00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan cow Kalai. Here's cal if your algorithm is anything like mine. You've noticed an uptick in the number of AI generated animal videos bouncing around social media. You know the ones I'm talking about. There are videos of cats and wolves and doorbell cameras, and videos of raccoons and bears jumping on trampolines. There's a viral video of a cat chasing away a leopard that had jumped into someone's backyard. And just yesterday I was served a video of a bear being scared by a Halloween decoration. These videos are often funny or shocking, and when compared to other uses of artificial intelligence, they might seem harmless, but they also look super real. This, conservationists say can be a problem. Researchers with the University of Cordoba in Spain recently published a paper in the journal Conservation Biology that outlines some of the potential pitfalls of these fake videos. For one thing, they can depict endangered or threaten species as more numerous than they actually are. It wouldn't be difficult to make a video of oslots, the tiny endangered cat that only lives in a few small pockets in South Texas invading a neighborhood. If someone sees that video and believes it's real, they might be less likely to support oslot conservation, you know, because they're stealing your kids Halloween candy getting frightened by animatronic clowns. Researchers also worry that these videos give people a false sense of how animals actually operate. If you watch a video of a grizzly bear walking up to some Yellowstone tourists and asking for belly scratches like a dog, you might think that non AI bears will do the same. It's the same way people approach out of their league for dates. It's all AI folks that could land you in serious trouble. Not to mention being incredibly disappointed, our increasingly urbanized society is already disconnected from nature. Most people don't know what kinds of wild animals live beyond city limits, and these videos aren't helping them be more engaged or involved with the actual issues on the ground. Now, you might say that these researchers aren't giving people enough credit. Most have already learned to be suspicious of sensational looking videos on the internet. We won't stop supporting wolf management because we see a video of a wolf and a housecat playing in the yard. Still, these videos look incredibly real, and unlike fake videos of politicians or public figures, there isn't much public outcry to curb their spread. If enough people think mountain lions like to snuggle housecats, it could actually impact the next ballot measure to ban mountain lion hunting. Bottom line, be careful about what you believe on the Internet, and even more careful about what you share, especially when it comes to your bank account or social Security number. In a few days time, he'll return the money I invested, plus one thousand percent interest and a share of his family fortunes. It's a scam. It is not a scam. Why would someone want to scam me? Jamain and on the Internet service one of the trusted things of today's society. This week we've got crime Listener, mail Bureau, news, and so much more of it. First, I'm going to tell you about my week, and my week was all sorts of interesting, as per usual. A couple of things I'm thinking about right now. Met up with the fantastic Hal Herring. If you're not listening to the BHA cast and blast with Hal, jump on over there download this one. It's great. Hal is often described as an American treasure, and I sure think so. Another thing I'm thinking about corner crossing. As everyone here is aware, we have quote legal gray areas unquote dominantly in the ninth Federal District Court, which, of course my home state of Montana lies in our state Game Agency not the state Attorney General's office issued a statement a couple weeks back saying that corner crossing remains illegal in Montana and game wardens will refer to the county attorney's office as to essentially ask permission on what to do. For clarity, game wardens in the state are not looking for corner crossers. They have to be notified by a landowner who wants to prosecute people who have walked from public land to public land. Then the warden has to contact the appropriate county attorney's office and take action on whatever that response is. But here's the thing. Wyoming Federal District Court and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals have both said that corner crossing is legal On top of that, scot Us, the Supreme Court of the United States has said that both of those courts made the right decisions. There is no reason to review. This is all based off of the Unlawful Enclosures Act passed by Congress, which is a fancy word for we the people in eighteen ninety five. There has never been a legal gray area. There have just been a very few interests that have conspired to twist things that way. Fun fact for you, if states in the Ninth Circuit were to jump on the Tenth Circuit's extremely narrow definition of corner crossing as regulation, we the people would actually lose a lot of privilege in our ability to access public land. The Tenth says only cross on foot at the corner, while Congress says, if your intent is to access public land and you need to cross private land to do so, you can legally do it, even if you are pushing a band of sheep which happens to be in the neighborhood of a thousand or so use which are the girls for you's folks who do not know sheep. Also been thinking about an incident I had the other day. Incident makes it sound like a bad occurrence. Well maybe it is an occurrence. Anyways, we were hiking, and by we, I mean me and my buddy's youngest on deer hunt in this particular area is an incredible draw unit, extremely hard to draw for elk. We came across an elk hunter with his bowl of a lifetime right next to the trailhead half a mile out, and we offered to help. He's a little older by himself, and our offer is a little bit rebuffed, kind of says that, well, you know, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I got it, So of course I kind of pushed the issue because it's a big deal. It's a really big deal, and he's by himself, and I helped clean a few things up, take some nice pictures, and again say hey, we're coming right back through here at dark or whenever the deer hound ends, and we can just pack this guy right out of here. There's grizzly poop all over. It's not a big deal to us. Then we go off and hunt, have great time watching small mule deer bucks, red updos, and a gorgeous Montana sunset. When we come back down the mountain, it's blacker than pitch, and I say, hey, let's make sure to check up on our guy and his bowl, make sure things are okay, And honestly okay is what we find. The hunter is, in my opinion, doing things to the best of their knowledge and ability, and the situation as he left it probably would have been good ish, but we rearrange things. We move the head in the cape as well as the carcass into a position that may have been less bare friendly, and certainly it was cleaner and better for airflow and meat preservation. But again link this dude was by himself, and by the time we got out to the trailhead we had this debate started, and that debate would pick up more people and continue way too late in the night, not the way any of us would have done it, but also not our tag, not our critter, and things would probably turn out fine, but we declared it's a once in a lifetimer type of opportunity. Why wouldn't you just knuckle down and get it all out. So here's the interesting thing and the conclusion I came to the only reason I know anything about hunting is because people had the patience and grace to let me learn as a child, you know, should that opportunity not be provided if the person is a lot older and learning. I'm still learning, right, Everything turned out just fine. Again, not how we'd have done it, But a bear didn't mess with the head, and for those of you who don't know, black bears in particular love dragon heads off, I don't know why. And nothing did mess with the carcass. And the meat was a little hairy and a little dirty, but in otherwise good edible, non wasted condition. And as a friend of mine pointed out, if you dry age that meat, all that outside stuff comes off and is effectively wasted anyway. So I'm curious to know what you all think about this situation. Do you push harder, take control? Or do you walk away? My young friend, who I was helping out on that trip, said, you know, it seems like bad planning. If you know you can't get around well and you have that tag, why wouldn't you go with somebody who could help you, Which was, oddly enough, kind of the situation that we were in. That young fella knows a lot of stuff. You probably would have been okay, but he asked for somebody to come along and help and that's where I was so right in. Let me know what you think, ask c Al. That's Ascal at the meat eater dot com. Moving on to the crime desk down in Tahas, we have a story of yet another kid fishing in a neighborhood pond who was verbally assaulted by an adult man with zero chill. That lovely interaction was between a fourteen year old boy and a man who is much much too old to get that worked up over a kid with a fishing pole. The boy was fishing at a place called Sullivan Park in South Austin. It's unclear exactly why the man was so upset, but part of the argument seemed to be about whether the boy needed a fishing license. You don't need a license in Texas until you're seventeen, which is what the kid told his verbal assailant, but that didn't do too much to mollify the irate adult. He lashed out at the fourteen year old, and even though he didn't step towards the boy, he did obviously threaten him. The boy's mother is taken to local media to advocate for her son. She filed the police report, but because the man's words don't rise to the level of a terroristic threat. The Austin Police referred the case to municipal court. The boy's mother isn't satisfied with this conclusion, and she wants officials to do more to hold her son's assailant accountable. I mean, listen, we're talking about fishing, not a gang, not a gang, not a gang, We're talking about fishing. What is going on in this country? I hope they catch whoever this fella is and instruct him to buy the kid a new fishing pole, and probably instruct this guy on the joys of relaxing and fishing. Maybe that's the problem. This guy doesn't fish. Down to Missouri, three people were caught up for poaching almost a thousand fish with thrownets in Camden County. Although thrownets are legal means of take for bait fish and Missouri, there is a daily limit of one hundred and fifty for those non game species, and these fellas were up to seven thirteen. They also helped themselves to fourteen smallmouth bass, twenty eight readier sunfish, and two hundred and thirty seven suckers using thrownets, which you just can't do. The trio pled guilty this month and were issued violations including loss of fishing privileges. Finishing up the crime beat in Indiana with by far the most chilling crime story this week. Father and son, John and Hayden Lowe were charged late last month with several counts of animal cruelty and obstruction of justice after allegedly shooting two pet dogs while hunting from tree stands on private land in Laporte, Indiana, then attempting to cover up the crime. On Saturday, October twenty one, the owner of the two dogs, a beagle named Josie and a chocolate lab named Bear, noticed that the beagle's GPS caller had stopped sending signals. She went to the caller's last reported location and found the dog on the property next time to hers killed by an arrow. According to the charging documents filed by the Laporte County Prosecutor, The police found that the entrance wound of the arrow was high up on the dog's body, indicating that it had been shot from above. Trying to find out more, the dog's owner contacted another hunter in the area after seeing his social media posts, and the police interviewed him to investigate further. This hunter had been named nearby tree stand that morning and had seen the dogs heading into the property. He heard the dogs moving through the forest before yelping in distress and going silent. Critically, this witness said he never heard the animal's bark. Climbing down from the stand to investigate, the hunter then found fifty eight year old John Lowe along with his twenty two year old son Hayden, with Hayden dragging a chocolate lab down a fire lane between the properties. John said the dogs had charged Hayden aggressively, causing John to kill them, and now the pair were looking for a place to discard the dog. Low asked the other hunter not to tell anyone, which is exactly what you do, you know, when you're doing straightforward stuff. He then added, took care of a problem for both of us. Not hard to read between the lines here. No hunter is glad to see dogs making a ruckus near their spot in the deer woods, but to kill those dogs is not cool man. The lows then dragged both dogs to a separate property, hiding them in the woods, and then proceeded to destroy Josie's GPS caller. The Low's appeared to be many things, but criminal masterminds ain't one of them. The statement that John Lowe gave to the police was full of contradictions. He said the dogs had charged him, not his son. He said the dogs had been barking and snapping aggressively, even though the witness heard no barking. He couldn't explain why he hadn't contacted the police or animal control about the aggressive dogs, or how the dogs could have threatened him and his son while they were up in tree stands. He said he wasn't motivated to kill the dogs to prevent them from scaring deer away, but did admit to dragging the bodies off the property to conceal them. Neither of the Loews have a prior history of criminal activity or hunting violations, and their trial is set to start on January fourteenth of next year. We spoke with Captain Derek Allen of the Laporte County Sheriff's Office, who said the incident had deeply dismayed the tight knit community. Quote. I had a coach at a youth athletic event approached me twice in two weeks to express his ongoing shock. He went on to say that hunters and other participants in the outdoors, like farmers and dog walkers in the area, typically have respect for and trust in each other. On top of the cruelty of the crime is the absolute gift this kind of thing is for the anti hunting folks. Shooting dogs from tree stands is exactly the kind of cartoon villain behavior that give hunters a bad name with the general public, and animal rights groups work hard to convince the world that all hunters are this cruel. I know all you out there who've had success during the rut are in fighting your non hunting friends over for dinner, But maybe invite a couple more and we'll try to counterbalance the lows at least a little bit. Now here's the dirty side of the world. Gang. There are areas of the country from Alaska, Hawaii all the way down to our southern states where folks who did not heed old Bob Barker's advice and spay and new to your animals, they get sick of them. They discard them in rural communities and they will pack up and attack wildlife. And it is like it's a real thing in areas, like they are feral dog packs, and it unfortunately goes to animal control people to eradicate those populations. So these folks are bypassing the shelter system and they're just dumping them out on farm roads and letting those animals fend for themselves. And if they don't get taken on by carrying citizens in our rural communities, they can turn into real pests and drains on our natural wildlife. This particular situation involves a dog with a GPS collar and who knows what the real deal is, but again not cool gang. Moving on to the money desk, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife is pursuing a solution to their chronic funding problem. The Associated Press reports that they plan to require hikers, birdwatchers, kayakers, and anyone else who uses state land to buy a recreation license. For the last one hundred years, conservation has been paid for by hunters and trappers and anglers, said Andrea short Sleeve, the department's chief of operations. Now we're trying to get everyone else who is using and benefiting from those areas to also pay in This license won't be financially burdensome. The proposal calls for a five dollars license to access the land for the day, and only twenty dollars if you want an annual permit. They hope to begin enforcing this new requirement by twenty twenty seven. While most states charge entrance fees to access state parks, most do not require so called non consumptive which is a total misnomer. To pay to birdwatch or height Vermont would be unusual, but not totally unprecedented. Here in Montana, people who want to access many state lands are required to purchase a conservation license. They're eight dollars for residents, ten dollars for non residents, and they're required for anyone accessing state land, even if they're just wildlife watching. As the number of hunters and anglers relative to the population continues to decline, state wildlife agencies will have to think of creative ways to generate revenue. This is one of them, and we'll see if more states fall Vermont and Montana's lead. Colorado and Utah have also been battling with this program. It's important to note here that hunters and anglers nationwide are declining relative to the population. Now in certain areas, like I'll tell you right now, the state of Montana that number is very high. The hunting angling community is very high, especially when you get into hunting season. You have a lot of traveling anglers, traveling hunters, but nationally on average, that's the fact Jack. The Trump administration recently announced its latest pick for the head of the BLM, former congress member and head of the New Mexico Republican Party, Steve Pierce. This nod comes after Trump's previous nominee for the post, oil and gas lobbyist, Kathleen Scamma, withdrew from consideration back in April after a social media post came to light condemning the January sixth insurrection. Trump's new choice also has a background in oil and gas, having started and then selling an oil field services company. Pierce served in the New Mexico House of Representatives, then in US Congress for many years, with failed bids for the US Senate and for the governorship of New Mexico. So how is Pierce likely to do as head of the BLM? For obvious reasons, he's likely going to be accommodating to the oil and gas industry, we can guess, and he's on record denying climate change. But is he a rabid opponent of all public lands like William Perry Pendley. As we used to say, WPP you know me who was the head of the BLM from July twenty nineteen to September twenty twenty, I should say sitting head. I don't believe he was ever confirmed. And the answer is nobody can tell. We can't predict the future, and Pierce may or may not be confirmed. We shall see. We know he's going to have his hands full. The BLM has been without a permanent head for months, and there have been a series of controversies there since Trump took office. In April, the BLM's Deputy director for Administration and Programs, Mike ned had to be escorted out of his office after opposing staffing changes ordered by a doze employee. And as recent history tells us, is going to be a busy few years for public lands issues. No doubt we are going to have to keep a close eye on the BLM under anybody's leadership right now, but that's no different under any administration. I am skeptical, if you want my personal opinion, skepticism aside where the rubber hits the road, BLM is an incredible resource. The Bureau of Land Management. All that stuff out there, the quote unquote flat nothing out there, valueless stuff that we were pitched during the reconciliation fight is unbelievable. It is an American treasure. We can't even fathom how valuable it is to our nation. This guy Pierce becomes the sitting or acting or actual director of the BLM, He's got a hell of a job, a lot of pressure on him. And all that matters to me is not the guy's background or his track record up until now. It's what happens when he's in that seat. And one thing I'll tell you is there's a lot of folks in DC who have no idea what the resource actually is, and it's up to us, the American people, to keep them informed. That's our duty. And it's three sixty five, seven days a week. And moving on to the Japanese bear desk. As you might guess, since I pitched my idea for Wasabi bear spray back in early October, the Japanese bear attacks desk has spun completely out of control. As of this writing, there have been more than two hundred and twenty bear attacks and thirteen deaths so far. This fiscal year across Japan by far the most in recorded history from the last month alone is twenty year old man gathering mushrooms was decapitated. Remember that thing I said about bears and heads. A seventy eight year old woman was mauled to death while taking out her trash, and a former women's professional wrestling referee who had retired to work at a rural spa you know that old tale was pulled into the forest and killed while cleaning an outdoor bath. Three people died in the span of a single week. Non fatal attacks are happening at a rate of almost one every other day, including a New Zealand born marathon runner who had both bones of his forearm broken cleaned through, and an eighty five year old woman who was attacked while washing radishes at a tap outside her farmhouse. Where do you draw the line? One bear, after mauling a man in the city of Yazawa late last month, hold up in a house for six whole days before it was finally captured by a hunting association. Home and business invasions have become commonplace, with one bear in northwest Tokyo entering a supermarket and clearing out the sushi section. The attacks are affecting all parts of Japanese society. A forthcoming movie entitled Haiguma or Brown Bear, Don't Forget the exclamation mark about workers in the gig economy, was scheduled to be released this month, but is now being pushed back to early next year because of the crisis. With bear hibernation not likely to take place until late December, officials are getting desperate. The governor of Akita Prefecture traveled to Tokyo recently to meet with the Japanese military known as the Self Defense Force or SDF, to get help with the problem. Several news outlets reported that the army would be coming into help with a bear call, but to the disappointment of nine year old boys everywhere, there will be no tanks rolling in to do battle with swarms of angry brown bears, not even giant ones that ravaged cities. SDF interventions will be strictly non lethal, and forces have now been deployed to Akda to plan for more systemic bear control measures and protection of local bear hunters. This isn't the first time the Japanese military has scrambled to respond to wildlife threats. Starting in twenty eleven, SDF troops traveled to the northern island of Hokkaido to reduce over population of Sika deer. Flying helicopter connaissance missions and transporting deer killed by local hunting associations was their assignment. This time around, they'll assist in setting up bear traps and will lend other logistical support, but those same licensed hunters associations will be pulling the trigger. The licensed hunters are also getting a significant bump and pay. The town of Ba in Hokkaido is now paying bear hunters an hourly rate of four thousand yen or twenty six bucks an hour, up from just ten dollars an hour in twenty eleven going out on the Alaskan Peninsula. What a ripoff, man we had to pay to do that. We can go to Japan, see all the cool stuff there and get paid to hunt brown bears. Son of a busy hunters who bag a bear in Ba will now earn sixty thousand yen or just under four hundred bucks per bear, versus about one hundred and twenty five dollars for a bear in twenty eleven. Towns across northern Japan are now offering similar rates, but are struggling to attract hunting associations and asking for assistance from the national government to pay for them. Ironically, Japan has some serious bear hunting heritage. The Anu people of northern Japan built their entire culture around a yearly bear festival that celebrated successful hunts. Bears were so central to Anu culture that if hunters killed Asawa cubs, those cubs were often taken from the den and raised in captivity. There are several documented cases of Inu women nursing bear cubs who were too young to eat solid food. You also may have pricked up your ears when I mentioned the name Akida, the prefecture in the north of Japan. That name was given to the Akita dog, the famous bear hunting breed of the Matagi people, who still hunt bears in the protected beach forests of the region. The number of traditional Matagi hunters has been in steep decline over the past several decades, but several of them are now offering their services across Japan. Who knows, maybe this growing problem will revive some of those hunting practices, and maybe instead of paying professional hunters, Japan might look across the ocean to a place where hunters will gladly pay into a system of regulated hunting and feed themselves in the process. But you know, before I get too proud of American hunting, I do have to remember how crazy Americans get when you propose a bear season in New Jersey or Florida or Connecticut. But seriously, my Japanese friends, please call me, email me, ask Clascal at themeaeater dot com. Man will come help you out, even just as an observer. Moving on to the mailbag desk, listener Scott Patterson wrote in with a fascinating topic from the other side of the pond, There is a tradition in Scotland that calls on ten men from the village of Ness on the Isle of Lewis to travel by boat to an uninhabited island called Sulascurr each August. These ten men make the forty mile trip through the rough North Atlantic to hunt gannets, which are large white seabirds. More specifically, these men are looking for googa, which is the Gaelic word for young gannets. The gouga hunt, as it's known over there, has been happening since the fifteen hundreds. The men who participate in the hunt today sleep in the same stone dwellings their ancestors made, and they pursue the cold, difficult work in much the same fashion. They capture the young birds, kill them, pluck them, and preserve the meat with salt for the trip back to the village. Anyway, Scott wrote in tell me about this hunting tradition because it's under attack. There's a campaign to in the hunt, led by an animal rights group called Protect the Wild. They argue that the this is cruel, inhumane, and not sustainable, even though the same hunt has been taking place for literally five hundred years. It's also governed today by modern wildlife management regulations, so there's even less chance that it hurts the larger gannet population. This is a cultural hunting tradition like any other, and even though almost none of us will have the chance to participate, it deserves to be protected. Thanks for letting us know about this, God, and if you live over that way, make your voice heard. One thing you gotta know a gang is our natural resources are sustainable. That does not mean we cannot eradicate them from the face of the earth. It's the job of hunters, conservationists to demand proper management of these resources, and that in itself is too broad of a statement. Demand the proper management of these resources far into the future. We're talking multi generations, right. These folks have been doing it for five hundred years and that's a drop in the bucket. Don't settle for sustainable. It's sustainable for how long we want it forever. That's all I got for you. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write in to ask C. A. L. That's Ascal at themeeteater dot com. Let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. You know we appreciate it. Thanks again, we'll talk to you next week.