The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 373: Shirker Bucks, Baubellum, and Binturongs

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Steve Rinella talks with Jim Heffelfinger, Janis Putelis, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: How Jim got canceled from Instagram and how to help him make a comeback by following him at @cervidnut; Jim's book, Deer of the Southwest, is back in print; the forthcoming bible on black-tailed and mule deer of North America; antlerogenesis and how antler bone resembles cancer growth; testes the size of peas; check out a picture of the two-headed fawn; extra bones; the female baubellum; Jim's article about lead and wildlife on The MeatEater website; how Seth ate so much tuna that he got mercury poisoning; why binturongs smell like fresh popcorn and brown buns; raccoon dogs; more Covid circulation between humans and deer; Pistol Jim, Jackrabbit Jim, and other perfect nicknames; planning our world squirrel cookoff; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. He's a conservation ranger. Jim Heffelfinger. Alright, Jim Heffelfinger is back. The famous Jim Heffelfinger. I feel like you're going to beat my ass in trivia, which kind of makes me wish you hadn't come. Yeah, I'd like to donate to Mueller Foundation. You already got it figured out?

See, I feel like you're already going to win anyway, and then Spencer's going to throw you a bone. Yeah, well, he should. Everybody gets a ringer, don't they? I just don't like it. I don't know. When I play at home, sometimes I really don't do very well. And those bones don't they i just don't like it i don't know when i play at home sometimes i really don't do very well and those bones don't seem to be automatic by any means no they're not always bones so yeah um the instagram came for you jim they did shut me down banished i don't understand how

like i don't get it and they don't call you and say, Jim, by God, we've had enough. There's nobody that makes those decisions. So my Instagram account, my old one that I had built for years, which was Jim Deere, was just shut down. They just said the account's been disabled. Now, you don't think it has to do with, like, the fact that you're not Jim Deere tractors? Yeah, I don't think so. Like, Jim, like, like. John Deere. Yeah, but I mean mean didn't you use that little icon i yeah i use the icon and photoshopped it to be a mule deer instead of a white-tailed

deer but if you look on there there's a whole bunch of other people that use that icon and everything else so i don't think that was it and it was because you like to shoot pistols i do i shoot pistols competitively but i've been posting posting those pistol shooting videos for 10 years, as have everybody I shoot competitively with. So it's really, I think it's just like a random AI bot, some kind of something randomly was triggered. Well, have you tried to do the appeals? Yeah. Did you have a certified account? I don't know what certified is.

I don't either, but it's a thing. I did. I did an appeal. Like if you had the little blue check mark next to your name. Yeah, I don't think so. I'm just a no. Meet you big time. Is there a point at which you just get too big, though, when they're not going to shut you down? Well, you could take the president of the United States, for instance, who gets shut down on social media.

Or maybe yourself. So maybe no. Maybe not. Yeah, I did send an appeal every other day. They're like, Trump, sure. Kardashians, no way. They're just too big. They're too big. They're too big. Trump, sure. Kardashians, no way. They're just too big. They're too big.

They're too big. No, yeah, you can get kicked off. They'll kick you off. It depends on your politics. They don't kick off super left-wing people. Maybe they do. Does Bill Maher get kicked off Instagram? No clue, bud.

Huh? He's not super left-wing. No, you're right. But he's controversial. He's controversial. He's like, I'd like to have a list of famous left wingers kicked off social media.

There's got to be some. I don't know. That's too bad, man. So you had to start over again. I feel like you need to get in there and try to like figure it out, man. Yep, I did for two months. For two months.

And for the first month and a half, I sent one of those appeals at least every other day and it just out into the black hole no response no response from from instagram at all so after about two months i just shrugged my shoulders and started a new one is it really that uh lifeless and soulless that no that you can appeal that many times and no one's ever going to just shoot you a note saying there's nothing that can be done here's what you did wrong i wouldn't have thought so but yeah apparently apparently like no response like nobody nobody is listening nobody's responding and it's probably not like a phone number you can. No. Right. No. Get it right. Yeah. Like get some customer service. If your account has been canceled, press five.

Yeah. Yeah. And they have over a billion subscribers. Instagram does worldwide. So, I mean, they're not watching accounts. They're not, they're not probably not manually canceling accounts. There's probably some AIs, AI, artificial

intelligence that's, that's just getting triggered and shutting things down. So one in eight. No, because there's many people that are duplicates and businesses and stuff. I mean, you got like 8 billion people. One of our camera guys, when you hear someone doing something totally insane or someone

says like, I wonder if anyone blank, his reply is, man, there's 8 million people on this planet. Billion. 8 billion. Yeah, 8 billion people on this planet. Billion. 8 billion. Yeah, 8 billion people on this planet. Of course someone does that. Yeah.

Yeah. So the new account's Servidnut, which has been my email. You got to start from scratch now. Yeah. Yeah, it's really exciting to put together these really- I don't think I follow- I'm going to follow Servidnut right now while I'm sitting here. You're already on Zuckerberg's radar, man.

I know it. I know it. I'm on the list. It's C-E-R-V-I-D-N-U-T. Don't tell me how to spell it. Do you know Zuckerberg's building a big development in town here? No. Really?

I learned that from Kylie's husband because I follow him on Instagram. What kind of development? Housing development. I don't know. Yeah. So, you know, I can't think of that dude without thinking of him in the movie. You know that movie, Social Network? Yeah.

Oh. Like, I can't think of him without it being that kid, the character. Okay, here I am. I'm following you. And then, well, you're already up to 454. Yeah, I know at 400. Isn't that amazing? How many were, how many did you have?

I had about 4,000, so I wasn't a huge account. There's 455. You build, yeah, you build some, you build some followers and then you just start over and then you put this really cool post out there and, and you, you know, you got 102 followers. Dude, I'm going to do everything I can to help you out. Oh, your kid's all good for the tickets. Oh, excellent.

Can you rest easy now? Yep. Yep. So are you just going to keep posting like you did before or are you going to change things? Yeah, no, I've already, I've already posted, I've already posted some shooting videos right after I established the account. And someone said, what are you doing? You're going to get banned again. And I said, well, better try it out now when you have a hundred followers and to build it up

again. Well, why would you do that? Because everybody else does it. I mean, everybody that's a competitive shooter is posting videos of them shooting. And plus we don't know. Yeah, but what happened? You don't know that's it because what about

like Taylor Thorne? All she does is post. Let me look. Is she still alive? I know she's alive. I mean, is she like having a mess with her? She's still on the gram. But yeah, that's what Jim's saying is that we don't know what canceled it.

No, but I'm trying to see. Oh no, here she is shooting up a storm. What's that guy's name that was at the Vortex shooting school thing? Yeah, Ruben. Ruben, but no, there was another guy. It's like josh i forget his name oh yeah um i was just watching his shooting videos the other day on yeah yeah because i shoot competitively and i have a lot of friends that are shooters you know my my feed is just full of rolling videos yeah he's gonna come on the show someday here he is shooting up a storm yeah he posts a bunch about shooting maybe maybe you're maybe you're not good at shooting maybe they uh maybe they got an ai

that finds people who aren't that good with a pistol probably too slow it's like too inaccurate shut his countdown i can think of i can shoot a better pistol behind my back uh i hesitate to bring this up, Jim. I called you dumb. Did you have one last thing you wanted to say about how to spell whitetail deer? I do. But you said that I say stupid shit all the time, which I do. No, no, no.

I would have never have said that. But that balanced, I think, the previous podcast where you said I was the smartest guy on the planet so i said i'm stupid about one thing maybe you say that one thing too much well now that you're stupid about two things i feel like you just got burned you put your hand in the fire and got burned and now your hand's back in the fire on instagram so there's like one way i think you're stupid being really smart and saying dumb things are not mutually exclusive either. And the second way you're dumb is you and Durkin's white dot tailed deer thing. You almost cleared it all up recently. And then right at the end, you just botched it. Oh, I did?

Yeah. Like you feel as though I'm not giving your argument effectively. Yeah. Previously, you weren were reading my email. I'm not, you feel as though I'm not giving your argument effectively. Yeah. Previously you weren't explaining the argument. Yep. And then you read my email and you got it like, you got it perfect because you're reading my email. And then right at the end, you screwed up.

Well, can we rehash this? Because I didn't read the email. Okay. It's simple. Can I set it up? No, Jim's going to set the whole damn thing up. But when you do, you better give my point good. No, you can do it.

It'd be more entertaining probably. Okay. How do you feel? This is the, I swear to God, we will never talk about this again. How do you, if you had to spell, okay, the deer that lives in America, but not mule deer, spell it for me. W-I-T-E-T-A-I-L-E-D. Okay. Okay, that's a different, that's a new one.

Okay, sorry. So yeah, some people spell it E-D. You could just put T-A-I-L as well. Correct, correct, correct. But Heffelfinger here and and dirk and they're like i equate it to people who go thee and thou they feel that it's w-h-i-t-e dash t-a-i-l-e-d and like sure but no one in their right mind is going to write that and i was pointing out that every book

i've ever written when i get it back from the copy editor the copy editor has gone in and turned them all into that and i then need to go back in and stat let me give you a little book writing stat is when an editor makes like if when an editor makes a correction in your manuscript and you're like no no, you're wrong. You write STAT. It stands for stop doing that. Back off. Back off.

So the editor wanted to hyphenate it. Because it's like the and thou. Formal. It's antiquated. Formal. Spelling. This antiquated, formal spelling. And Durkin, like, what was the magazine Durkin used to work for? Deer and Deer Hunting. He bought the first magazine article I ever sold, Durkin, when he was the editor of Deer and Deer Hunting in the 90s.

Is that right? Yeah, that long we've known each other. That's back when they said the and now. Okay, and on the cover of that magazine, was it like, hunt the whitetail rut the right way? And they would write the hyphen? No. Okay. Well, sometimes.

But here's the deal where it gets all mixed up. There's no, it's not thee and thou. There's no kind of question about what the official name is. I mean, the official name of that deer is white hyphen tailed with an E D deer. I mean, that's the name of that animal. No changing it. Well, there's no changing it, but, but we always, we shorten it and we say white tail,

white tails, that's fine. But when you say white tail deer, now you've just taken the two acceptable forms of that word and you smash them together. It's not even grammatically correct. White tail deer, you gotta put the E D. Like when you trivia a couple of weeks ago and you wrote ivory billed woodpecker, I hope you

didn't have a hyphen and an ed on that. Did you write Ivy bill woodpecker? Ivory bill woodpecker. Ivory billed. And if you look at the names of the species. Dude you want to talk about ivory bills, I'll tell you some stuff that will curl your hair. I should have brought that up.

I just read a great book about that. Go on. But, but Durkin sent a list of animals that have like a hyphen E-D and it's pretty rare to find any animal that is just smashed together and doesn't have the hyphen E-D. So the correct word, the correct name of that animal is white hyphen tailed deer, but nobody wants to run around saying white tailed deer, white tailed deer. And even when I write all the time, I mix it up with white tails, white tail, white-tailed deer with an ed in the hyphen. What's not correct is when you hybridize those and you say white tail, and then you add deer

to the end of it. White-tailed deer. White-tailed deer. That's not correct. That's just some hybrid of the two acceptable forms of it. So you say white tails, we're going to hunt white tails, look at that white tail.

These are white-tailed deer in a little more formal setting, but you don't say white tail and then're going to hunt white tails. Look at that white tail. These are white tail deer in a little more formal setting. But you don't say white tail and then add deer to the end of it. Do you say mooses? Meese. Oh, Corinne's got a note here. When I was, when we were, I passed along to, when we were in Alaska hunting moose, my in-reach, I passed along to Kylie. I sent Kylie a note that said, Tell Corinne that I had a dream that she fell from the sky and landed in my mom's yard with a compound fracture in her left femur.

You came out of the sky, hit a tree branch, and landed in the yard with a compound fracture in your left femur. I wonder what that means. I don't know. And then weirdly, we then had to go do something or another. And I was very distracted by the bone sticking out of your thigh. And you were just very nonplussed. Oh, that's, does that mean I'm tough?

I just found that hilarious because that's, that's what Steve sometimes uses in reach for, to communicate. You hit a limb right across your gut. Very important messages. It's like, flop. You just came out of nowhere. Flop. Bam.

Right into the ground. In your ma's yard. My mom's yard. So watch your ass. I think we need to, this was actually Savannah's idea, that there'd be some kind of coffee table book or calendar or something with a compilation of all your random in reach messages. My in reach messages. That'd be hilarious.

Maybe that'll be, now it'd be like a next calendar, fucked up in-reach messages. Your book's back in print, Jim. Yeah, Deer of the Southwest. Yeah. Yeah, published that, and that's Desert Mule Deer, Cow's Whitetail Deer in the Southwest. That's Coos Deer, folks.

For you folks at home. Interpret. Yeah. So it's been out of print. Actually, the first time I was on the podcast here, I don't know how many copies were left, but shortly after that, it just, it was gone. It was out of print. Um.

Did it get to where, is it so out of print that people sell them for stupid amounts of money and then no one wants to buy it? I've got some screenshots of $800 on Amazon. That happens to rare books. Yeah. Yeah. Good books. books you know because it'll be like someone well yeah because you'll see it where there's an auto print book and there'll be like a slight spike in demand and then there's some guys like i don't know maybe someone needs it for like some thing and then all of a sudden it shoots up and they're selling it and then and then you go back the next day and someone made some more and they're back to normal, but it's always like a last gasp.

Like, I don't know. You never know. Maybe someone will give me 800 bucks for this book. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I, I shortly after I was on the podcast

the first time I went and ordered some because I sell some on my website, deer nut.com. They haven't banned that website. They have not banned that. Uh-uh. And, and I had orders. I had standing orders. And so I called the publisher to get some more.

And they said, well, we're waiting for more. We're out. And we're waiting for more. And I said, who are you waiting for more books from? Because they're the publisher. They're the ones that have the store, the warehouse of them. And it turns out it was out of print. And so that was right when COVID started.

And there's COVID and there's some revolution in the changes in the personnel at Texasxas a&m university press so it drug out for three years but just about two months ago it became available and it's it's available everywhere awesome do you get any money off that a little bit yeah i think um the first run i think i calculated i got 62 cents in royalties for the for the book at that time. 62 per copy. Per copy. You know what? That's actually not that insane. It's not that crazy. Yeah, yeah. People don't realize that.

They think if you sell a book, the author probably gets 80% or so, but the author gets a tiny fraction. No, if you buy a paperback, an author might get a dollar. Yep, yep. Oh, you know what I was going to mention about your thing getting,

your account getting suspended? I don't know if you're reading. It could be high up because I was reading in the – I can't remember if it was reported in the Wall Street Journal or the Times. I think it was reported in the Journal that the Biden administration actually had a list of people that they felt were disseminating COVID disinformation. That was probably it. And the administration themselves were working with social media platforms on a hit list.

And even pointing out if they'd cancel from one, they'd be like, oh, yeah, but he's still on this. So it could come from high up. Yeah, it might be. It could come from high up. That's the thing about that Instagram account The original one I never talked politics I never talked controversy You know that was my place for just really fun

Interesting deer stuff you know sometimes Dad jokes sometimes funny stuff It was really benign really vanilla And interesting so it's not like there was Anything controversial You never said you know if you want to cure COVID Get a copper Is it brass or copper?

Copper, I think. You got to get a copper rod, a copper dowel, and swirl each nostril. Never said that. That's what Dirt told us. Nope. I don't think I said the word COVID on my account.

No, it's depressing. Why did you want to talk about John Coulter? John Coulter. I got some trivia for you. Well, who's his buddy that got, who was his buddy that got chopped all the pieces not far from here? And they smeared those pieces on John Coulter.

Oh, I don't know that story. Pots. They were Lewis and Clark alum. Huh. Don't know that. But Coulter was one of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He shot a mule deer.

Um, and that mule deer ended up when it was described in the journals of the, uh, of the expedition that ended up to be the original description that found its way into scientific literature for the very first description of, of mule deer in the West. There's a French guy named Raffinesque who named a whole bunch of, of animals, gave them scientific names. And he published in 1817, he published the first account of mule deer. And he based that on the journals of Charles LeRae. And Charles LeRae journal is famous. A lot of people have published and talked about how Charles LeRae was the first one to describe mule deer. I've written about it several times. Turned

out I was full of shit that time too. Is that that right because the charles le ray journal is a complete fraud charles ray never existed um and and i read about this at some point in time yeah and so that charles le ray journal they've traced actually patrick gass from he was he was on the lewis and clark expedition so the journal kept by patrick gass you know they all kept different journals patrick gass describes a mule deer that turned out to be the first description of mule deer it was it was incorrectly folded into this fraudulent completely fraudulent and fabricated journal of charles charles le ray and then charles le ray's journal was used to describe mule deer by this rafineske guy into the scientific literature when they trace that, it turns out this mule deer that John Coulter

shot and was, was described in Patrick gas's journal and published was actually the first description of mule deer where they started talking about it. Now, what, like what makes it the first description? We, we recently had a Coronado, uh, we recently had a Coronado expert on the show and no doubt I haven't read everything from everybody on the show. And no doubt, I haven't read everything from everybody on the Coronado expedition, but they, no one on the Coronado expedition was like, oh, and there's a deer.

Yeah, that's true. They weren't writing things like that. Whereas Lewis and Clark, I mean, that was their purpose to go document all the natural things. And so, um, what little written word that exists from the Coronado expedition, and I don't even know what that is, but I know there is some, they weren't, they weren't,

they weren't talking about types of deer. And, and even if they said deer, it would, it wasn't a description of this. You live in Arizona. They both live in Tucson. You need to go listen to the,

you need to go listen to the, she's finding the, she just found the oldest gun in America in your state. Right. I heard that whole podcast. Yeah. It was good. What do you know who Coronado is?

I've never paid any attention to it. Well, you just listened to the podcast. I did. Oh. So, you know now. What was the question? What? You just said, I don't know anything about Coronado.

Yeah. I just told you, you just listened to about it. Right. Right. Yeah. He said, other than the podcast. Yeah. I mean, it's just not a topic that i've dove into and and read about

at all um so either or they never like like lewis and clark's account counts as because they said it's yay big it's got this it's got this it's got this that counts as a scientific explanation yes it a scientist has to take that and then describe it in a scientific explanation yes it the a scientist has to take that and then describe it in a scientific journal and but they have to base that on something that's uh you know an earlier journal that what makes it the first description is how accurate it was it talks about the rope like tail with a black tip it talks about the fact that they jump and they hop like goats um talks about these long ears talks about having more of a grayer coat and so all descriptions make it, um, no question that they're talking about a mule deer. And that was the first time someone described it accurately.

The first white tail that was described was like 1581 in Virginia, actually it was North Carolina, but everything on the East coast was considered Virginia at that time. And it's funny because they were Europeans, Europeans trying to describe these white-tailed deer, which they hadn't seen before. And one of the main parts of the description is they said that the antlers are backwards. And so if you think about a European, the roe deer, they're going backwards, the red deer they're going backwards.

And they came to North America and these antlers are going forward. So they said their antlers are backwards. You know, they never saw a deer where the antlers swept forward, everything was back. So that was one of the descriptions of they said their antlers are backwards. You know, they never saw a deer where the antlers swept forward. I got you. Or their nose. Yeah.

Everything was back. So that was one of the descriptions of the head backwards antlers. Oh, really? In a tail deer. Who was it that wrote that description? Um, oh, it was 1851 and it was, oh, I can't come up with it.

Yeah. 1581, right? 1581. Right, right, right. 1581 at the time. So what's your new deer book then? Yeah, so we've been working, me and a lot of people throughout the West, been working on a big, what will be the Bible of mule deer and black-tailed deer in North America. About 41 years ago, Charles Walmo put together a book called Mule Deer and

Black-tailed Deer in North America, um, with different people writing different chapters. And that thing is, has, is still used as a reference for mule deer information, but it's four decades old. And so, uh, as the chair of the mule deer working group, I'm in touch with all of the West leading mule deer people. And so about four years ago, we, we embarked on a, a new book to create another mule deer and black-tailed deer that was updated with all the latest information. So that is at the publisher now. It's in layout. It's going to be about 550 pages, 100 color photographs.

Yeah, 23 chapters, 80 authors, 550 pages, 100 color photos. Yeah, published by CRC Press. So there's some, some meat eater podcast alum here because Matt Kaufman did the migration, led the migration chapter. Kevin Monteith, who's been on the show, led the nutrition chapter. Ed Arnett, who's been on the show,

led a habitat chapter. Yep. So the cool thing is there's 23 chapters and each chapter was written by the international leader or the national leader for that topic. I mean, the expert for that topic. So this is a compendium of all of the latest information written by the people that are in

the know. On Black Tails and Muleys. On Black Tails and Muleys. In fact, there's seven. What chapter did you lead up there? Did you not, because you're doing the overall editing? I was the lead editor. me and Paul Krausman,

who used to be a professor at University of Arizona, was later a professor at University of Montana before retiring. And I've known him for a long time. So he and I teamed up. So I'm the lead editor. And then I wrote a good part of chapter one, which is historical distribution, taxonomy, where we take the 11 mule deer subspecies and distill them down to only five valid subspecies so we pull that down emily latch was my co-author she's a geneticist that i've been working with with decades doing deer genetics but we've got the tiburon island mule deer which is a mexican island mule deer we've got the cedros island mule deer those islands have been separated for 10 000 years and they're genetically and they're

physically different. And then we've got Sitka black tail and clumping black tail as different subspecies. And then the fifth mule deer subspecies is continental mule deer. Everything in North America is the same subspecies because there's no geographic divider between, there's no genetic differences that you can really define. Physical differences that their tails change as you go in different areas but there's no physical differences that you could really say these are different deer the different subspecies what is up with a why are sitka blacktail seemingly so different in appearance than columbia blacktail they seem to have like a little white tail deer or sorry, a little white tail deer.

They look like white tails. Laid up in them. Yeah. That is fascinating. Just catch the long pause for the hyphen. White tailed. Tailed. You can just taste the hyphen in there.

White tailed deer. But to the Sitka, they've got these white tail like tails. They've got shorter metatarsal glands on their back legs, closer to, um, white tails. Uh,

and they've got darker faces like a white tail, which, which makes it appear like they have white eye rings, um, like a white tail, short,

smaller antlers. It's fascinating. I don't have an answer why they look like white tails. They're not, it's not because of hybridization. I thought I remembered reading in, uh, what's the old timer's name?

Canadian, Valerius Geist. Valerius Geist, yep. I thought I remember reading in his book that, and I could be wrong, but I thought there was a theory that when the ice was moving south, the, the white tails kind of like work the edge of that ice south across the, you know, what would be the lower 48 up the West coast and

somehow met those like. Yeah, not quite. They weren't coming along the coast, but what he talked about was we had whitetails already in the East. White, Ortecolius, the whitetail mule deer genus has been in North America for 5 million years.

We've got fossils in Florida 5 million years ago. So what he was saying was. I got one on my bookshelf. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That you gave me. Yeah.

So we had white-tails in the east and then we had this differentiated into kind of a Western mule deer, black-tailed deer thing. And then later glacial, um, glacial action separated the black-tails along the coast and then the mule deer in the central part. Geis' theory about- Like they met somewhere? Yeah, Geis' theory was that blacktail males interbred with whitetail females and created the mule deer.

In my chapter one, I discussed that a long time, and I don't think it's valid. I think there's a lot of reasons why that's not true. He had this kind of elaborate- what do you call that when you as a scientist what do you call what he would do a theory monger okay he's like val's a friend of mine lifelong friend um but he would kind of throw out some stuff and he'd be like well how like okay show me your you know when i help my kids with their homework you know and you can like show me your work yeah right they're like what's blank times blank that wasn't necessarily a bad thing right you gotta like so it's like show me the work his thing was that you had that that it went like this

you had white tails in what's now the southeastern u.s million three million years ago four million years ago at some point in time climatic conditions were such that they colonized america coast to coast and then in the southern portion yeah from from they caught they made it all the way all the way and then it got real hot and dry in the middle and so there became a gap between the two. And then they had all this separate time to evolve. And then it got real nice weather again. And the white tails came back West. These abandoned black tails came East. They had sex along the Rockies.

And then there's the mule deer. Was he the one that said they, they've mule deer been Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's the theory. Was he the one that said they, they've, mule deer have been around for 10,000 years and I wouldn't be surprised if they're gone in 10,000 years? Yeah. He wrote an article, I think in Outdoor Life that talked about the mule deer disappearing. And he says that there are new species that arose in the Pleistocene. And we spent a lot of time in that chapter one because this information has been out there so much and I haven't always agreed with it. And I did, I sent Val the draft of my chapter to review. Unfortunately, he didn't

get to it before he died. He was actually, cause I wanted his input on it because I was disagreeing with a lot of things, but we've been friends a long time and that's what scientists do. It's okay to disagree. Unfortunately, I would have really liked to have his comment, but with Val's theories, the thing is it's, it's not necessarily a bad thing. He was a thinker, man. He thought outside the box all the time. And he was throwing these theories out. In a lot of cases, he threw a theory out without showing his work.

Just, I think this is what happened. And people followed up and did a master's or PhD on it and either proved it right or proved it wrong. And I remember him telling me one time that, that someone had done this work and they proved that one of his theories was wrong and he called it splendid work it was fantastic all right now we know he said that was a theory of mine someone did a great job of investigating it found out i was wrong and he was excited that someone we actually had that information he was that kind of guy so he threw a lot of theories out and some of those theories really helped people

think about these some of these concepts and um and relationships and some of those theories really help people think about these some of these concepts and um and relationships and some of them were just just batshit crazy that picture that muley buck on the cover makes me want to get that buck so bad that's a kaibab buff yeah georgia andranco took that photo on the kaibab so that it says here the last book like that was published like this was 41 years ago there's a lot like with mule deer especially like lots changed for them and and blacktail deer and and actually um steve's brother danny reviewed the chapter on on blacktail deer so one of seven of the chapters of those 23 chapters are are a separate chapter on each of these seven eco regions in north america so we divided the

coastal rainforest as one ecoregion, the Great Plains as one ecoregion, the California Chaparral as one ecoregion, the Colorado Plateau and the Southwest deserts. And so we have a chapter on each one of those ecoregions written by those experts that manage and survey and hunt deer in those areas and have been researching and managing the deer in those areas. So there's even these seven chapters just focusing on eco regions. Um, and there's one on the coast of rainforest with the black tail deer there. So, um, it, it's pretty excited. It's pretty exciting.

How are you, um, pessimistic about the future of mule deer? No, not at all. Not at all. I think we just need to focus on habitat. And if we preserve some of the open places for them to live, um, they'll, they'll be fine. And I, and I've written about the future of mule deer and, um, people love mule deer too much. We're not gonna, you know, we're not gonna let anything bad happen. How important is predator control with mule deer in your view? Not, not very important locally. You can do something, but, um, you know, the idea

that we're going to kill some predators and it's just going to air quotes, help the deer out. Um, you have to really intensively control predators in a fairly localized area to, to actually increase survival, either increased survival of fawns or increased survival of adults. And you can do it in a small area, but you can't do it even on a game management unit size area. It would take so much money and so much effort to depress the predator population so much that you actually relax the predation pressure and improve survival of deer. And it's so expensive to do it in one game management unit. I mean, in my view, you spend those millions of dollars doing some long lasting habitat work or some overpasses to preserve some

migration corridors or something. So it's really, it can, it can be beneficial in a local area. Um, but you're not going to be able to do it on a large scale area just as a matter of deer management. So when we as hunters are like walk around touting around on Instagram, Hey, everybody do your part. And someone kills a wolf or a mountain lion. Yeah. It's not doing anything from a population standpoint. And people say, you know, we killed this lion and so we did the deer population the favor. Not really. I mean, you're just not having that much of an effect.

Did you follow that? Other lions come in there. Did you follow that predator program that they were doing in Colorado on the Rhone Plateau? I did not that was very work but that was like extremely specific in time and intensity yeah well that's exactly what yeah yeah yeah and it wasn't just like doing it in january for it was like focus yeah yeah yeah and they did a long uh long-term study mark hurley and others and Mark Hurley is the lead author on our predator chapter. Okay.

Um, in, in the book, he did a long-term study in Idaho where they controlled coyotes and lions in certain game management units. Um, and, and in the end, in a focused area, coyote control in a focused area can, can save enough fawns if you've got habitat. It's tied very closely with habitat. In fact, my next article in

the mule deer foundation magazine is on on predators and we talk about how closely that's tied with the quality habitat because if you go in and you kill a bunch of predators you save a bunch of fawns you absolutely save a bunch of fawns in that area if the the deer population's over carrying capacity they're going to die from something else some other causes so the habitat has to be such that it can hold a lot more deer. So when you save them from the jaws of predators, then they actually have a place to live and they've got enough food. So it's very closely tied with habitat quality and caring capacity.

I hear every now and then speaking to habitat, people are like, well, I see deer all the time in my little suburb neighborhood. They seem to be just fine. They're adapting. They're in the, they just live in the yards. Everything's fine. You don't need to preserve wide open habitat. What's your answer to that? My sister, my sister keeps sending me videos of the two mule deer bucks right outside her window and they lay in her front lawn in the shade and they eat out of the bird feeder. Um, and they grow out and they graze in the, in the yard. So that's one little snapshot of their year round habitat needs.

And so, you know, they need, they need winter range free from snow and with some forage during the winter. They need some really good nutritious summer range. And then they might once in a while come into a neighborhood and eat a little bit and hang out, but that that's not providing the habit, their habitat needs for the whole year or even really that month. It's just a, it's just a stop at Dairy Queen is all it is. That's not providing their habitat needs for the whole year or even really that month. It's just a stop at Dairy Queen is all it is.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. We had a text message. Who found this text message?

Oh, that was that someone sent that to me. Someone sent It was an Instagram thing. An Instagram message to Brody. They're called DMs

on Instagram, Brody. I'm in an argument. This is from someone who says to Brody this. Read Instagram, Brody. I'm in an argument. This is from someone who says to Brody this. Read it, Brody. I'm in an argument with a friend who is claiming that 98% of game animals, anyway, are tagged with trackers. While I know this number is unbelievably wrong, I'm having a hard time finding numbers for tracked game animals. Any insight? I just replied like there's 25 million deer in the United States. Do the math. But yeah, I mean, you probably know

better than anyone, but I would guess it's way less than 1%. This is like black helicopter level. It is. Utah has more radio collared ungulates than any other state right now. They're putting out like 500 GPS collars a year as part of their herd monitoring. They're statewide. It's really an incredible effort. What are they after? No one's even close. Survival rates cause specific mortality, what's killing them, and then overall, how are they surviving, and movements, migration patterns and movements and habitat use.

They're getting some fantastic information. For example, talking about predators, they have a whole bunch of units that from all of those radio collars, they know that those animals are limited by habitat because they're taking fat levels and nutrition information and they're malnourished. They know these animals are limited by habitat. They've got another unit. The animals are fat. They're doing really well.

They've got really good nutrition and still the adult female survival is really low. And most of them are getting killed by mountain lions. So here they actually have the information where all these populations are limited by habitat and predator control is not going to help anything. In this unit right here, they're doing really well habitat nutrition wise and predators are killing snot out of them. And so if you have that kind of information, you can go to that game management unit then and, and up the mountain lion quota and let people kill twice as many mountain lions in

that area and try to get that deer population to recover. So that's the benefit of that kind of information. But they have about 12, they have about 1200 mule deer right now, radio collared with GPS collars in the state of Utah. Their population is about 300,000 mule deer. It's less than half of 1% of, of the, of the population collared. So there's only 98%.

Not 98%. Sounds like someone's frustrated they saw a big buck with a collar. Yeah. Or they're worried about the black helicopters finding them when they're poaching something. I don't know. Well, I thought that aren't all birds now tracking us or drones or something? What was that hashtag that was going around?

Well, yeah, I posted that on my old Instagram account. It was a poster that said, birds are drones. Wake up, the government's watching us. Birds aren't real. It said, birds aren't real. up. The government's watching us. Birds aren't real. It said, birds aren't real. That's right. They're drones. They're government drones.

And I think they're the website. Probably so. I think there's a big movement in a website that's called birds aren't real. Would you know that the, we're spending way too much time on conspiracy shit,

but did you know that, you like the whole flat, the earth flat thing? Started out as a joke. It was like a guy just made, a guy was like making a point and it started out as a joke it was like a guy just made a guy was like making a point and it started out as a joke but it caught on i didn't know that like the flat earth folks the new kind of flat earth folks it started out as a dude like goofing on people like that but then his goof caught on and he created a movement yeah like there's a great youtube

video about how stevie Wonder wasn't blind. It'd be like that, but also it becomes like a big movement, you know. They say that the earth can't be flatter. Cats would have pushed everything off it by now. I want to talk about the word of the day, antler genesis. And I'm looking at a thing that describes antler growth more closely resembles bone cancer growth than regular bone growth. Right. Yeah. Antler growth. I mean, that's a growth of bone. It's a growth of nerves. You think about when you injure a nerve, how long it takes to heal that nerve. Here we have antlers that are growing in the course of a couple months and these bones are

growing a couple feet. Nerves are growing a of feet. The skin's grown so fast. So that bone growth, which can be up to an inch a day in some species. Think about that. An inch a day. That's incredible. And so that bone growth is so fast. Antler growth of that bone material is actually more rapid than bone cancer growth. And so there's people doing research with the deer family to be able to grow bone that

fast and then to shut it down and then to have it stop and then, then shed the velvet and, and calcify that bone. They've got to have some physiological or chemical mechanism to stop that runaway bone growth of the antlers. They've got to have some regulation of this bone growth. So people are studying that, um, in relation to, to bone cancer and saying, well, if they're able to shut down that, that crazy bone growth, maybe we can tap into that and find a way to shut down cancerous bone growth, um, and regulate it in that way. And so when you look at captive deer, they've surveyed people that have deer in captivity about how many died of,

how many deer had cancer because they're in captivity and they get sick. They take them in and they check them out. And the deer family seems to be five times less likely to get cancer. So it seems like they've got some kind of mechanism to control this tumor growth or bone growth. So that's pretty exciting if that can be tapped into and maybe we could do something with cancer growth regulating slowing stopping the growth of cancer cells do you know when uh i'll say about this

here day because we're watching some uh we're watching moose thrashing a lot of brush we're seeing a lot of bulls that got little bits of velvet dried on their antlers yet. Um, if a buck or a bull or whatever, never thrashed brush, would all that velvet just stick there? No, it would come out. It, it, it loosens from that antler and you see pictures sometimes of, of antlers, big mule deer or an elk and it's falling off.

It's starting to slough off of that. And even cause you know, they haven't been thrashing at brush cause it's so loose. It would just, it would have been gone, but you can see it just loosen and start falling off. What about cactus bucks? Why are they holding? Like why doesn't theirs just fall off?

That's a hormonal issue. And there's a whole bunch of different things that can cause that. I thought Seth just new hearthed them, man. I thought Seth maybe stumped them. He's like, well, yeah. What about? Like Kelsey's buck she shot a few years ago.

That was in October. So what's up with that? And it was all intact, like not even trying to fall off. I think I sent you the article. I wrote an article in Mildred Foundation Magazine on cactus bucks. And it's a hormonal issue, but it's really complicated. So people are frustrated when they say, why is that buck still a vantler?

What's causing that? And there's a thing called a cryptorchid buck, which is a buck that has its testes descend into the scrotum, but they stay like the size of a pea. Yeah. They're just super small. Those are, I'm sorry, those are hypogonadal bucks. Hypogonadal just means really small, really small gonads in the, in the scrotum. But then the, um, the cryptorchid bucks don't have their testes descend into the scrotum, they stay in the body cavity, usually encased in fat there.

And, and those conditions can cause disruptions on the testosterone that that animal gets because the shed velvet, you need that peak in testosterone as you lead up to the rut. And so it's that surge in testosterone that dries the velvet and it strips it off. And so if the testes are still in the abdominal cavity, or if they're too small and not producing testosterone, you just lack that testosterone to shed that. But it can be more complicated than that because you can have antler does, which are in velvet and people call cactus bucks. And they're actually does that have had a tumor on the ovary, which disrupted estrogen production or other things in the hypothalamus gland,

which can disrupt the production and distribution of hormones. There's also been cases where animals, cause sometimes you'll get like, if you have an individual animal, you've got some individual malformation, some individual problem with that animal. Sometimes you get a population where like half of the bucks are still in velvet in November. Now something's going on, um, in that population and, and nobody's been able to nail that down. The, the leading theory is that some plants produce phytoestrogens, like plant-based estrogens. And in a certain season, you might have a certain rainfall pattern or temperature pattern, which makes a whole bunch of those plants just flourish and the deer are eating a lot of them.

And they're just eating a lot of estrogen. It's disrupting the flow of testosterone in there. And so all of those different things can happen. And unless you get an animal in, you get a blood sample, look at testosterone levels. You're able to look at the testes, the condition of the testes and look at the antlers. There's also the receptors, the testosterone receptors in velvet might malfunction and they might have a lot of testosterone, but the velvet receptors aren't detecting it. So there's a whole bunch of really complex things, and you can't really get to the bottom of it without a really intensive necropsy with a physiologist and a chemist.

Do you see antlered does that are viable? Yes. Okay. Yeah, the last Whitetail book actually had a picture of an antlered doe with a fallen suckling. So they can reproduce. It depends what causes that. picture of a, an antler doe with a fallen suckling or so they, they can reproduce. Okay. It depends what causes that injury to the ant injury to the skull on a doe might actually, um,

cause an antler growth, um, to form. They've done that experimentally. What about like surviving like EHD? I've heard that being the thing that causes. Yeah. Not, not antler does, but cactus bucks. Yeah. Yeah.

That's definitely thing. Um, there's aed does, but cactus bugs. Yeah, that's definitely a thing. There's a veterinarian, Dr. Fox from, I believe, Utah, wrote a really good paper about a case of EHD. And EHD is epizootic hemorrhagic disease, and it causes this hemorrhaging. And it'll cause hemorrhaging in the body and the nose and the eyes and anus and everything, but also can cause hemorrhaging in the testicles. And so if it's hemorrhaging and swollen, it interferes with that production of testosterone and then it interferes with the antler cycle. So they, her team of wildlife vets documented this case of EHD in a population causing a whole bunch of cactus bucks from disrupting that hormonal. Isn't a sign of that, like the, the hooves sloughing off?

Yeah. One sign of epizootic hemorrhagic disease is lines or cracks in the hooves and it runs, it's not lengthwise from the tip to the fur, but it's across the hoof. And it's what it is, is a stress line. It's when they get sick at the time they get sick, because those hooves are constantly

growing like fingernails. Yeah. So at the time that they get sick, it, that stops growing because they're really sick, just like a bighorn sheep get those annual rings every year during rut because that horn sheet stops growing. And then when it starts growing again, it leaves that stress line there. And it's the same thing with the HD hooves is there'll be a stress line.

Yeah. I think with Kelsey's buck, if I can remember right, the, the hooves were basically, it looked like they were falling off yeah on that one and then that week we saw probably half a dozen different bucks in velvet still yeah yeah so when you've got especially when you have evidence like on the hooves like that or if you've had some animals die earlier in the fall from ehd you know then it's indication it's not something like the phytoestrogens i was talking about yeah hey why do people use oh oh, sorry, do you have, go ahead. I had a little follow-up on that too.

But is any of that what causes a buck to be a shirker buck? Oh, I was going to ask you. Do you know what a shirker buck is? Yeah, that was a guy. I think we may, I might have even asked you this last. As Yanni laid out, it was a guy's thing. It was a guy's thing, yep. Yeah.

We might have even talked about it last time you were onanni laid out, it was a Geist thing. It was a Geist thing, yep. Yeah. He talked about it. We might have even talked about it last time you were on. We could have. I don't remember, but yeah, shirker bucks are those bucks that maybe mature mule deer. So you're saying, you're defining it as it's a thing, or you're just saying this is the theory that was laid out.

Yeah. I'm explaining, I'm explaining Val Geist's theory. Okay. Yeah. Because I don't, he, he spent his PhD in Banff National Park observing mule deer that apparently were pretty tame.

So he could observe them at close range. And from those observations, he wrote a lot about, um, about mule deer breeding. But his theory was that there's some shirker bucks and they shirk, they shirk, and he calls it that because they shirk their responsibility to breed that year. It's a great word.

And he said they just opt out of rut. They gain a lot of fat. They don't burn their fat because they're not running does. They just stand around and. Bide their time. And bide their time. And hopefully, his theory was, at some point, then they're so big and so fat and so powerful. They come down the mountain.

They're like, I'll take her take her boys i'll take them all yeah yannis only hunts for shirker bucks yep um i don't i don't know of any evidence of any other evidence of that other than his stories yeah that he just kicks it and i just do all the pre-rut let's everybody do all the pre-rut. Let's everybody do all the whatever. No, he was saying that it would go on for multiple years. And then one year it's like. Oh, yeah, not just a season. No, no, no. He would grow to be four or five years old and shirk all those seasons.

Oh, not just shows up on the day of the action. No, no, no. It would be a cumulative effect that at five years he's like, now, boys, nobody's messing with me. It just cuts loose. All the other bucks are like, holy shit. Where did he go from? Yeah, he's been gaining fat.

Some bitch been shirking up there on the mountain. Oh, so it was like a lifetime play. And the only way that would work from an evolutionary standpoint, if on year five or whatever he was able to to father a whole bunch of offspring i mean that would be the only advantage i do we did talk about this i remember you making the you making an astute observation that if that's your reproductive strategy you have a high degree of cockiness that you're not going to die in year two, year three, year four. You better be nocturnal. Yeah. Yeah, you got to have a good place to shirk.

Why do people use, and I don't even know how to ask the question. Why do people use blue tongue and EHD kind of synonymously, but they're not the same thing, right? Yeah, they're not the same thing, but they're very close. They're both hemorrhagic disease. They both cause kind of the same symptoms, but they are very much different things. There's two forms of EHD, EHD1 and 2, and then blue tongue. I don't remember. There's like seven different types of blue tongue.

The virologists can tell them apart when they do like PCR genetic analysis. So they're definitely different things. EHD is, is usually more of a deer cattle thing. Blue tongue tends to be more pronghorn goats, sheep kind of thing for some reason. Give me the life cycle of that disease. It's spread by aculicoides verapennis. It's a, it's a gnat, basically a noceum is what spreads that. So you've got to have some moisture in order to spread that disease, but

it's a virus that's just spread by the bites of those gnats. So he's got to bite a deer, then bite another deer. Yeah. Right. Why is it that like in a place like Montana here where you have places where there's mule deer and

whitetail, like overlapping in the same habitat, why is it that it hits whitetails so much harder and mule deer seem to not be as affected by it? I don't know the species difference, but there's definitely a, a multi-year protection. Once, once animals get EHD and if they survive and most animals do survive, they've got

antibodies for that, for that virus. And when it comes, that's why it usually doesn't hit like every year. It'll, it'd be bad one year and then it won't hit for a couple of years because even if it's in the environment, those animals have high antibodies and they fight it off. Um, they had, they had some captive deer in

Mississippi and some captive deer in, in Michigan. And it's, it's something that's mostly has been, it's moving North definitely, but it has been a Southern, uh, kind of disease in the, in the warmer climates. And they brought some Michigan deer down into the pens with the Mississippi deer and the Michigan deer just all died because they had no exposure to it. Oh, no shit really?

In the past. They're very susceptible to it. That's weird. Whereas the, whereas the Mississippi deer had some antibodies and had some exposure to it. And so it's, it is definitely some of that protection. Um, I, and there are some diseases that it, it is more of a whitetail thing and not so much a

mule deer thing. Yeah. Like up on the Milk River, like, I don't know, last time EHD hit, like it crushed like 90% of the whitetails. Last year. The mule deer were. Last year from what ranchers were saying out

there. Yeah, the mule deer were basically unaffected. Yeah. And I, and that's a known thing. But I don't know why. I don't know. It's just species or different species are susceptible to different things like different,

um, different dog breeds are more or less susceptible to rattlesnake bites and things like that. They're just. Does that have anything to do with the amount of moisture you get in a year? Yeah. If it's going to be a bad year or a good year.

Yeah. But super dry. Cause we, I coauthored a scientific paper like 25 years ago when we documented it for the first time in Arizona. So in arid climates where there isn't a lot of water for those no-see-ums, those little gnats to reproduce, which is the vector, it won't spread animal to animal. It's got to be insect bites. It's got to be a bad insect year. Yeah, it's got to be a bad insect year.

What you might call like, holy shit, there's a lot of no-see-ums this year kind of thing. Yep, definitely. And they found out that the one that some of them in the southwest can actually reproduce in the moisture of like cactus, broken cactus. That's all the moisture they need to reproduce. So that's been found. But definitely some moisture around where you've got a lot of gnats that year. Now, okay, this is going to get a little complicated. I think I know the answer to this, but I want to make sure I know the answer to this. Why do, when deer get EHD, why do they all turn up laying in rivers and ponds and creeks?

Yeah, I think they're just- In water tanks. They're viremic. They're just like, you know, like when you've got the flu, you want to drink a lot of water. They just want to drink a lot when they get, their temperature comes up and they've got that virus and they're sick. They just naturally head to water to drink or to cool off. And they usually die like late summer, early fall. Yeah. It's definitely a late summer thing. That's the first thing that makes you suspicious that

maybe it's an EHD thing. They're by water in late summer. Now last year, I think it was last year, Nebraska. Let me know when it starts ringing a bell for you guys. Last year in some portion of Nebraska, maybe it was two years ago, they were buying back deer tags. I think that happened in the Dakotas too, maybe North Dakota. I was thinking Dakotas when you said that.

They were buying back deer tags. And there's different people, department people talking about the cause. They were attributing it to the incredible dryness, but, but here's the catch. It was congregating deer more around water. Do you buy that? It could be.

I don't, I don't know the details of that North Dakota incident to that degree. You've got to have the vectors. You've got to have the insects to do that. Concentrated around water would put them all together, like feeding deer in a CWD area or whatever. Definitely you've got disease spread much more than that, but I don't know if they had like a wet spring with a whole bunch of gnats all over the place and then it got dry through the summer and they were concentrated. I don't know that kind of detail of what might have happened. Got it. Hey, what's a nude mouse model?

Yes. Well, it's like the naked mole rat, the hairless cat. Let me read the article title. Development of a nude mouse model for the study of antlerogenesis mechanism of tissue interactions and ossification pathway. Yeah, they basically bred some naked rats, some naked mice for studies in the lab so that they didn't have all that fur on there. And they could do skin grafting studies and things like that where they would have this nude mouse. And so the model part of it is just, they use this nude mouse as a model to do all kinds of different research and have found it, apparently have found it pretty useful. But they, we were talking about the antlers, when a fawn, a buck fawn is born, it has what's called an antler periosteum underneath the skin of the forehead.

And it's not attached, it's tissue, not attached to the skull, and it's not really attached to the skin initially. Oh, really? It just floats in there? Just in between there. And then eventually it attaches to the bone. So you could like insert that into Yanni's head? You could, and he would grow antlers. Because they haven't done it with humans,

but this new mouse model paper, they took some of that antler periosteum, which is stem cells. And stem cells are cells that can develop into anything, organs or skin or bone or anything. And so they took some of those, the antler periosteum material, grafted it under the skin of the forehead of these nude mice. And they grew little antler buds on top of their heads. And they've taken that antler periosteum and even grafted onto a leg of a deer and it grew a spike on its leg bone, on the side of its leg bone.

Oh, come on. And so they can grab that. People get bent out of shape testing out shampoo on them little buggers. But like that? That's like rogue taxidermy, not taxidermy. Yeah, but if that leaves the cure in bone cancer, then everybody's all in.

I thought it was just like part of the Texas deer lobby. All the nuance. But those antlers. But can you have more antlers growing out at weird places? One to 200 inches, we'll grow one for you. Out of his butt. And when they do it to a deer, that antler on the leg still reacts to the whole annual hormonal cycle and the antlers actually shed. No!

And the antlers are shed because it's still feeding all of the same hormones out of the blood system. That's wild. And so they've been able to translocate that. And they've also taken the stem cells from the antler periosteum. Chun-Li Li, a researcher in China, has cloned two adult red deer

just from the cells from an antler periosteum and about eight other deer, some other deer species. I don't know if they're rusa deer. Can you send me and Will the picture of the pink mouse with the antlers so we can put it on Instagram? You want to see what we're talking about? Go on at Steven or Nell and we'll show you an antler mouse. Yeah.

Pink mouse with a big ball bun at its head. He's got a quarter inch antler. So they've taken those cells and they. He's scoring 0.25. Yeah, but the base, the base is big. Yeah. I mean, they've cloned whole red deer just from the cells of the antlered periosteum.

Oh, man. What, what. Yeah. I guess if it's like, if it, I guess if you got an eyeball toward cancer. Or, you know, think about if you've got an endangered species in there, you've got five left and they're ready to blink out. If you could clone those, not ideal, but it's better than losing them completely.

Yeah. No, I'm with you. I'm just talking about like making mice have antlers. Yeah. Right. All right. That's a tough one. You know, in CWD research, they have what's called cervidized mice and they have some

cervid genes inserted into the genome of the mouse. And then they can study with mice with their fast generation time. You know, they're reproducing all the time. You can get 10 generations in, I don't know, a year or two. And so those mice have deer genes inserted in them. And they can study deer genes that are relevant to CWD research. So they can have all these mice instead of having deer and waiting to get 10 years old and do research on the genetics. Deer genes, but in mice.

They're called cervidized mice. And I was in the lab in Denver once and I asked the director, do they get? And I started raising my hands like little antlers. He said, no, no, no, they don't get antlers. Recently, you and I have been swapping photos of two-headed deer it started out with a two-headed spike yep in mexico and you said don't do anything with this right but we can release it now at the beginning the picture had came to a friend of mine and then come to me and i asked if we could post it and he said well let's wait a second but i've now got the go ahead we can we can post that and i don't have any additional

information that was killed do you have any better photos of it i don't that's the only that's the only photo tell the story of this deer uh so it's a it's a year obviously yearling it's a spike there's a picture of it laying there bloody tongues hanging out it was harvested by someone um in in, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, which is like Acapulco is kind of up the coast in Southwestern Mexico, um, in the mountains of, uh, Petitlan. And the picture came to a friend of mine, uh, and apparently all of the locals were pretty freaked out just for superstitious reasons about this two headed deer. I mean, it was, it was, um, people were pretty worried about it because it looked so strange.

And the one photo we have, it looks legit. You never know with these things. I'm always a little guarded about that. But we've had two-headed fawns documented. Oh, yeah. On my Instagram, Jim sent this to me. On my Instagram, I have photos, x-rays of a two-headed fawn. Yep.

But the thing that blew me away about the little spike is they get actually lived. Right. And I wish they had video of it. Like, could it eat with both of its heads? Did one just kind of hang out? That's why a little part of me is guarded, you know, that it's a, it's a hoax, but I've looked at the picture. And, and if you have a fawn that's two headed, it's only one more year. It would only have to live a year for that's two-headed it's only one more year it would only

have to live a year for that thing to be a spike and to get shot and it would depend on what's going on inside with these what's called conjoined twins where they're just twins that are joined and they share body parts it depends what's going on inside every every individual is different and that two-headed fawn that you posted, it did not have two complete digestive tracts when they did the necropsy on it. The right head had a complete digestive tract. The left head, the digestive tract was intermittent and was blind, came to a blind end in at least two places.

They had two hearts in one sac. So its esophagus didn't fuse in with the main line. Yep. So that head wouldn't have been able to eat. Right. And then back by the rectum somewhere, there was another blind stop. And so it depends with the spike, if it had two complete digestive tracts, it's conceivable it

could live, live one year and get shot, um, as a spike. What, uh, what kind of deer was it? Just out of curiosity. White-tailed deer. Yeah. Yeah. The spike was white-tailed deer in the fall.

Cousy. Yeah, that's right. Or Cousy. It might've been one of the other Mexican Highland subspe deer and the fawn. Cowsy. Yeah, that's right. Or cowsy. It might have been one of the other Mexican highland subspecies, but none of those have been studied. All of those are just kind of smaller deer in Mexico. So tell about this one we do know is in fact,

like totally legit. Right, the fawn. The fawn. Yeah. Was it found dead? It was found dead in 2016 in, was, um, was it Michigan or Mississippi? Minnesota. Minnesota.

Um, mushroom hunter was out. He found this fawn. It was in perfect condition. That wasn't decomposing. It was dead. Um, and it looked like it had been cleaned off by the mother, but they did a necropsy. They did a fantastic job. Lou Cornicelli, who was a big game leader in Minnesota and, and Gino D'Angelo is a university of Georgia

professor. And they, they did x-rays. They did a complete necropsy to look at it. One thing they did was they, they put the lungs in water and the lungs sunk, which means they've never had air in them. That's the way you can tell if it's stillborn or not. So they, so it never had taken a breath. So it was stillborn, but it seemed to be cleaned off. So they felt like it was stillborn, the mother cleaned it, and then abandoned it. And this guy must have found it right after that because it was in pristine condition. I was just watching a movie about that. What was that famous operation they did in World War II where they threw a guy in the ocean? They threw a fake officer in the ocean, but they had to make up a whole in the ocean. They threw an officer, a fake officer in the ocean,

but they had to make up a whole background on him. And he was carrying like letters, fake letters, and it's what led the Nazis to believe that the Sicily landing was going to be in Greece. Yep, I remember that. They put fake documents so he'd wash his shoulders. And they made him a whole fake pass.

They made a girlfriend with a whole. You're talking about a corpse. Yeah, they took a corpse and it had, they took a corpse and just dumped it off a submarine. And, and they made up like this thing with this person with a pass. They had an actual girlfriend with a past. To pull one over on the nuts.

And it worked. But they had a hell of a time. I guess for a long time, they needed a body. And they were afraid that someone would be this person didn't die in the water. And they didn't really get into it, but I wonder if that's what you're talking about. Yeah. Certainly there's forensic ways to tell whether they drowned or not.

Like something about like what the, the condition of the lungs would be or something. Did they determine why this thing like didn't take a breath? Like why it didn't. No. You know, and when they, when they look at the, the discontinuous digestive track, you know, there when they, when they look at the discontinuous, um, digestive track, you know, there's probably just all kinds of things, um, wrong with it.

There's been two other white-tailed deer fawns, two-headed fawns documented, but this is the first one that's been documented to have been born, even stillborn. The rest were in fetuses where they did necropsies on pregnant females. And then they, they ran into these two-headed fawns inside the womb. 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. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Let's talk baculums. Bacula. Baculas.

Okay. Hit me. So I was looking for some information for Spencer, and I think it's for an upcoming trivia question, so I won't go into details, but I ran into this paper. But I ran into this paper. That's all I need to hear right there, man. I'll be able to track it.

Believe me, what I just said. I'll be able to track it. Believe me, what I just said. I'll be able to do some reading. No, believe me, what I just said isn't going to be a hint for whatever's coming up. Oh, okay. But I started reading. I just sent Spencer three doozies for when I'm not here. They're killing me. I want to ask you guys if you know them so bad, but I'm not going to do it.

Well, I was reading this paper, and it had a whole bunch of different things. And one thing it had was extra skeleton bones, like bones that aren't attached to the skeleton. It had a whole bunch of different things. And one thing it had was, um, was extra skeleton bones, like bones that aren't attached to the skeleton. It had a whole bunch of science on bacula. Oh, that's, I never thought about that. It's a bone unattached to the skeleton. Just like, like kangaroos have these bones that support the pouch. They do? They do.

They do. They support the pouch. And the males have them too, which obviously don't support the pouch because male kangaroos don't have a pouch. But they, that's part of the pelvic girdle and it's not attached. It's just another example of one of these bones. I never thought, well, deer shoulder's not attached. Yeah, I know it. That's, that's true.

Oh yeah. But it's hooked on pretty damn good. I mean, with muscles. Well, yeah, you're right. Not once you start cutting it, it's not. Oh yeah, you're right. You're right. Yep.

Okay. All right. So there's a whole paper on these, the extra, extra They actually had antlers in there and sheep horns in there too. But I was reading about these bacula and was surprised, which is what I said. What was the question that Spencer asked? I forgot. I forgot that one. So I'm reading the paper about baculum and I run into the fact that females have a companion to the baculum, which is actually a clitoris bone is what it is.

Of what species? All the species that have baculums. No. Yeah, not 100%, but almost all of those species. And you don't find it in other species. If they don't have a baculum, then they're not going to have. So a black bear, take a black bear for instance.

A female black bear has a floating clitoral bacula. Genital bone. And it's called a baubelum. B-A-U-B-E-L-L-U-M. So like, so let's say a boar black bear, like whatever, five, six inch long. Same as a raccoon.

Yeah. Yep. How, what size would that female bone be? Much smaller. And, and they're, they don't look just like it. They're, they're completely different in shape as you'd imagine.

So if you were. How big say? The. You have any? I was looking at some. No, I don't. No, that'd be interesting. I'm, I didn't even know about it until recently.

Small enough if you were, you know, cleaning that bear, butchering it, you probably wouldn't even notice. No, you'd have to look for it. You'd have to go in there and certainly look for it. Because like even like a walrus's baculum is like 18 inches long. And the female, I've seen pictures of both. I thought you can use those as a walking stick.

Just about can. No, it's like a thing, man. A walrus has the largest baculum in relation to body length, like 18% of its body length. So like one-fifth of its body length is baculum. Yeah, I think people used to make little walking sticks out of them. But they're like little miniature baseball bats you get at the ball game. You'd like to use that as a hunting tool in a club.

For short people. It would be short people. Like Danny DeVito had one. But it's like, you know, bacul they're found in a lot of carnivores. They're found in bears, found in rodents, um, primates, bats. A bat baculum is about 0.15 millimeters. A 10th of a millimeter is a bat baculum. I had no idea bats had them.

I know. And then, and then they, they talk about the balbellum, the female version of it, of almost all of these, probably 80% of the species that have baculums, the females have a balbellum too. So it comes hand in hand. I have never even heard of that. So a bunch of research on that is like, well, why would you have a bone for the female genitalia? And they think it's just something that came along in evolution, like male nipples. I mean, two sexes having something and it's really only functional in one of the sexes.

So it's probably something that just came along in evolution with that. And it's more variable too. The female bulbellum, even in some species that have it, you may have some individual females that don't have it and some that do have it. Like it's on its way out. Yeah.

Like it's, it's not functional. And so it's, it's real variable. Huh. But we know for a fact that it's not its way out. It's vestigial. Yeah, like it's not functional, and so it's real variable. Huh. But we know for a fact that it's not functional. Yeah. I mean, well, I don't think you can ever say that, but nobody's been able to. There's a whole bunch of different theories,

even the baculum, theories about what purpose that serves, and there's a whole bunch of different theories. And the scientists will tell you, throw up their hands, and we're not really sure what purpose it is. There's a whole bunch of different theories. And the scientists will tell you, throw up their hands. We're not really sure what purpose is. There's a couple of obvious ones, but there's a lot of theories that have come across on that. If anyone out there collects the, what do you call it again, Jim?

Bobellum. Bobellum. Taxidermist or anyone. Just write meat eater. Bobellum. And send them to us and maybe I'll make some jewelry for the next auction house. Yeah. And so there's a lot of variability in animals that have it.

All of those, like the bear family, the raccoon family, a lot of carnivores. There's a lot of exceptions in there of species, like primates are one that have baculums. Humans obviously are an exception to that. But there's exceptions in all those categories of certain species that don't actually have a baculum. Just species that are exceptions to that. We've been talking a lot about, um, lead and wildlife. Um, you had written a piece for our website about lead and wildlife. Yep.

Yep. Give me the, give me the quick and dirty. Where you at on it? So the reason, the reason I wrote that piece is there's just a, there's a lot of talk. You read about lead and wildlife and you seem to get the same old things, but there's some other things that I think aren't being talked about. Mostly all the nuance. People are happy to glom on to these bumper sticker sayings or just generalities like having lead in your venison is obviously bad for human health. And people talk about like lead, using lead ammunition is toxic to wildlife. Well, my piece was let's focus on what the real issue is.

The real issue isn't mammals, reptiles, amphibians with lead ammunition. The real issue is birds that are consuming, mostly that are consuming meat or birds that will pick up lead pellets as grit. Both of those ways. But birds are very susceptible to lead poisoning. So let's focus on what the issue is. The issue is lead ingestion by birds. That's what the issue is. And, and it's not just generally lead exposure. Cause I hear people saying, you know, they

talk about lead exposure being bad. Let's be specific. It's ingestion of lead by those birds. And then let's focus on where it is a problem. And if we need to make some management changes in a local area or local valley, state and provincial and tribal game and fish agencies are in the position to change regulations if it's deemed a problem. But nationwide bans, statewide bans about lead exposure of wildlife so we need to we need to ban lead or implement regulations when you look at the science banning lead or or advocating

that everybody switched to non-lead bullets and ammunition is not very well supported from a conservation standpoint population level conservation is not very well supported from a conservation standpoint. Population level conservation is not very well supported from a human health standpoint. Metallic lead is very different than organic lead compounds, which is what's in lead paint and lead gasoline and clutch pads and brake pads. That's a very different kind of lead that can poison people very easily. Consuming a number eight lead pellet once every week is not going to elevate your blood lead levels. You've got to consume metallic lead almost daily, and that's what the human medical research shows, before your blood levels are elevated to the point where it's the CDC safe levels.

This might be a little out of your wheelhouse But what would you say if I told you That Seth ate so much tuna That he got mercury poisoning Apparently that's possible Because I eat a lot of sushi And I've often wondered about that You did get that, didn't you? Do you have mercury levels?

I didn't actually get my levels checked But I had symptoms of mercury poisoning. He came back with a lot of tuna and ate it all in one fell swoop. I worry about that. What? I eat sushi enough that I kind of think about that. From your recent Hawaii trip? Well, yes, partially.

That and Louisiana eating cobia. Guy eats a lot of fish. In a month's time, at least 50% of my meals were fish. Big pelagic ocean fish. Cobia, red snapper. And what were the symptoms? My hands were going numb. Seth.

Like I was having weird memory loss. But this is the thing. See, I would have thought, I would have rolled my eyes and been like, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. However, I had read a piece recently that is this guy that never ate fish. He got pulled off a cruise ship. He never ate fish.

He's on a cruise ship that has a sushi deal and just camped out on it. It's a temporary thing. You get better. You stop eating. You get better. You stop eating. You get better. He developed a temporary mercury poisoning. But that stays in your system, doesn't it?

No, it eventually works. Are we sure about that? Well, I'm sure you have some. We're talking about enough to knock your D in the dirt like it did with Seth. I don't know. That's a little bit worse. Knock your back in the dirt. You're young and healthy I don't know. That's like a little bit worse. Knock your back in the dirt. You're young and healthy, man.

I was looking at like the recommended. Sad about that. Like the consumption recommendations for just for like Canyon Ferry, the local lake here. And they say five servings of walleye per month is what they don't, they recommend like no more than that. And the servings, eight ounces of fish. Oh yeah. You definitely.

And I was eating eight ounces of fish. Like yeah, you definitely top that. And I was eating eight ounces of fish. I was eating way more than that a night. Is that an issue with big pelagic fish though as much? I mean, these little lakes, sometimes you get seeps and mines going into the lakes and things. Well, when I was doing research, it said that cobia is one of the highest, like one of the fish has the highest mercury levels.

And I was eating- It's an issue with big pelagic fatty they're accumulating all that are like they're living pretty long time they're bioaccumulating big fish and it's like industrial it's industrial um what do you call it like shit in the air a flu what's the word i'm looking for effluent industrial fluent that yeah comes down on the ocean surface and big fish that and that they're big enough that they're eating their bioaccumulating from older fish yeah it gets more think about a marlin marlin will eat mahi yeah gets more big fish eat a great white shark you're probably in trouble you know uh one of my favorite fish writers

he like does these great books uh his name is vick dunaway i got a bunch of his books he does like these books that are um if you're going fishing somewhere let's say you're going on vacation to the gulf coast you get vick dunaway is like sport fish of the gulf coast and it's um great picture of the fish what's up with it so if you catch fish like the Gulf coast. And it's, um, great picture of the fish. What's up with it. So if you catch fish, like the hell's that you flip through Vic Dunaway and find your fish.

And he always, he has these really great, like very concise food quality assessments, which are like spot on and very concise. And his one for great white shark is don't even ask. How'd you put two and two together uh you were getting weird symptoms and then yeah well i was just i was just eating a lot of fish and i was like um i've always thought about mercury poison psychosomatic you thought about it before you got the symptoms no no i had

the symptoms first and then i was like yeah so now you got the thinking and then got symptoms yeah no you gotta tell me right now he had liver cancer dude in five minutes my liver'd hurt no i mean it wasn't that okay yeah um and i mentioned it to kelsey i was like i've kind of been having like weird uh like my hands are going numb um and it ain't cold and i'm not ice fishing yeah she goes yeah i'm having the same thing oh whoa so the morris household man well i mean one the one week i eat fish every single night for dinner we do we eat a lot of fish too i likes fish well you got to eat it when it's fresh right it's like that's one of those things it doesn't last in the freezer forever yeah but it's yeah i eat a lot of fish too and like fish well you got to eat it when it's fresh right it's like that's one of those things it doesn't last in the freezer forever yeah but it's yeah i eat a lot of fish

too and i feed my kids a lot of fish but we punctuate it not i don't punctuate it because of mercury i just punctuate it because i don't know like whatever yeah well usually i do too i just i'm like on a low red meat year so there's some, I could help you out with that. Well, I'll be good, yeah. It'd be cool to test some of that stuff the next time you get some. That'd be great, man. Yeah.

We could put our lab coats on. Tumor. Our lab coats on. Maybe you could buy a really expensive machine that measures mercury. Oh, Greg Fons has had some tested, I believe. I think he's done that somehow or another. Hey, let me ask you this.

I want to cover this in more detail when I got my story straight, but there's some legislation coming up, some federal legislation coming up that I'm a little hazy on detail, so I want to tiptoe around it a little bit. Having to do with limiting the ability of federal land management agencies to restrict lead shot and lead ammunition on lands under their purview wasn't there yeah i thought there was just something about wildlife refuges like a big ban right so that's that's what that's where i thought you're going well no it'd be like limiting the ability in the future

that some national forest can't at the federal level say, hey, even though the state's handling wildlife management, we're going to come in and say that just because, no lead ammunition on our national forest. Like limiting their ability and making it be that it has to achieve, like it has to be that the lead has to be linked to a population as the primary cause of a population decline and not done frivolously. Do you got any comment on that? Or is it a little early to tell? I don't know about limiting the ability of agencies to

do that. There is a federal register notice now about some refuges that are being open to hunting, but that comes with the caveat of no lead. And so that's open for comment right now. And their justification for that is not only not compelling, but there isn't much of a justification. They just have general statements about lead and health and wildlife and doing the right thing and good conservation. So they don't justify why lead couldn't be used in those particular cases. But as far as limiting a federal agency's ability, I just want it to be based on science and it often isn't. So if, if there's a, if you can demonstrate some particular problem with using lead ammo in that spot, you know, let's regulate

it. But state, state and provincial and tribal agencies, that's what they do. They have an issue that impacts conservation and they make some changes to address that. My meat eater piece had really four topics that often don't get talked about. And one is what species are actually affected. And I mentioned that. The other thing is the idea of population level effects. So for a long time, me and other people have said, Hey, there's no population level effects. So there, so we don't need to regulate it. The truth is there probably is a whole bunch of population level effects with golden eagles and the bald eagles, um, and, and, and other animals. We're

just not monitoring them and studying them with such intensity that we would be able to detect a population level effect. But other than condors, condors is a big issue, but other than condors, I don't see any population level effects that are significant enough that would drive me to want to make some wide sweeping changes in what, what ammo people use. And so I think we have to be careful in saying there's no population level effects because there is, they're just small and, and some cases we haven't detected them. Um, so, so I don't say

that anymore. Population level effects. I talk more in terms of is, is using lead ammunition, such an issue to the conservation of that species that we need to make some changes. And, and, and I don't find any compelling arguments for, um, for species to, that we would need to change. What do you personally shoot when you're hunting? Solid copper. The last 12 years, all of our rifles, and I have two pistols, a 10 millimeter and a 460 Roland that I've built up to be hunting pistols. And it's all copper, solid copper ammunition.

And I've done that. I did that a long time ago. It started when my kids had junior hunts on the Kaibab and Arizona Game and Fish Department gave us two boxes of premium copper ammo. So I have 40 rounds of ammo just free every time the kids got drawn. And then you could also get a box of 50 bullets if you reload, which I do. And so I was getting some of this free copper ammo and started using it and really liked it. It shoots really clean.

It's accurate. It puts animals down. It's effective at that range. And I like the wound channel is so clean you know a lead bullet will blow up and create a lot of bloodshot um meat and there's a lot of they've shown some of those lead dust and those lead fragments to go 12 inches from the wound channel i mean it does that lead does spread into a lot of meat and i like the fact that a copper bullet will punch a hole in there and you lose very little meat oh dude listen we so i was just hunting we were just hunting moose and we shot a bull

300 wind mag clay shot a bull 300 wind mag i'll stand right next to him 19 yards 180 grain bullet of a 300 wind mag shooting federal trophy copper it went through the like ball it went through the ball of the shoulder okay cut that bone clean in half went through both lungs lodged against the hide on the other side and it was a absolutely perfect mushroom. Mushroom. Yep. Yep. That's, that's amazing. Anything to make it through that. In a, he's got thing in his pocket right now.

An absolutely perfect mushroom at 19. Like no way. Is that the only shot? You shoot him more times? No, he put no one right next to it, but didn't need to. None of the petals sheared off or anything. That's crazy. Nothing.

But one thing I want to say about the, lead issue, and I address it at the end of my article online, is that even if it's not a compelling issue for everybody to switch to copper for wide-scale conservation issues or human health issues, we better be paying attention to hunter image. Because when they hold up a bald eagle, the symbol of freedom, and the thing is sick or dying because it ingested a lead bullet. And they tell the whole audience that, you know, hunters are still using lead bullets. And if they stop using lead bullets, we won't have this issue anymore. There's no doubt it makes us look really bad. And we should be paying attention to that because 95%

of the public doesn't hunt. And that 95% of the public still supports legal regulated hunting to the tune of like 77 to 81% support for hunting. So why, why is there 5% of us that hunt and the other 95% of the population supports us to such a high degree? It's because they, they know that hunting is a positive force for conservation. It does a lot of really good things for wild things in wild places. And so anything we've got like that, that gives us a positive force for conservation. It does a lot of really good things for wild things in wild places. And so anything we've got like that, that gives us a black eye, we'd better pay attention to, and we better be careful of because we can't lose that support or we're going to lose everything.

So I, I advocate people if they can start moving towards using non-lead, uh, bullets, but mostly for the purpose of, of, of hunter, um, hunter image and just maintaining public support for what we do. And that's the main thing that, that I think that's the best argument for hunters. When you start telling them that you're killing, you know, some small percentage of raptor populations, it's just not very compelling to get people to switch, but we, we better pay attention to how we look to the 95% that don't hunt. I shoot copper and I'm deeply uneasy with widespread ammunition bands that, like you said, aren't targeted. Now I like to ask myself, what, what would I have been saying back

when they did it for waterfowl? Yeah, no Now in waterfowl, there's a small percentage of ducks that were actually dying. That was not a population level effect. That, that was done. It was lead pellets for, for waterfowl was banned because bald eagles were still endangered at that time. And there were lawsuits about killing bald eagles that were eating ducks that had lead. And so bald eagles were getting poisoned by lead. Bald eagles were on the Endangered Species Act. And that was the driver.

That's what drove, that's what drove the waterfowl lead ban, not impact, not population impacts to waterfowl. Got it. Uh, what's a binturong? A binturong is a bear cat. It's a ververvid. It's a, it's a kind of a goofy mammal that lives

in Southeast Asia and, uh, in the, the forest. And they have a particular smell. They smell like popcorn. Um, and that, that popcorn or. But this isn't the guy that's cut that might be linked to. No, no, no. This isn't the raccoon looking thing that might

be linked to COVID. No, that's a. Civet cat. No, no, no, no, no, no. Right. No. It's the thing that a pangolin. Oh, that's not. No, no, no, no, no. Right? No. It's a thing that, a pangolin. Oh, oh, that's not.

No, no, no, no, no, no. But you're right. Some suit dog raccoon, I think they even live in Latvia. Raccoon dog? Yeah, that's him. That's a COVID thing? Is that the same as a civet?

Gives you COVID. The pangolin was the original. I read it on Jim's Instagram. Yeah. The pangolin, the pangolin was involved too. They found, they found some DNA

that was linked to the pangolin. But these bear cats, people have observed for a long time that they actually smell like fresh popcorn, which is bizarre. Because that smell, that fresh popcorn smell or browned buns or even seared steak or that really nice smell when you're browning something comes from a reaction of amino acids and sugars and high heat. It's called a Maillard reaction. And you have on here in the notes, it says unrelated to waterfowl because it looks a lot like Maillard.

When you say Maillard reaction. Yeah, the Maillard reaction. Yeah, there's an I after that. Popcorn, seared steaks, fried dumplings, cookies, biscuits, breads, toasted marshmallows. Yep. So it creates that chemical process of searing things with amino acids and sure creates that smell. But these bear cats in Southeast Asia are running around with that same smell.

And so some researchers looked at a whole bunch of compounds in their urine, trying to find some compound that might correlate, something that they all had. And they found this 2-AP is what it's called. And it's 2-acetyl-1-pyrolene. And it's just a compound. But it's the compound that results from when you're browning bread or you're searing steak, this Maillard reaction. And so they found that compound. And it was the only of about 50 compounds. It was the

only one that was in all the individuals, like 26 bear cats that they tested. It was in all individuals and it's known to create this smell through the malar reaction. But I mean, nobody's toasting these bentarones in the forest. So it's coming from something else in their urinary track or their digestive track. And there's some bacteria that have been shown to actually create as a byproduct this 2-AP that makes that smell. And so they're only at this point theorizing that there's maybe some bacteria in the urine that's interacting and it's resulting in this 2-AP being produced and making them smell like brown buns in the oven. Wow. You know what might be a good little research

project for you, Jim? Why do pronghorns smell like Frito-Lay corn chips? I know. Maybe that's why. I've heard that. I've heard that. And you run your hands through their hair and smell your hands.

You think you've been eating Frito-Lay corn chips. I'm looking forward to that smell real soon. It is a crazy thing. I ate some Maillard reacted mallards last night. Oh. Delicious. Okay. I got, I got one, I got one more for you, Jim, unless, uh, unless you got more things

you want to add. No, that's good. Where are we at with, um, you know, keep reading about COVID and whitetails and the crazy rates of COVID and, you know, 60 some percent of the whitetail deer sampled in, let me clarify, 60 some percent of the whitetail deer sampled in Michigan, I remember. It's not that they had COVID, but they showed, what the hell is it? They had exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID.

They didn't have the disease and the symptoms, but they had high antibody levels. Okay, antibody levels. Where does that sit right now? There hasn't been a lot. I was just, earlier this week, I was in the Fort Worth Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, which is all 50 wildlife agencies

in all Canadian provinces and territories like Yukon and Northwest Territories. And they have a wildlife health meeting. And they had a lot to address in that wildlife health meeting, which I always attend because that's the place you can get the latest information. And they weren't, they didn't have time to go into any detail, but the people from USDA and USGS that are tracking this, um, there's not a lot of new stuff since we talked in December about the fact, like you mentioned that these white-tailed deer in the east are getting, not only getting exposed to this SARS-CoV-2 virus and having antibodies,

but they're showing that they're being exposed to the actual variants that are circulating in the human population at that time. No. It's pretty obvious that they're getting it from humans. I thought it was coming from Doug Duren's urine. Yeah. I don't know if I told you about that. Buckman juice. Buckman juice, right. Yeah. I don't know if I told you about that. Buckman juice.

Yeah, Buckman juice, right. Yeah. So there isn't a lot of. They're getting like updates. They're, they're right. Right. How in the hell is that happening? So as they sample, like they sample whitetails two years ago over here at the beginning of the pandemic and they had the original version and then they sample, next year they sample deer in this other area and they've got the Delta version.

And then the deer over here have they sample deer in this other area and they've got the Delta version. And then the deer over here have this Omicron version later on. So they're getting them as it circulates through the human population. From like really good bow hunters? They're like, like what? It's so it's spilling over. It definitely spilling over into the deer

population. Now the concern is then that it circulates independently in the deer population and mutates as it does. Sure. Mutates and changes. And then they're, they're worried about it spilling back into humans. that it circulates independently in the deer population and mutates as it does. Sure. Mutates and changes. And then they're, they're worried about it spilling back into humans.

And that was documented in one case in Ontario where some guy that picks up road kills shows up with the version that's circulating in the deer population at that time. So that was a case where deer actually, the guy caught it from deer, but it didn't cause any unusual sickness. It was just, um, he had a case of COVID.

What's weird about that case is that mink are also susceptible and mink farms have had to be depopulated because they've, they've, they've got, uh, the SARS-CoV-2 and mink farm workers have caught it from the mink. Those versions that are circulating in the mink. This guy, they were pelting like in Denmark and elsewhere. They were pelting millions of mink or they were gassing millions of mink. And I thought it would lead to a real spike in, in like mink and muskrat fur prices. But apparently they pelted, they pelted tons of those mink and actually flooded the markets with, with COVID mink pelts.

Interesting. What I've heard. The one guy that got COVID from white-tailed deer from picking up road kills in Ontario, that version he got from deer, but it was actually a mink variant. No. That was in deer and then into human. Weird, just weird, weird stuff. You are kidding me. So if you went to this wild, this hell thing, did you hear about this big, bad hog virus?

No. Stay tuned for that. Sean Weaver's been a whistleblower about some big, bad hog virus. Hog, wild hog or domestic? Well, could, you know. Stay tuned to find out. He was saying to me and Cal, he's like, hey, man, pay attention to this because I got, you know, some disease people are telling me this could turn into a huge deal. Yeah, I wish I knew that.

Because that's the collection. It's spreading among hog populations on other continents. But there was some prediction. See, I shouldn't be saying this shit because I don't even know. Listen. Keep your eye on those odds. Listen.

I am talking. I have no idea what I'm talking about. I don't know. However, something about some hog thing that could just be insane. I shouldn't even. Stay tuned. They had the hogs as we know it.

Yeah, I wish I knew that. I could have asked those people. You heard it from Jim. Yeah. We need to have Sean's dog report. We need to have Sean's hog report. And Sean will come hit us with a hog report. What else you got, Jim?

It's been a long time since we talked, man. Yeah. I know. It's just good to be back. Good to talk about fun stuff. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you needed to be asked about? I don't think so. My Instagram account, I got rookie numbers.

Yeah, if you guys could go and help bolster Jim back up. But listen, you just shoot. Jim, I was going to say shooting yourself in the foot. I don't know. numbers. Yeah. If you guys could go and help bolster Jim back up, but listen, you just shoot Jim. I was going to say shooting yourself in the foot. I don't know. You might just need to make a new one that sticks to, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but you might need to make a new one that

just sticks to like deer biology and not do what you think might. And you know what? Why don't you do this? And just cave into the AI bot? No, no. Here's an idea. I got an idea for you. Cause I don't want, that's what I do. I don't want you to cave into the AI bots. Why don't you do this? And just cave into the AI bots? No, no. Here's an idea. I got an idea for you.

Because that's what I do. I don't want you to cave into the AI bots. Why don't you start two? Pistol Jim. Okay. Pistol Jim. That'll get flagged immediately. That one's not taken.

Pistol Jim. And that's like your shooting account. And then you got your deer biology account. Then you run these two accounts and see if the pistol account blows up and never gets flagged and your deer biology account gets taken down, then it'll deepen the mystery. Yeah, I don't like that idea.

Don't. No, I don't have time for that. I don't have time for deer accounts. I'm going to hit the icon and go to the Instagram account. Okay, so help Jim out. If we could, how many followers did you have? Don't report me.

How many followers when he stole your account from you? 4,000. If you guys just come on, help. If you don't have an Instagram account, make one. Follow Jim. No. Follow Jim at Servidnut. Not serving nuts.

Servid. Yeah. Servidnut. Servid like deer. Servidnut. And follow the wild turkey doc. And that's all you need Serve it. Yeah. Serve it nut. Serve it like deer. Serve it nut. And follow the wild turkey doc. And that's all you need to do. Yep.

Yep. And my website, deer nut.com. Deer. D-E-E-R-N-U-T. And you can get deer of the Southwest there. And get Jim's new books. Yeah. And that'll be out probably January, February, that big mule deer and black tail deer book.

Did you follow him, Seth? Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm just looking at your account now. Did you follow them, Seth? Oh yeah. I'm just looking at your account now, you have a picture of deer on ice flows. Yeah. That are using them to travel. Yeah, with three examples. That's insane.

But did you see all the pictures? What, ring an endorsement from Seth? Well, the last one is. The last one is Rudolph and Cornelius on an ice flow. But there's one of a big whitetail buck, it looks like. Yeah. Standing on a nice flow.

Standing on a nice flow, yeah. Look at that. Bring it like Seth likes serving nut. Yeah. Go to serving nut. Get Jim back up and running so they can come and shut his account down again. Yeah. Then you'll have to go with, I don't know, you have to think of some other thing that means deer.

Gun nut. Yeah. Buck nut. I might get buck nut right now. I'll be able to sell it to Jim later when he gets his account shut down for not learning his lesson. All right, Jim Helfenbanger.

Can you say where you work? Yeah, Arizona Game and Fish. Do they get mad when you come on the show or do they like it because it's outreach? I think they're ambivalent. I mean, it's good information. That's not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear they loved it, they hated it. It's outreach? I think they're ambivalent. I mean, it's good information. That's not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear they loved it, they hated it.

It's just they don't care. They do care. No, there are a lot of fans, of course, in the agency. I was at a sandwich shop in Fort Worth last week and sat down at the table and some guy came up to me and said, are you Jim Heffelfinger? Like, I feel like I'm near someone famous. And I introduced myself, shook my hand and he said, yeah, I'm a real fan of the

meat eater. I really like when you're on there and I like your stuff. And I said, he, and then he said, what are you doing in town? And so I thought he was another biologist at the meeting. Cause that's usually who knows who I am. And he wasn't, he just lived in Fort Worth. And I said, well, how did you know who I was randomly here in the sandwich in Fort Worth. And I said, well, how did you know who I was randomly here in the sandwich shop? And he said, well, that big name tag on the lanyard on your chest. That's great, man.

All right, so here's what will happen. We're going to end the show. We're going to do trivia. Corinne's going to work with you to build up, as stuff comes to mind, you'll continue to send us what's on your mind. We'll make a big stack of it. And and then there was enough stuff that's on your mind you'll come back and we'll cover what's on your mind again sounds good oh actually i have one more question i should have put this before um when i first met you i just i knew you as like that hair hunter. Hair hunter. The big rabbits, you know?

Oh, yeah. Jack rabbit. Yeah, the jack rabbit Jim. Jack rabbit Jim. That might be good. That's your Instagram page right there. You just need to have like disposable. You just need to have so many of them when you lose one.

You're like, ah, it doesn't matter. Yeah, next one. I had a Facebook page that was jack rabbit Jim and Facebook shut me down a long time ago. They said, and it was all about jackrabbit hunting, and they said, Jackrabbit Jim's not your real name. And so you need to send us a photo ID, a government-issued photo ID. Because the real Jackrabbit Jim's like, that's not him. And so I obviously didn't have an ID with Jackrabbit Jim on it. So they shut it down, and I was telling my director, our past director, um, that story because he knows about the Jack Rabbit camp I used to have.

And he says, I can, I can fix that. I can get you a government issued ID that says Jack Rabbit Jim. And my, my Arizona game official ID says Jack Rabbit Jim Heffelfinger with my sister. But it was too late. It was too late to save my account. You got a lot of problems with social media. I know. Wow.

That's hilarious. Go follow Jim. Wait, I didn't even get to ask my question. The next year you said that the season, I think, was closed because their numbers weren't great. Not closed, yeah. Not closed, or just their numbers were low. So I just wanted to see what the state of the... Yeah, they're coming back but we've

also had a horrible drought last year and so we had this rabbit we had this rabbit um virus that swept through it's new mexico arizona but then it went all the way up into somewhat into the northwest and the rocky mountain states yeah um it really knocked some of our cottontail and blacktail jackrabbit antelope jackrabbit populations down. And then the drought came after that. And so it was kind of a double whammy. So they're building their, their populations back up. Um, the season's not closed because what little hunting occurs isn't impacting the population,

but I'd say they're just building back up. So you guys were going, you guys were going easy on this cause there wasn't, it wasn't worth the chase at the time. Well, we, we also, I know a lot of people that jackrabbit hunted that said they were just laying off them for a while. And then we had this junior jackrabbit camp

we had every year and we didn't have it two years ago because of COVID. And then last year they just decided not to have it just because of the population. Do you hunt a bird squirrels? Mm-hmm. So here's the deal. I got, I know we're trying to wrap up.

Let me tell you this real quick. There's the national squirrel. Is it international or national squirrel cook-off national it happens in arkansas apparently we got to get we're trying to work on this they were going to do it in tennessee but they got run out by the animal rights people so yanni's got yanni's been working with some people they got a whole venue we want to have a giant blowout squirrel world but i. But I want to get the guy that actually does it in Arkansas involved.

We want to have the most hugest squirrel cook-off blowout in Tennessee. I think that's Joe Wilson in Arkansas. I'm not positive about that. He's a buddy of Clay. I don't know. It's getting deep because the Tennessee boys said they've been reaching out to the Arkansas boys, and the Arkansas boys haven't been returning communications.

No. Well, if they don't want to do it, they don't want to do it. I mean, I don't know. Those Abert squirrels are big. Jim can bring up some Aberts and enter the competition. Matt Cook. They don't want to do it? I thought that they would run the whole program, the Arkansas boys.

I'm just saying that previously already, before we ever got involved, Tennessee had tried to make communications with the people that had been running the one in Arkansas, and they'd been having difficulties getting a hold of them. That's all. We'll figure it out. Either way, if we do it, you'll come up? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That would be awesome. You know, those Kaibab squirrels are black a birds. Yeah. They're pretty cool. They look really neat. They've got a reddish stripe on their back. They look like their size of cottontails.

I like to go down and hunt a couple. Yeah. I need to add those to my. Well, I'd like to do the, I'd like to do it. Squirrel sling. Oh, you know what? I just transferred all my old Garmin waypoints i had to call someone to on x figured out because i'm not good that kind of stuff i have bazillions of old waypoints from like an old gps

yeah they're around they're around my montana 600 yeah i'm way back yeah and i was like i wanted to get them all onto on x which is exceedingly easy to do but it was like the most baffling i was looking i was like man it's taking forever. I was looking at it, I was like, man, it's taking forever to enter all these coordinates. So I called someone on X like, no, it's just, no, just do this, this, this. Over the phone, I got it all loaded up. And when I was going through them all,

I got a lot of like, I hit a lot of waypoints to say Abert. It was like Abert one, Abert two, Abert three. Down at Matt's? Just, what's that? Down at Matt's? No, what's that? Down at Matt's? No, in New Mexico. Oh, yeah.

And it was, I was walking around hitting and making waypoints every time I saw Abert squirrel. So I'm sitting on hot intel now that I thought was just lost to whatever, but I know specific trees. Yeah, I hung out with them. You need one of those pelts for your squirrel collection too. Yeah. Well, we gave those to Guy Zucker. Yeah, well, we should get one of those for him.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Squirrel cook-off, man. Yeah. You know what? Maybe you could do like a lecture on squirrel biology down there. Could do that.

That'd be interesting. It's going to be so cool, man. But we should bring in our squirrel doc too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. John Kaprowski. John Kaprowski is a good friend of mine. How'd you like him?

Yeah, my office is right down the hall from his before he went to the University of Wyoming. Oh yeah. Yeah. John Kaprowski. John Kaprowski is a good friend of mine. Yep. My office is right down the hall from his before he went to the University of Wyoming. Oh really? And so I knew him for more than 10 years. One of my favorite people in the world. Oh, he's awesome. You don't hate him?

No, he's helped me out a whole bunch. Speaking of interesting baculums. Remember the squirrels baculum? Oh, barbed. Corkscrew. Corkscrew. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

There's a dirty limerick about that that I'll not tell. Don't even, don't tell a punchline, don't nothing. Remember, this is family friendly. You know, there's actually some theories that some of those things. Not all the, oh.

Baculum like that might actually pull the sperm plug from the previous male out. Yeah. We covered that. Oh, did you? Well, your body covered that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Fascinating. He gave you a little shit as I remember. Mm-hmm. He was good. We covered that. Oh, did you? Well, your body covered that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Fascinating. He gave you a little shit, as I remember. Mm-hmm. He was good. He was good, yeah. Where did he go? He went to the University of Wyoming.

He's the dean of the Hobbs School. So he's over Monteith and not so much Kauffman because he's USGS, but Monteith is in the program. So he's the dean. So he's going to put all those guys on squirrel research. Yeah, right. Probably. No, John's actually done it. He's like, I want to put all those guys on squirrel research. All right. Probably. No, John's actually done it.

I want to know all the squirrel migration corridors. John's done a ton of other research. You know, he's the squirrel guy. My son, I tell my son about him and he says, so do they call him the nutty professor? That's good. That's good.

All right. Thanks for coming on, man. Yeah. We'll see you at the squirrel cook-off. Yeah, for sure. World squirrel cook-Off. Yeah, for sure. World Squirrel Cook-Off. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this.

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