The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 920: News from the Fish Shack - Cornell Bans Butchering, The Alaska Fishing Report, and America’s Youth Speak Out

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater Crew discuss: Saving ducks from botulism; Alaska fishing conditions; why kids these days are so screwed up; and more! Presented by Can-Am: maker of the best ATVs, SxS, and Utility Vehicles www.can-am.brp.com 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. Hey, your neighbor? You know that guy your neighbor? He's been out there all summer. He's hanging cameras. He's watching the photos roll in. He knows where that buck is bedding, where he's feeding.

He's pinpointing where he needs to be on opening day. You've seen the pictures, and you know the deer is there. The question isn't whether that buck gets shot this fall. The question is whether it's your story or his. So tip the odds in your favor with the on-x hunt app, trail, camera, analysis, hyper-local wind and weather forecasts, and the insights to act on what you're seeing. Don't show up to opening day empty-handed. Bring on X-Hunt.

Hunting season is right around the corner, and first light season opener sale kicks off August 18. You can save up to 40% site-wide, and this year they're rolling out new 24-hour daily deals throughout the sale. So it's worth checking back every day because those deals are going to change. There are also a few pieces I really like that are on sale for the first time ever, including the 308 pant and navigator hoodie. If you've been waiting to replace some worn out gear, fill a hole in your system, or just get ready for the season. Now's the time.

Head over to firstlight.com and gear up for the season. Welcome to the news show, everybody. This is a field report. This is a special edition of the news show where we're reporting from the field. What is it called in the news? Like, where the guy is out in the field? in the field correspondent. Yeah.

Like if there's a picture that it's like a hurricane and I'm the guy out being like, it's getting very windy. Yeah, Johnny on the spot. Field correspondent. We're like that guy. We're sitting on Seth's a frame porch on an island in southeast Alaska.

Seth was a great neighbor to a point. And we're over at his place. He built his outdoor shower so that my place where I go to take a whiz off my area, my ledge, now when I take a whiz, I have to look at Seth's, some of his garbage, and his outdoor shower. So I'm going to put an outdoor shower where he has to look at my outdoor shower. You guys can wave to each other.

Well, yeah. Is it been a problem? No, but I keep expecting it to be. do you think we're just going to see you taking a leak? Is that, is that? Then I'm going to be out there, you know, shaking her off or something, and I'm going to look over and now you're going to be staring at me. Scrubbing your pits.

And just, I don't know. Well, here's the thing. We shower once it's dark for the most part. Oh, you do? Yeah. That's when I like. We haven't, we haven't, I don't think we've done a daytime shower yet. So this show is going to, this new show is going to be a little bit different.

We are going to have, we have some news coming in. the end. There's some hot news coming in the end, but we're going to be heavy on the our news section. Because we're going to talk about, we're going to do a field report reporting from Alaska or fishing. We're going to be talking to some of tomorrow's anglers, today's youth.

They're going to come do a quick interview. We've got three of them lined up, young men. All you people that think that the world's going to hell and the kids these days and all that, all your worst fears will be realized. When we conduct a series of interviews, with like the worst of the worst.

We have, what, a 14 and 2 16s? You have almost 15. Yeah, we got like basically a 15 and 2 16s. They're going to come on. You're going to realize just how bad things are when they come on and share their thoughts. It's worse than you think. And then we're going to get us some new stuff.

We got grizzly bear. We got kind of an interesting deal with grizzly bears up in Canada. We got an interesting thing about shooting, drones with TSS and our continued reporting on TSS. We got some news from Cornell, my new enemies, Cornell University. Used to love them. Now they're my enemies. Really?

Why's that? I'll tell you. And then we're going to go to a pre-recorded interview with someone from Ducks Unlimited about a botulism. Get this. A botulism outbreak. Killing thousands of ducks right now, a botulism out. Right, killing thousands of wild ducks.

Weird. You know. But for starters, we're going to announceing, here's the, I've been dying to talk about this, we haven't talked about it yet. The Christmas tour, this year's Christmas tour is coming up. This time we're hitting last year's Christmas tour is down south. It was kind of like the Yankees come down south. You know, like Sherman's March all over again.

Yeah. You guys wrecked that place. Yeah, we wrecked it. But this is more in the Midwest. So we're going to do. This year's Christmas tour, where you come out all theater shows, a night of entertainment, guaranteed laughs, live music, you name it. Monday, December 14th, we're going to be in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Okay? That Monroe Live, 20 Monroe Live, what does that mean? That's a theater. Grand Rapids, Michigan, so very close to where I grew up. That's where I went to regular college. That's where I finished regular college was in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Tuesday, December 15th, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Turner Hall. Wednesday, December 16th, Madison, Wisconsin, Barrymore.

I'm a feeling there's going to be a lot of people that aren't from Madison there asking why it was in Madison. I'm not following. That happens a lot. Like, the people that come to the show aren't actually from Madison. Like, they're coming in from the country to know of the big city. I can't believe you had it in Madison. I got to come into Madison, all these hippies, you know.

So come tell me all about that. That's at the Barrymore. Clay Newcomb, Brent Reeves, me, Janice, Patelis, is in the live tour this year. Great show. Again, live music, guaranteed laughs, lots of prizes. Thursday, December 17th. So December 17th, the meet you to Christmas tour, Des Moines, Iowa, at the Val Air. ballroom. Friday,

December 18th, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Pantages Theater. Then the tour closes, the sixth night of the tour, Saturday, December 19, Fargo, North Dakota, Fargo, theater.

Is there any, like, special guests? We'll get to all that later. Yeah. We'll announce that later. December 14, Grand Rapids, December 15th, Milwaukee. December 16th, Madison, Wisconsin, December 17th, Des Moines, Iowa, December 18th, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 19th, Fargo, North Dakota. Guaranteed last, lots of prizes, Me Eaters Christmas tour. Also, the punt gun that we shot and made our punt gun video about, we bought it for 20 grand from Rock Island, which is a premier auction site for antique firearms and other firearms.

We're selling it back. We're selling it at Rock Island. All money goes to conservation. The auction is on August 23rd. It's part of Rock Island's August premier auction. It is a two-gauge, two-gauge. Holland and Holland punt gun features 95% of its original paint, custom engravings. And it works.

When we bought it, we didn't know if it works. It works. We shot it six times. We have the shell casings. You can have a functioning gun and you can watch a video of it working. Very rarely on Rock Island does a punt gun come up. But this is happening, August 23rd. Rock Island is the world's biggest auction house for antique and historic firearms. They sell, for you punt gun enthusiasts out there, they sell less than one punt gun every year. It's how rare this is. This is the, only punt gun rock island has ever sold that they know for a fact works how's that for a superlative yeah the only one the one and only oh jeremy ramero's here he's not normal on the news show did they know when you bought it from the first time did they know that it worked no we had to find out that it worked gotcha it definitely works works great the only punt gun that has ever sold on rock island that works, well, that they know works.

Yeah. It's like when dirt, when we found out dirt has a narwhal allergy. Many people probably have narwhal allergies, but they don't know. They don't have the opportunity to find out. But he has a certified narwhal allergy. Now when dirt goes to restaurants and they say any allergies, dirt can now say, which I'm jealous of, he can say narwhal. So what? Did he eat narwhal?

He ate it and it took him four times to figure out that that's what was getting them. His throat chokes up. He turns bright red, gets all itchy. Oh, yeah. When he eats narwhal. The fourth time, we ate a good bit of it. And then he finally got it in his head. He's like, I have a narwhal allergy.

I know I do now. I didn't know what's been happening, but the four times I've eaten it, I've had an immediate reaction. Dirt is allergic to narwhal. Interesting. We bought the punt gun for $20,000. Rock Island estimates, estimates,

Estimates, yeah, estimates that it will sell for between 20 and 30 grand. It's a good chunk of change for conservation. How should you guys get it for? Two people out there that want to take your turn to own on in the punt gun. If the punt gun goes for less than we bought it, that's a real kick to the nuts for us. Yeah. Because we went and got the trouble. We're giving you a shell casing and the gun works.

You guys custom made those cases too, right? Custom casings. Yeah, and they're not cheap either, right? No. every dollar goes to the meat eater land access initiative Rock Island is even waiving their fees so that even more money goes to conservation August 23rd

you don't need to be in person to bid when Spencer Newhart won it at auction he won it remotely is there do you know if there's a minimum bid or how they're doing it don't know rock island auction dot com is a great question but I can't answer Check out. It's lot 3386. Get your own punt gun. So you're selling one shell with it so they can...

We're throwing in a shell so you can bring it to your machine just to have mock up the shell. And we'll tell you everything we know about shooting it. Shoot's great. Shoots great. Last little bit of deal here. The season opener sale. So Meat Eater Season opener sale is live and it's the best time to gear up for your hunt. Buy one, get one free on all meat eater teas and hoodies.

50% off select game bags. Plus get deals on our favorite hunting gear from First Light, Phelps game calls, FHF, Moultrie, Yeti, and more. You can even save on our most popular seasonings and trivia games. Head over to themeatheaterstore.com to gear up for your hunt season opener sale. Okay, time for our news.

Fishing Report. Fishing has been, spectacular like almost as good as a weather which is like spectacular equally odd yeah some years are good

some years are not good I don't know what it is it's just been a stellar year for fishing I when I come up here I usually expect it to be half the day's decent half the day's slow like you know

temper your expectations but yeah it's been amazing and mixed bag a little bit of everything yeah yeah mixed bag. You know, King salmon numbers have been down and there's been a lot of restrictions

on King salmon. They must be having pretty good returns in BC in British Columbia, I'm guessing. Because a couple of years this time of year, it's just closed, close, no retention on Kings. Then it was like you could have one, you could have two, but you can, a non-resident

can catch a couple of kings. It's been pretty predictable, the last, barely predictable the last, what, two, three, years. I don't know if that's because we figured out how to fish for them. I know exactly what is.

It's flutter jigs. Yeah. I think so. We should be talking about this. No. Giving it away. I'll tell you what doesn't work. Scratch that.

Scratch what I said. We used to jig a lot of halibut with leadhead jigs and grub, what do you call them? Twist. Twisters. Big glow, glow ones. Kings don't hit them.

Nope. But kings like, pinks like flutter jigs. Everything likes flutter jigs. Yeah. Kings hit flutter jigs. Deep. So, what's that? And deep.

Yeah. Real deep. Yeah, that's the weird thing too about kings is that they're like, just ways that you don't picture king salmon is we get some kings scattered. But, you know, we hook kings that are grabbing a flutter jig that's banging the bottom in 180 feet of water, 200 feet of water. Yeah. Yeah. He's down there grubbing. grubbing in the mud, which is not how you picture of King Salmon.

Yeah, and you can expect, I don't know, a couple of good opportunities a day. No. You screwed one up yesterday. I screwed one up. Brody's boy, he'll be on talking about this in a minute. I'm not going to talk about it. I wasn't in your boat. Well, he'll talk.

Well, I asked him about it. I brought one up today. That was 27 inches. 27 inches. Yeah, there's a minimum for 28. I threw a 26, I threw a 26 can. back. We got a legal one today. Hayden got a legal one today.

Well, it's a little confusing when you hook them, right? Because you're dropping your bottom fishing for halibet and cod expecting to really set the hook and something. That's going to give you some fight and you set the hook and your line just goes slack before you know it. You're reeling as fast as you can to catch up to it.

It's like you're processing it all that's happening, yeah. That's a weird thing about King Salmon psychology is like a halibut he wants nothing to do with that boat. He wants nothing to do with the surface of the ocean. He wants that bottom bad.

In his mind, he's like, I'm not leaving the bottom. And he's also not going laterally. No. He's like, I'm going to stay. Unless you catch him shallow. Right. Then they freaking run like. Yeah, Seth would have a big one real shallow and then it took off.

Right. Yeah. But normally they stay glued to the bottom. Yeah. But yeah, you're reeling. Nothing's happening. And you're like, what's going on? and then 50 yards from the boat,

a king salmon's jumping out of the water. If you want to think of it spatially, picture that you're standing at a urinal. Like, looking down, a king wants to be around that hole that the pee drains down. Like, he's like just down. You mean a halibut.

A halibut. A halibut. Wants to be down in there. Yep. And a king wants to be up by the handle. The flush handle. A king's the spray that's coming out and hitting you in the,

In the knees. Yeah. But why a King Salmon is weird that a King Salmon thinks the way he does? What does he think? Like, you haven't even, even if you haven't even put pressure on him yet. No. No. They're up.

He just, just the fact that he has a hook in his lip makes him want to come up and breach the surface. Yeah. And that's when things are going to go wrong. Yeah. That's when I get it. Well, you have to back your drag off, right? Because your drag's tight for a hell of it. So the moment you feel like it's a king.

Oh, he's got three miles of slack, but it's, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're, like, reeling up as fast as you can, trying to back your drag off at the same time, and then fighting them at the salmon. The only problem with the flutter jig is that just they're heavy. And once they get out of the water with those things, they shake them all.

Yeah, I always think maybe he's going to knock himself out. Just lay there in the water. There were a few times in years past where we just never took a net with us. So getting those kings into the boat, that was stressful. Yeah. Because you got to know, they're legal and then you got to get a gaff in them while they're going.

Yeah, you got sort of like rough gauge them. Yeah. I learned the thing today that I didn't know. I just heard it. Maybe a rumor. Doesn't sound like a rumor. I heard today that a friend of a friend, there's a fish called a yellow eye rock fish, you're allowed.

Right now a non-resident is allowed. What? this gets so complicated. We've talked about it before, but yeah. Alaska regulates rockfish in sort of, not by species, but almost like by classification of rockfish. Kind of where they live. Yeah.

So you have pelagic rockfish, shelf rockfish, and slope rock fish, and each of those buckets has specimens in the buckets. But there is one rockfish, the yellow eye rockfish, that you have to log the catch. If you're a non-resident. You have to log the catch. They're one a year. I heard today

and I didn't know this and I'm going to be way more diligent about it going forward. I didn't know that it was this quick because we'll come back at night. I don't want to incriminate myself. I didn't know it was immediate. I heard sometimes you just do it.

The app makes it easier once you get used to the app. I kind of forgot about the app, but the app makes it easier. A guy caught a yellow eye, ADFG, must have been watching with binoculars. They waited 13 minutes. Oh, for him to...

Approached his boat and gave him a citation for not logging his yellow eye. Yeah, that's like big game. Fill out your carcass tag immediately. Yeah, they treat it like no different. And I didn't, I just like, just ignorance on my part, not doing, not doing my work to, to read the regs carefully. I did not know that it meant like the second you caught it. Yeah. We're always, you know, I'm just, like I said, just I'm just admitting the guilt, you know, we'll be like,

Oh, don't forget. Well, so many of those things in other states are like 24 hours. Yeah. Yeah, like we catch a bobcat. You got 24 hours to report the bobcat. I had no idea that you have to immediately, like, put it in your cooler and act like you're tagging it. Yeah, I think it says it in the regs immediately upon. It's probably this, I don't know if it would be just yellow eye.

Would it be that way for ling cod and king? Kings. Yeah, of the rockfish. So sablefish. Yep. All the non-resident, like. Sable fish. Kings, Yellow Eyes.

Lincod. Salmon shark. Lings. Ling cod. That's good to know. Log it immediately. That's a public service announcement for you anglers out there.

Log your stuff. I didn't know. But I can tell you what. Going forward. Well, like you said, I'm a Johnny logbook, man. I'm going to log them when I hook into them. Yeah.

Yeah, the app makes sense. With a yellow eye, you kind of can. Pull your phone. They don't get away much. Yeah. So, Kyah, who you'll be hearing from, we're going to do a quick interview with him. Just part of America's terrible youth. He caught his yellow. I went out and tried to get his yellow.

Took him a whole week to do it. I watched it happen this morning. And my little boy was like, get the gap, get the gap. I'm like, that fish, he can't get away if you wanted to. That fish ain't gone nowhere. Yeah. You can bring him halfway up and he can get off and they'll eventually. You'll eventually.

Well, you know, you know, what i've i've seen that happen two times i have two times seen yellow eyes in 300 feet of water come off somewhere on the journey up and i'm not kidding you 10 minutes later whatever there's a yellow eye floating there yeah as much as he got barrel trauma he got enough barrel trauma before he shook the hook did he came off as much as he'd like to get back down there he can't do it can't yeah with those things you feel like you get a couple headshakes in the beginning and then it's just like dragging up something yeah heavy and they got they got a good five seconds of fight yeah then they're done you know but you're digging that automatic that automatic uh release dissender thing you're using

yeah we had a guy on this here's another hot tip for anglers man we had a guy on from i think he was he was he was nature yeah we had he's from nature conservancy and he brought so in Alaska and this is true in other places too but in Alaska if you're fishing if you're fishing I can't think if you're fishing rock fish or there's the potential to catch rock fish whatever it is you have to have a dissender device with you there's a lot of fish species Goliath groupers are one I think and all the rockfish are one that they don't they don't they can't equalize well so when they do a sudden when they do a sudden pressure change from going from deep to shallow,

their swim bladder can't regulate. Like a halibah can't. Like you can take a halibut from 500 feet of water to the surface and he can just swim back down. But a rockfish has to very slowly do it like a scuba diver. He has to do a slow ascend. So they regulate that you have on board a decender device. This guy gave us these pressure sensitive descenders.

And you can set at 100, 200, 300, 300. Yep. And normally you're trying to put this little needle in his lip. Oh, and you're getting all those rockfish have spines. Oh, yeah. And then you're keeping him longer. Yeah. He's can't, he's not cooperating because he don't know what's going on.

You're trying to explain to him. It's like, listen, dude, I'm trying to send you back to the bottom of the ocean. Calm down. Yeah. This descender has like a little plier on it. It's like it's the most ingenious. It's called the sequelizer. It's almost like the jaws on a boga grip.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. sequelizer. It's got the perfect grip for grabbing him. You grab his lip and it goes, you set it to whatever. If you're fishing around 100 feet of water, set it to 100 feet. Go down and it just lets the fish go. I watch them on my fish finder.

The thing is, the thing is unbelievably accurate. And see the fish keep going, yeah. You'll see, you'll be watching that thing go down. It'll get you 100 and all of a sudden like the fish breaks off. You guys breaks right. your brakes right and goes and like slowly makes his way down man yeah we're great

yeah i've been using that old old school dissender and that's that's a pain yeah upside down bobby pin looking deal i highly recommend the sequelizer dissender if you're a person who lives in these areas but think we're discussing is the peacot deal because halibut have all the cachet people want to come catch a halibut

when you leave in the morning you say we're going for halibut but more and more i'm going for pacot oh we go pacific cod yeah you're hoping for those big waves of just cod after cod it's so much better that is an eaten fish so much better because you're here to collect food it ain't about like i don't need a big fight out of that thing it is it is an eaten it is an eaten fish yeah we had cod deer night that we had hell last night it's like cod is just a better fish yep i agree they call them gray cod or pacific cod far superior fish not a big fight you're gonna get some some people writing in about that i bet soft mouths you can't you got wrong people you got to uh you can't really set the hook real hard on them no you'll yeah you'll tear them you know soft mouths soft bodies annoying to flay yep very

knowing to fly. Why is that? Because it's of their body doesn't have rigidity. Like, flaying a halib is elegant. Yeah. Flaying a peacock is like, you just feel like you never do it the same way twice. It's like a train wreck. It's like flaying, it's like flaying catfish. Yeah, kind of, yeah. That's true.

Big head. A peacod likes that jig tickling the mud now and then. Yep. I think he's down there. And they don't whack it. Sometimes it's just, you know, a little tickle and p. That's a hell of fish. That's a frying.

The frying is. The fronest of all fish. Oh, here's another gear report. So the sequelizer is a hell of a piece of equipment. I bought a ceramic fishing night. Because you never have to worry. It doesn't get rusty. Like a flame knife.

No, it's a serrated. It looks like a pairing knife. It's serrated and it's ceramic. You just leave it on your boat. Never gets rusty. Nice. Well, we went to kill a fish with it and the tip broke off and then I dropped it over to side of the boat.

so I don't know I should be one of those guys that goes on Amazon and gives it a bad review one star fell over the side of the boat it's like you're like going to buy a product on Amazon and you're reading the reviews and people are giving it bad reviews

for stuff like that has nothing to do with the product whatsoever you know but I think I'm on to something with a ceramic fish knife if you can keep from losing over the side of the boat I have to check it out

Do they stay pretty sharp? Didn't have it long enough. I dropped over the side of the boat right off the bat. Those are incomplete gear report. I'll have to come back for part two of this gear report. But if anyone's got a hot tip about that, I'd be curious to hear their hot tip. Radio experience with Cameron Wickcombe. Live at the Rhyman.

You and a pal with flights and two nights in Nashville. To see Cameron Whitcomb at the legendary Riemann Auditorium. Plus, a thousand dollars. spending caps. Just listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes a day on the free IHard radio app and you're in to win. Cameron Wilcombe. Stream the new single Kingdom of Fear. Available now.

Meat Eater's season opener sale is live. And if you've been waiting to gear up for your hunt, now's the time. Buy one, get one free on all Meat Eater teas and hoodies. 50% off select game bags and deals on gear from some of our favorite brands. First Light, Phelps, FHF, Multery, Yeti, and more. And for after the hunt, we have a limited time offer to save on our most popular seasonings

like backstrap brew, campfire crust, and backcountry bark. Or get the six-pack to try them all. Our favorite time of year is right around the corner. Head over to the meat eater store.com to check out our season opener sale. Okay, you guys ready to bring over our first interview subject? Yeah.

Yeah. We're going to dig into America's youth. Who wants to start? Hayden? Come on over. Brody's boy Hayden's coming over. Here he is. Hayden, how, uh, Hayden Henderson, introduce yourself. Hi. My name's Hayden. I'm Brody's kid. And tell everybody what you've been doing with your time after school. Running for cross country mostly. Okay. Yesterday we had a situation. Here's what one of the things I want to ask.

ask you about. Yesterday we had a situation where you weren't breaking along because we were in salt water. You had a king, salmon attack your flutter jig. And as happens, well, a couple things happens.

I think they swipe at the flutter jig and get hooked. Or I think sometimes they get lip hooked. But when they're rolling around, they get the assist hook. One of the assist hooks in their tail and then their lip hook dislodges and then he's in the tail. but either way he came up ass backward.

Yeah. He was chill. He comes up to the surface. Nice big king. Definitely 28 inch king. I grabbed the net. I go in for a scoop and miss. Ooh.

Fish is gone. Ooh. Did you, and I want you to level with me. When you run that through your head, do you think that gentleman was just trying, just trying to help.

Or do you feel like, do you feel like, um, like I cost you that fish? No, it was fighting weird. It was fighting like a halbit. It didn't burn up to the surface.

It was pulling down. And then you said you just hesitated when it came to the surface and you just paused and was too slow with the net. Yeah, but how have you, how did it change our relationship? He lost it for you. Mm-hmm.

Were you thinking, like this is a man who's netted many kings. He shouldn't be able, he shouldn't make a mistake like that or things happened. Or like I knew he would do that. He wasn't talking bad about you behind your back. It must be, it must, some with you and the Henderson's because I, I witnessed out here. That's, that's the thing. Last year.

I have lost a lot of Henderson fish. We got two more to go. To the point where I think they're like, he feels like if he can't have him, no one can't. I don't even go in Steve's boat. Something's a little fishy. It'll happen to me if I go in Steve's boat. Brody's wife, for instance. Yep.

Wasn't even in Steve's boat. Yeah, Brody's wife. Nice halibut. Yeah, in her own boat. Not even a part of her boat. I climbed aboard her boat and lost her out. You weren't super bummed out. I'm like, let me in there.

Let me in there. No, because I also got that king today. Yeah. Yeah, made up for it. Yeah, it all worked out. And he spent a boat with me a bunch losing fish for him, screaming at him for doing it wrong. It happens. So it didn't shake anything up?

No. What was the highlight of your trip, your weak fishing? It might have been today, because today started off kind of slow, but then we went and got three slot link cods. I got my king salmon. So it was a pretty good day. Yeah, your family went from no legal lincod. We should explain that. You want to talk about it tricky.

Yeah, that's tough. to regulation tight slot a link out has to be between 30 and 35 inches to keep it can i can i can i jump in one year it left it was what four or five years ago it's 30 to 45 you know and they knocked it 30 30 to 40 something and now it's 30 to 35 i'm waiting for it to go 30 to 30 31 oh which we would have had a league we would have had one the other had one too uh yeah yeah it's a tight slot it's a tight slot it's a tight slot 30 35 we had an over we had an over slot fish today we had two under slot fish yeah but brodie did uh you guys did kind of a miracle thing and and hit in one day hit three slot fish yeah they're click those are they're so

cool those fish yeah i should clarify you're allowed one over you're technically allowed two link hot a year because you're allowed one over 55 but those don't exist oh my god if you get one you're looking at a state record the state record is 55 inches yeah yeah the world the world it might be the world right They're letting you keep a new record. Yeah. It's hard to imagine a 55 inch link cut. I used to think that we were going to catch one. When they're 35. And then Seth looked it up.

I was like, there's got to be a bunch of them out there. And Seth's like, well, it would be, he's like, Seth. I think I said the world record was 54. Wow. Yeah, it's 54 or 55 inches, something like that. Yeah, something. I'm sure they exist. But interestingly, for a while, the state record link cut, I don't know about now, but the state

record link cod was only from about 7, 8 miles from here. I remember from the 80s. The state record might be the world. I remember looking that up. Like who's going to beat it? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, but some mean, cool fish. So, tell me, so today

you liked it because it started out of slow bite and then you got onto a hot bite. You guys brought in a lot of kelp greenling. Yeah. Oh, I love that fish. You know, big ones too. Yeah. And then, uh, you got a king. You got those link cods. Got some black rock.

Got some black rock fish. That's the pelagic rock fish, which you're allowed a couple of day, a few a day, something like that. Yeah. Do you imagine coming and fishing again next year, Hayden? Yeah. Let's say there was a track. Let's say there was a cross-country race and you had to decide what would be more important to you. There's some backstory to this. We do the youth hunt together and I'm missing it because I have a varsity cross-country race. How do they already know they're going to have a race that day. Because they just like schedule. This far in advance.

Yeah. You couldn't say like, well, hey, I got a conflict. No, because they're like scheduled by each school. I'm not sure which one it is. Call the principal or something. You think that's something that they would look into. Yeah, like, well, they'd be like, hey, boys, anybody got any hunts playing or anything? We're trying to plan at cross-country race.

I mean, it is Montana. I don't think the race is during the youth season, but it would be during the trip out. to the camp. So when you look at those race schedule, it doesn't say for date, it doesn't say youth season. But they might be totally, meaning they might be totally unaware of the conflict.

You got to answer Steve's question, though. Would you skip a week here? For a week here? Yeah. Because this is really my- skip a race. Yeah. This is really only one chance,

but I have more opportunities to go get a deer. Yeah, that's true. That is true. Any final things you like to add? No. Not really. What do you think is wrong with kids these days? Like, why are you guys so terrible?

Just look at Jimmy. It's that thing in his hand right there. Outrunning cross-country fishing. Whatever having to the old kind of kids. What did they do? They played Pac-Man and Frogger. Anything you'd like to add, Hayden? No.

Wish you'd best luck. So you're trying to be varsity. You're trying to be varsity cross country, which means you're playing up. You're dating up. Yeah. Our team had seven seniors graduate, which is like a whole varsity roster. So I'm assuming. So also there might be room for you.

Yeah. But you're going to be at what grade? 10th grade, sophomore. Okay. Hmm. Got it. And you're looking forward to this opportunity. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Now, one last question for you. This is through the school, not through like league or club or something. Yeah, it's the school cross-country team. Got it. So you got like little jerseys and everything? Yeah. Okay. Do you think you're good enough to play college? No. I'd go into college for sports was never playing, really. That's not what you want out of life?

No, I don't think so. maybe. Maybe. Can you go to college for fishing these days? Not halibah fishing. No, but bass fish. You gotta go fish little teeny fish. You gotta fish teeny fish

to go to college for it. Isn't that weird? Some of the halibut we're catching out here are smaller than... Yeah, they're small. Large mouth that I've got before. The potential, the potential. That's true.

All right, Hayden, thanks for joining, man. Thanks for having it. We're going to bring on our next terrible kid. Who's up? James? Come on James Ladies and gentlemen We're stepping up in age

This is what happens This is what happens to a kid When he hits 16 He wears his sunglasses He wears his sunglasses at night Which I recently learned That's from a song James

What's been the highlight of your trip Um Probably attempting to shoot a salmon In the salt water Because freshwater isn't legal Spearfish a salmon Spear fishing salmon sphere fishing exam.

Yeah. What would give me a better one because give me, give me something like a rod and reel highlight. That big link cod, that Kaya hook today, who will be coming on soon and that Matthew landed,

that was over the slot. Mm-hmm. So right now you can keep him 30 to 35 inches and this one was 38. So it was over the slot. I think he was bigger. I didn't even straighten him out. I just,

like, I held the, he wasn't even straight. and I held the the I got like a flexible tape measure you know and I just saw 38 and I'm like he's so crooked he's 38 so I just knew he wasn't a contender yeah that was the highlight of the trip do you got a better one one I don't know like Kaya caught his yellow eye like oh okay I caught a slot link guy he'll probably talk about this but usually when we go fish yellow eye because it's a one of year fish it's kind of like you just drop down and get it when either the weather's really bad or you have 20 minutes to burn I mean, and we spent, what, eight hours? I mean, like an incredible amount of time kind of good. We thought he was cursed. The first day, I said, I'm going to get my yellow eye.

And like three minutes later, I had him in my hand. Jimmy got his yellow eye kind of on accident. And we kept being like, let's go get Kai's yellow eye. And just that kid, we'll be hearing from him. How do you, here's a question I'd like to ask you. How do you select? Because Kyya was your guest. You brought a guest up to your family.

place. How did you make your selection? Well, Kai always works really hard because he works in the flagship store in Bozeman. But before that, he's always had an interest in like salt water fishing because his family never, as you know, didn't have any sort

of interest in like hunting or fishing. And when that started to become a little bit more prevalent when he was friends with me, he started to like saltwater fish and started to get more interested in that. So over the two years that I've known him, that just became more and more of a thing. So I thought that he'd be a good person to have up here and try fishing. And then how are you feeling about the decision to bring a friend up?

I think it was a good idea. I think Cock of the Cove is in his reach. Yeah. Yeah. He could be in the running for Cog of the Cove. Yeah. The running. I guess you're running.

Yeah. So your highlights were all around your friend. Yeah. Now, but your other highlight was trying to get a salmon with a spear gun. Yeah. Which is difficult. Very. More difficult than I would have imagined.

Yeah. But you've done it successfully before. Yeah. More in a different creek than that, when they're a little bit more packed together and not as spooky. But I think because it's a little bit later and the seals have been chasing them around and the water quality is so, terrible that just trying to get one in range is a little bit more difficult. Yeah. So one, just be clear here since we're law dog and like, you just said in a creek, can you

explain what you mean by the different creek? Not in a creek, but outside of the mouth of a creek, there's like where the saltwater reaches the freshwater if you go just beyond that to where it's actually legal. There's two that are kind of bordering next to each other, but there's two different species of salmon that run. there we have pink salmon um that run in the one to the left and then in the one to the right there's more silvers and pinks which is a little bit um and silvers hold up a little bit better in a freezer so that's the one that i was trying to get one closer to that so the regs work that you can't spear a salmon

in fresh water um so you need to imagine the contour the shoreline contours and draw line where you like imagine that the stream isn't there so it's a little estuary or mouth or whatever is off limits but you can be out beyond that line if you imagine the shoreline contour where the creek flows in you can be out and salt out there but you're sort of targeting fish that are congregating to run yeah you're just getting them because especially if you go while the tide's falling um the fish will like be pushed out into um the ocean a little bit more and that's where you can try to shoot them then. And what are they doing, Jim, when they see you moving around or they

split it? Yeah, they don't like it at all. But what kind of gives you an advantage is if you run closer to the bank, those big schools when they're coming at you will split on either side and because they kind of don't know what's doing, just follow the other fish, like the one in front of them. If you try to cut off the group that's going along, like if I was going up, like if there was a group of fish to my left, if I were to start swimming that direction, I would cut them off to a shorter area where they'd be pushed up more to the bank and give me a closer shot with a speargun.

Gotcha. What I do, because you're in shallow so you can stand up and look for the wakes and swirls, you know, and then cruise down the shoreline trying to find it. But, but, uh, you guys ever just stay in one spot? Yeah, I've done that. You know, it doesn't work.

It's hard. Well, it's boring as I'll get out. Yeah. Then you can stand up and you're like, oh, I should just swim over that. What about, uh, you wouldn't spook him as fast doing that. No, you don't.

But no, but they know, like, they know. You know, you move your gun. They kind of recognize. Because they're getting hounded by seals and sea lions, so they're on high alert, man. You guys need like a gilly suit. What about a full of weed? You know how there's kelp lines. You know.

And they'll travel those kelp lines. I've tried that. Just getting in there and ambush them. Again, you get in there and you're like, just the greatest idea they've ever had, anybody's ever had. And then like a couple of minutes later, you're like, yeah I don't go look around it's just like last time I had that idea

last night I got into some weeds held on you're like I could sit here all night right I don't know and you just go but yeah hunting out in the kelp was a good idea you know

there's also a lot of interesting stuff there like you can find an octopus and grailing that are down the bottom of that a lot of crabs little rock crabs you see diving yep

what else you got anything you'd like to add We're going to hear from your friend, Kaya, in the second here. Yeah. He plays basketball. We'll get into that. Well, what do you feel is wrong with today's youth?

Why are you guys so terrible? Fishing and all that. Yeah, that makes us pretty awful. And then we all have phone addictions. But your phones don't work here. My phones don't work here now. That's why I like you so much more out here. Thanks for coming on.

James. Appreciate it. Oh, Jimmy, if you want to see Jimmy, Jimmy likes taking photographs. You can go see some of Jimmy's photographs as you go on Instagram to at Jimmy Rinella. Is that what it is? At Jimmy Rinella? Yep. He likes doing nature photographs.

I'm kind of trying to copy Seth. Seth's been giving them some pointers. Yeah, you're doing good. Thank you. Yeah. Go check out his photos. Oh, also for you people that are listening and not watching, Jimmy is wearing a USS Jimmy Carter SSN 23 nuclear sub hat.

I found that hat beach combing probably 17 years ago. You want a little story about that hat? I don't even like telling this story because it makes me feel sick. I had that hat for years and years and it got real moldy. And I looked at it. For a couple years, I looked at it. And I thought, I'm going to burn that hat. I don't know why.

just because I was in a real cleanup mood. You ever get a real clean-up mood? Oh, yeah. And I assembled my burn pile and gassed it. Got all my gas on it? Yanked it out at the last second. No. And I threw the hat on there.

It seems like something from a movie. I threw the hat on there, but the eruption, when it catches, boom! Yeah. Shot the hat. Really? Off the burn pile.

And then I felt that I was being spoken to by like a divinity. You got a word. Like it's a divine message. You got to listen to serendipity. And I looked up at the skies and I said, never will I ever again attempt to dispose of this USS Jimmy Carter hat. Now, do you like to think that the captain of that sub like they surfaced? I know exactly what happened up, took a look around, his hat blew off? He, the captain's sub was down there and he surfaced because he thought some Ruski's.

Ruski's, Chinese, North Koreans. bad players Iranians and he wanted to get a look and he said boys bring me up because he felt that he feel something wasn't right and he stuck his hat out

head up out of there to look out that hatch and the wind took it yeah and you found it and then he saw that enemy ship and just got the the I'm sure there's probably some kind of machine gun mounted

on the top of that sub and just like yeah I can see it I can see it happening. And now that hat's mine. All right, James, thanks for coming on, buddy. Yeah, thank you. Okay, send over your friend.

Our last and final interview with today's youth, so you all know what's coming. Kaya Yeltsin. Yeltsin. Say it again? Yelchen. Yelchen. Kyya, your father was not born in America. Nope.

Born in Turkey. Okay. And he came to America with not a high level of familiarity with the American sports. traditions. Not at all. Not at all. No such thing is hunting overseas in Turkey. Yeah, but probably a little fishing, though. I'm not too sure about that. Move your mic closer to your face. There you go. You've got to be a little bit of fishing just about everywhere. Yeah. So, so however your, I mean, I know your parents. I'm friendly with your parents. Your parents are great parents. Yeah. They did a great job with you. I love you. You're a great kid. I enjoy every minute I spend with

you. Thank you. How has it been, how has your parents received you becoming, uh, being getting into fishing and hunting and all that when it wasn't something that they were super familiar with? I think my mom was more of me pro going out hunting and fishing because her dad was a huge hunter. I took his gun over, he had a few rods that were broken, but my dad had none of that, no experience of going out hunting, fishing any of that. So he was a little bit skeptical about it. But once I brought home the deer, you know, fish, all that stuff, it's just been amazing. He's been cooking all of it getting into.

some steaks. So they weren't squeamish at all about eating the wild game or anything. No, my dad's, he, he doesn't, he says he doesn't like doing it himself. So I think he wasn't too mad about me doing it. Yeah. But when Kai got his first deer, his father came over and we got it all processed up. His father came over to check in on the whole situation and find out what was going on and then, and then they cooked a bunch of deer. Yeah. Yeah. Stug got a bunch left. Great. And you anticipate that they'll like the fish. I think so. Yeah.

Move your mic close to your face. What you want to be is like a finger off. Now you're getting there. What was some of the highlights of your week fishing? I think catching a lane caught on my first day. It's probably one of my... Right off the bat. Yeah.

Because I've been told, you know, people take weeks to catch one of those. Because of the slot limit. Yeah. And then take one day to catch yellow eye. Inverse for you? Yep, he pulled it up and that sucker was like 30 and an 8th. Right in the slot. Very close.

Yeah, right in the slot. Reeling in that link hot with Matt today was pretty fun too. A big one we had to let go. That was cool. And, you know, just hanging out here with everyone, meeting everyone. It's been pretty fun. All right, man. You like the food?

Yeah, love it. Eat a lot of fish? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for coming on. Thank you. Oh, tell us about your sporting activities.

Oh, you're a basketball player. Yeah, I've been through a bunch of different sports. You know, I did soccer, swimming, basketball, you know, all the above. But I've been focused on basketball a lot recently. I did football two years, but then I quit that because duck season's coming. So. And you don't, you don't anticipate, like, you're not trying to be like a college basketball. No, not at all.

I don't, I'm not looking for it. What position are you playing? I haven't put it all. I'm probably more of a big than a guard, though, because there's not a lot of big kids in our team. So I have to kind of fill that spot. As a tall kid. Yeah. Not really my thing, but, you know, as long as I'm out there, I really care what I'm doing. And you're going to play again this year? Yeah. Hopefully varsity. Yeah. And then does, is that like the kind of deal, like the cliche is that the football player, like the girls like football players.

Do you find that to be true as a high schooler? When I was, little. I'd watch movies of high schools and I'd see all the jocks and I would think that. But nowadays, it's kind of not really like that. So women have a place in their heart for a basketball player? Not so sure about that either, but...

What do they like these days? Hunters? Fishermen? I mean, they'll go for anyone at this point. Okay. Thanks for coming on the show, Kyle. Thank you for having me. I especially like the part where you had in-depth thoughts about the girls. Always.

Real ladies, man. But real quick, you guys these days have your own little vernacular. There's a stage of a relationship. This is the main thing I ask these guys about because it's so puzzling to me.

A relationship has a stage called talking to. Yeah. Can you explain for people that are older? It's kind of like meeting when you meet them for the first time and you get to know them that kind of stage. But what would have been to have been the equivalent before they called it talking to?

I remember talking to you about this a ways back. You called it, you guys were seeing someone. Is that what you called it? People used to say I'm seeing someone. And it meant like definitely not like your girlfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend deal, but you were. I was like friends with benefits. Yeah. No, it was like it was very early stage.

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what talking to is. So you don't ask, you don't, you just, you don't verbalize to a girl that you're talking to her. No, it kind of just happens. Like, you'd never say like, I would like to be talking to you. No, no, no, no. You don't ask that. It's kind of, you're like, hey, you want to talk?

Hey, I'm talking to you. Yeah. Like, go in someone and say, I'm talking to this girl right here. So you, but you get a feeling that you're talking. It's kind of, you can kind of tell after either the first you hang out, if this is going to go somewhere or not. So it's kind of implied that if it does that you're talking. Okay.

And then, but then the next step, then you would formalize it. Yeah. With a, you know, sign if you want to. Do you,

so where, do you have a girlfriend? Are you talking to someone? Yeah, they're, they're a thing. Oh, so you got a formal girlfriend,

dude? He has a formal girlfriend. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, no, I like her. I told her one day, I would rather these two die

than her be inconvenience. Late to the belt school. I like that girl. A lot. She's great. So where are you, are you single? You got a girl?

I'm in the early stages. Gotcha. You're talking. Early talk. Seeing someone. Well, you, hold on, you, your early talk right now? Is that a different stage? No, I'm just, I'm in the talk.

But you haven't talked about talking? No. Not talked about talking. So if you asked her, would she say, I'm talking to someone? Yeah, how do you know that she knows? That's a great question. That is true. Is she right now somewhere saying she's talking to you, or would she be like,

I'm what? With him? No, I'm not. I'm not sure how that works, because I think... You ask, are we talking? You kind of just hope that they are like, you know, have enough respect to say, like, yeah, you don't say I'm talking to someone, but you don't say I'm taking either.

Do you ever worry? We're not going to go on about this all night, but, like... Do you ever worry that she doesn't even know you're talking? And here you are talking about talking to her, and she doesn't know that the talk is happening. Could be. But then there's always another girl to talk to you. That's right.

Not saying there's a list, but there's always someone else to talk to you. Well, you should throw that you're a deep dropper now into your repertoire talking. Oh, yeah. No, you know, this kid, all the kids, I had four. How many kids are on my boat today? day? Four? No, I had three.

My entire deep drop session, they were all three. I'm not kidding. From before I began to after I quit, they were all asleep in the boat. I woke up a few times to you deep drop. Yep. Didn't offer a hand. I was knocked out.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, thanks for coming on, Kyle. Thank you. Appreciate it, man. Of course. With Cameron Wickham Live at the Rhyman

You and a pal with flights and two nights in Nashville To see Cameron Wickham at the legendary Rhyman Auditorium Plus a thousand dollar spending cash Just listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes a day On the free IHart Radio app and you're in to win Cameron Wickham Stream the new single Kingdom of Fear Available now

Me Eaters season opener sale is live. And if you've been waiting to gear up for your hunt, now's the time. Buy one, get one free on all meat eater teas and hoodies. 50% off select game bags and deals on gear from some of our favorite brands. First Light, Phelps, FHF, Multery, Yeti, and more. And for after the hunt, we have a limited time offer to save on our most popular seasonings like backstrap brew, campfire crust, and backcountry bark. Or get the six. pack to try them all. Our favorite time of year is right around the corner.

Head over to the meat eater store.com to check out our season opener sale. On to the news, the actual news. Oh, this is a little bit of your news because this is something the guy wrote in. About TSS. Here's a deal that's interesting. The other day of my wife comes in the house,

all worked up. Seth's checking on something. She comes in the house all worked up because someone's flying a drone over the house. And I was going to shoot the drone, but then it was gone. Someone was saying, if they stopped making TSS for turkey hunters, there now is anti-drone TSS from European manufacturers. An anti-dron load, okay?

So a load designed. Explain this to me. What's that? Explain this to me. Okay. If you bought a shotgun load for drones, they load it with number seven tungsten, five shots for 100 bucks. So it's a box of turkey shot.

It's a tungsten drone. That's all it is. 12 gauge tungsten drone, 2 and 3 quarter inch casing. Okay. One in the eighth. So a drone round has one and an eighth ounce tungsten. One and eighth ounce of tungsten shot.

A turkey load, standard TSS load, one and three quarters ounce. Okay. A drone round, two and three quarter, your standard turkey round, three inch. So it's a little shorter, a little less shot. Your typical drone round, muzzle velocity, 1329 pete per second. A turkey load, 1,200 feet per second. The pellet count on a drone round, 211 pellets, on a turkey round.

round 330. Now, why is tungsten better for drones than lead? Probably all the same reasons. Flies faster. Sure, yeah. Yeah. Or not I should say fly, sorry. Holds, you know, heavier.

Yeah. Better penetrator. Dron rounds. Turkey hunters might have to start looking into drone rounds when things get tough. Yeah. Here's another interesting news bit. So, you know, in Canada, Alberta, opened up a thing they call, in 2025 they opened this up. This is a very interesting program.

They opened up a program called the Wildlife Responder Program, where it allows an Alberta resident to apply for an opportunity to respond to respond to problem wildlife issues throughout the province. they opened the program for elk and grizzlies. So a guy wrote in here who applied for the program, got a call, and went out and got a problem grizzly. That would never fly in the United States, man. Yeah.

Got a problem grizzly. It'd be great if they could do it here, but it was just never fly. It's a great idea. I'd like to know if they're like escorted by a fish game official when they're doing it or they just go? I don't believe so, man. I don't believe so.

You can apply for a zone. Okay, it's open for Elker Grizzlies. Alberta's broken into three zones. Applicants apply for a zone. Okay. It's a true lottery draw. But if you're a successful applicant, it requires you've got to be on 24-hour notice.

So that's, right now, that would be basically the only opportunity to get a grizzly. in Canada, correct? No, BC banned their grizzly. Oh, it was BC? Okay, I got you. Yeah. So you get a call that some guys got a problem bear.

You got 24 hours to get over there. And instead of, because think about the alternative. Like what they do in my neighborhood. When there's a problem bear, they send a game warden out and he's got the barrel traps and all that, barrel traps them and they euthanize them and throw them in a dump. Yeah. If it's a black bear. Yeah, give the opportunity to do a hunter.

Like imagine you call and be like, hey, hurry up. Yep. I'm curious, Brody, you made a good point. Like, is there a game warden that goes out with them? How are they IDing the problem? Grizzly bear? How do they know which ones? I'm sure that the game ward gets involved to determine that there actually is a problem.

Yeah, it's a lot different than going and shooting, you know, some elk that are raiding a haystack, you know? Here's another news story. This is a sad. This is when the news show takes a sad turn. Cornell bans wild game processing in dorms. What a long and sordid story this is. So what I like about the story, this is in the New York Times, what I like about the story is all the quotes from The Hunter

are pulled from our podcast interview with The Hunter. Yeah. And it talks about our podcast in the New York Times article about the situation. Some, I put this headline up on social media and some jackoff was like, they should have never been gloating about it, it'd never be an issue if they weren't gloating about it.

That's not what made it an issue. No. No. Them gloating about it didn't, it was an issue long before anybody said a word about it. What happened was these two guys at Cornell went out, and we interviewed them, one of them. They went out bear hunting and got a bear. They looked at the rules. They thought about going to a friend, didn't work out.

They looked at the rules and realized there's not a rule. Like you can prepare food in the dormitory kitchen. They went to the dormitory kitchen, got all their stuff, got a tarp and everything, kept it all clean, went to the dormitory kitchen and processed their bear. A bunch of students then, a bunch of whiny kids, had a little shit fit. And they called the cops and they called the university people. The game warden said, they didn't do anything wrong. They had a, they killed the bear illegally, they had a permit.

It's not against the rule to butcher bear at Cornell. Nothing happened to him. Cornell waited an appreciable amount of time. And now the new student handbook says, no cutting up, no processing game animals. in the dormitory kitchen. The spokesperson, this is what really gets my goal. It's not so much the rule.

It's not so much the rule. What gets my goat is that the spokesperson said, bring it to a processor. Hmm. No. Make a area for processing. Sure.

Yeah. I still think of these kids as American heroes. Yep. No, that's too bad. Yeah. Go to Penn State. You know that they let you process there?

I mean, no one has. They're pretty friendly that stuff. At least they used to be. Yeah, they used to be. A comment, here's a comment from the New York Times comment section. Bear meat is exceedingly nasty. Only fools are starving people eat bears. Same with dog.

Same with venison and elk. Beef, pork, and chicken make up the holy trinity of meat. You don't need to eat any other flesh unless you can't afford one of those three. And don't talk to me about fish and seafood. Bears are much better than that yucky stuff. As a matter of fact, beans are better than

the Holy Trinity of meats. That's a comment. Not a big meat eater fan, that guy. So, that's all over. I thought about, you know, I'm out of the game. I already went to school and did all that. I'm not going back to school. I was deeply offended.

Yeah. It's, it's, And I called for a boycott of Cornell, not that I would have any impact on anything. And it was a joke when I said that, but still. Yeah, it's too bad. You know, a couple of good kids. Because for a minute, they were the coolest school in the country. Yeah.

They were the coolest school in the country. You're going to keep using that bird app? I'm still going to use my Merlin app. I still got a friend. I still count the Cornell people among my friends. They still make the one, like, you know, one of the top five greatest apps ever made. It's like up there with on X, you know.

Merlin. The people who made that app, though, probably wouldn't agree with that either. No. While some of the people that made that app, I know that some people that worked on that app are hunters. Yeah. Yeah. So. Maybe they should be connected and the next bear can be scanned at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

There you go. That's a good idea. Okay. From there, we're going to go into, we're going to close the show out. We're going to go and do, this is going to be the last news segment on the show. We're going to do our, we're going to talk about an avian botulism outbreak that is killing thousands of ducks. Here's more. Okay, right now we're joined by Jeff McCreary, who's the director of operations for the western region of Ducks Unlimited.

We're going to be talking about something that's going on with an avian botulmonary. outbreak that is killed somewhere around 10,000 ducks this year. And where this is happening is the Klamath Basin. Jeff, do you mind explaining to people? What is the Klamath Basin and what does it mean to ducks? Yeah, Steve, the Klamath Basin is one of the most important areas for Waterfell in North America. is essentially the neck of the hourglass for the Pacific flyway from birds coming from the prairies in Alaska down to California. And it serves every part of the life cycle for birds from production, migration, wintering, and molting.

And then what is, how many, how many ducks utilize that area? Is there a way to take a stab at that? Sure. And not as many as they're used to. In the 1950s, they counted three million pintails just on one of the, one part of the wildlife refuges, a Tully Lake refuge up there. There's three million pintails. There's not three million pit bulls alive today on the planet. Oh, wow. I would say, yeah, it's been a big,

it's been a huge fall from the highest way back in the last part of the 1900s there. But approximately 75% of all waterfowl in North America, or in the Pacific Flyway, sorry, use the Klamath Basin and the Central Valley or Great Salt Lake at one point during their life cycle. So it's critically important for just a huge number of Pacific Flyway population. Okay. Now, what is avian botulism? Like, when I think of the word botulism, I think of the, in the old days, if you didn't properly can, like, if you were home canning, that was your risk.

that you would screw up a home canning job and kill your family with botulism. But what is avian botulism? How is it living in the water? It's very similar to the same bacterium that you'll find when you don't can your food right. But avian botulose is a bacteria that lives in soils. It proliferates in shallow, warm water and high temperatures, which is exactly what we're seeing in the two refuges right.

now. Okay. Soxylism in it of itself doesn't kill birds, but it has a neurotoxin that gets released when the birds ingest, let's say, larva or grubs that are carrying this bacteria. And when the neurotoxin gets to a certain threshold, it causes a paralytic effect on these birds. So what happens is the birds slowly and sometimes very rapidly start to be paralyzed and their neck starts to droop and they can't hold their neck up and their head falls in the water and they drown. They're not dead directly from botulism, but the secondary effects of the neurotoxone.

Oh, no kidding. Okay. Yeah, it's horrible. But it's naturally occurring. Absolutely. It's naturally. It happens every year in the Klamath Basin. It happens all over the Intermountain West.

We've had massive die-offs in the early 90s in Great Salt Lake. There's a million birds that died there from a botulism outbreak. So it's a naturally occurring thing. But in the Klamath Basin, it's largely pretext. vendable. And then it's bad, it got bad this year because, and you already alluded to this, it got bad this year because water levels are low and the water is hot. Absolutely. That's what's going on right now. So everywhere across the West, if your listeners are thinking about what they're going to be doing this fall, it's going to be hot and dry. There was almost no snowpack in the West,

and Klamath was exactly the same. There was very little, if any, snowpack on the ground. Great spring rain, lots of great wetlands, lots of great productivity for from a waterfowl perspective, but that water's all done. The snow was not releasing the drown water and it's flow, so we're running out of water. And this approximate 10,000 ducks that died, when did this die off? When did you start seeing evidence of this die off? We started seeing this evidence about a month ago or so. They started finding the first few birds, which is actually about maybe three weeks earlier

than when we typically start seeing dead ducks up there, which is about now. And as the temperatures are increasing, the water levels are dropping, the number of birds that we're estimating are dying each day continues to increase. And in some point, it's going double. You had 100 last, yesterday, you have 300 a day. So the cumulative estimates about 10,000, maybe possibly more. Okay. So this is happening. It's still happening.

We're not talking about a thing that was going on. And we're not talking about old news here. And no, it's not. And it's getting to a point where it's going to be really critical as when you think about exponential growth, it's doubling again today. I mean, we're talking 100,000 ducklings were produced on these two refuges this year alone. And we've got hundreds of thousands of other birds that are migrating into these wetlands. And when they arrive, they molt. And so you've got 100,000 ducklings that can't really fly. You've got a couple hundred thousand other birds that are losing their flight friends. And so, you've got a couple hundred thousand ducklings that are losing their flight. others and can't fly. So they're trapped. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Explain to me what it requires.

Like, there's a remedy, there's a partial remedy, or there's a hope of a remedy. Explain what needs to happen here that would solve this problem or help solve this problem. Well, the answer is the one thing that's very hard to get, and that's water. And the climate basin, if it's not known, for amazing waterfowl, amazing waterfow hunting. It's known for the water complex that arise between endangered species and agriculture and wildlife. So what you can do is you can get more water. You can get water that's coming out of the lake. It's going to be cooler than what's in the

wetlands. It's going to be fresher. You can circulate that water. You can make it deeper to cover the mud flats where the botulism is growing. So the recipe is simple. Just add water. The complicated thing is Whose water are you going to add and how are you going to do that? Yeah, yeah. And tell me about that. What is, how do you do it? Well, there's a why this is even a problem is because we're, the, the West, if, for those of us or Westerners, we've noticed over the last 30 years, snowpack is getting smaller.

It's evaporating quicker. There's essentially a drying trend that's happening in the Western United States. And Klamath is no different than anywhere else. The challenge is that there's demand. on water from endangered fish that have a biological opinion to keep water in the upper lake or to run water down the river. And then the third pot of water that's out there is the agricultural water for that irrigation project.

And all three of these pots of water are suffering. However, the clam of water users association and the irrigation districts are working with NGOs or working with tribes and agencies to find a way where we can be creative and get past the conflict that's out there and get on towards collaboration. Because right now everybody's suffering, fish are suffering, ducks are suffering, people are suffering because of the conflict. And really the only way out is collaboration. And water users are proposing a flow-through concept where we would take some of these

limited water supplies that are still there, run them through the irrigation project, down into the wetlands, raise the water, circulate the water, cool the water. And then we would pump it back out into the river. you're removing all the nitrogen and phosphorus loading that's in the water from the upper lake. You're recharging the groundwater. And you're helping to save hundreds of thousands of dutch, the local economy, endangered species. It's this amazing idea for collaboration. And we just need a little bit of water to do it.

And then on that formula where you're pulling water out of a reserve system, using it to increase water in the wetland, moving it to the river system where it's going to be beneficial to salmon, you know, as they come up for spawning runs. What does it do for the people that are using that water to irrigate crops? That's the really challenging thing here. Agriculture is suffering. So they're getting about 63% of their promised allotment from the Bureau of Reclamation. And so what they're proposing to do is they're proposing to take this water and use 100% of this water for this flow through concept for the environment, for the ducks, for the wetlands, for the fish, as a example of leadership to change the paradigm from conflict to collaboration. So they're suffering, but they're still willing to do it because in the long run, if we don't help recover these fish,

that are really dominating how water is driven, we're never going to be able to recover these well-ins. We're never going to be able to stop this botulism cycle, and we're not going to be able to have healthy communities and healthy economies. And so water users are really stepping up and taking the leadership approach of doing something different and finding a collaborative solution versus a conflictor.

What is the entity that represents water users? So you're not going out and striking a deal, with every farmer about their water they must have a collective of sorts what is that that's the clam of water users association so they represent the primary or all the water districts that are in and associated with the clameth project there's three main ones clamoth irrigation district the Tully Lake irrigation district and the claim of drainage district are the are the biggest ones within there and the water users represent them as well as some other smaller. Yeah, so if it, if this water user's group is recognizing the dire situation and they're

allowing, they're agreeing to in this emergency situation to let water go and let it go for wildlife, what does come of their issue? Like, what does come of the crops? Is there a, is there a, is there a sacrifice on crop output? I mean, there has to be, right? Yeah, for sure. And, And, you know, there's an allocation that they're given in April by the Bureau of Reclamation about how much water is going to be available this year. And so they've already made their planting plans. The crops are planting. We're going into harvest time right now. So essentially, they've already made their decisions about how much or how they're going to use the limited water that they have.

So this water isn't going to necessarily help directly on the crops that are in the ground. And so that's why they're able to, because they've already made, they've already. done the sacrifice, they're able to do this type of innovative approach. Understood. Now, let's jump down the road. Like you said, we're looking at long-term trends here, right? This is not an anomaly. Is what's happening this year and the sacrifice you're talking about and the collaboration you're talking about, is it applicable next year or is next year just becomes its own question all over again? Well, you know, there's, that's a great question. When I think about conservation, I think about a couple things. I think about community and I think about leadership. And to do any kind of conservation of the flammatvation, it requires essentially everybody. Everything is

connected to everything else, the politics, the economy, the social, the natural resources. They're all driven by this drop of water and everything is connected to that. And if we don't have broad agreement about a path forward with the entire community, we're never going to change the cycle that we're on. But in order to engage that community, you have to have leadership. Somebody has to be doing something a little bit different in order to inspire others to do something similar again. And that's what's happening this year is water users is doing something that they've never done

before. They're committed to use this water for 100% of these other purposes, not for agriculture. That is leadership and that is studying a model that we, want our tribal partners and our agency partners to also emulate too next year. Because without them, without those partners, we'll help the agencies and without the tribes agreeing and collaborating on how to make this work, it's not going to be possible. But something has to be different. Something has to be that spark that changes the past and creates a new future.

And that's what's happening this year. And that's what's significant. And that's been a really a huge focus of that. Ducks Unlimited over the last six years is that we've really tried to create an environment through extensive relationship building with the agencies, with irrigation users, water users with the tribes, to create an environment in which this little spark can grow and become a flame and happen. And that's happening this year.

And Scott Seuss, the president of the Water Users Association, he's really making a big difference through his leadership, bringing this community together to help and support this effort. So let's jump from next year back into this year. Do you feel that this action is going to like set up to be successful or make the situation not as dire for ducks as it would otherwise be? Like do you feel that there's going to be some kind of that there's the potential for like an immediate remedy right now or is that not in the cards for this year? I think there's a media. I think there's opportunity. I've been, it's a, man, it's a torturous road. It's been a pretty intense last couple months working on this. But I think that there's a path. I think that there's water available,

and I think that there's political will to get that water down to the refuges this year. It's still not too late. And I know water users and the agencies and all the partners have been really working hard on that. And what is going to drive what happens, happens in the future is what happens this year. And the blame that irrigation and agriculture gets a lot is you're just going to take that water for agriculture. We say it's going to the refuge, you're just going to take it. Well, they're saying, no, no, we can prove up. We can show you all the math.

We can show you all the records that we are going to do exactly what we say. And that water is going to go for this flow through purpose. and so everybody's kind of watching that when that water comes that agriculture sticks to what they said they were going to do and demonstrate the model of success that can be relied upon for next year and that's what's going to help the future. All right, man. I would love to have you at the end of this season.

I would love to have you come back on and give kind of a snapshot of what happened and the sequence of events and how it played out. We'd love to hear more about it. Absolutely. I'm hopeful. Yeah, well, I look forward to hearing more about it. Again, joined by Jeff McCreary, the director of operations for the Western Region of Ducks Unlimited, talking about the Klamath Basin, avian botulism,

outbreak, and the flow-through water solution. Again, Jeff's from Ducks Unlimited, has been working on this issue. And Jeff, thanks for explaining everything. And, man, good luck to you and good luck to the water users and producers and trying to figure out a solution to this issue. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for having us on.

Thanks, man. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the special episode of the news show broadcasting from Fish Camp and southeast Alaska. Tune in next week for the regular normal version of the special version of the beach. Meat Eater podcast, the new show. Thanks for joining. Hunting season is right around the corner, and first light season opener sale kicks off August 18.

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