I'm Travis Bader
and this is the Silvercore podcast.
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I'm joined today by a UBC grad in economics, business or sustainability.
Did his undergrad thesis.
Hunt Recruitment and retention.
His master's thesis on preferences and willingness to pay for wildlife management
and is currently the executive director of the British Columbia
Wildlife Federation.
Welcome to the Silvercore podcast.
Jesse Zeman Thanks, Travis.
You know, even though this is about B.C.
and you've got a big role within the British Columbia Wildlife Federation,
your areas of study and your expertise was something that I think would be useful
for people all throughout North America and beyond.
And you've got very keen
insight into what it is we're going to be talking about today
and a lot of respect from people who have been working with you and around you
and even those who just kind of follow you casually on forums.
And I was funny because in doing a little bit of research for this podcast,
I came across a quote here and it says, I admire Jesse and his efforts.
He is horribly intelligent and is extremely dedicated
to our wildlife concerns.
And I thought, who better to have
on the Silvercore podcast to share his thoughts
on wildlife management, on Hunter retention and Hunter recruitment than you.
So again, thank you for joining me here.
Yeah, thanks.
Those are very kind words for someone who must not know me that well.
So you've been involved with the Wildlife Federation and for a long time.
I think in your... you're an airline pilot
by by trade on top of everything else here.
And you decided to jump in and work
at the Federation, which probably
in some respects people would look at and say, well, I bet you
it doesn't pay as much as being an airline pilot.
Why would this guy do this?
Why would.
What what is it that drives you?
Yeah, that's yeah, that's certainly the case.
You definitely work a lot more and get paid a lot less.
That is true.
My. My time at the B.C. Wildlife Federation.
I've been involved since I was a kid.
Probably since as far back as I can remember.
Involved in the Oceola Club, which is in Lake Country,
kind of in the interior of British Columbia.
And and started under a fellow named Ron Taylor,
who is one of the original members of the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation.
You know, big name in the conservation movement.
So he kind of got me started as a kid, you know, into hunting and fishing,
fishing as young as I was, you know, two or three years old
and kind of just took that on and got started into some stewardship projects.
So I've kind of been a lifelong BCWF member.
And and the passion for it really just comes in seeing the change
and realizing the change in fish and wildlife populations and
all of the effects that we now realize, you know, where we're down.
And in Ladner right beside the Fraser River here or close to there
and you talk to some of the folks that are older than our generation
and they used to have sockeye returns every year there
where they could go fishing.
And then it went
to, you know, once every other year and then it went to once every four years.
And now, you know, the likelihood is we probably won't see another sockeye
fishery for the foreseeable future in the river.
Or if we do, it's going to be, you know, very marginal once every four years.
So that's kind of the passion is recognizing that,
you know, what I've experienced and what the people before me experience.
My kids are probably not going to get
that opportunity unless people who really care about these resources
put their hands up and say, we're not okay with what's going on.
We want to see change.
We want to see sustainable fish and wildlife populations.
So that's the motivation.
So that sounds like a pretty uphill battle personally.
I mean, it sounds like you're
you'd be banging your head against a brick wall at times because
best laid plans, you can put together a full
thesis and paper and stats and everything on it, but
you're going to have layers of bureaucracy
and you're going to have different political climates.
So they're going to affect how those decisions are being made.
How do you deal with that?
Yeah, Yeah.
A lot of sleepless nights for sure.
I mean, the the very interesting thing, if we cut right to the core in British
Columbia, you know, politics, there are politicians
who are intrinsically motivated who really get into it for the right reasons.
There are a lot of personalities, but the reality of it in B.C.
is that quite often the provincial election is won
and lost by 60 to 80000 votes across the province.
Sometimes far less than that.
And there's a number of areas where things are always close, right?
And so when we look at how many people hunt,
you know, 110,000 plus people that buy a license every year
between fresh water and saltwater licenses, you're talking
over 500,000 licenses that are sold.
If you can get those people to stand up and advocate for Fish and Wildlife
and let elected officials know that what they're doing is an okay
and they want to see change, you will get changes in
how fish wildlife is managed and how conservation is applied.
So so that's kind of like the ultimate goal is to get people
to herd the cats in a way where they're vocal
about what's important to them, where they engage with their MLAs.
And I think you'll see change
that strategically.
You can definitely hunters and anglers could 100% control
the outcome of the provincial election if they were all on the same page and not
That would not be a hard, hard feat in that sense.
And like any any group of people, there's always going to be classes
within that group
that they look at, trying to make distinctions between each other.
They'll say, Well, I'm a sport shooter.
I'm not a hunter.
I'm a I'm a rifle shooter.
I'm not a pistol shooter.
And there's a level of divisiveness in there.
I would think that it would be extremely difficult
to get people to self advocate.
And I think you're probably fighting a
a traditional sense of co-opting responsibility for advocating
to a third party, because in days of old people would say, well,
I belong to the Wildlife
Federation or I belong to whatever it might be, I pay my money.
What are they doing for me?
And what we're really seeing as we move forward
is the empowerment of the individual.
Like the Internet has really empowered the individual.
A.I and that's an interesting thing I'm kind of looking at as well
because I got an expert in A.I.
they just did a podcast with and another one
who's a futurist who I'm talking with, talking about how A.I.
is changing the whole paradigm of people and commoditizing essentially knowledge
and how moving forward, the trend is going to be went
from physicality to intelligence to now uniqueness.
The individuals.
So I think you're going to see a growing push
that's going to be assisting in people, recognizing and realizing that
their own unique voice has a heck of a lot more power than it ever has in the past.
But how are you looking at this?
How is it something that the Federation is kind of looking at
mobilizing the individuals to advocate?
Yeah.
So yeah, that that is always so when we talk strictly, you know,
advocacy is one part of our of our business.
We've got a whole bunch of different parts
But in terms of mobilizing people, in a lot of cases, it's education.
There's also we we get this like feeling of hopelessness from a lot of people
where it's like, well, I'm exactly you're saying I'm just one person.
My MLA is never going to listen to me.
It's a waste of my time to go see them.
And that's part of the, you know, the hurdle
that we got to get over is people recognizing that their time is valuable,
that their MLAs in person appreciate them coming in
and having an exchange of knowledge or lobbying or advocacy or whatever.
And so Bill C 21 is a prime example where people are finally getting mobilized
and, you know, we kind of talked about this off air.
I think what you alluded to is that, you know, there's these factions
and so you have like the sports shooting community who maybe not doesn't hunt
you have hunters who obviously shoot that's part of their business.
And and I think, you know, in the past you had people saying, well, I don't hunt,
so why should I care? I don't support shoots.
So why should I care?
Well, you should care because you have overlapping interests
in the sense that, you know, hunters need sports shooters and sports shooters
need hunters in the sense that there are a ton of sports shooters that adds numbers
to people who care about firearms or using firearms.
On the flip side, sports shooting social license is very
clearly tied to people hunting, right?
So the public doesn't necessarily support people who just shoot.
And that's not their fault.
That's really more spillover from what goes on in the States.
But the reality is, is everybody is on the same team and going,
I care about what you do.
You care about what I do.
Let's jointly work together to advocate.
You are going to be much more powerful than if you say, Well, I don't hunt
and I don't care about sports shooting, so I'm just going to go my own way.
And so I think that's part of this broader realization.
And it's the same in the world of Fish and Wildlife, right?
We now have this Fish Wildlife and Habitat Coalition, which is 29 groups,
I think makes up, you know, there's over 900 sustainable businesses, 275,000
plus people who have, you know, five years ago
couldn't even stand to be in the same room together, really like it was
I was at I was at a pile of those meetings where people
just, like, instantly cut loose on each other.
But everybody's coming upon this realization that, look,
you know, I you know,
if you're a non hunter, you're like, I really care about grizzly bears.
Well, guess what?
Grizzly bears also need salmon, right?
And we all care about salmon and we all care about the sustainability
of grizzly bears, the sustainability of caribou.
So these little tiny things that we don't agree on, why don't we set that aside?
Because there's bigger, more important issues.
You know, there's bigger fish to fry
than these little tiny nuances, because if we all head off in our own direction,
we know that things are going to get worse for shooting or for conservation.
So that's really the message, I think, and that's part of the mental bridge
that we got to get over.
And so how are we focusing on that?
We just recently added a conservation hunting,
angling and sports shooting engagement coordinator.
So that person's role really is going to be building community
within our different constituencies and talking to people and educating people.
That's a that's a big part of it.
We're also kind of stepping up the world of education.
We already do a ton of education, but we're going to be offering
some more products to kind of bring in,
you know, we're
seeing increased female participation in things like hunting and angling.
They're both becoming more family oriented activities.
And so supporting that transition,
again, is good for hunting and conservation
and angling because there's more people that care about the resource.
But under that, again, like it's it's
these activities are stigmatized in the sense
that typically it's been a white male, older
who does these things and people find that unrelatable.
But if we have all these other people who are coming in to these activities
and reaching out and touching the rest of their community,
hunting suddenly becomes far more palatable.
And we're seeing that right?
Like, I mean, I recall even 15 years ago where if you talked about hunting
in British Columbia, you were instantly sent death threats.
And, you know, it's in the Vancouver Sun, you know, the province is out to train,
you know, ten year old killers and those sorts of things.
And now that discussion has changed big time right now,
like there's like the local food movement and people are moving
towards hunting because they're concerned about where their meat comes from.
They want to source it ethically. So.
So I guess what I'm saying is, you know, we can all be a bow
hunter or a rifle hunter or a sports shooter, a fly fisher.
But we should all be on the same page in terms of taking care of this resource,
in terms of making sure
that everybody has access to it so they can go out hunting and fishing.
And if we can get raise it up that level, we're going to be a lot better off.
Yeah, if you can create a hierarchical approach,
I mean, not that the concerns of these different groups are invalid,
but perhaps there's something that can be approached
a little bit later on down the line after some of the big blocks are set in place.
And that gives you a strong foundation.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think I mean there's we do we have
we have clubs that have had internal struggles between,
you know, the IPSC and the Trap shooters and all the rest of that stuff.
And you know, that the reality is, is like if we can't
people can't use handguns, IPSC going to go the way of the dodo, right?
And if we so so you know, you got to set those things aside.
You got to make sure that you're
not trying to marginalize each other and you got to go, okay, if we all work
together, we're going to get to a better place in time.
Then if we all fight amongst ourselves, Right?
That's that that's one of the big challenges.
You know, I had someone on the podcast before, very intelligent person,
and she was saying talking about ego in hunting.
Yeah.
I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Right?
And you know, she's going in.
She's like, I get you know, some people have ego,
but it made me pause and look at and really analyze
the the thought of the ego in in what's involved.
And you find it everywhere.
But I think she was correct.
That's Jenny Lee.
Jenny Li, am I pronouncing it right?
You're right.
She said it both ways to me. Yeah, yeah,
that I think she is very correct in so far as you know,
money and power seem to be the two things that
can create the most strife for people, whether that's real
money or real power or perceived money or perceived power.
I'm I'm the captain of my gun club or I'm the head ring safety officer.
Okay, fair enough. Right.
That's a different elevation of position or whatever it might be.
And it seems to me that that is that she hit the nail on the head,
that that is the barrier to having people kind of work together.
If people can kind of
take a step back
and put the ego aside and really,
truly look at what it is that's going to benefit the group the most
and maybe swallow that difficult pill, work together with your
the person who you've been feuding with because of whatever it might be
for the last little, so that you can both see
the realization of a shared goal.
Yeah, that's but that's a
that's a huge thing unto itself because,
you know, egos tied into basically everything.
And you know, in the firearms world, they see it a lot too.
I got a gun. I'm pretty special, right?
I mean, in the States,
everyone and their Grandma has a gun and it's a completely different personality.
I work with firearms instructors. Well, I'm an instructor.
I got to be extra special because I teach it now. Right. And
learning that
coming to the realization that we're all in this game together.
And I think Shane Mahoney actually said it really well before
when he's talking about the animals and how we manage them.
And he says, you know, it's not that I'm better than the animals, it's
not that I have dominion over the animals.
I mean, the animals will all have things that they can do
better than me, the bear is stronger than me, right?
The the cougar is going to be faster than me.
The deer has got better ears than me, right?
There's all these different things.
But the question is, is that we are actually one of the animals
and we have to find a way to work together in a holistic way.
Yeah, Yeah, I think that's accurate.
I mean, Shane does spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff
and it is accurate.
And I think it we're seeing it our it's already happening like this,
this kind of shift in in why and when and who picks up hunting
and who picks up angling has changed right This was you know
40 years ago hunting was essentially a male dominated Caucasian activity.
And now there's more and more people that are getting into it.
And I think that's great, right?
Like you will find some people with in a much older demographic
who, you know, oh,
in my day, you know, men and boys went out hunting a blah blah blah
And it's like, that's great in your day.
But in our day, everybody goes out hunting.
And so these people, I guess, you know, ego is part of it.
It's it's how they relate to hunting and how they were brought up.
Seeing, hunting.
And the view about hunting now is different.
And I think it's a good thing. I mean, I think there's
you know,
there's a ton of value in getting people hooked into these activities.
And I think that's the broader part, too, is hunters.
As hunters, we often find ourselves in competition with other hunters, right?
So if you're out somewhere and it's busy and you're running into people,
quite often hunters get really bent out of shape.
There's people everywhere.
I'm tripping over them.
I can't believe this blah blah blah
And it's like, well, like, you know, hunters in British Columbia
probably make up 3% of the whole population.
There is a whole bunch of people
that probably support hunting or forms of hunting,
but there's also a bunch of people that are opposed to hunting.
Mm hmm. Right.
So I would rather go out in the bush and run into someone who's out
enjoying the same activity that supports conservation and go, Hey,
I'm going to go up this drainage.
You go up that drainage, have a great day, or let's work together on this,
rather than running into someone who hates what I'm doing and hates me for it.
Right. I love that.
So it's like a totally it's like I mean, all these things to me
when people see, you know, have an interest in these activities,
it's like I want to bring you into this for a number of reasons.
And same, you know, as it relates to BCWF is,
we want to train up and I'm sure it's the same for you.
We want to train up people who are confident and understand
how to say if we hold a firearm, handle a firearm, harvest an animal, like
we want these people to have the best experience possible,
because the worst thing you can do
is get somebody who goes, I want to get into hunting.
And the first time they go out, they harvest something that's illegal.
They get a fine and they quit hunting. Right? Right.
So, you know, even if you're talking about firearms instructors,
you know, in my mind
as a firearms instructor or as a core instructor,
you want to be putting through the best students
that you possibly can to prepare them for hunting so that they enjoy hunting,
so that they're good stewards for these activities, so that it reflects
well on the public. Right.
So all things that we think about all the time, 100%,
you know, we've always taken the approach of: there’s material
People need to know to pass a test.
We can sit here and we can just teach that material,
They can go, they can leave, and they go: “ok I passed my tests. Now what?”
Or we can instill our passion
for what it is that we do through example
and try and have people adopt a
a mental process or a lifestyle of safety, of ethics, of community.
And we’ve worked really hard
to be able to do that since 1994 when I started doing the the training.
And we found that it's been it's been quite successful.
And when I say look around others that are successful in the field, do it.
Do it very similarly.
But you brought up, oh my God, so many things.
I'm I'm taking notes as we're going through here.
Recruitment and retention,
paying for conservation talking about memberships, Grizzly bear.
I’ve read something about black bears.
We might want to talk about that too
what the
Federation stands for, C21, Demographics.
Food is a vehicle like there's a whole bunch of things
and I'm trying to mentally just kind of put this into an order.
Yeah, that doesn't have us jumping around too much.
But I think an interesting area would be,
you know, and this would probably apply to those in British Columbia.
Everyone, when they're saying, hey, what's what's the federation doing for me?
Yeah.
Understanding what the Federation's mission
statement is or what it is that the Federation stands for.
Because so often I see people look at it and say, Well, I'm a duck hunter
I’m into waterfowl or I'm a firearms owner or I'm an angler.
From my understanding, the federation wasn't designed
for any one of those groups in particular, but for the management,
the long term smart management of our natural resources.
But you can, yeah, steer that in the right way.
Yeah, there's the, I mean you can hand out the vision
statement and mission statement.
but really it's about taking care of nature, essentially taking care
of these resources, representing people
who hunt, fish, trap, sport shoot
advocate on their behalf, advocate on behalf of conservation.
But the other piece, too, is to engage and instill awareness in the public.
And so there's like so there's like a whole bunch of different parts
to our business.
I mean, we do education, right? So
core is one of them.
One of our programs becoming an outdoor is women, women outdoors,
we do wetlands education, we have our conservation webinars.
So that is all engaging
not only our members, but also the public our conservation webinars
As we get elected, officials we’ll get members of Parliament,
which is our federal government we’ll get members the Legislative Assembly,
which is the provincial government on those to learn about them
a bunch of our stuff is outreach in terms of media.
Last year in just by December, we are in,
I think, 1400 different new just newspaper articles, never mind TV and radio.
And so that reach in terms of the viewership,
it would have reached something over 400 million Canadians last year.
Right.
So that's a huge part of what we're trying to change.
Like those numbers are up big time over 2021 because a lot of it
we're realizing is we have a ton of access
to federal and provincial ministers and MLAs.
We meet with them and advocate.
But the public having our public engage in, having our members
engage, in having hunters and anglers who are nonmembers engage,
makes huge strides in terms of policy decision making, right?
So media engaging the public advocacy, I would say, is really where we're
where we're well-poised, given the size of our membership
and the activities we do, but we also do a ton of on the ground stewardship right?
So in terms of fish habitat, wetlands restoration,
we're probably going to deliver just just right around
$5 million worth of on the ground wetlands and water projects.
This year
we'll deliver
well north of $1,000,000 in terms of terrestrial wildlife conservation.
So assigned to your mule deer project, we got three
large controlled burn projects on the go.
We're funding, I think we've got three
PhD students who are doing wildlife conservation science for us.
We've got one that's doing a post-doc on interior Fraser Steelheads.
So it's kind of like science on the ground,
stewardship, a ton of education and a ton of advocacy.
We do a bunch of work for the clubs in terms of
advocacy, but also, you know, we're trying to build more of a sense of community.
We have a bunch of support for ranges in terms of lead management,
noise management that we use to support them to ensure that our ranges
are sustainable and that they're not on the wrong side of provincial law.
And then we also provide insurance.
I mean, so there's a whole bunch of parts to our business. Right
I guess it's difficult to be everything to everyone.
Yeah.
And you're never going to be that.
Yeah, but at the crux of it, it's about the conservation,
a wise use of our resources
and I guess if we step back to that hierarchical approach,
if we're able to address that, the other things should hopefully fall in line.
Now, you brought up now we're talking about people
self advocating, talking to their MP’s or MLAs.
Bill C 21
So I you know, we've had some discussions about that here on the podcast.
And I had someone said, Trav, what's your MP had to say about this?
I'm like, you know, I've spoken with her in the past.
She's really nice.
You know, we get along just fine, but I never see anything really
come of things right? And thought, Well, you know what?
Got to do it anyways.
You got to go in there. So call her up.
And I had a really long conversation, really insightful
actually learning that the division within the ranks on how,
how c21 is being rolled out and you know, without her
putting her foot in her mouth but yet reading between the lines on things
and things aren't all right on that.
And in fact, my name's been put forward to be a witness in the hearings.
So we'll we'll see where that goes if it happens.
So better make sure I'm talking to Smart people like yourself and others
to make sure I'm putting our best foot forward.
But, even from in my position
and being down the road so many times and talking
with others within the Federation, like, Oh, you're going to get nowhere with it.
But all of them went through it and did it anyways.
That negative mindset of “we're messed up to begin with.
You know what, if the boat's sinking?
Yeah, because it's taken on water.
What do you do? Yeah.
You just rowed ashore faster or keep bailing.
Yeah. Don't give up. Yeah.
And I'm finding some, some really positive results
from that mentality over the years.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's, yeah, there's, there's a number of things to consider.
So in the world of advocacy, you know, everybody does like,
fill out this online form, write a form letter that goes to an MLA
Now I'm done.
I mean, that is like, that is like decimal dust.
That is like a speck of sand on the largest beach in the world.
Right? Means nothing.
The next part is like a personalized letter.
You know, your elected officials assistant might read it, might tabulate
how many they get the next you know, the next part is the in-person meeting.
And that is worth orders of magnitude more than the other two combined
right?, like, I mean, like 20,000 letters is like one visit.
And so, you know, the feeling that you get after meeting with your MLA
or MP is different depending on if they're in opposition or what their position is.
But the reality is, is that you are able
to influence these people and their decision and educate them.
And so, when we talk about MLAs and MP’s There are very few that hunt or fish
or that shoot, right?
And so they don't know what this is all about.
And when they get a briefing note
from their cabinet or their caucus, it says, Well, here's
the party, here's the party line, we want you to tow it right.
They're not exposed to who uses firearms, how do they use them,
What's the licensing scheme?
How many times a day are these people checked?
They don't have.
That's a huge knowledge gap on their end.
And so if you spend the time to educate them and build their relationship,
they are going to get it.
And even if they don't portray to you
that they're going to take it back to Ottawa and raise a bunch of,
you know, what about it, Yeah, they're going to do that, right?
So when you're in government, your job is to listen, write stuff down,
but you are not supposed to externalize if you're opposed to it.
That goes back to caucus.
And so, you know, if Travis walks in and 200 Travis’ friends walk into
a member of government of the party in power and say this is offside,
you may not feel like you got very far, but when they go back to their next
caucus meeting, they're going to go, why do I have all these firearms
owners and hunters in my constituency office raising
heck over
what's going on and why are they giving me
a different line than what you're feeding me?
Right, right, right.
So they're going to start to ask questions.
And the same goes the opposition, right. All here all the time.
Oh, well, my my MLA is a member of the opposition, so it doesn't matter.
Well, it matters for a whole bunch of reasons.
One is that the opposition can make the government's life really hard.
Right?
And they can talk to the media and they can basically slam
the government for what they're doing.
The other piece that we all have to consider is it seems like in Canada,
and B.C., is that we don't vote governments in, we vote governments out.
Right.
So so one of the one of the biggest learning moments that I had with
with a minister was the minister said, you know,
the reason why I always met with you is because you took the time
to meet with me when I was a backbencher before I was minister.
He said, Look, as a minister, I don't remember any of the meetings that I had.
My schedule is completely jammed.
You know, you're running from point A to point B, but the reason why
I always made sure that you got a meeting with me
and that I listened to you is because you spent the time at the front end
when I was an opposition MLA, for starters, and that's why you got access.
So these are like long term relationships that you establish.
You become trusted by your MLA or your MP
and and be like a legitimate person and tell them how important it is.
The other the other the last piece that I'll just mention to you is
people always go: “well, you’re going to go into this meeting.
I don't want to sound like I don't know what I'm talking about.”
All these people need to get across is that you're unhappy.
Here are the reasons why and
Here's how important it is to you.
Because when we come back to this,
like what you said is politicians like two things, money and votes.
Right?
And if they're worried that the votes are not going to come,
you're going to change their mind.
You're going to change that party's mind, and they will move
in a different direction.
And I think that's part of, you know, there is a lot of inertia
behind the opposition to C 21 where the public is starting to bite.
And that's where the BCWF, I think has been really well positioned because
we've been able to talk to you like CBC Radio, CBC, some of the media outlets
that probably seem more left leaning are giving us a lot of airtime
and talking about this, not in the sense that gun owners are bad people.
They're actually getting
through to the facts and starting to call that the government of Canada out on it.
And so,
you know,
I guess what I’m saying is all of this works, you might not feel great
after your meeting with your MP or your MLA, but you're having an effect.
That's their job.
Their job is to not show emotion, to not say, I'm going to take this back.
They got to tow the party line, right?
It's like being on a team.
You might be a fourth line hockey player and you might not get much ice time,
but you're not going to go complain to the coach, right?
I really like that because so often people lose fact of the lose
sight of the fact that they're just people like you or I.
Yeah, they have the same motivations.
They got the same things
that hurt their feelings, that make them uncomfortable or upset.
You treat them with respect.
You know, there's a saying, Oh, it's not personal.
Jesse, this is just business.
And I've always taken the approach.
My business is built on relationships.
Those relationships take time to establish are built on trust,
which are and trust can be easily broken.
All business is personal.
Building those personal connections and relationships
is what helps grow a business from nothing to something.
And it's what is going to help.
If you treat any one of these issues as a business problem
is, I think, going to help see resolution favorably
if you can have that relationship, because it's really hard
to have a really good relationship
with Jesse, but then go do something which, you know, is completely off site.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You yeah.
The and you'll find interesting in C 21 like when you you know people don't,
you know nerd out in the policy world and watch what's going on in Ottawa
but you will find that two of the MP’s
who are in the NDP caucus have been raising like major grief
in Ottawa about Bill C 21 and those are both MPs
where our clubs have, you know, established relationships with them
to help educate them like come out to our we're going to have a range day, come out to our range
Let's show you how this works and what the process is.
And so those people are up to speed and now they're asking questions, right?
So, yeah, I know I get the helplessness
or hopelessness feeling, but it's you got to be resilient to that.
And and if you build those relationships at a time over time, like the part
that I don't understand
as well is everybody thinks, conservation is like, oh,
this party is the only party that practice conservation.
It's a non partizan issue. Right? Right.
Like everybody cares about sustainability.
So the more that we can advocate and show elected officials that this is our number
one issue, you know, I'm a hunter and angler and my number one
issue as a British Colombian is X, Y, and Z.
They're going to get the message.
I mean, they understand when people are bent out of shape or when people
are passionate about it, and they'll do everything they can to support it.
So, you know, mobilizing people, providing people with the
the tools so that they can go out there and speak and
have some confidence like, well, you say I've heard that is a common barrier.
People said I haven't had time to read the whole bill.
I don't know all the ins and outs.
You're an expert, right?
Can you go speak for me? Yeah.
And that idea of expert.
Well, who's an expert like I've been, I,
I've been a subject matter expert in every level, of court.
And federal, provincial and municipal.
I've qualified as an expert in certain issues.
And I will still look at myself
and look around and say, well, look at that person over there.
They're an expert.
You know, I had a friend who was climbing with another friend
who's a well accomplished client where he’s a ACMG guide
and he says he was belaying at the bottom girl comes up, says all “oh you’re a climber are you?”
And he says, oh, no, no, I'm not a climber
He's like, Well, you got a harness on, you've got shoes on.
And “well, I've only been a couple of times before.” I said
Then. You're a climber. Yeah, right. Yeah. Oh, got it.
And in the same way you know, I look around and I see
I, I own a firearms business.
I'm into.
I enjoy precision rifle shooting, pistol shooting, shotgun
shooting, I hunt, and but I don't see myself as a gun guy.
And people come by and they look around
Trav, you're a gun guy. Yeah, right.
So I think for people to just kind of realize that
if they're in it, even if they just dip their toe a little bit in that pool.
Yeah, they're in the pool.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, and, and,
and the extension of that is they're going to know more than their MLA and MP
I mean, just, just defacto being involved in the world of conservation or sports
shooting or hunting angling,
you most likely know more than 99% of the elected officials
because they just don't know anything about it. Right. Right.
So they're oblivious. So you do not need to be an expert.
And as you said, like MLA’s and MP’s it's a popularity contest.
They're every day people there are some of them
that are really intelligent, have tons of policy.
But there's a ton that or not that literally one day were like I'm
going to run for politics,
I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going to give it a try.
And so I've been a teacher for a little bit
and I thought, you know, I'm might try.
Yeah, I know.
Totally. Totally. And that's that's our system, right?
That's our system. That's how it's built.
And so, yeah, as a as as someone who's passionate about these things,
don't ever think that, that the person, the MP that you're meeting
knows more than you because they don't. Like you
are there really to build your relationship
You're there to educate them first and then advocate, right?
So you want to be seen as a person
they can trust who gives them good information that's reliable.
But yeah, you're going to know way
more than your MLA or MP when you meet with them.
Yes, 100% the case.
So there's a mutual
acquaintance of ours has introduced me to a term called GOWT.
I don't know if you've heard that one before.
GOWT: grumpy old white dudes.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
I had never heard that term before, but you were talking about demographics
within the the hunting community and firearms community
and you touch on that a little bit and yeah, it, it does traditionally
have this grumpy old white dude, male dominated
people who
feel that they're having things stripped away from them
and so they're always on the defensive, which is probably why they come across
as grumpy.
But our demographics are so quickly changing,
which is amazing.
You talk about new people, new hunters
getting into and new people get into firearms, women
make up the largest percentage of new firearms
and new hunters across North America.
And this is something the Wildlife Federation from from
my observations, as an outsider looking in has been embracing.
Yeah. Did that concept play
into your original thesis that you did about recruitment and retention?
Yeah,
to a lesser extent at that time.
I mean, at that time hunter numbers were crashing.
So we go from, you know, in the early eighties, 176,000 hunters every year.
Licensed hunters.
Yeah.
And I think by 2004 we were at 84,000.
So like the world was literally falling apart at that point.
And it's like, okay, let's let's try to figure out why this is happening.
Let's figure out what the constraints are.
The demographic shift was not necessarily on the radar at that time.
It was just it was just starting to turn.
And I mean, that was part of it is
there were some signs in the states that it was starting to shift and say,
okay, let's put some more focus on this and talk about it.
So I would say a lot of it's happened on its own.
There are a few changes and a bit of discussion that happened.
But yeah, I think it's phenomenal.
I mean, hunting and fishing as a family activity is like for the future
of hunting and fishing is like the best possible outcome you can have.
And here we are in the Lower Mainland,
which is outside of Toronto, one of the most diverse places in Canada.
Yeah, for sure.
You have people coming here
from all over the world and you can take one or two approaches,
you can take an approach.
That says well, these people don't know anything
about conservation and so they shouldn't be hunting and fishing or you can go,
These people are clearly interested in fishing or hunting,
so let's try to educate them and bring them up to our standards
or cultural norms around how we treat wildlife and how we interact with it.
So those are the two approaches.
And I mean, the second approach
brings more people in the way you want them to behave.
And it and it also will fan out into these communities.
So like, you know, in British Columbia where we're a bit of a microcosm
because we have all these people, you know, like 90 plus percent
of the population occurs in like less than 5% of the province.
Right.
And so we can take the approach that we shouldn't even go there and engage
the lower mainland, or we can take the approach
that we should try to influence the Lower mainland and educate the Lower Mainland.
And we know that BC politics is really driven to the lower Mainland, right?
So we should probably be trying to engage down here and to talk to people
and to bring up the issues and to make hunting,
fishing and sports shooting supported by the communities.
Right.
So that when something like Bill C 21 comes up,
you know, the MLA from Langley and the MP from Langley go, What are you doing?
I've got 3000 constituents at a club
who do all these great stewardship
projects who are taking care of salmon, who have a rifle range,
and you're taking them all off and you're going to cost me
my seat in the next election unless you change it. Right?
So that's so that's kind of like I think where we want to go is,
you know, you can you can ignore the lower mainland
or you can get yourself into it and try to start having a conversation
about the sustainability of Fish and wildlife.
I think the second approach is the best approach.
You know, Shane Mahoney was saying you can jump into the river,
you can be right in your approach, you can put your hands up and start
walking up that river, but the river is going to win.
Yeah,
but if you can find something
that's floating down the river and you're able to jump on that and work
with the river in order to direct it
in a way that is going to be beneficial for everybody in his assessment.
And it's I agree, it's something that,
you know, my wife's a chef and we've talked about this for a very long time.
His assessment is food is that vehicle to be able to reach people
who may be adverse or disinterested or have just ignorant
to to what hunting and fishing is all about.
Food is that common universal vehicle, the culture of food,
how it's shared, how it's prepared.
And and I think that
COVID had probably really highlighted
the need for sustainable harvesting and
being able to have
some sort of sufficiency self-sufficiency within us.
Yeah, yeah I think I can’t remember I think it's Rinella who said that
He calls it venison diplomacy right and and that is huge like at our place
we have people over all the time who are non hunters.
Non anglers don't eat well and that's all we eat right.
And even in terms of how, you know, this comes back to social media too
and we've talked about this all over the province for the last 15 years.
Right.
But but making hunting relatable
to you non hunters and anglers is huge.
Right?
So someone who doesn’t hunt or fish does not understand a picture
of a dead animal, but someone who hunts, doesn't hunt and fish understands.
Here is the story of my hunt. Right?
So one of the pictures is the animal you harvested the other nine pictures of.
Here's what we did before.
Here's the misadventure that we had here, the time I fell in the creek.
And then here's the meal at the end, and then it becomes relatable.
Hunting becomes relatable. And same with social media.
Like on Twitter.
There's a bunch
of people now who who I don't think would’ve talked
about, the fact that they were hunters five or ten years ago.
But now that, you know, food people, I think the hunting communities realizing
that food is a big connector,
you know, everybody's putting up pictures of their meal, right?
It's like, hey, here's what I ate.
Here is the new thing that I made this week.
And the non hunter is like, Well, that's cool.
I love to do that.
I love to try sushi from a salmon that I caught myself or I'd love to try
whatever it is, you know, tongue, tacos or whatever, whatever it is, Right?
Liver balls doesn't matter.
So, yeah, you can make you can make hunting relatable to non hunters
through.
Yeah, through you.
I mean, people appreciate what we do if it's put across properly.
So I've seen a marked shift in since you become
executive director of the Federation with how the federation communicates
and you're out there, you'll get up and you'll do your
We talked about this ahead of time. I have this.
I was asked to do a bit of a talking head thing where I say something
and it comes out, man, that was recorded, I think about 20 different times.
Yeah. Like, oh, my eyes went too wide.
I was doing something silly on this thing.
And he said, You know what?
You just you got to get over it one and done get it out there.
But what I've noticed in
the shift is the way that you guys communicate through social media.
Do you have a background in that?
Is that something that you're coaching on or help with or.
No, I hate? Yeah, I know.
Like our social media, like our marketing communications team,
we've got an awesome team who are doing just like absolutely phenomenal work.
But in terms of those videos, we got a ton of like awesome feedback.
I hate doing them like with a passion in front of a camera is not my thing at all.
And even on media interviews, like having a camera
a foot away from my face, it's not my thing.
I can talk to 300 people in a room, no problem.
Yeah, the camera thing is not my jam, but I just, you know, there's it's.
It goes to extremes for me.
Either I either record it and do it off the cuff
and ship it off to the team and they put it out.
Or I spend like half a day trying to make it perfect
and I do not have half a day record or one minute video, right?
So for me, it's just like, hit the record button, spit out what we've been up to
for the last two weeks, get it out on the airwaves and done.
And on the other
the other thing on the communication
thing, as you may have noticed, is like, again, we're focusing on our membership,
on our directors, the things that they do, the things that we do,
and even in terms of our social media, like we are definitely
getting the message across that hunting is becoming more diverse.
So like Jenny's on our board, Charlotte is on our board
talking about female participation,
talking about other viewpoints, and we take flack for sure.
It's really interesting,
like Instagram and Facebook for us are like polar opposites.
Instagram tends to be very positive space where people like to see
these changing demographics, like to see diversity and hunting
and angling, whereas Facebook not so accepting and warm.
But we got to move on with it.
The different age demographics too, that use a different platform.
It's 100.
That's a huge that's a huge part of it.
But again, like you got to kind of stick to your principles
and what you're trying to achieve and we are trying to include
more people in outdoor recreation, conservation, hunting and angling.
And so we got to show that.
How do you do that?
Well, it's in large part like talking, you know, interviewing
people like Jenny and interviewing people like Charla.
We've got yeah, it's really showing people,
you know, if people like women who want to get into it or people
who are visible minorities want to get into hunting or angling,
if they just see a picture of an old white guy on social media
every single time, it's unrelatable to them.
Right?
So how do you show themselves,
you know, how do you show them that they fit into this community?
That's the challenge is like it's like, you know,
even when you look at some of the research in the states, it shows that up
to 70% of kids want to try hunting and fishing.
It's that they don't have access to it, right?
So if you can show people that people like them are into these activities
and they can talk about why they're into the activities,
it suddenly becomes relatable.
And you might push that person from just being hunting, curious to being a hunter
or from being vehemently opposed to hunting to going, Hey, you know what?
Jenny hunts and here's why she hunts.
And I get that so I can get behind hunting now.
Whereas before I saw and learned about her, I couldn't.
Right?
Well, that barrier to entry into hunting could be can be pretty huge.
Um, there's a cost outlay.
There's the knowledge acquisition,
which is just it's a lifelong lifetime endeavor.
are there things that the Federation is looking at
or has been doing that can assist people in building that community
and bridging the gap between no knowledge, no
no ability to no kit, no gear
to being able to get out there and do something with someone else.
Yeah. Yeah.
On their own. Yeah, absolutely.
So two of the programs that we currently have
becoming an outdoorswoman and women outdoors, that becoming
an outdoors woman is like an all inclusive basically three dayer and you can learn
whatever you want like fly fishing, chainsaws, backing up a trailer.
You know, we're saving , you know, getting rid of lawyers retirements
I guess, and saving, saving, saving marriages at the same time.
Right.
But but all those activities are offered in like
this thing sells out like instantly like it's like a matter of days.
And so last year, post COVID,
we were finally able to get two smaller courses up, but we're really turning up
the volume on those courses and trying to educate as many people.
Like we've got a long term goal to basically educate 20,000 people a year
through our different programs.
And so yeah, so, so offering that, offering that kind of like
taking people from in an ideal world, I'm opposed to hunting, to
I'm okay with hunting to
Hey I want to try this and then supporting them all the way through that journey.
I think there's a lot of value.
And so the BCWF’s motto kind of has always been
join, volunteer, donate, and we're going to be putting educate
like learn, join, volunteer, donate as part of the thing.
So the upfront is them, you know, trying to get their,
you know, brain engaged in terms of how this all works.
You know, for somebody who comes from an education background, which I've always
thought was kind of funny, actually, a friend pointed it out, says “Travis,
You sucked at school, right?”
How is it that you've got an education background?
You you went to five different high schools,
a few different elementary schools, like school just
wasn't your thing and your into education.
And I thought, well, I.
I looked at the way that I would like to learn and how I can reach people.
And it's not that I can't.
It's just different way.
And my approach seems to be resonating with other people.
But that education piece is something that I know
I've very strongly advocated for with the Federation for a number of years.
I'm very encouraged to hear that because I see that as the vehicle.
Just maybe it's just because of my echo chamber, I mean of my background.
But I see that as the vehicle that's going to really propel
the federation as well as
B.C and beyond, and to having more people out there
doing things in a way that's going to be ethical, sustainable and and growing.
And in fact, I remember
I was recently it was kind of funny because there is an article
I don't... I think it might have been The Sun newspaper and this guy gets in there
and he's talking about how in the eighties there is a 80% decline in
new Hunter recruitment.
And it kind of did coincide
right with an education piece because this is in British Columbia
and all of the Hunter education, outdoor
education was taken outside of the school system and put into sort
of private instructors and volunteer instructors throughout the province.
And recently I was asked if I could find that article and I pulled it up.
I'm like, Hey, that guy's Jesse
was because those were ten years ago when I when I read that one.
Yeah, that was you. You were the guy who was in that one.
Yeah.
So did that tie into that paper that you did?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was part of the learning.
Yeah.
So I mean, yeah,
the reality of all this is, is that it's not that people like you'll get,
you'll get people who are opposed to hunting and fishing and say,
well these are dying things, they're going out like smoking.
And there was even
a government official like a long time ago that said that. The reality is
people want to go hunting and fishing and they want to try it.
But like you say, there's so many barriers to entry
and then so many things that you can screw up, especially not having that mentor.
Right.
So this is part of like the pre eighties approach.
Which is father, it was a father and son activity predominantly.
So dad taught son
now we're finding as there's a whole bunch of people that are new to Canada
or live in Vancouver were not exposed to that did not have a mentor
and now they want to learn and so it's way harder to pick these activities up
without having someone who knows what they're doing than it is with a mentor.
And so even in terms of what we're doing in the Lower Mainland, we actually just
just got an agreement together for the Seymour River, basically
where we're going to be bringing a busload of high school students out to the river
every day, I think from April, May and June to take them out to the river
to talk about salmon, roll over some rocks,
look for some bugs, take them up to the hatchery,
give them a T-shirt and send them on their way.
I think we're looking at doing it like I think it's like 1500 students
every spring.
Wow. To get the education right.
And so what we're hoping is two things.
One is that we're going to have 15 more 1500 kids a year that care about salmon
and that have a better relationship with our environment.
But the other thing that we're looking at too is like,
I bet you a whole bunch of those kids
want to learn to fish and maybe they're going to become BCWF members.
And if we can start them out
as BCWF members when they're in their teens,
they're going to stick with us for a long time.
We're going to raise the kind of anglers who are ethical, who understand
regulations, who portray a good public image.
So there's a whole bunch of things attached to that.
You know, there is a quote, and I think it was I don't know
who it was attributed to the person who said it was attributing it to.
I think that's the current government in power.
But they said you control the children, you control the future.
And although that's kind of got negative connotations, to that.
If you're able to provide the children with the education
and the information and the ability to learn right on their own.
So it's not just
regurgitating rhetoric, you're going to have a much better future.
And that's I believed very strongly in that education piece.
And it's really encouraging to be to hear
That's the direction
the federation is going.
Yeah, we're finding and hearing more and more about,
you know, in the lower
mainline here too, like you do have you do have you know,
there aren't as many salmon as there was ten or 40 years ago, but you do have
a number of rivers that have like hatchery fish, hatchery coho or whatever.
And so we are hearing more and more about all of these kids
who want to try fishing, but their parents don't fish or,
you know, like mom, like, you know, broken family or whatever,
where the parents split up and they just don't have the access.
So again, it's about supporting these kids, getting them outdoors.
Right.
You know, the alternative to keeping a kid busy is a kid gets in trouble,
Right? So.
So why wouldn't we invest some of our resources in the future
instead of living day to day and trying to bring these kids up
in a way that we think is going to be good for our Fish
and Wildlife in the long run,
But it's also going to be good for hunting and angling.
It's going to be good for the BCWF
So, you know, on that same forum where the individual that quote that I had
at the very beginning was singing your praises,
there is a common topic.
That came up a few times and that was about indigenous hunting
and that's an issue, of course, all across North America.
The resources that we have don't belong
to any one individual, it belongs to all of us in general, but we have different layers
of government and different interests and sometimes those are butting heads.
One of the quotes that came up, and I'll paraphrase because I didn't have it
written down was, you know, I'm getting out of my tree stand at last
after last light and I'm cutting trail walking back and I'm watching
some hunters driving up in their truck and they're just starting their hunting
for the evening or I'm fishing with my single barbless hook
and getting upset about the fact that I'm not really catching anything
just to see a net across the river and and a whole ton of bycatch.
The that's a very emotionally charged politically.
Yeah.
treacherous area to navigate through but it needs to be navigated
and needs to be talked about is how how do you find that.
Yeah well
it's not easy. no. right And I mean, -well, you looked at your watch.
Should we change subjects? No, no, no, no, no, no.
Because I've got to do the other meaning.
No, it's it is not easy.
I mean, in B.C., the reality is there's like
over 200 different nations communities.
Right? Right.
So and there are a lot of challenges in our world, you know,
we do not have the bandwidth or capacity to work with every single community.
So really where we are is we're focused on building relationships with nations
that want to work with us.
And so there is one side of the story where,
you know, people just fish when how they want.
It doesn't matter
the status of their population, if they're endangered or whatever.
That's one side of the story.
There's the other side of the story
where there's nations who are voluntarily giving up their right
to hunt and fish, who we're working with on stewardship projects to restore salmon.
So hopefully one day we can all fish.
There's nations who are yeah, who are like intentionally limiting their rights
because they want to see non first Nations hunting and harvesting and fishing.
And so that's where we're spending a lot of our time.
You know, it's a big like there's a lot of nations,
there's a lot of nations that are really proactive
where they have their own licensing system, where they have
like an MOU with the conservation officer service
so that if their community members are not following the regulations
that they have laid out,
then the conservation officer service can charge those individuals.
So so I guess in our world, you know, we don't have the bandwidth
to work with everyone, the ones everybody who wants to progressively work
and improve
the sustainability of Fish and Wildlife or is where we're spending our time.
And we are seeing like a number of nations who are who are, you know,
essentially writing regulations for their own members
and who are saying here is how we fish, here is
how we hunt, here is what sustainability looks like. Like on Vancouver Island
they have their own tags, like they have a tagging system.
And it's like, here's your tag.
You don't you don't get two you, you don't get three, you get one.
So working, working with the nations who want to move forward, who are looking
to improve the sustainability is where we're spending a lot of our time.
So there's an old quote.
I don't think it was Disraeli who said it, but it's been attributed to him
and others.
There's liars, liar, there's lies,
then lies and statistics of there's liars, damn liars and statisticians
is looking at statistics.
Is it difficult to reach a consensus, a consensus throughout British Columbia
as to what the concerns are with wildlife management?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Consensus is always hard.
Yeah, right.
And people and people don't want complex answers.
They want easy answers, right?
So in the world of wildlife, it can be we'll just get rid of the walls, right?
In the world of fishing. It's just get rid of the nets.
Just get rid of the seals.
Just get rid of the commercial fishermen.
Quite often it's just get rid of everything other than me, right?
That's. That's the world we live in.
But yeah, there's.
Yeah, And that's the world of politics
too politicians soundbites and like one zinger or one liners.
And quite often in our world, it's not that simple.
Sometimes it is, but quite often it isn't.
So you're right.
We're not going to get consensus for everybody.
And again, you know, there's two approaches to this.
One is
where, you know, and you probably live this too, in your business, there is like
3% of the people who will suck 95% of the energy out of you, right.
Where there is like
probably 20 or 30% of people who are like, I'm ready, put me in the game.
I will play as hard as I possibly can.
So, you know, who are you going to spend your time on?
The people who want to suck the life out of you
every single minute and are going to call and complain.
Or the people who are like,
I don't like this and here's what I'm going to do about it.
Like the action oriented people
is where we try to spend our time, where I'm trying to spend more
and more of my time because, you know, there is a million people like this.
The thing, too, there's a million people who will complain on an online forum,
but they will never step out into the real world
where they have a real name and they need to go meet with their MLA.
And and quite frankly, like you just can't you can't get sucked into that vortex
because it's not productive. Right. We're all looking in my mind.
We're looking for outcomes and complaining to each other.
You know, online does not change outcomes.
What a breath of fresh air. I like that.
I know we're conscious of time here because.. No we're we're good.
We're good. Okay. Yeah.
So your your master's thesis that you did.
Yeah.
I thought that was kind of interesting before
we actually before we move on to that,
is there anything on Hunter retention or recruitment?
If you want to put some sound bites out there, if people were we're looking for
successes that we're seeing in BC or maybe
major points from your thesis that you put together,
what would would be your summary of what
well, it's a two part question then, you've looked at before as a thesis.
Yeah.
What were your thoughts on it there and is it still hold true now, and if now why not.
Yeah yeah a lot it back then I mean we identified core
the privatization of core as a barrier right.
So you got to get people across that first part of the line.
There are a whole bunch of things hunting regulations
and then the mentorship was a big part of it too.
So just basically access to it, right?
So has that changed? Certainly.
Like you said, hunting has become a more family oriented activity.
I think the people where we're really missing out
is probably down here and part, but
also helping these like single moms who's who's kids,
not just their son, want to get into fishing or hunting
and moms going like, how do I even do this?
Right. Right.
And and so that's where we see like, we'll see moms take the core course.
You see this with their with their kids.
Yes... right Or we'll see women enroll in the becoming an outdoors women program
so trying to so so it has changed in that sense of the demographics
have changed and the supports that they need have changed.
Right.
And so in the past, I think the clubs provided a lot of the
a lot of the social staff, right.
Like the monthly meeting hang out dinners and stuff.
But I think the clubs in the future
and even now are going to have to shift more towards
recognizing that their membership and recruiting and retaining new members
is really thinking about this changing demographic and thinking about
events and functions to support the this this lack and thirst for knowledge.
Right In the past, like everybody knew like,
oh yeah, the hunting regulations back then were this and this cup walk looked
like this.
And here's how many deer around
the people who are getting into it now have no baseline, right?
Their baseline is today. It is not 1970.
So figuring out a way to kind of fill that gap, that knowledge gap, and also
kind of help these new hunters get up to speed
and anglers get up to speed, I think is is what's changed, I would say.
Have you heard of the first Hunt Foundation?
No razzle dazzle.
Rick Brazel, as he called himself Rick Brazel in the States has had
him as and others have been pushing very hard and they've built something
called the First Hunt Foundations, designed specifically to take people out
who've never hunted before and pair them up
with a vetted, background checked, educated
mentor.
Yeah, to take a person out and they can get out
hunting once or twice with the hope that going off.
It's not like you've got a long time and maybe you'll develop a longtime
relationship and hunting partner, but that person's resources are
able to be shared with others.
So it's not like you're always monopolizing them.
Yeah, but he's got this thing going with the first Hunter Foundation.
It's growing rapidly.
They're doing an amazing job and it's introducing
youth and new hunters into what it's like under
the mentorship of somebody who's been doing it successfully for a while.
Yeah, yeah. Alberta has a similar program too
I mean, that's something we're just we're just launching into.
But the the other piece of that too, is like there's the part where you get into
hunting. There's also the social structure.
And so that comes up.
A lot in the research too, is like people,
you know, like we can
let's just say we have a group of four people who hunt together.
One guy or girl might be like, I'm here to get the biggest buck
I'm going to get up at 430 in the morning every single day.
I’m gunna be back an hour after light, when people might be like,
Wow, I'm just here and I hope I get some meat to take home.
The other person might be going, I'm just here because you all are here, right?
And you can get this in like one hunting group.
And so part of the challenge in this like sense of community, which Jenny talks
about a lot, too, is that's missing is is if one of those people move away
or one of them gives up hunting like the whole group can fizzle.
So for these new hunters, having that sense of community
and being able to build people around them is really important.
You see this in the research a lot.
You know, people always say, I don't have enough time in our world.
I'm sure that's true and it's probably never been more true.
But but this sense of community
is huge for hunting and fishing, like we have to build.
We have to build some better lines of sight between all these people that enjoy it.
And I mean, the clubs the clubs do provide
that to a certain extent, but we need to focus in on it.
I mean, that's that's one of the biggest missing pieces.
Sure, it's fine if one person wants to take up hunting, but chances are
they're not going to want to go hunting by themselves.
So you have to find people that are compatible, I guess, to go out hunting.
And I don't know your experience, like we all have different experience.
I'm totally happy to go hunting by myself for a week back
when grizzly bears were open, like I'd just take off.
Yeah, but I know, you know, my wife hunts.
She's not. She's not going to go by herself.
It's not her jam. Right.
And we have friends that are the same way.
Like if, if there's a bunch of people going, there are 100% in.
But if it's like we're headed up north and we're going to head off
in different directions, are going to see each other in five days.
They're not into that, right? I hear you.
So you got to build that that network And I'm... So how how
Yeah Well and that so sense of community comes from a whole different
bunch of different places
but like these educational you know like women outdoors becoming outdoorswomen
So for example, last year we had two.
So I went to an Oceola Club meeting right after our bow.
Two of the ladies that had just signed up for the Oceola
Club were also two ladies that had just taken the BOW program.
They also that night volunteered for the southern interior mule
deer project.
So again, like stringing these pieces together, I'm interested in this.
I took the first course.
I joined a club, I'm volunteering for a project and then having club activities
that help support that network and facilitate that relationship
I think is a big part of it. Right?
Things like pint nights, backcountry hunters and anglers do that as well.
Like they're really valuable in building the network.
So these people need to feel like a sense of belonging
to the community, I guess is what we're talking about.
You know, I think having a strong North Star
that everyone's gravitating towards can bring in a whole bunch of different
backgrounds and interests.
As long as they're on board
knowing this is the North Star that we're moving towards.
And that's what I see the federation value
is, is helping make sure that that star is lit bright.
People have an idea of where that's going and the community can work towards that.
Otherwise you just find yourself in that level of division worried.
Well, I'm into the angling group, but I even at well, I angle but only with flies.
Well I cast but only spay Right. Yeah.
And so but if you have that guiding light that they're working towards,
I think that will help the communities become cohesive.
Yeah. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. It's been, it has been very interesting.
I always remind one of the, one of the former directors of fisheries
that fish is a four letter word, but it's been interesting.
It's been interesting learning about the fish factions
because I was never really that exposed to all the politics there.
But there is a lot of baggage
in that world, you know, same as hunting and how people.
But yeah, the reality is like we need fish in the river first
before anybody can argue about how many barbs the hook has.
And you know how long your leader is, We have to have fish in the river,
so we should all be on the same page as that.
And the other piece under that is the more fish there are in the river,
the more opportunity there is for everyone.
Right? And so, like
even when we talk about skeena steelhead, which is a hot issue, right?
Do you all want to fight over who gets to fish when there's 5000 fish in the river?
Or do you want to go, You know what?
If there were 30,000 fish every year, I'd be okay with having people
out using gear or the occasional angler eating a steelhead.
I would probably be okay with that
because having 30,000 fish in the river and having more people on the river is way
better than having 5000 fish in the river and nobody out fishing.
You know who's really passionate about that and who's been doing a lot of work?
When you bring up the Skeena Brian Niska, and he's out of the Skeena Bay.
lodge there and man, he's involved at a bunch of different levels. He's
doing a heck of a lot of work.
But people would say,
well, he's got a vested interest right? because he's he's running this lodge over there
Okay. Sure.
I mean, like he's an angler first and foremost. Yeah.
I think being able to leverage all of those who have vested interest as well.
So if the federation is able to look via hub essentially for businesses,
for the clubs, for the new individuals
coming through and not necessarily be the
the be all end all provider of all these things,
but be able to connect them to those who do. sure.
I see that as the the strongest way from from my perspective anyways to leverage
those who have a maybe separate interest but the same northstar guiding them. Yep.
And propel us a heck of a lot further. Yeah. Yeah.
That makes sense.
We are finding that with with a lot of the stewardship work that we're doing.
We are.
I feel like we're getting into a place where we're able to,
especially with First Nations, where we're able to manage
all of these relationships or build all these relationships
that the province or government of Canada really is not capable.
You know, their approach is lets sit down at a boardroom,
you know, in a boardroom and figure out how to cut up this last piece of pie.
Whereas our our approach is like, let's get out on the land,
Let's figure out how to make things better.
Let's go out, find some funding and do work on this together.
And I think that's
Yeah, your idea is a good one.
And in terms of people
with vested interests, I think we all have a vested interest.
I do. We do. It doesn’t matter if we own a business or whatever.
I think the I think the broader challenge
is that everyone we all need to recognize that
that there's people who do these activities different than we are.
And what we should be really worried about is if those activities are sustainable.
That's the first question.
Like, I really you know, personally, I'm a I'm a fly angler 99.
You know, when it's when it's in fresh water, like that's what we do.
But I don't really care if somebody sits beside me
with a worm in a bobber, it does not bother me at all.
What I'm concerned about is that what they're doing is sustainable,
that they're out enjoying themselves on the water,
that they're teaching their kids good, you know, ethics
and that and that they're, you know, good stewards for this activity.
I really don't care what's on the end of their line.
It doesn't bother me at all. I love that.
Washington Now, I should probably fact check this or I'm
sure one of the listeners
viewers will take a look at fact check me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure
I've had discussions with others about it in the past.
And I think I think I've looked into it.
But they've got a program where
people who have been hunting for X number of years
can essentially
be a mentor or they might have to undergo
some training or under do a bit of background checking.
But There's an incentive for them
if they're going to be giving up their time
going out hunting and bring in somebody who's brand new to the sport
who they don't know.
And I guess that's another offensive word by some calling it a sport, even though
our province either calls it sport right on their website in the provincial side.
But if they're bringing somebody out into the activity of hunting,
the incentive is, is the following year
they get preferential odds on on drawing tags.
Have you heard of that before?
And is that something that you think would be
effective or able to be implemented in, let's say, British Columbia?
Yeah, Yeah.
I think our yeah, when we talk about this business
of one on one hunting I know Dylan does a little it's not hunting it's limited.
I mean our challenge
is around our wildlife act and guiding and illegal guiding and perceptions there.
right.
That's the big stumbling block. Right.
But in terms of the mentorship, I mean, yeah, it makes sense.
You brought up the limited entry hunting system and how that works.
That's in review.
And I know everybody's got their favorite system
and not a lot of people necessarily like this one.
So that's that's work that's going on right now.
Yeah.
I mean, it makes sense.
Like really we're trying to get people who are inexperienced out there
with people who are experienced and people who have the right kind of experience.
Right?
There's a, there are a whole- I'm you know, I'm very well aware that there are people
who got taught bad habits who have continued to have those bad habits.
And so we've got to make sure
that there's quality control, I guess, in that process.
But yeah, I'd be keen.
Like Freshwater Fisheries Society also has the Learning to Fish program, right?
And so you just you've got to do a bit of, you know, you got to follow these people
through their life history to make sure they're sticking with it.
That's the big that's the big
trick is like we can introduce people to fishing one day of the year,
but how do we, you know,
are they staying with it And if they're not staying with it,
what are the gaps there that we need to fill?
Yeah.
And I also I guess I must have just gapped on the whole guide outfitters
sort of side of thing because that could be putting
the way our laws are currently written and could be put in.
It's the compensation piece that's where it gets tricky.
Right- like.. Right.
If there's any kind of money involved, that's where it gets tricky.
So so those are some of the challenges that we have that are not
necessarily shared in other jurisdictions or.
Are a bit different.
But I mean, I think the concept of incentivizing people
with a lot of experience to take new people out I think is phenomenal.
Right.
I think that's that's the that's the way we want to do it for sure.
So you did your master's thesis on something that
essentially what what is it?
It was on paying of... Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
I think it's called
resident Hunters preferences and willingness to pay for moose management.
So essentially what we're trying to look at is like, what do you want to see
in moose populations, how often do you want to go hunting?
What kind of governance of wildlife management you want to see?
How much of your license fees do you want dedicated to the resource?
And then the last piece was how much are you willing to pay essentially?
So it's like, you know, how do you want to see moose hunting?
How do you want to see moose managed, governed?
And then how much are you willing to pay for that?
And yeah, that's that's essentially it.
There's a whole bunch more.
But that's, you know, 60 pages in 30 seconds.
So what did you find out? What do people want?
Yeah, Yeah, we Found out.
I mean, essentially they want to see Moose restored, right?
So in British Columbia, we've gone from,
you know, in the eighties, peaked over 13,000 moose a year being harvested.
We're now now are probably down below 4000. Wow.
So moose have declined.
What we've seen is people want more moose on the landscape.
They want to be able to hunt more often than harvest.
Right. Because there's a tradeoff there.
If we have, let's say, 100 moose
available in an area we could let you know,
100 people go hunting every single year and harvest each of those hundred moose.
Or we could let a thousand people go hunting, but
only, you know, harvest like a 10% success rate.
Right. Right.
So we can we can essentially we can let people go hunting more often
with a lower success rate or less often with a higher success rate.
And so that was one of the questions is like which end of the spectrum?
So people wanted to definitely wanted to go hunting more often, right?
That's what they said.
That's what they said, right.
So, you know, part of the message there is contrary to the anti-hunting
narrative, it's not about just about killing an animal.
Right. Right.
When people are saying, I want to go hunting more,
even though I know that I am not going to harvest
and moose are my chance to harvest moose go down, that means that there's
other factors associated with hunting that are also really important
are the license fee, proportional license fee.
20% of your hunting license
currently goes to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation as a surcharge.
People, you know, by and large want 100% of their license dedicated
and they're willing to pay more for that as well.
If it's dedicated.
We gave them alternative governance mechanisms.
So right now, basically things go through cabinet.
Essentially there's some delegation, but politicians essentially
make the decision around wildlife management.
People don't like that. Sure.
Yeah, they would prefer to see like in the States, they have a game commission
which is essentially like hunters and anglers who are part of a board
that make a recommendation and typically to an elected official
they would way more prefer that and they're willing to pay way more for that.
Or even we said a nuance piece realated to UNDRIP
and DRIPA which was a multi government multi-stakeholder commission.
So that would be like having the provincial government,
first Nations government and then stakeholders on a commission
and people overall were willing to pay more.
There's definitely people that were opposed to it.
But yeah, what the research showed is, is people are willing to pay
like a current moose license
fee for like, you get a LEH and buy your tag, it's 25 bucks.
People are willing to spend like literally hundreds of dollars.
If we were able to change the way we manage Moose. Wow.
Yeah. Yeah.
Was that a bit surprising to you that the magnitude was surprising?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Like, I think if we
if we dedicated license fees, it went to, like 120 something dollars.
I don't have it right at the tip of my finger. sure
like I think it was $14 for each a thousand moose additional available
so like so like we're talking you know if people got the world
their way like a couple of hundred dollars for a moose tag.
Right.
Which huge because in the world of North America at least
people and especially are this demographic kind of like the older demographic
they do not like government and they do not like paying taxes.
Right. I could get onside with that. Right.
Right.
So those are two things they hate.
But in this case, we're we have a compelling case to say.
There are some people that want to pay more tax if you do this.
That's highly unusual.
And I know even when you talk to the folks in the states about, Pitman Robertson,
like their excise tax, you know, again, similar approach to government in tax.
But if you went to and said, you know, we're going to make your firearms
13% cheaper because we're going to get rid of that
Pitman Robertson they're going to say no way, because there is of close
to $1,000,000,000 that goes into Fish and Wildlife every single year as result.
So that was one of the really cool breakthroughs, is that there
there is a place and a space for people paying more tax,
but they want their money to be dedicated to the resource.
They want the resource to be increased.
And that's a really compelling story because politicians never hear that.
Nobody ever walks into a minister's office
and says, We're our industry is willing to pay more tax.
Nobody does that and we want to know how it's being spent.
Yeah, and I think most people don't really mind the taxes if they can see
proper allocation of those funds in a way that's that makes business sense.
Right?
Not that it'll just balance itself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's a really compelling story
because minister, like, governments never hear of that.
No, nobody ever, like, no advocate or a lobbyist shows up in Victoria and goes,
We're here
because we want to give you a pitch to spend more money on,
you know, essentially taking care of wildlife.
It doesn't happen. So it was really cool.
Yeah, that was pretty cool. Very interesting.
So it's just a matter of turning that
into policy now to actually get the rubber to hit the road.
You know, on the political side, you brought up Grizzly Bear.
I think it was 2017 NDP government of BC's came in says,
okay, we're going to get rid of grizzly bear hunting.
it was enacted sometime in 2018.
I think, if I'm not mistaken.
And I think the there was
some very poorly timed social media
exposure or some hunters posting pictures of grizzly bears.
I didn't see them all.
I heard about some of them.
I saw some.
How much do you feel that that social media aspect played a role
in the decision of putting the ban on grizzly bear hunting?
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, you the the world of anti-hunting or anti,
like the people who are opposed, they're going to use everything they can.
Sure. Right.
We've learned that one of the, you know, kind of rabid anti hunters.
So one of those videos was from Alaska.
And I actually got offered like a substantial amount of money
to find out the name and to cough that name up to the anti hunters.
Right.
So so they are using social media to make hunting look bad.
That's what they're going to do.
Right. So, again, I think there's a lot of learning.
I mean, I have seen things shift, at least on the social media
that I monitor and check out where people are starting to tell the story
and starting to tell more about hunting rather than just a kill shot.
So the answer is yes.
It plays a huge role because it makes headlines, right?
Like, especially in this world where media now is being decentralized and people
are doing research on social media as opposed to like legitimate sources,
it you know,
hunters have the ability to undo the social support that hunting has.
But on the flipside, right, like let's just say,
you know, on your social media account, let's just say, for example,
the average person has 500 people on their Facebook.
You also have the ability to influence all of those people, right?
So if we have 110,000 hunting, like we have the ability to impact
nearly like the whole province of B.C through our social media,
if we do it properly, right, if we tell the whole story
and we talk about why we do it and the values that we put into it.
So it's a double edged sword and I would just say, you know, in your
before you put a post out, just think about, you know,
what is the how is a non hunter going to react to this, Right.
And how do we sell them on hunting?
We don't need everybody to become hunters, but we need everybody
to like hunting to be okay with hunting, to support hunters.
And that's interesting.
You said one of the videos that they're offering money for was a fellow in Alaska,
you said, Yeah.
So it's funny
how ideas funny, maybe not the right term.
Interesting how ideas can spread and policies can spread
and the policy becomes regulation and then becomes legislation.
And it just because people look to the left and their right and they'll say,
well, that's how my
my counterpart over the
next province or the next state is doing things.
And how important it is for people to
to ensure that they're being vocal and they're talking to their MLA’s
and their MP’s so that that doesn't happen.
And, you know, I look at a gun range over in
in New Brunswick, and they won a court ruling.
Essentially, they took their chief firearms officer
to task for
overstepping their boundaries and placing
renewal conditions on the on their range,
which they had no authority to do So.
And I went to court and their CFO said, well,
I'm just doing that because that's how the Nova Scotia CFO does it.
Well Neither one has the authority to do it.
But Nova Scotia has never stood up and said anything right. So
I can see that changing, though.
Yeah, I'm it.
It just, you know, these things bleed and they will bleed over
both positive and negative.
So if you see something negative happening next door, don't think,
hey, it can happen to you.
You can help reverse this decision for them.
Yeah, I know the states are looking to Canada
on a lot of different issues and they're trying to say, Well,
that's kind of where we want to go too.
If it's their political, they're politically motivated.
Yeah, yeah.
I think like C 21 is a prime example because I did hear that as well.
It's just it's just quote unquote assault rifles, right?
Why should I care?
And it's like, well, here are all the reasons why
In terms of the grizzly bear stuff, too, when you think about the advocacy
on the anti hunting, I mean, they used they used
what hunters were putting out on social media against them.
Right? So that was a big part of it.
And the other piece
you know I Will give
so Rain Coats was one of the big drivers.
I remember that they were they were successful in that approach
in the sense that they are not really lobbyists.
That was a public campaign, that was not a government relations PR campaign.
That was a public campaign.
So what that what that should tell us is that talking to the public,
talking to our neighbors, coworkers, friends and family who don't hunt and fish
is really important.
Mhm. Right.
That's the missing piece is- great point.
You know if you're a hunter you know, pardon the words
but you got to come out of the closet on it
and you have to talk about it and you got to engage non hunters.
They are way more.
And again this comes back to the online world.
Talking to somebody online gives you no... it does nothing for the activity right.
Trashing somebody or getting in a fight on a hunting forum with somebody else.
This does not change the outcome. Talking to your neighbors
or taking some venison or inviting them over for dinner is huge.
Right?
That is how you you start the conversation.
That is how you get sort of social support for hunting
I mean, it's the same. It's really interesting.
So like, even with gardening
Right, if people have a garden, you know, because they're going to bring you over
veggies, you're gunna invite them over for dinner and be like, what can we bring?
We just got this out of the garden.
Nobody's like, Hey, I just got a great head of lettuce from save on.
Can I bring it over for dinner next week?
totally. So it's entirely relatable.
And all that shows you is that you have like as an individual,
you have the ability to influence people who don't hunt and fish,
and there are some really easy ways to do it.
And part of it is just talking to people about it.
I like that.
If I didn't have two more questions, that would be a great way to wrap things up.
The only other two that I was looking at I know Chad Day of the Tell ten Group
has put a bounty on grizzly bears because they're their internal research
and data is saying that they need to be managed and not just left to roam.
Do you see the grizzly bear ban reversing?
Yeah, you know what I do?
What I see is there are a number of first nations across the province,
like, you know, part of the narrative around this grizzly bear hunt was first
nations are opposed grizzly bear hunting and and some first nations are.
But I would say in the interior the majority are not.
And so there is you know, in terms of like with Chad's approach,
Chad is very interested in getting a licensed grizzly bear hunt.
There are a number of other nations who also are very interested.
So so as we build relationships with nations and trust with nations,
I think the discussion I mean, the discussions are already live,
but I think the discussion will will grow in terms of concerns
around the number of grizzly bears and how grizzly bears are acting
like from a kind of a behavioral creating problem.
So so the answer is I can see a time where grizzly bear hunting comes back,
you know, in terms of
the way our world works, it'll it'll probably be different.
But yeah, there's definitely a lot
impetus from a number of nations to get grizzly bear hunting back
because like Chad’ll say too, like, you know,
they're not harvesting the number of bears that they want to harvest.
Mm hmm.
There's a lot to unpack there.
I can read between the lines, but I think that might be for a future podcast
as well. Yeah, it's.
And again,
it comes back to this relationship
business like we were talking about, like there are, you know,
there are going to be nations who we can work
well with and build relationships and synchronize well with.
And we're not going to agree on everything.
There is no doubt about it.
But the things that we agree on, we need to work on together, right?
For sure.
I guess.
See, the last one that came up and I have zero information on it
and it just came up in Google when I put your name up in it directly
to a Facebook page, and then I had to search
through a bunch of stuff to find it and I couldn't find I gave up.
But essentially the Google title came up was about talking
about black bear hunting and looking like it was going to go the way of grizzly.
Have you heard anything on that or any efforts to try and do that?
You know, so the world of anti-hunting will use the things that are easy, right?
Not they're not going to well, they're not going to go after
deer hunting like there's, you know, it's like this where all the firearms.
Right.
The public is not going to be supportive of people who just shoot.
But the public, by and large, is supportive of hunting.
Right. And so there's shades of gray and hunting.
There's people who hunt grizzly bears.
There's calling wolves aerially.
And on the other side, that spectrum there is waterfowl hunting
and there is deer hunting and there is grouse hunting.
And so the people who are opposed to hunting are
always going to pick these ones that result in a negative reaction.
So I would say, you know, black bear hunting is probably part of it.
Trapping is definitely on that list.
100%, like trapping is going to come to the top.
The wolf call comes to the top, right?
So and there's going to be a growing narrative that, you know, hunters like
are feeding their egos or that they don't eat what they kill.
Right.
And so, like, cougar hunting is another easy one for anti-hunting, right?
So like essentially anything that's a predator,
anything that is not not considered normal or where
there's a whole bunch of hunters that do it, that's those are the easy
those are all low hanging
fruit trapping is the low hanging fruit for anti- hunters, too.
Right.
That's why they pick it, because this is on the fringe.
Like these are activities that we know the public is not going to react well to.
So those are the ones we're going to pick. camel in the tent.
Hey. Yeah, Camel in the tent. Yeah, please, sir.
So cold out. Can I just put my foot in? Well I guess if you put your foot in..
Can I put my leg in? Yeah.
Next thing you know, you're sleeping outside and the Camels inside. Yes.
Yeah. And I mean, successful approach. Yeah.
And these groups go after the conservation officer service all the time as well.
Right.
So, so a lot of that again is just, you know, there's a very, very few of them.
They're not, they don't, they don't get a lot of traction.
But don't, don't, don't feed don't feed them.
You don't feed the anti hunters. Right.
And again, like this is where we can engage all of these people
that we know inside of our networks who don't hunt and fish.
Right.
That's part of this newer position at the BCWF is developed, is
I want our fishing game clubs to be recognized
by their communities, by their city council,
by their MLA and by their MP as stewards of the environment.
Like I want everyone to know who lives in
Prince George at the Spruce City, Wildlife is the place to go.
If you have a question about grizzly bear hunting or black bear hunting
or restoring fish populations in the Fraser than Jack River like those,
that's the hub.
I want our people to be a source of information, right?
Because then it minimizes all of this stuff, all of the fringe stuff.
They suddenly become persona non grata.
They are not the place where we go to get information, right?
So if we have these clubs and these membership
that are trusted, that have a day at the range, that
have a clean up day in the bush, that have a conservation project use,
you become the person or the group for conservation
and that's who you know, that's who hunters and anglers are.
I think we lost that a little bit and we got to work to get it back.
But it's very doable.
That's amazing.
Is there and I'm looking at a clock conscious of time here.
Is there anything else we should be covering before we wrap up?
I we covered a lot.
Yeah. Yeah, we covered a lot. Yeah. I don't know.
I mean, there's
I think yeah, there's a lot there's a lot to this world into this job.
I mean,
I feel like we've covered most of it.
There's going to be questions that come up. Yeah.
If you're game for another one in the future, we'll have to.
There is one thing that you mentioned at the end,
which is, like you say, if I look with read between the lines,
I think there's a lot to unpack on that one. Yep.
But we'll leave that for a different episode.
Sure.
Jesse, thank you so much for being here on the Silvercore podcast.
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it