The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 859: Man-Eating Lions, The Border Wall, and Judas Deer

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: Bobcat collaring; the Man Eaters of Tsavo by John Banovich; the Monteith Shop fundraiser; building the border wall through Big Bend National Park?; an interview with professional golfer Brian Harman; the "rapid depopulation" strategy unfolding on Catalina Island; the effort to legalize deer baiting in Michigan; Forest Service overhaul confusion; Alaska opens a mountain lion season; a big crappie tournament; 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. Hey, it's Clay Newcomb here from Bear Greece, and I want to tell you about my new 12-26 film presented by Maltry and Onyx. These are 12 of meat eaters' biggest and baddest hunts from the last year that are going to be released through 2026. These are long-form episodes, or what I call films,

so you're going to get more of what you love. My film will take us into the deep and cold, rugged, country of southwest Utah on a lion hunt with hounds, where we traveled over 80 miles and five days on mules. But the best part, I'm hunting with the legendary lion hunting family, the meekums, but also one of the country's top mulemen, Ty Evans. This is about mules and lions. This is the kind of place where winter hangs on tight and every track in the snow tells a story. If you've ever wondered what it's like to pursue a mountain line in big country on muleback, then this is the episode for you. Check it out now on the Meteeter YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more

12 and 26 in the coming months. Welcome to the news show, everyone. This week we're covering how Randall does not understand sports after all. We're going to talk about yet another forest service management controversy. We're going to get into what tracking collars can tell us about Bobcats, some things about lost arrow etiquette, more on the Catalina Island Mule Deer Eradication Program, and Alaska announces a mountain lion season of all things. All they need now are mountain lions. Well, that's not true because they've maybe got a couple mountain lions, but they got a mountain lion season, plus a whole lot more.

But first, our news, and pull up the pictures, Phil, you can pick whatever one you want. Whichever won. it's too much power to get to handle it. Oh, he's going with that one. Check this out. This is a couple days ago. What do we see? Okay, I'll tell you what.

It's funny you ask. So I was down with my friend Mercer Long in northern Arizona. And Mercer was a lifelong bobcat trapper. He used to be a bobcat foot trapper in the Mojave Desert. When California banned foot trapping, Mercer invented his own cage trap. And he started a cage trap business. and became a bobcat cage trapper.

Then California banned cage trapping. So now he takes his business elsewhere, but he became so skilled at capturing bobcats that he is the go-to guy when you want to do a bobcat collaring project. So when researchers want to put a tracking collar on a bobcat, that's your man. That's how you're going to catch him.

He's got good stories. That's not an easy thing to do. And so his expertise is for hire to come in. So he's done working on a program. Here they got, here what we're doing is, I packed that cage trap. I say packed. We're not too terribly far from the truck. Oh, I couldn't even tell it was on your back.

I thought you're just standing in front of it. Looks like it's up on that hill. No, it's on a backpack mount. I see. This is on Saturday. No? Yeah, Saturday. So that's on a backpack frame.

And if you look, you'll see, I'm going to explain this. You see how there's a little white thing off of on lookers left of my head. Yeah. There's a little white box. All right. So they have all these cats on collars. They cannot, they will not share those waypoints. So he works on the project, but he does not have access to the waypoints.

Okay. Because, you know, think about like, a guy could be tempted. Is this a project? Like, you know, let's just say, for instance, that Bobcats are going for a couple thousand bucks of pop. A guy might be like, yeah, I'd like to know where all those cats are with those collars. Is this a project for? Arizona Fish and Gamer? Yeah, the state state project. So he doesn't

get, he does not, he cannot log on and get access to the points. But they had a cat that's collar fell off. They want to get, um, how's this go? Yeah, the cat's collar fell off. They want to get a particular

cat back on collar. So they shared with him some old points. They're like, here's a couple honey holes that this cat likes. So we hiked up to one of these honeyholes that the cat likes. And that little contraption, we went out and checked one of these. So that little contraption, when that door springs, that sends a signal. I had a question. And it hits his phone. Before you catch it. And once it hits

his phone, the race is on? What's he, is he baiting? Is he putting up like compact disc, their flashy, ribbons? So you're saying you want to know what that set is? Yeah. I'll tell you about that set. How's he set? He makes that trap. That's a double door. So this cat has already been in single door cage traps. She's all done with traps. She's like no kind of traps no more as the feeling Mercer's getting. You can only ask cats so many times to go through this. So that door is double door so it's open door.

So when we went up under that, right up under that juniper behind me there, we went up in there and basically up against the rock wall with brush, sort of made it like, a very natural tunnel. A little cave. Well, no, because the cave is like dead end. Okay. So in normal cage trap, there's a back wall. This is a double door trap, which has its own limitations.

It's not perfect, but in this case of a cat that's like, yeah, I'm not doing that again. So we put it again in there, and it's two doors open. Now, the problem of two doors, and I think this is a bigger problem than Mercer does. He says this is not actually a problem, and I've made it up in my head. But so there's a door on each end, both spring loaded. now picture that the cat who's already on like you know high alert oh they just they're tight they're wired tight that thing hits that pan and in the and like you know this thing moves that thing moves that thing moves meaning the trigger mechanism there's a lag time like the pan moves it pulls a wire that pops a trigger right and during that this already high strung cat instead of him needing to do a 180, which in a single door trap, he's got a spin, right? I'm like, what, how is it that that thing doesn't already get the signal and isn't already

out that front door? And he says, he's like, you're making this up in your head. Maybe they just go and freeze. He says it doesn't. Yeah. He says it works. I'll get to the set the minute. Um, no, I'll do the set right now. So we mounted, we put it in. And along a very good, like, natural hunt thing, that's pulled pack rat, pack rat nests. Up in air, southern, they're hunting rabbits, hunting pack rat nest. It looks very natural. It's an open tunnel. Mounded it with brush, so it looks real natural.

Under the pan in the center, he dug it out, and he put two kinds of lure in there, two kinds of cat lure that he makes. He put cat droppings, bobcat droppings, inside. each door and then sprayed it with a mix signature blend of cat piss in rotten rattlesnake juice which he shot me in the face with he's like I'm sitting when we're rigging the setup I'm sitting there helping rig the setup

and no sooner does he say hey you're going to want to move because you're not going to want this on you and it's sort of I like begin my motion and push I'm like you show me in the face So other than the move, I'm like, yeah, well, you didn't give time to move. Other than the rattlesnake juice, he's like, he's appealing to their like territoriality. It's not like being them in with food. It's all, see, talking to him, man, it's, it's all curiosity.

Yeah. Now, he says a cat in the north is on a different trip. A cat in the north is hungry. Desert cats, they're interested in, they want to be, they want to be intrigued. You're not going to get them on like that he's starving to death. Yeah. Because there were like a couple spots in Colorado where it'd be out hunting like whatever, cotton tails in the winter and run across cage traps like this.

Oh, got it. They'd often have like Christmas tinsel or compact discs. I'm not that far yet. Okay. I got you. We hung a on that juniper. Their lookers right side of that juniper. Yeah.

There's a big like purple feather pom-pom that I hung there because in that way, he could be up on the rim. Let's see it. Up on the rim and then have a line of sight to that pom-pom. And so two kinds of lure, droppings, rattlesnake juice, and then a visual,

some feather visual attractor, some feather visual attractor inside the cage. When it pops, when that door goes down, it pulls a magnet, it pulls like a pin out of that box. that box, we went and checked one that had gotten tripped by another reason, but depending on the time of day,

they want them out there right now. Like I was surprised, one of his things tripped and he's taking me to the airport. And it was daytime. And he couldn't get there for five hours. I'm like, what the hell's going to have to do it in five hours? He's like,

that don't fly. It's now. So he had to call someone. I'm like, nothing's going to happen to that cat in, five hours. But he's like, this is not how it works.

Like when that signal goes, you go. They don't want any risk of harm. Oh, I got you. Of harm. It gets too hot. It gets too stressed.

Yep. Something finds it and starts harassing it and stresses it. So it's like you, you go. You got to be ready to, you got to be ready to spring into action. Can you go to my other thing? Yes.

Maybe. Dude, this is my new favorite painting. What's it called? Manninger Zasavo. Manninger Zasavo. I didn't know this story. These two lions, this is an old story. Oh, these two lions.

I didn't know you didn't know this. Theodore Roosevelt commented on this. I didn't know you didn't know that. The ghost in the darkness. They ate 140 people working on a rail line in Africa. And they had to pause railroad construction because these lions kept. This painting's by John Banovich. is these lions eating a dude

but all you can it's beautifully there's a great movie a great movie that plays fast and loose with the facts well how do you need to get fast and let me the facts they bring in like they bring in an American hunter

shirts for an American audience that's how Michael Douglas that's who gets stuff done man Val Kilmer's in it you want something done call Val there's the one guy who always plays an imperious

like British official I don't know his name you'll recognize him. Oh, it's a great book. He's a character actor as a British official. You should read the book. It's a quick read. It's a good read.

Can we cover that movie in... I asked a trivia question about it. Radio. So if you want to see a painting, it is my new, my new goal in life is to get a print, a big, nice print of these lines eating that dude's leg. If you want to see a painting, if you're listening and want to see a painting, type in BANovich, B-A-N-O-V-I-C-A. I met him.

The reason I'm talking about this whole thing anyways, I just met him at the, I met him. My question is, why is the line on the left? What's up with his face? Is he's reacting to the camera? He's got Lyme disease and he's getting facial paralysis.

He's snarling it off the actual cats. I read in the description of it in the auction site, or I guess on his site, that he saw the mounts of the cats and didn't think they were shot. good enough shape. Yeah. So he visualized sort of the spirit of the cats.

Well, other cats. If I'm remembering correctly, it was two males that for some reason didn't have mains. Yeah. And they say that they weren't getting any play. Mm-hmm. Started focusing on people. 140 people.

Teddy Roosevelt thought it was a cool story. Oh, anyways, Banavich meat eat, man eaters of Savo, T-S-A-V-O. That is a patent. that's a painting I'd like to wake up that every day if I brought that painting home and I was like What do you like about it? The foot

The foot Okay, that's what I thought The foot It's very The human foot The human foot Yeah the foot is I'm no painter

I feel like feet are hard I feel like he should have got a little thigh bone in the middle of the meat there No dude you can't over in the ham See if I was drunk Here's why that painting is good If I knew how to paint And I was painting that

I'd have a whole pile of dead guy I mean, I'd overdo it. I'd overdo it. There'd be like dudes parts everywhere and everything, you know? The artistry is in the restraint. Oh, yeah, no, it takes you. That's what makes him good is he knows not to have a whole pile of guys. The first time I looked at it, I didn't see the foot.

Yeah, it takes you 30 seconds or a minute. That's why he's a painter and I'm not. Yeah, I'm not. You should commission him to do something for you. But either the human was small or those cats were just giant. Oh, they're big, dude. Those things are big. From what I understand, I think they're taxidermied at the field museum in Chicago.

Yeah, but I think that they're not in great shape. Yeah. That's a pain. Yeah. I would have had all 140 people piled up and like, I was just gone overboard. Yeah, I would have gone over with an actual crown on his head. And no one about my painting, man, but that painting, because you look at it and also you're like, oh, my God, there's a foot in there. And it's a good foot.

Yeah. It's a great foot. You know, David Foster, the writer David Foster Wallace once wrote a piece about he profiled. He profiled David Lynch. And in his discussion of David Lynch, he was talking about Quentin Tarantino. And he's talking about Tarantino's famous scene from Reservoir Dogs where a guy gets his ear cut off. And he's talking about David Lynch's famous scene where a man finally. in ear.

And he said the difference between David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino, Quentin Tarantino is interested in an ear getting cut off. David Lynch is interested in the ear. So it's just like a difference. That's me and that painter. Yeah. You know. Yanni.

Hmm. Oh. What do I want need to talk about? My volleyball tournament? No. Oh, the giveaway. Please. Oh, the giveaway.

Your name is next to this. Down at the real outline. We'll give you a minute. Randall go, Do you know about this, Yanni? Never mind. The website giveaway?

We can do it quickly. Yeah, you can write a review on any turkey recipe. That one, that's what are you talking about? Yeah, On the Meteor.com. And then you're entered to win a wild and a whole cookbook. Easy peasy.

But you got to go, you got to go make the recipe if you're going to do a good job at doing this. Oh, yeah. Don't, don't, don't, don't treat yourself. Don't just phone it in, dude. Yeah. Yeah, but chance to win Wild Hole Cookbook when you go and do a deal. Okay, now Randall's got to plug something. All right. I need to plug this for my dear friend Kevin Montief. If he's been on the podcast twice.

Correct. Most recently, maybe last year. So he's a biologist at the University of Wyoming, teaches wildlife science. And he's got a research. He calls it the Monteth shop. It's like a research lab where they do all kinds of stuff on what we think of as big game, you know, like elk, deer, moose, antelope. They do a lot of migration research and it's like very applied science. So they're doing a fundraiser banquet that's this coming weekend. If you're listening to this one, the show drops April 11th, it's in Laramie. It's called Echoes of the Tracks and it's their annual fundraising event. Randy Newberg will be there. He's speaking and they've still got tickets available. So if you are in the Laramie area, go to Monteithshop.org. And then there's a little tab that says connect and you'll see echoes of the tracks.

Or if you just Google Montief, Echoes of the tracks, you can find all the info there. And then they also are doing a raffle with Muley Fanatic Foundation for a Wyoming commissioner's license. So that is a commissioner's license allows you to hunt. hunt deer, antelope, or elk. You pick a species in any unit that's open to hunting. So, um, well, they got their hands on. That's good. Yeah. Wyoming, Wyoming supports a lot of cool like conservation groups with those commissioners licenses. So there's, this is called the seven, seven two two zero raffle, the 7220 raffle. If you Google that, you'll find it. Um, and again, they're drawing it the night of the banquet April 11th. So get online and, and just you can Google

7-2-20 raffle and get yourself in there. Get yourself in there and support wildlife and wildlife research. Another thing they focus heavily on at the Monteith shop is the role of prenatal and natal what's the word nutrition. Yeah. Let me back that up. They do a lot of work around how, let's just, Just look at it just strictly from antlers.

When you see a big buck, they've done a lot of work in exploring and explaining how that big buck, in some ways his bigness was determined while he was in the womb. The way in which cow elk, mule deer doze, the condition they're in as they're carrying their baby, says as much or more about the outcome of that baby than anything that happens in its own life. And you can also say a lot about the land that they're living on, right?

How productive that landscape is. Those are phenomenal episodes. And also talks a lot about when we say an area has, when there's an area that produces a lot of big bulls or a lot of big bucks, hunters will say that area has great genetics. He would argue, maybe. I can tell you what it has for sure, though, is great nutrition. Yeah.

And low stress. Fat mothers. You know, low stress, great nutrition. It's not a genetics thing. Yeah. So check out, again, Monty Shop.org. And you can find the link there for the, for the event, Echoes of the Tracks. And then you can also find this raffle.

But April 11th, this is a job, right? There's only 750 tickets. Yeah. But pretty much going to win it for sure. Yeah. They've got, there are quite a few for sales. So your odds will probably be bad. better than that.

Better than one in $750. How much they cost? 100 bucks. Or $300 for $5. Really? Something like that. Yep. Remind me after the show and I get in on that.

I win that sucker. Let's all get in on it. All right, for corrections. Isn't there one more thing to talk about? Nothing I'm aware of. Yeah. Oh.

Yeah. Just minutes ago. Yeah. You know how hot and fresh my cat update was? Yep. Carrying that cat trap. This is even hotter and fresher because just minutes ago, we wrapped our first so

Doug Duren been on the show many times Doug is behind building a new organization called Sharing the Land I'll be talking about this a lot more coming up sharing the land is an organization that creates that pairs access seekers with landowners

on the promise of the access seekers doing work conservation work whatever kind of things need to be done on the land so it's not a cash exchange that happens but it's a a work that happens um it could be any number the access seekers can come many forms fishermen hunters they've even had an access seeker who's looking for a great place to walk a dog and then they got a lot of landowners they're looking to have certain kinds of projects

taking care of on their place it's growing um and we just had the very first just minutes ago uh it became officially a non-profit all incorporated and everything i'm on the board and we just at our first board meeting. But we're telling a lot more about that coming up. Well, you should at least tell people how, like, give them a website to go to if they're interested in. Type up sharing the land. Yeah.

Go dig up. Go dig up on sharing the land. We got all kinds of ideas we're going to do to make that organization. What kind of works, Doug, make your kids do to hunt turkeys? He's already told me what they got to do this year. He's doing like a grasslands, like sort of like a Savannah restoration kind of deal. And they got to work on that this year. In the past, they've had to burn.

Burn projects, all kinds of things he puts them doing. So this week, there are some streamside stuff, but this year it's working on his open lands area. 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. 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. All right, everybody, if you're getting fired, up for spring turkey season. You're going to want to hear this. Man, I'm telling you I'm fired up. Well, anyway, right now we're running the ultimate spring turkey giveaway and it's packed with over $13,000 in prizes, including an incredible turkey hunting experience, gear from Sig, a shotgun from Bonelli, a $1,000 gift card from First Light, and a whole

big pile of gear from other partner brands. One lucky winner is going to receive a spring 2007 Rio Grande Turkey Hunt. in the Texas Hill Country for you and two of your buddies or family members. Brought to you by Bird Dog. And during the giveaway, the more you spend at First Light, Phelps game calls, FHF gear, and the Me Eaters Store, the more entries you'll earn for a chance to win the entire prize package. Getting entered is easy. Just head over to the First Light contest page at firstlight.com.

Fill out the entry form and you're in. Remember, for every 25 bucks you spend, you get 10. additional entries. One winner will be selected to win the whole damn prize pack. But don't wait around. The giveaway ends one minute before midnight on Monday, April 13th, 2002, 26. So you got all day that day.

But it ends right before midnight. Gobble, gobble, gobble. So this week, corrections. Ready, Phil? Corrections! Corrections! Okay, all you bootwheres out there, sorry. This week, the winner,

gets this. This week on corrections, the corrections winner gets a Moltery Edge 3 Pro Trail camera. Not just that. A one-year subscription. So you get a cellular camera

and a one-year subscription. So you can run your camera, watch stuff, get your great pictures. I would advise you go set it by a beaver. Damn, that's what I like doing a bunch. But you put it, put a word hell you want. Yon is like setting it so it doesn't take pictures of anything but deer and turkeys.

No, because he sends me pictures of Bobcats and Fishers. I heard him talking about it. It depends on the camera location. We have a lot of them set up. We set one out for Bobcast recently and boy, we've got everything but down in Texas. You can believe the stuff that walks by there, but no Bobcats. Did you see any pictures in me? No, I looked. We also have a little problem. We lost the camera. we waypointed where we like way pointed where we wanted to put it based off some information we had yeah and so we waypointed where then we changed our mind and put it somewhere else didn't update the waypoint so I'm like hey on you go get my cameras over at this waypoint and

yeah he goes he's like definitely no camera he says me a picture and I'm like send me a picture of what's looking at and this is grass there's like one skinny little mesquite and I look at it I look around. I go, oh, there's that skinny little mosquito. I walk over there. I'm looking for the camera. I'm like, no, dang. I'll kind of look back.

I'm like, oh, there's that mosquito. I walk over there 10 yards. And then I see 10 other mesquites that look just like it. I thought, all right. So after he searched, I went in to see if I had any videos of him walking around. And I hate to tell you we're in close. I did not catch you looking about. We gave him a college try.

You're getting pictures from the camera that you don't know where it's at. Yeah. Boy, that's going to be a bomb. It's going to be hard to find, dude. But, hold on, I thought that now, it depends on which model it is, but some of them are GPS enabled. Oh, yeah. You know what?

Why didn't we think of that when you were down there? Well, it's not really my problem. He's been here. Yeah, he was acting a little bit like he wasn't going to spend too much time on that issue either. We'll find it. Yeah, we'll use that. This camera does have GPS.

Oh. So. All right. Sweet. Plus one year subscription. You'll be a little. up and running. Send us some cool pictures if you win. Okay. First off, oh, you know what we wrote in.

Okay. Is this a correction? You can ignore it. This thing about the goats? No, basically like about 25 to 30% plus of the corrections came in, commenting on your reading the numbers. Oh, oh, like that they don't like it when you say 110,000? No. No, it was like, you like when you write a check? No, it was like you, apparently you said, because I didn't go back to listen, $110,795,000. Like you said thousand twice.

So we've got so many nitpickers out there. We brought around ourselves. You know. That was like the largest number of corrections were for that. Okay. So we got millions of corrections. We picked out three that we like. One is about how Randall don't know sports.

Sure. Yeah, there are a lot of these. Got a lot of messages, the team here that answers these emails forward quite a number of these to me. So in episode 853, I interviewed Will Cheddar from the University of Michigan basketball team, and afterwards is sort of a throwaway line, just to gas up, a friend of the program, I said, he's the hardest fisherman in college sports or hardest fishing dude in college sports, something like that. Which is very subjective. Very subjective.

I'll note when you say he's the coolest guy in town, no one turns to you and says, have you met everybody in town? You know, so as soon as I said that, actually this went through my head that there are college fishing teams. Yeah,

and I chimed in and agreed with you, but I don't know what I'm talking about. And then I didn't know what else to say other than, yeah, that's what I agree with. So anyway, but with this email from late, from Oklahoma got selected as the most

I think articulate and well-supported one. There are a lot of them that accused me of insulting college bass fishing teams. Without even bringing them up. Yeah, yeah. One accused me of both omitting it and dismissing it, which I think is a contradiction in terms, or overlooking it and dismissing it.

So anyway, with the demands of tournament, Leighton writes, with the demands of tournament play, regular season games, practices in schoolwork, I respectfully disagree that Will can claim this title. Dedicated college bass fishing athletes spend far more time on the water as a part of their actual sport. For instance, athletes like Garrett Smith of Lander University and his teammate Andrew Blanton have won back-to-back Strike King Bass Master College National Championships. College Base teams compete in multiple events per season across the Bassmaster College

series with tournaments often spanning two days plus official practice periods. Many teams fish 10 to 15 or more events annually, in addition to countless hours of off-season practice, scouting, and travel, while maintaining full academic schedules. This level of on-the-water commitment easily surpasses what a student athlete in another sport, even one who fishes recreationally as much as will can log. These college anglers truly embody what it means to be the hardest fishers in college sports. Keep up the great work on the podcast. I enjoyed every week.

I don't know now. I kind of flip-flopped on this one. You thought it was... Well, where did you start? You were wrong. but I'm like, these guys are just in it for the money. They're into for the money, dude. If someone, I mean,

cheddar dudes in it for the love, you know? I'm well aware of, I'm well aware of college bass fishing competitions. When we were in Arbor and met Will, we went fishing with the University of Michigan fishing team. Will connected us with them because he fishes with those guys. Because he fished that hard. Harder than they do.

Yeah. Well, yeah, that's, that's, that's really what I intended to make. on this podcast was just a solid claim that Will fish is harder than anyone instead of just sort of being a throwaway line. But in any event, yeah, as soon as I said this and we got like 30 seconds past it

in the in the podcast, I thought, oh, maybe I should have said something about college bass fishing there as well. But I didn't want to bring it back up. And if someone in the room had said, Randall, you're forgetting about college bass fishing, I wouldn't have fought them on it.

I would have just said, you know what? You're right. but what I'm interested in highlighting is that a guy who's playing for the national championship tonight went fishing in between winning an elite eight game and winning a final four game you know like I think it's I just meant to highlight that it's cool that he's fishing and I also don't think I'm not voting for this guy I don't think that and this is this is nothing against like my pushback here is nothing against college bass fishing anglers I won't I don't want that to be misconstrued but like But I don't think the time on the water is a measure of how hard one fishes. I think a retired dentist who fishes every single day of his life is not necessarily a harder guy, a harder angler than like somebody who works a 10-hour shift and fishes two hours on the way home every single day.

Like I think there's some balance. I think like when I talk about someone who hunts or fish is hard, I think about how they commit to it within the brink. broader responsibilities of their lives. So that's... So you don't stay incorrected? No, I think it's a fine correction to highlight that there's competitive college bass fishing out there. But do they fish?

I don't push back against that. But I think like taking... Yeah, like, and Will has never claimed to be the hardest fishing guy. Again, this was just a throwaway line. So I stand corrected. But... But not. But not fully.

Yeah, what you're doing is you're doing one of those I like it too I like to do this too You're saying Okay, so I'm wrong But am I right? Well, what I'm saying is like This you know what I meant to say

Here I'm just meaning to highlight someone who excels In one area of life also being super passionately committed to fishing Yep Let's say there's a guy that works 23 And I think as a community we should celebrate that Listen to his guy that works 23 hours a day.

Yeah. He works a 23-hour shift seven days a week. Fish is one minute. And then when he has an hour, when his shift ends, his shift ends at 10 p.m. Yeah. And he's due back at 11 p.m. A lot of guys are going to go home and get like a check in on their wife, good bite, take a nap. He goes out to the pond out back and just pounds water.

Yeah. For one hour. And I'm like, that's the hardest fishing man out there. These guys would be like, who do, do, there's a professional bass fisherman. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I,

and I believe it's not what I meant, and that's truly like I 100% stand on that. Like, I don't think time on the water is the only measure of, of how hard somebody fishes bass. How hard is that? If they're fishing yellow perch or something, but they're fishing bass. Yeah.

You could make the argument, too, that cheddar's all about doing it for the love of it. These other guys are in it. because these are big, big, big, big money college bass guys. I don't want to make any other. I don't want to make any aspersions or put anything else out there in the world that could be taken the wrong way. Brody thinks the corrections is taking the whole show over. It is.

All right, number two correction. All right, here's a good one. For example. This is corrected. Oh, this is correct to me. I screwed up. Well, or not? So in episode 857 at the end of Spencer,

segment about the super bloom in Death Valley, Steve makes the statement that somewhere outside of Santiago, Chile is the driest place on Earth. I believe the area he is referring to is the Atacama Desert. Correct. That's what we're referring to. He says, this has been referred to as the driest place on Earth, but that statement comes with an asterisk. Asterisk.

I never say the ass. Because the full story is, it is the driest. this is a good correction. It's the driest non-polar desert on Earth. They base the dryness of an area on its availability of liquid water. And there is a place that has less. And the Atacama, the average annual rainfall is about 15 millimeters, with some areas receiving only one to three millimeters of water.

annual precipitation, wow, annual rainfall. Meanwhile, the McMurdo dry valleys of Antarctica receive anywhere from 5 to 100

millimeters per year, but that precipitation falls strictly as snowfall. Now, once you take into account the other factors such as temperature and humidity, that's when it becomes more clear. The extreme cold and strong winds

that sweep most snowfall that does occur, leave no trace of water left. Some areas within the valleys have not seen liquid water in over two million years. On the flip side, the Atacama Desert also has the benefit of common chaka or coastal fog, adding a little humidity to the area. So in short, while the Atacama Desert receives less precipitation than almost anywhere on Earth, it is still not considered the driest place on earth. That belongs, that title belongs

to the McMurdo Dry Valleys. And then he has a nitpick where I say just outside of Santiago, Chile, and he points out that this is actually 500 miles away. Whatever. Good correction. That's a great correction. It is.

He didn't lay out his credentials. Two million years. Go on. Oh, I got to talk about another dry place since Spencer's not here. This is real bad on Spencer. It looks real bad for Spencer. This is bad mass, Spencer. Episode 857, Spencer was setting up a discussion for the Death Valley Superbloom.

And why is he rolling me into this? I don't know why. I'm going to take you out of it because you didn't have nothing to do with this. This was Spencer's deal, not Steve's. And Spencer mentioned that Death Valley was the former site of a lake. And he also mentioned at one point the lake used to be 7,000 feet deep, which is a over a mile deep. Now this guy does a big old swing here and really gets into his credentials. This is where, this is like you can't, like we can't argue with this guy after you read this part.

As a geologist who studied the basin and range during my graduate years and currently studies Pleisocene geology in the upper Midwest, I knew immediately that this was right for a correction. So don't mess with this guy. Yes, there was a lake that existed across much of Death Valley during the Pleistocene based on its hydrology and lack of outflow. That's where Steve and I checked in, I think, was that it's a dead end. Yeah, but I don't know what I'm talking about. Dead end basin. However, that lake was never at 7,000 feet deep, even at its maximum.

The lake that was referred to in the discussion is called Lake Manly. And it is still called that today when water accumulates in bad water basin. Core records and age dating from the Lowenstein. That's a period of time. Do you need to explain that? No, that's he's citing a journal. Oh, from Lowenstein. Recognize two major periods of time when Death Valley had a perennial lake, the earliest was 186 to 120,000 years ago.

And the latest was 35,000 to 10,000 years ago, both periods where the climate was very cool and wet. The period from 186,000 to 120,000 years ago is believed to be when Lake Manley was at its largest and deepest extent at 335,000. meters or 1,099 feet. While it is difficult to estimate the true depth of Lake Manley at its largest extent, it was definitely not 7,000 feet deep at any point. Big old correction, right? Spencer's face. Stumped right to his face.

About 6,000 feet off, Spencer. You could still deep drop that lake. Oh, yeah. That's like electric real. That's like electric real country. No one wants to do that without electric real. It's probably why Spencer's not here today. I think he just meant you could deep drop it.

Yeah. I think that's funny that Corinne laughed at your deep drop joke. Yeah, because we're going to do a whole... We're going to do a whole show, Deep Drop Boys. And then they were going to do a whole, like, music video. Dude, me and Seth have a show, we're going to go to the deepest places on that. Yeah, just it was an idea. We just haven't gotten to going yet, looking for a sponsor.

You're going to go to the deepest places on earth and lower down a jig or like a bait. Mariana's trench. And people just tune in to see if we catch something. Now you've expanded it. to the world? I'm intrigued. Yeah. You know that trend? It's like, what is it, Norwegian Slow TV? That's what yours.

Oh, because the first three episodes, is it going to be going down? No, that's the best idea. Like, we've been talking about doing some kind of slow TV from media. It's basically just a show called, do we have enough line? A lot of episodes, you just don't have enough line. Okay, so the

Maltry Trail camera, one year subscription, get all kinds of crazy photos you can send us. Hardest Angler in college sports. How many votes? Zero. Dryest place on earth. Four votes.

It's already decided, but just for the hell of it. Death Valley. Gets two votes. You know, I might change my vote. No, no, no. Here's a question. If someone is like hyper-credentialed versus if it's if the audience member is a lay person who gets interested and inspired to do research.

Like, does that weigh how you assess the correction? I don't think it should weigh. That'd be like picking your kid to win something. I just went based on the degree of the mistake. Just seemed more extreme than your mistake. Real extreme. And a goofs on Spencer, so I like it. But you were on the wrong continent.

Yeah. No, that's true. I was off. You were more than 6,000 feet off. We learned a lot from both. They were both good corrections. And there at a common dude had the double whammy where I also said it was just for, I don't know why. I said it was just outside of the last.

He had a double whammy. He could have won just off that. Anytime you can tell me something about Antarctica, I'm listening. Yeah, that was a great follow-up fact. Yanni. Seal finger. Oh, wait. So thanks Gabe.

So number two wins. Do we name their names? Because now people are going to be, hey, I can borrow your trail jam. Okay, Phil can bleep that out. I heard the good news. It's a late record. Let's see if I'm going to want to put their cameras under his membership. If I put my cameras under your deal, because you got the free of my spot.

If you don't have a spot of that camera, I do. Sealfinger, in case you guys were still interested in that. This fellow wrote in to say that his dad's hand made the news show. he was really excited. Turns out that his dad has what he thinks is like the most, um, maybe researched, uh,

case of seal finger ever. And the pictures that were taken are like constantly getting used on the internet. Just happen to be the one of the, that Corinne found or I don't know who found it. One of us found it. Yeah, we pulled up some random seal finger photo. He's listening and he's like, that sounds like my dad's hand.

Yeah. And, uh, yeah, so he sent in. They were very excited that their family is now part of, uh, the meat eater universe. Randall highlighted this piece

in his letter that we all laughed about. He writes, I called dad and told him about it. He couldn't laugh that hard because he had just broken his ribs from a snowmobiling mishap. Later that day, he also lit his hair on fire

using a friend's propane stove, which I have a video of. This fellow's injury prone is what they call that. But, Small world's part of his story, though, is he's like in the hospital getting ready to get surgery done on his hand. And the nurse is checking on him, seeing that it's getting worse. And she calls the doctor on call and explains the situation. And the doc goes, hey, ask the guy

if he's been seal hunting lately. And he replies, yes, I have. And he goes, oh, I'll be right down with the proper antibiotics. And so instead of having to have surgery, they just hit him with the proper antibiotics and fixed him right up. So, yeah, I don't know. moral of story is there it's like the more you know right because uh yeah saved him from having surgery just by being able to be like yeah surgery you you have a little card in your wallet right that kind of is supposed to act in that same way but i'm just reading another thing he's got here this is a rich letter yeah he says a few years later a friend was telling someone about the incident and searched it online there it was dad's hand unmistakable because he had a small

tattoo dot between his thumb and index. That was a test tattoo. So he at one point did a test tattoo to see about getting a tattoo and didn't, but he still has the dot from the test. Well, it was a test tattoo from one he was going to do himself with pen ink and a needle. Yeah. That's the good part. He signs off by saying, as they do in Newfoundland, long may your big jib draw.

which is a traditional Newfoundland toast and saying that means may the wind always be in your sails. Which Steve, in this case, you guys weren't here before we were recording but we had a conversation about how some sayings don't translate well because they lose sort of their flow

or their rhythm or you had other terms for it. But I feel like this one is actually better by saying when you say, may the wind always be in your sales versus long make your big jib drop. That just doesn't roll off my tongue. Well, okay, you're right, but there's, it's not just saying.

What I was trying to explain is, I was like, we have this saying, a stitch in time saves nine. And there's like, there's a lyrical quality to it and a rhyme. Yeah. So if some hoser in like Italy is saying in America, they have a saying. And he does the saying in Italian, but it loses its rhyme equality. And maybe it's not an efficient transfer of words. And so it winds up being clunky. and they'd go like, well, that doesn't sound like a great saying,

because they're losing the fact that ours is rhymy and quick. If you stitch it now, you may save yourself upwards of eight to nine stitches over a longer duration of time. Correct. And they'd be like, that doesn't sound like a great saying. Or there's this, I've never gone and fact check this, but some of the tribes on the Colombian plateau had a word for the Bitterroot Mountains. and it was like

the spine of the bitter roots I never fact checked as I just been told us the spine of the bitter roots they would talk about that and it would say that that marked the land beyond which there are no salmon

but I feel like it's like when we do that with native expressions it probably it just takes out a very different tonality and maybe in their languages it was just it wasn't it didn't have that like sounds like someone translating

like profound yeah yeah the land beyond which there are no salmon. It might have just been some little, you know, something that was... Don't bother going over there. Yeah, like more quick, you know. That's all.

Here's the etiquette question. Are we good on those? We're good. Long may your big jib draw. What was the other saying you were just hitting us with, Yanni? May you have the journey you prepared for? That's a good one.

May you have the race that you prepared for. No, no. Okay. This is coming in a guy that says he lives in a small city in central Nebraska. This is an adequate question. Ediquette. Everybody pay attention.

It's not a tourniquet. It's an etiquette question. I have an adequate question for you guys that I've been wrestling with over the past few days. He just recently got back into archery. He shoots at his city's public outdoor archery range. He says this past week, he missed a shot low on one of the targets. He's the only one at the range. So he goes out there and starts looking for his.

lost arrow. He looks for 30 minutes. During that time, he finds seven arrows, none of which were his own. He gives up for the day. But then later remembers a trick from one of the hot tip-offs from the late radio live show. We could pick those hot tip-ups off. He remembers a tip where a guy says, hey, if you're trying to find arrows, wait till night and use a black light to find your arrows. That was a hot tip. He remembers hearing this hot tip about using a black light to find your arrow. So he went and bought a black light. Goes back out to the range after dark.

Found his arrow in under a minute. Kept looking around and found a dozen arrows. Here's the question. Are these his? Is it keepsies? Is it finders, keepers, losers, weepers? or should he go set them all out hoping that the right people come find them?

This is a legit question. This is a great question. I know exactly how I would handle it. I think you'd probably take them and put them a little bucket at the range and be like, are these yours? No, dude, because they're going to get stolen by it. No.

Listen. Other people are going to steal them. I think it's fine. I think both are correct. In this case, I'm saying finders, keepers, only because it's a public range. and I'm sure

well okay I'm back to it I agree with bro I think I think you put up a sign at the range it says lose narrow text me a description and I'll see if I have it oh there you go you can do this pick the real two or three sweet ones out and then put the beat up I mean I think if he says that out of those 20

that he found four of them are the right size weight length which you better check on the spine too but he says that they were would work great in a setup. I think that, yes, those people that lost their arrows could have done what he did and found their arrows. They didn't. They've, like, assumed the loss.

Now, is it a nice thing to do? Just put them in a bucket and say, hey, found a bunch of arrows for you guys? Sure. But, like, I wouldn't feel bad if he, if he, I wouldn't be like, oh, dude, you're an asshole for taking those four arrows. If they're getting used, that's better than being in the ground. My, my red line would be if you're checking. every week and throwing them up on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace.

Yeah. My red line would be like if this becomes a systematic way of acquiring arrows that you can then resell. Yeah. This guy says he only has four or five of his own arrows. So four more would really help him out. It double his quiver. Yeah.

It's a tough one. He says he's going to bring him back. He says when I lose the arrow, I just figure it's gone. Because on the other hand, if I went down to shoot, and there's my arrow sitting there next to the deal. It does say a lot about kind of the throwaway culture that we're comfortable with, too. It's kind of a bummer. Yeah, but you never know.

There could be like, there could be a guy that zipped an arrow down there, and then he looked for for five minutes, had to go to something and thought, I'm going to come back later, and you don't want to deprive that guy of the satisfaction of finding his arrow. Yeah. 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. 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 IHeart Radio app. All right, everybody, if you're getting fired up for spring turkey season, you're going to want to hear this. Man, I'm telling you, I'm fired up. Well, anyway, right now, we're running the ultimate spring turkey giveaway, and it's packed with over $13,000 in prizes, including an incredible turkey hunting

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Fill out the entry form and you're in. Remember, for every 25 bucks you spend, you get 10 additional entries. One winner will be selected to win the whole damn prize pack. But don't wait around. The giveaway ends one minute before midnight on Monday, April 13th, 2000, So you got all day that day. But it ends right before midnight. Gobble, gobble.

Okay, more in the news. This is what we talked about. We've talked about this a bunch of times over the years, but we've talked a lot about, I mean, just throughout the history, the long, long history of this podcast. We have a number of times brought up issues about, like cue the controversy drum roll,

issues about the border wall. Okay. Here's the border wall between us of Mexico. here's what this always gets to be this is why this is always a touchy subject on the show sort of our promise to listeners on the show is we try to just stick to issues

that matter to hunters, anglers, outdoor enthusiasts, right, wildlife enthusiasts, we try to talk about issues that pertain to those areas and leave out the other parts of the world. Like you might notice here on the news show, how could we call this the news show?

one the biggest thing in the news is the war in Iran. Why are they not, if they're covering the news, they should be covering that. Well, because that's not our area. That's not our area. It's not our area of expertise.

Where this becomes problematic is because some issues like, well, to use the wall in it. No. Some issues sit on a nice edge. Well, the Iran thing did overlap a little bit with tungsten, for example. And then we appropriately covered that.

Great point. Like tungsten. and tungsten is used in munitions it's used in killing turkeys so there's a like they they collide uh no area do they collide more though in discussions about the border wall when we talked about the idea of an

impenetrable physical barrier between the US and Mexico we have often brought up what does this mean for wildlife movements what does it mean for wildlife movements and then people will write in I'll be real mad and I'll be like I'm never listening

again you've never lost your job to an illegal immigrant, right? And I'm like, I wasn't talking about that. I was sticking to the part of this that is relevant to what we talk about when we do the show. If you were over for dinner, I would love to talk to you about the illegal immigration crisis of a few years back. I would love to talk to you about that at my house. That's not what I'm going to talk about here. We talk about the wall in terms of wildlife movements and whether you think that we should build a a mile high, 100-yard thick wall from

coast to from the Gulf to the Pacific or whatever. That's great. If that's what you believe, you have to hold in your head that that would have implications for wildlife. Meaning, this is the way I've used to explain this before. Let's say you're sitting around and you're debating whether or not

It's a good idea that the family go on a family vacation this year, right? And you're factoring all the things in, time off work, maybe some family obligations you should be taken care of, what it's going to cost, right? You factor all these things in and maybe you decide, you know what, all things considered, we're still going to go on vacation. So you could think about all this wildlife issues and be like,

I've considered all these wildlife issues, that Jaguars won't ever repopulate the U.S. They're not going to be able to come back into Arizona ever. There's some free-ranging buffalo herds of Mexico that would never cross and meel deer, whatever. You could be like, I understand all that. I'm wide-eyed.

I still want the biggest wall in the world. I'd be like, cool, glad you thought about everything and came to your conclusion. So, in talking about this, that's how we've discussed the wall. Well, right now it's kind of a weird twist because they keep, the feds have this, the,

this map they keep putting up, showing like what kinds of barriers they're going to use along the border. And you can have electronic barriers, which is basically surveillance equipment. You could have a personnel barrier, which is just a heightened presence of, custom and border patrol,

individuals on the landscape, and you have a physical wall barrier. Big old shitstorm down in the big bend area, because of whether, not, they're going to want to run the border wall along the border of Big Ben National Park. And this is one of those weird ones where you get like a real nimbie component. And it has hit, it has come up against some staunch opposition from, this is one of those

stories where the opposition comes from an unlikely place. We're ranchers in the area, hunting guides in the area, river rat, like river users in the area are like there ain't no need for a wall here there's no one down here anyways it's kind of like not so much that's coming from an unlikely place as much as it is like unlikely people partnering up too yeah like the the thing we saw with pebble mine right yep so uh top because here for instance like picture you got like big horns black bears deer relying on movements and river access right So there's just been a lot of a lot of debate, some protesting, various things going on about are they going to do this down in this little,

this extremely remote area. And there's some statistics coming out of this. So this is like a guy that wrote, a listener wrote into us about this as well. The Big Ben sector, okay. in 2003, the Big Bend sector was running 1,500 immigration encounters per month. Okay. The El Paso, so 1,500 encounters per month in the Big Bend area.

So what do you compare that to? Let's say El Paso. El Paso was running 50,000 immigration encounters per month in the El Paso sector. And then, you know, I mean, that stuff is just drop, when the Trump administration came in, like, that stuff is just dropped off incredibly quickly. So right now, 2025, they've reduced the number of apprehensions by 74%. So they were at 1,500 immigration encounters per month in 23. It's down 74% today. And so people are saying, it's just there's no need to,

Like in a case like this in the big band area, when you weigh the wildlife risk against the illegal immigration risk, it doesn't weigh out. And I think that's what some listeners are arguing. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah. There are also other techniques like sky surveillance, drones, etc. that are deployed that have seemed to be pretty effective. Yeah, the electronic wall. Right.

replacing with the electronic wall surveillance issues he has an interesting quote in an inner one of the guys that wrote it has an interesting observation a little bit's incendiary so i'm not going to get into it but he's talking about separating man from nature he says the tower of babble i'm not going to read this quote he takes a he takes he swings for the stow what's that expression shoots for the stars in the end. Swings for the fences. Swings for the fences in that one. But an interesting deal. And so people in this area, I think it's not going to happen.

If I crystal ball it, I think they're not going to do the wall there. But apparently you can go to this site and like refresh on it and see this like ever-changing plans about what kind of where the wall is going to be constructed. Yeah. And here's here's one statistic that the 510 miles in this region. the border patrol is recorded an average of six crossings a day in this region. Okay. So like it's it's the least active. The Republican sheriff of Terrell County says this is the least active sector of the whole border.

And you're talking about building a wall through a national park. What does that sheriff think about it? He is apparently not. I mean, he seems to concede that it's not necessary. I don't want to speak beyond what he's quoted is here, but he's a border patrol veteran and. Republican sheriff and he says it's the least active sector along the whole border. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. So I'd like to dig in more on this with like an interview subject at some point. Just the wall. The wall at this point or in other states. Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah, from a wild life perspective. Yeah. From a wild life perspective.

Yeah. We had a story like that we didn't report on. You're right. We had a story we didn't report on about implications for desert big horns. Yeah. In California. Yeah. And if there is a way,

to weigh, I feel like if there is a way to weigh electronic surveillance and other methods, like other methods that are maybe, um, faster, less disruptive, more effective, sometimes probably less expensive, whatever to do things electronically and achieve the same goal. It might want to be in the decision just gets made that way. I mean, just look at like, I mean, you know, I don't need to point it out. The advancements in surveillance through drones. That's what I was going to like AI and drones. And then AI work to weed out like to weed out false hits where it's like, you know, that's a deer.

That's whatever. That's whatever. That's a human. Yeah. You know, um, could wind up being that it just becomes a, it comes like a, that the, the idea of a wall in some of these areas becomes, it's just an obsolete notion. Because there's better ways of accomplishing the same thing. Yeah. The, when me and, uh, Yanni there down hunting, uh, we're often looking at those big blimps.

Remember guys saying that blimp. that blimp counting a hair on your head right now. All right, Randall, set up your interview. Yeah, so we've got another interview from the Meat Eat Eaters Sports Desk. We talked to Brian Harmon, a former podcast guest, former trivia contestant. The Butcher. Brian, the Butcher, Harmon. And he is headed to Augusta, Georgia, this week to play in the Masters.

And so that's Thursday, April 9th to Sunday, April 12th. And so Phil, why don't you play the interview? Welcome back to the Meteor News Sports Desk. I'm your host, Randall Williams, joined today by Brian Harman, four-time PGA tour winner and the 2023 winner of the Open Championship and a contestant in Meteor trivia episode 495. Brian, it's great to have you. Thanks for having me. Well, the Masters tease off on April 9th at Augusta National. As we all know, it's a tradition unlike any other. How's your freezer looking right now? It's a little bear.

We had a pretty lean deer season, but we killed us, killed a few turkeys last couple weeks. So we're working our way back up. We're about to be fishing soon. I was going to see, supplementing that at all with some fish. I know your big spear fisherman. Yeah, we got to catch some this summer. We've got to catch some flounder.

We've got a really good triple-tail run around St. Simon, so hopefully it'll get some. Very nice. Now, picture this scenario. Sunday afternoon at Augusta, everything's going your way. You're on the back nine and in contention for the win. Your family's cheering you on. Now picture this entirely unrelated scenario.

It's the third week of October. Tomorrow morning, you've got a pretty much guaranteed limit of wood ducks lined up. But there's also a pretty decent buck showing up on your trail camera. He wouldn't be your personal best, but maybe he's just smaller than your third best buck. Are you more excited to go to the tree stand or the duck blind that much? morning. Tree stand. Tree stand, huh? Mm-hmm.

The deer's calling your name. Are you still shooting fixed blades? Yes, I am. I did kill a buck with an expandable last year. Gotcha. And was that a conversion process? Are you sold now? Well, I killed two bucks. I killed two bucks with my bow last year, and I shot one with a fixed blade. And the exit wound was so tiny. I think I'd just gotten to where I'd worked on so much penetration with my arrow

that it's almost like it zips through our little white tails. I kind of had set up for elk and expandable on our bucks at home. The bucks we kill are probably only 170, 180 pounds maybe. Yeah. It's easy to chase your tail on bullets and arrows, you know? You can chase that dragon for a long time. Now, Brian, your PGA Tour website bio lists you as a left-handed golfer who does everything else right-handed. I've got two questions.

Are you left or right-eye dominant? And do you shoot a gun like a normal person or do you shoot it left-handed? I shoot a gun like a normal person. I'm left-eye dominant. So if I'm killing ducks, I've got both eyes open. But if I'm shooting for numbers trying to hit a bunch of skeet or something, something. I'll close my left half. Interesting. Interesting. Now, you're headed into Augusta as a former major champion. You know that course. You've contended there. But as best I can tell from a quick

Google search of the Georgia hunting regs, the masters in April falls smack dab in the middle of turkey season. So do you find it's more helpful to kill a turkey before Augusta? So you're coming into the tournament clear headed and focused? Or does postponing your gobbler hunt until after the drama of Sunday afternoon help keep that fire? your belly. You know, if I can kill some turkeys before, it tends to work out a whole lot better. My mind doesn't wonder nearly as much, but I'm very peculiar about my calendar this time of year. I might steal a day, Monday after Augusta. And then Georgia does great. We have a youth season. We had two weekends ago, so I take my boy. And then our opener was last weekend. We had a big time.

So I've done some turkey out, which has been really nice. Now, on the show recently, Spencer acknowledged that when he went to the Masters, he gobbled at you. And I believe that you conveyed to Steve or Corinne that you heard it and you looked. I heard him. And you knew it was him. It was not a turkey. It was not convincing.

Yeah. No, I could tell it was a man yelping at me for sure. But, yeah, you guys were kind of spot on about the wildlife at Augusta. Hugh and Farber. You're not even looking for anything interesting. I guess it's understandable. You just focus on playing golf. Sure.

It's a beautiful place. And if I wasn't sure that if I, you know, if you pull your phone out there, I'm not sure that they wouldn't just send an airstrike right where you were standing. But that Merlin app, I think Corinne was talking about, I use it all the time at home.

It's awesome. But I would love to just click that on in my bag and if I could find some, That's probably the one cell phone application that the master's rules did not have in mind when they banned all cell phones from the course. I think they're smart enough to only pipe in native birds. Gotcha. Well, Brian, should you walk away with the green jacket at the end of the weekend, you will be hosting next year's champions dinner. And I would like to ask you to make a hard commitment right now to the non-live audience of this pre-recorded segment.

will you serve meat you have personally killed and butchered at next year's champions dinner if you win in Augusta? Yeah, absolutely. What would you serve? Have you given any thought to that just in your daydreaming? I tell you what, what would be incredible? I think my favorite meal is the way that I like cooking elk tenderloin, which is nothing fancy. But if I were to get, if I were to win the Masters and killing elk this fall, man, to serve tenderloin. Now, I might have to get some buddies to donate some tenderloins so I can feed everybody.

Two tenderloins won't feed 20-something do, but that might make for a cool appetizer. Oh, yeah. Well, Brian, thanks so much for your time. Check Brian out, Plain and the Masters, Thursday, April 9th to Sunday, April 12th. Friend of the program, we appreciate you joining us, and good luck out there. Anytime, man. Love y'all. Yep, take care.

Another hell of a segment, Phil. You don't have to tell me, Randall. We wish Brian the best of luck. Yeah, yeah. That's the hardest hunting man in Georgia. I almost said, pull it. Pull it. We don't want any more corrections.

Hardest hunting man in the American South. Right there, ladies and gentlemen. Brian's a good sport. And he's a fan of the show, so it's good to chat with him. Do you remember we were golf with him that one time? And we were shooting at deer targets with golf ball. and he hit the deer he hit it oh he's good i couldn't believe it i wasn't there for that no he's he's i think he missed his first shot barely and then we had some 3d targets out and flop boom

hit the tar hit the deer with the golf ball he was good that dude was good with a golf club he's gonna win that whole thing i don't know anybody else down there yeah greg norman i don't know who he's playing again no not greg norman anymore that is a golf name though good job we could scratch off the list He's going to beat all those guys. I can tell you that much. Yeah, like you were saying earlier, it's a feat just to be in the tournament. Oh, yeah.

It's wild. Is that why Spencer's not here? Is he going to the Masters? He would probably. He's been. He's been. Oh, he said that he was watching Brian Harmon play one time and yelped at him. And he said that Brian Harmon looked,

And Brian Harmon said he does remember that. Well, you know that because we got to that in the interview, remember? When we just watched the prerecored second. To be clear, I asked about the interview. Yeah. I asked if it went well. Take that out, Phil, because it makes me look bad. We'll do.

Just look, I'm not vetting the material. 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 IHeart Radio app.

All right, everybody, if you're getting fired up for spring turkey season, you're going to want to hear this. Man, I'm telling you I'm fired up. Well, anyway, right now, we're running the ultimate spring turkey giveaway, and it's packed with over $13,000 in prizes, including an incredible turkey hunting experience, gear from Sig, a shotgun from Benelli, a $1,000,

gift card from First Light and a whole big pile of gear from other partner brands. One lucky winner is going to receive a spring 2007 Rio Grande Turkey Hunt in the Texas Hill Country for you and two of your buddies or family members. Brought to you by Bird Dog and during the giveaway, the more you spend at First Light, Phelps game calls, FHF gear, and the meat eater store, the more entries you'll earn for a chance to win the entire prize package. getting entered as easy. Just head over to the First Light contest page at firstlight.com.

Fill out the entry form in your inn. Remember, for every 25 bucks you spend, you get 10 additional entries. One winner will be selected to win the whole damn prize pack. But don't wait around. The giveaway ends one minute before midnight on Monday, April 13th, 2,026. So you got all day that day. But it ends right before midnight.

gobble, gobble. Catalan Island. Back to Catalina Island. I'm really not that interested in this story anymore, but here's where... No, it's... I'm saying that to say that... We've all said that. It was more...

It was hyped up. No, that gets the audience. He's like, why, why? Oh, okay. It was so hyped up by a lot of hunters. about saving these deer. And now I'm kind of like, I don't know.

We'll small population of these deer. Like, is it like on the grand scheme of things? And the other thing I keep coming back to is that if these deer are gone, no one's really losing like this great hunting opportunity because the hunting opportunity sucked beforehand. Everybody just complained about it, how poor it was, right? They made it very difficult for hunters to go there and have a good hunt,

et cetera. It's not a big buck factory where you're like, oh, I wish I could get on that island. Yeah. Like for the few locals that were, you know, being able to get some deer meat out of it, maybe, maybe those,

maybe white buffalo will hook them up. I think what the issue was is like, can you, can you, for people just tune in and now, can you do a recap? Just, yeah. Yeah, like there's an island.

There's an island. Like eight deer or 10 deer were brought there 100 years ago, roughly. And, uh, four hunting purposes. It turned into a population of about 2000.

The island itself, though, has never had any, like, large ungulates, any herbivores that lived on it. So all of the plant life that lives there can't withstand the pressure, supposedly, from these deer and the buffalo that live on this island as well. And we use the goats that used to live on the island. That's right. And so after a few years or, I don't know, many, many, a few decades of having a hunting program. that didn't reduce the population enough, the conservancy of this island that owns like 80% of the land on the island

has decided to just get rid of the deer altogether. Wrigley's the chewing gum people. That's right. Well, at some point in time, they were the chewing gum family. Yeah, so they had to go through a permit process with the state. Because again, these are, because there is,

they are deer, even though they live on private land, they are property of the people in the state. So they had to go through a permitting process with California Game of Fish to figure this out. But they've done it and they're moving forward and they hired.

No, no, because now with the setup I need to give my why. You're like, so you're saying you were interested in it, but the more you thought about it, it's not that many deer. It's not a historic population. It's not native range. It's not a great

hunting opportunity. So to you, it feels like the the hype has become bigger than the issue. Yeah. Okay. What I feel when I look at this is I see, what some people do is lost opportunity and a certain irony of the conservancy that holds the land saying, we've tried to control them through hunting, but it doesn't work.

So we need to bring in outside sharpshooters to kill them all. and then people just rightfully so saying you didn't try that you say you tried it but you never allowed hunters to try to participate you never gave hunters a chance to lower the numbers you blocked him every which way made it next to him possible claimed it didn't work and now you're bringing in outsiders to shoot them on leaving the rot I think that is that's the rub maybe oh yeah 100 percent and I still think that there's a bunch there's a bunch of underhanded deceitful you know like lying going on from this conservancy like they are not playing uh what's the saying

clean fair fair pool clean pool no dirty pool swimming in a dirty pool swinging for the fences shoot okay enter there's a new story yeah they're They've hired a company called White Buffalo. And White Buffalo had their website pulled up here. A lot of websites. Non-profit. Yeah, I've turned into it. We found out they were a non-profit.

Strange name for a wildlife eradication outfit. Yeah, I don't understand where that came from. But yeah, they do work all over the place, basically controlling animals to help bring back native landscapes. That's kind of that's like their basic deal. When looking at like what they offer for whitetail deer herd management, it's like artificial or not no, I'm trying to say it, not AI, but what's the opposite? Like basically contraception. Yeah.

They put them on birth control. They sharpshoot them or they have managed hunts, which I would assume that means that they sort of like bring in, you know, public hunters. but helped them, you know, do these talents and do them at a, you know, a higher rate to bring populations down. So it looks like they do great work. Their website was really clean and nice and it seems like, you know, they're probably a great hire for this, for this job. You think so? Can I just interject with the, the significance of the white buffalo? We probably talked about that before on the podcast, right?

We heard it from Taylor Keene. Yeah, it's like a significance to the Lakota people. It's a spiritually rich animal and planes, Negrith power. Yeah. So. There's also Uncle Ted's Great White Buffalo, which I was like an Apocalypse now when he plays that

song, you know, on his attack helicopters, when these guys are up in their choppers, maybe they play Uncle Ted's Great White Buffalo. There's also a... There's also a Charles Bronson movie where a white buffalo is kind of like almost like a Western horror movie where Charles Bronson is duking it out with a

white buffalo that's trying to kill him. Is that right? Strange movie. Maybe they're inspired by that movie. They're going to pull out the old, they're going to pull out the old Judas deer trick. It's one of the tricks in their playbook.

Yeah, after they're done, doing all the baiting and shooting, then they throw out a deer with a GPS collar on it to attract. It's the dirtiest deer. You take a deer and put a collar on them and let them go and you be like, okay, go find your buddies.

And then you watch his tracking collar and you come in and get him it's, you know what it's like, man. It's like when the, and Red Dawn, dude. When they make that, that kid, you know, the kind of the kids

don't fit in good, he goes into town and they make him eat that transmitter and then the Ruski's come for him. He's like a Judas dude. This whole plan looks so aggressive. Very, very aggressive. We'll get to the condor part.

Well, no, let's get this part. Well, yeah, again, it's like, I don't, why is it? He doesn't care anymore. Why is it? 400 bucks. a deer.

No, why, but why, with it being a nonprofit organization is very odd. Is that money being fundraised

from people? Like, it's, yeah, they figured they, they, they, they figured that they're

doing like an environmental service. And on the island, and all, in all, I mean, in all fairness,

they've had a bunch of plant species, um, become extirated from the island. Yeah. And who am I? I mean, I'm not in this business.

I don't know. We could have like Parker Hall or somebody say, tell us if $400 per deer is, is $800 grand. It is expensive. Shee. Huh?

800 grand. I don't know the debts. I mean, I imagine it's probably like this. You got to get them all. And people that have been in that work, we've been to do before. They're like, oh, no, the first 95% are easy. Yeah. The first 95%, no problem. It's like the last ones is the problem.

Yeah. That's when a dude lives on the island for six more months and only hunts at night with, you know, thermals and tries to track down the last cold year or whatever. Yeah, he's talked about areas when they've done wild hog work. He's like, yeah, getting a whole bunch of them, no biggie. It's like when there's two hogs left, fine nose. But like, like you say that it's aggressive, Krim, but why is it aggressive? Like they've been hired to do a job.

Oh, right. They're going to go in and put the hammer down and get the job done. It seems like I guess that's needed. It would have been nice if they would have given more hunters a chance to. Yeah, again, I don't want to like, that's why I'm bored of the stories because we can go back to that and talk about the indecencies of this conservancy, which like we really don't know

that much about. I'd love to like, if they wanted to come on and like explain themselves, it'd be interesting. Yeah, but like, you know what I mean? I'd hear about for 10 minutes. No, but you're saying that is the rub. Is it like the way they've handled it all? But every time there's any kind of these like sharpshooter culling operations, hunters get all bent out of shape

about it. They're like, why aren't they giving us the chance? Because that's what I always wonder. Yeah. I know, but I'll always say that because I'll always wonder. Yeah, but like, this is just another example of that to me. Listen, man, my panties are in a bunch anytime like, like, even with the, even with the suburban sharpshooting, when you have a bunch of people live in a community and they all determine that like, that hunting's bad. They don't want anyone hunting. And they bring in a sharpshooting outfit to start shooting them at night. It just, it always will rub me the wrong way. I get it. But how many hunters are going to actually. jump in there and take care of it. We'll never know. Rob Sam. I guess we'll never know.

The dude running for the dude running for governor of Iowa hunts them deer. He'd love to hunt Catalina. Dude, he hunts deer on spots for if the deer takes three steps, it's on the neighbor's place. He's got this whole program dialed down, man. Shoots Biggins. Brody mentioned the California Condor Project,

which this is a way that this, the Catalina Island Conservancy is saying like, hey, it's going to be okay. We're not going to just leave them to rot. We're going to relocate the deer carcasses over to the mainland and feed condors. When I read that, I go, oh, I wonder if they're going to use, you know, copper or non-led ammunition, right? And Brody's like, well, we already had a guy right in and said that that's a bunch of BS. But they're not like, that's a big cost to freeze. probably would have to freeze these carcasses and bring them, you know, via boat.

I wasn't clear on it. I thought they meant that the condors fly out to Catalina, maybe. And eat the deer. Yeah. Yeah. They're saying, no, they're saying, oh, no, no, we're going to freeze them and bring them over to the mainland. Right. I don't know.

Who makes, do they make juicy fruit gum? They used to chew out of it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a wriggly product. They do. They do. That lost its flavor real. Oh, it did, man.

And I used to chew that. I think their big red product. Man, that'd burn your tongue, dude. Get a whole pack in there eventually. taste buds get all inflamed and everything, man. Now they're shooting all these deer. No, I don't know if they're still tied up. I'm not saying that Big Red, juicy fruit

has anything to do with this, man. Clearly. They're like, we're going to poison gum and leave it, lay it all out for the deer. Well, it still seems like a flawed deal because that town of Avalon has made it so that you can't hunt or discharge a weapon within their perimeter. And they say like a whole bunch of deer hang out within the town's boundaries.

So I don't think they're going to, this program's not going to get rid of 100% of the deer on the island. You want to talk about a bunch of deer hanging out over there. Just wait a few. Oh, yeah. That Judas deer is going to head straight for that. That dude's going to be standing outside the local ice cream parlor in that town. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think for the people that. say, well, I really just don't want to see those animals go to waste. I don't buy that. Yeah, you know, I buy it, but I don't think that's the main motivating factor. Right. And we all know now, we're educated enough to know that if you just, like, shoot a deer and let it lay in the grand scheme of things, does it go to waste? Because you or I don't consume it?

It's like nutrient recycling. Totally. Like, well, last time Yanni gets to do a Catalina Island. No, when the Catalan Island concerns, he comes on here to chat. I'll be the first one. I think you should get a Pulitzer Prize for the coverage, dude. I don't. You've done a great job of covering the story and, like, analyzing it and stuff, man.

And then, like, a weird, like, turn. Do you know what I mean? He, like, you know. You imagine if Walter Cronkite came on. He's like, man, I'm not real interested in this, but I'm going to tell you about it. I'm not really interested. Cronkite, he comes on and he's like, he's like, yeah, I'm not real interested in this and I've changed my mind. I didn't know where you're going for Cronkite.

It kind of changes my whole approach to this. Tom Broca, I don't know, pick someone. Oh, my goodness. That was great report, Yanni. I like the emotional parts of you, like, getting tired of the story and, like, oh, what's it mean anyway? That was great, man. I hope listeners appreciated that. What else you got?

Me too. What else you got, you know? They're trying to legalize baiting deer in Michigan. It's a lot more complicated than that. Well, is it? I think that's a pretty fair assessment of what's going on there. It's a fair assessment. You were always able, when I was a boy, you just baited, right?

Oh, yeah. We baited, and then they put restrictions on baiting. they're trying to make it legal again. And basically, there's some people for it. There's a lot of public for it. I texted a few folks that live in hunting Michigan. And these folks are all anti-baiting.

They wish it was completely gone. But according to them, they're like, whether this goes through or not, they don't think anything's going to change. Because we all know, in places where you're not allowed to bait, like let's just say Michigan or where I'm at in Wisconsin,

you can go to any, I think any, gas station, Walmart, whatever, and there are giant bags of corn out front. But they do those quantity, Michigan has areas where they do a quantity restriction.

You're allowed to put out a certain amount. Okay. And in some ways, but there's a lot of places where you cannot be a gallon or out, what the hell it is. But they limit, how much you put down. Yeah,

I mean, you're honest, like, it's, you know, it's illegal where I grew up, but like,

that's only during the season. So you can, you know. Well, we're sitting in a state right now, you can't bait. Right.

Never could bait. No. But it's just the whole, we're not talking about the whole state of Michigan here. Lower Peninsula. Lower Peninsula. So with CWD,

you could always bait and we baited. And, and I, I actually regret it. You said that in past. Yeah. I would have learned a lot more about deer if we didn't,

bow hunt. I wish at a young age, I would have learned to really hunt deer and hadn't spent that time when I had like years in time that I hadn't messed with the bait thing. And I wish I would just like use, I wish I knew that what I knew now. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have hunted totally differently. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, the proponents of the bill are saying that we will have more hunters, we'll have more participation, more retention, more youth getting into it if we allow it

because it just makes it easier. Yeah, I can see that. So, originally around chronic wasting disease and bovine tuberculosis, so disease issues. That's why I was outlawed. Yeah, and starting in since

in 2019, the Department of Natural Resources, so the Wildlife Management Agency He in 2019 started putting baiting restrictions in place in the lower peninsula, citing disease concerns that you're concentrating, you're making super spreader events. Like during COVID when you had a big party and everybody kind of got mad at you, you were doing that out in the woods,

suckering in all kinds of deer to come in and rub noses. And so their thought was, hey, we're going to slow down disease spread and get rid of baiting. And that's pissed people off, still pisses people off. And so now they're kind of going around back on her. right talk about that oh the fact that yeah so this is it's it's it's it's very unpopular with

the department of national resources and they're saying that yeah we're not we're basically not doing this under sound science and that we're they're just basically voting you know just doing political science and uh politicians are making management decisions by getting putting this back in you know what they want to do is they want to do is they want to want to, they're looking to prevent the wildlife agency from being able to do a ban. Right. All together and in the future, which I think would be a bad thing. I know that we all don't agree all the time with what our state wildlife agencies do,

but I believe that for the most part, they're out there trying to do what's best. And we forget that they're trying to balance so many, uh, different, um, you know, entities that have different needs, you know, whether it's the ranchers that are having issues with deer or elk, you know, the people that want more opportunities, the people that want more trophies, you know, people that want, you know, whatever, you know, they're balancing all of all of that social stuff. It's not just wildlife management. So,

like, you had to step back and look at it that it's not just what, you know, what's going on in your little neighborhood and what you want, how you want to be able to bait in your backyard. You also have, in this case, you also have two true kind of battling each other. We covered this a couple years ago where the head of Michigan's wildlife agency had this open letter

ahead of deer season basically saying almost being like, why can't we get hunters to kill doze? We need to kill doze, we need to kill doze. We can't get hunters to kill doze, right? Almost throwing his hands up and they're like, in the most respectful way of possible is kind of like, what is wrong with everybody?

Our dough harvest, our populations are going up. Doe harvest is going down. We try to incentivize dough harvest and people won't kill doze. So an argument in favor of the bill is it makes it easier to get those. That is an argument, but I think it's a little bit of a BS argument. The Farm Bureau, they like, they want to, they like the bait bill. They want bait coming in because they feel like it's going to, um, help alleviate crop damage. If you had a crystal ball at Brody, you think if they legalize it.

bait. It's like across the board. Are you going to see a higher dough take? I certainly think it's like, listen, there's a reason why people bait. It increases your odds. No, I understand that. But when we're talking about whether the, specifically whether more doze would get shot. Whether the population of hunters that's around these days, like, are they going to shoot more

does? Like, is it, is the people most mad about the bait ban people that just want to shoot tons of dose? I don't know. I don't know either. I have, yeah. Like, look, I'm not trying. Like the old classic road safety.

Like, yeah. People are like, someone's got to do something about road safety. I definitely feel like there are areas in this country where like the number of deer are a problem. And they got to figure out some way to knock them down, you know. Sure. So that's another argument. Arguments in favor of the bill. Road safety.

The state has 58, over 58,000 deer related vehicle crashes. That was in 2024. for. Meaning the current bait ban is failing to control the population. Or people aren't shooting them. I don't think you blame that on the bait ban. And then like Yanni said, hunter recruitment saying that like if you can put bait out,

it's easier and kids are more successful and everybody's going to have a better time. Shooting all kinds of deer. Arguments against the bill. Disease spread. Okay. The DNR and the wildlife biologist oppose the bill. then you get into the science question right where is you know wildlife management people are you know driven by what they would argue is a scientific understanding of the data and the population and and that this is coming from social this is coming this is coming from like a social end of things and then the question of fair chase concerns some traditional hunting groups argue that baiting diminishes fair chase ethics of the sport i i would that that's not what i would be looking at

And making this decision, I wouldn't be looking at that. Especially if your goal is to kill a bunch more deer. Yeah. I think that the, I think that the relevant, in my mind, the relevant bits that I'd be looking at is, um, what is the evidence to suggest that bait legitimately and accelerates disease transmission? Like how true is that? Is that really true? And then with this, um, is this really the most quickest, most effective? way to bring up dough harvest.

That's the things I'd be looking at if I was chief of Michigan. They need to call that white buffalo company, send them in there. Don't give many ideas. Yeah, have Michigan taxpayers pay 400 bucks of deer. They'd be like, the first thing we do is called a big bait pipe pipe. And we put some collars on some other deer. Which, I mean, that is. Our two stories aren't talking to each other, dude.

Because the eradication service, white buffalo, they say right. off. First thing we do, get a bait pot. Yep. Yeah. So, and a Judas deer. Case and point. Yeah, maybe Michigan should legalize using Judas deer. 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 in the IHeartRadio app. All right, everybody, if you're getting fired up for spring turkey season, you're going to want to hear

man I'm telling you I'm fired up well anyway right now we're running the ultimate spring turkey giveaway and it's packed with over $13,000 in prizes including an incredible turkey hunting experience gear from sig a shotgun from berneli a $1,000 gift card from first light and a whole big pile of gear from other partner brands one lucky winner is going to receive a spring 2,027 Rio Grande turkey hunt in the Texas Hill country for you and two of your buddies or family members. Brought to you by Bird Dog. And during the giveaway, the more you spend at First Light,

Phelps game calls, FHF gear, and the Meat eater store, the more entries you'll earn for a chance to win the entire prize package. Getting entered as easy. Just head over to the First Light contest page at firstlight.com. Fill out the entry form and you're in. Remember, for every 25 bucks you spend, you get 10 additional entries. one winner will be selected to win the whole damn prize pack. But don't wait around.

The giveaway ends one minute before midnight on Monday, April 13th, 2002, 6. So you got all day that day. But it ends right before midnight. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Randall? All right. So last week, there were a bunch of headlines out there about the overhaul of the Forest Service

that was announced by the administration, I believe on like Tuesday afternoon, there was a press release that went out. And this has to do with the structure of the structure and geographic location of the Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of our public lands. And you can read the press release to get the explanation firsthand there. There's a lot of the coverage out there that sort of gives a broader context to it. Um, and a lot of the headlines are pretty alarmist. They say this is a dismantling, um, things of that nature. Um, and so I read as much as I could, uh, and talk to some folks that work in the conservation space to get their read on it.

But when you've read as much as you could, what is the, what happens? You fall asleep? No, I just read as much as you could find. We all get bored with it, you know. Um, yeah, I mean, I read, I read like the, most of the articles that people were sharing. Um, okay. And so the, the, the announcement describes this as a sweeping restructuring of the agency to move leadership closer to the forests and communities it serves. And so there's a couple points to this that I'm going to hit on and kind of contextualize each one.

Uh, the first is that they're going to move the, the headquarters from D.C. to, uh, Utah. Um, and so you interesting choice. Yeah, that, that's the one. Yeah, that raised a lot of eyebrows, I think, just given Utah's history with public land. And the press release has this quote from the governor of Utah saying, you know, we're excited about this, great news. Because this way they're closer, we can strangle them more easily. Yeah. And I think like, so one, like the bigger history is I guess there are, and this is sort of from behind the scenes, folks, like there are more and more for service personnel that are gravitation.

towards DC like the DC footprint of the agency has grown but like there's a good reason to have the headquarters in DC because the the chief of the Forest Service and the deputy chiefs of the Forest Service work with the administration work with Congress like they their their job is to be held accountable by the administration Congress for what they're doing and then their job is also to like inform the the federal you know the federal government of what what's going on with the agency. So like to move the the head of the organization away from D.C., I don't know if it's fair to say that it makes it less relevant, but it makes it harder for the people at the top to be effective in their jobs. So there's going to have to be a lot of back and forth, right?

And so that's sort of the first thing is like moving the, moving the agency's headquarters to Utah. Oh, man. The other that that that I just kind of I just want to meditate on that for a minute. Um, that's a weird one to me because you have the, the, the, the, uh, the, uh, legislators. Right. In that state, the, their, their state representatives just have a, um, more than any other state have just a hostile relationship to public lands. Yeah. It seems intentional.

They could have picked anywhere like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so the other... It'd be like if the golfing, like the golf association was like, we're going to move our headquarters to Steve's house. Yeah, that would raise eyebrows.

You don't let golf? They'd be like, that's the point. The next, like the next sort of biggest headline out there is that they're, they're closing all the regional offices. So right now there's nine regional offices that oversee all the forests and grasslands across the country. And they're going to move to a state-based model. So there's going to be 15 state directors.

Some of those states. I got a fuse. Can you back? How was it? Remind me what it was before? So they're regions. There's like region one, region two. How many were there?

They're nine. Okay. Sorry. So they're going to 15 state directors. Some of those oversee multiple states. And this, like the headline is that the regional offices, all the regional offices are being closed but what's what's really happening is it's transitioning to a model that more closely resembles like the BLM has state directors yeah um and so so this is sort of more of a

restructuring although for the people in those regional offices um who may have to move or lose their jobs like there is there is an impact on the ground but it's not like all of that infrastructure is being dissolved it's it's transitioning to a state director model which folks in the conservation space say works well for the BLM. So, um, and presumably people assigned at the regional level will, will be assigned at the state level. Yeah. I mean, that's, there'd be a re there'd be like a reshuffling.

That's where it gets hard like and shuffling. And this is something I'm going to touch on later on is like it gets hard to really understand the scope of the personnel changes that'll take place. Like there's probably going to be a lot of turnover and, loss of institutional knowledge and have career, you know, career people sort of their paths take a left or right turn here. I don't know that like we can even find that out at this point, how it's going to affect. Like I would be doubtful if there's just a one-to-one, like you go to a different desk, but it's hard to say at that point. And then the last one,

I think, is pretty significant. And they've announced that they're, they've announced that they're going to consolidate all of the research that they do into a single Forest Service research organization in Fort Collins. So they're going to close 57 of 77 research stations across the country. Four in Michigan are closing five in Mississippi. And this, like, there's, I don't really know how to explain this in a way that like you should have their own Forest Service research stations that sit outside of like USDA research stations they must yeah yeah this is this is

forest service specific yeah and and like so not all of them are being closed like I think that in the in the public communications they've tried to emphasize that like some like a lot of the fire stuff will will be less affected than everything else but like there's a real question about how do you study like southern pine forests from Fort Collins efficiently and then the other thing is that like each one of these

research stations, a lot of them anyway, are affiliated with like a research institution, like a university. And so they rely on that lab space. So you can't just close 60, you can't close like three quarters of the research stations out there, move all that to Colorado and not lose something. Right. And it just seems like, that seems like more of a defanging or squeezing of like the forest services research capabilities. Yeah. And that I don't really know, like, how you explain that that as being beneficial to the Forest Service. I don't think they're trying to make it.

I'm sure they're probably, they're going to probably be cute. Yeah. And act like this is for the betterment of the agency, but that's silly. Right. This is to, this is to cripple. Hamstream, yeah. Diminish, lessen. the impact of the agency.

Right? I mean like yeah. Because the architects, the architects aren't like, how do we make the forest service bigger and better? Right. I mean, I think there's like, I think there's, that's how the critics are reading this. As like, this is a very deliberate attempt to like destroy it. And that's, I'm not using the word destroy. Yeah, but, but like.

Diminish. Diminish it. Diminish its impact. No, I don't think, no, not using the word destroy. Right, right. But like I think that I think there's also this to like give them some sort of benefit of the doubt. Like there's this ideological thing that like they need to get out of D.C. and be in the West. And like we have too big of a footprint.

And so it might not be like necessarily like a, it might be a more principled things if you believe that the Forest Service is doing too much science out there. I'm don't, I'm not in that camp. But so this went through public comment period, 47,000 emails, 14,000 specifically addressed the restructuring. More than 80% of those comments opposed it and of the remainder. More of those were neutral than supported it. So like the support in the public comment period for this stuff was like 5%, something like that. So it was overwhelmingly opposed. The tribes have spoken out in opposition, a lot of conservation groups.

And a lot of Forest Service, former Forest Service leadership has spoken out. And the message there is like, basically nobody's asking for this internally. Nobody necessarily wants this. There's been no real analysis of the cost or the savings of this. And they did this with the BLM in the first Trump administration. They moved the agency headquarters to Grand Junction. It was way more expensive than they anticipated. And a lot of the people ended up just like either taking early retirement or quitting.

only 41 of the 328 BL employees that they wanted to move out to Grand Junction actually did it. And then the Biden administration moved. They didn't move everybody back. They determined that, yeah, there are some jobs, I guess, that would be better suited to be out West and have more close connection with like the career field staff. But they did move the leadership back because it was just not working. So this, I mean, and this is all. in the context of huge cuts to the Forest Service operations budget, huge cuts to the capital improvement and maintenance budgets. And the Forest Service is down already, 25% in terms of people,

like human resources. And they have a hiring freeze in place with a lot of key jobs that are unfilled. So like it just adds to this broader confusion and, and, sapping of morale, I think. So I guess like in talking to people, I was kind of in the, I was kind of more aligned with the idea that this was a dismantling. You know, and I guess I still don't, I wouldn't repudiate that view. I talked to a lot of people that sort of talked me back from the edge a little bit. They said there's still a lot of inexplicable things in here and things that aren't going to be workable. they'll have to be reversed.

But what was pointed out to me, and this is like my takeaway is there are a lot of other things. Like this is a big, splashy headline. There's a lot of other things going on right now, like the roadless rule repeal that are going to be far more impactful on the future of our national forests. Like there's a pile of stuff right now that's happening

that will ultimately undermine the forest service system as we know it. and this is kind of adding to that but um they're saying and not to minimize like the impact on employees and and all the chaos and confusion that's happening but like ultimately it's not like a five alarm fire um but it's also just like do we need to do this and is doing this are we taking away from other important work you know so i don't know it's not it's not encouraging i would was, I will say like my, my takeaway from it, I was a little more heartened after talking to, like, more experienced and knowledgeable people. Mm-hmm. But it's still just like a lot, it's just like a big pile of shit thrown at the wall to see what sticks, you know.

Yeah. And you can read more about that at the meat eater.com. Feds announced major restructuring and relocation of U.S. foresters. Good job, Randall. Thank you. Thanks. That's my first one. I was going to ask.

I was going to ask, let's wait on the wrong line deal. All right then. I always get screwed. It just happened the other day. Did you say the lions always get screwed? No, I always do it.

Okay, good. Do your report. So we're going to do it. If you want, I just feel like we've been running. People are going to have a, they got a limit. We're going to do it.

All right. Then we're just going to keep pushing it back. And you already said we were doing it. I was going to have Phil beep it all out. Alaska is open in a mountain line season. Some of you might be asking why, because they don't have any Mount lions. Mount lions are found in the largest numbers in the western U.S. and southwestern Canada, but they're most widely distributed large mammal in the Western Hemisphere,

all the way from the Yukon down to the southern Andes in Chile. But historically, they're not native to Alaska. And since 1989, there's only been five, documented mountline observations all in southeast Alaska. Four of those were in Game Management Unit 3, which includes Rangel and Petersburg. There have also been some unconfirmed tracks and sightings, mostly originating in the Rangel area. And researchers believe that these few mount lines that have shown up are dispersed from mainland

British Columbia. Yeah, dude trapped one and dude shot one. They've had four dead bodies still. So yeah, most recently, Alaska Wildlife Troopers were notified on June 3rd, 2024 that one had been shot and killed on the south end of Wrangel Island. Before that, it was 26 years. You got to go back 26 years from 2004. No, because the wolf trapper caught one in a snare on Kuyu Island. Well, that's not true.

This says 26 years, in 1998, a wrangle trapper caught a mountain line. Is that long ago? And a wolf trap on Kuprenov, Kuprenov Island. And then a decade before that, 1989, one was shot near Rangel. So it's all kind of in the same area where they're showing up. Okay. Anyway, so it might seem strange that Alaska now has a mountline season.

But the Southeast Alaska board a game recently, like formerly approved a new and limited hunting. hunting and trapping season. Did you say unlimited or limited? Well, the hunting season is limited. It'll run August 1st to June 15th with a bag limit of one. It's a big season.

Listen, wait. You got to break that to your wife. I'm going to be hunting pretty hard this season. For the hunting season, it's males only. But there's also a trapping season in units 1, 3, 4, and 5, which will run November 15th through March 13th. first. Obviously, trappers can't decide whether they're catching a male or a female. So they're not going to be held to that male-only regulation. So, you know, like, Steve's like, why are they doing?

I'm like, well, I think they're just trying to get ahead of it. I'm sure Steve will say more on that. But the reason the board gave is they're trying to like regulate a small but growing predator population rather than have an animal that they're like by regulation, they're not able to manage it, you know, through hunting and trapping. What I find interesting about the story is they feel that they're coming down the stequin river.

Right. That's it. It's sad. They're falling river drainage. I read this analysis. It was a handful of river systems that the headwaters of the river systems are glaciated or deer free and kind of the best approach to be coming out of British Columbia. be a you could be into you could be into good deer country and tip over into the uppers

to keen and then follow this to keen down and eventually get on the coastal areas and they're starting to pick off stick of black tails on the coastal areas interestingly all of these what is it five that have shown up in this area all male yeah so which makes sense with that like dispersal yeah dispersing there's a similar thing where mule deer for the first you know in recent years mule deer have been showing up in tokelaska coming in along the the highway there the following the highway corridor development along the highway corridor clearing along the highway corridor um and they don't want the deer coming in right now in that case they don't want the deer coming in because think about the implications of something like like disease issues so servit

diseases coming in on this new animal showing up um and so if you see a mildew you can kill it i think maybe you got to have a valid license but basically they like they oh it shoot on Yeah, and acknowledging it there, it's like if you see a meal, you can kill the mild deer. So with the lion thing, I see it. Like, I understand leaving it that I understand the need to say like they're here. Yeah. Because clearly they're there. You could also say, hey, we're recognizing they're here.

The state is going to put in a management policy that lions are here. We're accepting there. When you look in our regulations, you'll see lions are. here. We may someday decide to have a season, but the state agency saying, yes, we accept, we have a population of mountain lions. There's a pathway to a mountain lion season down the road, but at this point in time, they're so few.

They're coming in naturally. They're protected. Or the state's perspective, it could be this. It's like, they're coming in because things are getting warmer and there's less snow and different temperatures and deer white-tailed deer are moving north, mule deer are moving north and west. And a lot of this stuff is like human-caused. And it might be like, we don't want mountain lions. Yeah.

We already got wolves, black bears, grizzly bears, lynx. I feel like that. And they're like we don't need a new cat species coming in because of changing environments. And we don't want them. And so rather than just saying we don't want them, we'll say that they're basically open. Yeah. And if you get one, you're not in trouble. I feel like that there's got to be.

that's part of it, especially in Alaska where they're, they work pretty hard to maintain their big game populations for the use of the people. Yes. And this could present potentially a problem for the black tail deal. I have more, not more. I have as much respect in faith in Alaska Department of fishing game. This is going to blow, this is going to piss people off because they're having all kinds of reasons. Why not?

So I'm choosing my words carefully. I have as much respect. for the integrity and aim of Alaska Department of Fish and Game as I do for any state agency. In terms of looking at how do we protect wildlife resources, recognizing the importance of human use. And recognize the importance of traditional use practices. They're pretty spot on. Relative to any other agency. So I tend to look at, if they do it, I tend to go like, you guys are level-headed, wildlife managers.

don't feel like you've been like infiltrated by animal rights activist or something like your level headed wildlife managers and I kind of you know at this point I'll be like I trust your opinion yeah and it's look I mean mountain lions are doing pretty well throughout a lot of their range this isn't I think gonna change that you know I don't think you can look at them as an invasive species they're walking in there on their own yeah walking yeah they're walking in on their own two feet so four to me though I want to invite a correction then we're doing this because we don't want another species. You mean the fact that it's closed for a month and a half?

Yeah, I mean like, why not just have that, you know, right to shoot policy like they do on the mule deer. Because I think classifying them as a game animal, like gives them certain management. But why not do that with those mule deer and toke? It's a great question. What's the difference, I guess? We just have someone, hopefully we can get find some. someone would answer those questions for us. I want to invite a,

I want to invite a correction. Does that mean you're going to correct me? I am, I am virtually certain that more recently than what you're saying, like pretty recently, a dude hooked one in a wolf snare on Kewu Island.

You're probably right. I'm just going off. What are they doing on those islands, though, man? Those dudes are walking, like, they're like dispersing, heading way down that thing and then swimming, man,

because they're not finding any females. They're not crossing ice. They're not fine in females. When those lines showed up on Flathead Island here in Montana, like at least ice was a possibility there. Yeah, and they're like smelling big horns, smelling dumb, big horns, tame big horns. Yeah, that's a good question, man.

It's a good question. Prince of Wales doesn't have them yet. There's no, you can't. If you see one on Prince of Wales, you can't shoot it or I don't know what. Well, it depends what region. They don't have a season. They gave the regions there.

But I think the hunting season, it's just the trapping season that's limited to certain region. It's when it's wolf season, it's trap. Yeah. You're also protecting a wolf. You're also protecting a wolf trapper who accidentally hooks a cougar. Exactly. Yeah.

That if he hooks a cougar, he's not in trouble. Yeah. Which is cool. Yep. So. Someday Yanni's great grandson will be up there with Mingus's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson. In a wetsuit. No.

Mingus's line. stops with him oh he's missing his testicles isn't he you can get him cloned they do that these days you're right I could get him cloned I got one news thing to end with please what's the biggest crappie that any of you have caught don't know 15 16 inches not huge or like pounds done their weight probably less than a pound for me two okay I don't know you're super close I think that's a big one so at the lake of the Ozarks the other weekend this is like so fun to find out about it was the second annual big crappie challenge what was the biggest croppy the big crappie challenge 2.37 pounds can you get 20 inches day no I'll have to look for

that he won 50,000 dollars they take crappie seriously they're gonna do we got to enter next next year let me see I don't mean that ain't that ain't master's money but but pretty good a lot cheaper than going after a billfish and spending 50 grand on gas yeah well First of long, I just got one 44 bucks playing golf. I'd rather win $50,000 catching crappies. 16 inches long? Did I say 15, 16? I'd like to take that back.

That's what you call a slab, Corinne. I call it a big one slab. Ask me again. 11, 12 inches. Yeah, I just kind of caught myself in a lie there. You get a dozen emails. I'd like to offer a correction for Steve. There's no way Steve caught a.

There's no way you got. I haven't caught a spec that big. Nope. I was lying. Paper mouse. All right, everybody. Thanks a lot for joining. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you.

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