The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 623: What Happened to the Bobwhite Quail?

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Ron Kendall, Brody Henderson, Cory Calkins, Corinne Schneider, and Phil Taylor. Topics discussed: More on cowboy hats in airports; spearfishing in Montana; explaining environmental toxicology; the treats to the Bobwhite quail; the boll weevil; coveys of quail; buzz bombs; the art of wing shooting; fire ants; Operation Idiopathic Decline; eye worms; mating inside the eye; caecal worms; surpassing the cycle; Quail Guard; and more.  Outro song "Hunters and Hounds" by Allen Wayne Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now 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.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meat. Meat Eater Radio Live is the newest addition to the Meat Eater Podcast feed. Every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time, we'll be going live from Meat Eater HQ on the Meat Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one hour variety show will feature call in guests, segments and live feedback from

the MeatEater audience. Then on Friday morning, the episode will be available in audio form on the MeatEater Podcast feed. So come hang with me, Steve, Yanni, Cal and the rest of the MeatEater crew every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time on the Meat Eater crew every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time on the Meat Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. And remember, it's live, so anything can happen. Well, almost anything.

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case underwearless. We're going to hunt. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com.

F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. I'm not in the plumbing or appliance business so I can share this hot tip for listeners that happen to be in plumbing and appliance in particular the intersection of plumbing and appliance. This came to me literally it came into being a dream. In a dream I was staying in a hotel and I was staying in the shower in the hotel and realized that there's one of those little espresso machines in there in the shower. Are you sure it wasn't body wash? No. Okay. No, I was astounded in the shower. Are you sure it wasn't body wash?

No, no, I was astounded in the dream. I was blown away. You could go like, like you're standing there showering and there's like a thing in the hotel and it had these little cups. They should invent that. It's like, and you had a shot of espresso in the shower, save yourself a little time.

Can't even a dream. All right Listen man, I know and I'm just throwing it out there because I'm not in a position to capitalize on it I'd have to move into plumbing appliances Coffee business coffee business hotel contracting. I mean, come on man's only got Man's only got so much time.

Joined today by Dr. Ron Kendall, professor of toxicology at Texas State University. This is gonna be our first ever. There's two firsts. Texas Tech. What did I say? Texas State. I did? Is there such a thing? Yeah. I'm at Texas Tech. Okay, but is there a Texas State? Yeah. Sorry about that. Texas Tech, which I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say it's better than Texas State. Texas Tech, and there's there's multiple firsts here because this is our first ever episode, I don't know how we've missed this in all the billion years we've been making the show.

This is the first ever episode where we focused on the plight of the Bob White quail. Not only that, the other first is, Dr. Kendall has, and people might hear this and they might not be overwhelmed by it, but just hear us out. We're gonna explain why the first ever FDA approved vaccine for wild birds. Now this is coming at a time when vaccines are exceedingly divisive in American culture.

You know, I'd be arguing about the COVID vaccine all the time. Do you still get in trouble for talking about this? Well, they still like ban you from YouTube for saying it's controversial. Hopefully that era is over. So there's like, you know, the vaccines have been in the news, but here we have a case of the first ever FDA approved vaccine for wild birds. And we're going to talk about that in the context of what in the hell has happened to all of the quail

everywhere. Absolutely. I mean a whole culture in some states like the entire culture of quail hunting has vanished in a lifetime. That's true. My friends in Texas, my buddy Brad in Texas, they have a big family property and they have the quail, they still have the quail hunting trucks. All the art is quail hunting art. Did you guys have any around when you were a kid in Michigan? You had to go a little bit south, southern New England, not a little bit. My dad and my like my friends dads used to talk about how they used to quail hunt in Pennsylvania and they're just like, they were all gone by the time I was hunting.

When I was still in college. So in the nineties, we would go every winter over Christmas break and hunt quail in Southern Illinois. They ain't there. Right. Yeah. Uh, Brad's place, Atteria you go in all the art, it's quail hunting art, they like are not, they don't hunt quail. It ceased to be a thing.

Yep. Where did they used to be? Well, we're going to talk about all that in a minute. First we're going to talk about cowboy hats. We're going to get into all that. So much listener feedback on my observation that I was saying that I had a rather, perhaps an indefensible position,

Dr. Ken Dalby, curious to get your opinion on this. Where I was saying if you're not livestock adjacent, you have no business running around in a cowboy hat. And I equated it to that if I ran around in a police uniform, if I dressed up like a cop, people would, that would be odd, right? People would be like, where does he get off dressing up like a cop?

I think you're reaching. But you can dress up like a cowboy without repercussion. Yeah, I mean, you get dress up like a cowboy without repercussion. Yeah, I mean, you get mad at like, I don't know, some rock star when they wear a cowboy hat. Well, a police uniform designates a certain amount of authority that they can. Yeah, but I think of a cowboy

as having more authority than a cop. Oh, me too. You're viewing it as an occupational uniform type thing versus a fashion thing. I'm just saying think of a world in which you could just run around in a police uniform, right? It would be chaos. But why is it okay that you can run around

in a cowboy suit? Because it doesn't cause chaos. Cowboy suit. Cowboy uniform and a cowboy hat. I mean, I feel like you need one more piece of attire. A duster. If you have a cowboy hat and a duster on it, that elevates it. You know, you know, the spurs, you know, the American Prairie Reserve, the movement in that area against the APR against the American Prairie Reserve

is like, and even the, even the head of the American Prairie Reserve acknowledges the genius of save the cowboy stop APR, right? Like a marketing, however you feel. I personally am like, you know, willing seller, willing buyer. They're buying land that's for sale. And as, you know, sort of a foundational American principle is that when you buy land, you can do what you want with it.

And so if the APR is buying land that's currently for sale and choosing to look at it or whatever, it's their business, I don't know. True. It doesn't mean you got to love it, but I mean, it's like, it's kind of like an American principle. You know, you buy, if you bought property and said, you know what, I decided on my property,

I don't want any fences. It's like, why is that so insulting to people it gets a little uncomfortable when we think about in in Texas remember that one spot in Texas and that one place in Georgia where there are monkey farms well you're right you're right that's when you know then you're like that slippery I know but I'm see I'm, see, I'm, I'm, I'm doing like devil's advocacy and I'm trying to make a much broader point. So scrap the APR thing. What was I even talking about that for?

Save the cowboy. That's right. People that are opposed to it say, like it's a brilliant bit of marketing. Save the cowboy, stop the APR. So I view it like my, I'm trying to save the American cowboy. The integrity of the American cowboy meaning what if I see a guy I'm like that there's a real cowboy

I'll say to my kids that there's a cowboy. Now I don't know I could be getting duped. It could be. So you should have to have like a carrying card to be a real cowboy. We just had some people in from the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes They have to carry a they have to that you know they have to carry what they were calling their Indian card. Yeah, sure Dude ranch hands and stolen cowboy valor that we this would generated some cringe pulled some good feedback from it Guy says I was just listening to Steve's rant on episode 614 about a fake ranch hand at the airport and the prevalence of people wearing cowboy hats. He goes on, I understand that Steve feels like most people he sees, he has seen wearing

a cowboy hat lately have no business wearing one. As a US Marine Corps veteran, I fully understand his point of view. There are a lot of dipshits that by surplus military, I didn't know this was a thing. There are a lot of dipshits that by surplus military uniforms and pretend to be service members, veterans for the attention, instead of growing a pair and actually joining

the armed forces. However, as someone who did serve, I am not bothered in the slightest by those," here he uses a term I have never encountered. It's an interesting and colorful one. So that term, which I've never encountered, it combines the word knuckle with a euphemism for fornicator. 99% of them are just, he goes on, 99% of them are just attention-seeking fools who mean no harm, pose no harm, and rarely fool anyone worth fooling. The most they will ever achieve is a few moments of stolen valor. He's speaking not about the military uniform, I valor he's speaking not about the military uniform I think

he's speaking about stolen valor like is wearing a cowboy hat when you're not in the livestock business is that stolen valor I love it stolen valor he goes on but even though I understand Steve's misgivings about wannabe cowboys, his contempt is misplaced. It's a hat. People like different types of hats. It's their right to express themselves freely

and I will fully defend anyone exercising that right. Even the right school, even the night school rejects the dress up as service members or cops. That's a little harsh on the right school, even the night school rejects the dress up as service members or cops. That's a little harsh on the night school. Long story short, everyone can tell the difference between a real cop, cowboy, veteran, et cetera. And the wannabes.

Additionally, it's kind of weird that Steve is so bent out of shape over the cultural appropriation of cowboys. Let the clowns be clowns. Love you, William. Another guy. This is in reference to episode 614. Quote, I'm quoting him here. Steve was complaining about people in cowboy hats.

As much as I agree with his opinion on this, Steve needs a little reminder that these wannabe cowboy hipsters are currently keeping the beaver pelt market alive and well. I've acknowledged this again and again. Every time I bring it up I acknowledge this. He goes on to say, well I may think these people look like idiots as long as my beaver pelts keep selling they can play dress up all they want. Another one called cowboy hats on liberals. Dear meat eater crew, Steve again got to talking about his disdain for folks wearing cowboy hats and other western wear who don't work in a livestock adjacent industry.

I think his point can fundamentally be distilled into the perspective that cowboy hats and boots are use specific. And if you don't work in that industry, then the need for their use doesn't exist. But I think Steve should consider a broader user group. Many people go on trail rides or visit dude ranches on vacation. So they may well have a legitimate use for cowboy hats and cowboy boots. No, you can ride a horse with a baseball hat on dude. The fact that you would need a cowboy hat to go to a dude ranch.

That's the dress up he's referring to, right? No, he says legitimate use for cowboy hats. Yeah, but maybe you want a wider brimmed hat. Keeps the sun off. Keeps the sun off, you know? Okay, but let's say you were out golfing all that day. With a cowboy hat. The sun is still shining. Yeah, it'd be just as appropriate on a golf course.

A cowboy hat would look great on a golf course. That's true. It would look great on a golf course. Why is it that when you're out in the sun and there's a horse by you, you suddenly need a higher level of neck protect? Do you mean like if they were out digging ditches all day, it doesn't have anything to do with anything. It seems like the cowboy hat is just the superior hat. It's better at doing its job than a cap. I'm trying to give airspace to the opposing viewpoint here but I'll

tell you this I had exposure for a number of years to a dude ranch through circumstances I'll not get into but I had some expo I would have I would be a number of times spent a little bit of time at a dude ranch and oddly the the people that work there were the most cowboy dressing up people on the planet, but they were all rich kids. They were all rich boarding school kids and their parents would go to the dude ranch.

Okay, rich kids from out East would, they'd grow up going to the dude ranch and playing cowboy. Then they get older and they get a little rebellious. And then they go to work at the place for a while as sort of like this little act of rebellion. And they would dress up like seventies cowboys. So everybody that works there dresses like a cowboy from the seventies.

Everybody that works there. I don't know. Like the Marlboro Man? Like, yeah, yeah, like. Silk scarf. Yeah. If you go and watch Rancho Deluxe, they all dress like Rancho Deluxe. Yeah. And like, yeah, like 70s. Like, like Reynolds and what was the trans am movie the smoking abandoned yeah stuff like like yeah, you know, what do you

And it there's like it's hard to express it there's a little bit of like at this dude ranch, too There's a little bit of like a little sexy mixed in right He goes on Did I get into Anyways, he says Here he's attacking my viewpoint. There's no different than wearing a cowboy or nowhere different than dressing like a policeman He says the name is the same is not true for a police outfit. The public generally can't go on a ride along and

dress like cops as part of their vacation. It's a valid point and it's probably illegal to impersonate a police officer. I think cowboy hats and boots are more similar to motorcycle jackets and boots. They serve a real purpose when you are riding, but it's also okay to wear them when you are not riding. Same with hiking boots and pants, or the scholarly apparel that Randall might wear,

such as a tweed blazer with elbow patches. That means that I totally agree that spurs in the airport are a bit much." He goes on, a few years back I made plans to go trail riding for the first time. I wanted a cowboy hat, but there aren't any Western wear stores near me in New Jersey. Even though John Stetson, this is a little thing I didn't know. Even though he goes on, even though John Stetson is from New Jersey. So I ordered a Stetson hat off Amazon. It came in a plastic bag, flat as a pancake.

I processed the return and the new one also came flat as a pancake. And Amazon told me to just keep the old one. I did that five more times and ended up with seven Stetsons. Oh no. All flat. Then COVID hit and I never went trail riding. I think maybe he wasn't getting legit Stetsons

from his Amazon store. He says he's been wearing it gardening instead. Corinne, did you label this cowboy hats on liberals or was that their thing? No, that was his thing. Because I would argue that the tourists wearing cowboy hats is mostly from like conservatives from Orange County who move up here because they're tired of liberal California and they're like I'm gonna wear my cowboy hat now. Those kind of folks. Like I've had enough of the bullshit.

I'm going to Montana and getting a cowboy hat. Yeah. Those kind of folks. Like I've had enough of the bullshit. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to Montana and getting a cowboy hat. Hello fellow cowboys. How are you? How do you do? Last one. Is this the last one? Last one.

Airport cowboy hats. He begins his note with salutations. I couldn't help but think about Steve's disdain for people dressing as cowboys in the airport and wonder what the difference is between that and anyone wearing a baseball jersey to a baseball game. I'm going to my kids tonight. I'm going to the, there's a thing for my kids debate per debate club. Oh, who's in debate? Jimmy.

Oh, great. This guy's not invited. Okay. So he's wanting to compare. Okay. It's not like the fan is going there to pinch hit or step on the mound because the entire bullpen was somehow injured, but rather to support who they're rooting for. Chances are people in Estetzen and Spurs

are not cheering on their home team on the range, but would it be fair to say that maybe they're such big fans of the Western lifestyle that they choose to portray themselves in that fashion? I don't believe the two situations are exact replicas of one another, meaning it's an imperfect analogy, but they seem hand in hand.

Sports fans who waste their time and money dressing like overpaid, whiny athletes is a close enough comparison in my less than humble opinion. I disagree. Yeah. Also athletes taking a stray. What's going on here? I think, I think that the one toward the end is a good point. It's a great point. It's almost too obvious right here. He goes on to say, as for Steve's aversion for cowboy hats that aren't in a hands that aren't in livestock adjacency he goes on he says I wonder how the non-hunting public view camo worn anywhere but the woods no no camos become not the same I don't think you should wear it if you don't like I would question wearing it. If you're not in an outdoor adjacency lifestyle,

like snowboarders that annoys me. And I can pick that up as my next thing that annoys me. Yeah. I'm shopping around. I got to know though, is a small part of this based on the fact like that you feel like you just can't pull off a cowboy hat yourself. We've seen Steven a cowboy hat. I think he looked swell

I'll return again to Ronnie Bane So two things Ronnie Bane told me Never wear a hat that says hello before you do And I wear a fur hat, but I'm a trapper and and says hello before you do. I wear a fur hat but I'm a trapper. And what was his other one? Personality has more personality. Yeah and likewise he says this he says never wear a hat that has more personality than you do. This should be a shirt. It should be a podcast inspired meat eater shirt. Never wear a hat that says low before you do.

A cowboy hat with that. Or like, you know, raccoon hat and a... yeah. Hey, did you eliminate the need for Brody to talk about... oh no, Brody are you ready? Oh, are we jumping to spearing? Just very quickly. Let me scroll back up there. Still at the top. Well thought you thought you're researching it. I did a little bit We got a letter from someone here in Montana just wanted to make sure that all interested parties were aware that an amendment to the Montana fishing regulations had just been proposed that would Open the Western Western District, Montana is divided in three

fishing districts. East, Central, West. Open the Western District up to spearfishing for Northern Pike, several members of the crew are major proponents of spearfishing. He's just trying to like, he supports this thing. He likes the idea. I'm not sure if this thing will get approved or not, but the thing is, is a lot of Western Montana's waters are already open to spearfishing for northern pike. Like where there's pike, it's generally a lot of them. You can already go spearfish them. Not all of them.

Not all of them, but a lot of them. Cause there's, they have pike in a lot of places. They'd rather not have them, but a lot of them. Because they have pike in a lot of places, they'd rather not have them. But they're not going anywhere. But it's basically like a free for all on them, where they are. Like you were saying, the Sealy Swan, the Clearwater. There's a small lake outside of near Flathead Lake.

Yeah, Sealy Swan and Clearwater are the same thing. But yeah. Yeah. So there are already places where you can do that. I don't have a problem with it like I think it'd be great I think it'll probably pass because we're trying to slow down the spread of North yes yep I call him North East when I was a kid like my county I live in Twin Town but it was a Muskegon County there was a there was a wealthy neighborhood called North Muskegon and everyone that didn't live in North Muskegon hated like class angst you know and we called Northies. Gotcha. Everybody hated them

except them. Yeah I mean there's places where you can shoot Pike with rifles what's a big deal with spearing them? Where can you shoot a Pike with a rifle? I think there's still a seat there may it may have been ended but they're at a time like in Vermont you could shoot them with rifles some places in in the north like Vermont had a yeah that seems like it encouraged some hazardous behavior man they may have ended it but they're taking shots at a shallow angle over the neighbor's house or something you shot at a fish or two in your life oh yeah yeah oh yeah 100 man little off, but I grew up in whitefish

and had a school mate, acquaintance kid that was like two grades older than me die spearfishing in whitefish lake. He punctured a electric wire under the water. Shocked. Super sad. Yeah. Shocked.

Through the ice spear. Spearing, not spearfishing. No, he was under the water in the summer, swimming around looking for carp, I believe. And, uh, and I think he just ran into a wire. Yeah. Electric wire. I believe it was a 220 volt to a water pump

that was probably watering somebody's lawn. Yeah. He never came up and his friend that realized he never came up dove in after him. And when he touched him to release him, he got electrocuted and almost died too But he didn't I never heard what ended up happening if there was a lawsuit or whatever Yeah, I want to jump one more thing about this spearfishing thing

You know how spearfishing walleye is legal in like Lake is it Lake, Michigan? Well, it's legal on it's it's it's legal north of Thunder Bay on the Lake Huron side. Yeah. It's no, it's legal south of Thunder Bay on Lake Huron and it's legal south of Grand Haven on Lake Michigan side. And the rod and reel guys get all bent out of shape about it. Well, they don't have any reason to be, I know because what they did, they made a special license so they know how many spearfishing certificates are being

sold and all spear fishermen have to submit a report and they're gonna be quite surprised at how few- Exactly. Wally dogs are getting killed. Yep. Relative to rod and reel guys. And I don't think it is that contentious.

Right. It's a non-thing. It's a non-thing. I mean, when I was doing my research there and something I found was that there'd be some conflict between- That's the fear, yeah, they made it, they went in and made it provisional,

subject to revisiting, and it's a non-issue. Yeah. Yeah, it's a non-issue. But that's even different, because there you're talking about a native fish. Like you could always spear trash fish, I don't like to use that term, but rough fish. Right.

Yeah. Non game. Yeah. Non game. I take that back. Phil, edit me out saying that. Got it. Make it, make it so I go boop.

Non game. You'd always be a non game and they're trying to open up like, like walleye Northeast, um, I might just be like primarily walleye northies. It might just be like primarily walleye northies. And Montana's weird too because they have like in some places in the state game fish are game fish, certain species of game fish are game fish, and then you go somewhere else in the state and that species is not managed as a game fish. Like yellow perch, there's places where there's no limit, then in Canyon Fairy you can only keep 10. Which makes them a game fish. Yeah. They magically become a game fish. So it gets confusing.

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 sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew! Our Northern brothers. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, ONX is now in Canada! The great features that you love in ONX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps

that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the great white north can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership,

you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the On X Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnez, Vortex, Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. Onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Folks, I've got some very exciting news. First Light has just launched their all new completely reinvented whitetail line. This has been after years of brainstorming, prototyping, and field testing.

This innovative new whitetail system incorporates the technology, the features, and the designs demanded by some of the most hardcore deer hunters in the world. People like Levi Morgan, Tony Peterson, myself, Andy May, Jeff Sturgis, Michael Hunsucker, Sean Luckdall, a whole bunch more. We were all involved in designing what we want. This is the system. These are the jackets and bibs that we have helped design. I'm very excited with what we've come up with. They are all fully windproof. They are all fully windproof. They are all featuring new, more technically advanced and more weatherproof fabrics and insulation.

Like I said, three new jackets with a whole bunch of interesting new features, including an improved kit link pass through system, interchangeable hoods, new cuts with collars and wrist gaskets, all sorts of stuff. To learn more about the new First Light Whitetail system that's right for you, just going over to firstlight.com. All right, we're gonna talk about Quail.

Yeah. Everybody ready? Can you explain toxicology, Dr. Kendall? I think of drunk people. Okay, I can. First of all, Steve, I'm glad to be here and listen to this interesting conversation. What's your take on the cowboy hat deal? Like if you were a dictator of the world? Well, I think you got something there. I come from West Texas

and we have true cowboys there. Okay. Not as good as but... And generally speaking, we see true cowboys dressed as cowboys with cowboy hats associated with livestock or some agricultural industry. I in fact have a cowboy hat because I have a ranch with cows. Oh, there you go. So that's the real deal. You got your card. I knew it was a good episode to talk about this. He's got a cowboy card.

So I got my cowboy card and I sold and was a good episode to talk about this. He's got a cowboy card. So I got my cowboy card and I sold and bought a lot of cattle, believe it or not. But an environmental toxicologist is an individual studying the transport, fate, and effects of chemicals and drugs on wildlife and human health, how it affects reproduction, well-being, and your health, including cancer. So that's what I do, and I've done it all over the world. I've traveled the world in my work and have been involved with the formation of what we call the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry that just celebrated its 45th annual meeting bringing in people from all over the world this year to Fort Worth, Texas. And that's my 45th meeting. I was a charter member. So

I've been involved a long time in this field, in fact, even in my high school and in my college days, working with insect toxicologists that were developing chemicals to kill insects that affected cotton. Well, the question- The boll weevil. The boll weevil. And so- I wouldn't know one if I saw one.

Well, I know what they look like. And, uh, but anyway, I got exposed to this kind of thinking a long time ago, because at that point I was just a teenager working in a lab. And at that time people didn't really think about what those chemicals were doing to our environment and to our fish and wildlife resources, and to our health. Those were the days that kids would drive behind a truck spraying DDT to kill mosquitoes, and they're just right in the fog. So, I mean, we just didn't understand that. So, what I've been involved with is really a very challenging, interesting feel, but also a sobering feel because on a global basis we are dramatically impacting our planet.

And it concerns me with the loss of biodiversity and the amount of chemicals and chemical transport that now we're identifying even in remote areas of the Arctic and in the rainforest and so on. But as we were talking earlier, Steve, you were mentioning what happened to the quail? And you know, I was, Corinne and I were talking when I came in. She said, where are you from, Texas? And I said, no, I actually grew up in Florence South Carolina it was not far from Myrtle Beach it's called the coastal plain of South Carolina and I grew up in the

country and and I was lucky to have a grandfather that mentored me to the outdoors he gave me a lot of my environmental ethic and he was taking me quail hunting. I guess I was six or seven years old and would walk around behind him as he would quail hunt. I didn't have a gun, but I was just so interested. And he had a fine bird hunting dog, a Llewellyn Setter, and it used to be so interesting to me to watch him quail hunt.

And he was a very good shot. So by the time I got to be so interesting to me to watch him quail hunt, and he was a very good shot. So by the time I got to be 12 years old, my grandfather actually would let me use his fine bird dog, and I started to quail hunt. And I can remember getting my first quail. Now, when I was a kid in South Carolina, I actually hunted in a five mile radius of my house. I knew that territory. I walked it. I walked it and walked it.

I had a map and my map identified quail coveys. And in the fall... Help me understand what that means. I'm going to explain, Steve. What a covey is is... Oh, I mean the map. You're gonna get to that too? I'm gonna get to the map. Because... I need to see one of these maps. That map was like priceless to me because it identified where the coveys were, okay?

It's where I found a covey. And a covey, a quail, in the fall of the year, back when I was a kid, maybe 15 or 20 quail, 25 quail, in a group. And they roost on the ground together in a circle each night. They feed together, and this is for protection, and also for thermal regulation. Well, the bird dog, the hunting dog, and I have five Llewellyn setters today,

but those dogs learn how to trail that scent and they point the covey, okay, maybe 15, 20 yards away, 10 yards, and then you walk in front of the dog and when those quail come up as a covey, that's pretty pretty sporty shooting because most people they get so emotional when that big Covey comes up and you got 20 buzz bombs taking off they can't

focus so it's a real art form you got to pick one you got to pick one out and you got to stay on him so it's a real art form of wing shooting. In this map, I was a kid, loved the outdoors and loved my fishing and it was my quail hunting. So I had this map and I had generated of all the covey haunts that I knew where I could go and find three or four coveys in a two-hour period based on that particular terrain. So, you know, my interest in quail goes back to the very beginning. And what's so, so concerning now is that I could literally walk out my back door sometime where I grew up and there'd be a covey of quail walking across the backyard. Okay? And that

when you were a kid. When I was a kid. Now in that five mile radius of where I grew up you might be lucky to find one covey where when I was 12, 13, 14 years old, there'd be 50, 60, 80 covies. So the impact has been dramatic. Now I'm real fortunate, my quail hunting buddies from a kid from 12 years old, we still hunt together. We still bird hunt together. They're both medical doctors in South Carolina. And so they tell me, basically, wild quail hunting as we knew it as kids is gone,

unless you're spending massive amount of money to manage a ranch or something. So we've seen this happening across most of the wild bob White quail hunting range. Do you mind laying out that range for folks? Yes, the wild Bob White. Just to clarify my question, pick some point, I don't know, like it could be 1950, it could be 1492, I don't know,

like at some point, where were they? You know, the wild quail, wild Bob white is a historically valuable game bird. And we often call them the canary of the prairie. They're good indicator species of grass grassland birds. In fact, the Bob White is among the most declining bird in America today. It's amazing. And so the Bob White, looking back in time, probably had huntable populations in up to 25 states. Through the southeast, out into Texas, up into Iowa, you know, Kansas and so on. So when we look at it now, some of the best quail hunting left in America is in West Texas and Southern

Texas, but it's West Texas is where I've done a lot of my research and we call it the Alamo of wild quail hunting left in North America for Bob White quail. And we call it the Alamo of wild quail hunting left in North America for Bob White quail. And so, you know, it's really an interesting thing to look at as we're losing this biodiversity, okay? And because the wild quail, people love them in Texas, and there's so much interest in preserving and conserving them, not just hunting them, but they are just an important indicator species of our grassland birds. So I originally came to Texas, Corinne you were asking me, I originally came to Texas in 1997 to found an institute called the Institute of Environmental and Human

Health, okay, and I was also a founding chairman of the Department of Environmental Toxicology where we trained doctoral and master students in now the field of environmental toxicology. When I was a graduate student we didn't have those degrees, okay, so this is an important degree now. And the last 12 years, after moving out as director and chair, I founded the Wildlife Toxicology Laboratory, and that's where we have worked extensively with the United States Food and Drug Administration to develop a treatment for a disease in our wild quail. Let me back up a little bit. As we look at agriculture and habitat impacts to our wild quail populations,

that's very significant. And for the listeners, habitat means where quail live, where they occupy to reproduce and survive the winter and breathe in the spring and the summer. So we've seen increased in predator populations, like hawks. We can't shoot a wild hawk anymore. So they're all protected. Well, a lot of them feed on quail, including the Cooper's hawk, which is the most significant

aerial predator to the on quail, including the Cooper's hawk, which is the most significant aerial predator to the wild quail. And so we've seen changes in agriculture, of course, heavy agricultural chemical use, okay, that exposes quail and so on. So I look at it as a multitude of variables that have come together to suppress our wild quail. Can I ask you just a timeline question? Like are we seeing the decline increase more 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 75? Absolutely. Like what's, you know, if we were to graph chart that, what are we looking at across the timeline? Well, a lot of huntable populations have already been lost, say in the Carolinas and Virginia and so on.

But as we even look at Texas for the last, say go back to the 70s to now, you're seeing a general decline, okay? You have bumps of increases followed by crashes. All right. And that's that I want to get, I'm going to get to that in just a minute. So, but if you look at the curve over time, the curve is generally going down about three or 4% a year. All right. That curve pitched off at around when in the seventies? Approximately late sixties, sevents. Okay? Because when I was hunting quail in the late 60s and early 70s, it was unbelievable. Okay? And I'm talking about

you could go out in an afternoon and find 10 or 15 cubbies of wild quail. Okay? In an afternoon. It was nothing back then. Now, people come and may go quail hunting just a few years ago, even in Texas, and I heard maybe they'd find one covey and hunt a whole weekend. All right, so that's not very good quail hunting. And when my buddies from South Carolina come to Texas, their standard is at least 20 coveys a day, okay, hunting a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon. And generally I could provide that, but only in specific areas. And what, when we first started looking at the whole quail question, it was largely precipitated by a major crash of our wild quail back in 2010 in West Texas. And on some of the finest habitat

that you could have, a place where quail live, I mean it some of these ranches were superior. There was adequate rainfall, the cover looked great, we were seeing lots of broods of little baby quail. So everybody said, wow, I mean, we're going to have an unbelievable year. Yeah, everything looked good. Everything looked good. Well, by the time we got to October, November, nobody could find a quail. I mean, they were gone. And on one of the best ranches you could find quail. I mean, they were gone, and on one of the best ranches you could find is a picture book quail hunting ranch. They didn't hunt for

five years. Five years! And they had, before that, had some of the finest quail hunting that you could have ever imagined. It took five years to recover that population, even in a good zone of West Texas. So this generated a large research initiative funded by sportsmen, Steve, in Texas. Park City's Quail Coalition, the Rolling Plains Quail Research Foundation, and so on. Sportsmen! And they said, we have got to figure out, when we have this kind of habitat and perfect conditions, climate, and so on, for that particular year in 2010, what the heck happened to our quail?

They were literally gone. And our data suggested that we're not talking about losing some of them. On some of the ranches we were looking at, we're talking losing 90 percent. So this began a multi-university research initiative to look at environmental contaminants, pesticides, viruses, bacteria, and so on. Was the fire ant in the mix? If not, can you hit on that? I hear that all the time. Well, I know a lot about the fire ant. You're going to get me off track there, but I'll address it. Well, no, I just thought like the, the whole what happened, when I have this conversation with people who are not as, not authorities like you are, in the mix is this, like, fire ants kill all the babies.

Believe it or not, for my master's degree at Clemson University, I studied the fire ants Solenopsis invicta, and I know a lot about them. And we were at that time testing an organochlorine pesticide called Myrex that was utilized to be sprayed from an airplane and a corn cob grit bait that the ants would pick up and take into the mound and kill the queen. Okay? But it was an organochlorine like DDT. So we ultimately

couldn't use that anymore. And that's a whole nother story. Maybe we can do another podcast on organochlorine pesticides. I'd love to. I'm serious. I'm serious. And so, but, but, but in my opinion, they are part of the mix, but they didn't wipe out our quail. Okay. They just didn't. And I'll tell you. The argument is just so I'm clear on it because I might be wrong about this they when the egg hatches they bite the hatchling and kill it? It's possible okay but I can still remember I guess I was about 16 years old, I was quail hunting near my home, and this area, this field burned, and there were lots of quail in this field, like four or five

coveys, and there were fire ant mounds all over the place. And I looked at it, and I said, wow, this is a good bit of fire ant mounds here, and there are quail here. So the fire ant, in my opinion, does not necessarily wipe out the quail. They may have some impacts on when the hatchlings hatch and so on. But it's not this 90% business. No, it's not the big gun. It's not the silver bullet. But what I'm going to tell you is I think we've identified one of the silver bullets that are really hitting our wild quail.

And so I talked about this big project called Operation Idiopathic Decline, because nobody knew what was the cause. What? Tell me that word again. It was called- No, idiopathic. It was called- Remind me. It was called... No, idiopathic. Because nobody could... when a doctor does an operation idiopathic evaluation, they don't know what's wrong with you.

And so with the quail, this terminology was coined with these foundations coming together, funding all of this multidisciplinary research and And what emerged? And what's been a really undervalued area in wildlife conservation are diseases, okay? And so this has been one of the big unstudied areas that you know, I I Became a parasitologist. I never even thought I would engage that. So with this OID, Operation Idiopathic Declined Big Research Program, what emerged in Texas, particularly in western Texas, was the occurrence of parasitic infections.

And there were two parasites that we identified in our wild quail. And one was the eye worm, Oxy Spirura Petrae, the eye worm. What is an eye worm? It's a worm that has a sophisticated mouth part, and it locates in the eye of a quail and it feeds on tissues and and and so on in the rear of the eye generally and including the heart what we call the hardarian gland which is important for immune function and tear production. Nevertheless this eye worm is located in the eye and they're quite large. A female eye worm adult

will stretch across a penny. Okay? And if you extrapolated that eye worm and that little quail to your eye, that eye worm would be the size of a toothpick. How were they picking this worm up? Okay, good question. We have completely defined the life cycle and published this. Steve, the listeners here can go to my website at Wildlifetoxicologylab.org. In everything I'm talking about, we've published the world's literature. Okay, so we have pursued this step by step by step, and I'll get to the FDA work in a little bit

because that was a decade of work. Take your time. But the eye worm is a pretty sophisticated creature. They have a very sophisticated mouth where they can attach and feed. But... Are they native? They've been around a long time. We're not completely sure of their total biological history, but they are 96% related to the central African eye worm in the human called Loa Loa. And that worm in a human can damage the eye, can result in blindness, actually can penetrate the brain. Okay, so that eye worm in a quail is highly related to a

pathological infection even in the human being. Is the quail eye their cuisine of choice? Or do we see them in other bird species? I'll get to that, Corinne. Lots of good questions here. It's a fascinating life history. The quail basically will release eye worm eggs in its droppings, okay, as it's in a

field feeding. Crickets and grasshoppers come along and eat the droppings, and they ingest the egg. The egg hatches in the cricket gut, or the grasshopper, and it develops into what we call the infective L3 larvae. Okay, so it's a larvae. So the quail comes along and grabs that cricket. Believe it or not, that larvae can exit the exoskeleton of the cricket and migrate up the esophagus into the nasal sinus and to the eye of the quail. Coming out of the quail's crop. Yes. Or gizzard or something.

The crop. In 10 minutes, that's all. And what we've learned... No kidding. This is like aliens. 10 minutes. The quail eats that Cricket yep, and the crickets got the larvae in its gut. Yeah, and that's some bitch comes out Shoots up into his nasal capacity or cavities in his eyeball. You can't believe it, but it's true in ten minutes

In ten minutes, how does even that's so weird. How does even know to make a break for it? It's a lot of things about biology we don't fully understand. But the only thing I know is, number one, the infection carried by a given cricket may be more than one infected larvae. So one cricket could be ten eye worms. And then once that worm gets in the quail, what we've learned now is it pretty much is going to be there until the quail dies. They're long-lived, very long-lived. And they actually mate, the male and female mate in the eye.

And they- Sick bastards. They produce eggs. We have, the listeners can go to my website and see pictures, but the female eye worm is loaded with eggs. They're an egg-producing machine. So basically, they release the eggs, they're swallowed, they go into the alimentary tract. It starts all over. And so, what is so amazing, and we were first ones to discover this, is you can go from a relatively clean quail population, maybe with 10% infection, to a month or six weeks later, you have 95% of your birds infected with eye worms.

So it happens very fast. The epidemiology is extremely interesting. Is that because they're a bird that travels in tight little packs? We think that precipitates it, because when they are with covies, they are exposed to each other every day. Now in the spring, they break up and pair off, okay? And so that's when they're reproducing. But we're seeing that the infection with the eye worm can literally emerge into a zoonotic event fast. And so I, as an environmental toxicologist studying

this, first I said is it plausible that we could go from a ranch to a county of infection in the matter of a month or two? The answer is yes. It travels fast. 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 sweepstay. fast. you know, sucking high and titty there. ONX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in ONX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking.

That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the great white north can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access

to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex, Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. Onxmaps.com slash meet onxmaps.com slash meet welcome to the to the onx club y'all

how do the quails end up dying what kills them okay wow you guys are aggressive or aggressive. You want to know? Well, what we're seeing is we've had FDA demonstration ranches where we've been testing the medicated feed I invented, okay? And the testimonials are amazing because one man and wife live on their ranch and they used to call, they wear my phone out calling me about quail flying into their windows and house and killing themselves. Okay? Oh. Okay? Because it affects vision. And so once we started using the medicated feed on this particular

ranch right at four years ago, not one quail has flown into that house. Oh, it's driving them blind. Yeah, that's what we, yeah. So they couldn't feed the... Yeah. And what you got to understand, well, Steve, I'm a quail hunter. I gather. I'm an outdoorsman, I'm a rancher, and I'm a scientist. Okay?

So I kind of bring it all together. So I'm not just in some lab pontificating. I actually understand quail, their biology, their behavior, and so on. And so I've seen Cooper's hawks go after quail. When a quail leaves the ground flying, they gotta be 99% on the go, or that Cooper's hawk's probably gonna catch them. It's unbelievable dynamic. I watched it. That's why he's hauling ass like that. You got it!

And so what I'm trying to say is, Quail have gotta be Olympians, athletes, every day. So anything that suppresses their energy or affects their keenness of sight and all, it puts them at a disadvantage. And we know this now because what we're seeing with our medicated feed, we just had a major scientific paper come out in the International Journal of Parasitology, Parasites and Wildlife. It's on my website.

People can look. But what we've been able to see is we've been able to increase our quail survivability with the use of the medicated feed up to 40% annually, okay? Which most people estimate less than 10% will make it to the next year. We're seeing dramatic increase in survivability and a 300% increase in the quail population, compared to untreated sites in the same area. So the point is, is we know these parasitic infections now, we've got the evidence that they are impairing survivability of our wild quail.

Can you touch on that second parasite? Yes. The second one that we discovered and published a lot of papers on now is called the seakle worm, and it lives in the cecum of a wild quail. The cecum is assisting the quail in digesting all the seeds it's eating, okay? The seakle worm lives and feeds there. And we've seen seakle worm infections. What is that thing, the seakle worm? I'm not familiar. It's just part of the digestive tract associated with the small

intestines. Okay. But again, it's just an area that is secreting certain digestive enzymes, particularly for fiber digestion. But these sekel worms can build up to large quantities in the quail. Now, Corinne, you asked what the eye worm was, the sekel worm is more than 90% related to the round worm or the escarad in your dog. It's essentially an escarad. And I saw your two dogs earlier today. I bet you you worm, deworm your dogs regularly. They're due to be dewormed, too. Well, she means to. Yeah. Well, I tell you, these sickle worms can build up. We found 1,701 quail.

And the poor quail. What did it look like on the outside? Well, the poor quail, they have a well-developed breast muscle. Because when they come off the ground, they explode. And they're moving 50 miles an hour in just a few seconds. OK? A dog pointed this bird, and the dog caught it. The bird couldn't fly. And so they brought it to us and it had 1,700 seagull worms. So I mean,

and this particular group was reporting what we call feather piles of quail kills on the ground. The predators were really hitting them hard. They were very infected with seakle worms. So we think the seakle worm is about as important as the eye worm. Okay, now we've learned something from our brethren in Scotland in the United Kingdom, where they hunt the red grouse. Very important game bird over there. And the red grouse was suffering from dramatic population declines on given years. And research showed that the red grouse suffered from a worm in their cecum as well, okay? It was a cecal worm. And it caused the

birds not to be able to fly as fast because they reduced energy from aerial predators. And believe it or not, it caused the female grouse setting the eggs to emit a smell that the foxes could key in on and they were destroying all the nest. So the behavior of the red grouse by the scientific team in the UK was studied and you know the red grouse is eating, you know, a lot of fiber, so they have to go get grit every day. All right. Okay.

That's part of their behavior. And so the Scottish scientists identified where the grit piles were, where the red grouse would go. And they said if we could simulate a grit pile and put a drug in it, maybe the grouse would eat it. Well, they did. And they were able to knock out these infections or suppress them, and the grouse were not experiencing these kind of population crashes anymore. So, and I know this team, and I've been on a program with them both at a quail seminar. But anyway, so we had evidence that the UK and Scotland could do this, but the

United States Food and Drug Administration doesn't register drug treatments for wild animals, okay? So I can stop you for a couple seconds. Yeah. I want to get into this. Okay. I got a couple back up. I got back up on a couple things. Okay. I never associated, I never thought about high fiber with grit. Does a, does a hawk, okay, does a red-tailed hawk, does he need grit? Does he ever go get grit? He's mainly a meat eater. Yeah. To my knowledge, red-tailed hawks do not go get grit. He's mainly a meat eater. Yeah. To my knowledge, red tail hawks do not go get grit. I've never seen one. Do they have a gizzard though? They gotta have a gizzard, right? Or does the gizzard only function if it has a grit in it?

The latter. Okay. So the gizzard is a grit contraption. The gizzard is part of species of birds that are eating grains, seeds. The gizzard is part of species of birds that are eating grains, seeds. The gizzard is a grinding machine, so to speak, and it requires abrasive substrate like rocks grit, okay? So these red grouse in Scotland are eating a lot of fiber and they have to go to these grit piles every day, every day. You know, my kids, the reason I'm asking about this, my kids have these pet pigeons. They use a lot of grit and what they do is they get all the grit from the shingles on

the roof. Yeah. Yeah, I believe it. That could be a toxicology problem. That could be a toxicology problem. You got that right. Yeah. Before you jump into like how you got the drug out there, you were doing all your research on quail in West Texas. Did you find that those parasites were a problem with quail in other parts of the country also? Yes, well, this has been very research intensive.

What I'm telling you now is we had absolutely no clue about this back in 2012, okay? When we first opened the book and said, where do we go with this thing? So we started looking across the border in New Mexico, and we actually found it in the blue quail, the scale quail. So there's some interface there, and believe it or not, we've published a paper on this, we've seen it in the prairie chicken. So they are the same genus and species as in the prairie chicken. And we've now, I've got a graduate student working on this, we now see it in several

species of songbirds. The eye worm, not the seak worm. The eye worm. So this thing could be continental. We've just had samples submitted to us from Montana, and sharp-tailed grouse, and the gray partridge. You got it here. It's in Montana.

And I'm telling you, an eye worm is dangerous. They are dangerous in the eye of a bird. And that could be those same species of worms, the eye and the cecum, is that right? Cecum, yes. Those worms could be in Bobwhite quail in Kentucky, they could be in Bobwhite quail in South Carolina. Yes, and we're, this thing, this whole thing is expanding now, and we've had so many people reaching out to us because wildlife disease investigation and wildlife management has just pretty much been ignored, okay?

And people just think that if you've got great habitat and good rainfall, you'll just have quail. Well, that's not true. That's kind of true. In certain years you will, but I take it back to 2010 on one of the top ranches for quail. Well that's not true, that's kind of true. In certain years you will, but I take it back to 2010 on one of the top ranches for quail management in the state of Texas won all the awards, he lost all his quail. So that hypothesis of we got a good habitat and some rainfall, we're gonna have a lot of quail. That didn't necessarily work.

But what is really awesome is that since we introduced the medicated feet on that particular ranch, he hasn't seen a crash in years. And that's another thing. We've got several of these FDA approved demonstration ranches and we've been sustaining huntable quail populations while the neighbors aren't hunting. You gotta give the neighbors some of that stuff. Well, you can't imagine what I had to go through even to get a ranch approved for a demonstration site. Let's jump into that, talk about the FDA. Is there a reluctance that they don't do that? Is there a reluctance that

by approving wildlife drugs there's a Pandora's box and unforeseen consequences? Well, first of all, I've had a lot of experience at EPA being the past chairman of the Scientific Advisory Panel for implementation of the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Redenticide Act, FIFRA. I know a lot about EPA regulatory mandates.

I did not know what I was getting into with the United States Food and Drug Administration. They are very tough at evaluating registration of drugs. I started in approximately 2013-14 developing preliminary data and communication with the FDA about my interest in this whole parasitic disease issue and a treatment. And we had developed a dialogue and they said it seems to make sense. And historically, FDA, they just don't register drugs for the natural habitat. So basically, what we got done, and I'm going to tell you what we got done, it's not a vaccine.

It's a medicated feed drug treatment that is the first medicated feed treatment FDA's ever registered for a wildlife species in the natural habitat that will be commercially available. Okay? It's first, and they work with me for many years to get that done. The product now is called Quail Guard, but backing up, when we got started, it was in approximately 2015. Hey, I don't understand. I'm not a drug company. I'm just a professor at a university. And so I submitted all these materials and I thought I had some pretty interesting data that I knew about a wild quail. I knew about their behavior because I have a wrench and I love my quail. And so we ultimately figured out we could get them to come into an enclosure with some

openings and feed out of a simulated chicken trough. A wild quail covey will do that. And it took us a long time to figure that out. And why do they need to do that rather than you just scattering it out? Because FDA didn't want just scattering it out at that time. They wanted us to target the wild quail. Understood. And I'd like to... Because this was still in the testing phase. It was still in the testing phase. They didn't want everything running around eating. So it was my son, Ronnie Kendall, that helped me figure this out with what size enclosures would these wild quail come into. We started out, Steve, with a dog kennel, eight foot by eight foot, and we had holes in it and we baited the quail in so they would come in the covey wood and feed out

of a trough and we could offer the medicated feed. Like a crab trap. Like a trap! It's got a little opening. And Ronnie kept working and we went down to six feet by six feet, then we went to four feet by four feet, and now he's got a technology called Quail Safe and it's a third the size of your table here. You could put it in the back of your truck and it's amazing how the quail will come in and feed and we can target the wild quail. But are they over medicating themselves if they're eating too much feed? No. We had to go when... y'all are interesting. I mean, I think you find this interesting. I love this stuff. But Corinne, we started out... I had to

figure out could I even treat a bird in the wild in the natural habitat. FDA wanted to know that. How would we do this? And so I submitted all this data, and in September of 2015, I was invited to FDA headquarters for formal meetings. And, uh, can I, I got a question about leading up to that. At first, do you just find the address online and write like, dear FDA? Kind of. It started out just- Like, I have an intense interest in quail. It started out, we did a lot of research about who may be willing to engage us on this.

Okay, so you were trying to find someone within- Yeah. And it was the Office of Minor Use and Minor Species. And I said, that looked to me, they might be interesting. That's got to be the right address. Yeah. So I mean, this was like, you know, just pull up your boots and go do it. You know, I had worked with the EPA extensively, but not with FDA. And so I was brought to this meeting, and it wasn't a day of meetings, it was a week. This is when you finally got their attention.

Boy, I had their attention then. And so my sponsoring office told me to be prepared for a 20-minute seminar and to show them what we were going to do. Okay, so I had all these meetings during this week, and on the final day on Friday morning, I was told that we're going to have a meeting starting first thing, and you're going to walk into a big room of scientists, and they're going to talk to you about this. And from this meeting, they will either give you a thumbs up that we will go ahead for a registration pursuit, or they'll give you a thumbs down.

And so when they opened those two doors, there were close to 70 people in that room. No, really? Yes. From what disciplines? Environmental science, toxicology, statistics, immunology. It was like a whole room, and I'll never forget it. They can just attack your stuff from any angle. From any angle. And so, I mean, I had to swallow pretty deep, and I sat down at the table with

my sponsoring office, the director and my project officer, who was terrific. And they both just leaned over and they just said, get up there and just tell them what you want to do. And I literally, I went to the front of the room, they were all very attentive, and I gave a 20-minute seminar. And I showed them the wild quail, I showed them, you know, what these worms looked like. I showed them the dog kennel and the quail. I had videos of the quail coming in.

I explained how we could develop a feed. The quail would eat it. And we had early evidence that we could kill the parasites. And, you know, that was a three-hour meeting. Not 20 minutes. Not 20 minutes. When I got through with my presentation, they began to ask me questions, very respectful questions, and about how they would do this and whatever. And I answered the questions. I didn't try to, you know, about how they would do this and whatever. And I answered the questions. I didn't try

to, you know, I just, I was as straight as I could be. And so the sponsoring office took me back after, it was lunchtime then, and the director then, she since has retired, but she said, she said that went really well. There wasn't one condescending comment, not one, in three hours, and they could have ripped me apart. There were so many statisticians on the left wall. I mean, it was like a dozen, ten of them. The statisticians could have just gone into that, and the toxicologists, the human food safety division people were there, and they were all just discussing all the components I was going to have to deal with. Corinne, I was going to have to determine safety. I was going to have to determine environmental issues.

I was going to have to determine how quickly the drug would remove itself from the body of the quail if a human ate it. So I had to, you know, they were all talking. And so that was September. It took about till December. And I got a letter through my sponsoring office. And they said, Dr. Kendall, here's what you're going to have to do. And when I read that letter, I took a deep breath and says, wow, that's massive amount of work, massive. Maybe I missed this, but were they at all interested in you qualifying the value of having quail on the ground? They didn't debate it. I explained it. They got it. They got it.

Not only is a Bobwhite quail the canary of the prairie, so to speak, as an indicator species, they're a big-time economic bird. People come from all over the world to hunt wild quail in Texas. And there's a big real estate firm in Lubbett, Texas, where I'm from, and they sell big ranches. And I gave a talk at a sportsman's group, and one of the owners of that company stood up and he said, what he's saying is the truth. He said, if you got a lot of wild quail in your property, I can probably sell it faster than if you had oil well. I'm dead serious.

He said it right in front of the whole crowd. This wild quail, this wild quail thing is a big deal. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada and boy my goodness that we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or sweepstakes and Our raffle and sweepstakes law It makes it that they can't join who our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of you know Sucking high and titty there on X is now in Canada sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there. ONX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in ONX are available for your hunts this season. The hunt app is a fully

functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about ONX here on the Meat Eater podcast. Now you guys in the great white north can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex, Federal and more. As a special offer you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet on x maps dot com slash meet Welcome to the to the on X club y'all What about what about him what'd you find out about human safety like I shoot a quail That's got a you know

He's got a mouthful this stuff and I go clean out his gizzard and I eat his gizzard and I eat his breast meat and his thighs. What happens to me? Am I a deworm? You're going to have more? You're good. You're good. All of this was exploratory and it drew every bit of experience I had. But we started investigating the drug Fembendazole and it's been it's been used on a variety of domestic animals and so on, excuse me, but we had to come up with an effective concentration and what FDA made me do once I had some early testing I'd done with Fimbenzol, and we saw it was

pretty safe, and we knew it would kill those worms. And so we had to run at the request of FDA, and you gotta understand, everything is so formal with FDA. You have to have a good laboratory practice certification for your lab. So I had to have what we laboratory practice certification for your lab. So I had to have what we call the GOP officer. So they come in and evaluate you and check your data. And everything we did was under strict protocols approved by FDA. So you just can't imagine. A lot of our reports would be massive, like maybe a thousand pages of data.

They check everything. They don't just skip around. They check everything. And so it was quite a process. Like we had to do safety, and we had to triple the estimated dose and triple the timeframe of exposure to look for any pathological issues or check the extremes. Check the extremes and there were none. We ran this very nice experiment

on all of that. What was really cool, Steve, one of my students, a PhD student, was a terrific chemist and it's very sophisticated chemistry to look not only at the parent drug but the what we call the metabolites okay the breakdown drug products so FDA gave us we had to develop techniques to look at the liver of the quail and see how the breakdown products were clearing the liver and so

on this is all published. But it took us forever to get the drug validation down, and it required a lot of collaboration with our school of pharmacy up at Amarillo, Texas. They had the right instrument and were willing to work with us, so we had the GLP certify that lab. But we got it done, but what we showed is the drug clears within hours after the birds are removed. So FDA now has designated, you don't even need a day of drug clearance.

It clears within hours. So it's very, very safe to the birds, and it clears very quickly. So you could get, you would get a feeder, let's say, assuming you're not going to broadcast the seed. Right. You could get a feeder and run regular old feed in it. But you don't need to have treated feed. Exactly. Get the quail where you got a bunch of these out and your cobbies are using them and then on treatment time you come in and put the treated feed in, let it cycle for whatever amount of time and then shut the thing down or continue back to just regular feed inside there. Steve, that's terrific. That's exactly what we do.

Hear that, Brody? So, uh. Kicking ass over there. You guys are awesome. I'm gonna start to drug up. Yeah, so we do assist the quail with a fortified feed without the medication. And, um.

To get them coming to that day pop. To get them coming. But what's cool is my son Ronnie, we have this technology called Quail Safe, but he's developed an electronic Bob White Quail call of their Cubby call. Got it. Okay, now I could do that for you, Steve. Please. I've heard better quail. Oh my mouse really dry. I gotta get, I gotta get. That's good though. But that's kind of what it sounds like. I'm sure. And he puts that out by the feeder. It's an electronic call and believe it or not when these coveys that, they'll come from hundreds of yards

away. And when they know that feed is there, they come by and check it once in a while. It's amazing. That's their behavioral ecology that we understood the critical component of the covey call, and they will come from so far to investigate that. And then once they find that feed, you know, that's like a free lunch. And, um, and this does not domesticate them whatsoever. These are wild birds and we can attest to that by, you know, when we hunt,

I mean, these things, I know what a wild quail looks like when we hunt them. And, uh, so, so itail looks like when we hunt them. So it's really worked beautifully. The electronic call gives it so much more pull of the birds. And like I said, once the coveys start using it, then the summer comes, then early fall, and the hen brings the brood in, the little birds, okay? And they learn to eat the four to five feed, not the medicated feed yet, although it's fine for the little birds. It doesn't hurt them, okay? It's very, very safe. But once they learn, then the little

birds learn that that's a resource for them, particularly during drought, okay, when maybe seed production is very low. And so we're looking at all of these dimensions now. And so what's kind of pretty awesome is once you get set up to treat, and like one of our ranches is 2000,000 acres. And I've got students working out there, so we've got some pretty good estimates on the number of birds. But once you're set up to treat with the cost of quail guard, you may be approximately able

to treat for a dollar an acre a year. $2,000. So what's that come out of? How much for a pound of that feed? I think it sells for the Quail Guard organization I think it's $50 for a 50-pound bag, so a dollar. You mentioned wild birds and there's a lot of places where people are just going and shooting planted, farm raised quail. Are those operations at all interested in using this stuff or they're just putting birds out? They're not too concerned. They're going to get shot. They're going to get eaten by whatever. They're not worried about treating those birds. Yeah, a lot of my buddies back in South Carolina, they call them box birds. You go to a breeder and you buy 25 in a box and you go put the box out under a bush and the birds walk out and you hunt them.

That's kind of what quail hunting is to South Carolina now, compared to us all wild coveys. We're talking about wild quail. Yeah. And a pen bird that's released into the wild has a very low chance of survival. And you can't imagine, this is another real value of our ranch. And when you have a ranch and you live with your quail, you learn a lot. But that hen is teaching that brood so much on alarm calls and, I mean, she'll make a certain call and they'll all just freeze. They don't learn that in a pen, okay? And so survival is critical for a quail because literally everything wants to eat them. Hawks and raccoons or

snakes, raccoons are terrible on the nest, and so on. So a quail, a quail to survive has to be an athlete. You know, that they found that same thing when they were trying to reestablish wild turkey populations for a long time. They were taking box birds. Exactly birds and cutting them loose, and it just never worked. It never worked! Because they didn't have the survival instinct, they didn't have, it wasn't appreciated like what level of education they're getting from the hen, and when they finally found success,

they found success by catching wild birds and moving wild birds, and then they had that, I always think of it as they had the right level of paranoia to live. Yeah, and another thing too, we just had a second paper just come out in the International Journal of Parasitology, it's on our website for Facebook, but we did a study on the same ranch. It's a massive ranch. And we were able to get three six-mile transects where we did a test. And this was the early stages of getting ready to test the efficacy of the drug treatment for the FDA. So I was getting ready for that. But what's really cool, what's reported in this paper, is that we had six miles separated

by two miles, and six miles separated by two miles, all on the same ranch. Okay? It's a big place. Big place. Anybody hunting that place? But what was really interesting, we had feeder systems out there, we had the birds coming. Now one of the transects, we did nothing. We had radio collars on birds, so we knew where they were going.

We were using radio telemetry, and they weren't flipping across transects. They were located on those transects. But we had one transect with nothing. The second transect, we had just the fortified feed, all right? It was a good quail feed. And then on the third transect, we introduced the medication, the drug. And so we did two years of treatment, and in that two years, that drug treatment had a 300% increase in wild quail.

300%! And there was no difference between doing nothing and introducing the fortified feed. That was not significantly different. We were surprised. But when you introduced that drug... I would have thought it'd be good, better, or bad, bad, or best. Well, you know, the data's the data. But it could be on a given year, might be.

I do think helping the birds, particularly in drought years, is critical. I do. But on the given years we were working on this particular ranch, what we saw is it wasn't just the feed, it was the drug. And then when you introduced that drug, we literally had a population explosion. So do most places, if you go South Carolina, we talked about Texas, whatever. Do most places have enough birds left that bringing in the medicated feed, bringing in the medicine is gonna be enough?

Because it seems to me that they would need to be paired with some translocation of birds. Because like, you can go put all the medicated feed in the world out, but if there's no birds to find it, there's no birds to find it. Or good habitat. Well, those are great points, and there are attempts now to reintroduce quail into East Texas. You know, Texas used to have quail all over the state, and they have kept retreating west. And you pretty much, you gotta get to Abilene before you start getting into quail again.

It's amazing! So they're trying to reintroduce quail into East Texas, and I don't know where all of this is going, Steve, except my data tells me with hard information that we've been able to sustain sustainable, huntable populations on our FDA-approved demonstration ranches while the neighbors weren't hunting. And that's a fact. We're writing that paper up right now. I mean, the neighbors weren't hunting because there was no quail to hunt. They just didn't have the quail. And so I think those are real acid tests, you know, because what our whole goal has been is sustainable, huntable populations. Because as I explained on my website that, you know, it was the sportsmen that funded all of this.

It wasn't a federal grant, it was the sportsmen. And they cared about the quail. To pay for the turkey work. Exactly. Then people wind up criticizing sportsmen to be like, oh, you just want to save them so you can hunt them. And you're like, you know what, that's partially true. It's not all the way true, but it's partially true.

Well, quail hunting is kind of a religion in Texas. The Park City's Quail Coalition has a banquet every March, and they'll have a thousand people there for raising money for quail, and they can raise maybe a couple of million dollars that night. There's so much interest in this and I want to put things in perspective to how important quail hunting is in Texas. I gave a talk five, six years ago with a Scottish scientist that had done a lot of work on the red grouse in Scotland. Now in hunting the red grouse in Scotland, they're hunting on the moors and the grouse are driven.

And you have a stand and you got a guy loading the gun for you, you're shooting so much, you have a loader that hands you the gun and you may stay in a castle or something. So I'm serious. I've never done this. I want to do it before I die. But I've heard it's pretty elite, you know. And I was talking to this scientist that had done a lot of work with the Red Grouse and a graduate student and I were having lunch with him. And I said, you know, I just always thought that was amazing. And I said, it's got to be the pinnacle of wing shooting, wild bird wing shooting in the world. He said, oh no, no.

He said, you're West Texas quail hunting that we over in Scotland, look at, you know, you're out with a Jeep and got fine bird dogs and pointing these wild bobwhite quail and staying in a regular house. Staying in a regular house. And you know, that just staggered me cause I said, you know, you're telling the truth. And my, my good friend Rick Snipes, he has a ranch in West Texas and, and Snipes ranch, and we did a lot of the early work on his ranch, but he calls it the pageantry of the hunt.

And it's a lot to it, getting the dogs ready, loading the Jeep with the bird dogs, and you got- Putting your cowboy hat on. Yeah, he doesn't wear a cowboy hat. But he's got a seat sitting out in front of the Jeep, you know, off the ground. I mean, it's cool looking. And so it's a lot going on there. It's very colorful.

And dogs were pointing, and cubbies were getting up, so it's quite a spectacle, to be honest. And we were recently on Sportsman's Classic TV with Mr. Dorsey. You might know that. He came and quail-hunted with us. And we did a great story, and we had Rick leading the hunt sitting in front of the jeep. But it's a lot of pageantry to it. So I look back to my, this scientist, and talking about that, and they, it just really hit me hard. Like, it's right here in my backyard that what they are looking at is probably some of the best in the world. It's the pinnacle, yeah.

It's the pinnacle. And Steve, you may want to come quail hunt with us. I'm getting excited about it now. Oh, man! You may want to come quail hunt with I'm getting excited about it now. Oh man. The main thing I'm the main thing I'm turning the back of my head is how um my buddy Uh, how my buddy brad can get on this program now Uh, I know you you you put it out using the feeder. Yeah, will that be the Yeah? Will that be that like if a landowner, rancher, concerned party wants to try this on their place, is it prescribed? Like you have to do it such and such way or else you're in violation of the law? Or do you anticipate there'll be people buying a sack of this stuff and just putting it in the seed spreader and driving down the road and see what happens? Good point.

The FDA label said it's recommended to use strategic feeders. Recommended. Okay. Because what someone buys is- So I can see other uses. But again, looking at it, the FDA label, they did not make it totally restrictive. No. They just recommended it, because I could just see a lot of value maybe in appellate form in the future. The quail will accept the pellet form. The feed is a crumble now, and it's highly palatable. When we shift, when we go to the medicated feed, the quail have, they

accept it immediately. We've determined all of this with video evidence. So how do you get, how does someone, like, someone wants to apply this and try it. Where do they go? How do they begin? I mean, they're not buying it all on Amazon, I don't imagine. No. My son has an organization called Quail Safe, and it's got all this information on it, quailsafe.com. We've been working with Bryant Mills in Aledo, Texas. They've been terrific. They manufacture the feed. They do a beautiful job.

The feed is incredibly nutritious. We have the science on that. And anybody can buy it? Anybody can buy it. That's what I'm saying. If this is why this made US history, this is the first medicated feed article to be registered for a wildlife species and the natural habitat to be commercially available. So this made history. And what I'm proud of,

like I said, Corinne earlier, we weren't a drug company. This was eight years of working with FDA and then another couple of years of preliminary data. So we did it with graduate students, and graduate students don't stay but a few years. So we had to go through multiple graduate students and I had some amazing students that, well you can look at my website and see how many publications we've got. One of my past graduate students through her doctoral work got 20 peer-reviewed scientific publications from her doctoral work. That's a lot! Off this project. Yeah. Have you had any interest from like state game agencies using this stuff? Yes. Because one of the challenges with it is it's like it's a very

targeted solution for a like widespread problem like. Like you said, you fixed the quail problem on one ranch and the neighbors didn't have any quail. Yeah, that's a good good point. This is an evolving process. It was evolving at FDA. It's evolving in terms of engagement with management agencies and so on. Traditionally, state management agencies are habitat, habitat, habitat, habitat. And as I told you earlier, which I usually applaud. Yeah, I mean, I'm all into habitat, but habitat's not all of it. And so when I lost quail and my good friends lost their quail on Superior Quail Habitat the years I told you, I started saying, uh-uh, it's more than habitat.

And I as a scientist said, there's something driving this, and there's something driving these crashes. And what's cool, like I said, when we've been treating these properties, we haven't seen the crashes. We've been having sustained, huntable populations. CB How long has it been available for? WG It was registered May 23rd, 2024. That's just now.

So you just don't, there's not, you're not yet in a position where you've got a hundred land managers who've gone out and you haven't yet got a hundred land managers to go out, take the equipment, apply it on their property, give it time to work. You just don't know where this is going to head right now. Yeah, and what we found out, it takes about three years, okay? In your second year, you, in the right conditions, you can see a real pop in numbers. And we report that in this paper that's just come out. Yeah, because I can see the time, because you gotta do it, you gotta acclimate them, you gotta get the coffees coming, you gotta acclimate them to the feed, you know? So it takes, you just can't go throw the feed out there and say, oh man, I'm gonna have

a bunch of quail this fall. It doesn't work that way. It just doesn't work that way. It's a process. And you got, you know, and Ronnie, my son Ronnie, he has a website that explains all of this. It's got beautiful videos and whatever. It's called quailsafe.com. And there is a strategy. And you need to know how to place these instruments to deliver the feed,

how to manage them. It's almost, I mean, once you put them out and get the quail coming, it's pretty much, you're done. 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 sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law, it makes it that they can't join, whoo, our Northern brothers, you're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, ONX is now in Canada.

The great features that you love in ONX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater podcast. Now you guys in the great white north can be part of it,

be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light,

Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. Onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the Onx Club, y'all! Once you deworm a quail, how long is he dewormed for? Got a student working on that. They will be reinfected the next year, probably. What we've learned, though, Steve, is on our demonstration ranches, and we have another scientific paper on this, we are suppressing the cycle.

Yeah, that was my next question. In other words, the percentage of insects carrying the infective larvae is significantly reduced going into a multi-year medicated feed treatment. Yeah, you said they'll be reinfected next year, but like a one-year-old quail is ancient, right? Well, that's what a lot of people think, but it's not necessarily the truth. Really? And we have data to prove this now. One of my outstanding PhD students that just finished this spring, he had a four-year project

on a ranch and really intensively monitored them. And what he found compared to an untreated area in the same county, close, was he was seeing a 40% survivability to the next year versus a 10%. Okay? So, and so, and no wonder when he would do his fall Covey counts, it was phenomenal. Now what does that mean? Well, the teams go out and right at first light, they'll listen for these Covey calls. And at a given point, you hear the Coveys express themselves with a location call at sunrise and you count those calls. Well, if you hear five, that's

pretty good. If you hear eight, that's terrific. If you hear ten plus, like you're standing here and you're hearing that call, that's outstanding. He was hearing 15 to 18. You got me? Significant numbers. So we are excited about that because we are enhancing quail survivability and sustainability. Is that the key to like maintaining numbers is to have birds carry over to their second care? Exactly! The most valuable quail on your property is that hen that is able to carry over to the next year and be ready to nest in March, April, and she could actually give you 50 birds. She could nest three times in a summer.

You see what I mean? So you want to carry that hen over if you can. So this is what we're seeing. We're seeing the evidence of this. The way I look at this, you don't really get it until your buddies that were your teenager hunting partners say there aren't any quail left in our old haunts in South Carolina. They're gone.

And I said to myself, man, that's the real deal. And this happened across most of the wild bobwhite quail range now. And so can it happen in Texas? You better believe it can happen. And so what we're doing, and the way I look at it, is you know, I'm in this for conservation, and I don't shoot any quail anymore. They my buddies! But I love my quail hunting, and I love my bird dogs. And it's such a beautiful thing to watch a fine dog cover the landscape and work a cubby of quail and just the finesse of it, and how intelligent they are.

So there's a film some of your viewers might want to look at. It's called TheBobWhite.com. That's TheBobWhite.com. And it tells, my son produced it with a team from Nashville, and it's won some awards. But it tells that story of the issue of the quail and how important they are as an indicator of your ranch health and of your conservation ethic. And so we take this pretty serious and the family has all dedicated itself to this work over many, many years. So, you know, my wife Colleen has been counting quail with me for years, and I just wanted to share something with you too. We drive around on the ranch,

and when we get up a covey of quail, when Ronnie was a little boy, he grew up out on that ranch, and I get excited over every covey I see. You know, I count them and want to see if they're young birds or older birds, but every covey I saw, I always get excited. And I'll never forget, one day he looked at me, he's in the Jeep, and he said, Dad, why do you get excited over every covey of quail you see? He said, we've got quail all over the place. I said, because we may not have them one day, and we lost them in South Carolina, and we could lose them here.

And so now, when he drives around, he gets excited over every covey he sees, because he values it now. He understands that, you know, so many people don't have them even in West Texas. I've got a question about quail numbers on public lands because I see this so far as a like a private land solution and I know this maybe kind of piggybacks off what you were asking if there's a little bit yeah game agencies interested in this. I mean there's no way they're not going to be if it winds up being effective. There's no way they're not going to be interested in it. But then if you've got, if on public lands you have these feeders

and then with the issue of toxicology, you know, are there studies underway of what quail guard on the land has on other species? Who knows? Not that, you know. Well, and good question, Corinne. I appreciate your insight. Honestly, it was Ryan Callahan's question that I'm asking him to have. seen in 10 years of field work and massive amount of observation, video data and so on, we are not seeing non-target species effects. Okay? And what we know as well, if you utilize quail safe technology on a

property, you're targeting the quail, pretty much. And so, so again, we do, when we were doing all these tests, like our efficacy studies for FDA, whatever, we would do circular investigations around any treatment area to see any evidence. Like soil health type stuff as well. So again, it's, you know, and the rate at what we're using is pretty low. And so I feel really good about it and I'm sure gonna use it. And so I look at it and to me is I want to help the wild Bob White. I don't want to lose him. And so and I'm looking at this, we're starting to look at songbirds too. And I think we may be needing to investigate songbirds

because we've already got the evidence it's in songbirds. Are there groups of individuals or other, I don't know, are there people who are against the idea of administer, not administering, but offering drugs to wild animals as the thing that, you know, you can bring this out further to, who knows, if there's a drug developer, EHD, is there a drug? Is there an organized opposition effort? I have not run into that.

You know, like, would we end up having drug companies make all kinds of things to, you know, hoof rot, EH, you know, would we? The minute they find something for hoof rot, I can guarantee you that someone's gonna be going through this process on it. Right. I'd say for the most part, I haven't seen major

opposition. I've seen mainly amazement and fascination that we are experiencing a lot of climatic variation. We had 116 degree temperatures last summer in West Texas. We're not the Mojave Desert. So we're seeing a lot more plus 100 degree days, 112, 114, and you look at all these variables and you think about the stress organisms are having to deal with in a climate that may be changing. I'm not going to debate that right now, but I'm going to say when it's 116 degrees out there and you're a quail nesting on the ground, that ground's probably 200 degrees.

So anything we can do to help that quail survive those extremes, that's what I'm looking at. And at the same time, this past winter, it's five degrees with snow on the ground. We can go to those extremes. And by the way, Steve, that's where quail safe becomes critical. Those quail will bore down through the snow. We got the videos. They want to get in there and eat, because they can't get to the feed on the ground with the snow.

So if you go to that website, you'll see the quail. They get them a little tunnel to go in and feed. And anything we can do, I'm looking at it as a conservationist, and anything we can do to help sustain those populations. I think it's just an interesting question when we think about, you know, making drugs available for animals as, you know, beyond the habitat question, right? Isn't this, I don't, isn't there something out there for wild sheep? And so this is the second drug for the wild animals? Not something you can go, a private person can go buy.

Yeah, that's, was it was for sheep But that was an agency that wasn't publicly available No, that's why this was so unique and they used the trough The sheep came in big horn sheep came in eight out of and they offered them a drug for lung worm But that was agency driven so what I'm saying and I and I was very proud that FDA worked with me on this because this was the first time that a wildlife species was a drug register for wildlife species in their native habitat that was going to be made commercially available, not an agency. So that's what made the journey

so complicated. And to be honest, FDA was very difficult. They held us to the same standards as the drug companies. And they don't work with universities very much. I met with a drug company with their vice president of research, and they said to do something like this, a new registration for a new species, they budget 10 years. So universities turn over so much in 10 years, and the students come and go. You know what I mean? Whereas the drug company, they've got a whole lot of people that can work on this. So FDA wasn't really used to working with professors, but they did work with me. I had an assigned project officer that stayed

with me the whole way through, and she was wonderful. And then I had to deal with all these different entities within the agency with all the components I've been talking about. So this thing's been really rigorously evaluated. And they made it real clear. We're going to hold you to the same standards we hold drug companies. You're going to have to do everything we told you to do and that's it. So I was kind of proud that we did it in eight years instead of ten. But my sponsors thought it was forever and oh man, it was rough, Steve.

But they all thought we should just be able to get done next year. You know, I was explaining, listen, like on some of these projects, a massive amount of data, okay? And the FDA, when I turn a project in, they would get six months to look at it. Six months. And then, if they had any questions, and you had to to redo anything and you had to resubmit it, they'd get six more months. So it would drive me crazy. I tell you, you noticed my hair wasn't this gray in 2012.

And I'm telling you, it was the toughest thing I've ever done. But I had great students, a great team. I want to acknowledge my assistant, Tammy Hendricks, who was terrific, been with me for 25 years, and she stood right by me through the whole... What color is her hair? She's still younger. But some days I'd walk into her office and just shake in my head. She said, don't worry, we're going to get through it one day. So we actually had a party in Fort Worth associated with that scientific meeting I mentioned earlier in the podcast.

Drug party. Society of Environmental To toxicology and chemistry. So I had some of my past students, current students, and Tammy and we just really had a great time finally getting through that. But I've just had wonderful people and wonderful students and very thankful about that and thankful the family's help and like I said my son I'd never when we started off with with Quail Safe I when I I had to find some way I could show the FDA we could get those quail to come into some kind of system where we could target them. And so, like I said, you'll find the website, quailsafe.com, it's fascinating.

Yeah, I want to congratulate you on the whole thing, but before we wrap though, tell people like, what's the best single place they can go to see what's going on and figure out if it's right for their property and to go to quailsafe.com. Yeah, a guy would go to quailsafe.com and talk to him. You can buy all the stuff you need there. Yeah, yeah. Well, excellent, man. I appreciate it. Again, Dr. Ron Kendall, professor of toxicology, Texas Tech University,

go to quailsafe.com to check out the work. Also, can you name the two foundations you've been working with? Yeah, the two foundations, Park City's Quail Coalition, they have a nice website, They have a nice website and the Roding Plains Quail Research Foundation. Time for... I'm not going to eat any more chocolate covered grasshoppers. That's for sure. I remember the nights when I was seventeen Me and them dogs, we'd be down by the creek A few more burlots and a little jimping They'll ball on the track and they'll chop into trees At the base of the ridge where we cut out I'd sit on a tailgate and wait for a sound Levi and Clyde had their nose to the ground When the last of our kind we were hunters and hounds Up from the shoals and out in fields Down through the holler, back up through the hills Lord, save my soul and help lead me to see What these old hounds ain't but a few left around

They've cut all the timber and the old timers died out The moon's shining bright and the leaves on the ground Where the last of all kind we were, hunters and hounds They had a jaw full of tobacco and a shirt pocket of lead I remember a saying that an old man once said Hunt them when you can and keep them good and fed A son lost is lost and a run over is dead Well now hunters and hounds ain't but a few left around The sun lost his lost and run over his dead Well now hunters and hounds ain't but a few left around They've cut most of the timber and the old timers died out

The moon's shining bright and the leaves on the ground With the last of our kind we were on our stands Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now 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.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meat. MeatEater Radio Live is the newest addition to the MeatEater podcast feed. Every Thursday at 11 a.m. Mountain Time we'll be going live from MeatEater HQ on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, segments and live feedback from the

MeatEater audience. Then on Friday morning, the episode will be available in audio form on the MeatEater Podcast feed. So come hang with me, Steve, Yanni, Kel and the rest of the MeatEater crew every Thursday feed.