Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcasts and Blasts – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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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.