The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 907: Yellowstone Wolf (Mis)Management, Betting on Wildfires, and Bears Ear

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: Monumental changes to Bears Ears, Wildfires on prediction markets, CO ain’t your trapping friend, Permanent Daylight Savings hunting, changes to the Endangered Species Act, 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. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. 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 Phelpsgamecalls.com. Welcome to the news show. Today we've got Spencer reporting on the most reported on story in the world, the old-timer who got tossed.

by a buffalo and Yellowstone. We've got wolves and Yellowstone have left Yellowstone, and that's got Yellowstone wolf lovers panties in a bunch. The Trump administration has made changes to the Endangered Species Act, and if you're guessing

that it wasn't to make it strong and more effective, you're on to something. Colorado's dumb fur ban has died, but they replaced it with something not quite as dumb. Is the perpetuation of daylight savings time good or bad for outdoorsmen.

How can you make money betting on wildfires and more? But first, our news. I'll tell you about our news. That's good, Bill. Listen, you want to talk about workplace drama. Workplace drama. This represents tremendous workplace drama. I'm not aware.

Oh, the bear grease of bib. Yeah, what's the drama? Clayful. fought for years for these bibs. I think since 2019. Relationships were ruined over these bibs. Because Clay stuck

to his guns. He would accept nothing less than perfection. If you're a bib man, let me stand up. You see me good, Phil? Look great. Here you go.

It's the important parts. Yeah. I'm not trying to flash. Well, you can see the main part of a bib is the top is attached to the bottom. Put that camera on. Put the camera on so I can see what's going on.

There you go. The bare grease bib, look. Zippers. Like, it's all in reverse. I'm looking at the camera. Zipper. Side pockets. Okay?

You can run them like, you can run them southern style. We just run around like that. You can zip them up. Flexible. They got chaps running from ankle up. It's the ultimate bib. It's the greatest product we've ever made. And like I said, a lot of fighting.

Mm. A lot of fighting. I had some household drama over these. How so? I brought them home, and I have a pair of 3xL carhart overalls that I do all my car work in. I brought these suckers home to do that in. And my wife said, those are too nice to do car work in. But now I did car work in them.

Well, she wants those to be your dress bills. Yeah, I asked her, like, can I wear these to church? She didn't answer. I think the, if you had those out of church, I would say, I'd like this man to step up to the pulpit. I think he's got something that he should share with the congregation. Also, you're not a 3xl. What are you doing with 3xl bibs at home?

Oh, I got this from the thrift store. They're just like a big pair of bibs you do. You're working. These are, I think they run a little bit big because these are your original ones. I'm running around in a medium, which is right, right where I should be for a pair. Okay, this is a large.

I'm 6'4. You're a big guy. Oh, I see. Clay is telling people on Instagram. They run a little big. So if you're getting your pair, Keep Clay's words. It depends if you like to put them on

over a bunch of stuff. This is the best, listen, this is the ultimate deal. This is what I live in from now on. I will say, I throw these on,

like in the morning, I climb a tree and shoot from my saddle before work. And I just throw these on over my work clothes. Climbing the tree, good to go.

Because you don't want to get your t-shirt dirty. Well, I wore a t-shirt today, but usually have nice pants on. Yeah. Dude, people know about my dress-up game. These are rocks-out bibs. I like them.

Yeah. I got to get me some. Oh, dude. Oh, yeah. Just like durable. A lot of fighting. They're available now. That's what we want to emphasize above all else.

There was a lot of fighting. There was a lot of fighting. It got like it got emotional. These were built with anger. It got emotional. I'm picturing an Instagram ad. Just like Clay fuck these bibs. It got emotional.

A lot of fighting. And here after after five years of fighting. I think it's seven. I thought Clay said 20. years of fight. Clay being like, not like that! Like this! Yep.

For the, uh, for the ignoramus back here, what's the difference between a bib and an overall? I don't know. I use them interchangeably. Okay. I think it's interchangeable. I didn't know if there was a practical difference. If I had to say a difference, I feel like an overall maybe like goes all the way to sleeves. No, that's a cover all. That's a great product too. My wife's got a lot of cute little overalls these days. Yeah, that's the thing. My wife's got a pair. I'm into that, though. I'm into that, though. I'm into that. I'm in that. Overall, overall overall. Overall, overalls are cute bids are oh yeah she's got some real cute little bids are working it

she's not running around knees if she was she'd probably cut it she'd do something to her she'd mod them she's not gonna start working on the truck no she just runs around being cute in her little overalls now and then it's only a differentiation between coveralls and bib overalls yeah um you can get them now and you gotta go get them because here's the deal all that fighting if if they bomb clay's getting fired just more fighting So if you want to bring peace to the workplace, blow these bibs out of the water, get them, love them, Clay wins, I win, everybody's happy. A lot of fighting. Nate's got a hot tip for you. Or a cold tip, because I had norovirus this weekend and spent a lot of time in the shower. Oh, dude, is miserable. Not as miserable as when I got it after the mile high hunting show and spent an hour and a half plane.

flight in the bathroom. But this weekend, you're a two-time Norovirus happening. I think I've had it three times. You gotta eat more bad stuff. I've had Norovirus. Hold up. Just strengthen the system.

Yeah, that's probably a good point. You weren't frequenting Taco Bell, were you? No. Surprising virus. I know, but. It could have been. No, our whole social group got it, so it's pretty sure is norovirus.

Anyways, I'm a little skeptical of Western medicine, or Western medicine curious, and I don't believe in the over-utilization of the medical system. And so instead of going to the doctor when I have stuff like this, I just do every hour and a half I get in the shower

and sit there for half an hour kind of soak it out, hydrotherapy. But eventually, after the seventh or eight shower rotation, the shower gets pretty uncomfortable. So I thought to myself, what could I put in here to make the shower more comfortable?

And lo and behold, I had a sleeping pad. So I blew that sucker up, threw it in there. And it made my eighth, ninth, and tenth shower of the evening far more enjoyable. Do you imagine that you're sort of washing away the sickness? I don't know if it's the, I'm washing it away or I'm steaming it out.

What I'm, what I'm concerned about, I, whenever I think of air matches is I think of all the crevices, you know, like there's crevices in there. To me, that would be ripe for, say, if some Duke got in there, there's a good chance. He's not in there shatting himself in there. You'd be surprised. So if you find yourself on. your seventh or eighth shower rotation of the evening, blow up your sleeping pad and sit on that sucker. Get a shower stool. Available at a common drugstore.

I like that idea, though. It's a great, dude. You can hate on it. I don't take baths. But if I did, I'd say this is not comfortable. No. The CDC says norovirus is very contagious. What do you doing here, Nate?

I stayed home yesterday. I was clear on Sunday and I stayed home yesterday, so I didn't get you guys sick. But also, it's just love the game. I got another our news. here's the deal um there's a place called matt's reel repair m a t s not two t's matt's real repair i've been using them for years those guys if you got a fishing reel that needs work those guys are the best guys on the planet in their business nicest dudes in the world do you send us altus there or something i send my i send every year i send reels in the mass reel repair if you get if a reel gets to

They'll call you. Be like, you're throwing good money after bad. It's done. You got to give it up. Every couple years, I take my reels and I send them in for like, I write, you put a little form. I put down clean, lubricate, fix what's broke. It's like taking your car in for a tune-up or whatever, oil choice. But I've been running some dial with saltist reels.

I love those. For way over a decade. In the salt. In the salt. Just the nicest guys, man. Just like, you know, you call over there like, hello. That's what I like. It's not like press one for two for them.

Okay, we're gonna, we gotta do some corrections, but the audience has a love-hate relationship with corrections. Some people love them, some people hate them. We're gonna try to shorten it up. So we brought in a thing to time it. What's the winner get? Nothing right now. We're just rounding up corrections.

Oh. Yeah. No, you're not going to win nothing right now A long time ago, a guy made us this interest O meter, can you put this, can you put, can you put, can you put my shot on the screen? Yeah, get the diarrhea sleeping pad off the Okay. A guy made us this interest O'Meer.

Sorry, hold on. Yeah, there you go. I'm going to walk through some corrections very quickly. Okay. This was listening to Ryan Thomas. Who created the meter. Who created the meter? Oh, thank you, Ryan. Got three red dots, yellow and three green.

So it's seven levels of interest. And the way this machine functions is we all have a terminal with a dial and it averages, those lights average our interest in said topic. And so Steve will spend about a minute covering a correction and we'll all weigh in with our dial on how interested we are. And the top one wins. Guy named Troyer writes in. A couple weeks back, you guys mentioned new shirts with TR on them. Love the idea, but you guys call.

him Teddy, and that would have made the man bristle. He did not appreciate the nickname. While there are reports that in political sphere, he did not mind if a stranger called him that. As supporters of the man, I personally use TR or Theodore proper, as it has been said that he never permitted himself to be called Teddy. All right, they're turning their dials. I'm moderately interested in that. I'm not turning my dial. Oh, okay.

We didn't make it out of the red. We got a three. Who's this guy? The venison, the guy. This is some dude from the UK. What's his name? I can't remember his name. Let me start by expressing my...

This is about Yanni's report on Wimbledon, the tennis contest, serving venison to lower their carbon footprint. Dropping beef picking up venison. Which we covered. Feller says, let me start by expressing my genuine admiration for the meat eater. brand, your team, and everything you do for hunting and conservation internationally. The reason I felt it was worth writing in that meat eater has earned enormous credibility with hunters around the world. When you speak about a country or a hunting culture, people listen. That is why I felt compelled to reach out after listening to your recent discussion regarding

Wimbledon, Venison, and the UK landscape. The Venison served at Wimbledon is sourced from the Royal Parks. This is managed park venison, not wild-shot deer. While quotes in the article note that eating venison helps control deer populations causing ecological destruction, eating park venison does absolutely nothing to reduce Britain's booming wild deer population. Trained hunters in the UK are legally permitted to sell wild venison directly into the food chain, yet only one major supermarket chain regularly stocks genuine wild British venison most stock imported or farmed venison because of public perception the market finds park or farmed labels more palatable than wild despite wild being the more ethical sustainable choice

he notes one minute average he notes too that they're now they're now serving wild venison in National Health Service hospitals. I know, but here's the deal. I was going to say that too, but it ran out of time. Oh, I thought that was interesting. So for you to add it in. Well, I thought we could have got... Okay.

I thought we could have rid of... Interestingly, you're beginning to see genuine progress. You left in mixed. While British venison is now even being served in several NHS hospitals as part of an initiative to promote sustainable locally sourced food. You don't say.

That's a good detail. It's exactly the kind of story. So now my interest is falling because it went on too long. But I don't know. If it were me, I would have cut out all this stuff about how his genuine admiration for the brand. I like that part. Because it was enormous credibility. That was interesting. All right. We were out of five out of seven, then Brody brought it down to a four. But he's still in the in the lead here. He achieved yellow. We covered a piece where in Alabama, H-O-A and Alabama brought in the feds to kill a bunch of geese that were bought. them. And we're like, what I was saying, I was saying, just don't start the timer yet. This is background. I was saying it seems a little severe to call in the feds to kill some geese.

There's got to be another way. That's just my comment as a guy that doesn't know anything about this HOA. Guy writes in, he wants to remain anonymous. I am a wildlife biologist with USDA's wildlife services. I would like to add some insight on the HOA geese issue. First, some information was left out of the podcast segment, including previously used non-lethal harassment and the severity of their situation. According to Heritage Plantation, they have invested over $25,000 using coyote decoys, lasers, shoreline fencing, and the introduction of swans. for over 10 years they have been conducting egg oiling. This blocks the egg pores preventing oxygen and stalling embryo growth. In addition, they were also denied by the city of Madison to use trained dogs.

So they tried a lot. Over the past year, 16 geese and 75% of the swans have died from illness and 100% of the carcasses tested positive for avian influenza. One important thing to note here is that they most likely were dealing with a resident population. This means they remain there year round. These situations are very common in urban and suburban areas. In fact, in places that I have worked on goose issues are conveniently also where the DNR chooses to band geese. Every single banded goose I have lethally removed were banded and the exact place I shot them.

with examples of some birds being banned almost 10 years ago in the same spot. This is all to say, it is extremely hard to harass resident geese, and it seems to me that they have exhausted almost every other method besides installing a wire grid across the pond. Here's what gets interesting.

As to the method of lethal removal, roundups are just the most efficient way. They're conducted during the summer mold. for euthanasia most programs utilize CO2 gas chambers takes about 10 to 20 seconds to kill a goose I saw a comment saying that geese can hold their breath for 45 seconds but that doesn't matter because CO2 is older list and they don't know to hold their breath

I got a bad feeling guys one two three we're a six out of seven there for the interest I just jammed it up I forgot my Minnesota wolves Pat Durkin Nate reviewed compensation programs for wolf killed livestock My hearing aid equipped ears perked up

When Nate said wolf advocates were the original source of Wisconsin's wolf compensation funding Here's where it's tricky When wolves are being managed by the state DNR Department of resources through hunting and trapping, state law requires wolf depredation payments come from wolf hunting, trapping licenses, and license application fees. However, when wolves are being protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act, the money for wolf depredation payments

comes from Wisconsin's Bureau of Natural Heritage and Conservation. So if you're allowed to hunt and trap them, hunters pay depredation. If you're not, it comes out of a totally different fund. Man, that's a nice tight correction there. Pat closes with this thought. Pat has often said, deer make people stupid. He elaborated on that. Elaborated on that. Deer make people stupid.

Wolves make people mad. Turkeys make people happy. Turkeys make me more mad than that. Crank that sucker up. Lastly, this is the final, final mention on whether it is okay to refer to weed smokers as dope smokers. Pat achieved yellow there. So currently in second place.

No, well, yeah. At the end, you got, okay. Last one. Light green. Last one. The most important one. I'm writing in to defend Steve and correct the angry dope smokers about the use of the term dope smoker.

First, I want to establish my bona fides. Listen, careful. This is the most this is the most credentialed dope smoker in the world. I want to establish my bona fides. I lived my entire life in the foothills of Northern California and was a self-proclaimed stoner through most of my 20s and 30s. I spent many croptobers as a trimmer getting paid in wait for my services.

In addition, after recreational cannabis use was legalized in California, I was the director of product development for two of the largest, most well-known cannabis brands in the state. My job there was to select the best weed, build supply chains for manufactured products like oils, vapes, and edibles, and then bringing those products to market. That's a very credential. I bet you that guy had a subscription to high times.

Now, on to the topic at hand. Is the term dope smoker acceptable? The answer is yes. Perhaps the best supporting evidence for this comes from the band's sleep, who are of the undisputed creators of stoner rock genre. In 1998, Sleep released the album Dope Smoker, which I listened to. Phil, can you cue up just a quick intro to Dope Smoker? You're supposed to have it ready.

Was I? Did I get it? That's my bad. Let me know what you're ready. Yeah, okay. Give me a sec. In 1998, Sleep released the album Dope Smoker, which contains only one song titled Dope Smoker. titled Dope Smoker.

It would be an EP. The song is a 63-minute epic tale about a pilgrimage made by weed priests known as weedians across the mystical desert, the purpose of their pilgrimage to cast seed of Eden onto the nurtured desert soil of Zion creating a permanent,

spiritually elevated sanctuary dedicated to continuous cultivation and smoking. He's losing me. This is great. Now, I'm more of this. The band spent four years writing and recording the song. Here's how it starts. I was hooked.

That's good, Phil. Okay, great. They spent four years writing and recording the song album. Both the title and content of Dope Smoker were so important to sleep that when their label, London records threatened to drop them over it in 1996, the band, went to court, lost, then leaked the album themselves two years later. That's great. He goes on to say, I dare any offended dope smoker out there writing into the media podcast

to tell the members of sleep that the word which caused them to fight a year-long legal battle with London records, effectively bankrupting them and in causing them to break up for 15 years, is somehow a pejorative. Keep up the good work. And to all the dope smoking hunters and angers out there, stay high. I was right. He achieved five and a half on our scale. It's flickering on six.

So who won? The geese man. I think that is a six, though, isn't it? Is it just a bad? No, it's like flickering, you know, for someone just gave him a little more. The engineer's got, he's got, we got a couple mods. Yep. Yeah.

Before we go back to prize, and we got a couple of mods. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When you build gear for law enforcement, you are not designing for a bluebird day. You're designing for adaptability under pressure and a kit that absolutely cannot fail you.

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But the best part, FHF now builds purpose-specific kits for turkey, fishing, and waterfowl. You get the chest rig in every single pound you need for your pursuit right out of the box. Toss a heavy pack right over the streamlined harness and you're ready for anything. Go to phfgear.com and check out the chest rig. Build your foundation. Buffalo flips old man. On to the news. All right, a viral video from July 10th showed an old man getting thrown what's been said eight feet in the air.

I don't know where. Where bib overalls, I believe. Yeah, he was. Yes. He looked like a dope smoking man who could use some bear grease bibs, I would say. He would have been unscathed in these berries bibs. Yes, yep. Thrown eight feet in the air by a bison yellowstone.

It was 65-year-old Carl McDaniel. He's from a small town north of Seattle. He was in the park with his grandson, and the two were on a walk at a campground near Yellowstone Lake when they spotted a rutting bison who was putting on a show. The bison rut goes from June to September, so they're kind of peak that time period. Carl and his grandson lingered for a second to take some pictures, and then the attack happened. Play the video, Phil. For our audio listeners, there's two individuals. Yeah, the old-timers running one of those beards that goes down.

Oh, is that a beard? It is a beard. He's running one of those beers that goes down to your nipples. And he's got suspenders and jeans, not bibbs. Oh, not bibbs, yeah. And a grandson who's wearing a Miami Dolphins, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Jersey. Bison is wallowing. He's now on his feet.

This white pickup, it was later said it was trying to haze the bison didn't work. The pickup honk there was a very poor hazing operation. They said that the pickup honked at the bison and maybe that's like what got the bison on its feet actually. So it was doing the opposite of what it intended. The bison and the man are playing ring around the rosy with some trees. And then this is where the attack happens. Oh. Oh, go.

Quite a video. Man. Captured by a photographer who was at the campground at that point. Can you imagine if he didn't, if there wasn't a dude with a really high-powered camera there? Is that where it at? Like, did the bison just walk off after that? Immediately after the attack, some good Samaritans, including the camp. cameraman who stopped filming. They haze the bison until it moved away from Carl and because they were in a

popular area, emergency vehicles got there within 10 minutes. The man is hurt, but okay, his femur was broken in four places near his hip. The accident happened on a Friday. He had surgery on Sunday, right here in Bozeman, and he was standing again on Monday. Carl said it wasn't the bison that hurt him. It was the ground. Sure. So it wasn't the impact from the bison. It was coming down that caused that broken femur. Now, the National Park Service says you need to stay 25 yards away from bison. This is on their website. It's in all their reading materials.

They also say 100 yards away from bears, wolves, and mountain lions. Carl estimated that he and his grandson were 100 yards away from that bison. So they were bare distance. 4X, what the National Park Service says. Normally when these things happen, the reaction from the general public is like, wow, what an idiot. He sure deserve that. Go team bison.

You know, get those moron tourists. That hasn't been the case here. And when I watch that video, I don't have that reaction either. Like the dude seemed like he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he didn't linger too long. And the way that video begins, you're watching the kind of encounter that happens in Yellowstone thousands of times a year where someone's just like watching a bison from what would be considered a safe distance. and usually it doesn't happen like this where the bison actually attacks him.

Do you guys feel the same way or did you see something different? No, but I never, like, I never think that the person was dumb for even creeping up on stuff. Petting them? Listen. I'm like a guy, you know,

I like to get in there. Like, I never think a guy's dumb. What you're telling you never try to sneak closer to something. Of course I have But I'm not gonna try and pet I think what Spencer's getting at is true Like this guy

No he didn't have When the video begins I'm not mad at him And I never do that I never do that I never do that thing like oh what a dummy But that's like 80% of the online reaction Normally when this happened

Normally people are like Boy dude had it coming Yeah I feel like the reaction to this one Is very different than what you usually see Like that thing was gonna get him No matter what It went through those trees flushed them out of that. And that old guy's pretty spry.

He was too. There were multiple moments where I'd have been like, oh, I'm safe now. Like the thing is over. And then the bison like keeps going after him. That dude was hitting the Nazi zombie moves. I don't know what that means. Thanks, Will. What's that mean? It's a call of duty.

No. Are you going to add anything to this that people don't know. I got more. I got more. Randall had to take. Oh, I was just going to say, like, he starts out what looks to be a very safe, conservative of distance from the bison. That truck goes through, blows its horn. They start moving off as soon as the bison

starts moving towards them. Like, I don't know that there's anything in there that I'd second guess. And then the other thing, too, is like, you never really see the grandson get away. But you sort of get the sense. Like, when the grandfather comes around the trees, he kind of stays there and does the cat and mouse thing with it. And I kind of wonder if he's, like,

trying to distract the bison. The grandfather said that was the case. He told his son to run to the grandson to run to the amphitheater and that he was going to try to distract him. So he just ran when we couldn't see him right. The distraction worked a little too well, though, as we saw in the video. No, of course, Carl survived. I'm not getting 100-yard vibes off that. I didn't think so either, but that was what the quote said as far as distance.

Now, the guy, the hazer. Yeah, then he just run away. I think the hazer got it with the hate was part about this. The dude who supposedly hazed it from a truck, even though he's in a truck, he gets scared. He's got away. Yeah. He runs away in his truck. Yeah, like right here, right here, you can see he's like trying, you know, he's trying to distract the bison, I think.

Oh, look at that. That's a bad, that's a bad ass at critter. Again, multiple times, I'd be like, oh, it's, I'm safe, you know, I've evaded the bison. Yeah. I want to draw that bison. I want to draw that bison tag and get that one. All right. Him do something I don't know.

Him here was something I don't know. Okay. Of course, Carl survived, but I went to one of my favorite books, Death in Yellowstone to try to put the attack in perspective. There have been two bison-related deaths in Yellowstone. The first was from July 12th, 1971, almost 55 years ago to the day when Carl was attacked. That's when Marvin Schrader, a 30-year-old from Spokane, Washington, was at the fountain paint pots with his wife and three kids. Marvin wanted to get a picture of a solitary bison that was loafed in a meadow. Marvin got to within 20 feet of the bison when it got up and charged him the bison's horn.

pierced the man's liver just before it launched him 12 feet in the air. Marvin's family watched him groaning on the ground for a few minutes until he died. You're doing fatalities. Fatalities, two ever in park history. I would have guessed much higher. I would have fatalities? So that was 1971. The second fatal bison attack happened 12 years later in Hayden Valley.

Again, it involved a solitary bison during the rut. it was July 31st, 1983, 21-year-old French visitor, Alain Dumont, wanted his picture taken with a bison. He got to six feet away

when the bison turned and gourd him, throwing him 10 feet in the air. Dumont's injuries included a punctured kidney, punctured stomach, torn colon, damaged spleen,

and four broken ribs. Dumont survived long enough to see a doctor, but later died from an infection because of the ruptured spleen. So those are the two fatal bison. I don't know the spleen is. Mine hurts now. Now, all three of those events share some similarities. It was a singular bull bison during the rut, which again is happening right now, specifically in July. Each victim was either taking a picture

or getting their picture taken with the bison, including modern day Carl. And my last thought is this book made me aware of something that I hadn't really considered before. And it's that humans have always been stupid. I think there's maybe like this shared thought among people today that we're like more disconnected from nature and our cell phones are making us dumber and common sense isn't common anymore. And I think people maybe carry some even guilt about just like how dumb the modern man is. This book will make you realize that people have been doing dumb things and dying in spectacular ways. But they're not doing dumb things. For 150 years. Who's not? all kinds of buffalo hide hunters got killed it's like the world's like a slightly dangerous place i'm telling

you this book if you read if you look at this book and look at all the deaths that have happened in yellowstone over the last 150 years your takeaway will be like oh man people have always been stupid people are always trying to like take a cool picture or impress a girl or win a win a bet um or you know like ignore bad weather ignore an animal's behavior that's been happening for the last 150 years for as long as people have been recording this stuff. And I feel like we just kind of assign that to folks in 2026. Like look at how stupid we are collectively. This book will tell you otherwise. We have always been stupid. And it's like, you know, maybe our species has a chance. Here's the best evidence of this whole thing. In the 1980s, Yellowstone averaged six bison

related injuries per year. In 1983 alone, there were 11 injuries. Today, it's less than two a year, despite there being literally twice as many bison in the park and twice as many visitors. So we've cut down, we've cut down injuries. Because they've, they, they control, they control people's freedoms. I don't think so. I think they're just better at telling people. They're just better at telling people like, hey, don't get to six feet from a bison because they've restricted people's freedoms. Yeah. Americans are a trigger happy lot. We like to get in there. We want to Mix things up. Mm-hmm.

And they make it like, you can't mix anything up in there. Yeah. They should engrave that on the- I knew Spencer was headed for, the land of rules. I knew Spencer was headed for trouble waters on this one when I found out that the view also covered this story. Oh, dude.

My wife pointed out this story to me. We don't, we don't traffic in the same news sources. They didn't talk about the two bison fatalities, though, and ruptured spleens. You brought it. No, that's good. So I like the spleen.

And again, humans have always been dumb. Humans have always been doing stupid things in dangerous places. I'm just very slow to condemn someone for having a mix up with wild animals. Like specifically, the thing when it comes to taking the best picture, like taking a selfie, that has been going on for as long as cameras have existed. There are so many deaths in this book because someone is trying to get the right picture. I feel like your book might have the opposite of survivorship bias. You're only going to highlight the things that went crazy bad. Yeah, but that's why it's fascinating.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you made a whole book, a whole book called, a whole book called Normal Everyday Things, Going Normally. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's also, it's also a little sad because every character that gets introduced in this book, you're like, well, I know how this ends.

They're going to die. I got a book about Hunter's Dying, called Dying to Hunt in Montana. It's, you can't, it's, it's too painful. The gunshot section. Oh. It's just like the writer's too good. Sparse. you cannot read it.

You cannot read it. The amount of people jumping, crawling under fences, going over fences. And I don't read it being like, dummy, dummy. I read it like, dude,

world's slightly dangerous place. But you still got to get out there and mix it up. Randall, you're going to do the changes to the ESA, but should I start with the world's most misleading

headline or do you want to end with that? Let's start with it. Okay. Phil, I sent this. Did you see that email? Yeah. I've been, yeah, this is big news. We're little, uh, just because of our recording schedule, we're a little late to the game and talk about this, but it's not going anyway.

Anyway, Randall's going to lay out some changes the Trump administration made to the Endangered Species Act. But in amongst all the reporting, uh, those great wildlife reporters at the Washington Post run an article about these changes. And you see a couple of manatees floating there. Yeah, there's two manatees hanging out. And it says, Trump administration allows killing of species threatened with extinction, which one might reasonably assume, good Lord, they're hunting manatees. Yeah, we were sharpening our harpoons. I was already on the road. Yeah.

He headed to Florida when I realized that this was a very misleading photo. But in all seriousness, like I said, up top, if you're guessing did a day. They want to make the endangered species act not as effective. You're correct. Yeah, and this is one of those cases where there's a headline, and you think, God, this is, this seems ridiculous. Surely it's not a big deal. The headline is both wrong, but this is also a big deal.

Yeah, they just wanted to find a way to take something that was very wonky. Yeah. And hard to understand and make people click on it by making the impression that it's now okay, that Trump is saying you could hunt management. Right. And it worked because that screenshot, the hyperlink was purple. So somebody clicked on that and read it. I don't know who that came from. That came from me. I clicked right away. Yeah. I clicked knowing it was dumb, but I still clicked it. Yeah, I clicked on it just to make sure I got my tag application in on time. So the force, I'm sorry, the Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA, so the Department of Interior and the Department of Commerce issued a rule on July 14th. And the rule is called rescinding. the definition of harm under the Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act at the most fundamental level makes it illegal for anyone to take. And these are, when I say the word with that emphasis, that's from the law.

To take endangered species without authorization from the government. And in Section 319, the term take means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect. or attempt to engage in any such conduct. So the word take is defined by 10 different terms. And so this, as I said before, in the rule, the rescinding how the word harm under that umbrella of take has been commonly understood for the past several decades. So harm, until this rule change,

the operational definition of harm included in destroy, an animal's habitat, if destroying that habitat or altering it, impairs essential behaviors, such as breeding. And one example that I found in my research from, I believe, was an article on Vox. I can't recall exactly where, but building a hotel on top of a beach where sea turtles nest, right? Like, because that is going to impair the ability of the species to recover, that is considered take under the Endangered Species Act. In this rule change, the administration does not offer a new definition, but it refers to a dissent made by Justice, former Justice Scalia, the late Justice Scalia, in a case known as

Babette v. Sweet Home, that also had to do with the Endangered Species Act and Habitat. And in his dissent, Scalia said that essentially everybody knows what take means. It means when you deliberately go out and kill an animal. And so there's no way that you could understand take to include destroying that animal's habitat. By descent, you mean he was on the losing end of a decision? That's exactly right. So in that case, Scalia was not, the court actually ruled that conserving habitat, or I should say, destroying habitat falls under the definition of takes.

Scalia disagreed with the majority, but the administration is going back and using his words to argue that, in fact, destroying habitat in a way that will harm the species does not constitute take. Now, the way that this works, essentially, is there was a change two years ago in the way that administrative rulemaking works. like when Congress passes a law saying you can't take an endangered species and then gives you 10 words traditionally historically the agency themselves has been able to define what harm means right and as long as the court found that their definition was reasonable then the agency could use that that definition um two years ago the court repealed that was called the chevron doctrine or was up to the agencies to find a reasonable understanding of the law. After the Chevron Doctrine was overturned by the court, now the court has sort of claimed

the power to interpret the best meaning of these laws. So essentially, what's going to happen in September is that harm, the word harm, will no longer explicitly include actions that will destroy habitat. at. You could build a hotel in that example. You could build that hotel on the beach where the sea turtles nest. And as long as you're not intentionally killing individual sea turtles or their eggs, you're fine. You're not in violation of the air. You're not going to shut down a logging operation because they're spotted owls around. That's exactly right. Yeah. So you'd have to drop a tree on a spotted owl.

Yeah. The part that's the part. And again, the administration is quoting Scalia's understanding of the word harm. And what Scalia says is that it has to be an affirmative act directed immediately and intentionally against a particular animal. It's not an act or omission that indirectly or accidentally causes injuries to a population of animals. So this sort of fundamentally undermines the purpose of the Endangered Species Act. And what's interesting, too, is that it's clear that Congress intended the Endangered Species Act to cover those habitats.

In the Endangered Species Act itself, it talks about conserving the habitats that species need to survive. It says the purpose, this is from the law itself. The purposes of this act are to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved. So, in short, the administration is saying that harm doesn't encompass those habitats, even though Congress specifically calls out habitats. And then the law also has provisions to permit incidental take. Like if you're going to do a project that would harm habitat that's needed by an endangered

species, you can work with the government to offset whatever incidental take you might have. But because harm is no longer going to encompass that, it's unclear what will happen with those types of projects. Like if incidental take or habitat destruction is not considered harm, it's very unclear like how that will move forward. And this is probably going to, long story short, this is probably going to end up in the Supreme Court. they're basically the administration has basically said

harm under the endangered species act no longer no longer encompasses destruction of these habitats and so like it really removes a big chunk of what the act is supposed to do so if it's going to end up in the supreme court in the meantime do they get to operate under this new definition of harm or well there's there's lawsuits that have already been filed i believe but i don't know whether the court will issue an injunction to stop the administration from from putting this rule into effect but as of right now in september yeah this rule takes effect whereby habitat destruction

is no longer covered under the definition of harm which is hard to wrap your mind around but that's sort of where we are man these guys guys guys got a case of the ass against, uh, wildlife. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's one of those things like, I, I feel like every, every person in our community that cares about wildlife and cares about habitat and wild places, like, we can all acknowledge that the Endangered Species Act has been weaponized in some instances. Sure.

Like, there's ways to improve it, right? But to do away with this chunk of it, which seems awful important, if you want, want these species to survive. Like, it's, it's kind of taken an axe to the whole thing when, when I think most... Well, I don't think it's the concern is with wildlife, obviously. The concern is with... For sure. Development and energy extraction and stuff like that, right?

For sure. Yeah, it removes a lot of roadblocks to things like, as you say, development. Yeah, there are some real significant pain points in the Endangered Species Act. I mean, the most obvious example of that. is the way wolves and grizzlies have been handled where in the case of grizzlies for decades you have decades where grizzlies have reached recovery status as defined when they were listed yeah but people block the de-listing because they view it as my favorite animal protection act that sort of thing

creates a lot of ill will toward the Endangered Species Act where people just look at these these ridiculous examples of people weaponizing the ESA it creates all kinds of animosity toward the ESA and then you get actions like this I'm not trying to blame certain people for it it's what I'm saying

then you get people that are like all right I'm done with the whole damn thing yeah it's a polar I mean it's it's a legitimately polarizing topic because of the way that it's played out in contemporary politics, especially like in the West here. But man, to say that the whole thing is rotten is maybe a step too far. Get Bell, Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus.

From $94 a month, price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When you build gear for law enforcement, you are not designing for a bluebird day. You're designing for adaptability under pressure and a kit that absolutely cannot fail you. That tactical pedigree is exactly what drives everything at FHF gear. The chest rig is the single most adaptable, multi-use foundation FHF makes. It rides high and tight on your chest completely out of the mud and brush.

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Go to FHFgear.com and check out the chest rig. Build your foundation. One point about it. And there's a hundred ways to get into this. Only 2% of the species that go on the Endangered Species Act come off because of recovery. 2%. Things come off because they didn't deserve listing in the first place. Yeah.

Things come off because they're extinct. Things, 2%, there's some big examples, bald eagles, whatever, 2% come off because it worked. So that's another thing people will look and be like, well, it doesn't work anyways. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things too. It's just like, governance is messy. You write a law with the best of intentions and it can be used in any number of ways. through litigation and all kinds of stuff to, to, you know, there's tons of different perspectives on the ESA, but like just getting rid of harm, including habitat is,

is wildly sort of like a huge, like, leap in imagination. Like, let's say for some reason, just a, you already made this point. I just want to double make it. Let's say there's a, there's a particular cliff face and there's a type of swallow that nests on that cliff face. and it's the only place those swallows ever nest. Some guy says, I want to blow that cliff face up. Historically, they've been like, well, you can't blow that up

because that's an endangered swallow the nests on that cliff face. Now it would be like, okay, wait till all the swallows are off. Right. Then you can blow the cliff face up. That way, you're not technically taking any of the swallows. Yeah. Yeah, it's not like the people who crafted this actually believe that destroying habitat is not quote harm like they know they're being cute right yeah yeah so something that

got my attention was randall saying that noah is under the department of commerce which i didn't know and i never considered where it was rolled up in the government i knew it wasn't d oi but i googled why would it be under commerce uh it was created in 1970 noa was and the most famous driving reason for noah's placement was a political feud between President Richard Nixon and his secretary of the interior Wally Hickle. Following the 1970 Kent State shootings, Wally wrote a public letter criticizing the Nixon administration, criticizing their handling of the Vietnam War demonstrators and urged the president to listen to the youth. Furious with Wally's public defiance, Nixon chose to punish him by stripping the proposed oceanic and atmospheric agency from the DOI's purview.

Instead, he handed the agency to the Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, a loyal ally. So that's how we got to where Noah is under the Department of Commerce, which when you hear it, you're like, well, that seems weird. And there's a good reason why it is so weird. Ten soldiers and Nixon's coming. We're final. I wish I could do it better Nixon in Ohio. I know Phil can.

He just doesn't want to. No, I count. Okay, that's cool. I don't mean that. Take it? Oh, go on. Wildfire. Yeah, make money on wildfires?

No, we're talking about daylight savings time. Oh, that's what's up now? And if it's going to become permanent. This whole thing is so confusing to me. I got you. We're going to clear it all up. Did the farmers start it? Was it Ben Franklin?

Two hours, one hour. Okay. We're going to clear it all up. So right now, the House of Representatives has passed the Sunshine Protection. Act, which is not the first time they've brought this bill up. It's a bill to make DST or daylight savings time permanent. What does that mean? Daylight savings time, permanent daylight savings time means one hunter's legal shooting light comes at 705 a.m. and another's at 912 in the same time zone. In this case, central time. This gives an extra hour of shooting daylight in the

afternoon. And so the question we're going to examine, is the extra afternoon light worth it? Yes. All right, we got one. Hold on. I'm already confused. I'm already confused. And I hope you're not making the mistake of thinking that the numbers we apply to this somehow affects how many hours of daylight there are. No, it's all relative to work hours.

That's what I'm talking about. Yes. Because we'll get into it. When I was in college, this is the one thing that got me to write an email to a politician was that when the time would change, when it does, the bars would still stay open until 2 a.m., but now the sun's coming up an hour earlier. So I'm losing an hour of sleep now

every time the clocks roll back. So I'm like, we got to get this fixed. We need that extra hour in the afternoon instead of in the morning because I'm not going to leave the bars early to make it up for shooting light. So I'm looking out for those kids. The drinkers lobby.

Yes. Okay, take it away. So to answer this question, we're going to go way back. What is daylight savings and where to come from? A plain definition is that daylight savings time is the practice of setting our clocks one hour ahead of standard time in the warmer months, so a given stretch of daylight lands later in the day. We move the clocks forward one hour on the

second Sunday in March and back one hour on the first Sunday in November. The origins of daylight savings time can be traced to Ben Franklin, though tenuously. As U.S. envoy to France, Ben Franklin published a satirical essay that Parisians could save 64 million pounds of candle wax if people just woke up with the sun. He did propose firing cannons at dawn, but never proposed changing the clocks. Fast forward about 100 years, and George Hudson, a New Zealand postal worker

and entomologist, proposed a two-hour shift, primarily so he had more daylight to collect bugs after work. I don't know if anyone's ever observed this before, but that Ben Franklin, smart man. He used to do up some...

I don't know if anybody's noticed that. This was October to March in the southern hemisphere, but same for us, it's the opposite in the northern. He didn't get a whole lot of traction until 1907 when William Willett,

an English build Royal Astronomical Society Fellow and golfer proposed a similar advancement, but in four 20-minute increments across the month of April and reversing that in September. The stated benefits were more recreation time, less crime, less energy. To Spencer's point, people in the past being dumb, this is a great example. We hate changing our clocks once. This dude proposed changing it four times over a month. The first official adoption is 1916 in Germany, which was an effort to conserve coal for the World War I war effort. This takes us.

Oh yeah. Germany was the first one. That's how this started? Yep. Now, granted. One of their plots for world domination. Immediately, I mean, within months, the rest of Europe adopted it for the same reasons. So there seemed to be some merit there. Fast forward two years, 1918, the U.S. adopts DSD for the same reason,

but repealed in 1919, after the war amid public complaint, much of it from the agricultural community. I'd always thought that the ad community love daylight savings time. Like, that was the whole point. It is not the case. They do not like it.

1920s, DSD becomes optional daylight savings time. There's limited local adoptions pretty patchy throughout the U.S. There's all sorts of issues with trains and trick commerce and whatnot. 1942 FDR institutes year-round wartime, which is year-round daylight savings for energy saving. In 1945, three years later, wartime's repealed. States and cities set their own rules. Again, it results in this patchwork in confusion peak.

in 1954 when, for example, New England extends through October while all their states end in September and then some go to November and some do one hour, some do staggered, and so it's a mess. They've delivered that for about 20 more years and in 1966, the Uniform Time Act is passed, which standardized DST from the last Sunday in April to the last Saturday in October. That said, states may exempt themselves, which is how Arizona, Hawaii, and portions of Indiana were exempted. You'll also notice when we look at these lines, there's a creep, the boundaries creep where the western edges push to escape those late sunrises. 1974 to 75, the same thing's enacted during the oil embargo. They enact year-round

DST to save energy. There's a ton of public backlash, specifically citing kids going to school in the dark. And within eight months, they roll it back, the standard six-month on again and off again. Can I ask questions to be clear here? When they're talking about energy, savings, they mean that it's an hour less that you'll spend dicking around your house at night with the lights on. It's the lights on, which we'll get into. And now it seems to be offset by AC and all the other things that take energy. 2005, the Energy Policy Act extends DST from the March to October, I'm sorry, from April to October to March to November. And that's what we have today. And it was mostly energy related. The current Sunshine Protection Act introduced in the Senate originally in 2018,

then again in 2021, then in 2022, has been reintroduced again here in the House in 2026 and passed and it's sitting with the Senate. So there's this long history of daylight savings. And ultimately, the main critique is that it just needs to be the same across the board, whether it's early or late, whatever. Yeah. I got a question. Yeah.

Why daylight, why do they want to go with permanent daylight savings time versus permanent standard time? There's, what's a, it's basically a tradeoff if you want time in the morning or time at night. And that's the question. Hold on it. Daylight in the morning. So they're talking about, I'm just going to take the perspective of the dumb guy out there. Yep.

Because that's where I'm at on this. This means you don't have to message your clock anymore. The goal is to never change the clock. Okay. Yep. So are you going to adopt the fall time or the springtime? Yes. I don't care.

Well, it's are you going to adopt the permanent summertime or the permanent winter time. Because that's when it changes. That sixes to me. I support this whole thing, because I think the whole clock changes thing is dumb. Agreed. Yeah. So the question is, I'll tell you why later. Let's just clarify terms, because I think we need it at this point. What we do currently is we switch twice a year, spring forward one hour and fall back. Everyone hates it. There's been permanent standard time, which is what Steve's talking about, where we stop switching. We keep the quote unquote natural clock, which has lighter mornings and darker evenings and happens to be recommended by most sleep scientists and the Academy of Sleep Medicine.

And then what Congress is passing is permanent DST, which is to lock the clocks one hour ahead forever. Lighter evenings, darker morning. Well, until they change it again. Until they're getting kids out having fun riding their bikes all summer long at night. They need to get up in the morning. If I have one takeaway from your segment so far, it's that it won't be forever. It'll be for 20 years.

There's a comment. In that. And one of the studies I read, it said it's a, Took us 50 years to get this standardized. Yeah. What's next? So that said, states can still opt out, which, what? Under this rule, they have to be in the same time zone.

There's a few other stipulations. But if you really hate this idea, your state can't opt out. Would it be that Indiana was right all the wrong or wrong? Well, parts of Indiana. It depends on what you think is important. Arizona and Hawaii, and the territories, none of them observe it because they're near the equator and it doesn't really matter. It just useless. But it does matter significantly,

especially for the groups that are the two corners of the time zones, which we're going to talk about. The time zones themselves are an interesting little tidbit. So where did these come from? To weigh the pros and cons, we need to have a firm understanding of those time zones themselves because the impact of this proposal is

drastically different. If you live, say, in the northeast corner, or I'm sorry, the northwest corner of North Dakota, which is the top northwest corner of of the central time zone or Panama City, which is the far southeast corner of the central time zone. So these time zones came originally from the astronomical societies. Basically, they wanted 24 worldwide meridians, which is 15 degrees apart.

And that would collapse all these different railroad times into four time zones across the U.S. Eastern Central Mountain Pacific. And every time zone is built around the central line of longitude, where the clock is supposed to match noon would line. up with that meridian perfectly. And so that's why it's in the middle of these times zones. That's great. So instead of, you know, like, when you've, the

time zone line that you're basing it off isn't the split in between, you know, Alabama and Georgia or where your split is. It's the center of that, generally. The farther east you go from that meridian. So in this case, let's take the center of the country and you're going towards the edge of North Dakota. The

the further east you go, the earlier the sun runs against your clock. The farther west you go, so towards Florida, the later it runs against your clock. Put it simply, latitude and longitude. Longitude, east-west, is when the sun crosses your clock. Latitude, north to south is how long the day is. And both of those get, they stack at those corners, the northwest and southeast corners. So, Phil, if you don't mind pulling up that first little slide.

guy that I've got. What we're going to look at is the two time zones for the, you know, we can choose, well, which time zone do you guys want? Central. It doesn't matter to me at all. Which one? Central. Central. Central is the largest. So click on Central. In this case, Wilson, North Dakota, and Panama City, Florida. And you'll see in December 21st, you've got a 9.42 a.m. wake up in North Dakota versus 735. Sunset isn't that drastically different, but that wake-up is crazy. Now, if you go back, let's take it to, let's call it November 7th. What you're looking at here, and this is how you can measure from a hunter's perspective,

you'd be 8.49 a.m. under permanent daylight savings time, which is you can't hunt before work. And I'm only talking weekdays here. I'm not talking weekends. You're not going to hunt before work with an 8.49 a.m. sunrise. But I don't think you're hunting before work when it's a 7.49. Exactly. That is my whole point is I don't think it matters. Because, you know, take an hour off this. You're going to go if you sunrise, shooting light isn't until 715, you're not going to get that sit in before. I don't know, man. If you work here where people just do what they want all time anyway. Yeah. Now that said, after work, you got great options.

628 sundown. So shooting light ends at seven. Dude, you can sneak out of work at four, hop up in your tree stand, and you got two hours to hunt. Cause you share a dirty secret with you. Please. I used to like when they switched the clocks for fall bow hunting because you'd get out of school, your old man to pick you up at school, rush you out to sit in a tree stand, and you just got to the magic hour that much quicker. Before, it felt like you were up there forever. But then all of a sudden, you just rush out there. And the minute you get in your tree, dude, it's the magic hour. I think for high schoolers.

So I used to look forward to it because it shortened how long you had to sit in your tree before he saw something. I used to get like 90 minutes after school, you know, which was perfect. You're like, right away. He might be up there for a million hours. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry for the kiddies, but for the people who have nine to fives, I think this is great news. So what we're demonstrating here, and you could do it across all the time zones. You can check winter solstice, all the things.

But you guys get it. the tradeoff is regional, especially as you live on the far extremes of these time zones. So why it matters to everyone, there's very clearly documented associations with the time change specifically. There's more car crashes. There's less robberies. There's more heart attacks, more strokes. There's mood implications.

I could go on. But ultimately, what does it mean for us as hunters? And for hunters, there's a few elements. Energy usage is the first one. There's this argument that daylight. savings time increases energy efficiency because you don't have your lights on as long because the sun's up. The jury's out. It seems that the increased usage of home appliances and AC during peak heat hours throughout the year after daylight savings would actually offset that because

lights have gotten so efficient with like LED lights and whatnot as opposed to heating up your oven at 5 o'clock when the sun's still shining is going to be significantly more energy draining. And so it's kind of a moot point. From the rancher impact, because we love of our ranchers here. The switch is what's annoying. It seems like they don't really care which one's which. It's just like choose one schedule. I want the milk truck to show up at the same time every day. I don't want my cows to have to change twice a year for their schedule. Dear vehicle, and that was actually a tough one for me to wrap my mind around. Like, why is that time really matter? But if you had like a morning routine, like your morning poop

or something and then someone said, oh, wait, actually you need to do that an hour earlier today, twice a year, it'd be super annoying to adjust all your routines. And so you have taken up smoking. I feel for the cows. Yep. Another interesting one is deer vehicle collision. This is a big one. Yeah, man. If you're a hunter, you're like, oh, okay, now I'm convinced. Yep, yep, we're getting even more dialed. So this is a study that covers one over one million collisions and 96 million hourly traffic observations. Collisions are 14 times more frequently two hours after sunset than before, which is pretty clear. The fallback shift puts peak traffic into darkness at the time of the rut, which also

sees more deer injuries. Year-round DST would prevent approximately 36,550 deer deaths, 33 human deaths, 2,054 injuries, and $1.2 billion in costs annually. Permanent standard time, which would be not shifting the clocks, would make collisions worse at $2.4 billion annually. 37,000 more deer out there walking around if we change the clocks because they're not getting hit by vehicles. Save big bucks. Save big bucks. That's good. Yeah. And you have a logo for that with a dollar sign and a big buck. And then in little letters, I didn't even think about the play on words.

That's great. Yeah. And so finally, the ultimate question I wanted to answer is your hunt scheduled. Do you have weekends or weekends, but on a workday, if you're trying to get in before or after, just permanent daylight saving time give you to give hunters more hours before or after and what's the tradeoff? And so, Phil, if you can pull up that second slider, what we're going to do. going to look at is total hunting minutes, which I defined as before, from 30 minutes prior to sunrise, up till 8 a.m. and from 4.30 p.m. till 30 minutes after sunrise. So this is a working man schedule

here. Yeah, this is a working man. Yeah, exactly. Like we, like I said, weekends or weekends. We're just trying to sneak out after. School teacher schedule. There you go. And in this case, we'll, we'll talk again, North Dakota and Panama City. And what we can do, if you want to slide that towards November. Look at that second, though the blue is your morning minutes that's available. The orange is your afternoon minutes. And so that top, the top row itself is standard time. The second row is permanent DST or daylight savings. And so you end up getting a few more minutes when you switch in North Dakota. If you're down in Florida, it doesn't really change. But then if you look at the full year, so under Williston, the second set of bars, you end up with significantly more hours of sun

rise under the system than you do under standard. And you can you can apply that kind of across and again it's it's it's greater at the northwest corner than it is in the southeast. And so there you go. I'm a big fan. I think it's great. Hmm. Yeah.

If I was alive a long time ago and someone would have brought this whole thing up in the first place. Ben Franklin or whatever like you know, we're hanging out. Um, I always said, man, let's just, no. Let's just do focus on something different. Like this thing just seems like, A headache. It's going to be hard to get buying.

It just feels arbitrary. It's taken like 100 years. It's like stuff just the, I like the seasons. Just no. If this sticks, it'll be really interesting in like 30 or 40 years to tell little kids about how we used to change the clock twice a year. I feel like they've been talking about changing this, though, my whole life. This feels the closest it's ever come because Trump said if it gets to his desk, he'll sign it. It would be a big win for Republicans.

Because he's a big bow hunter. When he gets off work, you know, he's always up with the old tree. Yeah. I bet it happens this time. This is it. This is where we make the change permanent. We could go down through hunters, but we've gone on for a while. No, you're good.

I do like Nate's note about upland, retirees, more daylight to hunt, fewer clock change health risks. I'm just saying if you're hunting upland birds, you're probably retired, so none of this matters to you. anyways, and you're just less likely to have a heart attack with the lack of clock change. Yeah, that's a good report. I'm with you. Get Bell, Pure Fiber Internet with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.

Bell, connection is everything. When you build gear for law enforcement, you are not designing for a bluebird day. You're designing for adaptability under pressure and a kit that absolutely cannot fail you. That tactical pedigree is exactly what drives everything at FHF gear. The chest rig is the single most adaptable multi-use foundation FHF makes. It rides high and tight on your chest completely out of the mud and brush. On the front, you've got a rugged molly panel to attach extra pouches and more molly on the underside of the bag to mount.

a sidearm holster right where it is most accessible. Inside, it's lined with Velcro so you can configure it exactly how you want it no matter of the season. But the best part, FHF now builds purpose-specific kits for turkey, fishing, and waterfowl. You get the chest rig in every single pounce you need for your pursuit right out of the box. Toss a heavy pack right over the streamlined harness and you're ready for anything. go to FHFgear.com and check out the chest rig. Build your foundation. Back to Colorado.

Back on the fur ban thing. It's dead. It didn't go anywhere. Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission voted six to five. That rejected the petition that would have been. Six to five. There's still five people that thought it was good idea. I mean, Polis has his people in there, right?

They're not going. and where they actually put some new people on which we could talk about what if it would have passed would have it went into action at that point or was there like another hurdle wow yeah it would i mean there would have been exceptions to to think like flies felt hat stuff like that but anyway it's it's done it's not happening um i think i think we should take credit for that we should we got on it uh commit one of the commissioners dallas may said cpw did a survey in april and 50% 57% of the public did not support that ban. So,

you know, they went along with what the people wanted. Yeah, 65 is basically 57%. Right. Exactly. This was, this was that original proposal

by the Center for Biological Diversity that we talked about a bunch. But we're moving on. 43% of Coloradans. I know. That's my takeaway. You should not be able to sell or buy a product made from

muskret for this i mean i'm not in charge of the survey but if you think about where people live in colorado you know what i mean like that that concentrated number of people on the front range that probably would have supported it it kind of makes i would i gave a talking oh good i would have felt a lot better with a seven to four commission vote it doesn't matter it's done i know i tell a quick story i was down and i gave a talk down in san antonio texas a weekend ago to texas Wildlife Association. And in my talk, I was joking with them about how everybody in Colorado always bitches about you people coming up and buying all their land.

I used to. But I'm like, the way things are shaking out in Colorado, I would say that the more the merrier, they need more Texans. Open the border. They need more Texans to get that place straight and back out. There's probably people from Colorado now that are moving to Texas because they like the way things are here. Austin.

Oh, yeah. Left Wingers. This is a controversial statement I'm about to make. I don't want to get political. You don't say. Lefties don't want to live in lefty states. Not anymore. Lefties want to live in righty states.

The big lefty states lose population to the righty states. Yeah. It's so weird. Yeah, demographics are always changed. Because they're like, I don't want to live with someone breathing down my neck all time. But, you know, I don't want to get political. Yep.

All right. We'll move on. They did have some options they could have gone with, which was keep the current regulations, ban the sale of fur products with exceptions, ban the sale of raw pelts with exceptions. That all seemed confusing and they just got rid of the whole thing. The second thing that happened at this meeting was that because they couldn't just let the fur bearer thing go completely, is the commission voted also 6-5 to impose new daily bag limits on 17 fur bearer species.

Now, basically what that means is trappers and hunters. The coverage on this, I felt like, was kind of screwy because everything mentioned trapping, nothing mentioned hunting. It was definitely like the coverage was aimed at like painting, trapping a certain way, I felt like, and kind of left the hunting part of it out of it. But anyway, no more than two animals per species per day. Those species are badger, bobcat, beaver, coyote,

muskrat, striped skunk, western spotted skunk, raccoon, red fox, mink, possum, pine martin, ring-tailed cat, gray fox, swift fox, long-tailed weasel, and short-tailed weasel. Two muskrats a day. That's it. Now, CPW proposed a 15 animal daily limit, which was largely a symbolic cap because very few trappers would ever reach that number. Of course, wildlife advocacy groups were like, no, that's way too many. So they came up with a couple of different options, eight animals a day for common species that are often considered like a nuisance for livestock owners, like coyote,

raccoons, red foxes, four animals a day for less common species like Pine Martin and Mink. Ultimately, those options didn't go through. The commission adopted an even stricter rule, which was the two per species per day. This isn't like this isn't banning trapping. You can still trap? Kind of. Can I ask you stupid question? Yeah.

For like if you if I were to say to you you you can only harvest four animals a day We're talking about Martin and mink how does that how does that work out in practice Because you're gonna have more than four traps out there I mean like does a good day turn into a bad day? Yeah, what if you get six? It's yeah it's meant to like really upend your deal like if you're setting like it would be that if you're trapping muskrat and it like muskrat is possible there's no you don't have control there is no species concerned about these species but it would mean that you'd be like

do I make three sets trusting that one of those sets doesn't pay off that's what I'm yeah you would turn people into violators for sure it's on its face it doesn't seem

crazy because people reach those levels but it does kneecap you in terms of how it plays out on the ground if you want to stay in compliance normally what you do when you try it like

a normal state that is interested, a normal state that is interested in like honest wildlife management, does they, when they look at a species that's susceptible to overharvest, they create unit-wide quotas. Right. And the unit-wide quota, everyone that gets something,

say it's a bobcat. Everyone who gets a bobcat calls a hotline or goes online, reports their bobcat. As you approach the unit-wide quota, you give a 24-hour or 48-hour notice that the season is closing. Yeah. Or if you're racing toward the quota, they might call it, knowing that in the next 48 hours,

the quota will be cheap. That's like a serious grown-up way of handling this problem. This is a way meant to like kneecap people. Yeah. And prevent people and basically criminalize normal activity based on nothing. And to be clear, like even Bobcats, which are regulated tightly in some states, like, none of these species did CPW, like, none of these species, like, none of them. of them are biologically unsustainable, right? Like, even with no limits, the populations were doing fine,

right? So it's just like, this vote is just like a broader trend in Colorado towards restricting, you know, things like mountain line hunting, wolf, the wolf restoration thing. Like, it's all part of this trend to like make it harder for people that hunt and trap. Um, next. Now, like, the thing about this is, is that impact, practical impact on people in Colorado, it's probably not going to be, there's not probably not much to it because in 1996, Amendment 14 passed in Colorado, which banned the use of leghold traps, instant kill body gripping traps, snares and poisons for hunting and trapping. So the only way you can trap in Colorado is with live box traps.

Is that what they'd be? Unless you're under a depredation permit. And so like the practicality of like putting out a bunch of live traps is just not there. Like not many, there's not many people doing it in Colorado. There's very few high volume like commercial trappers. So is this going to have a big impact? I don't think so. The impact I think you would see is on.

hunters, probably more than, than trappers, like things like shooting coyotes, you know, to a day. So that's kind of where it's at. There's some interesting info here from Matt Eckert, who's a CPW deputy assistant director. Unlimited daily bag limits with live trapping, which is the only method of trapping allowed. funding harvest numbers gathered from harvest surveys far below the maximum allowable harvest that would be considered sustainable. So they're nowhere near, again, like endangering any of these species. The agency sold 20,000 fur bear permits last year.

85% of those permit holders did not harvest an animal. So whatever, that's 3,000 people with fur bear permits harvested. you know, at least one animal. So it's just like not a big thing in Colorado, but it's definitely like a statement from the commission to like just make it more difficult. Yeah. These people are such little, like,

there's such worms too because they, they have an agenda, they have like an animal rights, animal protectionist agenda. And over time, they've abandoned like the, the PETA approach. Yeah. The PETA approach is sort of make noise socially. right make outlandish claims, hire celebrities to do little celebrity spokesman bits. That doesn't work.

And they've gotten shrewd enough now or they've adopted this kind of language of wildlife management. Yep. And they've infiltrated game commissions. They've entered the political sphere. And they start using the vernacular of people who sort of are invested in wildlife management, who understand wildlife management. And they can, they're achieving their. ends or achieving their goals by masquerading.

Yeah. And they're undermining as wildlife professionals. They're undermining like the effectiveness of the people that are actually doing like the boots on the ground and work and the and the work of collecting data. Like they're making it so like the guidance and advice of the agency is just like not valuable, you know? A thing this, something this brings up to me. I want to preface by saying, I'm not there, but I've always wondered about this.

At what point would it be? This is a question everybody has to ask themselves. If wildlife management in your state or in this country in general veers so off course and the objective of it is lost, at what point would you ever decide that you're just going to do things the way that makes sense to you and effectively become a vigilante individual. Meaning, you know, if it got to where the mission was lost, would you ever say, um,

we've strayed so far from like the conservation objectives and we've strayed so far from anything that makes sense, I'm just going to do my own thing. Yeah, I mean, because because I don't trust these people anymore. Yep. And I'm not, I'm not, proposing anyone get there, but I always ask myself, because there is a point. If all of a sudden tomorrow, they said, all of a sudden tomorrow, the animal rights people

gain their momentum. Yep. And there's all of a sudden it's like federal law. And some federal law comes into place. It is forbidden to consume wild venison. It's just against the law. I would, at that point, become a poacher.

I just would. I wouldn't listen to it. If there's a thing that, you know, there's, but there's, but that, that applies to all kinds of things. If it also became that free speech, that's like generally free speech is prohibited, I would become, I guess, a free speech vigilante in all sorts of measures. But like, there's a point at which I would say, you lost me, I'm kind of going on my own on this one. Yeah, and that's a danger again. I think where, like, these agencies just can't do their job the right way, when they're being guided by commissions that have a clear goal to go the other direction, you know. I don't

don't know how i don't know how colorado's going to pull back out of this okay i want to give a silver lining to outdoorsman there if this were to pass when i lived in south dakota there was a body of water i fish that flirted with the idea of going from the daily limit of four walleye's to three naturally people are against it who fish uh but quietly i was like well if this does pass this will be a different definition of success all of a sudden because if the if the limit is four and you come into the boat dock after a day of fishing and someone's like, how'd you do?

Catching zero walleye is basically the same as like bringing three. It's like, did you get a limit or not? Like, yep, got my limit. Now, if the limit is less, you're more likely to be like, yeah, I got my limit. What a badass trapper I am.

I don't think that way. But I thought that was like they were saying that you now have a limit that you can get per day. Do you understand what I'm saying? if the walleye limit was now three instead of four, everybody's getting limits. Wow, look how great of anglers we are. Silver lining.

Molly's Wolfpack. Yeah, Steve knows. He's coming around. A trapper who got a limit. Now that's a trapper. He's so effective. Well, if it's a two muskrat limit, there's going to be a lot of great trappers. See?

A lot of happy travers. They're such a good trapper. The state's like, they didn't realize how lucky they are now. You're getting too many. There's trouble brewing in Yellowstone. This is a very Western heavy episode, but we're going to run with it anyway. Trouble burn in the Yellowstone Wolf World concerning a pack of wolves. So there's a pack of wolves originally called the Crystal Creek Pack.

Okay. The pack has been in existence since reintroduction. So it's thought to be the first pack that ever coalesced and formed. Of course, all those original wolves in that original pack are all dead, but like as a sort of piece of continuity, the pack has kept going. Reminds me of I just live in a house where none of the people on the lease

lived in the house, but the house just kept chugging along with various people moving in. There was always four or five people in there. None of them were the original people that ever rented the place in the first place. So from the rent, from the landlord's perspective, it was like the tenants. There wasn't one like through resident. There's no through line. There's no through line. They had no idea who was living in that house.

Just the check came and it was like that house. So the wolf pack, they die and get replaced, but it sort of exists. All right. It was originally called Crystal Creek Pack. It was renamed after Molly Beatty, who was the first female director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

She actually died of cancer during the time of the reintroduction. So eventually they call this pack Molly's pack. Okay. Here's where this gets kind of interesting. This pack has historically stayed put in the park. They spent about 95% of their time in the park,

which means, because the park's just, you know, full of people, park rangers and whatnot, they're habituated to humans. But they've now drifted out of the park. They've drifted eastward into the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. This is an area that has a lot of cattle grazing. So there's fear now that this beloved park pack,

which is like a very much a tourist attraction. The tourist attraction has moved out into the woods. They've moved out into the wild. Okay. And there's cattle grazing there. So people are anticipating that this pack is going to start getting in trouble for killing cattle. Is that, are they in the like trophy zone?

They are. They're in the trophy zone. Now that Brody brought it up, I'll mention it. Sorry. Well, you're okay. Wyoming has a area where they manage wolves as a trophy animal. That term's goofy.

They manage wolves as a big game animal in the north, west corner of the state. And the rest of the state, they manage them basically as vermin. They run them like coyotes. Which is, I'm not a huge fan of that at all, but they have their extremes. They have two units which demonstrate one of them is like sound management and one of them seems, feels extreme to me. However, it's a fear now that this Molly's pack is going to start getting in trouble for killing cattle. So the wolf protectionist, like the park protectionist people, the public, they're saying, hey, we need to go in and suspend grazing leases into Shoney National Forest to prevent these wolves from having a chance to kill a cow and get in trouble.

All right? So they've tried, they've tried to bump, they've tried to bump the wolves back into the park because they're denning out of the park. In a method they use to bump wolves is it actually send people in there to kind of hang out near the den site to try to apply a little pressure and get them to nudge back over toward the park.

They managed to move them but not move them all the way and it feels as though as we're speaking right now, right now, they're over, still in the national forest, and they still got pups in the national forest. This is Wyoming's hunt area one. They're in a hunt area. There's a bad case of canine distemper in the park,

which is trimming back the wolves real bad. So Wyoming already reduced the wolf quota in the trophy area by 50%. But in this area where this Molly's pack is hanging out, there's currently planned to be a four-wolf hunt quota in that area. that season is going to run from September 15th to December 31st. Again, four wolf quota in that area.

So now you've got wolf advocates and even some politicians from Jackson, Jackson Hole politicians, asking Wyoming to actually come in and halt the wolf hunt in Unit 1, not to protect just some wolves in general. But to protect the wolves they like. The park rules that don't know any better. They're like, it was, not that they thought it was okay to hunt, but they're like, yeah, we, we understand there's a wolf hunt there. But now that someone might get the ones we know and like, we would like you to close it. They're saying that to the State Game Commission. And they're trying to put leverage on Shoshonee National Forest to say, no wolf hunting in Shoshonee National Forest is here because some people's favorite wolves are over there. They've tried this before, and it hasn't worked for these little pressures.

Like, when some wolves were in Colorado, they tried to get Wyoming to come in and say, okay, you can't hunt along the Colorado border for fear that you might kill one of those wolves that we all know about in Colorado. The Wolf Project Director in Yellowstone is the guy named Dan Staller. He's taking a rather circumspect view on the old thing. He said, he said to a news agency that he'd hate to see an old alpha female. Like Wolf 1090F lose her life to hunting. But that's part of the world of the wolf now. It's been part of the world of the wolf for over 10 years.

Yeah, and a lot longer before that. But they point out the 1090F is world famous. Is there any speculation on why they chose to leave the part? There's some people throwing darts at it. I've read some speculations that felt like they kind of whiffed of not really know what we're talking about it was that. There's been very mild winters. Here, try this one on.

There's been very mild winters in the park. And so the animals in the park are in very good shape because there's been mild winters. And so they're too hard for the wolves to catch. But somehow a little over to the east and Shoshone National Forest, which is subject to the same weather patterns, they're, you don't know. Yeah, yeah.

They move around. Yep. They move around. It's an invisible line. that they don't recognize or know about. They move huge distances. In fact, in a day's travel, they can be back where they came from.

It's just they're not aware of the line. But it's like the takeaway on this is there is an inherent danger in naming animals, and creating individual personalities around animals of trying to protect this one and not that one. This is the thing I often preach I'm talking to, when I'm talking about wildlife management to audiences that might not be familiar with the principles of wildlife management,

and I always use the analogy of, and I've used it here before, apologies for using it again, imagine that you have an apple tree and it produces apples. Animal rights people are very interested in the apples. They take a shine to the individual apples on that tree. a mature wildlife manager takes a great interest in the tree because if you take care of the tree, it will always crank out apples. Animal rights people come oblivious to the tree because they're so concerned about the individual apples.

And those apples get eaten. Those apples fall to the ground and die. Inevitably. But that tree will crank for hundreds. Well, it'll crank for a long, time. Decades and decades it'll produce. And so here you have people fixating on the apples that they know, the apple growing

closest to their house, which they, which they polish and look at and take pictures of. And the tree is this kind of, you know, not of concern. But when you, it's, you see this thing happen to when you get like, you'll get like an albino animal in an area. And people, it'll put away for people to know that. albino animal. And they're like,

someone needs to come save the albino animal because I know that one. I recognize that individual. And it just, it creates a mess. It creates a mess. I can't tell what I hope happens here.

If they naturally move back into the, honestly, I think that that if they naturally move back into the park and it's like crisis averted, you'd be disappointed. No, no. It might be, it might just be the best thing.

It's better for wolf lovers and wolf hunters. It might be the best thing. Because the state, the national forest and the state cannot capitulate. Yeah. Like, this is my recommendation. You can not capitulate. Yeah, like, we say the wolves don't know where the boundaries of the park are, but there's boundaries, right? Yeah.

So, like, they're not in there anymore. maybe they should go back in. It's like, the state cannot, I'm asking them. Like, do not. You cannot capitulate to the mob. Yeah. And say, okay, we're going to extend park jurisdictions way out into the national force. That's the thing is you can't manage park animals.

Yep. They can't, they can't give in. But if the wolves move back, then the state doesn't need to capitulate. And they don't need to deal with. Firestorms. With what's going to happen when someone. gets this famous lady wolf

I think there's some wolf hunters already plotting for that September 15th owner I know there are and I and I don't hate you I just I just

I think that a lot of I think a lot of managers federal level state level if they move back they're like oh my God they got yeah thank God get Bell

Pure Fiber Internet with Crave NetS and Disney Plus from $94 a month, price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When you build gear for law enforcement, you are not designing for a bluebird day. You're designing for adaptability under pressure and a kit that absolutely cannot fail you. That tactical pedigree is exactly what drives everything at FHF gear. The chest rig is the single most adaptable multi-use foundation FHF makes. It rides high and tight on your chest completely out of the mud and brush.

On the front, you've got a rugged molly panel to attach extra pouches and more molly on the underside to mount a sidearm holster right where it is most accessible. Inside, it's lined with Velcro so you can configure it exactly how you want it no matter of the season. But the best part, FHF now builds purpose-specific kits for turkey, fishing, and waterfowl. You get the chest rig in every single pound you need for your pursuit right out of the box. Toss a heavy pack right over the streamlined harness and you're ready for anything. Go to FHFgear.com and check out the chest rig. Build your foundation. Speaking of potential for really bad stuff, this next segment could be the latest in an ongoing series titled online predictions markets are weird and seem bad for everything.

These are gambling sites where you can buy shares in an outcome. It's typically yes or no question. And it could be will so and so win an election. Will so and so score touchdown? Will it rain? Will Trump say a certain word? Topeka, Kansas, yep. Will this disease spread into this other country? Will there be a hurricane in the next week? And it's a multi-billion dollar industry, the ones you've probably heard of are Kalshi and Polly Market. But there's recently a story in high country news reported by Kylie Moore a couple weeks ago. She wrote about the relationship between wildfires and prediction markets. And she looked specifically at the 2025 LA fires. People spent $1.2 million betting on 20

different questions about the outcome of those fires. It was like how many acres are the fires going to burn, where the fire is going to go, when they'd be contained. And in fact, she points out, there's another site that's launched called Wildfire with Wise instead of Eyes, where it's specifically about making predictions on fires. And the problem here, as you might guess, is we spent a lot of time sort of as a society, like public agencies, nonprofits, all the stuff, explaining how people, what people need to do to prevent man-made wildfires because it's pretty easy in the right conditions for one individual action to have devastating consequences.

And now there's a financial incentive for someone to go out and perhaps leave a campfire smoldering. Like, anything that people can bet on, someone's going to find a way to nudge the outcome that they want. And so it's just really weird that we live in a time now where you could have financial incentive for a wildfire spreading. And it's a big distinction between betting on. I looked at what else you can bet on on Kalsh you last night.

How many inches of rain will fall in Houston in July? Whether or not there will be an eight-mast, magnitude earthquake in California before the end of this year. How many hurricanes will be in the Atlantic? Like, those are all things that you don't have control over. Not easily manipulated. Right. And so there's a reason like why it's more problematic for an athlete or a referee to bet on sports than it is a guy sitting up in the bleachers. But again, like, this is out there right now. these markets justify it by saying this isn't they're saying this is a type of crowd-sourced forecasting meaning that you can look at polymarket and see where the expert money is saying that fire's

going to go and so it's actually it's actually provides the most accurate information to people because they can crowdsource all of this which is obviously like kind of a bullshit hedge. Yeah, how many billions of dollars are they making, like, those sites making off of gambling on these things? Yeah, I mean, the, like, there's proposed legislation right now that prohibits betting related to terrorism, assassinations, wars, crimes, or gambling on people's deaths, because obviously being able to gamble on those things creates perverse incentives. But there's, I bet Randall gets hit by a golf club. Or, like, think of it this way, perverse and sense, it's like, I bet Randall's going to get a 200-inch buck this year.

And then, lo and behold, you starts haunting his ass off. Yeah. Or he goes and poachers one. If I could, if I could bet, if I could bet a million dollars on whether or not I'll fall down the stairs today, I will hurl myself from the third floor to the first. But, um, wildfire has not yet, like, been among the things. The banned substances. Bands, proposed bans. So, understood.

Just a weird, we have enough headwinds in terms of wildfire prevention and fighting in this country. Currently, we don't need people gambling on whether or not that fire is going to spread to the next county. Because you know what? Somebody might go out there with a can of gas and make that spread to the next county. I already shared this with you. With the prediction markets, you're reading about all these kind of crazy bets about whatever, like wars and famines, whatever. I was watching a movie called Dien Bienfou. It was about the French defeat by the Vietnamese,

which kind of ended up precipitating the American War in Vietnam. Anyways, in this movie, there's a bedding salon, a parlor, a betting parlor. It's a big plot in the movie where everyone, French, Vietnamese, everyone is going into a book to place bets on what hills would fall and when the Vietnam would overrun Dien Bienfou, including people who are directly

not directly involved in the fight, but people who are manipulating the actions of pertaining people, military guys, whatever. So the idea of inside betting inside trading, betting on out, betting on things that seem almost, you know, morally reprehensible. Yeah. This is not new. No.

It's just really bought kind of an age old thing to the forefront. Yeah. And it's accessible to everyone. And it's, like, it's in your pocket. It's right there. And anybody can do it. And it's just giving more options to people who got bad gambling problems, like to be able to bet on anything. Yeah.

I'm not worried about those people. You're not? Well, I'm not a big, like, save you from yourself kind of guy. Well. But that's a through line on this whole episode. We already got that from the Yellowstone thing you talked about earlier. Yeah. I don't, I don't necessarily, I don't want to save people from themselves.

But it is, yeah, to make it be that you can, like, profit by, like, building up a bet around a wildfire and placing the bet. You know, I get it. but it's also like a difficult thing to regulate. Like for the government to come say, hey, no more bet making. Sure. Which they do.

They did. They did for a really long time. This administration likes these markets, though. They've been like generally favorable towards them. A recent example of like a better who controlled his own destiny was at the last Super Bowl at Levi Stadium in California. There was a streaker. Within hours of that happening,

it came out that he placed, I think it was a $50,000 bet on production. addiction markets that there would be a streaker during the Super Bowl. Plus, he got like 10 buddies to do the same thing. And so there were like millions of dollars exchanged and made because this guy was like, well, yeah, there's going to be a streaker

because I'm going to do it. If you're that passionate about streaking and you've fully committed to doing it, it would be silly to leave that money on the table. I don't know that that, I don't know that that's the government's problem. The Super Bowl streaker maybe not. Yeah.

That went okay. I feel like If someone said, man, I got a lot, was betting on, you know, whether to be a streaker at the Super Bowl, I lost some of my hard-earned money. And now I really feel like I should have been protected by the government. I'd be like, buddy, I don't know, man. You're betting on streakers at the Super Bowl. The other thing is, is if you outlaw it, somebody's going to make it a thing anyway. People aren't going to stop betting on it. The mafia will rise again and make all of its money off of betting if, you know, legalized,

gambling goes away. So like someone's going to figure out how to do it. And I'll point out. I mean, I'm not totally hip to current law, but I think arson is generally illegal, illegal anyway. Correct. So he's already got one problem. Yeah, but they might really, yeah, they might really put the screws to you when it comes time to like issue a sentence if they're like, you know, you did this stuff. Yeah, they go to the jury like, and the son of a bitch bet on it. Yeah. The streaker, he's breaking the law too when he does it. What's the law he's breaking? Public.

Passen or naked. Yeah. Oh, that one. I don't know how I feel about that. Should that be illegal? Probably. In certain contexts. Streaking or betting on it?

I also think it came out that that guy had, like, wait a minute, this dude has been a streaker before. And I, maybe it's not been well reported on, but like this might have been the second time that he. He knew he'd come out on top financially. Just as you pointed out with the Buffalo attacks. People have been streaking long before the age of cell phones. There's just something about it. It makes you want to go out there and do it. America's our trigger-happy people.

I mean, that metaphorically, not just that they like to shoot. They're just a, it's hard to control them, Americans. We're out there. Yeah. Creeping up on wildlife, pulling our clothes off. Maybe Carl had a call she bet on the number of bison injuries this year in Yellowstone. And now he just cashed the over. All right, we're done?

We got one more hit on Bears' ears. We'll keep this brief. If you hadn't read in the news, the Trump administration slashed the monument protections for Bears' ears. This was originally designated in 2016 under President Obama, and it's about 1.4 million acre monument under the Antiquities Act,

ostensibly to stop rampant looting across 100,000 plus acre or 100,000 native archaeological sites. It was backed by a five-tribe coalit. etc., etc. Trump won slash the monument in 2017, Biden then fully restored in 2021. Just a few weeks ago, July 13, 2026, Trump 2 slash it again down to about 120,000 acres. And he did that by executive order. Yes, by executive order. And it's because of an interpretation. He feels that or his administration, him, whatever, feels that he can reduce those based on a clause that says the minimum, it's like the minimum amount or the least amount of space necessary.

The opponents to this say that you can create monuments, you can't undo monuments. So basically, yeah, it's sorry, the clause is smallest area compatible. And his rationales it locked up critical mineral resources. From a hunting perspective, it doesn't really change the hunting management that's still in the hands of Utah, but it does change the access because travel rules. in a monument, it restricts you to motorized travel strictly on designated roads, protect cultural ruins and whatnot. Without the monument protections, you can basically do whatever you can do on BLM land,

which is a lot. Then there's also an opening of a 60-day window for potential mining, oil, and gas leasing, which will most likely happen in that area. An interesting little, I wouldn't say the opposite, but an interesting effect of this is that when this whole political kerfuffle went down in 2016 with Obama and then back and fourth. Pre-2016, visitation was 75,000 people annually with national headlines and all the digital apps and stuff. It drove visitation of 400,000 visitors last year. That's compared to, so, you know, 100 or sorry, a 300% increase compared to a 20% increase across the Utah

Big Five in that same area. And so that's altered game behavior. That's increased backcountry pressure. It also calls into question the idea that people are locked out of their under Monumentary. Exactly. One visitation. That's a good point. When visitation. They're locking us out. Except for the 400,000 people who went there.

Yeah, Trump's quote was, you can't do anything. You can't go hunting. You can't go fishing. You can't do anything. You can virtually not even walk on it. That's completely false. Yeah. Yeah.

That was Trump's quote as he like signed the paper. But that was like, we've covered, we've covered every step of this thing. For 10 years. For 10 years. 10 years is a long time, but it's not a long time. I think that when you look at this, I think people often lose sight of the fact that this was first put in place under Obama.

I think in the popular imagination, this was like something dating back to Teddy, Roosevelt. Theodore. And this is likely, in two years, this is likely to get undone again. On the issue like this, I become interested is what does it take to have this stop bouncing?

Obama put it in a place. It was under Trump undid it. Biden put it back in place. Trump was undoing it again. It's that executive order thing, man. You'd have to get rid of that and have it be a congressional. Yeah, they proclaim it to be and then getting it undone is a lot harder. Part of the issue and where this winds up planned out. as people followed this debate back and forth, is part of the issue is like, um,

there's this fear of losing hunting and fishing privileges on the monument status. Uh, I don't know. The, the executive action on this becomes a little bit silly. And I do wonder what steps it would take. And if it was going to get like some kind of congressional designation, I'm, I'm guessing that there would need to be a, some serious gift.

There would need to be some serious. debate and probably compromises made. Yeah. And it's and it might not land at Obama's 1.6. Yep. And we have a late story coming in of the, Meteeter photo contest. If you scroll down the bottom of your screen, Phil, if you can pull up that first one. On the media website, there's a contest that ended yesterday. And these are the top three winners that'll be chosen today when this podcast launches.

And the winner will choose two Moultry Edge four trail cameras with solar packs and $100 meat eater store gift card. And so these are the three we're looking at. First one, what are you seeing in there with that gator? A gator coming to kill some coons. Who's winning that fight? Or a bunch of coons coming to gang up on a gator. I've seen videos where they come in right in there and grab them raccoons.

That one gets my boat hands down. man. Then second one. There's a mountain line getting ready to smoke of fawn. Yeah. I'm betting on the line. Oh, I didn't even see that fawn. Yeah. Oh, that's real interesting. Betting on the line. Damn, and that's from July 6th. That picture's only a few weeks old.

Oh, then there's a guy that actually... He might still be digesting parts of that fawn. There's a guy that actually, his trail camera actually picked up the moment his arrow entered the vital area on a Michigan 8. Whitetailed buck. I like that, but I feel like I've seen stuff like that before.

I know, because you could get, yeah, that's not like trail camy. Like, you could just pull a still off a video and have that. My buddy's got a picture of him and his dad in the stand and his dad is missing their target buck. It's hilarious. It's fine, but it's just, it's not trail camy. So what do we vote? I vote for the Gator. I'm Gator.

Yeah, me too. Yeah. All right, Team Gator. Because I'd like to be standing there to see what happens. I kind of know what's going to happen. Oh, but I, but my buddy. in Louisiana has sent me these videos and the Gator just comes up and grabs the raccoon.

I think the raccoon can't run away. Into these corn feeders. Yeah. No, the raccoon's like, what is that? What is that? And all of a sudden the Gator just walks off with the raccoon. I like with the two are sort of hanging back there side by side. The body's like, I'll go check it out.

All right. I want to back up on something. I don't mean to be light. I don't mean to be dismissive on the monument, the Bears years monument status. At this point, I just feel that this is not done. And I think that in two years,

we're probably going to see another reversal. Yeah. Another football. Yeah. I think it's going to be, yeah, it's going to be another. It's like the, it's today's ANWR. even though Anwar is still today's Anwar.

Tomorrow's Anwar. Yeah, it's going to be one of those things. It's going to be a long time until this gets settled and it will not get settled through executive proclamations. Thanks for listening to the new show. 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 Phelpsgamecalls.com. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.