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 subject of his excellent and funny book, Stories of the Past: An Arizona Game Ranger Remembering the Outlaws), was chairman of staff for the North American Wetlands Conservation Council and the Pacific Flyway Council, western director of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, and has devoted most of his life to teaching young people about wildlife and conservation. Join Hal and Sam as they talk about outlaws, waterfowl hunting, Arizona, the Bitterroot, active habitat restoration, and a life spent completely immersed in hunting and fishing. If you have not heard of Sam’s Warden Wisdom on Instagram, now is the time to check it out.

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 about American Prairie – how their work began and also what their plans for the future hold. This discussion features AP’s Director of Public Access & Recreation Mike Quist Kautz and Director of Bison Restoration Scott Heidebrink, who are here to talk history, bison, cattle, grasslands, watersheds, and hunting and the logistics of getting 1000 pounds of meat and 150 pounds of hide out of the field. Listeners who want to apply for a bison permit on AP lands, or who might be interested in the Block Management Program hunting access opportunities on AP lands, won’t want to miss this conversation, recorded at AP headquarters in Montana.

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, including a decade in the U.S. Army Special Forces during America’s longest wars. Now “retired” to the bush in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, Kevin is the point man for Wild Response, an organization that equips and trains the roaming, high-risk game rangers who are protecting the bitterly imperiled wildlife of these last iconic wild landscapes, often at the risk of their own lives. Internationally recognized man-tracker, soldier, medic, teacher and passionate conservationist of wildlife and wild places, Kevin has an utterly unique tale to tell. Join us!

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 warden for this part of the American backcountry – the oldest of Old Florida – for over 30 years. He wrote about his adventures in his excellent first book Backcountry Lawman and expanded on that success by gathering other Florida warden tales in Bad Guys, Bullets, and Boat Chases. Artifact hunter, historian, fisherman and hunter of both man and beast, Bob Lee is a master storyteller with a lifetime of rollicking adventures to draw from. Join us for the ride.    

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 the Bahamas. Chris’ latest book is The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water, which manages to be a deeply honest memoir, a celebration of the joys and terrors of family, and a love letter to the landscape and rivers of the American West, all at the same time. Join Hal and Chris for an intense conversation about fishing, life and literature, recorded live at the 2023 BHA North American Rendezvous.

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 expanses of private land being consolidated, with public lands enclosed or access blocked to members of the hunting and angling public. Join us at the 2023 BHA North American Rendezvous as Hal discusses the implications of the Wyoming battle with Eric Hanson, an attorney who has assisted BHA in its support of the four hunters, and Sawyer Connelly, a former BHA staffer and legal scholar: Learn the latest on the legal case and also, for the hardworking optimists, a possible solution from Sawyer to the dilemma of access to the checkerboarded public lands in the West. You heard it here first!

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, public access, conservation funding, and fair chase hunting and fishing opportunities will have been introduced and considered in Helena. On this week's Podcast & Blast, we sit down with Jake Schwaller and John Sullivan of the Montana BHA board and Kevin Farron, BHA regional policy manager, to discuss a few of these bills, how best to make your voice heard, and why BHA members from across the country need to stay vigilant and engaged when the sausage is being made in their own state. Join us as we explore what Costco has to do with Montana's new pheasant stocking program, how nonresidents who own land in Montana will be given up to five deer and elk tags, and how recreational marijuana is funding - or was funding - the state's best conservation tool: Habitat Montana.

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 million acres of marsh and swamp in Indiana and Illinois, with thousands of people living on the wealth of its fish and game, flocks of waterfowl darkening the skies, passenger pigeons, deer and black bear, beaver and muskrat and otter. For decades it was the so-called “pantry of Chicago,” providing wild game to markets and restaurants, furs to the garment and hat industries, tons of cut reeds for packing materials, and millions of board feet for lumber for houses, including fueling reconstruction after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Then the huge steam-powered dredges came, and the murder of the Grand Kankakee Marsh began. Can we ever put to rights what we once so thoughtlessly sundered? Join us for a conversation with Hal and two of Indiana’s finest storytellers and conservationists: Jeff Manes, a former steelworker turned columnist for the Chicago Tribune who grew up fishing and hunting the swamp, and Jim Sweeney, of the Porter County Chapter of the Izaak Walton League and Friends of the Kankakee.

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 snow survey ski trip through the Bob Marshall Wilderness in 2015, lost touch, then met again on a jury duty call-up last summer. It was a lucky meeting for Hal and for this podcast: Bill Avey has given his life to America’s public forests, and he knows the strengths and weaknesses, the joys and tribulations, of his agency and the work it does, from the roots to the crown.

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. All that remains of the bad idea is Rodman Dam, completed in 1968 to raise water levels enough to make the canal usable. The Rodman Dam blocked the free flow of the incredible Ocklawaha River, inundated 20 mighty freshwater springs, flooded miles of timber and bottomland wildlife habitat and, most importantly, cut the Ocklawaha and its tributaries off from the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean, causing a cascade of losses to wildlife, water, fisheries and human beings. Now the time has come to remove Rodman Dam and restore these connections. Hal talks about the dam – its history and potential future – with Lisa Rinaman of the St. Johns’ Riverkeeper and retired game warden and author Bob Lee, who has spent his professional life protecting the game and fish of the Ocklawaha. Join us to consider one of the major restoration projects of our time.