Ep. 48 (Part 2) Tom Opre | Filmmaker, Conservationist & Wildlife Advocate

Tom: But conservation is not a mindset. It's not an emotion. It's a physical act. To be a conservationist, you must conserve, okay? Now, if you look at human history, man has had to be a conservationist, but it's not been some part of our management. So if you're a Roman and you're going across the desert of Syria to go attack the Parthians, you know, you had to conserve water, right? So you can get the legion across there. Or if you were, you know, Hannibal coming over the, over the Alps, the Italian Alps to attack the Romans. And you're taking all this, this army with elephants while you're going across there in the winter time, you need to have energy calories of energy. So you have to have food. You have to conserve that food to get your army over that. It was a part of life, right? But now we're in this modern world where let's face it, folks. Most people thinks their food, you know, comes from a grocery store.

Tarek: Welcome to Y'all Street. Today, I'm back with Tom Opry, award-winning filmmaker, conservationist, and the director of the Shepherds of Wildlife Society.

Intro: 100% legit. So Chris, you want a cup of coffee? I just want to be the best.

Tarek: Tom, want a cup of coffee?

Tom: Absolutely.

Tarek: Hey, we got you this Montana map coffee mug with the little grizzly on the inside. I thought that was appropriate.

Tom: Well, we got the bison on this side, by the way, they're really good to eat. So delicious.

Tarek: Hey, coffee. Cheers to you too.

Tom: I need that. The puppy woke me up early this morning. Cause it had to go. We just got this puppy last Friday. It came from Napa, California, but we met the guy in, in, uh, uh, Salt Lake city, which we considered that's not really halfway, but he was selling another dog to a guy from North Dakota. So we had to go down and get German Wirehaired. So my wife, my wife, uh, she, uh, competes in, uh, not she does, but the dogs are field trial dogs. So, uh, and then the goal is, uh, we get to go ahead and support the field trialing in the spring and early summer. But in the fall we get to go find real live wild birds.

Tarek: So, but for right now, no sleep.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. I kind of felt well. And the other thing too, last night, my oldest, my 22, almost 23 year old daughter had our first grandchild. So 10, 10, 15 last night. So yeah, it's been a busy, busy week so far.

Tarek: Granddad.

Tom: Yeah. So, but we're kind of giving her some space to kind of figure it all out. So, but, uh, good deal. Yep. So I think almost, almost eight pounds, almost 20 inches.

Tarek: So big, yep.

Tom: Little boy. So he's, he's, uh, everything sounds great. So, so all good in Montana, right? Absolutely. I mean, I've got four kids guys for a reason, right? I'm going to have my own, you know, tribe in Montana.

Tarek: So, so our last podcast was super popular, really interesting, covered a lot of topics for people that are hearing you now for the first time. And bearing in mind that we have a very international audience, where do you stand? I guess just sort of on the political spectrum here, you are both, you are, you are both a conservationist, as well as a hunter, a fisherman. And what is the balancing act between the two? Because in the minds of many people, you're either one or the other.

Tom: Well, that's, that's a great question, Tarek. Um, I was at the shot show some years ago and Lars Larson was doing his radio show that, you know, the conservative talk show guy, AM radio. And he had me on Lars has been to Africa a few times and we have some common friends and he says, Tom, come over here and do my, do my radio show. And I'm like, okay. So we sit down and yeah, we talked for about a half hour or so. And of course Lars had to stop halfway through it. Now, I know Tom sounds like a liberal, but he's not, I'm a common sense guy. All right. You know, at the end of the day, uh, I realize, uh, you know, Hey, you know, these, these things called iPhones have things called gold in them and a lot of precious metals. And, and, uh, you have scenarios where, you know, I mean, this table's made out of wood, right? You know, we got to cut trees down. And of course where our subdivisions are in cities are today, that was wildlife habitat at one time. And I grew up in a family where my father was an outdoor writer. You know, he wrote for outdoor life and field and stream for close to 30 years. He was a union journalist, but you know, I was raised to be physically conservative. Uh, you know, he said, you know, on the social issues, probably a little more middle of the road, but when it came to the outdoors, he wanted to be a, you know, be a flame and, you know, liberal, you know, on it. Uh, and I mean that, you know, you know, tongue in cheek obviously. Uh, but yeah, no, at the end of the day, I think the greatest conservation is the very first real conservationists in the modern era are hunters. You know, we, we, we have come to understand because of our history of market hunting here in the United States and the fact that, uh, the exploitation of resources all over the world over hundreds of years, we've seen what's happened to the landscape, to ecosystems, what's happened to wildlife. And, uh, you know, we are the dominant creature species on this planet.

Tarek: What you just said is going to sound pretty unbelievable to, you know, people across the pond that the hunters are, you know, the conservationists. So you get into that a little bit because I, I think it's, it's an interesting topic.

Tom: And I think the word conservation is a cool word, right? Everybody wants to be a conservationist, but conservation is being really, it's, it's, it's been usurped by a lot of people. I mean, I run into mainstream media, you know, journalists that will call organizations like humane society or the center for biological diversity. Or when I worked in Scotland, they call the John Muir trust or trees for life conservation organizations. Nah, those organizations are 180 degrees in the other direction. Those are preservationist organizations. They will tell you, let nature be free hands off, keep man away. You do not need to utilize wildlife or timber or even the minerals or anything like that. And so what we have is this disconnect in our urban society. And so they've glommed onto this word. They think it's great, but conservation is not a mindset. It's not an emotion. It's a physical act to be a conservation. And you must, you must conserve. Okay. Now, if you look at human history, man has had to be a conservationist, but it's not been some part of our management. So if you're a Roman and you're going across the, the, the desert of Syria to go attack the Parthians, you know, you had to conserve water, right? So you can get the Legion across there. Or if you were, um, you know, Hannibal coming over this, over the Alps, the Italian Alps to attack the Romans and you're taking all this, this army with elephants while you're going across there in the winter time, you need to have energy calories of energy. So you have to have food. You have to conserve that food to get your army over that. It was a part of life, right? But now we're in this modern world where, let's face it, folks. Most people thinks their food, you know, comes from a grocery store. Well, yeah, it does, but it doesn't. It originates in a field or on a farm on a ranch. And then there's a process that goes through until it becomes processed enough for you to get it through all these middlemen at your grocery store. And that's something that we've really seen a difference in a change when it comes to conservation. You know, here in America, our history, you know, my family goes back to the early 1600s here. I actually have a great grandfather that was on the Mayflower. Um, most of New England was, uh, you know, a lot of my family members helped, you know, colonize that area. And of course we came in here and there was a lot of wildlife around. Now there's a reason for it. We could talk about it someday, but maybe not today. But, uh, there was a lot of wildlife, a lot of good habitat. Um, and there was a lot of native Americans here and utilizing it. But, you know, through disease, European disease, you know, the Europeans came in and brought this disease and ended up eradicating probably maybe 90% of the human population in North America. You know, the early conquistadors were responsible for that. Now, of course, that allowed for a time period where you didn't really have a lot of impact on wildlife. And of course, the early on years, you know, the native Americans pretty well hammered wildlife. They didn't conserve it. Just like what I saw when I shot Killing The Shepherd in Africa from, uh, in 2017, we literally got there and the wildlife had been eradicated and these were subsistence farmers and they were trying to survive. And so kids were starving to death on the floors of these, these huts because there wasn't anything to eat here in North America. What we saw was a time period. Once these, these North American Indians populations were decimated by European disease, you had a 70, 80 year period before, you know, Plymouth rock and the period, you know, you know, you got the pilgrim showing up. Well, everything in nature is programmed to overpopulate the carrying capacity of land. So you literally had a time period where wildlife was able to reestablish itself completely unhindered by man. And of course, as we said, we are the, we have the greatest impact on our planet, especially when it comes to wildlife species, but you know, everything across the board. So I'm talking about Northern European ancestors that came in, you know, like my family, you know, back in the early 1600s. And so what we saw there was you had this huge amount of time where wildlife was able to, I mean, literally these populations grew exponentially. And of course, when those early settlers came in, those early colonizers, what they saw were, you know, the sky blackened by passenger pigeons, you know, bison, as far as you could see herds of thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions lots of deer, white tail deer, elk, black bear, all the species that we have here for the most part exploded in population. And so then, you know, people needed to survive, right? So they had big families, there were subsistence farmers. I know my family were doing that. And so they would end up utilizing the wildlife to augment, you know, or to survive. And of course, and we're talking, we're getting beyond the fur, you know, the, you know, the fur age of, you know, trapping and all that and the mountain men and moving into, you know, this time period where you have the expansion of, you know, the colonization North American by Northern Europeans. And of course, we didn't think about this resource being finite. It's like gold, right? You know, gold's a very scarce thing. That's why it has its value. Well, that's what's happened to wildlife. Wildlife got used. We thought there was a lot of it. We thought that the forest would grow forever and they would be all over. And in these mature forests, we chopped them all down in the name of progress. And then at the end of the day, all of a sudden in the late 1800s, guys like George Bird Grinnell, Theodore Roosevelt you know, Gifford Pinchot and others realized, wait a minute, where did all these animals go? Ah, we killed them all. And we didn't think about it, you know, because you would hear the stories about trappers going in and trapping out an entire river system because they're there to make money. And of course the, the market hunting that went on and of course the warfare between, you know you know, European settlers and, and the the native Americans there, I mean we eradicated, you know, General Sheridan, let's eradicate the bison because that was part of war, you know? And so, at the long and the short of it is luckily those gentlemen ushered in this, this modern conservation ethos. They formed the Boone and Crockett Club, which is the oldest conservation organization in North America. And what they pushed is regulation, protecting habitat that, you know, Gifford Pinchot, the father of the National Forest Service. And what it did is it allowed us to protect habitat. So of course that ushered in, you know, having a protection of the resources, you know, where you had the game wardens, conservation officers, and then also the same time bringing in scientists, wildlife biologists, to study the animals, to study the habitat, to make sure that we make really sound decisions over the management of them. And that is what, you know, Gifford Pinchot is literally the father of modern day conservation. He is the first person to coin this, this definition of wise use. And so, and that is propagated from, I mean, you know, I love to tell our Scottish friends that are into rewilding for the last 30 years. That's another story we'll talk about someday. But I like to tell those guys, we've been rewilding here in North America for about 130 years. And you know, we're not perfect, but we've done a pretty good job of it. And it's all because of people seeing a value. And so again, you've talked about those other organizations, they're preservationist organizations. They, they want nature to be free. They don't want any human interaction. And unfortunately it doesn't work very well when you have 8.1 billion humans on the planet. And we have the, the impact that we do have on these landscapes. And so it's really critical that we continue to show a value to rural people. And of course, conservation starts at the ground level, starts at the local level. I don't care if we're talking about Idaho, Montana, Texas, Europe, Africa, the Asia, the stands, any of that stuff. When people at the local level see a value for having a resource there, they will take care of it. And almost always that, that benefit is economics.

Tarek: It's important that we avoid extremes. So you'd mentioned that there was a period of time where we would go in and just eviscerate populations. But at the same time, there's now legislation in places like Oregon that is ballot initiatives to say that we should not kill any animals of any kind.

Tom: I'd be 28. Yep.

Tarek: So talk about that.

Tom: Well, and again, you know, we talked about the fact that we were seeing this serious urbanization of our Western society. I mean, even in Montana, where I'm from folks, majority of people live in town. They don't live on a ranch. They don't live on a farm. And we've seen this. If you go back in history here in America, since the great depression, prior to then, most people had a relationship with somebody in the family or extended family that was tied to a ranch or a farm. So people kind of understood where the food came from. But now you talk to people like there was a survey right before COVID with the public school system in Chicago. And they asked these high schoolers, where does your hamburger come from? Do you know 50% of those kids didn't know it came from a cow? 50% of the entire group of kids in the public school system in Chicago did not understand it came from an animal, came from the grocery store, came from the cell phone package. The grocery store provides everything, right? So that's a real problem because now you're talking about, we live in a representative democracy, 50% plus one win. So we're going back to politics here. All right. All right. Now we have people like we showcased in the real Yellowstone that are not only dictating policy, but making policy on say grizzly bears that have never seen a grizzly bear track, let alone a grizzly bear. And they have no concept to the unintended consequences of doing what they think is right. So in the case of Oregon, there is a, um, ballot initiative. A lot of states allow this. And this is, this is going back to Athens folks. This is not a representative government. This is mob rules, 50% plus one wins. So literally this goes on the ballot November and it's a yay or nay. So in the case of IP 28, IP 28, what it does, they call it the peace act. And what it does is it would eliminate all of the safeguards that have been put in to keep people out of trouble based on the animal cruelty laws that they have in Oregon, which are pretty serious. I mean, you break the law, you're looking at a felony. Now you and I like to shoot guns, right? We like to go out in the outdoors, right? Well, guess what? If you have a felony, that's against the law. Can't have a gun anymore. So what we see here is it is a small group of people, probably very urbanized people, um, that have an idea that they think is right. Now, I have to tell you, most of these anti-use people and anti-hunting people, it has nothing to do with what's, let's say, a positive outcome for nature or something that's better for wildlife or, you know, the environment. That's not the motive. The motive is to raise money. It's about power and control because most of these anti-hunting groups say the Humane Society of the United States, it's a 200 billion, I'm 200 million dollar a year entity. You can pick up, look at their nine 90 tax return every year online. But IP 28 doesn't just address hunting. Oh, it covers the gamut of any use of animals, including amphibians, fish. Uh, I mean, all life basically that humans utilize.

Tarek: So what it would do is you can't raise cattle and slaughter the cattle.

Tom: You can't raise, you can't raise cattle, no animal husbandry. I mean, yeah, I guess you can raise them, but you can't, you can't eat them. You know, um, there was a list here. There's so much going on. I'm just going to go with this thing. If this was a past hunting and fishing become prosecutable as an animal injury or, you know, killing it, livestock slaughter becomes illegal. Many livestock handling practices become suspect. Wildlife agencies, the fish and game agency, they lose their, all forms of lethal management. So you can't, I mean, you can't even manage Berman. The pest control guy will be in trouble. You can't kill a mouse. So, uh, animal agriculture becomes functionally impossible. Um, funding for conservation, which, you know, the hunters and fishermen, uh, not only do they spend money on their, on their hunting licenses and their permits, which that money goes directly to the Oregon state fish and game agency to pay the bills, but there's a little thing called the Pittman Robertson act in 1937, which is, and of course, and then there's the Dingell Johnson act for fishing. But Pittman Robertson is a 11.4% federal excise tax at the wholesale level that whoever buys a gun, a bullet or archery tackle goes directly into that fund. It doesn't go to the IRS, but it gets spread out among all 50 states fishing game agencies to pay for conservation, the wise use of a natural resource. And so it, I mean, you think there's no way any of this could happen. And, and, you know, I mean, I mean, let's look at where's food, where's people food going to come from.

Tarek: It's also a pretext to take away gun rights, because if you aren't able to hunt anymore, then what is the point of having a gun?

Tom: Well, and I've had this conversation with many CEOs and presidents of companies that are at the shot show. So this is a shooting sports show every year. And a couple of years ago I sat down with a bunch of CEOs and I said, so what happens if you lose two, 3% of your business next year or five or six the next year, eight or 9%. Now I don't know how familiar you are with the firearms industry, but the margins are pretty dang slim, really tight. Yeah. Yeah. So if you all of a sudden, and these people in Oregon have already said, when they get this passed in Oregon, they're going to move it to Massachusetts. Then they're going to go to Illinois and then they're going to California. What all those places have in common. They're run by liberal politicians living in cities that have no clue what's going on in the Hither land, you know, the rest of the country. And so unfortunately, if you want to talk about a threat to conservation and to our modern conservation model, our North American, this is the number one threat there is.

Tarek: So what would happen? Let's assume that this bill passes, and let's say it passes in Massachusetts and in Illinois and in California. And that becomes the precursor to it happening in other States throughout the U S what is the outcome of beyond just killing the, the ag industry beyond that? What, what would be the environmental consequences of that happening?

Tom: Well, let's talk about humans. Now not only is there a huge economic issue here, people are going to be out of business. Now, of course, this thing, this, this particular bill says it creates a fund to retrain people. So you're gonna retrain all these farmers and ranchers and retrain all these hunters and fishermen. I mean, we're talking about your coastal species, guys, you know, whatever, they're coming out abalone or salmon or whatever. You're not going to have it anymore unless it gets sourced from outside of the state. But if it goes across the country, say it's a federal piece of legislation, because again, guys get to remember, in the United States, let's just, we're just talking about hunting right now. Only 4% of the U S population buys a hunting license in a given year. Only 1.7% of the population ranches and farms. And there's a little crossover there between the hunters. Now, fishermen, like say in Oregon, I think about 15% of the population buys a fishing license about just shy of 10% buys a hunting license. There's crossover there. So let's just say it's 20%. Okay. Again, elections have consequences. 50% plus one wins at the end of the day. Well, the way I look at it, even if there's 25% of people in Oregon or 10% of Americans are strongly for the consumptive use in modern conservation, that means we're 40% or 25% in Oregon plus one behind before you even get to the ballot box. And that's what I talked to those shotshow executives in those companies. I'm like, so what happens guys? Now that's economic. That's going to be your bottom line. But what happens to the rest of the, our country? Well, where do you get your protein from? Because the last time I checked, we eat a lot of protein and we need it. It's part of what makes us human. There's going to be a huge problem. Not only are we going to have people out of business and people are going to lose culture and their way of life that we're going to have people have serious health issues. I mean, this thing is serious.

Tarek: We already have headwinds in that department anyway, right? With the cattle population in the U S being in decline and obviously rising cattle prices. It would have a huge impact.

Tom: Oh, huge impact. Now, of course the cattle thing, you're talking about dominoes here right now. We're dealing with pretty serious drought throughout most of cattle country in the United States. That's why you've got the numbers down so low. And of course these guys are trying to make a living. And as we've talked about in the last podcast, making a living as a rancher running cattle operations is a dog eat dog world. Now. Yeah. The last couple of years, they're actually starting to make some money at it. But when you get all of these effects lining up, it's kind of like having a bad winter in Montana or Idaho and your elk don't have enough food and they start to get really, you know, really leaned out in the springtime. And then you get your predators out on the landscape, just, you know, hammering everything they can. And you don't manage those predators. Then eventually you're going to have enough. All it takes is a disease. Like now we've got chronic wasting disease. It's kind of moving throughout the West. We've got it all over Montana now, and it does have an impact on those populations of those ungulates. Eventually you're going to get down to where you're gonna have some real problems on your hand. If we're going to continue to manage wildlife through this North American conservation model, which again, conservation is not free folks. It costs a lot of money and hunters and fishermen spend billions and billions of dollars because they get a value out of it. That is the key thing to conservation.

Tarek: Most of the hunters that I'm around appreciate the opportunity to have these natural expanses of land. It's a way many hunters work in the city, you know, have desk jobs and are looking for opportunities to go out into nature with their sons and daughters and spend time alone away from the cell phone in the, in the fresh air. And if we lose that environment or the opportunity to spend time there you know, it's, it, it, it will have a deleterious impact on culture. I believe.

Tom: Yeah. I grew up in a family where, you know, my dad as a union journalist didn't make a lot of money. Well, I can tell you without wild game, without having deer in the, in the larder without having ducks and turkeys and salmon and you know, grouse and pheasants and all stuff. I mean, you know, those are delicacies really if you think about it, but that's, I was blessed to grow up in that and the traditions that you're talking about Tarek. I mean, our, we, we worked with other families. We, we got together and had weekends up on, on a piece of land that we leased in Michigan where I grew up to go hunt deer and turkeys and upland birds. But we managed the land. We took care of it. We monitored things. But we had that, you know, I'd like to say there's a reason why a campfire mesmerizes every human being in the world. And I mean, even suburbia, right? You how many times you've been at somebody's house and in the suburbs and there's a campfire circle in the backyard, right? Everybody has one, right? Well, I can tell you there's that reason is, has nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing to do with the roasting marshmallows folks. We've been sitting around campfires for a long, long time. And, um, and it's good. I mean, I, I think those traditions that we have, it, it, it, you know, it literally bonds us to the land. It helps us to be better people, uh, better neighbors, better family members and the experiences there. I mean, it goes back to the beginning of humanity, right? You know, like I said, we spent a lot of time in the field, in the outdoors. Now we're in this modern world right now where we can grow food. You know, if you look at the human population graph and you go through, you know, 10,000 years ago, there's not a whole lot of humans around here. Everybody starts growing, growing, you get it to a thousand years. We start to get a little few more, you get to, you know, the 1500s, 1600s, this population, but even till you get into till import pre-industrial age, the population's creeping up, but not by a whole lot, you know, but then when you get to the industrial revolution, you get to use of fossil fuels. We are now at a situation where we can literally produce almost unlimited amounts of food and we can store it for almost unlimited amounts of time. Refrigeration. Our Native American friends didn't have refrigerators, folks. You know what they did? They hung it and dried it, but that only works for so long. And then they ended up making a thing called pemmican, which was beef. There'd be not beef, but it'd be tallow fat from the animal, the actual meat. And then in the East coast, they would use mass producing crops, acorns. And when you grind them up, the flower has an acid in it. It's a preservative. Here in the Western, it was berries. There's an acid in it. Now with pemmican, you can get that to last for months. Big difference. And that's part of what our Northern Europeans, when they came into the Eastern seaboard, I remember the scientist, the late Valerius Geis, he called it the American nut garden, because the whole East coast, you know, it's full of mass producing trees. Oaks and beech and hickory and all this stuff, right? They all produce stuff. And those Native Americans burned that country all the time. They maintained it. The pilgrims write in their journals and their essays about being able to ride their horses and pulling their carts. Now they didn't have the wagons at that time, but they could pull it. They could ride through all that country completely unhindered. There was no underbrush because the Native Americans were constantly burning the ground, maintaining that American nut garden to produce acorns. And of course, when the Native Americans got eradicated through disease, and then, you know, of course the passenger pigeon population, guess what? If you're not eating it, the wildlife's going to eat it.

Tarek: And you would say that's the difference between conservation and preservation.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. If you're going to let... So one of the things the late Valerius Geis told me, he said, Tom, and this is one of the founding fathers of the North American conservation model, very, very famous scientist from British Columbia. And he's like, Tom, a lot of people think mother nature is going to figure this out. Never has and never will. Mother nature is brutal. Mother nature doesn't have emotions. Mother nature doesn't care. It's survival of the fittest folks. Remember that from school? It's real. And if you want to understand how real it is for humans, remember the Syrian civil war that was going on, what's going on in Ukraine, but especially in Syria, you had these people going around. I would tell these, my friends that didn't believe in sustainable use. And good conservation. Take your extended family, take mom, dad, take the aunts, uncles, take the second and third cousins. They all pack up and go over to Syria. Find yourself a house there that's been abandoned and set up shop. See how long, see what happens. See how long it takes before another human being comes along and decides they want what you have. Maybe they want your food. Maybe they want your water. Maybe they want the gun you have, because I assume you're going to have a gun to protect yourself in a place that's not a civil war. Maybe they'll take your wife or your kids from you. Maybe they just want to kill you because they don't like you. That's the reality of humanity. And that's what goes on every day. When you walk out the door of this studio, when you walk out the door of your house, everything you see is alive, will die. That's a fact of life. And so at the end of the day, everything's competing to survive. That's why we see, I tell people, Hey, you want to make it really simple? You've got a pond, a mill pond in your neighborhood or in your town or whatever like that. And of course you go out there in the springtime and it's this beautiful, clean water. And you can see the fish and the turtles and stuff. The first warm day in May, especially we're talking about the Northern climate. You get back to that place and say, mid-August, what's it look like? It's covered in milfoil and all this other weeds, right? Well, plant life, everything in nature is programmed to overpopulate the carrying capacity land in order to survive. Look at humanity.

Tarek: Well, we always say, you know, on my property, that we're always fighting nature. We're always fighting the weeds. We're always fighting, you know, the cougars. We're always fighting everything that is out there.

Tom: The key there is not to fight it. The key is to figure out and be a part of it. And that's what good conservation is. And that's what we've done here in North America. That's why we have these incredible wildlife NGOs, non-government organizations. So Wild Sheep Foundation, Yelp Foundation, Pheasants Forever, Quail Unlimited, National Wild Turkey Federation. You know, all of these organizations are so laser focused on what they do, and they do an incredible job on the habitat because let's face it, folks, if we don't have clean, healthy ecosystems that have the proper habitat for these animals that have spent the millennia, you know, living in these areas successfully and healthy, you know, being able to brood that, you know, bring the next generation of those animals into the planet. We're not going to sit around and debate whether somebody sets a trap or pulls a trigger or utilizes the animal in any way, because they're not going to exist. Period.

Tarek: Yeah. Your journeys have taken you back to Africa here.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. We're yeah. So I told you in 2017, and this is crazy story. We didn't really talk about it in the last podcast, but this whole journey, you know, I told you, you know, my background is in filmmaking. I spent doing my whole life. And of course, you know, I was interested in what my dad was doing. And so, um, you know, when, back in the late sixties, early seventies, my father had made some outdoor films. And when I was a young kid, I used to sneak in his office when he wasn't around. And it was all shot on 16 millimeter film. So a lot of you guys probably wouldn't understand this, but this is the film with the sprocket holes in it. And you have to put it in a projector and it makes a noise as it projects onto the screen. And of course the screen can be your wall of your, of your dad's office, which is what I was doing. And it was pretty cool. It was fishing stuff. Guys were catching fish and float planes were flying over there and I said, man, I'd kind of like to do that. So, you know, if you get a good relationship with your, with your dad, you know, every boy wants to be like his dad. Right. You know, so that was an interest on there. And I was very blessed to have the childhood I had being in the outdoors and, you know, I mean, being able to experience what I was able to do when your dad's an outdoor writer and like a serious guy and one of the biggest newspapers in the country, you get a lot of opportunity. And so I had some really cool opportunities, but, um, but yeah, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I think, um, kind of circling back, let's go back to what you were going to hit on there. I've just jumped off on a tangent on myself.

Tarek: So, yeah. So, um, your journeys are taking you back to Africa.

Tom: Yep. So getting back, you know, growing up in the outdoors and being around all this stuff and being very blessed to have these opportunities, um, you know, in mid nineties, you know, my dad was taking people all over the world on, on, uh, sales incentive trips through the auto industry. Cause he was the auto guy right in Detroit, you know, wrote the outdoor stuff. So everybody wanted to, I can remember as a kid, my dad was complaining about these baseball guys from the Tigers, Detroit Tigers were harassing my dad to go fishing and hunt with my dad, right? And he's, he's, he's pro athletes. And my dad's like, I don't have time for you guys. I don't deal with them. I said, well, who's bothering you, dad? He said, well, there's a guy named Kirk Gibson. And then who's the other guy? Oh, this guy named, uh, Jack Morris. Oh, Cy Young wore to winter multi-time, you know, what's wrong with you, dad. But I grew up in a household where, you know, we go out and hunt ducks in the morning over in Jackson County, about 20, 25 minutes from the house with a, with a guy who picks up a guitar and strums on it like nobody else. Ted Nugent, you know, I just, that's, I was blessed to have these opportunities. My first eve of my first bow hunt, my dad's like, Hey Tom, we're gonna, we're gonna go hang out with, we're in Northern Michigan. We're going to hang out with my fly fishing buddy. Yeah. Okay. So we go to this lodge and it's sitting in front of this big fireplace, big stone fireplace fire going in there. And this old sinewy guy's talking to me about shooting animals all over the world. And I'm like, Hey, I just want to find the first whitetail doe tomorrow. I can find, I mean, whatever. And of course we get done and he goes, Tom, Tom, like, you know, a dad, I was Tommy back then.

Tarek: Yeah.

Tom: And he's like, Tom, you know, should we get a picture with Tommy? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I take a picture and should we, should I autograph? Oh yeah. He autographs this black and white eight by eight by 10 of him with this, this a bighorn sheep that he'd shot with his bow. I didn't really think much of it. Like I said, I was hoping the next day to come across the first whitetail deer I could get. And some years later I realized I'd spent the eve of my first bow season with Fred Bear. My dad's fly fishing buddy. Very, very blessed. Very, very blessed. So my dad got the opportunity to do a lot of stuff around the world and he invited me to come to Zambia back in the mid nineties on a, on a safari there. And I was like, wow, okay. I'm working in the film business, had some time got on the plane, flew over and get to see Africa for the first time. You know, Cape Buffalo, lions, elephants, I mean everything. What was your initial impression? Wow. I mean, the air smells different there. Um, the wind feels different. It's really, I mean, yeah, remember Africa guys is a continent and it is so big that you could put all of North and South America in it. You could put India in it and you could put most of Europe in it.

Tarek: Yeah. People don't realize that because of how our maps are drawn.

Tom: Yeah, right. Yeah.

Tarek: You flatten out the map and Africa doesn't look as big as it is.

Tom: Yeah. So, you know, it was a real eye opener to me. And, um, and of course I just have this affinity for the outdoors like you. I just, I mean, it's, it's what, it's made me who I am today. It's that time in the outdoors and been very, again, very blessed to spend time here, you know, growing, you know, spent most of my life living in Montana now and it's God's country, you know, getting in those mountains and smelling, smelling the fresh air and crossing streams and catching trout and, and, um, you know, seeing the different wildlife and how they interact with each other and being a part of it, being a positive part of it was really there. And so I ended up, um, you know, we ended up doing a show. I had a co-production with NBC sports from 2008 to 2015 for a show called eye of the hunter. And, uh, I hosted it, I directed it, produced it, you know, it was pretty big, serious deal. I mean, we had, um, we probably were the largest highest rated outdoor field sports show in the world. Uh, we were on against Monday night football, 9 PM Eastern. And, uh, and then a lion named Cecil got shot in Zimbabwe in 2015, July of 2015. Worldwide news. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The whole world went, became unhinged. And, um, and of course my wife, Olivia is, um, she was Mrs. Nebraska in 2003. I don't know if we talked about her the last go around, but she was marrying Dick Cabela's personal assistant, uh, in the early two thousands and she ran for Mrs. Nebraska and she won the thing. But to be in the Mrs. pageant, you have to have a, some sort of cause you celebrate, you know, it could be breast cancer, whatever her cause was the hunter conservationist. Yeah. It makes sense. You know, she's, she loves to hunt, loves to fish working for the Cabela's, you know, it kind of goes hand in hand. And, uh, but it created an opportunity for her to take that, that crown in that sash and go talk to kids about conservation, about the outdoors, about hunting and fishing. And, uh, when we finally got together, um, you know, she'd ended up co-hosting a whole bunch of outdoor television shows, uh, federal's dangerous game, the Benelli shows, the Ruger shows, a whole bunch of stuff, right. Dozens of shows. And of course, when we got together, then she ended up co-hosting my, our show with me. And, uh, you know, it was pretty prominent out there. Of course, when Cecil was shot, I mean, the phone just rang off the hook. I mean, we had Al Jazeera cause we were supposed to be on the today's show in the morning. Uh, of course we worked for NBC sports, not NBC, the big guys and the NBC big guys were like, Hey, we want to have you on here. Of course the NBC sports guys, when they found out, said, no, you're not going. We had the tickets were supposed to be in New York the next day and they're like, you're not going. We don't want it. We don't want any, anything here. And so, you know, it was a crazy time. And unfortunately, um, you know, the, the hunting community, hunting conservation community didn't take a billion dollar platform that was given to them to talk about it. And that'll never happen again. But my wife Olivia was asked to write the editorial about why we hunt even lions for USA today. And, uh, she wrote a wonderful, uh, opinion piece. And, uh, and you can find it today on, you can look it up, Google it USA today and Olivia Opry and why we hunt lions even today. Um, of course, you know, we had, I don't know, probably five or 6,000 death threats. Uh, they wanted to kill our kids and skin them and hang them up on their walls. I mean, it was just crazy. All the stuff that we dealt with.

Tarek: How were those death threats coming through?

Tom: All through social media. So all through, so nobody's knocked on the door, but you know, in Montana you don't really want to knock on somebody's door if you don't know what you're doing. Cause you're going to get a reception. I can tell you that. So anybody who's listening to this and thinks they want to pull, bring it on. All right. Uh, the wife packs heat all the time. So yeah, knows what she's doing. But, um, it was funny too, because I mean, it's funny, but it's sad at the time. Cause you know, it's almost a societal norm thing. You know, I mean, why, why would we demonize people? Because they're actually doing something that in reality is providing a value to rural communities, providing a benefit. Well, so in the case of Africa, a lot of people say, Oh, you know, all the money it goes to pay for all this hunting and stuff, you know, it all goes off to offshore accounts and the Seychelles or the, maybe the Panama Canal or some other BS. No, it doesn't. Even if a guy spends a hundred thousand dollars on a, you know, African safari to hunt a lion or whatever it is, which that's about the price these days. Well, actually it's now pushing 250, 300,000, depending where you go. Um, that money goes to an operator, that operator hires local people to work. And of course they may be working year round and maybe working a period of time, but he's got to build a camp. He's got to pay concession fees to national parks. He has to also pay the local community. And in a lot of cases the community resource boards will get some money, which are the kind of the local, you know, I don't know, you call them like the local council. And then the chiefs get paid a little portion of the money. And of course all these people get paid, they get jobs and they can go buy food and they don't have to be relying on wildlife as far as poaching it. Or in the case of having a crop that fails because most of these people are subsistence farmers too and crops do fail.

Tarek: So I understand the benefit to the community. What is the benefit to the animal population? Like how do you justify this? People are looking at these pictures of these hunters who are going on these African safaris killing these beautiful animals.

Tom: All animals are beautiful by the way. All animals are. It doesn't matter what kind, you know, there's an interesting little analogy I use. I call it the rat analogy. Just again about the economics of this and then I'll move into what you're talking about. If you have a rat in your house, what do you do?

Tarek: Kill it.

Tom: Yeah. Pack rat, especially. Right. What do you do if the rat's worth 50,000 bucks?

Tarek: You preserve it. You save it. Try to sell it.

Tom: You raise a whole s**tload of rats. Right? Now I'm simplifying things here, but that, that is a reason why you see the hunting of these iconic species, whether it be a lion or an elephant or one of these wild sheep in Afghanistan or not Afghanistan, but in the "stans" in that area where you've got Marco Polo sheep and things like that. And where you see that going on, those population of animals now provide a value to that rural community and to that government and to the local stuff, you know, local people in that. And so they will work to save that animal and you will end up having a good population. The case of elephants in Botswana, you know, I was there last June doing a film that's going to become a short little film. We've got a book coming out called The Water That Walks, there'll be a book coming out soon, and basically telling the story of what's going on in the Okavango Delta between the photo safaris and the hunting areas that are just adjacent to it. Do you know that if you take all of the national parks in Africa, especially from say Central Africa, South to South Africa, and then you take all the land mass that's set aside for hunting concessions, it's twice the size of land mass than what you have in national parks that are set aside. It's protected because of the hunting. If you have people out there, you've got the game scouts that are looking at things and they're not only protecting against poaching guys, because we're talking about third world countries. We're talking about governments that don't have big resources. They don't necessarily have the wherewithal to really want to do it. They're looking at making money off this resource. Okay. And then of course, they will hopefully want to do it in a sustainable manner. But at the end of the day, I've sat down with a lot of these quote unquote hunting safari companies and said, yes, you need to change what you're saying. You got to change the messaging because yeah, you keep posting. We see it on social. We've got these anti-poaching teams out here. We arrested these people and whatever. Yeah. Okay, great. But you do so much more than that because you're in these geographically remote areas. Sometimes in the case of where we shot Killing the Shepherds, 1.2 million acres, it's larger than Glacier National Park. And there's 48 game scouts running around the dang thing. That's it. But they're trying to protect the resource out there so it can be utilized and provide a value for the people. So people won't kill it all. And so I said, guys, you're not just protecting the wildlife. They're out there with those same teams protecting against illegal development, illegal charcoal production, which is a huge problem in Africa. Illegal mining, another price of gold, $4,000 an ounce folks, right? Hey, well, where we shot Killing The Shepherd, they have alluvial gold deposits there. So everybody that's got a shovel and a pickaxe is now an illegal miner looking to make some money. It's the Wild West. All right. You've got Chinese that want timber. They want to go and they poach timber left and right. So you get the illegal logging. You got all this stuff going on. Without that operator in that concession, putting out those community game scouts and paying the fees for those guys to be out there and equipping them, putting a kit, making sure they have the training with national parks and wildlife, you'd lose all of it. So I think it's pretty important. If you want to keep entire ecosystems intact, then you have to ensure and you have to understand that these people are on the ground that are hunting safari operators are way more than I've actually told these guys, Hey, take credit for credit's due. We have a biodiversity crisis, right? We have a climate crisis. Now, I don't care if you believe in any of that stuff, right? I don't care if you're liberal Democrat in between libertarian. I don't give a at the end of the day. This is what this is. The headlines, headlines take advantage of it because you're already doing it. You know, take responsibility. You already take responsibility. And so at the end of the day, you know, use that in your social media because you're doing it and take credit for it. Because if we don't have people taking care of these resources in these ecosystems, we're going to lose them folks. And it's not somebody in London. It's not somebody in LA. It's not somebody in Chicago. So that's somebody in Dallas that is protecting those places. It's people on the ground. And the only people are going to do it are the people that are seeing a benefit. So getting back to that, that iconic animal, that a hundred thousand dollars or $200,000 that gets spent. Okay. It pays for all the fees to be there. It pays for the staffs, but okay. That guy who lives in Lusaka, Zambia, or Harare, Zimbabwe, he has a house. He might have a mortgage. Oh, so it goes to the bank. He's got a Land Cruiser. Oh, he's got to pay for parts. Oh, maybe he goes to the dealership and buys a new one. Okay. Uh, he's got a gun. He goes to a local gunsmith, pays a local gunsmith. He's got to buy food. He's got school fees for his kids. He's got to pay the local school. Guess where all that money goes. It's just like you hired the guy to build a, a, uh, at your house to build a garage or a, or a barn on your property. Well, you pay him a hundred thousand dollars to build it, right? Does all that money go to the socials? Does it go to a Swiss unmarked account? No, but you'll hear the anti-hunting crowd make those kinds of claims and they'll make these really crazy claims that less than 4% of the money that's spent on a hunt actually goes to the local community. They just literally cherry pick data and make up lies because again, it's all about power and control. It's not about positive outcomes for nature. It's not about positive outcomes for rural communities. And it sure as heck isn't about positive outcomes for wildlife.

Promo: If you're enjoying y'all street, please like and subscribe and share with your friends. It really helps the show. Y'all Street is a division of Texas precious metals. If you've ever been interested in buying gold or silver, check us out at text metals.com. We take good care of our customers and we're proud to say we do Business The Texas Way.

Tarek: Talk about your current project.

Tom: So we, uh, we did this film Killing the Shepherd and of course it was in an area, a huge area, uh, back in the late 18, 1980s, 1990s this place had the big five. So the big five is, is your leopard, lion, Cape Buffalo, um, elephant and Rhino had black Rhino had elephant, had a good population of Cape Buffalo. Then all the planes game. So the Kudu, all these antelope species and warthog, things like that. And, um, in 2001, 2002, the government shut down hunting in the country because of corruption within the government and in the hunting industry. Cause not everybody in hunting industry is a good person like any industry, right? Not everybody in the gold, gold selling business are good folks either.

Tarek: Everything is highly regulated.

Tom: It's all legal. And matter of fact, a lot of hunters want to bring home their, their hunting trophy, you know, they want to have that, that memory of that experience. And let's face it, folks, you can take a picture of it. You can take a video of it. It can be on your iPhone. That's great to show friends. But at the end of the day, having that animal up on your wall, it's a three dimensional thing. You can touch it, you can feel it. And I can tell you both my wife and I, you know, we've done a lot of hunting. We've been able to go around the world and do things. When I see that animal up there or she sees her animals up there, she can tell you what day it was, what the weather was like, who she was with, the whole experience. Now I ask anybody who just has pictures of their golf outings to tell me what the weather was like when they're out golfing last week, let alone last year or five years or 20 years ago. That's how, I think that's something people don't really understand. And so again, it's really important people understand that if we don't provide those values, it's all going to go away. And we've got such a disconnect now in our urban society that we need to educate people on this. So in the case of the Luano, the lower Luano, where we shot the film, this time period ushered in an area of basically lawlessness. And so you ended up in a scenario where a commercial criminal bushmeat gangs moved in and they built villages in the greatest concentrations of wildlife. And they didn't plant crops like subsistence farmers would. They planted drying racks so they could dry game meat. That's what they use. It's called built on and or bushmeat. And of course, bushmeat in Africa, and I don't care where you are in the entire huge continent of Africa is considered a right to be able to eat bushmeat all over the country, all over each country, all over the continent. In fact, we back during COVID, my, one of my youngest kids was in the soccer. And so she was, we ended up having this UK soccer club come to the Flathead Valley of Montana. They bring these coaches over and they teach the kids about, you know, European soccer, English soccer. And of course, part of the deal was is they needed to have us host the coaches, the parents, so they could stay at our houses. Well, of course, nobody wanted to host the coaches during COVID. My wife, I'm like, screw it. We don't care. So we had three, we had three coaches. So we had a couple of kids from the UK and we got one kid, um, from, uh, Nigeria and, um, you know, and at the time we were, I was filming Killing The Shepherd and he, you know, he's, he's sitting there. And I said, of course, you know, he looks at all the animals in our house and he's like, Oh wow. You know, he's like, wow. Okay. I wasn't sure what was going to happen here. And he's like, that's actually pretty cool. All right. And then I showed him some pictures. I just received some WhatsApp photos from over from some game scouts that have captured, uh, you know, some get bushmeat and arrested some poachers. And I showed him the picture of the bushmeat and this kid lives in Nigeria. Now this is now half a continent away from, from Zambia, long ways away. And he looked at that and goes, bushmeat, man. Yeah, that's good stuff. I mean, I don't care. You could be in Egypt or you could be in South Africa. They all consider it. It's no different than an American looks at apple pie and hotdogs. Yeah. That's how they look at it. So, so these guys came in, of course, the whole Southern boundary of the lower Luwano is what they call the great East road. So from Lusaka the Capitol all the way up to Malawi to the coast and Mozambique is the main tar highway paved highway. So it's a little scary. It's not to our standards by any means, but it is paved. And there's a thousand trucks a day that go up and down that doing commerce, really easy to be able to move contraband on those trucks. So, so these guys had about 15 years of completely unhindered access and they killed everything. We figure at least six species went locally extinct, you know, elephant, rhino, you know, you know, those were the first to go Cape Buffalo. I mean, slaughtered them all. Puku antelope, a Puku antelope is, you know, it's kind of about the size of a whitetail deer. And they're kind of like it'd be like the equivalent of going to upstate New York with cottontail rabbits. They're everywhere, right? Yeah. Well, in the Eastern side of Zambia, Puku antelope are everywhere. There's not a single one in 1.2 million acres in this place. Zebra, hard to be gone, wiped off the face of a place. And so, I knew that there was, you know, 2015, 2016, that the family came in to help out the Norton family, Macasa safaris. I got there in May of 2017. Kids were, you know, literally they'd been starving to death right before I got there. Their crops were failing. There was no food. The family started buying mealy meal, started turning things around. They were able to kid out a bunch of Game Scouts, start operations. And within five years, they were able to eliminate 80% of the poaching. The criminal guys, those gangsters, they literally put hits to kill both the father and son that were the family that organized the safari stuff. Luckily they didn't kill anybody. But it was pretty dicey. You know, a lot of times that, you know, I mean, you run around Game Scouts, the AK-47s, and there's a reason why they have them because those guys had gotten in firefights and it was a bush war. It was scary stuff. But again, certain populations of animals like kudu and bush buck and warthog, those animals, there was little pockets that survived lion and leopard. And over the course of the next five years, after they reduced that poaching impact, those, like I said, everything in nature is programmed overpopulated carrying capacity. Well, guess what? The population of animals exploded. Now this is an area that didn't have any hunting quota. The government had designated as game depleted. So there was no chance at any time soon that the animals would, you know, nobody ever thought the animals would come back, but they came back. And by 2020 the community and the safari operator got a very limited quota, 48 animals on 1.2 million acres. And that's what they have today. And it's enough of a economic stimulus that they can between a fish farm they built and what they've done, they can, they can make a go of it. Now it's not the best of all worlds, but it's, it's going on. But I knew that national parks had been talking about working on a potential wildlife restoration act. So kind of long story here, but to give you the whole deal. So I was there in March 21st of this year, just the other day, uh, sitting in the office of national parks with the deputy director. And he was talking about the government. The national parks was going to donate Cape Buffalo and Pucu antelope to the area, to the community and bring back these species of animals. Now, why is that important? Well, of course, biodiversity, right? We talk about that. This area does have some grasslands, but it is not the great Serengeti. There is no big migration. This is Mopani bush. So you've got Cathedral, you know, big old growth, and then you've got what they call Jess bush. So it's thick as heck. And, um, so you've got all these, these animals that, that populations that exploded, but you don't really have animals that will work in their grasslands. You know, elephants aren't there. There's no Cape Buffalo. And so over the 10 years that the operators been there in 2015, 16 to now, uh, they've seen a noticeable encroachment by the bush on their grasslands. You know, they just don't, you got to have those herbivores in there in order to keep those grasslands healthy. So there's some really important things that need to happen. And I said, wow, that's kind of cool. I'd, you know, they're talking about helicopters and rounding them up helicopters and putting them on big six by six off-road trucks and trucking them seven, 800 kilometers from other national parks to bring them in here. I'm like, well, I want to film that. That's, that's kick, you know, it's kick ass. Let's do that. And I said, wow, you're going to donate this stuff, but man, who's paying for the helicopters? He's paying for the vets and six by six trucks. And they said, well, the community and the, and the operator need to pay for that. Huh? Okay. Huh? I looked at the operator. I said, uh, community has money. No, you got the money. Not really. Huh? All right. Well, I can see where this is going. Yeah. I know. So I know some fairly affluent people and a few of us, you know, at least here, guys, let me, let me head home. I'm going home tomorrow. Let me call around when I get home and just see what I can do.

Tarek: Yeah.

Tom: And the long and the short of it is within eight weeks of getting home. Uh, well, the first thing I did is, you know, we've got a media strategist and publicist. So I called up, uh, Adam Handelsman and down in Austin. And I said, you know, he's an A-list publicist. And I said, Adam, here's the story. And he goes, well, do you have exclusivity? I said, well, if we're going to raise the money, I'm sure as heck not going to let anybody else film it. And he goes, well, if you do, I think I can get 60 minutes and CBS news to pick this up. Now, I don't know if that's going to happen. We're having the conversations, but you know, again, these are great stories that we need to educate.

Tarek: How much money did you have to raise?

Tom: 150,000 is what we figured. Um, we're, it looks like we're pretty close to on budget, uh, government throw a few curves at us. Um, but, uh, but yeah, so we had to do that. So that's phase one of operation return to the wild. So phase two, now, you know, we can do all this great wildlife restoration work. We can fix all these things, whatever. But like we said, we have this huge disconnect in our urban population. Well, here's a great opportunity to educate people. So the comps thing. So phase two is, is, uh, uh, documentation of the restoration, the publicity, the PR. I mean, I mean, you know, we want to get as many people exposed to this as possible. So they understand kind of what the realities are on the ground, because again, it's, it's brutal, right? It's Africa all over the world is brutal. And so, um, so what we're working on there is getting that, that, that next stage going on. So if folks want to go to shepherds of wildlife.org, uh, and be involved in it, we're going to be raising money over the next couple of months, but it's a hundred thousand. So, and it's basically going to cover us to have the photographers, the film crew, the publicist, you know, our engine. And of course, of course when it gets to the point where we're going to be releasing the animals, I'm hoping we can get the president of Zambia to come and participate. You know, we'll definitely get the minister of tourism. And I've been talking to the U S fish and wildlife service and their director and trying to get them involved. And they're really excited about this.

Tarek: And you're calling us operation return of the wild operation return of the wild.

Tom: So, yeah. And so, I mean, let's face it, folks, we're a nonprofit media company. Our goal is, is to create content that will educate people about the realities on the ground when it comes to conservation, the wise use of financial resource. And one thing I really come to understand the last 10 years working on this stuff is, is mother nature does not practice conservation, the wise use of financial resource. People do, we do. And that's the one thing people really need to understand, you know, without, and again, with conservation, without human dignity, isn't conservation and conservation is not free. So you have to understand that our goal is to document this stuff and get it out there and try to educate people on what we're doing, why we're doing it. Because at the end of the day, back again, everybody, you know, elections have consequences. People make buying decisions, purchasing decisions, everything has a downstream impact. It's like I told my kids when they were getting, when they were just getting going, I said, you know, if dad isn't happy, your rear end, isn't going to feel very good. But a lot of people don't realize that, you know, we live in this society that it's instant gratification. I mean, look at social media, look at iPhones. You know, look at my film business. We're all in this digital world. It used to be, I had to ship the film out to a lab overnight into a lab with a courier or something like that. And then I'd have to wait back to get a one light transfer and see if we had screwed it up or not the day before. And so, you know, now I can look at it and I, okay, yeah, let's go shoot 10 more shots. And we're all, we're done. Let's go home. It really is interesting because in the case of the Luano and the lower Luano game management area, there's some great opportunities here. So the first film I did, Killing the Shepherd, it was a proof and concept. My wife and I put all the money in it to make it happen. And I couldn't afford a composer, music composer to do an original score. So we used a library music and that's a little bit, we used a good library, but it's a little bit like trying to pound a square peg in a round hole. But a composer's 50 grand for a feature length documentary film. And so the last two films I've done, I've used Paul Munsey because now we have the money to do it. And Paul spent, you know, he's out of the Isle of Skye in Scotland, phenomenal composer, music composer. And he worked for Danny Elfman in LA doing for 15 years doing all the Avenger films. And I called him up the other day and I said, Hey, you know, remember the first film I did there? And he's like, yeah, yeah. And I said, you know, the other thing too, I didn't tell you is that in 2020 Paul scored a short animated film called Hair Love. It won the Academy Award for best short animated film that year in 2020. So Paul's a rockstar. He's a, he's, I've just, I've learned a lot from him and just really appreciate what he, what he brings to the equation. But I said, Hey, if I send you the first film Killing the Shepherd without any music, will you write a score for it? Oh yeah, I'll do it. And of course, I didn't really know what I've done. I'm a short form guy. I've been directing my, you know, since I was 27, but it's mostly been national TV commercials. That's where, you know, fortune 500 companies, that's where I've made my bread and butter, 22 minute TV shows, episodic stuff, but never a feature length film. Yeah. I produced them, but not directed them. So this was my first, that was my first directing gig. And, you know, I mean, it came home with all this footage coming out of COVID and everything like that. And I'm like, what am I going to do with this? And I said, yeah, maybe I'll just do the Werner Herzog. I don't know if you know, Werner Herzog, the great German cinematographer, filmmaker, director. And a lot of times in his documentaries, he kind of walks around and over here, the Bay people are doing this and they will stretch the game here. And you know, and I said, well, okay. But problem was I was back in the United States. So I built a set in my basement in Montana to look like Africa. And I shot my standups there. I know it, but nobody else does. But you know, I was like, Oh, you know, I'm going to go back there. It's been 10 years. It's Africa. You know, you take two, three, four steps forward in Africa. Sometimes you take five or 10 steps backwards. There's been some really cool developments and not so good stuff. The bad stuff. When we talked about the price of gold, $4,000 an ounce, like I said, legal gold closets, everybody wants to be a gold miner. Yeah. The game scout that carried my cameras, blacks in Tembo. He was the top poacher turned game scout, phenomenal game scout, 2023. He got caught poaching a Hippo on the river by his own team. They threw him in their local jail and he broke out and he was on the land for about a year and a half in 2025 national parks, put an undercover team on them. They finally arrested him poaching another Hippo. And, uh, he got, uh, he's 49 years old and he got 15, 17 year hard labor in prison.

Tarek: Wow.

Tom: That's a life sentence.

Tarek: Going back to the, um, the, the tribe that went in and wiped out all of the game for 15 years, the Bush, the criminal Bush beat.

Tom: Yeah. These weren't a tribe. These were, this was a very militaristic gangs.

Tarek: Okay.

Tom: Okay. Yeah.

Tarek: So what happened to them?

Tom: They all ended up in prison.

Tarek: Okay. So the government came in and

Tom: Well, the, the safari company, the family that got started working with the community, they were able to get, uh, the infrastructure set up to put a community game scout teams together.

Tarek: Okay.

Tom: They ended up getting about, I think it was about 36 guys to start off with, kitted them all out, got the training they need in order to carry a firearm by national parks, which, uh, I helped get them, you know, helped them find some funding for that. And, uh, and they got these guys into the, into the woods and they literally, they incentivized them, you know, for every snare they took out, you know, and the wire snare is probably the predominant, uh, tool poachers use to kill. Cause one poacher can put a hundred snares out in a week.

Tarek: Yeah. It's way more efficiant.

Tom: And it's well, the last data I heard, they had taken out 22,500 snares in the last first eight or nine years. And I think about somewhere in the neighborhood of about 250 homemade shotguns and muzzle loaders. That's the other thing they do. They'll take a 12 gauge. Uh, they'll, they'll take a pipe that will hold, you know, that's the right diameter for talking and they'll make this contraption with a, with a firing pin and a, in a, in a stock on it. And they'll put a real shotgun, you know, a modern day shotgun shell in there and they'll go kill games sitting around, you know, water holes. Cause everything has to come to drink.

Tarek: Yeah.

Tom: And that's what they do. And they just kill, kill, kill. And when they'll kill an animal, uh, even if they're eight, 10, 12 hour hike into the area off from the main roads, they will, if their cell phone service, they'll GPS it. They'll send a text to the guys, the runners that are out on the road. They'll come in at night and they will process all that. They'll cut it all up and they will get it out that same night.

Tarek: Wow.

Tom: Um, in the case of these, these commercial criminal Bushmeat, I mean, they're highly militaristic gangs. Um, they ended up all ended up in prison. Uh, and that's part of the, that five-year period where the wildlife blew back on there. And it just, I mean, the populations just blew up, which is, you know, except everything in nature is programmed to overpopulate the carrying capacity of the land. And so I ended up looking at this going, wow, you know, maybe there's an opportunity here to make a second film, almost like a bookend. So you've got 10 year period where you're able to kind of document updates. And we're talking about child brides. Uh, you know, we're talking about the price of gold. We're talking about the poacher. And in fact, when I was there in March, national parks allowed me to interview the undercover officer that arrested blacks in Tembo. So he told me the whole story from the horse's mouth. And when I go back, they're going to allow me to go in the prison and interview the game scout. I mean, that's, I can remember most of the people in that most of the, a lot of the people, a lot of the poachers are in that same prison. I don't know if you want to be, it's like a police officer getting thrown in, you know, in the, in jail. Yeah, it's probably not a safe place. Uh, but you know, but there's been some really cool positive developments. Um, of course, restoration, right? Operation return of the wild. So that's a really important story. Um, when we went there in 2017, um, African children's schools, we introduced them to what's going on. Uh, when I first got back, they, they went ahead and, uh, committed the money and the funds to build seven or excuse me, to build three schools with teacher residents and uniforms and teacher salaries and desk and teaching supplies. They didn't have, this is the Bush. There was no, I mean, these kids were going to the open air, thatched roof, hot, hot dirt floors, no uniforms. It's a British educational system. So, you know, they call the kids wear uniforms. And, um, now, I mean, I think it was about that first grant request was for about 80 or a hundred uniforms. Last November, the grant request, cause we've been funding it all. We're up to eight classroom blocks in those three schools. And the uniform grant request was for 800. Now those kids are learning English, which is the international language of commerce. They will be the leaders of their community. They may be the leaders of their country and we have really serious curriculum in there about wildlife and conservation. Those kids know dang well that they got their educations because the value of the wildlife.

Tarek: You know, one of the things that I speak often about, especially to college students is that, um, you know, your vocation should support your mission and you have to understand and identify what it is that is your purpose in life and harmonize your career and, you know, your, your work activity to, to be subordinate to that or, or to, to be, um, uh, collaborative with that mission. And every time I hear you speak, that's what I think of because your vocation is as a filmmaker, this is what you've done your entire life, but it supports your mission, which is being a conservationist.

Tom: Yep.

Tarek: And so the two really go hand in hand.

Tom: Yeah, no. And that's, you know, the story of how did shepherds of wildlife come into existence? I've been a part of efforts to try to pull together the consumptive use conservation, wildlife groups, you know, the sheep, the elk, the, you know, the Boone and Crockett's all these people together to try to create a coalition and I've been pretty successful. I've been really blessed. I'm not used to failure, but we failed utterly.

Tarek: Really?

Tom: Yeah. Now, uh, they all talk a good talk, but unfortunately I call it the, uh, the fishing hole syndrome. I'm not going to take you to your, my fishing hole, because you might come back and fish it. And so it's turf. It's, it's about power control, a different kind of power control than we're talking about with the anti-use anti-hunting people, but they all want to protect little thing. We're talking about institutions here, right? And so institutions don't have emotions. Institutions want to have a life, right? Those staffers, you know, and it's kind of, I make this little joke about the fact that, you know, a lot of these anti-use people, you know, they go around to their donors and say, the world's coming to an end, give me a million bucks. And the donor strokes out the check. Here you go. And next year they come back and say, Hey, thanks for the million bucks. Of course, next year. Right. And by the way, we need 1.2 million this year. Well, wait a minute. You know, I thought you've, you've, you've saved the earth. Well, we did, but you know, the crossbars moved a little bit over here and we've got a little more money. We have to give costs a raise, you know, you know, cost of living increases. We've got a little more insurance. So we do 1.2 this year. It just keeps revolving and revolving and revolving. And so the only reason why a lot of these organizations, once you achieve what you need to do, they got to come up with a reason to exist. But in the hunting conservation wildlife area that I, that I've been dealing with, unfortunately, because of, of egos more than anything you, you just couldn't pull anybody together. And so, and really most of those organizations are not situated to be able to talk to the 39 year old suburban housewife because they're already stereotyped as, I mean, our wildlife NGOs do an incredible job, right? And I'm talking to the sheep, the elk, the turkeys, all that stuff. But unfortunately our folks group research shows that they look like a bunch of Elmer Fudd's raising more rascally rabbits to go out and shoot and kill. You know, this, this, you know, they want to do it for their own benefit. Of course, you know, things like Safari Club and the NRA and Boone and Crockett, that's another whole world, you know, but it's all stereotyped. And so when you walk up to the door and your logo says PETA on it, what are you going to think about the person standing across from you? I mean, you already have a preconceived notion. So I knew that there needed to be something out there that could traverse all of those, those quagmires and all those chasms that are out there in society. And so I was lamenting this problem to a neighbor of mine who happens to be a attorney. And, um, I said, you know, I got this great idea for this thing called Shepherds of Wildlife and it's made up of wildlife photographers and outdoor filmmakers who all believe in our modern conservation model. And he's like, well, that's really great. You know, it's really cool. And, um, about three months later, he sent me an email and says, Oh, by the way, uh, you're the proud owner of a five one C three called the Shepherds of Wildlife. And the guy had gone off and registered this thing with the IRS unbeknownst to me. And I'm like, I like this last thing I wanted to do. I'm like, what are you talking about? I was trying to, trying to raise enough money to make the first film killing the shepherd. And it's all about same time period. And I didn't really think much of it goes, we're going to COVID and, you know, we didn't really do much with them. When COVID COVID, it came pretty obvious that that five one C three was pretty valuable and, and talking with the, we brought on a bunch of photographers and some other filmmakers and, you know, we started to work on another film in Scotland called the last keeper. And then of course we just did this last year came out with the real Yellowstone and we just saw how important it was to have this platform that's, you know, I mean, we're, we're trying to basically protect conservation to ensure that people understand how important conservation is not only for wildlife, but all things in life, including us. I mean, it's as simple as do you want to have clean drinking water, right? I mean, it's that simple. And if we don't take care of these landscapes, then we're not going to have clean drinking water.

Tarek: The word 'shepherd' is an interesting one. When you reflect on what the role is of the shepherd, because on the one hand, a shepherd's role is to protect the sheep.

Tom: Yeah.

Tarek: But on the other hand, the flock protect the flock.

Tom: Yeah.

Tarek: On the other hand, what is the, what is the end purpose of that flock food and sustainability? And so there is a real harmonization. It kind of circles back to what we were talking about at the beginning.

Tom: And it came that I had, I had already figured out that that first film killing the shepherd, that was the title when I got into it before the film was done. I said, that's the time because I looked at our modern Western urbanized world is having an outreached or overarching impact on these rural communities all over the world. And in this case, a rural Africa, I mean, we're dealing with a film that's about a rural community that's led by a woman chief, which is very rare for that part of the world. And she wants to break the bonds of poverty by waging a war against illegal, you know, wildlife poaching. And that's what propagated all this. And I'm like, well, you know what? We're, you people are killing these people, literally killing them with your, it's kind of like killing me, you know, with love, right? Oh, we want to do what's right. We want to save the animals. Well, wait a minute. What if somebody can see the value of having that animal that allows them to buy food so they can feed their family or they can get an education, or maybe that that value creates a clinic, a medical clinic, so they can get healthcare, all those things work in there. And so we actually did some focus group research on that first film about 18 months ago, we hired an outfit called responsive management out of Virginia, which they specialize in all things, conservation and hunting and all that stuff in America. They work for almost all the state fish and game agencies in the U S fish and wildlife service. And we had them do a focus group research about that film with that group of people. We know that 50 to 75% of Americans, are okay with the consumptive use of wildlife, our modern conservation model here, as long as it's done for the right reasons. And of course, consumption is number one, right? We've been eating animals for a long time. And we asked them, you know, and they're all, all suburban urban people, not strongly for, against the use. So it's not the anti-use and the pro-use people. Cause I don't want to talk to either one of them. I don't need to preach to the choir and I don't need to deal with the people that are emotionally invested in their argument because it's like two a or second amendment or pro-choice or pro-life. I don't care what you say, you can have all the data in the world, you know, scientific data. They don't care.

Tarek: Yeah.

Tom: All right. So, but there is this group of people in the middle, 55, 75% that are okay with it. And we know that. So we asked these people, do you think that hunting is a form of conservation? And only 3% of respondents strongly agreed with that. Not very good. Okay. And so we had him watch the film after they watched the film one time, that 3% strongly agreed, went to 33% strongly agreed. And we had to strongly agree with agree. We're at 77%.

Tarek: Okay.

Tom: So we've moved the needle. Let's get back to that value that rural communities have to see from wildlife. And we asked him, do you think that well-regulated legal hunting as a form of conservation, can these rural stewards, and I mean this, you know, pun intended, it's black and white, right? I mean, we're talking about black rural Africa. Can these rural stewards realize their most basic human rights? So again, good paying job, buy food, access healthcare, opportunity to get an education. 10% of respondents strongly agreed with that statement before they watched the film, which I totally chalk up to the language, well-regulated legal hunting, which wasn't in the first question. But after they watched the film, Killing the Shepherd one time, that 10% went to 47% strongly agreed. And when you added 40%, 47% strongly agree with agree, Tariq, we were at 90%.

Tarek: Well, the word resources is a term that we think about just in our family lives. What resources do we have? We think about the word resource and business. How do companies manage their own resources? How do they think about resources? And clearly in the world of conservation, resources matter, certainly at the governmental level.

Tom: It's the basis for conservation, right? You have to have a resource. Otherwise, what are you going to conserve? Rocks? I mean, I guess you can. I mean, but I mean, what we're trying to do with Shepherds is that, yeah, I started this out as a little bitty filmmaker, had an idea, and now we're starting to see it's, it's, it's, it's, this is bigger than me.

Tarek: So how can people help you?

Tom: Well, if you can go, love to get feedback from people, watch the films, get online. I respond to just about every single, you know, somebody makes a comment or sends a PM to us. I respond to them. Shepherdsofwildlife.org. Yep. And it's two H's in Shepherds guys. But even if you only have one, cause you don't know how to spell, we actually own that URL too.

Tarek: You're pretty active on social media.

Tom: Yeah, we're very active. Yeah. Yeah. So you get on Facebook, we have a thing called Shepherd's brief. It comes out three times a week. You know, that's kind of blown up lately. We've been getting hundreds of thousands of views and a lot of that stuff, which is great. But we need everybody watching this stuff. Of course we need help. Well, we need people to help fund what we're doing. And of course operation return the wild. We've actually got a landing page on our website where people can make contribution as low, I mean, 25 bucks, you know, you can help us out in whether it's going there. Um, but you know, we need people to watch the films. We need people to tell their neighbors about the films. Uh, we need people to talk about trying to get them in the classroom, take them to work and explain to people how things work here and how, you know, how important conservation is for all of us out there. I mean, you know, I write a book for every one of these films, which by the way, I brought you a copy of the latest book here. So, um, and we were here last year, it was the real Yellowstone film. So I'm now starting to get to the point where I actually get these out pretty close to when the film actually comes out. And so, and by the way, that film is, is being embargoed. We now have Hollywood's attention. So I have an A-list producer who works with a guy who does a lot of historical, especially World War II films, uh, and has done things with volleyballs before in the Pacific. Um, his producer is, uh, actually pitching, uh, the Real Yellowstone. I'm trying to position it for a pitch to, to Netflix. So we have the film, all the films are available on shepherdsofwildlife.org. Um, if you make a donation, you can get access to the film, but we also include on our packages. We do a, uh, for every premiere, we do a panel discussion with experts. So every one of our films has that as part of that. Plus we throw in the makings of, and you know, we, we actually wrote a song for that film. I think I told you about, so you get to find out and watch the music video and see how we made the song. So, so yeah, it's a little bit more money than buying a ticket to the movie theater, but it's all for a good cause. And that every, every single dollar goes back to the mission to reeducate.

Tarek: When do you think the new film will come out? Operation Return of the Wild?

Tom: Well, so the goal on that is, um, we're going to be filming this, this next month. I've already been filming on some stuff. There's some very specific things that we need to do. Um, and there, there's some stuff historically that I found out about these people, the Soli people. This is the tribe in South, the Southeastern corner of Zambia that I didn't put in the first film. Like the fact in the 1890s, they had a white chief.

Tarek: Well, that's interesting.

Tom: Yeah. Pretty interesting, isn't it? So it was a guy named John Harrison Clark. He was the son of a wealthy merchant in Port Elizabeth. He had military training and in his early twenties he was in a situation, I'm sure he was a young playboy, right? And he was in a situation where a gun accidentally went off and he had to get out of town real quick. So we went up through Mozambique, up the Zambezi river to the confluence of the Luwango and Zambezi rivers, which the Luwango is the main North South river in the Eastern part of Zambia. And where that confluence is, that is the Southeast corner basically of my subject area. And, um, the day he gets there, now I'm sure he was looking for gold or ivory, you know, trying to make some riches. Uh, but the day he gets there, he befriends the Soli people. And literally the day he gets there, Portuguese slavers show up to enslave the Soli people. Now this is 60 years or so after England has banned slavery in the 1820s. So we're talking 1880s, 18, late 1880s, early 1890s. And he takes it upon himself to get in a firefight in a gun battle and he runs the slavers off.

Tarek: Wow.

Tom: He befriends the chief, ends up marrying one of the chief's daughters, father's children. Now I can tell you the chief game scout in Kapanda or in Chamba where we, we work in the film and the subject area is mulatto is you and I are white. And, uh, you know, he ends up, uh, when the chief dies, he ends up becoming the chief and becomes a King. He gets a 3,500 man Senga army to protect the people. And he ends up controlling and protecting an area that today probably encompasses most of what is now Eastern Zambia, about the size of half of Texas.

Tarek: Yeah.

Tom: And, uh, he actually builds himself a palace out of stone in an area where there is no stone until you go about 10 miles away to the mountains. So it would have taken an army to bring all the rock down to build this thing. And I've actually found digital photos of this guy or photos, photos have been digitized of him. Black and white photos sitting on the veranda of his palace, you know, with game heads on whitewash walls, you know, hanging on there. And so of course this is before Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa company comes in. If anybody remembers, you know, that time period, you know, the British South Africa company was probably one of the strongest militaries in the world. Uh, obviously covering trade, you know, amongst the empire. And of course they don't want him doing this. They don't want him there. So they're coming up from what is, you know, which was lower Zambia, there's a Southern, not Zambia, but lower Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia. And they move into this area. And of course they get him to stand down. And they bequeath him two farms. Uh, one is a Chingon Bay, uh, which is about 50 kilometers North of where I was filming. And he turns around and gives it to the Catholic church. And, um, to this day it's a Catholic mission. They have their own Facebook page and, uh, you know, and it's run by, administered by a Catholic priest from, from Poland. And when the priest passes away, they, they ship another priest from Poland down there to run the place. I never been there. I want to go there one of these days. Pretty cool place. There's no road between them, by the way. So you have to hike to get to them or you might be able to make it in a, in a land cruiser. But, um, but where he had his palace, um, he started growing cotton and he was the first person to import a cotton gin in that part of the world. We're talking turn of the century. And, uh, he was able to get some of his crops into the markets in London and they were as graded as good or better than the best Egyptian cotton. So the day now this is Africa, right? So, you know, it happens. Uh, huge flood comes in, he loses everything. He moves about a hundred miles to the West to a little town called, um, Broken Hill. And he starts running a copper mine. Uh, of course while he's running the copper mine, he starts the very first brewery there and he imports the very first model T car to that part of the world. And because all the miners are locals, right? He knows the language, he knows the customs, you know, all that. Uh, he's such a good mining manager that the miners there nicknamed him Changa Changa, which in Soli means the one who stood up. Now to this day, if you're considered a good mining manager, the miners will nickname you Changa Changa. It's Hollywood, buddy. It's cool. So we're thinking about, Hey, let's do a recreative Changa Changa, George Harrison Clark fighting off the Portuguese slavery. So that'll be, it's not going to be killing the shepherd part two. It's going to be Killing The Shepherd return to the wild. But the goal here is to get a 10 year time period, 10, 11 years, whatever ends up being of really showcasing that the hard, harsh reality. So on the ground when it comes to rural communities and wildlife and rural Africa today, because people need to understand they make decisions, they make buying decisions. They support organizations that are absolutely having a negative impact, not only on the wildlife, but those rural people. So you've been asking me questions for the last hour or so or half. I know last time, I think we talked for an hour and 47 minutes. It's always a pleasure to come to the CDA by the way.

Tarek: I love having you on the show.

Tom: Yeah. So one of these days, I guess I got to hang out with some of your friends in Texas though. So let's go chase some Axis deer, by the way, that's some of the best eating I've ever had is Axis deer. So, you know, I do a lot of these podcasts for a lot of folks and, and, um, you know, I get 10,000 questions and stuff. And, you know, you've been super polite listening to me run my mouth here for the last hour and a half, but I've, I've got some interesting questions for you that I think pertain not only to what I'm trying to do, um, and shepherds of wildlife, but also what you're doing with, with, with, uh, you know, Texas precious metals. And so the first question I had for you was, is what is the one thing you learned building Texas precious metals that would surprise somebody trying to build a mission driven organization?

Tarek: Wow. That's a, that's a great question. I, I don't know if this is something that would surprise somebody as much as it may be refocuses or, or recenters, um, what the purpose is of a business, which is fundamentally to solve a problem. And if you're not solving a problem or thinking about solving problems, I think the purpose of the business begins to be diluted in a way. So that can be something as simple as I'm going to open a local coffee shop. Well, what problem am I solving? Well, maybe there's no other local coffee shops around. And so it makes it, you know, the, the solution or the value proposition is one of convenience, or maybe it's, uh, the, the type of ambiance that you're offering. You know, for us, the, the value proposition when we started the company really was speed. So we were getting products to our customers very quickly. It was selling trust. Um, we have some new and innovative products that we're going to be launching in the capital markets that really solve various issues. So, um, I always think about the, you know, starting like our true North in business is always, um, what problem are we solving? And let's try not to invent problems that don't exist.

Tom: Yeah, no. And I mean, Shepherds of Wildlife. I mean, what's the problem we're trying to solve is just disconnect in our urban society.

Tarek: Exactly.

Tom: It's an information thing.

Tarek: And so, you know, one of these days, the problem solving, by the way, helps inform what your mission is.

Tom: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, and then the vision from there, that's the figure out how to get her done. And so, yeah, no, we're going to have people like you on our advisory board, by the way. So, um, other question I had for you, you've built this incredible business about preserving wealth, right? Gold. You know, do you think there's a role for American businesses in preserving, you know, our, our natural world? Is there, is there, is there a corporate responsibility?

Tarek: Absolutely. Um, you know, I, I'm going to borrow from, uh, my business partner, Jason Kaspar. He's the fifth generation, uh, CEO of Kaspar companies, which is our parent company, uh, been in business since 1898, one of the longest continuously operating manufacturing companies in Texas. And the mission statement for Kaspar Companies is to improve people's lives by being faithful stewards of God-given resources. And it goes back to the word resource. Well, one form of resources, capital, uh, one form of resources, land, um, one form of resources, labor. Um, but we're, we're given these resources and what is it that we are doing? If the, if the sole objective, it's, it's like, um, when we think about, um, just the study of, of ethics, if, if our sole objective in life is pleasure, our entire life is going to be meaningless and unfulfilled. And in business, if our sole objective is just making the most amount of money possible, then we have no mission, right? Our, our mission is, is one that is very, um, uh, our mission is one that just simply lacks purpose. And so we, we think about the decisions that we make through that lens. Um, certainly in the precious metals market, the sustainability and the provenance of the metal and where we get our metal from, uh, and ensuring that it's not illegal or that we're facilitating, you know, bad behavior. That's a really important thing. Um, but we also have a corporate foundation that we, we dedicate a percentage of our profits to in order to support local, uh, statewide and national organizations that, that we feel, um, you know, are supporting, you know, our communities. And we do a lot, especially in South Texas, particularly with, um, you know, high school students who are raising animals and that sort of thing. So we, we give back a lot and I think it's important to give back, um, you know, the more successful that we are. I think that the greater the responsibility we have in preserving what's been given to us.

Tom: Oh, that's great. You know, one of the things that I really try to expand upon and get into people's heads is, you know, wildlife doesn't exist because people love it. Wildlife exists because someone saw a benefit to conserve it.

Tarek: What a great comment.

Tom: I mean, that's the reality folks. Again, mother nature doesn't practice conservation. The wise use financial resource people do.

Tarek: Tom Opry. Thank you very much for joining us. It's been great.

Tom: Great to be out here.

Tarek: I can't let you leave without getting a gift from us. So here's more contribution. Silver round from Texas Precious Metals to add to your collection.

Tom: Oh yeah. Well, that's awesome. Thank you. I like that. I just need to, uh, I need to see if silver is going to go up. Like it's been going for the last few years.

Tarek: Just give it some time.

Tom: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. So, uh, yep. No, it's been great and looking forward to coming back again next year. So maybe we'll have to have you in Montana next time. Do a little fly fishing or I don't know. Maybe we have to come out and go chase some birds behind the bird dog.

Tarek: We can do it on site.

Tom: Yeah. Well, let's try to do that. Maybe this fall. If you want, well, we'll see. Maybe next year we'll get you out there. We didn't come out this next year and do a tech scout and then next year we'll record something when I, when I have some more crazy things to talk about. So thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Tarek: That's Y'all Street