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On the subject of wind we've been talking about is very telling people how windy it is, so they don't think that I'm just, you know, struggling.

It's the winds I think I've ever seen it since I've moved to Montana five years ago.

It's so windy that Yanase got reports from an 80 mile an hour winds and. Oh, yeah, over in big timber, ranchers, shit work and cattle, sheep and cattle.

And he says his eyes are swollen from all the small particles that have been blown into his eyeballs the last two days.

That windy. I thought my windows might. Implode towards me this morning as I was making coffee, it was so in that bed and the glass was flexing extremely windy.

We have a Halloween, it's so windy that that doesn't matter. There's a Halloween decoration that I had to get up and remove in the middle of the night.

I have I have ahead have a. But, oh, here's a way to explain how windy it is. My neighbor's wheelbarrow, which I don't know exactly where he stores it on his property, but it was at least 100 yards from his house. It had a wheelbarrow had just been blown across the landscape.

This is it's pretty windy. I got too windy. I want to tell. So for the first time ever, my my beloved sister in law say so. Juanita, Juanita Viro is here.

Thank you, Steve. Pleasure to be here. My favorite. Probably I like you more, Naani. Oh, I like you more than my brother who like if I had to choose between my brother. And my sister in law, you have two brothers and two sister in law, and I'm stuck with this one, this one in particular, I'm just trying to try to lay it on thick. The one that one is married to?

Yeah, one is married to my brother Matt, but like her more than him, which puts me in an awkward position because originally I know I never told you this.

I was originally not skeptical of you. But but. I was sussing you out. Oh. Because I care about my brother a great deal, and so, you know, I love him to death, would you find out in your suffering?

Oh, the light you put initially, right? Initially, like, I wouldn't take him saying, like, oh, you know what?

I have a girlfriend. We might get married.

I don't take that as I wouldn't take that as like, oh, gosh, can't wait to meet this wonderful person.

My head would go. What's wrong went like like. I got her number, now I'm going to find out. Skepticism. Usually do them wrong, I don't know, just get injured, skeptical, like I was skeptical, but then now, you know, you really won me over.

Oh, look, I love you so much. So, so kind.

Oh, I love you so much. You do such a great job at being girl that you do a great job in my brother's wife. But just in I'll point out, you guys will live together.

It's a secret. Yeah.

You guys live nice, long, happy marriage.

You guys live nine hours apart. Yes, it is just like a commute.

It's like a along with no, we have to begin our plans to remedy the situation, not even looking at it as something that should be remedied.

Absolutely not for anyone. We get a little older like some day. You have to get some remedy. Makes it sound like there's like it's a problem. There's something wrong with. So, yeah. So it's trying to say it's like it's not like a thing that they're like stuck in and wish they weren't.

So you just don't live together, just don't live together.

I think a lot of people might change probably later. Yeah.

When we need assisted living, help me assist each other. Well what are you going to do for us? And we might as well just have one person do it that's cheaper.

We just start to love each other so much that you can't be that far apart anymore. You need more time together.

We've got a lot of love right now. I don't know. I won't say my Windi story, though. It's very windy. I thought your brother's house was going to blow away.

Well, that's that's what I'm getting. I'm trying to decide. This is a prolonged setup for a story about windedness. The first time I took my wife to.

My brother's house in Mile City, she never been to my city. And I think she just had like she's pregnant. We had one baby. And she was pregnant with another baby. Either way, I take her there and I don't know, I know, but there's like there's a hint a baby, there's there's a tornado coming, but I didn't know there's a tornado coming. So we get to Mile City and we're going to go fishing. And our friend was there as well, and so like was going hang out and catch up with Dean, will hang out in the house and you guys all go fishing.

So we start down the road to go fishing and also like a tornado hits and.

Blows trees like we couldn't get anywhere, we couldn't get down the road, it's like cottonwoods are blowing down the road, a chunk of mats. Roof blows off his house. Well. And she's like huddled in the doorframe and she's like, never been to this town her life, she's only been here like 30 minutes and she's like, oh my God, this place is windy.

But, you know, unbeknownst to any of us, it was like and it's doorframes probably aren't the sturdiest of doorframes know.

It's like the kind of house that we're all in this together house. They haul in on a trailer.

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Lightly manufactured.

Yeah. She's like No. One. I can't picture how windy it is here, but yeah, it's like arrived here.

Your tornado yesterday we I was out with my wife and kids and we ran.

A ground ran aground two days ago, ran our jet boat aground, and I blame the wind for this because, like when you're you can run a jet boat in inches of water, you know, but you kind of rely when you're picking your course, you kind of rely on the way the the water looks.

You're looking for deep water, shallow water. And the wind was so severe. Two things, the wind was so severe that it interrupted the surface activity on the river and made everything look different.

Because the winds blowing up current and made and made it so you couldn't read the river, right. And. I was trying to buy a fishing license for my wife, and I was convinced that she already had one. She was convinced she didn't have one. Some were on the phone, I'm sure, like drive the boat down a very shallow river and be on the phone like, no, hit that button.

No, it's your birthday, you know. I know you got it. And also but I am just dead.

I mean, like, ran aground. But nobody got thrown, no one got thrown. That's good. It was kind of like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, yeah, everybody had to get out. Dragging the boat around, it was just a gravel bar that ran up on a gravel bar, scared the hell out of everybody. It was bad and then. Yeah, it's like generally horrible fishing, a dude, a dude gave us the wall, so we want it to because a guy gave us one.

So dude had caught one, didn't want to clean it, gave us that wall. And then we caught our own and went home with two Walwa.

That's it. Well, it's a very windy day, camped out for the night.

Big doings. Also joined by Casey Snyder. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. Spelled real weird. Hey, you know, it's the American version of a German name.

So essent i that strong German I rather than a wire, which I think is Dutch technically.

Yeah. And you're currently to give people your tell people what you're up to.

So I am in the state legislature back home in Utah, so I am from Cache Valley, represent the 5th District, the fighting five as we like to call it, state legislature. And last session this last spring session, we ran a bill to amend our state constitution to add the right to hunt and fish in our state and join a bunch of states, including this one, and make sure that that right. That opportunity is always protected in Utah.

So that's why I'm here to talk to you about today. Yeah.

You're super involved in one year and AG. Yeah, we have. We farm. We ranch. We kind of dabble in everything. I am a man of many hats.

I would say so, including that John Deere when you get on right. Absolutely.

All the way green all the way. But yeah. So we farm and ranch and then in the legislature and also working on a Ph.D. in Fire, Forestry and Fire, Utah State University. That's sort of one of those ongoing things. But that dovetails in with in the summertime, we have a local department and I usually will go out for a couple of months, a couple of weeks and fight fire, including this summer.

So there's your HD and fire. What are you looking at?

So we're we're looking at basically better ways to predict fire in our state. So I'm working on a fire atlas, which would say, hey, when does this type of vegetation burn? How often and how big to the fires usually go? So basic baseline data stuff. And then we're going to look at some other topics relative to management. Do private lands in the state of Utah burn more often than federal lands are bigger? Those types of just just basic questions.

Let's see what's going on down there on a longer scale. So we'll see. It's one of those we're five years in. We'll hopefully one day they'll call me doctor, but we'll see.

So just just to recap, you're in you're like in your state legislator legislature. Yep.

And you guys are in farming. You help operate a family ranch.

Yep. And you fight fires sometimes are busy at my house and you're, like, enrolled in an academic program. Yep.

Yeah, if you don't sleep, you can get a lot done. I'll just say it. So you just stay up a lot.

You know, caffeine, you know, it's surprising, Steve. A little bit, man.

Yeah, I do. I would keep you because with that array, if something's not interesting, that date is do something. Just work on a different thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And I could tell people what I am that day rather than, you know. So maybe today I'll be the firefighter and tomorrow I'll be the farmer. And also keeping it, keeping it light, keep it flexible.

You know, surprise me recently about the fires. I want to point out a commonality between two and our two guests here, my sister in law, Juanita, there's a lot of differences and a lot of commonalities that I want to point out. You guys both are in livestock. In some respects, like you guys have a large horse herd, Juanita Juanita lives on. Lives on a guest ranch over Missoula, and you guys keep a shitload of horses.

Yes, and so I was I was talking to Casey earlier, I was curious about his grazing management and, you know, so you guys are in the cattle business. Yep. And you guys both like our fire obsessed. I guess it could come in like a wipe out because it could come wipe the program out. Yeah, yeah, I think Abscessed is I'll take that as a compliment. We'll say that's a good thing. I meant as a good thing.

Oh, it's encouragement. Like I learned a thing that I didn't know recently is a. We had a big fire right here and we had friends lose their homes and stuff, and for a minute we were kind of on standby to see if we had to evacuate. And it was close to a hiking trail.

And I'm running around telling everybody there's no way someone flicked a cigarette, that there was no weather that learned that that. A lightning strike can fester. In the ground or in a tree, it was weeks, wasn't it? Yeah, they think that it was a lightning strike from a weeks earlier. Like, how the hell does that happen?

We've had that happen on our place with burning in the fall and the winter.

And then it just goes to the duff and goes to the roots and then blows up in March, April with spring wind dried up like burning brush, and suddenly there's instant flame and burning.

I mean, casinos is yeah, it happens all the time.

You get fires, it'll last all winter under under the snow. Wake up in the spring. There it is again.

Really. Yeah. I was like, this is like in plain sight, man, that it must have just been living in this tree. Yeah. And then erupted out of the ground one time.

I talked about this for I can't remember it, but one time we were camping. Hunting elk and weed started a fire, and it was that like on a ridge top with a lot of white bark pine, that deep, deep duff, you know, and you'd like, dig down that shit. You never quite hit like mineral soil, but you try to whatever, make a fire. And we made a fire. Put it out. Like, thoroughly put it out, I thought a couple of days later, still up, Hunton, I'm like, that's so weird that there's some dudes camped.

And that weird ass spot where we are camped because it's not like a camp spot. Because I see smoke rising up. And I'm watching the smoke and like become more aware of the smoke and more turn around in my head, like, what are the odds that two people would camp there, make a fire and eventually wander out there?

And sure enough, man. They had burned down in the pine duff and popped up 10 feet. Away, and then we had to go in there and just excavate the hole, we had to take like an evening off Hunton. And excavate the whole damn area, trying to put all of our fires out. Yeah, you know, some of that stuff is on a fire, the Rice Ridge fire over and Seelie, like three or four years ago.

And we had, I don't know, six pumps in series that we're just running. And you'd wake up in the morning and you'd spray water on it pretty much all day and go home next morning. You'd come up and it'd be smoldering again. That Duff's once it's got heat and especially some of this country, it it'll go a long time. So, you know, maybe that fire still burning. Maybe. Have you been up there lately to check to see if that campfire has always been about 20 years.

So I hope I know it's all well. We had we had another one.

That similar thing isn't a snow. And it's tunneled away from us, and the reason you can see it is it got like steamy over in other areas where the fire traveled underground through the duff and then started melting up patches of snow. To combust. I've learned a lot of lessons since then. Is this your first term doing the state?

Yeah, I'm coming out of the my first term running for my second. So she's got a win coming up here, you know, fingers crossed. We'll see how it goes.

And then how did it come to be? Like, tell people what the the the program you're involved in or the bill you're trying to do with the right to hunt fish? Like, what's that all about?

So, you know, if I'm not doing everything else, I guess you should say I'm hunting and fishing. And that is a big part of who I am. And, you know, we we've been going back and forth on setting this up. I was up at camp all last week and happy not to respond to any emails or phone calls. Now, you get a note. I did a little five by six.

Boil this down in Utah with your bowl is a lot easier to get them with your rifle. We'll just say that when it's dark timber up there, you know, on public land hunt.

So it was I'm happy to have that, you know, that done. But that that's something I've grown up and done my whole life. And when I I'm currently the head of what's called the hunting and fishing caucus in our state legislature. And we've sort of been looking at how do we preserve this legacy, this opportunity into the future. We don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. We don't know what kind of pressures are going to be on our sport going forward.

So if we could codify now when support is high for these types of activities for hunting and fishing, we could put that in our Constitution, maybe down the road. If perceptions change, public opinion shifts, there's at least a higher threshold before those sort of activities could be eliminated or or curtailed.

So that was sort of the thinking behind things.

But we know it's common for people to say that. People always say it's a privilege. It's like part of like what they teach in hunter safety and stuff. Well, I think that's the balance, right? It's a privilege, not a right. I think the privilege comes in. It can be revoked. Right. You don't follow the rules. You're not up to the current statute and doing things the right way. Yeah, you could. That can be eliminated.

But at a fundamental level, that fundamental right level, the opportunity to follow the law and to harvest something with your own hands, that's what we're trying to protect. Everything else is subject to statute. Right. And the limitation by the Division of Wildlife Resources or our state legislature. But to be always guaranteed that if you're following the law, you can go hunt or fish for something in our state. That's that was the genesis and the impetus behind the whole thing.

How many states have the protections? 13, I believe, right now. And, you know, some of this goes back clear back into the founding.

So there are states back east, I believe it's Connecticut, if I remember right.

Or Vermont there, you know. Right. As they're putting their state constitution together, Bill, it was in there, the right to hunt and fish. And so we're we're kind of keeping up. A lot of the states around this have it. You guys have it here. Idaho, even California has the right to fish.

Now they've you know, really they didn't get that. They passed it out, you know, so seriously, that's dead serious. And that's maybe some of the concern that we had when we ran it. You know, like, oh, they're already starting to say maybe this is one.

They ran a right to fish you. You have a right to fish, but you don't have a right to hunt in California.

So that, you know, so Bo fishing, is that in that gray area, right, like that of a lot of work. So anyway, they are so we're just, you know, following great ideas and hopefully adding it to our state constitution. Voters have to obviously adopt it.

So it has to be a simple majority, a simple majority state legislature has to support it with two thirds. So it passed in the House and Senate, in our legislature with a two thirds majority. And now it'll go to the people and it just has to, you know, 50 plus one.

OK, a whole bunch of questions.

Oh, man. So why it didn't pass unanimously? No. What was the argument against passing it so that it was unnecessary?

Like what? Yes. Yeah. I mean, fundamentally, it's like, well, of course that's always going to be something why we don't need to elevate it to the level of a constitutional amendment.

And, you know, I sort of make the argument that you do and and history in our state would prove. So I don't know if you've talked about it here, but in Colorado right now, there's obviously a there is a proposition to add wolves to reintroduce wolves going on in the state of Colorado. Yeah.

Which has been made a moot point because they've since then. Well, they've been haggling over this. The wolves just showed up on their own yet. So they're there now.

But see, in our state, you can't buy a proposition without a two thirds majority make decisions relative to wildlife. So we passed a constitutional amendment that set that threshold. This is in the early 2000s. And when that ran through, everyone was like, well, this is crazy. Who do you who even cares? Right. Why would you want this to happen? And it was sort of this argument that it was unnecessary. You fast forward 20 years and you look across the state line, you're like, huh?

Oh, they're kind of doing that now.

Or you mean that people are putting like a very simple wildlife management decision that would normally be made by agencies appointed to make those kind of decisions.

They're putting it like to a simple yeah, yay or nay, 51 percent vote, taken science out of it and totally basing wildlife management on public opinion. And that was, again, sort of seen as unnecessary. And so you look at this amendment with that as context and you can say, you know, it's nice just to have this as a safeguard when you've got public opinion on your side. And it's nice to be able to guarantee in our state that right to hunt and fish because the majority of our population supports it.

Now, we don't know where it'll be 10, 20, 30 years from now.

Has any state ever tried to run one of these and lost? I think they have, yeah. But I believe that if we've all the states where it's passed with clear majorities, there's there hasn't been any problems. And right now there hasn't been any big push back. All the major hook and bullet groups in our state are supporting us right now and there's not any opposition to things. So I'm hoping we're going to, you know, smooth sailing and everything will be good.

But, you know, I don't know.

There's not there's no organized opposition to right to hunt fish, you know, and again, any of the any of the concern comes down to why do we need to do this and why are we doing it now? And that's a you know, that's a pretty good argument that that's beatable. So we'll see how it goes. I am optimistic we're going to get it passed through.

And and I'm, you know, one of those people that's going to benefit from it.

So can you can you try to identify a. Like, what would be a thing that this could prevent from happening, like like what would be an issue if you look at other states or some kind of other rule that's come down, what would be something that this would be beneficial in protecting from?

So one of the provisions is that's added to there. So we sort of put a box around this, right? We say subject to state rules and a few other things. But one of the things that we we guarantee in this is that hunting and fishing will be the primary tool for managing wildlife populations. So if you look back east in particular, where you've got high density of white tailed deer, for example, they're basically paying state agencies, sometimes at night, sometimes with other means to to eliminate deer because they've got so many other amendment says hunting and fishing would do that.

So if not only do you have the right to take, but you're saying the North American model is fundamental to this and hunters and anglers are always going to be the primary ones playing a role in how wildlife are managed in our state.

So that's, for example, one real specific and nuanced thing that hopefully this will protect against going forward.

What are you guys role trapping into that? Because we believe that that's covered under the statute, so it's harvest tape game, you know, and I think that's covered without sort of the bigger fight that always occurs over that.

I guess you guys chickened out.

I thought about the chicken, though. Come on. No, I think if you if you're harvesting wildlife, it's covered. Right. And there's always that public perception. Public opinion drives everything. And while I love to trap, that's something I grew up doing, mostly bobcats and beavers. There is a pretty strong anti sentiment with that. So if you can cover that and preserve that right with basically harvest, why have the fight? I mean, there's enough fighting in politics as it is.

So if we can, we can achieve the same objective without sticking it in somebody's XYZ. Let's do that without calling it out.

Yeah. Now, would it prevent let's just say if you're following in the the tracks of California, like they've lost the right or abilities hounds, right? Yeah.

So when it's when something like that comes up, when they're like, well you can still hunt but you can't do it this way anymore.

How does that work? You know, I'm that's still that honestly that discretion still applies like so we're not eliminating the the divisions, making rules and regulations.

That's it's all subject to that. But what it would say is maybe you can't use dogs or, you know, there's already rules over dogs or Bayt or whatever on different bears and lions.

But the ability what it would guarantee is that you could still harvest bear. Right. As long as populations are such and you meet objectives and all those types of things.

So it's that's the root of it. There will always be that debate. And I think it's necessary and prudent. Right. About means and methods. I think that's a natural part of of our sport. And I think that has to be part of it.

But what we're trying to do is, is prevent it from being eliminated wholly as an option, which is that's what people argue when they argue the death by a thousand cuts.

Yeah. Thing. I mean, everybody likes to poke fun at California when it comes to death by a thousand cuts because it's easy.

Right. It's it is easy to poke fun at Cal. Yeah.

I had a guy like a very high ranking as a national hobby to poke fun at California's going.

But yeah, I had a very high ranking person in California's wildlife department predict to me and he made this prediction a long time ago.

Years ago, he predicted me, said.

We will lose bow hunting next. The referendum. And he put it that he said, I think in 25 years, it'll all be gone. If you look in California, they did like Martha to take stuff on mountain lions, OK, but eventually just got rid of a mountain lion, mountain lion harvested all by hunters. It's all done now by it's all done now by the state. I mean, they're still they're still under damage permits killing several hundred a year.

They're still killing the exact same amount.

They're killing the state. And agents are killing about as many as hunters used to, but they removed methods before eventually getting round to the thing. Entrapping like got rid of trapping. And then went to a thing to be that you can't sell fur. So what I'd be more interested in is like a piece of protection or I wish that that the protections you could measure more against the death by a thousand cuts.

Thing one frustration I have with conservation groups, especially ones a frustration.

I have a conservation groups that focus on habitat issues, which are very important access issues, is they oftentimes don't like to get embroiled.

In the method of take arguments, so a couple of years ago, there was a thing in this state that was like death by a thousand cuts, like the level of specificity it was no trapping, not no trapping, but no trapping on public land to try to narrow it down like a little thing that you think you could get there. Like what's the what's something we could get away with? It got clobbered. It got clobbered. It didn't pass it, but it was like so fine tuned to try to make some progress toward getting rid of.

Hunting, trapping, whatever, yeah, in Maine, it was there's a couple of years ago in Maine, I think it was getting rid of bait for bears, getting rid of hounds for bears and people would point out.

Well, that's the only way people like in thick, flat country, that's the only way people get bears. So you're effectively ending 90 percent of the bear harvest, but you're not coming out and saying you're trying to make it an issue about dogs and bait, but we see what you're really driving after.

So it'd be cool if the if you if we could make protections that helped also prevent the like just whittling away at people's stuff, I've never heard in California that the thing has gone anywhere to, like, ban bow hunting.

But this guy had it laid out, like how it would be approached, how it would be one. Well, I think that goes to the broader point as hunters and anglers, we've got to be involved, right? Like there's at my level, there is literally only so much I can do. And we've I think we've done that and sort of set the table and set a pretty high threshold and set a pretty strong burden of proof.

But if if you like to hunt and fish and you're not involved in the political process, it's going to be involved for you without you. And so that's sort of I think I know we're kind of coming off topic a little bit here, but if you appreciate these opportunities, you better support them the whole way.

And that's through initiatives at the ballot box. Heck, if you like to hunt fish, maybe you ought to even run for office.

You know what ruins hunting and fishing for me? Political service. Yeah, it's it's not getting ready for the legislative session in January really screws up my ducci.

I'm not going to lie. But, you know, I believe in this stuff and it's important to me and I'm willing to step up and I think is as folks like to do that we've got to be willing to make that sacrifice on the front end so that this legacy in this heritage is there for our kids.

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When the states go to do the right to hunt fish thing, is there like a. It's like a plan, like a little package, they send you to do it in your own state. You know, I mean, how did it come to be that that came on your radar?

Well, so actually, I had a buddy that had done some research work as part of a master's degree and was just sort of compiling data is like, hey, we don't have one of these. This ought to be a good thing, you know? And then I started reaching out to the various conservation groups and said, hey, what do you think about this? And, you know, everybody jumped up and down. You want to hear a really interesting committee hearing that politics is largely boring unless somebody says something stupid.

I think that's sort of the norm. But in our legislature, in the committee where this bill was presented, when we put this forth, we had like half the room in tears.

It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my whole political career. The chairman is crying, saying, I'm going to protect this opportunity for my daughter.

Like, this is a real tears, real tears. Like I'm like I'm sitting there presenting on my bill and thinking, oh, I.

I think I got pretty strong support in here because he's crying and he's crying and everybody's telling stories about the bullet that came off the mountain, you know, and their daughter's first there and those types of things. So, you know that it it was a good idea that obviously had a lot of support and a lot of political and emotional support, and we ran the whole way with it.

So how have you gotten any well articulated, like any well articulated opposition to it?

No. Now, I mean, there are opinions out there. And I would say that the when folks are saying, is this really necessary? I mean, I they use good words and correct grammar. So I think you could classify it as well articulated.

I just don't think it's compelling and that maybe that's the difference. So I think we're going to be OK.

You know, fingers crossed. Hopefully the voters in the state of Utah will make the right choice.

Are those folks are those opinions coming from people like our groups like PETA, or is it just random people that are actually saying, oh, really? Why? Why now?

I think it's more random. Yeah. You know, even some of our large groups, Humane Society and PETA, like you mentioned, that maybe would sort of be a catalyst for opposition.

They they've largely said, nah, you know, not a big deal. So at least publicly.

And that's how they're behaving so far. And, you know, our ballots are coming out this week back home. I'm assuming that you guys are getting your here to for mail.

And so and you just got is oh, man.

You know, so we're only, what, a couple of weeks, a couple, three weeks before the election.

So I think, you know, I think we're going to be OK, but you never know. So that's why I am so happy to be here today. And hopefully all the listeners in Utah will be convinced by the compelling argument that I have made on this podcast.

Well, yeah, I think you probably were going to lose it, but now you're going to win. Chalk it up to meteorite right now. What exactly does it say?

It's I mean, I can't regurgitate it verbatim because it's fairly long, but it's basically the right to hunt. Fish will be preserved subject to data.

And when you go into when you normally go in and do a referendum thing like I'm always guilty of, I'm actually going to touch on this later.

I have to talk about my sister in law, Juanita Moore, but I'm guilty of as I get down to the to the tail end of my ballot.

Yeah, I'm finding out about things I wasn't aware of, like, oh, my home and what I have that feeling a lot. Yeah.

It'll be like a what they call like some new like very complex, like tobacco taxation. Issue, right, like there's always this. Yeah, that's. There's how can there be 20 levees that I have to think about right now? Yeah, and I'm torn between. I'm I always get torn between. I could sit it out because that which is the responsible thing to do because I have no idea what it's talking about.

Or I could try to, like, read real quick and make like a snap judgment in order to weigh in, but I feel like I'm just not.

Educated on the issue, and then they have these ballot supplements, right, and the each side gets to, like, agree on.

Broken, and it's sort of like everybody agrees that it's a fair synopsis of the issue. What did you guys have to go through their process like? What's the what's the what's the the why not in the ballot supplement?

Yeah. So maybe we're not as cordial back home, like, I got to present my opinion and they got to present theirs. But we didn't like compare notes and say, oh, I could be totally wrong.

But they're always very I feel that they're, they're very I should say that they're very measured. Yeah. Like it seems like someone is in there because you wouldn't be able to be in there like, you know, those little flyers you get for candidates. He loves China and hates America. Right.

Like that wouldn't be in there. Wouldn't be in the right. They would find another way to articulate it. You know, he hates babies. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I we have that same thing, you know, and I do need to say, I am grateful that you didn't have like a third method, which is like eeny, meeny, miny, mo.

So that's you know, that means you are an important voter. I might be killed. I might be guilty. That was the last time I chose C D. Yeah. I don't wanna be predictable.

I, you know, so I we'll just pretend that you're A and B are your only options.

But we do have that as a smidgen. But I, I'm hoping like. Before this podcast, you probably didn't know anything about this hunt, right, to hunt and fish in the state of Utah, but what what does your heart tell you? You know what you believe.

And I'm hoping that there's that little moment in time in the in the ballot box or at the kitchen table. When you fill in your circles, it's just a feel good. You know what? Boom. And we're going to go with that. That's my hope. There is going to be obviously this and some other sort of orchestrated like here's get out the vote and let's make sure we're supporting this. But at a fundamental level in my state, that's something I think we still cherish that heritage, that opportunity.

So I think that's going to pick up people, you know, always roll the dice with A, B or C, so anyway. Well, we'll see how it goes.

Do you are you a career politician? Were you gonna say something?

I was just going to say so. The language is really clear on your ballot, right? Is there a number associated with us like we need to advertise this? Oh, my gosh. I think we're g so like we're down to the whole like we're.

I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So it's like, you know, I, I shop for a and I didn't get it but there's four or five on the ballot otherwise.

But yeah I, I vote for a sleepy voter or for Steve cruising through to the bottom of his ballot.

The language is very clear. What the the right to hunt and fish boom.

And you'll see that's hunted down, hunted down and and love America and the great state of Utah and support that amendment. That's kind of what we're going for.

What else throws me on the ballot is when you get down to the part where you're like voting for a judge, but it doesn't seem there's anyone running against them.

Yeah, I'm always torn to because I'm like their zuway running against them and I will make them feel good and write their name down.

See, but here's here's the thing.

At that point it you're not responsible like all those people who work who could have ran for judge and didn't.

That's where the blame is. So you you just go with what you've got before you that that whole who screwed up isn't you in the ballot box at that point. It's whoever you know didn't step up and run or or maybe it really is just a good judge. Don't don't harbor any guilt on that. That's all I'm trying to say.

But he's so just like has such an impeccable career here, see that there's just no one could even remotely challenge.

Yeah. That that was not on you. Just go with it. Just go with it. Do you imagine it going to become a career politician?

Oh man. I hope not.

Everybody. No, listen, don't do the false modesty, false passports here. Every politician says that. Oh, I'll tell you one that didn't, though. I think I remember we had Wyoming's former governor we talked about a minute ago.

Matt Mead was on the show. Yeah. And he was terming out as governor.

And I was like, so what do you do next?

He's like, nothing. I'm done doing politics. No, Michael, come on. This is like a it'll be like a week and you'll be.

But I think he actually meant it like he quit. He's done unless he pops up. I was like I thought he was doing the old like, you know. Act like keep it a secret or whatever, but it seems like he just full on stopped. He was at the ranch and he's done that's my dream, you know, balanced. I want my if my place could be fully productive in my ranch running, that's what I want at the end of all this.

Like so my wife and I bought our place.

It's not inherited. We didn't come. We both grew up in it, but bought our own place. That to me is more important, you know, and I've got a couple of people pull that off.

Malvin, it's it's. I think I like to gamble, but I don't gamble is not really legal, it's not legal in the state of Utah. So I think farming sort of supplements that itch.

But yeah, so that that's for me, the big thing, you know, I'm happy to serve. I actually before I, I ran for office, I, I made the poor life decisions of working as a staffer in politics. So I worked in D.C. for a little while. And when this seat that I currently hold came open, it was like, well, I think I could help out. I kind of have been through this mess before.

Maybe I can do a few things. But I you know, I'd like to do a few terms and then if there's something else, whatever, but my preference would be farming, hunting and fishing, because this really screws up with the things that I like to do.

How many how many of you are there? How many people around the state and what the state legislature? Well, I mean, I'm such a hard time.

And so, like, there's only one Casey Snyder, if that's what you're asking.

There's only one way to put it in national terms. Quick.

First is the people understand or help me and the listeners understand, like we all know that, you know, we have whatever three hundred and sixty four, whatever the hell it is, Congress, congressmen and congresswomen in Washington, DC that represent the country.

And we have 100 senators, two from each state. You could have a state like all states get to. There are a lot of states you might only have one representative or the state might like have 20, depending on population and land mass, I think.

But then you have your state version. Right. And it's a way different job.

It's way better. So I get go home at night and I only have to do this for a couple months.

Yeah. And but I didn't realize it's like it's not quite but like is almost sort of a voluntary. Yeah well you guys are like raking it in.

I only get paid January, February and part of March when I'm there. And so everything else is sort of on my, my dime. And even then when you're down there it's like, you know, I could stay home, make more money.

But yeah, it's kind of a pure form of politics. The state. Yeah. The so to serve at the state level.

But I actually think that's a good thing. And also so it puts it changes the incentives. Right. So maybe in D.C., if I'm going to go make a hundred fifty K heck yeah. I'll run for Congress. Right. Or I'll be a senator and now you know, I'll see what happens in the legislature. We're in our capital when you're making like ten or twelve thousand dollars a year and you got to do this. I bet this takes at least 30 hours a week for me, like you're going to do it because you legitimately feel like it's service.

You know, like I'm not getting rich. And and frankly, I doubt I'm going anywhere after this.

So it's it's literally a chance for me to go and say, hey, neighbors, what's important to you?

How can I how can I impact this in a positive way? You know, and and I think that trickles down like how much? Look at a county commissioner, look at a mayor, look at a city council person.

Right.

Like you're looking at a county commissioner and see, that's what I'm saying. Like that's that's service.

Right? Like in and and proof of that is what's your incentive at the end of this?

No, it's like I feel like I can make a positive impact on my community. I'm going to step up and do my time at the end of this. Nobody's going to know my name. I call down the city offices. I represent about seven towns in my little valley.

Yeah. How many people do you represent? About 35000 people. So that's a sizable a decent size. But I'll call the the city. I have that many constituents. Hey. And they all love me, I'm sure.

But I'll call the city office and I'll say, Hey, this is Casey Snyder. I'd like to rent a room for the afternoon to have a town hall or, you know, just talk to some people and they'll be like, OK. Who are you and that's you know, that's that is perfect. I love that, because then it's like, oh, yeah, yeah. You know what? I'm nobody but can I borrow the room for the night?

So do you get on do you get people in your constituency or super pissed at you all the time?

Well, there are people clearly they're not a majority because I'm still here.

Right. But yeah, I, I, I actually have a file in my inbox where, like, people are super creative when they they're insulting you. Like some people. It's, it is amazing. I'm like, gosh, I wish I was that smart when I was mad.

I file it away and I read it back to myself, you know, like I'm like, gosh, that whenever I'm really pissed at somebody, I'm going to use this.

I'm going use email A and all the phrases that were thrown at me. That's so yeah. Yeah, I, I talk to a few people offshore.

I think it's part of the deal and you get you get dragged into stuff. That you probably don't have any background in, though. Yeah, you know, I think there's look, I know where my lane is. Like, if you ask me about cows or inflation or, you know, natural resources generally. Yeah, I think I can articulate an answer.

But, you know, you put me on some of these social issues and like urban housing, it's like I live on a farm, like, how am I supposed to know what a good state policy is for high density housing, you know?

So, yeah, that happens. What do you do in those cases? You know, I call an expert.

You know what? Like, you find a constituent who's got a background in it. You know, you do your research and you hope you make an educated and informed decision when it's your time to vote. The one thing with the legislature or in city government or county government, any form is like you got a vote like it's yes or no on this.

And and you may not be all the way prepared, but, you know, you can't chicken out like you put up or shut up. Kind of a deal.

You're there. Yeah, well, everybody other people in that exact same situation, you could have someone in your state, someone coming out of a maybe has a background, urban development, and they're weighing in on ag issues.

Yeah. And no one would no one like thinks the question.

Right. Well, you know, I think all of us have a good sense for well I'm I grew up in agriculture, so I have a master's degree in wool. I don't know if I can say it on the podcast.

Oh, you got it. So yeah. But I think everybody kind of knows. Right. Like, if you're an expert matter and you get somebody from downtown telling you how to, you know, commenting on an AG bill, like somebody with a John Deere hat might step up and say, all right, folks, let's tell it to you straight. And, you know, the same thing happens on my end. If I'm totally out of left field on something I have no business or no idea.

I went into like somebody is going to call you out. And so that's the balance. Like make informed decision, make come up, do your homework, be educated on an issue, but not just make crap up like that's that's poor policy.

Do you think there's any what do you think would happen if someone tried to do a right to hunt and fish bill for the U.S.?

Oh, man, I don't know, but I can't picture it. Well, I bet it wouldn't pass. You know what the I don't know.

You know, the most wonderful thing about being in the state legislature is I don't really care what happens in D.C. You know, I like that world so screwed up and upside down right now.

Like, I don't I, I don't know, you know, what's going to pass. So the right to hunt fish in the state of Utah, that's what's going to happen.

They're coming up in a few days or thirty days or whatever. Thirty four days, just right around the corner. I had this guy telling us one time, there's this this this story. And I'm friends with studies like demographics and perceptions of hunting and the way hunting is covered in media and newspapers and things. And and he was explaining to me that.

Depending on how you word it, OK, you can word it approval of hunting and fishing to Americans in a way that there's overwhelming approval. Mm hmm.

So basically to the effect of if you go to Americans and you say, do you support. Like regulated hunting and fishing, informed by, you know, by biological input about where rhetoric and really soup it up.

Yeah, lay the whole thing out. Support of hunting, it actually is higher now than it was in the 80s. The minute you put any particular to it, it starts to fall apart. Yeah. Well, any like any little detail, the minute you add a detail like, um, you know, whatever you go like, do you support, you know, hunting deer or the bow also is just like it just goes off like people sort of they're like, yeah, I get it at a high level.

I get it. But don't I don't I don't like the little nitty gritty.

I don't like things that spell out like what exactly. I'm saying I support.

Hmm. Why don't we have this conversation before. And my amendment, you know, like how, how do I know if through the eyes of history this is I wrote the right thing down on the ballot.

We should have talked before I went to all that.

I think you should have gone crazy, crazy, strict, because in your state you have to strike while the iron is hot and like you have a state that has that like is very I would from a distance, I would say it's like very supportive. Yeah, we're red. We're very supportive of hunting and fishing rights, very supportive of gun rights.

Right. So I would be doing crazy stuff right now.

Oh, man. To lock it in. And I'd be like, I'd have a trap and billman it. You know, I the legislative session starting here at the end of January, if you want to talk about any particular move down there and run out, hey, where do you guys make two hundred grand?

You know, you might want to take a lot of zeros off of that, but you, you know, go with that again.

How many state legislators legislate? Why can I say this word? It's a legislator.

Legislator. I am a legislator serving in the legislature. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

So how many of us are there? And I think one hundred four. So and that senators and and representatives. So I'm, I'm just a lowly representative. I'm not a, you know, a mighty senator like across the hall over there.

But you know, in your terms up, you just finished your first term. Yeah. Yeah. Did anybody challenge in the first time.

So I had an opponent in. So I'm a Republican. I had a Democratic opponent. I have another Democratic opponent this fall.

The gal who ran against me last last fall is she's awesome. She's a really great lady. She's actually the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor on our ticket.

So you guys aren't going to smear you guys. Excuse your awesome.

You know, I do campaign for you. You know, it's a toss. Who had done a better job? Clearly, we believe in different things.

She's a lot nicer than I am, I'm sure. But we had a great race.

I, I won about seventy five percent of the vote down there. So my little part of the world is very conservative. I have another lady who's running against me this year. And I you know, I I'm I'm optimistic will be OK. But either way, I the way I like to do things back home and in Cash Valley where I'm from is, you know, we look we've got to get along.

And I, I clearly have a set of things I believe in, but I think there's there's good people and good ideas in the whole world. And I, I feel like one of the things that I did in my last race, I don't know if you want to go off on this ten, it's a little bit of a tangent, but if it has to do with.

This is like the get out the vote. So, yeah, let's just go, let's go. I think it's maybe it has to do with how partisan politics is ripping the country apart, but then someone can point to an area where it's not. That's great. OK, we'll go with that, where the world's where the whole country is not going to burn alive.

And so, you know, so one of the things that was really important to me was that it's, you know, in the face of what I think is we should all be embarrassed about where the state of our current national politics are. We should all legitimately be embarrassed. And so when I ran last session, I actually wrote an editorial that basically said this. The person running against me is a great person. And you look at all the stuff that she's done.

She's done a fabulous job. She she pushed for some propositions that passed. And they were they were fundamentally motivated because she was on health care and she lost her mother to cancer and watch that happen and watched all the money she had to spend. So she was advocating from a real position. Yeah. And she did a really good job. And we may have differed on the particulars, but she was sincere in her beliefs. And that's what I articulated.

And I said, look, we're she's a good person. We just have a different a fundamentally different view on some key issues. And that's the difference. And like, why can't we just talk about these differences or or, heaven forbid, find ways to wade through those differences in a way that's going to be beneficial to the to our whole community. You know, and that's I, I feel like we've stepped up and done that in our little part of the world.

I don't believe at a fundamental level, politics has to be a zero sum game. I think we let it be that way. And I think we're letting national leaders create this narrative that it's us against them. And I don't think it has to be that way. I think you can literally stand on your principles and say, look, this person, I do not disagree or I do not agree with them on all these issues. There's probably a whole bunch we do.

There's probably a whole bunch we don't.

But that doesn't change who they are as a person. I think we got to get past where we're at now. So if you're getting out to vote or you're supporting a candidate or whatever you're doing, like let's in your own neighborhood in your own way and, you know, county council or whatever you do.

And let's push that debate, that that's a groundswell I'd like to see is where we start treating each other like Americans, like people, and just have debates about issues, not about right now.

All we do is have fights about who we are. Yes. You know, it's a waste of everybody's time.

Do you have kids? I do hold they. I have a six year old and a six month old. OK, so a little little guys.

I think I've been a little bit struggling in conversation with my kids is. If you're. Like, I might be dismissive about a viewpoint that someone else would hold in conversation and they pick up on it. I now am oftentimes like when some issue comes up. I'm oftentimes trying to explain to them like that person. Believes what they believe. With the same level of passion that, like you believe what you believe, like you have to try to get in this mindset of like when you don't agree with someone, they're coming from something that feels as real to them.

And it's not and you can't always just have it be that they're dumb and wrong. Right. Right. I mean, as a lazy way, it's a way bigger thing than that, they're like they're dumb and wrong and they're telling you something that fundamentally they know they would tell you. They know inside and out, you know, and they've thought that they've approached to every possible way and have come to this decision.

Yeah. Weirdly, we got into this most recently around and this was like, I hesitate to bring this up, I'll throw this out, we don't need to talk about it. We're talk about the 9/11 hijackers.

To get to like to get into. If if you had somehow been able to, like, converse with those individuals, their articulation of what they thought they were doing and what they thought they were trying to accomplish, wouldn't you wouldn't even be able to approach it. But they would have something that they would tell you that they had arrived at. And like the key and even understanding something that's just like an absolute what we would argue is like absolutely evil, absolutely wrong, the antithesis of everything we believe in, everything we stand for.

There would still be deep down there some like explanation that that person held. And you're never going to combat it. Or understand it without like taking the time, like like to try to at least understand where someone's coming from.

Yeah, if not, it's just like, you know, you wind up with a sort of a superficial understanding of even the people you disagree with, like with me, like like for instance, if I'm in an engagement with someone who let's say someone who opposes the right to hunt and fish, you know, how would I ever be equipped?

To. Combat that. If I'd never ask what exactly? I'm like, oh, they just don't want us to have fun, right? Are you really going to get anywhere now? Well, and I think it's it's how much easier it is to say you're evil or you're bad. I mean, extreme examples of silent.

Just that was a horrible example. OK, but we'll go to a narrow space about how do you get fishing.

Yeah, I want to talk about my example. Oh, man. I know I go deep.

I say it's a horrible example is an extreme example. But I think in that case being I like it came up through. I don't want to bore you with how the subject came up at dinner.

This is with your kids because they know about the content to the site.

Well, my 10 year old. Oh, right. They know man. They are. Sounds like they're pretty well informed kids.

Well, I mean, the older one knows that that was the thing. I mean, at this point, like, people know that that happened one day. Sure.

And it's an extreme example, but it's like with kids, you sometimes have to have extreme examples. Yeah, it came up. Yeah.

And it's it's a lot easier to just say this. You know, this this person, they disagree with my right to hunt fish. They're they're they're evil. They're stupid, you know, like how much easier is that to say than, you know, they they have an opinion and it's probably based on experience or fundamental belief in whatever they believe in.

And, you know, I mean, some of this stuff, majority rules. Right. That's kind of the the our how our system's taken takes shape and how it runs anyway. So. Fifty one percent wins and so forty nine percent can have a strong opinion and there's probably going to lose the majority. Right. Like that's just that's the sad part of politics. But the other side of that isn't how you debate and how you engage. That's the part you can control.

You can still advocate strongly for your position, whatever it is, and push for your belief, whatever it is.

But you don't have to do it at the expense of somebody else's opinions. And that's, I think, where we should all shift fundamentally is as a country.

But a body mind the other day sent me a text exchange she was having with someone from PETA. And I'm reading through the text exchange and it winds up toward the end, it takes on this tone of like really we're talking about the same thing, like it's surprising how much we sort of care about, you know, I like that from engagement.

Yeah. Would be like, OK, now what exactly? Like, what's the problem. Right.

You know, yeah. I think it's of like not not all the, you know, just like a debate. Right. I run it all the time.

Like when you hear from people if we get notes, some people who are just mad.

Right. They're just mad. Oftentimes even opening up. Even creating the feeling that there's a conversation. People get. The stress level goes down in correspondence, the people. I believe, you know, one of my favorite things to do is so if I get a really let's let's say I get an email that's really is is nasty and mean, but not creative. Right. So I can't find a way to use later. But it's just I could tell these people are torqued off at me.

I will find them not in a creepy way. Right.

But like with the Google, whatever you use the White Pages, I will go and find out where they live and I'll just knock on the door and be like, Hi, I'm Casey Snyder.

We've actually never met in person before, but we've had correspondence through email.

Let me hear your concern.

And I've had you would be shocked, like the most angry, ardent person through whatever form of communication when you're there face to face and just be like, tell me what's on your mind. They'll go. And and half the time, it's like looking down at their feet and like, you know, I was just a little upset and it was late at night, you know, and whatever.

But it's just that conversation. This is talkative people. You figure it out.

So that stuff does give me hope, man. You should. That when all this. But whatever this is, yeah. Corvids made it bad to embrace couped inside, going crazy, so your mind runs away with you, man. Yeah, I was about to see our day. Is that. All I hear about is how we're all going to kill each other and hate each other. But then when I go about my day. I just have like like really like positive, like understand like how could I still be getting away with having really positive interactions?

You think I'm doing something wrong? Like, I just go through like I just run into people that don't know some dude at the boat launch. I'm like, hey, he's like, Hey, you want to. Yeah, man, how is that possible?

He'll get there. He'll get we didn't even, like, fight about anything. Yeah.

You know, I, I think politics is terrible. People are good fundamentally. And I think we'll get there, let the cameras come off of whatever's happening over there. That's why I say I don't even care about that.

I'll just focus on what I could control back home.

But let the cameras come off. I think fundamentally we all like each other, even if we're, like, really, really mad at each other right now.

That's what I think. Anyway, we'll see. I could be wrong.

I was reading I can't remember who it was, a person in health care policy. Predicting that one covid ends. I'm not there to say it is because wishful thinking, but there's going to be sort of this. That the sort of collective hug and niceness, let's go with that man. Let's go.

I was like, not at all, but I like I, I like, you know, we had a little glimmer of that back home. So our cases were pretty low and our county decided to have the county fair, you know, and it was just we're still going to go forward with it. And I mean, the person in person.

Yeah, yeah. We we encash county. We still had the fair and the rodeo and everything else. And there was no spike, you know, at the end of it. Everything. No changes, no changes.

Science fair. Yeah. We we didn't let the Carneys in.

So, you know, there was still school stuff. So that was a change. But it was like it was the fair. I love the fair.

It felt like I wanted I walked around the I'm like just the fact that we had the fair I, I kind of wanted to give people a hug, just be like, you know, it's so good to see. Oh yeah. This is like kind of normal. So I think you're, I think you're help.

But he's right. You know, if my Littlefair was any indication about like peace and love because we had a little bit of normalcy, I think let's go with that. Let's say he's going to be right.

I fear that we'll forget. How to do it, like how do you do it, like how do you like that we'll forget, like how to just go be around people, forget how to enjoy a live concert.

Yeah.

Like like you'd go into a bar and not be like, why is this dude like breathing on me or, you know, like I got him going to places, you know? I mean, like I don't do like extra stuff. I do the things that I deem kind of necessary, but I don't do.

That'll do a lot of like extra exposure stuff I don't want to have to go, I don't want to have to have someone call me and tell me I got to lay low for two weeks in my house.

Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. You'll be all right. You'll be all right. It's like I mean, you know, the cliche is ride a bike, right? Like, I think it's a lot easier just to be nice than it is to ride a bike. I think you'll be all right. I think you want that fist bump will come right back like you'll be beyond.

All right. You'll do it with so much more exuberance, just like if you hadn't ran a bike for two years and you get out and you're like, oh, this is fun. No, paddle, paddle, paddle, stand up.

Yeah, be like it feels so good to have this drunken man spitting into my face.

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All right, so turn our attention now to the I don't if you realize this is a very bipartisan affair because, one, it is a county commissioner who's a D, but it's a county commissioner.

So I think state to you guys aren't in competition with one.

But Casey and I have. Yeah, I think our values probably align.

Oh, I would tell him what I want to talk about things because here's my primary issue with. I approach these different ways with Juanita's upcoming election. One was that I would just tell people. Because it's in Missoula County, how many people live in Missoula County, our census hasn't been done. A hundred. Nineteen thousand maybe. It's a sizable constituency, the second largest county in Montana, where kind of a big deal belongs to no one.

Yeah, OK. Or when I was doing this, so I thought about taking this two different approaches.

I was going to tell people it doesn't matter anything about any detail about money. It doesn't matter. Just go down the ballot. Get to the bottom. Middle, mid range on where they're putting it.

Down, down, way, low, go down there, look for Juanita now, look for those vocero, use alliteration vulval, go down to the bottom, find Véro and just check it under the assumption that most people who vote in Missoula County aren't getting that far on the ballot. Nothing against Missoula. But I just know from my own habits, I often like I said, I peter out toward the end. Like, you get there, it's like, oh, my God, the president, senators, like you're all excited and then, you know.

A lot of people just kind of leave it off, right? What do you think of this strategy? So I wanted to do what I just told people to go find Wanita the details and matter. Nothing about her mattered. Just find her as a favor to me. Vote Viro, check the box.

But then I came around and I thought I wanted to share, like, greater detail.

Fantastic one he lives in. I don't know what you call your house, Juanita lives where she lives on the ranch where she was born. That's I was a month old, my my folks were working on another ranch for a year before they came back to the ranch. But your grandfather lived there. Oh, for sure. And my great grandfather.

OK, so she lives where her great grandfather lived. All right. On the county. Yep.

OK, same county she lives with her great grandfather lived, her grandfather lives and you were born on some other ranch but then moved there for a month.

And you live in kind of like a like a cat.

I don't know what the hell what do you what do you tell people who live in my great grandmother's with a great many bags, like my great grandmother's cabin with a lot of baths. Yeah. Yeah.

Not far from Rice Ridge, where you where you were and see like one Eda's. Her property, which is like one in his family, like wholly owns the property, but the property where you live. Is in The Black Man is a program that is one of one of the early. Early block management, my grandfather was was part of a bringing that to the western part of the state. Right. I think block management beyond you can check this.

I think block management start on the eastern side first in Montana. But came over to the west side, so my my we had problems. The story goes, oral tradition goes.

We have problems with people cutting our fences, trespassing, shooting horses, what have you, driving around cars and how you know.

And my grandfather decided to take some of that management into his own hands.

And so he was running around. With his mother's purse gun in his in his glove, like shooting at people he thought were were trespassing or were were hunting, not how he wanted them to be hunting, which is problematic.

So with the help of a neighbor who is little more of a statesman and working with our game warden figured out that this is better to involve the public and to have this block management program where people are a little more invested because it's walking only two. So if you're walking in, you're not driving. It's a different type of hunter. I don't hunt or fish.

You don't fish. Oh. OK, well, officials wanting to many times, Juanita, when fishing likes to dispatch the fish.

Yeah, because I don't I don't want to I'd rather die quickly. Man, you what do you think we're going to go off here, you watch a little perch that's been like frozen for like four hours, suddenly come to life and your sink as you're scaling it.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a bed. Yeah, not good.

She doesn't like if you thought in hell for people like you go fish in the boat and it's flopping around in her mind. It'd be like if you had a deer flopping around in your car. Put it out, put it out of it's got to put it out. Yeah, you're the mercy killer. She says she understands are hunting and fishing credentials.

I am. I'm constantly reminded that I'm not from a fishing culture as well, from both these two and and and and my nephew reminds me of that because I.

I don't I don't have the feel, you know, the hug goes all the way into the fish, like in its guts.

Before I decide for you're aware of this. For you're aware of the fish's presence on the other and your line.

So. Yeah, but so yeah.

So back to the the block management. It was just this really beautiful arrangement where you'd have fish, wildlife and parks and our game wardens do the management of the folks. My grandfather wasn't running around trying to shoot at people. People were respecting the landscape, respecting the access and not tearing up fences. And of course, there's also some self policing going on, too, which is really great because you have other hunters out there, they're watching. You know, there are other hunters, you know, and make sure everyone's following the rules.

And so so we've had a lot of success with our block management program.

We don't have to you know, it's open to the public.

You don't have to tell us. You don't have to get permission. You don't have to call us or sign up or any of that.

It's it's I mean, you have to park the appropriate places, but you have to sign in.

You have to sign in, I guess. Oh, no, not there's no sign. There's no sign.

And no wow for black management just for saying black magic is a horrible name. God bless whoever came up with. But it's a public access program. It's like one of those days that no one would ever know what you're talking about. Yeah, well, you look at like the icon, there's there's a, you know, a hunter with a rifle shaking hands with a rancher, a great icon.

It's a great icon. Speaks at all a rancher shaking hands of one hunter. But, yeah, Black manages the public access program. So point being, you live in a place that is open to black management. You. When you got married to my brother. You got married to my brother within sight of the bones of your grandfather. Intentionally, yes. Buried in the family plot is not a plot to pasture, but like a pile of rocks.

Yes, yes, we put a pile of rocks on top of them. Yes, like right there on the property.

Yep. And oftentimes I know my wife told me that you never told me this, but oftentimes when you have a decision to make.

Is it true that you go out shit yet don't talk about this. No, someone just a couple of days ago, you know Ed Robertson from Mountain Prairie, anyways, it was asking me the same thing, but yes, I do. Your wife is very observant.

I don't know. This one either goes out to visit the bones of her grandfather when she needs to make a decision. Yes.

And even when my brother's off hunting on their anniversary, wanting to get dressed in her wedding dress and goes out and sits on the rock. Where she married my brother by herself, to be fair, his brothers only missed one anniversary, and that was all he missed this year.

This year we've we celebrate, you know, our anniversary. I put the dress on, get the same bouquet, some champagne. We. Take our vows and and friends, whoever is around, we stomp out to our wedding rock and, you know, reevaluate our vows and. Yeah, that's great, and this year, covid. And like goats is, I don't know, some some hunting season issue, so my husband couldn't be there with me.

So I was at the Rock by myself. I knew I was going to happen.

But the point being, I think all that I'm only bringing us out like I'm not going to get into, um.

How generous you are. And how very kind. Well, not knowing that, but how? Your wonderful aunt to my kids, without any fanfare, in fact, like children, doesn't like kids, kind of lets the kids understand that she doesn't like them, but within that, they love her because they know there's no bullshit. Like, that's to me, like that's a mean lady, but I like her because she takes the horse riding, gives me snacks, I could tell that she's got like a like, you know, I read that there's a threshold there.

She's cool about it. I get it. I love her more for it.

A wonderful and like I think you're great aunt.

Oh, that's really kind of you think you're pointing out all this, your generosity, compassion. Let me tell you, this is my favorite Wanita story. One, it gets talked about when you get your car crash. This is making you uncomfortable.

No, I'm I'm I'm one after the car crash, I guy a guy destroys one of his car.

He turns out he doesn't have a driver's license or has no insurance or he has no insurance, no insurance.

I'm on the phone with one Iida being like, well, how are you going to go about sticking it to him? Right. Hi. What are you going to do to go after him to get your money out of him?

She has to interrupt our call because he's calling her because she had called him to check in on him and make sure he's OK. Yeah, that was I've never been in a car accident before, she took pity on the that killed her car.

Yeah, but it was super icy roads, Highway 200, you get all three of you know, it super icy roads. And this pickup truck just slid right into my face.

It was oncoming. Oncoming. Yeah. Yeah.

And she made it her responsibility to pursue to make sure he was all right.

I'd never been in a car accident before. I mean, this is my home road. And yeah, I couldn't get out of my car, had to crawl through the windows and everything's dark. You know, I was worried, you know, it's pitch black. I was worried that someone's got hit my car, which is black and very small on a dark highway and got out of my car. Then I was wondering where I supposed to go because someone's going to hit my car.

And I was worried that I was going to get hit again. Someone came and picked me up and then we turned around to go find the the guy who hit me because I want to make sure that they were OK. And first thing we did was when we saw each other, we gave each other a big hug.

And I, I value that so much, not just because now we're talking we're we're in COVA.

This is just happened almost a year ago. But yeah. And then he worked up and silly like you, you know, and he was telling me he didn't have insurance. And I was like, dude, keep quiet because there's other people around. But we were just so grateful both of us were OK and and.

Yeah, and I didn't I know he had stuff going on and tough gig. And I was I have insurance. He doesn't and I'm not I mean he's going to go get insurance.

I don't I don't need to tell you one thing I do. Yeah. Yeah. We and we we kept in touch, but there was no need to wreck his life and. Man, he's my neighbor. Yeah. Point being, I think, one, I just want to implore people and this is the only this all of the three hundred and how many million people are in America right now.

Yianni 360 some. I was going to say, read it, several hundred million individuals in America, one hundred and thirty thousand of them. Will encounter your name on the ballot. Vote Varro, and I'm not I'm not getting into the policy, No. Twenty eight, twenty eight. I don't even know what the hell the issues are in your county. I don't really care.

But I know that in terms of how you conduct your life. And the connection you have to the land where you live. And your compassion for the landscape and the people around you, I have a feeling I'm saying this to the voters out there.

I have a feeling that you will take your responsibilities seriously. And do well by the individuals who put their faith in you to make good decisions, you're going to make me cry, Steve.

So when you go to vote, go down and like, that's your person. Nothing to say bad about the person running against you, but that is who I want.

If I was living in that damn county, that's what I want for my county commissioner. That's that's well said.

And I can't I can't disagree with you. And I think it's like what Casey was saying earlier.

We were talking about our local politics. It's it's not what you hear at the national level. I think our our local issues. I mean, this is just this is community members looking out for each other. This is the decisions we make is to make our community a better place to live and raise our kids.

I don't even have kids, but I care deeply about all of your kids and kids and. The fact that we have here, it's. Sounds so corny, but it's true, so corny, but who cares about kids in the way that going out fishing, she would say?

What are these little people supposed to eat all day? No one has considered this.

Something like that, yeah, that's that's fair also, selfishly, I like to eat, and so I was wondering what I was going to be eating too, so.

Yeah, no, it's like Casey alluded to this earlier, this is an honor and it's a huge responsibility.

Casey's not doing this for for money. And it is just a it's a it's an honor.

And when you really love a place and I you know, you love Utah and I love Montana even more Missoula County, the more I learn about it, it's yeah. It's an honor to be asked.

So I was appointed and then so now I have to run to finish to get another term and. Yeah, when you feel ready and folks believe in you and like like you said, yeah, it's it's pretty exciting to take that step.

Yeah, I think it's helpful to you to talk about right now. I just have a couple. I wanted to have a couple of people in who have issues, but. Just in some way, help bring up the idea that, like the people involved in politics and like when you go to vote, that thankfully there's just it's individual, like it's individual Americans. For the most part, I would venture to guess individual Americans who are hoping to, like, do a good job at service for people.

Absolutely, absolutely. So on November 3rd or whatever day after the election, you can do it right now, and when our cities are in flames, when our cities are in flames, we'll look back on this conversation today and try to remember.

Now, there are some good folks out there working for us, and I think it's important to remember that. And again, it's it's local.

Forget about the the national noise and. Remember the yeah, the action, the rubber meets the road. Yeah, I like county commissioner.

Honestly, I don't think it really matters what party we're from. I mean, it's we deal with such a broad range and whether it's someone complaining about neighbors, dogs versus like, ah, you know, what's the correct pavement recipe to add to our budget?

You know, the it's a it's a broad, broad range.

Yeah. I follow along on Instagram. It seems like when you post some stuff about being a commissioner, you're always like off doing like things that you probably never even thought you'd be learning about. Right. About, Oh my God, the workings of a county. It's fantastic.

And and it's weirdly like the ranch, you know, like the ranch. You know, it's this amazing place, your ranch probably the same thing. It's like there's never enough, you know, JB Weld and duct tape and baling twine to, like, hold the place together.

Yeah, but somehow it works.

And Missoula County, it's amazing staff and amazing engaged citizens who who really care.

And that's what that's what makes it special.

So I'm I'm an old man. And we got some crazy challenges to deal with because we're a large county in a complicated county. And yeah, we have an urban Missoula, which is very different from are largely like rural the rest of the county. I mean, you spent time up and see like.

Yeah, yeah. It's there's some tension there. And but that's why I yeah. I think that this particular commission of which I'm part of, I think we represent that tension well and in a in a positive way. And yeah, I think we can demonstrate, some can do and even a little joy which is in a word you hear and no politics at all.

Well to again, thank you both for coming on. Yeah. Wanita Viro. Missoula County Commission. Yes. This is your first up since you got appointed. Now you got to go win.

Yeah, this wasn't on my radar at all. I mean, Casey, you've been you've been in the scene for a while. This is this came out of left field for me.

You makes a series of poor decisions and then you end up with a bad opportunity.

And how long are you going to do? Oh, yeah. Are you to are going to be governor? No, no, no.

I like where I live. Oh yeah. That's right. Yeah. Like at a certain point you got to go somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't move to live with my brother. Yeah. I'd be really dismayed at how I become a politician.

I was like, well that's better than my brother. And Casey Snyder, who's up for reelection. Is their term limit where you're at. No. Mm. Oh. Tell people your district. It's House District five State Cash Valley Cash Valley from the mountain era cash.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Jim Bridger loved it.

And I live in paradise, which is aptly named, you know, so so you can do two votes here because you can find Casey Snyder. District, yep. So all five of you or thirty thousand, you have to fight and fight and that and that spread out community and then also in Utah, go find your right to hunt and fish thing and vote.

It's yes. Correct. Correct. Yes. You want yes. We want to be able to hunt and fish.

And if you're in one of them, the majority of states doesn't have such protection.

So I hope that other people will be inspired to write their state legislation, their free time, get that rolling in the other states. And I look forward to a national version.

There's a movement starting right here right now. I can feel it. I feel absolutely right to hunt fish and trap. Right. Right. And run hound dogs, right? Yeah, say and shoot a bow. What was the other things?

Yeah, archery, hunting bears, bait bears, chase lions.

All right. Thanks, guys. I appreciate you coming out. This is the bipartisan get out the vote issue. We've introduced you to a Democrat. We've introduced you to Republican.

It was Válková that make you guys hard that like they did in basketball. Oh, they did a fist bump. There it is. Partisanship ripping apart America right here in our podcast studio. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you. Thanks.