00:00:04 Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show, everybody. This week, we've got Jordan Sillers here at the news desk, which is news in and of itself, but he's going to cover some news too. We got a bobcat poaching ring of criminals who desperately need to sharpen their pencils. What happens when a youth deer season hunting team starts losing some of their senior talent? Where are you most likely to get killed by hitting a deer with your vehicle? It's Delaware's turn to deal with CWD, so get ready for that civil war. Bird smugglers stuff birds down their panties. I feminized it. 00:00:44 Speaker 2: That's fine. 00:00:45 Speaker 1: Yeah. Underwear. No one cares about that story. 00:00:48 Speaker 3: Briefs. 00:00:49 Speaker 1: Yeah. Let me try this. We should AAB test this. Bird smugglers stuff birds down their briefs. 00:00:59 Speaker 2: That's alliteration. 00:00:59 Speaker 4: I like that. 00:01:00 Speaker 1: Versus bird smugglers stuff birds down their panties. That's going to do way better. 00:01:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think panties will hit harder for the SEO. 00:01:10 Speaker 1: And more. But first, Operation Night Cat. Now, before I get into Operation Night Cat, I always thought, I always was under the impression that when you name an operation, you use code language. Yeah. Like my favorite while my favorite by far of all time poaching bust was operation North shore. 00:01:34 Speaker 3: That was the one in, in Ohio. 00:01:37 Speaker 1: It was the giant deer meat, smoky taxidermy walleye tournament ring racketeering, everything you love racketeering, wire fraud, all the bad sounding crimes. But then when you get into it, it's basically dudes were shooting deer in making smoky sticks, selling smoky sticks in bars, and then taking that money to pay their taxidermy. And then one day, one of them runs off and catches a bunch of walleyes somewhere, goes off to another state, joins a walleye tournament at a gas station, wins. And so then he had all these fraud and racketeering charges. The wire fraud was because... one of them, a guy poached a deer and he had a girlfriend call the hotline to, to report the deer. So when you read it, it was like reading Al Capone's. It was like, like you're reading like Al Capone's rap sheet. Yeah. But it was like this big venison smoky ring. Anyways, they didn't call it operation venison smoky. So operation night cat. I feel that if you, let's say you were a Bobcat poacher and you're poaching them at night and someone's like, Hey man, I heard that there's this operation brewing called Operation Nightcap. One might go, jeez. 00:03:01 Speaker 3: I better be careful. 00:03:02 Speaker 1: I wonder if that involves me. That's why you can't do that. 00:03:05 Speaker 2: I wonder, honestly, though, if they just make those up for the press release afterwards. And if they actually use the operation name when they're talking about it. 00:03:13 Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. Oh. 00:03:15 Speaker 4: But you would think it's only internally that they're using it. 00:03:18 Speaker 1: That's another thing. No. 00:03:19 Speaker 2: Because you've got inside moles, man. They're probably just like, the case about the Bobcats. That's probably what they, when they're talking to each other, like, what are you working on today? Oh, the case about the Bobcats. 00:03:30 Speaker 4: Yeah, Bobcats. 00:03:31 Speaker 3: I'm sure we can get law enforcement or game warden to write in. 00:03:34 Speaker 1: If someone in New Hampshire can write in, we'd mighty appreciate it. Were you guys, just admit it. You shouldn't have called it Operation Nightcat because you're going to tip off the offenders. 00:03:46 Speaker 3: I'd just like to know who gets to choose. There's someone that gets to pick the name. A bunch of people put names in. 00:03:51 Speaker 1: I would have called it Operation Rolling Thunder. 00:03:54 Speaker 3: They already used that one. Wasn't that? 00:03:55 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:03:56 Speaker 1: Okay. Epic Fury. 00:03:57 Speaker 3: There you go. 00:03:59 Speaker 1: Desert Storm. 00:04:00 Speaker 2: I don't know. 00:04:01 Speaker 1: I would have come up with something novel and called it that. Anyways, here's what Operation Nightcat is all about. It's one of these ones. I'm not in any way, shape, or form downplaying the crimes that we're going to get into. These are serious wildlife crimes. But what I like is when a poaching ring winds up racking up a lot of terminology that makes you feel like it's something much worse. This is an international poaching ring. But what happens is this. Well, first off, let me tell you why we're talking about it. Just right now, a bunch of these guys, three of these gentlemen involved in this Bobcat poaching ring in New Hampshire, they've already pled guilty to state charges, but now they're dealing with their federal stuff. And they're going to be sentenced in October 20. And just now, this month, they pled guilty to some federal stuff, and they got sentencing coming up in January. But here's what these guys were up to. It's kind of an interesting deal these guys had going on. I didn't know this till this came out. I had no idea. New Hampshire is one of these states. And it's a dumb rule. They have a dumb rule. And I didn't break the rule. So I can say that it's a dumb rule. They have a dumb rule where they have no bobcat hunting in New Hampshire. I had no idea. I learned the other day, I saw a headline. This is something we, can you add this for the new show? California, there's a little movement in California about bringing bobcat hunting back. Wow. That never happens. So for some dumb reason that I don't understand, New Hampshire has no bobcat hunting season, no bobcat trapping season, no bobcat hunting season. So these dudes in New Hampshire are licking their lips about how they could be making all this money trapping cats and hunting cats. All of them are... New Hampshire State Prison Corrections Officers. Some retired and some not. The main ones is this dude, Sherwood Dubry. Dubry. I ought to drop the R. Follows him just to be Sherwood Duby. Randy Inman. These two are 48 and 49. So these are like dudes I'd be hanging out with age-wise, right? They're in my little pockets. And Sherwood Dubree Sr., who's 72. So you got these two guys, one of them's dad, all corrections officers. And they want to start getting into the Bobcat trade, but they live in a state where they can't trade in Bobcats. So between 2018 and 2022, they're trapping and hunting cats. And they get like a little bait station going. They got thermal scopes. They got traps out. And they start harvesting bobcats. They harvest a total of 41 bobcats during the period that they're looking at these guys' activity. But bobcats are a sighties species. The reason bobcats are a sighties species isn't because bobcats are threatened or endangered by any stretch. They're not, but they're a spotted cat. And many cats around the globe that are spotted are threatened and endangered. And so in order to monitor bobcat movements, you put a CITES tag on them. And it's meant to avoid confusion between other endangered spotted cats. 00:07:39 Speaker 3: And the states issue those CITES tags, correct? 00:07:43 Speaker 5: Yes. 00:07:43 Speaker 3: And New Hampshire does not issue those tags. 00:07:45 Speaker 1: There are a handful of things like this. We've talked about this in the past, but just as an example. In Texas... where Jordan Sillars comes from. That's right. 00:07:55 Speaker 2: Great state of Texas. 00:07:57 Speaker 1: In the great state of Texas, check this out. In the great state of Texas, there is no closed season on bobcats. There is no bag limit on bobcats. There is no salvage requirement on bobcats. Meaning 365 days a year, you could shoot bobcats in Texas and throw them in a ditch. No problem. 00:08:21 Speaker 4: Or not even pick them up. 00:08:22 Speaker 1: Or not even go even move them. Yeah. You don't even need to do the work it would require to put them in a ditch. Just not even go over there. You don't need to go over and even look to see if you got it or not. And you're a-okay in Texas. But if you want to sell a Texas bobcat or move a bobcat from Texas to the Oklahoma panhandle, you got to go get a CITES tag on it because they're very... interested in how spotted cats move. 00:08:51 Speaker 3: When you say move, you mean? 00:08:53 Speaker 1: Cross state lines. Right. 00:08:54 Speaker 3: And in the markets. They're the product or whatever. Humans moving their hides. 00:09:00 Speaker 1: Humans moving the hides. And you're like, well, are bobcats endangered? No, not at all. They're like, the IUCN has them listed as a species of least concern. But there are many very imperiled spotted cats, like the snow leopard, for instance. And so When you see a spotted cat on the market, it's just calling out, yo, this is a bobcat, not some crazy spotted cat that's in danger. So they can't sell their cats. Not only are they illegal getting them in New Hampshire, but they can't sell them. They can't send them out of New Hampshire legally to a fur market. If they were in a situation where, let's say, they weren't allowed to get muskrats or something like that, that are not a society species, this whole thing probably would have never been detected. But what they had to do is they had to get their cats and send them to a buddy who's in a cat state. So they sent them to their buddy in New York and their buddy in New York goes down. and he's like, Hey, yo, I caught these in New York. And he gets side. He's tags on them. Then they sent them to a Canadian auction house and sell them the rub. So when I heard this, I was like, oh, I could see that they were tempted. Like I said, they were licking their lips at the cat market. But it turns out that the cats these guys are dealing with are cats caught between 2018 and 2022, meaning these 41 cats they got were worth, do a drum roll, Phil. That's pretty good. 65 bucks a piece. That's what I'm saying. This is a poaching ring that you need to sharpen your pencils. Cause when you get into like the fines that these guys have generated about something so stupid. What I did a little, I did a little calculation. During these four years, these three guys who have good jobs are corrections officers. These four guys have made a grand total. Before they divided up their earnings, they've made themselves $ 2, 665. 00:11:08 Speaker 2: Over four years. 00:11:10 Speaker 1: Over four years divided by four. What's that per year? 00:11:13 Speaker 3: That's not a good hourly rate. 00:11:14 Speaker 1: You're an educated man. You have a doctorate. 00:11:16 Speaker 2: $ 500 a year, I'd say. So they're making $ 500 a year. 00:11:18 Speaker 1: Not a lot. 00:11:19 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:11:22 Speaker 1: You can buy something cool with that. 00:11:24 Speaker 2: But that's just, then they have to split it up. So each of them. 00:11:27 Speaker 1: Yeah. But the other day, a friend of mine observed me. I have a diesel truck. He has a diesel truck. He observes me. Every time I fill my truck, I could have bought a Ruger 10-22. 00:11:38 Speaker 2: Oh, that's depressing. 00:11:43 Speaker 1: He's like, I just stand there watching that thing go, oh, wow, I could have bought a 10-22 or I could have bought a break open shotgun. 00:11:49 Speaker 2: Ugh. 00:11:51 Speaker 1: So yeah, they're making a little scratch. Now, that was good, but I didn't mean it. Did you catch that, Phil? Not at all. I missed it. I wasn't. They're making a little scratch. 00:12:05 Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. 00:12:05 Speaker 1: Of the cat market. That was solid. 00:12:07 Speaker 2: That's pretty good. 00:12:08 Speaker 3: Cat scratch. 00:12:09 Speaker 1: Now, had they done it at last year's prices, had they done all these 40 cats at last year's prices, they would have pulled in $ 8, 200. Not bad. Because last year... cats in their surrounding states. Like basically any cat walking last year was worth 200 bucks. So they would have made 8,200. Had they done it all last year, they would have made $ 8, 200. So for their crime that brought them in $ 2, 665, they are now on the hook for $ 20, 500 in restitution and fines. Is that just the state stuff? Because the federal stuff hasn't been Here's the deal about it. If you're a poacher, here's where you've got to start thinking. The state... There's a thing in wildlife law where the state will have a restitution thing. Let's say you were to come to... Let's say you came to... Well, we're sitting in Montana, so we'll do Montana. Let's say you come to Montana and you kill a Boone and Crockett bighorn sheep. You poach a Boone and Crockett bighorn sheep. The state is allowed to say, well, what's that worth? Well, the governor's tag for bighorn sheep and a guy buying the governor's tag is anticipating getting a Boone and Crockett bighorn sheep. Those governor's tags will go for $ 250, 000, $ 300, 000. So the state assigns a value to the wildlife. A small ram has a restitution that's different than the big ram. And a lot of states build in these like trophy restitution fees, meaning if you kill a giant trophy, the restitution goes up. The state restitution in New Hampshire on a bobcat that can't be monetized anyways is 500 bucks. So if you get caught poaching, if you catch a bobcat and sell it for 65 bucks and you get caught poaching for it, it's $ 500 in restitution, not counting your fine. Am I trying to bring a level of like, a level. 00:14:06 Speaker 2: Of rationality to poaching? These guys aren't real bright, seems like to me. Because the other thing I noticed here is... One of the reasons they were caught and found guilty is because they're sending text messages back and forth to each other. Apparently, some of them said, hey, I know this is wrong, but we're doing it anyway. You know, that kind of stuff. And also videos, it sounds like, of them actually shooting the animals. 00:14:28 Speaker 1: But here's the thing that demonstrates that they were rational beings. One of them texts another. This shows that they're like thinking people. One of these men sends another one a text message saying, I hope they don't start a Bobcat season. Because that would lead to a lot of competition. Right. 00:14:54 Speaker 4: They had a monopoly going. 00:14:57 Speaker 1: He's like, we're making so much money. Wouldn't it suck if other guys could get in on this? And then it was just all legal. Uh, so they got federal sentencing coming up and, and where this, this is the thing we've talked about a lot on the news show. And this is like, this is, there's a thing that gives wildlife law. There's a thing that really gives teeth to wildlife law. And it's like, here's, here's a hot tip to poachers. I, we should do a pamphlet. So you want to be a poacher. I'd be like, number one, the thing, if you are a poacher, If you're a small-scale poacher guy like these guys, there's one thing you've got to have on your fridge on a magnet. Don't send shit to other states. I'm going to leverage the presence of Jordan Sillers, because people are probably sick of hearing me talk about this. Jordan Sillers, you're an expert in law, because you host Blood Trails. Yeah, that's right. Now, why would you, if you're a budding poacher, you're an aspiring poacher, why would you have a fridge magnet That says, don't send shit to other states. 00:16:15 Speaker 2: Because as soon as you cross state lines, you bring in the feds. And, you know, if you're a criminal, you do not want to involve the federal government in your activities. Because that adds another layer of investigative power, but also another layer of penalties, which you're going to get hit with if you are found guilty of federal crimes as well as state crimes, which is exactly what these guys got. 00:16:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, because of this thing called the Lacey Act. Right. 00:16:43 Speaker 4: Do you think these guys are aware of the lacy act when they were they are now they are now but were they when they were uh. 00:16:51 Speaker 1: I think the last time he used the word lacy was probably lacy lingerie or like you know whatever. 00:16:56 Speaker 3: Cagney and lacy remember that yeah i feel like these guys they didn't know how bad the the punishment could. 00:17:05 Speaker 1: Be so the late the lacy act stuff um The Lasiak stuff came about, I can't remember what year, but it kind of came about during the dark ages of wildlife in America, which was late 1800s, early 1900s, when you had this emerging group of conservation leaders, including well-known figures like Theodore Roosevelt and others, who are trying to get a handle on that... States could make all these wildlife laws, but if the states don't get serious about enforcing them, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So a state would come in and they have people, whatever, you know, killing great blue herons and egrets to sell the feathers. And some state says, hey, from now on, you're not allowed to kill great blue herons or egrets. But they don't do anything to stop it. They would pass these laws and then they don't put any money into enforcement. They turn a blind eye. So they came up with this Lacey Act thing where they're like, the feds are very interested. So the feds are like, hey, if you violate a law and cross states, we're going to seize authority. And it was the Lacey Act that really let them start hammering wildlife traffickers and poachers. Because the feds got serious about it before many of the states did. And it still really stings you today. I brought up earlier that guy, A guy took walleye from one state and drove over to do a fishing tournament in another state, right? A guy like that is, like, as innocuous as that might seem, a guy like that is violating LASIAC. If you shoot a deer and turn it into smoky sticks, and you're selling those smoky sticks in Ohio, but then one day you happen to be over in Indiana and sell a batch of your smoky sticks at a bar you like to frequent in Indiana. You just got, now you're in trouble with the feds, man. 00:19:00 Speaker 2: Yeah. And it only takes one. It's not like your whole operation has to be out of state. It's like one violation where you're carrying that poached animal across state lines and the federal government can get involved. 00:19:11 Speaker 1: I just heard about a great Lacey Act deal. A guy that got stung on a Lacey Act and it was as simple as this. He had Check this one out. He had poached a deer, I believe in Georgia, but his taxidermist was across state lines. Yep. And bam, federal. Yep. 00:19:33 Speaker 2: The other thing I noticed with this one is that they shipped him up to Canada. Now, Not knowing anything about the first, you. 00:19:39 Speaker 1: Know, not much about the first raid. That's the last thing I'll get into. 00:19:41 Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. 00:19:41 Speaker 1: That's the last thing I'll get into. 00:19:42 Speaker 3: Can I ask a question? 00:19:44 Speaker 1: Please. 00:19:44 Speaker 3: How are they, were they jack lighting these things and killing them at night? Like what were they? 00:19:48 Speaker 1: They were running traps. 00:19:49 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:19:49 Speaker 1: Because one of them mentioned, one of them mentioned choking a cat, which means he trapped it and put a, put a noose on it. Like a dog, dog. Yep. With a catcher. Yeah. Put a catch pole on it. There is a catch pole. It should probably be rebranded, but it was a very, very good catch poll, and I happen to have one called the Death Ray. It could maybe use a rebranding, but it's sort of the gold standard of catch polls. But the reason they're sending it up to the international market fur auction. 00:20:27 Speaker 2: Just a bigger market. 00:20:28 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:20:28 Speaker 2: Better, better prices. 00:20:29 Speaker 1: Yeah. Like a lot of country buyers. Like if you, if you caught Bobcats or muskrats, whatever, and you went to a country fur buyer, a local fur buyer, go to a local fur shed and sell your furs. That individual is almost certainly sending them to Canada too. Okay. So they're just sending them up to the big fur auction in Canada, which is where it just becomes international. Right. The reason their cats aren't that valuable is that like the, the color's poor, the fur quality's poor. Like, If they had done, do this, times 40 times 1,100. 00:21:00 Speaker 3: Steve says times like an elementary kid. Multiply. 00:21:10 Speaker 1: I'm not sure what you call it, man. 44,000. Had they done this last year in, let's say, Wyoming, they would have made that amount of money. How much money? 44,000. They would have made 44,000 instead of their two grand. So they're also operating in the wrong state. Well, they wouldn't have broke a law in Wyoming because they would have been allowed to catch cats. So, yeah. Poachers got to sharpen their pencils. If, in fact, this was all on their minds. But an interesting case, nonetheless, because it brings in so many aspects of wildlife law. And I'm a sucker for poaching rings. If you ever get tired of doing all those murders and all that, Jordan, on blood trails, You might just think of one that explains.... 00:21:56 Speaker 4: Inside the mind? 00:21:57 Speaker 1: Like, you know what? Mind of a poacher. Mind of a poacher. That's not bad. 00:22:02 Speaker 3: Yeah, which brings up, like, you know, maybe they were thinking they were going to make some money, but I think there's also, like, this kind of, like, psychological aspect to where it's exciting to be doing something like you know what i mean they kind of get like addicted to that part listen oh the. 00:22:19 Speaker 4: Guys that we've talked to that have busted these rings they say that's the number one reason they're in. 00:22:23 Speaker 1: It yeah i'll tell you what it is like i feel it because i like i've been pulled by all these like when i was young we would thank god never did it across state lines but a dollar let me put this way A dollar made hunting, fishing, trapping is worth a million dollars made like digging a hole. It's just different. Yep. The feeling of that money in your wallet is just different. You know, I remember selling 40 gallons of smelt for a dollar a gallon on the black market. Yeah. In high school. And that 40 bucks, it was like having helium in my pocket. Like, I just felt like, I was like, dude, I'm like, fuck Daniel Boone, dude. And so I think that they're like, they get that money and they're like, I'm old school, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, like, like the old hide hunters. It's just, it's just a, it's a kind of money that, To certain individuals, it's a kind of money that just feels different. You're making money doing what you love. 00:23:38 Speaker 3: And you're pulling a fast one. 00:23:40 Speaker 1: Oh, I'm not excusing it, man. 00:23:42 Speaker 3: No, no, I'm saying the pulling the fast one thing, that's part of it. 00:23:45 Speaker 1: Oh, that appeals to people too. They're getting away with something. I understand. Yeah, I'm not, I find, this is the last thing I'll say on this whole thing, but I get in trouble with my wife all the time for this. I'm often interested in like, I'm more, I'm interested in the stories that people tell themselves. Meaning let's say your wife's saying about two people, you know, and they got a divorce or something. And the one of them did something horrible. I'm often thinking about, well, there's probably two sides of that story. But if you say that to your wife, she gets mad at you. So, so, but I'm often wondering like, what is, you know what I mean? So in these guys, it's bad what they did and they're getting their due, but I'm also curious about what is in their mind. 00:24:36 Speaker 4: I feel like you're giving them too much credit. I think we should try to get an interview with them to actually speak to these individuals. But yeah, I feel like you're giving them too much credit. 00:24:47 Speaker 1: What was the credit I gave them? 00:24:49 Speaker 4: Just that they're walking around thinking that they're Daniel Boone because they made some money. 00:24:53 Speaker 1: They definitely were. They definitely were. It'll be a short interview. 00:24:59 Speaker 3: I don't think they're going to agree to the interview in any case. 00:25:01 Speaker 1: I don't know. All right, on to our news. Our news. That's you, Jordan. Come on, dude. Pull it together. 00:25:18 Speaker 2: I'm up now. Am I talking about Blood Trails? 00:25:20 Speaker 1: Yes, sir. Wasn't that why you're here? 00:25:22 Speaker 2: Yeah. You thought you were going to talk. 00:25:23 Speaker 1: About the Lacey Act? 00:25:23 Speaker 2: I thought you were going to tee me up. 00:25:25 Speaker 1: No, no. 00:25:26 Speaker 3: You're on your own. 00:25:27 Speaker 4: It's fine. 00:25:27 Speaker 3: This is a tight new show, man. 00:25:29 Speaker 2: It's fine. Yes. 00:25:30 Speaker 4: Okay. 00:25:30 Speaker 1: Over to you, Jordan. 00:25:31 Speaker 2: Thank you, Steve. 00:25:34 Speaker 1: Yes. 00:25:34 Speaker 2: Blood Trails Season 3 is out now. Episode 1 comes out today. As with the last two seasons, we have eight new episodes that will come out every Thursday over the next eight weeks. So each episode is a different story. I'm really excited about this season. I think we have a nice mix of stories that you may have heard of before, but maybe not in quite this much detail. For example, we're covering the Chai Vang story. murders from up in wisconsin from 2004 so we talked with a bunch of game wardens we talked with uh some of the the families of the victims we talked with our buddy uh yivang i talked with him um and i think we do a good job really covering all sides of of that story and it's a it's horrible it's tragic um what's the first episode that's out today First episode that's out today is kind of the other end of the spectrum. We cover some other cases that really have not gotten any coverage at all. So the episode that's out today is about a high school kid. He was a senior up in Minnesota. He went up to a cabin with a bunch of buddies. They were gonna hunt. They were also gonna party a little bit. And he disappeared the next morning and has never been found. No trace of him has ever been found. Just nothing. He just disappeared. 00:27:01 Speaker 1: Yep. 00:27:01 Speaker 2: And so it was kind of chalked up to, well, maybe he just felt because it's a kind of a boggy, you know, marshy area up there. Maybe he fell in one of those, but he never rose up. There's not, his gun was never found. Um, and so they took a pretty hard look at some of the other boys who were at the cabin. And so there's questions even today, you know, who knows what. And so I was able to talk with two of those boys who were there as well as, uh, Noel's brother, um, and some other folks. 00:27:30 Speaker 1: So it's a good one. One of the problems I have, and I'm not saying I haven't listened to this episode yet. A problem I have with listening to blood trails. Okay. Is oftentimes the guy that did it is it's so clear who did it. All I can think about is how we could go kill that guy without getting caught. Yeah. Or when you got it narrowed down to two people that you'd get them both together, torture them. 00:27:56 Speaker 2: Hmm. 00:27:57 Speaker 1: To find out who did it. It's like, I just get so full of revenge. I gotta not listen. 00:28:05 Speaker 3: I'm like, you. 00:28:09 Speaker 1: Know that guy did it, man. Someone's just gotta get him. 00:28:12 Speaker 2: Hey, I get that. And I tell you, the families get that too. In this case, I don't. 00:28:19 Speaker 1: Know how they live. In some of the past episodes, I don't know how the families can live. That guy 100% did it. Yeah. But they never found the body. So the guy just gets to walk. Right. Yep. 00:28:30 Speaker 3: Do you got to give your brain a break from these stories now and then like all that dark stuff? I, I don't, it doesn't. 00:28:38 Speaker 2: It doesn't seem to, I mean, I'm when I'm talking with like, like just the other day, I talked with a mom whose son went missing up in Kalispell and they never found him. And when I'm talking with her, I I'm feeling for her cause I have kids. Um, But I think I'm able to compartmentalize a little bit and not let it affect me in the day-to-day. I will say I have intentionally not covered stories about little kids because there are several pretty famous stories of five-year-old wanders away from camp and it's kind of suspicious. 00:29:16 Speaker 1: I can see you doing that. That's too sad. 00:29:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, we might one of these days, but I just can't. I can't really meditate on that for any length of time. So, um, but yeah, bloodshed season three out now. 00:29:28 Speaker 1: Are there some episodes where you just know who did it? 00:29:33 Speaker 2: Um, there, there are a few where I have very strong suspicions. And I'm, of course, not the only one. Do you have revenge fantasies? I don't, personally. 00:29:47 Speaker 1: You don't get that feeling? 00:29:48 Speaker 2: No, I don't. 00:29:50 Speaker 1: I start thinking, but man, I don't want to get in trouble. Steve, I. 00:29:55 Speaker 2: Maybe Brody will get them. Steve, you and I have talked about a number of episodes. One of the things I have learned about you is Steve has a very strong sense of justice. 00:30:03 Speaker 1: Yeah. When it comes to murdering people, yeah. The Bobcat deal, that's one thing, but this is a whole other level, man. 00:30:09 Speaker 2: It's a good thing. It's a good thing. I think these victims need advocates, and a lot of times that's their family. But people with that strong sense of justice... It makes me too mad. 00:30:21 Speaker 1: I've got to turn it off. Yeah. 00:30:23 Speaker 2: Well, there will be several... I should know who did it right off the bat. 00:30:25 Speaker 1: There will be. 00:30:25 Speaker 2: Several you will not like... this season. This first one, actually, there is someone who a lot of people are very suspicious of in this first episode. And there's no smoking gun exactly, but he made some statements that are very concerning about what happened. 00:30:44 Speaker 1: Do you mind backing up? You mentioned that, is it Chia Vang? Sorry, what was the name? 00:30:51 Speaker 2: Chai Vang. 00:30:52 Speaker 1: Chai Vang. Do you mind, people will be familiar, most people will be familiar, but do you mind Touching on that because it'll prop people will remember this and. 00:31:00 Speaker 2: There's a Nash It was like a national news to 2004 Chai Vang killed six hunters in Northern Wisconsin and wounded two in a shootout in a shootout, right? So what happened was he wandered onto some private land? He got up in a tree stand that you know, it was on private guy walks up says hey, you can't be here This is private land. You have to get out of this tree stand. He comes down and He's walking, he's told to go, according to the guy who found him, he's told to go one way, he goes a different way. But he's, it's kind of, it's amicable, like there's no yelling or anything at this point. The guy that found Chai Vang radios back to the cabin, hey, I found a guy up here in this tree stand. Some guys at the cabin get on ATVs, drive out, and confront Chai, because apparently this had happened a couple times before, trespassers on the property. And so they start yelling at him. He probably yells back. There's this confrontation. Everyone agrees it doesn't get physical. There's no shoving. 00:32:07 Speaker 1: There's no punching. 00:32:08 Speaker 2: There's no fighting. The guys that come out from the cabin don't have guns. The only people who have guns are the first guy who found him in the tree stand and Chai Vang. And so at this point, this is where the story, there's some disagreement. Chai Vang's walking away. They see his back tag number. So at this point in Wisconsin, you had to wear a tag on your blaze orange with a number that identified who you were. So they see his back tag number. They say, hey, we're going to call that in. You know, you're going to get in trouble for trespassing. Chai says he's walking away. He looks back and sees the guy who had the gun, the original hunter who confronted him. He says that that guy had the gun, was shouldering it. And then he hears a shot and sees some. 00:32:55 Speaker 1: Dirt fly up. 00:32:58 Speaker 2: Everyone else who was there says that didn't happen. They say no one shot, no one ever shot at you. And so Chai turns around. He has a military surplus. I forget the exact model, but it's like an AK, basically. So it's semi-auto, has 10 rounds in it. He turns around. He unclips his scope from his gun because he's only... 25-30 yards away from these guys and start shooting. 00:33:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, but he had fought in the He had fought in the secret wars. He had not. Oh, he had not. So he wasn't from, he didn't fight in Laos with the Americans. 00:33:36 Speaker 2: He was too young. His dad did. He was in the Army National Guard in California where he had a, you know, sharpshooter badge, basically. But he never saw combat. So this is something that I assumed when I first heard this story. This guy saw combat You know, he had some form of PTSD and he's just reacting in a way that he had before. But he never did. He never saw any active combat. So he starts shooting all these hunters. And not only does he shoot and kill two of the guys there, he then chases after, there's a father and son who are there. The father runs one way, the son runs the other. He chases after both of them and kills both of them. He chases them down, shoots them in the back, kills both of them. And then, The cabin, there's other people at the cabin, they're getting radio calls. They hear, hey, someone's shooting, send help. So two other people who are at the cabin get on a four-wheeler and drive out, and he also shoots both of them. Neither of them were armed. He claims the one guy was armed, but there was no gun that was ever found. So he shoots both of them in the back as they're driving past him. He shoots and kills both of them, and doesn't kill them immediately either. um, has to finish the job basically on, on both of them. 00:34:57 Speaker 4: Um, how many people total then? 00:34:59 Speaker 2: Six people died and two were wounded. 00:35:01 Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Yeah. 00:35:03 Speaker 2: Um, so you can imagine, I mean, you can imagine like how much attention this got, um, court TV, like filmed the whole trial, uh, the next year. And so we, we have some of that footage where we play. 00:35:16 Speaker 1: Um, and you could dig into this whole story. Who did what? Yep. When, why? Yep. Yeah. That's great. 00:35:23 Speaker 2: So that's episode two. That'll be out next week. 00:35:26 Speaker 1: Congratulations, man. Thank you. And then we're working on a hot one. Yes. 00:35:32 Speaker 2: Yes, we are. 00:35:32 Speaker 1: The hottest one. 00:35:34 Speaker 3: Your passion project? 00:35:36 Speaker 1: Passion project, yeah. Youth Deer Season's coming up here. Youth Deer Season's coming up in Montana, and it's big changes this year because we're losing... We're shedding a lot of senior talent is what's happening. You just get them up where they know, you just get them up where they understand and then they age out. 00:35:57 Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 00:35:58 Speaker 1: It ends at 15. 00:35:59 Speaker 3: My kid didn't. Yours did. Mine didn't. 00:36:01 Speaker 1: I thought you were aged out. 00:36:03 Speaker 3: No, he's got a cross-country meet. He's committing to that team. 00:36:07 Speaker 1: Oh, that's right. 00:36:07 Speaker 3: Remember you were giving him shit about it? 00:36:09 Speaker 1: Oh, so we only got one aging out. Yeah. Well, yeah, but we got a lot of problems. We got one that's in a some kind of, we got one that's in a brace. Yes. 00:36:16 Speaker 4: Injured. 00:36:17 Speaker 1: Injured from a rock climbing incident. Mm-hmm. um we got one aged out we got one sticking staying true to his team. 00:36:29 Speaker 3: Yeah and he's got i don't think he would be doing this but he's got a uh mule deer tag in colorado this year so he's got a fallback he's got a fallback hunt. 00:36:40 Speaker 1: Yeah yanni's elder daughter this is her last year. 00:36:43 Speaker 4: Oh man see i feel like Yeah, I mean, obviously, they'll be better after this hunt than they are before this hunt because they'll have more experience, but I feel like I'm coming in right now with my varsity team. 00:36:59 Speaker 1: You got some seasoned players out there. Yeah. 00:37:02 Speaker 4: They're, they're, they're, they're going to get the job done. They're going to hike hard. They're not, there's going to be a lot less whining. Like we're, we're, I knew they were fired up about this one. Cause when I, like a week ago and I went, okay, we need to start packing, right? Like let's get the things, like get them in piles at least, you know, get your, the hunting gear and the clothes and, and just the pile of socks and get in. Usually three days. 00:37:25 Speaker 1: Usually you're wasting your breath. 00:37:26 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:37:27 Speaker 4: Three days later, you're like, okay, we started. And as of three days ago, I think everybody's pretty much packed and ready to rip. 00:37:33 Speaker 3: Well, they better be. 00:37:34 Speaker 1: That's great. 00:37:35 Speaker 3: Because they only got. 00:37:36 Speaker 1: Hours. 00:37:37 Speaker 3: Hours. It's kind of nice though, going like after you. 00:37:41 Speaker 1: Well, 24. 00:37:42 Speaker 3: After you build that veteran up, it's kind of nice going back to the beginning with the younger, the younger ones. 00:37:48 Speaker 1: See, I know that's what I'd be all like depressed and everything. Like the other day, I knew it, but I didn't really put it together that my older one's a junior. Oh, it was like a gut punch. He's going to move away. Yeah. 00:38:00 Speaker 3: He was 10 when we started. 00:38:01 Speaker 1: 10. I know, but now it's like, he's going to like go off and. I don't want him to go away. 00:38:06 Speaker 3: I know. That's how I feel about my kid. I'm like, are you going to go to school here in town? 00:38:09 Speaker 1: That's what I was telling him. I'm like, you have to apply to local school. 00:38:13 Speaker 3: You can stay here if you want. 00:38:15 Speaker 1: Dude, hit me. We were out pronghorn hunting, and all of a sudden, it never really hit me. I was like, he's a junior, man. He's going to move away. I've got to find a way to hold him captive. But anyways, so I still got an 11-year-old. So I got him. Plenty of seasons left, man. Plenty of seasons left. 00:38:33 Speaker 3: It won't be that long. It'll just be me and Steve and the two young ones. 00:38:37 Speaker 1: I know. Quiet camp, dude. Quiet camp. But the nice thing is that I was bringing, he's going to be exceptionally seasoned because he, for years, had to come along and couldn't even hunt. 00:38:49 Speaker 4: Yep. 00:38:50 Speaker 1: He had to just walk along. 00:38:51 Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. We might have to, next year, maybe invite a new family. 00:38:57 Speaker 1: I was thinking about that. Recruit some fresh talent. Yeah, we need a talent scout. 00:39:00 Speaker 3: How old is Corey's kid? 00:39:03 Speaker 4: He's eight this year, so he'll be ready to go in two years. 00:39:06 Speaker 1: Oh, let's grab that guy. Yeah. 00:39:08 Speaker 4: Marshall. 00:39:09 Speaker 1: We should tell him he can come right now and just start the... Yeah. What do you call that? What do you call that? He could be like a benchwarmer. 00:39:15 Speaker 3: Training. 00:39:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, a benchwarmer. Yeah, we need to recruit talent. It's going to get quiet around there. 00:39:20 Speaker 4: If we bring Marshall, it won't be quiet. 00:39:24 Speaker 1: Yeah let's grab him speaking of kids the other day i sent this is so funny the other day i sent my boy i'm like hey go get your sister from school we i he had to go get his sister from school early because we're taking off to go hunting so he takes his buddy to go and they go down to the junior high school and they're like parked in the parking lot they're they're trying to learn how to blow duck calls And they can't figure out why, but some lady's like staring at him. And they watch her and pretty soon she's over talking to a cop. And then pretty soon the cop is over banging on their window. And they roll the window down and he goes, oh, is that a duck call? He goes, someone said you were in here smoking drugs. 00:40:12 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:40:16 Speaker 1: So he says the cop then has a laugh and he watches the cop go back over to talk to the reporting party and clear the air on the violation. Too funny, man. One other one. I was at a pancake, a fire department fundraiser the other night. It was a pancake sausage dinner. I'm sitting there and I'm referring to the pancakes on my plate as flapjacks. My kid's like, why do you call them flapjacks? I'm like, it's a synonym. It's a pancake synonym. Flapjacks are pancakes. Pancakes are flapjacks. And there's this old timer sitting across from me at the bent folding table. And I said, sir, you probably know the word flapjack. He says, I'm familiar, but those are pancakes. 00:41:02 Speaker 4: So like what? I don't know. 00:41:08 Speaker 3: I think you're right. I think you're right. 00:41:09 Speaker 2: Flapjack is just like a. 00:41:10 Speaker 1: Flapjack's a freaking pancake. 00:41:12 Speaker 2: That's a more fun word, I think. Flapjack. 00:41:14 Speaker 1: I like that. I don't know. 00:41:16 Speaker 2: More fun to say. 00:41:17 Speaker 4: I'm bringing a big old, the giant bag of Krusty's Flapjack mix to youth camp, so we're going to eat a lot of pancakes one morning. 00:41:25 Speaker 1: Okay, time for your news. On a recent episode, we had discussed this. We had discussed Speaking of game laws, we didn't discuss what happens. Let's assume you live in a state where you can't shoot deer with a spotlight, which is all the states, and your state spells out legal method of take. 00:41:53 Speaker 3: And legal shooting hours. 00:41:54 Speaker 1: And legal shooting hours. So legal shooting hours is 30 minutes after sunset. Legal method of take, meaning it's archery season, so you're allowed to shoot a deer with a bow, whatever. But all of a sudden, you do a thing that commonly happens where a hunter goes out and they hit a deer. And they wait an hour. So now it's dark. They're hunting in the evening. They hit a deer. They wait an hour. They go out and they find the deer. And lo and behold, the deer is still alive. It's dying, but still alive. Most guys in this situation, you'd shine a light, right? 00:42:26 Speaker 4: Oh, there he is. 00:42:27 Speaker 1: He's still alive. And someone's going to shoot him with a bow. Or you cut his throat. Well, if you cut its throat, you've now killed it with something that's not a legal method of take. If you shine a light and shoot it with an arrow, you just spotlighted a deer. 00:42:44 Speaker 3: And shot after legal. 00:42:45 Speaker 1: And shot after legal shooting light. So we were wondering, why don't more states contemplate these scenarios and clear it up? Because you could feasibly come across a wounded deer at night and be like, well, it's after legal shooting light, I can't shoot. And I was pointing out that... I never even thought of this. And I would, prior to this ever dawning on me, I would, without hesitation, use a flashlight and shine it and put another arrow into it. Without hesitation. So I wondered, is this a common violation? Why isn't this contemplated in game laws? And a listener wrote in from North Carolina. And in North Carolina, they've contemplated it with very specific language. which is, I had never heard of this before. In North Carolina, you have until 11 p.m. to dispatch a wounded animal after legal hunting hours. Here's the wording. This is pretty great. If a hunter kills or wounds a big game animal during legal shooting hours, that's an important detail here, During legal shooting hours, the hunter may use a portable light source and a single dog on a leash to assist the hunter in retrieving the dead or wounded big game animal and may dispatch a wounded big game animal using a. 22 caliber rimfire pistol, archery equipment, or a handgun otherwise legal for that season. You have until 11 PM. 00:44:33 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:44:33 Speaker 3: It's a great, it's a good way to like kind of prevent some malarkey with like high powered rifles and spotlights. 00:44:43 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:44:44 Speaker 3: You know, just short range stuff. 00:44:45 Speaker 1: No, that's a great, I think that that that's a thing. I'd be curious to hear from other game wardens about it, but that's just like an interesting wrinkle that just had never occurred to me until I heard of a guy getting a citation for shooting a wounded deer at night with a light. Yeah. 00:44:59 Speaker 2: I'm surprised someone, a game warden, would... Like, if it's clear he's not spotlighting, he's not poaching at night, if it's clear he shot during legal hours, I'm surprised a game warden would issue a citation like that. 00:45:12 Speaker 1: My understanding, though, is that the deer was duking it out with a dog in a pond. Hmm. So maybe there's a question of, like, just how wounded was it? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Yanni? 00:45:31 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's where it gets tricky. Hold on, you want me to read this number two about shooting the buck with the crossbow? 00:45:39 Speaker 3: No, no, we're good. 00:45:40 Speaker 1: No, no, no, we're good there. All right. No, but the guy had a specific question. 00:45:45 Speaker 4: Ryan wrote in, I just finished watching the whitetail rut hunt with Giannis. Giannis mentioned how he was spending 12 hours a day sitting in the saddle. Now, I am no saddle hunter. That is a really long time to be up in a tree with no potty breaks. My question for the crew is, what do they do for bathroom breaks on those all-day sits? I just pee right out of my tree stand, and somehow, at least for the last six years, I'm very lucky that somehow I just get into a pattern where I literally make it all day, and then when I get home, I empty my bowels, I go to sleep, I wake up, and I do it all again. So I haven't had to deal with number two in the saddle. If I had to, I would climb down, dig a hole, poop in the hole, and then climb back up. 00:46:35 Speaker 1: In the tree. You're able to take a whiz right out of that saddle, huh? 00:46:41 Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. 00:46:42 Speaker 1: Just like normal. 00:46:43 Speaker 4: Just like normal. 00:46:44 Speaker 3: I wonder if there's any super hardcore whitetail tree stand hunters that wear those adult diapers. 00:46:52 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:46:53 Speaker 4: I haven't heard of that, but there's definitely people that still pee in a bottle. Right. 00:47:01 Speaker 1: Oh you know like buckman juice. 00:47:05 Speaker 4: Which is doug duran's urine which is doug. 00:47:07 Speaker 1: Duran's urine i was helping my i was helping my boy set up my boy was trying to get a white-tailed doe with his bow and i was taking a whiz down below there and um and he was like worried about it and i said man a deer probably want to come up and smell it and he sat there and he said sure enough a fawn came along and smelled that smelled that buckman juice there you But yeah, I remember being very like when I did a lot of like growing up doing a lot of tree tree stand hunting. I remember being there was a common conversation, people being very concerned about urine, human urine, like in the in like the serious whitetail world. Is that conversation over? 00:47:46 Speaker 4: No. 00:47:47 Speaker 1: Okay, so guys that really know still wonder about it. 00:47:51 Speaker 4: There's still people that take precaution not to just pee to the base of their tree. 00:47:57 Speaker 1: Because they feel that what? That if a. 00:48:00 Speaker 4: Deer comes downwind and for some reason wouldn't smell them, but would only smell the urine, I don't know if higher, lower air currents or whatever, but that somehow the urine would spook the deer. I've just seen it too many times now where I am on a high ridge, and I know my wind's blowing clearly off the ridge, way down and disappearing into the atmosphere. But that pee at the base of the tree is right there, and deer come right by it. And they stop. They smell it. But I've never had them blow out because of it. I think it just turns to ammonia. 00:48:40 Speaker 1: Pretty quick. 00:48:40 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:48:44 Speaker 1: This came across my mind. awareness my desk the other day that uh i was kind of surprised by that well sort of surprised you're gonna let phil play the sound oh you got a good one phil. 00:49:01 Speaker 3: Every week same one every week. 00:49:03 Speaker 1: Time for the news dude i thought maybe you got in there and crafted a new one no that's a good one phil thanks man yeah that's cute thank you cute is what i aim for check this out and this makes sense a little bit In the state we're sitting in right now in Montana, this is the state where you're most... likely to be killed by hitting wildlife with a car. So not that you're going to hit it, but that you're going to die hitting it. 00:49:30 Speaker 3: This is just wildlife, not just deer or other animals. 00:49:35 Speaker 1: Okay. deer... I about got killed the other night hitting someone's black angus. Which blends in exceptionally well with a black angus. 00:49:44 Speaker 3: No, I just asked because Montana has moose and elk and larger. 00:49:48 Speaker 1: That's why. I bet you that's gotta be why. That's gotta be why the fatalities are so high because you're hitting stuff that's big and it comes up into the windshield, man. You're knocking the legs out from it and sending it into the windshield. So... These guys looked at the whole country, dying from hitting wildlife. 2015 to 2024. Hold on. 00:50:13 Speaker 4: Did it say why PlayCasino.com was looking into this? 00:50:17 Speaker 1: Because I don't know. They might just generate a bunch of viral statistics stuff, which I'm a sucker for. I don't know why. The data experts at Play Casino. 00:50:29 Speaker 3: They got their information from the Department of Transportation. 00:50:36 Speaker 1: So there's some interesting numbers though. Between 2015 and 2024. So 2024. Yeah. So a nine year, during a nine year span in America, 2,115 people got killed from hitting wildlife with cars. But here's the crazy deal. Hawaii in that time period, not a single person in Hawaii was killed hitting something. All those hogs, All those chickens. 00:51:04 Speaker 3: Axis deer. 00:51:04 Speaker 1: All those axis deer. No one gets killed by hitting chickens, but. 00:51:08 Speaker 3: Wild cattle. 00:51:09 Speaker 1: Scratch chickens. Yeah. An axis deer must be like, it just doesn't have the necessary ass to kill a person. No one in Hawaii in nine years died hitting wildlife. But when you're driving around Hawaii, there's junk all over in the roads. Yeah. 00:51:26 Speaker 2: No one like swerved and like hit a, you know. concrete barrier. 00:51:30 Speaker 1: I don't know if they count that. 00:51:32 Speaker 2: So they have to hit the animal. 00:51:33 Speaker 3: Maybe. 00:51:34 Speaker 1: I get my boy a talk and do the air night. I let him take the wheel driving at night and there's a lot of junk in the road. And I'm like, you know, that just like run it over, man. It's sad, but yeah, you know, just how it goes. Interesting thing about it too, is these fatalities, it like, it just makes total sense. These fatalities peak in October, November. It's like the rut, man. Yep. Like during the rut, Americans die hitting deer with cars. 00:52:06 Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you drive down 90 here between Belgrade and Giannis' you know, Bozeman. It's like whitetails dead everywhere. 00:52:15 Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. All over the roads, man. So this data is like, it's like likelihood, right? So it doesn't deal in sheer numbers. But in sheer numbers, the number one hitting state The number one death state for hitting wildlife is Texas. A lot of people, enormous numbers of deer. Fast people. 00:52:39 Speaker 2: Fast speed limits. 00:52:40 Speaker 1: Free people just infused with freedom. That's right. 00:52:46 Speaker 3: And that 80 mile an hour speed limit. Those high fences don't make a difference in that case. 00:52:51 Speaker 1: Just a lust for freedom. A lust for freedom barreling down the Texas highway. That's right. And millions of deer. More deer than we have people by far. 00:53:03 Speaker 3: 210. 00:53:09 Speaker 1: Pennsylvania, 135 people killed hitting wildlife. Michigan, 124 from people hitting wildlife. Michigan and Wisconsin are kind of like very much the same place. So Michigan, 124. Wisconsin, 121. I've always made the case. I don't know if this is true, but I feel like it's true. Someone should do a poll. I think a person in Wisconsin is more likely than a person in Michigan to know what watershed they live in. 00:53:35 Speaker 2: Why do you say that? 00:53:40 Speaker 4: Wisconsin versus Michigan? 00:53:41 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that it'd be like a great way of measuring. This would be a good money for like, if someone was a researcher, you would do a survey and find out Who, what state has the most sort of environmentally aware populace? And to measure it, you would just say, if you take a piss, what is your pisses route to the ocean? And if they could do it, right? If they could say Bear Creek into Muskegon River, Muskegon River, into Lake Michigan, Lake Michigan into the St. Lawrence, out into the Atlantic. You'd be like, cool. 00:54:26 Speaker 2: Can you imagine calling someone on the phone? 00:54:28 Speaker 1: I was going to bring that up because they have a remarkably similar number. 124 and 121 people killed hitting deer. California, 80 people killed hitting deer. But for statistics, Montana. 00:54:46 Speaker 2: Montana. 00:54:48 Speaker 1: More than double the rate in the second place, Wyoming. More than double the rate of dying, hitting deer. 00:54:57 Speaker 2: I wonder if there are specific locations in Montana, specific locations that just funnel animals and there's a highway. 00:55:07 Speaker 3: Is this that Sealy Highway? 00:55:10 Speaker 1: That's a deathbed, yeah. That's a deathbed. I got a buddy. He was a tree surgeon. We used to work together. Like, I'm going to say it, and you're going to think that it's a lie, but we were right where it happened, and he walked me through it. He killed seven whitetails in one hit. 00:55:29 Speaker 3: Holy cow. 00:55:30 Speaker 4: Wow. 00:55:31 Speaker 1: He showed me where it happened. 00:55:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I remember you saying it was so bad. I don't know if it's still that bad, but it affects, like, bald eagles. 00:55:38 Speaker 1: Golden eagle. 00:55:39 Speaker 3: Golden eagle. 00:55:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a golden eagle migration corridor. Because the deer, there's so many dead whitetails on that road. 00:55:48 Speaker 4: Hmm. 00:55:49 Speaker 1: Over to you, Jordan. All right. 00:55:53 Speaker 2: Here we have a story, another crime story, that caught my attention for reasons that will become obvious. 00:56:00 Speaker 1: Because it involves men's underwear. 00:56:02 Speaker 2: In a moment. 00:56:05 Speaker 4: All right. 00:56:06 Speaker 2: So a Cuban man, permanent resident in the U.S., but a Cuban citizen, named Alberto Hernandez Castillo was picked up at... Miami International Airport, I think it was last Sunday, Customs and Border Patrol officers noticed what they described as a strange bulge in the man's pants. 00:56:28 Speaker 1: Now, you might be. 00:56:30 Speaker 2: Wondering why they would be interested in such a thing. According to the criminal complaint, Castillo appeared to be nervous and when asked, couldn't offer a believable explanation for what was going on. down there. 00:56:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, are you happy to see me? Yeah. Or do you have birds in your pants? 00:56:47 Speaker 2: Exactly, right, right. I would have loved. 00:56:49 Speaker 4: To know what his explanation was. 00:56:51 Speaker 2: Turns out it was the birds. The complaint says, I'll just quote from it here, the pat-down revealed that Hernandez Castillo was concealing six cylindrical clear plastic containers. So six plastic cylinders, they were each wrapped with tape and then had black mesh material near the opening. And Phil has some photos, I believe. 00:57:17 Speaker 1: I love when people come prepared with photos. 00:57:19 Speaker 3: Which one do you want to pull up here, Jordan? 00:57:21 Speaker 2: Let's do the one with the pants in question. So each of these tubes was sewn into his underwear and each tube contained live birds. Now, if you're on YouTube watching this, which you should, you can see this photo here. Interesting outfit for someone trying to evade detection. That's just kind of an aside. The gold shoes are a bold choice. 00:57:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, he looks like a dude who's like, he looks like a dude who has in mind that people are going to be like, what are that guy's up to? 00:57:57 Speaker 4: I don't know. 00:57:58 Speaker 3: You could go the opposite way and say it's just like so distracting that you wouldn't even think. 00:58:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like, dude, they're going to be so tripped out by my clothes. They're not going to notice my bold. 00:58:07 Speaker 2: Every NBA logo on my shorts. So, It's a little unclear. We don't know from the complaint exactly how this worked. We know that these cylinders with birds inside were sewn somehow. There appears to be some kind of mesh situation happening. But in any case, you know, it was probably uncomfortable, but I looked it up. It's only an hour flight from Havana to Miami. So, you know, not a hugely long time to sit there with a bunch of cylinders with birds in them in your pants. 00:58:39 Speaker 3: I might be getting ahead of myself here. Yeah. What about the noise the birds would make? 00:58:44 Speaker 1: I was just wondering, like, are they in there going tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet? 00:58:47 Speaker 2: That is a great question. So this doesn't specifically mention that, but there are other stories, similar stories, we'll get to in a minute, that mention the birds were sedated. So that's probably, yeah, that's probably what he did in this case. Because you're right. Though, you know, they're small little sounds. Maybe he could pass that off. 00:59:09 Speaker 1: Right. 00:59:10 Speaker 2: Hear it maybe in in the airport i'd. 00:59:11 Speaker 1: Just be i'd be going on oh excuse me. 00:59:16 Speaker 2: You just just watch a video of birds on your phone the whole time and then people. 00:59:19 Speaker 1: Will yeah it's like oh it's just ate something not did. 00:59:22 Speaker 2: Not agree so the birds there were 10 birds so six cylinders 10 birds so some of these had two birds in one Um, there were eight yellow faced grass quits and two blue grass beaks. Um, and they appear to have survived most of them. There's that photo that was up earlier. There's a cage with the birds in it. I count nine, I think eight or nine birds in there. So most of them survived. They seem to be okay. Um, but here's where it gets interesting. So you're probably asking yourself at this point, why would a man survive? put birds in his pants, and try to get into the U.S. 00:59:59 Speaker 1: Can I take a stab at it? Go ahead. Because he's going to sell them into the illegal pet trade. Right. 01:00:04 Speaker 2: So that is possible. They are kept as pets, of course. 01:00:09 Speaker 1: Or he's a fetishist. 01:00:13 Speaker 2: I didn't come across that in my research, but possible. 01:00:15 Speaker 1: Possible. 01:00:16 Speaker 2: Anything's possible these days. What I did find, though, and this is not something I'm familiar with, and I was talking with Brody about this before the podcast. He wasn't familiar with it either. which makes me feel less uninformed. But apparently these birds, it's possible they were competitors. So there is a thing called songbird competitions. It's popular in the Caribbean, in South America, in certain parts of the US. And the way these competitions work is they're usually male songbirds and they're naturally competitive. So they'll kind of sing back and forth to each other. It's a bit like Glee, the animal version of Glee or one of those acapella, you know, competition movies, but with birds. And there's, I assume there's different ways of organizing these competitions, but usually it's the first bird to make 50 different chirps or to sing 50 different songs. And so they'll- I've never heard of this. Yeah, they'll put two cages next to each other and the birds will sing back and forth. Someone will be paying very close attention, I assume. And listening to all the the chirps and noises that these birds are making and the first 250 wins So it's not like, you know cockfighting or dogfighting. It's very the birds aren't being injured or harmed They're actually very well taken care of sure man. The problem is when don't try. 01:01:43 Speaker 1: To excuse this don't try to humanize this guy Okay. 01:01:46 Speaker 2: But fair enough like a bobcatch. Well, he is he he is bringing them into the country illegally And there is a financial incentive here. So he could be selling them into the illegal pet market. However, if they're sold as competitive birds for these competitions, and this is from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and I couldn't believe some of these numbers, they can be sold for as little as $ 500, which seems like a lot for a little songbird. But as much as $ 10, 000 people will pay for these birds. 01:02:20 Speaker 3: For a real good competitor. 01:02:21 Speaker 2: Right, which gives you an idea of, Potentially the level of money we're talking about when it comes to gambling because that's a whole part of this too, right? As people are gambling on these birds, which that might be illegal. 01:02:32 Speaker 1: I'm not sure Can I hit you with a quick question? Yeah Years ago I was in Hanoi and I would notice that a lot of old people would go down to parks and they would have songbirds in cages. 01:02:46 Speaker 2: Mm-hmm and they would just. 01:02:48 Speaker 1: Kind of You just see him go to a park with a songbird. Yeah with a blanket over it And they would be in groups and they would just have the, they would take the cover off. And you just see like collections of six or eight old people with six or eight little cages with songbirds in them. Yeah. Is that maybe what they're doing? 01:03:05 Speaker 2: That may, may well be. I've looked up a few videos of these competitions and that's exactly what. 01:03:10 Speaker 1: It looks like. 01:03:11 Speaker 4: People have a cage. 01:03:11 Speaker 1: I don't like what in the world is that? Yeah. 01:03:14 Speaker 2: Yeah. Here we have a family boards. 01:03:17 Speaker 1: That's my life. 01:03:19 Speaker 5: This sound means it's dawn in Guyana, and if it's Sunday, that means the showdown is not too far off. Bird owners gather across the country to proudly exhibit their birds and have them face off against each other in whistling competitions called Guyana Speed Singing Contests. 01:03:36 Speaker 1: Bird for me is not just competing. 01:03:39 Speaker 2: Here you go, Steve. 01:03:41 Speaker 4: Fascinating. 01:03:42 Speaker 3: Traditional songbird competition in Hanoi take place weekly, frequently on Sunday mornings. 01:03:48 Speaker 1: Damn, that's what I was looking at. 01:03:50 Speaker 3: Mostly meet on weekends, especially Sundays. 01:03:52 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:03:54 Speaker 3: Enthusiasts assembled in coffee shops, lakeside corners, and parks. 01:03:57 Speaker 1: Yes. 01:03:58 Speaker 3: All over the place. 01:03:59 Speaker 4: Average competitor, 70 years or older. 01:04:01 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:04:02 Speaker 3: Wow. 01:04:03 Speaker 1: So, you know, that's, it's taken me many years, but I've always been like, what is going on with that? Okay. 01:04:09 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:04:09 Speaker 1: Cool. 01:04:10 Speaker 2: So the next question you might have is, you know, if you were, if you're in Cuba, you know, maybe you have family up here. You want to, you know, continue this hobby that you love. Why wouldn't you just import these birds legally? The problem is the quarantine. So when you import wildlife into the U.S., it has to be in quarantine for 30 days to make sure it doesn't have any diseases. What these competitive bird trainers say is that that 30 days of quarantine undermines their training. birds training. 01:04:42 Speaker 1: So song out of them. Yeah. 01:04:43 Speaker 2: They, they take the, you know, when the bird is young, they put them in a cage in a quiet place and they play recordings of bird song. 01:04:52 Speaker 1: Okay. 01:04:53 Speaker 2: And so the birds learn the song and they slowly kind of acclimate them to be around people and other noises. And so they don't lose their, their, you know, the songs that they've learned. Uh, what they say is the 30 days in a random, you know, us government facility kind of ruins them it ruins the birds and if you've you know invested a lot of time in these animals they don't want to do that so that is potentially a reason why some of these guys and there are other examples i could cite of people smuggling these little songbirds into the u.s. 01:05:21 Speaker 1: Yeah but drugging them and sticking them down your pants i mean there's another knock the song out of his back i. 01:05:29 Speaker 2: Guess not there there's another guy who um wasn't quite as creative this was just last year he put Two orange-fronted parakeets in brown paper bags and stuffed those down his pants so he didn't have the cylinders. Another guy, similar, he put them in hair curlers, like women's hair curlers, and put a bunch of those in his carry-on bag and was caught for that. 01:05:52 Speaker 1: Um and i was i'm looking at your notes here that dude was he was fixing to get three thousand bucks a bird that's he. 01:05:58 Speaker 2: Told authorities three thousand. 01:05:59 Speaker 1: Twenty twenty thirty four birds now that guy sharpened his pencil. 01:06:03 Speaker 2: Yeah he's that's like a hundred grand he's yeah that's a that's a yeah that's that's an mba that's an mba style wildlife violator right there man right yeah um So, yeah, as far as penalties, like Max is 20 years in prison, you know, $ 250, 000 fine. Most just get probation, especially if they're a first-time offender for something like this. But, yeah, I was fascinated. I had no idea about these competitions. 01:06:28 Speaker 1: Hmm. 01:06:30 Speaker 4: It makes me, it reminds me of, I believe, I can't remember where, we must have done it for live, but remember that story we covered about how the, there was those pigeon trainers that were shooting the hawks? 01:06:42 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:06:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:06:43 Speaker 4: Yeah. Very similar. 01:06:47 Speaker 1: Like little bird subcultures, man. Subcultures that lead to criminality. 01:06:52 Speaker 4: And also have a lot of bedding involved. 01:06:59 Speaker 3: Been a while since we've talked about the on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again saga of the Ambler Road in Alaska. There's an update that just happened. But if you're not familiar... Um, the Ambler road is a road that's, uh, being proposed to be built, uh, in the Southern Brooks range of Northwestern Alaska. It's going to be a 211 mile long industrial gravel road connecting the Dalton highway to the Ambler mining district. Um, the reason that the road is, is proposed to be built is access to copper, zinc, lead, gold, and other mineral deposits. Um, For mining for foreign mining companies. Why is it always foreign mining companies? 01:07:45 Speaker 1: I'll never get that. The ore from this thing goes over, and there's some arguments that it benefits China more than the US. 01:07:56 Speaker 3: Two companies, Trilogy Metals out of Canada and South 32 Limited out of Australia, stand to make $ 1. 5 billion if this road is built. And the road would be restricted to only authorized industrial traffic. So, like, the public can't drive down that road. It crosses through all kinds of public lands, including 26 miles of Gates of the Arctic National Preserve. And the mines could be active as long as 30 years. More than... Go ahead. 01:08:31 Speaker 1: No, you go ahead. 01:08:33 Speaker 3: More than 80 Alaska Native communities have expressed opposition to the road. Obviously, the flip side of that is that this road would certainly provide jobs and economic benefits to local communities in Alaska. So there's that to consider. This all started back in 2015 when an application was issued sent to the federal government. In 2017 to 2020, the Bureau of Land Management conducted an environmental impact study. And in Trump 1 administration, the road was approved and issued a 50-year right of way. 2022, Biden administration suspended the authorizations over deficiency in the environmental review. 2024, the project just got completely rejected following a supplemental impact review. Now, this year, or no, last year, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources approved an easement across about 7,000 acres of state land. This will be important later. 2025, President Trump approved the appeal reversing the Biden administration's federal rejection. BLM reissued the federal right away. So it just like went back to where it was in Trump won. This year, Alaska DNR reaffirmed its state land easement approval and In response, seven conservation organizations filed an appeal in Alaska Superior Court challenging the approval. That's just for this state crossing through this state land. It doesn't have anything to do with the federal side of it. The National Parks Conservation Association announced the lawsuit alleging that the DNR had failed to adequately evaluate environmental impacts. So you've got seven plaintiffs, uh, National Parks Conservation Association, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and Winter Wildlands Alliance. Now you might recognize that some of these groups, a couple of them at least, are like groups that we haven't spoken kindly of in the past. Um, you got anything to add on that? 01:11:18 Speaker 1: Strange bedfellows, man. 01:11:19 Speaker 3: Yes. 01:11:20 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:11:21 Speaker 3: Um, this, there, this whole thing is being managed for trustees for Alaska, which kind of represents a lot of Alaska native, uh, communities. Um, and they're just saying again, that they failed to evaluate environmental impacts. Um, And again, this is only challenging that state land easement, not the federal stuff. Some potential impacts would be, if the road goes through, would be on the Western Arctic caribou herd, the road would pass right through their migration corridor and potentially interfere with seasonal movement. There's a lot of potential impacts on fish and rivers. sedimentation in rivers, altering stream channels, degrading habitat. 01:12:09 Speaker 1: You know how many streams you have to culvert? 01:12:11 Speaker 3: Thousands. 01:12:12 Speaker 1: 3,000. Yeah. Yeah. Across like 11 major river systems and culvert 3,000 streams. Yep. 01:12:22 Speaker 3: Obviously, all of those are of concern. One particular concern is the Kobuk Wild and Scenic River. 01:12:30 Speaker 5: Okay. 01:12:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, you're looking at that map there. 01:12:35 Speaker 2: Do we know how much crosses through state versus federal? 01:12:40 Speaker 1: How much? 01:12:41 Speaker 3: I'm assuming not as much state because they only had to get that one. 01:12:45 Speaker 1: Easement for state. Yeah, the states along the corridor, the states along the pipeline corridor that they're coming off of. 01:12:50 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:12:50 Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha. 01:12:53 Speaker 3: Yeah. So, caribou, rivers, fish. 01:12:57 Speaker 3: And all the construction and noise and human activity could also displace other Arctic wildlife species. There's concern about permafrost. The road could accelerate thawing and erosion. And it would enable additional mines, gravel pits, and industrial infrastructure. And Native Alaskan subsistence communities, like if it affects that caribou herd, it's definitely going to affect you know, their ability to feed themselves with caribou and fish and, and could just kind of ruin traditional hunting areas. So where we're at now is, uh, the Alaska Superior Court is going to review the challenge to the, to the easement. Um, federal road authorizations remain a separate legal issue. Um, And the proposed mine is entering a new environmental review process that will happen on November 2nd. So a couple of weeks, I guess. Right now, the road's only proposed. It's not constructed. 01:14:08 Speaker 1: This fight is playing out like any other of these major environmental battles. The Pebble Mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay. One administration and the next. the mine in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Ambler Road. These are environmental fights that play out over decades. I think that the administration was hopeful that they were going to fast track this thing. But within this Ambler Road thing is a lot of stuff that just strikes me as a lot of BS. Any talk about this being a 30-year project, it is bullshit. Okay. It's a, it's a, it's a forever project. It is like no one, like if you put people, any, anyone involved in proposing this thing or the financial backers of this thing, and these guys have enormous biz dev, like that you would enter into a deal like this and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on regulatory stuff. Like the biz dev expense and building this mind. is, is astounding for, for something that might not even go. This is a forever deal. Like no, if you put someone on a lie detector test, anyone that really knows what's going on and you said, Hey, is this a 30 year thing? 01:15:33 Speaker 2: No. 01:15:33 Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it, it, it, this will, it will bleed to hundreds of projects. Yeah. 01:15:39 Speaker 3: And I mean, in the, I think it was in the Trump one administration. It was a 50 year permit for the road or something. 01:15:46 Speaker 1: So it's a, it's a forever project. 01:15:48 Speaker 3: They're going to take every last ounce of the stuff they can get. 01:15:51 Speaker 1: It's a forever project. It'll be like, once it's there, it's like, it's just there. 01:15:57 Speaker 3: And then there's the, if it ever does close, there's the cleanup that has to happen afterwards. 01:16:02 Speaker 1: You know, dude, let me tell you something that's not going to happen in Alaska. they're not going to tear up a road. 01:16:09 Speaker 3: Right. It's like, I'm saying the mind. Yeah. Yeah. 01:16:12 Speaker 1: It's, it's a, it's a forever thing. Yeah. I'll tell you, let me tell you another thing. That's a forever thing. Uh, those minerals will be eternally valuable and they are there forever. I don't right now. See, I don't right now. See, um, any sense of urgency. and going after these minerals. As someone who's kind of an environmental nationalist, let's say, should we be in a situation, should we find ourselves as a nation in a situation as dire as we were in, say, 1941, right? It might be a different conversation to me. It might be a different conversation about, like, we're in an existential crisis, right? um, we need these things to save the free world. I might be like, let's talk. Sure. But I, like, I don't, it's not going anywhere. 01:17:16 Speaker 3: Well, it's not coming into the United States. That's for sure. It's leaving the United States. 01:17:20 Speaker 1: And then what's so funny about it, it's going to leave the U S is or, and then we're going to pay a bunch of goofy ass tariffs on it when it comes back as a, as product. 01:17:28 Speaker 2: Right. 01:17:29 Speaker 3: To buy it back. 01:17:30 Speaker 1: To make other dudes a bunch of money. 01:17:32 Speaker 2: Yep. 01:17:34 Speaker 1: And it's like, this is, you are, you are tapping into one of the, I mean, you are tapping into one of very few of our last vestiges of like pure wilderness. Yeah. 01:17:48 Speaker 3: Pristine. Just untouched. 01:17:51 Speaker 1: And it ain't going nowhere. 01:17:53 Speaker 4: Nope. 01:17:53 Speaker 1: It's like, to me, it's like, why now? For foreign, that's this thing too. like for foreign mining companies but even if they were u.s owned mining companies i still have a lot of questions but to me it's like calm this is a foreign mining company. 01:18:08 Speaker 3: Wanting to say miss in the boundary water like. 01:18:10 Speaker 1: I don't get why is it always that way and why is it always like shadow investors and stuff and they build these like they build these orgs just to front these things where you don't even understand the backing of it just the whole thing blows my mind so i get like Why do we got to basically go in and trash a bunch of our national treasure at this point in time to benefit other dudes? This is kind of maddening. 01:18:42 Speaker 4: It'll benefit some Americans too, obviously. And that's why this is getting pushed forward. 01:18:49 Speaker 1: Yeah. And like, yeah. And they're able to like give a lot of money to politicians and politicians are willing to do their bidding because they're giving them tons of money. Like, like I get all that stuff. I just, you know, I can't get excited about this damn road. The other question that comes up, so they built the Dalton Highway, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, they put a road on it. That road's open to the public. And there's a lot of people that are like, if they build the Ambler Road, so 200 miles of road, paralleling the Brooks Range, crossing all these streams, there's some people that say, and it won't even be open to the public. But I look and I'm like, man, I don't know. Would it be great if it was? 01:19:32 Speaker 2: Well. 01:19:33 Speaker 1: Does that make it better? 01:19:34 Speaker 3: For some people, it would. that access would be great. 01:19:38 Speaker 4: Right. 01:19:38 Speaker 1: In all honesty, like in all honesty, I'd be one of the first dudes down that road. Should I be like, right. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know if they do cut the road. Um, I don't even know how I feel about it. I don't know how I feel about it, but when people go like, and it won't even be open to the public, I often wonder like, would that really be the best thing to have it be open to the public? I believe that it eventually would be open to the public. 01:20:08 Speaker 3: Probably, yeah. 01:20:09 Speaker 4: It wouldn't be good for those people that are subsistence living up there. 01:20:15 Speaker 1: If it doesn't open to the public, if they build this road and it's not open to the public, it'll not be open to the public because of because of native Alaskan resistance to it being open to the public to non-local non-subsistence recreational hunters and anglers pouring into that area and putting pressure on a resource that they don't want pressure. 01:20:41 Speaker 3: I mean, just look at the map. Like you'd open all that country to from, from Fairbanks, you drive up there, take a left and you're in there. And to what the only way you could get in there before is by plane. 01:20:53 Speaker 1: Right. 01:20:54 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:20:54 Speaker 1: And people aren't even factoring in the main thing, dude. Once you get into Alaska logistics, okay, here's what happens is when that's open to the public. And again, like I have very mixed feelings about this. Once that's open to the public, that's air, that's airboats on all those rivers. 01:21:18 Speaker 3: Right. Yep. 01:21:20 Speaker 1: You, it's like you have opened up like a pan. You're opening up a Pandora's box when you put airboats. in jet boats on everything that that thing crosses. Yep. 01:21:35 Speaker 3: Yep. That's a great point. 01:21:37 Speaker 1: It is just like, I can see not, not even from the, not even from the, not even from the conservation angle of tapping an industrial corridor and putting hundreds of mines in one of our last great wildernesses, not even from that, but from the, from the mind of, people that live subsistence lifestyle, native Alaskans that live subsistence lifestyles in those areas, from the impact, the eventual impact of airboats and other types of operations coming off, snow machines coming off of a 211 mile, basically a trailhead that runs 211 miles. It's a big, big deal. deal. It'll be a big, big deal to them. I'm the kind of guy that would be on the receiving end of it because I'm the kind of guy that would be up there pack rafting and stuff. 01:22:35 Speaker 3: I'd feel icky, but then I'd see a giant herd of caribou and be like, well, you know. 01:22:38 Speaker 1: You know what you'd say? Everybody else is doing it. It's the great story from the Buffalo hide hunter. I think it was Buffalo Jones who said, many days. He's talking about being on the Texas plains. He says, many days I would come home at night And I would want to hang up my rifle. I was so sickened by what I had done all day. And I was going to quit. But then I'd wake up in the morning and off in the distance. Boom, boom, boom. And he's like, someone else is going to do it anyway. Yep. And I'd head back out. And you'd have like that, you know, I'd be like, oh. 01:23:20 Speaker 3: Get yours while the getting's good, you know. 01:23:22 Speaker 1: I heard it's pretty sweet. But again, this is like a not, what I'm talking about is way future. I'll be dead. Because let's say it goes 30 years and there's no access, I'm already out. So I'm talking about the future. I'm not even talking about myself. When talking about the future, what's that Aldo Leopold quote? I'm glad I will not be a young man in a future without wilderness. I was telling my 16-year-old this quote yesterday, two days ago. I was like, I'm glad I'll not be a young man in a future without wilderness. Maybe you will be. Right. I didn't have to suffer through it. 01:24:04 Speaker 4: He won't be, but maybe his kids. 01:24:06 Speaker 1: No. Deeply uneasy, personally, me, deeply uneasy about this road. And the biggest thing is the shit ain't going anywhere. 01:24:17 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:24:17 Speaker 1: If we really, as a country, really, really in the future, you know, are in some spot where it becomes of, like, existential significance. Let's talk. 01:24:30 Speaker 3: We'll check back in on it, I'm sure, at some point down the road. 01:24:35 Speaker 1: It's money in the bank right now, bro. Money in the bank. Gold in the bank. Zinc in the bank. 01:24:43 Speaker 4: Delaware found its first cases of CWD last year, Brody. 01:24:47 Speaker 3: Was it last year or this year? 01:24:48 Speaker 4: It was last year. 01:24:50 Speaker 3: It was? 01:24:51 Speaker 4: Yeah, but this year they're implementing a... Yeah, it was last year. Gosh, now you got me tripped up. 01:25:00 Speaker 3: I think it might have been this year, man. I think it was April of this year. 01:25:06 Speaker 4: Why were they sampling in April? 01:25:08 Speaker 1: I don't know. 01:25:12 Speaker 3: Double check. You go on and I'll check. 01:25:15 Speaker 4: I wrote it, right? I wrote it down there. Anyways, they found two in the last year, approximately. And it's prompted an activation of the state's CWD plan. Which was interesting. Well, two things were interesting. 01:25:27 Speaker 1: During the 25-26 hunting season, they sampled 600 deer and got two positives. Yeah. Okay. 01:25:36 Speaker 4: Delaware's Division of Fish and Wildlife, it's actually the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Division of Fish and Wildlife. That's a mouthful. 01:25:46 Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, man. I wouldn't even be able to begin to make one of the acronyms out of that. Uh-uh. D-N-R-E-C. 01:25:54 Speaker 4: Division of Fish and Wildlife. Anyways, they've been on top of it, man, since 2003. Every single year, about 600 to 650 samples. And so that's 13,000 total. And so then, yeah, the 25-26 hunting season, which they must be talking about last year, came up with two. 01:26:16 Speaker 3: It says it was confirmed in April of this year, so the samples could have come. 01:26:21 Speaker 4: From last fall. 01:26:23 Speaker 1: Yeah, it says they collect them during hunting season. 01:26:26 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just odd that they throw the 26 in there. This was tripping us up. Anyways, so yeah, they implemented emergency regulations. They basically made a CWD management zone in Lower Sussex County, which we've spent some time in out there on the Delmarva Peninsula. Um, just so happens that this is where like most of the deer are in the state. And so it would, you know, you'd go to guess that this is going to be where CWD would pop up. It's where the most deer are killed is, uh, down in Sussex County. Um, I was surprised to see like. Here, these numbers are Delaware. 16,000 hunters. They kill about 16,000 deer annually. 01:27:10 Speaker 1: That's a hot hunting state right there, man. 01:27:13 Speaker 4: If you're a Delaware hunter, I mean, obviously, there's a few out there that are probably killing two or three or four. I don't know exactly how they're- Yeah, but that's extraordinary. Yeah, it's wonderful hunting, sounds like, in Delaware and especially in Sussex County. Um, anyway, so they set up a, uh, CWD management zone where you got to check deer in during the November shotgun season. Uh, and they placed, placed a ban on, uh, natural urine based buck lures. Um, I know, I know, but they're doing what they can, you know? 01:27:48 Speaker 1: Yeah. That feels like really COVID-19 to me. 01:27:53 Speaker 4: A little over the top. 01:27:54 Speaker 1: Just a little like what? 01:27:56 Speaker 4: And I don't know, are they going to ban selling them? Or is it going to be like Wisconsin where you can't bait, but every gas station has bait for sale? 01:28:04 Speaker 1: To me, it just seems like that one, banning urine-based buck lures, to me, seems like just grasping at straws. 01:28:14 Speaker 2: They have a little explanation here on their site. They say buck lures are connected to CWD because infectious abnormal misfolded proteins called prions that cause a fatal disease are shed in animal bodily fluids. 01:28:29 Speaker 1: Understood. 01:28:29 Speaker 2: And can be transmitted to other deer, either from direct contact or in browsing vegetation. So are they saying the the product itself can. 01:28:38 Speaker 1: Yes. That you would be moving in. Okay. I, I, I get it. Yeah. There's a lot of other things going on all the time. Deer are always sticking their noses against each other. There's, it's just, there's a lot going on all the time to go and look and be like, oh, that'll slow the spread. It's like, come on. It's, it's like you're trying to do something. You're trying to be helpful. I understand. You're trying to be helpful. I just think that one is like a little, it, it, it, it, it always strikes me as goofy. Yeah. 01:29:09 Speaker 4: They're monitoring it, which is awesome. I'm glad to hear they're so on top of it in Delaware. Um, they're going to expand the zone if they find more positive deer this year. Um, Brody asked me to give you some stats of where we're at currently, CWD, and what it was 10 years ago. In the country, we now have 37 states. 01:29:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like every few months, another state. 01:29:34 Speaker 4: Gets added to the list. 10 years ago, we only had 24 states. 01:29:41 Speaker 1: It's undeniable that it's spreading. Undeniable. On the interview show, we recently had on the director of Missouri's Fish and Game Department, and you should listen to the whole thing. It was all on the subject, but it seems that there's a percentage. If you do good control efforts, there's a percentage at which you can be effective. He, they feel others feel too, that there's a, there's a prevalence rate at which you're, you're not going to change the, like these kinds of management exercises at, I think it's five and above. At 5% and above, there's nothing you're going to do. You're not going to lower the percentage. You can suppress 1%, 2%, whatever. You can take management efforts and suppress. I wish I remembered better all the numbers he gave, but they're starting to come to the conclusion that there's a prevalency rate with CWD at which these herd reductions stop being effective. But states that get aggressive early... sometimes have luck in keeping low-prevalency rates. But he, Jason Sumners, and please go listen to the interview because it's much more nuanced what I'm saying, is of the opinion that at a point, these traditional herd reduction strategies and other steps don't make a difference. 01:31:16 Speaker 3: Did he say if there's anything that does? 01:31:20 Speaker 1: No, there are areas, small areas, There are areas in Missouri where they have stopped spending. Cause there's no, cause there's no return on your investment. 01:31:30 Speaker 3: I mean, you've got like areas like Doug's place where the prevalence rate is super high. You've got some of those areas here in Montana. 01:31:37 Speaker 1: And you got finite, you got finite resources. You got finite personnel and finite resources. And when you're at 20% prevalence, you're not going to, you can go put all the money in the world in there and you're not going to make it 19%. Yeah. And so they, if they're, And again, deer don't understand state boundaries. And the thing is too, is Delaware is an exceptionally, you know, extremely small state. So you're not controlling big chunks where your management strategy is acting on itself. Like you have a lot of area that's border country. Sure. With deer moving across borders. And so if you're out of sync with the states around you, This creates complications. In the areas that Missouri is stepping away from on CWD management is border areas. I believe on their southern border, they can't spend there anymore. 01:32:29 Speaker 3: They're kind of like circling the wagon where they can. 01:32:32 Speaker 1: They have some natural barriers, some big reservoirs and other things that form some natural barriers, and there's kind of a zone where we're done. We're done. 01:32:41 Speaker 4: Yeah, just from personal experience, It does seem like the less deer, the less CWD. Like where we hunt in Wisconsin, very low deer density compared to say where Doug's at. And we've yet to have a positive case. We've been testing all of our deer now for, I don't know, probably close to 10 years. And the county has had a few positives, but like we just don't have the spread rate that they do down in Doug's. 01:33:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, like you do when you get areas where you got like 30 deer per square mile, 40 deer per square mile. I think that kind of blows my mind on the social aspect of chronic wasting disease. When we did that interview with Jason Sumners recently, and anyone interested in CWD, I highly recommend that you go and listen to that interview because it's very comprehensive and it's look at where we stand with CWD management today. There is a faction, like there is a faction of the American outdoor community that is resistant to even having a conversation about CWD. I was made aware of this asshat on Facebook who has all these posts where he's saying that I'm getting paid. I'm getting paid. I individually am getting paid by the government to talk about CWD because I'm an anti-hunter. 01:34:12 Speaker 4: Well, that explains that big diesel truck, that new truck. 01:34:16 Speaker 1: And I'm trying to get people to stop hunting because I'm a secret anti-hunter. And my way to help the government stop hunters is to spread this fear about CWD. And this guy's like, follow the money, follow the money. And so I look into him. He's a deer breeder. So I'm like, Oh, I followed the money and I'm at your house. 01:34:41 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:34:42 Speaker 1: Yes. 01:34:42 Speaker 3: Oh my God. 01:34:43 Speaker 1: It just, it's like how it came to be that, that, that you are sort of, um, that, that people would not ostracize people who are having conversations about a, a wildlife disease. 01:35:00 Speaker 3: A scientifically like, acknowledge like it's it's real folks. 01:35:04 Speaker 1: And to say you're i don't know i'd like to follow i'd like to talk to as many people as i can who have expertise in this field because i want to understand it because i love deer and i don't like deer diseases and it'd be like oh you're a i'm gonna. 01:35:21 Speaker 3: Tell your kids on the youth hunt that you're an anti-hunter that's. 01:35:24 Speaker 1: What they do is i don't like this dude like this dude um I was going to have a little bona fides tournament with him, but I'm not going to have a bona fides tournament. 01:35:37 Speaker 4: It just comes down to the fact that you're affecting his pocketbook by what you're saying. 01:35:40 Speaker 1: Follow the money. 01:35:41 Speaker 4: Okay. 01:35:43 Speaker 2: Is he in Texas? I'm not going to say. 01:35:47 Speaker 1: Okay. 01:35:48 Speaker 2: Because in Texas, that's like the nexus, right? It's like the deer breeders. 01:35:55 Speaker 1: There's a lot of tension. Yeah. 01:35:57 Speaker 2: Right. And it's around CWD. It's all around CWD. 01:36:00 Speaker 1: And here's the deal. If I view– if you're a deer breeder, I view that as a livestock issue. Right. It's a livestock– in most states, they regard it as a livestock issue. 01:36:17 Speaker 3: I'm sure most people are familiar with the connection to deer breeding, but if they're not, can you. 01:36:21 Speaker 1: Quickly– Um, because we put enormous social value on deer and it's really hard to grow big deer in the wild. And that's why like a big buck is regarded as a thing of extraordinary value is it's like it's rarity. And so someone long ago had the brilliant idea, um, of being like, man, it's so hard to make big deer in the wild. And it's so hard to get a wild, big deer. I can, I can like just grow one. I'll make a fence and grow a big deer and people value big deer because they're so rare and so cool and so wild, but now also not just have them cause I made them. And, and generally when you're in, when you're a deer breeder, your deer are generally regarded as, um, under the purview of your department of livestock, same way that you'd manage sheep, goats, cattle, horses, whatever. It's like you're managed by department livestock. When we spoke to Jason Sumners from Missouri. deer breeders in Missouri are under the purview of livestock, agriculture department. And then you have the wildlife department that works on deer. 01:37:28 Speaker 3: And then you have CWD. 01:37:29 Speaker 1: Well, yes. Yes, because here's where we're getting to. There is... There are many people in the CWD space who point to evidence asserting that captive deer have at times transmitted CWD to wild deer. If it was shown, if it was shown to me that that's actually not true, like as we continue to study CWD and we look at these transmissions and we figure everything out and we do it and it turns out captive deer have never spread a disease to wild deer, I would put the captive deer industry right back in my head where it's always been, which is a thing that I don't have an opinion about. 01:38:16 Speaker 3: Right, but I believe there is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service map that you can, I think that's where it's from, that you can look at, which shows kind of these expansions of CWD. And often in the center of them is a deer breeding facility. You know, it's just like, it's the bullseye in that CWD zone. 01:38:42 Speaker 1: The first one ever identified. The first deer ever identified to have CWD. was a mule deer in a research facility. So in a government facility, that's important detail. The first one ever identified was in a government facility in Colorado, but people weren't checking wild deer back then. Right. I don't know where to like, no one can say where it, anyone that tells you where it came from is just talking. They don't know. It's not known where it came from. You can point to when was it first found? But that doesn't mean that you found the first deer. Of course you didn't find the first deer that ever had it. So, yeah. What are you guys commiserating about? 01:39:25 Speaker 2: There's just a map from Onyx with CWD by state, like which states it's been found in. 01:39:33 Speaker 1: There have been some very mysterious, there have been some very mysterious jumps of CWD and Jason Sumners even talks about it. It is not always edge effect. Meaning you'd have like some center, like let's say, you know, wherever you have like some center and then spreading out from that and concentric rings would be more and more and more and more and more. Like you imagine like if without air travel and highway travel, the way the cold would just kind of move from person to person and drift out. You do have where CWD seems to go and jump. And when it jumps, is it, is it because someone sent a bale of alfalfa? 01:40:15 Speaker 3: Or a breeder buck. 01:40:17 Speaker 1: Yeah. Was it a bale of alfalfa that had a bunch of deer saliva all over it and deer hair in it? Was it a guy that went on a hunting trip? He lives in, I don't know, he lives in Iowa and he went out and killed a big deer in Colorado and took it home and pressure washed its brain all over his, you know, out in his backyard. And he's got yard deer. Is it because someone moved a breeder buck? Like you'll, we'll never know these things. Like you don't know. But people look, and there's a lot of attention and focus has fallen on moving live deer that might have diseases. I'm interested in something I'll probably never have, which is, like, I would love to have certainty. If I knew somehow that that just wasn't a thing, I would put it out of mind. It's interesting that years ago, there was a ballot initiative came up to make it that, like, in this state, they banned deer captivity. 01:41:15 Speaker 3: I think there's some other states that have too. 01:41:17 Speaker 1: It passed by a lot. And this is not a softy anti-hunting state. No. This is a state where hunting culture runs deep. Participation is very high. And they wanted to open up canned elk hunts here. And there was a, there was a citizen's initiative that banned it. So, um, is, is, Does that point to an underbelly of anti-hunting sentiment in the state of Montana? I don't think so. There was hunters that did it. I don't know. I don't know. Dying for more info. If there's a guy, this is true. If there's someone out there that feels that, if there's someone out there that feels that they have good empirical evidence showing that captive deer have not spread CWD. And it's hard to prove this, but good empirical evidence suggesting that something else is at play, I would be very serious about having that conversation. If it's out there. 01:42:33 Speaker 3: I don't know. 01:42:34 Speaker 2: But it's like, yeah. It's tough in Texas because you mentioned most states, they treat them like livestock. In Texas, they're wildlife still. And so Texas Parks and Wildlife is over that. And the reason why when you come across someone who is very vocal, like this gentleman you're referring to, about CWD isn't real, it's not a big deal, trace it back. 01:43:01 Speaker 1: No, there's no one. The denier community has moved on from it's not real. 01:43:06 Speaker 2: How do you, what's farther than that? Oh, it's a conspiracy? 01:43:09 Speaker 1: No, no, no. 01:43:10 Speaker 4: No, no, it's real, but it's always been there and it's nothing to worry about. 01:43:13 Speaker 1: The denier community used to be that it's fake. They change over time. The leading edge of the denier community now sits at, I think it's that it's agricultural products are spreading CWD. 01:43:31 Speaker 3: Is that right? 01:43:32 Speaker 1: But it doesn't matter. Right. Or something. But it's not that it doesn't exist. 01:43:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, but the incentive for the breeders, right, is because when CWD is found in their facility, they have to kill a bunch of deer. 01:43:44 Speaker 1: And that pisses them off bad. 01:43:45 Speaker 2: And that pisses them off. And so that's kind of the connection where the incentive comes from. And this is a huge fight in Texas. It's been, you know, ongoing for years. There's been pretty famous... deer breeders who have refused Texas parks and wildlife order to kill their deer. 01:44:00 Speaker 1: Yeah. They viewed as government ovaries. 01:44:02 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:44:02 Speaker 2: They eventually have to do it. Um, but it's, it's, it's hard to imagine because then you hear reports of deer getting out of these facilities that have tested positive for CWD. And so it's hard for me to imagine that it's never happened that one of those deer has never spread it. 01:44:15 Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, they don't even have to get out nose to nose through a fence is. 01:44:20 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:44:20 Speaker 3: It happens all the time. I'm sure. 01:44:22 Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't, I've never met anyone who's not a hunter. What's funny about this whole thing of it being like that if you are interested in wildlife diseases, you're an anti-hunter. What's funny is I've never met anyone who's interested in CWD who's not a hunter. 01:44:38 Speaker 3: Right. 01:44:40 Speaker 1: Make a list. Make a list of the least huntinest people you can think of in your social circle. This is a real question. Do me a favor. Of the people you text with, think of who is the least huntinest people you text with. And if you got people that hate huntin', put them on this list. Text them and go, hey man, what do you think about CWD? 01:45:06 Speaker 3: Is that that zombie disease I read about? 01:45:09 Speaker 1: Or it'll be what? So the idea of being interested in CWD is anti-hunting. Why aren't anti-hunters talking about CWD? Only people that talk about CWD are hunters. Whenever I talk about CWD, I'm talking about CWD and the people I know that are most interested in CWD have hunted the longest. Like the guys I know that are most like, oh shit, this is terrible. It's like, let me guess, you've hunted a long time. Dudes that started hunting last year don't care about CWD. It's like a, it's an old, it's a dude that loves deer thing. It's a symptom of loving deer and being a lifelong hunter is that you're worried about CWD. So to have it be that it's like an anti-hunting thing is so weird. But hunters care about CWD and guys that hunt wild deer blame people that have captive deer. People that have captive deer blame something different. Well, there's so many baked in self, there's so much baked in self-interest. Like I'm full of it. I have self-interest because I love deer and I like eating deer. So I'm worried about CWD. They have self-interest because they like selling hunts. 01:46:21 Speaker 2: Well, and, and, you know, to be fair, it's not just the breeders, right? Because what we were talking about earlier, the ban on buck scent, right? Because when CWD comes in, now we have a ban on, you know, baiting. And so there are these strategies people rely on to go hunting, just like average Joe, not a deer breeder. they like baiting deer because it makes it a little easier. 01:46:41 Speaker 3: There's also the economics of those products. 01:46:44 Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. Right. 01:46:45 Speaker 2: And so they're like, Hey, I, I don't want to be restricted in the way that I've hunted for a long time. And so, you know, there's an incentive. Yes. 01:46:53 Speaker 1: And that one, like, and that one hits more again, acknowledging the self-interest. Right. Right. My self-interest is, um, my primary protein source is deer meat. So I'm interested in the health of consuming deer meat. And, and I liked in my favorite thing to do is hunt deer. So I'm interested in that. Yeah. If you're a deer breeder, you're interested in selling semen and stud bucks and bottled deer urine and selling hunts and all that. But that's why earlier, remember when I got prickly about the buck urine thing? Yeah. I'm not a, I'm not a dough and heat urine guy, deer urine guy. I don't employ that tactic, but then I, just like a deer breeder, I look at that and I'm like, Show me where that's actually an issue. Knowing that since we don't know what's spreading it, when you go and say, eh, I'm going to change that. Yeah. You know, I'm going to make that illegal. Yeah. It feels, it winds up feeling arbitrary. So if I try to be as big of a person as I can, I could picture that I'm raising deer in a high fence operation. And then someone's like, hey, you're doing bad. That you would say, please show me. 01:48:12 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:48:12 Speaker 1: Show me where my deer that I have, show me where they're spreading CWD. Yeah. Don't come to me with a hypothetical. Yeah. 01:48:23 Speaker 2: Which is why agencies, I mean, it's in their best interest, I think, to think about the opinion of hunters and like how they're going to react to whatever policies you put in place. It's not the only thing, because sometimes you got to do stuff that people hate. Yeah. That's just what you got to do. But like, You got to be careful. 01:48:41 Speaker 1: And sometimes they take a ham-handed approach. It's just like, it's like COVID-19 all over again. Yeah. Where, you know, for one day I say, hey, you know, if Amazon brings a box to your house, leave it out in the rain for two weeks because you're going to get sick off it. Yeah. If your parents are dying in an old folks home, you can look at them through the window, but you can't go hug them goodbye. 01:48:59 Speaker 4: Right. 01:49:00 Speaker 1: And you do all this crazy shit. And then later we look at all the crazy stuff we've done and you say, man, that got out of control. You know? Yeah. Like whatever. vaccinating kids when kids don't get sick from it. All that stuff. In the end, you look and it's crazy. Someday we might understand CWD better and we might look and be like, a lot of that stuff was stupid. When Michigan was first trying to figure out CWD response, they came in and they banned putting out deer bait in all kinds of places. Then they later go, you can put out five gallons of bait. It's like, oh, so you've discovered that 10 gallons spread CWD, but a gallon or five gallons doesn't spread CWD. Is that where we're at? You have this data you can share with the hunters of Michigan and people get like, come on, dude. And the reason I bring up that COVID-19 thing is because there's a thing, and I harp on this often, there's a thing that happens when you're managing humans is you push humans too far on something. And then they go, never mind all of it. Which is where you landed. The CWD COVID-19 thing will always feel like a parallel to me. Because it's where you land when people say, some of this is so dumb. Out of an abundance of caution, I'm not open to anything you have to say anymore at all. Like, my friend had to watch his mom. Like, die in an old folks home through a glass window and couldn't go hug her goodbye. I now, I could be on the most crowded plane in the world. I'm not wearing my mask because I'm done because you've pushed me too far. And you run the risk with the CWD stuff. States run the risk of doing that. And I've seen it happen again and again, where people just get like, man, you guys are nuts. Nevermind. Yep. I'm done talking about it. And they've created a lot of that. Yep. But it still worries the shit out of me. You know? I don't know, man. It's the end of the show. I don't know. You got any more to add? Nope. 01:51:15 Speaker 4: I'm glad they're there trying and doing something about it than not. 01:51:19 Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I just can't. Yes. Me too. It worries me. It honestly worries me sick. It worries me, like CWD worries me sick. And for the two reasons I always bring up, the human health aspect, which tends to worry me less over time. And then the herd health issue worries me sick because I like deer. I like deer culture. I like deer hunting. I like the whole thing. I like that we're going taking our kids deer hunting tomorrow. Like, love it. So I worry about it. But at the same time, I worry about When people get, and it can happen that people get a little drunk on, I don't want to say drunk on authority. They just get a little bit chaotic. 01:52:14 Speaker 3: Sure. 01:52:15 Speaker 4: And we're already experiencing CWD fatigue. 01:52:18 Speaker 3: Right. 01:52:18 Speaker 4: I mean, geez, I was testing elk 20 years ago in elk camp. We had to test every single elk that we killed. 01:52:25 Speaker 1: In Colorado. Yeah. 01:52:26 Speaker 4: Um, you know, so it's like been a major part of my whole adult hunting career. You know, that was when I was, you know, in my early twenties. 01:52:36 Speaker 1: Did you know that this CWD fatigue, you go to Southwest Wisconsin. Do you know how long now CWD has been at the forefront of deer hunting conversations in Southwest? 01:52:46 Speaker 3: 30 years. 01:52:47 Speaker 1: A quarter. Yeah. A quarter of a century. And a lot of guys are like, we're still shooting big bucks. We're still eating deer burgers. 01:52:56 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:52:58 Speaker 1: I don't know. Worries me sick. All right, turn it all off, Phil. 01:53:03 Speaker 4: Thanks, Phil. 01:53:05 Speaker 1: We'll see you guys next week. See you next week, suckers.