Tom Reed, of Harrison, Montana, is a founding board member of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and a true son of the Western plains and Rocky Mountain wilderness. Born in Colorado, Tom worked as a horse and mule packer and a small-town reporter in Wyoming, edited a bass fishing magazine in Arizona, spent years with Wyoming Fish and Game as writer and editor. Throughout his life, he’s pursued the foundational passions that drove him as a youngster- horses, hunting and fishing, wilderness, dogs,...

In April of 2022, Libby Tobey, Hailey Thompson and Brooke Hess skied into Marsh Creek in Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, towing their kayaks and a sled full of camping gear. The goal: trace the route of anadromous fish from the source of the Salmon River to the Pacific Ocean and advocate removing the four dams on the Lower Snake River that block that migration and are killing that river system. 78 days and 1000 miles away down the tiniest tributaries to the massive whitewater of the main rivers,...

Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Representative Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) are co-sponsoring The ‘Public Lands in Public Hands Act” which would ban the sale or transfer of most public lands managed by the Department of the Interior or the Department of Agriculture (which includes the vast majority of federal public lands – Bureau of Land Management is under Interior and the National Forests are under Agriculture).   The bill also requires Congressional approval for disposals of publicly...

Jim Heffelfinger, Arizona Game and Fish Wildlife Science Co-ordinator, Chairman of the Mule Deer Working Group, wildlife conservation professional, author of Deer of the Southwest. Coming at you live from the 2024 Mule Deer Expo in Salt Lake City, Hal catches up with one of America’s rockstars of wildlife conservation and research, Arizona’s Jim Heffelfinger. The conversation roams and wanders, from mule deer and blacktails, habitat and CWD, to Mexican wolves and hunting javelina, with a...

Journalist Jimmy Tobias started out working on backcountry trails for the US Forest Service and Montana Conservation Corps. Since then, he has become one of America’s hardest-hitting investigative reporters specializing in public lands, conservation, and the outdoors. Tobias’ story about the link between ecosystem disruption and tick-borne illnesses, “How Lyme Disease Became Unstoppable,” was published in June 2022 in The Nation. That story was the original inspiration for this interview, but...

Join Hal and BHA North American Board Member and CEO of the Orianne Society Dr. Chris Jenkins for a fascinating conversation about everything from public lands and local hunting and food to Dr. Jenkins' specialty: venomous snakes.  An episode you don't want to miss!

The largest public lands conservation opportunity in our lifetime is at hand. The Bureau of Land Management is finalizing plans for the long-term management of an expanse of public lands in Alaska that is larger than the state of Ohio.  There are 28 million acres at stake, an unfathomable wealth of wildlife, big game, fisheries, waterfowl, and the headwaters of rivers like the Kuskokwim and the Yukon. These are known as the D1 Lands, protected from mining and energy development by the Alaska...

Learn more about what goes on in the halls of Congress as Hal sits down with BHA Government Relations Manager Kaden McArthur to discuss the 2023 wins BHA played a role in achieving for the conservation of our public lands and waters. 

Douglas Tallamy, Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, University of Delaware Any hunter, angler and/or student of the natural world is bound to be more than a little gobsmacked by the rate of development and growth that we see all around us: Bozeman, Atlanta, Boise, Moab, Salt Lake City, Huntsville, Austin, the Gulf Coast, Phoenix, Chattanooga, Asheville and beyond. Is there any hope for the wild places and the world we love? Hell, yes there is. And it will be done...

Join Hal Herring and Mississippi State University environmental history professor and author of My Work is that of Conservation, An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver Mark Hersey for a fantastic American conservation story that has never been more relevant than it is right now.  If you finished seventh grade in an American public school, you learned about George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery in Missouri and grew up to be one of America’s leading scientists...

Listeners to the BHA Podcast & Blast will likely know Erin Block from her brilliant short essays at MidCurrent, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Field & Stream, and TROUT magazine, where she is an editor-at-large. Some might know her books on the the art of making bamboo fly rods (The View from Coal Creek), or By a Thread: A Retrospective on Women and Fly Tying. Some might follow her Instagram, a powerfully understated immersion in foraging, wildlife and birds, hunting and fishing and...

If you are an upland bird hunter with a yen for great writing and vividly lived experiences, you have probably been reading the Mouthful of Feathers crew -- Tom Reed, Marissa Jensen and Greg McReynolds -- on the internet since 2009. Whether you have or have not, you are in for a treat. Join us for a celebration of wild birds and wild dogs and their first publication, in a book that you can hold in your hands, of the best of the best of the Mouthful of Feathers short essays and stories. ...

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...

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...

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,...

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,...

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 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 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 Initiative are here to talk about...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...