The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 890: Mushroom Poisonings in California, Mule Deer in Alaska, and an Ex-NRA Chief in Trouble

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: Steve's foray into spearing for walleye; the sketchy science behind pouring soda on fish; eating animals that eat rotten meat; an update on the NRA's legal troubles; an "outbreak" of mushroom poisonings in California; the first mule deer harvested in Alaska; Randall's experience collaring fawns in Wyoming; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. If you do off-season work, you know it beats up gear. Scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. First Light fieldwear is built for all that. No shortcuts. Purpose-built, durable. Hard-wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters,

it supports the work that earns the season. Check out First Light's new fieldwear collection at firstlight.com. Welcome to the news show this week. We've got the NRA in continued legal trouble. We've got, does it really help to make fish drink pop? What is beach access and why do some wealthy folks hate it so damn bad? Spencer reports on an outbreak of mushroom poisonings and deaths in California. And me, Steve, is troubled by the word outbreak in that context, but we will see.

We've got. Despite what you've read, there is, in fact, no evidence of Jaguar Pups living right now in Arizona. And it happened. A hunter in Alaska killed the first ever mule deer killed by a hunter in Alaska. Plus a whole lot more. But first. What is first? Oh.

Walley's. Oh, we're going wallace first. Well, I don't know. What else is first? TRC Pion giveaway. Oh. Yeah, because this is something I have to talk about all the time. I'm going to start talking about the interview show, too.

Right now, go to, if you want to win the annual turkey hunt giveaway, go down to, Phil, what camera is it when I'm not talking to that thing? Well, that's your camera, always. I'll switch it to Spencer and Randall if they're talking. I'll switch it to Brody if he's talking. But that one is me. That one is you. Okay, I got confused because of that thing we got sitting there.

Yeah, sorry. If you want to win this year's turkey hunt giveaway, where me and Yon, John is take you turkey hunting. We do everything but wipe your bottom. Like, we bring in a cook that cooks for you. We'll help you tie your boots. All your expenses are paid.

Janice and I will cater to your every need and desire when you win. And we have years worth of winners to back us up on this. So you buy raffle tickets. Go to TRCP.org. Go to the turkey hunt giveaway or the spring fundraiser or summer funder. raise what they call it. If you go to the head under giving, it's like the first thing below your cursor. Buy your tickets. Okay. Someone wins every year. If you win, you and a friend, you can take your husband, you can take your wife, you can take your best friend. Last year we had a couple of brother-in-laws,

right? Whoever you want to pick, we cover your airfare, we cover your tag, we cover your food, we cover your lodging, you pay nothing. You leave your wallet at home. Do they bring a gun? we have in the past brought a gun okay we've in the past we've had in the past we brought a gun we had a guy bring basically a coach gun he had a 10 gauge single shot sawed off gun

he missed with it and then we had him switch gun optional I was cheering for that guy yeah I like the style I never see anything like it I never seen anything like it I thought that turkey was going to be not alive anymore after the shot, the concussive boom,

but the turkey was unfazed. I'm not sure what happened. I think you ought to bring some of the last TSS ammo in the world for that hunt. We'll supply your ammo. We'll supply your ammo. Wow. All you do is you and your friends show up, eat good food that you don't have to cook,

eat off dishes you don't have to clean, and have fun. Who's doing the calling on these hunts? I hunt with one. We do a little deal. This year we drew straws. So I had my guy Yanni had his guy

But we switch it up But my guy got his turkey in 10 minutes Wow And Yanni's guy got his turkey that afternoon Our guys this year got their birds First we had three nights Two days to hunt But in the past if we've had a bad

A couple days we always we work it out So you're calling though Yeah got it Um Well Yanni's calling I'm calling And then if And then when our guy got a bird

Then we started hunting for the chef The intention was the chef would get his bird and I'd start hunting too. But it's busy. It's packed in. If you get your bird right away, there's still plenty of hunting to be done because we're going to switch to me hunting. It's a great time. Go buy your raffle tickets.

It goes to good cause. All the money goes to TRCP. Like we take care of the expenses. All the raffle money goes straight to TRCP, whose slogan is guaranteeing Americans quality places to hunting fish. That's it for that. Speaking of Teddy, I don't know the rest of that. There's something with Teddy Roosevelt merch in here, but I don't know the detail.

Randall's talk about it. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Well, I was going to talk about the roadless rule. Yeah, we're talking about the roadless rule. I don't know where you are in the document. Yeah, why did you say that? Oh, someone deleted.

It said TRCP, Haunt, giveaway, and Teddy merch. He's going by memory. Yeah, if you're following the news, Mike Lee is up to his old tricks, and he introduced. an amendment into the Wildfire Prevention Act of 2025 that would nullify the roadless rule. And so this... Man, that dude loves him a road, man.

I mean, it must be nice. He just... Loves a road. I wish I had one thing in my life that I was so single-minded and passionate about as he has... What was it? What was it? What do you have in doing bad things to public lands?

What was the quote you heard from someone? just recently. It's not a resource if you can't research or if you can't reach it. If you can't access it. Yeah. Yeah. So in any event, that got slipped into this bill as an amendment. And so the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 11 to 9 to adopt the amendment

and advance it. So it's now going to go to the Senate for a full vote. So get out there, make your voice heard. Let your senators know that you oppose the nullification of the roadless rule. You can take action that I haven't checked this, but I assume almost all major conservation groups, hook and bullet groups, have action alerts on their websites, BHA, TRCP, let your lawmakers know how you feel about it.

One way or the other, I'm not going to tell you how to weigh in, but old Mike Lee, just constantly churning to turn back the tide. So that's good. Walleye Spareen. Michigan, this is actually a news. this is actually a newsy item. Four years ago, Michigan opened up its first spear fishing season for what had traditionally been regarded as game fish.

So you've always been able to spearfish for non-game fish, rough fish. I don't use the word trash fish, but people like that word, which included some non-native things like Eurasian carp, Asiatic carp, and some native things like native things like native sucker species, bow fin, all that. But a few years ago, Michigan opened up a initially provisional spear fishing season for three coveted game fish, coveted game fish being walleye, lake trout, northern pike. Not salmon for some reason, but walleye, lake trout, northern pike. And they opened it up where they took basically the Michigan shoreline of southern

Lake Michigan and the northern shoreline, the northern shoreline of Michigan's stretch of Lake Huron and did these test seasons. And anglers, spear fishermen could get a free stamp with their fishing license and they had to do monthly reporting to report on their activities. What they found over that time, to sum it up and I talked about it before, what they found over that time is the harvest is negligible and effort instead of going up as the new opportunity came in effort went down so people were thinking they wanted to go and then and then we're finding that they weren't going they were giving out about 4,000 they were giving out about 4,000 spearfish stamps of those a few hundred people went once. of those I think 118 people like got a fish

okay and despite all that there was a big pushback from some hook and line I don't yeah I don't know that you'd there was pushback

yeah I don't know that it would be big pushback and there's some continued pushback yeah there was some pushback for context though so Saginaabe here's my Michigan map

okay I was brought up right here this is Saginaw Bay, right? For context. Last year, rod and reel anglers caught 500,000 walleye out of Saginaw Bay. In the entire state in all open waters for spear fishing. So not Saginaw Bay, but of all waters opened to spear fishing last year, spear fishermen killed 430 walleye. Less than 1% of them.

Less than 1%. They killed 0.086% of the walleye. But keep in mind, it's apples and oranges. 500,000 got caught out of Saginaw Bay. 430 got caught out of here and here. Okay. Negligible harbts. However, now there's this part.

We went out to hit it. I went, my buddy Greg Font. went who's been on the show a bunch and we were hosted by Jonathan Dirkgoe who was instrumental in establishing the spear fishing season and we set up a little contest where we fished against a couple rod and real angers Chester the divester and Seth and man did we just beat them real bad every day beat them real bad Came back to Montana with his tail tucked between his legs. Dude, they were pouting from day one.

Beat them bad. Give me an example of the pouting. It's just like body language. Oh, like what kind of poutin? Yeah, say something to you. Like, flip you off. Like trying out, like trying out a lot of ideas, you know, um, well, first it was, the first day, it was real sunny.

Okay. And calm. Too sunny and too calm. Too sunny, too calm. Yeah. Next day was cloudy. was overcast and windy too cloudy, too windy.

But then it was like whatever. Then it became this big like local intel. You know, we had local intel. They didn't have local intel. They had an opportunity for it, but they didn't want it. Then it became just whatever. A lot of howlton. I want to know like what's a rough comparison to doing the walleye thing compared to like, whatever,

dive in a rig. Like as far as. We dover rig. Well, we dove a wreck. I'm saying like salt water fish that are they more are they spookier are they more chill I'll get into that yeah yeah that's great question first I want to touch on this so well the first thing we did is we went and drifted at a river mouth not a river mouth if you get down to the bottom of Lake Huron so like Lake Superior flows into Lake Huron through what's called the St. Mary's River it's like you almost think of like a narrow straight right where the lake down some 20 feet. Well, at the bottom of Lake Huron, it flows down into Lake Erie, and they call that

overflow, the St. Clair River. Yep. So they drew the spearfishing line kind of at the mouth, at the head of the St. Clair River. But the current is already picking up pretty good down there. The whole damn lake necks down and forms like a big river, and it flows out into Erie. So it's a river, but it's kind of like a narrow spot in the lakes. there's a lighthouse that marks the spearfishing border. Can't go past that lighthouse.

But by then there's plenty of current. So we're doing drifts. We're dropping in and doing drifts. So you drop in, breathe up, dive down 20 feet of water, and just ride the current. Big old sturgeon down there. But the current's so strong you can't turn around. I blow past the sturgeon. I blow past the sturgeon and I try to go back up and check it out.

You can't get back up. I'm blowing back tackle. The amount of tackle I blew past. There's three bottom bouncers snagged on a log, laying like the bottom bouncers are laying together, touching. Like tackle like you wouldn't believe down there. You could open a tackle shop with the tackle on those trees and tires and whatnot laying down there in the bottom.

But as you're blowing, every time you dive down, you're just zipping down the bottom. And there's, there's, when I say this, don't think I'm like saying throwing out a number. There are thousands of white suckers. Hmm. Hmm. Spawning on gravel. Did you shoot some of them? No. No. Well, yes, because I missed a walleye and hit a sucker on accident. Wow. Yeah. I mean, thousands of white suckers with my hand, I'm showing you how they, what they're doing.

They're in the current, the ones, you know, as they're milting, they're like, yeah, phew. you come down through those schools of suckers and the walleye are laying in with the suckers so it's just you just got suckers parton like mo you're like moses and the the suckers are the red sea dude and in mixed in with them are wally dogs and we do a bunch of drifts and got to limit a walleye but there's rod and real dudes cleaning up too right right but they're small wallets they're eaters then in that part of the lake it's like size limit 14 i think it's a 14 minimum something like that five a day so we got three guys on guns we're only fishing two guys at a time because that's the tournament

rule so one guy's operating the boat two guys are drifting and we get our fish um then we go out to a wreck somewhere else and dive a wreck it was in 40 feet of water and got three burbit off that wreck hiding in the wreck hmm The next day, we start to go to a whole different area and just start hunting for walleye. And I always think, you know when you're fished walleye and someone gets one, you get real excited because you think you're going to get another one? In this area, you would go, you would kick 200 yards, say, and there'd be a walleye. I mean, a walleye. Once you find them, it is not hard to get them.

When you find him, you are going to get a shot. He's not going to spoo. There's a 90% chance when you find him, you will get a, very good shot at them. And that area where they bigger, even though there's a nice wallace. Then we're in a nice wallace, but few and far between. That's day two. We don't get that many, but we get some good ones.

A bunch of small mouth, but you can't shoot. But you go along and they'd be like, a walleye by itself, no other walleye anywhere around, separated by what seems to be hundreds of yards of no walleye, a walleye. And you find them, there's a nine and ten chance you're going to get a shot. you might miss, but there's a nine and ten chain he's going to not spook bad. Like they are not suspecting that you're going to shoot at him. Day three,

we're doing that and all of a sudden we're just into him. I mean, lots of biggins. Then the guy we're with that was instrumental in bringing on this opportunity, he started to get uneasy. Because he's like,

man, And this is. Oh, I see. A nice wall. Too easy. When you're trying to make the, you're trying to make the argument of negligible take and. Yeah.

But those are the ones, it's like, we had it all. We had clarity. It's, it's very cold water. We just had, we had good water clarity, which never happens.

It's just like, everything came together perfectly. Yeah. And man, did we have a day that I will, I will remember the rest of my life. Did any party you feel bad about, about spearing those things?

No. No. I'll remember that day for the rest of my life. It was just one of those days. It was one of those days. I was texting with Max, who was there with you guys on this shoot,

and I don't know if it was his joke or if it was a joke that you guys were making to each other 10 times a day when you'd punch each other in the shoulder, but I had asked Max how the fishing was going. He said, they were biting really good on spring steel, horizontal,

very fast presentation. I thought that was fun. That's a joke. Kudos to whoever came up with that. I enjoyed that bit. You did? That was my joke. Yeah, that was a good joke. I was telling them to text Seth,

because they were struggling. I was saying, maybe tell them that Spring Steel, horizontal, very fast presentation seems to be. I like that. Seems to be working. I was, amused. Unbelievable. Just like one of those days of fishing, the likes of which you probably never see again.

You're going to do it again? I don't know. I'm not, yeah. If I live there, you wouldn't be able to keep me out of that water. Right. If I live there, I wouldn't be able to keep out of the water. A downside, I don't want to take too much time on this, but a downside to it would be this. See, I'm from there.

I guess if you're from there, you can hack on it. There is a monotony. There's a monotony to the environment when it comes to being underwater in a freshwater environment. Like in saltwater, like a dive in a reef or something. you're down there and you're just like oh my god oh my god even if it's not something you're going to shoot you know yeah like whatever you know you're half scared of sharks you're just like suckers yeah you know and you're seeing stuff you got to go look it up you don't you know what you know what you know what you know what

it's just a lot going on there's always a right there's just a lot going on it's a very dynamic environment it's dangerous more dan it's it there's a it's an enthralling dynamic environment some of those areas in some of those areas in the Great Lakes are not I mean let's just be frank there's some areas that are desert like right there's some areas that are desert like out in the Great Lakes proper in the Great Lakes proper

um like the stretch of Lake Michigan I grew up on if you went out and and did big drifts out there up and down the between the sandbars you could not go hundreds of yards without seeing anything you could go miles without encountering a fish it's a very places are very sterile. So you're hunting a very sterile environment. Right.

And that, it's just a little bit different. Did you come across either the other two legal game fish species? Never later. Yeah. We went and dove one day for Lakers. And what I gather is that they're

not into the whole thing. Lakers do not want you to shoot at them. So what these guys are saying, and they've gotten a couple they're saying Lakers are like, nah, I'm out. So Jonathan saw a Laker, and all he saw of that Laker is that Laker being like, I'm out. But Wal-I, for whatever reason in a walleye's head, that's not what he's thinking. But a Laker is like, yeah, I don't know what that is, but I don't like it.

And we didn't try for Northerns. Yeah. Yeah. A weird thing with this whole deal, when it started, they were using flashers for Lake Trout. and it seemed like that was very effective. And the state very quickly said, no flashers.

But you can use a flasher, rod and reel fishing. How would you use the flasher spear and you just like... Suspend it vertically. Oh, I got you. So you tie a big string of flashers or a flasher on a buoy and you just drift and work the flasher. And then dive down to the flasher.

And you're just bringing fish up checking the flasher. out. So at first you could do that. And they had some good luck. Like you could like a lakeers come from long ways and they'd interact with the flasher. Then you could dive down, get the blaker. But then right away they're like, oh, never mind, no flashers. But they didn't do that for rod and real guys. You could run flashers all day long. And then put a hook behind them. And why? Because flashers work really good. And he lure a lake truck. And then the lake truck gets lured in and he bites your hook and you catch them. And that's cool. But if you're spearfishing, uh-uh.

It's a weird, weird deal that you can flasher for rod and reel, but you cannot flasher for spearfishing. Check this out. Guess how many the Lakers the spearfish are killing annually? Take a guess. A dozen. No. Seven? No.

Am I getting warmer? 40. Five. Oh, they are killing. Within two fish. The four-year average is that the spearfish are killing. five lake trout a year. The spearfish are killing

19 Northerns a year on average. But you can't use a flasher. Does Michigan have a Like, is there? It's insane. Is there a fishing season both Spiro's and Rod and Real guys have to, like, is there a walleye season? If it's open, it's open.

But you guys have seasons there. It's not like, yeah, you have a northern season. When we were there, North, Northeast weren't open. I'd go with Speardos. Spiro, you're a Spiro. It's a Spiro. I picked that up. along the way. I'm not one. I like Speardot better.

This is Spirol. I'm sorry, it's too late. It's like you can't, like, think of a new word for like something that's like, weirdo. It's like weirdo. It's like weirdo. It's like weirdo. Yeah. It's too late. They already got a name for it. It's computer. Spiro. That's my report. That's my report. I would like to see them open up salmon. I would like to see it that you could chum and I'd like to see it that you could use flashers. And I think it's insanity that you can use a flasher for rod and reel fishing, but you can't use a flasher for spearfish. The flasher doesn't

kill the fish. It's open for all of the three native game fish species, but the non-native salmon is not. Yeah. I think if you open it for salmon, I think you'll find that the spearfishing harvest is about a salmon a year. Yeah. It'll be about a salmon a year. Depends how

close you can get to a river mouth at certain times of the year. It'd be great. Man, just a lot. Most people aren't, most people like, I mean, let's be frank. most people do not have the dedication in physical fitness required to free dive in 50 degree water. Yep. It's just, they just don't. Or interest. And you don't want amateurs trying that stuff. Yeah, you can, you can catch walleye. And I don't have a problem with it. You can catch walleye shit-faced with with TV on. And you're not. breaking a rule.

No one would be like, well, that's, what's the challenge now? Your shit face. The shit face part, you might be breaking a rule. But a dude that wants to climb in 50 degree water and dive down to the bottom in 30 feet of water where the water is now 32 degrees because of the thermal climb and beat himself up like that. It's like, knock yourself out, bro. Well, if Seth had bested you in this feat, I think we could have done a rematch where you're

fishing against shit-faced watching TV walleye anglers. Well, that's what they do because they got forward. facing sonar. To hear, they also brought up an ethics thing. They wanted to introduce an ethics conversation. It's like, Hummet, aren't you the guy

with forward? Like, aren't you the guy live scoping wall eyes? Which is basically like looking at them, you know, the same as you're doing. Them fishing, if you want to see a side profile,

what them fishing looks like, here's what them fishing looks like. Can you get me, Phil? Yep, we got this. This is what them fishing looks like. Because they're watching. it's like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

They're going like, oh. Oh. Oh, there he is. That does seem harder to do cross-eyed drunk. Anyhow, I'm done talking about that. Great time. Did I include that? We had a phenomenal time.

Fry. Yeah, similar to his walleye up. Oh, fry wall. Oh, I got to tell you the funniest part of it. I'll cut one of my news stories out to make more time for this. Here's the funniest part. There's a restaurant right where we're staying and they do that deal where you can bring your fish in and they cook it. So the night before they're down there and they brought their burbit down there and some Wally dogs down there and they cook them all up.

Well, I get a big old, so like a burbit is a true cot. Oh, while we were there, we made a T-shirt where it's already done. It's a burbit. It's a burbit. And it says Loda Loda, which is Lanayan name in italics. And it says, AKA. and it has all the Burbitt's names. Oh, good.

It's a fish of a thousand names. Yeah. Like it. We can do that with a lot of different pieces. I'm explaining to the boys. Those are already sold out. I'm explaining to the boys how cod have huge livers. And the oil in that liver is like a buoyancy mechanism.

So if you're pregnant and you're eating cod liver oil, so your baby's real smart, cod have big livers. And a burbara is the only freshwater cod. So I pulled this big honk and liver out of this thing. And I'm telling the boys, like, you can actually eat this. It's not good, but it's interesting. So it makes us way into the restaurant. And I'm thinking, well, I'm going to go in and I'm going to slice it as you do real thin.

You slice the liver real thin and you put it on a hot cast iron skillet and fry the oil out of it. And you basically make like a cod crackleck. I can see where this is going. You make a cod liver crackling. Well, the fellas go into the cook. And they're like, oh, he just wants you to fry it. this liver. And it's the size of my hand.

That's great. He batters it. He batters the liver, like, just the liver. And it's basically like your deep frying oil. It's like, if you took oil and could bread oil and then like, if you could somehow like get oil cold enough to be solid and then bread it and deep fry it, that's basically what he makes. And the lady comes out, she's like, I don't know how you're going to do with that thing. What did you do with that thing?

We tried to eat spoonfuls of this. You had to eat with a spoon. It was repugnant. But I was telling her, I'm like, listen, man, I mean, it's not your fault. But that's not what, you know, I just, I just, you know, this is funny. Then she fried our bourbet up and our Wally dogs. Did you get a hint of liver with that? That's what someone was saying.

Someone's like, now we're eating out of the same oil that had that damn cod liver. The God oil is. She was a lot of fun, though, the gal would open that own that restaurant. Experience. You and a pal in Montreal at Oceaga, with four nights at residents in downtown Montreal. Flights from Porter Airlines, two weekend gold tickets, and $1,000 of cash.

Please love me. Lord, Zara Larson, Tema Gray, Sombor, 21 pilots, and more. Download IHard Radio. Listen to IHard new music for 10 minutes and enter to win. Osiaga, 2026. Every day you listen is another change. chance to win.

Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season. It's not glamorous. Scouting, hanging cameras, cutting lanes, fixing fences, packing, practice, prep, the stuff that doesn't get noticed, but that makes the difference. That's what first light fieldware is designed for. Fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends. Every piece is built for real use.

No shortcuts. hardwearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters, built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right way. If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out First Light's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. Your news. We got an email from Nick in Pennsylvania.

He says he was fishing at a local state park, a group of anglers on shore. He catches a large mouth bass. he was using a Texas rigged worm and in the hook set he makes he damages the large mouth's gills and the bass shows up bleeding when he gets it to shore and he says

there's an old couple next to him fishing and they reach for their styrofoam cup of Coca-Cola and say well here's what you do you pour that on the gills and that'll fix it upright they'll swim away happy and healthy I'm familiar okay not with his story but Nick Nick is he he is a little bit hesitant to do it, but the old lady insists.

And so he doesn't want to have a confrontation in front of these kids and stuff. And so he just goes with it. She pours a Coke on the gills. He releases the fish away. And he says he was so bothered by the whole thing that he just left after that because he was like, I was like kind of gross. I don't really like how that all played out. I think the social interaction and also what did I just do to this fish? The woman insisted that she has seen this work on muskies.

It's how you fix a fish's bleeding gills. So Nick writes in and says, did I handle this okay? What do you guys think? I wrote about this subject. I'm not interested in that question. Which question? What he ought to have done.

Oh, okay. I'm interested in why, what, what is that about? This started on Facebook about a decade ago. There was a couple viral videos. One of them was from this musky guide in Canada. And he says, here's what you do if you gill hook a fish. And he pours, I think it was Diet Coke. Diet Coke was like his drink of choice.

I don't understand how that happens the first time. Like how to someone like, I got an idea here. Oh, yeah. That's what you're saying. Anyway. This guy figured it out. He saw somebody figure it out. He pours the Diet Coke on the musky's gills.

Mosky swims away and he says, voila. That's how you save a fish's life. Video got 1.2 million views. I know that number because I wrote about this shortly after to talk about this theory. And that that was the number that I had at the time. It's probably triple that. now. But basically, these folks would say you have a fish with a gill injury, you pour soda on it, it cauterizes the wound and allows the fish to swim away. That's the science behind it.

Like the acid and the coke or something? Yes. I think you could envision in your head if you were to pour a soda across a fish, it would just sizzle, right? And that's like doing the cauterizing of the gills. This is what these proponents would say of this. I was like, no, that sounds really dumb. So I interviewed some fish biologists about this. Like a fish doctor. What do you think about this fish doctor of pouring soda on a wounded fish's gills?

And basically they're all like, this is as dumb as it sounds. You should not do this one. You're overhandling a stressed fish. Particularly if it's like a northern or a musky and they have that slime, that slime is coming off on your hands. They need that to survive. That fights off.

Because of the shallow, warm water they live in, that's fighting off different infections they might encounter up there, it makes them faster. Muskie and Pike, they need that to survive that slime on them. So you're overhandling the fish, not good for them. You're introducing a foreign substance to a very sensitive part of the fish's body. It's gills, particularly one that's acidic, like Brody pointed out. Also not good for them.

And finally, if it was working out, like what they say, you're cauterizing the gills. Well, the fish's gills are doing gas exchange. So you're just cauterizing their whole gas exchange system. they kind of need that to breathe. So if that's what you're witnessing happening, you're probably not improving the fish's health. So I wrote about this after interviewing these biologists.

A year later, some biologists actually study this. What they do is they take some fish. I think it was Pike that they worked on. This was in 2020. They took a pliers and they wounded the fish's gills. They then poured soda on it. This is as bad as testing shampoo on little

rabbits. Yes. And then they release the wounded fish into a tank. and they observe it for a half hour and watch what happens. They determined that it did nothing. There was no improvement to the fish's health. But no detriment? I don't know that they knew that. I don't think that was like a takeaway that they came away with, but they were not helping.

And again, if we go back to things about like you're overhandling the fish, it's already stressed out. Just get it back in the water. Fish, their blood will naturally clot in water. And so if you are witnessing what you think is something working. when you're pouring soda on it. You're just like witnessing the fish's body doing its own thing without your soda being present. Just simply because pouring soda on it makes a similar sound to a hot iron cauterizing

something. Like, oh, it must be doing it. And so the one proponent I talked about, John Anderson. This perk fill up. John Anderson, the musky guide from Canada. Even after this came out, he said, no, I don't believe the biologist, actually. And he started a campaign. It's called Save a Million Fish.

And this is like the main pillar of this campaign is you pour soda on fish gills. But what? So he is. He said he said he's personally witnessed at work on 18 muskies. So he knows that it works and he doesn't. He doesn't think. But he would have to be living in a place where he could run two realities at once. He must be doing that.

Yeah. Only, only thing that the, like just because the fish lived doesn't mean it lived because he poured coke on it. No. And you know what I mean? Science, or like your, your witnessing event is about two seconds after that fish swims away. You have no idea what it does after that. Save a million fish. Save a million fish.

John said that he still, like, has dyes at Coke with him so he can perform this. Diet Coke. Diet Coke. No, actually, I think it was Diet Coke is what he used to do. I think maybe he transitioned to just a carbonated water now is what John uses. Got it. But that cauterizes it. Cotterizes.

So the CO2. Just the bubbles. The bubbles are cauterized. Phil, make the sizzle sound again. You're good at it. Oh, that was me. Oh, good. But, yeah.

Good job, Brady. But this guy wants to know if he should have ignored that lady and just let it go. Now that I know what I know. Like, for instance, one time my daughter got all bit up by Hornets and a lot of people had advice about what she ought to do. And a lot of it I knew wasn't going to work. But I was just like, yeah, sure. You know, like, put motor oil on them.

I'm like, yeah, okay. Like, I know it's not going to work, but I don't want to be rude. But in this case, I feel like he would, he would. Knowing what I now know, I would say, I think he'd say, ma'am, I appreciate it. Haven't done a little research into this. I know it's well-intentioned. I don't think that that's the best thing for this bass. I caught him.

I kind of got the bass into this situation. This is my deal here. You know, this is my program. And I'm going to have to do what makes sense to me, which is putting the fish back in. I love this guy's style, though. He had an unpleasant social interaction he just left. Yeah. A strange detail he does provide about this couple who tries to save the fish with the soda.

They said they were fishing with children's fishing routes, which I don't know that I've witnessed that. My wife would call that avoidance. He has an avoidance problem. Or if she was, if she was criticizing me for something, she'd be like, you're having avoidance. That's where you get mad and walk off or something like that. Don't pour soda on fish gills. There you go. Eating bears that eat rotten bait.

This is a quick one. I think pretty easy one. Guy writes in, I just got my first archery bear in Saskatchewan. I've tried bear meat. Saskatchewan. I've tried bear meat and I enjoy it. I was looking forward to filling my freezer

with something other than venison for a little variety. However, the outfitter baits with meat scraps from the butcher. They're not kept in a freezer at camp so they get a little rotten. He highly recommended, I do not eat the meat from bears because of this. I was a little disappointed. Do you think that bear meat would be okay and just make sure that it's thoroughly cooked? Do I need to find an outfitter that has a better baiting process that is more conducive

to better bear meat for the freezer? Bears eat rotten meat all the time, whether it's out of bait station or not. Yes. Deer carcasses, elk carcasses, road killed raccoon, whatever they can find. Other dead bears. So that's not going to have an effect on whether the meat's safe or not. Most of the meat they eat is probably rotten. Yeah.

That is a persistent idea, though. Yes. There's two things. Go on. I got two final comments. Not final. I have two things I like that. You can say what you're going to say.

This idea that, like, if it ate something that you're then, eating what it ate. You are, but you're not. If you shoot ducks that were running around on a cattle where they're graining cattle in the winter, those ducks are eating cattle sheep. You'll see it on there. What I recommend that you eat cow ship? No. Can you eat a duck that might have ate some? Yes. If there's all kinds of things to eat all kinds of things. It's not the same as you eating it. No. If a wild pig eats a rattlesnake, and they will,

or a havelina eats a rattlesnake, you're like, Can't eat him. Yeah. I'll be poisoned by the rattlesnake. It's just like, you're not. It's going through a whole, it's going through a whole digestive process. And then through complex chemistry that I can't explain is later converted into muscle and you're eating it.

It's not like a direct facsimile of what it ate. Yeah, I go through this all the time because my dogs go out and eat shit. And then they come in and give me kisses. I tell people, it's not like I ate shit. Yes. That is. Oh. Yeah.

Yeah. That is. I do not. That is. I just can't tolerate it. The same thing. Can't tolerate dogs. Dogs that eat dog shit. Terrible.

It's coprophagia. Some of them suffer from it, okay? Yeah. That's not too. We're not judging. That is gross. I have some, like, kind of experience in this area. I got one big last final point when you're ready for you move on.

I don't want to throw shade at this outfitter. But I do. I hunted with an outfitter in Idaho on a, it was like a group, like, industry hunt thing where it was hounds and bait baited bear hunt and there's like i don't know six or seven hunters at that camp um i was the only one that kept the meat from the bear i killed everyone killed bears the outfitter same thing like ah the meat's no good it'll make you sick blah blah blah um i am thoroughly convinced that in that case that outfitter was looking to get out of doing the work of dealing with that meat.

It is. I've never hunted there in Canada. I've never done the Canada bear thing. But report after report from people I know well. Yeah. People that I know and trust. I've heard report after report of outfitters telling clients that they'll try out, you can't bring it back.

What do you mean I can't bring it back? Well, you shouldn't bring it back. It's not good. It's like there is a culture, not ubiquitous, but there is a culture of trying to talk people out. And it's because it's just easier to ditch it. And they come up with all these reasons why you can't use it. Yeah. I have friends that have been where they're like, I don't understand.

Like, I just want it. You can't have it. No, I look, I can't have it. Well, you can, but you don't. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And when I, when I, it was like a surprise to these people that I, like, shocking that I would want to keep this thing. So I would tell this guy, like, if you're going to book another hunt up there with a different outfit or like, be clear up front that you're very interested in keeping the meat. Get that sorted out from the start.

But to get more specifically into his question, like, sure, it, it's not, if it's eating rotten meat, it's not a safety issue for her. It could be a palatibility issue. Right. Like, I got a buddy. that killed a, I got a buddy that killed a black bear here, killed a black bear off of rotten cow, all full of maggots and stuff, he was feeding on it. And he said, man, you could always smell it on that meat. Yeah. And it's real off pudding. It's not a safety issue. It's a palatibility issue. If I was baiting bears, I would want to bait bears. I would bait bears. I would bait bears with something where I'm like, if I'm going to do this and feed them, I'm going to feed them something that kind of adds to the quality. Right. The same way, the same way, you know, the same way you do in cattle production

or the same way you doing wagoo production or whatever. Like, there's certain feeds that give you a certain result. Big grain, fat, and cows taste pretty damn good. They got good fat on them. Some people like it. Some people don't. But it's like a result from what you feed it. Yeah.

And so, sure. I could picture that I was going to feed it all stuff that I thought was going to yield, like a good flavorful fat. Like if I could feed it grain and molasses, I'd probably feed it grain and molasses. Yep. You got this next one, Steve? Oh, this is a note.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He says he was listening to last week's news show, and we were talking about dying from P-FAS chemicals and fish. He was thinking about time. He about died. He says that our show intro is more dangerous than P-FAS.

So he says, I was standing at the top of the ladder listening to the Meat Eater podcast one after another. I was under a bunch of willow oak trees that were the inevitable cause of clogged, clogged gutters. There was the long pause between episodes per usual. And he's talking about like the show intro. While he's up there and hears in the show intro,

there's the tree falling. We've gotten multiple reports from people about this. Yep. That the tree falling noise led him to believe that the willow was breaking and he about stumbled and fell off his ladder. We had a guy sitting in his tree stand,

bow hunting one time and the same thing happened to him. He was just kind of waiting for things to mellow out, listening to the show, and heard that tree crack and thought his tree. That's scary. He thought his tree was coming down. I have a buddy who swears his dog is triggered by it. I don't know if the dog

thinks a tree is falling, but whatever that specific noise is, he's just not into it. Doesn't like that sound. Doesn't bode well. So on to the news. Now, here's kind of a perennial news story that keeps popping up, but it's popped up again. And it's about legal trouble for the NRA.

So it's kind of a little bit of a long, I'm going to try to do a simplified version of a long story. The New York Attorney General. There's an Attorney General in New York named Latisha James. Latisha James is kind of, I mean, she's famous for a handful of things, but one of the things she's famous for is she went after the Trump business very heavily.

for a claim that they had falsified real estate values in order to apply for loans. So basically overstating the value of collateral in order to get loans. And so after Trump's first term, when everybody was trying to prosecute him for all this kind of stuff, everybody's looking for any reason to prosecute him, she was one of the people trying to prosecute him. And then it got turned because during Trump, too, they're like, hey, we're going to go use the legal system to target her the way she used the legal system to target us. So then they're going after her about, I can't remember what the hell they're going after her about. But anyhow, that little saga. So if you, if you recognize the name Letisa James that has to do with this kind of law fair retribution, counter

retribution between her office and Trump administration, Trump business empire. She really wanted to go after the National Rifle Association. So how do you go after a nonprofit? So what she wanted to do is she wanted to attack the NRA. And she comes up with this idea of looking at how they're utilizing money. And like an important detail is NRA was headquartered in New York. Yeah. So it was her business because it was a nonprofit stationed or certified in New York.

So the nonprofit is under New York law. You can form a nonprofit and establish it in all kinds of different places, but they happen to be certified or basically chartered, incorporated, whatever, under New York law. So she's not really interested in, I mean, in all honesty, she's not interested in how the NRA is governed. She is interested in tearing down the NRA. In doing this, she uncovers a bunch of bad spending practices. It makes this case that the NRA is defrauding its membership by blowing money on things they shouldn't be blowing on. And so, Susan, what she wants, she wants to say, the malfeasance is so bad.

The NRA is defrauding their membership so bad that they should be basically killed as an organization. She doesn't get that. What she gets is that the longtime president, is it president or CEO when you're at the NRA? I believe president. CEO. So, CEO. Okay. Wayne Lopier.

Everyone, you've seen Wayne Lopier your whole life. The guy ran the NRA for 30 some years. Okay. What comes out of this is that Wayne Lopier owes the organization $4.3 million. Okay. So the claim is, Wayne Lopierre is, Wayne Lopier. Misfent $4.3 million and owes it back to the organization. He appealed it.

So when you're seeing it pop up in the news again now is the appeal failed. Some other things got thrown out, but the appeal failed and it still is like, LaPierre owes the org back $4.3 million. The spending. So some examples of the spending here, be like this generated a ton of headlines. Wayne LaPierre spent $275,000. So again, $275,000 on wardrobe. Okay. At a Beverly Hills boutique.

Custom made designer suits. Yeah. The argument on his part is, hey, I play a role. I'm on TV. I need to look a certain way and that these are basically costumes that I must wear people being like that is insane $275,000 for some suits for wardrobe

is excessive. Okay. There was a, there was a some restaurant tabs at an Italian restaurant like a $5,398 restaurant tab at a place they had a cigar bar. There was some gifts like Wayne LaPierre bought gifts for people

or friends of the organization, like he bought someone a $1,200 handbag and build it back to the NRA. He bought someone a pair $860 candlesticks, build it back to the NRA. Some of these things seem kind of nitpicky and I don't really get the problem.

At his home, he has security people at his home. The security guys were getting bit up real bad by Skeeter. So he spends $810 on a Skeeter control package saying, hey, the skeeters are tearing up the security guards. It's $800. I don't know.

That feels, you know, I don't know. But he also took his family on vacation, right? And like private Jetsons. Here's the one that got, here's the one that feels a little, a little nutty. So. after the Sandy Hook shooting, there was two mass shootings that kind of came close together.

And Wayne Laupier, who has a security detail, and the organization did say to Wayne Lapeer, like, it's not safe for you to fly commercial as the head of the organization. When there's so much animosity toward the organization around the gun rights debate,

it was agreed to for security purposes, he should not fly commercial. Well, of those shootings, he had said, well, I'm going to skip what he said. He went on a very expensive trip to the Bahamas and stayed on a super yacht owned by a contractor who has done a hundred million dollars in contract work for the NRA, builds some airfare to the NRA, and goes to the Bahamas and does a lengthy vacation, which it's a, it's a vacation. that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in total.

When pressed on it, LaPierre said it was a security vacation. That after the Sandy Hook shooting, things were so hot, I had to get somewhere to protect my safety. And I knew I could protect my safety if I went into the Bahamas and stayed on this super yacht. But then it's like, but how is it that you were also at a family member wedding while you were there. That was pre-planned. So for that reason,

some of this caused like a lot of internal upheaval and internal strife within the NRA. And some people, even though Latisha James is in no way trying to help the NRA, she's not like, oh, I feel bad. This is really terrible that they're misusing their funds.

She's going like, I want to kill the NRA. How could I kill them? Well, I'll kill them over this. pretending like I'm trying to help members and protect member money. But it brings up all this embarrassing stuff. It's caused a ton of trouble for the NRA. And then within this fight, there's this other fight. They use the main PR firm.

So here's the NRA is a nonprofit organization. But much of their work is done by a PR firm, which is a for-profit organization. So what you have in nonprofit land is you wind up going like, okay, we'll take, take tons of money and hand it to our PR firm. I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars and hand it to the PR firm. And then the PR firm. Ackerman McQueen. Yeah, Ackerman McQueen.

The PR firm, because they're for profit, will then do a bunch of the weird things. Because, hey, we're just paying them all this retainer money. And then they do the things. And so it gives you like these ways to get around stuff. All this has been quite scandalous. Yeah. And then they also tried to. hide a lot of this. There's a quote from someone

in the NRA saying we have to be careful because Wayne wants to get through the whole year saying he hasn't used private aircraft. Yeah. So it's just like real bad. They knew it was bad. Happy Pride Month Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you

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We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride. Iheart Radio. Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season. It's not glamorous. Scouting, hanging cameras, cutting lanes, fixing fences, packing, practice, prep, the stuff that doesn't get noticed, but that makes the difference. That's what First Light fieldware is designed for. Fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends. Every piece is built for real use.

No shortcuts. Hard wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters. Built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right way. If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out First Lights, new fieldware collection. election at firstlight.com. Certain people, like long-time staff people within the organization, there starts to be a lot of turning on each other within the organization.

And then the organization has a foundation and there's tons of bickering within the foundation. But the thing here, since 2019, the NRA's revenue is down 46%. since 2019 member dues, member dues at the NRA since 2019 have dropped 57.5%. Before the NRA became like a really a gun rights organization, it was a safety and training organization. Their safety and training spend 27.5% decline since 2019. Part of what may, well, let me, so their legislative spending, okay, money they spend on lobbying. Lobbying, campaign spending.

There was a time when they're an extremely powerful lobby in D.C. They were. That's what I was going to kind of close on here. Is, well, let me say this at first. They're legislative spending. So the core money spent to influence legislation is down by over 50% from 2019. So 2019 was an off election year, but down by over 50%.

So like core mission spending down. I mean, they are in a tough spot to the point where they're liquidating investment assets in order to cover expenses right now. But they were probably, and maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I'm wrong. I think that they were at the height of their powers, probably the most effective nonprofit organization in American history. I cannot think of a rival in terms of just how effectively. and tenaciously they defended Second Amendment rights. Can you imagine if like the wildlife conservation movement had a organization of that power?

Yeah, I mean, the NRA like had the advantage of just having to focus on a very narrow single issue. Yeah. And never having any nuance on it. That doesn't like detract from what they, you know, what they were able to accomplish. Part of the current split within the NRA. is between, it's like the split within the Iranian regime. It's a split between like the old guard and hardliners. Right.

And so there's like Wayne Lop, people that came up with Wayne Lopier and like his vision, like his mandate. I'm not saying they like the spending, the spending issues, but like that vision, it's like a real, like rigid, take no prisoners, like non-negotiable, defense second amendment rights to all. fence, right, that want that, and there's a version that wants a, there's a faction that wants a softer version more well of general public opinion and they're, and they're duking it out. Yeah.

But yeah, they were, I mean, bar none. Like, I challenged someone to think of a, of a nonprofit that defended its core missions effectively as the NRA. Like, I used to have, this is the crazy part, back in these days. they would come after, they would come, not just enemies, they'd come after you for not being friendly enough. I used to have people within this come after me, because I wasn't like,

I'm like, I make a show we run around with guns, but I somehow wasn't like pro gun. That's all I ever do is play with guns, but I wasn't pro gun enough. They had so much money, they were going to attacking the pro gun people. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

They'd be like, dude, we've gotten all the answers. anti-gun people. Now we're going to go get the some of the gun guns. We're going to have to the gun guys. And now it's just different. And your research did, what did it attribute that that, you know, just fall off and membership and dollars? I'm glad you brought that up.

I don't know. I have, there's two things. One, there was just a lot of I mean, this, the infighting the financial stuff made a lot of people hesitant. I think that people have alternatives. now in defending their second

amendment rights, more local organizations, whatever people have alternatives. Gun owners of America. Politically, it's tricky politically. What happens is if you had a, if you had someone come into, so in two years, let's say in two years, you have a very hardcore gun legislation candidate

emerge on the Democratic ticket. Okay, someone that's going to campaign. control. Sorry. You get the Democrats put forward a guy and he's campaigning on gun control. Of course you're going to see a spike. Yeah. In the gun business,

there's a thing in the gun business called the Trump slump. Yeah. And people don't feel with Trump in office, people don't feel that their gun rights are at risk. So gun spending goes down. Ammunition spending goes down because people feel secure in having the rights they have.

But what's weird is, This huge decline since 2019 included four years of Biden, a gun control president. So I could see if I was looking at some chart that showed over the last 18 months since Trump won that there's been a decline. But this decline was through a gun control administration. Well, I think the, I mean, I think the financial improprieties had to have enough. Well, I think they came out for the first time in 19. like I think this is like a five year running story. Yes.

The first big wave and I mean, I think like there's a lot of people that are died in the wool card carrying members who saw the NRA suits thing at $1,500 night hotels. Yeah. And pulled their bucks. Yeah. I just wondered if it was like a aging out of membership. This is changing demographics, you know.

According to federal election filings, 56% of NRA donors reported their occupation as retired. So I think they're probably just dying out is like one of the, one of the elements of this too. Hmm. So most of the James case, most of the James, to sum up, most of Latisha James's case has not gone the way she wanted. But there's still this obligation that LaPierre owes this money back to the organization. Not only that, as it stands right now, he can't have a position. He cannot have a formal leadership position within the NRA for 10 years.

He can do fundraising. He can volunteer. He can write op-eds. But he can't have a formal leadership position within the organization for a decade after 30 years of being at the helm. But he resigned right when this thing, when this corruption case came up. I'm going to skip the Lake Michigan Beach dispute. Yeah, let's hear about some mushroom deaths. Foragers in California can't stop eating poisonous mushrooms.

We'll talk about it. From November, November 2025 to May 26, that's a seven-month span. There were 49 reported cases of wild mushroom poisonings in the state. Officials are saying it's the largest outbreak of mushroom-associated poisonings in California history, the largest outbreak in American history, and one of the largest outbreaks in modern global history. It's not an outbreak. I'll save it. This is,

well, go ahead. I'll tell you the verbiage. I'll take it up later. Here's the verbiage that California uses. This is from their California Department of Public Health. Outbreak of severe illness and death linked to ingestion of poisonous wild mushrooms. The CDC says the California poison control system has responded to an outbreak of 39 cases of amatoxin mushroom poisoning.

That's the verbiage they use. I don't think. I think it's egregious because, like, if there was a salmonella outbreak, you would call it a salmonella outbreak from lettuce at Costco or whatever. Like, I think that's the language that they're applying the same thing here. I think this goes back to zombie deer and turkeys ambushing people. It's like using the wrong word. I would call it a bunch of dudes messing up. I would say California's growing mushroom poisoning streak of dudes messing up is the biggest ever in the U.S.

It's the largest in American history. Of those 49 cases, four have resulted in death, and another four have required a liver transplant. Victims in this rash of poisonings range from age 19 months to 84 years. 19 months. 19 months. Feeding babies. Most of the poisonings are from counties along California's Central Coast and San Francisco Bay. The mushrooms were picked in urban parks, wreck areas, nature preserves, national forests, state lands, and at least one.

case a national park, so coming from urban and very much wilderness areas, the two primary culprits are the Western Destroying Angel and the Death Cap, both of which are species of Aminita mushrooms. We're looking at those two mushrooms here. Death Cap on the left, that is an invasive mushroom that showed up, I think, in the 1930s, likely on some lumber from Europe. And then the Western Destroying Angel, which is native to that region. Now, are they mistaken those for something else, Spencer?

We'll get to the reasons why. Or are they thinking, oh, that's a Western destroying angel. Why don't I try that? Honey, can you go grab the baby? Would you get the death cap? I'd probably give it some Western destroying angel. Well, some people might, if they don't know, they'll just be like mushrooms. We'll get to some of the reasons in a second.

If you're not familiar, Aminita mushrooms are, they are mushroom classic. They are, you know, they have a straight stock with a big cap. It's got very defined gills underneath. The most well known of the aminida species is the fly agaric, which is a red cap with white warts. This would be like if you told a cartoonist to make a mushroom for a kid's book, this is what they were to call on. Super Mario mushroom. Is a fly agaric mushroom. Oh, that thing is used widely in art.

And I'll point out that you should mention the nice little gift I got you. Oh, Steve got me a gift where you were in state of, no, Washington, D.C., and he brought me home a nice little serving tray that has an amonese. a mascara or fly a Garrick on it. It's the best kind of gift when you just see someone and you just you see something and just kindness to your heart. It was a kind gift. I was I think both of our wives were actually probably more moved by it than we were. My wife was astounded.

She was a good gift. And then my wife, when I told her the story, she was like, oh, that that's so nice. And that she also liked hearing that Katie was like, you know, amused by it. Like, yeah, please, Steve. Yes, do it. and my wife hearing that that interaction happened. It'd be a nice thing for your friend. Yeah, no, it was, it made it impact beyond just Stephen.

I was like, I got half of mine to do a nice thing for Spencer. I don't know. This is mushroom classic. That is the most famous Aminita. It's like the one that shows up all over pop culture. It's what Mario eats to level up. It's the mushroom that Toad's head is based off of. It's what Alice in Wonderland eats to grow bigger or smaller.

It's featured in the Elder Scrolls as a magical item. It's what the Smurfs live inside of. That is pop culture's mushroom and allows Steve to tell his favorite antidote about the fly, Garrick. Oh, about the reindeer herders? Yeah, so it's got hallucinogenic characteristics. And these guys in Siberia figured out you could feed it to a reindeer and then drink that reindeer's piss and you trip.

Yeah. This is the truth. And if Santa Claus is, of course, real, but. Folks who say he isn't, they say that those shepherds came up with Santa Claus after drinking the tainted urine while they were tripping off of the fly Garrick urine. That's why he's red and white. Yes, exactly. And like the reindeer were flying that they were tending to. Oh, it's definitely true.

Well, yeah, Santa is real. But of course, if he wasn't, they would say this is where it was created with these. No, what you're telling me is true. I just know it's true. Yes. I'm thinking we ditch this year's family feud trivia and we film a special episode of... Well, to Steve's credit, I was also surprised by this when we were doing part of my plate a few years ago, I found some flyaguerics in Montana prior to us filming.

And I said, Steve, if I find more, can we eat them for the show? Is that okay? Fully expecting you to say no, and then I could be a martyr and be like, F and Steve would let me eat the hallucinogenic mushrooms. Steve said, go for it. I was very excited. Again, I was moved that Steve would let me make a YouTube video eating the fly garic mushroom. Now, if you want to do that, we're not, you don't do it.

But if you want to do it, you have to boil them. You toss out that water. You boil them a second time. And then you can ingest small amounts of the fly gear. Again, don't do it. Yeah. Don't do this. But a question.

Yeah. I want to wedge a question in here. This is fascinating. You know how like weed just grows out of the ground. Yeah. But they used to have laws about, even though it's a plant. Like most plants. in the woods, you can just eat them.

But then they make, but you can't eat that plant. Right. And then certain other drugs come out of the ground and they say, you can't eat that. Sure. Or you could take, right, during prohibition, you could leave an apple laying around

and it turns into booze. They'd be like, you can't drink that. Yeah. And you'd be like, well, just growing out in the woods, why not? Um, if you were running around eating those, you're not breaking a law. Probably not.

I bet if you were to, like, sell them at a park on the bench, you'd be breaking the law then. That's where like the line gets drawn. But I think if you were just, if I gave them to Brody, I don't think the law gets broken in that instance. Oh. Yeah. Unless you would prove you were trying to kill me. Sure.

So again, that is a fly agaric. That is a type of ammina mushroom that we're discussing closely related to the death cap and the destroying angel. Aminita mushrooms are what are causing all these poisons. To put this into perspective, the United States has about 50 cases of aminita poisonings each year. California hit that number itself in seven months. So why the surge of poisonings, Brody? There seems to be two contributing factors. One is that the area has simply had more ammina mushrooms this year.

Typically in central and northern California, aminita are around in December and January, and they're kind of limited to that short window. This year, due to some unusual rains, they were showing up early and staying late. I talked to one forager I know in Yuba County. Her name is Ellen. she said that this last foraging season

had the most aminita she's ever seen in her life that goes for the edible varieties and of the poisonous varieties. She said her local foraging friends are seeing the same thing this year. Ellen also said that typically she doesn't see a lot of death camps at higher elevations.

Death caps are the invasive ones. So maybe this is how long it's taken for them to spread to some higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada's or maybe it was just the weather this year that allowed them. to grow so prevalent. So reason number one, there are a lot more aminitas out this year. Reason number two, most of the victims are foreigners. California has reported that 49 victims

speak seven different languages. So many of them are relying on foraging knowledge from Central America or Eastern Europe, not realizing that they're picking a mushroom that has the word death in it. The state is taking some action to spread awareness. Napa County is now running radio ads in three languages to warn of poisonous mushrooms. California has updated flyers that warn about aminita poisonings to include nine different languages now. Wow. And they are making that signage more prevalent here.

Three examples, English, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. So you'll start now seeing these around some national parks and city parks, other places common for foraging. So this is what California is trying to do to stop this. Just talk about it a lot. Tips to avoid mushroom poisonings. If you're a new forager, stick to the foolproof form. Morels, Chantrell's, Chicken in the Woods, Puff Balls, as the name implies, those are the easy to identify ones that are found across the continent.

Once you've mastered those, you can learn a few more oysters, bullets, pheasant backs, hen of the woods. If you know the foolproof for, in those four I just mentioned, that will get you through 90% of scenarios when you're wondering if I should eat this, when you're looking at a mushroom. And then the last tip is when looking at puff balls, do a cross-section on them. That simply means you cut it and have vertically going from what would be like the head of the mushroom down to its toes. Some poisonous mushrooms from the Aminita family or vomiters, they will look like a puff ball when they're a juvenile mushroom. We're looking at one here. This you can see is a small mushroom that from the outside would look just like a junior your puff ball. Now this I did not know. You cut this in half and you cut it in half. You do

the cross section. If you see any gaps in there or if you see what appears to be like someone took a stamp and they put a different mushroom in there, that is a juvenile aminita or a juvenile bometer. That is one you don't mess with. But from the outside, it looks just like a puffball. It's like a roarshard test. I'm seeing something vaguely sexual. Yeah. If it was a puff ball, just be white. There's nothing. Next picture, Phil. This is what a puff ball will look like. It is just solid white flesh from one side to the other. Yeah, it's tofu. To finish drywall.

Steve and I were on a turkey hunt with the kids a few years back. We found some of those giant ass puff balls. It's very underwhelming man. So do the cross-section thing. I saved a coworker at worker who texted me one day. They're like, this is certainly a puff ball, right? And I said, looks like it cut it in half and send me a picture of that. And they did.

And it was an aminita. Oh, really? Yeah, don't eat that one. So it's easy to happen. That's a good bit of information right there. And remember, there's old mushroom hunters, there's bold mushroom hunts, there are no old bold mushroom hunters. My only thought here is, I'm all for putting your kids in all kinds of situations. And I don't want to blame the victim.

Something just strikes me as unusual there. 19 month old. 19 month old. There was also, some of the folks involved in these poisonings were labeled as unhoused. So just like grabbing what was accessible. in a park. I don't know that that was the case with the toddler in this story, but it played a role among the 49 victims. Pride Month Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate

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Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. Casey, you haven't heard the first ever mule deer. was killed by a hunter in Alaska. This happened in mid-April. So just like six, eight weeks ago. It was spring hunt. Yep.

I assume he must. I didn't really figure this part out. He must have been bear hunting, I'm assuming. No, man. They've been seeing them around. They just hadn't gotten a chance. He got it out of his yard.

Oh, yeah. Okay. So Skagway resident. And if you, can you pull up the, yeah, there you go. There it is. Just the dough me old deer there.

Can you pull up that map? Phil? I don't think I can be sent to Mabit. I'll find it. I sent it to you. If not, that's all good, I'll find it.

This guy's name is Weston Nelson. He killed this deer neared Skagway, which is kind of sits at the top of the arm of southeast Alaska, like that coastal stretch of southeast Alaska. And I think like any true southeast Alaskan looks like he went for the old headshot. Oh yeah. neck or head. Yep.

Yep. That's proof that he's a local, he's a local. In a gray hooded sweatshirt. So he got the first one ever in Alaska that they know of that a hunter has killed. This dough had previously raised a fawn, but it was not pregnant at the time of harvest. According to Alaska Fish and Game, uh, Nelson gave, gave fish and game, biological samples, head hide, all that stuff they wanted to, to kind of dissect and look at. He also kept the meat.

In Alaska, mule deer are classified as a non-native species with no established historical range. They're not native to the state of Alaska. Therefore, there's no close season, no bag limit. Hunters are encouraged to shoot them if they see them. Wildlife officials kind of are classifying this event as like a management, like a milestone occurrence. of a new species showing up and also a management opportunity because it helps see what's going on

with the species and what those deer might be carrying into Alaska. If you're wondering, this isn't the first deer, mule deer that showed up in Alaska. They've been there before. One got hit on the road, I know. Yeah, one got hit in 2017.

One got hit on the highway near North Pole, Alaska. Occasional sightings, go back to at least the 70s. Three meal deer reported north of Delta Junction in 2013. So it's just like something that's kind of happening more and more. We've talked about this with, with mountain lines just a little while back.

Yeah, coming down the Stakein River. Yep, yep. But the most recent sightings have kind of clustered around that, the Skagway Haynes Eagle area. They've been seen as far north as Fairbanks. So they're kind of like all along that, that western border of the, the Yukon territory.

Yeah, different points of entry, like the south ones are probably coming down the Stakein. And the north ones are coming in along, I think the northern ones are coming in along the, the Alaska highway. Yep. Yeah.

And that's, that's one of the reasons they give, like for why they're, they're coming into Alaska as human development, like building roads and giving them avenues for easy avenues for travel. all these deer again are coming from the Yukons the mule deer date back almost a hundred years than late 1930s in the Yukon territory they're not native they kind of moved in there on their own and they believe that there's about a thousand mule deer in the Yukon territory right now so this is probably going to keep happening biologists pointed a few different factors for why they're coming in warmer winters reduce snow depths. Agricultural expansion is a big one.

So like they're able to move into these areas and find food sources on farms. Then again, we talked about road construction, gives them travel avenues and then just natural dispersal. This kind of surprised me when I looked into it like why Alaska would not want mule deer to become established. the main reason I thought would be CWD. It's actually winter ticks is what they're worried about the most because winter ticks have devastated moose populations

in New England and the northern tier of the United States, Minnesota and then into Canada as well. I had that completely wrong as well. In fact, I've even said to people that as you see more and more and they made that rule, you can shoot them whenever you see one. I've told people because they're concerned about disease coming in. And they are.

Yeah, but what I was reading from there, like you're saying, the primary concern is the tip, like, tick load. Yep. So they're worried about them carrying both parasites and pathogens into the state. Some other concerns are mule deer didn't involve in Alaska.

So biologists don't really know what impact they might have on an ecosystem, like with brow species and things like that. How they might interact with moose caribou, the native black tail deer so it's a story to follow

we'll see what happens I think it's not going to be the first it's not going to be the last mule deer that hunters kill in Alaska what a white tail might be next don't they have like the same fear over them walking in I think it I mean it could happen but

I think you know the mule deer thing is something they're going to have to deal with for sure I I totally support what they're doing. Yep. Like I get it. It's like I think they're doing the right thing. Just a thought.

I don't know the non-native is like, if something's walking in, if something's walking in on its feet, not to question the decision they made. I think it's the right decision. But it's kind of like, I wouldn't say non-native. Not at this point.

It's natural dispersal. It would just be like historically they weren't present. Yeah. Yeah. Historically not present. Yeah. But now I'd be like, well, they're native. Nobody's, nobody dropped them off. Yeah, they're native now.

And I, but I, I, I, I, I totally get why they're doing what they're doing. And that you could also argue that it is human caused. Right. If it's agriculture, road construction, whatever, that you'd be like, it is human caused. It's not, it's not as weird. It's not as direct as if you put them in a box and turn them loose. Yeah. You're not going to find a state that, like, manages,

game resources, like better than Alaska as far as like providing food resources for their residents and things. And like that's, I think, a big concern here. Yeah, they have challenges. Nobody's perfect. But I, I am generally a big fan of Alaska's approach to fishing game. And it's tough for me. With mule deer, they're like my favorite animal. They're struggling in a lot of their range. So to see them kind of be painted as a bad guy. here is tough, but it's what Alaska has to do. Here is an article from quite a while ago. From Alaska, it says they had reputable reports of white tails near

Hyder and Haynes. Oh, I was wrong. Haynes is one of the areas they're seeing. Reputable reports. Reputable reports. They said they have not had one confirmed. Yeah. So I was maybe wrong.

This direct quote is they are basically within spitting distance of the border. So probably the same area there, the mule deer are coming. Um, Roy Churchwell, area biologist for Juno. Oh, okay. Hmm. So I was mostly wrong. But unconfirmed. Unconfirmed.

That was from 2019. It's unconfirmed that I was mostly wrong. Yeah. Let's let's make sure reputable reports still fall under the category of unconfirmed. Sure. You got, uh, you got more mule deer stuff for us, Randall? You want me to do it or should we, should we keep our powder dry? Man.

It's up to you, buddy. You've been sitting there. I don't know. Let's do it. Let's do it. Because I fulfilled a lifelong dream. Well, not a lifelong dream. Maybe five years now.

I've wanted to introduce my wife to Kevin Montief. And I finally did it this weekend. Wow. And we just take her over his house sometime. Well, Laramie is a good, good little drive. But we went down to the Wyoming range. Kevin Monteth is a biologist at the University of Wyoming and a taxidermist and a wonderful human being. And multiple podcast guests.

Multiple podcast guests, brilliant guy, it's always just like you walk away from any time spent with him having learned something like substantive about something that you thought you knew about and that you really care about. So Kevin, one of the projects that's that falls into the umbrella of Kevin's big operation there is a collaring deer study in the Wyoming range of Montana. And Rebecca Rafferty is running that program. She's a PhD student there. and so they they capture deer and collar them multiple times a year in march they captured some of these collared deer and the does they ultrasound and to check them for pregnancy nice question yeah are they coloring them for that migration study or just general a bunch of different studies they're looking at migration i mean the main thing that they're interested in is is how the animals use the landscape and the relationship between um What's interesting about this has been going on for 10 years. And so they have like multi-generational data of doze, their health, their offspring, the success of their offspring and all that. And so one key moment in the annual cycle of that study is when these doze in March, when they check them for pregnancy, the ones that are pregnant, they fit with what they call a vit, which is a vaginally implanted transmitter. kind of looks like a giant IUD

and it has a thermometer in it. And when a pregnant dough begins to give birth, it's right outside of the cervix. And when a pregnant doe begins to give birth, it drops that transmitter. And as that transmitter cools down as it's no longer being warmed by the internal temperature of her body,

it starts giving off a signal. And so these guys, Rebecca basically lives down there. Kevin kind of drops in and out, because he has all kinds of other stuff going on. But they're chasing down birth sites as they happen within hours and going and checking on the fawns, putting collars on the fawns. And so I've always wanted to get down there and do this. We drove down on Friday, and we timed it so that this is usually the peak of the

fauning season. It's been super early this year. And they don't really have a clear explanation of why, The hypothesis is that it has to do with the full moon during the rut. Well, no. That was a joke. Yeah. I mean, well, the interesting thing is they know.

So when they, when they ultrasound them in March, they know when they were fertilized based on the size of the eye that they can measure in the ultrasound. So like, they know when these, when these deer were conceived. And then they can draw that out and say they'll be born this date. That's interesting, though, that the rut fell a couple weeks later than normal. Yeah. But it was a weird winter. Yeah.

So what they're seeing, and a lot of this, I might just be mistranslating from the scientist's peak, but what they're seeing is that these deer this year got their summer ground super early or their fawning ground super early. And some of them are just giving birth when they get there rather than waiting until their fawns are fully developed. Really? Yeah. So they had, this was supposed to be the peak weekend.

and they had already collared 91 fauns. So they had less than 10 fauns to go. Like they had really good rates of pregnancy, especially among younger does this year. But all the fauns are just dropping pretty early. And they are seeing, it's not like they're all underdeveloped, but he was saying that sort of as a percentage of the overall,

there's probably more premature fawns this year. So we drove down Friday and they said, we think we have one for tomorrow morning. Phil, if you can pull up that first map. So the green dot there is where the transmitter dropped. So we... You guys are at 9,000 feet? The top of that is 10,200 feet.

So this deer, I knew we were in trouble because they said this is a deer they call sheep deer. Because every year she drops her fawns up in the cliffs. Wow. And before they've had issues trying to get down the cliffs to get to the fawns. But we hiked in and we sat that blue waypoint there. We kind of sat there waiting for another transmission. So once the VIT drops, they wait for collar data to upload to see if she's hanging out around there or if she moved. And kind of she missed her 9 a.m. data upload, just depending on how she could link up with the satellite.

So we sat around until one. And then all of a sudden we had this waypoint way over there. If you look on the map, we were kind of sitting on top across this little draw from where the VIT dropped. And then we realized we had to go over the top and drop down this avalanche shoot and then side hill across this really nasty stuff. And like we had a dot on the map where she had been milling around at one o'clock. And we went over there and sure enough, I mean, this is like, steep brushy stuff i fell a few times uh it was it was like very vertical and uh we get over to that spot and phil you can go to the next slide there so that that yellow dot is where she had been

milling around and that red dot is actually where the where the fauns were um next next photo these funds oh so so this was tough cutest little thing so you can see this is like the perfect deer bed. I mean, if you walk like 10 feet in any direction of that, you're going to be hanging on to branches. It was just on a little bench. It was just a little bench in this, like, you could have laid a sleeping bag down and covered the whole thing, but there's this little bench on the side of this face. One fawn was stillborn, and then this guy was, uh, small. I think he was, he was right around two kilos. Um, so he's going to have a rough, a rough go. Like, that was pretty disheartening after that long day, but we, you know, when they, when they get them, they take some samples of blood,

hair for genetic analysis and nutritional profiles. They measure them. They measure, uh, like the size of the fawn. They measure the hoof growth. So they have a better sense of like how long they've been on the ground. This one was definitely on the ground for less than eight hours when we walked up on it. And that does nowhere around like blowing at you or anything. We never saw her. No. We never saw her. We never saw sheep deer, which is a good thing because I would have been rather upset with her. Because she just like, he was saying that some of these doves, when they drop that transmitter, like a lot of them will stay there and give birth, but she dropped her transmitter and then just took off across this mountainside from like this great little bench at the top to just this

hellhole. So that was a long day. We got back after dark, um, hiked like 3,000 feet and probably nine miles or something like that to get to her. And then the next day, go to the next one, Phil. Okay, so the next day, we had another transmitter that got dropped, and this one was going to be in a much more, as you can see, this is a great place to give birth. But so this one, we hiked up there, and we thought she was still around. So we actually, he pulled out the telemetry wand, you know, to identify where the dough actually was.

It was kind of in this, this big curve in a closed road. And so we circled the road around and eventually we saw her. She stood up with her collar on kind of right where Sydney is sitting there. And she bounded off about 50 yards. We walked down. And then Kevin and I were looking for the, the fawn and we walked right through that little gap that's lit up in the trees and sydney sydney's like you got we walked within two feet of this thing it was it's right at her feet there

uh phil if you go to the next picture uh that's so that's actually another that's we had to walk around and find the second one this was about like 20 yards away uh but the dough stayed close we could still hear her circling around us and all that so next picture phil there's the the the first fawn we found just tucked in the tucked in the brush. And when you walk up on them, they, they're like main defense is, I forget the name, something breakicardia, which means like when they, when you walk up on them, their heart rate drops like 60%. And they, they don't even blink their eyes. They're almost like in this state of suspended animation. And so we got these two. They're nice and healthy. They're like almost twice as

heavy as that other one that you do when you're handling them do they nothing nothing what's interesting is he said that these and and this is what we observed the ones that are like little and maybe not going to make it those ones will move a leg here and there but the big healthy ones just do nothing so you can you know we picked them up moved them to a safe spot to measure them and everything like that and then phil if you go to the next one um yeah there's the two fauns, and we're fitting them with collars there. So they'll fit these with collars, then they'll recapture them, put different

collars on them. And next one. Those things just have like eternal handling at some point. They're always getting captured, collared, captured collared. That's interesting. You know, like when you have a piece of information, but you shouldn't tell people the truth?

Yeah. Well, I have one of those. They tell you that, oh, don't touch it because the mom will never come back. Right. They tell you that because you shouldn't be touching it. Right. But it's not true. No. Yeah, we these, they do all this. Yeah. And put a collar on it.

And the mom comes right back. And we, so before touching him, you know, you pick up dirt and you rub it all over your hands. You grab grass. You rub it all over your hands to try to mask your scent and not leave your scent. Listen, buddy. That mom knows you've been there. Oh, for sure. She's watching.

She was watching us. She was watching us. The other really crazy thing is that you think where, I mean, and this is all stuff that you know sort of theoretically, but you think like, oh, yeah, of. course deer clean up the birth site like you've heard about them eating the afterbirth and all that stuff like that earlier photo where that little deer's just laying in that bed things bone dry she's consumed all of the afterbirth there's no fluids anywhere there's no hair anywhere i was wondering about why they look so clean they don't look all slimy she cleans them totally to avoid

scent yeah and so you walk up on these things and it's like just the hand of god drop them on the side of the mountain. There's no, like, evidence of birth. So, I don't know if there's more... Yeah, this is measuring the... Measuring the hoofs. And then... Is there anything else, Phil?

Yeah. I mean, just unbelievable. Cute. Like, they're... And, like, the first day was a little challenging because there's the stillborn and the one that was pretty... Mm-hmm.

Like, but super cool, and just the amount of information that they have about these animals and how mom behaves around them, how they rear them up. You know, like he has data on the grandmothers and great-grandmothers of these animals and where they give birth and all that stuff. But it's kind of funny. They have, they have such an intimate knowledge of these deer that they can tell you all about how they use this, how they use that. Sheep deer obviously has a reputation for just giving birth. And just really, just a pretty incredible weekend.

if you love deer. Like it was, you walk in there and at first there's this part in the back of your mind. It's like I shouldn't be here. Like I'm intruding. Yeah. And like it is sensitive stuff, right? Like you don't want people to go out and handle these things. Like you should never go out and handle these fauns.

You should let them alone. But once you get to measuring them and thinking about what all this means, it was just a really powerful experience. So I don't know if I have another photo. That's the last one. But that was great report. The other disheartening thing is we, to get to those deer, we hiked up this closed OHV route. And we, when we put that second one back, we started walking around to see if we could find

the transmitter at the birth site, which is about 100 yards away. And that little fawn got up and started walking. And we said, all right, we're just going to back out. We don't want to pressure them or anything. So we turned around and walked out. And we got like 200 yards down. the trail and I hear something and there's five side by sides playing loud music drinking beers um like walleye fisherman yeah and we you know and the road is very clearly close so we go back down to the

truck and then they come bombing back down there's the big gate that says no h no hv behind this line they they drive over the vegetation to get around the gate and four of them peel off and the one guy stops right in the road like there you could see half mile road in either direction he stops right in the road right next to us as close as he could get to us without pulling off the road over to our vehicles just comes out lights a cigarette takes a piss right in front of us cranks his music up and then throws gravel and fuck it takes off down the road and i just thought yeah like it was just the most blatant like disrespect and violation why don't you grab a photo of them uh it was it was too late at that point but it was just like one of these things like you you realize the rules exist for a reason

because like i felt like we were kind of you know we were in her space right and then here these guys are just wrecking shit so that was kind of a sour note at the end of it but man very cool stuff big thanks to uh kevin and and rebecca yeah you want to listen to a podcast go listen to the episodes when oh man kevin montes been on the show yeah he he has got some more stuff that i talked to him this week and about that would be a good episode. Curl your hair. Yeah. Podcasts so good, it'll curl your hair.

My observation on the photos is they don't grow into their ears ever. Like they're just born with giant, silly ears. And then they just have giant silly ears their whole life. Yeah. Okay, everybody. Thanks for tuning in, listening, man.

We're going to bump a couple of these stories until next week's episode, and we'll have some freshies in there as well. Thanks. And talk to you soon. If you do off-season work, you know what beats up gear. Landwork crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. First Light fieldwear is built for all that.

No shortcuts. Purpose built, durable. Hard wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters. It supports the work that earns the season. Check out First Light's new fieldwear collection at firstlight.com. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.