The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 411: Boned from the Right, Boned from the Left

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with Jason Bergsman, Matt Cook, Bridget Noonan, Jason Phelps, and Clay Newcomb.  Topics include: What chaps Steve's ass; Alaska's traditional use practices; donuts and black bears; purposefully putting an icky slant on things; how you should never fall in love with a ground nesting bird; controlling efficacy; more on turkey season in Michigan; "Texotics" and gynecologist hunters; when a shooting leads first responders to a Bengal tiger cub;  when you learn valuable life lessons at the border crossing with Mexico; the true meaning of refried beans; when folks are useless on the first day; the saga of Phelps' buck; Clay's energy jitters; when the non typical beam gets shot off; 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. Okay, we're recording in Sonora, Mexico, but I need to start the show with distressing news from the United States of America, which is only 14 miles away.

It's comforting in some way. Yeah, covering American news from Mexico. Here's a headline from the New York Times. Biden moves to end donut lures and other bear hunting tactics in Alaska. This is the story that never goes away. One might see that and think, well, that sounds horrible.

Donut lures. I don't like that. And then be happy about what's going on. This story we've reported on, this is one of those seesaw stories that comes up as administrations change. It's also one of those stories I always feel like that I should,

I should get to be the one that writes the article because i would write it different than everybody else let me back up to say to explain what's going on up until i'm trying to think of how far back to go i'm gonna go pretty far back when alaska became a state a i'm not gonna get into great deal detail on this but people can go look into this when alaska became a state a issue a negotiating point was wildlife management in alaska okay um meaning alaska wanted to hang on to its wildlife management and alaska has some management issues in the state where they have a thing called subsistence hunting.

When Alaska looks at a finite resource, which would be fish and game, Alaska always will favor subsistence practices. If you are a person like me who lives in the lower 48 and goes into Alaska to hunt, you are the lowest priority in Alaska wildlife management. The highest priority in Alaska wildlife management is subsistence users. Next to that, sitting below subsistence users are certain commercial practices. So like commercial fishing, the guiding industry, they're going to get it. So let's say you have a finite resource

like salmon is a finite resource. Top of the stack are going to be the needs of subsistence users who rely on fish and game for the for to to eat for sustenance there they get first dibs second dibs would be the commercial industry third dibs would be recreationalists okay most states that that don't have that subsistence thing will look at, it'll be commercial recreational, and those are the competing interests. But in Alaska, you have a third competing interest, which is subsistence. So just keep that in the back of your head as you hear what we're talking about. Alaska uses predator management, as do many states in the lower 48.

Alaska uses predator management unapologetically to increase and hold stable populations of big game. And they don't do this like it's a naughty little secret. It's like, in my view, in Alaska's view, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying, we would like to have, we would like to increase big game numbers at the expense of some predators in order to be able to provide big game resources to subsistence users to guides and outfitters to recreationalists they look and it's like there's a lever that you can

move you can reduce predators up big game populations it's it's a thing that they do in order to reduce predator numbers they have a number they have things at their disposal it could be it could be hiring people to go into airplanes an airplane gun for wolves i remember that because when when when palin harvey field about palin when palin really became in the spotlight as John McCain's running mate, under her governorship in Alaska, they had done aerial wolf shooting as a predator management tool. And I feel like a lot of Americans got the idea that Sarah Palin herself

was the wolf gunner. It was sort of like really laid on her doorstep, but this is a historic practice that long predated Palin. This is a thing that since aircraft came into being, they have been using aircraft to control wolf numbers. Another thing they'll do to control predator numbers is rather than have it be a state-sponsored activity paid for by the state you can control predator numbers

through the lever of subsistence hunter practices recreational hunter practices guide and outfitter practices meaning you can make predator hunting easier and more productive by having certain management strategies in place now some of these management strategies people find distasteful when they hear about them out of context and in isolation for instance if i told you um about going that someone was going to go in den dig for black bears you would be oh how heartless and horrible well on the koyukan people um who are from the the vicinity the Koyukuk River, which flows into the Yukon, they felt,

when the anthropologist Richard K. Nelson spent time with them, they had explained to Richard K. Nelson that they felt that it was unethical to kill a bear otherwise than to dig it out of its den. That to shoot it up and out of the ground was not acceptable if you wanted to hunt bears you went to you knew through ancestral knowledge and through

your own discoveries you knew where bears denned you knew den sites and when you went out for bears you went in the winter and you crawled into bear dens to check if they were being occupied and that is how a real hunter hunted bears and a thing that we all know now and like it has broader and broader buy-in is that you do not go in in uh you know there's this sort of de facto reverence for hunter-gatherer practices like It was how it was done. So in Alaska, there are places, historically, where it has been legal to den dig for bears. It was legal to den dig for bears.

It was a customary practice to den dig for bears before there was law, before there was state law or federal law, people were den digging bears. That's how they were doing it. There's another management practice in Alaska that gets a lot of criticism. And this is the practice of shooting swimming animals. Okay. In a lot of States, you simply cannot shoot a swimming animal. However, there are areas in Alaska that are extraordinarily remote, and you can only get to them by air or by boat. And subsistence hunters have historically hunted in some of these areas

by going into these areas and penetrating these areas the only way one can, which is by boat. And the caribou hunting practice would be that you would go to these known crossings during caribou migrations, and you would take a boat there and set up a camp at a caribou crossing, and you would hunt caribou as they were crossing the river out of boats. It had been done prior with atlatls and spears. As firearms came into being, it became the practice. You can't get them any other place than to catch them crossing the river in a vast wilderness.

So prior to law, prior to state law, prior to federal law, it was a practice in certain places to hunt caribou that were swimming because you're killing them at fords. And it's how indigenous hunters had done it and other people that followed in their path had done it. And that practice had become codified into law because it was historic use. What's another one? We covered den digging. Oh, another one would um that when you're trying

to lower wolf numbers in order to increase caribou and moose numbers that you might allow the killing of wolf pups okay because from the manager's perspective, you're trying to raise prey numbers. You're trying to raise meat for humans. And in order to raise meat for humans, the lever you can pull is killing wolves. I guess looking at it, the wolf that's getting killed in predator control doesn't feel better or worse about his death knowing what his age is meaning a five-year-old wolf isn't like oh i understand shoot me i'm five but a one-year-old wolf would be like oh the the horror and sin it's like it's you're reducing wolf numbers you're just gonna do it the most productive

way you can think of which would be reduce wolf numbers. These practices are historic practices that have always been in place in Alaska. I'm getting to the part that burns my ass. We hadn't got there yet? No, because this is the thing. Everyone that writes about this, I haven't even gotten to the whipsaw

part of this. I can't wait. I'm joined today by Jason Phelps, Clay Newcomb, Clay Newcomb Newcomb, I haven't even gotten to the whipsaw. I haven't even gotten to the whipsaw part of this. I can't wait. I'm joined today by Jason Phelps, Clay Newcomb, Clay Newcomb Newcomb, Bridget Noonan from First Light, Matt Cook, who's been on the show before and has yet to speak, but he has a question now. I have a question. And for the first time, Jason Bergman,

the last of the old Coos men. What's the question? You have a question just on what i covered so far i do have a question i haven't got to the part but well i have a question yeah we're laying the groundwork how does a rancher who you know has predation problems and poisons like a wolf how does that fit in to is that that's a that's a non-thing okay yeah that's a non-thing. Okay. Yeah, that's a non-thing. Okay. Now, if you were to go and read, if you were going to read Alaska's Wolfman about one of the first wolf guys that went up into Alaska,

I think he became active in the 20s. There's this book, Alaska's Wolfman. It's a fascinating read. And he goes out and he goes out to work for the state of Alaska on wolf control. Typically in areas where caribou herds have been greatly depleted. And later in areas where they were doing economic development and they were going to, he spends a bunch of time up by kotzebue where as an economic development plan they were trying to get native alaskans set up in the reindeer herding business okay okay they were trying to stabilize food resources and get them set up to be reindeer herders but they would bring

in these reindeer herds and they would just get decimated by wolves. And in Alaska's Wolfman, he goes from being just a gun hunter, like doing wolf control with guns, and then he gets into poisons. And I think he's getting into poisons even in the 1950s, and just how amazingly effective. Yeah, that's why I asked. Yeah, like he talks about just how astonishingly effective the poisons are. Like he talks about going into an area, this is near Kotzebue, he goes into an area with poison pellets, and he would just go out and shoot something and lace it. And he gets to where he feels he's killed every wolf, there's no wolves left.

A guy reports to him they saw like seven gray wolves and two black wolves come across the ice, come across some bay and get into the area he's in. And he's like, sure enough, a couple of days later, he goes to one of his bait stations. There's seven gray wolves and two black wolves laying dead at his bait station. Like astonishingly effective. When we talk about wolfers in the lower 48, they were poisoning wolves, not as predator control. I mean, they did eventually, but the 48 they were poisoning wolves not as predator control i mean they did eventually

but the first guys poisoning wolves and even starting in the 1860s they were poisoning wolves for the wolf hide trade and they would use strychnine you would shoot an animal gash it cut gashes in it and mix a just like an infinitesimal amount of strychnine. I think they would mix it with water and scatter it on the carcass. And then you'd wait a while and go and pick it up. There's a book, Life and Death at the Mouth of the Muscle Shell, which is a guy's journal. And he'll talk about going and checking his bait stations

and coming back with 40 wolves. He also talks about, I can't remember which tribe, but the tribe, a tribal representative coming into his establishment at the mouth of the Muscle Shell, where the Muscle Shell flows into the Missouri. It's underwater now because of Fort Peck Reservoir. A guy comes in and has a gripe about the wolf baiting practices because they were traveling through the area

and lost 24 of their dogs to these guys strychnine baits so they were wolfers and they were wolfers because at that time there was a fad that when you had a wagon there was a it was fashionable to have a wolf pelt blanket got it for your guests in your wagon so on a cold day you get into your wagon you'd want to be able to have your guests cover up with a wolf pelt blanket and that drove the wolfer poison trade and then in time it became um they were poisoning for for predator control and then eventually the practice of poisoning wolves was eliminated but they'll still in places they'll still use this little gun what's that do you know the name of that thing basically a coyote takes a bait and it cyanide yeah i've heard that cyanide capsule yeah delivers it but it has to be like a you're not just lacing baits alaska's wolf man he'll talk

about going into his laced baits and he's got birds he's got wolverines he's got his everything scattered around dead uh but that's not a that's not a thing they're doing right now and i would also argue if if if they were using poisons right now in alaska for predator control you would lose the ability to talk what i was just trying to do is laying out that these are historic use practices that if if we're going to go look if you're going to go look in wild game management and you're going to go look at what's ethical, what's not ethical. It's so arbitrary and so personal. I think that Alaska is great about acknowledging and protecting traditional use practices,

even if preserving traditional use practices might come at the expense of allowing new technologies. They were one of the first states, I think they might have been the first state I heard of, that with drones, they were done with drones before other people started to address the question. Someone could correct me if I'm wrong,

but I think that they might have been the first state, and then a bunch of Western states followed that they might have been the first state, and then a bunch of Western states followed. They might have been the first state to be like, no, on drones. So it's not that Alaska doesn't have a come one, come all, kill them all by any means necessary policy. They follow traditional use practices.

It's not, you know, and in new stuff they might go and get rid of. So they were like early on, guys, you could use, you could picture how, Clay, you could picture this, how effective drones would be for hunting moose. You're in willow flats,

everything's 12 feet high. You have this big black animal. You know what's right. It's got to be right around you in a willow flat. See the paddles. It's not like, it's not going to hide from a drone. And right away were like no on drones but but in places you can dig a barrier out of its hole but this gets this gives me the second part of what burns my ass about this whole thing that was the first no just that's just background gotcha but because

i'm trying to establish keep in mind these management practices that Alaska has. Okay. Now, let's look at the restraint with which they will exercise them. Okay. Go to Region 2 of Alaska. In Region 2 of Alaska, which is Prince of Wales Island, Unit 2 or whatever, I think they call them units, Unit 2, Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. Black bears, a predator, okay? You can't hunt it from, not only, like, you can't hunt it from a boat.

You cannot legally, the ruthless state of Alaska that just wants to kill all the predators, if you're in Prince Will's Island, you have to have your feet on the ground. You cannot shoot a black bear from a boat. You cannot shoot a sow. You can't shoot cubs. You can't shoot a sow with cubs. You have salvage requirements. Always the skull. Meet in the spring, meet and hide in the spring, hide in the fall. You have a permit draw where if you're a non-resident, you have about a 50% chance of getting an opportunity to hunt one of these predators at all.

No den digging. Okay. to these predators at all. No den digging. Okay? Because they have a management practice in their toolbox does not mean they universally exercise it. Okay? It's just a thing they have the ability to do. But generally, all of these practices that I'm naming out, generally you can't.

Generally they don't in places they do. But generally, all of these practices that I'm naming out, generally you can't. Generally they don't in places they do. During the Obama administration, the feds came to say to Alaska, they came and made this very arbitrary seeming, where through the National Park Service, they come and said, we're going to eliminate Alaska's ability to exercise certain practices that they may or may not currently be exercising

on refuge land, on federal refuge land. So here you have a state that has game management authority in their state. The feds manage a ton of land in Alaska, but that's the system of checks and balances that exists all over the US. You have tons of federal land on which the wildlife on that land is managed by the state. It's a phenomenal system. I love federally managed land. I'm suspicious of federal wildlife management when it supersedes a state's management decision, especially in a case like Alaska's where they still have grizzly bears across like 98% of their historic range.

We in the lower 48 can't say the same thing. We wiped them out in the lower 48. They didn't wipe theirs out. They have wolves across the entirety of their historic range. Do we? No. They didn't wipe theirs out. They have their entire suite of megafauna still intact. We don't. They haven't wiped theirs out. so when you go and look and be like oh alaska needs to change their ways by what evidence they haven't they haven't committed any sins against god in terms of eliminating animals from the landscape yeah so to go and and and and to go to them and say to them,

oh, your management practices, which you may or may not be doing right now, can no longer be applied on refuge lands. Under Obama, they made it be that on 13% of the state is what it winds up being. In our efforts to save the world, we are going to tell Alaska that on 13% of their state, they no longer have authority to do management practices that they may or may not be exercising.

He and Obama brought that in. So Obama interrupted over 100 years of practices that just- That worked, that we have the evidence that they worked. Sorry, not 100. What the hell year did they become a state? The 50s. Yeah, the 50s. Okay. So I was wrong. What the hell year did they become a state? The 50s. Yeah, the 50s. Okay, so I was wrong.

Not 100 years. 70-something. Okay. So the state had been an entity in and of itself. It had been a state. And they had a game agency prior to statehood, but whatever. You had statehood,

Alaska Department of Fish and Game comes into being. They have predator management, but they still have predator management, but they still have intact predator, completely intact menagerie of predators still occupying the entirety of their historic landscape. But the feds say, you can't do these things that you may or may not be doing on little chunks of land

where we oversee the land designation. Obama does that. Now now trump undoes it so obama upset a long history of status quo and the way this was treated in the press when trump undid it all trump did is trump undid a very short thing but how was it treated in the press it was like it was in the press they treated it like Trump decided one day he woke up and said, I think, I think that in Alaska they should start digging wolves out of their dens and digging bears out of their dens.

I think that that's what it should be. And so he simply undid a prohibition that was still in its infancy. Or returned it to what it was four years ago. Exactly. But it was treated like the Trump administration decides to allow bears to be dug from their dens. Man.

The horror. Is that not just like a classic virtue signaling not to use the political hot button word but i mean like the former administration shutting that down just because they didn't like the idea we're looking for something to grab onto that just would get a rise out of people i mean it's just like virtue signaling yeah i i'm like maybe one of the only few people on the planet um no there's a couple more that can be like uh they can sort out you know because like a lot of things like no matter what trump did there's a lot of people they're just gonna hate it and there's a lot of people that are just gonna love it right they're pre-wired

and you're one of the few people on the planet that can sort that out navigate it i feel like i'm i i feel like i have an extraordinary ability to look at trump's record issue by issue there you go and divorce the policy from the the noise yeah and all the guy did was he said, the guy before me overreached. It was contentious. It was an insult to Alaska Fish and Game. It was an insult to the state of Alaska. They should not have done that. And put it back to the way it was.

But now, lo and behold, here's the final thing. Oh, we're not even to the point. No, we're not. Lo and behold. That was the backstory to this. Here we are. Biden moves to end donut lures. Like, like the Times

is suddenly interested in like specific strategy. Like they're like, like they're going to end donut lures okay they're gonna end the placing of donuts for bait which would leave like a guy who let's say there's a guy using uh dog food coated in molasses is he at home going guess i'm safe no they're ending donut lures it's like the times all of a sudden becomes interested in like the specificity of the date of the bait why because it sounds particularly egregious

donut lures they're not ending the use of donuts it's baiting yeah i was going to say that like where does the interest in debate item come from? And why did they not say, why did they not say moves to end burnt honeycomb? Moves to end. So that's not a joke. Salmon carcasses. Donut lures. The Times is focused on the use of donuts. Biden moves to end donut lures.

Wow. Have you ever heard that term before donut lure i've never no i know what it is well yeah what they need is just placing of donuts yeah right if they had said biden moves to end the baiting of bears but it's like they're like how could that doesn't sound bad it doesn't sound as bad as i would like but there's something that sounds especially naughty about a donut. I think they're trying to portray just a big overweight bear just gnawing on

donuts. You want to paint that picture. And the grasping and people's grasping of like, why should this be bad? I don't understand. Why is it bad? They point out that... Where's my little Ben Franklin glasses here? They point out that um... So it Where's my little Ben Franklin glasses here? They point out that all the...

So it begins. So Dateline, Washington, or, you know, Placeline. The National Park Service is moving to prohibit hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting black bears with donuts. Just donuts. And using spotlights to shoot hibernating bears and cubs in their dens.

Techniques allowed by the Trump administration, but considered inhumane by conservationists. I'm a conservationist. And I don't. I don't. And still pinning it back

somehow on Trump. Do we know for sure what the definition of donut is? I mean, does it have to be pastry with a hole in it? That's like Long John's? Are Long John's in? Could you bait pastry scones? Could you bait with a donut hole? Yeah, yeah.

A donut hole is the opposite of a donut. A donut hole is what makes a donut. Its absence makes a donut. Are you with me? Or opposite of a donut. A donut hole is what makes a donut. Its absence makes a donut. Are you with me? Or think about a Danish. Sure. My understanding, it's like I would love to see the legislation, because I bet in the legislation there's no mention whatsoever of a donut.

But to somehow— So do you think they're actually talking about specifically not baiting bears using food lures? Yes. But this journalist, this writer, I think seems to think that it just sounds especially naughty. That would be some good click bait for his article. It sounds unnatural and naughty if it's a donut. Yeah. unnatural and naughty if it's a donut yeah so when you're reading this stuff when you're reading this stuff this is just a couple things i would like to keep you to keep in mind that that the the

mentions of trump allowing it it had already been allowed a uh let me find this quote from someone um here's your oh no i don't even need this quote from someone. I don't even need this quote because I'll just paraphrase the quote. All these articles that come out about this thing, now it's been three times. It was when Obama did it, him saving the world by banning it. When Trump ruined the world by putting it back the way it was. Biden saving the world by banning it when trump ruined the world by putting it back the way it was biden saving the world by banning it and all these readings you'll find that they're going to represent it as though someone in alaska feels like just adamant that they're like it's presented like alaskans just want the right to do the most atrocious

stuff imaginable to wildlife. That they're actually just defending the use of donuts in and of itself. That they care so much about being able to place donuts and be mean to bears that that's what they're defending and you do not and i read all these articles i'm a sucker for articles about the subject no one ever takes point to clarify the contentious issue is it's not the practice they're not focused on the practice they're focused on how are you justifying usurping our rights to manage wildlife as we see fit? They're not in love with defending donuts. They're in love with saying you don't have a place, you don't have a justification,

and in some people's argument, you don't have the legal pathway to come in and interrupt our game management practice and i think they can say that from a legal standpoint as i made clear that it's like it's it's a federal overreach and it's a it's a usurpation is that a word jason usurpation let's do it yeah word do you know we recently covered a word that, you know, like flatulence? Familiar. Did you know there's a word for the actual substance? Flatal. I did learn something today.

Like the miasma is like flatal. What was I talking about? Usurpation. It's a usurpation of their thing and they would be just as mad if it was anything else they would be alaska might be just as mad if the feds came in and said we have decided that uh let me let me put this forward because this is a good this is a great way of explaining this i think let's say the feds came let's say the feds were completely different people and they came forward and said on refuge land you can hunt moose with a drone because we

hate moose i think alaska would be pissed right they'd be pissed why is there a hesitation not to regard that their practices are working? I mean, why is that not talked more about the abundance of game there and how the lower 48? Could be learned in a thing or two. Yes. Why is that not? I don't know.

Because they're using words like inhumane. They're using like, even like, I even object to their word of conservationists. Conservationists find it inhumane they're using like even like i even object to their word of conservationists conservationists find it inhumane those aren't the those are pulled those two terms are pulled from completely different dictionaries conservationists find it inhumane conservationists if you like if you look at what a concert how a conservationist defines their concern list, I don't know conservationists that are concerned with what's humane. They might be concerned with how do we preserve intact ecosystems.

That would be a thing that I would agree with. But I don't think Aldo Leopold woke up in the morning wondering what's humane. He woke up in the morning wondering what's humane? He woke up in the morning wondering how can I save wilderness? I mean, wolves, like, I don't know, if you want to go on YouTube and watch some harrowing shit, you should go watch grizzly bears dig black

bear cubs out of their dens and eat them. Talk about shit that'll curl your hair. That's, I don't know know is it like is the practice does the bear cub who's getting dug out of his den is he like oh i was nervous because i thought it was a person but it's just a bear eating me i feel better about it now or does he think like my gosh this is inhumane i'm just a cute little bear cub it's it's they're combining words that don't belong together yeah if they said regarded by animal welfare activists as being inhumane i'd be like that's that's good reporting that's great animal welfare activists think it's inhumane okay at least paint it that way it's so manipulative yeah i was talking with jason the other day about uh

every time you read an article about something you let me rephrase this remember this conversation we had when you're reading articles about stuff you have no idea about you're thankful for the article you're like oh that's cool i're like, oh, that's cool. I didn't understand any of that. Now I understand it pretty good. Thank you. But every time you read an article about something that you know well, you're pissed about how it was presented, which

then makes you wonder what you just got wrong, but you didn't know enough to know all the ways it was whacked out. Hmm. To which Jason said, I've observed that before. And one of the same things.

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You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet onxmaps.com slash meet welcome to the to the onx club y'all so who who are the forces who are the interests that were lobbying for this ban in this legislation my guess is it is animal welfare activists pressuring the administration and they have it's a bee in their bonnet and it's been a bee in their

bonnet since the obama administration and they are saying whatever through however uh whatever perfectly acceptable practices happen in american politics where you back a campaign you back it financially you back it with your followers and then a while later you go and say hey remember how you know there's we got a real problem uh we saw happen with with murphy the governor of new jersey he ran under like he would actually talk about it he ran a campaign and one of the planks in his platform was ending the bear hunt in new jersey was that coming from his mind i can't accept that it was. It was someone, and I'm not saying that these deals are bad because these deals happen in our favor all the time. I'm on a board, I'm a board member of TRCP.

No one uses the term like they're proud of it, but TRCP lobbies at a federal level for conservation. So I get it. You send your emissaries to politicians and you're like here's the thing that burns my ass and then you hope that they serve your bidding but i don't think when when biden um you know is out checking on his camaro and his classified documents in his garage i don don't think that he's like, man, you know what burns my ass? It's the bear den digging in Alaska. Someone planted it in their mind.

And the only place they can possibly pull it off is on refuge land. So the bigger intent may have been to ban bear hunting altogether. But they can't do that. But this policy was a scrap to throw. Sure. As a concession. Sure. Let me say something about baiting bears.

This is off the real topic you're talking about. Crenn wanted you to explain why. Baiting bears allow, well, first of all, anywhere that you can bait bears, it is a management tool by the agency to take out the number of bears they need to in that region. Like heavily forested regions, you can't spot and stock bears and effectively kill them. So it's a management tool, number one. Number two, it allows for selective harvest. Like we can target, and generally people do this. Generally bear hunters would be, they would put up a bear bait.

They would have, they would know what bears were coming in and they would select for older, mature males to take out. The least selective hunting that Clay Newcomb does for bears is spot and stalk hunting, which would be going to some state, glassing up a bear on a hillside. You've been hunting for three days and you've seen two bears and you go shoot that bear and then you got to ground check them that's right yeah and so baiting is actually a very high quality management tool for bear managers for instance in the state of arkansas 22 years ago they decided we're going to manage our bears by using bow hunters over bait on private land. Like very thought out, very strategic. And they have a quota.

And so, man, baiting bears, don't let anybody, Jason Phelps, tell you that it ain't cool. Because it's cool. It's a great way to manage bears. But it's so, like, this is the way I describe it is that in one sentence, you can, can, you could relay a story of, Hey, these crazy rednecks want to put out donuts and kill bears. And you, if you have no context, no historic context, you don't live in bear country that equates to bad. it's about a three or four step conversation for you to understand why it's actually really good like we have expanding black bears are doing

better than almost any other big game on the continent yeah well every yeah indisputably every population of bears on this black bears are expanding and we're not getting any more wilderness. We're not increasing the amount of habitat. We're decreasing it by, you know, encroachment of civilization, habitat fragmentation, all this stuff. And so if there was ever a time in North America for a need for really strategic bear management, it's now. And then these folks come in thinking that they're doing something good and are actually getting it completely wrong. And so, yeah, it's just one of these things that's just backwards, but it would take somebody listening to you for more than one sentence to be like, oh, I get it.

Here's a full-page ad that was just taken out in the Seattle Times. A friend of mine sent it to me. Full-page ad. It's from an organization called WashingtonWildlifeFirst.org. Full-page ad. It's a picture of a wolf. The main text is, Washington wildlife management is much scarier than the big bad wolf.

Ask Governor Jay Inslee to make Washington safer for wildlife. And they go on to say, fish and wildlife policy has been set by 2.2% of people who hunt. Now, the governor is making three appointments to the fish and wildlife commission that could transform washington wildlife management please join us in asking for commissioners who will prioritize conservation over consumption and be a voice for the values and interests of all washingtonians so what you're having here is they want to have wildlife commissioners that are

like a zookeeper, a wildlife commissioner that's an animal rights activist in management. At the top of the page, there's text. There's like the atrocities. Beavers are trapped and drowned for their fur. Let me tell you one thing, beavers are not. Beavers are not hunted. They're regulated as a furbearer with very tight restrictions and very tight gear restrictions. But you don't hunt for them. That's the only way they're done. Cougars are hounded and shot out of trees. Wolves are slaughtered for the livestock industry.

It's a wildly different worldview and when you get into wildlife management like you have to become a believer in the slippery slope because the conversations that are happening out of your view the conversations is we would like to see an end absolutely we would like to see an end. Absolutely. We would like to see an end of consumptive use of wildlife across the board. How do you do that? Death by a thousand cuts. Because you can still go, you can still go to Americans and poll Americans and say,

do you believe in regulated hunting? Do you support regulated hunting and fishing? Overwhelmingly. Higher now than it was in the 80s. We'll say, yes. hunting and fishing overwhelmingly higher now than it was in the 80s will say yes the minute you put particulars to it the number goes down the minute you put particulars to it you could go and do a poll i haven't seen this one necessarily but you could go do a poll and say um do you do support regulated hunting and uh regulated hunting fishing yep do you support regulated hunting and fishing? Yep. Do you support the practice of having a dog chase a bird and flush it so that a man can slaughter it with a shotgun?

Well, no, not that. Would you support someone sitting on the edge of a field so that when a deer comes out to get its first little bite of food in the evening, a man, you know, be like, oh, no, that sounds terrible. So what does that tell you, though? Does that tell you that, so if people who have no understanding of hunting are in support of it,

then that means that, okay, if you're in support of it, then let the people who actually know what's going on, know what it takes to manage wildlife, know what it takes to manage the land, have control of making rules and regulations. I mean, like, what's the point of, what's your takeaway from what you're saying about there's overwhelming support of it until you get to the granular stuff that when you go after it it's easy to go out when you when you go after it you go after the lowest hanging fruit and the thing that sounds most atrocious because you're not going to be able to go after the thing in and of itself

washington eventually will california eventually will californ eventually will. California's basically there. Years ago, I had a very high-level person at a California fishing game predicting to me that they would lose the whole thing in 25 years. He thought it was going to be archery next, the whole thing eventually. He said, from where he was sitting

that day, he said, I think we'll lose the whole thing in 25 years. Archery will be the next thing we lose. Then it'll be a thing about, you know, the maiming of, or humanity of it. There's, there, there's a justifiable, there's, there's a position when it comes to these debates that, that I think that very intelligent, well-meaning people put this idea forth, that hunters need to aggressively police their own actions to make it that there is no low-hanging fruit, that we would self-eliminate all the low-hanging fruit, that you'd say, okay, I'm going to quit hound hunting because that gives us all a black eye. Okay. I'm going to quit. You should quit baiting because that gives us all a black eye. And they think that you would clean it up so much that an animal rights person would look and say

to themselves, well, the they've made themselves as pure as the driven snow and i have no more desire to mess with them because i really was just interested in trapping um there are people that think that that's the that that's the approach that you should be that you should never um display talk about anything. If you take a picture of you and a deer you killed, you should look really sad. That you should never have bloody hands. You should never drive with

a deer in the back of your truck that someone might see. You should never do any practice that might irritate an animal rights activist and that then will live in perpetuity for the rest of our lives that's like i i i regard it as a like a a it's not it's not a nonsensical position i just think that i've come to think more and more that that's wrong and stupid yeah they're

after the low-hanging fruit because it's low but as soon as that's gone the next level is the low they're never going to go away yeah you know it it feels like it's really it's an issue of identity like at a real big macro scale it's like who are we as really even as americans and it's like this is who we are and this is our track record with wildlife we have the most abundant big game wildlife conservation practices in the history of the planet our our success has been so good here and this is who we are this we're hunters we eat meat we deeply value culturally these animals and it's like they're trying to take that away from us because they don't understand it there's a there's a viewpoint i have that that i almost shouldn't make but i'm just gonna just in the in the in being um just in the spirit of honesty, I'll make it.

There's an argument, like, in the abortion debate, there's an argument like, hands off my body, right? Like, don't tell me what to do with myself, okay? It's one of the leading arguments. It'd be like, when it comes to contraception, when it comes to abortion, there's an argument that people make that that's me and that's my business. And it's sort of like it's like ending the argument. You're trying to end the argument by saying like, it's me.

Don't tell me what to do because like I live in America and I have self-agency to make certain decisions. And these are my inalienable rights. And that's the end of it. I'm not here to like hash this out with you for a long time right it's a way of handling it i sometimes i feel that that a little bit like i feel that there is a legacy there's a legacy of hunting and fishing and interaction with wildlife in America that has made it in some respects the philosophical, the spiritual property of a discipline and a lifestyle. Meaning there's a discipline and a lifestyle that has a established a sense of

ownership over a renewable resource and in all fairness to have someone who doesn't interact with the wildlife who doesn't understand it well who views it only as a thing that they watch on television or that they see out of their window when they drive through Yellowstone once in their life. Like, I feel like their imposition on this whole thing that they're an intruder into a world that they don't understand. And it'd be like these two different things.

If you're going to, like, there's two different viewpoints. Take it in voting. Some people think that just your mere presence in America gives you the right to vote. Here, legally or not, your mere presence in America should allow you to cast a ballot. There's other people that think that, well, no, I think that you should be a citizen.

I think that you should not be a felon. I think that you should have a citizen. I think that you should not be a felon. I think that you should have a address by which I can identify that you are who you say you are and that under those conditions, you should be able to pick the leaders of the country. Two different worldviews. When it comes to fish and wildlife, instinct more like instinctively i'm more like the person who would want you to have to jump through more hurdles and understand what you're talking about and know the history before you weigh in on shit but it doesn't really work that way well going back to the washington commissioners thing, like Jason was telling us about how there's this idea that the commissioners, the people that are making wildlife based decisions would be outside of the historic genre of people that we pick. Like, like, you know, let's put an animal rights activist on the game commission just so that we have this diverse spread of people.

You could do that, but that's not the way we've done it. And what we've done has been highly successful. So I think that's the statement that you're making is like, yeah, we could like totally change the way that we're doing this. But if you want to do something that's predictable and stable, that has worked in general, and some people have bones to pick with their wildlife agency which is kind of i mean yeah whatever but in general macro macro scale wildlife management

in this continent has been phenomenal extremely successful like since the garden of eden it hadn't been this good and so i think what we're saying is that yeah you could do it that way that's way different and what we've done has worked extremely yeah, you could do it that way. That's way different. What we've done has worked extremely well. Typically, guys that are on commissions that are making decisions are people that are historically, culturally vested in wildlife from a hunter-manager position. I think that Jason was talking about the CR9, and you should make your own point about it,

but there's this idea, you live in Washington. Yep. There's an idea that you're going to throw out a desire to throw out a very effective system as measured by how successful it's been and replace it with not quite sure. Yeah.

I mean, being from Washington and kind of seeing what's happening, um, you know, most of North American's big game is managed by the North American model of wildlife. And one of our commissioners might not be quoted perfectly, but to this sense, it no longer works because it does, it no longer has an emotional or social um emphasis there there's no way that to now categorize and balance that with the the idea of how do we manage the wildlife we need to look at now the the social impact that these seasons these you know quotas whatever they may be and then we also need to look at the social um so it's emotional and social components are not included in that model therefore we just need to undo everything but they they don't have a model to replace it with so now

it's like they've now used this no model to go to that let's just remove spring bear season so it's this it's this low-hanging fruit instantly being taken off um and these don't, this might be a point that's a little bit outside, but these people are so uneducated on our hunting seasons. You know, we, we just went through this whole, um, spring bear undoing that we've had forever. One of the new commissioners, I don't know which one it was thought at the same time, we should take out spring wild Turkey seasons, because if a spring bear comes out of his den lethargic and is more vulnerable than by all means a spring turkey had to be and that's that's what we're dealing with like we're to the point where these people have no understanding on

why seasons are set when they're set and why we presume at certain times and you're just to the point of just in in that article alludes to it like they're going to replace three commissioners because some of our commissioners that did have fishing and hunting backgrounds were so frustrated with some of the recent stuff. They've all resigned. And it's like, well, now we're going to go from, you know, what was kind of a mixed board to just a lopsided. Yeah, you guys are going to want to put like Pamela Anderson on your commission. Yeah, it's not going to be good. But I'll take the task, even what he said about the...

He probably doesn't know anything about the North American model of wildlife conservation because him saying that there's no social and cultural component, it's made up of seven tenants. One of the tenants is democratic allocation. That feels pretty cultural and social to me.

Democratic allocation of resources. A waste component. There's a tenet about waste. Non-frivolous use. There's a tenet about international cooperation. That all feels very cultural and social to me. He's attacking a thing he doesn't understand. Yep.

Hey, what's the response for hunters to this, Steve? So what we're talking about, we're talking about these big things that are going on, not totally outside of our control, but what's the message to the hunting community? You know, mine remains unchanged. Um,

the two party system is kind of miserable for hunters. We need like a new one that's pro-hunting and pro-habitat. You're talking about like a big national political system? You got to strategically shop. You get hunting defense and cultural defense from the right, and a lot of times you get pretty good environmental habitat stuff from the left. I see. And there's nowhere to turn.

It's like, who do you feel like, you know, it's who at any given moment is less likely to screw you? And to be honest with you, like, right now, like with the cultural stuff going on, like the right right now is a lot of elements of the right right now are less likely to screw you. It's like becoming such a clown car. I would, with some of the stuff like,

like, you know, I remember Inslee got in and he was one of the first, you like say he's like one of the first guys, you know, I remember Inslee got in, and he was one of the first, like you said, he's like one of the first guys to bail on the 2016 deal. Yeah. But in my head, I already knew like with certain wildlife issues, I was like, man, not the guy for me.

Yeah, extreme. But probably has a great habitat record i guarantee it we yeah like the amount of tax just to save some you know the orcas and it's nuts like i mean it's a good it's a good idea but it's just like the at the expense of of you know washington citizens he's uh i would consider extreme i was gonna like you know i think what is a national wild turkey federation isn't it defend He's, I would consider extreme. I was going to. Like, you know, I think, well, it's a National Wild Turkey Federation.

Isn't it defend the habitat, defend the hunt? Isn't that their, like, part of their slogan? One of their taglines. Do that. Send NWTF a bunch of money. It's like. Here's what I was going to say at a more granular. Can I answer one more time yes because i just thought of a better one yep not better not better than defend the habitat defend the hunt think about what's built into trcp's thing guaranteeing americans quality places

to what hunt and fish hunt and fish yeah so i shouldn't say like I'm the one that's got it figured out. A lot of people got it figured out. Defend the habitat. Defend the hunt. Guarantee Americans quality places, not shitted up places, quality places to hunt and fish. Yeah. So the public sector is all over this. Aspects of the public sector. Sorry. Yeah. So the public sector is all over this. Aspects of the public sector.

Sorry. Yeah. Aspects of the NGO, you know, the NGO private sector is all over this. But in the political atmosphere, it's like you're always, someone's always screwing you. And in some respects, always helping you out. Some people are always helping you out. Yeah. You want to know something funny that happened to half a finger oh go ahead let me say this because this is i wanted to hear what you had

to say about that and that was like a like a i would say a big macro like call to action for people and giving some understanding if we were to have a family meeting as hunters if we were all like okay boys come inside everybody's on the couch we gotta have a family meeting as hunters, if we were all like, okay, boys, come inside, everybody's on the couch, we got to have a little talk. I would say what we need to do is we've got to, maybe this is overdone, but I think there's things that I can do that would, in my own life, that would help me be better. But we really have to unify. and that's an overly stated word but what that means is when you tell your kid how dumb crossbow hunters are you are eroding no i pointed at steve when i said it bridget when you tell your son no when you there's things that we do all the time that infuse division inside of people that are really on our team like and

i've experienced that massively inside of when i ran bear hunting magazine i mean it was like just baiting bears and all this controversial stuff and all i'm saying is if there is somebody that does something different than you because i guarantee you you do stuff different in montana than i do in arkansas and the way i view hunting is different than the guys out west do. You're treading into dangerous territory right now, but go on. You think so? Oh, yeah, you are. Well, I'm just saying we're so divided amongst ourselves.

Like, I'm okay with the way that Jason hunts and if it's inside the laws and the boundaries of legality where I live and I can run run bears with hounds and I can trap and I can you know shoot squirrels through the end of February then like just be okay with that just be like good job Clay you go here's the here's where you're you're here's where you're you're you're playing checkers when you should be playing chess. Okay. Game managers. Even if there was no radical animal rights agenda whatsoever in this country, game managers would still need to wrestle with emerging technologies.

You have, you would agree that wildlife is a finite resource. Right. Okay. Right. Wildlife is a finite resource. You want to maximize people's, you want to maximize your population's

opportunity to try to get a share a portion of this finite resource in order to maximize participation and opportunity you need to do things that control efficacy right i just i know where you're going with this well let's say people say people don't. Let's say you have. 25 years from now. Let's say you have a population of, you have a mountain range and you're very well-intentioned game, pro hunting game managers are like, we can pull a hundred elk off that mountain. No problem.

A hundred elk off that mountain. There's a, let's say, I'm using not real numbers, but there's a thousand elk on that mountain. Okay. That mountain has historically had about a thousand elk on it it can hold about a thousand elk um we can kill a hundred in the fall and you know what you're gonna have a thousand elk on that mountain again next year that's just how it goes you could kill none you're gonna have a thousand elk on that mountain you could kill a hundred and you're going to have 1,000 elk on that mountain. You could kill 100, and you're going to have 1,000 elk on that mountain, because that mountain is going to hold about 1,000 elk. It gets much more.

They tend to starve off. It gets much more. Predation shoots through the roof, whatever. It's always got about 1,000. We're going to kill 100. Now, we could say, okay, we're going to kill 100. You can use a helicopter. You can use thermal.

You can use night vision, explosives. Okay? How many tags are you going to give out? 100 tags. Probably. Because everybody's going to get the elk. Or you say, here's what we're going to do instead. You can use a bow. You can't hunt at night. everybody's going to get the elk. Or you say, here's what we're going to do instead.

You can use a bow. You can't hunt at night. How many tags are we going to give out? 300. 1,000? To kill 100. No, you know what you're going to give out is you're going to have probably about 14% to 20% success rates. 500.

So you're going to give out 500 tags. That is why like you know i'm with you i think you're deeper into the weeds than what i know you're proposing that you're proposing a you you're tiptoeing around proposing a philosophy in which everything is great and cool and just because i hunt out of a helicopter with night vision, we're all brothers. I think he's taking the extreme of what I was even insinuating. You tiptoed into dangerous territory. This is all I was saying.

Don't hate a guy because he uses hounds. Historic use practice, just be okay with it. You don't have to kill a mountain lion over hounds, but that's the way we do it. We're Americans. If you're not defending. Your point's well taken. We're on the same side.

But you can even shoot holes in my point. Here's unification. Steve, we're on the same side, brother. Oh, we are. The crossbow thing kind of, because here's the deal. When you get into individual, I'll argue policy all day long. I don't like crossbows. Well, I'm not saying that.

In Montana, yeah, right now, archery season in Montana, the state where I live, archery season in Montana, you can't hunt with a crossbow. However, crossbow hunters be like,

why are you discriminating against us? We can't hunt. No, you can hunt with a crossbow. You can hunt with a crossbow more than you can't. You can hunt with a crossbow more than you can't. You can hunt with a crossbow all through spring bear season. No problem. Six weeks of general firearm, you can hunt with a crossbow.

Don't say you can't hunt with a crossbow. You can't hunt with a crossbow during archery season. Just as I can't hunt with a gun during archery season. I would never come and say, there's no chance to hunt with a gun. They would be like, well, no, sir, there's a lot of chances to hunt with a gun. You hunt with a gun all through spring bear season.

You hunt with a gun all through general firearm season. You can hunt with a gun all through the extended seasons, but you can't hunt with a gun during archery season. A crossbow, you can have at it. don't want your ass off with a crossbow you just want to do it the one time you can't who doesn't if you want to ask any individual be like would you do you think it should be cool like should we let you hunt with your gun during archery i'd be like you mean just me sure i think that's phenomenal i think that'd be a phenomenal idea yeah great point but here's where my point falls apart just in all fairness i think that management agencies need to protect traditional use practices someone might say i would someone might point and be like one of the oldest strategies that we know was occurring on this continent,

two old strategies were the buffalo jump and fire. You would light shit on fire and kill the stuff that ran out. So if you want to defend traditional use practices are you saying that hunters should have uh carte blanche to go and burn thickets to flush out game so right it all gets a little complicated in traditional use you have to like draw a line in the sand like on this day in 1927 is you know it's like you couldn't you could i mean go back as far as you can and then with the you know with things uh improving it's like traditional use where do you draw the line a cree beaver hunting strategy was that you just remove the dam drain the whole

pond out and then go around to all the dens and stuff and dig them out and club the beavers. In most states now, especially states that have a deep tradition of contemporary fur trapping, you can't destroy the dam because you're chopping down the apple tree. You want people to be able to pick the apples, don't cut the damn tree down. So all this stuff is a little tricky. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there,

OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. You guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the to the OnX Club, y'all.

Speaking of which, the second thing I wanted to cover. That was a great intro. That was a great intro to the podcast. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast. I was hacking on I was hacking on Michigan

because our friend in Zuck I wasn't hacking on Michigan. our friend in Zuck – I wasn't hacking on Michigan. Our friend in Michigan, Guy Zuck, Matt's personal friend. That's how I know Guy Zuck. Matt Cook's friend. Sent me a note. He was very concerned about the fall turkey hunt in Michigan, and I had spent some time – I didn't criticize the state.

I said I would love to hear the justification for why they're having it be that one guy can in a certain area in Michigan that you could buy tag after tag after tag in the fall and kill turkeys.

And not only that, but shoot hens. Basically got areas where you just keep buying them until they're, you know. And some guy, he knows, got killed five gobblers off public landfall turkey hunting. And I was saying, I was saying not that it was wrong. I was saying, I think that people need to be cautious with turkeys. And I think that if you're going to look and be like, like, and let me back up one second.

A guy wrote in all bent out of shape, like how can you support the shooting of does and fawns, but you don't support the shooting of hens? That's not my gripe. My gripe isn't that. My statement was simply that as we know from Missouri, as we know from Kentucky, as we know from South Carolina, you can't take turkeys for granted.

Talk about what's going on where you're at, Clay. Yeah, in Arkansas, we've lost, in the last 10 to 15 years old you know 20 years ago we had a pretty great turkey hunting and today it is Arkansas turkey hunting is very very difficult and it's it's death by a thousand cuts in terms of why turkey populations are declining but it's happening all over the south the southeast and there's guys that are you know dedicating their careers to trying to understand why but they're just a you know a ground nesting bird man you can't can't put your faith in them because they're extremely vulnerable yeah yeah clay had said once never fall in love with a

ground nesting learn that from my grandpa who was a who was a quail hunter for real it's kind of a joke but my grandfather was a big time uh bird dog trainer bob white quail man in the last 20 years of his life that i spent with him he bemoaned the the the passing of the bob white quail i mean we went quail hunting literally knowing we weren't going to find quail. But he just wanted to work his dogs and we wanted to go through the motions. And so I quail hunted my whole youth, like basically knowing we were after something

that for the most part didn't exist. And his stories of man, clay, I one time found nine coveys on that single hill right there. And today there's none. And so, you know that kind of stuff and then you go and say well why is that and the answer is where do i begin right fire ants changing agricultural practices um changing fire management practices cheat grass invade you know it's like all of that shit.

Even if you removed one, it'd probably still be happening. But with turkeys, you have, like, there's this thing with, there's this phenomenon, like the founder effect. I shouldn't call it a phenomenon because it might be sort of like a somewhat of a scientific principle, the founder effect. When you bring, when you introduce a new species on a landscape, it kicks ass for a couple reasons they're exploiting they're exploiting a resource base that hasn't been touched so they're gonna like fill a niche and the niche hasn't been manip it hasn't been uh it hasn't been occupied but it hasn't been exploited at all okay so let's

say you were to go to some landscape that had never had some prey rich landscape that had never had a coyote on it and you're like just imagine some magical island full of rabbits and ground nesting birds never had a coyote on it you dump some coyotes loose on it what do you imagine is going to happen boom and coyote population shit loads of food the rabbits have never seen it before they're like hey what's that? And it gets eaten. Shit that eats coyotes hasn't figured out how to exploit, just as the rabbits haven't figured out how to prevent themselves from, they haven't learned to not lay out in the open at night

because they've never needed to worry about laying out in the open at night, but now they've got to realize, man, you can't lay out in the open at night anymore. That's for sure. And something that might be like a coyote would be good to eat, he hasn't figured out how to deal with them yet. Maybe it's kind of hard to kill, but if we put our heads together, we'll figure out how to kill coyotes and we'll eat them, but they haven't figured that out yet.

So here the coyotes are eating tons of rabbits, tons of ground nesting birds, having tons of babies, nothing's killing their babies. And you'd be like, man, this is the coyote hunting paradise. Fast forward 20 years. They've pulled off the cream of the crop of the rabbits. Rabbits have gotten very paranoid. They conduct their daily existence very differently. Some other big bad thing has been like, you know,

I figured out that I can go out to that place and kill a shitload of coyotes, and I like to eat coyotes, right? And over time, it's not that way. Turkeys were reintroduced, but it's like they were so eliminated from the landscape that turkeys, when they were reintroduced, they had a new founder effect. And everybody, like every state that went through it had the same thing. my dad like it happened in michigan right when i moved out of michigan i left michigan tonight i finished school and left michigan and my dad started just slaying turkeys he didn't even need to do anything right and it was just that this came in and they were they were

clueless exploding in numbers. And everybody got to be like, this is just how it is. Now we have shit loads of turkeys all the time. Kill them all. And my, my only thing with that stuff is like, I would be cautious.

I would be cautious. And, and when they, when Michigan, the, the, some representative from Michigan Fish and Game responded and they're viewing it like, they're viewing

these high take areas, they're viewing it as population control. And then you'd be like, well who the hell is saying there's too many agricultural interests? Not me. I've never had a turkey hunter bitch to me about too many turkeys, ever. So when someone says turkeys are overpopulated,'m like by whose measure not mine yeah so just be careful that's my only take on it man it's not it's not immoral it's just like

be careful it's really interesting because when you have these big booms of of well particularly with turkeys the 70s 80s 90s. There's a 30-year period, which is a pretty long period in a human lifespan, enough time to really build a norm and build culture. That's when all the call companies rose up. There were no big major turkey call companies and turkey call accessories. In the 90s those things really peaked and kind of and that's when turkey hunting media started and so it was kind of like there was a flag stuck in the ground in the 90s in america about turkey hunting culture and then that became the norm and then today we're like dad gum why can't it be like the 90s and that's also when there were some

great turkey poachers that arose like charlie and louis dell edwards that's what i was going to mention my hometown clay gets into this in his series of bear grease podcasts and you should you should expound on this a little bit in a series of bear grease podcasts about turkey poachers a bunch of different turkey poachers and that these guys are they call it pre-season hunting yeah guys that are killing 25 turkeys 50 turkeys 75 turkeys because turkeys are everywhere yeah yeah they you know if you're season bag limits too and you have you're in a place with a ton of turkeys i mean for people with with without the the the backing to want to obey the law,

I mean, killing two turkeys just wasn't enough. These guys hunted from the time they started gobbling to the time they stopped. Get it when it's getting good. Yeah. Another piece of feedback that came from the state of Michigan's Fish and Game Department is this trend that I first heard about from Robert Abernathy, who's a turkey researcher in south carolina and it's that in looking at how are

we going to continue to hunt turkeys and continue to have a lot of turkeys you may in your state see a shift away from killing turkeys early right we sometimes are killing turkeys in the snow in spring season and it's because hunters want to hunt them when they're gobbling. They want to hunt turkeys when you make a call, they're coming. And there's a lot of emerging, I shouldn't say a lot, there's some emerging research and emerging suspicion that when you're killing gobblers pre-nesting, you're damaging the social hierarchy and interfering with breeding.

And it's like, kill all the gobblers you want in May. Don't kill them so bad in April. You're busting them up at the wrong time. And then there's also a fear that when you're hunting these wintering flocks and stuff like pre-nesting that you're having a lot of uh you're having a lot of collateral damage by running shotgun by running shotgun patterns into into groups of turkeys rather than working individual birds later on in the later on in the cycle ground nesting birds are just extremely complex

i think that's what we're learning yeah i i know when i interviewed mike chamberlain it's like the list of uh you know what's affecting you know a lot of it you talked early which a lot of states have their youth season and they talk about easy now i i know i know but like i think there was a study done don't mess my youth study done in missouri where like um you know it's not a huge percentage of the overall birds but they equate like that 20 of the birds that get killed has like just as much of effect as the other you know 80 of the birds that get killed and so but it's not he was quick you know mike was quick to say it's not just youth seasons it it's habitat, it's this, it's this. It's just a very, and on an animal that has a max of four year life cycle, and they can get older than that.

But if we just say four years is kind of the end of the road for a turkey, living through three, with something with that quick a turnaround, it's a slippery slope in Michigan. It's just very, the populations like clay had said 60 can shift very very quickly when you're only dealing with a three or four year yeah you get one or two bad springs and you're down to 33 of your birds if we're going on and it's just a very very complex issue i don't think we have figured out yet there's another aspect of turkey season and i was joking like i i enjoy you turkey season um and it gets into that kind of like not in my backyard like don't mess with me right like I'm I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth

on one hand I'm saying there's a lot of respected turkey researchers are like we got caught stop killing birds so early yep and then I'm like you know I'm already planning I'm already planning Wisconsin you know we go to Wisconsin for youth turkey. It's my favorite time of year. Last year we killed zero turkeys. But that was not our intent, right? Our intent was to get a couple. So I love it.

I love it. And, yeah, maybe, you know, there will be a time when you have to, you know, question that and make that sacrifice. But generally what you're looking for is you're not looking for you're looking for not individuals uh making like self-proclamations you're you're looking for agencies to codify regulations yep right and and basically have that be you know people be like how do you be how do you become an ethical hunter but here here's 90% of it. Follow the law. We'll get you pretty much all the way there. Follow the law. Um,

and the law right now is, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, way less than half as many tag holders in the fall and a way lower success rate in the fall

they view it as like it's like a negligible harvest but i don't know man the good old days of turkey hunting you know i hate to say it but in some respects the good old days of turkey hunting could be winding down would you be as cautious about going to two birds, you know, tag for two birds limit versus one before you would, you know, open up the fall? Like in Michigan, you have a one bird limit. Would you rather see them going to two birds and not do the fall? If I was the czar, if I was America's wildlife czar.

That'd be a good position for you a good position that would be a good position you're the only one in this country that can sort through bipartisan politics true if i was america's wildlife czar and i could just do what i needed to do and i wouldn't even have to hear any complaints right there's no way to even get a hold of me. And I'm the wildlife czar. And no one even knows that I'm the wildlife czar. You're the man behind the curtain. I'm the man behind the curtain and I can do stuff and I don't need to hear about it from my friends.

No one would know I did it, but it would be done. And that scenario, I would be like, I would go to my Turkey guys and I'd be like okay what are we looking at all the states all the game management units like very detailed level what are we looking at give me the harvest numbers that we can withstand i would say great let's shoot for that in the spring there's a lot of other stuff to do in the fall. Let's make a big, robust spring season.

If we need to cut out April a bit, if we need to eat into April, let's give it back twice-fold in May. Well, that's what they're doing. That would probably be my edict, as turkeys are. That's what they're doing a lot. In Arkansas, that's what they're doing. They've bumped our season dates back to the late teens of april usually and man by then it's it's pretty tough and uh used to it opened like the first saturday in april you know when i was a kid

so yeah they're doing that hey let me tell you who let me tell you a turkey guy that you need to have on this podcast and i'm gonna be so bold as to do this on the air what number here's the thing you might be doing yourself a disservice because if you do that and then he winds up on all kinds of other podcasts then it won't be as fun for me to have him on this podcast gotcha well i'll tell you there's a okay i'll tell you everything but the guy's name there's a guy in tennessee that you really should have on the Meteor podcast. Great guy. Thank you.

He's got a little different angle than some of the other turkey apologists that we've had floating around. I view myself, when it comes to turkey stuff, I'm not making this stuff up. I view myself basically as a um a person who listens to mike chamberlain yeah i mean mike chamberlain told me something like crazy i probably wouldn't but i mean like generally it's like i don't you know we talked about earlier like what's the motivation guy loves turkey hunting yeah dedicated his life to turkeys

loves turkey hunting he doesn't want to see turkey hunting go away. I'm like, I agree. Like that guy, Robert Abernathy, dude lives to hunt turkeys. He's a turkey researcher. I know that his heart is pure. And I'm like, if that guy likes to hunt turkeys as much or more as I do like to hunt turkeys, this guy lives to hunt turkeys. And when he's talking, he's talking about how we're going to keep hunting turkeys.

That's the guy I want to listen to. Yeah, no doubt. I'll tell you, I don't know if I'm supposed to say that this happened to Heffelfinger, but it's super funny. Heffelfinger used to be a deer guide. And he was guiding on a place in Texas. So it's a ranch owned by a ranch owner. And they did guided hunts on it. And Heffelfinger has a client who's a ranch owned by a ranch owner and they did guided hunts on it and heffelfinger has a client who's a gynecologist and he rattles in a big buck for the guy and the guy that owns

the property comes and suggests the heffelfinger um because this client suggests the heffelfinger that perhaps heffelfinger's wife should start seeing this gentleman. He's kind of like, I'm going to leave that up to her. That's the funniest story. He's like, yeah, yeah, I'll pass on that suggestion. How did that story come up i'm trying to he emailed about a broader suite of things but then just threw that in there as a little tidbit he has the greatest emails he'll he'll tell you something and then but there's like four other things that like just ran he was because we were he was we were talking about exotics in texas and he was introducing me to

a word i hadn't heard, which is Texotics. The exotics industry of Texas. So he had some comments about Texotics. Which leads me, another thing I want to talk about is in New Mexico, cops responded to a shooting, another shooting in an adjacent trailer happens. Another shot is fired. They find a blood trail from a person, track the blood trail into another building, and what's in that building? A Bengal tiger. A pet.

So did the Bengal tiger have anything to do with the crime no he's just an innocent bystander okay okay but they hauled it away oh they weren't supposed to have it in there no they had a bengal tiger in a dog box wow wow wow think about that it reminds me of the story you told about the guy in vietnam oh yeah i feel like it's the saddest story i tell it's just interesting about dog ownership um all right so jason do you mind you don't want to talk at all jason's like the the interesting man in the room here.

I mean, aside from Matt. I mean, aside from Matt. And everybody else. Well, Jason got his second big game animal. Do you mind just giving listeners sort of a high-level, you know, we're hunting coos deer, like a high level newcomers, you know, uh,

a Yelp review, if you will, of coos deer hunting. Well, I learned a lot over the course of the last six, seven days down here in Mexico. Um, really grateful to you,

Steve, Clay, Jason, Bridget, and the whole meat eater team for having me join you guys at the risk of disgracing the entire pursuit of hunting. Uh, I hope that I did not do that. No, no, that's great. But with, uh, you know, with the mentorship of Steve and Clay, uh, I, uh, I gained a lot, certainly an appreciation of the, uh, the patience, the athleticism, the endurance of a coos deer hunt,

the strategy that's required to get it right, to get success. I learned what to do and what not to do at a Mexican border crossing. Very valuable life lesson. We had a great crossing. We may or may not talk about it at some greater length here. I learned that there's a healthy debate around the origin of the term refried beans. So some would contend that refried beans is very literal in that the beans are being fried again. And again.

And again. And again. Whereas others would say that there's just one uh there's one fry one fry one pot to which beans are just continuously added like an infinite bottle of refried beans i don't know where i sort out on that yet um can't wait to get to the google that i feel is knowable were we to have internet access but yeah yeah no internet access i learned that i like not having internet access it makes mysteries linger a little longer yeah uh i learned that after seven consecutive days wearing the same pair of first light long

underwear uh they do not smell which and then overall my suite of first light gear uh is uh is durable and comfortable and highly recommendable oh that's great thank you uh but it's been uh it's been a great time and a great experience you learn how to take a very quick shower very quick yeah yeah 20 seconds is really all that it takes, it turns out. To get clean. Yeah, to get freshened up. What was your impression of the amount, the primary thing you do is looking through binoculars?

Well, that gets to the patients. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's a real acquired skill. I mean these these these coups they're they're hard to find but you got I felt you got good at it over a couple days I got better at it no I got better at it yeah yeah that that's fun to watch is and I know it'll happen is I know the people on the first day be useless and that let me say a couple days later a couple days later they're all sun spot and stuff yeah it's fun it's like a very quick you learn

the basics pretty quickly steve's favorite day the coos hunt is the first night after he takes new people because he's like man i was out there and it was like i didn't even have any help at all man i was spotting all the deer and i don't even know what Clay and Jason were doing. Steve all of a sudden became southern. And then the next day, it's like, how'd y'all do? It's like, oh, we probably spotted as many as Steve. And he's like, oh, I knew they'd come around. Well, it's after that first day

when you are able to discern the difference between a cow and a deer, the things really take off. So I came a long way. Anybody? Oh, you know, one more thing I want to touch on. I also want to thank Jay Scott, Jay Scott Outdoors, Colburn and Scott Outfitters. Jay Scott put so much work into has put decades of work into having built a um not only a guided but a

do-it-yourself coos deer hunt in mexico you can work with him too to do and we've done it many many times now um if you really want to learn it go with jay you'll learn i still look forward to that day i haven't done it yet but look for a day of like actually hunting with with jay and learning everything he knows if you really want to learn you can go with jay but also jay um helps facilitate do-it-yourself stuff where he he gets you hooked up with information you need and everything and and you kind of get cut loose on a you know cut loose on your own chunk of ground to hunt. And it's a blast and always thankful for him for putting that together. It's a big undertaking. Yeah, he does such a good job with it.

Very well organized. But one thing I want to cover off on is the saga of Jason's buck, which died not by his hand. So we're already calling it Jason's buck. Let's just be clear, this is Jason Phelps. Jason Phelps' buck. So you want to tell about finding the buck? Where'd you find him?

Or how big a story do we need here, Steve? Just that, found it, and how he turned up on a different mountain. Yeah, so I'll kick it off and you can finish it, Clay. That's kind of the way it happened. First morning, we go out and find a good buck and Bridget is able to get it killed and you can finish it, Clay. That's kind of the way it happens. First morning, we go out and find a good buck and Bridget is able to get it killed. And we go out and start glassing.

It gets too warm. We take it back to camp. Hey, that was a really good valley. We're going to go back. We're sitting down there glassing and it was like that magical last 45 minutes. Deer start popping out everywhere and we're trying to keep track of them all.

There's a doe. There's a spike chasing a doe, and you're kind of going back and forth to all your different groups of deer. Well, the spike that had chased the doe over, I turned around. I'm like, whoa, that's a lot bigger buck. In the same view of my spotter, he had a real wide short time three-point. We're like back and forth. I said, that bottom buck is a uh is a stud but i said i think his right side is broken like something doesn't look right not adding up and he's kind of you know

he's broadside to us and at first he goes to take off you know goes to run that doe and i'm like holy smokes he's got like a big long tight i thought he had a drop tight something just looked weird um and then he finally slowed down we were able to like man he's got like two 14 inch points it comes straight up he's got a big old eye able to like, man, he's got like two 14-inch points that come straight up. He's got a big old eye guard. Looks like something going on funky at the base. And he was a real solid eight on the left. And we come home. Like me and Matt run up there, try to get – we close the distance at 300.

And nothing's left there besides the spike. He kind of ran the dough off. And we're excited. Like, oh, we've got to play for tomorrow. We're going to kill that buck. And so we go there in the morning, end up getting Matt his buck. And so I said, all right, I'm going to climb up there. So I'm in that 300-yard spot.

I'm going to kill this buck tonight. Hey, and what did I tell you that night when you came home talking about this really unique, you know, wild racked, you know, basically a buck with one normal side and then on the on the right side he had double main beams and an eye guard just really you know just one of those once in a lifetime bucks i would love to have killed and i said man you need to spend all week all week yeah so i think clay secretly knew that wasn't his home range and was trying to throw me off so that night i climb up in there um glassing, just going to pound that.

And then I get Steve and Clay and Jason are on a different mountain, and real faint radio reception. I don't remember how it came across. I told you, hey, the buck that you're trying to get, we found him on a totally different mountain. Yep, and that's where I'm at. And you try to defend your – you try to be to be like well you know where i'm at like i mean no like i mean a totally different mile away it's a totally different mountain well it was so we

you described this buck and we were so far away from you that that steve actually said we've got a chance of seeing that deer but on the other mountain like out of play like've got a chance of seeing that deer, but on the other mountain, like out of play. Like we had a chance of glassing the deer like maybe a mile away. So we weren't hunting that deer. Yeah. And we had made a big loop. We decided we had gone five or six miles since daylight. We'd been out all day and had made a big loop and had had a pretty rough day of hunting.

Hadn't seen many deer. It's a long story. We did see one buck that we didn't get, but late in the evening, we were on a high knob and we had all been glassing for a pretty long time. And it was just one of those deals where this buck was, he was in a very thick area, very steep area, but he was within 440 yards of us when I arranged him. But on a micro level, he was in the wide open. Yeah, he was out of the wind in a brushy, like a brush-choked hellhole out of the wind. But he was sitting in a spot about as big as this living room that was,

I mean, he was just laying there bedded. And the second I saw him, I was like, that's Jason's buck. And I sneak over the hill and give the, you know, the coos deer eyes and hand motions to Steve, like big buck, come over here. And so they come over and we glass the deer. It's a deer we want to shoot. And we slip into 330 yards. And, you know, we were hunting in a team, me, Steve, and Jason Bergman. And it's complicated who gets to take the shot because when Jason was going to shoot, if it was inside of 300 yards, I mean, that's kind of where we were at. Yeah, and it was very windy, and I knew it wasn't going to be close.

Yeah. And so Jason was the shooter, but when it was going to be a further shot, all of a sudden I was the shooter. Yeah, it was like you were the feds. Yeah. And Jason was Alaska. Yeah, like that. It's like that.

To put a bow on it. Yeah. And so we slip into 330 shooting across the canyon pretty pretty stiff i would say 10 mile per hour crosswind that's what i believe it was pretty stiff crosswind and uh but i argued that it wasn't all the way i didn't quite understand that but i i'm with It wasn't where he was. Because he was out of the wind. This is the thing that gets super tricky about wind and ballistics, man. You're on some peak, okay, and you're in 10-mile-an-hour crosswind.

But you're shooting across a canyon and around the side of a hill. He's in potentially a zero-mile-an-hour crosswind. Oh, I see. Or he's in the wind's wrapping around the hill, and the wind's blowing the opposite direction. Yeah. Or it's blowing down. Yeah. Or up.

Like, everyone wants to take, like, what's going on with them in mountainous terrain and then act like that's a constant. Right, right. In certain situations, you could be like, I assume that between me and my target, that wind is the same all the way across. But in this kind of stuff, it's not. It's it's hard to like it's hard to hold for it so when you get in

like extreme long range stuff and people are like oh i calculated for the dude your wind your bullet passed through five different wind circumstances over the your 800 yard shot yeah like the it was it's been subject to all kinds of stuff you can't even begin to understand between here and there. Yeah. So we get a really good rest. I use Steve's tripod. And I've got to say, I know what it feels like to be nervous for a shot,

which I would be. My heart rate would increase. Breathing would increase. I'd be nervous shooting at a big deer that I think is like a once-in-a-lifetime coos buck but i also had the chemical jitters because of a monster energy drink that i had drank like an hour and a half before which i don't drink a lot of monster energy drinks ever but i drank one because we were on the death march with steve and and so i'm serious when i pulled the gun like walking down there i was like my heart is doing

stuff that it usually doesn't do and so i i wasn't you know i had a good rest yada yada i shot using my patented shooting platform yeah it was good it was good and i shoot the first time and miss the buck we think the buck stands up runs maybe 20 30 feet and i had a very difficult time finding him again in the scope because now he's in the brush and i shoot the second time he's the problem yeah yeah steve was like now he's standing there he's standing did you not see him shake like he shook it well he jumped up and he and he shook like a dog like trying to get water off his hide you know and anyway when we went up there i realized that i had shot the non-typical horn off of the deer the first shot had missed high high and left and had shot off jason's beautiful

14 inch spike and uh i think the deer had felted like a unusual jar to its head went out there and kind of gave a little shake and uh and then the second shot I hit him and does it I've been struggling for the right word because I was saying it's not irony but it's Karma yeah it's like the thing he's known for the thing I wanted the most gets shot off yeah like i can't think of the there's the gap in the english language yeah we need for what happened good point yeah yeah i don't know but in the end i'm very very thankful you because of where you killed him was his home range i would still be to this day our last day hunting sitting in that one little drainage waiting for him to reappear and so you know jason ended up killing an even bigger deer

two days later just in the like almost within sight of where i killed this deer and uh jason and i being old coos deer men like we are we decided that if you're going to kill a big coos deer you need to be close to a red and white radio tower because every big coos deer we've ever killed has been right there it's been right by a big red and white radio tower so that's our tip of the week i'm buying it yeah yeah so i think. So I think if you're going to market a coos deer hunt with Stephen Rinella and the Meat Eater team, I would – This is not a thing that's being marketed. No, it is not being marketed.

This is an exclusive event, which I'm very appreciative for. But I think I would also describe it as it is a as, you know, it is a team effort. I had no idea that you would break into groups. I envisioned myself alone on a mountain making poor decisions or having to make judgment calls that, you know, would be questionable. So with Bridget and Jason Phelps and I, I mean, it was truly all in team effort. And we each spotted each other's deer, which I think is a cool dynamic. It's as much strategy as it is, you know, making plays. And there's so much risk in every decision you make and so many opportunities for things to go sideways

we even had you know bridget could tell a story bridget had a mountain lion sighting that came down and ran right across our field oh yeah talk about that there's one last thing you got to talk about by the way she's bridget badass let me hand it over that's her that is my nickname for her we were matt and i had already tagged out. So we were on a mission for Phelps to find him a big buck that day. And we did. Jason found a giant buck that day. Beautiful 10 point, I think.

And at the time I pulled up my range finder because I wanted to see how far it was. I'm looking at all this through my range finder. And I pan over to find the buck. And there's a mountain lion in the same view. And no one else has said anything. And I was like, I told these guys I had zero chill. I was like, there's a mountain lion in the same view and no one else has said anything and i was like i told these guys had zero chill i was like there's a fucking mountain lion what are you looking at and he was stalking the buck that phelps was after and um so i actually watched this what i believe to be a huge tom stalk and chase off his buck, change tactics, follow a doe,

and do like a double arm swipe at this doe. She just tucked her butt and got away. How much did he miss by? Inches. Okay. And he was sizably bigger than the deer. Noticeably bigger than the deer. And this was all in the span of a few minutes.

Longer and thicker than the deer. Yeah, just broad from tip to tail. And that makes sense because these deer, these does especially are under 100 pounds. Yeah, they're small deer. But the entire hillside lit up.

It was like you'd kicked an anthill. We should have known it was there. There were like 30 deer we didn't know were there. Yeah, out of nowhere. And the cat stuck around for a little while too. So these guys finally spotted it.

And we're watching all this from about 400 yards. And then he continued to make plays. I'm sure he was fat and happy. That cat looked like Jason on the mountain when I told him I killed his buck. The cat just stood around for a while. We went back to Cat Hill, and that's where ultimately Phelps killed his buck. Another thing you guys said was interesting is there was some cattle that never even lift their heads so unfazed the cat ran right past them they just kept feeding there were deer scrambling around everywhere and nuts

because bridget when she was range finding had lost a buck until we like i got her back on he's up by the dead yucca and in that view was my buck or that buck a cow and then the cougar and that that cow did not care that buck he was out of there just chewing he just it ran by him two yards away the cowboys here uh we were asking about the you know in very very broken spanish um We hacked our way through figuring out that they're a problem only on the calves. Oh, calves. On the calves. Makes sense.

Not a problem on the grownups. I had a very good moment with the cowboy out here, though, telling him about your story of the mountain lion. Oh, you did? He understood it completely. I was like, Puma, Venata. Big hand motions. Venato.

Venato. And then I said, but he didn't get it. You know, and I was like. Nobody knows. And the cowboy was like, oh. It was very cool. It was one of the coolest things I've seen in the woods. You know what? Everybody good the woods. All right.

Was everybody good? Yeah. Thank you. It's been an awesome trip. Thanks, Steve. It's been good. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Hey folks, exciting news

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