The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 847: Neanderthal Love, Mule Deer Eradication, and Mink Eyelashes

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: How Jani hasn't gotten a mountain lion this year, Brody's new tattoo and whether the tattoo industry faces a bleak future, Spencer's 2026 America The Beautiful Pass, MeatEater's Time Capsule Clovis Hunter hoody and tee, Corrections!, neanderthals getting it on and Randall as a neanderthal, Catalina Island mule deer eradication, Texas' Rattlesnake Roundup, mink eyelashes, and more.  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.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to Meat Eaters 12 and 26, presented by Moultry Mobile and OnX Maps. 12 of Meat Eater's biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long-form episodes, so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bird.

bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on Meat Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Welcome to the news show on this week's episode. We're covering new research on how Neanderthals, Neanderthals, if you want to be more official, how Neanderthals got it on. The controversial Catalina Island deer annihilation program is your wife or daughter or you wearing illegally imported fake eyelashes made of mink fur? Are tattoos going to be totally screwed in the future? And just when you thought Colorado and animal rights people couldn't embarrass their state any more than they already have, they do.

bringing you this news we've got me Stephen Ronella along with Janus Putelles Dr. Randallus William Spencer Newhart Brody Henderson

The show is broken into three segments Our news Your News and The News Starting us out with our news We've got Janus With no news

Why is it no news? Because you haven't caught a lion How do you report on that. In this case, no news is not good news. I don't know. I'm always the opt-in-miss. My dog and I are still getting out there on plenty of nice hikes in the mountains and joining ourselves, practicing what we're trying to do. He's trying to put a positive spin on this news. You think if Mingus could talk, he'd say, yeah, this is fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can't think the dog isn't bummed that you guys

haven't caught one yet this year? I don't know if he knows. I have no idea of sort of what his sense of time is. I venture to guess that the dog doesn't think of it as being that he's in this season. No. And then there'll be another season next year. And I don't know that he knows that it's been a long time since he saw a lion. But I would venture to guess that if you had two bowls of kibble. And you could metaphorically put chasing a lion and catching it into one bowl and then just,

sort of aimlessly chasing sense to the woods in the other bowl and never catching the line, I think you'd go for that bowl first. You think he wouldn't? I think so. I mean, he, you don't know what mental trip he's on. No. He could be like just.

He's a real process oriented guy. He could be like, when he's laying there sleeping, you think like, oh, look at him sleeping. He could be there being like, I'm a loser. I always knew, you know, I came from the kennel. I came from the dog pound. I'll never live it down. Or it could be the opposite. My first owner abandoned me.

When he's on a line, he could be like, God, I hate this. But I know he likes it a lot. Or he's like, if we caught one two months ago, I wouldn't be in the best shape of my life right now. Yeah. Or he's like, I don't see the point in harassing these poor things. I'm not going to chase it up a tree. Oh, rebelling. Maybe he's disappointed in you, Yanni.

What do you think about this? that could be too uh you know it's been it's been humbling that's what i think about it because he's five this year so really we've been hard at it for this would probably be the fourth year right we've had three years one of those years was cut very short by that accident that we we had together with mangus so really he had like two good years and in those two good years he had a year where he caught like 16 lions and then a 13 year a 13 year a 13 line a 13 year. So to go now to this year to have

none, it's like, oh, were those flukes? No, I don't think 16 and 13, that doesn't... You don't lock into that. That's not like, if it was like 2 and 1 and 0,

I'd be like, well, maybe 0 is normal, but 16, 13, 0, something happened. Yeah, the weather happened. Are you blaming the snow? Is that problem? For sure. But I've also just had a string of bad luck where on the good snow days, we've found tracks and one day the tracks literally filled in with snow in front of our eyes. Like it was snowing so hard. Multiple days I've had tracks that just took a left when they should

have kept going right and they went on to private land. So I just called Mingus back. One day, I felt like we were within hundreds of yards, less than a thousand yards. of Pear Lyons, and it literally was getting dark on us. I'm like, you just got to, at some point, you just got to call it because it's getting, you know, it gets dangerous when it gets dark, right? I don't want to leave him out all night long. So there's been a string of that kind of stuff also, but the fact that, yeah, we've had like the worst snow winter in a long time has definitely played into it.

Understood. Thank you, honest. You're welcome. How many numbers of days in the field this year? Oh, sorry, we're back to it. You know, I wish I had a... I just had a burning question. No, that's a good question.

Because I feel like I've been hunting roughly the same amount. Oh, that's even more troubling. Between the, you know, over the last four or five years. But, yeah, I don't have a number for you. But if I had to guess, we've been out maybe 20 days. But, you know... Thank you, honest. I've talked about this before.

I think I talked about this on a previous podcast. The one silver lining of this year. catching anything. We caught a bobcat. Oh, yeah. Which I know you're real frustrated about that, but... Catch and release. Catch and release to Bobcat. He didn't have his... I know. No.

But that's huge for me as a hound owner. Oh, that's a triumph. Yeah. For him to be able to do that all by himself. It was a big day. So, all is not lost. Like, if that's the only thing that happens this hound season,

they'll be a pretty good season because we accomplished that one thing. Yeah, I would just say you caught one. And leave it at that. One cat. One cat. One cat. Did you get your cats? Yep.

Yeah, but if you talk to like our good buddy, Jake Grimm, he'll tell you that that one Bobcat is worth 10 to 20 lines. So then say that. Say 1020. Yeah, then you're right on average here. Yeah. It's not over for you yet anyway. You got what? You got time.

Yeah, I got a big, I got a big, I got a big month. Big hot snowless month ahead of you. I can't believe. They're saying it's coming. I can't believe the conversion rate is 10 to 20 mountain lines for one bobcat. I don't believe that. I think that's an exaggeration. It is so hard that many people literally, many people literally will not cut loose on a bobcat track.

Because they're like, it's not worth my time. We're not going to catch it. We're just going to end up on this long chase and end up in a pile of rocks. and I won't get to see a bobcat. I'll take the blame for this. Maybe it's even high. A lot of ground to cover. 50 mountain lines.

Yeah. I mean, it's so special that I'm maybe what I think is going to happen with this our new section. Listen, Steve. It's so special. Now we're consider by getting a tattoo to honor. Now I believe you. What's the word I'm looking for?

It's a memorialize. Yeah, memorialize. I would have it be a tattoo, no tattoo. And be like, this blank spot. on my skin is the year nothing happened no he should get a

lion tattoo to be like oh that's what they look like didn't you just do an indefensible loss Steve where people should memorialize places where things didn't happen well

yeah I did one where you would put signs where people almost got killed yeah that's good on the subject tattoos the

radio live finale a tattoo artist came in and did he in the office he did 13 tattoos that day oh wow Brody got his first tattoo ever which my wife thought was cool when he gets all done when he gets all done this is my news here he gets all done and me and him get the BS and I'm like hey act like you're giving me one get it all set up act like you're giving me one and I'm going to send it to we have a family group text chat called the free trappers so i i uh i'm like act like you give me one and i'm going to send it to my family and be like i finally broke down i

can't believe i did it by got a tattoo i send it no reply my little ones later told me they knew it wasn't true my wife had already talked to brodie so she knew it wasn't true my 15 year old going on 16. This is why I know that tattoos are in trouble. The tattoo industry is in trouble. 15 year old. He says that is so blank. I can't say what he said because he'd get in trouble his mom.

Later, he thinks it's true. Later, he says to me, dude, don't ever comment on my haircut again. Like coming from a guy with a tattoo. And him and his buddies' minds, I gather. It is the dorkiest thing a person could do. Not rebellious. Not rebellious. It's like, oh, my God.

Times have changed. Oh, my God. I don't think so. Tattoes have been around for thousands of years. I know, but allow me to finish my thought. Here's why I think that his social circle is interesting. They have a foot in two worlds. He's been brought up around all kind of redneck stuff,

knows all kind of rednecks, right? He just went and pulled calves at his buddy's ranch. But he also knows all about rich people. He knows about, like, rich urban people and ski people. So here's this kind of interesting mix of redneck stuff and rich people stuff. And from either side of that, he's not getting tattoo cool factor from either side. So I just am worried about the tattoo market.

I'm not because my kid said, I want to get the same one as you. I was wondering if you had data to back up your argument. I'm looking at data right now, actually. Spencer went to God his Trump-themed America, the beautiful past. Hold on. Phil has data on this right now. Can I hear it?

I'm looking at a percentage of Americans with tattoos over time. In the year 1936, it looks like 10% of, of the American population had tattoos. And then 2003, that's a long jump. It was 16%. But then we have from 2003 to 2012, 21% of Americans had tattoos. From 2012 to 2015,

that number jumped from 21 to 29. And from 2015 to 2023, that number jumped to 32%. So it's been a steady increase. No, no, but Steve is talking about the future from here. That's why Phil should do a better job of listening. So your argument was like right now. The future.

Okay, I'm just saying the trends disagree. We're in the tattoo bubble. Your trend doesn't show the future because it's not known yet. I know the future. That's why I'm telling you. He's forecasting a sharp decline based on his son's reaction. I have detected an attitudinal shift. I have detected an attitudinal shift.

And I looked at And so if I'm going to go on To a prediction market I want to make a bet That in 20 years There has been a cataclysmic drop off In tattoo rates Because I've had a glimpse into the future

By talking to my kids' buddies Yeah you could be very very right Based on what they're doing Of the alcohol industry And how they don't like sex in movies Yeah A bunch of prudes Yeah

Spencer got a new page Pass. Explain this. This is very interesting. This is legit news. I went to Yellowstone a couple weekends ago. And my winter trip there is usually when we get our new pass for the year. It's called the America the Beautiful Pass.

How long has that existed? Since 2004, I believe. Some version of it has existed. Oh, here. Phil's got them pulled up. The America the Beautiful Pass. It's $80. It grants you entry to national parks, national wildlife refuges,

is also covers your day use fees. If you're in National Forest, Grasslands, BLM, Army Corps land, a place where you're required to pay a day use fee. You typically don't need to if you have to America. It's like a good deal if you do these things a lot, right? Certainly. Yeah. Yep. But I think although there's like so many places it gives you access to, these are primarily just using national parks.

That's what people buy them for us to get in and out of national parks for a year. And you and the miss is buy one every year. Every year. Since we moved to Montana, so this is our seventh pass that we've had. got three of them here now. Why didn't you buy it in South Dakota? Just didn't attend national parks the same way we do now. Didn't live as close to as many of them.

Yeah. But that'd get you into Rushmore. It would get you into Rushmore. Yeah. Speaking of Rushmore. I believe. So America, the beautiful past, it's like the size of your credit card or driver's license. It's a laminated card.

Now, traditionally, these have a photo on them of wildlife or landscape. And I've got past examples here that you can see. Phil, can you go back. to that shot you had up. And that's, that's showing you like the last decade of that. That's a roseated spoon bill? That is a, yes, correct, from the Everglades. So what year is that?

That is last year. Everglades National Park, roseated spoonbill. And then what year is this? 2024. That's an eastern collared lizard. Okay, lizard, 2024 pass. 2023, it was a landscape picture from Kings Canyon National Park. So you get an idea of what they look like. A polar bear from? What park would that be from?

I don't know. Denali, does Danali? Gates the Arctic? Gates the Arctic. I also don't think it has to be in a national park. It's just like federal land. But you did say it's got to be a, it's like by law. I don't think it pulled.

Since 2004, it's been a federal law that the way these are chosen is there is a picture contest done by, what is it, the National Parks Foundation. And the winning photo from that is on the pass for the following year. So this year, you can see what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be Glacier National Park. Park in Montana. That was what the winning photo was from last year. But the Trump administration has changed this. They are breaking this 2004 federal law. And instead, it is a picture of George Washington and Donald Trump on the past. Can you see that, Bill? And this is made some folks

very mad. It's just too much, man. It's made folks very mad to where it doesn't look like he's at the park. No, it has you wouldn't look at that and think, you know, You know, it looks like he got to the outhouse at the park. He got to the porta potty at the park. And it was locked. And it's, and there's, and it's overflowed. It's locked. And he opened the door and he's like, someone's going to pay.

That is the vibe I'm getting. Yes. And you can see these, these photos on our YouTube channel. I mean, in all fairness, this is 250th first president, current president, 250 years of presidents. I think that's what this is going for here. Yes, I mean, he made a lot of changes with National Park related stuff this year that is supposed to be more patriotic. For example, he got rid of Juneteenth and MLK Day as free days and he's made Flag Day, which is his birthday. And then President's Day as free days instead.

And this is all patriotic team. He's also, this is a good one. He bumped up the fee for non-residents. If you're from Canada, if you're from Italy. I support that. And I agree. I think that's like the other stuff I don't get. That's a North American thing that we're like if you want to go.

recreate and Colorado as a non-resident, you pay a higher fee. And it's like part of it. They've also removed like indigenous perspectives from. That's, yeah, totally different. Yeah. What happens if you put a piece of tape over Trump's face. So within, within days of the new year, when these went into effect, the National Park Service had to release a statement saying that your pass will be voided if you alter it by putting

a sticker over it, by drawing on it, by. Has that always been true? Yes, but I don't think anyone's ever tested it. hasn't been a problem. But it's always been the fact. It's always been true. Yes. And like, for example of how much drama this has made, there's an Etsy shop seller who is started making stickers for these. And she said that she would like give that money to public lands for what she would sell. It's a sticker that would go over Trump's face. She made $16,000 in the first month. Hmm. Just just doing that. What is the sticker? I don't remember. I think it's. It's like a wildlife.

It's like a wildlife. Yeah. Maybe. PICA. We've looked this up. trivia. You can say it pica or pica. Who can? Anyone can. I can't. You can have it on a future. We did this on, we addressed that on trivia.

That's right. Okay, what's next year's, are they going to revert next year's past to the winner? I don't know. This would be like if the duck stamp, like the whole duck stamp competition, if all of a sudden the duck stamp was like a duck with like Trump's face on it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And he's like, no, no, no, that's the, that's the duck stamp this year. So the Trump administration has not been great to the national parks. You know, Doge cut 1,000 employees last year.

Yeah. They tried to slash the budget by 38% this year. The Senate rejected that. So Trump, not exactly a mascot for the national parks. I was trying to think of an analogy. It would be like if we had a media to radio live listening pass and then Steve put his face on it. Yeah. That's great analogy.

I totally understand. That's what it would be like. Or if he let Elon Musk take an axe to radio live. And this drama is going to get bigger. The national parks get 40% of their visitation between June and August. So there's a lot of folks who are going to be buying their pass in a few months. And it's already been a big deal. But it's going to become probably a bigger deal.

On a related note, someone just shared with me. This article's a little bit older now. I've been kind of hanging on to it. Someone shared with me an article, an op-ed. that came out. It was a guest essay called mega elites who live on their phones or ruining the outdoors.

And it's a hyperbolic headline. But what it points out is we've kind of like we've moved away we're currently moved away from the old style of like outdoor Republican. And you know, like you think about

the bushes were anglers, right? They would vacation at like Kenny Bunkport and go fishing. Anyways, this article lays out this idea that rather than trips to Wyoming to fly fish and stuff, what we see out of the administration is golfing in Florida. And this individual argues that there's then been this like perspective shift away from this like tradition of outdoor Republicans into like indoor Republicans. The guy is a research.

So the guy that wrote it, you should go go check it out. Listeners should check it out. it'll like it'll do one of two things it'll either make you so mad because you disagree and you'll be like so mad you'd be mad that we mentioned it or you'll be so happy we mentioned it because it already aligns with what you think

so you can go no matter who you are just think about this no matter who you are you can go read this and reinforce your opinions and be happy or sad if you ever read something that everybody agrees on everybody, it's probably not worth reading. It'd be like reading a park pass. Yeah, that's a joke.

The guy that wrote it, you get a little suspicious when you read what he does. So Dr. Lazzack is a researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the politics of climate change. So guess what his biases might be? Another piece of news We got we're doing this we're doing a new series called the time machine So every month We're taking artwork

Like see this one here this goes back the farthest This is a time machine artwork of Clovis points Archaeological drawings of Clovis points That's this month We're going to hit the Custer battle The Battle of the Greasy Grass or the Battle of the Little Big Horn depending on what side you're on. Pitman-Robertson Act.

Every month you can come check it out. T-shirts, hoodies, time capsule. We go back in time. That's the Clovis shirt right there. They're all limited to run teas and hoodies. Find them at the Meat Eater Store website. I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies.

Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind, and now got my own show. So if you're tired of lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies, available on all TSN platforms in the IHeartRadio app. Welcome to Meat Eaters 12 and 26, presented by Moultry Mobile and OnX Maps. 12 of Meat Eaters' biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long-form episodes, so you get more of what you love.

The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on Meat Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Okay, moving on to corrections. Corrections! Corrections! That's from Fiddler on the roof.

This is our inaugural segment, inaugural segment of corrections. where we have a correction of the week contest sponsored by Tocovas. So corrections are like this. If you're sitting around, like normally in today's political climate, and I mean, this is what I'm sticking it to both sides on this.

People just say stuff that's just wrong and they know it's wrong. It's like a flex to say stuff that's just wrong. Because it's kind of like, it's like, I know it's wrong, you know it's wrong, and now you're going to have to live with it. But we try to invite corrections.

So if we say something that's screwed up, or we make a mistake or omit the truth or whatever, we invite your corrections. We want your corrections so bad about things we're wrong about that if you get the correction of the week, you win a pair of Toccova's boots. You send your corrections to the Meat Eater podcast at themeatheater.com. we got three to choose from to who wins the tokova's boots

going in the future we'll only be accepting corrections from the news show but we're accepting corrections otherwise right now episode 838 someone writes and this is his correction episode 838 Steve is talking about a hen turkey making bad calls and uses the term on accident. The corrector goes on to say, as a writer and someone who makes a living speaking,

he should know it is by accident. He goes on to say, fewer things annoy me more than this. If he could please correct this going forward, it would make my listening experience much better. You don't do something on accident Are we voting at the end? I'm not going for this guy

Can I I mean maybe my grammar is off But shouldn't those quotes be Outside of that period I was about to be back in his face Back in his face In your face Yep

I got Steve This guy's name Steve Steve I got a little suggestion for you. Learn how to put your quotes in the right place, buddy. I think this guy's already lost his chance at a pair of boots. He's out.

Close call, but no, no, no, no. I'm sure that he placed those periods there by accident. So on accident, I'm looking this up and I see that it's like colloquial, but I don't, is it a grammar

thing? I've heard you say, oh. The blocule off of me is wrong. Yeah. Okay. But I don't think he's going to win. Because he got it, he got like back at him.

Back at him. Okay. On mink, coals and bad smells. Here's a contender. Here's a real contender. He's referencing back to episode 838. Okay.

Around a 31 minute mark in the episode, Steve referenced the 2020 coal of Mink in Denmark. We were talking about during the COVID pandemic. They found out that Mink were harbingers of COVID, and they started killing all ranch mink in Denmark. And I said that the mink all went to market.

My understanding was when I first heard about the coal, I thought it would cause mink prices to skyrocket because there's no more mink. But someone said the inverse was true. It was a massive influx of. of mink pelts because they had to go pelt all the mink. And so it flooded the market with mink and tanked it. So I said they were all pelted out. This guy says the coal was so hasty and disorganized that it didn't give the opportunity

for many of the affected mink farmers to pelt out, meaning to skin them all. Given that just before the discussion of the mink coal, there was a discussion of various bad smells. You may also be interested in the fact that the coal resulted in millions of mink being buried in mass burial sites. And the fact that they hadn't been skinned meant that some of them started to decompose and bloat and push their way out of the ground, which media dubbed zombie mink. I like that. That's from Doug. That's a correction of a correction you received, right?

because your initial impression was that they wouldn't be skinned. Your initial assumption. Yeah, but that was internal. Yeah. This is a legit correction. Yeah. Now here is like a great correction that's going to compete with the mink correction. Episode 829 at the 14 minute mark.

We're talking about, yeah. Okay. We're talking about salmon leaving their natal spawning streams and going back out to the ocean. Or are we talking about one's coming up? Coming up. Oh, okay. Pretty sure.

Either way, we're talking about fish loss at dams in the Columbia system. Oh, no, were we talking about smote going out? I think it's smoke going out. Smoke going out. Yeah. Okay. And we're saying that they're losing that at every dam these fish encounter, they're losing 7 to 15% of the population at every dam.

Brody, in all of his ignorance, I say I can't even do that math Brody does and he says that's over a hundred percent him being dumb jeez yeah that's not how the math works not how the math works this guy writes in

it's actually like this if 200,000 salmon attempt to make it past the first dam with a 15% more mortality rate, there will be 170,000 that make it through to attempt the next dam. After dam number two at 15% mortality rate, there are 144,500 smelt left. If you continue this trend through all eight dams, you are left with 54,500 salmon.

This is a total loss of about 73% at the high end. If you use the 7% mortality rate with this method, you end up with 111,900 fish after the 8th dam. So the total mortality rate range is from 44 to 73%, not as what I did in my head more than all of them. Yeah, this is this is probably going to get a correction too, but it's like it's like the reverse

of compound interest Hmm, I don't know about that. If you have money invested as it grows, it grows, it grows more. As it shrinks, it shrinks less in each iteration. Understood. Hmm. The way I, well, that's, that does.

Okay. You got a minor and math? You got a doctor? I was actually just thinking we should, we should at some point just have a podcast episode with a status. Yeah, about draw odds and just probabilities. Probabilities for the, for the Joe Blow outdoorsman.

We can explain things like this. We can explain draw odds. That's a great idea. You know, because that's another thing is, um, there's a lot of confusion about draw odds. Mm-hmm. That's a good idea. Yeah. A hunter.

It might not be, it might not be a two-hour podcast, but it could be a flop. If you qualify, please write in to the Meteeter podcast at the Meteor.com. I also need someone. Did you know that there's a, did you know that there's a discipline that zoos have zoo SWAT teams? Okay. And there's like a leading figure in the zoo SWAT team area. And she made a YouTube video one time about her industry and her training,

tactical zookeeper training. And in this video, they're like shooting shot, shooting slug guns through woven. wire fences. She does her interview in front of a bear with a bullseye on his brain. Yeah, you need to clarify what these SWAT teams do.

It's for, if monkeys get loose. It's for if monkeys get loose. The Harambe. They had a kid fall into a gorilla container and they killed the gorilla. What zoo was that at? Cincinnati. So we reached out to people within this zoo SWAT team community.

And they're like, no one will talk to you. This is a very tight-knit community. No one will speak. If ex-person won't speak, no one will speak. But ex-person has spoken, weirdly, but won't. If you are in the zookeeper swap team business, we would love to talk to you on the podcast. That does sound like a good one. Oh, it'd be a great one.

Yeah. But they're like, they don't. don't want zoos have to have a zoo keeper SWAT team. I do know someone well I know but I didn't pan out like no on site or they call people no I think they got they got tactical

trained people who are ready for a lion to get out I would also guess that they're wearing multiple hats at the zoo yeah it's like it's like the but they in their mind it's a dirty secret hmm I think it's more that nobody

wants to see animals harm at the zoo, but if something happens where it's between an animal and a human being, then they'll do what they need to do. So I think that there are people at zoos who are trained, less something get out of control. Yeah, but I don't think that's a dirty secret. Someone out there works in this field. I would like to have a serious conversation on the podcast about that field. Like, what is the training?

What is the probability? What are some examples where this has occurred? Why does this go on? I don't feel like it's a thing that they're like, hush, hush, can't talk about that. It just seems weird to me. Some more audience emails. Wait, wait, wait. We got to pick a winner.

We're voting between millions of mink and thousands of salmon. Gosh, it's tough. Like, number three did a lot of math. So number one, the guy that can't use his quotes, right? Any votes? Here's, well, here's one way that I think about this. If a good correction, I would think, is one that you would delete. to someone to their face

if they're a stranger at a bar and they'd walk away going huh if you were at a bar with a stranger and they said it's not on accident it's by accident then I would like that guy

you would just from the real that's like well that's something like Nate Mason would hit me with that that's true it sounds obnoxious you do like Nate but he's kind of obnoxious

I like but it's not really opening your he'd tell you that it's not really opening your eyes You know, you wouldn't go home and be like, you know what I learned today? No, I would tell my wife that. I'd wake her out in the middle of night. I'd say it's a lot.

I stand corrected. I can't sleep. I don't think guy number one would even vote for guy number one in this one. Okay. So, any votes? We got seven voters in the room. Guy number one? No.

Okay. Guy number two, not all mink were discarded. Not all mink were pelted out. That's, I'm voting for that guy. You know why you're voting for him? Because the other guy's goofing on you. No, I'm voting for him because it's like he's bringing the like receipts. He's got an article.

It's like, he's bringing information in articles. I will say it typically when in the news when somebody calls something a zombie something like a zombie deer, I don't like it. I like this use of zombie. Okay, I'm voting for him. So the mint guy. Don't we all need to be like closing your eyes here or something? Okay. The math guy.

Goof and I'm Brody. he wins some Tocoba boots We had some people that abstain For a vote Karend didn't even vote No I'd not say in the thing that he's making fun of him Oh you voted for the mink guy Oh my mom it we got a miscount

Oh no That means Phil Bill is a timebreaker Oh I'm like Florida Geez Okay A lot of hanging chats

The mink guy No Mink Sorry Okay the mink guy Try it How many times are you going to change your vote Is this election

This is some hanging chads, dude. Final vote. Final vote. This is serious this time. The mint guy. Two votes for the mint guy. The math guy. Steve convinced himself to change his vote.

Max Allen is the winner of the pair of Covas. Steve's undefeited. Because he's goofing on Brody. That's why he got my vote. Max Allen, you get a free pair of boots. You can tell us what size and style and all that. Someone will take care of. Good, Max.

Okay, quick audience, email. We're running behind time. We've got to hustle. No one even comment on this. I feel like we're right on time. I think we're actually doing pretty good. No one even comment on this. Guy writes in.

In the Screw Worm episode 835, you guys relayed a story from Kevin Murphy's childhood about putting an altered bull to work for breeding purposes. What I was talking about is Kevin Murphy's childhood. Murphy, I was driving along with Kevin Murphy, and he's talking about working at a ranch. I said, what kind of work you're doing at the ranch? And he just relayed to me his story that they would be able, that in the old

days, they would surgically redirect a bull's penis so that it was coming out backward. You would make this bull wear a big ink blotter on his neck and you'd turn them out with your cows. He would detect that a cow

was in heat and he would mount the cow. But his pecker being misoriented would not result in fertilization. But the ink blot would mark the cow as being receptive, at which point a farm boy or whoever would, like Kevin, you would then rush out and artificially inseminate that cow. I thought that was very, very, very, very interesting. That's great. This writer writes in, this listener writes in, in my time spent cowboying out west,

we have come to call these heat-seeking missiles. He's being metaphoric. He's being poetic there. Gomer bowls, G-O-M-E-R, Gomer. Perhaps from Gomer Pyle, I don't know. Gomer Bulls or teaser bowls. And he says that phrase is commonly used in the equine industry as well. Gomer Bulls are often selected because they won't cut it as a good

breeder bowl genetically, but are generally easy to work and be around. Advances in animal husbandry have made vasectomy the primary method for sterilizing these bulls.

I could relate. And for the cows, we often use paint patches that work like a scratch-off, huh, rather than lots of ink and paint. The patches can rip off. and do a good job showing who's been getting ridden by the Gomer Bowl.

If he sees someone with a cowboy hat on backwards at the airport, he points out he calls him a Gomer. He wonders, does Kevin Murphy consider himself livestock adjacent enough to wear a cowboy hat? His hat's not quite a cowboy hat, but Kevin Murphy entered cowboy hat validity through an entirely different path. in my view. He could have never looked at an equine or bovine animal and wear a cowboy at. Switching to the news.

The news. Dr. Randall. Well, there's some exciting developments in the world of Neanderthal or Neanderthal romance. There is a report, a paper that came out last month in the journal Science that concluded that like for a while we've known that humans and neanderthals share DNA and in crossbred at some point but they've now determined that the preponderance of those interactions and couplings were uh had to do with a male neanderthal and a female homo sapien this is showing because they can track like mitochondrial DNA and yeah a lot of stuff i don't understand i found it i found a term called the neanderthal desert

Okay. Which refers to the fact that in human X chromosomes, they show much less Neanderthal DNA than the rest of the genome. Okay. And if you're a specialist in this area, I'm going to misuse a lot of these terms. Oh, get your corrections ready. But if I use, say, 60 to 70% of them correctly, write in and say, you did a good job because that's what I made before. So there was a bunch of theories about why this might be.

it could have been the, like the Neanderthal DNA could have been missing from the X chromosomes because there's some sort of like health risk or something that would just sort of be weeded out through natural selection like whatever that, that Neanderthal DNA made humans more, made the offspring more susceptible to certain diseases, right? But what they did is they went and looked at Neanderthal DNA and they found that Neanderthal DNA on their X chromosomes, they actually have like a much higher percentage of human DNA in them, right? Because there's, there's DNA from both sides. So they kind of reverse engineered. I never even thought to look at that. Yeah. So you take an old Neanderthaw dead guy. Yeah. Bones and be like, well, he's got some

homo sapien lurking in them. Yeah. Huh. And so that's, so that essentially that's the, explanation now. And there are some, there are other reasons that could sort of account for it other than just like sexual preference. This has nothing to do a sexual. They're trying to make it like that. Oh no, no, I don't like there's,

there are some theories. I already haven't figured. There are some theories about like, um, like you can have whatever sex bias in breeding because of like, uh, distribution. Like whatever Neanderthal males travel more.

Something like that. Sure. Um, but they've, so, but basically they've ruled it down to, the fact that for whatever reason, Neanderthal males and Neanderthal and human females were the most likely, uh, uh, like overwhelmingly more likely to couple than say human male and a Neanderthal female. In the, the pieces that I read about this, and I can't remember where I read about the pieces I read.

It was like, they were sort of getting into the suggestion of like attraction. Yeah. Was there an attraction component? Um, I don't. I don't know. Earlier I told you what would happen in the future. Yeah. I can, and here I could tell you what happened in the past, if you'd like.

Yeah. I mean, I read another, I read another article that was very much leaning in the opposite direction of the attraction to be provocative. It was just like, you know, for most of human history, mating resembled what we see in animals and that there's no consent, right? And it's, you know, it's like, when. you watch a duck with a duck it's sometimes ugly but um in any event they they went the opposite direction to be more provocative okay right um but that there was a core there was a coercion element yeah that's where i'm going yeah in understanding this and i don't know that maybe you guys know this uh meal deer and white tail deer will not infrequently uh interbreed and i believe that when

they do that. Like they'll have a, their offspring don't do well, but I've read that, and I don't know why this is true, I've read that it is typically a white tail buck breeding a mule deer dough. Hmm.

But I've never read why, is it because the other, I don't know if it's, that the other couplings don't produce offspring, or is it that that's just how it goes and that's just how it goes and, and that's just how it.

goes yeah yeah i mean the other really interesting thing that i i pulled up when i was doing my deep dive on neanderthals um was like the there's another human species the denisivans or denisovans who are more of they're sort of like the asiatic version of a neanderthal okay and they split off like around the same time as the and neutrals the anatole sort of went north and west and the denisovans went east and this is one case where they just found, I think, like a finger bone in a cave in Russia. And they discovered that, hey, this is a different type of human. And they sort of done what Heffel fingers doing with the Merriam's elk.

Yeah. So they're going back to older fossils that they assumed were just either just normal homo sapiens, and they're identifying them retroactively as Denisovins or Denisovans. They had been miscategorized. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was reading a book on human genetics. I want to say, like, if I'm wrong, it's still an interesting book.

I want to say that it was in this book. No, it wasn't in that book. I was going to say it was in the Seven Daughters of Eve. I can't remember what the hell book. I was reading a book about human genetics. In the book, they were talking about that, you know, as the human diaspora, as humans spread around the world, there are pockets of the world that have much higher Neanderthal DNA concentrations. There are pockets of the world that have no.

Yeah. In Africa, like sub-Saharan Africa. Yeah. In Africa, like down into the African continent, Neanderthals weren't down there. They were a European, predominantly European, Asian, Middle Eastern species. So people that remained in Africa, they don't have introgression from Neanderthals. He points out that this is a very, this is a very hot-loaded subject. And he said that there's even been a reluctance.

He claims in this book, and I can't remember the guy's damn name, he claims that there's been a reluctance to talk about what populations around the world have a lot of Neanderthal because it would be viewed as disparaging these people. yeah and so he said it's like it's become like a sort of hush-hush subject because because it's people would review it view it as derogatory yeah it is interesting i think like our understanding neanderthals has changed a lot and now we recognize that they were they buried their dead and they wore jewelry and they used tools and lit fires and things like that and probably had language but dove for shellfish Yeah, but for a long time, obviously, there was this sort of, I mean, I think what Western science did for a long time is like, look at something else and assume it's lesser than, right? If it's not Homo sapiens or if it's not, you know, previously, like if it's not European, it's sort of on this order of being, right? And there's like this progressive view of these things. But now I think it's like the Neanderthal DNA story is even more interesting.

Because, like, I was reading something the other day that if you have, they found in one study that people with more Neanderthal DNA or a certain sequence of Neanderthal DNA were more susceptible to bad COVID outcomes. So it shows like how, you know, like some chunks of Neanderthal DNA could go missing over time because for whatever reason it makes people susceptible to certain infections. But. Or if they had bad COVID restrictions in their communities. authorities are like no going outside of your cave all their Amazon boxes are laying around unopened yeah um I'll tell you what happened you ready yes I think that Neanderthal groups would now and then overpower homo sapien groups

they would kill the they would kill the males and they would keep the females as concubines that's exactly what happened I can't dispute that. You ready to move on? I think it's plausible explanation. I don't know.

These guys are not Neanderthal guys? You guys like chop it up? That's good news. All right. Can I tell you my favorite Neanderthal little thing? Sure. I was reading a book about Neanderthals. It had a lot to do with Neanderthals.

And this guy was talking about when they exume all these remain, Neanderthal remains. They see a like a predictable suite of injury. on the bones. They were showing them to physicians. And there was a physician who had treated a lot of bull riders in his career.

And he pointed out that, wow, the types of injuries I'm seeing are very representative of what I see on bull riders. Out of this came this idea, and this guy wrote about it, that they practiced a confrontational style of hunting. Yeah.

They, that they mixed it up. You're not, you're not saying that bull riders are like Neanderthals. No, I'm saying that he was like the kinds of breaks and lesions. He saw reminded him of what he sees from bull riders getting trampled, gourd. Yeah.

But you have to have a little bit of a Neanderthal mindset to get on a 2,000, pound animal and ride it around. They should research the genetics there. What I would like to know is if it went the other way. Did homo sapiens do the same thing? Well, that's a bunch of lady, did a bunch of female homo sapiens raided at Neanderthal camp, killed all the women and brought the guys home as concubines?

That homo sapiens would do that to Neanderthal women. I mean, that is one theory as far as. Because it's only like a one way path that Randall's talking about, right? Like, Neanderthal. Oh, yeah. Understood. I'm not that good. I can't tell you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is like, at some point, human behavior changed because that's one of the

explanations, at least for the extinction of the Neanderthals, is there's no like discernible physical change in humans over that period of time. So whatever, when we went from cohabitation to one species being left. uh there's a change in culture yeah that explains it uh we can move on from neanderthals or i can offer one more factor please uh the old man of la chapelle famous neanderthal uh remains that was used for a long time to sort of imagine what they looked like uh uh for a while they thought that this is like the best model of a neanderthal and then at some point someone pointed out this is like an old guy with some serious back injuries and a lot of arthritis.

From, from, from, he probably had a more upright posture. If you can imagine like, yeah, if we discovered some, you know,

if we're aliens and we came in, this is the way it was put on one thing. It was like, we're aliens and we arrived on Earth and we found Joe Biden, Shaquille O'Neils or, yeah, or like, and we're like, my God, they're all seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. Or if we found like some,

some decrepit, you know, old person who walks all hunched over. It's like you jump to some conclusions. So that's one of the sort of changes in our thinking as we recognize. This is probably not the guy we should go on for a benchmark. I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind and now got my own show.

If you're tired of lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies available on all TSN platforms and the IHeart Radio app. Welcome to Meat Eaters 12 and 26 presented by Moultry Mobile and OnX Maps. 12 of Meat Eaters' biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long-form episodes so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver

carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on Meat Eaters' YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. I don't know if there's any Melville readers out there, Herman Melville readers, but a Neanderthal

expert is this podcast White Whale. Just cannot find one. We have a bunch of emails in. I found some and they are too busy or have declined. So it's a whole we have to find the best. If I had a zookeeper SWAT team person standing here

and a Neanderthal person standing here, I would go Neanderthal. Maybe we need to get like a bunch in a row. Like now, like if we get multiple ones, like we have one. And then the next week we have another Neanderthal guy. When I was on Theo Vaughn's show, he's got a huge show. On Theo Vaughan show.

I said, hey, I'm looking for a Neanderthal expert. So I thought, well, I'll reach new people. Yeah. Because there's like the hosers that listen to our thing and that wasn't working. So I thought, I'll talk to, I'll talk to the hosers that listen to Theo Bonn. Still nothing. That was a big JK. Phil, can you pull up my assets really quick?

Oh, yeah, sure. Sorry, I forgot this. This is, uh, this is a, this is a, this is a, use this the whole time. Well, I forgot about it just until now. Uh, this is a recreation of a Neanderthal. And then if you go home with that guy. Yeah. If you go to the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

They have a thing that scans your face and renders you into any number of hominid species. So, Phil, if you'll continue to my next slide, that's what I look like as a Neanderthal. Sort of spread my eyes apart and added a more prominent brow ridge. But you can see my mustache on the bottom is still red. I'm not seeing the resemblance. Yeah, they need to update their program. Yeah, I'm sure. Like your bug-eyed?

Yeah. No, I can't see. I think AI is going to upgrade that process. got, you know, didn't you say there's a, like, a red hair? I believe so, yeah. Yeah. Moving on.

Yanni's going to bring us now about, Yanna's going to talk to us now about Catalina Island Mealdeer eradication program, which we've touched on periodically over the years. Just as a recap, we're going to find out where things stand now. As a recap, there's an island off the coast of California, called Catalina Island. It has...

Can you put up the, uh, pick the map there? It is hosted. It has hosted a number of non-native species over the years. There was a herd of American buffalo that were brought out there for a film. They are there. But there is a large population of mule deer on Catalina Island. They were not historically on Catalina Island, but they were historically just inshore from Catalina Island.

So, brings up this question. Are they native? Are they not? People want to get rid of them. They don't want to get rid of them. So over the years, we've often mentioned various things about they're expanding hunting opportunities for mieldy on Catalina Island. They are retracting hunting opportunities for mule deer on Catalina Island. I've never even fully understood it. Yanis is here to tell us where it stands now because there's been significant buzz. Yes. To cut to the chase. When we're all done here in the next five or ten minutes, I will still not fully understand it. No one probably else in this room will fully understand it. Yeah, I signed up to cover this little story yesterday less than 24 hours ago. And I thought, oh, this will be easy. Well, once I dove in, I see that this is one of those that Steve likes to say makes its own gravy. So I'll try to give like an overview of what's happened and really just state facts. I'm hoping you guys can sort of start then, you know, asking questions.

We might be able to get into the stuff that doesn't seem so factual about this story. Like Steve said, it's Catalina Island. It's about 75 square miles. Some important things you need to know. It's 88% roughly private land. And that land is managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy, which is pretty much an organization, a nonprofit, private conservation org that is made by and made up of the people that own the land. Okay.

Does that make sense? Yeah. The Wrigley family. The Wrigley family. Yeah. They definitely have a lot of influence. They basically, if you, they also own like most of the businesses that operate on that island.

I think there's, it's so there's like four to five thousand people that live on that island. If you live there and work there, you most likely. work for them in some way or another. And rent from them, maybe. Probably. You know, so that in itself gets tricky because people want to protect their livelihoods, right? And then talking and saying things that, you know, might cause problems. You may or may not want to do that.

Yeah, you're living in a company town. Yeah. You don't trash the company. Yeah. So we have this conservancy, this Caledian Island Conservancy. want to restore the island. I think that their motto is basically to like keep the

do the best they can be the best stewards of that land through recreation, habitat management. One other thing. But they want to make it be as those it was before contact.

They're sort of like what I would call island purists. like restore the native vegetation. So you're looking at it, you're looking like what it looked like a long time ago. Exactly. Yep. Before the deer, they had, like you mentioned, all these other animals, feral goats were a big one. They were also cattle that were once run on Catalina Island by the Wrigley family.

Like, it was a business, right? They have kind of gotten rid of all these other grazers and animals, but the thing left are these deer that are still, and you can see there's pictures online where you can see enclosures and you can see the line like often we see in Mexico when we're hunting coos deer right where the cattle have been on one side of the fence and they haven't been on the other side of the fence and one side looks scorched earth and the other side looks pretty lush and green right and tall grass you can see images like that online if you look for them it's where they got deer fenced out or in exactly um so the conservancy believes is saying that at this point,

they've had a hunting program on the island for 20-some years. And again, this hunting program is run through the Wrigley family or this Catalina Island Conservancy. Yeah, right? They believe that it's not doing enough to suppress the deer numbers

to make a difference in letting the habitat rebound. They want to see more of these sort of lush Forbes brush living there and less of that cheat grass non-native landscape going there and they believe that the deer browsing is causing that right they're eating the stuff that they're preferring that stuff

and they're letting this other stuff grow more of they have for years been trying to get a permit that basically allows them to do massive calling efforts and take out as many of these deer as they want because again they feel like the hunting program is not doing doing the trick. Can I wedge because you're trying to go just facts? Can I wedge a not just fact thing? Do you mind? Can I be the guy that does the not fact thing?

I want to choose my words carefully here. A common refrain among people who have attempted to do a mule deer hunt on Catalina Island is that they do their best to make it impossible. Who's they? The conservancy

This is just a viewpoint that is expressed to me Is that they pay lip service to a hunting program But Make the hunting program They set it up to fail Is a common refrain Among friends of mine Who've tried to participate in the mule deer hunt

Is they set it up to not work Yeah It's disingenuous And it's been all over the place as far as who can hunt there, how much they can hunt there. They've had years where it's only been a couple hundred tags. They've had years where it's been a thousand tags. They've had years where only locals can hunt, only Californians can hunt, and then other years where you can't have non-residents coming in and hunting. When they had that, it wasn't very well publicized.

So a lot of people didn't know. And then those that knew were sort of keeping it hush-hush. is like, oh, we got a good thing going. Like, we're not going to tell all of our friends about this great hunting opportunity. And I don't want a spot burn on the eradication program. Which is expected. So, kind of where we are now is that they have, the Catalina Island Conservancy, have gotten to a point where they got this permit to basically do the calling that they want to do.

And it's a five-year program, and they're like, they're allowed to. do it. To this point, I talked to Charles Whitwim, Whitwam this morning. He's the Howl for Wildlife guy. He's sort of in a accidental wake, ended up making a documentary called Killing Catalina that's about this subject. And if you want to know why, go and watch it. It's very educational. You'll learn a lot about what's going on there. But he's the guy, I figured that Conan would know, without talking to somebody that works for the Catalina, Island Conservancy, he's the guy that's probably dove into this, the deepest, right?

At this point, they haven't killed any deer that he knows of. But they're, like, they're supposed to start sometime soon. Like a helicopter program. Not a helicopter program. That was the first thing that was put out there. That's how they got rid of the goats in the past. And there was a lot of public outcry against doing that because they had supposedly

you know, three-legged goats, wounded goats, walking around, and it didn't look good. They couldn't sharpshoot them as well. Exactly. So now the idea is that you would bring in government sharpshooters and do the killing. The locals and a lot of hunters, conservation orgs, and interestingly, people like the Humane Society of California have bonded together. Strange bedfellows. Yes. Yes.

To oppose this. And actually, as of, I think, yesterday, there's a press release, uh, release today that, um, I can just give you the, the,

uh, real high look at it here is that, um, a coalition of hunting, conservation, sports and advocacy organizations follow a lawsuit challenging the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's approval of a plan to exterminate

the up to 2,000 mule deer on Catalina Island. So like, Spari Club International. is a part of that, a bunch of California's, you know, smaller orgs are there, health or wildlife. Can I ask, like, what, it's obvious why someone like group for like the Humane Society would be against it. What are these hunting groups against it because they're about to lose hunting opportunity? Like, what are they? Like what it?

I think that they're against it because, and from what I gather, is because it's a, in their mind, it's a bad way to manage wildlife. And mostly because they didn't go through the proper channels, process, these steps to get this permit. Some stuff was fast-tracked. There was like a bill introduced last year that got through. And lo and behold, sponsors of this bill are related and interconnected with this Catalina Island Conservancy. And so some things happened to help make this permit kind of smooth right through, which from what I research is that they've been trying to get this permit for 15 years. And California Department of Fish and Wildlife has been like, no, you guys don't have the science to prove that you guys need to be doing this.

Because that's where it gets tricky is that they basically have a private island. They control it, but they don't control the animals. Sure. Because the animals are owned by the people of California. California. How do the locals feel about the deer? They. And by locals, what do you mean, though?

Well, there's people that live on the island, right? Yeah. But they, like, they live on the property of the people that want to kill the deer. Sure. But interestingly, yeah, they're opposed to the killing of. The people that are renting from the family that owns the thing. Yeah. Huh. It's so.

It's so sticky. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, there's. There's two of them for each deer. They actually passed in the last year. I don't know if you'd call it legislation or a zoning thing, but basically within the town of Avalon,

which must be like incorporated. And so it's, not been there. Yeah, it's the other 20% of the island that isn't controlled by Cali and Ina Conservancy. They basically passed a law where you cannot shoot or discharge firearms within those limits. And of course, that is where most of these deer live.

And that's where all the people are, though. Like when you come in there, it's like a beautiful little bay and a port. Yeah, it's beautiful. Real like, walk around, get an ice cream cone kind of vibe. Yeah. But they made it so that they're not going to be able to kill every single deer off the island. Because it's basically the ones now that are in town cannot be eradicated. Has anyone, are there any real studs?

I'm not talking about the town's people. It's got to be. Are there any studs on this island? or the dinks? You know, just the few images that I saw, nothing that would fall into like nice Colorado mule gear. I looked into it. It's not like a destination mule. Dudes aren't like

C-Groleting. It's not like anilob island. Yeah. Nothing like that. No. No. I mean, I'm going to state the real obvious on this one. Um, it brings up an interesting question of how far from the native source do you need to

be where it becomes like irrefutably an exotic mm-hmm so like take something like nil guy in south Texas right

the Indian like I think I think they're predominantly from like the Indian subcontinent am I right about that yeah no no no yeah I think so to Texas when I look at a when I spin the old globe

I'm like that is a non-native from way far away. Like that has nothing. That has nothing to do with that. Do you know what I mean? Nothing to do with that.

That's its own little thing. Their fate, the fate of the nil guy in South Texas is not related to sort of like the fate of nilgai as a wild species in general. When you get to a situation like this where you can look and see

you can look and see where they're from. It's 22 miles from Los Angeles is the Catalina Island. You can look and see where they're native. Yeah, it wouldn't be impossible for a deer to make that swim. No. Oh, look at southeast Alaska. You see those black tails swimming around

all over hell. Yeah. So it's like, it does bring up interesting question. I'd be like, okay, they came in with people, but I mean, dude, it's just right. Their native range is like right there. you can't rule out that one hasn't made the swim. But it is an island, which like island ecosystems operate differently than a mainland. I'd like to refer,

I'd like to refer to listeners to, I can't remember the name of it, David Quamman's book, an island biogeography, which explains all this kind of stuff. Why islands are so special. Why do mammals shrink and lizards get huge, all that kind of stuff on islands?

I don't know, man. I'm a real fence sitter on this one. I'm kind of on the side of the... Here's why I'm on the side of the mule deer. I don't know. Go ahead. I don't know. Who cares about it?

Something else just to plop in there, right? There's this buffalo herd. I think the highest number ever got was like up to 1600 or something like that. Okay. It's been there roughly the same amount of time as these mule deer. It came in to film a movie. Yeah. There right now, approximately 100 there.

Okay. they think there's roughly 2,000 of these deer. At least that's what the Catalina Island Conservancy. The outfitter and a lot of the locals and people that have hunted there think there's a lot less than 2,000 deer. Could someone do the math if you go, how many, how many Buffalo? 100. So 100 at, let's say, 1,200 pounds. And how many deer?

2,000. 2,000 at, let's say, 120 pounds. Oh, wait, hold on. 100 at what? 100 at 1,100. Someone's going to write into correction about this. Yeah, I was going to say we're getting on dangerous ground here. 100 at 1,200.

Especially since buffalo are grazers and, or, yeah, and mule deer are browsers. With those numbers, it would be 120,000 pounds of biomass for the bison versus 240,000 for the mule deer. So, mule deer's double. Twice as much biomass of mule deer. Double. Go on by those numbers. Correction? I don't think that's going to get corrected.

Because it's correct. The Buffalo are just a little less sort of iconic of the island. Sorry, a little bit more than the deer. The deer are like very much a part of it. Locals love them. People love to go there and see them. But the Buffalo are just a little bit cooler. There's, you know, murals of Buffalo.

There's weather veins. Buffalo, like that's, it's very much a part of them. When I went, when I went there, it was for this reason. To check the Buffalo out. But when I'm not writing about it, but I went there to write about it, but I never got to it. Yeah. Didn't I, was I researching us going to do a hunt there at some point? Probably.

But anyways, they've all been sterilized. So you would think that you couldn't keep these Buffalo going, right? Or they wouldn't. If they're all sterilized. and they're not going to reproduce. They're going to blink out. They're eventually going to blink out. But you're not going to sterilize 2,000 deer.

When that question was posed to the main scientists of the conservancy, she had a very lackluster, vague answer as to what's going to happen to those bison. Where it just, at that moment, you really feel like she's a mouthpiece for this other, you know, thing that's going on. She's not necessarily in control because if you're going to take out 2,000 deer, take out the 100 bison too, right? And it's like don't have any of that kind of grazing going on on the landscape, right? But because the locals and the tourists and everything,

there's even that much more, you know, probably comes down to money. And, you know, attached to it. They're like, well, maybe we'll keep them around. kind of a little bit somehow we're not going to get rid of them completely um like i said it's just it's just thick with uh with sort of all these just like little ideas of what's going on who's thinking what why they're doing it like they're just going to do like they're just going to let the deer lay after they should like they're not going to get used no yeah there's no there's no there's not like they're going to donate it all to a food bank no that's so crystal ball it for me

Based on your, based on your 24 hours of non-stop research. Johnny's been up all night. Crystal ball it for me. If you had to take, just say, if we're going to go, if we're going to go to a prediction market thing and make a bet. Yeah. And I said, in five years, you know, in five years, Catalina Island will have no mule deer. Like, whatever. How are you going to bet on it?

I think that they will have mule deer. I think the main thing that's like a big sticking point to anybody that sort of tries to figure the story out is that it looks like they don't actually have a good survey of how many deer on the island. Some people are like there's 500. Some people are saying there's 2,200. No one really knows. And so you can't really go anywhere. You can't extrapolate from there if you don't know exactly how many deer on this island, right? And you think they can be able to figure that out.

I'm imagining that because it's getting so much press that this lawsuit was filed, the California Division of Wildlife is going to fishing game, whatever they call themselves. They're going to walk back. Yeah, they're going to walk back that permit and going to say, hey, hold on, we need to do this the right way.

We're like, we're here to manage wildlife. Let's do it the right way. And so I think that it's probably going to come back to a private lands management permit, which is what they're operating under now, I had to have a hunting program. What they need to do is, they need to go get take one of them big jets with a lot of seats in it

go to casanovia wisconsin put everybody from casanova wisconsin on that jet and fly them out to catalina for a big mooch a big old yeah i'm talking a big mooch feel like lemmings getting pushed into those they'd all just run into town where they're safe dugs in charge Doug Durant gets a map of the island. He gets his laser pointer. You sit here, you sit here. At 10, you do this. At 1022, you get out of year blind and do this.

Big mooch. Sounds like fun. Little whittle him down. But here's my final take on it. Not that it matters. My final take on it is, since a meal, like, a thing I would factor in, you have so many areas you can point to where mule deer are not. doing good.

The island is so close to native mule deer range. I would take these two things and I would say we have a lot of areas where mieldier are not doing good. This is sort of like honorary native mule deer range because it's so close. It's a bright spot for mielder. They're doing well there. It's more valuable to have, it's more valuable to have reassurance about the long-term ability of mule deer.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe it could be a potential source location for future reintroductions. I don't know. If I was emperor of the planet, I would say lower the numbers through greater public hunting opportunities, get lower the numbers down. But let's set aside talk of eradication. It's also a population that's more than likely pretty safe from CWD. You know what I mean? If they were careful.

What if I said, though, it came at the cost of losing several, you know, native endemic species that only are found. What are the species? Floral species that are only found on that island. And they're still there after 100 years of grazing? Yeah. And have they done as everything they could do to reseed?

I'd have had to no more. I'm just spitball in here. Yeah, we got to move on. I'm just saying if I'm just throwing that in there. Like would you still say, hey, we really need this little, little micro. No, I would factor that in. I would factor that in. If there was a chance that there was an endemic plant species that was going to blink out and go extinct and by having no meal deer, I knew that I could save that endemic plant species and it was that binary.

That would make my decision much more complicated. And I would probably tip toward the endemic plant species. Keep an eye on the story for us, Janice. I will. I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind, and now I've got my own show.

If you're tired or lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies, available on all TSN platforms in the IHeartRadio app. Welcome to Meat Eaters 12 and 26, presented by Moultry Mobile and OnX Maps. 12 of Meat Eaters' biggest and baddest hunts from the last year, released throughout 2026. These are long-form episodes, so you get more of what you love.

The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on Meat Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Great job. There'll be plenty. If there was an award for reporting on a news story, Yaddy'd win a pair of boots. Oh. Well, I haven't got to go yet.

Well, I'm the only point of comparison you have, so I'm trying to take that personally. Well, you know who's going to be out. Bro, what are you going to have to hold? The Coloradans can't embarrass themselves anymore until they did. Story? We run it out of time. We're going to punt. Oh, no, I'm out of here.

See him. Over to Spencer for Rattlesnake Roundup. Roundup. This weekend, March 13th, through the. the 15th is the 68th annual world's largest rattlesnake roundup in Sweetwater, Texas. It's been going on since 1958. Not even COVID stopped them from having a couple of their festivals. That's great.

There's a parade, a carnival, a gun and coin show, dance, guided rattlesnake hunts that you can sign up for. Those costs $75 to go catch one. Cooking competition with categories such as brisket, ribs, chili, beans, bloody mary, and of course rattlesnake, but the big attraction is the rattlesnake hunting contest. And hunters, they'll spend weeks or months

catching rattlesnakes that will then get entered into the contest. You can stock them up ahead of time? Far in advance. They don't let you do that with bass fishing. No, it's unclear to me. It seems as though you need to keep them alive to enter that.

But I couldn't confirm that with anything, but you need to keep these snakes alive. Are they managed in any way? In some states, rattlesnakes, like, there's a limit. They're managed to have some kind of like, they tell you on the game species. On the website, you need to have a permit from the state of Texas,

whatever, you know, like a small game permit, whatever their equivalent is. A collection permit of some sort. And for the first 3,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in, these Sweetwater JCs will pay $20 per pound for those rattlesnakes. What do they want them for? We'll get to it. We'll get to it.

But anyways, $20 a pound. It was $5. per pound in 2006. So that's a $15 increase. And if you were doing inflation, that $5 would be about $9 today. So they've doubled even if you account for inflation and what they're paying. For the next 5,000 pounds, they pay $15 per pound. And then they stop paying altogether if they have more than 8,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in.

Is that, is that, Phil just put up a photo. Is that guy so confident in his snake chaps that he's just standing in among those rattlemen, It seems as though he is. There's rattlesnakes on top of rattlesnakes, and he is within center years. And he's like, my chaps are good. Well, it looks like he's just flicking one off his boot there. How many different species? We should go there one year.

No, thank you. It's just terrible. Not a big snake guy. It is just the Western Diamondback. They look at with Spencer. Looks like there's different species in there. Now, first prize, first prize for bringing in the most pounds of snakes is $1,000. The longest snake gets five.

$500. Their all-time record is an 81.5 inch rattlesnake. What's that? Come out to in feet. It's like a teenage-old. Seven. A little less than. Correction. We're looking at it.

Their website has results from the last decade and from looking at these. It's clear that there is a sweetwater rattlesnake hunting goat. Andy Lee has won five of the last nine contests. Is this this gal? Including in 2024 and 2025. Why don't we get that guy on the show? What's his name? Andy Lee.

Can you get him on the show? I've got some more details for you on Andy. Last year, he brought in 651 pounds of rattlesnakes, which beat second place by 39 pounds. Here's some good journalism, Steve. When I googled Andy's name, I learned that he owns a pest control business in Texas. He's got a hot line out of it. He is double dipping. First, someone pays him to come remove a snake from under their porch.

And then he goes and enters it in this context. does not dissuade me from wanting him on the show. No, I'm with you. But last year, last year with that winning weight, if he would have entered it in the first 3,000 pounds, he would have made $14,000. How many snakes? Does it say how many snakes? It does 50? It doesn't say

it's always measured in pounds on their website. There he is right there. There he is. That's his, uh, the business he owns. Andy Lee. And who's D.D. D.D. That's his wife. Then they, they own the business together. Now, Steve asks what happens to these snakes. Uh, they're registered. Then they're skin, battered, deep fried, sold at the concession stands.

You're not eating up that many snakes. Give me a break. Phil's got a picture of, uh, that, they said they're eating them there. They're going through that whole batch of snakes. I don't know. And the skins are going to a separate market. It doesn't say what they do with the skins.

Uh, Phil's got a picture of how all them skinning in a line there. Look at that. Oh yeah. They're making some sweet leather product. On, on average, uh, there are 4,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in each year. The record was set in 20. 2016 when 25,000 pounds of diamond backs were captured. There must have been something with the weather that year that just made a boom, rattlesnakes.

Now, here's the most amazing part, I think. I found a quote from Texas A&M in 2006 that said they estimate the roundup captures 1% of the state's entire Western diamond back population. Every year. But they have a, I wonder, have you encountered what sort of harvest rate? Like a state would have deer harvest and they're going to kill 10%, 11%, 12% of the state's deer. So I don't know about the fecundity of rattlesnakes, but I'm guessing 1% is well within recovery. I imagine if this is the world's largest version of this and it still exists, then yeah, they're not worried about hurting the Western Diamondback population in Texas if it continues on. Now, it's very popular in the community.

They expect 25,000 visitors this year again. It's this weekend that pumps in $8 million to the local economy. So go check it out if you live in Central Texas. What's up with the bloody handprints on the wall? Well, I think they're taking them hands that are all bloody and pressing them on that wall. Yeah, well, I gather that part. Interesting. It's amazing.

Beautiful. Yeah, it's like little cave paintings. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I'll save it. 68th annual world's largest rattlesnake roundup. What town?

Sweetwater, Texas. Sweetwater. Excellent reporting. Thank you. Did it Bastiani or no? No. I think it's, no. I mean, the quality of the reporting and the delivery, but it just didn't make as much gravy.

Okay. I'm still third. What is it when you just don't even get mentioned? Like, picture at the Olympics. Like at the Olympics, you got the gold, silver, and bronze, you know, but they don't even let a guy get on the. Randall, at least you got to compete. Yeah. Yeah.

No, Randall, I'm just joking, man. I thought you did a great job. Maybe I could tilt the scales a little more. So back to the Trump, America, the Beautiful card. Okay. The center of biological, what is it, the Center for Biological Diversity. The anti-hunting organization. They are suing him for doing that.

They started that lawsuit in December. I reached out to them for an update on the lawsuit. Funny, I was going to talk about those folks in my section. Their update is they don't have an update yet, but they're working on it behind the scenes. So we don't know what the fate of, by the time they wrap it up, this card will no longer even be good.

Oh. Should, although they do a lot of, they do a lot of like posture. Understood. I understand. They do a lot of posture. Right,

but what would have, say best case scenario for them happens and they win this lawsuit against the Trump administration. Then we're going to reissue 100,000 cards? Well, maybe someone who chooses to buy their pass

in December of this year. They'll have a, They have a people for the ethical treatment of animals-esque wing. They do. Center for Biological. They use some of the same type of people to think up campaigns that they're like, oh, no, no, no. It's not that we'll win.

It's just that it'll be reported on. This is right in their wheelhouse for what they would do is have a lawsuit like this. All right, Brody, I'm down real sorry, buddy. No, but you did say they do things to posture. the Center for Biological Diversity, like they got something done in Colorado which is not good.

Well, it's not done done. It's not done done, but. You think it's going to pass? It already passed. No, but you think it's going to become law? But it already, they're just in the rulemaking process now. Yeah, but I thought the rulemaking process would get so like that it wouldn't go.

Or people were thinking it wouldn't go. We'll see. We'll report on it next week. That one needs time. Couldn't have scripted it any better. Yeah, that one needs time. Yeah. Okay, going over for our final story.

Is this our final story? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Going over for our final story. I heard a very interesting thing recently. My brother Danny up in Alaska has a buddy. my brother Danny works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

He has a colleague who is a, he'll explain what he does. I was hearing about, learning about that when imports come into the country, right? There's a customs process around processing imports. And here's where you would look for like illegal wildlife imports, meaning things you could imagine, like someone opens up a crate and they're like, good Lord, it's full of rhino horn. Like, that's going to be a problem, right? But there are other things that you might not know about that customs officials look at. And U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, when it comes to wildlife issues, that is their turf. Okay.

And I was learning about a thing I had no idea that it even existed is that people make fake eyelashes out of mink fur. And since it's a wildlife product, it needs to be imported. in a certain way, and I was learning about how wildlife officials will detect, find, and seize incoming fake eyelashes made of mink, which I feel are being worn by people who have no idea what they're wearing.

Definitely not. Over to our guests. Ready, Phil? Yeah. God, you didn't see that coming? I thought there will be a little bit more to do before we bring him in, but hey, he's here. Yeah, like, you know, women and fake eyelashes. History of that, but that's okay.

Brian Olin, how's it going? Good morning. Yeah, it's going well. I guess I should have worn some eyelashes today so I could have demonstrated that for you, but I didn't include that in my morning routine. You're forgiven. Lay this out for us. Like, lay out for us. what form these things take,

how you know about them, where they come from, whatever you got for us. Gotcha. So yeah, I didn't know about them, not surprisingly, before I started this job

about five years ago. We all know about fake eyelashes, but there is a pretty significant quantity of them being made from mink. Certainly also made from like silk and other synthetic materials. but they look like just like a half moon or crescent moon shape, like adhesive strip with individual pieces of mink hair,

I guess just attached or glued on there. They're, when you like do some research on them and say that they're more fluttery looking, a little more naturally looking, the mink hair ones versus the synthetic ones. So there's some ways you can kind of, once you look at five or six hundred of these things, you can kind of tell them apart pretty easily. But the main care kind of tapers to a point, whereas the synthetic materials are more like truncated and chopped. You can kind of tell that with the naked eye.

So yeah, we're inspecting these. Kind of, you know, it comes and goes in waves, but daily across the U.S. And we're here in Anchorage, Alaska. So most of our imports are coming from Southeast Asia. So, yeah, we're looking at air cargo coming in and trying to stop these and make sure they're imported in the correct manner. What would be the correct manner? Like, they're not like a mink eyelash isn't necessarily illegal.

It's just that the way they're bringing them in, they're not declaring them as a wildlife product. Is that the problem? Yeah, yeah. So mink art particularly highly protected, like you mentioned, Rhinelhorn. and obviously they're not in the same level. Most of these are farmed mink. And so they just need to have a few things done. If you're commercially importing, you've got to have an import permit from us. And then, yeah, you have to declare every shipment as it arrives, declare it to the genus and species. So we know what, oh, what animal you're using and the quantity. So that's the biggest, like, violation for the mink eyelashes.

is they're just failing to declare or failure to obtain a license. So do this for people. You told me how this works. But let's say someone's sitting at home right now and they're just curious. If their fake eyelashes are made of mink or not, tell them the little test you do to find out what exactly you're looking at. Sure. Yeah.

So if you have a pair that maybe took off and you already wore once or twice, you can just take a match and burn part of that and get a good whiff and see what it smells like. And if it smells like burned hair or like petroleum plastic, that'll tell you right off the bat if it's a natural product or a synthetic product. Huh. How many times if you had to get, like you've been there five years, how many different times have you encountered mink eyelashes? coming into your port?

Hundreds? Oh. Yeah. Hundreds. It's not every day anymore, but these things kind of come and go in waves. So much of it is driven by like the fashion industry and what's popular. And I think right now we're kind of at like a lull, at least in our port of what we're seeing. So maybe there's some, you know, people are starting to realize that they are made of mink and they don't

want that. But it seems like it's on a downward trend right now. But, you know, like 10 years ago, it was probably 10-fold amount of products coming in. You know how fashion becomes self-parody? Like, meaning a thing becomes fashionable and then it just tries to one-up itself, right? Like, a hole in your jeans, that's fashionable. So then eventually it's that the whole front of your jeans is gone or there's holes from top to bottom because it's self parodies itself. Are mink eyelashes subtle or are they like you want to see big eyelashes? Check these out. Like how would you rank a mink eyelash?

Oh, yeah, like on flutterly flutteriness. That's either they're up there and the amount of flutter they have. Oh, so it's an exaggerated eyelash. It's like a big eyelash. Well, at times it is. yes, but there's so many variations that you'll see that smaller more and kind of petite ones

and then ones that are just comically large but... Got it. So you could be classy and still be wearing mink. You could be classy in mink or you could be not in mink, it sounds like. I think you can be classy. Now, here's another question if you don't mind adding in on this.

Are you able to share with us a handful of other wildlife products that you've seen show up in your area of jurisdiction over your career there? Are you able to share some other examples of things that you might, that your agency might find coming into port in Anchorage, Alaska? Sure. A lot of what we see is products. We don't see too many live, live animals. A lot of those are, you know, they don't want their live animals to sit on the tarmac when it's like negative

20 out. Got it. They just don't survive. So you're not a good port of entry for live. No, not typically, although we just had some yesterday. Can't talk about those too much, but in the past, past years, like we had a viper come in in a Pringles can from Southeast Asia. Hmm. And that was, that was an eye-opener. So that's, you know, like one of the more surprising. Yeah, yeah.

You're like, hey. But most of what we see is parts and products. feathers, shells, turtle products, turtle shell products. Got it. And occasionally live animals like birds. Randall has a question, Steve. Oh, go ahead. We have all those products.

How many of those are, like, banned outright versus how many of those are simply trying to slide in undeclared? Yeah, so that's part of our gig is to facilitate the legal trade. so we're there to find the real bad stuff but also you know help people do it legally um most you know like the real bad stuff we don't see super often like um the rhino horn the uh elephant tusks like we see that stuff but it's it's pretty rare compared to like oh you're importing shell jewelry uh that has to be declared so that's of course more common the more common the animal the more common we're seeing the thing so are you often involved in the work of let's say

someone's importing shell jewelry does it fall on your agency um to to try to determine what is the genus and species because i imagine it could be like very hard to figure out if it's polished shell right how you'd ever begin to understand like is it what is it from you know where did it come from what did they make it with? Yeah. So it's upon the importer to declare it to the genus and species level. And they would rely on their exporter quite a bit for that. Okay.

So it's not like it's not our position to determine that. But we do have to spend a lot of time trying to ID things because the importers, you know, in illegal cases, they don't want to do that anyway. So we need to be able to do that to know that. to know that this might be a protected species or it may not be. Yeah. Meaning someone could try to bring in a thing that could be, that they could be declaring it as something permissible,

but you'd have the obligation of verifying that it was what they're saying it is. Exactly. Whether that was a mistake or intentional, it could be a thing that would happen. Yeah, like snake skins. you know, there's protected snakes and there's not protected stakes. So if you were wanting to try to sneak something in without permits, you might call it, you know, a water snake versus a ball python or something.

Understood, understood. You know what I didn't do a good job of when I started out? Brian, can you tell everybody what your, you know, your agency, but also what your specific job title would be? Like, what is your, what is your, I don't know, you know, what's on your badge? Yeah, yeah. So I'm a wildlife inspector. I work for the Office of Law Enforcement, which is a law enforcement division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

And so we work at all the ports of entry across the U.S. And we combat the legal wildlife trafficking trade and then, like I said, facilitate the legal trade. Got it. And then you are, you are based within, are you within the Anchorage Airport? Like, where do you sit right now? Yeah. So me, I'm at the Anchorage Air Force. We have an international side.

So I'm at the office here today. We also have people over at sorting facility for like the air cargo. So we get most of our, most of our cargo's coming in from Southeast Asia on the, on the air side of things. We also have outports that we cover for like the highways between Canada and in the U.S. and Alcan. We'll cover that as well. Got one last question for you. Sayapela

went over to Africa and he did some hunting and he lives in Anchorage and he waits a million years and finally the stuff he got in Africa arrives for him do you get to take a peek yeah yeah just yesterday

I was inspecting a shipment from South Africa so yeah even non-commercial personal shipments have to be declared so they'll arrive on cargo and we'll go over there make sure what they're declaring is accurate. If there's permits to collect,

we'll collect those and stamp them and help them fill out paperwork. And yeah, yeah, that's kind of a fun thing of our job is to kind of see that exotic stuff coming in. You know what? I'm realizing he might be a very good trivia contestant.

On wildlife questions. A lot of knowledge. Wildlife questions. Brian, thanks for coming on the show and explaining all that to us, man. I want to go get me a set of of these eyelashes and put them on. We should have done that today.

I thought about doing that. Yeah, there's some pictures in there. I can't pull them up while Brian's on the line. Oh, that's why he's going to show them. That's right. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much, Officer.

Appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. I'm going to start going up to people, lighting their eyelashes on fire, and smelling. All right. Let me know what I'm looking at. Thank you very much. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining the news show. Come on next week, and you're going to hear Brody talk. about a thing that I don't understand well because I thought it was something different.

Okay, good plug. Brody's guys were cut out for him. I thought the rulemaking process would prove so impossible that it was like some kind of problem. Let's hope that that's what happens. But it's not officially law yet. They got to go through some stuff. Stay tuned. With that, wildlife commission.

Just what you thought Colorado. The animal rights. community in Colorado could not embarrass their stay anymore. They do next week on the news show. When you flew out the window. The sunset, I thought I would never stop screaming. Stop screaming some more. Welcome to Meat Eaters 12 and 26, presented by Moultry Mobile and On X Maps.

12 of Meat Eaters' biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long-form episodes so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree.

Check it out now on Meat Eaters' YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.