The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 882: Cyanide Bombs, New CWD Research, and F%ck Data Centers

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: New research about CWD that you really need to hear; bear spray vs. pistols; are cyanide bombs really bombs?; wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Area; how the Alaskan Arctic might be getting a data center, plus the rapid spread of data centers across the country; and more.  Thanks to our partner: Mountain Dew. Enjoy Mountain Dew, an American Original 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. A little too relaxed during yoga? That's embarrassing. You know what's not? Debt. Consolidate your debt with a loan from FIG. No early repayment fees and low interest rates.

So you can pay off your debt faster. Borrow better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Check out Phelps' new bear cub distress call. Springtime is the right time to use a bear cub in distress sound when bear hunting. Mail bears will kill cub. in order to get females to cycle into another breeding opportunity, and the sound of a cub in distress also signals to other male bears that a meal is close and even a possible mate.

A bear cub in distress will also get the attention of a female bear to come and investigate to defend a cub, dragging any male suitors she has in tow. Not to mention, a cub in distress will also call other predators in, as they're looking for an easy meal too. Get your own bear cub in distress at Phelpsgamecauls.com. Welcome to the news show, Mother Lickers. This week we've got some research about CWD that I really need to hear about. The debate about bear spray versus pistols, as bear defense rages on, are the cyanide bombs you've been hearing all about actually bombs.

Wolves in the greater Yellowstone area are getting whittled away in numbers by hunters? No, trappers? No. But don't worry, we'll tell you what it is later on in the show. The Alaskan Arctic. might be getting itself a data center, which I generally kind of hate the idea of generally. And Spencer, never won for a controversial subject,

has another softball yet uplifting story about fishing records. But first. That's good. Well, I'm not looking around, but I'm saying like, but first. You're waiting for someone to jump in. First, our news. Yeah. Steve.

Well, no, I'm up. Yeah. My daughter got her first black bear. Nice. She's a very competitive hunter. It's not interested in, uh, doesn't like, it is not interested in any kind of duck hunting, nothing. It's got to be a turkey or bigger. It's got to be where you set your mind on getting a thing.

There's got to be a question of whether you'll get it. Like going duck hunting and be like, man, there's going to be a lot of ducks. Could, doesn't care. Doesn't care. she's into the like a box she's into the like can it be done kind of hunting

and you have to be cruising all around she's not going to sit somewhere doesn't want to sit nowhere it lends itself well to yeah she won't sit in glass during youth oh no like that yeah but she's if you said hey we're gonna go sit in a tree stand for a long time that's not what she wants to do gotcha she likes to be mobile

she likes to be looking around on the ground for rocks and whatnot um but got so we had four we had kind of like four full days to hunt bears and then we had a day that we could kind of hunt a little bit if need be and by the end of the third day she was getting real antsy because you weren't seeing bears or you weren't seeing like nice bears well i mean she's not listening she'll listen to the show a little slow to the trigger yeah that happens so it's kind of like that's a hard thing to like get over when you're a parent, man.

And, yeah, real slower to the, not a little slower to the trigger. Because he can't get mad at him. Bless her heart. No. You just yell, shoot, shoot. I'll get mad at my boys. I'll get mad at my daughter. I'm not going to get mad at her now and then, but I'm like way nicer to her than anybody else.

Shoot. Yeah. Like, I would be, my boys, I'd be smacking him the side of the head, back of my hand. Shoot, shoot. But no, her, I'm like, go, it's okay, so when you're ready. When you're ready, sweetie. So, like, one time we went after a bear in, uh, and it's just sitting there playing his day, you know,

and it's facing toward us. And, you know. You had gotten out of, like, you were in the process of trying to kill it. You were out of the boat. We got out of the boat, way a few hundred yards down when, worked up. I'm like, once we get to that, there's sort of a tree laying there. Like, once we get to that tree, we get to the tree, I get her set up on the tripod.

It's just sitting there. Meanwhile, I would have put a box of shells into it. but it's like, but you know what I mean it's just different. And then I talked all about like she likes to run through all weeks leading up to going hunting. She likes to run through all things that would go bad. And then before she shoots, she likes to do a final run through of all the things that could go bad. Like what do I do if? Yeah.

Like what if the, I'm like just at a point where there's an element of this that is a roll of the dice. as much as we try to rule all that out, there's an element to it that there's a dice roll. Right? And we try to weight the dice and all that, but like there's a dice roll. And she doesn't like the dice roll part. She wants to be that when she touches that trigger,

she wants it to be that it's like God strikes it with the bowl of lighting. Well, you know, that's not up there. She wants it to go, fo' up there. Because like, if you wound one, you're done up there, correct? That's right. So, in this region, in this reason, in Alaska, if you nick one, you scratch your tag. So that, and if they get, when they go into the rainforest, it's difficult.

Anyway, she likes to do a quick run through of all possible scenarios that could go wrong. And then we kept talking about like broadside, broadside, broadside. And it's not broadside. And I'm like, do I really want to like open up this whole can of worms and introduce the idea that one could feasibly Yeah. You know, and it's just not the moment for it. Yeah. Not the moment to be like, you know, I hadn't mentioned this.

But in a scenario like this, I could see a pathway toward, anyways, it went from facing us to just walking into the woods. She was bummed. Bombed. Bombed. But we persevered. Yeah. Perceived. It's great.

It was great. Competitive. Get that rug put in her room? She will. Competitive bear hunter, like competitive with the bears, competitive with her brothers, competitive with her brothers, competitive with you? No, it competitive, yes, a little bit competitive with her brothers, but mostly

it's competitive. Maybe that's not the right word for it, but it's she has a a challenge accepted. Yeah, she's got, she's got a tag, she wants to fill that tag. It's we're doing this and it's like, okay, she's motivated. Let's go. What was her

on the on the ride home? Was she like, I can't wait to do that again or she didn't come up very happy with very happy with the results very happy with the results and it's this bear

um had uh we saw some ones that were little rubbed this bear has almost like an electric blue it's not I wouldn't call it a glacier bear not that area but has almost when it was just laying there has almost like an electric

blue black color to it gorgeous we're having john hayes john hayes is going to do it bare man ruggin he's gonna rug it

nice make a bunch of sausage with it hot italian and sweet italian there you go and i kept the back straps for regular eating but mostly sausage you're gonna do the clay newcomb uh heavily salt and throw it in a wood stove for 25 to 30 seconds

treatment no not his not clay's recipe The funniest thing, we'll move on, but the funniest thing that came out of that meal you're referring to was Clay was telling us how he doesn't like, he doesn't like fresh ground pepper. Yeah. Oh. He says, I like pepper. Never heard that. Out of those tins.

He says, I like it. So when you, he says, I like it to work like a windicator. Yeah. He's not like a grainy. Stale old. Stale old powdered pepper. He is not like any kind of like fresh ground crunchy pepper. Yeah. Yeah. It's stuck between your teeth.

He likes those McCormick tins. And when you turn it upside down, it like blows away. It's like charcoal dust. It's just the restaurant pepper, like the diner pepper. It's so funny that he's got like an opinion on that. It's just the essence of pepper at that point. You're not actually getting pepper. Yeah, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't blink. twice if someone handed me his favorite pepper. You know, like, it's not like, I'm just kind of, it's pepper.

But he had this very strong, very strong opinion on it. Brody bin, walleye, fishing wally dogs. Yeah, it's late start for, normally I'd have had boat out by now, but it was the first time this past weekend. Because of all this running BS. Yeah, jogging. Yep, that takes up a lot of time on the weekends. But yeah, we got out there on Saturday. we went to Canyon Ferry close by here.

And normally this time of year, the south end of that lake where the river dumps in would just be chocolate milk and mud. But there's no run, no snow runoff this year. So it's clear. Yeah, we tore up the little, little walleye, little wallace dragon, uh, crank baits around like eight or 10 feet of water. But it's like perch. That lake right now. And that's like, that's a dynamic lake. It's always changing.

Always changing. Yeah. Right now it's like perch fishing for wall eyes. Yes. Because it's a bunch of wallies the size of big perj. Yeah, there's not a good like forage base of like minnows or whatever for those wallies. So they eat a lot of insects. And so there's a whole bunch of small ones and a few really big ones that eat other wallies.

But there's a lot of age classes missing. Yep. Yeah. But they've changed the management strategy. So people are keeping more of those small ones. And there's a cut off. You can only keep one over 15 inches, I think, um, to get those, those bigger age classes coming back. But we had, we had a great, you know, we caught enough for a fish fry. It was fun, you know,

it's a weird deal. It's almost like some more else got to get. I don't know. But dude, like, we put the boat in and it's like, where do we go? And you look to the South Lake and there's like a cluster of 30 boats, like kind of in one corner of lake. Fish and Wallydogs? Yeah. It's like, well, we'll go check there. Sure enough. And they were all catching those 12 inches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. Yep. Huh. So yeah. Dynamic lake. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's not my favorite one.

We usually hit another lake in the summer, and we'll start hitting that one, too, but it's close by, so it was fun. In my lifetime, like, I remember. I started fishing that lake in the mid-n nineties. And at that time, you could get a mountain. Well, I remember you saying you and your brothers used to catch a couple. hundred in one morning. Eight, nine, ten inch yellow perch. Now, there's a couple perch in there.

That are bigger than the walleye. That are bigger than the wallets. Yes. So it went for being the, you went for being swarms of eight, nine, ten inch perch. No walleye to speak of except for like a normal walleye fishery. To be in that the small perch are gone. It's giant perch and perch size walleyes. Yeah.

But this is the, this is what happens in reservoirs. And this is what happens when you have a fishery, dominated by non-natives. Yeah. Yeah, it's just hard to control what happens. Yeah, there's no equilibrium. The walleye blew up, but they ate all the perch. So, you know, that's what it is there.

Lake also has like, in my eyes, it's a problem. Like, the large percentage of the biomass in that lake seems to be carp. Yeah. My boy and his buddy put on wetsuits and took spear guns. Yeah. And he said without going under. I gave him a couple pins And I'm like, you want to dive down

Under the drop? He said, we never went underwater. And he said, we laid on the surface and shot 34. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know what you do about it. Like, nothing. Yeah.

He thinks he's helping. You ain't help. No. When do you get up to 34,000, then. I'm like, he's like, hey, we're going to go carp spearfishing. What do you do with all this cart? I'm going to flam.

Like, not my freezer. get him his own freezer. He helps the lake. I'm like, okay. I'll tell you, let's agree on this. It doesn't hurt the lake. Right. Yeah. It doesn't hurt the lake. Yeah. Spencer, gardening.

Gardening, but not gardening. You're an orchardist. Is that a word? I don't know if that's probably a word. I think like the gardening version of an orchard though is orchardy, orchardy, something like that. It's like orchard R.Y. So I've been orcharding.

Okay. Yeah. No, I bet you. I think that's like the gardening equivalent. It doesn't matter. I've spent my spring digging holes. I'm trying to start an orchard where I live. I'm now up to 60 fruit bearing trees, dwarf trees, and shrubs on my property from 16 different

types of fruit. Phil has a graphic for us there. Wow. Who made that graphic? It's good. Cracker barrel. That's good. A cracker barrel.

It actually is, it's personal. That is just a generic? No, I asked Data Center to make it for me. Right next to you. Yeah. Live, laugh, love pillow. My grandma had this wall paper in the house.

Five-down bucket of water down the table. Apples, blackberries, buffalo berries, choke berries, choke cherries, currants, crab apples, cherries, plums, pears, peaches, raspberries, rhubarb, saskatoon, stimbledberries and honeyberries. Why are you rolling rhubarb into that? I didn't know where to put that at. It's a, it's a perennial fruit bearing thing. Asparagus and rhubarb, perennials.

Yes. Gardening, yes. You make a pie with it. Listen. You make a pie in a crisp with it. You might as well put spinach on there. Take rhubarb off. Ignore rhubarb.

Please. I have two rhubarb plants going. You're shooting another gallon of water by removing rhubarb. And then I've got a 16 foot asparagus trench that I've got going as well. But that didn't make the list. You know, that didn't feel like an orchard thing to me. But why didn't rhubarb make the list? That did feel.

Yeah, that felt like a fruit-bearing thing. What are you most excited to eat on that list? Most excited? I like to focus on the negative. You? Yeah, okay. The most excited. Probably is anything producing yet?

Are you still years away from? Well, rhubarb, I made a cake with my rhubarb this last week. But that doesn't count in this whole thing. It's not a fruit. No. No. The thing I'm probably most excited for was peaches because that's the one that they tell you not to grow here. They're like peaches.

They don't grow in region four. And you're like, I can do it. I'm trying. Well, if we had this winter, we had this last winter, you could grow coconuts in the valley here. So the peaches I'm very bullish on And I now have some peaches forming Throw them on the grill with some oversized pork chops Those those I'm excited

Bring on that global warming Yeah I like what you got going For the most part Okay what don't we like Besides the rhubarb I think your currents are going to tear it a new one They're doing good

I only planted two of those Chalk cherries Choke cherries will tear it a new one Crab apples Well one that they're native Which I really like 12 of my 16 Things are native to North America The other one is they are a phenomenal pollinator for your other apples.

Apples are one of those trees that you need to have multiple varieties. And crab apples are one of the strongest for helping pollinate your apples. Oh, you know you might enjoy. I wanted to have a crab apple. We have the author of a new book about Johnny Appleseed. Oh, I would love that. He's coming on. Not only is about Johnny Appleseed, but he goes and does Johnny Appleseed.

Yeah, goes and does his route and talks to people. and Johnny Appleseed got any scandal in his life I don't know we'll find out you should join

when we had that right around yeah Johnny Appleseed not wouldn't be scandalous to Austin maybe his

religion he was like a very conservative like Quaker can you go back to that because I got

some that's sure yeah anyway he the trees that he was planting

were largely called spitters which you don't eat those fresh you make them into hard

cider and so he's sort of betraying his religion by planting all these hard cider brewing trees. It's like if you went around just throwing beers in people's yard. Yes, it's exactly like that. You're going to get real good at canning, Spencer.

I plan to, yeah. What else you got, Steve? Honeyberries? Honeyberries. Are you familiar? Are you familiar? Try something new. Are you familiar with honeyberries? Listen, I got some honeyberry bushes, the likes of which would stagger the mind. So why don't you like them? Because kids don't like them. They don't have any kids. They eat them. No one likes them. I get them to my kids. they're like, that's not a berry.

Here I think your problem is, with honeyberries, you don't eat those until like the day they turn ripe. Any time up until that moment, you have a very poor experience eating a honeyberry. So if you were eating ones that weren't ripe, I understand why someone would spit them out and be like, I'm never having that thing again. Don't come tell me that I was doing it wrong. Okay. I'm just saying, I would yank your honeyberries out.

Uh-huh. It's too late. I would yank your blackberries out. Saskatoon's, man. Why would you take away blackberries? Because I think I would double down on raspberries, lose the blackberries. Have you dealt with Saskatoons or service berries before?

Yeah, I've already got, I've had two of those in my heart. They're real seedy and mealy. They're not like a pick off the bush and eat. A crab apple. What's the other you're going to do with a crab app? I just explained to Brody. Those are a phenomenal pollinator. And I'm even going to double down on that.

Next year, I've got some aspirational things I want to add yet. An apricot tree. It was too late for me this year to get an apricot tree in the ground. So I'm going to do that. I want to do an apple crab, which is a crab apple apple. hybrid. So that, it like makes a cute little,

so it's a decent pollinator and it tastes okay. Yes. I grow, I grow currents. So last year I took all my currents, spread them out on cookie sheets and set them out in the yard and made my own little current, dried currents. Great.

And the missus, the missus was promising that she was going to make me something with all those dried currents. Some sons of bitches are still in the pantry. Uh-oh. I got to remind. She's pretty reliable about bacon. I'm going to be up to at some point here.

I'm going to have a harvest six months. out of the year from May to October. I'm going to constantly have my perennials pushing out fruit. And then I'm also going to grow enough that I don't have to be mad at the bunnies and the birds and the bugs when they take some. I can just let them have it because I'm like, look at

all this delicious fruit I have. Take your share. Not like Randall. No, I'm not going to compete with the wildbubes. Wakes up and Randall's out there. Wakes out just enraged. About chickens. The other thing is, chicken depredation.

Brody was worried about my time management that I'm just going to spend my time doing nothing but mowing around trees now. But I planted these in a no-mo zone. So I have now converted 40% of my yard to an area that I don't know. So I'm just saving saving time there, saving water. I just hope you don't run afoul of the homeowners association. You know, Spencer. I was, I was, uh, the other day, I was asked to Spencer, like Spencer doesn't come to the office a lot of days.

And he says, oh, I do my best work at home. Mm-hmm. Now I know what he's talking about. He's a farmer now. His orchard. It's in my blood. Farming. Okay.

Oh, check this out. Mark Kenyon, got a new podcast called Future Wilde launched yesterday, May 27th. Drops every second Wednesday. Every second Wednesday. Like every other Wednesday? Yes. Okay. So we've taken, you'll see like Cal's Week in Review.

That's stuff. We had to do a little more shuffling on our, on our feed. So you'll find a feed called Meat Eater Conservation. Cal's Week in Review lives, meat eater conservation. Mark Kenyon's Future Wild lives meat eater conservation. So when you're listening to the shows you want, it was formerly the Cal of the Wild podcast feed,

but it's now getting filled out with additional shows. So you'll see a name switch there. A little too relaxed during yoga? That's embarrassing. You know what's not? Debt. Consolidate your debt with a loan from FIG. No early repayment fees and low interest rates so you can pay off your debt faster. Borrow better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that is why I wear first light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear. Built to perform, built to last. Whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable. outerware shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer. Designed by hunters, four hunters, with a deep commitment to conservation and land

access. No shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Okay, audience emails. Dirk had wrote in. We were talking about how Michigan. Michigan has sort of three main game management areas, the upper peninsula, the northern lower peninsula, the southern lower peninsula. The southern lower peninsula had always been ever since I was a child

and probably before that. Had always been shotgun only. And there was like what we called the shotgun line. Below the shotgun line, you can't hunt with a rifle. Bless their hearts, they just undid that. It's just rifle through and through.

Whole state now. I was saying how, I think, that's a great idea. And really liked all that. And I was sort of, this is not a word I use often, but I was poo-poohing the idea that it would lead to an increased number of accidents.

Pat Durkin, America's last outdoor columnist, wrote in to say that he disagrees. And he thinks that he's got data showing that he disagrees. So Wisconsin, right Wisconsin he says they went through the same

debate 15 years ago okay so in 2013 Wisconsin got rid of their shotgun zone the counties they had counties that were shotgun only and the thinking is primarily that shotgun slog doesn't go as far so it's safer less likely to hit a home

less likely to hit a person yeah like areas of higher population density higher home density or whatever. Because when you touch off, you know, grandpa's old 30-0-6, right? It just can wind up somewhere you don't anticipate. And when you touch off your shotgun, it's going to burrow into the other side of the field. I'm exaggerating, but you get the point.

Center fire, you know, tapered rifle cartridges fly farther. Wisconsin went through this. Durkin made a chart that he compiled last fall for his weekly outdoor. column and he looks into what happened in Wisconsin when they did this. And, okay, he says this. In brief, I almost hesitate to say this because it makes gunton seem like a not good idea. But I'm just going to, in all fairness, in brief, Wisconsin had 203 shooting accidents. We're not talking about hitting someone's storage shed.

accidents, human accidents. Wisconsin had 203 shooting accidents during November's main gun deer season from 2000 to 2025. So, for a year. Is my math right? No. 80 year.

Is that possibly true? Dirk would know. There's a lot of hunters in Wisconsin in an accident. I mean, it doesn't define what an accident is. 203 shooting accidents in 25 years what I would want to know is how many of those were like self-inflicted like you know what there's like yeah I know all encompassing that's when I start

tearing dirken down yeah that's one of the things I'm going to use the terrible right there are 800 thousand eight hundred thousand deer tags in Wisconsin so that's you know one accident per 100,000 tags yeah I'll take those odds I don't. I just, I almost want to abort right now, because there's parts of this I'm just not feeling. I think you got to keep going. I'll keep going. But please, if you're in Wisconsin night who's handy with numbers and good on the internet, feel free to write in. Dirk goes on to say this.

So then they got rid of the shotgun only counties and went rifle statewide. From 2000 to 2012, oh, I'm giving this wrong. Son of I should never gotten into this. Well, we screw. I should never gotten into this. Let me put my glasses on. Initially, you said from 2000. The numbers we just quoted, you said, were from 2000 to 2025.

It was actually 2000 to 2012. Those those. Well, who put down 25? No, no, no, no. This is, may I? Never mind. May I? I'm pulling out.

May I. I'm back it out. So big picture. Story's not ready. So big picture, there's a 25 years span. And halfway through that, it goes to rifles only. So in the first half of this 25-year span, there were 139 of the 203 shootings took place. In the second half of it, there have been 64.

I respect that, Steve. I'm pulling out. You're not falling into the sunk cost fallacy. No, he, he should have just cut this sentence. There's a 54% decline when they switched to it. I am not. You remember one CBS from Barry White?

The numbers all add up. Remember Barry Weiss took over CBS News? And they had that big story prepared about the Elsa Alvadoran super prison. And they pulled the story and everybody got all mad. And then she said, it's not that we're pulling it

because they were like, oh, you're afraid to be critical of the administration. And she said, that's not it. The reporting's not ready. And then lo and behold, the story came out. that's us right now

I think this is pretty straightforward actually Steve just ignore the sentence that says in brief and then just read the last two sentences of the paragraph from 2000 to 2012 139 shootings

from 2013 to 2025 64 shootings of 54% decline but I'm still going to tear dirty down when I'm ready because how many of these are self-inflicted do you think that changes the Rifle versus shotgun.

Because I don't know. I don't, what I, I need to parse this out. Like, I don't, the 54, I don't know that you could attribute it. It's just not deeply important. No, but I think all it shows is that when you switch to rifles, you don't necessarily see an increase in overall accidental shootings. No, he's, that's, that's what, he's saying you do see an increase. No.

No, he's saying you see a decrease. Oh, I think the problem is you didn't read this. I read it. Oh, you didn't comprehend it. Yeah, so they switched to rifles and in fact they've had a decline in accidental shootings. Yeah, so there's something else that explains the decline, but clearly you don't see an increase. The bucks got bigger, the sky got bluer, birds music got sweeter. Everything improved when they switched to rifles.

Okay. Durkin does make a good point. Maybe he's right. What he does make a good point about is he's like, here's the other deal. Yeah, I miss. So it's like my fault a little bit. I was, I didn't,

no one said that. Okay, Barry Weiss. I screwed up. I shouldn't have pulled it. I was going to tear Durkin apart, but I don't think we've pulled it yet. What Durkan does point out is this.

He's doing a little bit of what I wanted him to do more of. He's pointing out that deer drives are kind of going extinct. Yes. And he's pointing out that people are using more elevated blinds, which is helping to reduce the accidents. But until you pluck out self-inflicted shootings, where a guy is, like, getting his gun out of his truck, right, shoots himself in the knee or whatever, I would need to, like, I would need to parse it out to see what is the result of, like, bullets flying? And what is the result of just malfeasance? What do they say in the military? There is no

Accidental Accidential discharge. Yeah. They don't allow you to say accidental discharge. There's a negligent. Negligent discharge. I would need to see negligent

discharges pulled out of this for me to start having any idea about it. That's all. I think it shows a trend. Give them a little credit. Moving on. A lawyer wrote in.

We covered some people, we covered some crazy. North Carolina waterfowl people who have taken it upon themselves to sort of migrate these little ducks and geese around a lake to put them where they feel they're safe and they're sort of loading up wild waterfowl into dog crates and moving it where they want it to be. And this guy was asking, is that even legal? And we were pointing out that's definitely not legal. Well, a lawyer wrote in about a community in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. And Spencer's going to share some insights about this community. This person says those crazy North Carolina folks have nothing on this lady.

She's a few cans short of a 12-pack. She is suing Surfside Beach for infringing on her first amendment rights by ticketing her for feeding geese. This lady will stop traffic on the highway to let geese walk across the road. Now, that doesn't seem that damning to me. Like what, you're going to just drive through the flock of geese if they're crossing the road? No, that doesn't seem damn. to me that you would get cited for feeding illegally feeding migratory waterfowl and then say it's a violation of your First Amendment rights is goofy.

The article that he links explains it a little more that this woman is a part of a group that's called FIFO FACAFO, Flock Around, Find Out. That's the only reason this is in this script because I like flock around and find out a lot. Yeah. And these people, I don't think they call themselves this, but the article did. it calls them geese influencers, who are sort of speaking up on behalf of the geese. They have custom hoodies.

And yeah, and t-shirts and they show up in public wearing them. It sounds like this woman is filming other residents and their treatment of the geese, which I assume is just like sort of hazing them to get them to move on. And then she is then, you know, spreading those videos and people are saying,

you can't do that. You can't film these folks. And she's saying, yes, I can. And that's where the First Amendment thing comes So it sort of takes like four steps. Why would the lawyer that wrote in have gotten that wrong? Isn't he supposed to be law dogging?

Yeah, I don't know that he got it wrong. He just skipped like four steps to say she's protecting. She's protecting geese and she is now turned it into a First Amendment thing. I said they had hoodies. They in fact have T-shirts. You know, Phil Polaroid. I like those things. Flock around, find out.

I like those so much. We should meet it or should do a co-lab with these guys. It would be great. I'd like a flock around find out shirt. It's a dead goose instead. Instead of a lot. So this is then Riled up at a town hall meeting, apparently? It appears that way.

Yeah. And so now it's now turned into a First Amendment thing. Her attorney says, The witch hunt of Maria and the Canadian geese is over. We'll put an end to this. And the town is not in her favor.

They say that feeding these things is causing issues for their public spaces and the residents. So it's the Fafo group versus the town. Hmm. It's a great story. going to go. Guy rode in.

Oh, Brody's going to talk about a guy that rode in. Oh, yeah. I've been hearing this lately. I've been hearing this lately.

Oh, I've been hearing it for a lot. This is near and dear to my heart, this conspiracy theory. It's not a conspiracy. Listen, it is,

it is. I think it is. You don't think it is? Anyway, let's see what you hear it. We got an email from a listener. I listened to your last interview with podcast with Mike Bodenchuk. Is that how you say it's?

That's correct. I'm predation. You never, mentioned turkeys predating on grouse chicks and eggs they planted turkeys in northern wisconsin where they are an invasive species okay we'll get to that um people have witnessed turkeys killing and eating grouse chicks 30 turkeys will go through the woods making it look like pigs went through scratching up and eating everything turkeys are everywhere now and grouse populations are suffering every single person living in once fantastic grouse areas that have been taken over by

turkeys say the same thing grouse are suffering this seems to be a taboo subject i would like to hear your thoughts go ahead i got thoughts i was just hunting in oklahoma yeah turkeys hunting in oklahoma and like every time you go turkey hunting there's a lot of birds on the neighbor's place which is a common problem so we went and spoke to the neighbor uh-huh he said kill them all they're eating all my quail okay and then we were we were talking about amongst ourselves, do we dispel him of that belief? Or let him just take the permission. Yes.

We just decided to take the permission and resist. Like every part of me. Every part of me wanted to say, well, yeah, I don't know about that. Right. But I've never corrected a landowner who said something, you know, he could tell me black is white. I'd be like, of course it is. Yes.

This is a thing that's been coming up for years, like in roughed grouse country. and you know the whole like people have witnessed turkeys killing and eating grouse chicks maybe i don't know um i'd have to see where there's got to be trail cam footage if this is such a problem right but like he's right that nor turkeys were introduced into northern wisconsin in 1970s prior to that there were not turkeys that far north they they planted them they took off they did well I don't think you can call them an invasive species. That's my opinion. During that same time frame, like throughout rough grouse country, since the late 70s, early 80s,

rough grouse have been on a serious decline. The fact that these two things happened at the same time, like correlation is not causation, right? Just because the turkeys are there doesn't mean they're the reason grouse are around, are hurting. We did a podcast with our buddy Carl Malcolm from the Rough Grouse Society and touched on this a little bit. Carl would tell you it's exclusively, not exclusively. It's mostly a habitat problem. Where grouse are hurting, it's because the habitat isn't ideal for them.

Like I can't say this guy is completely wrong and what he's seeing didn't happen. But yeah, I think it's a, it's a long. the lines of a conspiracy theory. It's something I tell my buddy in Pennsylvania that's a hardcore grouse hunter. I say it all the time as a joke. Like, turkeys ate all the grouse, but it's a joke. Yeah. Well, I would invite this person. And I would never want to hack on a guy that's just curious about what's going on. Yeah. I would invite him to reach out to places that do Turkey research. Okay? Reach out to NWTF. Reach out to Carl, too. And start looking into something called crop surveys.

There have been in a lot of areas, extensive crop surveys. Where they, hunters submit, in some cases, thousands of samples of turkey crops. And you can see, you can research about what turns up in turkey crops.

They eat some odd things. Yeah. And I can't rule out that it never happens. Right. Because you can throw a mouse to a backyard chicken. Yes. It'll eat the mouse. Now we're talking.

There is trail cam footage of a white-tailed deer going up to a robin nest, pulling a hatchling out of the nest and eating it. Things happen. They do. But is it having a population level impact? Yeah. Like I can't tell you that no turkey has never eaten a grouse. Sure, I'm sure it's happened. But I would think if this was a major problem that an organization like the Rough Grouse Society might have like addressed this at this point.

And it does not seem to be a bit of a concern with that. Is the idea that they enjoy eating those eggs or are they just trying to eliminate competition from the world? Oh, no, I think it's like just eat whatever they can. I'm not familiar with this theory. Yeah, I think it's just a Yeah, the turkeys aren't doing like They're not doing like what a wolf does When it kills a coyote.

I mean, I don't know. I mean, I've never interviewed a turkey, but I don't buy that just as my guess on it. So yeah, sorry, man, I can't. I'm not buying it, but good luck. A little too relaxed during yoga? That's embarrassing. You know what's not?

Debt. Consolidate your debt with a loan from fig. No early repayment fees and low interest rates. so you can pay off your debt faster. Borrow better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear First Light.

This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear. Built to perform, built to last, whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go far. and stay longer designed by hunters,

four hunters with a deep commitment to conservation and land access, no shortcuts, no excuses, just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. In the news, we have a special guest coming on right now from the National Institute of Health.

Let me give you a little background. A guy I used to be buddies with, we didn't have a falling out. We just don't talk as much as he once did. The journalist Jim Robbins did a piece in the New York Times about chronic wasting disease. And what's worked, what's not work, just kind of your typical piece that comes up every few years where there's a survey of what's going on in chronic waste and disease research, chronic wasting disease. management, attitudes toward chronic waste and disease. It was a well-reported piece, and Jim Robbins is pretty great at his, when he does wildlife work,

he's pretty great at really getting a disparate collection of voices together on an issue. I always like reading Jim Robbins journalism, and he does a lot of great pieces in the Times, and brings a very level-headed look to complex wildlife issues. In this piece, I read about the work of Catherine. Catherine, can you help me with how you pronounce your last name? It's Hayg. In the work, Jim mentioned Catherine Haig from the National Institute of Health and that they were, she'll do a much better job of explain it than me, but they were looking into the likelihood

or the probability or what would need to happen for chronic wasting disease to do a species jump. So just as a quick background, chronic wasting disease is a servid disease. Moose, deer, white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, caribou, members of the deer family. It's a prion disease that afflicts members of the deer family. And there's this fear that

I'm speaking of me personally. I've eaten accidentally. I've eaten CWD positive meat. I worry my primary concern around CWD remains that a person would get it. And it would be devastating for that individual. It would be devastating for the culture of deer hunting. It would be terrible that you would look at a deer

not as this great source of renewable resource and source of nutrition and all these family values baked up around hunting and eating wild game and sharing that experience. And you'd look at a deer and think, man, that thing's not safe to eat. It would just be devastating. So with all that said, Catherine, can you tell us a little bit about what you do at work and what you did at work around your SWD project? Thank you very much for inviting me on. I am a pre-on biologist.

My work has generally focused on the human forms of these diseases. So in humans, most of the diseases, they're a bit more like Alzheimer's. They arise for no known reason. They're not all by any means due to infection. That's a very, very small amount. Oh. Yeah. There are a very small number.

that are genetic as well. So in the focus on human diseases, what we developed was what we call a human cerebral organoid model of disease. And so what that is, is we take a little snipp of skin cells from a consenting donor, and we reprogram them,

like you would a computer, to make them stem cells. And from those stem cells, we then tell them to grow into brain cells. And we create these little balls of brain cells. Once we've done that, we can expose them to those infectious preons from a human that died of these diseases, and we can have them infected to model the development of disease in a petri dish.

I want to ask a clarifying question on that. When you say a human that died from those diseases, give me an example of one of the diseases that that might be. Because, you know, like we said, like no human has, as far as we know, no human has ever contracted CWD. So what human disease would you use in your work? We use Kreuzfeld-Yap disease. Okay. So that's the most common form of human disease. It's still really rare.

It's an incidence of about one to three per million. So not common by any stretch. But the people who die of it, the prehomes that are within their brain are infectious to other human tissue. Okay. So that's what we use. And you've been, and you, with the technology you're describing, you have been able to take these preons from a donor,

and you've been able to infect the cells in your Petri dish. Like you can successfully infect the cells. Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And we've monitored them for the disease. disease, progression, what's changing in the, and the deposition of the misfolded protein that

is that causative preon. So we see all of that within the human organoids. Okay. Okay. So then walk me through what happened when you started looking at CWD or give me any other relevant steps along the way here? Well, like you said, the big question, what worries everyone is the potential for a jump from we have servants to humans of this disease. And that's a really legitimate worry. I don't know if you have covered mad cow disease on this show, but these diseases are in that same group, that same family.

So mad cow disease did jump from cattle to humans. It was thought to be through eating contaminated meat. So it's a real genuine concern. So for us, we now have a model of human infection and we thought we could use this to try and test that species barrier. Our model is somewhat artificial, to be fair. We literally put the mini brains into a deer brain homogenous. So those little mini brain organoid cultures swim in the CWD infectious preons.

It's a massive exposure and it's a prolonged exposure. So it's far more than we would ever expect any human to really meet. And certainly no human brain would be expected to be in that environment. So we give them this massive dose of infectious prions. And then we monitor them over time to see if they develop disease. Because the CWD, the deer prions are just a little bit different to the human, we can detect the difference between what was the original deer prion and if a human prion starts to emerge. And the good news for that study was that we did not find any evidence of infection of the human organoids.

Have you been able to run the same experiment using, let's say run it with cattle? Okay. Or run it with horse. Have you done that? We have been doing that. Our difficulty with the BSC has been getting hold of good quality tissues to use. We've had tissues with very low titers that really would be too low for infection anyway. So we are doing that. We are trying to do that.

we have an abundance of CWD tissue. Yeah, I got my question was confusing. I'm sorry. What I meant was, so the livestock industry, right, is rightfully, has been rightfully concerned about CWD, that we have CWD infected deer and elk

grazing with, coming into contact with cattle. Or she, right? And so imagine from our America's beef producing industry, the impacts, right? Yes. That would happen, should we find that SWD had somehow infected the nation's beef hurts? So would you be able to, like, would your experiment work to be? to bathe

cattle brain cells in CWD to see if that's a possible jump? Yes, it would. So I am aware that the CDC has tissues of CWD that has transmitted to cattle.

And we do actually want to look and see if that would be infectious to organoids. There are some difficulties with these experiments because I think people worry that they borderline on gain of function, which obviously you don't want to cross into that area. Okay.

Really, we just want to screen, is this infectious to the human brain organoids? Yeah. But I personally think that's a really critical experiment. I think it's far more likely that a CWD that's gone into a cow could be a problem. And I think we do need to know that. Got it. I'm going to ask you a question that we didn't tee up with you. It's not like a controversial question.

Don't feel uncomfortable. But a lot of times when I'm talking about CWD, you know, with other deer hunters and people that eat a lot of deer and elk. And we have CWD in, what's 30 some states now. So most people live in a CWD state. it's better understood on the county level, but, but, you know, millions of Americans hunt deer in areas where CWD is in their county. And a question that comes up or an idea that comes up is maybe we don't have known instances of humans contracting CWD because these things take so much time, right? And maybe it's just a myth, but, but, but you hear people. say, well, I don't know.

In 10 years, in 20 years, maybe there will be many. We just don't know yet. How, as a professional, what are your thoughts on this idea that you would eat infected meat in 20 years it would emerge? Is this based on anything realistic? Or is this just kind of an urban, like a, not an urban, but a rural legend? It's not impossible. These are diseases with very long incubation. periods. So one comparison you can draw is with the BSC epidemic. Now, that emerged in the mid-1980s,

and we were seeing the first cases in the mid-1990s. I think it transpired that it's about an eight-year median incubation. So what we might expect, you know, CWD we've known about since, I think it's been published since the 60s. That's correct, yeah. So what we might expect is that if that really was the case, that we'd start seeing a tick up in the number of cases of CJD. And that just hasn't happened. Got it. So I think that is very unlikely. I mean, if the incubation period is so long that it's longer than a human lifespan,

that would be irrelevant anyway. But we would be on the lookout for a tick up in cases, or more likely, like BSC, the form of CJD that it caused was completely different to the forms that we see through natural sporadic disease. The biochemical signature of the protein was distinct. So we were able to tell whether someone died of the variant CJD from eating BSC versus of an unfortunate case of the normal disease. I understand.

So while it's not impossible, at this point, I don't believe there's any evidence to support a tick up in cases or a different disease emerging. Yep. Now, you're welcome to just to, to, uh, just take a wild guess here, but I'm going to ask you another question. When CWD was identified, it was identified in a, I believe it was a captive mule deer in Colorado in the late 60s.

Where do you think that came from? I mean, if we had done the amount of testing, like, let's say the amount of testing we're doing now across the country, if we were doing that amount of testing in, 1900, would we have found CWD if we were doing that amount of testing in 1900, or do you think it spontaneously generated somehow in the North American servent population? It's hard to tell.

It may have been around for much, much longer than we know. I believe that there is a isolated herd in one of the Northern European countries where it spontaneously appeared. So it seems most likely that it could have been a spontaneous disease that maybe if the deer weren't in such close proximity, maybe that one deer would have died and it wouldn't have been a particular problem. But I don't know.

It could have been just the odd case here and there for a very long time. And there's no, you know how you can go look at a ice, you can go look at a, you can go look at an organism and you can tell from mitochondrial DNA that it went through a bottleneck or you can get some idea of I don't know the longevity of it like how by the rate of mutations

whatever to hell you can tell how long something had been around but these things you can't really look at that way right I mean you can't look at them and sort of date or look at how they morphed over time or where populations emerged and spread to because it's a It's a protein and not a cell.

Am I, you know, is what I'm saying making any sense? Like, you can't track its history, or am I wrong? There's a little, a little bit you can. So over a millennia of evolution, that gene has persisted in most mammalian species and abian species, I think even in turtles. and you can track how the gene evolved by the differences between each species. So one of the things we do when we're looking at sort of the risk of transmission is where those changes have occurred in the sequence, we can look at whether that would prohibit the two prions binding. So if a sequence has changed too much, you know, it's like a jigs or puzzle.

It's just not going to fit. Okay. So we can look at that a little bit, and there is quite a lot of work going on in the field to try and look at those structures to determine whether there is a risk of, particularly a given strain, maybe moving across rather than. Yep. Understood. Yeah. I mean, in all honesty, I mostly understand what you're saying, but I get the gist of what you're saying. Can I ask you one last question?

Of course. Okay. Have you followed, and apologies, but we're getting into, we didn't like pre-hit you with these. So if you don't want to answer, don't answer it. Have you followed this conversation and some action being taken place around this idea that there's some deer that seem to be less susceptible to CWD or. or CWD behaves in them differently and it's it lingers longer or whatever, but they're like they're being built as a resistant, a CWD resistant deer. Do you, do you have any, do you have any professional awareness of this, of this idea? Yes, it's not, it's not crazy. This mostly comes from the genetics again.

So within our own genes, you can have what's called a polymers, morphism, which can just be a single change in the gene. It doesn't cause disease. It's there. It's normal for everyone. It's, you know, just inherited. But those little changes can change your susceptibility to disease. In the world of Scrapey, they found that there's a specific set of these polymorphisms.

Like, I think it's three for the scrapy resistance. But when they have those polymorphisms, they are very unlikely to contract disease. So that herd becomes protected. And this is of huge interest for CWD as well, because if you could breed a herd that simply can't get the disease, then it is no longer a problem. I a little bit beg to differ because I guess I don't beg to differ on what you're saying. Where I wind up having a hard time, and this is for this is a different conversation because this is like population modeling and population. in population dynamics is how

I mean, when you have tens of millions of deer out on the landscape and we have cervids in 50 states you know how would you, let's say you found it, how would you ever have meaningful

genetic input into a population without starting basically from zero all over again? It'll take a long time So this has also happened naturally. Okay. I don't know if you heard of Kuru. It was a disease for a tribe of Papua New Guinea.

So they actually, they were cannibals. They were eating the corpse as part of a funeral rye and, of course, becoming infected. But they actually evolved a new polymorphism to protect them against disease. And I think at the point that they were persuaded to change their funeral rights, it was about 50% of the population that may have this new polymorphism. So it happened naturally that they were evolving this effectively to survive. So with a few deal with those polymorphisms out there, they may simply outcompete the ones that get disease.

Got it. Man. Over time. I got a question. Please. Yeah. She's great. If you ever, you should come do a residency here.

Catherine, what would you say to a hunter who sees the result of your test? It's like, see, there was nothing to worry about. Like, I can eat the CWD positive meat, and it's not, like, I have no, nothing to worry about as far as getting infected. Like, what would you say to now you're putting her in a tough spot? I know but I think there's an answer like, because

I'm guessing like there's no such thing as a negative result right? Like, you want to see a scientist choose her words carefully? Yeah. Get ready. Because they're going to be hunters who are like, see? Oh, I feel that way. Yeah.

Yeah. Every model is flawed. So that's the first thing to bear mind. Science, nothing is perfect. So we have to always take our results with a grain of salt. In our model, we have tested the human polymorphisms that represent only 90-ish percent of the population. So there's still a subset of people we haven't been able to test whether they would be vulnerable. We are working on that now and keeping fingers crossed. So I don't think I would be blase and say, yeah, you'll be fine, eat as much as you want.

I think I would still recommend to people that they get their meat tested if they can. I also feel a bit like this isn't something to be losing sleep over. This is the kind of CWD research I like, man. Don't lose any sleepover. No, no, just dispassionate. That she's dispassioned. Do you know what I mean? No, I like that answer.

Keep it in mind, but don't. lose any sleep over it. Catherine, you come on the show any time, man. This is great. This is my favorite guest of all time. Thank you very much. Thank you for the invite. You come any time.

You're going to have Brody's seat. We'll get you some of our deer meat to eat. Yeah, we'll cook you some deer meat. Thank you. Oh, you know, I got to tell you one last thing. I'm just telling you this just to be entertaining. to give you a little concept to think about. When I used to have an idea that, like, I love to talk about CWD to a fault.

It's my favorite subject. And I'm open to people's opinions about who I'm very open to people who want to say, don't worry about CWD. Or they're like, CWD is a hoax or CWD doesn't matter. It's a conspiracy theory. And my thing is, I used to want to make a burger. I wanted to get a bunch of CWD infected deer, like a dozen of them, and make a batch of burger with all that meat.

And then when someone was coming to tell me that it was a hoax and didn't matter, I would cook them a patty of that burger. And if they ate the burger, then I would listen to everything they said. If they declined the burger, then I would say, you see, it's concerning.

But I would only believe the hoaxers after they ate my burger. But I haven't made it because I feel like I would be criticized for having that burger around. Yeah. I'd write like, don't eat on the packs. It was the famous clip in the UK of the politician giving his little daughter a burger right in the heart of the BSC epidemic. Oh, was it? Oh, yeah. Wow.

That's my guy right there. Yeah. Put your mouth where your money is. And as much as I recently ate CWD infected me without knowing it and then had like an uncomfortable text message for my friend telling me. And then I had to text my buddy who was with me at his house. Right. If someone made me the burger I'm talking about, still today, after hearing your news, still today I would be like, man, I don't want that burgers. I just don't want that burger.

All right. Thank you very much for coming on. I appreciate the work you're doing. I'm sure you have all kinds of motivations to do your work. But on behalf of hunters, on behalf of consumers of deer meat, thank you for looking into this. This is just the kind of information we need to make responsible decisions. So I appreciate it. Oh, thank you for having me.

Great. Thanks, Catherine. Thank you. A little too relaxed during yoga? That's embarrassing. You know what's not? Debt. Consolidate your debt with a loan from FIG.

No early repayment fees and low interest rates. So you can pay off your debt faster. Borrow better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear first light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear. Built to perform, built to last.

Whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerware shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer. Designed by hunters, four hunters, with a deep commitment to conservation and land access. No shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com.

That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Play the clip, Phil. Oh, goodness. Oh, we're just going to go out. I feel like I need to sit with that. Listen, I've been sitting with it. I read Jim Robbins article. There's a lot of, there's a lot of subjects where you, you know, they pop up in the news every now and then.

And you're like, I've seen this before. I've seen this before. And then you get that. And it's like a, it's like a drug. It's like a new, a new information. Well, that's truly the new, like, you don't get new information on CWD. No, ever. And we just got some.

Yeah, that's like the least. full of shit lady on the planet too. That's the vibe I'm getting up. That was electric. Clip time. Like if you put me, like, if I was going to rate people full of shit, like, I would be like up there. She's like down there, man. Yeah, play the clip. This guy, no, this,

just watch this guy for his hosting abilities. I'm not joking. This guy is mesmerizing to me. Play the clip, Phil. Haunting aspect of the recent bear killer. of Anthony Polio in Glacier National Park is that he did deploy bear spray, but it still killed him. I've heard that yesterday from a customer who read an article,

and today a member of, that actually works for Glacier National Park, came by and said the same thing. Now, I have made on James Willow's YouTube, and I released it here on Facebook, five times when bear spray won't help you. And it would be helpful if you viewed that video. The guy who worked for the park service came in today

and said that when they were searching for Anthony Polio, even though it was two or three days later, part of the way that they found him is that they smelled the bear spray and went over to where the incident occurred and found his baby. body. Great.

So, as promised, the pistol v. bear spray debate rages on. A little more background. We got it. That gentleman covered it pretty well, but a young man named Anthony Polio from Florida. He lives in central Florida now. I think he's from South Florida originally.

I was reading he works as a church deacon. He was killed on the, this spring. He was killed on the way up to the Mount Brown Fire Lookout in Glacian. National Park. Right before he killed, he left his dad a phone message. It was kind of haunting idea. He just killed 2.5 miles from the trailhead.

A couple little tidbits here that are worth pointing out before I get into the bear spray idea. When that happened, the first is just an axe to grind. When that happened, it was pointed out the first in the park in 25 years. Like, it's like, it's so rare. It hasn't happened in the park in 25 years. But that is a demonstration of what I think of as National Park Syndrome, which is thinking, like taking Yellowstone Glacier or whatever, Yosemite,

and drawing it off as though that this is a world unto itself. And what happens within these arbitrary borders somehow is different than what happens outside of these borders. So when you're pointing out, first in the park in 25 years, okay. but not the first in a while. So you have, you know, a bear killed someone in Montana in 23. A bear killed someone in Montana in 2022. Grizzly bears killed two people in Montana in 2021. Just last year, August of 25.

A guy was killed in British Columbia, 48 miles. from the border. So by pointing out these things like in the park as though the park is something that exists in and of itself is a little like just misleading and goofy. I would much rather speak about these things at an ecosystem

later. And I hate the word, I hate the fact that Yellowstone is in this, but it's the best serviceable, serviceable words. Like the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Which is a chunk of ground the size of Indiana. There's definitely probably tourists out there that

feel much different about walking around in Yellowstone than a solo Elkunner might feel about walking around solo in Paradise Valley. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, it could never happen to me here. Because they create this idea, they create this

idea that that somehow is a distinct place. This gentleman that was killed, his father even suggested, like just to kind of give you, like, if you think of National Park Syndrome him. And I don't mean this to be critical, him. He just lost his son. But he suggested, and speaking to a journalist from the New York Times, he suggested that all of the Grizzlies in Glacier should be fitted with a GPS chip. And had they done that, this would have never happened because they would have been able to notify people where the bear was. And like, that someone would have the idea that that was even possible comes from this idea of that these parks or these distinct. things with hard edges rather than the fact

that the animals have no idea they move in and out these are soft boundaries because you're a big park guy yeah but like the glacier has over three million visitors a year because people aren't messing around out on national forests for the most part

maybe a few of them but like those three million go to glacier and they recreate in glacier this is just like a statistic that they're keeping and be like we had a shooting in Bozeman recently Okay. You wouldn't like assign that to Belgrade, you know, the town a few miles away, even though you're like, it's all the same community or whatever. Okay.

So does the guy that got killed by a grizzly just north of Yellowstone Park? So then when someone gets attacked in the park, they're like, no one's been attacked this park for blinking and blank years. You're like, well, guy just got killed six miles from the park. Yeah, that's just like the statistic for Yellowstone. Like I'm not, I'm not that bothered by it. And I don't know. Again, three million people National Park Syndrome.

Three million people visit. I think you have National Park Syndrome. Oh. It's like National Park Derangement Syndrome. Yeah. That's like you have. To Ragement Syndrome. Yes, I think they should be wilderness areas.

Guilty. I have derangement syndrome. Great. I had some kind of analogy I thought of this morning, but I can't remember what it was. Okay. Allow me to think about it for a minute. I'm just not that bothered by like the stat being like,

it's the first fatal grizzly attack in Glacier in what was it 30 years? I would say the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem. When you say, like, well, it hasn't been happening a glacier, okay, but a grizzly killed

someone in Ovando. Oh, here's my analogy. Yeah. A woman was killed, a bike, a bicyclist on a long bicycle trek journey.

Stopped and set up a tent near the post office in Ovando. A grizzly dragged her out and killed her. So what I say... That was within the last few years, right?

Would I go and say, this is the first ever grizzly bear attack in Ovando, which is like a couple miles wide. Sure. Or would I say a northern continental divide ecosystem attack? I don't. Because of course, in Ovando next to the post office, sure, it's the first one in a long time. In fact, I don't know when the last person got killed at the post office in Ovando was.

But who are you specifically mad about? Because I'm looking at an article right now. The world. They give you all that context. they talk about the Ovando thing in here. They talk about like other attacks that have happened in Canada. So just like who is the person? I believe we should talk about grizzly attacks.

This is relevant to a very few small number of people. I would say going forward, if I was the emperor of the world on wildlife issues, a role I would like, I would say, from now on, we will speak of these, bears in their DPS terminology, distinct population segment terminology, which would be the greater

Yellowstone ecosystem, the northern continental divide ecosystem, the cabinet yak ecosystem, Northern Cascade ecosystem, etc. That is how I would catalog attacks. That is how I would speak about it. That's not the point I'm trying to get to. Okay. The point I'm trying to get to is now it has realivened, like even a friend of mine, a friend of mine texts me, I will never trust bear spray ever.

Because this guy discharged the spray. If you look, this kid that was killed, polio, there were accounts that his spray was found nearby. and there were accounts that his spray was found still clutched in his hand, his pepper spray. He definitely discharged the spray. His father, who might have additional information that hasn't been released to the public, because the person from Montana Fishw Wildlife and Parks, who's investigating this incident isn't talking yet. The kid's father might have more information.

The kid's father said to a journalist, he thinks his kid hose the bear and then ran. and the bear caught up with him. I don't know where he's getting that. But the idea is some people like, it doesn't work. But here's the point, part of the point. The guy that was killed 48 miles from the USBC border, 48 miles north of the USBC border, shot the bear to killed him.

Yeah. Shot it in the hip. It killed the bear. It killed the bear. But the bear killed him. There's nothing on a can of... In the words of hatchet jack. it killed the bar that killed me.

There's nothing on a can of bear spray that says guaranteed to stop a grizzly from killing you. But that's the way people are treating this. I know. And I'm like I have, I carry a, a, a, a, a, a sig 10 millimeter when I think there's high likelihood of grizzly action. And I carry spray. This is my own little stupid math problem. I don't know. I don't know why.

I can't defend it. I carry spray when I think there's a casual chance of bear action. I don't know why. It's just dumb. This is what I do. It just works in my mind. Do you remember when that bear was walking up the hill towards us on the moose hunt and Cook was holding the rifle in one hand and bear spray the other? Yeah, he does both.

And I said, you better pick one or the other. This is so funny. We're sitting there on a hill. We're looking out. There's this grizzly coming across this flat. And it gets into the willows right below us. And I'm like, that bear is going to be here in a second in our laps. I'm sure.

I'm like there. There he was. So this thing that comes out where it's. like reinforcing this idea but this cuts both ways neither of these things are perfect no there was a case a couple there was just a few years ago there's a

guy that two guys are bear hunt black bear hunting they miss they misidentify a grizzly bear a guy shoots the grizzly bear thinking it's a black bear the bear runs into the brush

they go in there after it the wounded grisly now attacks one of the hunters. The other hunter goes to kill the grizzly off his buddy, but instead mortally wounds the buddy. The buddy dies of a gunshot wound, not a bear attack. That's why if you go look at bear attack fatalities, he's not on the list. So do you then go, ha, guns don't work?

No. Because it's like everything. None of this is perfect. None of this is perfect. But the fact that this guy discharged spray doesn't, you can't draw a conclusion from this. Because you go even to other attack. There was another attack in Montana in Yellowstone Park.

Well, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The woman was scratched up by a bear. Well, why did the malling stop? Because her buddy hosed the bear. We've had two people on this show who were mauled by grizzly bears and the mauling stopped when? When they hosed it. One hosed it on purpose.

It was mull in the back of her neck, and she stuck it in her face over her shoulder without even looking at it and hosed it over her shoulder. And it ran off. Another person that sat right in the studio, he didn't hose it. It was in his hand. The bear went to bite his hand,

bit through the can and blew it up in its face, and the attack stopped. All these things are imperfect. They're saying that he deployed it. It doesn't mean he hit the bear. It doesn't mean he hit in the face. Yeah. Yeah.

He could have deployed it with the wind in his face. Right. He could have been rolling around on the ground with bear sprays. Shooting that shit all over the place. Yeah. Or he's sitting there in 10 mile an hour wind. And the window sends it right back to him. It could be.

I don't know. It could be that he host himself. Yeah. We'll probably know later. Yeah. I don't know. But to draw a big. conclusions from this about the efficacy of spray or to draw big conclusions about the efficacy

of guns from other incidents. They're all imperfect. Yeah, I think you show me someone who's a very strong opinion, airtight opinion one way or the other. I could find one example to support that. And I could find another example that would disprove your strategy. Yeah, the dismissiveness From the video we watched, be like if someone died in horrific car accident, you're like, well, seatbelts and airbags. Yep. Oh, yeah. They're not cutting it. Yep.

And that happens. Last time I trust those things. Yeah. Or, oh, well, you can go on all day with this. You can run all day with these and that. Yeah. I've done time about that. That's all.

There's people that, I mean, I have people every now and then ask me, do you carry a gun or do you carry bear spray? And I say both. And. I'll say both at all times. And I say, no, sometimes they carry one. Sometimes I carry the other. I can't really explain one way or the other, but I don't feel I'm worse off for having a can of bear's spray and my gun. I, you know, like, I don't always want to carry my gun.

And if I'm in a place where I don't think it's going to be, you know, we're going to have a shootout. I'm not going to bring it. But, and it's not, I mean, if I'm a gris country and I got an elk or a moose or something, half butchered. Yeah. And I'm going back in the next day. Oh, yeah. Spooky.

Pistol drawn, buddy. Pistol drawn, not spray. If I only had spray, I'd have the spray. But again, I can't tell you, it's all, like, it's all, um, there's a big amount of mental masturbation and all this. It just makes me feel better. The only one who knows what happens to bear. Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. And you can't interview them. Nope. If we could get a, if we could get a, some sort of a powder, pistol powder that also made a big cloud of, oh. You know, when you shoot it. Yeah, you shoots a bullet and a bunch of spray. Yeah.

That's good. I'm going to work on that. And then get residue all your hands. I've never invented anything. I'm going to try to invent that. I've got a notebook full of inventions. I'm done. That's all I wanted to say.

Well, there's. lot of data centers in the news lately. Never a truer statement was spoken. And it's not because there's all this hysteria about it. Like there's just a lot of data centers and a huge rush of data centers being constructed. So two headlines that are pertinent at the moment to our audience. One is that the Potomac River was named the number one most endangered river of 2026. there was a big sewage spill, but American rivers said it would have been number one anyway

because of how intensely data centers are operating and being constructed in the Potomac watershed. There are 300 data centers in the Potomac watershed. They use 9% of the water annually, including 12% of like water used, 12% in the summer. Ludin County, I'm probably butching the pronunciation, has the highest concentration of data centers in the world, 199 currently operating, and 13% of the global data center capacity in just one county in Virginia. And so the Potomac being the number one most endangered river is one headline. The other headline is folks have probably seen the state of Alaska is moving forward with a 50-year lease for a proposed AI data center on Alaska's North Slope. And this would be, I think, 20-some miles south of a lot of the oil infrastructure.

So it's very far north in Alaska. It's a $500 million development. And it will consume twice as much natural gas as is used for electricity and heating across Alaska's entire urban grid. What? Mm-hmm. They haven't. So one thing to note about that, the gas. they don't pump natural gas in large quantities or, you know, in any amount off the North Slope.

So a lot of that gas wouldn't be used if this thing didn't go in up there and burn the gas. I understand. Yeah. It's a byproduct. Yeah. So, so. That's not the part that bothers me. This is a huge, I mean, basically like this is, the North Slope one is, is sort of an interesting case because given the latitude, it's going to use a lot less water than the industry standard. There's some estimate saying 90% less. Because it's cold. And so the three concerns that, you know, if you're reading about data centers, the three interrelated concerns are water usage, electricity consumption, and the actual footprint of the facility. The electricity consumption is huge because they're powering all these machines. Then they need to cool those machines because they're using so much energy. And that's

where the water comes in. And then the footprint, just for efficiency's sake, like, they have to cite all of this stuff in a condensed area. But there's also, like, industrial pollution concerns, isn't there? Yeah, there's also that. There's also that. So big picture, I guess, I read something recently and it's, you know, there have been data centers for a long time that store, like the videos you're watching or your Google Drive documents and all that stuff. But AI requires exponentially more computer power. And all of these companies, the metas of the world, the Googles of the world,

they're dumping all of their chips in the AI game. And so, like meta gave, he gave up on his metaverse. Yeah. But it was so cool. It was so cool. That was the dorkies thing in the world. And the growth of these things, is just crazy.

They're saying that this is the largest growth in power demands since post-World War II era in terms of demand on the grid. AI data centers can use as much power as 100,000 homes or more. Meta's building one in Louisiana that will draw twice the power of the entire city of New Orleans. My God. Another meta facility in Wyoming will draw more power than every residential property in the state combined. and we're expected to double or triple energy use in the very near future. So, so like there's, even if you get beyond the facilities themselves, like the demand that they're putting on for new power plants to come online, nuclear reactors seem to be sort of

the, what folks are hoping will solve this problem. But in the meantime, a lot of its natural gas, um, China is, it's obviously a race with China. Their advantage is in power. They have, they have a lot more power than us. And our, you know, we see all these headlines, like basically every headline that you've seen in the past few years about our grid being outdated or drought, all this stuff. Like, it all ties into this question of data centers.

And they can exacerbate drought. Obviously, like, there's a huge one going up in Utah that, uh, Mr. wonderful Kevin O'Leary is behind. It's going to occupy, speaking of that footprint, it's going to occupy 40,000 acres. And we'll release the equivalent of 23 atomic bombs worth of thermal energy in a single day. A physics professor at Utah State estimates it will warm daytime temperatures by two to five degrees and nighttime temperatures between 8 to 12 degrees. Some estimates think within what? It's putting off so much energy.

that making a microclimate it's making a microclimate in the area around oh in the area around so daytime i mean like a pretty expansive area not just like so i guess like you know the term nimbie not my backyard i'm a nimp i just invented that a nimp not in my country it's like i just don't i i just wanted to go away yeah i was fine i was fine i hate the stuff. I hate all the environmental destruction for this. I said about looking into these two headlines and it's like an onion, the more layers you peel back, there's more, there's even more stuff to untangle, right? Not that you untangle parts of an onion. I'm an environmental nationalist. But yeah, there's, so there's another story in Georgia. Residents in a subdivision complained about

low water pressure. The county revealed that two industrial scale water hookups had been connected to the power, to the water supply, connected to a data center. One had been installed without informing the water utility, and the other one hadn't been built. So collectively, that drained 30 million gallons in less than a year out of this water supply without paying for it. Here's why I want to. It's just this unbelievably sprawling concern that, that, like, will affect habitat and water

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no shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. I got a question that maybe you can answer this. This is why I want to get a really, good, like a really good you know that CWD

scientist? I want to get her on data centers. Sure. We talk about using water, but see, if you're just using water for cooling, you have a discharge. This is one of the problems with like coal fire generator plants or nuclear plants. You're using

tons of water for cooling and then the often the environmental problem is you're putting it right back where it came from, but you're putting it back where it came came from hot. Right. So you have a hot water discharge or a warm water discharge, which can lead to all kinds of problems. Rough fish like it, sometimes good fish like it, but it can lead to problems because you're changing water temperatures. So the water's not vanishing. But it could be polluted also. Yeah, it could be, I mean, any, but is that true? Well, yes. Is it polluted?

There are cases, I mean, any sort of concern that you have, I'm guarantee you could find a headline in the past two months where there's some instance of this, just because of the scale of change that's happening right now. Some of them have closed systems. Okay. Like they're circulating water through a closed system. I believe the one

that they're talking about doing in the North Slope would be a closed system. But not all of them. But why are you not, and I'm not asking you to answer this for me, but picture that you're drawing from an aquifer. Do we have the technical capabilities?

to pull it up, cool, and put it back in the aquifer. I can't answer that. I mean, I know there's concerns about contaminating the water that's going through all this piping, leaching. But the water that you drink went through your pipes. That's true. So, I don't know. I'm not trying to make a point. I would love to have someone explain this better to me because I just need to understand that.

I also think like one of the concerns with them is that the same time that they need to be cooled the most intensively is during the summer. And that's also a time when water levels are low in rivers. And there's also just, you know, irrigation demands and all this stuff. So they sort of have this compounding effects on existing water shortages. And when you're using water to cool, what's happening is you're putting the heat into the water. Yeah. how if water's coming in into a data center

it's coming in at I'll just pull a number I can picture it's coming in at 50 degrees yeah is it leaving at 52 is it leaving at a hundred and two I couldn't tell you that I know I'm not trying to bust your balls

no this is one of the things I wonder about yeah I mean I want to get I need to get someone on the show on the interview show I need to get someone that's real solid on this show Well, the NIMBY thing that you talked about is... NIMC. Well, I'm saying NIMBY with these things. Like, like, you mentioned in Georgia where there was, like, low water pressure.

Like, that's kind of what scares me, because when people get sick of these things being in their backyard, like, a logical step could be with the right, like, people behind it in Washington saying, like, well, let's put these things on public land, right? Away away from where people are going to be pissed about it. You know, like Zuckerberg bought that island in Hawaii. He goes out there and surfs around and those goofy glasses and stuff. Do you, uh, I bet he's not putting one on that island. No. No. It'll be like, these are the dudes, these are the dudes that they will never even see one of these things.

Right. It's not going to be in their backyard. Uh-huh. I mean, with something like this, too, ideally, like the problem is the best place to put massive facilities like this, from a habitat standpoint is on landscapes that are already developed or already disturbed. You know, like the best place to do any sort of development is where development has already occurred. So you're not chewing up farmland and you're not chewing up forest and all this. It's like whatever neighborhood in the Bay Area, all these users live in.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I like walking away from my, my limited research on this, it's one of those things when I see it in the news. I kind of roll my eyes and I'm like, God, I'm sick of hearing about data centers, but... I'm not. The more you read about them, you sort of come to the realization that it's not stopping. So we just need to be clear-eyed about the potential risks for habitat and wildlife, you know? Because it's just going to be an ongoing conversation that's probably going to get bigger and bigger in the years ahead. We got to do two quick hits.

We're going to do two quick hits because then we got to get into fishing records, which is what we're going to do. we're all here to hear about. My computer died, so we should just punt that segment to next week since we're all right. See, they took all of his power, the data center. Yep, they did. First casuals you right here. This is when it gets real. This is when it gets real.

Yeah. Okay, so we'll punt on that. Your computer died. Can't plug it in? I don't see a charger in this room. Oh, you're really going to quit because your computer died. Well, no, also, I, before my computer even died, I wrote in the script that I think we should punch.

Oh, that was you that was me. Well, I said, my parentheses. He's just hoping there's another record. I've got a charger. next week. Okay. But you're Delman. Not a somewhat quick hit.

Try to presume. If you're a fellow that reads the news and you're always seeing like data centers, blah, blah, blah, blah. Phil, can you see it? Lately, you've been seeing nothing but cyanide bombs. They're putting cyanide bombs on public land. Phil's going to pull up a picture. Spencer's guilty of this.

I am. If you're seeing stuff about the Trump administration's putting cyanide bombs on public land, it's like hold on a minute hold on a minute a cyanide bomb it's it's the same mentality is calling cwd the zombie deer disease

it's the same mentality you're taking a term in a okay it's like let's say you oppose the inheritance tax what do you go what do you do the death the death you say a death tax?

They're even going to tax you when you're dead because you want to rebrand it. Cyanide bombs are not cyanide bombs. They are canine pest ejectors. Rolls off the tongue. It's just, let's just at least be honest about what we're talking about. There's a very fine debate to be had about whether they should, they're called M44s. Whether you should use it, whether they should be using an M40. devices out on public land. I got a lot to say about it. But please stop with the cyanide bomb thing.

Yeah, there's two like parts of the language you should avoid when talking about. One is calling them a bomb. There's no explosion. It's a spring loaded ejector that sends the cyanide into whatever it's hitting. Crystallized form. Yeah. The other one is calling it a cloud of cyanide. That's another thing you don't do. There's no cloud of gas. It's not just like spreading this across the landscape. It is a solid capsule that is then ejecting the, I assume it's like a powder form. It's like a granular form that mixes with saliva. Yeah.

And that goes directly into the coyote's mouth. There is no like haphazard green fumes coming from one of these things. So you don't call it a bomb and you don't say it's a cloud of gas. Our diagram does show. Gas. No, crystals. It says hydrogen cyanide gas. That's what it makes when it mixes with saliva.

Powder. It's like what it makes when it mixes with saliva. Did I say anything wrong? Did I say anything wrong? When you open up a box of powder and sugar in the diagram. When it mixes. If I put powdered sugar in your mouth, what's going to happen to that powdered sugar? Is it going to turn into cyanide gas?

It's going to form a liquid. Right. So do you go, that's not powdered sugar. that's a liquid. No, it's powder sugar. Once it's in your mouth, it's a liquid. Once it comes in contact with your saliva, it liquefies.

Sure. You could dislike M44s all you want. But let's just be clear about what they are and stop talking about them in some bullshit way. I didn't say anything other than there is cyanide gas at some point in this process. Because it's in our diagram. Yes.

Once the crystals come in contact with a liquid, there's a gas produced that is inhaled by the animal. And it kills it. I'm not trying to sugarcoat back to powdered sugar. I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything. Yeah. It's just stop calling it that.

Because when you're calling it, not you people, America. I know. Because when they're calling it that, they're trying to vilify something in a way that's dishonest. Yeah. These things are also not. We're supposed to be reporting this story. These things are also not new, right? No.

They've been around forever. Ever. Not ever. They were, they're banned during late in the Biden administration. So they're whatever. couple years. They've been banned. But they've been a use for years. But that's a, that's a,

that's, that's, that's part of the problem with headline writing in America. They've, they were legal for decades. Yes. They had a directive under the Biden administration that they wouldn't be able to use them. And these aren't public, these aren't like Joe Blow don't

use these. Like, like, wildlife services or Avis is able to use these. They're not like, you know, you don't just buy them at the, you know, you know, you're go out of the hardware store and buy an M44. It's a professional tool for protecting livestock from predators, which you could be for or against. Let's just be honest about what it is. It's a tool like that. There was always legal.

And then under the Biden administration, they put a moratorium on it, and the moratorium has been lifted. So whenever this happens, what happens is you then report Trump once cyanide bombs. There was an incident, I think, that kind of spurred the ban. Like there was a kid in Idaho was out with his dog Somehow they were both inspecting this thing or looking at it The dog ended up dying and the kid did not the dog it killed the dog Yes he got a settlement of a hundred and fifty-some thousand dollars so like sure there's a possibility that something bad can happen Here's the deal on this here's deal on this what kills more dogs

This is like another case of intellectual dishonesty. What kills more dogs? Coyotes or M-44s? Sure. So all of these organizations, Project Coyote, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, all these organizations that petition against M44s, and they always like to go to the dead dog. But when dogs kill coyotes, where are they? If they are so interested in dead dogs, where are they? They don't have a thing to say about that because they don't actually care about that dog.

They just don't care about the dog. They leverage it. They leverage it because they care about predator control. So just be more honest. What's pretty interesting is there's, I've got an article here from the Casper newspaper, Wyoming, and a woman from the Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, which I'm assuming is not a pro M44 group. They're indiscriminate. They kill anything that comes across them.

no way that anybody needs that to protect their livestock. There are other ways to do it. It's cyanide. That's a tool of war, not something that needs to be used to protect livestock. And here's the interesting part, because she's trying to get hunters on her side. They're just asking for sporting dogs to get killed, like, you know, hitting up the guys that are out there with bird dogs. Yeah.

Now, by, yeah, this, this directive, the interior department's being a little. little coy because they're sort of saying, no, no, no, no, we're not saying go use them. There still has to be NEPA and all these other steps. But they're basically undoing the restriction. They're not mandating that they be used. They're eliminating a barrier to using them. So it's safe to assume that on a case-by-case basis, they may start using M-44s on BLM to protect property. They're supposed to be somewhat canine-specific because there's like a bite-to-and-es-a-old.

and poll. There's a bite and pole function that needs to happen to trigger them. Another detail when you're talking about Biden outlawing them or Trump allowing them, that's specific to federal land. There's still states that throughout the ban were using these things that I don't think were impacted by either it being outlawed or being allowed. And there are states that have state laws that they can't be used in the state. Yeah, exactly. So it's, And again, man, I think, you know, not that I'm the arbiter of what should be an allowable debate. There's a lot to debate here. It's just the bullshit gets piled down so thick around this subject that people can't even see clearly anymore.

Like the rhetoric gets so ridiculous. And the posturing gets so ridiculous. The people aren't you having a sane conversation about it. Yeah. And I've also heard that in some of these. instances where a human deploys one accidentally that they're like some missing

context there about the person was trespassing or they are required by certain laws to have two signs within 15 feet of these plungers. Used be 25 feet now it's 15 feet. And they have to be bilingual. And when you hear about these going off accidentally in something that's not a coyote's mouth

like the signs weren't there or someone was walking in a place that they weren't allowed to be. that's like a common element in this story. Yeah, if you see the setup, I mean, they're marked with a big sign. They're bilingual, I assume, in German for the attack dogs. Yeah. The other thing you've got to look at is you wind up in this kind of stuff, you always look and you say like, is it a population level impact? So when you build, let's say you build a data.

data center. And you're putting up a ton of, you're putting a bunch of concrete on the ground. You are absolutely killing wildlife and you're destroying wildlife habitat. The question would be, is it a population level impact? When you put up wind turbines, so wind power generating turbines, they kill birds. But that industry will say, but it's not a population level. impact. Cars kill raccoons, but it's not a population level impact. So from a wildlife management view, you would say, yes, it's killing some, but it's not a population level impact.

And when you're looking at the M44 stuff, you'll see, oh, wolves could get it or whatever could get it. They're not having population level impacts. So that's another thing to keep in mind. And I keep paying one side of the story, but I'll play the other side for a story. We have a terrible legacy of poisoning wildlife, and we poisoned wildlife for over a century and wiped out a lot of species and extirpated a lot of species across native range through poisoning. So, pun intended, it leaves a bad taste in people's mouth. Poisoning. There's a reasonable, there's reason to recoil at the idea of poisoning predestine. because our legacy of poisoning predators is bad.

We did a lot of damage with indiscriminate use of poisons. And so even when it's a discriminant use of poisons, it can rile folks up. I don't know. Especially if they're not getting the full story from the news coverage. We moving on? I'm done. Here's the headline.

I thought I'd never hear. Wyoming reducing wolf quotas for 2025. If you're familiar with Wyoming and their relationship with wolves, that might seem surprising. Is it to preserve the age class? Yeah. The trophy. Wyoming wildlife managers are proposing major reductions to the state's 2026 wolf hunting quotas. A widespread canine distemper outbreak caused one of the sharpest wolf population.

declines in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Nice job. Since they were introduced there in the mid-1990s. If you're not familiar, canine distemper, it's a viral disease affecting all kinds of canine species, wolves, coyotes, foxes, domestic dogs. And it's especially lethal to puppies, highly contagious, incurable, affects the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and nervous systems. most dogs, like if a dog's infected with it, it's going to die within two to four weeks.

Dogs can survive it, but they generally will suffer from permanent neurological damage, like seizures paralysis. Canine December is not new in the Yellowstone area. There's been several distemper outbreaks in the region in the past 20 years, but there were smaller flare-ups that didn't cause major mortality events like this past winter. And according to state and federal monitoring of Wyoming's wolf population, it declined from roughly 330 wolves in 2024 to 253 entering 2026. Breeding pairs drop from 24 to 14. And the, the, the Wyoming has two different like

wolf hunting zones. One's called the true. I'll explain this more, but, Can you pull up that map, Phil? There's what they call the trophy area in northwestern Wyoming. That declined to 130 wolves. And that area in the northwest part of the state is where they have to maintain a target of approximately 160 wolves, or they get in trouble with the feds and wolves going back on the ESA. So that's why this is very concerning to Wyoming's wildlife managers. it's not necessarily that they're worried about this wolf decline in general. It's that if there's not enough wolves in that area around Yellowstone,

you'll also hear that called the recovery area back when the wolves were managed federally rather than by the state of Wyoming. So right now it's below that target of 160 wolves. Distemper exposure was detected. and 64% of wolves captured during monitoring work. Wolf pup survival dropped dramatically, which affected recruitment into the adult population. An estimated 31 to 34 pups out of 87 documented pups statewide survive,

so less than half. Man, you'd think that the people that are so hysterical all the time about a wolf getting killed by, a hunter. They got to be shit in their pants. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the first time they've seen like a population event, like level event like this. Um, what it'd be like really with all the consternation about managed wolf hunting somehow putting wolves back on the ESA list. Um, as much as that was like pushed and pushed and pushed. Yep. It'd really be something if it wound it being a naturally occurring wildlife disease.

Yeah. Put them back on the left. Exactly. And like they, in the research I was doing, they, they make a point to say that like hunting is not causing population level declines. Like it's in that,

they're highly managed in that, that, uh, trophy zone. How many get killed there each year? Well, it was, it was, the quota was 20 was 44.

Um, and they didn't even, they only killed 31 out of 44 last. last year, so they didn't even meet the quota. They're proposing to drop that quota to 22, so they want to cut it in half. Are they fixing to keep the rest of the state as basically like a vermin coyote zone? Yeah, they don't, like, they don't need to manage them for a minimum in the rest. It's only that, that recovery area, trophy game management area.

Yeah, so if you're not able to look at the graphic Phil has pulled up here, basically the top eighth. So the top left or northwest corner of the state comprising about an eighth of the state of Wyoming, which is pretty damn rectangular, is wolf trophy game management area. And the rest of the state is just predatory management area or the predator zone where the wolves are open all the time. They're managed like a coyote in seven eighths of Wyoming, roughly seven, eights of Wyoming, excluding the corner of the state which touches on Yellowstone

National Park and Grand Teton National Park. Yep, and the state of Wyoming has an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to maintain those minimum number of wolves and minimum number of breeding pairs inside that trophy zone. So,

yeah, they took pretty drastic action to make sure that wolves don't end up becoming federally managed in the state of Wyoming, which might seem like counterintuitive for a state like Wyoming. It might seem like they don't want any wolves, but they're doing what they need to do to maintain them as a state-managed game animal, which is pretty cool. Yeah, everybody's fulfilling their role there. Yeah. Like the state is doing their part and the feds are like doing their thing about saying, we expect this many animals. all the numbers you said though are like half as big as I thought they would be.

As far as the total numbers. The total number that are killed, the total number that live there, what the quota is. I assumed I would have put 2x on all those. I was just guessing. Yep. So there you go. If you're looking to kill a wolf in the trophy zone in Wyoming this year, it's going to be a little harder. Okay, everybody.

Stay tuned next week for Spencer's Fishing Records Report. And a charge computer. He's going to charge up. He's going to be ready. They might get another record between now and then. Do me a favor as you're wrapping up listening. Go subscribe to the Meat Eater podcast YouTube channel, please. Or wherever you listen.

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