This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human Welcome to the news show. Today we're going to talk about Armadillo's spreading leprosy. What? We've got some good news for Hound Hunters in Alberta and some troubling news for Wyoming Wolf Hunters. Steve gets the scoop on the latest in Grizzly Bear Management. A jeopardy contestant exposes himself, but not in the way that you might think. And Nate has a segment about a record carp that Brody is very, very skeptical about. And with that, we're on to our news. Now, if you can't tell from the past 36 seconds, Steve is out again today. He's still up in the high Arctic adventuring around. He posted a photo of a giant cod that he caught, which made all of us very jealous. So I'm hosting today. I joined by Seth, Spencer, Cal, Nate, and Brody. Steve will be back soon. Soon. But we've maybe got one more. Two weeks, two weeks from now. He'll be on the news show. So, you know, if you don't like this program, when Steve's not here, hang in there. We'll fix you up. It might be better. It might be better. They might be better. We'll see how the day goes. Yeah, we don't know. Yeah, Spencer. We have two meat eater store events. Happy. We have two meat eater store events happening. The first one is August 13th at the Milwaukee meat eater store from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. I will be hosting a game of trivia at the store. There will be prizes for first, second, and third place. The grand prize is a $1,000 gift card. Yeah, somebody say, wow. Wow. That's a show. You got to be there in person. Everybody who shows up that night gets a 15% discount. That's only good for that night in the store. You can have teams up to four people playing. Randall takes that very seriously. Nobody tried to sneak in there with five hard cap. Nobody using cell phones. The event is free, but you need to sign up ahead of time to reserve a spot. Go to the meat eater dot com slash events. Again, August 13th at the Milwaukee store from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Then on August 15th, we are opening the meat eater store in Minneapolis at 50th and France. It's the grand opening that Saturday. Me, Clay, Brent, and Tony will be there from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The first 150 people get a gift and there will be prizes given away every hour. That's at our Minneapolis store, grand opening, August 15th. If you miss me there, I think I'm going to go to the twins game that night. It's $2 beers. I can't miss that. I'd be losing money by not going. You can find me at the twins game. If you don't see me at the grand opening. That's like 90% off a normal face. Yes. By FOMO right now. What kind of beers are they? Well, I would guess up there. The great North. They would have Miller Lite, Coors Lite, Bush Lite. All of your favorites. What's the format for the trivia game? I think it's going to be 20 questions. We'll probably do four rounds of five questions. Take a slight break. Bring your score cards up to me so we can we can grade those and we'll get updates after every five questions. Very nice. What do you think of that? I like it. I like it. It'll move quickly. But I think an in-person trivia game. It's only fun if you can get a running score. Doors open at 6. First trivia question is going to be read at 6.30. You need to sign up ahead of time. The Mediter.com/events. Fun stuff. Speaking of fun stuff. I am pleased to announce that the latest edition of Mediter's American History. Volume four is going to drop on October 20th. So this is the official announcement that that is forthcoming. Release on October 20th. This is Mediter's American History, the Alaskans 1896 to 1941. It's going to cover trappers in the interior of Alaska between the Klondike Gold Rush and World War Two. This is dog sleds, river boats, bears, moose, caribou, lots of fish, and trapping fur bears for the fine fur market. This is a period of history that Steve got really into just in his extracurricular reading. And he decided that this needed to be the subject of our next book. I didn't know that much about it, and the more I read, the more fascinating it was. So keep your eyes peeled for that. And if you haven't listened to the first three, let me encourage you to do so. You don't have to listen to them to enjoy volume four, but highly encouraged, highly recommended. It's volume four done. No. Okay. No. Thanks for asking that. Yeah, we got to turn the files in a little before that, but it'll get done. It'll get done. I have every confidence. That time period probably gets some good insights into adaptive technology. Oh, yeah. Creeping into the wilderness early outboard motors. Guys just getting so mad at outboard motors that they just sing them or throw them on the sand bar, because they're not worth it. That's still happens. Yeah. The ruse keys are in there for a little. They sort of are in there for the prehistory. Lots of surplus military rifles, as you might imagine, in like the 20s and 30s. Lots of guys just. It's like a very different sort of modern story. I mean, the funny thing is when you look at this, these people are living in a world that resembles. Lewis and the Lewis and Clark era in a lot of ways. They're on discovered frontier. They're in places that they don't have maps for their. They're hunting and fishing for their own food. They're making some of their own clothes. Like it's a very primitive hard-scrabble existence, but at the same time. Like the Empire State Building is being built. There's like professional baseball. And that's that's wild to think about. Yeah, so it's like a really interesting contrast between what's happening in the rest of the country and what's happening in interior Alaska during the first couple of decades of the 20th century. That's the white Fang era as well. If you'd like to that book, that was published in 1906. It's about that part of the world in the 1890s. Yeah, Jack London was we talk a little bit about Jack London in one of the chapters describing the gold rush. But if you don't have a sense of scale for how many people flooded up into British Columbia, they're on territory in Alaska during the during the days of the Klondike Gold Rush. It's unbelievable. Just a flood of people. And then some of them stuck around and they you know, they didn't make a ton of money trapping or they didn't make a ton of money mining for gold. But a lot of them turned to trapping as a way to support themselves. And so that's really the story of this book. So that's what I got October 20th October 20th. Keep your eyes peeled. And now your news. We're going to talk about alpha gal and treatment for it. So if you hadn't heard recently, Steve hosted bar card bilger on the interview show to cover ticks and alpha gal. If you don't know what alpha gal is, it's not a Gen Z term for boss women or something like that. Good one. We had a lot of comments about that. And people were confused on. Yes, now they know it is a tick bite bite induced syndrome that causes an allergy to red meat and dairy products. It's pretty mysterious bill gates may or may not be involved. But at this point, the treatments are minimal. But we had a lot of comments and people write in with stories about successful treatments through acupuncture, which personally I'm very skeptical of as is Steve and a couple of other people. But we had really interesting response to it. Hey, Steve and me to crew just finishing listening to episode 908 about alpha gal syndrome is a great episode on topic that hits close to home for anyone who spends serious time in the woods. I wanted to follow up on the brief mention of acupuncture as a potential treatment. I have two close friends, both very down to earth blue collar guys who developed severe alpha gal allergies over the last three years. One of them actually had a near fatal anaphylactic reaction after his doctor recommended that he slowly reintroduce red meat into his diet. He ate a can of Vienna sausages and ended up in a life. I got to stop. He don't write into it. Yeah. I don't know that would be my choice. I might only have red meat one more time in my life. Let's eliminate. I'm sure his problems are related to a tick. I like his style. I do too. I'll be honest. I like his style. It would have been really boring if he like cooked up a little bit of hamburger in a pan. No, this is good. Well, his friend, the other blue collar guy that he mentions, couldn't even be in the kitchen when his family was cooking bacon without his face and body breaking out in hypes. Desperate for a solution, a coworker mentioned that his brother and acupuncturist in Charlotte, North Carolina was using a technique to target alpha gal. Both my friends were very skeptical, but they decided to give it a shot. Unbelievably, after just one session where a needle is inserted into their ear, both guys were completely cured. It's been a while now and neither has had a single allergic reaction since both are back to eating meat without any issues. I know this is far fetched and sounds like pseudoscience and I wouldn't have believed it myself. I haven't seen it happen to two of the biggest skeptics that I know. I just want to share these real world success stories as another perspective on a disease that affects so many outdoorsmen. Nate Dodson. Man, I'd like to see a blood test from those dudes after they had. Yeah, so I'm not we're not going to go super deep in this, but.
there's an interesting, a very interesting study on PubMed about, it's like a, a very well done study on acupuncture and on for alpha-gal treatment. And the results are very interesting. So if you're dealing with this, check it out. Yeah, I read that, I read that study, acupuncture confuses me. Same. I don't understand it. Me neither. But a lot of people think it works for them, or it works for them. And I think when it comes to health stuff, who are we to say if it helps? There you go. Yeah, if you had a red meat allergy, that's kind of thing you just like throw the kitchen sink yet. Yeah, you just try anything. Yeah, if you told me I could cut off my left arm elbow down forearm down, I don't know, I'd give it a shot. What about shoulder down? Yeah, yeah, probably, probably. Keep the shoulder though for some recoil. The red meat allergy, yeah, I mean, like, I'd keep, I'd try every tool in the toolbox. All right, we've got another email here. This is a chedicate question. And the fellow writes, "Hi, Steve and crew." So right off the bat, we've screwed this one up. Hi, crew. Long time, listener, first time writer, I'd appreciate if you guys wait in on this one. In Illinois, nearly all public waterfowl sites assign blinds through an in-person lottery for the whole season. To enter, you show up on a designated day in July with your ID and a current or previous year's hunting license and a waterfowl stamp. A DNR officer writes your name on a slip and drops it in a raffle tumbler. If your name gets drawn, you pick from the open blinds, then you turn in a form listing up to four hunters and each of them has full hunting rights to that blind. You can only be listed on one blind in the entire state per season, and there's no hunting outside the marked blinds. My partners were out of town at a wedding, so I went alone to the site that I hunt every year. Normally it runs clean. A name gets read, you call the blind you want, and if a second name from a group that already one gets drawn, they just say pass and step out. That protocol usually means everyone who shows up leaves with a blind. Before it started, I did a rough head count. If every group of four took one blind, everyone there goes home happy. Around the fifth draw, an obvious nonhunter from a group that had just one got called. He turned and chuckled to his buddies and went and grabbed another blind. Then it happened four more times. Five groups took multiple blinds to lock everyone else out that only put one name on each extra blind so no other group could join. And result is that, mean at least three other groups walked away with nothing. I honestly don't know whether they're mad at the DNR, the first group that set the precedent or my hunting partners college buddy, who decided to get married yesterday. So here's what I'm chewing on. One, do I have a right to be pissed or am I just a sore loser? Two, whose fault is it really that this happened? Three, what would you do in this situation? Four, any solutions to make this convoluted process suck less. You have a right to be pissed for sure. Yes. And there was no attempt to like talk to the single groups and and fill those open spots. That's the, that's what I'm conjuring in my brain. There's individuals in those other blinds. My versus full capacity in those blinds. Yeah, my test for this would be are those blinds going to be sitting empty during hunting. Right. And if they are, that is a huge red flag and that's a non starter. This, this is messed up. If they've got non hunters there trying to claim stuff, but like they should be checking licenses. Yeah. You know, when these draws are happening. Yeah. I also wonder to in situations like this, you can't really get, if people are do it, if people are playing by the rules, don't hate to play the game. Yeah. But in this case, it seems like the outcome that there's the intent. Right. Right. It seems like the outcome that the state wants is not, is not the outcome that's going to play out in the, in the field. Right. And so I'm hoping that they have some sort of system where they figure out how many days you hunted out of these blinds. And like if they're not getting used, you know, maybe you're knowledgeable the next year or something like that. This Brody brings up a good point right on paper. What's the difference between a hunter and an on hunter? Do you have a license? Well, I guess that makes you a hunter. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, because you could ultimately, you could end up with the same outcome, I guess, if you had all these groups there and half of the groups were just lazy asses that would get a blind with every intention of hunting it and then not hunt it that season. Like you could still end up getting screwed just based on the relative different commitments of each group. But yeah, this seems egregious. Yeah. And then you put like a sign in box at the blinds. Right. And when you hunt them, you sign in and whatever at the end of the year, they look and be like, oh, the people won this blind only hunted two days or something or whatever, zero days. Exactly. You hunt zero days, you had to like, yeah, you're not eligible for the next year or something. Or make people like commit to certain days on the calendar. And if they don't show it like if they're not going to be there, they relinquish those days and other people can get them somehow, like some kind of system where you have access to a blind that's not getting used. I think Drew needs to fight fire with fire. And he needs like bring his nine year old daughter, neighbor and a couple folks in his universe that can help him maybe put the odds in his favor, maybe arrange a field trip for the local senior center. I am laughing. Here are the church bus out there. That is the, I always say like the most dangerous people in America or retirees, because they got a lot of time, some disposable income. And if they really want, yeah, to focus on something they can, right? And so hammer. Yeah. But like we're in this like deregulation period in America right now. And I do laugh at the conversation that we just had. It's like, okay, well, how do you fix people being jerks? Right. That's like, well, okay, we're going to have a representative government system. And then everybody, you know, it's like, I mean, we just need people that follow the intent of the system. And if you're not there to do that, yeah, stay the hell out. I mean, one way that I could see this being somewhat mitigated is if you made the groups declare who's in their group beforehand, right? Like it seems like there's five sort of four solo individuals there each putting their name in separately. And then they, so maybe just have, you have to declare that this is group A, group B, group C. Well, on the, on the slip that they pull out, just have everyone to have all the names. And then those people, yeah, exactly. You have, you have all the names there. And then those specific names can't get drawn. I can see where people that hate water fell hunting, get involved in this, to try and get some blinds. They're good birdwatching spot. But even on like non-drop public water, relatively close to here, like forever, there's been this highly competitive deal. It's like, okay, there's these blinds that are like historic blinds on the waterway. The young dude in the group goes down at midnight, camps out in the blind all night. And then the older guys roll in just before shooting light with coffee and breakfast sandows. And that kid's been there shining the headlamp at every other group that's come out to hunt blind. Yeah. You know, it's like, and then on really competitive days, there's three young dudes that pin down three different blinds to keep other people out. And then they only hunt one blind. Yeah. It's like the arms race. I think it's, it's there's no way of getting rid of all the gamesmanship and this stuff. But when the gamesmanship starts to overtake the real point of why you're out there, that's where it ruins it for me. When like you're thinking more about how to beat the system than you are, just like, how are we going to get out of the good day? Not just how to beat the system. It's how to screw over your fellow hunter. It's like, is that really what we want to be doing? You know? Yeah. There's always going to be those people. I know. I know. Drew, just why don't you talk to your local DNR access person and just read there, take their temperature on this. You know, maybe you could work towards a solution next year that makes it a little bit better. Good Lord. They're finally here that long last after fighting and yelling and fighting some more. Clay Nukem and first light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together. Not just any work bibs. We're talking the bare grease bibs from clay. Now I've watched clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants pretending to be work bibs. And boy, he did not. These are Clay's invention for things like breaking mules, rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt. I'm going to use them all the time, trapping, working, fixing stuff. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, these are your bibs made from tough stretch dot cotton. They got brighter proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets down near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck and they are up at the meat eaters store.
right now at the meateaterstore.com. Now it's time for the news. (upbeat music) So starting out, did I get, did I do that right? Never mind. (laughing) - Bill, what is that sound effect? It sounds like I thought that sounded ending, but then I thought maybe there was more. - A tweety bird being crossed under a boom. - It's like an old-timey newswire Morse code thing that I morphed into a nut hatch that's tweeting at the same time as the Morse code and then it gets eaten by something. - That's exactly what I thought that was. - Very good, very good. Brody doesn't like it. - What do you mean? I like it, I just didn't get the bird part. - Oh, that's fine. - To start off our news, excuse me, to start off the news for the week. We have an interview that Steve has prerecorded with David Wilms and they are gonna talk about and get to the bottom of some of the headlines that you might have seen lately on Grizzly Bear Management. Join now by Dave Wilms, the associate vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, certified attorney, and undisputed expert on Endangered Species Act issues. Undisputed expert on Grizzly Bear Management. He's here to tell us what exactly does it all mean? What we've been reading in the news about changes to Grizzly Bear Management in the Rocky Mountains with particular implications to those three states that have Grizzly Bear populations, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Thank you for coming on, Dave. - Thanks for having me. - Always good to see you. - So what's up, what is going on? This is always a difficult issue to follow. It becomes very, there's a lot of details, a lot of things change and get undone through litigation. So where are we at right now? What's new? - Yeah, I mean, the big news story is about a week ago, the governors of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, held a press conference with Secretary of Interior, Doug Burgham, to announce a new rule involving Grizzly Bear. And they just call it the 4D rule, but for folks that don't know what the 4D rule is, section four, subsection D of the Endangered Species Act gives the Fish and Wildlife Service a lot of flexibility to write rules that allow some level of take for different, take meaning injury to an animal, lethal removal of an animal, harassing an animal, not harassing, that's the wrong word. But dealing with conflict issues to come up with Grizzly Bear is giving some flexibility to do that by writing this rule for threatened species that exempt those things from what are called take prohibitions. Normally if you were to harm or harass or do anything to these Grizzly Bearers, you'd be violating the Endangered Species Act as they're listed. So this is to exempt certain activities, management activities from the take prohibitions of the Endangered Species Act. That's at the high level. - Yeah, so give me an example of an activity that would actually happen that we might start seeing more of that we weren't seeing before. - Well, I mean, I don't know if you're going to see new activities, I think you're in some ways you're formalizing old activities. - Okay. - So like tons of credit to Wyoming and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and their large carnivore team, they've been doing a lot on the ground management at Grizzly Bearers and people just don't see it for decades. And they've been consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service. And if they have a Grizzly Bear going out and harassing livestock or killing livestock and they need to deal with that bear, they need to haze it off or they need to translocate it someplace else or if it just keeps getting worse, they actually need to, there needs to be lethal removal of the bear. But then they coordinate with the Fish and Wildlife Service and do that. This rule formalizes that relationship is the way I would describe it. From the Wyoming perspective, it would formalize that relationship in rule and formally authorize through this rule, the states to take on these on the ground management activities. And that conflict resolution is a big piece of it but it could be some of the scientific research. It could be, if you have a bear that's struck by a vehicle for example and it's injured on the side of the road, it seems pretty simple. You should be able to dispatch that bear, right? Well, the way, the Endangered Species Act writes, you wouldn't have to be a violation of the act to do that. So this would allow a state agency, personnel, authorized personnel to go and deal with that injured bear without having to necessarily wait for somebody from the Fish and Wildlife Service to authorize it or come out and do it. For example, I understand what you're saying but I feel like there's got, there has to be more to the story than just formalizing something that's already happened or also it wouldn't have been, why is it being treated like a significant change or a significant piece of evolution? - So, that's a great question and I guess the best way to describe it is, look at all the criticism that's happened over the last 15, 20 years. One of the big complaints that you see when you talk about grizzly delisting, right? We tried twice to deal with grizzly bears. People come up in arms over grizzly delisting and one of the big things they cite is this distrust for the states, the state legislators, the governors, the state agencies, and I don't think the public broadly knows that states have been very involved with grizzly bear management and recovery for now 50 years. And one thing this rule does, it does a couple of things that I think are really important. One, is it formalizes that relationship and it formalizes the fact that states have an active role in management of grizzly bears and recovery of grizzly bears. So that's one piece of it. I don't think the public knows. And so this formalizes that and says, we're recognizing what an amazing job the states do and formally creating this role. Another thing I think it does is it creates a roadmap for, if you can make a rule like this work where you're, if you meet certain, and the way this rule is written, by the way, if you meet certain benchmarks, there are then the state can take on additional responsibilities of management. Okay. The way it's written, the states have pretty much already met those benchmarks 'cause they're tied to demographic objectives, like what are the, what's the population distribution? What's the overall population? All the things that have been met for 20 years. - Yeah, yeah. - So if you tie it to that, then they're automatically gonna be able to step in and do those things. But it also creates a roadmap that you could use for other species and other places that maybe haven't reached those benchmarks yet. So this is, I look at this as a rule, as it's an incentive for states to really lean in on listed species and push towards recovery and taking back management of them, even while they're still listed. So in that regard, I think it's a pretty big deal. But I think it's also important that there are things this rule doesn't do that are floating around out there on the internet 'cause people are armchair quarterbacks and armchair lawyers and all those things and tell you what this rule does and doesn't do. And there's a lot of misinformation out there too about this rule. Is it safe to say that since this has been attempt, since de-listing has been attempted twice. And both times that they've pushed the US Fish and Wildlife Service has moved to de-list grizzly bears. It was blocked in the courts. And usually the greatest thing that they were used as public leverage was the idea that there would be hunting licenses issued for grizzly bears. Then that really unnerved a lot of grizzly bear protectionists. And so they got the de-listing beat. Is it safe to say that this is rather than trying to undo or rather than trying to de-list and one fell swoop? This is just a necessary step toward that objective in order to alleviate some of the immediate pressure that would be felt if they tried to de-list again right now. I think that's right. I think it also another way to think about this is think of this as an insurance policy of sorts. - Okay. - Right. So you put this rule in place that creates the authorities for the states to go out and do the on-the-ground management, to go do the respond to conflicts, to one thing they can't do is they still have to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service before they do any lethal removal. They can't just go out and deal with grizzly bear. But all of this other management stuff, they'll now have the ability to just go do under this rule. And so the insurance policy I call it is, say six months from now or a year from now, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposes to de-list grizzly bears. - Yep. - What's gonna happen? We're gonna have lawsuits filed like we always do and it's gonna get tied up in the courts. Well, while that is playing out and being fought, you still have the states largely managing the bear like under this rule. - Yep. - Now it.
It doesn't go as far as, I wrote a book chapter three or four years ago, where I proposed something like this structure, only I went a lot farther with it, and I actually said, you should just incorporate the post-delisting management plan of the states into the 4-D rule. And if that means authorizing, like allowing a hunting season to occur while it's listed, that you could theoretically do that, obviously this doesn't go that far. This doesn't authorize a hunting season. My theory back in the time was, you could have this species be effectively delisted, but it's still listed, but effectively managed as though it's delisted. And then let the courts play out and you've got this insurance policy. Well, this has most everything except that piece, the hunting piece, like most everything else is included in that. So it's almost this, the folks on the ground don't have to watch the pendulum swing with the litigation. They just see the states out there doing the management. And then over the longer term, those groups that distrust the states and say they can't do it. Well, now you have this body of evidence building, formally building through these annual reports that this 4-D rule requires from the states. You have a body of evidence annually building showing what the states are doing to manage the grizzly bears successfully. And I think that can be blunt future litigation. Oh, yeah. That's great because that's the claim is that if they de-list grizzly bears, the states are just going to go whole hog, kill them all, and then you point out, well, why would that benefit the states to manage the grizzlies in a way that they're back under ESA protection? The state has no incentive to tank bear populations. Of course. Then you see what they've been shooting themselves in the foot if they tanked bear populations. Well, the first thing that this gives an opportunity to demonstrate that the states have no interest in impairing grizzly bear populations. That's right. You can see how it's playing out with wolves, for example. You've probably seen in Wyoming the proposal to now reduce the wolf quota by over half this year because wolf numbers are down from disease and other things have caused them to depress. So they're adapting and adjusting because, frankly, the state doesn't want to see wolves re-listed either. They don't want to see grizzly bears re-listed. So you're going to end up with this body of, under this 4D rule and the reporting that comes out of it. I do believe in one of the best things that will come out of it is you're going to see the proofs in the pudding and you're going to see that the states are able to show. We're doing it. Bears are still recovered and at least, you know, blunts arguments against the distrust of the state agencies, which I think has been one of the, like, you mentioned, one of the biggest obstructions to not be able to get them delisted. You'll never satisfy everybody. There are people out there that are just, like, I don't care if they're recovered. They should stay protected under the ESA because I never want to see them hunted in any way or something like that. That's going to be out there. I got one last question for you. Were you involved in shaping this or, and would you be able to say if you were involved in shaping this? All I can say is years ago, so I've written, there's a, there's a book out there called the Codex. It's a, it's the worst titled book ever, but it's called the Codex of the Endangered Species Act volume two. I contributed a chapter to that where I laid out this exact idea of, of increased authority to the states under a 4-D rule. And I've been working on that for years prior, you know, going all the way back to my time, working for the governor of Wyoming on, on some ESA stuff. So this is an idea, there are other people that have been talking about this too. This is an idea that I've definitely honed in on, on Grizzly Bears in particular. And I've presented the idea to the service, to service leadership over the years at different conferences and so forth. So, did I have a hand in writing it? Absolutely not. I didn't, you know, that's the service they do that. But I definitely, I definitely fleshed out an idea that seems to show up in the rule. I won't take credit for it, but it's, it, it, there's some, there's some mirroring of some of the writing. You're potentially an intellectual father of this. There you go. Yeah. I like that, I like that way. That way I described it. I was going to ask you one more question, but it'd be such pure speculation and it was going to be, I'll do it anyways. Okay. It's a two-part question, no, it's a one-part question. Sure. Sure. If you had to crystal ball it, it's just a wild guess. We're giving you room for a wild guess in your life time. In your lifetime, do you think that you will see the implitation of a grizzly bear hunting season in Montana, Wyoming, or Idaho? Like I mean, we're actually, it actually goes through and happens in your lifetime. If you had to say yes or no, and it's just a wild ass guess. And I say it depends on what the certain, the reason I say that is I actually believe that as the service moves forward, the Fish and Wildlife Service moves forward with the proposed delisting rule, if they decide to do that. What that says and what lands are incorporated by that, and this might be a longer conversation for us someday. But we'll determine whether they're ever delisted in our lifetime or not. And I think it could go one of about three ways. So I would love for it to happen. And I'm hopeful that it happens. But I just, I can't give you the, I can't do the, you wanted the yes or no, and I can't just like say yes or no, I can only say it depends. Although I can't say it has happened in our lifetime because the first 40 rule written for grizzly bears in 1975, or maybe it was a year or so later, allowed hunting of grizzly bears out in the Bob Marshall outside of Glacier. And that continued until the early 1990s. I think it was, it was shut down in 1991. But anyway, it's been, it's been written into 40 rules in the past. So in our lifetime, as a threatened species, they've been hunted. But they, in the future, all I'll say is I hope so. Okay. But you'll give it a big depends. A big depends and you can use depends as in the adult diaper or whatever, because it's easy. That's what this whole thing is. Amen. Dave Wilms. Thanks for coming on. Again, Dave Wilms from the National Wildlife Federation. Um, always is great for giving a very even keeled, measured, unemotional take on contentious wildlife issues and issues of corner crossing and other things. So again, thank you, Dave. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Steve. That's a great interview. Gentlemen, what do you think? David texts me. Followed up. He wanted to redo his, his final take that Steve asked about, good, because I didn't really like his answer. No, me neither. And he said, and I think he's still kind of given a, a Steve would say a law, a dog, an answer. But he's a lawyer. He can't blame him. He said, if I had a crystal ball on whether we'd see hunting in the three states in our lifetime, I stand by him by saying it depends. But it's more than what the FWS decides to do with the listing. It depends on what courts do. It depends on what Congress does. It depends on what the states do, but I'd also say I sure hope we see it, not because I want to hunt them necessarily, but because if they are recovered, and that's how the states want to manage them, then hunts, then that's what should happen. Grizzly bears and GYE have been objectively recovered for more than 20 years. The service has tried to delist them twice. If we want to continue touting the success of the ESA, then we have to be willing to delist recovered species and trust that states will do everything they can to make sure that they never need to be listed again. Yeah. I had the same thought like when he was describing at the end what his crystal ball prediction was. I did have the same thought that sort of bubbled up in my mind is like, well, I would like to hunt them. I will apply for a tag if it happens, but just the big picture, how cool would it be if an animal that was endangered is all of a sudden a renewable resource in the way that we think of other. How cool would it be if the ESA worked as intended and people and people acknowledged that it worked as intended? Phil, we got to pull the map up here so folks who are watching can understand what we're looking at. You cannot look at this in a vacuum and be like, okay, this idea on its own makes sense on its own. It absolutely makes sense, but there's all these surrounding factors and what I would say folks who aren't keen to this idea of returning the bear to state management need to understand is currently and for many, many years, grizzly bears have been getting shot and killed a bunch like more than anybody would guess in the states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, primarily due to conflict resolution. Do you have a number like how many a year? I haven't looked today. I can't remember what. I think I recently heard 50 in Montana. So when I went down to trap grizzly bears, the trapping seasons the first week of July and we had a big winner that year and trapping for coloring purposes life trapping life trapping.
research. Yep. Longest longest bear population study. Yeah. Just going to make that clear for the listeners. There were just in the state of Montana, there were 26 bears killed in by the first week of July with a big winner, right? And I bring up the big winner because they're not active until later on in the season. So they've been out for a relatively short amount of time. Montana had already killed 26 grizzly bears, right? And it's like calls just the hunters that are killing grizzly bears, vehicle mortality, bear on bear mortality, and then conflict mortality are your big factors. So moving the grip, the bear to state management is not all the sudden going to cause bears to be shot. Right. They already are being shot, whether you like it or not. Yeah. And I think that's the thing. As soon as people heard grizzlies being managed by the states, there's this like knee jerk reaction, like, oh my god, they're going to have a hunting season, right? Yeah. They're going to kill them all, which is like not what's happening at all. There's not going to be a hunting season for grizzlies next year. No. In fact, in the state of Montana, we have a five year run built into our grizzly management plan. So no matter what, even if it's like, yeah, do whatever you want, we would be marching five years down the road towards a grizzly bear hunt. So look at the map. You have the Northern continental divided ecosystem, the NCDE. On the north end of that is glacier, waterton, national park, no hunting. And it's a national park, federal management. In the middle of that, you have the Bob Marshall wilderness complex. And then jump down to the GUI, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. In the middle of that, Yellowstone National Park. This idea that it's just going to be the state's managing bears, I think, is very disingenuous. There's always going to be collaboration because you have basically two giant spawning areas in the middle of both of these populations. There's always going to be an interagency grizzly bear task force that operates within the parks. And then you have just the current state of things, which is the states are doing the vast majority of boots on the ground management of the bear right now. And last year and the year before, all the way back into to the 70s, when the when the grizz was listed as threatened. Yeah, and in those, those are the six distinct population segments for grizzlies in the lower 48. It's the ones around glacier and Yellowstone, obviously, like that's where all the bears are, right? The one to the west there, the BE, that's the bitter root. There might be a couple of bears in there right now. The Cadant Yak and the Selkirk, the Red and the Purple ones. There's bears there, not as big of a population. The one over in Washington, Northern Cascades, there's probably not a single bear in the lower 48 right now. They're like in Canada. They're around and there's only a couple of them. Yeah. So like those smaller populations, I think would probably be managed more towards the ESA line of things versus like a more liberal state managed. I think those are really on this map to show that these are areas conducive to having sustainable grizzly populations. The bitter root, I don't believe there's an established population there, meaning that there's cells and boroughs producing cubs every year. Yeah, there will be, but there's definitely bears that get encountered. Yes, and tariff golf courses, and some of which are our cells. Yeah. But those are bears that are moving in there, either from the Cadant Yak, which is again, to the West Galatian National Park or the Northern continental divide ecosystem, and this greater conversation of like population connectivity to provide long-term genetic viability, meaning like were you out enough in the soup to where the ingredients keep getting mixed around, and you're not going to have a one-ingredient soup, right? So a shallow gene tomato soup. And every year we're getting closer and tear up the soup to the Northern continental divide in the greater the else, don't kind of link it up. Well, I thought they confirmed one this year. They may have that move. They may have moved. Yeah. I'm pretty sure to like a male and a female from each side bread and produce cubs this year. Nice. I would still call that like a big anomaly because of just all the like the biggest grizzly bear in the state was killed on one of the highways in between those two. So like wildlife corridors with wildlife crossings, all these things could be done to help improve that and make it not an anomaly, which I think would be a good thing for all sorts of wildlife, not just grizzly bears. But right now like the fringe area around yellow stone and glacier and the bob and the bittera and the yak, that habitat is largely there because it is in a wilderness designation, a wilderness study area designation, a designated roadless rule designation, and all of those things are under some form of review. Some people would say attack during this administration. So again, like looking, I think it's great that the bear goes back to state management. However, I want to hunt the thing. I'm the only person at the table who's been able to apply for a grizzly bear tag in the lower 48 because I was living in Idaho the last time this happened. And we got 90s. We got to apply. No, it is a couple years ago. A couple years ago. That's right. And then five years ago, yeah, that one. Yeah, it would be, I mean, be like nine years ago now. Yeah. But how did that go down? They after the applications were submitted, they killed it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't get to a non-maloy and Mizzou looks shatter down. They didn't get to a point where they ever drew anything either. No, Wyoming issued tags. That's right. They did. A dozen of them, I think. Yeah. And I think I think Idaho went through the draw, to not draw. But that was the framing of the federal decision to, to re-list was this, this historic range and habitat connectivity to, to mark actual recovery. So long story short is, if you were like me and you want to see a hunnable and sustainably hunnable population in perpetuity of grizzly bears, which I think would be just amazing. And something, us people with big lumps of fat on our shoulders, called brains, should be heavily invested in. Then you should be advocating for wilderness and roadless and proper forest management, as well as expanding wilderness. Because that's the stuff that these low fecundity critters, such as grizzly bears, need to have sustainable hunting populations. End of rant. You know what might take away from that interview was, David Wilms should do our jobs. He's good. I think we should just have him do this because he's way better at it. Yeah. Oh, carry on. He says, I might not even want to kill a grizzly bear. Or a hunter grizzly bear. Come on, Dave. Some of the distribution map we saw there crosses over into tribal land, specifically like the Black Feet Reservation and the Crow Reservation. I could see where they are potentially the first ones who like get to do a hunt when, or if that becomes available. We've seen that in the past with some of the, the bison they're allowed to take. If I could wave a magic wand, they'd be doing those hunts inside the parks. Sure. Yeah. Historical hunting grounds. Yeah. Totally. Anyway, I feel like when we talk about this story, we haven't covered it like they're going to be a person at the table who maybe get some heavy input when it comes around. That's a huge omission. Good Lord. They're finally here at long last after fighting and yelling and fighting some more. Clay Newcomme and First Light have done it. We're talking the bear grease bibs from clay. Now I've watched clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants pretending to be work bibs and boy he did not. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, These are your bibs made from tofu.
stretch.cotton. They got brier proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere. Put them on. But you can bet your ass. I got them in my truck. And they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meateaterstore.com. Speaking of Wyoming, this is a story that was reported by Mark Heinz at the Cowboy State Daily. Although I actually saw this post that I will reference here in a minute just popped up in my feed, shocking. Two weeks ago, Steve covered the story about a pack of wolves known as Molly's wolves moving out of Yellowstone and into the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. They are obviously they can legally be hunted. This is one of the original packs in the park. It's a pack with a lot of history with the wolf watching crowd. Now that they are in the National Forest, they are susceptible to hunting. I believe that sees in open September 15th. When Steve was reporting on it, the underlying question was, is this going to be a big flashpoint for hunter and anti-hunter conflict? Well, it is. Then this is the post I saw that is the subject of this story. But there is a social media influencer in Austin, Texas, who has now offered a 10,000 dollar reward for the identity of any hunter who kills a member of Molly's pack during the upcoming hunting season. He basically just wants to dox whoever takes one of these wolves. Yeah, public shaming, condemnation, I think is the word that he used. This guy's name is Jonas Black since we're sharing names. Jonas Black is his name. And he claims to support fair chase hunting. And he says, I'm not an anti-hunter, but he says that Molly's pack is basically like zoo animals. He claims that this will be like shooting a dog. And so he wants to get the word out that anybody who shoots one of these will have their identity made clear to the world. Are those the words he used? It's like shooting a dog. Yes, he's a man. He says, yeah, so he's a dog trainer. He's a dog trainer. And I think I saw that he became interested in wolves after that story from 2024 where the guy ran over the wolf with the snowmobile and brought it into the bar and took photos. I saw that bar this summer. Oh, I've been in there. Yeah. You know, since he seems giant chicken Fred's day, this guy seems to encourage social media disc courts, then you know, hit him up. No, no, no, you think that's not a good bad behavior. This is and this is like the other side of this story is that Montana and Wyoming both have laws in place to keep the identities of wolf hunters confidential because there is such a potential for harassment and threats from the anti wolf hunting crowd. And so that's, you know, that the states themselves won't reveal identities of individual wolf hunters, but there is nothing illegal to my knowledge about a private party learning the identity of the hunter and making that public, even if the obvious outcome will be harassment and probably threats of violence. Why isn't he all hot and bothered about like hunting on the strip for elk, like those would be fall under the same the Las Vegas strip. I'm sorry. Just north of the park. Oh, the buffers are because because this guy is all for fair chase hunting. So long as that's not something he really, really likes. Right, right. So this is this is discouraging. I think he's got he's got like some graphics, some AI generated graphic. It's like a logo for protect Molly's pack and I don't know. I hope it doesn't discourage anyone, but it seems like hate to break it team. I mean, how would he get the info of who is that he wants someone to snitch? No, he's telling this guy. People it would be like Molly's pack is going to get killed and he ain't going to know about it. It would be like if Randall had a tag and Spencer is like, man, I can make 10 G's here. Yeah, that's what he's hoping for is like you find out that a body of a body shot one of those wolves and then you get. Let's go, Seth. I'll split it with it. Yeah. I was going to say I'm going to buy a Wyoming wolf tag. Go down there and then call myself. Oh, yeah. The fallacy also is like Molly's pack is the static thing. It's the same. It's the same group of Disney characters that started the whole deal. But they're not in Disneyland anymore, Cal. But also within Disneyland, they're they're eating each other. Yeah. And like always got to do is call any state agency and be like, are hunters the most effective tool when it comes to wolf management? And they're going to be like, no, absolutely not. Wolves kill the most wolves. Yeah. Secondarily like trappers do a much better job than hunters. Yeah. That's like, I don't think I don't think we need to go down these hypothetical scenarios because I don't think this guy's going to be calling any game agency to learn more about the situation. Phil is Yellowstone more of a Disney land or a Disney world, you would say. I'd say Disney world because it has like three or four kind of prominent features that attract the biggest populations. Kind of like Disney world has four theme parks that are kind of cross and you kind of have to navigate how to get there. You got to deal with traffic, transportation. Okay. Yeah. Make that adjusted. Another huge omission in our country. Thanks, Spencer. So I have the obviously that is a not a very heartening story for our community. But I'm going to balance that out. I also saw a headline. This was in the CBC that Alberta Hunters will be able to use hounds this year to hunt black bears in certain wildlife management units that have what they call conservation, caribou conservation areas. And I was surprised to see this because I feel like Canada in some ways is like Oregon or Washington where it seems like hunters are really under attack and you see a lot of headlines about opportunities being rolled back. Specifically, the one that came to mind first was the British Columbia doing the way with its grizzly bear hunt. So yeah, they're bringing back hound hunting to hunt black bears. And the concern is that some of these caribou herds in Alberta aren't doing well and the mortality rate of newborn caribou is the concern there and predation obviously plays a huge factor in that. So there's again a lot of outcry from any hunting groups. The usual concerns about hounds chasing non-target species and grizzly bear conflict and stuff like that. And it's obviously clear from a lot of the commentary on the CBC site that there's a lot of misinformation about hunting and bear hunting in particular, but nonetheless I thought it was good to shine spotlight on some. Well, that's that you got in here about Minnesota. It's pretty cool. So this is, I mean, this is one thing that I think a lot of people focus on wolves when they think about impacts on angulets, but black bears are hugely effective predators of calves of angulets. And there's a specific study in Minnesota that showed in years when spring bear hunting took place. There was a 68 percent lower proportion of bear predation on moose calves during those spring hunts with no compensatory increase in wolf predation, meaning like it wasn't just zeroed out by someone else gobbling up all the calves. So I think that that one involved that would involve the tribe. I can't recall the details on it, but it was mentioned in some of the coverage of this story. And so I dug it up and took a look at it. But yeah, it's black bears. I mean, you see it too. If you hunt around here, like they're they're keyed in on on, yeah. Spencer, why don't you take it from here? I was this is a couple of weeks ago. I was making dinner in the kitchen. My wife was in the living room watching Jeopardy. And I heard something happen to where I went in the room. I was like, you got to rewind that. I need to hear that again. And it was during the part of the show that like comes after the first commercial break, maybe it's second where they just get a little fun fact about the contestants are like, so Randall, you met Johnny Depp's sister in an elevator one time, right? Tell us about that. And then Randall would talk about how he was at a Halloween party and met Johnny Depp's sister and everyone got a good laugh out of it. Did you come up with that beforehand? Or do you just rip it? Yeah, just just going off. Did you meet Johnny Depp's sister? No, no, it's a good riff. So I heard during one of these little character intros, something that got my attention. And we are deep in YouTube prison right now for the clips that I've shown in the past that get dingged for copy rights, whether it's from like Ace Ventura or showing the man get flipped over by a bison in Yellow Stone. So we can't show the clip today. Phil and I are going to act it out instead. I'm going to be Ken Jennings. Phil is going to be the contested. I'm so tough around here. See, the thing is, is it's a better experience if we show the clip, but then we can't make money off of that. Right. So take it away boys. We get thrown deeper into YouTube prison, which is like maybe the deepest we've ever been right now.
'cause I'm the clips. - Yeah, we're in a hole right now. It's bad. - And then I also need the crew to help us out because there's some parts where the audience laughs. So please laugh along, just to give everyone the full experience. But like a very appropriate, jeopardy audience kind of laugh. - Can you play the jeopardy song without getting dinged? - Yeah, it depends how much parody there is. - Let's find out. YouTube is our biggest hater. Spotify, they're like, okay with it. And Apple podcasts, right Phil? - Well, now we've got video on Apple too, so there's the whole, no, another can of where. - Anyway, all right, here is the scene. Oh, and Harrington is from Chicago, Illinois, a union organizer and PhD candidate. And I'm told a pretty big deal in the state of Vermont. - Well, for one beautiful year I was, Ken. In 2013, I caught the largest bofen recorded in the state of Vermont. It's a fish for those in the know. - I assumed. (laughing) - Sweet. - Yeah, I wasn't entered in this tournament, but my friend was, and I was fishing with him. And I said, hey, you wanna enter this under your name. Don't tell the game more. And I, it won the state tournament for that year. We won $1,000, and we split it. And I got my first analog synthesizer with that money. - Wait, I thought they gave you an analog synthesizer. - It was a big deal. - And the price. - You went out and bought one? (laughing) - I did buy one, I still have it. I hope the game warden doesn't take it away. - No, if he's watching now, I think the statute of limitations has expired. - Who's that, were you thinking? - Mm-hmm. - Okay, see, nicely done. - Just to admit it to that. - So he admitted, if you didn't catch it there, he caught a bofen, gave it to a buddy who was entered in a bofen tournament, and that buddy won and got the $1,000 grand prize. This happened in 2013. I checked the Vermont master angler records for 2013, and to enter a master angler bofen, it needs to measure 28 inches. If you're an adult angler or 23 inches for youth anglers, there were 10 master angler bofen entered in 2013. Oh, and did say that his was the biggest in the state. I don't know how literal he was being, but the biggest in the state that year was a 32-incher caught by Robin Hiranzin, and it was caught on Lake Champlain 4 p.m. on June 29th. So I don't know that Robin was the person who entered it. I have Googled to my Whitton trying to find the tournament that would give a $1,000 grand prize for a bofen in Vermont. There are not many of them, and I found what I thought was the actual event, the Lake Champlain Father's Day Derby. So I sent them the clip, and I asked if it was their tournament. Here was the response. Quote, "Hi Spencer, I'm aware of the episode. $1,000 would not have been the prize for largest bofen at our 2013 tournament, but I plan to do some digging. We certainly can't have individuals who were involved in the 2013 fraud or anyone whose involvement would compromise the integrity or reputation of fishing competitions participating in our events." So it was not them, but they are looking into it to see if they could track down. - Well, yeah, 'cause it would be. - It's not necessarily exclusive to that fish, right? There's like big fish prize. There's most what there's all sorts of variables. - As I understand that email, he's simply saying $1,000 wasn't the prize for that. Maybe so-and-so was inflating the amount that he won. - Well, that's what I was gonna say. - Maybe it was a $900 prize. - So when fishing-- - Gotta get the lawyers on this. - When fishing tournament crimes happen, they're usually prosecuted as fraud or theft. And in Vermont, those crimes are considered felonies if they exceed $900. So this is a $100 beyond what it needs to be a felony. - Are you putting a man in jail right now? - Yeah. - I mean, we know that the Jeopardy writers watch the media derivative. - That would be my little tidbit if I was on Jeopardy. Well, actually, you guys still a question I think. So as Ken mentioned, the Statue of Limitations will likely protect Owen and he's correct. The Statue of Limitations in Vermont for felony fraud is $1,000. Now, there is some wiggle room with what's called discovery and I don't understand this well enough to know if it would apply in this case, but discovery would be like if a doctor did surgery on you and then you realized a year later that they messed something up and you're now in great pain. I think the Statue of Limitation starts at discovery once you realize that the doctor messed up. In this case, I don't think discovery would apply. Maybe it would if the tournament now just learned that they had fraud committed against them, but nobody probably cares enough for a 13 year old crime for $1,000. But Karma got him Owen got second place. He only won $1,400 that day and he lost to the Jeopardy Super Champion Caleb, who won that episode with $19,000 and nobody got final Jeopardy right. But we're gonna solve this. We're gonna figure out what tournament had $1,000 taken from Man Spencer. That's like the hard hit and the true crime invested in a journey with the second place person to get their $1,000 prize, who was actually interested. - Seth, your tournament angler, what would you recommend the punishment be here? - And what analog synthesizer would you buy with your winnings? - Yeah. - I don't even know what the hell that is. - What is an analog? - You own one. - Oh no, all the sins that I used to own, which were two were all digital. - It's like a keyboard that makes the sound of a baseball. - Yeah, it looks like a neck tie. - Yeah. - Exactly. - I mean, that kind of stuff happens unfortunately quite often in tournaments. And people just get in a lot of trouble over it. - Yeah. - Like there's a recent one where allegations of a guy trying to buy a big fish from his co-angler and it blew up, like it's always like big stories when they come out, you know? - Tip by it? - Was it for less or more than the prize amount? - I would have to be offered like 500 bucks or something for, like if he would have caught, I don't know, it's a long story, but the co-angler caught a fish that if the boat life, the guy, you know, driving the boat would have caught it if he were him. - He wouldn't want that guy. - Potentially won the tournament and yeah, yeah. - If you have information on what tournament this could have been, reach out to
[email protected] or have an update in the future on a $1,000 that he stole. - Crime stoppers, we should use to have a crime stoppers company email address. Yeah. - Seth Morris, speaking of Seth Morris and Fishing, you've got some interesting news to report. - Bringing more fishing to the news desk here. A new study challenges assumption about forward-facing sonar. - Ooh. - Mm-hmm. - A landmark experimental study suggests one of Fishing's most debated technologies may not increase catch rates after all. And, you know, forward-facing sonar has just been a huge topic in the last couple of years. So this is, this was very interesting to me. For years, forward-facing sonar has been at the center of he debate amongst anglers, tournament organizations and fisheries managers. Critics have argued that the technology gives anglers an unfair advantage and could accelerate over harvest of popular sport fish while supporters have maintained that its benefits have been overstated. I definitely see both sides of the argument. But there's a new study that was done by the University of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And they did a long-term randomized controlled experiment examining how forward-facing sonar actually affects recreational fishing. And their findings are not, probably not what people expected. So the study published in fisheries research followed four experienced anglers, fishing Wisconsin's net, I think it's pronounced Nebish Lake. Throughout the summer of 2025, by alternating access to garment, life scope, forward-facing sonar between two teams while standardizing equipment, fishing efforts and conditions. Researchers isolated the effects of the technology itself. Rather than catching more fish, anglers using forward-facing sonar actually caught fewer small mouthbass than anglers fishing without the technology. Researchers found catch rates declined by approximately 0.64 fish per hour when anglers had access to forward-facing sonar. The technology did provide one measurable advantage. Anglers using forward-facing sonar caught slightly larger fish on average, about one inch larger. Yeah, that's what I tell you, Saf. I would wonder if I got a lot of questions. I'll say there's a lot of holes in this study. Were they just out there trying to catch as many fish as they can or were they targeting large fish? You know what I mean? Well, it goes on to say like, so these, during the study, they had GPS trackers on the anglers so they could see what the anglers were doing. the GPS tracking show.
So anglers using forward face and so on are spent significantly more time searching for fish than actually just casting. Which makes sense. Oh, yeah, you're staring at a screen, yeah. That's funny. Boats moved more slowly, covered less water and made more frequent directional changes while using the technology, which makes total sense because as you're going and scanning, you see a fish over here, you're going to make a 90 degree angle and go over, you know, go over try to catch that fish. I would be more interested if they, maybe they did, do they, they count the number of casts per fish like that would I would say people using forward face and so on are casted way less. Yeah. This is only four anglers in one lake. Like I said, there's a lot of old learn a lot. I still think it's interesting. Yeah. It's the only, it's the only study it's ever been done on the effects forward face and so on are. It's interesting if nothing else to show you how people fish when they're using yeah, yeah. So it goes on to say the study also found no evidence. This is one thing I don't agree on. The study also found no evidence that anglers became substantially more effective as they gained experience with the technology over the course of the summer. I think if you follow the Bass Master Elite series at all, you'll know that these younger kids that spend a lot of time with forward facing so on are are just so good at it. Is the series where they flip a coin to determine which tournaments have in which we don't? This, this past season was the first time they ever did that. They flipped the coin for every event to determine if it was forward facing or no forward facing. Yeah. And it was basically a split schedule. So I don't know. These researchers should take a look at that. Just the data from that from this year of the Elite series to compare tournaments with forward facing and without that would be a great that would be a great like I imagine there's a lot of data from that a lot of those boats are tracked. There's a lot of guys that are really. Yeah. But that is the data is there that you have to go look at it. But this really contradicts what you found with the billfish thing where catch rates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. So this, this is a smallmouth bass study. As Randall and I experienced a couple of weeks ago up in Canada on Lake of the woods. We would spend a lot of time musky fishing without any sort of electronics other than just 2D and then we would go out in the evenings with live scope and catch a musky. Yeah. Yeah. But also the time the hours of the day where we were fishing were arguably the best hours of the day for to catch a musky. But it was just you at least knew that you were casting to fish with with live scope. Yeah. The question right is like what because there's a lot of smallmouth fisheries to where if you're casting you're going to be catching smallmouth. Yeah. They're just going to be smaller. So the game becomes like, okay, how do I change up my rig presentation approach tactics to get through the small fish and target the big fish? But you're still fishing and then when the live scope comes in, you're just not going to waste those quote, unquote, waste those casts. Yep. Totally. That's like on Lake of the woods, you can pull up to any offshore reef and you're going to just catch a bunch of walleye. But if you want to catch a 30 inch, 30 plus inch walleye, like you would use live scope out over a basin and target suspended fish, that you could only unless you were trolling and just happened to catch one. Yeah. So that's an example of like how your fishing style would just completely change by using the technology. I remember when we were doing one of the fish, I think you were there Seth or Philman for DOS boat and any second I could, I just had a line in the water like, yeah, and caught all sorts of just completely random fish because that was, you know, just trying to catch fish. Yeah. That's the joy of fishing is a lot different than trying to catch the fish. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Which is. Yeah. The trophy fishing. So. Yeah. Anything more on that? No, I think, I think it'd be interesting to, and I hope that they do more studies on like different species and, you know, anglers, yeah, involve anglers that have a lot more experience with it. There's more research to be done. Totally. But it's just interesting that they, this is like the first piece of, you're the first study that has come out on a forward face and so on our and, and yeah, they didn't find a lot of concerns with it. Great work. Good Lord. They're finally here at long last after fighting and yelling and fighting some more Clay Newcombe and first light have done it. Not just any work bibs, we're talking the bare grease bibs from Clay. Now I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants pretending to be work bibs and boy, he did not. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, these are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton. They got briar proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. Put them on. I got them in my truck and they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater store dot com up next Brody has leprosy. Not yet. But if I go to Florida and wrestle an armadillo, I might get it. Leprosy cases in Florida are on the rise and armadillos are to blame. If you don't know what leprosy is, there's descriptions of this disease that date back three to 4,000 years in India, China, Egypt, disease that's frequently mentioned in the Bible. It was extreme social stigma because it was highly contagious and incurable. People believed it was a punishment from God. During the middle ages, they would set up these leprosy colonies and force people to go into these colonies and kind of separate them from society. These people were declared legally dead, so they basically had no rights. The cause was unknown until 1873 when a Norwegian physician named Gerard Amor Hansen. I hope I'm pronouncing it. Gerhard. Gerhard. Anyway, a Norwegian doctor discovered the bacterium, micro bacterium, leprosy. So that's the cause of the bacterial disease. And before effective treatment, the disease would cause nerve damage, loss of sensation in the hands and feet, severe deformities and blindness in advance cases. In the 1940s, antibiotic treatments came around and they were able to cure the disease. And today, like in the United States, it's very rare. It's still pretty common in other parts of the world, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Africa, a couple hundred thousand cases a year reported. But again, very rare here in the United States, 95% of people have a natural immunity making infection uncommon after exposure. Symptoms can take a long time to show up to 20 years to appear after exposure. So what do armadillos have to do with it? How did they be and armadillos in the United States become carriers of leprosy? Then the nine-banded armadillo, which we have a picture of that, yeah, I've been showing stuff. Okay, clear. Yeah, now he's just showing. Yeah, there he is. Leprosy symptoms look like. Thanks Bill. You're welcome. They're the only wild animal in North America that maintains, they're a carrier of this bacteria and so they're like a wildlife reservoir. Scientists still don't know exactly how this ended up happening. But the leading theory is that leprosy was brought to the Americas by European colonists in the 1500s and at some point they transferred leprosy to the armadillos who are now transferring it back to humans. I can see how I'd kick the lab out of the bed, cuddle up with that deal. It looks like an animal that should have leprosy. A pretty interesting, well, one detail that supports this strain, that supports this idea that they are not.
Pridillo strain is a very close match to the strain from humans, so it's suggested the bacteria is spilled from people into armadillos. An interesting thing, why armadillos are like a good reservoir for this thing is they have a body temperature of 91 to 95 degrees, so lower than people. And this bacteria actually grows kind of poorly at a normal human core body temperature. So that's pretty interesting. 10 to 20% of wild nine banded armadillos are carriers. Yeah, it's pretty wild. So Florida had 17 reported cases of leprosy so far in 2026. It's an upward trend, 26 reported cases in 2025, 20, 2024. So it's like slowly been on the rise over the last few years. Are all those cases directly related to messing with? They don't they can't they can't necessarily confirm that, but they believe that the majority of them are some some might be people bringing it in. They they traveled internationally, but they do believe that that some of this is coming from armadillos. The Florida officials want to like maintain this isn't like some widespread epidemic. The overall risk remains low and the disease does not spread easily, but you shouldn't handle live or dead armadillos. And they think that the bacteria can also be kind of like transmitted into the soil from armadillos. So you should wear gloves while gardening or you know messing around in the dirt and you should wash a bunch. The greatest highest risk stuff would obviously be handling or capturing live armadillos, skinning or butchering them or eating them. Now I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. I got some some other stuff going on here, but I'm going to I'm going to address the eating thing. Where did I put that? I had it in here somewhere. Maybe I cut it out. Anyway, I remember what I was going to say like internationally, there are places where armadillos are eaten like down in Central and South America, but there is also a history of in the United States of people eating these things, particularly during the depression they were called Hoover Dogs and people would eat them then. Still happens now and then different states have different like management strategies for armadillos as far as whether they're a game animal or not. Most of the time they're not considered a game animal so you can you can go out and grab yourself an armadillo if you really want to. So that's what's going on in Florida, but Florida is not alone. I did a little extra research and we get about 150 to 250 cases of leprosy annually in the entire United States. And again, some of those could be coming from people who are traveling and brought it back. But this this kind of armadillo human crossover thing they believe has happened in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. So keeping eye out for those armadillos, you don't you don't want to be getting this disease. It's a nasty one. And Florida seems to be like 20, 25% of all the cases nationally and Florida is increasing. That's why it's in the spotlight right now. Yep. Interesting. I don't think Florida when I think armadillos, maybe either the blind spot for me yet another one. Yeah, does that does that back to you just live on the skin of those things? I think it's like they carry it internally. I would assume. Brody is just mapping at the range of the armadillo here, so like they go that nine banded armadillo goes pretty far north. But the majority of the leprosy cases for whatever reason are in the southern southern tier there. We had them run around in Savannah and they are surprisingly fast. Mm-hmm. They're slow animal. Yeah, they're cool. They're cool. They're cool looking little critters. But man, they're the worst thing walking on your tree stand. Oh, you think it's big giant. They're so loud. It's so loud. Yeah. And you can't see him. Yeah. There is at least one armadillo in South Dakota or there was despite it being outside of their range. I had a body who's a farmer who was hauling cattle. I think from Oklahoma that also had some hay with it in the trailer and when he got back home and unloaded it in armadillo came running out of the hay pile. So there was one there shortly. I don't know if he made it through winter. Yeah. If you want to really like creep yourself out like I didn't want to show the pictures here today. But you can look at like some pretty gruesome pictures of what leprosy can do to it. It's rough, man. This says it's completely curable though. Yeah. And about it. Treatment takes six to 12 months and after the first few doses of medication, you are no longer infectious. Mm-hmm. Point six to 12 months. That's a long time. That is a long time. I heard about this I tried to catch, I was in the act of hand catching an armadillo in Texas. Got yelled at. You want to get leprosy? Did I really say that? Yeah. Of course. And they're like, no, it's a real thing. I'm like, no, it is not. And then I was like, oh, damn you Google. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's how I hear about armadillos and human interactions. It's like people catching them by hand. Yeah. Yeah, people keep them as pets. It's a handful, like I said, we'll eat them. Their meat was described as like rabbit, like dark, darker rabbit. If you had a couple, like you get rid of the roto tiller in the garden, just let those suckers turn things over. Yeah. They call them a Texas speed bump. What would that be like if you like ran one over? Wow. Oh, one six. Man, I can tell you, one time that Robert Earl King's song. Back horrible memory expense, because one time I ran over a turtle by mistake. What kind? It was like, I think it was a painted turtle, but the noise was gruesome, like we were rolling kind of slow. Yeah. And the window was down. And I imagine the noise to be similar. I was, I was one time coming back from Fort Peck real late at night, like fished all day and came back and on 90 there in between Big Timber and Livingston, come around on them bends. And here comes two raccoons out in the middle of the road. And it was like, I applied the brakes, but I couldn't, I wasn't swerving at the boat line. I mean, I hit both of them. What? Both tires. And for one hit each tire in the front. And it was like, I was probably going 75 miles an hour and it was like hitting the freaking speed bump. Yeah. Wow. So listeners, right in, let us know what is the worst sounding animal to hit. All right. Speaking of hits, Nate's got a quick hitter to wrap us up here. Yeah, this is a segment we're calling old news. When we miss something in the news cycle, but we still on talk about it, what we're going to do is we'll go way back to an old, timey news item, talk about how it relates, see how that piece is aged, and then bring a full circle to where we're at today. In this case, we're covering the unofficial official, heaviest common carp caught in the US, but by a Brit. So quick history going back to 1877, mild stomping grounds in Baltimore. Fish populations are taking due to overharvest and water quality decline. Wildlife officials are looking for a solution to fill the protein gap left by this decline. Enter Spencer F. Baird, the first director of the United States Fish Commission. He looked across the pond at the Bountiful and Popular Common Carp populations of the UK and began the effort to import them. By 1900, Common Carp, are ubiquitous throughout the US, primarily due to state and federal efforts to introduce them and their natural resilience and fragundity. So that takes us to this old timey bulletin, if you'll pull that up, Phil, to release by the Department of Commerce, the US Bureau of Fisheries, and if you're listening, it's exactly what you imagine. It looks like it's printed on some real nice card stock. Are you going to do an old timey voice? Dude, I want to do that Shane Gillis voice he does. Can I do it? Yeah, please read it. That'd be great. Eat the carp. The carp discovered America in 1877. He found the land to his liking. He multiplied and filled the waters with his kind. He is now big, abundant and useful. He converts useless vegetation and small animals into meat. The meat is wholesome and nutritious. It contains as much protein as sirloin steak. It is easily digestible. It can be cooked in such a way as to remove the muddy taste. It can be boiled, baked, made into croquettes or fish loaf. Carp jelly, an ancient Swedish dish, is delicious. There are millions of carp in the United States. The last sentence shows that 43 million pounds were marketed in one year. Nearly all of this came from a few states in the middle West. 48 those 43 million pounds of carp. Therefore, the carp must be good to eat. The carp is good to eat. The carp has not only been eaten, but has been cultivated in Europe for centuries. Europeans know how to cook it. Catch the carp by the carp. Cook the carp properly and eat it. Eat the row, can the row, make carp jelly, can the fish smoke it too. For more information, recipes right to the United States Bureau of Fisheries, Division F, Washington DC. I wish I would have had this for the carp video. Yeah, did you really? Did we release the carp videos? That's one of the reasons we roll in this. I'm sure the suits will be super happy. I would like to point out Randall did not prepare for this. At the top of that, it says, please post conspicuously. 19-11. 19-11. Yeah. The carp propaganda machine was going strong. Again, Randall was not prepared.
He just pulled this out. So that's good. I always wanted to do like a propaganda movie voice over propaganda film from roller two. Hey there GI, you know, in 1911, what was happening in Alaska for your audio book? 1911 was that was James Carroll's first year of trapping. Oh, that river off of Porcupine. Not a context. Wow. He wasn't eating carp. Yeah, that's that's the book. Steve did his book as one of the Steve reads books. So you ain't got to because it was James Carroll's book his first 10 years in Alaska. Yeah, sorry. No, we'll return to the claims made by this. We'll not we won't go line by line, but basically all of those things are wrong. If you want to see if the meat is wholesome, you can refer to Steve's carp alla bear beer episode that just launched on YouTube. It's great. Dr. Randall's heavily featured in it. The recipes, I think we might need to try a carb jelly for the next one because it calls that out specifically twice. Millions of carp most carper used for most commercial carp are used for fertilizer or they're exported and they claim it must be good to eat because so many are getting eaten. So I looked up a couple reviews on food network. There's two restaurants that are famous for their car, both in Omaha, Nebraska. Yeah, this Joe test one is like Joe test. So we'll read two reviews a highlight in a low light. It's a carp ribs. They serve there. There's a couple things just Lisa underscore seven to one five stars. Yeah, love this place. Go for the carp, not the mac and cheese. This is an old time cafe with amazing potatoes. Don't think of it as a Michelin restaurant, but it has the best fish, best potatoes and really awesome coleslaw. Robert, see on the other hand, one star. Don't believe what you see on TV. Try the two piece fried carp. One was the ribs section, which was good, but seasonless. The other was the tail with barely any meat and looked very unappetizing. We need to dress something here real quick. Yeah, restaurants often call fish something that it's not. And there's a bunch of different kinds of carp. So what kind of carp are these restaurants serving allegedly common carp, which we'll give into because apparently the Asian carp doesn't taste quite as good. Yeah, and then there's buffalo too. Well, yeah, but buffalo is not a carp. Right. Right. It gets mixed and it does get mixed in, but I've eaten several pounds of the quote unquote silver carp. And it is tasteless. Like there is no flavor to that. So it's just like a positive review though. When it comes to most people, it is an extremely positive review. Right. Because like you fry it and it tastes like tofu. Yeah, it's like. It tastes like what have you put on it? We should point out too that I looked at the comments on your carb video and everybody is quick to point out that there are cultures all over the world that have very delicious ways of preparing carp, although. And like it seems like there's a great deal of variability when it comes to different species and also the water that they're coming out of and the temperature of the water. And that's that's we'll skip through some of the Asian carp stuff and just focus on common, but it seems that the for good carp cultivation, you got to be real dialed in on water quality, which they are in the UK and France. So for any diehard trivia listeners out there, you may know that I don't know jack about fishing. So when I was doing this research, I found it extremely surprising that there's like a big dedicated carp community out here that loves them. They're badass fish to catch, and they treat them as like a naturalized fish here in the states thoughts. I don't think they treat them as a naturalized fish. I think there's there's a ton of people, but like I fish a lot, said fish is a lot. We don't treat them like a naturalized. I think there's some carp apologists out there, but I think there are people that have flats boats. In this valley, to go fish carp on came first memorable fish, but yeah, yeah, my most memorable fish fight on the little Miami River growing up was a big ass carp that just just ran. Yeah, just took out drag, so cool fish. And yeah, for like fly fisherman in Montana. Poor my bone fish, who always give me a break. Oh, how many people are you like, oh, yeah, trout took me into my back and in the back of your mind, you're like, yes, because you don't know how to fight a fish. You know, but you hook into a car that's going to take you into your back. And it's like a really cool. Yeah, it's fun. I caught one in downtown Denver on the plant river and on my four weight, that was like the best fight I've ever had on a fly rod. Yeah, very cool. I will take it like the I was blown away by by how like highly edible the carp were in Tennessee. That was as I'm like Kentucky Lake. And excellent basketball. Oh my god, the crazy fishery in general, but the carp situation there's way out of hand. And I was fishing with Tennessee wildlife resource agency. And they have a bumper pole deep that fryer that they take places. Oh, and they just show people how tasty carp is. They're like, anyway, you want to catch it, shoot it, whatever. But it's awesome food too. God, I wish you get those guys on the next video. Yeah, for sure. We can make that happen. They probably wouldn't recommend carbol beer though. Yeah, they'd recommend carp and beer. Yeah, fried carp in there. Nate, what's your, what's this giant carp photo? I'm seeing. Yeah, this takes us to the current US carp record. Craig Budo reporting on a very own media.com. Turn me on to the story and said we had talked this guy. So I call up Scott Lennox expecting to get a few laughs about catching a monster fish that nobody cares about. And boy was I wrong. Scott comes from a long line of dedicated trophy carp fisherman with adventures from UK, France, Cyprus and now California. In UK trophy carp fishing, it's like akin to red stag hunting. Those guys, they're dedicated carpons with decades old fish that have names and histories and entire industry built around them. Carp men will get reservations. It's crazy. Yes, yeah, it's very exclusive. Guys will take 10 day trips to France paying thousands of dollars in the hope to catch a big John or Eric's common Arnold or something like that. And so after Craig or I'm sorry Scott moved to California and finding a distinct lack of the trophy carp industry, he began his journey to become a backcountry carp fisherman. And I'm not kidding man. Please explain that part to me. This guy will backpack in the lakes and rivers with a full set up to fish for carp for six days straight, seven days straight in the hope to catch a monster. He's got scouts out. He's got a whole carp community that trades Intel and are finding the good lakes. And his on this specific trip, I do this due to so this guy is more dedicated first light line of clothing. He took a beach chair and an umbrella and sat by his polls around the caution. And then eventually he's like, I can't do this for six days at a time. And he's upgraded to a cot and a tent and you know, your normal future. I'll tell you what he doesn't have competition. You know, so surprised. So two things on the competition front. He will not give up his spots, not because he doesn't want to engage other carp hunters, because he doesn't want both fishermen coming in and killing his big car. He's very, very sensitive. And he treats a carp like a dude would treat like a big old sturgeon. Like he's so invested in caring for that carp and putting it back. I mean, it's, it's amazing. So on this trip, he goes out catch his goal is to catch a 30 pounder on day three. He's gets skunked for two days day three. He hooks into a 50 pounder. He doesn't have any evidence or proof he doesn't have a certified scale just snaps a picture. His buddy comes out. He's on like hot standby for big carp alert. His buddy comes out has the official scale and Scott gets a 64 pound card, which beats the current US record by two pounds. This photo shows all that is man. He's just just good, good beard, good fish. Or if he pulls a scale off those and like makes a necklace or something. No, he doesn't, he doesn't do anything to it. He lets just he wants it to be as healthy as he's going to go back and get it one of the 65. Exactly. His brother, who's a big like tournament carp guy in the UK, bought his flights the next day to come to the California and target big backcountry carp. So he's flying it for the UK. This is great. It's amazing. We got to fill. We got to go to Cyprus for carp fishing and one of the few international Benagons locations. Sign me up. All right. Well, I think that does it for this week tune in next week. We've got some out of town guests coming to take over the news show. That's right. Brent Reeves, Tony Peterson, Maggie Hudlow, Jordan Sillers and Mark Kenyon. Although no longer an out of town guest, I suppose, just a guest. They are taking over the news desk. So tune in and then the week after that Steven Relo will be back here. Thanks for watching. Guaranteed Human.
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