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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col’s week in review with Ryan cow Calaian. Here’s cap last week down in Clearwater, Florida, four anglers set out for a day trip and a twenty five foot catamaran as part of a birthday celebration, only to capsize twenty six miles offshore and then cling to the whole of the upside down boat overnight. On board was ninety year old Clarence Woods and his son’s Dennis, who was turning seventy, along with family members Chris Harding Senior forty two Chris Harding Junior, eighteen. The group didn’t have any communications equipment on the boat, no VHF, no satellite transmitter, just cell phones that did not perform after they hit the salt water. Once the boat began to take on water, it flipped almost immediately. Woods later told reporters I didn’t have time to contact the coastguard. We were more concerned about getting a life jacket on the ninety year old and the eighteen year old. The one I was gonna wear got hung up and I just had to leave it. According to authorities, the boat’s flare gun and strobe light were also lost immediately, and I’m going to guess the group’s fishing tackle has not been seen either. A helicopter search that evening had no success, and over the long night, the four mariners struggled to stay afloat and keep up. Morale Woods as a pastor and said that the group prayed and sang the whole time. At seven fifteen am the following morning, the Coastguard spotted the boat and brought the group to safety. All four received medical treatment, but aside from dehydration and a few scrapes, they escaped unscathed. Now you might say that suffering a shipwreck and a night exposed to the elements while contemplating death is a good way to spoil a fishing party, But I can guarantee that the sight of that Coastguard helicopter coming over the horizon is the best birthday press Dennis Woods that will ever receive. On top of that, I’d love a good shipwrecked survival story when I’m ninety. Not a lot of surprises at that point in life. I love a young pe This week we’ve got stats, snort, report, crime, and so much more. But first I’m going to tell you about my week, and my week has been spent in South Dakota with friends Chef Jesse Griffiths, Eric Johansson, Tom Carpenter, Ryan laurim Er, Jared Worthington, and a hoopload of dogs, black labs, Epani Old Breton, French Britney’s wired hair Gryffon named Hank, and Snort, who was the best yellow lab in the group by far and away, no exception. This week was a hosted trip that we put together last year as a fundraiser for Pheasants Forever. As you know that’s a group I’m very supportive of. Eric’s family farm here in South Dakota is a great example of a working farm cattle operation, meaning it’s not just for show or recreation. It’s a replicable model for folks who make a living providing food for America. Not a vacation property set around wildlife. It’s a family agricultural business that uses all the tools in the toolkit to farm and graze what is profitable and leave the rest for wildlife. This is the prairie poth whole country full of intermittent wetlands that do not connect to flowing water or water that is permanently on the landscape, as in they are not protected, especially with the changes proposed changes to the waters of the United States that we covered last week. These areas go dry sometimes because that’s what wetlands do, sometimes for years, and then they’ll fill and stay for a year or three years or five seasons. It’s how the ecosystem works. The Johansson farm chooses to farm around that stuff, and the wildlife thrives unbelievable amounts of wild pheasants, no planet birds ever. It’s amazing to see their grazing ground. They support native prairie. The wildlife buffers around the intermittent wetlands are all native. It’s you know, big, cold, flat, white, wind blown country out here, but it’s amazingly beautiful and it’s so impressive to get in the thick stuff and take a walk and see how much wildlife’s in there. Just unreal. Anyway, big huge thanks to Jared and Ryan, who are the dudes who got together lifelong friends, adult life anyway, who got together and purchased this trip as a donation to Pheasants Forever. They were able to bring all their dogs out and it was super fun to see a couple different breeds that I haven’t been hunting with lately. Anyway, get out there and work, and this is an overwhelming place. There is scent everywhere when you’re walking, big stands of standing corn or sorgum, stuff that hasn’t been harvested yet, and a big congregator of wildlife. They’re in there trying to get the calories. On these super cold days. The birds are really visible and it is tough, tough hunting conditions for any dog to stay working the way they should provide the opportunities for us knuckleheads with the guns when they can just see those birds running in front of them. Too tantalizing. So onto the Snort report. As you recall snorts encounter with a rattlesnake more than four years ago as left her with a bald ear in this dry cold. It chaps just like your lips do. But imagine taking your chapped lips or face and smashing them all day into cattails and sorghum and coarse prairie grass of a brace of stuff, multi floor rows, stuff that got spines and stickers. That’s what I deal with on Snort’s ear, what she deals with. So I carry bag balm and liberally apply that to that little pink ear to stave off open sores. But in these single digit tempts we’re experiencing, it’s definitely pink and tender, and you feel for it. On top of that obstacle. She and I have been like a solo pheasant hunting team most of the year. We’re hunting big public spaces that get lots of pressure, and we’re running down individual rooster tracks and scent, and often this pursuit includes literal running to get our bird or ideally birds switching gears to a place like this Johansson’s there’s birds sent everywhere. It’s much more dense, and in the case of walking the corn and sorgum, like I said, the birds are way more visible. They’re running ahead of you with cotton tails and hens, long tailed roosters zipping back and forth. Perfect scenario and understandable for a dog to sprint ahead and try to chase those birds. After all, we’ve been chasing and sprinting after birds on the public land. But she did not. She kept it tight and worked real close and waited for the guns to go off and birds to fall somewhere above her. She worked her tail off in that super thick, snow covered, matted slew, cat old, tall grass, frag mighty stuff. She got into the pheasant tunnels rooted them out. Five is a magical time for most bird dogs. It is for Snort. I’m just like blessed to be around her. I knew this hunt was going to be tough on her and I would have to correct her with a couple of shocks from the collar. I was prepared to do that, but I never had to. I hardly whistled at her in two days. Leaves me feeling like I just don’t deserve a dog like this. She focuses on the hunting. I focus on the shooting. In the last two days she flushed more birds than we have all season combined. It was just fantastic. The only time I really had to whistle at her bust out the coach’s whistle is when we were done and I turned for the county road and she went followed me. She kept hunting, and it was tough. Man drifted snow, frozen hands, faces frozen, that pink ear. It’s tough. But what you wish all hunts were. You knew you were gonna get the opportunities if you just kept marching, it was great. Snort comes from Riverstone Kennels. Eric here currently has two of her relatives working on the farm, and it’s got me thinking it’s about time I got her some backup. I know they just don’t make dogs like her, but I’m sure they got a good substitute. So that’s gonna be coming down the pipe this spring. I hope Chef Jesse, my good buddy Jesse Griffiths have died. Doy Fame and the Hog Book and the Pheasant Book, which are must haves if you’re buying something for Christmas. Kept us very warm this week with braised pheasant legs for Fuugh and Catchia Tory, and then ample amounts of pheasant breast thrown in at the last minute, savory killer hot meals. At the end of cold days, watching great dogs and putting birds in the bag. We drank some of that Velvet Buck wine that you may have heard of on Dan Flores’s podcast. That is a great cold weather warm you up wine, and a portion of the proceeds goes to backcountry hunters and anglers, so keep that in mind where you can find it. It’s called velvet buck and it goes great with game. Also, if you’re looking for something else to you know, stuff a stocking, don’t forget that fed up old trucks calendar. Portion of that goes to backcountry hunters and anglers too. You can find that stuff on themeaeater dot com. And I think we’ll be auctioning off this hunt again in the future. We got to talk to Eric about that, but Jesse’s in. We’ve been scheming on ways to make it even more special and coming out and getting this agricultural perspective is invaluable. Seeing this many wild birds is invaluable. Seeing the dog work is invaluable. So it’s education and food and fun and good camaraderie. And it’s just hard to put a price tag on that really is. I’ll keep posted on that. It’s a heck of an experience. Moving on to the applied statistics desk. Down in Florida, the State Fish and Wildlife Commission has run its bear hunt lottery and awarded the one hundred and seventy two permits for its first bear season in a decade, which starts December six. However, according to reporting by Orlando News six, as many as forty four of those permits were awarded to anti hunters who plan to sit out the hunt, But Chuck O’Neill, president of Speak Up for Wildlife, says that if anything, that estimate might be low. He said, quote, by the time it’s all over with, we’ve got at least fifty two of the one hundred and seventy two tags, which will reduce the number of bears killed down to about one hundred and twenty or less. O’Neill has that math right, and he’s slung in some other numbers. He himself bought two hundred and fifty one entries in the bear hunt lottery at five bucks a pop. Overall, there were one hundred and sixty three, four hundred and fifty nine applications, and although we don’t know how many separate individuals bought all those chances or what their intentions were were, they brought in eight hundred and seventeen two hundred ninety five dollars for conservation. A last dish lawsuit to stop the hunt has also failed. So by the time you are hearing this, Florida’s bear hunt will be underway. We’ll see if the hunt meets management expectations. This time around. Oh side note, forgot to tell you we knocked down thirty one birds in two days, did not lose a single bird. Lots of dog power out there, gang. It was magical hate losing Pheasants hate losing anything. For whatever reason, birds are like very maddening. I feel like none of them should get away with the little snort nose on their behind. Anyway, if I could have a magic wand everyone, and I mean everyone would learn about hunting and conservation and wildlife management and ecosystem services and diversity, and they don’t have to love a bear hunt, but they’re going to understand it and not be against it. Short of that, Florida Fish and Wildlife can can estimate the number of tags bought by non participants or anti hunters and expand the number of total tags to accommodate that kind of loss. There Therefore, we could have a bidding war on our hands where O’Neal and activists like him pay for more and more of the fwc’s budget, and the same amount of hunters get to go out and hunt. What O’Neill and the activists don’t understand is that what hunters are doing is they are paying for an opportunity, not a bear. Not every hunt represents a dead animal. I can promise you that. Now where does the cash from hunts like this go? Florida Fish and Wildlife this year announced a major revegetation project along the kiss Me Channel Lake’s system, with an initial investment of two point three million dollars. So Chuck and all the other members of Speak Up for Wildlife thank you for taking part in that. Moving on to the bear desk. In other bear news, four grizzlies captured in response to last week’s attack on a Canadian school group are being relocated out of the area after DNA tests revealed that none of the trapped bears were responsible for the attacks. As we covered last week, a sal grizzly and two cubs came out of the woods in Bellicula, British Columbia on November twentieth and attacked a group of school children injuring eleven and sending one adult and three kids to the hospital. Saliva samples were collected from the clothes of the victims, and after several traps and cameras were deployed in the area, four adult bears were caught. However, the DNA of the trapped bears did not match the saliva on file. The BC Conservation Officers Service announced that instead of releasing these bears back into Bellicula, they will be moved elsewhere within their home range. Although relocations are difficult and dangerous, bears have historically done very well when moved from place to place, so these bruins are expected to do just fine. The Conservation Officer Service decided to move the bears because this area of New Halk First Nation’s territory has seen a rapid increase in bear human overlap in the last several years, with about six bears currently per one hundred square miles. That might not sound like a lot, and wouldn’t be very many black bears, who were much less aggressive than grizzlies, But if you have that many brown bears who are starting to hibernate later due to rising seasonal temperatures and are getting more used to human food, you start to get a lot more conflict like in this recent incident. Officials will continue to use thermal vision drones and bear traps to try to catch the bears responsible for the attack. We’ll keep you up to date with any further developments there over to Pennsylvania for some brighter news on the bruin beat. Pennsylvania hunter Nate Miller had the outing of a lifetime last week when he killed the black bear with a live weight of seven hundred and seventeen pounds. Miller had set up a blind at five thirty am, but after getting cold and deciding to move around to warm up, he spotted a bear less than eighty yards away. Three quick shots, the beast was on the ground, and Miller was understandably overcome. He told Channel eleven News quote, I’m shaking, I mean just I couldn’t even talk right, couldn’t even stand up straight. It was an emotional dump to give you a sense of how big this bear was. Even with the help of three friends in a game sled, it took almost five hours to move the eight hundred yards, and park rangers accomplished the last one hundred yards with an ATV. But Miller himself provides the most vivid example. He said, quote, in the process of putting the ear tag in, I could not pick the head up. At the waystation, the measurements came in not just seven hundred and seventeen pounds, but also seven feet five inches tall. Although official results will take a few days to come back, this is expected to be the biggest bear ever taken in Butler County, which is almost on the Ohio border, and likely to be in the top ten state wide. Congrat toinate and everyone who’s had success in the state’s bear hunt. Historically, PA has had one of the most successful bear restoration programs in the country. I say restoration instead of reintroduction because Ursus americanus was never fully extirpated from Pennsylvania, even though it reached dangerously low levels by the turn of the twentieth century. Keystone State carried out some of the earliest bear repopulation efforts, moving almost fifty bears in nineteen twenty two and nineteen twenty three from Potter County in the north central part of the state to five other locations. Again, from nineteen seventy nine to eighty four, seventy two bears removed from the northeast to the southwestern regions, and thirteen of those bears were documented producing at least twenty successful litters. And although bears had been slowly recovering through mid century, Pennsylvania Game Commission closed the annual bear hunt in both nineteen seventy seven and nineteen seventy eight, leading to a hockey stick shaped increase in the number of bears through to the present day. I’m going into all this history because it’s interesting and because in an ideal world it might reach the ears of bear hunt protest like old Chuck O’Neill back there in Florida. It was hunters who paid for those translocations, hunters who sponsored those population studies, hunters who worked with private landowners to conserve bear habitat, and hunters who had the restraint to put down their guns for a couple of years to give breeding animals a chance to get a foothold. Without hunters, althose forested acres in PA probably would have been logged for several more crucial years, possibly delaying or even preventing the resurgence of bears there. Instead, that seven hundred and seventeen pound behemoth the Nate Miller killed spent his life enjoying acorns and wasp larva, likely mating with a few appealing females and mixing it up with a couple other male bears before having a tough final few seconds. That life just couldn’t have happened without hunters. I have to believe that if Old Chuck knew this, he’d be a little bit more open to what we do and he can still go on love and bears, I know I do. One last note for Pennsylvania. The first Sunday Hunts in three hundred and forty three years took place there over the past two weekends, with an estimated five hundred thousand hunters taking part each day. All you working stiffs and soccer game afflicted parents out there, I hope you enjoyed your time in the woods. Big huge thanks or congratulations rather to all of you who lobbied your butts off to make that happen special shout out to Pennsylvania back country hunters and anglers. You guys pushed Big Rock uphill for a lot of years. You should feel very very good about yourselves. Moving on to the crime desk. You may remember all the way back in March, I told you about a hunter and would be social media influencer who caused akre fluffle in Australia for picking up a baby wombat and posting the video online. While she’s back in the news and her latest allegation landed her briefly in jail. Samantha Strabel, who goes by Sam Jones online, has been charged with lying about her residency to obtain a hunting license in Wyoming, which is a common thing. She’s facing eight misdemeanor charges, including six counts of false swearing and one count each of taking wildlife without a license, according to an article by Eli Fournier over at the Mediator dot com. You can check out Eli’s article for the full story, but basically, Game Wardens got an anonymous tip that ol’ Sam hadn’t lived in Wyoming for the last two years, which would disqualify her from purchasing resident hunting licenses. Wardens called the address she listed as a residence, but the man who answered the phone said Samantha had moved to Australia in twenty twenty three. She returned in twenty twenty four and killed an elk and an antelope on a resident tag. Earlier this year, she killed a mountain lion on a resident tag, even though she hadn’t lived in the state long enough to qualify for residency. When confronted by Game Wardens, she claimed to have lived in Wyoming one hundred and eighty days which is the cutoff for losing your residency in the state. Problem was cell phone records and other evidence proved she’d only been in Wyoming for seven days in twenty twenty five and twenty nine days in twenty twenty four. Strabel was booked into the Sublet County Jail on November twenty one and released on her own recognaissance that same day. If convicted, she faces up to a year in jail and twenty six thousand dollars in fines. But I think it’s safe to say that the Wyoming wombat woman’s career as a hunting influencer is going to take a hit. Officials with the Colorado Parks and Wildlife were asking for the public’s help finding the person who illegally killed the female mountain lion. The lion had been shot through the chest and then dragged into some bushes near the group campsites at Gunnison City Mountain Park in Taylor Canyon, north of Gunnison. The cat appears to have been killed last month, just three days before the legal hunting season began. Anyone with information about the killing of the lion is asked to contact CPW District Wildlife Manager Cody Pryor nine to seven zero six four to one seven zero seven to five or Cody dot Pryor. That’s prior at State dot CO dot US Gunnison City Mountain Park last month. If you’re around the group campsites and he got some info, hit up CPW. Killing the cat is bad out of season, not eating the meat even worse. Suns and guns. A Washington State man escaped jail time for killing five cow elk and what wildlife officials described as a quote killing spree. In twenty twenty three, an employee at a timber company reported finding five cow elk on a hillside south of Cosmopolis. All the elk had been shot with a high powered rifle and no meat had been harvested from any of them. Game wardens weren’t able to identify a suspect until ten months later, when wardens ran into forty five year old Richard Lauren Pratt at the crime scene. He’d broken into the property by cutting open a gate, and wardens found him in possession of two firearms, but since Pratt was a convicted felon, they were able to confiscate both of his rifles and match one of those rifles to the poaching case from earlier that year. They were happy to find the right poacher, but they weren’t happy with the conclusion of the case. The Washington Department of Fiching Wildlife put out a press release stating that they’d worked out a plea agreement with the Grays Harbor prosecutor that included prison time, but when it came time for sentencing, the judge handed Pratt something called a mental health sentencing alternative. This slapped him with a ten thousand dollars fine and a ten year suspension of his hunting privileges, but put him in quote community custody for thirty six months. This will likely include some kind of mandatory mental health treatment and other probationary requirements, but it doesn’t include prison time. WDFW police Captain Dan Chadwick criticized the judge by saying he is quote disappointed that Pratt’s sentence doesn’t include time in the slammer, which is an understandable reaction. The press release points out that Pratt could face up to one hundred and sixteen months in prison if he violates the conditions of this sentence. Moving on to the mailbag, a quick reminder before we dive into the mailbag this week. Along with sending an email to askcl you can also call four h six two two zero six four four one and leave me a voicemail. I listen to every message, and you might just hear the sonorous sound of your voice on an upcoming episode. Listener Keith Kempinich wrote in this week with a quick clarification about a segment I did last week on Minnesota’s shotgun only hunting zones. He pointed out that while the state Department of Natural Resources has eliminated shotgun only zones, individual counties can still pass ordinances that ban the use of center fire rifles. That sounds great from a local control perspective, but there’s a problem, he said in his email quote. County lines do not line up with current Deer permit areas, which will likely result in a bizarre patchwork of areas in which rifles are legal and not. Presently, the rifle and shotgun zones do line up with DPA boundaries and are demarketed by some major highways. Going forward, you might have DPAs which are established for management purposes in which both weapons are allowed. Depending on which county you’re in. It’s going to be a mess. That does sound like a mess. Hopefully counties will adhere to the statewide rules and not go off and do their own thing. As we covered last week, shotgun only zones aren’t about public safety. They’re about deer management, which should be controlled by DNR biologists. Speaking of controversial legislation, listener Charlie McDonald wrote in with a bad bill from his home state of Michigan, House Bill four eight five to one would limit the amount of land owned by the state to no more than fifty percent of the land in any given county, township, city, village, or school district. This means that if there is a county where the state owns more than fifty percent of the land as a wildlife management area, the land that exceeds fifty percent would be considered surplus and I assume sold off. Charlie doesn’t think this is a good idea, he said in his email quote, HB four eight five to one is yet another attack on public lands. Part of the flimsy ration is that the DNR will manage public lands more effectively if the agency has less land to manage. I, for one, think the DNR is doing a fantastic job providing quality access to state owned and managed lands, and I have never once wished for less state land to hunt and fish on. I’m right there with you, Chuck. With the current attacks on federal public land, those state parcels are more important than ever. Michiganders should contact their state reps and tell them to vote no on House Bill four eight five to one. Last one for you. We cover urban deer hunting quite a bit on this program, but mostly from the management and policy perspective, But listener Chris Coffield wrote in with a great on the ground report from his home state of New Jersey. He didn’t grow up hunting, but when he and his wife bought a house that bordered a deer management zone, he applied for the local management program in Somerset County. He highly recommends it, and he sent me a list of pros and cons for anyone who might be interested in joining their own local programs. That hunting in an urban setting has its downsides. It’s not exactly a serene experience with kids playing nearby, neighbors using their leaf blowers, and cars driving past, he said. He tries to introduce himself to the people who have homes nearby, but no one likes seeing dead deer in their yard. To help the deer die as quick as possible, he uses a heavy fixed blade broadhead and only takes broadside shots. He also pointed out that while you are allowed to take a buck in his county, wildlife officials encourage hunters to take dose. If you’re someone who’s only trying to kill big bucks, an urban deer hunting program probably is not for you, but the pros outweigh of the cons. According to Chris, it’s easy to get access to these areas and the deer face very little pressure. That means you’ll have tons of opportunities for a shot, especially in the early season. The shots are usually close given the heavy tree cover, and tags are plentiful. In fact, in his area, you risk losing your place if you aren’t able to harvest at least too deer. Plus, since it’s the holiday seas in and we’re looking for ways to give back, Chris pointed out that the fee you pay in order to participate in the program is used to pay butchers who work for Hunters for the Hungry. This is an organization that takes donated deer and turns them into venison for homeless shelters. It’s a win win all around. Thanks a ton for that email, Chris. It’s a great reminder that even if you live in an urban or suburban area, you don’t have to travel very far to get great hunting opportunities. Check out your local deer management program and get to fill in that freezer, even if it’s not yours. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening, and remember to write in ask c a l let’s an askal at the meteater dot com and let me know what’s going on in your neck of the woods. You know we appreciate thanks again. Talk to you soon.
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