Ep. 914: Bounties on Wolf Hunters, A Jeopardy Contestant Exposes Himself, and Leprosy from Armadillos

The MeatEater Crew discuss: state management of grizzly bears; a forward facing sonar study; treating Alpha-Gal Syndrome with acupuncture; wolf watchers are at it again; a carp for the record books; and more! Presented by Can-Am: maker of the best ATVs, SxS, and Utility Vehicles www.can-am.brp.com http://www.can-am.brp.com Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:41Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show. Today, we're going to talk about armadillo spreading leprosy. What? We've got some good news for hound hunters in Alberta and some troubling news for Wyoming wolf hunters. Steve gets the scoop on the latest in grizzly bear management. A Jeopardy contestant exposes himself, but not in the way that you might think. And Nate has a segment about a record carp that Brody is very, very skeptical about. And with that, we're on to our news.

• 2:13Steven Rinella?

  Now, if you can't tell from the past 36 seconds, Steve is out again today. He's still up in the high Arctic adventuring around. He posted a photo of a giant cod that he caught, which made all of us very jealous. So I'm hosting today, joined by Seth, Spencer, Cal, Nate, and Brody. Steve will be back soon. Soon. But we've maybe got one more.

• 2:37Speaker 06

  In two weeks.

• 2:38Steven Rinella?

  Two, two weeks from now, he'll be on the news show. So, you know, if you don't like this program when Steve's not here, hang in there. We'll, we'll fix you up. It might be better. It might be better. We'll see how today goes. Yeah, we don't know. Yeah. Spencer?

• 2:53Speaker 06

  We have two Meat Eater store events happening. The first one is August 13th at the Milwaukee Meat Eater Store from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. I will be hosting a game of trivia at the store. There will be prizes for first, second, and third place. The grand prize is a $1,000 gift card. Yeah, somebody say, wow. Yeah, there we go.

• 3:17Steven Rinella?

  That's a shock.

• 3:18Speaker 06

  You gotta be there in person. You gotta be there in person. Everybody who shows up that night gets a 15% discount. That's only good for that night in the store. You can have teams up to four people playing. Randall takes that very seriously. Nobody try to sneak in there with five.

• 3:34Steven Rinella?

  Hard cap.

• 3:35Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm, nobody using cell phones. The event is free, but you need to sign up ahead of time to reserve a spot. Go to theMeatEater.com/events. Again, August 13th at the Milwaukee store from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Then, on August 15th, we are opening the Meat Eater Store in Minneapolis at 50th and France. It's the grand opening that Saturday. Me, Clay, Brent, and Tony will be there from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. First 150 people get a gift, and there will be prizes given away every hour. That's at our Minneapolis store. Grand opening, August 15th. And if you miss me there, I think I'm going to go to the Twins game that night.

• 4:20Speaker 06

  It's $2 beers, so I can't miss that. I'd be losing money by not going. So you could find me at the Twins game if you don't see me.

• 4:29Steven Rinella?

  $2.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  That's like 90% off a normal baseball beer.

• 4:32Steven Rinella?

  Rushed by FOMO right now. What kind of beers are they?

• 4:35Speaker 06

  Well, I would guess up there in the Great North, they would have Miller Lite, Coors Light, Bush Light.

• 4:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, all of your favorites. What's the format for the trivia game?

• 4:46Speaker 06

  I think it's going to be 20 questions. We'll probably do four rounds of five questions. Take a slight break, bring your scorecards up to me so we can, we can grade those, and we'll get updates after every five questions.

• 4:59Steven Rinella?

  Very nice.

• 5:00Speaker 06

  What do you think of that?

• 5:01Steven Rinella?

  I like it, I like it. It'll move quickly, but I think an in-person trivia game, it's only fun if you can get a, a running score.

• 5:09Speaker 06

  Doors open at 6:00. First trivia question's going to be read at 6:30. You need to sign up ahead of time, theMeatEater.com/events.

• 5:16Steven Rinella?

  Fun stuff. Speaking of fun stuff, I am pleased to announce that the latest edition of Meat Eater's American History, Volume 4, is going to drop on October 20th. So this is the official announcement that that is forthcoming. Release on October 20th. This is Meat Eater's American History, The Alaskans, 1896 to 1941. It's going to cover trappers in the interior of Alaska between the Klondike Gold Rush and World War II. This is dog sleds, riverboats, bears, moose, caribou, lots of fish, and trapping fur bears for the fine fur market.

• 6:00Steven Rinella?

  This is a period of history that Steve got really into, just in his extracurricular reading, and he decided that this needed to be the subject of our next book. I didn't know that much about it, and the more I read, the more fascinating it was. So keep your eyes peeled for that. And if you haven't listened to the first three, let me encourage you to do so. You don't have to listen to them to enjoy Volume 4, but highly encouraged, highly recommended.

• 6:27Speaker 06

  Is Volume 4 done?

• 6:29Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 6:29Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 6:30Steven Rinella?

  No. Thanks for asking that.

• 6:33Speaker 06

  Until October 20th.

• 6:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we gotta, we gotta turn the files in a little before that, but it'll get done. It'll get done. I have every confidence.

• 6:43Speaker 07

  That time period, you probably get some good insights into adaptive technology.

• 6:50Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:50Speaker 07

  Creeping into the wilderness.

• 6:52Steven Rinella?

  Early outboard motors, guys just getting so mad at outboard motors that they just sink them or throw them on the sandbar because they're not worth it. That still happens. Do the Ruski's make an appearance in there? The Ruski's are in there for a little, they, they sort of are in there for the prehistory. Lots of surplus military rifles, as you might imagine, in like the 20s and 30s. Lots of guys just, it's, it's like a very different sort of modern story. I mean, the funny thing is, when you look at this, these, these people are living in a world that resembles Lewis and, the Lewis and Clark era in a lot of ways. Undiscovered frontier. They're, they're in places that they don't have maps for. They're, they're hunting and fishing for their own food.

• 7:37Steven Rinella?

  They're making some of their own clothes. Like, it's a very primitive, hard scrabble existence. But at the same time, like, the Empire State Building is being built. There's like professional baseball. That's, that's wild to think about. Yeah, so it's like a really interesting contrast between what's happening in the rest of the country and what's happening in interior Alaska during the first couple of decades of the 20th century.

• 7:59Speaker 06

  That's the White Fang era as well, if you liked that book that was published in 1906. It's about that part of the world in the 1890s.

• 8:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, Jack London was, we talked a little bit about Jack London in one of the chapters when we were describing the Gold Rush. But if you don't have a sense of scale for how many people flooded up into British Columbia, Yukon Territory in Alaska during the, during the days of the Klondike Gold Rush, it's unbelievable, just a flood of people. And then some of them stuck around and, you know, they didn't make a ton of money trapping, or they didn't make a ton of money mining for gold, but a lot of them turned to trapping as a way to support themselves. And so that's really the story of this book. So that's what I got.

• 8:45Speaker 06

  October 20th.

• 8:46Steven Rinella?

  October 20th. Keep your eyes peeled. And now, your news.

• 8:57Speaker 07

  We're going to talk about alpha gal and treatments for it. So if you hadn't heard recently, Steve hosted Burkhard Bilger on the interview show to cover ticks and alpha gal. If you don't know what alpha gal is, it's not a Gen Z term for boss women or something like that. Good one. We had a lot of comments about that, that people were confused on.

• 9:16Steven Rinella?

  Before they listened to the episode.

• 9:17Speaker 07

  Yes, now they know. It is a tick bite induced syndrome that causes an allergy to red meat and dairy products. It's pretty mysterious. Bill Gates may or may not be involved, but at this point, the treatments are minimal. But we had a lot of comments and people write in with stories about successful treatments through acupuncture, which personally, I'm very skeptical of, as is Steve and a couple of other people, but we had really interesting response to it. So we're going to read off one. Hey, Steve and me, Eater Crew. Just finished listening to episode 908 about alpha gal syndrome. It was a great episode on topic that hits close to home for anyone who spends serious time in the woods. I wanted to follow up on the brief mention of acupuncture as a potential treatment. I have two close friends, both very down to earth, blue collar guys,

• 10:01Speaker 07

  who developed severe alpha gal allergies over the last three years. One of them actually had a near fatal anaphylactic reaction after his doctor recommended that he slowly reintroduce red meat into his diet. He ate a can of Vienna sausages and ended up in a life threatening situation. I gotta stop you right there. He dove right into it.

• 10:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. I don't know that would be my choice. I might only have red meat one more time in my life.

• 10:24Steven Rinella?

  Let's eliminate all the variables.

• 10:26Speaker 06

  Are we sure his problems are related to a tick?

• 10:29Steven Rinella?

  I like his style.

• 10:31Speaker 07

  I do too.

• 10:32Steven Rinella?

  I'll be honest, I like his style. It would have been really boring if he like cooked up a little bit of hamburger in a pan. No, this is good.

• 10:38Speaker 07

  Well, his friend, the other, the other blue collar guy that he mentions, couldn't even be in the kitchen when his family was cooking bacon without his face and body breaking out in hives. Desperate for a solution, a coworker mentioned that his brother, an acupuncturist in Charlotte, North Carolina, was using a technique to target alpha gal. Both my friends were very skeptical, but they decided to give it a shot. Unbelievably, after just one session where a needle is inserted into their ear, both guys were completely cured. It's been a while now and neither has had a single allergic reaction since. Both are back to eating meat without any issues. I know this is far fetched and sounds like pseudoscience and I wouldn't have believed it myself. I haven't seen it happen to two of the biggest skeptics that I know. I just want to share these real world success stories as another perspective on a disease that affects so many outdoorsmen. Nate Dotson.

• 11:24Steven Rinella?

  Man.

• 11:25Speaker 06

  Wow. I'd like to see a blood test from those dudes after they had.

• 11:29Speaker 07

  Yeah. So I'm not, we're not going to go super deep in this, but there's an interesting, a very interesting study on PubMed about, it's like a, a very well done study on acupuncture and on, for alpha gal treatment. And the results are very interesting. So if you're dealing with this, check it out.

• 11:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I read that. I read that study. Acupuncture confuses me.

• 11:51Speaker 07

  Same.

• 11:52Steven Rinella?

  I don't understand it.

• 11:53Speaker 07

  Me neither.

• 11:53Steven Rinella?

  But a lot of people think it works for them or it works for them. And I think when it comes to health stuff, who are we to say if it helps?

• 12:05Speaker 07

  There you go.

• 12:06Speaker 06

  Yeah. If you had a red meat allergy, that's the kind of thing you just like throw the kitchen sink at.

• 12:10Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. You just try anything.

• 12:11Steven Rinella?

  Trying anything. Yeah. If you told me I could cut off my left arm, elbow down, forearm down, I don't know, I'd give it a shot.

• 12:18Speaker 07

  What about shoulder down?

• 12:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah, probably. Probably.

• 12:22Speaker 07

  Keep the shoulder though, for some recoil.

• 12:24Steven Rinella?

  The red, the red.

• 12:25Speaker 06

  Hurt to swim game.

• 12:26Steven Rinella?

  The red meat allergy. Yeah. I mean, like I'd keep, I'd, I'd try every tool in the toolbox. All right. We've got another email here. This is a Chetiquet question. And the fellow writes, hi, Steve and crew. So right off the bat, we've screwed this one up. Hi, crew. Longtime listener, first time writer. I'd appreciate if you guys weighed in on this one. In Illinois, nearly all public waterfowl sites assign blinds through an in-person lottery for the whole season. To enter, you show up on a designated day in July with your ID and a current or previous year's hunting license and a waterfowl stamp. A DNR officer writes your name on a slip and drops it in a raffle tumbler.

• 13:10Steven Rinella?

  If your name gets drawn, you pick from the open blinds. Then you turn in a form listing up to four hunters and each of them has full hunting rights to that blind. You can only be listed on one blind in the entire state per season and there's no hunting outside the marked blinds. My partners were out of town at a wedding, so I went alone to the site that I hunt every year. Normally it runs clean. A name gets read, you call the blind you want. And if a second name from a group that already won gets drawn, they just say pass and step out. That protocol usually means everyone who shows up leaves with a blind. Before it started, I did a rough head count. If every group of four took one blind, everyone there goes home happy. Around the fifth draw, an obvious non-hunter from a group that had just one got called.

• 13:54Steven Rinella?

  He turned and chuckled to his buddies and went and grabbed another blind. Then it happened four more times. Five groups took multiple blinds to lock everyone else out that only put one name on each extra blind, so no other group could join. End result is that me and at least three other groups walked away with nothing. I honestly don't know whether be mad at the DNR, the first group that set the precedent, or my hunting partner's college buddy who decided to get married yesterday. So here's what I'm chewing on. One, do I have a right to be pissed or am I just a sore loser? Two, whose fault is it really that this happened? Three, what would you do in this situation? Four, any solutions to make this convoluted process suck less?

• 14:39Speaker 07

  You have a right to be pissed, for sure. Yes. Uh, and there was no attempt to like talk to the single groups and, and fill those open spots. That's the, the, that's what I'm conjuring in my brain. There's individuals in those other blinds versus full capacity in those blinds.

• 14:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. My test for this would be, are those blinds going to be sitting empty during hunting season? And if they are, that is a huge red flag and that's a non-starter. This, this is messed up.

• 15:11Speaker 06

  Um, if they've got non-hunters there trying to claim stuff, like they should be checking licenses.

• 15:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 06

  You know, when these draws are happening.

• 15:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I, I also wonder too, um,

• 15:25Steven Rinella?

  in situations like this, you can't really get, if, if people are doing, if people are playing by the rules.

• 15:34Speaker 07

  Don't hate the player, hate the game.

• 15:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. But in, in this case, it seems like the outcome that.

• 15:39Speaker 07

  Well, there's the intent, right?

• 15:41Steven Rinella?

  Right. It seems like the outcome that the state wants is not, is not the outcome that's going to play out in the, in the field, right? And so I'm hoping that they have some sort of system where they figure out how many days you hunted out of these blinds. And like, if they're not getting used, you know, maybe you're ineligible the next year, something like that.

• 16:00Speaker 07

  Cause Brody brings up a good point, right? On paper, what's the difference between a hunter and a non-hunter? Do you have a license? Well, I guess that makes you a hunter. Yeah.

• 16:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 07

  So.

• 16:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I mean, cause you could ultimately, you could end up with the same outcome, I guess. If you had all these groups there and half of the groups were just lazy asses that would get a blind with every intention of hunting it and then not hunt it that season. Like you could still end up getting screwed just based on the relative different commitments of each group. But this seems egregious.

• 16:36Speaker 07

  Yeah. Maybe you put like a sign in box at the blinds.

• 16:39Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 16:39Speaker 07

  And when you, when you hunt them, you sign in and whatever. At the end of the year, they look and be like, oh, the people who won this blind only hunted two days or something, or whatever, zero days.

• 16:48Steven Rinella?

  Exactly.

• 16:49Speaker 07

  You hunt zero days, you had to like.

• 16:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 07

  You, you're not eligible for the next year or something. I don't know.

• 16:53Speaker 06

  Or make people like commit to certain days on the calendar. And if they don't show it, like, if they're not going to be there, they relinquish those days and other people can get them somehow. Like some kind of system where you have access to a blind that's not getting used. I think Drew needs to fight fire with fire and he needs to like bring his nine-year-old daughter and his neighbor and a couple of folks in his universe that can help him, you know, put the odds in his favor.

• 17:20Steven Rinella?

  Maybe arrange a field trip for the local senior center.

• 17:24Speaker 07

  I am laughing here.

• 17:25Steven Rinella?

  Drive the church bus out there.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  That is the, I always say like the most dangerous people in America are retirees. Cause they got a lot of time, some disposable income. And if, and if they really want.

• 17:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 07

  To focus on something, they can, right?

• 17:40Steven Rinella?

  They get a hammer.

• 17:41Speaker 07

  Yeah. Um, but it, it like, we're in this like deregulation period in America right now. And I do laugh at the conversation that we just had. It's like, okay, well, how do you fix people being jerks?

• 17:55Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 17:56Speaker 07

  It's like, well, we're, okay, we're going to have a representative government system and then everybody, you know, it's like.

• 18:03Steven Rinella?

  I mean, the.

• 18:04Speaker 07

  We just need people to follow the intent of the system. And if you're not there to do that.

• 18:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 07

  Stay the hell out.

• 18:11Steven Rinella?

  I mean, one way that I could see this being somewhat mitigated is if you made the groups declare who's in their group beforehand. Right? Like, it seems like there's five sort of four solo individuals there, each putting their name in separately. And then they, so maybe just have, you have to declare that this is group A, group B, group C.

• 18:33Speaker 07

  Well, on the, on the slip that they pull out, just have everyone in the group's names on it.

• 18:37Steven Rinella?

  And then those people, yeah, exactly. You have, you have all the names there and then those specific names can't get drawn.

• 18:44Speaker 07

  I can see where people that hate waterfowl hunting get involved in this.

• 18:48Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 18:49Speaker 07

  To try and get some blinds. They're a good bird watching spot.

• 18:54Speaker 07

  But even on like non-drop, uh, public water, uh, relatively close to here, like forever, there's been this highly competitive deal where it's like, okay, there's these blinds. That are like historic blinds on the waterway. The young dude in the group goes down at midnight. Camps out in the blind all night and then the older guys roll in just before shooting light with coffee and breakfast Sandoz and that kid's been there shining a headlamp at every other group that's come out to hunt the blind.

• 19:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 07

  You know, and it's like, and then on really competitive days, there's three young dudes that pin down three different blinds to keep other people out and then they only hunt one blind.

• 19:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 07

  It's like the arms race.

• 19:43Steven Rinella?

  I think it's, it's, there's no way of getting rid of all of the gamesmanship in this stuff. But when the gamesmanship starts to overtake the

• 19:53Steven Rinella?

  real point of why you're out there, that's where it ruins it for me. When like you're thinking more about how to beat the system than you are just like, how are we going to get out?

• 20:02Speaker 07

  Well, it's not just how to beat the system. It's how to screw over your fellow hunter. It's like, is that really what we want to be doing? You know?

• 20:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, there's always going to be those people.

• 20:11Speaker 07

  I know, I know.

• 20:13Steven Rinella?

  Drew, just, why don't you talk to your local DNR access person and just read their, take their temperature on this. You know, maybe you could work towards a solution next year that uh, makes it a little bit better.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder wantons.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective doing here. Three bodies on the ground.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  All since swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 20:52Speaker 02

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• 22:00Steven Rinella?

  Now it's time for the news.

• 22:07Steven Rinella?

  So starting out, did I get, did I do that right? Never mind.

• 22:13Speaker 06

  Phil, what is that sound effect? It sounds like.

• 22:15Steven Rinella?

  I thought the sound had ended, but then I thought maybe there was more.

• 22:17Speaker 06

  A Tweety Bird being crushed under a boot.

• 22:20Speaker 07

  It's like an old timey Newswire Morse code thing that I morphed into a nut hatch. That's tweeting at the same time as the Morse code and then, and then it gets eaten by something.

• 22:28Speaker 06

  That is exactly what I thought that was.

• 22:30Steven Rinella?

  Really good, really good.

• 22:32Speaker 07

  Brody doesn't like it.

• 22:35Speaker 07

  What do you mean? I, I like it. I just didn't get the bird part. Oh, that's fine.

• 22:39Steven Rinella?

  Uh, to start off our news, excuse me, to start off the news for the week. Uh, we have an interview that Steve has pre-recorded with David Wilm's. And they are going to talk about, uh, and get to the bottom of some of the headlines that you might've seen lately on grizzly bear management. Joined now by Dave Wilm's, the Associate Vice President of the National Wildlife Federation, Certified Attorney, and um, undisputed expert on Endangered Species Act issues. Undisputed expert on grizzly bear management. He's here to tell us what exactly does it all mean? What we've been reading in the news about changes to grizzly bear management

• 23:25Steven Rinella?

  in the Rocky Mountains, um, with particular implications um, to those three states that have grizzly bear populations. Um, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Uh, thank you for coming on, Dave.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. Always good to see you.

• 23:43Steven Rinella?

  So, so what's up? What is going on? This is, this is, this is always a difficult issue to follow. It's, it becomes very, there, there's a lot of details, a lot of things change and get undone through litigation. So like, where are we at right now? What, what's new?

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the big news story is about a week ago, the governors of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana held a press conference with Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum to announce a new rule involving grizzly bears. And they just call it the 4D rule. Uh, but for folks that don't know what the 4D rule is, section four subsection D of the Endangered Species Act gives the Fish and Wildlife Service a lot of flexibility to write rules that allow some level of take for different, take meaning, you know, injury to an animal, lethal removal of an animal, you know, harassing an animal, not harassing, that's the wrong word.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  But you know, um, you know, uh, dealing with conflict issues to come up with grizzly bears, giving some flexibility to do that by writing this rule for threatened species that exempt those things from what are called take prohibitions. Normally, if you were to, to harm or harass or do anything to these grizzly bears, you'd be violating the Endangered Species Act because they're listed. So this is to exempt certain activities, management activities, from uh, the take prohibitions of the Endangered Species Act. That's at the high level.

• 25:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So give, give me an example of an activity that, that would actually happen that we might start seeing more of that we weren't seeing before.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I don't know if you're going to see new activities. I think you're, in some ways, you're, you're formalizing old activities. So like, tons of credit to Wyoming and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and their large carnivore team. They've been doing a lot of on the ground management of grizzly bears and people just don't see it for decades. And they've been consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service. And if they have a grizzly bear going out and harassing livestock or killing livestock, and they need to deal with that bear, they need to haze it off, or they need to translocate it someplace else. Or if it just keeps getting worse, they actually need to, there, there needs to be lethal removal of the bear.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  But then they coordinate with the Fish and Wildlife Service and do that. This rule formalizes that relationship, uh, is the way I would describe it. From the Wyoming perspective, it would formalize that relationship in rule and, and formally authorize through this rule the states to take on uh, these on the ground management activities. Uh, and that conflict resolution is a big piece of it, but it could be some of the scientific research. It could be, if you have a bear that's struck by a vehicle, for example, and it's injured on the side of the road. It seems pretty simple. You should be able to dispatch that bear, right? Well, you know, the way the Endangered Species Act writes, you wouldn't be able, that'd be a violation of the act to do that.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  So this would allow a state agency personnel, authorized personnel, to go and deal with that injured bear without having to necessarily wait for somebody from the Fish and Wildlife Service to authorize it or come out and do it, for example.

• 27:07Steven Rinella?

  Um, I understand what you're saying, but, but I feel like there's got, there, there has to be more to the story than just formalizing something that's already happened or else it wouldn't have been, why is it being treated like, treated like a, a significant change or a significant piece of evolution?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  So, I mean, that's a great question. And I guess the best way to describe it is, uh, look at all the criticism that's happened over the last 15, 20 years. One of the big complaints that you see when you talk about grizzly delisting, right? We've tried twice to delist grizzly bears. People come up in arms uh, over grizzly delisting. And one of the big things they cite is this distrust for the states. The state legislatures, the governors, the state, you know, state agencies. And I don't think the public broadly knows that states have been very involved with grizzly bear management and recovery for now 50 years.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  And one thing this rule does, it does a couple of things I think are really important. One is it formalizes that relationship and it formalizes the fact that states haven't, have, have an active role in management of grizzly bears and recovery of grizzly bears. So that's one piece of it. I don't think the public knows. And so this formalizes that and says, we're recognizing what an amazing job the states do. And, and formally, you know, creating this role. Uh, another thing I think it does is it, it creates a mode roadmap for, you know, if you can make a rule like this work where you're, if you meet certain, and the way this rule is written, by the way, if you meet certain benchmarks, there are, then the state can take on

• 28:51Speaker 03

  additional responsibilities of management. Okay? The way it's written, the states have pretty much already met those benchmarks because they're just, they're tied to, to jet demographic objectives, like what are the, what, what's the population distribution? What's the overall population? All the things that have been met for 20 years.

• 29:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  So you, if you tie it to that, then they're automatically going to be able to step in and do that, those things. But it also creates a roadmap that you could use for other species in other places that maybe haven't reached those benchmarks yet. So this is, I look at this as a rule as it's, it's an incentive for states to really lean in on listed species and push towards recovery and taking back management of them. Even while they're still listed. So in, in that regard, I think it's a, a pretty big deal. Um, but I think it's also important that there are things this rule doesn't do that are floating around out there on the internet. You know, because people are all armchair quarterbacks and, and armchair lawyers and all those things and tell you what the, this rule does and doesn't do.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  And there's a lot of misinformation out there too about this rule.

• 29:55Steven Rinella?

  Is it safe to say that

• 30:00Steven Rinella?

  since this has been attempt, since delisting has been attempted twice? And both times that they've. Pushed the, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has moved to de-list grizzly bears.

• 30:14Steven Rinella?

  It was blocked in the courts and usually the greatest

• 30:20Steven Rinella?

  thing that they were used as, as public leverage was the idea that there would be hunting licenses issued for grizzly bears. Then that really unnerved a lot of grizzly bear protectionists. And so they got the delisting beat. Is it, is it safe to say that this is rather than trying to undo? Rather than trying to de-list in one fell swoop, this is just a necessary step toward that objective. In order to alleviate some of the immediate pressure that would be felt if they tried to de-list again right now.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  I think that's right. I think it also, another way to think about this is think of this as an insurance policy of sorts.

• 31:04Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Right? So you put this rule in place that creates the authorities for the states to go out and do the on the ground management.

• 31:11Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  To go do the, respond to conflicts to, one thing they can't do is they can't, they still have to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service before they do any lethal removal. They can't just go out and kill a grizzly bear. But all of this other management stuff, they'll now have the ability to just go do, uh, under this, under this rule. And so the, the, the insurance policy I call it is say six, six months from now. Or a year from now, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposes to de-list grizzly bears.

• 31:38Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 31:39Speaker 03

  What's gonna happen? We're gonna have lawsuits filed like we always do and it's gonna get tied up in the courts. Well, while that is playing out and being fought, you still have the states largely managing the bear. Like under this rule.

• 31:54Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  Now it doesn't go as far as, like I wrote a, I wrote a book chapter three or four years ago where I proposed something like this structure. Only I went a lot farther with it and I actually said, you, you should just incorporate the post-de-listing management plan of the states into the four D rule. And if that means authorizing, like, allowing a hunting season to occur while it's listed, that you could theoretically do that. Obviously this doesn't go that far. This doesn't authorize, uh, uh, a hunting season. My, my theory back in the time was you could have this species be effectively delisted, but it's list, it's still listed.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  But effectively managed as though it's delisted and then let the courts play out and you've got this insurance policy. Well, this has most everything except that piece, the, uh, the hunting piece, like most everything else is included in that. So it's almost this. You, the, the folks on the ground don't have to watch the pendulum swing with the litigation. They just see, you know, the states out there doing the management. And then over the longer term, those, those groups that distrust the states and say they can't do it. Well, now you have this body of evidence building, formally building through these annual reports that this 4D rule requires from the states. You have a body of evidence annually building, showing

• 33:14Speaker 03

  what the states are doing to manage their, the, the grizzly bears successfully. Uh, and I think that can be blunt future litigation.

• 33:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh yeah, it's great because that, that's the claim is that, oh, if they de-list grizzly bears, the states are just gonna go whole hog. Kill them all. And then you point out, well, why would that benefit the states? To manage the grizzlies in a way that they're back on the endangered, back under ESA protection. The state has no incentive to tank bear populations.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 33:45Steven Rinella?

  They've been shooting themselves in the foot if they tanked bear populations. So I see you're saying that this gives, this gives an opportunity to demonstrate that the states have no interest in imperiling grizzly bear populations.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  That's right. You can see how it's playing out with, with wolves. For example, you've probably seen in Wyoming, the proposal to now reduce the wolf quota by over half.

• 34:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  This year because wolf numbers are down from, you know, disease and other things have caused them to depress. So they're adapting and adjusting because frankly, the state doesn't want to see wolves relisted either. They don't want to see grizzly bears relisted. So you're gonna end up with this body of, of, under this 4D rule and the reporting that comes out of it. I do believe, and one of the best things that'll come out of it is you're gonna see the proofs in the pudding and you're gonna see that the states are able to show, we're doing it, bears are still recovered. And it at least, you know, blunts arguments against the distrust of the state agencies, which I think has been one of the, like you mentioned, one of the biggest obstructions to not being able to get them delisted. You'll never satisfy everybody. There are people out that are just like, I don't care if they're recovered.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  They should stay protected under the ESA because I never want to see them hunted in any way or something like that. Right? That's gonna be out there.

• 34:55Steven Rinella?

  I got one last question for you. Um, yeah. Were you involved in shaping this? Or, and would you be able to say if you were involved in shaping this?

• 35:04Speaker 03

  Uh, a, a, all I can say is years ago, um, I, so I, I've written. Uh, it, there's a, there's a book out there called the Codex. It's a, it's the worst titled book ever, but it's called the Codex of the Endangered Species Act. Uh, volume two, I contributed a chapter to that where I laid out this exact idea of, of increased authority to the states under a 4D rule. And I'd been working on, on that for years prior. You know, going all the way back to my time working for the governor of Wyoming on, on some ESA stuff. So this is an idea. Like there are other people that have been talking about this too. This is an idea that I've definitely honed in on, on grizzly bears in particular.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  And I've presented the idea to the, to service leadership over the years at different conferences and so forth. So, um, did I have a hand in writing it? Absolutely not. I didn't, you know, that's the service. They do that.

• 35:58Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  But I definitely, I definitely fleshed out an idea that seems to show up in the rule. I won't take credit for it, but it's, it, it, there's some, there's some mirroring of, of some of the writing.

• 36:12Steven Rinella?

  Potentially an intellectual father of this.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  There you go. I like that. I like that way.

• 36:18Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  That way of describing it.

• 36:20Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna ask you one more question, but it'd be such pure speculation and it was gonna be, I'll do it anyways.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 36:27Steven Rinella?

  It's a two-part question. No, it's a one-part question.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Sure. Sure.

• 36:30Steven Rinella?

  If you had to crystal ball it.

• 36:35Steven Rinella?

  And it's just a wild guess. We're giving you room for a wild guess. In your lifetime, in your lifetime, do you think that you will see the implication

• 36:48Steven Rinella?

  of a grizzly bear hunting season in Montana, Wyoming, or Idaho? Like, I mean, where actually, it actually goes through and happens in your lifetime. If you had to say yes or no, and it's just a wild ass guess.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Uh, can I say it depends on what the cert? The reason I say that is I actually believe that, that as the service moves forward, the Fish and Wildlife Service moves forward with proposed de-listing rule, if they decide to do that. What that says and what lands are incorporated by that, and this might be a longer conversation for us someday. But will determine whether they're ever de-listed in our lifetime or not.

• 37:33Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  And, and I think it could go one of about three ways. So I would love for it to happen. Uh, and I'm hopeful that it happens, but I just, I, I can't give you the, I can't do the, you wanted the yes or no, and I can't just like say yes or no. I can only say it depends. Although I can say it has happened in our lifetime because the first 4D rule written for grizzly bears in 1975, or maybe it was a year or so later, allowed hunting of grizzly bears outs in the Bob Marshall outside of, uh, uh, glacier. And that continued until the early 1990s. I think it was, it was

• 38:15Speaker 03

  shut down in 1991. Um, but anyway, it's been, it's been written into 4D rules in the past. So in our lifetime as a threatened species, they've been hunted. Uh, but, uh, they, uh, in the future, all I'll say is I hope so.

• 38:31Steven Rinella?

  Okay. But you'll give it a big depends.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  A, a big depends and, and you can use depends as in the adult diaper or whatever, because it's either like, that's what this whole thing is.

• 38:43Steven Rinella?

  All right, man. Uh, Dave Wills, thanks for coming on. Again, Dave Wills from the National Wildlife Federation, um, always is great for giving a very even keeled, measured, unemotional take on contentious wildlife issues. And issues of corner crossing and other things. So again, thank you, Dave.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, you bet. Thanks.

• 39:05Steven Rinella?

  Thanks, Steve. That's a great interview. Gentlemen, what do you think?

• 39:09Speaker 07

  David texted me, followed up. He wanted to redo his, his final take that Steve asked about.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Good. Cause I didn't really like his answer.

• 39:16Speaker 07

  No, me neither. And he said, and I think he's still kinda giving a, a Steve would say a law dog an answer, but he's a lawyer. You can't blame him. Said, if I had a crystal ball on whether we'd see hunting in the three states in our lifetime, I stand by my saying it depends. But it's more than what the FWS decides to do with delisting. It depends on what courts do. It depends on what Congress does. It depends on what the states do. But I'd also say, I sure hope we see it. Not because I want to hunt them necessarily, but because if they are recovered and that's how the states want to manage them, then hunts, then that's what should happen. Grizzly bears and GYE have been objectively recovered for more than 20 years. The service has tried to de-list them twice. If we want to continue touting the success of the ESA, then we have to be willing to de-list recovered species

• 39:58Speaker 07

  and trust that states will do everything they can to make sure that they never need to be listed again.

• 40:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I, I had, I had the same thought, like when he was describing at the end what his crystal ball prediction was, I did have the same thought that sort of bubbled up in my mind is like,

• 40:17Steven Rinella?

  well, I, I would like to hunt them.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Will apply for a tag if it happens, but on the like, just the big picture, how cool would it be if an animal that was endangered is all of a sudden? A renewable resource in the way that we think of.

• 40:32Steven Rinella?

  How cool would it be if the ESA worked as intended?

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:36Steven Rinella?

  And people acknowledged that it worked.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  Phil, we gotta pull the map up here. So folks who are watching can understand what we're looking at. This, you cannot look at this in a vacuum. And be like, okay, this idea on its own. Makes sense on its own. It absolutely makes sense, but there's all these surrounding factors. And what I would say, folks who aren't keen to this idea. Of returning the bear to state management need to understand is. Currently, and for many, many years. Grizzly bears have been getting shot and killed.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  A bunch like more than anybody would guess in the states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Primarily due to conflict resolution.

• 41:31Speaker 06

  Do you have a number? Like how many a year?

• 41:33Speaker 04

  Uh, I haven't looked today. I can't remember what.

• 41:36Steven Rinella?

  I think I recently heard 50 in Montana.

• 41:39Speaker 04

  So the, when I went down and trapped grizzly bears. Uh, the trapping seasons, the first week of July. And. Uh, we had a big winter that year. And.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Trapping for collaring purposes.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  For collaring.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Trapping.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Live trapping, yeah, for research, yep. Uh, longest, longest bear population study.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, just wanna make that clear for the listeners.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  There were just in the state of Montana, there were 26 bears killed. In by the first week of July with a big winner, right? And I bring up the big winner because they're not. Active until later on in the season. So they've been out for a relatively short amount of time. Montana had already killed 26 grizzly bears, right? And it's like. Well, it's just the hunters that are killing grizzly bears, uh, vehicle mortality. Bear on bear mortality. Um, and then conflict mortality are your big factors. So, um. Moving this, the grip, the bear to state management is not all of a sudden. Gonna cause bears to be shot.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Um, they already are being shot, um, whether you like it or not.

• 42:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and I think that's the thing. As soon as people heard. Grizzlies being managed by the states, there's this like knee jerk reaction like, oh my God, they're gonna have a hunting season, right?

• 43:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:01Steven Rinella?

  Like they're gonna kill them all, um, which is like not what's happening at all. There's not gonna be a hunting season for grizzlies next year.

• 43:08Speaker 04

  No, in fact, the, the state of Montana, we have a, a five year. Run built into our grizzly management plan. So no matter what, even if it's like, yeah, do whatever you want. We would be marching five years down the road towards a grizzly bear hunt. Um, so look at the map. You have the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, the N C D E.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  Uh, on the north end of that is Glacier Waterton National Park, no hunting. Um, and it's a national park, federal management. Uh, in the middle of that, you have the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. And then, uh, jump down to the G Y E, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In the middle of that Yellowstone National Park. This idea that it's just gonna be the states managing bears, I think is. Very disingenuous. There's always gonna be collaboration because you have basically two giant spawning areas. In the middle of, of both of these populations, um, there's always.

• 44:17Speaker 04

  Going to be, uh, an inter-agency grizzly bear task force that operates within the parks. Um. And then you have. Just the current state of things, which is. The states are doing. The vast majority of boots on the ground management of the bear. Right now and last year and the year before, all the way back into, to the seventies. When the, when the griz was, uh, listed as, as threatened.

• 44:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And in those, those are the six distinct population segments for grizzlies in the lower 48. Um.

• 44:57Steven Rinella?

  It's, it's. The ones around Glacier and Yellowstone, obviously that like, that's where all the bears are, right? The one to the west there, the B E, that's the bitter root. There might be a couple of bears in there right now. Um, the cabinet yak and the Selkirk, the red and the purple ones, um, there's bears there. Not, you know, not as big of a population. The one over in Washington, Northern Cascades. There's probably not a single bear in there in the lower 48 right now. They're, they're like in Canada. They're around. And there's only a couple of them.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:33Steven Rinella?

  Um, so like those smaller populations, I think would probably be managed. More towards the ESA line of things versus like. Yes, a, a more liberal state managed.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  I, I think those are really on this map to show that these are areas conducive to. Having. Sustainable grizzly populations, uh, the bitter root. I don't believe there's, um, an established. Population there, meaning that there's sows and boars producing cubs every year.

• 46:13Steven Rinella?

  There probably will be, but.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  There's definitely bears that get encountered.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  And tear up golf courses.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  And, and some of which are, are sows.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Um, but those are bears that are, are moving in there. Um, either from the cabinet yak, which is again to the west Glacier National Park or. Um, the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem and this greater conversation of like population. Uh, connectivity to provide long-term. Uh, genetic viability, meaning like we got enough. In the soup to where the ingredients keep getting mixed around and you're not gonna have. A one ingredient soup, right? So a shallow.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Like a tomato soup.

• 46:56Steven Rinella?

  Every year we're getting closer and closer to the Northern Continental Divide and the Greater Yellowstone kind of linking up.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Well, I thought, I thought they, they confirmed one this year.

• 47:05Steven Rinella?

  They may have.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  They, they may have moved.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty sure, well, I'm pretty sure to, to like a male and a female from each side bred and produce cubs this year.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  Nice. Um, I would still call that like a big anomaly because of just all the. Like the biggest grizzly bear in the state was killed on one of the highways in between those two. Um, there, you know, so like wildlife corridors with wildlife crossings, all these things could be done to help improve that and make it. Not an anomaly, um, which I think would be a good thing for all sorts of wildlife, not just grizzly bears. But, um, right now. Like the fringe area around Yellowstone and Glacier and the Bob. Uh, and the bitter root and the yak.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Um, that habitat is largely there because it is in a wilderness designation. Um, a wilderness study area designation, a designated roadless rule designation. And all of those things are under some form of review. Some people would say attack. During this administration. So again, like looking, I think it's great that the bear goes back to state management. However. I want to hunt the, the thing. I'm, I'm the only person at the table who's been able to apply for a grizzly bear tag in the lower 48. Uh, because I was living in, in Idaho the last time this happened and we got.

• 48:36Speaker 06

  Nineties?

• 48:37Speaker 04

  We got to apply. No, it was, it was the.

• 48:39Steven Rinella?

  Couple of years ago.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, it, it would be, I mean, it'd be like nine years ago now.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  Um, but.

• 48:48Speaker 06

  How did that go down? They, after the applications were submitted, they, they killed it, right?

• 48:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  Don Malloy and Missoula shot her down.

• 48:58Speaker 06

  They didn't get to a point where they ever drew anything either.

• 49:00Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, Wyoming issued tags.

• 49:03Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 49:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they did. A dozen of them, I think.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think, I think Idaho went through the draw, did not draw, um. But that was the the framing of the federal decision to to relist was this this historic range and habitat connectivity to to mark actual recovery. So, long story short is, if you were like me and you want to see a huntable and sustainably huntable population in perpetuity of grizzly bears, which I think would be just amazing and something us people with big lumps of fat on our shoulders called brains

• 49:50Speaker 04

  should be heavily invested in. Uh, then you should be advocating for wilderness and roadless and proper uh, forest management as well as expanding wilderness. Because that's the stuff that these low fecundity critters such as grizzly bears need to have sustainable hunting populations. End of rant.

• 50:16Speaker 06

  You know what my takeaway from that interview was? David Wilm should do our jobs. He's good. I think we should just have him do this because he's way better at it. Yeah. But we'll carry on.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  He says, I might, I might not even want to kill a grizzly bear or hunt a grizzly bear. Come on, Dave. Toughen up.

• 50:34Speaker 06

  Some of the the distribution map we saw there crosses over into tribal land, uh, specifically like the Blackfeet Reservation and the Crow Reservation. I could see where they are potentially the first ones who like get to do a hunt when, when, or if that becomes available. Uh, we, we've seen that in the past with some of the, the bison they're allowed to take.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  If I could wave a magic wand, they'd be doing those hunts inside the parks.

• 50:58Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Historical hunting grounds.

• 51:01Speaker 06

  Yeah. Totally. Anyway, there, I feel like we have, when we talk about this story, we haven't covered that like they're going to be a person at the table. Um, who, who may get some heavy input. No, that's a great point. That's a huge omission.

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• 52:45Speaker 06

  So, speaking of Wyoming, uh, this is a story that was reported by Mark Hines at the Cowboy State Daily. Um, although I actually saw this post that I will reference here in a minute, just popped up in my feed. Uh, shocking. Um, two weeks ago, Steve covered the story about a pack of wolves known as Molly's Wolves moving out of Yellowstone and into the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. Uh, there, obviously, they can legally be hunted, and this is one of the original packs in the park. Um, it's a pack with a lot of history with the wolf watching crowd. Um, and now that they are in the national forest, they are susceptible to hunting. I believe that season opens September 15th.

• 53:28Speaker 06

  And when Steve was reporting on it, uh, the, the sort of underlying question was, is this going to be a big flashpoint for hunter and anti-hunter conflict? Well, it is. Um, then this is the post I saw, uh, that is, that is the subject of this story, but there is a social media influencer in Austin, Texas, who has now offered a $10,000

• 53:53Speaker 04

  Country.

• 53:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, $10,000 reward for the identity of any hunter who kills a member of Molly's pack during the upcoming hunting season. He, he basically just wants to dox, uh, whoever

• 54:06Speaker 04

  Public shame.

• 54:07Speaker 06

  Takes one of these wolves. Yeah, public shaming, uh, condemnation, I think is the word that he used. This guy's name is Jonas Black, since we're sharing names. Uh, Jonas Black is his name. He can, and he claims to support fair chase hunting. Uh, and he says, I'm not an anti-hunter, but he says that, uh, Molly's pack is basically like zoo animals. Uh, he claims that this will be like shooting a dog. Um, and so he wants to get the word out that anybody who shoots one of these will have their identity made clear to the world.

• 54:42Speaker 06

  Are those the words he used? It's like shooting a dog? Yes. He's a man. Dog. He says, yeah, so he's a dog trainer. He's a dog trainer, and I think I saw that he became interested in wolves after that story from, uh, 2024, where the guy ran over the wolf with the snowmobile and brought it into the bar and took photos. Um, I saw that bar this summer.

• 55:03Speaker 04

  Hmm. Oh, I've been in there.

• 55:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  You know, since he seems

• 55:06Speaker 04

  Giant chicken fried steak.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  This guy seems to encourage, uh, social media discords, then, you know, hit him up.

• 55:13Speaker 06

  No, no. Let's not encourage bad behavior. Um, this is, and this is like, the, the other side of this story is that Montana and Wyoming both have laws in place to keep the identities of wolf hunters confidential because there is such a potential for harassment and threats from the anti-wolf hunting crowd. Um, and so that's, you know, the, the, the states themselves won't reveal identities of individual wolf hunters, but there is nothing illegal, to my knowledge, about a private party learning the identity of the hunter and making that public, even if the obvious outcome will be harassment and probably threats of violence.

• 55:49Speaker 07

  Why isn't he all hot and bothered about like hunting on the strip for elk? Like, there, those would be, fall under the same.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  The Las Vegas Strip?

• 55:57Speaker 07

  I'm sorry, um, just north of the park.

• 56:01Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 56:02Speaker 07

  Oh, the buffer zone? The buffer zone, thank you.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  Because this guy is all for fair chase hunting, so long as it's not something he really, really likes.

• 56:09Speaker 07

  Right, right.

• 56:11Speaker 06

  So, this is, this is discouraging. I think he's got, he's got like some graphics, some AI-generated graphic that's like a logo for protect Molly's pack. And, um, I don't know. I hope it doesn't discourage anyone, but it seems like

• 56:26Speaker 04

  I hate to break it to you.

• 56:27Speaker 07

  I mean, how, how would he get the info of who? Is that, is it public?

• 56:30Speaker 06

  Someone to snitch? No, he

• 56:31Speaker 07

  Well, I tell this guy, uh, people, Molly's pack is going to get killed and he ain't going to know about it.

• 56:37Speaker 03

  It would be like if Randall had a tag and Spencer is like, man, I can make 10 Gs here.

• 56:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's, that's what he's hoping for. It's like, you, you find out that a buddy of a buddy shot one of those wolves and then you get

• 56:50Speaker 04

  Let's go, Seth, I'll split it with you.

• 56:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. I was gonna say, I'm gonna buy a Wyoming wolf tag, go down there and then call myself in.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  Uh, the fallacy also is like Molly's pack is this static thing. It's the same, it's the same group of Disney characters that started the whole deal.

• 57:09Speaker 03

  But they're not in Disneyland anymore, Cal.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  But also within Disneyland, they're, they're beating each other.

• 57:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 04

  Um,

• 57:18Speaker 04

  and like, all he's got to do is call any state agency and be like, are hunters the most effective tool when it comes to wolf management? And they're gonna be like, no, absolutely not. Wolves kill the most wolves.

• 57:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:34Speaker 04

  Secondarily, like trappers do a much better job than hunters.

• 57:39Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 04

  It's like

• 57:41Speaker 06

  I don't think, I don't think we need to go down these hypothetical scenarios because I don't think this guy's going to be calling any game agencies to learn more about the situation. Phil, is Yellowstone more of a Disneyland or a Disney World, you would say?

• 57:56Speaker 03

  Ooh. I'd say Disney World because it has like three or four kind of prominent features that attract the biggest populations. Kind of like Disney World has four theme parks that are spread across and you kind of have to navigate how to get there. You gotta deal with traffic, transportation.

• 58:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, make that adjustment. Another huge omission in our coverage. Thanks, Spencer. Um, so I have the, obviously, that is a, not a very heartening story, uh, for our community, but I'm going to balance that out. Uh, I also saw a headline, this was in the CBC, that Alberta hunters will be able to use hounds this year to hunt black bears in certain wildlife management units that have what they call conservation, caribou conservation areas. Um, and I was surprised to see this because I feel like, uh, Canada, in some ways, is like, uh, Oregon or Washington, where it seems like hunters are really under attack and you see a lot of

• 58:53Speaker 06

  headlines about opportunities being rolled back. Um, specifically, the, the one that come, came to mind first was the British Columbia doing away with its grizzly bear hunt. Um, so, yeah, they're bringing back hound hunting to hunt black bears. Um, and the concern is that some Some of these caribou herds in Alberta aren't doing well and the mortality rate of newborn caribou is is the concern there and predation obviously plays a huge factor in that. So there's again, a lot of outcry from anti-hunting groups. This, the usual concerns about hounds chasing non-target species and grizzly bear conflict and stuff like that. And it's obviously clear from a lot of the commentary on, on the CBC site that

• 59:39Speaker 06

  there's a lot of misinformation about hunting and bear hunting in particular, but nonetheless, I thought it was good to shine spotlight on some. Well, that stat you got in here about Minnesota is pretty. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, so this is, I mean, this is one thing that I think a lot of people focus on wolves when they think about impacts on ungulates, but black bears are hugely effective. Predators of calves, of ungulates. And there's a specific study in Minnesota that showed in years when spring bear hunting took place, there was a 68% lower proportion of bear predation on moose calves

• 1:00:17Speaker 06

  during those spring hunts with no compensatory increase in wolf predation, meaning like it wasn't just zeroed out by someone else gobbling up all the calves. So I think that, that one involved,

• 1:00:29Speaker 06

  that would involve a tribe. I can't recall the details on it, but it was mentioned in some of the coverage of this story. And so I, I dug it up and took a look at it, but yeah, it's black bears. I mean, you see it too. If you hunt around here, like they're, they're keyed in on. Oh, yeah. Hell on elk calves, for sure. Spencer, why don't you take it from here? I was, this is a couple of weeks ago, I was making dinner in the kitchen and my wife was in the living room, watching Jeopardy. And I heard something happen to where I went in the room. I was like, you gotta rewind that. I, I need to hear that again. And it was during the part of the show that like comes after the first commercial break, or maybe it's second,

• 1:01:13Speaker 06

  where they just get a little fun fact about the contestants. They're like, so Randall, you met Johnny Depp's sister in an elevator one time, right? Tell us about that. And then Randall would talk about how he was at a Halloween party and met Johnny Depp's sister. Everyone got a good laugh out of it. Did you come up with that beforehand or do you just riff? Just, just going off. That's good. Did you meet Johnny Depp's sister? No, no, that's just, it's a good riff. So I, I heard during one of these little character intros, something that got my attention. And we are deep in YouTube prison right now for the clips that I've shown in the past that get dinged for copyrights, whether it's from like Ace Ventura or showing the man get flipped over by a bison in Yellowstone. So we can't show the clip today.

• 1:01:55Speaker 06

  Phil and I are going to act it out instead. I'm going to be Ken Jennings. Phil is going to be the contestant. Times are tough around here. See, the thing is, is it's a better experience if we show the clip, but then we can't make money off of that. So. And then we get. Take it away, boys. We get thrown deeper into YouTube prison, which is like maybe the deepest we've ever been right now because some of the clips. Yeah, we're in a hole right now. It's bad. And then I also need the crew to help us out because there's, there's some parts where the audience laughs. So please laugh along just to give everyone the full experience, but like a very appropriate Jeopardy audience kind of laugh. Can you play the Jeopardy song without getting dinged?

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah. It depends how much parody there is.

• 1:02:39Speaker 06

  Let's find out. YouTube is our biggest hater. Spotify, they're like, okay with it and, and Apple Podcasts, right, Phil?

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, now we've got video on Apple too. So there's a whole, another can of worms.

• 1:02:52Speaker 06

  Anyway, all right. Here, here is the scene. Owen Harrington is from Chicago, Illinois, a union organizer and PhD candidate. And I'm told a pretty big deal in the state of Vermont.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  Well, for one beautiful year I was, Ken. In 2013, I caught the largest bowfin recorded in the state of Vermont. It's a fish for those in the know.

• 1:03:12Speaker 06

  I assumed.

• 1:03:15Speaker 06

  Sweet.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wasn't entered in this tournament, but my friend was and I was fishing with him. And I said, hey, you want to enter this under your name? Don't tell the game warden. And I, it won the state tournament for that year. We won $1,000 and we split it. And I got my first analog synthesizer with that money.

• 1:03:32Speaker 06

  Wait, I thought they gave you an analog synthesizer. And the prize, you went out and bought one?

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  I did buy one. I still have it. I hope the game warden doesn't take it away.

• 1:03:44Speaker 06

  No, if he's watching now, I think the statute of limitations has expired. Is that what you think? Okay, scene. Nicely done. Should we just admit it to them? So he admitted, if, if you didn't catch it there, he caught a bowfin, gave it to a buddy who was entered in a bowfin tournament and that buddy won and got the $1,000 grand prize. This happened in 2013. I checked the Vermont Master Angler records for 2013 and to enter a Master Angler bowfin, it needs to measure 28 inches if you're an adult angler or 23 inches for youth anglers. There were 10 Master Angler bowfin entered in 2013.

• 1:04:24Speaker 06

  Owen did say that his was the biggest in the state. I don't know how literal he was being, but the biggest in the state that year was a 32 incher caught by Robin Hierenzen and it was caught on Lake Champlain at 4:00 PM on June 29th. So I don't know that Robin was the person who entered it. I have Googled to my wit's end, trying to find the tournament that would give a $1,000 grand prize for a bowfin in Vermont. There are not many of them and I found what I thought was the actual event, the Lake Champlain Father's Day Derby. So I sent then them the clip and I asked if it was their tournament. Here was their response, quote,

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  "Hi Spencer, I'm aware of the episode. $1,000 would not have been the prize for largest bowfin at our 2013 tournament, but I plan to do some digging. We certainly can't have individuals who were involved in the 2013 fraud or anyone whose involvement would compromise the integrity or reputation of fishing competitions participating in our events." So it was not them, but they are looking into it to see if they could track down. Well, yeah, cause it's, it's not necessarily exclusive to that fish, right? There's like big fish. Uh, prize, there's most weight, there's all sorts of variables. As I understand that email, he's simply saying a thousand dollars wasn't the prize for that.

• 1:05:46Speaker 06

  Maybe, maybe so and so was inflating the amount that he won. Well, that's what I was gonna say. Is this guy a liar or a cheater? So when, when fishing. We gotta get the lawyers on this. When fishing tournament crimes happen, they're usually prosecuted as fraud or theft. And in Vermont, those crimes are considered felonies if they exceed $900. So this is a $100 beyond what it needs to be a felony. Are you putting a man in jail right now?

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  I mean, we, we know that the Jeopardy writers watch the Meat Eater trivia.

• 1:06:19Speaker 06

  That would be my little tidbit if I was on Jeopardy. Like, well, actually you guys stole a question, I think. So as Ken mentioned, the statute of limitations will likely protect Owen and he's correct. The statute of limitations in Vermont for felony fraud is $1,000. Now there is some wiggle room with what's called discovery and I don't understand this well enough to, to know if it would apply in this case, but discovery would be like if a doctor did surgery on you and then you realized a year later that they messed something up and you're now in great pain. I think the statute of limitation starts at discovery, once you realize that the doctor messed up. In this case, I don't think discovery would apply. Maybe it would if the tournament now just learned that they

• 1:07:02Speaker 06

  had fraud committed against them, but I, I don't, you know, nobody probably cares enough for a 13 year old crime for a thousand dollars. But karma got him. Owen got second place. He only won $1,400 that day and he lost to the Jeopardy super champion Caleb, who won that episode with $19,000 and nobody got final Jeopardy right. But we're going to solve this. We're going to figure out what tournament had $1,000 taken from. Man, Spencer, that's like some hard hitting, like true crime investigative journalism. I want the second place person to get their $1,000 prize, uh, who was actually entered in. Seth, you're a tournament angler. What do you, what would you recommend the punishment be here?

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  And what analog synthesizer would you buy with your winnings? Yeah. I don't even know what the hell that is.

• 1:07:45Speaker 06

  What is an analog?

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  Phil, you own one? Oh no, all the, all the sins that I used to own, which are, which were two, were all digital.

• 1:07:52Speaker 06

  It's like a keyboard that makes, you know, the sound of a baseball hitting. Looks like a necktie.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that kind of stuff happens unfortunately quite often in tournaments. And people just get in a lot of trouble over it.

• 1:08:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Like there was, there was a recent one where allegations of, of a guy trying to buy a big fish from his co-angler and it blew up. It's like, it's, they're always like big stories when they come out, you know?

• 1:08:22Speaker 06

  To buy it? Was it for less or more than the prize amount?

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  I think they offered, he offered like 500 bucks or something for, like if he would have caught. I, I don't, it's a long story, but the, the the co-angler caught a fish that if the, but like the guy, you know, driving the boat would have caught it. He would have, he would have won, potentially won the tournament and yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 06

  If you have information on what tournament this could have been, reach out to trivia at the meat eater.com. We'll have an update in the future on Owen's $1,000 that he stole. Crime Stoppers. We should just have a Crime Stoppers company email address. Yeah. Seth Morris, speaking of.

• 1:09:05Speaker 07

  Seth Morrison fishing, you've got some interesting news to report.

• 1:09:08Speaker 03

  Bringing more fishing to the news desk here. Um, a new study challenges assumption about forward facing sonar.

• 1:09:16Speaker 07

  Ooh.

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  Hmm. Um, a landmark experimental study suggests one of fishing's most debated technologies may not increase catch rates after all. Um, and you know, forward facing sonar has just been a huge topic in the last couple of years. So this, this is, this was very interesting to me. Um, for years, forward facing sonar has been at the center of, uh, heated debate amongst anglers, tournament organizations and fisheries managers. Critics have argued that the technology gives anglers an unfair advantage and could accelerate over harvest um, of popular sport fish while supporters have maintained um, that its benefits have been overstated.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  Um, I definitely see both sides of the argument. Um, but there's a, a new study that was done um, by the University of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Um, and they, they did a long-term randomized controlled experiment um, examining how forward-facing sonar actually affects recreational fishing. Um, and their findings are not, probably not what people expected. Um, so the study, uh, published in Fisheries Research

• 1:10:42Speaker 03

  um, followed four experienced anglers fishing Wisconsin's net, I, I think it's pronounced Nebbish Lake.

• 1:10:51Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  Um, throughout the summer of two thousand twenty-five. Um, by alternating access to Garmin LiveScope forward-facing sonar between um, two teams while standard, standardizing equipment. Um, fishing efforts and conditions, researchers isolated the effects of the technology itself. Um,

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  rather than catching more fish, anglers using forward-facing sonar actually caught fewer smallmouth bass.

• 1:11:23Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  Um, than anglers fishing without the technology. Researchers found catch rates declined by approximately point six four fish per hour. When anglers had access to forward-facing sonar. The technology did provide one measurable advantage. Um, anglers using forward-facing sonar caught slightly larger fish. Um, on average, about one inch larger.

• 1:11:49Speaker 07

  Hmm. Yeah, that's what I.

• 1:11:50Speaker 06

  So what's that tell you, Seth?

• 1:11:52Speaker 07

  I would wonder if, like, I, I got a lot of questions.

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  There's, there's a lot, there's a lot of holes. I'll say there's a lot of holes in this study.

• 1:12:00Speaker 07

  Were they just out there trying to catch as many fish as they can? Or were they targeting large fish? You know what I mean?

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, like there's. Well, it goes on to say like, so the, the, the, these, during the study, they had GPS trackers on the angler so they could see what the anglers were, were doing. The GPS tracking showed anglers using forward-facing sonar spent significantly more time searching for fish than actually just casting. Which makes sense.

• 1:12:26Speaker 07

  Oh yeah, you're staring at a screen.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:12:30Speaker 07

  That's funny.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  Boater, boats moved more slowly, covered less water and made more frequent directional changes while using the technology. Which makes total sense because as you're going and scanning, you see a fish over here, you're going to make a ninety-degree angle and go, you know, go over and try to catch that fish.

• 1:12:47Speaker 07

  I would be, I would be more interested if they, maybe they did, did they, did they count the number of casts per fish? Like that would.

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  I would say people using forward-facing sonar casted way less.

• 1:13:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Speaker 06

  It was also, this is only four anglers.

• 1:13:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Speaker 06

  In one lake.

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  Like you said, there's a lot of holes.

• 1:13:05Speaker 06

  Learn a lot.

• 1:13:06Speaker 07

  I still think it's interesting.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, I mean, it's the only, it's the only study that's ever been done on the effects of forward-facing sonar.

• 1:13:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, it, it's interesting, if nothing else, to show you how people fish when they're using.

• 1:13:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um,

• 1:13:23Speaker 03

  so it, it goes on to say the study also found no evidence, this is one thing I don't agree on. The study also found no evidence that anglers became um, substantially more effective as they gained experience with the technology over the course of the summer. I think if you follow the Bass Master Elite Series at all. You'll know that these, these younger kids that spend a lot of time with forward-facing sonar are just so good at it.

• 1:13:52Speaker 06

  Is the Elite Series where they flip a coin to determine which tournaments have and which ones don't?

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  This, this past season was the first time they ever did that. They flipped the coin for every event to, to determine if it was forward-facing or no forward-facing.

• 1:14:08Speaker 07

  No way.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  And it was basically a split schedule.

• 1:14:10Speaker 07

  Huh.

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  Um, so, I don't know, these researchers should, should take a look at that. Just the data from that, from this year of the Elite Series to compare tournaments with, with forward-facing and without.

• 1:14:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, that would be a great, uh,

• 1:14:28Speaker 07

  that would be a great, like, I'd imagine there's a lot of data from that.

• 1:14:32Speaker 03

  A lot, yeah.

• 1:14:33Speaker 07

  Both are tracked. There's a lot of guys that are really.

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the, the good thing about that is the data's there.

• 1:14:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38Speaker 03

  They just have to go look at it.

• 1:14:39Speaker 07

  But this really contradicts what you found with the billfish thing, where catch rates.

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing. So this, this is a smallmouth bass study.

• 1:14:50Speaker 03

  As Randall and I experienced a couple of weeks ago up in Canada on Lake of the Woods.

• 1:14:56Speaker 03

  We would spend a lot of time musky fishing without any sort of electronics other than just two D. Um, and then we would go out in the evenings with LiveScope and catch a muskie.

• 1:15:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  You know? But also, the time, the hours of the day where we were fishing were arguably the best hours of the day for to, to catch a muskie, but it was just, you at least knew that you were casting to fish with, with LiveScope. Yeah, and that's the, the question, right? Is like, what? Cause there's a lot of smallmouth fisheries too, where if you're casting, you're going to be catching smallmouth. Yeah. They're just going to be smaller. Mm-hmm. Um, so the game becomes like, okay, how do I change up my rig, presentation, approach, tactics to get through the small fish and target the big fish? Yep. Um, but you're still fishing.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  Yep. And then when the LiveScope comes in, you're just not going to waste those quote-unquote waste those casts. Yep, totally. That's like,

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  on Lake of the Woods, you could pull up to any offshore reef and you're going to just catch a bunch of walleye.

• 1:16:12Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:13Speaker 03

  But if you want to catch a thirty-inch, thirty-plus inch walleye, like you would, like, you would use LiveScope out over a basin and target suspended fish that you could only, unless you were trolling and just happened to catch one.

• 1:16:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  Yep. So like that, that's an example of like, how your fishing style would just completely change.

• 1:16:35Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Speaker 03

  By using the technology. I remember when we were, uh, doing one of the, the fishing, I think you were there Seth, but we were filming for Doss Boat. And, uh, any second I could, I just had a line in the water, like. Yeah. And caught all sorts of just completely random fish because that was, you know, I was just trying to catch fish. Yeah.

• 1:16:56Speaker 07

  That's the, that's the joy of fishing.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  Is a lot different than trying to catch the fish.

• 1:17:01Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, right? Which is. Yeah. Trophy, the trophy fishing, so. Um, yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 07

  Anything more on that?

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  No, I think, I think it'd be interesting to, I, and I hope that they do more studies on

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  like, different species and, and, you know, anglers.

• 1:17:22Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  Involve anglers that have a lot more experience with it.

• 1:17:25Speaker 07

  There's more research to be done.

• 1:17:27Speaker 03

  Uh, totally. But it's, it's just interesting that they, this is like the first piece of, you know, the first study that has come out. Um, on forward-facing sonar and, and yeah, they didn't find a lot of concerns with it.

• 1:17:43Speaker 07

  Great work.

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• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  Up next, Brody has leprosy.

• 1:19:19Speaker 07

  Not yet, but if I go to Florida and, and rassle an armadillo, I might get it. Um, leprosy cases.

• 1:19:26Speaker 04

  In Florida are on the rise and armadillos are to blame.

• 1:19:32Speaker 04

  If you don't know what leprosy is, is that like there, there's descriptions of this disease that date back three to four thousand years and India, China, Egypt, it's a disease that's frequently mentioned in the, in the Bible.

• 1:19:46Speaker 04

  Associated with extreme social stigma, uh, because it was highly contagious and incurable. People believed it was a punishment from God during the Middle Ages, they would set up these leopard colonies and, and force people to, to go into these colonies and kind of separate them from society. Um. These people were declared legally dead, so they, they basically had no rights. The, the cause wa- was unknown until eighteen seventy-three, when a Norwegian physician named Gerard Amor Hansen. Hope I'm pronouncing it.

• 1:20:22Speaker 04

  Gerhard, Gerhard. Anyway. A Norwegian doctor discovered the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. So that's, that's the cause of bacterial disease.

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  And be- before effective treatment, the, the disease would cause nerve damage, loss of sensation in the hands and feet. Severe deformities and blindness in advanced cases. In the nineteen forties, antibiotic treatments came around and, uh, the, the, they were able to cure the disease to, um, and today, like in the United States is very rare. It's still pretty common in other parts of the world, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Africa, couple hundred thousand cases a year reported. Um, but again, very rare here in the United States. Um, ninety-five percent of people have a natural immunity, making infection uncommon after exposure.

• 1:21:21Speaker 04

  Um, symptoms can take a long time to show up, uh, up to twenty years to appear after exposure. So what do armadillos have to do with it? Um, like how, how did they be, and armadillos in the United States become carriers of leprosy? Um, then the nine banded armadillo, which we, do we have a picture of that?

• 1:21:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, I've, I've been showing stuff.

• 1:21:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, now he's just showing.

• 1:21:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, there he is.

• 1:21:47Steven Rinella?

  What leprosy symptoms look like?

• 1:21:50Speaker 07

  You're welcome.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  They're the only wild animal in North America that maintains, like is, that are a carrier of this bacteria. And so they're like a wildlife reservoir.

• 1:22:02Speaker 04

  Scientists still don't know exactly how this ended up happening. But the leading theory is that leprosy was brought to the Americas by European colonists in the fifteen hundreds. And at some point, they transferred leprosy to the armadillos who are now transferring it back to humans.

• 1:22:22Speaker 07

  I can see how. Yeah, I'd, I'd kick the lab out of the bed, cuddle up with that.

• 1:22:29Steven Rinella?

  It looks like an animal that should have leprosy.

• 1:22:31Speaker 04

  A, a pretty, a pretty interesting, well, one, one detail that supports this strain that, that supports this idea is that the armadillo strain is a very close match to the strain from humans. So it suggests that the bacteria is spilled from people into armadillos. Um, an interesting thing of why armadillos are like a good reservoir for this thing is they have a body temperature of ninety-one to ninety-five degrees, so lower than people. And this bacteria actually grows kind of poorly at a normal human core body temperature. So that's, that's pretty interesting. Um, ten to twenty percent of wild nine banded armadillos, uh, are carriers.

• 1:23:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's pretty wild. So Florida had seventeen reported cases of leprosy so far in twenty twenty-six. It's an upward trend. Um, twenty-six reported cases in twenty twenty-five, twenty, twenty, twenty-four. So it's like slowly been on the rise over the last few years.

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Are all those cases directly related to messing with?

• 1:23:37Speaker 04

  They don't, they can't, they can't necessarily confirm that, but they believe that the majority of them are, some, some might be people bringing it in, they, they traveled internationally and brought it back. Um, but they do believe that, that some of this is, is coming from armadillos. Um, they, they, Florida officials want to like maintain this isn't like some widespread epidemic, the overall risk remains low and the disease does not spread easily. But you shouldn't handle live or dead armadillos, uh, and they think that the, the bacteria can also be uh, kind of like transmitted into the soil from armadillo. So you should wear gloves while gardening or, you know, messing around in the dirt and you should wash a bunch.

• 1:24:22Speaker 04

  Um, the greatest, highest risk stuff would obviously be handling or capturing live armadillos, skinning or butchering them or eating them. Um, now, I'm gonna jump ahead a little bit. I got some, some other stuff going on here, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna address the eating thing. Um, where did I put that? I had it in here somewhere. Um, maybe I cut it out. Anyway, I remember what I was gonna say, like internationally, th- there are places where armadillos are eaten, like down in central and South America. But there is also a history of, in the United States of people eating these things, um, particularly during the depression.

• 1:25:05Speaker 04

  They were called Hoover dogs and, and people would eat them then. Still happens now and then, different states have different like management strategies for armadillos as far as whether they're a game animal or not. Most of the time they're not considered a game animal, so you can, you can go out and grab yourself an armadillo if you really want to. Um, so that's what's going on in Florida, but Florida's not alone. I did a little extra research. And, uh, we get about one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty cases of leprosy annually in the entire United States. And again, some of those could be coming from people who are traveling and brought it back.

• 1:25:45Speaker 04

  But, uh, this, this kind of armadillo, human crossover thing, they believe has happened in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. So keep an eye out for those armadillos. You don't, you don't want me getting this disease. It's a nasty one.

• 1:26:02Steven Rinella?

  And Florida seems to be like twenty, twenty-five percent of all the cases nationally. Florida's increasing, that's why it's in the spotlight right now. Interesting. I don't think Florida, when I think armadillos, maybe that's just, maybe that's just a blind spot for me, yet another one.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  Um, yeah. Does that, does that bacteria just live on the skin of those things?

• 1:26:26Speaker 04

  Like in, they carry it internally, I would assume.

• 1:26:30Speaker 07

  Brody, is this map the, the range of the armadillo?

• 1:26:33Speaker 04

  So like they go, that nine banded armadillo goes pretty far north. Um, but the, the majority of the, the leprosy cases, for whatever reason, are in the southern, southern tier there.

• 1:26:44Speaker 03

  We had them running around in Savannah and they are surprisingly fast. I thought them were a slow animal.

• 1:26:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're cool, they're cool looking little critters.

• 1:26:52Speaker 03

  But man, they're the worst thing walking under your tree stand.

• 1:26:54Speaker 07

  Oh, you think it's big giant deer?

• 1:26:58Speaker 03

  And you can't see them.

• 1:26:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:00Speaker 06

  There is at least, uh, one armadillo in South Dakota, there was, despite it being outside of their range. I had a buddy who's a farmer who was hauling cattle, I think from Oklahoma, uh, that also had some hay with it in the trailer. Uh, and when he got back home and unloaded it, an armadillo came running out of the hay pile. So there was one there shortly. I don't know if he made it through winter or not.

• 1:27:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, if you want to really like creep yourself out, like I didn't want to show the pictures here today, but, um, you can look at like some pretty drew some pictures of what leprosy can do to you. It's, it's rough, man.

• 1:27:30Speaker 06

  This says it's completely curable though.

• 1:27:32Speaker 04

  Antibiotic.

• 1:27:33Speaker 06

  Treatment takes six to twelve months and after the first few doses of medication, you are no longer infectious.

• 1:27:39Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:40Speaker 07

  Boy, six to twelve months, that's a long time.

• 1:27:42Speaker 03

  That is a long time.

• 1:27:43Speaker 07

  First time I, I heard about this, I tried to catch, I was in the act of hand catching an armadillo in Texas. Got yelled at. You don't want to get leprosy?

• 1:27:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, I of course was like

• 1:27:59Speaker 07

  And they're like, no, it's a real thing. I'm like, no, it is not. And then I was like, oh, damn you, Google.

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I feel like that's how I hear about, uh, armadillos and human interactions. It's like people catching them by hand.

• 1:28:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:28:15Speaker 06

  People keep them as pets. It's a handful. Like I said, we'll, we'll eat them. Their, their meat was described as a lot like rabbit, like dark, darker.

• 1:28:25Speaker 03

  If you had a couple, like you get rid of the rototiller in the garden, just let those suckers turn things over.

• 1:28:32Speaker 06

  They call them the Texas speed bump. What would that be like if you like ran one over? Man, I could tell you, I, one time.

• 1:28:39Speaker 03

  That Robert Earl Keane song.

• 1:28:40Speaker 06

  Back horrible memories, Spencer. Cause one time I ran over a turtle by mistake. What kind? It's a hor- it was like, I think it was a painted turtle. But the noise was gruesome. Cause it like, we were rolling kinda slow. And the window was down and I imagine the noise to be similar.

• 1:28:58Speaker 03

  I was, I was one time coming back from Fort Peck real late at night, like fished all day and came back. And on 90 there, uh, in between, uh, Big Timber and, and Livingston. Come around one of them bends and here comes two raccoons out in the middle of the road. And it was like, I, I applied the brakes, but I could, I wasn't swerving. I hit both of them. What? Both tires and for one hit each tire in the front. And it was like, I was probably going 75 miles an hour and it was like hitting a freaking speed bump.

• 1:29:33Speaker 03

  So listeners, write in, let us know, what is the worst sounding animal to hit?

• 1:29:42Steven Rinella?

  All right. Speaking of hits, Nate's got a quick hitter to wrap us up here.

• 1:29:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, this is a segment we're calling old news. When we miss something in the news cycle, but we still want to talk about it. What we're gonna do is we'll go way back to an old timey news item, talk about how it relates, see how that piece has aged. And then bring it full circle to where we're at today. In this case, we're covering the unofficial official heaviest common carp caught in the U.S. But by a Brit. So a quick history going back to 1877, my old stomping grounds in Baltimore. Fish populations are tanking due to over harvest and water, water quality decline. Wildlife officials are looking for a solution to fill the protein gap left by this decline. Enter Spencer F. Baird, the first director of the United States Fish Commission.

• 1:30:25Speaker 07

  He looked across the pond at the bountiful and popular common carp population, populations of the UK and began the effort to important, import them. Uh, by 1900, common carp are ubiquitous throughout the U.S. Primarily due to state and federal efforts to introduce them. Um, and their natural resilience and fecundity. So that takes us to this old timey bulletin. If you'll pull, pull that up, Phil. Um, released by the Department of Commerce, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. And if you're listening, it's exactly what you imagine. It's a, it looks like it's printed on some, some real nice card stock.

• 1:30:56Speaker 06

  Are you gonna do an old timey voice?

• 1:30:57Speaker 07

  Dude, I wanna do that Shane Gillis voice he does.

• 1:31:00Steven Rinella?

  Can I do it?

• 1:31:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, please read it. That'd be great.

• 1:31:02Steven Rinella?

  Eat the carp. The carp discovered America in 1877. He found the land to his liking. He multiplied and filled the waters with his kind. He is now big, abundant and useful. He converts useless vegetation and small animals into meat. The meat is wholesome and nutritious. It contains as much protein as sirloin steak. Mmm. It is easily digestible. It can be cooked in such a way as to remove the muddy taste. It can be boiled, baked, made into croquettes or fish loaf. Carp jelly, an ancient Swedish dish is delicious. There are millions of carp in the United States. The last sentence shows that 43 million pounds were marketed in one year.

• 1:31:43Steven Rinella?

  Nearly all of this came from a few states in the middle west. Somebody ate those 43 million pounds of carp. Therefore, the carp must be good to eat. The carp is good to eat. Carp has not only been eaten, but has been cultivated in Europe for centuries. Europeans know how to cook it. Catch the carp, buy the carp, cook the carp properly and eat it. Eat the roe, can the roe, make carp jelly, can the fish, smoke it too. For more information, recipes, write to United States Bureau of Fisheries, Division F, Washington DC.

• 1:32:16Speaker 07

  I wish I would have had this for the carp video.

• 1:32:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Did you realize we released the carp video?

• 1:32:20Speaker 07

  That's one of the reasons we, we were rolling this. Um, I'm sure the suits will be super happy. I would like to point out.

• 1:32:28Steven Rinella?

  At the top of that, it says, please post conspicuously.

• 1:32:35Speaker 06

  So yeah, the, the carp propaganda machine was going strong.

• 1:32:39Speaker 07

  Again, Randall was not prepared for this. He just pulled this out. So.

• 1:32:43Steven Rinella?

  That was great.

• 1:32:44Speaker 07

  That's good.

• 1:32:44Steven Rinella?

  I've always wanted to do like a, a propaganda movie, voiceover propaganda film from World War II. Hey there, G.I.

• 1:32:53Speaker 06

  In 1911, what was happening in Alaska for your audio book?

• 1:32:56Steven Rinella?

  1911 was, uh, that was James Carroll's first year of trapping.

• 1:33:03Speaker 06

  Lot of context. Wasn't eating carp.

• 1:33:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's, that's the book. Steve did his book as one of the Steve Reid's books. So you ain't got to. Cause it was James Carroll's book, uh, his first 10 years in, in Alaska. Yeah. Sorry.

• 1:33:17Speaker 07

  No, we'll return to the, the claims made by this. Uh, we'll not, we won't go line by line, but basically all of those things are wrong. Um, if you wanna see if the meat is wholesome, you can refer to Steve's carp a la beer, beer episode that just launched on YouTube. It's great. Uh, Dr. Randall's heavily featured in it. Um, the recipes, I think we might need to try carp jelly. For the next one, cause it calls that out specifically twice. Uh, millions of carp, most carp are used for, uh, most commercial carp. Are used for fertilizer or they're exported. And they claim it must be good to eat. Cause so many are getting eaten. So I looked up a couple of reviews on Food Network. There's two restaurants that are famous for their carp, both in Omaha, Nebraska.

• 1:33:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, this Joe Tess one.

• 1:33:57Speaker 07

  Yeah. People like. Joe Tess. So we'll read two reviews, a highlight and a low light.

• 1:34:01Speaker 06

  Is it carp ribs they serve there?

• 1:34:03Speaker 07

  They, there's a couple of things. Um, just Lisa underscore seven two one, five stars. Love this place. Go for the carp, not the mac and cheese. This is an old time cafe with amazing potatoes. Don't think of it as a Michelin restaurant, but it has the best fish, best potatoes and really awesome coleslaw. Uh, Robert C. On the other hand, one star. Don't believe what you see on TV. Tried the two piece fried carp. One was the rib section, which was good, but seasonless. The other was the tail with barely any meat and looked very unappetizing.

• 1:34:32Speaker 06

  We need to address something here real quick. Restaurants often call fish something that it's not. And, uh, there's a bunch of different kinds of carp. So what kind of carp are these restaurants serving?

• 1:34:42Speaker 07

  Allegedly common carp, which we'll get into, cause apparently the, the Asian carp doesn't taste quite as good.

• 1:34:48Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then there's buffalo too.

• 1:34:50Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, buffalo is not a carp. Gets mixed in a lot.

• 1:34:54Speaker 07

  It does get mixed in.

• 1:34:55Speaker 03

  I've eaten several pounds of the quote unquote silver carp. And it is tasteless. Like there is no flavor to that. So.

• 1:35:07Speaker 06

  So it's like a positive review though.

• 1:35:09Speaker 03

  For most people, it is an extremely positive review, right? Cause like you fry it and it tastes like. Like, it's like tofu. Yeah. It's like.

• 1:35:19Speaker 03

  Like whatever you put on it.

• 1:35:21Steven Rinella?

  We should point out too, that, uh, I looked at the comments on your carp video and everybody is quick to point out that there are cultures. All over the world that have very delicious ways of preparing carp. Although. And I, like, it seems like there's a great deal of variability when it comes to different species and also the water that they're coming out of and the temperature of the water.

• 1:35:42Speaker 07

  Um, and that's, that's, we'll skip through some of the Asian carp stuff and just focus on common, but. It seems that the, for good carp cultivation, you gotta be real dialed in on water quality, which they are in the UK and France. Um, so for any diehard trivia listeners out there, you may know that I don't know jack about fishing. So when I was doing this research, I found it extremely surprising. But there's like a big dedicated carp.

• 1:36:05Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 1:36:05Speaker 07

  Community out here that loves them.

• 1:36:07Steven Rinella?

  They're badass fish to catch.

• 1:36:08Speaker 07

  And they treat them as like a naturalized fish here in the States. Thoughts?

• 1:36:13Speaker 06

  I don't think they treat them as a naturalized fish. I think there's.

• 1:36:19Speaker 06

  Like I fish a lot. Seth fishes a lot. We don't treat them like a naturalized.

• 1:36:24Speaker 07

  I, I think there's some carp apologists.

• 1:36:26Speaker 03

  But I think there are people that have flats boats.

• 1:36:30Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:36:30Speaker 03

  In this valley.

• 1:36:31Speaker 06

  Focus on carp.

• 1:36:32Speaker 03

  To go fish carp.

• 1:36:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  On Canyon.

• 1:36:34Steven Rinella?

  My most memorable fish.

• 1:36:36Speaker 03

  Real flats boat. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. My most memorable fish fight on the little Miami river growing up was a big ass carp that just, just ran.

• 1:36:45Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:36:45Steven Rinella?

  Just took out drag. Super cool fish.

• 1:36:48Speaker 03

  And yeah, for like fly fishermen in Montana.

• 1:36:51Speaker 06

  The poor man's bonefish.

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  How many people are you like, oh yeah, trout took me into my back end. And in the back of your mind, you're like, yes, cause you don't know how to fight a fish.

• 1:37:05Speaker 03

  You know, but you hook into a carp that's gonna take you into your back and it's like a really cool.

• 1:37:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's fun.

• 1:37:12Speaker 06

  I caught one in downtown Denver, uh, on the Plant River and on my four weight. That was like the best fight I've ever had on a fly rod.

• 1:37:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, very cool. Uh, I will, I will tell you like the.

• 1:37:27Speaker 03

  I was blown away by how like highly edible the carp were in Tennessee. That was on Lake Kentucky Lake. Hmm. And Excellent bass fishery. Oh my God, the crazy fishery in general, but the carp situation, there's way out of hand. And I was fishing with Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency and they have a bumper pole deep fat fryer that they take places. Oh. And, and they just show people how tasty carp is. They're like, any way you want to catch it, shoot it, whatever. But it's awesome food, too. God, we should get those guys on the next video. Yeah, for sure. We can make that happen.

• 1:38:12Speaker 03

  They probably wouldn't recommend carp à la beer, though.

• 1:38:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:16Speaker 07

  They'd recommend carp and beer.

• 1:38:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Fried carp and beer.

• 1:38:20Steven Rinella?

  Nate, what's your, what's this giant carp photo I'm seeing?

• 1:38:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, this takes us to the, the current US carp record. Craig Budo, reporting on our very own media.com, turned me on to this story and said we had talked to this guy. So I call up Scott Lennox, expecting to get a few laughs about catching a monster fish that nobody cares about. And boy, was I wrong. Scott comes from a long line of dedicated trophy carp fishermen with adventures from UK, France, Cyprus, and now California. In the UK, trophy carp fishing, it's like akin to red stag hunting. Those guys, they're dedicated carp ponds with decades old fish that have names and histories and entire industry built around them. Carp men will take

• 1:39:00Speaker 03

  You gotta get reservations, become part of the club.

• 1:39:02Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:39:03Speaker 03

  Got it, yeah.

• 1:39:03Speaker 07

  It's very exclusive. Guys will take 10 day trips to France, paying thousands of dollars in the hope to catch like Big John or Eric's Common Arnold or something like that. And so after Craig, or I'm sorry, Scott moved to California and finding a distinct lack of the trophy carp industry, he began his journey to become a backcountry carp fisherman. And I'm not kidding, man.

• 1:39:24Steven Rinella?

  Please explain that part to me.

• 1:39:25Speaker 07

  This guy will backpack into lakes and rivers with a full setup to fish for carp for six days straight, seven days straight, in the hope to catch a monster. He's got scouts out, he's got a whole carp community that trades intel and are finding the good lakes. And on this specific trip, dude, this dude is so, this guy is more dedicated.

• 1:39:46Speaker 03

  There's a first light line of clothing there.

• 1:39:47Speaker 07

  Yeah. His first trip, he took a, a beach chair and an umbrella and sat by his poles around the clock. And then eventually he was like, I can't do this for six days at a time. And he's, he's upgraded to a cot and a tent and you know, your normal accoutrement.

• 1:40:05Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'll tell you what, he doesn't have competition.

• 1:40:08Speaker 07

  You know what? So surprisingly. So two things on the competition front. He will not give up his spots, not because he doesn't want to engage other carp hunters, because he doesn't want bow fishermen coming in and killing his big carp. He's very, very sensitive to that. And he treats a carp like a dude would treat like a big old sturgeon. Like he's so invested in caring for that carp and putting it back. I mean, it's, it's amazing. So on this trip, he goes out, catch, his goal is to catch a 30 pounder. On day three, he gets skunked for two days. Day three, he hooks into a 50 pounder, doesn't have any evidence or proof he doesn't have a certified scale, just snaps a picture. His buddy comes out, he's on like hot standby for big carp alert. His buddy comes out, has the official

• 1:40:53Speaker 07

  scale, and Scott gets a 64 pound carp, which beats the current US record by two pounds.

• 1:41:00Steven Rinella?

  This, this photo shows all that is man.

• 1:41:03Speaker 07

  He's just a

• 1:41:04Steven Rinella?

  Just good, good beard, good fish.

• 1:41:06Speaker 03

  I wonder if he pulls a scale off of those and like makes a necklace or something.

• 1:41:10Speaker 07

  No, he doesn't, he doesn't do anything to it. He lets just, he wants it to be as healthy as

• 1:41:13Steven Rinella?

  He's gonna go back and get it when it's 65 pounds.

• 1:41:15Speaker 07

  Exactly. His brother, who's a big like tournament carp guy in the UK, bought his flights the next day to come to California and target big backcountry carp. So he's flying it for the UK.

• 1:41:28Steven Rinella?

  This is great.

• 1:41:28Speaker 07

  It's amazing.

• 1:41:29Steven Rinella?

  Phil, we gotta, Phil, we gotta go to Cyprus for carp fishing and one of the few international Bennigan's locations.

• 1:41:36Speaker 03

  Sign me up.

• 1:41:38Steven Rinella?

  All right. Well, I think that does it for this week. Tune in next week. We've got some out of town guests coming to take over the news show. That's right. Brent Reeves, Tony Peterson, Maggie Hudlow, Jordan Sillers, and Mark Kenyon, although no longer an out of town guest, I suppose, just a guest. They are taking over the news desk. So tune in. And then the week after that, Stephen Rela will be back here. Thanks for watching.

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