

52:17the door is unlocked or a furnished home where you're the only one with a key to that door uh neither one is good or bad but they both are gonna drive different markets uh and that's that's part I think what you just you know listen your analogy is fine but I think you should go more like this you're renting an unearned furnished home with no door you have to bring your own water and if the roof leaks that's on you my guy now guess what this bargain basement little drafty little drafty gonna be paying the ass but if your budget oriented and you can put the little sweat equity into it by the way you'll never own it you're putting sweat equity to maintain just so whatever yes but that's I'm all for come on in baby compared to nice apartment right same square footage roof definitely works if there's ever a problem with it you just let me know beautiful door beautiful door with a deadbolt and at one of the rattly chain things so you can see who's got like the whole bit it was like that you you not only have you not only have water you got a nice maker she got a nice maker because you didn't have to bring your own appliances I

53:19got a top notch appliance set you are far better at illustrating the difference on that analogy than I am Matt uh however those are some of the like it goes granular down to details like that right and and to and to be fair we talked about the private market for private grays and and there's a range there's a range because what the market will bear for the conditions for how well the owner takes care of the land and all that on the public land side we have range managed by the Bureau of Land and management the public land that varies greatly too so I have to think and this is a future deal this is should we have a uniform grazing fee on the federal land there are some pastures in eastern Montana I'll just make up areas in eastern Montana that are so far different than let's say southwest New Mexico all BLM but the conditions on the ground the availability of water the uncertainty of whether water is going to be flowing in a spring or not I mean just different

54:23climatic factors seems like that would drive a different market too but yet we have one we have one grazing fee for the entire western United States we're on the private market side it varies on what the market will bear so I would love to see or I'd volunteer to jump on a crew that would take a look at what should the floor be there needs to be a fair floor for the taxpayer but then what are the what are the conditions that would change that just something to think about that I want to jump on that crew too let's go let's go got to New Mexico because they would have to be something as big as is like what is the caring like what are the calories produced right availability of land son like proximity to anything right like you have all of these different things that would determine what the actual value would be some areas of our west it takes a lot more labor to run the same number of AUM so let's let's go apples to apples you know 100 AUM's takes more

55:25labor in this area than that area because changes into Pography distance from water things like that so I think in the future that would be a fantastic thing to look at and um let's see I wanted to go somewhere else here too um oh he's back and that you know to excuse me I just turned 70 it's good right he must moisturize okay so I don't if you've heard it but coming up through BLM I've certainly heard it is the welfare rancher thing you know this sub it's a subsidy right I think I just laid out a really good example where there really isn't a subsidy people that column that's the federal grazing has non fee costs and they're substantial and they they add to the bottom line for that ranching operation what do you know it comes almost equal to the private so

56:26I don't buy that um but I have to ask a question I think it's a very important question it's certainly contemporary what use out there on the public domain is not subsidized is recreation subsidized when when you bring your mountain bike out motorcycle side-by-side fences have to be maintained gates have to be maintained roads have to be plated a why-y county is a really good example yeah where there's an economic burden on a rural county this is all good stuff I am so glad that people are getting out onto the public land you know we we talked earlier before the show on the last child in the woods and I want to see moms and dads out there with their young kids and exploring all that but but there's a there's an economic burden to these rural counties because you know you leave the treasure valley on Friday night

57:26get a jump on it or maybe Saturday morning a lot of folks most are packing their own lunch they've already got their tank filled um they're using the roads in a why-y county they're not buying gas there I'm not saying everybody but that's a trend they're not buying fuel there they're not buying lunches there but they're utilizing the public land and enjoying it as they should those roads get used more gates get left open cowter guards need pulled um oh trash receptacles need emptied cost money someone's got to do that there's a lot more search and rescue going on now than 20 years ago and in a why-y county you know I've gotten hurt on the public land you get hurt and you call well there's a deputy that has to respond to that thing thinking more deputies all that so there's there's a service burden when recreation takes place on the public land as well not only to the BLM but to the counties that surround that and that's a subsidy I'm not I'm not dissing it or putting it down that's a fact in our country but these are the kind of conversations I hope to lead to where we

58:31can have some blue ribbon tasks forces to ask how can we remedy this we don't want to gouges maybe they want to take money but I don't want to see money taken away from a family barely put gas in their tank and now they can't get to a why-y county and have that last child in the woods out there there's got to be an intermediary we need to be able to take care of the land fund it help counties with the service burdens that they're receiving from weekend recreation or other recreation there's got to be a way and I think in there you can go back to Taylor Grace why why did Senator Taylor start with five cents because nothing existed and he wanted to be able to show that we can start accruing some revenue without hurting a business learn how to do that and then start increasing it right so yeah you don't hear the phrase welfare recreation when somebody's talking about mountain biking or trail running you don't you you know problems in areas like rigans if I'd you know councilman Roy Ackins on the on the show before sure I mean sure fantastic examples of people

59:35that are literally across the river they don't want to walk a mile to get to like the crossing and they call for a helicopter well that okay and I mean talk about trash people coming off the river from recreating and spending time and you know like somebody's got to take that trash out and it falls on the people in that area Murphy actually is my favorite place to go lizard catching good yeah down in the white you bring your children oh yeah oh yeah big fat but yeah I mean rabbit creek road down Murphy and we go down there you know in the summertime and we go down early and it's it's fantastic yeah third cattle guard park on the left just hit the trail on the right and you know you go down to the river area and we're chasing you know jack rabbits all of the all of the area it's it's fantastic but again exactly to your point I go down there I didn't I don't know that I've ever bought gas down there you know I haven't paid a tax to drive on those roads I haven't done anything yet on the benefactor it's it's not my idea it's been kicked around but

1:00:40I can't let go of it I've been talking to anyone who will listen for 10 years uh common term is a backpack tax before your viewers attacks let me explain this um listen you want the drafts around or not okay Ari I could could front a penny per back that I would be a view okay that would be a few coming over the mountain scene to drive so back in the 30s there were two acts that were passed we're talking about Senator at table or Taylor having a template from the Mitzpah Pumpkin Creek Raising Association to do this good work here's a template for you Pitman Robertson and Dingle Johnson those are two acts the Pitman Robertson has to do with terrestrial wildlife that Dingle Johnson has to do with fisheries and these acts have been in place since the 30s what they do is every on the wildlife side every bullet every rifle every rifle sling

1:01:41anything directly related to that has an excise tax upstream same thing with fish and line a fish and router a hook at the point of manufacture so maybe that hook was made three years ago at the point of manufacture there's a small excise tax and I have some information I'll leave with you on that it accrues to about 25 million dollars a year for Idaho every year it's aggregated from the whole country every fish and hook every bullet and then there's a formula that distributes it to the states fishing game in the states gets about 20 I'm pretty sure I'm right yeah sure your viewers are correct correct is if I'm wrong and and that offsets the burden of being able to be and the capability of being able to manage okay what if every trekking pole I can boot back pack Gore-Tex jacket I have all that you do too I'm sure how does excise tax we're talking decimal dust this is at the point of manufacture but when it accrues and this stuff aggregates in a nation

1:02:46it's a lot of money and when you go to the cash register and I buy my fish and rod or my ammo for dear season I'm not really thinking about that tax in fact when you have some hunters on or anglers ask them about it our hunters in this state are very proud of the pitman Roberts and Dingo Johnson because they know they are paying through their sports helping for the management of game in the state and fisheries in the state we can do the same thing with recreation without hurting people without having it so it's onerous and now I can't afford gas or my tank we're talking very small amounts at the point of manufacture I don't believe the formula should be to provide that money to the federal government I don't believe that money should be provided to the state government this is just my perspective and there's a lot smarter people on economics and marketing than I market management than I have there's just an idea I preface this by the service burden on rural counties and I used a Y County as an example it could

1:03:48be Lem high County and I believe there could be a formula that could be very elegant and easy to see where counties in the country whether it's Florida to Alaska that have the greatest burden of public lands and I'm not saying public lands are a burden I'm saying the use there yes yes and and the county needs it second deputy or a third and needs to pull you know needs to grave roads helicopter and boat and the whole thing there could be a fight so that money then goes to the counties to relieve that service burden and what happens better service to you when you go down with your boys the roads are the roads are bladed there's a deputy God forbid somebody gets hurt that's a that's a user fee isn't that wonderful the folks that are using that land are found a way to fund the needs out there and we already have a template that's been in effect since the 30s and it works perfectly there's there's monitoring and an evaluation of I don't know if

1:04:49it's every year but it's every couple years of every fish and game outfit in this country to ensure there's not diversion of funds this isn't just here's the money you know when they come to Idaho um director Fedrick's folks meet with those people they they follow the money and they look to be sure that that money is being used for black and white terrestrial wildlife management and fisheries management and in the the the commission when we we deliberate on a policy change or virtually anything we always have in mind how is pitman Robertson Dingo Johnson funds being how are they being used and in any way is there any diversion of funds involved with this not purposely but and so we we check and Jim's director Fredrick's folks check on that too so it's a really good template uh I've been trying to spread my pixie dust and you're helping me do that uh I would love to see a backpack tax isn't it about time that Patagonia

1:05:54R.E.I. Sierra designs pay their fair share for their clients through their clients of managing these vast open landscapes because on the hunting and angling side this that's been happening and I think it's time that um outdoor outfitters I don't mean hunting guide outfitters they're already paying taxes sure but clothe the factors manufacturers pay their fair share for managing um these vast lands and and helping counties meet the demands that are being that are being laid on layer after layer each year as cities grow on their back they're painting a portrait and making money off of it on a canvas that they're not paying for that's it we pay for the canvas and they make the money off of it that's the reality and this can be a win-win no one's gonna be shorted when they buy their jacket you can look up the information it's pennies of decimal dust tax at the manufacturing stage

1:06:58I think we could have a huge win we're gonna have to do something as the west grows as the public land gets more use which I am so excited about because I'm a big believer in kidding people out there and being in touch with the land having their fingers and it's certainly having their kids fingers in it and we're gonna have to have a source of funding to be able to manage that over time um this summer so go to the wise fantastic um we get my my nine-year-old turned uh there went any turn nine last year we got a used ATV4 look quad right like 90cc mongoose it was great right we have a we have a whole track in my yard now it's like huge ruts because like we've got this whole thing the hay bales the whole bit and I started taking them out to the BLM so now he's going all over these public lands and I'm you know going to be in areas that are appropriate I'm going behind him in like my crummy niece on frontier but then I got to get I got to get a quadruple biking this other stuff but you know I don't we haven't spent a lot of money because I don't have a lot of money spent on these I got to find you I got to find used ones when I can find them but dude

1:08:02it's unbelievable he just he just comes alive and having access to that we uh enough you came to visit my brother and lost sister in law got a niece in an FU they came to visit the nephew lives in northern they live in northern California and he's way into motorsport but the closest thing he has to it is an hour away and it's membership based and there's a five-year wait list even apply for membership he comes out here I drive him 10 minutes down the road hours he's out the just tired I had to bring extra gas like they just win so hard and to have that access to have that resource it's just so fantastic yeah access is becoming another linchpin for discussion and I think I skipped over in fact I know I skipped over I used the the term

1:09:03that those bottom lands in private ownership private range lands are the sinew connecting unfragmented landscapes when when we drive to Stanley or he drive anywhere out in the wild he's or winemaka we see this vast unbroken landscape and it is vast but it's really um a quill work you know it's it of jurisdictions of private state tribal uh federal land tenure and although it's a quill work it's still a vast landscape and water runs through there and air and wildlife migrates and arguably the best water and the richest soils are in these bottom lands that were originally homesteaded so we're always going back to that that homestead why did people pick those parcels there was water there and there was more there's richer soils well what do you know today those same homesteads edges and corners of riparian areas and sub irrigated off native grass pasture that's where sage grouse um can be found in the spring that's a brooding ground

1:10:05um i said it earlier when you drive to winemaka you're seeing elk pronghorn standing in private bottoms there's a lot of pressure right now on those ranches i you could probably bring in 10 ranch owners of anywhere within 200 miles a year and i'll bet someone's knocked on their door in the last few years seen i'd like to do business with you you've got some beautiful meadows were we're interested in development because there's a new road to this area what have you and when that gets developed arguably those bottoms are our strongest conservation tool in the west that's that's where all the water and soils and wildlife transition through and when those are gone um we have fragmentation of wildlife habitat when you fragment habitat it's a non-renewable resource at that point um kind of a fire we can restore the land sure but that fire is not taking away the cement foundation yes it isn't but i'm not sure how we come in and and restore

1:11:07the land once there's development and i am not anti-development i have three children they need places to live they're looking for places to live as Idahoans i just envision us working together as rural urban partners the rural partners want to see some good land to go out to and some of that's going to be private bottom land access not everyone's going to grant access but many do they want to see viable wildlife populations out there and that takes that private land that i keep saying sinew because it does it keeps everything together it's where the water is it's where the rich soils are they want to see that intact so there's a benefit to ensuring those ranches continue in agriculture on the other hand the ranches depend on their urban neighbors they're buying products they're providing services not all the plumbers are coming from the middle of Hawaii County they may be coming from town so we're inexplicably combined in today in 2026 and beyond

1:12:10there there is so we need to find a way and i you know i've used the term many do the Idaho way of neighbor is a verb and work together to ensure that these vast working landscapes stay intact and unfragmented and if we don't pay attention to it it's not going to happen just because people love the land we need to have the conversations of how we can work together urban and rural neighbors working together to maintain unfragmented landscapes that everybody can enjoy and in the mean time come up with a way to fund it like a PR DJ like backpack bill yeah the backpack bill and listen i'm all for you i'm all for this um listen to him i've we have covered so much more than just the tailored raising up which i love but i want to be sensitive to your time here um do you have anything else you want to know i greatly appreciate this mad i this a studio is is not an environment that i'm accustomed to you made it very comfortable and i i think i love it in here

1:13:14i love i like the subject and your coffee is great by the way yeah i like i like the subject and i think we've opened up a few chapters that maybe we could explore it on the road oh listen you're welcome any i i film every single day and and as i told you even before we got going there's something about like i can't bake but if i loved baking i'm sure i could bake tarts and whatever all day long and not notice it i can't i hate baking dude the whole follow the instructions and you put the egg in before you were supposed to just forget it i can't and then it's like the preheat preheating the oven has got to be the most hateful event in my entire life and then i want to check it and it's like a watch clock oh and the oven light like you can never see correctly but then you open the oven and let the heat out then your kitchen's hot and you get like the blast of how to forget it man but this i can listen to you educating me about these things all day get yourself a dutch oven you learn to use one in your backyard and

1:14:15you won't have an oven heat deal and you can have a cold beer uh while you wait for the colds to come up the temperature oh you know what man it's not a bad thing i actually uh the guy bought my house from my current house um he uh he had a lot of different kind of like fire pit setups in his backyard one was just this gigantic um uh what's uh it's not a bandsaw like the two guys saw going back and forth oh misery whip yeah there you go he had one of those just tied together and that was like this fire pit in the middle like one of the pastors was i thought was cool but he also had this uh the cement patio that he poured and there was a big hole in it and he had stacked dry stacked like pavers around to make and he had gotten a uh a tripod with a chain on it so he could drop in like beans into the thing right or you do some you know obviously you uh within the hole you get a bunch of coals then you carve out a middle space you put a big pot with uh water in it and then you lower down a big conca meat and they're like he had all these things right so i'm uh yeah maybe i should get like a dutch oven that i drop into the fire pit get a number 10 to start you know have a good time number time i love it but yeah man like it's that you know what's so

1:15:19interesting about this and again you this has been a perfect example of that the things you talked about today maybe there are people out there that have always had these questions and they don't have access to you or maybe people those into this and they didn't have this question and now they learned something and they're like i would have never thought but the bottom line is what are the odds that the the people that have consumed this could just call up commission or Tim Murphy and say hey could i grab you a cup of coffee all make it for you sit down and talk to me for two hours about this maybe you do it once if you're feeling insanely generous but most people just you you wouldn't have time in your life to do that and by coming and sharing with me it's like god bless it man the the the the you have now get granted access to your wealth a well of knowledge to people that would have never had a chance to math the the ranch is a classic force multiplier um i get calls all the time so did the other commissioners and we've

1:16:22volunteered for this because we're interested in it so if someone wants to meet um downtown McCall near where i live or anywhere else or hey are you going to be in Boise soon yeah i go to their house or we meet in a cafe and we talk but there are only so many days hours that you could do that you can do this so this is a force multiplier and i appreciate it absolutely so again yeah we touch on a lot of things that we can explore later let's please do that okay i'd love to thank you for coming on we'll do it again you know