The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 820: Skunks Ruin A Marriage and Colorado’s Wolf Plan In Trouble

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with Brody Henderson, Janis Putelis, Randall Williams, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Canadian hunters helping Canadian hunters; Corrections!; go see Steve's talk about his first trip to hunt in Africa at Safari Club International's 2026 Convention; how skunks can ruin a marriage; a Massachusetts lobster heist; results from the Florida black bear hunt; Alaska's subsistence program under review; a mountain lion kills a hiker; Colorado's wolf program in trouble; and more.  Enter the raffle for an Alaska mountain goat hunt: https://ohfak.org/raffles/chugach-mountain-goat/ Enter the raffle for an Alaska buffalo hunt: https://ohfak.org/raffles/delta-bison/  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.

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welcome to the meat-eater podcast suckers listen if you got little kids standing by you're going to cover their ears because randall's got a news item we are going to bleep it right phil's going to bleep the whole thing okay good of course yeah we've done this in the past yeah so randle found us the salacious exchange on what platform this is on facebook do you spend a lot of time there no i've no i was looking at i was looking at like you know facebook marketplace stuff and this popped up? Yeah, and I have no idea. That's not true. I have no idea who this guy is.

I did some research to find out where he is. We won't name him. Just set the scene. He's, he goes on. How did it come through your feed? Like it was just popped up? It knows that I'd like this. That's not true. You're lying. Oh, so I'll set the scene. There's a photo

and it's a bunch of packaged deer meat and his post reads I'll do a short inversion. Deer processors are the biggest rip-offs of 2025, 185, 185, bucks for 30 packs of meat, which brings the price over six bucks a pack, and I supplied the meat. Then they want to get shit because you question them on it. Lucky I didn't slap the shit out of him.

I'm in the process of processing my own damn deer and fuck the processor and hope they all go out of bad. Hope they all go out of business, a bunch of rip-off bastards. Then they shied me on five packs of sausage that cost me $15. Mind you, deer processing was $85 before Sleepy Joe for the same thing. Hummet, well, back up I'm interested He feels that

That he feels that the Biden administration Made made wild game processing go up It's part of it I think he also just thinks that they're greedy And they felt emboldened by it And all by being greed Greedflation They felt emboldened by the Biden administration

To charge more Yeah and I think the real like it. The real, uh, this is, this is, there's, that is true. Love the love. I believe everything anybody tells me. And you think this is like, this is it, but there's 2.9K comments. So, 2,900 comments. And I realized that this man is responding to almost everyone that comments. So he just wants the public to know, just so I'm understanding this. He just wants the public to know. He's going to do his own dear process. Yeah, he's been ripped. And he's going to do it himself from now on. He's doing it himself. And he just, is putting this out to the public. Yes. Okay. So one person commented, grow some balls and process the deer yourself

and retain all the meat for yourself. And he responded six hours later and he said, I've got some for you, you, Phil, are you bleeping out? Listener already know the answer to this. Are you bleeping out the balls? Yeah.

I think, I think the balls in the, in the initial comment, I will not bleep out. The balls in the, second comment, I will. I think the context is different. Like right now, people just in here you say balls, it's a bleep. Nope, that's not being bleep.

Let's get back to this. We've talked about what's wrong with balls? Okay. Yeah, we've let so much more flies. So I'll just, I'm in it now, I'm just trying to get the the production. The listener experience. Another gentleman commented, if you hand off the work, you should have to pull out

your wallet. Then 11 hours later, the man responded, nobody asked the peanut gallery, not so you can but he did because he I know I know he did ask the gallery humans are full of contradictions

how was putting how is a Facebook post not asking the peanut gallery yeah I don't think he's fully thought it through yeah you should reflect on your attitude before taking the life of another animal you should be more grateful to which

he responds I wouldn't think twice to take yours That's the one good one. That one got me. This is going to become like a blood tracts episode. There's a hair mind here. There's a year mind here that I heard earlier. Oh yeah.

Let me find. Because I'm a sucker for a good year majo. Well, there's a couple. I just wanted to yawning. He threatened to punch me. There's a couple of year majokes. It's true. This one says,

Sleepy Joe is the problem. Question mark. Sounds like the problem is sleepy so-and-so who can't do his own deer. And he says, Because I was busy your mom. That's good. What are you going to bleep out on that?

I don't know. I'm going to feel it out and just see what feels. Then he brings his own profession. Well, someone brings his own profession. He says, sounds like you f***ed yourself and brought it to the wrong butcher, just like when customers bring shit to you

for bubble gum welding. To which he responds. Oh, he's a welder. He says, yeah, okay, let's see you're weld, smart ass. You nor nobody you know can do what I do. So it's turned into an indictment of his own welding. Yeah, and then there's just rapid fire.

Real men cut up their own deer. Fuck you, pal. Watch out. We got a badass. Fuck off. If you don't have time or knowledge to put what you harvest in the freezer, you shouldn't be hunting. Fuck you.

Sounds like you was being lazy and cost you more than you wanted to pay. Now you're mad. If you want a bitch, get off your ass and do it yourself. And he says, you, nobody's lazy, but you're old lady. Hmm, maybe... Could be true. Yeah.

I don't know. And then the other one was the, my, this is, I'll end with this. He says, if you don't shoot a button buck, you'll get more meat. And he says, does this look like a button buck to you? And he has a picture of him holding the cutoff head in the back of a truck. And it is a nice buck. Can I see that? Corinne, do you know what bubble gum welding is?

It's not good. I mean, is it just like doing a shoddy job and... Bubbly, gobbly, gobbly. Like gum stuck on the other side of a table. Like, oh, oh, got it. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you for that education. I wouldn't have known until I did a little bit of welding last year. I was out duck hunting with cow and I was like a lull in the action and I just got on Marketplace and I saw that and I screenshot. I took like 10 screenshots of the comments. And there's more there. It's a rich text. The guy exposed himself.

I mean, he exposed his face. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it's a personal Facebook fake. Yeah, you can, if you go to his page. We should have him on the show. He seems a little cantankerous. Maybe remotely. You know what's funny.

You know the. Keep him at arms length. I want to get moving along. We got a lot to cover today. Just so, ladies and gentlemen, just saying, you know, we're going to talk about Florida, Florida bear hunt. A lot of news. Florida bear hunt.

We got a heartwarming story from Ken. We're going to talk about Colorado wolf management and the wrath of the Trump administration. We're going to talk about a lot of corrections. Oh, some stuff about Jaguars in Arizona, some stuff about mountain goats in Alaska. A lot of stuff to talk about. What else is in here? There's a thing called a desperate plea about skunks. Subsistence.

Oh, Massachusetts lobster heist. I don't think we can get to the subsistence. That's a big. That's a big bucket. Anyways, obviously, lots of stuff we got to cover, but real quick, you know the Bobcat championship game? No. The local school team won. My buddy.

Very exciting. My kid's buddy was telling him a story. His family is all huge Bobcat's fans. It goes to overtime. And so it's like very tense overtime moment. And the Bobcats dude makes a catch in the end zone. which ties the game up. It will then be decided by the extra point.

Anyways, the minute he makes the catch, his old man. I know he's learned up on his sports. I was watching this, dude. And you know what's funny? I'm watching my family.

So I'm in the position of knowing more than anybody. It's like that old like, you know, I hate to say it, but it's an old term like the blind leading the blind. I had a glimmer of vision. Leading a family of the blind. Because I'm like,

no, no, what happens now? you know because my wife she was a little surprised because Katie's been I think watching more football in the last few years she's a big fan

she was on the she was fired up but I know more of the rules and I'm just like better I don't know man like I'm better like can we clip that feeling out what's going on in a football game

than she is yeah I understand she's more invested in it she likes going to the to the arena to watch the game Yeah. So anyways, my kid's buddy, his dad, the minute the dude makes the catch his dad in a moment of excitement, curls his remote control across the room.

And when the remote control hits the wall, it changes the channel and then dissolves. So he's just describing his old man trying to frantically get his TV back up and run. And by the time he got the By the time he got it back up, the game was over. Oh, no. He missed 10 minutes of overtime. He missed the point. He missed the point.

He missed the game winning kick. You know what I mean? And he was just, his old man was like just so overwhelmed. That was hilarious. Heartwarming story to start the New Year, folks. Here's a good one for you. on a recent show we covered a we we kind of

dogged on him and goofed on him a little bit but we covered a young struggling Canadian hunter who lives in Alberta probably probably no we know he's in Alberta yeah that's right talking all about how he he's hunted all these years and never

sees nothing never gets nothing nobody will tell him where to go he says they'll tell him to go west but then he sees a picture of them with a deer and it looks like they went east. He thinks people lie to him, hunting all these years, never got anything but a grouse. Well, we covered him and goofed on him and with love. He wrote in to say, uh, no, no, no, he didn't write him.

A bunch of Canadians emailed us. Canadians wrote us helping him out. That just goes to show you the difference between Canadians and Americans. Yeah. Americans would be like tough. Here's one. Hey, my name is this is the letter. Here's a letter that came in.

Hey there, my name is Steve Van Brunt, and I'm the treasurer of the Calgary Fish and Game Association. By the sounds of his email, I'd guess this hunter is in Calgary. Our group would love to take him in and help him out. Please forward him my info. I know the struggle. I also started hunting in my 20s and went a few years getting skunked at first. And he says, here's a, for reference, here's a picture of my first deer,

which I shot west in the mountains. and if you look, it's not So yeah, Roman has connected the initial writer in with this group and maybe we'll hear of his success. We need a follow up next month.

Here's a deal. Now this is, we pay attention, we got to do corrections. Now, anyone alive today knows everyone talks about how we're in this era of misinformation, right? We're like in this cultural moment of were just misinformation.

Does everybody know that? If you're engaged in the national conversation and you're a news reader, you would know that there is a, you would know whether you agree it or not, you would know that there is a cacophony of like noise around fake news, misinformation, and it cuts both ways. During the pandemic,

you'd say that, hey, maybe it was a lab leak. and you'd be accused of misinformation, right? Which wound up being probably true. So it cuts both ways. But there's this whole narrative of like

there's no accountability, right? There's no accountability. You just say, you say a thing and you could say something blatantly false and we don't have the mechanisms out there to correct misinformation.

And then it goes out there and does its thing. And it cuts both ways. Whatever. But we have that mechanism here. We have that here. And I'll point this out. When I participated in that, when I participated in the New York Times daily podcasts, I've been in a lot of podcasts. And I've hosted a lot of podcasts.

Those suckers fact check. What the guest says. Yeah. That would shut down most podcasts. Yeah, Phil. We need to start doing that. They record it. You don't want me to do that.

They go to me. And they're like, you said X, you said Y, you said Z. We can't corroborate Z. And I had to go be like, well, give me five minutes and I'll show you. Right. And then later that day, I had to be like, I was wrong. I was wrong. And they caught it.

Yeah. Right. No one does that. That would ruin, that would end podcasting in America today. However, what we'd like to do is we're going to create, I want corrections so bad that we're going to create a system by which we reward corrections. So if we say something that's off or incorrect, or if we miss something, or if they're, you know what, you know that thing that happens where you lie by omission?

We caught our kid lying by omission recently. Left out a key detail. The detail was so key Right He's like I'm gonna go do blank This is the oldest Yeah

I'm gonna go do blank They're like oh that doesn't sound like a problem You know And then like a while later We realized that he left off The other things he was doing Like let's say you're like Who was there with him?

He's too clever Let's say you were like Hey I'm gonna run down the road To the gas station Okay. To rob it. Yeah. Right.

That's not it, but it'd be like a thing like that. And we're like, Holman, that's what? At what point were you planning and including that detail? So he lied by omission, right? Lied by omission. So if we say something that's off, incorrect, if we miss something, if we screw up by omission of a thing. Right? Sure, everything you said was correct, or you, the listener, are thinking, you didn't say anything that was wrong, but you left off something of such impact that would have fundamentally changed the conversation you were having. Feel free to write in. But they got to bring the receipts, right? They can't just disagree with you.

Oh, you got to bring the receipts. You got to show your work. Be discerning about it, please. Yeah, don't just send a bunch of dumb garbage in. You can email the meat eater podcast at the meat eater.com, and we're going to be accumulating a bank of this. Corrections. In a little while, we'll formalize a segment. Yeah, we're talking about formalizing a segment, and we're talking about rewarding the best correction. Phil, you're going to have to come up with a corrections jingle.

Oh, that'll be fun. Corrections. We can dust off traditions. Well, I had an idea where in the room, you all go, one, two, three, corrections, and then I play a sound that goes, Corrections. So it's kind of like a combo deal. I don't know. We'll figure it out.

Fiddle around the roof coming back. We've done this in the past. But we've never, we've never. System a time. We've encouraged it by acknowledging it. But we've never formalized. And what we're aiming toward doing is perhaps building a correction of the week. This is a live idea.

I'm throwing out there. Feel free to shut it down immediately. Would you want people to send in like video clips of them saying like, hey, this is this is John from. Arkansas. I got a correction for you. We can play it. We can play it on the TV. That would be depending on the delivery.

Yeah. You could do that and or you could write it. If someone did do that, we don't want Randall's guy doing that from Facebook. That might be the entire episode. Let me get out of the corrections. I foresee, if I can just finish my thought, I foresee a show that is 100% corrections. Because then you got corrections to the corrections. remember that.

That's been a thing. We don't need to do them all. So the Warner, here's a correction, for instance. I will just pick the good corrections that we like. No. The best correction is the correction that corrects the biggest wrong. Correct. For instance.

Like, if someone's like, oh, you said that it became a state in 1848, it actually became, technically, it became a state on at 1159, you know, PM, the, New Year's Eve 1847, like, I don't care about that. Yeah. You know, but if it's like, hey, man, you said whatever that, that, you know, I don't know. For example. That way. For example.

We have some good examples. Yeah, trying to get on a show here. This isn't a podcast correction. It's a video correction. But it has podcast tie-ins. We recently did a thing, a video about our, our sandhill cranes truly rib eye in the sky. If you haven't watched it, go to you. YouTube and watch that episode.

We're currently making a video called our Morganzers really as bad as they say. Okay. So in our Sand Hill Crane video, we busted out our Warner, Braxler, Shear Force test machine, which measures tenderness. To this, Chris Calkins from the University of Nebraska, who is a meat scientist, wrote in to say. Wait, he was our guest. He was on episode 277. He came on to talk about meat science. That was back when we had good names for our episodes.

That episode was called Red Cutter. So good. Before we caved and started using dumb names. Now, he's a meat scientist. So yeah, if you're going to go find this episode, don't search like meat eater, what to know about meat. You're going to have to type in red, red cutter. ever think they're right in. Yeah, it'd be very difficult to find.

Something that no one on the planet is searching. Except for people who have already listened to the episode and remember every detail about it. They typed in Meat Scientist, University of Nebraska, wild game. You won't find it. If you type in Red Cutter, you'll find this. It's an extremely educational episode. Yeah, people should listen like every year just to refresh. Yeah, all your questions about, like, all your questions like, you know, when someone hits a deer and it goes, you hit a deer bad,

it goes two miles before you find it. And then people will be like, well, that deer will be no good to eat because it was stressed and the lactic acid. All those questions resolved. Should you soak your meat and water? Should you soak it in salt water? All those questions resolved. He wrote in to say, there's no basically, he says, yeah, what is he?

Oh, here it is. It's quick. This is Chris Calkins, the meat scientist. I saw a recent Instagram post showing use of the meat shear machine. being used on raw meat. Be aware there's hardly any relationship between sheer force of raw

versus cooked meat for those who know it's a glaring error. We were taking raw sandhill crane and raw ribeye and measuring the tenderness and the sandhill crane blew away the ribeye

in terms of tenderness. Did you do it cooked? also we never did it cook that that was the mistake and what was funny about it is i was noticing that in the sheer force machine sandhill crane is half it's it's scoring like i can't remember the exact numbers basically it's scoring like a 1.5 bite force and the ribby is scoring a a 3.0 bite force but then when you cook them and eat them there's no discernible like in my mind there's no discernible difference. He's saying you can't do that. You got to cook it,

then sheer force tested. So we did the wrong science. Did the wrong science. But it's okay. Part due coming up. It was okay. That's a great correction. In future, this gentleman would maybe be walking away with correction of the week. For those,

Brody's going to visit your home. And cook you dinner. And you can like insult me or something and tell me I'm wrong. Here's another correction. I love how game You are for that, Brady. We recently had on an episode 796 called Heart of the Jaguar. We had on the author James Campbell.

We discussed among many things, Jaguars and Jaguar Recovery in Arizona. In that episode, we mentioned the biologist, one of the, if not the leading servid researchers. He's not going to write a correction about that, saying how he's not. Amanda, I regard to be one of the leading servant researchers in America. I regard that to be true. We mentioned Hefflefinger in the show, and I even mentioned saying something

that Heffel Finger might not like to hear. In Hefflefinger, we had a long conversation. Hefflefinger had some very fair corrections. He was unhappy with references to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, not being supportive of Jaguars showing up in Arizona. And he had a mountain of examples that he shared with me demonstrating quite the opposite,

that the Arizona Game and Fish Department has been entirely hospitable to Jaguars in Arizona. He says his agency has always been very active in both planning and implementation of Jaguar conservation. The Arizona Game and Fish Department supports the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Jaguar Recovery Plan, which focuses on core jaguar habitat in South and Central America and Mexico, and that conservation efforts and funds for jaguar conservation should be focused south of the border. He also says, although the peripheral habitat in Arizona doesn't contribute to recovery,

his department remains committed to protecting and conserving those individuals that disperse into Arizona. Moving on to a public service announcement. Doing this announcement goes against my well-being. Because I've already bought my raffles. Yeah, I was thinking about that earlier when I bought my raffle. I'm about to knock you down. The Outdoor Heritage Foundation. Sorry, Corinne.

I'm about to knock your odds down because I got the page open. I'm going to get my credit card out. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner. This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes, and dinner was taking way too much of it. I just signed up for Hello Fresh,

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Because going pro with Lenovo Pro means you've got the winning formation. One-on-one advice, IT solutions, and customized hardware powered by Intel Core Ultra processors help you stay ahead of the competition. Business Goes Pro with Lenovo Pro. Sign up for free at Lenovo.com slash pro. The Outdoor Heritage Foundation of Alaska is raffling off a Chugatch Mountain Goat tag. That's G800.

That's the tag number. Which will come with a fully guided hunting experience and a travel stipend. As well as a Delta Junction bison tag, which is SI400. The money raised, is it SI400? I think it's D. unless they changed it. I feel like it should be D-I. It's D-I.

S-I-403. That's what it says on the website. Whatever. It's the Delta Junction bison tag. So you get two tags if you win? Two separate raffles. The money raised for these tags will go to fund a collaring study being launched on the

Chewgatch Mountain Goat population by the Palmer Fish and Game Office and will also be used to support the organization Endowment Fund. So this organization, the Outdoor Heritage Foundation of Alaska, is raising money with a mountain goat draw that they will turn around and use to do research on that population of mountain goats by going in and funding a collaring study by Palmer Fish and Game.

Now, of the many things I enjoy following in life, I like following fur markets, and I love following collaring studies. Looking at a map with all the blips of where stuff goes, I like the normal stuff animals do wearing a collar, and I like the weird stuff animals do wearing a collar. Love collaring studies. They're very enlightening about how things use habitat. Another great thing about collaring studies is,

once you know how a population, so there's a native population of mountain goats, once you know how that population of mountain goats uses the landscape, conservation efforts can be much more focused, right? you might say, hey, if we're going to protect habitats or do habitat work, where do these things actually go and what do they use? And it helps you be very targeted in conservation efforts. So collaring studies are great.

Both the bison and the goat raffles are live now. To back up to this goat deal. For the goat tag, if you're a not, this is open to non-residents. And the catch here is, unless you have a relative in Alaska, and if you're an Alaskan non-resident, so you don't live in Alaska, the only way you can go hunt goats is if you have a relative in Alaska, and you can hunt goats with that person. Other than that, you've got to hire a guide.

So when you draw this tag to win, it's a guided trip with a travel stipend to get you up there. This is an all-expense-paid go tag. When I draw it, I won't need those services. because I'm already familiar with the area. I don't need the services. You really shouldn't put in for this. It's what you're saying. I apply for this tag.

Here's the catch. Here's the weird part. I apply for this tag every year. Every year. Here's the crazy thing. These websites actually tell you how many tickets have been sold. So you can look at what your chances are. What is that right now?

Only 258 tickets for the goat. What? Dude, I'm in the mix. I'm in the mix. For now. I'm in the mix. I bought 70. I bought 4 for 75.

I'm going to get back in there now that I'm going to buy. I'm getting back in it. I was just getting like, I just made the opening offer with my $75. You can just tell them you don't need a guide. You're like, I don't need that part. I'm going to put the money. I'm going to donate it back. I'm going to donate it back.

back to the org. Gotcha. I don't need the guide. Yeah. I'm already in it. I'm already in the state draw anyway. Yeah. You're almost, you're basically already hunting that goat.

Yeah. You're so close. So how do people find this if you want to participate? Um, well. Oh, the Delta Junction bison ticket package is like, of the hunts in Alaska, there's Delta Junction, the Chittner herd, the Farewell Burn heard, the Copper River heard. The Delta herd is the like road accessible. It's a very achievable hunt.

They do some, there's some farming, oddly. There's not much farming in Alaska, obviously. There's some agricultural production around Delta Junction. So a lot of these guys that have these ag fields, they charge a small trespass fee. It's like if you want to go hunt a really wild, free-ranging bison population that has buffalo that are able to, to move across jurisdictions and they're just like wild, free roaming animals managed

as a big game species. This is an accessible hunt for people that don't know the ins and outs of Alaska. You don't need to be like a logistics wizard to pull off a Delta Junction hunt. So where you get... 40 tickets for 500 bucks.

One ticket for 25 bucks. Goat. 14 for 200. All expense paid. Four for 75. God, that makes me. I just need, I'm getting in there.

heavy duty now. Yeah. Can you bleep all that out, Phil? We'll do. So for the goat raffle, you have until March 6th, the drawing is going to be the next day. For the bison raffle, you have until the 14th. The drawing is going to be on March 15th. And if you go to the Outdoor Heritage Foundation of Alaska's website, oh hfak.org, forward

slash raffles, plural, you will find links to purchase tickets. Okay. Don't buy the, buy the bison ones. Moving on. We got an email called a desperate plea advice needed. Now, and I'll stay too, because we're going to get to the hard hitting, we're going to get to the hard hitting political, politically divisive stuff down the road. Remember I was talking about wolves and like the wrath of the Trump administration? That's all coming.

But first is desperate Desperate plea. Dear Steve and crew, this is someone writing in for help. Let me Let me begin by saying I love my wife and kids very much. That's always a great setup.

But hey, some guys don't. Now if he wrote in, say, let me begin by saying, I don't love my wife and kids. Yeah. Changes the whole thing. I wouldn't cover the story. Yep.

I wouldn't have put it in there. I would have read it. He wouldn't have a problem if he was. It's true. He wouldn't even have this problem. Very titillating to start off a story with that, though. Yeah. Yeah.

You couldn't not read it. If he said, I don't love my wife, I would have read, but I would never cover it. Yeah. Because I wouldn't be able to support that. He says, I also love trapping. As you may or may not know, skunk prices are pretty good this year. We know it well, buddy. In fact, we covered it at On Meteor Radio Live.

With the fur market being down the past few years, I was excited to see that skunks are average in 20 to 30 bucks in Oklahoma. Geez. They were even higher. Like here... Sorry, that was my dog. There's a dog in the studio. Excuse me. They were even higher.

This happened like a couple years ago, there was like that spike in beaver prices for cowboy hats. And dudes got so hard after beavers, it's just like, it dropped. And I, and the skunk, I don't think the skunk is like, I don't know that the skunk explosion is going to hold out. because I think it's already dipping from harvest. A lot of guys catching a lot of skunks. Anyway, he's $20 to $30 in Oklahoma.

Back to the letter. That being said, my son and I have started to target skunks more than usual. He says, now I am no Jared Maya Johnson, but we're looking at a nice little payday with all the skunks we've been catching. I don't understand that reference. He's doing pretty good. He's really not because there's no part of Jeremiah Johnson where he's excelling at any sort of fur.

harvesting. Are you, you're bringing a correction to the God? He feels like he's a great trapper, Jeremiah, and that he himself is not comparable to a great trapper that maybe Jeremiah was. But he's still doing well.

If he said, no, I'm no Craig O'Gorman. That would make sense to three people. Or I'm no Slim Peterson. Yeah. Or I'm no, I'm no Hawbaker. Oh. Now Randall knows what you're talking about. I'm no Mercer-Long. No, Seth Morris. I'm no John Graham. Sure. I'm no Jeremiah Johnson. But to go on, he's no Jeremiah Johnson, but he's looking at a nice little payday with all the skunks he's been catching. Well, I came home last night and sat on the couch after a good trap line check and my wife broke down in tears and proceeded to tell me she can't live like this anymore.

buddy I have gotten the same notes she then says she's tired of my truck and the garage smelling like a skunk he says I didn't get sprayed so it's not that bad but she can just get a little whiff of it here and there I bet it's probably worse I'm sure it's terrible let me tell you something buddy let me finish up the time he goes on I am in a predicament I love my wife but I'm about to sell all my trap and stuff and sign my son up for piano lessons. What should I do? Is there a happy medium to my situation? P.S., if y'all don't need a new turkey spot in Oklahoma, I'd love to take you out. Bryce from Oklahoma.

That odor is one of those odors. Let me put you this way. My dad always liked to tell a story. When he was a little boy, he lived by a foundry. And all day long. Kottong, kottong, kong, kong, kong, from the foundry. People would say they'd come to his neighborhood and people go, what is that noise? To which people in the neighborhood would go, what noise? Right? You, my friend, might be acclimated.

You might be getting acclimated to the skunks mouth. Am I the only person, and I'm not in a household where skunks get trapped? If I drive by it, I just never, you know, I never think it's bad. No, it's great. Just a little width of a road kill skunk, bud. It doesn't, it doesn't hit me in that way. The intensity increases by proximity. A little width of a road kill skunk is, I, is nothing close to it, I'm sure.

But if you run over a roadkill skunk and get a little bit of it stuck up under your vehicle and it just stays there for two weeks. But it doesn't smell like, it doesn't smell rotten. Like things that would turn me off is like something that's like rotting. I had my cat come home at two in the morning drenched in skunk and that completely altered my brain. It's rewired it. I hate, I can't do it now because my house smelled like it for weeks. And the thing is, is it can like make something smell just by being near it. Oh, like it absorbs by.

It goes through the air and coats. Like remember we were in that, you were out at Jake's place and you were skinning that skunk. And we had a couple of beaver thighs sitting like 10 feet away to eat. No one near. And you couldn't eat those beaver thighs. So, yeah, years ago, remember we auctioned off in the auction house of oddities that bottle of genuine skunk? Yes, I do. So we were extracting that with hypodermic needles.

You buy it Murdox, like hard, like large, boar cattle injectors. Well, we were like surgical about. doing it. And I, all I did is, I didn't want to throw my hypodermic needle out. So you washed it and kept it. No. I didn't. There was the one oversight.

Okay. So I had the hypodermic needle in my garage and my wife is having a shit fit about the skunk smell in her car on everything. I had a whole embarrassing thing happen at the barbershop. So I'm like. Katie, there is no nothing in that garage. It's just like a residual smell that'll dissipate. But it wouldn't.

And I eventually realized that hypodermic needle. So she's probably right. You're probably wrong. If you had a way to take your whole, all aspects of your skunk operation to an outbuilding. He needs a skin and shit. Yeah, just build a shit. But you might not have that. You might not have that luxury.

It might just have to be that you tell her, trapping season don't last all year. I don't know. Or you take the whole entire operation. You don't park your truck in the garage. The entire operation, when you walk out of your shed, you walk out of your shed in your underwear. Yeah. She's already in tears, so I think, I don't know if the trapping season is only part of the year is going to work.

I think he needs to start looking at the shed, looking at the more dramatic step here. But he might not, my story about the hyperdermin needle is being, you have to take the entire operation. Mm-hmm. Boots, gloves, hat, clothes, truck, backpack. The entire operation has the move to where you, when you walk away from skunk land, you walk away in your underwear. To be fair, you love your wife and kids very much, but you haven't moved your operation off-site.

Yeah, but I'm not doing 20 skunks. True. I'm good for like a skunk. I mean, a skunk. A skunk now and then We got a handful of like You know Skunk now and this guy might

You know be a little more thoughtful than you I don't know She is crying I think he's a little bit hard on the piano lessons I think there's a lot of value in piano lessons I was gonna say that too He's make a point But yeah

I think I think Yanni's point is that as a wrong point You know I'm just saying Maybe he could use his proceeds to pay for some piano lessons and say look what the kids getting out of it. As long as that kid hasn't been handling a skunk. He's got the keys on the piano. Skunks are black and white.

Pianos are black and white. Oh. Good point, man. It all goes together. Yeah, I think he was making a point. I don't think skunk trapping and piano playing are totally incompatible, but I think that you would find that there is an inverse correlation to prowess on the piano in prowess as a skunk trapper.

I think that you would find that. Does Dale Brisbane know about these high skunk prices? I told about it. And he said, I'm not that broke. Which I didn't want to take it up with him. I don't want to argue about it. I thought he was wrong. Here's some news from Massachusetts.

This is fascinating. Something I hadn't really thought about. Well, I have thought about it. Listeners will know that in the past I had, it remains unresolved, unsolved. There's an unsolved mystery where I, there was a fish heist in our office. I don't know how it's still unsolved. It was in our last office.

Yeah. There was a major fish heist in our last office and it was never solved. Someone stole a small fortunes worth of seafood and we never caught them. He's at us. Never caught them. But check this out. I thought I was allowed to take that stuff. Wait, what?

There have been these like high profile, like organized crime level. So this is a story. reported in Forbes from Massachusetts, these like well-organized, high-profile thefts of massive amounts of seafood. And the gist of the article saying when you, like, these aren't, these aren't things with barcodes and serial numbers.

That's the reason they like them. Yeah. So it's like, you're stealing lobster. So like unmarked, like completely unmarked stuff that's very easy. see something i never thought of like a big load of seafood on a truck is very hard to track yeah it's hard to track and it's easy to move it's easy to move they got these guys that just stole

40,000 like hear me out 40,000 pounds of lobster meat from a warehouse in massachusetts estimated to be worth $400,000. The lobster was supposed to go to Costco's in Illinois and Minnesota. You think that's like king crab legs in the shell? Or do you think it's lobster? I'm sorry, lobster. So is it?

I keep seeing lobster meat. I feel like it must be. Would you picture going to a Costco and finding tails? Yeah. Sometimes you'll see holes. They're not picked. They're not like the main lobster tails. they're the

no these aren't rock lobster tails that's right spine the spiny lobster tails yeah yeah when it keeps pointing out meat I'm assuming they're not moving live lobster but maybe like tails

and they're like at the time of this reporting they're pointing out the much it's already gone on the black market for half price which that's what my takeaway yeah they should be getting more black market lobster these steves

probably moved it at $200,000 but this guy goes on to say that you're probably seeing, you're probably seeing, when you hear about how this stuff goes on, this analyst here saying, you're seeing old school organized crime intersecting with cybercrime.

These guys basically, not basically, these criminals impersonated a legitimate trucking company. They go to a warehouse with a truck that's labeled and everything, and they know about the, they know about the lobster being there, they know about the shipment happening.

They pose as the legitimate shipper. Well, they take over there. They like, it's like identity theft. Like they, they get the account numbers and all the information they need. It's both like physical on the trucks and then like on the back end with the communication. They've hacked all the delivery information. They have a fraudulent load listing. And then they got their guy.

in they got dispatchers right very sophisticated stuff and they drive off and they drive off and then the actual truck shows up looking for the lobster that they already took off of the movie yeah it's a great part of the movie it's just 200,000 seems like I know it's like it's too risky for that

right it just seems like is it enough I would say if I if you were to tell me oh well they've done it hundreds of times over which later we learned that there was The crab shipment that went missing. What was the number annually? It was in the billion. Wasn't it?

Yeah. And they could be involved with all kinds. They could be picking up televisions and computers. And they could be doing this with all different kinds of stuff. But this being reported like this is going to make their lives more difficult. But yeah, there's been other seafood heists. Yeah. But the part of it, I mean, it's all interesting.

The part of it was interesting to me is that you're just able to move. huge, that you can just move black market huge quantities of seafood. But if you said it, like you said, if it's organized crime, they probably already have those connections, right? Like they know, they know how to move. 40,000 pounds a lot. So this is all told cargo theft is estimated to be a $35 billion loss from the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Yeah. But that includes, that includes electronics, pharmaceuticals. But Yanni's point about the net, unless you're doing a unless they're just doing this all the time.

If you imagine that you're a one-off criminal enterprise, and you have this where you got four people involved, six people involved, and in the end you net 200,000 bucks. That's not even net. That's not your retirement plan. Yeah, it's like, going to an island for the rest year.

Maybe it's so easy for them to do. I wonder how much the crab heist was and then there's other, you know, seafood heists going on. So maybe they just have it. And they can be just going on. Then it's easy. Maple syrup is another big one.

I think we've even covered that. We've covered the glass eel deal. This is how you get to the classic film trope of one last heist. Because they need to do one last heist so that they can finally ride off into the sunset. Right. So that's why Ocean's 11 became like. The 40,000 pounds of lobster was good. But if we can get another 40,000 pounds of lobster, I'm not doing this anymore.

Yeah. Exactly. You know, like the town. I've paid these oceans films. Yeah, exactly. It's the last job. Okay. New Year, fresh start.

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Florida bearer hunt results, harvest results. We've covered just a whole bunch. Florida a decade ago, we always tell the story because it's one of my favorite, kind of like, I don't know, wildlife policy stories of the last decade or so, is Florida ran a bear hunt a decade ago. and their first bear hunting forever.

I can't remember exactly how long, but their first hunt in decades, they ran a bear hunt. When they put together the bear hunt, they decided on a quota system. So it was an open hunt with a cap. And it's like, anyone with a license can go out and hunt bears,

and their plan was to shut the license to shut the hunt down at 300 bears, I think is what it was. And, they within a couple days hit their quota in some of the units they hit their quota right away when they built it in they built in that there was a 24 hour window so as they approach their bear quota people have to report the bear as soon as they kill it as they approached the bear quarter their plan was to shut it down but there was a 24 hour window to shut it down during

that 24 hour period they were hunters were killing so many bears in florida that during the 24-hour shutdown period, some units in Florida, the bear harvest overshot the quota in a couple of units. And so in two days of this open hunt in Florida, in a two-day span, they killed 300 bears. All right. And the anti-hunters, the animal rights folks,

had a connoissement about this. They felt like, oh, my God, they botched the whole thing. They killed too many bears. On the flip side, that was half of the reality. The other half of the reality was people said, man, we must have a lot of bears, right? There's two ways of looking at this whole story. But it was a real black eye for Florida. Florida didn't do any bear hunts.

Now, they just did another bear hunt. And on this bear hunt, they tried a new model. On this bear hunt, they tried a tag draw model where they did a lottery to give out a smaller handful of bear tags. What happened, as we reported on previous shows, what happened is the animal rights people all come in, and they start saying, hey,

we're going to go apply for bear tags and then not use them. So they're going to give out the requisite, they're going to give out the allotted number of bear tags. And you guys... 172. Okay. We're going to, we're going to award 172 bear tags and the

Animal rights, people are like, yeah, but we're going to get all those bear tags and not use them. Prior to the hunt, the Fish and Wildlife Commission in Florida, their basic attitude was, go ahead, buddy. Because you're just buying licenses and funding our agency by buying licenses. Next year, we'll take the formula and we'll adjust. If our objective is to kill, let's say, whatever, let's say their objective is to kill 100 bears, if you do your little scheme and we give out a hunt, let's say we gave out 200, tags expecting to kill 100 bears. And we give out 200 tags and kill 50 bears.

Well, guess what? Next year, we'll give out 400 tags. And we're going to get it right. Buy all the fake licenses you want. We thank you for the money. Was their attitude? Well, they did their hunt and lo and behold, they came in, they ran the season from December 6 to December 28.

They had a good hunt, but they came in below objective. But hold on, is that clear that it's, that the objective was to kill 172? No, that's just a number of tags issue. Yeah. They killed 52. And I think that they had, they had, they were comfortable with a much larger harvest. What was the harvest they were comfortable with? I don't know if they said, they said a number.

They just said that they're, like, the success rate was lower than they had planned on, but it's still pretty good. Yep. They're pleased, but it was on the low end of expected. So here's the great irony. Here's what always happens. This happened. Let me give you another verse. Well, let me tell you what happened. I'll give you another example to happen. So the animal rights community says, we're going to screw your bear hunt and we're going to apply for all these tags. And then don't hunt. Okay. So they do the hunt. They issue 172 tags. They kill, remind me again? How many got? Around 50, right? They kill 52 bears. What does the animal rights community say? The lack of success these hunters had goes to show there aren't enough bears to support the hunt. It's like in California, when California banned using hounds to mountain lion hunt, the efficacy rate plummeted. So they ban the use of hounds, the animal rights groups petition, they ban the use of hounds.

They ban the use of hounds to hunt. then you see in the following years, efficacy rate of lion hunting drops, drops, drops, because you can't use hounds to hunt. What do they go and say, oh my gosh, mountain lion efficacy rates are so low now. It must be there's no lions.

So they create a scenario, and then they use that scenario, turn around and use it against the wildlife manager. So here they're making the case, geez, it went so shittily, thanks to us doing what we did, that now we can turn around and use that low harvest against the agency by saying,

it must not be that many bears, success rates are very low, even though we're all sitting on tags that we didn't hunt. Yeah, it'd be interesting to know how many of those tag holders were deliberately not going to hunt and then go with a success rate based on that, you know? Yep.

He goes, they go on to say, um, they go, release, they say, hey, the hunter's success rate was very close to other states with similar hunt parameters. Do you know if that's it? Go ahead. Well, I'm glad for him.

I mean, if they had had a mistake again, right? Let's say they had given 172 tags. I don't know what their objective was. If they gave 172 and 172 people killed a bear, then, uh, I don't know, then they'd be, people would be using that against them. It'd be another like, what a slaughter, you know? So here's, here's. moving forward.

Can non-res apply for that tagged, you know? I'm not aware. That's a great question. I would assume so. I'm not positive. Man, I wanted to get all into

this is just a... You can probably hit it lightly 10%? Because public comment is open. 10% non-resident? Yeah. Trump reviews federal subsistence program in Alaska.

Now here, this is a dozy. I hesitate to get into this because this is an hour long conversation. And it's not settled yet. Right. Maybe light touch to talk about how it's not settling and come back to it. 60% of Alaska's federal land. In Alaska, there is a thing called federal subsistence hunting where people that live in rural communities in Alaska and in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in. in defined rural areas in Alaska,

residents of defined rural areas in Alaska can often hunt and fish on federal lands under different regulations than everybody else. It's the, it's federal subsistence. So you want to do there's three tiers, right? There's native. Then there's like resident subsistence and there's like there's like. There's state. It's kind of recreational. Well, there's there's, here's why it takes an hour.

Yeah. Because there's state. subsistence yeah so here's an example it let's say you're a resident of Alaska there are some harvest that are state subsistence harvest for instance sablefish or black cod that's state subsistence you could live in downtown Anchorage and go and you can travel to an area that has a state subsistence hunt or a state subsistence fishery and you can participate in the area. So you could be from an urban area, but participate in a state subsistence hunt as long as you're

in the area where the state subsistent hunt occurs. For federal subsistence practices on federal lands, you have to be a resident of that area. Okay, you can do federal subsistence activities in your area. And it might be increased bag limits, earlier hunting seasons, fisheries that aren't open to other people. And that's the federal subsistence. thing. What it allows is you can't, the state can't go in on some issues, they can't go in and make hunting seasons and fishing opportunities that are applied solely to Native Alaskans. What they can do is they can say on federal lands, they can say if you live in this area,

and it might be a predominantly native area, if you live in this area, you have different rules and regulations for certain hunting and fishing practices on federal lands. Many, oftentimes, and this is my personal view, some of the federal subsistence board decisions are,

there's some areas where they have some major overreach. In my view, as an outsider looking in. You mean like being too liberal with what they allow some people to do? No, not as much that as they've created a lot of controversy, verse in Alaska by making certain things like in western brooks range that like caribou hunting

moose hunting for big game you know whatever decision that says um it's it's federal subsistence only meaning that people from other part not people from outside the state not only people from outside the state but people from outside of that area can no longer hunt that area or taking sheep doll sheep units in the brooks range and the federal subsistence board coming in and saying only federal subsistence people can hunt this hunt and it could be what they've allowed to creep into their decision making process is not necessarily the health of the species being hunted but it's social considerations meaning people communities in the western brooks range say hey we're sick of people from outside of our area coming into hunt so the federal

subsistence board saying, okay, we'll make it that they can't. That has caused an enormous amount of controversy in certain areas. The federal subsistence board just made a very strange decision. They came in and declared Ketchikan, Alaska, to be federal subsistence eligible. So now you have a town that has a Walmart and a Starbucks and a bunch of crappy gift shops for cruise people and gift stores. It's a full on town with an airport. The federal subsistence board shocked everybody, most everybody, and came in and said,

Catch a can as federal subsistence. On what grounds, but like from their perspective, if they're putting forth this on serious grounds, what are they claiming? there are people who could benefit Here's the I'll give you the best argument I mean I know I tried to understand this a while back and I can't Because there's a lot there are a lot of Native Alaskans in Ketchikan right

And you can't grant They can't grant just Native Alaskans Right yep So you have indigenous people in Ketchikan They can't grant them These these hunting and fishing privileges on that you can only grant it to the tribes

under federal subsistence but the minute you do that for federal subs you can't so you have to say the jurisdiction everyone living in this jurisdiction so now the guy that the the guy I know that Walmart owns Walmart but the guy that owns the grocery store is now federal subsistence but and can do hunting and fishing practices like in practice in practice if that's lived out will that still end up benefiting tribal members who they're seeking to that tribal members were instrumental in petitioning like native alaskans from the area were instrumental in petitioning to get federal subsistence status but the federal subsistence status but the federal subsistence status falls of the whole town. And many people quite rightfully are looking at the irony of taking a town that has chain hotels. Sure.

A Super 8. A Walmart. Cruise ship docks. Delta airline flights. Alaska airline flights. United Airlines flights. A ferry system. Cars.

Right. Taking a full on city, a full on urban center. Mm-hmm. And saying you need to, you basically are saying you people rely on a subsistence lifestyle and should be granted subsistence harvest authority. And other people looking to be like, how in the world can you live in a town with a Walmart and an airport and claim? And be reliant on subsistence practices.

And why? I know you said earlier that they can't give it, just give it to the, the native. And why is that? It's unconstitutional. I don't know the full legal history of why that can't happen. It's unconstitutional. Here's what else makes this story interesting. Where a lot of this subsistence activity is going to wind up taking place is on another town,

on another island that already has, because another island that very much is rural and is very remote. And the people on that island have federal subsistence. So now people out there are like, Holman, wait a minute, where do you think they're going to be doing all this federal subsistence activity? It's going to be in our federal subsistence area. So now you got one, you got people from one federal subsistence area who are like, dude, you people aren't rural.

And I know you're all coming to our area to hunt. Yeah. So for these various reasons, when I laid out about stuff from doll sheep units, and I'm not even fully, like, I have very complex. personal thoughts about this whole thing. I'm trying to as much as possible lay out the issue that we'll cover when we cover this. We're going to cover

this big time later. This is the light touch. This is the light touch. It's so complicated. The thing is where like if it goes through like what's to stop like Anchorage or Fairbanks from you know what I mean? Yeah. So SCI Safari Club International

has a thing they've asked. This has been put forward. they have asked the administration, the current administration, to do a review of, hey, what is going on with the federal subsistence program in Alaska? And a couple of the questions they're raising is they've recently added new board members. So it's like, what is up with the, what is up with who is on the board? Are we talking about health of wildlife species or are we talking about social friction? what is the decision making process? What are some of the things that happen lately

and just basically doing a review of the process? Native groups in Alaska are worried about this. What's that? I'm looking forward to hearing more. We're going to do a full cover on it. Yeah, what's the timeline on this? Like, as far as them...

You read that from it because I've got to pull something up. Then we're going to move on other news stories. Yeah, public comment where is it? By February 13th. Oh, speaking of February 13th and Safari Club, what am I going down there? So I'm trying to find right now.

That's your birthday. Why know? But check this out. Give me a minute. Not then. Where are they taking comments? Not then. Oh, you mean when you're going to Nashville?

With Morgan. Yeah. February 18th to 21st is the... Is the SCI show? Is the dates for their show. Okay. If you on YouTube watch our Africa series. And if you didn't, like, you need to.

Or listen to all the 3 million podcasts we did about it. I'm going to be at the SCI convention in Nashville with Morgan Potter. So if you're going to the SCI show, Morgan Potter and I are going to do a presentation. So the professional hunter I was hunting with who's been on the podcast, we're going to be in Nashville doing a presentation at SCI about that trip, about wildlife management, Africa, about things. that were assumed and learned, just the whole story of it. So if you want to come check that out. Tickets, you get tickets through SCI. I have no, I'm going.

Ticket prices, all that money goes to SCI. It all goes to support SCI. I'm not taking a dip into this. So when you get in, you've got to buy a ticket. But the ticket is not to me. The ticket is to support SCI, because this is one of their biggest fundraising. It's a nonprofit.

One of their biggest fundraising opportunities is this. So when you get your ticket, you're supporting SCI, not me. Mountain Lion kills woman in Colorado. A hiker. They even give her name. Kristen Marie Kovatch, 46 years old.

Killed on New Year's Day in northern Colorado. Go ahead, Brody. This is your neck of the woods. Well, it was right outside Estes Park, which is right outside Rocky Mountain National Park, where, like, kind of resort-y, touristy town, popular hiking trail

and some other fight. hikers have you personally hiked that trail no i i don't i mean i may have back when way back when when i lived in boulder i don't know i mean i've been in that area a bunch but either way some other hikers found her and uh it was determined she had been killed by a mountain uh they went in and i think killed two juveniles and i don't know where they're at with getting the the lion that i heard from i heard through the grapevine that they were looking for the adult. Yeah, I haven't heard whether they...

I mean, you'd think they would have got on that line pretty quick, but who knows? I don't know. I heard, yeah, but yeah, of course it would be. If it was like a predatory response, they're probably going to go after it. But, you know, like, the whole thing kind of goes to whether, like, lions attack more people in states where they don't get hunted versus where they do... Like, line hunting is legal in Colorado. it might not take place a lot in this particular area.

But it's like, when you get into that whole thing, it's like it happens so rarely that it's like. It remains a non-issue. Yeah, exactly. But it remains a non-issue. If we covered people getting zapped by lightning, like we always covered people getting killed by wild animals. If we covered people getting zapped by lightning,

we would have a lot, we would, there would be much more coverage. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I saw was that the, on that same trail a guy was attacked in the fall and he he hit it with a stick and managed to scare it off

but then I guess there have also been cases of people walking pets in that area that have had their pets attack so it seems like it was by yourself it's probably a line that's just like it's not like this is out in the middle of nowhere you know yeah the guy was the guy was encountered encountered a line in November when he was running and it rushed him but he beat it off so it seems like

there here's the crazy I'll bleep that out thanks Phil what are you going to bleep out just just move on there here but here's here's where this whole thing with mountain lion attacks gets weird is you had that you had that summer this is a few handful of years ago now where Washington state had its first ever recorded human fatality from a mountain line attack yeah and then right on the heels of that, I think it was in this order. Oregon had its first one in something like 90 years

right together. And then a bunch of other high profile cases, we had a kid on who's sitting right where Yanni's sitting right now, who him and his brother were attacked and his brother was killed in a mountain line attack. It's like, it seems, beyond seems,

like, it seems as though you're seeing more and more. There's different explanations would be like there's more lines on the landscape there's more people on the landscape there's more recreation on landscape one of the more interesting things someone has mentioned to me we have a friend who works in mountain lion depredation issues works problem lines and things spent his whole career on mountain lines he had like just an observation from throughout his career he was in the

pacific northwest and it's like just an it's an individual it's a very well-informed individual's observation that early in his career, any mountain lion that brushed up against like the human lion barrier was, was a deadline. He's like in the old days, if a lion came on someone's porch, it was a deadline. If a lion came through town, it was a deadline. He says, as tolerance has increased and as people have been reluctant to, like, oh, look, that's so cool. There's a lion on my porch.

which he's not passing judgment on it. But he's saying as tolerance and acceptability of lions has increased, as people have gotten comfortable with wildlife and people have gotten where it's not, you know, you don't call the cops because you saw a mountain lion cut across your backyard. He says, I would expect to see more of this sort of thing happen. It doesn't mean that it's becoming like a pandemic. It doesn't mean it's becoming like anything other than a freak occurrence. He's like, I would expect to see that with increased tolerance,

you're going to have increased interactions. Yeah, and those lines that are experiencing increased tolerance also develop their own increased tolerance for being around people. Yeah. You know, they're like, oh, no, no, they're not a problem. You can go right up to them. Yeah. It's like, they don't do anything. But to demonstrate, like, how rare it is, at first when I read this sentence, I thought it was funny, but then I thought about it.

It was the first fatal attack in Colorado by a mountain line this century. And you're like, oh, wow. Was it? But this century is 25 years. So. Oh. And where was the guy? I remember the guy to put that one in a stranglehold.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was a one. Oh, baby. Wasn't that Colorado? I believe it was. Wasn't that little, it was a little line.

It was like a juby. Yeah. Was it also Colorado where there were four older ladies? Were they, they, that was Washington? Yeah, another thing, bikes, bikes seem to have like a lot of,

there seemed to be a lot of mountain biking incidents with lions. I'm okay with that. And there was the one in, There's a grizzly bear up by glacier that ended up killing a guy on a bike. Yeah, but it's like as more and more people are traveling quickly and silently in the woods. He hit that. Yeah.

That was a weird story because the dude hit it. Yeah. The dude behind him. Oh, really? No, the dude behind him, I believe, bugied. Hmm. Took off. The guy that hit the bear got killed by the bear.

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Lenovo.com. slash pro. Also in Colorado. Take it away, Brody. Back to the wolf desk in Colorado. Yeah. People think this is my favorite thing to talk about. Where the wolf desk intersects with the wrath of the administration.

People think this is my favorite theory. Oh, come on. It's not just a theory. Well, no. Here's the deal. Let's argue after we talk about it. But you got to include the water deal. Oh, we will.

Okay, go ahead. So the Fed, we talk about Colorado Wool's all the time. They're kind of out of standstill right now with getting new ones to introduce because the Fed said you can't get them from Alaska. You can't get them from Canada. Now they've stepped in and said, if you don't comply with certain, like, showing us certain, like, record keeping things. and certain practices you're going to do down the line and introducing more wolves. Like if you don't comply with what we say,

we're just going to shut down your whole reintroduction program and we're going to take over management of wolves in the state of Colorado. So that's the, that's what's going on. Some of the reasons for stepping in where that Colorado knowingly introduced livestock killers that Colorado released wolves last January without really letting anyone know when and where they were going to do it. So there's like tension between Colorado and the federal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife as far as management policies.

And that they went outside the country to get the wolves, which was not part of their management plan. They ultimately, yeah. I mean, they tried everywhere and ultimately, I think, got some from British Columbia after the fiasco. They brought in the state are currently has 20 to 30 wolves, several new pups born in 2025. They brought in 15 from Canada. And I think they've, I forget the exact number, like out of the total number they've introduced. I think they've maybe killed, I can look it up real quick, but I think they've, they've had to like lethally remove 10 of the ones they've introduced. I know that they have.

And I know that that was even done in a very, some of that was done in a pretty low key fashion. Yeah. They had one boogie over to New Mexico. Yeah, which is very close to a population of endangered Mexican gray wolves. That one killed some, that one killed some livestock,

and then they brought it back home. What'd your buddy cook think about that? I haven't asked them. Anyway, so possible outcome. comes here of a complete federal takeover where Colorado, CPW, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has no authority to manage wolves in their own state. And the feds could come in and kill the wolves that are there.

They could relocate them like Colorado wouldn't have a say. The reintroduction could be halted. So it's pretty interesting considering what else is going on at the same time as this. there's a bill moving through Congress right now like the House just approved delisting wolves it hasn't gone through the Senate yet and I don't know that it'll make it through the Senate but that would throw a wrench into this whole thing too

because then the feds might not have the power to do what they want to do here but there's also like this big beef going on between Trump and Polis you know Trump has beefs with a lot of governors from Democratic states there was a water program. But he had that little hugathon with the new mayor of New York. He did.

They love each other. Which if I think of like a threat to America, I think of that dude. Yeah. Partly. I see a lot of threats. That dude's not manned. He's not managing wolves anywhere, though. Yeah, he's not managing wolves.

But yeah. So like, what was their name, Tina Peters? Is that right? So there was the woman. that what did she do Randall she was like she she was an elections clerk and she after she certified the election messing with stuff she yeah she

let someone come in and copy the hard drives off of their voting machines and gave them passwords to the voting machines and did a bunch of stuff like that so she got some some random guy from the internet she got convicted of that like violating her charter as an elections official Trump pardoned her but she was convicted on a state charge. So it was like a symbolic, symbolic pardon. And Polis was like,

yeah, it doesn't mean anything. Yeah. Trump didn't like that. And then he blocked this water bill. Yes. The Laura Beaubart was behind. Lauren, yeah. Yeah. And then she said, well, this is all about Epstein. Yep. And other people are like, no, it's all about Polis. Yeah. No, I doubt Trump is like digging into like, wolf management in Colorado, but... Yeah, this is all in Brody's mind. In Brody's mind. I think it all comes back to the beef between Polis and Trump. They have beef.

They have beef for sure. Yeah. They have beef. And it's like, hey, we're going to make your life difficult. And Polis and Polis's husband are big wolf supporters. They are. So it could be he's like, I'm going to stick it to young wolves too. No.

But he's got. In that way, though, this has been the state has by and large, if they had called me, I would have said, here's what I think you ought to do about wolves. It would have not have been what they did. Yeah, like, they bungled a lot of stuff badly, unfortunately, because I have a lot of, like, love for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. I think they do a lot of great stuff. I just think this wolf thing was.

But this wasn't them. This got handed to them. You can't put it on them. They weren't the architects of this. But they got there, they were in charge of. of releasing the wolves. They like, but under under duress.

That, look, the, the director of CPW resigned because he was going to get canned over the wolf thing. Okay. But they did just for, you know,

I'm telling listeners, you already know the story. There was a, there was a ballot initiative. Yeah. And the ballot initiative, I can't remember the language, but the ballot initiative,

when it passed, it sat in motion. Um, the, the, the, agency needs to make a plan and execute on a plan and they were very quick to do it they were when i talk about the bungling is it the world got very complicated for them as well yeah if you

remember because wolves were walking in from wyom yep it like everything got weird and then other states were like i don't know why this is other states were like i'm not giving you wolves No one besides the state agency directors probably will ever know why that decision was made. I think you can make some guesses. Idaho, Colorado would say, I'm not giving you our wolves. Not Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Sorry, what I see. Now, if someone could come explain to me, like, what phone conversation led to them saying,

we're not helping you out by giving you wolves, which we're hunting. Well, I mean, there has been word out of Wyoming. They're like, we're not going to help you put more wolves around our borders that can come back into. Yeah, but like if you put more wolves in Colorado, more wolves go back into like. Sure. They'll want to get back home. Yeah. So that's and then, and then they tried to work with, they tried to work with tribal entities.

They did. To get wolves. And then, you know, I remember, you know, one was like, hey, you can have some of these ones that were dealing death to cattle. But they also, the tribal thing, didn't work out because they wanted the tribal, like, wildlife managers in Colorado to be able to have their own management authority over wolves that would end up in Colorado on reservations there. And they didn't agree to that. Hmm. Anyway. Whether or not it's like the vindictiveness of the administration, and they are, I mean, they are some vengeful cats.

Yep. Like, if that is driving this, I don't know, but like, sure, maybe. But I could picture this becoming an issue because this was a real, this has been a sore, this has been a sore subject. Mm-hmm. For a lot of agricultural producers in Colorado. And these are people that will have the ear that will have the ear of the administration. Yep. Yep. And basically they're saying you need to, you need the mandate to Colorado is you need to operate with a lot more clarity about what's going on and what's your plan and who've you moved. What wolves are you moved where and what did they do?

Yeah. And they've got to provide all that information and those plan details by February 18th. So a little over a month from now, we'll have some more information on this. Here's the funny part. Here's like another part about why this, why their plan is peculiar. So they got, what do they got right now? 20 to 30? Yeah, I think. Colorado's goal is 30 to 50. They have no mechanism in place. They don't even have a prayer of a mechanism in place to do any population control on wolves.

Right. 30 could turn into, yeah. When you say 30 to 50, it's like you are just, you are baiting. My kids use this term rage baiting. Like for me to rage. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how about that rage bait, Randall.

You'd say something to provoke me. Say something I know it's going to piss you off. Yeah. It's easy to rage bait, Randall. I was rage baiting you recently about some issue. I can't remember what it was. I think it was like gender issues around sports participation.

I was rage baiting Randall. He was sitting right where he's sitting right now. Very effectively, I rage baited him. Now, I think when they go and say like, oh, no, we just want 30 to 50. You're like rage baiting wild life managers because you're like, How in the world, what do you mean? You don't have a pathway toward doing any kind of like control.

There's no way in the state of Colorado under current rules and regulations under the current administration, Colorado will never stop it at that. We'll never have a hunt. These are the same people that almost just damn near shut down bobcat hunting, mountain line hunting. Colorado is never going to have. with this governor, Colorado will never have a wolf hunt. So when they're like, oh, we just want 30 to 50? It's like, what stops it at 50?

It's lunacy. It's like you're going to have the way you have it set up. You're going to have whatever the carrying capacity of the state is, which is way more than that. It's a lot considering how many elk are in the state of Colorado. It's like you have hundreds. When you say 30 to 50, it's like what would give you that? number. How many are in Montana? Do we know?

700 or something, 800? Colorado's got twice as many elk as Montana. Man, don't say, bleep that out, Phil, until we can get the right number. Over a thousand. Okay. That's according to. That's pretty good, actually. Leave it in there. Can you make that louder? Sure. But we'll know more in a month. Yep. If they, so, A couple things to watch here is again, and I don't know what this will happen. Members of Congress are looking to delist. This is where this, all this stuff gets so tricky. Members of Congress are moving to delist wolves in the lower 48.

So the house already has. Yeah. So how previous administrations, how wolves have been managed, they've been managed by these distinct populations. So we talk about, well, northern Great Lakes. So the wolves in northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota. We've toyed with, do we de-list that little clump or not? And then we had this big conversation. Do we de-list in?

Well, they did de-list. They had a hunt. No name. What I'm saying, we used to talk about the wolf habitat as chunks. Yep. So we've had this long argument about the northern Great Lakes, list or de-list? Northern Rock. Sorry, D-List or not.

And then the Northern Rockies, delist or not. And it's been a ping pong. They were, in the Northern Great Lakes, they were delisted. Then they were re-listed. In the Northern Rockies, they were delisted. So you could still be fighting about, like,

what about this little chunk of ground? What about this little chunk of ground? Now they're saying, you know what, bro? We're done talking about little chunks. We're talking about the country. and not argue anymore about the northern great lakes or whatever. Just like they're like done with it now. And it's like this is one of the things.

This is one of the things where people in wildlife politics, this is one of the things where people go wrong is, you know Maduro, the president of Venezuela? I've heard of him. He's sitting in Brooklyn right now. Now, a few days ago, he had a great offer. Not a few days. prior to him getting detained,

he was like, here, listen, you, your cronies, your family, your henchmen can go, will drop sanctions and you can leave the country. And you can go and be in exile in Turkey. Take it or leave it. He didn't take it. And I'm not getting the legality of all this I'm saying. They laid it out.

He said, nope, not doing it. doing it. Now he's sitting in jail in Brooklyn or Manhattan, wherever hell he is. Yeah, Brooklyn. My message, my message to, my message to people in wildlife politics, you screwed up by fighting the northern Great Lakes, you've screwed up by fighting those agencies and not delisting in the Northern Great Lakes. You're screwing up by not delisting Grizzly Bears in the the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem and in the Yellowstone, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

Because what's going to happen next is you have a good offer on the table. You didn't take it. And what's going to happen next is you're going to wind up into jail in Brooklyn. Yep. Because they're going to be like, I'm done dealing with you guys. No wolves are listed. Just blanket. Blank it.

Because you shoot yourself in the foot by being unreasonable all the time. I don't even know who I'm talking to. man there's so many do you follow me oh I definitely follow it's just barring legality they should have never they should have never

block the de-listing we're not going to get into the legality we talked about this already no no legality here's the deal about what I meant by that legality meaning like my kid was like hey is what they did in Venezuela

illegal and I'm like anything that happens outside of the country any conversation about being illegal legal or illegal is like by what mechanism right right by what mechanism like at far as I know Putin's not incarcerated right people like the invasion of Ukraine

was illegal it's like okay well I guess there's what do we we have our Netanyahu's not in jail Trump's not in jail we have our own procedure for generally how we enter into our jurisdiction our what I the point I was making I said the legality of it is like Like within the U.S., we have a system. When you start talking about global leaders, we're like, oh, what they did in North Korea was illegal.

It's kind of like, it's just, it's academic. It's academic. Well, we have international governing bodies. Tell that to Slobidon Milosevic. Okay. Or tell that to Maduro. What I'm saying is generally when you're talking about. Constitutional law.

I know, but when you're talking about, barring constitutional law. When you're talking about global actions, when you're talking about global actions that, like, nation states that take global actions and then pundits start talking about, I don't even know if this was legal. I just tune it out because I'm like, it's inconsequential. This isn't partisan. I would say it. I would say, no, not to make it. I'm not making it partisan, but I would say like a nation that is sanctioned by, international bodies and they can't feed people.

They suffer consequences for doing things that are illegal under international law. Like there are, there are, it's when the big guy on the block does it and there aren't consequences, it might still be illegal, but you get away with it. Yeah. But we, but international bodies enforce international law all the time. When Saudi Arabia, whoever in Saudi Arabia, when they killed the journalist Khashoggi, people loved pointing up, boy, That's illegal.

I'm like, do you think, like, do you think they care? Whether something is illegal. I don't remember people saying that was illegal. It was. I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember. No, but I don't remember the main talking point being that this is illegal.

Go ahead and send your corrections. No, no correct this about this. Listen, no one listens to this show for international. I don't know. I'm not good at international news. What I'm good at wildlife news. Talking about wolves, right? I was trying, here's the deal. I just made a mistake.

I was trying to draw some parallels. And I tiptoed out of my area of expertise by drawing some parallels. The comment I made about legality is that whether or not like the legality of us nabbing someone that we have under indictment who happens to lead another country. Like I wasn't getting into that. What I was getting at was I was trying to draw parallels. Between when you, when people, and this, this is like a widespread issue, you have a sweet deal going and you don't take it, then you wind up getting stung. My message to people who wolf preservationists and grizzly bear preservationists is, you've had some very reasonable efforts from your own agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has moved to delist wolves in the northern. Great Lakes. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has moved the agency, the federal agency

that's responsible for the management of the species has moved to delist. For a very good reason. Because they met the recovery objective. They moved to the de-listed. Animal rights organizations through legal action block those de-listings. That generates an enormous amount of hostility. And what you will then find is that people in the political world, people in leadership are going to say, I'm now done playing around, I'm going around and I'm doing it this way. Because I'm sick of these little petty isolated instance arguments. Agreed. Leave Maduro out of it.

You make a great point out of that up. If we still had creative names for podcast episodes, that could be it. Leave Maduro-O-Wis. I think that could be good for the algorithm, honestly. And anybody wanting to know about Wolfty listing could obviously type in, leave Maduro. Because here's the deal, man. Yeah, because here's the deal. I am a very avid reader of the news.

But there's news that I understand and news that I try to understand. I understand wildlife news in America, but I don't understand. I just read it. Like, I like to follow along, but I don't have an informed opinion about it. So when I start talking about Venezuela, I would advise them listening to just tune out. Don't change. Don't listen to something different, but just turn it down. When I start talking about Venice.

Football, we're on. Now, football. Yeah. Turn it down. No, football turn it up. You were like, you were on a roll earlier today talking about overtime. Yeah, I tiptoed into some areas. I shouldn't, we should bleep it all out.

I tiptoed into some areas where I don't belong. I was just trying to be helpful. I was trying to be helpful. I love you, Steve. I was trying to be helpful. It works. Is that it for news today? Yeah, we got to stay tuned for all these things.

These are continuing, ongoing issues. Let's make a plan. Then people can listen in on the plan making. How are we going to really tackle the whole soup to nuts on federal subsistence program? Right. Go back in history. We need to do a whole episode on it. Yep.

And you got plenty of people we could be talking to from Alaska. Like I didn't bring up the anachronism, Anilka. Mm-hmm. But Anilka ties into this. We're going to tackle it. Because the reason I want, this isn't just for people. here's why I want to tackle this. A lot of the stuff we talk about on the show

is like there's the thing and then there's the sort of context of the thing. And so all these issues and Endangered Species Act stuff, wolf de-listing, you know, federal subsistence, Florida bear hunting.

They're all these little, they're interesting news stories or interesting events and occurrences that had happened. But by learning about them, you learn about how the hunting regulations that you live under, like maybe you live in Indiana, which we haven't talked about today,

you'll start to go like, oh, that's why stuff is the way it is where I live, by watching these things come up. And so it's more than just voyeurism of looking in at what's happening in other states, but I feel that it helps you better understand wildlife management where you live. Or where you go, like the mechanisms at play, the terminology at play, the way that the feds rub against the states and they rub against the non-governmental organizations and they rub against the animal rights lobbying arms, right?

It's all, it all helps you put together a national picture of, you know, when you go down to a river and you cast a bait and there and the fish bites and you pull the fish in, you go like, oh, that's why that fish is there. Or that's why I can't keep that fish. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and some of these things, like the Florida bear hunt, like, like, might not seem like it's a national issue, but it is. Like, after what's happened in New Jersey and Washington and other places with bear hunting, like, I consider it a national thing. Yeah. It's national news, buddy. Mm-hmm.

All right, everybody. You know what else we didn't get into? The whole shootout in Michigan over. Oh, yeah. We can't bump to that. We're going to do a deep dive and the whole shootout in Michigan over wild boars.

And that's a rich story. Call your buddy deadly, Tedley about it. We text about it. But we text a lot about CWD and he knows that he and I don't agree on CWD. So he likes to inundate me with things arguing his perspective.

It would be a good one. But he, because he's like, yeah, we don't see eye to eye on it. Is there any other, is there any hog news coming out of other states. I haven't looked into

that yet, like populations No, I don't, nothing super hot that I'm aware of, but the Michigan, we're going to tell the Michigan story. Something happened up in Canada. We're not still recording, are we, Phil? You should probably turn it off, Phil. You turn it out now.

Okay, bye. See, I don't know if no one has their headset on. I have no idea. Pro by Going Pro with Lenovo Pro matters. One-on-one advice, IT solutions, and customized hardware powered by Intel Core Ultra processors, keep your business on the right track.

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