BHA's new President & CEO Ryan Callaghan probably needs doesn't need an introduction. But you may be wondering what he and BHA are planning for the future, why now is such a critical moment in the history of public lands and waters, and how and why you should get involved with BHA. 

Here's your chance to learn the answers to those questions and a whole lot more as Cal sits down with Podcast & Blast host Hal Herring for a conversation you don't want to miss. 

During the 2025 fight against the mass sell-off of America's public lands, Utah-born cowboy, big game guide, and U.S. Army veteran Braxton McCoy seemed to be everywhere, from his barrage of fiery commentary on X to the Tucker Carlson and Shawn Ryan podcasts, to addressing public meetings across the West. He was the most powerful and tenacious conservative voice of the pro-public lands movement.

He hasn't let up, and he never will.

Join us for the story of a true American original, a soldier who suffered catastrophic injuries in a suicide bomb attack in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006, and fought successfully to rebuild his body, mind and life. It was a process that took years and the kind of resilience and discipline that few human beings possess. Through it all, from war to hospital bed to hunting elk in the Lost River Range of Idaho, raising four kids with his wife, and writing his harrowing memoir The Glass Factory, Braxton has drawn solace and power from the vast American public lands that he calls his natural home.     

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The views and opinions expressed in the Podcast & Blast are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers.

The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson. 

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists. 

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Follow us:

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

Chris Jordan has some unwelcome news for the watershed and fisheries restoration movement. Restoring robust populations of salmonids and other fish species in degraded rivers and wetlands is much more complex than we could have ever imagined, and we've been doing it wrong for decades. Most of us, even those of us who view our fishing and our rivers as a kind of religion, don't even know what a truly healthy river looks like.

But Chris also has some welcome news, though, and it's the subject of today's podcast: we know how to restore functioning watersheds for coldwater fisheries now, and it's imminently achievable. Real watershed restoration that can last and bring back healthy cold water fisheries – it's called "process-based restoration" – is the future. It's not just about removing archaic dams and putting curves and woody debris back into broken and degraded creeks. It's about beavers, muck and mire and willow thickets, floodplains and aquifers, wildfire and wetlands, gravity and shade.

It is, as Chris has studied and implemented successfully for the past few decades, about "helping rivers do their jobs with a lighter hand and a larger scope" and recognizing that the messiest natural systems are the very best at producing the strongest and healthiest fisheries. Join us- 100% guaranteed, you'll see your favorite rivers and creeks in an entirely new light.

The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson. 

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists. 

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Follow us:

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

Ep. 121: Melanie Vining - Executive Director, Idaho Trails Association

For a measure of sweat equity, an entire world of adventure awaits anyone who wants to work on American public lands. In today's podcast, Hal catches up with Melanie Vining, an Idaho elk hunter, mom and mule packer who is the ramrod for the Idaho Trails Association, one of the major outfits bringing together volunteers with the tools, knowledge and support to get the work done on our BLM and national forest backcountry trails. This is a conversation about one of the most successful public land volunteer groups anywhere. It's about how the work gets done, why we do it, and the fun and friendships that are the essence of the experience.   

Ep. 120: Australian Outdoorsman Dave Byrnes

Join us for a journey Down Under with Dave Byrnes, host and founder of Australia's best hunting and shooting podcast, The Hunting Arete. Byrnes, of Newcastle, New South Wales, is a tradesman, father, aficionado of fine guns and wanderer of the wildest bush country of the strangest continent. We talk hunting tahr above the glaciers of New Zealand (ice axes required!), Sambar in the mountains of New South Wales, rusa, chital, fallow, hog deer, water buffalo, free range donkeys and run-amok feral camels. It's wild ride of a conversation. Bring your translator if you don't speak Aussie, and marvel at a whole 'nother world of hunting and conservation and public lands fights, right here on planet Earth.

Jessie Shallow, of Salmon, Idaho, is the partner biologist for the Mule Deer Foundation, working with state and federal agencies to restore mule deer winter range and other habitat in the wake of the last- decades' massive range fires. Her family and personal roots are deep in the southern Idaho farmlands and wild country from the Owyhee to the Bitterroots. Jessie and Hal discuss the work they've done together over the past two years: This season MDF crews planted a record 196,000 sagebrush and bitterbrush seedlings on burned-over mule deer winter range and core sage grouse habitat. Join us to learn what is at stake here, what is being done, and what the future holds for this crucial conservation work.

Connect with Backcountry Hunters and Anglers

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Connect with Mule Deer Foundation

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Host of BHA's Backcountry College YouTube series, Clay Hayes is a traditional bowhunter, wildlife biologist, wilderness skills instructor, master bowyer, filmmaker and family man who splits his time between a homestead in the mountains of Idaho and the piney woods and swamp country of the Florida Panhandle where he was born and raised. Clay is also the winner of Alone Season 8, the reality TV survival series, where he survived for 74 days along the shoreline of Chilko Lake in British Columbia using a small selection of tools, his bow, the teachings of the great Stoic philosophers, and a combination of a little luck and lot of pure will.

Tony Latham is a retired game warden with 25 years' experience working undercover on some of Idaho's wildest public lands and in pursuit of some of the West's nastiest wildlife criminals. Undercover work is a total immersion in a subculture: of cheap alcohol and casual violence, dive bars and broken people, slaughtered fish and wildlife, and coldly professional violators. The job exacts its own price, and nobody could ever say they do it for the pay. It's only for the truly committed, those who believe in hunting and fishing and wildlife conservation as basic to the American way of life and who are willing to put their lives on the line to make sure it endures. Join us in Salmon, Idaho, to hear stories from the game warden and lifelong conservationist who risked it all to hold his part of the Thin Green Line.

Everybody knows that wildlife in the United States is owned by all of us. Elk, deer and other species are held in the public trust, period. But what happens when publicly owned big game is commercialized – and when hunting opportunity for public wildlife is sold to the highest bidder? What happens when so-called "private land" licenses can be used on public land? Some Western states are grappling with those questions now, but New Mexico public land elk hunters have been living under these conditions for years. Hal takes a deep dive into the byzantine regulations of elk hunting in New Mexico with three local hunters – Joel Gay with NM BHA and Jesse Deubel and Ray Trejo with the New Mexico Wildlife Federation – including what lies ahead for New Mexico and what other states should consider before going down the same road. Tune in for this cautionary tale about the commercialization of a valuable public resource: elk. 

0:01:52 Intro
0:04:01 Background
0:14:45 Anti Donation Clause
0:18:20 IPRA and Obfuscation
0:20:13 Responsibility to NM Residents
0:24:28 The restoration paid for by public
0:27:35 High Quality of NM hunting
0:31:31 The low draw odds for the public
0:35:57 History of the draw odds and guide set-asides
0:44:11 Marketing property with Landowner Tags
0:46:04 Privatization of Public Resource
0:49:21 NM Depredation Law
0:52:33 NM Depredation Fund
0:55:29 Conservation is not convenient
0:55:59 The NM draw system is privatized, complex and obscure
1:01:03 Entitlements and Politics
1:02:52 What would a solution look like?
1:12:33 What can people do?
1:16:32 NM Legislative Finance Committee Audit
1:20:37 RAWA and NM Landowner Tag Funding
1:24:04 NM Game Commission Politics
1:32:34 NM 2021 Hunting Plans

Dan O'Brien has been ranching for nearly 50 years and doing it in a way that improves wildlife habitat. Listen to this intense conversation with Hal Herring about the legacy he's helping to build with his herd and with his land. 

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), a hunter, angler, longtime conservation champion and BHA member, has introduced legislation known as the Recovering America's Wildlife Act (S. 2372). This bipartisan bill would dedicate nearly $1.4 billion annually to fund projects by state and tribal fish and wildlife agencies that benefit both game and non-game species. In partnership with a broad coalition of organizations, businesses and fish and wildlife management agencies that make up the Alliance for America's Fish & Wildlife, BHA is working to advance this legislation, the product of decades of hard work by devoted sportsmen and women, conservationists and business leaders. In this special episode of the Podcast & Blast, Hal talks with Sen. Heinrich about why hunters and anglers have a major stake in the conservation of habitat relied upon by a range of fish and wildlife species. Learn more and take action in support of the Recovering America's Wildlife Act.  

Ed Arnett is the hunting-est, bird-doggingest biologist in America, chief scientist for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership as well as host of the national conservation TV series This American Land. Hal and Ed have been friends and hunted together for more than a decade. In this interview they sit down to talk sage grouse, fire, public lands and the future of sagebrush ecosystems, which also means the future of the myriad species – from pronghorn and mule deer to pygmy rabbits and Brewer's sparrows – that make up the incredible tapestry of the American West. BHA and TRCP, along with a coalition of other hunting and fishing groups, are working together to advance a legislative approach to conservation of grasslands habitats, including the sagebrush shrub steppe. Learn more about the coalition's work, and take action in support of grasslands conservation.  

Meredith and Tory Taylor have been outfitters, guides and conservation leaders in the wild heart of Wyoming's Greater Yellowstone for almost 50 years. Over those decades, they have explored places few others have ever seen, shown generations of Americans the wonders of hunting and fishing and wilderness, horses, wolves, storms and stars, wildflower meadows and summer snowbanks, tumbling whitewater creeks and towering black-rock peaks. Theirs is a marriage and an adventure partnership, based in their modest home and native plant gardens and horse pastures on the Wind River, carried as far afield as Outer Mongolia. Join us for a wide-ranging discussion of lives lived large, elk-fed, and mostly on horseback. 

The news keeps getting worse: over 250 million acres of our public lands potentially up for sale and 3 million or more likely carved out.  While this has been a goal, and a dream, of many radical politicians for the past fifty years, until now it has only been whispered, dog-whistled, lied about, and obscured. Now, their plan is out in the open.

The line is drawn in the sand. The gauntlet has been thrown down. The land grabbers have made their play.

How will we respond? How do we, the Americans who know and love and depend upon these lands, stop this utterly shameless theft of our national assets?

MeatEater Director of Conservation and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers North American Board Chair Ryan Callaghan joins Hal as they discuss what is happening, what's at stake, and how we – all of us American patriots together -- are going to stop this vandalism and theft of the treasures of our nation. Listen. Learn. Then Take Action.

And Fuel the Fight with our United We Stand for Public Lands campaign

This episode is a special Dual Release with MeatEater for Cal's Week In Review.

The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson. 

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists. 

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Follow us:

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

"I never found a place I belong, so I'm making one." Jonathan Wilkins is the founder of Black Duck Revival, a hunting and fishing guide service and simple lodge – built by his own two hands from an old church building in Brinkley, Arkansas. Jonathan is also a father and husband, a next-level forager and cook, a writer and working man. As he wrote in an essay for Outdoor Life last winter, "I am a Black man. Actually, I am biracial, but I live in a place where that nuance of truth is, most often, not afforded me." Jonathan's story, and the story of Black Duck Revival, is an American journey, a reclaiming of heritage, a celebration of family, hunting and fishing in the beautiful and haunted lands of the mighty Arkansas Delta.    

The remote Red Desert is a place of dreams, albeit dreams sometimes replete with choking alkali dust, freezing winds, gumbo mud, and the scattered, bleached bones of the unlucky or unfit of all species. But it's a place of elk, toad mule deer, herds of pronghorn and the thunder of flushing sage hens, too – all of which have to be able to move long distances to range and water and shelter from the mighty elements, in the age-old way of desert dwellers, if they are to survive. Join us with Josh Coursey of the Muley Fanatic Foundation and Joy Bannon of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation to learn about the work being done to identify and conserve the most critical migration paths, habitat and heritage of this last, great empty place.   

Recorded in-person at BHA 10th Annual North American Rendezvous in Montana, join us today for an in-depth conversation between two certified gun nerds, Hal Herring and Nephi Cole. Nephi is director of government relations-state affairs of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry's primary trade association. Nephi has a serious conservation, shooting and outdoors pedigree – in addition to currently representing America's firearms manufacturers and retailers, he has worked for the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service and spent six years as the senior policy advisor to Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, where he specialized in natural resources, outdoor recreation, water issues, firearms and energy. Anyone interested or engaged in America's long debate over firearms and the Second Amendment can tune in here to understand the position of the largest firearms industry advocacy group in the United States. 

Based out of Anchorage, Alaska, Heather's Choice is a backpacking food startup company dedicated to making delicious, ultralight, nutrient-dense meals and snacks for adventurers. Heather Kelly is an avid hunter, angler, backpacker and outdoor adventurer. Kelly launched Heather's Choice Meals for Adventuring in 2014 to combine her love of sports nutrition and backcountry pack-rafting. Her emphasis has always been on high-quality, whole foods nutrition. With signature dishes such as smoked sockeye salmon chowder and blueberry buckwheat breakfast, Heather's Choice has gained recognition as a healthy, delicious, portable food option for the backcountry.

Join Hal as he sits down with renowned chef, author and outdoorsman Hank Shaw as they discuss hunting, fishing, foraging and preparing the wildest of wild game. 

Archeologist Dr. Larry Todd came home to Meeteetse, Wyoming, after a long career studying ancient hunting peoples all over the planet. Asked to do a quick archeological survey of some high-elevation public lands in Northwest Wyoming, he took a crew of students and headed out, convinced of lean pickings and a fast return to the comforts of home. After all, how many ancient hunters would choose to live at 11,000 feet, on barren ridges swept by winter snow and bitter wind, blistered by summer sun and relentless lightning storms? A week into the expedition, Dr. Todd and his crew found themselves in an unprecedented high-altitude treasure hall of artifacts, the record of thousands of years of habitation, drivelines and traps for hunting, ambush points, winter camps, kill sites of bison and bighorn sheep.

For more than 20 years, Eddie Nickens, a member of BHA's North American board of directors, has been the premier storyteller and scribe of American hunting, fishing and conservation, writing for Field & Stream, Garden and Gun, Audubon and dozens of other publications. It's a radical understatement to call him an outdoor writer, although the term fits the man who has published the best-selling behemoth of outdoor skills, Field & Stream's Total Outdoorsman. In our conversation today, Hal and Eddie celebrate the publication of Eddie's new book, The Last Wild Road, a collection of his all-time best stories from an unmatched life afield in the American wilds.

On this second podcast focusing on the Eastern forests and upland game birds, Hal catches up to Mike "the Polish Hammer" Neiduski, the regional director of the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society, to talk habitat, public and private lands restoration, small scale timber harvest, and the heart-stopping explosion of wild birds flushing from dense cover, in front of the world's best bird dogs- our own. The talk is public lands bird hunting from the Uwharrie National Forest to the Pisgah and the Nantahala, the Cherokee, and beyond. Join us for a conversation that springs straight from the wild richness of the southern forests, where there is a  path to a better future for these iconic gamebirds.

Jenna Rozelle lives in southern Maine, where she teaches classes on wild foods, forages, hunts, fishes and chronicles an existence spent close to the land. For her, hunting and fishing go hand in hand with foraging and land stewardship. A board member of the New England chapter of BHA and self described late-onset hunter, Rozelle tells Hal the story of her long and winding road to a gratifying relationship with harvesting wild creatures.

Join Hal and Todd Waldron, Northeast region forest conservation director for the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society, for a discussion of the rich history of Todd's home territory, a life of hunting and fishing public lands – from upland birds to whitetails, smelt netting to flyfishing for native brook trout – and what the future brings as we confront and overcome the obstacles to re-establishing the biodiversity and health (not to mention upland birds) of this last great wilderness.

"At first the Euroamerican settlers could not fathom the tallgrass prairie.
Stepping into it from cropland-speckled woodlands to the east, they entered
a land of sky and horizon, wind and light, flower and scent, a surging sea of
grasses that staggered the imagination. The prairie grasslands seemed to
stretch on forever, a landscape that promised no enclosure, only intensity
and exposure…"

So writes Cornelia (Connie) Mutel in her book, The Emerald Horizon: The
History of Nature in Iowa, a modern classic of natural history. Mutel has spent
her life chronicling the fantastic and beleaguered landscape of her home
state, and the place that she knows and loves like no other. Her life's work-
seven books written or edited, all on different aspects of Iowa's natural
history- could be viewed as a requiem: only 0.1% of the native tallgrass
prairies remain in Iowa, over 97% of its' once wildly biodiverse landscapes
have been converted to human use, agricultural runoff and toxic spills have
poisoned over half of the state's waterways and thousands of its residents'
wells, the draining of wetlands causes massive, budget-breaking floods,
topsoil loss is at crisis level. The current model of Iowa's agriculture does not
work for anyone, and there seems to be no political will to change it.

But Connie Mutel, a writer steeped in the understanding of time, nature, and
change, does not believe in requiems. We discuss her latest and perhaps
most important work, Tending Iowa's Land: Pathways to a Sustainable
Future, where she brings together a diverse selection of expert voices from
across Iowa, all focused on the very possible and very practical goal of fixing
that which is broken, and restoring the miracle that is Iowa.

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The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson. 

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists. 

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Follow us:

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

Texas offers a diversity and abundance – of topography, fish and wildlife, and experiences – that few other states can match. Grahame Jones, recently retired as the director of law enforcement with Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, as well as chairman of BHA's Texas chapter, knows this landscape intimately. Jones, a fifth-generation Texan, is a veteran of over 27 years in the field, starting as a game warden in the wild piney woods of east Texas and working his way up to chief of special operations, targeting big game poaching rings and illegal commercial fishing operations along the coast. Jones is one of Texas' most deeply informed voices for coastal and other conservation. His passion comes from his early years hunting and fishing from Houston's Katy Prairie to the Mexican dove fields in Tamaulipas – and from a lifetime spent in the woods and waters across his native state. Join Hal and Grahame for a discussion of critical conservation challenges, for edge-of-your-seat stories about backcountry Texas lawbreakers, and for an exploration of some of the best of the Lone Star State.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything you will ever need to know to win any argument about the future of our American public lands--special and crucial episode with Walt Dabney.

Understanding the background and history of our public lands is critical to safeguarding them for the future.

Texas-born Walt Dabney started his National Park Service career in Yellowstone in 1969, worked as a ranger from the Everglades to Alaska, and was the Superintendent of the National Parks in Southeast Utah from 1991-99, completing a 30-year Parks Service career. Then he served as the Director of State Parks for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for 14 more years.

Walt is now the leading voice for America's system of  public lands. His 45-minute presentation, The History and Future of Our Public Lands, took him over seven years to develop. It is the product of a lifetime of experience, and years of assiduous research. Join us for a talk with America's foremost advocate for our public lands, and later watch the presentation here 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9837FXIr6xI

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The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson. 

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists. 

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Follow us:

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

Instagram: @backcountryhunters

Facebook: @backcountryhunters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"[David Joy]is a man who sees his homeplace clearly and who writes like his hand was touched by God." — The New York Times

Novelist and essayist David Joy is a tall, lean and red-bearded denizen of the hollers, mountain tops and ridges of Jackson County, North Carolina. He is an obsessive turkey, deer and squirrel hunter, a fisherman who wrote his first published book on fly fishing but who is equally at home running live baits for big flathead catfish on Piedmont rivers. He is on the very short list of great American fiction writers and essayists who hunt and fish and speak for public lands and conservation as naturally as they breathe or write.

This podcast was recorded at David's cabin near Little Canada, North Carolina, after a long hike in the Pisgah National Forest to scout new hunting country, in the good company of David's little feist dog, Edie Munster. Listeners who love David's stark and hyper-realistic style of writing, and his oft-times harrowing and unsettling novels, will love when Hal and David talk writing and story after a deep dive on turkey calls and turkey hunting. More at https://david-joy.com/ and be sure to read the profile of David in the spring 2025 issue of BHA's Backcountry Journal. 

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The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson. 

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists. 

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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

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

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