Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

Because you don't have to get training anymore, right? Because you don't have to have a permit anymore.

But now we're teaching people who may not get a TWRA, they're getting it in their schools.

Yeah, we got the message from our principal at the beginning of the year.

It was like, just so you know, there is a training about guns in our school now for your first grader.

And he's like, I'm doing all this research, and I found out if you get ammonia and... apple cider vinegar and mix it together, whatever.

And I told him, I said, just call TWRA or call a guy.

Call the man, ain't me.

Call the man.

You know, every now and then one of the radio guys would say, hey, I recognize your voice.

You're the guy who does those radio PSAs for TWRA, right? And I say, yeah.

So then the door was wide open.

So I was able to talk them into putting Wildcast on the air.

Yeah.

I, too, like Amy, grew up with a dad who did not have little boys, and luckily he took me out, and I started squirrel and rabbit hunting.

That was the beginning of my outdoor career, I say, and then moved up to deer and followed that path in college and spent some time in another place and came to TWRA in 2015, and it's just been a blessing.

I work with the greatest people.

There is a surge in cougar sightings across the east and the government is partly responsible.

Quote by Daryl Ratajk, former chief of wildlife, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

Within the last few years, there's been a dramatic upswing in the number of reported sightings of cougars east of the Mississippi.

Sometimes these reports have accompanying images, sometimes it's eyewitness accounts.

You know, we were just out of spots to hunt.

So we worked with TWRA, talked to them.

We said, you know, we really need Katusa for our world hunt.

It's our biggest hunt of the year.

Well, is there anything else coming along down the tracks or anything coming up on the new year that ain't been announced yet?

Like I said, we've got a couple of new hunts that we're adding in hopefully next year.

One will be a competition style hunt and the other one's going to be kind of a fellowship youth hunt that we're going to partner with the TWRA on, get some kids out in the woods.

And we haven't decided if we want to do it competition format with the kids or As members, I want to go out and let the kids take guns and go with the game wardens and shoot some squirrels out.

And over the next 10 years, we're going to be implementing recovery actions for those mussels.

And we're working with TWRA.

We're working with Fish and Wildlife Service.

working with several universities.

Break it down so people can learn about that.

Sure.

A little bit like the TRBN, the Tennessee Biodiversity Summit, it's put on by TWRA, but it's not primarily focused on game species like a lot of TWRA stuff.

It's focused on the rare stuff, the non-game, the biodiversity of the state.

But here's why I'm bending your ear about this.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, TWRA, needs your eyes.

They need your coolers.

They need you to stop treating these fish like an inconvenience and start treating them like evidence.

If you catch a small invasive carp, 9 inches or less, anywhere in Tennessee except the Mississippi River, or if you catch any invasive carp out in East Tennessee... or anywhere else they aren't supposed to be yet, here's what you do.

You put that fish on ice, you freeze it if you can, and you contact TWRA immediately.

Do not throw it back.

Do not toss it on the bank for the buzzards.

And even if I kill my two bucks, I'm still good to go down there and hunt again on that license because it's not a tag, it's a license.

The way that the TWRA explained it to me because I want to make sure that the last time I tried that process.

So a little loophole in the system works out pretty good.

God forbid they ever figure it out because they'll change that in a heartbeat because that's just all

top of it.

How old do you think this –

And one of the lead guys at TWRA, I mean, he literally got busted – years ago you can look this stuff up on google i don't know his name i can't tell you the full story but he was influxing the number of cwd cases because they're getting government funding from it then you get you know oh i'm gonna go on a tangent here then you got guys like grant woods on you know oh uh they're they're getting paid from missouri and they're getting all this extra funding and stuff like that to talk about how cwd is a real thing and it's like it's no different like influencer wise of them pushing this or that it's like whose side is you know who on you know at this point yeah it's it's kind of a shame

i just yeah i just wonder how long this velvet season is going to last uh i don't see it lasting long i don't know why i know it's been around since what 2019 or 2018