Ep. 903: Stranded Whales, Cattle-Killing Wolves, and Maine Cleans Up Its Act

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Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative is everything you love about dip, nothing you don't. Moultrie Cellular Trail Cameras help you locate, pattern and harvest your target buck. They're built for deer hunting. Edge Force Solar comes with a fully integrated solar panel built in, delivering true set and forget power. It features the largest integrated solar panel in its class. Receive images straight to your phone and monitor battery life from the Moultrie app so you avoid spooking deer and only need to go to your hunting spot when it's time to hunt. Check out Moultrie at moultrie.com. Welcome to the news show, everybody. Today we've got news about my unfortunate, regrettable criminal past, dam removals in Maine, stranded whales on the Pacific coast, anti-buffalo politicians are generally winning, but they suffered a minor setback, and you've heard of earn a buck, well, welcome to earn a second buck. And you won't believe this one, wolves eat cows. But first, our news. And to open up our news, we have a special guest here. The special guest's name is John Jersic. He is a retired Michigan conservation officer. Some folks call him game wardens, but in Michigan they call them conservation officers, and I've got to give some background here. We're going back in time to around 93, or my guess would be 93 or 1994. I was parked in my truck. On Manistee National Forest where Cedar Creek crosses underneath M-120, checking mink traps, in behind me pulls a game warden, a conservation officer. He gets out, we're talking, he asks me, "Have you been setting snares?" Which alarmed me, because I had, and they were illegal in that area, and it wasn't my fault. Oh, it wasn't my fault. I'll explain right now. There was a game, there was a fur buyer named Abe Salacina, and I would sell some fur to Abe Salacina, and Abe Salacina would always be pushing snares on you. When the snow got deep, Abe would be, "You know what guys do in other areas is they set these snares, and the fur keeps coming in all winter." So it wasn't my fault, but it was very alarming to me, and I lied. I lied. This is all terrible. I was lying up front about my behavior. I lied, and then the game warden, the conservation officer, goes to my annoyance, goes through every trap in my truck, checking the tags. You're legally obligated to have a tag on there. Checks them all, we converse, he leaves. Now I have written about this, I've talked about it, I told the story. A couple weeks ago, my good friend from back home, Ronnie Bame, is talking about this. He's like, "I'm not going to let you in on this." I'm like, "I'm not going to let you in on this." He's like, "I'm not going to let you in on this." to a retired conservation officer. The retired conservation officer, knowing where Ronnie's from, though he's from the same Twin Lakes, asked him, do you know a guy, Steve Rinella, who I checked for whatever back in 1994. And I thought to myself, why in the world is this on this man's mind now? Ronnie suggested I ask him. Here he is. Thank you for coming on the show 30 years later. Well, I'm glad we've had this chance to sit down and talk, and I'll tell you, even though it's been a long time, you're going to feel a lot better getting us off your chest. I've gotten it off my chest. I just need to hear it from your perspective, because at the time, I didn't ask you what you're thinking and what you're doing. Walk me through your recollection of this. Well, it's interesting that you know how you get caught with a snapshot in your brain of a spot, you know, in an incident or a time. I can see that. I can picture, you know, that was always a good spot. You know, there was a sand trap there, and you could work trout fish right along that piece of ground, and you know, we'd get trapped a little bit too, right? Everybody set make traps there. Right, right. Real common spot, and it's right along a busy road. Yeah, so anyways, and you know, I've been there, of course, dozens and dozens of times in my career when I worked around here, and I can't remember, you know, what you know, I think we approached this incident from two different perspectives. I may have simply just, hey, here's a guy trapping, right? I'm going to check him, and then going through traps and mentioning about snaring. The bottom line, the end to this whole story is I was clueless that you had any snares. Oh, you were! Because I was like, how does he know I have snares out? John, did you know that this fur buyer was out there pushing young trappers to use snares? Did you know this guy, Abe? No, that's the name? Oh, yeah. Know the name, know who that was. Didn't know it was being pushed, so to speak. But here was, and this is probably why I threw a dart and asked the question, right? That was at a time when it was growing in interest locally. Snaring, and you know, and I knew for sure it was going on, but it wasn't at the time legal. It is today, but at the time it wasn't legal, so just like any other game warden on a fishing expedition, I'm going to ask a few questions and see what he says. But you started right out with that question. I don't, so I don't know if it was this part I don't honestly remember. Did I have some knowledge that maybe you as a local guy were doing it? I don't remember that part. One, let me add this. When I was cleaning out paperwork when I retired back in 19, you know, remember we had the old report all poaching complaints, the rep complaints? I had found one from you, and it was, the best I can recall again is it was Cedar Creek, and I don't know if you. No, it was Bear Creek. Bear Creek, okay. And somebody had come across, or you had come across maybe untagged traps or something like that? Nope. Go ahead. I got in huge trouble with this from Abe Salacino. Okay. I had found where a guy was trapping before season. Okay. And even though even though I was as innocent as it was, even though I was a violator, I didn't want anyone else violating. And I thought that that violation was a bad violation. So I called and reported a guy for trapping before season. Some informant told Abe Salacino, Abe Salacino ripped into me that you would ever report a trapper for anything and where do you get off? And you take that man-to-man, you do not call the state. Wow. Well, so hold on. That's a good story right among itself that in the trapper world, things do get settled out on the road. You know, if people are stealing traps, if they're stealing fur from traps, if they're trespassing, or even, you know, if one guy gets on another guy's turf, that little war usually gets settled somewhere out there along the stream bank or in the woods or wherever. And of course we never heard about it. There was a number of local trappers though that I got to be pretty decent friends with. You know, they were pretty good. I don't even want to call them informants. They just tended to do the right thing and wanted to see things done right. We're getting about four stories down the road now. But on that rap complaint, it looked like, I kind of remember the verbiage on it is I ended up finding a young kid, you know, a teen or something like that and i had gotten back a hold of you and you wondered if i could just handle it with a warning which i did um and that's how that ended that's probably after i got in trouble with abe salasino it and it could well be um but the uh yeah that that was the whole deal and then going back to our cedar creek contact i don't know you know i don't i don't recall that i specifically remembered i was after you or i had solid information that you were doing it but the whole thing about snares at the time is kind of everybody was starting to do it you know it was something that uh people were doing wasn't legal yet it was so easy you could cover a lot of ground you could trespass easy uh what people were doing was even using it along the 31 corridor on the highways like in the fences yeah um doing stuff like that and we probably didn't have the opportunity to do that but i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was a good thing to do that and i think it was nowhere near a quack. Simple as that. I am so confident in my opinion I'm going to make a t-shirt that says Drake's don't quack. That's confidence. So, there you have it. There's my opinion. There's my stance on it. Drake's don't quack. They don't quack. I think he just wanted to show off his turkey fan collection. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Yanni. Wasn't there somebody on the crew who saw a hen turkey gobble? That happens, but they don't gobble gobble. Right, but like, I mean, if you were to say they kind of gobble but not really gobble, could you not apply the same thing here? Like a Drake will quack, but not really quack. Just kind of a quack. Yeah. It's not a quack. And I think, I wish that Max would have been able to do a better Drake whistle that sounded like that Drake quack that we heard from the Cornell Lab of Morinthology. Drake quack. All right, Spencer, tell us about the Auction House of Oddities. Auction House has one week left. Everything has been bid on. We appreciate everyone throwing their money at this good cause. There's one item, though, that does not have a bid yet. That is the boat motor. What? It's a Honda 150 VTEC outboard motor. Outboard motor. You got to pick it up in Bozeman. We have it listed at 8K right now. That's like the first bid that's going to be made. Can I talk about that? Can I talk about why that is? Yep. This money all goes, this is a fundraiser, like a non-profit venture. All this money goes to land access fund. We know that we can take that 150 outboard Honda. Marketplace, we'd get 10 to 15K. Yeah, because it's worth twice what we're, it's got, it's got, oh, the only, the only hours it has is the hours that we used to film Das Boat. One season of Das Boat, which was filmed over the course of a few days. Yeah, the episode I was involved in, we floated that boat with no engine. Then we put the engine on and fished for four hours. So my episode only had four hours. And so it's, it's worth twice. If you went and bought it new, which it is, it's worth twice that. So we put the minimum at eight grand because we could just go sell it on Facebook Marketplace or probably just take it to Townsend and bring it to an outboard dealer and sell it to him for 8,000 bucks. This is the rare example in our auction house where you could get something at a good deal. And no one's bidding on the damn thing. No one's bidding on it yet. It's only been a day. So you get, we got the auction house going for another week. We also have listed my box of rocks. I don't feel like that description does it justice though. So I want to tell you about my five favorite rocks. There's 17 different rocks I have in here that I've collected over the years. I'm gonna give you my five favorite ones. First one here is Wonderstone from Nevada. We had the meat eater live tour in 2020. We spent the night in Reno. I got up at 5 a.m. I went and got a rental car. I drove out into the desert about 90 minutes to a place called the Rainbow Mountain. Was everyone like, where's Spencer going? Steve threatened to come with me. Yeah, Steve threatened to come with me. And I was like, I'll get you up at 5 a.m. And you're like, eh, maybe not. I was already up. So that was formed by layers of volcanic ash. It's a popular rock among artists who do mosaics because it's got a bunch of layers of color. It's one of the prettiest rocks I own. So that is Wonderstone. Also known as Rhyolite. There you go. This one's kind of an eyeball shape. You must own a few of these then. I have a few pieces. Yeah, there it is when I found it on the mountain. And then the next picture is my suitcase going home. I took home plenty of Rhyolite Wonderstone with me. The tour bus got heavier after that day. That's a big one. Next one, Obsidian from Oregon. I found this at the Glass Buttes in Oregon. That's one of the biggest obsidian deposits. In the world, ancient humans were spreading this stuff all across the continent. Obsidian traced back to here has been found in Ohio that ancient peoples carried there, traded their way there. So we got a big old piece of obsidian. You could keep it raw just like that. Or if you're a flint knapper, you could turn it into something dangerous. That's what I was going to. Did you ever just get the urge to break some of the rocks you found? I got some of this and I did bust it all up. It's so nice. You hit that with a hammer, dude. Yes, this is a raw piece. You do whatever you like with it. If you're going to break it up, put a towel around it and then smash that thing with a hammer. And then watch your ass because that stuff is sharp. It's the sharpest natural substance. Yeah, it's very sharp. This is a raw piece. It's about the size of a softball. All right, number three is a leaf fossil from Idaho. There's this landowner there who was building a dirt bike track back in the 70s. And as he's building this dirt bike track, he starts excavating the side of a mountain and he uncovers a 15 million year old lake bed. And that lake formed. When there was a volcano nearby that went off and it dammed up this river. And just like in the blink of an eye, it totally flooded this valley. And it put all these trees and plant life under some really deep cold water. And so this is one of those leaves. Looks like probably from an elm. How old is that? 15 million years old. Likely from an elm tree. Really delicate rock. When you go to this guy's place and you find him just on his property somewhere, like I found him driving his tractor around. And he's like, you here for this? The dirt bikes or the fossils? And then you pay him like 10 bucks or I don't remember what the fee was. It was real cheap. It was like $10. And you found all that? All that. And you can, for 10 bucks, you pick which one you want? I don't remember what the dirt bike fee, my rock hounding fee was real cheap. It was only me and my wife. And then there was one other group there. It was somebody from China who was doing a research project. He let you haul away all that for 10 bucks? All that. Didn't ask any questions. He just said, knock yourself out. And the $10, so this is one of those fossils that I found there. Damn. Yeah, I don't know. Probably like six inches long. Looks like it's probably from an elm tree. Number two, this is a fish fossil from Wyoming. It's from the world famous Green River Formation. It's a really amazing place called American Fossil. You book your dig like way in advance and then you get to go there. This is a video of what a successful one of these would look like. Wow. This is a nightia. Was that you? That's me. That's the state fossil of Wyoming. It's an extinct type of herring. It's like one of the coolest places on planet Earth, I think. You get to go to this giant quarry. You take home anything you find there. It can be absolutely anything. Fish is the most common, but there's mammals, insects, birds. There's been like a three-toed horse that was discovered there. And you could find something worth millions of dollars you get to take home. So this is one of those fish that I found that day. Man, if people don't bid this up, they could go to hell. And then the last one, here, is a dino bone that I found in Montana with the famous and infamous Jack Horner. He's been on the show. Yeah. I put him in a real tough spot when he was on that show. And I asked him if I could come with on a dino dig. And how does he say no, you know, when there's microphones? That's what happened? Yeah. Yeah. I asked him on the show. Uh-huh. And he's like- That's how you got in? Yeah, I guess so. So I'm like, okay. And I emailed him the next day and I'm like, Jack, when can I join you? And so like three months later, I was on a dino dig with Jack in Northern Montana. And this is a duckbill dino, a type of duckbill that Jack actually discovered. And if we were doing this news show back in February, we might've talked about Jack because he was in the Epstein files. Yeah. So that's why I say the infamous, also infamous for other reasons. I never told this story, but I feel like it adds something to this. Now, just to be clear, being in the Epstein files doesn't in and of itself mean anything. Yeah. To add context for Jack's involvement, he went to Epstein's ranch in New Mexico to look for dino bones. And then I think they talked about him joining the ranch in Wyoming to also do some excavating. Yeah. Yeah. It's just important to- Yes. Right. There, there's some more Jack Horner background about his, one of his wives that he had. Yes. Okay. So- Yes. He married a student. When I go to this dino dig, uh, this was 2022, I believe. Um, as a volunteer, I'm teamed up with a paleontologist and then you're like given a job. And a paleontologist to work with our job was prospecting, meaning we got to just like wander around the badlands and look for possible fossils or, or like big, big deposits of fossils. Um, and I'm asking this woman some questions and I, all of a sudden I elbow my wife. I'm like, I think this might be Jack's, um, like wife that the student that he married. And then it comes out a little bit later that it was. So I found this rock with Jack's famous ex-wife and Jack. They got, they split up? They split up. Yeah. Uh, but they're still friends. They're great friends. And she's like, I love Jack. Jack's one of the most important people in my life. We're great friends. We still work together. Um, so like the only people who've touched this bone are Jack Horner, Jack Horner's ex-wife, me, my wife. That's, that's the fossil you're getting from a type of dinosaur that he discovered back in the seventies that put Jack on the map. Uh, a duckbill dinosaur. God, what a box of fossils. 17 of them. Those are five of my favorites. That's just five. That's the worst five. Yeah. We got petrified wooden here, clam fossils, snails. Fossils, agates, all kinds of stuff. Inga of gold. No. Damn. Love it. It's a legacy. Learn more at amu.org. dot a p u s dot e d u slash military the fall hunting season is finally upon us i love this time of year me and my kids got trips coming up for pronghorn deer more deer cow elk we got all kind of stuff coming up we're about ready to trade out summer sleeping bags for cold weather down pack up a food bin and a cooler and we'll throw in a couple mountain dews for a little reward and boost after those long mountain marches there's nothing better it's my favorite time of year to spend time with my family born in the foothills of tennessee mountain dew was made for a damn good time outdoors the bold taste you know and love has proud american roots dating back to 1948 mark your best fall memories with the crisp refreshing citrus kick of mountain dew from hanging out around the bonfire to just hopping into your friend's truck and cruising the woods get out there and enjoy the outdoors of mountain dew an american original tasting great since 48 look for mountain dew in stores near you i'll try quite a bit and when i'm home it's very easy to stay on a rigid food routine and eat the right kinds of food at the right time but when you're on the road it's hard to stay in your routine and like diet can really start to fall apart i've seen it and that's why i like athletic greens now ag1 is already the standard for daily foundational nutrition ag1 pro is what's next is built for people who don't want to stop their creatine c-a-h-m-b advanced gut lining support on top of everything ag1 next gen already delivers you can get it in travel packs one travel pack 10 to 12 ounces of cold water every morning if you're already taking creatine separately ag1 pro simplifies your stack one thing in the morning covers more than your current routine might for less than a dollar more per serving ag1 pro supports protein synthesis helps reduce protein breakdown and supports muscle recovery and consistent training performance visit drink ag1.com slash meat eater and get an ag1 pro yeti shaker in your ag1 pro welcome kit again that's drink ag1.com slash meat eater grab yours now okay on on to your news now your news today is brought to you by banished suppressors which i'm holding in my hand here what i'm holding my hand specifically is the meat eater banished colab which has the equivalent of like a little adjustable muzzle brake apparatus on the end it's 30 cal can you can run on anything i run one of these on my 22 creedmoor on a brought to you by that okay the your news is a guy that wrote in today he comes in looking for life advice and he's gonna get it he says he was at a what was he at a state sale he's at an estate sale i don't know how he got there and randall wasn't there but he was at a state an estate sale and he sees that there's a beaver pelt for sale uh winds up that there's two beaver pelts once he gets to asking about it the old lady wants 25 bucks for both of them he somehow gets her down to 20 bucks so he gets two beaver pelts for 20 bucks he bought them because they seemed cool he didn't want to get thrown away and he bought them because quote you guys have talked a lot about fur as such an interesting and high quality material he goes on to say but having them i don't really know what to do with them have a hat made but it's not that cold here i wouldn't get to use it hardly ever my wife okay it's hard for me to say this without crying he says my wife is unlikely to allow them as decor i i feel like he should have gone a little further here and like actually like he hasn't even asked her yet you know what i mean we should we should i know we we need that i'll sometimes need to ask my wife about something for three months just waiting for the right moment i am i'm petrified anyway i thought you guys might have some suggestions happy if you want to discuss on the pod or even drop me a line or email thanks in advance i got a ton of suggestions there's all kinds of stuff you could do with it nate pulled a picture here where my feet are resting on a beaver fur ottoman how does a guy like this how does the guy make something like this i'll tell you we had an ottoman and it had a little pad i went and got some super thin so scrap a super thin plywood wrapped put the plywood on the bottom wrapped the beaver hide around the pad and took a staple gun and there you have it it still started making my back too sweaty there was always a beaver pelt over this chair i'm leaning on you could take your two beaver pelts and have a hat made and send it to a person that lives in a cold place you could just have it laying over a piece of furniture and when people come over you go see that that's a beaver pelt well he's got his wife to contend with the biggest problem he's got the biggest problem he's got is what do you mean your wife won't let you like what is it's not even her none of her business we're not talking about not asking my wife something for two weeks it's not about something like that right you would just lay it across the couch and be done with it yeah a hundred percent oh yeah so i mean that's what i would do nothing else is there what you don't want to be in a happy marriage no i would do the same thing and it was like i was at my dentist the other day yesterday i was at my dentist those dentists are problems you know he was telling me his wife's out of town he hung a bunch of taxidermy up in a certain place in the living room his wife comes back out of town and he's like i don't want to be in a happy marriage i don't want to be in a happy marriage i don't want to be in a happy marriage i don't want to be in a happy marriage i don't want to be in a happy marriage i don't want to be in a happy marriage i don't want to be in a happy marriage doesn't like it he said but she can't even climb up there dude i got my wife just built these shelves and there's 24 nooks guess how many nooks i am allocated 12 one no it should be 12 that's what i said and you're not no you're gonna let it slide i'm trying my best but dudes i don't know what you do is you build your own thing with 30 nooks put that where you want and give her one yeah man there's all kinds of bad stuff about my wife but the one thing like she never there's certain things she just does not mess with me about she would never mess with me about something like this about home decor about skulls and all that kind of stuff never messes with me about it that's a gift and like never messes with me about doing stuff in the kitchen i could take a roadkill moose and put it on that counter and she's not gonna mention it i feel like unless someone was like a vegan or seriously anti-hunting or something like a beaver pelt's not offensive no in any way no my wife is always mad at me but like she doesn't mess with me about some things she's perpetually mad about some stuff but this is just not an issue i have to deal with so it's hard for me to even empathize can we make that a regular segment like things that she's mad at you about oh yeah she could host it how's it working your house spencer around home decor i have a pretty good guess by now as to like what my wife would approve of and not approve of and so i don't i don't get that one wrong too often but also if there's something i really want and she doesn't i'll be like this is really important to me i really want this buck up in here that i killed yeah uh and then i that that usually wins it for me and i think but that's also like a powerful sentence to say like this is important to me um so i don't use that one often either yeah i think you could tell your wife that these beaver pelts from this estate sale are very important to uh email her yeah that might just do it if not time to get a new one i'll call her onto the news you didn't even mention getting them turned into a pillow those are some of my favorite things i like at your house you know what problem solved why didn't i think of that you're gonna turn this into a win for your wife hadn't thought of that i'm gonna give you a hot tip sewing by so my should we even say that should we bleep that out i'm sure she'd love the business okay i'll give you a hot tip buy so my how do you spell some i s o a m i that's your hot tip say you want a pillow leather-backed pillow your wife your wife will be praising you this is gonna turn all your marriage around you're gonna become a household hero when she'll ask you to start trapping beavers when you get that leather-backed beaver fur throw pillow in that house she's not gonna get off it you're not gonna see her in your bedroom anymore because she's gonna be sleeping with her head on that couch pillow onto the news earn a buck is back except now it's earn a second buck yeah it sounds that i like it that's got more of her that's got more of a ring yeah yeah we'll give you the first one you got to earn the second one um in new york state this time beginning this year uh new york hunters must harvest and report an antlerless deer doe or antlerless buck uh before becoming eligible to shoot a second uh antler buck or antler deer um it's a statewide rule it replaces the previous system that allowed many hunters to harvest two bucks without taking an antlerless deer um every licensed hunter will still receive an antler deer tag and they'll earn that second antler deer tag only after they've had two bucks in the past year are legally harvesting and reporting animals. an antlerless deer can you back up a minute yep and explain to people why why is this even a thing oh that's that's all next so new york state's got a million whitetails 500 000 hunters deer hunters uh annual harvest is around 225 000 deer but only 100 000 of those are does um so in a lot of wildlife management units the deer population is greatly exceeding objectives um and and they're starting to see that excessive browsing is creating poor habitat nutritional stress on the deer that are there and it slows down forest regeneration they're also seeing crop damage more deer vehicle collisions so that the doe harvest is the rate is too low and in fact only about 13 percent of new york deer hunters harvest one antlerless deer only three percent are harvesting two or more really yeah i i i don't it's a i don't get it personally like it was never a big like we always were all about harvesting does you know i don't know why it's a big deal these days um but dec department of environmental conservation can you look that up any department of environmental conservation environmental conservation yeah so they did like focus groups and surveys and things and they had input from biologists all over the state um but before they came to this like this idea for harvesting more does and actually something that came out in that same the same surveys is a lot of hunters preferred going back to a one buck limit but uh dec concluded you know that's not going to do anything to increase antlerless harvest so there was no reason to do that um but at its inception the earn a buck concept was you they were going into to try to control deer numbers and particularly around cwd right they were going to places where you traditionally would just get a buck tag yeah and they were going to hunters and saying no longer can you just get a bus you got you have to kill a doe to get a buck and that wound up being in some areas exceedingly unpopular wisconsin did it and undid it yeah we'll get well i'm going to get to all that stuff um so the regular season deer tag is now called the antler deer tag and you and you qualify for that second buck by using you know just a rifle doe tag a bow muzzle loader um whatever you get the doe with it doesn't matter you'll get that second buck tag after you prove that you've killed that doe and and this was this was some interesting stuff here um the state's going to implement this and they're going to do field checks uh hunters may be required to sign an attestation verifying the report um they if if requested hunters must provide proof of the harvest within a week um and that could be a photograph um it could be a like a receipt from a deer processor they're just trying to like dissuade people from faking it um and if they do get caught faking it it's two fifty two hundred fifty dollars per offense up to two grand and possibly one year in jail um imagine that what are you in for yeah but this what are you i'm in for murder what are you in for he's like well you know the earn a buck program yeah like new york's going big on proving this michigan also just like they just came out with a new proposal for a similar earn a second buck program they're they're looking to do a pilot program in five counties in southern michigan and their proof is just like the tag they're just like we kind of looked at the proving it all these different ways it was too expensive so a tag's good enough um so michigan's going a much different direction tag as in i bought a tag no like you validated like a like you know how you validated yeah yeah exactly some blood on it they just looked at like dealing with photos and and like game check stations all that and it was just too much money but that was the that was the accusation i heard in wisconsin when wisconsin did earn a buck i would hear from guys saying that a group of guys would get a dough and everybody'd use the damn right yeah for sure to go get their buck tag now like this like whitetail populations are like going through the roof in a lot of places they're like steve mentions there's concerns with cwd but still like it's it hasn't this program has not been popular in the past like hunters feel like it delays their opportunity to kill a buck if you're a hunter who can only you know maybe hunt one day on the weekend or two days on the weekend it's it's like limited time um trophy hunters that aren't interested in shooting does at all aren't interested in it and this this last one makes some sense because the regulation can tend to treat low density and high density deer areas the same um for example in new york this northern zone the adirondacks like that's an area with really low deer densities um so you know it's going to make it harder to to get that dough and then get that second buck um the dec's dec says it's to incentivize not punish hunters if they do want a second buck they can travel to one of the wildlife areas and they can go to one of the wildlife areas and they can go to one of the wildlife management units where there's a lot of does and and do it that way um for those hunters that like don't like it maybe question whether it works like there's proof that it does work um you control populations by shooting does wisconsin pioneered the earner buck program in the late in the 1990s um it ran a little more than a decade before it got shut down just because of hunter dissatisfaction dissatisfaction with the program but it increased doe harvest rates by 20 to 40 percent reduced deer densities um and it helped improve forest regeneration um the wildlife manager in wisconsin like they concluded it was like a very successful program but it was just like the hunters didn't like it doug durn will tell you it's the most effective whitetail herd management strategy ever created um there's a few other states that have experimented with it not like on a statewide level iowa and some other midwestern states have have run like localized earn a buck regulations with the same results like higher doe harvest and uh faster population reductions so like it does work we'll see if uh the new york hunters embrace it or not i'm not sure how it's going to go like i'm all for it but i've never like really done it or experienced it you know dude it's not good i would say if you were a state and you had a rigid you're like an rigid one buck state yeah okay we're in a like we live in a one buck state rigidly one buck and new york is a two buck state they're not going from one to two they're staying at two yeah saying but let's say let's say you're a two buck state or a one buck state yep i think the way to do it is you gotta you'd be like let's say you're one buck state you say you still get your one buck same as normal you gotta kill two does and then you earn unprecedented yeah second buck opportunity what an opportunity that would be people feel like they're getting more yes not like they got to jump through hoops to get what they've always had because that's when you wind up with discontent yeah but i mean it's like falling doe harvest is like a problem all over the country these days people don't yeah because people are painsies they don't want to eat deer meat yeah the the yeah here's the like in 20 years this will become more clear maybe it'll be 50 years to become more clear of the two conversation there's two conversations happening about deer whitetail deer in america conversation one there's too many whitetail deer over vast portions of the range there's too many whitetail deer by someone's measure yep okay landscaping ticks agriculture highway collisions by someone's measure there's too many deer the other major conversation happening on whitetail deer in america is the fact that there's too many deer in america and there's too many deer is that we have that chronic wasting disease is spreading and ultimately chronic wasting disease is going to have population level impacts some people project it's going to have catastrophic population level impact and they're seeing falling populations in places already i know but these two stories you're right well yes you can argue it yeah these two stories at some point are going to need to reconcile with each other yeah they're these two narratives are not in sync nope and like and i don't know is it 20 years is it 50 years when it becomes clear where one of the narratives was wrong or or something or they come together and all of a sudden we're talking about there are no deer anymore yeah hopefully it's not that hopefully it's like a management strategy that everyone agrees works you know like here in montana they have a lot of deer and they're talking about deer and they're talking about deer and and they're talking about deer and they're talking about deer and they're talking about deer and they're talking about a special cwd hunts like late in the season where it's you know it doesn't matter if you've already shot a buck you can get these cwd tags and go in and kill a buck or a doe you just got to be prepared to deal with a deer that might be cwd positive you know in the same season i hunted two different earn a buck programs in two different states one was you could shoot a buck it was exactly like this you could shoot a buck and then you had to shoot a doe in order to shoot a second buck and the other one you had to shoot a doe before you were allowed to shoot your one buck i shot i was way more motivated to go out and kill that first doe i traveled to i traveled probably eight hours to go hunt over halloween weekend shoot a doe came back home then went two weeks later to shoot a buck the other program where it was shoot a buck shoot a doe shoot a second buck was my home state i shot a buck peak rut and i was like cool i'm good i didn't go out and shoot another doe and i i wanted to it's not like i was like oh screw these guys i wanted to go shoot out another doe it was not a high enough priority for me to get out there and do it yeah i don't get that like not wanting to go hunt and shoot a deer and eat a deer like you're eating something you're hunting too and learning and but i still hear there's still people out there and it might have something to do with just the you know high density low density areas yeah but uh there's people that have memories of years where there were more deer in their area and they long for those times when they would see 20 deer a sit instead of just two and well i mean that was me when i was a kid we'd see 40 deer and one was a spike you know yeah but people miss those days you know they like target rich environment yeah yeah sure yeah in military families service is more than a job it's a legacy at american military university that legacy can help open new doors through education if someone in your family served in the military you could be eligible for reduced tuition take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life learn more at amu.apus.edu slash military the fall hunting season is finally upon us i love this time of year me and my kids got trips coming up for pronghorn deer more deer cow elk we got all kind of stuff coming up we're about ready to trade out summer sleeping bags for cold weather down pack up a food bin and a cooler and we'll throw in a couple mountain dews for a little reward and boost after those long mountain marches there's nothing better it's my favorite time of year to spend time with my family born in the foothills of tennessee mountain dew was made for a damn good time outdoors the bold taste you know and love has proud american roots dating back to 1948 mark your best fall memories with the crisp refreshing citrus kick of mountain dew from hanging out around the bonfire to just hopping into your friend's truck and cruising the woods get out there and enjoy the outdoors of mountain dew an american original tasting great since 48 look for mountain dew in stores near you this episode of the meat eater podcast is brought to you in part by bobcat now this country was founded on the belief that we should keep pushing our limits and doing things that have never been done before from landing on the moon to building the brooklyn bridge we don't stop to wonder why we just ask how now bobcat was built on that same philosophy they started the compact equipment industry through grit determination and a whole lot of think we can't do that we'll watch us they set standards broke records empowered people to build bigger and higher to dig deeper to make the impossible possible it's no surprise they demand the best from their products for the people who demand the best for themselves after all real work isn't about building a resume it's about building your legacy we've all been there with doubters telling us what we can't do who cares what they think we don't need their permission or forgiveness we just get things done so go ahead and doubt me judge me challenge me but when the time comes watch me that's bobcat all right moving on uh to the to the wild buffalo reporting desk story about american prairie some of you might know it as american prairie reserve it's now american prairie uh for reference to the wild buffalo if you want to go back into our library we recently did an episode with the ceo of american prairie about their mission uh to summarize real quick before we get into the nitty-gritty on this one american prairie is a is a conservation land preservation organization that operates out of north central montana their objective is to buy land on the open market okay willing seller willing buyer they just bid and buy land on the open market and then try to restore it to you know as pristine as possible of a landscape uh they own outright deeded land they own about 167 000 acres of deeded land they sit on grazing leases they sit on more grazing lease land than they sit on deeded land so so to the tune of it they have grazing rights either because they own it or they lease it on about a half million acres okay i'm throwing out some big numbers and some people made me not be able to picture this all right american prairie again they own 167 000 acres all right the biggest ranch in the state of montana 400 000 acres is owned by rupert murdoch ap american prairie owns more acres than ted turner's flying d so this is a big big ranch very controversial i'll get into that in a minute uh but i'm on before saying this very controversial i clarify all of that land is all public so the 167 000 acres they own is open to the public you can walk across it you can walk your dog on it you can go around looking around uh the deeded land is state and federal public land so the fact that they lease grazing rights on it does not make it that you can't hunt it it's totally open in public they just have the right to run cattle buffalo whatever to graze the grass all right part of the controversy of ap there's a rallying cry to the opposition to ap which is save the cowboy stop american prairie it's this idea that if you buy up ranch land and just use it for wildlife you are creating an existential threat to the american cowboy because he's supposed to be out and all of a sudden now it's just deer and elk it's a popular sign you see the way you'd see a politician sign someone's driveway and i'll point out that on a lot of ap's property they're still grazing cattle and a lot of them i'll point out too ap owns as i'm going to get into they own about 970 buffalo there are 2 million cattle in montana so the existential threat that these animals provide is a little bit you got to take it with you know you got to think of the numbers here okay i find american prairie to be controversial why do i think they're controversial my concern with american prairie as i've told everybody i know that works there or runs the place or is on the board my concern is that their commitment to public hunting is tepid and when i put that in my notes i don't think anyone's ever said the word tepid on this show i don't recall means lukewarm i was just gonna say my concern is that their commitment to public hunting is lukewarm what do they say to you they can do a lot on that they say of course not we have this and this and this but they put restrictions they put hunting restrictions above and beyond what the state puts and they basically not basically they put a mule deer hunting moratorium on their land but the state is not eye to eye on that right and then even like you go ask like deer researchers are like a limited buck harvest limited mule deer buck harvest has zero impact on mule deer populations right it doesn't matter but and that's what it would be so that's that's why they're controversial to me but i'll try to look at things in this case i look at the good and the bad this is just the story of what's going on on the hunting thing like i'd point out that montana's block management which is like private land open to public yeah it's not uncommon for those pieces to be open to hunting but have restrictions right like you can't kill an elk here correct you can't duck on is there right you can't drive these roads um so like we we see that in other parts of the state but they have a lot of acreage again i would say this i did say this i would say this with them sitting right here because i i'm like sympathetic to the mission i support the buffalo part of the mission i think that they would be doing themselves a strategic favor by being more open yeah putting more lands open to hunting less restrictions more acreage hunting because you're going to create all the hunters are going to be your allies but instead you're going to create all the hunters that are around but instead you're creating an impression in people's minds they don't want me around and if they buy up more land it's more land that i'm not welcome on it's just it's this is way beyond what i want to talk about here so i want to talk about here's politics their buffalo they run their buffalo as what's called a conservation herd it's not a production herd they're not running buffalo in order to produce hide leather meat right they're running it as a restoration project they're running it as a restoration project they're running it as a restoration project it's the native they're categorized as livestock aren't they they have to be in the state okay these are ear tagged counted animals not because they necessarily want them to be but they're not regard even though they're a native land mammal they're not regarded as wildlife in montana they have to be regarded as livestock so yes out of necessity yeah they have to like count them manage them like livestock but the objective is this is the dominant native land mammal on that landscape historically and they're trying to put them back on the landscape so they're doing this by buying ranch land and letting the buffalo roam on it and they're doing it by doing leases paying the lease fees and letting their buffalo run on state and federal grazing leases all right what's a grazing lease well a grazing lease is the west is full of it a grazing lease is you got a chunk of land let's say let's just say for easy sake it's a thousand acres you strike a deal with if it's bureau of land management federally managed public land bureau of land management they open up a grazing lease for a thousand acres they will tell you you can graze blank number blank cow care uh cow calf pairs for blank months and that's how it's like measured in animal units and if you're in a very lush place that'll be a high number and if you're in the badlands where it's all brown for you know 10 months of the year it's going to be a really low number exactly it's tweaked according to the an assessment of the productivity of the land and you you get a deal you sign a lease you pay a fee america prairie has this is a quote from ap there's pointing this out in in terms of this grazing lease debate that i'm going to explain as america prairie says america prairie has lawfully grazed bison on blm lands for more than 20 years with every rule regulation and permit requirement there have been no grazing violations and the administrative record contains objective evidence showing that range land conditions have improved over the last two decades with bison on the landscape however right now after 20 years for reasons i'll get into the state of montana and the feds are tag teaming american prairie they're coming at american prairie on state leases they're coming at american prairie on federal leases under the direction of secretary of interior bergham the department of interior is pulling american prairie's federal leases that's that's one fight it warrants a ton of discussion since this is a news show the news right now in this moment is about the state leases that american prairie has okay america prairie is aiming to graze bison on 5 000 acres of lands owned by the state of montana they already have the permit they're just looking to put the animals out there the state manages 1.4 million acres of grazing leases so to put the animals out there this is another way america prairie is asking to graze buffalo on point zero one one percent of the state's grazing acreage a tenth of a percent okay in seeking permission from the state to do this the state slow walked them for seven years would not process the request eventually the state supreme court steps in and says that's just bad government you gotta process their request so what happens now the state now is saying we're not gonna let permits out to people that want to graze buffalo in a conservation herd one of the perspectives on this is a stock grower stock growers organization opposed to them putting buffalo out a discretion a discussion is they're saying grazing leases were intended for what they call production livestock grazing meaning grazing leases were intended to be used to produce a food product and if you have a conservation herd it's that's outside of the intention of grazing leases however this intention was never adequately codified by law it's an interpretation of past intention so the state fought them by just slow walking their permits okay while all this is going on they've had all these different debates at one point the state says um well we can't do it right now because our state land order borders blm land and we need to hear from the blm what they think about these dastardly buffalo grazing blm land blm comes back at the time they come back and says well nothing bad happens it's kind of a non-issue so rather than the state then saying okay we've heard from the blm they say it's not a problem we'll accept that no they go we're going to appeal your decision that it's not a big problem then the state gets into this kind of goofy debate they start obfuscating what their objectives are they get into this goofy debate about whether one bison actually equals one cow okay now montana state university has research suggesting that you can view their an equivalency if you put a buffalo on the grass it's the same as putting a cow on the grass okay and since the state sets the stocking ratios anyways they can say how many are permitted to be out there but that's not what they're after they just don't want them out there and then they put out this thing like hey we're not trying to obstruct buffalo being on the ground it's just we're just trying to protect the grasslands and it's kind of gets into this thing like hold on a minute so you're trying to prevent the west from turning back into that real dump that it was back when 30 million buffalo were grazing around and vast herds of elk occupied the american great plains and like lewis and clark were staggered by the abundance of wildlife and whole cultures were existing off this wildlife for 10 000 years like let's not revisit that shit show right that's that's the argument finally the supreme court says you got to deal with these people's permit so then the state land board comes and directs the montana department of natural resources and conservation saying don't renew buffalo leases don't give out buffalo leases just to change the rules okay they're saying it has to be production agriculture so america prairie takes them to court and a judge just puts in an injunction no you think i forgot to mention meanwhile america prairie canceled all their public hunts they do public raffle hunts they had to cancel all their hunts because of this whole shit show going on for bison they canceled their public buffalo hunts they do buffalo hunts for veterans they canceled it because all this uncertainty about their herd um they want an injunction but to me it feels very tenuous their argument is that the that the land board and the drn dnrc didn't do the normal rule making process before changing the rule so we're saying you didn't you know you didn't open it up for public comment and all that and so the judge put an injunction and says they don't need to clear their animals out yet it's a it's a very minor victory but it like i said it has a very tenuous appeal a very tenuous feel to me this is not like a conclusive finding it's just an injunction on something while something else gets sorted out the federal land thing which still lingers that all hinges on the intent and definition of something called the taylor grazing act but again the federal blm part of this is a whole other story the state and the feds are tag teaming this organization around their buffalo herd what's funny about this the irony of this is a lot of this is taking place against the buffalo herd and it's not just the backdrop of all this hoopla about the theodore roosevelt presidential library opening up in medora north dakota and they timed the opening of the library for the july 4 celebrations of our 250th anniversary all these political figures converge on north dakota for the opening of the theodore roosevelt presidential library over july for a weekend because the political figures all want to align themselves with the vision and mission of president theodore roosevelt what is that legacy tr is a it's like tr just is a conservation president people that when people think of tr today they don't think they they don't think about him storming san juan hill they don't think about him being an advocate of panama canal he's a conservation president i want to say that he's a conservation president he's a conservation president i'm on the board of the theodore roosevelt conservation partnership when people hear that they don't think i'm talking about conserving panama Guy is a conservation president. The conservation president. The. Just let me do like a little year by year run through on an issue. In December 1904, President Roosevelt urged Congress to authorize that the government set aside portions of forest reserves as refuges for bison. 1905, in his annual message to Congress, Theodore Roosevelt described the buffalo as the most characteristic animal of the Western Plains and addressed the importance of the remaining small herds. He also acknowledged the economic advantages associated with the value of the buffalo herd. He recognized Wichita Reserve in Oklahoma as a forest reserve that could aid in buffalo preservation. The next year, he becomes the honorary president of the American Bison Society. The next year, we're now in 1906, Roosevelt congratulated Senator John F. Lacey of the Lacey Act infamacy of Lacey Act fame, not infamous fame. Congratulated Lacey for getting the Senate Committee on Agriculture to order an amendment to an appropriation bill that approved money. for the Wichita Reserve, which would house Buffalo. The next year, 1907, Roosevelt supported reintroductions of Buffalo. Wind Cave National Park, the National Bison Range, Wichita Mountain Reserve. The next year, 1908, the American Bison Society, of which Theodore Roosevelt is the honorary president, successfully petitioned Congress to pass a bill that would establish a permanent bison range in Montana. So there's 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908. I could go on and on. So when these people are coming there and tying themselves to the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, at the same time trying to attack the restoration of the animal, what are you tying yourself to? It's because so much stuff, so much stuff, so much stuff is just like perform. You could get the same people in the same room and they're acting like they're talking about the same thing, but they're not talking about the same thing. Like, what are they talking about? It looks good to stand in front of a portrait of TR. That's what I always say. Every politician in America would like to be favorably compared to Theodore Roosevelt. But what the guy wanted is so damn clear. Yep. And they don't. It's just maddening. It's just maddening. It's just maddening. It's just maddening. It's just maddening. It's kind of an environmentalist by today's terms. Oh, he was a radical. Radical. That's the other thing people don't realize is how much people hated that guy for doing all this stuff. They hated him. Steve would have hated him because he liked National Parks so much. Yes. Yes. You'd have disagreed with him back then. Yeah, the guy that shot at him, hit that little booklet in his chest. I'd have been like, Martin Laff, he likes parks. No, I'm joking. But yeah, I would have disagreed with him on that. I'd have been like, Teddy, you're misguided. You know, the journey for that, it was his folded up speech that saved his life when he was shot. It was said that that can trace all the way back to his early years when he was a president and he was really into boxing to the point where those in his cabinet were like, Teddy, you can't be boxing with the interns anymore. Like, it's just a bad look when you show up in some public space and you've got a black eye. So he kind of started secretly boxing with people in his universe. Clinton ran with that, but he wasn't boxing. Yes. Yeah, other bad physical contact. Teddy gets lit up one day. He gets knocked in the side of the head that messes with his vision. He has to start wearing glasses. So when he goes to give speeches now, the font is so big that he has to have more paper physically to do his speeches. So for that speech, he had a lot more pieces of paper. It was wadded up in his pocket where he was shot. And so, like, you can go back and say his little underground boxing ring saved his life because he had more paper in his pocket. To be honest, don't you do a thing called mediator experiments? Yeah, it's a great idea. Yeah. He finished his speech. He did. Put a speech in your pocket and we'll start cutting loose at you. The old bull moose. Yeah, it was badass. Listen, it was badass that Trump had the wherewithal to raise his fist. But imagine how bad. As it was to finish your speech. Yeah. After a dude shot at you. Ted definitely knew that. He's like, oh, look at all the points I'm going to win here by doing this speech after just getting shot. No. We have to really do some historical digging on, you know, like powder loads, bullet, you know, because you can't use a nice acubond and try that. A couple of years ago, there was a story. I think it was a boyfriend. Girlfriend were messing around with that. I think one of them killed the other one holding books up. We should just use like those beanbag rounds shooting books. Let's talk about Maine. Yeah, we'll get into it. Not Plattner, but Maine. Because I'm not going to talk about that. No, you're not. Maine dams. Yeah, here's a conservation wind story. Inside climate news. I need to get, since we're doing this show all the time, I got to get up on my subscription. You boys must have a lot of subscriptions to all these different news sources. Is that right? I just got a lot of people that send me stuff. I need more of those people. Barge will cover a couple of them. Just a couple. Inside climate news reported that because of dam removal, Maine's alewives are making a significant comeback. And like me, 24 hours ago, you might be like, what's an alewife? Which is really humiliating for you. Yanni, you're from Michigan. How could you not know what it, how did you pronounce it? Alewives. Alewives. Okay. I thought you said something different earlier. Well, I'll get to why I should know about it as a Michigander. It's an anadromous herring, averaging 12 inches, but can be as big as 16. Not considered a game fish. Although some folks smoke them and eat them. Alewives are most famous. This is why I should be embarrassed as a Michigander for using. Well, I'm embarrassed for not knowing this. The Welland Canal to bypass Niagara Falls and invade the Great Lakes. Causing the extension extinction of several Cisco species. They've also had negative impacts on yellow perch and whitefish populations in the Great Lakes. And how they do that is that they either out compete them for the zooplankton or they eat the fry of the yellow perch and cod and other fish like that. But this isn't about how they got famous. Maybe they're going to get famous because of this conservation win. Cause for their native range, which is like South Carolina up in the mountains, they're going to get famous for this conservation win. Cause for their native range, which is like South Carolina up in the mountains, back when ale was more commonly consumed than water in a lot of places because it was safer to drink it yeah yeah um people consume like a liter a day on average right so i was scared the pilgrims were scared of american water they drank ale for like every 140 people you had to have a place that made ale i got back then it was a it was a thing that women did and if a dude owned that and his wife worked there no no she would develop a beer belly that's the thing it was run by women and they were called ale wives and they tended to be rotund golly man i didn't know that tough damn nomenclature okay huge uh someday they'll get around to changing that one man huge conservation they'll call them like betsy ross or they'll call them like the who's the suffrage person who's the suffrage person on the oh they'll call them like the susan b anthony because i'll rebrand them because that's kind of that's mean i think go on um unprecedented population uh recovery the number of migraine fish in benton maine jumped from fewer than 800 800 35 years ago 800 fish yes to nine million last year that's pretty sweet and that's just better math i tried to figure out what percent increase that when they're real low like that they were just cut off from their spawning grounds by dams yes exactly and so they've done all kinds of things to to help them get back back up in there um which i'll tell you about in just a second uh like i was saying um it brings you know nutrients up into the the mainland uh kind of like salmon in alaska right um these ale wives bring uh it's a vital food source for eagles seals otters um and uh yeah just makes the place uh nutrient rich want me to hit you with something please it's a one million one hundred and twenty four thousand nine hundred percent increase it's a big increase in my head it's a lot it's like going from the people in these buildings connected to new york city all right starting in the 1700s a construction of industrial dams blocked the fish from swimming upstream to spawn trapping them downstream and causing populations to plummet uh intensive commercial fishing in the mid-20th century farther decimated populations and by 1994 harvests collapsed to a fraction of their historical highs where the federal commercial fishing um the feds basically put a moratorium in on them on fishing form in 2012 so the population rebound is driven by removing aging dams or building bypass systems so the population rebound is driven by removing aging dams or building bypass systems the systems that they do are they do a bunch of different things um one is high-tech fish elevators where literally they basically have just like a channel that kind of comes out off the dam and then at the end of it there's a bucket and when that bucket goes down into the water it creates a current as you can imagine it sucks it in and those uh l wives are literally attracted to it and they swim right in there the bucket picks them up puts them into the raceway and then on they go yeah um then they all come together and they all come together and they all come together they all come together and they all come together and they all come together and they all come together also do on smaller creeks they basically just build uh little you know steps so yeah where fish can just jump up and go up through the rocks and get on up there uh let's see 2025 maine saw a booming migration of over 20 million l wives unfortunately in contrast states south of maine continue to experience declining or depleted populations um internet says likely due to um maine is one of only five states with federal approval for sustainable river herring fisheries uh and as of last year 25 maine municipalities have regained the right to harvest locally under strict state limits they actually have to right now a lot of people don't like this but right now they have to monitor their fish returns for 10 years and produce that they have the stocks in these ponds where they're where they do the reproduction like an average return yeah until they can start a commercial harvest um my big takeaway here was i just thought it was so cool we've heard this over and over on these shows that we do and we hear i think it was we recently had some tribal members from the northwest on that just talked about the the wonder that you can achieve from nature when you see like i think we're talking about the size of some giant chinooks that was the conversation we were having and i think the same thing here there was a lot of locals that were interviewed that can remember like seeing some of these fish swimming up you know these small creeks in maine as kids and then they went through a period where there were literally none and they have you know put their own hard work and effort into it and now they're seeing them return and it's pretty cool and now they're getting to pass that on to the next generation and people just say it's like one it's an amazing thing to stand there at a small little creek and literally see so many fish swimming along where you can just stick your hand in and pull a fish out if you want the points of the resiliency of my nature if you like give it room to do what it needs to do yeah there's something about maine though like that state compared a lot of other states when it comes to knocking down dams like they're all about it i feel like they they tend to do it at a higher rate than a lot of other states i was talking about this on a run recently with the fella and uh i was telling him where i was researching for today and uh he was saying that this is a big thing topic in northern michigan we're gonna have to probably discuss that at some point getting some dams out yeah because there's a lot of people that are enjoying like the pontoon uh boat lake life culture and when you take that dam out yep that little reservoir you've been putting around on might not be around anymore and uh it's a it's a real trick right now to try to sell people on saying hey the river version of this might be as good or better than the sure than the reservoir yeah we used to pound salmon and steelhead where they'd all get backed up on the sixth street dam on the grand river and if that wasn't there it'd be great but then everybody'd have to figure out how to catch them when they're out there and they're not on a roadblock yeah did we cover that how they're putting the rocks back in in grand rapids to to put the rapids back in grand rapids are they tearing the dams out yeah oh good for them pretty cool in military families service is more than a job it's a legacy at american military university that legacy can help open new doors through education if someone in your family served in the military you could be eligible for a job in the military for reduced tuition take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life learn more at amu.apus.edu slash military the fall hunting season is finally upon us i love this time of year me and my kids got trips coming up for pronghorn deer more deer cow elk we got all kind of stuff coming up we're about ready to trade out summer sleeping bags for cold weather down pack up a food bin and a cooler and we'll throw in a couple mountain dews for a little reward and boost after those long mountain marches there's nothing better it's my favorite time of year to spend time with my family born in the foothills of tennessee mountain dew was made for a damn good time outdoors the bold taste you know and love has proud american roots dating back to 1948 mark your best fall memories with the crisp refreshing citrus kick of mountain dew from hanging out around the bonfire to just hopping into your friend's truck and cruising the woods get out there and enjoy the outdoor outdoors of mountain dew an american original tasting great since 48 look for mountain dew in stores near you this episode of the meat eater podcast is brought to you in part by bobcat now this country was founded on the belief that we should keep pushing our limits and doing things that have never been done before from landing on the moon to building the brooklyn bridge we don't stop to wonder why we just ask how now bobcat was built on that same philosophy they started the compact equipment industry and they started the compact equipment industry and they started the compact equipment industry and they started the compact equipment industry through grit determination and a whole lot of think we can't do that we'll watch us they set standards broke records empowered people to build bigger and higher to dig deeper to make the impossible possible it's no surprise they demand the best from their products for the people who demand the best for themselves after all real work isn't about building a resume it's about building your legacy we've all been there with doubters telling us what we can't do who cares what they think we're going to do we don't need their permission or forgiveness we just get things done so go ahead and doubt me judge me challenge me but when the time comes watch me that's bobcat whales whales whale strandings have been tracked for over 50 years in washington the record for gray whales was set in 2019 when 34 of them washed up dead uh we are only halfway through 2026 and we already have 30 of them this year so the record was 34 six months in we have 30 of them this year i talked to john calum boquitas he's the founder of the cascadia research collective in washington to find out why uh first i asked him about 2019 what caused that mass mortality and how did biologists react then uh john said that the 2019 he felt felt normal uh and it really didn't raise any cause for alarm biologists had seen this before in 99 in 1990 and they were like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die and in all three of those cases 1990 1999 2019 they felt as though gray whales had approached their global carrying capacity. And so this was just a natural cycle where they, uh, you know, self-reduced and the biologists just said like, this is what a gray whale boom and bust cycle is. Can I, can I comment on your graph? He's got a graph up. One line is strandings. Is that stranding? Nope. Oh, that's just the global population. I read it wrong. Nevermind. Sorry. We've got a chart looking at the global population and then, and the, uh, calf recruitment. Oh, but anyway, he said in 1990, 1999, 2019, they're like, this is actually a good thing. Uh, you know, the, the oceans have plenty of gray whales. Um, and so they're just like naturally having some, some reduction as for 2026, uh, biologists don't think this is a normal mortality event like the other ones, 16 of the whales that have had necropsies done, uh, all 16 were determined to be malnourished. And of those 16, 10 of them had blunt force, trauma from vessel strikes. So 100% of the necropsies said the whales were starving and 63% said that the whales were starving plus struck by a ship. Uh, John said that a starving whale is a delirious whale. So it's just more likely to swim in front of a cargo ship. It's a lot like when we talk about CWD with deer, the CWD doesn't kill them. It's that, that they don't have their mental faculties anymore to the point where they wander in front of a semi, uh, they walk out in front of a hunter. They don't smell a coyote. And that's what kills a CWD positive deer, not the CWD itself. It's, it's a similar thing. That's why all these starving whales are getting struck. Uh, so what's going on to cause the whales to starve? John's direct quote was this. There has been a profound change in the Arctic. Uh, here's why he says that about 95% of the world's gray whales migrate to the Arctic. Uh, the other 5% are these unique populations that wind up in Russian waters, uh, or they stay on the Pacific or they go into the Puget sound. Those ones are called sounders. That 5% gray whale population is not currently experiencing the mass die off. Uh, the biologists who observed that 5% say that they're doing just fine. It's the 95% that are going to the Arctic waters that are struggling. Uh, John said clearly there's been some sort of collapse in the food in the Arctic. Uh, the, the gray whales, they feed by rolling around on the bottom and they scoop up a bunch of mud and they filter out the tiny shrimp and the worms. Um, and, and he pointed out, it's a statistical fact that the Arctic is, uh, heating up faster than any place else in the world loses 10% of its floating sea ice every decade. Uh, so obviously there's been an impact, uh, to the microscopic food that the gray whales are feeding on in the Arctic. And, uh, now it's like shine some new light, maybe on the 2019 population to collapse. Maybe this is, you know, a whole decade long thing that that's happening. Here's some other tidbits from, from the interview with John. Uh, it's believed that about 15% of dead whales wash up on the shore. The rest of them sink to the bottom, uh, whale strandings for humpbacks and orcas have been totally normal this year. Uh, I asked him what happens to a dead whale that washes up on shore. He said, there's three common solutions. Uh, it's buried nearby. It's towed out to see where it sinks or it's just left to decompose. I found a juvenile dead humpback last year in California. Uh, this one was just left there to decompose. Um, the smell was so intense on that thing. You can smell it from like a mile away. I wish I could have just like showed people that smell like here to take the, take a whiff of this thing. You want to talk some maggots? Well, why don't you just get a little ball jar and take a chunk? I don't think I'd be in jail. Put that in the auction house of oddities. Yeah. Smelly whale air. Um, I also, I noticed that 81% of the dead whales have been male. And I asked him if that's normal. He said, no, that that's a new phenomenon. They're noticing that. Uh, asked if he had a theory as to why here is his hypothesis, which has not been tested. Calf reproduction has been very low in recent years. And John thinks that maybe some of the females are foregoing reproduction due to a lack of resources. Therefore the fields, the females are more resilient, uh, to the current conditions because they're not spending that extra energy breeding and carrying a baby and, uh, caring for a calf. Uh, so that's just his, his initial guess, you know, as to why they've been seeing this. for the last six months. Something else John brought up, the 34 dead gray whales in 2019 was a lot less concerning because at that time we were just coming off at an all time high for their population. So 34 dead whales out of a population of 27,000 is very different than if this year, if this pace continues, that'd be 60 dead gray whales out of a population of 17,000. So just like some really problematic numbers there. I asked him what he thinks the short long-term solution is. Short-term, he said to prevent vessel strikes and entanglement of fishing gear, because those are often happening closer to shore, just feels like we have more control of that thing. Long-term, just like helping the gray whales in the Arctic, that probably just means with research right now. And John said this, I don't know if it was something John has been told from the federal government or if it's just like a known thing among biologists, but he said that if you're like funding asks, you're going to be able to do this. And he mentioned climate change that it's just like, got no chance of getting off the ground. - Yeah, what's funny though, is four years ago, if it didn't mention climate change, it had no chance. - Yeah, so John said- - Four years ago, you had to take your research and make it about climate change or else you'd never get your research done. - So for this specific problem- - And people would just, and I know many researchers, you would take what you're doing and just impose a climate spin on it, even to the point of, let's say, you were just trying to work in public lands acquisition, you would need to say, as the earth warms and as stress from climate change increases, people will need more outlets. How will they find relaxation? On public lands. Therefore, as a climate mitigation plan, we would like to create more public lands. You had to play this dumb game. Now you just go back in and take it out and just keep doing the work you're doing. - Yeah, the problem is, John says, if you want to study gray whales in the Arctic, it's impossible not to mention climate change. - I'd find a way. - For the next two years, probably just not happening for them. Last thing I asked, what do you think the Macaws tribe request to hunt gray whales? Here's a brief timeline, so you're up to speed. The 1920s, the Macaw tribe quits whaling because populations are so low. 1970, gray whales- - How low? - I couldn't find that number. I don't know if they even have one that exists. It's not just like a guess. 1970, gray whales are- put on the endangered species list. 1994- - At what population? - I don't have the answer for you there. - It's a real letdown. - 1994, gray whales are removed from the endangered species list. 1995, don't have the population. 1994, well, actually the chart probably does. 1995, so this is one year after they're off the endangered species list. The Macaw tribe notifies the government that they want to start whaling again. - Oh, whale. - I don't know if that was the number. We get to 1999, the tribe, kills one gray whale on an approved hunt. This is a picture of one of the harpoonists pursuing a whale at the time. So they do kill one that year. That brings us to today. The tribe has not been given the green light since, and the case has sat in limbo for 26 years. So they killed one gray whale in 1999, have not killed one since. - At that point, historically the carrying capacity was about 2,500 gray whales, and they sit now- - 1,000? - 2,500. - Okay. - And then the optimum sustainable population's about 1,300. - I think you're missing a zero, buddy. - No, something's missing. - Or it looks like a specific gray whale population. - Yeah, it's Eastern versus Western gray whales. - Rather than the global one. - Yeah, we have some Macaw coming on the show to talk about their whale. They're coming up on an upcoming show to talk about whaling. How many have stranded? - 34, no, 30 this year so far. - This tribe killing a whale doesn't matter. - That's what I'm asking John about. They've killed one since 1999. The government has not given them the green light since. John is fully on board with the Macaw tribe hunting. He cited this. It's the only treaty between the United States and a native tribe that specifically mentions the right to hunt whales and seals. And it was signed back in 1855. Therefore, John feels we should honor that as the only treaty that has that specific language. Here's a direct quote from article four of the treaty. "The right of taking fish and of whaling or sealing at usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians." So John said he's also seen the management plan that the Macaw tribe has for the gray whales. He said he feels as though it's responsible and it makes reasonable requests regarding harvest. So if they wanna go kill one tomorrow, he's cool with it. - The only thing I'd have to know here, I would want to see, I would love to see a century's worth of population dynamic information. - Sure. - Because what I don't know, and I don't know if anybody knows this, is if you look at over a hundred years, how dynamic is this population and how unusual is the trough? - Right. - And if they're in a population trough right now, are they in this trough every 30 years? Are they in this trough every century? Have they never been in this trough? - What I'm seeing is Pacific gray whale population lowest populations, 13,000 whales, lowest population level since the early 1970s. - Okay. So we'll see, in the 50 years of tracking, He feels as though this is, like, the most serious it's gotten for the gray whales. Not good news. What's interesting is, like, in 99 when they did this, it was huge public backlash. Oh, my God, yeah. It was insane. It's become so much more tolerated, which is the only thing I can think of in the hunting world that people are now more excited about today than they were 25 years ago. The gray whale strandings, they could stop, and, like, you know, maybe 30 is the number they sit on for the rest of the year, and then all of a sudden it's not so alarming. It doesn't seem likely. If that trend continues, this is going to be, like, a real, like, global topic. Politicians are going to talk about this in the future. Well, they'll be back to being, the next time the next Democratic administration comes in and they'll be reconsidering them for Endangered Species Act protections. Ain't going to happen now. I'll tell you that. Thanks, Spencer. So wolves eat cows. Crazy. That can't be true. It is. Little baby cows or big cows? Primarily baby cows, on average, between 300 and 600 pounds. Okay. So for almost 100 years, there were no wild wolves in California. Today, there's about 90 individuals in 12 packs. And new genetic testing that came out just the other day shows exactly what they're eating, and it's mostly cows. Hmm. If you want to pull up that map, Phil, this just gives an idea of where the study's going on. We're going to talk about the Lassen pack, as well as the Harvey pack. What pens are we looking at here? Just that, just that wolf one. Oh, not the tent? Steve wants to know about the tent. Oh, that's where I camped for Sheep Show last year. Okay. Yeah. I'm with you. Anyhow. So Lassen pack trickled in in 2011, naturally, from Oregon. Formerly identified in 2016 as the first breeding pair. At the time of the study, here in 2020, it was the first breeding pair. And as I've become the scat study guy, uh, around these parts, this study is a scat pickup. Um, it covers, like I said, Lassen and Harvey packs, which cover is about 20 wolves through the summers of 2022 and 2023, which is defined by June through October because of the overlap with grazing on public land. Um, and in this study, there were 86% of wolves. of the scat samples picked up had cattle in them um compared to in the teens and 20s for mule deer or any other wild prey man but i got so many questions but keep going later no lay mommy we'll keep going is it embryo like are they not is it after birth no we'll talk yeah we'll talk about it okay um this scat pickup method as opposed to the iguana method that was just purely counting they did a very very rigorous um extremely scientific methods um the first being mitochondrial sequencing to confirm the species that was eaten micro satellite genotyping which confirms the identity of individual wolves and dna meta barcoding to identify the prey dna in that scat and then the researchers through those methods were able to measure the exact the biomass of what was actually eaten so they could tell um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um and then the researchers through those methods were able to measure the exact the exact the biomass of what was actually eaten so they could tell in this scat 80% of that is cattle even though there might be seven different things that are that are in that in that um and so it's not just how often a prey showed up it's relatively how much that prey was eaten um and then through that they can tell like how many pounds of meat roughly yeah um it's it's pretty insane and i could not get into the specifics of how it works but there's a long section about that um and so when you when you look into the biomass which is which is kind of what we're talking about um and so when you when you look into the biomass which is which is kind of what we're talking about um cattle averaged 55% of the biomass consumed versus 12% of mule deer and 15% of small mammals so they're just chowing on cattle the in you cannot determine what's distinguished from predation versus scavenging um which which makes the the data kind of interesting but ray free range cow calf operations traditionally have mortality around one or two percent so researchers say it's reasonable to think that a meaningful share of this cattle um cattle biomass reflects actual kills not just scavenging and there are a few that were confirmed to be actual kills but generally it's so remote and so dispersed you can't figure out what's what's a scavenge and what's what's killed um then i looked at a meta-analysis of this of like how does this compare in california to wolves worldwide and how they're predating on things and you see that livestock are hit the hardest where herds are grazing unattended and small dispersed groups when when you look at the occurrence of this compared to natural game or that i should say that the game species there actually seems to be a preference towards game species as a pro as opposed to um livestock but the the higher those higher rates don't it's not the same when those cattle are dispersed and when the prey goes down proportionally was it did you come across anything about like whether like introduce populations of wolves or like new emerging populations of wolves like do they prey on livestock more than like established population yeah this idea that like maybe there's these cow eaters that were brought in that have been been talked like or it's just like they go for the easy stuff because they're like in a new environment no whatever i didn't find that specifically um there's definitely a learning curve associated with with like prey in a new species it seems that the prey have the learning curve rather than the the predators but this this meta-analysis you look at it looks like 200 different packs across the world and there's so so some of them are going to be introduced some have been there for a long time and this is india europe us um and there's really not a preference for cattle across the board um but when you compare that to what's going on in california they they have no other forms of ungulates they have small populations of elk that currently their their ranges don't overlap a whole ton and their mule deer are in significant decline so from a peak of about a million in 1970 to about 500 000 today what it shows is that as as prey species then free ranging cattle specifically get targeted by these wolves but a problem with that yeah is that there weren't wolves there in 1970 for the mule deer yeah i mean the wolves are just there now yeah so for someone to say that wolves have switched from deer to cattle in california they weren't there when there was a million deer but in other places there's been there's like in there's there's a study in india where there's plenty of different species i see where you see ungulate declines they pick up on cattle yeah yeah yeah yeah that makes sense to me and if there was no cattle there they'd pick up on whatever's next dog exactly exactly um and so it's like so what you know i i think the big thing i came out of here with is there there really isn't a thing of cow eaters you know that was a big that was a big narrative in the in the colorado introduction um they're gonna eat what's convenient you know they're gonna eat they seem to have a preference for wild game wait a minute there's not a thing there's not packs that just like over time it becomes a learned behavior that the pack leaders teach the rest of the pack and then it becomes a at larger scale it only seems to happen when prey species are at are significantly lower than what they could be like the low carrying capacity um so i mean they'll go hit the cows they'll go hit the cattle but only when prey species are hurting a little bit of that feels off to me but only kind of how so well like i'll give you an example like uh the wolves that were introduced in north in the north park area of colorado that kept hitting cows and cows and cows there's shit loads of elk around there there's moose around there there's like they're not in a game poor environment sure you know they're i so i that that's a kind of thing that you'll hear all the time and i talked to someone who is intimately involved with that reintroduction effort and a lot of that report from his perspective was that there were individual landowners who were intentionally causing conflict because they didn't like that's a big accusation i know man i know it's a bold statement and so there's there's two things at play is that there's one the reimbursement portion of it which in colorado's management system was very generous um like it you know it's kind of like your climate change thing is like oh my cow died but what no one's gonna they're not gonna go kill their own calf to be like give me no but a cow my a calf might have died and they said wolf did that well but they have investigators that come out but then you can't you it's hard to split i don't want to distract no no it's okay i do yeah no let's do it i don't have a total problem with i have a because there's there's there's inverse questions sure there's this thing that wolves when you have when you have a early we're talking about buffalo when you have a wolf when you have a baby and you have a baby and you have a baby and you have a baby and you have a baby i can't remember what it is you got to have a thousand of them or you got to have two thousand of them at that point the packs will start it's sort of somehow something clicks and it becomes worthwhile in their mind to learn to kill it and once they learn to kill it and develop the techniques to kill it that's what the pack likes to hunt it would see again based on a couple studies but these studies are are globally It seems that that data is not borne out. It seems that they'll eat. what's there it's not like they learn to attack a certain thing maybe in like localized populations that could happen but across the board you're not seeing it i don't have a debate about this not you and me we should not not we should get all the people on me but like other people versus other people i've also heard something that the larger a pack gets the more likely it is to turn to livestock because it's big and hard to kill big packs of coyotes hunt deer they've got a lot of mouse singles hunt rodents sure go on uh just know i'm sitting over here skeptical okay um well you'll you'll like this then there's a companion study that's happening at the same time with basically the same wolf herd in 2022 and they're measuring the stress response of cattle in this area okay and so this is getting at the the landscape of fear idea yeah now i'm getting interested again yep you um and basically if wolves are present whether or not they're actually killing an individual cow are they impacting the rancher's operations because they're less because there's aborted cattle because they don't lactate as well because of all the other things that cortisol can lead to yeah um so you'll see in in as you compare these two herds traditionally cortisol levels drop as summer temperatures rise you know it's like a more favorable growing season um and the stress goes down in wolf exposed herds that drop is significantly lower than in the wild so that's a good thing um so that's a good thing if you're in the wild if you're in the wild if you're in the wild and you're you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild you're in the wild so basically the cattle when wolves are around they stay stressed out whether they're getting eaten or not whether they're getting eaten or not it's like if you went to your own house and scared the hell out of your dog and chases all around but never killed it the dog's gonna suffer there you go taste is good no you'll have a red cutter um and so that that raised cortisol is linked tenuously at this point to lower fertile fertility weakened immunity disrupted milk or colostrum transfer and the the takeaway from this researcher is living among wolves for cattle is a chronically stressful experience and that could ultimately have production related impacts on both the short and long term however it's yeah it's not proven yet um this is an idea that people like to talk about but it's not proven yet um this is an idea that people like to talk about it makes sense just when you think about it but more research is needed to see how much that's going to happen which gets back to the colorado thing because you look at compensation and how do you prove compensation that my cattle are not producing as much because there's a general air of fear in this area and and different different cut different regions different countries different places have have looked at that problem in different ways because ultimately this conversation like wolves are going to come back web through ballot box biology or just walking around like wolves are going to enter landscapes that um traditionally have had cows that don't have large predators you know um and so you look at three different types three different methods there is uh solipur india which i'm sure i pronounced wrong um wisconsin and then colorado had basically three different ways of compensating these ranchers in india and they're pretty similar like they're pretty similar agricultural economies and whatnot growing cattle um and or growing livestock i should say in india they've been compensating these ranchers they've been compensating the wolves have always been there like people get it they've been there they're cool with them and claims are managed by the government they have very low rates of claims of livestock predation claims in that area what are they running goats and sheep yeah because they're not slaughtering cattle in india i think it's all goats and sheep um in wisconsin the original funding mechanism was donations from pro-wolf advocates given to ranchers who or or i should say agricultural folks who had claims of wolf predation yep that method lasted not long it is not the way they do it anymore um and then in colorado as they've introduced wolves they pull from the general fund um and they have a very generous scheme of paying out um predate basically predation permits um but it's tough it's like how do you how do you go about doing this how do you determine did that die by you know whatever covet or something and got eaten by a wolf let me save someone at home a mean letter i'm just going to express their opinion now so they don't have to write that in the chat i'll write you a mean letter if you turn out a thousand cows on range okay and they're up doing their thing and then the fall comes and you go to pull them off range and you count them up and you got 990 you're never gonna know what happened to them so someone's gonna come and tell you like oh the wolf mitigation thing just show us like i don't know i don't know where they went they're just they're gone right you can't then go like hey i'm missing 10 and someone's gonna cut you a check yeah so that's part of the frustration is you got to be there and do like you got to be there here it is it's got this tooth mark pattern on it and it leads to i'm not saying it's undoable they lose cows for all kinds of reasons like cows die they got a way of dying i'm not saying this is the lead cause of death but that is a frustration is the the it's like it's on you the burden's on you to show what happened to get the compensation so that's one of the pain points around compensation for sure so someone doesn't need to write you that letter thank you you guys so that no one has to write this letter as well common livestock in india includes cattle buffaloes goats sheep and poultry and india has one of the world's largest cattle populations but according to just quick ai search here is that it's that's mostly for the milk everything else the buffaloes the goats sheep poultry pigs they eat those there you go just a report tough tut in a tough nut i started this thinking i was going to hear all about how wolves are evil and they're cow eaters it's so complicated yeah you got in over your waders on that so dude it's deep because listen there's a thing no one there's a thing that just leads to fighting wolves wolves yeah you know they say never talk about politics or religion at dinner don't talk about we're wolves water rights is another one we should just stock more elk where these wolves live that's what i'm stood we need a healthy ungulate population at dinner when you go like no i don't want to get political you know then you say something real political like no i don't want to talk about wolves but let me tell you something about wolves huh that it i think that's all we got for today that's right we're gonna talk about one thing we're not gonna talk about anymore it's about how in california here's one we were gonna cover but we're not gonna in california there's an area where they ban dudes from the pier fishing sharks for fear that they'd hook a shark and then swim over and bite someone who's swimming that's what they say if i was the mayor i'd be like no swimming because if a guy's fishing sharks and his shark gets tangled up on you he might lose it you could read another one of those books if you read another one of those books if you read another one you can read more at the meat eater.com we'll see you next week you can read about it at the meat eater.com better than the mayor and jaws the meat eater.com slash auction go buy something oh that's right check out that model 94 cow killers come on in military families service is more than a job it's a legacy at american military university that legacy can help open new doors through education if someone in your family served in the military you could be eligible for reduced tuition take the next step with flexing your money and getting a job at the meat eater.com online programs built for real life learn more at amu.apus.edu military this episode is sponsored by better help you know those little promises you make to your future self tomorrow i'll put my phone away earlier or stop rehearsing arguments in the shower tomorrow i'll stop saying yes to everything or stop overthinking that conversation most of us aren't trying to become completely different people we're just hoping to feel a little better and we're just hoping to feel a little better every day that's what's great about better help with them better is personal it's matching with a therapist who gets you and having someone in your corner better doesn't have to come from major victories it can be from the small habits you create and 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