The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 914: Bounties on Wolf Hunters, A Jeopardy Contestant Exposes Himself, and Leprosy from Armadillos

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

The MeatEater Crew discuss: state management of grizzly bears; a forward facing sonar study; treating Alpha-Gal Syndrome with acupuncture; wolf watchers are at it again; a carp for the record books; 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. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved 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.za for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Welcome to the news show. Today we're going to talk about Armadillo spreading leprosy.

What? We've got some good news for hound hunters in Alberta and some troubling news for Wyoming wolf hunters. Steve gets the scoop on the latest in grizzly bear management. A jeopardy contestant exposes himself, but not in the way that you might think. And Nate has a segment about a record carp that Brody is very, very, very skeptical about. And with that, we're on to Our News. Our News.

Now, if you can't tell from the past 36 seconds, Steve is out again today. He's still up in the high Arctic adventuring around. He posted a photo of a giant cod that he caught, which made all of us very jealous. So I'm hosting today, joined by Seth, Spencer, Cal, Nate, and Brody. Steve will be back soon. Soon. But we've maybe got one more. In two weeks from now, he'll be on the news show. So, you know, if you don't like this program when Steve's not here, hang in there.

We'll fix you up. It might be better. It might be better. We'll see how today goes. Yeah, we don't know. Yeah. Spencer? We have two meat eater store events happening.

The first one is August 13th at the Milwaukee Meadeeater store from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. I will be hosting a game of. trivia at the store. There will be prizes for first, second, and third place. The grand prize is a $1,000 gift card. Yeah, somebody says, wow. Wow. That's a show.

You got to be there in person. You got to be there in person. Everybody who shows up that night gets a 15% discount. That's only good for that night in the store. You can have teams up to four people playing. Randall takes that very seriously. Nobody tried to sneak in there with five. Hard cap.

Nobody using cell phones. The event is free, but you need to sign up ahead of time to reserve a spot. Go to the medeeder.com slash events. Again, August 13th at the Milwaukee store from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Then on August 15th, we are opening the Meadee store in Minneapolis at 50th and France. It's the grand opening that's Saturday. Me, Clay, Brent, and Tony will be there from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The first 150 people get a gift, and there will be prizes given away every hour that's at our Minneapolis store. Grand opening August 15th. And if you miss me there, I think I'm going to go to the Twins game that night. It's $2 beers. So I can't miss that.

I'd be losing money by not going. So you could find me at the Twins game if you don't see me at the Grand Open. That's like 90% off a normal baseball. Yeah. Yeah. by FOMO right now. What kind of beers are they?

Well, I would guess up there in the Great North, they would have Miller Light, Coors Light, Bush Light. Yeah, all of your favorites. What's the format for the trivia game? I think it's going to be 20 questions. We'll probably do four rounds of five questions. Take a slight break. Bring your scorecards up to me so we can grade those and we'll get updates after every five questions. Very nice.

What do you think of that? I like it. I like it. It'll move quickly, but I think an in-person trivia game, it's only fun if you can get a running score. Doors open at six. First trivia question is going to be read at 630. You need to sign up ahead of time, themedeater.com slash events. Fun stuff. Speaking of fun stuff, I am pleased to announce that the latest edition of Meat Eaters American History,

volume four, is going to drop on October 20th. So this is the official announcement that that is fourth. coming release on October 20th this is meteor's american history the alaskans 1896 to 1941 it's going to cover trappers in the interior of alaska between the klondike gold rush and world war two this is dog sleds riverboats bears moose caribou lots of fish and trapping fur bears bears for the fine fur market this is a period of history that stevehs got really into just in his extracurricular reading and he decided that this needed to be the subject of our next book. I didn't know that much about it and the more I read, the more fascinating it was.

So keep your eyes peeled for that. And if you haven't listened to the first three, let me encourage you to do so. You don't have to listen to them to enjoy volume four, but highly encouraged, highly recommended. Is volume four done? No. Okay. No. Thanks for asking that. Until October 20th. Yeah, we've got to turn the files in a little before that, but it'll get done. It'll get done. I have every confidence. That time period, you probably get some good insights into adaptive technology.

Oh, yeah. Creeping into the wilderness. Early outboard motors, guys just getting so mad at outboard motors that they just sink them or throw them on the sandbar because they're not worth it. That still happens. the Ruski's making appearance in there? The Ruski's are in there for a little, they sort of are in there for the prehistory. Lots of surplus military rifles,

as you might imagine, in like the 20s and 30s, lots of guys just, it's like a very different sort of modern story. I mean, the funny thing is when you look at this, these people are living in a world that resembles the Lewis and Clark era

in a lot of ways. Undiscovered frontier. They're, They're in places that they don't have maps for. They're hunting and fishing for their own food. They're making some of their own clothes. Like it's a very primitive hard scrabble existence. But at the same time, like the Empire State Building is being built.

There's like professional baseball. That's wild to think about. Yeah. So it's like a really interesting contrast between what's happening in the rest of the country and what's happening in interior Alaska during the first couple decades of the 20th century. That's the White Fang era as well, if you'd like that book. that was published in 1906. It's about that part of the world in the 1890s. Yeah, Jack London was, we talked a little bit about Jack London in one of the chapters when we're describing the gold rush,

but if you don't have a sense of scale for how many people flooded up into British Columbia, Yukon territory in Alaska during the days of the Klondike Gold Rush, it's unbelievable. Just a flood of people. And then some of them stuck around. And, you know, they didn't make a ton of money trapping, or they didn't make a ton of money mining for gold, but a lot of them turned to trapping as a way to support themselves. And so that's really the story of this book. So that's what I got. October 20th. October 20th.

Keep your eyes peeled. And now, your news. We're going to talk about Alphgal and treatments for it. So if you hadn't heard recently, Steve hosted Burkhard-Bildger on the interview show to cover ticks and Alpha-Gal. If you don't know what alpha-gal is, it's not a Gen Z term for boss women or something like that. Good one. We had a lot of comments about that that people were confused on. Before they listen to the episode. Yes, now they know. It is a tick bite-induced syndrome that causes an allergy to red meat and dairy products. It's pretty mysterious. Bill Gates may or may not

be involved, but at this point, the treatments are minimal. But we had a lot of comments and people write in with stories about successful treatments through acupuncture, which personally, I'm very skeptical of, as is Steve and a couple other people, but we had really interesting response to it, so we're going to read off one. Hey, Steve and meat eater crew, just finished listening to episode 908 about alpha-gal syndrome. It was a great episode on topic that hits close to home for anyone who spends serious time in the woods. I wanted to follow up on the brief mention of acupuncture as a potential treatment. I have two close friends, both very down-to-earth blue-collar guys, who developed severe alpha-gal allergies over the last three years.

One of them actually had a near-fatal anaphylactic reaction. After his doctor, Dr. Dr. recommended that he slowly reintroduced red meat into his diet. He ate a can of Vienna sausages and ended up in a life-threat. I got a stop you right there. He dove right into it. Yeah.

I don't know that would be my choice. I'm like, I might only have red meat one more time in my life. Let's eliminate all the various. I don't sure his problems are related to a tick. I mean, I like his style. I do, too.

I'll be honest, I like his style. It would have been really boring if he, like, cooked up a little bit of hamburger in a pan. No, this is good. Well, his friend, the other blue-collar guy that he mentions couldn't even be in the kitchen when his family was cooking bacon without his face and body breaking out in hives. Desperate for a solution, a coworker mentioned that his brother, an acupuncturist in Charlotte, North Carolina, was using a technique to target Alpha Gal. Both my friends were very skeptical, but they decided to give it a shot.

unbelievably after just one session where a needle is inserted into their ear both guys were completely cured has been a while now and neither has had a single allergic reaction since both are back to eating meat without any issues i know this is far-fetched and sounds like pseudoscience and i wouldn't have believed it myself if i haven't seen it happened to two of the biggest skeptics that i know i just want to share these real-world success stories as another perspective on a disease that affects so many outdoorsmen Nate dotson man wow i'd like to see a blood test from those dudes at after they had. Yeah, so I'm not, we're not going to go super deep in this, but there's an interesting,

a very interesting study on PubMed about, it's like a very well done study on acupuncture and on for alpha-goult treatment. And the results are very interesting. So if you're dealing with this, check it out. Yeah, I read that, I read that study. Uh, acupuncture confuses me. Same. I don't understand it. Me neither. But a lot of people think it works for them. works for them. And I think when it comes to health stuff, who are we to say if it helps? There you go. Yeah, if you had a red meat allergy, that's the kind of thing. You just like, throw the kitchen sink at. Yeah, you just try anything. Yeah. Yeah, if you told me I could cut off my left arm, elbow down, forearm down, I don't know. I'd give it a shot. What about shoulder down?

Yeah. Yeah, probably, probably. Keep the shoulder, though, for some recoil. The red, the red meat allergy, yeah. I mean, like, I'd keep, I'd try every tool in the toolbox. All right. We've got another email here. This is a Chetiquet question. And the fellow writes, Hi, Steve and crew. So right off the bat, we've screwed this one up. Hi, crew. Longtime listener, first time writer, I'd appreciate if you guys weighed in on this one. In Illinois, nearly all public waterfow sites assigned blinds through an in-person lottery for the whole season. To enter, you show up on a designated day in July with your ID and a current or previous year's hunting license and a waterfowl stamp. A DNR officer writes your name on a

slip and drops it in a raffle tumbler. If your name gets drawn, you pick from the open blinds. Then you turn in a form listing up to four hunters and each of them has full hunting rights to that blind. You can only be listed on one blind in the entire state per season and there's no hunting outside the marked blinds. My partners were out of town at a wedding, so I went alone to the site that I hunt every year. Normally it runs clean. A name gets red, you call the blind you want, and if a second name from a group that already one gets drawn, they just say pass and step out.

That protocol usually means everyone who shows up leaves with a blind. Before it started, I did a rough headcount. If every group of four took one blind, everyone there goes home happy. Around the fifth draw an obvious non-hunter from a group that had just one got called. He turned and chuckled to his buddies and went and grabbed another blind. Then it happened four more times. Five groups took multiple blinds to lock everyone else out that only put one name on each extra blind so no other group could join. End result is that me and at least three other groups walked away with nothing.

I honestly don't know whether be mad at the DNR, the first group that set the precedent or my hunting partner's college buddy who decided to get married yesterday. So here's what I'm chewing on. One, do I have a right to be pissed or am I just a sore loser? Two, whose fault is it really that this happened? Three, what would you do in this situation? Four, any solutions to make this convoluted process suck less? You have a right to be pissed for sure. Yes.

And there was no attempt to talk to the single groups and fill those open spots. That's what I'm. that's what I'm conjuring in my brain. There's individuals in those other blinds versus full capacity in those blinds. Yeah, my test for this would be, are those blinds going to be sitting empty during hunting season?

And if they are, that is a huge red flag and that's a non-starter. This is messed up. If they've got non-hunters there trying to claim stuff, but they should be checking licenses. Yeah. You know, when these draws are happening.

Yeah. I also wonder too in situations like this you can't really get if people are doing if people are playing by the rules don't hate the play hate the game yeah but in this case it seems like

the outcome that there's the intent right right it seems like the outcome that the state wants is not is not the outcome that's going to play out in the field right and so I'm hoping that they have some sort of system where they figure out how many days

you hunted out of these blinds and like if they're not getting used, you know, maybe you're ineligible the next year, something like that. Because Brody brings up a good point, right, on paper, what's the difference between a hunter and a non-hunter? Do you have a license? Well, I guess that makes you a hunter. Yeah. Yeah. So

yeah, I mean, because you could ultimately, you could end up with the same outcome, I guess, if you had all these groups there and half of the groups, were just lazy asses that would get a blind with every intention of hunting it and then not hunt it that season. Like you could still end up getting screwed just based on the relative different commitments of each group. But this seems egregious. Yeah, maybe you put like a sign in box at the

blinds. Right. And when you hunt them, you sign in and whatever. At the end of the year, they look and be like, oh, the people who won this blind, they only hunted two days or something or whatever, zero days. Exactly. You hunt zero days. You hunt zero days. You're just a year. You'd be like, oh, the end of the year. You're like you're not eligible for the next year or something. Or may people like commit to certain days on the calendar. And if they don't show it like, if they're not going to be there, they relinquish those days and other people can get them somehow,

like some kind of system where you have access to a blind that's not getting used. I think Drew needs to fight fire with fire. And he needs to like bring his nine year old daughter and his neighbor and a couple folks in his universe that can help him, Maybe, put the odds in his favor. Maybe arrange a field trip for the local senior center. I am laughing here because. Drive the church buzz out there.

That is the, I always say like the most dangerous people in America are retirees. Mm-hmm. Because they got a lot of time, some disposable income. And if they really want to focus on something they can. Yeah. I think it's a hammer. Yeah. But it, like, we're in this like deregulation period in America right now.

Mm-hmm. And I do laugh at the conversation that we just had. It's like, okay, well, how do you fix people being jerks? Right. And it's like, well, we're going to have a representative government system. And then everybody, you know, it's like, I mean, we just need people to follow the intent of the system. And if you're not there to do that, stay the hell out. I mean, one way that I could see this being somewhat mitigated is if you made the groups declare who's in their group.

beforehand, right? Like, it seems like there's five sort of four solo individuals there each putting their name in separately. And then they, so maybe just have, you have to declare that this is group A, group B, group C. On the, on the slip that they pull out, just have everyone, you have to have all the names. And then those people, yeah, exactly. You have to, you have all the names there, and then those specific names can't get drawn. I can see where people that hate Waterfowl hunting get involved in this to try and get some blinds. They're a good birdwatching spot. But even on like non-drop public water,

relatively close to here, like, forever there's been this highly competitive deal where it's like, okay, there's these blinds that are like historic blinds on the waterway. The young dude in the group goes down at midnight, camps out in the blind all night and then the older guys roll in just before shooting light

with coffee and breakfast sandoes and that kid's been there shining a headlamp at every other group that's come out to hunt the blind. Yeah. You know, and it's like, and then on really competitive days,

there's three young dudes that pin down three different blinds to keep other people out and then they only hunt one blind. Yeah. It's like the arms race. I think it's, it's, there's no way of getting rid of all of the gamesmanship in this stuff,

but when the gamesmanship starts to overtake the real point of why you're out there, that's where it ruins it for me. When you're thinking more about how to beat the system than you are just like, how are we going to get out on a good day. It's not just how to beat the system, it's how to screw over your fellow hunter. It's like, is that really what we want to be doing, you know? Yeah, there's always going to be those people.

I know, I know. Drew, why don't you talk to your local DNR access person and just read their take their temperature on this? You know, maybe you could work towards a solution next year that makes it a little bit better. Hey, there's a version of hunting where you just show up, you sit in a tree stand, you hope something happens, and then you go home. A lot of people hunt that way. And every once in a while, it'll work out. Then there's the version where you've done the reading before the test. You've got the on X hunt app with cameras integrated on your map,

a tailored deer movement forecast to help you make the most of your days in the woods, and precise weather predictions. So when a buck starts showing up, you already know where he's coming from and where he's going. Most of us don't have unlimited days in the field. We've got a week, maybe a little more. And every hunt that doesn't produce because you were in the wrong spot, that's a cost you can't get back.

Build a real plan before opening day with the on X hunt app because hope is not a strategy. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved 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.za for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here at long last. After fighting and yelling and fighting some more, Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together, not just any work bibs. We're talking the bare grease bibs from Clay.

Now, I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants, pretending to be work bibs and boy he did not these are clay's invention for things like breaking mules rendering grease kneeling in the dirt I'm going to use them all the time

trap and working fixing stuff it doesn't matter if you want good durable comfortable bibs these are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton they got briar proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh they got pockets damn near everywhere

again comfortable and durable put them on you don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck. And they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater store.com.

Now it's time for the news. So starting out, did I get, did I do that right? Never mind. Phil, what is that sound effect? It sounds like. I thought the sound had ended, but then I thought maybe there was more to it. A tweety bird being. It's like an old-timey newswire Morse code thing that I morphed into a nut hatch that's tweeting at the same time as the Morse code and then it gets eaten by something.

That is exactly what I thought that was. That's really good. Brody doesn't like it. What do you mean? I like it. I just didn't get the bird part. Oh, that's fine. To start off our news, excuse me, to start off the news for the week, we have an interview that Steve has pre-recorded with David Wilms.

and they are going to talk about and get to the bottom of some of the headlines that you might have seen lately on grizzly bear management. Join now by Dave Wilms, the Associate Vice President of the National Wildlife Federation, certified attorney and undisputed expert on Endangered Species Act issues, undisputed expert on grizzly bear management. He's here to tell us what exactly. does it all mean what we've been reading in the news about changes to grizzly bear management in the Rocky Mountains with particular implications

to those three states that have grizzly bear populations Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Thank you for coming on, Dave. Thanks for having me. Always good to see you. So what's up? What is going on? This is always a difficult,

issue to follow. It becomes very, there's a lot of details, a lot of things change and get undone through litigation. So like, where are we at right now? What's new? Yeah, I mean, the big news story is about a week ago, the governors of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana held a press conference with Secretary of Interior, Doug Bergam, to announce a new rule involving grizzly bears. And they just call it the 4D rule, but for folks that don't know what the 4D rule is, section 4, subsection D of the Endangered Species Act gives the Fish and Wildlife Service a lot of flexibility to write rules that allow some level of take for different, take meaning, you know, injury to an animal, lethal removal of an animal, you know, harassing an animal, not harassing, that's the wrong word, but, you know,

dealing with conflict issues to come up with grizzly bears, giving some flexibility to do that by writing this rule for threatened species that exempt those things from what are called take prohibitions. Normally, if you were to harm or harass or do anything to these grizzly bears, you'd be violating the Endangered Species Act because they're listed. So this is to exempt certain activities, management activities, from the take prohibitions of the Endangered Species Act. That's at the high level.

Yeah. So give me an example of an activity that would actually happen that we might start seeing more of that we weren't seeing before. Well, I mean, I don't know if you're going to see new activities. I think you're in some ways you're formalizing old activities. So like tons of credit to Wyoming and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and their large carnivore team. They've been doing a lot of on the ground management at Grizzly Bears. And people just don't see it for decades. And they've been consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

And if they have a grizzly bear going out and harassing livestock or killing livestock, and they need to deal with that bear, they need to haze it off or they need to translocate it someplace else. Or if it just keeps getting worse, they actually need to, there needs to be lethal removal of the bear. Then they coordinate with the Fish and Wildlife Service and do that. This rule formalizes that relationship. is the way I would describe it. From the Wyoming perspective, it would formalize that relationship in rule

and formally authorized through this rule the states to take on these on-the-ground management activities. And that conflict resolution is a big piece of it, but it could be some of the scientific research. It could be, if you have a bear that's struck by a vehicle, for example, and it's injured on the side of the road, it seems pretty simple you should be able to dispatch that bear right well the way the endangered species act writes you wouldn't be able that would be a violation of the act to do that so this would allow

a state agency personnel authorized personnel to go and deal with that injured bear without having to necessarily wait for somebody from the fish and wildlife service to authorize it or come out and do it for example um i understand what you're saying but but I feel like there has to be more to the story than just formulizing something that's already happened or else it wouldn't have been, why is it being treated like a significant change or a significant piece of evolution? So, I mean, that's a great question. And I guess the best way to describe it is look at all the criticism that's happened over the last

15, 20 years. One of the big complaints that you see when you talk about Grizzly delisting. Right. We've tried twice to D-List Grizzly Bears. People come up in arms over a Grizzly D-Listing. And one of the big things they cite is this distrust for the states. The state legislatures, the governors, the state agencies. And I don't think the public broadly knows that states have been very involved with grizzly bear management and recovery for now 50 years. And one thing this rule does, it does a couple of things I think are really important.

One is it formalizes that relationship and it formalizes the fact that states have an active role in management of grizzly bears and recovery of grizzly bears. So that's one piece of it. I don't think the public knows. And so this formalizes that and says, we're recognizing what an amazing job the states do and formally, you know, creating this role. Another thing I think it does is it creates a roadmap for, you know, if you can make a, a rule like this work where you're if you meet certain, and the way this rule is written, by the way, if you meet certain benchmarks, there are, then the state can take on additional responsibilities of management. Okay. The way it's written, the states have pretty much already met

those benchmarks because they're just, they're tied to, to demographic objectives. Like, what are the, what's the population distribution? What's the overall population? All the things that have been met for 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. So you, if you tie it to that, then they're out of automatically going to be able to step in and do those things. But it also creates a roadmap that you could use for other species and other places that maybe haven't reached those benchmarks yet. I look at this as a rule as it's an incentive for states to really lean in on listed species and push towards recovery and taking back management of them, even while they're still listed.

So in that regard, I think it's a pretty big deal. But I think it's also important that there are things this rule doesn't do. that are floating around out there on the internet, you know, because people are all armchair quarterbacks and armchair lawyers and all those things and tell you what this rule does and doesn't do. And there's a lot of misinformation out there, too, about this rule. Is it safe to say that since this has been attempt, since delisting has been attempted twice and both times that they've pushed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has moved to delist grizzly bears. It was blocked in the courts. And usually the greatest thing that they were

used as public leverage was the idea that there would be hunting licenses issued for grizzly bears. Then that really unnerved a lot of grizzly bear protectionists. And so they got the delisting beat. Is it safe to say that this is rather than trying to undo, rather than trying to de- delist in one fell swoop. This is just a necessary step toward that objective in order to alleviate some of the immediate pressure that would be felt if they tried to delist again right now. I think that's right. Yeah. I think also another way to think about this is think of this as an insurance policy of sorts. Okay. Right. So you put this rule in place that creates the authorities for the states to go out and do the on the ground management. Yeah. To go do the responsibility.

to conflict to one thing they can't do is they can't they still have to consult with the fish and wildlife service before they do any lethal removal they can't just go out and kill a grizzly bear but all of this other management stuff they'll now have the ability to just go do under this under this rule and so the the insurance policy i call it is say six six months from now or a year from now the fish and wildlife service proposes to delist grizzly bears what's going to happen we're going to have lawsuits filed like we always do, and it's going to get tied up in the courts. Well, while that is playing out and being fought, you still have the states largely managing the bear, like under this rule. Now, it doesn't go as far as, like, I wrote a, I wrote a book chapter three or four years

ago where I proposed something like this structure, only I went a lot farther with it. And I actually said, you should just incorporate the post-D listing management plan of the states into the four-D rule. And if that means authorizing, like allowing a hunting season to occur while it's listed, that you could theoretically do that. Obviously, this doesn't go that far. This doesn't authorize a hunting season. My theory back in the time was you could have this species be effectively delisted, but it's still listed, but effectively managed as though it's delisted. And then let the courts play out and you've got this insurance policy. Well, this has most everything except that piece, the hunting piece.

Like most everything else is included in that. So it's almost this, the folks on the ground don't have to watch the pendulum swing with the litigation. They just see, you know, the states out there doing the management. And then over the longer term, those groups that distrust the states and say they can't do it. Well, now you have this body of evidence building, formally building, through these annual reports that this 4D rule requires from the states. you have a body of evidence annually building showing what the states are doing to manage the grizzly bears successfully. And I think that can be blunt future litigation. Oh, yeah, it's great because that that's the claim is that, oh, if they delist grizzly bears,

the states are just going to go, whole hog, kill them all. And then you point out, well, why would that benefit the states to manage the grizzlies in a way that they're back on the endangered, back under ESA protection. The state has no incentive to tank bear populations. Of course. They've been shooting themselves in the foot if they tanked bear population.

So as you were saying, this gives an opportunity to demonstrate that the states have no interest in imperiling grizzly bear populations. That's right. You can see how it's playing out with wolves, for example.

You've probably seen in Wyoming the proposal to now reduce the wolf quota by over half this year because wolf numbers are down from disease, you know, disease and other things have caused them to depress. So they're adapting and adjusting because, frankly, the state doesn't want to see wolves relisted either. They don't want to see grizzly bears relisted. So you're going to end up with this body under this 4D rule and the reporting that comes

out of it. I do believe, and one of the best things they'll come out of it is you're going to see the proofs in the pudding and you're going to see that the states are able to show. We're doing it. Bears are still recovered and at least blunts arguments against the distrust of the state agencies, which I think has been one of the, like you mentioned, one of the biggest obstructions to not being able to get them delisted. You'll never satisfy everybody. There are people out that are just like, I don't care if they're recovered. They should stay protected under the ESA because I never want to see them hunted in any way or something like that. Right. That's going to be out there. I got one last question for you.

Were you involved in shaping this or, and would you be able to say if you were involved in shaping this? All I can say is, Years ago, so I've written, there's a book out there called The Codex. It's the worst titled book ever, but it's called The Codex of the Endangered Species Act, Volume 2. I contributed a chapter to that where I laid out this exact idea of increasing authority to the states under a 4D rule. And I'd been working on that for years prior, going all the way back to my time, working for the governor of Wyoming on some ESA stuff. So this is an idea. There are other people

that have been talking about this too. This is an idea that I've definitely honed in on on grizzly bears in particular. And I've presented the idea to the service leadership over the years at different conferences and so forth. So did I have a hand in writing it? Absolutely not. I didn't, you know, that's the service. They do that. But I definitely, I definitely fleshed out an idea that seems to show up in the rule. I won't take credit for it, but it's it there's some there's some mirroring of some of the writing. You're potentially an intellectual father of this. There you go. I like that. I like that way. I was going to ask you one more question, but it would be such pure speculation and it was going to be, I'll do it anyways. Okay. It's a two-part question. No, it's a one part

question. Sure. Sure. If you had to crystal ball it, and it's just a wild guess, we're giving you room for a wild guess in your lifetime, in your lifetime, do you think that you will see the implementation of a grizzly bear hunting season in Montana, Wyoming, or Idaho? Like, I mean, where it actually goes through and happens in your lifetime if you had to say yes or no, and it's just a wild-ass guess. can I say it depends on what the search. The reason I say that is I actually believe that as the service moves forward, the Fish and Militius service moves forward with the proposed delisting rule if they decide to do that.

What that says and what lands are incorporated by that, and this might be a longer conversation for us someday, but we'll determine whether they're ever delisted in our lifetime or not. And I think it could go, one of about three ways. So I would love for it to happen. And I'm hopeful that it happens. But I just, I can't give you the, I can't do the, you wanted the yes or no. And I can't just like say yes or no. I can only say it depends. Although I can say it has happened in our lifetime because the first 4D rule written for grizzly bears in 1975, or maybe it was a year or so later,

allowed hunting of grizzly bears out in the Bob Marshall outside of a glacier. And that continued until the early 1990s. I think it was shut down in 1991. But anyway, it's been written into 4D rules in the past. So in our lifetime, as a threatened species, they've been hunted. But in the future, all I'll say is I hope so. Okay. But you'll give it a big depends.

a big depends and you can use depends as in the adult diaper or whatever because it's like that's what this whole thing is all right man Dave Wilms thanks for coming on again Dave Wilms from the National Wildlife Federation always is great for giving a very

even keeled measured unemotional take on contentious wildlife issues and issues of corner crossing and other things so again thank you Dave yeah you bet

Thanks. Thanks, Steve. That's a great interview. Gentlemen, what do you think? David texted me, followed up. He wanted to redo his final take that Steve asked about. Good, because I didn't really like his answer. No, me neither.

And I think he's still kind of given a, as Steve would say, a law dog, an answer. But he's a lawyer. You can't blame him. He said, if I had a crystal ball on whether we'd see hunting in the three states in our lifetime, I stand by my saying it depends. But it's more than what the FWS decides to do with delisting. It depends on what courts do. It depends on what Congress does.

It depends on what the states do. But I'd also say, I sure hope we see it. Not because I want to hunt them necessarily, but because if they are recovered, and that's how the states want to manage them, then hunts, then that's what should happen. Grizzly bears and GYE have been objectively recovered for more than 20 years. The services try to delist them twice. If we want to continue touting the success of the ESA, then we have to be willing to delist recovered species and trust that states will do everything they can to make sure that they never need to be listed again. Yeah, I had the same thought, like when he was describing at the end what his crystal ball prediction was, I did have the same thought that sort of bubbled up in my mind as like, well, I would like to hunt them. I will apply for a tag if it happens.

But on the, like, just the big picture, how cool would it be if an animal that was endangered is all of a sudden a renewable resource in the way that we think of other. How cool would it be if the ESA worked as intended? Yeah, exactly. And people acknowledge that it worked as intended. Phil, we got to pull the map up here so folks who are watching can understand what we're looking at. This, you cannot look at this in a vacuum and be like, okay, this idea on its own makes sense. On its own, it absolutely makes sense. But there's all these surrounding factors.

and what I would say folks who aren't keen to this idea of returning the bear to state management need to understand is currently, and for many, many years, grizzly bears have been getting shot and killed a bunch, like more than anybody would guess in the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, primarily due to conflict. resolution. Do you have a number? Like how many a year? I haven't looked today. I can't remember what I think I recently heard 50 in Montana. So the, when I went down to trap grizzly bears, the trapping seasons the first week of July. And we had a big winner that year. Trapping for collaring purposes. For collaring for collaring purposes. Live trapping. Yeah, for research. Yep. Longest, longest bear population study. Yeah. Just to make the world. that clear for the listeners.

There were just in the state of Montana, there were 26 bears killed. And by the first week of July, with a big winner, right? And I bring up the big winner because they're not active until later on in the season. So they've been out for a relatively short amount of time.

Montana had already killed 26 grizzly bears, right? And it's like, cause... Well, it's just the hunters that are killing grizzly bears. Vehicle mortality. Bear on bear, mortality and then conflict mortality are your big factors. So moving the grip, the bear to state management is not all of a sudden going to cause bears to be shot. They already are being shot. Whether you like it or not, that's just a fact. Yeah. And I think that's the, as soon as people heard

Grizzlies being managed by the states, there's this like knee-jerk reaction like, oh my God, they're going to have a hunting season, right? Yeah. Like they're going to kill them all, which is like not what's happening at all. There's not going to be a hunting season for Grizzlies next year. No. In fact, the state of Montana, we have a five-year run built into our grizzly management plan. So no matter what, even if it's like, yeah, do whatever you want. We would be marching five years down the road towards a grizzly bear hunt. So look at the map. You have the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem, the NCD,

N-C-D-E. On the north end of that is Glacier-Waterton National Park, no hunting, and it's a national park, federal management. In the middle of that, you have the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, and then jump down to the G-Y-E, the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. In the middle of that, Yellowstone National Park. this idea that it's just going to be the states managing bears, I think is very disingenuous.

There's always going to be collaboration because you have basically two giant spawning areas in the middle of both of these populations. There's always going to be an interagency grizzly bear task force that operates within the parks. And then you have, just the current state of things, which is the states are doing

the vast majority of boots on the ground management of the bear right now, and last year and the year before, all the way back into the 70s when the gris was listed as threatened. Yeah, and in those, those are the six distinct population segments for grizzlies in the lower 48.

the ones around Glacier and Yellowstone, obviously, that's where all the bears are, right? The one to the west there, the BE, that's the Bitterroot. There might be a couple of bears in there right now. The cabinet yak and the Selkirk, the red and the purple ones. There's bears there, not as big of a population. The one over in Washington, northern Cascades, there's probably. not a single bear in there in the lower 48

right now. They're like in Canada if they're around and there's only a couple of them. Yeah. So like those smaller populations I think would probably be managed more towards the ESA line of things versus like

a more liberal state managed. I think those are really on this map to show that these are areas conducive to having sustainable grizzly populations.

The bitterer, I don't believe there's an established population there, meaning that there's sows and boars producing cubs every year. There's definitely bears that get encountered

and tear up golf courses. And some of which are sows. Yeah. But those are bears that are moving in there, either from the cabinet yak, which is again to the west of Glacier National Park or the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem and this greater conversation of like population connectivity to provide long-term genetic viability, meaning like we got enough in the soup to where the ingredients keep getting mixed around and you're not going to have a one ingredient soup, right so a shallow gene

like a tomato soup every year we're getting closer to the northern continental divide and the greater Yellowstone kind of linking up I thought I thought they confirmed one this year they may have that move they may have moved yeah I'm

I'm pretty sure to like a male and a female from each side bred and produce cubs this year nice I would still call that like a big anomaly because of just all the like the biggest grizzly bear in the state was killed on one the highways in between those two.

They're, you know, so like wildlife corridors with wildlife crossings, all these things could be done to help improve that and make it not an anomaly, which I think would be a good thing for all sorts of wildlife, not just grizzly bears. But right now, like the fringe area around Yellowstone and Glacier and the bob and the bitter root and the yak. That habitat is largely there because it is in a wilderness designation, a wilderness study area designation, a designated roadless rule designation,

and all of those things are under some form of review. Some people would say attack during this administration. So again, like looking, I think it's great that the bear goes back to state management. However, I want to hunt the thing. I'm the only person at the table who's been able to apply for a grizzly bear tag in the lower 48 because I was living in Idaho the last time this happened. And we got-90s?

We got to apply. No, it was a couple years ago. That's right. And then they put five years ago. Yeah, that one. Yeah, it would be, I mean, it'd be like nine years ago now. Yeah. But.

How did that go down? They, after the applications were submitted, they, they killed it, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They didn't get to... Don Malloy and Missoula shot her down.

They didn't get to a point where they ever drew anything either. No, no. Wyoming issued tags. That's right. They did. A dozen of them, I think. Yeah. And I think Idaho went through the draw.

I did not draw. But that was the framing of the federal decision to relist was this, this historic, range and habitat connectivity to mark actual recovery. So long story short is if you are like me and you want to see a huntable and sustainably hinnable population in perpetuity of grizzly bears, which I think would be just amazing and something us people with big lumps of fat on our shoulders called brains should be heavily invested in, then you should be advocating for wilderness and roadless and proper forest management,

as well as expanding wilderness, because that's the stuff that these low fecundity critters, such as grizzly bears, need to have sustainable hunting populations. End of ramp. You know, it might take away from that interoperative. was, David Wilms should do our jobs. He's good. I think we should just have him do this because he's way better at it.

But we'll carry on. He says I might not even want to kill a grizzly bear or hunt a grizzly bear. Come on, Dave. Toughing up. Some of the distribution map we saw there crosses over into tribal land, specifically like the Blackfeet Reservation and the Crow Reservation. I could see where they are potentially the first ones who like get to do a hunt when when or if that becomes available.

We've seen that in the past with some of the bison they're allowed to take. If I could wave a magic wand, they'd be doing those hunts inside the parks. Sure. Historical hunting grounds. Yeah. Totally. Anyway, I feel like when we talk about this story, we haven't covered that like they're going to be a person at the table. Yeah.

Who may get some heavy input when it comes around. That's a huge omission. Hey, there's a version of hunting where you just show up, you sit in a tree, tree stand, you hope something happens, and then you go home. A lot of people hunt that way. And every once in a while, it'll work out. Then there's the version where you've done the reading before the test. You've got the on-X hunt app with cameras integrated on your map, a tailored deer movement forecast to help you make the most of your days in the woods and precise weather predictions. So when a buck starts showing up, you already know where he's coming from and where

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Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here at long last. After fighting and yelling and fighting some more, Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together, not just any work bibs. We're talking the bear. grease bibs from clay now I've watched clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants pretending to be work bibs and boy he did not these are clay's invention for things like breaking mules rendering grease kneeling in the dirt I'm going to use them all the time trap and working fixing stuff it doesn't matter if you want good durable comfortable bibs these are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton they got briar proof chaps that run from

cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck. And

they are up at the meat eater's store right now at the meat eater's store.com. So speaking of Wyoming, this is a story that was reported by Mark Heinz at the Cowboy State Daily. Although I actually saw this post that I will reference here in a minute just popped up in my feed. Shocking.

Two weeks ago, Steve covered the story about a pack of wolves known as Molly's wolves moving out of Yellowstone and into the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. There, obviously, they can legally be hunted. And this is one of the original packs in the park. It's a pack with a lot of history with the wolf watching crowd. and now that they are in the national forest, they are susceptible to hunting. I believe that season opened September 15th. And when Steve was reporting on it,

the sort of underlying question was, is this going to be a big flashpoint for hunter and anti-hunter conflict? Well, it is. Then this is the post I saw that is the subject of this story, but there is a social media influencer in Austin, Texas, who has now offered a $10,000. Hard a wolf country.

Yeah, $10,000 reward for the identity of any hunter who kills a member of Molly's pack during the upcoming hunting season. He basically just wants to docks whoever takes one of these wolves. Yeah, public shaming, condemnation, I think is the word that he used. This guy's name is Jonas Black, since we're sharing names. Jonas Black is his name. and he claims to support fair chase hunting.

And he says, I'm not an anti-hunter, but he says that Molly's pack is basically like zoo animals. He claims that this will be like shooting a dog. And so he wants to get the word out that anybody who shoots one of these

will have their identity made clear to the world. Are those the words he used? It's like shooting a dog? Yes. He's a big dog trainer. He says, yeah, so he's a dog trainer. He's a dog trainer and I think I saw that he became interested in wolves after that story

from 2024 where the guy ran over the wolf with the snowmobile and brought it into the bar and took photos. I saw that bar this summer. Oh, I've been in there. Yeah. You know, since he seems... Giant chicken fried steak. This guy seems to encourage social media discords, then, you know, hit him up. No, no, let's not encourage bad behavior.

And this is like the other side of this story is that Montana and Wyoming both have laws in place to keep the identities of wolf hunters confidential because there is such a potential for harassment and threats from the anti wolf hunting crowd. And so that's, you know, the states themselves won't reveal identities of individual wolf hunters, but there is nothing illegal to my knowledge about a private party learning the identity of the hunter and making that public, even if the obvious. outcome will be harassment and probably threats of violence. Why is he all hot and bothered about like hunting on the strip for elk? Like those would be fall under the same. The Las Vegas strip? I'm sorry. Just north of the park.

Oh. Oh, the buffers. The buffer zone. Thank you. Because this guy is all for fair chase hunting so long as it's not something he really, really likes. Right. Right.

So this is, this is discouraging. I think he's got, he's got like some graphic. some AI generated graphic. It's like a logo for protect Molly's pack. And I don't know. I hope it doesn't discourage anyone, but it seems like... I hate to break it to you on us. How would he get the info of who?

Is that... He wants someone to snitch. No, he basically... I hate to tell this guy, people, Molly's pack is going to get killed, and he ain't going to know about it. It would be like if Randall had a tag, and Spencer is like, man, I can make 10 Gs here.

Yeah, that's what he's hoping for. It's like, you find out that a buddy of a buddy shot one of those wolves and then you get... Let's go, Seth. I'll split it with you. Yeah. I was going to say, I'm going to buy a Wyoming wolf tag. Go down there and then call myself in. There you go. The fallacy also is like, Molly's pack is this static thing. It's the same group of Disney characters that started the whole deal. But they're not in Disneyland anymore, Cal. But also within Disneyland, they're eating each other. Yeah.

And like all he's got to do is call any state agency and be like, are hunters the most effective tool when it comes to wolf management? And they're going to be like, no, absolutely not. Wolves kill the most wolves. Yeah. Secondarily, like trappers do a much better job than hunters. Yeah. It's like.

I don't think, I don't think we need to go down these hypothetical scenarios. is because I don't think this guy's going to be calling any game agency to learn more about the situation. Phil, is Yellowstone more of a Disneyland or a Disney World, you would say? Ooh. I'd say Disney World because it has like three or four kind of prominent features that attract the biggest population. It's kind of like Disney World has four theme parks that are spread across and you kind of have to navigate how to get there. You got to deal with traffic, transportation.

Okay. We'll make that adjustment. Another huge omission in our coverage. Thanks, Spencer. So I have the obviously that is a not a very heartening story for our community, but I'm going to balance that out. I also saw a headline this was in the CBC that Alberta hunters will be able to use hounds this year to hunt black bears in certain wildlife management units that have what they call conservation, caribou conservation areas. And I was surprised to see this because I feel like Canada, in some ways is like Oregon or Washington,

where it seems like hunters are really under attack and you see a lot of headlines about opportunities being rolled back, specifically the one that came to mind first was the British Columbia doing away with its grizzly bear hunt. So yeah, they're bringing back hound hunting to hunt black bears. And the concern is that some of these caribou herds

in Alberta aren't doing well and the mortality rate of newborn caribou is. is the concern there, and predation obviously plays a huge factor in that. So there's, again, a lot of outcry from anti-hunting groups, the usual concerns about hounds chasing non-target species and grizzly bear conflict and stuff like that. And it's obviously clear from a lot of the commentary on the CBC site that there's a lot of misinformation about hunting and bear hunting in particular, but nonetheless, I thought it was good to shine spotlight on some.

Well, that stat you got in here about Minnesota is pretty cool. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So this is, I mean, this is one thing that I think a lot of people focus on wolves when they think about impacts on ungulates, but black bears are hugely effective predators of calves of ungulates. And there's a specific study in Minnesota that showed in years when spring bear hunting took place, there was a 68% lower proportion of. bear predation on moose calves during those spring hunts with no compensatory increase in wolf predation meaning like it wasn't just zeroed out by someone else gobbling up all the calves so i think that that one involved um that would involve a tribe i can't recall the details on it but it was mentioned in

some of the coverage of this story and so i i dug it up and took a look at it but yeah it's uh black bears i mean you see it too if you hunt around here like they're they're keyed in on on falling on hell on elk have yeah yeah sure Spencer much you take it from here uh I was this is a couple weeks ago I was making dinner in the kitchen my wife was in the living room watching jeopardy and I heard something happen to where I went in the room I was like you got to rewind that I need to hear that again and it was during the part of the show that like comes after the first commercial break maybe it's second where they just get a little fun fact about the contestants. They're like, so, Randall, you met Johnny Depp's sister in an elevator

one time, right? Tell us about that. And then Randall would talk about how he was at a Halloween party and met Johnny Depp's sister. Everyone got a good laugh out of it. Did you come up with that beforehand or do you just riffing? Yeah, just just going off. Did you meet Johnny Depp's sister? No, no, it's a good riff. So I heard during one of these, uh, little character intros, uh, something that got my attention. And we are deep in YouTube prison right now for the clips that I've shown in the past that get dinged for copyright, whether it's from like Ace Ventura or showing the man get flipped over by a bison in Yellowstone. So we can't show the clip today. Phil and I are going to act it out instead. I'm going to be Ken Jennings. Phil is going to be the contested.

Time's tough around here. See, the thing is, is it's a better experience if we show the clip, but then we can't make money off of that. Right. And then we get taken away, boys. We get thrown deeper into YouTube prison, which is like maybe the deepest we've ever been right now because some of the clips. Yeah, we're in a hole right now. It's bad. And then I also need the crew to help us out because there's some parts where the audience laughs. So please laugh along just to give everyone the full experience. But like a very appropriate Jeopardy audience kind of laugh.

Can you play the Jeopardy song without getting dinged? Yeah, Phil, let's find out. It depends how much parody there is. Let's find out, Bill. YouTube is our biggest hater. Spotify, they're like okay with it and Apple podcast, right, Phil? Yeah, well, now we've got video on Apple too, so there's a whole, another can of work. Anyway, all right, here is the scene.

Owen Harrington is from Chicago, Illinois, a union organizer and PhD candidate, and I'm told a pretty big deal in this state of Vermont. Well, for one beautiful year I was, Ken. In 2013, I caught the largest Beaufin recorded in the state of Vermont. It's a fish for those in the know. I assumed. Sweet. Yeah, I wasn't entered in this tournament, but my friend was, and I was fishing with him. And I said, hey, you want to enter this under your name?

Don't tell the game warden. And it won the state tournament for that year. We won $1,000, and we split it. And I got my first analog synthesizer with that money. Wait, I thought they gave you an analog synthesizer. This is a big deal. It's a big deal. You went out and bought one?

I did buy one. I still have it. I hope the game warden doesn't take it away. No, if he's watching now, I think the statute of limitations is expired. Is that what you think? Okay. Nicely done. Just admit it to that? So he admitted, if you didn't catch it there, he caught a bofin, gave it to a buddy who was entered in a bofin tournament, and that buddy won and got the $1,000 grand prize. This happened in 2013.

I checked the Vermont master angler records for 2013, and to enter a master angler bofin, it needs to measure 28 inches if you're an adult angler or 23 inches for youth anglers. There were 10 master angler bofin entered in 2013. Owen did say that his was the biggest in the state. I don't know how literal he was being, but the biggest in the state that year was a 32-incher caught by Robin Hiranzin, and it was caught on Lake Champlain at 4 p.m. on June 29th. So I don't know that Robin was the person who entered it. I have Googled to my wit and trying to find the tournament that would give a $1,000 grand prize for a bofin in Vermont.

There are not many of them, and I found what I thought was the actual event, the Lake Champlain Father's Day Derby. So I sent them the clip, and I asked if it was their tournament. here was their response, quote, Hi, Spencer, I'm aware of the episode. $1,000 would not have been the prize for largest bofin at our 2013 tournament, but I plan to do some digging. We certainly can't have individuals who were involved in the 2013 fraud or anyone whose involvement would compromise the integrity

or reputation of fishing competitions participating in our events. So it was not them, but they are looking into it to see if they could track down. Well, yeah, because it's not necessarily extremely, exclusive to that fish, right? There's like big fish a prize. There's most weight. There's all sorts of variables. As I understand that email, he's simply saying $1,000 wasn't the prize for that. Maybe maybe so-and-so was inflating the amount that he won.

Well, that's what I was going to say. Maybe it was a $900 or a cheater. So when fishing, when fishing, you got to get the lawyers on this. When fishing, turning to crimes happen, they're usually prosecuted as fraud, or theft. And in Vermont, those crimes are considered felonies if they exceed $900. So this is a $100 beyond what it needs to be a felony. Are you putting a man in jail right now? This is now a felony crime. I mean, we know that the Jeopardy writers watch the media to vote. That would be my little tidbit if I was on, Jeffrey. Be like, well, actually, you guys

stole a question, I think. So as Ken mentioned, the Statue of Limitations will likely protect Owen. And he's correct. The Statue of Limitations in Vermont. for felony fraud is $1,000. Now, there is some wiggle room with what's called discovery, and I don't understand this well enough to know if it would apply in this case, but discovery would be like if a doctor did surgery on you, and then you realized a year later that they messed something up and you're now in great pain.

I think the statute of limitation starts at discovery, once you realize that the doctor messed up. In this case, I don't think discovery would apply. Maybe it would if the tournament now just learned that they had fraud committed against him, but nobody probably cares enough for a 13-year-old crime for $1,000. But Karma got him. Owen got second place.

He only won $1,400 that day. And he lost to the Jeopardy Super Champion, Caleb, who won that episode with $19,000, and nobody got Final Jeopardy right. But we're going to solve this. We're going to figure out what tournament had $1,000 taken from... Man, Spencer, that's like the hard-hitting, like, true crime invested.

I want the second place person to get their $1,000 prize who was actually entered in. Seth, you're a tournament angler. What would you recommend the punishment be here? And what analog synthesizer would you buy with your winning? Yeah. I don't even know what the hell that is. What is an analog? You own one?

Oh, no, all the sins that I used to own, which were two, we're all digital. It's like a keyboard that makes, you know, the sound of a baseball hit. Yeah. It looks like a necktie. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that kind of stuff happens. Unfortunately quite often in tournaments and people just get in a lot of trouble over it.

Yeah. Like there was there's a recent one where a allegations of a guy trying to buy a big fish from his co angler and it blew up like It's so they're always like big stories when they come out, you know to buy it? Was it for less or more than the prize amount? I think they offered like 500 bucks or something for if he would have caught I don't know it's a long story

but the the co angler caught a fish that if the buttlet if the guy you know driving the boat would have caught it he would have won that potentially won the tournament and yeah if you have information and what tournament this could have been reach out to

trivia at the meat eater.com and we'll have an update in the future on Owen's thousand dollars that he stole crime stoppers we should just have a crime stoppers company email address Yeah. Seth Morris. Speaking of Seth Morris and fishing, you've got some interesting news to report.

Bringing more fishing to the news desk here. A new study challenges assumption about forward-facing sonar. Ooh. A landmark experimental study suggests one of fishing's most debated technologies may not increase catch rates after all. And forward-facing. Sonar has just been a huge topic the last couple years. So this is, this was very interesting to me.

For years forward facing sonar has been at the center of heated debate amongst anglers, tournament organizations, and fisheries managers. Critics have argued that the technology gives anglers an unfair advantage and could accelerate over harvest of popular sport fish, while supporters have maintained that its benefits have been overstated. I definitely see both sides of the argument. But there's a new study that was done by the University of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And they did a long-term, randomized, controlled experiment, examining how forward-facing sonar actually affects recreational fishing.

and their findings are probably not what people expected. So the study published in fisheries research followed four experienced anglers fishing Wisconsin's net I think it's pronounced Nebish Lake throughout the summer of 2025 By alternating access to Garmin live scope forward-facing sonar between two teams while standardizing equipment, fishing efforts, and conditions. Researchers isolated the effects of the technology itself. Rather than catching more fish, anglers using forward-facing sonar actually caught fewer smallmouth bass than angeles. fishing without the technology. Researchers found catch rates

declined by approximately 0.64 fish per hour when anglers had access to forward facing sonar. The technology did provide one measurable advantage. Anglers using forward facing sonar caught slightly

larger fish on average about one inch larger. Yeah, that's what I... So what's that... I tell you, Saf. I would wonder if like I got a lot of questions I'll say there's a lot of holes

yeah were they just out there trying to catch as many fish as they can or were they targeting large fish you know what I mean like there's well it goes on to say like so the these during the study they had GPS trackers on the anglers so they could see what anglers were doing the GPS tracking showed anglers using forward facing sonar spent significantly more time searching for fish than actually just casting. Which makes sense.

Oh yeah, you're staring at a screen. Yeah. That's funny. Boats moved more slowly, covered less water, and made more frequent directional changes while using the technology, which makes total sense because as you're going and scanning, you see a fish over here, you're going to make a 90 degree angle and go over, you know, go over and try to catch that fish. I would be more interested if they, maybe they did. did they count the number of casts per fish?

Like that would... I would say people using forward face and sonar casted way less. Yeah. This is only four anglers. Yeah. In one lake. Like you said, I don't think you learn a lot.

I still think it's interesting. Yeah. It's the only, it's the only study that's ever been done on the effects forward facing sonar. Yeah. It's interesting, if nothing else,

to show you how people fish when they're using. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it goes on to say the study also found no evidence. This is one thing I don't agree on. The study also found no evidence that anglers became substantially more effective as they gained experience with the technology over the course of the summer. I think if you follow the Bass Master Elite series at all, you'll know that these younger kids that spend a lot of time with forward-facing sonar, are just so good at it. Is the elite series where they flip a coin

to determine which tournaments have in, which ones don't? This past season was the first time they ever did that. They flipped the coin for every event to determine if it was forward-facing or no forward-facing. No way. And it was basically a split schedule. Huh. So I don't know, these researchers should take a look at that,

just the data from that, from this year of the Elite Series to compare tournaments with forward facing and without. Yeah, that would be a great, that would be a great, like, I imagine there's a lot of data from that. A lot. All those boats are tracked. There's a lot of guys that are really experienced. The good thing about that is the data is there. They just have to go look at it.

But this really contradicts what you found with the Billfish thing, where catch rates went way up. That's the thing. So this is a small amount. bass study as Randall and I experienced a couple weeks ago up in Canada on Lake of the Woods we would spend a lot of time musky fishing without any sort of electronics other than just 2D and then we would go out in the evenings with live scope and catch a musky yeah you know but also the time the hours of the day where we were fishing were arguably the best hours

of the day for to catch a musky but it was just you at least knew that you were casting to fish with live scope yeah and that's the question right is like what because there's a lot of small mouth fisheries too where if you're casting

you're going to be catching small mouth yeah they're just going to be smaller so the game becomes like okay how do I change up my rig presentation approach tactics to get through the small fish and target the big fish. Yep.

But you're still fishing. Yep. And then when the Livestcope comes in, you're just not going to waste those, quote, unquote, waste those casts. Yep. Totally. That's like, on Lake of the Woods, you can pull up to any offshore reef and you're going to just catch a bunch of walleye. But if you want to catch

a 30-inch, 30-plus-inch walleye, like you would like you would use live scope out over a basin and target suspended fish that you could only unless you were trolling and just happen to catch one yeah yeah so like that that's an example of like how your fishing style would just completely change yeah by using the technology i remember when we were doing one of the the fish i think you were there set but we were filming for dos boat and uh any second i could i just had a lot line in the water. Like, yeah, and caught all sorts of just completely random fish because that was,

you know, I was just trying to catch fish. Yeah. That's the, that's the joy of fishing. It is a lot different than trying to catch the fish. Yeah, right, which is. Yeah. The trophy fishing. So, um, yeah.

Anything more on that? No, I think, I think it'd be interesting to, and I hope that they do more studies on like different species and you know anglers. Oh yeah. Involve anglers that have a lot more experience with it. There's more research to be done. Totally. But it's just interesting that they, this is like the first piece of,

you're the first study that has come out. Great work. Forward facing sonar and, yeah, they didn't find a lot of concerns with it. Great work. Most of us aren't scouting or working on our property as often as we'd like. We've got jobs, families, and a limited number of days in the tree each fall. So the work you do now matters. On X hunt, put your trail camera photos on your map.

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Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here at long last. After fighting and yelling and fighting some more, Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together. Not just any work bibs. We're talking the bare grease bibs from Clay. Now, I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants,

pretending to be work bibs, and boy, he did not. These are Clay's invention for things like breaking mules, rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt. I'm going to use them all the time, trapping, working, fixing stuff. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, these are your bibs made from tough, stretch, duck cotton. They got briar-proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable.

Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck. And they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater store.com. Up next, Brody has leprosy. Not yet, but if I go to Florida and rassel an armadillo, I might get it. Leprosy cases in Florida are on the rise and armadillos are to blame.

If you don't know what leprosy is, there's descriptions of this disease that date back three to four thousand years in India, China, Egypt, a disease that's frequently mentioned in the Bible, associated with extreme social stigma because it was highly contagious and incurable. people believed it was a punishment from God. During the Middle Ages, they would set up these leopard colonies and force people to go into these colonies and kind of separate them from society. These people were declared legally dead, so they basically had no rights. The cause was unknown until 1873 when a Norwegian physician named Gerard Amor Hansen. I hope I'm pronounced. I think that's Gerhard.

Gerhard. Garehard. Anyway, a Norwegian doctor discovered the bacterium mycobacterium lepray. So that's the cause of bacterial disease. And before effective treatment, the disease would cause nerve damage, loss of sensation in the hands and feet, severe deformities, and blindness in advanced cases. In the 1940s, antibiotic treatments came around and they were able to cure the disease. And today, like in the United States, is very rare. It's still pretty common in other parts of the world, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Africa, a couple hundred thousand cases a year reported. But again, very rare here in the United States. 95% of people have a natural immunity making infection.

uncommon after exposure. Symptoms can take a long time to show up up to 20 years to appear after exposure. So what do armadillos have to do with it? Like how did they be, armadillos in the United States become carriers of leprosy? Then the nine banded armadillo, which we, do we have a picture of that? Yeah, I've been showing stuff. Okay, cool. Yeah, now he's just showing.

Yeah, there he is. Leprosy. What leprosy symptoms look like. They're now, they're the only wild animal in North America that maintains, like, they're a carrier of this bacteria. And so they're like a wildlife reservoir. Scientists still don't know exactly how this ended up happening.

But the leading theory is that leprosy was brought to the Americas by European colonists in the 1500s. And at some point, they transferred leprosy to, the armadillos who are now transferring it back to humans. I can see how. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I'd kick the lab out of the bed, cuddle up with that deal well. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like an animal that should have leprosy. A pretty interesting. Well, one detail that supports this strain that supports this idea so that the armadillo strain is a very close match to the strain from humans.

So it suggests that the bacteria is build from people into armadillos. An interesting thing, why armadillos are like a good reservoir for this thing is they have a body temperature of 91 to 95 degrees, so lower than people. And this bacteria actually grows kind of poorly at a normal human core body temperature. So that's, that's pretty interesting. 10 to 20% of wild nine banded armadillos are carriers. Yeah, it's pretty wild.

So Florida had 17 reported cases of leprosy so far in 2026. It's an upward trend. 26 reported cases in 2025, 20, 2024. So it's like slowly been on the rise over the last few years. Are all those cases directly related to messing with? They don't, they can't necessarily confirm that, but they believe that the majority of them are. Some might be people bringing it in. They traveled internationally.

and brought it back. But they do believe that some of this is coming from armadillos. Florida officials want to like maintain this isn't like some widespread epidemic. The overall risk remains low and the disease does not spread easily. But you shouldn't handle live or dead armadillos. And they think that the bacteria can also be kind of like transmitted into the soil from armadillos. So you should wear gloves while gardening or, you know, messing around in the dirt, and you should wash a bunch.

The greatest, highest risk stuff would obviously be handling or capturing live armadillo, skinning or butchering them or eating them. Now, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. I got some other stuff going on here, but I'm going to address the eating thing. Where did I put that? I had it in here somewhere. maybe I cut it out anyway I remember what I was going to say like internationally there are places where armadillos are eaten like down in central and South America but there is also a history of in the United States of people eating these things particularly during the

depression they were called Hoover Dogs and people would eat them then still happens now And then different states have different management strategies for armadillos as far as whether they're a game animal or not. Most of the time they're not considered a game animal. So you can go out and grab yourself an armadillo if you really want to. So that's what's going on in Florida. But Florida is not alone. I did a little extra research. And we get about 150 to 250 cases of leprosy annually in the entire United States. And again, some of those could be coming from people who are traveling and brought it back. But this this kind of armadillo human crossover thing,

they believe has happened in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. So keep an eye out for those armadillos. You don't want to be getting this disease. It's a nasty one. And Florida seems to be like 20, 25% of all the cases nationally. and Florida is increasing. That's why it's in the spotlight right now. Yep.

Interesting. I don't think Florida when I think Armadillo's. Maybe that's just the blind spot for me. Yet another one. Yeah. Does that bacteria just live on the skin of those things? I think it's just like they carry it internally, I would assume. Brody, is this map bay at the range of the Armadillo here?

So like they go, that nine bandit armadillo goes pretty far north. But the majority of the leprosy, cases for whatever reason are in the southern, southern tier there. We had them running around in Savannah, and they are surprisingly fast. I thought of them was a slow animal. Yeah, they're cool. They're cool looking little critters. But man, they're the worst thing walking under a tree stand.

Oh, you think it's big giant deer? They're so loud. They're so loud. And you can't see them. Yeah. There is at least one armadillo in South Dakota. There was, despite it being outside of their range. I had a buddy who's a farmer who was hauling cattle, I think, from Oklahoma, that also

had some hay with it in the trailer. And when he got back home and unloaded it, and Armadillo came running out of the hay pile. So there was one there shortly. I don't know if he made it through winter or not. Yeah, if you want to really, like, creep yourself out. Like, I didn't want to show the pictures here today, but you can look at like some pretty gruesome pictures of what leprosy can do to you.

It's rough, man. This says it's completely curable, though. Yeah. Antibiotic. Treatment takes six to 12 months. And after the first few doses of medication, you are no longer infectious. Mm-hmm. Boy, six to 12 months, that's a long time.

That is a long time. First time I heard about this, I tried to catch, I was in the act of hand catching an armadillo in Texas. Got yelled at, you don't want to get leprosy? And I was like, did they really say that? Yeah, I of course was like, oh, yeah.

And they're like, no, it's a real thing. I'm like, no, it is not. And then I was like, oh, damn you Google. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's how I hear about, armadillos and human interactions. It's like people catching them by hand.

Yeah. Yeah, people keep them as pets. It's a handful, like I said, we'll eat them. Their meat was described as a lot like rabbit, like dark, darker. If you had a couple of like you get rid of the rototiller in the garden, just let those suckers turn things over. They call them a Texas speed bump.

What would that be like if you like ran one over? Loud. Go on 60. Man, I can tell you, I, One time is that Robert Earl Keynes song. It brings back horrible memories, because one time I ran over a turtle by mistake. What kind?

It's a horror. It was like, I think it was a painted turtle. Okay. But the noise was gruesome. Dude. Like we were rolling kind of slow. Yeah.

And the window was down. And I imagine the noise to be similar. I was, I was one time coming back from Fort Peck real late at night, like fished all day and came back. And on 90 there, uh, in between,

uh, Big Timber and Livingston come around one of them bends and here comes two raccoons out in the middle of the road and it was like I applied the brakes but I couldn't I wasn't swerver you had to hit one of them I hit both of

what both tires and one hit each tire in the front and it was like I was probably going 75 miles an hour and it was like hitting a freaking speed bump. Damn wow so listeners right in let us know what is the worst sounding

animal to hit. All right. Speaking of hits, Nate's got a quick hitter to wrap us up here. Yeah, this is a segment we're calling Old News when we miss something in the news cycle, but we still want to talk about it. What we're going to do is we'll go way back

to an old-timey news item, talk about how it relates, see how that piece is aged, and then bring it full circle to where we're at today. In this case, we're covering the unofficial, official, heaviest common carp cotton U.S., but buy a Brit. So quick history, going back to 1877, my old stomping grounds in Baltimore,

fish populations are taking due to overharvest and water quality decline. Wildlife officials are looking for a solution to fill the protein gap left by this decline. Enter Spencer F. Baird, the first director of the United States Fish Commission. He looked across the pond at the bountiful and popular Common Carp populations of the UK and began the effort to import them. By 1900, Common Carp are ubiquitous throughout the U.S., primarily due to state and federal efforts to introduce them and their natural resilience and Fugundity. So that takes us to this old-timey bulletin, if you'll pull that up, Phil, released by the Department

of Commerce, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. And if you're listening, it's exactly what you imagine. It looks like it's printed on some real nice card stock. Are you going to do an old-timey voice? Dude, I want to do that Shane Gillis voice he does. Can I do it? Yeah, please, read it. That'd be great. Eat the carp. The carp discovered America in 1877. He found the land. to his liking. He multiplied and filled the waters with his kind. He is now big, abundant, and useful. He converts useless vegetation and small animals into meat. The meat is wholesome and nutritious. It contains as much protein as sirloin's steak. It is easily digestible. It can be cooked in such a way as to remove the muddy taste. It can be boiled, baked, made into croquettes or fish loaf. Carp jelly,

an ancient Swedish dish, is delicious. There are millions of carp in the United States. The last sentence shows that 43 million pounds were marketed in one year. Nearly all of this came from a few states in the Middle West. Somebody ate those 43 million pounds of carp. Therefore, the carp must be good to eat. The carp is good to eat. Carp has not only been eaten but has been cultivated in Europe for centuries. Europeans know how to cook it.

Catch the carp, buy the carp, cook the carp properly and eat it. Eat the row, can the row. Make carp jelly, can the fish, Smoke it 2. For more information, recipes, write to United States Bureau of Fisheries, Division F, Washington, D.C. I wish I would have this for the carp video. Yeah, did you realize we released the cart video this?

That's one of the reasons we were rolling this. I'm sure the suits will be super happy. I would like to point out, Randall did not prepare for this. At the top of that, it says, please post conspicuously. What year was this? 1911. So, yeah, the cart propaganda machine was going.

strong. Yeah, dude. Again, Randall was not prepared for this. He just pulled this out. So, that was great. That's good. I've always wanted to do like a

propaganda movie, voiceover propaganda film from World War II. Hey there, G.I. In 1911, what was happening in Alaska for your audiobook? 1911 was, that was James Carroll's first year of trapping on the Salmon River off the porcupine.

Not a context. Wow. He wasn't eating carp. Yeah, that's the book. Steve did his book as one of the Steve reads books, so you ain't got to. Because it was James Carroll's book, his first 10 years in Alaska. Yeah, sorry. No, we'll return to the claims made by this.

We won't go line by line, but basically all of those things are wrong. If you want to see if the meat is wholesome, you can refer to Steve's carp a la beer episode that just launched on YouTube. It's great. Dr. Randall's heavily featured in it. The recipes, I think we might need to try carp jelly. for the next one, because it calls that out specifically twice. Millions of carp, most carp are used for, most commercial carp, are used for fertilizer or they're exported. And they claim it must be good to eat because so many are getting eaten.

So I looked up a couple reviews on the Food Network. There's two restaurants that are famous for their carp, both in Omaha, Nebraska. Yeah, this Joe Test one I said people like. Joe Test, so we'll read two reviews, a highlight and a low light. Is it carp ribs they serve there? There's a couple things. just Lisa underscore 721. Five stars.

Love this place. Go for the carp, not the mac and cheese. This is an old time cafe with amazing potatoes. Don't think of it as a Michelin restaurant, but it has the best fish, best potatoes, and really awesome coleslaw. Robert C. on the other hand, one star. Don't believe what you see on TV.

Try the two-piece fried carp. One was the rib section, which was good, but seasonless. The other was the tail with barely any meat and looked very unappetizing. We need to dress something here real quick. Restaurants often call fish something that it's not. And there's a bunch of different kinds of carp. So what kind of carp are these restaurants serving?

Allegedly common carp, which we'll get into, because apparently the Asian carp doesn't taste quite as good. Yeah, and then there's buffalo too. Well, yeah, but buffalo is not a carp. It's not a carp, right? It gets mixed in a lot. It does get mixed in. But I've eaten several pounds of the quote, unquote, silver carp.

And it is tasteless. Like there is no flavor to that. So, so it's like a positive review though. For most people, it is an extremely positive review, right? Because like you fry it and it tastes like,

it's like tofu. Yeah, it's like, it's like, it tastes like whatever you put on it. We should point out too that I looked at the comments on your carp video and everybody is quick to point out that there are cultures all over the world that have very delicious ways of preparing carp.

Although, it seems like there's a great deal of variability when it comes to different species and also the water that they're coming out of and the temperature of the water. And that's, we'll skip through some of the Asian carp stuff and just focus on common. But it seems that for good carp cultivation, you got to be real dialed in on water quality, which they are in the UK and France. So for any diehard trivia listeners out there, you may know that I don't know Jack about fishing. So when I was doing this research, I found it extremely surprising. that there's like a big dedicated carp community out here. That loves them.

They're badass fish to catch. And they treat them as like a naturalized fish here in the States. Thoughts. I don't think they treat them as a naturalized fish. I think there's maybe a handful of people. But like, I fish a lot. Seth fish is a lot. We don't treat them like a naturalized.

I think there's some carp apologists out there. But I think there are people that have flats boats in this valley. That's focused on car. To go fish carp on Kenya fair. My most memorable fish fight. Real flat boats. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, my most memorable fish fight on the little Miami River growing up was a big ass carp that just ran.

Yeah. Just took out drag. Super cool fish. And yeah, for like fly fishermen in Montana. The poor man's bone fish. Who always give me a brig. Oh, brilliant. How many people are you like, oh yeah, trout took me into my backing?

In the back of your mind, you're like, yeah. because you don't know how to fight a fish. You know, but you hook into a carp that's going to take you into your back. And it's like a really cool. Yeah. It's fun. I caught one in downtown Denver on the plant river.

And on my foreweight, that was like the best fight I've ever had on a fly rod. Yeah, very cool. I will, I will tell you, like, the, I was blown away by how, like, highly edible the carp were in Tennessee that was on Lake Kentucky Lake and excellent bass fishery oh my God the crazy fishery in general but the carp situation there's way out of hand and I was fishing with Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency and they have a bumper pole deep fat friar that they

take places oh and they just show people how tasty carp is. They're like, any way you want to catch it, shoot it, whatever. But it's awesome food, too. God, we should get those guys on the next video. Yeah, for sure. We can make that happen. They probably wouldn't recommend carp a la beer, though. Yeah, they'd recommend carp and beer. Yeah, yeah, fried carp and beer. Nate, what's your, what's this giant carp photo I'm seeing? Yeah, this takes us to the current US carp record. Craig Budo, reporting on our very own media.com, turn me on to this story and said we had talked to this guy. So I call up Scott Lennox, expecting to get a few laughs about catching a monster fish that nobody cares about. And boy,

was I wrong. Scott comes from a long line of dedicated trophy carp fishermen with adventures from UK, France, Cyprus, and now California. In the UK, trophy carp fishing, it's like akin to red stag hunting. Those guys, they're dedicated carp ponds with decades old fish that have names and histories, an entire industry built around them. Carp men will take... You've got to get reservations, become part of clubs. Yes. Got it.

Yeah. It's very exclusive. Guys will take 10-day trips to France, paying thousands of dollars in the hope to catch like Big John or Eric's Common Arnold or something like that. And so after Craig, or I'm sorry, Scott moved to California and finding a distinct lack of the trophy carp industry, he began his journey to become a backcountry carp fisherman. And I'm not kidding, man.

Please explain that part to me. This guy will back. pack into lakes and rivers with a full setup to fish for carp for six days straight, seven day straight, and the hope to catch a monster. He's got scouts out. He's got a whole carp community that trades intel and are finding the good lakes. Um, and his on this specific trip, I do this dude is so this guy is more dedicated. There's a first light line of clothing there. Yeah. He took a, a beach chair and an umbrella and sat by his poles. around the clock.

And then eventually he was like, I can't do this for six days at a time and he's upgraded to a cot and a tent and you know, your normal macuchaman. Well, I'll tell you what, he doesn't have competition. You don't know so surprisingly.

So two things on the competition front. He will not give up his spots, not because he doesn't want to engage other carp hunters, because he doesn't want bow fishermen coming in and's killing his big car. He's very, very sensitive. that. And he treats a carp like a dude would treat like a big old sturgeon. Like he's so invested in caring for that carp and putting it back. I mean, it's amazing. So on this trip,

he goes out, his goal is to catch a 30 pounder. On day three, he gets skunked for two days. Day three, he hooks into a 50 pounder, doesn't have any evidence or proof he doesn't have a certified scale, just snaps a picture. His buddy comes out, he's on like hot standby for big carp alert. His buddy comes out, has the official scale. And Scott gets a 60, 64-pound carp, which beats the current U.S. record by two pounds. This photo shows all that is, man. He's just a good, good beard, good fish. Or if he pulls a scale off of those and, like, makes a necklace or something.

No, he doesn't, he doesn't do anything to it. He lets just, he wants it to be as healthy. He's going to go back and get it when it's 65 pounds. Exactly. His brother, who's a big, like, tournament carp guy in the UK, bought his flights the next day to come to the California and target big backcountry carp. So he's flying in for the UK. This is great.

It's amazing. Phil, we got to go to Cyprus for carp fishing and one of the few international Benegans locations. Sign me up. All right. Well, I think that does it for this week. Tune in next week. We've got some out-of-town guests coming to take over the news show. That's right.

Brent Reeves, Tony Peterson, Maggie Hudlow, Jordan Sillers, and Mark Kenyon, although no longer an out-of-earned. of town guests, I suppose, just a guest. They are taking over the news desk, so tune in, and then the week after that, Stephen Ruella will be back here. Thanks for watching. This is an I-Heart podcast.

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