Ep. 847: Neanderthal Love, Mule Deer Eradication, and Mink Eyelashes

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en and the MeatEater crew discuss: How Jani https://www.instagram.com/janis_putelis/?hl=en hasn't gotten a mountain lion this year; Brody's new tattoo https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/p/DVhNY0UkoyR/?hl=en and whether the tattoo industry faces a bleak future; Spencer's https://www.instagram.com/spencerneuharth/?hl=en 2026 America The Beautiful Pass; MeatEater's Time Capsule Clovis Hunter hoody and tee https://store.themeateater.com/products/meateater-time-machine-clovis-hunters-hoody?srsltid=AfmBOorCk2euNzLb1TsXdC-tVCsgUXX1KUD1cKbLDQCxQq8lSk9enMk2; Corrections!; neanderthals getting it on and Randall https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/?hl=en as a neanderthal; Catalina Island mule deer eradication; Texas' Rattlesnake Roundup; mink eyelashes; and more. Outro credit: "The Screaming Song" written by George Alan Sparhawk Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:26Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show. On this week's episode, we're covering new research on how Neanderthals, Neanderthals, if you want to be more official, how Neanderthals got it on. The controversial Catalina Island deer annihilation program. Is your wife or daughter, or you, wearing illegally imported fake eyelashes made of mink fur? Are tattoos gonna be totally screwed in the future?

• 2:57Steven Rinella?

  And, just when you thought Colorado animal rights people couldn't embarrass their state any more than they already have, they do. Bringing you this news, we've got me, Stephen Rinella, along with Yanis Poutelis, Dr. Randall Williams Spencer Newhart, Brody Henderson. The show is broken into three segments, our news, your news, and the news. Starting us out with our news, we've got Yanis with no news.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Why is it no news?

• 3:31Steven Rinella?

  Cause you haven't caught a lion.

• 3:35Steven Rinella?

  How do you report on that?

• 3:36Speaker 04

  In this case, no news is not good news.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Hmm, I don't know, I'm always the optimist, you know, my dog and I are still getting out there on plenty of nice hikes in the mountains, enjoying ourselves, practicing what we're trying to do.

• 3:50Steven Rinella?

  He's trying to put a positive spin on this.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  You think if Mingus could talk, he'd say, yeah, this is fun?

• 3:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:58Steven Rinella?

  You think the dog isn't bummed that you guys haven't caught one yet this year?

• 4:03Speaker 03

  I don't know if he knows.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  I have no idea of sort of what his sense of time is.

• 4:12Steven Rinella?

  I'd venture to guess that the dog doesn't think of it as being that he's in this season.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:18Steven Rinella?

  And then there'll be another season next year.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  And I don't know that he can, he knows that it's been a long time since he's saw a lion. But I would venture to guess that if you had two.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  Two bowls of kibble.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 05

  And you could metaphorically put chasing a lion and catching it into one bowl. And then just sort of aimlessly chasing sense to the woods in the other bowl and never catching the line. I think you'd go for that bowl first.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  You think he would?

• 4:44Speaker 05

  I think so.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 4:47Steven Rinella?

  You don't know what mental trip he's on.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:50Steven Rinella?

  He could be like.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  He's a real process oriented guy.

• 4:53Steven Rinella?

  He could be like, when he's laying there sleeping, you think like, oh, look at him sleeping. He could be there being like, I'm a loser. I always knew, you know, I came from the kennel. I came from the dog pound. I'll never live it down.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Or it could be the opposite.

• 5:09Steven Rinella?

  My first owner abandoned me.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  When he's on a line, he could be like, God, I hate this, but I know he likes it a lot.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  Or he's like, he's like, if we'd caught one two months ago, I wouldn't be in the best shape of my life right now.

• 5:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  You know.

• 5:22Steven Rinella?

  Or he's like, I don't see the point in harassing these poor things. I'm not gonna chase it up a tree.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Oh, rebelling. Maybe he's disappointed in you, Yanni.

• 5:35Steven Rinella?

  What do you think about this, Yannis?

• 5:36Speaker 03

  That could be too. Uh, you know, it's been, it, it's been humbling. That's what I think about it. Because he's five this year. So really we've been hard at it for, this would probably be the fourth year, right? We've had three years. One of those years was cut very short by that accident that we, we had together with Mingus. So really he had like two good years. And in those two good years, he had a year where he caught like 16 lions and then a 13 year. A 13 lion year. So to go now to this year to have none, uh, it's like, oh, were those flukes?

• 6:17Steven Rinella?

  I don't think 16 and 13, that doesn't.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  You didn't luck into that.

• 6:21Steven Rinella?

  That's not like, if, if it was like two and one.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:25Steven Rinella?

  Zero, I'd be like, well, maybe zero was normal. But 16, 13, zero, something happened.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, the weather happened.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  Are you blaming this? Snow, is that the problem?

• 6:36Speaker 03

  For sure, but I've also just had a string of bad luck where on the good snow days, we've found tracks. And one day, the tracks literally filled in with snow in front of our eyes, like it was snowing so hard. Multiple days I've had tracks that just took a left when they should have kept going right and they went on to private land. So I just called Mingus back. Um, one day I felt like we were within hundreds of yards, less than a thousand yards of, of paraleons. And it literally was getting dark on us. I'm like, ah, you just gotta, at some point, you just gotta call it. Cause it's getting, you know, it gets dangerous when it gets dark, right?

• 7:17Speaker 03

  And I don't want to leave him out all night long. So there's been a string of that kind of stuff also. But the fact that, yeah, we've had like the worst snow winter in a long time has definitely played into it.

• 7:29Steven Rinella?

  Understood. Thank you, Yanis.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 7:32Speaker 05

  How many numbers of days in the field?

• 7:34Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sorry, back to it.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  You know, I wish I had a.

• 7:38Speaker 05

  I just had a burning question.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  No, that's a good question. Um, because I feel like I've been hunting roughly the same amount.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  Oh, that's even more troubling.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Between the, you know, over the last four or five years, uh.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  Uh, but yeah, I don't have a number for you, but if I had to guess, we've been out. Maybe 20 days, but you know.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  Thank you, Yanis.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  I've talked about this before. I think I talked about this on a previous podcast, the, the one silver lining of this year.

• 8:05Steven Rinella?

  I'm not catching anything.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  We caught a bobcat.

• 8:07Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Which, I know you're real frustrated about that, but.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Catch and release.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  Catch and release the bobcat.

• 8:15Speaker 05

  I know.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  But, uh, that's huge for, for me as a, uh, as a hound o- owner.

• 8:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's a triumph.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. For him to be able to do that all by himself, it was, it was a big day. So all, all is not lost. Like if that's the only thing that happens this, this, uh, hound season, there'll be a pretty good season because we accomplished that one thing.

• 8:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I would just say you caught one. And leave it at that.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  One cat.

• 8:41Steven Rinella?

  One cat.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  One cat.

• 8:42Steven Rinella?

  Did you get your cats?

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Yep. Yeah, but I mean, if you talk to like our good buddy Jake Gribb, he'll tell you that that one bobcat is worth 10 to 20 lions.

• 8:52Steven Rinella?

  So then say that. Say 10 20.

• 8:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, then you're right on, you're right on average here.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's not over for you yet anyway. You got what?

• 9:01Steven Rinella?

  Good time.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  Another?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I got a big, I got a big month.

• 9:04Steven Rinella?

  Big hot, big hot snow this month.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  70 degrees next week.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  They're saying it's coming.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  I can't believe the conversion rate is 10 to 20 mountain lions for one bobcat.

• 9:14Steven Rinella?

  I don't believe that.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 9:16Steven Rinella?

  I think that's an exaggeration.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  It is so hard that many people literally, many people literally will not cut loose on a bobcat track because they're like, it's not worth my time. We're not going to catch it. We're just going to end up on this long chase and end up in a pile of rocks and I won't get to see a bobcat.

• 9:35Speaker 05

  I'll take the blame for this.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  May- maybe it's even higher.

• 9:37Steven Rinella?

  Lot of ground to cover.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  50 mountain lions.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's so special that I maybe.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  This is what I think was gonna happen with this R news section.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Listen, Steve, it's so special that I would consider like getting a tattoo to, to debt, to, to honor.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Now I believe you.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  What's the word I'm looking for?

• 9:57Steven Rinella?

  To memorialize.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, memorialize.

• 9:59Steven Rinella?

  I would have it be a tattoo, no tattoo, and be like, this blank spot on my skin is the year nothing happened.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  No, he should get a lion tattoo to be like, oh, that's what they look like.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Didn't you just do an indefensible law, Steve, where people should memorialize places where things didn't happen?

• 10:15Steven Rinella?

  Well, I, yeah, I did one where I, where you would put signs where people almost got killed.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's good.

• 10:22Steven Rinella?

  Uh, on the subject tattoos.

• 10:28Steven Rinella?

  The, the, the, the radio live finale.

• 10:33Steven Rinella?

  A tattoo artist came in and did he in the office, he did 13 tattoos that day. Oh, wow. Mm hmm. That's efficient. Brody got his first tattoo ever, which my wife thought was cool. Hmm. When he gets all done, when he gets all done, this is my news here, he gets all done and me and he get the BSing. And I'm like, hey, act like you're giving me one. Get it all set up. Act like you're giving me one and I'm gonna send it to, we have a family group text chat called the Free Trappers. So. So cute.

• 11:11Steven Rinella?

  I, uh, I'm like, act like you're giving me one and I'm gonna send it to my family and be like, I finally broke down. I can't believe I did it. I got a tattoo.

• 11:21Steven Rinella?

  I send it. No reply.

• 11:26Steven Rinella?

  My little ones later told me they knew it wasn't true. My wife had already talked to Brody, so she knew it wasn't true. My 15 year old going on 16, this is why I know that tattoos are in trouble. The tattoo industry is in trouble.

• 11:44Steven Rinella?

  15 year old, he says, that is so blank. I can't say what he said, he'd get in trouble with his mom.

• 11:54Steven Rinella?

  Later, he, so he thinks it's true. Later he says to me, dude, don't ever comment on my haircut again. Like coming from a guy with a tattoo.

• 12:08Steven Rinella?

  And their, like in him and his buddies minds, I gather, it is the dorkiest thing a person could do.

• 12:16Steven Rinella?

  Not rebellious. Hmm. Not rebellious. It's like, oh my God.

• 12:21Speaker 04

  Times have changed.

• 12:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, my God. I don't think so. Tattoos have been around for thousands of years. I know, but allow me to finish my thought. Here's why I think that his social circle is interesting. They have a foot in two worlds. He's been brought up around all kind of redneck stuff, knows all kind of rednecks. Right? He just went and pulled calves at his buddy's ranch. But he also knows all about rich people.

• 12:49Steven Rinella?

  He knows about like rich urban people. And ski people. So here's this kind of interesting mix of redneck. Stuff and rich people stuff. And from either side of that. He's not getting tattoo cool factor from either side. So I just am worried. About the tattoo. Market.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  I'm not because my kid said, I want to get the same one as you.

• 13:16Steven Rinella?

  I was wondering if you had data to back up your argument.

• 13:19Speaker 06

  Well, I'm looking at data right now, actually.

• 13:21Steven Rinella?

  Spencer went and got his Trump, the, his, uh, Trump themed America, the beautiful past.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  Hold on, Phil has data on this right now.

• 13:28Speaker 06

  Can I hear? I'm looking at a percentage of Americans with tattoos over time in the year 1936. It looks like 10% of, of, uh, the American population had tattoos. Uh, if we jump, uh, and then 2003, that's a long jump. So it was 16%, but then we have from 2003 to 2012. 21% of Americans had tattoos. From 2012 to 2015, that number jumped from 21 to 29 and from 2015 to 2023, that number jumped. To 32%. So it's been a steady increase.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Steve is talking about the future from here.

• 14:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay, that's why Phil should do a better job of listening.

• 14:06Speaker 06

  So you're, so your argument was like right now.

• 14:08Steven Rinella?

  The future, the future.

• 14:10Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm just saying the trends disagree.

• 14:14Speaker 05

  We're in the tattoo bubble.

• 14:15Steven Rinella?

  Your trend doesn't show the future. Cause it's not known yet. I know the future, that's why I'm telling you.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  He's forecasting a sharp decline. Based on his son's reaction.

• 14:27Steven Rinella?

  I have detected an attitudinal shift. I have detected an attitudinal shift. And I looked at.

• 14:35Speaker 05

  Lot of data.

• 14:35Steven Rinella?

  And, and so if I'm going to go on to a prediction market. I want to make a bet that in 20 years, there has been a cataclysmic drop off. In tattoo rates. Because I've had a glimpse into the future by talking to my kids buddies.

• 14:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, you could be very, very right.

• 14:54Steven Rinella?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 14:55Speaker 06

  Based on what they're doing to the alcohol industry and how they don't like sex in movies.

• 14:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, a bunch of prudes.

• 15:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Spencer got a new pass.

• 15:06Steven Rinella?

  Explain this. This is very interesting. This is, this is legit news.

• 15:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, I went to Yellowstone a couple of weekends ago, uh, and my winter trip there is usually when we get our new pass for the year. It's called the America, the Beautiful Pass.

• 15:18Steven Rinella?

  How long has that existed?

• 15:19Speaker 07

  Um, since 2004, I believe some version of it has existed.

• 15:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, here, Phil's got them pulled up.

• 15:25Speaker 07

  Uh, the America, the Beautiful Pass, it's $80. It grants you entry to national parks, uh, national wildlife refuges. Also covers your day use fees, uh, if you're in national forests, grasslands, BLM, Army Corps land, a place where you're required to pay a day use fee. You typically don't need to if you have.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  It's like a good deal if you do these things a lot, right?

• 15:45Speaker 07

  Certainly, yeah. Yep. Um, but I think, uh, although there's like so many places it gives you access to, these are primarily just used in national parks. That's what people buy them for, is to get in and out of national parks for a year.

• 15:56Steven Rinella?

  And you, and you and the missus buy one every year?

• 15:58Speaker 07

  Every year. Since we moved to Montana, this, so this is our seventh pass that we've had. I've got three of them here now.

• 16:03Steven Rinella?

  Why didn't you buy it in South Dakota?

• 16:06Speaker 07

  Just didn't attend national parks the same way we do now. Didn't live as close to as many of them.

• 16:11Speaker 06

  Rushmore.

• 16:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 16:13Steven Rinella?

  But that'd get you into Rushmore.

• 16:14Speaker 07

  It would get you into Rushmore. Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  Speaking of Rushmore.

• 16:16Speaker 07

  I believe. Uh, it, so the, the, the America, the Beautiful Pass, it's like the size of your credit card or driver's license. It's, it's a laminated card. Now, traditionally, these have a photo on them of wildlife or landscape, and I've got past examples here that you can see.

• 16:31Steven Rinella?

  Phil, can you go back to that, that shot you had up?

• 16:34Speaker 07

  And that's, that's showing you like the last decade of.

• 16:36Steven Rinella?

  That's a rosiated spoonbill?

• 16:38Speaker 07

  That is a, yes, correct, from the Everglades.

• 16:40Steven Rinella?

  So what year is that?

• 16:41Speaker 07

  Uh, that is last year.

• 16:42Steven Rinella?

  Everglades National Park, rosiated spoonbill. And then what year is this?

• 16:46Speaker 07

  2024, that's an eastern collared lizard.

• 16:49Steven Rinella?

  Okay, lizard 2024 pass.

• 16:51Speaker 07

  2023, it was a landscape picture from Kings Canyon National Park. Uh, so that's, you get an idea of what they look like.

• 16:58Steven Rinella?

  A polar bear from what park would that be from?

• 17:00Speaker 07

  Uh, I don't know. Denali, does, does Denali?

• 17:02Speaker 06

  Gates of the Arctic.

• 17:03Speaker 07

  Gates of the Arctic. I also don't think it has to be in a national park. It's just like fed, federal land. Uh, and it's.

• 17:09Speaker 04

  But you did say it's gotta be a.

• 17:11Speaker 07

  It's it's

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Like by law?

• 17:13Steven Rinella?

  I don't think it

• 17:13Speaker 07

  Since 2004, it's been a federal law that the way these are chosen is there is a picture contest uh done by, what is it, the National Parks Foundation? And the winning photo from that is on the pass for the following year.

• 17:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  So this year, you can see what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be Glacier National Park in Montana. That was what the winning photo was from last year. Uh but the the Trump administration has changed this. They they are breaking this 2004 federal law. Uh and instead, it is a picture of George Washington and Donald Trump on the pass.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Can you see that, Bill?

• 17:48Speaker 07

  And and this It's on the TV. This has made um some folks very mad.

• 17:52Steven Rinella?

  It's just too much, man.

• 17:54Speaker 07

  It's it's made folks very mad.

• 17:56Steven Rinella?

  He doesn't look like he's at the park.

• 17:58Speaker 07

  No, it has. You wouldn't look at that and think, you know, wild places.

• 18:02Steven Rinella?

  It looks like he got to the outhouse at the park. He got to the porta potty at the park.

• 18:07Speaker 07

  It was locked.

• 18:08Steven Rinella?

  And it's and it and there's and it's overflowed.

• 18:11Speaker 07

  It's locked.

• 18:12Steven Rinella?

  And he opened the door and he's like, someone's gonna pay.

• 18:16Speaker 07

  That is what I'm saying. Yes. Uh and you can see these these photos on our YouTube channel.

• 18:22Steven Rinella?

  Um and Well, yeah, I mean, in all fairness, this is 250th first president, current president, 250 years of presidents. I think that's what this is going for here.

• 18:31Speaker 07

  Yes, I mean, he he made a lot of changes with National Park related stuff this year that is supposed to be more patriotic. Uh for example, he got rid of Juneteenth and MLK Day as free days. And he's made Flag Day, which is his birthday, and then President's Day as as free days instead. And this is all patriotic thing. He's also, thi- this is a good one. He he bumped up the fee for non-residents. If you're from Canada, if you're from Italy.

• 18:55Steven Rinella?

  I I support that.

• 18:55Speaker 07

  And I I agree. That's I think that's

• 18:57Steven Rinella?

  The other stuff I don't get.

• 18:58Speaker 07

  That's a North American thing that we're like, if you want to go recreate in Colorado as a non-resident, you pay a higher fee. And it's like part of it.

• 19:04Steven Rinella?

  They've also removed like indigenous perspectives from

• 19:07Speaker 07

  Hmm. That that that's, yeah, totally different.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a lot of things that happens if you put a piece of tape over Trump's head.

• 19:14Speaker 07

  So uh within within days of the new year, when these went into effect, the National Park Service had to release a statement saying that your pass will be voided if you alter it by putting a sticker over it, by drawing on it, by

• 19:27Steven Rinella?

  Has that always been true?

• 19:29Speaker 07

  Yes, but I don't think anyone's ever tested it. It hasn't been a problem.

• 19:31Steven Rinella?

  But it's always been the fact.

• 19:32Speaker 07

  It's always been true. Yes. And, and like, for example, of how, how much drama this has made, there's an Etsy shop seller who has started making stickers for these. Um, and she said that she would like, give that money to, uh, public lands for what she would sell. It's a sticker that would go over Trump's face. She made $16,000 in the first month. Just, just doing that.

• 19:52Steven Rinella?

  What is the sticker?

• 19:53Speaker 07

  I don't remember. I think it's.

• 19:55Speaker 05

  It's like a wildlife. It's like a wildlife. Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 07

  Maybe.

• 19:58Steven Rinella?

  Pike.

• 19:59Speaker 07

  I, I, we've looked this up on trivia. You can say a pika or pika.

• 20:04Steven Rinella?

  Who can?

• 20:05Speaker 07

  Anyone can.

• 20:07Steven Rinella?

  Go, go eat. I can't.

• 20:11Speaker 07

  I, I, we did this on, we addressed that on trivia. That's right.

• 20:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay. What, what, what's next year's? Are they going to revert next year's pass to the winner?

• 20:19Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 20:19Steven Rinella?

  This would be like if the duck stamp, you know, like the whole duck stamp competition?

• 20:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:23Steven Rinella?

  If all of a sudden the duck stamp was like a duck with like Trump's face on it?

• 20:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:28Steven Rinella?

  And he's like, no, no, that's the, that's the duck stamp for sure.

• 20:31Speaker 07

  Yeah. So the, the Trump administration has not been great to the national parks. Uh, you know, Doge cut a thousand employees last year.

• 20:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 07

  They tried to slash the budget by 38% this year. The Senate rejected that. So Trump not exactly a mascot for the national parks. I was trying to think of an analogy. It would be like if we had a media to radio live listening pass and then Steve put his face on it.

• 20:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. That's great analogy. I totally understand.

• 20:55Speaker 07

  That's what it would be like. Uh, and so.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  Or if he let Elon Musk take an axe to radio live.

• 21:02Speaker 07

  And this, this drama is going to get bigger. Now the national parks get 40% of their visitation between June and August. So there's a lot of folks who are going to be buying their pass in a few months. Um, and it's already, it's already been a big deal. Um, but it's, it's going to become, uh, probably a bigger deal.

• 21:18Steven Rinella?

  Uh, on a related note, someone just shared with me, this, this article's a little bit older now. I've been kind of hanging on to it. Um, someone shared with me an article, an op ed. That came out. It was a guest essay called mega elites who live on their phones are ruining the outdoors. And it point, that's, that's a hyperbolic headline. But what it points out is

• 21:40Steven Rinella?

  we've kind of like, we've moved away, we're currently moved away from the old style of like outdoor Republican. And, you know, like you think about, uh,

• 21:54Steven Rinella?

  The Bushes were anglers, right? They would vacation out like Kenny Bunkport and go fishing. Anyways, this article lays out this idea that that rather than rather than trips to Wyoming to fly fish and stuff, what we see out of the administration is golfing in Florida. And this individual argues that there's then been this like perspective shift away from this like tradition of outdoor Republicans into like indoor Republicans. Um, the guy is a research. So the guy that wrote it, you should go, go check it out. Listeners should check it out. It'll like, it'll, it'll, it'll do one of two things.

• 22:32Steven Rinella?

  It'll either make you so mad. Um, because you're disagreeing, you'll be like so mad, you'll be mad that we mentioned it. Or you'll be so happy we mentioned it because it already aligns with what you think. So you can go, no matter who you are, just think about this, no matter who you are, you could go read this and reinforce your opinions. And be happy or sad.

• 22:52Speaker 05

  If you ever read something that everybody agrees on, everybody, it's probably not worth reading.

• 22:59Steven Rinella?

  It'd be like reading a park pass.

• 23:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:02Steven Rinella?

  That's a joke.

• 23:05Steven Rinella?

  The guy that wrote it. You get a little suspicious when you read what he does. So he, he, Dr. Lazak is a researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the politics of climate change. So guess what his biases might be?

• 23:25Steven Rinella?

  Uh, another piece of news. We got, we're doing this, we're doing a, a new series called the Time Machine. So every month. We're, we're taking artwork, like, see this one here? This goes back the farthest. This is a time machine artwork of Clovis points, archaeological drawings of Clovis points. That's this month. We're going to hit the Custer Battle, the Battle of the Greasy Grass, or the Battle of the Little Bighorn, depending on what side you're on. Um.

• 23:58Steven Rinella?

  Pittman Robertson Act. Every month you can come check it out.

• 24:03Steven Rinella?

  T-shirts, hoodies, time capsule. We go back in time. That's the Clovis shirt right there. Um, they're all limited run tees and hoodies. Find them at the Meat Eater Store website.

• 24:15Speaker 01

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• 24:45Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Now, if you've thought about trying therapy with BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay

• 25:26Steven Rinella?

  for eligible members of just 23 bucks per session. Hey, you might not know this, you probably don't know this, but World Mental Health Day is October 10, but your brain does not wait around for October 10. You gotta take care of your mental health at all times. And therapy isn't just for like big life choices. It can be a place to talk through small but important things like a work situation, taking up too much mental real estate, a relationship dynamic you can't quite name, or simply the sense that something feels off. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an average copay.

• 26:07Steven Rinella?

  Pay of just $23 per session with insurance. If you don't have insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 10% off your first month. Go visit betterhelp.com/meateater to explore your payment options. That's betterhelp, H E L P dot com slash meat eater. If you've got something weighing on your mind, taking a toll on you, don't be afraid to reach out. Betterhelp.com/meateater. Okay, moving on to corrections. Corrections, corrections. That's from Fiddler on the Roof. This is our inaugural segment, inaugural segment of Corrections,

• 26:50Steven Rinella?

  where we have a Correction of the Week contest sponsored by Tacovus. So Corrections are like this, if you're sitting around, like normally in today's political climate,

• 27:02Steven Rinella?

  and I mean, this is, this is why I'm sticking it to both sides on this. People just say stuff that's just wrong and they don't, and they know it's wrong. It's like a flex to say stuff that's just wrong.

• 27:15Steven Rinella?

  Cause it's kind of like, it's like, I know it's wrong. You know it's wrong and now you're going to have to live with it. But we try to invite Corrections. So if we say something that's screwed up or, or we make a mistake or omit the truth or whatever, we invite your Corrections. We want your corrections so bad about things we're wrong about that if you get the Correction of the Week, you win a pair of Tacovus boots.

• 27:44Steven Rinella?

  You send your Corrections to the meat eater podcast at themeateater.com. We've got three to choose from to who wins the Tacovus boots. Okay, going in the future, we'll only be accepting Corrections from the news show, but we're, we're accepting Corrections otherwise right now.

• 28:05Steven Rinella?

  Episode 838. Someone writes in, this is his correction. Episode 838, Steve is talking about a hen turkey making bad calls and uses the term on accident. The corrector goes on to say, as a writer and someone who makes a living speaking, he should know it is by accident. He goes on to say, fewer things annoy me more than this. If he could please correct this going forward, it would make my listening experience much better. You don't do something on accident.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  Are we voting at the end? Yeah, you can't.

• 28:51Speaker 07

  I'm not voting for this guy.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  Can I? I mean, maybe my grammar is off, but shouldn't those quotes be outs- outside of that period?

• 29:01Steven Rinella?

  Thank you, Yannis. I was about to make that same point. Back in his face, in your face.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 29:10Steven Rinella?

  Hey, you know what? I got it. Steve, this guy's name is Steve. Steve, I got a little suggestion for you. Learn how to put your quotes in the right place, buddy.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  I think this guy's already lost his chance at a pair of boots.

• 29:24Steven Rinella?

  He's out. Close call, but no, no, no, no.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  I'm sure that he placed those periods there by accident.

• 29:33Steven Rinella?

  Ah.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  So on accident, I'm looking this up and I see that it's like colloquial, but I don't, is it a grammar thing? I've, I've heard you say.

• 29:44Steven Rinella?

  Colloquial often means wrong.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:49Steven Rinella?

  But I, I don't think he's gonna win because, because he got, he got like back at him. Back at him. Okay, on mink, coals and bad smells. Here's a contender. Here's a real contender.

• 30:03Steven Rinella?

  He's referencing back to episode 838. Okay. Around the 31 minute mark in the episode, Steve referenced the 2020 coal of mink in Denmark. We were talking about during the, the COVID pandemic. They found out that mink were harbingers of COVID. And they started killing all ranch mink in Denver, in Denmark. And I said that the mink all went to market. My understanding was when I first heard about the coal, I thought it would cause mink prices to skyrocket. Because there's no more make. But someone said the inverse was true. It was a massive influx of mink pelts because they had to go pelt all the mink.

• 30:48Steven Rinella?

  And so it flooded the market with mink and tanked it. So I said, they were all pelted out. This guy says, the coal was so hasty and disorganized that it didn't give the opportunity for many of the affected mink farmers to pelt out, meaning to skin them all. Given that just before the discussion of the mink coal, there was a discussion of various bad smells. You may also be interested in the fact that the coal resulted in millions of mink being buried in mass burial sites. And the fact that they hadn't been skinned meant that some of them started to decompose and bloat

• 31:30Steven Rinella?

  and push their way out of the ground, which media dubbed zombie mink.

• 31:38Speaker 05

  I like that.

• 31:40Steven Rinella?

  That was from Doug.

• 31:40Speaker 05

  That's, that's a correction of a correction you received, right? Because your initial impression was that they wouldn't be skinned. Your initial assumption.

• 31:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but that was an internal.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:51Steven Rinella?

  This is, that was legit.

• 31:52Speaker 05

  But still.

• 31:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Now here is like a great correction that's going to compete with the mink correction.

• 32:01Steven Rinella?

  Episode 829, at the 14 minute mark, we're talking about

• 32:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay, we're talking about salmon leaving their natal spawning streams and going back out to the ocean. Are we talking about ones coming up?

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Coming up.

• 32:17Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Pretty sure.

• 32:20Steven Rinella?

  Either way, we're talking about fish loss at dams in the Columbia system.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Oh, no, were we talking about smolt going out?

• 32:27Steven Rinella?

  I think it's

• 32:28Speaker 05

  I think it's smolt going out.

• 32:29Steven Rinella?

  Smolt going out.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:31Steven Rinella?

  Okay, and we're saying that they're losing, that at every dam, these fish encounter, they're losing 7 to 15% of the population at every dam.

• 32:44Steven Rinella?

  Brody, in all of his ignorance,

• 32:48Steven Rinella?

  I say, I can't even do that math.

• 32:52Steven Rinella?

  Brody does, and he says, that's over 100% him being dumb.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Jeez.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's not how the math works.

• 33:04Steven Rinella?

  Not how the math works. This guy writes in, it's actually like this, if 200,000 salmon attempt to make it past the first dam, with a 15% mortality rate, there will be 170,000 that make it through to attempt the next dam.

• 33:25Steven Rinella?

  After dam number two, at 15% mortality rate, there are 144,500 smelt left. If you continue this trend through all eight dams, you are left with 54,500 salmon. This is a total loss of about 73% at the high end. If you use the 7% mortality rate with this method, you end up with 111,900 fish after the eighth dam.

• 34:07Steven Rinella?

  So the total mortality rate range is from forty-four to seventy-three percent, not as what I did in my head, more than all of them.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is, this is probably gonna get a correction too, but it's like, it's like the reverse of compound interest.

• 34:26Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  Whereas like, if you have money invested, as it grows, it grows more, as it shrinks, it shrinks less in each iteration.

• 34:35Steven Rinella?

  Understood.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 34:37Steven Rinella?

  The way, well, that does, okay.

• 34:40Speaker 04

  You got a minor in, in math? You got a doctorate in math?

• 34:42Speaker 05

  I was actually just thinking, we should, we should at some point just have a podcast episode with a, a statistician.

• 34:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, about draw odds.

• 34:50Speaker 05

  And just probabilities, probabilities for the, for the Joe Blow outdoorsman. We can explain things like this, we can explain draw odds.

• 34:57Steven Rinella?

  That's a great idea. You know, cause that's another thing is, um, there's a lot of confusion about draw odds.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:03Steven Rinella?

  That'd be a good idea. Yeah. A hunter.

• 35:06Speaker 05

  It might not be, it might not, might not be a two-hour podcast, but it could be a flop.

• 35:11Steven Rinella?

  If you qualify, please write in to the Mediator Podcast at the Mediator.com. I also need someone from the, did you know that there's a, did you know that there's a discipline?

• 35:24Steven Rinella?

  That zoos have zoo SWAT teams.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 35:31Steven Rinella?

  And there's like a leading figure in the zoo SWAT team area, and she made a YouTube video one time about her industry and her training, tactical zookeeper training. And in this video, they're like shooting shotgun, shooting slug guns through woven wire fences. She does her interview in front of a bear with a bullet, with a bullseye on his brain.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would, you'd need to clarify what these SWAT teams do. They're not after people.

• 36:00Steven Rinella?

  It's for, if monkeys get loose.

• 36:02Speaker 05

  It's for Harambe.

• 36:03Steven Rinella?

  Or lions get loose.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  The Harambe contingency.

• 36:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they had, they had a kid fall into a, into a gorilla container, and they killed the gorilla.

• 36:13Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 36:13Steven Rinella?

  What zoo was that at?

• 36:14Speaker 05

  Cincinnati Zoo.

• 36:15Steven Rinella?

  So we reached out to people within this zoo SWAT team community, and they're like, no one will talk to you. This is a very tight-knit community. No one will speak. If, if X person won't speak, no one will speak.

• 36:32Steven Rinella?

  But X person has spoken weirdly.

• 36:37Steven Rinella?

  But won't.

• 36:39Steven Rinella?

  If you are in the zookeeper SWAT team business, we would love to talk to you on the podcast.

• 36:45Speaker 05

  That does sound like a good one.

• 36:46Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it'd be a great one.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:48Steven Rinella?

  But they're like, they don't want, zoos have to have a zookeeper SWAT team.

• 36:53Speaker 05

  I do know someone.

• 36:55Steven Rinella?

  Well, I know, but I didn't pan out.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Like on site or they call people?

• 36:59Steven Rinella?

  No, I think they got, they got tactical trained people who are ready for a lion to get out.

• 37:05Speaker 07

  I would also guess that they're, they're wearing multiple hats at the zoo.

• 37:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like the, but they, in their mind, it's a dirty secret.

• 37:13Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 37:15Speaker 06

  I think it's more that nobody wants to see animals harmed at, at the zoo, but if something happens where it's between an animal and a human being, then they'll do what they need to do. So I think that there are people at zoos who are trained, lest something get out of control.

• 37:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but I don't think that's a dirty secret.

• 37:33Speaker 06

  Right.

• 37:34Steven Rinella?

  Someone out there works in this field, I would like to have a serious conversation on the podcast about that field. Like, like, what is the training? What is the probability? What are some examples where this has occurred? Why does this go on? I don't feel like it's a thing that they're like, hush, hush, can't talk about that. It just seems weird to me. Um, some more audience emails.

• 37:59Speaker 05

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 37:59Speaker 07

  We gotta pick a winner. We're voting between millions of mink and thousands of salmon.

• 38:05Speaker 06

  Gosh, it's tough. Like, number three did a lot of math.

• 38:08Steven Rinella?

  So number one, the guy that can't use his quotes, right? Any votes?

• 38:12Speaker 05

  Here's, well, here's one, one way that I'm thinking about this. If a good correction, I would think is one that you would deliver to someone to their face if they're a stranger at a bar and they'd walk away going, huh.

• 38:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 05

  If you were at a bar with a stranger and they said, it's not on accident, it's by accident, then.

• 38:33Steven Rinella?

  I would like that guy.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  You would?

• 38:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  Just from the.

• 38:37Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 38:37Speaker 07

  That's something like Nate Mason would hit me with that.

• 38:39Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 38:40Speaker 07

  It sounds obnoxious.

• 38:41Steven Rinella?

  You do like Nate? But he's kind of obnoxious.

• 38:43Speaker 05

  I like, but it's not really opening your.

• 38:47Steven Rinella?

  He'd tell you that.

• 38:48Speaker 05

  It's not really opening your eyes. You know, you wouldn't go home and be like, you know what I learned today?

• 38:53Steven Rinella?

  No, I would tell my wife that. I'd wake her up in the middle of the night. I stand corrected. I can't sleep.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  I don't think guy number one would even vote for guy number one in this one.

• 39:04Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  And he knows.

• 39:05Steven Rinella?

  And he votes, we got seven voters in the room. Guy number one?

• 39:08Speaker 04

  No.

• 39:08Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Guy number two, not all mink were discarded, not all mink were pelted out.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  That's, I'm voting for that guy.

• 39:16Steven Rinella?

  Well, you know why you're voting for him? Cause the other guy's goofing on you.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  I'm voting for him because it's like he's, he's bringing the like receipts. He's got an article. It's like. He's bringing information, articles.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  I will say typically when, in the news, when somebody calls something a zombie, something like a zombie deer. I don't like it. I like this use of zombie.

• 39:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I'm voting for him. So for the mink guy.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Don't we all need to be like closing our eyes? Nope.

• 39:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay, the math, the math guy goofing on Brody. He wins some Tico over boots. We had some people that abstained.

• 39:54Speaker 05

  Corinne didn't even vote.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  No, I'd not say in the thing that he's making fun of me.

• 39:58Speaker 06

  Oh, you voted for the mink guy?

• 40:00Steven Rinella?

  Oh, we got a miscount.

• 40:03Speaker 06

  That means Phil.

• 40:04Steven Rinella?

  Phil, listen, way in here dude.

• 40:06Speaker 06

  Oh, I'm like Florida.

• 40:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 40:08Speaker 06

  A lot of hanging chads.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  No.

• 40:12Speaker 06

  Mink. Sorry.

• 40:13Steven Rinella?

  Okay, the mink guy.

• 40:15Speaker 05

  Try to say it differently.

• 40:17Speaker 06

  How many times are you gonna change your vote? Is this election fraud here?

• 40:22Steven Rinella?

  This is some hanging chads dude. Final, final vote, final vote. This is serious this time. The mink guy.

• 40:31Steven Rinella?

  Two votes for the mink guy. The math guy.

• 40:34Speaker 05

  Steve convinced himself to change his vote.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  Max Allen is the winner of a pair of Kobe's. We will reach out to you.

• 40:42Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's goofing on Brody. That's why he got my vote. Max Allen, you got a free pair of boots? You can tell us what size and style and all that. Someone will take care of you.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  Max.

• 40:51Steven Rinella?

  Uh, okay. Quick audience email. Um, we're running behind time. We gotta hustle.

• 40:57Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. No one even comment on this.

• 40:59Speaker 07

  I feel like we're right on.

• 41:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think we're actually doing pretty good.

• 41:01Steven Rinella?

  No one even comment on this.

• 41:02Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 41:03Steven Rinella?

  Guy writes in, in the Screw Worm episode 835, you guys relayed a story from Kevin Murphy's childhood about pe- about pudding and altered bull to work for breeding purposes.

• 41:18Steven Rinella?

  What I was talking about is Kevin Murphy, I was driving along with Kevin Murphy and he's telling me about working at a ranch. I said, what kind of work are you doing at the ranch? And he just relayed to me a story that they would be able, that they, in the old days, they would surgically redirect a bull's penis so that it was coming out backward.

• 41:38Steven Rinella?

  You would make this bull wear a big ink blotter on his neck and you'd turn him out with your cows. He would detect that a cow was in heat and he would mount the cow, but his pecker being misoriented would not result in fertilization. But the ink blot would mark the cow as being receptive, at which point a farm boy or whoever would, like Kevin, you would then rush out and artificially inseminate that cow. I thought that was very, very, very interesting.

• 42:19Speaker 07

  That's great.

• 42:22Steven Rinella?

  And my, this writer writes in, this listener writes in, in my time spent cowboying out west, we have come to call these heat-seeking missiles, he's being metaphoric, he's being poetic there, Gomer bulls, G-O-M-E-R, Gomer, perhaps from Gomer pile, I don't know, Gomer bulls or teaser bulls. And he says, that phrase is commonly used in the equine industry as well. Gomer bulls are often selected because they won't cut it as a good breeder bull genetically, but are generally easy to work and be around. Advances in animal husbandry have made vasectomy the primary method for sterilizing these bulls. I could relate.

• 43:12Steven Rinella?

  And for the cows, we often use paint patches that work like a scratch off huh? Rather than lots of ink and paint.

• 43:22Steven Rinella?

  The patches can rip off and do a good job showing who's been getting ridden by the Gomer Bowl.

• 43:32Steven Rinella?

  If he sees someone with a cowboy hat on backwards at the airport, he points out, he calls them a Gomer.

• 43:39Steven Rinella?

  He wonders, does Kevin Murphy consider himself livestock adjacent enough to wear a cowboy hat?

• 43:48Steven Rinella?

  His hat's not quite a cowboy hat, but Kevin Murphy entered cowboy hat validity through an entirely different path. In my view.

• 44:00Steven Rinella?

  He could have never looked at an equine or bovine animal and wear a cowboy hat.

• 44:08Steven Rinella?

  Switching to the news, the the news, Dr. Randall.

• 44:13Speaker 05

  Well, there's some exciting developments in the world of Neanderthal or Neanderthal romance.

• 44:21Speaker 05

  Uh, there is a report, a paper that came out last month in the journal Science. Uh, that concluded that, uh, like for a while, we've known that humans and Neanderthals shared DNA and and crossbred at some point, but they've now determined that the preponderance of those interactions and couplings were, uh, had to do with a male Neanderthal and a female Homo sapien.

• 44:49Steven Rinella?

  This is showing because they can track like mitochondrial DNA and

• 44:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, a bunch of stuff I don't understand.

• 44:54Speaker 05

  I found it. I found a term called the Neanderthal Desert.

• 44:58Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  Which refers to the fact that in human, uh, X chromosomes, they show much less, uh, Neanderthal DNA than the rest of the genome. And and I, if you're a specialist in this area, I'm going to misuse a lot of these terms.

• 45:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so get your corrections ready.

• 45:17Speaker 05

  But if I use, say, 60 to 70% of them correctly, write in and say, you did a good job because that's what I'm aiming for. So, um, there, there was, there are a bunch of theories about why this might be, it could have been the, like, the, the Neanderthal DNA could have been missing from the X chromosomes because there's some sort of. Like health risk or something that would just sort of be weeded out through natural selection like it if whatever that that um Neanderthal DNA made humans more sus- made the offspring more susceptible to certain diseases, right? But what they did is they went and looked at Neanderthal DNA and they found that Neanderthal DNA on their X chromosomes, they actually have like a much higher percentage of human

• 46:02Speaker 05

  DNA in them, right? Cause there's there's DNA from both sides. So they kind of reverse engineered.

• 46:08Steven Rinella?

  I never even thought to look at that.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so you take an old Neanderthal dead guy.

• 46:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:12Steven Rinella?

  Bones and be like, well, he's got some Homo sapien lurking in them.

• 46:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:16Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 46:17Speaker 05

  And so that's so that essentially that's the the explanation now and and there are some there are other reasons that could sort of account for it other than just like sexual preference.

• 46:28Steven Rinella?

  Um, this has nothing to do with sexual. They're trying to make it like that.

• 46:31Speaker 05

  Oh, no, no, I'm I don't like there's there are some theories.

• 46:35Steven Rinella?

  I already have figured.

• 46:35Speaker 05

  There are some theories about like um like you can have whatever sex bias in breeding because of like uh distribution, like whatever Neanderthal males travel more, something like that.

• 46:52Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Um, but they've so but basically they've ruled it down to the fact that for whatever reason, Neanderthal males and Neanderthal fem- and human females were the most likely uh like overwhelmingly more likely to couple than say a human male and a Neanderthal female.

• 47:10Steven Rinella?

  In the the pieces that I read about this, and I can't remember where I read, but the pieces I read, it was like they were sort of getting into the suggestion of like attraction.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:21Steven Rinella?

  Was there an attraction component? Um, I I don't I don't know. Earlier I told you what would happen in the future.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:31Steven Rinella?

  I can and here I could tell you what happened in the past if you'd like.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I read, I read another, I read another article that was very much leaning in the opposite direction of the attraction to be provocative. It was just like, you know, for most of human history, mating resembled what we see in animals and that there's no consent, right? And it's, you know, it's like when you watch a duck with a duck, it's sometimes ugly. But, um, in any event, they, they went the opposite direction to be more provocative, right? Um, but

• 48:07Steven Rinella?

  That there was a, there was a coercion element.

• 48:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:09Steven Rinella?

  That's where I'm going.

• 48:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:11Steven Rinella?

  In understanding this, and I don't know, maybe you guys know this, uh, mule deer and whitetail deer will, will not infrequently, uh, interbreed. And I believe that when they do that, like they'll, they'll have a, their, their offspring don't do well, but I've read that, and I don't know why this is true. I've read that it is typically a whitetail buck breeding a mule deer doe.

• 48:39Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 48:41Steven Rinella?

  But I've never read why, is it because the other, I don't know if it's that the other couplings don't produce offspring? Or is it that that's just how it goes and, and, and that's just how it goes?

• 48:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the other really interesting thing that I, I pulled up when I was doing my deep dive on Neanderthals, um, was like the, there's another human species, the Denisovans or Denisovans, um, who are more, they're sort of like the Asiatic version of a Neanderthal.

• 49:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  And they split off like around the same time as the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals sort of went north and west and the Denisovans went east. And this is one case where they just found, I think like a finger bone in a cave, um, in Russia. And they discovered that, hey, this is a different type of human. And they sort of done what Heffelfinger's doing with the, the Merriam's elk.

• 49:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 49:39Speaker 05

  So they're going back to older fossils that they assumed were just either

• 49:44Steven Rinella?

  Understood.

• 49:45Speaker 05

  Just normal Homo sapiens and they're identifying them retroactively as Denisovans or Denisovans.

• 49:50Steven Rinella?

  They had been miscategorized.

• 49:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I was reading a book on human genetics.

• 49:57Steven Rinella?

  I wanna say, like, i- if I'm wrong, it's still an interesting book. I wanna say that it was in this book. No, it wasn't in that book. I was gonna say it was in The Seven Daughters of Eve.

• 50:08Steven Rinella?

  I can't remember what the hell book. I was reading a book about human genetics.

• 50:13Steven Rinella?

  In the book, they were talking about that, you know, as the human diaspora, as humans spread around the world, there are pockets of the world that have much higher Neanderthal DNA concentrations. There are pockets of the world that have no.

• 50:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:32Steven Rinella?

  Neander- like, in Africa,

• 50:36Steven Rinella?

  like-

• 50:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, like Sub-Saharan Africa.

• 50:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, i- in, in, in Africa, like, down into the African continent, Neanderthals weren't down there. They were a European, predominantly European, Asian, Middle Eastern species. So people that remained in, that, that remained in Africa, they don't have introgression from Neanderthals. He points out that this is a very, this is a very hot-loaded subject. And he said that there's even been a reluctance, he claims, in this book, and I can't remember the guy's damn name. He claims that there's been a reluctance to talk about what populations around the world have allowed a Neanderthal, because it would be viewed as disparaging these people.

• 51:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:20Steven Rinella?

  And so he said, it's like, it's become like a sort of hush-hush subject, because, because it's, it's, uh, people would review it, view it as derogatory.

• 51:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, it is interesting. I think, like, our understanding of Neanderthal has changed a lot. And now we recognize that they were, they buried their dead, and they wore jewelry, and they used tools, and lit fires and things like that, and probably had language, but-

• 51:45Steven Rinella?

  Dove for shellfish.

• 51:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, but for a long time, obviously, there was this, uh-

• 51:52Speaker 05

  The sort of, I mean, I think what Western science did for a long time is like, look at something else and assume it's lesser than, right? If it's not Homo sapiens, or if it's not, you know, previously, like, if it's not European, it's, it's sort of on this order of being, right? And there's like this progressive view of these things. But now I think it's like the Neanderthal DNA story is even more interesting because, like, I was reading something the other day that if you have, they, they found in one study that people with more Neanderthal DNA, or a certain sequence of Neanderthal DNA, were more susceptible to bad COVID outcomes. So it shows like how, you know, like, some chunks of Neanderthal DNA could go missing

• 52:37Speaker 05

  over time because for whatever reason, it makes people susceptible to certain infections, but.

• 52:42Steven Rinella?

  Or if they had bad COVID restrictions in their communities. The authorities are like, no going outside of your cave. All their Amazon boxes are laying around unopened.

• 52:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:54Steven Rinella?

  Um, I'll tell you what happened. You ready?

• 52:57Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 52:59Steven Rinella?

  I think that Neanderthal groups would now and then overpower Homo sapien groups. They would kill the, they would kill the males and they would keep the females as concubines. That's exactly what happened.

• 53:13Speaker 05

  I can't dispute that.

• 53:18Steven Rinella?

  You ready to move on?

• 53:19Speaker 05

  I think it's plausible explanation.

• 53:20Steven Rinella?

  I don't know, these guys are not Neanderthal guys? I don't know. You guys want to chop it up?

• 53:24Speaker 04

  That's good news.

• 53:25Steven Rinella?

  All right. Can I tell you my favorite Neanderthal little thing?

• 53:28Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 53:30Steven Rinella?

  I was reading a book about Neanderthals. It had a lot to do with Neanderthals. And this guy was talking about when they exhume all these remain, Neanderthal remains, they see a, like, a predictable suite of injuries on the bones. They were showing them to physicians. And there was a physician who had treated a lot of bull riders in his career.

• 54:02Steven Rinella?

  And he pointed out that wow. The, the types of injuries I'm seeing are very representative of what I see on bull riders. Out of this came this idea, and this guy wrote about it, that they practiced a confrontational style of hunting.

• 54:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:22Steven Rinella?

  They, they mix it up.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  You're not, you're not saying that bull riders are like Neanderthals.

• 54:27Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm saying that he was like, the kinds of breaks in lesions. He saw reminded him of what he sees from bull riders getting trampled. Gored.

• 54:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  But you have to have a little bit of a Neanderthal mindset to get on a 2,000 pound animal and ride it, ride it around.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  They should research the genetics there. What I would like to know is if it went the other way. Did Homo sapiens do the same thing?

• 54:59Steven Rinella?

  Well, that's. Did a bunch of lady, the bunch of female Homo sapiens raided a Neanderthal camp? Killed all the women and brought the guys homeless concubines?

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Would do that to Neanderthal women?

• 55:10Steven Rinella?

  I mean, that's, that is one theory as far as.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  Cause it's only like a one-way path that Randall's talking about, right? Like.

• 55:18Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. Understood.

• 55:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:21Steven Rinella?

  I'm not that good. I can't tell you.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, there, there is like, at some point, human behavior changed because

• 55:31Speaker 05

  that, that's one of the explanations, at least for the extinction of the Neanderthals. Is there's no like discernible physical change in humans over that period of time? So whatever, when we went from cohabitation to one species being left. Uh, there's a change in culture.

• 55:49Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 55:50Speaker 05

  That explains it. Uh, we can move on from Neanderthals, or I can offer one more fact.

• 55:55Steven Rinella?

  Please.

• 55:56Speaker 05

  Uh, the old man of La Chapelle, famous Neanderthal, uh, remains that was used for a long time to sort of imagine what they looked like.

• 56:05Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:07Speaker 05

  For a while, they thought that this is like the best model of a Neanderthal. And then at some point, someone pointed out, this is like an old guy with some serious back injuries and a lot of arthritis. From, from, from. He probably had, he probably had a more upright posture. If you can imagine like. Yeah. If we discovered some, you know, if we're aliens and we came in, this is the way it was put on one thing. It's like, we're aliens and we arrived on earth and we found. Joe Biden. Shaquille O'Neal's or yeah, or like, and we're like, my God, they're all seven feet tall and 300 pounds. Shaquille O'Neal's remains. Or if we found like some, some decrepit, you know, old person who watch, walks all hun- hunched over. It's like. Understood. You, you jump to some conclusions.

• 56:51Speaker 05

  So that's one of the, the sort of changes in our thinking as we recognize this is probably not the guy we should go on for a benchmark.

• 56:59Speaker 01

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• 57:27Steven Rinella?

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• 58:10Steven Rinella?

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

• 58:48Steven Rinella?

  We have Just cannot find one. We have a bunch of emails in. I found some and they are too busy or have declined. So it's a whole, we have to find the best. Hmm. If I had a zookeeper SWAT team person standing here and a Neanderthal person standing here, I would go Neanderthal. Hmm. Maybe, maybe we need to get like a bunch in a row. Like now, like if we, if we get multiple ones, like we have one and then the next week we have another Neanderthal guy. When I was on Theo Von's show, he's got a huge show. Yeah. On Theo Von's show, I said, hey, I'm looking for a Neanderthal expert. Cause I thought, well, I'll reach new people. Cause like, there's like the hosers that listen to our thing and that wasn't working. So I thought, I'll talk to, I'll talk to the hosers that listen to Theo Von. Still nothing. Hmm.

• 59:34Steven Rinella?

  That was a big JK.

• 59:36Speaker 05

  Phil, can you pull up my assets really quick?

• 59:38Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, sure.

• 59:39Speaker 05

  Sorry, I forgot this. This is a

• 59:41Steven Rinella?

  Why does it not use this the whole time?

• 59:43Speaker 05

  Well, I forgot about it just until now. Uh, this is a recreation of a, uh, Neanderthal. And then if you go

• 59:52Steven Rinella?

  I'd go home with that guy.

• 59:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. If you go to the Natural History Museum in Vienna, they have a thing that scans your face and renders you into any number of hominid species. So Phil, if you'll continue to my next slide, that's what I look like as a Neanderthal. Sort of spread my eyes apart and added a more prominent brow ridge. Uh, but you can see my mustache on the bottom is still red.

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  I'm not seeing the resemblance.

• 1:00:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. It's the eyes.

• 1:00:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 1:00:21Steven Rinella?

  Like you're bug eyed?

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  No, I can't see.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  AI is going to upgrade that process.

• 1:00:27Steven Rinella?

  You know.

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  Didn't you say there is a, like a red hair?

• 1:00:31Speaker 05

  I believe so, yeah.

• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Steven Rinella?

  Moving on, Yanni is going to bring us now about, uh, Yanni is going to talk to us now about Catalina Island Mule Deer Eradication Program, which we've touched on periodically over the years. Just as a, as a recap, we're going to find out where things stand now. As a recap, there's an island off the coast of California called Catalina Island. Um, it has-

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  Can you put up the, uh, pick the map there?

• 1:00:55Steven Rinella?

  It is hosted, it has hosted a number of non-native species over the years. There was a, there was a herd of American buffalo that were brought out there for a film. They are there, but the, but there is a large population of mule deer-

• 1:01:10Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:12Steven Rinella?

  On Catalina Island. They were not historically on Catalina Island, but they were historically just in shore from Catalina Island. So, brings up this question. Are they native? Are they not? People want to, uh, get rid of them. They don't want to get rid of them. So over the years, we've often mentioned various things about they're expanding hunting opportunities for mule deer on Catalina Island. They are retracting hunting opportunities for mule deer on Catalina Island. I've never even fully understood it. Yannis is here to tell us where it stands now because there's been significant buzz.

• 1:01:52Speaker 03

  Yes. And to cut to the chase, when we're all done here in the next five or 10 minutes, I will still not fully understand it. No one probably else in this room will fully understand it. Um, yeah, I signed up to cover this little, this little story yesterday, less than 24 hours ago, and I thought, oh, this will be easy. Well, once I dove in, I see that this is one of those that Steve likes to say makes its own gravy. Um, so I'll try to give like a, an overview of what's happened and really just state facts. And then I, I'm hoping you guys can sort of start then, you know, asking questions. We might be able to get into the stuff that is, doesn't seem so factual about this story. Um-

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Like Steve said, it's Catalina Island. It's about 75 square miles.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Some important things you need to know. It's 88% roughly private land. And that land is managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy, which is pretty much an organization, a nonprofit, private conservation org that is

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  made by and made up of the people that own the land.

• 1:03:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  Does that make sense?

• 1:03:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. The Wrigley family.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  The Wrigley family. Yeah, they, they definitely have a lot of influence. They basically, i- if you, they, they also own like most of the businesses that operate on that island. I think there's, it's, there's like four to 5,000 people that live on that island. If you live there and work there, you most likely work for them in some way or another.

• 1:03:27Steven Rinella?

  And rent from them, maybe.

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  Probably, you know, so that in itself gets tricky because people want to protect their livelihoods, right? And then talking and saying things that, you know, might cause problems, you may, may or not, may not want to do that.

• 1:03:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you're living in a company town.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:47Steven Rinella?

  You don't trash the company.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  Yep. So, we have this Conservancy, this Catalina Island Conservancy. They want to restore the island. I think that their motto is basically to like, was like, keep the

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  do the best they can, be the best stewards of that land through recreation, habitat management.

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  One other thing, but there, they want to make it be as those it was before contact. They're sort of like what I, what I would call island purists.

• 1:04:26Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Like restore the native vegetation. So you're looking at it, you're looking like what it looked like a long time ago.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:04:33Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  Before the deer, they had, like you mentioned, all these other animals. Feral goats were a big one. There were also cattle that were once run on Catalina Island by the Wrigley family. Like, it was a business, right? They have kind of gotten rid of all these other grazers and animals, but the thing left are these deer. That are still, and you can see, there's, there's pictures online where you can see enclosures and you can see the, the line, like often we see in Mexico when we're hunting coues deer, right? Where the cattle have been on one side of the fence and they haven't been on the other side of the fence. And one side looks scorched earth and the other side looks pretty lush and green, right? And tall grass. You can see images like that online if you look for them.

• 1:05:20Steven Rinella?

  It's where they got deer fenced out or in.

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  Exactly. Um. So, the conservancy believes is saying that at this point, like, they've had a hunting program on the island for 20 some years. And again, this hunting program is run through the Wrigley family, or the, or, or this Catalina Island Conservancy, right?

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  They believe that it's not doing enough to suppress the deer numbers to make a difference in letting the habitat rebound. Um, they want to see more of these sort of lush, uh, Forbes brush living there and less of that cheat grass, non-native landscape going there. And they believe that the, the deer browsing is causing that, right? They're eating the stuff, that they're preferring that stuff and they're letting this other stuff grow more of.

• 1:06:15Speaker 03

  They have for years been trying to get a permit that basically allows them to do massive culling efforts and take out as many of these deer as they want. Because again, they feel like the hunting program is not doing, doing the trick.

• 1:06:28Steven Rinella?

  Can I wedge, because you're trying to go just facts. Can I wedge a not just fact thing? Do you mind? Could I be that? Could I be the guy that does the not fact thing? Um.

• 1:06:39Steven Rinella?

  I want to choose my words carefully here. A common refrain among people who have attempted

• 1:06:48Steven Rinella?

  to do a mule deer hunt on Catalina Island is that

• 1:06:54Steven Rinella?

  they do their best to make it impossible.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  Who's they?

• 1:07:00Steven Rinella?

  The Conservancy.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:07:02Steven Rinella?

  Likes to, like, this is just a viewpoint that is expressed to me.

• 1:07:08Steven Rinella?

  Is that they pay lip service to a hunting program.

• 1:07:13Steven Rinella?

  But. Make the hunting program. They set it up to fail.

• 1:07:19Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:20Steven Rinella?

  Is a common refrain. Among friends of mine who've tried to participate in the mule deer hunt is they set it up to not work.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Steven Rinella?

  It's disingenuous.

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  And it's been all, it's been all over the. Place as far as who can hunt there, how much they can hunt there. They've had, they've had years where it's only been a couple hundred tags. They've had years where it's been a thousand tags. They've had years where only locals can hunt, only Californians can hunt, and then other years where you, they, you can't have non-residents coming in and hunting.

• 1:07:50Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  Um, when they had that. It wasn't very well publicized. So a lot of people didn't know. And then those that knew were sort of keeping it hush hush because it's like, oh, we got a good thing going. Like, we're not going to tell all of our friends about this great hunting opportunity.

• 1:08:04Steven Rinella?

  They don't want a spot burned on the eradication program.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  Which is expected. So, kind of where we are now is that. They have, the, the Catalina Island Conservancy have gotten to a point where they, they got this permit.

• 1:08:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  To. Basically do the calling that they want to do. And it's a five-year program and they're like, they're allowed to do it. They, to this point, I talked to. Charles Whitwam, Whitwam this morning, he, he does, he's the Howl for Wildlife guy. He's sort of in a accidental wake, ended up making a documentary called, um, Killing Catalina, that's about this subject. And if you want to know more, go, go and watch it. It's very. Educational. You'll, you'll learn a lot about what's going on there. But he, he's the guy I, I figured that kind of would know, without talking to somebody that works for the Catalina Island Conservancy, he's the guy that's probably. Dove into this the deepest, right? Um.

• 1:09:07Speaker 03

  At this point, they haven't killed any deer that he knows of, but they're like, they're supposed to start sometime soon.

• 1:09:14Steven Rinella?

  Like a helicopter program.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  Uh, not a helicopter program. That was the first thing that was, uh, put out there. That's how they got rid of the goats. Um, in the past and there was a lot of public outcry against doing that because they had supposedly, you know, three-legged goats, wounded goats walking around and it didn't look.

• 1:09:33Steven Rinella?

  They couldn't sharpshoot them as well.

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Exactly. So now the, the idea is that you would be bringing government sharpshooters and, and, and do the killing. The locals and a lot of, uh, hunters, conservation orgs, um, and interestingly, people like the Humane Society of the, of California have bonded together.

• 1:09:58Steven Rinella?

  Strange bedfellows.

• 1:10:00Speaker 03

  Yes, to oppose this. And actually, as of I think yesterday, there's a press release, uh, release today that, um, I can just give you the, the, the, uh, real high look at it here is that, um, a coalition of hunting, conservation, sportsman's advocacy organizations filed a lawsuit challenging the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's approval of a plan to exterminate the up to 2,000 mule deer on Catalina Island. So like Safari Club International is a part of that. A bunch of Californias, you know, smaller, uh, orgs are there, help for wildlife. Um,

• 1:10:36Speaker 04

  Can I ask like,

• 1:10:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  What, it's obvious why someone like group like the Humane Society would be against it.

• 1:10:43Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:44Speaker 04

  What are, are these hunting groups against it because they're about to lose hunting opportunity? Like what are they?

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  It like what it? I, I think that they're against it because, and from what I gather is because it's a, it's a, in their minds, it's a bad way to manage wildlife. And mostly because they didn't go through the proper channels, processes, steps to get this permit. Some stuff was fast tracked. There was like a bill introduced last year that got through and lo and behold, sponsors of this bill are related and interconnected with this Catalina Island Conservancy. And so some things happened to help make this permit kind of smooth right

• 1:11:33Speaker 03

  through, which from what I researched is that they've been trying to get this permit for 15 years and California Department of Fish and Wildlife has been like, no, you guys don't have the science to prove that you guys need to be doing this. Cause that's where it gets tricky is that they basically have a private island. They control it, but they don't control the animals. Because the animals are owned by the people of California.

• 1:12:00Speaker 04

  How do the locals feel about the deer?

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  They

• 1:12:04Steven Rinella?

  And what by locals, what do you mean though?

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  Well, there's people that live on the island, right?

• 1:12:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but they, but they like, they live on the property of the people that want to kill the deer.

• 1:12:12Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  But interestingly, yeah, they're opposed to, to the killing of

• 1:12:17Steven Rinella?

  The people that are renting from the family that owns the thing.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's so, it's, it's so sticky. Of about 4,000 people. So

• 1:12:28Steven Rinella?

  But there's, there's two of them for each deer.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  They actually passed in the last year, uh, I don't know if you'd call it legislation or, or a zoning thing that, but basically within the town of Avalon, which must be like incorporated. And so it's

• 1:12:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I've not been there, yeah.

• 1:12:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's the other 20% of the island that isn't controlled by Catalina Island Conservancy. They basically passed a law where you cannot shoot or discharge firearms any, within those limits. And of course, that is where most of these deer live.

• 1:13:01Steven Rinella?

  And that's where all the people are though. Like when you come in there, it's like a beautiful little bay and a port and

• 1:13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 1:13:08Steven Rinella?

  Real like, what the real like walk around, get an ice cream cone kind of vibe.

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they, they made it so. That they're not going to be able to kill every single deer off the island because basically the ones now that are in town cannot be eradicated.

• 1:13:23Steven Rinella?

  Has anyone, are there any real studs? I'm not talking about the townspeople. Are there any studs on this island or the dinks?

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  You know, I, just the few images that I saw, nothing that would fall, fall into like nice Colorado mule deer.

• 1:13:35Speaker 04

  I looked into it. It's not like a destination mule. Dudes aren't like secretly like.

• 1:13:39Steven Rinella?

  It's not like Antelope Island.

• 1:13:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, nothing like that.

• 1:13:43Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:13:44Steven Rinella?

  Here, uh, I mean, I'm, I'm going to state the real obvious on this one. Um. It brings up an interesting question of how far from the native source? Do you need to be where it becomes like irrefutably an exotic?

• 1:14:02Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:14:03Steven Rinella?

  So like, take something like Nilgai in South Texas, right?

• 1:14:09Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:14:11Steven Rinella?

  The Indian, like, I think, I think they're predominantly from like the Indian subcontinent. Am I right about that?

• 1:14:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no. Yeah, I think so.

• 1:14:21Steven Rinella?

  To Texas. When I look at a, when I spin the old globe.

• 1:14:27Steven Rinella?

  I'm like, that is a non-native from way far away. Like that has nothing.

• 1:14:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:33Steven Rinella?

  That has nothing to do with that.

• 1:14:37Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:14:38Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Nothing to do with that. That's its own little thing. Their fate, the fate of the Nilgai in South Texas is not related to sort of like the fate of Nilgai as a wild species in general. When you get to a situation like this where you can look and see.

• 1:14:58Steven Rinella?

  You can look and see where they're from.

• 1:15:00Speaker 07

  It's 22 miles from Los Angeles is the Catalina Island.

• 1:15:03Steven Rinella?

  You can look and see where they're native.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it wouldn't be impossible for a deer to make that swim.

• 1:15:10Speaker 04

  No. Oh, look at Southeast Alaska. You see those black tails swimming around up there?

• 1:15:14Speaker 03

  All over hell. Yeah.

• 1:15:16Steven Rinella?

  So it's like, it does bring up an interesting question. I'd be like, okay, they came in with people, but I mean, dude, it's just right. Their, their native range is like, right there. You can't rule out that one hasn't made the swim.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  But it is an island, which like island ecosystems operate differently than a mainland.

• 1:15:37Steven Rinella?

  I'd like to refer, uh, I'd like to refer listeners to, I can't remember the name of it. David Quammen's book, An Island Biogeography, which explains all this kind of stuff. Why islands are so special. Why do mammals shrink and lizards get huge, all that kind of stuff on islands? Um.

• 1:15:59Steven Rinella?

  I don't know, man. I'm a real fence sitter on this one. I'm kind of on the side of the, here's why I'm on the side of the mule deer. Do you, I don't know. Go ahead. I don't know. Who cares?

• 1:16:07Speaker 03

  Something else just to plop in there, right? There's this buffalo herd. I think the highest number it ever got was like up to 1600 or something like that.

• 1:16:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  It's been there roughly the same amount of time as these mule deer.

• 1:16:19Steven Rinella?

  Came in to film a movie.

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. They're right now approximately a hundred there.

• 1:16:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  They think there's roughly 2,000 of these deer, or at least that's what the Catalina Island Conservancy. The outfitter and a lot of the locals and people that have hunted there think there's a lot less than 2,000 deer.

• 1:16:36Steven Rinella?

  Could someone do the math? If you go, how many, how many buffalo?

• 1:16:41Speaker 03

  A hundred.

• 1:16:42Steven Rinella?

  Let's say, so 100 at, let's say 1,200 pounds. And how many deer?

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  2,000.

• 1:16:50Steven Rinella?

  2,000 at, let's say 120 pounds.

• 1:16:55Speaker 00

  Oh, wait, hold on. 100 at what?

• 1:16:58Steven Rinella?

  One, 100 at 1,200.

• 1:17:00Speaker 00

  At 1,200.

• 1:17:01Steven Rinella?

  Someone's gonna write in the correction about this.

• 1:17:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, I was gonna say, we're getting on dangerous ground here. 100 at 1,200.

• 1:17:06Speaker 03

  Especially since buffalo are grazers and, or, uh, yeah, and mule deer are browsers.

• 1:17:12Speaker 07

  With those numbers, it'd be 120,000 pounds of ma- biomass for the bison versus 240,000 for the mule deer. So mule deer's double.

• 1:17:23Steven Rinella?

  Twice as much biomass as mule deer. Okay.

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  Double.

• 1:17:25Steven Rinella?

  Go on, Andy.

• 1:17:26Speaker 07

  You went by those numbers.

• 1:17:27Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:17:28Steven Rinella?

  Correction. I don't think that's gonna get corrected.

• 1:17:31Speaker 03

  The.

• 1:17:32Speaker 00

  Cause it's correct.

• 1:17:34Speaker 03

  The buffalo are.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  Just a little less sort of iconic of the island than the, or sorry, a little bit more than the deer. The deer are like very much a part of it. Locals love them. People love to go there and see them. But the buffalo are just a little bit cooler. There's, you know, murals of buffalo. There's weather veins of buffalo. Like that's, it's very much a part of them.

• 1:17:57Steven Rinella?

  When I went, when I went there, it was for this reason.

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  To check the buffalo out.

• 1:18:03Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'm not writing about it, but I went there to write about it, but I never got to it.

• 1:18:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Didn't I, was I researching us going to do a hunt there at some point?

• 1:18:14Speaker 03

  But anyways, they've all been sterilized. So you would think that you couldn't keep these buffalo going, right? Or they, they wouldn't. If they've, if they're all sterilized and they're not going to reproduce.

• 1:18:26Steven Rinella?

  They're gonna blink out.

• 1:18:27Speaker 03

  They're eventually gonna blink out.

• 1:18:29Steven Rinella?

  But you're not gonna sterilize 2,000 deer.

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  When that question was posed to the, the main scientist of the conservancy. She had a very, uh, lackluster, vague answer as to what's gonna happen to those bison. Where it, it just, at that moment, you really feel like she's a mouthpiece for this other, you know, thing that's going on. She's, you know, not necessarily in control because if you're gonna take out 2,000 deer, take out the 100 bison too, right? And it's like, don't have any of that kind of grazing going on, on the landscape, right? But because the locals and the tourists and everything, there's even that much more.

• 1:19:16Speaker 03

  You know, probably comes down to money.

• 1:19:19Speaker 03

  And, and you know, attached to it, they're like, well, maybe we'll keep them around. Kinda, a little bit, somehow. We're not gonna get rid of them completely. Um, like I said, it's.

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  Just it it it's just thick with uh with sort of all these just like little ideas of what's going on. Who's thinking what?

• 1:19:39Speaker 04

  Did you talk about what they're gonna do? Like they're just gonna let the deer lay after they should like they're not gonna get used.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  No, no, that, yeah, there's no plan for it. It's not like they're gonna donate it all to a food bank.

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  No, that's.

• 1:19:52Steven Rinella?

  So crystal ball it for me, based on your reason, your, based on your 24 hours of nonstop research. Yanni's been up all night. Crystal ball it for me. Um, if you had to take just say, what, say, if we're gonna go, if we're gonna go to a prediction market thing and make a bet.

• 1:20:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:07Steven Rinella?

  And I said, uh, in, in, in, in five years, uh, you know, in, in five years Catalina Island will have no mule deer.

• 1:20:17Steven Rinella?

  Like whatever, how are you gonna bet on it?

• 1:20:19Speaker 03

  I think that they will have, uh, mule deer. I, I think the, the main thing that's like a, a big sticking point to anybody that sort of tries to figure the story out is that it looks like they don't actually have a good survey of how many deer on the island.

• 1:20:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:20:34Speaker 03

  Some people are like, there's 500, some people are saying there's 2200. No one really knows. And so you can't really go anywhere. You can't extrapolate from there if you don't know exactly how many deer on this island, right? And you think they could be able to figure that out. I'm imagining that because it's getting so much press, that this lawsuit was filed, that the California Division of Wildlife is going to Fish and Game, whatever they call themselves.

• 1:20:57Steven Rinella?

  They're gonna walk back.

• 1:20:58Speaker 03

  They're, yeah, they're gonna walk back that permit and gonna say, hey, hold on. We, we need to do this the right way. We're like, we're here to manage wildlife, let's do it the right way. And so I think that it's probably gonna come back to a private lands management permit, which is what they're operating under now, and had to have a hunting program.

• 1:21:16Steven Rinella?

  What they need to do is they need to go get, take one of them big jets

• 1:21:23Steven Rinella?

  with a lot of seats in it.

• 1:21:24Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:21:25Steven Rinella?

  Go to Casanova, Wisconsin.

• 1:21:30Steven Rinella?

  Put everybody from Casanova, Wisconsin on that jet and fly them out to Catalina for a big mooch.

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  A big old, yeah.

• 1:21:38Steven Rinella?

  I'm talking a big mooch.

• 1:21:40Speaker 03

  Feel like Lemmings getting pushed into the ocean.

• 1:21:43Speaker 04

  They'd all just run into town where they're safe.

• 1:21:45Steven Rinella?

  Doug's in charge. Doug Duren gets a map of the island. He gets his laser pointer. You sit here, you sit here at 10, you do this at 10:22, you get out of your blind and do this.

• 1:22:01Steven Rinella?

  Big mooch.

• 1:22:02Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:22:04Speaker 03

  Sounds like fun.

• 1:22:04Steven Rinella?

  Little whittling down, but here's my final take on it. Not that it matters. My final take on it is since a meal, like a thing I would factor in. You have so many areas you can point to where mule deer are not doing good.

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:22:19Steven Rinella?

  The island is so close to native mule deer range. I would take these two things and I would say, we have a lot of areas where mule deer are not doing good. This is sort of like honorary native mule deer range because it's so close. It's a bright spot for mule deer. They're doing well there. It's more valuable to have.

• 1:22:43Steven Rinella?

  It's more valuable to have reassurance about the long-term ability of mule deer. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe it could be a potential source location for future reintroductions. I don't know. If I was emperor of the planet, I would say,

• 1:23:01Steven Rinella?

  lower the numbers through greater public hunting opportunities, get lower the numbers down, but let's set aside talk of eradication.

• 1:23:09Speaker 04

  It's also a population that's more than likely pretty safe from CWD. You know what I mean?

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:23:16Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:17Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:23:19Speaker 04

  If they were careful.

• 1:23:20Speaker 03

  What if I said though, it came at the cost of losing several, you know, in native endemic species that only are.

• 1:23:29Speaker 04

  What are the species?

• 1:23:30Speaker 03

  Floral species that are only found on that island.

• 1:23:32Steven Rinella?

  And they're still there after a hundred years of grazing?

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Steven Rinella?

  And have they done is everything they could do to, uh, reseed and like I'd had to know more. I'm just spitballing here.

• 1:23:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:45Steven Rinella?

  We gotta move on.

• 1:23:46Speaker 03

  I'm just saying. If they, I'm just throwing that in there.

• 1:23:52Speaker 03

  Like, would you still say, hey, we really need this little, little micro?

• 1:23:57Steven Rinella?

  No, I would factor that in.

• 1:23:58Speaker 03

  Population of mule deer.

• 1:23:59Steven Rinella?

  If there was a chance that there was an endemic plant species that was gonna blink out and go extinct, and by, and by having no mule deer, I knew that I could save that endemic plant species. And it was that binary that would make my decision much more complicated. And I would probably tip toward the endemic plant species. Keep an eye on the story for us, Yanis.

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  I will.

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• 1:24:50Steven Rinella?

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• 1:25:33Steven Rinella?

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

• 1:26:00Speaker 03

  Great job.

• 1:26:01Steven Rinella?

  There'll be plenty, there'll be plenty more. If there was an award for reporting on a news story, Yanni would win a pair of boots.

• 1:26:06Speaker 05

  Oh, well, I haven't got to go yet. Well, you only, I'm the only point of comparison you have, so I'm trying to say that personally.

• 1:26:13Steven Rinella?

  Well, you know who's gonna be out. Brody, you're not, we're gonna have to hold the call. Coloradans can't embarrass themselves anymore until they did story.

• 1:26:20Speaker 04

  We running out of time.

• 1:26:21Steven Rinella?

  We're gonna punt.

• 1:26:23Speaker 04

  Well, I'm outta here. See ya.

• 1:26:24Steven Rinella?

  Over to Spencer for Rattlesnake Roundup, Roundup.

• 1:26:27Speaker 07

  This weekend, March thirteenth through the fifteenth is the sixty eighth annual world's largest rattlesnake roundup in Sweetwater, Texas. It's been going on since nineteen fifty eight. Not even covid stopped them from having a couple of their festivals.

• 1:26:44Steven Rinella?

  That's great.

• 1:26:45Speaker 07

  There's a parade, a carnival, a gun and coin show, dance, guided rattlesnake hunts that you can sign up for. Those cost seventy five dollars to go catch one. Cooking competition with categories such as brisket, ribs, chili, beans, bloody marys, and of course rattlesnake. But the big attraction is the rattlesnake hunting contest. And hunters, they'll spend weeks or months catching rattlesnakes that will then get entered into the contest.

• 1:27:12Steven Rinella?

  You can stock them up ahead of time?

• 1:27:13Speaker 07

  Far in advance.

• 1:27:14Steven Rinella?

  They don't let you do that with bass fishing?

• 1:27:16Speaker 07

  No, it's unclear to me. It seems as though you need to keep them alive to enter that. But I couldn't confirm that with anything, but you need to keep these snakes alive.

• 1:27:25Speaker 04

  Are they managed in any way like in some states rattlesnakes like there's a limit and they're managed as some kind of like

• 1:27:32Speaker 07

  They tell you on the

• 1:27:33Speaker 04

  game species.

• 1:27:34Speaker 07

  On the website, you need to have a permit from the state of Texas, whatever, you know, like a small game permit, whatever their equivalent is.

• 1:27:41Steven Rinella?

  A collection permit of some sort.

• 1:27:43Speaker 07

  And for the first three thousand pounds of rattlesnakes brought in, the Sweetwater J C's will pay twenty dollars per pound for those rattlesnakes.

• 1:27:52Steven Rinella?

  What do they want them for?

• 1:27:54Speaker 07

  We'll get to it. We'll get to it. But anyways, twenty dollars a pound. It was five dollars per pound in two thousand six. So that's a fifteen dollar increase. And if you were doing inflation, that five dollars would be about nine dollars today. So they've doubled, even if you account for inflation and what they're paying. For the next five thousand pounds, they pay fifteen dollars per pound. And then they stop paying altogether if they have more than eight thousand pounds of rattlesnakes brought in.

• 1:28:20Steven Rinella?

  Is that, is that, Phil just put up a photo. Is that guy so confident in his snake chap? He's just standing in among those rattlesnakes.

• 1:28:29Speaker 07

  Seems as though he is. There's rattlesnakes on top of rattlesnakes and he is within.

• 1:28:34Steven Rinella?

  And he's like, my chaps are good.

• 1:28:36Speaker 05

  Well, it looks like he's just flicking one off his boot there.

• 1:28:39Speaker 04

  How many different? We should go there one year.

• 1:28:41Speaker 05

  No, thank you.

• 1:28:42Speaker 07

  It's just.

• 1:28:43Steven Rinella?

  Not a big snake guy.

• 1:28:44Speaker 07

  Uh, it is just the Western Diamondback.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  I'll go with Spencer. Looks like there's different species in there.

• 1:28:51Speaker 07

  Now, first prize, first prize for bringing in the most pounds of snakes is $1,000. Uh, the longest snake gets $500. Their all time record is an 81 and a half inch rattlesnake.

• 1:29:04Steven Rinella?

  What's that come out to in feet?

• 1:29:05Speaker 04

  It's like a teenage. Almost seven.

• 1:29:07Speaker 07

  A little less than.

• 1:29:09Speaker 05

  Correction.

• 1:29:09Speaker 04

  We're looking at it.

• 1:29:11Speaker 07

  Their, their website has results from the last decade and from looking at these, it's clear that there is a Sweetwater Rattlesnake Hunting Goat. Andy Lee has won five of the last nine contests.

• 1:29:22Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:29:22Speaker 04

  Is this this gal?

• 1:29:23Speaker 07

  Including in 2024 and 2025.

• 1:29:27Steven Rinella?

  Why don't we get that guy on the show? What's his name?

• 1:29:29Speaker 07

  Andy Lee.

• 1:29:30Steven Rinella?

  Can you, can you get him on the show?

• 1:29:32Speaker 07

  I've got some more details for you on Andy. Uh, last year he brought in 651 pounds of rattlesnakes, which, uh, beat second place by 39 pounds. Here, here's some good journalism, Steve. Uh, when I Googled Andy's name, I learned that he owns a pest control business in Texas.

• 1:29:49Steven Rinella?

  He's got a hotline on it.

• 1:29:51Speaker 07

  He is double dipping. First, someone pays him to come remove a snake from under their porch.

• 1:29:56Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:29:56Speaker 07

  Uh, and then he goes and enters it in this contest.

• 1:29:59Steven Rinella?

  This has not dissuaded me from wanting him on the show.

• 1:30:01Speaker 07

  No, I'm, I'm with you. Uh, but last year, last year with that winning weight, if he would have entered it in the first 3,000 pounds, uh, he would have made $14,000.

• 1:30:09Speaker 04

  How many snakes? Does it say how many snakes? It's 650?

• 1:30:12Speaker 07

  It's, it doesn't say. It's you. It's always measured in pounds on their website.

• 1:30:15Steven Rinella?

  There he is right there.

• 1:30:16Speaker 07

  There, there he is. That's his, uh, the business he owns, Andy Lee.

• 1:30:19Steven Rinella?

  And who's Dee Dee? Dee Dee must be his wife.

• 1:30:21Speaker 07

  Then they, they own the business together. Uh, now Steve asked what happens to these snakes. Uh, they're registered, then they're skinned, battered, deep fried and sold at the concession stands.

• 1:30:30Steven Rinella?

  You're not eating up that many snakes. Give me a break.

• 1:30:33Speaker 07

  Phil's got a picture of, uh, that they, they said they're eating them there.

• 1:30:37Steven Rinella?

  They're going through that whole batch of snakes.

• 1:30:40Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 1:30:40Speaker 04

  And the skins go to a separate market?

• 1:30:43Speaker 07

  It it doesn't say what they do with the skins. Phil's got a picture of how all them skinning in a line there. Look at that.

• 1:30:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, they're making some sweet leather products.

• 1:30:52Speaker 07

  On on average, there are 4,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in each year. The record was set in 2016 when 25,000 pounds of diamondbacks were captured. Uh, there must have been something with the weather that year that just made a boom rattlesnakes. Uh, now here's the most amazing part, I think. I found a quote from Texas A&M in 2006 that said they estimate the roundup captures 1% of the state's entire western diamondback population.

• 1:31:21Steven Rinella?

  Every year.

• 1:31:22Speaker 07

  Every year.

• 1:31:23Steven Rinella?

  But they have, I I wonder, have you have you encountered what sort of harvest rate? Like, like a state would have deer harvest and they're gonna kill 10%, 11%, 12% of the state's deer. So I don't know about the fecundity of rattlesnakes, but I'm guessing 1% is well within recovery.

• 1:31:42Speaker 07

  I imagine if this is the world's largest version of this and it still exists, then yeah, they're they're not worried about hurting the western diamondback population in Texas if it continues on. Now, it's very popular in the community. They expect 25,000 visitors this year. Again, it's this weekend that pumps in $8 million to the local economy. So go check it out if you live in central Texas.

• 1:32:03Speaker 04

  What's up with the bloody handprints on the wall?

• 1:32:05Steven Rinella?

  Well, I think they're taking them hands that are all bloody and pressing them on that wall.

• 1:32:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I gather that part. It's interesting.

• 1:32:13Speaker 05

  It's amazing.

• 1:32:14Steven Rinella?

  Beautiful. Yeah, it's like little cave paintings.

• 1:32:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:17Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, I'll save it.

• 1:32:19Speaker 07

  68th Annual, uh, World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup.

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  What town?

• 1:32:25Speaker 07

  Sweetwater, Texas.

• 1:32:26Speaker 04

  Sweetwater.

• 1:32:26Speaker 07

  Central Texas.

• 1:32:27Steven Rinella?

  Excellent reporting.

• 1:32:28Speaker 07

  Thank you. Did it best Yanni or no?

• 1:32:30Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:32:30Speaker 05

  I think it's pretty good.

• 1:32:32Steven Rinella?

  I mean, the the quality of the reporting and the delivery, but it just didn't make as much gravy.

• 1:32:39Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:32:40Speaker 05

  I'm still, I'm still third.

• 1:32:44Steven Rinella?

  What is it when you just don't even get mentioned? Like pictures at the Olympics.

• 1:32:49Speaker 05

  Less than honorable mention.

• 1:32:51Steven Rinella?

  You got the gold, silver, bronze, you know? But they don't even let a guy get on the.

• 1:32:55Speaker 04

  Randall, at least you got to compete.

• 1:32:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. No, Randall, I'm just joking, man. I thought you did a great job.

• 1:33:02Speaker 07

  Maybe I could tilt the scales a little more. So back to the Trump America the Beautiful card.

• 1:33:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:33:07Speaker 07

  The Center of Biological, what is it? The Center for Biological Diversity.

• 1:33:11Steven Rinella?

  The anti-hunting organization.

• 1:33:12Speaker 07

  They are suing him for doing that. They started that lawsuit in December. I reached out to them for an update on the lawsuit.

• 1:33:19Speaker 04

  Funny, I was gonna talk about those folks in my section.

• 1:33:23Speaker 07

  Their update is they don't have an update yet, but they're working on it behind the scenes.

• 1:33:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 07

  So we don't know what the fate of, by the time they wrap it up, this card will no longer even be good. So.

• 1:33:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:33:34Speaker 07

  Should.

• 1:33:34Steven Rinella?

  Although they do a lot of, they do a lot of like posture.

• 1:33:37Speaker 07

  Understood, I understood.

• 1:33:38Steven Rinella?

  They do a lot of posture.

• 1:33:39Speaker 05

  Day you buy it.

• 1:33:40Speaker 07

  Right, but what would happen? Say best case scenario for them happens and they win this lawsuit against the Trump administration. Then what? We're gonna reissue?

• 1:33:49Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 1:33:49Speaker 07

  Hundred thousand cards?

• 1:33:50Speaker 05

  Well, maybe someone who chooses to buy their pass in December of this year.

• 1:33:55Steven Rinella?

  They have a people for the ethical treatment of animals-esque wing.

• 1:34:00Speaker 07

  They do.

• 1:34:00Steven Rinella?

  Center for Biological, they use some of the same type of people.

• 1:34:05Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:34:05Steven Rinella?

  To think up campaigns that they're like, oh, no, no, no. It's not that we'll win.

• 1:34:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:10Steven Rinella?

  It's just that it'll be reported on.

• 1:34:12Speaker 07

  This is right in their wheelhouse for what they would do is have a lawsuit like this.

• 1:34:16Steven Rinella?

  All right, Brody, I'm real sorry, buddy.

• 1:34:19Speaker 04

  No, but you did say they do things to posture. They, the Center for Biological Diversity, like they got something done in Colorado.

• 1:34:31Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:34:32Speaker 04

  Which is not good.

• 1:34:32Speaker 07

  Next week's episode.

• 1:34:34Steven Rinella?

  It's not done, done.

• 1:34:35Speaker 04

  It's not done, done, but.

• 1:34:36Steven Rinella?

  You think it's gonna pass?

• 1:34:38Speaker 04

  It already passed.

• 1:34:39Steven Rinella?

  No, but you think it's gonna become law?

• 1:34:42Speaker 04

  But it already, they're just in the rulemaking process now.

• 1:34:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but I thought the rulemaking process would get so like that it wouldn't go. Or people were thinking it wouldn't go.

• 1:34:54Speaker 04

  We'll see. We'll report on it next week.

• 1:35:01Steven Rinella?

  That one needs time.

• 1:35:02Speaker 05

  Couldn't have scripted it any better.

• 1:35:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that one needs time.

• 1:35:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:06Steven Rinella?

  Okay, going over for our final story. Is this our final story?

• 1:35:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, right?

• 1:35:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:15Steven Rinella?

  Going over for our final story. I heard a very interesting thing recently. My brother Danny up in Alaska has a buddy. Uh, my brother Danny works for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He has a colleague.

• 1:35:29Steven Rinella?

  Who is a, he'll, he'll explain what he does. Well, my, I was hearing about, learning about. That when, when imports come into the country. Right, there's a, there's a customs process around processing imports. Um, and, and here's where you would look for like illegal wildlife imports. Meaning things you could imagine, like someone opens up a crate and they're like, good lord, it's full of rhino horns. Like that's going to be a problem, right? But there are other things that you might not know about that, that customs officials. Look at and US Fish and Wildlife Service. Um, when it comes to wildlife issues, that is their, that is their turf. Okay. And I was learning about a thing I had no idea that it even existed.

• 1:36:14Steven Rinella?

  Is that people make fake eyelashes. Out of mink fur. And since it's a wildlife product, it needs to be imported in a certain way. And I was learning about how.

• 1:36:28Steven Rinella?

  Um, wildlife officials will detect. Find and seize incoming fake eyelashes made of mink. Which I feel are being worn by people. Who have no idea what they're wearing.

• 1:36:46Speaker 05

  Definitely not.

• 1:36:48Steven Rinella?

  Over to our guests. Ready Phil?

• 1:36:51Speaker 06

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:36:52Steven Rinella?

  God, you didn't see that coming?

• 1:36:53Speaker 06

  Well, I thought there'll be a little bit more to do before we bring him in, but hey, he's here.

• 1:36:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, you know, women and fake eyelashes.

• 1:37:03Speaker 03

  History of that, but that's okay.

• 1:37:05Steven Rinella?

  Brian Olin, how's it going?

• 1:37:10Steven Rinella?

  Good morning. Yeah, it's going well. I guess I should have worn some, some eyelashes.

• 1:37:13Speaker 07

  Today, so I could have demonstrated that for you, but I didn't didn't include that in my morning routine. So.

• 1:37:20Steven Rinella?

  You're forgiven. Lay, lay, lay this out for us. Like, like, lay, lay out for us. What form these things take, how you know about them, where they come from, whatever you got for us.

• 1:37:34Speaker 07

  Gotcha. Um, so yeah, I didn't know about them. Um, not surprisingly, before I started this job about five years ago. Um, we all know about fake eyelashes. Um, but there is a pre-significant quantity of them being made from mink. Uh, certainly also made from like silk and other synthetic materials. Um, but they, they looked like just like a half moon or crescent moon shape. Like adhesive strip with individual pieces of mink hair, I guess, just attached or glued on there.

• 1:38:10Speaker 07

  There, when you like do some research on them and say that they're more fluttery looking, a little more naturally looking, the, the mink hair ones versus the synthetic ones. Um, so there's, there's some ways you can kind of, once you look at five or 600 of these things, you can kind of tell them, tell them apart pretty easily, but. The mink hair, um, kind of tapers to a point, whereas like the synthetic materials are more like truncated and chopped. Um, you can kind of tell that with the naked eye. Um, but, um, so yeah, we're inspecting these, um. Kind of, you know, it comes and goes in waves, but daily across the US. Um, and we're here in Anchorage, Alaska, so most of our imports are, are coming from, uh, from Southeast Asia.

• 1:38:53Speaker 07

  Um, so yeah, we're, we're looking at air cargo coming in and trying to, trying to stop these and make sure they're imported in the correct manner.

• 1:39:01Steven Rinella?

  What would be the correct manner? Like, they're not like a, a, a mink eyelash isn't. Necessarily illegal. It's just that the way they're bringing them in, they're not declaring them as a wildlife product. Is that the problem?

• 1:39:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. So mink are, uh, particularly, uh, highly protected. Uh, like you mentioned, uh, rhino horn, obviously they're not in the same level. Uh, most of these are farmed mink.

• 1:39:27Speaker 07

  And so they just need to have a few things done. If you're commercially importing, you gotta have an import permit from us. And then, yeah, you have to declare every shipment as it arrives. Uh, declare it to the genus and species. So we know what.

• 1:39:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:39:43Speaker 07

  What, what animal you're using and the quantity. Um, so that's, that's the biggest, um, like violation for the, the mink eyelashes is they're just failing to declare or failure to, to obtain a license.

• 1:39:56Steven Rinella?

  Uh, so do this for people. You told me how this works, but let's say someone's sitting at home right now and they're just curious. If their fake eyelashes are made of mink or not. Tell them the little test you do to find out what exactly you're looking at.

• 1:40:14Speaker 07

  Sure. Yeah. So, um, if you have a pair that maybe you took off and you already wore once or twice, um. You can just take a, a match and, uh, burn part of that and give, get a, get a good whiff and see what it smells like. And if it smells like burned hair or like, um, or like petroleum plastic, that'll tell you right off the bat if it's, if it's a natural product or a synthetic product.

• 1:40:37Steven Rinella?

  Huh. How many times i- if you had to get like, you've been there five years, how many different times?

• 1:40:46Steven Rinella?

  Have you encountered? Mink eyelashes coming into your port?

• 1:40:52Speaker 07

  Um, hundreds.

• 1:40:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:40:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:40:56Steven Rinella?

  Hundreds.

• 1:40:56Speaker 07

  It's not every day anymore, um, but, uh, that these things kind of come and go in waves. Um, so much of it is driven by like, uh, the fashion industry and what's popular. And I think right now we're kind of at like a lull, at least in our port of, of what we're seeing. Um, so maybe there's some, you know, people are starting to realize that they're, they are made of mink and, and they don't want that. But, um, it seems like it's on a, on a downward trend right now, but, um. You know, like 10, 10 years ago, it was probably tenfold amount of products coming in.

• 1:41:30Steven Rinella?

  You know how fashion becomes self-parody, um, like meaning? A thing becomes fashionable and then.

• 1:41:40Steven Rinella?

  It just tries to one up itself, right? Like, like a hole in your jeans, that's fashionable. So someone then eventually it's that the whole front of your jeans is gone. Or there's holes from top to bottom because it self parodies itself. Are mink eyelashes subtle? Or are they like, you want to see big eyelashes? Check these out. Like, how would you rank a mink eyelash?

• 1:42:04Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, like on flutterly flutteriness? That's either they're up there and the amount of flutter they have.

• 1:42:11Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so it's an exaggerated eyelash. It's like a big eyelash.

• 1:42:16Speaker 07

  Well, at times it is yes, but like there's so many variations that you'll see that smaller, more kind of petite ones and then ones that are just comically large, but.

• 1:42:26Steven Rinella?

  Got it. So you could be classy and still be wearing mink. You could be classy in mink or you could be not in mink, it sounds like.

• 1:42:34Speaker 07

  I think you can be classy.

• 1:42:35Steven Rinella?

  Now, here's another question, if you don't mind adding in on this. Um, are you able to share with us a handful of other wildlife products that that you've seen show up in your area of jurisdiction over your career? There, are you able to share some other examples of things that you might? That your agency might find coming into port in Anchorage, Alaska?

• 1:43:01Speaker 07

  Sure. Um, a lot of what we see is products. We don't see too many live, um, live animals. A lot of those are, you know, they don't want their live animals to sit on the tarmac when it's like negative 20 out.

• 1:43:14Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:43:15Speaker 07

  They just don't survive. So.

• 1:43:16Steven Rinella?

  So you're not a good port of entry for live?

• 1:43:19Speaker 07

  No, not typically, although we just had some yesterday. Um, can't talk about those too much, but in the past, past years, like we had a, um, a viper come in, uh, in a Pringles can, uh, from Southeast Asia.

• 1:43:34Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:36Speaker 07

  And that was, that was a, yeah, that was an eye opener. Um, so that's, you know, like one of the more surprising.

• 1:43:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:43Speaker 07

  You're like, hey, um, but most of what we see is parts and products, um, uh, feathers, shells, um, turtle products, uh, turtle shell products.

• 1:43:54Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:43:55Speaker 07

  And occasionally live, live animals like birds.

• 1:43:58Speaker 05

  Randall has a question, Steve.

• 1:44:00Steven Rinella?

  Uh, go ahead.

• 1:44:01Speaker 05

  You have all those products, how many of those are like banned outright versus how many of those are simply trying to slide in undeclared?

• 1:44:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, so that's, that's part of our, our gig is to facilitate the legal trade. So we're there to find the real bad stuff, but also, you know, help people do it legally.

• 1:44:22Speaker 07

  Most, you know, like the real bad stuff, we don't see super often, like, um, the rhino horn, the, uh,

• 1:44:32Speaker 07

  elephant tusks, like we see that stuff, but it's, it's pretty rare compared to like, oh, you're, you're importing shell jewelry. Uh, that has to be declared. So that's of course more common, the more common the animal, the, the more common we're seeing the thing, so.

• 1:44:45Steven Rinella?

  Are, are you often involved in the work of, let's say someone's importing shell jewelry? Does it fall on your agency? Um, to, to, to try to determine what is the genus and species? Cause I'd imagine it could be like very hard to figure out if it's polished shell.

• 1:45:04Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:45:04Steven Rinella?

  How you'd ever begin to understand, like, is it, what is it from? You know, where did it come from and what, what did they make it with?

• 1:45:12Speaker 07

  Yeah. So, yeah, so it's, it's upon, uh, the importer to declare it to the genus and species level. Um, and they would rely on their exporter quite a bit for that.

• 1:45:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:45:21Speaker 07

  Um, so it's not like, it's not our position to, to determine that, but we do, uh, have to spend a lot of time.

• 1:45:30Speaker 07

  Trying to ID things, uh, because the importers, you know, in, in illegal cases, they, they don't want to do that anyway. So we need to be able to, to do that, to, to know that may, this might be a protected species or it may not be.

• 1:45:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Meaning someone could, someone could try to bring in a thing that, that could be. That they could be declaring it as something permissible, but you'd have the obligation of verifying that it was what they're saying it is.

• 1:45:59Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:46:00Steven Rinella?

  Whether that was intentional, a mistake or intentional, it could be a thing that would happen.

• 1:46:05Speaker 07

  Yep, like snake skins, you know, there's, there's protected snakes and there's, there's not protected snakes. So if you were wanting to try to sneak something in without permits, you might call it, you know,

• 1:46:17Speaker 07

  a water snake versus a ball python or something.

• 1:46:19Steven Rinella?

  Understood, understood. You know what I didn't do a good job of when I, when I started out? Brian, can you, can you tell everybody what your, you know, your agency, but also what your specific job title would be? Like what is your, what is your, what is your, I don't know, you know, what's on your badge?

• 1:46:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. So I'm a, I'm a wildlife inspector. I work for the Office of Law Enforcement, which is a law enforcement division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And so we work at all the ports of entry across the U.S. And we combat the legal wildlife trafficking trade and then, like I said, facilitate the legal trade.

• 1:46:56Steven Rinella?

  Got it. And, and then you are, you are based within, are you within the Anchorage Airport? Like where, where do you, where do you sit right now?

• 1:47:04Speaker 07

  Yeah. So me, I'm at the Anchorage Airport. We have an international side. So I'm at the office here today. We also have people over at sorting facility for like the air cargo.

• 1:47:18Speaker 07

  So we get most of our, most of our cargoes coming in from Southeast Asia on the, on the air side of things. We also have outports that we cover for like the, the highways between Canada and the U.S. Like Alcan, we'll, we'll cover that as well.

• 1:47:34Steven Rinella?

  Got one last question for you. Say a fella went over to Africa and he did some hunting. And he lives in Anchorage. And he waits a million years and finally the stuff he got in Africa arrives for him. Do you get to take a peek?

• 1:47:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. Just yesterday I was inspecting a shipment from South Africa. So yeah, even um, non-commercial, personal shipments have to be declared. So

• 1:48:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:48:03Speaker 07

  They'll arrive on cargo and uh, we'll go over there and make sure what they're declaring is accurate. If there's permits to collect, we'll collect those and stamp them and, and help them fill out paperwork. And um, yeah, yeah, that's kind of a fun thing of our job is to kind of see that, that exotic stuff coming in.

• 1:48:19Steven Rinella?

  You know what I'm realizing? He might be a very good trivia.

• 1:48:23Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:48:24Steven Rinella?

  Contestant.

• 1:48:24Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:25Steven Rinella?

  On wildlife questions.

• 1:48:26Speaker 04

  Lot of knowledge.

• 1:48:27Steven Rinella?

  Wildlife questions.

• 1:48:30Steven Rinella?

  Brian, thanks for coming on the show and explaining all that to us, man. I want to go get me a set of these eyelashes and put them on. We should have done that today.

• 1:48:40Speaker 04

  I thought about doing that.

• 1:48:41Steven Rinella?

  I, yeah, there's some pictures in there. I don't know.

• 1:48:43Speaker 06

  I can't pull mobile brands on the.

• 1:48:45Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's why. That's right. That's right. Yep. All right. Thank you very much, officer. Appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Um, I'm gonna start going up to people, lighting their eyelashes on fire and smelling.

• 1:48:55Speaker 07

  All right.

• 1:48:56Steven Rinella?

  Let me know.

• 1:48:58Steven Rinella?

  Looking at. Thank you very much. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining the news show. Come on next week and you're gonna hear Brody talk all about a, a thing that I don't understand well, because I thought it was something different.

• 1:49:11Speaker 04

  Okay. Brody's guys were cut out for him.

• 1:49:15Steven Rinella?

  I thought the rulemaking process would prove so impossible that it was like some kind of problem.

• 1:49:21Speaker 04

  Let's hope that was, that's what happens, but it's not officially law yet. They gotta go through some stuff, but.

• 1:49:29Steven Rinella?

  Stay tuned.

• 1:49:29Speaker 04

  With that.

• 1:49:30Steven Rinella?

  Wildlife Commission. Just when you thought Colorado.

• 1:49:33Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:49:34Steven Rinella?

  The, the, the, the, the animal rights community in Colorado could not embarrass their state anymore. They do. Next week on the news show.

• 1:49:44Steven Rinella?

  When you flew out the window and into the sunset. I thought I would never stop screaming.

• 1:50:00Steven Rinella?

  Thought I would never stop screaming.

• 1:50:35Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. Hey, let me tell you, when the hunt is over, the work isn't over. You've still got all the grinding, stuffing, slicing and sealing. Turning your harvest into meals takes the right tools.

• 1:51:16Steven Rinella?

  L E M Products offers grinders, stuffers, slicers, dehydrators, vacuum sealers and more for hunters and home meat processors. For more than 30 years, L E M has been helping people bring their harvest from field to table. Visit lemproducts.com and use promo code STEVE15 to receive 15% off plus free shipping. That's STEVE15 at lemproducts.com. Go and ask any serious whitetail hunter what the best time of the year is to be out in a tree. And it's not a holiday, okay? The best time is not already on your calendar. It's the rut.

• 1:51:59Steven Rinella?

  It's the two or three week window that serious deer hunters plan everything else around. And OnX Hunt's rut calendar does this for you and helps take the guesswork out of your planning. It tracks the different phases of the rut. As they move through your area, so you know when to book the time off, when to have the whole camp locked in and ready, or conversely, when it's still too early to burn out your best spots. You only get so many rut hunts in your life, so use the rut calendar within OnX Hunt to make the most of the whitetail rut this fall.

• 1:52:35Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.