Regional District of East Kootenay

I think, you know, unless, you know, one of Nelson Grand Forks or Columbia Valley can pick things up, I think that's going to be a pretty top-heavy division, but I'm...

I'm definitely liking what I'm seeing out of the East Kootenays right now.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, I think we'll do the mainland last, but I want to talk Valley Division.

Um, and there's, like, in the East Koot- so we're in the West Kootenays.

In the East Kootenays, uh, in the area of White Swan and, and, and whatnot, the stories are plentiful about-

Hmm

... having encounters with these creatures.

two incredible guests.

two very unique guests they sort of come from different parts of the world geographically and professionally but together they're doing some incredible work so today we're on talk of sheep to talk about a new film it's called on the landscape big bighorn sheep of the east kootenays And super stoked about this.

This is a project that Brian and Jesse have been ingrained in for, well, quite some time now, literally years.

And Jesse Bone is the producer of the film.

You know, we were identifying places where collisions were regularly happening and we were identifying habitats that were grown in or not sufficient anymore.

So, you know, the we kind of came to the point of well maybe if we start making a video and it's a really good um outreach piece then you know we can get the attention of other people and we can hopefully gain some momentum through um you know through through a call to action to uh you know people that care that we could maybe get some get some work happening on on the highway um we kept coming against walls, trying to get any work to happen to prevent collisions.

So when you talk about the walls, specifically government is it's basically just government you go to government and say hey let's let's look at some solutions here or were there other barriers like obviously i like people in the east kootenays are incredibly invested in these animals like you know there was all these facebook groups and of course with the closure of the trans canada and the relocation through radium um you know mortality was through the roof down there But we've seen a ton of engagement from the local communities.

So was it kind of government and was it highway related? And and then where were we with on like on the wildlife side of things? So there's obviously there's a highway aspect of it, which is highways and their primary safety is highway safety.

yeah yeah the first time was our annual well cole's missed the last couple years but our annual archery elk hunt

in the east kootenays there so

it uh yeah it was pretty rainy to start with and we were i was i don't know we just got hammered with rain and Low elk numbers in our usual spot and did some moving around, found, found a couple of bulls, but just wasn't able to make it happen on that trip.

It was a lot of, a lot of glassing, a lot of hiking, a lot of sitting in the trailer, waiting for the rain to go away, hunting in the rain too.

just not the

case in BC.

Even in the East Kootenays, I'd say where the elk like to hang out is not is not great for long long

distance well i always tell people that are hardcore elk hunters in bc it's like could you just imagine if we were in colorado

scott i'm all i'm all excited all right we're going to be talking about uh one eye industries and uh i have to i just have to i don't mean to catch you off guard but i have to what is the genesis of that name

I come from the East Kootenays in the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia.

Yeah.

And when I was starting this company, I went out fishing at a lake, and this old-timer come down and joined us for a cold beer and told us a story about a grizzly bear at that lake that took the back door off of the camper and was going to have hors d'oeuvres.