EP 53: Bighorn Sheep Hunting with Gray Thornton

We enhance wild sheep populations, promote scientific wildlife management. We all know that sheep are expensive critters to manage. Laskin has $400,000 to do a golf sheep management plan. Anything to do with Western big games.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter and Anna Bronson here with the Epic Outdoors podcast. We've got a special guest with us. We've got Gray Thornton, President and CEO of the Wild Sheep Foundation with us. So we're super excited to dive in and visit with him. He's got a lot of experience in the outdoor industry. But before we get going, we'd like to thank Under Armour for sponsoring these podcasts and all that they do for us here at Epic Outdoors as well as the hunting community. They're an awesome partner with us as well as a supporter of hunting and all that we're doing. So anyway, we do appreciate Under Armour and all that they've done for us. So we just want to let everybody know, we've got a lot of listeners out there that aren't a member of our service. We produce nine magazines a year. It's monthly, December through June.

Talk about all the Western states, drawing on skill percentages, best units, and break it down for applying across the West. We're also available to visit. We help guys develop short-term, mid-term, long-term hunt strategies, application strategies, as well as helping you buy landowner tags, hunts, and all kinds of different things that deal with Western big-game hunting. So anyway, a lot of podcast information out there. Of course, that's free and fun to listen to while you're traveling. But if you want the detailed information, join. Join Epic Outdoors on epicoutdoors.com. It's $100 a year. And we get to visit about hunting. This is the time of year when we're not actually out in the field much. We are in the office 24-7, it feels like. And just cranking it out with a different magazine and visiting with guys over the phone and talking, hunting, and getting prepared for the fall.

If you need another reason to join, right now through the end of February, if you join, we're giving away your choice, a doll sheep hunt to be entered in to win a doll sheep hunt or a mule deer hunt with us, the Epic Crew, or an elk hunt here in Utah with the Epic Crew for anywhere that joins up until February 28th. You're entered in that. Or if you refer somebody, if you're already a member and you refer somebody that joins, make sure that you let them know to tell them that you joined them. You'll have another name in the hat for that. There's no limit to the amount of times you can be entered or the amount of guys you can refer. But there are no way to buy tickets for this. So joining a membership or referring somebody that does is the only way to get in. So epicoutdoors.com, you can join online or give us a call at 435-263-0777. Anyway, Gray, you there on the line with us?

I am, and it's good to be with you both. Appreciate the opportunity for being on the program and appreciate Under Armour for sponsoring it. Great company, great product. Love them. Well, yeah, thanks for making some time with us. We know it's getting to be a real busy time a year for you. Holidays are over, but that doesn't mean relaxation in your neck of the woods, and we'll get to that here in a bit. You've probably been working harder than ever, Gray, getting ready for this convention. We keep wondering what the holidays mean. Other than just a bunch of boxes here and packing and grinding and getting ready for the show season. It's just, it's the holidays, the holidays mean a bunch of guilt for not spending time with your family and working too hard. That's what it means.

Exactly. No, we really do appreciate it. And, you know, before we dive into maybe, you know, your role with Wild Sheep Foundation where we know you today, let's, for some of our listeners, let's talk a little bit about your background. You know, where you came from as far as, you know, how you got into hunting in the outdoors and things like that. And our affiliation with you, Gray, we've known you for years, clear back when Adam and I were in the Hunt and Fool days, and we've dealt with you a lot of years. Well, yeah, and it's been, you know, I honestly just feel blessed. It's interesting. I was just, I flew in from Dallas yesterday with their, of course, their convention kicked off yesterday, but I was there. I had to get back to just work on our show. But Craig Boddington was recognized as a 2018 Weatherby Award winner. And it's just funny.

Craig and I call each other cousins because he's Craig Thornton Boddington. Oh, is he? I didn't know that. Oh, we think so. We don't know how. But his family's from Kansas. My family on the Thornton side is in that Kansas, Missouri area. So we just call each other cousins. But it was interesting. I was listening. He did a fabulous acceptance. He's just a good guy. And, you know, he's been around forever. And, you know, he, and like me, don't really know where we got the big interest in big game hunting. His dad was a big bird hunter. But Craig had this interest in big game hunting. And my folks, my dad wasn't a hunter and still not a hunter. He does a little fishing with me. But my folks divorced when I was five. And I think what ended up happening, you know, I had this innate interest to be in the outdoors. Thank goodness.

And I had a mom who, you know, as a single parent at that time, decided that, you know, she wanted her son to be out, you know, doing things outside. So she, about seven, eight years old, she bought me a spin fishing outfit at a place called Jemco in Palo Alto, California, and said, hey, why don't you go up to Foothill Park Lake and start fishing? And so I just got into fishing like there was no tomorrow. I thought, man, this is, you know, I just love it. And so with my, you know, mowing lawns and washing cars and polishing cars and all the things that, you know, we as kids did to raise money and, you know, earn some allowance there, I started buying all the hunting and fishing magazines that I could get my hands on. So, you know, of course, back then it was Field of Strings, Sports of Field, and Outdoor Live. Yeah. And so I just read all of them cover to cover.

And maybe, I don't know, you know, maybe just reading about, you know, I was reading about fishing, but I was also reading about hunting. And I, you know, I had this innate desire to do so. So finally got to realize that after I got out of college. And so I'm a late bloomer when it comes to hunting. But I had a Xerox client at the time. I went to work with Xerox Corporation right out of school and had a Xerox client that was a hunter. And he kind of mentored me. He's still my mentor to this day on hunting ethics, doing the right thing. But he taught me reloading, taught me how to hunt. And we did some deer hunts in California. And then I guess it was 1986 that I took my first big game animal, which was a pronghorn antelope in Wyoming. And, you know, it's been a fabulous ride ever since.

And just this last year, I was able to complete my finawe. So all four North American wild sheep, which is something I never in my wildest dreams I thought I would do. And my retirement account proves that I shouldn't have. No, no, no. Our last time is going to be spent on hunting. You know, that's right. You can't take it with you, can you? So I'll be working until I'm 100 years old. Yeah. You know, that's a very unique, yeah, unique story. You know, it's different. It's almost self-made in a way. You know, you're, yeah, I guess your mom got you started. But maybe it was just to get you out of the house because you're like a normal kid and said, I'm bored, Mom. What can I do? And she's bought you a fishing pole and said, go to the lake. And, you know, who knows? I mean, look at you now. You're CEO of one of the most prominent and well-respected wildlife conservation groups in the West.

You know, that's how simple it can start. Isn't that funny? Back, you know, back in those days, you know, that was, that was in the 60s. And it was, you know, get out of the house and I don't want to see you until dark. Yeah. So my have times changed. My kids wish I would say that. My kids wish I would say that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's, I guess, a sad state of affairs that we don't. But, you know, there's still some great places in this country that you can do so. Yeah. Up in, up in Canada as well. But yeah, you know, those, those are the times. You know, get on your bike, go somewhere and you could ride 10, 15 miles away and your mom wouldn't worry about you until, you know, if it started getting dark and you weren't home. And then you were in trouble. So tell us after college, give us kind of, you know, just that little chain of advice.

Well, you know, I, I got, I got into Xerox and I'm a salesman, I guess, to heart and did well at Xerox. And then I was recruited over to a company called Burroughs Corp, which became Unisys. And I, I guess, in some respect, I wish I'd stayed with Xerox because I absolutely love the products, love the, love the company. And I just, I did okay at Unisys, but I just, it wasn't my passion. Yeah. And in the, in the eighties, I was in California and some of the political upheaval there. Funny, I once, a good friend of mine, Jim Zumbo, and Jim asked me, how did you get into the conservation business? And I said, Jim, I got into the conservation business about how you got out of it, black guns.

So I got, I got involved in, and formed the political action committee in California in my twenties called Valley Coalition for Constitutional Rights to fight the assault weapon ban in California and a bunch of other anti-gun programs that they had going on. And, and learned early that, you know, if you had a, if you had a, a group of people behind you and had a wee bit of money, you actually had a political voice that they listened to. Wow. So I was very, very active in that. I probably spent, probably should be in the chagrin of Unisys. I spent more time working on Valley Coalition than I did selling computers.

But I was sitting in the, sitting in the, sitting in the, sitting in the, you weren't a good employee. Are you telling us you were a good employee? I was an okay employee. But I was. Your priorities were straight, is what I'm hearing. Your priorities were straight. I was a real good volunteer. Yeah. But long and short of it, I was sitting in my office in Bakersfield, California, and reading Safari Times newspaper. And they were looking, Safari Club International in 1990 was looking for someone to build a marketing program and build their membership and their chapter base. So I contacted them and said, I'd like to apply for the job. And flew in and walked into, at them, the gentleman's name was Jim Morehouse, who was the executive director. And Warren Parker was the president. I walked in with a marketing plan and said, this is what I was going to do for you.

And they, they, they, they chuckled and said, well, when can you start? Really? What do you think? What do you think they chuckled? They're just like, here's some naive whippersnapper from California walking in here, going to tell us how to run this thing. But no one had walked in with a marketing plan. Oh, I got you. And I said, this is, you know, this is, this is what I can do for you. I didn't give you the pull, but if you want the pull, you got to hire me. Yeah. Yeah. You teased them a little bit. They hired you. A little, a little bit. Well, you got to, it's one thing to have a plan, but somebody's got to initiate it and follow through. And that's what you've probably proven, you know, in your past history. That you can follow through. So, so they, they said, well, when can you start?

And guys, you know, being a, being a man with my priorities straight, I had our annual Colorado elk and deer hunt plan. And I thought, well, shoot, you know, I said, I got to get it. You know, I got to give, you know, I got to give Unisys, you know, two, three weeks notice. And, and so I risked it. I looked at Warren Parker and I said, well, guys, I've, I've got an elk hunt plan and I got to give Unisys, you know, the, the, the proper notice. So I can't start until, and I, you know, I added two weeks on to my elk hunt. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, man, is that a gutsy thing to do? I, you know, I shouldn't be doing this. And Warren in his, in his way, he kind of had a scratchy voice. Well, great. Let me tell you something. In this organization, that's a valid excuse. Well, I like the right thing. Anyway. You're hired. I worked for FBI and poured myself into it. I was a big aficionado.

I'd never been there, but a big aficionado of, of Safari and, and African hunting and dreamed of going to Africa, which is rather odd that here I sit at the CEO desk of Wild Cheat. North American. But, you know, instead of, yeah. Yeah. Instead of pouring into Jack O'Connor and, and, and those books, I was reading Rourke and Bell and Capstick and Boddington. And anyway, it suited me. I was very, very, uh, enjoyed, uh, SCI left there after seven years. Uh, I joined them when they had 15,000 members and I departed as their membership director and chapter development director with 32,000 members. So we did a, we did a good job of, of growing them with a fabulous group of volunteers. Uh, and then went to Dallas Safari Club and Dallas had about 600 members and 200 booths when I went there in, uh, about November, 1997.

And after a wonderful 11 years with that fabulous organization, we had grown their, their membership to nearly 4,000 people and about a thousand exhibitors. So. It's unbelievable. Had a, uh, had a, had a very good 18 year run in the Safari Club. The men, and then came, really wanted to work more in conservation and came to, uh, came to Wild Sheat Foundation in 2008. Well, that, uh, the Dallas is, is pretty interesting. Adam and I, we're going to, you know, we want to do a booth there and, and start, uh, hitting that. And it's just unbelievable how that place has grown. They've got waiting lists and people and it's just crazy. And for you to walk in at 600 members and move it to 4,000, it's just very impressive. Waiting list. Yeah. So you, because of your work, it's hard to, hard for little guys like us to get into that show.

Well, it was, it was, uh, you know, it was a, it was a fabulous and is a fabulous team effort. The DSC has their, you know, back then we called them and they still do the DSC 100 and it really wasn't 100 volunteers. It was kind of close to the 500. Yeah. Uh, but it, it was done with a culture and a, a desire to, to, you know, back then, you know, our, our man says, we don't want to be the biggest, we just want to be the best. And, um, no, it's a great, great organization and it's got an unbelievable convention now. Well, it is. And it's, uh. We've got Executive Director Corey Mason and he's doing a fabulous job. Well, and very, very unique that a, that a chapter, not a national organization, but a chapter of an, of a national organization could, can rise to that level is pretty, pretty spectacular because, you know, we all, this is the time of year we're getting into where we go to all

of our national conventions. And then there's Dallas Safari Club that's, you know, in with all the big boys, you know, a chapter, you know, in essence, but it's much more than that. So, um, was that a seamless, uh, you left right there, right to wild sheep. That's how I remember it. We knew you, uh, I guess first at Dallas SCI, but you, it was seamless, wasn't it? It went straight from there to. Yeah. And Dallas actually, Dallas broke away. Dallas, Houston, Sacramento, and South Florida broke away from SCI in 1982. Yeah. And they're their own, their own entity. Basically. Yeah. They are autonomous organizations. Uh, they're often confused as Dallas SCI, but it's really, you know, it is Dallas Safari Club. Yes. And, uh, but yeah, no, I, I, uh, I, I had a, I was on a contract back then and, and,

you know, it was, it was just time to, you know, I, I wanted to be more involved in conservation, 18 year run or at that point, 17 year run with, with the Safari Club. And we were coming into my contract with negotiations for another three year deal. And, and I announced that, you know, I, I, I don't want to renew, but I love this organization. I had a nine month notice that I needed to give. And so I gave the nine month notice and then said, look, you got a new president coming in. Why don't I spend 12 months? Um, you know, cause I love the, you know, I love the organization. I love the problem with leaving. And so I, I gave an effect a year's notice and we, uh, we started a first, you know, a search and hired Ben Carter and Ben kind of took it to the new, the next level after me. So it was, uh, it was, it was a seamless departure for, from Dallas because we had,

at that we'd hired a deputy executive director, if you will. Uh, and so he worked under me and then I left, uh, the end of March and took a month off to get married and moved to Wyoming. And a lot of May, May 1st. Jeez. That's like, that's like you're 20 years old, 20 years old all over again. Got married, new chapter in your life, move, new house. Took Kelly on a honeymoon to Cody, Wyoming. Yeah. There you go. Well, we did, we did go bone fishing. Oh, okay. We, uh, we, uh, we got married, we married in February, had to come back to work. And then, uh, yeah, we took off, went bone fishing and then I started in Cody, Wyoming with wild sheep boundaries. So, well, and you know, Dallas, one last little plug for Dallas Safari Club is there, they've got a New Mexico chapter now. I couldn't, I was shocked. I just learned that yesterday. Yeah. Yeah.

They've, they've started, they've actually got one up in Maine as well. Oh, do they? Yeah. Okay. So they've, they've, uh, they branched out again, doing, uh, doing an exceptional job and hats off, hats off to them. So now to the current Wild Sheep Foundation, did they approach you or did you apply? How did you, how did you, how did that happen? And then? I, I had, uh, I had, uh, I had this wild hair that, uh, that I could be a consultant. And so, uh, I was going to hang out a shingle. I wanted to move to Wyoming. I'd given a speech in, and actually in CIC in Europe and a member of, uh, Sheep Foundation back then had heard, it was still Fanaaz back then. And I said, I was going to move to Wyoming and do some consulting work. I had no idea what the heck I was going to do. And so anyway, long and short of it, it had come, uh, you know, I poured myself into Dallas

Safari Club for the last year. And the summer before my departure, which was going to be the end of, end of, uh, March, uh, I realized that I had really no gig set up for the future. I was going to go into the convention crunch time of the fall of, of 2007. And I might find myself at the end of March sitting there in Dallas or somewhere in Wyoming with nothing. So, um, I did start visiting with a few people and, and at the time visited with Dan Boone, who was a president elect of Fanaaz at the time. And he said, well, we'd like to hire you as a consultant. And I thought, well, at least I got a gig here. And then DSC said that, you know, they'd like me to stay on and do some consulting work for them. So, okay, well maybe, maybe I could still be in grits and beans. And in the fall, I was actually working, uh, with Andy Hoxie of the Rocky Mountain Health

Foundation and possibly working for them. And, uh, in the fall of 20, uh, 2007, uh, Ray Lee, uh, the, uh, the president CEO of, uh, of Fanaaz announced that he was going to resign. And so we worked a little different program and I agreed to come on in May of 2008 as his president CEO. So I worked with, uh, then it was Lou Rupp, the president of Fanaaz later to become Wild Chief Foundation and Dan Boone. So of course that was during a very, very tumultuous time for the foundation. Um, I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. Let's, let's talk about it a little. Old, old garbage, but no, but I think, I think, I think we should talk about it a little bit. I think it's, it shows, I mean, you're still there, you're still cranking it stronger and strong as it's ever been. And sometimes those rough times, uh, help, help companies or foundations or whatever grow and be solid and unified.

It unifies people, it unifies your followers and the people that support you. And so I think it, looking back on it during the time was pretty rough, but looking back on it, I'd just like to know your thoughts. If you think it was healthy, if you, you know, uh, rather not talk about it or think about it at all. And glad those times are over. No, I think you're, I think you're spot on. And, and, and what it does is it, it, you know, and I'll give a few vignettes on why it did have an important and positive impact on, on Wild Sheep Foundation. Because what it does is have us now keep a laser focus on our mission and purpose. But back in 2005, I think it was, uh, the industry got word that there was a, uh, intellectual property dispute between FNAWS and Grand Slam Club Ovis. Yeah. Uh, Dennis Campbell served on the board of directors of FNAWS, uh, and Gisto, um, operated within,

I think at that point, it might just have been Grand Slam Club, but it may be a little odd. I guess it was Gisto. So he had added Ovis. Um, and they kind of operated within the, the, uh, the foundation of North America Wild Sheep. Uh, the Grand Slam Club had a booth at the show. Uh, Dennis was the record keeper for the, uh, Grand Slam, um, recognition. Yeah. Uh, the Grand Slam Awards were given at the FNAWS convention, but Dennis, uh, decided, um, that he was going to go on his own. And, which, you know, he has every right to do so. Um, and he, at the time, uh, had, he owned the rights to Grand Slam Club. Um, but the Grand Slam moniker had not been trademarked. It had been used, um, by a number of companies in a number of ways. Uh, you know, Easton Archery had it. Hoyt Archery had it. Major League Baseball. Yeah, I mean. Breakfast at Denny's. You know, Major, Major League Baseball.

Denny's. Denny's. The Grand Slam breakfast. Denny's. World Championship tennis. Right. You know, but funny enough, I hear that Andre August is actually the owner of the term Grand Slam as it applies to tennis. Oh. I'm not sure if that's absolutely, but just kind of a little one of those trivia things. Yeah. Anyway, long and short of it, Dennis, uh, Dennis copyrighted, uh, the term Grand Slam. As it pertains to hunting? And Super Slam. Which, yes. With respect to sheep. The four North American, yeah. Four North American wild sheep. So, uh, and he also trademarked a term that was used by the International Sheep Hunters Association, which is now defunct, called ISHA, uh, which was the Super Slam, which was the Grand Slam plus, uh. International. Another eight. Eight other world sheep. Yeah. World sheep. And so, anyway, he, he did it. He did it legally, and he did it.

Now, you know, if anyone can argue about the, whether it's right or wrong. Ethics of it. And I'm not going to sit here and argue that. He did it. Yeah. He did it legally. Sure, sure. And, but at the time, you know, it was a term that people had been using, and they said, well, you can't do that. Well, yeah, he did. And unfortunately, Fanaas continued to use the term. Because you always had, and it's all we'd ever rolled off our tongues. But, hey, how many sheep do you need for your slam? Or, when did you get your slam? I mean, it's just what we always ever said. Yeah. So, long and short of it, after a cease and desist letter and a few other burps and mistakes made along the way, instead of settling this, two organizations within our own community got in a row, split, and then got into a lawsuit. Yeah. And I was actually interviewing with Dan and Lou before they went to court, and I said,

now, you guys, you're going to settle this, aren't you? But, I mean, come on. You're like, what are you getting me into? Yeah. What am I jumping into here? Jeez. Let's not waste conservation dollars on, you know, what we call four dead sheep. Sure. You know, and that's really what we were talking about. So, long and short of it, they didn't. They got into a lawsuit. They lost.

And they lost a jury trial. They lost another judgment on it. And then, sadly, continued to fight. And this is when I was with them. I'm trying to settle the thing. And they decided maybe a different attorney.

And I resigned. I actually resigned and accepted the executive director position at the Bar Club International back in 2010. And I said, I'm not going to, if we're going to continue to fight this thing, I'm not going to be a part of it. I'm not going to waste any more. Not on my watch. Yeah. Anyway, the good news is, cooler heads prevailed.

I ended up rescinding my resignation. Stayed on. But I just thought it was the only honorable thing to do. Because at the time, their leadership, the Sheep Foundation leadership said, no, you're not going to work with Dennis anymore on solving this. We're just going to fight it. And, you know, I mean, if you can't be a CEO, then you need to step down. And so I offered them to step down. And I said, no, actually, we need you. We want you to stay. Well, it's good. It's good. You settle it. It's good because you brought a different perspective. You were from the outside. Yeah, you weren't. When you're right in the middle of the fight, I mean, you can't back down. You get tough guys that are businessmen that have, you know, built their empires in each of their, you know, respective industries. And they're just smart men that just don't back down. That's not what you do.

That's not these guys' personality. So it's nice that you came in as a third party from a little bit different perspective and could help that.

Well, and, you know, so here's the silver lining. And hence the story on Dark Times.

You know, we then, I kept, one of the statements I'd made to the board early on is, you know, you all, you all need to get Dennis Campbell and just go out of your rifle scope and instead put him in a rearview mirror. And finally, in October, November of 2010, Dennis and I agreed on a settlement that I think was going to be a little bit. It was fair. It was fair to just go. They had rightfully won. Both organizations had suffered greatly. The only persons that really won were the attorneys. Yeah. And, but we, you know, we decided, and one thing that was nice as part of the settlement was joint conservation projects. Earlier, I had a deal that would have been about $600,000, but that got torpedoed by some poor moves.

But anyway, at the end, we had $300,000, but instead of just going to disco as part of a settlement, was going to go to conservation and our industry from both organizations with WSF writing the check. So it was kind of a, you know, Dennis, let's, let's do something to apologize to our community for being, so it took, it took two to tango, you know, it took two, you know, you know, what's in a sandbox comparing their, you know, what. Yeah. And we, you know, so he agreed and rightfully, so we, you know, Keith Foundation funded the project, and for three years, we co-funded about $100,000, you know, or at least co-credited. Initiated, whatever it is. You're both involved. Yeah, Keith Foundation wrote the check because it was, you know, we were the one that lost.

And so the good news is, is, you know, Dennis and I have kind of a hot phone, a red phone, and if there's ever a problem, my pledge to him was I'm going to pick up the phone and call him. His pledge to me is he's going to pick up the phone to call me, and, you know, we just got through a situation where Dallas Safari Club, here my old buddies, actually put their convention on top of ours in 2019, and I learned it five days before Christmas. We just saw that last night. I know. We saw that. We saw you guys, they're moving to mid-January. You guys are back into February, and main SCIs in the first of the January. It's like, it's got to be a lot to juggle. Don't get me wrong. It's not easy. But you guys are always in January. To move it to February is kind of a big deal, and so it just, I can see how you got, people don't, shouldn't, don't want to and shouldn't schedule on top of each other.

It's tough. Well, you know, so, hey, I understand that Dallas had a problem, you know, but just don't wait two years to tell us, and we find out five days before Christmas and a year out. So, anyway, we got it sorted out, but the moral of the story is one of our options was to move on top of disco in 2019, and I immediately reached out to Dennis Campbell and said, hey, Dennis, I got a problem, and here's the situation. Here's my, but, you know, tell you what, I just want to confirm your 2019 dates. Yeah. And if those are correct, then we would be on top of you, and we're not going to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And he appreciated it. So, you know, so here, you know, you know, we're obviously, we're not the biggest friendly organizations in the past, but you know what? For the industry. Yeah.

We all need to work together, and the three of us on this phone know that, you know, as Benjamin Franklin said, you know, we better hang together because we will surely hang separately. So, you know, the good news is that, you know, yes, it is a puzzle trying to fit the big shows together, Dallas, SCI, Wild Sheep, Shot, WHCE. I mean, you know, and it's, you know, there's all kind of a succession of the shows that work, and Houston Safari Club need to throw, you know, they're great organizations, throw them in. But anyway, so I spent five days before Christmas on the phone with Houston, Dallas, SCI, and Gisco, and we got all the dates sorted out, and we've got on the Wild Sheep Foundation website. Oh, I just printed it out last night. It's nice. It lets us plan stuff. Yeah, we're the keepers of the, I started that back at Dallas, and I just kept it going at Sheep just so we could all know.

Yep, for years down the road. Here's the shows. So, anyway. Oh, it's very nice. Schedule clear out. But here's the final on the Gisco side. You know, I made the comment that, you know, nowhere in our old mission statement was there anything about what you call four dead sheep. We upgraded our mission statement and updated it in 2012. Well, we review it every single year at our spring meeting. Every board meeting, I go through our mission statement to include the vision, a purpose, a mission, and our corporate values. And I ask our board and demand that our board view and judge their discussions, their deliberations, and their decisions through the prism of that mission statement during a one-day meeting or a two-day meeting.

Every single office and every single public space in the Wild Chief Foundation headquarters in Bozeman and our satellite office in Cody has a mission statement on the wall. And, you know, I can assure you that those dark times of 2005 to 2010 are reflected in that there will not – that garbage will not happen again. Yeah, that's galvanized the mission statement and had it maybe more to the fore. You know, it's not just a here's a two-sentence mantra we put in our magazine to say we live by or whatever. We actually really are trying to govern the whole – steer the whole ship with that right out on the windshield, basically. Yeah, and I've got it pulled up here.

It says on your mission statement, we enhance wild sheep populations, promote scientific wildlife management, educate the public and youth on sustainable use and the conservation benefits of hunting while promoting the interests of hunter.

You know, does that change or is that something you're going to – you stick to that same mission statement from here on out or – You know, we review it. So, you know, for example, the vision we have not changed. The purpose used to – you know, the purpose of wild sheep, you know, fanahs back then was to put sheep on the mountain. Well, we put a lot of sheep on the mountain, about 24,000 sheep and about 1,400 actions. But as disease became more and more the issue that was impeding the enhancement of wild sheep, we added keep. So that was – To put in keep. Before my time. So put in keep sheep on the mountain. And then just last year, actually 2016, we added wild. We'd gone back and forth and back and forth on, you know, everyone knows what it is. Well, some people don't. Maybe better – yeah, you don't want the – We're the domestic sheep guys.

You don't want the wool industry to say, well, you're right there. It says you're going to keep sheep on the mountain and now you're trying to take them right off. You want to clarify what you really mean. You want to buy me out and get these domestics out of your sheep. I don't get it. Exactly. And so – and then, you know, we tweak back also in 2016 in October board meeting. We tweak – it used to say promote professional wildlife management. We changed the term to scientific. So, you know, our mission statement – and we learned this actually from Larry Potterfield at Midway USA. And we modeled our mission statement off of his and plagiarized greatly. And I gave him all the credit and said, Larry, we're going to do this. He says, go for it.

But made it ours. But his mission statement has a vision, a purpose, a mission, and values. And we do. We take them seriously. You know, we look at the values. And we have made decisions on who we work with and what we do based on those corporate values. I'm going, well, wait a minute. Those – you know, that group or that entity or that outfit does not share the same values that we have. So we will not work with them or we won't go into partnership with them. So we take it seriously. You know, we look at it every – you know, it's not just window dressing. It's not just something in the magazine. It's something that we look at at every board meeting and go, okay, we're going to – you know, we're going to – we're going to act through the prism of this mission statement. And then annually we make sure that it's still relevant.

You know, Larry Potterfield of Midway USA used to be a catalog company. Yeah. Yeah. Well, now they're primarily an online company. So they changed their mission statement to say we are a online – so anyway. Well, things change as we roll a little bit. But the gist of it is there. Yeah. And throughout, you know, throughout my life and obviously the last 20 years primarily being a lot more involved in sheep and loving sheep and outfitting for sheep and just loving sheep. You mentioned something earlier about what's changed. And that is a lot about the research and what we know about wild sheep and specifically diseases and pathogens that affect them and separation between domestic sheep and goats.

And so having all that be reflected more accurately in what your mission and your theme and vision and all that is shows – so you're alive and working and, yeah, not resting on what you thought you know. You're resting on what you want to know now but what you want to know more of or know in the future. Well, you're so right. I mean, every time we turn over another rock on this disease issue, you know, we find, you know, four more rocks that need to be looked at, addressed, and dealt with. But, you know, it kind of gets back to where, you know, we have become laser-focused on our mission. Our fundraising is laser-focused in a conference in a mission. And, you know, we've got a fairly small footprint as an organization. You know, we're only about 7,000 members. But we annually raise and direct to our mission program more than $4 million a year.

Last year we did $4.71 million directed to mission program. $18.1 million that this little organization that loves sheep directed to wild sheep conservation in the last four years. That – that's a bomb product. Oh, it is. And you're right. And there's other single-species organizations we know. There's Mule Deer Foundation. There's Rocky Mountain Out Foundation. There's NWTF. Turkeys. You know, there's those. But you're – you are a – even a smaller niche of a single species because of the – you know, there's not millions and millions of elk or sheep like there are deer and elk. You've got a lot – you know, not smaller pool. And you're pulling from people that, yeah, they may dream or want to hunt sheep. But until somebody gets to taste sheep hunting, usually maybe through drawing a permit in a western state, they don't – it doesn't usually click.

And I see this a lot of times as an outfitter is I maybe take people on their first sheep hunt and then just watch them go hog wild for the next five or ten years trying to drive every tag they can or save their pennies to go up north. And so you're dealing with a species that people are very passionate about. But it's not widespread. Not everybody gets to partake of it. Everybody's a mule deer hunter. Sheep hunters are mule deer hunters. Sheep hunters are elk hunters. But elk and deer hunters aren't always sheep hunters. You're just dealing with a smaller niche group. So you have to make a lot of what you have. And you hit – you know, your membership isn't what an RMF can. And there's reasons like we just discussed for that. But the membership that you have and, you know, the money you can raise with such a low membership is astounding.

And anybody that's gone to the sheep show – and we'll get to the sheep show here in a minute – or other local chapter and affiliate events, it's not hard to pick up and realize that how passionate sheep hunters are about what they love to do and what they love to put their money to and all that. Yeah, and I think what's awesome, great, too, is obviously during the lawsuit and some of that, you came – you know, the financial end of the organization was questioned to a degree and challenged, to put it lightly. And so to be – now we're in 2018. You guys are cranking. You are putting and keeping wild sheep on the mountain and able to do so with, you know, a financial stability that once wasn't there. And so anyway, I think that's impressive and goes a lot toward the validity of the organization.

Well, and you guys nailed it just on the, you know, the passion that, you know, sheep hunters or, you know, or aspiring sheep hunters. And that's, you know, that's the thing. I mean, you – you know, there's – there's such an aspirational side to our organization. You know, we have the Less Than One Club. We've got, you know, 1,300 aspirational sheep hunters that pile – and we'll probably have 1,500 in the room. We're doing it in the Expo Hall this year in Reno for our Less Than One Club reception that will give away, you know, three doll sheep hunts to those that haven't yet taken a sheep. And that's just – that's so exciting. You know, that is so exciting. So, you know, and it's either good and bad. You know, we joke about sheep fever and all that. But, I mean, that happened to me. I took – I went sheep hunting for the first time in 2000. Didn't really take it seriously.

I was living in Dallas. I was not in the shape I should have been. I mean, I thought that I could hike around in my Kofak boots and a backpack, you know, maybe for 30 minutes on the flat ground in Dallas and be in shape. And it kicked my you-know-what. And it wasn't 13 years later that I went on my second sheep hunt and got around. But it did. It changed. It absolutely changed my life. And there is something about sheep. You know, there's just no doubt about it. And, you know, you do. You know, you're applying for all the places that you possibly could draw. And it's exciting when someone does. And if you can go on a sheep hunt and help a buddy, that's almost just as good as going with yourself or with me and my stupid problem right now is I got a wife that's a sheep hunter. So, you know, another reason why I'll be working until I'm 100 years old.

You've got your finals and now she wants hers. Absolutely. Absolutely. She's like, you can't even think about sheep hunting until, you know, until me. You're talking about your lack of retirement. Your lack of your retirement net funds. But how fabulous is it to be in the mountains and share, and you guys know it, but, you know, to share that passion with someone's love. So, I just, you know, so anyway, very blessed. And, yes, you know, no retirement, but, you know what, we're going to be sheep hunting. But, Gray, I want to talk just a little bit, just break down for their listeners. A lot of them are not maybe members of WSF, although we're encouraging them to be. Just give us the basics. Obviously, you've got the mothership up in Bozeman. And then how do the other chapters and affiliates work?

I know, like, they've got their own, a lot of them are broke off on their own a little bit, but you're endorsing them to a degree. And then let's talk about that and then the funds and then choosing some of the projects. And some of the projects you're currently working on are planning. Let's just kind of give a basic breakdown of that. Well, somewhat unique, well, I guess it is unique, when FNAWS was creating its chapter structure, first, there were organizations like FNAWS already out there. Fraternity of the Desert Bighorn, Rocky Mountain Bighorn Society, great regional organizations focusing, you know, in the fraternity, you know, on Desert Bighorn Sheep, on the Bighorn Society in Colorado. Yeah, NBU, Nevada Bighorn. You know, I mean, you had these organizations out there, you know, the FNAWS started in 1977 as a mother ship.

But our chapters, even with, you know, there's affiliates that don't share our name, but our chapters were set up, for whatever reason, completely autonomous. So, you know, as a Montana chapter member, I'm not a member, and that could be Montana chapter of the Wild Sheep Foundation or back then FNAWS. I was not a member of FNAWS, apparently. Of National. Yeah, of National. Even though you were of the state, the individual state. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So strange, you know, and I mean, that's a podcast on its own on why. But so anyway, what we've done over the course of the last four or five years anyway is, you know, look at different ways that we can bring our community kind of within the fold. So we created a joint membership program that really is based on SCI's structure.

And we've got eight chapters and affiliates that are now taking part in it where we provide their membership, renewal, and fulfillment services. And those are called joint chapters and affiliates. And those organizations, when you join them, you're also a member of the National. So we have discounted regular membership and discounted live membership. So you go on our website and you see kind of a tiered approach. You know, you sign up for joining the Wild Sheep Foundation at what would be $45 annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. And you type in your zip code and it recognizes, hey, you're in Las Vegas, Nevada. Would you like to join the Fraternity of the Desert Bigborn as well? Well, knock five bucks off of the Sheep Foundation dues and knock five bucks off the fraternity dues. Link the two together. And now you're a member of a local group, a regional group that's got work projects to do.

They've got regional meetings, regional activities. And you're a member of the mothership that's doing work all over North America and around the world. So that's working out really well. And it's helped us increase our membership and reach. And it's provided a great service to those chapters and affiliates that are now using the staff at Wild Sheep Foundation to do their fulfillment. Because, you know, no one in a chapter wants to lick envelopes and send out renewal. And so generating revenue, you generate it largely from the convention, donors, all kinds of, you know, is that, I mean, that's basically that. And then you have some membership dues, but for the most part, it's the convention that we're talking about here, January 18th to the 20th. Yes. Our funding model is, you know, I call it a bake sale for conservation. It's similar to Dallas, similar to FCI.

You know, we basically operate at a loss, if you will, operationally. Because membership dues don't, you know, from membership dues, you're not going to put $4.7 million on the ground. That's right. You know, you're just not. We know that. So our bake sale is our annual convention. It's coming up in Reno, as you said, the 18th through 20th of January at the Reno Sparks Convention Center. We've got banquets starting actually Wednesday the 17th and go through Saturday. Sure. And the funding model there is similar to, you know, similar to the other national organizations. You know, we've got a big expo that you, you know, you, you know, we rent the hall and then we sublease the space to exhibitors and just fabulous group of exhibitors there. Then we have our auctions. And where Wild Sea Foundation is unique is, you know, we have the special permits.

We've got 31 special permits that we sell primarily for, you know, there's other great organizations, Yule Deer Foundation, SFW, that are selling, you know, Yule Deer tags and elk tags at WHCE. But, you know, our two organizations or our two events are kind of the premier, you know, the marquee permit sales. So, we do and sell about, you know, we're selling 31 special permits this year. We will direct a little over $3.2, $3.3 million to state, provincial, and tribal agencies from those permit sales. So, those are, some of them are complete pass-throughs, you know, Wild Sea Foundation sells it and directs 100% of it to, you know, to Nevada or Arizona. Where statute requires that, yeah. Or some state statutes and other times you get 5% or 10% or whatever the state allows to keep it for marketing. Yeah. Yeah. Typically 10%.

And then we turn around and, you know, when you do the math, okay, so we do $3 million in permits, but we did $1.7 million or $4.7 million in contributions and grant made to mission programs. Well, where does the $1.7 comes from? Yeah. You know, $3 million from permits, there's another $1.7 that WSF directed to mission programs from operational dollars. That comes from the, you know, the net proceeds from the convention, you know, the exhibitors, the auctions, the raffles, the drawings. The selling hunts, yeah. And then, and then our donors, you know, we have donor societies that just, you know, the altruism of the Wild Sheep Foundation member never ceases to evade. Yeah. Yeah. And we, we have our Marco Polo Society, our Legacy Society, and our Chadwick Ram Society.

Our Chadwick Ram Society, we doubled in size last year, and we have a goal of 100 new Chadwick Ram Society members enlisting at our show in Reno. And as a little, a little kiss, we purchased a full boat stone sheep hunt with Yukon Stone Outfitters. It includes the charter flight, the, the license and tag fees, you know, about a $50,000 package. And one of our Chadwick Ram Society members, either current or new, is going to win it when we draw it in, at our Chadwick Ram Society. And our Chadwick Ram Society in June. And what does it, what does it take to, to, what does it pledge for Chadwick Ram? I mean, I know, I know Marco Polo is different. It's basically what the different labels are, different donation levels. Yeah, the Marco Polo is for those real, real heady guys, not us regular folks. But Marco Polo Society is a $100,000 gift to Wild Sheep Foundation.

You can break that down into 10 years, $10,000. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a, that's a tough nut to crack. Um, our goal is 100, uh, Marco Polo Society members. We currently have 58. So we've got 40, 42 to go. I created the, the Chadwick Ram Society in 2013 in the fall to give us regular folks an opportunity to give and be in a society. So that society is, at the starting level, um, $2,500 or $250 a year for 10 years. Yeah. Up to $50,000 or $5,000 a year of a tax deductible donation over 10 years. Yeah. And what we're doing on this hunt is for every $250 that you paid into your pledge. Uh-huh. Now, so every $250 that you paid into your pledge, you get a ticket into the drawing for the hunt. Yeah. Bonus points almost for every $250 you've spent. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. So, anyway, work that well.

We're going to have a Chadwick Ram Society area near our membership booth with couches and displays and people telling you about it. But, you know, we take that money. And there's three places you could dedicate it. You could put it into the area of greatest need and often we'll go into our Conservation Revolving Fund or our grant aid program. Or you can direct it to our endowment fund, which is a completely endowed fund that the principal or the corpus can never be touched. And we take about 4% off per year. Yeah. 4% off a year that we direct into our grant aid program or our conservation fund, which is a quasi-endowed fund. We treat it as an endowment. We invest it like an endowment. We take 4% off per year. But if, for example, we find through Tom Besser at Washington State University the silver bullet that could solve the domestic sheep, wild sheep disease issue,

we have the ability through a two-thirds majority vote of the board to use those donor dollars and direct 1.5 million or whatever into Tom's research. So, three buckets we put it in. That's smart. I mean, I've been involved a little bit to, you know, at the state level of our organization. And because of that, I've attended some of the meetings where you and your board have explained some of that. And the foresight, you know, for what if and when we need this, how can we tap into it is very well thought out. And, you know, obviously, as we talked about already, a lot of great minds and we're a lot of great businessmen. We're usually board members or just passionate sheep people. A lot of people that know how to, you know, where you've come in the last six, eight years since, you know, call it rock bottom, so to speak, to the stability and the counts.

I mean, you guys publish that every year in the Wild Sheep magazine. It's very astounding. And one thing I want to point out, we've kind of dived into it, is how really commendable I believe it is how you guys have tried to include everybody. We all know that sheep are expensive critters to manage. They aren't elk. The elk just take care of themselves, but sheep don't. And so they need a lot of looking after. And unfortunately, that, for the time being, is just probably not going to change, both from a research and disease standpoint and separation and, you know, real estate and land acquisition and all those types of things. And so there's a lot of money that's needed, and those donors are much appreciated. But the Chadwick, you know, society gives another opportunity for people to $250 a year donation or whatever they feel like on up.

And I think along with those lines, what Adam's talking about is including everybody. It's easy to listen to the podcast and say, I'm not the $100,000 guy. That's crazy. I'm not even the $5,000 guy a year. That's crazy. And it's not just a rich guy's sport, even though you've developed these different programs and you need to and we're glad. And I'm actually personally thankful that you're doing that because sometimes, as hunters, we get to reap the rewards of that when you're putting and keeping sheep on the mountain. It feels inclusion. But to attend the convention, you can walk the floor for $20, and that is appreciated as well from you guys. And anything and anybody and everybody is welcome within the Wild Sheep Foundation.

And depending on your stage in life, if you're newly married and going through college or whatever, your $20 donation and be able to walk the floor and participate with Wild Sheep is appreciated. As well as as you grow in life, if you choose to donate and pledge more funds as life changes for everybody and all of us, then that's appreciated. And so I think it's important to realize there's people that donate time. Maybe they don't have as much money as they have time, and they're donating time and working with guzzlers and their local chapters or Wild Sheep Foundation is the whole and the mothership on it. And so I just want to reiterate that as long as Adam's talking about that. Yeah, very commendable how the inclusion. And anybody that goes to the sheep show usually doesn't just go once and say, ah, that wasn't as fun as I thought it was going to be.

I go because you know so many people there for most of the time you see them face to face maybe once a year. And they're talking deer and elk too. Yeah. They're not just, I mean. Yeah, whether it's an outfitter you've hunted with or just another sportsman or an outfitter from up north that only come down here to a few shows. And you guys have been very good about having, you know, you have a ladies event there. You know, you have, you know, it's only for women. I mean, well, there's a couple of men there and then they're, you know, but they're usually like John Bear and others that are there to help raise money and auctions and things like that. But it's, you know, the ladies have their room where they can just go have a great time. And then you have a life member breakfast. And, you know, that's another, you know, $1,000 membership gets you that life member.

And a summit life member, $2,500. You know, the annual membership, just $45. And then you touched on the less than one club, which, you know, those aspiring sheep hunters, you know, a minimal contribution. I can't remember, you know, Gray, you can clear $40, $50 or $100, whatever it is. Yeah, $20, $25 to join the less than one club. Yeah, yeah. Mike Winnish. Well, you know, you look at, you know, you look at, you know, your local organization there. You know, Utah Wild Sheep Foundation. And you, you know, you look at the young, you know, I couldn't come this year. I apologize for that. But, you know, just the young guys and gals that I see at Utah Wild Sheep Foundation, you know, and are they, you know, are they sheep hunters? Yes, they might be. You know, that's the sad thing about sheep hunting.

You know, when you typically have the wherewithal to do it, you don't have the legs and lungs. But, you know, we looked at that and I looked at that and we see that out in the, you also see a lot of it in Canada because they have over-the-counter opportunities to hunt sheep. But we looked at what, you know, what can we do within, you know, the national convention? So we reinstated a backpack race, indoor backpack race. It's awesome. Absolutely hilarious. It is. And I just... And the young guys and gals, you know, the men's division, the women's division, we then created the old parts division. But, you know, the young guys and gals, and I was there a couple years ago watching. I thought, don't be stupid, Gray, and go wreck out your knees. Yeah. Well, don't enter.

And I'm watching and there was, you know, an old guard from Oz that looked over at me, kind of, you know, motioned to me to walk over to him. And he goes, look at the age of these people. And I go, yeah. And he goes, you know what? There's hope. There's hope. And that's exciting. And I see that. I see that in Utah, too. Yeah. You know, that's... You know, you go to WHCE, it's a family-friendly environment. The Wild Sheep Foundation is a family-friendly environment. We have a youth wildlife conservation experience that we do for kids on Thursday and Friday and then open it up to the public and kids on Saturday that, you know, that brings the family down to the show, gets them involved, gets them interested. And as you guys have said, you know, it's a... We call it the Wild Sheep Foundation's family.

You know, the whole thing is, you know, sure, there's adult, you know, adult environments at the show. Appropriate adult environments. Not inappropriate adults. But, you know, there's adult environments at the show. It is a family-friendly... Yeah, it is. ...or family-friendly. And, you know, that is what's going to ensure the future of our heritage. Yeah. Yeah, you got it. Making sure that we've got young people that feel comfortable. Well, and you get them a taste of it now. They have a good time. And all those things, you know, we kind of did a real crash of what you guys do at the Sheep Show. And it's obviously on your website at wildsheepfoundation.org. But there is something for everybody. There really is. And it's not one of these, you go there and you feel like, well, geez, I'm getting my, you know,

everybody's thumbing their nose at me because I'm in my blue jeans and I'm walking around here for the first time dreaming about, you know, these white rams and dark rams and, hey, where do I ever get to hunt one? It's just not like that. And if you go there, you'll know what it's about. And, you know, with sheep hunting, you know, and that's why... The only reason I even started taking hunters here in Utah or Nevada is I'm not going to probably hunt them enough in my life to quench my thirst, I guess, for hunting sheep. And so my brother and I, we started taking them. And that's the only reason, honestly. I mean, you get some monetary benefit from it. But if I didn't love it so much, I definitely wouldn't do it. There's a lot of other ways to just, you know, pay bills. So it's, there's something about it and you get a taste of it.

And, you know, maybe their kid, I'm looking forward to now, Jason and I, Jason's killed his four rams. I've got one lacking, but now we've got our kids that are kind of coming up to hunting age. And, you know, it's at some point, maybe lightning strikes and boom, the fire gets lit. And, you know, just going along on a sheep hunt. But it's like Adam saying, four isn't enough, you know. And, like, you know, great. But you can save your money and you can kill two or three or four or five doll sheep and continue to sheep hunt a bit. But it's just, it's hard to quench your thirst. We can deer and elk hunt every year. In fact, we can deer and elk hunt three and four times a year. And so, anyway, it's hard to get enough. But I want to kind of move to, you know, we forgot the convention. We generated the revenue. Now what do you do with the revenue? How do you choose the projects?

What are you looking for in 2018? Maybe what did you do in 2017? Just a couple of, you know, highlights. Kind of highlight. What to look forward to. You know, we, I guess I'm a guy that likes kind of the vernacular at Kern. You know, I talked to our convention as a bake sale for conservation. Well, I also used to use the term cafeteria conservation. And that's kind of what a number of us organizations would do. You know, we would raise money. We would dedicate a certain percentage of the funds to grant aid projects. And then we would wait for other organizations, for, you know, state, provincial, tribal agencies to request funds from us. So we started something a little different. And, you know, we thought, wait a minute. We, you know, we are first and foremost a conservation organization. We're obviously a first and foremost an organization focused on wild sheep.

And admittedly, we're an organization that, for the most part, does most of our work on North America wealth. But we get it. I mean, we do fund some international projects. We've got some more in the mix now where I can talk about it. But we started a process of going, okay, we want a strategic plan. Every organization wants one. You know, you usually, you know, bring somebody into a room. You have a facilitator. You get a bunch of bright ideas. You come out with this wonderful plan. It sits in a binder. It's put on a shelf. We did a little different task. We said, wait a minute. We're a conservation organization. We could have business plans for fundraising, business plans for our convention. But what is our plan for North American wild sheep? So we created our North American Conservation Vision 2020. And we did it five, six years ago to say, where are we going to be in 2020?

So we had thin horn projects and big horn projects. The thin horn projects back in 2013, as we were discussing, you know, this process, and thought, you know, we do so much and we talk so much about bighorn sheep. But half of the wild sheep in North America are thin horns, stones and dolls. Twenty-five percent of the wild sheep in North America are in one state, Alaska. And what are we doing for them? What are we doing? Well, we really didn't do much for them. We talked about them a little bit. We knew that, you know, from a historical standpoint, their distribution was about the same. But are there issues that we should be addressing? So we created, it was in 2014, we held the inaugural. We held a thin horn summit in Richmond, D.C. and brought about 70 to 80 of the brightest thin horn mines from all across their range,

from Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory, Alaska, and northern D.C. and got them in a room and started addressing issues per jurisdiction. And we came up with a, you know, a set of priorities that we were going to do for thin horn sheep. Now, we didn't have to have a summit. Interesting enough, we just had our second thin horn summit. We had it in Anchorage in April of 2017, where we revisited, you know, those priorities and then got an update from each jurisdiction on where they're going. You know, for example, Alaska had not updated their management plan for doll sheep in over 40 years. Jeez. So, you know, you got oil prices low, you got state budget issues. I said, we don't have any money. We go, well, that's not really going to be a problem because Wild Sheep Foundation is going to come in with $100,000. 60 of it we got from a partnership with Safari Club International Foundation.

And we directed $100,000 to Alaska Gaining Fish. But before doing that, worked it through the PNR Act folks within the feds and got a three-to-one match. So here, you know, Alaska now has $400,000 to do a doll sheep management plan. So they're, you know, so they're addressing doll sheep in Alaska. They've now made it a priority. We're doing the same thing in northern B.C. and Yukon Territory and Northwest Territory. We just funded a $100,000 project working with the Tautan Central Government, which is a first nation in northern B.C., on doing the first stone sheep monitoring project and a disease project that's been done in northern B.C. where, you know, we just had not paid attention to thin horns. Yeah. We also established something called no contact in the north. And as we start discussing the issues with bighorns and disease, we basically drew the line.

And through some pretty visionary folks like Jack Atchison, Jr., who, you know, pointed out, look, guys, gals, there's 25% of all wild sheep who are in one state. Could you imagine if we let microplasma over pneumonia run rampant in Alaska and wipe out 40,000 to 50,000 doll sheep? It'd be unimaginable.

You know, geez, I mean, we had, you know, in North America, turn of, you know, just the turn of the last century. I mean, there's estimated we had one to two million Rockies, Californians, and deserts running around. Yeah. We got as low in the 1960s and 70s as 25,000. I mean, we decimated. We did it. We did it with disease. Well, we brought them back to 85,000. But you start looking at, hey, it's not unrealistic to lose an entire species through disease. So that's something we've been doing on the thin horn. And on the big horn, it's primarily, primarily trapping transplants, primarily disease work, buyouts of grazing allotments on a willing seller, willing buyer, a lot of advocacy pushing policy on big horn sheep. Sadly, we're almost to a point that there are very few, if any, safe places to repatriate big horn sheep due to the potential conflict with domestic sheep.

Yeah, I know we're about out of them in Utah. And that's not that there's not a lot of great habitat. But there's either urban development, like Wasatch Front, causing issues with, you know, not big flocks, but small little backyard stuff that's, you know, already reared its ugly head there, or just other places in the state that are too close to not worth the investment based on the knowledge we now know about. Probably going to go through an exercise in futility, putting big horns there and watching them flounder. Yeah, but look at how phenomenal Utah has done. I mean, you look, you know, two just incredible success stories are Utah and Nevada. I mean, Nevada in the 1960s had a remnant population of big horns, and now they have 11,000 desks in Rocky and California big horns. Yeah. You know, they've been sharing them with Utah.

I can remember sitting at the Utah Fun Oz banquet about three years ago with Greg Sheehan, who, thank goodness, is now our principal deputy director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Yeah. And I'm sitting at dinner with him there at Utah Fun Oz. He says, Gray, I want 10,000 big horns in Utah.

And, you know, he's coming to our convention, and, you know, we'll recognize him for that. But, you know, okay, I know that's not necessarily your portfolio now with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, but you can certainly be a sounding board. Yes. And let's figure out how we can get 10,000. There's a big horns in Utah. Yeah. It's going to take some hard work and it takes some money. Well, exactly. And you can, you know, you can go to every state that's had historical big horns and had the issues happen, like you said, with, you know, just the, just normal colonization of Western North America, settlement, you know, pioneer days, all that. And we didn't know what, nobody knew what they were doing, you know, bringing domestic sheep and goats out to a naive species that just didn't evolve with some of those pathogens.

But thankfully, and, you know, I know you mentioned a little bit, but you guys talked about your disease research at Washington State University. I've been there on the chapter and affiliate summit. And obviously that's years ago, but the research that's going on there and what we've learned there has really shaped, I can take, I can speak from a Utah standpoint of how the knowledge gained there and how that's affected real on the ground sheep management in Utah. Just case in point, what we've learned there through the identifying the pathogens that have caused and linking the direct transmission and then been able to test existing herds by net gunning, drawing blood, nasal swabs, turning the sheep go on site, getting disease profiles on our existing sheep herds in Utah built and established as baseline.

We now can make much better management decisions on where we can use for source populations and where you definitely do not want to use as a source population for a transplant. And where you, even if you've got clean sheep from another part of Utah or another part of Nevada, you need to try to put clean with clean or, you know, dirty with dirty. Wipe out the dirty with the clean. Exactly. Just, just on how it really affects transplants because, you know, transplants have been the saving grace. Fortunately, enough of them by, by just gut and sheer luck for the most part in the seventies, eighties worked because it wasn't based on the science we have today, but, but it was done by a lot of state and, and state agencies that just had a will to do it. And fortunately they did what they did. And otherwise, you know, the, the, the, the declines would have been even, even more rapid.

But now, like I said, the disease research, which I know national has funded greatly there at Washington state and other universities and other entities is, is being put to use on the ground in every state now to make real decisions on our own. All right. And like Utah, we're almost done with every sheep herd in the state, getting a true blood profile. You know, you, you take a sample size of an, of, of enough sheep in a unit and you get a statistically valid, um, um, or, or, or just a profile of positives or no, no negatives. And you're, and you're done. It's, it's just, it's really remarkable. And that's all happened within the last three to five years. You know, it's recent. Well, and let me tell you something that's kind of unique within, and you're spot on. I mean, you know, we keep learning more and more and more.

And just within the last two years, some novel approaches are taking place. Um, Dr. Tom Besser, who is the Rocky Craig WSF endowed chair. And I mean, you're right. The Wild Street Foundation has invested millions of dollars into this disease research. But, you know, he, he is the guru on mycoplasma ova pneumoniae or MOVI or MOVI or MOVI. And, you know, his research and his collaborators research have shown that if we can eliminate MOVI or MOVI off the landscape, it's about a 95 to 97% solution. So, that's created some interesting thought. Uh, we're doing a test project in Southern BC called Eating MOVI Off the Landscape. You can breed MOVI-free domestic sheep. Yes. And you wean them, wean them in eight weeks, keep them away from other sheep, and they become, they are MOVI-free.

And we're doing a program where we're, you know, we're testing, and it's, it's done with willing domestic sheep producers. Uh, you know, fortunately in, in, in Southern BC, I think it's only about one to two percent of the domestic sheep, uh, production is, is in or near suitable or, uh, occupied to a big horn habitat. So, it's a small, it's a small sample, which works great for this profit, you know, this pilot project. But, through our Wild Sheet Society of BC affiliate there, we are buying up MOVI-positive domestic sheep and replacing them, you know, with, with purchase, uh, MOVI-free or negative domestic sheep. Yeah. And then we butcher. Slaughter the. And give away, you know, yeah, slaughter the dirty. And as they've coined, you know, we're eating and we'll be off the landscape. They eat just fine. They taste the same. Yeah. To a person. They taste the same. It is.

It's a, it's a, you know, it's a pathogen. You know, we have pathogens in our body that we're fine with. But, you know, some, you know, hey, look at, you know, look at smallpox and, and, you know, Native American population. I mean, it's the exact same scenario. It is. You know, a naive population coming to one that has some antibodies. Yeah. Well, in Alaska, we're, we're proposing a similar, similar scenario. You know, here, here's an amazing statistic. There's about 1,400 domestic sheep and goats in Alaska. Wow. I thought it was 2,000. Their board of games said, no, it's about 1,400. There's, you know, 40 to 50,000. Doll sheep. Again, 25% of, of the North American population of all wild sheep. Would it be worth it for Alaska Wild Sheep Foundation and Wild Sheep Foundation to buy up. 1,500 sheep. Every single, 1,500 domestic stock and replace them.

And we've estimated it's going to cost anywhere from 200 to $500,000 to do so. It's going to take legislation to say you cannot bring in an MOV positive goat or sheep into Alaska. But is it worth it? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, stop it while it's small. I mean, that's a smaller problem than, you know, we can't, you know, you can't predict 10 or 15 years down the road. Something catches on up there for, you know, weed management and goats start getting flooded in up there. Whatever. You can't, you know. So 1,500 is, for all intents and purposes, a non-existent number. I mean, it's, I don't want to minimize $250,000 to $500,000 to make it happen. But it really is almost a non-existent, you know. But, yeah. But, you know. Yeah. And the sheep foundation sits there and goes, you know what? You know, for an investment of, you know, we've spent millions on disease research.

We spend millions in buyouts and advocacy in it. For $500,000 a week to solve a problem, man, we'd write to check them all. You know, there's a classic case of, hey, guys, we've got a conservation revolving fund. And we think this might be the, let's tap into it. Let's write the check. And let's make it happen. So, you know, it goes back to what you all are saying. You know, we keep learning. And as we learn, we get smarter. And we, you know, we get cleverer. And these are, you know, these are things. That's not trying to run the domestic sheep off the landscape. That's not. You know, we're a multiple-use organization. But, you know, you can't have them on, you know, you can't have both on every single acre. And there's, you know, certain uses that are compatible and certain uses that are incompatible. And domestic sheep and wild sheep don't mix. And it's obvious from listening to you.

It's intense. It's very, very, I mean, there's so much that goes into it. It's political. It's not. Some of these problems are, you know, we can solve them in a room. And then you've got to go to governors and state senators and U.S. senators. And it's scientific. It goes back to your mission statement of scientific wildlife management. There's very, they're so involved. You know, it's crazy. It's tough. It's obviously very hard to manage sheep. That's what I'm getting at. 20 or 30 words in a mission statement. But, boy, what that takes to pull off is a lot. So it's commendable. It's wearing me out listening to you. And how extensive management of sheep. Well, you know, it brings up, and we've all heard it, that, you know, bighorns are born looking for a place to die. And our job is to make them not that. Make them not die.

Make them not be born looking for a place to live out their life on the mountain. Yeah. And it takes hunting to do that. It takes people that care about sheep. You know, even though Adam's trying to guide as many hunters as he can to kill them, it's not, it's the love for sheep that, you know, it takes to, you know, to be able to manage sheep effectively and funding and being willing to help with the funding and help with the projects and all of that. It's the love of hunting sheep. Well, and, you know, kind of to cap this off, and, you know, we're doing an initiative down in Mexico, in Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and to a lesser extent, it's already happening in Baja. But, you know, they can, due to a, you know, it's different from where we are. You know, we're now, for the most part, talking about a private land scenario.

Because, but because of a private land opportunity and the ownership of the animals, again, different from the North American wildlife conservation model, which we all love and hold dear. But this is giving us the opportunity to work with landowners who can see a return on investment, even though they'll never get a full ROI. You know, because we're talking ranches that are 100,000 acres and then repatriating sheep, letting them go free range, tearing down fences, and hope, wishing and praying that they don't come in contact with the Capricot goats. And growing desert big horn sheep down in Coahuila and Chihuahua. That's awesome. There's populations, you know, that were zero now at 600, you know, zero now at 700.

And this is what's amazing, because in one scenario that we're working with in Chihuahua, because there is zero pathogens, there is absolutely no domestic goat, no domestic sheep. They're getting 80% recruitment on their land. You know, they're going to show, they'll have a doubling in their desert big horn sheep population in five years, and then a doubling again. I mean, you know, we get excited in Utah and Montana and elsewhere with, you know, 20% recruitment. 30 or 40. Yeah. You know, holy shit, we're talking 80. This is, you know, when you remove disease from the landscape, that is what you're able to do. They have no winners down there. Like, Alaskan doll sheep would be the same in terms of being able to live till winter. But then they've got a winter in Alaska to deal with to survive, where these Mexicans, they don't limit predation. Predation is disease.

Yeah, that's what you're up against. Needless to say, there's pretty serious cougar control going on. Yes, there you go. But, well, you know, we could talk for five hours. I know we could. And it would all be very, very, and we'll have to probably have you back on. And we definitely will. We want to, I want to commend you for all of these projects. And like you said, you went into pretty good detail there about some great specifics about where you've been putting the money to in Washoe Foundation. And I just want to, you know, recognize you for that. It's very commendable. Obviously, I'm very passionate about it. And so, you know, it's something I value where, you know, some other sportsmen maybe don't as much or don't get it. But I would just, I guess, challenge everybody to look at the Washoe Foundation as a conservation organization that gets results. That's right. Join them.

Whether it be a $45 annual member or a life member, join them. If you have time, I realize they're on the West Coast in Reno at their annual convention coming up here. But if you ever have time to come to there, it won't probably be your last sheep show. No, it won't. It's a party, but it's a family party. And it's you really. You learn a lot. You make a lot of great relationships. It's just an awesome event. Adam and I, as well as Jeff John here in the Epic office will be there. We'll walk the show. We'll be there for sure Friday and Saturday. And so we do want to encourage everybody that's listening. If you're even close to Reno whatsoever, of course, we drive eight hours or fly each way. But anyway, we want to encourage guys to walk the show. And even if you haven't done it before or haven't been involved with WSF for $20, you can walk the show and see what it's all about.

And there's a lot of intense hunters there from all walks of life with Western Big Game. And so anyway, it's one of our favorite shows of the year. And Gray, we want to thank you for spending an hour and a half with us here on the phone. I know you're packing up, getting ready to head to the show. And time is valuable. And we just want to thank you for spending some time with us here today. Well, Jason, Adam, I can't thank you all enough. We appreciate our partnership with Epic Outdoors. You do a phenomenal job. And we're just very, very appreciative of the opportunity to spend this time with you and share our mutual passion for a resource and our mutual passion for enhancing that resource. And, again, there's something about wild sheep. And, yes, there's something about the Wild Sheep Foundation. So we appreciate the opportunity to kind of tell our story.

We appreciate the opportunity to extend an invitation to come to our show in Reno to join as a member. And just get involved. Get involved in any organization. If you've got a passion for elk, get involved in the Elk Foundation. If you've got a passion for mule deer, get involved in the Mule Deer Foundation. Everything that walks, slithers, and crawls has an advocacy organization that needs your help. So we're one of them. We're always striving to do a better job. And we just appreciate the opportunity on the program. Awesome. Thanks, Gray. Thanks for your time. Adam and I are involved in all of the organizations we can be involved in and support you all. And, of course, take part in hunting all the different Western big game species. But, anyway, thanks again. Appreciate you. Keep up the fight. Keep doing good things. And we'll see you in Reno. We'll see you on the 19th.

Sounds great, guys. All right. Happy New Year. Hey, you too. Thank you.