The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 307: Talking About Things That Are Not Sexy to Talk About

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Doug Duren, Jim Heffelfinger, Richie Baker, Ross Copperman, Sean Weaver, Brody Henderson, Spencer Neuharth, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.Topics discussed: The Doug Duren Fact-Checking Alert App; Jim's sticker and the correct pronunciation of "coues"; Steve as a punt gun enthusiast; "rice breast" ducks; how Steve, Jani, and Corinne share the world's greatest doctor; very late duck migrations in 2021; canada geese benefitting from urbanization; how Cal was born with his mustache; FirstLite's new waterfowl line coming at you in 2022; "Typha"; the Shakespearean drama of Washington State's Fish and Game Commission; undermining the theory that rattlesnakes don't rattle anymore because people killed off all the ones that rattle; animals with Covid; when a Funeral Director's assistant writes in with hot tips on how to butcher a deer in the field to avoid disease; PFAS and EHD in deer; Jim's testicle stories; it's not a dog eat dog world; when Doug wrote a mean email to Steve; the CWD creep; mandatory testing?; a really nice buck...that's a doe; piebald deer and deer with fangs; a round of Trivia to bring in 2022!; 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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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Are you on, Phil? Might as well just cover this. We're on. Oh, okay. I think a great app for Doug, and you could call it Doug Duren, would be like, you just turn your phone on. This would save Doug a lot of trouble. Especially if he cuts all of his fingers off in a farm accident.

Like, yeah, he's already got a maimed up finger. If Doug had an app that he could just turn his phone on, right? Turn like the voice recorder on and it would just fact check everything everybody told him for him anyways. And then do alerts when he found a problem. So that way Doug could like maintain eye contact with people he's talking to and not be busy typing everything you tell him into his phone to find out that what you said isn't actually true. Yeah, right.

He's fact checking you while still part of the conversation. Yeah, I'd be like, oh, you know, acorns, you know, it seems they sure, they drop around, you know, October 2nd. Well, actually, you know, if you look, October 1st is peak acorn drop day. We had an argument about how many, a discussion, I should say, about how many acorns an oak tree drops when Steve was at the place one time.

And I don't know, it was widely varying. I said 10,000, he said a thousand or something like that. And we were trying to find it on Google as I do. And, uh, as I'm, as I'm talking, as he's talking. And, uh, at that moment, a friend of mine calls and I said, well, this guy I'll know. And Steve goes, okay, this is the, whatever he says is the answer. And I think he said a thousand and he's, I'm no longer friends with that guy. I feel like that's a conversation to have with Clay. I'm taking my,

I'm taking my kids to Doug Duren's the spring and, um, a lot of enthusiasm about ditch burning. Cause they got to burn ditches at Doug's and they like anything that's on fire. Oh yeah. And imagine a fire that's 300 yards long. It's like for a kid, there's, you know. Nothing bad. Yeah, because the problem with every fire is, in their mind,

every fire is not long enough. But here's a fire that runs way down the road. With a crick in the middle of it, too. That's the other part. Yeah, it's like everything you could possibly want. You can get burnt and two soakers. And just to keep the excitement alive this past spring, I ended up moving the fire across the road

and damn near burning my pine trees down. Yeah, I was getting a little stressed out. The pine duff caught on fire. Yeah. So the next thing you know, we had a hose down there and Jimmy was getting fire instructions from Steve. I felt like putting a little helmet on him. They were like, okay, dial 9-1 and put your finger on the one.

All right, so Doug's obviously here. That was Sean Weaver's here. Corinne, Spencer Newhart's way down in the corner. Spencer's going to hit us with another little Google fact before we proceed. Phil, who looked like a skater a minute ago, but you took that skater hat off uh this is this is the hat i wear when um my hair looks like shit oh yeah warm springs production hat that's right cute little bang sticking out of their t-shirt oh thanks man richie richie won tell tell me what you won richie and were you surprised when you won uh yeah no i was i was way surprised that nothing like that ever happens to me um um i i'm the podcast winner the trivia giveaway so so how

did how did we know how did like meat eater notify you that you won the thing and we're coming to play trivia uh well i was really bad about checking my email that week that i won and i almost missed out on it. Oh, like they almost moved on to the next person? Almost moved on to the next person. Do you know that that's actually really strict? I believe it. It has to be, right?

When I've been involved in TRCP giveaways, there's sort of like this set thing. It's like there's this set cadence in which you notify. Right, especially when you bring— And then you have to bump along and you can't I'll spare everybody but anyways, you probably did get lucky. Very lucky because one of your colleagues actually found my number somewhere and Corinne called me out of the blue.

She might have broke some kind of law. Maybe. I don't know what your guys' laws are on that. Yeah, like the sweepstakes people. Like the sweepstakes version of the ATF is going to kick the doors down. I hope not. Kick the door down And arrest Corinne At what age do you decide

If you're Richie with a Y Or Richie with an IE I did that Because I see you're with a Y No I did that What do you use Oh Y You do Y

So you do R-I-C-H-Y Yeah since I learned How to write my name Tucson, Arizona Tucson, Arizona If you had to put Your trivia skills On a sliding scale of 1 to 10,

where would you land it? Depends on the day of the week. Really? Some days you're pretty hot. Some days I'm hot, some days I'm not. Really? Spencer, hit him with a sample trivia. A sample trivia? A sample trivia. Here's my favorite trivia question. We use it all the time. Okay. Okay, let me think of a good one.

Name for me. Okay. Okay. Well, let me think of a good one. Name for me. Okay. I've got a good one, but I don't want to burn it because I gave it to Spencer and it'll be a good one. Oh, here's a good one. This is, watch this segue. Pronounce this word for me. Oh, cows, coos, which version do you want?

Oh, see, he already won. I already know that. All right. The answer was, the correct answer was, depends. I have me a brand new sticker from Jim Heffelfinger who's also here

and Ross Kopperman from First Lights here, my esteemed colleague. Great to be here. Jim Heffelfinger. I don't want to say you and Doug are my favorite people,

but you're up there. That's good. Up there. I know it's me, Jim. Brought me a sticker that says, see, here's the problem with the sticker. There's no problem with the sticker. Yeah, no, I'm going to read it like this. It's a sticker with a picture of Elliot Kooz.

Elliot Kows. Okay, Kows. Just like C-O-W-Z. Elliot, okay. This guy believed in levitation. He was kind of a crackpot. He was kind of a crackpot. He was like, he had some hits.

That's all brilliant people are. Yeah, he had some hits and some misses. Pronounced his name. Cows. Cows. Cows. And now there's a spirited debate whether you say a coos deer or a cow's deer. I would say there's not much debate.

Everybody says coos. There is because I always return to, I didn't know that these things existed until I became a subscriber to Western Hunter Magazine. Published by Chris Denham. Chris Denham. Okay. And Chris Denham told me that he'll say coos till the day he dies and he doesn't care what anybody says. So I just adopted.

There's a lot of people like that. I adopted that. But half a finger, I actually wrote, you wrote like an academic paper. No, a magazine article. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I'll be in the next issue of the Arizona wildlife views and it goes into all the detail about why it's cows academic paper. No, a magazine article. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it'll be in the next issue of the Arizona Wildlife Views, and it goes into all the detail

about why it's cows. Okay, go ahead, hit me with it. Talk me into it. Because I'm not going to switch, but talk me into it. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the issue. Oh, I didn't tell the good part of the sticker. The good part of the sticker says, it says, Coos Whitetail Deer. No, it doesn't.

It says, Coos Whitetail Deer tailed deer butcher the deer not the name before you go before you talk i'm going to point something out you when you write white tailed deer you do white hyphen tailed when we do books and our books go to the final copy edit person, like the real crackpot copy editors, they always do that. They always change it to that. And I always stet it. You stet it? Meaning I always reject the correction and I make it say whitetail. So you're wrong on a couple of counts on that one sticker. Well, six inch sticker and you've got two errors on it.

Let me tell you something. Are you familiar with, like when it comes to English language use, there's sort of like two dictionaries, right? There's two types, descriptive and prescriptive. Nope. Meaning one seeks to describe how the language is used and one seeks to advise on how to use the language. I tend to be more descriptive.

Descriptive. And when I see a deer, like, let's say I'm sitting there in a place that has mule deer and white tails, and someone says, oh, shit, there's a deer. Okay. Do I say, oh, no that's a white tailed deer. I don't. I'll go, that's a white tail. I say white tail. But when I write it, you know, the correct way to write it is white tailed deer. So when you write it, it has to be, as a biologist, it has to be white tailed deer. But in a magazine, I say white tails. What do you do? When I'm sitting behind a binocular,

I say white tails. Okay. Talk me, tell me why it's cows and i'll never bring it up for the rest of my life but i won't i won't switch that's not ever bring it up for the rest of my life it's just pretty simple his name was pronounced cows and everybody did he tell you his name he did actually yes yes so in the late 18th was he levitating he was he wrote a book called cow's checklist of Birds in North America. And one of those birds has a subspecies name that's cows named after him. And he has a footnote that says, here's how my family name is pronounced, C-O-W-Z. So he, in his own words, in his own publication, tells everybody how to pronounce his name.

So there's really no, there's no question how it's supposed to be pronounced. There's a big question on how people choose to pronounce it. And they can choose to pronounce it any way they want, but they should recognize what's correct and what isn't. I don't know how you come back from that. Yeah, that's hard.

You come back to it like this. I mean, Elliot, you come back with a sentence like this, me and Ross are going coos deer hunting this January. Yeah, that's a fact. That reminds me of the white tail versus white tail reminds me of one. Damn.

So if your car doesn't start in the morning, are you someone that says my damn car didn't start or my damned car didn't start? I've had this debate with several people. I fall into the latter. Like it was damned. You'll put the D on there. It was damned

That's why it didn't start I will switch that I don't know Spencer hit us with your quick little factoid Your little punt gun factoid That I don't believe I don't think Sean and I came to an agreement Because I can't find anything definitive

The only thing I can find is on You you're not going to accept this, Wikipedia. No, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, man. Uh-huh. No. Listen. I'm not, I'm not, when you're, if you're at a, like an actual, if you're writing for, when you go through the fact check process at a magazine, they won't accept Wikipedia.

Right. But is there a, is there a footnote, like source at the bottom of that? Yeah, but then I can't find anything within that source that backs up what they said. Spencer's trying to tell me that in 1860, they had already banned the punt gun. I feel like it was a rolling ban that some states were outlawing it. And then at one point, it's like everybody said no to it. This sentence, again, you're not going to accept it from Wikipedia. It says, in the United States, this practice depleted stocks of wild waterfowl by the 1860s.

Most states had banned the practice. The Lacey Act of 1900 banned the transport of wild game across state lines. And the practice of market hunting was outlawed by a series of federal laws in 1918. I don't feel like that satisfies. Yeah. No, it doesn't satisfy me.

Trivia voice, dude. Yeah. I'm just still not buying it. Cause like I can sit here right here. There's a 1914 listing of the punt gun owners in Susquehanna flats. There's like a punt gun owners association Susquehanna flats. There's like a punt gun owners association? Yeah.

Punt gun enthusiasts? You know, when I was researching the punt gun, they still have like wildlife officers in India that will confiscate like two or three a year from people that are out killing waterfowl with them. Man, I think that we should, and I'll okay this right here and now. I think we got to get it.

We got to start getting in on those sites where you can buy a punt gun and get a punt gun and start messing around with it out in a field. Yeah. Let's do that. Yeah, we should get a punt gun. Let's do that. And some real cheap beat up old decoys off Facebook marketplace or something. See how big a spread

we can hit i was thinking clay pigeons i don't know that'd work i would love to get a punt gun and start having become like a punt gun enthusiast do you think your kids would be more into the fire or the punt gun oh if we got a big ditch fire going and then and then i said now now we're gonna score number two shoot the punt gun down into the fire. Yeah, we don't have to choose. Yeah, they would be very into that. I want in on this. This sounds awesome.

Ross, be shoving my kids out of the way. My turn. My turn. We can get this punt gun like an LLC. Get about 20 of us, right? And everyone pitches in a couple hundred bucks. We got a punt gun all of a sudden. No, I just think that

our company will just buy the punk gun. There you go. That's good. Can you start bidding on punk guns for us? I will do some real research, because I feel like you're being for real. Oh, I'm dead serious. I don't know. I'm going to put the mic down now and start typing. I thought Steve was joking about this lazy boy

you're sitting in, Spencer, for months. It turns out he wasn't so i would say just go if we had a punt gun i would become a punt gun enthusiast yeah for sure uh that's a great segue into um another addition to sean's duck report now sean i gotta warn you you get to talking about science-y stuff. Yeah. You got old Heffelfinger sitting here. That's fair. So normally if someone talks about something science-y, a couple days later I get an email from Heffelfinger.

Being like, well, actually. So he's just going to be able to live do it. Doug's already typing out. I was going to say, I'll be Googling. Sean hasn't even started. going to be able to live do it well you can bet doug's already typing i'll be googling well i actually wanted to talk about two different waterfowl things because one is like a constant email thing we get or you know messages on instagram whatever else rice breast rice breast first one this year. I mean, the first one that was so bad, it was unquestionably inedible during the youth duck season. Yeah, what do you mean?

I mean, inedible because it messes with you? Because it's not inedible. Listen. Like mentally and emotionally? That's the conversation I want to have about this. Okay. It's this. If it was like a thing that was happening to me all the time, I'd get over it. Okay.

I'm raising a family. Now, I pick my battles. Dinner night, we had ducks and duck hearts. That's pretty impressive. What I do is I take bear fat or pork fat, and I simmer the duck hearts in the fat for a long time. Just bloop, bloop, bloop. So they don't get too chewy. Bloop, bloop, bloop in the bubbles.

Then I put them on a skewer and put them on a hot grill. Okay? Mm-hmm. I make my kids eat them. Do they like them, or do they do they object no they end up liking them but i'm like eat that they didn't have the other stuff okay do they know what it is steve oh yeah okay he's like it's got a hole in it so yeah it's where his blood comes in and out um but if i don't want to do like i don't't want to do the, the, the, I didn't want to

serve that. There's been one, we, we believe in the, like, um, everybody's got it. We don't cook special stuff. Like everybody eats what everybody eats. There's been one time we had something made out of older deer's liver and my daughter's crying about it. She didn't like it. And, um, I was like, I don't care.

And then my wife takes a bite. And my wife goes, Rosie, you don't need to eat that. But yeah, it would just cause a lot of trouble if I had bought it. Because we were all looking at it. And if I served it, it would have set me back. And then I would have lost credibility. So here's the point I bring up that i feel like doesn't ever get discussed the only time i ever noticed rice breast personally is if i've breasted a bird but if you're plucking your

birds you're never looking past the skin so you're probably eating a lot of rice breasted birds this you're doing a microaggression yeah 100 percent let me tell 100%. Let me tell you something. You ever hunt youth duck season? Yes, and I know you're not plucking them then. They got all the pin feathers. They got all the pin feathers. Of course.

And there's no fat and the skin's too thin. My entire point is that the discussion around the messages I get around like should i eat a rice-breasted bird it's only because you tell people what we're talking about no one knows so so rice breast is uh sarcosystis it's pretty much cysts in the breasts of the duck that look like rice hence the rice breast is it all pus or is. Is it all pus or is it little worms? They're technically a cyst created by whatever the parasite is.

It's not actual worms. It's just a cyst created by the parasite. It's a minor infection. Oh, and it looks ridiculous. It's gnarly. And for whatever reason, it seems like birds you shoot early in the year, you know, shovelers off the local shit ponds tends to be like the duck you find with it. They look like maggots at first. Yeah.

It's not pleasant to look at at all. if I gave you a Pepsi challenge of the most rice-breasted duck on the planet in a non, do you feel that you'd be able to pick out the rice breast? Oh, no. I don't know. You've been eating them?

I've never not eaten them. So that would be yes. Yeah. The double negative would be dub yeah like why the double negative well yeah because because like it's uh for me it's a it's it's a point for me is like that i'm sure i've eaten dozens of rice breast birds when they're plucked yeah but you so why not eat them when they're breasted because i feel like let me ask you. Yes. No question. I turn them into tacos.

So you don't have to look at it. Have you ever found one so bad that you discarded it? I probably have when I was younger, not anytime recently. Got you. So your, your hypothesis is because you know, or probability wise, you've probably ingested this several times without knowing it and nothing bad ostensibly happened to you that is perfectly fine. I mean, it's, it's like unanimous that it's doesn't affect you. It doesn't hurt humans in any way.

It's just gross to look at. When you cook it, like, let's just say you smoke a sarcocistic duck breast or you, you know, grill it. Are you like, can you actually look at the cooked meat and see that there is a difference? And is there a textural difference when you're eating it? You definitely see it, but I haven't noticed it like texture wise. But you have a picture here that that's an extreme case that's an extreme case that's what i had this that's what we had this youth season one duck had it really now callahan mentioned to me that

he mentioned to me something to the effect of i'm not surprised because it's been such a warm fall. Does that make any sense to you? I have no clue. I don't know enough about it. Yeah, I don't either. What do you think, Jim? I don't either. I've never heard that relationship.

Hmm. Well, go on. Is that all you're going to say about that? That's all I wanted to talk about with that was just raise that point. Nothing's going to happen to you. Yeah. It's unsightly, but there's no thing that says you're going to wind up

with a deadly parasite. No. No. Yeah, jackrabbits in southern Arizona have tapirum larva, and it's not the

kind of tapirum that can affect humans, so you can technically, as long as you cook a good, you can eat it. And we do.

If there's a few tapirums here and there, we still keep all the meat. But sometimes you get one that's just loaded, and that one we let

the coyotes have. Did you know um i have a new doctor the world's greatest doctor okay her name's katie yanni's doctor too i just found out yeah she's so tight-lipped she is she's so tight-lipped she didn't tell me she was yanni's doctor well i don't i think there's some laws yeah about that yeah well she sticks to him i found out from yanni it was his doctor because i'm down there breaking a thing i'm down there telling her about me and yanni in the trichinosis situation and she's not like oh yeah that's my patient he told me that too she played totally dumb but then i was talking to yanni and he's like that's my doctor i told her about that so that's impressive anyways she's getting this whole thing rolling to she's helping us pursue this biopsy in state in state to get the deep muscle

yeah biopsy in our biceps to find those little larvas in there i have some more info for you about that. Well, I need to connect you with my doctor. She'll probably play dumb with you. Yeah, because she is probably my doctor too. Is her last initial in the second half of the alphabet? Steve, I'm pretty sure you can say her name. Do it again.

Oh, that's your doctor? Yeah, world's greatest doctor. Yeah. Okay, go on, Sean. Okay, so the waterfowl topic I wanted to really talk about today is specific to this

year, which is the crazy weather we've been having and how it affects waterfowl specifically like um two things one being the drought that's been pervasive across the country especially the west um and two just how mild it's been. But first and foremost was last winter, well, last fall, winter, and into the spring was about as dry as you could ever ask for in the Dakotas and Saskatchewan, which is where most of the continent's waterfowl nest, prairie pothole region.

North Dakota was down 80% on their pond counts in may are you serious yeah 67 below the long-term average which you can only imagine how many fewer ducks that leads you gotta be kidding me man 80 pond count down pond count meaning someone counting baby ducks. No, so, sorry, not the actual counting of ducks, but the physical ponds, like spots for them to nest on. An 80% reduction in pond surface. Yeah, so if there was 100 ponds last year, now there's 20 or whatever. No shit, really? So we don't know that that will correlate. We do.

Obviously, it's not good, but you don't know that that means necessarily an 80% reduction in ducks because there could be some buffering of some sort in there. But we know it. I mean, we know there's the relationship of that. It hurts the duck population. Sure. In addition to that, which luckily we have like long-term harvest data and like adaptive management, but we also like don don't we didn't have counts from canada because of covid so we're kind of a little blind right now on like what the duck population might be with this drought to go like a little more into how severe the drought was bismarck, North Dakota recorded their third driest year on record only preceded by dust bowl

years, which I mean, that's, that's pretty extreme. Well, anyway, what all this comes back to is like, we know just based on the pond counts and the water situation that we have less ducks going into fall this year. we don't know exactly what that number looks like because we didn't get a waterfowl count but we had less ducks going into the fall yeah and then in addition to that we have like undeniable warming we have just so much warmer falls last fall november 2020 was was the warmest November on record ever. Um, this November was the seventh warmest November on record in the United States.

And it was also like the eighth driest. 2020 was the average war, like averaged out to be the warmest November on record. Yeah. And so what this like, what this eventually leads to is just this later shift in the waterfowl migration. And you have, and there's several factors that I'll discuss as I keep coming on. Because there's, it's a very complicated issue. It's beyond just weather.

It's beyond just drought. It has to do with agriculture. It has to do with agriculture. It has to do with urbanization. Like there's so many factors, but one of them that this year is so undeniable is like the weather, the climate has changed and the ducks are moving south later. And there's a lot of frustrated people so far this season,

for sure. It's been a hard duck season for a lot of people. You pointed out that Minnesota just had their first recorded December tornado. Yeah. I mean, talking about tornadoes in Minnesota, what was December 15th-ish? Yeah. Wild. Hmm.

Yeah, I was in South Texas last week for my son's graduation. He got his PhD in in wildlife we went down there to see him walk shout out to levi 90 degrees for the commencement december 10th and it just like leaves water you know the waterfowl hunters in the north like the the data shows that their duck hunting success doesn't necessarily get affected by weather changes because inevitably like hunters in north dakota south dakota minnesota wisconsin they already have the birds the birds are nesting there or like they're the birds never don't come that far south they always at least get that far but um there's quite a bit of data and and

like a correlation of the the lower the pond counts and the warmer the year like just obviously i mean anecdotally but also scientifically makes sense the south struggles they don't kill as many ducks. Didn't you last, wasn't last year one of the highest, I guess we'd call it pond counts, but there was a lot of water in the Dakotas? That was two years ago. And we're going through some just wild fluctuations right now. Flood, drought, flood, drought. And it's because it was only, I would say it was probably four or five years ago we were at the highest duck count ever oh really and then now we're on a real slide

highest duck count or highest pond highest duck count oh just five years the reason we don't have duck counts the last two years is is covid hey can I put in a request for the next, for Sean's, for the next Sean's duck report or whenever, sometime in the future? Can you do a duck report on age demographics? Oh, of duck hunters? Or of ducks? No, no, no, no, no.

I don't care about that. Of the ducks? Ducks, man. Yeah. Age demographic of ducks. Old ass ducks. We shot a duck or not a duck sorry but you can throw this into it a water like age demographics on waterfowl okay uh did you hear about when we called in a

sandhill we had a sandhill crane that was banded 17 years prior in fairbanks alaska we killed it in texas yeah that's so crazy. Am I exaggerating? I think I was. No, no, no. That's not exaggerating at all. I think it was 17. When I was guiding snow goose hunts, we had an 18-year-old snow goose that was banded as an adult. Yeah, this was banded as an adult.

And it's funny. I had been to where it was banded. Really? Yeah. I like when that happens. We shot a duck in Oklahoma that was banded where I live in South Dakota. Went to Oklahoma to kill a duck. That was where we were from.

It was back home. Any harvest data coming in on ducks from this year? Is it a low duck year or is it a good duck year? It's a bad duck year. I mean, I haven't seen any actual harvest data, but I can't imagine it's going to be good. Was five years ago a good duck year? Yeah, we're on a, we're just in general on a downhill trend of like overall hunter success anyway. And that's kind of what I want to discuss in future duck reports is all the different

factors that are affecting that really. Because it's not just as simple as like, there's less ducks and it's too warm. It's, it gets way more complicated than that. When you start talking about like crop distribution and even stuff like, um, power plants and industrial plants and urbanization, like all that is affecting, but I'll, I can't get all into it.

We'll be here for hours. Yeah. But there's, there's a lot of factors leading to lower hunter success. On ducks. Mm-hmm. But then you look at like sandhill cranes, snow geese. Geese. Yeah.

Like speckle bellies are booming right now. Speckle bellies are, I think, anecdotally, I think 20 years from now, we'll be looking at speckle bellies the same way we look at snow geese now of like just unbelievable population growth. Yeah. But ducks are not in the same ballpark at all. Huh. And it really comes back to that prairie pothole region.

I mean, that is it. It's up to 70% of the continents nesting ducks. So if the Dakotas in Saskatchewan are in a drought, you just don't have ducks. Got it. I feel like a lot of folks will listen to what Sean just said and be like, I fucking told you this year sucks. Yeah.

It's not us. It's the ducks. There's a certain element to it for sure that it's just cyclical, just like any population of animals. And ducks are probably even more so than a lot of animals. You can't change what the jet stream is doing or, you know, what rain does or what snow does. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's an interesting point because I feel like with big game animals, we have a tendency to blame it on our own behavior to some degree. No, we don't. Predator management. Wolves. Exactly. Wolves in the DNR. Yeah. And with waterfowl, it's more of this mystique of like, I don't get it, but I'm not seeing as many ducks.

I don't know if it's me. I don't know if it's the blind I'm hunting in. I don't know if it's, you know, my buddy buddy's calling but it ain't happening this year and we can't blame it on ourselves as easily so it becomes less yeah less clear well and i think um you know we could end up with a snowy winter and by next spring be back into the you know back into the game like have all all sorts of ponds it's that's all it is you know guys back into the game, like have all sorts of ponds. It's, that's all it is, you know. Guys just got to deal with it, get used to it, find ways to be successful anyway. Hunt speckle bellies.

Yeah, and just like be willing to adjust the conditions and go different places or like, you know, not sit on the same pond every day expecting that like, you know, that all of a sudden the ducks are just gonna appear like sometimes you're just gonna have to go out and search for those like some yeah okay there's gonna be fewer ducks but you still gotta just like anything you gotta go find them remember in the late 90s when everyone was you know all of a sudden you could hunt geese and like we're all getting like bit by mosquitoes hunting geese in the late summer. Is that still going on?

Yeah. South Dakota, North Dakota still have an August goose season. Because in the east, that goose fly away is kind of screwed right now. Yeah, they're down to, I think, one a day. But then golf course geese in the Midwest. What's the difference between those two things? You could do that now, or you can make that a Sean. That's, that's a, I think that comes back to the urbanization conversation that we got to have. They're like a winner.

Yeah. Like to some level, like, well, of course, Canada geese have won with urbanization, but also somewhat mallards, right? Maybe not population-wide, but like mallards have definitely adapted to urbanization way better than any other duck. Friends of mine in Fairbanks were saying that they've got mallards on the university, on the campus, in Anchorage and Fairbanks. They got mallards that have found a way to overwinter. Yeah, that's crazy.

And he said they just get fat and lazy and overwinter in these sort of like populated areas with bubblers and stuff, you know? And he said, and then these ducks show up in the spring, migrators, and it's some like haggard male that's been like starving to death flying back home. And he said those

big fat ones just come up and be like, I'll take it. I'll take it from here, boys. Like they just been biding their time you know yeah this this is definitely uh like put a tab on this because we're gonna keep talking about this there's there's some interesting studies and just conversations around the urbanization stuff. So we'll cover that another time for sure. Got it. Okay, Ross, you ready? Let's do it. I think so, yeah.

So you run the program at First Light. You're a duck enthusiast. Yeah, I appreciate that. Earlier I was saying that Ross is a big-time duck hunter, and Ross contested to say he's a long-time duck hunter. Yeah, I mean, at one point, uh, Steve and I, and I think Dan had a conversation about the intersection of passion and talent and how the

sometimes there isn't said intersection. I feel like that's my case. Like I'm a passionate waterfowler. I don't know that I'm particularly talented at it, but, uh, I've been doing it a long time. Definitely probably spent more time in the duck blind than any other pursuit that I have. So it's been a lot of time sitting.

So, but first light is coming out with a waterfowl line. Are you kind of like in your head like, yes, finally. Dude. Yeah. So it's a long, long time coming. I mean, we've been talking about it as far as

I know for at least eight years. Wow. Waterfowl has always been like the denominator in the office that we just haven't gone after. Even though like everybody does it. More people, we always do this kind of nerdy math, but we definitely spend more time collectively waterfowling across the office than in any other individual pursuit. So it's always been there. I mean, shit, I met Cal well before first light.

So back in the day, right? Like when you used to go to your, uh, waterfowl zone and we'd put in the boat launch and you knew everybody there cause people weren't doing it yet. And it was like a community and you knew you saw so-and-so's rig and you're like, oh, he's here.

And you knew where he hunted and stuff. So my buddy Robbie's out there and I motor up to him cause I know what blind he's going to be in. And this was probably 2002. And I motor up there and Robbie's sitting in the blind and he's got this kid with him with a big ass video camera. And he's like, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm going to make some DVDs or something.

And this is my friend Ryan from Montana. He's out here filming. Cal was a hundred percent. And I remember this. I can't remember like where my keys are right now, but I remember Cal had, you know, like the bomber hat on and I mean, I don't know exactly how old Cal is. I don't think anybody does, but he was like born with that mustache, right? Yeah, correct. Like I think he was 12 and he had a pretty thick broom going there. Uh, no, I just remember this. And, and, um, you know, I, I think I was, let's see, roughly 22. So Cal was approximately, you know, he's in high school was my guess or right around there. Uh, and that's how we met like, and then we didn't see each other for whatever another eight years or something until i went to first light um and cal was the only employee at that point i was

second employee so there's always been this like backstory i actually used to waterfowl with scott one of the founders and kenton the other founder well before i was at first light before first light was around and then we started hiring people And the cool thing about waterfowl is as we'd hire people from, whether it was Intermountain West or Maryland, waterfowl is a denominator, right? Like you're not speaking the language of whitetail versus Western. Everybody waterfowled or goose hunted, duck hunted, whatever. Um, so point being, it's been in our blood for a long time. We've talked about it a long time. And yeah, to your question, I am definitely really excited to finally get there. point being it's been in our blood for a long time we've talked about it a long time and yeah

to your question i am definitely really excited to finally get there uh i feel like we've been penciling it out and noodling on it for eight years and we finally get to bring it to the table so pretty excited tell people right now what typha means oh boy that's gonna be one of the ones that people are like what yeah typha is typhus is a genus. It's a great word. Yeah, it's the genus that like cattail belongs to. So all of that sort of marshy foliage falls under that category or genus, I guess. You buy that, helpful finger? Yep. To clarify.

Jim buys it. Yeah, save me an email there. Google sells it. It's true too. Yeah. Doug's app has it. Doug's phone. His app has it going, b it. Yeah, save me an email there. Google sells it. It's true, too. Yeah. Doug's app has it. Doug's phone. His app has it going, bing!

Yeah. Bullshit. Bullshit. Yeah. Well, to clarify, Typha's the name of our new waterfowl pattern. Oh, yeah. I was getting there. Did I leave that out?

Yeah. Well, I'm sorry. Yeah. It's a valid question. But, yeah, it kind of encompasses that full marshy atmosphere that we developed this pattern to use specifically for, but yeah. So besides it being in our DNA, the other thing that we were looking at for the last eight years, we're like, man, what a lot of people don't know, unless they happen to have tried it is that, you know, our, our, uh, foundation for our system is Marino. Merino for waterfowling is the best goddamn thing to ever happen to anyone.

I mean, when you drop your motion decoy wing into the water and you got to go shoulder deep in there and you pull your arm out and you have the property of Merino that's warm and wet, and then you go home and maybe you're hanging out and you forget to dry it, the fact that Merino doesn't stink, it just all comes together and then it's insulated properties and all that. so that was kind of a no-brainer um and then we've spent the last several years developing specific fabric packages for waterfowl um and then really dorking out on a lot of the features that would make our product um smarter and more

usable and more friendly so that you'd use it and you'd be like man i can't believe nobody's thought about this feature before now which to be fair and to be transparent i feel like waterfowl has long been a forgotten category in particularly in apparel i could say that probably across the board relative to let's say western big game i mean you've seen so much innovation in there over the last 20 years and for a variety of reasons a lot of it was driven from mountaineering technology that people would borrow and then apply to yeah that's a good point man yeah and you saw that and you they always had like mountain hunting gear always had something to chase yeah which was exactly which

was mountaineers exactly right and it was very easy for folks, Hey, that's working really well in mountaineering. Let's apply that to hunting, figure out how to put a pattern on it, you know, all that sort of stuff. But for whatever reason, probably by virtue of, you know, honestly, waterfowl is a smaller market. I think it was neglected for a really long time when in fact, it's one of the most, like from a durability standpoint, it's certainly one of the most demanding pursuits that we take place in. I mean, people view waders, let's be honest, as disposable.

Like if you can get, if you're a hardcore waterfowler and you can get a year out of one without having to warranty it or repair it, you're pretty psyched. Yeah. You just don't expect, waterfowls don't expect things to last. And we looked at that as, you know, like, I don't know, the market was, the manufacturers are neglecting that market. And we wanted to make stuff that was like brick shithouse tough, smart, and using the same level of innovation that we've seen in Western big game and whitetail over the last, you know, 10 to 20 years.

And you got to stay dry. Yes. You know, that's such, it's, it seems so simple, but to have something that's light enough to functionally wear and not too bulky and thick to where you can actually still shoulder a shotgun and be functional while also like, you gotta be dry. When would, uh, when, when does your average mug be able to go out and be like, oh, I can buy it? Well, the product will come to, we'll get inventory of it next summer in probably like

June, July type time. And that's when we'll have it available for purchase. In the meantime, uh, we're going to start rolling stuff out, some previews and showing what the individual product looks like, uh, between now and then, and really get into, you know, all the stuff that we think makes it, um, the best waterfowling product in the market. I don't want to, I don't want to mess your story up, but you also are stumbling upon the greatest

ice fishing line of apparel. You're right. And you did point that out not too long ago. I'm not going to lie to you. We didn't design that. I was like, what these, what y'all be calling these is, uh, you know, ice fishing. Yeah.

Another neglected market. There you go yeah i will oh go ahead well i was gonna say that like on the pattern front that's probably the thing i'm like i was most excited about when i first got to start screwing around with this stuff was that over and over the problem i've had had with products for years is too dark. Like, when you're out in the marsh and you look at guys from a distance, you typically notice they're a black blob. Like, they are darker than their surroundings. But you don't realize how light that fall-dried...

Right. Exactly. ...cattail and other vegetation is. Mm-hmm. And, you know, that's a thing in waterfowl hunting is like cover up any black holes, right? In your blind, like you want grass hanging over the top to cover that like black hole in the blind or even on a boat. Like you don't want a dark motor on the back showing. So you go put a motor cover on it.

Like that dark black blob, whether in a field or in a marsh is like always a problem and it's always what the birds pick out and usually camo is just too dark and at least for the marsh environment for a cornfield environment got it because everyone's always trying to create a pattern or a camo that like can ride the line right of like oh you can wear this in the timber of arkansas or the buck brush in missouri or then a cornfield in south dakota it's like well those are very different yeah those are very different environments and typha is light it's like a light color some people would um like maybe in the South might think it's too dark in their environment and they might be right.

But as far as like, if you hunt anything grassy, anything marshy, anything agriculture at all, like it looks so good. And it's an area where it's just not a debatable point. Like it's indisputably benefit camel, like the right camel is indisputably beneficial when you're hunting ducks that's like they see shit if there's anything i noticed this year like me and yannis were on a hunt in nebraska and i was he was kind of like on the edge of the cattails little tucked in but they were like pretty light thin cattails and i was out picking up a bird, looking back at him 80 yards. And I was like, tickled pink that he was just not, he was not dark. He was the same, you know, wasn't all

blacked out. I'm happy to hear that because over the last handful of years, we probably went through 15 iterations and it kept getting lighter and lighter. You know, we'd have people, folks like Sean and we'd have guides and all this stuff and we'd secretly show it to them and they're like lighter, lighter, lighter. And it landed where it did with that recognition that I think people have a tendency to Sean's point to try and find a happy medium. And with waterfowl, that doesn't work. I mean, you've got to be pretty specific. I think out of all of our pursuits, arguably waterfowl and turkey are probably the most discriminant.

And so we really tried to make something that was intentionally specific to this environment as opposed to something that could operate in a multitude of environments. Gotcha. All right. So this has you titillated. Go to TheMeatEater.com slash Waterfowl and sign up and you stay abreast of all things waterfowl related at MeatEater. Again, MeatEater.com slash Waterfowl. 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 makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x 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.

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onXmaps.com Welcome to the onX club, y'all. Here's the thing Corinne and I were fixing to talk about, but I'm just going to do it real quick. The spring bear hunt in Washington. We've covered this everybody in the

planet talking about this yeah i don't know yeah no ever i mean north korea is kind of a black hole dude like i don't really know coming out what's coming out of north korea on this but most people in the world are talking about this washington their their spring black bear season is sort of like on hold. It came down to this commission vote. You know when you think of a Fish and Game Commission, you think of a Fish and Game Commission as being people who are predisposed to be supportive of hunting and supportive of use of natural, responsible use of natural resources. Washington ain't okay it's like they've got their governor and you know i don't know

they've had a lot of like very very left-wing governors for a very long time that have have packed the commission full of people who not only are antagonistic they got people on the commission not only antagonistic to hunting but like outspoken criticisms of the north american model of wildlife conservation i mean they had a freaking zookeeper on there who just resigned like a zoo like when i think of a fishing game commissioner the last thing that pops in my mind is a zookeeper he's like what we like to do is we keep in a little cage. Put them in a cage, right? That way nothing bad can happen to them. This guy resigned.

But here's what happened in Washington. I'm trying to do this as quickly as possible. They're supposed to have nine commissioners, like the Supreme Court. Why do you have nine Supreme Court justices? In case they don't agree. They all vote. And then it just so happens that you're going to have like the right way. They got eight.

I don't know, the governor won't appoint the ninth one. The ninth one's supposed to come from the east part of the state. People in the east part of the eastern part of Washington tend to be hunt fish friendly.

Mm-hmm. Right? More culturally like that. People from the west part of the state tend to be, I'm speaking tremendous generalizations here. There's a greater likelihood they're going to be i'm speaking tremendous generalizations here there's a greater

likelihood they're going to be antagonistic to like hunting and fishing like the uh like the cascade mountain range kind of yeah split there uh they haven't gotten their commissioners so they got these eight people they get it comes to a vote whether to have the spring bear season and it falls a four to four vote and instead of it being a tie and that means the bear hunt goes on for whatever reason it's a tie but the bear hunt doesn't go on another commissioner resigns he resigns because he's like in the commissioner dog house somehow the zookeeper um he uh so now they got seven now they got seven commissioners. They got to get all the commissioners appointed, and then they got to rehash this thing out.

The tricky part is the Fish and Game Agency, when the biologists from the Fish and Game Agency come forward, they're like, bears are doing great in Washington. Very strong population. We recommend having the limited draw bear hunt as usual. That was their recommendation from a biological perspective. And some of these commissioners like it's social, not biological. There's like a social antagonism to this.

Yeah. And that's the argument. They're not even debating anymore. Like whether it's a sustainable resource. Right. Uh, oddly. No, I shouldn't say fortuitously. There's a thing where you can let the, where they like invite input.

Washington's Fish and Game Commission invites input. You're not being like a weird internet troll. Like they invite input. There's a thing called contact the Fish and Wildlife Commission. Go to my Instagram, scroll back to December 20. And you'll see a picture of me doing a grip and grin with a bear. In there, there's like a link and it's a link to how you give the old what for to the commission. It's a form you fill out.

And they're like sensitive. They look at the form. They're sensitive. They want to hear from people so if you like live particularly if you live in washington if you hunt washington um let them know how you're feeling about this they got a form for you so like going to like my like bio go to like at steven ranella scroll back till you see a dead bear go to the lincoln bio and then fill out a thing letting the commission know where your head's at on the bear hunt. Think about all that, Doug.

I think that it's interesting that we have sort of the opposite, at least politically, situation in Wisconsin and that we have a natural resources board that's also appointed by the governor. But we have one of the board members whose term ended in April of last year who has refused to leave the board until the Senate confirms his replacement, which of course the governor put in, nominated right away. And it's a, he was appointed by our previous governor who happened to be a Republican. And our current governor is a Democrat and our Senate is controlled by the Republicans. So they're just, essentially this guy says, well, I'm not leaving the board until there's a, until the new nominee is confirmed. But then they won't confirm him. And they won't confirm him.

So we have this squatter. I mean, and it has a huge effect. Do you think these guys are all talking together to make a plan? Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt. Durkin has written about it extensively. And it is affecting, well, our wolf management. It's affecting our deer management. And it's just, to me, it's, in both of these cases, it's unsettling that politics are playing such a heavy role in how our natural resources are managed. You're talking about the North American model of conservation. Science-based management in Wisconsin is also being ignored, but it's being ignored by the other side because there's a contingent who wants to have, you know, early – let's have wolf hunts early and often.

And the DNR is saying a different thing about wolves. Not that we shouldn't have a wolf hunt. Not that we shouldn't be managing or anything like that. But that we need to have a better plan. And, you know, a law was passed, again, by the legislature and signed by the previous governor that says if wolf hunting is allowed, we need to have a wolf hunt during this period of time. So last year we rushed one, and I think you guys talked about the shit show that our wolf hunt became.

And it was because of this rushing forward. I don't have the answer for it. I'm not in wolf country, and I don't apply for a wolf tag just because it's not something that I'm particularly interested in hunting. But I certainly agree that they should be hunted and managed, but how that's done is so important. And I'm running, quite honestly, as we talk about chronic wasting disease and deer management, we're running the same thing there. So it's interesting that we have the same problem in two states, but they seem to be coming from different political standpoints. Well, that's why I'm a proponent of creating a third political party.

Well, I'm with you. When are we going to do that? Right now. That's happening. Yeah. I think it's just, I think we just rehashed Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party. I like it.

I like it a lot. That's a good idea. Heffelfinger, take this one on for me. Jim. Which is that? I just call you Heffelfinger so people know what I'm talking about

because you have an unusual last name. That's true. But Jim Heffelfinger, take this one on for me. The theory that, this is a fan favorite, rattle snakes don't rattle anymore because people killed all the ones that rattle. Yeah, that's a common thing. Do you hear that? No, no.

You never heard that? I mean, I've heard that. Oh, you've heard the theory. Okay. I've heard it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Cal floated this one, right've heard the theory. Okay. I've heard it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. Cal floated this one, right? Yep. It was inspired by his dog and like about killed by a rattlesnake. Right. They bit it at the base of the ear. I actually had, I got a brand new little yellow lab puppy and we had a run in with a venomous creature. About two days after she was home as an eight week old puppy, she was mouthing something

and I came out and I said let's drop it what do you got there and she flicks off of her tongue a black widow a big black widow spider pops out on the ground and it wasn't moving but it was fresh she had picked it up and killed it did it get her no we washed her and somehow she did not get bit so yellow lab seemed to have a propensity to get into venomous creatures but but we did talk about the, you talked about the snake selection thing about killing, rattling rattlesnakes, but we can just recap it. Basically, in order for something like that, you're talking about forcing evolution, kind of an artificial evolution where you select these animals that have a higher propensity to rattle, animals that are quick to rattle, a little more sensitive to rattle. And so you,

first of all, have to have snakes, have little more sensitive to rattle. And so you, first of all, have to have snakes, have to have that being genetically programmed. So you have to have some snakes that they get this gene from their parents that they're a little more sensitive to rattle. You have to have that kind of genetic connection or you can't make any kind of genetic changes by selecting some or not selecting others. And so we don't really know whether there's some genetic sensitivity to rattle gene or not. But even if we assume there is, then you've got to have people out there affecting a majority of the population, taking a high proportion, a disproportionate number of these animals that are more sensitive to rattle when something comes near them.

So you've got to have the selection to select those out disproportionately. And you've got over the top of this, you've got all of these other environmental factors that have something to do, have a lot to do with whether rattlesnake rattles or not. You know, what's the ambient temperature? If it's really cold, they're probably not going to rattle.

If it's, if it's really warm, they'll be a little quicker to rattle. Maybe how, how close you got to them, how big and imposing you look. Maybe this rattlesnake got almost stepped on by a cow three times in the week and he's just pissed off because here's someone else walking at him. You know, what's your trajectory towards him? Whether he feels like he's well hidden.

All of that stuff has a lot to do with how threatened the snake feels and whether it's going to rattle or not. And some idea that it has some genetic component from its parents about whether it's sensitive to rattle or not. Just doesn't make a lot of sense. There's too many other environmental factors that are coming into play for any kind of wide-scale selection to actually change how quickly rattlesnakes rattle in the wild. One thing you pointed out too, and I think I mentioned this, is when you look at people who do large-scale rattlesnake killing, they're not walking around listening for rattles. Yeah, they're not walking around and then some really sensitive rattlesnake rattles and then

they go kill that. So that's what you would need for that kind of selection. They're going in and going into dens and they're doing all kinds of other sometimes destructive things to get rattlesnakes out, but it has nothing to do with how sensitive that snake is to rattle or not.

So you can't, you can't exert that kind of selection, even in those really intensive rattlesnake roundup kind of situations. So next time someone says that to you, say, shut up. That's what I should have just said to Cal. As a public biologist, that's generally what I use on the phone. All right. We're going to hit a bunch of, uh, we're going to hit a bunch of, we're going to get a bunch of deer stuff with Jim and Doug. And I'll point out that, you know, Jim's from Arizona, Doug's from Wisconsin. But they both are like very on top of the deer situation.

So these two aren't like coming from, they're not like they don't work together different necks of the woods all that kind of stuff but in my mind i was bracket that i wanted them to come on together because they're the people that i email with the most about deer and often quite different things about deer but we're gonna cover a little ground who wants to oh let me hit you with this one because we're going to talk about COVID real. I don't want to spend a ton of time on COVID and deer. All this stuff about, I want to get your opinion on it. Oh, I have one.

A lot of stuff about deer and COVID. Oh my, to me, it just seems like such a, I don't know. Okay. How much on a sliding scale of one to 10, each of you, Jim and Doug, on a sliding scale of 1 to 10, how much do you agree with this statement? The dear COVID thing, this is me talking, the dear COVID thing is a non-issue. What is 10?

What is 1 to 10 on the scale? 1 is strong disagreement. 10 is strong agreement. I would probably fall in the seven. Hmm. Doug? I'm confused as to what the scale is again. Yeah, I think that was a double negative.

You strongly, okay. Because I'm guessing Jim and I agree about this. I say the COVID deer thing, I feel like the COVID deer thing is a non-issue. Strongly disagree is a one. Strongly agree is a 10. Is that the way you went on it? Yeah, I went closer to 10. I mostly agree with that.

You went to seven. I think it's something that's just being blown out because it's kind of a popular thing that gets a lot of clicks, clickbait. But there is an element that we should not completely dismiss it. That's right. And that's, yeah, so it's hard for me to put a, so I'll go with like a five because it's noncommittal, right? Oh, my God. You guys are like deer COVID tweakers. And here's why.

And here's why. At least from what I've learned, and Jim and I have some folks that we talk to in common about it. Well, so you guys have some overlap. Yeah. We know some of the same people, talking to some of the same wildlife people. Yeah. That it is a reservoir. things that it does is that it sort of tells me that, and maybe tells, the conclusion that I came to in talking with various people is that's, so it's there. And so COVID, like chronic wasting

disease, is something that we're going to have to live with. Understand? But I think they found it in 70 animal species. I don't know if it's that many. Do you say 70? I thought I read their data. Somebody Google that shit. I know. Well, Doug's talking. He can't talk.

Sean, how many animal species have they found COVID in? I mean, tigers, lions, minks, dogs. And here's my take on it. I'm going to tell you this. I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not a health it. I'm going to tell you this. I want to, I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not a health professional. I don't even knew that. I just think that it's like,

I hesitate to even say this because people get in all kinds of trouble for saying stuff like this. I don't think we're getting out of this one. I think it's the new norm. I think it's the new norm. I think it's the new norm. So let me go on. There I agree.

A funeral director. There I agree. I do think it is. I think it's, you know, it's another example of a zoonotic disease that we have to pay attention to. But, you know, it's sort of like with COVID. I mean, we were, you know, as we were flushing the toilets with our feet and all this other stuff. And I mean, you just have to, after a while, it's like, okay, I want to get on with my

life. Uh, thanks for the information. I will take the precautions that I think are necessary. Um, I'll talk to professionals about it and make my decisions from there, but I'm getting on with my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What worries the wildlife health professionals is that mink, domestic mink caught it from their keepers, from humans.

Sure. So mink caught it from humans. There's evidence that the virus circulated for a couple months in the mink population, mutated a little bit like it does, and there was a human that had COVID-19, and it had one of the strains that had mutated in the mink population and it had infected the human and the human got COVID. So it's still, some people are worried that with a huge reservoir like deer, it could mutate into such a form that would be more virulent if it went back into humans. Now there's no evidence that COVID has ever jumped

from deer back into humans. And there's no evidence that a deer has ever been phased by it. There's no evidence that a deer has ever had. That's one thing that's important, too. The virus is called SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. COVID-19 is the disease, and SARS-CoV-2 is the virus. So deer have been shown to have been exposed to the virus, and they've elevated antibodies showing they're exposed to it. No deer has ever been documented to actually have any kind of sickness, to actually have the COVID-19 sickness.

I feel like I'm being a little glib. So I want to, I want to articulate my perspective a little bit more thoroughly. Uh, I don't think we're, I don't think we're going to defeat COVID. I don't think we're going to constrain it. I don't think we're going to limit any of the spreads of any of the variants. I think that it's going to be, we're going to limit any of the spreads of any of the variants. I think that it's going to be, we're going to have new variants coming out of the human population all the time. In a couple

years, I think we're going to look at a lot of stuff we did and we'll be like, oh yeah, maybe we delayed something, but probably not. Or maybe we delayed something that's just the reality now and it gave us a minute to get boned up on medications and stuff. But it's circulating in a bunch of animals. It's circulating in a bunch of people across five or what?

Six continents. Um, I don't think that it's like, ah, shit. Now deer got it. This will never end. Like I just, I, I, it's like a, I feel it's a non-factor, but we got a nice letter from a funeral director and he was pointing out to, he's like, he's like, Hey, if you hunt deer, listen, I've been dealing. So there's like a lot of information out there for people that are deer hunting. Now they're like, when you go, when you go to gut a deer, you got to have your latex gloves.

You got to have a knife. Well, now they're like, yeah, you got to have your COVID mask. This guy wrote in and says, listen, I've been dealing with COVID deceased people. And here's what we do. And we have a hundred success rate in staying healthy. And he admits processing a deer is not the same as processing a human, but these tips could still be used. He suggests this when butchering in the field.

I don't, I don't think they use that word in the funeral when butchering in the field when my father died my father died late at night and um i was the last person i watched him take his last breath and i remember the funeral people quickly showed up and they showed up um in their suits and the long black wool coats and they they were there fast. Same. Yeah. Yeah. When my dad died, it was very, very similar. I was like, dang, you guys got here quick, dressed up like that. Yeah.

He's just like laying in bed with that stuff on. What was I getting at? Oh, move to, he says, here's what morticians are doing around COVID deceased. When butchering in the field, move to an open area with lots of air circulation, stand upwind of the deer. Do not compress the chest of the animal. When rolling the animal over,

stand away from the head, tape the mouth closed and plug the nostrils. Starts to paint a picture, don't it? Always wear gloves and a mask. Here's a tip. When removing the lungs, do not squeeze. Bury them once removed.

After field dressing is complete, place the deer in cold, isolated storage for 48 hours before continuing on. I've had no experience consuming an animal of this state. That's good to hear. I would consult further experts on this topic. So there you have it. From a real pro.

Love it. Can I give you another? Oh, go ahead, Doug. I was just going to say, I got to thank this guy for writing this. Because it's like, how are you going to make this shit sound interesting, man? And that does. It really does. Oh, listen ahead, Doug. I was just going to say, I got to thank this guy for writing this. Because it's like, how are you going to make this shit sound interesting, man? And that does. It really does. Oh, listen, man.

We got like the best audience in the world. Yeah. We get great, great photos, great feedback. Someone for, oh, go ahead. The other thing, thank you. The other thing I would say is, as a lot of folks know, I have a CWD testing kiosk on our farm where people drop off. But it got carried away by a tornado. Yeah, it got tipped over by the tornado last night.

December storm. It didn't get carried away. It's only a few yards down the field, but. Doug's out of town. His wife sent a picture of his upside down kiosk off. Yeah. It's like I leave and shit happens. And in our kiosk, I opened up, as I have to,

open up bags and make sure the paperwork's right and stuff. And several of the deer, uh, they all came from the same place. The, the, uh, mouths were taped shut on them. Is that right? And I was like, well, that's interesting. Must've been this guy's place. I hadn't, I hadn't, I hadn't read that as a recommendation and I didn't notice that there was anything plugging the nostrils, but they did have notes on the, like, this is Sean's buck or, you know, Joe's dough or whatever.

So maybe that was why they did it. I know the guy, so I'm gonna have to ask him about it. I'm only mentioning this. Somehow my wife has these little snowmen Christmas ornaments that are made out of tampons. Cool. Come on. So my boys are like, what is this? It sounds made out of tampons. Cool. So my boys are like,

what is this? It sounds like a Karen art project. Yeah. My wife gives my boys the full rundown for what that's all about. And then either way, that'd be a great nostril plug.

Perfect size, right? Creative mind, Steve. Maybe a little big for some folks. People in combat carry tampons a lot for bullet wounds. Pass through bullet wounds through an arm and they'll shove a tampon through it. Yeah, and if the pandemic ends, make a snowman out of them.

That's a thing in wrestling. Wrestlers go get bloody noses and shove a tampon up their nose. Remember the movie Strange Brew? He gets a bloody nose in court and the bailiff gives him a bullet to plug his nose with. But then someone cracks a joke and the bullet flies out and goes off.

It's a good movie. Here, a listener wrote in about this. This guy's kind of licking his lips at this whole COVID thing because he's like, man, if deer lose their sense of smell. Oh, yeah. Good hunting.

It's going to change the whole game Going to change the whole game That's a good point Alright PFA's in deer what the hell is a PFA PFA this is an emerging thing that I didn't know much about until I started looking into it But they're just chemicals that don't degrade They kind of accumulate in the environment

Forever chemicals right That's like the little sort of like Public I don't know what the hell hell, how do I describe it? It's kind of the. The Nome de Jure. That's not right. That was French. A cutesy name.

A cutesy name. Yeah. Because something you find in the media all the time because they like to pick those. But they came around the 1950s and they put them in flame retardant stuff and water resistant chemicals, all kinds of plastics, probably Clark Griswold's non-nutritive cereal varnish and those kinds of things. But it's ubiquitous in the environment. And now they're starting to find out that they don't degrade. And so they're, they're accumulating and tissues are accumulating and detect, detect it in blood. And so we had, we had the one report in Maine this year of the local municipality advising people not to eat deer from this one local specific area.

And that was coming from a local municipality. Yeah. Not to eat deer either. And so Brian Richards sent me a link from a year ago that was in Marinette, Michigan. Not Marinette, Michigan. Marinette, Wisconsin, right on the side. And that was a year ago. And they were advising people not to eat the livers of deer.

So they were saying that in the heart tissue and the muscle tissue, the levels were undetectable or very low and not a problem. But in the livers, because the livers and the kidneys are organs that filter the blood and they filter toxins out of the blood. And so it was accumulating in the liver and they're telling people not to eat the liver. So what were they seeing? Do you know, because a handful of people from Maine sent us this, this, this, this warning that came out.

What were they looking at? Do you know, like, what were they seeing specifically? Were they seeing, were they actually seeing like really elevated counts in venison? That I know. Or was it more theoretical? Yeah. I don't know the specifics, whether they like, like a year previous in Wisconsin where they tested heart tissue, muscle tissue, and liver tissue and found that there are different

levels. In the Maine situation, I don't know what they tested and what was sparking their concern, whether it was just in the blood or in muscles. Do you feel that, uh, oh, you got something to say, Doug? But the difference is in Maine, they're saying don't eat the meat. Don't eat the deer at all. Out of a very specific zone. A very specific area.

In Wisconsin, it was liver and heart. Yeah. Just liver. And they specifically said, don't worry about eating heart tissue and muscle tissue in Wisconsin. Well, they did. And that. I clarified earlier that I'm not a healthcare professional. Yeah.

Nor am I. I wouldn't like to clarify that too. I would, I have a way that I assess things and I go like, would I really die from this? Like, will this be the thing I die from? And this is not to advise anyone, but I just, but in that situation, I would probably be like, man, am I really going to like, is this going to be the thing that kills me?

Eating this deer. And I'd be like, in my mind, I would be like, that's not going to do it. Yeah. It's going to be heart disease. Those. Or lung cancer. PFAs. And I've heard them called PFAS.

I don't know if that's what the cool kids use or if that's just what one person was using incorrectly. But they've been linked to higher cholesterol. They've been linked to kidney testicular cancer, been linked to lower birth weight changes in liver enzymes, high blood pressure, and in children, a decreased reaction to vaccinations in getting their antibody levels up. So there's some medical connections with having these high levels of that in the blood. Most of those studies, though, were done in areas where the people had really high levels, not just kind of baseline levels. But also the CDC and some other sources say 95 to 98% of people in the United States have

measurable PFAS levels in their blood, just to environmental level. But if you look at this area in Maine, are they advising don't eat vegetables from vegetable gardens in this area? Are they advising, or does that not work that way? Are they advising don't eat livestock products from this area? I haven't heard that, but. Yeah, that's interesting. I'm not sure, but I know this specific area in Maine, it was Fairfield was once used in a pulp paper manufacturing. Released into the Kennebec River. Yep. And the bio-waste was spread on farm fields for years. So I don't, I haven't seen anything else to, I guess, prove what this person has said, but he said that the kind

of word on the street is that local dairy farms are having their stocks killed as well. Wow, man. One of the guys at Roe and He says, man, their family's been hunting. He said for 40 years they've been hunting a property smack dab in the middle of this zone. And if you look at a county map, it's Falls and Fairfield.

He's wondering, is it really safe to eat? Hate to give it, yeah. I don't want to give advice, man, but I remember one time I had a garden and I just wanted to, I sent a soil sample into the local, like, you know, you have the land grant universities that have like an ag extension thing.

And they came back with very high elevated levels of lead in the garden soil, and like really high i remember it was like 13x what's high or something already and um i pondered that for a day or two and then went on garden is that from you is that from you shooting raccoons in the garden you just deposited some lead in this no what? And I was curious how that happened. And, uh, and I'd spoke to a couple people and

they're saying that, um, that they, that the, the, the thing they were looking at most there was the years of leaded gasoline. So being in a, you know, being in an area that's close proximity to where there was a lot of, a lot of combustion of leaded gas. Yep. And, uh, it falls out of that exhaust and

in close proximity. So you might have an area where, I don't know, man, or you like idle the tractor, you know, people were idling their tractor for 70 years outside the whatever barn you could have like, uh, from the years of leaded gas. But like I said, man, it like shook me up and I just kind of went on.

The, my knee jerk reaction is to not worry Like I said, man, it like shook me up and I just kind of went on. My knee jerk reaction is to not worry about the PFAS, but disease professionals will tell you if your municipality is issuing a don't eat kind of advisory, you probably would be smart to follow that. Where my brain goes with that is like the every boat ramp having a mercury advisory, you know, like that's commonplace everywhere is mercury advisors don't eat too much fish, but I don't personally know anyone that's ever ran into mercury poisoning problems. Can I tell you a funny story about that? Go ahead, Doug. You got something to say though? Uh, yeah. Yeah. The thing that concerns me, and if someone who's in that area would write in, I'd like to follow up this being a kid who grew up with a dairy farm. He said that the word is the local dairy farmers have killed off their stock as well. And my question is, one, did that happen?

Our questions are, one, did that happen? If so, why? Because in the livestock world, if there is a disease issue and there are a handful of them, that the Department of Agriculture requires you to destroy your herd. And I'm wondering if this was something that was required or if they're just saying, well, this is a mess. I mean, I can't imagine. We don't even know if it's true or not. Well, right. That's what I'm asking. Is it true? If so, you know, so. Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, though. I'm with you.

You didn't tell that you're a Mercury star. So my dad, one of my dad's main fishing buddies when I was a kid is this dude, Ron. And Ron was also a commercial bait fisherman. So he made his living catching live bait and selling live. He had his own bait shop. Then he distributed live bait to other bait fishermen. So he made his living catching live bait and selling live. He had his own bait shop. Then he distributed live bait to other bait shops. And the dude fished all the time and lived off fish, lived off freshwater fish. And they were scouring around.

The university of Michigan was scouring around for old dudes like him that had been eating fish their whole life out of the great lakes. And they would send them and he would periodically go down to university of Michigan to do these mercury tests and part of it would be these memory quizzes and they'd say to him like okay you got to go to the grocery store and get you know milk eggs bread black pepper olive oil and lettuce and then he'd have to sit there for a minute and they'd say uh what do you get the grocery store and in describing these tests to me he said to me uh man i wouldn't have been able to remember that if i never ate fish at all uh we had another thing cadmium and liver i don't know

like i'm not downplaying cadmium and liver but i don't know. Like, I'm not downplaying cadmium in liver, but I don't know. You guys want to talk more about stuff that's hiding in deer? Not really. I mean, cadmium can cause some health issues. It's probably a local, I mean, it's probably a local thing, and you could probably find a lot of these little situations where there's some kind of contamination and it gets concentrated in the liver. New Hampshire Fishing Game advises against eating deer liver because of PFAS,

same thing we just talked about, and cadmium. All right, here's another disease, and we've covered this a little bit, but I just want to get a little, I got a question for each of you around EHD. Epizootic hemorrhagic disease, EHD, seems to be like, I've never heard any suggestion that there's any effect on humans, but it's now damn effective on deer. And you can have an EHD outbreak that you'll commonly hear of 50, 75% of a deer herd getting carried off by EHD. We were having a discussion about EHD recently, and someone mentioned that it's always fatal

to deer and got some feedback. That's, in fact, not the case. So go ahead and talk about that. Yeah, they may have been thinking about CWD, which we talk about as always fatal. But EHD, actually a large percentage of the deer population survives EHD every year, even when you get those big die-offs like that. But the ones that survive get antibody levels, and that makes them immune to it for a year or two. So you generally don't get EHD die-offs in consecutive years. You'll get it like especially a dry summer, a real drought summer, and you'll

get a really bad EHD year and you'll have, you'll lose a lot of them in late summer. And then the next year, all the ones that survive have antibody levels. And so the next year you won't have an EHD problem no matter what, because they're all pretty well protected with, with the immunity to that. Here's a, this, this seems like a paradox. Maybe you can explain this to me. EHD, this isn't the paradox, but this, I'll get to the paradox in a paradox. Maybe you can explain this to me. EHD, this isn't the paradox, but I'll get to the paradox in a minute. Like EHD is spread from deer to deer by a biting midge.

Okay. Like a bite, just the same way humans might get malaria, right? Like mosquito goes to one person and they move an infectious disease. Not animal to animal. From that person to the next. Why is drought bad? It seems like a wet year would make more midge because it's like an aquatic thing. Like a wet year would make more midges out on the landscape.

And then some people say, well, it's because it concentrates deer. I think that's it. That's what I've always heard. It's the concentration. You have fewer water sources. You probably have fewer midges, but you have all of the deer and all the midges all in the same location. And you can get that circulation, that concentration. Okay.

Now, what I had always heard is that the, like, real enemy. It's a tribute pursuit guy. Yeah. The real enemy of deer hunters when it comes to EHD is if you have a very wet year followed by a very dry year. Because what really, like, gives those midges a home and boosts their populations and makes whitetail come in contact with them is long mud lines. So if you have like a super wet spring or a super wet 2011 and then a super dry summer or a super dry 2012, that's when you get these long mud lines where you get a lot of those biting midges at.

Yeah, we found in Arizona, actually, they've documented that those little midges, Culicoides verapennis, can actually reproduce in the wetness of cactus. Oh. A little bit of moisture like that. Oh, shit. All right, Doug, let me hit you with this one. Oh, go ahead. I have a question for Jim, and that is, it seems as though EHD has been more of a Southern issue.

But, and now it's, it's, it's more. In the Northern Great Plains. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, it's reported, um, anecdotally by hunters in Wisconsin, but, um, uh, but, but, but why is that, why is there that cutoff just, I mean, with theoff with the midge?

I think it's a climate factor with midges and just where midge populations are or those kind of midge populations are. And you get too far north and you just don't have those kind of vector populations in there. They did, Mississippi State University one time brought deer from Michigan down to Mississippi. And they actually brought Mississippi deer and put in the pens in Michigan. And they found that those Northern deer brought down to Mississippi had a very high mortality rate from, from EHD. No shit, really. Because Northern deer didn't have antibodies or

previous exposure at least to those strains. And there's two different types of EHD and there's about seven different serotypes of blue tongue virus, which is another closely related hemorrhagic disease. So when people use blue tongue and EHD synonymously, that's not correct. That's not correct.

They're different diseases. They just have kind of the same clinical symptoms. They're both hemorrhagic diseases. Are they both spread by midges? Yes. Okay. And the blue tongue is normally kind of a

sheep pronghorn antelope. Or should I just say antelope? We got one. I would go American pronghorn. Someone that was mad with it. I've switched, dude. I've switched to pronghorn. Someone that was mad with it. I've switched, dude. I've switched to pronghorn. I don't get that workshop about it.

My state's fish and game regulations have not. They haven't. We have the Arizona Antelope Foundation. But the blue tongue is kind of an antelope sheep thing, and the EHD is more of a deer cow thing for some reason. It separates that way. I got a question for Doug, but I got one more thing on EHD. This person's game, someone wrote in, their game warden was saying that deformed hooves.

You buy that? Yeah, absolutely. The hooves, when they get EHD and survive it, their hooves will slough off and they'll have a crack, a line across those hooves. So you can, in the fall, just look at a hundred harvested deer that come through and you'll see some like stress lines and cracks on the hooves. And that's evidence that they had. Another interesting interesting thing is too is the hemorrhagic disease causes a hemorrhaging of all the tissues including the testicles and the bucks that have

a lot of hemorrhaging in the testicles during the antler development period can produce cactus bucks so so there's a veterinarian karen fox who led led some research that documented not 100%, but very clear that EHD was producing some cactus bucks. Oh, shit. Okay. I love Jim. Everything he brings is great. You like Jim?

Yeah, that's awesome. He just liked my testicle stories. Yeah. Expensive perk right up. This guy says, too, when he had a doe, he sent a picture of the deformed hooves with that crack and a curvature to him. He said, when I processed her, the meat was very dark and had a foul odor. Yeah. I read that.

That's unusual. If the animals like viremic and hemorrhaging, I can absolutely see. But if it's an animal that survived, maybe it just still had some of those lingering effects of all that hemorrhaging, I can absolutely see. But if it's an animal that survived, maybe it just still had some of those lingering effects of all that hemorrhaging. I don't know. He brought up a thing. You hear people say the dogs wouldn't even eat it.

You know what was interesting is I was cleaning a coyote skull. I had snared a coyote and was cleaning the skull up the other day. And usually when I do that, like with that clean beaver skulls or muskrat skulls, whatever, my dog, she knows the minute she can smell that simmering pot, like she knows what's coming. She would not eat that. You're going to think I'm crazy when I tell you this. She would not eat that coyote head pickings.

Okay. But it sat in her bowl long enough. I'm not, I got eyewitnesses. She ate, she drank the broth, but wouldn't eat the chunks, but she drank the broth out of the bowl, and I'm not kidding you, man. Five minutes later, walked over by the kitchen table and puked.

Wow. It's not a dog eat dog world. Well done. There it is. Yeah, it was the weirdest thing, dude, and that dog never pukes. That dog eats, can eat. You wouldn't believe what that dog can eat.

Never pukes. Does she eat duck tongue? I put duck tongue in front of Yupik's face and he just wouldn't even touch it. You know what a favorite snack is for the fur handler, Stu Miller? What his dog likes is the uh, the back feet on beavers. That's like a chew. It's like a preferred chew toy for his dog. And it gets days out of a beaver's back foot.

Doug, a quick EHD, uh, question for you. Sure. If it's a widely held conviction that slowing the spread that, uh, held conviction that slowing the spread of CWD often involves lowering deer numbers. Yes. Right? That contagion rates will fall if there's less deer having less contact. It's a widely held conviction. In fact, in many states, when there's a CWD

outbreak, one of the first steps you take is to try to go into the hot zone, reduce numbers to reduce spread and to make it that animals be less incentivized to strike off and do long journeys to find areas that aren't so

crowded. Have you heard anyone, is this a belief that anyone expresses that E has you ever heard anyone be like EHD giving a real wallop to a deer population could be beneficial to really dramatically lowering a deer population, thereby perhaps slowing CWD spread. Has anyone ever said this before? Or am I the only person that ever like kicked around that correlation? A very smart man that I talk with this stuff about a lot has said that. I mean, I summed it up in that EHD could do the work that hunters are not.

And because EHD is, correct me if I'm wrong, Jim, is, it's indiscriminate. It's going to kill across the, across the population. So big giant bucks down to fawns, which is part of what we need to do too. It's interesting because some hunters in my area and people that I know and anyway, and know them to be good people have said, oh, I had EHD in my place this year. We found six deer around a little pond by, and that's being like wildfire through the local community. And I wonder if part of that, I mean,

I don't question that he found six dead deer around his pond. And so then they're saying, well, it's EHD. And I was like, well, okay, did the biologists come out and confirm that? And as I understand, you have to do that pretty quickly if you're going to catch the virus and all of that. So like 72 hours or something confirm that. And as I understand, you have to do that pretty quickly if you're going to catch the virus and all of that. So like 72 hours or something like that. And so of course that they didn't. I also know a couple of the people who are spreading that to be very concerned about the policies and ideas that I'm working on to reduce your population.

Guys, so they might be incentivized, be like, ah, it's CHD. It's not CWD. Well, no, no, no. No, that, well, we don't need to reduce the deer herd because EHD is doing it for us. EHD is doing it for you. We'll get into some stats about CWD in your area in a minute here.

Okay. Oh, you know what I was going to mention? You know, Spencer's like. I love Spencer, I want to say. Well, I wouldn't. He's become one of my favorite people. I wouldn't like him if I was you. Spencer tries to, Spencer tries to suppress

information about CWD because he believes it's not sexy. Spencer believes that people are tired of hearing about it. Well, he's. So he tries to suppress it. He's right that it isn't, isn not sexy. Spencer believes that people are tired of hearing about it. Well, he's. So he tries to suppress it. He's right that it isn't, isn't sexy. I think that what Spencer is trying to do is

to keep things interesting. And, and I think that's a healthy discussion about, I think it's a healthy discussion. It was like, how much of this should we be talking about? I can tell you this. You remember those commercials when you were a kid that said, ignore your teeth and they'll go away? Remember those?

Come on, you all remember them, right? Nope. Nope, I like it. Oh, well, I remember that. Well, maybe it's because of where I grew up. Anyway, you know, ignore CWD and it won't go away. So I'm turning that. I like it though, yeah.

You know, I think in bumper stickers, so that's good. Yeah, you know, but the problem, I like the, the problem with that slogan is you're asking a lot of people because you're trying to get them to remember some shit that I don't remember. Right? Keep working on it. You'll come up with a good one.

Oh, no, Doug already has it. Listen, I don't know if you guys know this. It's not ours. it's just our turn. Like Doug made that up and I used to be like, he didn't make that up. I'm telling you man. Spencer, you're good on Google. Google that shit. I've done it. You go try to find.

I challenge you. Any other reference? You type that shit into Google. It's like a Doug Dan festival for pages and pages and pages and then you get to the end of the doug duran stuff it's a black hole there's nothing there's nothing when doug like doug made that up and did you make up um for, give the rallying cry? Buy time and pay for science. Did you make that up? Well, yeah.

I mean, I had not heard it before, but that's what, you know, sort of the CWD thing, my attitude about chronic wasting disease is that. Buy time, pay for science. And I mean, that encompasses an awful lot, doesn't it? I mean, let's slow the spread. Let's reduce prevalence in let's, um, uh, reduce prevalence in areas where it exists. Um, let's preserve deer hunting in those areas. I, I'm, uh, Spencer has an open invitation to

come to the farm and, and deer hunt with me. And part of the reason is, is that I'm just going to like lay CWD on him the whole time. Oh yeah, man. You're going to sex him up with CWD talk. But Cal was just there and Cal's like, you know, at some point, I mean, we had our CWD discussions and everything, but he's like, at some point you're just deer hunting.

I was like, yeah. I mean, it's not like we're wandering around like, uh, CWD, you know. Asthmats. But, you know, and so, I mean, at the end of the day, it's been around long enough by us, and I can talk about what's happened on our farm in our area, but that, you know, it's sort of that new norm. Get used to it. I've got the information. I know what I'm supposed to do.

Here are the things that we can do. I get involved politically and, you know, as an activist about us not doing what we should be doing. And that's what concerns me more than anything. And that's like following the science. Well, let's follow the science. And the science says we need to be doing a better job of demographic control, population control. And we're not.

And in Wisconsin, we're really good. I mean, you can go onto the Wisconsin DNR CWD website and go to the CWD and deer metrics and all of this. And we've got great information on there. And I applaud our Department of Natural Resources for that. But what we don't do is a very good job at all of doing anything to control it, mostly because it's not science, it's politics, which goes back to that discussion we were having earlier.

You get mad at me a little bit. And I remember you got one of the times you got most mad at me is I had expressed to you, no, I had expressed and you wrote me a real mean email. Like it actually kind of like a mean email. I was pissed off. And I had said, I had said something to the effect of, if I wasn't worried about potential transmission to humans down the road, that this thing would mutate and spread to humans or spread to livestock. No, I didn't even bring up livestock humans that my obsession with concern about CWD, I didn't put it quite this way, but would fall like 90%. Like if God came down and said, listen, bro, no human will ever get CWD. I would feel 90%. My, my concerns would be alleviated by 90%.

And Doug sent me a big old, Oh my, you got personal in it. It's like a mean old email, mean old text message. And a side note, Pat Durkin has told me that I need to get, speaking of developing apps, that I need to- That makes your text messages sound nicer? No, that I need to get an app that once I start typing shit like that, that it will not allow me to send it until my blood pressure goes down and I have a chance

to review it don't even had like a threat to me he's like basically like uh really no you're not that you're gonna come beat me up or anything but it was like a threat like um one you know one sentence like that can destroy decades of work and well i think that's he's gonna double down on it hey hey get the the hook that app up to your mouth uh jim uh i want to get back to just some stuff about wisconsin um and like i want to talk about cw with jim's to talk about a new outbreak, like a new state added to the long list of States now have CWD. Um, this will speak to Ross, Ross being from Idaho. Jim's going to talk about that. And then, and Doug, I want to get like kind

of anecdotal and local and talk about like in your neck of the woods, what's going on? Like, like how is deer hunting just getting different? And I think it's going to be like an alarm, but let him do the Idaho deal. But, but collect your thoughts, sort of deer hunting is just different now, man.

And, and I think that this difference is going to become more widespread over time. And there's gonna be a lot, a hell of a lot more stories like Doug story, uh, from the last couple deer seasons in Wisconsin. But hit us first, like Idaho, like how's this happened?

All of a sudden someone in Idaho is like, holy shit, this deer's got CWD. Yeah. CWD spreading, you know, increasing in prevalence where it is. And prevalence is a percent of the animals in the population that is positive and it's spreading.

And Idaho just joined the CWD club being the 27th state with CWD positive. What was interesting about Idaho is it was found on the western side of the state. And there's no CWD yet in Washington in those states to the west. But there's CWD crowding in on three sides from Wyoming and Utah and Montana coming in from the east side. So it was really interesting that this first incident was two bucks that were harvested in October of this year in, on the west side of the state there. And I, so it's all over. I mean, I think it's gotta be, there's gotta be a lot of filling in the hole, filling in the gap. And that might be what's going on here because they just developed a new CWD plan for the state

in 2021. And part of that was, we're going to test the panhandle in the Northern tip every year. And we're going to test two units over on the Eastern border every year, because that's where we expect it to come from. And then there's three other units in the rest of the state. They're going to rotate. And so the first year they tested this one unit that was going to rotate. Like just kind of like throwing in like a fluke. Yeah. And so they just started testing there and they found it. And the fact that it's on the West side of the state, I would expect them to be filling in the blanks once they start sampling a little more. I've never got your perspective on it. You know what I was saying about the human infection risk?

Do you, where do you fall on it personally? I've never killed a deer that was CWD positive, so I've never had to make the decision. I think about four decades of people in the northern Rockies eating CWD positive deer and it's never jumped the human barrier into humans. That gives me a lot of comfort. But the CDC and World Health Organization recommend that nothing that's been positive with prions enter the human food chain. And the CDC recommends you throw the deer out. And so I know those recommendations are out there. Those guys are a little jumpy though, I feel.

I think it's a personal decision. I would probably not have any qualms eating one myself. Is that right? Because of four decades of pretty high incidents in Wyoming, Colorado, and nobody's gotten sick. But if you've got little kids around the table, got a wife, maybe a pregnant wife, it's kind of a different conversation. And it's a personal decision. I agree. And I talk about this more often than I want to and certainly more than Spencer wants me to. But it is a personal decision.

And what I've been finding is that people who are going to eat it anyway don't get their deer tested. And so that's a little troubling in that. Yeah, you've got, I would never, I have killed a CWD positive deer. Actually, the one that I killed, a friend of mine took it and he ended up eating it. And I already had, you know, freezer flow, the first one that I killed that was positive. But anyway, I personally am not, I have chosen not to, although even though we are having positive deer on the farm, none of them are ones that I have butchered and kept for myself, which is also a behavior thing that we can talk about.

But I'm keeping younger deer, ones that I used to think were less likely to, to have the disease. Um, uh, but yeah, I mean, don't, you know, uh, if you want, it's a personal decision to do it, but don't make that decision for somebody else and don't make it that decision for children. I, I just, I mean, is it an abundance of caution or is it just being a good person? I think it's a little of both, you know. Lay out a little bit about what, like, just what you're seeing.

I mean, because you're, you mentioned that you describe yourself as an activist, okay? Like, you're not an academic. You're interested in CWD because you've lived CWD now for 20 years on a place like you've lived CWD for 20 years on a place that's been in your family for a century. So like you, you, you're sort of like living it in real time, meaning like when you look out the window or drive around on your property, it's a thing that, and it's become, i don't want to say like uh you're not like you're not obsessed with it but i don't know man when was the last time you went a day without saying cwd well in the fall not very often i can't i couldn't even tell you but it you know it's interesting because i wrote an article a couple articles for uh for meat eater and they're out there and you can check them out.

And part of it was why every hunter, in fact, I said why everyone should be concerned about CWD all the way from the animal rights or animal welfare people down to big giant buck trophy hunters, and then what we can do about it. And I have seen the change. And I'll be perfectly honest with you. When CWD first was discovered in Wisconsin, had the DNR knocked on my door and said, we've got to kill every deer in the area.

And your farm is right in the middle of that area. So let's get started. I'd been skeptical. Kill every deer. Yeah. I mean, that's what they wanted to do in the eradication zone and they, and they tried real hard to do that. And I'd started having questions like, well, why is it here? Why is it here? Why is this the hot zone? And I don't think we've

ever really gotten that, the answer to that question in Wisconsin. There's been a lot of speculation and there've been a few people that I know and mostly trust who, you know, who anecdotally have talked about some of the things that went on down there. And I guess I don't want to get too deep into that, the weeds on that. Well, I don't,

I don't, I don't understand what you're saying right now. Like why, how did it start in, how did it start in the Mount Horeb area? That, why was it first discovered there? The reason,

you know, this is a farm analogy. If you see one rat, you got a hundred of them. And there they found, they saw a sick deer and tested it for CWD and then realized, and then they, they had been doing surveillance for a while. And surveillance testing is a really interesting thing, um, to me. Um, and then they, they found that it was a little more widespread, but the prevalence was really low. I mean, do you remember what those numbers were?

It was like in the single-digit percentages. But what's been interesting to me about living with it, asking that question, is what we've discovered up until four years ago, we had no positives. And we'd been testing what was recommended. You mean on the Duren family farm? In our area and the Duren family farm, we hadn't had a positive and we were testing every deer that they would allow us to test. And they were skewing it towards older deer, which to the minds of the biologists were the ones that were most apt to have it. Once we started having, four years ago, when we started, which was about the time

I quit doing buck management and all of that, um, you know, uh, retired December arrow and all those, all those things. Um. Uh, can I tell people what that means? You, you were running on, like on, on your family farm, you guys are running a program of like trying to grow big bucks. Yeah. We were doing it. Like let, let, let bucks of like trying to grow big bucks. Yeah, we were doing it. Like let, let, let bucks walk and let them grow up big.

Yeah. And. Shooting does the whole time though. Oh yeah. We've always, we've always, I mean, for the last 25 years, really, we've been, um, we've been doe killers. Um, uh, and remember that I, when I grew up, when, when I first started hunting in Wisconsin, four hunters had to get together in August, buy their license, tear a little tag off, write their name on it and their number, send it in with some money to the DNR and apply for one doe tag. Party permit.

Party permit. Remember you had the badges that you wore on your arm and everything? But you got to kill one doe with that. Now in my county, with every buck tag, you get four doe tags. So that's in 50 years, this is my 50th year of hunting, that's how much it switched, you know, in terms of population and management and stuff like that. It's an important thing when people say, oh, I'm concerned about how few deer we have. I'm like, well, you should have been around in 1971 um and uh so um what we ended up finding then when we got our first positive it was a two and a half year old buck and in four

years we just the buck that you're supposed to let walk yeah but we already have your big buck managing but i had oh yeah i had already that those, all bets are off on that. Shoot whatever deer is going to make you happy. And, you know, I just, I got tired of, well, I mean, you remember we had a little incident where managing people gets to be a pain in the butt and somebody was offended that I said something about our program on the podcast. And anyway, I just like, you know, there for a lot of. And one of them being, I don't want to manage people anymore. I just want to hunt deer and want people to be happy. And, oh, by the way, we have a situation here where we need to be more aware of what's going on. So let's, and younger deer behavior, and Jim's going to just tell me to shut up when it's time for me to shut up.

Younger deer tend to be the ones that travel furthest from their home range. So when we first started getting positive deer four years ago, our first five deer were a year and a half old buck, a two and a half, two, two and a half year old bucks, a year and a half old doe, and a three year old doe. Those were our first five in four years. And those are aged by people who are actually

aging deer, not guys looking at like it's the sway of its back, you know. No, no, no, no. That's being aged with the, you know, the tooth charts at the CWD test station. And so that kind of told me, and at the same time in that, in those 120 deer, at the same time, we were killing five and a half year old bucks and four and a half year old bucks and six year old does. And so our, our deer, quote unquote, um, on our, the ones that were sort of our core deer weren't, were not CWD positive. That's interesting. But the, but the yearlings that were dispersing into your area. We're bringing it.

Yeah. So, I mean, that's what I anecdotally, and I guess the, the biologists are agreeing with me now. Um, or they agreed with me. I'm agreeing with what my anecdotal evidence follows what they're saying. So in four years, in 120 deer, we had five positive. This year we've received- Hold on, hit me with that again.

I didn't catch it. 120 deer over a four-year period of time. That you tested. Yeah. We had every deer. Once we could test every deer, we have tested every deer. I mean, even you were there the last time. Oh, no, no.

I just wanted to make sure that I just wanted to catch the span of time and the number. Yeah. So we average about, we have been averaging about 30 deer harvested a year. Okay. On our 400 and then the, you know, surrounding property, they also have, I'm able to hunt. So five deer out of 120, somebody can do the math. I'll point out that you host a hell of a lot of hunters. Yeah.

Generally over 30 people deer hunt our place every year. Yeah. And we are at 29 deer right now. And we have another, we have a bow hunting, you know, late season bow hunting, and we also have the holiday hunt antlerless hunt coming up yet. So you'll get there. Well, we'll, we'll hit 30.

I mean, I was, you know, people ask me, what's your number? And I was like, don't stop shooting. Um, and I, and honestly I have 11 trail cameras out and they all come to a, there's a cell setup and they all come to one and I get that. And we have killed 29 deer on our farm and you cannot tell the difference on the cell cameras.

The rate of photos coming in. Yeah. The rate of photos coming in. And I mean, sure. Well, that buck isn't showing up anymore. Cause he's dead. But, um, uh, so anyway, so five deer in four years, 120 over four year period of time.

So one or two a year, you know, not really a, um, so 4%, 4.5% or something like that, which I'm like, let's keep it at that, which is sort of what our management strategy has been this year. We've killed 29 deer. We're still waiting the result from the results for 10 weeks. But so 19 deer, six of them have been positive. And all of the good bucks, we killed a five and a half year old 10 pointer, just like buck of a lifetime thing.

And I just broke my heart to find out. And, but I wondered about that deer because I took, I think I sent you the pictures of them. I know I posted them on Instagram. This guy's like standing in front of me, you know, let me pose here in front of the sign for you. And then walked out. I mean, he was, it seemed like, I mean, yes, rut behavior, except there wasn't a doe around, you know? And, um, and so he ended up being harvested by a friend of mine. And then, um,

all of our, so all of our bow bucks, which were, uh, two and a half, three and a half and five year old, five and a half year old buck, um, tested positive. And, um, we've had, um, another buck test positive and two does. And one was a, I'm sorry, both the does were three year old, were aged at three years old. So, um, feel a little bit like we're losing the battle. And part of, part of that is, um, because the population is still really high. We do a raffle or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers. You're 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

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They're not saying it's not a thing anymore. They've given up on that. Oh, you know that. And they're not saying that prevalence will level off at 2%. They've given up on that well i'm not sure that um the person who said that has you know the the uh james kroll who uh said that when he was he predicted it would level off at what wisconsin two percent pat durkin's got him on tape saying it so um and and you know that we should take a more passive approach to cwd in w Wisconsin when he was our dear trustee. So would he still, I mean, he's a, you know, he's from the science community.

Would he still say that it hasn't passed 2%? I know there was some questioning of how the data is. If you don't like the data, you start questioning how the data is gathered. So. I haven't heard from him. I haven't heard from James Cole recently, so I'm not sure what his stance is on stuff now. The last thing that I read that he said, and, um, was that, well, CWD is, uh, again, to downplay it, it's just a problem in four counties in Wisconsin.

How would you like to be the counties around those four counties? Um, uh, currently in our county, prevalence is different than percentage of deer tested. So prevalence is as Jim described it before, but because we don't require testing, it's completely voluntary in Wisconsin and it sort of makes sense, right? Yeah. I can't picture, I can't picture getting on board with mandatory testing. Except for in surveillance areas where they're trying to figure out what's going on around here. Like Idaho right now, they just. Mandatory.

Yeah, they just added a bunch of tags and you have to get them tested because that's the purpose. You know, I do want to walk something back because when you kill a black bear, you damn sure mandatory bring it down. When you get a river otter you bring it down yeah bob cats have to be tagged now yeah you're right there is mandatory testing on stuff and there's every mountain goat like in this state every mountain goat every bighorn sheep bighorn sheep sure it's a volume thing they're tagged and tested you have to bring it for visual inspection so i'm just saying i i at first when you said like mandatory blank, I was like, well, that's unprecedented.

But then I quickly realized that it's hardly unprecedented because there's tons of shit you got to bring down. Yeah. Like, you know. Well, it'd probably be unprecedented in that volume. Yeah, yeah.

For sure. Yeah. Well, and so in an area, and I've had discussions with a biologist about this, and I think Jim would agree, and if he doesn't, again, tell me to shut up and correct me. But in an area where you know that CWD already persists, mandatory testing doesn't necessarily make any sense because you already know it persists there. And if you're getting enough tests from voluntary testing to understand how it's spreading, good enough.

Yeah, if you're getting enough. But if you get like a couple new positives in a new area, you want to know what's going on. Because like I think it was Arkansas that got their first positive and they went in and tested and they were like 10% already. The prevalence rate was so high that it was obvious it had been there a long time. Yeah, Tennessee had the same experience. There has been people on the other side, the people who are not alarmed. I should stop out of respect. I should stop saying CWD deniers.

Let me think of another way to put it. People who are not alarmed. Okay. What should I call them? I don't know what the hell. CWD deniers. Okay. Those not alarmed. There has to be an argument.

There has been an argument that they're saying, dude, it's just alarmed. There has to be an argument. There has been an argument that they're saying, dude, it's just been here. It's like, it's all over. You've been eating it. They have it. We still got a lot of deer. Right? Yeah.

Humans haven't caught it. I think that's what they're saying. Yeah. And, and, uh, right. And, uh, yeah, there is that evolution from, uh, uh, it's, it's, it's fake. It's a hoax. It's always been everywhere. Yeah.

It's right. No, no. And it really is. I mean, it's like, and you can't do anything about it. Well, I can tell you this, this is the first year where we've, we've, uh, got sick deer on our cameras. Um, and it's heartbreaking when you get that. I posted on my Instagram page a video from the Doe Derby, the little event that we had from 15 miles south of us where a fellow pulls into his hunting on a farm field.

And here's this buck laying in the weeds. And it had already dropped its antlers. It was emaciated and it was just laying there shaking and it'll six seconds long and it'll break your heart. Um, uh, there are, uh, fawns testing positive for CWD. So if you're a big giant buck guy and prevalence is so high that fawns are testing positive, um, uh, a buck fawn is going to die from that disease in two years if he doesn't die from a bullet. So the days of big giant bucks are going to become more difficult.

That said, because this guy is going to write in, Richland County, we are still killing big giant bucks. That's the, like. You and I have talked about this. I hit you up with that idea. Here I am. I'm just a Joe blow sitting there right now being like, man,

how worried should I be about this? And, and you're like, it's okay. It's indisputable that CWD is always fatal. Okay. It kills them. It kills them in what?

Two years. Yep. So here you are, you're like in a hot zone you've been dealing with cwd for how many years well 20 i mean south of us so you're still shooting big bucks and i'm just saying like like here i am so i'm this guy and i'm saying to you like okay doug that's all great and fine you You've had CWD around for that long. You got this huge prevalence, but a guy just got a once in a lifetime buck on your place.

So what really, if I'm not worried about catching it, what's the problem? It's not a problem on my place now, but I can take you to a property south of us about 15 miles where they weren't killing big giant bucks anymore. They were finding them dead in the woods. And what they changed their attitude and said, well, we're just going to become deer hunters again. And, and they test every deer. And, um.

So they feel like they, they feel like they've crossed that threshold where they don't have deer getting to be five years old. Jim? Yeah, it, it, it's bound to, it's going to change. It's bound to change. When, when you get an animal that, that contracts it and is only going to live for two years, you're not going to have a lot of mature bucks out there. You're going to run out of mature bucks.

But are we seeing that happen in places from your perspective? I don't know personally. You know, you'd have to go to the northern Rockies, like Wyoming, Colorado, the places where they have 40% prevalence in a game management unit. I'm just not familiar enough to know whether they're seeing changes in age structure and things. I don't know, but when you get, I would think that'd be like the first thing that I think like,

like that would be the thing that, that people would be more, not more. No. The second most interesting part of this, the first most interesting part is disease transmission. In my view, the second most interesting part is like,

is this the end of big giant bucks? I feel like someone would be looking at like Boone and Crockett entries coming out of these CWD zones. If you've got 30 to 40% of the, of the males, one thing too, that a lot of people don't talk about is when we talk about prevalence rates throughout the West and mule deer prevalence rate is defined by those wildlife disease experts as the percent of the males older than one year that are positive. So it's very specific. I got it.

Yeah. And so females have a lower prevalence rate. But you have to arrive at some kind of definition. So you're not adding a bunch of does in one state and not another state. So they've defined prevalence rate and can keep it consistent throughout the West as just being bucks older than a year, males older than a year, and that's prevalence rate. And so when you've got 20 to 30% prevalence rate, you're just not going to get bucks that are living to six, seven, eight years old. You're going to get very few of them. Because at any given time, one fifth of bucks over one year of age. Yeah. And so, and then it's also driven by population, but you can go on to the, to the CWD page of Wisconsin DNR.

And there are some prevalent studies that are going on in southeastern Richland County. We're in northeastern Richland County and go into southeastern Richland County and see what the trends are there. And those are the areas where anecdotally it supports exactly the same thing that the, the anecdotes are, it's higher prevalence in, in older bucks. And anecdotally, we're not running out of deer because we're really good at growing deer, you know, birthing deer and are part of, you know, what it's like. It's just, it's Shangri-La. If you're a deer, we've got all these groceries in the spring and summer and fall, um, in the winter, not so much, so much. But so we're producing a lot of deer, and that's one of the things that the,

what did we call them, the CWD skeptics? Yeah, that's a better word. I thought they were going to, I thought all the deer were going to be dead by now. It's like, yeah, I thought the prevalence was going to level off at 2%. You know, what the hell you want to talk about here? I mean, don't throw that shit at me.

Let's take a look at what, what is really happening. And, um, uh, positive fawns and, and Jim could talk about this too, I'm sure about, you know, is a, is a fawn, uh, getting CWD from a positive doe in utero or is that, you know, happening after? And boy, there's some really interesting, I just haven't been down that rabbit hole too far. I have talked to a couple of biologists about it, but. I think I saw a report recently of some research that I think is still in progress that they

found the malformed prion in fetal tissue. Not even born yet. Yeah. And it's got CWD. So. Wow. What I'm trying. What I'm trying to do with, with, with my,

here's where I'm coming from with it. And again, you can read that article. I like killing big, giant bucks. I am not a guy who wants to go out and kill every deer just because every deer is possible because we can just – let's just kill every deer to control this disease. I want a healthy deer herd. I think we need to be talking about healthy deer management as opposed to, you know, big, big giant buck management. The other thing that's happening in our area, we got so deep into the big giant buck management, they're not rare anymore.

I mean, oh yeah, nice 160 inch deer. We killed 200 over here. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, it's true. There's still just giants being killed. A giant was killed by a neighbor, you know, same thing, 170 class buck, CWD not detected. Huh, yeah. You know, four-year-old buck. So there's some of that, too.

It's sort of like you had talked one time about COVID, and I was like, wow, another one of those things that Steve likes that I latched on or says that I latched onto. And that was, you said, boy, COVID, the thing that freaks me out about it is how sort of, uh, how it affects every things differently, people differently. And some people get really sick and some people hardly get sick at all. And this is almost the same sort of thing. Yeah. But as prevalence goes up, we're going to have less of that. We have, I, what I preach to people is it's the deer herd is going to be smaller in our area. And you know what? We can either be the ones driving that and have

a nice age structure and a nice, you know, a nice balanced herd with a lower prevalence, or we can let CWD do it. And yeah, we can have all kinds of deer and they're going to be young ones. And 40% of them are going to be positive then. Yeah. Not two.

Yeah. All right, Jim, I'm going to be positive then. Yeah. Not two. Yeah. All right, Jim. I'm going to hit you with some quick hitters. Because see, we've got a problem. Richie's over here dying. He's ready to play media trivia. Did you know I'm right over there? Yeah, no, I'm doing great.

This is fascinating sitting here and watch this. Good deal. So hang in there. Jim's going to do a bunch of quick hitters. We're going to time you on how quick you can handle all these questions. Okay, ready? Jim's going to do a bunch of quick hitters. We're going to time you on how quick you can handle all these questions. Okay. Ready? Guy wrote in with a dough, an antlered dough,

which has got like three, it's a full on, that's how you call it. It's got like double brow tines. Yeah. It's got hard antlered, like a nice buck, but it's a doe. That's an unusual, that's a really unusual case, that one that was sent in there. I've been getting these reports for forever. And the confusion is there's a whole bunch of different conditions that can make a buck actually look like a female.

When you kill a deer that's got antlers, you open the legs up and it doesn't look like, you don't find any male genitalia that's obvious. So here I'm talking about testicles again, Spencer, pay attention. He's like, now it's getting sexy in here. There's a condition called hypogonadal bux, which their testicles are actually in the scrotum, but they're the size of a pea. So if you want to insult your campmates, just call them hypogonadal, but they don't have the kind of testosterone. And so they, they, they don't develop as they're

developing young. They don't develop the full male external genitalia to look normal. And so when you, when someone opens the legs, it looks like a female and they immediately declare it as, as an antlered doe and they go on, but it's really not, it's just a malformed buck. There's also cryptorchid males, which the testicles don't, they never descend into the scrotum. They stay in the body cavity encased in fat. And that throws people off.

And, and so you look and there's no scrotum, there's no testicles. And, and sometimes even the penis can look like it's in a fold, like almost, almost different, almost like a female. And so that, that throws people off there too. But in that case, the testicles are in the body and they're producing testosterone.

And so they get heart antler and everything else. So this is a lot of those like, uh, doe bucks. Sometimes they're called, um, pseudo hermaphrodites. Cause I mean, it's like people are, and then people are writing to you being like, it's a doe. It's a doe. Yep. And then, and then you say, well, what kind of

genitalia, what it looked like? Well, I don't know. We gutted it and you know, there's no proof. And so a lot of cases you don't. It's a doe, yeah. And then you say, well, what kind of genitalia? What'd it look like? Well, I don't know. We gutted it and there's no proof. And so a lot of cases you don't know what's going on. So this picture here, you can't really tell. Well, I think I can. Right. That's the picture.

Yeah, there are cases where you have antlered does and that can happen from an injury to the skull. There's a certain region of the temporal bone in the skull that's real sensitive to the bones injured at a certain time of the year. It can produce, even in a doe, it can produce an odd antler coming out of the skull plate. Because does produce testosterone in the adrenal gland too. So they produce a little bit of testosterone. And antler development is not dependent on

testosterone. Actually, antlers grow at a low point of testosterone during the year. They grow their antlers in velvet and then you get close to rut, testosterone levels come up. Those rising testosterone levels then dry the velvet, they shed the velvet, and then they go through rut. And after the rut, testosterone drops precipitously, and that's what triggers then the shedding of the antlers dropping off. So the antlers are growing during a period of low testosterone. So in certain cases, if a doe has a tumor on her ovary and it messes up the hormone system, or she gets an injury in the skull, she can actually produce antlers. And there's cases where does have antlers that are actually reproductive and they're reproducing and have a fawn. But in almost every single one of those cases, the does stay in velvet because they don't have that, that dramatic increase in testosterone

to dry the velvet and shed the antlers. So they'll stay in velvet because they don't have that, that dramatic increase in testosterone to dry the velvet and shed the antlers. So they'll stay in velvet through the winter and, and even hang onto their antlers and not shed them because they don't have the testosterone. Oh, no kidding, really. But what's unusual about this is that, that doe is in hard antler in that picture from Missouri. And I, and I, I wrote to the, the game warden who contacted the hunter out in the field. She sent me some more pictures.

And in one of the pictures, you can almost see it. You can clearly see it doesn't have a scrotum, doesn't have a penis. It has four nipples, but males have four nipples too in deer. A hunter called me one time, said he shot an antler doe because it had four nipples. And I said, look inside your shirt right now. Tell me what you see. He's like, yep, four nipples. Yeah, four nipples.

Yeah. But in that particular picture, I think I can almost see it, what looks like a vulva kind of on the edge of the picture. I think that might be a legitimate heart-alert doe, which is extremely rare. But these odd things happen. She could have something strange with her ovaries that's producing enough testosterone to do that. Okay, ready for the next one? Alyssa from Michigan wrote in. She's got a picture of a buck with cow spots. She's calling it. So pawpaw Michigan, a buck with cow spots. We call it

piebald. It's like not quite like being albino. You can clarify that. Right. And there's people saying like, man, you got to shoot those deer because they got health problems. Yeah. There's some truth to that. You don't need to shoot those deer. There's actually that piebald condition is something that shows up here and there, especially in social media. I remember Michigan made it that you can't shoot those deer.

A lot of it's state by state. Some states you can't shoot a white deer. You can't shoot a piebald deer. So it depends on that. But that piebald condition is a recessive genetic condition and comes along with deformed spine like scoliosis. Okay.

Deformed hooves, bowed legs, short legs, short nose, short jaw. Sometimes internal organs are not formed correctly. And so there's other genetic problems with those piebald deer, but some deer die right away because of the problems when they're fawns. Some deer don't have too many of those other problems and they'll live to adulthood. And you'll have a buck, a mature buck that looks like Dougoug's favorite beer the spotted cow from new glary's brewery they've got these brown and white patches and they're always random there's no two that are alike they're just random on the body and they can be sexually viable yeah definitely so is it ill lot so is it like um when they make it illegal to get one to shoot one is that kind of just

it's just like it's like an aesthetic thing like that kind of just, it's just like an aesthetic thing. Like people want to see them. It's aesthetics. It's not a common enough thing that it's going to be more common if you preserve them. And so many of them are dying because of the other issues like that. It's just purely a social thing. It's not going to affect any. Okay.

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. You ready for the last one? Yep. Deer with fangs. Elk ivories, sorry, go ahead. You ready for the last one? Yep. Deer with fangs. Elk ivories, deer with fangs, people write in all the time. They got like a deer with some crazy teeth going on. Yeah, whitetail mule deer do not normally have upper canine teeth, but in rare cases that we get a throwback from evolution.

And I say that because back in the Miocene, the early dino deer or the early primitive deer, generally, most of those had fangs and some of the early ones just had fangs and then antlers kind of developed and showed up in the fossil record. And as we got more and more. Fangs are older in the fossil record than antlers? Yep. There's some, some antlerless animals that are

in the deer family, depending on when you start the deer family with big tusks like that. And the tusks probably serve the same purpose as antlers, as display, probably mostly as display, maybe as fighting, intimidation of rivals. But then as antlers developed and got more elaborate throughout deer evolution, those fangs got smaller and smaller. And now we still have over half of the 40 species in the deer family that have upper canine teeth. And when you get a, when you talk, when you hear someone talk about an elk ivory. Like I'm having my, I'm having a necklace made for my wife that has elk ivory incorporated in it. That is a vestigial tusk.

That's a deer fang, sure. That's just one, elk are one of the species that, that retain those upper, upper canines. What's interesting about them is how wiggly they are. Sometimes they're loose. Sometimes they are firm in the, in the socket there. But you think about, um, like a primitive deer probably looks a lot like a munchak with small antlers up on big stalks and then, um, canines. But, but with what's interesting about the white-tailed mule deer not normally having canines is species that do have big canines, like the Chinese water deer has big tusks. And underneath on the lower lip, underneath that fang is a black spot, black fur that kind of accentuates that white fang. Oh, no kidding. And it just, it kind of, it kind of shows it off.

But what's interesting is you look at a deer mound of a white-tailed mule deer, and they also have that black labial spot on their lower jaw. Right where that canine would be. And so the question is, did they lose their canines in most individuals and still retain that black labial spot? Is that what that black labial spot's for? Because what else is it for? And you look at some other tusked animals and

you see that black spot. That's pretty interesting. It might be this evolutionary throwback from dino deer. Are there any other primitive characteristics? I thought that I've seen that, uh, some of the canine deer will often have like a

very black defined line above their eyes, like a black eyebrow. That was one individual deer from, from Louisiana. There was a deer that had. I thought that deer lived in Florida. Maybe it was, maybe it lived in Florida.

I think Louisiana. Oh, was it Louisiana? I think Louisiana. That's what was in my head, but it had pretty big canine tusks. And then it had the strange black V-shaped on the forehead. And so that was, um, Lindsay Thomas wrote, uh, from, from, uh, National Deer Association,

wrote an article about that and talked to me about that. And he talked a lot in that article about that being, um, the, the black markings and the canines all being primitive characteristics. But no one, you know, no one really knows what the fur looked like back in the Miocene. But I had an illustrator for a Mildred book that's coming up illustrate some of these extinct deer species. And I actually had him illustrate one of them with that black V from that individual in Louisiana. Rich, do you feel like Jim's going to kick the shit out of everybody at Trivia? Yes.

Is it fun? If it's about deer. Dude, if you want to win, man, I'd have your sights on beating Jim. I'm kind of working on my angle over here. Is there a high prevalence of deer questions? I don't think so. Good. We're going to get right into it.

This is kicking off, what the hell year is it? 2022. Kick off your 2022 with some hot meat-eater trivia action. Hosted by Spencer Newhart. That's right. This is trivia you're not going to get from Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit. Hey, hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Oh, okay. All right. My eraser on my thing is not in there. You got sleeves? There's an on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, okay. All right. My eraser on my thing is not in there. You got sleeves? There's an extra. Your sleeves are even black. Okay, I'm ready. Go again.

Ready? This is trivia you're not going to get from Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit or any Barney trivia. These are born out of Meat Eater's four verticals and made just for our Meat Eater audience. Steve, what are our four verticals? I'm going to stop doing this because I think that it's stupid. They don't fit. I think this makes it special.

When you have a question, go ahead. They don't fit. Okay. You can say like what we're interested here at this year, our interests, hunting, fishing, wild foods, wildlife conservation. But when it comes to trivia and you ask a mountain man question, it doesn't fit.

Okay. I'll ask someone else that question from now on. There is a prize. Listen, dude, it's outdoor trivia. Mm. But it's like,

it's like specific to Meat Eater. Okay, then rebrand it. All right. But when we come out with the actual game that you can buy, it's going to have a Pioneers and Explorers category. Sure. Okay? All right. When you go to our website, you're not going to go to a drop-down menu that says Pioneers and Explorers on it.

Technically, under our conservation tab is where you'll find anthropology, natural history. Okay. So, the worst hide hunter. Okay. The worst hide hunter. Uh-huh. Okay. Jay Wright Moore would live under conservation?

The man who claims to have killed 10,000 buffalo? Yeah, when we cover a poacher, that goes under wildlife management, which lives under conservation. Okay, all right, let's start. There is a prize. Me, Dieter, will donate $100 to the conservation organization. The winner's choosing. We've played four times so far.

Brody has won twice. Steve has won once. And Clay has won once. All right, we have some housekeeping. I have a punt gun update. This is a quote from the Boone and Crockett Club. Not yet. This is a quote from the Boone and Crockett Club.

Many states had outlawed the use of punt guns by the 1860s, but it wasn't working. At the turn of the 20th century, federal law was desperately needed, not just for waterfowl, but all of the nation's wildlife. Okay. Also, I found three punk guns for sale in online auctions right now. They range from $4,000 to $8,000 and from six feet long to 10 feet long.

One seller's selling point said that his buddy shoulder fired the gun and broke his collarbone So he'd recommend you mount it on something if you shoot it again That's what I like to hear, man That's the one I want A lot of heat behind that Now, for today's trivia We have a stacked room

We have Jim, who knows everything about everything Doug, who also knows everything about everything And then we also have Richie If If not, he'll find out. That's right. Richie is representing all Meat Eater listeners, so a lot of pressure, Richie. I don't know that everybody's going to vote for me to represent them. Well, that's

how this works. You represent them all. Richie, a lot of pressure. Phil, play the music. Look, I need to know what I stand to win. Everything. How's that? You stand to win everything.

Well done. All right, question one. And like every time we play, this is multiple choice for the first question. The topic is fishing. This first great question comes to us via Cody Osterhout and Rich Relahan. If you have a question you think is right for Media to Trivia, you can send it to trivia at themedia.com. The question is.

Dude's a pro, isn't he? He's a smooth man. Thank you. Which of the following trout is not actually a trout? Rainbow trout, brook trout, golden trout, or brown trout? Which of the following trout is not actually a trout? Rainbow, brook, golden, or brown? Steve has a question.

No, I'm just letting you know I already got the answer. Oh, okay. It's all written down. We have a confidence, Steve. Jim is erasing. Uh-oh. The ringer is questionable on the first question. Does everybody have an answer?

No. Can you repeat the... Which of the following trout is not actually a trout? Rainbow, brook, golden, or brown? Rainbow, brook, golden, or brown? Rainbow, Brooke, golden or brown? Gotcha. All right, go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying golden,

Doug saying rainbow, Steve saying brook, Jim saying golden, Ross saying golden, Richie saying golden, Phil saying brook, and Sean saying golden. The correct answer is brook trout. Dang. That's right, boys. Only correct answer is brook trout. Dang. That's right, boys. Only Phil and Steve got it correct.

Brook trout are technically members of what? I can see me getting it right, but I'm surprised Phil got it right. I edit a fishing podcast every week. Oh. That shit's paying off, huh? Brook trout are technically members of the char family. Many historians consider them the most targeted fish in America up until the late 1800s. That's when brook trout were displaced by stockings of brown trout and rainbow trout across much of their range.

Well done. You can fill her down. You can fill her on the board. Topic two. The topic is cooking. According to section 319 of the Department of Ag's Code of Federal Regulations, for something to legally be called an Italian sausage, it needs

to have salt, pepper, and one other spice. What is that third spice? This is a legal definition of an Italian sausage. It needs to have salt, pepper, and one other spice. I want you to tell me that third spice.

I'm feeling good about this one too. I have no clue. I'm feeling very good about this one. Does everybody have an answer? Go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying fennel. Doug with no answer. Steve saying fennel. Jim saying fennel. Ross saying oregano, Steve saying fennel, Jim saying fennel,

Ross saying oregano, Richie saying sage, Phil saying paprika, and Sean without an answer. The correct answer is fennel. What'd you have, Phil? I put paprika. Or star anise. You could say star anise. So fennel or star anise listen man i'm like barely italian i got an italian name but i'm like talk about your sicilian uh background 23 i did the i did

the whole thing i'm 23 italian two percent north african and a whole bunch of west western european yeah but he talks about it like he's from the Corleone family. I know. Other rules include that the final product cannot have more than 35% fat or 3% water. If the sausage has been smoked, cooked, or cured, those words must be used

in the product name in the same size font as the word's Italian sausage. Can you, whoever wrote fennel, can you raise your hand really quick? Corinne, Steve, and Jim.

Right here, buddy. What makes that way more embarrassing for me is that my brother cooked fennel can you raise your hand really quick corinne steve right here buddy what makes that way more embarrassing for me is that my brother cooked fennel sausage ravioli the other night i so should have known that there's a sausage that we've been making that we got from this cookbook that uh our buddy steve kendra has and me and yanni it's me and yiani's like standard sausage now. It's salt, like deer meat and fat, right? Yep. Salt, black pepper, fennel. It's.

Italian sausage. Listen, dude. It's Italian sausage. It is the best. It's like so simple and so good. Everyone eats it. It's like, holy shit. It's like, dude, that's three things.

It is phenomenal. Plus prions. Yeah. Question three. The topic is big game. What state has the largest population of pronghorn antelope? What state has the largest population of pronghorn antelope? We have some quick answers in the room.

Does everybody have an answer? Not Phil. Phil now does. Go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying Wyoming. Wyoming, Wyoming, Wyoming, Wyoming, Wyoming. Phil saying Arizona. Sean saying Wyoming.

The correct answer is Wyoming. Hey! Wyoming has a commanding lead on the rest of America. Dude, Phil had such a promising start with that brook trout shit, man. Wyoming has a commanding lead on the rest of America with about 400,000 antelope within its borders. Montana is second at 125,000. Colorado third at 70,000. And New Mexico and South Dakota share fourth place at about 40,000. So Wyoming sits on a really comfortable lead, man.

And their numbers, like any state's analog numbers, fluctuate a lot. I think it was like a decade ago they were at 500,000. So they dominate the rest of the country when it comes to goats. Wow. Question four. The topic is biology. Ooh. Oh, this is Jim.

Jim's pressure. Pressure's on, Jim. No pressure. I know. Oh, wait. Can I go back and interrupt thisure's on you. I know. Oh, wait. Can I go back and interrupt this for a second? Yeah, yeah. What do you got?

We had a write-in from a biologist saying, can we please stop calling pronghorns pronghorn antelope? Tell them we're working on it. Yeah. The topic, again, is biologists' question four. This chief vein of the thigh supplies oxygenated blood from the heart to the lower extremities. This chief vein of the thigh supplies oxygenated blood from the heart to the lower extremities.

Again, a confident room. Corinne is even dancing in her chair. She feels so good about her answer. No, I don't have the answer. Can you repeat that again? Oh, yes. Jim? If you could repeat it. Okay, are you fact-checking me now?

No, no. Okay, alright. This chief vein of the thigh supplies oxygenated blood from the heart to the lower extremities. I don't know if I got it. Does everybody have it? I was saying, you can make Jim feel better and classify this under physiology.

I am blanking so hard right now, it's ridiculous. Do we need a second yet? No, we're good. I know I'm wrong. Go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying femoral artery, femoral artery, femoral artery. Jim saying vena cava. Ross saying femoral. Richie with no answer. Phil, femoral artery, femoral artery. Jim sang vena cava. Ross sang femoral.

Richie with no answer. Phil sang femoral. And Sean sang femoral. But you said... I heard ephemeral. That doesn't count. He's not going to get a point for writing ephemeral. That's my bad.

Correct answer is femoral artery. How can an artery... I'd never seen it written out. I'd only heard people saying femoral, and I thought it was ephemeral. That's an artery that goes away. Yeah, thank you, Steve. I'm going to protest that one, though, because a vein can't be an artery. Correct.

An artery can't be a vein. That was what tripped me up. That's why I thought it was wrong. What blood vessel... I thought when I looked at it, I saw the definitions of the word. Dude, I think that you got to throw that out, Spencer. He's totally right. He's totally right.

Because he won up to you. I think Spencer gets a negative score. Man. You got to throw it out, Spencer. I should get plus two then. Yeah, you got to throw it out. That was what tripped me up, too. I'm seeing places that call it a vein, but not like

not educated places. So you may have me there. Okay. How are we dealing with this? I would give Jim the correct answer. I think Jim would have got it if not thrown off by that. Well, everybody would have got it. Come on, Jim, let's just do the honesty thing. You would have gotten it?

Yeah, I was thinking for more, and then I said, repeat that. Oh, a vein. I can't think of a vein. Yeah, but here's where you're not thinking it through. He said supplies blood too. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. So you should have recognized that there was a contradiction

if you're such a Joe Smarty Pants. I did. That's why I wanted it repeated. It's a contradiction. Yeah, there is a contradiction. You got a vein supplying... And he's never played before, so he might not feel comfortable.

Right? Yeah, that's right. He might not know that Spencer is, in fact, fallible. I feel bad about the question. I would give Jim credit because he would know better than anybody. Let's give Jim credit.

But I think everybody would. Okay, it's a blood vessel. Everybody would have got it. Phil doesn't get it, though. Ephemeral? Yeah. Ephemeral? Yeah. Ephemeral's no-go. I'm not going to argue with you.

Unless Spencer's still in the Bay Area. Sean, Sean, who, ephemeral, Sean, Corrine, Doug, Steve. In Leonard Lee Rue's 1978 book, The Deer of North America, he estimates that a whitetail shot in the femoral artery will only survive about 80 to 120 seconds before it runs out of oxygen in its brain and bloodstream. I can tell you that ain't true. You think faster

or slower? My old man hit one when I was a little kid. We found it a mile and a half away. But hit, nicked, right? It's different. When we got there, he didn't have any of his stuff. And I remember he took only thing he had. I can't remember how this worked.

Like he had found his arrow somewhere along the way and had to use, like took a, had to gut it. He didn't have his knife or anything. And I remember him taking one of those Rocky Mountain broadheads apart and gutting it with one of the single little blades. The entire deer? Gutted the entire deer. Wow. I mean, what do you mean? How do you gut partial, part The entire deer? Gutted the entire deer. Wow. I mean, what do you mean? How do you gut partial, part of a deer?

I don't know. If he just like open it up and then carry it on with something, like use his hands from there or something. No, he did like, he took it apart and I remember him gutting the deer with that little, that little wedge of a razor blade. Yeah.

I think hog dress is where you leave everything north of the diaphragm. Yeah. They cut, there's a, the Scots call it like to gl, like gl, they got a word for it. It's like the diaphragm down. A glotch. Or grotching or glotching. Yeah. A diaphragm. Yeah, the Scots call it like, they got a word for it. It's like the diaphragm down. A grotching or glotching? Yeah, diaphragm down.

Like gut it, gut it, diaphragm down, and they call it like a, whatever the hell. Put that in your trivia. Okay. We are on to question five. The topic is natural history. This next great question comes to us

via Mark David Bradford. If you have a question you think is right for media trivia, send it to trivia at themeateater.com. Meriwether Lewis brought a dog along for the Core Discovery Expedition. It's the only animal to complete the entire

three-year journey. I need you to either give me the dog's name or tell me its breed. I didn't know you had a damn dog. There's a sad stat I saw somewhere that there are more statues of the dog than there was. Of York? Yes.

Meriwether Lewis brought a dog along for the Corps of Discovery expedition. It's the only animal to complete the entire three-year journey. I need you to either give me the dog's name or tell me its breed. I should know the name, too, but I can't think of it. I have no clue what kind of breeds they had back then. I just had an illustrator illustrate that scene of them killing the first mule deer. Oh, and was the dog in it? Mm-hmm.

Oh, okay, great. Oh, really? Yep, I had to describe to the illustrator what kind of dog to draw. That's all they had that dog when they were starving over Lolo Pass and no one thought to eat it? They thought about it. They ate over 200 dogs on the expedition, but they never ate this dog. No shit. Yeah.

I had no idea about this dog. Jim, tell me about the color that they painted the dog when we're done with this. Okay. I want to visit that. Does everybody have an answer? Go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying a Newfoundland. We have Doug saying an American mix, a.k.a.

a Mott. Steve saying a blue tiger. Blue tick. Jim saying a Newfoundland. Ross saying a wolfhound. Richie saying a hound. Phil saying a Newfoundland. And Sean saying a bloodhound. The correct answer is it was a Newfoundland

named semen. How do you guys not know this? That's right. I've got a Newfoundland. Corinne has a Newhound. The correct answer is it was a Newfoundland named Seaman. How do you guys not know this? That's right. I've got a Newfoundland. That's right. I never heard you. Wow. A Newfie.

How do they spell that name? S-E-A-M-A-N. Now, Steve, watch how this little tidbit ties the game together. On May 14, 1805, Lewis and Clark had to perform surgery on an artery in Seaman's hind leg that was severed by a beaver bite. My favorite Lewis and Clark historian Francis Hunter speculates they would have used a $3.50

tourniquet that they purchased from a pharmacy in Philadelphia to stop the bleeding. According to journal entries, Seaman never went into shock and made a full recovery 10 days later. Tagged by a beaver. Tagged by a beaver. Tagged by a beaver. How come that guy never comes on the podcast? Remember I said we should do that?

Wait. Corinne's getting there. I have a random question, but $3.50 tourniquet, is that adjusted for inflation? Because that seems crazy expensive. That seems like a stout-ass price, don't it? It identified it as an axle tourniquet, which I couldn't find anything about that online. So it must have been something real special. Now, I'd seen it argued about what color semen was.

And it said that in modern depictions of semen, he's often black because that's what a lot of modern Newfoundlands are. But if you look at the oldest paintings of semen, he was often like white with brown spots or black spots. So what color is the Newfoundland in your book? Ours was black. Yeah. I think some historians have an in your book? Ours was black.

I think some historians have an issue with that. But it was black. Did you get that one, Ross? No. I don't think anyone got it other than Jim. No. Corinne got it. And Phil got it. One more thing.

If you want to be well-prepared for emergencies in the field like Lewis and Clark, MeatEater is now selling a Meat Eater Hunter Series Acute Trauma Care Kit. It is everything you'd want in a trauma care kit, including a tourniquet, trauma shears, splint, bandages, gauze, and more. That one was a reach. Very good host. Oh, no. Spot on, dude.

And is the cost $3.50? Something like that. Roughly. We are halfway through trivia. Looking at the leaderboard, we have Steve and Jim and Corinne with four, and then the rest of the crowd with roughly two. It's a barn burner. Question six. The topic is conservation.

What state has the most game wardens? Oh. What state has the most game wardens? Hmm. Oh, man. It's got to be this one. I'm making a wild-ass guess here. It's got to be this one.

I can rationalize my wild-ass guess. What state has the most game wardens? Does everybody have an answer? Go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying Texas, Doug saying Pennsylvania, Steve saying Missouri, Jim saying Texas, Ross saying Pennsylvania, Richie

saying Arizona, Phil saying Colorado, and Sean saying Texas. The correct answer is Texas. Texas has the most at 460, followed by New York at 400, North Carolina at 370, and California at 350.

Ironically, despite North Carolina having the third most game awards in the country, as we discussed on a previous Game of Trivia, they rank dead last in game award and salary. Can I tell you why I went Missouri? Please. No, it doesn't matter. You said it was an educated guess. Let's hear the background.

Because they got that license plate tax that helps pay for conservation. So I thought maybe they were so flush with money that they were able to stock up. I don't know. But New York was second?

Second. Wow. Think about it. I was debating between Texas, Florida, and California just because of population. Question 70. Topic is gear.

What is the most purchased centerfire rifle ammunition in America? What is the most purchased centerfire rifle ammunition in America? We're talking caliber here? Correct. I feel like there's some... Yeah. Let's put your answer now, buddy. You understand what I'm going with.

You know this one, don't you? Huh? You know this one already. I know it, yeah. Everybody has an answer. It looks like go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying 308, Doug saying 30-odd-6. Steve saying 223. Jim saying 30-odd-6. Ross saying 30-odd-6.

Richie saying 30-odd-6. Phil without an answer. And Sean saying the 223. The correct answer is the 223 Remington. I'm tired. I don't know why I didn't think of that. I was worried you were going to get me. I was worried there might be nuance with like 5-5-6 there.

This stat comes from our friends at Federal Premium as well as a number of other sources. The top five most sold rounds are 223 Remington, 308 Winchester, 30-odd-6 Springfield, 30-30 Winchester, and 270 Winchester. Wow, that's in order? That's in order. Man. Y'all gave pretty relevant answers. 223 dominates, though, along with 30, because it's also popular among plinkers. Yeah, that's so obvious once I saw Sean's board.

Question eight. The topic is biology. This next great question comes to us via Paul Province. If you think you have a question that's right for media trivia, send it to trivia at the media.com. An animal most active at dawn and dusk is crepuscular. An animal most active at nighttime is nocturnal. And an animal most active at daytime

is blank. An animal most active at dawn and dusk is crepuscular. Most active at night is nocturnal. And an animal most active at daytime is blank. A day person. It didn't look like confident writing. Everybody have an answer?

Go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying perky, ha ha. Doug saying sunny. Steve saying diurnal. Jim saying diurnal. Ross saying awake. Richie saying diurnal. Jim saying diurnal. Ross saying awake. Richie saying diurnal. He gets it.

Diurnal. We have Phil saying not a vampire and Sean saying diurnal. The correct answer is diurnal. Humans and most... See hands. Steve, Sean, Richie. Anyone else? Jim.

Man. Humans and most other primates Are considered diurnal But this puts us in the minority When you zoom out a bit Because only about 20% of mammals Also sleep at night Me and Jim are neck and neck We have two questions left

And looking at the leaderboard We have Steve and Jim With six right each And then Sean Steve and Jim with six right each, and then Sean and Corinne with five right each. And the rest of us are sucking wind. The rest of us are going to Google. That's right. Question nine.

The topic is public land. What federal agency has the most acres of public land? What federal agency has the most acres of public land? What federal agency has the most acres of public land? Now, I would not accept Department of Interior. I'm looking for an agency within the Department of the Interior. Hmm. Man. Damn.

I'm going to write. Everybody have an answer, Steve? Do you? Yeah. Go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne saying BLM. Is that what you're saying? BLM.

Doug saying U.S. Forestry. Steve saying BLM. Jim saying BLM. Ross saying BLM? Is that what you're saying? BLM. Doug saying U.S. Forestry. Steve saying BLM. Jim saying BLM. Ross saying BLM. Richie saying National Parks. Phil saying BLM and Sean saying BLM. The correct answer is BLM. BLM has 248 million acres, which is 10% of all the land in the country. That's followed by the Forest Service at 193 million acres, U.S% of all the land in the country. That's followed by the Forest Service at 193 million acres, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at 89 million acres, and Park Service at 84 million acres. I want to say that I wanted it to be forestry.

We are on to our last question, and we have Steve and Jim tied with seven, and Sean and Corinne tied with six. So we could potentially have a four-way tie for first place. The topic is fishing. If someone says they caught a limit of copper bellies, what popular game fish are they referring to? If someone says they caught a limit of copper bellies, what popular game fish are they referring to? If someone says they caught a limit of copper bellies,

what popular game fish are they referring to? A lot of pressure for four of you. Steve, Jim, Sean, and Corinne. Corinne, are you nervous? A little bit. A little bit. Jim, are you nervous? Very nervous. I'm not a fish squeezer.

I'm going to lose because of Brooke Trout and this question. Does everybody have an answer? No, I don't. You better write something down because you're playing first place here. Go ahead and reveal your answers. We have Corinne with no answer. Doug saying carp. Steve saying bluegill.

Jim saying pumpkin seed. Steve says we call them rust bellies. Ross saying bass. Richie with no answer. Phil saying smallmouth. That's a good answer, Phil. It's not right. It's a good answer.

Sean saying yellow perch. The correct answer is bluegill. Don't they hybridize with pumpkin seeds? That's close, Jim. I don't think I'm going to give it to you, though. What? They're not saying. They were given this name

because of the vibrant orange and yellow coloration you find on a bluegill's belly, which is most vibrant on males during the spawn. The copper belly moniker is most popular in the South, but according to Encyclopedia Britannica, other common nicknames for bluegill include blue sunfish, sunny, sun perch, copperheads, bream, brim, and roach clowns. Call them big old rust bellies.

That's good, too. I like that. Steve wins Meat Eater Trivia. My donation. Have we upped the donation? Are we still sitting at $100? Still at $100. I think we should increase it. Okay.

My donation. I would like my $100 to go to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which I'll point out is very serious about paying for the science on CWD. That's good. Rich, thanks for playing. Thanks for having me. Oh, one more thing, too, because we've talked about this a little bit in the past. Jim, can you give us a heads up on your boys' progress

from having been pretty banged up in a car wreck? Yeah, I think my son Cody was in a head-on collision back in early October, both broken legs, badly shattered arm, but he's got a positive attitude and he's, he's going to rehab. He's now walking with a, with a walker. And when he pulls it together, he's going to go see Luke Combs.

Yes, he is. Absolutely. Yeah. Right after the accident, they were, they were planning to go to Luke Combs and, and weren't able to go. And through Steve, um, we're going to, we're going to be able to let him go when he gets better, when he's able to. He'll be able to go back and shotgun a beer with him.

Oh, yeah. But you know what? I bet it won't be as fast. Speaking from experience. All right, buddy. Thanks for joining. Am I missing anything? No. Have a good year. Am I missing anything? No.

Have a good year. Make a New Year's resolution. I don't know. What should it be? I got one. I just came up with mine. I hadn't thought about that before. What's that? Keep on keeping on, man. Alright, everybody. Thanks. alright everybody thanks OnXH is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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