How does the state of South Dakota educate those or how are you as a state agency involved with the cattle farmers, with the farmers, um, with the outdoorsmen on, uh, what are maybe some best practices or the state of the pheasant or grouse in, in the, in the state? How do you communicate with those people, educate them on best practices and on, on habitat and things like that?

Yeah.

So a lot of it, we have a really excellent private land staff, and so they're actively working on putting in grazing infrastructure on certain people's property and helping them formulate it to where it's not only gonna help them productivity-wise and fattening their cattle and still making money, but also making it advantageous for wildlife.

So our private lands folks are just phenomenal.

And we have, we have different funding options, whether it's through the Game, Fish, and Parks funds or helping them get through, you know, EQIP or CRP through the feds.

Uh, so our private lands guys are awesome.

Um, but then we also have, you know, stuff like this, you know, podcasts or we have, um, articles in newspapers and stuff where we are really putting out this information to help these folks.

... whether it's mule deer or white tails, talk to me about, um, is pheasant habitat also good deer habitat?

Yeah.

Um, in general, you kinda hit it on already.

You know, the winters, for the most part, throughout peak pheasant range, so kind of Midwest, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, you know, our winters have been pretty negligible the last few years.

So when you get really good winter survival with pheasants, you know, your population can just skyrocket, especially if you have good nesting conditions, and that's really what we're dealing with the last few years.

So there are definitely some habitat improvements on the ground.

Um, you know, Pheasants Forever does a great job.

The state organizations do a great job.

Talk to me about, um, is pheasant habitat also good deer habitat?

Jake, what's your story? How'd you get into umpiring, and where are you at in umpiring right now? For me,

I got into umpiring in high school, doing Little League stuff.

And then when I got to college, started doing middle school, high school ball.

uh, did all the travel in the summer.

It was my, uh, gig is super flexible, you know, just taking any game anywhere kind of thing.

And then toward the end of college started, started thinking I wanted to, uh, see how good I could get at this thing.

And then, um, right after college went to professional empire school, um, in Vero beach, Florida.

What do you think is holding them back from getting paid more?