00:00:04 Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show, everybody. This week, we've got details about a youth turkey hunt shooting in which a three-year-old shot another child. Coloradans will have a chance to assert their American-ness on November 3. Those of you who don't think you need help calculating your own ratios when grinding burger actually do need help. And we're here to provide that help. We got snow goose news out of Maryland and elsewhere. The Posh Mountains. What was that, Yanni? 00:00:34 Speaker 2: I didn't say anything. 00:00:39 Speaker 1: I thought he said something. Dude, I was getting people hyped for the show. Now I'm like. 00:00:44 Speaker 2: I literally just scratched my lip. 00:00:48 Speaker 1: Now we lost the audience. 00:00:51 Speaker 2: Bring him back. Bring him back, buddy. 00:00:53 Speaker 1: The posh mountain town of Los Angeles, Pilates capital of America, where we're sitting right now, just lost 14 black bears that the state had to euthanize because some dude was running a seemingly non-hunting bait pile. That titillates him. And more. But first off, let's dig into the youth turkey tragedy with the one and only Pat Durkin. Thanks for joining, Pat. 00:01:19 Speaker 3: Well, you bet. 00:01:19 Speaker 1: Thanks, Steve. Can you quickly remind... We talked about this. Can you quickly remind people at a very. 00:01:28 Speaker 1: Give a very quick overview of what happened last spring in terms of the initial news that came out. Just like the basics with the ages. Because we commented on... the story, but all we had was some basic numbers. So can you recap those numbers? Sure. 00:01:51 Speaker 4: This happened during the state's annual youth turkey season. It's a two-day season that starts mid-April. It was done in Racine County, which is just south of Milwaukee, and Racine County also borders Lake Michigan. So it's really the far southeastern county in Wisconsin. It happened on a public land, about two square mile area. And it involved a deputy with the Racine County Sheriff's Department. And he was, the guy's 35 years old. And apparently he was mentoring, he said, his three-year-old daughter. 00:02:31 Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that it was a daughter. 00:02:34 Speaker 3: It was his daughter. And he was carrying. 00:02:38 Speaker 4: a 12 gauge shotgun and blind calling, just apparently walking around calling. Um, he's never taken a hunter education course, but he's a, he's a military veteran. And in Wisconsin, we exempt, um, veterans from needing to take, um, hunter education. Um, he, um, he later told investigators, they really had not hunted much. 00:03:02 Speaker 3: Before this incident. 00:03:03 Speaker 4: And he was usually hunting with his friends, but, um, that day he was hunting by himself. He was also, um, was another interesting thing about this is. 00:03:13 Speaker 1: Well, Pat, can I, can I butt in real quick? Do you mind just laying out, do you mind just laying out the, just for people that haven't heard our coverage before? 00:03:22 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:03:23 Speaker 1: Do you mind laying out the original story? Just the, the cleanest, most bare bones version of the original story you can think of. Yeah. Which would be that a three-year-old during youth turkey season. I'll do it. Then you can dive in. 00:03:37 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:03:38 Speaker 1: Well, I'm asking for a second time. 00:03:41 Speaker 2: Go ahead, Pat. 00:03:42 Speaker 1: You do it. I see that anti-Pat Durkin sign behind him. 00:03:46 Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Steve. 00:03:47 Speaker 4: But yeah, basically a man took his daughter out hunting. 00:03:52 Speaker 3: She was being mentored. 00:03:53 Speaker 4: Apparently he, he lined the shot up and then had her touch the trigger when he told her to shoot. And inadvertently, he had mistaken movement 40 yards away. 00:04:07 Speaker 3: For a turkey. 00:04:09 Speaker 4: And he ended up shooting a man who was there mentoring his seven-year-old son. It turns out this man was actually a co-worker, a fellow deputy in Racine County, the Sheriff's Department. And the shot hit these guys pretty hard. The man had his arm around his son, up like this, apparently around his shoulders. And so that got caught some of the shop, but the boy got, got the worst of it. He took multiple shots, pellets into the head and upper neck and back area and ended up in the hospital for a few days. And later, like in June, doctors removed every pellet they could from the boy, but he still had had to this day has one pellet in his brain, one pellet in his skull and one pellet in his, in his spine. And the father, though, is doing well. He had 12 pellet wounds, including some in his arm and left hand. 00:05:09 Speaker 3: But basically, his left side of his body got hit. 00:05:12 Speaker 1: When this story was originally reported, for many months, the only details that were out there was that a person mentoring a three-year-old child, that the three-year-old child had shot another pair of hunters. And then you've followed this story and have uncovered these other details. Where did you learn, for instance? Well, we had this original question of how capable is a three-year-old of even aiming a gun? And we were even wondering, like, three-year-olds still... soil themselves on, on a regular basis. So how is a three-year-old capable of wielding a, was it a 12 gauge or 20 gauge shotgun? 00:06:01 Speaker 3: Is it 12 gauge? 00:06:02 Speaker 1: So how's a three-year-old even shooting a 12 gauge shotgun? Right. Well, where, where did you learn this detail that, that the mentor was holding the shotgun and the kid's job was to reach over and pull the trigger. And does that even warrant, does that even count as a mentored hunter? 00:06:20 Speaker 4: Right. Well, this is where it gets really interesting, Steve, is that the state does not really specify what it takes to be a mentor and what it takes to be a mentored situation. And so like this case, it said right in the initial report of the incident was that the guy had rested the shotgun on a log and he had aimed it and that his daughter was then instructed to touch the trigger and basically triggered the shot when he said so. And, you know, I'm like you, I have grandkids, I've had my own daughters, and I have a hard time understanding how any three-year-old would even comprehend what they're even doing at that point. 00:07:03 Speaker 1: Oh, so are they, in this case, are they looking into, was that even, does that even count? 00:07:14 Speaker 4: Well, you know, all the criminal complaint does is state what the charges are. And this guy has been charged with four felonies. 00:07:22 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:07:23 Speaker 4: Two felonies per victim. And it's basically, let me see, just real quickly, it's second degree reckless injury with use of a dangerous weapon and injury by negligent use of a dangerous weapon. Two different counts, you know, one each for, I mean, two each for these victims. And so the guy's facing like up to $ 70, 000 in fines and up to $ 42, 000 years in prison if the terms are all laid out consecutively. So the state obviously is taking this very serious. 00:07:59 Speaker 1: I also didn't know until you, it doesn't really change anything, but I didn't know until you just said it right now that it was his daughter. I just had made this, I had made this assumption. Yeah. Because 90% of hunters are men. I'd made an assumption that it was his boy. 00:08:13 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:08:14 Speaker 4: Initially the, the, the, the department of natural resources said, and local sheriff's department did not release details on gender or names, of course. And so all we had at first was that it was two people who had been shot and you kind of assumed it was a father and son who got shot and it's also shooting. But yeah, as the case got explored and more information came out, then we learned it was a daughter involved. 00:08:47 Speaker 1: And then in your reporting, you found out some details that these, it's just crazy, but the shooter and the victim were not strangers. 00:08:59 Speaker 3: No, no. 00:09:00 Speaker 4: You know, the initial report was that they, they assumed these guys did not know each other, but then they learned later that, um, actually they were colleagues, you know, that, um, that the shooter had, had talked to his, his coworker, a fellow deputy about places to hunt nearby. The guy gave him some information, but asked him not to hunt these spots. And I saw, I watched some of the camera interviews they did with this guy that came out when the criminal complaint was released. And it sounds like he was under the assumption that this other guy and his son had not stayed in the area that they had left. 00:09:42 Speaker 1: Okay. So this guy had shared information with them. They knew each other. They had shared information, but they were not out hunting together by any means. They would have had no idea that each other was in the same area. 00:09:56 Speaker 2: Right. 00:09:56 Speaker 4: Neither of those guys knew the other guy was anywhere near them. The father and son were watching a field. They did not have any decoys out, but they were calling occasionally. The father was calling occasionally. What I don't know and isn't in any of the reports so far, the criminal complaint is whether this guy sneaked in with his daughter and set up on them, or if they just happened to be sitting nearby and then spotted this movement after the calling. Because apparently the shot went off right after this father with his son had been calling and had moved his hand. So I'm guessing he was using like a slate call or a box call or something. He told investigators that when the shot happened, it was just seconds after he had called. And he figures it was his hand that was moving that got the guy's attention. 00:10:54 Speaker 1: Sometimes you hear these stories and you just can't make any sense out of it. Here's a guy, assuming he wasn't gobbling, assuming he wasn't gobbling. 00:11:03 Speaker 3: Right, right. 00:11:04 Speaker 1: He's talking about using a slate call. This hunter is, I mean, get in this guy's head a minute. This hunter is hearing turkey noises. Not only does he think he's aiming at the thing's head, but he's talked him into self. 00:11:23 Speaker 2: I don't think he is thinking he's aiming. 00:11:25 Speaker 1: At the thing's head. He's also talked himself into thinking that it's a gobbler, that it's a male turkey. 00:11:30 Speaker 5: He's a very inexperienced hunter. 00:11:35 Speaker 1: Our friend Robert Abernathy was shot while turkey hunting. The man that shot him explained to him, when you put your... Robert Abernathy, when he got shot by number five shot, he was sitting there looking down a hill and lifted his foot up on a stump to kind of lean into the stump. The guy that shot him explained, when you lifted your foot on that stump, it looked just like a gobbler going into strut. Oh. 00:12:11 Speaker 5: Like people invent stuff in their brain. 00:12:13 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:12:14 Speaker 1: But what is this guy inventing in his brain? The whole picture. 00:12:19 Speaker 4: Well, it's a great question, Steve, because he did tell these investigators that he thought he saw red and blue, apparently. And, you know, they checked with these guys, the victims, and neither of them was wearing anything red, blue, or white to resemble a turkey's head. They were wearing camo, but nothing that, you know, we're all taught in hunter education, turkey education, never to wear red, white, or blue out in the field during turkey season. But from what I could gather watching this recorded interview with the guy afterward by investigators, he claimed he saw these colors. But every time you read about hunter accidents like this, the shooter almost always builds things into the scene that just were not there. They get excited and they see things that really aren't there. And apparently the same thing happens in police shootings where they Just see things that didn't. In the moment, there is that stress, that buck fever, whatever you want to call it. 00:13:23 Speaker 3: And it does work on people's imaginations. 00:13:27 Speaker 6: Oh, yeah. 00:13:27 Speaker 2: Because he heard the bird, even though he didn't hear a gobbler. He heard a hen, most likely, calling. 00:13:34 Speaker 3: Right. 00:13:35 Speaker 2: And then there was a flash of movement in the brush. And I still believe that he shot, and not his three-year-old daughter. 00:13:42 Speaker 1: No, I believe that he... I would believe that. 00:13:47 Speaker 1: I would accept that he had her reach over and punch the trigger. 00:13:51 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:13:52 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:13:53 Speaker 4: He had her positioned apparently like, you know, apparently like in his lap, he was sitting there and had her in the lap, but yeah, it says Reddit in every, every report I've read on this, it says he aimed the shot. You know, he had the, he had the gun against his shoulder. Basically all she'd do is reach up and put and pushed on the trigger. 00:14:13 Speaker 6: Pat, is this deputy still working or has he been suspended or fired? 00:14:17 Speaker 3: He's on administrative leave. 00:14:22 Speaker 1: You mentioned early on there when I was trying to squeeze out of you the basics that we had already covered there. You were going down the path of mentioning that he had an exemption from hunter safety. 00:14:37 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:14:38 Speaker 1: Can you explain that exemption? 00:14:40 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:14:41 Speaker 4: This is, to me, one of the intriguing points of the story because it's become kind of a little hot button topic for the hunter education people in Wisconsin. Wisconsin and 15 other states have had this exemption where if a man or a person has served basic training in the military, they exempt them from hunter education training. And the hunter ed people I know who have contacted me about this, They're really upset that Wisconsin ever gave that exemption because they just don't think the basic training we receive in the military qualifies anyone to go hunting. 00:15:22 Speaker 3: There's just a. 00:15:24 Speaker 4: Whole different dynamic involved in teaching someone how to shoot rifles and various weapons in the military compared to what we see in military. hunting what we experienced out there in the field. 00:15:36 Speaker 1: I think that it would cover, that is a weird one to me. I think it was, I'm guessing that it's motivated more by trying to do a solid for veterans and help them, you know, and try to be helpful to that community. But I would imagine, you've been through bootcamp. I have not, but I'm guessing that bootcamp, they're assuming that you're learning some safe firearm handling practices. Right. But you're not learning. But but 90 percent of the curriculum would have no business being in basic training. Right. 00:16:09 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:16:09 Speaker 3: When I think back, Steve, on this, like I was I was in the Navy. 00:16:13 Speaker 4: My entire hands on work and basic training with firearms was was toting around an A303 Springfield with a. 00:16:26 Speaker 3: Piece of wood shoved down the barrel so it couldn't be fired. 00:16:29 Speaker 4: And then one day we went to the training. We shot 22 rifles for half the morning. And that was our introduction to firearms. I never fired another gun in the Navy until I was out on the ship. And then maybe once a year we got to shoot our M14s and maybe the old. 45 caliber handguns. But, you know, there's nothing about things like checking your background and beyond. It was all the basic hunter education stuff we all learn. 00:16:58 Speaker 1: Hmm. 00:17:02 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:17:02 Speaker 1: I wonder if they're going to wind up revisiting that because what you have then is you have a case where it's like you have a double problem. I'm not saying it's a problem that you have necessarily a problem that you have a veteran who's skipped hunter safety out in the woods, but all of a sudden they're in a position of mentoring another person And you have like a double layer of lack of training. Yeah. 00:17:27 Speaker 4: To me, it's worth discussing because it just, I think it was misguided. I think you're right that it's probably just done as a solid. But gosh, you look at how the situation unfolded and you can't help but think, well, maybe this guy had a little background in hunter education, which those of us who have taken that course in Wisconsin, it's pretty damn thorough. And it's nice things to stick in your head. I guess I, you know, the one thing I'd say too, is that I have a lot more concern with that law, that exemption than I do with, you know, like we changed our laws about 15 years ago. First in 2009, they removed the 12 year old requirement in Wisconsin. And then like eight years later, I think they lowered it to 10, age 10. And then like eight years later, they lowered it to where they just got rid of it. Because like I say, 35 states don't have a age requirement. And so these things are so unusual with kids getting involved in these mentored shootings. It just seldom happens. I'm not really sure. I can see where people get bothered by that and not having. 00:18:36 Speaker 3: A age requirement. I mean, I had an age requirement. 00:18:40 Speaker 4: But gosh, when you see something like this become, it's so unusual. 00:18:45 Speaker 3: It made news. 00:18:47 Speaker 4: And when something makes news, It typically is something very uncommon. So I hate to see us always running around passing laws every time one uncommon thing happens. Yeah, it's interesting. 00:19:00 Speaker 1: I've been philosophically supportive of abandoning the really strict age requirement rules. When I was growing up in Michigan, you had to be 14 to rifle hunt deer. I think it's ridiculous. No one waited that long. I didn't wait that long. We all started early. Everyone I knew started early. Uh, that's too much. Philosophically, I've supported abandoning age restrictions. If I was going to be in charge of brokering a national compromise and I had to pick a number, it's going to make all kinds of people riled up. If I had to pick a number and I was going to set the standard for all 50 States, I would say 10 years of age. 00:19:42 Speaker 5: That's, that's what I would pick too. 00:19:44 Speaker 1: Yeah. I would go 10. and just be like, okay, we're going to settle it. All 50 states right now, wham, 10. 00:19:49 Speaker 5: I feel like even at six or seven, kids just don't yet know what they're actually doing. 00:19:56 Speaker 1: This is striking a national compromise. If I had to negotiate, I would go into the negotiation being, I'll settle at 10. I'll settle at 10. So my opening bid might be like, how about eight? And they'd be like, no, you can't do eight. And I'm like, okay, 10, and it's a done deal. I would settle at 10. 00:20:14 Speaker 2: Good job, Steve. Master negotiator. 00:20:18 Speaker 1: Man, Pat Durkin, thanks for coming on. 00:20:21 Speaker 3: You bet, Steve. 00:20:21 Speaker 1: Thanks, Pat. I got to ask, there's an anti-Pat Durkin sign hanging in the background there. Is that because of deer politics, whitetail politics? 00:20:29 Speaker 4: No, actually, that goes back to my very, very early days as a sports writer in 1984. I was covering a local semi-pro basketball team and I wrote some columns that the fans didn't like. And so I got picketed at one of the games. 00:20:48 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:20:48 Speaker 4: It had to be like six or eight people picketing me. And they even had little buttons made with that thing, my picture on it saying, you know, basically get rid of me. And how I came into possession of the sign, though, One of my coworkers who was at the game, he ran out to the hallway after they got done picketing me. And he walked up to this guy holding that sign and says, I work with that guy. He's a real asshole. 00:21:18 Speaker 3: Can I have the sign? 00:21:22 Speaker 4: And then he brought up to me the next day at my desk and I said, So I built a frame for it and I've had it in my office ever since. 00:21:28 Speaker 1: That's great. 00:21:29 Speaker 2: Man, you got to give them credit for like the civic engagement of that little town. 00:21:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I'd ask you if I could have that when you die, but I don't want to wait that long, man. That could be decades. That could be 50 years. 00:21:43 Speaker 2: Hey, Pat, before you send it, sign it too, would you? 00:21:47 Speaker 1: Anti-Pat Durkin. Signed by Pat Durkin. 00:21:51 Speaker 3: I used to have one of the buttons, too. 00:21:54 Speaker 4: You just put it on your sweater or jacket, but I can't seem to find it lately. 00:21:59 Speaker 3: Maybe one of my kids took it. 00:22:01 Speaker 2: All right, Pat. 00:22:02 Speaker 1: We all love you, man. 00:22:03 Speaker 3: Well, thanks. 00:22:04 Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on, dude. 00:22:06 Speaker 3: You bet. See you around. 00:22:09 Speaker 1: All right, here's one. We got the meat grinding. 00:22:12 Speaker 2: Hold up. 00:22:12 Speaker 5: We're supposed to wait for sound. 00:22:14 Speaker 1: We don't have a good sound. Oh, that's pretty good. Is that a new one, Phil? 00:22:22 Speaker 3: Nope. 00:22:22 Speaker 2: Same one as always. 00:22:23 Speaker 1: That's not bad. Our news. Okay, so here's the other day, one of our guys, one of the eggheads upstairs here at the office. 00:22:31 Speaker 5: He's not an egghead. 00:22:33 Speaker 1: One of the tech guys. He's a tech guy. I got two tech issues lined up with him right now. A phone and a computer problem. 00:22:41 Speaker 5: He's a get-after-it hunter, too, man. 00:22:43 Speaker 1: Listen, I was joking, man. I know. He just told me a great story about getting a cowlick with his bone arrow. Anyways, I didn't mean to say that. I was joking. Great guy upstairs. Great guy upstairs came to me and he says, Hey man, we just made a ground meat, a meat grind calculator. And I said, what kind of idiot needs that? He goes, well, what do you mean? And I said, well, I can just do it in my head right now. And I realized that for my entire life, I've done it wrong. Where if, if, I bet you that 99% of the people would make the same problem. 00:23:23 Speaker 5: That's how I always do it. 00:23:25 Speaker 1: If I had 100 pounds, let's say I have 100 pounds of deer meat, and I want a 80-20 blend. Okay, I want an 80-20 blend. I have 100 pounds of deer meat. Well, any idiot would know that you put in 20 pounds. He's like, but that's not right. That gives you a 16.7% blend. I've been doing that my entire life. Wow. 00:23:53 Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 00:23:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, it would have been easier for you if you had just every time done 80 pounds of meat. You got to think about the total. 00:24:01 Speaker 1: That's where I was off. 00:24:02 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:24:02 Speaker 1: But I was telling him how dumb he was to make the calculator. Mm-hmm. 00:24:07 Speaker 2: No, so I'm looking at it right now. So if you did 100 pounds of meat, it's really easy. 00:24:10 Speaker 1: You go there. 00:24:10 Speaker 2: You pick. what percentage you want. 00:24:15 Speaker 1: He's on the meat eater.com, the meat grind calculator. Yeah. 00:24:19 Speaker 2: Or you can go custom your ratio. And I did this to figure out what Steve's was when he did a hundred pounds of meat and he added 20 pounds of fat. This says 20.5 gets you 17%. Okay. So most of us, if we're doing it this way, you're light on the fat. If you want a 20%, uh, fat ratio, you'd go 100 pounds of meat, you'd put in 25 pounds of fat. 00:24:45 Speaker 1: God, man, I'm going to have to use this calculator. You go on this calculator, how does it work? 00:24:51 Speaker 2: You're going to have juicier burgers, buddy. 00:24:53 Speaker 1: You're going to be blown away. You pick your percentage you want. 00:24:57 Speaker 6: You do 10% if you want lean, 15% lean burger, 20% classic, 30% sausage, or you can do a custom mix. Then you either give them your amount of meat or your amount of fat. Then it could work it backwards or however you need it. 00:25:10 Speaker 1: What a great little tool. And the graphic is a meat grinder. That's got, that's got spent. That's got Hunter Spencer written all over it. The graphic is a meat grinder. It has like a calculator face on it. Very clever. The meat grind calculator. Good job. Yeah. 00:25:28 Speaker 2: We'll all be using that this fall. 00:25:29 Speaker 1: That was a good little tool. Just to think I've been eating dry ass burger without even knowing it. What probably happens, I feel that my burger is perfect. So when I use that calculator from now on. Too much fat in here. I'm going to type in 16.7%. 00:25:45 Speaker 5: You might develop heart problems now that you're getting more. 00:25:49 Speaker 1: Dude, that's a great calculator. Oh, so remember when Khrushchev, do you guys remember when Khrushchev addressed the United Nations? 00:25:56 Speaker 5: These guys don't. 00:25:57 Speaker 2: No. 00:26:00 Speaker 1: I don't know if I do. What was being addressed? I don't know. He's mad about being in the Soviet Union. I don't know. Hated America. 00:26:09 Speaker 5: He was the last of the Cold War guys. 00:26:11 Speaker 1: Pull it up, Phil. This is so long ago, it's in black and white. Type in Khrushchev beating his... He got so mad addressing the United Nations. You finding it? He got so mad he took his shoe off. 00:26:28 Speaker 2: Oh, there's a Wikipedia article about it. Go on. 00:26:31 Speaker 1: It's called the shoe banging incident. Yes. So mad. He took his shoe off and beat the podium. Can you pull it up, Phil? 00:26:41 Speaker 2: Yeah. Sorry, one sec here. 00:26:43 Speaker 1: I'm sure he's mad about the Cold War. I'm guessing. I don't think it was like... He's mad at his wife or something. He's probably mad about the Cold War. 00:26:52 Speaker 2: I'm really interested to see how you're going to segue this. 00:26:56 Speaker 5: Well, he already did. 00:26:57 Speaker 2: Did he? 00:26:58 Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a way. So I always. 00:27:01 Speaker 1: No, that's not it, Phil. That's some guy cleaning a retainer. It's not Khrushchev. Here he is. 00:27:08 Speaker 2: Look at him. 00:27:10 Speaker 1: So there's Khrushchev. He's doing the Soviet thing. 00:27:14 Speaker 5: There he is. 00:27:15 Speaker 1: There he's got his shoe. That's how pissed he is. 00:27:19 Speaker 5: Look at the other guys laughing at him. Except you're not pissed, you're excited. 00:27:27 Speaker 1: He means business. Yeah, but people don't know when I'm always sitting here is I run around in Hey Dude shoes. My normal ones, my old ones are very dirty, but I got these brand new ones. If you're in the market for some Hey Dude shoes, we got these new ones out. You get a first light pattern on there. 00:27:42 Speaker 5: Two versions of them. 00:27:43 Speaker 1: Two versions. This is the one I wear all the time. The first pair I ever got, Jason Phelps bought them for me as a present because I was admiring his. 00:27:53 Speaker 2: This is years ago. 00:27:54 Speaker 1: Nice guy. It's a nice gesture. It's an affordable shoe. 00:28:00 Speaker 5: That's the shoe version and then there's a slipper version. 00:28:02 Speaker 1: Then there's an insulated slipper like a camp shoe. Pretty sweet. You can get them, but you can't get them quite yet. I haven't seen Randall take his off. I think he sleeps in them. Dude, I wear mine all the time. I like them. When you get out of the woods, you take your boots off. I just wear them to work anyway. They're so lightweight, I always stick them in my bag. I've always been a big fan And wear them all the time. So when we got a chance to put First Light Camel on Hey Dude Shoes, I was all over it. These are the Wally Funks. But we also got the Slip Camp. It's like an insulated one you slip into when it's cold out. Hanging around Deer Camp. 00:28:43 Speaker 5: I'll be taking those next week. 00:28:45 Speaker 1: You can't get them yet, though. You gotta wait till October 13th. But it's a limited run. If you go to the Meat Eater store, you'll find these shoes. And then when you get mad at someone, you can take it off and be like, That's not what I meant. 00:28:59 Speaker 5: Yanni shot my buck. 00:29:01 Speaker 1: Shut up, Yanni. Stuff like that. October 13th. Heydude.com and the meat eater store you can find them at. Okay, moving on. Oh, your news. Brought to you by Banish. Suppressors, which I'm holding in my hot little hand right here. 00:29:19 Speaker 6: Steve's going to have to take his shoe off for this one. 00:29:24 Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I am going to get that. I might double do it. 00:29:28 Speaker 5: Last week we— Khrushchev, I don't know. 00:29:30 Speaker 1: If he ever got so mad he took both his shoes off, but I can see. 00:29:33 Speaker 5: You're about to. Yeah, last week we talked about the guy in Wyoming who shot a bull grizzly. He left it overnight. A grizzly ate a little bit of it, came back, cut the head off, took the head, left the meat because he's worried about the grizzly. 00:29:49 Speaker 1: And Brody's a big supporter of this guy. 00:29:51 Speaker 5: Listen, I understand why he did what he did. You weren't there. You didn't hear the debate. 00:29:56 Speaker 2: Come on. 00:29:58 Speaker 5: I said the guy screwed up. 00:29:59 Speaker 1: We debated it a minute ago. 00:30:00 Speaker 5: He weren't there for the whole conversation. 00:30:03 Speaker 1: Anyway. Who was there? Can someone recap? Was Brody, like, as apologetic on the original? Go on. I wasn't there. I'm not ready to opine yet. My shoes are on. 00:30:13 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:30:14 Speaker 5: Anyway, we had a game ward not from Wyoming write in about his take on this thing. 00:30:21 Speaker 1: Can you tell the story, please? 00:30:23 Speaker 5: Sure. 00:30:24 Speaker 1: I know people already heard it, but just quickly tell. 00:30:26 Speaker 2: The story again. 00:30:26 Speaker 5: I'll give the quick version. Last year in September, a guy was elk hunting, archery elk hunting outside of Cody, Wyoming in a very grizzly infested area. He shot a bull elk in late afternoon. 00:30:42 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:30:45 Speaker 5: The bull walked off about 100 yards. They were in a pretty open area. They watched it lay down. It was late afternoon. They kept their eye on it until dark. And then they were like, don't know if it's dead or not. We're going to back out and come back in the morning. 00:31:00 Speaker 1: Okay, can I ask a clarifying question? 00:31:02 Speaker 2: Sure. 00:31:02 Speaker 1: I'm not going to opine. Yes, you will. No. As you and I have discussed this. 00:31:09 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:31:09 Speaker 1: I've heard two explanations for his thinking. 00:31:14 Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 00:31:14 Speaker 1: And this is an important point. The telling you just did, he was doing more of a, it's hitting the guts. It's laid down. I don't want to bump. 00:31:29 Speaker 2: It. 00:31:29 Speaker 1: It'll die if I back off. But in the other tellings, when we've talked about this privately, you've said, i don't want to go you said that he thought i don't want to go in there because of grizzly. 00:31:40 Speaker 5: No grizzlies were deaf like he said grizzlies were deaf they didn't want to necessarily mess with it at night. 00:31:48 Speaker 1: But this is because then spencer's giving me a lecture what every deer hunter knows no i was waiting till the next day to pursue a gut shot deer and i'm like i could see four hours. 00:32:00 Speaker 5: I listen I think it's a legitimate concern to that when you're done, Brody, go ahead. There's a legitimate concern of bumping the elk. There's a legitimate concern of getting attacked by a grizzly or a grizzly getting killed, which is also a gigantic headache. Like the guy's concerns, I think were legitimate. 00:32:19 Speaker 1: I told you I'm not going to opine. 00:32:20 Speaker 5: I know what you can opine after I read, can I read this or do you got something to say, Spencer? 00:32:24 Speaker 1: This is all background. 00:32:26 Speaker 6: Uh, Steve was saying before the show, he said, I didn't even finish the story. Who leaves a deer overnight or who leaves an elk overnight? And I was like, that's very common. 00:32:34 Speaker 1: I told you. It's the majority of people that don't care about the well-being of the meat. 00:32:41 Speaker 5: Except you left one overnight. 00:32:44 Speaker 1: Depends. You did. 00:32:46 Speaker 2: You left an elk overnight. 00:32:47 Speaker 1: Not when I can see it laying there. 00:32:48 Speaker 5: Okay. 00:32:50 Speaker 1: But anyway. 00:32:51 Speaker 6: To respond to Steve saying, who on earth does this? This is a common practice. The national deer association says you hit one in the guts with a bow. You wait 12 hours. A bow hunter magazine says eight to 12 hours. The meat eater.com says eight to 12 hours. 00:33:07 Speaker 1: Well, that, that person's not going to be working here in a couple of hours. We need to move on. Let me finish. 00:33:14 Speaker 6: It's just a thing that said, it's a thing that's done. People leave deer overnight when they have a marginal. 00:33:18 Speaker 1: Hit because they don't want to looking at it. It's dark. 00:33:21 Speaker 5: It's like, it gets dark. 00:33:23 Speaker 1: You should see my, my flashlight. I would have gone every couple hours, shined over, picked up its eye shine. 00:33:31 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:33:32 Speaker 1: There's there's it's good. It's heads up. Let's hang tight. Another hour later, little eyes shine. Take a nap. Wake up. Little eyes shine. 00:33:40 Speaker 2: Take a nap. 00:33:41 Speaker 1: Wake up. Oh, he's dead. 00:33:43 Speaker 5: Let's do this after I read it. But first, I got to finish the story. He comes back the next morning with some buddies, pistols drawn. The elk is dead. 00:33:54 Speaker 1: Why are their pistols drawn? 00:33:56 Speaker 5: Because they're just being ready. 00:33:59 Speaker 1: They're paranoid. 00:34:00 Speaker 5: We went in pistols drawn to my moose. 00:34:04 Speaker 1: That makes sense. Anyway. That's a good point. But that was a different situation. 00:34:12 Speaker 5: Anyway, they get to the bull. It's obvious there's been a bear on it eating it. The guts are ripped out. There's bear shit all over the place. This man decides to leave the carcass, cuts the head off, takes it out. Just the head. 00:34:30 Speaker 1: No back straps. No meat. 00:34:33 Speaker 5: No nothing. And doesn't report this to the fishing game department. Now, let's move on to the letter. 00:34:41 Speaker 1: I don't opine yet. No. 00:34:43 Speaker 5: Let me get through the letter. 00:34:44 Speaker 1: How was he caught? Wow. 00:34:46 Speaker 2: I think you do have to explain that part of the story. 00:34:49 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:34:52 Speaker 5: So there's a carcass laying there. On his way out, he lets some cowboys know that there's a grizzly on a carcass. that has eaten some of his elk. There's a carcass up there. Stay away from it. Later, I don't know how many days later, probably not far, some hunters come across this carcass, headless, which looks very suspicious. 00:35:14 Speaker 1: Sure it does. 00:35:16 Speaker 5: They report that to a game warden. The game warden follows up. He ends up talking to this guy. He takes the guy's, I think, his bow. He confiscates it. the meat or the head and the antlers. And this guy eventually goes to court. The game warden cites him. He goes to court and fights the citation and gets out of the citation. This is where we're at now. 00:35:43 Speaker 1: In court? Yes. A six-person jury. 00:35:46 Speaker 2: What? 00:35:49 Speaker 1: Everybody's paranoid down there. 00:35:51 Speaker 5: And one of the reasons why is because Wyoming advises not to mess with. 00:35:56 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:35:57 Speaker 5: Don't opine yet. Okay, I got to get to this letter. This is the reason we're here right now. Okay, a game warden wrote in. He's not from Wyoming. He's just giving a game warden's perspective. Good morning, Brody. Just listened to your story from the new show about the hunter abandoning his meat that a grizzly had claimed. I can't speak for Wyoming, but I thought I'd offer you some perspective from a game warden's point of view. I understand and agree with the hunter leaving the bull overnight. I can also understand leaving the elk once he saw a bear had claimed it. But there are several things he did or didn't do that make a game warden question his actions. Number one, he took the time to cut the head off the elk and take that. He didn't take the time to get any of the meat. He questioned whether it would be salvageable due to being contaminated by the bear. Surely there were parts the bear didn't touch. Sounds like there was a group of guys with him. Several could have stood guard while he salvaged what meat he could. Then get the head last, which is getting the head last. I know in this state it's a rule, right? Pack the head out last. 00:37:07 Speaker 1: That's a rule in Alaska. You can't move the, all the meat has to move before the trophy. 00:37:12 Speaker 5: That's my biggest problem with the whole thing, he says. He made note to tell several people in the area there was a grizzly on a carcass, but he never reached out to Game and Fish. That should have been his first call. Now Game and Fish gets a call about a headless elk, a call that could have been headed off, but a game warden is thinking that this is poached or someone didn't care to get the meat because they were too lazy to pack it out. Sure, there would have been bear sign at the carcass when he got the call, but at that point there's no telling when the bear found the carcass. Now the game warden has to use his time and resources to track this guy down. When he does, the guy says, well, a bear claimed the carcass, so I just took the antlers. Uh-huh, right. There were just too many fishy things going on with this case. What he's saying is that the game warden was justified in issuing a citation. Um, I also understand that Wyoming has a warning about carcasses that have been claimed by Grizzlies, but that warning should come with a caveat of an immediately report to Game and Fish. I feel that Game Warden was justified in writing the citation. And I also agree with the defendant's right to take it to court. And in this case, he won. We write citations to correct the behavior. And I feel like this hunter will correct his behavior. 00:38:29 Speaker 1: In the future. 00:38:30 Speaker 5: Lessons learned, but calling in and being honest is always the best avenue to take. Do you need a drum roll for this? 00:38:41 Speaker 1: No, because he made all the points. I was gone, so I wasn't here for that recording of the news show, or I would have got this all off my chest earlier. I'm sure this guy, he's probably a nice guy. I'm sure he's, I don't know. Give me the bend for the doubt. Probably a great guy. Probably loves his children. Loves his country. Like, all that stuff. Likes help. I'm not saying something bad should happen to him. I'm attacking the logic. I don't want to attack an individual that I don't know. I understand where he came from. There's just, like this guy said, though, there's some things that strike me as being very, very fishy. We were in a situation before where we actually had got assaulted by a bear. 00:39:31 Speaker 5: I know, we kind of alluded to that last week. 00:39:33 Speaker 1: In that situation, had we said, let's just grab the antlers and go. Someone might have been like, why don't you just say, let's just grab a big back strap. Why not grab a back leg and go? Why is it that you're going to grab and go? 00:39:46 Speaker 5: Sure, but you were also told that there's like a very good chance that a grizzly is going to claim. 00:39:52 Speaker 1: And they were right. Yep. And they were right. But getting attacked by a bear didn't then, we didn't then take that to mean, let's just grab the antlers and get out of here. No, no. We grabbed the whole damn thing and got out of there. 00:40:06 Speaker 6: Yep. 00:40:08 Speaker 1: I think you've got to... Why is it that there was... Why is it that you had the wherewithal, you got guys with guns, you got the wherewithal to go remove the head, but you don't have the wherewithal to go remove any of the parts? He was. 00:40:22 Speaker 5: This is what he said. Again, you weren't here. He said he was... Before any of this stuff had happened, another game warden had advised him not to take meat from a carcass that a grizzly had claimed because of Urine, feces, saliva, like contamination. That's what he said. 00:40:42 Speaker 1: A guy told him that? What are the odds he had that conversation? 00:40:45 Speaker 5: I'm just saying, he said an old game warden told him that. 00:40:50 Speaker 1: An old game warden sat him down and said, just apropos. 00:40:54 Speaker 5: I'm just telling you what he said. 00:40:56 Speaker 1: Case never comes up. 00:40:57 Speaker 5: I don't know if that's the case, if that's what he said. 00:41:05 Speaker 1: I'm not going to beat the table with a shoe or something about it. It just feels very, very fishy to me. 00:41:12 Speaker 5: It looks fishy too. 00:41:14 Speaker 1: The other part that feels very fishy to me, if he viewed it as this great travesty that he was not able to get his elk meat and was somehow only able to get the antlers, also the same guy, it begs the question, how in the world would that have struck you as a thing that you weren't gonna bother telling anybody about? Yeah. 00:41:40 Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure. And we talked about that last week. He was either making a mistake or he was just trying. 00:41:52 Speaker 1: To get out of there. Being fishy. That seems like the biggest error in this. Where he's like, hey, I got the part I wanted anyway. I got the part I wanted. I'm good. Now I don't gotta mess with all the hassle of dealing with it. elk carcass i'm trying to talk my wife into cooking it. 00:42:11 Speaker 6: As to why you would leave an animal die if if someone is listening back on this now why would you what steve you were you were adam you're like nobody leaves a critter lay overnight no don't put words in my mouth okay you tell me your words he's looking at it i'm not even defending this specific situation okay i'm. 00:42:27 Speaker 1: Not talking about other situations we're talking about this situation. 00:42:30 Speaker 6: But you said the only person who would leave something late overnight, they don't care about the meat. That was a declaration you had made. 00:42:36 Speaker 1: No, no, no. He's looking at it. Again. I'm talking only about this situation. Yes. Okay. I could see a situation where you knew you had a really bad hit on something. I could see a situation, depending on the weather as well, which would factor in my calculation, if it was getting down to 20 degrees at night. Yep. I Googled it for this day. He was hunting. 00:42:59 Speaker 6: It says the lows were in the mid forties to low fifties around Cody, Wyoming. 00:43:03 Speaker 1: Okay. That would have factored in many things would factor into the situation. I'm only speaking to a situation where there it is. I can see it. Right. In other situations, I would say, I wouldn't say I want to pull back and go back to camp to let it die. And he's like, and also I'm scared of grizzlies, so that's also going to encourage me to go back to camp. I would sit there saying, I'm going to pull back, but because of the risk of losing it to grizzlies, I'm going to linger here. check it with my spotlight. 00:43:42 Speaker 5: And there's things you could do. 00:43:44 Speaker 1: You can monitor the situation. 00:43:46 Speaker 5: If it, if you knew it was dead, you could go build a great big fire and. 00:43:50 Speaker 1: Just do all the things you do, make all kinds of noise, make a big fire and hollering. 00:43:55 Speaker 5: One thing that this, before we go on this, if there are game wardens out there who know the answer to this question, and I'm sure they do, this is something Steve and I were talking about. Is it, Is it legal to dispatch a wounded animal that's not going where it's laying there, wounded, but it's not dead? Is it legal to dispatch an animal after legal shooting light? 00:44:20 Speaker 1: Yeah, because this is a great question. Let me tell you a story I just heard. I just heard a story about some hunters where they had gotten a bad hit on a deer. They came back at night to track the deer. They had a dog. The dog got onto the wounded deer. Somehow chased the deer out into a creek or pond, I'm not sure, but the deer's now out in the water with the dog. In the beam of a flashlight, a kid, the kid that shot it, in the beam of a flashlight, hits the deer out in the water and kills it. 00:45:02 Speaker 2: With a gun. 00:45:02 Speaker 1: With a bow. With a bow. Yep, sorry. I initially thought they meant with a gun. Takes his bow and. 00:45:11 Speaker 1: Smokes it in the head on the beam of a flashlight with a dog on the deer got in trouble for this for shooting it with the artificial light now here's where this is like a huge i think this is a very interesting gray area in wildlife law if you look at legal method to take Legal method of take would not be a knife. Most states, it would be illegal to jump out of a tree and kill a deer with a knife. It's not a legal method of take. They'll spell out archery equipment, right? Center fire firearms, right? Like a rim fire, not a legal method of take. A knife, a spear, not a legal method of take. 00:45:55 Speaker 5: Or even if you were archery hunting and had a pistol and you finished it off with a pistol. 00:45:59 Speaker 1: I would never do that. I know, I'm just... But this is all great questions. Because let's say... and I've done this and I would continue to do this. Even if I knew it was illegal, you catch up to something that's wounded and you cut its throat. You've now killed the deer with, with not a legal method to take, or you catch up to it and you do just like what I'm talking about. You take a flashlight and you're like, shit, there he is. Get another air window. Yep. You get an air window and kill it. It's so weird. I get it, but it's so weird to be like, you just broke the law. 00:46:32 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:46:33 Speaker 1: Who would write these tickets though? 00:46:35 Speaker 5: I've cut deer's throats before. 00:46:37 Speaker 1: Illegal method of take. Well, the first deer I ever got, like I was telling you, you always hunted before you were allowed to, back when I was 14. I shot a deer when I was 13 in. 00:46:49 Speaker 2: Michigan. 00:46:50 Speaker 1: I shot it. It jumped up. I jumped on it, tackled it, cut its throat. That would have been absolutely illegal method of take. But no game warden would write you a ticket for finishing a deer off with a knife. No. 00:47:03 Speaker 2: No, as long as... I think it's there because it's the slippery slope of, you know, if it's not written in there, then it gives people the opportunity to, at 2 o'clock in the morning, be out there shooting deer under lights. And as long as they're not caught, you know, doing it in the act, they can be like, oh, no. 00:47:22 Speaker 1: Finishing them off. 00:47:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, we're just out here finishing these three off, you know? 00:47:27 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:47:28 Speaker 2: Right? I got it. 00:47:29 Speaker 1: So.... 00:47:31 Speaker 2: It has to be there. And it will probably be this gray area for some time to come. 00:47:36 Speaker 1: I would love to hear a couple game warden perspectives. Yeah. Like, there's extreme versions. And maybe an extreme version is, hold on a minute, your dog is not that wounded. 00:47:49 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:47:49 Speaker 1: And your dog has it out in the water. Yeah. And it's like getting away. And you smoke it with an arrow under a flashlight. That feels to me like not That sort of tips into a weird area. 00:48:03 Speaker 5: Then there's the one that's laying on the ground, like wheezing, you know, like it's not going anywhere. 00:48:08 Speaker 1: It'd be very interesting. 00:48:10 Speaker 2: And again, just like that warden said too, the thing to do is call and let the warden know. So if you're going to all of a sudden fire a high caliber rifle two hours after legal shooting light ends at a deer that's on the ground wheezing, and there's going to be a gunshot that goes off two hours after legal shooting light, Call the warden. If you can. 00:48:29 Speaker 5: There's a lot of places you're not going to be able to. 00:48:31 Speaker 2: Sure. But you can make your best effort to be like, hey man, just in case you get a call about one single shot at 10 p.m. when it got dark at 7.30. 00:48:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's funny too because I would never If we were bow hunting and we went out at night to look for something, you definitely bring your bow. Yep. Sure. Because you're like, well, shit, I don't know what's going to happen. I have to finish it off. If someone said, well, I'm just going to grab my pistol. I'd be like, no way, dude. It's bow season. Exactly. But I would never factor in the artificial light. 00:49:00 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:49:02 Speaker 1: As to why someone would let one lay, though, for like 12 hours, if you're not familiar with archery hunting. 00:49:08 Speaker 6: Like, there's a chance you bump that deer, and he runs off, and you never find him now. Ideally, you can let them die in their first bed or their second bed, uh and and you're just upping your odds by letting them slowly expire in their bed rather than chasing after them and now they've ran two more miles away and and you just can't find them anymore. 00:49:29 Speaker 1: Look me in the eye once again yeah that's not what i'm talking about I hear you. I hear you. 00:49:36 Speaker 6: You didn't even know the 100-yard detail until we started, until like five minutes ago. 00:49:41 Speaker 1: Before the show, you're like, people don't leave deer lay overnight. That's not what I meant. Okay. 00:49:47 Speaker 2: Let's move on. 00:49:48 Speaker 1: You're right. Listen, you're right. You're right. Thank you. 00:49:51 Speaker 5: All right. 00:49:51 Speaker 1: I feel much better now. Yeah, I was. Okay. 00:49:54 Speaker 2: Wonderful. 00:49:55 Speaker 1: But now we got to fire Mark Kenyon. So that's too bad. He's got to take the hit here. Well, the 8-12 hour recommendation... You know him better. Do you mind letting him know? I'll let him know. I'll tell him to keep showing up anyway, though. I think Steve will forget about it. Let's just hope it blows over, but it sounds like you're fired. 00:50:18 Speaker 5: On to the news. 00:50:25 Speaker 1: Here's an interesting one. I just got this. 00:50:30 Speaker 1: Thumbing through stuff I thumbed through, and I saw that Maryland... I'm mainly talking about this story because it was a side story, but that Maryland... Let me put my spectacles down here. What are you laughing about? 00:50:44 Speaker 5: It's a side story. 00:50:45 Speaker 1: Oh, the side story is the best. That's why I brought this up. 00:50:48 Speaker 2: Here's a headline. 00:50:50 Speaker 1: Waterfowl hunting schedule confirmed after federal light... Trust me, I'll explain all of this. But here's the headline. Waterfowl hunting schedule confirmed after federal light goose conservation order paused for 26-27 season. As a little background. People who pay attention to wildlife politics, wildlife news, know that snow goose populations were quite low. in the 60s and 70s, and then due to changing agricultural practices and the changing of some things that are not even well understood, snow goose populations just exploded. Most people think that snow goose populations were driven by, again, changes in agricultural practices, grain prices, more changing agricultural harvest schedules, the way grain is harvested, where we basically created a bunch of snow goose wintering habitat. You might say, well, why is that a problem? That became a problem because snow goose numbers, it wound up being that the limiting factor on snow goose numbers was winter habitat. So as farming practices created more and more and more snow goose habitat, snow geese started to greatly degrade their nesting habitat in the Arctic. So in an effort to conserve Arctic nesting habitat, states took a lot of steps to increase snow goose harvest. And out of this came some snow goose hunting practices that in previous generations would have been regarded as deeply taboo. Most people out there will know that when you're hunting snow ducks or geese or migratory waterfowl, you need to put a, you need to put a plug in your gun so that the gun can hold a maximum of three shells. So two in the tube, one in the chamber, if it's a slide action or a semi-auto, right? Maximum of three shells counting the chamber. Um, when you're hunting big game, generally you're allowed to hunt 30 minutes after legal sunset and waterfowl, you always have to quit at legal sunset. Um, People know that like when you're calling geese, calling ducks, normally you have to use a mouth blown call. You can't use an electronic caller. People are accustomed to very tight bag limits. Like maybe you're allowed two geese or three geese or four geese, right? To lower snow goose numbers, all that stuff went out the window. And they started these crazy snow goose seasons where there was no limit on snow geese. Or you're allowed 25 snow geese a day. You were allowed to put extended magazines on guns. We're here that you get videos of guys shooting snow geese where the magazine is longer than the barrel on the shotgun. 00:53:59 Speaker 5: Spring seasons, too. 00:54:01 Speaker 6: This has been most of my life. I've only ever known snow goose hunting as what you're describing. 00:54:06 Speaker 1: You've only ever known the good times. Electronic callers. That you could sit multiple electronic callers out in the field playing the noise of a huge flock of snow geese. That you're hunting them in the spring. You're hunting ducks migrating. Geese. Sorry. Normally you're hunting geese and ducks migrating south in the fall and winter season. They're opening up seasons all through the central flyway. Somewhere in the Atlantic flyway. You're hunting returning geese. You're hunting them on the way down, you're hunting them all winter long, and you're hunting them on the way back in an effort to lower these goose numbers. Most guys that are participating in these crazy snow goose hunts aren't even really aware of, I would guess, aren't really aware of degraded Arctic nesting habitat. Maybe most of them don't really care about degraded Arctic nesting habitat, but it created this snow goose bonanza. If you go look online, you'll find videos where guys are dumping hundreds of snow geese off bridges. And you'd go to popular snow geese hunting areas, and people would have photos, I've seen them, where there are islands of dead snow geese. Because guys are just killing them and dumping them. Dumpsters full of dead snow geese. Landfills covered in dead snow geese. From people like, the Bonanza is so big that they're violating the wanton waste laws. It was the Wild West. So an important distinction here is in the Atlantic Flyway, you have the greater snow geese. And these things are big. And then in the Central Flyway, you have the lesser snow geese. Well, Maryland and other Atlantic Flyway states are just now starting to reverse some of these. They're starting to tighten some of the bonanza back down. Let me pull this up here from Max. Bear with me a minute. Not as organized as I would like to be. Our resident duck expert, Max Bartum. I said to him, like, tell me your thing. What are you thinking when you look at this? Like, help me interpret this. Max Bartum says, here's my thoughts. He points out the main concerning thing about this is that the Atlantic greater snow goose population is has been declining for years. They think that last year alone, they lost 200,000 Atlantic greater snow geese to avian influenza. 00:56:54 Speaker 5: That's what I was going to ask about. 00:56:57 Speaker 1: It wound up being that it's not, like, if they're getting that number under control, it's not because of the crazy hunting. The number's dropping from the avian influenza. And he points out that they're talking about pausing. They're talking about pausing the thing, but they're only just adjusting a couple things. They're still hunting them in March, right? And this article even points out that greater snow geese on the Atlantic flyway are now at or below the conservation threshold they'd like to see. So that leads to the question, why in the world are they still killing them in March? Because they're only changing a handful of these regulations. 00:57:53 Speaker 5: What's interesting to me is like these are, like waterfowl is like top level managed by the feds, right? So states are free to change their own waterfowl regulations? 00:58:08 Speaker 1: No, it's a flyway thing. It's a flyway issue. 00:58:10 Speaker 5: Okay. 00:58:11 Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a flyway issue. Snow geese seem to still be doing good, though. Central flyway, 100%. This flyway, not. Here's a sentence from this thing, or a passage. The Light Goose Conservation Order is a management tool authorized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and has been used to reduce and stabilize populations of light geese. which include greater and lesser snow geese and Ross's geese since 2010. However, here's the thing. So the Atlantic Flyway is the greater. However, greater snow geese are now at or below the management plan's population goal. Maryland and the other states in the Atlantic Flyway, a major bird migration route on the East Coast, have elected to pause the light goose conservation operation order for the 2026-2027 season. Barely. If they were really, like, I don't get. If they were really serious about this. 00:59:21 Speaker 2: No, because it's like at or below population levels, right? So if it's at. then everything's perfect. So if they're slightly at or below, I'm guessing in their heads, they're like, it can still sustain this hunting. It can't sustain this hunting. 00:59:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, but what I'm afraid of here is they're not factory. Okay. The Atlantic greater goose population right now is sitting at roughly 450 to 500,000 birds. They just lost 200,000 to avian influenza. Avian influenza has not gone away. Meanwhile, the Central Flyway lesser snow goose population sits at 8 million. If you've got greater snow geese in the Atlantic Flyway at around 500,000 and you just lost 200,000 to avian influenza and you're pausing the conservation order as a couple modest tweaks and you're still shooting them all through the winter and through March, I just think that it feels to me a little... courting disaster. Yeah. 01:00:28 Speaker 5: Is it possible that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could, like, do they supersede Maryland, like Maryland? If they said, you can't. 01:00:36 Speaker 1: Do this anymore. Yeah, absolutely. 01:00:39 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:00:39 Speaker 1: It's through a flyway council. All the states, the feds all come in. There's even interplay with Canada and Mexico on the whole thing. I just saw when I thought, when I saw the headline, I thought, oh, wow. 01:00:50 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:00:51 Speaker 1: They're doing away with all the crazy slaughter hunts. 01:00:54 Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. 01:00:55 Speaker 1: Because geese numbers are so low. And I read it and I'm like, oh wow, geese numbers are really low. And then I'm reading it and I'm like, but they're not really doing away with the crazy slaughter hunts. 01:01:04 Speaker 6: My read would be the same as Yanni, that despite all that, they're still very bullish on snow geese being okay. 01:01:13 Speaker 1: Max says the new rules accomplish little. Perhaps saving a roost or two from being jumped. Yeah. 01:01:22 Speaker 6: It does feel like, again, the first time in my lifetime that this has gone the other direction for snow geese. It's always been the gloves are off. 01:01:30 Speaker 1: Like, get them. The only thing they've done, just to be clear, here's the only thing they've done. They've said, okay, now instead of no limit, the limit is 25. And now instead of being able to shoot a half hour past sunset, you can only shoot till sunset. That is the response to it being at objective, having just lost a couple hundred thousand birds to avian influenza. Now for my Maryland story. Right when this started to blow up, so this would have been back in, I know, yeah, this would have been in 2010 when this whole thing started to blow up. I go down with my buddy Ronnie, and we go down. I can't even remember how it happened. Me and him and another buddy of ours went down to do a big snow goose hunt with a guide. And the guide had one of those dogs. This is the problem with some labs. They're human shit eaters. I wasn't aware of this. It's an issue. 01:02:35 Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. 01:02:35 Speaker 1: Ask Max. 01:02:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, there's all kinds of things on the internet to fix it, like feed them bananas. 01:02:41 Speaker 6: I'm aware of, like, coprophagia, but I didn't know it could, like, humans. 01:02:45 Speaker 1: They'll be like, yeah, give me the human stuff, too. There are. It's a problem among labs. 01:02:49 Speaker 3: Okay. 01:02:50 Speaker 1: I have this on good authority from Max, who in addition to knowing more about ducks and geese than I'll, knowing more now at his young age about ducks and geese than I'll ever know. 01:03:00 Speaker 4: Okay. 01:03:02 Speaker 1: He knows more about labs than I'll ever know. I had one for 13 years. They have a human shit eating problem. 01:03:12 Speaker 6: Yeah. 01:03:13 Speaker 1: So picture this. This ties into Maryland. We're all in layout blinds, which really restrict your movements when you're in a layout blind. 01:03:23 Speaker 5: You can shoot your toe off. 01:03:25 Speaker 1: This guide goes off and takes a growler in the windrow. All right? All of a sudden, here's the dog running around, having consumed those human feces. Even to the point, you're going to think I'm lying, but I'm not. Ask Ronnie. Even to the point where the dog is trailing the toilet paper out of its mouth. 01:03:49 Speaker 2: Okay. 01:03:52 Speaker 1: There you are in a layout blind. 01:03:54 Speaker 5: He should have buried his dog. 01:03:55 Speaker 2: Phil, are you going to have to put a warning on this episode? 01:03:57 Speaker 1: In addition to this dog being a coprophagic dog, scatophagic dog, he's also an avid face licker. And he's got you kind of captive because you're in a layout blind. So here now we know That he's just consumed human feces. But he wants to lick you real bad. I'm in that layout blind beating this dog off. 01:04:32 Speaker 5: When you're not supposed to be moving around. 01:04:34 Speaker 2: Now we will have to put a warning. 01:04:36 Speaker 1: I'm in the layout blind aggressively shooing the dog away just because of this. What do you think of that? 01:04:47 Speaker 5: How many geese did you kill? 01:04:48 Speaker 1: Not many. 01:04:50 Speaker 5: A handful. 01:04:52 Speaker 1: Not unlimited. 01:04:53 Speaker 5: Not a slaughter hunt? 01:04:55 Speaker 1: Not unlimited. What do you think of that? 01:04:58 Speaker 6: That would have been the first time in my life I would reject dog affection. 01:05:03 Speaker 1: I love dogs. 01:05:05 Speaker 5: Makes you wonder though. 01:05:06 Speaker 1: Would you want that dog licking you? No. 01:05:10 Speaker 5: No. 01:05:12 Speaker 1: How's that for a story? 01:05:14 Speaker 5: I'd rather hear Spencer's turtle story. 01:05:17 Speaker 2: Yeah. Thanks, Steve. 01:05:19 Speaker 1: Here's my turtle story. 01:05:22 Speaker 6: An Iowa man is facing more than 120 charges in Alabama for trafficking in endangered species. 01:05:29 Speaker 1: Phil's got pictures for us. 01:05:30 Speaker 6: Aiden Thronson, whose only prior criminal history- He's a little shaver. His only prior criminal history I could find was for speeding in a school zone. He was arrested in Northwest Alabama near Bankhead National Forest. He is accused of harvesting and selling flattened musk turtles, which are a species that is exclusively native to north central and west central Alabama. It's been called the rarest turtle in North America. The turtle is listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, endangered by the state of Alabama, and critically endangered by the IUCN Red List. These reptiles have been extirpated from about 75% of their native range, Their population is down 90% since the 1960s. Their greatest threats are the things that you always hear in these cases, pollution, food chain disruption, poaching, and habitat loss. Specifically, the turtles rely on rocky waterways where they wedge themselves into rock crevices to escape predators. But due to mining practices and urban development, their home waters have been filled with silt that now covers their hidey-holes. and that exposes them to raccoons, snapping turtles, wading birds, and large fish. The turtles are real easy pickings for most predators that wander the upper Black Warrior River system, since adults only get three or four inches big. But besides their shell, these are tiny little turtles, besides their shell, their best defense is the foul-smelling musk odor that they're named after, which they can release when they're threatened. 01:07:03 Speaker 1: Now, guys like Aiden. 01:07:05 Speaker 6: are further depleting flattened musk turtle populations by moving them on the exotic pet black market. The species is largely trafficked due to its scarcity, not because it has any perceived medicinal value. So what would it cost to own one of them? Well, figures are pretty hard to come by, but there was a bust in the 1980s for someone who was selling them at $ 80 a pop, which is pretty cheap. In 2008, someone in Canada was advertising them for 180 American dollars per turtle. And right now you can buy one adult male from JJW Farm Sanctuary for $ 1, 444. And that's their sale price. 01:07:43 Speaker 1: Is that dude Black Market? This is Black Market. 01:07:46 Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I can't find where this website is based out of, but it seems to be foreign. They only accept payment via Cash App, Zelle Pay, or Crypto. 01:07:59 Speaker 1: He's got a hell of a sale on, because that's marked down from $ 3, 000 to $ 1440. 01:08:03 Speaker 6: Let's talk about the rest of their offerings. This is your one-stop shop for exotic animals, the JJW Farm Sanctuary. 01:08:09 Speaker 1: Here's what else they have. 01:08:11 Speaker 6: We could get a male sub-adult chimpanzee for $ 15, 000. That's a $ 5, 000. 01:08:17 Speaker 1: Price marked down. 01:08:18 Speaker 6: That price seems appropriate, $ 15, 000. 01:08:21 Speaker 1: For a chimp. That's like, I think, in the neighborhood of what I would guess. 01:08:25 Speaker 6: Or we could get the world's deadliest bird, a cassowary, for $ 7, 000. Or we could buy a pound of glass eels for $ 2, 348. And this last one is just for Steve. We could buy an oscillated tom turkey for $ 2, 200. That's not an oscillated turkey. I understand the photo is not, and I don't think that's their photo either. But they are listing a male oscillated turkey for $ 2, 200. It has one customer review from someone in Colorado. who said that it seems to be a good turkey and they got it on time. So $ 2, 200. 01:09:00 Speaker 1: Where is this place out of? 01:09:02 Speaker 6: I can't find a physical address, but it seems to. 01:09:05 Speaker 1: Be in a foreign nation. That's a CITES animal. 100%. 01:09:11 Speaker 6: Based on what I'm seeing, I would guess somewhere in Asia is where this JJW Farm Sanctuary is located. They have their email address on there. They encourage you to come pick these critters up in person, but they will ship them to you if you need to. And again, the review was from somebody in Colorado who had an oscillated turkey shipped to them. So that's where you can buy a flattened musk turtle right now for $ 1, 444. That's the turtle we're talking about. 01:09:37 Speaker 1: So how old is the kid there? The kid's young. 20 years old. He's 20 years old. 01:09:41 Speaker 6: Now, according to a CITES analysis, they believe that about 100 flattened musk turtles are exported from the United States every year, but they think the vast majority are farmed animals rather than wild ones. As of now, it's unclear where Aiden's turtles were headed or how many he had when arrested, but the 104 counts of taking or selling a protected species and the 20 counts of violating the protection of flattened musk turtles suggest it was more than just a few. The 20-year-old was given a $ 100, 000 cash bond The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources is not commenting right now because they say it's an act of investigation. So we don't know if he just had like his pockets full of these turtles, if he had a pickup full of these turtles, what it was, but facing 120 plus counts for trafficking these things. 01:10:30 Speaker 1: My first instinct when I saw his picture, I thought he was 15 or 16 years old. And I felt bad for him. Not bad for him, you know what I mean? Like caught up in something wrong. Didn't understand, right? But 20. Yeah. 01:10:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:10:44 Speaker 6: And he's like very intentional driving from Iowa to Alabama to this tiny little watershed to get these things. 01:10:52 Speaker 5: It makes you wonder what else he was doing. 01:10:54 Speaker 1: I bet he's a hunt, fish, and son of a gun. 01:10:55 Speaker 6: No, man. I tried to find his social media. I found two profiles, one on Instagram, one Facebook, same exact name. And all the photos there are reptiles. So this seems to be a real passion of his is having reptiles. 01:11:10 Speaker 5: Or selling them. 01:11:11 Speaker 1: Or selling them. 01:11:12 Speaker 3: Yep. 01:11:13 Speaker 6: So no further details right now. We'll see how this plays out. 01:11:17 Speaker 1: You know, I have never even heard of that turtle. Me either. 01:11:23 Speaker 6: That's why they call it the rarest one on the continent. Alabama, though, is just loaded with that stuff. Alabama, I think, has the most freshwater diversity on the continent. 01:11:33 Speaker 2: That's my understanding. 01:11:34 Speaker 1: Don't they have one... the most, maybe, endemics or something? 01:11:40 Speaker 6: Freshwater fish that probably extends to the herpetology world as well. 01:11:46 Speaker 1: Man, that poor kid, man. That's his story. Well, I don't know. He's 20, you know. 01:11:50 Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't think he's hanging out with the wrong crowd. I think he might be the wrong crowd. 01:11:53 Speaker 1: Might be the wrong crowd. That would be my guess. 01:11:56 Speaker 2: Speaking of the wrong. 01:11:57 Speaker 5: Crowd, 15 bears removed from Bozeman property after someone allegedly fed them. Uh, Early September 26, just outside Bozeman, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks received a report that black bears were allegedly being deliberately fed at a residential property. Spokesman Morgan Jacobson later said investigators believed that feeding had been occurring. Later that month, wardens and wildlife staff investigated the property and encountered an extraordinary concentration of bears. described as extremely food-conditioned and habituated to people. Bears had lost their normal fear of humans and were no longer relying on natural foods. FWP considered these bears to be a significant public safety threat, and all 15 of them were removed. 14 were euthanized, and a cub was was transferred to like a rehabilitation facility. The scale of that is highly unusual. In an entire year, FWP normally removes only about eight to 10 problem bears from the Bozeman area. Jacobson said he knew no comparable local case involving so many bears. Repeated access to human food sources teaches bears to associate homes and people with easy food. Relocated bears often come right back to where they were captured when they were doing this stuff, or they'll find another place to go near where they were relocated to to get after human food. Common attractants are garbage, birdseed feeders, pet food, and other calorie-rich associated foods. But it sounds like This person was, it wasn't like they were coming in to hit a bird feeder, that these bears were being fed. FWP stresses that early reporting matters if you do have a bear that's, you know, getting in your bird feeder or garbage, because if they catch them early enough, they can kind of like stave off that behavior in the future. As of today, the investigation remains publicly open. 01:14:19 Speaker 1: Yeah, like they haven't identified the locale yet. 01:14:22 Speaker 5: I don't think they want- North of Bozeman. 01:14:23 Speaker 1: You say? I know, that's as much as I've found. 01:14:25 Speaker 5: It's probably, I assume that's intentional. They don't want, you know, to attract attention to that person. Like, that's all I could guess. So they haven't identified a suspect or announced charges. Under Montana code- Unlawful supplemental feeding. The statute prohibits perfectly or knowingly attracting bears with supplemental feed and prohibits feeding that artificially concentrates wildlife. Maximum punishment, $ 50 to $ 1, 000 fine, up to six months in county jail. A court can additionally revoke the offender's hunting, fishing, or trapping license and suspend their ability to do any. 01:15:11 Speaker 1: Of that stuff. But there's no indication that they were doing this to hunt. No, they might've been like, I think this was an animal lover. Yeah. Yeah. That's the vibe I get. Yeah. Is that it's not someone trying to get like a little bait pile going for hunting that it's a, that it's a, they're doing a favor to the bears. Yes. 01:15:28 Speaker 5: They're, they're, they're doing the bears a solid by giving them some food. Um, my react, my first, the first thing that came to mind with, with that in mind, that this was just someone like being nice to the bears, an animal lover. But the first thing that came to my mind is like, imagine the reaction, like what would have happened if a hunter was found to have poached 14 bears? 01:15:51 Speaker 1: Oh, they'd be killing them. You know what I mean? 01:15:53 Speaker 5: Like this person is responsible for the death of 14 bears. And, you know, we'll see, hopefully we find out what the punishment ends up being, but I doubt it'll be what they deserve. 01:16:07 Speaker 1: Is my- No, because think about the, from, from a resource perspective. 01:16:13 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:16:14 Speaker 1: Think about, uh, I mean, this is not a bear. This is not a bear rich environment relative to other places. No, not that it's just not, it's like arid, you know, no, it's fairly open. Like we don't have bears. Right. Like in the densities that you do in dense forest ecosystems. Um, What we have are more visible because of the open nature of the country. But we don't have that many. And think about what you've done to the resource reduction for people that do do lawful bear hunting. It's like, that is a huge, huge hit to the bear population. The other thing I think about is for them to, how extreme it must have been. Where, I've told this story a couple times, but I kicked a bear out of my own garage twice now. this this fall two times i've run a bear out of my garage it was in the neighbor's garage um someone in our someone in our neighborhood i'm not sure who someone in our neighborhood tattle told on the bear their advice to them was close your garage right exactly so these are not like the agency the state agency is not trigger happy no when it comes to problem bears their normal attitudes is you need to take care of the like correct the problem yeah you know if you've got like fruit from fruit trees laying around get it picked up if you got trash out get it picked up if you got bird seed out take it in if it's in your garage close your garage yeah this isn't like like their attitude is learn to live with it reduce deterrence and learn to live with it for so for them to go all of a sudden like 14? It must have been a crazy situation. 01:18:10 Speaker 5: Yeah, and it brings to mind there was that woman in California that was feeding bears regularly, and I think she ended up getting killed by one of them. 01:18:19 Speaker 1: In her house. Yeah. In her house. 01:18:21 Speaker 5: So that's like the extreme version of what could happen. 01:18:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, they must have had, these bears must have been like standing around. Yeah. Like to know what bait they were using. 01:18:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my main question. Is in the Pilates capital of the world, this posh mountain town, as proclaimed by Steve and Rinella, what were they feeding the bears? Like, were they smart enough just to be like, yeah, these bears will eat corn. So they just went down to the granary bought a bunch of bags of corn. 01:18:49 Speaker 5: Or bags of dog food or. 01:18:51 Speaker 2: Were they like oh Bears like red meat, so I'll go buy half a cow and feed him steaks. 01:18:57 Speaker 1: Hopefully it'll go to, I shouldn't say hopefully, yeah, I hope it goes to trial so all this becomes public. 01:19:03 Speaker 6: And if it would have been half that, if it would have been seven bears, that would still be a shocking number. 01:19:09 Speaker 1: 14 is insane. I don't even get, like you talked, like Clay, he'll run up, when Clay's running a bait pile down there in Arkansas, he'll get where he thinks that's, I remember him saying one time he had a bait pile and he thought 13 bears were using the bait pile. But he notes that he's like, when you kill one of those bears, it shuts the bait pile down. Because he says there's two things happening. Acorns, as he likes to call them, acorns are starting to fall right around that time of year. But also he said, so that's a pull away. Like a bear would rather go eat wild acorns rather than deal with the stressful situation of coming into a bait station where a bunch of other bears are using it. But he says a bait pile is good for a bear. And when you kill one, it shuts it down. So how could it be, like, how are these bears so habituated? I would love to know this. They're so habituated that they're able to barrel trap 14 bears? 01:20:14 Speaker 5: This also isn't nearly the food-rich environment that Clay is dealing with. 01:20:18 Speaker 1: Where the bears are like, geez, I keep seeing my buddies in these barrels, but I'm going to keep coming. 01:20:23 Speaker 5: They got to work for food around here. 01:20:25 Speaker 1: Is that how they got them? They barrel trapped these? I don't know. 01:20:28 Speaker 2: I would imagine. 01:20:29 Speaker 1: Or they darted them. I assume they just shot them dead. 01:20:32 Speaker 2: No. 01:20:33 Speaker 3: Oh. 01:20:33 Speaker 5: Maybe. I think they would have, if they say euthanized, like, I don't know. 01:20:38 Speaker 1: Oh, that could be. Yeah, maybe they just went out there and had to just shoot them off. 01:20:42 Speaker 5: Or they've trapped them. I mean, trapping them is 14 in one spot. Like, maybe they did just shoot them. 01:20:48 Speaker 1: I don't know. Because it's an open investigation, they're probably not going to talk about this yet. But they are generally very restrained and conservative about problem bears, which I applaud. 01:21:00 Speaker 5: They give them a chance, usually. 01:21:02 Speaker 2: This was already a couple weeks ago. My brother-in-law, yesterday when I saw him, he said that just over the weekend, they had trapped three more out of that neighborhood where he lives, south of the university. So it's like, the bears are just. 01:21:17 Speaker 5: It's a catastrophic berry failure this year. 01:21:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not in the mountains and out in the places they should be. They're all coming to town to look for food. 01:21:27 Speaker 1: But even the town food failed. I was talking to an old-timer that has an apple orchard. 01:21:33 Speaker 2: Oh, you mean like that kind of town food? 01:21:35 Speaker 1: He lost his whole orchard because the buds all froze during that free cold snap. We have choked cherries and crab apples. I shouldn't say that because you shouldn't have those. I didn't plant them. 01:21:43 Speaker 2: They're just there? You could cut them down. 01:21:46 Speaker 1: Dude, they even ask. Yeah. They even asked that if you have these things, you should consider changing up your tree program. For bears. Yes. Got it. It's a recommendation. It's a recommendation. Anyways, not a one in my yard, not a single choke cherry or crab apple in my yard, but I've had the worst bear problems we've ever dealt with. Two o'clock, two o'clock in the afternoon, I had to run one out of my garage. 01:22:13 Speaker 2: I wonder if we could transplant your problem trees over to Wisconsin to my place where I'd love to have the deer and bears eating on them. I would like to make a correction. I think that those bears at Clay's bait sites, when the acorns start falling, I don't think it's that they all of a sudden are like, oh, I don't want to deal with the stress of a bait pile. I'm going to go eat acorns. I think it's actually the acorns are falling. It is a much better source of calories, better food, I don't need bait anymore. I have this great thing called acorns. 01:22:48 Speaker 1: Here's why I disagree. Please. Once you shoot one, they all vanish. So there is some calculation they're making. There is some push and pull. 01:23:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, there is some, but I'm just saying that I don't... If the acorns start falling. 01:23:09 Speaker 1: Yes, he says they would rather. 01:23:11 Speaker 2: They change food source. 01:23:12 Speaker 1: He says they would rather... But it hurries that decision along. He should come on the show and talk about it. It hurries that transition along when you shoot one on the bait. 01:23:24 Speaker 5: Okay. 01:23:28 Speaker 1: Or else, why does the transition happen right on opening day? 01:23:35 Speaker 2: I honestly think it's coincidence. I mean, in Wisconsin, it seems to happen a week before opening day. 01:23:41 Speaker 1: Oh, it does? Yeah. 01:23:42 Speaker 2: Like literally all my neighbors like are quitting bear baiting because everybody baits them. They have them all summer long and then the acorns start falling and literally there are no more bears on the baits or cameras. 01:23:54 Speaker 1: You could be right. I see what you're saying now. Yeah. 01:23:57 Speaker 2: I think it's a strong pull. 01:23:58 Speaker 1: Like it's just, it's like right around whatever that day is, September 5 or whatever. It's like you're at the end anyway. Yeah. You're at the end anyway. 01:24:06 Speaker 2: I understand. 01:24:07 Speaker 1: I'll buy that. 01:24:10 Speaker 2: Shall we continue? 01:24:11 Speaker 1: Please. 01:24:13 Speaker 2: The Sportsman's Alliance Foundation and Safari Club International are suing the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission over its newly imposed daily bag limit of two fur bears. 01:24:24 Speaker 1: Which is so dumb. 01:24:26 Speaker 4: Oh, it is. 01:24:27 Speaker 2: This is how it came about. Colorado's fur bear population has historically been strong. 01:24:32 Speaker 1: Just quick. I shouldn't have spoke. I shouldn't have spoke. It's not dumb that they're suing them. It's dumb that Colorado did that. It's good that they're suing them. But go on, I shouldn't have even spoken up. 01:24:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just adding, well, we'll get to all this. The furbearer population in Colorado has historically been strong and sustainable without any daily bag limit requiring no science-based restrictions. Originally, there were two proposals that came in for a change in the bag limit. There was two options. One was a limit of 15, which was recommended by CPW staff, or a tiered limit of eight or four, which I don't exactly understand how tiered goes eight or four, but whatever. Those were the two options. 01:25:19 Speaker 1: Some species eight, some species four. 01:25:21 Speaker 2: Okay. But where's the tiered come in? 01:25:23 Speaker 5: It was for, there was two different groups of critters. One was like, Things that are considered predatory and nuisance, like foxes, raccoons, and then others were like pine martins. 01:25:37 Speaker 2: And the word tiered is just used because it's eight and four. 01:25:40 Speaker 1: Sure. Okay. 01:25:44 Speaker 2: So there's a last minute introduction. This is what they're getting in trouble for. During the July 16th meeting, Commissioner Rebecca Niemietz, introduced a motion for a limit of two based on her own unpeer-reviewed survey published just the day before. I mean, come on. 01:26:05 Speaker 1: Just pulls it out of her arse. 01:26:06 Speaker 2: Literally. Despite objections from other commissioners that the new limit bypassed public notice and comment requirements, six commissioners voted in favor of the two-for-bear limit. Now, the whole commissioner thing in Colorado, there's 13 total. Only 11 of them have voting rights. They're appointed by the governor, but they have to be sworn in by the legislator. So what's happening, legislation. What am I trying to say? Not legislation. Legislature. So what's happening here is that the governor has appointed a bunch of folks to this commission that aren't pro-hunting and fishing. And then this kind of stuff can come up, and they vote on it, and it can get pushed through. So what they're getting sued over is, is that they have violated the administrative procedure act by failing to provide proper notice, including, and sorry, ignoring public comment rules and relying on rushed unreviewed data. 01:27:07 Speaker 1: Yeah. Like we're all here to debate and vote on 15. And at the last minute, some gals like, ah, how about two? Yes. 01:27:16 Speaker 5: That's what happens in that commission, man. 01:27:19 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:27:19 Speaker 5: Over and over. 01:27:21 Speaker 2: Uh, Colorado's got a big problem on their hands. But right now, well, coming up, less than a month, October 3rd, you can help Colorado's hunters, anglers. 01:27:35 Speaker 5: November 3rd. 01:27:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, what did I say? October 3rd? That already passed. November 3rd, you can vote in Colorado and vote for Amendment 83. which would make a constitutional right to hunt and fish in the state of Colorado. I talked to Dan Gates this morning from Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management. He said the main thing you can do right now if you're interested in helping this out is everything you see on the internet, like on socials, don't just like it or make a comment, share it. And I'll go... on to say that like you should contact people it's the same thing that i was saying for when we were when you guys were voting for the uh for the lion thing in colorado it's like just this morning i sent a text to my uh family in colorado um most of this group there's probably about 10 people in this group most of them don't hunt my brother's on this group he hunts i'm trying to think who else my cousins used to hunt they haven't hunted in 10 years And I just said, hey, have you heard of Amendment 83? It's on the ballot. The short version is this. The amendment creates a constitutional right to hunt and fish. It'd be nice if something like this wasn't needed. But animal rights extremists have chosen Colorado as one of their battleground states, and they will continue to chip away at these opportunities and Colorado's outdoor heritage until it's gone. Here's a link to learn more about the amendment. And I gave them the SaveTheHuntColorado.com link. And I told them I supported it wholeheartedly. I hope that they would too, and even more, share info about it, talk to neighbors and friends. Paul Diaz. That's how you say thank you in Latvian. 01:29:21 Speaker 5: You know what I'd like? We should have some kind of expert that can explain, like, do these constitutional rights to hunt and fish, do they have, like, teeth? 01:29:32 Speaker 1: You should listen to this podcast. Because we've explored this issue many times on this podcast. Would have it changed anything in this specific situation, though? 01:29:40 Speaker 6: Like, couldn't they still pitch the two-furbear limit and that still pass? 01:29:44 Speaker 1: Yes, I have yet to see. Like, I have yet to see. No, no, no. There's an example. We covered in a recent example where 25 states have enacted constitutional right to hunt fish. Vermont was the first in the 70s. The next state didn't do it until, like, the mid to early 90s. 01:30:01 Speaker 2: No, Vermont was the first in 1777. Hundreds of years ago. 01:30:08 Speaker 1: That's when they did it? Yes. 01:30:10 Speaker 2: The next one was in like 96. That's when it was? Yeah. They were way ahead of the game. 01:30:17 Speaker 1: There's some states that are surprising that we have, like Montana, like big hunting and fishing states. Montana hasn't done it. Nevada hasn't done it. But 25 states have done a constitutional right to hunt and fish. My question on this issue, and I ask everybody that comes on about it when we talk to people about it, is can you cite an example for me where a piece of legislation came up and the legislation or a game management question came up and it was shot down because it would have violated the right to hunt fish. And there's just one right now. Who's the state that's suing on fisheries? We just covered it on the podcast. Is that North Carolina? I believe North Carolina. Anglers are saying your fisheries management has run amok. And you are degrading or challenging our constitutional right to hunt and fish by not managing fisheries in a way that allows for fishing. And they're questioning it under that. But I'm not aware of many situations where actions have taken place where this would trump those actions. I could picture some. And I could also picture that they'd say, that it would be, we're always going to set bag limits. The commission sets bag limits to do all this, and that you wouldn't be able to sue under that premise anyways. But with that said, I do think it's a very good thing to do. Oh, yeah. And I think that when we pass these pieces of legislation, we should make them as broad-reaching as possible because you're doing it on a ballot initiative, which makes good hard law. 01:32:04 Speaker 5: Yeah, and in a state like Colorado, you're doing it kind of crystal balling the worst scenario where they're like, sorry, you can't hunt bighorn sheep anymore. 01:32:15 Speaker 1: Or whatever, you know? It's so puzzling to me that Colorado of all places has emerged as The area where the radical animal rights agenda is being tested. 01:32:28 Speaker 5: I don't think it's weird at all. 01:32:29 Speaker 1: I would picture it more in Rhode Island. 01:32:32 Speaker 2: Don't you think them and Washington are the two that are kind of battling? 01:32:35 Speaker 1: Yeah, Washington is bad, bad. 01:32:37 Speaker 5: They saw an opportunity when Polis got into office. And, you know, we know that Polis's husband is very much an animal rights activist. 01:32:46 Speaker 1: That's how he defines himself. 01:32:48 Speaker 5: I think they were like, all right, here's our chance to pounce, you know? 01:32:52 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:32:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, because they have a ally in the governor's mansion, and then his husband defines himself as an animal, whatever the hell goofy term he uses, defines himself as an animal rights activist. 01:33:07 Speaker 5: And we know from the Cats Aren't Trophy thing that the governor was involved in that whole thing. 01:33:15 Speaker 1: Oh, his husband there. He's spending money and advocating against Proposition 83. They don't want Amendment 83. 01:33:24 Speaker 2: No, definitely not. 01:33:25 Speaker 1: Now that that dude's getting termed out, is the person that's going to replace this governor, who I think is just the worst governor in the country, is who's ever going to replace Polis? Are they more friendly to hunters and anglers, or are they like another animal rights wag job coming in? 01:33:44 Speaker 5: I need to research it. 01:33:45 Speaker 2: According to Dan Gates, he's better. 01:33:47 Speaker 1: He's better, yeah. 01:33:48 Speaker 6: Is there a federal avenue in this that, like, if Trump decided tomorrow that he wanted to create 50 states having the constitutional right to fish, does that work? 01:33:59 Speaker 1: It would be an, I don't know, there would be some kind of executive action. Well, he was bragging the other day. He was bragging the other day that he could ban fishing. He says, my office is so powerful, I could ban fishing. I might just ban it for a day. That's great. Maybe that's the win on this. He was explaining this to Johnny Morris, and he was saying to Johnny Morris, who was in the audience when he said this, he said, I could make it that you don't sell any fishing rods. My office is so powerful, I could ban fishing for a day. And he joked, I'm not going to fall into the trap of not knowing when the guy's joking, which the news media always pretends to not know when they're joking. He's joking. but he joked, I could do this. 01:34:52 Speaker 5: I don't think, I don't find that joke funny. 01:34:54 Speaker 1: Well, it's a joke. At all. It's a joke. And the media, the media always, like he says a joke and then they go and act like he meant it. Right. And there's that, there's that Selena Zito quote. The media doesn't take Trump seriously, but they take him literally. Trump supporters take him seriously, but not literally. And so the media then, you know, whatever, they would act like he's really going to ban fishing for a day, which would be not a thing he's going to do. But him saying that, I wonder if that is true from a legal perspective. And you did an executive order. The problem is with executive orders, as we see every time anybody does an executive order, the next executive undoes that executive order. And that's how you get stuff like the monument battles going. the roadless battle, and all these other executive orders. 01:35:46 Speaker 5: But I don't think it would have, like, he couldn't, how could he order, the states control their own wildlife regulations, like hunting and, like, I don't. 01:35:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I don't see it happening. We should dare him to pass it. 01:35:58 Speaker 2: I don't know if it would be illegal. My hope is that these amendments to the state's constitutions, that it would act as a retardant to future attacks. And if that is all that it does, great, you know. Dan Gates will have more time to enjoy his retirement as opposed to sitting around all the time battling this. 01:36:15 Speaker 5: Give one more quick call to action, Giannis, please. 01:36:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, go to SaveTheHuntColorado.com. 01:36:26 Speaker 1: An issue I see, and when Colorado's going through the last election cycle, when the cat hunting ban was up in Colorado, I never said it. I never said it, but I got pessimistic. Do you remember? Yeah. I was like, man, I think it's going to pass. I never said it, but I was like, I got fearful that it would pass. 01:36:50 Speaker 5: You had reason to believe that. 01:36:52 Speaker 1: Did you have people who thought that, who were educated? What's that? Did you have people who thought that who were educated on the subject? I was just looking at the polling. 01:37:00 Speaker 5: I think there was good reason to wonder because the Wolf thing went through, right? 01:37:05 Speaker 1: But I don't see those as... I know, but... They're neighbors, but not cousins. 01:37:10 Speaker 5: But it gives you an idea of how the electorate is thinking. 01:37:15 Speaker 1: I got pessimistic. And I got to, toward the end, I got like, man... I never said it because I didn't want to deter... I didn't want to... People just give up and not show up at the polls or whatever. But I got nervous. And I got to, on the day before, I got to where I was like, if I really had to guess, I think that we're going to fall short. And then got it by a good margin. 55 to 45. Which is big. Where we send people to the White House on 49.9% of the vote. Or sometimes we send people to the White House on less than half of the vote. Margins are tight these days. On this one, the thing I'm worried about is, what I keep reading is that they're anticipating, on November 3rd, they're anticipating the blue wave. And the blue wave would be that Democratic voters are very motivated to go to the polls right now. And they're finding a sort of waning enthusiasm among Republican voters. This, like it or not, is going to be a, not clean, not clean, but it's gonna just be a partisan split vote this is gonna have heavy support from republican voters and it's gonna have i bet you among democratic voters if only democratic voters voted on this amendment the amendment wouldn't pass It'll lose among Democratic voters. It'll win overwhelmingly among Republican voters. If Republican voters are not motivated to go to the polls, it makes me worried about Amendment 83. 01:38:55 Speaker 5: It'll pass. Go vote. 01:38:57 Speaker 1: Yeah. But you agree that it's, well, no, it'll not pass among Democrat voters. and it'll pass overwhelmingly among Republican voters. 01:39:08 Speaker 5: So we need some Democrats to vote for it. 01:39:10 Speaker 1: And you need a lot of Republicans. I don't know what all they got going on. I think the Republicans have kind of given up hope in Colorado. Like, you're not going to win the governor's office. 01:39:18 Speaker 2: This is, I think, something... I want to bring this up because it gives you a talking point, and everybody, I think, at home can be like, oh, no, why do I really need to go talk to people that, you know, don't understand hunting, or how am I going to talk to them about this, or just... This gives you a little insight as to what non-hunters, this is, I was texting with my aunt after I texted the group. She wrote back and said, hey, I'm all for hunt to eat, but have reservations about trophy hunters. Does this amendment address that? I didn't see it addressed. Is it under, in quotes, traditional hunting? okay so again this is just where she's at with what she knows about hunting and there is a part of it and again that term i was asking you guys earlier like it's been weaponized big time yeah i could go to her right now and i might have a i might call her and say hey i'm a trophy hunter at times i just spent 20 days in uh hunting elk and didn't shoot an elk because i was looking for a trophy um But that's like what's in her head because she's hearing about like how bad trophy hunting is. 01:40:27 Speaker 1: Because she thinks of it as a dichotomy. 01:40:29 Speaker 2: Well, she thinks of, I said, well, what is trophy hunting to you? She says, well, someone just goes and kills something and takes the antlers and puts it on their wall. I said, well, that's illegal. You literally cannot do that anywhere. That's called poaching. She's grizzly. 01:40:42 Speaker 5: Huh? 01:40:43 Speaker 1: Gets it. 01:40:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:40:45 Speaker 1: It's like different states call different things, but it's wanton waste. 01:40:48 Speaker 2: So it's like that kind of a simple conversation and explaining something simple as that is saying, hey, trophy hunting, this thing that you think is trophy hunting that you're seeing in the media and people are saying, oh, this is what these people actually want to do. 01:41:02 Speaker 3: It's illegal. 01:41:03 Speaker 2: We can't do it. No one does it. And so you can kind of forget about trophy hunting and just like, please support us as just hunters and anglers that are mostly out there doing the hunt. 01:41:14 Speaker 1: To eat thing. Except for Brody's body. One more shout-out for Vermont. 01:41:22 Speaker 6: They passed it in 1777. That was 14 years before they became a state, and they were the only state who had that protected right to hunt and fish for more than 200 years. How can you have a constitutional amendment before you're a state? 01:41:35 Speaker 1: Dude, they didn't even finish the revolution. Like, this is an important one. When we did the Longhunters, where it's colonial... Uh, you know, it's about the colonial deerskin trade. Like our, our audio original long hunters covers the end of the French and Indian war up to the American revolution. And we talk about pre revolution, all of the deer hunting restrictions that were in place. There was restrictions that you couldn't hunt if you weren't a local. You couldn't hunt deer if you weren't a local. There was people putting in deer seasons. In the 1760s, 1770s, they're like, we need a season. We need bag limits. New York, I think, was the first. We need that you can't shoot does. We need that you can't come from out of town and hunt deer around here. So yeah, it was people who were aware of these things. All right, man. I hope just a lot of people show up on. 01:42:39 Speaker 1: November 3rd. And just do what you guys did around the cat thing down in Colorado. It is so upsetting to see this happening in Colorado. SaveTheHuntColorado.com. Sons of bitches. 01:42:53 Speaker 2: See you guys next week. 01:42:54 Speaker 1: We want to make them go hunt with that lamb. Yeah, we'd want to protect his right. All right, man. See you next week.