Ducks Unlimited Podcast

00:00 Mike Brasher Welcome back everyone. I will be your host today, Dr. Mike Brasher. I have three guests in Studio U with me. It's rare that we actually get three guests on a particular topic, but this one certainly deserves it. And we're going to be talking about recruitment, retention, and reactivation of hunters. And we're probably going to go a little bit broader than that with regard to bringing people into the outdoor space. I have here a couple of representatives of the Council to Advance Hunting and Shooting Sports and also have fellow DU colleagues. So I'm going to go around the room and do those introductions. First is Taniya Bethke, the Director of Operations for the Council to Advance Hunting and Shooting Sports. Taniya, it's great to have you here. I'm so glad to be on here with you. Thank you so much for having us. And then I'll jump across here, stay with the Council. Swanny Evans, the Director of Research and Partnerships for the Council. Swanny, great to have you as well. Mike, excited to be here. At the other end of the table, I've got my friend and fellow DU staffer, Mark Horowitz, Ducks Unlimited's Manager of National R3 program. And this is your third, maybe third or fourth time on the podcast. You're becoming a regular man. Man, I love being on the podcast. You do a great job. Come here anytime, man. Just, you don't even have to give me a heads up. Just tell me to come on in. How good I do is totally dependent upon the quality of the guests that I have on the show. Let me just say that. Have you heard his voiceovers? High quality voiceovers. I have, I have a feeling I'm going to start hearing more of those if I start paying attention. I probably heard those and didn't realize it was you. Have they aired yet? That was the D-U-X. It was over at Texas Motor Speedway. Yeah. Yeah. I did not realize that was you. Just wait. I've got a business, a little side business coming out pretty soon. So don't worry. All right. Okay. Good deal. Well, everybody else can stay tuned for that as well. We're going to go around and do a little bit of, well, we'll do introductions for Taniya and Swanee. Mark, we've had you kind of give your background before. We'll skip over you a little bit this time. Taniya, introduce yourself to our audience. Who are you? Where'd you come from? Your background, I'm particularly interested in your background related to this subject of

02:09 Taniya Bethke the outdoors, the shooting, sports, hunting. Tell us about yourself. Yeah. So I grew up in the middle of a cornfield in southern Minnesota and I was the only chick with an afro for about 300 miles in any particular direction. But I grew up around firearms and living out of a garden. We had chickens and goats and all of that when I was growing up. But I did not grow up hunting. And it wasn't until I was 33 years old and moved to Pierre, South Dakota to oversee all of the education programs for the state that I got really engaged and interested in sustainability, providing for my family and met a wonderful group of women that taught me, mentored me into hunting and shooting sports. And like I said, had some experience with firearms and some comfort with firearms, but really loved the opportunity to learn what it meant to provide for my family. And I've always been a camper, always been a hiker, kayaker, but it was a totally new relationship

03:01 Mike Brasher with Wild Spaces when I started to hunt and I've loved it ever since. And so how did you make it to the council and where are you located kind of professionally? Tell us a little bit about that.

03:13 Taniya Bethke So right now I'm located in Pierre, South Dakota. I grew up in Minnesota and my background in conservation is in conservation. I've got a degree in conservation biology and I've spent some time as a wildlife biologist, spent some time working my way through education as well. And kind of my job originally with South Dakota Game Fish and Parks helped me to fuse those two pieces together. I had a chance to do conservation work and education at the same time. And that evolved into being the R3 coordinator for the state of South Dakota. So I engaged in regional projects and some multi-state conservation grant projects while in that role and caught the attention of

03:46 Mike Brasher the council. And they brought me on about two years ago. We're going to talk a bit about, we're going to talk a lot about the council as we've referred to it here. It's probably a bit nebulous to the people listening right now, but we're going to get to that. But I am going to tell the story of how you and I met and how this kind of came full circle, which is really cool. It's really cool. Really funny. We were, it was earlier this year at St. Louis at the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference. And I think it was the last day I was about to leave as waiting to get lunch. And I was standing, I was standing in line waiting to be seated. And I heard, accidentally started eavesdropping because I heard someone behind me kind of in a bit of a softer voice saying, you'll never, but I could sense the excitement. And I might get some of this wrong, but it's the way I remember it's like, you will never guess what, what I've just been invited to do. I have been invited to give a presentation at something called the North American Duck Symposium. Can you believe that? It's like that you were fascinated to learn that there was a conference dedicated to ducks. Do I get, and so I, I heard you say that and you continued to talk and I typically, I don't do this, but I, I was just compelled to do so turn around and say, I'm sorry, I overheard your conversation. Who are you? Tell me about who invited you to the Duck Symposium. I introduced myself. And so is that the way you recall it or was something else? Like, were you like, who's this weird guy that's turning around asking me about this duck symposium?

05:13 Taniya Bethke I was really marveling at the fact that the North American Duck Symposium acronym spells NADS, but aside from that, we were also planning out our t-shirt choices for the symposium and what they should say. There is a bit of a move to sort of to change that, to go away from that acronym. So no, I, I was really excited. You know, I've been working with a colleague, Lisa Webb, who's also a waterfowl. I'm glad you implicated Lisa in this. She's a great instigator in a lot of these, a lot of these ways, but she's a great colleague and she's invited me into this space to talk a

05:43 Mike Brasher little bit about the cross-section between diversity and inclusion and R3. Very good. Great to have you doing that. Thank you so much. Swani, I want to move to you now and tell us about yourself. Sort of the same thing. Where'd you come from? Your interest in the

05:56 Swanny Evans outdoors, how you made your way to the council. I'd just like to point out that we're only five minutes in and it's already getting us down a bad path here. Causing me to have to sort of apologize and yeah, this would be a culpice here. So I, I grew up in Georgia. I got into hunting through a very traditional pathway. You know, my, my dad hunted, my uncles hunted, my whole family hunted. It's almost like I didn't have a choice, which I'm not complaining about, but that was that traditional pathway, which I'm sure we'll get into later. And I'm very thankful for that. Really enjoyed that time in the outdoors growing up and that time in the outdoors actually led me to pursue my degrees in wildlife. And so I went to the university of Georgia, Warneille school of forestry and natural resources, did my bachelor's of science in wildlife biology and forest resources. And through that got really involved in the deer world. So a bit of a deer bigot. Went down a different pathway than you did. You were feathers. I was there. But through that, I was diving really into capture work. We did a lot of movement studies. And so I got heavy into kind of the skillset surrounding capture and that funneled right into my master's work. Eventually I led a few capture projects after undergrad and then ended up getting funding for my master's degree from a small nonprofit that continually contributes to the research when it comes to overpopulations of urban deer. So I went way down the wildlife damage management pathway, which for people that don't know, that's, you know, dealing with human wildlife interactions or human wildlife conflicts, mostly in urban areas, sometimes military bases, air force bases, that kind of thing. So ended up working in eight different states and overseas, doing a lot of sharp shooting work with deer. I mean, we were sharp shooting deer just outside of DC in the Fairfax County parks. We were doing surgical sterilization research up on Long Island, just all sorts of interesting things, shooting Philippine deer and Guam and feral swine. But this whole experience, you know, it was a very interesting one. And I was offered a job doing that. And I was already kind of doing that once I completed grad school. But one thing that I realized through that whole process, I ended up turning down the job and I saw this position come up for something that was called R3. And this was in 2015. In 2015, R3 wasn't that well known, even in our community. And I read the job description and I kind of looked at it and, you know, I thought, no, that's not for me. I'm research heavy, you know, damage management. That's the direction I'm going to go. I read it the next day. And at the time I was working, I was doing a contract for a military base in Georgia. But read it again. And it kind of made me think that's the whole reason I got into wildlife to start with, is because I like to hunt. You know, I'm big into shooting sports. I like to hunt. This job says it's all about continuing hunting, you know, making sure that it's here for the next generation, ensuring that our natural resources continue to be supported in that way, that that way life is still there. So that kind of brought me full circle and I ended up diving into this position and it was funded by five organizations at the time. So it was funded by Quality Deer Management Association, Sephardi Club International, National Wild Turkey Federation, Georgia Wildlife Federation, and the state agency in Georgia. And it was the first kind of state R3 position of its kind. And so dove in head first and that's how I kind of progressed into that. I was in that for five years just by nature of it being one of the first positions like it. Got a lot of attention, a lot of opportunities and that funneled into where I've landed down with

09:47 Mike Brasher the council for the past three years. If you were one of the first ones in those types of positions, you probably means that you were overwhelmed with people wanting your help and your expertise and meant you were one of very few that could that had the capacity to even help address those problems,

10:02 Swanny Evans right? Yeah, but the funny thing is I didn't have any expertise. Other than your background, I mean, that's absolutely my hands on experience. Yeah. And I had all the stakeholder development relationships. I mean, we were constantly working with all these different stakeholders in my previous work. And then I had the obviously the personal interest in the topic. At the time, there weren't many, I mean, I could probably count on one hand, the number of people that I would have considered to have some sort of R3 dedicated expertise in the country. And they were even broad spectrum. They were working on a bunch of different things.

10:36 Mike Brasher So yeah, it was pretty overwhelming, but it was also a large opportunity. And how long have you been with the council now? Did you say? So now I was in that position for five years. I've been with the council for three years now, I believe. Okay. Well, as we go through this conversation, next question is going to be like, give us an overview of what the council to advance hunting and shooting sports is. And but as we go through this, this is a platform for y'all to tell the story of the importance of this issue. What is the issue, the importance of this issue, this issue to all the partners marked why it's important to ducks unlimited. And we'll take this conversation where we need to. So Taniya, I'll give you first shot at for people that may not be familiar with the council to advance hunting and shooting sports, give us

11:22 Taniya Bethke the rundown. You know, Swanny's got a lot of the background and a lot of really smooth language around that piece of it. But I can speak a little bit to some of the services that we offer and some of the core functionality of our organization. So we're nonprofit. You know, our office is based out of DC, though we live all over the country and serve remotely mostly. And we serve a core group of our three practitioners across the country. And whether they're in industry, state, NGO, or federal partners, if they are dealing with our three, whether it's recruitment, retention, or reactivation of hunting or shooting sports participants, we're there to serve them to make sure that they've got the most up to date information in order to do the most effective delivery of our three strategies on the on the landscape. And so whether that's us helping to provide professional development, partnership on research, research projects, providing planning opportunities and support for our three planning efforts for the organization, or reviewing grant applications, those are just some of the things that we do frequently on the

12:22 Mike Brasher landscape with many different kinds of organizations. Where does your traditional hunter safety education and training fall into this? Has it advanced? Has it grown? Is it developed into sort of a we added different things in response to this more active engagement in

12:37 Taniya Bethke recruiting new hunters? That's a really interesting concept. So historically, R3 and HunterEd were viewed as very separate, very different things. Hunter education was a legal certification course that people went through in order to be able to hunt. Whereas R3 was very much a, this is how we're going to increase the actual participation in these activities and the intellectual support for hunting and shooting sports. And so over the years, they function relatively separately. But I would say in recent years, especially with some of the improvements and changes or transformations that have happened around Pittman Robertson dollars, that that has led to more opportunities to incorporate hunter education into more comprehensive learn to hunt opportunities that has really tied it closely as a funnel into R3 initiatives.

13:20 Mike Brasher So this would be a good place to sort of detour and just give two or three minute sketch about Pittman Robertson. That's a topic that we haven't discussed yet on our podcast. And so Swanee, I'm just sort of quick, what is it? Cause it's something that we'll probably

13:34 Swanny Evans reference more than once in this conversation. You haven't talked about Pittman Robertson on this podcast yet. Shame on us. I'm clutching my pearls. Hey, no. No, it was a great way to find out the inner workings behind conservation and how it's funded. What a great opportunity. Have you talked about the history of conservation at all?

13:56 Mike Brasher We've talked about the history of waterfowl conservation. All right. Well, let's just briefly touch on it. Well, we have discussed it. We've touched on it as part of some other episodes, but I'm talking about a dedicated episode and Pittman Robertson, Dingle and Johnson, those type of excise tact programs. We have not talked about them as their

14:14 Swanny Evans own dedicated episode. It is on the list. It's okay to resubscribe folks. They've talked about it. All right. So, you know, there was, there was something called market hunting back in the, I guess it was the 1800s. It was going way back. Yeah. We got to start with the origin story. You know, so that was hunting for profit. It was selling the hides, the plumage, the meat, you know, all these different things. And wildlife was viewed as this inexhaustible resource in North America. So people didn't think it was something that was ever going to be depleted or even had the ability to be depleted. And as such, obviously a lot of species were depleted. The passenger pigeon went extinct. You know, bison were way overshot. Just a number of species across the landscape, as I'm sure you all have talked about before, specific to maybe some waterfowl and other game birds. A lot of people started to take notice of this or not a lot, probably more, a small group of people. And there was a need to do something. And so through a series of legislative acts like the Lacey act preventing interstate commerce, which effectively shut down the markets for game, quite a few other things, they started to put what we might consider game laws, wildlife protection laws, public lands, all these things started to come into play, but there was no funding surrounding this to any effect to police these game laws or do research or work in habitat or whatever it might have been. And that's where Pittman Robertson came from. So it's the federal aid and wildlife restoration act of 1937. And it was senators Pittman and Robertson. I'm trying to remember which states they were from. Maybe you can help me out here. I do not want to say Nevada or something, but man, my, any of my Warnell professors here, they're going to pull my degree. So anyway, in effect, what that did was it was putting an excise tax on sporting arms and ammunition. And it's been amended to add a few different things like archery equipment and other things over the years. But in general, the way that Pittman Robertson sits today, 10 to 11% comes off the top of any archery equipment that you buy, handguns, long guns, any sort of firearm or ammunition. So if you go out and you go buy your AR-15 or whatever it is from the store today, you don't see it, but the manufacturer is paying 11% on that firearm. That's all being rolled up to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And then those dollars to the tune of over a billion dollars every year are being reallocated to the state natural resources agencies based on their land area and the number of licensed hunters. Now the catch is those states have to match those dollars one to three. So it's a really good deal for the states, but they still have to have some

17:10 Mike Brasher funds to be able to pull those federal dollars down. Three federal dollars to one state dollar. Correct. And what about archery? Did you say archery isn't an archery fall in there as well? Archery does fall in there. Correct. And there's also the Dingell-Johnson Act. It does essentially

17:27 Swanny Evans the same thing for fishing gear and boat motor fuel. Yeah. So Pittman Robertson was so effective at generating these funds and this funding model, you know, Dingell-Johnson came along years later and they wanted to do something similar on the fisheries conservation side and a lot of the boating access needs and other things that were present out there. So that's a brief history, but these PR dollars allow us to do a lot of work on the ground, whether that's hunter education, habitat management, purchasing public lands, you know, wildlife research, pretty much the majority of state agency budgets in most states are coming solely from those federal dollars or solely from those hunting and sporting dollars. But it's a really important thing. And just recently it was the PR modernization happened. So Pittman Robertson was modernized and that allowed us to do more work with those dollars for R3 marketing purposes. And as part of that, in the same timeline, there was something called the Target Marksmanship Act and that allowed for a 90-10 split on shooting ranges in particular. So now states can have even more favorable split

18:50 Mike Brasher to develop shooting ranges and manage public shooting ranges. That means one state dollar to nine federal dollars. Correct. Is that right? Okay. From the PR fund. Yeah. 90% federal, 10%. So y'all have a board, a board of directors. Talk about, I guess, some of the other, like who are Taniya, you kind of referenced this, but like who were your primary? And I kind of, I don't like to use this word, but it's the best way I can think about it right now is actually before I go there, I did want to say with regard to the history of waterfowl conservation, we have a 18 part series on that where we cover a lot of the things that you talked about market hunting, Laciac, Weeks McLean, MBTA, all that kind of stuff. I should go back and listen to that episode because I bet it's more comprehensive than 18 episodes. The history of waterfowl harvest management. And to your point about market hunting, that's the origin of waterfowl harvest management is the legislation that put harvest of migratory, well, put the management of migratory birds under federal jurisdiction, right? And everything else kind of flows from that in terms of conservation. But so anyway, yeah, I need to go listen to that for a refresher. You can find that if you search the history of waterfowl harvest management, Ducks Unlimited, it almost guarantee it'll take you to the website where we have that archived. So back to the question I was going to ask is like, who do you consider your primary consumers of the information and the work that y'all do? I know the ultimate beneficiary is the American public, conservationists, fish and wildlife and all of society, but sort of the more immediate, who are your primary

20:31 Swanny Evans consumers of the work that y'all do? Well, maybe we should take a step back and talk about the creation of the council and why it was fun. Taniya covered some of the services, but we're actually a relatively young organization. The council was founded and officially chartered in 2009. The first real discussion about the council started in 2007. It was a industry agency summit that the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies was involved in. And I believe it was in DC, but they started to discuss this need for ensuring the future of hunting and shooting sports. And so there's an organization on the fishing and boating side called the recreational boating and fishing foundation. And they've been doing this work for years, long predating the council on that side of the equation, but there was no central organization working on ensuring the future of hunting and shooting sports. And obviously it tied in with that as future wildlife conservation. In 2008, there was some sort of a White House policy meeting and one of the immediate recommendations to come out of that was we need to establish a council similar to RBFF that I just referenced to work on hunting and shooting. And that was all, we had a number of different things going on that spurred that. One of those being this decline in license sales, a potential issue with participation and unsure future of hunting and shooting sports. And so with that, the council was formed and we were formed with the same mission that we have today, which is to facilitate the promotion and growth of hunting and shooting sports and the education of the public on the contributions that hunters and shooters make towards wildlife conservation. So it's kind of twofold, but the way that we do that is we, the way I always describe it anyway, we do some stuff that's not behind the scenes, but we're kind of those behind the scenes facilitators of R3 on the hunting and shooting side, or at least one of the main ones. So we work with all the organizations like Ducks Unlimited. I remember back in 2016 is when I first met Mark, he was on a panel and I believe the council was on that panel back in Augusta, Georgia, talking about how to increase R3 partnerships. But the whole idea is getting everybody working together in the same direction, making sure they have the best practices, the best research available, to move that forward, whether it's through trainings or other practices that we currently work on. So that's kind of the backstory of how we got to where we are now. So the issue is declining numbers of hunters, and we can probably extend that even farther to talk about anglers and other… In some states, we've seen declines on the whole. Certainly since the 80s, when you look at certifications of license sales, we're down off of the peak. We've also got the issue of public perception of these activities. I think you referenced it in an email previously, but for folks that don't know, this is the first year since 2015 that we've seen a decline in public acceptance of legal regulated hunting. So we were at 81% of the general public approved of hunting,

23:39 Mike Brasher and now we're down to 77% over the past two years. Yeah, that was a survey conducted by a group called Responsive Management. So some articles out there about that,

23:49 Swanny Evans about the results from that survey now. Yeah, so Mark Duda is a great researcher. He's done so many different surveys, but he's been doing that survey. And I think the first time he did it was in 95. And then they skipped a few years, and then it's been about every two years since then. So it's been a relatively consistent methodology, especially in recent years. He uses a multi-modal approach. So they do an online survey and a phone survey as well. And he's always crossing his t's dot in his eyes. And he does those at the state level for some of the state agencies too.

24:23 Mike Brasher And those data are tracking similarly. Yeah, I remember him. I remember, I guess he was quoted saying, yeah, it's easy to poke holes in various surveys in a single survey, right? You have just data from one survey. You can say, well, yeah, but when you start seeing the same result from multiple surveys, multiple scales, multiple geographies, you know that the trend that you're

24:46 Swanny Evans getting from those surveys is holding out. It is real. Yeah. And if you're listening to this, you could definitely go check that. I think there was an Outdoor Life article about it. You've seen it's gone around a few different places, but you can actually get the real PDF document too. It's rather lengthy, but if you're into that kind of thing, it's pretty interesting. There's some interesting nuggets in there. In general, hunting is always ranked highly among the general public for wildlife management reasons to protect humans for harm from, for the food reasons, but even for the food dropped off rather significantly this past year.

25:23 Mike Brasher And so then the question of why is that a concern? Why is it, and you've referenced this, but I want to drill down a little bit more. Why should we be concerned about a decline in, well, what you just talked about public support for hunting, but hunters? Like I think we need to draw out a little bit more about how the role that hunters play and have played in funding conservation. I was having a conversation with somebody the other day where I, this question kind of came up and I said, every hunter that buys a license, and I'll just say, if you don't buy a license, probably wouldn't consider you a hunter in the way that we're talking about it here, contributes to conservation. Talk about the kind of the outsized role that hunters play. I think it's fair to say that in funding conservation and supporting conservation. Whether we're talking about financial support or political support, who wants to take that?

26:23 Swanny Evans Taniya is giving me the wink. I'm giving Taniya the wink. So y'all just have to stop me because I love the sound of my own voice. So I just keep talking sometimes, but we call you audible chocolate for a reason. Taniya calls me that. So, when we start to talk about the impact of hunters and shooters on wildlife conservation, it's pretty astronomical. I mean, I just- So you made a distinction there, which I don't, I had not yet appreciated, but I'm glad you did. Yeah. So let's, well, let's talk about that. So Pittman Robertson that we just talked about, you know, it was, it was initially kind of this voluntary tax that sportsmen and women were taking on to support wildlife conservation. And they were willing to pay it because they wanted to ensure that we have these wild places, this wild game, and those funds benefit not just game species, but all sorts of, you know, other recreation, non-game, you know, just a diversity of wildlife on the landscape and landscapes in general. But the interesting part about this is when you look at the breakdown of Pittman Robertson funding, it's coming off of firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment. Okay. The bulk of that money, archery equipment is still very important. Don't get me wrong, but the bulk of that money comes from firearms and ammunition. We know from surveys that are done and they're repeated every couple of years by Southwick associates, Rob Southwick, it's another research firm. And those surveys have revealed that I think it was the last estimate that we have was in 2020 or 2021, 74% of those excise tax eligible firearms and ammunition are for non-hunting purposes. So these are people buying for self-defense, for competition, for, you know, whatever the reason for buying a firearm might be, you know, I've probably bought three in the past year and none of them were for hunting purposes. So it's pretty interesting when you start talking about the breakdown. So it's not just hunters that are supporting conservation, it's shooters, whether they know it or not. But let's talk about hunters since we're here at Ducks Unlimited. Hunters are not only paying in and generating and contributing to that over a billion dollars a year that are those excise taxes, the Pivot Robertson, they're also buying licenses at the state level, like you referenced and paying those fees. And, you know, some people don't have to buy licenses. There's, you know, we'd still call them hunters. But the interesting part is there's the money right there. But what we're not thinking about is what about all these people that are members of places like Ducks Unlimited pouring money into Ducks Unlimited that then puts that money back out on the landscape? You know, that's a huge impact. You'll have so many volunteers, you're touching so many people across the United States and elsewhere that it's just really cool once you start thinking about the full picture. And so you have a lot of nonprofits that are taking funds from hunters and obviously supporters that might not be hunters, but I would assume the majority hunters putting that back on the landscape, doing these habitat projects. And then you continue on and you think about all these people that buy private land for hunting purposes. I mean, I grew up in the Southeast and Georgia, we're over 90% private, right? So most of the wildlife management happens on private, mostly by hunters, you know, so they're also benefiting wildlife, not just through their direct funds, whether it be excise taxes, licenses, or through a nonprofit like Ducks Unlimited, but they're getting their hands dirty. They're working on the landscape, they're burning pines, they're, you know, playing food plots, whatever it might be, thinning trees. So there's all these different ways that they're impacting the landscape. Then you add on to that, keep going with all the benefits of hunting to the landscape. That's due. Your hunters are managing the resource as well. The resource in this case, being the wildlife, you know, we know that keeping deer populations in check, you know, you're reducing deer vehicle collisions, you're making sure that we can grow whatever crops it is that we need to grow. All sorts of different things like that. So very important role that hunters have to conservation, hunting something, whether it's money or impact, hunting something that's evolved with humans for like a million years now, or something along those lines. So I think it predates modern homo sapiens. So it is really something that's truly human, and we are connected to this landscape. And I think as long as we don't

30:55 Mike Brasher forget that we're going to be okay. It is clear that you think about this every day. Pretty smart fella. I'm sure he recites this in the shower in the morning. I have no doubt about that. That's one of the best descriptions of that entire spectrum of conservation support that that I've ever heard. So that was awesome. Thank you. I've never been accused of being smart before, Mike. That's the first time for everything. Mark, I do want to get your thoughts, kind of perspective, and I guess your description of Ducks Unlimited's involvement, interest in this overall issue. We have our own sort of R3 type programs, but they're not directly, there may be some new program or some component of a program that I'm not aware of, but they're not your traditional like hunter recruitment programs, right? We're recruiting people to the conservation community through a lot of our programs. You can talk about some of those, reference some of those, but we are active in supporting and participating in the council to advance hunting and shooting supports. And so talk about it from Ducks Unlimited's perspective,

32:04 Mark Horobetz how all of this fits with what we're trying to accomplish. Yep. So I guess this is the DU podcast. I can kind of flex our muscles a little bit. I mean, we are the world's largest nonprofit that is dedicated to conserving, preserving, and restoring wetland habitat. And our duckhead, I think over time, that brand has become something that our members, our volunteers, and the outside community, corporations, foundations, they understand and they recognize it. And so for Ducks Unlimited, I feel like we bring a lot to the table in terms of our impact. And one area in particular that I feel like we have done a really good job, certainly over the past decade, is recruitment of young men and women into the fold of hunting, into conservation, and into the organization as in general. And so for DU, I think we kind of, to your point, maybe step back and we're saying, hey, looking at what are we doing for the next generation? What are we doing for the overall R3 movement that is becoming more and more popular? And I think it was actually one of our own staff members, Nick Wiley, who's involved with the council on the board with the council from a previous employer. And then now in his life with Ducks Unlimited, it said, and look at what we're doing with our college chapter program and with our high school chapter program. That is peer to peer mentoring in of itself. It is a foundation that is truly sustainable. And I think a lot of the feedback we've heard from R3 practitioners, from the council, from other Ethan state agencies and NGOs was, hey, we're doing some great work, but sometimes the one and done type events are not moving the needle the way we need it to. And so for me personally, coming through Ducks Unlimited, working with our high school and college chapters now, Justin Acock manages the youth engagement programs for DU and does a phenomenal job. But me having had that experience from when I first started here in 2013 and hearing the stories and seeing the stories of how DU, a conservation organization, Hunter found and Hunter supported, has a really, has a knack for bringing people into the fold that maybe don't come from a hunting background. And on top of that, we have over a hundred college chapters across the country with young men and women that are from a hunting background, very similar to what's Swanny and I came through a very natural channel into the hunting industry. Those are the type people we need in the field consistently taking people out, whether it's hunting, fishing, shooting sports, kayaking, it doesn't matter. We need those people doing that consistently year in and year out because that's where we're going to move the needle. And so DU is very good at hosting fundraising events. We know what our strengths are. And so for us, I think we've always been very single focus on our mission. That's why we've conserved over 16 million acres since 1937. So we're not going to stray from what we know best and what our strengths are. Our strengths have always been attracting that next generation to the organization through our youth engagement

35:19 Mike Brasher programs. One of the other programs that we have right now, which links directly to the council's mission is TRAP, right? We've talked about that before, but just kind of give a brief reminder of that.

35:31 Mark Horobetz Yep. So to Tani and Swanny's points, we talked about it earlier today in our committee meeting, the shooting sports impact on the landscape for R3 is huge. And, you know, again, utilizing what Ducks Unlimited does best, that is raising money. We have the opportunity to work with local shooting teams to assist them in raising money for their immediate use of funds within their local community. So that's taking our corporate buying power and allowing them to sell tickets on discounted merchandise where they keep 100% of the net proceeds to use immediately for travel, for ammunition, for entry fees. I mean, look, shooting sports is one of the fastest growing sports in the country, but it's very expensive. And so the DUTRAP program, which stands for Team Resource Assistance Program, has allowed us to give back to the local communities, give back to those young men and women who are getting involved in the sport. And to me, the neatest thing about this program is we've had coaches come up and say, look, our budget was X and that was all we had. So we were having to turn kids away. And, but because of the DUTRAP program, we've been able to raise thousands of dollars and be able to reach back out to those kids and say, Hey, no, we've got enough room for you now. Come on, let's go shoot. And so it's been really, really unique to see the growth the program has taken off like wildfire. A lot of it, the resistance upfront first was the coaches saying, man, this is too good to be true. You're telling me you're going to print the tickets and the market material and all we have to do is go out and sell the tickets and then you're going to drop ship the merchandise, whether it be a Traeger Griller or Yeti Cooler directly to the winner. We keep 100% of the proceeds. Well, yes, it is true. And so, yeah, again, Justin Acock and his team of our youth

37:21 Mike Brasher engagement coordinators across the country manage that program and do a great job with it. That's awesome. Thanks for filling this in there. I think right now is probably a good time to take a break and we will come back. I want to pick up on something that Mark talked about there about how the, you know, what, what have we learned about the once and done take a person hunting and then here you're on your own. And I mean, any hunter would, would realize pretty quickly, it takes a lot more to become an accomplished independent hunter than just and shooter as well than just one time a field under the mentorship of someone or the guidance of someone. So I want to talk with you all about what we've learned in that regard and what we're doing differently. Are there other programs in place? And what kind of Mark has talked about to help us do a better job addressing that. So we'll be right back. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. We are here with Taniya Bethke and Swanny Evans, both with the council to advance hunting and shooting sports and Mark Corbis with Ducks Eye Limited. I want to go to Taniya. I want you to talk a little bit about what Mark left off with in terms of one and done introducing new hunters. What have we learned about whether that is successful or, and what

38:50 Taniya Bethke have we learned about other tactics that might be better? Talk with us about some of that. There's some real fantastic foundational research that was done in the early 2000s about the most effective strategies for getting folks to not only be aware or interested in activities, but kind of start doing them and then continuing doing them either with or without support. And that created this, we pulled philosophy from several different sectors to create what's called the outdoor recreation adoption model. And it codifies those steps of what it means to start doing something and then continuing to do it. And so we use that model to illustrate the steps that people go through to start doing hunting and shooting sports. And Mark really pointed to a fantastic point about some of the initial efforts that they're engaging in at this collegiate level about how mentorship plays such an important role to keep people engaged in activities. And I think organizations like Ducks Unlimited have always had a really phenomenal social network that also keeps people engaged in activities over time. And so that's one of the things that was missing from our three initiatives for a long while was you were focusing on providing programs for kids of people that already hunted, for example, or if they hadn't grown up hunting, it was just a one quick introduction, one quick trial opportunity without any continuing follow-up support. So you're dumping just loads of resources and time and energy into no outcome or an outcome that would have happened with or without that support. And so if we're going to be responsible users or stewards of these financial resources that are given to us through the Pittman Robertson Fund, that are sportsmen dollars, they need to be effectively used to make sure we're using the best practices to bring people in, try an activity through recruitment, to keep them engaged through retention activities, whether it's continuing with or without support, and then to reactivate them if we lose them. And so I think that's just this really important thing that again, Mark pointed to when we started talking about those collegiate youth programs, providing social support for participants, providing ongoing support through mentorship. So we're not just abandoning folks that have gone through just the trial, just the first steps of recruitment. There's so much more

41:01 Mike Brasher to the relationship than that. Are any states rolling out programs? It has to be a much more difficult thing to do outside of some structured social environment, social kind of program where you establish that sustained mentorship, that's sustained tutelage almost, because it's easier to kind of imagine, all right, we're going to introduce people to hunting or shooting in this defined event, and then, okay, then we move on to the next group that we're doing. But are there any programs that states or any other entities are doing to try to sustain, promote, or facilitate

41:40 Taniya Bethke that sustained engagement in hunting? There are quite a few different initiatives. And I would say that the learnhunting.org initiative is probably right now one of the largest ones. The International Hunter Education Association is creating an online database of mentors to connect new incoming hunting and shooting sports participants to people that they can ask questions of and potentially connect with and go out in the field with. But each state has attacked this whole concept of mentorship from their own perspective and resources to figure out the best way forward. And sometimes it looks like a state-sponsored mentorship pairing activity. I've seen states partner with organizations like the Boys and Girls Club to find mentors and mentees to move forward in a learn to hunt kind of relationship. I've seen other states and organizations really use their hunter education instructors as mentors for continuing to learn how to hunt. And others use folks like Mark, and the programs that he oversees and is deeply engaged in to be able to continue reaching out to college students and provide peer mentorship with each other in those kinds of

42:45 Mike Brasher chapters. So there's lots of different models on the landscape. Take a little bit of a turn here. We're going to come back to that. But I'm curious, what's your favorite story or memory in your job or the most rewarding thing that you've been able to experience so far? Because we do these things wanting to see an outcome that we place value on. And so I'm wondering if you've had a particularly

43:12 Taniya Bethke noteworthy experience or any story to tell. You know, it's interesting that you ask that. I've had a lot of experiences with my own kids, with colleagues, my own personal experience coming into hunting and shooting sports. But I would say the most recent and most rewarding experience I had was with a girlfriend of mine. She'd gone through a learn to hunt program in South Dakota, comprehensive program, start to finish all the way through game processing and putting up your own meat. And the second year came around where she'd walked through the process with an instructor the year before, and then she drew her own tag. And there wasn't a program to say, okay, year two, you've learned everything now, how do you practice it together? And she reached out and called me and said, hey, Taniya, can you come out in the field with me? And I was like, of course, you know, I'd be honored. It'd be phenomenal. And so we went out in the field together. She e-scouted everything about where she wanted to go, secured all the equipment and purchased everything. And I want to backtrack and say that she had decided to go hunting. She's an architect. And an architect in South Dakota, she realized, you know, the big deal here is that a lot of business decisions are made either hunting or on the golf course. And so as part of a leadership development course that she went through, she learned to hunt and she learned to golf. So as part of her personal development and professional development, she was dedicated to going out hunting and brought me into that. And so it's so fun to see her secure all of her equipment, do all of the e-scouting, prepare in all of those ways and, you know, work together with me on that pathway. And I remember the night before we're getting all of our stuff ready, you know, we got all of her gear like laid out on the floor, pulling it out of all the packaging, we're looking at how it's used, getting everything set up, we're sighting in her rifle at the range. And to just walk through all of these steps that take many people years to cultivate or the walk into an already established system and to see her children witness her going through this massive development and to see her experience those challenges and bring me in was such an honor. Not to mention sitting in the middle of the Black Hills at sunrise and watching the frost thaw and having an opportunity to be in some of the most beautiful remote locations in South Dakota with a dear friend of mine and being able to witness these deer come down out of the hills and into our sites. I mean, it was just epic. Beautiful experience.

45:25 Mike Brasher You're pretty active on social media. I don't know if you want to give out your social media handle or not, but what you were describing sounds familiar. Did you chronicle some of that experience with your friend? Because it seems like I'm friends with you on some social

45:41 Taniya Bethke media platforms. Do I recall seeing some photos from that? Likely, yeah. Patry and I have done some storytelling around this. My accounts tend to be relatively private for the most part. They're not big for followers, but I use them for sharing pictures of my kids with my family. But we have done some storytelling because I think it's important to talk about all the different narratives that are representative of broader audiences in this field. I don't think it's a mystery that many of the stories that have been told for many, many years have been relatively monochromatic and have been relatively single sided when it comes to gender. And so we're entering into a new era where the necessity for more stories and representation is increasing, especially as we look at the continuation of hunting and shooting sports as part of our American culture. We want to make sure that all Americans have access to spaces, wild spaces, feel comfortable and safe and welcomed into those spaces. And when we look at the collective purchasing power and voting power of the American public and who holds that, those representatives are diversifying. And so telling those stories and making sure those stories are part of our collective tones of storytelling is a really important component of the work that the council does and what I see as opportunities

46:51 Mike Brasher for the future. And so what are some examples? Do you have examples of some strides that you've made in that regard? Can I help people think about what that looks like? Anything there?

47:02 Taniya Bethke Yeah. So this is by no means a last step. This is a first step is representation, right? But I had the opportunity to work on a multi-state conservation grant with Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. Early on in my career, I realized as we were trying to do some of the storytelling of broader audiences, I couldn't even find a picture of a woman hunting anywhere. And as a woman hunter, there was no role modeling. And so I wanted to create those resources for women and people of color. And so we were awarded a multi-state conservation grant to do that, to create a Midwest small game specific photo toolkit so that we could tell more stories, so that we could represent broader audiences that have been engaged in hunting since long before time. So yeah, that was one project. It created photo assets for the Midwest. Those photo assets have

47:50 Mike Brasher now expanded considerably. And that was just the very beginning. Yeah. And people may be thinking, well, photos, that's not a big deal. It is a big deal. People like to see folks that look like them. That's just the truth. I think Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission did something similar with regard to some photos showing diverse participation in various outdoor activities. And it's a very simple step to take, but it's a very important step to take. Swanee, I saw you taking some notes, anything to add to the conversation that we've been having here with regard to any of the work, any notable experiences and rewarding moments that you've had since you've kind of got into this field?

48:30 Swanny Evans I was just playing tic-tac-toe with myself. I lost. No, I was just going to, you know, thinking about what y'all were talking about and the one and done's that Mark mentioned. And I thought it might be a good idea. Taniya, you mentioned that study that was done. It was 400 programs across the United States. Most of the participants were the children and or spouses of the existing hunters. So these are three in recruitment programs that were intended to get new audiences into the fold. We're touching our existing constituent base only. You know, those people were going to hunt anyway. So you start to think about the one and done's and the traditional model of R3. And a lot of it has been youth focused. So let's think about it a little bit. You know, Mike, if you take a kid hunting, you're going to take them out and you're going to take them to a field, teach them about hunting, give them this great experience. And then what are they going to do after that? If their parents don't hunt? At best, they would contact me and ask if I would take them hunting again. Exactly. So are you going to continue to take them hunting until they're 18? Yeah. The opportunity, I'm sure some do, but that's for the most part, no. Exactly. So if we're getting in, if we're looking for what we might consider non-traditional audiences, and all I mean by that is people that don't come from hunting backgrounds, from different demographics, from different households, urban areas, whatever it might be in the hunting space, you either need to be thinking about families teaching the whole family. So the parents and the child, or doing some adult focused programming. If we're talking about on the ground programs, because adults have authority in their own lives, they have discretionary spending, transportation, they can make these decisions, they're going to have skills development much quicker and understanding of these activities. And then they can go back out and do it on their own, potentially with some mentorship like Tanai was talking about. So that's just something that I always like to hit on on these things, because a lot of people immediately think about youth, which is the natural thing to do. Because I grew up hunting, Mark just talked about his traditional pathway. So we all think, yeah, we got to get the kids into it, the next generation, right? Which is true, we do, but we need to be strategic about it. And if you're going after people that their families don't hunt, the exception for some one offs with dedicating a lot of time, you're not going to be able to get the kids into it in these large scale manner. But there's been a lot of adult programming around the country where these adults come through, whether it's field to fork program or a college program or something similar. And they pick up the activity, certain percentage of them will, and they talk to their friends about it. They might take some of their friends along or share some of the venison or some of the wood deck poppers or whatever it is that they made on the grill with their friends and do a little game meat diplomacy there, kind of spreading the word that way. But then they're likely going to have kids of their own one day, and they'll bring them through that, what we consider a traditional process to kind of restart that. So that's kind of what I was thinking about and taking notes in addition to my tic tac toe game over here. But it's just something to consider. But I do want to, since Mark brought up trap, I want to differentiate here between hunting programs and shooting programs, because shooting sports is way different. I can get a kid into shooting sports. I can drop them off with one of these teams that DU is supporting and their coach is going to handle everything. They're going to shoot with the team. I can come back and watch the match. I can just come back for the event after I drop them off every day and they can get into it. So youth, our three programs on the shooting sports side might be a lot more effective. It's just something to consider.

52:29 Mike Brasher How much does science and research play into figuring these things out?

52:35 Swanny Evans So that's a really good question. Originally, not as much as it should have, because tonight I referenced that study that looked at all of these programs and we were just doing what felt good. We want to take the kids out. This experience was good for us. We felt great at the end of the day because we took 12 kids out in the field. Look at those smiles. Yeah, all those smiles. But as our three has come on the scene, as we know it today, and this funding has happened with PR modernization and other things, it's allowed everybody to try different things, do more research and a lot of audiences have been identified. We know things like we've now tested what I just described. There was a study done looking at all of these different state level programs. Adult programs by far had the highest hunting license lived. And then when you look at different audiences, we've got a lot of research to show that it just makes sense when public approval of hunting for food is high, that a food motivation, especially in increasingly, seemingly increasingly food conscious society, a food motivation might be a likely efficient audience if you wanted to call it that. So there've been a lot of food focused programs, you know, hunting for sustainability, field before all these different things, college audiences, and there was research to back that up. So there was research looking into those food audiences. Same thing with college audiences. Lincoln Larson out of NC State and several other researchers have published papers looking at college audiences as a potentially ripe audience for getting people into hunting. You know, people in college, obviously, hopefully they're involved in the DU banquet or event, but at the same time, they have authority in their own lives. They're out from their parents thumb for the first time in their life. We know from research that people in college are more likely to try new things. You know, a lot of things that they try, for better or worse, might stick with them for the rest of their life. So it's this audience that's really interesting and people like Lincoln Larson delved further into this and they found that yes, not only are we getting, you know, an audience that might have an interest in hunting that's captive there, that probably don't have kids yet, that might start that cycle over, but they're also more demographically diverse. You know, they're coming from all these different backgrounds, different ethnicities. Even a lot of the college programs that are now ongoing on the campuses are majority female. So it's pretty interesting. So yes, research is starting to support a lot of these different avenues and now we can take that and make an educated decision about where to place money

55:16 Mike Brasher on effort. Yeah, I remember that's been the thought that's always going through my mind is seeing these investments and just being so curious what the outcome of them is. And so it's great that we're moving in that direction. I'm kind of in that same vein and maybe connecting back to what we talked about earlier, the decline in public support for hunting. First time we've seen a decline in a number of years. How much is kind of our social media etiquette around hunting and angling or I guess those two would be the, and maybe even shooting as well. Any of these activities, how much are we looking at that as influencing perception of these activities by the public? And is that a message that y'all try to incorporate in or that others that are three programs, initiatives incorporate into their training or their messaging?

56:13 Taniya Bethke You'll have to talk a little bit about the research that's been done about the language to be used in order to portray hunting to be to increase the positive perception of the activities that we do. But there's been some additional studies about values, right? We have transitioning values in our culture between our traditionalist hunting base, right? That's very comfortable with maybe some of those grip and grin shots or the tongue long and out the side or even a little bit of blood on tailgate. Not a big deal. This is the culture we grew up in. This is stuff that is just part of life and this is part of this heritage that we've inherited as opposed to pluralist or mutualist populations that might have a much more personal relationship with wild spaces, right? Something that borders on spiritual perhaps or have a much different kind of perspective about the role that nature plays in our lives. And so as we look at that shift in values, the kinds of language that are attractive or the kinds of concepts that are attractive or the root behind what your relationship with nature is, is going to influence the perception and the lens that you're looking at all of those images through. So as we see increases in mutualist and pluralist populations, those folks that have that deeply personal relationship with nature that's different from our traditional populations, we as a collective community can be mindful about the things that matter in those conversations and can leverage those values to our benefit. And some of that looks like, or not to our benefit necessarily, but to be in a more inclusive conversation of those broader values, it can look like transitioning how we represent our activities with pictures that perhaps are not bloody or are more people-focused. But you want to talk a little

57:48 Swanny Evans bit more about the specific research that's pointing to the language that we use around hunting? Yeah, so people have been thinking about this for years now, to your point, Mike, and Mark Duda, who we brought up earlier in partnership with a number of other organizations, I remember years ago, hosted a workshop in DC that I went to, I want to say it was 2016 or 2017. But you can say that. Yeah, I think I can say that. Go ahead. It was 2017, I remember it vividly.

58:19 Taniya Bethke It's dark and stormy night.

58:21 Swanny Evans I did a turn and burn flight to DC just for this workshop because at the time I had a limited travel budget, so couldn't afford to stay overnight, long day. But it was a one-day workshop and what they did is they brought in the director of debate for Cornell University, I believe, and he's actually got his own debate consulting firm. He's coached presidential debate. It's just a pretty impressive resume, right? So they compiled the research and had this guy host the session to talk about how to effectively communicate hunting and the importance of it. And the arguments for and against, and that was kind of that initial workshop, initial phase. Well, what this led into is some more research. Mark, I apologize, not Mark over here, Mark Duda. I'm trying to recalling this the best I can, even though I vividly remember from 2017. But they ended up, so Mark and Peter Churchborne of the National Rifle Association with the Hunters Leadership Forum, ended up putting together a collection of these resources. And it turned into this book that's called How to Talk About Hunting. And so this book has all of the relevant data that we're aware of for how to communicate about hunting, what the most effective pro and anti-arguments are. And they fielded this among the general public, among people that were in favor of hunting and among anti-hunters. And one of the messages, not surprisingly, that rose to the surface, one of the most favorable arguments among anti-hunters, people that were against hunting, was that hunting for food is more ethical than factory farming. So that just shows how powerful some of those, we know that hunting for food is generally accepted, but it's even more powerful among some of these groups that are actually against hunting, because factory farming is a bigger issue to them, and they view this as more ethical. Which, while I'm on this rant, let me take a little side trail here. You just settled into it. That's true. I'm a little worried. Let me get comfortable. So let's talk about this. If we have any vegetarians out there that are against hunting, let's talk about why you can't be against hunting if you're a vegetarian. I have zero issue with vegetarians. I make a lot of health decisions myself, but when you think about it, you can't really be against hunting for an ethical reason if you're a vegetarian, because if you're likely eating soy-based products, to grow soybeans, especially in the southeast, what do you have to do? You have to kill deer or you have to exclude deer. So you're screwing up habitat or killing the deer either way. You're killing so many small mammals and birds anytime you harvest anything in monocrop agriculture. So you're indirectly resulting in these deaths. Let's say you're a vegetarian that shops at your local farmer's market. We did a program called Field to Fork. This guy, Hank Forrester, with the Quality Deer Management Association at the time in Athens, Georgia. We went to the local farmer's market to recruit people to learn how to hunt. Well, what we found out with those 15 farm vendors there, these local farmers, every single one of them hunted or had depredation permits because they couldn't grow their stuff without doing that. So it's pretty fascinating when you connect it all back together that for the food is a really powerful reason for hunting. It's a management purpose, yes, but for the food is the original reason for hunting, most likely. And it's something that's really hard to argue against when you start thinking about

01:02:01 Mike Brasher it, especially when we've had such an impact on the environment. The one thing that I'll say is, and this is based on a personal experience that I had last year related to this very topic, not all vegetarians have the same motivation for being so. We actually had a vegetarian go hunting in the LSU first hunt program. Patty was her name and I was her guide in the blind. And she was a vegetarian, but she was a vegetarian because of an objection to kind of commercial factory farming. And so she wasn't opposed to the consumption of meat. It was the source of the meat that was the issue for her and understand all of what you're saying. But that was, she's a PhD student at LSU. We recorded an episode following that experience with her and Kevin Ringelman, the university advisor that was part of that first hunt program. And that was one of the more memorable experiences for me because of the cerebral nature with which she approached that experience, a PhD student. And I realized that kind of going in and she's going to be thinking about this from a level that I normally don't experience for someone who's never pulled the trigger on a live animal. But that was, I guess the point is that those are, there's a lot of complex emotions wrapped up into some people's decisions. But the fact that she viewed it through the lens that she did, she did end up shooting her six ducks, I will add. She was a fantastic

01:03:37 Swanny Evans shot by the time we got to the end of it. It was just a really special thing for me to be part of. Yeah. So, and that's kind of where I was going with that is, from the anti-hunting perspective, hunting is actually more ethical than factory farming. And we saw that all the time. And vegetarians, like I was saying, I'm not against that lifestyle, but you can't be against hunting and be a vegetarian. That's my point. And when Field to Fork we saw, I'm guessing 10% of our participants every year were vegetarians. And they were there because they wanted to take ownership of their protein source. They wanted to get back into eating meat, but they only felt like they were

01:04:15 Mike Brasher responsible for it. And it was ethical if they were doing it themselves, taking it off the landscape. And so this whole idea of how to talk about hunting, our concern about not losing public support for hunting, share with our audience, like why is that important? And I guess we can draw, we can point to some real issues that are occurring in various states or in various countries around the world of people losing access to certain types of hunting or methods of hunting. It's not just a, I don't know if you would consider it, there's partly a social license, but then there's also just the legal ability to do it when it gets right down to it. If there's a strong enough opposition to a certain activity that we value and others don't, then ultimately there can be an influence on policies and legislation, right? How much does that factor into, I mean, I know it's in the back of your mind. I know that's a core, something that is important

01:05:17 Taniya Bethke in this discussion. Does that make it into your messaging at any point? I know that we tie a lot of our messaging to the important role that hunting and shooting supports participants play in conservation, but as a larger concept around what activities we have access to and want to continue as Americans in the United States that are part of our lifestyle choices and part of the freedoms that we have, that's certainly part of the messaging and some of the interests that we have and make sure that we're protecting and ensuring support for these activities moving

01:05:45 Mark Horobetz into the future so that they continue. Mark, anything to add here from DU's perspective at this point? No, I think it's Swanny and Taniya hit on some really key points. I know for us with the college chapter program, we are seeing an uptick in the number of female participants, which is something that we're really paying close attention to. We have our big collegiate leadership summit called third term, which will take place the end of this month. And we have a record number of students from 74 different chapters that are attending 315 plus students from all across the country. And to the point that we're talking about earlier about what the impact social media has on the non-hunting public, we are going to address that specifically with a keynote address from Robbie Kroger from Blood Origins, who will be on stage at the business session to talk to this very diverse group of students that are, you know, they do a great job of representing their university and that duckhead, but maybe they could use a little bit of encouragement on some different directions that they could go with their social media. Because for me personally, that is something that as a hunter and angler and someone who loves and appreciates this resource and being able to pass it down to my kids to hunt with my wife and my dad, it does concern me. And so I think I appreciate the work the council's doing and the research that's out there that's helping us to try to pinpoint a better direction and ways to educate

01:07:19 Mike Brasher the public on how to operate. We'll start wrapping up here in a few minutes. I have a couple of other questions. I wanted to get each of your take on this kind of looking into the future, some kind of crystal ball type stuff. A lot of times people will ask the question, what keeps you awake at night? What do you worry about most with regard to what it is that you're trying to, the things that you value, the things that you're trying to achieve through the work that you're doing? Do you see more opportunities than challenges? Is that view changing? Is like how you view the world? How quickly does that change? There's a lot of questions wrapped up in it, but it's typically what I do. Taniya, I'll start with you. Answer that question or a series of questions however you want

01:08:03 Taniya Bethke to. The first National Hunting and Shooting Sports Action Plan came out in 2016 and that really codified the guidance for the R3 movement at the national level for the first time. 2016, that's not that long ago, but even since then that plan helped identify gaps in how R3 is delivered. And since then we've learned a load more. So the council right now is in the middle of working together with partners in the R3 community at large to create the next iteration of the Hunting and Shooting Sports Action Plan to address some of those continuing, not continuing, but newly identified gaps. So for me, I see an incredible amount of opportunity, not just to continue to better serve our constituent bases, but to make sure that all Americans see themselves represented and have access to wild spaces and feel welcome there. And that to me is incredibly exciting. We have more information on the landscape and more funding for doing this incredible work than

01:08:55 Swanny Evans ever before. And to me that is at the very core of why I love what I do. That's awesome. Swanny? Repeat the question for me. What keeps me up at night? What keeps you up at night other than strategizing on how to beat yourself at tic-tac-toe? Well, I just bought a new F-150 so my truck payment is kind of just haunting me in the background. But 36 months, 0% finance, it'll be over soon enough.

01:09:19 Mark Horobetz Talk to you about that after this because I'll be in the same boat as you soon. Oh really? You

01:09:23 Swanny Evans bought a new truck? F-150. Man, every time I look over, Mark's got another button I'm done on his shirt. Just the one to match yours. No, it's hot today. So random additions to this episode. I like it. We're trying to keep it light. Yeah. Okay. So what I find really interesting about, and I think about a lot with R3 is, R3, and this keeps me up at night, has been painted a little bit as just about increasing participation. And that's the fault of the R3 community, myself included. But R3 is a lot more than that. And we've gotten some criticisms publicly and some of that justified and some of it not justified in my mind. When I think about R3, my ultimate goal, at least, is to ensure that regardless of the percentage of the population that participates, that these activities are relevant throughout all segments of society. So that ties right into public approval. That's why public approval is so crucial to me because things can change in an instant at the ballot box if people don't understand it. If you don't understand something, it's easy to be afraid of it. It's easy to think it's bad. I've done it myself with many different topics and then I became educated on them and I just don't know why I used to think what I did. So it's one of those things that public approval is going to be crucial. But what is also crucial about R3 is ensuring that we continue to tackle the access issue. We have all of these different initiatives that R3 professionals and others are working on to increase access across the United States. And that's one of the outside of time, that's one of the number one referenced barriers to hunting and shooting sports participation is access. So we've got a lot of great programs and tools that people are working with across the country to increase not only the amount of public land, but the opportunities available on public land, and then public access on private property. So that's one thing that I'm really hoping we as a community, we're already doing a lot with, but I'm hoping we double down on it, both from a hunting perspective and also shooting sports. Public shooting ranges for state agencies have become a hot topic recently. We talked about the funding split, we talked about why shooters might need more consideration, at least than they have traditionally been getting. And so you're seeing these state of the art public ranges from our state natural resources agencies, which is great, it's going to tie in naturally to DU programs like TRAP. So those are things that I really think about. And I want to make sure that R3 is viewed as something that's for everybody that participates or is going to participate. It's benefiting the existing constituents like people like me that are going to hunt no matter what with access considerations or reducing regulation complexity, working on all these different issues that we haven't necessarily talked about today that we don't have time to go into. But we've kind of focused on that programmatic aspect, but it's much more than

01:12:45 Taniya Bethke that. I want to make sure that the listeners understand that. You just said a really great point too that I think is really important is talking about how R3 is not just recruitment, that it does benefit our existing user base. And I think that's something that's left out of the national narrative all the time. Our existing users, if you're only focused on recruitment, you're only focused on funneling more people onto public land that's already taxed in some ways, what benefit does it have for me as an existing hunter or as somebody that's already engaged in conservation? So I just want to make it abundantly clear that there are many benefits and 20 sitting on some of them, whether it's access or whether it's simplified regulations, that those are all benefits that are passed along to all constituents. R3 is not just about new folks. It's about how we have comprehensive customer engagement strategies for all of our customer engagements across our

01:13:40 Mike Brasher agencies and organizations. What else do we need to talk about here? What else do you have on your list? Any super exciting thing coming down the pipe for the council? Any other general messages? We've covered a lot, but I know there's a lot more that we could cover. And so I just want to make sure we cover the most important things that y'all might have that we haven't done so yet.

01:14:03 Swanny Evans Got our National R3 Symposium coming up in Mobile, Alabama next year. This is really exciting for all of us. Swanny, you excited about that? Oh, of course. Of course I'm excited. Mobile, Mark's going to be driving down. DU has been a large supporter of the symposium historically and will be again next this… Can I get that on the record this year as well? Absolutely. Just like you just did. No, we've always appreciated the… Like Mark mentioned, DU has been involved with the council pretty much since the beginning. And now Nick Wiley, is he the chief conservation officer?

01:14:37 Mark Horobetz What's his title? He is the COO, Chief Operating Officer. I knew what it was. I was putting you on the spot there. I was looking at you and seeing if you got it. I know. No, Nick has been great and Swanny and Taniya and the group, the reason they're here is the TAG is the acronym, the assessment group. So it's a different backgrounds, whether it be state agencies, federal, other NGOs and industry partners. We're all here together at Ducks Unlimited headquarters working on that next iteration of the National Hunting and Shooting Sports Action Plan that Taniya talked about.

01:15:11 Mike Brasher Do you want to give a shout out to some of those partners? It's always a risk when you start naming them, you're going to miss some of them, but maybe just some representatives or just the general

01:15:20 Taniya Bethke groups from which they come from. Like state agencies, right? All right. Yes. This is difficult. You're right. Because we have over 35 folks that engage in that process with this. We're not going to make you do that, but special, special shout out. We've got some diversity focused NGOs that serve on those Oregon on, on TAG and TAG review panel as well. We've got some of our larger NGOs that have been incredible and influential throughout the entire process, whether it's NWTF or Ducks Unlimited or Delta Waterfowl. We have quite a few folks that come from state agencies, whether they're from state leadership all the way to programmatic deliverers on the ground at RS3. We have several industry partners on the landscape that have been influential in the programs. Not programs, excuse me, influential in kind of guiding how we move forward as an RS3 community through this plan. Who did I leave out? There's so many more. Our federal partners have been incredible from US Fish and Wildlife Service. They've been instrumental in driving some of this direction as

01:16:14 Swanny Evans well. Yeah. So this is a group that Taniya put together and it's experts in the RS3 community. So Mark is an expert in the RS3 community. You have your very own Ducks Unlimited RS3 expert here. That's why he's been on three times, maybe four. I had to recount. He's going to be a regular before you know it. He's going to be over here. And he's a heck of a host too. I'll say that. I'm very excited about the agenda this week. It's a lot of fun. But they're working on all sorts of, under Taniya's guidance, all sorts of issues surrounding R3 and priorities and different things, not just the plan. It's a pretty neat group and Ducks Unlimited is hosting us here, which is why we're here. But you were asking, is there anything exciting going on in the landscape? That's where we started this. We're getting back. So Tag is super exciting. Let me tell you what I'm excited about. Okay. Oh boy. It's not my truck payment. So we keep bringing up Mark Duda. He's

01:17:08 Mark Horobetz going to owe me something after this podcast. I admit, Duda's been here. Truck payment. Has Duda been here in this podcast room? No, he's not been to this podcast room, but he did come speak to our senior leadership team about the focus of our youth programs and starting to shift that model and the data is pointing towards the collegiate demographic and up. And so that's kind of where the shift, I guess, in momentum from our national youth engagement programs started leaning more towards the collegiate chapter program side of things. So yeah, he's been here before.

01:17:42 Swanny Evans That's great. So there's an organization called the National Shooting Sports Foundation. They're on our board as well. The president's CEO of the association is Joe Bartosi and he fills our board seat, but every two years they're the trade association for the firearms industry. Every two years they do research with Mark Duda looking at participation in shooting sports and a bunch of different metrics surrounding those participants. That research was just released. It was actually presented on for the first time at our National Art Three Symposium and the estimate was right around 63 and a half million people shot a gun in I believe it was 2022. So I mean, that's a huge number, especially compared to hunting, you know, and what's really neat is when you dig further into that and some of the other National Shooting Sports Foundation data that they've done through their retailer survey and other things, we know that I think it's over the past year and a half, three years, something along those lines. I think it's three years. We've got 18 million new firearms owners. So, and we know that these audiences are more diverse than the traditional demographic, you know, ethnicity we use it as an indicator of diversity and that's certainly increased, you know, black American firearm purchases are way up. I'll be at the National African American Gun Association Convention, the first one ever in Atlanta in a couple weeks. They've got 50,000 members now. They just started in 2015, you know, so we're seeing all these groups embrace firearms and I just, I wonder what the, so that's great news for conservation funding, right? But it's also great news for the activity and the trap program and what are the opportunities to get people into the outdoors via shooting sports that come from these non-traditional backgrounds? You know, I can probably look at you and tell you if you're going to be a good football player, you know, but I can't look at somebody and say they're going to be a great shot. You know, anybody, regardless of your background stature, you can have fun and be competitive in shooting sports. So it's a pretty unique activity, you know, so you're asking about good things. We're seeing increases in shooting sports. That means dollars, but that also means support for the

01:19:52 Mike Brasher activity. I'm really curious. Do you think I'm going to be a good football player? Not in your current state. You're accurate. That was the right answer. But that was so, yeah. All right. Where do we go from there? I don't think I'm going to be invited back tonight. How can our listeners get involved? How can our listeners get involved? How can they make a contribution or work and they

01:20:22 Swanny Evans learn more? All right. How can you get involved? The best way that you can get involved with the council, unless you're a professional kind of in our space, working for an agency or nonprofit or industry, obviously you can come directly to us. Our contact information is on the website at CAHSS.org. We've also got some other interesting resources up there. Feel free to check it out. But the best way that you can get involved in R3 is through your state agency. Go volunteer, go help out, help out with access initiatives, whatever it is, or through your nonprofits like Ducks Unlimited. So my suggestion would be to reach out to one of your D.U. regional directors, Mark, somebody here. Mark, maybe you can tell us who on the team would be the best to contact.

01:21:07 Mark Horobetz Yeah. So Justin Acock, he manages our youth engagement programs and also our field staff. So most likely you may have someone, a D.U. staff member that covers your specific state that can

01:21:20 Swanny Evans help you get plugged in. Yeah. Because the stronger that we're a small team, like I mentioned before, we work behind the scenes. It's not a whole lot of staff. You don't have a whole lot of staff. We have five staff. Yeah. So Dr. Steven Leath is our executive director. He was formerly the president of Auburn and Iowa State. We've got Taniya, who you've heard her backstory myself, Lance, who also he's our marketing communications also comes from a state agency. And then we just hired our most recent hire is Amanda Pittman and she's out of New Mexico. So we're five staff. We're all kind of spread out. And like I said, we facilitate, we work on this research, we work on putting the right people together, the strategy that Taniya is working on. But the stronger our partners are is the stronger that we are in our three initiative is. So the strength of D.U.'s volunteers and the any sort of our three efforts that D.U.'s doing, whether it's access or on the

01:22:12 Taniya Bethke ground programming directly impacts the work that we're able to do. And I just want to add to that really quickly that if you're not well connected with your local partners or if you're not well connected with your state agency, you still can be a mentor for others. You still can take somebody that doesn't necessarily have the same background as you may not look or sound like you out into wild spaces and be a resource for them and continue that relationship moving forward.

01:22:37 Mike Brasher That's awesome. Taniya, Mark, Swanny, thank you all so much for the time. We've been going here for almost an hour and a half. It's a great thing. We had a lot of good stuff to talk about. I know we could have kept on going, but Chris has got to get out here. You got to eat dinner or something. Thanks so much for having us. It's been a joy. Yeah, it's been super. Mark, I'm glad you had this group here. Glad we were able to make time to do this. So thanks, everybody. Thanks, Mike. Thank you. A special thanks to our guest on today's episode, Taniya Bethke, the director of operations and Swanny Evans, director of research and partnerships, both with the Council to Advance Hunting and Shooting Sports and Mark Horowitz, our Ducks Unlimited manager of our three program. Greatly appreciate their time and all that they're doing in this field. As always, we thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the wonderful job that he does getting these episodes edited and out to you and to you, the listener. We thank you for your time and we thank you for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation. And we thank you for being a mentor to youth and hunters and shooters.