Libsyn Directory

An Assault on Public Lands with BHA's Patrick Berry and Kaden McArthur

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Release Date: 05/06/2025

Southern Folk Medicine with Phyllis Light

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Come with us to Arab, Alabama, to meet Phyllis Light, herbalist, responsible forager, native plant conservation advocate, founder of the Appalachian Center for Natural Health, and author of Southern Folk Medicine: Healing Traditions from the Appalachian Fields and Forests. Phyliss Light was born on Brindlee Mountain, in this southwest extension of the Appalachian Mountains, into a family with Creek and Cherokee Indian roots. She learned herbalism from her grandmother, and spent long days of her childhood “gleaning” – harvesting wild foods and medicines, fishing and hunting, with her...

Saving Coldwater Fisheries with Chris Jordan, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Northwest Fisheries Science Center

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Chris Jordan has some unwelcome news for the watershed and fisheries restoration movement. Restoring robust populations of salmonids and other fish species in degraded rivers and wetlands is much more complex than we could have ever imagined, and we’ve been doing it wrong for decades. Most of us, even those of us who view our fishing and our rivers as a kind of religion, don’t even know what a truly healthy river looks like. But Chris also has some welcome news, though, and it’s the subject of today’s podcast: we know how to restore functioning watersheds for coldwater fisheries now,...

Special Guest Ryan Callaghan: Public Lands Under Fire

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

The news keeps getting worse: over 250 million acres of our public lands potentially up for sale and 3 million or more likely carved out. While this has been a goal, and a dream, of many radical politicians for the past fifty years, until now it has only been whispered, dog-whistled, lied about, and obscured. Now, their plan is out in the open. The line is drawn in the sand. The gauntlet has been thrown down. The land grabbers have made their play. How will we respond? How do we, the Americans who know and love and depend upon these lands, stop this utterly shameless theft of our...

Iowa: Agriculture and the Tallgrass Prairie

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

“At first the Euroamerican settlers could not fathom the tallgrass prairie. Stepping into it from cropland-speckled woodlands to the east, they entered a land of sky and horizon, wind and light, flower and scent, a surging sea of grasses that staggered the imagination. The prairie grasslands seemed to stretch on forever, a landscape that promised no enclosure, only intensity and exposure…” So writes Cornelia (Connie) Mutel in her book, The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa, a modern classic of natural history. Mutel has spent her life chronicling the fantastic and...

The Future of OUR Public Lands with Walt Dabney

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Everything you will ever need to know to win any argument about the future of our American public lands--special and crucial episode with Walt Dabney. Understanding the background and history of our public lands is critical to safeguarding them for the future. Texas-born Walt Dabney started his National Park Service career in Yellowstone in 1969, worked as a ranger from the Everglades to Alaska, and was the Superintendent of the National Parks in Southeast Utah from 1991-99, completing a 30-year Parks Service career. Then he served as the Director of State Parks for the Texas Parks and...

Turkeys, Novels and Wild Appalachia with David Joy

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

“[David Joy]is a man who sees his homeplace clearly and who writes like his hand was touched by God.” — The New York Times Novelist and essayist David Joy is a tall, lean and red-bearded denizen of the hollers, mountain tops and ridges of Jackson County, North Carolina. He is an obsessive turkey, deer and squirrel hunter, a fisherman who wrote his first published book on fly fishing but who is equally at home running live baits for big flathead catfish on Piedmont rivers. He is on the very short list of great American fiction writers and essayists who hunt and fish and speak for public...

An Assault on Public Lands with BHA's Patrick Berry and Kaden McArthur

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Worldwide Conservation with Mandela Leola Van Eeden

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

When Mandela Leola Van Eeden was a child roaming the South African outback, her father would run a flag up a tall pole above their cabin so that she and her dog would be able to find their way back home. Her mother is from Valier, on Montana’s Hi-Line, and Mandela grew up mostly in Billings, steeped as much in the Montana outdoors culture as she was in her father’s native South African farming and ranching world. She is a hunter and an angler, an international whitewater rafting guide and explorer, musician, Ashtanga yoga teacher, and host and producer of the hugely popular podcast...

11 Bulls in a Row with BHA's Trey Curtiss

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Trey Curtiss, a native son of Montana, is BHA’s Strategic Partnerships and Conservation Programs Manager. Trey is also among a very small group of public lands’ elk hunters who have successfully filled a bull tag now for over ten years in a row. Ponder that, for a moment: for any of us who have hunted bulls in the backcountry and think we know exactly what that entails. Do we know, really? What are we missing? What does it take, really, in time, gear, commitment, preparation? Join us for one of the most in-depth talks on public lands elk hunting that you will ever encounter. Before the...

It’s More Than Fishing: A Conversation with CCA’s Pat Murray

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Come with us to Houston, Texas, to talk saltwater fishing, conservation, philosophy and life with Pat Murray, former light tackle fishing guide and President of the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA). Pat is the author of Pat Murray’s No-Nonsense Guide to Coastal Fishing and the just-published It’s More than Fishing, from Texas A&M University Press. He’s also the publisher of TIDES magazine, and an award-winning outdoor writer and reporter. CCA was founded in 1977 to address the drastic commercial overfishing of redfish and speckled trout along the Texas Gulf Coast. The battles...

More Episodes

Public lands and waters have risen to the forefront of hunter-angler issues in 2025, from Utah's attempted steal of 18.5 million acres of land owned by us all and managed by the Bureau of Land Management to divestment and sale of public lands being floated in Congress and the shrinking of the Federal workforce charged with overseeing the health of our shared resources. The daily flow of information has been a constant -- one that's hard to keep up with. In this special episode of the Podcast & Blast, Hal sits down with BHA President and CEO Patrick Berry and Director of Government Relations Kaden McArthur to sort through the maze and learn what's really going on. And most importantly, we learn of BHA's critical work in advocating for our shared lands and waters and the role we all play as citizens of the United States in deciding the future of our public lands. This is an episode not to be missed for any hunter, angler or outdoor recreationalist. Thanks for tuning in.

Tell your elected officials that you value your public lands and waters.

The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson.

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists.

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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