#089 Charles Whitwam - Howl For Wildlife

Podcast

May 20

We are all connected in this circle called life, and that includes wildlife. By providing balance and stability to nature's processes, wildlife is a vital part of the world's ecosystems. However, it is under siege from all sides as it faces challenges such as habitat loss and the impact of climate change. Joining Bobby Marshall on today’s show is Charles Whitwam, a guide and outfitter and the founder of Howl For Wildlife, a modern-day platform for advocacy surrounding wildlife issues. Bobby and Charles talk about conservation, wildlife, biology, politics, advocacy, hunting, archery, Black Rifle Coffee, Free Range American, friends, outdoor life, and more.

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Charles Whitwam - Howl For Wildlife

My guest is Charles Whitwam. He's the Founder of Howl For Wildlife, an amazing organization that's getting in front of legislative issues regarding wildlife, habitats, conservation and much more. I enjoyed my conversation with Charles. I encourage you to read this in its entirety. If you spend any time in the outdoors, you can check out Howl For Wildlife.

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Charles, thanks for joining me, I was in your neck of the woods the last time. We weren't able to connect then. We are doing this virtually. I'm now on the East Coast, hanging out in Boston for a few days. I’m glad that we could carve out some time to get together.

I appreciate it. We had met for the first time. I didn't know where you were anyway, but when I talked to you, you said you were in San Francisco.

I had no idea that you lived in Northern California or I didn't even know much about you. You are somebody that has been on my list that I have wanted to get on the show because what you do and what we are doing aligns very well. I want to congratulate you and also thank you right out of the gate for what you got going on with Howl For Wildlife.

Let's dive right into it. It's a new advocate spot for hunters’ voices and outdoorsmen's voices. You don't have to be a hunter to go there and get some education. I wanted to talk to you firsthand about that. That's why I invited you on. I'm super fortunate that I have some friends that are in the hunting space and write for certain publications. One of those is Free Range American. It's a Black Rifle publication.

I reached out to Mike Herne about the whole Mountain Lion Predatory Cats bill that they were trying to pass in the State of Colorado or at least get it rolling. Where I got most of my education about it and everything was at Howl For Wildlife. Shout out to Mike Herne for turning me on to you and your platform. I was shocked and amazed at how easy it was to find the information. How easy it was for me to voice my opinion and contact the right people to do that. I want to commend you on that and I want to learn about it.

That's great to hear because that's what we want to accomplish. You went there and it was easy for you to use. That's the bottom line. That's what I want to hear coming from an end-user. That's great that it makes sense to you. Free Range American has been wonderful. I had never contacted them before. It was through a contact that I knew that has something to do with Black Rifle that got me in contact with those guys and Michael Shea and Matt White. I haven't met Mike Herne but I know who he is. Those guys have been writing some incredible articles and supporting what we are doing. I'm looking forward to working with them more and we are. I got to meet Michael in Texas.

What were you doing down there?

The Veteran Adaptive Athlete Shoot at the Black Rifle ranch. That was an amazing experience to be around those people and help out where I could. We were shooting bows, having fun, and hanging out with some amazing people.

What a super cool event. I have never been to the Adaptive Shoot. I have been to some events. One of the coolest things that the Black Rifle puts on is that Adaptive Shoot. I work with some similar nonprofits that get veterans out in the outdoors, whether it's fly fishing or shooting bows at Rocky Mountain. Specialty Gear is one of those higher-end shops where you can get some good lessons and take people with disabilities and not put limits on them. We have had a couple of those guys on like Caleb Brewer. He's a common friend of ours and we have also had Mike on the show, but what a great organization group of guys that are truly helping.

They were. It was a humbling experience to see some of these guys in the condition that they are in, missing limbs and bodies burnt, you name it. They are out there having fun. You are looking at them and you are like, “This has got to be tough,” because you can't walk around anymore and I can. You are out here wanting to shoot a bow and all that, and you are having a good time. When you are around people like that, you are appreciative of what you have.

All those times when I have complained about my feet hurting from packing elk out or doing whatever. None of that shit matters. After you see the drive that some of these guys have and how genuine of a good time they are having.

After the shoot, it was probably four hours. They had their whole range set up. You are on the Black Rifle ranch. It's outside San Antonio and you are on these teams. Everybody is going around to each target. It's all at varying ranges and some guys are shooting with a mouth tab because they don't have an arm or have lost the use of one arm. They are pulling their bow back and the string has a tab on it.

It's better to take action against a bill as an individual rather than as an organization.

For most of these guys, it's their first time. They just started shooting a bow a couple of days before or whatnot. They are super excited about it. It was like probably about four hours to get through it. For the most part, I was on Matt’s team which was great because he's super cool and so much fun. Super generous guy. You could tell. He’s a nice guy being around those dudes and all the back and forth and everybody else who was on the team. What a good time. I talked to a lot of the guys afterwards and they would certainly be interested in hunting.

It's so great and I have said this multiple times. Whether you are successful in hunting or not, just the time that you spend out there, the decompression from getting away from some technology a little bit depending on where you are at and just the practice that goes into shooting a bow. If you've never done it, I urge anybody to at least try it because it's almost a form of meditation for me or martial art. There are some connections there with a human that if you don't get that, then put it down. You should feel it almost right away.

It's certainly a primal weapon even though the compound bow is a new thing for the most part. The technology keeps getting better. It takes discipline. It's a perishable sport. Being able to see your arrow in flight and hit the target and get better at that is super rewarding. To take that into the hunting arena is a whole another thing. It's certainly more than shooting. It's something I love. I have been shooting a bow for as long as I can remember. My dad was super into it. Probably one of my first Christmas presents was a bow and we lived on the property where I could go shoot every single day. We had all kinds of targets and tree stands and everything. It was a property I lived on. Bowhunting has been a big part of my life for sure.

It has been for mine too. I grew up in a family of bowhunters, whether they were traditional or shot compounds. I was fortunate enough as a kid that that was one of my first gifts, a 22 rifle shortly after that. I always stuck with the bow. That time of the year is epic in Colorado. It sounds like Jurassic Park when those elk start bugling. It's pretty epic. It's cool because we grew up with a very similar background. I grew up on the property as well and we had free range to go outside and play. We were taught to be responsible with the weapons that we were given. If you weren't, you were in deep shit. It's a different way to grow up. I was young like 6 or 7 years old.

You grew up in Colorado.

I live in Evergreen now and I grew up there. There's so much national forest and public land around us. That was honestly the catalyst for me starting this show. There's such an influx of people. People have heard me say this time and time again on this show. I feel like they don't necessarily have those grassroots education of growing up around wildlife or in the mountains, and they have moved there. There are so many more people. Awareness needs to be raised on how to treat those spaces right and take care of them, be good stewards of the land, and all that stuff. I'm worried that my kids won't be able to experience that or their grandkids or however long that takes to deplete something or screw it up.

I'm trying to do my part but have a good time. I get to talk to cool people like you. That's the best part of this podcasting world. I didn't mean to go off on a tangent on archery or anything. I talk about it all the time, but it is something that I'm super passionate about and it's cool that we share that connection. Let's dive into Howl For Wildlife. Let's explain to the readers that maybe don't know you guys because you are a recent organization that has popped up. How long ago did it start?

I launched it on January 11th, 2022. I started working on the idea last January of 2021. I have been working on it ever since, trying to figure out how to build it and what technology is out there to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. It's not too complicated but I had to get the right parts to work with all the other parts because there was nothing out there that I could go buy that was going to do this and do everything that I wanted to do. First and foremost, it's always going to be an action-oriented platform.

When you go to the website, for the majority, you are going to see actions and different issues that are going on around the United States in multiple states. By issues, there's a bill or a petition or an initiative to take away hunting privileges for some reason. This could be trapping, predator hunting or public access to areas. On the flip side, it can also be pro-hunting issues. It can be no net loss of hunting lands. There's a bill out there where Georgia wants to write a bill for the next twenty years where there will be no net loss of hunting lands. It means that whatever hunting land is there now that they have set aside, that stays in place, which is a great thing for hunters and future hunters as well because they are going to have that place to go and hunt and fish.

These are issues that have to deal with both sides of that coin and all hunting. Because it's not our mission and it's easy to get spread too thin, I’m staying away from any other issues, Second Amendment issues. Sometimes it might tie in if it's right but there are plenty of other advocacy groups out there for the Second Amendment. If they want our platform, I can build that for them and license that if they needed that.

When you have an issue, the difficulty in the past has been, "What do I do?" Some are better than others. Some will have a list of the decision-makers or the list of the people that are going to decide on this bill. That can change too because bills get passed along. That can go from committee to committee. It's not always the same people. You have to stay on top of that. For you to get involved, if you simply want to write an email to those decision-makers, you have to find who those decision-makers are. There could be multiple decision-makers. There have been bills where there are 82 different people. My point is I know most people don't take the time to do that.

What I wanted to do was create something where when you click that button to get involved, you are reaching all of the decision-makers that are involved with that specific bill, and it's coming from you. It's coming from your email address. We are not involved in that. It's your communication between you and them. If there are 82 decision-makers, you've sent 82 separate emails, not just one. They are all hearing about it. It's not going to the chairman of the board, their staff or whatever. I wanted to be a pain in the ass and be like, “We are going to get you involved with all of them.” Then comes the form letter thing. I didn't want to have a cookie-cutter form letter because those are easily filtered.

TMSP 89 | Howl For Wildlife — Howl For Wildlife: There's no difference between you and a mountain lion. You're just a predator with forward-facing eyes.

Technically, your emails or your correspondence are supposed to be read and acknowledged by law. They get filtered. They get put in one place or whatever. I came up with an idea to do a way better job to get around that. It's way more personal for you. You can edit your email. If you want to reach these people, push this button. Write your own email. You've reached all those people right now.

If you don't know what to write. You don't know this unless you come back to the website a bunch of times. Depending on your cookie settings, you might not see the different emails. We have a library of emails surrounding whatever subject that are pre-drafted and written for you. You can change that. You can edit. You can erase the whole thing and write your own. We have done that as well. It’s the same thing with subject lines.

With some issues, they want the same subject line so they can filter it because they need to know, “This is for this subject,” and they will specifically state that. For other issues, it's just, “Here's a bill and we need to make it as personal as possible, but I'm not going to make the subject lines all the same.” All of that is different as well. You might not know that, but that's how we have set it up to be more effective in what we are trying to do. The way I look at it is from the people who are receiving the emails. I look at it from their angle.

If I'm one of them and I see all these emails and they are different emails and their different subject lines, they are not coming from an organization, they are coming from Joe Smith and Mary Lou, whatever, they are like, “This is coming from a bunch of people. This isn't some organization that's sending the same thing over and over.” We have made it easy for you to contact the right people. I'm tracking analytics and all that. We are over 700,000 individual emails sent since January 2022.

I can tell you firsthand. It was super simple. I didn't have to go and sign up or log in. I encourage people to do that with you guys if they are inspired after our conversation. I wanted to go on. I wanted to do what I could to voice my opinion about the Predatory Cats bill that was just up for proposal in the state of Colorado. I had to go in and I put my name in, and I put an email address and that was it. I had access to phone numbers, emails, and how many people I wanted to contact and I didn't want to contact. There were multiple ways to get involved.

It was so simple and easy to use. You got the perfect platform for somebody to voice their opinion and do the right thing without doing a ton of homework. You should know about something before you start clicking and sending something. It's confusing. There are so many loopholes like you said. Maybe there has to be the right subject line or you don't know who to contact. That takes an expansive amount of time. You know firsthand because you are doing it on the back end or your team is.

One thing too is that when these hunting bills come up, they don't take into consideration, for example, the state of Colorado, because we have so many over the counter big game tags and it's not regulated with a draw yet. A lot of our revenue comes from out-of-state hunters. They don't have a way to voice their opinion at the ballot box which is BS.

This is the only way that you can do that. It’s by sending an email and saying, "I live in the state of California or whatever but I come to Colorado every year and spend X amount of dollars or whatever. This is a family tradition." Whatever you want to put in that email, it's a way for hunters that frequent Colorado on a regular basis or any state that's having an issue to voice their opinion.

There's a tremendous amount of revenue involved there that comes from out of state. Some states make more money from out-of-state hunters than in-state hunters. That is an important voice that they need to be aware of. It's set up so the decision-makers don't know what state you live in. You can write that in there. I always say that if you do live in this state, make sure you put that in there. You don't have to. I usually start it off with something like, “I'm a concerned conservationist. I'm a citizen and a hunter. I'm a citizen of the United States” or whatever. It is set up that anybody in any state can take action.

There are multiple reasons for that. You hit one of them with out-of-state hunting. That's why I got involved in Canada. Tons of people go to Canada, moose, caribou and everything else. We got involved in British Columbia because that's a lot of dollars. Not for the province there but for local businesses. Tourism if you want to call it that. Outfitters, hotels, restaurants, and all of that. You have those people coming in. The hunting industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry. This has wild effects, either positively or negatively. A lot of these bills have giant effects on economies and lifestyles, and then fishing game commissions. If you get rid of hunting or you lessen hunting, they are going to have less money to pay themselves. They will have less money for management for their own salaries and everything. There's a value put on all of this.

Even for public land space, whether you are using that for camping or hiking. Colorado had a campaign a few years back that was Hug A Hunter or Hug A Fisherman because it pays for 85% of the states’ parks and upkeep and those bridges that cross rivers on some of those trails and stuff like that.

I love Hug A Hunter, those little videos that they had. I just discovered that. Those are great and they are well done. It’s cheesy but whatever. They are well done and they get the point across. That sparks a conversation. That's something you want to get out to the non-hunting public because a lot of people don't know where dollars come from for wildlife management.

People have a weird way of humanizing everything, but then take that humanity and put it someplace outside of reality.

You don't have to be a hunter to understand that, but how many people understand that? If we can get them to understand that, what will then be their thoughts on hunting? Not that they have to become a hunter, but it’s interesting. We break down what the humane side of the United States’ definition of trophy hunting is. They take these polls. You know how polls are, you can set it however you want. It's ridiculous, honestly.

They will set up a poll and ask a question about trophy hunting where I would probably answer it the way they want me to answer it because it's the way they are asking it. We need to start changing minds through education and through outreach, which is something we don't do. We talk to the choir all the time and that's it. We are like, “We all understand. We all get it.” We are the minority here. We have to understand that.

Hunting is a very hard thing to understand unless you've experienced it firsthand. For me as a kid, now that I look back on it, it was fun when I was a kid. The first big game animal I killed, I was in shock. There's a big process of breaking that down and what you go through the emotional rollercoaster. I bawled my eyes out but was happy at the same time. For me, looking back on it, it puts a value on a life. It made me understand what an actual living breathing thing is and its value on it.

We were doing it because it was a form of food. I still do it to this day because that's where I want my meat to come from. There's no better lesson from that standpoint of this is serious shit walking around, living and breathing and stuff, and being able to be at the top of the food chain, which we should be grateful for.

It's important to understand that their life is surrounded by being hunted not just by us. There are all kinds of things that are trying to kill them. Depending on what you believe. What I'm saying is if you believe in God, the Bible or whatnot or if you believe in strictly evolution or something, you are either an animal, which if you came from an animal then, why can't we hunt? What's the difference then between me and a mountain lion or whatnot. I'm just a predator with forward-facing eyes.

It's an intellectual fallacy when I hear humans shouldn't hunt or something. Why are you going out to hunt these animals? It's like, “Aren't we a part of this earth? We didn't come from a different planet or something. This is a part of who we are. Explain to me the change if I developed from an animal, when am I not allowed to hunt?” How come you have no problem with wolves hunting at all, but if I have dogs that are trained to be more disciplined, you have a problem with them hunting. Isn't that in their instincts? We have this weird way of humanizing everything but then taking humanity and putting it in some place outside of reality.

Part of that is you got to look at the timeline because, for hundreds of thousands of years, we have been doing this. For the last 150 years, maybe it started to not be acceptable in some people's eyes. It’s something that has been happening for a lot longer and we should pay some homage to it a little bit more than criticize it because it's a form of existence.

It's a strange attack because still by far, the majority of people eat meat. We are killing animals either way, but if I want to kill an animal in its natural environment that it's used to, that it is born into being protective itself. It's a part of its instincts. There's now something wrong with me doing that. We got to think about who is behind this or whatever. They are strategic as well. What are you going to do? There's obviously some farming of animals and whatnot, and treatment of animals or beef and things like that that get attacked, and sometimes rightly so. It would be a pretty stupid strategy to be a giant group that is going after the slaughter of any beef whatsoever because you are going against the majority there. Most people want to eat a steak or whatnot and everything.

They compartmentalize it and redefined trophy hunting. They say we don't eat meat for the edible animals that we do eat the meat from. You name it. They create social science saying that bears can't survive because of climate change and wildfires, and their numbers are dwindling and all that. That happened in California. The biologists and department here completely slammed the Humane Society of the United States on the false science that they drew up in their petition to the commission basically in bear hunting. The management plan in California and the studies that were unbeknownst to them. This is funny. Nobody knew they have these studies going on. They are like, “We are going to release these studies now.” It's like the bear numbers are more than they ever have been.

That's the same thing in Colorado. They outlawed spring bear hunting and now the Division of Wildlife will give you an add-on bear tag in any game. You don't have to draw. They are practically giving them away because it's a problem.

We got to fight the science battle, but we also need to fight the perception battle. Not to necessarily convince people to become hunters. If they want to, that's fine. Show them why the role of hunting is so important and the many reasons why it is. Those can be personal reasons and those can be to support wildlife management, the money that comes from that and all of that, the food and adventure that it provides.

They are always going to take the worst things that they could find, the worst pictures or videos and paint all hunters like that. As you were saying, it is hard to understand if you haven't been there. I don't care what anybody says. Personally, I like to call it when people have the debate about whether you killed an animal or you harvested the animal. I know I'm killing it, but I'm doing more than that.

I can go kill an animal and leave it. If I harvest it by definition, I killed it and then I took the animal. That's a part of it and all hunts are different. Some of them are backyard hunts or in some of them, you show up at your hunting spot and there's a big buck that went fast. Some of them are two-week-plus adventures where you lost 13 pounds and you went up and down the mountain. It's the hardest thing you've ever done. You may break a leg or something. It can be crazy where you hunt and the spectrum of the adventures that you can get into with hunting, and that can be any hunting. That's a great message that we can show and everybody is different too. People are going to latch on to different messages, but we have to start doing it.

Another point here is you don't have to be a hunter to advocate for the best interest of wildlife. This is something that we have commonly lost and why I'm so excited. It is what you are doing as well because there is an education process to this. I don't think that we should just go to the ballot box and basically introduce a species that has never been in a certain area. I'm talking about wolves specifically in the state of Colorado. Just because we think that they are a cool animal or there’s a more ethical way to manage elk populations or this animal was once there.

It's a very fragile situation and we pay hundreds if not thousands of biologists in the state of Colorado to study things like this that are wildlife biologists. Unfortunately, they didn't have a voice in some of that. A lot of them were put on a gag order or something like that to where they couldn't talk about it if they work for a government agency.

You needed to listen to experts, then form your opinion, and then vote if it is something like that or the ballot box. In the ballot box biology, I get public, civil, and humanity issues, whether it's healthcare, Medicare or whatever is brought up, school systems. Everything that you do at the local level, but what I don't understand is voting on something that has a scientific background to it with proven facts and experts that are constantly tracking it.

We don't ask the public to vote on medical-surgical procedures because there are professionals who get that. Who would we be to be like, "This is what I think?" It's up to persuasion like, “Read this comment or read this column.” They are both conditioned on something so important based on that. With wildlife issues, there are paid professionals in every single state who studied the animals in their state, which is vastly different from other states.

There are different habitats, pressure and predator management. Why do we even have those people then if we can just take these issues to the ballot box, however, the ballot box is a reality? We need to tackle that issue and say, “Let's make it so we can handle the ballot box as well. How do we do that?” If we can accomplish that, which I honestly say we can, then they become irrelevant. The Humane Society of the United States becomes irrelevant. If they can't win there, where are they going to win? They can't win by science. They never have.

I always hear, “They have a lot of money and a lot of people,” so do we. How much money is spent in this industry is insane. That's not an excuse. It's got to be used in the right way and there needs to be a well-packaged message, marketing, and outreach plan that is the vehicle for this. I know there are smart enough people out there who can do this. The great part about it is that we can start with science and data on our side. We don't have to make stuff up. It can be proven by professionals.

That's the direction that we need to head. Back to crossing state lines because there are hunters that hunt out of state. The reason why I want it set up and the reason why it is set up where you can take action in any state is we need to unify. It doesn't matter if you are an elk hunter, turkey hunter or whatever species-specific hunter you are, or if you are not a multi-species hunter or whatever. When you see an issue in Virginia that's a trapping issue or whatnot, we need the entire hunting community to get behind that. You got to take the 5,000-foot view of what's happening here. The low-hanging fruit is what the anti-hunter and hunting orgs are going to go after first.

If they can get trapping out of the way or if they can get predator hunting out of the way, there are a lot of things that are going to happen if they do get that out of the way. If we can keep the battles there, they are going to spend more resources and more money on that. If they start seeing, “We can't even win this,” it's going to make everything a lot harder for them.

What we are accomplishing as a hunting community is everybody is having each other's backs. When you see a duck hunting issue, but you've never hunted a duck before but you are behind it, that's everybody coming together and supporting the entire sporting community. We have to understand also that the anti-hunting communities know they can't get this done in all 50 states. They pick specific states.

They are like, “Where do we have a chance? Are there senators, congressmen or whoever that we can convince to get behind this bill to sponsor this? Where can we win?” We win in Washington State, Oregon and California. If we get those out of the way, Arizona is next because Arizona is starting to change a little bit, so they are going to go there. They are going to go to Colorado which they already are. The next thing you know, we have less predator management or zero predator management if it was up to them in all of these states.

The spectrum of adventures that you can get into with hunting is huge. It could be in your backyard or a two-week-long adventure.

Now, they don't have to spend any resources. All of their people can start working on whatever the next state is. They can keep building that. It might take some time or it might not, but they got all the time in the world. This stuff has been happening for decades and decades with regard to the Humane Society of the United States. We have to look at it like that. What's the game plan here? What's the strategy? That's also why you need to be involved and every state.

You understand that. That's why we are accomplishing a lot of things by having each other's backs, not just for each other. We are fighting different battles by doing that. The other thing that you brought up is we do have the call thing set up as well where it connects you with all the right people and gives you those talking points.

You don't even have to make the call. You just push the button. You have to put your phone number in and a number from whatever state that issue is being presented will call you and pipe you into all those people with an in-state number. There are some strategies to that, but we are giving you something to say. Making a call and talking to somebody is way more powerful than an email if you can do that. The other thing is we get people involved in commission meetings, which has been powerful here. Commission meetings or hearings where there's public testimony. We had some parts that do that in Colorado.

I came out there for that bill. Getting people involved in the process, so if there is a meeting going on, if there's public testimony needed, if people need to show up to a Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting or something. The reason why I say this is in the past, I have always heard hunters don't show up. The anti-hunting orgs show up. They have their people there. They make the calls. They make the emails and all that. This is doing what they do and I'm like, “If they can do it, how come hunters can't do it?” Let's set something up that's more effective than what they have.

They have more time because they are not having any fun.

That's what we have done and we are drawing resources from wildlife biologists and people who understand the legislative process and all of that too. If we say, “There's this meeting coming up and we would like you to give public testimony,” you are not intimidated by that because there's going to be a bunch of other people around you. You are going to know exactly how the process works. By that time, you are going to have what you are going to say totally written down, and you are in it with everybody else who was doing it for the first time. As we keep doing this, you get more comfortable and you get more emotionally involved.

You also have a community to lean on a little bit too. I would imagine. I wouldn't know what to do or even where to go. It's a great way for people to connect to that and share a common goal or value for sure.

We have had somewhere around 700 different hunters now involved in commission meetings, which is huge because it has never happened before. We are by far outnumbering the anti-hunters at these meetings which is great. What happens with the national hunting orgs that already exist is when they come up with an issue or they have something they are working on, we can provide them with more ammunition, with more people.

Generally, they go and speak on behalf of all of their members. To me, I'm like, "Why don't we have all the members also be there? Let's get them involved." That seems like a double positive right there. That's what we are doing and we are not trying to be an insulated organization like, “We can do this and it's just us.” We are trying to work with everybody that we can for sure just to get you, the hunter, involved.

That's pretty uncommon. I commend you guys on doing it and doing it the way that you are and involving the individual. How did this all start? What was the catalyst? What gave you this idea? There's a big gap there that needed to be filled, but what made you put your foot down and head forward and go for it?

Where I saw the gaps where I knew there was a problem, it was the bear ban that was proposed in January of 2021. I was involved with that in getting people to sign their disapproval, send emails and make calls. That was successful. It was a wave of support to pull the bill, and the bill got pulled super fast. That was for California.

One of our hunting lobbyists here in California said, "I have never seen anything like this before. The bill didn't even go anywhere and the author of the bill pulled it. It never went to a committee or anything. The national orgs didn't even have time to respond to this. It happened so fast, but there was this grassroots push.” I'm like, “The hunters haven't been involved before. What do we do to get hunters involved?” I also figured out through that process about decision-makers, and that each bill has a certain set of people that are looking at it and that changes as it progresses.

I learned about the process and I realized nobody had anything out there to get you connected with the right people. It was based on the success that we had and the way that we had that success, the method that we use for that success, and learning about the process that made me want to get some software in a program that could accomplish this on a larger scale and make it easy for everybody and every state.

As far as getting the industry involved on top of all the advocacy stuff that we have made easy, we have gamified the website. When you do log in. When you do create an account, which is just an email and a password. As long as you are logged in on the site, everything you do there like sharing links, taking action or getting involved in commission meetings, there's a point value assigned to all that so you get points in your account. When those points reach a certain threshold, you are automatically entered into a contest to win rewards.

I don't know if it bothered me but I was like, “I think there's a better way to do this.” I see contests all the time on social media, “Like this page and share it twenty times and tag fourteen people and you'll win something.” I get that, but what do we need to do to get people involved in keeping hunting around because that doesn't keep hunting around. Not that it's supposed to. Not that that's their mission but I'm looking at it like, ”How do we get everybody involved?” Let's incentivize this. The rewards and incentives have been pretty amazing so far. We have had some hunts and some $800 backpacks and stuff like that. People are getting emails one day like, “You've done this and this.”

I was checking out your Instagram page and it is amazing what all you guys gave away. I had no idea about the incentives. I need to be more involved firsthand, so you can hold me accountable now. It's cool. I was looking at your Story because I knew what we were going to talk about here. I get caught up. I'm bad at social media and I have a hard time paying attention to a lot of the people that I follow unless it's right there in front of my face. I'm not the guy to spend hours on it scrolling, but I went to your page. Started watching the stories and it was about 15 or 20 stories of you guys giving away stuff.

It wasn't even us. That's our partners that are like, “We'll offer this,” which is what it's all about. We want hunters to know who in the industry is stepping up to the plate. We are not charging them or anything like that to do that. It works both ways. First Lite Hunting has been big in sharing our posts and stories, getting involved, and writing up their own posts.

I never talked to First Lite or anything. They were like, "This is great what you are doing. We are going to start sharing that with our hundreds of thousands of followers.” That's what's important. We have to get the message out. Nobody knows who I am. I'm relying on the industry to see the support. It's growing for sure. I have met some pretty incredible people. That's the whole thing. We all have to spread this message and get as many people as involved as possible. The same thing with Kifaru. Aron Snyder has been awesome. I have never met him but he's like, “I get what you're doing. What do you need?”

As far as getting information and stitching this all together. Do you have a team or is anybody collaborating with you or is this all you that's putting this together? I'm sure you have other obligations in life as well. Not just this.

The only other person that's officially in the company is John Stallone. He lives in Arizona. He and I have been friends. We've been hunting together for several years. He has been helping me mostly with the advertising side and partnership side because of the people that he knows. The website, the actions and all that, I'm the only one that's had the time for it, honestly. I had this idea and I'm like, “I'm going to go with this. You can be involved if you want to but I'm making this happen. You just have to believe in me." That's it right now.

I do have a few content providers now. Some of those are coming in from Free Range American as well. Those people will be helping me with writing actions and writing more of the strategy side of how our actions are set up. Those are people who are seasoned smart writers who do research and can do things way better than I can. It also saves me a lot of time to have somebody else provide me with this info so I can throw these actions up. Once I have the content, I still have to make the pages, a new webpage for it, set up the backend correctly, and all that good stuff.

You got social media on top of that. There are so many things out there now.

It’s fairly small at this point. I have been doing nothing but this.

It makes me like it even more. You've done quite a few of these shows now. I feel honored to have you on. I don't know anything about you though. This is the first time we have hung out. Can we dive into your background a little bit? You had mentioned growing up in the outdoors and having some property to play on and shooting a bow early on. Can you run us through your background and maybe what your parents did if they were hunters or what they did for work?

Making a call and talking to somebody is way more powerful than an email.

I grew up in Michigan. I lived there for 22 years I would say. It was out in the middle of nowhere. Most people would say it was in the middle of nowhere. I could come home from school and either hunt on our property or hunt on the tons of land that surrounded us. We also had 7,000 acres of public land that was about a mile away. I mostly deer hunted on that property there. My dad has been a hunter. He started hunting in the '50s. He started bowhunting. I have his Fred Bear bow. I killed a turkey with it. I have his first bow.

He must have been a Fred Bear fan.

That was around back then, but it's his old recurve. It's a Bear Super Magnum 48, I believe. I got that restrung up and killed a turkey and a pig. I got a wild pig with that too. He was way into hunting mostly deer. He was absolutely in love with hunting white-tailed deer all over Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. That's where he hunted deer.

We ate pretty much nothing but wild game. We had small farm chickens and we had pheasants for a while, lots of gardens and fruit trees. Hunting was the biggest event and it was more than one event, but I looked forward to being the age where I could go big game hunt with my dad and all the guys that would go way up in Northern Michigan or go to the upper peninsula. That was the biggest event in my life when I was finally twelve and I could go bow hunt. That was the biggest event in the world for me.

I never played sports in the fall because that was hunting season. That's how important it was for me. At the time, I didn't know some people didn't hunt. I thought everybody hunted to some extent and I certainly thought everybody supported it. We would come back from hunting and people had deer on top of their cars and trucks and campers are stacked, and nobody thought anything of it. It's probably different now.

One of my first memories is watching my brother chop a chicken's head off in our backyard. I saw that chicken running around with no head. It didn't bother me. It was one of the first memories I have ever had. I knew where the food came from and it doesn't stand out as strange to me. It seemed super natural. Sometimes that's hard for me to put myself in anybody else's perspective because I have been born into it and I have a different perspective like everybody does.

There are a lot of things that don't bother me personally, but I'm aware that it can and there might be some explaining to do or you might have to be sensitive on some subjects to others. I'm fine with that. That's the way the world works. Most people have more things in common than they don't. That’s a part of humanity. I moved to Chicago and then I moved to California. When I lived in California, I didn't hunt for about 5 or 6 years. I didn't hunt at all and I wasn't buying preference points either which sucks because I would have a lot more elk points now.

I did the same thing because I lived in California. The bighorn sheep was the one for me. I threw my life away. Hopefully, I dropped one before I'm 65 years old so I can go.

I’m waiting on getting lucky on that. I got into wild pig hunting out here. A buddy and I, he was like, “We got to go check out this place and go wild pig hunting. It’s on public land.” At that point, I was going back to Michigan and going back to Ohio and hunting white-tailed, but I didn't hunt in California at all. It seemed too complicated to me at the time. Now I hunt here all the time. I love hunting here. It took me a while to get into that. I had a brief pause from hunting. I was more into rock climbing and things that brought me to California specifically. In 2006, I bought an events-based rock climbing company.

We do corporate events and stuff like that and that's still what I do to this day. We do rock climbing, zip-lining, and fun stuff like that for cities, corporate events and things like that. That's how I make my money. That's also why I have a lot of time to do this because it's seasonal. I have all of what you would consider bill season, like the legislative season. I usually have that off from my job, so I have a lot of time to invest in this which works.

We grew up very similar. I grew up elk hunting and running around the woods in Colorado. We didn't have anything better to do. We were making guns out of sticks and using pine cones as hand grenades to play army. We go rabbit hunting or whatever, and then when the big game rolled around, I was with uncles and stuff calling and elking.

I remember my first elk hunting trip like it was yesterday. Being there and shaking when bulls are being called into archery hunt, and then, and then seeing that whole process. It's cool because those family traditions we had stuck with them. I still go with my brother and my uncles. Some of my uncles are on the younger side. They are a big family and Colorado. They help me tremendously because I grew up without a dad.

These were the guys that I looked up to and they let me tag along for all of it. I was fully invested and knew what I was getting into before I haven't put a knock on an elk. I feel very fortunate. It’s crazy now the influx that we are seeing. For example, one of those uncles is now in his 50s and shot a nice bow. He drives a flatbed truck. He's bringing it off the Western slope and driving down I70. He's like, “This is the first time. I got flipped off by three different people, honked at, and swerved out because I had the elk in the back of the truck. Several years ago, it wouldn't have happened. I'm going to leave."

I was like, “Where are you going to go?” He's like, ”Montana or something.” I was like, “That's probably not any better there.” It's amazing how times are changing and how fast they are. He was so disappointed. I hate seeing that, but we still get out there. Hunting in California, because I never have, are there a lot of hunters there? Do you run into other hunters? In Colorado, because we have so many out-of-state people and stuff, if you are in an open game unit, you got to almost use the other hunters to your advantage sometimes?

It depends on where you are. I have found my spots. There are a lot of hunters for sure. There are a lot of private lands. There's quite a bit of public land as well. It depends on where you want to go. There's one area that I went to when I first started hunting. I was rifle hunting there. I will never do that again. It was the most dangerous thing I have ever been involved in my life. There were so many people there.

That's coming from somebody who's hunted open game in Michigan, which there were a lot of hunters there. It depends on where you go. There are a lot of places to scout. There are spots where you can get away and you can backpack in. It depends on how hard you want to work. I have certainly done my best to get access to private land when I can. I got into guiding as well with all that time I had. I got into guiding and then I got into outfitting.

I also have my own business where I run hunts as well. For me, that gives me the ability to pay for access in California by essentially bringing in funds from guiding, and then I can hunt that property. I have expanded guiding. I do a little bit in South Dakota, Arizona and Idaho. I'm not guiding there. I hunt in those states as well. I do guide in South Dakota, but I hunt in Idaho and Arizona and expand into other states as well. It depends on how I'm using my points and all that good stuff. I love hunting elk in Idaho.

It's hard for me to leave the state of Colorado. September, that's where I'm at. You can find me there. This has been awesome. Let's go ahead and wrap this up. I want to do one with you in person. We have this internet lag going on and stuff a little bit. It's difficult but I would love to have you in the studio and come up and see where I'm at. The Fall is a hard time for us because we are hunting or something, but if you come up right before September or after September, we got some huge bulls running around where I'm at that 300 or 400 class bulls that roll into the golf course there. They don't leave until hunting season is over.

This has been awesome. I want to go ahead and close this out the right way. I think that what you are doing is great. I can't wait to have you on. I want to have you on more often so we can talk about some issues. I want to be a platform for you as well. You don't have to come on the show. If you want to shoot me anything or any issues that I can share, it's good for our follower base. We have a lot of hunters that follow us and stuff like that. We got a lot of people that aren't hunters either, but looking at us for some education a little bit.

I want to commend you on all that. It's awesome what you are doing. Keep it awesome. Let us know how we can help. I think that nobody cares more about wildlife than hunters. You've given them an easy way to have a voice. It's time to take some action. I encourage people to go check out Howl For Wildlife. Before we jump off, I know you guys have social media. You got a website and more importantly, let's talk about how people can help on an individual basis, whether it's a donation, donating their time or whatever.

I appreciate that. The website is HowlForWildlife.org. Instagram is where everything originates as far as social media, and then it gets spread out to Facebook or Twitter from there, but that's @Howl_org. We are 100% based on donations. Those are very much appreciated to keep all this software paid for, content providers, and all that good stuff for sure. That helps.

Thanks again for your time. Let's go ahead and wrap this thing up. I appreciate everybody and go check out Howl For Wildlife. Thanks, Charles.

Thanks.

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