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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col’s Week in Review with Ryan col Kalahan. Here’s Cal. Last week we brought you news of a coyote who swam to and from the Rock. Ah, that was a bad Sean Connery, let me give it to you this way, your best Losa’s only whine about doing that best The Rock is that better? It’s got to be better. Couldn’t finish that quote. Go watch The Rock, which if you listened last week you already have. It’s a wonderfully bad movie, but fantastic Nick Cage and Sean Connery great one liners. Kind of like that like overlay of like some history in there. It’s fun. Anyway. This week we’re covering a canid who crossed a much, much bigger body water, the Atlantic Ocean. Earlier this year, a red fox stowed away on a car carrier ship leaving from Southampton, England, arriving in the Port of New York and New Jersey in February. After being discovered, the fox was quarantined at the Bronx Zoo. It’s a good thing he didn’t slip off the boat undetected. Vet’s discovered that the fox was carrying a parasite called French heartworm, which is just regular old heartworm with a fancy accent and a cigarette joking aside, French heartworm is rare in the US and can be fatal to canids. So it’s great news that this fox was treated without spreading the parasite. I can’t imagine it just got treated anyway. Last week the Bronx Zoo declared the fox was disease free. Scientists there also named the fox Basil, which is a good name, even if I don’t love the practice of giving names to wild animals, although now I guess Basil isn’t a wild animal. The Bronx Zoo doesn’t have a red fox, and so this one might end up staying there, or he may be transferred to a different animal sanctuary. We’ve all heard stories of crafty foxes escaping red coated hunters on horseback by crossing back over their tracks or traveling only at night but to stow away on a cargo ship headed for the USVA. That’s taking the term sly fox to a whole different level. This week land access legislation and he shot my paw. But first I want to tell you about my week, and my week has been a little more wild than usual. The pregnant lady whom I was just told by some listeners that I referred to my partner Sam in many ways other than fat, But those terms that I use meant fat right here on this here podcast, Well, Sam is not pregnant anymore. The kid is here, baby Boy Callahan, the sixth generation of Callahan’s here in the Treasure State, was born on the twenty second, meaning that we were contractions were happening while I was recording this podcast. Now I should address the quote and alleged fat references. We practice positive body image here in this house, especially when referring to everything other than my beer belly. Bigger is better in the baby game, so far as my knowledge goes, so big is success and good and beautiful. And you may argue with me about that, but you cannot argue about the end result. The kid’s so handsome that I couldn’t walk the fifteen feet across the operating room. We ended up in like an emergency C section scenario without someone stopping me to say, wow, that is a good looking baby, to which I said thank you and they said, no, you don’t understand, but don’t always look that good, to which I said, yeah, I’m not someone who compliments babies, and this one is so handsome. I need to go figure out who the father is. Anyway, we got six days of keeping a tiny human alive under our belts. Mom’s tough and kicking butt. Kid is eating like a monster and gaining a little bit of weight on the right track. A couple of big takeaways so far from early fatherhood. For all the crap people in the guiding game, get about like being itinerant bums and you know season employees dirt bags well, blah blah blah blah, that life had taken care of other people and making sure you are the first one up and operating for a week or ten days on little to no sleep before a day of recharge, multitasking your butt off and keeping things safe, well, that really preps a fella for the dad life. May not be doing it the way the TikTok influencers are or the nurses in the hospital would prefer, but we smell nice and eat well and no missing digits or scars or diaper rash. Yet for those who have not the you know, the c section game takes MA out of the quick movement and lifting any weight game for a bit. Plus, I mean, jeez, childbirth is wild. We are mammals. It’s a good reminder. Other takeaway, I’ve never named a puppy before I got to hang out with it for a while. I’m not one of those people that comes up with names ahead of time. So baby Boy Callahan came home with the name baby Boy Callahan. That’s something people do not like, and I can’t imagine doing it any other way. But my god, that’s a conversation that I wish would end. Makes one wish you had a generic name that you just lie to everybody with. I know it’s hard to top that news, but I got a little corner crossing update from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks today. Christy Clark, the director of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, just announced a directive issue to the Public Land and Public Water Committee to review corner crossing access programs provided by the state and ways to increased land owner participation in those state access programs designed around opening up like easement style corridors to landlocked parcels, and I suppose that could be applied in areas where you have quote unquote problem corners. What is the Public Land Public Water Committee, you may ask, Well, it was created back in ninety three to help advise the governor and FWP on landowner relations and access programs. PLWP can support legislation and provide recommendations. Recently, the committee backed increased payments for landowners in block management. We’ve had a couple of things here, So we had, you know, backcountry hunters and anglers in Public Landwater Access Association entered a joint suit against the State of Montana seeking a declaratory judgment on corner crossing, a real black and white definition for all of us to run on. And then our Land Board voted to kind of adopt a lot of new language and pro One of those seems to imply that state lands that are accessed through corner crossing would be considered not accessible and land swaps of state land. One of the big barriers is if it’s in use by the public and accessible by the public, it’s a lot harder to swap those parcels. So those two things have happened, and then we just got this statement or public notification basically that the Public Land Public Water committee would be focusing on finding some access solutions. So I like that. That’s great, show some good intent, some movement would be good if it was a long time ago. Just remember that no matter what side of the barbed wire you stand on, public or private, we are all trustees of the public estate. We are public landowners, and we can have access to those lands while respecting and preserving private property rights. It literally happens every single day and has happened every single day. The crazy comes out when folks start acting like this is a new concept. It is not moving on. We’re just trickling into June here after a season of historically low snowfall across the West. We have more updates on Crazy Mountain Ranch, the ultra luxury Montana golf course with a long track record of racking up water violations CMR. Crazy Mountain Ranch is now petitioning the Park County District Court to gain quote unquote exclusive authority to control a ditch carrying water to their golf course. The hearing on the petition will take place on June third. To get a sense of whether these are folks we can trust to make water diversions without oversight, It’s important to look at their history after CMR was caught watering their grass without proper permits in twenty twenty four, and you got to keep in mind, this is the arid West right that ditchwater is largely from snowpack located in this case in the Crazy Mountains, and it runs down stream for everybody. Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservations sued the club to stop, but the club continued to use water illegally, and so the state Water commissioner shut off supplies entirely. To resolve the dispute, the club and the DNRC sent a consent decree where the state would expedite review of the club’s existing permit applications and the CMR would stop using water in violation of the rules. But almost immediately the club began trucking in one hundred and ten thousand gallons of water per week, and soon investigators found that the City of Boulder, Montana, was selling much of this water to CMR from a well that had no water right that violated both the Montana Water Use Act and the consent decree the club had signed. The DNRC fined the club eight thousand dollars one thousand dollars per day for using the unlawful well. CMR then refused to pay that fine, saying it wasn’t their responsibility to ensure that Boulder could legally sell them the water. In fact, Boulder had been isn’t that well for years without proper rights due to a clerical error, and so in March, the district court ruled in CMR’s favor, allowing them not to pay the fine, but warning, quote, make damn sure that the water you put on those soddid acres is compliant. After the rule, the same commissioner who turned off CMR’s water gave it a quote to the press that he probably shouldn’t have, saying, quote, it could really be tight on water this year. It should stay limited to egg use. I think CMR is citing this quote as evidence that the commissioner won’t act impartially and a reason the club should have control over the water ditch without oversight. Justifying their position, the general manager of CMRS said they needed to quote react to water flows on a daily, sometimes even hourly basis. The headgate is on our property and we cannot expect the water commissioner to be there at all times. But that’s a far cry from removing commissioner oversight altogether. Nearby water user Scott Knutsun said quote, if one user can manage its own diversions without independent oversight, it weakens the system that protects every water user in Montana and sets a dangerous precedent. And he does mean dangerous precedent. The saying whiskeys for drinking waters for fighting is all around the West, and it’s because of situations that are very similar to this, not exactly like this right in relation to the agriculture I think you should ride in, do you think the water should be used for growing fat cattle, tall grass, improving feed and habitat, maybe growing some food for America? Or do you think it should be used to irrigate some Kentucky bluegrass in a spot that only a handful of people have access to with a high high barrier to entry. The hearing to decide the matter is on June three. If the district Court allows CMR to control this headgate without oversight, all the foxes in the area should take no. Maybe they can petition to get unrestricted oversight of their local chicken coops. Moving on to the Pierce vote, last Monday, Donald Trump’s pick for head of the BLM, Steve Pierce, was confirmed by the US Senate. As we’ve covered before, Pierce’s record isn’t great, with a long list of statements and votes showing support for selling public lance. This vote was an early test for the so called Senate Stewardship Caucus, a bipartisan group of four Democrats and four Republicans, similar to the Public Lance Caucus in the House. The Senate Stewardship Caucus split along party lines to confirm Pierce, with one of the Republican members, Tom Tillis of North Carolina, deciding not to vote. The administration seemed to know that Pierce wasn’t the most popular pick because they packaged together his nomination with almost fifty other officials. Now do I think it would have been worth the political capital for the Republican members of the caucus to demand that Pierce be broken out from the other nominees and then vote him down. Not necessarily, but the whole point of this group is to defend our public land, and so waving through a BLM director who is on the record saying, quote, we do not even need most of those public lands might be strike one. Now, we’ll wait and let Pierce prove himself one way or another. But if he takes actions that sacrifice public land, or if another public land sale comes around, this caucus needs to pull together and do the right thing to risk becoming irrelevant, and you know, we want them to succeed. We need Unfortunately, a lot of reliable folks at the BLM have moved on to greener pastures. At least seven BLM state directors or associate state directors left the agency in April. Institutional knowledge turnover is tough. Now. This past Monday was Memorial Day. Memorial Day is the day that we should chill out a little bit and think about all the actions of the folks in the armed services that have got us protecting our freedoms and interests across the world. It’s public service, man, it’s a it’s a civil service role. And I know lots and lots of folks who have taken up that charge and challenge many who are still out there and we’re involved in conflicts all over the place. So in the spirit of Memorial Day, I am, you know, very thankful for the actions of those folks who have signed on and joined up and didn’t come home or sometimes came home and had a lot of a lot of tough challenges getting back in the old civilian swing of things. Memorial Day is also, you know, the kickoff to summer for a lot of people. Our temperatures start to really crank up, which typically means that bears should be entering like a lull between the heightened activity of the late rut which typically runs into you know, June, first week of June, and that hyper faget of leaving the den and trying to pack on as many pounds that occurred early in the spring. So it was very surprising to read this week that a two year old black bear was shot and killed in the suburban neighborhood and Canby, Oregon. According to Katei n Channel six, the bear had come within a few blocks of a farmer’s market as well as the Clackamas County Fairgrounds. The bear climbed a tree, a classic strategy to avoid conflict, and when the bear came back down, neither the local police nor the Department of Fish and Wildlife had a tranquilizer gun on hamp According to the news report, the bear was not acting aggressive and had not threatened anyone, but police shot the bear out of an abundance of caution because several people had gathered around the tree to view the animal. That’s a tough lesson for old the Yogi to learn. It’s been a while since we’ve said this on the show. We’ve said it many many times. Our job in days of abundant wildlife right is to make sure that we’re putting our bird feeders away, we’re putting our trash away, and we’re keeping our garage doors closed, stuff like that so these critters don’t become habituated and scenes like this happened. Staying in Oregon, we have a bit of bad news. Initiative Petition twenty eight, the so called Peace Act, has now officially gained enough signatures to be included on the ballot in this fall’s elections. Although the Oregon Secretary of State still needs to verify the signatures before they make it official, voters are almost definitely going to decide this one as a reminder, the Peace Act would remove exceptions for hunters and anglers in Oregon’s animal cruelty laws, which would make any act that injures or kills an animal illegal. This would also criminalize farming and ranching in the state. I’m not shaking in my boots that this will definitely pass, but the fact that it’s coming to a vote is just absolutely ridiculous. Even if IP twenty eight is defeated, it remains damaging because it creates needless division. Most people on the right and the left agree about protecting the natural world, and they all agree that hunting and fishing are essential to conservation. But when people get out there and they hire very skilled folks to collect signatures to advance efforts like the Peace Act, convinces too many people that everyone on the left is a wacko and everybody on the right is a crazy conservative, and so we remain divided. There’s a better path forward folks having a real dialogue and take the time to actually understand the other side of the fence. Nevertheless, we got to defeat this one with a big public education campaign. We’ll let you know when IP twenty eight gets closer to the vote. Moving on to West Virginia, Senator Jim Justice So West Virginia has introduced the Grouse Act aka the Growing and Restoring Operational upland Species Ecosystems Act of twenty twenty six. How’s that for an acronym good job team. The bill would benefit yes, grouse, but also a whole lot of other species. It would establish a USDA program to reimburse landowners up to seventy five percent of the cost of planning native vegetation that’s beneficial to upland wildlife on commercially logged for us. It would also provide landowners with technical assistance to do so. Quote as a lifelong hunter and angler, this is just common sense and a major win for investing in conservation, said justice. By improving wildlife habitats, we can strengthen populations of everything from grouse to deer and beyond, while also creating a real economic impact for West Virginians, Americans, and our outdoor community. The bill unsurprisingly has the backing of a host of conservation groups, from the Rough Grouse Society, an American Woodcock Society, to the National Wild Turkey Federation and Yes US over at backcountry hunters and anglers. In fact, our West Virginia Chapter chair takes old Justice out on the river works on a smallmouth bass game. It’s solid, common sense legislation that will be pushing forward and tracking in the weeks and months to come. M moving on and I’m circling back to something I hit at the top of the show. The Montana Landboard is overhauling its land swap process for the first time in twenty years, and some conservation groups are crying foul. On Monday May eighteen, the Land Board, which includes the state’s five highest elected officials, voted on the shakeup. The new plan impacts the regulations for land swaps involving public land managed by the state. One change is that the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation would no longer be able to flatly deny a proposed land exchange if it is not in the public interest or eligible under existing land exchange requirements. That would be reserved only for the politically elected Land Board. Additionally, the new plan increases the scope of work that private consultants can do. Those consultants are paid for by YEP, private landowners and might not have the public’s best interest in mind for obvious reasons. The new process also changes the language surrounding whether the public benefits from a landswap, a required consideration. Some folks in the conservation community testified and support of the change, which was introduced by State Auditor James Brown, who called it a red tape reduction that all eliminated unnecessary bureaucracy. According to the Montana Free Press that said, many folks raise serious concern with who exactly benefits from the changes, as well as the lack of a public comment period. Said Kevin Farren with Montana Wildlife Federation, quote, this is opaque. This is something that was given to the public seven days ago in its full form. A thirty day scoping and comment period should be the very least that we should be getting out of this. Governor Greg gene Forte did put forward a motion to add a thirty day comment but the Land Board voted down the motion. Gene Fote abstained from the final vote, which was a unanimous four to zero. Russell Fruits with the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, a man who is taking his own time as a volunteer to represent, made his voice heard during public testimony. Quote. Recent third party broker land exchanges in Montana have produced deals where the public received high elevation terrain of limited utility while giving up productive, lower elevation land and established recreational acts. Those outcomes are not accidents. They’re what happens when no one is in the room to independently be accountable and stick up for the public well, said Russell. Great example of what you get for your membership dollars out of BHA. Doesn’t matter where you came from, what your background is. You are capable of representing your interests in front of the land board or the legislature or the US Congress and will help you get there. So you know, become a member today. We need you. Jumping on over to the critter desk. Wild hogs and deer go together like oil and water, which is to say they don’t. That’s one of the main takeaways of some ongoing research down Mississippi, where research professor doctor Melanie Boudreau conducted a study that involved coloring wild pigs and white tailed deer. While boudreau study hasn’t been published, she sat down with Meat Eat Associate editor Adam Moore to break down some of her preliminary findings. Boudreau and her team colored ten faral hogs and ten deer on a property in March and plan to monitor their locations until October, though that didn’t quite happen, said Boudreau by October, all our pigs were dead. Landowners in Mississippi like to handle their pig problems. That said, Boudreau notes that they were still able to connect enough data to see how the species were impacting each other or, in this case, how the pigs were pushing deer out of overlapping habitats such as hardwood bottom land. Additionally, Boudreau’s team set up camera traps over bait piles, and in thirteen thousand pictures there were none that had both hogs and deer in a single frame. Deer in pigs don’t like being next to each other. If you said, that’s not surprising, but it’s cool to see it in the data, and that it supports what landowners and others are saying. There are a couple of interesting notes from a conservation perspective, one being that feeders create quote interaction points for hogs to run into and bump deer from properties. Additionally, the research shows that deer bumped by hogs often come into contact with other deer groups that they otherwise might not have, which could increase the spread of chronic wasting disease or other diseases. Pigs rooting and Wallowing at feeder sites could also allow for the transmission of cwdprewns within the soil, which is something hunters might want to keep in mind when considering the pros and cons of hunting over bait, and it’s apparently pretty popular in Old Mississippi. Quote hunters have to decide if the feeders are worth that risk, said Boudreau. We did an aerial survey just account how many feeders might be across the state of Mississippi. We found one feeder per square kilometer and that’s just the ones we could see from a plane. I imagine that’s a sample size that’s been extrapolated. Gang If not, we’re gonna shut this podcast down. Going to the feeder manufacturing business set up shop in Old Mississippi. But to go with the math, that is one feeder for every fourteen deer in the state. That’s a lot of corn on the landscape. Head over to the meateater dot com for our full conversation with doctor Boudreaux. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening, and remember to write in to a s K C. A L. That’s Ascal at the meeater dot com. You can also call into four oh six two two zero six four four one. That’s four oh six two two zero six four four one, and this is the first podcast live for one audience member, baby Boy Callahan, who uh teetered and tottered and cooed and sputtered all the way through the thing, but no crying. What a chap Anyway, thanks for listening. That’s all I got for you. Let us know what’s going on in your neck of the woods. You know, I appreciate it, and we’ll talk to you next week.
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