00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan cow Calahan. Here's cal Over. In Connecticut, East Hartford Animal Control fielded a complaint this week about two squirrels who were discovered painted head to toe, one in red paint, the other in blue. Has the partisan divide in this country gotten so bad that it spread even to our bushy tailed brethren. The department put out a notice calling for any info that could lead to the perpetrator in the case, but so far they have no leads. Although the squirrels didn't appear to be in distress under the law, it's still considered an act of animal cruelty to trap and paint squirrels. In fact, last year, in nearby Putnam County, a sixty two year old man was arrested for exactly this crime after catching squirrels and I have a heart trap in his backyard, painting them with apple red rustolium, and releasing them in a nearby public park. The motive, according to Daniel Franz, the Department of Environmental Conservation officer who made the arrest, the man said he quote wanted to keep track of the ones that were returning to his yard, disturbing the birds and causing his dogs to bark. The Putnam County man was charged with illegally trapping, transporting, and releasing wildlife, as well as three counts of poisoning or attempting to poison animals. I agree that this was a bad thing to do, but no jury in the land made up of bird feeder owners will convict this guy. Interestingly, the way Americans treat squirrels has historically been a kind of barometer for how compassionate we are as a nation. After the gray squirrel was eradicated from American cities in the mid nineteenth century, the species was actually reintroduced when those cities began to build public parks. The first squirrel reintroduction happened in Franklin Square and Philadelphia in eighteen forty seven, and although efforts were intermittent over the next two decades, several large scale reintroductions began in the eighteen seventies when New York, Boston, Chicago, and other major cities across the country built bigger parks. The squirrels were brought in not only to make the parks feel more like natural settings, but also to give people a way to be kind to animals by feeding them. Ernest Thompson, setting co founder of the Boy Scouts, wrote that feeding squirrels was needed by people to quote cure them of their tendency toward cruelty. Seaton himself wrote scholarly articles on squirrel migration, and even a novel for children called Banner Tale, The Story of a Gray Squirrel. Unfortunately, by twenty twenty five, that title Banner Tale strikes a little close to home with these painted squirrels. I, of course don't recommend feeding any wildlife, and squirrels count as wildlife. But if you do live in a city, one kindness you could do to yourself and the squirrels is to let your phone run out of batteries, grab a sketch pad, get outside, and maybe draw some squirrels. As they go about making a living. They can rotate their ankles one hundred and eighty degrees to dig their toenails into bark and climb downward head first. That's worth drawing. Maybe one of those sketches turns out so good that you even apply a little paint. Look at that, isn't that a nice little tree? And he lives right here in his brush. All you have to do is sort of push him out. This week we've got wildlife crime, wildlife attacks, and the mysterious AOG. But first I'm going to tell you about my week. And my week has been spent tying up loose ends and slinging arrows. Specifically, I like to shoot bear shaft arrows, which are fully built arrows except for they don't have fletching, and I shoot those in competition against my hunting arrows, which are the same things, they just have turkey feathers on the end of them. Theory being is that the bear shafts will show the mistakes either in the bow or in my release, that the fletchings are compensating for. Any compensation comes at a cost of a few feet per second here and there, lost speed equals loss of penetration on mister grizz. I even went out to a very exposed piece of state ground and shot some distance in a relatively high sustained wind. That type of shooting really wakes you up. With the old recurve. It's been a real long time since I've shot a compound in those conditions, and I imagine there is a difference, but likely nowhere near as striking as what happens to the slow paradox of the turkey fletched Greek curve or longbow sticks. They still get where they want to go, but holy cats, they don't appear to get there in a straight line, meaning, of course they are less efficient and nowhere near as deadly. Oh, Yogi may not even bleed if a shot was attempted in a good crosswind. Full value shooting, which is shooting into the wind or with the wind, is unaffected, meaning directly into the wind is fine. And if you were shooting with the wind, that's fine too, But that shot rarely presents itself when you are hunting critters with noses. I got to be honest with you. I'm looking forward to getting out into our big, wide ass open public lands for an extended stay. I want to be uncomfortable, inconvenienced, and surrounded by all the variables mother nature can throw it a person in a remote spot, a place where you need to be on top of your stuff because nobody can come save your butt except you. And yeah, this is a brown bear trip in Alaska, which means I have to be guided as a non resident, and there are of course sat phones and all the other crap that exist to constantly stay in contact, so I'll have support, but still at least I won't be sitting here listening to the damn phone vibrate and the calendar, pay and all the rest of it non stop. And you know what, I wish the same for you. Get out there this fall, appreciate it, understand what we got and selfishly, if you do this, I will know you will fight harder to hang on to it and add more to it. Moving on to the AOG desk. That's act to God. I think everyone is aware of the two elk hunters who disappeared in Colorado. Their disappearance sparked a six day search. They were eventually found deceased. The Corners report was just in and they were both found to be struck by lightning. Andrew Porter and Ian Stasco, both twenty five years old, had traveled from their respective homes in North Carolina and Utah to chase elk with their bows in southern Colorado San Juan Wilderness Area, but when their families lost communication with them on September eleventh, they were reported missing to the Canejos County Sheriff Office on September twelfth. That sparked a massive six day search of the area that involved various state and local agencies combing the rugged terrain for any sign of the missing pair. Heavy rain had rolled in the day of the hunters went missing, but investigators soon discovered backpacks and camping gear in their truck. This raised concerns for the search and rescue team, since they surmised Porter and Stasco had been caught out in bad weather without the proper equipment, but it also sparked firestorm theories online as people wondered how two experienced hunters had disappeared within what couldn't have been a very great distance from their truck. That theorizing continued after the bodies of the two young men were found, but Caneo's County Coroner, Richard Martin, declined to name a cause of death. He said neither body showed signs of trauma, but did not offer any further explanation for how they died. Then, on September twenty two, Porter's fiance Bridget Murphy posted on Facebook quote, it is official that a lightning strike near them took them in an instant. They didn't do anything wrong, They didn't feel fear or pain. He was just trying to get back to the car as storms rolled in the corner. Confirmed Murphy's account, he said neither body showed major burn marks, which indicated that they didn't sustain a direct hit, but they were close enough to the strike that they were both killed instantly. Condolences to the families of these two young men. We know that anything can happen when we go out in the wilderness, but we hope that being careful and smart will be enough to bring us home safely. It sounds like these guys were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I'm sure that's incredibly difficult for the families. So do as are good friends. The meteorologists of meteorologists say, Reo Speedwagon, have this dollar out. You know, full moonnight, rocky mountain winter. Those storms move on you fast, find shelter and always keep riding the storm out. It's good advice. Moving on to the crime statistics desk, the Boon and Crockett Club released a report last week claiming that a whopping ninety six percent of poaching cases go undetected in the United States, those thousands of animals have an estimated replacement cost of one point one to three billion dollars nationwide, and the lost fine money is estimated at three hundred and two point six million dollars. Of course, you can't really measure something that is undetected, so the real number may be higher or lower, but the Boone Crockett Club worked with researchers at the Wildlife Management Institute to come up with a statistically sound estimate. I won't get into the nitty gritty here because frankly, I don't understand it myself, but based on the report as well as an article at the meat eater dot com by Sage Marshall, researchers use statistical models and fed known variables into those models, things like citation rates for illegal take, the ratio of known illegal take to legal take officer coverage area, the number of licensed hunters in the state, and illegal take data from twenty eight radio telemetry studies on big game from across the US. Researchers also use self reported surveys of wardens, landowners, hunters, and even some people who had admitted to committing wildlife infractions. The number they arrive at is pretty depressing, but also not surprising. Wildlife crime is really tough to track. It almost always happens in remote areas, and there aren't enough wardens to cover every lake and backcuntry trail. That's why every state has a tip line to turn in poachers and why successful investigations always start with a tip from the public. The report also underscores why it's so important that hunters and anglers police our own. If you're out hunting with some buddies and you see an opportunity to cut corners and violate the rules, be the voice of reason. Wildlife is owned by everyone, and our agencies have rules in place to make sure those resources are here to be enjoyed for generations to come. Nothing new gang. We've got a police our own. We got excellent officers out there doing their job, but it really is up to us to set the expectation that wildlife crime is not acceptable or condonable. Two Wisconsin men are being charged with a variety of felonies and misdemeanors for dumping a trailer full of fluorescent lamps containing mercury into a stream that leads the horric and marsh Leonard Hughes told investigators that he has a bit business buying and selling semi trailers. One of the trailers he purchased was filled with boxes of fluorescent lamps. Rather than try to resell those lamps or dispose of them properly, he approached a landowner named Zachary Ballard and asked if he could just dump the lamps on his property. Ballard agreed to it and exchanged for five hundred bucks, and the payers set about leaving thirty five thousand fluorescent lamps on the landscape. But they didn't just pile them up and leave them on the ground. Investigators noticed that they'd used a tractor to push some of the lamps into a stream on the property. That stream leads to Horrick and Marsh Dan from northeast Wisconsin. The listener who sent me this story described the marsh as quote one of the gems of our beautiful state and the criminal complaint investigators pointed out that the older fluorescent lamps contain high levels of mercury. While mercury is a naturally occurring element, exposure to mercury can cause serious health effects in humans, fish, and wildlife. Hughes faces six counts including three felony counts of unlicensed dispose of hazardous waste and two counts of resisting a Warden. Ballard faces misdemeanor counts for allegedly intentionally depositing garbage into state waters and bail jumping. I don't know what penalties they'll receive, but Dan from Northeast Wisconsin has an idea. After calling this dynamic duo a pair of quote dim bulbs, which is a pretty good joke, he said in an email quote, these fools should be tarred, feathered, and made to run the gauntlet on the opening day of duck season in Wisconsin. I don't advocate for violence, but I do advocate for a good time, and I think this would qualify in any case. I definitely understand the centement. A pair of Louisiana man got fined more than eight thousand dollars in Ontario, Canada for improperly packaging a mess of fish. Thanks to listener Jeffrey Chang for sending this one in game, Warden stopped James Shoemaker and Michael Williams at the Fort Francis border crossing as they were attempting to get back in the United States. They had been fishing on Lake of the Woods, and they'd apparently had a good trip. Wardens recovered four large bags of over one hundred frozen fish filets. It isn't illegal to take fish across the border, but these guys had cut the skin and scales off the fish that made it impossible to identify what kind of fish they were, which is a crime. Especially at a border crossing. Wardens need to be able to identify how many of each species. You have to make sure you aren't breaking any bag limits. As hunting seasons get underway, this should be a good reminder to be very careful about knowing the regulations for an out of state or out of country hunt. Not following those rules can turn a great trip into a nightmare and make an expensive trip even more spendye moving on to the symbolic relationship desk, a Florida bofishing guide had developed an unusual partnership with the aquatic life of the Gulf of Mexico. For more than a decade, Crystal Bay charter Captain Justin Diamond has been attracting pods of dolphins with the underwater floodlights he uses to locate fish for his bowfishing clients. As soon as the fish are visible and stunned by the lights, the dolphins starts snatching them. Lots of anglers know this dynamic all too well, especially in Florida, where one recent study showed that forty three percent of anglers had experienced depredation of their catch by sharks. But Diamond says that losing those fish is completely worth it. In exchange, the dolphins drive fish into shallow water where bowfishers can more easily see and kill them. Speaking to the Tampa Bay Times about the dolphins, Diamond said, quote, every year they get better at hunting. It's a unique situation where everybody wins, just like feis driving squirrels up trees. Diamond calls the dolphins his quote unquote, aqua dogs. He's even named the individuals who turn up night after night Crystal Echo, Bunny Knuckles, and my favorite, tetris All. This might sound like a devoted fan of dolphins assigning intention to a standard dolphin behavior, like swimming towards schools of fish, but in the video Diamond posts he can clearly see a distinct behavior from the dolphins. They form a perimeter around the smaller fish and flap their tails to flush them toward the anglers. We spoke with Diamond and he said that although he's been guiding for almost fifteen years, he only started to see the flushing behavior about seven years ago. At first it was hard to tell what was happening, but night after night of seven or eight hours on the water, the behavior got so strong, he said, quote even now, all these years later, I see it and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. This is a perfect case of mutualism, where two species adapt to help the other access resources they couldn't get on their own. Another great example is the African honey guide, a bird that depends on eating eggs and larva of bees to survive. However, honeyguides don't have the tools to break into nests themselves, but they are experts at locating hidden bee nests, and once they find one, they persistently call to humans like a feathered dinner bell. People come break open the nest to get the honey, the birds stick around to get the grubs. Everybody wins. Studies have shown that the hazard of people of Tanzania get as much as ten percent of their total calories with the help of greater honey guides. Researchers had never seen this kind of mutualism with dolphins until they started joining Diamond on his bow fishing trips, but now they are taking advantage of this symbiosis. Scientists from the University of Florida and Cedar Key Dolphin Project have been building a photographic database of this population of dolphins as they come in for dinner. They've also been able to collect valuable DNA samples by holding petri dishes over the dolphins blowholes to catch the spray kicked up as they exhale. They've even observed mature dolphins bringing young calves along for the hunts, as though to train them for future trips. Who knows, maybe generations from now will be calling them golf setters or Floridian smooth skinned pointers. Either way, if you fancy yourself a good dog trainer, may want to head down and join up with Captain Diamond and try in your hand little dolphin training. Moving on to the attack desk, twenty nine year old man was attacked by a grizzly bear earlier this month in Yellowstone National Park. He was hiking the Turbid Lake Trail northeast of Yellowstone Lake when he encountered the bear. According to the National Park Service, details are still scarce at this point, but it appears he surprised the bear and it charged him. He hit it with bear spray, which was apparently enough to convince it to leave, but not before it chewed up his chest and left arm. He was hospitalized after suffering significant but non life threatening injuries, and the Park Service says they don't plan on going after the bear. They say it appears to have been a defensive response to a surprise encounter, so they're not worried that they have a rogue, aggressive bear in America's most famous national park. This seems like a good time to call your attention to a proposal in California that several of you have emailed me about over the last few months. The California Grizzly Alliance recently conducted a feasibility study that claims the big ruins would thrive if reintroduced into the state. The report claims, quote, grizzly bears have been extinct in California for a century, but they need not remain so grizzlies are extremely unlikely to return to the state on their own at any time in the near future. A well planned, well resourced, and well managed reintroduction and recovery program could, however, likely establish a sustainable California grizzly population in one or more recovery areas over several decades. They say as many as seventeen hundred bears could live in three areas in the far northern, eastern, and southern parts of the state. I have no doubt that there are places in California where grizzly bears could live, but shipping grizz from out of state would make Colorado's tumultuous efforts to reintroduce wolves look like a walk in the park. Wolves almost never attack humans. They kill plenty of livestock, but they don't strike fear into people the way grizzlies do. Grizzlies kill and injure people every year, and I have a hard time imagining that even urbanites in la would be comfortable with the thought of running into a bear if they venture into the mountains around the city. But this is how these reintroduction efforts start. There's a big, flashy feasibility study, big money environmentalists get behind the effort. There are a few years of trying to get it on the ballot, and eventually it does. Then the pr campaign starts completely with the fuzzy bear cubs, chubby pre hibernation styles, and majestic looking bores. Then the people get to vote, and who knows where things go from there. I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but I can see how it might. If you live in the Golden State, which does indeed feature a grizzly on its state flag, this is one topic you want to keep an eye on. I love grizzly bears. They are freaking awesome. I just can't help but foresee look into the crystal ball and see a lot of human bear conflict in the future. If this were to happen, of course, I think it would be pretty cool too. Moving on to let ammo desk, US Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it is expanding its voluntary lead free ammunition incentive program to thirteen National Wildlife refuges across the country. The program was launched last year at seven refuges, and that pilot program was successful enough to expand it. If you hunt at one of the approved sites during the twenty twenty five twenty twenty six hunting season. You can be reimbursed for up to fifty dollars per box of lead free ammunition and twenty five dollars per box for shotgun or muzzleoder for up to two boxes. Just keep your receipts and submit your proof of purchase at FWS dot gov forward Slash Initiative Forward Slash Lead hyphen Free. The refuges this year are in Oregon, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, Idaho, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts. The program doesn't apply to every hunting season, so check out that link at FWS dot gov for more details. That's all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write in to ask c L that's Ascal at the meeater dot com. And as you know by now, if you just can't stomach right and in, we got a fancy schmancy call line that you can hit us up on. That's right, it's the official Cows We can review voicemail. Give me a ring at four zero six two two zero six four four one. We'd love to hear your questions comments, complaints. Whatever you say, keep it clean, keep it relevant, and you might hear your story or great or interesting anecdote right here on this show. And you know, and you know, I'll have a witty and well thought out response to you. So make it happen. Thanks again, We'll talk to you next week.