“It is astonishing that this law has escaped fundamental change.” John Leshy, author of The Mining Law: A Study in Perpetual Motion The 1872 Mining Law represents one of the most extraordinary give-a-ways of American assets in the history of our nation. It has been the target of reform and repeal almost from the very moment it was passed. No other …

Alaska’s proposed Ambler Road is back on the table, and Americans are once again asked a fundamental question about what we value and what kind of world we will pass on to our children. We covered the Ambler Road controversy in Episode 168 of the podcast, and a quick re-listen to that episode will be handy for getting the information we need to mak…

We're spending Thanksgiving week with our families and bringing you one of our favorite podcast episodes from the archives: Ron Mills, an outfitter, hunting guide and packer in the Bob Marshall Wilderness since 1959! Ron has authored a new book called Under the Biggest Sky of All, 75 Years on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, a raucous and astounding…

Almost ten years ago, career firefighter and paramedic Beau Beasley embarked on a journey to tell the true stories of America’s veterans, honestly and in their own words. He was a respected outdoor writer and flyfishing guidebook author, and was deeply affected by the friendships he’d made through his involvement with Project Healing Waters, an org…

Episode 191 with Jared Sullivan, former editor of Field and Stream and Men’s Journal, on his new book, Valley So Low, about the 2008 coal ash disaster near Kingston, Tennessee, its catastrophic aftermath on the health of those who cleaned it up, and holding our federal agencies accountable. In 2019, Tennessee native and former Field and Stream edit…

Blaring headlines: “Battle lines hardening in dispute over Mobile ship channel deepening project” “No more federal mud dumping' — Standing room only at Baykeeper town hall” A newly deepened and widened shipping channel created by the US Army Corps of Engineers makes Mobile, Alabama, the second fastest growing port in the US – the amount of cargo ha…

Utah files landmark lawsuit challenging federal control over most BLM land Yes, it is to retch over. Once again, the Utah legislature is coming for America’s public lands, this time by way of a lawsuit filed against the US government to lay claim to 18.5 million acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Utah has a new website …

From ballot initiatives that mandate wolf-reintroduction or banning the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats, wildlife management decisions are increasingly being made by voters instead of biologists. It is called “ballot biology” and it is a result of some highly motivated anti-hunting and animal rights groups reaching out to a ballooning demogra…

Join Hal and Florida archeologist Jeffrey Shanks for a lost tale of British Marines and Jamaican privateers, American maroons, Creek Indian warriors, rogue Choctaws, religious prophets, and the bloody and tenacious struggle for freedom. The Apalachicola National Forest in Florida’s Panhandle holds some of the most remote swampland wilderness in the…

Woniya Dawn Thibeault, winner of Alone: Frozen, author of Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey In 2019, primitive skills instructor and master hide-tanner Woniya Dawn Thibeault was selected for the Alone Season Six challenge. She and nine other contestants were dropped off along the East Arm of the Great Slave Lake, in Canada’s Northwest Ter…

The Wilderness Act was passed by Congress in 1964, and has protected over 109 million acres of American public lands (53% of them in Alaska) since then. But the idea was born in 1924, with the vision of none other than Aldo Leopold, who was then the Supervisor of the Carson National Forest, and had spent almost fifteen years working on and explorin…

The bitter tide of privatizing public lands and waters is rising fast across America. Only the actions of quietly heroic citizens can stop it. Nobody who hunted and fished the Cutoff wanted to tell the world about it. The Cutoff is also known as Creslenn Lake, a twelve-mile stretch of what used to be the Trinity River (it was “cut off” by a long-ag…

Tony Jones, host of the Reverend Hunter podcast, and author of The God of Wild Places: Rediscovering the Divine in the Untamed Outdoors and eleven other books, outdoor writer, hunting mentor, guide in the Boundary Waters, father of three, hunter, fisherman, seeker. When Tony Jones was growing up, all he ever wanted was to know and preach the Gospel…

Michigander Mark Kenyon is the host of the Meateater podcast Wired to Hunt, and the author of the definitive book on the American public lands, That Wild Country. Mark is at work on another book about the future of American conservation, and the hunting and fishing that do not exist without it. He’s also hunting and fishing and gardening, raising o…

A conversation with Jonathon Gassett, Ph.D., former Commissioner of Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, Southeastern Representative of the Wildlife Management Institute, National Conservation Leadership Institute and Patrick Berry, former Director of Vermont fish and Wildlife Department and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers “Th…

20 Years of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers with Ben Long and Patrick Berry Ben Long is a founding board member of BHA, the author of the Hunter and Angler’s Guide to Raising Hell, and a lifelong hunter-conservationist of the old breed. Ben came to Rendezvous this year to meet with new BHA CEO Patrick Berry of Vermont and help chart a course for th…

Alabama’s iconic Coosa River was recently named America’s fifth most endangered river. It’s vast watershed, all 280 miles of tributaries and lakes, begins in the mountains of north Georgia and flows south through the very heart of Alabama. The Coosa, like so many American rivers today, faces intense pollution from industrial-scale poultry productio…

Tom Reed, of Harrison, Montana, is a founding board member of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and a true son of the Western plains and Rocky Mountain wilderness. Born in Colorado, Tom worked as a horse and mule packer and a small-town reporter in Wyoming, edited a bass fishing magazine in Arizona, spent years with Wyoming Fish and Game as writer an…

In April of 2022, Libby Tobey, Hailey Thompson and Brooke Hess skied into Marsh Creek in Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, towing their kayaks and a sled full of camping gear. The goal: trace the route of anadromous fish from the source of the Salmon River to the Pacific Ocean and advocate removing the four dams on the Lower Snake River that block that migra…

Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Representative Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) are co-sponsoring The ‘Public Lands in Public Hands Act” which would ban the sale or transfer of most public lands managed by the Department of the Interior or the Department of Agriculture (which includes the vast majority of federal public lands – Bureau of Land Management is…

Jim Heffelfinger, Arizona Game and Fish Wildlife Science Co-ordinator, Chairman of the Mule Deer Working Group, wildlife conservation professional, author of Deer of the Southwest. Coming at you live from the 2024 Mule Deer Expo in Salt Lake City, Hal catches up with one of America’s rockstars of wildlife conservation and research, Arizona’s Jim He…

Journalist Jimmy Tobias started out working on backcountry trails for the US Forest Service and Montana Conservation Corps. Since then, he has become one of America’s hardest-hitting investigative reporters specializing in public lands, conservation, and the outdoors. Tobias’ story about the link between ecosystem disruption and tick-borne illnesse…

Join Hal and BHA North American Board Member and CEO of the Orianne Society Dr. Chris Jenkins for a fascinating conversation about everything from public lands and local hunting and food to Dr. Jenkins' specialty: venomous snakes. An episode you don't want to miss!

The largest public lands conservation opportunity in our lifetime is at hand. The Bureau of Land Management is finalizing plans for the long-term management of an expanse of public lands in Alaska that is larger than the state of Ohio. There are 28 million acres at stake, an unfathomable wealth of wildlife, big game, fisheries, waterfowl, and the h…

Learn more about what goes on in the halls of Congress as Hal sits down with BHA Government Relations Manager Kaden McArthur to discuss the 2023 wins BHA played a role in achieving for the conservation of our public lands and waters.

Douglas Tallamy, Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, University of Delaware Any hunter, angler and/or student of the natural world is bound to be more than a little gobsmacked by the rate of development and growth that we see all around us: Bozeman, Atlanta, Boise, Moab, Salt Lake City, Huntsville, Austin, the Gulf Coast, Ph…

Join Hal Herring and Mississippi State University environmental history professor and author of My Work is that of Conservation, An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver Mark Hersey for a fantastic American conservation story that has never been more relevant than it is right now. If you finished seventh grade in an American public sc…

Listeners to the BHA Podcast & Blast will likely know Erin Block from her brilliant short essays at MidCurrent, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Field & Stream, and TROUT magazine, where she is an editor-at-large. Some might know her books on the the art of making bamboo fly rods (The View from Coal Creek), or By a Thread: A Retrospective on Women and Fly …

If you are an upland bird hunter with a yen for great writing and vividly lived experiences, you have probably been reading the Mouthful of Feathers crew -- Tom Reed, Marissa Jensen and Greg McReynolds -- on the internet since 2009. Whether you have or have not, you are in for a treat. Join us for a celebration of wild birds and wild dogs and their…

The proposed Ambler Road is a proposed 211-mile industrial corridor through public lands along the southern flanks of the Brooks Range and one of the last and largest protected roadless areas on earth. The road would be built from the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District on the Ambler River, passing through the Gates of the Arctic National …

Public Lands, Wild Game Cooking, Hunting, Angling and Conservation – Live from the Texas Hill Country with Chuck Naiser, Jesse Griffiths and Riverhorse Nakadate The Podcast and Blast has gone to Texas! Host Hal Herring takes the Podcast & Blast on the road to the sunbaked Texas Hill Country to record a live episode at Star Hill Ranch in Bee Cave. I…

Listeners of the podcast will remember a number of dam-focused episodes over the past few years, Free the Ocklawaha (Florida) and Snake River Dams (Idaho, Columbia River basin) to name just two. But the issue of dams – the blocking of the arterial systems of the earth – is not about just a few high-profile cases. More than 800,000 dams across the p…

Coho salmon habitat, wetlands conservation, the removal of abandoned fences that kill hundreds of migrating mule deer, pronghorn and elk every year. Marine Corps helicopters and bighorn sheep, fish counts, bowfishing for alligator gar, restoring native plants on burned-over public lands. A ton of good work is getting done on our public lands and wa…

Dave Simonett of Trampled by Turtles is a Minnesota fisherman, hunter and dog man, a former roofer, and one of America’s most profound songwriters and hardest-touring musicians. Hal and Dave spent a morning fishing Montana’s Big Blackfoot this summer, throwing spruce moth bugs for cuttbows and browns, and then caught up in the afternoon for a conve…

The longhunters of the 18th century knew it well. The Native nations of the Southeast knew it better yet, lived upon its bounty of bison and elk, and maintained it with fire and the deliberate cultivation of hundreds of species of plants. It was the Southeastern Grasslands Complex, known now only from the oldest maps. But remnants exist, of the mos…

There is a dire misconception these days that hunting and angling are somehow the birthright of Americans – and that these life pursuits and passions of ours belong to us by dint of benevolent magic or extraordinary good luck. American hunting and fishing do not exist because of magic or luck. We have what we have because our forebears raised relen…

Texas hunter and fisherman Jesse Griffiths is the author of Afield: A Chef’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish and The Hog Book, the definitive text – artwork is closer to the reality - on hunting, butchering and cooking feral hogs. The Hog Book won the prestigious James Beard Award in 2022, a fitting tribute to a man on the cutting…

Mitch Reid is a native son of the Alabama Wiregrass, where he grew up fishing and hunting his home country in the headwaters of the Choctawhatchee River. After a military career with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, he came home to raise his family and continue to serve his nation by working with The Nature Conservancy to protect and restore the land…

Arizona game warden and author Sam Lawry is retiring from his second career as the executive director of the Teller Wildlife Refuge on the Bitterroot River of Montana. This BHA podcast is being released to honor Sam and in appreciation of his life as one of America’s premier conservation leaders. Sam served 23 years as a game warden in Arizona (the…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 158: Hunting at American Prairie American Prairie is 455,840 sprawling acres of Montana grasslands and breaks that represents one of the largest expansions of publicly accessible hunting opportunities in the West— and one of America’s largest public/private land conservation projects. A longer story deserves to be told abou…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 157: Kevin Garrad, Founder of Wild Response Growing up in rural England, Kevin Garrad was a child of the wild moors, a ferreter and a trainer of lurchers, a hunter of invasive minks, and destined to be a soldier. Fast forward to an early-in to the U.S. military just out of high school and eight deployments in 18 years, incl…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 156: Florida Backcountry Lawman Bob Lee You may remember Bob Lee from Free the Ocklawaha River!, where he and Hal first met. Bob is one of the leading voices for the removal of Rodman Dam and the reconnection of the Ocklawaha River to the St. Johns and the Atlantic Ocean. He knows of what he speaks: Bob Lee was the game war…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 155: Montana Fishing Guide and Writer Chris Dombrowski Chris Dombrowski is a professional fishing guide of over two decades on the rivers of Montana, an acclaimed poet and the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Alluring Fish, which is about, among many other things, the pursuit of bonefish in th…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 154: The Legal Fight Over Corner Crossing Comes to a Head The future of public access to public lands access is being decided in Wyoming with the ongoing saga of the corner-crossing hunters and their legal travails. We all have a dog in this fight – and never more so than right now, given the accelerating trend of huge expa…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 153: The MT Legislature, The Weed Tax, and The Conservationists Montana's legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, but the amount of work that goes into a single abbreviated session is mind-blowing. In just a few short months during its 2023 session, more than 200 bills dealing with fish and wildlife management, …

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 152: Murder of the Grand Kankakee Marsh “I have never yet found a place that equaled the Kankakee swamps for the variety of game to be found there.” – J. Lorenzo Werich, 1920. Few know the history now. None who experienced it are still alive to tell us the tale. But it was once known as The Everglades of the North, a millio…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 151: Bill Avey, 40 Years in the Forest Service Retired Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Bill Avey is here to give us a clear view into the workings of the U.S. Forest Service – and what is arguably, for a public lands hunter or angler, the most important agency in America. Hal and Bill became friends on a s…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 150: Free the Ocklawaha River! Almost 60 years ago, the U.S. government, blinded by hubris, began work on the Cross Florida Barge Canal. Never heard of it? That’s because President Richard Nixon, seeing it for the financial and ecological monstrosity that it was, halted the project in 1971 before it was halfway completed. A…

Podcast & Blast: Episode 149, Conservation in the 118th Congress with the BHA Policy Crew As a wise man once said, You may not be interested in war, but when the times comes, war will certainly be interested in you. The same can be said about Congress. This week's episode with BHA's John Gale and Kaden McArthur takes us to Washington, D.C., with an…

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 148: Drew Phipps and the Restoration of the Candy Darter America’s Midwestern rivers – the Elk, the Kanawha, the Ohio and all their vast systems of arterial tributaries – are home to a mind-boggling array of some of the most bizarre creatures on this planet. Among them, the candy darter, a tiny fish of such astounding beaut…