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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cow’s Week in Review with Ryan cow Calaian. Here’s cap. A bald eagle in North Carolina dropped a cat through someone’s car windshield last week and what can only be described as a catastrophic commute. The incident occurred on US Route seventy four in Swain County, about sixty five miles southwest of Asheville. The driver was in a four door sedan making their way along the road when all of a sudden whim, the feline was catapulted into the passenger side windshield and left a sizeable, roughly cat shaped hole in the glass. You may not believe me, but I just had a bald eagle drop a cat through my windshield, the driver said on a nine to one to one call. The dispatcher calmly explained that he did believe the caller, but then laughed. According to Fox News, the cat, as you might imagine, was dead. In fact, according to a listener named Alan, it had been dead for quite a while. Alan lives in the area, and he says the feeline had been dead on the side of the road for a few days. Bald eagles usually don’t mess with live cats, but they’re happy to scavenge one if the opportunity presents itself. Alan said he watched the eagle pick up the cat and fly off with it, but it must have been too heavy a prize. I did not train this eagle, as one of you asked, but as you’ll hear later in this episode, I’m not the only one who’s concerned about invasive predators on the landscape. I can’t say I’ll be shedding many tears about this perjectile. This week we’ve got animal attacks, legislation, and feral cats. But first I’m going to tell you about my week. And my week was great. Absolutely put the screws down in big steep country, far from any public private boundaries on our big, beautiful public lands last week. The weather was terrible for both stalking and traditional muzzleoders and seeing, but god, it was a fantastic kel hunt. First, we hauled a can am down with us on this one. There are very few areas in this zone where you can take these exclusively, but it was just extremely nice to run this machine on the wet, sloppy forest Service roads rides way better than three quarter ton turns around faster and easier, and where we stayed we didn’t even have to turn the truck on for the full week, which was great because it turns out I had a catastrophic coolant leak, which was a real problem. It was luxury living on the commute point. Only deep wet snow came in every day and night, severely limited visibility. But like I told you last week, we found them. Actually finding elk was not hard at all. Finding mature bowls seemed to be a challenge, which is completely incongruent with my knowledge of this same area only seven years ago. As per always, there is never one reason in the conservation game for anything. But here is my theory on the decline of big bulls, and there’s anecdotal theories that this herd is just in decline anyway. Nutrition has changed somewhat, big burns have matured in this area. The feed is changed, likely some increase in invasive plant grass weed communities. Wolves have been a presence in roughly the same numbers during this whole time, but what has increased is trail building and human presence. The amount of recreational trails, primarily for mountain biking and primarily illegally built have increased human presence throughout the years in areas which were previously somewhat isolated until hunting season and off trail hikers show up. Wolves love using trails and roads to move fast and efficiently in the pursuit of game. A trail on which you can haul ass on your mountain bike allows that relatively short legged wolf to do the same. An elk, which uses its relatively long legs to blow across ground cover at a fast pace, can be cut off by predators who are using a trail system. Change in weather patterns are also a factor. I believe it stays nice longer, so more people are out in the woods and animals don’t get to relax. We have year round patterns of shed hunting, mushroom hunting, spring bear hiking, mountain biking, archery, rifle muzzleot or, snowmobiling, backcountry skiing, helicopter skiing, and then you throw in the predators like wolves, who do not take any of these seasons off. So when do the ungulates get a break? What’s the stress level and what are the results? Could it be a decline in what used to be like a pretty high prevalence of just big old bull elk or there could be nothing wrong and these are changes on the landscape with no impact. In any case, it was a phenomenal adventure on our public lands. We ended the trip with a pre dawn hike, starting at five thirty am up a wickedly steep slope. Bowls going to bed on a nearby ridge were spotted at about seven forty five am, and only miles and sun crusted hip deep snow lay between us. We came down that same steep hill in a misty rain at eight pm, thoroughly spent. It was a wonderful trip. Can’t wait to do it again. Want to ask for you, and this is a literal ask, no joke. What is the best way to keep your powder dry and one hundred percent humidity? Specifically, how do you keep moisture out of the pan and fire hole in a stock and shooting situation with a flint lock. I’ll take all the help I can get an expert. I am not and Thanksgiving Turkey Day as some call it, coming up here and by the time you hear this here podcast, so happy Thanksgiving everybody. Hopefully you and the fam treated each other well. Moving on to the attack desk, a seventy year old North Carolina woman was attacked earlier this month by a whitetail buck. The Charlotte Observer reports that the woman was trying to walk her dog around six thirty am when she saw the deer near her mailbox. She attempted to shoot it away, but it didn’t take kindly to the gesture. It charged her and knocked her over, pinned her to the ground with its antlers, leaving puncture wounds on her chest and legs. She was eventually able to get to her feet as she tried to defend herself by grabbing its antlers and moving back towards her house. It’s unclear how she managed to extricate herself from the situation, but she eventually made it to the hospital, where she was treated for non life threatening injuries. We hear at least one of these stories almost every November. Some poor individual gets too close to a running buck and that testosterone fueled animal decides to add humans to its daily list of adversaries. It’s also more likely than not that this particular deer had been fed. That’s what the neighborhood deer feeders usually forget your favorite buck might be docile as a lamb. In June one those hormones kick in watch out. A lack of fear around humans combined with rut brain is a bad combination for the elderly, as we saw in this story. A grizzly bear in British Columbia attacked a group of school children last week, injuring eleven and sending one adult and three kids to the hospital. The attack took place in a remote First Nations community called four Mile. The kids were out on a field trip when the attack occurred. The Globe and Mail reports that about twenty kids and teachers were eating lunch when a sow and two cubs emerged from the woods and attacked. It’s unclear whether something sparked the attack or it was unprovoked, but teachers had to deploy two cans of bear spray as well as bear bangers before the bruin finally decided to leave the area. Bear bangers like a firecracker. Wildlife officials have set camera traps and live traps, and they say they’ll continue looking into the capture or kill of the bears. Saliva was collected from the victim’s clothes, so they’ll know if they get the right animals. Meanwhile, officials in the area are encouraging people to stay indoors and not try to find the bears themselves. One of the schools hosted a basketball game, but officers with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were there to make sure everyone got home safely. That might sound a little overcautious, but the Globe and Mail reports that more bears are showing up in residential areas this year, and it’s not clear why. These aren’t your teddy bears. They’re wild animals. When resident told the Outlet, residents here, we have a lot of respect for them, but these bears have no fear. Now, BC hunters are probably shaking their heads at the behest of First Nations communities, including the one where this attack occurred. The province banned bear hunting in twenty seventeen. There’s nothing to say that hunting grizzlies would have prevented this attack. But if we’re talking about bears losing their fear of humans, we have to look at all the ways that bears are taught to avoid the strange hairless creatures living, working, and going to school. Down in the valleys. Hunting is one of them, and we’ll see if this incident prompts serious calls to once again actively manage the bear population. Moving on to the accident desk. The body of a missing hunter was found earlier this month after his friends and family refused to give up the search. Fifty one year old Devon Dobeck went deer hunting in Oregon’s Mount Hood National Forest on October thirty one. He texted a friend to say he’d bagged a buck and was heading back to his car a day early, but when he didn’t check back in, his family became concerned and a search and rescue operation was launched. The Klackamous County Sheriff’s Office and at search and rescue team found Devon’s car, but there wasn’t any sign of the hunter or his deer. They continued their search throughout the night, and rescuers reported hearing gunshots. They assumed this was Devon trying to signal for help, but they weren’t able to pinpoint where the shots were coming from. The search efforts continued through the week, but they still weren’t able to find the missing hunter. The Sheriff’s office suspended the search, but Devon’s family and friends didn’t give up. They launched to go fund me campaign and use the money to hire a helicopter and horse teams. They also worked with a nonprofit search and rescue organization and had the help of dozens of volunteers. One of those volunteers is the one who who eventually spotted Devon’s body at the base of a cliff face. The area was so difficult to reach that it took professional rope teams two days to get the body, but they eventually got Devon out and now his family will have the closure that many families of missing hunters don’t get. This story hits close to home, not just because Devon was a hunter. He was also a good buddy of Dave Smith, the founder of Dave Smith Decoy’s. I’m sure Devon’s family and friends are happy to know what happened to him, but this will be a tough road to walk. Condolences to Dave and Devon’s family and everyone who knew him, and good reminder that you’re not out until you’re out. I always get hacked on for getting home, taking care of all my stuff, and forgetting to text or call anybody who knew that I was out there doing my thing. It’s a good reminder to make those calls and text the priority and let folks sleep easy. Weird things happen out there. This week, New Zealand started a major new offensive in the global war between faralcats and native species. Feelines have been added to the list of target animals in the country’s anti invasives program known as Predator Free twenty fifty, along with rats, stoats, ferrets, and possums. Faralkatz will now face a coordinated government effort to completely wipe them out. Faral katz are serious politics in New Zealand. In twenty twenty three presidential debate, both major candidates pledged to eradicate them, but current President Christopher Luxen has been slow to add cats to Predator Free twenty fifty and was getting hammered across the political spectrum for it. The pressure became so intense that Conservation Minister Tama Putaka went on Radio New Zealand to announce the feral cat eradication program, calling katz quote unquote stone cold killers. To put this in context, this would be like both Trump and Harris pledging to exterminate faral CAATs during the twenty twenty four campaign. After the election, Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders would call Trump soft on cats. Next, EPA had Lee Zelden would go on Fresh Air Terry Gross and say that the US was going to new cats, back to the Stone Age. Imagine all that, and then imagine no real backlash. The political climate is so different down to New Zealand because cats have been responsible for driving fourteen species of native birds extinct, and they’ve contributed to the extinction of ten other bird species there. Bloodthirsty cats have also made headlines recently. In the town of Ohakuna, a single feral cat was documented killing one hundred and seven bats in one week, and seventeen skinks were found in the stomach of another cat in the southern region of Canterbury. These splashy incidents have dramatically changed public opinion in New Zealand. When Predator Free twenty fifty was established in twenty sixteen, cats were kept off the list by animal rights groups, and when the town of North Canterbury included cats to its list of target species in a youth hunting competition a few years ago, the backlash was so intense that the town reversed the decision that opposition just doesn’t exist anymore. In fact, the New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals hasn’t protested this recent move, instead joining other conservation groups to advocate for a law requiring the desexing of all pet cats in New Zealand. To be clear, this extermination campaign is only focused on wild roaming, non pet cats. Even when Conservation Minister Putaka was calling feral cats stone cold killers, he emphasized that he is a pet cat owner and lover. So what happens now? Large scale trapping operations will likely start next year, including training of homeowners. Many of New Zealand’s other invasives like rats and stoats, have been meaningfully reduced by traps in people’s backyards. Funding will also go to developing new cat control technology. For example, much of the toxic bait targeting invasives in New Zealand is dropped from helicopters, but the sausages that work best for poisoning cats tend to burst open when you drop them from high up, so I kid you not. Some funding may go toward perfecting bound non exploding poison sausages. Although I’m not counting out feral cats just yet. New Zealand does lead the world in successful pest eradication. There are many lessons that North America could take from this effort, but unfortunately it won’t help on some of our worst problems, like pythons in the Florida Everglades. Just zero point one percent of successful eradications in human history have been of reptile species. Even non exploding poisoned sausages can’t conquer the python. Time for a legislative roundup from across the country, and as usual, it’s a busy week. The FEDS have announced their plan to dramatically shrink the definition of Waters of the United States, or wotas under the Federal Clean Water Act. WODOS defines the areas that the EPA can protect from pollution and destruction, and in twenty twenty three, the Supreme Court ruled that only wetlands that had a quote unquote continuous surface connection to a relatively permanent waterway like a river or lake, can be protected. The Trump administration has now interpreted that decision to mean that wetlands would have to contain surface water during the quote unquote wet season every year, and a stream has to have a quote unquote bed and banks to qualify. Wetlands connected to intermittent streams which dry up during part of the year would therefore lose protections. Ephemeral streams which only flow after rainfall or snow melt would also be excluded. That might not sound like a big deal if you’re not familiar with water, but approximately fifty percent of the country’s drinking water passes through these kinds of intermint waterways. Trump’s new WODAS proposal would strip protections from about eighty five percent of known wetlands in the lower forty eight to get a sense of what this would look like in dryer states. In Arizona, just two point four percent of wetlands would be protected under this plan. The EPA will be soliciting public comment on this one when it gets further along, so we’ll give you a heads up when it’s time to weigh in. Make no mistake, kids, The revisions in twenty twenty three were a major setback for migratory bird species and all the other species that live in intermittent wetlands and benefit from them. These revisions will, without a doubt, have a major impact on the huntable populations of migratory birds get tuned in. Trump has also released a separate plan to roll back several protections under the Endangered Species Act. The first Trump administration initiated many of these same changes back in twenty nineteen, which were then reversed under Biden, so now those reversals are being reversed. One proposal would bring economic considerations into the decision making process on whether to list a new species under the ESA. That means that if the habitat of the Railroad Valley toad, a species that only exists in a tiny part of Nevada, happens to overlap with a big deposit of cobalt, we would have to weigh the value of that cobalt when we decide whether to list the toad. Until now, only scientific considerations have been included in listing decisions. Another proposal would limit projections into the future as a reason to list a species. So even though scientists predict that the Yarrow’s spiny lizard in Arizona’s Mule Mountains will completely lose its habitat due to ongoing climate change, those predictions will have less weight in a listing decision. A third would end the so called blanket rule, which automatically applies protections to all species designated as threatened. Each individual species would now have to get its own specific protection plan, which is a much higher hurdle. The same groups that sued to stop the changes back in twenty nineteen will be suing to stop these changes as well, so we’ll continue the eesayo yoing that we’ve all gotten used to. Bouncing over to Alaska, the trumpet Menministration is preparing to issue a rule that will allow hunting for bears overbait on National Preserve land in Alaska. Although baiting is legal on state land in Alaska, the Biden administration prohibited it on federal land, but this new plan will make the rigs closer to consistent across the board. It’s interesting to step back from the politics on this one and take a historical view. Many contemporary anti hunting orgs will still defend hunting by indigenous groups, especially those practices that started before European contact, but all indigenous bear hunters that we know of historically located bears in their dens and killed them there. Later, almost all bear hunting was done over hounds, so because bears are so reclusive, baiting can be considered the bear hunting method that exemplifies fairchase the best. This won’t convince the antis, but it’s worth remembering. Regardless. Ohio WANs you might get the chance to vote next year on a constitutional right to hunt and fish. Rep. Ron Ferguson introduced House Joint Resolution one, which calls for constitutional amendment declaring quote, the right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife is a valued part of Ohio’s heritage and shall be forever preserved for the public good. If approved by three fifths of both legislative chambers, it would be presented before the people of Ohio next November. If a majority of Buckeye State residents approve it, it will be adopted. Like most similar amendments, this one would also make hunting and fishing quote a preferred means of managing and controlling wildlife. This is designed to fend off recent efforts to marginalize hunters and ensure hunting and fishing remains the primary tool in the Ohio dn r’s arsenal. Of course, it still has a high bar to hurdle. Three fifths of the Ohio House and Senate need to approve it, So if you haven’t already, get on the horn with your state legislators and tell them to vote yes on House Joint Resolution one. Next up, the Wisconsin legislatures for the third time, considering a bill to establish a false sand hill crane hunt. Opponents worry that the crane population will collapse under the hunting pressure, but as it stands now, as many as thirteen hundred cranes are already killed every year and the population is stable and growing. Unfortunately, those thirteen hundred birds are all shot under depredation permits to protect farmer’s crops, and so they cannot be eaten and instead just rot in the field. Tim Andrik of Ducks Unlimited testify at the state hearing decrying the waste. He said of people opposing the sandhill crane hunt quote, I think they’re opposed primarily because they’ve not eaten one. Tim, I couldn’t agree. More Over, in Minnesota, the state will end shotgun only hunting zones, now allowing rifles in all designated areas. DNR Big Game Program Coordinator Paul Burr clarified that shotgun only rules historically weren’t created for public safety, but instead to limit effectiveness of means of take when deer populations were lower. But now those populations are much more We’re robust bird told the KTTC News Channel quote. They’re just a better tool for deer hunting, so opening it up to let everyone use a rifle will hopefully result in people being more successful. Finally, in Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers are the latest call for all users of state lands to pay for permits, not just hunters and anglers. A hiking permit would cost twenty for adults, ten for kids. Non motorized boats would have to pay a registration fee, and foragers would buy a yearly license for forty bucks. These fees are intended to patch a sixteen million dollar hole in the Wisconsin Dnire’s budget without hiking the cost of a hunting or fishing license. We’re going to see how the recreational user permit issue plays out across the country. Let me know what you think by writing in to ask cal at the meateater dot com or by dialing four h six two two zero six four four one and give me an earful thanks. Again, That’s all I got for you. If we’ll talk to you next week. Have a wonderful, safe, Thanksgiving it outside. H
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