Can you talk a little bit, how did Montana come to have the protections for stream access and what some would argue is a gold standard? And let's start with what even the term stream access means.

thanks bill and um i think we were talking about before we hit record um i i did the first story on this that i can remember in 1999 for the bitter root star um we did a front page like full out in-depth dive into stream access because back in the bitter root this is before the the bigger cases at miller slew and that stuff um but this was we obviously saw with the growth in the bitter root that the stream access there was going to be a big issue, right, really fast.

So I did some deep diving back then, and, man, it's so long ago.

Really, the stream access law as we understand it was a law passed in 1985 by the legislature.

And it was based on, as we'll get into later, it was based on the Roman doctrines of the public trust, right? That air and water must be shared in common.

You can't really own the water.

And Montana was unique in this because...

Tom

Is that the plan?

That's the plan.

And I think I announced this like two years ago and then got lost in the public lands book, which I'm still delivering.

But the time for this, the time is now.

The time for this is now.

And what I learned being the host of the BHA podcast, which was an incredibly great experience for years and years, was that there are all these people, and I think of them...

Not just old people either.

on the podcast,

Is there a good way to extract from these lands, and is leasing the way to do it?

Okay, so un- until recently...

Well, I've been a big supporter of Taylor Grazing Act and, uh, grazing in the West.

It's funny because, uh, because it's extractive, but, but, uh, it's good.

It's...

I believe that the ecological problems can be, that, that can be worked out by the Bureau of Land Management and range conservationists and whatnot.

Um, I'm a supporter of grazing on public lands, and, but as long as it's regulated by an impartial, you know, the federal government.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And from that, people I, that I worked with in Paying attention to the very things that the reason that this country is so-- was-- became such an enviable place to live.

Uh, Hal, I'm gonna hand the mic over to you and let you share Seasons with Bear.

Every hunter who's ever trained and loved a dog has a story.

If that dog lives to be old and gray-faced, stove up from heroic efforts and mishaps afield, groaning on a bed by the wood stove, his feet twitching in dreams of long-gone birds and battles and glory, that is one kind of story.

If your dog dies violently, needlessly, at the height of his powers, the sunlit days of wind and prairie and swamp still unfolding, and then cut short, that is another kind of story indeed.

Fall.

In the early 1990s, with a carefully timed phone call at midnight, you could leave a message and be first in line to reserve a day on the Teller Wildlife Refuge, a five-mile piece of bottomland along the east bank of Montana's Bitterroot River.