transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Hit it, Phil.

Speaker 2:
[00:03] Boom.

Speaker 1:
[00:04] This week on the news show, we're talking about Senate Republicans giving a big old thumbs up to a toxic copper sulfide mine just outside of the Boundary Waters Wilderness on the Superior National Forest. Oklahoma starts letting deer breeders cut their pet deer loose in the wild, thinking it'll somehow help genetics, despite any reason to think so. Paddlefish anglers in Missouri are practicing catch, mutilate, and release fishing. I just made that up. Spencer's interested in a meteor shower, which is cool. And Steve bitches even more about Colorado's asinine animal rights movement. Plus a lot more joined today by Dr. Randall Williams. Jordan Sillers is here from Blood Trails Podcast and many other things.

Speaker 3:
[00:50] Dr. Jordan Sillers.

Speaker 1:
[00:51] Sorry, Dr. Jordan.

Speaker 4:
[00:51] No, it's fine. I'm on the wrong side of the table.

Speaker 5:
[00:54] It's fine, no, it's fine.

Speaker 3:
[00:55] I'm a big credentialist.

Speaker 1:
[00:56] No, Dr. Jordan Sillers is here.

Speaker 4:
[00:59] Bachelor's degree, Bachelor's degree, Spencer.

Speaker 1:
[01:02] BA, Spencer Neuharth.

Speaker 4:
[01:05] BA, Barangas.

Speaker 1:
[01:06] GED, Yanis Peiris.

Speaker 6:
[01:08] Barely. The BGED.

Speaker 1:
[01:13] BA, Brody Henderson.

Speaker 6:
[01:17] You did a great job reading that intro, but I'm curious as to whether you mistakenly said Steve bitches or you're now referring to yourself as Steve and the third person like that's a thing now.

Speaker 1:
[01:28] No, it's not. Because I was trying to keep with the format.

Speaker 4:
[01:33] Steve's just being a voice of God.

Speaker 1:
[01:35] Yeah, it's like picture that you're at home.

Speaker 3:
[01:37] He dissociates for the introduction.

Speaker 1:
[01:40] I bitch more about Colorado's anti fur ban.

Speaker 6:
[01:44] When you're talking to your wife, you're not like, Steve needs to clean his room.

Speaker 1:
[01:47] No, no, I'm going to bitch about the Colorado's fur ban.

Speaker 6:
[01:53] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[01:54] There's a bunch of just, yeah, I'm just going to go off on it for a while, like an hour.

Speaker 6:
[01:58] I want to hear it.

Speaker 2:
[02:01] Steve and I just returned from Illinois. I just did a roast episode. I was watching the edit and I said that the Montesina State University Bobcats pounded the Illinois's whoever.

Speaker 1:
[02:18] You put the S on there. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[02:20] For whatever reason, growing up, I just said that a lot and it was later in life when I was finally corrected, and it's still just a hard habit to break for me. Anyways, we were in Illinois hunting turkeys with the winners. Actually, not the winner, we hunted with the brothers-in-law of the winner of last year's TRCV turkey hunt.

Speaker 1:
[02:42] He had a baby and couldn't make it.

Speaker 2:
[02:43] Yeah, or his wife was about to have a baby and couldn't be gone, and so he sent his two brothers-in-law, which was very nice of him and I felt like what a great thing for all three of those brothers to be so lucky to marry into that group of people and be like, oh, you're my new brother-in-law and oh, you like to hunt a lot? I mean, not everybody gets that. Anyways, amazing hunt. Quite possibly the best day of Eastern turkey hunting I've experienced. Would you say yours was equally as good?

Speaker 1:
[03:13] We had a hell of a day one day. Very interesting day.

Speaker 2:
[03:16] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[03:17] Very interesting day.

Speaker 2:
[03:18] Lots of birds playing ball, as we like to say. Yeah, made me feel like a real expert turkey caller. Are we going to go into talking about any of the details of the hunting?

Speaker 6:
[03:29] Did you get any of those like 30 pounders?

Speaker 1:
[03:32] No, they weren't that huge.

Speaker 6:
[03:33] No.

Speaker 2:
[03:34] They're big, but they weren't huge. We had a bunch of scales that didn't have batteries in them. And so it's hard to weigh them.

Speaker 1:
[03:41] I felt like I had a lifetime of turkey experiences in one day. Probably the best. You know turkeys like to strut on railroad tracks? So there's this group of turkeys, and this place is like, it's nothing but railroad tracks. It's like railroad tracks, because we're hunting along a valley, and the tracks go down the valley. Trains are a major, major part of hunting here. Turkey strutting on the tracks, and it leads to the question, what do they do when the train comes? So you get all excited thinking a train's going to come, they're going to go flying way off, you know? When the train comes, they step out of the way. I mean, they step out of the way. The train going by, and they're like, like, and listen, they just go down the embankment and stay in there.

Speaker 2:
[04:27] These aren't slow as Montana trains, like the one I deal with almost on a daily basis that you feel like you could just about run next to and grab the ladder and jump on to. The like, I stepped out of the way for a train. And when I was hunting with Andy, we took a video. I mean, that sucker was humming like a solid 60 miles an hour. Just like the cars are just like half a second.

Speaker 6:
[04:52] You know, you know how you've talked about flies seeing a hand coming at them? Maybe the turkeys.

Speaker 1:
[04:57] It's like, yeah, they're so fast. It seems slow to them. A lot of turkey hunting experiences.

Speaker 2:
[05:05] A lot of turkey hunting. Yeah, it was cool. They played ball. But we just want to give everybody a heads up that we're going to have the time period when you can buy raffle tickets for next years, for the 2027 hunt. And I believe we're working on securing the same farm.

Speaker 1:
[05:23] I think that if he's up for it, and he said, let me know if you want to do this again, if that host is up for it, that will be the home.

Speaker 2:
[05:32] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[05:33] Both of the winners got their birds.

Speaker 2:
[05:36] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[05:37] Fairly quickly. They both, my guy got his first ever turkey. My buddy Andy came out and chef for it.

Speaker 2:
[05:47] It was amazing.

Speaker 6:
[05:48] That right there makes it worth it.

Speaker 2:
[05:49] Phenomenal food.

Speaker 1:
[05:51] We had smoked king salmon, mule deer, we had spot prawns from Alaska, we had mule deer kielbasa. Our host one night brought over rib eyes. We had razor clams.

Speaker 2:
[06:07] He did that thing with the, we talked about this before on a show where you velvet the meat with the baking soda. And then he deep fried it and did like a Asian-y kind of a dish. Oh, so good.

Speaker 3:
[06:20] And I wonder if we could sell more tickets to the raffle if it was like you guys and then more of us also come along too.

Speaker 6:
[06:30] Oh, I think so.

Speaker 1:
[06:31] Yeah, but I don't know that it's, it's, I don't know. It's not an infinite turkey spot.

Speaker 6:
[06:38] Did Andy get to hunt?

Speaker 3:
[06:39] Well, that, we should probably.

Speaker 6:
[06:40] Did Andy hunt?

Speaker 1:
[06:41] Andy got to hunt.

Speaker 2:
[06:42] That's good.

Speaker 1:
[06:43] That's, listen.

Speaker 2:
[06:44] I actually.

Speaker 1:
[06:45] You want to hear like a long story.

Speaker 2:
[06:48] But we gotta move on. No, no, because it has a, this is, there's something to be learned from Andy's story. And this is what it is. But I'll tell you that first and then you tell me if we should tell the story. He basically missed a bunch of turkeys and we can just say, say that's it. I can tell you about all the hunts.

Speaker 4:
[07:05] How many is a bunch?

Speaker 2:
[07:07] He missed three different turkeys.

Speaker 1:
[07:09] Are we talking like missed opportunities, missed shots and the missed opportunity? Great. I've been friends with him. I've been friends with him since we were like in school.

Speaker 6:
[07:21] I'm looking forward to hearing his version at the shack this summer.

Speaker 2:
[07:24] He's still in that place of turkey hunting. When that gobbler comes over the ridge and there's his head, and all you can see is his head and you have two seconds, maybe three to kill him. He's not processing all of that fast enough to go, there he is, bang and kill him. He goes, oh, okay, turkey, okay, one more step and then I'll pull it, and then the turkey's gone. But here's the deal, after all of that, we get back, we're rushing, it's the last morning, we got to get to the airport, and I'm like, we got to shoot this gun, because he's shooting my gun, and I'm going to shoot the gun, because I want to see if my gun's off. So I set up a target, 30 yards, pull the trigger, smoke it.

Speaker 6:
[08:03] It's got a red dot on it.

Speaker 2:
[08:04] Yeah, red dot. And so I got this box that I unfolded, so it's super long. I just drew a bunch of black circles on it. And the way I put up against the tree, one is like 30 inches off the ground, and then other black circles like at ground level. I said, all right, sit down and shoot that top circle. He shoots it, the whole pattern's on the bottom circle, like at least two feet low. And I didn't have him repeat it, because he's shooting my TSS ammo at 12 bucks every time he pulls the trigger. And, but the best I can figure, you guys can give me your opinion on this, but I know that with a pistol, when I start missing the target, you know what I'm doing? Is I'm pushing into that gun and I'm missing low, because I'm like anticipating a recoil, so I'm pushing the gun and pushing the barrel down, and that's why you miss low. Because usually like if someone that has a real bad flinch or a jerk, right? They're like pulling the gun left or right, like a righty usually is going to jerk it right, lefty jerks it left, or maybe up a little bit. But I feel like here he was sort of preloading, countering the recoil, counting the recoil, and before he got the trigger to break, his gun was, you know, at 30 yards, he was two feet low.

Speaker 3:
[09:22] So you have him aim two feet above the head of the turkey?

Speaker 2:
[09:25] Well, I mean, had we gone right back out, yeah, we maybe would have had to do that.

Speaker 1:
[09:28] He didn't troubleshoot these misses till after the fact. Yeah, phenomenal show, phenomenal clip.

Speaker 2:
[09:35] I want to wrap it up with this. I feel bad because I think about all the people out there that have had experiences like that. And without diagnosing that, their friends just go, you're a shitty shot, bud. And they believe it and no one like fixes it. And they go through their life being like, oh man, I'm a shitty shot. Maybe they quit hunting or whatever it is. But like...

Speaker 1:
[10:00] Then they're putting a name to the problem.

Speaker 2:
[10:01] Yeah, like it's fixable, right? Like do the old thing where you get your buddy and then he either loads or doesn't load the shotgun for you and then hands it to you and it has you shoot at the target. And then when he gives you one that's empty and you pull the trigger and go, ah, and jump, then you know you got a little bit of a flinch.

Speaker 1:
[10:21] Last thought about Illinois turkey hunting is that one o'clock cutoff. You gotta quit at one. Yeah, it's changes it. It's humane. It's more humane for humans.

Speaker 2:
[10:32] Yeah. Cause you get a nice nap in.

Speaker 6:
[10:35] I used to be against it, but now I think I like it because you just concentrate all your effort in half a day and not worry about the rest.

Speaker 1:
[10:42] No, I don't like it.

Speaker 4:
[10:44] I'll tell you what.

Speaker 1:
[10:45] From the time it gets light to the time it gets dark.

Speaker 2:
[10:48] Yeah. But like you said, often if you're hunting the whole whole day like that, you do come in, you take a little break.

Speaker 1:
[10:54] Start losing your mind.

Speaker 4:
[10:55] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[10:56] Yeah, for sure. You got to use toothpicks to keep your eyelids up.

Speaker 6:
[10:58] Dinner at 10 o'clock at night.

Speaker 1:
[11:00] That's how it's supposed to be.

Speaker 6:
[11:01] Brutal.

Speaker 2:
[11:02] Oh no, we were mad at like 8.39 every night. It was beautiful. Anyway, so keep an eye and an ear out for when we start talking about next year's TRCP Turkey Hunt. It's going to be fun and phenomenal.

Speaker 1:
[11:16] All right, Jordan Sillers, what's new in your neck of the woods there, Jordan?

Speaker 5:
[11:20] Oh man. Well, I'm glad you asked, Steve. Blood Trails Season 2 is out now. First episode is out. We're going to be releasing them every Thursday over the next eight weeks. So if you didn't catch it last season, Blood Trails is our true crime podcast about hunters and anglers. So we cover stories where people outside get in some pretty serious trouble. So we got a pretty interesting lineup this season from all around the country. We have people who were killed, murdered, people who disappeared without a trace. So I hope people will enjoy it and tune in.

Speaker 1:
[12:01] I thought of you today and I was reading an article about a diver that just found a family that had been missing since the 50s.

Speaker 5:
[12:09] Oh, man. In a lake or?

Speaker 1:
[12:11] They went out to cut Christmas tree boughs to make wreaths outside of Portland. And a diver just found their car.

Speaker 5:
[12:21] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[12:22] They had kind of known a little bit about what had happened, because they found a couple of the family members dead in the river, like in 59 or something like that. So, and the car had never turned up. So, one theory was that the car went into the river, but there was like a big manhunt and a big search, and now a diver found the family car and more human remains.

Speaker 5:
[12:50] That's wild.

Speaker 1:
[12:51] Made me think about you.

Speaker 5:
[12:52] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[12:53] Well, isn't that funny that that's how people think about you now?

Speaker 5:
[12:55] I know. I know. You should see my inbox.

Speaker 1:
[12:58] The worst news I read, and I'll think, Jordan Sellers.

Speaker 5:
[13:02] I bet he'd like to hear about this.

Speaker 1:
[13:04] I bet that catches fancy.

Speaker 5:
[13:06] It's great.

Speaker 4:
[13:07] In TV, it's universally accepted that season three of a show is the best. That's the peak. It's like where your characters are established, your storylines are colliding, just the whole thing is matured.

Speaker 3:
[13:19] You haven't had to recycle anything yet?

Speaker 4:
[13:21] Season three is the pinnacle. So as good as Blood Trails is in season two right now, season three. It gets even better.

Speaker 1:
[13:29] I usually feel like by season three on TV shows, I don't watch serial shows because of this reason. I can start smelling them writing it. I can smell them writing it.

Speaker 5:
[13:41] Like they're predictable?

Speaker 1:
[13:43] I can smell them trying to keep it going. Like they're past the original idea.

Speaker 4:
[13:49] Not a whiff of that in Blood Trails, though.

Speaker 1:
[13:51] No, no, it's not a serial drama.

Speaker 4:
[13:52] Yeah. Phil, that's like a thing, right? Oh, for sure.

Speaker 6:
[13:55] I don't necessarily agree. Like, as most a lot of my favorite TV shows, I think their best seasons are like four and five. But but I but I do think season three is that's a pretty good theory.

Speaker 5:
[14:03] I like that.

Speaker 6:
[14:04] That's something to think about, though, for the audience. One case and you do like 20 episodes on one case.

Speaker 5:
[14:10] So we are this summer planning a three or four. We haven't decided yet. Miniseries on one case.

Speaker 1:
[14:17] Really?

Speaker 5:
[14:18] Yeah. Don't go too far.

Speaker 1:
[14:19] Is it about when my fish got stolen?

Speaker 5:
[14:21] You're familiar with it. No, no. We're going to do and we talk to them, actually. These guys who got stuck over in Turks and Caicos because oh yeah, they had ammo in their luggage. We did, but we interviewed them when they were still stuck on the island. So they had to be kind of careful about what they shared and what they didn't. Now they're home, you know, spoiler alert, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[14:43] There's enough there for three episodes.

Speaker 5:
[14:45] Yeah, that doesn't seem possible. I talked to the guy who was in prison over there for eight months. This prison was declared by the UN to be a human rights violation.

Speaker 1:
[14:58] Wow.

Speaker 5:
[14:59] I talked to him for five hours. It's, there's some crazy stories from a Turks and Caicos prison, as you might imagine. So there's plenty there.

Speaker 1:
[15:08] I'll trust your instincts. Your new season is off to a strong start.

Speaker 5:
[15:14] Yes. Episode one is out. It's about a hunter up near Helena, so this neck of the woods, who was murdered.

Speaker 1:
[15:22] Chopped up too.

Speaker 5:
[15:22] Yeah, back in 2011 and his remains were found in two separate locations. So that story is a lot of twists and turns in that one. You think you know what's happening and then you're not expecting what's about to happen.

Speaker 2:
[15:40] Real characters. My daughter and I listened over the course of the last 24 hours and we enjoyed it. It was a good episode.

Speaker 5:
[15:47] Good. Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[15:49] Phil, corrections.

Speaker 6:
[15:50] Corrections.

Speaker 5:
[15:53] Corrections.

Speaker 1:
[15:54] The winner of a correction this week will win a Moltree Edge 3 Pro Trail Camera Plus, and here's the important part, plus a one year subscription. That's what matters.

Speaker 2:
[16:05] Matt, I got mine recently. I didn't even know I could do this. I just need to get better at knowing my products. I got mine rigged up now, the ones that I have, the new ones, where it only takes a picture of a deer or a turkey.

Speaker 1:
[16:17] Yeah. Have you turned off squares yet? That's interesting.

Speaker 2:
[16:21] Oh yeah, yeah. But you can do that with the other ones.

Speaker 6:
[16:23] Trespassers walking around.

Speaker 1:
[16:25] Yeah, what if a chupacabra comes by? Well, what if a Bigfoot comes by?

Speaker 4:
[16:28] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[16:29] That's why I like the feature in theory, but in practice, do you really want to tell your camera if there's something earth-shattering? If there's a setting like deer, turkey, or something crazy.

Speaker 6:
[16:43] Yeah, you could miss one of the coolest things. Like an alligator walks by.

Speaker 1:
[16:46] Yeah, or a chupacabra with an alligator.

Speaker 2:
[16:49] Oh my God. Yeah, I guess I'm taking a chance at missing that.

Speaker 1:
[16:56] Yeah, that is that. Then even how you can turn off squares. There's a grid. If there's areas that are always giving you false trips, like if you got like birds fly by and trip, you can be like, well, I'm going to shut those squares off. But what if a chupacabra comes through those squares?

Speaker 5:
[17:13] Flying chupacabra.

Speaker 2:
[17:15] On the contrary, what if you see Steve walking through there?

Speaker 4:
[17:18] What if like a naked old man walked by? Now Yanni doesn't have to subject himself to seeing that.

Speaker 3:
[17:24] Yeah, that's true. But what if there might be some things you don't want to see? You won't be able to unsee.

Speaker 6:
[17:29] It's like an eldritch horror.

Speaker 1:
[17:30] So the winner of the winner of this week's correction of the week will can sort through these conundrums on their own when they get their camera, whether or not you want to get specific with the integrated AI technology, or whether you want to just see every crazy, naked old man and chupacabra out there. It's up to you. This is one of those ones we got a lot of corrections on the subject of the Savo Maneaters. These two lions that kept eating a bunch of people. So many people, in fact, they shut down construction of a railroad. We looked at a great painting where the lions are eating a dude's foot. That was a great painting. And a lot of people wrote in, they think that the lions, I said 140 people.

Speaker 6:
[18:17] Well, that's what was in the book, the original book.

Speaker 1:
[18:19] It seems like the lions probably ate closer than 40 people, closer to 40 people. There's a couple of little interesting, and again, a correction can be like missing information. Couple of interesting tidbits. When Render Pest came through Africa and started killing, like almost wiped out Cape Buffalo, right? So this is also during the Render Pest epidemic when prey species were in massive decline.

Speaker 6:
[18:45] Do you want to explain Render Pest real quick?

Speaker 2:
[18:47] You should.

Speaker 1:
[18:49] I know it's a cattle disease that a bunch of animals in Africa caught when it came in on cattle. But no, I can't, the show can't go on forever.

Speaker 6:
[19:00] Well, I just, that detail, like I think people would have not understood what was going on.

Speaker 1:
[19:06] A disease came in on cattle and wiped out tons of African wildlife, including what was devastating for Cape Buffalo. So these lions were potentially low on food because of the Render Pest epidemic killing all the wildlife. They probably had some dental injuries, that's supposed. And here's the other thing, is that while they were working on the railroad, and also just because of cultural practices, there were more human corpses out on the landscape in those days than there are today. So a lion could get a taste for eating folks, just from that. It'd be like if we, you don't buy that?

Speaker 6:
[19:48] No, then why wouldn't they just look for corpses? They wouldn't be like, oh, I'm going to go get like a live human. I don't, I'm just not buying, like.

Speaker 1:
[19:55] Sure. All right. Bro's not buying that part. Either way, that's a correction. The meat of the correction being 40, not 140.

Speaker 3:
[20:06] That's fair. And they, I read some of the studies that he sent and they basically are looking, because they have the remains of these lions, they're looking at their hair and bone collagen, and they can look at sort of the chemical signatures of their diet, and they show like, you could see like month by month, how much more of their diet was humans.

Speaker 1:
[20:30] Oh, really?

Speaker 3:
[20:31] Yeah. There's one of the lions said, like in the final months of 1898, one of the lions peaked at roughly 30% of its diet was humans.

Speaker 1:
[20:43] Wow. Okay. I brought up the hunters. I was saying that firearm enthusiast shooters could start a class action lawsuit and sue the government for making suppressors hard to get. And the class action lawsuit would be that the government made us all go deaf. I was just trying this out. I wasn't like, you know, I mean, I wasn't, I hadn't taken steps to initiate this class action lawsuit, but I was musing about the class action lawsuit. An attorney wrote in and he basically is saying good luck with that. Hearing protection is widely available. The possibility of hearing loss is widely documented. You don't have to go shoot your gun. It's kind of your problem. He thinks that this class action lawsuit is doomed to fail.

Speaker 6:
[21:49] Interesting conversation we had earlier in regards to this. One of our employees who is in the military, there was a company that provided hearing protection to everyone. This guy said they all still ended up with hearing damage despite having hearing protection.

Speaker 3:
[22:10] And there was some liability on the part of the manufacturer.

Speaker 6:
[22:14] Despite the fact that hearing protection is widely available, that doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna prevent hearing loss.

Speaker 1:
[22:19] He says, the actual cause of the hearing loss is that we made decisions to fire guns without wearing readily available hearing protection. Since hearing protection is readily available at nearly every sportsman shop, each of us had ample opportunity to prevent hearing loss. I'm not writing this because I oppose the idea. I'm writing this with institutional knowledge of the legal world and would hate to see someone waste their money or time exploring such a farce. Farce. I think it's mean.

Speaker 6:
[22:50] Yeah. When your lawyer tells you.

Speaker 1:
[22:51] And he signs off as an Esquire.

Speaker 6:
[22:53] But then your lawyer says your case is a farce. You're in trouble.

Speaker 4:
[22:57] If you decide to pursue this, though, Steve, you'll have a lot of backers. I don't know if this crossed your desk, but you talking about this went viral on TikTok, got half a million views, 20,000 likes. So people are like, that's Steve Rinella. We could win this thing.

Speaker 1:
[23:13] I do a lot of social media.

Speaker 6:
[23:15] This guy's got a great lawyer name though.

Speaker 1:
[23:17] Yeah, Esquire?

Speaker 6:
[23:18] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[23:18] Dylan T.

Speaker 6:
[23:19] Newkirk, Esquire.

Speaker 3:
[23:22] All righty. Our next correction comes for me. He writes in, I'm a ballastitian who specializes in small caliber internal ballistics. It's a fascinating field.

Speaker 1:
[23:36] Are you just going to seriously just breeze past that he's a ballastitian? Because that's cool.

Speaker 4:
[23:40] I didn't know it was a thing.

Speaker 3:
[23:41] No, it's great. No, that's why I'm reading this. That's why I'm reading his introduction.

Speaker 1:
[23:45] Where I would have gone, I'm a ballastitian.

Speaker 3:
[23:49] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[23:50] Like you want to talk about bona fides.

Speaker 3:
[23:52] And I like his specialty in small caliber internal ballistics.

Speaker 1:
[23:58] The hell's he? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[24:00] Internal ballistics is from the ignition to the muzzle, which is fascinating. He says it's all the truth.

Speaker 1:
[24:08] You think you think he's lying?

Speaker 3:
[24:09] He says it's a fascinating field, which is in general poorly understood by most gun owners.

Speaker 1:
[24:14] His name's Geoff.

Speaker 3:
[24:15] Yeah. I like this guy. He, he, in that episode, when we were discussing suppressors, I sort of offhandedly at the end made a very dry joke that there's someone out there working on quiet gunpowder. And so he wrote in to say that that's impossible. He says the noise generated by a gunshot comes from two things, the rapid expansion of gasses and the supersonic crack of the projectiles that breaks the sound barrier. There really isn't a way to make an inherently quieter chemical propellant as it's the gas expansion and subsequent release of pressure that makes the noise. It's essentially a very high pressure version of popping a balloon. And then he goes on, he goes on to say that even air guns are loud. When you get up to the larger air rifles, the most powerful air guns can do about 6,000 PSI at the chamber. Your average 6.5 Creedmoor has a chamber pressure of 10 times that and two to three times that at the muzzle depending on powder charge, bullet weight, and barrel length. The only way to mitigate this is to use a suppressor to slow down gas expansion. Now you're just letting go of the balloon instead of popping it, which is a great, great illustration. Aside from that, make sure you're using ammunition that gets full powder burn before the bullet exits the tubes, and short barrels, especially on ARs, are notorious for being mini flashbangs, as the last of the powder charge is burned externally. It really doesn't make it quieter, but it does cut down on how concussive the shot is, and micro TBI's are cumulative.

Speaker 2:
[25:47] So what's a TBI?

Speaker 3:
[25:48] Traumatic brain injury. Oh, there's the study. There was a story in The Times like a couple of months ago about how much brain damage is done, like shooting pistols indoors. And it was, I mean, I don't remember any details.

Speaker 6:
[26:05] Like from the concussion.

Speaker 3:
[26:06] Yeah, just like micro concussions hitting you all the time.

Speaker 1:
[26:09] See, I don't do that. That was smart.

Speaker 3:
[26:11] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[26:13] It seems like this guy's telling you you made a really bad joke.

Speaker 1:
[26:16] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[26:17] Yeah, I know. I rewatched it to make sure that I, you did the delivery.

Speaker 1:
[26:23] Randall sent it. Well, it's just like, let's go to the boat.

Speaker 3:
[26:27] I was like, how bad was my delivery that that wasn't understood as a joke? But nonetheless, I'm glad this guy wrote in because I like his style.

Speaker 1:
[26:34] Well, I'm voting for him because I like it that he's a ballistician.

Speaker 3:
[26:38] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[26:38] I like that he's an old man who still puts two spaces between period and capitalized.

Speaker 6:
[26:43] That's great. I'm glad you caught that, Spencer.

Speaker 4:
[26:45] I always appreciate seeing that because you know that you can vote for him for that reason. No, I'm just saying I like that. This person learned to type on a typewriter.

Speaker 5:
[26:53] I'm not voting him for that reason.

Speaker 2:
[26:55] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[26:56] Speak and tell us to do that.

Speaker 4:
[26:58] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[26:59] Corrections. The vote. Savile man eaters. Three votes.

Speaker 4:
[27:06] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[27:09] Class action lawsuit. Not going to work is what is zero votes, zero votes. Randall being dumb.

Speaker 3:
[27:18] Randall's delivery.

Speaker 2:
[27:19] Clear winner.

Speaker 1:
[27:22] Clear winner.

Speaker 3:
[27:24] At first when I read, because his subject line is low volume powder. And I was like, man, this is going to be really interesting. I thought he was talking about like the volume of powder in a case.

Speaker 1:
[27:33] Oh, gosh.

Speaker 3:
[27:33] And then I realized it was about my bad joke.

Speaker 1:
[27:35] Yeah. Enjoy your camera and your subscription. Multi-camera and subscription. Thank you very much. A couple of listener emails. Guy wrote in that his wife makes him go to Greek Orthodox. See, this is terrible, but I'm going to read it anyways. He's Roman Catholic and he says, when we go to my church, you know, church service is 45 minutes.

Speaker 4:
[28:04] He's home for kickoff.

Speaker 1:
[28:05] He says his wife is Greek Orthodox. And he says they get a little carried away. He's been listening to the podcast in there because he's got these new hearing aids that Bluetooth in, so no one knows what he's doing. They don't even know that he, they don't think he's listening to anything. It's piping in on his hearing aids. But he says now and then he's in there smirking.

Speaker 6:
[28:26] You can't say this guy's name or his wife's going to find out.

Speaker 2:
[28:29] No, no, no, he told his wife.

Speaker 6:
[28:31] Oh, he told her.

Speaker 1:
[28:32] He might have given it away. Don't say his name, because then the preacher might get it.

Speaker 2:
[28:35] No, he confessed to his wife since it was obvious I had no painful expressions on my face. It was smiling from time to time.

Speaker 6:
[28:42] We don't want to get into trouble at church.

Speaker 2:
[28:44] No, no, that's definitely not.

Speaker 1:
[28:45] Two-hour service, two-hour service to that church.

Speaker 4:
[28:48] He felt like he needed to have more painful expressions. That's what he's saying. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[28:53] No, it didn't have his usual scowl.

Speaker 6:
[28:56] Be even worse if it was a two-hour service with a gobbler right outside the church.

Speaker 1:
[29:00] I know. And then you couldn't hunt at Mississippi because it'd be against the law, as covered on the new show. Another guy wrote in, just to make it real quick, he's been struggling with what to do with his remains. I've talked about that I would like my remains hauled out in the mountains where they could be eaten by a bear. He had an idea, which is very interesting, because the problem with my idea is then you've got to task your family members with like carrying your carcass around.

Speaker 3:
[29:23] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[29:23] And then probably becoming a future episode of Blood Trails.

Speaker 5:
[29:26] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[29:27] His idea, you just get cremated, and then mix it in and put it at a black bear bait station. So that way you can be eaten by bears very conveniently.

Speaker 2:
[29:40] Yeah. I wonder if you went the green burial route, and you went through that paperwork or whatever, and then instead of doing the burial, you just ended up at the bait station kind of hole like you want to be, like if that would pass.

Speaker 1:
[29:56] But if you did that and then a dude killed a bear at that bait station, and then he learned he ate you, he's going to be not happy. Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[30:05] That's okay.

Speaker 1:
[30:06] Yeah. Whatever.

Speaker 4:
[30:08] They have little trees you can buy where you add like the compost to it. They're supposed to be cremated remains. So then you're like growing that tree, and then someone could put a tree stand in it someday.

Speaker 1:
[30:18] That's a great idea.

Speaker 4:
[30:19] It's an option.

Speaker 1:
[30:20] Lots of things to do with your body.

Speaker 5:
[30:22] I talked to a guy up in Maine, a canine handler for Search and Rescue. He told me that their dogs can smell, they smelled some like bear scat or coyote scat, and they signaled on it because they could smell the human that they'd eaten. So it had gone through the digestive tract, and the dogs could still smell it in that scat, which I thought was pretty impressive.

Speaker 1:
[30:49] Was that Covered in Blood Trails?

Speaker 5:
[30:50] Episode 2 coming out this Thursday.

Speaker 1:
[30:52] Oh, God, that's gracious.

Speaker 3:
[30:53] This guy's a pro. There you go.

Speaker 2:
[30:55] Oh, man.

Speaker 1:
[30:56] Slipped in that.

Speaker 2:
[30:56] That's gonna be good. But you know what? You guys are just commenting on how good his idea is. He has a question at the end of his email. His question is that he knows-

Speaker 1:
[31:07] I was so blown away by the idea.

Speaker 2:
[31:08] He knows that there's gonna be other critters coming in there to eat his remains like raccoons, and he doesn't like raccoons for some reason, and so he wants to know how to keep raccoons and other pests away from the bear bay and only let the bears eat it.

Speaker 1:
[31:24] I don't know.

Speaker 6:
[31:26] Hanging that stuff up, we're hanging it in a way that you can't-

Speaker 2:
[31:31] I say you shouldn't be against the raccoons. They're critters too. Let them eat some of you and spread you around the woods a little bit. You know, like what's the problem with the coons?

Speaker 1:
[31:42] Or give it to Clay and have Clay put it and you'll have eight bears eating it.

Speaker 3:
[31:47] Yeah, but what happens if the raccoons really get after it? And you're like, clean it out. You're like, oh, what was the deal with so-and-so? He's like, oh, well, his final wish was to be eaten by bears. And then you're like, well, he was mostly eaten by raccoons. But one bear did come in, you know, take some of the romance out of it.

Speaker 1:
[32:04] I think that if you go a thin, like you get your body back and you put it, the ashes at a low ratio or ground up, however you do it, if you can get it ground up and mix it in a lot and just make sure you got a lot of bait, everything's going to partake. You're going to have ravens flying around with you in them, crows flying around with you in them.

Speaker 6:
[32:30] Which is pretty romantic if you're just going everywhere.

Speaker 1:
[32:33] Yeah, you're all mesopredators, big. Yeah, it's great. Etiquette. Thank you.

Speaker 6:
[32:45] Okay. Turkey hunting. I exclusively hunt public land in Virginia, and a lot of the national forests out here butt right up against private. Owned by people who build little hunting cabins. Last spring I found a great spot that butted up against private. There's clearly marked public access. I'm not on anyone else's land. It's right off the main road. Went in to hunt it opening morning, got there really early. Not long before gobbling time, another truck pulled in. So he must have still been like out getting ready in the parking lot or whatever. It was an old timer. He was friendly, but said he owned the adjacent private land, and he parks his truck there during the season to deter other hunters from.

Speaker 1:
[33:29] Sure. Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[33:30] Yes. His friend picks him up and takes him somewhere else.

Speaker 1:
[33:34] Just to help people connect to the dots here. He's creating the appearance that someone's already there.

Speaker 6:
[33:40] This is not something that I've never heard of before.

Speaker 1:
[33:43] Yeah, this old man did not invent this.

Speaker 2:
[33:44] Oh, sure. Someone in this room has done this.

Speaker 6:
[33:46] Yes, maybe. He has to exchange numbers and said, would love to know if you get one. I hunted it anyways that day and killed a nice gobbler. Now, after him telling me he's trying to keep people out of there, I wasn't really keen on letting him know that I got one. A year later, the day before opening day this year, after having not heard from this guy in over a year, wouldn't know him from Adam, he texts me asking where I'm going in the morning. Not as though he'd like to tag along, but just wants to know where I'm going. I know I'm not entitled to let him know that I'm hunting the land adjacent to his. I get sharing info, so we're both not pulling up to hunt the same spot, but he's not buying that that's where this guy is going with it. He's just trying to keep tabs on this guy. I don't appreciate another hunter trying to keep track of where I'm going. I don't really trust him either, since he's trying to keep people out of public land. I'm kind of at a loss what to do. Should I just not respond? Should I tell him to go kick rocks? Should I just tell him the general area I'm going to? I would not respond. Well, maybe you should respond, because you never know when you might need to get on that guy's land to like retrieve a bird or who knows? You could get in a pickle and need his help or something. I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[35:10] I just text him two days later and say, sorry, didn't see this.

Speaker 6:
[35:14] Got one.

Speaker 3:
[35:14] Got one. And then send him a smiling picture of you in a different place.

Speaker 6:
[35:20] It's a tough one.

Speaker 1:
[35:21] Yeah, it's a tough one.

Speaker 2:
[35:22] It's not tough. There's so many right answers. It's really comes down to how he's perceiving the whole situation.

Speaker 1:
[35:27] I'm not saying like how to be, I'm not saying how to be friendly. I'm saying how would you handle like, like, would you share with him? You know, would you share with them to say, you know, I'm not sure where I'm going to be hunting. I've been thinking though, that the move of trying to create the feeling that someone else is there doesn't sit well with me.

Speaker 6:
[35:48] Right.

Speaker 2:
[35:49] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[35:50] Which is like, that's the wrong thing that you need to say.

Speaker 2:
[35:54] That's the wrong thing, right?

Speaker 6:
[35:55] The thing is, is if you go like aggro on the guy, he's probably going to come back at you aggro and like, sees your truck parked there and then he's got a pro, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2:
[36:05] Oh, I wasn't going to suggest you go aggro at all. I would say use it to your advantage and just become buddies with him and be like, oh, because you're doing this and I'm in on it. Like, I sort of, you know, I'm in on the thing.

Speaker 1:
[36:21] But if you say, hey partner, I'm hunting back in our little spot, what can we do to make sure no one else does? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[36:30] Would you mind parking the truck in that spot again?

Speaker 1:
[36:35] That's what you do.

Speaker 2:
[36:37] I'm just saying that there's options, you know?

Speaker 6:
[36:41] But like the detail about this guy using a vehicle to keep people out of a spot isn't...

Speaker 1:
[36:47] But he's not keeping them out.

Speaker 2:
[36:49] No, not at all.

Speaker 1:
[36:50] It's subterfuge. It's subterfuge.

Speaker 6:
[36:52] It's trying to persuade them not to go in there.

Speaker 2:
[36:57] For sure. And I mean, I've hunted spots like that. And when there's a truck already there, you're not going to stop. You're going to go to the next pull-off.

Speaker 1:
[37:06] There's a mindset, like for instance, you know, I have friends in Alaska that advocate on having a very brightly colored tent. They like a bright colored tent. Why? They don't want to be hidden. They want people to be like, ah, damn it. There's dudes down there hunting. Right?

Speaker 6:
[37:29] From the air, you can see.

Speaker 1:
[37:31] So if they said, well, what I do is I set brightly colored tents all over the place. They'll be like, is it wrong? Or is it just a, you know?

Speaker 6:
[37:43] A dick move.

Speaker 1:
[37:44] Yeah, or just a move, a move. Like it's parking. Like he's not, if he was putting up a sign that says no trespassing, that's flat out immoral. That's immoral.

Speaker 2:
[37:53] And illegal, I think in a lot of places.

Speaker 1:
[37:56] Parking a car to create the illusion of pressure. I don't know that it's immoral. It's just like it's a little move. It's a move. I don't think it's immoral.

Speaker 6:
[38:10] I think it is. I think there's a there's a there's a Spencer.

Speaker 1:
[38:16] I don't I'm not saying I like it. I just don't think it's him.

Speaker 6:
[38:18] He's going through a lot. He's having his buddy pick him up. Like he's going through some steps.

Speaker 1:
[38:23] What do you think, Spencer?

Speaker 4:
[38:23] I wouldn't text this guy specifics. Is it immoral?

Speaker 1:
[38:27] Is the neighbor being immoral?

Speaker 4:
[38:28] It wouldn't bother me that much. It's just like a little game he's playing. And he thinks it's going to give him a 10% chance more of killing something. I'm OK with it.

Speaker 3:
[38:37] But he's not. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but he's not hunting that area. He's just trying to keep people away from the area.

Speaker 5:
[38:44] Wouldn't it's because he's not hunting the area. That's why it's a problem.

Speaker 1:
[38:48] If he was hunting, what's he supposed to do with his car if he's hunting the area?

Speaker 6:
[38:52] He's trying to create a buffer between.

Speaker 3:
[38:54] I understand that. But what Spencer is saying is this guy's doing it. What's the purpose of this guy's game? It's not to improve his odds. It's just to keep people out of it.

Speaker 1:
[39:03] Yes, because he has the private land right there.

Speaker 2:
[39:06] That day he didn't hunt it.

Speaker 1:
[39:08] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[39:08] But we don't know what happens the rest of the season. Maybe he's got family coming in a week and he wants to hunt those birds that live behind his place.

Speaker 3:
[39:16] I do think it's immoral.

Speaker 1:
[39:18] Immoral.

Speaker 3:
[39:19] I'll put, if we're judging it on moral or immoral, I would say immoral.

Speaker 1:
[39:24] What if I hung a sign up and said, the turkeys here are all dead?

Speaker 6:
[39:29] I'd be running in there.

Speaker 3:
[39:32] I just don't like messing with other people's hunts.

Speaker 6:
[39:35] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[39:36] I do my business, you do your business, and we accommodate one another as best we can. I don't like messing with somebody else.

Speaker 1:
[39:42] Okay. That's good. Moral clarity.

Speaker 6:
[39:46] Thanks for that.

Speaker 1:
[39:46] Because that was waffling.

Speaker 3:
[39:48] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[39:49] But are you then going to call him out on it? Because you're not going to quit hunting that spot.

Speaker 3:
[39:54] I'm probably not going to call him out on it.

Speaker 2:
[39:58] So you're then just going to go enjoy the fruits of his labor?

Speaker 3:
[40:02] I have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1:
[40:03] You're not going to respond to it.

Speaker 3:
[40:05] If he asks me what I think about it, I don't want to get into a confrontation with someone that I don't like. I'd just be like, this is kind of a dick move, whatever.

Speaker 1:
[40:14] Then when he texts you like, hey buddy, where are you hunting? You just don't reply.

Speaker 3:
[40:17] Probably not. I don't know. I just like that's weird to me. I don't know. People just need to leave one another alone. Just less people, please. I don't know. I just want to go turkey hunting. I just want to go bear hunting. Brody's in the same trailhead. We can just say, I'm going to go this way, you go that way, whatever. I don't know.

Speaker 6:
[40:42] I'd be like, no, I'm just leaving my truck here.

Speaker 3:
[40:44] All the games and subterfuge and everything. It just bothers me.

Speaker 1:
[40:50] Real strong moral clarity.

Speaker 3:
[40:52] Well, I don't know. So much of my worldview is relativist that it's fun to just dig in my heels sometimes.

Speaker 1:
[41:01] A hot tip on recovering lost arrows.

Speaker 2:
[41:04] We talked about this at least twice already about arrows being lost at public archery ranges and what you should do when you find them or how to find them, or how to get your arrows back. Well, this fellow wrote in, thanks to Tyler. He said what he does is he writes his name and a phone number on his fletching. So when someone finds it, they can just dial him up and then keep it easy. Instead of having to meet up somewhere, he just says, hey, stash it in so-and-so spot at the range, and I'll grab it next time.

Speaker 1:
[41:40] So this is happening to him all the time.

Speaker 2:
[41:43] Often enough, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[41:46] We got to put that one to rest. That's good. If it was about lost arrows in my yard, I'd be more interested.

Speaker 6:
[41:52] Yeah, but that's a simple, great solution to a problem. I love it.

Speaker 1:
[41:57] That's true.

Speaker 4:
[41:57] We had a hot tip off on MeatEater Radio where the guy said he puts a small reflective tape in front of his veins, and then he bought a $12 UV flashlight from Amazon, and you can see that thing from 50 yards away if you're pointing the flashlight in the right direction.

Speaker 3:
[42:11] That's where this all started.

Speaker 6:
[42:13] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:14] That's good. Randall.

Speaker 3:
[42:18] All right. I guess I'll put on my moral hat again. Yeah, I mean, this is big news. Last week, Republicans in the Senate voted to essentially kill the 20-year moratorium on this mine upstream of the Boundary Waters, potential mine upstream of the Boundary Waters. It's basically bent over backwards to let a Chilean billionaire take minerals out of the ground and send them to be processed in China.

Speaker 1:
[42:55] So then when they ship them back as products, they can be merited. They'll be tariffs on our own stuff coming back to us.

Speaker 3:
[43:02] Seventy percent of Minnesotans opposed the mine, 98 percent of the 675,000 public comments were opposed to it. Dozens of hunting and fishing organizations were opposed to it. And then the way that they did this too, like there's a bunch of stuff you can get into here. The way that they did this was using the Congressional Review Act, which is a law. It was passed in 96 that lets Congress sort of override or cancel regulations put in place by federal agencies. And they're supposed to do it within 60 days. And it had not been used very much. I think the first 20 years of its existence, it was used once, then it was used. There were five of them during Obama, zero successful uses because he vetoed them. And then Biden used it three times. But of the 42 times this has been used, 38 of them have been under Trump. So it's, it's not just a change in like policy.

Speaker 1:
[44:05] Ever?

Speaker 3:
[44:07] Yeah. The 38 out of the 42 have been, have been. So it's a change.

Speaker 1:
[44:11] It'll be some lawyer will be like, hey, you know what we could try, right? And they're having some luck with it.

Speaker 3:
[44:16] And the thing about it is that you can't put the genie back in the bottle because once you use this act, they can never make a rule that's, the agency can never come back and make a similar rule. So it sort of does it forever. Like it just overturns the decision forever. The, the mine's not a done deal. Like they still have to do permitting and permitting could be a bear that could like kill it. But I mean, essentially the way this worked was this is a Chilean mining company in 1966. They got mineral rights for this area. Their lease expired. They renewed it, expired again. They renewed it again. And then under Obama, it expired. And at that point, they basically said, you don't have a right to automatically renew this lease. We need to re-evaluate the merits and risks of having this lease in place. And so they put a two-year moratorium in place so that they could do a study. Once Obama goes out of office, the billionaire guy in Chile, he basically kicks this right off. He, and one of the weird things about this is in December of 2016, so right after the election, he buys a $6 million house in DC and rents it to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. It never goes on the market as a rental. He just buys it. They see it before the property is even closed and they move in.

Speaker 4:
[45:46] And they lived there through 2022, I think. It was a while.

Speaker 3:
[45:50] Yeah, yeah. And then he, like this guy has also met, he's met Trump before at a Patriots game because they're buddies with Kraft and Brady. But within weeks of the administration coming in, he starts, he starts communicating directly with Zinke and his staff. So all of a sudden, Zinke announces that the feds, like the decision that we had to, we could reevaluate this was bad. And he says, actually, we have to automatically renew the lease. So just like a pivot sort of based on some strange legal technicality. So they reissue the lease. Zinke says that it deserves further study and then reissued the lease the next day. Meanwhile, the Forest Service under Sonny Perdue kills the study, even though he told Congress they would do the study. Long story short, Biden comes in, he cancels the lease, and they put in place this 20, they finished the study and put in place a 20-year moratorium on mining. Trump comes back in. Zinke is now in Congress, and the guy who took over for Zinke at Interior, David Bernhardt, who's Trump's other Secretary of the Interior in his first term, he is now working as a lobbyist for the Chilean mining company. So Zinke-

Speaker 1:
[47:16] Quite a nice little chunk of change I heard.

Speaker 3:
[47:18] Yeah, I've heard, I heard from one source, like $100,000 a month. I couldn't find documented proof of that. I saw some other reports that were like a couple of hundred thousand a quarter.

Speaker 1:
[47:31] But I heard similar amounts to try to push this thing through. Just real quick so people understand what we're talking about when we say a mine. People are familiar with the Boundary Waters Wilderness area. This is a mine that's going in upstream of that in Superior National Forest. Superior National Forest, interestingly, was put in place by Theodore Roosevelt, I think 1909. What they do is you're pulling a bunch of rock up out of the ground. But once it oxidizes, it produces an acid. And I mean like millions of tons.

Speaker 6:
[48:13] Yeah. I'll point out that the fact that you're hearing a lot of people say, but the mine's not in the Boundary Waters, it's important that it's upstream or will be because this type of mine, there's never been an example of this type of mine not resulting in this pollution, major pollution.

Speaker 3:
[48:33] Antifagasta is the Chilean company. They just had in January of this year, they have a copper sulfide mine in Chile that was, they just received a bunch of fines for violating water quality standards and monitoring. And yeah, it just seems like a bad actor that had some friends in the White House and they pushed it through. Like I've also heard there are a bunch of senators that were opposed to killing the moratorium. And they kind of got phone calls from the White House and yeah, basically Zinke whipped it up in the house and pushed it through and Bernhard's been lobbying for it. And, and now the moratorium can't come back because they, they did it in this way. So for like a system in which we should have say in the management of our public lands, and you would hope that people can weigh in and make a difference in how their own public lands are managed. It's kind of just a big slap in the face.

Speaker 1:
[49:34] Another interesting part of it is if you go back to last June when we were fighting the public land sell off. This after that fight, the story sort of came out about this like grand coalition. And every time there's a big public lands fight, when it happened under Jason Chaffetz, when it happened under Mike Lee. So Jason Chaffetz was like 2017 or something like that. Mike Lee last June. Both times it was like this proposal to sell three million acres of public lands in the West. And the story afterward comes out and it's like this coalition of sportsman's groups. And this like unusual mix of these like traditionally right wing and traditionally left wing voices come together in support of whatever. In this case, I mean, in this case, these sort of like hunter angler, you know, the hunter angler like right leaning block couldn't deliver the goods. I mean, this thing went on party lines, dude. Like, like all, all these hunter angler based conservation organizations of which I'm a board of, a board member of one could not turn Republican votes.

Speaker 3:
[50:55] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[50:56] I mean, they're just like, no, and apparently, like we're going, we're going with what the boss tells us on this one. It was also like it was looking at times the vote looked good. The White House got involved in the vote, and then people chicken shitted out. And people that talked about, people that talked, there's even people, there's people that expressed knowing that they were voting wrong. They expressed that they were voting wrong, but had to. With that kind of stuff, like, it's just like, that kind of stuff's infuriating.

Speaker 4:
[51:28] And you can feel it in some of the statements afterwards that some of these politicians made. They were almost like apologetic about, you know, their justification for how they voted.

Speaker 1:
[51:37] The justification for how they voted is someone told them what to do.

Speaker 3:
[51:39] Yeah. And I will say, like, I've seen, I've seen a lot of comments out there, like some from our audience taking shots at, like, the, like, a lot of times you'll hear in debates like this, you'll hear people say this isn't a partisan issue, right? Like, like, this is not a partisan issue. We just need to get it done. And to say something is not a partisan issue isn't to, like, say that both sides are the same on this issue. It's to say, it's to give space and say, like, you can be a Republican and do the right thing when it comes to this, right? Like not in this case. Well, yeah, I mean, it's not on this one. It's like an aspiration. But what I'm saying is, like, it's not, it's not a judgment that, like, this was definitely a partisan vote. But like there are Republicans out there or people who don't identify as Republican, but they might be conservative, whatever. You can be opposed to this mine no matter what walk of life you're in. But like your representatives aren't falling through on it. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 6:
[52:45] Like, yeah, for the general population, it's not partisan, but it certainly was partisan when the vote, when it came time to vote.

Speaker 3:
[52:52] Yeah, absolutely. So it's not like when you say something's, when you say conservation is a non, like should be a non-partisan issue. It's not exculpating like shit like this. It's, it's meant to say like people from both parties can agree on this, but whether or not they're elected officials are going to do the right thing is something entirely different on the tour in terms of saying stuff like that.

Speaker 1:
[53:16] I don't want to spend all day on this one. This is a major issue on terms of saying stuff like that. When people will say to me or they'll say whatever the big, well, I don't want to get political. I don't want to be political, but it's like everything is political. The fact that Superior National Forest is there in the first place. How was Superior National Forest there? Because Theodore Roosevelt wrote it into existence. How did he have the authority to write it into existence? Because he won the election, the political one. Like everything is political. Suppressors is political. Jordan's going to talk about Oklahoma releasing captive deer into the wild. I don't want to get political. It's political. We're going to talk about the Colorado fur ban. Political. It just is. People don't want to stay away from politics. I get the sentiment of what you're saying, but it's not how things work.

Speaker 3:
[54:09] Oh yeah. No, I like, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[54:13] I guess, but yes, I did not.

Speaker 3:
[54:15] When you say, when you say like conservation, this isn't a partisan issue. It means that people from both sides can agree on it.

Speaker 5:
[54:21] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[54:21] Giving space for that.

Speaker 5:
[54:23] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[54:23] Not great American outdoors.

Speaker 3:
[54:24] It's not like giving Republicans a free pass on kowtowing to the White House and pushing this through even though they know it's the wrong thing to do.

Speaker 1:
[54:33] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[54:34] You're right.

Speaker 1:
[54:35] There are none. There's talk right now. It seems goofy, but like putting Theodore Roosevelt just got leaked the other day, putting Theodore Roosevelt in the football Hall of Fame. Have you seen this? Comes right on the heels of this Boundary Waters thing. So you're like basically shitting on the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt. And then like a day later, it's leaked that like, we're going to put them in the football Hall of Fame. And you know, he'd probably be like, yeah, if this is a trade-off, I'll go, I'll go with the preserve and the Boundary Waters from acid runoff.

Speaker 3:
[55:15] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:15] Please.

Speaker 3:
[55:15] So I guess the last thing to say is just like, there's still stuff you can do. Like it, like when we take a loss like this, you still can call up your representatives. You don't need an excuse to call up your representatives and let them know.

Speaker 1:
[55:30] So if you, if you're, if you see how much good that I'll see how far that'll get you on this one.

Speaker 3:
[55:34] Well, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:35] A lot of people did that.

Speaker 3:
[55:36] I know. But what else are you going to do?

Speaker 4:
[55:40] The state of Minnesota seems like they may have a move left to like prevent this. There's also Canada will be involved. They've said that they're going to resist this. Also local tribes. They have like some say in this as well. And so there's a few players who could maybe slow this down or stop it. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:57] It's not a done deal. It'll move to the next steps. It was just a disappointing vote. It was a disappointing vote because so many people, so many representatives, in this specific case, so many representatives on the Republican side signaled to conservation groups, signaled that they wanted to do the right thing, and then ultimately admitted that they couldn't, which is like, you know, like you said, chicken shits.

Speaker 4:
[56:27] Yeah, I guess worse in politics.

Speaker 3:
[56:28] As far as calling them though, what I mean is like, if somebody does the wrong thing, and then nobody burns their ass about it. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[56:36] Like call up, like, listen buster, you want those people to- Almighty disappointed.

Speaker 3:
[56:41] You want those people in the office to be like, shit, like people are pissed off about this.

Speaker 4:
[56:47] Yeah, this vote, this was an open book test. Like the answer was so obvious that there shouldn't be mining here because the public was so against it. The locals were against it. The history that these mines have, like it was clear that the answer is no, we don't allow this. And so I think it's fair for our audience to look at these politicians in the future. When Mr. Politician campaigns on being an outdoorsman, a hunter, an angler, a conservationist, a public land advocate, it's reasonable to be like, I don't think you get a second chance on this. Like you failed this open book test so spectacularly that I don't believe you. And the consequence of that is I'm not going to vote for you because of your track record on like this exact thing.

Speaker 1:
[57:33] I don't know what to say.

Speaker 3:
[57:35] She said, that's a good segment, Randall.

Speaker 1:
[57:36] Good segment, Randall. And a great wrap up, great wrap up of Spencer Neuharth.

Speaker 5:
[57:42] That's inspiring.

Speaker 1:
[57:44] George?

Speaker 4:
[57:44] There should be consequences when they mess it up that bad. That's it.

Speaker 3:
[57:48] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[57:49] You know what, man, I gotta talk. I'm gonna, I have an, I gotta speak in DC at an event, a dinner. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the Boundary Waters.

Speaker 4:
[58:01] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[58:02] Good.

Speaker 1:
[58:03] Jordan?

Speaker 5:
[58:06] So.

Speaker 1:
[58:07] I should be doing this segment because I just came from Oklahoma yesterday.

Speaker 5:
[58:09] Oh yeah?

Speaker 1:
[58:10] I didn't see none of these deer.

Speaker 5:
[58:11] That's my neck of the woods.

Speaker 1:
[58:14] I didn't see none of these deer running around.

Speaker 5:
[58:15] Well, there's only two so far. Yeah. No, every time I talk about this, I have a hard time believing it actually happened, but sure enough it did. So, back in 2024, so two years ago, the Oklahoma State Legislature passed a bill, I mean, speaking of like bad votes, this bill was passed almost unanimously in both the House and the Senate, and it established what was called the Chronic Wasting Disease Genetic Improvement Act. And the idea here is that we're going to breed whitetail deer to be resistant to CWD. So there's a biologist from Texas A&M named Chris Seabury, or Seabury, who basically discovered that if, and I forget the exact, like, allele, whatever, codon, but if deer have this, they're resistant to CWD. Now, they're not immune, so they can still get it.

Speaker 1:
[59:16] They call them durable.

Speaker 5:
[59:18] Durable, right. So they can still get it, and that's a really key thing to understand here. They're not immune from CWD, but they're more durable.

Speaker 1:
[59:25] That's the fashionable word lately, is durable.

Speaker 5:
[59:27] Yeah, right. And what kind of advocates of this point to oftentimes is scrapie in sheep, which is also a prion disease, and it was eliminated through this kind of genetic breeding program. Obviously, you're really not comparing apples to apples in that situation because sheep are livestock, right? They're in pens, it's a very controlled environment. The proposal here is to breed these deer to be genetically durable to CWD, and then we're going to release them into the wild to improve the genetics of the wild herd, which kind of sounds like it might work, but it's never been tried anywhere. The other really crucial thing is that the deer aren't tested for CWD before they're released. We don't know if these deer have the disease before they're released. And I've confirmed this with the head veterinarian.

Speaker 1:
[60:28] No, that's true.

Speaker 5:
[60:28] Yeah, for Oklahoma. They don't know. They weren't tested. And so, and I'm not 100% sure what it's like in Oklahoma. I can tell you in Texas, the deer breeders are like, where, like if there's CWD in Texas, it's probably in those breeding facilities. So it's there, but these deer that are released, we don't know if they have it. And so they passed this bill in 2024. And I think like people weren't, I mean, maybe it's just me, but I was like, again, they're not gonna actually do this, right? And the bill itself was very, it's very hard to understand the bill as it was written because it allowed the Department of Agriculture in Oklahoma to write the rules, basically the standard that they would use to release the deer. But then it also had another line in there that said, the Department of Wildlife Conservation, so the people kind of supposed to be in charge of wildlife in the state, they have some kind of permitting authority. It said they can charge a one-time permit fee. It didn't say they could create rules, but if you're charging a permit fee, then it's kind of implied you have the authority to create the rules by which you get that permit. But it was all very unclear. Fast forward two years. In the original bill, it said the deer would be released between February and April of this year. The wildlife agency hadn't crafted any kind of permitting requirements or any kind of rules. They had started a survey to survey the genetics of the wild population. They hadn't completed that yet. But then, we kind of got news about a month ago that one of these deer had actually been released. The Ag Department approved the release of one of these deer. So this is, again, a pen-raised deer that hasn't been tested for CWD is now being released onto a low fence property where it can go kind of wherever it wants to go.

Speaker 1:
[62:35] And the public does not know where.

Speaker 5:
[62:38] I got a county, I can tell you, it's Waggoner County. I think that's how you say it, was one of the deer. I don't know where the second deer was released. And from the breeder's perspective, this is great because now our potential pool of customers is everyone. Any landowner in the state, it used to be you could only sell a deer to a high fence operation, which there are lots of those in Oklahoma, not that many. Now any landowner can buy a deer. Why you would want to is sort of beyond me.

Speaker 1:
[63:08] Because you can buy one of their crazy big bucks, one of their phony big bucks, and then cut it loose on your place and act like you're doing it to help CWD. Well, there's 750,000 deer in Oklahoma. These two deer, I'll be the first to admit, I'm no mathematician. I'm no statistician. But they've cut two of these deer loose into a state with 750,000 deer. And I'm like, this will help genetically with CWD.

Speaker 6:
[63:38] It's like, are you kidding me? We talked to Heffelfinger about this a while back, and he made that point. You're never going to spread that gene, effectively spread that gene through the entire population. But he also said, you don't know what else that gene could be responsible for. It could have all kinds of negative effects too.

Speaker 5:
[63:58] So the Wildlife Commission held a hearing on this where they invited some scientists to present. One of them had put a model together of like, how many deer would we actually have to release in order to improve the genetics of the state? It was like 75,000 per year for 10 years straight. Basically just replacing the entire population. And even then, the genetic benefits you get start to degrade after you stop releasing more deer. And this was also, according to the scientists, in their model, they assume kind of best case scenario, which is that captive deer will survive and breed at the same rate as wild deer, which I mean, is kind of a big assumption, right?

Speaker 1:
[64:46] One of the craziest parts of this, go on, I'll tell you the crazy, I'll tell you what I feel is crazy.

Speaker 5:
[64:51] All right, yeah, so there's kind of one more chapter to this is that the kind of sponsors of this program in the legislature were very frustrated with the Wildlife Agency for not moving forward with the survey, for kind of dragging their heels, right, according to the sponsor. So, this year, they proposed a new bill that would totally eliminate the Wildlife Agency from this process. Like, they would have no permitting role, they wouldn't be able to charge a permitting fee, just totally remove them from the process entirely. So, these deer, which, you know, wildlife in the state would be controlled by the Department of Agriculture. That bill, so two years ago, the bill sailed through. This bill just failed in a Senate committee, it passed the House, went over to the Senate, it failed in a Senate committee on a nine to three vote. And I was told that the kind of, the public interest, you might say, in the program two years ago, has then trickled to now, and senators now are a little more hesitant to sign off on this. And so it's possible that there's appetite to kind of get rid of the program entirely next year in a bill.

Speaker 1:
[66:16] Because you can't find, you can't find a wildlife org, let me set the deer breeders. You can't find a wildlife org that thinks it's a good idea. I love that Boone and Crockett and Pope and Young are saying Oklahoma deer. There's a possibility Oklahoma deer become ineligible for the books because they're genetically modified.

Speaker 5:
[66:33] Yep, yep. And it could expand, like I live in Texas, neighbors Oklahoma. If they like cross the border into Texas, now Texas deer are not, right? So it's, no one seems to really like this, except for the deer breeders and their allies in the legislature.

Speaker 1:
[66:51] Well, one of the main, okay. One of the main, I'm gonna choose my words carefully here. One of the primary, main, key, main, primary, most important key individuals involved in this genetic, this supposed genetic durability issue prior to that work had been on the war path against Texas's state agency about CWD because he felt that he felt that they were imperiling his land values by talking about CWD all the time. Okay.

Speaker 5:
[67:34] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[67:35] Then lo and behold, down the road, the other interesting thing is this is the biggest proponents from this. When I look around and get messages from friends and stuff, the biggest proponents of this are the same people that have always said it's a hoax. CWD is a hoax.

Speaker 5:
[67:51] Right.

Speaker 1:
[67:52] Then why do we need a solution? You're like, it's a hoax, but here's the solution. It's a hoax, but this will fix it.

Speaker 5:
[68:00] Right.

Speaker 1:
[68:00] It's like, hold on a minute. Is it a hoax or does this fix this or is this self-serving?

Speaker 2:
[68:04] Well, if you got to release 75,000 deer annually, someone's going to make some money.

Speaker 1:
[68:09] Wow. But it's so funny. It's like one minute it's a hoax and it doesn't have any impact. And the next minute the industry is like, but wait a minute, it is a problem. And guess who's the solution?

Speaker 5:
[68:22] We can solve it.

Speaker 1:
[68:22] It's me.

Speaker 5:
[68:23] Right. Right. Right.

Speaker 1:
[68:25] All these years you've blamed me and now here I am with the fix.

Speaker 5:
[68:29] Right. Right. But but you can you can kind of you can kind of see why if you're not really paying attention to this issue you're not in this in the weeds on this you're like yeah we breed we like we we breed for certain traits and animals right why wouldn't this work and so you can kind of see why this program the state legislators were like okay yeah we'll give it a shot might as well but now it sounds like they've been and you know organizations the sports and conservation organizations have been doing a lot of work in that legislature to educate the the representatives there and it seems to be kind of taking hold.

Speaker 1:
[69:07] I'm going to paraphrase something from the conservationist Jim Poswitz. Jim Poswitz he made this point I think he might have been on the show when he made this point or I was interviewing him or something. Either way, the late Jim Poswitz was saying, he was talking about the deer breeders, this idea of them trying to make giant mega bucks and all this stuff. The reason they're doing that is because there's a societal belief in the symbolism of wildlife, right? We have placed cultural value on deer. We've placed cultural value on the landscape, on nature's ability to make this creature, right? When one gets big, it's celebrated, but it's like a cultural value around wild places and wildlife and nature. And they've kind of looked at this and they're like, oh, got it, big antlers.

Speaker 5:
[70:10] Yeah, that's what we want.

Speaker 1:
[70:12] I mean, they're like, they kind of missed the parts about wildlife.

Speaker 5:
[70:17] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[70:18] They missed the parts about mystery.

Speaker 3:
[70:20] The magic.

Speaker 1:
[70:21] Yeah, like the magic of a landscape producing these magnificent specimens.

Speaker 5:
[70:28] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[70:28] And they're like, oh, yeah, big old antlers. I could probably do that better in my yard. But what makes those big old antlers valuable, yeah, is the fact that they have cultural significance as wildlife. Meaning, if they went and found a way to make cows huge. Okay. If they're like, this cow is way bigger. People aren't going to say like, oh, at that point, I would like to pay you $20,000 to shoot one of those cows. It would be, well, no, because that's livestock. I'm not going to pay you to shoot that. Well, they're like, no, but this has the appearance of this thing that has cultural value, I will sell it to you because it's got big handlers. And isn't that what it's really all about?

Speaker 5:
[71:15] Right. Right. Right. Well, and that kind of takes me back to the market for this, right? Because there's two sides. There's people who want to sell them, but then they need a market. And I still don't understand, maybe if you have a giant spread, thousands of acres, you might be interested in this. But if you have like 200 acres of low fence property, like why would you want to buy what it's going to leave?

Speaker 1:
[71:43] People will do it.

Speaker 5:
[71:44] It's going to be in the next county.

Speaker 1:
[71:45] People aren't smart about statistics. I don't know. Why does my wife buy scratch offs at the gas station? She's an addict. Because she just has an undying faith in magic. Oh, and no amount of logic is going to dissuade her from buying scratch offs with the kids.

Speaker 2:
[72:09] Well, maybe she does it for the entertainment value.

Speaker 1:
[72:11] Yeah. And I think that people will be entertained by like, they'll buy some deer and turn. I don't know. It's just like nature isn't going to be good enough.

Speaker 6:
[72:21] You know who won't buy them is CWD deniers because they don't give a shit anyway.

Speaker 1:
[72:25] No, they will because the...

Speaker 4:
[72:27] When I heard about this, like first I was like, oh, that's not a good idea. But then shortly after that, I had a tingle of satisfaction that someone felt like they were portraying or like pursuing a creative solution. Because CWD feels like a thing that we're probably going to have to take a big swing at it. And like every tool in the toolbox needs to be explored. And nothing's working. Right. And like, I am satisfied to hear that someone is like, maybe this thing out of left field is the answer. And that other people did look into it and threw cold water on it, you know, at some point. But I'm happy that like there are things behind the scenes that are, you know, beyond my awareness taking place trying to solve CWD.

Speaker 1:
[73:09] Agree. I totally agree. It's like it's again, I've made myself a thousand times on this show. I've made myself clear that like it's much to the annoyance of certain friends of mine. The main thing I remain worried about, the main thing is that, and it's never happened, but what scares me is the idea that there would be transmission to a human being. That scares me.

Speaker 4:
[73:33] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[73:34] Right. That this has nothing to do with that. This is not addressing that. The other part is you have like, I can't help but look at where it's coming from.

Speaker 4:
[73:43] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[73:44] It's coming from the community. That has told us all along, there is no problem. So why are you all of a sudden interested in a solution? It's gotta be that there's more to the story. You have cried from every rooftop. It's a hoax. There's no problem. But now you want to fix it. I don't buy it. Something else is going on.

Speaker 6:
[74:17] That's a good way to end it.

Speaker 3:
[74:18] Yeah. The whole thing.

Speaker 6:
[74:21] Yeah, let's go wrap it up.

Speaker 3:
[74:22] Shut it down.

Speaker 2:
[74:23] Steve, you were in Wisconsin two weekends ago for the youth turkey hunt, weren't you?

Speaker 1:
[74:29] I was there two weeks ago for the youth turkey hunt. Let me tell you why I go there, because I love my friend Doug. Also, I would go there early on because Wisconsin doesn't have an age restriction. I have three kids, they're spread out. So I could go there and mentor my, for instance, my eight-year-old daughter turkey hunting, where she would be literally sitting in my lap as we turkey hunted. And then Doug could hunt with one of my other kids or we would team up. And it became a family tradition. I think we went eight years. We've been there eight years in a row for youth turkey season. It's a family tradition. My kids have come to love Doug like a like an uncle, like a brother.

Speaker 4:
[75:11] I thought you'd say like a landowner.

Speaker 2:
[75:12] No, they're not.

Speaker 1:
[75:14] That's not a concept.

Speaker 6:
[75:16] To set the stage before we move on, it was something your kids kind of, as far as hunting turkeys, it was something they kind of graduated into.

Speaker 1:
[75:24] Yes, they did. They all spent time. They all spent time. They all had to spend time just going and hanging out before I said it was time. And I have generally said it was time to like sit on my lap and turkey hunt when there were eight. That's my, I don't want to call it arbitrary. That's the number I've arrived at.

Speaker 6:
[75:49] Where you felt comfortable.

Speaker 1:
[75:50] That's the number I've arrived at.

Speaker 2:
[75:51] Well, that sets up this story here. Pat Durkin wrote about it at the meateater.com. That same weekend, Steve was there. There was an accident in Wisconsin where a 35-year-old, sorry, 35, 38, I already lost my numbers for him, 38.

Speaker 1:
[76:14] An adult.

Speaker 4:
[76:15] 30 something.

Speaker 5:
[76:15] 34.

Speaker 3:
[76:17] 34.

Speaker 2:
[76:17] 34. I think it's important to know his age. 34-year-old was hunting with a three-year-old, mentoring a three-year-old that weekend. They supposedly aimed and shot a 45-year-old that was mentoring a 9-year-old with a 12-gauge.

Speaker 3:
[76:39] A 7-year-old.

Speaker 2:
[76:41] 7-year-old. Thanks.

Speaker 1:
[76:42] It's important to point out.

Speaker 5:
[76:44] Yeah, they hit two.

Speaker 3:
[76:45] Two hunters.

Speaker 1:
[76:45] Hit a mentor and a kid. A mentor and a kid hit a mentor and a kid.

Speaker 2:
[76:49] No, no, no, it was a 9-year-old.

Speaker 1:
[76:51] I think we're just getting a little hung up on the details here.

Speaker 5:
[76:53] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[76:53] The three-year-old matters. The three matters.

Speaker 5:
[76:56] Yeah, the three-year-old, that matters. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[76:58] That matters big time. And the 12-gauge shotgun.

Speaker 1:
[77:01] Shooting a 12-gauge. Three-years-old shooting a 12-gauge for mentored youth turkey season.

Speaker 2:
[77:05] Okay, so.

Speaker 1:
[77:06] Let's get the facts.

Speaker 2:
[77:08] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[77:09] Hit the facts.

Speaker 2:
[77:11] Youth turkey hunting weekend in Wisconsin. The three-year-old is with the 34-year-old. They shoot two other hunters that are out in the field together with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Speaker 1:
[77:24] At 35 yards.

Speaker 2:
[77:26] At 35 yards. Luckily, no one is fatally hurt. I think, as of the writing of the article, the seven-year-old kid was still in the hospital, but his mentor had been released. Actually, they're not releasing gender, so we don't know any of the genders of these hunters. But the people that had been shot, the mentor had been released, and the kid was still in the hospital, but non-fatal injuries. So that's really all we know. They're not releasing a lot, because obviously, they're going to continue to investigate the situation, because as you might imagine, there's a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions. My first thing when I read it, when I was assigned this little book report here, was like, my God, how are you really gonna make a three-year-old hold and aim and fire a 12-gauge?

Speaker 1:
[78:24] That's why I smell fish.

Speaker 2:
[78:25] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[78:26] I smell bad fish.

Speaker 2:
[78:29] I read the comments.

Speaker 1:
[78:30] Oh, that's the only thing I can say.

Speaker 2:
[78:32] I read the comments on our web page and-

Speaker 1:
[78:37] Do people smell the fish?

Speaker 2:
[78:38] Oh, yeah. 75% of them are like, that three-year-old didn't pull that trigger. The mentor was just out with a three-year-old and was like, oh, this is a way for me to get another bird.

Speaker 1:
[78:49] Yeah, 100%. I'm not buying it.

Speaker 4:
[78:50] This is like a level up of white steertech.

Speaker 1:
[78:53] I'm not buying that that three-year-old was wheeled in the 12 gauge. Three-year-old was probably shitting its pants.

Speaker 4:
[78:57] Do they wipe their own butt?

Speaker 6:
[78:58] Three-year-old was probably taking a nap.

Speaker 4:
[79:00] I don't raise a child.

Speaker 2:
[79:02] Some do. I mean, they're not doing a good job of it.

Speaker 1:
[79:05] They don't like get up, fix breakfast.

Speaker 2:
[79:09] They rarely have complete sentences. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[79:12] We should have brought a three-year-old in and asked him some questions.

Speaker 2:
[79:15] Hey, just so you know, I tried to get one. I posted this morning. Craig's a little old to bring one in. No, on the company Slack under the Bozeman Channel, I asked, does anyone have a three-year-old kid that could bring to the office to be part of the new show episode of Round 230? It's now 315. They had to be on camera but wouldn't be required to do much talking and saying hi. I'd like to have them to show the audience the size and stature of a three-year-old to show the context around the hunters.

Speaker 1:
[79:44] Dude, we should have had a whole panel of three-year-olds in here.

Speaker 3:
[79:47] This would have been helpful for me because when I read the age of a child, it doesn't do much.

Speaker 5:
[79:52] I mean, they came out of a vagina three years prior.

Speaker 2:
[79:58] They're just not that big yet.

Speaker 5:
[80:00] No.

Speaker 3:
[80:00] I know but I can't really call to mind a three-year-old.

Speaker 1:
[80:06] A three-year-old would, let me give you for instance, a three-year-old would walk into a lake and shit their pants. You wouldn't even think, you wouldn't even like think much about it.

Speaker 6:
[80:20] The recoil of a 12 gauge shotgun would do great bodily harm to a three-year-old.

Speaker 5:
[80:24] Yeah, it would.

Speaker 4:
[80:26] Jordan said only some three-year-olds wipe their butt.

Speaker 5:
[80:29] I want to amend that. Only some three-year-olds sit like aren't in diapers. None of them wipe their own butt.

Speaker 1:
[80:39] If you have a three-year-old in your life, you are having, not daily, but you are having multiple times per week encounters with their feces.

Speaker 4:
[80:53] Getting under your fingernails is a good context.

Speaker 1:
[80:55] It's like that's what we're talking about. You get to where you're so used to it, you would eat it.

Speaker 2:
[81:03] According to CDC data.

Speaker 1:
[81:05] Am I wrong?

Speaker 6:
[81:06] I wouldn't eat it, but I had it under my fingernails plenty of times.

Speaker 2:
[81:09] According to the CDC, a typical three-year-old boy in the United States of America weighs 31 to 33 pounds.

Speaker 3:
[81:18] It's like a big turkey. Hold on.

Speaker 2:
[81:21] Giant.

Speaker 6:
[81:22] Okay, we've established that they're small.

Speaker 2:
[81:24] A very, very, very small thing. I was telling this story to my daughter, Ina, who I think she was probably 10-ish when this happened, but she was still scared. She had been shooting at 22 a bunch, but she knew the 410 had some recoil. One day I was like, look, she had shot it once, some tears had come. I'm like, no big deal. We'll come back in a couple of months. Time passes, we're back there. I said, this time, sit in my lap. Well, I made the mistake of leaning against her back.

Speaker 1:
[81:59] To solidify her shoulder.

Speaker 2:
[82:00] Yeah, and so her shoulder wasn't allowed to move back. And again, just a little 410 and we were just shooting a field load, not a turkey load. But that was enough to more tears and to put that away for another six months. So again, you can't imagine what a 12 gauge turkey load would do to a three year old.

Speaker 1:
[82:23] Here's another way of putting it. This hunt, this whole incident, they're so young, they will have no recollection.

Speaker 2:
[82:31] None, ever.

Speaker 1:
[82:33] When you think back to your first memories, your first memories are like four or five, six, they will have no recollection. I'm all for this dude bringing that child out. But I think after this incident, you would have to just say, for the record here, I was wielding that shotgun. This is not a conversation about mentored hunting. And I was just, this should be a conversation about right here at me.

Speaker 3:
[83:03] And he was shooting at movement.

Speaker 1:
[83:05] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[83:06] There's a detail that I found, this person did not have hunter safety. They had a military exemption. Yeah. Which, you know, sure. It's something to think about.

Speaker 1:
[83:22] But now there's all this conversation. Should we change, like, will Wisconsin change the law? Is it too early to go? And I'm like, don't confuse this for a mentored hunt situation.

Speaker 6:
[83:33] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[83:34] It's not a mentored hunt situation. That kid did not identify that target and aim that gun and pull that trigger.

Speaker 6:
[83:39] Yeah. I think one of the best things that's happened in the last, whatever, decade, maybe 20 years, however long it's been going on, is that a lot of states have gotten past this minimum age thing, 12, 14, and...

Speaker 1:
[83:53] But I do see pictures of likes, you know, I see pictures of some ages and I'm like, man, I don't think they can even comprehend what they're doing.

Speaker 6:
[84:01] Six-year-old shooting a 200-inch whitetail.

Speaker 1:
[84:03] I don't know that they comprehend what they're doing. I even had questions and I would never tell people to do like, it's like, I support the idea that it's a family decision. I started my kids hunting turkeys at eight years old and I did not think I waited too long. I worried that I did it too early. I never felt that I waited too long at eight.

Speaker 6:
[84:23] Yep, I think that's a good age.

Speaker 1:
[84:25] Never felt that I waited too long.

Speaker 6:
[84:26] Yeah, and the way it works here in Montana is they can hunt deer at 10 and I think that's just about right.

Speaker 1:
[84:32] Yep, I would never complain about the 10-year-old law here. When I was growing up in Michigan, to hunt deer with a gun, when I was a kid, no one paid attention to this rule. Everybody broke it because it was so ridiculous. You had to be 14.

Speaker 2:
[84:44] Yeah, I paid attention.

Speaker 1:
[84:45] That's too late. That's too late.

Speaker 6:
[84:48] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[84:48] Three, too early.

Speaker 6:
[84:54] Paddlefish time?

Speaker 1:
[84:55] Yeah, we're going to cut some stuff off the end.

Speaker 6:
[84:57] Yeah, I'll try and move.

Speaker 1:
[84:58] No, no, man. Hit the paddlefish then. I want to hear, you know, the Spencer Report.

Speaker 6:
[85:02] He's been living under a rock.

Speaker 1:
[85:04] Spencer Report, Spencer Report.

Speaker 6:
[85:07] There's been some sick puppies doing some sick shit on Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Multiple live paddlefish have been discovered with... You got the pictures up, Phil. Are we getting there?

Speaker 1:
[85:22] Multiples.

Speaker 6:
[85:22] Multiple. Profane messages. I'll let you read them if you can make them out. These are the pictures that I was sent.

Speaker 5:
[85:31] This is how they were cropped.

Speaker 6:
[85:33] Oh, you can kind of see what that one says. So, FUFMDC, which is Missouri Department of Conservation. I saw a picture of one that had... Paddlefish have this long snout called a rostrum. I saw one that had been cut to kind of look like those soft... What do they call them?

Speaker 3:
[85:57] Soft-toothed fish.

Speaker 1:
[85:58] Really?

Speaker 6:
[85:58] Like disgusting. Yeah. I don't know if we've got that picture or not. No, just don't want to.

Speaker 1:
[86:02] Here's someone etched 2021 into a paddlefish.

Speaker 6:
[86:05] So...

Speaker 1:
[86:06] Like they're cutting it in with a razor blade.

Speaker 6:
[86:08] Yes. Yeah. Some of them were found alive, but mutilated. It's just like very sick examples of like animal cruelty. The local reaction, the regional reaction around Lake of the Ozarks obviously been pretty strong with shock and outrage. Local tackle shop manager said he'd never seen anything like this. There's concerns that it could hurt tourism in the area. The investigation, they haven't found out anything yet, but they're looking at this as intentional acts of animal cruelty and vandalism against the species, possibly motivated by grievances against state conservation rules.

Speaker 1:
[86:53] Well, if you're writing FU. Missouri Department of Conservation, I have a feeling that that's not possibly motivated by animosity. They're mad about the regulatory structure.

Speaker 6:
[87:03] Sure. And maybe something about keeping paddlefish.

Speaker 1:
[87:07] Maybe they're mad about the regulations.

Speaker 6:
[87:09] Row, you know, there's been plenty of examples of these fish being poached for their row, but this isn't that. Authorities say they're making some progress. Public's encouraged to report tips and a coalition of over a dozen fishing guide services in the area, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma. They've all pledged to chip in rewards that are exceeding $15,000 right now, leading to a conviction. With that kind of money, if someone saw something, someone's probably going to report something.

Speaker 1:
[87:47] Yeah, it's a win-win. If you knew who was doing this, one, they got to quit.

Speaker 6:
[87:51] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[87:52] So you can help them make them quit by turning them in, and then you get $15,000 in scratch.

Speaker 6:
[87:56] Yeah. But it's gross. And whenever something like this kind of thing, this is a little, this is pretty strong example of it. But I always worry when a goose is walking around a local lake with an arrow sticking out of it, like it gets me worried about the perception of hunters. And in this case, the perception, like the general perception of fishermen, like just a week ago, maybe, they found a mule deer doe dead in Roundup, Montana that had been shot with a blowgun, a blow dart killed it. It's like that kind of thing. Like I think the worry is, it's like all those hunters, you know, kind of thing. And it shouldn't, we shouldn't have to defend ourselves against stuff like this. It's crazy.

Speaker 1:
[88:48] No, it's kind of gruesome photos, man. Yeah. And the things you're talking about, like a very long living fish.

Speaker 6:
[88:55] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[88:56] And then you're also kind of, like in some cases, you're mortally wounding it. It's like just getting all infected and dying.

Speaker 6:
[89:01] Yeah. Yeah, it's gross.

Speaker 1:
[89:04] On that note.

Speaker 4:
[89:06] Here's a segue. Spencer has a tattoo of a paddlefish. It's his favorite animal. Oh man. How about that?

Speaker 1:
[89:11] How do you know?

Speaker 4:
[89:12] How do I know?

Speaker 1:
[89:13] That was a joke.

Speaker 4:
[89:16] Each year, there are a few consistent media showers.

Speaker 1:
[89:20] I was going to say, so why are you allowed to go, Spencer?

Speaker 4:
[89:23] I was trying to tell you that this would be a segue for you.

Speaker 1:
[89:26] Oh, you're offering that up.

Speaker 4:
[89:27] Here's how you do it.

Speaker 1:
[89:27] Oh, hey, on that note, Spencer, over there, his favorite animal is the paddlefish. And he has a paddlefish tattoo, by golly.

Speaker 4:
[89:37] Now, each year, there are a few consistent meteor showers that give you your best chance at seeing shooting stars. I think the biggest one is in August. There's also another notable one in November, December. These generally occur about the same time each year as the Earth passes through an area that has a trail of dusty debris that was left by a comet or an asteroid. And that's happening right now as we sit here. One of these is happening tonight. Spooky. April 21 is the peak of the Lyreids meteor shower. Really? It's always in late April. Roughly April 17 to April 26, but tonight and tomorrow night, April 22 are the two best nights of the whole show. These shooting stars are best viewed from the Northern Hemisphere after moon set and before dawn. So for much of the country, that means your best viewing hours are between midnight and 6 AM. That doesn't mean that you won't see shooting stars at 10 PM. You will. It just won't be quite as spectacular as that like midnight to 6 AM window. The Lyreids meteors, they don't tend to have a long train of light, but these are prone to creating bright flashes known as fireballs. Here's some tips from NASA on good stargazing for this meteor shower. The first one's obvious. Just get away from light pollution. That means leaving the city or simply turning off your porch light. Focus your eyes in the darkest part of the sky. And if the whole sky is dark and you're able to be picky, for this meteor shower, it's best to cheat your eyes to the east rather than the west. NASA says it takes about 30 minutes for your eyes to fully adapt to the darkness. So give yourself at least an hour to guarantee a glimpse. As I said earlier, the darker the sky, the better the show. Tonight and tomorrow night, we actually have a waxing crescent moon, which means just a sliver of it is illuminated. That's good news for stargazers as well. Humans have been observing this for as long as we've been on Earth. There are written accounts going back to 687 BC, that's 2,700 years ago, about the Lyrids meteor shower. One Chinese writer, he said this, on the fourth month of the summer of year seven, at night, the sky is so bright that some fixed stars become invisible. Because of the meteor shower at midnight, the stars fell like rain. So that's what you have a chance to experience. Now during the peak of the Lyrids, which is again tonight, tomorrow night, April 21, April 22, you can expect to see about a dozen shooting stars at its peak. But some years, it's better than others. The Lyrids, when it's really good, that's called, what is it, a meteor outburst. So in 1922, in 1982, the Lyrids produced 90 meteors per hour. And in 1803, observers saw 700 per hour, which is one shooting star every five seconds. So a dozen is what you'd expect for a baseline these next couple nights. But it has a chance to be even more grand than that. Although its peak is right now, as we sit here, extra shooting stars will be visible into the weekend. So as we exit the debris field on Sunday, if you're at Turkey Camp this weekend, if you're out fishing in the dark, keep your eyes to the sky.

Speaker 1:
[92:43] I'm going to park my car out so people think someone's already there watching, and I'm going to have it all to myself. Man, I'm going to be watching. No one else can watch.

Speaker 4:
[92:54] If you do happen to witness a spectacular fireball during the Lyreids, which as I said earlier, as I said earlier in The MeatEater Showers, it's known for producing fireballs rather than like long streets of light, then you should go report that to the American MeatEater Society. And if they get enough reports, it becomes a confirmed fireball. So I polled a random one of these confirmed fireballs from last year to show you how the process works. This was from March 7, 2025. This fireball was not part of the Lyreids Meteor Shower, as it was about six weeks before that. Phil has a picture of it here showing you how these reports are gathered. It was 440 a.m. mountain time. Four people witnessed a fireball that's traveling from east to west at a downward angle. It's since been categorized. This is event 1414, 2025. So we have our first observer. This was Reagan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who says it's an orange fireball. They leave a note with the American Meteor Society saying, so grateful to have experienced this. Our next observer is James in Bismarck, North Dakota. James reports the fireball was light blue and white. He says it was very bright. At first, I thought it was a plane moving across the sky until I realized that it was heading towards the ground. Then it clicked that it was a fireball. It reminded me of the fuel streak of an incoming missile. I don't know how James knows that, but he said it reminded him of that.

Speaker 1:
[94:23] Where do you see him saying that?

Speaker 4:
[94:25] Which one?

Speaker 2:
[94:26] Under persistent train.

Speaker 4:
[94:28] The third observer is Brooke in Townsend, Montana. That's just down the road from us. Brooke says it had a smoke trail with shades of light blue, orange and white. She simply says that it was wild. Now, here's our fourth.

Speaker 1:
[94:42] How old is Brooke?

Speaker 4:
[94:43] Doesn't tell us that. Here's our fourth report.

Speaker 1:
[94:46] I'm always looking out for guys around the office.

Speaker 6:
[94:48] Spencer in Bozeman, Montana is our fourth witness here.

Speaker 1:
[94:53] What kind of dork is that?

Speaker 4:
[94:55] I know, I like the sound of this guy. He reports the fireball lasted about three seconds. It was white. Here's his quote. I spend a lot of time outside at night. This was the brightest meteor I've ever seen.

Speaker 1:
[95:06] Excellent report.

Speaker 4:
[95:08] I mean, I trust that person.

Speaker 1:
[95:11] He establishes credentials.

Speaker 6:
[95:13] You're not a traveler, are you?

Speaker 2:
[95:15] No, no.

Speaker 4:
[95:16] I was thinking back, what was I doing at 4:30 a.m.? I was in my hot tub. I had just got done traveling. I had a shoot, I shot a roast that week. I had two episodes of trivia. My whole sleep schedule's off. So if I like wake up super like that, I'll just go out in the hot tub. I was out in the hot tub and I saw this fireball and then I went and reported it.

Speaker 3:
[95:35] You woke up early. This wasn't like coming down after a long night.

Speaker 4:
[95:39] It was like bed at 8 a.m. up early and I reported it and I got to be part of event one for-

Speaker 1:
[95:47] Congratulations, man.

Speaker 4:
[95:48] Thank you. So if you see a particularly spectacular fireball this weekend or anytime, you should go do some citizen science and report it to the American Meteor Society. It's valuable to have them-

Speaker 1:
[96:00] There's a sign up that says, report a fireball, it's fun and easy.

Speaker 3:
[96:03] You should get attention, it's as easy as before.

Speaker 1:
[96:06] Yeah, I reported a fireball.

Speaker 4:
[96:08] It was easy. It asks you 12 questions and some are like, oh, what is the answer to that? You like really have to- So when you see one of these things, you know, put yourself in that place, like where did it start? Where did it end? What color was it? Roughly how much time did it take for it to cross the sky? That way you can give AMS a good report.

Speaker 1:
[96:26] Excellent job, man. It was a great report.

Speaker 3:
[96:28] Hats off.

Speaker 1:
[96:29] Here's the thing I'm thinking about. If I tell my kids about this, they're going to want to stay up or get up. If they get up, then they're going to be all cranky tomorrow. So it's like, do you go with, as a parent, do you go with enhancing their lives and then dealing with them when they wake up and they're talking about how tired they are?

Speaker 6:
[96:47] I have an answer to this.

Speaker 1:
[96:48] Or do you not tell them about it?

Speaker 6:
[96:49] I have an answer to this. In our house, I'm like, you can set an alarm and get up if you want, and then I just go to sleep.

Speaker 3:
[96:58] She'll wait till they're older where they can truly experience the whole, they can appreciate the whole experience.

Speaker 1:
[97:03] You know, I'm probably going to tell them about it. But what will happen is their mom will get them up. She's better about stuff like that.

Speaker 4:
[97:09] Now, the gambler.

Speaker 1:
[97:11] All right, buddy. Thanks for joining the new show. Next week, Steve on Colorado. I'm telling you what.

Speaker 6:
[97:18] We promise it'll come.

Speaker 2:
[97:19] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[97:19] And I've been bumping the report on the Monte Verde archaeological site.

Speaker 6:
[97:27] We might end up with an episode that's just-

Speaker 2:
[97:29] I know.

Speaker 6:
[97:29] It's called bumped. 80 minutes of Steve is talking directly into the camera.

Speaker 1:
[97:34] All the stuff that keeps getting bumped. Because my stuff is always at the end. There's no time to get to it. Thanks for joining the new show. Send in hot news tips if you get them. We'll cover them. Take care.