The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 903: Stranded Whales, Cattle-Killing Wolves, and Maine Cleans Up Its Act

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: Steve’s brush with the law; Drake quacks; NY hunters earn a second buck; stranded whales; Susan B. Anthony fish; wolf diets; 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. Did you hear Phelps has teamed up with a bunch of other high-end brands to do the Ultimate Elk giveaway? Anyone who is 18 or older can sign up to win an amazing gear package that includes a new rifle or bow along with great supporting gear. The winner will pick their rifle package or archery package. For every $25 spent, you get 10 additional entries. The signups end July 26 at Phelps game calls.com. Welcome to the news show, everybody.

Today we've got news about my unfortunate, regrettable criminal past, dam removals in Maine, stranded whales on the Pacific coast, anti-buffalo politicians are generally winning, but they suffered a minor setback, and you've heard of Earn a Buck, well, welcome to earn a second buck. And you won't believe this one, Wolves eat cows. But first, our news.

And to open up our news, we have a special guest here. The special guest's name is John Jersick. He is a retired Michigan Conservation Officer. Some folks call him game wardens, but in Michigan they call him conservation officers. And I got to give some background here. We're going back in time to around 93. my guess would be 93 or

1994. I was parked in my truck on Manistee National Forest where Cedar Creek crosses underneath M-120 checking mink traps. In behind me pulls a

game warden, a conservation officer. He gets out, we're talking, he asks me, have you been setting snares? Which alarmed me because I had. And they were illegal in that area.

And it wasn't my fault. I'll explain how it wasn't my fault. I'll explain it right now. There was a game, there was a fur buyer named Abe Salasina. And I would sell some fur to Abe Salasina. And Abe Salasina would always be pushing snares on you. When the snow got deep, Abe B, you know what guys do in other areas is they set these snares.

And the fur keeps coming in all winter. So it wasn't my fault. but it was very alarming to me. And I lied. I lied. This is all terrible. This is all terrible. I'm just being up front about my behavior.

I lied. And then the Game Warden, the conservation officer, goes to my annoyance, goes through every trap in my truck. Checking the tags. You're legally obligated to have a tag on there. Checks them all. We converse. He leaves. Now, I have written about this.

I've talked about it. I told the story. A couple weeks ago, my good friend from back home, Ronnie Bame, is talking to a retired conservation officer. The retired conservation officer, knowing where Ronnie's from, he's from the same Twin Lake, asked him, do you know a guy, Steve Ronella, who I checked for whatever back in 1994? And I thought to myself, why in the world is this on this? this man's mind now.

Ronnie suggested I ask him. Here he is. Thank you for coming on the show 30 years later. Well, I'm glad we've had this chance to sit down and talk and I'll tell you, you know, even though it's been a long time, you're going to feel a lot better getting us off your chest. I've gotten it off my chest. I just need to hear it from your perspective. because at the time I didn't ask you what you're thinking and what you're doing.

Walk me through your recollection of this. Well, it's interesting that, you know, how you get caught with a snapshot in your brain of a spot, you know, in an incident or a time. I can see that. I can picture, you know, those eyes a good spot. You know, there was a sand trap there and you could brook trout fish right along that piece of ground. And it would get trapped a little bit too, right? everybody set make traps there right right real common spot and it's right along a busy road

yeah so anyways and you know i've been there of course dozens and dozens of times in my career when i worked around here and i can't remember you know what you know i think we approached this incident from two different perspectives i may have simply just hey here's a guy trapping right i'm going to check them uh and then going through traps and mentioning about snaring The bottom line, the end to this whole story is I was clueless that you had any snares. Oh, you were. Because I was like, how does he know I have snares out? John, did you know that this fur buyer was out there pushing young trappers to use snares?

Did you know this guy? No, that's the name. Oh, yeah, know the name, know who that was. didn't know it was being pushed, so to speak. But here was, and this is probably why I threw a dart and asked the question, right? That was at a time when it was growing in interest locally, snaring. And, you know, and I knew for sure it was going on. But it wasn't at the time legal.

It is today. But at the time, it wasn't legal. So, you know, just like any other, you know, game warden on a fishing expedition. I'm going to ask a few questions and see what he says, you know. But you started right out with that question. I don't, so I don't know if it was this part I don't honestly remember. Did I was, did I have some knowledge that maybe you as a local guy were doing it? I don't remember that part.

One, let me add this, when I was cleaning out paperwork when I retired back in 19, you know, remember we had the old report all poaching complaint. complaints, the rap complaints. I had found one from you. And it was, the best I can recall again is it was Cedar Creek. No, it was Bear Creek. Bear Creek, okay. And somebody had come across, or you had come across maybe untagged traps or something like that.

Nope. Go ahead. I got in huge trouble with this from Abe Salasina. Okay. I had found where a guy was trapping before season. Okay. And even though I was, you know, as innocent as it was, even though I was a violator, I don't want anyone else violating.

And I thought that that violation was a bad violation. So I called and reported a guy for trapping before season. Some informant told Abe Salasina, Abe Salasina ripped into me that you would ever report a trapper for anything and where do you get off and you take that man to man you do not call the state. Wow. Okay. Well, so hold on. That's a good story right among itself that in the trapper world, things do get settled out on the road.

You know, if people are stealing traps, if they're stealing fur from traps, if they're trespassing, or even, you know, if one guy gets on another guy's turf, that little war usually gets settled somewhere out there along the stream bank or in the woods or wherever. And, of course, we never heard about it. There was a number of local trappers, though, that I got to be pretty decent friends with. and they were pretty good. I don't even want to call them informants. They just tended to do the right thing and wanted to see things done right. We're getting about four stories down the road now. But on that rap complaint, it looked like I kind of remember the verbiage on it,

is I ended up finding a young kid, you know, a teen or something like that. And I had gotten back a hold of you and you wondered if I could just handle it with a warning, which I did. And that's how that ends. That's probably after I got in trouble with Abe Salasina. And it could well be. But yeah, that was the whole deal. And then going back to our Cedar Creek contact, I don't know. You know, I don't recall that I specifically remembered I was after you or I had solid information that you were doing it.

But the whole thing about snares at the time is kind of everybody was starting to do it. You know, it was something that people were doing, wasn't legal yet. It was so easy. You could cover a lot of ground. You could trespass easy. What people were doing was even using it along the 31 corridor on the highways, like in the fences. Yeah. Doing stuff like that.

And we probably didn't have the number of coyotes at that time that we do now. But, you know, they were growing in numbers too and people were working at. And you know, as a trapper, anytime fur starts going high or, the normal, right? The incentive to cheat ends up there, whether it be trespass, another guy's turf, stealing some traps. And I know I recovered quite a few stolen traps for area trappers, you know, either out of the White Hallmark for Muskegon Marsh.

Yeah. I'll tell you why it always stuck with me. What I was doing is I was snaring Red Fox down in the thickets. Right. And when you said that, I knew you knew. But I thought, why did he not take it? Why did he not take it or why did he not just stake one out or do some kind of stuff to catch me? Right.

And then I was paranoid and quit for a while. Oh, one time, one time on another local trapper. I won't use a name, though, but it was out at the wastewater. Okay, real, real common wastewater trapper out there. Oh, can I take a stab? Did his first name start with a B and his last name start with the F? No. Was it B.C?

We should have this conversation. It was B.C. So anyways, the point was is he had a few words with me out on the dirt road in the middle of the wastewater. Like, you know, why are you eyes after me and all that? I concluded the conversation by turning around, getting back. in my truck and said, you know, paranoia is a mighty powerful tool, isn't it? And I just drove away. Man. All right. My last question for you, John, and I appreciate doing this. My last question for you is, since it was a nothing thing, and you didn't give me a ticket, and you were just throwing that

out there as a fishing expedition, why did it stick in your mind? Because I wasn't like a known figure at all. I was, I had never been in trouble, you know. Right, right, right. Yeah, let's clarify to the audience. You weren't anybody that I, I had on the radar or was following around or anything like that or he had, as best I can recall any specific information, you know, on you doing anything. So I don't know. Why does it stick in my mind? You got me. You know, I know I dealt with a number of local trappers over the year, good and bad. I don't know. Some of them, you know, You were just around for so long, you sort of got to know these guys. And, you know, it's nothing, nothing real specific, nothing evil.

I don't remember. Again, I think this was just a chance meeting out on the side, M-120. And I thought, hey, I'll throw a dart to see if the guys got snared. And you know, as a trapper, finding people's snares and that sort of thing, not an easy task. No. It's hard to find your own snares. Well, yeah, and that's one of the things. If you talk to people that run a lot of snares,

I don't think they recover them all every year, you know, because how do you simply remember if you got out 100 of them? You know, where are they all? Oh, yeah. They were all, snaring was also starting to gain in popularity, like in those, you know, sort of the edge of Muskeying, Grand Haven, Grand Rapids, those edges, like the fringe urban areas, you know, you know, places where you might have.

the fox and stuff like that down in there. Yeah. So there you go. Man, I sure appreciate you coming on. This is going to add significant color to the story. It's going to, it's a hot tip for game wardens just to throw out wild stuff. Just throw out wild accusations just to see if someone, if it hits. And also to induce paranoia and poachers.

Well, you know, the whole nature and the job is quite a bit of smoke. and mirrors. You know, a lot of times you're covering a county by yourself or more, you know, and vast areas, you know, you might be an hour to the other side of the area you cover or more. So like I say, it's smoke and mirrors, try and make everybody feel that you're everywhere at once, 24-7, right, which is impossible. So to chum the waters with a little bit of information out there, you know, and ask some questions, you never know. Sometimes you get lucky and they say, say something. Well, it worked on me. I'd form the opinion of you that you knew all things that you were like a, you had like godlike omniscience about the woods. So thank you very much for coming on,

John. I appreciate it, man. Enjoy, uh, enjoy the rest of your retirement. All right. Thank you much for having me. All right. Take it easy. Thanks, John. Bye. This is great. Oh, Nate, pull up where it all happened. Oh, yeah. For you people watch it on YouTube, here's where it all went down. What other game wardens can we interview that you've ran into in the past? You know, it's a great story. We were one time here in Montana, we're hunting ducks, and we had our decoys in the canoe. We weren't in the canoe. We were using the canoe to drag our decoys.

Opening day, I get a ticket for no life jackets. I try to $75 ticket. I try to explain, but we're not in the canoe. He's like, come on. I'm like, I'm serious, man. We're just using the drag decoys. still a ticket. The next year, I'm not kidding you, a year later, opening day, same boat launch, same canoe, full of decoys, different game warden pulls in, writes me to citation.

Wow. I'm like, but we're not in the canoe. Me and the same buddy, $75 ticket again. You could have bought a lot of life jackets. Think you would have learned. I think I would learn. But that's not as good of a story. All right, what's next?

Max is writing in. Oh, this is more our news. This is more our news here. I'd like to preface this with, well, the text chain started at 457 a.m. He's got a new baby. Yeah. But it also must have gotten fired up to be texting another guy at 457 a.m. It's a little bit early, I feel like.

I think he's up all night with that new baby, so he's probably got nothing to do. Changing diapers. He's been thinking about it. He says, Drake's don't quack like a hen, and I'll stand by that until, light dive. I said, yeah, the Cornell Lab proved that, but also proved that they do quack like a Drake. What I'm calling a quack is pre-specific, I think. Ducks make a lot of sounds. I said, depending on how discerning the ear is, and since, in quotes, Max, they make a lot of sounds, you can see how the two could be conflated. Ha, ha, ha, but a Drake doesn't quack. Even Rocky knows that. That is not

the nickname or name of his new son. But, um, okay, so that's just, just pumping the tires up here a little bit because I'm excited to see what Max came up with. You roll it. All right. Clearing the air here a little bit. Drake Mallards do not quack. Simple as that.

And I'll take that to my grave. They don't quack. Yes, they make a sound out of their mouth, but it's more of a buzz or a whistle. Just not a quack. I pulled up the same website. Yanni and Steve we're listening to. That is Drake whistle.

That is a hen quack. He has splitting hairs a little bit. Yeah. Whistle, quack. Just two different things. Sort of like music, there is different pitches. And I think in duck calls, there's different pitches as well. A hen mallard can do a high pitch and a low pitch quack.

A Drake can also do a high pitch whistle and a low pitch whistle. What I think Yanni is getting confused is that low-end whistle. It's not a pure d'wit, d'wit. It's just like a d'wit. It's a little more sharper, a little more crisp. Sounds a lot like a quag. No, hear him out. Hear him out. He's getting his calls out, ladies and gentlemen.

Drake whistle, standard. This is going to be my high-pitched. At the end, you can almost hear like a T. Mm. Weep. And then this is going to be my low end. Weep. Weep.

Weep. Weep. Nowhere near a quack. Simple as that. I am so confident, in my opinion, I'm going to make a t-shirt that says Drake's don't quack. that's confidence yeah yeah so there you have it

there's my opinion there's my stance on it Drake's don't quack they don't quack I think he just wanted to show off his turkey fan collection put that in your pipe and smoke it yanni wasn't there somebody on the crew who saw

a hen turkey gobble but that happens but they don't gobble right but like I mean if if you were to say they kind of gobble but not really gobble. Could you not apply the same thing here? Like a Drake will quack, but not really quack. Just kind of a quack. Yeah. It's not a quack. And I think I wish that Max would have been able to do a better Drake whistle that sounded like that Drake quack that we heard from the Cornell Lab of Morentology. Drake quack. All right, Spencer, tell us about the auction house bodies.

Auction house has one week left. Everything has been bid on. We appreciate everyone throw on their money at this good cause. There's one item, though, that does not have. a bid yet. That is the boat motor. It's a Honda 150 V-Tech outboard motor. You got to pick it up in Bozeman. We have it listed at 8K right now. That's like the first bid that's going to be made. Can I talk about that? Why that is? Yep. This money all go, this is a fund. This is a fundraiser, like a nonprofit venture. All this money goes to land access fund. We know that we can take that 150 outboard Honda. Marketplace, we'd get 10 to 15K.

Because it's worth twice what we're, it's got, it's got, the only hours it has is the hours that we used to film Das Boat. One season of Das Boat, which is filmed over the course of a few dates. Yeah, the episode I was involved in, we floated that boat with no engine. Then we put the engine on and fished for four hours. So my episode only had four hours. And so it's, it's worth twice. If you went and bought it new, which it is, it's worth twice that.

So we put the minimum at eight grand because we could just go sell it on Facebook marketplace or probably just take it to Townsend and bring it to an outboard dealer and sell it to him for $8,000. This is the rare example in our auction house where you could get something at a good deal. And no one's been on the damn thing. It's only been a day. So we got the auction house going for another week. We also have listed my box of rocks. I don't feel like that description does it justice, though.

I just want to tell you about my five favorite rocks. There's 17 different rocks I have in here that I've collected over the years. I'm going to give you my five favorite ones. First one here is Wonderstone from Nevada. We had the immediate live tour in 2024. We spent the night in Reno. I got up at 5 a.m. I went and got a rental car.

I drove out into the desert about 90 minutes to a place called the Rainbow Mountain. Was everyone like, where Spencer going? Steve threatened to come with me. Yeah, Steve threatened to come with me. And I was like, I'll get you up at 5 a.m. And you're like, eh, maybe not. I was already up. So that was formed by layers of volcanic ash.

It's a popular rock among artists who do mosaics because, you know, it's got a bunch of layers of color. It's one of the prettiest rocks I own. So that is Wonderstone, also known as Rialite. There he go. This one's kind of an eyeball shape. You must own a few of these then. I have a few pieces.

Yeah, there it is when I found it on the mountain. And then the next picture is my suitcase going home. I took home plenty, plenty of Rialite Wonderstone with me. the tour bus got heavier after that day. That's a big one. Next one, obsidian from Oregon. I found this at the Glass Buttes in Oregon. That's one of the biggest obsidian deposits in the world.

Ancient humans were spreading this stuff all across the continent. Obsidian trace back to here has been found in Ohio that ancient peoples carried there, traded their way there. So we got a big old piece of obsidian. You could keep it raw just like that. Or if you're a flintnapp or you could turn into something. That's what I was going to... Did you ever just get the urge to break some of the rocks you find? I got some of this and I did bust it all up.

Yeah. It's so nice. You hit that with a hammer, dude. Yes, this is a raw, raw piece. You do whatever you like with. If you're going to break it up, like put a towel around it and then smash that thing with a hammer. And then watch your ass because that stuff is sharp. It's the sharpest natural substance.

Yeah. It's very sharp. This is a raw piece. It's about the size of a softball. All right. Number three is a leaf fossil from Idaho. There's this landowner there who was building a, dirt bike track back in the 70s.

And as he's building this dirt bike track, he starts excavating the side of a mountain, and he uncovers a 15 million-year-old lake bed. And that lake formed when there was a volcano nearby that went off, and it dammed up this river. And just like in the blink of an eye, it totally flooded this valley. And it put all these trees and plant life under some really deep cold water. And so this is one of those leaves. Looks like probably from an elm.

How old is that? 15 million years old Likely from an elm tree Really delicate rock When you go to this guy's place And you find him just on his property somewhere Like I found him driving his tractor around He's like you hear for the dirt bikes or the fossils

And then you pay him like 10 bucks Or I don't remember what the fee Was it real cheap? It was like $10. And you found all that All that and you can For 10 bucks That's you pick which one you want

I don't remember what the dirt bike fee My rock hounding fee was real cheap cheap. It was only me and my wife, and then there was one other group there. It was somebody from China who was doing a research project. He let you haul away all that. All that. Didn't ask any questions. He just said, knock yourself out and the $10 fee. So this is one of those fossils that I found there. Damn. Yeah, I don't know, probably like six inches long. Looks like it's probably from an elm tree. Number two, this is a fish fossil from Wyoming. It's from the world famous Green River formation It's a really amazing place called American Fossil.

You book your dig, like, way in advance. And then you get to go there. This is a video of what a successful one of these would look like. Wow. This is a nightia. That's me. That's the state fossil of Wyoming. It's an extinct type of herring.

It's like one of the coolest places on planet Earth, I think. You get to go to this giant quarry. You take home anything you find there. It can be absolutely anything. Fish is the most common, but there's mammals. insects birds. There's been like a three-toed horse that was discovered there. And you could find something worth millions of dollars you get to take home. So this is one of those fish that I found that day. Man, if people don't bid this up, they can go to hell. And then the last one here is a

dino bone that I found in Montana with the famous and infamous Jack Horner. He's been on the show. Yeah, I put him in a real tough spot when he was on that show and I asked him if I could come with on a dino dig. How does he say no? You know, when there's microphone. That's what happened? Yeah. Yeah, I asked him on the show, uh-huh. And he's like, that's how you got in? Yeah, I guess so.

So I'm like, okay. And I emailed him the next day and I'm like, Jack, when can I join you? And so like three months later, I was on a dino dig with Jack in northern Montana. And this is a duck bill dino, a type of duck bill that Jack actually discovered. And if we were doing this news show back in February, we might have talked about Jack because he was in the Epstein files. So that's why I say the infamous, also infamous for other reasons. I never told this story, but I feel like it adds something to this. Now, just to be clear, being in the Epstein files, doesn't in and of itself mean anything.

Yeah, to add context for Jack's involvement, he went to Epstein's ranch in New Mexico to look for dino bones. And then I think they talked about him joining the ranch in Wyoming to also do some excavating. Yeah. Yeah. It's just important to. Yes. Right. There's some more Jack Horner background about one of his wives that he had.

Yes. Okay. So yes, he married a student. When I go to this dino dig, this was 22, I believe. As a volunteer, I'm teamed up with a paleontologist. And then you're like given a job and a paleontologist to work with. Our job was prospecting, meaning we got to just like wander around the badlands and look for possible fossils or like big deposits of fossils. And I'm asking this woman some questions, and all of a sudden I elbow my wife.

I think this might be Jack's wife, the student that he married. And then it comes out a little bit later that it was. So I found this rock with Jack's famous ex-wife and Jack. They split up? They split up. Yeah. But they're still friends. They're great friends.

And she's like, I love Jack. Jack's one of the most important people in my life. We're great friends. We still work together. So like the only people have touched this bone, Jack Horner, Jack Horner's ex-wife, me, my wife. That's the fossil you're getting from a type of dinosaur that

he discovered back in the 70s that put Jack on the map. A Duckville dinosaur. God, what a box of fossils. 17 of them. Those are five of my favorite. That's just five. That's the worst five. Yeah, we got petrified wood in here, clam fossils, snail fossils, agates, all kinds of stuff.

Ingot of gold. No. Damn. Love it. Hey, I'm Ruby Carr, the host of the podcast, Oncour. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf Parades, I'll Believe in Anything, and tattoos all the things she said,

and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon. Stream encore on IHeart Radio, Crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, it's here, folks, the 2026 Meat Eater Auction House of Oddities is back and open for bids now. This year's auction features eyebrow-raising outdoor gear donated by the Meat Eater crew, employees and friends of the brand, including Steve's dad's shitty old truck full of badass hunting gear, the Honda Outboard Motor from DOS Boat Season 3, Clay Newcomb's Alaskan Wet Suit Bear Hide, fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Cray and. and more. The auction house kicks off July 8th and runs for two weeks with 100% of proceeds going to our land access initiative, which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions, such as the recent 200-acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 328-acre Wildcat Bend acquisition in Montana, and the 215-acre Shilaw-Pond project in Maine.

Visit themeatheater.com slash auction to place your bids now. get your hands on some meat eater history and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign okay on to your news now your news today is brought to you by banished suppressors which I'm holding in my hand here what I'm holding my hand specifically is the meat eater banish

colab suppressor which has the equivalent of like a little adjustable muzzle break apparatus on the end it's a 30 calcan you can run on anything I run one of these on my 22 Creedmoor on up brought to you by that okay the your news is a guy that wrote in today. He comes and looking for life advice, and he's going to get it.

He says he was at a, what was he at? Estate sale. He's at an estate sale. I don't know how he got there and Randall wasn't there, but he was at an estate sale. And he sees that there's a beaver pelt for sale. Wines up that there's two beaver pelts once he gets to asking about it. the old lady wants

25 bucks for both of them he somehow gets her down to 20 bucks so he gets two beaver pelts for 20 bucks he bought them because they seemed cool he didn't want them to get thrown away and he bought him because quote you guys have talked a lot about fur

as such an interesting and high quality material he goes on to say but having them I don't really know what to do with them have a hat made but it's not that cold here. I wouldn't get to use it hardly ever. My wife,

okay, it's hard for me to say this about crying. He says, my wife is unlikely to allow them as decor. I feel like he should have gone a little further here and like he hasn't even asked her yet. You know what I mean?

We should, we should. I know. I'll sometimes need to ask my wife about something for three months. just waiting for the right moment I am I'm petrified anyway I thought you guys might have some suggestions happy if you wanted to discuss on the pod

or even drop me a line or email thanks in advance I got a ton of suggestions there's all kinds of stuff you could do with it Nate pulled a picture here where my feet are resting on a beaver for Ottoman how does a guy like this how does the guy make something like this

I'll tell you We had an ottoman and it had a little pad. I went and got some super thin, so a scrap, a super thin plywood, put the plywood on the bottom, wrapped the beaver hide around the pad and took a staple gun and k-ch-k-tunk-tunk-tunk. And there you have it.

It still started making my back too sweaty. There was always a beaver pelt over this chair I'm leaning on. You could take your two beaver pelt and have a hat made and send it to a person that lives in a cold place. You could just have it laying over a piece of furniture, and when people come over, you'd go see that. That's a beaver pelt. Well, he's got his wife to contend with there. The biggest problem he's got.

The biggest problem he's got is what do you mean your wife won't let you? Like, what does it? It's not even her, none of her business. When I'm talking about not asking my wife something for two weeks, it's not about something like that. Right. You would just lay it across the couch and be done with it. 100%. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's what I would do. Nothing else is there. You don't want to be in a happy marriage? No, I would do the same thing. I was at my dentist, D.R.A. Yesterday's at my dentist. Those dentists are problems, you know. He was telling me his wife's out of town.

He hung a bunch of tax dermy up in a certain place in the living room. His wife comes back out of town, doesn't like it. He said, but she can't even climb up there. Dude, I got, my wife just built these shelves and there's 24 nooks. Guess how many nooks I am allocated? 12. one. No, it should be 12. That's what I said. And

you're not? No. You're going to let it slide? I'm trying my best, but dudes. How many? How many? What you do is you build your own thing with 30 nooks. Put that where you want. Give her one. Yeah. Man, there's all kinds of bad stuff about my wife, but the one thing

like she never, there's certain things she just does not mess with me about. She would never mess with me about something. like this about home decor about skulls and all that kind of stuff never messes with me about that's gift and they're like never messes with me about doing stuff in the kitchen i could take a roadkill moose and put it on that counter and she's not going to mention it i feel like unless someone

was like a vegan or seriously anti-hunting or something like a beaver pelt's not offensive no in any way no my wife is always mad at me but like she doesn't mess with me about some things she's pretty I'm perpetually mad about some stuff, but this is just not an issue I have to deal with, so it's hard for me to even empathize. Can we make that a regular segment, like things that she's mad at you about? Oh, yeah, she could host it. How's it working your house, Spencer, around home decor. I have a pretty good guess by now as to, like, what my wife would approve of and not approve of. And so I don't get that one wrong too often.

But also, if there's something I really want, and she doesn't, I'll be like, this is really important to me. I really want this buck up in here that I killed. And then that that usually wins it for me. And I think, but that's also like a powerful sentence to say. Like, this is important to me. So I don't use that one often either. I think you could tell your wife that these beaver peltz from this estate sale are very important to email her. Yeah.

That might just do it. If not, time to get a new one. I'll call it. On to the news. You didn't even mention getting them turned into a pillow. Those are some of my favorite things I like at your house. You know what? Problems are.

Why didn't I think of that? You're going to turn this into a win for your wife. Hadn't thought of that. I'm going to give you a hot tip. Sowing by So-M-I. Should we even say that? Should we bleep that out? I'm sure she'd love the business.

Okay. I'll give you a hot tip. So-ing by So-M-I. How you spell Sam-I, Steve? S-O-A-M-I. That's your hot tip. Say you want a pillow, leather-backed pillow. Your wife.

your wife will be praising you. This is going to turn all your marriage around. You're going to become a household hero when she gets that pillow. She'll ask you to start trapping beavers. When you get that leather back beaver fur throw pillow in that house, she's not going to get off it. You're not going to see her into your bedroom anymore because she's going to be sleeping with her head on that couch pillow. On to the news.

Earn a buck is back, except now it's earn a second buck. Yeah, how it sounds that? I like it. That's got more of a, that's got more of a ring to it. Yeah, yeah. We'll give you the first one. You've got to earn the second one. In New York State this time, beginning this year, New York hunters must harvest and report an antlerless deer or antlerless deer before becoming eligible to shoot a second antlered buck or antler deer.

It's a statewide rule. It replaces the previous system that allowed. many hunters to harvest two bucks without taking an antlerless deer. Every licensed hunter will still receive an antler deer tag. And they'll earn that second antler deer tag only after legally harvesting and reporting an antlerless deer. Can you back up a minute and explain to people why, why is this even a thing? Oh, that's all next. So New York State's got a million white tails, 500,000 hunters, deer hunters.

annual harvest is around 225,000 deer, but only 100,000 of those are doze. So in a lot of wildlife management units, the deer population is greatly exceeding objectives. And they're starting to see that excessive browsing is creating poor habitat, nutritional stress on the deer that are there, and it slows down forest regeneration. They're also seeing crop damage, more deer vehicle collisions. So the dough harvest is the rate is too low. And in fact, only about 13% of New York deer hunters harvest one antlerless deer. Only three percent are harvesting two or more. Really?

Yeah. I don't, I don't get it personally. Like it was never a big, like, we always were all about harvesting does, you know. I don't know why it's a big deal these days. But DEC, Department of Environmental Conservation, can you look that up? Department of Environmental Conservation. Environmental Conservation, yeah.

So they did like focus groups and surveys and things and they had input from biologists all over the state. But before they came to this idea for harvesting more does. And actually something that came out in that same, those same surveys is a lot of hunters preferred going back to a one buck limit. But DEC concluded, you know, that's not going to do anything to increase antlerless harvest. So there was no reason to do that. But at its inception, the earn-a-buck concept was they were going to try to control deer numbers,

particularly around CWD. They were going to places where you traditionally would just get a buck tag. Yeah. And they were going to hunters and saying, no longer can you just get a buck? Yes. You have to kill a dough to get a buck. And that wound up being in some areas exceedingly unpopular. Wisconsin did it and undid it.

Yeah, we'll get. Well, I'm going to get to all that stuff. So the regular season deer tag is now called the antler deer tag. And you qualify for that second buck by using, you know, just a rifle dough tag, a bow muzzle loader. Whatever you get, the dough with, it doesn't matter. You'll get that second buck tag after you. prove that you've killed that dough. And this was, this was some interesting stuff here. The state's going to implement verification measures to prove, to make sure hunters prove that

they actually killed the deer because there was some concern around people just like filling out a tag and saying, you know, I killed one. And then they'd get straight to that second buck. They were never interested in shooting a dough. So they're, they're going to do field checks. hunters may be required to sign an attestation, verifying the report. They, if requested hunters must provide proof of the harvest within a week. And that could be a photograph. It could be a, like a receipt from a deer processor. They're just trying to like dissuade people from faking it.

And if they do get caught faking it, it's $250 per offense up to two grand, possibly one year in jail. I imagine that. What are you in for? Yeah. What do you, I'm in for murder? What are you in for? He's like, well, you know the earn a buck program? Yeah. Faking that I killed to do. Like, New York's going big on proving this.

Michigan also just like, they just came out with a new proposal for a similar earn a second buck program. They're looking to do a pilot program in five counties in southern Michigan. And their proof is just like the tag. They're just like, we kind of looked at proving it all these different ways. It was too expensive. So a tag's good enough. So Michigan's going a much different direction. A tag as in I bought a tag?

No, like you validated. Like, you know, you're not going to tag. Yeah, exactly. Some blood on it. They just looked at like dealing with photos and like game check stations, all that. And it was just too much money. But that was the, that was the accusation I heard in Wisconsin. When Wisconsin did earn a buck, I would hear from guys saying,

that a group of guys that get a dough and everybody'd use the name dough to go get their buck tape. Now, like this, like, whiteto populations are like going through the roof in a lot of places.

Like Steve mentions, there's concerns with CWD, but still, like, it hasn't, this program has not been popular in the past. Like,

hunters feel like it delays their opportunity to kill a buck. If you're a hunter who can only, you know, maybe hunt one day on the weekend or two days on the weekend. It's like limited time. Trophy hunters that aren't interested in shooting does at all aren't interested in it. And this last one makes some sense. The regulation can tend to treat low density and high density deer areas of the same. For example, in New York, this northern zone, the Adirondacks, like that's an area with really low deer densities.

So, you know, it's going to make it harder to get that dough and then get that second buck. The DEC says it's to incentive buys, not punish hunters. If they do want a second buck, they can travel to one of the wildlife management units where there's a lot of doze and do it that way. For those hunters that like don't like it, maybe question whether it works, like there's proof that it does work. You control populations by shooting doze. Wisconsin pioneered the Earnabuck program in the late in the 1990s. It ran a little more than a decade before it got shut down just because of a hunter dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction with the program.

But it increased dough harvest rates by 20 to 40 percent, reduced deer densities, and it helped improve forest regeneration. The wildlife manager in Wisconsin, like, They concluded it was like a very successful program, but it was just like the hunters didn't like it. Doug Durn will tell you it's the most effective whitetail herd management strategy ever created. There's a few other states that have experimented with it, not like on a statewide level. Iowa and some other Midwestern states have run like localized earnabuck regulations with the same results like higher dough harvest and faster population reductions. So like it does work.

We'll see if, uh, the New York hunters embrace it or not. I'm not sure how it's going to go. Like I'm all for it, but I've never like really done it or experienced it. Yeah. Dude. I would say if you were a state and you had a rigid, you're like in a rigid one buck state. Yeah. Okay.

We're in a like we live in a one buck state. Rigidly one buck. And New York is a two buck state. They're not going from one to two. I know saying it's saying, but let's say. Pennsylvania. You're a two buck state or a one buck state. Yep.

I think the way to do it is you got to, you'd be like, let's say you're a one buck state. You say, you still get your one buck, same as normal. You got to kill two doves. And then you earn an unprecedented second buck opportunity. What an opportunity. That would be, people feel like they're getting more. Yes. Not like they got to jump through hoops to get what they've,

always had because that's when you wind up with discontent. Yeah. But I mean, it's like falling dough harvest is like a problem all over the country these days. Yes, people don't, yeah, because people are pansies. They don't want to eat deer meat anymore. The, the, yeah, here's the, like in 20 years, this will become more clear. Maybe to be 50 years to become more clear. Of the two conversation, there's two conversations happening about white tail deer in America. Conversation one, there's too many white tail deer. over vast portions of the range, there's too many white-tailed deer, by someone's measure. Yep.

Okay. Landscaping, ticks, agriculture, highway collisions. By someone's measure, there's too many deer. The other major conversation happening on white-tailed deer in America is that we have that chronic wasting disease is spreading, and ultimately chronic wasting disease is going to have population-level impacts. Some people project it's going to have catastrophic population level impact. And they're seeing falling populations in places already. I know. But these two stories, you're right.

Well, yes, you can argue it. Yeah. These two stories at some point are going to need to reconcile with each other. Yeah. These two narratives are not in sync. Nope. And like, I don't know. Is it 20 years?

Is it 50 years? When it becomes clear where... one of the narratives was wrong or or something or they come together and all of a sudden we're talking about there are no deer anymore yeah hopefully it's not that hopefully it's like a management strategy that everyone agrees works you know like here in montana they have special c wd hunts like late in the season where it's you know it doesn't matter if you've already shot a buck you can get these cwd tags and go in and kill a buck or a dough you just got to be prepared to deal with a deer that might be CWD positive.

In the same season, I hunted two different earn a buck programs in two different states. One was you could shoot a buck. It was exactly like this. You could shoot a buck and then you had to shoot a dough in order to shoot a second buck. And the other one, you had to shoot a dough before you were allowed to shoot your one buck. I shot, I was way more motivated to go out and kill that first dough. I traveled probably eight hours to go hunt over Halloween weekend, shoot a dough, came back home, then went two weeks later to shoot a buck.

The other program where it was shoot a buck, shoot a dough, shoot a second buck was my home state. I shot a buck, peak rut, and I was like, cool, I'm good. I didn't go out and shoot another dough. And I wanted to. It's not like I was like, oh, screw these guys. I wanted to go shoot out another dough. It was not a high enough priority for me to get out there and do it. Yeah, I don't get that like not wanting to go hunt.

and shoot a deer and eat a deer. Like, you're eating something. You're hunting too and learning and. But I still hear, there's still people out there and it might have something to do with just the, you know, high density, low density areas. Yeah. But there's people that have memories of years

where there were more deer in their area. And they long for those times when they would seed 20 deer a sit instead of just two. Well, I mean, that was me when I was a kid. see 40 deer and one was a spike, you know. Yeah. But people miss those days, you know, they like target-rich environment. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Hey, I'm Ruby Carr, the host of the podcast, Encore. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, my man, wolf forades, I'll believe in anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon.

Stream encore on Iheart Radio, crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, it's here, folks. The 2026 Meat Eater Auction House of Oddities is back and open for bids now. This year's auction features eyebrow-raising outdoor gear donated by the Meat Eater crew, employees, and friends of the brand, including Steve's, dad's, old truck, full of badass hunting gear, the Honda Outboard Motor from Doss Boat Season 3, Clay Newcomb's Alaskan Wetsuit Bearhide, fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Cray and more. The auction house kicks off July 8th and runs for two weeks with 100%

of proceeds going to our Land Access Initiative, which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions such as the recent 200-acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 300, 28-acre wildcat bend acquisition in Montana and the 215-acre Shilohpon project in Maine. Visit the meat eater.com slash auction to place your bids now, get your hands on some meat eater history, and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign. All right, moving on to the Wild Buffalo reporting desk. A story about American Prairie.

Some of you might know it as American Prairie Reserve. It's now American Prairie. for reference sake, if you want to go back into our library, we recently did an episode with the CEO of American Prairie about their mission. To summarize, real quick, before we get into the nitty gritty on this one, American Prairie is a conservation, land preservation organization that operates out of north central Montana. Their objective is to buy land on the open market.

Okay, willing seller, willing buyer, they just bid and buy land on the open market. and then try to restore it to, you know, as pristine as possible of a landscape. They own outright, deeded land. They own about 167,000 acres of deeded land. They sit on grazing leases. They sit on more grazing lease land than they sit on deeded land. So to the tune of it, they have grazing rights, either because, they own it or they lease it on about a half million acres.

I'm throwing out some big numbers and some people made me not be able to picture this. All right. America Prairie, again, they own 167,000 acres, all right? The biggest ranch in the state of Montana, 400,000 acres is owned by Rupert Murdoch. AP, America Prairie owns more acres than Ted Turner's flying D, so this is a big ranch.

Very controversial. I'll get into that in a minute. But before saying this, very controversial, I'll clarify. All of that land is all public. So the 167,000 acres they own is open to the public. You can walk across it. You can walk your dog on it. You can go around looking around.

The deeded land is state and federal public land. So the fact that they lease grazing rights on it does not make it that you can't hunt it. It's totally open in public, they just have the right to run cattle, Buffalo, whatever, to graze

the grass. Part of the controversy of AP, there's a rallying cry to the opposition to AP, which is Save the Cowboy Stop American Prairie. It's this idea that if you buy up ranch land

and just use it for wildlife, you are creating an existential threat to the American cowboy because he's supposed to be outrope and cattle. And all of a sudden, it's just deer and elk. It's a popular sign you see the way you'd see a politician's sign. Oh, one's driveway. And I'll point out that on a lot of AP's property, they're still grazing cattle. They are. A lot of them. I'll point out too. AP owns, as I're going to get into, they own about 970 buffalo. There are two million cattle in Montana. So the existential threat that these animals provide is a little bit, you got to take it with, you know, you got to think of the numbers here.

Okay. I find American Prairie to be controversial. Why do I think they're controversial? My concern with American Prairie, as I've told everybody I know that works there or runs the place or is on the board, my concern is that their commitment to public hunting is tepid. And when I put that in my notes, I don't think anyone's ever said the word tepid on this show. I don't recall. It means lukewarm. I was just going to say.

My concerns that their commitment to public hunting. is lukewarm. What do they say to you? They could do a lot on that. They say, of course not. We have this and this and this. But they put restrictions, they put hunting restrictions above and beyond

what the state puts. And they basically, not basically, they put a mule deer hunting moratorium on their land, but the state is not eye to eye on that. Right. And then even like, you go ask like deer researchers

are like a limited buck harvest, limited mule deer buck harvest has zero impact on mule deer. your populations, right? It doesn't matter. But, and that's what it would be. So that's why they're controversial to me.

But I'll try to look at things in this case. I look at the good and the bad. This is just the story of what's going on. On the hunting thing, like I'd point out that Montana's block management, which is like private land open to public. Yeah. It's not uncommon for those pieces to be open to hunting, but have restrictions, right? Like you can't kill an elk here.

Correct. You can't duck hunting. Is they right? you can't drive these roads. So like we see that in other parts of the state. But they have a lot of acreage. Again, I would say this, I did say this. I would say this with them sitting right here

because I'm like sympathetic to the mission. I support the Buffalo part of the mission. I think that they would be doing themselves of strategic favor by being more open. Putting more lands open to hunting, less restrictions, more acreage of hunting because you're going to create all the hunters are going to be your allies.

But instead, you're creating an impression in people's minds they don't want me around. And if they buy up more land, it's more land that I'm not welcome on. It's just, it's, this is way beyond what I want to talk about here. So what I want to talk about here is politics.

Their buffalo, they run their buffalo as was called a conservation herd. It's not a production herd. They're not running buffalo in order to produce hide, leather, meat, right? They're running it as a restoration project. Can I ask you a native? They're categorized as livestock, aren't they?

They have to be in the state. These are ear-tagged, counted animals. Not because they necessarily want them to be, but they're not regard, even though they're a native land mammal, they're not regarded as wildlife in Montana. They have to be regarded as livestock. So yes, out of necessity, they have to like count them, manage them like livestock. But the objective is this is the dominant native.

land mammal on that landscape historically, and they're trying to put them back on the landscape. So they're doing this by buying ranch land and letting the buffalo roam on it, and they're doing it by doing leases, paying the lease fees, and letting their buffalo run on state and federal grazing leases.

All right? What's a grazing lease? Well, a grazing lease is, the West is full of it. A grazing lease is you've got a chunk of land. Let's say, let's just say for easy sake, it's a thousand acres, you strike a deal

if it's Bureau of Land Management, federally managed public land, Bureau of Land Management, they open up a grazing lease for a thousand acres. They will tell you, you can graze blank number, blank cow cow calf pairs for blank months.

And that's how it's like measured in animal units. And if you're in a very lush place, that'll be a high number. And if you're in the bad lands, where it's all brown for 10 months of the year, it's going to be a really low number. Exactly. It's tweaked according to an assessment

of the productivity of the land. And you get a deal, you sign a lease, you pay a fee. America Prairie has, this is a quote from AP. There's pointing this out in terms of this grazing lease debate that I'm going to explain. As American Prairie says, America Prairie has lawfully grazed bison

on BLM lands for more than 20 years, complying with every rule regulation and permit requirement. There have been no grazing violations. And the administrative record contains objective evidence showing that range land conditions have improved over the last two decades with bison on the landscape. However, right now, after 20 years, years, for reasons I'll get into, the state of Montana and the feds are tag teaming American

Prairie. They're coming at American Prairie on state leases. They're coming at American Prairie on federal leases. Under the direction of Secretary of Interior Bergham, the Department of Interior is pulling American Prairie's federal leases. That's one fight. It warrants a ton of discussion. But since this is a news show,

the news right now in this moment is about the state leases that American Prairie has. America Prairie is aiming to graze bison on 5,000 acres of lands owned by the state of Montana. they already have the permit

they're just looking to put the animals out there. The state manages 1.4 million acres of grazing leases. So to put this another way, America Prairie is asking to graze Buffalo on 0.01 percent

of the state's grazing acreage. A tenth of a percent. Okay? In seeking permission from the state to do this, the state slow-walked them for seven years would not process their request. Eventually, the state's Supreme Court steps in and says, that's just bad government. You got to process their request. So what happens now? The state now is saying, we're not going to let permits out to people that want to graze buffalo in a conservation herd.

one of the perspectives on this is a stock grower, a stock growers organization opposed to them putting Buffalo out. A discussion is they're saying grazing leases were intended for what they call production livestock grazing, meaning grazing leases were intended to be used to produce a food product. And if you have a conservation herd, that's outside of the intention of grazing. places. However, this intention was never adequately codified by law. It's an interpretation of past intention. So the state fought them by just slow walking their permits. While all this is going on, they've had all these different debates. At one point, the state says, well, we can't do it right now, because our state land borders BLM land. And we need to hear from the BLM what

they think about these dastardly buffalo grazing BLM land. BLM comes back. At the time, they come back and says, well, nothing bad happens. It's kind of a non-issue. So rather than the state then saying, okay, we've heard from the BLM, they say it's not a problem, we'll accept that. No, they go, we're going to appeal your decision that it's not a big problem. Then the state gets into this kind of goofy debate. They start obfuscating what their objectives are.

They get into this goofy debate about whether one bison actually equals one cow. Okay. Now, Montana State University has research suggesting that you can few, they're an equivalency. If you put a buffalo on the grass, it's the same as putting a cow on the grass. Okay. And since the state sets, the stocking ratio, anyways, they can say how many are permitted to be out there. But that's not what they're after. They just don't want them out there.

And then they put out this thing like, hey, we're not trying to obstruct buffalo being on the ground. It's just, we're just trying to protect the grasslands. And it's kind of like gets into this thing like, oh, I'm it. So you're trying to prevent the West from turning back into that real dump that it was back when 30 million buffalo were grazing around. And vast herds of elk occupied the American Great Plains. And like Lewis and Clark were staggered by the abundance of wildlife. And whole cultures were existing off this wildlife for 10,000 years. Like, let's not revisit that shit show.

That's the argument. Finally, the Supreme Court says you got to deal with these people's permit. So then the state land board comes and directs the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation saying don't renew Buffalo leases, don't give out Buffalo leases. Just to change the rules. They're saying it has to be production agriculture. So America Prairie takes them to court and a judge just puts in an injunction No, you don't think I forgot to mention

Meanwhile, America Prairie canceled all their public hunts They do public raffle hunts They had to cancel all their hunts Because of this whole shit show going on For bison They canceled their public buffalo hunts They do buffalo hunts for veterans They canceled it

Because of all this uncertainty about their herd They want an injunction, but to me, feels very tenuous. Their argument is that the land board and the DNRC didn't do the normal rulemaking process before changing the rule. So we're saying you didn't, you know, you didn't open it up for public comment and all that. And so the judge put an injunction and says they don't need to clear their animals out yet. It's a, it's a very minor victory, but it, like I said, it has a very tenuous a very tenuous

feel to me. It's not like a conclusive finding. It's just an injunction on something while something else gets sorted out. The federal land thing which still lingers that all hinges on the intent and definition of something called the Taylor Grazing Act.

But again, the federal BLM part of this is a whole of the story. The state and the feds are tag teaming this organization around their Buffalo herd. What's funny about this, the iron of this is a lot of this is taking place against the backdrop of all this hoopla about the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

opening up in Madora, North Dakota. And they timed the opening of the library for the July four celebrations of our 250th anniversary. All these political figures converge on North Dakota for the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library over July for a weekend. Because the political figures all want to align themselves

with the vision and mission of President Theodore Roosevelt. What is that legacy? TR is a, it's like, TR just is a conservation president. People that, when people think of TR today, they don't think, they don't think about him storming San Juan Hill.

They don't think about him being an advocate of Panama Canal. He's a conservation president. I'm on the board of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. When people hear that, they don't think I'm talking about conserving Panama, the guy is a conservation president. The conservation president. The, just let me do like a little year-by-year run through on an issue.

In December 1904, President Roosevelt urged Congress to authorize that the government set aside portions of Forest Reserves as Refuges for Bison, 1905, and his annual message to Congress, Theodore Roosevelt described the buffalo as the most characteristic animal of the Western Plains and addressed the importance of the remaining small herds. He also acknowledged the economic advantages associated with the value of the buffalo herd. He recognized Wichita Reserve in Oklahoma as a four. reserve that could aid in Buffalo preservation. The next year, he becomes the honorary president of the American Bison Society.

The next year, we're now in 1906, Roosevelt congratulated Senator John F. Lacey of Lacey Act infamacy, of Lacey Act fame, not infamous fame, congratulated Lacey for getting the Senate Committee on Agriculture to order an amendment to an appropriation bill that approved money for the Wichita Reserve, which would house Buffalo. The next year, 1907,

Roosevelt supported reintroductions of Buffalo, Win Cave National Park, the National Bison Range, Wichita Mountain Reserve. The next year, 1908, the American Bison Society of which Theodore Roosevelt

is the honorary president successfully petitioned Congress to pass a bill that would establish a permanent bison range in Montana. So there's 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, I could go on and on. So when these people are coming there and like tying themselves to the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt at the same time trying to attack the restoration of the animal,

like what are you tying yourself to? It's because so much stuff, so much stuff is just like perform. You could get the same people in the same room and they're acting like they're talking about the same thing, but they're not talking about the same thing. Like, what are they talking about? It looks good to stand in front of a portrait of TR. That's what I always say. Every politician in America would like to be favorably compared to Theodore Roosevelt. But what the guy wanted is so damn clear.

And they don't. It's just maddening. Over to you, Yanni. He's kind of an environmentalist by today's terms. Oh, he was a radical. Radical. That's the other thing people don't realize is how much people hated that guy for doing all this stuff. They hated him.

Steve would have hated him because he liked National Parks so much. Yes. Yes. You'd have disagreed with him back then. Yeah, the guy that shot at him hit that little booklet in his chest. I'm like, Martin left. He likes Parks. No, I'm joking.

But yeah, I would have disagreed with him on that. I would have done a new show. about that. I've been like, Teddy, you're misguided. You know, the, like, journey for that, um, it was his folded up speech that saved his life when he was shot. It was, it was said that that can trace all the way back to his, um, early years when he was a president and he was really into boxing to the point where those in his cabinet were like, Teddy, you can't be boxing with the interns anymore. Like, it's just a bad look when you show up in some public space and you've got a black eye. So he like kind of started secretly boxing.

boxing with people in his universe. Clinton ran with that, but he wasn't boxing. Yes. Yeah, other bad physical contact. Teddy gets lit up one day. He gets knocked in the side of the head that messes with his vision. He has to start wearing glasses. So when he goes to give speeches now, the font is so big that he like has to have more paper physically to do his speeches.

So for that speech, He had a lot more pieces of paper. It was wotted up in his pocket where he was shot. And so, like, you can go back and say his little underground boxing ring saved his life because he had more paper in his pocket. You honest, don't you do a thing called mediator experiments? Yeah, it's a great idea. Yeah. He finished his speech.

He did. Put a speech in your pocket and we'll start cutting loose at you. He finished speech. The old bull moose. Yeah. It was badass. Listen, it was badass that Trump had the way with all to raise his fist. But imagine how bad ass it was to finish your speech

after a dude shot at you. Ted definitely knew that. He's like, oh, look at all the points I'm going to win here by doing this speech after just getting shot. We have to really do some historical digging on, you know, like powder loads, bullet, you know, because you can't use a nice acubon and try that thing. A couple of years ago, there was a story.

I think it was a boyfriend, girlfriend, we're messing around with that. I think one of them killed the other one, holding books up. We just use those beanbag rounds shooting books. Let's talk about Maine. Yeah, we'll get into it. Not Platter, but Maine, because I'm not going to talk about that. Maine dams.

Yeah, here's a conservation wind story. Inside climate news, I need to get, since we're doing the show all the time, I got to get up on my subscriptions. You boys must have a lot of subscriptions to all these different news sources. Is that right? I just got a lot of people that send me stuff.

I need more of those people. Barge will cover a couple of them. Just a couple. Inside Climate News reported that because of dam removal, Maine's alewives are making a significant comeback. And like me, 24 hours ago, you might be like, what's an alewife?

Which is really humiliating for you. Yanni, you're from Michigan. How could you not? How did you pronounce it? Alewives. Elwives. Okay, I thought you said something different earlier. Well, I'll get to why I should know about it as a Michigander.

It's an anadromous herring, averaging 12 inches, but can be as big as 16, not considered a game fish. Although some folks smoke them and eat them. Alewives are most famous. This is why I should be embarrassed as a Michigander for using... Well, I'm embarrassed for not knowing this. The Welland Canal to bypass Niagara Falls and invade the Great Lakes, causing the extinction of several Cisco species. They've also had negative impacts on yellow perch and whitefish populations in the Great Lakes. How they do that is that they either out-compete them for the zooplankton or they eat the fry of yellow perch and cod and other fish like that.

But this isn't about how they got famous. Maybe they're going to get famous because of this conservation when. because for their native range, which is like South Carolina up to Nova Scotia and the Western Atlantic, they are not doing as well. Do you have a picture of that, L-W? I just, I had it on the sky.

Yeah, the Great Lakes ones are nearly that big. What's that? The Great Lakes ones were small. Yeah, they were. Yeah, I think it's like a food thing, you know, plankton and stuff like that. Yeah, they went no 12 inches, man. And those Great Lakes one, they do not get back to the ocean,

right? They're just staying there. No, yep. Yeah, there's both populations that just are fresh water and then the salt water. They exploded there to the point where they would like, how many would die during temperature changes, that beaches would be uninhabited, like people would go to the beach. Listen to this. Old time Southsiders still call the little 10 inch herrings all wives for those summer days in 1967, when a billion pounds of the dead fish, wash up ashore.

Beach goers, you know. Lots of them. Sounds stinky. Why are L. Wives important? Or what do they do with them, I guess? The most common use, which was interesting, I thought, is for bait, for lobster fishing. That's why people like to commercially harvest them.

Like I said earlier, people do smoke them for human consumption. But really most importantly, I think, for all of us and the story is that it's a key seastone species that provides food, you know, all along through the food chain and, you know, it provides food for the bigger fish that we like to catch, like, striped bass and cod. Did you change my font size, Nate? I don't think so. Oh, gosh. I'm like Teddy, man.

I can't be having this smaller font size. I need my readers now. You can zoom in on your own. I know, I know. This is all staying. While Yonis is doing that, you know why they're called alewives? Yes. I let her rip.

Well, they got a big old belly on them, and so they were, they were compared to an alewife, which is basically a, which is a portly. Like a lady drinking too much beer? No one that would run a, one that would run a ale, I don't know what you call. Tavern. Just a bartender at a tavern. Well, no, more than that. Back in the, I can go way deep.

The tavern gave you a little belly? You don't say. I'm asking. Yeah, I would think so. Anybody who was around? So this goes so far back. This goes like the first mention of ale wife, I think was like 1,300 something. Okay.

Back when ale was more commonly consumed than water in a lot of places because it was safer to drink it. Yeah, yeah. People would consume like a liter a day on average, right? The pilgrims were scared of American water. They drank ale. For like every 140 people, you had to have a place that made ale. Back then, it was a thing that women did. And if a dude owned that and his wife worked there, she would develop a beer belly.

That's the thing. It was run by women. And they were called ale wives. And they tended to be rotund. Dolly, man. I don't know that. Tough nomenclature. Okay, huge.

Someday they'll get around to change. changing that one, man. Huge conservation. They'll call them like the Betsy Ross or they'll call them like the, who's the suffrage person? Oh.

On the, oh. Anthony, Susan B. Anthony. Yeah. They'll call them like the Susan B. Anthony because they'll rebrand them. That's mean. I think.

Go on. Unprecedented population recovery. The number of migraine fish in Benton, Maine, jump from fewer than 800, 800, 35 years ago. 800 fish?

Yes, to 9 million last year. That's pretty sweet. And that's just because... I try to figure out what percent increase that was. When they were real low like that, they were just cut off from their spawning grounds by dams? Yes, exactly. And so they've done all kinds of things to help them get back up in there. Which I'll tell you about in just a second.

Like I was saying, it brings nutrients up into the mainland, kind of like salmon in Alaska, right? These alewives bring, it's a vital food source for eagles, seals, otters, and yeah, just makes a place nutrient rich. Want me to hit you with something? Please. It's a 1,124,900% increase. Hmm. I was to do that in my head. It's a lot.

It's like going from the people in these buildings connected to New York City. Starting in the 1700s, the construction of industrial dams blocked the fish from swimming upstream to spawn, trapping them downstream and causing populations to plummet. Intensive commercial fishing in mid-20th century, farther decimated populations, and by 1994, harvest collapsed to a fraction of their historical highs. where the federal commercial fishing, the feds basically put a moratorium on them on fishing form in 2012. So the population rebound is driven by removing aging dams or building bypass systems. The systems that they do are, they do a bunch of different things. One is high-tech fish elevators where literally, they basically have just like a channel that kind of comes out off the dam. And then at the end of it, there's a bucket.

and when that bucket goes down into the water, it creates a current, as you can imagine. It sucks it in, and those L-wives are literally attracted to it, and they swim right in there. The bucket picks them up, puts them into the raceway, and then on they go.

Then they also do, on smaller creeks, they basically just build little, you know, steps. Yeah, where a fish can just jump up and go up through the rocks and get on up there. Let's see. 2025 Maine saw a booming migration of over 20 million ill-wives. Unfortunately, in contrast, states south of Maine continue to experience declining or depleted populations. Internet says likely due to warming oceans and different ocean fishing pressures.

Maine is one of only five states with federal approval for sustainable river herring fisheries. And as of last year, 25 Maine municipalities have regained the right to harvest local. under strict state limits. They actually have to, right now, a lot of people don't like this, but right now they have to monitor their fish returns for 10 years and produce that they have the stocks in these ponds where they do the reproduction. Like an average return over there. Until they can start a commercial harvest.

My big takeaway here was, I just thought it was so cool. We've heard this over and over on these shows that we do. We hear, I think it was, we recently had some tribal members from the North on that just talked about the wonder that you can achieve from nature when you see like I think we were talking about the size of some giant Chinooks. That was the conversation we were having. And I think the same thing here, there was a lot of locals that were interviewed that can remember like seeing some of these fish swimming up, you know, these small creeks in Maine as kids. And then they went through a period where there were literally none and they have, you know,

put their own hard work and effort into it. And now they're seeing them return. And it's pretty cool and now they're getting to pass that on to the next generation and people just say it's like it's an amazing thing to stand there at a small oak creek and literally see so many fish swing along where you can just stick your hand in and pull fish out if you want it points to the resiliency of my nature if you like give it room to do what it needs to do yeah there's something about main though like that state compared a lot of other states when it comes to knocking down dams like they're all about it i feel like they they tend to do it at a higher rate than a lot of other I was talking about this on a run recently with the fella,

and I was telling me I was researching for today, and he was saying that this is a big topic in northern Michigan. We're going to have to probably discuss that at some point, too. Getting some dams out. Yeah, because there's a lot of people that are enjoying, like, the pontoon boat, lake life culture, and when you take that dam out, that little reservoir you've been putting around on might not be around anymore. And it's a real trick right now to try to sell people on saying,

hey, the river version of this might be as good or better than the reservoir. Yeah, we used to pound salmon and steelhead where they'd all get backed up on the 6th Street Dam on the Grand River. And if that wasn't there, it'd be great. But then everybody'd have to figure out how to catch them when they're not on a roadblock. Yeah. Did we cover that how they're putting the rocks back in in Grand Rapids? to bring up, put the rapids back in Grand Rapids. Are they tearing the dams out?

Yeah. Oh, good for them. Pretty cool. Hey, I'm Ruby Carr, the host of the podcast, Encore. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf forades, I'll believe in anything,

and tattoos all the things she said. and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon. Stream encore on IHeart Radio, crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, it's here, folks. The 2026 Meat Eater Auction House of Oddities is back and open for bids now. This year's auction features eyebrow-raising outdoor gear donated by the meat eater crew, employees and friends of the brand, including Steve's dad's shitty old truck, full of badass hunting gear, the Honda Outboard Motor from Dospo,

Season 3, Clay Newcomb's Alaskan Wetsuit Bearhide, fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Cray and more. The auction house kicks off July 8th and runs for two weeks with 100% of proceeds going to our Land Access Initiative, which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions, such as the recent 200-acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 328-acre Wildcat Bend Acquisition in Montana and the 215-acre Shilaw Pond Project in Maine. Visit the meat eater.com slash auction to place your bids now, get your hands on some meat eater history, and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign.

Whales. Whales strandings have been tracked for over 50 years in Washington. The record for gray whales was set in 2019 when 34 of them washed up dead. we are only halfway through 2026, and we already have 30 of them this year. So the record was 34, six months in, we have 30 of them this year. I talked to John Callum Boquitos. He's the founder of the Cascadia Research Collective in Washington to find out why. First, I asked him about 2019. What caused that mass mortality? And how did biologists react then? John said that the 2019 he felt felt normal. And it really didn't.

raise any cause for alarm. Biologists had seen this before in 99 in 1990 and in all three of those cases, 1990, 1999, they felt as though gray whales had approached their global carrying capacity. And so this was just a natural cycle where they, you know, self-reduced. And the biologist just said, like, this is what a gray whale boom and bust cycle is. Can I comment on your graph? He's got a graph up. one line is strandings is that strandings? Nope. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,

I'm sorry, I read it wrong. Never mind. Sorry. We've got a chart looking at the global population and then the calf recruitment. But anyway,

he said in 1990, 1999, 2019, they're like, this is actually a good thing. You know, the oceans have plenty of gray whales and so they're just like

naturally having some reduction. As for 2026, biologists don't think this is a normal mortality event like the other ones. 16 of the whales that have had necropsies done, all 16 were determined to be malnourished, and of those 16, 10 of them had blunt force trauma from vessel strikes. So 100% of the necropsies said the whales were starving,

and 63% said that the whales were starving plus struck by a ship. John said that a starving whale is a delirious whale, so it's just more likely to swim in front of a cargo ship. It's a lot like when we talk about CWD with deer, the CWD doesn't kill them. It's that they don't have their mental faculties anymore to the point where they wander in front of a semi. They walk out in front of a hunter. They don't smell a coyote anymore. And that's what kills a CWD positive deer, not the CWD itself.

It's a similar thing. That's why all these starving whales are getting struck. So what's going on to cause the whales to starve? John's direct quote was this. There has been a profound change in the Arctic. Here's why he says that. About 95% of the world's gray whales migrate to the Arctic. The other 5% are these unique populations that wind up in Russian waters, or they stay on the Pacific

coast, or they go into the Puget Sound. Those ones are called Sounders. That 5% gray whale population is not currently experiencing the mass die-off. The biologists who observe that 5% say that they're doing just fine. It's the 95% that are going to the Arctic waters. that are struggling. John said clearly there's been some sort of collapse in the food in the Arctic.

The gray whales, they feed by rolling around on the bottom and they scoop up a bunch of mud and they filter out the tiny shrimp and the worms. And he pointed out it's a statistical fact that the Arctic is heating up faster than any place else in the world, loses 10% of its floating sea ice every decade. So obviously there's been an impact to the microscopic food that the gray whales are feeding on

in the Arctic. And now it's like shine some new light maybe on the 2019 population to collapse. Maybe this is, you know, a whole decade-long thing that that's happening. Here's some other tidbits from from the interview with John. It's believed that about 15% of dead whales wash up on the shore. The rest of them sink to the bottom. Whale strandings for humpbacks and orcas have been totally normal this year. I asked him what happens to a dead whale that washes up on shore. He said there's three common solutions. It's buried nearby. it's towed out to see where it sinks or it's just left to decompose.

I found a juvenile dead hump back last year in California. This one was just left there to decompose. The smell was so intense on that thing. You can smell it from like a mile away. I wish I could have just like showed people that smell. Like here, to take a whiff of this thing.

You want to talk some maggots. Well, why didn't you just get a little ball jar and take a chunk? I don't think I'd be in jail. Put that in auction, out of oddities. Yeah. Smelly whale air. I also, I noticed that 81% of the dead whales have been male,

and I asked him if that's normal. He said, no, that's a new phenomenon. They're noticing. Asked if he had a theory as to why. Here is his hypothesis, which has not been tested. Calf reproduction has been very low in recent years, and John thinks that maybe some of the females are foregoing reproduction due to a lack of resources.

Therefore, the females are more resilient to the current conditions because they're not spending that extra energy, breeding and carrying a baby and caring for a calf. So that's just his initial guess, you know, as to why they've been seeing this for the last six months. Something else, John brought up, the 34 dead gray whales in 2019 was a lot less concerning because at that time we were just coming off

at an all-time high for their population. So 34 dead whales out of a population of 27,000 is very different than if this year, if this pace continues, that'd be 60 dead gray whales out of a population of 17,000. So just like some really problematic numbers there. I asked him what he thinks the short long-term solution is. Short-term, he said to prevent vessel strikes and entanglement of fishing gear,

because those are often happening closer to shore, just feels like we have more control of that thing. Long-term, just like helping the gray whales in the Arctic, that probably just means with research right now. And John said this. I don't know if there's something John has been told from, you know, the federal government or if it's just like a known thing among biologists, but he said that if your like funding, ask mentions climate change that it's just like got no chance of getting off the ground.

Yeah. What's funny, though, is four years ago, if it didn't mention climate change, you had no chance. Yeah. So John said... Four years ago, you had to take your research and make it about climate change or else you'd never get your research done. So for this specific problem. And people would just, and I know many researchers.

You would take what you're doing And just impose a climate spin on it Even to the point of let's say you were just trying to work in public lands acquisition You would need to say as the earth warms And as stress from climate change increases People will need more outlets How will they find relaxation on public lands? Therefore as a climate mitigation

plan, we would like to create more public lands. You had to play this dumb game. Now you just go back in and take it out and just keep doing the work you're doing. Yeah. The problem is John says if you want to study gray whales in the Arctic, it's impossible not to mention climate change. I'd find a way. For the next two years, you know, probably just not happening for them. Last thing I asked, what do you think the Maccah's tribe request to hunt gray whales? Here's a brief timeline, so you're up to speed. The 1920s, the Maccault tribe quits whaling because populations are so low. 1970, gray whales. I couldn't find that number. I don't know if they even have one that exists. It's not just like a guess. 1970, gray whales are put on the endangered species list. What population? I don't have the answer for you there.

It's a real letdown. 1994, gray whales are removed from the endangered species list. 1995. Don't have the population. Ninety- well, actually, the chart probably does. 1995. So this is one year after they're off the endangered species list. the Makah tribe

notifies the government that they want to start wailing again. Oh, whale. I don't know if that was the number. We get to 1999. The tribe kills one gray whale on an approved hunt.

This is a picture of one of the harpoonists pursuing a whale at the time. So they do kill one that year. That brings us to today. The tribe has not been given the green light since and the case is sat in limbo

for 26 years. So they killed one gray whale in 1999, have not killed one sense. At that point, they're historically, the carrying capacity was about 2,500 gray whales.

And they sit now, 1,000? 2,500. Okay. And then the optimum sustainable populations about 1,300. That doesn't, I think you're missing a zero.

No, something's missing. Or it's like a specific gray whale population. Eastern versus Western gray whales. Global one. Yeah. We have some macaw coming on the show to talk about their whale. They're coming out up on an upcoming show to talk about whaling.

How many have stranded? 34, no, 30 this year. Yeah. This tribe killing O. Whale doesn't matter. So that's what I'm asking John about. They've killed one since 1999. The government has not given them the green light since. John is fully on board with the Makkah tribe hunting.

He cited this. It's the only treaty between the United States and a native tribe that specifically mentions the right to hunt whales and seals. And it was signed back in 1855. Therefore, John feels we should honor that as the only treaty that has that specific language. Here's a direct quote from Article 4 of the treaty. The right of taking fish and of whaling or sealing at usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians.

So John said he's also seen the management plan that the Makkah tribe has for the gray whales. He said he feels as though it's responsible and it makes reasonable requests regarding harvest. So if they want to go kill one tomorrow, he's cool with it. The only thing I'd have to know here, I would want to see, I would love to see a century's worth of population dynamic information. Sure. Because what I don't know, and I don't know if anybody knows this, is if you look at over 100 years, how dynamic is this population and how unusual is the trough. Right. And if they're in a population trough right now, are they in this trough every 30 years?

Are they in this trough every century? Have they never been in this trough? What I'm seeing is Pacific Greywell population, lowest populations, 13,000 whales, lowest population level since the early 1970s. So we'll see. In the 50 years of tracking, he feels as though this is like the most serious it's gotten for for the gray whales. Not good news. What's interesting is like in 99 when they did this, it was huge public backlash. It was insane. It's become so much more tolerated, which is the only thing I can think of in the

hunting world that people are now more excited about today than they were 25 years ago. The gray whale strandings, they could stop. And like, you know, maybe 30 is the number they sit on for the rest of the year. And then all of a sudden it's not so alarming. But doesn't seem likely. If that trend continues, this is going to be like a real global topic. Politicians are going to talk about this. Well, they'll be back to be in the next time there's the next Democratic administration comes in and they'll be reconsidering them for Endangered Species Act protections. Ain't going to happen now.

Tell you that. Thanks, Spencer. So wolves eat cows. Crazy. Can't be true. It is. Little baby cows or big cows? primarily baby cows on average between 300 and 600 pounds okay so for almost 100 years there were no wild wolves in

california today there's about 90 individuals in 12 packs and new genetic testing that came out just the other day shows exactly what they're eating and it's mostly cows if you want to pull up that map fill this just gives an idea of where the study's going on um we're going to talk about the Lassen pack as well as the Harvey pack. What pins are we looking at here? Just that, just that wolf one. Oh, not the tent? Steve wants to know about the tent. Oh, that's where I camped for sheep show last year. I'm with you.

Anyhow. So Lassen pack trickled in in 2011 naturally from Oregon, formerly identified in 2016 as the first breeding pair. At the time of the study here in 2023 and 2024, there's 50 individuals. in about six packs. And as I've become the SCAT study guy around these parts, this study is a SCAP pickup. It covers, like I said, last in the Harvey Pax, which is about 20 wolves through the summers of 2022 and 2023, which is defined by June through October because of the overlap with grazing on public land. And in this study, there were 86% of the SCAP samples picked up had cattle. in them compared to

in the teens and 20s for mule deer or any other wild prey. Man. But I got so many questions, but keep going. No, laybombing. We'll keep going. Is it embryo? Like, are they, is it afterbirth? No, we'll talk. Yeah, we'll talk about it. Okay. This scat pickup method, as

opposed to the iguana method, that was just purely counting. They did a very, very rigorous, extremely scientific methods. The first being mitochondrial sequencing, to confirm the species that was eaten, microsatellite genotyping,

which confirms the identity of individual wolves, and DNA meta-barocoding to identify the prey DNA in that scat. And then the researchers through those methods were able to measure the exact, the biomass of what was actually eaten. So they could tell in this scat, 80% of that is cattle,

even though there might be seven different things that are in that. And so it's not just how often a prey showed up. It's relatively how much that prey was eaten. And then through that, they can tell like how many pounds of meat. Roughly, yeah. It's pretty insane. And I could not get into the specifics of how it works, but there is a long section about that. And so when you look into the biomass, which is kind of what we're talking about, cattle averaged 55% of the biomass consumed versus 12% of mule deer and 15% of small mammals. So they're just chowing on cattle.

You cannot determine what's distinguished from predation versus scavenging, which makes the data kind of interesting. But free range cow calf operations traditionally have mortality around 1 or 2%. So researcher state's reasonable to think that a meaningful share of this calf. battle biomass reflects actual kills, not just scavenging. And there are a few that were confirmed to be actual kills, but generally it's so remote and so dispersed. You can't figure out what's a scavenge and what's killed. Then I looked at a meta-analysis of this of like, how does this compare in California to wolves worldwide and how they're predating on things? And you see that livestock are hit the hardest where herds are grazing unattended and small dispersed groups. When

when you look at the occurrence of this compared to natural game or I should say the game species there actually seems to be a preference towards game species as opposed to livestock but the higher those higher rates don't

it's not the same when those cattle are dispersed and when the prey goes down proportionally was it did you come across anything about like whether like introduce populations of wolves or like new emerging populations of wolves?

Like, do they prey on livestock more than like, established population? Yeah, this idea that like maybe there's these cow eaters that were brought in that have been, been talked to, like. Or it's just like, they go for the easy stuff because they're like in a new environment. No,

I didn't find that specifically. There's definitely a learning curve associated with, with, like, prey in a new species. It seems that the prey have the learning curve rather than the, the predators. But this meta-analysis you look at, it looks like 200 different packs across the world.

And there's, so some of them are going to be introduced. Some have been there for a long time. And this is India, Europe, U.S. And there's really not a preference for cattle across the board. But when you compare that to what's going on in California, they have no other forms of ungulates. They have small populations of elk that currently their ranges don't overlap a whole ton. And their mule deer are in significant decline. So from a peak of about a million in 1970 to about 500,000 today,

what it shows is that as prey species thin, free-ranging cattle specifically get targeted by these wolves. But a problem with that is that there weren't wolves there in 1970. For the mule deer? Yeah, I mean, the wolves are just there now. Yeah. So for someone to say that wolves have switched from deer to cattle in California, they weren't there when there was a million deer.

But in other places, there's been, there's, like, there's a study in India where there's plenty of different species. I see where you see ungulate declines, they pick up on cattle. Yep, yeah, yeah. That makes sense to me. And if there was no cattle there, they'd pick up on whatever's next dogs. Exactly. Exactly. And so, it's like, so what, you know, I think the big thing I came out of here with is there really isn't a thing of cow eaters.

You know, that was a big narrative in the Colorado introduction. They're going to eat what's convenient. you know, they're going to eat, they seem to have a preference for wild game. Wait a minute. Yeah. There's not a thing, there's not packs that just like over time, it becomes a learn behavior that the pack leaders teach the rest of the pack and then it becomes a... At larger scale, it only seems to happen when prey species are at, at, like, are significantly

lower than what they could be, like the low carrying capacity. So, I mean, they'll go hit the cows. They'll go hit the cattle. only when prey species are hurting. A little bit of that feels off to me, but only kind of off. How so? Well, like, I'll give you an example.

Like, uh, the wolves that were introduced in north, in the North Park area of Colorado, that kept hitting cows and cows and cows. There's shitloads of elk around there. There's moose around there. There's, like,

they're not in a game, poor environment, you know? They're, I, so I, that's a kind of thing that you'll hear all the time. And I talked to someone who was intimately involved with that reintroduction effort.

And a lot of that report from his perspective was that there were individual landowners who were intentionally causing conflict because they didn't like. That's a big accusation. I know, man. I know it. Bold statement. And so there's, there's two things at play is that there's one, the reimbursement portion of it, which in Colorado's management system was very generous. like it you know it's kind of like your climate change things like oh my cow died but what no one's gonna they're not gonna go kill their own calf to be like give me two thousand

but a cow might a calf might have died and they said wolf did that well but they have but they have investigators that come out but then you can't you it's hard to split between what's I don't want to distract no it's too much I do yeah no let's do it I don't have a total problem with I have because there's there's inverse questions sure there's this thing that wolves When you have a early we're talking about Buffalo. When you have a buffalo population on the ground, there's kind of this magic number

at which wolves will start to pay attention to it. I can't remember what it is. You've got to have 1,000 of them or you've got to have 2,000 of them. At that point, the packs will start, it's sort of somehow something clicks and it becomes worthwhile in their mind

to learn to kill it. And once they learn to kill it and develop the techniques to kill it, That's what the pack likes to hunt. It would see, again, based on a couple studies, but these studies are globally, it seems that that data is not borne out. It seems that they'll eat what's there. It's not like they learn to attack a certain thing.

Maybe in like localized populations that could happen, but across the board, you're not seeing it. I'll have a debate about this. Not you and me. We should get all the old people. But like other people versus other people. I've also heard. something that the larger a pack gets, the more likely it is to turn to livestock. Because it's big and hard to kill. Big packs of coyotes hunt deer.

They just got a lot of mouse to feed. Singles hunt rodents. Sure. Go on. Just know I'm sitting over here skeptical. Okay. Well, you'll, you'll like this then. There's a companion study that's happening at the same time with basically the same wolf herd in 2022 and they're measuring the stress response of cattle in this area. Okay. And so this is getting at the landscape of fear idea. Yeah, now I'm getting interested again. Yep. And basically, if wolves are present, whether or not they're actually killing an individual cow, are they impacting the rancher's operations because there's aborted cattle because they don't lactate as well, because of all the other things that cortisol can lead to. Yeah. So you'll see in, as you compare these two her,

Traditionally, cortisol levels drop as summer temperatures rise. You know, it's like a more favorable growing season, and the stress goes down. And wolf exposed herds, that drop is 58% weaker. Huh. So basically, the cattle, when wolves are around, they stay stressed out. Whether they're getting eaten or not. Whether they're getting eaten or not. It's like, if you went to your own house and scared the hell out of your dog and chased it all around, but never killed it, the dog's going to suffer.

There you go. Well, taste is good either. No. You'll have a red cutter. And so that raised cortisol is linked tenuously at this point to lower fertility, weakened immunity, disrupted milk or colostrum transfer. And the takeaway from this researcher is, living among wolves for cattle is a chronically stressful experience,

and that could ultimately have production-related impacts on both the short and long-term. However, it's not proven yet. This is an idea that people like to talk about. It makes sense just when you think about it. But more research is needed to see how much that's going to happen, which gets back to the Colorado thing because you look at compensation and how do you prove compensation that my cattle are not producing as much because there's a general air of fear in this area. And different regions, different countries, different places have looked at that problem in different ways because ultimately this conversation like wolves are going to come back, went through ballot box biology or just walking around like wolves are going to enter landscape. that traditionally have had cows that don't have large predators. And so you look at three different types, three different methods.

There was a Sola Pure India, which I'm sure I pronounced wrong, Wisconsin, and then Colorado had basically three different ways of compensating these ranchers. In India, and they're pretty similar, like, they're pretty similar agricultural economies and whatnot, growing cattle or growing livestock, I should say. In India, the wolves have always been there. Like, people get it. They've been there. They're cool with them. And claims are managed by the government. They have very low rates of claims of livestock predation claims in that area. What do they run in goats and sheep? Yeah, because they're not slaughtering cattle in India. I think it's all goats and sheep. In Wisconsin, the original funding mechanism was donations from pro wolf advocates given to ranchers who, or I should say, agricultural folks who had claims of wolf predation. Yep. That method lasted not long. It is not the way they do it anymore. And then in Colorado, as they've introduced wolves, they pull from the general fund, and they have a very generous scheme of paying out, basically predation permits. But it's tough. It's like, how do you, how do you go about doing this? How do you determine did that die by, you know, whatever, COVID or something and got eaten by a wolf or not? Let me save someone at home a mean letter. I'm just going to express their opinion now, so they don't have to write you a mean letter. if you turn out a thousand cows on range,

okay, and they're up doing their thing. And then the fall comes and you go to pull them off range and you count them up and you got 990. You're never going to know what happened to them. So someone's going to come and tell you like, oh, the wolf mitigation thing,

just show us. Like, I don't know. I don't know where they went. They're just, they're gone. Right? You can't then go like,

hey, I'm missing 10. and someone's going to cut you a check. So that's part of the frustration is you got to be there and do like, you got to be there, here it is, it's got this toothmark pattern on it. And it leads to,

I'm not saying it's undoable. They lose cows for all kinds of reasons. Like, cows die. They got a way of dying. I'm not saying this is the lead cause of death, but that is a frustration. It's like, it's on you. The burden's on you to show what happened

to get the compensation. So that's one of the pain points around compensation. Sure. So someone doesn't need to write you that letter. Thank you. You guys, so that no one has to write this letter as well, common livestock in India includes cattle, buffaloes, goats, sheep, and poultry. And India has one of the world's largest cattle populations. But according to just quick AI search here is that that's mostly for the milk. Everything else, the buffaloes, the goats, sheep, poultry, pigs, they eat those. real. Good report. Tough nut. I started this thinking I was going to hear all about how wolves are evil and their cow eaters.

It's so complicated. Yeah, you got in over your waiters on that one. Dude, it's deep. Because listen, there's a thing that just leads to fighting. Wolves. Wolves. Yeah. You know, they say never talk about politics or religion at dinner.

Don't talk about wolves. Wolves or wolves. Water rights is another one. we should just stock more elk where these wolves live that's what i'm stood we need a healthy ungulate population that's the name of the game at dinner when you go like no i don't want to get political you know then you say something real political like no i don't want to talk about wolves but let me tell you something about wolves that it i think that's all we got for today that's right because we're going to talk about one thing we're not going to talk about anymore

It's about how in California, here's one we were going to cover, but we're not going to. In California, there's an area where they ban dudes from the pier fishing sharks for fear that they'd hook a shark and then swim over and bite someone who's swimming. That's what they say? If I was the mayor, I'd be like, no swimming. Because if a guy's fishing sharks and his shark gets tangled up on you, he might lose it. You can read Northameteer.com.

We'll see it next week. You bought it at the Meteor.com. Better than the mayor in Jaws. The Meteor.com slash auction. Go buy something. Oh, that's right. Check out that model 94. Oh, such thing is cow killers.

Come on. Did you hear Phelps has teamed up with a bunch of other high-end brands to do the ultimate elk giveaway? Anyone who is 18 or older can sign up to win an amazing gear package that includes a new rifle or bow along with great supporting gear. The winner will pick their rifle package or archery package. For every $25 spent, you get 10 additional entries. The sign-ups end, July 26 at phelps game calls.com. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.