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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana, this is Cal’s Week in Review with Ryan Cal Callahan, presented by First Light. Here’s Cal. The spookiest time of year is now upon us when kids wear superhero costumes with six-pack abs and The Nightmare Before Christmas starts playing on repeat. One group celebrating Halloween for the first time this year are the Black Bears of Squamish, B.C., just north of Vancouver, where homeowner Stephen Fryer has set up a motion-activated ghoul on top of his garbage cans. Thanks to listener Jim Lane for sending this one in. Before Fryer put the decoration out, the Bears had chewed the handles off his garbage cans, ripped the straps attaching the cans to his house out of the wall, and torn holes through the lids. So instead of continuing to play defense, Fryer decided to go on the big O. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me! Now, when any two- or four-legged trespasser comes close to Friar’s trash area, a life-size green zombie rises up from the top of the garbage cans, waves its arms, flashes a bright light, and lets out a high-pitched mechanical scream. Friar’s home security camera has demonstrated the system’s effectiveness on several bears who flinch and move away once the decoration goes into action. One male bear, who was so startled that he lost control of his body, Fryer says it absolutely scared the bear to the point that it peed itself. There’s nothing better than somebody using a smart DIY fix for a tricky problem, but there’s lots of room for improvement. How about a little thriller in there? This week, we’ve got more bears, catfish, Pleistocene repeats, and so much more, but first I’m going to tell you about my week, and my week has been great. I’m currently listening to Idaho elk bugle outside my window while two yellow Labradors return to sleep after an early breakfast. I’m on the road again for BHA, heading to New York City, October 14, and we got a whole lineup of fun stuff that we’re doing in the heart of the cold, cold city. We got a New York City storytelling night at the Filson store Wednesday, October 14, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. That’s at 876 Broadway, New York, New York. And the 16th, we’ll be doing like a pint night style event at the Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 5. We’re going to do some angling and BSing with folks. Should be a ton of fun. And then we’ll have like a little happy hour near there afterwards. The 15th, we have an event at an old fishing related establishment that does not allow advertising. So if you want to be a part of that or any of these things, and you should, if you’re in there, you need a little outdoors camaraderie, please email brianbird at backcountryhunters.org. That’s B-I-R-D at backcountryhunters.org for more info about any and all. We’d love to see you come out where I can explain in person why I am not hunting in the middle of one of the greatest months on the calendar. The week after, I will be. I’m going to put the whole fam, which now is a total of three dogs, one lady, one baby, and myself, in the $ 7 a gallon diesel machine to hunt birds and antelope for a week, which, my friends, is sorely needed. I have not been able to really dig in and get nature under my fingernails the way I’d prefer as of yet, but we will get there. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. It appears to have been a truly epic archery elk season out there on our shared public lands. I have not seen official harvest reports yet, but anecdotally, I have seen lots of success. Bulls in the backs of trucks, big bull pictures flying around. And to that point, a bull just screamed outside my window to emphasize the fact that many still remain. We’re moving on to the news. Over in Connecticut, 39-year-old Michael Garrow has been arrested for the illegal killing of a black bear that had been eating his chickens. Garrow called the State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which if you know that acronym, it’s DEEP, which I enjoy, and turned himself in for the crime, saying he also suspected the bear had been preying on his goats. Although the bear depredation permits are available in Connecticut, they’re typically only issued once non-lethal options like electrical fences have been shown to be ineffective. Garrow did not have a depredation permit and also had not installed any other bear deterrent method. He will appear in court on October 9. A bill creating a black bear season in Connecticut is introduced every year, and every year it’s defeated, but with the total bear population in the state now exceeding 1,200, let’s hope that changes before too long. Jumping over to Georgia, staying at the crime desk. Distressing news out of Georgia this week, where the DNR is investigating the hunting-related death of a 23-year-old man in Wheeler County. After receiving a call at around 3.30 a.m. on September 26, DNR law enforcement investigated the shooting, later issuing a statement that the 23-year-old was killed as a result of quote-unquote illegal hunting activity involving five people. They later arrested 57-year-old Howard Benji Hartley, charging him with felony involuntary manslaughter, hunting at night, hunting from a motor vehicle, and hunting from a public road. The investigation is ongoing. Also in Georgia earlier in the month, 26-year-old Joseph Ethan Reeves allegedly shot four other hunters at Berry College Wildlife Management Area in Floyd County. Thankfully, this incident was much less serious and Reeves is being charged with misdemeanor misuse of a firearm. I’m guessing this one’s shotgun related. Don’t know the details on this yet. You know, this ties into something I’ve been having a lot of conversations about and it’s individuals who have not gone through the proper training and mentorship that end up representing the whole, whether it be OHB writers or hunters. There’s a lot of crossover here. One of the basic tenets, right, of hunting is identify your target and beyond. And the mentorship part really comes in here as, so what if something gets away? friends and neighbors. I’ve had so many more hunting trips that have resulted in no animals coming home. And I love hunting. It’s where I want to be right now. Trust me. Hunting is a very safe activity. It is a responsibility sport for sure. So repeat the basics often and as needed and necessary. We’re about to roll out the door here to do some bird hunting for the morning while it’s nice and cool. The rattlesnakes are still in bed. And everybody here is a hunter and an old one at that. Most of us in our 40s, plenty of seasons under our belt, and we’ll darn sure be doing a safety talk before we start walking with shotguns. And we’ll be encouraging that communication throughout. Moving on. Here at the Week in Review, we’re fascinated with amazing animals of every size, including the very, very small. This week, scientists in Lassen Volcanic National Park in northeastern California published a study documenting a previously unknown amoeba they discovered in the park’s super hot springs. Prior to this discovery, scientists thought that eukaryotes, that is, complex cellular organisms with a nucleus and a cell wall, had a temperature ceiling of about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. But this new little guy, Incendiamoeba cascadensis, can get all the way up to 147 degrees, hot enough to give you third-degree burns on your skin in a matter of seconds. The organism showed a remarkable ability to regulate its cell wall structure and repair its DNA in response to high temperatures. Although there are simple single-cell organisms that can live in temperatures up to 252 degrees, well above the boiling point, Incendia amoeba cascadensis has a much more complex, vulnerable biological structure but can still take the heat. The place the amoeba was found is incredible and well worth a visit. Lassen Volcanic National Park was originally created by Teddy Roosevelt all the way back in 1907 and is one of the only places in the world where you can find all four geological types of volcano. Plug Dome, Shield, Cinder Cone, and Stratovolcano. Hmm. Stratovolcano. Could have been a New Age kid name. Yeah. Anyway. Super cool story coming out of Wyoming, the Cowboy State, where longtime hunter Deb Tonsiger-Burke recently shot a pronghorn antelope with some very unusual headgear. Turns out this buck did not shed last year’s horn sheaths, but instead grew a second set in one continuous length, as in last year’s set is riding on top of this year’s set, which created kind of a curling super horn on one side of the critter’s head. Pronghorn. Amazing critters have some very interesting anatomy. Like antlered game, such as deer and elk, pronghorn shed their horns and regrow them every year. And it is a horn, not an antler. Horned animals, like in the case of this super curling horn for the antelope, they do kind of stack their horn on top of horn, creating those annuli rings that you can count. Deb’s husband, Jason Burke, spotted the buck this summer and he told Cowboy State Daily, quote, I showed my wife pictures of it in the field and she was definitely jazzed about it. She said, that’s the buck I want to hunt this year. The husband and wife team followed the buck to an alfalfa field and Burke said the hardest part was trying to sort through a herd of 200 antelope, get a shot at that particular one. Congrats to Deb. One of my favorite parts about antelope is, you know, when all things come together, you can be in an instance where you sort through 200 animals and you can fail and relocate and find different ones. And that’s part of the beauty of hunting that critter when they’re in abundance is you can kind of have, even if you have a day, you can do some trophy hunting, right? Be very selective. Pass things up. Whatever you take home, And we’re like very happy to have at least a doe tag in our pocket this year. You can use darn near all of that critter. The bone stock is amazing. They’re really, really light bodied. So you can butcher them in the field almost completely if you brought the gear with you. Very approachable critter and so tasty. Heading over the Chesapeake Bay, the USDA has announced a $ 6 million grant program for commercial fishing and processing operations in the area to expand their take of invasive blue catfish. Blue catfish have become a major problem in the Chesapeake Bay area. These fish have huge appetites and no natural predators. Introduced in the 70s, they have spread through the upper bay and gotten a foothold in every major tidal river in Maryland. A single catfish can weigh up to 100 pounds, and they build that bulk by eating everything in sight, including striped bass, blue crabs, menhaden, shad, herring, mussels, white perch, white clams, razor clams, almost anything with calories. Those smaller species support all the other species that commercial and recreational fishermen depend on, so getting catfish under control is absolutely critical for the future of the fishery. Jim Kaufman of TRCP recently went out with local fisherman Jay Fleming for a day of running just four trot lines along a single coastline in the upper bay. In a few short hours, they pulled in a whopping 800 pounds of catfish. In 2025, 2.5 million total pounds of catfish were harvested in Maryland waters, and that number is only climbing. Despite the fact that catfish look like something you’d put on your garbage cans to scare away bears at Halloween, they taste absolutely delicious. and increasing commercial take is a key way to keep their numbers in check. The grant recently announced by the USDA is one of many recent initiatives to give a leg up to the catfish fishing industry. This spring, U.S. Congress passed the Mitigation Act and Waterman Support Act. Fun acronym there. It’s MAWS, Mitigation Act and Waterman Support Act. which would streamline USDA inspection of catfish for human consumption and would also facilitate agreements with pet food and animal feed companies to create demand. This USDA grant would take things even further, awarding amounts between $ 50, 000 and $ 2 million to help businesses build and modernize processing facilities, bring new technology on board, and train workers. The better these businesses get, the more fish they can pull out of the ecosystem. If any of you out there in the Chesapeake Bay want to apply for this USDA grant, We have a link in the show notes for you. And if you’re a recreational angler out there, do yourself a favor, run a trot line, sharpen your fillet knife, and invite your friends over for a catfish feast. Bow hunter Ron Nizoliuk arrowed a bull elk in September of 25. Afterward, he and his hunting buddy decided to leave the elk in the field overnight instead of risking field dressing and packing out the meat at night in grizzly country. The next morning, They returned to find that a bear had partially eaten the carcass and left a big fresh crap in the area. That’s scat for you folks who may find the word crap offensive. They decided to leave it for health and safety reasons, both from the bear returning and from thinking that the meat was tainted. Game wardens, however, accused Nizoliuk of leaving the animal to waste instead of packing it out as he was legally obligated to. Nizoliuk faced misdemeanor offenses for this, which a jury ultimately decided not to convict him on. Following the whole ordeal, Nozoliuk is hoping that Wyoming Game and Fish will clarify their regulations to allow for unfortunate situations like this one. This is a game we play. Nozoliuk and his buddy were trying to balance personal safety with getting meat out of the field. Kubi Brown just wrote a fantastic piece for the Meat Eater site on tips for keeping your game meat safe overnight in these scenarios. To go back to an earlier story here, we have a choice. If you’re in heavy grizz scenarios, I know a lot of hunters who just don’t kill something in the evening. They make the choice to be out in the field. They’re keeping tabs on their elk and they’re making that play in the morning. And then they have a cutoff time where they’re just not letting an arrow fly. The other thing that you would do and what I do is you work all night long until all that meat is out of there. And the human presence and the commotion and the talking amongst your crew is your bare deterrent. And most of the time it works. And it’s just the game we play. You are obligated to get that meat out of the field. And there’s a lot of elk out there. I don’t know that these folks should go to court for the decision that they made. But if they make it again next year and the same thing happens, which would be a different story for me. Give me your two cents on this one. 406-220-6441. 406-220-6441. Moving over to the big fish desk. Three state records were toppled in Idaho in August, and you might not have heard of any of these species. August 1, Neil Benoit caught a 6.5-inch redside shiner on the Salmon River. His catch just barely eclipsed the catch and release record. A 6-incher pulled out of the Boise River in 2023. Redside shiners are native minnows in the region. The photo of the angler holding the mini trophy is really quite comical. I recommend checking it out on the Idaho Fish and Game website. On August 8, Joe Levin caught a 26-inch Utah sucker on the south fork of the snake, besting a 25-incher caught on the same river back in 2021. Utah suckers are one of several native sucker species in the Gem State, and while they’re not commonly caught, they play an important ecological role in cleaning habitat, processing nutrients, and of course, getting eaten by other fish and birds. Finally, on August 11, Riley Dragon of Rathdrum, and these are all real names, caught a 20.5-inch tench from Lake Coeur d’Alene, topping a 19-incher from the same lake in 2020. If you’ve never heard of a tench, join the club. A tench is actually native to Europe and Western Asia and is considered a cousin of the common carp. They survive in water with poor oxygen levels, and this one really is quite the unusual-looking specimen, which you can also see over on the Idaho Fish and Game website. We’re going to end on some really good news today. Pine Log Wildlife Management Area is being re-established. The 14,640-acre Georgia property had been open to the public from 1977 until 2023 and was popular for hunting, fishing, camping, and otherwise recreating on. But as we talked about in episodes 162 and 216, negotiations between the Georgia DNR and new private landowners stalled in 2023 and the property was closed to the public. But officials didn’t quit. Over the last four years, we never lost sight of the goal to acquire Pine Log and permanently secure it for public recreation and wildlife conservation. said DNR Commissioner Walter Rabin. They reached an agreement to reopen the property to the public after pooling $ 15 million from the state with matching funds from Bartow and Cherokee governments to acquire the property outright. Going forward, it will be known as the Neal Family Pine Log Wildlife Management Area and will be open to the public in time for spring turkey hunting in 2027. Way to get it done, Georgia. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write in to A-S-K-C-A-L. That’s AskHowAtTheMeatEater.com. Let me know what’s going on in your neck of the woods. You know, we appreciate it. And don’t forget, if you’re going to be in New York City and want to come down, do some BS-ing about conservation, hunting, and angling at the Filson Store out there on the Brooklyn Pier or at an undisclosed location that we cannot advertise. 14, 15, 16 of October, email bird, B-I-R-D, at backcountryhunters.org. Thanks again. I’ll talk to you next week.
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