The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 255: Never Pass Up on the First Day What You'd Be Happy to Have on the Last

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Clay Newcomb, Seth Morris, Chester Floyd, and Spencer Neuharth.Topics discussed: the time when Steve put a hit on a beaver; wolves and their magical ability to sniff out CWD-positive deer; why Doug feels you're missing the point; would you feed CWD-positive deer meat to your dog?; having mega colon and then dying from constipation; the handbook of mummy studies; how Seth survived a weasel attack; fear of too much renewable energy infrastructure and the failure to recognize how destructive it is to wildlife; castration bands to strangle off sheep tails; how mountain lions used to be everywhere; Boone's elk antler, or not; when deer had tusks; how Steve is against Clay bringing his bow and his rifle on the same hunt; a 17-year-old transgendeer; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. When I was a kid, I took out a hit on a beaver. Is the show started? The show might as well be started. You guys cool? If it started already? Yeah.

There was a drain in my home township. do they have townships where you live clay no i was i was gonna make a comment about that that i i'm not i don't understand townships spencer do you come from township country i own many a plot books where uh by the time i was like 17 years old i feel like i I knew every township I was in without looking at one. Yeah. So a township is six by six miles. 36 square miles.

Yeah, very common in the Midwest to have townships. And then there's a small amount of government is run out of the township. So at most townships,s you look it'd be like 36 so it's 36 square miles one of those square miles is state school trust land you know and that's just how it works so uh our we had a our township had a drain commissioner i understand now the drain commissioner there is very, the drain commissioner in my home township,

which is Dalton Township, is very controversial, sort of, or maybe the county commissioner. Either way, you have a drain commissioner. The drain commissioner would hire me to get problem beavers out of the drain system. One time I was working this beaver and it was in the summertime and, uh, shot and it sank.

And I went and told him, I said, man, you know, I can't really present it to you because it sank, and you paid me my $25 anyways. What do you think about that? That's honorable. I'd say that's like a hat tip to the trapper, kind of honorable.

Mm-hmm. I think that guy's name, Merle, his name was Merle, not Haggard. I was just going to say. Do you think he'd do the same now? Not Merle. His name was Merle. Not Haggard. I was just going to say. Do you think he'd do the same now? Not Merle Haggard. Do you think he'd give the money to you now? I'd be pretty shocked to hear he's alive right now. So no.

No, there's no way that dude's alive still. Nice guy. So I don't know if you guys were reading the New York Times recently. If you see a Wolf article in the New York Times recently. If you see a wolf article in the New York Times, you can virtually guarantee that it'll be something about just

how nice wolves are, you know, in the New York Times. There's an article in the New York Times. It's kind of a collision of two things i'm super interested in because the the article the name of the article is this using wolves as first responders against a deadly brain disease and it's saying it's talking about how um these researchers are in yellowstone are taking a look at whether wolves, because they have a magical ability, you know, everyone who's watched, um,

never cry wolf knows that they have an uncanny magical ability to sniff out disease and kill diseased animals, uh, that wolves, all it will take to stop CWD is wolves because they'll go and eat to stop CWD is wolves. Because they'll go and eat all the CWD positive deer. And so they're studying this in Yellowstone. Article goes on and on. You know, I'll give them this. Like, I'll give them this. I think it's interesting to watch. If you could ever, I'd have to ask my brother if you give him this. I think it's interesting to watch.

Um, if you could ever, I'd have to ask my brother if you could do this, cause this is kind of like he, he sort of specializes in like designing studies and statistics and stuff like that. But if you could ever see, like, does the spread of chronic wasting disease, which is a deer and elk, it's like a deer family version for you folks at home. It's a deer, it's a cervid. So deer, elk, moose, caribou, you know, white-tailed antemule deer, right?

It's the, uh, scrapie or mad cow disease version. It's a deer and elk version of that, of scrapie or mad cow disease. Um, it's a deer and elk version of that of scrapie or mad cow disease. Um, it's a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy and it's spreading very rapidly all around the country.

Um, it's main spread. This is a, I'm going to tell you a controversial statement right now. Oh, Doug Duren's not listening. No, because, no.

The big spreads that have happened around, I'm just going to come out and say this. The captive cervid industry, the captive deer industry has done a mighty lot, done a mighty lot to help CWD get spread around. Even a bunch of money, they just... See, now I'm way off on the wolf thing. Let me lay out the CWD deal a little bit first.

CWD, there's no evidence that it passes to humans. Like, no human's gotten it. They even have this group of people. They have a group of like 100 and some people that all ate CWD, unknowingly ate CWD infected meat at some kind of fundraiser. And then, I don't remember, the bulk of them all voluntarily submitted themselves for annual testing and none of them have gotten it. Tens of thousands of American hunters have eaten CWD positive meat. It's never jumped. Seth don't even care.

Do you, Seth? Tell him, Seth. Tell him how little you care. About eating it? I don't care at all. Let me ask you this, Seth. If I made, let's say I went to Doug's house. Yeah.

And I got a bunch of the, I went to the, wherever they do the testing. And I said, I want a bunch of those positive deer brains. Okay. And I made a burger in which I took 10 CWD positive deer. Yep. And ground up their meat and put some of the brain in there and put some of the spinal column tissue in there and made a burger.

Would you eat that burger? Well, I don't eat the brains and spinal column anyway in there and made a burger would you eat that burger well i don't i don't eat the brains and spinal column anyway okay let's say i just leave that out i'll eat the burger really yeah see that's how i test the cwd denier are you a cwd denier you just don't think it's gonna jump to humans no i i believe in cwd 1000 like you accept that it's a disease absolutely and it's spreading around yep but you just just take precautions to not spread it around. And you know, I don't deny that shit at all. But when it comes to human health, like you're not worried that you're going to be the dude that gets it.

No, no. There seems to be like a direct correlation between how many people you're feeding in your family and like how serious you take CWD. Oh, absolutely. I just, how big is your family? I mean, me and my girlfriend. Who's probably emerging as the best wildlife artist in America. Tell everybody her name.

Kelsey Johnson. Tell them her Instagram handle. K. Ray Johns. I better check to make sure that's right. You know what? Emerging. Did you hear what I'm saying, Clay? Emerging as probably America's greatest wildlife artist.

I've seen some of her stuff. It's cool. It's cool stuff. I have a pronghorn picture of hers hanging up in my house. Damn good stuff. K. Ray Artworks.com. Spell it for everybody. K. R. A. E. ArtS dot com. Spell it for everybody. K-R-A-E-R-T-W-O-R-K-S dot com.

Yep. Check it out. Seth's girlfriend. Anyway, Seth will eat the burger. That's how I test whether someone, that's like, people that say CWD is no big deal, I need to get a batch of these burgers.

So when someone says, I'm not worried about CWD, I can fry them up one of my CWD burgers. If they eat it, then I'm like, dude, I believe everything you say. Or I believe that you believe everything you say. If they pause, then I'm like, we got a problem. Yeah. Steve.

Go ahead, Clay. I want to get back to this Wolf situation. No, no, take your time. We're in a CWD zone here in Arkansas. We're in one cwd zone here in arkansas we're in one year yeah and i was just gonna say i'm i'm in some ways with seth like i'm not that worried about it and i that is displayed to me because i have not had my deer tested which i'm and you're feeding them to your kids. I do. And I'm not necessarily proud of that, but we've been eating deer from this region for 20 years. I mean, my kids have grown up with it.

So my point is, is that if we start, I mean, we've already had it pre-testing. Yeah, I'm with you. That's the thing. So I'm going to start making a habit of getting deer tested, but we never have. You know, bubbly Doug Duren, he gets irritated when people say that, like, if you were to say to Doug, I don't care about CWD because I'm not worried about catching CWD,

Doug feels you're missing the point. Right. Because as prevalence goes up, it's always fatal. Like you don't, no deer survive CWD. As prevalence goes up, you're going to have population wide impacts. And he feels, some people can test this. Doug feels it's beginning to happen and you're going to see that in these areas that have 75, you know, and climbing, um, infection rates that you're going to get to

where you're going to see population crashes dying from CWD. And also you're not going to have old mature bucks because deer don't live long enough. dying from CWD. And also you're not going to have old mature bucks because deer don't live long enough. Cause I killed a CWD positive deer this year. Did you eat it? No.

Give it to Seth, man. Well, at the time I offered it up to anybody on the editorial team. Um, and nobody took it. I was even offering it to people for like them to feed their dogs with and nobody took it um to feed a dog yeah ask yanni i i offered it to yanni and it was a hard no he wouldn't feed it to his dog dude yanni also brought up a good point that if he were to feed it to his dog and uh

ignored the potential health thing his dog would then go shat it out in his yard and be spreading cwd all over his property um which i i can respect that stance yeah that's a good point you know what's funny about this article back back to the article here so it's like this article where it's you know you know tomorrow there'll be an article like wolves uh actually help bring more rainbows you know if we had more be an article like wolves, uh, actually help bring more rainbows. You know, if we had more wolves,

we have more rainbows. Um, they're never just like a large wild canine. They're always a magical creature. And, uh, so they're doing this thing. And I am interested to see,

like, like I'd be interested to see if CWD spread slows in places that have high wolf densities. Um, this thing goes on and on, like saying this could be a reason why we should reintroduce more wolves around the country because they'll sniff out the CWD. And they finally give a fishing game guy, they give a chief of the wildlife division of Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks they give him like, at the end of the article, they throw him a bone and give him a quote.

He expresses doubts that wolves would prevent chronic wasting disease. He says, wolves help remove sick animals, but animals don't get visibly ill for about two years. So they are carriers and spreaders, but they don't get the symptoms. And to counter this, they go on and say that Miss Brandel, who's involved with this research, goes on to say that these magical wolves, she doesn't use magical, said that wolves may detect the disease long before it becomes

apparent to people. Through smell. Like a cancer dog. Like those dogs. That deer smells like it's got CWD. I'm automatically thinking about the welfare of the wolves, man. I mean, we won't feed this stuff to our kids, but we'll feed it to these majestic wolves. You see what I'm saying?

Oh, yeah. No concern for the wolves here. Yeah, but wolves always get like – listen, man, I like wolves. I like seeing wolves. I like seeing wolf tracks. I like wolves. I like to see wolves get restored. But I just like to also be realistic about it and not do all the hyper hyperbolic bs that people do to like to to

proselytize wolves and that's hard for people like they have a phenomenal marketing engine behind them uh how's that is that good a That article, that article feels an awful lot like the one that the New York times ran in like 2018 about letting mountain lions eat the feral horses. And that'll be the solution to the problem. Do you remember that? Yeah. And did you ever hear Carl Malcolm tear that? We tried to get that writer on the podcast.

He wouldn't come on the podcast. Carl wrote a, Carl wrote a scathing critique of that article. He's a professional biologist. He wrote a scathing critique of that article, but the Times didn't publish it because their rebuttals are generally very short. And Carl had all these statistics to point out areas where some of the highest mountain lion densities overlap with some of the highest wild horse densities and also laid out a lot about how mountain lions use the landscape um in a way that wouldn't at all be beneficial to killing off horses like where they hunt where they occupy isn't where horses go it was just an

asinine an asinine article um and the writer wouldn't even stand by it to come on the show and talk about it it was just it was a joke guy died uh there's an article floating around right now this guy they've had this body for a long time so there's this dude that was alive uh 1 000 to 1,400 years ago in the desert southwest. He died of constipation. Jeez. That's terrible. Yeah.

And it seems as though, as you're looking at his diet, that he had for months been, someone had been for months feeding him grasshoppers with the legs torn off. He ate mainly grasshoppers in the painful months prior to his death. Now, why do you say someone was feeding him? Well, it goes on to say that he was in such bad shape, he had what's called a megacolon. He had a parasite, trypanosoma cruzi, which I'd never heard of,

had blocked up the man's gastrointestinal system. So his colon swelled to six times normal size. It's a condition called megacolon. So the guy can't digest food properly, and he was becoming malnourished. They think that he would have been so bad by looking at his body that he probably couldn't even walk or eat on his own.

He was in that bad of shape. And then for the last two or three months of his life, someone was feeding him, or he was feeding on, legless grasshoppers, like the squishy part. I wonder why. I don't know. They found this guy back in 1937 in a rock shelter along the Rio Grande

and Pecos Rivers in South Texas. You can't say that. You can't say Rio Grande River. Do you know that? No. Because you're saying River Grande River. Oh, yeah, yeah. I got you.

So let me rephrase that. The Rio Grande. I'm just going to say the Rio Grande and Pecos River. So this dude was living, was he like living in a town somewhere or just out in the bush? What do you mean a town somewhere? Oh. We said. Yeah, like a Pueblo or something?

They found him like. In a rock shelter. Yeah. So he was like a primitive fellow 2.6 pounds of feces and a vast amount of food remains that were never processed that's not that much feces no I never go on a scale but I'm not like blown

away by that you ever weigh it spencer no he's shaking his head chester no no no i feel like i feel like wrestlers do that i i had a guy one time tell me that he said you'd be surprised what you'd eat when you're hungry and he told he said that statement after he told the story of riding a train from somewhere in New Mexico to San Antonio, Texas in a box car that he jumped in. He rode the entire way for three days. The train didn't stop. When he got to San Antonio, Texas, he was 16 years old. He'd run away from home, and he jumped out of the boxcar and went and found in a dumpster some molded biscuits and raw bacon, and he ate them. I worked with this guy.

He was like in his 60s. This was 20 years ago, and at the time he was in his 60s. And he looked at me and he said, Clay, you'd be surprised what you'd eat if you were hungry. And I believed him. Did he get sick prison from that i don't think so dang i take that back about um seth said wrestlers probably know how much it weighs and i guess when i was in high school wrestling i wasn't eating a bunch but before weigh-ins, if you'd go to the bathroom, you could usually, if you had a nice good crap, you could usually lose about a pound.

That's what wrestlers do? Yeah. That's interesting. Just try and get everything out when you can before you hop on the scale. They get a pound. What's interesting about how much, it goes on say like how much pressure this guy had going on. There's a thing, um, a phytolith, which is a plant part. And usually a phytolith can pass through a human's digestive tract unscathed.

But the phytoliths in this guy's digestive tract were split open and crushed, which points to an incredible pressure that was exerted on a microscopic level in this guy's intestinal system. This is going to be detailed in a forthcoming book called The Handbook of Mummy Studies. And if you think I'll not be buying The Handbook of Mummy Studies, you are wrong. Jeez, that sounds very painful. Speaking of painful, did you guys hear about seth uh almost getting uh

attacked by a wild weasel this morning he's lucky to be alive yeah it was scary tell him tell him what happened seth um we identified a culvert pipe that would be good for trapping weasels. And I dumped down over the bank. In the dark. In the dark. And I reached down in the culvert pipe to put a trap, a weasel box with a trap in it. And I heard something growled at me. And you got it.

How did it sound again? Seth won't make... Okay, tell the story. I do not think I can accurately mimic the sound because it sounded bigger than a weasel. He was in a culvert. He cried like a little baby. That's false.

What types of weasels are you looking for? Seth's like, eee! Long-tail weasel. Yeah, long-tail weasel. Seth, it was in a culvert, so it sure sounded like a megaphone. Yeah, it was like growling in a megaphone. Probably like a 14-inch, 16-inch culvert. I mean, that would make it sound really loud.

Yeah, but here's the thing. He just keeps talking about this horrific growl. And I knew, I ran down there with a flashlight. Yeah, but here's the thing. He just keeps talking about this horrific growl. And I knew, I ran down there with a flashlight. I thought we might have a bobcat. That's what I thought. I thought the first thing that came to mind was bobcat. By the way, Seth's like, eee!

And I went down there and shined a light in there, and we went to the other end, and it was just a little teeny weasel come out the other end. And then we spent an hour trying. Seth won't say what the sound sounded like. i i can't even begin to mimic and we've tried every like her no it's like a weasel growl like well i don't know how to mimic that he won't he will not do the sound like it wasn't like it wasn't like it was like no no i it's it was like to try to explain it it was like a very like soft quiet growl but it startled you but yeah i could tell how startled he was because when I went down there, the weasel box

was just kind of thrown down in the pipe. He didn't even properly place it. Hey, there's a YouTube video that says, Sound of Weasel. And it's a weasel in a cage making a growl. Oh, can you play that for us real quick? I'm trying here. Squeak, squeak.

Is that what you heard, Seth? That's not what I i heard it's not very loud guys oh there it is there it is it's like a chuckle is that what you heard that the the that part sounds a little familiar that's what scared you but it didn't it didn't sound like it was it was like, it was like two of those. But it was in a damn culvert pipe. I'd like to bring up that that's some good weasel trapping. That's some dang good weasel trapping. The sign reading.

Set a weasel trap, stick your hand in a hole, and there's already a weasel there. Yeah, the sign reading that went into this, that we identified such a hot locale that he was actually in the culvert, and then we shined through and couldn't see all the way through. So I ran up and over the road and down the other embankment and couldn't find the exit track. Then I realized that weasel was so scared of Seth that when he come out the other end of the culvert, he must have cleared 48 inches of snow before his feet hit the ground.

Here's a great question though steve here's a trapping question and this is gonna show the heart of the trapper and and i don't know which way it's gonna go would you have killed the weasel in the culvert if he wasn't in a trap oh i thought we had a bobcat and that bobcat would have been in trouble. And the weasel would have been in trouble. But not the weasel. Oh, yeah. Okay. Because it's like when you're coon hunting with dogs, we'll see a coon in a tree and not kill it because our dogs didn't tree it. We'll walk past a coon in a tree. Yeah, well, that's more of a training thing.

And I'm not worried about training up Seth. Already trained, Clay. Gotcha. I'm not going to, like, spoil Seth by getting a weasel that he didn't tree up. So she hasn't been approved yet, but Biden made his selection of interior secretary. If you hunt and fish, or if you just generally like to be outdoors, I don't care if you're a skier, biker, hiker, definitely if you're a hunter and angler, probably the most influential person in the country for you, particularly if you live in the Western U S probably the most influential person in your life, whether you know it or not

is the interior secretary. So the secretary of the interior. Outside of like the ag secretary who under Trump was Sonny Perdue, who oversees like USDA, you know, forest service lands, the interior secretary is like BLM, refuges, national parks, all these land management, you know, all of these land management agencies sit under this interior secretary and they kind of set the tone for what goes on in this country around land management on public lands, federal public lands. Highly influential. When Trump came in, he initially appointed Zinke, Ryan Zinke from Montana, who had been a Navy SEAL. He ran into a lot of ethics troubles and left and was replaced by a guy named Bernhardt.

And Bernhardt, Trump, so he, Bernhardt almost did four years from Trump. Bernhardt did a lot of great stuff. He did a lot of annoying stuff, but he did a lot of good stuff. And was very good on access. So very good on opening up lands to hunting and fishing that previously weren't. Was good on migration corridors. Was good on some management issues like overturning some Obama-era rules that restricted Alaska's ability to use certain management practices on refuge lands. That was a real slap in the face to the state of Alaska. They did a lot of good.

He did a lot of good stuff. We did a lot of bad stuff. They had this energy dominance. The Trump administration had this energy dominance plan. Right. And their their M.O. for the history of Trump's term was to really try to up energy extraction on public lands. I'm not a big fan of just coming out and saying that you just want to maximize output and not talk about how you want to do it in a responsible, way uh but biden just did his pick and i was really hoping he was going to pick martin heinrich from new mexico and i know there's all kinds of

reasons all kinds of political stuff but he was my he was my like i would have had an avid hunter, avid angler, great conservation ethic, extremely knowledgeable about the landscape out there. His head's on straight. He like knows what stuff matters. For hunters and anglers, you couldn't have done better than Heinrich, who's a Senator from New Mexico. And it was rumored that he was going to get the nod or, you know, there was a lot of people pushing for him to get the nod, but it went to subject to approval, went to Deb Hayland from New Mexico. The first native American to get appointed as Interior Secretary. So that's a big win for Native Americans here.

I am like trying to be optimistic here. I'm worried about a couple things that would happen. I'm worried that under Biden and under Halen that we might do too much renewable energy stuff on public lands. These solar arrays and wind farms are – we can't just turn the landscape into a solar farm. It's very destructive to wildlife habitat. Uh, and so this kind of like, I feel that

there's going to be this like knee jerk push into doing, creating like industrial landscapes out on our public lands of solar arrays. It's, you know, that stuff can be catastrophic to wildlife. So I'm a little afraid of that. There's a couple other things I'm afraid of, but maybe I'll be pleased in the end. You guys got any thoughts on this? You ought to.

I think they should just take that solar energy and make everyone get the Elon Musk's solar energy on the roofs of everyone's houses instead of out on the environment. Yeah, that comes with complications too, but I'd rather that. Yeah. Watching mass amounts of grassland and massive amounts of you know open country converted into wind farms they're so noisy too oh man where i grew up we had a bunch of them and um the only thing they were good for was obviously the energy they're creating but you could check the wind real easy when you're gonna go hunt and see which way they were pointed no that's a good point there's enough see See, that's always looking at the bright side.

Yeah. There's a 3,000-acre solar farm that's proposed to go in right next to my family's hunting property in Pennsylvania. Is that right? But not on public land. It's not public. But it is like some of the best elk habitat is that right you'll find in the state and it's there's a shitload of elk on it

kiss that i've seen the big wind the big wind turbines out west the solar farms i'm less i know less about just because i haven't seen them i mean are these some massive like like him saying a 3 000 acre solar farm that's news to me i didn't know we had them that big so that would effectively i mean they would fence these things so that would impede movement of wildlife oh yeah it's like it's an it's an industrial it winds up being an industrial landscape they basically they basically basically blanket the landscape. Yeah. Yeah. Then you have all,

you know, roads. I mean, it's just like, it's like, like it's, it's an industrial development project. And so,

and I, and the little bit I've, not a little bit, the fair bit of reading I've done on Hayland is that that's like a, a high priority. Other people speculate that a high priority could be trying to seed lands back to tribes, which is, you know, is an enormous minefield. And I, and, and would be highly controversial and may distract like that conversation may

distract from some of the things that I would view as high priority that were likely to get taken care of, but we'll see. Hopefully we'll all be real pleased. our raffle and sweepstakes law that makes it that they can't join, whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great

features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right.

We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. We had a conversation recently about castration bands.

I found a coyote shit with a castration band in it. Was I telling you about this, Spencer? You talked about it on the podcast. Yeah. I found a coyote shit. I was hunting antelope with my kids and found a coyote shit with a castration band. You could take a lamb. And I remember this kid named Paul Anderson doing it to his dog when I was growing up.

You take this little rubber band and wrap it around his scrow, and it causes the scrow to fall off. You ever have that done to you, Seth? No. I try to avoid that kind of stuff. A guy wrote in, a rancher from southeastern Montana, and he wrote in, he said people use those castration bands to dock sheep tails.

So you notice like, now then you'll see, you know, lambs aren't supposed to have, like lambs are born with a big, long damn tail. But everybody cuts the tail off them. And he was saying that the reason you cut lambs off tails is you prevent dung buildup and maggot infestation on the tail off them. And he was saying that the reason you cut lambs off tails is you prevent dung buildup and maggot infestation on the lamb's backside. So that tail builds up in lamb feces, flies land on there.

It's bad for the lambs. What they do is they put that castration band around the tail and it cuts off circulation. The tails falls off. He's saying that he thinks this coyote shit that had a castration band in it, he said, quote, odds are the lamb had lost his tail in a pasture somewhere and the coyote found himself a little lamb tail jerky laying on the ground and ate everything, including the band.

We see it in our ranch dogs scat all the time. Seth Price. Still running a hotmail address. Really? Look at that. I didn't know it was a thing anymore. Clay, tell us about this Canadian Lynx that just did this kind of cool thing. Yeah.

You know, Steve, this actually took place uh a while back it just resurfaced in the media but oh there's me all the time man yeah it's still a great story the other day i sent her producer a story about a guy who uh outfitter who'd gotten in so much wild had so many wildlife violations that he had what's called a global, he had like a global forfeiture of hunting privileges. And she wrote back, she's like, you know, this was 19 years ago. Are you sure you want me to put this in the show? I'm like, oh, sorry. Well, hey, this is worthy, Steve.

This is the longest documented travel of the lynx in biological history. And obviously, how many lynx in the history of the planet have been monitored. But basically, so the big story is that in the early 2000s, there were 218 lynx, one source says. Another source said 90 lynx transplanted from Canada into the high country of Colorado. So basically they were trying to restore the lynx population in Colorado. So they were catching them up in Canada where there's a bunch of lynx, bringing them down into Colorado where there were no lynx. Hey, Clay, do you happen to know what year lynx got Endangered Species Act protections? Yes. Canadian lynx were listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened in the contiguous U.S. in 2000.

So they're not on the endangered species list, as I understand it. They're on the threatened list. Yeah, but they're on the ESA list as threatened. That's right. So the only U.S. state that you can harvest and hunt lynx is Alaska. But in Canada, they're thick. They're doing very well. And I read an interesting stat too, Steve, that you'll appreciate. So at the peak of the fur trade, the fur trade in the in the early 1980s they

were exporting about 35 000 lynx pelts out of alaska and canada and obviously today that's much less just because of supply of demand you know but that's off that's off the topic here this so this lynx and he's got this science name, you know, BCO3MO2. They dropped him off in Colorado when he was two years old, and he lived in Colorado for four years. Hmm. And then he just disappeared. Settled right in.

He settled right in. Man, the amount of surveillance they do on these cats is kind of creepy man they knew how many sires of kittens this cat had uh how many sets of kittens this cat had sired it said it sired two litters of kittens one in 2005 one in 2006 so he was getting some play in colorado he was he was and lived four years. It must have been like a marital dispute that pushed him out. I don't know. But he left. In 2007, he went missing. And so the biologist just felt like it was just a loss. You know, like all these radio collared animals that they're tracking all over the place. Bears, lions, like collars just go dead. You know, that is just

the, it happens. It happens here in Arkansas with our bears a lot. Just randomly something goes wrong, collar goes dead, animal disappears off the data points of these biologists. But in 2010, Steve, a trapper in Nordeg, Alberta, catches a big lynx with a collar on it. And the cat was already dead in the trap or he would have released it, he said. But anyway, he gets the number off the collar, calls the number, and the people are just amazed. And the cat had traveled about 1200 miles and uh the cat was nine years old at the time and went back to alberta okay it was caught in

british columbia oh sorry it went to alberta so it didn't it didn't quite make it home um but it it just went north for and there's no you know these things are so mysterious because we just don't know why it did it we we don't know why but the the travel was you know obviously this cat's crossing major interstate highways i mean there's all kind of hazards that this cat would have had to have gone through so traveled north through the bulk of because he started out in southern colorado right san juan mountains yeah travel all through colorado presumably like i don't know swung through utah or western wyoming traveled through idaho or montana and then made his way way ass into canada yeah god that's yeah these so these cats steve typically have a home range of 12 to 83 miles

is what the the the the the website the well it was the it was the Fed website. It was really specific. But so, you know, the males have bigger home ranges. The females are going to have smaller home ranges. So, you know, they're known to travel. You know, Link's, most of his diet is snowshoe hares. They're highly specific. I did a little research on how are they different than bobcats.

You know, they look a lot like a bobcat. And it mainly has they can be slightly larger than bobcat but they're super specialized that's pretty much what makes them different you know bobcats live all across the u.s i mean they're very widely distributed lynx are highly specialized for hunting snowshoe hares and snow and in the board typically the well now they're in the boreal forest but at one time they were in all the highlands of north america as i understand it so and have a big have a big ass foot and bigger toughs i've talked about this on the show a handful of times but um i've only laid eyes on one lynx man and it was just and they have a face that kind of looks like a human baby in a weird way, man.

They're wild looking. If you want to pre-order the handbook of Mummy Studies, guess what that bad boy's coming in at? It's free delivery on Prime. $24.99? Hardcover is $449.99. Oddly, the paperback is $699.99 to pre-order it. Why would it be that expensive? I don't know, but I hope these good people are listening and send me one of these damn books.

That's crazy. And then is the mountain lion that recently made a long trip, that was more recent. Yeah, so there was a young lion collared in New Mexico February the 12th in kind of like northwest New Mexico. And he was documented to have traveled 558 miles and settled in the Mesa Verde National Park. So that's not standard mountain lion protocol, but that's not terribly uncommon. I mean, pretty cool, no doubt. Oh, yeah. But just amazing that they can move around and avoid trouble. You know? all those highways.

Yeah. Passing through towns, crossing highways, and not starving to death. Steve, we have, so two, three years ago, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission changed the title of one of our biologists from the bear biologist to the large carnivore biologist because we had enough legitimate mountain lion sightings in the state that it deemed a biologist to be over mountain lions in Arkansas. We're super fascinating and i i talked to the guy the other day for a podcast and basically

he thinks we're getting mountain lions on these big treks these big journeys like they're they're coming down the missouri river coming into arkansas and they'll we'll have just like a spasm of lion sightings that span like all of you know i mean like counties you know like there's a lion there there's a lion there there's a lion there and it's the same lion and he's on this big walkabout yeah and they leave though there's they have yet to document a lion that is a breeding populations of lions here but every year we have lions. And so he speculates that it's this edge of lion habitat where the males are dispersing deep. And he said, as soon as a female decides to live here, then we'll start getting males that come and stay,

because they're basically looking for mates and looking for territory. A male's not going to come in and inhabit a place that doesn't have a female. What's his point? Historically, it was the most widely distributed large mammal in the Western Hemisphere. Yeah. Down to the southern tip of Patagonia, right? All through South America, Central America, up into Canada, coast to coast here in the U.S. It was everywhere.

It's weird they had this little population hang on in Florida and then just get wiped out in the eastern U.S. and then just very slowly but gradually coming back. You know how they seem to be doing fairly well in California where it's heavily populated? Yeah. They're eating house cats and dogs and shit like that. Yeah.

Do you think eventually they'll slowly start populating like the eastern states oh where it's where it's like like they've cut they're gonna like kind of learn to live amongst humans oh i yeah i mean you're definitely i don't know how many generations it'll take but i think that you'll have i mean at this, like we're having like expanding, you know, mountain lions are expanding range. Black bears are actively right now expanding range. So I think definitely, I don't know what it would be. I don't know if like my kids' kids will be surprised to hear that once upon a time it was unusual to have a mountain lion like in Ohio. Yeah. to hear that once upon a time it was unusual to have a mountain lion like in ohio yeah um because

it's just like it's one thing to pass through but like they got to have enough room to not get in that much trouble but the fact that they're able to um do well not do well but to to live in huge population centers in california but then you have like a lot of topography steep brushy country yeah they can still hide yeah more deer there's still i mean they've got they've got to have a ton of deer they've got or you know elk they've got to have some type of ungulate you know cultural tolerance will be the main thing i think in the east just like how many how how many lions will people put up with which i think the tolerance would be left in the eastern part of the u.s would be less than the cultural tolerance in the west for large predators yeah i mean there's celebrities around california man i mean in like around the

population hubs in california population centers there uh one of the one of the i think probably an outstanding question on it is how well they can do in an agricultural landscape too, where so much of the ground is tilled and open. I don't know, man, but they're definitely expanding out. You know, years ago now, California banned mountain lion hunting.

First they went after houndsmen, then they just banned it altogether. It's kind of like the playbook there as you like like it's the death by a thousand cuts playbook uh they were looking at this dispersal study they thought that because california had no lion hunting they were expecting to see lions like sort of flowing out of california and they this, they were looking at this study of dispersal. And it was funny because Nevada, which still has a thriving lion hunting culture, Nevada actually has lions that they're producing

that are dispersing westward into California. Like they're still creating them and kicking them out. That's wild. Yeah, it's good stuff man uh in the early 2000s i was trying to do a magazine story for outside i could never get them to assign me the story but i kept wanting to do a story about um these guys and like you know anywhere like north carolina tennessee like the local crazy guy that would see a mountain line. Yeah. And everybody's like, you're crazy. You don't know what you're talking about.

And I was kind of, and I was a little bit ahead of my time. Cause this guy even started this thing called like the Eastern Puma Research Center or something like that. Cause he had run into one on a road hunting turkeys, I think. And it haunted him. Everybody thought he was a nut job. And then 10 years later, they're getting hit. One gets hit on the road in Connecticut.

Yeah. A wild born one. In Pennsylvania, I mean, like I always heard, like everyone knew someone that either seen one or like had a track that they'd found and like cast or it was just like you know it was it was there was always stories of people seeing mountain lions and people haven't like i haven't seen them but like heard of people who had like has pictures of lines that they'd killed because they were like killing the chickens or something yeah that kind of shit you know this dude in my home state wrote this book beast of never cat of god i think it was what the book was called but it was about him getting all obsessed with mountain lions in michigan which wound up not being bullshit yeah they just move yeah well i mean like this dude

right here norny it's not even like that big of a deal this dude went 586 miles man yeah they're freaking links how far that links Lynx go? 1,200 miles. There was a documented lion that went from the Dakotas to Connecticut in the last 10 years. Yeah, I think they think he swung around up through, I think they think that that dude swung around up

through Michigan's Upper Peninsula and dropped down from Canada into the East. That's like one guess of how he might have gone. I heard he got on a FedEx cargo plane chasing chickens and got out on the other side. Okay. So Spencer, you were right.

Spencer sent me a thing where he's like, I bet you a hundred people sent you this. And they had tell, tell, talk about what it was that this hundred people had sent me. Spencer. Recently this week out of Kentucky, an elk antler turned up that looks very old and carved into it says D. Boone. And then it has the year 1778 and the story goes this this antler was found in the late 1800s and was

passed through some generations and has now wound up with the rmef um and there's all this excitement around it on facebook for example rocky mountain elk foundation on facebook for example it's been liked 4 000 times commented on 700 times, and shared 5,000 times. Because people are excited that this antler, which came from the species of elk that is now extinct, turned up in Kentucky. Not a species of elk, Spencer. Subspecies. If. No.

No. Okay. A variety. A variety. I don't buy okay go on here's the thing i i said you see if i'm like i'm sure this has crossed your inbox a hundred times i don't want to get into the subspecies thing but i'll point this out at the time you had elk just from one end of the country to the other there There wasn't like unique population groups. They probably all intermingled. But sure, that's fine. A geneticist would not agree with that. Well, I'm going to tell you what the Facebook post said and why I said

that. It says, resource private land biologist Joe Lacefield, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation funded the carbon 14 dating of the antler, and it was traced back to the extinct subspecies of eastern elk. The Carbon 14 test dated the elk to have died in the range of the years between 1730 and 1806.

I would like, here's the other thing. I would like to see that report. Because, having done some C-14 submissions, they usually give you these things in like sigmas. They give you these things where it's like percentage, like these percentage likelihoods. And it'll go like 33%, 66%, 99% likelihood. I would like to see, is the report included there? And it'll go like 33%, 66%, 99% likelihood.

I would like to see, is the report included there? No, no. That's the best evidence they give. And then they end the thing by saying, there's no way to prove that Boone inscribed the antler, but the evidence says it is likely. Okay. Is that a legitimate, I mean, like,

we're saying that this is a legitimate news report. Okay. Is that a legitimate, I mean, like we're saying that this is a legitimate news report. Yes. Well, we're saying that there is an elk antler. That's undisputed. It has D. Boone

written on it. That's undisputed. They submitted it for C-14 dating, radiocarbon dating. That's undisputed. It came back with that date range, but i would just be curious

to see what probability they ascribe to the accuracy of that date range can i can i jump in here a minute talk about see radiocarbon yes okay that's pretty fascinating man boy yeah oh yeah no no no it is it is and i'm not even saying saying it's not d boone's daniel boone boone would have been during that time from 1806 to 1830 he didn't he die in 1820 steve in missouri uh someone can pull that up teens pull it up seth see how fast you know what i would type in seth i would type in um dan Boone. Where and when did Daniel Boone die? Well, he died in Missouri. It says that Daniel Boone first arrived in Kentucky in 1769

and settled with his family at Boonesboro in 1775. And again, this antler was dated between 1730 and 1806. Okay, the Earth, boys and girls, is bombarded by cosmic rays from the sun. Okay?

Mm-hmm. A thing that is produced by the bombardment of these cosmic rays is a radioactive substance called C-14. You tracking, Spencer? You fact-checking? It's taken up by plants. Anything that is alive that eats plants or eats things that have eaten plants

accumulates C-14. C-14 stops accumulating in these organisms when they die. C14 C14 Stops accumulating in these organisms When they die So you stop consuming Plants, you stop consuming things that consume Plants, and you stop Your intake of C14

That Is building up in your bones C14 has a known half-life So if you take a bone And you can look at the rate of decay is building up in your bones. C14 has a known half-life. So if you take a bone and you can look at the rate of decay of the C14 in it, you can tell how long ago the thing stopped being alive.

Now, once they started testing atomic weapons, so from anything that was alive, like C14 won't work, like you can't radiocarbon anything that was alive from the 1950s on. Because then atmospheric radioactive substances are so prevalent that our systems are all out of whack. If you checked us, you wouldn't be able to radiocarbonate our remains in the

future. Because we were alive for all that radioactive material that's in the future because we were alive for all that radioactive material that's in the atmosphere now from a testing atomic bombs detonating atomic bombs and whatnot so it doesn't work anymore then there's it comes into this thing called dendrochronology where the the rate at which these cosmic rays bombard the atmosphere fluctuates through time. It's not constant. So what they're able to do is take, for instance, tree rings from old trees, and they're able to count back, like if you cut a tree down right now,

and I can count back, let's say I find some 300-year-old tree. I can be like, okay, I just cut the tree down, and I can look and I'd be like, this ring was laid down. I know 300 years ago, cause I've counted from the core, right? To get to where this ring was laid down. And then you can look in that ring at the C14

that was laid down in that ring that year. And you can get an idea of the relative bombardment of these rays. And that's what helps you calibrate it out. But it's like imprecise. When I had my buffalo skull done, I came in with a 66% probability that it died within a couple decades of 1770. So I would just like to look at the report. But go on, Spencer. Well, maybe the best reason to be skeptical

is because there have been trees in Kentucky and Tennessee that were these landmarks at one point where Daniel Boone supposedly carved his name in there and like left a cute little note like one of them was like d boone killed a bar on tree year seven year 1760 and a number of these like trees exist in that area but there's like a lot disputing like well actually he spelled his name correctly but in this tree it was spelled incorrectly. There are other receipts of him writing bear correctly, but in this tree, again, like this is extra folksy how he spelled his name wrong, spelled bear wrong, etc. that area of having Daniel Boone artifacts and going all the way back to the 1800s when these trees were cut down and put on display and stuff like that. And it feels a lot like,

I'm from South Dakota, but I consider myself an honorary Minnesotan. And they have the Kensington Runestone there. Are you familiar with that like the the giant piece of rock laid in the earth that came up in the roots of a tree where some vikings had inscribed in this rock that oh yeah yeah like through the great lakes and stuff um but i know that story 99 percent of historians say no that's that's a lie but this popped up you know hundreds of years ago because they have like this great uh like they take a lot of pride in in daniel boone or people in minnesota take a lot of pride in vikings beating christopher columbus to america that's what it feels like i can't remember if it was in robert morgan's boone biography or the Farragher biography.

One of these Boone biographies. In the end, he talks about all of the alleged artifacts that there was a cottage industry of writing Boone on stuff. And that you could fill 10 houses with all the stuff that supposedly came out of Boone's house. And guns that have Boone on them and hatchets to have. It was like, because he was a celebrity in his own era. You know, he was like famous while he was alive. And so, I don't know man it's like modern social media like people writing stuff in trees like back in the 1800s it's like making a facebook post yeah i'll put this morgan oh go ahead morgan who you were referring to is going to be a guest on kentucky outdoors media

um to talk about the supposed Boone antler. What's his take on the antler? We don't know. He hasn't been on yet. But he's done some other, he hasn't done any other interviews about this antler. The antler came up on December 15th, three days ago. So this is all fresh. I'll put it to you this way.

If God came down, let's say Chester. Let's say Chester came over. And Chester said, I know, because somehow I've had contact with an omniscient being, I know the answer. This is Boone's antler knot. Like, I know. Through magical abilities, I know the true answer. And he said to me, I'm going to give you, you have to take a guess. Boone's Antler, not Boone's Antler.

If you get it wrong, I'm going to shoot you in the head. Okay, so here I am. I have to get it right. Is it Boone's Antler or not? I'll be shot dead if I get the answer wrong. You know what I would say? I'd say, uh-uh, not Boone's antler. Put in that situation.

The Boone artifact thing is funny that you bring up. We're publishing an article on TheMeatEater.com today called The Guns of Wyatt Earp. Looking at what guns did the cinematic Wyatt Earp carry? What guns did the dime novel Wyatt Earp carry? And what guns did the real life Wyatt Earp carry? The reality is that nobody really knows. And there's been guns sold many times at auction that claim to be Wyatt Earps, but everyone would dispute it,

and nobody really knows. So that feels very much like this Daniel Boone thing. So you don't actually know if he carried a Colt Peacemaker? You're going to have to read the article to get an idea of what people think he actually carried and the history of the cinematic and the novel version of Wyatt Earp. That's good stuff.

Spencer, what would you do if Chester held the gun to your head? No. You'd say not Boone's antler? I'd say not Boone's antler. Yeah, you and me are going to be living to tell a tale. What are the odds that it'd be Boone's and not just like a Newcomb on there or a Rella or some or morris anything like that how did this one antler from uh an extinct not subspecies of elk have daniel boone's subscription uh signature on it you think it's old i think it was a phony from a long time ago if i had to guess i don't really

know i mean who the hell am i i don't know does it look like it's been dremeled in there no no that'd be a good thing to test, though. Yeah, that was what I thought. And surely they tested this, but I mean, you could find it. It wouldn't be that big a deal to find an elk antler from the early 1800s. No. And then dremel into it and maybe leave it in the mud for five years and then pull it out.

No, I'll be clear. I think a dude scratched that in there a long-ass time ago. That's what I think. Spencer, you had provided a recommendation of a transition, a segue to another topic of conversation, but I don't want to steal your transition, so do you want to do your own transition? No, you do it.

You'll probably do it better. You're such a fan. Okay. You know how Spencer was just talking about Daniel Boone. Well, we're going to talk about Boone and Cracker Club for a minute. How was that? That was great. Yeah.

Our podcast guest, Jim Heffelfinger, sent us in this article. And I think that he might have been kind of responding to when we had him on. And we were talking about when we had the Boone and Crockett Club, people from the Boone and Crockett Club on. And we were talking about like how things like Boone and Crockett Club. When people talk about like a deer having a shot of 160 whitetail, right? You're talking about like a measurement system. There's a way that you measure bear skulls, there's a way you measure deer antlers,

and there's like record books. So if you shoot a big buck, you measure it, you go like, wow, this buck's a 190-inch white tail, and you send it off and they put it in their record books. And there's this article that Heffelfinger sent us that Spencer will break down a little bit about criticisms of that system. Like, is it really helpful? Because it's kind of become like Boone and Crockett Club, the score, has become like a social thing.

It's like a way to brag up whatever. But they point out that it had like a scientific foundation. And this Heffelfinger sent us this article that kind of lays into this a little bit. And the criticism would be that if you are trying to track a population of critters, how is it helpful to only look at the biggest ones? If there's a minimum size to get in, what are you really learning? That minimum size being for like, I think a typical whitetail is 160 and a non-typical is, I don't know, 170 or 180. Are you really actually like learning trends about the health of populations or not?

If you're only interested in the big ones. Yes. populations or not so if you're only interested in the big ones yes well because the big ones are the indicators of a healthy population of animals did y'all know i'm a boon an official boon and crockett score no i didn't know that no i didn't know that no so i you this is this i love this topic because on the surface it does seem it's easy to buy what this guy's saying but it's a little bit deeper than that to understand it in that you got to go back to originally when this system was built it was built before much of our modern science and the way to understand the health of systems an indicator was the number of older mature males so basically they

quantified the a number that's that said this is a mature healthy species and so uh typical boone and crockett rack the reason boone and crockett uh awards and gives preference to symmetry is because symmetry typically indicates health that's such that's i i i know that argument but that is bs well hey but it's it's actually not uh the come back in the day back in the day if a big butt that was kicking ass throws a little sticker out his right antler you know you don't look and be like oh something must be wrong with no. Now, it's not talking about that, though. And again, you got to think this system was designed 100 years ago. What it's talking about is when you have an animal that's stressed, you get massive amounts of dissymmetry.

Yes. I mean, like the back right leg is messed up. The right antler is going to be messed up. No, no. Left antler. It's the other way. The left antler is going to be messed up. No, no. Left antler. It's the other way. Opposite. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. With the front leg. If the front right leg is messed up, then the front right antler is messed up with the back leg. It's the opposite. Yes. Huh?

You sure? And, and Hey, the other thing, and I, I love it that this came up and just stop me. Cause I could take the next hour and talk about this and I'm not a big score guy. Like I'm not going to go. Like, I have no goals to, like, kill boon and crocket animals. Why not? But, I mean, like, I would just assume kill a 140-inch deer on the mountain over here that I love is go to Canada and kill a 180. You know what I'm saying?

I mean, like, I don't. I'm not a score guy but i think there's relevance to it because of its historical precedence and it at the time actually trophy hunting quote unquote like and that meaning targeting an animal because the size of its headgear is actually what helped save north american hunting because the brown is down philosophy was the way it went we were coming out of an era of market hunting going into an era when all these guys were saying, nah, don't, you know, we got to leave the females and young. We got to leave the juvenile males. I tell you what I'll do. Let's make a number. Let's make a scoring system that rewards killing an older,

mature male. And let's make that culturally cool to kill an older mature male and it totally took the pressure off of females and young and juvenile males and put it on older mature species which have already contributed to the gene pool and which are the best animals from a conservation standpoint to take out especially in a vulnerable herd so like you got to think about it that way and now you know 125 years later the boone and crockett club is do the main focus of the organization is not their record keeping they still keep records but the main focus of their their thrust is conservation efforts and dissemination of information and they're funding a whole bunch of stuff you know they just have this niche that they work in and so man when people give bc a bad

rap i gotta stand up to the play man i'm not i'll kick your i'm not giving bc a bad rap no no no not you steve i know you would i know you're not really i i'm not saying you i'm just saying people because people do, and it's because they don't know. They couldn't tell you what I just told you. Yeah. You know what's super embarrassing to me, Clay? I spent my whole life saying my old man was a scorer

because he was like, dude, I know he scored for Pope and Young, but I always said he was a scorer for commemorative bucks of Michigan, Boone and Crockett and Pope and Young. But then the dudes at Boone and Crockett told me your old man wasn't a scorer because they went and looked in the database and his old, his name wasn't in there. So he was lying or I didn't remember. Right.

But he was a scorer because everybody I've all through growing up, people would bring their deer over to have them score. Yeah. everybody i've all through growing up people bring their deer over to have them score them yeah and originally the the scoring of deer was was like very rudimentary it was like spread and length of time and that was it but then in 1950s we got the model that we now know today we're on like a five by five buck you would have 20 measurements or something like that um so you know i think the main thing to think about to like to just say this is like solid rational thinking that takes into account the last hundred years of what's happened in american north american conservation is that a scoring system turned the hunting culture from a market hunting culture into a conservation hunting culture by putting emphasis on older mature males. I think it's that simple.

And that's why we hat tip to it today. That's why we say, oh, man, he killed a boon who crack a buck. Guys say that and they have no idea what they're saying. I mean, people say up to the plate and changed us from a bunch of market-hunting fools. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX x club y'all so the criticism of that though clay would be like in 2020 and he's not hacking on bc that's right i understand the criticism i'm with you would be that like in 2020, it's not useful. Like there, there are other ways that we could measure the health of a population of critters. And so they, and we, and we do, that's right. And so Heffelfinger and Taylor Lashar, who has written for the meateater.com very recently, they looked at Pope and Young, Dallas Safari Club, and Boone and Crockett and

tracked the trends over time. And they wanted to see if they all basically agreed with each other on like the trend of the score of deer. And if they did agree with each other, then you could see why this is relevant and why this information would be helpful. If they didn't agree with each other, say you had the Boone and Crockett Club was really high in the 50s and now it's really low for the score of critters and Pope and Young was really low in the 50s and now it's really high, then you could argue that these criticisms are legit. What they noticed, though, is that all three clubs agree with each other on the trend of the score of antlers from like the 50s up until now meaning that this is relevant you can

like assess something based off of only looking at the top one percent of critters only because they all agree that that was my understanding from now how is that a criticism is that's a criticism no no he is saying that because pope and young has the same trend as dci and because dci has the same trend as boone and crockett that you could actually look at these numbers and like make some informed decisions by only looking at the biggest things that have the biggest antlers and the biggest horns i wish i would have read this thing myself because i'm telling you that's what it says oh my god but okay think about places where where there are not big deer let's just take

whitetails that we're all familiar with like there's not a lot of boone and crocket deer coming out of mississippi georgia arkansas and it's it's because our populations of deer for the habitat are are sometimes overpopulated um you know like big deer coming out of the midwest where we probably have some of the healthiest deer herds in the country minus cwd yeah but here's the thing man here's why spencer didn't read the article right think about it like this let's say i said i'm going to find a way to measure the health of humans by measuring their thumbs and i'm like what i do is i measure the length of their thumb then i measure around the big knuckle, and that thumb gets a score. And this is how I'm going to track how well humans are doing.

Are they making big people with big thumbs? At the same time, Chester here says, you know, I'm going to track how well humans are doing by measuring thumbs. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to measure the length of the thumb and then the circumference of the thickest part of that thumb regardless of where it sits. And Seth then says, yeah, I'm going to track the well-being of humans

by measuring thumbs. I'm going to measure the length of the thumb plus I'm going to take four circumferences off the thumb. And the thickness of the nail. And the thickness of the nail. He's going to measure the circumferences off the thumb. And the thickness of the nail. And the thickness of the nail. He's going to measure the thickness of the nail too. Oh, he's one of those guys. So here we have

I'm Boone and Crockett Club, Chester's Safari Club, Seth is Pope and Young. We're all measuring thumbs a little different but we're all measuring thumbs. But I don't think that they do measure differently. They do have differences. What is the difference very minute difference that's why i'm trying to make these thumb measurements minutely different oh so if later someone said

oh what his ranella's thing about measuring these stupid thumbs to see how well people are doing um let's test whether it's appropriate to see what Chester and Seth's thumb measurements are like. And Chester and Seth are like, oh yeah, bro, I've noticed the same thing with my thumb measurements. That doesn't tell you anything. Well, I mean, there's a lot.

This analogy, I'm not sure it flies because... Oh no, it's actually a perfect analogy. We don't know that human thumb length I'm not sure it flies because we have – It's actually a perfect analogy. We don't know that human thumb length has any correlation to human health. We do know that antler development – That's a good point. We do know that antler development, which is directly related to animal health, is massively correlated. Hey, I think this could help solve some of this debate.

No, I want to make a quick bet with you, Clay. Okay. I'll bet you $5 that Spencer's not doing a good job of telling us what the article's about. Can I read you a few sentences from the article? Let me make my bet first. Okay. I mean, who's deciding if he's done this? I will.

I'll bet you a dollar then. Okay. All right, Spencer, prove that you're reading the article right. This is from the article. If trends in horn and antler size were being influenced by a minimum entry score bias, then we would expect that different records programs

with different minimum size requirements would tell a different story about the direction and the strength of trends. For example, the strength of trends in the horns and antlers recorded by the Boone and Crockett Club with a higher minimum should be less than the trends in the Pope and Young records with a lower requirement for entry. Well, you didn't tell me that part. What part did I leave out?

About the minimums and all that. Yeah, I said that the minimums. I take check or cash. No, because here's the thing. Here's the thing. Just because he understood it doesn't mean that he delivered it properly. I've been working with this guy for a little while. And I'll tell you, if there's one thing that Spencer Newhart is,

it is, it is like correct in, you know, he's on his game. So he was, yes, I'm changing my complaint. He understood it well,

but in explaining it to me now, he left out the part that would have made me understand. Now here's, here's my, now it's making total sense okay and they saw the trends were the exact same ah no no no see i knew if heffelfinger sent it over it had to have been reasonable that's why that's why i thought you were messing it up my gripe with the boone and crockett club is not the Boone and Crockett club's fault. It is when people hold up States like Wisconsin and say that they are the big buck King because they have more Boone and Crockett and Pope and young records

than anybody. But I am sure that they do not kill two or three times as many giant deer as a state like Texas. It's just that the culture prioritizes entering them in places like wisconsin yeah and then in texas you got to remember if it's high fenced they won't no they'll still accept it in some other not boone and crockett well no they do but they also don't they keep track of road kills and stuff and some other sort of thing well so boone and crockett club keeps track of all animals despite method of kill, and they even keep records of pickups because, again, it's a biological record, so it doesn't matter if a hunter kills it or not.

Spencer, I— But you can't get in the—you can't sort of be honored if it's a high-fence deer. It doesn't have to be Texas in this argument either. It can be any state. Wisconsin does not kill twice as many big giant bucks as Kansas, despite them having twice as many entries in the books. Yeah. You think, so dudes in Wisconsin have a higher proclivity or there's a greater chance that some mug in Wisconsin

is going to register his buck through BNC. Exactly. I think that's because all the buck pools at the bars. It could be because they have to score their deer. To win the stuff. Yep, to win the money. I'll buy that. I think you're sort of on to something there,

but you're also talking about hunter numbers when you're talking about Wisconsin and Kansas. I mean, like, incredibly more hunters in wisconsin than kansas but i think your point's well taken and and i don't think the boone and crockett boone and crockett club is trying to say that this is an infallible biological record you know at the time it was created it was the best we had. It was innovative. And it worked to turn a market hunting culture into a conservation culture where we said we're going to give value to older, mature males and species. So that's the good thing. But what you're saying, Spencer, is right. There could be holes inside of it, but that doesn't mean that it's totally invalid you know in boone and crock it's not saying that you know certainly every deer that net boone and crock nets boone and crock it is not being scored that's for sure but uh but uh i think it i think it has i think it has good historical precedence one thing i will say is that the net score is what people get tripped up on is they say that's not relevant.

And that's where you take the symmetrical difference from one side and deduct it from the other. And the animal is penalized in the scoring system. And people are like, that's not relevant. And, you know, I think Boone and Crockett, they can't change the way they score animals because they've been scoring animals for 120 years do you understand that it's like no i understand they told us about that one right here yeah so i mean i i think all those guys would say yeah

there may be a better way to actually evaluate the size of a whitetail deer rack but we're not going to do it because we can't because they would invalidate all the scores behind it you know so i think when you look at it like the idea that the boone and crockett club is just a bunch of ego-driven guys wanting to see who has the biggest buck is just not true i mean it's just really not i mean i and we know these guys steve you know a lot of these guys and i mean they're they're conservation-minded hunters just like us that, you know, very few, very few guys are chasing scores. That's my thoughts. That's fine.

That's good. What are you going to debate me on? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I just kind of feel like it's like leading to something, man, like it's going to lead to us going toe-to-toe on something. Oh. I don't know. I just kind of feel like it's leading to something, man. It's going to lead to us going toe-to-toe on something. Oh. I don't know.

Okay. Okay. I thought you had a specific topic. Oh, no, no, no. Oh, man. Now I'm disappointed. I just want to square off on something, man. Oh, that'd be awesome.

So, real quick, speaking of, watch this segue Spencer speaking of deer having big old antlers imagine if they had big old tusks take it away Seth and they used to

that was good however good they don't anymore but Take it away, Seth. And they used to. Ha! That was good. Super good. However, they don't anymore. But some deer, it's rare, some deer still have fangs or canines. The muntjac. Yeah, there's still a species of deer out there that have them. Yeah, his name, one of them is the Munt.

Remy shot one. Munt. Where are they from? Keep talking. Anyway, there's a- South Asia. There's South Asia. He's got little tusks. Yeah.

Great big tusks. There's a podcast listener that wrote in and sent a picture of a deer he shot in South Texas, um, that had canines. Um, and so I started looking in to the deer with canines and, um, found an article written by Kip Adams back in 2016 where he cited a lot of people in here. But basically a canine is like an evolutionary throwback to ancestral deer that had big canines, big fangs. And that's sort's like elk ivory. Yeah. It's a vestigial tusk.

It used to have a tusk, now it doesn't. Yeah. Which you think like a thousand years from now, they'll eventually just be gone? You think they'll evolve away from that? I don't think a thousand years is... Ten thousand? Yeah. A million?

I don't know. I think it's headed toward the going away. Yeah. They just don 10,000? Yeah. A million? I don't know. I think it's headed toward the going away. Yeah. They just don't need them. Yeah. It's headed toward the going away. But there was interesting studies done, you know, across the U.S.

And it kind of seems as if like, depending on the region, it's more prevalent than other places. For instance, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, they looked at 166 deer and found that four of those deer, which is 2.4%, had canines. They looked at deer in the lower peninsula. They, they looked at 134, which one of them had canines, which is 0.07%. Um, in Florida, they looked at 95 deer. Four of those had canines, 4.2%. So I don't know. Could be that deer in certain areas are still holding on to that ancient ancestral trait. Yeah, we had a guy write in. I remember this dude writing in.

But another dude wrote in recently, and he had shot a fanged, a tusked buck. I think it was in florida that had this crazy facial mat marking like it had like this mask on its face black and they were saying that that was sort of like this this you know this like this recessive gene that had been triggered in that deer for whatever reason lou Louisiana. Was it Louisiana? A crazy looking like face mask, similar to other deer forms. It had a black Y on its face.

The top of the Y started like its pedicles, and then it met like where its eyes are, and then that Y, the bottom of it continued all the way down to its nose and that was the marking jim heffelfinger was uh quoted an article about that deer saying yeah that's just like a throwback um piece of genetics that made it into this deer in 2016 he also talked about the black markings on their face. If you look at a whitetail's lower jaw, can you picture whitetail's lower jaw where it has that black ring, like right behind its nose?

That is where the fangs would have stuck out in a whitetail, and it'd be black there to make them show better to other deer and show them how big and impressive their fangs are. So that's why you see that black ring along their bottom jaw oh i like that man one last thing i want to touch on real quick uh another dude wrote in tell this story seth yep so there's another dude that that wrote in he's from um southeast new hampshire and he wrote in about a buck he thought it was a buck a buck that he killed um in southeast new hampshire he said it was uh in an area that has very high hunter density a lot of pressure um he shot it november 9th of 2019 and it was with three other does. So it was four deer altogether.

And he thought it was weird when the deer came through that the buck was the first of the four. So the buck was leading the does. But it wasn't a buck. It wasn't a buck. A buck doe. You would think November 9th that the buck would be in the back. But it wasn't a buck. He shoots this deer.

Oh, I got what he's saying. It was unusual because, yeah, the buck would be in the back, but it wasn't a buck. He shoots this deer. Oh, I got what he's saying. It was unusual because, yeah, the buck would always be following the does. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. Let me plug an article real quick. Pat Durkin is publishing an article on themedia.com

in January that talks about why the bucks and bulls are always last when they're walking out at night and you're waiting to kill them. Why are they always last ones? I already know. I'll have to read that one. I'm dying to know. I don't really know.

Anyway, so this guy, he shoots his deer and it goes a short distance and falls. And he calls a buddy to have him help him. And while he's waiting for his buddy, he goes down and looks like for first blood. Um, and while he's doing that, he noticed a, a spike comes running by a grunting and all hot and bothered.

Can you do that grunt? Even though you can't do the squeal of a, or the, the roar of a weasel. Yeah. Brr, brr, brr, brr, brr. That was good. Um, anyway, he comes all, he comes by all hot and bothered Close distance finally sees him Spooks off

And the guy His buddy shows up They start tracking the deer And same buck comes through Again Grunting And sees him again spooks off. So one of these deer, I think they assumed that it was the one that he shot.

Was in estrus. In estrus. Even though it was carrying around antlers. Yeah. So they took this deer to get aged, and a biologist just recently got back to him and said it was 17 years old. That is unbelievable, man. Can transgender deer go into estrus, though? I don't know.

I mean, it had all the female organs. Yeah. Sure. That's what I was going to say. I'm not sold on the idea that uh antlered doe would be fertile i don't know i mean maybe only maybe it didn't throw antlers every year and the guy that wrote it wrote transgender but spelled it d-e-e-r like a little joke transgender transgender um i wonder and I honestly wonder this, if she comes into heat, she comes into estrus

and a buck goes to breed her, does the buck get thrown off? Does the buck register like something's not right when it sees the antlers. Or does it just like he smells what he needs to smell and that's all he cares about? I think from like a deer behavior standpoint, a buck would see the visual cue of antlers from a long distance. And he might come in to investigate thinking he's about to get in a fight once he got closer and actually engaged the attention of the doe that had antlers that doe would begin to send body signals that she wasn't a buck and he would then that would then override the visual cue that this is a buck because of antlers yeah he's like i don't care what you got on your head

yeah i'm here for i think i think that smell just just trumps everything yeah that time of year that's all they're thinking about yeah no judgment just curious man yeah just curious someone's gonna fill up uh our inbox with like a trail cam photo of a buck mounting another buck it's happened for sure uh now we're gonna start getting pictures of that yeah and then uh when you're separating cows from their calves and and when they're coming into you know uh never mind there's situations where i'll, there's situations where cows Mount cows. Oh yeah. Steers jumping on each other all the time.

Yeah. So the stuff goes on now. Uh, Clay, I'm going to see you in a very soon. We're going to go deer hunting. You can't decide if you're going to bring your bow or your gun. You don't need to decide right now.

But I want to tell you something. I do not believe in bringing both. I think it's wrong. I don't believe in bringing both. If you're a bow hunter, then be a damn bow hunter. Don't come and be like, I'm going to try with my bow and then switch to my gun

because I'm a bow hunter only up to the point where I might get afraid that I won't be successful. Okay. Can I argue for Clay? It's immoral. I would like to refer to my lawyer, Spencer new hearth and i would also like to say that i'm not like fighting for this position but you've been

hinting at you hinted to me oh i've been i've been hinted about bringing both and i will not hunt with you well what spencer i'm gonna let spencer talk first he he's itching to go i i was fighting for clay to bring both and be like take your bow for a few days third day and grab your rifle no i think one of the worst sayings in hunting and it's something that i heard on the outdoor channel when i was probably like 12 or 13 years old and uh it it like ruined me for a period of time and it was this outdoor show that i was watching where uh the woman was at some big buck outfitter in what was the show i don't recall i could take a guess doesn't matter i could take a guess but it wouldn't be fair to them if i was wrong yep they were at like some outfitter in iowa or kansas and it was the last day of the hunt

in like 120 inch probably three and a half year old white tail buck walks by and they choose to pass and then uh they cut to the interview and the woman says now you never shoot something on the last day that you wouldn't shoot on the first and that i was like oh like that's that's good advice right like that's good advice no that's not that's your management she stole that from yanni and messed it all up so so i i take a lot of issue with that saying and your version is a version of that that like i you're saying that like you cannot go into a hunt and move the goal post you can't go into hunt and be like i'm gonna kill 150 inch buck and then on the second to last day you're like well it's probably not gonna happen of course you do that then 130 inch buck and then on the second to last day you're like well it's probably not gonna

happen of course you do that then 130 inch buck walks by that's totally fine kill that instead that's totally how is that okay how is that different than what you're telling clay i just think showing up with all kind of weapons that you have like in your head sort of tiered out as like best case you know it'd be like well i'm really trying to get one with my bow now failing that i'm gonna try to get with my rifle failing that i will try to get one with my truck it's just like i just like just make up your mind man listen here's here's make up your mind what when you when you say that what you are prioritizing in your hegemon of ideas is that the method of kill is most important. No.

And I used to. No, you are. No, I'm not. I used to be. Steve, this is touching on some deep-rooted issues inside of me because I grew up with such a strict bow hunting world that, like, I mean, we didn't have guns. We bow hunted. And as I became an adult, I feel like, and I still love to bow hunt. That's like my default thing to do.

But I kind of just became okay with using a gun. And so I kind of, and obviously i still love to bow hunt but so i look at it more from a the macro hunt picture like i would like to go where we're going and take a good white tail deer i would prefer to do it with a bow i don't know what i'm up against i uh then bring it back i don't i don't know what i'm up against but steve i want to say too i'm on your team on this i like what you said that i was like yeah i like that i mean i like the idea of not switching i don't like to switch i've switched before and i've brought a bow and i've brought a rifle or a bow and a shotgun it just never seems to work out for me that well because i'm not

i like the commitment at least when for me it's just it hasn't worked out that well it's like bring the bow stick with it or well our situation too is we have a very short time period you know we don't have a lot of time to get this done but so i'm on your team steve but it's like a hard never do that philosophy you know i got i think we give i think we got to give some grace i to me that's like some version of what uh that woman said on the outdoor channel and that was a mantra that i went by for a while that i would like to go back and retroactively kick my own ass for like passing on deer because i was like you know what you never shoot a deer in the last day that you wouldn't shoot on the first no you're messing that saying up it's yanni's saying it goes both ways or you can say like you never shoot a deer on the first day

never pass up on the first day what you'd be happy to have on the last i'm telling you what this woman said on the outdoor channel that uh caused me to pass on many deer in the future that i would i wish i could go back and shoot those deer because i would have been happier in the moment shooting that younger buck than uh not shooting it and then just like having that mantra rolling around in my head like you don't shoot a buck on the last day, you wouldn't shoot on the first. That's not good deer management. I'll have the last word.

No. That's different. That's all. Clay, I don't care what in the world you bring down there, you just bring one of them. Gotcha. No, I actually have your rifle. I'm bringing it. So you either down there, you just bring one of them. Gotcha. No, I actually have your rifle. I'm bringing it.

So you either decide, either way, I'm bringing you the rifle. Yeah, yeah. I like the archery idea, though. Oh, yeah. I think that's what you should do, man. We'll have a hell of a lot of fun. Let's do it. The cool part about this hunt is it's going to be peak rut. Rattling is going to be very effective.

Yeah. And the interaction you're going to have at close distances by rattling bucks in is going to be pretty sweet. And we're on like private land in Texas that barely no one gets to hunt on. Could be really good. Could be really good. I think it's going to be. If it was anything like last year when we were there, when Steve was hunting the old guy last year. Yeah, I'd be like, oh, look, a zebra.

It was insanely good, and we weren't hunting whitedales. Well, I've got a decoy. I picked up a decoy today, a real mobile decoy that we can just pop out real quick. It's a pop-up decoy, double-sided pop-up decoy, Montana decoy. So, man, we'll plop that thing out. We'll just have to be pretty strategic with our setup because you're going to be rattling for me, Steve, right? Yeah, I can picture us arguing a fair bit about too much rattling

and not enough rattling. We'll get it all sorted out, Clay. I don't know if our friendship is going to hold up, but we'll get it sorted out. Oh, man. All right, guys. See, man. Alright, guys. See ya. See ya. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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