Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcasts and Blasts

Mitch Reid is a native son of the Alabama Wiregrass, where he grew up fishing and hunting his home country in the headwaters of the Choctawhatchee River. After a military career with the U.S. Army's 82 nd  Airborne, he came home to raise his family and continue to serve his nation by working with  The Nature Conservancy  to protect and restore the lands and waters of the place he loves the most in...

Arizona game warden and author Sam Lawry is retiring from his second career as the executive director of the Teller Wildlife Refuge on the Bitterroot River of Montana. This BHA podcast is being released to honor Sam and in appreciation of his life as one of America's premier conservation leaders. Sam served 23 years as a game warden in Arizona (the subject of his excellent and funny book,  Stories...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 158: Hunting at American Prairie   American Prairie is 455,840 sprawling acres of Montana grasslands and breaks  that represents one of the largest expansions of publicly accessible hunting opportunities in the West— and one of America's largest public/private land conservation projects. A longer story deserves to be told about American Prairie – how their work began and a...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 157: Kevin Garrad, Founder of Wild Response Growing up in rural England, Kevin Garrad was a child of the wild moors, a ferreter and a trainer of lurchers, a hunter of invasive minks, and destined to be a soldier. Fast forward to an early-in to the U.S. military just out of high school and eight deployments in 18 years, including a decade in the U.S. Army Special Forces dur...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 156: Florida Backcountry Lawman Bob Lee You may remember Bob Lee from Free the Ocklawaha River! , where he and Hal first met. Bob is one of the leading voices for the removal of Rodman Dam and the reconnection of the Ocklawaha River to the St. Johns and the Atlantic Ocean. He knows of what he speaks: Bob Lee was the game warden for this part of the American backcountry – t...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 155: Montana Fishing Guide and Writer Chris Dombrowski   Chris Dombrowski is a professional fishing guide of over two decades on the rivers of Montana, an acclaimed poet and the author of  Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World's Most Alluring Fish , which is about, among many other things, the pursuit of bonefish in the Bahamas. Chris' latest book is  The River Yo...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 154: The Legal Fight Over Corner Crossing Comes to a Head The future of public access to public lands access is being decided in Wyoming with the ongoing saga of  the corner-crossing hunters and their legal travails . We all have a dog in this fight – and never more so than right now, given the accelerating trend of huge expanses of private land being consolidated, with pu...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 153: The MT Legislature, The Weed Tax, and The Conservationists Montana's legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, but the amount of work that goes into a single abbreviated session is mind-blowing. In just a few short months during its 2023 session, more than 200 bills dealing with fish and wildlife management, public access, conservation funding, and fair chas...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 152: Murder of the Grand Kankakee Marsh "I have never yet found a place that equaled the Kankakee swamps for the variety of game to be found there." – J. Lorenzo Werich, 1920. Few know the history now. None who experienced it are still alive to tell us the tale. But it was once known as The Everglades of the North, a million acres of marsh and swamp in Indiana and Illinois...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 151: Bill Avey, 40 Years in the Forest Service Retired Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Bill Avey is here to give us a clear view into the workings of the U.S. Forest Service – and what is arguably, for a public lands hunter or angler, the most important agency in America. Hal and Bill became friends on a snow survey ski trip through the Bob Marshall Wilde...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 150: Free the Ocklawaha River! Almost 60 years ago, the U.S. government, blinded by hubris, began work on the  Cross Florida Barge Canal . Never heard of it? That's because President Richard Nixon, seeing it for the financial and ecological monstrosity that it was, halted the project in 1971 before it was halfway completed. All that remains of the bad idea is Rodman Dam, c...

Podcast & Blast: Episode 149, Conservation in the 118th Congress with the BHA Policy Crew As a wise man once said, You may not be interested in war, but when the times comes, war will certainly be interested in you. The same can be said about Congress. This week's episode with BHA's John Gale and Kaden McArthur takes us to Washington, D.C., with an exploration of the 118th Congress, where the hott...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 148: Drew Phipps and the Restoration of the Candy Darter America's Midwestern rivers – the Elk, the Kanawha, the Ohio and all their vast systems of arterial tributaries – are home to a mind-boggling array of some of the most bizarre creatures on this planet. Among them, the candy darter, a tiny fish of such astounding beauty that its very existence begs questions about hum...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 147: Ted Koch on the Lesser Prairie Chicken and Grasslands Conservation Will we act now to save America's iconic grasslands?  The southern population of the lesser prairie chicken has been listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as endangered, a listing that will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the fate of this gamebird and its habitat on the sout...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 146: Lyndsie Bourgon, Author of Tree Thieves Lyndsie Bourgon  is a writer, oral historian, National Geographic Fellow and author  of  Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods . Join Hal and Lyndsie as they explore the many paths that led to her book on the booming trade in stolen timber and other forest products from America's public and private lands. You...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 145: Ethnobotanist Dr. Susan Leopold Dr. Susan Leopold is an ethnobotanist who spent the early years of her career in the jungles of the Peruvian Amazon and Central America. An epiphany led her home, to Virginia and to the American heartland of the Ohio River, to study native plants, medicinal herbs and the natural and human history of this wild, diverse and beleaguered co...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 144: Author and Historian Douglas Brinkley   Douglas Brinkley is the preeminent scholar and writer on the history of America's public lands and conservation movement. Among his seven bestselling books of history are Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (2010) and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America (2016). His new...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 143: Feral Horses on Public Lands in Nevada More than 82,000 feral horses roam U.S. public lands, about four times as many as the land and water can sustain. Almost all of them live in Nevada, the most arid state in the union, where their impacts are almost unimaginable: desertification and massive loss of wildlife, ranging from pollinators and other insects to sage grouse...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 142: Ashley Peters, communications director, Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society   Ashley Peters grew up in rural Iowa, in a landscape of cornfields and monoculture agriculture. Looking for a wilder and wider life, she found her way to U.S. Forest Service trail jobs in the Minnesota Boundary Waters and in Alaska, to a degree in communications, and to conser...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 141: Public Lands Journalist Nate Schweber A flamboyant Western politician, yelling hatred for the federal government, accusing anyone who questioned him of being a "communist," secretly planning a takeover and selloff of 230 million acres of public land to his cronies. Sounds like today, yes? Well, it was 1947, and it almost worked. Montana-born, New York City-seasoned re...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 140: Far Bank's Simon Gawesworth on public access to public waters…worldwide Simon Gawesworth is a second-generation master flycasting instructor and world casting champion, author of three books on Spey casting, and currently works as the education and engagement manager for  Far Bank . A native Brit, he has been working in the flyfishing industry in the U.S. for the past...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 139: Kyle Lybarger, Native Habitat Project   Kyle Lybarger , a 29-year-old consulting forester, father, deer-hunter, small creek addict and self-proclaimed "native plant nerd" of Hartselle, Alabama, is a major part of a new and wonderful current sweeping America. Kyle's  Native Habitat Project  videos – simple, one-minute vignettes of obscure native plants, remnant grassla...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 138: Mississippi forester Alex Harvey Come with Hal to southern Mississippi to talk with Alex Harvey, a registered professional forester in Mississippi and Alabama and a land management consultant, wildlife biologist and multi-generational conservationist, hunter and fisherman. Harvey is carrying on the outdoor traditions passed on to him from generations of his family, ra...

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 137: Marine Veteran and Storyteller Russell Worth Parker Russell Worth Parker , known as Worth, is a retired Marine and a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. After 27 years in the Corps, he is home in Wilmington, North Carolina, hunting and fishing and being a husband and father – and has, as he puts it, "fallen backwards into a writing career." Parker's work has been publish...

Striped bass are arguably the most important fish – culturally and economically – on the Atlantic seaboard. And right now, anglers are spearheading a push to conserve and rebuild striper populations, which have suffered in recent decades because of overfishing and poor habitat. What's the future of this iconic Eastern species, and what opportunities can we create to ensure our continued ability to...