The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, Doug Collins.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Yes, it's the middle of summer.
Yes, it is in that wonderful time between spring and fall.
We're just out from football season, just out from fall hunting season.
I'm already about in the back.
I know for those hunters out there, you're getting ready.
Spring season's over, whether it be bear, turkey, wherever you may have been.
We've got a lot to talk about today.
Michael Waddell is on.
The bone collector is in the house.
We're excited.
To be a part of this.
So just right after the break, we're going to dig into it.
We'll look back to spring, look ahead to the fall, and also probably throw in a little bit of everything else in there in the middle because that's what it's like when friends get together over the podcast.
We'll be right back after the break.
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Alright, folks, we're back.
And there he is himself.
We can't see him there.
He's a little camouflaged.
I mean, he's sitting there with the bone.
I mean, I gotta admit, that bone collector hat, I've not seen that one before.
I got my Field Ethos hat on here.
But, you know, that one's a good one.
You're sort of blending into the background there, by the way.
I'm starting to put on my lucky hats, man.
I'd gotten me a big deer in this hat, so I'm getting close.
Like you said, even though it's July, man, you know, we started off talking about hoping we'll get some rain.
I got corn planted, I had some beans planted, and Lord, it got kind of dry, but now it's done perked back up, so I got deer on my mind right now.
Oh, well, they started out, you know, and I hunt several different places up here near my house.
I live on Lake Lanier, and of course, you know, it's more urban deer hunting, which has become a, I mean, look, you and I both know, we've talked about this before, biggest deer in Georgia in the last three to five years have been taken in Fulton and DeKalb and Cobb counties, you know, around the Atlanta metro, because they get into those pockets of 10 and 20 acres of land, and nobody, I mean, they just don't bother them, and so there's a huge deer.
They've been going up in my backyard, my wife sitting in our backyard the other night, kid you not, sitting there being quiet, just by herself, and three little buck pack come up.
I mean, they're 20, I mean, 15 yards from her.
And this shows you how different, I want you to talk about this, because the purpose of this question.
At this point in the summer, they don't really care, and especially if they're used to an environment that they're in.
She sat there.
She was being quiet.
She didn't have anything on.
And the buck, just one of the bucks, he's a young 6'8 pointer, if you look at him.
He just looked at her, just went on eating.
We had some corn thrown out.
They were there and just sat there.
Now, come September 10 in Georgia, He wouldn't get anywhere close to that.
Okay, tell me there's not, God did not put an internal clock in these animals.
I truly believe there's some instincts that's beyond what we can understand.
I do, and it is crazy because even on my farm, I live kind of, my house is pretty much way back into my farm, probably a half mile off the road, and then I have a I've farmed pecan, so I've got another barn right below my house.
Again, it's probably half to three-quarter mile off the road.
And that's one thing I've noticed, especially living here, where especially during the spring going into summer, Man, these does come fawn right up in this pecan orchard.
And I'll let certain areas of it grow kind of high.
And man, I feel like you could almost pet these deer.
I mean, like they're laid back.
And then as you get into this time of year, I'll see these old nice bucks coming out into the orchard.
And by the time you start thinking like, man, I can't hunt these jokers.
I'm starting to name them and they're my buddies.
You're right.
I mean, it's getting about August, September.
September is a month.
I mean, and everybody who listens, who deer hunts can probably vouch.
It's almost like, dude, I got this joker dead to rights.
This is the one I want.
And then all of a sudden, you know, he gets seasoned.
He either disappears and or becomes, I mean, You know, spookier than anything you've ever seen.
They get more afraid than a Democrat right now in these policies.
You better believe that.
You gotta believe that.
They're hiding.
About four years ago, four and a half years ago, I was traveling.
It's like I do now.
I still travel like you do.
But we had a bachelor group of bucks that were coming in the backyard.
And the two bigger ones, one was a 10-point, one was a mature, almost, I had to get him, but they could have been with two buttons, a 12. Then the two smaller ones, a six, an eight, and you had a four.
They were coming in my backyard like every, you know, 12 to 24 hours.
I mean, we had them out there.
I said, it's going to be perfect.
Yeah.
Come September, I think they took a vacation to Daytona Beach because I haven't seen them since.
And, you know, and then fast forward to two years ago, I had one called him Tallboy.
He come up, you know, like I said, I'm naming him.
Comes up, he goes up sort of like this and bends over.
And I said, I got this one.
I've been, you know, I've been working it, got him ready, you know, close by the house here.
I'm in the blind, because the way we were, I had a blind.
I was just going to use the blind right there, so I was in the ground blind.
I'm sitting there, and it's quiet in our neighborhood, and this area where we live, they're sort of spread out, but you can hear it.
And all of a sudden, I saw two of the, there's a three group that was with.
I saw two of the younger bucks start running by the lake and come up toward the house.
I said, well, I don't ever see them run like that.
So I said, well, so I'm just going to wait and wait.
And they got up into my field where it's out there, my backyard.
And I said, well, they look spooked.
And I said, so I sat there.
And then all of a sudden, I could hear the ATV crank up in the next door farm over there.
And I said, no.
Next thing I knew, the ATV came behind me.
I could see him about 40 yards off, came behind, went down toward the lake.
And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Five minutes later, he's back in the back end of that is my eight pointer.
Are you serious?
I kid you not.
I mean, he was a buddy of mine.
I've known him since we've grown up.
He's an orthodontist here in town.
Great dude.
Hunter Fisher.
He's a great guy.
It was on his mom's property.
He had put up a camera and saw him.
He just took out from work, came straight over there one afternoon after he was getting through.
Set up.
Took the deer, I mean, 150 yards, 200 yards from where I'm sitting.
No way.
And I went, I'll send you the pictures.
I was crushed.
I mean, it was like, are you kidding me?
And when he found out, it was like, oh no, I'm sorry.
But that's what makes this fun.
Right.
And besides also good eating.
Let's go back, kids, because I watched a little bit and we texted a little bit briefly on it.
You did some spring hunt, some turkey.
We did a great show earlier this year.
We talked about the turkey and population.
Talk to me about turkey season and how that went.
Turkey season was awesome.
You know, we hunted a lot in the South.
We hunt a lot in Alabama and Georgia.
There's been a lot of decent controversy among sportsmen about the turkey population in the South.
And this year, man, I was very, very pleased.
So far this year, I haven't seen a lot of poults.
I'd be real interested of those people that have.
I hadn't seen a lot of poults this year, but the last few years, it seems we've had a solid You know, at least, you know, average hatch.
And so the turkeys in the South, specifically Georgia, Alabama, and even North Florida, we went down there and hunted some.
Man, it was really, really good.
And we did some really cool things this year.
We teamed up with Troy Link of Jack Link's Jerky.
We were down, actually, not far out of Daytona Beach, and we were hunting turkeys.
And we had quite a few friends down there.
Jimmy John, who, you know, the sandwich shop, Jimmy, he was there.
So we were just all hanging out around a fire, just chasing turkeys in Florida, first of the season.
And anyway, we got to mention and talking.
Of course, those guys are living the American dream.
Troy's got a Really nice private plane and things like that.
And so we got to thinking about getting a slam and Troy had did the slam.
And so he's like, man, I wonder what the record is.
I wonder what the fastest slam that's ever been completed.
And so we talked and was like, well, you know, most people, you know, if you get a slam just in your lifetime, those four subspecies, which is the Eastern, Osceola, Merriam, and the Rio Grande, You know, it's a slam, but a lot of people try to do it the same year, and that's kind of a cool accomplishment.
So I started researching, me and another friend named Bubba Lindley, and found out that there was a gentleman named John Kasmus that had got it, and I think it was 48 hours or something like that.
The more we got talking about this slam, We started realizing that 48 hours is what to shoot for, so we decided to try it.
And we took off and planned it from his plane, started in Georgia, ended up in Colorado, and ended up getting it in right just under 11 hours.
Like, it was crazy.
Oh, wow.
I've never experienced anything like that, man.
It was like...
It was like intense and holy cow was it fun.
So that was one kind of cool thing we did.
Obviously, we would not have been able to do it if we didn't have the amount of turkeys we have across North America.
And of course, you know, Troy having a very successful company in Jack Links and having access to planes.
You know, we got friends all across the country who's got good hunting.
And so it was, that was pretty wild.
And outside of that, man, we just chased turkeys and had a good time.
Did a lot of hunting with my kids.
And so I was really pleased.
But I will tell you, man, we got after it pretty hard.
Come about the middle of May, man, I was pretty tired, man.
We've been chasing them turkeys hard.
I bet.
And that's the kind of thing.
And again, it goes back to the land management.
For all these environmental folks, conservatives, it's the hunters and the farmers that have been the original conservationists.
We're the original ones that know to protect this land.
We know it's God's gift.
We know that we are blessed in this.
And like I said, it's just frustrating to me to see all this extra that goes on.
And one of the things, speaking also of spring hunts, bear hunts and others, is it surprising to you, in a way, it's not, I'm sure, but the, I mean, you're from BC, in British Columbia, up in Canada, down through California, you got Wyoming, and others introducing either hunting bands on bear, grizzly, or reintroducing wolves.
And folks, let me just say this, and Michael's gonna tell you about this.
This wolf is not the husky in your front yard.
This is not a German Shepherd.
They're three times bigger than those, the true ones, and they are pure apex predators.
That's all they do.
And you will kill elk population, deer population, mule deer population, others in this.
What can we do to get to these generations that have been raised in these liberal think tanks to understand that we're actually killing conservation here?
Absolutely.
It's just like the same narrative we hear, Senator, you know, on a lot of different things and policies.
I think there's so much ignorance, yet there's so many people that think they're so smart and intelligent.
And especially, I think it gets even worse when you start talking about these categories because, let's face it, here it is, you know, Morning time, I'm sitting here in a camouflage shirt and a bone collector hat.
Obviously, I'm a country boy.
I know you're rooted in country, and so you know what?
A lot of times you get labeled as dumb rednecks, hillbillies, whatever it might be, not educated, or whatever could be labeled.
Even in the world of liberals, oh, we shouldn't label anybody, but believe me, we carry a crazy stigmatism because we like to hunt and fish, and we like to come To full draw and sometimes secure table meat, you know, with our bow and arrow.
And so with that though, the education that we have, and it gets back to kind of really an American rooted thing when it comes to somebody like me, you know, I've made my living in the hunting industry and more than just the hunting industry in conservation and better understanding wildlife and better understanding the flocks.
Better understanding the fisheries, the herds, so on and so forth.
And with that, there is an insane passion.
You know, it's funny, every time you and I talk, whether it's on a podcast or just in casual conversation, we're talking about hunting, we're talking about our family, we're talking about catching a fish and the stories we have around a campfire.
It's still, you know, you look at Your life and how busy you've been in the throes of Washington, D.C. And I think now you probably enjoy the outdoors more than ever because, let's face it, Senator, you was right there in the swamp.
You was right in the chaos.
You saw it every day.
So I'm sure you're still cleansing yourself psychologically every time you get in a deer stand.
And so that's the same thing.
And so even though it's a little off subject, talking about the wolf, there is an immense amount of understanding we have about our wildlife.
And there's immense understanding we have, and so we see the balance.
And so, you know, the good Lord had put this here, so obviously he knows way more than we do, but we're still learning.
And we're learning that there's certain things that just don't make sense.
And one is this reintroduction of the wolf.
It's devastating to the native herds of elk, mule deer.
It's very devastating to any domestic farmers, cattle country.
And it just gets downright, in some cases, dangerous.
We have more documented bear attacks than ever.
We have the mountain lions become a problem.
And it gets back to, again, the same ideology, and in my opinion, where they are calling, and what I mean by they, a very liberal-minded, ignorant There's a person or people or group that's trying to push a narrative that they really know nothing about.
So in their world of having their freedom of expression, I'm all for that, but you're stepping on situations that you know really nothing about.
We spend our time nothing but in the woods.
When we get off this podcast, I'll be out in the woods.
I mean, that's where I spend my time.
That's my sanctuary.
And so it's become devastating.
If you look at everything about it, you look at the amount of money that has cost the American taxpayers to reintroduce them, it will make you mad.
Even if you love a wolf and you got 75 of them in your shirt and you wear them for every little outing, Let me tell you something.
You're going to start getting aggravated because it's not just a couple hundred thousands.
It's millions upon millions.
And then if you look at that, then you subtract the amount of income that's coming into these areas because now the elk herd is devastated.
And then you look on past that and a lot of things gets hid.
And we're lied to the amount of money that it takes in some cases when things do get out of control, whether it's a grizzly, whether it's mountain lion, of what it costs and even in some cases overpopulation to have Different hired shooters that have come in to neutralize this when in fact you and I who are responsible outdoorsmen will pay money, we'll eat at restaurants, we'll go to the gas stations, we'll stay at the bed and breakfasts in hotels for us and our family to come hunt and use this resource for our family.
No matter which way you spin it, Senator, you can't make it make sense and I'm appalled by it.
Now, you know, luckily we've got some situations out there.
There's a group called Hunter Nation that's just formed.
They're actually at the convention right now.
The Republican National Convention is speaking and they're actually raising money to go and fight some of this ignorance.
In some cases, very rare, You'll probably know better than me, Senator.
There's some people that are just ignorant.
When you have a sensible conversation and they are in a place where they can make a vote, they're like, wow, I didn't know that.
A lot of it is education and a lot of it is the same You know, extreme liberal nonsense that it just makes no sense.
You can't make it make sense.
And you know what else?
The last thing I'll say about the wolves, I saw one thing that said, well, the reason they're introducing the wolves and they're advocating for it, because of the money that'll come in to view wolves, to do wolf spottings.
Man, I've hunted.
I've made my living since I've been about 19 years of age in this outdoor space, working for Realtree Camouflage, all up to being independently on my own with Bone Collector now.
I've been all over the world.
I've been all over Africa, all over Canada, up through Alaska, the Yukon, everywhere, South America.
Senator, I've only seen two wolves in the wild, and I know that I'm surrounded by them in certain areas.
So the point is, these guys are the ultimate hiders.
You don't see them.
Same with a mountain lion.
You know, bears can be a little bit more visible, but these animals are slick and sly, and man, they can come in like a thief in the night.
They are true apex predators, as you said.
Yeah, that is.
Well, and the other thing you're saying is, we get into this other issue, and you just saw this in, I think, Southern California in the last little bit, and It's just crazy to think that people, you will control these wild animals.
They're wild animals.
And so they're not Disney cute bears.
They're not the stuff yet.
And we're seeing now, once they move through the food supplies, That is naturally out there for them.
They're going to move to whatever else is there and they're going to get closer and closer to people.
And as we saw just a few weeks ago, somebody was killed by a bear attack and it wasn't in the backwoods of Colorado or up in British Columbia.
It was in California in a city area.
You're seeing this because as they move closer in, they're going to find food.
They're going to look for it.
And if you happen to be the food, You're going to get eaten.
But it brings back, and that's why you and I talk, that's why I love having you on the podcast, is we've got to get some sense out there.
Look, ignorance is not knowing something.
Stupid is knowing something and still saying it.
And I think that's what we see so much going on here.
Looking ahead, we've got a fall season coming up.
You and I both, we're both of us out there in the woods.
We're both out there talking.
We're talking to friends who are looking at it.
What are you excited about this fall?
I mean, we've got elk coming up.
We've got deer, whitetail down here.
We've got mule deer.
What are you preparing for right now?
Right now, I'm very, very excited about elk season.
That's probably...
You know, it's funny, man.
If you talk to me in the springtime, which we have, it's turkey.
If you talk to me, you know, deer season is deer.
But in September is probably my favorite month of the year because I have such a Insane passion for chasing big bull elk.
Not even big bull elk, just elk in general.
I love being out in the Rocky Mountains, down in the Southwest.
I love to hunt elk.
That's what I'm preparing for, man.
I just started shooting my bow a lot.
As you know, it's been hot in Georgia, so it's not really enjoyable unless it's late in the evening, early in the morning.
Man, getting pretty dialed in, changing up some setups, got my Hoyt out there, and just really, really kind of getting things dialed.
And that's probably on my mind.
I did yesterday, actually, good timing yesterday, I did go put all my trail cameras out and put out some Big& J's and different things, trying to just see what I might have on my farm.
And already, man, now it's the wireless cameras.
Oh yeah.
Trail camera, send it to your phone.
So my wife's like, man, you're going to get off your phone.
I said, man, I'm looking at these bucks.
She's like, oh my goodness, here we go.
So I'm like, man.
So I don't know, man.
I'm just excited about, I don't know.
I think the older I get, Senator, I'm now at the point to where I love the pursuit of the animal, but the campfires, the people I'm around, obviously getting older, beard getting grayer.
I just...
I just enjoy the time with my friends, the families, you know, most camps are mostly a lot of men.
There's getting to be a lot more women this hunting, and there's some dynamite lady hunters out there.
But a lot of our trips early on will be just dudes and different people from all different backgrounds, from literally people that lives in the trailer park to has yachts.
And I love that diversity.
It makes an unbelievable conversation.
I don't know, man.
Just an adult beverage sometimes around a fire and just the talk and the reflection.
And then it gets into conversation like this about practical things.
Obviously, you get into some politics.
But at the end of it, you're really talking about the things you love the most.
You're talking about your kids, your family.
And then you realize that You know, you'll go four or five days and hadn't even had any luck, and then you realize how much fun you're having.
And then when you do have a chance to fill a tag, it's like a carnival.
It's like Christmas.
It's like living Christmas to a degree.
And for those who don't hunt, it's hard to even understand.
But I don't know, man.
I really appreciate that part of it now and these adventures more than ever because I don't know.
Life's short.
You get one lap and that time in the woods and kind of getting away from the chaos and getting away from a little bit of everything sometimes is, I think, is some of the best medicine a man or a woman can get to get back rooted and with good people.
I agree.
One of the things, and you just mentioned something, and I talked about it earlier.
We were joking about you and me sitting here in my ball caps.
I mean, I interview people all the time in my ball caps.
I am who I am, and it goes.
The one I got on it is Don Jr. is a huge hunter, and I've known Don for several years now, and Eric as well.
They started a magazine a couple years ago called Field Ethos, and there's some guys up here from Georgia and do this.
And he wrote an article, and they only put it out four times a year, but it was a couple, maybe one issue back, and he wrote about that very thing.
He said that the liberal press tried to do an article about what does this magazine mean, and he said, It's not the political.
It's not just the alpha male.
He said it's about being with friends.
It's talking about it.
I've got friends who don't get to hunt much, but they still love to talk about it.
They love to look at it.
They love to hear the stories.
And it goes back to that, I think, just sort of primal community that we miss right now.
I mean, folks, if you're watching a podcast, you're listening to it.
If you're watching on Rumble, you'll see this.
I'm holding up my iPhone here.
But this is not community.
This is a communication tool, it's not community.
Hunting gives us community.
It's something that if I haven't talked to you in six months and text you a picture of a fish or a turkey or a deer, we're back right where we left off and you can do that.
Do you think people who hear this and that we've moved away from have gotten away from that, realizing that this is as much about community as it is anything else?
I 100% agree.
As a matter of fact, if you see the evolution of even the hunting shows, and you know, obviously you still see, and look, man, you and I can, we talk about trophy whitetails, we talk about these long beard turkeys and how big, and you know, most of us that are experienced hunters has done it a while.
We will score our deer.
Not all of us try to put them in the record book.
Before you would get deep into that, I would say, well, there's nothing wrong with that because of the fact if you study that, since we started recording records of our animals, even though some people might be hunting just for those antlers, which we don't, it is a nice caveat, but we can also go back and statistically prove that our wildlife and our fisheries have gotten stronger because there is a man, mostly men, Who want to score this?
So you can say it's out of insecurity.
You can say it's because, you know, they have something small between their legs as an anti, say, or whatever.
So even though I've certainly matured way past that point of caring just how big it is, even though my desire is to hunt a mature animal, what you just said is exactly right.
And going back to that, Absolutely.
Because of those records, Boone and Crock, Pope and Young, man, people start thinking about it.
Do you let this deer walk?
Do you do this?
So there's not a lot of people out there just blazing away.
I don't think we'll ever experience, unless the Democrats gain complete control and we are looking at every squirrel a little different because of the price of chicken at the supermarket.
I don't think we'll ever experience what we experienced in the western frontier of the buffalo being shot out or certain animals almost being shot out.
Now, controversially, we can look at a lot of different things.
I don't think it was just that.
It could have aired propaganda.
It could have been an act of war because we were trying to, at that time, get control of the Indian situation based on, once again, government.
Like I said, that's a whole other podcast.
But when it gets down to the end of it, you're right.
It is about the community.
Man, you can air out everything.
And I'm telling you, man, it's crazy.
Senator, I can't tell you how many times with a cold beer in my hand we've sat there and talked about Jesus Christ.
I can't tell you how many times we figure out where we're going to go the next morning.
I can't tell you how many times we've talked about different ways we can better be men and raise our young'uns and how do we keep them accountable and keep some ambition in them.
So it's not just a bunch of rednecks sitting around sharpening knives ready to go murder and You know, go through the woods and try to knock down and bring back everything and kill everything.
It is a true community of men that are talking.
I've learned so much about business in these camps, of understanding what EBITDA is.
I still don't know everything about business.
And you know, like I said, I was thrown into this If you want to call it capitalism and figuring out that, oh, wait a minute, you can have a business.
You get this and that going.
And yeah, when you're sitting around camp with people like Jimmy John and Troy Link, you're sitting there with entertainers that have seen so much out there in the world.
And at the end of it, we're all just sitting there equally together.
We're yoked in our observation of what we're chasing and we're just wanting to enjoy our time chasing and pursuing.
And then if you go back to those early stages before we had a chance to go to camps like that, I remember meeting up in my Uncle Morgan's barn and my dad, a guy named Scott Steiner, another guy named Rick, we'd all get together and we would just figure out where we're going.
You know, you're going to the platform stand, I think I'll go down here to the Hall of One.
Well, I'm going to go over here to this stand or that stand, the boat seat.
And man, when you hear a rifle shot, which typically back in those days, it was an old Remington 742, so you'd hear multiple shots.
Exactly.
Man, I remember my thought would, I wouldn't be like, Holy cow, Doug just got one.
I'd be like, we might have just got one.
It was a we thing.
And you could barely finish your hunt.
It might be eight o'clock in the morning.
And we talked about meeting back up at 1030, you know, at the Big Oak.
Yeah.
Everybody walked in.
And man, when you'd hear a couple of shots, The exhilaration of we might have got a deer, it didn't matter about what size, met back up, you put those deer in the back of the truck, you high-fived and it was just like you got one even if you was one of the guys who didn't pull the trigger.
Went back and a big old breakfast of grits and eggs and sausage and toast and just the time hanging out around that camp or in those little farm homesteads.
Nothing I will do will compare to that emotion and that feeling of those times.
But guess what it was?
It was community.
We were together in our hunt.
We were together that morning.
We were together all that weekend or that day.
And my best relationships Have probably been made in the outdoors.
And look, I played sports.
I played since Little League all the way through high school.
I never played any college ball.
And I made some great relationships.
But most of those same relationships I made there, we carried on in hunting together.
And the bond has come even more insanely close because of the outdoors.
So I think good Lord had a plan with that in the way we search out our food.
You got to join together.
And even in hard times, if you go back and study the Great Depression and stuff like that, You know, that was such a horrendous time for America.
But it's amazing how close the families got.
It's amazing how insane father and son got out squirrel hunting or fishing or catching catfish or down there, you know, trying to catch some little old anything out of the creek that you could put in a frying pan and mama making some cat head biscuits.
And there was a sense of knowing that good Lord was in control and we're going to be all right.
You know, a lot of those times dad was running off to the cities to Make a living.
Didn't see their family and kids or even run off to the fields if you're in the country to farm your cotton.
And so I think the outdoors and what the good Lord put can save us all.
And it doesn't happen to be without even pulling the trigger.
It's just being around.
And anybody who's listening that says, man, this guy's talking a bunch of hogwash.
I would challenge you.
If you know somebody, you got an uncle, granddaddy or a father or just a friend that hunts that will allow you just to come hang out in their camp.
If you're not refreshed, I don't know what I could give you, but I could bet you a pretty substantial amount of something because I promise you, you'll leave refreshed in your look on life.
I feel that strongly about it.
Oh, I don't disagree.
It brought back just such a great memory, even from last season for me.
I got to go a few times and picked up, I did get a bow kill and a gun kill last year.
And the gun kill is down in Lawrence County, down here in Dublin area over in Georgia.
We've got some good friends who have a farm over there and a big place.
And we both went out that morning, me and Mark, the other guy, and I went one way, he went the other way.
But as you know, if you're down in the air, you hear shots, and you hear that.
Well, getting late in the evening, and we've come, a big doe came up, and I'm just putting some meat down.
Took the shot, dropped.
She dropped off.
We had to go find it.
But before I could even put my gun down, I looked down, and my phone buzzed, and it was, is that you?
Mark was always saying, is that you?
And he said, I'm on my way.
And it wasn't even a thought.
I mean, look, it's what life used to be.
And again, I'm not saying it's not now, but it's expressed differently.
It's discouraged.
But this community that we know each other, that, you know, look, you talk about growing up on the farm and my granddad had a dairy farm, but I grew up on a little neighborhood where I'm still living.
I remember, you know, it was a community that Understood that everybody was a part.
And I'm from the generation, I'm from the butt beat generation, not the time out generation.
And any mama, or frankly, pretty much any daddy in the community, you get out of line, you didn't want to see anybody.
Somebody was going to correct you.
And it wasn't mean.
It wasn't mischief.
It was just like, no, you don't act that way.
But you may mention something here.
I want to tag off.
As I told somebody one time, they said, well, Doug, you're on a rabbit.
I said, well, if you ever tasted rabbits, you'd understand that's good meat, too.
But rabbit and squirrel.
I don't know if I've shared this on this podcast.
It'll be fun.
But especially with you, a few years ago, my son and I went squirrel hunting down in Greene County.
And we got several and brought them back, skinned them, got them up, cut them up, put them on the...
The grill, and I ate them.
I ate them at night.
And I put an Instagram post.
If you ever go to my Instagram, you'll see this.
It's from several years back.
And I took a picture of the keel, the trim, and the plate.
You know, so farm to table.
I was in D.C. during this time, and I posted that on my Instagram account.
My chief of staff texted me.
He said, what did you just post on Instagram?
I said, supper.
And he said, I mean, I kid you not, he was getting texts from people like, oh my God, how can he do that?
That's squirrel.
And Brendan's saying, I mean, it's Doug, okay?
It was good stuff.
It is good stuff.
Matter of fact, I did see that post.
I'm almost certain I liked it.
And I never thought about this much, but how many, you know, kind of question, Senator, when you were there in Washington, right there with, you know, right in the middle of it, how many of the other senators or even congressmen, did you meet a lot of hunters that was in Washington, D.C.? Yeah, you'd be amazed.
Not as much, of course, you would recognize me and you poking around Gainesville or down middle Georgia.
But, I mean, there's a big congressional sportsman club.
Here's an interesting thing.
A lot more...
What I call bird hunters.
A lot more fizz, quail, dove, that kind of hunting.
Duck, a good bit of.
But then you get the others who are mainly Southern or Western.
That is sort of the, as you would expect, Midwestern as well.
But yeah, it's a little more than you think.
It's better than the military veterans, I'll tell you that.
They weren't many of us in there at all, you know, military side.
But the hunter side was the Congressional Sportsman Caucus does a really good job of working.
And then you got, I mean, there's other organizations that people, you know, Safari Club, Dallas, I mean, you got the hunting You know, Wild Turkey Federation, others that are up and in and out all the time.
So it's a little better than you would think.
But again, the staff up there, I mean, a lot of them come from, they've never been hunting.
You know, the only animals they've seen are, you know, wild animals that they'd collar in the zoo.
Um, and so when you talk about hunting and so like when I posted that picture, you know, of a squirrel that I had just cooked and somebody, I think somebody commented, well, like, how could you do that?
And I think I was, I wanted to go down and I may have, I don't know.
I said, well, with a little olive oil, a little salt and pepper, you know, you get into it.
Um, so we'd have a lot of non hunters probably watching this podcast though.
If they wanted to get into it, And I think we've discussed this a little bit.
I want to go as basic as you get.
You got somebody who wasn't like you and I. They didn't grow up fishing.
They didn't grow up hunting.
Even if they left it, you know, for several years.
Like, I mean, there was a time in my life with kids and life and everything.
I just didn't get to do it as much.
But they want to.
Some of them are saying, well, it's expensive.
I've got to go out and buy all these clothes.
I've got to get all this.
What would you tell a young person today or even a middle-aged father who says, you know, I miss my time with my kids?
And they say, what can we do?
Just what's a little bit of advice the bone collector can give to that person?
Well, one is, just like we talked about, when you first go hunting, it's gonna be more about the outdoors and it will be about the experience, not necessarily the feeling of the tag or the kill, I should say.
And so my advice would be, one is, Probably the most expensive thing I've done was buy a farm.
And let's face it, I bought a farm.
Yes, I do truly farm.
So I have ag here.
We farm pecans.
But I bought it because I wanted a place to raise my family.
And so the only way I was able to do that is obtain a loan and I pay it all.
Every month I write the check and I say, honey, we got another month on this place, you know?
So it's kind of one of those things.
But obviously that gets to the extreme of Investing into it.
I didn't grow up where I had a lot of family members that had a lot of land.
My mama Waddell had a couple hundred acres that we grew up hunting, and since this shrunk down a little bit like a lot of family farms.
So access is probably a little tougher than it used to be, but it doesn't take, like you said, if you look into some areas, if you've got 10 acres in some areas, that's as good as a thousand acres in others.
And then also when it comes to the south and really across the nation, especially Georgia, we have some tremendous opportunity for public hunting on our WMAs, Wildlife Management Areas they're called.
You can buy a license.
I think it's up to about 30 bucks.
To hunt and fish and so very, very affordable and with that it gains you access to thousands and thousands of acres across our state that you can go.
There's unbelievable campsites there.
If you look at coming into September and maybe you're not into big game hunting, you don't know enough about it, you can get you a 20-gauge shotgun, you can set on dove fields free.
It costs you nothing.
A shirt like I'm wearing now, you can pick up at Academy.
I think this shirt was 19 bucks.
I mean, literally.
And that's all you need.
And maybe some Carhartt pants, something kind of brown in nature.
You can go out and hunt dove.
Obviously, you got the best shot shells to have you a shotgun.
Obviously, everything is what you put into it, so it can get expensive, but there is so many opportunities.
It's kind of like, you know, your first baseball glove you buy your five-year-old kid that's getting ready to go play t-ball is not You know, that Wilson 880-200, whatever it is, that costs $200.
You buy him a $15 glove, he ain't gonna catch a ball in no way.
He's gonna run around out there and be playing with bugs in the outfield.
Exactly.
Because it progresses.
And once you find a passion, you start striving and working toward it.
It's like, you know, most of us middle-aged men, I don't need an iPhone 47. Still get by with the tune.
This is about the most technical thing that I'm going to do as a podcast on it.
So, I think you can get into it at a lot of different levels, but I would tell anybody, check in the public ground.
Also, talk to your hunting buddies.
What you'll find in the hunting community, a lot of people, not everybody, A lot of these people will share certain resources.
They might not share an opportunity to set and stand to go after their biggest buck on their hit list.
But for instance, I have people every year, we have to take a certain, we manage our place and we want to take a certain amount of does.
So I've always got friends and different people, sometimes some first time hunters right here.
You know, the high schools down the road, my kids are in high school.
They got a hunter safety course and they can get a license.
I'll take them hunt, let them pop them a doe.
And they're just as Excited about that.
So there is access.
And with that, the last thing I would say, Senator, you know, a lot of people that might not be hunters listening or watching that might not understand it.
One thing we can understand, Is the fact that, man, I have so much peace to a degree in the good times and even the bad times.
I think we're headed to a great time in American policy.
I really think we're in a good place, which I'm sure we'll talk some about politics later on.
The best thing I have at Peace is understanding the good Lord's renewable resources and growing up a country boy.
I know where I'm going to be able to get fresh water.
I know that you're right.
I don't eat squirrel every day, neither do you.
I still love filet mignon.
Man, we still go to Sam's and Costco's and the local market and buy chicken breast and get excited about it.
Go home and talk about it.
You ain't going to believe what I got my chicken breast for.
But at the end of the day, even my wife had told me, and I've had some people, even big-time celebrities, like, Michael, we need to start prepping.
Oh my God, what are they going to do to the water supply?
What if we ain't got food in the grocery store?
And I'm like, man, gear it down.
I even told my wife, I said, listen, we got fresh water right here in the creek.
This water ain't near as bad a drink as you think.
It ain't got beaver fever.
We ain't got a beaver in these creeks right here.
You can drink it.
You got squirrels.
You got deer.
You got so many resources.
The good Lord figured it out.
And you can go back and look at those old timers.
They went to the market.
They wasn't buying processed food.
They wasn't even buying really meat.
They was buying yeast and sugar, salt, pepper, flour.
And if they had some pork fat and they could raise a couple hogs, if they had access to wild game, they had access to a creek to fish, They never had any concern.
So yeah, if electricity or an electrical grid goes down, Would even a country boy like me be uncomfortable because we don't have air conditioning and stuff like that?
I'm not saying it is.
I'm not fear-mongering.
I'm just saying when you have a sense of understanding of the resources we had and the sense that when the good Lord put that canine tooth and it was to eat meat, and that's not knocking the vegetarian, get on with your salad.
I ate salad too.
If that's all I had, I would.
But I believe that the balance is perfect and I believe that if you have these skills and you have these understanding, Man, you're going to be okay.
To the point, Senator, I told somebody, I had a conversation with a gentleman from LA the other day, his big music producer, and he just got into hunting and he was telling me about that.
He said, man, I'm like, it's weird.
I don't know what was in me.
He said, I've never been that kind of guy that wanted to spend and buy these big, expensive, exotic cars.
He said, man, I get picked on because I don't know.
He said, I've never really been an outdoorsman, but I got to just do it.
Old Toyota pickup truck.
He said, I love that truck.
He said, I want to get into hunting.
And so we're out in Oklahoma, actually on Blake Shelton's ranch.
And this guy was there.
He was helping produce some music with Gwen.
Man, it turned out to be one of the coolest, nicest guys ever.
And so he got into hunting and he had even told me, he said, man, I just kind of get depressed.
I don't know what it is.
I feel like I need to be out in the woods.
I get kind of claustrophobic around these big cities.
And he said, of course, LA has kind of went really downhill.
And come to find out, the guy was very, he was a Democrat.
He was pretty liberal in nature.
But the more I got to talking to him, and I said something by accident that I actually said to myself that meant a lot to me.
And he was talking about, he said, man, I made a lot of money, but I feel like this sense of I'm not fulfilled.
He said, I don't know what it's all for.
And he said, I'm not really enjoying certain things.
And so as I got to talking and he said, but what if all this were to go away?
I'm stuck right here in this city.
And I said, bro, that's the most mature observation that you're ahead of the rest.
A lot of times in the big cities, I said, because there's nothing wrong with the big cities.
I said, man, every country boy can have a good time.
In the city, you know, I said, but you can survive in the country and you can survive as a country boy.
And I said, I said, man, I told this guy, I said, man, have you ever thought about if you lost at all, would you gain or lose?
And when I said that, it's like I said it to myself.
Yeah.
And, you know, and I think so many people in our careers, if you think about it, Senator, we all can think about it.
It's like, man, if we lost at all, Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
And in some cases, if you are just focused on material things and money and the next fastest car, the next biggest vacation, It could easily be a situation where you're suicidal, like realistically suicidal.
But if you're rooted in the country and all of a sudden you're my neighbor and you say, Michael, hang on, worry about a podcast.
I've lost it all.
I was like, you ain't going to believe it, Senator.
I lost it all too.
He's like, well, how about this?
You want to go squirrel hunting this afternoon?
Because we need a mess of them.
And I heard them crappier biting.
And then it becomes not about where we can get and what we can get and what we can make.
It becomes, what do we have in that community?
And I do believe that there are certain people That they don't even realize, even though you focus on material things, if you've got a true sportsman's attitude, if you understand hunting and fishing, you understand that balance, I don't think you can ever lose as long as we have those resources out there.
I think most men will be able to provide for their families.
It might not be exactly...
The same value and excitement of sitting down at the dinner table for what you're going to eat.
We might all slim up a little bit because we're probably not going to be eating as many Swiss cake rolls.
But at the end of it, I'm not so sure.
And I thought deep on that and I thought, man, thank God I got a solid family.
I got a great wife.
I've understood the rights and wrongs and what I've done and how I've lived my life.
And you get a little older and I'm like, man, I'll see a squirrel out in the pecan orchard and I'm thinking, I ain't gonna chase you right now.
I ain't saying I won't have some buddies in.
I got a couple squirrel dogs.
But in the right circumstance, I'm gonna be chasing you damn hard to put you in some gravy with some biscuits on the side.
And so I think it's something to think deep on.
And when I said that to him, man, his eyes got big.
And since that, he went and got his hunter safety course.
He got his first hog this year.
He's in a duck club and he's doing it right out of LA. And he'll text me weekly and say, man, thank you for You know, pushing me to get involved in the outdoors.
So anyway, like I said, I'm very proud of the fact that we had that conversation, that I was in a situation to meet somebody like that.
It also helped me understand that the separation between a lot of us It's so small and we're divided in some cases when in reality it's just a conversation and an understanding.
Like you said, there's a difference in stupidity.
I had never heard that, which thank you for saying that.
You're right.
There's a difference in stupidity and ignorance.
You know, sometimes ignorant people can be educated.
Stupid people just never learn.
And so, in this case, he was pretty ignorant to outdoors and hunting and now he's educated and he loves it and he understands that balance.
I always like to do, and especially on these, is a call, you know, to, hey, get out in the woods, which we've done all the time.
But I think there's something else that needs to be brought up here, and we don't have to spend a long time, but we're about done here, but I can't get by without this.
Statistics show that hunters and, you know, the ones that we've talked about, our gun owners, our hunters, our fisher, man, are also, in some areas, some of your worst participants in voting.
Yes.
And we've seen this.
It was amazing to me.
A large percentage of gun owners, which, I mean, Pennsylvania, contrary to everybody's belief in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, has a huge hunting tradition.
Michigan, huge hunting tradition.
Wisconsin, Minnesota, all that.
Even down here in Georgia.
And again, without having to go into a long diatribe on politics here, though, From everything everybody's heard from you and I today, if you're a hunter, if you're a fisherman, if you're an outdoorsman, if you just like to go take pictures of wildlife, but especially if you own guns, you own bows, you own crossbows, whatever, you're fishing, Isn't it true that not only the God-given rights we have to do that should be transferred over?
And again, I'm not sitting here saying, go vote for X. Now, I'll tell you that for me, Donald Trump's going to be next president.
That's what I'm happy about.
And I'll say that all day long.
But at the same point, go and look at candidates and ask yourself the question, are they going to help Protect what I value.
And if they are, I'm going to support them.
If they don't, I'm not going to.
But by staying at home and saying it doesn't matter, we often leave the policies to others.
And I think we've got to correct that in our own community.
100%.
As a matter of fact, there's an organization that started called Hunter Nation, and I was talking about that.
They're not only fighting some of these insane policies, whether it's around the wolves and the mountain lions and just some really simple, pretty easy battles for the most part, but sometimes they get left unnoticed.
But the biggest thing they uncovered was the fact that They realize just how many unregistered hunters.
So if you look, 13 to 14 million licensed hunters.
You mentioned Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania and Michigan have, you know, Texas, I think Texas has the most, but look how the size of Texas, but for the size of Pennsylvania, we at one time had over a million licensed hunters.
So over a million people.
Michigan was 800,000.
Now that number might be different right now.
I haven't looked it up and looked at that exact number, but let's just say Michigan and Pennsylvania, you're talking about 1.8 million, nearly 2 million people.
Then if you look across the country, around 13 to 14 million licensed hunters.
So if you look at statistically, Most hunters, not all, but a high percentage of hunters are more, you know, family, God, country or God, family, country mentality.
So again, not telling anybody how to vote, but just whoever and whatever candidate in every single race from Congress to Senate to president to local, if hunters were involved because the mentality is so common and clean and pure in most cases, I think that alone could change the landscape of the country and you could take the country back by every hunter because 14 million people voting, say, 85-90% one way.
That's probably the strongest demographic to go after.
So any hunter or anybody you know that's a hunter, man, remind them to get out and hunt.
And there's actually a page.
I think Hunter Nation If you Google Hunter Nation, they've got a place to where whatever state, they'll get you registered.
It's kind of similar to the Rock the Vote that we see on MTV. That was a brilliant campaign.
They didn't tell you who to vote for, but a lot of the artists in different ways, I mean, it insinuates a different probably demographic to vote a certain way.
This hunter nation is basically telling people, get out and vote.
Register.
You owe it to yourself.
You owe it to your country.
We're not telling you how to vote.
We're telling you if you're a hunter, register and go vote.
Man, I can't say I wasn't guilty of it.
You're exactly right, Senator.
We've got to do a better job with that because there's too many of us that understand the conversation we've had in a long format.
They understand everything.
I guarantee you there were some people heard this, that we relit the campfire.
They're ready to get out there with the young in the camp and go chase a squirrel or rabbit.
We got to vote though.
It's our country and there's a lot of us that feel the same way.
So yes, we got to vote.
These hunters have got to.
Well, folks, this is what we're looking for, looking ahead to the fall.
We got elk, September.
Can't wait to watch where you got.
Where are you headed in September?
Not specifics, but where states?
Where are you heading?
Man, I'm headed out to the Navajo Nation.
I always hunt out there.
Man, I love the people on the Navajo Reservation.
I always go out to, typically, New Mexico this year.
I'm going there, and I'm hunting Utah.
Those are my three states.
I'm really excited.
We got a really cool hunt.
We lined up with the Folds of Honor.
That's probably one of the organizations I really enjoy supporting as much as any.
Colonel Nick Nichols, Colonel Rooney, they got a great thing going out there.
And so we do a hunt with them and kind of donate.
Basically, take somebody hunting and a little auction deal, so we'll give some money back there.
So we're going to start in probably Utah, and then we'll end up somewhere in New Mexico or out there on the Navajo Nation, man.
I can't wait, dude.
I'm chomping at the beer.
That is still something I've never done and I want to do, is I've not been on the elk hunt.
That's the one, and I'm still wanting to get out there, and I've got to make a plan.
It's just one of those things, like everything, you've got to make a plan and stay at home long enough to make a plan and do it.
As we go.
Hey, a quick note on that.
Tell Rooney, he and I tell and say, I know an old chap from chaplain from the Air Force who sat in the desert and talked to you.
He was on a, his squadron, F-16 squadron was out in the desert in Balad when I was there in 2008, 2009. He and I was sitting in the, in their little area kitchen area and we talked and he was just forming the idea of foals for honor back then in 2008, 2009. Tell him Doug Collins said hello.
I will definitely do that.
Man, that's exciting to hear.
I was a young captain back then.
As best as young I could be, I guess.
I was out there doing the work.
Here's what's funny.
You're talking about a funny American story.
I got to know Colonel Rooney just through the Folds of Honor and understand how we could help in the hunting industry, you know, for their cause.
And so that's a cool story.
I'll definitely remind him of you and that time y'all had a chat about it.
But I was one day with Colonel Nick, who was also an Air Force, an Air Force pilot.
And so we were just talking about, oh, we're all the same age.
I'm 51. So we're right in there.
I think Colonel I think Colonel Rooney's close.
You know, we're all close in that age demographic.
Anyway, we got to talking about old classic movies and stuff like that.
And we got talking about Smokey and the Bandit.
And I said, man, you know, I said, maybe it's the old Southern boy in me.
I said, I've never cared for the Ferraris and Lamborghinis, but I have always wanted like an old 77 Trans Am or even the old General Lee, that 600-inch charger.
And Colonel Nick said, man, you know, Colonel Rooney, He has both of those cars and he wants to sell one of them because, you know, it's just, you know, he's got daughters and they living in Oklahoma and, you know, they need garage space or whatever.
And it was just kind of wanting something he wanted.
So anyway, with that, I called him.
And so I ended up just bought not long ago, a 77 Trans Am from Colonel Rooney.
And dude, I took my kid to school in it before school went out this summer.
I took him to school in it every day.
He was seven years old and he couldn't understand why the kids didn't know about this car.
Now, all the teachers, all the teachers knew the Bandit.
Oh, yeah.
That's really cool.
So, yeah, he's a pretty all-American man.
Like I said, who don't want a Bandit or a General Lee?
I agree with you on that.
Well, look, for those of you who may be listening to the podcast who don't understand it, look, Smokey and a Bandit is not just a movie.
It is a Southern documentary.
Thank you very much.
We're good.
Yeah, we're good with it.
Well, folks, it's always been great to have Mike Waddell and the Bone Hunter on with us today, and we're excited as always.
Can't wait till we have our next visit to hear the elk and deer seasons, and I'm sure you and I will be communicating, talking, and texting between now and then on how the seasons are going.
But my thanks for being with us, brother.
We appreciate you.
If you're here on the podcast, DougCollinsPodcast.com, go to the email button.
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