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 Park and Preserve, bisecting the migration route of the embattled Western Arctic caribou herd and crossing nearly 3,000 streams and 11 major rivers including the Kobuk and Koyukon. Tune in to learn about this proposed project from three deeply concerned Alaskans while there is still time for hunters and anglers like you to make your voices heard.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 168: Paving Paradise: Alaska’s Ambler Road

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. It’s a packed house at the Texas BHA gathering for a conservation conversation fueled by extraordinary food, ice cold beer and a rip-roaring good time. Riverhorse Nakadate is a writer, poet and musician telling the story of public lands, flyfishing and conservation from the Texas Gulf Coast to the Boundary Waters. Jessie Griffiths is a visionary wild game chef, forager, hunter and angler, restaurateur and author. Chuck Naiser is president and founder of Flatsworthy, a coalition of sometimes conflicting stakeholders committed to solving the major challenges of a booming Gulf Coast and has been a renowned fishing guide and a successful battler for conservation on the Texas coast since he took a leading and often dangerous role in the “Redfish Wars” of the late 70s. He’s as plain-spoken and passionate as ever, at a time when his wisdom and experience are needed more than ever. Join us for a conversation with the three recent Texas BHA Public Lands and Public Waters Leadership Award recipients.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 167: BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 167: Public Lands, Wild Game Cooking, Hunting, Angling and Conservation – Live from the Texas Hill Country

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 planet have destroyed river systems, extirpated vast runs of native fish, displaced millions of human beings and drowned priceless farmlands, forests, prairies and wetlands. The delusion that we can plug living river systems and somehow turn them into money has perverted politics and economies and stolen the wealth of nations, hoarding it into the hands of the privileged and well-connected few. The story of dams – an incredible tale of careless hubris, blatant corruption and tragically bad ideas – is one [stevenhawleyauthor.com]Steven Hawley has been chronicling its unfolding for decades now, long enough to see a new clarity rising, and with it a growing movement to remove old dams and restore the free-flowing energies and arterial systems of our planet. Hawley’s new book, Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World, chronicles this history and future. Each success (and there are many of them) brings into stark focus the path forward, restoring rivers and fish runs and floodplains, reawakening the deep relationship between humankind and the waters that sustain us. Join Hal and Steven for a spirited exploration of one of the most critical issues of our time.  

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 166: Steven Hawley, Author of Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World

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 waters, and people are having a blast doing it. This is the reality of BHA’s hands-on conservation: projects done by real people; sweat, dust, sunshine and rain; like-minded folks coming together, seeing new country and leaving it quantifiably better than we found it. Hal joins Britt Parker, BHA’s habitat stewardship coordinator in Colorado, and Devon O’Dea, BHA California coordinator, to talk about the latest projects, check out the big future, and learn how you can get involved. 

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 165: Public Lands Stewardship in California and Colorado

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 conversation at the KettleHouse Amphitheater in Bonner, Montana. Dave was getting ready to rock a sold-out crowd in the beautiful summer gloaming, with the river running fast and cold in the near distance. Sometimes, it just all works out. Join us.  

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 164: Dave Simonett of Trampled by Turtles

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 most vibrant American ecosystem ever recorded, and Dwayne Estes and Jeremy French from the Southeastern Grasslands Institute are here to talk about the current successful efforts to understand it…and bring it back.  

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 163: The Southeast Grasslands Institute

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 relentless hell to restore our wildlife and protect our lands, waters and air. Ben Long, hardcore hunter, angler, conservationist, writer and longtime BHA leader, has produced The Hunter & Angler Field Guide to Raising Hell to re-awaken that spirit right now…when the need has never been greater. In the tradition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the epic of compression that launched the American Revolution, Ben’s Field Guide is a concise user’s guide to the institutions – from federal agencies to the courts – that help us protect that which we refuse to relinquish, and that which we will pass on to the generations that follow us. To whom much has been given, much is expected. Join us, in the fight, and for this conversation.   

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 162: Ben Long, The Hunter & Angler Field Guide to Raising Hell

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 edge of wild game and fish cookery. Jesse is co-owner of the Austin, Texas, New School of Traditional Cookery and the restaurant Dai Due, whose name is drawn from the Italian proverb, Dai due regni di natura, piglia il cibo con misura: “From the two kingdoms of nature, choose food with care.” Join us for a conversation with one of the most visionary chefs in North America, talking hogs, turkeys, panfish, hunting and fishing and foraging for food, and a life defined by the earth and her seasons.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 161: Texas Chef & Sportsman Jesse Griffiths

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 lands and waters of the place he loves the most in the world. Alabama is No. 1 in aquatic species diversity, with more than 4,000 known species. It is also No. 2 in the nation for species extinction. The time for action is right now. Huge projects are underway in Alabama, from restoration of coastal estuaries and marshes to protecting some of the most diverse hardwood forests and most biologically rich and intact rivers left on Earth. One of the most important watershed restorations in the U.S. is underway right here – reconnecting the mighty Alabama River and its thousands of miles of tributaries to the Gulf of Mexico – Gulf walleye, sturgeon, vast runs of mullet and other catadromous fish … they were all here, all the way up the Cahaba, the Coosa, the Tallapoosa. And they can be again.     

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 160: Mitch Reid with The Nature Conservancy

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. 159: Game Warden, Author and Conservationist Sam Lawry

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.

Ep. 158: Hunting at American Prairie

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!

Ep. 157: Kevin Garrad, Founder of Wild Response

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.    

Ep. 156: Bob Lee, Florida Backcountry Lawman

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.

Ep. 155: Chris Dombrowski, Montana Fishing Guide and Writer

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!

Ep. 154: The Legal Fight Over Corner Crossing Comes to a Head

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.

Ep. 153 - The MT Legislature, The Weed Tax, and The Conservationists

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.

Ep. 152 - Murder of the Grand Kankakee Marsh

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.

Ep. 151 - Bill Avey, 40 Years in the Forest Service

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. 

Ep. 150 - Free the Ocklawaha River!

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 exploration of the 118th Congress, where the hottest issues pertaining to our hunting and fishing and the conservation that makes it possible will be on the floor, in the offices, buried in reams of obscure paperwork and clouded by political shenanigans….John and Kaden clear the smoke, slash the fat, and let us all know what is going on, what is at stake, and who the players are as we make our way through 2023. We Americans consent to be governed, and this is a must-listen conversation about what we are consenting to, what we support and what we must resist.  

Get Started

Download the App