EP 594. From Leopards to Lessons Learned: Storytelling as Conservation

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where today’s guest Ms. Britt Longoria is one of the most eloquently spoken, can do hunters, conservationist and also I think one of the most interesting people on the interweb today. Britt, how the heck are you?

Brittany Longoria: I am great. What an introduction. I feel happy. Thank you.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’ve kept up with you for a long time and I’m a huge fan. But Britt, for those that don’t know your story, who are you not just as a hunter, but as a person?

Brittany Longoria: Probably the easy answer is, I am born and raised on the coast of Maine. So that has definitely a lot to do with my love of nature and natural resources, the mountains, the ocean and how I grew up close to the land, definitely created my field ethic that I hope I carry on wherever I’m at.

“Yeah. Who were your introductions to the outdoor world? Who were your influences, your mentors in hunting?”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Who were your introductions to the outdoor world? Who were your influences, your mentors in hunting?

Brittany Longoria: Definitely my father. I grew up doing father daughter hunts all over New England and that spread out to all over the world. And I would also say one of my big mentorships as far as really getting myself as a little girl out in the field was working with NAVHDA, North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association. Had a great, and still do have a great youth program up in Maine. And that was, I don’t want to say a gateway drug, but kind of, I mean that was my introduction was through bird dogs, working with dogs and having my own responsibilities, having to raise bird dog and really see the whole process from puppy and training to competing in AKC hunt tests and dog shows and kind of just that whole world I would say it was definitely through NAVHDA.

Ramsey Russell: Tell me what it was like, some of your fondest memories growing up hunt with your dad in coastal Maine. And I know from a little bit of social media it did involve woodcock grouse?

Brittany Longoria: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Versatile retrievers.

Brittany Longoria: Yes. So I grew up with German shorthair pointers and then dad migrated to Gordon Setters. So we kind of had the full spectrum of enclosures, incredibly intense bird hunting dogs to super slow, gentlemanly grouse dogs. So I’ve seen the gamut on that. I would say that it was grouse hunting, it was woodcock, it was white tail deer. Growing up, I really thought hunting was quite boring because sitting under a tree in Maine and it’s cold and you don’t see anything, it really wasn’t for me. And I really fell in love with bird hunting, with the socializing and the camaraderie and the movement and the dog work and kind of the whole kind of pageantry almost of being around bird dogs in the beautiful New England fall running after those doodles.

Ramsey Russell: Do you remember your first game bird?

Brittany Longoria: It was actually a pheasant that I shot with a 410 bolt action shotgun that was my dad’s first gun. And it was in Connecticut on a place called Addyville, Addyville East. And it was just a plantation hunt. But that’s when everything kind of all clicked together.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you like that. Tell me more about how you spread your wings and began to hunt beyond Maine and New England and spending summers over in South Africa.

Brittany Longoria: I decided probably around 12 or 13, that it would be a great career to have a safari company in Africa. And it was probably not the typical little girl dream, but that was what my goal was. And so everything I did, whether it was a school project or volunteering at a Safari Club International local chapter event or whatever, was to be around the African outfitters and professional hunters and hear their stories and emulate anything and everything to do with that. And so when I was 15, my folks felt comfortable enough with me going over there. We had built a very nice relationship with Steph and Lynette Swanepoel from Gnomes on Safaris. And I basically was put on a plane in the States and they picked me up on the other side and I worked the summer everything from building blinds to doing prescribed burns, to helping vets with translocation of certain animals, to going to game auctions, to bartending to driving, I mean, just anything and everything that they needed some help with, I was just game for it. So it just invigorated me wanting to continue to do something in Africa and then going to university in South Africa and living over there really expanded my ability to hunt over there as well. So I would say that my hunting big game was really peaked and moved from bird hunt, solely bird hunting really into big game hunting in Africa.

Ramsey Russell: Did your father travel to Africa previously? How did a 12 or 13 year old girl from Maine develop an interest in owning a safari company in Africa?

Brittany Longoria: My father designed telephone systems and had a company that did rural and remote engineering and telephone system designs through east and west Africa, this would have been in the 70s and 80s. And so I grew up on kind of bedtime stories of witch doctors and dugout canoes, traveling to go see what would be dictators of certain West African countries and all these different exciting, interesting adventure stories. So it was very much how I grew up in my mind, I guess, was that I was very involved with just loving my father’s stories so much that I had quite a comfort level. And like, okay, well that’s normal, that’s what dad does. So then I’ll just go and I’ll do my own thing.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s amazing. How did the experiences over there shape your philosophy around hunting and life in general? I mean, because for a lot of 12 and 13 year old people, the world is their backyard, all of a sudden your world is, the world.

Brittany Longoria: Absolutely. So when I started going over there, I would spend the summers and working in the hunting industry, it’s very different than being a hunter for yourself. So this is kind of a complex one, you see so much hunting on a commercial level, you get almost, maybe a little bit uncomfortable with how commercial it can be and how it can take away the sanctity of it when you’re doing it as a job. And so it reminded me of my internal kind of moral compass of, actually I love doing this for myself, but it’s at the same time private, it’s not something necessarily that I wanted to do as a profession. So it modified my personal choices of, okay I want to have a safari company, but I want to have a lodge and I want to do bird hunting and then I want a big game hunt for myself. But it’s very complex to do that as a professional, at least from my perspective.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I think that the outfitting world, the commercial hunting world it is real different when you’re in the driver’s seat than when you’re from the outside looking in anyway. I mean, there’s a lot of listeners say, man, I want to be a duck guide, no, you don’t.

“It’s a lot of work, and you’re building a business on something that you can’t always control, and you’re still trying to be in the hospitality industry. So you’re working with people and personalities and their perspectives of what they want to achieve.”

Brittany Longoria: It’s a lot of work, and you’re building a business on something that you can’t always control, and you’re still trying to be in the hospitality industry. So you’re working with people and personalities and their perspectives of what they want to achieve. But then you’re dealing with the unknown nature of, hey, this isn’t just shooting, this is hunting, I can’t guarantee something. I can’t guarantee that we’re going to come home with our limits filled and stuff like that. So it’s an interesting kind of paradigm looking at it from a professional perspective.

Ramsey Russell: I agree. You were exposed to both American and African hunting cultures early on, how do those traditions differ in how they shape a hunter’s values and worldview?

Brittany Longoria: Essentially, growing up in South Africa and I was in the Limpopo Northern Province, and so it was very much an agriculture hunting area. And the comparison to Maine was very different. I would say that it has a lot more similarities to Texas, where I live now, where you have a hunting culture that’s more visible, where kids wear camouflage to school and they have different spirit days, and sometimes they’re emphasizing hunting in more public spaces. Whereas in Maine, culturally, it’s a little bit more private and certainly more progressive and you don’t see it as visibly. You do it on the weekends or you do it at deer camp with your friends, but it wasn’t as public. So for me, growing up, I was always very private about hunting, that it was to fill the freezer, but it’s not something you brag about. It’s not something that, you go and bring a trophy photo into school and have the big kind of fraternity community that you do in some areas. So I saw that there was different cultural emphasis on hunting. And what’s interesting is, specifically through social media, you have a whole another complex layer of communication and culture and almost a subculture that allows people, wherever they are, to now have that community. So I think that that’s also a very interesting shift over the past 20 years or so. So I would say that –

Ramsey Russell: I’m sorry, go ahead.

Brittany Longoria: Nope, that was it. Just how public I am now is very different than how I was raised around hunting.

“I mean, one of the best stories ever heard was a client shot a full mane lion on the 20 minutes before pitch black dark on the 21st day of his 3rd consecutive. 63 days he spent in a blind all day, every day hunting lines before he pulled the trigger and he just accepts that that’s hunting and some people, it would drive them crazy.”

Ramsey Russell: Times have definitely changed, that’s for sure. My grandfather’s his entire hunting career which mostly in the United States, in fact all of the United States mostly close to home. But his entire hunting career from the time he was a young man until the time, 1978 is when he bought his last duck stamp, it’s all compressed into about 15 or 20 pages of magnetic photo album, it was what he did, it wasn’t something he documented like we do today. You were talking about working in that commercial environment and it’s interesting to me how so many of us hunt near home with our dads, growing up with our granddads and we accept the hunt, whatever the duck gods give us, we just accept it as fact, we accept it as true hunting in life. But then sometimes when people travel and go on the bucket list of a lifetime, their expectations shift into the pages of a magazine. Oh, I’m going to come back with this big animal or all these ducks or all this stuff and it doesn’t. And I’m thinking about something you said and it’s funny how that does that. But on the other hand, so many of the mindsets I’ve met in the SCI crowds that go to hunt some of these big and dangerous animals, their mindset is incredible. I mean, one of the best stories ever heard was a client shot a full mane lion on the 20 minutes before pitch black dark on the 21^st day of his 3^rd consecutive. 63 days he spent in a blind all day, every day hunting lines before he pulled the trigger and he just accepts that that’s hunting and some people, it would drive them crazy. You’ve now hunted across 6 continents, you’ve since founded a non-profit consultancy and you’re working on a PhD. What ties it all together for you, Brittany?

“Then my PhD again kind of evolves from that. And one of my, I guess kind of burning questions was tied to the concept of communication and trophy photos. How do we present what we do in this day and age where we have such an amount of information but we’re only allowed to capture 3 seconds of someone’s attention span in order to tell a whole entire story?”

Brittany Longoria: It’s an evolution. Everything is certainly me all the way through, but there’s a building upon a foundation. So for instance, the hunting across the 6 continents is an incredible blessing, but it has exposed me to incredible wilderness. And for me that’s why I hunt is the weird and wild places I end up that I would never ever want to hike that mountain if it wasn’t chasing after an animal or go to Pakistan 3 times in 14 months because I just am in love with the mountain hunting or whatever. So it’s definitely the hunting is a motivation for the travel, the adventure. But the non-profit side was created once I came back from Africa. So I finished my undergraduate there and came back to the States, let’s see, it would have been in 2007 and it was one of those things where it’s like, okay, now what am I going do? I decided to come back because I had a car hijacking and a break in to my house and it was just like, this isn’t worth it, I need at least a break from South Africa if this is what’s going to happen living there, I’d love to have a return ticket back to the States and come and visit. But living there is not what I have in the cards right now. So I came back to the States and I was like, okay, well I have a great degree in ecotourism, hospitality, nature conservation. I know how things work in Africa, but I’m an American. So what can I do as an American that can then still support Africa? And that’s when I started working with non-profits that were anti-poaching and community development, oftentimes run by hunting companies. So they would have a secondary non-profit that then supported these rural and remote areas. Tanzanian game trackers out of Tanzania at the time covered over 9 million acres. And so I was in charge of the fundraising for everything from GIS mapping, working with the governments, going back and forth to DC, making sure that policies were hopefully in place to then support the anti-poaching, which then also tied into the US security and it just kind of built and built. And so I got very involved in the non-profit world with like National Geographic doing expeditions and coming back and writing for their geostories, which was stuff that they would distribute to different schools, school age children. And so then that non-profit element still allowed me to be in the States, but then travel back and forth to Africa. So that checked a lot of boxes for me, kind of heart and soul as well as financially that I was able to have the security of being in the States and still fulfilling what I loved doing. Then my PhD again kind of evolves from that. And one of my, I guess kind of burning questions was tied to the concept of communication and trophy photos. How do we present what we do in this day and age where we have such an amount of information but we’re only allowed to capture 3 seconds of someone’s attention span in order to tell a whole entire story? So my PhD has expanded upon storytelling from a digital perspective, looking at the hunting narrative online. So that’s again, kind of, like I said, it’s more of an evolution of each element building upon the previous passion and what I’ve been working on.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about poaching in Africa, for those that haven’t been and spent as much time as you have in Africa, how bad is poaching on the African continent? And why do you think that is?

Brittany Longoria: Well, there’s different types of poaching. So obviously poaching is illegal hunting and you have the bush meat trade, which you have layers of even the bush meat trait. So you have for instance, the poor guy going out trying to feed his family, setting up a snare to bring something home to feed his family. And we all can kind of sympathize with that. Yeah, if I’m in a situation where I don’t have any way to provide for my family, I’m going to use my skills as a hunter to go feed my family. But then you have a layer of commercial bush meat poaching, which is then almost these syndicates that will go out and set out hundreds, thousands of snares. And then what they’re doing is they’re collecting the bush meat, which would be anything literally from primates to antelope to sometimes catching an elephant, and then the elephant has a snare around its foot. I mean, it’s indiscriminate. And these thousands of snares then are, these animals are collected, hopefully all of them, oftentimes they’re forgotten and sold in cities and villages and stuff like that. So from a commercial perspective. And then of course, you have the next layer and that’s the real crime syndicates where they’re poaching elephant for ivory and rhinos and pangolin for scales and stuff like that for an international level. So it’s bad, it’s every day, it’s a constant balancing, because in the hunting and conservation world, you inevitably always are going to have human wildlife conflict, we’re just too many people to have anything else. And so protecting hunting areas and having not just hunting areas, but wilderness areas, you have a very real and a very serious challenge with poachers poaching.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And you do see where commercial hunting activities kind of run an offense against poaching over there?

Brittany Longoria: Absolutely. And the thing is, is that it’s not just countering poaching per se, it’s also the illegal timber trade and charcoal production and people coming in essentially squatting in wilderness areas that are leased by organizations like different outfitters and stuff. So it’s not just poaching as the issue, it’s all the complexity of human encroachment on natural habitats. Even poaching fish and different things like that, that comes into play.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s talk about some of your memorable hunting experiences, Britt. Of all the hunting experiences worldwide you’ve done, is there one hunt that stands out as the most rewarding or transformational? And why?

Brittany Longoria: I would say probably the most rewarding was my Lord Derby Eland Hunt. I remember being a little girl and it was actually at an SCI local chapter about where someone had hunted the – it was at CAR and they had hunted the forest in the savannah and they were doing a slideshow presentation. Now this is like the old school, like actual slideshow where you have films slides and they put up a projector and it was during a trophy room social or something. And I remember seeing the Lord Derby Eland and just thinking it was the most beautiful animal. It was just massive and the colors of it and now the white stripes just kind of almost dripped down the back and then the big dark dewlap and the beautiful long curved horns, it was just like magical looking. And I was like, okay, yeah, I’m going to do that one day. And fast forward, 15 years or 20 years, and I went on the hunt, my father, Joe Hosmer had passed away about 6 months prior and it was a very profound hunt because hunting a Lord Derby Eland, we were in Cameroon, and it’s 110, 120 degrees during the day. You can walk as far as you have enough water is essentially what happens. So you’re walking probably 8 to 12 miles a day, it’s uneven terrain. I mean, I walk so much that my pinky toenails fell off, I mean, it was horrible, but I mean, it was serious stuff. I remember I had a suntan of my sports bra strap through my T-shirt that the sun was so intense. It was just incredibly physically demanding. And when I was hunting, I had a big mistake. I had a binocular strap that slipped over across my chest and the buckle fell right onto my shoulder. And I had shot a water buck and I’m running up to it to do a second shot. And while that happened, the buckle slipped right on the soft part of my shoulder and I shot the gun for the second shot and I got a big bruise right there. And on that hunt, I developed a flinch. And it was the most mortifying, upsetting, sad, frustrating, embarrassing experience that a hunter could have when they develop a flinch to then now you’re scared to shoot a gun. Now you’re physically anticipating the shot hurting you. And I got so sad and frustrated and I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to shoot the Lord Derby once I got there, once I was presented with the opportunity and for some reason I was able to overcome that flinch and I shot and it was one shot and down and done. And I remember coming up to that Eland and just breaking down in tears. And I was just so overwhelmed that I had spent literally decades anticipating it and then having the challenge of mentally and emotionally overcoming a flinch and then everything all coming together, taking the shot, everything good. My dad had passed away, so I was emotional about that and I just sat down and just bald my eyes out. So I would say that that was probably the most transformational experience while hunting where I just felt literally every single emotion that I could possibly go through within such a short period of time.

Ramsey Russell: Was the reward of killing that Lord Derby Eland was it the animal itself, the effort or just the sheer experience?

Brittany Longoria: I think it’s everything and I think it was just so magnified because I had been wanting and anticipating it for so long that it was a such a complex, almost psychological thing to finally come to fruition that here I am doing what I had anticipated and wished for and hoped for and dreamt about for all these years and then all of a sudden now it’s almost like, it’s done. And it was kind of like very bittersweet almost where it was like, wow, okay.

“We get caught up in the game of trophies but it’s really not just the animal itself and I think a lot of people don’t quite yet understand that it’s really not just the animal that head on the wall.”

Ramsey Russell: We get caught up in the game of trophies but it’s really not just the animal itself and I think a lot of people don’t quite yet understand that it’s really not just the animal that head on the wall. Speaking of which, do you do full shoulder mount type stuff with your trophies or -?

Brittany Longoria: I used to. So my dad and I collected a lot of trophies and hunted like almost in tandem where it would be like, okay, well you get this one, I’ll get this one. And for species and stuff on different hunts and coordinated like as part of how we hunted together. And then now with my husband Ricardo, we really don’t do taxidermy. Honestly, it’s so expensive, I’d rather save the money and keep hunting. If things don’t go to waste because there’s always, the outfitter always wants a second skin or a second set of horns in case of someone else’s doesn’t skin outright or they lose it or something like that. So it’s still gets utilized and enjoyed by someone. But I don’t know, it’s kind of interesting also with the perspective again the psychology of it of when we talk about hunting we often use a possessive term where it’s like, this is my deer or this is my duck or this is my something, because I killed it, it becomes mine. And it’s an interesting process to let go of the possession element of it and go into truly the experience of, okay, this is the experience. And I have my photos and I have the meat, whether I’m in the camp or if it’s in North America, then obviously I have the meat in the freezer here. But letting go of the tangible reminder is a very interesting process that I went through. Stopping, doing taxidermy.

Ramsey Russell: What specifically led you to let go of that tangible aspect of it? I mean, see behind me, I’ve got a bunch of it going to a museum. But I’m always curious because when I was young, I wanted a lot of trophies, a lot of mounted animals and now that I’m older, I don’t. Like yourself, I’ll go halfway across the world to shoot a cape barren goose that I can’t bring back, but that’s okay, I can take a picture, I can share the times, I can remember it. And somehow along the way, and I don’t know how that “Ah-huh” like moment, but I just kind of let go of that, like you say, that possession element of it. Was there an “Ah-huh” moment for you?

Brittany Longoria: For me, it was my husband saying, okay, I’ll pay for part of your trophy fees, but you got to pay for your own taxidermy. And I was like, Uh-oh. Again, there’s all these different little elements to it as well, where it’s like my father’s and my trophies are now in our barn that we’ve redone and it’s a beautiful collection. But I look at it and it’s like, no one loves those animals and those memories other than my dad and I. And now my dad’s gone, so I still hold on to it for me. But am I going to pass this on to my son? Sure, but he’s not going to know, he’s not going to be able to look at this eider duck and think about how his grandfather and his mom were hunting on the coast of Maine in January in the North Atlantic freezing their butts off and the jokes that they had and the stories that they’re sharing and the experience of that. He’s just going to say, oh, here’s duck, okay, whatever. So that’s kind of a fascinating element too, where it’s like, no one loves it more than the person that takes it. So if there’s that value for yourself, awesome. But it’s truly just yours.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Brittany Longoria: So I think that also played into it of, with the amount of hunting that we do, it wouldn’t be appreciated the same way that I personally appreciate it.

Ramsey Russell: Good stuff. Have you ever had an especially difficult hunt? I know that that Lord Derby Eland was, you had me at 110, 8 miles a day. But have you ever had any dangerous encounters with some of these animals?

Brittany Longoria: Yes and no. We’ve been always very blessed as far as safety with animals and with extremely incredible professional hunters throughout central and eastern Africa and very wild areas. I think I’m going to go a little bit different direction, I’m going to say probably the perceived danger of something that I’ve done would be going to Pakistan and hunting on my own, that really freaks out a lot of people that how can you be a Christian American woman hunting alone in a predominantly Muslim country in Asia? That’s just wild. And I certainly felt uncomfortable the first time I went that I was very hesitant and media tells you all these stories and it’s very overwhelming and it’s very foreign. I mean, you are in Pakistan, you’re not seeing other women in the streets. I mean, they don’t go out to the marketplace there.

Ramsey Russell: If you do, you only see their eyes slits through the mask.

“So I would say that that would probably be the most perceived dangerous thing that I’ve done, but it was more from a perspective versus an actual physical danger. I mean, I love Pakistan.”

Brittany Longoria: Yeah. And they have their hair covered and I mean, different religious sects have different levels of covering and stuff like that. But it was very interesting to be put in a situation where my husband went to a different mountain range because he was hunting one species and I went to a different mountain range with about 10 guys and 3 machine guns and we’re hunting in a different side. And I’m thinking to myself, if I’m going to be abducted or something’s going to happen, it’s going to be now. But what was amazing as well is, I thought about the other handful of women hunters who have done it before me, and I was like, man, if these ladies who have climbed these mountains and have hunted throughout Asia and have done it physically but also mentally persevered through cultural differences and got to that mountain and made that shot and got home and were excited to tell about it, then I’m good. I’m okay. So I would say that that would probably be the most perceived dangerous thing that I’ve done, but it was more from a perspective versus an actual physical danger. I mean, I love Pakistan. And speaking about ducks and stuff, I mean, some fabulous duck hunting and bird hunting we’ve done out there. I mean, that’s amazing on the Indus river and that big flyway that goes through there. Lots and lots of fun.

Ramsey Russell: At so many levels Pakistan, for such a short trip, three days of wing shooting brought back just a lifetime of stories. It’s so many different levels. Beyond the ducks, beyond the species, I mean, it’s so many different levels that it was almost overwhelming, it was so different. But I also learned that, you can put a Pakistani feudal lord and a Mississippi duck hunter in the blind at the same time, and in that moment, everything else is forgotten, we’re just duck hunters. How have you seen similarities like that among hunters? To me, the chase and the hunt and that shared camaraderie you mentioned earlier, it supersedes all of our differences, at least in that moment.

Brittany Longoria: Absolutely. I also think that that’s a very good point on why our hunting relationships are so intense so quickly that if you go hunting with so and so and they’re your guide, you leave forever friends. I mean, it’s not just a casual acquaintance. You see them at the SCI convention, and it’s big hugs, and you catch up like it was just yesterday. And I think it’s that intensity of such an emotional outdoor experience that creates that bond and that camaraderie that’s on a very different level than any type of other activity.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I just don’t believe we could have been watching a soccer game or doing anything else and develop that level of relationship just brought together in a duck blind. And for sure, now in Pakistan, I did follow the golden rule, don’t talk about religion and politics, and that set the tone. Speaking of Pakistan, I’ll lead into this question. And you’ve hunted and eaten wild game and foods all over the world, what’s the most memorable meal, best or worst, that you’ve ever eaten outside your own backyard?

Brittany Longoria: I was going to say my favorite would be growing up where Thanksgiving was always game meat. We always had stuff that we had hunted and harvested and stuff. So if I can’t use that one, I would say probably the most memorable is during COVID, we spent 35 days in Tanzania, and intentionally, it was on purpose. It was one of those things that no one was traveling and so we just got, deal of a lifetime. And we booked for 21 days and then extended it for another 14 days and just really enjoyed being outside and not constrained with all the craziness that was going on in our world.

Ramsey Russell: What a great idea.

Brittany Longoria: Yeah, it was fabulous. And I would say the best thing about that was that we ate game meat every single day. That having it be memorable to the point where we were catching fish, and then that’s what we had for dinner the following day. And we hunted for this, and we had those steaks the next day, and then we got a little dikdik and they took the little tiny tenderloins and had them on toothpicks and I mean, anything and everything in it, which was truly one of the most fabulous experiences. And a big part of it being so wonderful was that we were living truly the safari life of what we were hunting, we were eating within a few days. I mean, it was really amazing.

Ramsey Russell: Like the Hemingway experience.

Brittany Longoria: Absolutely. It was just fabulous.

Ramsey Russell: Do you have any hard and fast rules about eating in other countries? Like, for example, in Pakistan, I was told, do not eat the salad because they wash it with water and you don’t know where it come from and do not eat the dairy. And they said, hard and fast, don’t do it, I broke my rule, and I’ve never been sicker. I ate the salad and it was wonderful, but I paid for it. Do you ever draw a hard line? Or are you an adventure eater I’m up for whatever the locals are eating or do you draw hard lines?

Brittany Longoria: No, I’m kind of more of an adventure eater. Like, for instance, we’re on safari and then the trackers make their own little meal of, the mealy meal with, like the –

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, the little balls, little dough balls.

Brittany Longoria: Yes. And so dipping it in with, I don’t want to say, really gross stuff, but intestines, and they mix it with stewed tomatoes and stuff like that. And they’re like, yeah, I’ll try it. I mean, that’s interesting. Do I love it? No, I don’t always love it, but I’ll try it.

Ramsey Russell: Jay Allen answered that question one time on the podcast years ago. Now, I asked him a similar question, and I said, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever had? And he said, monkey brain. I said, what did it taste like he said, vodka, that’s what I chased it with. Now, for the record, I’m going to draw the line at monkey brain.

Brittany Longoria: Yeah, I’ll leave that down.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You were talking a little bit about some of your research and the online aspects, I want to talk about the leopard photo. Because you became the target of global outrage after a photo of a legally taken leopard went viral.

Brittany Longoria: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How did you handle something like that?

Brittany Longoria: Well, it was pretty wild because I hadn’t even shared the photo. I didn’t have my social media account.

Ramsey Russell: How did it get out?

Brittany Longoria: I had submitted it to Safari Club and it was in the record book and a troll swiped it from within the record book and took a digital copy of it. And then that’s what it was. So it was very strange, it was very shocking to me because I wasn’t expecting to see it anywhere, have an issue with it, I mean, I was just submitting it to the record book, and it was horrible. I mean, it was outrageous. And it will still kind of pop up every now and then, you’ll get a whole bunch of, 14, 15 year olds from Ecuador that, probably some pop singer said something about trophy hunting, and that picture comes up and then it goes viral again and then I’m getting all this death threats and all these wild stories and stuff like that. But I would say that it was horrible and horrifying for about a week and then I had an epiphany that I realized it wasn’t about me, I was a personification of what someone decided hunting and who hunters are. And with that personification, they then vilified me as an individual. And it was kind of compartmentalizing that these people don’t know me as an individual, so their judgments and their stories are their own perceptions of what trophy hunting is or what selective hunting is. And that’s what encouraged me a couple months after it happened, to then start my social media account. Because I wanted to tell my story. I wanted to say, okay, if you’re ultimately asking, why did I hunt? Because that was another thing that I found was that, if I engaged with some of these people after their anger subsided, they were really saying, why would you do that? Why would you hunt a leopard? And so that unto itself made me think, that’s a really great question. I’ve never even really asked myself. I was just a want to, and I did, and that’s why, but that doesn’t really fly as a reason. And so that’s when I really started diving into more of my motivations for hunting. Why do I hunt? And that was what I wanted to present visually as well as in the captions and text. And it was subsequent comments and stuff like that was the why? Why do I hunt? So it was more of a personal exploration from there on out, which then of course, led me to the PhD of really wanting to dive in on a psychological and a storytelling level of why do we do it and how do we present it? Does it explain it? So that’s what it was.

Ramsey Russell: It led to a lot of introspection. And I sat down with a PhD documentary guy one time in a duck blind, and I should have been tipped off that he didn’t have a shotgun with him. And I was a little, because it was PBS, I was a little guarded anyway. But he let off with the question, why do you hunt? And I didn’t have an answer right off the bat. Why do I hunt? Because, well, it feeds my family, it feeds my traditions, it feeds my culture. And he goes, yeah, but I love nature and I don’t hunt. And I mean, that’s a heavy question that I think all of us hunters owe ourselves to just, in the quiet of our head on the pillow, ask ourselves, why do we choose to interact with animals this way?

Brittany Longoria: Absolutely. And it’s a real deeply fascinating topic because as hunters, we’re trained to use facts and figures. We’re trained to say, well, it supports local economies, it’s the Robin Pittman act, and it provides money to conservation efforts. I fill the freezer, it’s all very tangible things that we’re trained to articulate while we hunt. But that’s not why we hunt. We don’t hunt for conservation, it’s a fabulous side effect. But I’m not out there hunting because I want to save a species, per se. I’m hunting because, as you say, it’s how I’m interacting with the whole environment and I become a participant of nature, not just an observer. And it’s a different level of engagement that is incredibly fascinating when we start to look at it from a human perspective, from a primal perspective. And I think that a big part of why we’re probably missing the mark on our social media side is that we’ve lost our ability to tell stories. And with that we have an incredibly powerful storytelling platform with social media. But we don’t know how to utilize it in the sense because we don’t know how to articulate our emotions and the sacredness and our internal reasons and our eternal motivations and we stick to the facts and figures and that’s what is kind of getting missed in how we communicate from a modern level. Whereas you have an indigenous person that storytelling is very much a part of their culture. And it’s not that hunting is not part of Western Caucasian culture, it’s that we’ve lost that sitting around a fire talking about the why.

Ramsey Russell: Talking about the why. Is there a line you draw in public discourse with anti-hunters? I mean, when do you engage and when do you just walk away from?

Brittany Longoria: I will engage when it’s one on one or a few people. When I’m just so outnumbered and I’m just getting hammered with the threats and the vial and stuff like that, it’s just easier to block and delete. But if I see someone starting to ask real questions versus just throwing mud and insults, then I’ll engage with them. And it also depends on how busy I am. If I’m deep in work, in my studies and stuff like that, then it’s like, okay, sorry, don’t have the time. But when I feel like it, I’ll work with people and I’ll ask certain questions. And like I said, what I find is that it comes down to them asking what is your motivation? And you don’t, they’re asking an emotional question, so they want an emotional response. They don’t want the scientific empirical data. This is what we do for conservation and local economies, it’s like, it’s the human side, the human element.

Ramsey Russell: That’s exactly what they want. But I’m the same as you. If somebody ask a question that’s not inflammatory, I mean when they come – a lot of them just troll you on your page just to say bad words and that’s it, they fade. But if they’re really asking a legitimate question, I want to meet with them. Have you ever had the opportunity to sit down face to face like we’re talking with an anti-hunter, not a non-hunter, but an anti-hunter.

Brittany Longoria: Yes. Actually with a lot of my work within the non-profit world because of the environmental background of a lot of the non-profits that I was working with had a lot of funders and companies and celebrities and different folks that very prominently were against hunting any form whatsoever. And when someone’s an anti-hunter, you’re not necessarily going to change their mind. So it’s just like hunters aren’t necessarily going to change their mind that hunting is bad or wrong or they should stop. But there comes to some really great ground that works together and makes sense, what I’ve seen at least especially on international stuff, is that they agree that hunting is a tool for wilderness conservation and habitat protection, that they’ll deal with it up until that point. Because then at that point, you’re using the numerical side of things, you’re truly illustrating dollar for dollar, the amount of impact a hunt and a hunter would inflict on an area versus an eco-tourism photographic safari camp that needs much larger infrastructure and roads and all these other elements that impact the environment. Whereas if you have one hunter or one hunting party, you don’t need a support team of hundreds of people and stuff throughout the area.

Ramsey Russell: I would love to have a heart to heart conversation with an anti-hunter because to me, one of the greatest threats of healthy wildlife populations right now is habitat loss. And you meet any stranger in the world going back to Pakistan, you meet anybody in the world and it all starts, friendships and relationships start with just one thing in common interest, not the differences, not the difference in religion or the difference in politics, just something in common, we’re duck hunting together. Okay, well, at face value, anti-hunters want healthy wildlife populations and I want healthy wildlife populations. Why can’t we meet and agree on that and work together? Because if we work together to build more habitat and protect more habitat, then the world’s a better place we’ve got and let the differences be gone. But I’ve never had an opportunity, try as I may, to really have that conversation, which makes me think sometimes maybe they’ve got another axe to grind, a lot of times. I mean, who else would say in the light of day, in front of God and everybody and their mama on a social media page for anybody to read some of the things that they say? Maybe it’s just some delusional, self-loathing human being that just doesn’t like the fact that I’m happy.

Brittany Longoria: And there’s definitely envy and jealousy and that type of elements, but I just kind of remind myself that the majority of people, when you have a full conversation with them, if you have the time to do it, they don’t necessarily end up agreeing with you, but they at least understand where you’re coming from and you can understand where they’re coming from. And that’s kind of all that I want is just at least the respect that I can continue to live my life the way I see fit.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Brit, when and why did you become involved with Safari Club International?

Brittany Longoria: Well, again, that was definitely my folks growing up in Maine and doing the local chapter fundraisers and they were involved with leadership. And then my dad, again, Joe Hosmer, kind of grew into the different leadership elements within the organization on the national and international level. And he was the first president of the SCI Foundation. So he was very involved with the conservation side of things. And that was like I said, I just kind of grew up going to conventions and running around with my dad. So it was just always kind of part of my life.

Ramsey Russell: As a bigger picture for those listening that may not know, what does SCI do worldwide to address some of the issues we’ve discussed?

Brittany Longoria: SCI is the largest hunting advocacy group. They have a membership of about, I think 55,000 people internationally. They have chapters all over the world. Local chapters are involved on the grassroots level of different conservation and hunting type programs and projects. And again, tying into the camaraderie and the social side of things. And then on the international side, they support sustainable use, conservation, scientific studies. They work with different governments doing, again, advocacy for hunting as well as hunters importing, exporting. They go to things like CITES, which works with endangered species, again the importing, exporting and different wildlife regulations. And then they also work with governments all over the world to help provide the science to support their hunting quotas.

Ramsey Russell: It’s really amazing how the first time I went, I don’t know, close to 20 years ago as an exhibitor, I just thought they were a hunting show. Then I became involved and started going to a few dinners and started getting on their email list about some of the need to know things as a hunter you need to know, I just realized these are like the NRA of hunting worldwide. They’ve got staff that are fighting tooth and nail day against political administrations, whether it’s habitat or conservation or people trying to shut down hunting or the import and export of firearms. I mean, it’s just unbelievable what they do as an organization besides hunt.

Brittany Longoria: Right. And you get kind of the stereotype of, oh, Safari Club International, it must be international hunters that are just going overseas to Africa. But as you said, I mean, it’s your own backyard that they’re fighting for, your own state and I mean they’re in every single state and then they have their main offices in San Antonio and then in Washington DC and so they’re right there on the hill fighting for hunter’s rights every day. So it’s certainly a special group of folks.

Ramsey Russell: You were recently honored with SCI’s Diana Award. Diana Award. What is the Diana Award and what did that recognition mean to you personally?

Brittany Longoria: Okay, so the Diana Award is, I would say, the most prestigious women’s hunting award in the world. And it is just a group of legendary women who have hunted all over the world, but also there’s an emphasis on education and conservation. It’s certainly a lifetime achievement award. So I feel very honored that I’m so young and have received it. But I guess it’s my lifetime so that I’ve been hunting, so that’s really special. And it’s just an incredible honor, I don’t really know how to describe it other than a sisterhood of some of the most incredible hunters. I mean, regardless of being a woman or not. I mean they are and they all identify as women, but it’s just an amazing sisterhood of just badasses. I mean they’re just incredible. I mean polar bears and elephants and Marco Polo and just anything and everything you can think of, these women are just so passionate about the lifestyle. What’s also really neat about them is that they’re so elegant, they’re all very much ladies. I mean, you go into a room with the Diana’s and everyone is just quintessential fabulous woman. I mea, it’s a really neat group to be a part of.

Ramsey Russell: Did receiving the Diana award change how others viewed you or how you see yourself in the community of hunting international?

Brittany Longoria: I guess it kind of gives me hunting chops that I have kind of gotten the nod by these legendary women that accepted me and chose me to be a part of that group. So I guess that it just essentially validates that I’m of equal to them even though I look at them as like a pedestal and I’m in awe of them. So I guess that’s pretty special.

Ramsey Russell: Part of your involvement with SCI, Brit, was you shaped the new Game Bird of the World awards platform. What inspired you and that initiative and how do you envision it strengthening the global bird hunting community?

Brittany Longoria: Like what we said in the beginning, where my gateway into hunting was bird hunting. And dad and I would hunt and we would collect. We would be like, okay, this is what we can hunt in this area, what do you want? What are you going to get? Okay, well this is what I want and this is what’s special and how are we going to do this and how are we going to plan the hunt around it? And you can do the same thing with duck hunting. And I described it when I was pitching it to SCI that I was like this is like bookends that it’s like, it’s your way to get people into broader types of hunting and different ways of experiencing hunting trips where you have something that you have a goal and you’re like, I want to get the quail slam and I want to get every single one and I want to get it with this one awesome dog that I have and my father’s shotgun and I’m going to travel around and I’m going to do it. And it gives you a way to achieve something similar to how the record book also creates goals where you’re like, oh my goodness, I could have all of the oxen of the world and hunt all of the cape buffalo and water buffalo and that’s where really cool something that I really love that style of hunting and I want to go and keep experiencing this kind of stuff, but I want to do it differently. And so I said the other side of the bookend is that after you go and you big game hunt, you see a lot of these men and women that then start kind of slowing down and they can’t climb the mountain as quickly as before. But they still love the concept of achieving something and collecting something and experiencing something that you can build upon and look forward to. And so I said that’s why it’s kind of mostly these bookends and it’s a great introduction, but it’s also something to add to these big game hunters that are winding down or not wanting to pursue as hard in their later years. And what’s just fascinating about it is that with hunting you then create these ways that an individual animal then creates its own value. So that’s kind of one of the differences between preservation environmentalists and sustainable use conservationists are where environmentalists often look at a whole group of animals and kind of cluster it all together. But then as a hunter we say, oh my goodness, there’s this little bird down in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, the black throated bobwhite quail that is just absolutely stunning and now all of a sudden we give this one quail species a value and an encouragement of international wing shooters to go seek out these destinations that otherwise wouldn’t have any ecological value, like monetary value to go into these areas. So I think that it also enhances the value of the game birds and the waterfowl. So it helps –

Ramsey Russell: One of the aspects of it that excites me so much, and thank you very much for developing this program. One of the things that excites me so much is that a lot of our listeners really aren’t, for whatever reason, just their background, they’re not going to go climb the world’s mountains to shoot the sheep collection or the markors or maybe even go to Africa. But so many people listening that I know personally especially they cut their teeth on small game, dove hunting, squirrels, rabbits, and a lot of them fell off like I did into this bird hunting world and now we can be a part of something bigger. So many people listening are collecting the North American. I met a really interesting young man, 22 years old from southeast Texas last year, that is 2 ducks away from just having met people and driven and self-hunted to collect all these bird species. And now he can get recognition and he can be a part of a Safari Club International community that is going to protect hunting and habitat. And I just see it as opened up the frontier for just a lot of people to become involved at their level, at my level, become involved with SCI and give back.

Brittany Longoria: And then it’s also the learning aspect. I mean, I remember going through and finding species that I never knew were huntable. And I was like, oh my goodness, dad, look at this, this is awesome. Like the snowcock in Nevada, like to go climb up in those mountains and chase game birds up there, I mean that’s a whole different experience. That’s like the Marco Polo of game birds, I mean in North America for those guys. But just how it opens and expands the concept again beyond your backyard of doing what you’re used to and then seeking out those adventures.

Ramsey Russell: Have you had any personal experiences abroad of how Safari Club International in play, how they brought global conservation to the area you were hunting or how they benefited that directly?

Brittany Longoria: Maybe not that precise. But I know that for instance, there is a program that my father worked very passionately on that’s still in place that’s called the African Wildlife Consultant Forum and Safari Club sponsors it. And what they do is they bring in kind of wildlife and tourism government officials from all over Africa, probably 30 or so different countries will be in present. And they bring in representatives from different hunting organizations like PHASA and African Professional Hunters association and different major outfitting groups as well as scientists and IUCN secretariats and US Fish & Game and everything. And so what they do is that they then open up the dialogue between African countries to discuss issues and problems going on. Again, whether it’s regulation and trade, importing, exporting, number of permits issued, different things like that. But what’s really powerful is that it creates the African countries to have their own voice in situations such as going to the IUCN and CITES conferences, because otherwise they would be often influenced by China and Asia in different areas that might not be positive to sustainable use. So it allows African countries to work as a voting bloc on very large political type bands and processes that otherwise wouldn’t, these conversations wouldn’t be had. So it’s a very interesting tool as well as the science behind it, but also a very political tool. So I would say that would then affect anywhere in Africa, for instance.

Ramsey Russell: I’m sure pursuant to your travels you’ve seen the good, the bad and the complicated sides of hunting on a global scale. Where is regulated hunting working best as a conservation tool and where is it most misunderstood or maybe even misused?

Brittany Longoria: The best example I would say is Pakistan. You have a situation where it’s extremely tribal in rural areas and you have families that sell their daughters at 9 or 10 years old into marriage and they are literally selling their kids because they need the money, they need the money from their daughters. And I have seen and worked with people, and I’m talking like Oxford level researchers working with, figuring out the scientific aspects of allowing hunting in the mountains in Pakistan. And because of hunting, it has created a micro economy that now these tribes do not need to sell their daughters into marriage at 10 years old. So I don’t care who you are as far as an anti-hunter, if you’re okay with selling a 10 year old girl into marriage to a 40 year old man, there’s something wrong. And if you can say okay, well if there’s a few wild goats and sheep that are shot by international hunters per year and that’s a reasonable difference, that’s pretty amazing. So I would say that regulated selective international hunting in Pakistan is probably the most impactful, tangible evidence of hunting being an incredible life changing difference for the people that live in and around those wilderness areas.

Ramsey Russell: Brit, when you look at the future of hunting wildlife, wild places, and I love wild places, what gives you hope and what keeps you up at night?

Brittany Longoria: So we created our own foundation and Ricardo and I, it’s called the Longoria Hosmer foundation and Hosmer is my maiden name. And our priority is we say first wilderness, then wildlife. And I believe that there’s hope in the concept of building bridges around wilderness conservation. And I think that’s something that we can all agree on. So I definitely see hope from that angle of talking with conservation efforts and keeping wild areas wild and ecosystems interconnected. I think that that’s very valuable as far as the ecological systems that then support human life, I mean, just in general. But I would say that that’s also probably what keeps me up as well, that it’s so complex and hunting is such a small piece of that greater puzzle. And I worry that social media will negatively influence hunting if we can’t get a handle on the narratives and our images. We’re so passionate, we love our lifestyle, we love what we do, we can sit there and talk hours and hours about how much we love it, but if we present it in a way that is not understood by the general public, they’re the ones that are going to be defining whether or not we can continue hunting. It’s going to come down to public opinion. And if we can’t illustrate hunting in a way that is translatable to someone who’s a voter, then it’s going to change how we interact with nature.

Ramsey Russell: Which leads me to the last question, precisely. You said previously that storytelling is the heart of conservation. What makes a great hunting story, one that can shift minds and hearts, even among non-hunters?

Brittany Longoria: Personalize it. You have to make it your own story. The number one reason why someone who’s a non-hunter would be either pro hunting or anti-hunting is if they know a hunter. So if you can take a story and make it your own, again, time back to motivation, why do you do it? Then that all of a sudden is the most powerful tool as a hunter as far as promoting sustainable use.

Ramsey Russell: What stories do not get told enough in the hunting media? And why do you think that is? What can we do to change that?

Brittany Longoria: I think that the biggest thing is that we rely on trophy photos. And what’s happening with a trophy photo is we are smiling in it. To us, we understand it too. When I say us hunters, we can look at a photo and be like, oh my gosh, that’s awesome and we’re excited for the hunter, we can relate and we’ve been there, we’ve done that. But to a non-hunter, there is such a confusion of why are you happy over a death of an animal? And it’s not a miscommunication, it’s their reading exactly what the image is. So if we can modify and showcase different aspects within our trophy photos, I think that then changes the narrative and also the motivation helps explain the motivation a little bit better. So I would say that that would be probably the most confusing element is a smile in a trophy photo.

Ramsey Russell: Really good stuff, Britt, thank you so much for coming on today. I have enjoyed it. This has been a fascinating conversation. We touched on a lot of things that I oftentimes think about, but you have a way with words. I’m going to share with people, when I knew you were a storyteller the first time, you were describing having hunted, growing up hunting with your dad up north and you described how the smell of a box of crayons brought you back to your childhood, the smell of a wax cotton coat. And I’m like, man, every time I put on my coat, I smell that box of crayons and I get it.

Brittany Longoria: Absolutely, love it.

Ramsey Russell: But thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story. Real quickly, tell everybody listening how they can connect with both you and with your foundation.

Brittany Longoria: Absolutely. So it’s just Britt Longoria is my Instagram account and I’m almost always on it. So if you DM me, I’ll respond. And the foundation is longoriahosmer.org.

Ramsey Russell: And you all have got quite an event coming up right now with your foundation. There’s an ongoing auction.

Brittany Longoria: Yes, we have an online auction right now. It’s our spring auction, original artwork and hunts and a lot of cool stuff. And then we’ll have an in person fundraiser. It’ll be a pigeon shoot at our ranch in Texas. So also DM me if you want a private invitation.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Brit.

Brittany Longoria: Absolutely, Ramsey. I appreciate your time.

Ramsey Russell: Folk, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where I’ll leave you with this question. Why do you hunt? See you next time.

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