Ep. 859: Man-Eating Lions, The Border Wall, and Judas Deer

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en and the MeatEater crew discuss: Bobcat collaring; the Man Eaters of Tsavo https://www.johnbanovichfineart.com/works/man-eaters-of-tsavo-2002 by John Banovich; the Monteith Shop fundraiser https://monteithshop.org/echoes-of-the-tracks/; building the border wall through Big Bend National Park?; an interview with professional golfer Brian Harman; the "rapid depopulation" strategy unfolding on Catalina Island; the effort to legalize deer baiting in Michigan; Forest Service overhaul confusion https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/public-lands-and-waters/feds-announce-major-restructuring-and-relocation-of-u-s-forest-service; Alaska opens a mountain lion season; a big crappie tournament; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:53Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show, everyone. This week, we're covering how Randall does not understand sports after all. We're going to talk about yet another Forest Service management controversy. We're going to get into what tracking collars can tell us about bobcats, some things about lost arrow etiquette, more on the Catalina Island mule deer eradication program, and Alaska announces a mountain lion season, of all things. All they need now are mountain lions. Well, that's not true because they maybe got a couple of mountain lions, but they got a mountain lion season. Um, plus a whole lot more. But first, our news, and pull up the pictures, Phil. You can pick whatever one you want.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  Hmm, whichever one. It's too much power.

• 2:36Steven Rinella?

  There's two. Oh, he's going with that one. Check this out. This is just, this is a couple days ago.

• 2:42Speaker 05

  What do we see?

• 2:43Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I'll tell you what. Funny you ask. So I was down with my friend Mercer Long in northern Arizona, and Mercer was a lifelong bobcat trapper. He used to be a bobcat foot trapper in the Mojave Desert. When California banned foot trapping, Mercer invented his own cage trap, and he started a cage trap business and became a bobcat cage trapper. Then California banned cage trapping. So now he takes his business elsewhere, but he became so skilled at capturing bobcats that he is the go-to guy when you want to do a bobcat collaring project. So when researchers want to put a tracking collar on a bobcat, that's your

• 3:25Steven Rinella?

  man. That's how you're going to catch them. He's got good stories. That's not an easy thing to do. And so his expert, his expertise is for hire to come in. So he's now working on a program. Here they got, here what we're doing is I packed that cage trap. I say packed. We're not too terribly far from the truck.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  Oh, I couldn't even tell it was on your back. I thought you were just standing in front of it. Looks like it's up on that hill.

• 3:48Steven Rinella?

  No, it's on, it's on a backpack mount.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  I see.

• 3:50Steven Rinella?

  This is on Saturday. No? Yeah, Saturday. So that's on a backpack frame. And if you look, you'll see, I'm going to explain this. You see how there's a little white thing off of, on Looker's left of my head?

• 4:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:05Steven Rinella?

  There's a little white box. All right. So they have all these cats on collars.

• 4:12Steven Rinella?

  They cannot, they, they will not share those waypoints. So he works on the project, but he does not have access to the waypoints. Okay. Cause you know, you think about like a guy could be tempted.

• 4:24Speaker 06

  Is this a project?

• 4:25Steven Rinella?

  Like, you know, let's just say for instance that Bobcats are going for a couple thousand bucks a pop. A guy might be like, yeah, I'd like to know where all those cats are with those collars.

• 4:33Speaker 06

  Is this a project for Arizona Fish and Game?

• 4:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, or the state, state project. So he doesn't get, he does not, he cannot log on and get access to the points. But they had a cat that's collar fell off.

• 4:46Steven Rinella?

  They want to get, um, how's this go? Yeah, the cat's collar fell off. They want to get a particular cat back on collar. So they shared with him some old points. They're like, here's a couple honey holes that this cat likes. So we hiked up to one of these honey holes that the cat likes. And that little contraption, we, we went out and checked one of these. So that little contraption, when that door springs, that sends a signal.

• 5:18Speaker 06

  I had a question.

• 5:19Steven Rinella?

  And it hits his phone.

• 5:20Speaker 06

  Before you catch it.

• 5:21Steven Rinella?

  And once it hits his phone, the race is on.

• 5:23Speaker 06

  What's he, is he baiting? Is he putting up like compact discs there, flashy?

• 5:27Steven Rinella?

  You want to know what that, so you're saying you want to know what that set is?

• 5:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:30Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you about that set.

• 5:31Speaker 06

  How's he set them?

• 5:31Steven Rinella?

  That's, he makes that trap. That's a double door. So this cat has already been in single door cage traps. She's all done with traps. She's, you don't like no kind of traps no more is the feeling Mercer's getting. You only ask cats so many times to go through this. So that door is double door, so it's open door. So when we went up under that, right up under that, that juniper behind me there, we went up in there and basically up against the rock wall with brush, sort of made it like a very natural tunnel.

• 6:05Speaker 06

  Little cave.

• 6:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well, no, because the cave is like dead end.

• 6:09Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 6:10Steven Rinella?

  So a normal cage trap, there's a back wall. This is a double door trap, which has its own limitations. It's not perfect, but in this case of a cat that's like, yeah, I'm not doing that again. So we put it again in there and it's two doors open. Now the problem with two doors, and I think this is a bigger problem than Mercer does. He says, this is not actually a problem and I've made it up in my head. But, so there's a door on each end, both spring loaded.

• 6:35Steven Rinella?

  Now, picture that the cat who's already on like, you know.

• 6:40Speaker 06

  High alert.

• 6:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh, they're just, they're tight, they're wired tight. That thing hits that pan and, and like, you know, this thing moves, that thing moves, that thing moves, meaning the trigger mechanism. There's a lag time. Like the pan moves, it pulls a wire, that pops a trigger, right? And during that, this already high-strung cat, instead of him needing to do a 180, which in a single door trap, he's got to spin, right? I'm like, what, how is it that that thing doesn't already get the signal and isn't already out that front door? And he says, he's like, you're making this up in your head. Maybe they just go and freeze. He says it doesn't.

• 7:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:24Steven Rinella?

  He says it, it works. Uh, I'll get to the set in a minute. Um, no, I'll do the set right now. So, we mounted, we put it in, and along a very good, like, natural hunting thing, that, that's pulled pack rat, pack rat nests, up in there, so then they're hunting rabbits, hunting pack rat nests, looks very natural, it's an open tunnel, mounted it with brush, so it looks real natural. Under the pan in the center, he dug it out, and he put two kinds of lure in there, two kinds of cat lure that he makes. He put cat droppings, bobcat droppings, inside each door, and then sprayed it with

• 8:07Steven Rinella?

  a mix, signature blend, of cat piss and rotten rattlesnake juice, which he shot me in the face with. He's like, I'm sitting, when we're rigging the setup, I'm sitting there helping rig the setup, and no sooner does he say, hey, you're gonna wanna move, because you're not gonna want this on you. And like, it's sort of, I like, begin my motion and, I'm like, you shot me in the face!

• 8:33Speaker 06

  So other than the-

• 8:34Steven Rinella?

  He's gotta set the move, I'm like, yeah, but you didn't give time to move.

• 8:37Speaker 06

  Other than the rattlesnake juice, he's like, he's appealing, appealing to their, like, territoriality. It's not like baiting them in with food.

• 8:45Steven Rinella?

  It's all, see, talking to him, man, it's, it's all curiosity. Now, he says, a cat in the north is on a different trip. A cat in the north is hungry. Desert cats, they're interested, they wanna be intrigued. You're not gonna get them on like that he's starving to die.

• 9:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, cuz there are like a couple of spots in Colorado where it'd be out hunting like whatever, cotton tails in the winter and run across cage traps like this.

• 9:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, got it.

• 9:16Speaker 06

  They'd often have like Christmas tinsel or compact discs.

• 9:20Steven Rinella?

  I'm not that far yet.

• 9:21Speaker 06

  Okay, I got you.

• 9:21Steven Rinella?

  We hung a, on that juniper, the looker's right side of that juniper.

• 9:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:27Steven Rinella?

  There's a big like a purple feather pom pom that I hung there because in that way, he could be up on the rim.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  And see it.

• 9:37Steven Rinella?

  Up on the rim and then have a line of sight to that pom pom. And so two kinds of lure, droppings, rattlesnake juice. Um, and then a visual, some feather visual attractor, some feather visual attractor inside the cage. When it pops, when that door goes down, it pulls a mag, no, not a magnet, it pulls like a pin out of that box. That box, we went and checked one that had gotten tripped by another reason. But depending on the time of day, they want him out there right now. Like I was surprised, one of his things tripped and he's taking me to the airport.

• 10:18Steven Rinella?

  And it was daytime and he couldn't get there for five hours. I'm like, what the hell's gonna happen to it in five hours? He's like, that don't fly. It's now. So he had to call someone. I'm like, nothing's gonna happen to that cat in five hours.

• 10:36Steven Rinella?

  But he's like, this is not how it works. Like when that signal goes, you go, they don't want any risk of harm.

• 10:45Speaker 06

  Oh, I got you.

• 10:46Steven Rinella?

  Of harm, it gets too hot, it gets too stressed.

• 10:49Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 10:50Steven Rinella?

  Something finds it and starts harassing it and stresses it. So it's like you, you go. You ready, you gotta be ready to, you gotta be ready to spring into action.

• 10:59Steven Rinella?

  Can you go to my other thing?

• 11:01Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 11:04Speaker 06

  Maybe.

• 11:05Steven Rinella?

  Dude, this is my new favorite painting.

• 11:10Steven Rinella?

  What's it called?

• 11:11Speaker 06

  Man eaters of Savo.

• 11:13Steven Rinella?

  Man eaters of Savo. I didn't know this story. These two lions, this is an old story. Oh, you didn't know. These two lions. I didn't know you didn't know this. Theodore Roosevelt commented on this. I didn't know you didn't know this.

• 11:23Speaker 07

  The ghost in the darkness.

• 11:25Steven Rinella?

  They ate a hundred and forty people working on a rail line in Africa and they had to pause railroad construction because these lions kept. This painting is by John Banovich. It's these lions eating a dude. You can, but all you can, it's beautifully done.

• 11:40Speaker 07

  There's a great movie.

• 11:42Speaker 06

  A great movie that plays fast and loose with the, the facts.

• 11:45Steven Rinella?

  Well, how do you need to get fast? I mean, the facts are like. They bring in, they bring in like the.

• 11:50Speaker 07

  They bring in an American hunter.

• 11:52Steven Rinella?

  Because for an American audience.

• 11:54Speaker 07

  That's how people.

• 11:55Steven Rinella?

  That's who gets stuff done, man.

• 11:56Speaker 06

  Val Kilmer's in it.

• 11:57Steven Rinella?

  You want something done.

• 11:59Speaker 07

  Call Val. There's, there's the one guy who always plays an imperious, like, British official. I don't know his name, but you'll recognize him.

• 12:06Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's a great book. He's a method, he's a character actor as a British official. You should read the book. It's a quick read. It's a good read.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  Did we cover that movie in, uh?

• 12:15Speaker 07

  I asked a trivia question about it.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Radio.

• 12:17Steven Rinella?

  So if you want to see a painting, it is my new, my new goal in life is to get a print, a big, nice print of these lions eating that dude's leg. If you want to see a painting, if you, if you're listening and want to see a painting, type in Banovich, B A N O V I C H. I met him. The reason I'm talking about this whole thing anyways, I just met him at the, I met him.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Uh, my question is, why is the line on the left? What's up with his face? Is he reacting to the, to the camera?

• 12:49Steven Rinella?

  He's got, he's got Lyme disease. He's getting facial paralysis. He's snarling at someone that's getting too close. He's styling it off actual cats.

• 12:54Speaker 07

  I read, I read in the, the description of it in the auction site, or I guess on his site, that he saw the mounts of the cats and didn't think they were.

• 13:04Steven Rinella?

  They were shoddy.

• 13:05Speaker 07

  In good enough shape.

• 13:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 07

  So he visualized sort of the spirit of the cats.

• 13:10Steven Rinella?

  Well, other cats.

• 13:10Speaker 06

  If I'm remembering correctly, it was two males that for some reason didn't have manes.

• 13:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 06

  And they say that.

• 13:17Steven Rinella?

  They weren't getting any play.

• 13:18Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:20Speaker 06

  Started focusing on people.

• 13:22Steven Rinella?

  Hundred and forty people. Teddy Roosevelt thought it was a cool story. Oh, anyways, Banovich, meat eater, man eaters.

• 13:30Steven Rinella?

  Of Savo, T S A V O. That is a painting. That's a painting. I'd like to wake up that every day. If I brought that painting home, I was like.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  What do you like about it?

• 13:41Steven Rinella?

  The foot.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  The foot. Okay, that's what I thought.

• 13:43Steven Rinella?

  The foot.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  It's very, uh, very anatomically correct foot.

• 13:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, the foot is.

• 13:48Steven Rinella?

  I'm no painter, but I feel like feet are hard.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  I feel like he should have got a little thigh bone in the middle of the.

• 13:55Steven Rinella?

  No, dude, you can't over.

• 13:56Speaker 07

  In the ham.

• 13:57Steven Rinella?

  If I was drunk, here's why that painting is good. If I knew how to paint and I was painting that, I'd have a whole pile of dead guys. Do you mean I'd overdo it? I'd overdo it. There'd be like dudes parts everywhere and everything, you know?

• 14:09Speaker 07

  The artistry is in the restraint.

• 14:11Steven Rinella?

  So.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it takes you.

• 14:13Steven Rinella?

  Makes him good is he knows not to have a whole pile of guys.

• 14:16Speaker 07

  Uh, the first time I looked at it, I didn't see the foot.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it takes you thirty seconds or a minute to realize the foot there.

• 14:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 14:23Steven Rinella?

  I'm not.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  You should commission him to do something for you. But either, either the human was small or those cats were just giant.

• 14:31Steven Rinella?

  Those things are big.

• 14:33Speaker 05

  From what I understand, I think.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Like an elk, man.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  They're taxidermied at the field museum in Chicago.

• 14:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but I think that they're not in great shape.

• 14:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:43Steven Rinella?

  That's a pain. Yeah, I would have had all hundred and forty people piled up. And like, and I was just gone overboard, dude. Yeah, I would have gone overboard.

• 14:53Speaker 07

  With an actual crown on his head.

• 14:55Steven Rinella?

  And knowing about my painting, man, but that painting, cause you look at it and all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, there's a foot in there and it's a good foot.

• 15:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  It's a great foot.

• 15:07Steven Rinella?

  You know, uh, David Foster, the writer David Foster Wallace, once wrote a piece about, he profiled. Um. Um. He profiled David Lynch.

• 15:21Steven Rinella?

  And in his discussion of David Lynch, he was talking about Quentin Tarantino. And he's talking about Tarantino's famous scene from Reservoir Dogs where a guy gets his ear cut off. And he's talking about David Lynch's famous scene where a man finds an ear. And he said, the difference between David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. Quentin Tarantino is interested in an ear getting cut off. David Lynch is interested in the ear. So it's just like a diff- that's me and that painter.

• 15:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 15:51Steven Rinella?

  Yanni?

• 15:52Speaker 04

  Hmm. Oh, what do I want, need to talk about? My volleyball tournament?

• 15:58Steven Rinella?

  No, the giveaway, please.

• 16:01Speaker 07

  Oh, the giveaway.

• 16:02Steven Rinella?

  Your name is next to this.

• 16:04Speaker 07

  Down at the real.

• 16:05Steven Rinella?

  We'll give you a minute. Randall, do you know about this, Yanni? Never mind.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  The website giveaway?

• 16:11Speaker 05

  We can do it quickly.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can write a review on any turkey recipe. That one, that's the one you're talking about, yeah, on the meteor.com. And then you're entered to win a Wild and Whole Cookbook. Easy peasy.

• 16:25Steven Rinella?

  So you gotta do is write a review.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  You gotta go make the recipe. If you're gonna do a good job at doing this.

• 16:30Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, don't, don't, don't, don't.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  Treat yourself.

• 16:32Steven Rinella?

  Don't just phone it in, dude, yeah. But a chance to win Wild and Whole Cookbook when you go and do a deal. Okay, now Randall's gotta plug something.

• 16:39Speaker 07

  All right, I need to plug this for my dear friend Kevin Monteith. Uh, if he's been on the podcast twice.

• 16:45Steven Rinella?

  Correct.

• 16:46Speaker 07

  Most recently, maybe last year or so. Um, he's a biologist, uh, at the University of Wyoming. Teaches wildlife science and he's got a research, he calls it the Monteith Shop. It's like a research lab, um, where they do all kinds of stuff on what we think of as big game, you know, like elk, deer, moose, antelope. Um, they do a lot of migration research and it's like very applied science. So they're doing a fundraiser banquet that's this coming weekend. If you're listening to this when the show drops, April 11th, it's in Laramie. It's called Echoes of the Tracks, and it's their annual fundraising event. Randy Newberg will be there. He's speaking,

• 17:31Speaker 07

  and they've got, they've still got tickets available. So if you are in the Laramie area, go to monteithshop.org, and then there's a little tab that says connect, and you'll see Echoes of the Tracks. Or if you just Google Monteith, Echoes of the Tracks, you can find all the info there. And then they also are doing a raffle with Muley Fanatic Foundation for Wyoming Commissioners License. So that is, a Commissioners License allows you to hunt deer, antelope, or elk. You pick a species in any unit that's open to hunting. So,

• 18:07Steven Rinella?

  Well, they got their hands on them. That's good.

• 18:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, Wyoming, Wyoming supports a lot of cool, like, conservation groups with those Commissioners licenses. So there's, this is called the 7220 Raffle, the 7220 Raffle. If you Google that, you'll find it. And again, they're drawing it the night of the banquet, April 11th, so get online and just, you can Google 7220 Raffle, and get yourself in there. Get yourself in there and support wildlife and wildlife research.

• 18:38Steven Rinella?

  Another thing they focus heavily on at the Monteith Shop is the role of prenatal

• 18:46Steven Rinella?

  and natal, what's the word, nutrition?

• 18:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 18:54Steven Rinella?

  On, let me back that up. They do a lot of work around how, let's just look at it just strictly from antlers. When you see a big buck, they've done a lot of work in exploring, explaining how that big buck, in some ways, his bigness was determined while he was in the womb.

• 19:13Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:15Steven Rinella?

  The way in which,

• 19:19Steven Rinella?

  Cow elk, mule deer does, the condition they're in as they're carrying their baby says as much or more about the outcome of that baby than anything that happens in its own life.

• 19:33Speaker 06

  And it can also say a lot about the land that they're living on, right? How productive that that landscape is.

• 19:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, tho- those are phenomenal episodes and also talks a lot about when we say an area has, when we, there's an area that produces a lot of big bulls or a lot of big bucks hunters will say that area has great genetics.

• 19:51Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 19:52Steven Rinella?

  Um, he would argue, maybe, I can tell you what it has for sure, though, is great nutrition.

• 19:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:00Steven Rinella?

  And low stress.

• 20:01Speaker 06

  Fat mothers.

• 20:02Steven Rinella?

  Low stress, great nutrition. It's not a genetics thing.

• 20:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, so check out again, monteeshop.org, um, and you can find the link there for the, for the event, Echoes of the Tracks, and then you can also find this, uh, raffle, but April 11th.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  There's only 750 tickets.

• 20:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. But pretty much gonna win it for sure.

• 20:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, they've, they've got, they're quite a few for sale, so your odds, your odds will probably be better than that, better than one in 750.

• 20:28Steven Rinella?

  How much they cost?

• 20:30Speaker 07

  A hundred bucks.

• 20:31Steven Rinella?

  Or buy.

• 20:32Speaker 07

  Or 300 for five.

• 20:33Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 20:34Speaker 07

  Something like that.

• 20:35Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Remind me after the show, I'm gonna get in on that. I'll win that sucker.

• 20:39Speaker 07

  Let's all get in on it.

• 20:41Steven Rinella?

  All right, Philly, ready for corrections?

• 20:42Speaker 06

  Uh, isn't there one more thing to talk about?

• 20:44Steven Rinella?

  Nothing I'm aware of.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:46Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, just minutes ago. You know how hot and fresh my cat update was?

• 20:51Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 20:52Steven Rinella?

  Carrying that cat trap, this is even hotter and fresher, cause just minutes ago, we wrapped our fur, so Doug Durn, been on the show many times, Doug is behind like building a new organization called Sharing the Land, um, I'll be talking about this a lot more coming up. Sharing the Land is an organization that creates, that, that pairs access seekers with landowners on the promise of the access seekers doing work, conservation work, whatever kind of things need to be done on the land. So it's not a, a cash exchange that happens, but it's a, a, a work. That happens. It could be a number of the access seekers can come in forms fishermen, hunters. They've even had an access seeker is looking for a great place to walk a dog.

• 21:36Steven Rinella?

  And then they got a lot of landowners. They're looking to have certain kinds of projects taken care of on their place. It's growing. And we just had the very first, just minutes ago, it became officially a nonprofit, all incorporated and everything. I'm on the board and we just had our first board meeting. But we talked a lot more about that coming up.

• 21:57Speaker 06

  Well, you should at least tell people how like, give them a website to go to if they're interested in.

• 22:01Steven Rinella?

  Type up sharing the land.

• 22:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:04Steven Rinella?

  Go dig up, go dig up on sharing the land. We got all kinds of ideas we're going to do to make that.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  What kind of work Doug make, make your kids do to hunt turkeys?

• 22:11Steven Rinella?

  He's already told me what they got to do this year. He's doing like a grasslands, like sort of like a savanna restoration kind of deal. And they got to work on that this year. In the past, they've had, in the past, they've had to burn, burn projects, all kinds of things he puts them doing. So this week there, some stream side stuff, but this year it's working on his, his open lands area.

• 22:37Speaker 00

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• 23:06Steven Rinella?

  I travel 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. It's built for people who don't want to stop there. Creatine, C A H M B, advanced gut lining support. 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.

• 23:51Steven Rinella?

  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 drinkag1.com/meateater and get an AG1 Pro Yeti Shaker in your AG1 Pro Welcome Kit. Again, that's drinkag1.com/meateater. Grab yours now. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if

• 24:35Steven Rinella?

  you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 25:05Steven Rinella?

  So this week, Corrections, ready Phil? Corrections, Corrections. Okay, all you boot wearers out there, sorry. This week, the winner gets this.

• 25:18Steven Rinella?

  This week on Corrections, the Corrections winner gets a Moultrie Edge 3 Pro Trail Camera. Not just that, a one-year subscription. So you get a, a cellular camera.

• 25:34Steven Rinella?

  In a one year subscription. So you can run your camera. Watch stuff, get your great pictures. Um, I would advise you go set it by a beaver dam. That's what I like doing a bunch, but you put, you put, put it wherever the hell you want.

• 25:47Speaker 06

  Yannis likes setting it so it doesn't take pictures of anything but deer and turkeys.

• 25:51Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. No, cause he sends me pictures of Bobcats and fishers.

• 25:54Speaker 06

  I heard him talking about it.

• 25:55Speaker 04

  It depends on the camera location. We have a lot of them set up.

• 26:00Steven Rinella?

  We set one out for Bobcats recently and boy, we've got everything but. Down in Texas, you can believe the stuff that walks by there, but no Bobcats.

• 26:09Speaker 04

  Did you see any pictures of me?

• 26:11Steven Rinella?

  No, I looked.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 26:13Steven Rinella?

  We also have a little problem. We lost the camera.

• 26:18Steven Rinella?

  We waypointed where we like waypointed where we wanted to put it based off some information we had.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:25Steven Rinella?

  And so we waypointed where, then we changed our mind and put it somewhere else.

• 26:30Steven Rinella?

  So I'm like, hey, Andy, go get my camera. It's over at this waypoint. And Andy goes, there's like definitely no camera.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  He sends me a picture and I'm, and I'm like, send me a picture of what it's looking at. And this is grass. There's like one skinny little mesquite. And I look at it and I look around and I go, oh, there's that skinny little mesquite. I walk over there. I'm looking for the camera. I'm like, oh dang. I'll kind of look back. I'm like, oh, there's that mesquite.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  Ten yards and then I see, I see 10 others mesquites that look just like it and thought, all right.

• 27:00Steven Rinella?

  So after he searched, I went in to see if I had any videos of him walking around and I could, I'm hate to tell you, we're even close. I did not catch you looking about.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  We, we gave it a college try.

• 27:12Speaker 06

  Pictures from the camera that you don't know where it's at?

• 27:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 06

  Boy, that's going to be a bummer when you get.

• 27:17Steven Rinella?

  It's going to be hard to find, dude.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  But hold on, I thought that now it depends on which model it is, but some of them are, are GPS enabled.

• 27:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. You know what? Why didn't we think of that when you were down there?

• 27:28Speaker 04

  It was not really my problem.

• 27:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he was acting a little bit like he wasn't going to spend too much time on that issue either. We'll find it. Yeah, we'll use, we'll use that.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  Uh, this camera does have GPS.

• 27:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 27:42Speaker 05

  So.

• 27:43Steven Rinella?

  All right. Sweet. Plus a one year subscription. You'll be up and running. Send us some cool pictures if you win. Uh, okay. First off, oh, you know, we wrote in.

• 27:55Steven Rinella?

  Okay, is this a correction?

• 27:57Speaker 05

  You can ignore it.

• 27:58Steven Rinella?

  This thing about the goats?

• 28:00Speaker 05

  No, basically, like, about twenty-five to thirty percent plus of the corrections came in, uh, commenting on your, uh, reading the numbers.

• 28:12Steven Rinella?

  Oh, oh, like, that they don't like when you say one hundred and ten thousand? They want it to be like when you write a check?

• 28:16Speaker 05

  No, no, it was like, apparently, you said, because I didn't go back to listen, one hundred, ten thousand, seven hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars. Like, you said thousand twice. So, we've got so many nitpicks out there.

• 28:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, we brought it on ourselves.

• 28:32Speaker 05

  You know?

• 28:33Steven Rinella?

  We brought it on ourselves.

• 28:34Speaker 05

  That was like, the largest number of corrections were for that.

• 28:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so, we got millions of corrections. We picked out three that we like. One is about how Randall don't know sports.

• 28:43Speaker 07

  Sure. Uh, yeah, there are a lot of these. Got a lot of, uh, messages. Uh, the, the team here that answers these emails forwarded quite a number of these to me. Um, so, in episode eight fifty-three, uh, I interviewed Will Cheddar from the University of Michigan basketball team, and afterwards, as sort of a throwaway line, just to gas up a friend of the program, I said, "He's the hardest fisherman in college sports," or "The hardest fishing dude in college sports," something like that.

• 29:13Steven Rinella?

  Which is, which is very subjective.

• 29:15Speaker 07

  Very subjective. I'll note, when you say, "He's the coolest guy in town," no one turns to you and says, "Have you met everybody in town?" You know, so, um, I, as soon as I said that, uh, actually, this went through my head, that there are college fishing teams.

• 29:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and then I chimed in and agreed with you, but I don't know what I'm talking about.

• 29:36Speaker 07

  And then I didn't know, and then I didn't know what else to say, other than, "Yeah, that's what I agree with." So, anyway, um, but with this email from Layton from Oklahoma got, uh, selected as the most, uh, I think articulate and well-supported one, there are a lot of them that accused me of insulting. College bass fishing teams.

• 29:57Steven Rinella?

  Without even bringing them up.

• 29:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. One accused me of both omitting it and dismissing it, which I think is a contradiction in terms, or overlooking it and dismissing it. So anyway, with the demands of tournament, Layton writes, with the demands of tournament play, regular season games, practices and schoolwork, I respectfully disagree that Will can claim this title. Dedicated college bass fishing athletes spend far more time on the water as a part of their actual sport. For instance, athletes like Garrett Smith of Lander University and his teammate Andrew Blanton have won back-to-back Strike King Bassmaster College National Championships. College bass teams compete in multiple events per season across the Bassmaster College Series with tournaments often spanning two days plus official practice periods. Many

• 30:41Speaker 07

  teams fish 10 to 15 or more events annually in addition to countless hours of offseason practice, scouting and travel while maintaining full academic schedules. This level of on-the-water commitment easily surpasses what a student athlete in another sport, even one who fishes recreationally as much as Will can log. These college anglers truly embody what it means to be the hardest fishers in college sports. Keep up the great work on the podcast. I enjoy it every week.

• 31:07Steven Rinella?

  I don't know now. I kind of flip-flopped on this one.

• 31:11Speaker 07

  You thought it was, where did you start?

• 31:13Steven Rinella?

  I thought you were wrong, but I'm like, these guys are just in it for the money.

• 31:19Steven Rinella?

  They're in it for the money, dude.

• 31:20Speaker 07

  If someone, I mean.

• 31:21Steven Rinella?

  And that Cheddar dude's in it for the love, you know?

• 31:23Speaker 07

  I'm well aware of, I'm well aware of college bass fishing competitions. When we were in Ann Arbor and met Will, we went fishing with the University of Michigan fishing team. Will connected us with them because he fishes with those guys.

• 31:37Steven Rinella?

  Cause he fishes that hard.

• 31:38Speaker 07

  And.

• 31:39Steven Rinella?

  Harder than they do.

• 31:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, yeah, that's, that's, that's really what I intended to make on this podcast was just a, a solid claim that Will fishes harder than anyone instead of just sort of being a throwaway line. But in any event, yeah, as soon as I said this and we got like 30 seconds past it in the. In the podcast, I thought, oh, maybe I should have said something about college bass fishing there as well. But I didn't want to bring it back up. And if someone in the room had said, uh, Randall, you're forgetting about college bass fishing. I wouldn't have fought them on it. I would have just said, you know what? You're right. But what I'm interested in highlighting is that a guy who's playing for the national championship tonight, went fishing in between winning an elite eight game and winning a final four game.

• 32:27Speaker 07

  You know, like, I think it's, I just meant to highlight that it's cool that he's fishing. And I also don't think-

• 32:31Steven Rinella?

  I'm not voting for this guy.

• 32:32Speaker 07

  I don't think that, and this is, this is nothing against, like, my pushback here is nothing against college bass fishing anglers. I want, I don't want that to be misconstrued, but like-

• 32:42Steven Rinella?

  But?

• 32:43Speaker 07

  I, I don't think the time on the water is a measure of how hard one fishes. I think a retired dentist who fishes every single day of his life is not necessarily a harder guy, a harder angler than like somebody who works a 10 hour shift and fishes two hours on the way home every single day. Like, I think there's some balance. I think like, when I talk about someone who hunts or fishes hard, I think about how they commit to it within the broader responsibilities of their lives. So, so that's-

• 33:16Steven Rinella?

  So you don't stand corrected?

• 33:18Speaker 07

  No, I, I think, I think it's a fine correction to highlight that there's competitive college bass fishing out there. That's-

• 33:24Steven Rinella?

  But do they fish-

• 33:25Speaker 07

  I don't, I don't push back against that. But I think like, taking, yeah, like, and Will has never claimed to be the hardest fishing guy. Again, this was just a throwaway line. Um, so I stand corrected. But-

• 33:39Steven Rinella?

  But not-

• 33:40Speaker 07

  But not fully.

• 33:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. What you're doing is you're doing one of those. I like it too. I like to do this too. Trying to keep everyone happy. You're saying, um-

• 33:49Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so I'm wrong. But am I right?

• 33:53Speaker 07

  Well, what I'm saying is like, this, you know what I meant to say here. I was just meaning to highlight someone who excels in one area of life also being super passionately committed to fishing.

• 34:07Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Let's say there's a guy that works 23.

• 34:09Speaker 07

  I think as a community, we should celebrate that.

• 34:10Steven Rinella?

  Let's say there's a guy that works 23 hours a day.

• 34:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:13Steven Rinella?

  He works a 23 hour shift, seven days a week.

• 34:16Speaker 07

  Fishes one minute.

• 34:17Steven Rinella?

  And then when he has an hour, his, when his shift ends, his shift ends at 10:00 PM.

• 34:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:24Steven Rinella?

  And he's due back at 11:00 PM. A lot of guys are gonna go home and get like a, check in on their wife, goodbye,

• 34:32Steven Rinella?

  take a nap.

• 34:32Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:33Steven Rinella?

  He goes out to the pond out back and just pounds water.

• 34:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:39Steven Rinella?

  For one hour. And I'm like, that's the hardest fishing man out there. These guys would be like, dude, dude, there's a professional bass fisherman.

• 34:49Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I'm saying?

• 34:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, I, I.

• 34:51Steven Rinella?

  And I'd be like, it's not what I meant.

• 34:52Speaker 07

  And that's truly like, I 100% stand on that. Like, I don't think time on the water is the only measure of, of how hard somebody fishes bass.

• 35:00Steven Rinella?

  How hard is that? If they're fishing yellow perch or something, but they're fishing bass.

• 35:05Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 06

  You could make the argument too, that, that cheddar's all about doing it for the love of it.

• 35:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. These other guys are in it for the love. Because these are big, big, high roller, big, big, big money college bass guys.

• 35:14Speaker 07

  I don't want to make any other, I don't want to make any aspersions or, or, or put anything else out there in the world that could be taken the wrong way.

• 35:23Steven Rinella?

  Brody thinks the corrections is taking the whole show over.

• 35:26Speaker 07

  It is.

• 35:27Speaker 06

  All right, number two correction.

• 35:28Steven Rinella?

  All right, here's a good one.

• 35:30Speaker 06

  For example?

• 35:31Steven Rinella?

  This is correct. Oh, this is correct to me. I screwed up. Well, or not. So, in episode 857, at the end of Spencer's segment about the super bloom in Death, Death Valley, Steve makes the statement that somewhere outside of Santiago, Chile is the driest place on earth. I believe the area he is referring to is the Atacama Desert. Correct. That's what we're referring to. He says, this has been referred to as the driest place on earth, but that statement comes with an asterisk, asterisk, risk. I never say the S. Because the full story is, it is the driest.

• 36:11Steven Rinella?

  This, this is a good correction. It's the driest non-polar desert on earth. Okay. They base the dryness of an area on its availability of liquid water. And there is a place that has less. In the Atacama, the average annual rainfall is about 15 millimeters with some areas receiving only one to three millimeters of annual precipitation. Annual rainfall. Meanwhile, the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica receive anywhere from five to 100 millimeters per year, but that precipitation falls strictly as snowfall.

• 36:58Steven Rinella?

  Now, once you take into account the other factors such as temperature and humidity, that's when it becomes more clear. The extreme cold and strong winds that sweep most snowfall that does occur, leave no trace of water left. Some areas within the valleys have not seen liquid water in over two million years.

• 37:22Steven Rinella?

  On the flip side, the Atacama Desert also has the benefit of common chaka, or coastal fog, adding a little humidity to the area.

• 37:35Steven Rinella?

  So in short, while the Atacama Desert receives less precipitation than almost anywhere on earth, it is still not considered the driest place on earth. That belongs, that title belongs to the McMurdo Dry Valleys. And then he has a nitpick where I say just outside of Santiago, Chile, and he points out that this is actually 500 miles away.

• 37:57Steven Rinella?

  Whatever.

• 38:01Steven Rinella?

  Good correction. That's a great correction. It is. Yeah, he didn't lay out his credentials. Two million years. Go on.

• 38:07Speaker 06

  Oh, I gotta talk about another dry place since Spencer's not here.

• 38:12Steven Rinella?

  This is real bad on Spencer. Looks real bad.

• 38:15Speaker 06

  This is bad math Spencer. Um, episode eight fifty-seven Spencer was setting up a discussion for uh, the Death Valley Superbloom. And uh,

• 38:25Steven Rinella?

  Why's he rolling me into this?

• 38:26Speaker 06

  I don't know why. I'm gonna take you out of it.

• 38:27Steven Rinella?

  I didn't have nothing to do with this.

• 38:29Speaker 06

  Yeah. Um, this was Spencer's deal, not Steve's. And Spencer mentioned that Death Valley was the former site of a lake. And he also mentioned at one point, the lake used to be seven thousand feet deep, which is over a mile deep.

• 38:43Steven Rinella?

  Now, this guy does a big ol' swing here and really gets into his credentials.

• 38:47Speaker 06

  This is where, this is like, you can't, like, we can't argue with this guy after you read this part. As a geologist who studied the basin and range during my graduate years and currently studies Pleistocene geology in the upper Midwest, I knew immediately that this was ripe for a correction. So don't mess with this guy. Yes, there was a lake that existed across much of Death Valley during the Pleistocene, based on its hydrology and lack of outflow. That's where Steve and I checked in, I think, was that it's a dead end lake.

• 39:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but I don't know what I'm talking about.

• 39:18Speaker 06

  Dead end basin. Um, however, that lake was never seven thousand feet deep, even at its maximum. The lake that was referred to in the discussion is called Lake Manley. And it's still called that today when water accumulates in Badwater Basin. Core records and age dating from the Lowenstein.

• 39:36Steven Rinella?

  That's the

• 39:37Speaker 06

  The period of time, you want, do you need to explain that?

• 39:40Steven Rinella?

  No, that's, he's citing a journal.

• 39:42Speaker 06

  From Lowenstein. Recognized two major periods of time when Death Valley had a perennial lake. The earliest was one hundred and eighty-six to one hundred and twenty thousand years ago, and the latest was thirty-five thousand to ten thousand years ago. Both periods where the climate was very cool and wet. The period from one eighty six thousand to one twenty thousand years ago is believed to be when Lake Manley was at its largest and deepest extent at three hundred and thirty five meters or one thousand ninety nine feet. While it is difficult to estimate the true depth of Lake Manley at its largest extent, it was definitely not seven thousand feet deep at any point.

• 40:22Steven Rinella?

  Big old correction right in Spencer's face. Stuffed right into his face.

• 40:25Speaker 06

  About six thousand feet off Spencer.

• 40:28Steven Rinella?

  You could still deep drop that lake.

• 40:29Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:30Steven Rinella?

  That's like electric real. That's like electric real country.

• 40:34Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 40:34Steven Rinella?

  No one wants to do that without an electric reel.

• 40:36Speaker 07

  That's probably why Spencer's not here today.

• 40:37Steven Rinella?

  I think he just meant you could deep drop it.

• 40:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  I think that's funny that Corinne laughed at your deep drop joke.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, because we're gonna do a whole.

• 40:45Steven Rinella?

  We're gonna do a whole show.

• 40:46Speaker 05

  The deep drop boys. And then they were gonna do a whole like music video.

• 40:50Steven Rinella?

  Dude, me and Seth have a show. We're gonna go to the deepest places.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  And what happened to all that?

• 40:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, just it was an idea.

• 40:56Steven Rinella?

  We just haven't gotten to going yet, looking for a sponsor. We go to the deepest places on earth and lower down and lower down a jig or like a bait.

• 41:03Speaker 06

  Marianas trench.

• 41:04Steven Rinella?

  And people just tune in to see if we catch something.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  Now you've expanded it to the world. I'm intrigued.

• 41:11Speaker 06

  Yeah. You know that that trend, it's like, what is it? Norwegian slow TV? That's what yours.

• 41:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Oh, because the first three episodes is it gonna be hitting, is it gonna be going down?

• 41:21Speaker 05

  No, that's the best idea. Like, we've been talking about doing some kind of slow TV for media.

• 41:26Speaker 07

  It's basically just a show called Do We Have Enough Lines? Because a lot of episodes, you just don't have enough line.

• 41:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so the the multi trail camera, one year subscription, get all kinds of crazy photos you can send us. Hardest angler in college sports? How many votes?

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Zero.

• 41:47Steven Rinella?

  Uh, driest place on earth?

• 41:53Steven Rinella?

  Four votes?

• 41:56Steven Rinella?

  It's already decided, but just for the hell of it, Death Valley? Gets two votes. Yeah, I might change my vote.

• 42:01Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 42:01Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  No, here's a question. If someone is like, hyper credentialed versus if, if it's, if the audience member is a layperson who gets interested and inspired to do research, like, does that weigh how you assess the direction?

• 42:19Steven Rinella?

  I don't think it should weigh. That'd be like picking your kid to win something.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  I just went based on the degree of the mistake, just seen more extreme than your mistake.

• 42:27Steven Rinella?

  Real extreme, and a goof on Spencer, so I like it. But you were on the wrong continent.

• 42:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, that's true. I was off. Yeah, so he went. You were more than 6,000 feet off.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  I don't know, we, we, we learned a lot from both. They were both good directions.

• 42:41Steven Rinella?

  And their Adacama dude had the double whammy, where I also said it was, I don't know why, I said it was just outside the city. I like that he said that for the last. He had a double whammy. He could've won just off that. Anytime you can tell me something about Antarctica, I'm listening. Yeah, that was, that was a great follow-up fact. Uh, Yanni?

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Seal Finger.

• 43:00Speaker 05

  Oh, wait, so thanks, Gabe, so number two wins?

• 43:03Steven Rinella?

  Do we name their names? Cause now people are gonna be like, hey, can I borrow your trail cam?

• 43:08Speaker 05

  Okay, Phil can bleep that out. Congratulations.

• 43:11Steven Rinella?

  It's a late, late record. See if that matters. They're gonna wanna put their cameras under his membership. Can I put my cameras under your deal?

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Sorry, blew up your spot.

• 43:19Steven Rinella?

  Didn't mean to blow up your spot, blank.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  If you don't have a spot for that camera, I do, you know? Uh, Seal Finger, in case you guys were still interested in that, uh, this fella wrote in to say that his dad's hand made the news show. He was really excited. Turns out that, uh, his dad has what he thinks is like the most, um, maybe researched, uh, case of Seal Finger ever, and the pictures that were taken are like constantly getting used on the internet. Just happened to be the one that, that Corinne found, or I don't know who found it.

• 43:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we pulled up some random Seal Finger photo. He was listening and he's like, that sounds like my dad's hand.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. And uh, yeah, so he sent in, they're very excited that their family is now part of uh, the Meat Eater Universe. Randall highlighted this piece in his letter that we all laughed about. He writes, "I called dad and told him about it. He couldn't laugh that hard because he had just broken his ribs from a snowmobiling mishap." Later that day, he also lit his hair on fire using a friend's propane stove. Which I have a video of.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  This fellow's injury prone is what they call that.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  But Small World's part of his story though is, he's like in the hospital getting ready to get uh, surgery done on his hand. And the nurse is checking on him, seeing that it's getting worse and she calls the doctor on call and explains the situation and the doc goes, "Hey, ask the guy if he's been seal hunting lately." And uh, he replies, "Yes, I have." And he goes, "Oh, I'll be right down with the proper antibiotics." And so instead of having to have surgery, they just hit him with the proper antibiotics and fixed him right up. So, um, yeah. I don't know, moral of the story is there is like the more you know, right? Because, uh, yeah, saved him from having surgery just by being able to be like, yeah, surgery. You have a little card in your wallet, right? That kinda is supposed to act in that same way.

• 45:21Steven Rinella?

  But I'm just reading another thing he's got here.

• 45:25Steven Rinella?

  This is a rich letter.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:27Steven Rinella?

  He says, "A few years later, a friend was telling someone about the incident and searched it online. There it was, dad's hand. Unmistakable because he had a small tattooed dot between his thumb and index. That was a test tattoo."

• 45:46Steven Rinella?

  So, he at one point did a test tattoo to see about getting a tattoo and didn't, but he still has the dot from the test.

• 45:53Speaker 06

  Well, it was a test tattoo from one he was gonna do himself with pen ink and a needle. Like, that's the good part.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  He signs off by saying, as they do in Newfoundland, long may your big jib draw, which is a traditional Newfoundland toast and saying that means, may the wind always be in your sails. Well, Steve, in this case, you guys weren't here before we were recording, but we had a conversation about how some sayings don't translate well. Because they lose sort of their, uh, their flow or their rhythm or you had other terms for it. But I feel like this one is actually better by saying, you say, may the wind always be in your sails versus long may your big jib draw. That just doesn't roll off my tongue.

• 46:39Steven Rinella?

  Well, okay, you're right, but there's, uh, it's not just saying, well, what I was trying to explain is like, we have this saying, a stitch in time saves nine. And there's like, there's a lyrical quality to it and a rhyme.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:51Steven Rinella?

  So if some hoser in like Italy is saying, in America, they have a saying, and he does the saying in Italian, but it loses its rhymey quality. And maybe it's not an efficient transfer of words. And so it winds up being clunky. And then you go like, well, that doesn't sound like a great saying, because they're losing the fact that ours is rhymey and quick.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  If you stitch it now, you may save yourself upwards of eight to nine stitches over a longer duration of time.

• 47:20Steven Rinella?

  Correct. And they'd be like, that doesn't sound like a great saying. Or there's, there's this, I've never, I've never gone and fact-checked this, but, but some of the tribes on the Colombian Plateau had a word for the bitter root mountains. And it was like, the, the spine of the bitter roots. And they're fact-checked this, I've just been told this, the spine of the bitter roots, they, they would talk about that and it would say that that marked the land beyond which there are no salmon. But I feel like it's like, when we do that with native expressions, it probably, it just takes on a very different tonality. And maybe in their languages, it was just, it wasn't, it didn't have that like, sounds like someone translating.

• 48:01Speaker 04

  Like profound.

• 48:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. The land beyond which there are no salmon. It might've just been some little, you know, something that was.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  Don't bother going over there.

• 48:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like more quick, you know? That's all. Here's the etiquette question. Are we good on those?

• 48:16Speaker 04

  We're good.

• 48:18Steven Rinella?

  Long may your big jib draw. What was the other saying you were just hitting us with, Yanni? May you have the journey you prepared for? Uh, may you have the race that you prepared for? No, no. Okay, this is coming in a guy says he lives in a small city in central Nebraska. This is an adequate question. Adequate etiquette. Everybody pay attention.

• 48:39Steven Rinella?

  It's not a tourniquet, it's an etiquette question. I have an adequate question for you guys that I've been wrestling with over the past few days. He just recently got back into archery.

• 48:50Steven Rinella?

  He shoots at his city's public outdoor archery range.

• 48:56Steven Rinella?

  He says this past week, he missed a shot low on one of the targets. He's the only one at the range. So he goes out there and starts looking for his lost arrow. He looks for 30 minutes. During that time, he finds seven arrows, none of which were his own.

• 49:16Steven Rinella?

  He gives up for the day. But then later remembers a trick from one of the hot tip offs.

• 49:25Steven Rinella?

  From the late radio live show. Hmm, we could pick those hot tip offs off. He remembers a tip where a guy says, hey, if you're trying to find arrows, wait till night and use a black light to find your arrows. That was a hot tip. Mm hmm. He remembers hearing this hot tip about using a black light to find your arrow.

• 49:44Steven Rinella?

  So he went and bought a black light. Goes back out to the range after dark. Found his arrow in under a minute. Kept looking around and found twelve, a dozen arrows.

• 50:02Steven Rinella?

  Here's the question.

• 50:05Steven Rinella?

  Are these his? Is it keepsies? Is it finders keepers, losers weepers? Or should he go set them all out hoping that the right people come find them? This is legit, this is a legit question. This is a great question. I know exactly how I would handle it.

• 50:20Speaker 06

  I think you'd probably take them and put them in a little bucket at the range and be like, are these yours?

• 50:25Steven Rinella?

  Dude, because they're gonna get stolen by, no.

• 50:27Speaker 06

  Listen.

• 50:28Steven Rinella?

  Other people are gonna steal them. But that doesn't mean that you're wrong, don't make a right. In this case, I'm saying finders keepers, only because it's a public range. And I'm sure, well, okay, I'm back to, I agree with Brody, leave the land.

• 50:45Speaker 07

  I think you put up a sign at the range, says, lose an arrow?

• 50:51Speaker 07

  Text me a description and I'll see if I have it.

• 50:53Steven Rinella?

  Ooh, there you go.

• 50:54Speaker 06

  Or you could do this, pick the real two or three sweet ones out and then put the beat up.

• 50:58Speaker 07

  I mean, I think if he's.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Well, he says that out of those, out of those twenty, that he found, four of them are the right size, weight, length, which you better check on the spine too. He says that they would work great in a setup, um.

• 51:14Speaker 04

  I, I, I think that yes, those people that lost their arrows could have done what he did and found their arrows. They didn't. They've like assumed the loss. Now, is it a nice thing to do? Just put them in a bucket and say, hey, I found a bunch of arrows for you guys? Sure. But like, I wouldn't feel bad if he, if he, I wouldn't be like, oh dude, you're an asshole for taking those four arrows.

• 51:34Speaker 06

  If they're getting used, that's better than being in the ground.

• 51:36Speaker 07

  My, my red line would be if you're checking every week and throwing them up on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 07

  My, my red line would be like if this becomes a systematic way of acquiring arrows that you can then resell.

• 51:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, this guy says he only has four or five of his own arrows, so four more would really help him out. It'd double his, double his quiver.

• 52:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's a tough one. He says he's gonna bring them back. He says, when I lose an arrow, I just figure it's gone. Because on the other hand, if I went down to shoot and there's my arrow sitting there next to the deal.

• 52:14Speaker 06

  It does say a lot about, a lot about kind of the throwaway culture that we're comfortable with too. It's kind of a bummer.

• 52:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, but you never know, there could be like.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Arrows are tough to find.

• 52:24Speaker 07

  There could be a guy that zipped an arrow down there and then he looked for, for five minutes, had to go to something and thought, I'm gonna come back later. And you don't want to deprive that guy of the satisfaction of finding his arrow.

• 52:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

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• 53:06Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. Okay, so buying a new car or a new home starts by building credit, right?

• 53:50Steven Rinella?

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• 54:12Speaker 03

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• 54:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay, more in the news. This is what we've talked about, we've talked about this a bunch of times over the years, but we've talked a lot about, I mean, just throughout the history, the long, long history of this podcast. We have a number of times brought up issues about, like cue the controversy drumroll, issues about the border wall, okay? Here's the border wall between us and Mexico. Here's where this always gets to be. This is why this is always a touchy subject. On the show, sort of our pro like our sort of promise to listeners on the show is we try to just stick to issues that matter to hunters, anglers, outdoor enthusiasts, right?

• 55:10Steven Rinella?

  Wildlife enthusiasts, we try to talk about issues that pertain to those areas and leave out the other parts of the world. Like you might notice here on the news show, how could we call this the news show? When the biggest thing in the news is the war in Iran? Why are they not, if they're covering the news, they should be covering that. Well, that's not our area. That's not our area. It's not our area of expertise. Where this becomes problematic is because some issues like, well, to use the wall in it, no, some issues sit on the knife's edge.

• 55:43Speaker 06

  Well, the Iran thing did overlap a little bit with tungsten, for example.

• 55:48Steven Rinella?

  And then we appropriately covered that, yeah. Like tungsten, tungsten is used in munitions. It's used in killing turkeys. So there's a like they collide. Uh, no way do they collide more though in discussions about the border wall. And when we talked about the idea of an impenetrable physical barrier between the US and Mexico, we have often brought up, what does this mean for wildlife movements? What does it mean for wildlife movements? And then people will write in, I'll be real mad and I'll be like, I'm never listening again. You've never lost your job to an illegal immigrant, right? And I'm like, I wasn't talking about that. I was sticking to the, the part of this that is relevant to what we talk about when we do the show.

• 56:33Steven Rinella?

  If you were over for dinner, I would love to talk to you about the illegal immigration crisis of a few years back. I would love to talk to you about that at my house. That's not what I'm going to talk about here. We talk about the wall in terms of wildlife movements and whether you think that we should build a, a mile high, hundred yard thick wall from coast to, from the Gulf to the Pacific or whatever.

• 57:03Steven Rinella?

  That's great. If that's what you believe, you have to hold in your head that that would have implications for wildlife. Meaning, this is the way I've usually explained this before. Let's say you're sitting around and you're debating whether or not it's a good idea that the family go on a family vacation this year, right? And you're factoring all the things in, time off work, um, all their, maybe some family obligations used to be taken care of, what it's gonna cost, right? You factor all these things in and maybe you decide, you know what, all things considered, we're still gonna go on vacation. So you could think about all

• 57:44Steven Rinella?

  this wildlife issues and be like, I've considered all these wildlife issues. Um, the Jaguars won't ever repopulate, um, you know, the US, they're not gonna be able to come back into Arizona ever. Um, there's some free ranging, uh, buffalo herds in Mexico that would never cross and mule deer, whatever. You could be like, I understand all that. I'm wide eyed. I still want the biggest wall in the world. I'd be like, cool. Glad you thought about everything and came to your conclusion. So, and talking about this, that's, that's how we've discussed the wall. Well, right now it's kind of a weird twist because they keep, the, the, the fed, the feds have this, the, the, this map they keep putting up, showing like what kinds of barriers they're gonna use along the, the border. And you can have electronic barriers, which is basically surveillance

• 58:29Steven Rinella?

  equipment. You could have a personnel barrier, which is just a heightened presence of, um, custom and border patrol, individuals on the landscape, and you have a physical wall barrier. Big old shitstorm down in the Big Bend area because of whether or not they're gonna wanna run the border wall along the border of Big Bend National Park. And this is one of those weird ones where you get like a real NIMBY component. And it has hit, it has come up against some staunch opposition from, this is one of those stories where the opposition comes from an unlikely

• 59:08Steven Rinella?

  place, where ranchers in the area, hunting guides in the area, river rat, like river users in the area are like, there ain't no need for a wall here. There's no one down here anyways.

• 59:22Speaker 06

  Not so much that it's coming from an unlikely place as much as it is like unlikely people partnering up too.

• 59:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 59:28Speaker 06

  Like the, the thing we saw with Pebble Mine, right?

• 59:31Steven Rinella?

  Yep. So, uh, top, cause here for instance, like picture you got like big horns, black bears, deer, relying on movements in river access, right? So this is, there's just been a lot of, a lot of debate, some protesting, various things going on about are they gonna do this down in this little, this extremely remote area? And there, there's some statistics coming out of this. So this is like a, the, the, a guy that, a listener wrote into us about this as well.

• 1:00:07Steven Rinella?

  The Big Bend sector, okay? Um, in 2023, the Big Bend sector was running 1,500 immigration encounters per month. Okay? The El Paso, so 1,500 encounters per month in the Big Bend area. So what do you compare that to? Let's say El Paso. El Paso was running 50,000 immigration encounters per month in the El Paso sector.

• 1:00:38Steven Rinella?

  And then, you know, I mean, that, that, that stuff is just dropped, when, when the Trump administration came in, like that stuff is just dropped off incredibly quickly. So, right now, 2025, they've reduced the number of apprehensions by 74%. So they were at 1,500 immigration encounters per month in 23. It's down 74% today.

• 1:01:03Steven Rinella?

  And so people are saying, it's just, there's no need to, like, in a case like this in the Big Bend area, when you weigh the wildlife,

• 1:01:12Steven Rinella?

  risk?

• 1:01:14Steven Rinella?

  Against the illegal immigration risk, it doesn't weigh out.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  And I think there's also-

• 1:01:19Steven Rinella?

  That's what some listeners are arguing.

• 1:01:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:01:22Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, it was just, there are also other techniques, like, um, sky surveillance, drones, etc., that are deployed that have seemed to be pretty effective.

• 1:01:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the electronic wall.

• 1:01:35Speaker 05

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:37Steven Rinella?

  Replacing with the electronic wall, uh, surveillance issues. He has an interesting quote, and one of the guys wrote it, and has an interesting observation. Little bit's incendiary, so I'm not going to get into it, but he's talking about separating man from nature. He says, "The Tower of Babel."

• 1:01:57Steven Rinella?

  I'm not going to read this quote.

• 1:02:00Steven Rinella?

  He takes, he takes, he swings for the, what's that expression? Shoots for the stars in the end there.

• 1:02:07Speaker 07

  Swings for the fences.

• 1:02:08Steven Rinella?

  Swings for the fences in that one. But an interesting deal, and so people in this area, I think it's not going to happen. That's my, if I crystal ball it, I think they're not going to do the wall there. But apparently, you can go to this, this site and like, refresh on it, and see this like, ever-changing plans about what kind of, where the wall is going to be constructed.

• 1:02:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, and here's, here's one statistic that, um, the 510 miles, um, in this region, the Border Patrol has recorded an average of six crossings a day in this region. So like, it's, it's the least active, the Republican Sheriff of Tarryl County says, "This is the least active sector of the whole border." And you're talking about building a wall through a national park.

• 1:02:52Steven Rinella?

  What does that sheriff think about it?

• 1:02:54Speaker 07

  Uh, he is apparently not, I mean, he's, he seems to concede that it's not necessary. I don't want to speak beyond what's, he's quoted as here, but he's a Border Patrol veteran and a Republican sheriff, and he says it's the least active sector along the whole border.

• 1:03:11Speaker 07

  So.

• 1:03:14Steven Rinella?

  I'd like to dig in more on this with like an interview subject at some point, just the wall.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  The wall at this point, or in other states?

• 1:03:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, from a wildlife perspective.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, big horn sheep populations separated.

• 1:03:29Steven Rinella?

  We had a story like that that we didn't report on. You're right, we had a story we didn't report on about implications for desert big horns.

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  Yep, in California.

• 1:03:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and if there is a way to weigh, I feel like if there is a way to weigh electronic surveillance and other mecha, like other methods that are maybe faster, less disruptive, more effective, sometimes probably less expensive, whatever, to do things electronically and achieve the same goal, it might wind up being the decision just gets made that way. I mean, just look at like, I mean, you know, I don't need to point it out, the advancements in surveillance through drones.

• 1:04:06Speaker 07

  That's what I was gonna say.

• 1:04:07Steven Rinella?

  And then, and then AI work to weed out like, to weed out false hits.

• 1:04:13Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:14Steven Rinella?

  Where it's like, you know, that's a deer, that's whatever, that's whatever, that's a human, you know? Um, could wind up being that it just becomes, it comes like a, that the, the idea of a wall in some of these areas becomes, it's just an obsolete notion. Because there's better ways of accomplishing the same thing.

• 1:04:30Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:04:31Steven Rinella?

  The, when me and Yanni there down hunting, we're often looking at those big blimps. Remember guys saying that blimp, that blimp counting the hair on your head right now?

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:04:44Steven Rinella?

  All right, Randall, uh, set up your interview.

• 1:04:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, so we've got another interview from the Meat Eater Sports Desk. We talked to Brian Harmon, a former podcast guest, former trivia contestant.

• 1:04:56Steven Rinella?

  The Butcher.

• 1:04:57Speaker 07

  Brian the Butcher Harmon, and he is, uh, headed to Augusta, Georgia this week to play in the Masters. And so, uh, that's Thursday, April 9th to Sunday, April 12th. And so, Phil, why don't you play the interview?

• 1:05:13Speaker 07

  Welcome back to the Meat Eater News Sports Desk. I'm your host, Randall Williams, joined today by Brian Harmon, four-time PGA Tour winner and the 2023 winner of the Open Championship and a contestant in Meat Eater Trivia, episode 495. Brian, it's great to have you.

• 1:05:31Speaker 09

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:05:32Speaker 07

  Well, the Masters tease off on April 9th at Augusta National. As we all know, it's a tradition unlike any other. How's your freezer looking right now?

• 1:05:42Speaker 09

  Ah, it's a, it's, it's a little bare. We, um, we had a pretty lean deer season, but we killed us, killed a few turkeys last, last couple of weeks. So we're, we're, we're working our way back up. We're about to be fishing soon.

• 1:05:55Speaker 07

  I was gonna say, supplementing that at all with some fish? I know you're a big spear fisherman.

• 1:06:00Speaker 09

  Yeah, we gotta, we gotta catch some this summer. We gotta catch some flounder. We got a really good triple tail run around St. Simon's. So hopefully we'll get some.

• 1:06:08Speaker 07

  Very nice. Now picture this scenario. Sunday afternoon at Augusta, everything's going your way. You're on the back nine and in contention for the win. Your family's cheering you on. Now picture this entirely unrelated scenario. It's the third week of October. Tomorrow morning, you've got a pretty much guaranteed limit of wood ducks lined up, but there's also a pretty decent buck showing up on your trail camera. He wouldn't be your personal best, but maybe he's just smaller than your third best buck. Are you more excited to go to the tree stand or the duck blind that morning?

• 1:06:40Speaker 09

  Tree stand.

• 1:06:41Speaker 07

  Tree stand, huh?

• 1:06:42Speaker 09

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:43Speaker 07

  The deer's calling your name. Are you still shooting fixed blades?

• 1:06:46Speaker 09

  Ah, yes, I am. Um, I did kill a buck with an expandable last year.

• 1:06:53Speaker 07

  Gotcha. And that, was that a conversion process? Are you sold now? Are you still?

• 1:06:57Speaker 09

  I killed, I killed two bucks. Um, I killed two bucks with my bow last year and I shot one with a fixed blade and the exit wound was so tiny. Um, I, I think I'd just gotten to where the, I'd, I'd worked on so much penetration with the, with the, with my arrow that it's almost like it zips through our little whitetails. I've kind of had it set up for elk and, um, expandable in our, on our bucks at home. I, I, the bucks we kill are probably only 170, 180 pounds, maybe.

• 1:07:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Speaker 07

  It's easy to chase your tail on bullets and arrows, you know?

• 1:07:34Speaker 09

  You can, you can, you can chase that dragon for a long time.

• 1:07:38Speaker 07

  Now, Brian, your PGA Tour website bio lists you as a left-handed golfer who does everything else right-handed. I've got two questions. Are you left or right eye dominant? And do you shoot a gun like a normal person or do you shoot it left-handed?

• 1:07:54Speaker 09

  I shoot a gun like a normal person. I'm left eye dominant. So if I'm, if I'm killing ducks, I've, I've got, I've got both eyes open. But if I'm, if I'm shooting for numbers, trying to hit a bunch of skeet or something, I'll close my left eye.

• 1:08:09Speaker 07

  Interesting. Interesting. Now you're headed into Augusta as a former major champion. You know that course, you've contended there, but as best I can tell from a quick Google search of the Georgia hunting regs, the Masters in April falls smack dab in the middle of turkey season. So do you find it's more helpful to kill a turkey before Augusta? So you're coming into the tournament clear-headed and focused? Or does postponing your gobbler hunt until after the drama of Sunday afternoon help keep that fire in your belly?

• 1:08:39Speaker 09

  You know, if I can kill some turkeys before, it tends to work out a whole lot better. My mind doesn't, doesn't wander nearly as much, but I'm very peculiar about my, my calendar this time of year. I might steal a day, Monday after Augusta.

• 1:08:57Speaker 09

  And then we, Georgia does great. We have a youth season we had two weekends ago. So I had to take my boy. And then our opener was last weekend and we had a big time. So I've done some turkey hunt, which has been really nice.

• 1:09:07Speaker 07

  Now, on the show recently, Spencer acknowledged that when he went to the Masters, he gobbled at you. And I believe that you conveyed to Steve or Corinne that you heard it and you looked.

• 1:09:19Speaker 09

  I heard him.

• 1:09:20Speaker 07

  And you knew it was him. It was not a turkey. It was not convincing.

• 1:09:23Speaker 09

  Yeah, well, no, I could tell it was a man yelping at me for sure.

• 1:09:30Speaker 09

  Yeah, you guys were kinda, you guys were kinda spot on about the wildlife in Augusta. It is few and far between.

• 1:09:36Speaker 07

  You're not even looking for anything interesting. You're just, I guess it's understandable. You just focus on playing golf. Sure.

• 1:09:41Speaker 09

  It's a, it's a, it's a beautiful place. Um, and, um, if I wasn't sure that if I, you know, if you pull your phone out there, I'm not sure that they wouldn't just send an airstrike right where you were standing. But, uh, that Merlin, uh, app.

• 1:09:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Speaker 09

  I think Corinne was talking about, I use it all the time at home. It's, it's awesome. But I would love to just click that on in my bag and.

• 1:10:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:10:03Speaker 09

  If I could find some.

• 1:10:05Speaker 07

  That's probably the one cellphone application that the, uh, the Masters Rules did not have in mind when they banned all cellphones from the course.

• 1:10:15Speaker 09

  I think, I, I think they're smart enough to only pipe in native birds.

• 1:10:19Speaker 07

  Gotcha, gotcha. Well, Brian, should you walk away with the green jacket at the end of the weekend, you will be hosting next year's Champions Dinner, and I would like to ask you to make a hard commitment right now to the non-live audience of this pre-recorded segment. Will you serve meat you have personally killed and butchered at next year's Champions Dinner if you win in Augusta?

• 1:10:42Speaker 09

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:10:44Speaker 07

  What would you, what would you serve? Have you given any thought to that just in, uh, when you're daydreaming?

• 1:10:48Speaker 09

  I, I tell you what, what would be incredible. I think my favorite meal is the way that I like cooking elk tenderloin, which is nothing fancy. But if I were to go, if I were to win the Masters and killing, killing elk this fall, man, to serve tenderloin. Now, I might have to, I might have to get some buddies to donate some tenderloin so I can feed everybody. Two, two tenderloins won't feed 20 something dudes, but man, I might make for a cool appetizer.

• 1:11:17Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. Well, Brian, uh, thanks so much for your time. Check Brian out, playing in the Masters, Thursday, April 9th to Sunday, April 12th. Uh, friend of the program. We appreciate you joining us and good luck out there.

• 1:11:31Speaker 09

  Anytime, man. Love y'all.

• 1:11:32Speaker 07

  Yep. Take care.

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  Another hell of a segment, Phil.

• 1:11:37Steven Rinella?

  You don't have to tell me, Randall.

• 1:11:39Speaker 05

  We wish Brian the best of luck.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:42Steven Rinella?

  That's the hardest, hardest hunting man in Georgia.

• 1:11:45Speaker 04

  I almost said pull it, pull it. We don't want any more corrections.

• 1:11:50Steven Rinella?

  But hardest hunting man in the American South right there, ladies and gentlemen.

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  Brian's, uh, Brian's a good sport and, uh, he's, he's a fan of the show, so it's good to chat with him.

• 1:12:00Steven Rinella?

  Do you remember we were golfing with him that one time and we were shooting at deer targets with golf balls? And he hit the deer, he hit it.

• 1:12:06Speaker 05

  Oh, he was good.

• 1:12:07Steven Rinella?

  I couldn't believe it.

• 1:12:08Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 1:12:08Speaker 04

  I wasn't there for that.

• 1:12:09Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:12:10Speaker 05

  Cause he's good.

• 1:12:12Steven Rinella?

  I think he missed his first shot barely and then we had some 3D targets out and flop, boom. We hit the, hit the deer with the golf ball.

• 1:12:20Speaker 05

  No, he was good.

• 1:12:21Steven Rinella?

  That dude was good with a golf club. He's gonna win that whole thing.

• 1:12:26Steven Rinella?

  I don't know anybody else down there. Greg Norman? I don't know who he's playing against.

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  No, not Greg Norman anymore. That is a golf name though.

• 1:12:34Steven Rinella?

  Couple of names we can scratch off the list.

• 1:12:38Steven Rinella?

  He's gonna beat all them guys. I can tell you that much.

• 1:12:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, like you were saying earlier, it's a, it's a, it's a feat just to be in that, uh, be in the tournament.

• 1:12:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh yeah. It's wild.

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Speaker 06

  Is that why Spencer's not here? Is he going to the Masters?

• 1:12:54Steven Rinella?

  He would probably.

• 1:12:55Speaker 04

  He's been.

• 1:12:56Steven Rinella?

  He's been, yeah. Oh, he said that he was, he said he was watching Brian Harmon play one time and yelped at him. And he said that Brian Harmon looked and Brian Harmon said he do, he does remember that.

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  Well, you know that because we got to that in the interview, remember? When we just watched the pre-recorded segment.

• 1:13:16Steven Rinella?

  To be clear, I asked about the interview.

• 1:13:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:20Steven Rinella?

  I asked if it went well.

• 1:13:23Steven Rinella?

  Take that out, Phil, cause it makes me look bad. Make you look I'm not vetting the material.

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• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  Catalina. Back to Catalina Island, um, I'm really not that interested in this story anymore, but Oh. Here's where. Yeah, but this is good. No, it's, uh, I'm saying that to say that. We've all said that. It was more. You can't say you're not interested anymore. It was hyped up.

• 1:15:47Speaker 06

  No, that gets the audience like, he's like, why, why?

• 1:15:50Speaker 04

  Oh, okay. It was so hyped up by a lot of hunters about saving these deer. I'm like, now I'm kinda like, eh, I don't know. Little small population of these deer, like, is it like on the grand scheme of things? And the other thing I keep coming back to is that if these deer are gone, no one's really losing like this great hunting opportunity because the hunting opportunities sucked beforehand. No, and everybody just complained about it, how poor it was, right? They made it very difficult for hunters to go there and have a good hunt, etc.

• 1:16:21Speaker 06

  It's not a big buck factory where you're like, ooh, I wish I could get on that island.

• 1:16:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like for the few locals that were, you know, being able to get some deer meat out of it. Maybe, maybe those, maybe white buffalo will hook them up. I think what the issue was is like, can you, can you, for people just tuning in now, can you do a recap? Just, yeah. There's, yeah, like there's an island. There's an island, so like eight deer or 10 deer were brought there a hundred years ago, roughly. And, uh, for hunting purposes, it turned into a population of about 2,000. The island itself though has never had any, uh, like large ungulates, any herbivores that lived on it. So all the. It's California.

• 1:17:05Speaker 04

  Plant life that lives there can't withstand the pressure supposedly from these deer and the buffalo that live on this island as well. And the goats that used to live on the island. That's right. And so. A- after a few years, or I don't know, many, many, a few decades of having a hunting program that didn't reduce the population enough. The conservancy of the, this island that owns like 80% of the land on the island has decided to just get rid of the deer.

• 1:17:34Steven Rinella?

  Wrigley's, the chewing gum people.

• 1:17:36Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:17:37Steven Rinella?

  Well, at some point in time, they were the chewing gum family.

• 1:17:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, so they had to go through a permit process with the state, because again, these are, because there is, they are deer. Even though they live on private land, they are property of the people in the state. So they had to go through a permitting process, you know, with, with California Game of Fish to figure this out, but they've done it and they're moving forward and they hired.

• 1:18:02Steven Rinella?

  No, no, because now, now with the setup, I need to give my why. You're like, so you, you're saying you were interested in it, but the more you thought about it, it's not that many deer. It's not a historic population, it's not native range, it's not a great hunting opportunity. So it, to you, it feels like the, the, the, the hype has become bigger than the issue.

• 1:18:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Steven Rinella?

  Okay. What I feel when I look at this is I see, I think what some people do is lost opportunity and a certain irony of the conservancy that holds the land saying, um, we've tried to control them through hunting, but it doesn't work. So we need to bring in outside sharpshooters to kill them all. And then people, just rightfully so, saying, you didn't try that.

• 1:18:54Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:55Steven Rinella?

  You, you say you tried it, but you never allowed hunters to try to participate. You never gave hunters a chance to lower the numbers. You blocked them every which way, made it next to impossible, claimed it didn't work, and now you're bringing in outsiders to shoot them all and leave them to rot. I think that is, that's the rub, maybe.

• 1:19:14Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, a hundred percent. And I still think that there's a bu- there's a bunch of underhanded, deceitful, you know, like lying going on from this conservancy. Like, they are not playing,

• 1:19:26Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:26Speaker 04

  Uh, what's the saying? Clean?

• 1:19:30Speaker 05

  Fair.

• 1:19:30Speaker 04

  Fair pool, clean pool.

• 1:19:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Dirty pool. Swimming in a dirty pool. Swinging for the fences. Shoot.

• 1:19:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay, we're enter. There's a new story.

• 1:19:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, they've, uh, they hired a company called White Buffalo. And, uh, White Buffalo had their website pulled up here.

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  A lot of websites.

• 1:19:57Steven Rinella?

  It's a nonprofit.

• 1:19:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've turned into it, found out they're a nonprofit.

• 1:20:01Steven Rinella?

  Strange name for a wildlife eradication outfit.

• 1:20:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I don't understand where that, where that came from. But yeah, they do work all over the place. Um, basically controlling animals to help bring back native landscapes. And that's kind of, that's like their basic deal. Um, when looking at like what they offer for whitetail deer herd management, it's like, uh,

• 1:20:28Speaker 04

  artificial, um, or not, no, I'm trying to say it, not AI, but what's, what's the opposite? Like basically?

• 1:20:34Steven Rinella?

  Contraception.

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, they put them on birth control. Uh, they sharpshoot them, or they have managed hunts, which I would, I so, I would assume that that means that they sort of like bring in, you know, public hunters, but help them, you know, do these hunts and do them at a, you know, a higher rate to bring populations down. Um, so it looks like they do great work. Um, their website was really clean and nice and it seems like, you know, they're probably a great hire for this, for this job that they need to do.

• 1:21:02Speaker 05

  Can I, can I just interject with the, the significance of the white buffalo? We probably talked about that before on the podcast, right? We heard it from Taylor Keen.

• 1:21:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like a, it's like a.

• 1:21:12Speaker 05

  To the Lakota people.

• 1:21:13Steven Rinella?

  Spiritually rich animal in plains mythology.

• 1:21:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, so.

• 1:21:19Steven Rinella?

  There's also Uncle Ted's Great White Buffalo, which I would like in Apocalypse Now when he plays that song, you know, in his attack helicopters, when these guys are up in their choppers, maybe they play Uncle Ted's Great White Buffalo.

• 1:21:30Speaker 06

  There's also a

• 1:21:31Steven Rinella?

  To get pumped, I don't know.

• 1:21:32Speaker 06

  There's also a Charles Bronson movie where a white buffalo, it's kind of like, almost like a western horror movie where Charles Bronson is duking it out with a white buffalo that's trying to kill him.

• 1:21:42Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 1:21:42Speaker 06

  Strange.

• 1:21:43Steven Rinella?

  Maybe they're inspired by that movie. They're gonna pull out the old, they're gonna pull out the old Judas deer trick.

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:21:53Steven Rinella?

  It's in, it's one of the tricks in their playbook.

• 1:21:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, after they're done doing all this baiting and shooting, then they, then they throw out a deer to, with a GPS collar on it to attract.

• 1:22:04Steven Rinella?

  It's the dirtiest deed, dude. You take a deer and put a collar on him and let him go and you be like, okay, go find your buddies. And then you watch his tracking collar and you come and give him, it's, you know what it's like, man? It's like when the, in Red Dawn, dude.

• 1:22:20Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:22:21Steven Rinella?

  When they make that, that kid, you know, the kind of the kids that don't fit in good, he goes into town and they make him eat that transmitter and then the Ruski's come for him.

• 1:22:30Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:22:31Steven Rinella?

  He's like a Judas dude.

• 1:22:32Speaker 05

  This is, this whole plan looks so aggressive, very, very aggressive.

• 1:22:38Speaker 06

  We'll get to the condor part.

• 1:22:39Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, let's get this part.

• 1:22:41Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, again, it's like, I don't, but why is it?

• 1:22:43Steven Rinella?

  He doesn't care anymore.

• 1:22:44Speaker 04

  Why is it?

• 1:22:45Steven Rinella?

  Four hundred bucks a deer.

• 1:22:47Speaker 04

  No, why?

• 1:22:47Speaker 05

  And that's why with it being a nonprofit organization is very odd, is that money being fundraised from peo- like it's.

• 1:22:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they figured that they, I think they figured that they're doing like an environmental service and on the island and all, and all, I mean, in all fairness, they've had a bunch of plant species, um, become extirpated from the island.

• 1:23:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, and who am I, I mean, I don't, I'm not in this business, I don't know, we could have like Parker Hall or somebody say, tell us if four hundred dollars per deer is

• 1:23:16Speaker 06

  Eight hundred grand.

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  Is expensive.

• 1:23:18Speaker 05

  Geez.

• 1:23:19Speaker 04

  Huh?

• 1:23:20Steven Rinella?

  I don't know the debts, I mean, I imagine it's probably like this, you gotta get them all. And and people that have been in that work.

• 1:23:27Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:27Steven Rinella?

  They're like, oh, no.

• 1:23:29Speaker 04

  First ninety-five percent are easy.

• 1:23:30Steven Rinella?

  The first ninety-five percent, no problem. It's the it's like the last ones is the problem.

• 1:23:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's when a dude lives on the island for six more months and only hunts at night with, you know, thermals and tries to track down the last couple deer or whatever, but.

• 1:23:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's talked about areas when they've done wild hog work. He's like, yeah, getting a whole bunch of them. No biggie. It's like when there's two hogs left.

• 1:23:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:52Steven Rinella?

  Find those.

• 1:23:53Speaker 04

  But like, like you say that it's aggressive, Karim, but what like, why is it aggressive? Like, they've been hired to do a job.

• 1:23:59Speaker 05

  Oh, right, sure.

• 1:24:00Speaker 04

  They're gonna go in and put the hammer down and get the job done.

• 1:24:03Speaker 05

  It seems like, I guess that's needed. It would have been nice if they would have given more hunters a chance to.

• 1:24:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, again, like, I don't wanna like. That's why I'm bored of the stories because we can go back to that and talk about the indecencies of this conservancy, which like, we really don't know that much about. I'd love to like, if they wanted to come on and like, explain themselves, it'd be interesting. Um.

• 1:24:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, I'd hear him out.

• 1:24:29Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 1:24:30Steven Rinella?

  I'd hear him out for ten minutes.

• 1:24:31Speaker 04

  No, but you're saying that is the rub. Is it like the way they've handled it all?

• 1:24:35Speaker 06

  But every time there's any kind of these like, sharpshooter culling operations, hunters get all bent out of shape about it. They're like, why aren't they giving us the chance?

• 1:24:44Steven Rinella?

  Because that's what I always wonder. Yeah.

• 1:24:46Speaker 06

  I know, but it's like.

• 1:24:47Steven Rinella?

  Because I'll always wonder.

• 1:24:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, but like, I I'm this is just another example of that to me.

• 1:24:53Steven Rinella?

  Listen, man, my panties are in a bunch. Anytime like, like, even with the rest, even with the suburban sharpshooting, when you have a bunch of people live in a community and they all determine that like, that hunting's bad, they don't want anyone hunting, and they bring in a sharpshooting outfit to start shooting them at night. It just, it always will rub me the wrong way.

• 1:25:13Speaker 06

  I get it, but how many hunters are gonna actually jump in there and take care of it?

• 1:25:18Steven Rinella?

  We'll never know. Rob Sand? I guess we'll never know. The dude running for gov- the dude running for governor of Iowa hunts them deer.

• 1:25:26Speaker 05

  He'd love to hunt Catalina.

• 1:25:28Steven Rinella?

  Dude, he hunts deer on spots where if the deer takes three steps, it's on the neighbor's place. He's got, he's got, he's got his whole program dialed down, man. Shoots big ones.

• 1:25:36Speaker 04

  Brody mentioned the, uh, the California Condor Project, which this is a, a way that this, the, the Catalina Island Conservancy is saying like, hey, it's gonna be okay. We're not gonna just leave them to rot. We're going to relocate the deer carcasses over to the mainland and feed condors. When I read that, I go, oh, I wonder if they're gonna use, you know, copper or non, non lead ammunition, right?

• 1:26:03Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:04Speaker 04

  And Brody's like, well, we already had a guy ride in and said that that's a bunch of BS. But they're not like, that's a big cost to freeze, probably would have to freeze these carcasses and bring them, you know, via boat.

• 1:26:15Steven Rinella?

  I wasn't clear on, I thought they meant that the condors fly out to Catalina maybe because. And eat the deer, yeah. Yeah, but they're saying, no, they're saying, oh, we're gonna freeze them and bring them over to the mainland.

• 1:26:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:26:25Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. Who makes ju- do they make juicy fruit gum? I used to chew a lot of that. Yeah, I think that's a Wrigley product.

• 1:26:30Speaker 04

  They do. They do.

• 1:26:31Steven Rinella?

  I used to chew a lot of that.

• 1:26:32Speaker 06

  That lost its flavor real fast.

• 1:26:34Steven Rinella?

  It did, man. And I used to chew, I think their Big Red product, man, that'd burn your tongue, dude.

• 1:26:38Speaker 06

  Get a whole pack in there eventually.

• 1:26:40Steven Rinella?

  Taste buds get all inflamed and everything, man. Now they're shooting all these deer.

• 1:26:48Steven Rinella?

  No, I don't know if they're still tied up. I'm not saying that, that Big Red Juicy Fruit has anything to do with this, man.

• 1:26:59Steven Rinella?

  Clearly they're like, we're gonna poison gum and leave it, leave it all out for the deer.

• 1:27:05Speaker 04

  Well, it, it still seems like a flawed, uh, deal because that town of Avalon has made it so that you can't hunt or discharge a weapon within their perimeter and they say like a whole bunch of deer hang out within those, the town's boundaries. So I don't think they're gonna, this program's not gonna get rid of a hundred percent of the deer on the island.

• 1:27:23Steven Rinella?

  You wanna talk about a bunch of deer hanging out over there just waiting a few months?

• 1:27:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:27:27Speaker 06

  That Judas deer's gonna head straight for that.

• 1:27:30Steven Rinella?

  That dude's gonna be standing outside the local ice cream parlor in that town, man.

• 1:27:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And I think for the people that say, well, I really just don't want to see those animals go to waste.

• 1:27:44Steven Rinella?

  I don't buy that.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I.

• 1:27:47Steven Rinella?

  I mean, I buy it, but I don't think that's the mode, the main motivating factor.

• 1:27:50Speaker 04

  Right. And we all know now, we're educated enough to know that if you just like shoot a deer and let, let it lay in the grand scheme of things, does it go to waste because you or I don't consume it?

• 1:28:02Steven Rinella?

  It's like nutrient recycling.

• 1:28:03Speaker 04

  Totally. Like.

• 1:28:06Steven Rinella?

  Well, last time Yanni gets to do a Catalina Island.

• 1:28:11Speaker 04

  No, when they, when, when the Catalina Island concerns, he comes on here to chat. I'm, I'll be the first one. 10 good questions.

• 1:28:19Steven Rinella?

  You should get a Pulitzer Prize for the coverage, dude.

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  I don't.

• 1:28:23Steven Rinella?

  You've done a great job of covering the story and like analyzing it and stuff, man.

• 1:28:30Steven Rinella?

  And then like a weird like turn. Do you know what I mean? He like, you know?

• 1:28:35Speaker 06

  Imagine if Walter Cronkite came on, he's like, man, I'm not real interested in this, but I'm going to tell you about it.

• 1:28:39Steven Rinella?

  I'm not really interested. Cronkite, he comes on and he's like, he's like, I'm not real interested in this and I've changed my mind. I didn't know we were going for Cronkite.

• 1:28:50Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:28:50Steven Rinella?

  It kind of changes my whole approach to this.

• 1:28:52Speaker 06

  Tom Brokaw, I don't know. Pick, pick someone.

• 1:28:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

• 1:28:55Steven Rinella?

  That was a great report, Yanni. I like the emotional parts of you like getting tired of the story and

• 1:29:03Steven Rinella?

  like, oh, what's it mean anyway? That was great, man. I hope the listeners appreciated that. What else you got?

• 1:29:10Speaker 04

  Me too.

• 1:29:10Steven Rinella?

  What else you got, Yanni?

• 1:29:11Speaker 04

  Uh, they're trying to legalize baiting deer in Michigan. Um.

• 1:29:16Steven Rinella?

  It's a lot more complicated than that.

• 1:29:20Speaker 04

  Well, is it? I think that's a pretty fair assessment of what's, what's going on there.

• 1:29:25Steven Rinella?

  It's a fair assessment.

• 1:29:27Speaker 06

  Isn't it?

• 1:29:28Steven Rinella?

  You were always able, when I was a boy, that you, we, you just baited, right? Everybody, not everybody. We baited and then, and then they put restrictions on baiting.

• 1:29:38Speaker 04

  They're trying to make it, uh, legal again.

• 1:29:41Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:42Speaker 04

  Um, and basically, uh, there's some people for it. There's a lot of public for it. I, I texted a few folks uh, that live in hunting Michigan. And these folks are all anti-baiting.

• 1:29:57Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:29:57Speaker 04

  They wish it was completely gone, but according to them, they're like, whether this goes through or not, they don't think anything's gonna change because it like, we all know in places where you're not allowed to bait, like let's just say Michigan or where I'm at in Wisconsin. You can go to any, uh, I think any gas station, Walmart, whatever, and there are giant bags of corn out front.

• 1:30:21Steven Rinella?

  Because, but they do those quantity, Michigan has areas where they do a quantity restriction. You're allowed to put out a certain amount.

• 1:30:29Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:30:30Speaker 06

  And in some places.

• 1:30:31Speaker 04

  But there's a lot of places where you cannot bait deer.

• 1:30:35Steven Rinella?

  Gallon or what the hell it is, but they limit how much you put down.

• 1:30:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like, it's, you know, it's illegal where I grew up, but like, that's only during the season. So you can, you know.

• 1:30:45Steven Rinella?

  Well, we're sitting in a state right now. You can't bait.

• 1:30:47Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:30:48Steven Rinella?

  Never could bait.

• 1:30:49Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:30:49Speaker 06

  But it's the whole, we're not talking about the whole state of Michigan here.

• 1:30:53Steven Rinella?

  Lower peninsula.

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  Lower peninsula.

• 1:30:54Steven Rinella?

  So with CWD, you could always bait and we baited and it, I, I actually regret it.

• 1:31:02Speaker 06

  You said that in the past, yeah.

• 1:31:03Steven Rinella?

  I would have learned a lot more about deer if we didn't bow hunt. I, I wish we'd, I, I wish at a young age, I, I would have, um, learned to really hunt deer. And hadn't spent that time when I had like years and time that I hadn't messed with the bait thing. And I wish I would have just like, used, I wish I knew that what I knew now. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have hunted totally differently.

• 1:31:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, the proponents of the bill are saying that we will have more hunters, we'll have more participation, more retention, more youth getting into it if we allow it because

• 1:31:43Steven Rinella?

  I can see that.

• 1:31:43Speaker 04

  It just makes it easier.

• 1:31:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I can see that. So originally around chronic wasting disease and bovine tuberculosis, so disease issues.

• 1:31:54Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 1:31:55Speaker 04

  That's why I was outlawed.

• 1:31:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and starting in since in 2019, the Department of Natural Resources, so the Wildlife Management Agency in 2019 started putting baiting restrictions in place in the lower peninsula, citing disease concerns, you're concentrating, you're making super spreader events like during COVID when you had a big party and everybody kind of got mad at you. You were doing that out in the woods, suckering in all kinds of deer to come in and rub noses. And so their thought was, hey, we're gonna slow down disease spread and get rid of baiting. Um, and that's pissed people off, still pisses people off. And so now they're kind of going around back on her.

• 1:32:33Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:32:34Steven Rinella?

  Talk about that.

• 1:32:36Speaker 04

  Oh, the fact that, yeah, so this is, it's, it's, it's very unpopular with, uh, the Department of Natural Resources. And they're saying that, uh, yeah, we're not, we're basically not doing this under sound science. And that we're, they're just basically voting, you know, just doing political science and, uh, politicians are making management decisions by getting, putting this back in.

• 1:32:59Steven Rinella?

  Yep. What they want to do is they want to, they're looking to prevent the Wildlife Agency from being able to do a ban.

• 1:33:09Speaker 04

  Right, all together and in the future, which I think would be a bad thing. I know that we all don't agree all the time with what our state wildlife agencies do, but I believe that for the most part, they're out there trying to do what's best. And we forget that, uh, they're trying to balance so many, uh, different, um, you know, entities that have different needs, you know, whether it's the ranchers that are having issues with deer or elk, you know, the people that want more opportunities, the people that want more trophies, you know, people that want, you know, whatever, you know, they're balancing all, all of that social stuff. It's not just wildlife management. So,

• 1:33:51Speaker 04

  like, you had to step back and look at it that it's not just what, you know, what's going on in your little neighborhood and what you want, how you want to be able to bait in your backyard.

• 1:33:59Steven Rinella?

  You also have, in this case, you also have two truths kind of battling each other. We covered this a couple of years ago where the head of Michigan's Wildlife Agency had this open letter ahead of deer season, basically saying, Almost being like, why can't we get hunters to kill does? We need to kill does. We need to kill does. We can't get hunters to kill does. Right? Almost throwing his hands up and they're like, you know, in the most respectful way possible is kind of like, what is wrong with everybody? Our doe harvest, our populations are going up. Doe harvest is going down. We try to incentivize doe harvest. People won't kill does. So an argument in favor of the bill is it makes it easier to get does.

• 1:34:45Speaker 04

  That is an argument, but I, but I think it's a little, I think it's a little bit of a BS argument.

• 1:34:50Steven Rinella?

  The Farm Bureau, they like, they wanna, they like the bait, they like the bait bill. They want bait coming in because they feel like it's gonna,

• 1:34:59Steven Rinella?

  help alleviate crop damage.

• 1:35:00Speaker 04

  If you had a crystal ball at Brody, you think if they legalize bait, it's like across the board, are you gonna, are you gonna see a higher doe take?

• 1:35:08Speaker 06

  I certainly think it's like, listen, there's a reason why people bait. It increases your odds, like.

• 1:35:14Speaker 04

  No, I understand that, but we were talking about whether the,

• 1:35:18Speaker 06

  Specifically whether more does would get shot.

• 1:35:19Speaker 04

  Whether the population of hunters that's around these days, like, are they gonna shoot more does?

• 1:35:24Steven Rinella?

  Like, is, is it, is the people most mad about the bait ban, people that just wanna shoot tons of does?

• 1:35:31Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 1:35:31Steven Rinella?

  I don't know either. I have, yeah.

• 1:35:34Speaker 06

  Like, I'm, look, I'm not trying.

• 1:35:34Steven Rinella?

  People bring up road safety, like the old classic road safety, like, yeah, people are like, someone's gotta do something about road safety.

• 1:35:41Speaker 06

  I definitely feel like there are areas in this country where, like, the number of deer are a problem and they gotta figure out some way to, to knock them down, you know?

• 1:35:50Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:35:51Steven Rinella?

  So that's another argument. Arguments in favor of the bill. Road safety. The state has fifty eight, over fifty eight thousand deer-related vehicle crashes. That was in twenty twenty four. Meaning the current bait ban is failing to control the population, or people aren't shooting them. I don't think, I don't think you blame that on the bait ban. And then like Yanni said, hunter recruitment, saying that like, if you can put bait out, it's easier and kids are more successful and everybody's gonna have a better time. Shooting all kinds of deer. Arguments against the bill. Disease spread. Okay. The DNR and the wildlife biologists oppose the bill.

• 1:36:33Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 1:36:36Steven Rinella?

  Then you get into the science question, right? Where is, you know, wildlife management people are, you know, driven by what they would argue is a scientific understanding of the data and the population and, and that this is coming from social, this is coming, this is coming from like a, a, a social end of things. And then the question of fair chase concerns. Some traditional hunting groups argue that baiting diminishes fair chase ethics of the sport. Ah.

• 1:37:06Steven Rinella?

  I would, that, that's not what I would be looking at.

• 1:37:08Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:37:09Steven Rinella?

  In making this decision, I wouldn't be looking at that.

• 1:37:11Speaker 06

  Especially if your goal is to kill a bunch more deer.

• 1:37:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I, I think that the, I, I think that the relevant, the relevant, in my mind, the relevant bits that I'd be looking at is, um,

• 1:37:23Steven Rinella?

  what is the evidence to suggest that bait legitimately and accelerates disease transmission? Like, how true is that? Is that really true? And then would this, um, is this really the most quickest, most effective way to, to bring up doe harvest? That's the things I'd be looking at. If I was chief of Michigan.

• 1:37:46Speaker 06

  They need to call that white buffalo company. Send them in there.

• 1:37:50Steven Rinella?

  Don't give them any ideas.

• 1:37:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, have Michigan taxpayers pay 400 bucks a deer.

• 1:37:56Steven Rinella?

  They'd be like, the first thing we do is grab a big bait.

• 1:37:59Speaker 06

  Then we put some collars on some other deer.

• 1:38:03Steven Rinella?

  Our two stories aren't talking to each other, dude. Because the, the eradication service, white buffalo, they say right off, first thing we do, get a bait pot.

• 1:38:13Steven Rinella?

  So.

• 1:38:14Speaker 06

  And a Judas deer.

• 1:38:15Steven Rinella?

  Case in point. Yeah, maybe Michigan should legalize Judas, using Judas deer.

• 1:38:20Speaker 10

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• 1:39:35Steven Rinella?

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• 1:40:02Speaker 03

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• 1:40:17Steven Rinella?

  Randall?

• 1:40:19Speaker 07

  All right. So, last week, there were a bunch of headlines out there about the overhaul of the Forest Service that was announced by the administration, I believe on like Tuesday afternoon, there was a press release that went out. And this has to do with the structure of, the structure and geographic location of the Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of our public lands. And you can read the press release to get the explanation firsthand there. There's a lot of the coverage out there that sort of gives a broader context to it.

• 1:40:58Speaker 07

  And a lot of the headlines are pretty alarmist. They say this is dismantling, things of that nature. And so I read as much as I could and talked to some folks that work in the conservation space to get their read on it.

• 1:41:16Steven Rinella?

  When you've read as much as you could, what is the, what happens? You fall asleep?

• 1:41:21Speaker 07

  Nah, I just.

• 1:41:22Steven Rinella?

  Read as much as you could find?

• 1:41:23Speaker 07

  We all get bored with it, you know?

• 1:41:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I read, I read like the most of the articles that people were sharing. And so the, the, the announcement describes this as a sweeping restructuring of the agency to move leadership closer to the forests and communities it serves. And so there's a couple of points to this that I'm going to hit on and kind of contextualize each one. The first is that they're going to move the, the headquarters from DC to Utah. And so.

• 1:41:56Steven Rinella?

  You interesting choice.

• 1:41:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, that, that's the one. Yeah, that, that raised a lot of eyebrows, I think, just given Utah's history with public land. And the, the press release has this quote from the governor of Utah saying, you know, we're excited about this. Great news.

• 1:42:10Steven Rinella?

  Cause this way they're closer, we can strangle them more easily.

• 1:42:13Speaker 07

  Yeah. And I think like, so one, like the bigger history is I guess there are, and this is sort of from behind the scenes, folks, like there are more and more Forest Service personnel that are gravitating towards DC, like the DC footprint of the agency has grown. But like, there's a good reason to have the headquarters in DC because the, the chief of the Forest Service and the deputy chiefs of the Forest Service work with the administration and work with Congress. Like they, their, their job is to be held accountable by the administration, Congress for what they're doing. And then their job is also to like,

• 1:42:51Speaker 07

  inform the, the federal, you know, the federal government of what, what's going on with the agency. So like, to move the, the, the head of the organization away from DC.

• 1:43:07Speaker 07

  I don't know if it's fair to say that it makes it less relevant, but it makes it harder for the people at the top to be effective in their jobs. So there's going to have to be a lot of back and forth, right? And so that's, that's sort of the first thing is like moving the, moving the, the agency's headquarters to Utah.

• 1:43:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, man.

• 1:43:24Speaker 07

  The other-

• 1:43:25Steven Rinella?

  That, that, I just kind of, I just want to meditate on that for a minute. Um, that's a weird one to me because you have the, the, the legislators-

• 1:43:36Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:43:38Steven Rinella?

  -in that state, the, their, their state representatives just have a, more than any other state have just a hostile relationship to public lands.

• 1:43:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:49Speaker 06

  It seems intentional. They could have picked anywhere, like-

• 1:43:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Speaker 07

  Yeah. And so the other, the other-

• 1:43:55Steven Rinella?

  It'd be like if the golfing, uh, like the golf association was like, we're going to move our headquarters to Steve's house.

• 1:44:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, that would raise eyebrows.

• 1:44:07Steven Rinella?

  You don't like golf? They'd be like, that's the point.

• 1:44:11Speaker 07

  Um, the, the next, like, the next sort of biggest headline out there is that they're, they're closing all the regional offices. So they're, right now, there's nine regional offices that oversee all the forests and grasslands across the country.

• 1:44:24Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:44:25Speaker 07

  Um, and they're going to move to a state-based model. So there's going to be 15 state directors. Um, some of those states-

• 1:44:33Steven Rinella?

  I got confused. Can you back? How was it? Remind me what it was before?

• 1:44:37Speaker 07

  So they're regions. There's like region one, region two-

• 1:44:40Steven Rinella?

  But how many were there?

• 1:44:40Speaker 07

  There are nine.

• 1:44:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay, sorry.

• 1:44:42Speaker 07

  So they're going to 15 state directors. Some of those oversee multiple states. Um, and this, like, the headline is that the regional offices, all the regional offices are being closed, but what's, what's really happening is it's transitioning to a model that more closely resembles, like, the BLM has state directors.

• 1:45:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:45:04Speaker 07

  Um, and so, so this is sort of more of a restructuring, although for the people in those regional offices, um, who may have to move or lose their jobs, like, there is, there is an impact on the ground, but it's not like all of that infrastructure is being dissolved. It's, it's transitioning to a state director model, which folks in the conservation space say works well for the BLM. So, um-

• 1:45:30Steven Rinella?

  And presumably- People assigned at the regional level will will be assigned at the state level.

• 1:45:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, that's.

• 1:45:39Steven Rinella?

  There'd be a re there'd be like a reshuffling.

• 1:45:41Speaker 07

  That's where it gets hard like.

• 1:45:43Steven Rinella?

  A shuffling.

• 1:45:43Speaker 07

  And this is something I'm going to touch on later on is like it gets hard to really understand the scope of the personnel changes that'll take place. Like, there's probably going to be a lot of turnover and and loss of institutional knowledge and.

• 1:45:57Speaker 07

  Have career, you know, career people sort of their paths. Take a left or right turn here. I I don't know that like we can even find that out at this point, how it's going to affect.

• 1:46:11Speaker 07

  Like, I would be doubtful if there's just a one to one, like you go to a different desk, but it's hard to say at that point. And then the the last one, I think, is is pretty significant, and they've announced that they're going to consolidate all of the research. That they do into a single Forest Service research organization in Fort Collins. So they're going to close fifty seven of seventy seven research stations across the country. Four in Michigan are closing, five in Mississippi and.

• 1:46:43Speaker 07

  This like there's, I don't really know how to explain this in a way that like.

• 1:46:49Steven Rinella?

  Do they have their own Forest Service research stations that sit outside of like USDA research stations? They must.

• 1:46:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:46:58Steven Rinella?

  For this is this is Forest Service specific.

• 1:47:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, and and like so not all of them are being closed. Like, I think that in the in the public communications have tried to emphasize that, like. Some like a lot of the fire. Stuff will will be less affected than everything else, but like. There's a real question about how do you study like southern pine forests? From Fort Collins efficiently. And then the other thing is that like each one of these research stations, a lot of them anyway. Are affiliated with like a research institution like a university, and so they rely on that lab space. So you can't just close sixty. You can't close like three quarters of the research stations out there, move all that to Colorado. And not lose something, right? And it just seems like.

• 1:47:44Speaker 07

  That seems like more of a like a defanging or squeezing of like the Forest Services research capabilities.

• 1:47:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Speaker 07

  And and that I don't really know like how you explain that that that is being beneficial to the Forest Service.

• 1:48:02Steven Rinella?

  I don't think they're trying to make it. I'm sure they're probably they're gonna probably be cute.

• 1:48:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:48:07Steven Rinella?

  And act like this is for the betterment of the agency, but that's silly.

• 1:48:13Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:48:13Steven Rinella?

  This is to this is to cripple.

• 1:48:19Speaker 07

  Hamstring on the end.

• 1:48:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Diminish lessen the impact of the agency.

• 1:48:24Speaker 07

  Is this?

• 1:48:25Steven Rinella?

  Right? I mean, like.

• 1:48:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:48:26Steven Rinella?

  Cause the architects, the architects aren't like, how do we make the Forest Service bigger and better?

• 1:48:32Speaker 07

  Right. I mean, I think there's like, I, I, I think there's, that's how the critics are reading this as like, this is a very deliberate attempt to like destroy it.

• 1:48:42Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'm not using the word destroy.

• 1:48:43Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, but but like.

• 1:48:44Steven Rinella?

  Diminish.

• 1:48:45Speaker 07

  Diminish it.

• 1:48:46Steven Rinella?

  Diminish its impact. No, I don't think, no, not using the word destroy.

• 1:48:51Speaker 07

  Right, right. But like, I think that, I think there's also this to like, give them some sort of benefit of the doubt. Like, there's this ideological thing that like, they need to get out of DC and be in the West and like, we have too big of a footprint. And so it might not be like necessarily like a, it might be a more principled things if you believe that the Forest Service is doing too much science out there. Um, I'm don't, I'm not in that camp, but, um, so this went through a public comment period, 47,000 emails, 14,000 specifically addressed the restructuring. More than 80% of those comments opposed it. And of the remainder, um, more of those were neutral than supported it. So like the support

• 1:49:35Speaker 07

  in the public comment period for this stuff was like 5%, something like that. So it was overwhelmingly opposed. The tribes have spoken out in opposition, a lot of conservation groups, and a lot of Forest Service, former Forest Service leadership has spoken out. And the message there is like, basically, nobody's asking for this internally. Nobody necessarily wants this. There's been no real analysis of the cost or the savings of this. And they did this with the BLM in the first Trump administration. They moved the agency headquarters to Grand Junction. It was way more expensive than they anticipated.

• 1:50:11Speaker 07

  And a lot of the people ended up just like either taking early retirement or quitting. Only forty-one of the three hundred and twenty-eight BL employees that they wanted to move out to Grand Junction actually did it. And then the Biden administration moved, they didn't move everybody back. They determined that, yeah, there are some jobs, I guess, that would be better suited to be out West and have more close connection with like the career field staff. But they did move the leadership back because it was just not working. So this, I mean, and this is all in the context of huge cuts to the Forest Service operations

• 1:50:54Speaker 07

  budget, huge cuts to the capital improvement and maintenance budgets. And the Forest Service is down already, twenty-five percent in terms of people, like human resources. And they have a hiring freeze in place with a lot of key jobs that are unfilled. So like, it just adds to this broader confusion and sapping of morale, I think. So I guess, like, in talking to people, I was kind of in the, I was kind of more aligned with the idea that this was

• 1:51:31Speaker 07

  a dismantling, you know, and I guess I still don't, I wouldn't repudiate that view. I talked to a lot of people that sort of talked me back from the edge a little bit. They said there's still a lot of inexplicable things in here and things that aren't going to be workable and they'll have to be reversed. But what was pointed out to me, and this is like, my takeaway is, there are a lot of other things, like, this is a big splashy headline. There's a lot of other things going on right now, like the roadless repeal, that are going to be far more impactful on the future of our national forests. Like, there's

• 1:52:10Speaker 07

  a pile of stuff right now that's happening that will ultimately undermine the Forest Service system as we know it. And this is kind of adding to that, but they're saying, and not to minimize like the impact on employees and all the chaos and confusion that's happening, but like, Ultimately, it's not like a five alarm fire, but it's also just like, do we need to do this? And is doing this, are we taking away from other important work? You know? So, I don't know. It's not, it's not encouraging. I was, I will say like my,

• 1:52:51Speaker 07

  my takeaway from it, I was a little more heartened after talking to like more experienced and knowledgeable people. But it's still just like a lot, it's just like a big pile of shit thrown at the wall to see what sticks, you know?

• 1:53:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:53:04Speaker 05

  And you can read more about that at the meat eater.com. Feds announce major restructuring and relocation of US foresters.

• 1:53:14Steven Rinella?

  Good job, Randall.

• 1:53:16Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:53:16Steven Rinella?

  Thanks.

• 1:53:17Speaker 07

  That's my first one.

• 1:53:19Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna, I was gonna ask, I was gonna ask. Let's wait on the mountain lion deal.

• 1:53:24Speaker 06

  All right, then. I always get screwed.

• 1:53:28Steven Rinella?

  It just, it just happened the other day.

• 1:53:29Speaker 07

  I'm just kidding.

• 1:53:31Steven Rinella?

  Did you say that lions always get screwed?

• 1:53:32Speaker 06

  No, I always do.

• 1:53:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay, go do your report.

• 1:53:35Speaker 06

  So we're gonna do it?

• 1:53:36Steven Rinella?

  If you want, I just feel we've been, we've been running, people are gonna have, they're, they got a limit.

• 1:53:39Speaker 06

  No, we're gonna, we're gonna do it. Cause then we're just gonna keep pushing it back. And you already said we were doing it.

• 1:53:46Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna have Phil beep it all out.

• 1:53:48Speaker 06

  Alaska, Alaska's opening a mountain lion season. Some of you might be asking why? Cause they don't have any mountain lions. Mountain lions are found most in the largest numbers in the western US and southwestern Canada, but they're most widely distributed large mammal in the western hemisphere. All the way from the Yukon down to the southern Andes and Chile. But historically, they're not native to Alaska.

• 1:54:14Speaker 06

  And since 1989, there's only been five documented mountain lion observations, all in southeast Alaska. Four of those were in game management unit three, which includes Wrangle and Petersburg. There've also been some unconfirmed tracks and sightings, mostly originating, originating in the Wrangle area. And researchers believe that these few mountain lions that have shown up are dispersed from mainland British Columbia.

• 1:54:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, dude trapped one, dude shot one. They've had four dead bodies.

• 1:54:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, yeah, most recently.

• 1:54:50Speaker 06

  Alaska Wildlife Troopers were notified in on June 3rd, 2024. That one had been shot and killed on the south end of Wrangle Island. Before that, it was 26 years. Uh. You gotta go back 26 years from 2024.

• 1:55:05Steven Rinella?

  No, because the wolf trapper caught one in a snare on Kuyu Island.

• 1:55:08Speaker 06

  Well, I that's not.

• 1:55:09Steven Rinella?

  Is that not true?

• 1:55:10Speaker 06

  This says 26 years in in 1998, a Wrangle trapper caught a mountain lion.

• 1:55:15Steven Rinella?

  That was that long ago?

• 1:55:17Speaker 06

  In a wolf trap on Kuprinov, Kuprinov, Kuprinov Island. And then a decade before that. 1989, one was shot near Wrangle. So it's all kind of in the same area where they're showing up.

• 1:55:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:55:30Speaker 06

  Um, anyway. So it might seem strange that Alaska now has a mountain lion season. Um, but the uh, the Southeast Alaska Board of Game recently like formally approved a new unlimited. Hunting and trapping season.

• 1:55:47Steven Rinella?

  Did you say unlimited or limited?

• 1:55:49Speaker 06

  Well, the the the hunting season is limited. It'll run August 1st to June 15th with a bag limit of one.

• 1:55:58Steven Rinella?

  It's a big season.

• 1:55:58Speaker 06

  Listen, wait, one animal.

• 1:56:00Steven Rinella?

  Break that to your wife. The honest, I mean, I'm not gonna be hunting pretty hard this season.

• 1:56:05Speaker 06

  For the hunting season, it's males only. Um, but there's also a trapping season in units one, three, four, and five, which will run November 15th through March 31st. Um, obviously trappers can't decide whether they're catching a male or a female. So they're they're not going to be held to that male only uh, regulation. Um, so you you know, like I I Steve's like, why, why are they doing? I'm like, well, I think they're just trying to get ahead of it. I'm sure Steve will say more on that, but. The the reason the board gave is they're trying to like regulate a small but growing predator population rather than have an animal that they're like.

• 1:56:47Speaker 06

  By regulation, they're they're not able to manage it, you know, through hunting and trapping.

• 1:56:52Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 1:56:54Steven Rinella?

  What I find interesting about this story is they feel that they're coming down the Stikine River.

• 1:56:59Speaker 06

  Right, that's it said they're following river drainages.

• 1:57:02Steven Rinella?

  I read this analysis was a handful of river systems that the headwaters of the river systems are glaciated. Or deer free and kind of the best approach be coming out of British Columbia. You could be into, you could be into good deer country and tip over into the upper Stikine and follow this Stikine down. And eventually get on the coastal areas and they're starting to pick off stick of black tails on the coastal areas.

• 1:57:28Speaker 06

  Interestingly, all of these, what is it, five that have shown up in this area, all male. So which makes sense with that like dispersal thing.

• 1:57:37Steven Rinella?

  Dispersing. There's a similar thing where mule deer for the first, you know, in recent years, mule deer have been showing up in Toko Alaska. Coming along the, the, the highway there, the following the highway corridor, development along the highway corridor, clearing along the highway corridor. And they don't want the deer coming in.

• 1:57:55Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:57:56Steven Rinella?

  Now, in that case, they don't want the deer coming in because think about the implications of something like, like disease issues. So cervid diseases coming in on this new animal showing up. And so if you see a mule deer, you can kill it. I think maybe you gotta have a valid license, but basically they like they.

• 1:58:11Speaker 06

  Shoot on sight.

• 1:58:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, acknowledging that they're there. It's like if you see a mule deer, you can kill the mule deer.

• 1:58:19Steven Rinella?

  So with the lion thing, I see it, like I understand leaving it that. I understand the need to say like they're here.

• 1:58:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:58:27Steven Rinella?

  Because clearly they're there. You could also say, hey, we're recognizing they're here. The state is going to put in a management policy that, that lions are here. We're accepting their, when you look in our regulations, you'll see lions are here. We may someday decide to have a season, but the state agency saying, yes, we accept, we have a population of mountain lions. There's a pathway to a mountain lion season down the road, but at this point in time, there's so few, they're coming in naturally, they're protected. Or the state's perspective, it could be this, it's like, they're coming in because things are getting warmer and there's less snow and different temperatures and deer,

• 1:59:12Steven Rinella?

  whitetail deer are moving north, mule deer are moving north and west. And a lot of this stuff is like human caused and they might be like, we don't want mountain lions. We already got wolves, black bears, grizzly bears, lynx.

• 1:59:25Speaker 06

  I feel like that's.

• 1:59:26Steven Rinella?

  We don't need a new cat species coming in because of changing environments and we don't want them. And so rather than just saying we don't want them, we'll say that they're basically open.

• 1:59:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:37Steven Rinella?

  And if you get one, you're not in trouble.

• 1:59:38Speaker 06

  I feel like that there's gotta be, that's part of it, especially in Alaska where they're, they work pretty hard to maintain their big game populations for the use of the people.

• 1:59:49Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 1:59:49Speaker 06

  Um, and this could present potentially a problem for the.

• 1:59:54Steven Rinella?

  I have more, not more, I have as much respect and faith in Alaska Department of Fishing Game, this is gonna blow, this is gonna piss people off, so have all kinds of reasons why not, but so I'm choosing my words carefully. I have as much respect for the integrity and aim of Alaska Department of Fishing Game as I do for any state agency. In terms of, um, looking at how do we protect wildlife resources, recognizing the importance of human use.

• 2:00:27Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 2:00:28Steven Rinella?

  And recognize the importance of traditional use practices, they're pretty spot on.

• 2:00:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:00:32Steven Rinella?

  Relative to any other agency. So I tend to look at, if they do it, I tend to go like, you guys are level-headed wildlife managers. I don't feel like you've been like infiltrated by animal rights activists or something like, you're level-headed wildlife managers and I kind of, you know, at this point, I'll be like, I, I trust your opinion.

• 2:00:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it's, look, I mean, mountain lions are doing pretty well throughout a lot of their range. This isn't, I think, gonna. Change that, you know, I don't think you can look at them as an invasive species. They're walking in there on their own, right?

• 2:01:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, walk, yeah, they're walking in on their own two feet, four.

• 2:01:08Speaker 04

  To me though, it feels more regulated than like we're doing this because we don't want another species.

• 2:01:16Steven Rinella?

  You mean the fact that it's closed for a month and a half?

• 2:01:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, like the, why not just have that, oh, you know, right to shoot policy like they do on the mule deer?

• 2:01:25Speaker 06

  Because I think classifying them as a game animal like gives them certain management.

• 2:01:31Speaker 04

  But why not do that with those mule deer and toke?

• 2:01:35Steven Rinella?

  It's a great question.

• 2:01:37Speaker 04

  What's the difference, I guess?

• 2:01:38Steven Rinella?

  We'd have to have someone, hopefully we can get, find someone to answer those questions for us. I want to invite a, I want to invite a correction.

• 2:01:44Speaker 06

  Does that mean you're gonna correct me?

• 2:01:46Steven Rinella?

  I am, I am virtually certain that more recently than what you're saying, like pretty recently, a dude hooked one in a wolf snare on Kuyu Island.

• 2:01:56Speaker 06

  That it's, you're probably right. I'm just going.

• 2:01:58Steven Rinella?

  What are they doing on those islands though, man?

• 2:02:00Speaker 06

  That's the thing.

• 2:02:00Steven Rinella?

  Those dudes are walking like, they're like dispersing, heading way down that thing and then swimming, man. Because they're not finding any females.

• 2:02:08Speaker 06

  They're not crossing ice, right?

• 2:02:10Steven Rinella?

  They're not finding females.

• 2:02:11Speaker 06

  When those lions showed up on Flathead Island here in Montana, like at least ice was a possibility there.

• 2:02:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and they're like smelling.

• 2:02:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:02:20Steven Rinella?

  Big horns, smelling dumb big horns, tame big horns.

• 2:02:25Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 2:02:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's a good question, man. It's a good question. Prince of Wales doesn't have them yet. There's no, you can't, if you see one on Prince of Wales, you can't shoot it or, or I don't know what.

• 2:02:34Speaker 06

  Well, it depends what region.

• 2:02:35Steven Rinella?

  They don't have a season.

• 2:02:36Speaker 06

  They gave the regions there.

• 2:02:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:38Speaker 06

  Um, but I think the hunting season, it's just the trapping season that's limited to certain regions.

• 2:02:43Steven Rinella?

  It's when it's wolf season, it's trap.

• 2:02:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:02:45Steven Rinella?

  When it's wolf, they're also protecting a wolf, you're also protecting a wolf trapper who accidentally hooks a cougar.

• 2:02:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:51Steven Rinella?

  That if he hooks a cougar, he's not in trouble.

• 2:02:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:02:54Steven Rinella?

  Which is cool.

• 2:02:56Speaker 06

  Yep. So?

• 2:02:57Steven Rinella?

  Someday, Yanni's great grandson will be up there with Mingus's great, great, great, great, great, great grandson.

• 2:03:05Speaker 04

  In a wet suit.

• 2:03:07Speaker 06

  Tree, tree of lions.

• 2:03:08Speaker 04

  Mingus's lineage stops with him.

• 2:03:11Steven Rinella?

  Oh, he's missing his testicles, isn't he?

• 2:03:13Speaker 06

  You can get him cloned. They do that these days.

• 2:03:16Speaker 04

  You're right. I could get him cloned.

• 2:03:20Speaker 05

  I got one news thing to end with.

• 2:03:22Steven Rinella?

  Please.

• 2:03:23Speaker 05

  What's the biggest crappie that any of you have caught?

• 2:03:26Steven Rinella?

  Don't know. Fifteen, sixteen inches, not huge.

• 2:03:29Speaker 05

  Or like pounds.

• 2:03:30Steven Rinella?

  Done their weight.

• 2:03:31Speaker 06

  Probably less than a pound for me.

• 2:03:33Speaker 05

  Two, okay, maybe you're super close.

• 2:03:35Speaker 06

  I think that's a big one.

• 2:03:36Speaker 05

  So, at the Lake of the Ozarks the other weekend, this is like so fun to find out about. It was the second annual Big Crappie Challenge.

• 2:03:45Steven Rinella?

  What was the biggest crappie in the Big Crappie Challenge?

• 2:03:48Speaker 05

  Two point three seven pounds.

• 2:03:50Steven Rinella?

  Can you get it to me in inches?

• 2:03:52Speaker 05

  This guy named Dave, no, I'll have to look for that. He won fifty thousand dollars.

• 2:03:56Speaker 06

  They take crappies seriously.

• 2:03:57Speaker 05

  Fifty thousand dollars. We gotta enter next, next year. Let me see.

• 2:04:01Steven Rinella?

  I'd have to know how many inches it was before I get a crappie.

• 2:04:04Speaker 06

  But, but, pretty good. A lot cheaper than going after a billfish and spending fifty grand on gas.

• 2:04:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well, Mercer line just got one forty-four bucks playing golf. I'd rather win fifty thousand dollars catching crappies.

• 2:04:16Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:16Speaker 05

  Uh, sixteen inches long.

• 2:04:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh. Did I say fifteen, sixteen? I'd like to take that back.

• 2:04:25Speaker 06

  That's what you call a slab, Corinne. They call it a big boy slab.

• 2:04:28Steven Rinella?

  Ask me again. Eleven, twelve inches?

• 2:04:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I just kinda caught myself in a lie there.

• 2:04:35Speaker 06

  You're gonna get a dozen emails. I'd like to offer a correction for Steve.

• 2:04:38Steven Rinella?

  There's no way Steve caught a speck that big. I haven't caught a speck that big. I was lying.

• 2:04:43Speaker 06

  Paper mouse.

• 2:04:44Steven Rinella?

  All right, everybody. Thanks a lot for joining.

• 2:05:13Steven Rinella?

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• 2:06:56Steven Rinella?

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• 2:07:39Steven Rinella?

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• 2:08:22Steven Rinella?

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• 2:08:26Speaker 00

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