Artemis

Ali Bair has managed to wrangle the lifestyle so many of us want -- cobbling together a career that matches our lifestyle. Ali is a fly-fishing guide in Colorado during the summers and works as a filmmaker in the off-season. This week we're talking about guide-life, the Covid fly-fishing boom, and how thinking beyond the all-day float trip opens up fly-fishing to more people.

3:00 Backcountry trout at camp = mmmm

7:00 Guiding the same rivers/places you fished as a kid

8:30 Seasonal double-life: fishing guide in the summers, filmmaker the rest of the year

10:00 Family vacay to Stanley Estes Park Hotel, aka the hotel from The Shining

15:00 Arkansas bass-fishing tips... black leech? White leech? Or huge 'ol dry flies like the grasshopper?

17:30 "Being a good guide goes so much beyond being good at fishing."

19:00 How you take an 18-month-old fly-fishing (don't opt out of the baby waders! Or worms getting cast into your face)

22:00 Pandemic was EXCELLENT for fly-fishing - AND - buying a fly-fishing business! Check out Sasquatch Fly Fishing

27:30 The "River Runs Through It" soundtrack... a personal fishing anthem in Montana

30:00 Fly-fishing business models: There's the two-custys-and-a-guide float trip program, AND other stuff -- like a backcountry hike to those harder-to-reach wade-fishing spots

33:00 Getting people into a basic fly-fishing experience is huge in recruiting new customers who'll come back summer after summer (like the $65/person intro trip at Sasquatch Fly Fishing)

36:00 Reel Women - guide service in the Tetons that operates trips everywhere

40:00 Making fly-fishing less cost-prohibitive

42:00 This is it! The podcasting version of a Fly-Fishing 101 lesson, where Ali talks us through casting

49:00 When you're casting, what's happening behind you can tell you more about what you're doing than what happens in front of you

53:00 Fishing isn't a 'guy's space' -- on family vacay or anytime else... it's for everyone! Yay!

1:00:00 Pandemic self-launches an online vintage clothing business, Little Vagabond Vintage  - the perfect complement to a person who cobbles together income from things they're passionate about

1:00:05 Finally getting that bear hide from two years ago after the taxidermist lost your phone number... #bestmoment Big bear, tiny house.

What exactly do fish do all winter under the ice? It's a surprisingly ambiguous question. Almost everything we know about fish comes from studying them in warm weather. Aquatic Ecologist Bailey McMeans joins us to talk about what fish are up to in the depth of winter. Did you know fish brains are actually bigger in the winter than in the summer? Join us for a peek at what fish are up to under the ice. 

3:00 What nudges a warmth-loving person to dwell in a cold place? The Greenland shark, for starters

5:00 How can the same fish cope with vast temperature extremes?

6:00 "Booger-freezing cold"

8:00 Canadian lakes: Wonderful systems for studying seasonal variations and the effect on marina fauna

12:00 Do you notice a difference in the quantity of fish caught when you're fishing under an ice tent versus au plein air? Light pouring into the water column... does it make a difference to fish?

13:00 Almost everything we know about fish comes from studying them in the summer

15:00 Studying fish brains in summer versus winter. WUUUT?! The size of the fish brain changes, everyone!

18:00 Is winter actually a time of scarcity for top-of-the-food-web fish in frozen lakes?

24:00 Does brain size increase/decrease in sync with cognitive demands? Like spawning, or navigation, maybe?

27:00 Fish are like most species, they have an optimal temperature range. But even for coldwater fish species, cold temps are still a challenge

33:00 Cold water: Colder; less light; and under a layer of ice, there's less oxygen exchange with the atmosphere

37:00 Isn't it kind of cool how much we still don't know?

38:00 Experiential knowledge from ice fishers is a huge boon to the study of winter ecology and fish... they're also integral to the whole 'catching fish' part of the study

46:00 What fish strike at also tells us about their underwater winter life

47:00 Spear(ice)fishing for muskie and northern pike with a decoy

49:00 Finding prey without vision (like possibly by using smell, movement sensing)

51:00 Do we care more about species we know intimately?

55:00 In the winter, the coldest water CAN be at the surface

57:00 Dr. McMeans wants to hear from you! Does the type/size of bait you use in winter differ than what you use in open-water season? Do you ever catch warm-water species, like bass, under the ice? If so, how do you catch them? If you have ideas to share, find us in the Artemis Facebook group.

58:00 How do you learn ice-fishing? 

1:00:01 Hank Shaw's kidney pie #offal #notawful

1:00:03 Winter lake ice is changing/melting in the same vein as sea ice

1:00:06 Artemis Turkey Tactics! Join us for a webinar series on turkey-everything. Plus, swag, everyone! A huge thank you to GotGameTech (awesome mobile apps to teach you how to call game) and PegLegs Customs (beautiful handmade turkey calls) for their generous support of this event! Go check ‘em out.

This week Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson introduced an infrastructure proposal to remove the lower Snake River dams. It's a move the conservation community has been working towards for decades. The four dams on the lower Snake impede salmon and steelhead migration. In the farthest reaches of the watershed, runs have all but declined to a trickle. Joining Artemis to talk about Rep. Simpson's proposal is Betsy Emery from The Association of Northwest Steelheaders.

2:00 The Association of Northwest Steelheaders Oregon NWF affiliate. (Psst... check out their women's program!

5:00 Steelhead fishing at a glance: Wow, this is cold and boring. THEN, a fish strikes and you immediately get why this is such a thing

6:30 Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson releases huge energy and salmon concept to restore salmon in the Pacific Northwest through the removal of the Snake River dams

8:00 The decline of salmon in our lifetime has been positively precipitous, leading to season closures and the decline of an entire sporting industry

11:00 Salmon/steelhead lifecycle 101; plus, steelhead = ocean-going rainbow trout, which are huge

13:00 Baby salmon & steelhead... it's a wild ride to the ocean!

16:00 Salmon and steelhead return brings a remarkable influx of nutrients inland from the ocean #goshdarnamazingcycleoflife

16:00 How do we weigh economic production (dams/electricity) against the survival of a species?

17:00 Crossing dams is a hotspot for smolt mortality

19:30 "Every time a smolt interacts with a dam, their chance of returning to the mouth of the river as an adult drops 10%."

24:00 Ocean conditions are sometimes portrayed as a scapegoat for salmon/steelhead decline

26:00 Salmon runs on the John Day River (3 dams) versus the Snake (8 dams)

27:00 Smolt-to-adult rate -- the quantity of juveniles that survive and return to spawn. For Idaho salmon, it's less than 2%

33:00 "The Energy and Salmon Concept" initiative by Rep. Mike Simpson - it specifically looks at the lower four dams on the Snake River in Washington, not the dams on the Columbia

37:00 Stakeholders affected by dam removal: Farmers/irrigators, barge commerce, even a small cruise industry

40:00 The infrastructure proposal isn't an item of legislation... it's more of a collaborative effort in the making to work toward dam removal

43:00 Want to learn more? A couple links: The Association of Northwest Steelheaders; Idaho Wildlife Federation

46:00 Zoom testimony on legislation... TIME, everyone... SO MUCH TIME

47:00 Artemis's "Go Confident as an Advocate" series – background info on important conservation issues, how to draft meaningful public comment, write an op-ed for the paper, and generally be informed enough to advocate for things important to you

Brianne Lauro had a very specific idea of who she wanted to be, professionally, when she left the island of Hawaii to study fisheries management on the Mainland. But the deeper she got into her studies, the more she realized that her family's culture of knowing the sea was also science... so why wasn't it being included in management decisions? Brianne tells us about receiving the wisdom of the ocean from her elders, something that happened when she showed up and asked.

2:00 Pssst... in case you missed it, Artemis is accepting applications for 2021 ambassadors! Apply here! We're also hiring a communications coordinator to work on Artemis and other NWF projects

3:30 Octopus, or tako finally makes an appearance in our freezer selfies! This is the time of year when octopi are venturing from the deep into the shallows, making it an opportune time for harvest

4:00 Octopus harvesting is usually learned from family, person to person

6:00 Hawaii has nearly year-round hunting; Growing up in a hunting family there means you can get out a lot

7:00 Studying fisheries management to get a toehold in the door for local people, who are sometimes occluded from wildlife/land management processes

12:00 Higher education utterly changes your lens on the world... changing majors to fit a changing world view

16:00 Are degree'd outsiders making most of the decisions? How can community knowledge and connection to place be of equal value to research when it comes to how we make land management decisions?

18:00 Find Brianne Lauro on Insta @Brianne_Lauro

20:00 Listening to the elders in your family and absorbing their wisdom about your family's place

23:00 We have to ASK if we want to RECEIVE knowledge from older people, and their knowledge of a landscape is totally different than ours, in many cases

27:00 Being nomadic at certain times of your life sometimes grows your vision, but it's also time you're missing out on knowing one place intimately

30:00 Culture changes when people move away. It used to be unheard of to meet a Native Hawaiian who didn't know how to catch fish -- but that's changing

31:00 The middle ground between being a youth and being an elder

35:00 Don't ask kids, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" -- try asking, "What kind of person do you want to be? What values do you want to hold?"

41:00 By documenting elders, sometimes we pay attention to their knowledge better -- watching the moon, the tides, the sky -- and then knowing how fish respond

45:00 First-hand experiential and generational knowledge is as valuable as empirical science

48:00 Research alone can't solve big conservation problems

56:00 Don't forget to join us on Facebook! Artemis has a super-fun Facebook group for listeners!

Hannah Leonard's first toe into the sporting world was noticing that eating game didn't aggravate her Crohn's disease. Since then, she's become an angler and hunter, all while pursuing a master's thesis in how conservation can use marketing tactics to increase its impact and effectiveness. She joins us this week on Artemis to talk heart recipes, conservation strategy, and about what it's like to run Missoula's fly-fishing film festival.

3:00 Feeding your dad some deer heart, plus pheasant chili

5:30 When the sound of your safety clicking off spooks the deer you're aiming for... #facepalm (... but... this situation turns around!)

6:00 Mansplaining versus bonafide help (Spoiler: You CAN click that safety off less aggressively)

8:00 When your first big-game harvest drops quickly... #sothankful

9:00 Hunting, harvesting, butchering, euro-mounting with a new partner 

10:00 Cooking a deer heart - the MeatEater recipe for a whiskey/coffee rub is hard to beat

12:00 Salt-soaking a heart to draw out some of the blood flavor

14:00 New to angling? Try choosing ONE river/fishing spot to master

16:00 Growing up opposed to hunting... and then getting a little closer, and a little closer, trying some game meat, liking it, and taking the journey in

19:00 Resource conservation and marketing -- instead of using marketing to get people to buy stuff, can we use it to sway someone's decision-making on conservation issues??

28:00 Example: can you nudge landowners toward conservation easement decisions?

31:00 "Nudge" by Richard Thaler ... what is a "nudge unit"? Let's talk behavioral economics for a minute

35:00 There's a fine line between not being creepy, and also targeting the specific landowners most likely to make a sound conservation decision on their property

38:00 It's equal parts creepy/powerful to see how Instagram/Facebook can predict what we're shopping for... is there a conservation tool lurking in our midst?

43:00 Would conservation groups make more headway on their goals if they strategically targeted their effort toward would-be decision makers, versus every individual interested in their cause?

47:00 Hannah Leonard's thesis is up for perusal here: A Conservation Marketing Toolkit

48:00 "The Hidden Brain" - a wonderful podcast to explore unconscious patterns that drive human behavior

49:00 Why does game meat get along better with Crohn's disease?

52:00 How many great fishermen/women started on a Tweetie Bird spin rod? 

55:00 Missoula Fly Gals - Monday fly-tying night over Zoom, with project materials available for pickup at the Missoula Angler (shop link)

57:00 Missoula Fly Fishing Festival benefitting The Mayfly Project

59:00 Who else wants to go fishing with April Vokey? (Check out her podcast here, The Anchored Podcast)

1:02 At 5am on a Friday, why not embroider on the couch with a survival show on? #bestlife

Hunter and trapper Jen Davis joins us from Michigan, where she shares about the value system that led her to sporting, and that also leads her to be simultaneously a part of groups like the National Trapper's Association AND the Sierra Club. Plus, Michigan muskrat dinners, a tricky turkey hunt, and the opportune (or inopportune?) fortune of spotting game on a pee break.

2:00 Buying an old house in rural Idaho... the things you'll find! 

7:00 One freezer for food, one for curiosities

9:00 Saving feathers for a down vest (and jewelry/flies) - plucking, cleaning and keeping

12:30 Jen Davis is a longtime alum of Artemis events - Shotgun 101 seminar and Storytelling Great Lakes

14:30 On being a tumbleweed kind of person versus the taproot kind of person

20:00 Being a hunter for years with no harvest... then trying for a heavily regulated turkey hunt, and getting a generous call back from a DNR employee loaded with helpful tips

24:00 Setting up your pop-up blind in the presence of turkeys! Then trying to escape for a pee break, only to see a tom turkey barreling toward your decoys

32:00 Pee breaks and hunting windfalls

34:00 Being a new hunter, showing up to a trailhead and seeing other cars there, and not being sure how to handle it

37:00 Muskrat trapping & Michigan muskrat dinners (yep)... plus, learning to trap

41:00 Trapping as humane harvest

48:00 The night traps are out - it can be a sleepless night

51:00 Being a trapper AND being in the Sierra Club (and struggling to fit into any single group squarely)

56:00 "I really want to connect personally with my place in the natural order of things."

59:00 An excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, "These animals will die by his hand. But first they will live well, in part by his hand. His lifestyle - which I had condemned, without understanding - protects the forest, the lakes and the rivers -- not just for him and the furbearers, but also for the forests being. A harvest is made honorable when it sustains the giver and the taker."

1:00:00 Artemis book club, round two?

1:05:00 Welcome-to-the-neighborhood gifts: Molasses cookies versus dead ducks

Val Titus is a scientist whose work looks into a variety of topics, like what we can learn from the bioaccumlation of toxins in long-lived turtles (like from lead ammo, among other sources). When she's not doing research or teaching science, Val is a hunter who A). offers a wild game and drink pairing course, and B). introduces other scientists and conservationists to sporting through a group called Conservation Leaders of Tomorrow.

2:00 Becca's back! And Marcia is a closet tea fanatic

5:00 Yogurt vs. sour cream on the chili/fajitas/burritos - WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON!?

6:00 Netflix docuseries: "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" on complementary tastes in cooking... time to add "umami" to your vocabulary!

8:00 What can turtles tell us about the bioaccumulation of lead from ammunition in our water systems? (P.S. A snapping turtle can live to be 100 years old... lots of data there!)

11:00 Did you catch the Kodi Jo Jaspers episode on non-lead ammo?

14:00 Looking at metal accumulation in the blood samples from old versus young turtles 

18:00 Aging a turtle? Look for size and belly rings

22:00 Hunting History, Ethics & Management class at Green Mountain College in Vermont

24:00 Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow  - a group that seeks to bring scientists and conservation workers into the field to introduce them to sporting culture

29:00 Spawning an adult-onset hunter through tactful exposure and education

29:30 "You're a liberal and... you... hunt?"

30:00 Vermont's "right to roam" private property laws

34:00 In academia, too - introducing biologists/foresters/would-be outdoorsmen and women to hunting

38:00 Rabbit hunting with beagles

41:00 #childhoodmemories - Road-tripping with the family beagle and watching him jump out of a window onto the highway after spotting a rabbit #beaglefacepalm

43:00 Wild game and drink pairing

48:00 Artemis kitchen challenges with game.... breakfast for dinner! Mardi gras! St. Patty's Day! 

50:00 Becca's adventure buying a 100-year-old farmhouse in rural Idaho... yay, Becca!

56:00 Artemis Southeast Storytelling Event on Jan. 21 at 6:30 EST

57:00 We're growing our ranks! Want to be an Artemis ambassador? Check out our 2021 Artemis Ambassador Application.

Carla Brauer was a vegan and animal rights activist in her teens. These days, she's a farmer, stockwoman, hunter, and... wait for it... a taxidermist! We talk about how you can change your diet without changing your ethics, dermastid beetles, and what it's like to give a TED Talk on your transition from vegan to hunter.

2:00 Dallas, Oregon (not The Dalles... and not Texas) 

3:00 Living that double-freezer life - one for food, one for taxidermy

5:00 #pandemicpig in the freezer AND king pigeons... they're like big white fat doves (AND... Oregon's big bad rats)

8:00 Rat terriers to the rescue! 

9:30 The personal journey of a former vegan/animal-rights activist who became more open-minded to eating meat, animal husbandry, and even taxidermy

13:00 Meeting a woman who took in 50-some chickens as rescues... and ended up selling their eggs to help pay for their keep. Vegan eggs? A eureka moment: You don't have to change your ethics to change your diet

16:00 The problem with a black-and-white approach to food (example: veganism has a hard line in the sand)

20:00 That gap between thinking 'maybe I want to try hunting' to actually getting out there... where do I even start? Like, how do I learn to shoot a gun? (It started with someone's generosity.)

22:00 Years of hunting with no success

23:00 Public lands hunting... it's intimidating. Finding a farm with a deer problem was a better first start

26:00 Reconciling your former vegan self (and social circle) with your emerging hunter/farmer self

28:00 Farming and making money farming are very different things... also, that point when you realize you're making more off quail skulls than vegetables

31:00 Dermastid  beetle husbandry

33:00 "I had a lot of access to severed heads... as one does."

34:00 Carla's TED Talk

36:00 Hunting came (long) before agriculture... but does innovation allow us to evolve away, morally, from animal consumption?

41:00 Hiking/birdwatching/other outdoors pursuits... are they a surrogate for what hunting used to give us?

45:00 The hunting mindset follows you everywhere outdoors once it's in your frame of mind

47:00 The experience of doing a TED Talk (!!!) - and also of seeing animal rights protesters at your talk

54:00 ANYONE can be a hunter... and it's important for the sporting community to embrace that

55:00 The goal of meaningful conversation isn't to change minds... it's to plant seeds 

58:00 Skulls to hides... and a self-built, wire-wheel fleshing machine

Join Artemis Southeast online for a fireside chat - Jan. 14 at 5 p.m. Mountain! Register Here!

Artemis has been on the air for one year now... a whole year! Here's a short, behind-the-scenes look at the making of the podcast, Hits and Misses style. (Pssst... blooper reel, everyone!)

Allie d'Andrea, better known as Outdoors Allie in the social media space, joins us to talk about what it's like to become a social media powerhouse in the hunting and fishing world... as a beginner hunter. There are trolls, for sure -- but there are also a lot of people out there eager to follow someone learning to hunt and fish. Why now? We talk about the journey, and what that means to aspiring hunters and fishers who don't have a mentor and turn online for help.

3:30 Getting deep off the bat: You start a new job, then lose a parent, and then a new colleague you've never met sends you a package of flies with a condolence note - these are big, wonderful human gestures from the Artemis community

7:00 Spur-of-the-moment weddings, ya'll! 

9:00 The life transitions that connect us to the sporting world

13:00 Non-hunting couple becomes hunting couple 

15:00 Allie's Instagram page

16:00 First Lite: A workplace where people live and breathe hunting

20:00 Putting your story out there on social media... there's positive and negative feedback. The positive is so heartwarming it makes the trolls bearable.

23:00 A 2018 float trip with Maggie and Allie and being honest about your beginner’s experience

26:00 If you're interested in hunting/fishing, but you don't have anyone to mentor you -- you're pretty much learning online. That's your 'mentor' to the outdoors

28:00 We need experts sharing good information, but it's a whole 'nother niche to show the beginner's sporting space. "Watch my learning curve in real time" is Allie's sweet spot

31:00 Insta trolls... #hatersgonnahate 

32:00 #mythbusting - Rack size (on your ungulate) is not correlated to your skill level or experience

35:00 Telling the food story versus the trigger/trophy story

38:00 Cooking with deer, duck, raccoon fat and more. Elevated Wild compares wild game fats.

41:00 Balancing meaningful connection in the outdoors with having a career that's ABOUT you documenting connection to the outdoors. (Sometimes you just don't film... the fear of burnout is real.)

44:00 Hunt to Eat's new Green Wave shirts... pretty rad!

45:00 When your high school bestie shoots her first deer and guts it perfectly

56:00 Saltwater fishing

1:00:00 A rough week for chickens

1:04 Liver is a beautiful, silky-smooth piece of meat... but the taste is unique, and there's SO MUCH of it. Should you cook/eat it every time if you don't really like it? (Adding cheese, everyone!)

1:08 Words from Glennon Doyle to close out our year: "We want to be on the mountain tops, but we're not called to be victorious. We're called to be wise, strong and kind. We are admired on the mountain tops, but we are beloved in the valleys...." #getyerkleenex #theresmore