Funding the wild: the role of outdoor recreation in conservation

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:07

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast, where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Amy Lefringhouse.

Karla Griesbaum: 00:16

And I'm your cohost, Karla Griesbaum.

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:18

And today, we are here with our friend, Curt Sinclair. He comes to us from the State Illinois 4-h office. He is our extension specialist in shooting sports and environmental education. Thank you so much for being here, Curt.

Curt Sinclair: 00:33

Well, thank you and it's a great group of folks to be friends with, so pleasure to be here.

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:40

Wonderful. Well Curt's going to talk to us about some of the trends that we see in fish and wildlife recreation. As you know, we're focused on wildlife during this season. Kurt did a real deep dive into hunting and fishing license sales and what that tells us about the state of outdoor recreation in that sense in Illinois. So I can't wait to dive in to that subject with you, Curt.

Amy Lefringhouse: 01:10

But first, before we get started, just tell us a little bit about your role in Extension and just big picture about about what you do.

Curt Sinclair: 01:20

Okay. Well, with the University of Illinois Extension, I've been fortunate to have worked for this organization for about thirty two years. And so I've seen change in some ways and stay the same in a lot of others. But my role now is with the State 4-H office, like you said. I am the person that coordinates the shooting sports part of 4-h throughout the state, and that includes archery clubs, shotgun clubs that shoot trap and skeet, rifle clubs that are air rifle and 22, which is a small bullet, that precision type rifle that, you know, like you'd have in the Olympics, you know, if you see that kind of activity of the sport.

Curt Sinclair: 02:04

And then there's also pistol, which is also air pistol with a little pellet and or a 22 pistol. So there's that's a national program that's run almost every state has a 4-H shooting sports program, 47 to be exact. So we operate under a broadly set of curriculum that's standardized. So what I'm trying to say is it's done in Arkansas the same way as it's done in Illinois and Maine and everywhere else. So I run that and that takes a lot of my energy in a work day.

Curt Sinclair: 02:38

There's over 700 volunteers that I work with and coordinate and train and then they are running clubs in their local counties. We have about 3,000 kids that are 4-H youth that are in these clubs. And so we hold trainings so that everybody knows how to do it safely and do it the right way and be positive with it. And so we have contests and and different things for fun. So that's a lot of what I do besides the anything to do with nature.

Curt Sinclair: 03:10

If it has do with the outdoors at the state 4-H level, then it is likely ends up on my plate. So that can be anything from sport fishing to forestry to just everything that 4-H does. If it's got anything to do with with the outdoors and or typically agriculture, that kind of thing, then I help with that. Not the livestock side, that's its own specialist. But other things that relate to ag are like small engines and tractors and electricity and things like that.

Curt Sinclair: 03:44

So I just love my job. It it's a varied position. It keeps me active and and moving around the state. And I do know an awful lot of people as a result in just all over the state, which is really satisfying.

Karla Griesbaum: 03:59

And you've got to feel so good. You're getting kids outside and into nature. That's

Curt Sinclair: 04:03

Exactly. And that is the that what drives me. I do love to see the results of kids' projects and stuff that have got them up and out. Not negative against screens, but I mean enough's enough sometimes. I'll get them away from their phone and and their computer and their video games and all that and let's go let's go outside. Yeah.

Amy Lefringhouse: 04:30

Well, one of my favorite things to do every year is to judge the natural resource projects at the county level and I've done some with you, Curt, at the state level, but my our master naturalist over here love to judge the outdoor the natural resources and the shooting sports projects. And every year I come away with that. Just kids are so cool. So creative. They're so, you know, I don't think we give them as much credit sometimes as as they deserve, but they come up with some really really cool projects and it always restores my faith in the youth whenever I I do those those judging activities so.

Curt Sinclair: 05:10

Yep. Well said. Yep. It definitely rejuvenates you. I know I felt that way when I was recently a part of the 4-h public speaking contest, you know, as a judge for that.

Curt Sinclair: 05:21

Mhmm. And the the kids, the they just blow you away with how high spirited and smart and, you know, you're like, oh gosh, there is there is hope for I need to. They're amazing. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Karla Griesbaum: 05:36

So, Curt, getting kinda transitioning into this hunting and fishing in Illinois, what do you see as the rural hunters and conservation efforts across the state?

Curt Sinclair: 05:46

Well, our country has a wildlife model that is really an amazing setup. So the the the setup of our system, North American model of wildlife management is really the envy of, I think, lot of the rest of the world that pays attention to these kinds of things. And that there is a a setup where there is an is an special excise tax that the federal government puts together. It was from 1937 and was called the Pittman Robertson Act, and it puts an 11% tax on outdoor related items. So whether consumers know they're paying it or not, they if if particularly in any kind of a direct hunting, fishing type of equipment, ammunition, just be it archery or whatever.

Curt Sinclair: 06:43

It's got that tax on it that goes to the federal government and then that the Fed then redistribute that money to the states according to a formula that is pretty logical. It's got to do with how big the state is geographically and how many fishing and hunting licenses they're selling in relation to their population numbers. So the reason that I did a little digging into the trends of hunting and fishing license numbers and sales has really got a direct correlation to say what our Department of Natural Resources here in Illinois has available to them to do programs, to run projects, to do projects, to run fish hatcheries, do their wildlife management, habitat management projects and all that. So it's vitally important. But it also is a good system when you stop and think about it.

Curt Sinclair: 07:42

It's it's the the person that's the quote sportsman or sportswoman is is actually funding. They're the ones funding the wildlife management habitat for everybody. Mhmm. So you may not be a hunter or a fisherman. You might be a bird lover.

Curt Sinclair: 08:03

That's just that's your jam is to just go out and do bird watching. And it's a hunting hunting and fishing outdoor lifestyle and those purchases that actually benefit the bird watcher too because they're, you know, they're out in these environments in the forests and fields of Illinois enjoying what they like, but that forest and field is being managed by the Department of Natural Resources many times and that money is coming from the outdoorsman. So it's an interesting system, but I think it's worked very, very well when you see of all the successes that wildlife management has had, the lessons that we've learned along the way, the way we've fixed them, has really been a pretty job well done. And so it's a system that I think is a good one. But I do have my concerns about it because there are some numbers, trends that make you go, we need to keep working at this.

Curt Sinclair: 09:05

We need to keep getting kids outside so that they have a spark to and a passion to be a fisherman or to be just somebody that relishes those experiences so they fall in love with the resource and then take care of the water at home and take care of it because they realize that this world is all connected and that maybe their love of archery is the reason that they are going to make sure their own kids get outside. So it's just all connected in those interesting ways.

Karla Griesbaum: 09:39

I feel like there's such a family element to hunting and fishing. So I am not a hunter in myself. Mhmm. I am where you like, was and is. And so I have a love for it even though I can't do it myself.

Karla Griesbaum: 09:52

I can appreciate what it does for our natural areas for what I like to do. Like when we were saying, like, I like to hike, and I like to look at things. I I like plants, So even though I'm not a hunter myself, I still appreciate that world and what they do for all the natural areas.

Curt Sinclair: 10:08

Absolutely. And I I I've really enjoyed some of your work and even listening to you recently talk about foraging

Karla Griesbaum: 10:16

Mhmm.

Curt Sinclair: 10:16

Is really a very common thread that you would have with a hunter. Because the level I think that I think people that are in these kind of outdoor pursuits for a while and they get older, they begin to just appreciate the experience and they don't want to waste anything. I mean, so the actual sustenance that's coming from the harvest of a pheasant or a rabbit or, you know, anything like that is just treasured. And I could also envision a world in the future where that becomes food the sources of food in our current culture aren't aren't you may not look at a squirrel and think of food. Mhmm.

Curt Sinclair: 11:05

But I could see maybe in the future maybe more people would. It's something that I see could evolve and be a positive for wildlife management and and even just that outdoor lifestyle is that it's no secret when times get hard, you're gonna find food somewhere.

Karla Griesbaum: 11:24

Right. Kind of on the other side of that, do you feel like there are some common misconceptions about hunting in Illinois?

Curt Sinclair: 11:32

Well misconceptions might be that the hunter is a consumer and just a taker and not a giver when it's just exactly the opposite. Again, that's why I kind of talked about the finances to kick this little discussion off today is because without the hunting and fishing license sales you're not going to have the Department of Natural Resources functional at all. Right. And without them, our natural areas are not managed or we don't even have even what we, you know, wish we had more, of course we do, but we wouldn't even have what we have now without them. So they are actually, the more you learn about this, the more you understand that they're they being the hunter and fishermen they are an absolute necessity for how our model works.

Curt Sinclair: 12:19

And so the amount of people doing those activities needs to be paid attention to.

Amy Lefringhouse: 12:27

Mhmm. And as an outdoor lover, just purchasing a fishing license or a hunting license can be seen as somewhat of a give back. Right? Even if you aren't going to be a you know Karla Hunter or you know whatever, you're not going to go fishing. You know that's almost kind of a it would be a responsible thing to do I guess is to give back to those pursuits that you that you enjoy that like hiking, like bird watching, like nature photography, things like that.

Curt Sinclair: 13:04

Well I was doing that a little bit of data diving into I just thought about what's happened in my lifetime just for my own interest to say you know how many hunting and fishing licenses were sold. I'll go ahead and tell you my age now. I was born in 1960, so I went back to the DNR's website and they are it's a great website, you can dig around and find all kinds of cool stuff. And I found the data that of how many hunting and fishing licenses were sold the year I was born. And we were looking at right about half a million hunting licenses were sold in that year.

Curt Sinclair: 13:43

845,000 fishing licenses were sold in that year. So that was my birth year. Then I was like, okay, well, about last year? So sixty four years later, we are we have shrunk in that number has shrunk from the hunting license was 496 or 496000 down to 287,000 for hunting licenses.

Karla Griesbaum: 14:12

Wow.

Curt Sinclair: 14:12

So a large decline in the number. Now keep in mind there's 2,600,000 more people in Illinois. Population has grown in those sixty four years by over two and a half million people, but we're basically selling just a little over half the amount of hunting licenses. So a much smaller percentage of the people are buying a hunting license in this day and age. That is a concern of the finances of how much money is available for wildlife management projects and operations here in Illinois.

Curt Sinclair: 14:50

That is not unique to Illinois by the way. I mean, this is a national trend. But these are our Illinois numbers that are like I said pretty easy to find if you're interested in it. Fishing licenses have not declined to that degree. They have gone down but not to that drastic of a drop.

Curt Sinclair: 15:11

From 8 45 it went down to 618. I'm talking in thousands again.

Amy Lefringhouse: 15:17

Right. Right.

Curt Sinclair: 15:18

So it went down significantly but not in half. So I think that's got a lot to do with our culture, our lifestyle, our accessibility of places. You know, there's lots of dynamics at play here but the numbers are the numbers when that's the reality of it. So anyway, that is why I and I thought to myself, why the rules of the regulations that govern the behavior of hunters and fishermen with what tools they can use, when they can go, you know, that kind of thing. The trend today is to make it easier and easier and easier for the public to do these pursuits.

Curt Sinclair: 16:05

Why? Because you know people at the top are like, we need people out doing this stuff so that we have the funds in order to do a better job. We don't want to see the percentage of the population who call themselves a hunter to keep going down, to be less and less and less and less. That would not be good for the wildlife management system that we have. So the rules then are becoming easier.

Curt Sinclair: 16:34

I can give you some examples. There are the tools, if you want to start there. The most popular game animal in Illinois is the white tailed deer. The tools that you can use to go hunting white tailed deer now include things that, and just a few short years ago, were prohibited. Crossbows would be one of them.

Curt Sinclair: 16:55

You needed to be basically over, I think it was 65, or be a disabled person to use a crossbow up until just a handful years ago. Now it's a legal tool. Now you can use certain kinds of centerfire rifles to shoot and harvest a white tailed deer. It's easier, much easier to be successful with some of these newer higher tech tools than just a few short years ago when all you had was a smoothbore barreled shotgun that you would put a slug in that would float around like a pitcher that throws a knuckleball. And it floats around and moves around and that's why it's hard to hit a baseball thrown with a knuckleball because it's not spinning and it's not stable, it it's hard to hit for a batter to hit.

Curt Sinclair: 17:51

Well, that's what you were doing with your smoothbore shotgun with a slug. It was just floating around the air, and you'd be lucky to hit a pie plate at 40 yards with it. And now the tools that you can use are pinpoint accurate right out of the box, and frankly it's easier and it's encouraging more people to go. It's I think trying to have the success rate of tags build go up. There are plenty of deer out there.

Curt Sinclair: 18:21

The management of them is a whole gosh, you could do a whole series of podcasts on white tailed deer management. But Illinois is very well known for a successful deer hunt and a deer it's a destination spot, whether that's good or bad for for who depends on who you are and where you've got to hunt yourself if that's something you wanna do. But but the point is it it the DNR is making it easier and easier to get into the system and to be successful. And there's a reason that they're doing that is because they need more hunters.

Amy Lefringhouse: 18:56

Mhmm. So backing up just a little bit on wildlife management, this is like a ginormous question. I'll ask it and we can try to like Mhmm. Talk about some of the main big concepts. But you talked about white tailed deer.

Amy Lefringhouse: 19:10

How does the state figure out what hunting seasons are gonna be? What are the limits, etcetera, for deer, waterfowl, you know, fish even sometimes? What are like the big picture things that the state looks at?

Curt Sinclair: 19:25

Well, they're looking at a number of factors on the the the either the flock, the herd, the whatever critter we're talking about here. But they're looking at the first of all, the rules and regulations are are set for for a couple different reasons. One of them is the management of that animal and that, you know, like you said, so if they're if they are within the carrying capacity limits of the habitat of that, and then typically they're managed by county on a county basis. Other states do it differently with different units or whatever, but but Illinois has got a 102 counties, which is a lot of counties, so they manage most of these permits, etcetera, by by county. And then sometimes a site within a county, if it's a if it's a state park or something like that, they'll have special tags for that spot.

Curt Sinclair: 20:23

But they're looking at the overall health of the herd. They're looking at if they maybe need to manage any kind of minimizing risks of disease, they will want to harvest more animals to not have them in such close proximity to each other, particularly again if the habitat is showing signs of being degraded by being, you know, just too many animals for that carrying capacity. The other reason that the that the rules are what they are regulations is for for safety reasons and for fair chase reasons. So there's the rules and regulations booklets for fishing and for hunting, you know, have rules in there because of it's a safety topic, it's a fair chase topic, you know, so that you can't for instance, you know, hunt after dark, you know, on certain animals, etcetera, because it just wouldn't be fair. It just wouldn't be ethical at all to do that and or safety reasons.

Amy Lefringhouse: 21:24

Nesting season

Curt Sinclair: 21:26

Right. And so for instance, if you talk on wild turkeys, they are able to be taken in the spring and in the fall, but in the spring, they're gonna protect the the female. So she can have her reproduction be successful and then do her job as a mother in the spring and summer, and then in the fall she would be a legal game animal. So it it's all about the bigger picture, like you said, of that particular species. And on whether it's, you know, whether the female is protected at a certain time or and for instance, in pheasant hunting, biology of that bird is that the reality is one one male pheasant, one cock pheasant can successfully breed with 10 hens.

Curt Sinclair: 22:18

So you have nine of the nine out of 10 male birds are basically expendable. Mhmm. They're surplus birds that have nothing to do with the future population and the pheasants. So the hens are protected, and you can take up to two male pheasants in the fall during that season. So there there there's always a biological or a safety or a fair chase reason or why rules are what they are.

Karla Griesbaum: 22:45

What about with fishing? How do you manage fish populations?

Curt Sinclair: 22:49

Well, they the the DNR does a lot of fish sampling, so they will go into a lake or a stream, and they'll do typically an electro shocking sample which is basically how many, for instance, how many fish of what species and what size are they am I successfully sampling in a given amount of time? And so then they'll estimate the population, look and age, and see according to age how big the fish is, its condition. So and then they'll say, okay, each lake then is gonna have a different set of rules and regs on if it's a public body of water. You need to go to the effort of finding out what the the specific limits are by species. For instance, you know, Lake Jacksonville near where I live, you can keep, like, 10 crappie underneath that are under 10 inches and a certain amount that are over 10 inches.

Curt Sinclair: 23:51

And so you gotta and it's just because they've got more crappie in that lake than they really need.

Amy Lefringhouse: 23:56

Right.

Curt Sinclair: 23:56

And they're not gonna they're not gonna get very big unless they get thinned out. So they're wanting you to keep smaller fish where typically you would grow smaller fish back, but there they're like, nope. We want you to keep this many under that size. Right. Though there's always a reason and it's up to an ethical sportsman to follow those rules and because they're being managed by people who know what they're doing.

Amy Lefringhouse: 24:21

Yeah. Each water body has its own management recommendations. Yeah.

Curt Sinclair: 24:25

Right. Right. You go

Karla Griesbaum: 24:26

We go up to Northeast Minnesota every summer and get fishing licenses, and those books that they give you

Amy Lefringhouse: 24:32

With the rules?

Karla Griesbaum: 24:34

Yes, they are thick.

Curt Sinclair: 24:35

Yes. It can be a little overwhelming for someone who's brand new and has a desire to be in the hunting or fishing arena to know, oh, where do I start? How do I do this the right way?' It can be a little overwhelming. Yeah.

Amy Lefringhouse: 24:53

Well that brings me to the next question here. Like what what should someone that's new to hunting or fishing in Illinois, where could they go? What do they need to know about licenses, permits, regs? Are there any programs or resources that you know, Curt, for these beginners who might want to learn?

Curt Sinclair: 25:12

There are several programs and certainly the Department of Natural Resources, I've probably spit out the DNR, which is just kind of a lingo. Department of Natural Resources is our state fish and wildlife agency, and again their website is really quite good. It's been updated recently and it's very user friendly compared to the last one, which you could say that about any of our organizations websites. But I do think it's drastically improved. And you just you start by if you're going to be new into hunting, for instance, you want to go to that website and find a hunting safety class.

Curt Sinclair: 25:57

So there's a ten hour hunter safety course that you can take either in person or you can actually take it online now, and that would educate you a lot on the safety, the methods, etc for different kinds of game animals and pick one to start out with. I suggest to folks to start small and by that I mean small and I'm talking go squirrel hunting. Squirrel hunting is kind of something that is faded away in popularity because of the the amount of white tailed deer that Illinois does have and the fact that that's just gets all the glamorous press and everything. But small game hunting is much easier to to get involved starting to do it. You're much more apt to be successful quickly.

Curt Sinclair: 26:50

You can learn a lot about the tools used, the habitats, the the the culinary benefits of small game, be it birds, rabbits, squirrels, etcetera, that can really get a person sparked into wanting to do more with hunting and go after bigger game and more challenging game. Don't think there's a more challenging species to hunt than the wild turkey. It's just an incredibly wary wild creature, and that's not where you'd wanna start. Because if you wanted to start hunting, I would say, okay. Well, don't try to start hunting and your journey at the at the wild turkey.

Curt Sinclair: 27:38

That bird is going to make you realize that this is an impossible thing to accomplish. And you're just gonna give up too quick. So start with something that you're likely to be successful with, which I believe is like I would take somebody that wanted to learn how to hunt, I would take them squirrel hunting, and I'm quite sure that we both have a blast.

Amy Lefringhouse: 28:01

I would I'll put in a plug too. I was a wing shooting IDNR wing shooting clinic instructor and if you can find a Illinois Department of Natural Resources wing shooting clinic near you, they have those listed on the website, on the DNR website. And you've never used a firearm and you wanna go hunting, it's like a really great clinic where you just you don't have to have any experience whatsoever and you hit the basics. You get to actually shoot trap, I mean, from all different angles, left to right, right to left, coming towards you, going away from you. And just there's women only workshops.

Amy Lefringhouse: 28:46

There's youth only workshops. There's coed workshops. There's adult, you know, adult, youth, whatever. They use great shotguns that are easy, don't have a lot of kickback. And I I can yeah. You just get a lot of you get a lot of rounds, so you're you feel really confident and comfortable after you leave one of those workshops.

Curt Sinclair: 29:07

Yeah. There's plenty. There's there's also there's also other opportunities. There's a program called Learn to Hunt Program.

Curt Sinclair: 29:15

That is also you're gonna find their events, their workshops, etcetera, on that DNR website. It's called Learn to Hunt Program. Mhmm. There are, again, organizations like Pheasants Forever, for instance, that I've worked with them for many years where we'll do the same thing. We'll have youth hunts that we'll organize to get kids out that may not have a parent, uncle, or somebody that's gonna introduce them to it so they could bring them to one of those events.

Curt Sinclair: 29:46

So you have to be a little proactive. I mean, you gotta take the, you know, gumption of saying, I'm going to find a way to do this. And if you have that, you you know, that initiative, you can find people that will help you and organizations that will help you get started. And I hope that's what 4-H is doing for a lot of kids too through our shooting sports program. It's just getting

Curt Sinclair: 30:07

them introduced to the tools that they can get good at and then they want to maybe use them later on in life, you know, or continuing.

Curt Sinclair: 30:17

Because these are, you know, kids in sports, it's great. Hey, I played football and basketball in high school too, but I'm not a professional. An adult, I'm not doing that anymore. But if you these are lifelong pursuits that that they can enjoy for their entire life, not just when you're young and athletic, like when you are when you're 16 years old and and you're as fast as you're ever gonna be, that's great. That's a great time of life, but that will go away.

Curt Sinclair: 30:49

And there's not many that are gonna be professional athletes in that regard. So the shooting sports and the outdoor lifestyle though is a is kind of a lifetime game. That's also kind of one of the pitches that we use in four h about teaching, quote, life skills is one one reason that that shooting sports is a is a very popular part of 4- h.

Karla Griesbaum: 31:14

And you can get involved at any age. Right?

Curt Sinclair: 31:17

Yes. For hunting and fishing. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Curt Sinclair: 31:20

Now, again, on and on fishing, we talk hunting more than we have fishing. It's certainly a little bit more accessible to be a fisherman. Typically can find places to fish easier than you can find places to hunt. The season is obviously not set like by a calendar. The fishing season is more of, know, are my ice fishing or am I open water fishing?

Curt Sinclair: 31:47

You know, you can fish all year round. So it it's just it's a little bit more accessible. I'm actually helping the Chicago Park District run a fishing contest this summer through their urban fishing program. They had one of their Chicago Park District folks actually run into me at the State Fair last year and he was judging our sport fishing thing and he's like, you know what, you're running a 4 H fishing contest.' He goes, 'Could you kind of teach us how to do that in our urban fishing program in Chicago? We have family fishing clinics in the Chicago Park Districts and we love to do what you're doing.

Curt Sinclair: 32:31

So I worked with them, set them up their own unique fishing contest, which is just a fun way to get people excited about taking a picture of their fish next to a ruler, throwing it on this little uploadable website thing that comes to my computer, and I just every day, I get to see pictures of kids

Karla Griesbaum: 32:55

Uh-huh.

Curt Sinclair: 32:56

Holding up fish with a big smile on their face. And I think to myself, I'm getting paid to do this? This is just joyful. You know? All these kids holding up their fish with a smile on their face, and I'm like, this is awesome.

Curt Sinclair: 33:10

Yeah. So doing that now in Chicago as well as around the state just to get kids excited.

Amy Lefringhouse: 33:17

Yeah. Well, and it it actually it pushes them to go one step further. Right? They've gone through their family like the family fishing clinics. They've maybe just, you know, been instructed by someone and then the next step is kinda to go out there and do it on their own and Right.

Amy Lefringhouse: 33:32

Take pictures and be proud and, I don't know, just take it just urges them, encourages them to go one more step further than just, you know, picking up that fishing pole that one time when they were instructed. So yeah, that's cool. I see I see the the statewide 4 H fishing contest. I see that go out on social media to get it get it done up there in the Chicagoland area. That's cool.

Curt Sinclair: 33:55

That's cool. And there's again, and there's also there's also, you know, just like I said, the appreciation of the resource that goes with that fish. So I care now that there's trash, care about in this water, I don't want that, I don't I want this water coming in here to be good because I love to fish. I, you know, I loved it. I loved the fact that now I can eat eat some of the things I catch and I can really sit down and enjoy a meal that I actually had a hand in getting to this plate.

Curt Sinclair: 34:28

So you can go to YouTube and type 4 H fish fillet and watch me teaching kids how to fillet a bluegill and, you know, it's just I've had so many people tell me that that's how they got started. That it's very satisfying to do that and know that now they feel some connection to nature.

Karla Griesbaum: 34:52

That's that reciprocity part too. It's like you're getting at it, but you want to keep having that to the future so you're gonna take care of what you're using.

Curt Sinclair: 35:01

Exactly.

Karla Griesbaum: 35:02

Works both ways.

Curt Sinclair: 35:03

Yes. Yes. So the the outdoor lifestyle and then the caring for the environment is a natural connection that is made by doing these outdoor activities. All of a sudden you care a lot about the resource or maybe you didn't before.

Karla Griesbaum: 35:23

Well, Curt, you've given a lot of advice on how to get into hunting or, like, youth that wanna get into hunting, how to start small. Is there any other piece of advice that you can to someone who wants to

Curt Sinclair: 35:36

get I think the DNR is doing a great job. They have free hunting and fishing you know, free, you know, free days that you don't need a fishing license to go fishing. Take advantage of that. Try it out. They have youth seasons, for instance, that favor getting a youngster out and having them experience a hunt for instance before anyone else gets to go, the kid gets to go.

Curt Sinclair: 36:02

So youth season for a deer in Illinois is in October. So there's a weekend in October that the youth can use a firearm in the field when the rest of the adults out there can't go. So they're getting the first crack at it. Take advantage of those. So there are I think the DNR again has done a concerted effort to make it easier to introduce kids to the hunting and fishing lifestyle, to get out themselves even if they're an adult already.

Curt Sinclair: 36:37

The tools are much easier. I don't know, just think about it. The the technology of all the equipment has just made it for instance, trail cameras. Let's go there. Trail cameras now are so popular that I know people that that have the the pictures just sent right to their phone in live time.

Curt Sinclair: 37:02

So they're able to watch wildlife year round on a piece of parcel of property that maybe they can hunt or something. So they they actually know the patterns, know a lot more than we used to know. And I personally have kept the technology out of my hunting and fishing experiences. I don't want to go myself. Now, if other people do, don't judge them for it, but you can buy live scopes to put on your fishing boat that you can actually, you know, like like you're in an aquarium.

Curt Sinclair: 37:40

You're looking you're looking at the water and you're going up to a brush pile and scanning it, looking to see what size the crappie are there before you even put your hook in the water. And these guys will stare at that screen all day long on their day off. Yeah. And that's fine for them. That's not fine with me.

Curt Sinclair: 37:59

I'm getting away from my computer screen when I go fishing. But, you know, it's not an illegal thing to be doing. It's not DNR is like, yeah, do it. You would think that would make fishing so easy that there wouldn't be any fish left. But no, there's fish out there.

Curt Sinclair: 38:18

And so you can choose where your level, comfort level is on this technology, but really it's just so much easier to be successful now that these fishing and hunting license numbers to me, I'm like why aren't these bigger? You know? It's easier to be successful now. It's easier to have all these tools to go out there. But I don't know, that's why when I wrote a little blog for this series that you guys put together, which I love by the way, I just thought to myself, wonder why this is pondering to me.

Curt Sinclair: 38:56

Why why these numbers aren't are are what they are? There's more deer now to to hunt than there ever has been. It's easier now to do it. Food's expensive. You go, you know, you go by the beef counter and you're like, oh, I think we'll be eating another deer.

Curt Sinclair: 39:12

I think I think my wife would like me to shoot maybe another deer next year because this this t bone steak is looking really expensive, and venison is quite good. So those are just all things a guy like me thinks about.

Amy Lefringhouse: 39:27

Well, I think I'll take that opportunity to if you are a hunter or a fisherman, it's a good thing to take someone with you. You know, I think that there's

Curt Sinclair: 39:40

For many reasons.

Amy Lefringhouse: 39:41

Lots of, you know, rural lifestyle you might have taken your you might have gone, if you're a young person, with your dad or your grandpa and

Curt Sinclair: 39:50

Mhmm.

Amy Lefringhouse: 39:50

And that might not be happening as much maybe in urban areas where there's an adult taking youngsters or other adults out as much as they used to. And so that's I'll just use that as a, you know, an opportunity if you if you love the sport, you know, hunting or fishing, pass it on, I guess. Pass it on to the next generation or your friends and and show them how you know, show them your love for the sport.

Curt Sinclair: 40:21

Yes. I think that anybody that gives of themselves like that to someone else is going to actually at the end of the day find out they they got more by doing that themselves. They didn't really the satisfaction of showing somebody the joys of nature is hard to hard feeling to beat.

Amy Lefringhouse: 40:44

Well, thank you so much. It's been really a great conversation, Curt. And just looking at the reality of the numbers and just what what's going on in the state of Illinois and some of the basics on how to get involved in, you know, these types of outdoor recreation opportunities. We appreciate you being here. And well, just like every episode, we're gonna end with an everyday observation from all three of us.

Amy Lefringhouse: 41:10

So this is where we highlight the mundane and the normal of our environment that is actually really interesting. So Karla, I'm gonna pick on you first like I always do. The cohost gets to go first, but Karla, you have something to share with us today.

Karla Griesbaum: 41:26

I love getting picked on. So my observation is turtle babies or hatchlings, I think they're more scientifically called. In between, like, two of our neighbors have ponds. And so we have a prairie in between that we have about an acre of prairie that we've restored, and we happen to get a lot of those nests in our prairie because turtles are coming from pond to pond, and they're like, oh, look at this great prairie to lay our eggs in. So we go out.

Karla Griesbaum: 41:57

We find turtle babies all the time. And my kids always come into my everyday observations, but, like, my 12 year old daughter is huge into wildlife, and so she's always going out there and finding all these things. And I just love you know, she comes with these itty bitty things that she could fit, you know, four or five in her palm, and we note there that staff at only about 1% make it to adulthood because of predation, because of road ways, and that's just that's just their evolutionary history. But I always think about that as she's releasing them into the pond at their nearest oldest thing. Good luck, everybody.

Amy Lefringhouse: 42:39

Yep. Yep. That's cool. That was always a highlight at the camp that I used to work at. We would find we would see nests, turtle nests, and they would be able to see some of them actually doing some digging and things like that.

Amy Lefringhouse: 42:53

So it was kinda it's a neat thing to see.

Karla Griesbaum: 42:56

It is.

Amy Lefringhouse: 42:57

Well, Curt, what do you have for us today?

Curt Sinclair: 43:00

Well, I did see a turtle when I was at, you know, laying her nest when I was mowing the other day too and and just left her alone, you know. But I was mowing next to a prairie as well. I put started a prairie and I had a a flower pop up that I'm like, I remember my mom having these in her prairie. I can't remember their name. So I shut the mower off and went back to the house and got my mom's old prairie ID book out, and it's a shooting star.

Curt Sinclair: 43:31

And I was just so filled with joy remembering my mom, and it was awesome. And the other thing is I've been trying to get a Baltimore Oriole feeder to work, and I've had this ornery squirrel that evidently has a sugar problem because he'd sit there and eat all the grape jelly out of it and and and just sit there and I'm like, wasn't getting any orioles. So I moved it and I hung it on a string and I greased up the string so he couldn't get out to it. And then this morning I saw Baltimore orioles feeding at the feeder and that squirrel, true story, he's sitting there about six feet away, just had his mad look on his face like, I can't get to that jelly and that bird is getting my jelly. And I was like then I laughed, got in a truck, and went to work.

Amy Lefringhouse: 44:20

Squirrel jealousy Yeah. Witnessed.

Curt Sinclair: 44:28

Nature is awesome. It is awesome.

Karla Griesbaum: 44:31

Well, what about you, Amy? What is your observation?

Amy Lefringhouse: 44:34

Well, this is a while back, but during the summertime, I like to hang out around creeks because I don't know. I feel like that's the place that the place to be in the summertime and where you see so much life. But I was around Fall Creek and which is near me. And I was walking through the woods with one of my friends and we were, you know, trying to get to this really cool kind of deeper spot. And we were going through and right past me zoomed a dragonfly or damselfly.

Amy Lefringhouse: 45:09

I'm not really for sure. I can't remember. I think it's a I think it's classified as a damselfly. And I was like, what was that? So we started like hopping through the woods like basically chasing this little dragonfly because I don't really know.

Amy Lefringhouse: 45:22

I can't ID my dragonflies as or damselflies as well as I really want to. But I did get a picture of it as it landed and I think it was like an ebony jewel wing. So I've seen them a bunch ever since then, but at the time I had just never really paid attention, I guess. And it was really cool. Just it's a neat thing.

Amy Lefringhouse: 45:42

Look it up on your, you know, look it up on your computer to see what it looks like or maybe we'll put a picture or put a I might put something in the show notes about it. But yeah, seeing that was was pretty cool because I don't know, dragonflies and damselflies are just neat. They're so colorful. They're neat. You know, lots of them are neon, different colors, and I don't know.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:04

It was just a neat experience. And I'm sure somebody watching over us was probably like, what are those two doing? Hopping around, following something that that nobody else could see except for us. So you went

Curt Sinclair: 46:17

Being a kid. Love it.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:18

I know. I do. I love to do that stuff. Well, thanks again, Curt, for being with us today. We always appreciate you. Appreciate your insight. Appreciate what you do in your job.

Curt Sinclair: 46:27

Well, thank you. It was a pleasure to be here with y'all.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:30

Well, this has been another episode of the Everyday Environment Podcast. Check us out next week where we will be talking with Brodie Eddington from Pheasants Forever Quail Forever. He'll be talking to us about quail in Illinois.