A Sand County almanac, And Sketches here and there;

one of my peers that goes into wildlife management, like, introduced me, for instance, to Aldo Leopold's, a Sand County Almanac, which is probably... Not probably. Which is the most influential conservation environmental text.

Why it's the most influential is because it was written for rednecks like what we were.

When you go read Roosevelt today, you're reading Roosevelt kind of like, like a hobby historian.

When you read a Sand County Almanac, you're, you're reading it and finding out you're reading it and being like, holy, this could have been written yesterday.

If you have a PhD, you run the risk of being like a mortician looking at a dead body.

There are those, there are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.

These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.

Which of these is not one of the five tools of wildlife management listed in the 1949 book, a sand county almanac, axe, cow, water gun?

Which of these is not one of the five tools of wildlife management listed in the 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, axe, cow, water, gun?

Axe, cow, water, gun. What would be your guess, Steve?

Cow.

No, that's wrong. Water.

Water is right. Nobody got that right though the time we played.

Which of these is not one of the five tools of wildlife management listed in the 1949 book, a sand County almanac.

Which of these is not one of the five tools of wildlife management in a sand County almanac.

The central thesis of game management is this game can be restored by the creative use of the same tools, which have heretofore destroyed it. Axe, plow, cow, fire and gun.

What year was most of that book written?

it was written in the twenties

I mean, his prose was so elegant. I mean, it was so compelling, and he just wrote about the outdoors in ways that really spoke to me. And in ways that no one had done.

I think the whole stewardship ethic, you know, and of course, in a private land state like Texas, that's very germane to what we do.

Aldo Leopold talks about it in Sand County Almanac, the mountain and the green, green fire, green fire dying in the wool side.

ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching, even when doing the wrong thing is legal

I contacted an old associate, Kurt Mein, the world's greatest Leopold authority, a trustee of the Leopold Foundation, a professor of ecology at University of Wisconsin, the author of the definitive Leopold biography.

He has read every quotable word Leopold ever wrote or said.

Aldo was a great man and a deep, deep thinker, but he never said what you keep saying he said, stop it.

Rivers are the gutters down which flow the ruins of continents.

And so he turns to Aldo Leopold. And so he turns to Aldo Leopold. And so he turns to Aldo Leopold. And so he turns to a you've got to think long term. So many Christian ethicists have turned to this.

Aldo Leopold's talking about technology he's talking specifically about hunting technology and he was saying that that you can't improve the well you can't improve the pump without improving the well yeah he's not talking about oil rigs he's talking about water water but meaning if you're going to make it easier and easier and easier to extract more and more and more water you're going to have to figure out a way to make the well better too deeper and better and pure because you will suck that some bitch dry

San County Almanac. He wrote there and that was collected and published after his death.

Leopold's work in a Sand County Almanac is poetry and poetry with an ecological twist that every hunter angler conservationist can resonate with.

I remember picking up his book, A Sand County Almanac in my brother's room and my brother's room was a place that that you ventured into at great peril.

Here's one way you just kind of summarize some of his admonitions that you kept with you to be to be one of those who cannot live without wild things. Keep all the parts, listen to the mountain and preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.

That says it all right. I mean, yeah, it's amazing. You know that if you can hoard if you can sort of hoard experiences, which I think is part of what I do along with books and other things. But if you can hoard experiences out there, then for me that that informs who I am.

So so seeing my father burn a piece of land to keep it productive or being out with him when he was cutting a tree and thinking about Leopold's good oak and thinking about the annual rings in that tree as history and not just how the tree grew, then then it it helps me understand and sort of re-find my place in the past, but also now.

there's uh you know one of the people we regard is sort of one of the fathers of modern wildlife conservation and also in some ways you know a person who was deeply influential to me though he you know we never cross paths uh is guy named Aldo Leopold who uh his most famous work is San County Almanac right which was which was basically a collection of things that he'd written during the sort of dark ages of American wildlife which was around the 1920s

Alma later on is going to pick up in that same kind of language when he's talking about the seed and the seed growing into a tree and the tree producing fruit. He uses that same kind of language about the fruit thereof.

Feels like Elder Bednar is very much tapping into not only that Book of Mormon theology of Alma 7, but the theology of the Book of Hebrews here.

I think for me personally, I have seen, as I've learned more and more about this, the value of the Book of Mormon is just increasing in my eyes. 2 Nephi 2, 2 Nephi 9, Alma 12.

I've started reading Alma 12 the other day and I'm like, wow, we know so much about this story because of the Book of Mormon.

And I think, Oh, look at that. We could be covered by Christ or we'd be exposed.