Ep. 943: Did a 3-Year-Old Really Shoot Another Hunter?

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater Crew Discuss: last spring’s Wisconsin turkey hunting tragedy; how to get the right blend with your burger meat; is the snow goose free-for-all coming to an end; a kid gets busted for peddling black market turtles; 14 bears are euthanized in Bozeman thanks to an illegal bait pile; and more! Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:41Steven Rinella?

  Welcome to the news show, everybody. This week, we've got details about a youth turkey hunt shooting in which a three-year-old shot another child. Coloradans will have a chance to assert their Americanness on November 3. Those of you who don't think you need help calculating your own ratios when grinding burger actually do need help, and we're here to provide that help. We got snow goose news out of Maryland and elsewhere. The Posh Mountain. What was that, Yanni?

• 2:12Speaker 05

  I didn't say anything.

• 2:16Steven Rinella?

  I thought he said something. Dude, I was getting people hyped for the show. Now I'm like.

• 2:21Speaker 05

  I literally just scratched my lip.

• 2:25Steven Rinella?

  Now we like lost the audience. Bring him back, bring him back. The Posh Mountain town of Boz Angeles, Pilates capital of America, where we're sitting right now, just lost 14 black bears that the state had to euthanize because some dude was running a seemingly non-hunting bait pile. That titillates him. And more. But first off, let's dig into the youth turkey tragedy with the one and only Pat Durkin. Thanks for joining, Pat.

• 2:56Speaker 06

  Well, you bet. Thanks, Steve.

• 2:57Steven Rinella?

  Can you, can you quickly remind, we talked about this. Can you quickly remind people at a very, like, give a very quick overview of what happened last spring in terms of the initial news that came out, right? Just like the basics with the ages? Because we commented on the story, but all we had was some basic numbers. So can you recap those numbers?

• 3:27Speaker 06

  Sure. This happened during the state's annual youth turkey season. It's a two-day season that starts mid-April. It was done in Racine County, which is just south of Milwaukee. And Racine County also borders on Lake Michigan. So it's really the far southeastern county in Wisconsin. It happened on a public land, about two-square-mile area. And it involved a deputy with the Racine County Sheriff's Department. And he was, the guy was 35 years old, and apparently he was mentoring, he said, his three-year-old daughter.

• 4:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I didn't know that it was a daughter.

• 4:11Speaker 06

  It was his daughter. And he was carrying a 12-gauge shotgun and blind calling, just apparently walking around calling. He's never taken a hunter education course, but he's a, he's a military veteran. And in Wisconsin, we exempt veterans from needing to take hunter education. He, he later told investigators they really had not hunted much before this incident. And he was usually hunting with his friends, but that day he was hunting by himself. He was also, was another interesting thing about this is.

• 4:50Steven Rinella?

  Well, Pat, could I butt in real quick? Do you mind just laying out, do you mind just laying out the, just for people that haven't heard our coverage before?

• 4:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:00Steven Rinella?

  Do you mind laying out the original story? Just the cleanest, most bare bones version of the original story you can think of?

• 5:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:10Steven Rinella?

  Which would be the day three-year-old during youth turkey season. I'll do it, then you can dive in.

• 5:14Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 5:16Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'm asking for a second time. Go ahead, Pat, you do it. I see that anti-Pat Durkin sign behind him.

• 5:23Speaker 06

  I'm sorry, Steve. But yeah, basically, a man took his daughter out hunting. She was being mentored, apparently. He, he lined the shot up and then had her touch the trigger when he told her to shoot. And inadvertently, he had mistaken movement 40 yards away for a turkey. And he ended up shooting a man who was there mentoring his seven-year-old son. It turns out this man was actually a coworker, a fellow deputy in Racine County, the Sheriff's Department. And they, the shot hit these guys pretty hard. You know, the man had his arm around his son, like, up like this, apparently around his shoulders.

• 6:08Speaker 06

  And so that got caught some of the shot, but the boy got, got the worst of it. He took multiple shots, pellets into the head and upper neck and back area, and ended up in the hospital for a few days. And later, like in June, doctors removed every pellet they could from the boy, but he still had, to this day, has one pellet in his brain, one pellet in his skull, and one pellet in his, in his spine. And the father, though, is doing well. He had four pellet wounds, and including some in his arm and left hand. And basically, his left side of his body got hit.

• 6:49Steven Rinella?

  When this story was originally reported, for about, for many months, the only details that were out there was that a person mentoring a three-year-old child, that the three-year-old child had shot another pair of hunters. And then you've followed this story and have uncovered these other details. Where did you learn the, for instance?

• 7:17Steven Rinella?

  Well, we had this original, we had this original question of how capable is a three-year-old of even aiming a gun? And we were, we were even wondering, like, three-year-olds still soil themselves on a regular basis. So how is a three-year-old capable of wielding a, was it a 12-gauge or 20-gauge shotgun?

• 7:38Speaker 06

  Is it 12-gauge?

• 7:39Steven Rinella?

  So how is a three-year-old even shooting a 12-gauge shotgun?

• 7:42Speaker 06

  Right.

• 7:42Steven Rinella?

  Well, where, where did you learn this detail that, that the mentor was holding the shotgun and the kid's job was to reach over and pull the trigger? And does that even warrant, does that even count as a mentored hunt?

• 7:57Speaker 06

  Right. Well, this is where it gets really interesting, Steve, is that the state does not really specify what it takes to be a mentored and what it takes to be a mentored situation. And so like this case, it said right in the initial report of the incident was that the guy had rested the shotgun on a log, and he had aimed it, and that his daughter was then instructed to touch the trigger and basically trigger the shot when he said so. And, you know, I'm like you, I, I have grandkids, I've had my own daughters, and I have a hard time understanding how any three-year-old would even comprehend what they're even doing at that point.

• 8:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh. So are they, in this case, are they looking into, was that even, does that even count?

• 8:51Speaker 06

  Well, you know, all the criminal complaint does is state what the charges are. And this guy has been charged with four felonies.

• 8:59Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 9:00Speaker 06

  Two felonies per victim. And it's basically, let me see, just to, real quickly, it's second-degree reckless injury with use of a dangerous weapon and injury by negligent use of a dangerous weapon. Two different counts, you know, one each for, I mean, two each for these victims. And so the guy's facing like up to $70,000 in fines and, you know, up to 42 years in prison, if the terms are all laid out consecutively. So the state obviously is taking this very serious.

• 9:36Steven Rinella?

  I also didn't know till you cha- it doesn't really change anything, but I didn't know until you just said it right now that it was his daughter. I just had made this, I had made this assumption.

• 9:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:46Steven Rinella?

  Because ninety percent of hunters are men. I'd made an assumption that it was his boy.

• 9:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, initially, the, the, the, the Department of Natural Resources and, um, local sheriffs department did not release details on gender or, um, or names, of course. And so all we had at first was that it was, um, two people who had been shot and you kind of assumed it was a father and, and, and, and son who got shot and, you know, it's also shooting. But yeah, as, as, um, as the case got explored and, you know, more information came out, then we learned it was a daughter involved.

• 10:23Steven Rinella?

  And then in your reporting, you found out some details that these, it's just crazy, but the shooter and the victim were not strangers.

• 10:35Speaker 06

  No, no, you know, the initial report was that they, they assumed these guys did not know each other. But then they learned later that, um, actually they were colleagues, you know, that, um, that the shooter had, had talked to his, his coworker, a fellow deputy about places to hunt nearby. The guy gave him some information, but asked him not to hunt these spots. And I, I saw, I watched, um, some of the camera, um, interviews that did with this guy that came out when the criminal complaint was released. And it sounds like he, he was under the assumption that, that this, that this, um, other guy and his son had not, um, stayed in the area that they had left.

• 11:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So this guy had shared information with them, um, like they knew each other, they had shared information, but they were not out hunting together by any means. They had, they would have had no idea that each other was in the same area.

• 11:32Speaker 06

  Right. You know, neither of those guys knew the other guy was anywhere near them. And, you know, he, the, the father and son were, were watching a field. They did not have any decoys out and, but they were calling occasionally. The father was calling occasionally. And then what I don't know, what I don't know, and isn't in any of the reports so far, that the criminal complaint is whether this guy sneaked in with his daughter and set up on them, or if they just happened to be sitting nearby and then spotted this movement after the calling. Cause apparently the shot went off right after this, this father with his son had been calling and, and had, had moved his hand. So I'm guessing he was using like

• 12:15Speaker 06

  a slate call or a box call or something. Cause he told, he told investigators that when the shot happened, it was just seconds after he had called. And it, and he figures it was his hand that was moving that, that got the guy's attention.

• 12:30Steven Rinella?

  Sometimes you hear these stories and you just can't make any sense out of it. That, yeah, here's a guy assuming he wasn't gobbling, assuming he wasn't gobbling.

• 12:40Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 12:41Steven Rinella?

  He's talking about using a slate call. This hunter is, I mean, get in this guy's head a minute. This hunter is hearing turkey noises. Not only does he think he's aiming at the thing's head, but he's talked him into self.

• 13:00Speaker 06

  I don't think he is thinking he's aiming at.

• 13:02Steven Rinella?

  Well, yeah, but I mean, he's also talked himself into thinking that it's a, it's a gobbler, that it's a male turkey.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  He's a very inexperienced hunter. Like that's.

• 13:10Speaker 06

  Right.

• 13:11Steven Rinella?

  When our, our friend, Robert Abernathy was shot while turkey hunting and the man that shot him explained to him, when you put your, well, Robert Abernathy, when he got shot by number five shot, he was sitting there looking down a hill and lifted his foot up on a stump.

• 13:35Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 13:36Steven Rinella?

  To kind of lean into the stump. The guy that shot him explained, when you lifted your foot on that stump, it looked just like a gobbler going into strut.

• 13:46Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  Like people invent stuff in their brain.

• 13:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, well.

• 13:51Steven Rinella?

  But what is this guy inventing in his brain? The whole picture?

• 13:56Speaker 06

  Well, it, it's a great question, Steve, because he did tell these investigators that he thought he saw red and blue.

• 14:02Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 14:03Speaker 06

  Apparently. And, but, you know, they checked with these guys, the victims, and that neither of them was wearing anything red, blue, or white to resemble a turkey's head. They were wearing camo, but nothing that, um, you know, we're all, we're all taught in hunter education, turkey education, never to wear red, white, or blue out in the field during turkey season. But, um, from what I could gather watching this, um, this, um, recorded an interview with the guy afterward by investigators, he, he claimed he saw these colors. But, you know, every time you read about hunter accidents like this, the, the shooting, the shooter almost always builds things into the scene that were, just were not there.

• 14:44Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 14:44Speaker 06

  They get excited and, and they do, they see things that really aren't there. And apparently the same thing happens in, in, um, police shootings, you know, where they just see things that did, in the moment, in the moment, there is that stress, that buck fever, whatever you want to call it. And it does work on people's imaginations.

• 15:03Speaker 05

  Oh yeah. Cause he, he heard the bird, even though he didn't hear a gobbler, he heard a hen, most likely, calling.

• 15:11Speaker 06

  Right.

• 15:11Speaker 05

  And then there was a flash of movement in the brush. And I still believe that he shot and not his three-year-old daughter.

• 15:19Steven Rinella?

  No, I believe that he, I, I would believe that I would accept that he had her reach over and punch the trigger.

• 15:26Speaker 06

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 15:28Steven Rinella?

  Maybe.

• 15:29Speaker 06

  Yeah. He had her positioned apparently like, you know, in, apparently like in his lap. He was sitting there and, and had her in the lap. But yeah, it says right in every, every report I've read on this, it says he aimed the shot. You know, he had, he had the gun against his shoulder. Basically all she'd do is reach up and put, and pushed on the trigger.

• 15:50Steven Rinella?

  Pat, is this deputy still working or has he been suspended or fired?

• 15:53Speaker 06

  He, he's on administrative leave.

• 15:58Steven Rinella?

  You, you mentioned early on there, when I was trying to squeeze out of you the basics that we had already covered there, but you were going down the path of mentioning that, um, he had an exemption from hunter safety.

• 16:13Speaker 06

  Yeah. And.

• 16:15Steven Rinella?

  What, can you, can you explain that exemption?

• 16:17Speaker 06

  Yeah. This, this is to me, one of the intriguing, um, points of this story, because it's, it's become kind of a, a little, um, hot button topic for, um, the hunter education people in Wisconsin.

• 16:31Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 16:31Speaker 06

  Wisconsin and 15 other states have, have this exemption where if a man or a person have served, has served basic training in the military, they exempt them from hunter education training. And, uh, the, the hunter ed people I know who have contacted me about this, they're really upset that Wisconsin ever gave that exemption because they just don't think the basic training we receive in the military qualifies anyone to go hunting. That is just a whole different dynamic involved in teaching someone how to shoot rifles and, and various weapons in the military compared to what, what we see in, in hunting, what we, you know, experience out there in the field.

• 17:13Steven Rinella?

  I think that it would cover, that, that is a weird one to me. I think it was.

• 17:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:17Steven Rinella?

  It, it, I, I'm guessing that it's motivated more by trying to do a solid.

• 17:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:22Steven Rinella?

  For veterans and, and, and help them, you know, and, and, and try to be helpful to that community.

• 17:28Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 17:29Steven Rinella?

  But I would imagine, you, you've been through boot camp. I have not, but I'm guessing that boot camp, they're assuming that, that you're learning some safe firearm handling practices.

• 17:38Speaker 06

  Right.

• 17:38Steven Rinella?

  But you're not learning, but, but ninety percent of the curriculum would have no business being in basic training.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah. When I, when I think back Steve on this, like I was, I was in the Navy, my entire hands-on work and, and, and basic training with firearms was, was turning around, uh, an A303 Springfield with a, um, a, a piece of wood shoved down the barrel. So it couldn't be fired. And then, um, one day we went to the, uh, training, we shot 22 rifles for half the morning and that was our introduction to firearms. I never fired another gun to Navy till I was out in the ship. And then maybe once a year we got to shoot our M14s and maybe the, um, the, the old 45 caliber handguns. But, you know, there's nothing

• 18:27Speaker 06

  about things like checking your, your background and beyond. Those, all the basic, you know, hunter education stuff we all learn.

• 18:36Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 18:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I wonder if they're gonna wind up revisiting that because what you you have then is you have a case where it's like a you have a double problem. I'm not saying it's a problem that you have necessarily a problem that you have a veteran who skipped hunter safety out in the woods, but all of a sudden they're in a position of mentoring another person. And you have like a double layer of lack of training.

• 19:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, it to me, it's to me, it's worth discussing because it just, I think it was misguided. I think I think you're right. That's probably just done as a solid. But gosh, you look at the um, how the situation unfolded, and you can't help but think, well, maybe this guy had a little background in hunter education, which those of us who have taken that course in Wisconsin, it's pretty damn thorough. And it's nice things to stick in your head.

• 19:31Speaker 06

  I guess I, you know, the one thing I'd say too, is that I have a lot more concern with that law, that exemption than I do with um, you know, like we changed our laws about 15 years ago. First in 2009, they removed the 12 year old requirement in Wisconsin. And then like eight years later, I think they, yeah, they lowered it to 10, age 10. And then like eight years later, they lowered it to where they just got rid of it. Because like, like I say, 35 states don't have a age requirement. And, you know, so these things are so unusual with kids getting involved in these mentor shootings, it just seldom happens. I'm not really sure. I can see where people get get bothered by that and not having

• 20:13Speaker 06

  a age requirement. I mean, I had an age requirement. But um, gosh, when you see something that's become, it's so unusual. It made it made news. And when something made makes news, it typically is something very uncommon. So I hate to see us always running around passing laws every time one uncommon thing happens.

• 20:33Steven Rinella?

  Understood.

• 20:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 20:36Steven Rinella?

  I philosophically, I've been philosophically supportive of abandoning the really strict age requirement rules. When I was growing up in Michigan, you had to be 14 to rifle hunt deer. I think it's ridiculous. No one waited that long. I didn't wait that long.

• 20:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:51Steven Rinella?

  We all started early. Everyone I knew started early. Uh, that's too much. Philosophically, I've supported abandoning age restrictions. If I was gonna be in charge of brokering a national compromise, and I had to pick a number, this is gonna make all kinds of people riled up. If I had to pick a number, and I was gonna set the standard for all 50 states, I would say 10 years of age.

• 21:19Speaker 05

  That's, that's what I would pick, too.

• 21:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I would go 10. And just be like, okay, we're gonna settle it. All 50 states right now. Wham, 10.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  Even at, I feel like even at six or seven, you kids just don't yet know what they're actually doing.

• 21:33Steven Rinella?

  This is striking a national compromise. If I had to negotiate, I would go into the negotiation, being I'll settle at 10. I'll settle at 10. So my opening bid might be like, how about eight? And they'd be like, no, you can't do eight. And I'm like, okay, 10, and it's a done deal. I would settle at 10.

• 21:51Speaker 05

  Good job, Steve. Master negotiator.

• 21:55Steven Rinella?

  Man, Pat Durkin, thanks for coming on.

• 21:57Speaker 06

  You bet, Steve. Thanks for having me.

• 21:59Steven Rinella?

  I gotta ask, there's an anti-Pat Durkin sign hanging in the background there. Is that because of deer politics, whitetail politics?

• 22:06Speaker 06

  No, actually, that goes back to my very, very early days as a sports writer in 1984. Um, I was, I was covering a local um, semi-pro basketball team. And I wrote, and I wrote some columns that that the fans didn't like. And so I got picketed at one of the games.

• 22:25Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 22:25Speaker 06

  Um, they had, yeah, it'd be like, had to be like seven, six or eight people picketing me. And even they even had little buttons made with that thing, my picture on it saying, you know, you know, basically, get rid of me. And the how I came into possession of the sign, though, one of my coworkers, who was at the game, he ran, ran out to the hallway after, after they got done picketing me. And he walked, he walked up, this guy holding that sign, and says, um, I work with that guy. He's a real asshole. Can I have the sign?

• 22:59Speaker 06

  And then he brought, he brought it up to me the next day at my desk. And I, so I built a frame for it. And I've had it in my office ever since.

• 23:05Speaker 05

  That's great.

• 23:06Steven Rinella?

  Man, I gotta ask you.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  Credit for like the civic engagement of that little town.

• 23:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 23:12Steven Rinella?

  I'd ask you if I could have that when you die, but I don't want to wait that long, man. That could be decades. That could be 50 years.

• 23:20Speaker 05

  Hey, Pat, before you send it, sign it too, would you?

• 23:24Steven Rinella?

  Anti-Pat Durkin, signed by Pat Durkin.

• 23:28Speaker 06

  I, I had, I used to have one of the buttons, too. You just put it on your sweater or jacket, but I can't seem to find it lately. So I don't know. Maybe one of my kids took it.

• 23:39Steven Rinella?

  All right, Pat, we all love you, man.

• 23:41Speaker 06

  Well, thanks.

• 23:41Steven Rinella?

  Thanks for coming on, dude.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  Thank you, Pat.

• 23:43Speaker 06

  You bet. See you around.

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• 25:17Steven Rinella?

  All right, here's one. Me, we got the meat grinding.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  Hold up, hold up. You're supposed to wait for sound, man.

• 25:22Steven Rinella?

  No, we don't have a good sound.

• 25:26Steven Rinella?

  That's pretty good. Is that a new one, Phil?

• 25:30Speaker 05

  Nope. Same one as always.

• 25:32Steven Rinella?

  That's not bad. Our news. Okay, so here's, the other day, one of one of our guy, one of the eggheads upstairs here at the office.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  He's not an egghead.

• 25:41Steven Rinella?

  One of the tech guys. He's that guy. I got two tech issues lined up with him right now. A phone and a computer problem.

• 25:49Speaker 05

  He said, get after it, Hunter, too, man.

• 25:51Steven Rinella?

  I know. Listen, I was joking, man. I know. He just told me a great story about getting a cow hook with his bow and arrow. Um, anyways, I didn't mean to say that. I was joking. Great guy upstairs. Great guy upstairs came to me and he says, hey, man, we just made a ground meat, a meat grind calculator. And I said, what kind of idiot needs that? He goes, what do you mean? And I said, well, I could just do it in my head right now. And I realized that for my entire life, I've done it wrong. Where if, if, I bet you that 99% of people would make the same problem.

• 26:31Speaker 05

  I, that's how I always.

• 26:32Steven Rinella?

  If I had 100 pounds, let's say I have 100 pounds of deer meat, and I want a 80/20 blend. Okay, I want an 80/20 blend. I have 100 pounds of deer meat. Well, any idiot would know.

• 26:46Speaker 05

  20%.

• 26:47Steven Rinella?

  That you put in 20 pounds. He's like, but that's not right. That gives you a 16.7% blend. I've been doing that my entire life.

• 26:59Speaker 05

  Wow. Mm hmm. Yeah, it would have been easier for you if you just every time done 80 pounds of meat. You had to think about the total.

• 27:09Steven Rinella?

  That's where I was off. Yeah. But I was telling him how dumb he was to make the calculator.

• 27:13Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. No, so I'm looking at it right now. So if you did, if you did a, you get 100 pounds of meat, it's really easy. You go there, you pick what percentage you want.

• 27:23Steven Rinella?

  He's on the meat eater.com, the meat grind calculator.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, or you can go custom your ratio. And I did this to figure out what Steve's was when he did 100 pounds of meat, and he added 20 pounds of fat. This says 20.5 gets you 17%. So most of us, if we're doing it this way, you're light on the fat. If you want a 20% uh, uh, fat ratio, you'd go 100 pounds of meat, you'd put in 25 pounds of fat.

• 27:53Steven Rinella?

  God, man, I'm gonna have, I'm changing my whole, I'm gonna use this calculator. So you go on this calculator, you can, how's it work? You set what?

• 27:59Speaker 05

  You're gonna have juicier burgers, buddy. You're gonna be blown, blown away.

• 28:03Steven Rinella?

  You pick your percentage you want. You do 10% if you want lean, 15 lean burger, 20% classic, 30.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  3% sausage, or you can do a custom mix and then you either give them your amount of meat or your amount of fat and then it could work it backwards or however you need it.

• 28:18Steven Rinella?

  What a great little tool and the graphic is a meat grinder. That's got, that's got spent, that's got Hunter Spencer written all over it. The graphic is a meat grinder that has like a calculator for you sign it.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  Very clever.

• 28:31Steven Rinella?

  The meat grind calculator.

• 28:33Speaker 07

  Good job, Logan. Yeah, we'll all be using that this fall.

• 28:37Steven Rinella?

  That is a good little tool.

• 28:40Steven Rinella?

  Just to think I've been eating dry ass burger without even knowing it. What probably happens, I feel that my burger is perfect. So when I use that calculator from now on.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  Too much fat in here.

• 28:50Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna type in 16.7%.

• 28:53Speaker 07

  You might develop heart problems, you know, now that you're getting more.

• 28:56Steven Rinella?

  Dude, that's a great calculator. Oh, so you remember when Cruise Chef, do you guys remember when Cruise Chef addressed the United Nations?

• 29:04Speaker 07

  These guys don't.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 29:08Steven Rinella?

  I don't know if I do.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Cruise Chef. What was being addressed?

• 29:12Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. He's mad about being the Soviet Union. I don't know. He hated America. Cruise Chef.

• 29:17Speaker 07

  He was the last of the Cold War guys.

• 29:20Steven Rinella?

  Cruise Chef, if you people think, this is so long ago, it's in black and white. Type in Cruise Chef beating the, uh, beating his, he got so mad addressing the United Nations.

• 29:33Steven Rinella?

  You finding it?

• 29:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, looking it up.

• 29:35Steven Rinella?

  He got so mad, he took his shoe off.

• 29:36Speaker 07

  Oh, there's a Wikipedia article about it.

• 29:38Steven Rinella?

  Go on.

• 29:39Speaker 07

  It's called the shoe banging incident.

• 29:40Steven Rinella?

  Yes. So mad. He took his shoe off and beat the podium.

• 29:47Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 29:48Steven Rinella?

  Can you pull it up, Phil?

• 29:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, sorry, one sec here.

• 29:51Steven Rinella?

  I don't even know what he's, I'm sure he's mad about the Cold War. I'm guessing. I don't think it was like, like his, he's like mad at his wife or something. He's probably mad about the Cold War.

• 30:00Speaker 07

  I'm really interested to see how you're gonna segue this. Well, he already did.

• 30:05Steven Rinella?

  Did he? I was trying to think of a way. So I always. No, that's not it, Phil.

• 30:10Speaker 07

  It's an ad, it's an ad, Steve.

• 30:12Steven Rinella?

  Retainer. It's not Cruise Chef. There he is. Look at him. So there's Cruise Chef, he's, he's doing the Soviet thing.

• 30:22Speaker 07

  There he is.

• 30:23Steven Rinella?

  There he's got his shoe. That's how pissed he is.

• 30:27Speaker 07

  Look at the other guys laughing at him.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 07

  Okay. Seb, you're not pissed, you're excited.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  He means business.

• 30:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but people don't know when I'm always sitting here is I run around in Hey Dude shoes. My normal ones, my old ones are very dirty. But I got these brands, big new ones. If you're in the market for some Hey Dude shoes, we got these new ones out.

• 30:49Steven Rinella?

  You get a first light pattern on there.

• 30:50Speaker 07

  Two versions of them.

• 30:51Steven Rinella?

  Two versions. This is the one I wear all the time.

• 30:56Steven Rinella?

  The first pair I ever got, Jason Phelps bought them for me as a present. Cause I was admiring his, this is years ago. Well, I mean, you know, it was a nice gesture.

• 31:05Speaker 07

  So that's like the shoe version.

• 31:07Steven Rinella?

  It's an affordable shoe.

• 31:08Speaker 07

  That's the shoe version. And then there's like a slipper version.

• 31:10Steven Rinella?

  Then there's a slip, there's an insulated slipper like a camp shoe.

• 31:13Speaker 07

  Yeah. Pretty sweet.

• 31:15Steven Rinella?

  You can get them, but you can't get them quite yet.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  I haven't seen Randall take his off. I think he sleeps in them.

• 31:20Steven Rinella?

  Dude, I wear mine all the time. And then, yeah. I like them. Like when you get out of the woods, you take your boots off, put them, I mean, I just wear them to work anyway, but it would be that, and they're so lightweight, I always stick them in my bag.

• 31:33Steven Rinella?

  But I've always been a big fan. And wear them all the time. And so when we got a chance to put a first light camel on Hey Dude shoes, I was all over it. These are the Wally funks. But we also got the slip camp. It's like an insulated one you slip into when it's cold out, hanging around deer camp.

• 31:51Speaker 07

  I'll be taking those, uh, next week.

• 31:52Steven Rinella?

  You can't get them yet though. You gotta wait till, uh,

• 31:57Steven Rinella?

  October 13th. But it's a limited run. If you go to the Meat Eater store, you'll find these shoes. And then when you get mad at someone, you take it off, be like, that's not what I meant. Yannis shot my buck. Shut up, Yannis. Stuff like that.

• 32:13Steven Rinella?

  October 13th, HeyDude.com and the Meat Eater store you can find them at. Okay, moving on. Oh, your news.

• 32:23Steven Rinella?

  Brought to you by Banish, suppressors, which I'm holding in my hot little hand right here. Um.

• 32:29Speaker 03

  Steve's gonna have to take his shoe off for this one.

• 32:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I am gonna get that. I might double, I might double do it.

• 32:36Speaker 07

  Last week, we, uh.

• 32:38Steven Rinella?

  Cruise Chef, I don't know if you ever got so mad, he took both his shoes off, but I could see.

• 32:41Speaker 07

  You're about to. Yeah, last week we talked about the guy in Wyoming who shot a bull, uh, grizzly. He, he left it overnight, a grizzly, ate a little bit of it, came back, cut the head off. Took the head, left the meat, cause he's worried about the grizzly.

• 32:57Steven Rinella?

  And Brody's a big supporter of this guy.

• 32:59Speaker 07

  Listen. I understand why he did what he did. You weren't there, you didn't hear the debate. Come on. I said the guy screwed up.

• 33:07Steven Rinella?

  We debated it a minute ago.

• 33:08Speaker 07

  He weren't there for the whole conversation. Anyway.

• 33:12Steven Rinella?

  Who, who was there? Can someone recap? Was Brody like, is apologetic on the original? Go on.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  I wasn't there.

• 33:18Steven Rinella?

  I'm not ready to opine yet. My shoes are on.

• 33:21Speaker 07

  Um, okay, anyway, we had a game ward not from Wyoming write in about his take on this thing. Um, if you didn't.

• 33:29Steven Rinella?

  Tell the, tell the, can you tell the story, please? Just, just, just, I know people already heard it, but just quickly tell the story again.

• 33:35Speaker 07

  The quick version. Last year in September, a guy was elk hunting, archery elk hunting outside of Cody, Wyoming, in a very grizzly infested area. Um, he shot a bull elk in late afternoon.

• 33:51Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 33:52Speaker 07

  The bull walked off about a hundred yards. They were in a pretty open area. They watched it lay down. It was late afternoon. They kept their eye on it until dark. And then they were like, don't know if it's dead or not. We're gonna back out and come back in the morning.

• 34:08Steven Rinella?

  Okay, can I, can I ask a clarifying question?

• 34:10Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 34:10Steven Rinella?

  I'm not gonna opine.

• 34:13Speaker 07

  Yes, you will.

• 34:14Steven Rinella?

  No. As you and I have discussed this.

• 34:16Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 34:17Steven Rinella?

  I've heard two explanations for his thinking. And this is an important point.

• 34:27Steven Rinella?

  The telling you just did, he was doing more of a, it's hitting the guts, it's laid down, I don't wanna bump it. It'll, it'll, it'll die if I back off. But in the other tellings, when we've talked about this privately, you've said, I don't wanna go, you said that he thought, I don't wanna go in there cause of grizzlies.

• 34:49Speaker 07

  No, grizzlies were definitely, like he said, grizzlies were definitely, they didn't wanna necessarily mess with it at night. I, um.

• 34:56Steven Rinella?

  But this is cause then Spencer's giving me a lecture.

• 35:00Speaker 07

  What?

• 35:00Steven Rinella?

  Every deer hunter knows.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  No, I was responding.

• 35:03Steven Rinella?

  Wait till the next day to pursue a gut shot deer. And I'm like, I could see four hours.

• 35:08Speaker 07

  I, listen, I think it's a legitimate concern.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  To that when you're done, Brody. Go ahead.

• 35:13Speaker 07

  There's a legitimate concern of bumping the elk. There's a legitimate concern of getting attacked by a grizzly or a grizzly getting killed, which is also a gigantic headache. Like, the guy's concerns, I think, were legitimate.

• 35:27Steven Rinella?

  I told you, I'm not gonna opine.

• 35:28Speaker 07

  I know. Well, you can opine after I read. Can I read this or do you got something to say, Spencer?

• 35:32Steven Rinella?

  This is all background.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  Uh, Steve was saying before the show, he said.

• 35:36Speaker 07

  I didn't even finish the story.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Who leaves a deer overnight or who leaves an elk overnight? And I was like, that's, that's very common. That's like quite, and, and.

• 35:44Steven Rinella?

  It's the majority of people that don't care about the well being of the meat.

• 35:49Speaker 07

  Except I, you left one overnight.

• 35:52Steven Rinella?

  Depends.

• 35:53Speaker 07

  You did, you left an elk overnight.

• 35:55Steven Rinella?

  See it laying there.

• 35:58Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  But to, to respond to Steve saying, who, who on earth does this? This is a common practice. The National Deer Association says, you hit one in the guts with a bow, you wait 12 hours. Uh, Bow Hunter Magazine says eight to 12 hours. TheMeatEater.com says eight to 12 hours.

• 36:15Steven Rinella?

  Well, that, that person's not gonna be working here in a couple hours.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Okay, I'm sorry, Mark Kenyon.

• 36:20Speaker 07

  We need to move on. Let me finish.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  It's just a thing that's said, it's a thing that's done. People leave deer overnight when they have a marginal hit because they don't wanna lose deer.

• 36:28Speaker 07

  It's dark. It's like, it gets dark.

• 36:31Steven Rinella?

  You should see my, my flashlight. I would have gone every couple hours, shined over, picked up its eye shine. Okay, there's, there's, it's heads up. Let's, let's hang tight. Little, another hour later, little eye shine, take a nap, wake up, little eye shine.

• 36:48Speaker 07

  Do this after.

• 36:49Steven Rinella?

  Take a nap, wake up. Oh, he's dead.

• 36:51Speaker 07

  Let's do this after I read. But first I gotta finish the story. They come back the next, he comes back the next morning with some buddies pistols drawn. They go, the, the elk is dead.

• 37:02Steven Rinella?

  Why are there pistols drawn?

• 37:04Speaker 07

  Because there's, they're just being ready.

• 37:07Steven Rinella?

  They're, they're paranoid.

• 37:08Speaker 07

  We went in.

• 37:09Steven Rinella?

  Rightfully so.

• 37:09Speaker 07

  Drawn to my moose.

• 37:13Speaker 07

  Anyway, um.

• 37:15Steven Rinella?

  It's a good point, but that was a different situation.

• 37:20Speaker 07

  Anyway, they get to the bull. It's obvious there's been a bear on it, eating it. The guts are ripped out. There's bear shit all over the place. This man decides to leave the carcass, cuts the head off, takes it out. Just the head.

• 37:38Steven Rinella?

  No back straps.

• 37:40Speaker 07

  No meat, no nothing, and doesn't report this to the, to the fishing game department. Now, let's move on to the, the letter.

• 37:49Steven Rinella?

  I don't opine yet.

• 37:50Speaker 07

  No, let me, let me get through the letter.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  How was he caught?

• 37:53Speaker 07

  Wow. I think you do have to explain that part of the story. Okay.

• 38:00Speaker 07

  So there's a carcass laying there.

• 38:03Speaker 07

  On his way out, he lets some cowboys know that there's a grizzly on a carc, there's a grizzly that has eaten some of his elk. There's a carcass up there, stay away from it.

• 38:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 38:12Speaker 07

  Later, I don't know how many days later, not, probably not far, some hunters come across this carcass, headless, which looks very suspicious.

• 38:22Steven Rinella?

  Sure does.

• 38:24Speaker 07

  They report that to a game warden. The game warden follows up. He ends up talking to this guy. Um, he takes the guy's, I think his bow, like he confiscates the meat or the, the head and the antlers. And this guy eventually gets, goes to court, he get, he get, the, the game warden cites him, he goes to court and fights the citation and gets out of the citation.

• 38:49Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 38:49Speaker 07

  This is where we're at now.

• 38:51Steven Rinella?

  In court?

• 38:52Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  A six person jury.

• 38:53Speaker 07

  What?

• 38:57Steven Rinella?

  Everybody's paranoid down there.

• 38:58Speaker 07

  And, and one of the reasons why is because Wyoming advises not to mess with. Okay, don't opine yet.

• 39:08Speaker 07

  Okay, I gotta get to this letter. This is the reason we're here right now. Okay, a game warden wrote in. He's not from Wyoming. He's just giving a game warden's perspective. Good morning, Brody. Just listened to your story from the new show about the hunter abandoning his meat that a grizzly had claimed. I can't speak for Wyoming, but I thought I'd offer you some perspective from a game warden's point of view. I understand and agree with the hunter leaving the bull overnight. I can also understand leaving the elk once he saw a bear had claimed it. But there are several things he did or didn't do that make a game warden question his actions. Number one, he took the time to cut the head off the elk and take that.

• 39:50Speaker 07

  He didn't take the time to get any of the meat. He questioned whether it would be salvageable due to being contaminated by the bear. Surely there were parts the bear didn't touch. Sounds like there was a group of guys with him. Several could have stood guard while he salvaged what meat he could. Then get the head last, which is getting the head last is, is a, I know in this state it's a rule, right? Pack the head out last.

• 40:15Steven Rinella?

  That's the rule in Alaska. You can't move the, all the meat has to move before the trophy.

• 40:20Speaker 07

  That's my biggest problem with the whole thing, he says. He made note to tell several people in the area there was a grizzly on a carcass, but he never reached out to game and fish. That should have been his first call. Now game and fish gets a call about a headless elk, a call that could have been headed off. But, but a game warden is thinking that this is poached or someone didn't care to get the meat because they were too lazy to pack it out. Sure, there would have been bear sign at the carcass when he got the call, but at that point, there's no telling when the bear found the carcass. Now the game warden has to use his time and resources to track this guy down. When he does, the guy says, well, a bear claimed the carcass, so I just took the antlers. Uh huh, right. There were just too many fishy things going on with this case.

• 41:06Speaker 07

  What he's saying is that the game warden was justified in issuing a citation. I also understand that Wyoming has a warning about carcasses that have been claimed by grizzlies, but that warning should come with a caveat of an immediately report to game and fish. I feel the game warden was justified in writing the citation. And I also agree with the defendant's right to take it to court. And in this case, he won. We write citations to correct the behavior and I feel like this hunter will correct his behavior in the future. Lessons learned, but calling in and being honest is always the best avenue to take.

• 41:47Speaker 07

  Do you need a drum roll for this?

• 41:49Steven Rinella?

  No, because he, he made all the points. I, I, I just, I was gone, so I wasn't here for that recording of the new show, or I would have got this all off my chest earlier. I'm sure this guy, he, he's probably, he's a nice guy. I'm sure he's, I don't know, like, give me the benefit of the doubt. Probably a great guy, probably loves his children, loves his country, like, all that stuff.

• 42:10Speaker 07

  Likes elk.

• 42:11Steven Rinella?

  Don't think, I'm not saying something bad should happen to him, or like, I'm not, I, I, I'm attacking, I'm attacking the logic. I don't want to attack an individual that I don't know. I understand where he came from. There's just, like this guy said though, there's some things that strike me as being very, very fishy.

• 42:31Steven Rinella?

  We, but we were in a situation before where we actually had, like, got assaulted by a bear.

• 42:38Speaker 07

  I know, we kind of alluded to that last week.

• 42:41Steven Rinella?

  In that situation, had we said, let's just grab the antlers and go.

• 42:47Steven Rinella?

  Someone might be like, why didn't you just say, let's just grab a big backstrap? Why, why not grab a back leg and go? Why is it that that you're going to grab and go?

• 42:54Speaker 07

  Sure, but you were also told that there's like a very good chance that a grizzly is going to claim.

• 43:02Steven Rinella?

  And they were right.

• 43:02Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 43:03Steven Rinella?

  And they were right. But getting attacked by a bear didn't then, we didn't then take that to mean, let's just grab the antlers and get out of here.

• 43:11Speaker 07

  No, no.

• 43:12Steven Rinella?

  We grabbed the whole damn thing and got out of there.

• 43:15Speaker 07

  I, I think you've got to.

• 43:17Steven Rinella?

  Why is it that there was, why is it that you had the wherewithal? You got guys with guns, you got the wherewithal to go remove the head, but you don't have the wherewithal to go remove any of the parts?

• 43:29Speaker 07

  He was, this is what he said. Again, you weren't here. He said he was at, like, before the, any of this stuff had happened, another game warden had advised him not to take meat from a carcass that a grizzly had claimed because of urine, feces, saliva, like contamination. That's what he said.

• 43:50Steven Rinella?

  A guy told him that? What are the odds he had that conversation?

• 43:53Speaker 07

  I'm just saying, he said, an old game warden told him that.

• 43:57Steven Rinella?

  An old game warden sat him down and said, yeah, just apropos.

• 44:02Speaker 07

  I'm just telling you what he said.

• 44:04Steven Rinella?

  Case never comes up.

• 44:05Speaker 07

  I don't know if that's the case, that that's what he said.

• 44:12Speaker 07

  And I've.

• 44:13Steven Rinella?

  I'm not going to like beat my, the table with a shoe or something about it. It just feels very, very fishy to me.

• 44:19Speaker 07

  And it, look, it, it, it looks fishy too, but you know.

• 44:23Steven Rinella?

  The other part that feels very fishy to me. If they view, if he viewed it as this great travesty that he was not able to get his elk meat and was somehow only able to get the antlers.

• 44:37Steven Rinella?

  Also, like the same guy, it begs the question, how in the world would that have struck you? As a thing that you weren't going to bother telling anybody about?

• 44:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. That, like, and we talked about that last week, like, like, he, he, he was either making a mistake or he was just trying to get out of there.

• 45:00Steven Rinella?

  Being fishy.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, that seems like the biggest error in this.

• 45:03Steven Rinella?

  Where he's like, hey, I got the part I wanted anyway. I got the part I wanted. I'm good. Now I don't got to mess with all the hassle of dealing with elk carcass. I'm trying to talk my wife into cooking it.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  As to why you would leave an animal die, if, if someone is listening.

• 45:22Steven Rinella?

  You back on this now?

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Why would you, Steve, you were, you were at me, you're like, nobody leaves in a critter lay overnight.

• 45:28Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, no, no. Don't put words in my mouth.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Okay, you tell me your words.

• 45:31Steven Rinella?

  He's looking at it.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  I'm not even defending this specific situation.

• 45:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay, but I'm not talking about other situations. We're talking about this situation.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  But you, you said the only person who would leave something lay overnight, they don't care about the meat. That was a declaration you had made.

• 45:44Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no. He's looking at it. I'm talking about, I'm talking only about this situation. Yes. I could see a situation where you knew you had a really bad hit on something. I could see a situation, depending on the weather as well, which would factor in, in my calculation. If it was getting down to 20 degrees at night.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  I Googled it for this day he was hunting. It says the lows were in the mid 40s to low 50s around Cody, Wyoming.

• 46:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay, that would have factored in. Many things would factor into the situation. I'm only speaking to a situation where there it is, I can see it.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Right. In other situations.

• 46:23Steven Rinella?

  I would say, I wouldn't say, I want to pull back and go back to camp to let it die. And he's like, and also I'm scared of grizzlies, so that's also going to encourage me to go back to camp. I would sit there saying, um, I'm going to pull back, but because of the risk of losing it to grizzlies, I'm going to linger here and check it with my spotlight.

• 46:50Speaker 07

  And there's things you could do.

• 46:51Steven Rinella?

  You can monitor the situation.

• 46:53Speaker 07

  If it, if you knew it was dead, you could go build a great big fire and just.

• 46:58Steven Rinella?

  Yes, do all the things you do. Make all kind of noise, make a big fire, hollering.

• 47:03Speaker 07

  One thing that this, before we go on this, um, if there are game wardens out there who know the answer to this question, and I'm sure they do, this is something Steve and I were talking about. Is it,

• 47:16Speaker 07

  is it legal to dispatch an ant, like a wounded animal that's like not going where it's laying there wounded, but it's not dead? Is it legal to dispatch an animal after legal shooting light?

• 47:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because this is a great question. So let me tell you a story I just heard. I just heard a story about some hunters where they had

• 47:37Steven Rinella?

  gotten a, gotten a bad hit on a deer. They came back at night to track the deer.

• 47:45Steven Rinella?

  They had a dog.

• 47:48Steven Rinella?

  The dog got onto the wounded deer. Somehow chased the deer out into a creek or pond, I'm not sure, but the deer's now out in the water with the dog. In the beam of a flashlight, a kid, the kid that shot it. And the beam of a flashlight hits the deer out in the water. Kills it.

• 48:10Speaker 05

  Hold on, with a gun.

• 48:10Steven Rinella?

  With his bow.

• 48:11Speaker 05

  With a bow.

• 48:12Steven Rinella?

  Yep, sorry. I know she thought they meant with a gun. Takes his bow and, and, and, and. Smokes it in the head. On the beam of a flashlight with a dog on the deer. Got in trouble for this. For shooting it with the artificial light. Now, here's where the, this is like a huge, I, I think this is a very interesting gray area in wildlife law. If you look at legal method of take. Legal method of take would not be a knife. Like you, most states, it would be illegal. To jump out of a tree and kill a deer with a knife. It's not a legal method of take. They'll spell out archery equipment, right?

• 48:56Steven Rinella?

  Center fire firearms, right? Like a rim fire, not a legal method of take. A knife, a spear, not a legal method of take.

• 49:03Speaker 05

  Or even if you were archery hunting and had a pistol and you finished it off with a pistol.

• 49:07Steven Rinella?

  I would never do that.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  I know, I'm just.

• 49:09Steven Rinella?

  But this is all great questions. Cause let's say, and I've done this and I would continue to do this even if I knew it was illegal. You catch up to something that's wounded and you cut its throat. You've now killed the deer with, with not a legal method of take. Or you catch up to it and you do just like what I'm talking about. You take a flashlight, you're like, shit, there he is. Get another arrow into him.

• 49:33Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 49:34Steven Rinella?

  You get an arrow into him and kill it. It's so weird, I, I get it, but it's so weird to be like, you just broke the law.

• 49:40Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 49:41Steven Rinella?

  Like who would write these tickets though?

• 49:43Speaker 05

  I've cut deer's throats before.

• 49:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, illegal method of take. You can't, the, well, the first deer I ever got, first I was, like I was telling you, you always hunted before you were allowed to. Back when I was 14. I shot a deer when I was 13. In Michigan. I shot it, it jumped up, I jumped on it, tackled it, cut its throat. That'd have been like absolutely illegal method of take. But no game warden would write you a ticket for finishing a deer off with a knife.

• 50:10Speaker 05

  No. No, as long as, I, I, I think it's there to, because it's the slippery slope of, you know, if it's not written in there, then it gives people the opportunity to at two o'clock in the morning. Be out there shooting light, shooting deer under lights. And as long as they're not caught, you know, doing it in the act, they can be like, oh no.

• 50:30Steven Rinella?

  Finishing them off.

• 50:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're just out here finishing these three off, you know?

• 50:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 05

  Right?

• 50:36Steven Rinella?

  No, I got you.

• 50:37Speaker 05

  So. It has, it has to be there. And it will probably be this gray area for some time to come.

• 50:44Steven Rinella?

  I would love to hear a couple of game warden perspectives.

• 50:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:48Steven Rinella?

  Like, there's extreme versions and maybe an extreme version is, homie, your dog is, it's not that wounded.

• 50:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:57Steven Rinella?

  And your dog has it out in the water.

• 51:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:01Steven Rinella?

  And it's like getting away and, and you smoke it with an arrow under a flashlight. That feels to me like not, that sort of tips into a weird area.

• 51:11Speaker 05

  Then there's the one that's laying on the ground like wheezing, you know, like it's not going anywhere.

• 51:16Steven Rinella?

  It'd be very interesting.

• 51:18Speaker 05

  And again, just like that warden said too, the thing to do is call and let the warden know. So if you're gonna all of a sudden fire a high caliber rifle, two hours after legal shooting light ends, as the deer that's on the ground wheezing, and there's gonna be a gunshot that goes off two hours after legal shooting light, call the warden.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  If you can, there's a lot of places you're not gonna be able to.

• 51:39Speaker 05

  Sure, but.

• 51:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 05

  You can make your best effort to be like, hey, man.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:43Speaker 05

  Just in case you get a call about one single shot at 10:00 PM. When it got dark at 7:30.

• 51:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but it's funny too, cause I would never, if we were bow hunting and we went out at night to look for something, you definitely bring your bow.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  Yep, sure.

• 51:59Steven Rinella?

  Cause you're like, well shit, I don't know what's gonna happen, I had to finish it off. If someone said, well, I'm just gonna grab my pistol, I'd be like, no way dude, it's bow season.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 52:06Steven Rinella?

  But I would never factor in the artificial light.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Well, a, as to why someone would let one lay though, for like 12 hours, if you're not familiar with archery hunting. Like, there's a chance you bump that deer and he runs off and you never find him now. Ideally, you can let them die in their first bed or their second bed, uh, and, and you're just upping your odds by letting them slowly expire in their bed rather than chasing after them and now they've ran two more miles away and, and you just can't find them anymore.

• 52:35Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Look me in the eye. Once again.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:41Steven Rinella?

  It's not what I'm talking about.

• 52:42Speaker 03

  But before.

• 52:43Steven Rinella?

  I hear you, I hear you.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  You didn't even know the hundred yard detail until we started, until like five minutes ago. Before the show, you're like, people don't leave deer lay overnight.

• 52:52Steven Rinella?

  It's not what I meant.

• 52:53Speaker 05

  Okay. Let's move on.

• 52:56Steven Rinella?

  You're right, listen, you're right, you're right.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  Thank you, all right, I feel much better now.

• 53:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I was.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  Okay, wonderful. But now we gotta fire Mark Canyon.

• 53:06Steven Rinella?

  So that's too bad. Who's gotta take the hit here?

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Well, the eight to 12 hour recommendation.

• 53:10Steven Rinella?

  You know him better, do you mind letting him know?

• 53:13Speaker 03

  I'll let him know. I'll tell him to keep showing up anyway though. I think Steve will forget about it.

• 53:20Steven Rinella?

  Okay, let's just hope it blows over, but it sounds like you're fired.

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• 54:56Speaker 03

  Onto the news.

• 55:03Steven Rinella?

  Here's an interesting one. I just got this, I was, uh, you know, thumbing through stuff I thumb through and I saw that, that Maryland. I'm mainly talking about this story because of a side story, but that Maryland, I'm putting my spectacles on here. We left them out.

• 55:22Speaker 05

  Your side story.

• 55:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh, the side story is the best, that's why I brought this up. Here's a headline. Mer, waterfowl hunting schedule confirmed after federal light. Trust me, I'll explain all of this. But here's the headline. Waterfowl hunting schedule confirmed after federal light goose conservation order paused for 26, 27 season. As a little background. People who pay attention to just like wildlife politics, wildlife news, uh, know that there has, that snow goose populations were, were quite low in the sixties and seventies and

• 56:05Steven Rinella?

  then due to changing agricultural practices and the changing of some things that are not even well understood, snow goose populations just exploded. Most people think that snow goose populations were driven by, again, changes in agricultural practices, grain prices, more agricultural, changing agricultural, um, harvest schedules, the way grain is harvested, where we basically created a bunch of snow goose wintering habitat. You might say, well, why is that a problem? That became a problem. Because snow goose numbers, it wound up being that the limiting factor on snow goose numbers

• 56:49Steven Rinella?

  was winter habitat. So as farming practices created more and more and more snow goose habitat, snow geese started to greatly degrade their nesting habitat in the Arctic. So in an effort to conserve Arctic nesting habitat. States took a lot of steps to increase snow goose harvest. And out of this came some, some snow goose hunting practices that in previous generations would have been regarded as like deeply taboo. Uh, most people out there will know that when you're hunting ducks or geese or migratory waterfowl, you need to put a, you need to put a plug in your gun.

• 57:34Steven Rinella?

  So that the gun can hold a maximum of three shells. So two in the tube, one in the chamber, if it's a slide action or a semi-auto, right? Maximum of three shells, counting the chamber. Um, when you're hunting big game, generally, you're allowed to hunt 30 minutes after legal sunset. In waterfowl, you always have to quit at legal sunset. People know that like when you're calling geese, calling ducks normally, you have to use a mouth blown call, you can't use an electronic caller. People are accustomed to very tight bag limits, like maybe you're allowed two geese or three geese or four geese, right? To lower snow goose numbers, all that stuff went out the window.

• 58:17Steven Rinella?

  And they started these crazy snow goose seasons where there was no limit on snow geese. Or you're allowed 25 snow geese a day. You were allowed to put extended magazines on guns. Where here you get videos of guys shooting snow geese where the magazine is longer than the barrel on the shotgun.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  Spring seasons too. This has been most of my life, that I, I've only ever known snow goose hunting as what you're describing.

• 58:44Steven Rinella?

  Yep, you've only ever known the good times. Um.

• 58:49Steven Rinella?

  Electronic callers that you could sit a multiple electronic callers out in the field playing the noise of a huge flock of snow geese. That you're hunting them in the spring, you're hunting ducks migrating, everyone, you know,

• 59:04Speaker 07

  Geese.

• 59:05Steven Rinella?

  Sorry. Normally you're hunting geese and ducks migrating south in the fall and winter season. They're opening up seasons all through the central flyway. Somewhere as in the Atlantic flyway, you're hunting returning geese. You're hunting them on the way down. You're hunting them all winter long and you're hunting them on the way back in an effort to, to lower these goose numbers. Most guys that are participating in these crazy snow goose hunts aren't even really aware of, I would guess, aren't really aware of degraded Arctic nesting habitat. Maybe most of them don't really care about degraded Arctic nesting habitat, but it created this like snow goose bonanza.

• 59:49Steven Rinella?

  If you go look online, you'll find videos where guys are dumping hundreds of snow geese off bridges and you'd go to popular snow geese hunting areas and people would have photos, I've seen them where there are islands of dead snow geese. Cause guys are just killing them and dumping them. Dumpsters full of dead snow geese, landfills covered in dead snow geese. From people like the bonanza is so big that they're violating the wanton waste laws. It was the wild west. So

• 1:00:21Steven Rinella?

  an important distinction here is in the Atlantic flyway, you have the greater snow geese. And these things are big. And then in the central flyway, you have the lesser snow geese. Well, Maryland and other flyway, Atlantic flyway states are just now starting to reverse some of these, some of the, but they're starting to tighten some of the bonanza back down. Um, let me pull this up here from, from Max. Bear with me a minute. Not as organized as I would like to be. Our resident duck expert, Max Bardem, I said to him, like, tell me your thing, what are you thinking when you look at this?

• 1:01:06Steven Rinella?

  Like, help me interpret this. Max Barda says, here's my thoughts. He points out the main concerning thing about this is, is that the, the Atlantic greater snow goose population has been declining for years. They think that last year alone, they lost 200,000 Atlantic greater snow geese to avian influenza.

• 1:01:31Speaker 07

  That's what I was gonna ask about.

• 1:01:34Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. It wound up being that it's not like, if they're getting that number under control, it's not because the crazy hunting.

• 1:01:43Steven Rinella?

  The number's dropping from, from the avian influenza.

• 1:01:48Steven Rinella?

  And he points out that they're talking about pausing, they're talking about pausing the thing, but they're only just adjusting a couple of things. They're still hunting them in March, right? And this article even points out that greater, that greater snow geese on the Atlantic flyway are now at or below, at or below

• 1:02:15Steven Rinella?

  the conservation threshold they'd like to see.

• 1:02:19Steven Rinella?

  So that leaves the question, why in the world are they still killing them in March?

• 1:02:23Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:28Steven Rinella?

  Cause they're only changing the hand, they're only changing a handful of these regulations.

• 1:02:31Speaker 07

  What's interesting to me is like, these are,

• 1:02:35Speaker 07

  like waterfowl is like top level managed by the feds, right? So are states are free to change their own waterfowl regulations and?

• 1:02:46Steven Rinella?

  No, it's a flyway thing. It's a flyway issue.

• 1:02:48Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:02:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's a flyway issue.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Snow geese seem to still be doing good though.

• 1:02:58Steven Rinella?

  Central flyway, a hundred percent.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Steven Rinella?

  This flyway not. And if they're like, so here's a sentence from this thing or a passage. The light goose conservation order is a management tool authorized by the U S Fish and Wildlife Service and has been used to reduce and stabilize populations of light geese,

• 1:03:19Steven Rinella?

  which include greater and lesser snow geese and Ross's geese since 2010.

• 1:03:25Steven Rinella?

  However, here's the thing, so the Atlantic flyway is the graders. However, greater snow geese are now at or below the management plan's population goal.

• 1:03:38Steven Rinella?

  Maryland and the other states in the Atlantic flyway, a major bird migration route on the east coast have elected to pause the light goose conservation order for the 2026, 2027 season.

• 1:03:53Steven Rinella?

  Barely.

• 1:03:55Steven Rinella?

  If they were really like, I don't get, if they were really serious about this.

• 1:03:59Speaker 05

  No, I'm, cause it's like at or below population levels, right? So if it's at, then you're like, everything's perfect. So if they're slightly like at or below, I'm guessing in their heads, they're like, it can still sustain this hunting. It can't sustain this hunting.

• 1:04:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but what I'm afraid of here is they're not factory, okay? The, the Atlantic greater goose population right now is sitting at roughly 450 to 500,000 birds. They just lost 200,000 to avian influenza.

• 1:04:31Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:32Steven Rinella?

  Avian influenza has not gone away. Meanwhile, the central flyway lesser snow goose population sits at eight million.

• 1:04:41Steven Rinella?

  If you've got greater snow geese in the Atlantic flyway at around 500,000 and you just lost 200,000 to avian influenza and you're pausing the conservation order is a couple of modest tweaks and you're still shooting them all through the winter and through March. I just think that like, it feels to me a little

• 1:05:04Steven Rinella?

  courting disaster.

• 1:05:05Speaker 07

  Yeah. Is it possible that, that the U S Fish and Wildlife Service could, like, do they supersede Maryland, like Maryland, if they said, you can't do this anymore?

• 1:05:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's through a flyway council, all the states, the feds all come in. There's even interplay with Canada and Mexico on the whole thing. I just saw, when I thought, when I saw the headline, I thought, oh, wow.

• 1:05:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Steven Rinella?

  They're doing away with all the crazy slaughter hunts.

• 1:05:32Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:32Steven Rinella?

  Because geese numbers are so low. And I read, I'm like, oh, wow, geese numbers are really low. And then I'm reading out, I'm like, but they're not really doing away with the crazy slaughter hunts.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  My read would be the same as Yanni that like, despite all that, they're still very bullish on snow geese.

• 1:05:47Steven Rinella?

  Apparently.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Being okay.

• 1:05:51Steven Rinella?

  Max says the new rules accomplish little. Perhaps saving a roost or two from being jumped.

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. It, it does feel like the, again, the first time in my lifetime that this has gone the other direction for snow geese. It's always been the gloves are off, like get them.

• 1:06:08Steven Rinella?

  The only thing they've done, just to be clear, here's the only thing they've done. They've said, okay, now instead of no limit, the limit is 25. And now instead of being able to shoot a half hour past sunset, you can only shoot till sunset.

• 1:06:26Steven Rinella?

  That is the response to it being at objective, having just lost a couple of hundred thousand birds to avian influenza.

• 1:06:35Steven Rinella?

  Now for my Maryland story.

• 1:06:38Steven Rinella?

  Right when this started to blow up. So this would have been back in, I know, yeah, this would have been in 2010. When this whole thing started to blow up, I go down with my buddy Ronnie and we go down. Can't even remember how it happened. Me and him and another buddy of ours went down to do a big snow goose hunt with a guide. And the guide had one of those dogs. This is a problem with some labs. They're human shit eaters.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  I remember, I wasn't aware of this.

• 1:07:11Steven Rinella?

  It's an issue.

• 1:07:12Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:13Steven Rinella?

  Ask Max.

• 1:07:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's all kinds of, there's all kinds of things on the internet to fix it, like feed them bananas.

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  I'm aware of like coprophasia, but I didn't know it could like humans, they'll be like, yeah, give me the human stuff.

• 1:07:24Steven Rinella?

  There are, it's a problem among labs.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:07:28Steven Rinella?

  I have this on good authority from Max, who in, in addition to knowing more about ducks and geese than I'll, knowing more now at his young age about ducks and geese than I'll ever know. Okay. He knows more about labs than I'll ever know. And I had one for 13 years. Um,

• 1:07:48Steven Rinella?

  they'd have, they have a human shit eating problem.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Steven Rinella?

  So picture this.

• 1:07:53Steven Rinella?

  This ties into Maryland. We're all in layout blinds, which are really, really restrict your movements when you're in a layout blind.

• 1:08:01Speaker 07

  You could shoot your toe off.

• 1:08:02Steven Rinella?

  This guide goes off and takes a growler in the windrow.

• 1:08:09Steven Rinella?

  All right. All of a sudden here's the dog running around having consumed those human feces. Even to the point, you're gonna think I'm lying, I'm not, ask Ronnie. Even to the point where the dog is trailing the toilet paper out of its mouth.

• 1:08:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay. There you are in a layout blind.

• 1:08:32Speaker 07

  He should have buried his dog.

• 1:08:33Speaker 05

  You had to put a warning on this episode?

• 1:08:35Steven Rinella?

  In addition to this dog being a copper phagic dog, scataphagic dog. He's also avid face licker.

• 1:08:47Steven Rinella?

  And he's got you like kind of captive because you're in a layout blind. So here now we know that he has just consumed feces, human feces. But he wants to lick you real bad.

• 1:09:01Speaker 07

  I guess this guy didn't bury his food.

• 1:09:03Steven Rinella?

  I'm in that layout blind beating this dog off, not.

• 1:09:09Speaker 07

  When you're, when you're not supposed to be moving around.

• 1:09:12Speaker 03

  Now, now we will have to put a warning.

• 1:09:14Steven Rinella?

  I'm in a layout blind aggressively shooing the dog away for, just because of this. What do you think of that?

• 1:09:25Speaker 07

  How many geese do you kill?

• 1:09:26Steven Rinella?

  Not many. A handful. Good, not, not unlimited.

• 1:09:31Speaker 07

  Not a slaughter hunt?

• 1:09:33Steven Rinella?

  Not unlimited. What do you think of that?

• 1:09:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, that'd have been like the first time in my life I would reject dog affection. I love dogs.

• 1:09:43Speaker 07

  Makes you wonder though, when you're getting wet.

• 1:09:45Steven Rinella?

  That dog licking you?

• 1:09:46Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:09:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:09:50Steven Rinella?

  How's that for a story?

• 1:09:52Speaker 07

  I'd rather hear Spencer's turtle story.

• 1:09:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Thanks, Steve.

• 1:09:56Speaker 03

  Here's my turtle story. An Iowa man is facing more than one hundred twenty charges in Alabama for trafficking in endangered species. Phil's got pictures for us. Aiden Thronson, whose only prior criminal history.

• 1:10:12Steven Rinella?

  He's a little shaver.

• 1:10:12Speaker 03

  His only prior criminal history I could find was for speeding in a school zone. He was arrested in northwest Alabama near Bankhead National Forest. He is accused of harvesting and selling flattened musk turtles, which are a species that is exclusively native to north central and west central Alabama. It's been called the rarest turtle in North America. The turtle is listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, endangered by the state of Alabama, and critically endangered by the IUCN Red List. These reptiles have been extirpated from about seventy-five percent of their native range. Their population is down ninety percent since the nineteen sixties.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  Their greatest threats are the things that you always hear in these cases: pollution, food chain disruption, poaching, and habitat loss. Specifically, the turtles rely on rocky waterways where they wedge themselves into rock crevices to escape predators. But due to mining practices and urban development, their home waters have been filled with silt that now covers their hun- their hidey holes and that exposes them to raccoons, snapping turtles, waiting birds, and large fish. The turtles are real easy pickings for most predators that wander the upper Black Warrior River system since adults only get three or four inches big. But besides their shell, these are tiny little turtles. Besides their shell, their best defense is the foul-smelling musk odor that they're named after,

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  which they can release when they're threatened. Now, guys like Aiden are further depleting flattened musk turtle populations by moving them on the exotic pet black market. The species is largely trafficked due to its scarcity, not because it has any perceived medicinal value. So what would it cost to own one of them? Well, figures are pretty hard to come by, but there was a bust in the nineteen eighties for someone who was selling them at eighty dollars a pop, which is pretty cheap. In two thousand eight, someone in Canada was advertising them for one hundred eighty American dollars per turtle.

• 1:12:10Steven Rinella?

  Man.

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  And right now, you can buy one adult male from J.J.W. Farm Sanctuary for one thousand four hundred forty-four dollars. And that's their sale price.

• 1:12:21Steven Rinella?

  Is that dude black market?

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  This is black market. Yeah, well, I, I, I can't find where this website is based out of them, but it seems to be foreign. They only accept payment via Cash App, Zelle Pay, or crypto.

• 1:12:37Steven Rinella?

  He's got a hell of a sale on, because that's marked down from three thousand to fourteen forty.

• 1:12:41Speaker 03

  Let's talk about the rest of their offerings. This is your one-stop shop for exotic animals, the J.J.W. Farm Sanctuary. Here's what else they have. We could get a male sub-adult chimpanzee for fifteen thousand dollars. That's a five thousand dollar price marked down. That price seems appropriate, fifteen thousand for a chimp. That's like, I think, in the neighborhood of what I would guess. Or we could get the world's deadliest bird, a cassowary, for seven thousand dollars. Or we could buy a pound of glass eels for two thousand three hundred forty-eight dollars. And this last one is just for Steve. We could buy an oscillated tom turkey for two thousand two hundred dollars.

• 1:13:20Speaker 07

  That's not an oscillated turkey.

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  I understand the photo is not, and I don't think that's their photo either. But they are listing a male oscillated turkey for two thousand two hundred dollars. It has one customer review from someone in Colorado who said that it seems to be a good turkey, and they got it on time. So, two thousand two hundred dollars.

• 1:13:38Steven Rinella?

  Where is this place out of?

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  I, I can't find a physical address, but it seems to be in, in a foreign nation.

• 1:13:45Steven Rinella?

  That's a Citi's animal.

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  A hundred percent. Based on what I'm seeing, I would guess somewhere in Asia is where this J.J.W. Farm Sanctuary is located. They have their email address on there. They encourage you to come pick these critters up in person, but they will ship them to you if, if you need to. And, and again, the review was from somebody in Colorado who had an oscillated turkey shipped to them. So that's where you can buy a flattened musk turtle right now for one thousand four hundred forty-four dollars. That's the turtle we're talking about.

• 1:14:15Steven Rinella?

  How old is the kid there? The kid's young.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  Twenty years old. He's twenty years old. Now, according to Citi's analysis, they believe that about one hundred flattened musk turtles are exported from the United States every year, but they think the vast majority are farmed animals rather than wild ones. As of now, it's unclear where Aiden's turtles were headed or how many he had when arrested. But the one hundred four counts of taking or selling a protected species and the twenty counts of violating the protection of flattened musk turtles suggest it was more than just a few. The twenty-year-old was given a one hundred thousand dollar cash bond. The Alabama Department of Conservation Natural Resources is not commenting right now because they say it's an active investigation.

• 1:14:58Speaker 03

  So we don't know if he just had, like, his pockets full of these turtles, if he had a pickup full of these turtles, what it was. But facing a hundred twenty-plus counts for trafficking these things.

• 1:15:08Steven Rinella?

  My, my first instinct when I saw his picture, I thought he was fifteen or sixteen years old. And I felt, and I felt bad for him. Not bad for him, you know what I mean?

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  He's like caught up in something wrong.

• 1:15:18Steven Rinella?

  Didn't understand, right? But twenty.

• 1:15:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  And he's, he's like very intentional, driving from Iowa to Alabama to this tiny little watershed to get these things.

• 1:15:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, makes you wonder what else he was doing.

• 1:15:32Steven Rinella?

  He's a hunting, fishing son of a gun, no, man.

• 1:15:33Speaker 03

  I tried to find his social media. I found two profiles, one on Instagram, one Facebook, same exact name. And all the photos there are reptiles. So this seems to be.

• 1:15:43Steven Rinella?

  Reptile guy.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  Seems to be a real passion of his, is, is having reptiles.

• 1:15:48Speaker 07

  Or selling them.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  Or selling them. Yep. So no, no further details right now. We'll see how this plays out.

• 1:15:55Steven Rinella?

  You know, I have never even heard of that turtle.

• 1:16:00Speaker 03

  Me either. That's why they call it the rarest one on the continent.

• 1:16:05Speaker 03

  Alabama, though, is just loaded with that stuff. Alabama, I think, has the most freshwater diversity on the continent.

• 1:16:10Steven Rinella?

  That's my understanding. I think they got, don't they have one, the most, maybe, endemics or something?

• 1:16:17Speaker 03

  Fish, yeah, the freshwater fish. That probably extends to the, the herpetology world as well.

• 1:16:24Steven Rinella?

  Man, that poor kid, man.

• 1:16:25Speaker 03

  That's a story.

• 1:16:26Steven Rinella?

  Well, I don't know, he's twenty, you know?

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think he's hanging out with the wrong crowd. I think he might be the wrong crowd.

• 1:16:31Steven Rinella?

  He'd be the wrong crowd.

• 1:16:32Speaker 03

  That would be my guess.

• 1:16:33Speaker 07

  Speaking of the wrong crowd.

• 1:16:37Speaker 07

  Fifteen bears removed from Bozeman property after someone allegedly fed them.

• 1:16:45Speaker 07

  Early, early September twenty-six, just outside Bozeman. Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks received a report that black bears were allegedly being deliberately fed at a residential property. Spokesman Morgan Jacobson later said investigators believe the feeding, that feeding had been occurring. Later that month, wardens and wildlife staff investigated the property and encountered an extraordinary concentration of bears, described as extremely food-conditioned and habituated to people. Bears have lost their normal fear of humans and were no longer relying on natural foods.

• 1:17:28Speaker 07

  FWP considered these bears to be a significant public safety threat, and all fif- fifteen of them were removed. Fourteen were euthanized and a cub was transferred to a, like, a rehabilitation facility. The scale of that is, is highly unusual. And in an entire year, FWP normally removes only about eight to ten problem bears from the Bozeman area. Jacobson said he knew no comparable local case involving so many bears.

• 1:18:04Speaker 07

  Repeated access to human food sources teaches bears to associate homes and people with easy food. Relocated bears often come right back to where they were captured when they were doing this stuff, or they'll find another place to go near where they were relocated to, to get after human food. Common attractants are garbage, bird seed feeders, pet food, and other calorie-rich associated foods. But it sounds like this person was, it, it wasn't like they were coming in to hit a bird feeder, that these bears were being fed.

• 1:18:38Speaker 07

  FWP stresses that early reporting matters if you do have a bear that's, you know, getting in your bird feeder or garbage, because they, if they catch them early enough, they can kind of, like, stave off that behavior in the future. As of today, the investigation remains publicly open.

• 1:18:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, they haven't identified the locale yet.

• 1:18:59Speaker 07

  They, I don't think they want.

• 1:19:01Steven Rinella?

  I know, it's much, that's as much as I've found.

• 1:19:03Speaker 07

  It's, it's probably, I assume that's intentional. They don't want, you know, to attract attention to that person. I, I, like, that's all I could guess. So they haven't identified a suspect or announced charges. Under Montana code,

• 1:19:22Speaker 07

  unlawful supplemental feeding, the statute prohibits perfectly or knowingly attracting bears with supplemental feed and prohibits feeding that artificially concentrates wildlife. Maximum punishment, fifty to a thousand dollar fine, up to six months in county jail. A court can additionally revoke the offender's hunting, fishing, or trapping license and suspend their, like, ability to do any of that stuff.

• 1:19:49Steven Rinella?

  But there's no indication that they were doing this to hunt.

• 1:19:52Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:19:52Steven Rinella?

  They might have been like.

• 1:19:53Speaker 07

  I think this was an animal lover.

• 1:19:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's the vibe I get. Is that it's not someone trying to get, like, a little bait pile going for hunting, that it's, that it's, they're doing a favor to the bears.

• 1:20:06Speaker 07

  Yes, they're, they're, they're doing the bears a solid by giving them some food. My react, my first, the first thing that came to mind with, with that in mind, that this was just someone, like, being nice to the bears, an animal lover. But the first thing that came to my mind is, like, imagine the reaction, like, what would have happened if a hunter was found to have poached fourteen bears?

• 1:20:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh, they'd be killing them.

• 1:20:30Speaker 07

  You know what I mean? Like, this person is responsible for the death of fourteen bears. And, you know, we'll see, hopefully, we find out what the punishment ends up being.

• 1:20:43Speaker 07

  But I doubt it'll be what they deserve, is my, my.

• 1:20:46Steven Rinella?

  No, because, Matt, think about the, from, from a resource perspective.

• 1:20:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Steven Rinella?

  Think about, I mean, this is not a bear.

• 1:21:01Steven Rinella?

  This is not a bear rich environment relative to other places.

• 1:21:04Speaker 07

  No, yeah, not that.

• 1:21:05Steven Rinella?

  It's just not. It's like arid, you know,

• 1:21:07Speaker 07

  No agriculture.

• 1:21:08Steven Rinella?

  It's fairly open. Like, we don't have bears.

• 1:21:12Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:21:13Steven Rinella?

  Like, in the densities that you do in dense forest ecosystems.

• 1:21:21Steven Rinella?

  What we have are more visible.

• 1:21:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23Steven Rinella?

  Because of the open nature of the country, but we don't have that many. And think about what you've done to the, the, the resource reduction.

• 1:21:34Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:21:34Steven Rinella?

  For people that do do lawful bear hunting. It's like, that is a huge.

• 1:21:38Speaker 07

  It's a hit.

• 1:21:38Steven Rinella?

  Huge hit to the bear population. The other thing I think about is for them to, how extreme it must have been.

• 1:21:47Steven Rinella?

  Where, I've told the story a couple of times, but I, I kicked a bear out of my own garage twice now.

• 1:21:51Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:52Steven Rinella?

  This, this fall. Two times I've run a bear out of my garage. It was in the neighbor's garage. Um, someone in our, someone in our neighborhood, I'm not sure who, someone in our neighborhood tattled on the bear.

• 1:22:07Steven Rinella?

  Their advice to them was, close your garage.

• 1:22:09Speaker 07

  Right, exactly.

• 1:22:11Steven Rinella?

  So, these are not, like, the agency, the state agency is not trigger happy.

• 1:22:16Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:22:17Steven Rinella?

  When it comes to problem bears, their normal attitude is, you need to take care of the, like, correct the problem.

• 1:22:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Steven Rinella?

  You know, if you've got, like, fruit from fruit trees laying around, get it picked up. If you got trash out, get it picked up. If you got bird seed out, take it in. If it's in your garage, close your garage.

• 1:22:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, this isn't like.

• 1:22:36Steven Rinella?

  Like, their attitude is learn to live with it, reduce deterrence and learn to live with it. For, so for them to go all of a sudden, like,

• 1:22:45Steven Rinella?

  fourteen, it must have been a crazy situation.

• 1:22:48Speaker 07

  And, and it brings to mind, there was that woman in California that was feeding bears regularly, and I think she ended up getting killed by one of, yeah.

• 1:22:58Steven Rinella?

  In her house.

• 1:22:59Speaker 07

  Um, so that's like the extreme version of what could happen, but.

• 1:23:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they must have had, these bears must have been like, standing around.

• 1:23:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:23:06Speaker 03

  Like, to know what bait they were using.

• 1:23:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's my main question is, is in the Pilates capital of the world, this posh mountain town proclaimed, as proclaimed by Steven Rinella, what were they feeding the bears? Like, were these, were they smart enough just to be like, yeah, these bears will eat corn? So they just went down to the granary, bought a bunch of bags of corn?

• 1:23:26Speaker 07

  Bags of dog food?

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  Or were they like, oh, bears like red meat, so I'll go buy a half a cow and feed him steaks?

• 1:23:35Steven Rinella?

  Hope it'll go to, I shouldn't say hopefully, yeah, I hope it goes to trial, so all this becomes.

• 1:23:39Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Steven Rinella?

  All this becomes public.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  And if, if it would have been half that, if it had been seven bears, that would still be a shocking number.

• 1:23:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Speaker 03

  Fourteen is insane.

• 1:23:47Steven Rinella?

  I don't even get, like, you talked, like, Clay, he'll run up, when Clay's running a bait pile down there in Arkansas,

• 1:23:55Steven Rinella?

  he'll get where he thinks, I remember him saying one time, he had a bait pile, and he thought thirteen bears were using the bait pile.

• 1:24:03Steven Rinella?

  But he notes that he's like, when you kill one of those bears,

• 1:24:09Steven Rinella?

  it shuts the bait pile down. Cause he says there's two things happening, a, acorns, as he likes to call them, acorns are starting to fall, right around that time of year. But also, he said, so that's a pull away, like, like a bear would rather go eat wild acorns, rather than deal with the stressful situation of coming into a bait station where a bunch of other bears are using it. But he says, a bait pile is good for a bear. And when you kill one, it shuts it down. So how could it be, like, how are these bears so habituated? I would love to know this.

• 1:24:46Speaker 07

  Well, they're.

• 1:24:47Steven Rinella?

  They're so habituated that they're able to barrel trap fourteen bears?

• 1:24:51Speaker 07

  This, this also isn't nearly the food-rich environment that Clay is dealing with.

• 1:24:56Steven Rinella?

  Where the bears are like, jeez, I keep, I keep seeing my bodies in these barrels, but I'm gonna keep coming.

• 1:25:00Speaker 07

  They gotta work for food around here.

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  Is that how they got them? They barrel trapped these?

• 1:25:04Steven Rinella?

  I don't know.

• 1:25:05Speaker 07

  I'm.

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  I got some questions.

• 1:25:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, or they darted them.

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  I assume they just shot them dead.

• 1:25:10Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:25:10Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:25:11Speaker 07

  Maybe, I, I, I think they would have euthanized, like, I don't know.

• 1:25:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that could be, yeah, maybe they just went out there and had to just shoot them off.

• 1:25:19Speaker 07

  Or they grab, they've trapped them, and, I mean, trapping them fourteen in one spot, like, maybe they did just shoot them, I don't know.

• 1:25:26Steven Rinella?

  Because it's an open investigation, they're probably not gonna talk about it yet. But they are generally, like, very restrained and conservative about problem bears.

• 1:25:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:25:37Steven Rinella?

  Which I applaud.

• 1:25:38Speaker 07

  They give them a chance, usually.

• 1:25:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:40Speaker 05

  This was already a couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law, yesterday, and I saw him, he said that just over the weekend, they had, uh, trapped three more out of that neighborhood where he lives, south of, uh, the university. So it's like, the bears are just.

• 1:25:55Speaker 07

  It's a catastrophic berry failure this year.

• 1:25:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're not in the, they're not in the mountains and out in the places they should be. They're like, all coming to town to look for food.

• 1:26:05Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm. But even the town food failed.

• 1:26:09Steven Rinella?

  I was talking to an old timer that has an apple orchard.

• 1:26:11Speaker 05

  Oh, you mean like that kind of town?

• 1:26:12Steven Rinella?

  He lost his whole orchard, cause the buds all froze, or in that free cold snap. We have choke cherries and, and crab apples. Shouldn't say that, shouldn't have those. I didn't plant them. They're just there.

• 1:26:22Speaker 05

  Why shouldn't you have crab apples? You could cut them down.

• 1:26:23Steven Rinella?

  Dude, they, they even ask, yeah, they even ask that if you have these things, you should consider changing up your tree program.

• 1:26:31Speaker 03

  For bears?

• 1:26:32Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 1:26:32Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 1:26:33Steven Rinella?

  It's, it's, it's a recommendation. It's a recommendation. Anyways, not a one in my yard, not a single choke cherry or crab apple.

• 1:26:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:42Steven Rinella?

  In my yard, but I've had the worst bear problems we've ever dealt with. Two o'clock, two o'clock in the afternoon, I had to run one out of my garage.

• 1:26:51Speaker 05

  I wonder if we could, uh, transplant your, your problem trees over to Wisconsin, to my place where, uh,

• 1:26:58Speaker 07

  Where they belong?

• 1:26:58Speaker 05

  Where I'd love to have a deer and bears eating on them. I would like to make correction, I think that those bears, like Clay's bait sites, when the acorns start falling, I don't think it's that they all of a sudden are like, oh, I don't wanna deal with the stress of a bait pile, I'm gonna go eat acorns. I think it's actually, the acorns are falling, it is a much better source of calories, better food. I, I don't need bait anymore. There's, I have this great thing called acorns.

• 1:27:26Steven Rinella?

  Here's why I disagree.

• 1:27:28Speaker 05

  Please.

• 1:27:29Steven Rinella?

  Once you shoot one, they all vanish.

• 1:27:34Steven Rinella?

  So there is some calculation they're making.

• 1:27:39Steven Rinella?

  There is some push and pull.

• 1:27:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, there is some, but I'm just saying that I don't, I don't, if the acorns start falling.

• 1:27:47Steven Rinella?

  Yes, he says they would rather.

• 1:27:49Speaker 05

  They change food source.

• 1:27:50Steven Rinella?

  He says they would rather, but it hurries that decision along.

• 1:27:57Steven Rinella?

  He should come on the show and talk about it. It hurries that transition along when you shoot one on the bait.

• 1:28:04Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:28:06Steven Rinella?

  Or else, why does the transition happen right on opening day?

• 1:28:12Speaker 05

  I, I honestly think it's coincidence. I mean, in Wisconsin, it seems to happen.

• 1:28:16Steven Rinella?

  I can't.

• 1:28:16Speaker 05

  A week before opening day.

• 1:28:18Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it does?

• 1:28:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like, literally, all my neighbors, like, are quitting bear baiting, because everybody baits them, they have them all summer long, and then the acorns start falling, and literally, there are no more bears on the baits, or cameras.

• 1:28:32Steven Rinella?

  You could be right. I see what you're saying now. Yeah.

• 1:28:35Speaker 05

  I think it's a strong pull.

• 1:28:36Steven Rinella?

  Like, it's just, it's like, right around whatever that day is, September five or whatever. It's like, you're at the end anyway.

• 1:28:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:43Steven Rinella?

  You're at the end anyway. I understand. I buy that.

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• 1:30:19Speaker 05

  Shall we continue?

• 1:30:20Steven Rinella?

  Please.

• 1:30:21Speaker 05

  The Sportsman's Alliance, Foundation, and Safari Club International are suing the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission over its newly imposed daily bag limit of two fur bears.

• 1:30:33Steven Rinella?

  Which is so dumb.

• 1:30:35Speaker 05

  Oh, it is. This is how it came about. Uh, Colorado's fur bear population has historically been strong.

• 1:30:42Steven Rinella?

  I shouldn't have spoke. I shouldn't have spoke. It's not dumb that they're suing them. It's dumb that Colorado did that.

• 1:30:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:50Steven Rinella?

  It's good that they're suing them, but go on. I shouldn't have even spoken up.

• 1:30:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is just adding. Well, we'll get to all of this. Um. The fur bear population in Colorado historically has historically been strong and sustainable without any daily bag limit requiring no science-based restrictions.

• 1:31:10Speaker 05

  Originally, there were two proposals that came in for a change in the bag limit. There was one, there was two options. One was a limit of 15, which was recommended by CPW staff, or a tiered limit of eight or four, which I don't exactly understand how tiered goes eight or four, but whatever. Those were the two options.

• 1:31:29Steven Rinella?

  Some species four.

• 1:31:30Speaker 05

  Okay. But where's the tiered coming?

• 1:31:32Speaker 07

  It was for, there was two different groups of, of critters. One was like, things that are considered like predatory and nuisance, like foxes, raccoons, and then others were like pine martens.

• 1:31:46Speaker 05

  And the word tiered is just used because it's eight and four.

• 1:31:49Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:31:49Speaker 05

  Okay. Um, so there's a last minute introduction. This is where they're, what they're getting in trouble for. Uh, during the July 16th meeting, Commissioner Rebecca Nyamyetz introduced a motion for a limit of two based on her own unpeer-reviewed survey published just the day before. I mean, come on.

• 1:32:13Steven Rinella?

  Just pulls it out of her arse.

• 1:32:15Speaker 05

  Literally.

• 1:32:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:17Speaker 05

  Uh, despite objections from other commissioners that the new limit bypassed public notice and comment requirements, six commissioners voted in favor of the two fur bear limit. Now, the whole commissioner thing in Colorado, there's 13 total. Um, only 11 of them have a, have voting rights. They're appointed by the governor, but they have to be, um, sworn in by, by the legislator. So what's happening, legislation? What am I trying to say? Not legislation, legislation. Sure. So what's happening here is that the governor has appointed a lot of, a bunch of folks to this commission that aren't pro-hunting and fishing. And then this kind of stuff can come up and they vote on it and it can get pushed through.

• 1:33:00Speaker 05

  So what they're getting sued, um, over is, is that they have violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to provide proper notice, including, and sorry, ignoring public comment rules and relying on rushed, unreviewed data.

• 1:33:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like we're all here to debate and vote on 15. And at the last minute, some gal's like, ah, how about two?

• 1:33:24Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:33:25Speaker 07

  That's what happens in that commission, man.

• 1:33:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:28Speaker 07

  Over and over.

• 1:33:29Speaker 05

  Uh, it, it, Colorado's got a big problem on their hands. But right now, well, coming up, less than a month, October 3rd, you can help Colorado's hunters, anglers.

• 1:33:43Speaker 07

  November 3rd.

• 1:33:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. What did I say? October 3rd? That already passed. November 3rd, you can vote in Colorado and vote for Amendment 83, which is the constant, which would make a constitutional right to hunt and fish in the state of Colorado. Um.

• 1:34:05Speaker 05

  I talked to Dan Gates this morning from Coloradoans for Responsible Wildlife Management. Um, he said, the main thing you can do right now, if you're interested in helping this out is everything you see on the internet, like on socials, don't just like it, um, or make a comment, share it. Um, and I'll go on to say that like, you should contact people. It's the same thing that I was saying for when we were, when you guys were voting for the, uh, for the lion thing in Colorado. It was like, just this morning, I sent a text to my, uh, family in Colorado. Um, most of this group, there's probably about 10 people on this group. Most of them don't hunt.

• 1:34:46Speaker 05

  My brother's on this group. He hunts. I'm trying to think who else. My cousins used to hunt. They haven't hunted in 10 years. And I just said, hey, have you heard of Amendment 83? It's on the ballot. The short version is this, the amendment creates a constitutional right, right to hunt and fish. It'd be nice if something like this wasn't needed, but animal rights extremists have chosen Colorado as one of their battleground states and they will continue to chip away at these opportunities in Colorado's outdoor heritage until it's gone. Here's a link to learn more about the amendment and I gave them the, um, savethehuntcolorado.com link. And I told them I supported it wholeheartedly and I hope that they would too. And even more, share info about it, talk to neighbors and friends. Paul Diaz. That's how you say thank you in Latvian.

• 1:35:30Speaker 07

  You know what I'd like? We, we, we should have some kind of expert that can explain, like, do these constitutional rights to hunt and fish, do they have like teeth?

• 1:35:41Steven Rinella?

  You should listen to this podcast. Cause we've explored this issue many times on this podcast.

• 1:35:46Speaker 03

  Would have it changed anything in this specific situation though? Like, couldn't they still pitch the two fur bear limit and that's still passed?

• 1:35:53Steven Rinella?

  I have yet to see, like, I have yet to see, no, no, no. There's an example. We did, we covered in a recent example where 25 states have enacted constitutional right to hunt and fish. Vermont was the first in the seventies. Um, the next state didn't do it till like the midnight to early nineties.

• 1:36:10Speaker 05

  Vermont was the first in 1777. Hundreds of years ago.

• 1:36:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh, hold on. That's when they did it?

• 1:36:18Speaker 05

  Yes. The next one was in like 96.

• 1:36:21Steven Rinella?

  That's when it was?

• 1:36:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. They're way ahead of the game.

• 1:36:25Steven Rinella?

  There's some surprise, there's some states that are surprising that we have, we have like Montana, like big hunting and fishing states. Montana hasn't done it. Nevada hasn't done it, but 25 states have done a constitutional right to hunt and fish. My question on this issue, and I ask everybody that comes on about it, when we talk to people about it, is can you cite an example for me? Where a piece of legislation came up? And the legislation or, or a game management question came up and it was shot down because of would have violated the right to hunt and fish. And there's just one right now. Who's the state that's suing on fisheries? We just covered it on the podcast.

• 1:37:06Speaker 03

  Said North Carolina?

• 1:37:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I believe North Carolina. Anglers are saying, your fisheries management has run amok. And you are,

• 1:37:19Steven Rinella?

  you are degrading or challenging our constitutional right to hunt and fish by not managing fisheries in a way that allows for fishing. And they're questioning it under that, but I'm not aware of many situations where, um, actions have taken place where this would trump those actions. I could picture some.

• 1:37:43Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:44Steven Rinella?

  And I could also picture that they'd say that, that it would be, um, we're always going to set bag limits. The commission sets bag limits to do all this. And that you wouldn't be able to sue under that premise anyways. But with that said, I do think it's a, it's a very good thing to do.

• 1:38:02Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:03Steven Rinella?

  And I think that when we pass these pieces of legislation, we should make them as broad reaching as possible because you're doing it on a ballot initiative, which makes good hard law.

• 1:38:13Speaker 07

  Yeah. And in a state like Colorado, you're doing it kind of crystal balling the worst scenario that could, where they're like, sorry, you can't hunt bighorn sheep anymore or whatever, you know?

• 1:38:26Steven Rinella?

  It's so puzzling to me that Colorado, of all places, has emerged as the area where the radical animal rights agenda is being tested.

• 1:38:36Speaker 07

  I don't think it's weird at all.

• 1:38:38Steven Rinella?

  I would picture it more in Rhode Island.

• 1:38:40Speaker 05

  Don't you think them and Washington are the two that are kind of battling?

• 1:38:44Steven Rinella?

  Washington is bad, bad.

• 1:38:46Speaker 07

  They, they saw an opportunity when Polis got into office and, you know, we know that Polis's husband is very much an animal rights activist.

• 1:38:55Steven Rinella?

  That's how he defines himself.

• 1:38:56Speaker 07

  I, I think they, they were like, all right, here's our chance to pounce, you know?

• 1:39:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah. Cause they have a, they have a ally in the governor's mansion and then his husband is, defines himself as an animal, or whatever the hell goofy term he uses, defines himself as an animal rights activist.

• 1:39:16Speaker 07

  And we know from the cats aren't trophy thing that they were, the governor was involved in that, that whole thing.

• 1:39:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh, his, uh, husband there, he's spending money and advocating against Proposition 83. They don't want Amendment 83.

• 1:39:31Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:39:32Speaker 05

  No, definitely not.

• 1:39:34Steven Rinella?

  But now that dude's getting termed out,

• 1:39:38Steven Rinella?

  is it, is the person that's going to replace this governor, who's I think is just the worst governor in the country? Is who's ever going to replace Polis, are they more friendly to hunters and anglers? Or are they like another animal rights wag job coming in?

• 1:39:52Speaker 07

  I need to research it.

• 1:39:53Speaker 05

  According to Dan Gates, it's, he's better.

• 1:39:56Steven Rinella?

  He's better?

• 1:39:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Speaker 03

  Is there a federal avenue in this that like, if, if Trump decided tomorrow that he wanted to create 50 states having the constitutional right to fish, does that work?

• 1:40:08Steven Rinella?

  It would be an, I don't know. There'd be some kind of executive action. Well, he was bragging the other day. He was bragging the other day that he could ban fishing. He says, my office, yeah, my office is so powerful, I could ban fishing. I might just ban it for a day.

• 1:40:27Speaker 07

  That's great.

• 1:40:28Speaker 03

  Maybe that's the win on this. We get a federal.

• 1:40:30Steven Rinella?

  Explaining this to Johnny Morris and he was saying to Johnny Morris, who is in the audience when he said this, he said, I could make it that you don't sell any fishing rods. My office is so powerful, I could ban fishing for a day. And he joked, like, I'm not going to fall into the trap of not knowing when the guy's joking, which the news media always pretends to not know when they're joking. He's joking, but he joked, I could do this.

• 1:41:01Speaker 07

  I don't think, I, I don't find that joke funny.

• 1:41:03Steven Rinella?

  Well, it's a joke. It's a joke. And the media, the media always, like, he says a joke and then they go and act like he meant it.

• 1:41:10Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:41:11Steven Rinella?

  And there's that, there's that Selena Zito quote, um.

• 1:41:16Steven Rinella?

  The media doesn't take Trump seriously, but they take him literally. Trump supporters take him seriously, but not literally. And so the media then, you know, whatever, they would act like he's really going to ban fishing for a day, which would be not a thing he's going to do. But him saying that, I wonder if, if that is true from a legal perspective. And you did an executive order. The problem is with executive orders, as we see every time anybody does an executive order, there's the next executive undoes that executive order. And that's how you get stuff like the monument, the monument battles, the roadless battle and all these other executive.

• 1:41:55Speaker 07

  But I don't think it would have like, he couldn't, how could he order? The states control their own wildlife regulations, like hunting and like, I don't.

• 1:42:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:42:05Speaker 03

  We should dare him to pass it.

• 1:42:07Speaker 05

  My, my hope is that these amendments to the state's constitutions, that it would act as a retardant to future attacks. And if that is all that it does, great, you know? Dan Gates will have more time to enjoy his retirement as opposed to sitting around all the time battling this.

• 1:42:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  Give one more quick call to action, Yannis, please.

• 1:42:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, go to savethehuntcolorado.com.

• 1:42:35Steven Rinella?

  An issue I see. And, and when Colorado's going through the, the, the last election cycle, when the cat met, when the cat hunting ban was up in Colorado, I never said it. I never said it, but I got pessimistic. Do you remember?

• 1:42:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:54Steven Rinella?

  I was like, man, I think it's going to pass. I never said it, but I was like, I got fearful that it would pass.

• 1:42:59Speaker 07

  You had reason to believe that after the.

• 1:43:01Speaker 03

  Did you have people who thought that, who were educated?

• 1:43:04Steven Rinella?

  What's that?

• 1:43:05Speaker 03

  Did you have people who thought that, who were educated on the subject?

• 1:43:07Steven Rinella?

  Looking at the polling.

• 1:43:08Speaker 07

  Okay. I, I think there was good reason to, to wonder because the wolf thing went through, right? You know?

• 1:43:14Steven Rinella?

  But I don't, I don't see those as.

• 1:43:16Speaker 07

  I know.

• 1:43:17Steven Rinella?

  They're neighbors, but not, they're neighbors, but not cousins.

• 1:43:20Speaker 07

  But it gives you an idea of how the electorate is thinking.

• 1:43:23Steven Rinella?

  Correct. I got pessimistic and I got to toward the end, I got like, man, I never said it because I don't want to deter.

• 1:43:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:32Steven Rinella?

  You know, I don't want to like, people to just give up and not show up at the polls or whatever. But I got nervous and I got to, on the day before, I got to where I was like, if I really had to guess, I, I think that we're not, we're going to fall short. And then, and then got it by a good margin.

• 1:43:46Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:43:47Steven Rinella?

  In today's.

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  Fifty-five to forty-five.

• 1:43:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, which is, which is big.

• 1:43:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:43:50Steven Rinella?

  And where, where we send people to the White House on, you know, forty-nine point nine percent of the, the vote, or sometimes we send people to the White House on, yeah, less than half of the vote. Margins are tight these days. On this one, the thing I'm worried about is what I keep reading is that they're anticipating on November 3rd, they're anticipating like the blue wave. And the blue wave would be that Democrat, Democratic voters are very motivated to go to the polls right now. Um, and they're finding a sort of waning enthusiasm among Republican voters.

• 1:44:27Steven Rinella?

  This, like it or not, is going to be a, not clean, not clean, but it's going to just be a partisan split vote. This is going to have heavy support from Republican voters. And it's going to have, I bet you among Democratic voters, if only Democratic voters voted on this amendment, the amendment wouldn't pass. It'll lose among Democratic voters. It'll win overwhelmingly among Republican voters. If Republican voters are not motivated to go to the polls, it makes me worried about amendment eighty-three.

• 1:45:04Speaker 07

  It'll pass, go vote.

• 1:45:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but you, you agree that it's, well, no, it'll not pass among Democrat voters. And it'll pass overwhelmingly among Republican voters.

• 1:45:17Speaker 07

  So we need some Democrats to vote for it.

• 1:45:19Steven Rinella?

  And you need a lot of Republicans. I don't know what all they got going on. I think the Republicans have kind of given up hope in Colorado, but you're not going to win the governor's office.

• 1:45:26Speaker 05

  Um, this is, I think something, uh, I want to bring this up because it gives you a talking point and everybody, I think at home can be like, oh no, why, why do I really need to go talk to people that, you know, don't understand hunting or, or how am I going to talk to them about this? Or this, this gives you a little insight as to what non-hunters, this is, I was texting with my aunt after I texted the group. She wrote back and said, hey, uh, I'm all for hunt to eat, but have reservations about trophy hunters. Does this amendment address that? I didn't see it addressed. Is it under, in quotes, traditional hunting? Okay. So again, this is just where she's at with what she knows about hunting.

• 1:46:10Speaker 05

  And there is a part of it. And again, that term, I was asking you guys earlier, like it's been weaponized big time.

• 1:46:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:16Speaker 05

  I could go to her right now and I might have a, I might call her and say, hey, I'm a trophy hunter at times. I just spent 20 days in, uh, hunting elk and didn't shoot an elk because I was looking for a trophy.

• 1:46:27Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:29Speaker 05

  Um, but that's like what's in her head because she's hearing about like how bad trophy hunting is.

• 1:46:36Steven Rinella?

  Cause she thinks of it as dichotomy.

• 1:46:38Speaker 05

  Well, she thinks of, I said, well, what is trophy hunting to you? She says, well, someone just goes and kills something and takes the antlers and puts it on their wall. I said, well, that's illegal. You literally cannot do that anywhere. That's called poaching.

• 1:46:50Speaker 03

  Unless a grizzly gets it.

• 1:46:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's.

• 1:46:53Steven Rinella?

  It's called, yeah, it's called, yeah. It's like different states call it different things, but it's wanton waste.

• 1:46:57Speaker 05

  So it's like that kind of a simple conversation and explaining something simple is that is saying, hey, trophy hunting, this thing that you think is trophy hunting that, that you're seeing in the media and, and people are saying, oh, this is what these people actually want to do. It's illegal. We can't do it. No one does it. And so you can kind of forget about trophy hunting and just like, please support us as just hunters and anglers that are mostly out there doing the hunt to eat thing.

• 1:47:25Steven Rinella?

  Except for Brody's body.

• 1:47:29Speaker 03

  One more shout out for Vermont. They passed it in seventeen seventy-seven. That was fourteen years before they became a state and they were the only state who had that protected, uh, right to hunt and fish for more than 200 years.

• 1:47:40Speaker 07

  How can you have a constitutional amendment before you're a state?

• 1:47:44Steven Rinella?

  Dude, they didn't even finish the revolution.

• 1:47:47Speaker 03

  Like this is an important one. We gotta get.

• 1:47:49Steven Rinella?

  We got in the, in the long hunt, when, when we did the long hunters, um, where it's colonial, uh, you know, it's about the colonial deer skin trade. Like our, our audio original of long hunters covers the end of the French and Indian War up to the American Revolution. And we talk about pre-revolution, all of the deer hunting restrictions that were in place. There was restrictions that you couldn't hunt if you weren't a local. You couldn't hunt deer if you weren't a local. There was, there was people putting in deer seasons in the seventeen sixties, seventeen seventies. They're like, we need a season, we need bag limits.

• 1:48:29Speaker 03

  New York, I think was.

• 1:48:30Steven Rinella?

  We need that you can't shoot does. We need that you can't come from out of town and hunt deer around here. So, yeah, it was, it was, people are aware of these things. All right, man. I hope it's just a lot of people show up on.

• 1:48:47Speaker 05

  November 3rd?

• 1:48:48Steven Rinella?

  And just do what you guys did around the cat thing down in Colorado. It is so upsetting to see this happening in Colorado.

• 1:48:56Speaker 03

  Save the hunt Colorado.com.

• 1:48:59Steven Rinella?

  Sons of bitches.

• 1:49:02Speaker 05

  See you guys next week.

• 1:49:03Steven Rinella?

  Want to make them go hunt with that lamb.

• 1:49:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, we'd want to protect his right.

• 1:49:11Steven Rinella?

  All right, man. See you next week.

• 1:49:40Speaker 02

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