PODCAST EP. 383: How Public Land Changes Hunting One Parcel at a Time

Speaker 1 (00:15.79)

There's movements in the elbows, there's loose in your head.

Speaker 1 (00:34.926)

There's nothing for me there won't see forever.

Speaker 1 (00:50.6)

Welcome to On the Wing Podcast presented by Purina Pro Plan. We're celebrating Build a Wildlife Area Week at Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever. And right out of the gates, I want to thank our week's sponsors, Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's Outdoor Fund, as well as our friends over at The Flush. And this year we've got $400,000 in matching funds.

Or matching funds, not a singular gift, but we've got four hundred thousand dollars in matching funds lined up. With this, like your pocket change, Case?

Speaker 2 (01:29.838)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's helped me. Was it your couch? I didn't have anything to do with it, so I thought, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32.62)

In your...

Speaker 1 (01:38.296)

Four hundred thousand dollars in matching funds to incentivize our listeners, our followers, our members, and all lovers of public land. If we can raise four hundred thousand dollars, we can match it toward Build a Wildlife Area this week.

And you already heard his voice. Casey Sill joins me as co-host. We're releasing, in conjunction with Build a Wildlife Area Week, Casey's very first crossover of your previous life and your current life. A brand-new film called Brick by Brick.

We'll consider this a documentary, not a science fiction movie like zombies or any of your war films. This is real-life creation of public lands. So Casey got to marry his stage and screen work with his work as a communications professional for the habitat organization.

So we're going to talk about that film called Brick by Brick, as well as Build a Wildlife Area as we celebrate Build a Wildlife Area Week. We're in September now. It seems fitting, Casey. We're recording this before your next filming adventure.

Just tease our audience a little bit about where you're heading for your first hunt. Well, this isn't your first hunt of the year. You've been out chasing ducks, haven't you?

Speaker 2 (03:13.932)

Well, it actually will be my first hunt of the year because we abruptly canceled our annual teal season.

Speaker 1 (03:22.126)

The teal smackdown got canceled?

Speaker 2 (03:13.932)

It was too hot. So two reasons for that. One is, yeah, it was like ninety degrees that day, and we've hunted teal opener in that kind of weather before. But the other thing was that my lab spent all weekend in the emergency clinic.

Speaker 1 (03:40.342)

I didn't know this.

Speaker 2 (03:41.79)

So that put a damper on the whole thing. She's fine, okay, but she ate a corn cob. That's what the vet says.

Speaker 1 (03:51.002)

The State Fair?

Speaker 1 (03:55.446)

Why did she eat a corn cob? Is this your chew toy?

Speaker 2 (03:58.962)

No, it's because she's a lab and she'll eat anything. She would eat this table if you left her alone with it for too long.

I don't know if it was when we were out running on public land somewhere or if maybe she got into the garbage when I wasn't looking and snagged one, because it's sweet corn time of the year. One way or another, she was really lethargic on Saturday and she'd been vomiting. I won't get too graphic with the details, but it looked pretty abnormal.

And I called my aunt, who's a vet, and I bug her with these dog questions all the time. She's a very old-school vet whose answer ninety-five percent of the time is, "Nah, that'll be fine."

When I called her and told her what was going on and she said, "You better take her in now," I knew it was pretty serious. So we took her over to Eau Claire to the emergency clinic. They X-rayed her. They thought she had a blockage, but they weren't sure.

Speaker 1 (05:12.92)

So you said they think it's a corn cob?

Speaker 2 (05:15.724)

That's what it looked like on the X-ray.

Speaker 1 (05:17.87)

When it came out.

Speaker 1 (05:23.618)

You didn't go see it?

Speaker 1 (05:37.175)

So you weren't breaking it apart with tools?

Speaker 2 (05:39.874)

Wasn't, yeah. So it all worked out, literally. But it put a damper on teal season because she had to rest for a week or something after.

Speaker 1 (05:51.982)

So you're heading out on your first hunt?

Speaker 2 (05:55.618)

Yeah, so long story.

Speaker 1 (05:59.083)

La Vida Corn Cob. Breaking news.

Speaker 2 (06:01.612)

Yep. So we're headed out to Wyoming here shortly. We're going to start around the Cody area and then we're going to move east a little bit to the Bighorns and do a little trout fishing and then hunt sage grouse, which I've never done before.

So it'll be a wholly new experience for me.

Speaker 1 (06:23.084)

And that is part of a film in our future.

Speaker 2 (06:25.334)

It is, yes. So that'll be a film coming up this fall. Myself and Ryan Sparks, the Quail Forever Journal editor, are heading out there to hunt and fish and sort of talk about water. Talk about the impacts of low water in the West, how that's impacting not just trout and rivers, but everything connected to them, sage grouse being one of the main examples.

So that's sort of the focus of the film.

Yeah, I was really excited to get out there. I bought my bear spray the other day because the first half of the trip will be around Cody. I thought I'd better come prepared.

Speaker 1 (07:04.462)

How nervous are you on a scale of one to ten?

Speaker 2 (07:06.542)

Depends on the day.

Speaker 1 (07:10.476)

How nervous is your eight-month-pregnant wife? Yeah, probably seven months.

Speaker 2 (07:14.114)

Probably more than I am.

It's funny. When I moved up here from Nebraska, I'd never been in any kind of bear country. As naive as that sounds, I was frightened of black bears when I moved up here because it was completely foreign to me.

It's funny how you get used to it. Now it's no big deal. You don't really think about it. But I've never been in grizzly country before, so that's a whole new set of mild anxiety.

I'm not sweating too badly about it, but I want to be sure that I know what I'm doing going into it.

Speaker 1 (07:52.768)

I am envious. Listeners know I've been talking about going to Wyoming, and I've had to cancel my trip to Wyoming because my truck has decided to no longer cooperate. I'm in the process of buying a new truck.

So for folks, hunting trips done for a film are done on their own dime.

Speaker 2 (08:06.633)

Really? I didn't know that either.

Speaker 2 (08:20.12)

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:22.328)

Turns out I need to buy a truck, not go to Wyoming this hunting season.

Speaker 2 (08:25.944)

Well, man, that's too bad. I didn't know that. So when were you planning on being out there?

Speaker 1 (08:30.296)

Right now. I was intending to be blue grouse hunting in Wyoming. I took a week's vacation and now I canceled it.

So the start of my hunting season will be rough grouse getting underway in Wisconsin on the twelfth.

Speaker 2 (08:35.137)

Man.

Speaker 1 (08:57.878)

Minnesota season starts the week after that.

Speaker 2 (09:00.621)

It's the week after. Okay.

Speaker 1 (09:02.774)

So getting underway in the woods, a little bit different, but that's all right.

Speaker 2 (09:06.894)

That's where we'd be if we weren't going to Wyoming.

Speaker 1 (09:10.622)

But we're going to spend our time talking about where you were last hunting season for this film, and we're going to talk about Build a Wildlife Area.

Before we get rolling, I want to thank Purina Pro Plan, the national dog food sponsor of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever and the presenting sponsor of On the Wing Podcast. My pups, Little Winter and Little Gitch Gumi, have always eaten Purina Pro Plan, not just because Purina supports the wildlife habitat mission of our organization, which is important to me and should be important to you as well.

But the most important thing for all of you to know is that Purina created Pro Plan for the working bird dog, like yours and like mine. The recipe was made for hunting dogs.

You can learn more at ProPlanSport.com. Purina Pro Plan. Nutrition that performs.

Speaker 2 (10:05.954)

From Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever National Headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, this is Casey Sill with the Upland Newsroom...

Speaker 2 (10:05.954)

From Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever National Headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, this is Casey Sill with the Upland Newsroom, delivering top stories from the habitat organization and across the American Uplands.

We begin today with the Rebuilding America's National Cow Herd, or RANCH Act. In August, Senators Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced the RANCH Act to help producers convert marginal cropland to perennial cover for managed grazing.

With America's beef cow herd at its smallest size in seventy years and grasslands disappearing at a rapid pace, the RANCH Act would support livestock production by increasing access to grazing lands, allowing existing operations to expand, and providing opportunities for young and beginning producers while also creating additional habitat for wildlife.

The RANCH Act would create a voluntary program for producers to establish up to 20 million acres of perennial forage on marginal and highly erodible cropland, expanding grazing opportunities while improving the health and resilience of working lands.

The program would provide annual rental payments and cost-share assistance to help producers establish perennial cover, with additional incentives for beginning farmers and ranchers as well as the use of high-quality native seed mixes.

Enrolled acres would remain available for grazing throughout the contract. By making it easier to transition less productive cropland to perennial forage, the RANCH Act would help producers strengthen their operations and manage risk while delivering benefits for wildlife habitat, soil health, and water quality.

Speaking of Washington, with the Senate back in session, the Senate Agriculture Committee will resume work on critical Farm Bill legislation. And you know what I'm going to say next. It has been eight years since Congress passed a bipartisan Farm Bill.

We need your voice to tell lawmakers that rural America cannot afford to wait any longer. Now is the time to speak up. CRP is the only major USDA conservation program left without significant investments or updates since 2018, and it is critical that Congress passes a Farm Bill this year to ensure CRP continues to deliver for farmers, ranchers, hunters, and rural communities.

Speaker 2 (12:23.406)

This includes improving rental rates for marginal and environmentally sensitive lands, restoring cost-share for beneficial management activities, and updating payment limits for the first time since 1985, provisions that are included in the Farm Bill currently under consideration by the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Through Pheasants Forever's Upland Action Center, you can take direct action to urge your senators to advance a Farm Bill that strengthens the Conservation Reserve Program and other conservation programs.

To get started, head over to pheasantsforever.org and click on our advocacy page.

That'll do it this week. Reporting from PF and QF headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, I'm Casey Sill.

Speaker 1 (13:01.482)

As I mentioned, we're celebrating Build a Wildlife Area all week at Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever. That's the umbrella name for our organization's land acquisition program.

It wasn't named Build a Wildlife Area in 1982 when we started. That name was decided over a breakfast table in 2005, which I was sitting at with Joe Dugan, Chuck Delaney, and Rob Drieslein. That name was conceptualized heading into Game Fair in 2005.

Now it's the umbrella term for our land acquisition efforts, and since 1982 we have created 248,293 acres, just shy of a quarter-million acres of permanently protected habitat out there on the landscape.

Those acres exist in the form of WMAs, Wildlife Management Areas, GPAs, Game Production Areas if you're in South Dakota, or Waterfowl Production Areas if we've turned them over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

So just shy of two hundred and fifty thousand acres of permanent habitat. Last year alone we turned over just shy of four thousand acres, 3,996 acres.

One of those projects was last year's signature project for Build a Wildlife Area Week, the Jim Woolley Family Tract. We had Jim Woolley, Matt O'Connor, and Matt Holland on last year at this time to celebrate Build a Wildlife Area.

That project, the Jim Woolley Family Tract, was turned over to the Iowa DNR just last month in August of 2026. That included 422 acres in Iowa's Madison and Clarke Counties that connect to 1,021 acres of the Heritage Hills WMA.

So thank you to last year's partners in the Jim Woolley Family Tract, which included Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's, SportDOG Brand, the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association, and Big Grove Brewing.

Speaker 1 (15:29.612)

Those folks and all the listeners who made a contribution helped put the Jim Woolley Family Tract on the ground for all of us to enjoy this hunting season.

Now let's turn our attention to Brick by Brick, a film sponsored by Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's Outdoor Fund, Chief Upland, and SportDOG Brand.

Casey, you're the producer, director, star, chief cook, and bottle washer. Tell us about the story.

Speaker 2 (16:01.932)

Yeah, Southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa are such a great example of the Build a Wildlife Area program. We wanted to go down there and sort of border-hop and see what the impact of BAWA has been, not only on habitat and access, but on the community as well.

I think there's a twofold impact. These places are so tied to their local communities. This area isn't filled with thousands and thousands of acres of public land. You think about northern Minnesota or Wisconsin with those huge tracts of public land. These complexes are built around small towns, and I think that's such a cool angle.

Speaker 1 (16:40.968)

Like the Sandhills.

Speaker 2 (16:55.608)

Exactly. We wanted to intertwine them with all the people who care about them. I thought that was a great story, so we went down there to hunt, meet some of the locals who are putting these acres on the ground, and try to shoot a few birds.

It was late in the year, a December hunt. Cold weather, no snow, but yeah.

That's really the gist of it. We wanted to see the connection between these properties and the communities they serve and that serve them.

Speaker 1 (17:26.495)

Listeners who are members will see that the fall edition of the Pheasants Forever Journal has a story you wrote. That story has a wonderful start to it.

You write, I think, that you were born with a right to hate Iowa.

Speaker 2 (17:44.578)

I think so.

Speaker 2 (17:55.79)

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:56.27)

Maybe it wasn't the word hate, but I want to make sure I wasn't putting too strong a word in your mouth. Explain why you were born with a right to hate Iowa.

Speaker 2 (17:59.074)

I think it was a strong word.

Speaker 2 (18:08.632)

I was born and raised on the Missouri River bottoms of eastern Nebraska. We could see Iowa from our door. There's nothing Nebraskans hold closer than a mutual hatred of Iowa, and I think it's the same for Iowans and Nebraska.

Most of that has to do with college football. Growing up there'd be kids from Iowa who came over and went to school in Nebraska, and it was endless bickering back and forth between the two states.

I think it's just very natural. That dislike is deep-rooted. I felt like that was my birthright.

But I have my secret, which I allude to later in the story. I actually love the state. I do.

Not just this area where we hunted, but the whole state. I haven't spent a ton of time hunting Iowa, but I've traveled through it a lot. I've done some trout fishing in the northeast part of the state and traveled to southern Iowa quite a bit.

I was talking to Tom Carpenter the other day about southern Iowa being a really underrated part of the country from a geographic standpoint. I think the southern third of Iowa is just gorgeous.

Speaker 1 (19:33.518)

I know.

Speaker 2 (19:36.546)

Maybe that's good. Maybe I want them to keep thinking otherwise.

Speaker 1 (19:40.483)

So you said you didn't hunt Iowa very much when you were a kid growing up there?

Speaker 2 (19:45.158)

No, we did not cross the border very much. I had some good friends who still hunt with me in Nebraska sometimes. They spent a lot of time over in the Loess Hills hunting pheasants, but we did not. We were mostly on the Nebraska side of the border.

Speaker 1 (20:02.366)

Was this trip your primary introduction into hunting in Iowa? You'd done a little bit before?

Speaker 2 (20:09.324)

Very much so. It was. I'd gone on a turkey trip to northeast Iowa a couple years ago where we fished for trout and hunted turkeys, but I didn't actually have a tag myself. I was just kind of tagging along.

So this was definitely the first upland trip I've ever taken in Iowa.

Speaker 1 (20:29.624)

So tell me now, as a born-again Iowa fan, what changed your mind...

Speaker 1 (20:29.624)

So tell me now, as a born-again Iowa fan, what turned your mind? You wrote very specifically in the story that's in the Journal about having not only an appreciation, but sort of a love affair with the state.

Speaker 2 (20:47.884)

Yeah, I think as far as this trip was concerned, once I got down there and saw what was available, I was blown away.

I mentioned it in the film and in the Journal story, but not just the quantity of public access in northern Iowa, the quality of it. I talked to Carp a little bit before we went, and he said, "Pay attention to that," because he spends a lot of time in Iowa.

And he's totally right. I got down there and everything is just so well taken care of and such a part of the lives of the people who are helping create it all.

I was really blown away by it. Public land is not something that I had access to growing up. There just wasn't much of it where I was. I mean, I lived on a national wildlife refuge, but it was completely closed to hunting.

So we did not hunt public property. Honestly, the whole concept of it was kind of lost on me until I moved to Minnesota.

I remember printing off county-by-county public-land atlases. I had no idea what OnX was at the time. Just realizing I could roll up to any of these places and hunt had a huge impact on my life.

And I'm not being dramatic when I say it changed my life. So to see everything folks are doing down in Iowa to grow that opportunity, especially in a state that's as heavily privately owned as Iowa is, it's pretty awesome.

Speaker 1 (22:43.372)

So did you start in Iowa or did you start in Minnesota for this film?

Speaker 2 (22:47.564)

We started in Minnesota and then kind of worked our way down.

Speaker 1 (22:50.734)

Okay, let's start chronologically. Tell me about the places you hunted and your impressions.

Speaker 2 (22:57.848)

We hunted Minnesota the first day. I met up with Saban Adams, who's the Minnesota State Coordinator, and we hunted the Howard Vincent Property that's right on the border.

That property has been talked about quite a bit over the past year or two.

Speaker 1 (23:13.554)

Literally right on the border. The other side of the road is Iowa. It's just north of Spirit Lake.

Speaker 2 (23:19.532)

Yep, north of Spirit Lake.

That was the first place we hunted, and it looks great now. It's amazing to see the before-and-after photos from that property because it was such a dramatic change.

I wasn't there, but I had seen some of the photos.

Speaker 1 (23:33.068)

Were you there for the dedication? It was just a barren black dirt field with a wetland in the middle.

Speaker 2 (23:41.548)

Yep. And now it looks great.

We showed up in very stereotypical Iowa-in-December weather. Sideways rain, cold, and there were ducks everywhere, which we took note of right away.

We hunted our way around that property, got the lay of the land, and then worked our way west from there throughout that whole complex, primarily west of the Howard Vincent Property.

Speaker 1 (24:12.211)

And did you spend one or two days hunting in Minnesota?

Speaker 2 (24:15.19)

Just one full day in Minnesota.

Speaker 1 (24:18.07)

Any impressions about the habitat complex before we jump into Iowa?

Speaker 2 (24:24.582)

Once we crossed into Iowa, the similarities were striking.

What's cool, and kind of the whole point of the film, is that it all feels unbroken. That state border doesn't really impact the habitat.

There's this massive public-land complex on the Iowa side, and it just continues into Minnesota. It's really neat to see.

Speaker 1 (24:49.944)

So all the hunting was within that Spirit Lake area. You were legitimately hopping back and forth.

Speaker 2 (24:54.67)

We did not leave that area.

Speaker 2 (24:59.672)

Yep. That was our whole plan. We stayed right in Spirit Lake and spent time on both sides of the border.

The next day we went into Iowa and hunted Christoferson Slough, which is a pretty well-known public-land complex east of Spirit Lake.

Speaker 1 (25:09.878)

All right, take us to Iowa.

Speaker 2 (25:23.566)

It's massive. Huge amounts of habitat.

It's been built over time, which is really where the title of the story comes from. When you zoom out on OnX, it looks like you're laying bricks on top of each other.

You add this little piece, then another piece, and pretty soon it becomes this giant complex.

Speaker 1 (25:40.834)

I didn't know where the title came from because I was thinking maybe it tied directly to Build a Wildlife Area. But that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (25:48.194)

Yeah. Looking at public-land complexes on OnX reminds me of Tetris.

You're fitting pieces together until eventually, in a place like Christoferson Slough, after twenty years or however long they've been building it, it turns into something really special.

Speaker 1 (26:12.054)

It's the connectivity that really adds value.

Speaker 2 (26:16.214)

Yep, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (26:18.584)

Did you hunt more than one place in Iowa?

Speaker 2 (26:22.186)

We did, but everything was basically adjacent to Christoferson Slough.

It was either the slough itself or additions directly connected to it or within spitting distance.

Speaker 1 (26:38.878)

In part of the film, hunting is obviously a major component, but you also interviewed chapter volunteers and members. What's the overall take on having this public land continue to grow in their area?

Speaker 2 (26:53.932)

They're working really hard at it.

I talked to a lot of folks from the Iowa Great Lakes Chapter. MJ Rapp was one of my primary contacts.

Speaker 1 (27:02.274)

Mary Jo, not to be confused with Michael Jordan.

Speaker 2 (27:08.622)

Right. Mary Jo.

She helped us identify some target areas because we'd never been there before.

She also invited us to a chapter meeting that happened to be taking place while we were there. We sat down with volunteers, listened to what they were working on, and heard them planning their banquet and future projects.

I also hunted with Steve Blum, another chapter volunteer, who showed us around on the Iowa side.

That entire chapter is doing incredible work. I know that's happening throughout the pheasant range, but northern Iowa folks care deeply about this access.

Because Iowa is so heavily private, these public lands are really jewels of the state, and people are working hard to continue growing them.

Speaker 1 (28:07.468)

I'm trying to remember the exact statistic. I think Iowa is something like forty-ninth out of fifty states in percentage of publicly owned land.

Speaker 2 (28:18.23)

I think it's somewhere around forty-eighth or forty-ninth.

Speaker 1 (28:24.327)

Somewhere in there. It's a very small percentage.

Speaker 2 (28:27.542)

Right. So seeing a public-land complex this large in a state that's that heavily privately owned is really impressive.

Speaker 1 (28:34.187)

They're also driven by protecting the water quality in the Spirit Lake watershed.

By creating these permanently protected habitat complexes, they're filtering the water that eventually reaches Spirit Lake, helping maintain the fishery and local tourism economy while creating habitat for birds at the same time.

Speaker 2 (29:00.322)

There's a really cool partnership between Minnesota and Iowa there as well.

The habitat directly across the border on the Minnesota side is still part of that same watershed. Properties like the Howard Vincent Property are all connected through the Spirit Lake watershed system.

Everyone is working together to protect that water.

Speaker 1 (29:20.376)

So this is the first time you've blended your new career with your old career. Impressions?

Speaker 2 (29:30.976)

It was a lot of fun.

I wanted to bring those two worlds together for quite a while, and I was really thankful to have the opportunity to do it.

It is a little bit different because...

Speaker 1 (29:42.84)

You weren't being chased by zombies.

Speaker 2 (29:44.59)

Exactly.

Even though those movies were small, there was something freeing about the fact that you're playing someone else...

There's freedom in making mistakes, looking stupid, and experimenting because it's not really you.

In this case, it was me on camera, representing myself and something much bigger than myself.

There was definitely some pressure that came with that, but I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (30:17.676)

Not only yourself, but you're representing...

Speaker 2 (30:20.77)

Yeah, this much larger thing.

Speaker 2 (30:20.77)

Yeah, of this much larger thing.

Speaker 1 (30:23.264)

Yeah, co-workers, volunteers, chapters, all of it.

Speaker 2 (30:27.318)

Yeah. We're always trying to tell these stories in our films, but this one was so connected to people I work with every day. There was definitely a responsibility to tell the volunteer story correctly.

I also found my previous experience useful from a logistics standpoint. Having organized film projects before, I knew how to think about things like continuity.

For example, if Saban is wearing a particular jacket in one scene, he needs to be wearing that same jacket in the next scene if it's supposed to be the same sequence. Little details like that actually came in handy.

Speaker 1 (31:11.832)

Why does he have a pink hat in this scene?

A little bit ago, you said public land changed your life. I'm going to ask you how it changed your life.

Before we get there, I want to thank OnX, a partner of On the Wing Podcast.

We don't hunt for that picture-perfect scene just for social media. With OnX as your guide, we hunt for the walk behind a good bird dog, the smell of burnt powder, and the buddy walking right beside us to some of our favorite places.

The best spots mean more every time we return. Some were passed down to us and some we found ourselves. The traditions we carry forward are the ones we hope somebody carries on after us.

Time out here has a way of putting everything else in perspective.

The best days rarely involve what ends up on the tailgate. They're the stories we tell for years, the unforgettable dog work, and the people who were there to witness it.

Long after the season ends, those are the things that stay with us.

OnX Hunt. Here's to the hunt.

All right, Casey, as we celebrate Build a Wildlife Area Week, I want to invite listeners to help us reach that $400,000 matching-fund goal.

You can learn more about Build a Wildlife Area at pheasantsforever.org or quailforever.org. Search for Build a Wildlife Area.

You said a moment ago that public lands changed your life. That's a big statement. I'm sure a lot of folks heard that and were nodding in agreement because public land has changed a lot of lives.

But why yours?

Speaker 2 (33:11.18)

I moved to Minnesota when I was twenty-four years old.

I had a good friend I'd known for years. We had casually talked about me moving up there, but never seriously. At the time I had finished college and was doing the movie thing, but I was kind of directionless, bouncing around and working construction jobs in the summertime.

Speaker 1 (33:20.45)

Really? On a whim?

Speaker 2 (33:40.034)

Yeah. He called me one day and said, "We're moving into a new house and we've got an extra bedroom. Do you want to move up here?"

Speaker 1 (33:44.888)

So it's a guy friend, not a girl.

Speaker 2 (33:47.22)

Yes, a guy friend.

I said, "Yeah, why not?"

We were actually shooting that zombie movie at the time. My friend Cody, who I knew through film, was in that movie too. We were talking about it during filming and that's really how the move happened.

Speaker 1 (33:56.246)

What were you doing at the time?

Speaker 2 (34:16.555)

When I came to Minnesota to work on that movie, I wasn't planning on staying. But while we were filming, the opportunity came up and I figured, what the heck, why not?

I stayed because of what I found after I got here.

I had grown up hunting, but I'd never had access to the opportunities I discovered in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Public land absolutely changed my life.

I honestly don't know that I would have stayed here if it weren't for the outdoor opportunities I found once I arrived.

And now my entire life is here. I met my wife here. I have a son and another child on the way. They'll be raised here.

I think about the fact that ten years from now my kids will be able to grab their bikes, ride a short distance, and have access to hundreds of acres of public land where they can hunt and fish for trout.

That's not something I had growing up. So yes, public land absolutely changed my life.

Speaker 1 (35:43.244)

Your brother and your parents have almost followed you there.

Speaker 2 (35:46.034)

They all moved up here too.

I have to give my parents some credit because we vacationed in northern Minnesota growing up. We weren't hunting, but we were fishing, so I already had a love for Minnesota and Wisconsin.

But I didn't understand the depth of the opportunity until I moved here.

I called my brother Danny a year later and told him he needed to come up here. Pretty soon Mom and Dad followed.

Now I hunt with my dad all the time, which becomes more meaningful each year. He's not ninety, but he's seventy, and you start thinking a lot about how valuable that time is.

The opportunities I have to hunt and fish with my dad and brother are dramatically greater than what we had access to growing up in eastern Nebraska.

Speaker 1 (36:43.522)

That's interesting because, as someone who's hunted Nebraska a lot, my perception is that there's a tremendous amount of public land there and some great walk-in opportunities.

Speaker 2 (36:55.776)

And that's true.

I've hunted Nebraska since working for PF, and programs like Open Fields and Waters and walk-in access are fantastic.

But growing up it felt very localized. We were on the eastern edge of the state, and there just wasn't much access around us.

Speaker 1 (37:15.192)

Pretty close to Omaha.

Speaker 2 (37:24.246)

Right. And it was also a different generation.

My dad grew up in a time when you simply knocked on a farmer's door and asked permission. That's what people did.

We didn't really think about public access the same way. The public land opportunities that exist in Nebraska today were far away from where we lived anyway.

Speaker 1 (37:55.244)

It's amazing how the smaller pieces add up. That's really the brick-by-brick concept.

I think of the Sandhills in Nebraska as the largest intact grassland in North America, but it's not necessarily in someone's backyard.

Meanwhile, these forty-acre and four-hundred-acre projects combine into large complexes and create opportunities for more and more people.

Speaker 2 (38:25.698)

That's what's so special about places like the Spirit Lake area in Iowa and where I live now.

They're not remote. A kid can get out of school, drive five minutes with his buddies, hunt pheasants, and still be home for dinner.

That value is enormous.

I think that's why the volunteers care so much. You drive by these places on the way to work every day. They're woven into the local community. You see grain trucks driving by and farms surrounding them.

These places become part of people's lives.

Speaker 1 (39:08.376)

They do their roadside counts in August on the way to work.

All right, folks, the film out this week is Brick by Brick.

Casey essentially wrote it, starred in it, produced it, and directed it. The only thing he didn't do was hold the camera.

That was Jordan Darley, so shout-out to Jordan for carrying the camera and handling the editing.

But the writing, voiceover, production, and direction all belong to Casey Sill.

Check out the film celebrating Build a Wildlife Area. It's called Brick by Brick.

The film is sponsored by Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's Outdoor Fund, Chief Upland, and SportDOG Brand.

This week we're celebrating Build a Wildlife Area Week thanks once again to Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's Outdoor Fund and our friends at The Flush.

You can learn more at pheasantsforever.org and quailforever.org.

Please consider making a contribution to Build a Wildlife Area. As I mentioned, we have $400,000 in matching funds available, so every donation helps unlock additional conservation dollars.

Casey, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (40:33.292)

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Bob.

Speaker 1 (40:35.64)

Thank you for listening. Check out the film and please consider a contribution to Build a Wildlife Area Week.

I'm Bob St. Pierre, reminding you to always follow the dog. Especially if it's on a Build a Wildlife Area property, something good will rise.

Thanks, folks.