Ep. 947: Are You Happy to See Me or Is That a Bird in Your Pants?

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater Crew Discuss: a songbird smuggler; are you smoking drugs or calling ducks?; the Chai Vang Massacre; a bobcat poaching ring; Steve as a big time anti-hunter; is Ambler Road the right move right now; and more. Subscribe to the new Blood Trails channel on YouTube @BloodTrailsTV https://www.youtube.com/@bloodtrailstv 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.

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• 1:41Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show, everybody. This week, we've got Jordan Sillers here at the news desk, which is news in and of itself, but he's going to cover some news, too. We got a bobcat poaching ring of criminals who desperately need to sharpen their pencils. What happens when a youth deer season hunting team starts losing some of their senior talent? Where are you most likely to get killed by hitting a deer with your vehicle? It's Delaware's turn to deal with CWD, so get ready for that civil war. Bird smugglers stuff birds down their panties.

• 2:19Steven Rinella?

  I feminized it.

• 2:21Speaker 05

  That's fine. Yeah.

• 2:23Steven Rinella?

  Underwear. No one cares about that story.

• 2:25Speaker 05

  Briefs. Yeah.

• 2:29Steven Rinella?

  Let me try this. We should AAB test this. Bird smugglers stuff birds down their briefs.

• 2:36Speaker 05

  That's alliteration. I like that.

• 2:37Steven Rinella?

  Versus, bird smugglers stuff birds down their panties. That's going to do way better.

• 2:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think panties will hit harder for the SEO.

• 2:46Steven Rinella?

  And more, but first, Operation Night Cat. Now, before I get into Operation Night Cat, I always thought, I always was under the impression that when you name an operation, you use code language.

• 3:01Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah.

• 3:02Steven Rinella?

  Like, my favorite wild, my favorite by far of all time, poaching bust was Operation North Shore.

• 3:11Speaker 07

  That was the one in, in Ohio?

• 3:14Steven Rinella?

  It was the giant deer meat, smoky, taxidermy, walleye tournament ring, racketeering, everything you love, racketeering, wire fraud, all the bad sounding crimes, but then when you get into it, it's basically dudes were shooting deer, making smoky sticks, selling smoky sticks in bars, and then taking that money to pay their taxidermy. And then one day, one of them runs off and catches a bunch of walleye somewhere, goes off to another state, joins a walleye tournament at a gas station, wins. And so then he had, like, all these fraud and racketeering charges.

• 3:57Steven Rinella?

  The wire fraud was because one of them, a guy poached a deer, and he had a girlfriend call the hotline to, to report the deer. So when you read it, it was like reading Al Capone's, it was like, like you're reading, like, Al Capone's rap sheet.

• 4:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:13Steven Rinella?

  But it was like this big venison smoky ring. Anyways, they didn't call it Operation Venice and Smokey.

• 4:20Steven Rinella?

  So Operation Night Cat, I feel that if you, let's say you were a bobcat poacher, and you're poaching them at night, and someone's like, hey, man, I heard that there's this operation brewing called Operation Night Cat. One might go, geez.

• 4:38Speaker 07

  I better be careful.

• 4:39Steven Rinella?

  I wonder if that involves me.

• 4:40Speaker 05

  I, I wonder.

• 4:41Steven Rinella?

  That's why you can't do that.

• 4:42Speaker 05

  I wonder, honestly, though, if, if they just make those up for the press release afterwards. And if they actually use the operation name when they're talking about it. I don't know. I don't know.

• 4:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 4:52Speaker 06

  But you would think it's only internally that they're using it.

• 4:55Steven Rinella?

  That's another thing.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  No, dude, because you got inside moles, man. They're probably just like, the, the case about the bobcats. That's probably what they, when they're talking to each other, like, what are you working on today? Oh, the case about the bobcat.

• 5:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, bobcats.

• 5:08Speaker 07

  I'm sure we can get a law enforcement or game warden to write in.

• 5:11Steven Rinella?

  If someone in New Hampshire can write in, we'd mighty appreciate it. Is, were you guys, just admit it, you shouldn't have called it Operation Night Cat, because you're going to tip off the offenders.

• 5:23Speaker 07

  I'd just like to know who gets to choose that, like, there's someone that gets to pick the name, like, a bunch of people put names in.

• 5:28Steven Rinella?

  I would have called it Operation Rolling Thunder.

• 5:31Speaker 07

  They already used that.

• 5:31Speaker 05

  Wasn't that, yeah.

• 5:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay, Epic Fury.

• 5:34Speaker 07

  There you go.

• 5:36Steven Rinella?

  Desert Storm. I don't know. I'd have come up something novel and called, and called it that. Now, anyways, here's what Operation Night Cat is all about. And it's like, well, it's one of these ones, I don't, and I'm not in any way, shape, or form, downplaying the crimes that we're going to get into. These are serious wildlife crimes. But what I like is when a poaching ring winds up racking up a lot of terminology that makes you feel like it's something much worse. You know, like, this is an international poaching ring. But what happens is this.

• 6:16Steven Rinella?

  Well, first off, let me tell why we're talking about it. Just right now, a bunch of these guys,

• 6:22Steven Rinella?

  three of these gentlemen involved in this bobcat poaching ring in New Hampshire, they've already pled guilty to state charges, but now they're dealing with their federal stuff. Okay, and they're going to be sentenced in October 20, and just now, this month, they pled guilty to some federal stuff, and they got sentencing coming up in January. But here's what these guys were up to, which is kind of an interesting deal these guys had going on.

• 6:47Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know this till this came out. I had no idea.

• 6:51Steven Rinella?

  New Hampshire is one of these states.

• 6:58Steven Rinella?

  And it's a dumb rule. They have a dumb rule. And I didn't break the rule, so I can say that it's a dumb rule. They have a dumb rule where they have no bobcat hunting in New Hampshire. I had no idea. Um, I learned the other day, I saw a headline, this is something, can you add this for the news show?

• 7:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 7:14Steven Rinella?

  California, there's, there's a little movement in California about bringing bobcat hunting back.

• 7:20Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 7:21Steven Rinella?

  That never happens. So for some dumb reason that I don't understand, New Hampshire has no bobcat hunting season, no bobcat trapping season, no bobcat hunting season. So these dudes in New Hampshire are licking their lips about how they could be making all this money trapping cats and hunting cats.

• 7:41Steven Rinella?

  All of them are, all of them are New Hampshire State Prison Corrections Officers.

• 7:48Steven Rinella?

  Some retired and some not. The, the main ones is this dude, Sherwood Dubry. Dubry. I would have dropped the R if I was him, just to be Sherwood Doobie.

• 8:00Steven Rinella?

  Randy Inman, these two are 48 and 49. So these are like dudes I'd be hanging out with, age-wise, right? They're in my little pocket. And Sherwood Dubry Senior, who's 72. So you got these two guys, one of them's dad, all corrections officers.

• 8:17Steven Rinella?

  And they want to start getting into the bobcat trade, but they live in a state where they can't trade in bobcats. So between 2018 and 2022, they're trapping and hunting cats. And they get like a little bait station going, they got thermal scopes, they got traps out, and they start harvesting bobcats. And they harvest a total of 41 bobcats during the period that they're looking at these guys' activity. But bobcats are a CITES species.

• 8:49Steven Rinella?

  The, the reason bobcats are a CITES species isn't because bobcats are, are threatened or endangered by any stretch. They're just, they're not, but they're a spotted cat. And many cats around the globe that are spotted are threatened and endangered. And so in order to monitor bobcat movements, you put a CITES tag on them to, and it's meant to avoid confusion between other endangered spotted cats.

• 9:16Speaker 07

  And the state, like, the states issue those CITES tags, correct? And no, New Hampshire does not issue those tags.

• 9:22Steven Rinella?

  There are a handful of things like this, like, like, we've talked about this in the past, but just as an example, in Texas.

• 9:30Steven Rinella?

  Where Jordan Sillers comes from.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  That's right. Great state of Texas.

• 9:33Steven Rinella?

  And the great state of Texas. Check this out. In the great state of Texas, there is no closed season on bobcats. There is no bag limit on bobcats. There is no salvage requirement on bobcats. Meaning 365 days a year, you could shoot bobcats in Texas and throw them in a ditch.

• 9:57Steven Rinella?

  No problem.

• 9:58Speaker 06

  Or not even pick them up.

• 9:59Steven Rinella?

  Or not even go even move them. Yeah. You don't even need to do the work it would require to put them in a ditch. Just not even go over there. You don't need to go over and even look to see if you got it or not. And you're A okay in Texas. But if you want to sell a Texas bobcat or move a bobcat from Texas to the Oklahoma Panhandle, you gotta go get a Cides tag on it because they're very interested in how spotted cats move.

• 10:28Speaker 06

  When you say move, you mean?

• 10:30Steven Rinella?

  Cross state lines.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  Right.

• 10:31Steven Rinella?

  And in the markets.

• 10:32Speaker 06

  They're the product or whatever. Humans, humans moving.

• 10:37Steven Rinella?

  Humans moving the hides. And you're like, well, are bobcats endangered? No, not at all. They're they're like, the IUCN has them listed as a species of least concern. But there are many very imperiled spotted cats, like the snow leopard, for instance. And so when you see a spotted cat on the market, it's just calling out, yo, this is a bobcat and not some crazy spotted cat that's in danger.

• 11:06Steven Rinella?

  So they can't sell their cats. Not only are they illegal getting them in New Hampshire, but they can't sell them. They can't send them out of New Hampshire legally to a fur market. If they were in a situation where let's say they weren't allowed to get muskrats or something like that, who that are not a Cides species. This whole thing probably would have never been detected. But what they had to do is they had to get their cats and send them to a buddy who's in a cat state.

• 11:33Steven Rinella?

  So they sent them to their buddy in New York and their buddy in New York goes down and he's like, hey, yo, I caught these in New York. And he gets Cides tags on them. Then they sent them to a Canadian auction house and sell them. The rub. So when I heard this, I was like, oh, I could see that they were tempted. Like I said, they were licking their lips at the cat market. But it turns out that the cats these guys are dealing with are cats caught between 2018 and 2022. Meaning these 41 cats they got were worth. The, do a drum roll, Phil.

• 12:10Steven Rinella?

  That's pretty good. 65 bucks a piece.

• 12:15Steven Rinella?

  That's what I'm saying. This is a poaching ring that you need to sharpen your pencils. Cause when you get into like the fines that these guys have generated about something so stupid.

• 12:28Steven Rinella?

  What I did a little, I did a little calculation.

• 12:32Steven Rinella?

  During these four years, these three guys who have good jobs are corrections officers. These four guys have made a grand total before they divided up their earnings. They've made themselves 2,665 bucks.

• 12:46Speaker 05

  Over four years.

• 12:47Steven Rinella?

  Over four years divided by four. What's that per year?

• 12:50Speaker 06

  That's not a good hourly rate.

• 12:51Steven Rinella?

  You're an educated man. You have a doctorate.

• 12:53Speaker 05

  500 bucks a year, I'd say. Yeah.

• 12:56Steven Rinella?

  So they're making 500 bucks a year.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  Not a lot.

• 12:58Steven Rinella?

  That's, you know, you buy something cool with that.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  But that's just, then they have to split it up. So each of them.

• 13:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:05Steven Rinella?

  But the other day, a friend of mine observed me. He, I have a diesel truck. He has a diesel truck. He observes me every time I fill my truck. I could have bought a Ruger 1022.

• 13:18Speaker 05

  That's depressing.

• 13:20Steven Rinella?

  He's like, I just stand there watching that thing go, oh, wow, I could have bought a 1022 or I could have bought a break open shotgun. Um, so yeah, they're making a little scratch. Now, that's, that's good, but I didn't mean it.

• 13:36Steven Rinella?

  Did you catch that, Phil?

• 13:37Speaker 06

  Not at all. I missed it. What was it?

• 13:39Steven Rinella?

  They're making a little scratch.

• 13:41Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:42Steven Rinella?

  The cat market.

• 13:43Speaker 06

  That was solid.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  It's pretty good.

• 13:45Speaker 06

  Cat scratch.

• 13:46Steven Rinella?

  Now, had they done it at last year's prices, had they done all these 40 cats at last year's prices, they would have pulled in 8,200 bucks. Not bad. Cause last year, cats in their surrounding states, like basically any cat walking last year was worth 200 bucks. So they would have made 8,200. Had they done it all last year, they would have made 8,200. So for their crime that brought them in 2,665 dollars, they are now on the hook for 20,500 dollars in restitution and fines.

• 14:23Speaker 06

  Is that just the state stuff? Cause the federal stuff hasn't been, yeah.

• 14:26Steven Rinella?

  That, here's the deal about, here's where you gotta start. If you're a poacher, here's where you gotta start thinking. The state, you know, there's a thing in wildlife law where the state will have a restitution thing. Like, let's say you were to come to, let's say you came to, well, we're sitting in Montana, so we'll do Montana. Let's say you come to Montana and you kill a, a Boone and Crockett bighorn sheep. You poach a Boone and Crockett bighorn sheep. The state is allowed to say, well, what's that worth? Well, the governor's tag for bighorn sheep and a guy buying the governor's tag is anticipating getting a Boone and Crockett bighorn sheep. Those governor's tags will go for 250,000, 300,000 dollars. So the state assigns a value to the wildlife.

• 15:12Steven Rinella?

  A, a small ram has a restitution that's different than the big ram. And a lot of states build in these like trophy restitution fees, meaning if you kill a giant trophy, the restitution goes up. The state restitution in New Hampshire on a bobcat that can't be monetized anyways is 500 bucks.

• 15:30Steven Rinella?

  So if you get caught poaching, if you catch a bobcat and sell it for 65 bucks and you get caught poaching for it, it's 500 dollars in restitution, not counting your fine.

• 15:40Steven Rinella?

  Am I trying to bring a level of like, of a level of rationality to poaching?

• 15:45Speaker 05

  Aren't real bright, seems like to me. Cause the, the other thing I noticed here is, um, one of the reasons they were caught and found guilty is because they're sending text messages back and forth to each other. Apparently some of them said, hey, I know this is wrong, but we're doing it anyway. You know, that kind of stuff. And also videos, it sounds like of them actually shooting the animals.

• 16:04Steven Rinella?

  And I think, but here's the thing that demonstrates there that they were rational beings. One of them texts another.

• 16:14Steven Rinella?

  This shows that they're, that they're like thinking people.

• 16:18Steven Rinella?

  One of these men sends another one a text message saying, I hope they don't start a bobcat season.

• 16:26Steven Rinella?

  Because that would lead to a lot of competition.

• 16:31Speaker 06

  Right. They had a monopoly going.

• 16:33Steven Rinella?

  He's like, he's like, we're making so much money. We're making so, wouldn't it suck if other guys could get in on this? And then it was just all legal.

• 16:51Steven Rinella?

  Uh, so they got federal sentencing coming up and, and where this, this is the thing we talk about a lot on the news show. And this is like, this is, there's a thing that gives wildlife law. There's a thing that really gives teeth to wildlife law. And it's like, here's, here's a hot tip to poachers. I, we should do a pamphlet.

• 17:12Speaker 06

  So you want to be a poacher?

• 17:13Steven Rinella?

  So you want to be a poacher? It'd be like, number one, the thing, if you are a poacher, if you're like a small scale poacher guy like these guys, there's one thing you gotta have like on your fridge on a magnet. Don't send shit to other states. I'm going to leverage the presence of Jordan Sillers. Cause people probably stick to hearing me talk about this. Jordan Sillers, you're, you're an expert in law because you host Blood Trails.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right.

• 17:41Steven Rinella?

  Now, why would you, if you're a budding poacher, you're an aspiring poacher, why would you have a fridge magnet that says, don't send shit to other states?

• 17:52Speaker 05

  Because as soon as you cross state lines, you bring in the feds. And, you know, if you're a criminal, you do not want to involve the federal government in your activities. Um, cause that adds another layer of investigative power, but also another layer of penalties, which you're going to get hit with if you are found guilty of federal crimes as well as state crimes, which is exactly what, what these guys got.

• 18:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Because of this thing called the Lacy Act.

• 18:20Speaker 06

  Do you think these guys were aware of the Lacy Act when they were?

• 18:23Steven Rinella?

  They are now.

• 18:25Speaker 06

  They are now. But were they, when they were, uh?

• 18:28Steven Rinella?

  I think the last time he used the word Lacy was probably Lacy lingerie or like, you know, whatever.

• 18:33Speaker 06

  Cagney and Lacy.

• 18:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. I feel like these guys, they didn't know how bad the, the punishment could be.

• 18:42Steven Rinella?

  So the late, the Lacy Act stuff, um, the Lacy Act stuff came about, I can't remember what year, but it was, it kind of came about it like during the dark ages of wildlife in America, which was late 1800s, early 1900s, when, when you had this emerging, this emerging group of conservation leaders, including, you know, well-known figures like Theodore Roosevelt and others who are trying to get a handle on,

• 19:10Steven Rinella?

  that, that states could make all these wildlife laws, but if the states don't get serious about enforcing them, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So a state would come in and they have people, whatever, you know, killing great blue herons and egrets to sell the feathers. And some state says, hey, from now on, you're not allowed to kill great blue herons or egrets. But they don't do anything to stop it. They, they would pass these laws and then they don't put any money into enforcement. They turn a blind eye. So they came up with this Lacy Act thing where they're like,

• 19:43Steven Rinella?

  The feds are very interested. So the feds are like, hey, if you, if you violate a law and cross states, like, we're gonna seize authority. And it was the Lacy Act that really let them start hammering wildlife traffickers and poachers. Because the feds got serious about it before many of the states did. And it still really stings you today.

• 20:05Steven Rinella?

  Um, I brought up earlier, that guy, a guy took walleye from one state and drove over to do a fishing tournament in another state, right? A guy like that is like, is innocuous as that might seem, a guy like that's violating Lacy Act. If you shoot a deer and turn it into smoky sticks, and you're selling those smoky sticks in Ohio, but then one day you happen to be over in Indiana and sell a batch of your smoky sticks at a bar you like to frequent in Indiana, you just got, now you're in trouble with the feds, man.

• 20:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it only takes one. It's not like your whole operation has to be out of state. It's like one violation where you're carrying that poached animal across state lines and the federal government can get involved.

• 20:48Steven Rinella?

  I just heard about a great Lacy Act deal. A guy that got stung on a Lacy Act, and it was as simple as this. He had, check this one out, he had poached a deer, I believe in Georgia, but his taxidermist was across state lines.

• 21:06Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 21:08Steven Rinella?

  And bam, federal.

• 21:09Speaker 05

  Yep. The other thing I noticed with this one is that they shipped them up to Canada. Now, not knowing anything about the fur, you know, not much about the fur trade.

• 21:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's the last thing I'll get into.

• 21:19Speaker 07

  Can I ask a question?

• 21:20Steven Rinella?

  Please.

• 21:21Speaker 07

  How were they, were they jack lighting these things and killing them at night? Like, what?

• 21:25Steven Rinella?

  They were, they were running traps.

• 21:26Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 21:26Steven Rinella?

  Because one of them mentioned, one of them mentioned choking a cat, which mean he trapped it and put a, put a noose on it like a dog, dog.

• 21:36Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 21:37Steven Rinella?

  With a catch pole. Yeah, put a catch pole on it. There is a catch pole called, it should probably be rebranded, but it's a very, very good catch pole, and I happen to have one called the death ray.

• 21:52Steven Rinella?

  It could, it could maybe use a rebranding, but it's like, sort of the gold standard of catch poles. But he, uh, the reason they're sending, they're sending up to the international fur auction.

• 22:04Speaker 05

  Just a bigger market, better, better prices.

• 22:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like a lot of country buyers, like if you, if you caught bobcats or muskrats, whatever, and you went to a country fur buyer, a local fur buyer, go to a local fur shed and sell your furs, that individual is almost certainly sending them to Canada, too.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 22:21Steven Rinella?

  So they're just sending them up to the big fur auction in Canada, which is where it just becomes international.

• 22:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 22:27Steven Rinella?

  The reason their cats aren't that valuable is that like, the color's poor, the fur quality's poor. Like, if they had done, do this, times, times, uh, forty, times, uh, eleven hundred.

• 22:43Speaker 07

  Steve says times like a elementary kid.

• 22:45Steven Rinella?

  Multiply. I don't give a shit what you call it, man.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Forty-four thousand.

• 22:50Steven Rinella?

  Had they done this last year in, let's say, Wyoming, they would have made that amount of money. How much money?

• 22:57Speaker 05

  Forty-four thousand.

• 22:58Steven Rinella?

  They would have made forty-four thousand instead of their two grand. So they're also operating in the wrong state. Well, they wouldn't have broke a law in Wyoming because they would have been allowed to catch cats.

• 23:07Steven Rinella?

  So, yeah.

• 23:10Steven Rinella?

  Poachers got to sharpen their pencils. If in fact, like, if in fact, this was all on their minds. But in an interesting case nonetheless, because it brings in so many aspects of wildlife law. And I'm a sucker for poaching rings. If you ever get tired of doing all those like murders and all that, Jordan?

• 23:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:27Steven Rinella?

  On blood trails, you might just think of one that explains.

• 23:33Speaker 05

  Inside the mind.

• 23:34Steven Rinella?

  Like, like, you know what? Mind of a poacher.

• 23:37Speaker 05

  Mind of a poacher.

• 23:38Steven Rinella?

  This is Jordan Siller.

• 23:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, which brings up, like, you know, maybe they were thinking they were gonna make some money, but I think there's also like, this kind of like, psychological aspect to where it's exciting to be doing something like, you know what I mean? They kind of get like addicted to that part.

• 23:55Steven Rinella?

  Listen.

• 23:55Speaker 06

  All the guys that we've talked to that have busted these rings, they say that's the number one reason they're in it.

• 24:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 24:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'll tell you what it is. Like, I feel it, because I, like, I've been pulled by all these, like, when I was young, we would, thank God, never did it across state lines, but a dollar, let me put it this way. A dollar made hunting, fishing, trapping is worth a million dollars made like digging a hole. It's just different.

• 24:26Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 24:26Steven Rinella?

  The feeling of that money in your wallet is just different. You know, I remember selling forty gallons of smelt for a dollar a gallon on the black market in high school. And that forty bucks, it was like having helium in my pocket.

• 24:48Steven Rinella?

  Like, I just felt like, I was like, dude, I'm like, fuck Daniel Boone, dude. And so I think that they're like, they get that money and they're like, I'm old school Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, like, like, the old hide hunters. It's just, it's just a, it's a kind of money that, to certain individuals, it's a kind of money that just feels different. You're making money doing what you love.

• 25:15Speaker 07

  And you're pulling a fast one.

• 25:17Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I'm not excusing it, man.

• 25:19Speaker 07

  No, no, I'm saying the pulling the fast one thing, that's part of it.

• 25:22Steven Rinella?

  That appeals to people, too. They're getting away with something. I understand. Yeah, I'm not, I find, this is the last thing I'll say on this whole thing, but, but, this, I get in trouble with my wife all the time for this. I'm often interested in, like, I'm more, I'm interested in the stories that people tell themselves. Meaning, let's say your wife's saying about two people you know, and they got a divorce or something, and the one of them did something horrible. I'm often thinking about, well, there's probably two sides of that story. But if you say it to your wife, she gets mad at you. So that, so, but I'm often wondering, like, what is, you know what I mean? So, and these guys,

• 26:04Steven Rinella?

  my, I'm not, it's, like, it's, it's bad what they did, and they're getting their due, but I'm also curious about what is in their mind.

• 26:13Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 26:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, I feel like you're giving them too much credit. I think we should try to get an interview with them to actually speak to these individuals. But, yeah, I feel like you're giving them too much credit.

• 26:24Steven Rinella?

  What was the credit I gave them?

• 26:26Speaker 06

  Oh, just that they're like walking around thinking that they're Daniel Boone because they made some money.

• 26:30Steven Rinella?

  They definitely were. They definitely were. It'll be a short interview.

• 26:36Speaker 06

  I don't think they're gonna agree to the interview on any case.

• 26:39Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 26:42Speaker 06

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• 26:46Speaker 02

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• 28:13Steven Rinella?

  All right, on to our news.

• 28:22Steven Rinella?

  That's you, Jordan. Come on, dude. Pull it together.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  I'm up now. Am I talking about Blood Trails?

• 28:28Steven Rinella?

  Yes, sir. Wasn't that why you're here?

• 28:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:30Steven Rinella?

  You thought you were gonna talk about the Lacy Act?

• 28:31Speaker 05

  I thought you were gonna tee me up, like.

• 28:33Speaker 07

  No, no, you're on your own.

• 28:34Speaker 05

  Alright, it's fine.

• 28:35Steven Rinella?

  This is a tight new show, man.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  It's fine. Yes.

• 28:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay, over to you, Jordan.

• 28:39Speaker 05

  Thank you, Steve. Um, yes, Blood Trails, season three is out now. Uh, episode one comes out today. As with the last two seasons, we have eight new episodes that will come out every Thursday over the next, uh, eight weeks. So each episode is a different story. Um, I'm really excited about this season. I, I think we, we have a nice mix of stories that you may have heard of before, but maybe not in quite this much detail. For example, um, we're covering the, uh, the Chai Vang murders from up in Wisconsin from 2004. So we talked with a bunch of game wardens. We talked with, uh, some of the, the families of the victims.

• 29:23Speaker 05

  We talked with our buddy, uh, Yevang. I talked with him. Um, and I think we do a good job really covering all sides of, of that story. And it's a, it's horrible. It's tragic.

• 29:35Speaker 07

  What's the first episode that's out today?

• 29:37Speaker 05

  First episode that's out today is kind of the other end of the spectrum. Uh, we, we cover some other cases that really have not gotten any coverage at all. Um, so the episode that's out today is about a high school kid. He was a senior. Um, up in Minnesota, he went up to, uh, a cabin with a bunch of buddies. They were gonna, they were gonna hunt. They were also gonna party a little bit.

• 29:59Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 30:00Speaker 05

  And he disappeared the next morning and has never been found. Um, no trace of him has ever been found. No, just nothing. He just disappeared.

• 30:08Speaker 07

  Really?

• 30:09Speaker 05

  Yep. And so it was kind of chalked up to, well, maybe he just felt, because it's a kind of a boggy, you know, marshy area up there.

• 30:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 05

  Maybe he fell in one of those, but he never rose up. There's not, his gun was never found. Um, and so they took a pretty hard look at some of the other boys who were at the cabin. And so there's questions.

• 30:27Steven Rinella?

  Sure, man.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  Even today, uh, you know, who knows what? And so I was able to talk with two of those boys who were there as well as, uh, Noel's brother, um, and some other folks. So it's a good one.

• 30:39Steven Rinella?

  One of the problems I have, and I'm not saying I haven't listened to this episode yet, a problem I have with listening to Blood Trails.

• 30:45Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 30:46Steven Rinella?

  Is oftentimes the guy that did it

• 30:50Steven Rinella?

  is, it's so clear who did it.

• 30:52Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 30:53Steven Rinella?

  All I can think about is how we could go kill that guy. Without getting caught.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:59Steven Rinella?

  Or when you got it narrowed down to two people that you'd get them both together, torture them.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 31:05Steven Rinella?

  To find out who did it.

• 31:06Speaker 05

  Steve's, so one thing I've learned.

• 31:08Steven Rinella?

  It's like, I just get so full of revenge fantasies. I gotta not, I gotta not listen.

• 31:13Speaker 07

  A dark story just got even darker.

• 31:15Steven Rinella?

  I'd be like, you know that guy did it, man. Someone's just gotta get him.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  Hey, I, um, I get that. And I tell you, the families get that too. Um, in this case.

• 31:27Steven Rinella?

  I don't know how they live. In some of the ca, in some of the past episodes, I don't know how the families can live where you're like.

• 31:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:32Steven Rinella?

  That guy hundred percent did it.

• 31:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:35Steven Rinella?

  But they never found the body. So the guy just gets to walk.

• 31:37Speaker 05

  Right. Yep.

• 31:38Speaker 07

  Do you gotta give your brain a break from these stories now and then? Like, all that dark stuff?

• 31:43Speaker 05

  I, I don't.

• 31:45Speaker 07

  It doesn't.

• 31:46Speaker 05

  It doesn't seem to, I mean, I'm, when I'm talking with, like, like just the other day, I talked with, uh, a mom whose son went missing, uh, up in Kalispell.

• 31:55Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 31:56Speaker 05

  And they never found him. And when I'm talking with her, I, I'm feeling for her, cause I have kids. Um, but I think I'm able to, you know, compartmentalize a little bit and not let it affect me in the day to day. I will say, I, I have intentionally, um, not covered stories about little kids. Because there are several pretty famous stories of like, you know, five year old wanders away from camp and

• 32:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 05

  It's kind of suspicious.

• 32:24Steven Rinella?

  I can see you doing that.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  I'm.

• 32:25Steven Rinella?

  That's you said.

• 32:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, we might, we might one of these days, but I just can't, I can't really

• 32:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  meditate on that for any length of time. So, um, but yeah, Blood Trails, season three, out now.

• 32:36Steven Rinella?

  Are there some episodes where you just know who did it?

• 32:41Speaker 05

  Um, there, there are a few where I have very strong suspicions. Um, and I'm of course not the only one. Um, uh.

• 32:51Steven Rinella?

  Do you have revenge fantasies?

• 32:54Speaker 05

  I, I don't personally.

• 32:55Steven Rinella?

  You don't get that feeling?

• 32:56Speaker 05

  No, I, I don't. I.

• 32:58Steven Rinella?

  I start thinking, but man, I don't want to get in trouble.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  Steve, I.

• 33:03Steven Rinella?

  Maybe Brody will, maybe Brody will get him.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  Steve, you and I have talked about a number of episodes. One of the things I have learned about you is Steve has a very strong sense of justice.

• 33:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 33:11Steven Rinella?

  Well, it comes to like murdering people. Yeah. Like the Bobcat deal, that's one thing, but this is a whole other level, man.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  It's, it's, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. I think, um, these victims need advocates. And a lot of times that's their family. Um, but people with that strong sense of justice, uh, you know.

• 33:28Steven Rinella?

  It makes me too mad. I gotta turn it off.

• 33:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, there will be several.

• 33:32Steven Rinella?

  I usually know who did it right off the bat.

• 33:33Speaker 05

  Several you will not like this season. Um, this first one, actually, there is, there is someone, um, who a lot of people are very suspicious of.

• 33:41Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 33:42Speaker 05

  In this first episode. And there's no smoking gun exactly, but there are state, he made some statements uh, that are very concerning.

• 33:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  Um, about what happened.

• 33:52Steven Rinella?

  Do you mind, do you mind backing up? You, you mentioned that, is it Chia Vang? Or, sorry, Kot, what was the name?

• 33:59Speaker 05

  Um, Chai Vang.

• 34:00Steven Rinella?

  Chai Vang. Do you mind, people will be familiar, most people will be familiar, but do you mind tou, touching on that? Cause it'll, it'll prod, people will remember this in their lives.

• 34:08Speaker 07

  It was a national, it was huge.

• 34:09Steven Rinella?

  This is like a national news story.

• 34:10Speaker 05

  Two, 2004, Chai Vang killed six hunters in, uh, northern Wisconsin and wounded two.

• 34:18Steven Rinella?

  In a shootout.

• 34:19Speaker 05

  In a shootout. Right. So what happened was he wandered onto some private land. Um, he got up in a tree stand that, you know, it was on private. Guy walks up, says, hey, you can't be here. This is private land. You have to get out of this tree stand. He comes down. He's walking, he's told to go, according to the guy who found him, he's told to go one way. He goes a different way. But he's, he's, it's kind of, it's amicable, like there's no yelling or anything at this point.

• 34:47Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 34:47Speaker 05

  Um, the guy that found Chai Vang radios back to the cabin, hey, I found a guy up here in, in this tree stand. Some guys at the cabin get on ATVs, drive out and confront Chai. Because apparently this had happened a couple of times before, trespassers on the property. Um, and so they, they start yelling at him. He probably yells back. There's this confrontation. Um, everyone agrees it doesn't get physical. There's no shoving, there's no punching, there's no fighting. The guys that come out from the cabin don't have guns. The only people who have guns are the first guy who found him in the tree stand and Chai Vang. Um, and so at this point, this is where the story, there's some disagreement.

• 35:30Speaker 05

  Um, Chai Vang's walking away. They see his back tag number. So at this, at this point in Wisconsin, you had to wear a tag on your, on your blaze orange with a number that identified who you were. So they see his back tag number. They say, hey, we're gonna call that in. You know, you're gonna get in trouble for trespassing. Um, Chai says, he's walking away. He looks back and sees the guy who had the gun, the, the original hunter who confronted him. He says that that guy had the gun, was shouldering it, and then he hears a shot and sees some dirt fly up. Everyone else who was there says that didn't happen. They say, no one shot, no one ever shot at you. Um, and so Chai turns around.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  He has a, uh, a military surplus. I forget the exact model, but it's, it's like an AK, basically. Uh, so it's semi-auto, has, has 10 rounds in it. He turns around, he unclips his scope from his gun. Because he's only 25, 30 yards away from these guys and starts shooting.

• 36:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but he had fought in the, he had fought in the secret wars.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  He had not.

• 36:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh, he had not. Oh, so he wa, he wasn't from, he didn't fight in Laos with the Americans.

• 36:43Speaker 05

  He, he was too young. His dad did.

• 36:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  He was in the Army National Guard in California.

• 36:49Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 36:50Speaker 05

  Where he had a, you know, sharpshooter badge, basically.

• 36:54Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  But he never saw combat. So this is something that I assumed when I first heard this story. This guy saw combat, you know, he had some form of PTSD and he's just reacting in a way that he had before.

• 37:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  But he never did. He never saw any active combat. Um, so he starts shooting all these hunters. And not only does he shoot and kill two of the guys there, he then chases after the, this, there's a father and son who were there. The father runs one way, the son runs the other. He chases after both of them and, and kills both of them. He chases them down, shoots them in the back, kills both of them. And then the cabin, the, the cabin is, there's more, there's other people at the cabin. They're getting, they're getting radio calls. They hear, hey, someone's shooting, send help. So two other people who are at the cabin, um, get on a four wheeler and drive out, and he also shoots both of them. Neither of them were armed.

• 37:49Speaker 05

  He claims the one guy was armed, but there was no gun that was ever found. So he shoots both of them in the back as they're driving past him. Uh, he shoots and kills both of them and doesn't kill them immediately either. He, he, um, has to finish the job basically on, on both of them.

• 38:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:05Speaker 07

  How many people total then?

• 38:06Speaker 05

  Six people died and two were wounded.

• 38:09Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, so you can ima, I mean, you can imagine like

• 38:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:14Speaker 05

  how much attention this got. Um, court TV like filmed the whole trial, uh, the next year. And so we, we have some of that footage where we play, um.

• 38:25Steven Rinella?

  And you're gonna dig into this whole story. Who did what?

• 38:27Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 38:27Steven Rinella?

  When, why?

• 38:28Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 38:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  Um, so that's episode two. That'll be out next week.

• 38:34Steven Rinella?

  Congratulations, man.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 38:36Steven Rinella?

  And then we're working on a hot one.

• 38:38Speaker 05

  Yes. Yes, we are.

• 38:40Steven Rinella?

  The hottest one.

• 38:42Speaker 07

  Your passion project?

• 38:43Steven Rinella?

  Passion project, yeah. Uh, youth, youth deer season's coming up here, uh, and youth deer season's coming up, Montana, and it's a big, it's a big change this year, cause we're losing.

• 38:55Steven Rinella?

  We're shedding a lot of senior talent is what's happening.

• 38:59Steven Rinella?

  You just get them up where they know, you just get them up where they understand and then, and then they age out.

• 39:04Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 39:05Steven Rinella?

  That ends at 15.

• 39:07Speaker 07

  My kid didn't. Yours did. Mine didn't.

• 39:09Steven Rinella?

  I thought you, I thought you were aged out.

• 39:11Speaker 07

  No, he, he's got a cross country meet. He's committing to that team.

• 39:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's right.

• 39:15Speaker 07

  Remember you were giving him shit about it?

• 39:17Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so we only got one aging out?

• 39:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:19Steven Rinella?

  Well, yeah, but we got a lot of problems. We got one that's into some kind of, we got one that's in a brace.

• 39:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 05

  Injured.

• 39:25Steven Rinella?

  Injured from a, from a rock climbing incident.

• 39:28Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 39:30Steven Rinella?

  Um, we got one aged out.

• 39:34Steven Rinella?

  We got one sticking, staying true to his team.

• 39:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, and he's got, I don't think he would be doing this, but he's got a, a mule deer tag in Colorado this year. So he's got a fallback.

• 39:46Steven Rinella?

  He's got a fallback hunt, yeah. Yanni's elder daughter, this is her last year.

• 39:51Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 39:53Speaker 06

  See, I feel like, yeah, I mean, obviously they'll be better after this hunt than they are before this hunt. So they'll have more experience, but I feel like I'm coming in right now with my varsity team.

• 40:07Steven Rinella?

  You got some seasoned players out there.

• 40:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're, they're, they're, they're gonna get the job done. They're gonna hike hard. They're not, there's gonna be a lot less whining, like we're, we're. I knew they were fired up about this one, cause when I, like a week going away, okay, we need to start packing, right? Like, let's get the things, like get them in piles at least, you know? Get your, the hunting gear and the clothes and, and just a pile of socks and get in, usually.

• 40:32Steven Rinella?

  Usually you're wasting your breath.

• 40:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, three days later, you're like, okay, we started and as of three days ago, I think everybody's pretty much packed and ready to rip.

• 40:41Speaker 07

  Well, they better be.

• 40:43Steven Rinella?

  That's great.

• 40:43Speaker 07

  Cause they only got.

• 40:44Steven Rinella?

  Hours.

• 40:45Speaker 07

  Hours. It's kinda nice though, going like after you.

• 40:49Steven Rinella?

  Well, twenty four.

• 40:50Speaker 07

  After you build that veteran up, it's kinda nice going back to the beginning with the younger, the younger ones.

• 40:56Steven Rinella?

  See, I know, that's what, I'd be all like depressed and everything, like the other day, I, I, I knew it, but I didn't really put it together that my older one's a junior. Oh, it's like a gut punch. He's gonna move away.

• 41:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, he was ten when we started, or ten.

• 41:10Steven Rinella?

  I know, but now it's like, he's gonna like go off and.

• 41:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 41:13Steven Rinella?

  I don't want him to go away.

• 41:14Speaker 07

  I know, that's how I feel about my kid. I'm like, are you gonna go to school here in town?

• 41:17Steven Rinella?

  That's what I was telling him. I'm like, you gotta apply to local school.

• 41:21Speaker 07

  You can stay here if you want.

• 41:22Steven Rinella?

  Dude, like, hit me, we were out, we were out pronghorn hunting and all of a sudden, like, it never really hit me. I was like, he's a junior, man. He's gonna move away.

• 41:31Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 41:31Steven Rinella?

  I gotta find a way to hold him captive. But anyways, I got, so I still got an eleven year old.

• 41:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 41:37Steven Rinella?

  So I got plenty of seasons left, man.

• 41:41Speaker 07

  That, it won't be that long, it'll just be me and Steve and the two young ones.

• 41:45Steven Rinella?

  Oh, quiet camp, dude. Quiet camp. But the nice thing is that I was bringing, he's gonna be exceptionally seasoned because he for years had to come along and couldn't even hunt.

• 41:57Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 41:58Steven Rinella?

  He had to just walk along.

• 42:01Speaker 06

  So we might have to next year introduce some, uh, maybe invite a new family, introduce some fresh blood.

• 42:06Steven Rinella?

  Recruit some fresh talent. Yeah, we need like a talent scout.

• 42:09Speaker 07

  Cory's kid.

• 42:10Speaker 06

  Oh, he's eight this year, so he, he'll, he's, he'll be ready to go in two years.

• 42:15Steven Rinella?

  Let's grab that guy.

• 42:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 06

  Marshall.

• 42:17Steven Rinella?

  We should tell him he can come right now and just start the.

• 42:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 42:20Steven Rinella?

  What do you call that? Like, uh, what do you call that? You'd be like a bench warmer.

• 42:23Speaker 07

  Training.

• 42:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, bench warmer. Yeah, we need to recruit talent. It's gonna get quiet around there.

• 42:30Speaker 06

  If we bring Marshall, it won't be quiet.

• 42:34Steven Rinella?

  Let's grab him. Speaking of kids, the other day I sent, this is so funny, the other day I sent my boy, I'm like, hey, go get your sister from school. We, I, he had to go get his sister from school early, cause we're taking off to go hunting. So he takes his buddy to go and they go down to the junior high school and they're like parked in the parking lot. They're, they're trying to learn how to blow duck calls and they can't figure out why, but some lady is like staring at them.

• 43:00Steven Rinella?

  And they watch her and pretty soon she's over talking to a cop.

• 43:05Steven Rinella?

  And then pretty soon the cop is over banging on their window. And they roll the window down and he goes, oh, is that a duck call? He goes, someone said you were in here smoking drugs.

• 43:24Steven Rinella?

  So he says, the cop then has a laugh and he watches the cop go back over to talk to the reporting, to talk to the reporting party and clear up and, and clear the air on the violation.

• 43:35Speaker 07

  Too funny, man.

• 43:36Steven Rinella?

  Um, one other one, I, I was at a pancake, a fire department fundraiser the other night and it was a pancake sausage dinner. I'm sitting there and I'm referring to the pancakes on my plate as flapjacks. My kid's like, why do you call them flapjacks? I'm like, it's a synonym. It's a pancake synonym. Flapjacks are pancakes, pancakes are flapjacks. And there's this old timer sitting across from me at the bench folding table. And I said, sir, you probably know the word flapjack. He says, I'm familiar, but those are pancakes.

• 44:12Steven Rinella?

  So like what? I don't know.

• 44:16Speaker 07

  I think you're right.

• 44:17Steven Rinella?

  Flapjack is just like a. Flapjack's a freaking pancake.

• 44:20Speaker 05

  That's a more fun word, I think. Flapjack. I like that. More fun to say.

• 44:25Speaker 06

  I'm bringing big old, the giant bag of crusties flapjack mix to youth camp, so we're gonna eat a lot of pancakes one morning.

• 44:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay, time for your news.

• 44:38Steven Rinella?

  On a recent episode, we had discussed this, we had discussed, speaking, speaking of, of game laws, we had discussed what happens.

• 44:49Steven Rinella?

  Let, let's, let's assume you live in a state where you can't shoot deer with a spotlight, which is all the states. And your state spells out legal method of take.

• 45:01Speaker 07

  And legal shooting hours.

• 45:02Steven Rinella?

  And legal shooting hours. So legal shooting hours is thirty minutes after sunset. Legal method of take, meaning it's archery season, so you're allowed to shoot a deer with a bow, whatever. But all of a sudden you like do a thing that commonly happens where a hunter goes out and they hit a deer. Okay, and they wait an hour, so now it's dark, they're hunting in the evening, they hit a deer, they wait an hour, they go out and they find the deer and lo and behold, the deer is still alive. It, it's, it's dying, but still alive.

• 45:29Steven Rinella?

  Most guys in this situation is you'd take, you'd shine a light, right? Oh, there he is. He's still alive. And someone's gonna shoot him with a bow. Or you cut its throat.

• 45:42Steven Rinella?

  Well, if you cut its throat, you've now killed it with a, with something that's not a legal method of take. If you shine a light and shoot it, shoot it with an arrow, you just spotlighted a deer.

• 45:52Speaker 07

  And shot after legal.

• 45:53Steven Rinella?

  And shot after legal shooting light. So we were, we were wondering, why don't more states contemplate these scenarios and clear it up? Because you could feasibly come across a wounded deer at night and be like, well, it's after legal shooting light, I can't shoot. And I was pointing out that, that I'd never even thought of this and I would, prior to this ever dawning on me, I would without hesitation, use a flashlight and shine it and, and, and, and put another arrow into it. Right? Without hesitation. So I wondered why, like, are, is this a common violation? Why isn't this contemplated in game laws? And the listener wrote in with, from, from North Carolina.

• 46:36Steven Rinella?

  And in North Carolina, they, they've contemplated it with very specific language, which is, which is, I had never, I had never heard of this before.

• 46:48Steven Rinella?

  In North Carolina, you have until eleven PM to dispatch a wounded animal after legal hunting hours. Here, here's the wording. This is pretty great. If a hunter kills or wounds a big game animal during legal shooting hours, that's, that's, that's an important detail here. During legal shooting hours, the hunter may use a portable light source and a single dog on a leash to assist the hunter in retrieving the dead or wounded big game animal and may dispatch a wounded big game animal using a twenty-two caliber rimfire pistol,

• 47:30Steven Rinella?

  archery equipment, or a handgun otherwise legal for that season.

• 47:37Steven Rinella?

  You have until eleven PM.

• 47:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a great, it's a good way to like, kind of prevent some malarkey with like high powered rifles and spotlights.

• 47:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 07

  You know, just short range stuff.

• 47:53Steven Rinella?

  No, that's a great, I think that that, that's a thing, I'd be curious to hear from other game wardens about it, but that's just like an interesting wrinkle that just had never occurred to me. Until I heard of a guy getting a citation for shooting a wounded deer at night with a light.

• 48:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm surprised someone, a game warden would, like if it's clear he's not spotlighting, he's not poaching at night. If it's clear he shot during legal hours, I'm surprised a game warden would issue a citation like that.

• 48:19Steven Rinella?

  My understanding though, is that, that the deer was duking it out with a dog in a pond.

• 48:29Steven Rinella?

  So maybe there's a question of like, just how wounded was it? Yeah, I don't know.

• 48:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:33Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 48:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:35Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 48:41Speaker 02

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• 50:09Steven Rinella?

  Yanni.

• 50:10Speaker 06

  Yep, that's where it gets tricky.

• 50:13Speaker 06

  Uh, hold on, you want me to read this number two about shooting the buck with the crossbow?

• 50:18Speaker 07

  No, no, we can, we're good.

• 50:19Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, we're good there.

• 50:20Speaker 06

  All right.

• 50:21Steven Rinella?

  No, but the guy had a specific question for you.

• 50:23Speaker 06

  Ryan wrote in, just finished watching the whitetail rut hunt with Yannis. Yannis mentioned how he was spending 12 hours a day sitting in the saddle. Now, I am no saddle hunter. That is a really long time to be up in a tree with no potty breaks. My question for the crew is, what do they do for bathroom breaks on those all-day sits? Um, I just pee right out of my tree stand and somehow, at least for the last six years, I'm very lucky that somehow I just get into a pattern where I literally make it all day. And then when I get home, I, uh, empty my bowels, I go to sleep, I wake up, and I do it all again.

• 51:07Speaker 06

  So I haven't had to deal with, uh, number two in the saddle. If I had to, I would climb down, dig a hole, poop in the hole, and then climb back up in the tree.

• 51:18Steven Rinella?

  You're able to take a whiz right out of that saddle, huh?

• 51:20Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:21Steven Rinella?

  Just like normal.

• 51:21Speaker 06

  Just like normal.

• 51:22Speaker 07

  I wonder if there's any super hardcore whitetail tree stand hunters that wear those adult diapers?

• 51:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Speaker 06

  Uh, I haven't heard of that, but there's definitely people that still pee, uh, in a bottle.

• 51:35Speaker 07

  Right.

• 51:39Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. Oh, you know, like Buckman juice?

• 51:42Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. Which is Doug Dern's urine.

• 51:45Steven Rinella?

  Which is Doug Dern's urine.

• 51:48Steven Rinella?

  I was helping my, I was helping my boy set up. My boy was trying to get a, a whitetail doe with his bow. And I was taking a whiz down below there and, um, and he was like worried about it. And I said, man, a deer probably want to come up and smell it. And he sat there and he said, sure enough, a fawn came along and smelled that, smelled that Buckman juice.

• 52:06Speaker 07

  There you go.

• 52:07Steven Rinella?

  But yeah, I remember being very, like, when, when I did a lot of, like, growing up, doing a lot of tree, tree stand hunting. I remember being, there was a common conversation, people being very concerned about urine, human urine. It like in the, in like the serious whitetail world, is that conversation over?

• 52:25Speaker 06

  No.

• 52:26Steven Rinella?

  It's so, okay, so, so like guys that really know, still wonder about it.

• 52:30Speaker 06

  There's still people that, uh, take precaution not to just pee to the base of their tree.

• 52:36Steven Rinella?

  Because they feel that what?

• 52:38Speaker 06

  That if a deer comes downwind and for some reason wouldn't smell them, but would only smell the urine. I don't know if, you know, higher, lower air currents or whatever, but that somehow the urine would spook the deer. But I've just seen it too many times now where I am on a high ridge and I know my wind's blowing, you know, clearly off the ridge, way down and something disappearing into the atmosphere.

• 53:03Steven Rinella?

  Uh-huh.

• 53:04Speaker 06

  But that pee at the base of the tree is like right there and deer come right by it. And they stop, they smell it, but I've, I've never had them blow out because of it.

• 53:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 06

  I think it just turns to ammonia.

• 53:18Steven Rinella?

  Pretty quick.

• 53:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:20Steven Rinella?

  Um,

• 53:23Steven Rinella?

  this came across my awareness, my desk the other day. That, uh, I was kind of surprised by that. Well, I don't know, sort of surprised.

• 53:31Speaker 07

  You gonna let Phil play the sound?

• 53:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you got a good one, Phil?

• 53:39Speaker 07

  Every week.

• 53:40Speaker 06

  Same one every week.

• 53:41Steven Rinella?

  Time for the news, dude. No, I thought maybe you got in there and crafted a new one. No, that was a good one, Phil. Thanks, man.

• 53:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're welcome.

• 53:47Steven Rinella?

  That's cute. Thank you.

• 53:48Speaker 06

  Cute is what I aim for.

• 53:49Steven Rinella?

  Check this out, and this makes sense a little bit.

• 53:53Steven Rinella?

  In the state we're sitting in right now in Montana, this is the state where you're most likely to be killed by hitting wildlife with a car.

• 54:07Steven Rinella?

  So not that you're gonna hit it, but that you're gonna die hitting it.

• 54:09Speaker 07

  This is just wildlife, not just, or this is wildlife.

• 54:13Steven Rinella?

  Other animal.

• 54:14Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 54:15Steven Rinella?

  Deer, oh, oh, I about got killed there and I hit someone's black Angus.

• 54:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:20Steven Rinella?

  Which blends in, which blends in exceptionally well with a black.

• 54:23Speaker 07

  No, I just asked because Montana has moose and elk and.

• 54:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh, no, that's why. That, I bet you, that's gotta be why, that's gotta be why the fatalities are so high because you're hitting stuff that's big and it comes up into the windshield, man.

• 54:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:37Steven Rinella?

  You're knocking the legs off from it, sending it into the windshield.

• 54:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:41Steven Rinella?

  So

• 54:44Steven Rinella?

  these guys looked at all, the whole country dying, dying from hitting wildlife, 2015 to 2024.

• 54:51Speaker 06

  Hold on, did it say why PlayCasino.com was looking into this?

• 54:56Steven Rinella?

  Because I, I don't know, they might just, they might just generate like a bunch of, uh, vi- viral statistics stuff, which I'm a sucker for.

• 55:05Steven Rinella?

  I don't know why. The data experts at Play Casino.

• 55:08Speaker 07

  They got their information from like the Department of Transit, yeah.

• 55:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, Department of Transportation. So there's some interesting numbers though. Between 2015 and 2024, so 2024, yeah, so a nine year, during a nine-year span in America, 2,115 people

• 55:29Steven Rinella?

  got killed from hitting wildlife with cars. But here's the crazy deal, Hawaii in that time period, not a single person in Hawaii was killed hitting something. All those hogs, all those chickens, all those Axis deer, no one gets killed by hitting chickens, but.

• 55:47Speaker 07

  Wild cattle.

• 55:48Steven Rinella?

  Scratch chickens. Yeah. An Axis deer must be like, it just doesn't have the necessary ass to kill a person.

• 55:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:57Steven Rinella?

  No one in Hawaii in nine years died hitting wildlife. But when you're driving around Hawaii, there's junk all over in the roads.

• 56:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, no one like swerved and like hit a, you know, concrete barrier.

• 56:09Steven Rinella?

  I don't know if they count that.

• 56:10Speaker 05

  Uh, so they have to hit the animal.

• 56:12Steven Rinella?

  Maybe. I gave my boy a talking to the other night. I let him take the wheel driving at night and there's a lot of junk in the road. And I'm like, you know that just like run it over, man. It's sad, but.

• 56:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 56:21Steven Rinella?

  You know, it's just how it goes. Uh, interesting thing about it too, is these fatalities, it like, it just makes total sense. These fatalities peak

• 56:36Steven Rinella?

  in October, November.

• 56:39Steven Rinella?

  It's like the rut, man.

• 56:40Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 56:41Steven Rinella?

  Like during the rut, Americans die hitting deer with cars.

• 56:45Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, you drive down 90 here between Belgrade and Yannis's, you know, Bozeman. It's like whitetail's dead everywhere.

• 56:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. All over in the roads, man. Uh, so

• 57:00Steven Rinella?

  the, the, this, this data is like, it's like likelihood, right? So it doesn't deal in sheer numbers. But in sheer numbers, the number one hitting state, the number one death state for hitting wildlife is Texas. Lot of people, enormous numbers of deer, fast people.

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Fast speed limits.

• 57:19Steven Rinella?

  Free people.

• 57:21Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 57:22Steven Rinella?

  Just infused with freedom.

• 57:24Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 57:24Speaker 06

  And that.

• 57:25Speaker 05

  Eighty mile an hour speed limit.

• 57:27Speaker 07

  Those high fences don't make a difference in that case, huh?

• 57:30Steven Rinella?

  Just a lust for freedom, a lust for freedom, barreling down the Texas highway.

• 57:35Speaker 05

  That's right. Yeah.

• 57:36Steven Rinella?

  And a, and millions of deer.

• 57:39Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 57:39Steven Rinella?

  More deer than we have people by far. Um, 210.

• 57:48Steven Rinella?

  Pennsylvania, 135 people that people killed hitting wildlife. Michigan, 124 from people hitting wildlife. Michigan and Wisconsin are kind of like very much the same place. So, uh, Michigan, 124, Wisconsin, 121.

• 58:04Steven Rinella?

  I've always made the case, I don't know if this is true, but I feel like it's true. Someone should do a poll. I think a person in Wisconsin is more likely than a person in Michigan to know what watershed they live in.

• 58:16Speaker 05

  Hmm. Why do you say that?

• 58:18Speaker 07

  Wisconsin versus Michigan?

• 58:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I think that it'd be like a great way of measuring, this would be a good money for like, if a good, if someone was a researcher, you would do a survey and find out who, what state has the most sort of environmentally aware populace? And to measure it, you would just say, if you take a piss, what is your piss's route to the ocean?

• 58:47Steven Rinella?

  And if they could do it,

• 58:50Steven Rinella?

  right, if they could say Bear Creek into Muskegon River, Muskegon River into Lake Michigan, Lake Michigan into the St. Lawrence out into the Atlantic, you'd be like, cool.

• 59:05Speaker 05

  Can you imagine calling, calling someone on the phone?

• 59:09Steven Rinella?

  Uh, I was only bringing that up because they have a remarkably similar number, 124 and 121 people killed hitting deer. California, 80 people killed hitting deer.

• 59:20Steven Rinella?

  But for statistics,

• 59:24Steven Rinella?

  Montana,

• 59:27Steven Rinella?

  more than double the rate in the second place, Wyoming, more than double the rate of dying hitting deer.

• 59:35Speaker 05

  I wonder if there are like specific, like specific locations. Like in Montana, like specific locations that just like funnel animals and there's a highway.

• 59:46Speaker 07

  Isn't that Sealy Highway?

• 59:49Steven Rinella?

  That's a deathbed, yeah. That's a deathbed. I got a buddy. He used to work, he was a tree surgeon. We used to work together.

• 59:58Steven Rinella?

  Like, I'm gonna say it, you're gonna think that it's a lie, but he showed, we were right where it happened and he walked me through it. He killed seven whitetails in one hit.

• 1:00:08Speaker 07

  Holy cow.

• 1:00:09Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:00:09Steven Rinella?

  He showed me where it happened.

• 1:00:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think I remember you saying it was so bad. I don't know if it's still that bad, but it affects like bald eagle.

• 1:00:17Steven Rinella?

  Golden eagle.

• 1:00:18Speaker 07

  Golden eagle.

• 1:00:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's a golden eagle migration corridor. Because the deer, there's so many dead whitetails on that road.

• 1:00:27Steven Rinella?

  Over to you, Jordan.

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  All right.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  Here we have a story, another crime story, uh, that caught my attention for reasons that will become obvious.

• 1:00:39Steven Rinella?

  Because it involves men's underwear.

• 1:00:40Speaker 05

  In a moment.

• 1:00:43Speaker 05

  Um, all right, so a Cuban man, um, permanent resident in the US, but a Cuban citizen named Alberto Hernandez Castillo was picked up at Miami International Airport. I think it was last Sunday. Customs and Border Patrol officers noticed what they described as a strange bulge in the man's pants. Um, now, you might be wondering why they would be interested in such a thing. Um, according to the criminal complaint, Castillo appeared to be nervous and when asked, couldn't offer a believable explanation for what was going on down there.

• 1:01:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, are you happy to see me?

• 1:01:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Steven Rinella?

  Or do you have birds in your pants?

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  Exactly. Right, right.

• 1:01:27Speaker 06

  I would have loved to know what his explanation was.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  Turns out it was the birds. Um, the complaint says, I'm just, I'll just quote from it here. The pat down, uh, revealed that Hernandez Castillo was concealing six cylindrical clear plastic containers. Um, so six plastic cylinders, they were each wrapped with tape and then had black mesh material near the opening. Um, and, uh, Phil has some photos, I believe.

• 1:01:56Steven Rinella?

  I love when people come prepared with photos.

• 1:01:58Speaker 06

  Which one do you want to pull up here, Jordan?

• 1:01:59Speaker 05

  Uh, let's do the, the one with the pants.

• 1:02:05Speaker 05

  In question.

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  So each of these tubes was sewn into his underwear and each tube contained live birds. Um, now, if you're on YouTube watching this, which you should, you can see this photo here. Um, interesting outfit for someone trying to evade detection. That's just kind of an aside. Um, the gold shoes are a bold choice.

• 1:02:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he looks like a dude who's like, he looks like a dude who has in mind that people are gonna be like, what would that guy's up to?

• 1:02:36Speaker 07

  I don't know. You could go the opposite way and say it's just like so distracting that you wouldn't even think.

• 1:02:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's like, dude, they're gonna be so tripped out by my clothes. They're not gonna notice my bulge.

• 1:02:45Speaker 05

  Every, every NBA logo on my shorts.

• 1:02:50Speaker 05

  So it's a little unclear. We don't know from the complaint exactly how this worked. We know that these cylinders with birds inside were sewn somehow. There appears to be some kind of mesh um, situation happening. Uh, but in, in any case, um, you know, it's, was probably uncomfortable, but I looked it up. It's only an hour flight from Havana to Miami. So, you know, not, not a hugely long time to sit there with a bunch of cylinders with birds in them, in your pants.

• 1:03:18Speaker 07

  I might be getting ahead of myself here.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 07

  What about the noise the birds would make?

• 1:03:23Steven Rinella?

  I was just wondering, like, are they in there going tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet?

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  That is a great question. So this doesn't specifically mention that, but there are other stories, similar stories we'll get to in a minute, that mentioned the birds were sedated. So that's probably, yeah, that's probably what he did in this case. Um, because you're right, though, you know, they're small little sounds, maybe he could pass that off. He wouldn't hear it maybe in, in the airplane.

• 1:03:50Steven Rinella?

  I'd just be, I'd be going, um, huh, excuse me.

• 1:03:55Speaker 05

  You just, just watch a video of birds on your phone the whole time and then people will.

• 1:03:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, oh, it's just ate something. That, that green.

• 1:04:02Speaker 05

  So the birds, there were 10 birds, so six cylinders, 10 birds. So some of these had two birds in one. Um, there were eight yellow faced grass quits and two blue grass beaks. Um, and they appear to have survived, most of them. There's that photo that was up earlier, there's a cage with the birds in it. I count nine, I think, eight or nine birds in there. So most of them survived. They seem to be okay. Um, but here's where it gets interesting. So you're probably asking yourself at this point, why would a man put birds in his pants and try to get into the US?

• 1:04:38Steven Rinella?

  Can I take a stab at it?

• 1:04:39Speaker 05

  Go ahead.

• 1:04:40Steven Rinella?

  Because he's gonna sell them into the illegal pet trade.

• 1:04:43Speaker 05

  Right, so that is possible. They are kept as pets, of course.

• 1:04:48Steven Rinella?

  Or he's a fetishist.

• 1:04:51Speaker 05

  I, I didn't come across that in my research, but possible, possible. Anything's possible these days. Um, what I did find though, and this is not something I'm familiar with, and I was talking with Brody about this before the podcast. He wasn't familiar with it either, uh, which makes me feel, you know, less uninformed. But apparently these birds, uh, it's possible they were competitors. So there is a thing called songbird, um, competitions. It's popular in the Caribbean, in, in South America, um, in certain, you know, parts of the US. And the way these competitions work is there's, they're usually male songbirds and they're naturally competitive, so they'll kind of sing back and forth to each other.

• 1:05:34Speaker 05

  Um, it's a bit like Glee, the animal version of Glee or one of those a cappella, you know, competition movies, but with birds. Um, and there's, I assume there's different ways of organizing these competitions, but usually it's, um, the first bird to make 50 different chirps or to sing 50 different songs.

• 1:05:54Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:05:55Speaker 05

  And so they'll.

• 1:05:55Steven Rinella?

  I've never heard of this.

• 1:05:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, they'll put two cages next to each other and the birds will sing back and forth. Someone will be paying very close attention, I assume, uh, and listening to all the chirps and noises that these birds are making. And the first to 50 wins. Um, so it's not like, you know, cockfighting or dogfighting. It's very, the birds aren't being injured or harmed. They're actually very well taken care of.

• 1:06:19Steven Rinella?

  Sure, man.

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  The problem is when.

• 1:06:22Steven Rinella?

  Don't try to excuse this. Don't try to humanize this guy.

• 1:06:24Speaker 05

  Okay, fine. Fair enough, but.

• 1:06:26Steven Rinella?

  It's like a bobcat.

• 1:06:27Speaker 05

  Well, he is, he, he is bringing them into the country illegally. Um, and there is a financial incentive here. So he could be selling them into the illegal pet market. However, if they're sold as competitive birds for these competitions, uh, and this is from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and I couldn't believe some of these numbers. Uh, they can be sold for as little as $500, which seems like a lot for a little songbird. Uh, but as much as $10,000 people will pay for these birds.

• 1:06:58Speaker 07

  For a real good competitor.

• 1:07:00Speaker 05

  Right, which gives you an idea of potentially the level of money we're talking about when it comes to gambling. Because that's a whole part of this too, right? Is people are gambling on these birds, which that might be illegal. I'm not sure.

• 1:07:12Steven Rinella?

  Can I hit you with a quick question?

• 1:07:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Steven Rinella?

  Uh, years ago I was in Hanoi and I would notice that a lot of old people would go down to parks and they would have songbirds in cages.

• 1:07:25Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:26Steven Rinella?

  And they would just kind of, you just see them go to a park with a songbird with a blanket over it. And they would be in groups and they would just have the, they would take the cover off. You'd see like collections of six or eight old people with six or eight little cages with songbirds in them.

• 1:07:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Steven Rinella?

  Is that maybe what they're doing?

• 1:07:44Speaker 05

  That may, may well be. I've looked up a few videos of these competitions and that, that's exactly what it looks like.

• 1:07:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so I was like, what, like, what in the world is that about?

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, here we have a.

• 1:07:58Speaker 05

  This sound means it's dawn in Guyana and if it's Sunday, that means the showdown is not too far off. Bird owners gather across the country to proudly exhibit their birds and have them face off against each other in whistling competitions called Guyana Speed Singing Contest.

• 1:08:18Speaker 07

  Here you go, Steve.

• 1:08:19Steven Rinella?

  So there you go.

• 1:08:19Speaker 06

  Fascinating.

• 1:08:20Speaker 07

  Uh, traditional songbird competition in Hanoi take place weekly, frequently on Sunday mornings.

• 1:08:27Steven Rinella?

  Damn, that's what I was looking at.

• 1:08:29Speaker 07

  Mostly meet on weekends, especially Sundays.

• 1:08:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:32Speaker 07

  Enthusiasts assemble in coffee shops, lakeside corners and parks.

• 1:08:36Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 1:08:36Speaker 06

  Average competitor, seventy years or older.

• 1:08:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Um, wow. So, you know, that's, this take me many years, but I've always been like, yeah, let's go on with that. Okay.

• 1:08:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, cool. So the next question you might have is, you know, if you were, if you're in Cuba, you know, maybe you have family up here. You want to, you know, continue this hobby that you love.

• 1:08:57Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:58Speaker 05

  Why wouldn't you just import these birds legally? Um, the problem is the quarantine. So when you import wildlife into the U.S., it has to be in quarantine for thirty days to make sure it doesn't have any diseases. What these competitive bird trainers say is that that thirty days of quarantine undermines their training. Oh. The birds' training. So.

• 1:09:21Steven Rinella?

  Knock the song out of them.

• 1:09:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, they, they take the, you know, when the bird is young, they put them in a cage in a quiet place and they play recordings of bird song.

• 1:09:31Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:09:31Speaker 05

  And so the birds learn the song and, and they slowly kind of acclimate them to be around people and, and other noises. And so they don't lose their, their, you know, the songs that they've learned. Uh, what they say is the thirty days in a random, you know, U.S. government facility kind of ruins them. It ruins the birds. And if you've, you know, invested a lot of time in these animals, they don't want to do that. So that is potentially a reason why some of these guys, and there are other examples I could cite of people smuggling these little songbirds into the U.S.

• 1:10:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but drugging them and sticking them down your pants.

• 1:10:04Speaker 05

  Uh, I mean, there's another.

• 1:10:06Steven Rinella?

  Doesn't knock the song out of them as bad.

• 1:10:07Speaker 05

  I guess not. There, there's another guy who, um, wasn't quite as creative. This was just last year. He put two, uh, orange-fronted parakeets in brown paper bags and stuffed those down his pants. Um, so he didn't have the cylinders. Another guy, similar, he put them in, uh, hair curlers, like women's hair curlers.

• 1:10:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Speaker 05

  And put a bunch of those in his carry-on bag and was caught for that. Um.

• 1:10:31Steven Rinella?

  And the, the, I was, I'm looking at your notes here. That dude was, he was fixing to get three thousand bucks a bird.

• 1:10:36Speaker 05

  That's, he told authorities, three thousand bucks a bird.

• 1:10:39Steven Rinella?

  Thirty-four birds. Now that guy sharpened his pencil.

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's, that's like a hundred grand.

• 1:10:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a.

• 1:10:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a, that's a racket.

• 1:10:48Steven Rinella?

  That's an MBA style wildlife violator right there, man.

• 1:10:51Speaker 05

  Right, yeah. Um, so yeah, the, as far as penalties, like max is twenty years in prison, you know, two hundred and fifty thousand dollar fine. Most just get probation, especially if they're a first-time offender for something like this. But yeah, I was fascinated. I had no idea about these, these competitions.

• 1:11:06Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:11:08Speaker 06

  God, it makes me, it reminds me of, I, I believe, I don't, I can't remember where, must have done it for live. Remember that story we covered about how the, uh, there was those, uh, pigeon trainers that were shooting the hawks?

• 1:11:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:11:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Speaker 06

  Very similar.

• 1:11:24Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Like little bird subcultures, man.

• 1:11:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Steven Rinella?

  That leads to, that leads to subcultures that lead to criminality.

• 1:11:31Speaker 06

  And also have a lot of betting involved.

• 1:11:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

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• 1:11:56Steven Rinella?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins nine one one Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

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• 1:13:06Speaker 07

  Been a while since we've talked about, uh, the on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again saga of the Ambler Road in Alaska. Um, there's an update that just happened, but if you're not familiar, um, the Ambler Road is a road that's, uh, being proposed to be built, uh, in the Southern Brooks Range, northwestern Alaska. It's going to be a two hundred and eleven mile long industrial gravel road connecting the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District. Um, the reason that the road is, is proposed to be built is access to copper zinc, lead gold, and other mineral deposits. Um, for commer, for, uh, mining for foreign mining companies.

• 1:13:50Speaker 07

  Um, why is it always foreign mining companies?

• 1:13:52Steven Rinella?

  I, I'll never get that. The, the ore, yeah, the ore from this thing goes over. And like, there's some arguments that it benefits China more than the America, than, than the U.S.

• 1:14:01Speaker 07

  Um, uh, two companies, Trilogy Metals out of Canada and South Thirty-two Limited, uh, out of Australia, stand to make one point five billion dollars if this road is built. Um, and the road would be restricted to only authorized industrial traffic. So like, the public can't drive down that road. Um, it crosses through all kinds of public lands, including, uh, twenty-six miles of Gates of the Arctic National Preserve. And, uh, the mines could be active as long as thirty years. Uh, more, more than, go ahead.

• 1:14:38Steven Rinella?

  No, you're going.

• 1:14:40Speaker 07

  Uh, more than eighty Alaska native communities have expressed o- opposition, uh, to, to the road. Um, obviously, the, the, the flip side of that is that this road would certainly provide jobs and economic benefits to local communities in Alaska. So there, there's that to consider. Um, this is, this all started back in two thousand and fifteen when an application was, uh, sent to the, the federal, uh, government. In two thousand and seventeen to twenty twenty, the Bureau of Land Management conducted, uh, an environmental impact study. And in Trump one administration, uh, the road was approved and then issued a fifty-year right of way.

• 1:15:26Speaker 07

  Twenty twenty-two, Biden administration suspended the authorizations over deficiency in the environmental review. Twenty twenty-four, the project just got completely rejected following a supplemental impact review. Um, now, this year, or no, like, last year, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources approved an easement across, uh, about seven thousand acres of state land. This will be important later. Um, twenty twenty-five, um, President Trump approved the appeal reversing the Biden administration's, uh, federal rejection.

• 1:16:07Speaker 07

  Uh, BLM issued, reissued the federal right of way. So it just like went back to where it was in Trump one. Um, this year, uh, Alaska DNR reaffirmed its state land easement approval. And in response, seven conservation organizations filed an appeal in Alaska Superior Court challenging the approval. That's just for this state, like, crossing through this state land. It doesn't have anything to do with the, the, the federal side of it. Um, the National Parks Conservation, uh, Association announced the lawsuit alleging that the DNR had failed to adequately evaluate environmental impacts.

• 1:16:52Speaker 07

  So you've got seven plaintiffs, uh, National Parks Conservation Association, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and Winter Wildlands Alliance. Now, you, you might recognize that.

• 1:17:14Speaker 07

  Some of these groups, a couple of them at least are like

• 1:17:18Speaker 07

  groups that we haven't spoken kindly of in the past.

• 1:17:23Speaker 07

  You got anything to add on that?

• 1:17:24Steven Rinella?

  Strange Bedfellows, man.

• 1:17:26Speaker 07

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:17:29Speaker 07

  This, there, this whole thing is being managed for trustees for Alaska, which kind of represents a lot of Alaska native, uh, communities.

• 1:17:40Speaker 07

  And they're just saying, again, that they failed to evaluate environmental impacts.

• 1:17:46Speaker 07

  And again, this is only challenging that state land easement, not the federal stuff. Um, some potential impacts would be, if the road goes through, would be, uh, on the Western Arctic Caribou herd, the road would pass right through their migration corridor and potentially interfere with seasonal movement. There's a lot of potential impacts on fish and rivers, um, sedimentation in rivers, altering stream channels, degrading habitat.

• 1:18:16Steven Rinella?

  You know, you know how many streams have to culvert?

• 1:18:18Speaker 07

  Thousands.

• 1:18:19Steven Rinella?

  Three thousand.

• 1:18:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, across like 11 major river systems and culvert 3,000 streams.

• 1:18:27Speaker 07

  Yep, the, uh, obviously all of those are of concern. One particular concerned is the Kobuk Wild and Scenic River.

• 1:18:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, you're looking at that map there.

• 1:18:42Speaker 05

  Do, do we know how much crosses through state versus federal? How much?

• 1:18:48Speaker 07

  I, I, I'm assuming not as much state because they only had to get that one easement.

• 1:18:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the states, the states along the corridor, the states along the pipeline corridor that they're coming off of.

• 1:18:57Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:18:58Speaker 07

  Yeah. Um, so Caribou, rivers, fish, um, and, and all the construction and noise and human activity could also displace other Arctic, Arctic wildlife species. There's concern about permafrost, uh, could, the road could accelerate thawing and erosion. And it would enable additional mines, gravel pits and industrial in- infrastructure. And native Alaskan, uh, subsistence communities, like if it affects that caribou herd, um, it's definitely going to affect, you know, their ability to feed themselves with caribou and, and fish and, and could just

• 1:19:41Speaker 07

  kind of ruin traditional hunting areas. So where we're at now is, uh, the Alaska Superior Court is going to review the challenge to the, to the easement. Federal road authorizations remain a separate legal issue.

• 1:19:59Speaker 07

  And the, the proposed mine i- is entering a new environmental review process that will happen on November 2nd, so a couple of weeks, I guess. Right now, the road's only proposed, it's not constructed.

• 1:20:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, this, this, this fight is playing out like any other of these like major environmental battles, the, the Pebble Mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The, the mine in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters canoe area. Ambler Road, these are like, these are environmental fights that play out over decades. I think that they, the administration was hopeful that they were going to fast track this thing, but within this, within this Ambler Road thing is, is a lot of stuff that just strikes me as, as a lot of BS.

• 1:20:52Steven Rinella?

  Any talk about this being a 30-year project is, is

• 1:20:57Steven Rinella?

  it is bullshit.

• 1:20:58Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:21:00Steven Rinella?

  It's a, it's a forever project. It is like, no one, like if you put people, any, anyone involved in proposing this thing or the financial backers of this thing, and these guys have enormous biz dev, like that you would enter into a deal like this and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on regulatory stuff, like the biz dev expense in building this mine is, is astounding.

• 1:21:26Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:21:27Steven Rinella?

  For, for something that might not even go, this is a forever deal. Like, no, if you put someone on a lie detector test, anyone that really knows what's going on, and you said, hey, is this a 30-year thing? No.

• 1:21:40Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, it, it.

• 1:21:42Steven Rinella?

  It's, it, this will, it will lead to hundreds of projects.

• 1:21:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I mean, in the, I think it was in the Trump one administration, it was a 50-year permit for the road or something, so.

• 1:21:54Steven Rinella?

  It's a, it's a forever project.

• 1:21:55Speaker 07

  They're, they're going to take every last ounce of the stuff they can get.

• 1:21:58Steven Rinella?

  It's a forever project. It'll be like, once it's there, it, it, like, it's just there.

• 1:22:04Speaker 07

  And then there's the, if it ever does close, there's the cleanup that has to happen afterwards, you know?

• 1:22:09Steven Rinella?

  Dude, let, let me tell you something that's not going to happen in Alaska. They're not going to tear up a road.

• 1:22:16Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:22:17Steven Rinella?

  It's like.

• 1:22:17Speaker 07

  I'm saying the mines.

• 1:22:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Steven Rinella?

  It's, it's a, it's a forever thing.

• 1:22:21Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:22:22Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell, let me tell you another thing that's a forever thing.

• 1:22:28Steven Rinella?

  Those minerals will be eternally valuable. And they are there forever. I don't right now see, I don't right now see

• 1:22:40Steven Rinella?

  any sense of urgency

• 1:22:44Steven Rinella?

  in, in going after these minerals. As like, if you're, as soon as coming in, in an environmental nationalist, let's say,

• 1:22:53Steven Rinella?

  should we be in a situation, should we find ourselves as a nation in a situation as dire as we were in, say, 1941?

• 1:23:03Steven Rinella?

  Right? It might be a different conversation to me. It might be a different conversation about like, we're, we're in an existential crisis.

• 1:23:13Steven Rinella?

  Um, we need these things to save the free world. I might be like, let's talk.

• 1:23:19Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:23:20Steven Rinella?

  But I, like, I don't, it's not going anywhere.

• 1:23:23Speaker 07

  Well, it's not coming into the United States, that's for sure. It's leaving the United States.

• 1:23:27Steven Rinella?

  And what's so funny about it, it's going to leave the US as ore, and then we're going to pay a bunch of goofy ass tariffs on it when it comes back as a, as product.

• 1:23:35Speaker 07

  Right, to buy it back.

• 1:23:37Steven Rinella?

  To make other dudes a bunch of money.

• 1:23:40Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:23:41Steven Rinella?

  And it's like, this is, you, you are, you are tapping into one of the, the, I mean, you, you are tapping into one of very few of our last vestiges of like pure wilderness.

• 1:23:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, pristine, just untouched.

• 1:23:58Steven Rinella?

  And it ain't going nowhere.

• 1:24:00Speaker 07

  Nope.

• 1:24:00Steven Rinella?

  I, it's like, it's, to me, it's like, why now?

• 1:24:04Steven Rinella?

  For, for foreign, that's this thing too, the, like for foreign mining companies. But even if they were US-owned mining companies, I still have a lot of questions, but to me, it's like, hold on, this is a foreign mining company wanting to do this?

• 1:24:15Speaker 07

  Same as in the Boundary Waters.

• 1:24:17Steven Rinella?

  Like, I don't get, why is it always that way? And why is it always like shadow investors and stuff? And they build these like, they build these orgs just to front these things. Where you don't even understand the backing of it. It, it just, the, the whole thing blows my mind. So I get like, why do we gotta basically go in and trash a bunch of our

• 1:24:40Steven Rinella?

  like na- national treasure at this point in time to benefit other dudes?

• 1:24:47Speaker 07

  Well, it's kind of mad.

• 1:24:50Speaker 07

  It, it'll benefit some Americans too, obviously. And that's why this is getting pushed forward.

• 1:24:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and, and like, yeah, and they're able to like, give a lot of money to politicians and politicians are willing to do their bidding because they're giving them tons of money. Like, like, I, I get all that stuff. I, I just,

• 1:25:08Steven Rinella?

  you know?

• 1:25:11Steven Rinella?

  I can't get excited about this damn road. The, the other question that comes up, so they built the Dalton Highway, the Trans-Laska Pipeline, they put a road on it. That road's open to the public. And there's a lot of people are like, and, like, if they build the Ambler Road, so 200 miles of road, paralleling the Brooks Range,

• 1:25:29Steven Rinella?

  crossing all these streams, there's some people that say, and it won't even be open to the public. But I look and I'm like, man, I don't know. Would it be great if it was?

• 1:25:39Speaker 07

  Well.

• 1:25:40Steven Rinella?

  Is that, does that make it better?

• 1:25:42Speaker 07

  For some people it would, that access would be great, right?

• 1:25:45Steven Rinella?

  In all honesty, like in all honesty, I'd be one of the first dudes down that road.

• 1:25:53Steven Rinella?

  Should I be? Like, do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know if they do cut the road.

• 1:26:02Steven Rinella?

  I don't even know how I feel about it. I don't know how I feel about it, but when people go like, and it won't even be open to the public, I, I often wonder like, would, would that, would that really be the best thing? To have it be open to the public?

• 1:26:12Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:26:13Steven Rinella?

  I believe that it eventually would be open to the public.

• 1:26:15Speaker 07

  Probably, yeah.

• 1:26:16Speaker 05

  It wouldn't be good for those people that are subsistence living up there.

• 1:26:22Steven Rinella?

  If it doesn't open to the public, if, if they build this road and it's not open to the public, it'll not be open to the public because of

• 1:26:34Steven Rinella?

  because of native Alaskan resistance to it being open to the public, to non-local, non-substance recreational hunters and anglers pouring into that area and putting pressure on a resource that they don't want pressure on.

• 1:26:48Speaker 07

  I mean, just look at the map, like, you'd open all that country to, from, from Fairbanks, you'd drive up there, take a left and you're in there into what the only way you could get in there before is by plane, right?

• 1:27:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and people aren't even factoring in the main thing. Dude.

• 1:27:07Steven Rinella?

  Once, once you get into Alaska logistics, okay, here's what happens. Is when that's open to the public, and, and again, like, I have very mixed feelings about this, once that's open to the public.

• 1:27:22Steven Rinella?

  That's air, that, that's airboats on all those rivers.

• 1:27:25Speaker 06

  Right. Yep.

• 1:27:27Steven Rinella?

  You, it's like you have opened up like a pan.

• 1:27:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:31Steven Rinella?

  You're opening up a Pandora's box.

• 1:27:34Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:35Steven Rinella?

  When you put airboats and jet boats on everything that that thing crosses.

• 1:27:41Speaker 06

  Yep. Yeah, that's a great point.

• 1:27:44Steven Rinella?

  It is just like, I can see, not, not even from the, not even from the, not even from the conservation angle of tapping an industrial corridor and putting hundreds of mines in one of our last great wildernesses. Not even from that, but from the, from the mind of people that live subsistence lifestyle, native Alaskans that live subsistence lifestyles in those areas. From the impact, the eventual impact of airboats and other types of operations coming off.

• 1:28:22Steven Rinella?

  Snow machines, coming off of a 211 mile, basically a trailhead that runs 211 miles. It's a big, big deal.

• 1:28:35Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:28:35Steven Rinella?

  It'll be a big, big deal to them. I'm the kind of guy that would be on the receiving end of it, because I'm the kind of guy that would be up there pack rafting and stuff.

• 1:28:42Speaker 06

  I'd feel icky, but then I'd see a giant herd of caribou and be like, well, you know.

• 1:28:46Steven Rinella?

  Uh, you know what you'd say? Everybody else is doing it. Like, it's, it's the great story from the buffalo hide hunter, um, I think it was Buffalo Jones, who said, many days. He's talking about being on the Texas plains. He says, many days I would come home at night and I would want to hang up my rifle. I was so sickened by what I had done all day and I was gonna quit. But then I'd wake up in the morning and off in the distance, boom, boom, boom. And he's like, someone else is gonna do it anyway.

• 1:29:20Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:29:21Steven Rinella?

  And I'd head back out and you'd have like that, you know, I'd be like, hell.

• 1:29:27Speaker 06

  Get yours while the getting's good, you know?

• 1:29:29Steven Rinella?

  I heard it's pretty sweet. But again, this is like a not, what I'm talking about is way future, I'll be dead.

• 1:29:36Steven Rinella?

  Because let's say this, let's, let's say it goes 30 years and there's no access, I'm already out. So I'm talking about the future, I'm not even talking about myself. When talking about the future, uh, what's that Aldo Leopold quote? I'm glad I will not be a young man in a future without wilderness. I was telling my, my 16 year old this quote yesterday, two days ago. I was like, I'm glad I'll not be a young man in a future without wilderness. Uh, maybe you will be.

• 1:30:06Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:30:08Steven Rinella?

  I didn't have to suffer through it.

• 1:30:11Speaker 06

  He won't be, but maybe his kids.

• 1:30:13Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:30:15Steven Rinella?

  Deeply uneasy personally, me. Deeply uneasy about this road and the biggest thing is the shit ain't going anywhere.

• 1:30:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Steven Rinella?

  If we really, as a country, really, really in the future, you know, are in some spot where it becomes of like existential significance.

• 1:30:37Steven Rinella?

  Let's talk.

• 1:30:37Speaker 06

  We'll, we'll check back in on it, I'm sure at some point, uh, down the road.

• 1:30:42Steven Rinella?

  It's money in the bank right now, bro.

• 1:30:45Steven Rinella?

  Money in the bank, gold in the bank, zinc in the bank.

• 1:30:50Speaker 06

  Delaware found its first cases of CWD last year, Brody.

• 1:30:54Speaker 07

  Was it last year or this year?

• 1:30:55Speaker 06

  More goodness. It was last year.

• 1:30:57Speaker 07

  It was?

• 1:30:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, but this year they're implementing a, uh, yeah, it was last year. Gosh, now you got me tripped up.

• 1:31:07Speaker 07

  I think it might've been this year, man.

• 1:31:09Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:31:09Speaker 07

  I think it was April of this year.

• 1:31:13Speaker 06

  Why were they sampling in April?

• 1:31:17Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 1:31:19Speaker 06

  It says confirmed earlier this year.

• 1:31:21Speaker 07

  You go on and I'll check.

• 1:31:22Speaker 06

  I wrote it, right? I wrote it down there. Anyways, they found two in the last year approximately. And, uh, it's prompted an activation of the state CWD plan, which was interesting. Well, two things are interesting.

• 1:31:34Steven Rinella?

  During the 25, 26 hunting season, they sampled 600 deer and got two positives.

• 1:31:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:31:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:31:41Speaker 06

  Um, the, uh, Delaware's, uh, the Division of Fish and Wildlife, it, it's actually the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Division of Fish and Wildlife. That's a mouthful.

• 1:31:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it is, man. I, I wouldn't even be able to begin to make one of the macro noms out of that.

• 1:31:58Speaker 06

  Uh-uh. D N R E C, Division of Fish and Wildlife. Anyways, they've been on top of it, man, since 20, 2003. Every single year, about 600, 650 samples. And, um, so that's 13,000 total. And, uh, so then, yeah, the 25, 26 hunting season, which they must be talking about last year, came up with two.

• 1:32:23Speaker 07

  It said, all it, it says it was confirmed in April of this year, so the samples could have come.

• 1:32:29Steven Rinella?

  From last fall.

• 1:32:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:32:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it says they collect them during hunting season.

• 1:32:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's just odd that they throw the 26 in there. Uh, this was tripping us up. Anyways, um, so yeah, they implemented emergency regulations. They basically made a CWD management zone in, uh, Lower Sussex County, which we've spent some time in, out there on the Delmarva Peninsula. Um, just so happens that this is where like most of the deer are in the state. And so it would, you know, you'd go to guess that this is gonna be where CWD would pop up. It's, what's where the most deer are killed is, uh, down in Sussex County. Um, I, I was surprised to see like here, here, these numbers out of Delaware, 16,000 hunters. They kill about 16,000 deer annually.

• 1:33:17Steven Rinella?

  It's a hot hunting state right there, man.

• 1:33:18Speaker 06

  Right? Like if you, it, it. If you're in Delaware hunting, like Hunter, I mean, obviously there's some, there's a few out there, they're probably killing two or three or four. I don't know exactly how they're.

• 1:33:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but that's extraordinary.

• 1:33:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's, it's wonderful hunting, sounds like, you know, in Delaware and especially in Sussex County. Um, anyway, so they set up a, uh, CWD management zone where you gotta check deer in during the November shotgun season. Uh, and they placed, placed a ban on, uh, natural urine-based bucklures. Um, I know, I know, but they're doing what they can, you know?

• 1:33:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that feels like really COVID-19 to me.

• 1:34:00Speaker 06

  A little over the top.

• 1:34:01Steven Rinella?

  Just a little like, what?

• 1:34:03Speaker 06

  And how, and I don't know, are they gonna ban selling them? Or is it gonna be like, you know, Wisconsin where you can't bait, but every gas station has bait for sale?

• 1:34:11Steven Rinella?

  It just, it, to me, it just seems like that, that one banning urine-based bucklures to me seems like just grasping at straws.

• 1:34:21Speaker 06

  They, they have a little explanation here.

• 1:34:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Speaker 06

  On their site, they say, uh, bucklure, yeah, bucklures are connected to CWD because infectious abnormal misfolded preon, uh, proteins called preons that cause the fatal disease are shed in animal bodily fluids.

• 1:34:36Steven Rinella?

  Understood.

• 1:34:36Speaker 06

  And can be transmitted to other deer either from direct contact or in browsing vegetation. So are they saying the, the product itself can?

• 1:34:45Steven Rinella?

  Yes, that you would be moving in.

• 1:34:46Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:34:47Steven Rinella?

  I, I, I get it.

• 1:34:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:50Steven Rinella?

  There's a lot of other things going on all the time. Deer are always sticking their noses against each other. There's, it, it's just, there's a lot going on all the time to go and look and be like, oh, that'll slow the spread. It's like, come on. It, it's, it's like you're trying to do something. You're trying to be helpful. I understand, you're trying to be helpful. I just think that one is like a little, it, it, it, it, it, it always strikes me as goofy.

• 1:35:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're monitoring it, whi- which is awesome. I'm, I'm glad to hear they're so on top of it in Delaware. Um, they're gonna expand the zone if they find more positive deer this year. Um, Brody asked me to give you some stats of where we're at currently CWD and then in the, and what it was 10 years ago. In the country, we now have 37 states.

• 1:35:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's like every few months, another state.

• 1:35:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:41Speaker 07

  It's added to the list.

• 1:35:42Speaker 06

  10 years ago, we only had 24 states.

• 1:35:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

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• 1:37:18Steven Rinella?

  It's undeniable that it's spreading undeniable. We on the interview show, we recently had on the director of Missouri's fishing game department and

• 1:37:30Steven Rinella?

  you should listen to the whole thing. It was all on the subject, but it seems that there's a percentage.

• 1:37:39Steven Rinella?

  If you do good control efforts, there's a percentage at which you can be effective.

• 1:37:45Steven Rinella?

  He they feel others feel too, that there's a there's a prevalence rate at which you're you're not going to change the like these kind of management exercises. At I think it's five and above.

• 1:38:00Steven Rinella?

  At at 5% and above, there's nothing you're going to do. But you're not going to lower the percentage. You can suppress like one, 2%, whatever you can take management efforts and suppress. And I wish I remember better all the numbers he gave, but they're starting to come to the conclusion that there's a prevalence rate with CWD at which these like herd reductions stop being effective.

• 1:38:26Steven Rinella?

  But states to get aggressive early. Sometimes have luck in keeping low prevalence rates. But he, Jason Sumners. And please go listen to the interview because it's much more nuanced what I'm saying. Is of the opinion that at a point, these traditional herd reduction strategies and other steps don't make a difference.

• 1:38:53Speaker 07

  Is there any, did he say if there's anything that does?

• 1:38:56Steven Rinella?

  No, there are areas, small areas. There are areas in Missouri where they have stopped spending.

• 1:39:05Speaker 07

  Cause

• 1:39:05Steven Rinella?

  There's no, because there's no return on your investment.

• 1:39:07Speaker 07

  I mean, you've got like areas like Doug's place where the prevalence rate is super high. You've got some of those areas here in Montana and

• 1:39:14Steven Rinella?

  And you got finite, you got finite resources.

• 1:39:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Steven Rinella?

  You got finite personnel and finite resources. And when you're at 20% prevalence.

• 1:39:21Speaker 07

  You're not gonna

• 1:39:22Steven Rinella?

  You can go put all the money in the world in there and you're not going to make it 19%.

• 1:39:25Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:39:26Steven Rinella?

  And so they, if there's and again, deer don't understand state boundaries. And the thing is too, is Delaware is an exceptionally, you know, extremely small state. So

• 1:39:39Steven Rinella?

  you're not controlling big chunks where your management strategy is acting on itself, like you have a lot of area that's border country.

• 1:39:47Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:39:48Steven Rinella?

  With deer moving across borders. And so if you're out of sync with the states around you, this creates complications. In the areas that Missouri, in the areas that Missouri is stepping away from on CWD management is border areas. I believe on their southern border. They're like, they can't spend there anymore.

• 1:40:06Speaker 07

  They're kind of like circling the wagon where they can.

• 1:40:09Steven Rinella?

  They have some natural barriers, some big reservoirs and other things that form some natural barriers. And they may, and there's kind of a zone where we're done. We're done.

• 1:40:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, just from personal experience, it does seem like the the less deer, the less CWD. Like where we hunt in Wisconsin, very low deer density compared to say where Doug's at. And we've yet to have a positive case. We've been testing all of our deer now for, I don't know, probably close to 10 years. And the county has had a few positives, but like we just don't have the spread rate that they do down in Doug's.

• 1:40:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like you do when you get areas where you got like 30 deer per square mile, 40 deer per square mile.

• 1:40:52Steven Rinella?

  I think it kind of blows my mind on the social aspect of chronic wasting diseases. When we did that interview with Jason Sumners recently and anyone interested in CWD, I highly recommend that you go and listen to that interview because it's very comprehensive and it's look at where we stand with CWD management today. There is a faction, like there is a faction of the American outdoor community that that is resistant to even having a conversation about CWD. I was made aware of this asshat on Facebook who has all these posts where he's saying that that I'm getting paid.

• 1:41:37Steven Rinella?

  I'm getting paid.

• 1:41:38Speaker 06

  Steven Rinella.

• 1:41:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I individually am getting paid by the government to talk about CWD because I'm an anti hunter. And I'm trying to

• 1:41:50Speaker 06

  Explains that big diesel truck, that new truck.

• 1:41:53Steven Rinella?

  And I'm trying to get people to stop hunting because I'm a secret anti hunter. And my way to help the government stop hunters is to spread this fear about CWD. And this guy's like, follow the money, follow the money. And so I look into him, he's a deer breeder. So I'm like, oh, I followed the money and I'm at your house.

• 1:42:18Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:42:20Steven Rinella?

  It just, it's like how it came to be that that that you are sort of

• 1:42:28Steven Rinella?

  that that people would want to ostracize people who are having conversations about a a wildlife disease.

• 1:42:36Speaker 07

  A scientifically like acknowledge, like it's, it's real folks.

• 1:42:41Steven Rinella?

  And to say, I don't know. I'd like to follow, I'd like to talk to as many people as I can who have expertise in this field. Because I want to understand it because I love deer and I don't like deer diseases. And it'd be like, oh, you're a

• 1:42:58Speaker 07

  I'm going to tell your kids on youth hunt that you're an anti hunter.

• 1:43:03Steven Rinella?

  Like this dude, like this dude.

• 1:43:08Steven Rinella?

  I was, I was going to like have like a little bona fides tournament with him, but I'm not going to have a bona fides tournament.

• 1:43:14Speaker 06

  It just comes down to the fact that you're affecting his pocketbook by what you're saying.

• 1:43:17Steven Rinella?

  Follow the money. Okay.

• 1:43:20Speaker 05

  Is he in Texas?

• 1:43:23Steven Rinella?

  I'm not gonna say.

• 1:43:25Speaker 05

  Okay. Cause that's, I mean, in Texas, that's like the the nexus, right? It's like the deer breeders.

• 1:43:32Steven Rinella?

  There's a lot of tension.

• 1:43:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Speaker 05

  Right. And it's around CWD, it's all around CWD.

• 1:43:37Steven Rinella?

  And here's the deal. If I view

• 1:43:46Steven Rinella?

  if you're a deer breeder, I view that as a, I view that as a livestock issue.

• 1:43:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:43:51Steven Rinella?

  It's a livestock, in most states, they regard it as a livestock issue.

• 1:43:54Speaker 07

  I'm sure most people are familiar with the connection to deer breeding, but if they're not, can you quickly?

• 1:44:01Steven Rinella?

  Because we put enormous social value on deer and it's really hard to grow big deer in the wild. And that's why like a big buck is regarded as a thing of extraordinary value is just like it's rarity. And so someone long ago had the brilliant idea of being like, man, it's so hard to make big deer in the wild and it's so hard to get a wild big deer. I can, I can like just grow one. I'll make a fence and grow a big deer and people value big deer because they're so rare and so cool and so wild. But now all of a sudden I just have them because I made them. And and generally, when you're in, when you're a deer breeder, your deer are generally regarded as

• 1:44:44Steven Rinella?

  under the purview of your department of livestock. Same way that you'd manage sheep, goats, cattle, horses, whatever. It's like you're managed by department livestock. When we spoke to Jason Summers from Missouri.

• 1:44:57Steven Rinella?

  Deer breeders in Missouri are under the purview of livestock agriculture department. And then you have the wildlife department that works on deer.

• 1:45:05Speaker 07

  And then you have CWD.

• 1:45:06Steven Rinella?

  Well, yes, and and and yes, because here's where, here's what we're getting to.

• 1:45:13Steven Rinella?

  There is.

• 1:45:16Steven Rinella?

  There are many people in the CWD space who point to evidence asserting that captive deer have at times transmitted CWD to wild deer. If it was shown, if it was shown to me that that's, that that's actually not true. Like as we continue to study CWD and we look at these transmissions and we figure everything out and we do it and it turns out captive deer have never spread a disease to wild deer, I would put the captive deer industry right back in my head where it's always been, which is a thing that I don't have like an opinion about.

• 1:45:52Speaker 07

  Right, but I believe there is a US Fish and Wildlife Service map that you can, I think that's where it's from, that you can look at, which shows kind of the, these expansions of CWD. And often in the center of them is a, is a deer breeding facility.

• 1:46:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:15Speaker 07

  You know, it's just like, it's, it's the bullseye in that CWD zone.

• 1:46:19Steven Rinella?

  The first one ever identified, the first deer ever identified to have CWD was a mule deer in a research facility. So in a government facility, that's important detail. The first one ever identified was in a government facility in Colorado. But people weren't checking wild deer back then.

• 1:46:39Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:46:40Steven Rinella?

  I don't know where to, like, no one can say where it, anyone that tells you where it came from is just talking, they don't know, it's not known where it came from. You could point to when was it first found, but that doesn't mean that you found the first deer, of course you didn't find the first deer that ever had it. So, yeah. What do you, what are you guys commiserating about?

• 1:47:02Speaker 05

  This is just a map from Onyx with, um, CWD by state, like which states it's been found in.

• 1:47:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. There have been some very mysterious, there have been some very mysterious jumps of CWD and Jason Sumner's even talks about it, it is not always edge effect. Meaning you'd have like some center, like let's say, you know, wherever you have like some center and then spreading out from that and concentric rings would be more and more and more and more and more. Like you imagine like if, if without air travel and highway travel, the way the cold would just kind of move from person to person and drift out. You do have where CWD seems to go boom and jump. And when it jumps, is it, is it because someone sent a bale of alfalfa?

• 1:47:50Speaker 07

  Or a breeder buck.

• 1:47:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Did, was it a bale of alfalfa that had a bunch of deer saliva all over it and deer hair in it? Was it a guy that went on a hunting trip? He lives in, I don't know, he lives in Iowa and he went out and killed a big deer in Colorado and took it home and pressure washed its brain all over his, you know, out in his backyard? And he's got yard deer? Is it because someone moved a breeder buck? Like you'll, we'll never know these things. Like you don't know, but, but people look and there's a lot of attention and focus has fallen on moving live deer that might have diseases. Um, I'm interested in something I'll probably never have, which is like, I would love to have certainty.

• 1:48:38Steven Rinella?

  If I knew somehow that that just wasn't a thing, I would, I would put it out of mind. It's interesting that years ago, there was a ballot, a ballot initiative came up to make it that like in this state, they banned deer captive serving.

• 1:48:52Speaker 07

  I think there's some other states that have too.

• 1:48:54Steven Rinella?

  It passed by a lot.

• 1:48:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:48:56Steven Rinella?

  And this is not a softy anti-hunting state.

• 1:48:59Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:49:00Steven Rinella?

  This is a state where hunting culture runs deep, participation is very high and they wanted to open up canned elk hunts here and it was a, there was a citizens initiative that banned it. So, um, is, is, does that point to an underbelly of anti-hunting sentiment in the state of Montana? I don't think so, there was hunters that did it. Um, I don't know. I don't know. Dying for more info. If there's a guy, this is, this is, this is true.

• 1:49:36Steven Rinella?

  If there's someone out there that feels that, if there's someone out there that feels that they have like good empirical evidence showing that captive deer have not spread CWD. And it's hard to prove this, but like good empirical evidence suggesting that something else is at play, I would be very serious about having that conversation. If it's out there.

• 1:50:08Speaker 05

  I don't know. Yeah. But it's like, yeah, it's, it's, it's tough in Texas because you mentioned most states, they treat them like livestock. In Texas, they're wildlife still. And so Texas Parks and Wildlife is, is over that. And the reason why when you, when you come across someone who is very vocal, like this gentleman you're referring to about CWD isn't real, it's not a big deal, trace it back.

• 1:50:38Steven Rinella?

  No, there's no one, the, the denier community has moved on from it's not real.

• 1:50:42Speaker 05

  How do you, what's farther than that? Oh, it's a conspiracy?

• 1:50:46Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no.

• 1:50:46Speaker 07

  No, no, it's real, but it's always been there and it's nothing to worry about.

• 1:50:50Steven Rinella?

  The, the denier community used to be that it's fake. They, they change over time. The, the, the leading edge of the denier community now sits at, um, I think it's that it's agricultural products are spreading CWD.

• 1:51:08Speaker 07

  Is that right?

• 1:51:09Steven Rinella?

  But it doesn't matter.

• 1:51:10Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:51:11Steven Rinella?

  Or something, but, but it's not that it doesn't exist.

• 1:51:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the incentive for the breeders, right? Is because when CWD is found in their facility, they have to kill a bunch of deer.

• 1:51:21Steven Rinella?

  And that pisses them off.

• 1:51:22Speaker 05

  And that pisses them off. And so that's kind of the connection where the incentive comes from. Um, and this is a huge fight in Texas. It's, it's been, you know, ongoing for years. There's been pretty famous deer breeders who have refused Texas Parks and Wildlife order to kill their deer.

• 1:51:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like they view it as government overreach.

• 1:51:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, they eventually have to do it. Uh, but it's, it's, it's hard to imagine because then you hear reports of deer getting out of these facilities.

• 1:51:45Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:51:45Speaker 05

  That have tested positive for CWD. And so it's hard for me to imagine that it's never happened, that one of those deer has never spread it.

• 1:51:52Speaker 07

  Yeah. Well, I mean, they don't even have to get out, nose to nose through a fence is, it happens all the time, I'm sure.

• 1:51:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I don't, I've never met anyone who's not a hunter. What's funny about this whole thing of it being like that, that if you are interested in wildlife diseases, you're an anti-hunter. What's funny is I've never met anyone who's interested in CWD who's not a hunter.

• 1:52:15Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:52:16Steven Rinella?

  Go, like make a list, make a list of the least huntingest people you can think of in your social circle. This is a real question. Do, do, do me a favor. Of the people you text with, think of who is the least huntingest people you text with? And if you got people that hate hunting, put them on this list. Text them and go, hey, man, what do you think about CWD?

• 1:52:42Speaker 07

  Is that that zombie disease I read about?

• 1:52:46Steven Rinella?

  Or it'll be what? So the idea of like being interested in CWD is anti-hunting, why aren't anti-hunters talking about CWD? Only people that talk about CWD are hunters.

• 1:52:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:00Steven Rinella?

  Whenever I talk about CWD, I'm talking about CWD and the people I know that are most interested in CWD have hunted the longest. Like the guys I know that are most like, oh shit, this is terrible. It's like, let me guess, you've hunted a long time. Dudes that started hunting last year don't care about CWD. It's like a, it's an old, it's a dude that loves deer thing. It's a symptom of loving deer and being a lifelong hunter is that you're worried about CWD. So to have it be that it's like an anti-hunting thing is so weird.

• 1:53:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:35Steven Rinella?

  But, but hunters care about CWD and guys that hunt wild deer blame people that have captive deer. People that have captive deer. Blame something different.

• 1:53:48Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:53:48Steven Rinella?

  There's so many baked in self, there's so much baked in self-interest. Like, I'm full of it. I have self-interest because I love deer and I like eating deer, so I'm worried about CWD. They have self-interest because they like selling hunts.

• 1:53:58Speaker 05

  Well, and, and, you know, to be fair, it's not just the breeders, right? Because what we were talking about earlier, the ban on buck scent, right? Because when CWD comes in, now we have a ban on, you know, baiting.

• 1:54:09Steven Rinella?

  Activities, yeah.

• 1:54:10Speaker 05

  And so there are these strategies people rely on to go hunting, just like Average Joe, not a deer breeder. They like baiting deer because it makes it a little easier or whatever.

• 1:54:19Speaker 07

  The economics of those products.

• 1:54:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, right, right. And so they're, they're like, hey, I, I don't want to be restricted in the way that I've hunted for a long time. And so, you know, there's an incentive there.

• 1:54:30Steven Rinella?

  Yes, and that one, like, and that one hits more, again, acknowledging the self-interest.

• 1:54:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:54:36Steven Rinella?

  Right? My self-interest is, um, my primary protein source is deer meat. So I'm interested in the health of consuming deer meat and, and I like, and my favorite thing to do is hunt deer. So I'm interested in that.

• 1:54:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:49Steven Rinella?

  If you're a deer breeder, you're interested in selling semen and, and stud bucks and you're interested in...

• 1:54:55Speaker 07

  And bottled deer urine.

• 1:54:56Steven Rinella?

  And selling hunts and all that. But that's why earlier, remember when I got prickly about the buck urine thing?

• 1:55:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:02Steven Rinella?

  I'm not a, I'm not a dough and heat urine guy, deer urine guy. I, I don't employ that tactic. But then I, just like a deer breeder, I look at that and I'm like, show me where that's actually an issue. Knowing that since we don't know what's spreading it, when you go and say, eh, I'm going to change that.

• 1:55:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:28Steven Rinella?

  You know, I'm going to make that illegal.

• 1:55:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:30Steven Rinella?

  It feels, um, it winds up feeling arbitrary. So if I try to be as big of a person as I can, I could picture that I'm raising deer in a high fence operation. I'm, and then someone's like, hey, you're doing bad. That you would say, please, show me.

• 1:55:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:49Steven Rinella?

  Show me where, where, where my deer that I have, show me where they're spreading CWD.

• 1:55:57Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:55:57Steven Rinella?

  Don't come to me with a hypothetical.

• 1:56:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. Which is why agencies, I mean, it's in their best interest, I think, to think about the opinion of hunters and like how they're going to react to whatever policies you put in place.

• 1:56:11Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:11Speaker 05

  It's not the only thing, because sometimes you got to do stuff that people hate.

• 1:56:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:15Speaker 05

  And that's just what you got to do. But like, you got to be careful.

• 1:56:18Steven Rinella?

  And sometimes they take a ham-handed approach. Or it's like, it's just like, it's, it's like COVID-19 all over again.

• 1:56:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:24Steven Rinella?

  Where, you know, for one day, it's like, hey, you know, if Amazon brings a box to your house, leave it out in the rain for two weeks because you're going to get sick off it.

• 1:56:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:31Steven Rinella?

  Um, if your, if your parents are dying in an old folks home, you can look at them through the window, but you can't go hug them goodbye, right? And you do all this crazy shit. And then later we look at all the crazy stuff, we're done, and, and you say, man, I got out of control, you know?

• 1:56:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:44Steven Rinella?

  Like, whatever. Vaccinate your kids when kids don't get sick from it. All that stuff, in the end, you look and it's crazy. Someday we might understand CWD better and we might look and be like, a lot of that stuff was stupid. It, it, when Michigan was first trying to figure out CWD response, they came in and they banned putting out deer bait in all kinds of places.

• 1:57:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:57:02Steven Rinella?

  Then they later go, oh, you can put out, hmm, five gallons of bait.

• 1:57:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, right.

• 1:57:10Steven Rinella?

  It's like, oh, so you've discovered that 10 gallons spread CWD, but a gallon or five gallons doesn't spread CWD? Is that where we're at?

• 1:57:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:57:21Steven Rinella?

  You, you have this data, you can share with the hunters of Michigan? And people get like, come on, dude.

• 1:57:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:57:28Steven Rinella?

  And, and, and the reason I bring up that COVID-19 thing is because there's a, there's a thing, and I harp on this often. There's a thing that happens when you're managing humans, is you push humans too far on something. And then they go, never mind all of it.

• 1:57:45Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57:45Steven Rinella?

  Which is where you landed. The, the CWD COVID-19 thing will always feel like a parallel to me. Because it's where you land when people say, some of this is so dumb. Out of an abundance of caution, I'm not open to anything you have to say anymore at all. Like, my friend had to watch his mom, like, die in an old folks home through a glass window and couldn't go hug her goodbye. I now, I could be on the most crowded plane in the world. I'm not wearing my mask because I'm done, because you've pushed me too far.

• 1:58:26Steven Rinella?

  And you run the risk with the CWD stuff, states run the risk of, of doing that. And I've seen it happen again and again where people just get like, man, you guys are nuts. Never mind.

• 1:58:37Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:58:37Steven Rinella?

  I'm done talking about it. And they've created a lot of that.

• 1:58:42Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:58:43Steven Rinella?

  But it still worries the shit out of me. You know? I don't know, man, it's the end of the show. Oh, you got any more to add?

• 1:58:51Speaker 07

  Nope.

• 1:58:52Speaker 05

  I'm glad they're there trying and doing something about it. They're not.

• 1:58:55Steven Rinella?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I, I, I just can't, yes, me too. It worries me, it honestly worries me sick. It worries me, like, CWD worries me sick. And, and for the two reasons I always bring up, the, the human health aspect, which tends to worry me less over time. And then the herd health issue worries me sick because I like deer, I like deer culture, I like deer hunting, I like the whole thing. I like that we're going taking our kids deer hunting tomorrow. Like, love it. So I worry about it. Um, but at the same time, uh, I, I worry about when

• 1:59:38Steven Rinella?

  people get, and it can happen, that people get a little drunk on, um, I don't want to say drunk on authority. They, they just get a little bit chaotic.

• 1:59:51Speaker 05

  Sure. And we're already experiencing CWD fatigue.

• 1:59:55Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 1:59:55Speaker 05

  I mean, geez, I was testing elk 20 years ago in elk camp. We had to test every single elk that we killed.

• 2:00:02Steven Rinella?

  In Colorado?

• 2:00:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, you know, so it's like been a major part of my whole adult hunting career, you know? That was when I was, you know, in my early twenties.

• 2:00:13Steven Rinella?

  Did you know that this CWD fatigue, you go to southwest Wisconsin, do you know how long now CWD has been at the forefront of deer hunting conversations in southwest?

• 2:00:23Speaker 07

  Probably 30 years, I bet.

• 2:00:24Steven Rinella?

  A quarter, yeah, a quarter of a century. And a lot of guys are like, we're still shooting big bucks, we're still eating deer burgers.

• 2:00:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I don't know. Worries me sick. All right, turn it all off, Phil.

• 2:00:40Speaker 05

  Thanks, Phil. See you guys next week.

• 2:00:43Steven Rinella?

  See you next week, suckers.

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