Ep. 847: Neanderthal Love, Mule Deer Eradication, and Mink Eyelashes

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show. On this week’s episode, we’re covering new research on how Neanderthal’s Neanderthals, if you want to be more official, how Neanderthals got it on the controversial Catalina Island. Dear Annihilation program. Is your wife or daughter or you wearing illegally imported fake eyelashes made of minkfurt are tattoos gonna be totally screwed in the future. And just when you thought Colorado animal rights people couldn’t embarrass their state any more than they already have, they do Bringing you this news, We’ve got me Stephen Ronella, along with Giannis poutell Us, doctor Randall, William Spencer, Newheart Brody Henderson. The show is broken into three segments, Our News, your news, and the news. Starting us out with our news, We’ve got Janis with no news.

00:01:05
Speaker 2: Why is it known news?

00:01:06
Speaker 1: Because you haven’t caught a lion? How do you report on that?

00:01:12
Speaker 3: In this case, no news is not good news?

00:01:15
Speaker 2: Hmm, I don’t know. I’m always the optimist.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: You know.

00:01:18
Speaker 2: My dog and I are still getting out there on plenty of nice hikes in the mountains, enjoining ourselves, practicing what we’re trying to do.

00:01:26
Speaker 1: He’s trying to put a positive spin on this.

00:01:28
Speaker 3: Do you think if Mingus could talk, he’d say, yeah, this is fun.

00:01:32
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you think the dog isn’t bummed that you guys haven’t caught one yet this year.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: I don’t know if he knows. I have no idea of sort of what his sense of time is.

00:01:47
Speaker 1: I venture to guess if the dog doesn’t think of it as being that he’s in this season and then there’ll be another season next year.

00:01:56
Speaker 2: And I don’t know that he can he knows that it’s been a long time he saw a lion.

00:02:01
Speaker 4: But I would venture to guess that if you had two bowls of kibble and you could metaphorically put chasing a lion and catching it into one bowl and then just sort of aimlessly chasing sense to the woods and the other bowl and never catching the line, I think you would go for that bowl first.

00:02:19
Speaker 2: He would, I think.

00:02:20
Speaker 1: So, I mean, you don’t know what mental trip he’s on.

00:02:24
Speaker 2: No, he could.

00:02:26
Speaker 1: Be like just a real process or anything. He could be like when he’s laying there sleep and you think like, oh, look at him sleeping, he could be there being like I’m a loser. I always knew, you know, I came from the kennel. I came from the dog pound. I’ll never live it down.

00:02:43
Speaker 3: Or it could be the opposite.

00:02:45
Speaker 1: One’s owner abandoned me.

00:02:47
Speaker 3: When he’s on a line, he could be like, kind of hate this, but I know he likes.

00:02:51
Speaker 4: Or he’s like he’s like, if we caught one two months ago, I wouldn’t be the best shape of my life right now.

00:02:58
Speaker 1: Or he’s like, I don’t see the point in harass in these poor things. I’m not gonna chase it up a tree.

00:03:04
Speaker 5: Oh rebelling m Maybe he’s disappointed in you, Yanni.

00:03:10
Speaker 1: What do you think about this?

00:03:12
Speaker 2: N That could be too uh, you know, it’s been it’s been humbling, That’s what I think about it. Because he’s five this year, so really we’ve been hard at it for this would probably be the fourth year, right, So we’ve had three years. One of those years was cut very short by that accident that we had together with Mangus. So really he had like two good years. And in those two good years, he had a year where he caught like sixteen lions, and then a thirteen year, a thirteen lion year. So to go now to this year to have none, it’s like, oh, were those flukes?

00:03:52
Speaker 1: No, I don’t think sixteen and thirteen that doesn’t You don’t luck, That’s not like if it was like two and one, yeah, y yeah, and zero, I’d be like, well, maybe zero is normal, but sixteen thirteen zero something happened.

00:04:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, the weather happens.

00:04:10
Speaker 5: Are you blaming the snow? Is that the problem?

00:04:12
Speaker 2: For sure? But I’ve also just had a string of bad luck where on the good snow days, we’ve found tracks and one day the tracks literally filled in with snow in front of our eyes, like it’s just snowing so hard. Multiple days, I’ve had tracks that just took a left when they should have kept going right, and they went on to private land. So I just called mangus back. One day, I felt like we were within hundreds of yards less than a thousand yards of pair of lions, and it literally was getting dark on us. I’m like, ah, you just gotta at some point, you just got to call it because it’s getting you know, it gets dangerous when he gets dark, right, I don’t want to leave him out all night long. So there’s been a string of that kind of stuff also, But the fact that Yeah, we’ve had like the worst snow winter in a long time. It’s definitely played into it.

00:05:05
Speaker 1: Understood, Thank you, honest, you’re welcome.

00:05:08
Speaker 4: How many numbers of days in the field to it?

00:05:11
Speaker 2: You know, I wish I had.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: I just had a burning question.

00:05:15
Speaker 2: No, that’s a good question, because I feel like I’ve been hunting roughly the same amount.

00:05:19
Speaker 4: Oh it’s even more between the you know.

00:05:22
Speaker 2: Over the last four or five years.

00:05:23
Speaker 6: Uh.

00:05:26
Speaker 2: But yeah, I don’t have a number for you, but if I had to guess, we’ve been out maybe twenty days. But you know, I’ve talked about this before. I think I talked about this on a previous podcast. The one silver lining of this year is not catching anything. We caught a bobcat oh yeah, which I know you’re real frustrated about that, but catching release, catch and released about half I know. But that’s huge for me as a as a hound owner.

00:05:57
Speaker 1: Oh that’s a triumph.

00:05:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, for him be able to do that all by himself, it was. It was a big day. So all all is not lost. Like, if that’s the only thing that happens this this hound season, it’ll be a pretty good season because we accomplished that one thing.

00:06:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would just say you caught one and leave it at that.

00:06:16
Speaker 2: One cat, one cat, one cat.

00:06:18
Speaker 1: Did you get your cats? Yep?

00:06:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I mean if you talk to like our good buddy Jake Gribb, he’ll tell you that that one Bobcat is worth ten to twenty lines.

00:06:27
Speaker 1: So then you say that, say ten to twenty.

00:06:32
Speaker 4: Then you’re right on You’re right on average here.

00:06:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s not over for you yet.

00:06:36
Speaker 3: Anyway, you got one good time another.

00:06:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got a big I got a big.

00:06:39
Speaker 1: Month, big hot. You get big hot, snowless month, seventy degrees next week, they’re saying it’s coming.

00:06:44
Speaker 5: I can’t believe the conversion rate is ten to twenty mountain lions for one bombcat.

00:06:49
Speaker 1: I don’t believe that. I think it’s an exaggerate.

00:06:52
Speaker 2: It is so hard. Many people, many people literally will not cut loose on a Bobcat track because they’re like, it’s not worth my time. We’re not gonna catch it. We’re just gonna end up on this long chase and end up in a pile of rocks, and I won’t get to see a Bobcat. Maybe it’s even.

00:07:12
Speaker 1: Hot ground mountain.

00:07:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it’s so special that maybe what.

00:07:18
Speaker 3: I think it’s gonna happen with this Steve.

00:07:22
Speaker 2: It’s so special. I would consider by getting a tattoo to debt, to honor believe the word I’m looking for memorialized.

00:07:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, memorialized. I would have it to be a tattoo, no tattoo, and be like, this blank spot on my skin is the year nothing happened.

00:07:43
Speaker 3: No, he should get a lion tattoo to be like, oh that’s what they look didn’t you just do.

00:07:46
Speaker 7: An indefensible loss, Steve where people should memorialize places where things didn’t happen.

00:07:50
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I did one where where you would put signs where people almost got killed.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s good.

00:07:58
Speaker 1: Uh. On the subject tattoos, the radio Live finale, a tattoo artist came in and did he in the office. He did thirteen tattoos that day. Oh wow, Rody got his first tattoo ever, which my wife thought was cool. When he gets all done, when he gets all done, this is my news here. He gets all done, and me and him get the bs and and I’m like, hey, act like you’re giving me one. Get it all set up, act like you’re giving me one. And I’m gonna send it to. We have a family group text chat called the Free Trappers. So I’m like, act like you’re giving me one, and I’m gonna send it to my family and be like. I finally broke down. I can’t believe I did it. I got a tattoo. I send it no reply. My little ones later told me they knew it wasn’t true. My wife had already talked to Brody, so she knew it wasn’t true. My fifteen year old going on sixteen, this is why I know that tattoos are in trouble. The tattoo industry is in trouble. Okay, fifteen year old, He says, that is so blank, I can’t say what. He says he’d get in trouble to his mom. Later, he so he thinks it’s true. Later he says to me, dude, don’t ever comment on my hair cut again, Like coming from a guy with a tattoo and their mind like and him and his buddy’s minds. I gather it is the dorkiest thing a person could do. Not rebellious, not rebellious.

00:09:54
Speaker 8: It’s like, oh my god, times have changed, Oh my god, I don’t think so tattoos have been.

00:10:03
Speaker 1: I thought, here’s why I think that his social circle is interesting. They have a foot in two worlds. He’s been brought up around all kinds of redneck stuff, knows all kinds of rednecks, right, he just went and pulled calves at his buddy’s ranch. But he also knows all about rich people. He knows about like rich urban people and ski people. So here’s this kind of interesting mix of redneck stuff and rich people stuff. And from either side of that, he’s not getting tattoo cool factor from either side. So I just am worried about the tattoo market.

00:10:47
Speaker 3: I’m not because my kid said I want to get the same one as you. I was wondering if you had your argument.

00:10:54
Speaker 2: I’m looking at data right now.

00:10:56
Speaker 1: Spencer went got his.

00:10:59
Speaker 2: Trump the America the Beautiful Past, and Phil has data on this right now here.

00:11:05
Speaker 7: I am looking at a percentage of Americans with tattoos over time, and the year nineteen thirty six, it looks like ten percent of the American population had tattoos. If we jump and then two thousand and three, that’s a long jump. It was sixteen percent. But then we have from two thousand and three to twenty twelve, twenty one percent of Americans had tattoos. From twenty twelve to twenty fifteen, that number jump from twenty one to twenty nine, and from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty three that number jumped to thirty two percent.

00:11:33
Speaker 2: Boo, it’s been a steady increase.

00:11:35
Speaker 6: He’s looking over the clever.

00:11:37
Speaker 1: Okay, that’s why Phil should do a better job of listening.

00:11:41
Speaker 7: So you’re so your argument is like, right now, sure the future Okay, I’m just saying the trends disagree.

00:11:49
Speaker 1: We’re in the tattoo. Our trend doesn’t show the future because it’s not no much I got. I run the future.

00:11:56
Speaker 4: That’s why I’m telling you he’s forecasting a sharp decline based on I.

00:12:02
Speaker 1: Have detected an attitudinal shift. I have detected an attitudinal shift, and I looked at data, and so if I’m going to go on to a prediction market, I want to make a bet that in twenty years there has been a cataclysmic drop off in tattoo rates. Because I’ve had a glimpse into the future by talking to my kids’ buddies.

00:12:28
Speaker 7: Yeah, you could be very very right based on what they’re doing in the alcohol industry and how they don’t like sex and movies.

00:12:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a bunch of breeds. Yeah, Spencer got a new pass from explain this. This is very interesting. This is legit news.

00:12:45
Speaker 5: I went to Yellowstone a couple of weekends ago, and my winter trip there is usually when we get our new past for the year. It’s called the America the Beautiful Pass.

00:12:53
Speaker 1: How long has that existed?

00:12:55
Speaker 5: Since two thousand and four, I believe some version of it has existed. Phil’s got them pulled up the America the Beautiful Pass. It’s eighty dollars. It grants you entry to national parks, national wildlife refugees. Also covers your day use fees if you’re in National forest Grasslands blm Army corps Land a place where you’re required to pay a day use fee. You typically don’t need to you if.

00:13:18
Speaker 3: You have, it’s like a good deal if you do these things a lot.

00:13:20
Speaker 1: Right, certainly, Yeah, yep.

00:13:22
Speaker 5: But I think although there’s like so many places it gives you access to, these are primarily just using national parks. That’s what people buy them for us to get in and out of national parks for a year, and and you and the missus buy one every year every year since we moved to Montana. So this is our seventh pass that we’ve had. I’ve got three of them here.

00:13:38
Speaker 1: Now, why didn’t you buy it in South Dakota?

00:13:42
Speaker 5: Just didn’t attend national parks the same way we do now, didn’t live as close to the Rushmore.

00:13:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that’d get you into Rushmore.

00:13:49
Speaker 5: It would get you into Rushmore.

00:13:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually rush.

00:13:53
Speaker 5: So the America the Beautiful Pass. It’s like the size of your credit card or driver’s license. It’s a laminated card. Traditionally these have a photo on them of wildlife for landscape, and I’ve got past examples here that you can see.

00:14:07
Speaker 1: And you go back to that that shot you had.

00:14:09
Speaker 5: Up and that’s that’s showing you like the last decade of that’s a roseated spoon bill. That is a yes correct from the Everglades.

00:14:15
Speaker 1: So what year is that? That is last year national park roseated spoon bilt.

00:14:20
Speaker 5: And then what year is this twenty twenty four? That’s an Eastern collared.

00:14:24
Speaker 1: Lizard, Okay lizard twenty twenty four past.

00:14:27
Speaker 5: Twenty twenty three. It was a landscape picture from King’s Canyon National Park.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: So that’s you get an idea of what they look like what park would that be from?

00:14:36
Speaker 5: I don’t know, Denali, the Arctic. I also don’t think it has to be in a national it’s just like federal land. And so you did say it’s gotta be a it’s it’s like by law since two thousand and four, it’s been a federal law that the way these are chosen is there is a picture contest done by what is it the National Parks Foundation, and the winning photo from that is on the pass for the following year. So this year you can see what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be Glacier National Park in Montana. That was what the winning photo was from last year. But the the Trump administration has changed this. They they are breaking this two thousand and four federal law and instead it is a picture of George Washington and Donald Trump on the pass.

00:15:24
Speaker 1: And and this this has made some folks very mad. It’s made folks very mad. He doesn’t look like he’s at the park.

00:15:34
Speaker 5: No, it has.

00:15:35
Speaker 1: You wouldn’t look at that and think, you know why, you know, it looks like it looks like he got to the outhouse at the park. He got to the and it was and it’s and and there’s and it’s overflowed. And he opened the door and he’s like someone’s gonna pay.

00:15:53
Speaker 5: Yes, And you can see these these photos on our YouTube channel.

00:15:58
Speaker 1: And I mean, in all fair and this is two hundred and fiftieth first president, current president, two hundred fift years of presidents. I think that’s what this is going for here.

00:16:07
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean he made a lot of changes with National park related stuff this year that is supposed to be more patriotic. For example, he got rid of Juneteenth and MLK Day as free days, and he’s made Flag Day, which is his birthday, and then President’s Days as free days instead. And this is all patriotic. Team He’s also this is a good one. He bumped up the fee for non residents if you’re from Canada, if you’re from Italy.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: I support that, and I agree that’s I think that’s the other stuff I don’t get.

00:16:34
Speaker 5: That’s a North American thing that we’re like, if you want to go recreate in Colorado as a non resident, you pay a higher fee.

00:16:39
Speaker 1: It’s like part of it.

00:16:40
Speaker 4: They’ve also removed like indigenous perspectives from that’s.

00:16:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally different.

00:16:47
Speaker 3: Happens if you put a piece of tape over Trump’s Yeah.

00:16:50
Speaker 5: So within within days of the new year, when these went into effect, the National Park Service had to release a statement saying that your pass will be voided if you alter it by putting a sticker over it, by drawing.

00:17:02
Speaker 1: On it, by Has that always been true?

00:17:04
Speaker 5: Yes, but I don’t think anyone’s ever tested. It hasn’t been a problem. But it’s always been It’s always been true, yes. And and like for example of how how much drama this is made, there’s an Etsy shop seller who has started making stickers for these, and she said that she would like give that money to public lands. For what she would sell, it’s a sticker that would go over Trump’s face. She made sixteen thousand dollars in the first month.

00:17:26
Speaker 1: M just just doing this. I don’t remember. I think it’s it’s like a yeah, maybe Pika.

00:17:36
Speaker 5: We’ve looked this up on trivia. You can say a Pica or Pika who can anyway can go eat?

00:17:44
Speaker 1: I can’t. I We did this on we addressed that on trivia. Okay, what what what’s next year’s Are they going to revert next year’s pass to the winner? If the duck stamp you like the whole duck stamp competition. Yeah, if all sudden the ut was like a duck with like Trump’s face on it. Yeah, and he’s like, no, no, no, that’s the that’s the duck stands. Yeah.

00:18:06
Speaker 5: So the Trump administration has not been great to the National Parks. You know, Doge cut a thousand employees last year. They tried to slash the budget by thirty eight percent this year. The Senate rejected that. So Trump not exactly a mascot for the National Parks. I was trying to think of an analogy. It would be like if we had a meat eater radio Live listening pass and then Steve put his face on it.

00:18:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally understand. That’s what it would be like.

00:18:33
Speaker 3: Or if you let Elon Musk take an axe.

00:18:35
Speaker 1: To radio Live. Yeah.

00:18:38
Speaker 3: And this this drama is gonna get bigger now.

00:18:40
Speaker 5: The National Parks get forty percent of their visitation between June and August. So there’s a lot of folks who are going to be buying their pass in a few months. And it’s already it’s already been a big deal, but it’s it’s going to become probably a bigger deal.

00:18:54
Speaker 1: On a related note, someone just shared with me this is this article is a little bit older, and I’ve been kind of hanging on to it. Someone shared with me an article, an op ed that came out and there was a guest essay called maga Elites who live on their phones are ruining the outdoors and at points that’s a hyperbolic headline, but what it points out is we’ve kind of like we’ve moved away. We’re currently moved away from the old style of like outdoor republican. And you know, like you think about the bushes. Were anglers right, they would vacation at like Kenny Bumpport and go fishing. Anyways, this article lays out this idea that that rather than rather than trips to Wyoming to fly fish and stuff, what we see out of the administration is golfing in Florida. And this individual argues that there’s been this like perspective shift away from this like tradition of outdoor Republicans into like indoor Republicans. The guy is a research so the guy that wrote it. You should go go check it out. Listener should check it out. It’ll like it’ll it’ll do one of two things. It’ll either make you so mad because you’re disagreeing. You’ll be like so mad, you’d be mad that we mentioned it, or you’ll be so happy we mentioned it because it already aligns with what you think. So you can go, no matter who you are, just think about this. No matter who you are, you can go read this and reinforce your opinions and be happi or sad.

00:20:28
Speaker 4: If you ever read something that everybody agrees on everybody, it’s probably not worth reading.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: It’d be like reading the Park Pass. Yeah, that’s a joke. The guy that wrote it. You get a little suspicious when you read what he does. So he Doctor Lezak is a researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley who studies the politics of climate change. So guess what his biases might be. Another piece of news we got, we’re doing this. We’re doing a new series called the time Machine. So every month we’re taking artwork like see this one here, this goes back to the farthest. This is a time machine artwork of Clovis points, archaeological drawings of Clovis points. That’s this month, We’re gonna hit the Custer Battle, the Battle of the Greasy Grass or the Battle of the Little Big Horn, depending on what side you’re on. Pittman Robertson Act. Every month you can come check it out. T shirts, hoodies, time capsule, we go back in time. That’s the Clovis shirt right there. They’re all limited to run. Teas and hoodies. Find them at the Meat Eater store website. Okay, moving on to corrections.

00:21:54
Speaker 2: Corrections, Corrections.

00:21:59
Speaker 1: That’s from Fiddler around Them. This is our inaugural segment. Inaugural segment of corrections where we have a correction of the Weak contest sponsored by Takova’s. So corrections are like this, if you’re sitting around like normally in today’s political climate, and I mean this is when I’m sticking it to both sides on this, people just say stuff that’s just wrong and they don’t and they know it’s wrong. It’s like a flex to say stuff that’s just wrong because it’s kind of like it’s like I know it’s wrong, you know it’s wrong, and now you’re going to have to live with it. But we try to invite corrections. So if we say something that’s screwed up, or or we make a mistake or omit the truth or whatever. We invite your corrections. We want your corrections so bad about things we’re wrong about that If you get the correction of the week, you win a pair of Takova’s boots. You send yours to the meat Eater podcast at the meeater dot com. We got three to choose from to who wins the Dakova’s Boots. Okay, Going in the future, we’ll only be accepting corrections from the news show. But we’re we’re accepting corrections otherwise. Right now, episode eight thirty eight, someone writes and this is his correction. Episode eight thirty eight, Steve is talking about a Hen Turkey making bad calls and uses the term on accident. The corrector goes on to say, as a writer and someone who makes a living speaking, he should know it.

00:23:44
Speaker 2: Is by.

00:23:46
Speaker 1: Accident. He goes on to say, fewer things annoy me more than this. If he could please correct this going forward, it would make my listening experience. It’s much better you don’t do something on accident.

00:24:04
Speaker 3: Are we voting at the ending?

00:24:06
Speaker 2: I’m not voting for this guy, can I I mean, maybe my grammar is off, but shouldn’t those quotes be outside of that? Was at his face, in.

00:24:21
Speaker 1: His face, in your face, I got, Steve, I got a little suggestion for you, learn how to put your quotes in the right place. Buddy.

00:24:35
Speaker 3: I think this guy’s already lost a pair of boots.

00:24:39
Speaker 2: He’s out.

00:24:41
Speaker 1: Close call.

00:24:42
Speaker 2: But no, no, no, no, I’m sure that he placed those periods there by accident.

00:24:51
Speaker 6: So on accident. I’m looking this up and I see that it’s like colloquial, But I don’t know. Is it a grammar thing I’ve heard you.

00:25:00
Speaker 1: Glocal off of me is wrong? Yeah? Yeah, But I don’t think he’s gonna win because because he got it, he got like back at them, back at them. Okay, on mink coals and bad smells, here’s a contender, here’s a real contender. He’s referencing back to episode eight thirty eight. Okay, around the thirty one minute mark. In the episode, Steve referenced the two thy twenty coal of mink and Denmark we were talking about. During the COVID pandemic, they found out that mink were harbingers of COVID and they started killing all ranch mink in Denver, in Denmark, and I said that the mink all went to market. My understanding was when I first heard about the cold, I thought it would cause mink prices to skyrocket because there’s no more mink. But someone said the inverse was true. It was a massive influx of mink pelts because they had to go pelt all the mink, and so it flooded the market with mink and tanked it. So I said they were all pelted out. This guy says the coal was so hasty and disorganized that it didn’t give the opportunity for many of the affected mink farmers to pelt out, meaning to skin them all. Given that just before the discussion of the mink coal there was a discussion of various bad smells, you may also be interested in the fact that the coal resulted in millions of mink being buried in mass burial sites, and the fact that they hadn’t been skinned meant that some of them started to decompose and bloat and push their way out of the ground, which media dubbed zombie mink. I like that that was from Doug.

00:26:56
Speaker 4: That’s a correction of a correction you received, right, because your initial impression was that they wouldn’t be skinned. Your initial assumption, Yeah, but that was an internal Yeah, this is that was a leg still action.

00:27:08
Speaker 1: Now here is like a great correction that’s going to compete with the mink correction. Episode eight twenty nine, at the fourteen minute mark, we’re talking about this, okay, we’re talking about salmon leaving their natal spawning streams and going back out to the ocean. Or were we talking about one’s coming up, coming up? Oh? Okay, pretty sure either way. We’re talking about fish loss at dams in the Columbia system.

00:27:40
Speaker 3: Oh no, were we talking about smoke going out?

00:27:42
Speaker 1: I think it’s I think it’s smoke going out. Yeah, okay, And we’re saying that they’re losing that at every dam these fish encounter. They’re losing seven to fifteen percent of the population at every dam. And all of his ignorance, I say, I can’t even do that math Brody does, and he says that’s over one hundred percent, him being dumb.

00:28:15
Speaker 4: Jeez, Yeah, that’s not how the math works.

00:28:19
Speaker 1: Now the MathWorks. This guy writes in It’s actually like this, if two hundred thousand salmon attempt to make it past the first dam with a fifteen percent mortality rate, there will be one hundred and seventy thousand that make it through to attempt the next dam. After damn number two, at fifteen percent mortality rate, there are one hundred and forty four thousand, five hundred smelt left. If you continue this trend through all eight dams, you are left with fifty four thousand, five hundred salmon. This is a total loss of about seventy three percent at the high end. If you use the seven percent mortality rate with this method, you end up with one hundred and eleven thousand, nine hundred fish after the eighth dam. So the total mortality rate range is from forty four to seventy three percent, not as what I did in my head, more than all of them.

00:29:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is this is probably going to get a correction too. But it’s like it’s like the reverse of compound interest, whereas if you have money invested, as it grows, it grows more. As it shrinks, it shrinks less in each iteration understood the way, Well that does.

00:29:54
Speaker 3: Okay, you got a minor and math, you got a doctor.

00:29:57
Speaker 4: I was actually just thinking we should, we should. It’s some point just have a podcast episode with a statistician about draws and just probabilities. Probabilities for the for the Joe Blow Outdoorsman. We can explain things like this, We can explain.

00:30:11
Speaker 1: Draws, you know, because that’s another thing is there’s a lot of confusion about draw odds. That’d be a good idea a hunter.

00:30:21
Speaker 4: It might not be, it might it might not be a two hour podcast, but it could be a fwop.

00:30:28
Speaker 6: Please write in the media podcast at the mediator dot com.

00:30:31
Speaker 1: I also need someone from the did you know that there’s a did you know that there’s a discipline that zoos have zoo swat teams? Okay, and there’s like a leading figure in the zoo swat team area, and she made a YouTube video one time about her industry and her training, tactical zoo keeper training. And in this video they’re like shooting shot shooting slug guns through woven wire fences. She does her interview in front of a bear with a bullet with a bulls eye on his brain.

00:31:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, would you need to clarify what these swat teams do?

00:31:14
Speaker 1: It’s after people. It’s for if monkeys get loose, the lions get.

00:31:21
Speaker 2: Or someone.

00:31:22
Speaker 1: They had they had a kid fall into us into a gorilla container and they killed the Gorilla was.

00:31:28
Speaker 4: Who was that at Cincinnati and Natty.

00:31:30
Speaker 1: So we reached out to people within this zoo swat team community and they’re like, no one will talk to you. This is a very tight knit community. No one will speak. If if X person won’t speak, no one will speak. But X person has spoken weirdly, but won’t if you are in the zoo keeper swap team business, we would love to talk to you on the podcast.

00:32:00
Speaker 2: That does sound like a good one.

00:32:02
Speaker 1: Oh, it’d be a great one. Yeah, But they’re like, they don’t want zoos have to have a zoo keeper swat team. I do know someone, well, I know, but I didn’t pan out like no or they call people no. I think they got they got tactical trained people who are ready for a lion to get out.

00:32:20
Speaker 5: I mean also guess that they’re wearing multiple hats at the zoo.

00:32:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s like it’s like the but they in their mind it’s a dirty secret.

00:32:30
Speaker 6: I think it’s more that nobody wants to see animals harmed at the zoo, but if something happens where it’s between an animal and a human being, then they’ll do what they need to do. So I think that there are people at zoos who are trained lest something get out of control.

00:32:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don’t think that’s a dirty secret. Someone out there works in this field. I would like to have a serious conversation on the podcast about that field, like like, what is the training, what is the probability, what are some examples where this has occurred? Why does this go on? I don’t feel like it’s a thing that they’re like, hush, hush, can’t talk about that. It just seems weird to me. Some more audience emails.

00:33:16
Speaker 5: Between we’re voting between millions of mink and thousands of salmon.

00:33:20
Speaker 6: Gosh, it’s tough, Like okay, number three did a lot of metal.

00:33:24
Speaker 1: Number one, the guy that can’t use his quotes right any votes Here’s.

00:33:28
Speaker 4: Well, here’s one one way that I’m thinking about this. If a good correction, I would think is one that you would deliver to someone to their face if they’re a stranger at a bar and they’d walk away going. If you were at a bar with a stranger and they said it’s not on accident, it’s by accident, then.

00:33:48
Speaker 1: I would like that guy. You would, yeah, just from the real like Nate Mason would hit me with that that’s true.

00:33:55
Speaker 2: It sounds like Nate, but he’s kind.

00:33:58
Speaker 4: Of I like, but it’s not really opening your he’d tell you that it’s not really opening your eyes.

00:34:05
Speaker 1: You know. You wouldn’t go home and be like, you know what I learned today? No, I would tell my wife that I’d wait hert in the middle night. I stand corrected. I can’t sleep.

00:34:15
Speaker 5: I don’t think guy number one would even vote for guy number one in this one.

00:34:19
Speaker 1: Okay, So and he votes. We got seven voters in the room, guy number one, okay, Guy number two. Not all mink were discard, not all mink werepelled. It out. That’s I’m voting for that guy. You know what, You’re voting for him because the other guy’s goofing on you.

00:34:36
Speaker 8: I’m voting for him because it’s like he’s he’s bringing the like receipts.

00:34:41
Speaker 3: He’s got an article.

00:34:42
Speaker 6: It’s like her information articles.

00:34:46
Speaker 4: I will say, typically when in the news, when somebody calls something a zombie, something like a zombie, dear, I don’t like it.

00:34:53
Speaker 1: I like this use of zombie. Okay, I’m voting for him.

00:34:55
Speaker 6: So the mink guy, we all need to be like closing your eyes.

00:35:01
Speaker 1: Okay. The math the math guy. Goof not Brody, he went some taka boats. We have some people to abstained.

00:35:09
Speaker 3: Didn’t even vote, say in the thing that he’s making fun of.

00:35:13
Speaker 2: Well, you voted for the mint guy.

00:35:15
Speaker 1: We got a miscount.

00:35:20
Speaker 2: Here, Okay, to hanging Chats guy. No sorry, okay, the mink.

00:35:29
Speaker 1: Guy, change your vote this lection. This is some hanging chats final final vote, final vote. This is serious this time. Okay, the mink guy. Two votes for the Mint Guy, the math guy.

00:35:50
Speaker 3: Steve convinced himself to.

00:35:54
Speaker 2: Steve’s undefeated.

00:35:57
Speaker 1: Because not Brody. That’s why you got my vot. Max al you got a free pair of boots. You can tell us what size and style and all that.

00:36:05
Speaker 2: Max.

00:36:07
Speaker 1: Okay, quick audience email. We’re running behind time. We got a hustle. No one even comment on this.

00:36:15
Speaker 2: H I think we’re actually doing pretty good.

00:36:17
Speaker 1: No one even comment on this, guy writes in and the Screwworm episode eight thirty five. You guys relate a story from Kevin Murphy’s childhood about about putting an altered bull to work for breeding purposes. What I was talking about is Kevin Murphy. I was driving along with Kevin Murphy. He’s talking about working at a ranch. I said, what kind of work are you doing at the ranch? And he just related to me a story that they would be able to in the old days. They would surgically redirect a bull’s penis so that it was coming out backward. You would make this bull wear a big ink blodder on his neck, and you turn him out with your cows. He would detect that a cow was in heat and he would mount the cow, but his pecker, being misoriented, would not result in fertilization, but the ink blot would mark the cow as being receptive, at which point a farm boy or whoever would like Kevin you would then rush out and artificially inseminate that cow. I thought that was very, very very interesting. That’s great, and just writer writes in, and this listener writes in, in my time spent cowboying out west, we have come to call these heat seeking missiles. He’s being metaphoric, he’s being poetic. There Gomer bulls g O. M. E. R. Golmer, perhaps from Gomer Pyle, I don’t know, Gomer bulls or teaser bowls. And he says that phrase is commonly used in the equine industry as well. Goomer bulls are often selected because they won’t cut it as a good breeder bul genetically, but are generally easy to work and be around. Advances an animal husbandry have made vast sectomy the primary method for sterilizing these bulls. I could relate. And for the cows, we often use paint patches that work like a scratch off huh, rather than lots of ink and paint. The patches can rip off and do a good job showing who’s been getting ridden by the gomer bull. If he sees someone with a cowboy hat on backwards at the airport, he points out, he calls them a gomer. He wonders, does Kevin Murphy consider himself livestock adjacent e enough to wear a cowboy hat. His hat’s not quite a cowboy hat, But Kevin Murphy entered cowboy hat validity through an entirely different path. In my view, he could have never looked at an equine or bovine animal and wear a cowboy hat. Switching to the news with the news, doctor Randall.

00:39:28
Speaker 4: Well, there’s some exciting developments in the world of Neanderthal or Neanderthal romance. There is a report paper that came out last month in the journal Science that concluded that, like, for a while, we’ve known that humans and Neanderthals shared DNA and cross bread at some point, but they’ve now determined that the preponderance of those interactions and couplings had to do with a male Neanderthal and a female Homo sapien.

00:40:04
Speaker 1: This is showing because they can track like mitochondrial DNA and yeah, bunch stuff I don’t.

00:40:10
Speaker 4: I found a term called the Neanderthal desert, which refers to the fact that in human X chromosomes they show much less Neanderthal DNA than the rest of the genome. Okay, and if you’re a specialist in this area, I’m gonna misuse a lot of these terms.

00:40:30
Speaker 1: Oh so get your corrections ready.

00:40:33
Speaker 4: But if I use, say sixty to seventy percent of them correctly, right in and say you did a good job, because that’s what I’m meaning before.

00:40:39
Speaker 1: So there there was there were a bunch of theories about why this might be.

00:40:43
Speaker 4: It could have been like the Neanderthal DNA could have been missing from the X chromosomes because there’s some sort of like health risk or something that would just sort of be weeded out through natural selection like it whatever, that that Neanderthal DNA made humans more made the offspring more susceptible to certain diseases.

00:41:05
Speaker 1: Right.

00:41:05
Speaker 4: But what they did is they went and looked at Neanderthal DNA and they found that Neanderthal DNA on their X chromosomes they actually have like a much higher percentage of human DNA in them, right, because there’s there’s DNA from both sides. So they kind of reverse engineering at that.

00:41:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you take an old Neanderthal dead guy bones and be like, well, he’s got some Homo sapien lurking in them. Yeah. Uh.

00:41:32
Speaker 4: And so that’s so that essentially that’s the explanation now, and there are some there are other reasons that could sort of account for it other than just like sexual preference.

00:41:44
Speaker 1: If this has nothing to do with sexual they’re trying to make it like that.

00:41:47
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, I’m I don’t like there’s there are some theories. There are some theories about like like you can have whatever sex bias in breeding because of like, uh distribution like whatever, Neanderthal males travel more, something like that. But they’ve so but basically they’ve ruled it down to the fact that for whatever reason, Neanderthal males and nandertal female and human females were the most likely, uh like overwhelmingly more likely to couple than say, human male and a Neanderthal female.

00:42:26
Speaker 1: And the pieces that I read about this, I can’t remember where I read about the pieces I read. It was like they were sort of getting into the suggestion of like attraction, Yeah, was there an attraction component? I don’t. I don’t know. Earlier I told you what would happen in the future, Yeah, I can, and here I could tell you what happened in the past if you’d like.

00:42:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I read another I read another article that was very much leaning in the opposite direction of the attraction to be proved. It was just like, you know, for most of human history, mating resembled what we see in animals, and that there’s no consent, right, and it’s you know, it’s like when you watch a duck with a duck. It’s sometimes ugly, but in any event, they they went the opposite direction to be more provocative.

00:43:20
Speaker 1: Okay, right, But that there was a there was a coercion element. Yeah, That’s where I’m going. Yeah, in understanding this, and I don’t know that maybe you guys know this, Uh, meal deer and white tail deer will not infrequently interbreed, and I believe that when they do that, like they’ll they’ll have a their offspring don’t do well. But I’ve read that, and I don’t know why this is true. I’ve read that it is typically a white tail buck breeding a mule deer dough but I’ve never read why is it because the other I don’t know if it’s that the other couplings don’t produce offspring, or is it that that’s just how it goes and that’s just how it goes.

00:44:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean. The other really interesting thing that I pulled up when I was doing my deep dive on Neanderthals was like the there’s another human species, the denise Evans or Denisovans, who were more they’re sort of like the Asiatic version of a Neanderthal, and they split off like around the same time as the Anertales. The Andertales sort of went north and west and the denis Ovans went east. And this is one case where they just found I think, like a fingerbone in a cave in Russia and they discovered that, hey, this is a different type of human and they’ve sort of done what Heffelfinger’s doing with the the Merriam’s elk. So they’re going back to older fossils that they assumed were just either there’s just normal Homo sapiens, and they’re identifying them retroactively as denise of ins ordentisil.

00:45:05
Speaker 1: They had been miscategorized. Yeah, yeah, I was reading a book on human genetics. I want to say, like, if I’m wrong, it’s still an interesting book. I want to say that it was in this book. Now I wasn’t in that book. I was going to say it was in The Seven Daughters of Eve. I can’t remember what the hell book. I was reading a book about human genetics. In the book, they were talking about that, you know, as the human diaster. As humans spread around the world, there are pockets of the world that have much higher Neanderthal DNA concentrations. There are pockets of the world that have no Yeah, like in.

00:45:49
Speaker 4: Africa, like like sub Saharan Africa and Africa, like down into the African continent.

00:45:59
Speaker 1: Neanderthals weren’t down there. They were a European predominant European Asian Middle Eastern species. So people that remained and that remained in Africa, they don’t have introgression from Neanderthals. He points out that this is a very this is a very hot loaded subject. And he said that there’s even been a reluctance, he claims in this book and I can’t remember the guy’s damn name, he claims that there’s been a reluctance to talk about what populations around the world have a lot of neanderthal because it would be viewed as disparaging these people. Yeah, and so he said, it’s like it’s become like a sort of hush hush subject because because it’s it’s uh, people would review it, view it as derogatory.

00:46:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is interesting. I think like our understanding neanderthalis has changed a lot. And now he recognized that they were they buried their dead, and they wore jewelry, and they used tools and lit fires and things like that, and probably had language, but dove for shellfish. Yeah, but for a long time, obviously there was this the sort of I mean, I think what Western science did for a long time is like, look at something else and assume it’s lesser than right if it’s not Homo sapiens, or if it’s not you know, previously like if it’s not European, it’s it’s sort of on this order of being right, and there’s like this progressive view of these things. But now I think it’s like the Neanderthal DNA story is even more interesting because, like I was reading something the other day that if you have, they found in one study that people with more Neanderthal DNA or a certain sequence of Neanderthal DNA were more susceptible to bad COVID outcomes. So it shows like how you know, like some chunks of Neanderthal DNA could go missing over time because for whatever reason, it makes people susceptible to certain infections.

00:47:56
Speaker 1: But or if they had bad COVID restrictions in their commune authorities are like no going outside of your cave. All their Amazon boxes are laying around unopened. I’ll tell you what happened, ready, Yes, I think that Neanderthal groups would now and then overpower Homo sapient groups. They would kill the they would kill the males, and they would keep the females as concubines. That’s exactly what happened.

00:48:28
Speaker 4: I can’t dispute that. You ready to move on, I don’t know that these guys are not Neanderthal guys.

00:48:38
Speaker 1: Don’t you bet? That’s good news?

00:48:40
Speaker 2: All right?

00:48:41
Speaker 1: Can I tell you my favorite Neanderthal little thing? Sure. I was reading a book about in the Anerthales had a lot to do with the Neanderthals, and this guy was talking about when they exhume all these remain Neanderthal remains, they see a like a predict suite of injuries on the bones. They were showing them to physicians, and there was a physician who had treated a lot of bull riders in his career, and he pointed out that, Wow, the types of injuries I’m seeing are very representative of what I see on bull riders. Out of this came this idea and this guy wrote about it that they practiced a confrontational style of hunting. Yeah, that they mix it up.

00:49:39
Speaker 2: You’re not saying that bull riders are like Neanderthals.

00:49:42
Speaker 1: No, I’m saying that he was like the kinds of breaks and lesions he saw reminded him of what he sees from bull riders getting trampled. Gord.

00:49:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you have to have a little bit of a Neanderthal mindset to get on a two thousand pounds animal and they.

00:50:05
Speaker 3: Should research the genetics there.

00:50:07
Speaker 8: What I would like to know is if it went the other way, did Homo sapiens do the same thing.

00:50:14
Speaker 1: Well, that’s a bunch of lady, a bunch of female Homo sapiens rated.

00:50:22
Speaker 4: Would do that to I mean, that’s that is one theory as far as because it’s only like a one way path that Randall’s talking about, right Like.

00:50:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, understood, I’m not that good. I can’t tell you.

00:50:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there there is like at some point human behavior changed, because that that’s one of the explanations at least for the extinction of the Anderthals is there’s no like discernible physical change in humans over that period of time. So whatever when we went from cohabitation to once he’s being left. Uh, there’s a change in culture. Yep, that explains it. Uh, we can move on from Neanderthals, or I can offer one more factory please.

00:51:12
Speaker 9: Uh.

00:51:12
Speaker 4: The old man of La Chappelle famous Neanderthal remains that was used for a long time to sort of imagine what they looked like. Ah, for a while they thought that this is like the best model of a Neanderthal, and then at some point someone pointed out, this is like an old guy with some serious back injuries and a lot of arthritis from the propotental hunt. He probably had a more upright posture. If you can imagine, like if we discovered some you know, if we’re aliens and we came in. This is the way it was put on one thing. It’s like we’re aliens and we arrived on Earth and we found Joe O’Neills or yeah, or like and we’re like, my god, they’re all seven feet tall. Or if we found like some some decrep it, you know, old person who watched walks all hunched over. It’s just you jump to some conclusions. So that’s one of the the sort of changes in our thinking as we recognize this is probably not the guy we should go on for a benchmark.

00:52:14
Speaker 1: I don’t know if there’s any Melville readers out there, Herman Melville readers, but a neander tall expert is this podcast white whale. We just cannot find one.

00:52:28
Speaker 6: We have a bunch of emails in I found some and they are too busy or have declined. So it’s a whole we have to find the best.

00:52:37
Speaker 1: If I had a zoo keeper swat team person standing here and a Neanderthal person standing here, I would go Neanderthal.

00:52:44
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe don’t get like a bunch in a row like now, like if we if we get multiple ones, like we have one and then the next week we have another Neanderthal guy.

00:52:54
Speaker 1: When I was on Theovon’s show, He’s got a huge show. On Theovon Show, I said, Hey, I’m looking for a Neanderthal expert. So I thought I’ll reach new people because like there’s like the Hosers that listened to our thing and that wasn’t working. So I thought I’ll talk to I’ll talk to the.

00:53:10
Speaker 4: Still nothing that was JK, Phil, can you pull up my assets really quick? Oh yeah, sure, Sorry, I forgot this.

00:53:18
Speaker 1: This is uh this does not use this the whole time.

00:53:21
Speaker 4: Well, I forgot about it just until now. Uh, this is a recreation of a Neanderthal. And then if you go home with that guy, yeah, if you go to the Natural History Museum in Vienna, they have a thing that scans your face and renders you into any number of hominid species. So, Phil, if you’ll continue to my ex side, that’s what I look like as a neanderthal, sort of spread my eyes apart and added a more prominent brow ridge. But you can see my mustache on the bottom is still red.

00:53:52
Speaker 1: I’m yeah, yeah, I’m sure like your bug eye.

00:54:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I can’t.

00:54:03
Speaker 5: Upgrade.

00:54:05
Speaker 3: Didn’t you say there was a like a red hair?

00:54:09
Speaker 2: I believe?

00:54:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. Moving on, Yan is going to bring us now about Yan is going to talk to us now about Catalina Island mule deer eradication program, which we’ve touched on periodically over the years, just as a as a recap, We’re gonna find out where things stand now as a recap. There’s an island off the coast of California called Catalina Island. It has the map, It is hosted, It has hosted a number of non native species over the years. There was a there was a herd of American buffalo that were brought out there for a film. They are there, but the but there is a large population of mule deer on Catalina Island. They were not historically on Catalina Island, but they were historically just in shore for Catalina Island. So brings up this question are they native? Are they not? People want to get rid of them. They don’t want to get rid of them. So over the years, we’ve often mentioned various things about they’re expanding hunting opportunities for mildeer on Catalina Island, they are retracting hunting opportunities for milder on Catalina Island. I’ve never even fully understood it. Giannis is here to tell us where it stands now, because there’s been significant buzz yes.

00:55:32
Speaker 2: To cut to the chase. When we’re all done here in the next five or ten minutes, I will still not fully understand it. No one probably else in this room will fully understand it. Yeah. I signed up to cover this little this little story yesterday, less than twenty four hours ago, and I thought, oh, this will be easy. Well, once I dove in, I see that this is one of those that Steve likes to say makes its own gravy. So I’ll try to give like a oh overview of what’s happened and really just state facts, and then I’m hoping that you guys can sort of start then, you know, asking questions. We might be able to get into the stuff that doesn’t seem so factual about this story. Like Steve said, it’s Catalina Island, it’s about seventy five square miles. Some important things you need to know. It’s eighty eight percent roughly private land, and that land is managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy, which is pretty much an organization, a nonprofit private conservation org that is made by and made up of the people that own the land. Does that make sense, Yeah, the family, the regularly family. Yeah, they definitely have a lot of influence. They basically if you they also own like most of the businesses that operate on that island. I think there’s there’s like four to five thousand people that live on that island. If you live there and work there, you most likely work for them in somewhere or another and rent from them maybe probably, you know. So that in itself gets tricky because people want to protect their livelihoods, right, and then talking and saying things that you know might cause problems. You may or may not want to do that.

00:57:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, you’re living in a company town. You don’t trash the company. Yeah.

00:57:27
Speaker 2: So we have this conservancy, this Calleyan Island Conservancy. They want to restore the island. I think that their motto is basically to like like keep the do the best they can be the best stewards of that land through recreation, habitat management one other thing. But there they want to make it be as those it was before. Kin they’re sort of like what I would call island purists.

00:58:05
Speaker 1: Like restore the native vegetation. So you’re looking at it, you’re looking like what it looked like a long time.

00:58:10
Speaker 2: Ago, exactly before the deer they had, Like you mentioned, all these other animals. Ferl goats were a big one. They were also cattle that were once run on Catalina Island by the Wrigley family, like it was a business.

00:58:28
Speaker 1: Right.

00:58:29
Speaker 2: They’ve kind of gotten rid of all these other grazers and animals, but the thing left are these deer that are still and you can see there’s there’s pictures online where you can see enclosures and you can see the line like often we see in Mexico when we’re hunting coups deer, right where the cattle have been on one side of the fence and they haven’t been on the other side of the fence, and one side looks scorched earth and the other side looks pretty lush and green right and tall grass. You can see images like that online if you look for them.

00:58:58
Speaker 1: It’s where they got deer fenced out or in exactly.

00:59:03
Speaker 2: So the conservancy believes is saying that at this point, like they’ve had a hunting program on the island for twenty some years, and again this hunting program is run through the Rickley family or this Catalina Island Conservancy, Right, they believe that it’s not doing enough to suppress the deer numbers to make a difference in letting the habitat rebound. They want to see more of these sort of lush forbes brush living there and less of that cheat grass, non native landscape going there. And they believe that the deer browsing is causing that. Right, they’re eating the stuff that they’re preferring that stuff, and they’re letting this other stuff grow more of They have for years been trying to get a permit that basically allows them to do massive calling efforts and take out as many as these deer as they want, because again they feel like the hunting program is not doing doing the trick.

01:00:06
Speaker 1: Can I wedge because you’re trying to go just facts? Can I wedge it a not just fact thing? Yeah? Do you mind? Because I know that? Can I be the guy that does not pay. I want to choose my words carefully here. A common refrain among people who have attempted to do a meald Your Hunt on Catalina Island is that they do their best to make it impossible. Who’s today the Conservancy likes to like this is just a viewpoint that is expressed to me, is that they pay lip service to a hunting program, but make the hunting program they set it up to fail. Is a common refrain among friends of mine who’ve tried to participate in the meald Your Hunt is they set it up to not work.

01:01:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s disingenuous, and it’s been all it’s been all over the place as far as who can hunt there, how much they can hunt there. They they’ve had years where it’s only been a couple hundred tags. They’ve had years where it’s been a thousand tags. They’ve had years where only locals can hunt, only Californians can hunt, and then other years where you can’t have non residents coming in and hunting. When they had that, it wasn’t very well publicized, so a lot of people didn’t know, and then those that knew were sort of keeping it hush husts because it’s like oh, we got a good thing going, like we’re not going to tell all of our friends about this great hunting opportunity and it.

01:01:42
Speaker 1: Want to spot burn eradication program, which is expected.

01:01:48
Speaker 2: So kind of where we are now is that they have the Kellean Island Conservancy’ve gotten to a point where they they got this permit to basically do the calling that they want to do and it’s a five year program and they’re like they’re allowed to do it. They to this point. I talked to Charles Whitwam Whitwam this morning. He does he’s the howl for wildlife guy. He’s sort of in a accidental wake, ended up making a documentary called Killing Catalina that’s about this subject and if you want to know why, go and watch it. It’s very educational. You’ll learn a lot about what’s going on there. But he’s the guy I figured that Conan would know without talking to somebody that works for the Catalina Island Conservancy. He’s the guy that’s probably dove into this the deepest. Right at this point, they haven’t killed any deer that he knows of, but they’re like they’re supposed to start sometime.

01:02:51
Speaker 1: Soon, like a helicopter program, not a helicopter program.

01:02:55
Speaker 2: That was the first thing that was put out there. That’s how they got rid of the goats in the past, and there was a lot of public outcry against doing that because they had supposedly, you know, three legged goats, wounded goats walking around and it didn’t.

01:03:11
Speaker 1: Look so they couldn’t sharpshoot them as well.

01:03:14
Speaker 2: Exactly. So now the ideas that you would have been bringing government sharp sharpshooters and and do the killing the locals, and a lot of hunters, conservation orgs and interestingly people like the Humane Society of the of California have bonded.

01:03:36
Speaker 1: Together strange bedfellows, yes, yes, to oppose this.

01:03:41
Speaker 2: And actually, as of I think yesterday, there’s a press release release today that I can just give you the the real high look at it. Here is that a coalition of hunting, conservation, SPORTSMS advacy organizations follow the lawsuit challenging the California Department official while let approval of a plan to exterminate the up to two thousand mule deer on Catalina Island. So like Spari Club International is a part of that, A bunch of California’s you know smaller orgs are there? How for wildlife? Can I ask it?

01:04:15
Speaker 8: Like, Yeah, what it’s obvious why someone like group like the Humane Society would be against it? What are are these hunting groups against it because they’re about to lose hunting opportunity?

01:04:28
Speaker 2: Like what are they?

01:04:31
Speaker 5: Like?

01:04:31
Speaker 2: What it I think that they’re against it because and from what I gather is because it’s a it’s a in their minds, it’s a bad way to manage wildlife. And mostly because they didn’t go through the proper channels process these steps to get this permit. Some stuff was fast tracked. There was like a bill introduced last year that got through and Lo and Behold, sponsor of this bill are related and interconnected with this Calalian Island Conservancy, and so some things happened to help make this permit kind of smooth right through, which from what I research is that they’ve been trying to get this permit for fifteen years in California Department Fishing Wildlife has been like, no, you guys don’t have the science to prove that you guys need to be doing this, because that’s where it gets tricky is that they basically have a private island they control it, but they don’t control the animals, sure, because the animals are owned by the staple California.

01:05:39
Speaker 3: How do the locals feel about the deer?

01:05:41
Speaker 1: They and what by locals, what do you mean though, Well, there’s people that live on the island, right, Yeah, but they live on the property of the people that want to kill the deer.

01:05:50
Speaker 2: Sure, but interestingly, yeah, they’re opposed to the killing of the.

01:05:56
Speaker 1: People that are renting from the family that owns the thing.

01:05:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s so it is.

01:06:03
Speaker 6: Of about four thousand.

01:06:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there’s there’s two of them for each dear.

01:06:08
Speaker 2: They actually passed in the last year. I don’t know if you’d call it legislation or a zoning thing that, but basically within the town of Avalon, which must be like incorporated and so that it’s been there, Yeah, it’s it’s the other twenty percent of the island that isn’t controlled by Callian Isron Conservancy. They basically passed a law where you cannot shoot or discharge firearms any within those limits. And of course that is where most of these deer live or that’s where all the people are.

01:06:40
Speaker 1: Though, Like when you come in there, it’s like a beautiful little bay and a port. Yeah, it’s beautiful, real like real like walk around, get an ice cream cone kind of vibe.

01:06:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they they made it so that they’re not going to be able to kill every single deer off the island because it’s basically the ones now that are in town cannot be eradicated.

01:07:01
Speaker 1: Has anyone Are there any real studs? I’m not talking about the townspeople. Are there any studs on this island or the danks?

01:07:07
Speaker 2: You know, just a few images that I saw, nothing that would fall fall into like nice Colorado mule.

01:07:13
Speaker 3: I looked in, but it’s not like a destination mule.

01:07:16
Speaker 1: Dudes aren’t like it’s not like Anelope Island.

01:07:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing like that.

01:07:21
Speaker 1: No, no, here, I mean, I’m gonna stay real obvious on this one. It brings up an interesting question of how far from the native source do you need to be where it becomes like irrefutably an exotic mm hmm. So like take something like nil Ghai in South Texas, right the Indian Like I think I think they’re predominantly from like the Indian subcontinent. Am I right about that? Yeah? No, no, no, yeah, I think so to Texas when I look at it, when I spin the old Globe. I’m like, that is a non native from way far away, Like that has nothing. Yeah, that has nothing to do with that, do you know what I mean? Nothing to do with that. That’s its own little thing. Their fate, the fate of the nil guy in South Texas is not related to sort of like the fate of Nilghai as a wild species in general. When you get to a situation like this where you can look and see, you can look and see where they’re from.

01:08:38
Speaker 5: It’s twenty two miles from Los Angeles, it’s the Catalina Island.

01:08:41
Speaker 1: You can look and see where they’re native.

01:08:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wouldn’t be impossible for a deer to make that swim.

01:08:49
Speaker 8: Oh look at Southeast Alaska. You see those blacktails swimming around.

01:08:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it’s like it does bring up interesting question. I’d be like, Okay, they came in with people by dude, it’s just right. Their native grange is like right there. You can’t rule out that one hasn’t made the swim.

01:09:08
Speaker 8: But it is an island, which, like island ecosystems, operate differently than a mainland.

01:09:16
Speaker 1: I’d like to refer I’d like to refer listeners to I can’t remember the name of it. David Kwalman’s book An Island Biogeography, which explains all this kind of stuff, why islands are so special, why do mammals shrink and lizards get huge, all that kind of stuff on islands. I don’t know, man, I’m a real fence sitter on this one. It’s kind of on the side of them. Here’s why I’m on the side of the mule deer. I don’t know. Go ahead, I don’t know.

01:09:45
Speaker 2: Something else, just to PLoP in there. Right there’s this buffalo herd. I think the highest number I ever got was like up to sixteen hundred or something like that. It’s been there roughly the same amount of time as.

01:09:57
Speaker 1: These mule deers came in to film a movie.

01:09:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, right now, approximately one hundred there.

01:10:02
Speaker 1: Okay.

01:10:04
Speaker 2: They think there’s roughly two thousand of these deer, or at least that’s what the Callian Island Conservancy, the outfit are, and a lot of the locals and people that have hunted there. I think there’s a lot less than two thousand deer.

01:10:14
Speaker 1: Could someone do the math if you go how many how many buffalo one hundred? We’ll say it, so one hundred at let’s say twelve hundred pounds, and how many deer two thousand, two thousand at let’s say one hundred and twenty pounds. Oh wait, one hundred at what one hundred at twelve hundred. Someone’s gonna write into correction about this.

01:10:40
Speaker 4: I’m going to say we’re getting on Bang’s ground.

01:10:43
Speaker 1: Here one hundred at twelve hundred.

01:10:45
Speaker 8: Especially since buffalo are grazers and er uh yeah, mule were are browsers.

01:10:50
Speaker 5: With those numbers, would be one hundred twenty thousand pounds of biomass for the bison versus two hundred and forty thousand for the mule deer.

01:11:00
Speaker 1: Mule deer’s double twice as much bio mass and mule deer. Okay, going by those numbers, correction, I don’t think that’s going to get corrected.

01:11:09
Speaker 2: The buffalo are just a little less sort of iconic of the island than the sorry a little bit more than the deer. The deer are like very much a part of it. Locals love them, people love to go there and see them. But the buffalo are just a little bit cooler. There’s you know, murals of buffalo, there’s weather veins of buffalo, like that’s it’s very much a part.

01:11:35
Speaker 1: Of them when I went. When I went there, it was for this reason to check the buffalo, but when I’m not writing about it. But I went there to write about it, but I never got to it.

01:11:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, did I was I researching us going to do a hunt there at some point. But anyways, they’ve all been sterilized. So you would think that you couldn’t keep these buffalo going, right, or they wouldn’t if they’re all sterilized and they’re not going to reproduce, they’re going to blink out. They’re eventually going to blink out.

01:12:07
Speaker 1: We’re not gonna sterilize two thousand deer.

01:12:10
Speaker 2: When that question was posed to the main scientists of the conservancy, she had a very, uh, lackluster, vague answer as to what’s going to happen to those bison where it just at that moment, you really feel like she’s a mouthpiece for this other, you know, thing that’s going on. She’s not necessarily in control because if you’re going to take out two thousand deer, take out the hunter bison too, right, and just like don’t have any of that kind of grazing going on on the landscape, right, But because the locals and the tourists and everything, there’s even that much more you know, probably comes down to money and you know, attached to it. They’re like, well, maybe we’ll keep them around kind of a little bit. Now, we’re not gonna get rid of them completely. Well, like I said, it’s just it’s just thick with uh with sort of all these just like little ideas of what’s going on. Who’s thinking?

01:13:17
Speaker 9: What?

01:13:17
Speaker 2: Why are they talk about.

01:13:19
Speaker 8: What they’re gonna do, Like they’re just gonna let the deer lay after they like, they’re not gonna get used.

01:13:24
Speaker 2: No, yeah, there’s no plan for it. It’s not like they’re going to donate at all to a food bank.

01:13:30
Speaker 1: So crystal ballet for me, based on your you’re based on your twenty four hours of NonStop research, ye all night, Crystal ballet for me if you had to take just if we’re gonna go, if we’re gonna go to a prediction market thing and make a bet. Yeah, And I said, and in five years, uh, you know, in five years, Catalina Island will have no meal deer Like whatever, how are you gonna bet on it?

01:13:57
Speaker 2: I think that they will have mule. I think the main thing that’s like a big sticking point to anybody that sort of tries to figure the story out is that it looks like they don’t actually have a good survey of how many deer on the island. Some people are like there’s five hundred. Some people are saying there’s twenty two hundred. No one really knows, and so you can’t really go anywhere. You can’t extrapolate from there if you don’t know exactly how many deer on this island, right and you think they can be able to figure that out. I’m imagining that because it’s getting so much press that this lawsuit was filed, the California Divisional Wildlife is going to Fish and Game whatever they call themselves.

01:14:35
Speaker 1: They’re gonna walk back.

01:14:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, they’re gonna walk back that permit and gonna say, hey, hold on, we need to do this the right way. We’re like, we’re here to manage wildlife. Let’s do it the right way. And so I think that it’s probably gonna come back to a private lands management permit, which is what they’re operating under now. And I had to have a hunting program.

01:14:54
Speaker 1: What they need to do is they need to go get take one of them big jets with a lot of seats in it. Go to Kasanovia, Wisconsin. Put everybody from Casanova, Wisconsin on that jet, and fly him out to Catalina for a big mooch, A big old I’m talking of big mooch.

01:15:18
Speaker 4: I feel like lemmings getting pushed it out.

01:15:21
Speaker 3: They’d all just run into town where they’re saved.

01:15:23
Speaker 1: Doug’s in charge. Doug Durant gets a map of the island, he gets his laser pointer. You sit here, you sit here, at ten, you do this. At ten twenty two, you get out of your blind.

01:15:37
Speaker 6: And do this.

01:15:39
Speaker 1: Big mooch sounds like fun, a little whittle him down. But here’s my final take on it. Not that it matters. My final take on it is since like a thing I would factor in. You have so many areas you can point to where mule deer are not doing good. The island is so close to native meal deer range. I would take these two things and I would say, we have a lot of areas where mildeer are not doing good. This is sort of like honorary native meal deer range. Because it’s so close. It’s a bright spot for meal deer. They’re doing well. There, it’s more valuable to have it’s more valuable to have reassurance about the long term ability of meal deer. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe it could be a potential source location for future reintroductions. I don’t know. If I was emperor of the planet, I would say, lower the numbers through greater public hunting opportunities, get lower the numbers down. But let’s set aside talk of eradication.

01:16:47
Speaker 8: It’s also a population that’s more than likely pretty safe from CWD.

01:16:53
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, if they were careful.

01:16:59
Speaker 2: What if I said it came at the cost of losing several you know, in native endemic species that only are found what are the species floral species that are only found on that island and.

01:17:10
Speaker 1: They’re still there after one hundred years of grazing. Yeah, and have they done? Is everything they could do to uh recede? And like I’d had to know more, I’m just spitballing here. Yeah, we got to move on.

01:17:24
Speaker 2: I’m just saying if I’m just throwing that in there, like, would you still say, hey, we really need this little little micro No, I.

01:17:35
Speaker 1: Would factor that in if there was a chance that there was an endemic plant species that was going to blink out and go extinct. And by and by having no meal deer, I knew that I could save that endemic plant species. And it was that binary that would make my decision much more complicated, and I would probably tip toward the endemic plant species. Keep an eye on the story for us, you honest.

01:17:57
Speaker 2: I will. There’ll be plenty.

01:18:04
Speaker 1: Y’all would win a pair of boots.

01:18:06
Speaker 5: I haven’t got to go yet.

01:18:07
Speaker 4: Well, you only, I’m the only point of comparison you have, So I’m trying to personally.

01:18:12
Speaker 1: Well, you know who’s gonna be out, bro what you’re gonna We’re gonna have to hold the Coloradin’s can’t embarrass themselves anymore until they did. Story.

01:18:20
Speaker 3: We running out of town.

01:18:20
Speaker 1: We’re gonna punt over dispenser for Rattlesnake Round Up Roundup This.

01:18:27
Speaker 5: Weekend, March thirteenth through the fifteenth is the sixty eighth annual World’s largest Rattlesnake Round Up in seat Sweetwater, Texas. It’s been going on since nineteen fifty eight. Not even COVID stopped them from having a couple of their festivals.

01:18:44
Speaker 1: That’s great.

01:18:44
Speaker 5: There’s a parade, a carnival, a gun and coin show, dance, guided rattlesnake hunts that you can sign up for. Those cost seventy five dollars to go catch one cooking competition with categories such as brisket, ribs, chili beans, Bloody Mary’s, and of course rattlesnake. But the big attraction is the rattlesnake hunting contest and hunters they’ll spend weeks or months catching rattlesnakes that will then get entered into the content.

01:19:11
Speaker 1: You can stock them up ahead of time far in advance the fishing.

01:19:16
Speaker 5: No, it’s it’s unclear to me. It seems as though you need to keep them alive to enter that, but I couldn’t confirm that with anything. But you need to keep these snakes alive.

01:19:25
Speaker 8: Are they managed in any way like they are states rattlesnakes, like there’s a limit, they’re managed as some kind of like.

01:19:32
Speaker 5: They tell your game species on the website. You need to have a permit from the State of Texas whatever you know, like a small game permit whatever their equivalent is, your collection permit of some sort uh. And and for the first three thousand pounds of rattlesnakes brought in the Sweetwater jc’s will pay twenty dollars per pound for those rattlesnakes.

01:19:52
Speaker 1: What do they want them for?

01:19:54
Speaker 5: We’ll get to it, we’ll get to it. But anyways, twenty dollars a pound like that. It was five dollars per pound in two thousand and six, so that’s a fifteen dollars increase. And if you were doing inflation, that five dollars would be about nine dollars today. They’ve doubled even if you account for inflation, and what they’re paying for the next five thousand pounds, they pay fifteen dollars per pound, and then they stop paying altogether if they have more than eight thousand pounds of rattlesnakes brought in?

01:20:20
Speaker 1: Is that is that the Phils put up a photo? Is that guy so confident in his snake chaps? He’s just standing in among those rattles.

01:20:29
Speaker 5: Seems as though he is there’s there’s rattlesnakes on top of rattlesnakes, and he is within center, and.

01:20:33
Speaker 1: He’s like, my chaps are good.

01:20:35
Speaker 4: Well, it looks like he’s just flicking one off his boot there.

01:20:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, how many difference he should be done there one year.

01:20:40
Speaker 4: No, thank you, it’s just terrible.

01:20:42
Speaker 5: The big snake guy, it is just the western diamondback that you can looks like there’s a different species in there.

01:20:50
Speaker 1: Now.

01:20:51
Speaker 5: First prize. First prize for bringing in the most pounds of snakes is one thousand dollars. The longest snake gets five hundred dollars. All time record is an eighty one and a half inch rattlesnake.

01:21:04
Speaker 1: What’s that come out?

01:21:04
Speaker 3: Two and feet almost seven?

01:21:07
Speaker 5: A little less than correction. Their website has results from the last decade, and from looking at these, it’s clear that there is a Sweetwater rattlesnake hunting goat. Andy Lee has won five of the last nine contests, including in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five.

01:21:27
Speaker 1: That guy on the show, what’s his name? Andy Lee? Can you get him on the show?

01:21:31
Speaker 5: I’ve got some more details for you on Andy. Last year he brought in six hundred and fifty one pounds of rattlesnakes, which beat second place by thirty nine pounds. Here’s some good journalism, Steve. When I googled Andy’s name, I learned that he owns a pest control business in Texas.

01:21:49
Speaker 1: He’s got a hot line. He is double dipping.

01:21:52
Speaker 5: First someone pays him to come a snake from under their porch, and then he goes and enters it. In this context, this.

01:21:58
Speaker 1: Does not dissuade me from wanting them on the show.

01:22:00
Speaker 5: No, I’m with you. But last year, last year, with that winning weight, if he would have entered it in the first three thousand pounds, he would have made fourteen thousand dollars.

01:22:08
Speaker 3: How many snake does it say how many snakes? It does fifty?

01:22:11
Speaker 5: It’s It doesn’t say it’s you. It’s always measured in pounds. On their webs there is right there there there he is. That’s his the business he owns Andy Lee, who’s was his wife. Then they owned the business together. Now Steve asked, what happens to these snakes? They’re registered, then they’re skinned, battered, deep fried and sold at the concession stands.

01:22:30
Speaker 1: You’re not eating up that many snakes. Phil’s got a picture of that.

01:22:35
Speaker 5: They said they’re eating them there.

01:22:37
Speaker 1: They’re going through that whole batch of snakes.

01:22:39
Speaker 5: I don’t know.

01:22:40
Speaker 3: And the skins gone to a separate market.

01:22:42
Speaker 5: It doesn’t say what they do with the skins. Phil’s got a picture of how all them skinning in a line there?

01:22:48
Speaker 1: Look at that?

01:22:48
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, making some very fishing.

01:22:52
Speaker 5: On average, there are four thousand pounds of rattlesnakes brought in each year. The record was set in twenty sixteen when twenty five thousand pounds of diamondbacks were captured. There must have been something with the weather that year that just made a boom of rattlesnakes. Now here’s the most amazing part.

01:23:10
Speaker 1: I think.

01:23:10
Speaker 5: I found a quote from Texas A and M in two thousand and six that said they estimate the roundup captures one percent of the state’s entire western diamondback population every year, every year.

01:23:22
Speaker 1: But they have I wonder have you Have you encountered what sort of harvest rate, like a state would have deer harvest, and they’re gonna kill ten percent, eleven percent, twelve percent of the state’s deer. So I don’t know about the fecundity of rattlesnakes, but I’m guessing one percent as well within recovery.

01:23:41
Speaker 5: I imagine if this is the world’s largest version of this and it still exists, then yeah, they’re not worried about hurting the western diamondback population. In Texas if it continues on now it’s very popular in the community. They expect twenty five thousand visitors this year. Again, it’s this weekend that pumps an eight million dollars to the local economy. So go check it out if you live in Central Texas.

01:24:02
Speaker 3: What’s up with the bloody handprints.

01:24:04
Speaker 4: On the wall?

01:24:05
Speaker 1: Well, I think they’re taking them hands that are all bloody and pressing them on that wall.

01:24:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I get that part. Interesting.

01:24:12
Speaker 4: It’s amazing, beautiful y.

01:24:14
Speaker 1: It’s like little cave paintings. Yeah, oh yeah, I’ll say it.

01:24:18
Speaker 5: Sixty eighth annual World’s Largest Rattlesnake Round Up Sweetwater, Texas Central. Excellent reporting, thank you they did best or now.

01:24:29
Speaker 1: No, I think it’s I mean, there the quality of the reporting delivery, but it just didn’t make as much gravy. Okay, I’m still third. It’s what what is it when you just don’t even get mentioned, like pictures at the at the Olympics, you got the gold, silver, and bronze, you know, but they don’t even let a guy get on the You.

01:24:56
Speaker 3: Got to compete.

01:24:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, Randal, I’m just joking, man. I’ll thought I thought you did a great job. Maybe I could tilt the scales a little more. So.

01:25:03
Speaker 5: Back to the Trump America the beautiful card, the Center of Biological what is it, the Center for Biological.

01:25:10
Speaker 1: Diversity, anti hunting organization.

01:25:12
Speaker 5: They are suing him for doing that. They started that lawsuit in December. I reached out to them for an update on the lawsuits.

01:25:19
Speaker 3: I was going to talk about those folks in my Their update is.

01:25:23
Speaker 5: They don’t have an update yet, but they’re working on it behind the scenes, so we don’t know what the fate of By the time they wrap it up, this card will no longer even be good.

01:25:32
Speaker 1: So should they do a lot of postures understood a.

01:25:40
Speaker 2: Right?

01:25:40
Speaker 5: But what what would say best case scenario for them happens and they win this lawsuit against the Trump administration, then we’re going to reissue I don’t know, a thousand cards.

01:25:50
Speaker 4: Well maybe someone who chooses to buy their pass in December of this year.

01:25:54
Speaker 1: They have a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals esque Wing Center for Biologically. They use some of the same type of people to think up campaigns that they’re like, oh no, no, no, it’s not that we’ll win, it’s just that it will be reported on this is right in their wheelhouse.

01:26:13
Speaker 5: For what they would do is have a lawsuit like this.

01:26:16
Speaker 1: All right, Brody, I’m down real sorry buddy.

01:26:19
Speaker 3: No, but you did say they do things to posture.

01:26:23
Speaker 8: They the Center for Biologic Biological Diversity, like they got something done in Colorado, which is not good.

01:26:32
Speaker 2: Next, well, it’s.

01:26:33
Speaker 1: Not done done.

01:26:34
Speaker 3: It’s not done done.

01:26:35
Speaker 1: But you think it’s going to pass It already passed. No, but you think it’s gonna become law.

01:26:41
Speaker 3: But it already. They’re just in the rule making process now.

01:26:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I thought the rule making process would get so like that it wouldn’t go, or people were thinking it wouldn’t go.

01:26:53
Speaker 3: We’ll see, we’ll report on it next week.

01:27:01
Speaker 1: That one needs time.

01:27:02
Speaker 4: Couldn’t have scripted it any better?

01:27:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one needs time? Yeah, okay, going over for our final story?

01:27:09
Speaker 2: Is our final story?

01:27:12
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, going over for a final story. I heard a very interesting thing recently. My brother Danny up in Alaska has a buddy. My brother Danny works for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He has a colleague who is a he’ll he’ll explain what he does. Well. I was hearing about learning about that one when imports come into the country. Right, there’s a there’s a customs process around processing imports, and and here’s where you would look for like illegal wildlife imports, meaning things you could imagine like someone opens up a crate and they’re like, good lord, it’s full of rhino horns, Like that’s gonna be a problem, right, But there are other things that you might not know about that that customs official look at. And US Fish and Wildlife Service when it comes to wildlife issues, that is there, that is their turf, okay. And I was learning about the thing I had no idea that it even existed, is that people make fake eyelashes out of mink fur. And since it’s a wildlife product, it needs to be imported in a certain way. And I was learning about how wildlife officials will detect find and seese incoming fake eyelashes made of mink, which I feel are being worn by people who have no idea what they’re wearing. Definitely not over to our guests, ready, Phil, Yeah, God, you didn’t see that coming.

01:28:53
Speaker 7: And I thought there’ll be a little bit more to do before we bring him in.

01:28:55
Speaker 2: But hey, he’s here.

01:28:57
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like you know, women and fake eyelashes.

01:29:02
Speaker 4: History of that.

01:29:03
Speaker 1: But that’s okay, Brian Olen. How’s it going.

01:29:09
Speaker 10: O, good morning, Yeah, it’s going well.

01:29:11
Speaker 11: I guess I should have worn some some eyelashes today, so I could have demonstrated that for you, but I didn’t didn’t include that in my morning routine.

01:29:18
Speaker 1: So you’re forgiven. Lay this out for us, like like layout for us, what form these things take, how you know about them, where they come from. Whatever you got for.

01:29:31
Speaker 10: Us, gotcha.

01:29:35
Speaker 11: So yeah, I didn’t know about them. Not surprisingly before I started this job about five years ago. We all know about fake eyelashes, but there is a pre significant quantity of them being made from mink, certainly also made from like silk and other synthetic materials. But they looked like just like a half moon or crescent moon shape, like adhesive strip with individual pieces of mink care I guess just attached or glued on.

01:30:07
Speaker 1: There.

01:30:10
Speaker 11: They’re when you like do some research on them and say that they’re they’re more fluttery looking a little more naturally looking, the the mink hare ones versus the synthetic ones. So there’s there’s some ways you can kind of once you look at five or six hundred of these things, you can kind of tell them tell them apart pretty easily. But the mink care kind of tapers to a point, whereas like the synthetic materials are more like truncated and chopped.

01:30:34
Speaker 10: You can kind of tell that with the naked eye. But so, yeah, we’re inspecting these.

01:30:40
Speaker 11: Kind of you know, it comes and goes in waves, but daily across the US and we’re here in Anchorage, Alaska, so most of our imports are coming from from Southeast Asia. So yeah, we’re we’re looking at air cargo coming in and trying to trying to stop these and make sure they’re imported in the direct manner.

01:31:01
Speaker 1: What would be the correct man or like they’re not like a mink eyelash isn’t necessarily illegal, it’s just the way they’re bringing them in. They’re not declaring them as a wildlife product. Is that the problem?

01:31:14
Speaker 11: Yeah, Yeah, so mink art particularly highly protected. Like you mentioned rhyan o horn. Obviously they’re not in the same level. Most of these are farmed mink, and so they just need to have a few things done. If you’re commercially importing, you got to have an import permit from US and then yeah, you have to declare every shipment as it arrives, declare it to the genus and species, so we know what, oh what, what animal you’re using and the quantity. So that’s that’s the biggest like violation for the mink eyelashes. Is there just failing to declare or failure to obtain a license.

01:31:55
Speaker 6: Uh?

01:31:55
Speaker 1: So do this for people. You told me how this works. But let’s say someone’s sitting that home right now and they’re just curious if they’re fake eyelashes are made of mink or not. Tell them the little tests you do to find out what exactly you’re looking at.

01:32:13
Speaker 2: Sure.

01:32:14
Speaker 11: Yeah, So if you have a pair that maybe took off and you already wore once or twice, you can just take a match and burn part of that and to get a good whiff and see what it smells like.

01:32:27
Speaker 10: And if it smells like burned hair like or like petroleum.

01:32:31
Speaker 11: Plastic, that’ll tell you right off the bat if it’s if it’s a natural product or a synthetic product.

01:32:36
Speaker 1: Huh. How many times if you had to get like you’ve been there five years, how many different times have you encountered mink eyelashes coming into your port?

01:32:52
Speaker 10: Hundreds? Oh yeah, hundreds.

01:32:56
Speaker 11: It’s not every day anymore, but uh that these things kind of come and go in waves. So much of it is driven by like the fashion industry and what’s popular. And I think right now we’re kind of at like a lull at least in our port of what we’re seeing. So maybe there’s some you know, people are starting to realize that they are made of mink and they don’t want that. But it seems like it’s on a downward trend right now. But you know, like ten years ago it was probably tenfold amount of products coming in.

01:33:30
Speaker 1: You know, how fashion becomes self parody, like meaning a thing becomes fashionable and then it just tries to one up itself, right, like like a hole in your jeens that’s fashionable, so someone then eventually it’s that the whole front of your jeans is gone or there’s holes from top to bottom because it’s self parodies itself. Are mink eyelashes subtle or are they like you want to see big eyelashes? Check these out? Like, how would you rank a mink eyelash? Oh?

01:34:05
Speaker 11: Yeah, like on flutterly flutteriness, I’d say they’re they’re up there and they amount of flutter they have.

01:34:11
Speaker 1: So it’s an exaggerated eyelash. It’s like a big eyelash.

01:34:15
Speaker 11: Well at times it is, yes, but like there’s so many variations that you’ll see that smaller, more kind of petite ones and ones that are just comically large but got So you could.

01:34:27
Speaker 1: Be and still be wearing mink. You could be classy in mink, or you could be not in mink.

01:34:33
Speaker 10: Sounds like I think you’d be classy.

01:34:35
Speaker 1: Now here’s another question, if you don’t mind adding in on this, are you able to share with us a handful of other wildlife products that you’ve seen show up in your area of jurisdiction over your career there? Are you able to share some other examples of things that you might that your agency might find coming into Port and Anchorage ELASTICA sure.

01:35:02
Speaker 11: A lot of what we see is products we don’t see too many live live animals. A lot of those are you know, they don’t want their live animals to sit on the tarmac when it’s like negative twenty out, I just don’t survive.

01:35:15
Speaker 1: So you’re not a.

01:35:18
Speaker 10: No, not typically, although we just had some yesterday. I can’t talk about those too much.

01:35:23
Speaker 11: But in the past past years, like we had a a viper come in in a pringles can from Southeast Asia and that was that was a Yeah, that was an eye opener. So that’s you know, like one of the more surprising Like, hey, but most of what we see is parts and products, feathers, shells, turtle products, turtle shell products, and occasionally live live animals like birds.

01:35:58
Speaker 4: Has a question, Steve, go ahead, right, we have all those products, how many of those are like banned outright versus how many of those are simply trying to slide in undeclared.

01:36:11
Speaker 11: Yeah, so that’s that’s part of our gig is to facilitate the legal trades. So we’re there to find the real bad stuff, but also you know, help people do it legally. Most you know, like the real bad stuff we don’t see super often, like the rhino horn, the elephant tusks, like we see that stuff, but it’s it’s pretty rare compared to like, oh, you’re importing shell jewelry that has to be declared. So that’s of course more common. The more common the animal, the more common we’re seeing the thing.

01:36:44
Speaker 1: So are you often involved in the work of let’s say someone’s importing shell jewelry, does it fall on your agency to try to determine what is the genus and species, because I imagine it could be like very hard to figure out if it’s polished shell, right, how you’d ever begin to understand like is it, what is it from? You know, where did it come from, and what did they make it with?

01:37:11
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, so it’s it’s upon the importer to declare it to the genus and species level, and they would rely on their exporter quite a bit for that. So it’s not like it’s not our position to determine that, but we do have to spend a lot of time trying to id things because the importers, you know, in illegal cases.

01:37:34
Speaker 10: They don’t want to do that anyway. So we need to be able to do that to know that this might be a protected species or it may not be.

01:37:43
Speaker 1: Meaning someone could someone could try to bring in a thing that could be that they could be declaring it as something permissible, but you’d have the obligation of verifying that it was what they’re saying it is exactly whether that intention a mistake or intentional. It could be a thing that would happen.

01:38:04
Speaker 11: Yeah, I like snake skins. You know there’s there’s protected snakes, and there’s there’s non protected stakes. So if you were wanting to try to sneak something in without permits, you might call it, you know, a water snake versus a ball python.

01:38:18
Speaker 1: Or something understood understood. You know what I didn’t do a good job of when I when I started out, Brian, can you can you tell everybody what your you know, your agency, but also what your specific job title would be, like what is your what is your what is your I don’t know, you know what’s on your badge?

01:38:34
Speaker 10: Yeah?

01:38:34
Speaker 11: Yeah, So I’m a I’m a wildlife inspector. I worked for the Office of Law Enforcement, which is a law enforcement division of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, And so we work at all the ports of entry across.

01:38:47
Speaker 1: The US.

01:38:49
Speaker 11: And uh we combat the legal wildlife trafficking trade. And then like I said, facilitate the legal trade.

01:38:56
Speaker 1: Got it? And then you are you are based within? Are you within the Anchorage Airport? Like where do you Where do you sit right now? Yeah?

01:39:04
Speaker 11: So, uh me and I’m at the Anchorage Airport. We have an international side, so I’m at the office here today. We also have people over at sorting facility for like the air cargo so we get most of our most of our cargoes coming in from Southeast Asia on the on the air side of things. We also have outports that we cover for like the the the highways between Canada and in the US, like alcan Well, we’ll cover that as well.

01:39:34
Speaker 1: Got one last question for you. Say a fellow went over to Africa and he did some hunting, and he lives in Anchorage, and he waits a million years and finally the stuff he got in Africa arrives for him. Do you get to take a peek?

01:39:52
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, just yesterday I was inspecting a shipment from South Africa. So yeah, even non commercial personal ship have to be declared. So they’ll arrive on cargo and we’ll go over there and make sure what they’re declaring is accurate. If there’s permits to collect, they’ll collect those and stamp them and help them fill out paperwork.

01:40:13
Speaker 10: And yeah.

01:40:14
Speaker 11: Yeah, that’s kind of a fun thing of our job is to kind of see that that exotic stuff coming in.

01:40:19
Speaker 1: You know what, I’m realizing he might be a very good trivia mm hmm. Contestant on Wildlife Questions a lot of analogy Wildlife Questions Brian asked, thanks for coming on the show and explaining all that to us. Man, I want to go get me a set of these eyelashes and put them on. We should have done that today.

01:40:39
Speaker 4: I thought about doing that.

01:40:40
Speaker 6: Yeah, there’s some pictures in there.

01:40:42
Speaker 1: I don’t know. All right, thank you very much, officer. Appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. I’m gonna start growing up to people lightening their eyelashes on fire and smelling all right, thank you very much. All Right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining the News Show. Come on next week and you’re gonna hear Brody talk all about a thing that I don’t understand well because I thought it was something different.

01:41:10
Speaker 2: Okay, Brod, these guys were cut out for him.

01:41:14
Speaker 1: I thought the rule making process would prove so impossible that it was like some kind of problem.

01:41:21
Speaker 8: Let’s hope that was that’s what happens. But it’s not officially lie yet. They gotta go through some stuff.

01:41:27
Speaker 3: Butioned.

01:41:31
Speaker 1: Just when you thought Colorado, the animal rights community in Colorado could not embarrass their state anymore, they do next week on the News Show.

01:41:44
Speaker 9: When you out into the sunset, I thought would never stop streaming. I thought I would never stop screaming your name.

01:42:14
Speaker 1: But I ran out of breath.

01:42:18
Speaker 5: So I took in some more, and I started

01:42:24
Speaker 9: To screaming, loud, screaming,