Ep. 820: Skunks Ruin A Marriage and Colorado’s Wolf Plan In Trouble

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to Meet Eaters 12 and 26 presented by Moltremobile and OnXMaps. 12 of Meet Eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long form episodes so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my Bated Bear Hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a Bated Bear Hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on Meet Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. This is the Meet Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless severely both bitten and in my case, underwearless. Meet Eaters Podcast. You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds. No compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at FirstLight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E. Welcome to the Meet Eater Podcast. Sockers, listen, if you got little kids standing by, you could cover their ears because Randall's got a news item. We are going to bleep it, right? It feels going to bleep the whole thing. Of course, yeah. We've done this in the past. Randall found us a salacious exchange on what platform? This is on Facebook. Do you spend a lot of time there? Like, you know, Facebook Marketplace stuff. And this popped up? Yeah, and I have no idea who this guy is. I did some research to find out where he is. We won't name him. But set the scene. He goes on. But I didn't come through your feed. Like it was just a problem. The algorithm. It knows that I'd like this. That's not true. You're lying. So I'll set the scene. There's a photo. I'll do a short version. Deer processors are the biggest ripoffs of 2025, $185 for 30 packs of meat, which brings the price over six bucks a pack. And I supplied the meat. Then they want to get s*** because you questioned them on it. Lucky I didn't slap the s*** out of him. I'm in the process of processing my own damn deer and s*** the processor. And hope they all go out of bed. Hope they all go out of business. Bunch of ripoff bastards. Then they s*** me on five packs of sausage that cost me $15. Mind you, deer processing was $85 before sleepy Joe for the same thing. Paul Met, well back up. I'm interested. He feels that the Biden administration made me made wild game processing go up. It's part of it. I think he also just thinks that they're greedy. And they felt emboldened by it. And all while I've been criticized as a group of liberals. They felt emboldened by the Biden administration to charge more. Yeah, and I think the real like the real uh this is this is I think that is true. I think that is true. I believe everybody anybody tells me. And you think this is like this is it but there's 2.9K comments. So 2,900 comments. And I realized that this man is responding to almost everyone that comments. So he just wants the public to know just so I'm understanding this. He just wants the public to know he's going to do is do a process. He's going to do it himself from now on. He's doing it himself. And he just is putting this out to the public. So one person commented, grow some balls and process the deer yourself and retain all the meat for yourself. And he responded six hours later. And he said, I've got some for you. You do. Phil, are you bleeping out? Listen, we already know the answer to this. Are you bleeping out? Yeah. The balls? Yeah. I think I think I think the balls in the in the initial comment. I will not bleep out. The balls in the second comment I will. I think the context is different. Like right now people are saying balls. It's a bleep. Nope. That's not being bleeped. Okay. Let's get back to the side. What's the form of balls? I'm trying to get the lay another gentleman commented. If you hand off the work, you should have to pull out your wallet. Then 11 hours later, the man responded, nobody asked the peanut gallery nothing. But he did because he, I know, I know. He did. Humans are full of contradictions. How was putting, how is a Facebook post not asking the peanut gallery? Yeah. I don't think he's fully thought through. Yeah. You should reflect on your attitude before taking the life of another animal. You should be more grateful to which he responds, I wouldn't think twice to take yours. That's the one good one. That one got me. There's a new amount in here. We touched the evidence for a book tour. Oh yeah. Let me find out. Because I'm a sucker for a good your majo. There's a couple of young and he threatened to punch me. There's a couple of your majo. It's true. This one says, sleepy Joe is the problem question mark. Sounds like the problem is sleepy, so and so, who can't do his own deer. And he says, because I was busy. Your mom. That's good. What are you going to believe on on that? I don't know. I'm going to feel it out and just see what feels feels right. Then he brings his own profession. While someone brings his own profession. He's a self and brought it to the wrong butcher. Just like when customers bring to you for bubble gum welding. To which he responds, Oh, he's a welder. He says, yeah, okay, let's see your weld smart ass. You nor nobody you s**t know can do what I do. So it's turning an indictment of his own welding. Yeah. And then there's just rapid fire. Real men cut up their own deer s**t you pal. Watch out, we got a badass s**t off. If you don't have time or knowledge to put what you harvesting the freezer, you shouldn't be hunting f**k you. Sounds like you was being lazy and cost you more than you wanted to pay. Now you're mad. If you want to bitch, get off your ass and do it yourself. And he says, you nobody's lazy, but you're old lady. And maybe, good but you're. Yeah. And then the other one was the, this is all I know with this. He says, if you don't shoot a button buck, you'll get more meat. And he says, does this look like a button buck to you s**t? And he has a picture of him holding the cut off head in the back of a truck. And it is a nice buck. Can I see that? Korean, do you know what bubble gum welding is? It's not good. Definitively no. I mean, is it just like doing a shoddy job and. Bully goby well. Like go on the other side of a table. Like, oh, oh, god. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Not good. I wanted to know until I did a little bit of welding last year. I was out duck hunting with Cal. And I was like a lull in the action. And I just got on marketplace. And I saw that. And I screenshot. I took like 10 screenshots of the comments. There's more there. It's a rich text. The guy exposed himself. I mean, he exposed his face. Yeah, you can if you go to his show. He seems a little. Kent anchors. Maybe remotely. You know, it's funny. No, the. I want to get moving along. We had a lot to cover today. Just so just so ladies and gentlemen, just so you know, we're going to talk about Florida. Florida bear hunt. A lot of news. Florida bear hunt. We got a heartwarming story from Canada. We're going to talk about Colorado Wolf management. And the. The wrath of the Trump administration. We're going to talk about. A lot of corrections. Um, oh, some stuff about jaguars and Arizona. Some stuff about mountain goats in Alaska. A lot of stuff to talk about. What else is in here? Uh, something called a desperate plea about skunks. Hmm. Substance. Oh, Massachusetts lobster. Heist. Hmm. I don't think we can get to the subsistence. That's a big. Anyways, obviously lots of stuff we got to cover, but real quick, you know, the, the, the, the, the bobcat championship game. No, the local school team one. My buddy. Very exciting. My kids buddy was telling a story. His family is all huge bobcat fans. It goes the overtime. And so it's like very tense over time moment. And. Bobcat dude makes a catch in the end zone. Which ties the game up. Mm-hmm. It will then be decided by the extra point. Anyways, the minute he makes the catch is on the end. I know he's learned up on his sports watch. Watching this dude. And you know, it's funny. I'm watching with my family. So I'm in the position of knowing more than anybody. It's like, I know like, you know, I hate say it, but it's a, it's an old term. Like the blind leading the blind. Mm-hmm. I had a glimmer of vision. I'm like, I don't know what happens now, you know, because my wife says, oh, no, she's blind. She's a little surprised because Katie's been, I think watching more football. She's a big fan. She was fired up. But I know more of the rules. Mm-hmm. And I'm just like better. I don't know man. I'm better at like, could we clip that figuring out what's going on in a football game? And she is. Yeah. And she's invested in it. Mm-hmm. She likes going to the, to the arena to watch the games. Yeah. So, anyways, my kids buddy, his dad, the minute the dude makes the catch, his dad in a moment of excitement, curls his remote control across the room. And when the remote control hits the wall, it changes the channel. And it dissolves. So he's just scrying his old man trying to frantically get his TV back up and running. By the time he got his, by the time he got it back up, the game was over. Oh, he missed 10 minutes of overtime. No, he missed the point. He missed 10 minutes of playing or what game was it? Yeah, I mean, it is just, this is all man. It was like just so overwhelmed. That's hilarious. Our warming story to start the new year, folks. Here's a good one for you. On a recent show, we covered a, we kind of dogged on him and goofed on him a little bit. But we covered a young struggling Canadian hunter who lives in Alberta. Probably. No, we know he's in Alberta. Yeah, that's right for talking all about how he, he's hunted all these years and never sees nothing, never gets nothing. Nobody will tell him where to go. Nobody will tell him where to go. He says they'll tell him to go west, but then he sees a picture of them with a deer and it looks like they went east. He thinks people lie to him hunting all these years, never got anything but a grouse. We'll be covered him and goofed on him and with love. He wrote in to say, uh, no, no, no, he didn't write a bunch of Canadians. Canadians wrote us helping him out offering that just goes to show you the difference between Canadians and Americans. Americans, he liked tough. Here's one. Here's one. Here's a letter that came in. Hey, there. My name is Steve Van Brunton. I'm the treasure of the Calgary Fish and Game Association. Here's in Calgary our group would love to take him in and help him out. Please forward him my info. I know the struggle. I also started hunting in my 20s and went a few years getting skunked at first. And he says, here's a, if for reference, here's a picture of my first year, which I shot west in the mountains. And he said, it's not. So, yeah, Roman has connected the initial writer in with this group. And maybe we'll, we'll hear of his success. Yeah, we'll. Next. Next. Well, here's a, here's a deal. No, this is the pay. We got to do, we got to do corrections. Now, anyone alive today knows that everyone talks about how we're in this era of misinformation, right? We're like in this cultural moment of, we're just misinformation. Does everybody know that? If you're engaged in the national conversation and you're a news reader, you would know that there is a, you would know whether you agree it or not, you would know that there is a coughony of, of like noise around fake news, misinformation, and it cuts both ways during, during, during the pandemic, you'd say that, hey, maybe it was a lab leak and you, you'd be accused of misinformation, right? Which one of being probably true. So it cuts both ways. But there's this whole narrative of like, there's no accountability, right? There's no accountability. You just say, you say a, you say a thing and you could say something blatantly false and we don't have the mechanisms out there to correct misinformation. And then it goes out there and does its thing and it cuts both ways, whatever. But we have that mechanism here. We have that here and I'll point this out when I participated in that, when I participated in the New York Times daily podcast. I've been in a lot of podcasts and I've hosted a lot of podcasts. Those suckers, fact check. Well, yeah. What the guest says, yeah, that would shut down most podcasts. They started doing that. They record it and they go to, they go to me and they're like, you said, ex, you said why you said Z. We can't corroborate Z. And I had to go, well, give me five minutes and I'll show you. Right. And then later that day, I had to be like, I was wrong. I was wrong. And they caught it. Yeah. Right? No one does that. That would ruin it. That would end podcasting in America today. However, what we'd like to do is we're going to create, we, I want corrections so bad that we're going to create a system by which we reward corrections. So if we say something that's off or incorrect or if we miss something or if the, you know, what you know, that thing that happens where you lie by omission. We caught our kid lying by omission recently left out a key detail. The detail was so key. Right. The D he's like, I'm going to go do blank. This is the oldest. Yeah. I'm going to go do blank. And we're like, oh, that's not like a problem, you know, and then like a while later we realized that he left off the other things he was doing. Like let's say you're like, let's say, let's say this isn't it. Let's say you were like, hey, I'm going to run down the road to the gas station. Mm-hmm. Okay. To rob it. Yeah. Right. That's not it. But it'd be like a thing like that. And we're like, oh, that's what at what point are we planning on including that detail? So he lied by omission. Right. Lied by omission. So if we say something that's off incorrect, if we miss something, if we, if we, if we screw up by omission of a thing, right? Sure, everything you said was correct or you, the listener are thinking you didn't say anything that was wrong, but you left off something of such impact that would have fundamentally changed the conversation you were having. Feel free to write in. But they got to bring the receipts, right? They can't just disagree with you. You got to bring the receipts. Yeah, I'm being, be discerning about it, please. Yeah, don't just send a bunch of dumb garbage in. You can email the mediator podcast at the mediator.com. And we're going to be accumulating a bank of this and corrections and in a little while will formalize a segment. Yeah, we're talking about formalizing a segment and we're talking about rewarding the best correction. Phil, you're going to have to come up with a corrections jingle. Oh, that's a good question. Corrections. We can go up traditions. Well, I had an idea where in the room, you, you, you, you all go one, two, three corrections. Then I play a sound that goes corrections. Yeah, that's kind of like a combo deal. I don't know. We've figured out, um, fiddle around the roof coming back. Oh, we've, we've done this in the past, but we've never, we've never system it. We've encouraged it by acknowledging it, but we've never formalized in what we're aiming toward doing is perhaps building a correction of the week. This is alive. This is a live idea. I'm throwing out there. Feel free to shut it down immediately. Would you want people to send in like video clips of them saying like, hey, this is, this is John from, from Arkansas. Shut it down. I got a correction for you. We can play it. We can play it on the delivery. That would be a good idea. Depending on the delivery. Yeah. Yeah. You could do that. No, I would, that would be, you could write it. If someone did do that, we don't want Randall's guy doing that from Facebook. That might be the top. That might be the top. I'm going to get out of the corrections. I foresee, I'm just trying to finish my thought. I foresee a show that is 100% corrections. Because then you got corrections to the corrections. That's the thing. Well, we don't need to do them all. So the Warner, here's a correction for instance. I will just pick the good corrections that we like. No. The best correction is the correction that corrects the biggest wrong. Correct. For instance, for like, if someone's like, oh, you said that it became a state in 1848. It actually became, technically, it became a state at 1159 PM, the New Year's Eve 1847. Like, I don't care about that. Yeah. But if it's like, hey, man, you said whatever that, that, you know, I don't know. For example, for example, yeah, trying to show here. This isn't a podcast corrections of video correction, but it has podcast tie-ins. We recently did a thing, a video about our, our San Hill Crane's truly rebinds, the rebinds guy. If you haven't watched it, go to YouTube and watch that. We're currently making a video called our Morgansers, really as bad as they say. Okay. So in our San Hill Crane video, we busted out our Warner, Braxler, Shear Force Test Machine, which measures tenderness to this. This calcance from the University of Nebraska, who is a meat scientist, wrote in to say, wait, he was our guest. Yeah. He was on episode 27. He came out to talk about meat science, the episode, that was back when we had good names for our episodes. That episode was called Red Cutter before we caved and started using dumb names. Now he's a meat scientist. So yeah, if you're going to go find this episode, don't search like, meat eater, what's know about meat, you're going to have to type in red red. Something you never think to write in. Yeah. You very difficult to find because something that know what on the planet is searching, except for people who've already listened to the episode and remember every day. They look at it. They typed in meat scientists, University of Nebraska, wild game, you won't find it. You type in red cutter. You'll find this is an extremely educational episode. You should listen like every every year just to refresh. Yeah, all your questions about like all your questions like, you know, when someone hits a deer and it goes, you hit a deer bad and it goes two miles before you find it. And then people will be like, well, that deer will be no good to eat because it was stressed in the lactic acid. All those questions resolved. Should you soak your meat and water? Should you soak it in salt water? All those questions resolved. He wrote in to say, there's no basically. He says, yeah, what was he? Oh, here it is. It's quick. This is Chris Calcon's The Meat Scientist. I saw a recent Instagram post showing use of the meat sheer machine being used on raw meat. Be aware there's hardly any relationship between sheer force of raw versus cooked meat for those who know it's a glaring error. We were taking raw sandhill crane in raw ribeye and measuring the tenderness and the sandhill crane blew away the ribeye in terms of tenderness. Did you do it cooked also? We never did it cooked. We never did it cooked. And what was funny about it is I was noticing that in the sheer force machine, sandhill crane is half. It's scoring like, I can't remember the exact numbers, basically it's scoring like a 1.5 bite force. And the ribeye is scoring a 3.0 bite force. But then when you cook them an item, there's no discernible difference. He's saying you can't do that. You got to cook it. Then sheer force tested. So we did the wrong science. Did the wrong science? That's okay. You weren't even laughing. That's a great correction. In future, this gentleman would maybe be walking away with correction of the week. For those, Brody's going to visit your home and cook you dinner. And you can like insult me or something. Tell me I'm wrong. Here's another correction. I love how game you are for that, buddy. We recently had on an episode 796 called Heart of the Jaguar. We had on the author James Campbell and we discussed among many things Jaguars and Jaguar recovery in Arizona. In that episode, we mentioned the biologist, one of the, if not the leading servant researchers. He's now he's going to write a correction about that and saying how he's not. Amanda, I regard to be one of the leading servant researchers in America. I regard that to be true. We mentioned Heffelfinger in the show and I even mentioned saying something that Heffelfinger might not like to hear. In Heffelfinger, we had a long conversation. Heffelfinger had some very fair corrections. He was unhappy with references to the Arizona game and fish department not being supportive of Jaguar showing up in Arizona. He had a mountain of examples that he shared with me demonstrating quite the opposite that the area, the zone of game and fish department has been entirely hospitable to Jaguars in Arizona. He says his agency has always been very active in both planning and implementation of Jaguar conservation. The Arizona game and fish department supports the US Fish and Wildlife Services Jaguar recovery plan which focuses on core Jaguar habitat in South and Central America and Mexico and that conservation efforts and funds for Jaguar conservation should be focused south of the border. He also says although the peripheral, the peripheral habitat in Arizona doesn't contribute to recovery, his department remains committed to protecting and conserving those individuals that disperse into Arizona. Moving on to a public service announcement. This doing this announcement goes against my well-being because I've already bought my rifle. I'm about to knock your odds down because I got the page open and I'm going to get my credit card out. Welcome to Meet Eaters 12 and 26 presented by Maltreem Mobile and On X Maps. 12 of Meet Eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long form episodes so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on Meet Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Travis Perkins Stratford has now moved to Lentenstone. He's got everything from timber, bricks and blocks to loads of tools, plants and equipment for hire along with benchmarks, kitchens and joinery. We keep all your essentials in stock, deliver to site and upgrade trade deals too. Your new Travis Perkins branch is packed with even more products, more space and even better service so for all your building materials, higher requirements and kitchen needs, simply head to Travis Perkins and benchmarks on Joseph Ray Road, Lentenstone doing what matters for the trade. The outdoor heritage foundation of Alaska is raffling off at Chewgatch Mountain Goat Tag, SG800. That's the tag number, which will come with a fully guided hunting experience and a travel stipend, as well as a Delta Junction Bison tag, which is SI 400. The money raised, is it SI 400? I think it's DI, let's say changed it. I feel like it should be DI. It's DI, SI 403. That's what it says on the website. Whatever. It's the Delta Junction Bison tag. So you get two tags if you win? Two seven win rounds. Two seven win rounds. Okay. The money raised for these tags will go to fund a coloring study being launched on the Chewgatch Mountain Goat Population by the Palmer Fish and Game Office and will also be used to support the organization's endowment fund. Well this organization, the outdoor heritage foundation of Alaska, is raising money with a mountain goat draw that they will turn around and use to do research on that population of mountain goats by going in and funding a coloring study by Palmer Fish and Game. Now I, uh, of the many things I enjoy following in life, I like following firm markets and I love following coloring studies. Looking at a map with all the blips of where stuff goes, I like the normal stuff animals do wearing a collar and I like the weird stuff animals do wear in a collar. Love coloring studies. They're very enlightening about how things use habitat. Another great thing about coloring studies is once you know how a population, so it's a native population of mountain goats, once you know how that population of mountain goats uses the landscape conservation efforts can be much more focused, right? You might say, Hey, if we're going to protect habitat or do habitat work, where, like where do these things actually go and what do they use and it helps you be very targeted in conservation efforts? So coloring studies are great. Um, both the bison and the goat raffles are live now to back up to this goat deal for the goat tag. If you're a not, this is open to non resonance and the catch here is, unless you have a relative in Alaska. And if you're a non resident of a, if you're a Alaska non resident, so you don't live in Alaska, the only way you can go hunt goats is if you have a relative in Alaska and you can hunt and go with that person, other net, you got to hire a guide. So when you draw this tag, the wind, it's a guided trip with the travel stipend to get you up there. This is all expense paid go take. When I draw it, I won't need those services because I'm already familiar with the area. Oh, my brother, I don't need the services. So you really should put you for this. So what you're saying, I apply for this tag. Here's the catch. Here's the weird part. I apply for this tag every year. Every year. Here's the crazy thing. These websites actually tell you how many tickets have been sold. So you can look at what your chances are. What is that right now? Only 258 tickets for the goat. What? Dude, I'm in the mix. I mean, the mix for now. I'm in the mix. I bought 70. I bought four for 75. I'm going to get back in there. I think I'm going to buy. I'm getting back in. I was just getting like, I just made an opening offer with my 75. You can just tell them you don't need a guide. You're like, I don't need that part. I'm going to put the money. I'm going to donate it back. I'm going to donate it back to the org. I don't need the guide. Yeah. I'm already in it. I'm already in the state draw. Anyway, you're almost, you're basically already hunting that goat. Yeah. You're so close. So how do people find this if you want to participate? Well, the Delta Junction Bison take a package. It's like of the Hunts in Alaska. There's Delta Junction, the Chitner herd, the farewell burn herd, the copper river herd. The Delta herd is the like road accessible. It's a very achievable hunt. They do some, there's some farming. Oddly, there's not much farming in Alaska. There's some agricultural production around Delta Junction. So a lot of these guys that have these ag fields, they charge a small trespass fee. Just like if you want to go hunt a really wild, free ranging, bison population that has buffalo that are able to move across jurisdictions and they're just like wild, free roaming animals managed as a big game species. This is an accessible hunt for people that don't know the ins and outs of Alaska. You don't need to be like a logistics wizard to pull off a Delta Junction hunt. So we're four tickets for 500 bucks. One ticket for 25 bucks. Goat, 14 for 200 all expense paid. Four for 75. God, that makes me, I'm just getting in there heavy duty now. Keep bleep all that out, Phil. We'll deal. So for the goat raffle, you have until March 6th, the drawing is going to be the next day for the bison raffle. You have until the 14th, the drawing is going to be on March 15th. And if you go to the outdoor heritage foundation of Alaska's website, oh, H F A K dot org forward slash raffles plural, you will find links to purchase tickets. Okay. Don't buy the bison ones. Moving on. We got an email called a desperate plea advice needed. Now stay tuned. We're going to get to the hard hit and we're going to get to the hard hit and political, politically divisive stuff down the road. When I was talking about wolves and like the wrath of the Trump administration, that's all coming. Um, but first, desperate, desperate plea. Dear Stephen crew, this is someone writing in for help. Let me, let me begin by saying I love my wife and kids very much. That's always a great set up. But hey, some guys don't. If he wrote in, say, let me begin by saying I don't love my wife and kids. Yeah. Changes the whole thing. I would cover the story. Yeah. I wouldn't have put it in there. I would have read it. He wouldn't have a problem if he was sure he wouldn't even have this problem. Very titillating to start off a story with that though. Yeah. Yeah. And you couldn't. He said, I don't love my wife. I would have read, but I would never cover it. Yeah. Because I wouldn't be able to support that. He says, I also love trapping. As you may or may not know, skunk prices are pretty good this year. We know it well, buddy. In fact, we covered it at on meaty to radio live. With the firm market being down the past few years, I was excited to see that skunks are average in 20 to 30 bucks in Oklahoma. Geez. Hmm. They were even higher. Like here. Sorry, that was my job. There's a dog in the stadium. Excuse me. They were even higher. This happened a couple of years ago. There was like that spike in beaver prices for cowboy hats. And dudes got so hard after beavers. It's just like dropped. And I in the skunk, I don't think the skunk is like, I don't know that the skunk explosion is going to hold up. Hmm. So I think it's already dipping from harvest. A lot of guys catching a lot of skunks. Anyway, it's 20 to 30 bucks in Oklahoma. That being a back to the letter. That being said, my son and I have started to target skunks more than usual. He says, now I am no Jared Maya Johnson. But we're looking at a nice little pay day with all the skunks we've been catching. I don't understand that reference. He's doing pretty good. He's really not because there's no part of Jeremiah Johnson where he's excelling at any sort of fur harvesting. Are you here? He's just saying that Jeremiah Johnson, he feels like he's a great trapper, Jeremiah, and that he himself is not comparable to a great trapper that maybe Jeremiah was. He's still doing well. If he said, no, I'm no craggled, or man. Well, that would make sense to three people. Or I'm no slim Peterson. Yeah. I'm no 10. I'm no haw baker. Oh, now random. No wife, Mars, the other. I'm no Mercer Lawing. No Seth Morris. I'm no John Graham. Sure. I'm no Jeremiah Johnson. But to go on, he's no Jeremiah Johnson. He's looking at a nice little payday of all the skunks he's been catching. Well, I came home last night and sat on the couch after a good trap lying check and my wife broke down in tears and proceeded to tell me she can't live like this anymore. Buddy, I have gotten the same notes. She then says she's tired of my truck and the garage smelling like a skunk. He says I didn't get sprayed so it's not that bad. She can just get a little whiff of it here and there. I bet it's probably worth it. It is worth it. Terrible. Let me finish up the thing. He goes on. I am in a predicament. I love my wife, but I'm not about to sell all my trapping stuff and sign my son up for piano lessons. What should I do? Is there a happy medium to my situation? PS, y'all need a new turkey spot in Oklahoma. I love to take you out. I love to take you out for a ride from Oklahoma. That order is one of those orders. Let me put to you this way. My dad always like to tell a story. When he was a little boy, he lived by a foundry and all day long. Katoong, katoong, katoong from the foundry. People would say that Katoong is neighborhood and people would go, what is that noise? To which people in neighborhood would go, what noise? You, my friend, might be acclimated. You might be being acclimated to the skunk smell. Am I the only person and I'm not in a household where skunks get trapped? If I drive by it, I just never think it's bad. No, it's great. It just wouldn't work. I don't understand. It doesn't hit me in that way. The intensity increased by proximity. A little with road kill skunk is nothing close to it. If you run over a road kill skunk and get a little bit of it, stuck up under your vehicle and it just stays there for two weeks. But it doesn't smell like it doesn't smell rotten. Things that would turn me off is something that's like rotting. I had my cat come home at two in the morning drenched in skunk and that completely altered my brain. It's rewired. I hate it. The thing is, is it can make something smell just by being near it. Like it goes to me the air and coats. Remember we were out at our Jakes place and we had a couple of beavers that I sit in ten feet away to eat. No one near and you couldn't eat those beavers. So, remember we auctioned off in the auction house of oddities that bottle of genuine scum scent? Yes, I do. So we were extracting that with hyperdermat needles, the myredox, like hard, like large, bore cattle injectors. Yep. Well, we were like surgical about doing it. And I, all I did, I didn't want to throw my hyperdermat needle out. So you washed it and kept it. No, I didn't, there was the one oversight. Okay. So I had the hyperdermat needle in my garage. And my wife is having a shit fit about the skunk smell. In her car on everything, I had a whole embarrassing thing happen at the barber shop. So I'm like, Katie, there is no nothing in that garage. It's just like a residual smell that'll dissipate, but it wouldn't. And I eventually realized that hyperdermat needle. So she's probably right. You're probably wrong. If you had a way to take your whole, all aspects of your skunk operation to an outbuilding, he needs a skin and shit. Yeah, just build a shed or, yeah, but you might not have that, you might not have that luxury. It might just have to be the, you tell her, trapping season don't last all year. I don't know. Or you take the whole entire operation. I think you don't park your truck in the garage. The entire operation, when you walk out of your shed, you walk out of your shed and your underwear. Yes, she's already in tears. So I think I don't know if the trapping season is only part of the year is going to work. I think I think you need to start looking at the shed, looking at the, the, the more dramatic step here. But he might not, my story about the hyperdermat needle is being, you have to take extra percussion, entire operation. Mhm. Boots, gloves, hat, clothes, truck, backpack, the entire operation has the move to where you, when you walk away from skunk land, you walk away in your underwear. To be fair, you love your wife and kids very much, but you haven't moved your operation off site. Yeah, but I'm not doing 20 skunks. True. I'm good for like a skunk. I mean, skunk now and then we have a handful of like, you know, skunk saying this guy might, you know, be a little more thoughtful than you. I don't know. He's she is crying. Um, I think he's a little bit hard on the piano lessons. The, I think there's a lot of value in piano lessons. I'm gonna say that too. Make a point. But yeah, but I think I think I think I think Johnny's point is why you, you know, I'm just saying, maybe he could use his proceeds to pay for some piano lessons and say, look what the kids getting out of it. As long as that kid hasn't been handled in a skunk. He's got the kids on the piano. Skunks are black and white. Piano's are black and white. Good point, man. I'll go together. Yeah, I think he was making a point. I don't, I don't think skunk trap and piano planner totally incompatible, but I think that you would find. You would find that there is an inverse correlation to prowess on the piano and prowess as a skunk trapper. I think that you would find that. Is Dale Brisbane know about these high skunk prices? I told about it. And he said, I'm not that broke. Which I didn't want to take it up with him. I don't want to argue about it. I thought he was wrong. Here's some news from Massachusetts. This is fascinating. Something I hadn't really thought about. Well, I have thought about it. Listeners will know that in the past I had, it was, it remains unresolved, unsolved, there's an unsolved mystery where I, there was a fish heist in our office. I don't know how it's still unsolved. It was in our last office. Yeah, that's. There was a major fish heist in our last office and it was never solved. Someone stole the small fortunes worth of seafood and we never caught them. I thought I was allowed to take that stuff. Wait, what? We have been these high profile, like organized crime level. So this is a story reported in Forbes from Massachusetts. These like well organized, high profile thefts of massive amounts of seafood. And the gist of the article saying when you, like these aren't, these aren't things with barcodes and serial numbers. That's the reason they like them. Yeah, so it's like you're stealing lobster. So like unmarked, like completely unmarked stuff that's very easy. Something I never thought of. Like a big load of seafood on a truck is very hard to track. Yeah, it's hard to track and it's easy to move. It's easy to move. They got these guys that just stole 40,000, like hear me out. 40,000 pounds of lobster meat from a warehouse in Massachusetts estimated to be worth $400,000. The lobster was supposed to go to Costco's in Illinois in Minnesota. You think that's like King crab legs in the shell? Or do you think it's lobster? But then they're like that. Sorry, lobster. So is it, is it tails? I feel like it must be tails. Would you picture going to a Costco and find it tails? Yeah, it's a tail. Sometimes they'll see a hole. They're not picked. That's what I was curious about. They're not like the main lobster tails. They're the, uh, no, these aren't rock lobster tails. That's right. Spine, the spiny lobster tails. Yeah. When it keeps pointing out meat, I'm assuming they're not moving live lobster, but maybe like tails. And they're like, at the time it is reporting, they're pointing out the, it's already gone on the black market. For half price, which that's what it might take away. Yeah, they're just getting more black market lobster. They probably, these steves probably moved it $200,000. But this guy goes on to say that you're probably seeing, or you're probably seeing, and when you hear about how this stuff goes on, this analyst here saying, you're seeing old school organized crime, intersecting with cyber crime. These guys basically, not basically, these criminals impersonated a legitimate trucking company. Okay. They go to a warehouse, with a truck that's labeled and everything. And they know about the, they know about the lobster being there. They know about the shipment happening. They pose as the legitimate shipper coming to go there. They like, it's like identity theft. Like they, they get the account numbers and all the information they need. Right. It's both like physical on the trucks, and then like on the back end with the communication. They've hacked all the delivery information. They have a fraudulent load listing. And then they got their guy comes in. They got dispatchers, right? Very sophisticated stuff. And then they drive off. And they drive off. And then the actual truck shows up looking for the lobster that they already took off. That's a good part of the movie. Yeah. It's a great part of the movie. It's just $200,000. Seems like, I know, it's like, it's too risky for that. Right. It just seems like, is it enough? Oh, it's, if I, if you were to tell me, oh, well, they've done it hundreds of times over it, which later we learned that there was a crab that I think wanted to say annually. What was the number annually? It was in the billions, wasn't it? Yeah. And they could be involved with all kinds. They could be picking up televisions and computers. And they could be doing this with all different kinds of stuff. But this, this being reported like this is going to make their lives more difficult. But yeah, there's been other seafood hice. Yeah. But the part of it, I mean, it's all interesting, the part that was interesting to me is that you're just able to move huge, that you can just move black market huge quantities of seafood. But if you said it, like you said, if it's organized crime, they probably already have those connections, right? Like they know how to move. 40,000 pounds a lot. So it says, all told cargo theft is estimated to be a $35 billion loss. From the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Yeah. But that includes, that includes electronics, pharmaceuticals. But Yani's point about the net, unless you're doing this, unless you're just doing this all the time. If you imagine that you're a one-off criminal enterprise, and you have this where you got, you got four people involved, six people involved, and in the end, you net $200,000. That's not even net. That's not your retirement plan. Yeah, it's not going to an island for the world. Maybe it's so easy for them to do. I wonder how much the crab heist was, and then there's other seafood heists going on. So maybe they just have it. And they can just go to the countryside quickly. Maple syrup is another big one. I think we've even covered that. Well, this is how you get to the classic film trope of one last heist. Because they need to do one last heist, so that they can finally ride off into the sunset. Right. So the, the 40,000 pounds of lobster was good, but if we can get another 40,000 pounds of lobster, I'm not doing this anymore. Yeah, exactly. You know, like the town of Penny and my friends. These oceans films, yeah, exactly. That's a last chance. Welcome to Meet Eaters 12 and 26, presented by Mulchry Mobile and On X Maps. 12 of Meet Eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long form episodes, so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on Meet Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Flaur to bear hunt results. Harvest results. We've covered this a whole bunch. Florida decade ago, we always tell the stories of one of my favorite, kind of like wild life policy stories of the last decade or so, is Florida ran a bear hunt a decade ago. And they're their first bear hunting forever. I can't remember exactly how long, but their first hunt was a year ago. I think it was a year ago. I think it was a year ago. I think it was a year ago. I think it was a year ago. I think it was a year ago. I can't remember exactly how long, but their first hunt and decades, they ran a bear hunt. When they put together the bear hunt, they decided on a quota system. So it was an open hunt with a cap. And it's like anyone with a license can go out hunt bears. And their plan was to shut the license to shut the hunt down at 300 bears. I think it's what it was. And they, within a couple days, hit their quota in some of the units. They hit their quota right away. When they built it in, they built in that there was a 24 hour window. So as they approached their bear quota, people have to report the bears as they kill it. As they approached the bear quarter, their plan was to shut it down, but there was a 24 hour window to shut it down. During that 24 hour period, hunters were killing so many bears in Florida that during the 24 hour shutdown period, some units in Florida, the bear harvest, overshot the quota in a couple of units. And so in two days of this open hunt in Florida in a two day span, they killed 300 bears. And the anti-hunter's, the Amelwrights folks had a conibction about this. They felt like, oh my God, they botched the whole thing. They killed too many bears on the flip side. That was half of the reality. The other half of the reality was people said, man, we must have a lot of bears. Right? There's two ways of looking at this whole story. But it was a real black eye for Florida. Florida didn't do any bear hunts. Now they just did another bear hunt. And on this bear hunt, they tried a new model. On this bear hunt, they tried a tag draw model, where they did a lottery to give out a smaller handful of bear tags. What happened, as we reported on previous shows, what happened is the Amelwrights people all come in and they start saying, hey, we're going to go apply for bear tags. And then not use them. So they're going to give out the requisite. They're going to give out the allotted number of bear tags. And you guys 172. Okay. We're going to award 172 bear tags. And the animal rights people like, yeah, but we're going to get all those bear tags and not use them. Prior to the hunt, the Fish and Wildlife Commission in Florida, their basic attitude was go ahead, buddy, because you're just buying licenses and funding our agency by buying licenses. Next year, we'll take the formula and we'll adjust. If our objective is to kill, let's say, whatever, let's say, their objective is to kill 100 bears. If you do your little scheme and we give out a hunt, let's say, we gave out 200 tags expecting to kill 100 bears. And we give out 200 tags and kill 50 bears. Well, guess what? Next year, we'll give out 400 tags. And we're going to get it right by all the fake licenses you want. We thank you for the money. Was there attitude? Well, they did their hunt and low and behold, they came in, they ran the season from December 6 to December 28. They had a good hunt, but they came in below objective. But, oh, is that clear that it's, that the objective was to kill 172 bears. No, that's a number of tags. Yeah. They killed 52. And I think that they had, they had, they were comfortable with a much larger harvest. What was the harvest they were comfortable with? I don't know if they said, they said a number. They just said that they're like the success rate was lower than they had planned on, but it's still pretty good. Yeah. They're pleased, but it was on the low end of expected. So here's the great irony. Here's what always happens. This happened, let me give you another ver... Well, let me tell you what happened. Let me give you another example to happen. So the animal rights community says, we're going to screw your bear hunt, and we're going to apply for all these tags. And then don't hunt them, okay? So they do the hunt. They issue 172 tags. They kill, remind me again, how many got around 52? They kill 52 bears. What does the animal rights community say? The lack of success these hunters had goes to show. There aren't enough bears to support the hunt. It's like in California, when California banned using hounds to mountain lion hunt. The efficacy rate plummeted. So they ban the use of the hounds, the animal rights groups petition, they ban the use of hounds to hunt. Then you see in the following years, efficacy rate of lion hunting drops drops drops, because you can't use hounds to hunt. What do they go and say? Oh my gosh, mountain lion efficacy rates are so low now, it must be there's no lions. So they create a scenario and then they use that scenario, turn around and use it against the wildlife manager. So here they're making the case. Geez, it went so shiddly, thanks to us doing what we did, that now we can turn around and use that low harvest against the agency by saying, most not be that many bears, success rates are very low. Even though we're all sitting on tags that we didn't hunt. Yeah, it'd be interesting to know how many of those tag holders were deliberately not going to hunt and then go with a success rate based on that. He goes, they go on to say, in their press release, they say, hey, the hunter's success rate was very close to other states with similar hunt parameters. Do you know if that's it? Go ahead. Well, I'm glad for him. I mean, if they had had a mistake again, right, let's say they had given 172 tags on what their objective was, if they gave 172 and 172 people killed a bear, then I don't know, people would be using that against them. Maybe another like, what a slaughter, you know, so here's the moving forward. Can non-res apply for that tag, you know? I'm not aware. That's a great question. I might assume so. But I'm not positive. Man, I wanted to get all in due. This is just you can probably hit it lightly because public comment is open. 10% non-resident. Yeah. Trump reviews federal subsistence program in Alaska. Now here, this is a doozy. I hesitate to get into this because this is an hour long conversation. And it's not settled yet. Right. Maybe light touched. A light touch. How it's not settled. I mean, come back to it. 60% of Alaska's federal land. In Alaska, there is a thing called federal subsistence hunting where people that live in rural communities in Alaska. In defined rural areas in Alaska, residents of defined rural areas in Alaska can often hunt and fish on federal lands under different regulations than everybody else. It's the federal subsistence. So there's three tiers, right? There's native. Then there's like resident subsistence. Then there's like just just kind of recreation. Well, there's here's why it takes an hour. Yeah. Because there's state subsistence. Yeah. So here's example. Let's say you're a resident in Alaska. There are some harvest that are state subsistence harvest. For instance, sable fish or black cod. That's state subsistence. You could live in downtown Anchorage. You can go and you can travel to an area that has a state subsistence hunt or a state subsistence fishery. And you can participate in the area. So you could be from an urban area. But participate in a state subsistence hunt as long as you're in the area where the state subsistence hunt occurs. For federal subsistence practices on federal lands, you have to be a resident of that area. Okay, you can do federal subsistence activities in your area. And it might be increased bag limits, earlier hunting seasons, fisheries that aren't open to other people. And that's the federal subsistence thing. What it allows is you can't, the state can't go in on some issues. They can't go in and make hunting seasons and fishing opportunities that are applied solely to native Alaskans. What they can do is they can say on federal lands, they can say if you live in this area and it might be predominantly native area, if you live in this area, you have different rules and regulations for hunting and fishing, certain hunting and fishing practices on federal lands. Many oftentimes, and this is my personal view, some of the federal subsistence board decisions are there's some areas where they have some major overreach. In my view, as an outsider looking in, you mean like being too liberal with what they allow some people to do? No, not as much that as they've created a lot of controversy in Alaska by making certain, like in Western Brooks range, that like, caribou hunting, moose hunting for big game, you know, whatever decision that says, it's federal subsistence only. Meaning that people from other parts, not people from outside the state, not only people from outside the state, but people from outside of that area can no longer hunt that area or take and sheep, doll sheep units in the Brooks range and the federal subsistence board coming in and saying, only federal subsistence people can hunt this hunt. And it could be what they've allowed to creep into their decision making process is not necessarily the health of the species being hunted, but it's social considerations. Meaning, people, communities in the Western Brooks range say, hey, we're sick of people from outside of our area coming into hunt. So the federal subsistence board saying, okay, we'll make it that they can. That has caused an enormous amount of controversy in certain areas. The federal subsistence board just made a very strange decision. They came in and declared Ketchikan, Alaska to be federal subsistence eligible. So now you have a town that has a Walmart and a Starbucks and a bunch of crappy gift shops for cruise people and gift stores. It's a full town with an airport. The federal subsistence board shocked everybody, most everybody, and came in and said, Ketchikan is federal subsistence. On what grounds, but like from their perspective, if they're putting forth this on serious grounds, what are they claiming? There are people who could benefit. Here's the, I'll give you the best argument. I mean, I know I tried to understand this a while back in it. Because there's a lot, there are a lot of native Alaskans in Ketchikan. Right. And you can't grant. They can't grant just native Alaskans. So you have indigenous people in Ketchikan. They can't grant them these, these hunting and fishing privileges. On that, you can only grant it to the tribe under federal subsistence. But the minute you do that for federal subsistence, you can't. So you have to say the jurisdiction, everyone living in this jurisdiction. So now, the guy that, the guy, I know that Walmart owns Walmart, but the guy that owns the grocery store is now federal subsistence. But they can do hunting and fishing practices. Like in practice, in practice, if that's lived out, will that still end up benefiting tribal members who they're seeking to? That tribal members were instrumental in petitioning, like native Alaskans from the area were instrumental in petitioning to get federal subsistence status. But the federal subsistence status falls in the whole town. And many people quite rightfully are looking at the irony of taking a town that has chain hotels, a super eight, a Walmart, cruise ship dogs, Delta airline flights, Alaska airline flights, United airline flights, a ferry system, cars, like taking a full on city, a full on urban center, and saying, you need to, you basically are saying, you people rely on a subsistence lifestyle and should be granted subsistence harvest authority. And other people looking at being like, how in the world can you live in a town with a Walmart in an airport? And be reliant on subsistence practices. And why, I know you said earlier, that they can't just give it to the natives. And why is that? It's unconstitutional. I don't know the full legal history of why that can't happen. It's unconstitutional. Here's what else makes this story interesting. Where a lot of this subsistence activity is going to wind up taking place is on another town, on another island that already has, because another island that very much is rural. And is very remote. And the people on that island have federal subsistence. So now people out there are like, hallment, wait a minute, where do you think they're going to be doing all this federal subsistence activity? It's going to be in our federal subsistence area. So now you got one, you got people from one federal subsistence area who are like, dude, you people aren't rural. And I know you're all coming to our area to hunt. Yeah. So for these various reasons, when I laid out about stuff from doll sheep units, and I'm not even fully like, I have very complex personal thoughts about this whole thing. I'm trying to as much as possible lay out the issue that will cover when we cover this. We're going to cover this big time later. This is the light touch. This is the light touch. It's so complicated. The thing is where like, if it goes through like, what's to stop like anchorage or fair banks from, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, SCI Safari Club International has a thing they've asked. This has been put forward. They have asked the administration, the current administration, to do a review of, hey, what is going on with the federal subsistence program in Alaska? And a couple of the questions are raising is they've recently added new board members. So it's like, what is up with the, what is up with, who is on the board? Are we talking about health of wildlife species? Or are we talking about social friction? What is the decision making process? What are some of the things that happen lately? And just basically doing a review of the process? Native groups in Alaska? We're worried about this. What's that? I'm looking forward to hearing more. We're going to do a full cover on it. Yeah. What's the timeline on this? Like as far as them, we read that for me because I got to pull something up. Then we're going to move on other news stories. Yeah. Public comment. Where is it? February 13th. Oh, speaking of February 13th and it's a Ferry Club. What am I going down there? So I'm trying to fire right now. That's your birthday. I know. Check this out. Give me a minute. Not then. Where are they taking comments? Not then. Oh, you mean when you're going to, um, with Morgan? Yeah. February 18th to 21st is this, is the S.C.I. show? Is the dates for their show. Okay. If you, if you on YouTube watch our Africa series, and if you didn't like, you need to or listen to all the three million podcasts we did about it. Yeah. I'm going to be at the S.C.I. convention in Nashville with Morgan Potter. So if you're going to the S.C.I. show, Morgan Potter and I are going to do a presentation. So the professional Hunter I was hunting with who's been on the podcast. We're going to be in Nashville doing a presentation at S.C.I. about that trip about wildlife management, Africa, about things that were assumed and learned just the whole story of it. So if you want to come check that out. Tickets. You get tickets through S.C.I. I have no, I'm going. Ticket prices. All that money goes to S.C.I. All it all goes to support S.C.I. I'm not taking a dip into this. So when you get in, you got to buy a ticket. But the ticket is not to me. The ticket is to support S.C.I. because this is one of their biggest fundraising. It's a non-profit. One of their biggest fundraising opportunities is this. So when you get your ticket, it's your supporting S.C.I. not me. Mountain Lion kills woman in Colorado. A hiker. They even give her name. Kristen Marie Kovatch, 46 years old, killed on New Year's day in Northern Colorado. Go ahead, Brody. This is your neck of the woods. Well, it was right outside Estes Park, which is right outside Rocky Mountain National Park where you're like kind of resorties touristy town. Popular hiking trail and some other hikers. Have you personally hiked that trail? No, I don't. I mean, I may have back when it way back when when I lived in Boulder. I don't know. I mean, I've been in that area a bunch. But either way, some other hikers founder and it was determined she had been killed by a mountain lion. They went in and I think killed to juveniles. And I don't know where they're at with getting the lion that I heard from. I heard through the grapevine that they were looking for the adult. Yeah, I haven't heard. I mean, you'd think they would have got on that line pretty quick, but you know, I don't know. I hurt, yeah, mine, but yeah, of course it would be if it was like a predatory. Yeah, um, after it. But you know, like the whole thing kind of goes to whether like lions attack more people in states where they don't get hunted versus where they do like line hunting is legal on Colorado. It might not take place a lot in this particular area. But it's like when you get into that whole thing, it's like it happens so rarely that it's like it remains a non-issue. Yeah, exactly. Well, it remains a non-issue. If we covered people getting zapped by lightning, like we always covered people getting killed by wild animals. If we covered people getting zapped by lightning, we would have a lot. We would there would be much more coverage. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I saw was that the on that same trail, a guy was attacked in the fall. And he hit it with a stick and managed to scare it off. But then I guess there have also been cases of people walking pets in that area that have had their pets come attack. So it seems like it's probably a lion that's just like, it's not like this is out in the middle of nowhere, you know. Yeah, the guy was the guy was encountered, encountered a lion in November when he was running and it rushed him, but he beat it off. So it seems like there here's the crazy part about. Thanks Phil. What are you going to believe about? Just just move on. That's the here's the here's where this whole thing with mountain lion attacks gets weird. Is you had that you had that summer? This is a few handful years ago now where Washington state had its first ever recorded human fatality from a mountain lion attack. Yeah. And then right on the heels of that, I think it was in this order. Oregon had its first one in something like 90 years. Yep. Right together. And then a bunch of other high profile cases. We had a kid on who's sitting right where we're young. He's sitting right now who him and his brother were attacked and his brother was killed in a mountain lion attack. It's like it seems beyond seems like it it seems as though you're seeing more and more. There's different explanations to be like there's more lines on the landscape. There's more people on landscape. There's more recreation on landscape. One of the more interesting things I've someone has mentioned to me. We have a friend who works in mountain lion depredation issues works problem lines and things spend his whole career on mountain lines. He had like just an observation from throughout his career. He was in the Pacific Northwest. And it's like just it's an it's an individual it's a very well informed individuals observation. The early in his career any mountain lion that brushed up against like the human lion barrier was was a dead lion. He's like in the old days if a lion came on someone's porch it was dead lion. If a lion came through town it was a dead lion. He says as tolerance has increased and as people have been reluctant to like oh look that's so cool there's a lion on my porch which he's not passing judgment on it. We're saying as tolerance and acceptability of lions as increased as people have gotten comfortable with wildlife and people have gotten where it's not you know you don't call the cops because you saw them outland cut across your backyard. He says I would expect to see more of this sort of thing happen. It doesn't mean that it's becoming like a pandemic. It doesn't mean it's becoming like anything other than a freak occurrence because like I would expect to see that with increased tolerance you're going to have increased interactions. Yeah those lions that are experiencing increased tolerance also develop their own increased tolerance for being around people. Yeah you know they're like oh no no they're not a problem. Yeah go right up to them. Yeah they don't do anything. But to demonstrate like how rare it is at first when I read the sentence I thought it was funny but then I thought about it. It was a first fatal attack in Colorado by a mountain line in this century and you're like oh wow was it but this century is 25 years so. Oh and where was the guy? I remember the guy that put that one in a strangle hold. Oh yeah I mean that was a one. Yeah. That was a whole baby. I'm thinking. Wasn't that Colorado? I believe it was. It was a little it was a little line. It was like a juby. Yeah was it also in Colorado where there are four older ladies where they bite those washers. They're washing. Yeah another thing bikes bike seem to have like a lot of there there seem to be a lot of mountain biking incidents with lions. I'm okay with that. And there was the one in there's a grizzly bear up by glacier that ended up killing a guy on a bike. Yeah but it's like as more and more people are traveling quickly and silently in the woods. You hit that. Yeah that was a weird story because the dude hit it. Yeah the dude behind him. Oh really? No the dude behind him I believe boogie. Took off. The guy hit the bear got killed by the bear. Welcome to meet eaters 12 and 26 presented by Maltry mobile and on X maps. 12 of meet eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long form episodes so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on meet eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Also in Colorado. Take away Brody. Back to the wolf desk in Colorado. Yeah. The wolf desk intersects with the wrath of the administration. People they accord my brother's theory. Oh come on. It's not just a theory. Well, no, here's the deal. Let's let's argue after we talk. But you got to include the water deal. Oh, we will. Okay, go ahead. So the Fed at we talk about Colorado wolves all the time. They're kind of out of stand still right now with getting new ones to introduce because the Fed said you can't get them from Alaska. You can't get them from Canada. Now they've stepped in and said if you don't comply with certain like showing us certain like record keeping things and certain practices you're going to do down the line and introducing more wolves like if you don't comply with what we say, we're just going to shut down your whole reintroduction program and we're going to take over management of wolves in the state of Colorado. So that's the that's what's going on. Some of the reasons for stepping in were that Colorado knowingly introduced livestock killers that Colorado released wolves last January without really letting anyone know when and where they were going to do it. So there's like tension between Colorado and the federal the US Fish and Wildlife as far as management policies. And did they went outside the country to get the wolves? Yes, which was not part of their management. They ultimately, yeah, they I mean, they tried to have everywhere and ultimately I think got some from British Columbia after the. They brought in the state currently has 20 to 30 wolves. Several, several new pups born in 2025. 15, they brought in 15 from Canada. And I think they've I forget the exact number like out of the total number they've introduced. I think they've maybe killed, I can look it up real quick, but I think they've they've had to like, legally remove 10 of the ones they know. I know that they I know that they have and I know that that was even done in a very some of that was done in a pretty low key fashion. Yeah, yeah. That they had one buggy over to New Mexico. Yeah, which is very close to a population of endangered Mexican gray wolves. That one killed some that one killed some livestock and then they brought it back home. What'd your buddy cook think about that? Haven't asked him. Anyway, so possible outcomes here of a complete federal takeover were Colorado CPW Colorado Parks and Wildlife has no authority to manage wolves in their own state. And the feds could come in and kill the wolves that are there. They could relocate them. Like Colorado wouldn't have a say. The reintroduction could be halted. So it's pretty interesting considering what else is going on at the same time as this. There's a bill moving through Congress right now like the house just approved delisting wolves. It hasn't gone through the Senate yet and I don't know that it'll make it through the Senate. But that would throw a wrench into this whole thing too because then the feds might not have the power to do what they want to do here. But there's also like this big beef going on between Trump and Polis. Trump has beef with a lot of governors from democratic states. There was a water program. But he had that little hogathon with the new mayor of New York. He did. They love each other. But if I think of like a threat to America, I think of that dude. Yeah. Well, part of that. I see a lot of threats. That dude loves that guy. He's not managing wolves anywhere though. Yeah, he's not managing wolves. But yeah. So like what was their name? Tina Peters? So there was the woman that what did she do Randall? She was like she she was an elections clerk and she after she certified the election. She was massive with stuff. She yeah, she let someone come in and copy the hard drives off of their voting machines and gave them passwords to the voting machines and did a bunch of stuff like that. So she got some random guy from the internet. She got convicted of that like violating her charter as an elections official. Trump pardoned her, but she was convicted under on a state charge. So it was like a symbolic symbolic pardon. And Polis was like, yeah, it doesn't mean anything. Yeah. Trump didn't like that. And then he blocked this water bill. Yes. The Laura Bolbart was behind. Lauren. Yeah. Yep. And then she said, well, this is all about Epstein. Yep. And other people are like, no, it's all about Polis. Yeah. Now I doubt Trump is like digging into like wolf management in Colorado, but yeah, this is all in Brody's mind. Brody's mind. I think it all comes back to the further between Polis and Trump. They have beef. They have beef. For sure. Yeah. They have beef. And it's like, hey, we're going to make your life difficult. And and Polis and Polis's husband are big wolf supporters. They are. So it could be that he's like, I'm going to stick it to you. I'm wolves too. Now, but he's got in that way, though, this has been the state has been by and large. If they had called me, I would have said, here's what I think you ought to do about wolves. It would have not have been what they did. Yeah, that like they bungled a lot of stuff badly. Unfortunately, because I have a lot of like love for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. They I think they do a lot of great stuff. I just think this wolf thing was, but this wasn't them. You can't put it on them. They weren't the architects of this, but they got there. They were in charge of of releasing the wolves. They like, but under derest that look the the director of CPW resigned because he was going to get canned over the wolf thing. Okay. But they did just for you know, I'm telling listeners. You already know the story. There was a there was a ballad initiative. Yeah. In the ballad initiative, I can't remember the language, but the ballad initiative, when it passed, it sat in motion. Um, the the state agency. Yeah, they were they had to make a plan and execute on a plan. And they were very quick to do it. They were when I talk about the bungling is the world got very complicated for them as well. Yeah, if you remember, because wolves were walking in from wild. Yep. It's like everything got weird. And then other states were like, and I don't know why this is other states are like, I'm not giving you wolves. No one besides the state agency directors probably will ever know why that decision was made. I think the wild. Idaho Colorado would say, I'm not giving you our wolves. Not Wyoming Montana and Idaho. Sorry. What does yeah. Now, if someone could come explain to me, like what what phone conversation led to them saying we're not helping you out by giving you wolves, which we're hunting. Well, I mean, there like there has been word out of Wyoming. They're like, we're not going to help you put more wolves around our borders that can come back into us. Yeah, but like if you put more wolves in Colorado, more wolves go back into what like sure, they'll want to get back home. Yeah. So that's and then and then they tried to work with they tried to work with tribal entities to get wolves. And then, you know, I remember, you know, one was like, hey, you can have some of these ones that were dealing death to cattle. But they also the tribal thing didn't work out because they wanted the tribal like wildlife managers in Colorado to be able to have their own management authority over wolves that would end up in Colorado on reservations there. And they didn't agree to that. Anyway, whether or not it's like the vindictiveness of the administration and they are, I mean, they are some vengeful cats. Yeah. Like if that is driving this, I don't know, but I like sure, maybe, but I could picture this becoming an issue because this was a real, this was has been a sore, this has been a sore subject for a lot of agricultural producers in Colorado. And these are people that will have the ear that will have the ear of the administration. And basically, they're saying you need to, you need the mandate to Colorado is you need to operate with a lot more clarity about what's going on and what's your plan and who do you move, what wolves you moved where and what did they do? Yeah. And they've got to provide all that information and those plan details by February 18. So a little over a month from now, we'll have some more information on this. Here's the funny part. Here's like another part about why this, why their plan is peculiar. Colorado, so that they got what do they got right now? 20 to 30. Yeah, I think Colorado's goal is 30 to 50. They have no mechanism in place. They didn't have a prayer of a mechanism in place to do any population control on wolves. Right. 30 could turn you down. When you say 30 to 50, it's like you are just, you are baiting. My kids use this term rage baiting. Like for me to rage, I don't know how about that rage, big man. It's something to provoke me. Say, say, I know it's going to piss y'all. Yeah, it's easy to rage, big man. I was rage baiting you recently about some issue. I can't remember what it was. I think it was like gender issues around sports participants. That was rage baiting, Randall. You sitting right, right? Right now. Very effectively. I rage baited them. Now, I think when they go and say, like, oh, no, we just want 30 to 50. You're like rage baiting wildlife managers because you're like, how in the world? Right. What do you mean? You don't have a pathway toward doing any kind of like control? There's no way in the state of Colorado under current regular rules and regulations under the current administration. Colorado will never stop it at that. We'll never have a hunt. These are the same people that almost just damn near shut down bobcat hunting, mountain line hunting. Colorado is never going to have with this governor. Colorado will never have a wolf hunt. So when they're like, oh, we just want 30 to 50. They're dealing with what stops at 50. Yeah. It's it's lunacy. It's like, you're going to have the way you have it set up. You're going to have whatever the carrying capacity of the state is, which is way more than that. It's a lot considering how many out there in the state of Colorado. You have hundreds. When you say 30 to 50, it's like, what would get what would give you that number? How many how many are in Montana? Doing that? 700 or something 800. Colorado's got twice as many elk as I'm telling him. Man, don't say, believe that outfill till we get the right number. Over a thousand. Okay. That's what I believe in. That's pretty good actually. Leave that under. He make that louder. Sure. But we'll know more in a month. Yep. If they so a couple things to watch here is there's a gain and I don't know what this will happen. Members of Congress are looking to de list. This is where it is all all this stuff is so tricky. Members of Congress are moving to de list walls in the lower 48. So the house already had. Yeah. So how previous administrations, how walls have been managed? They've been managed by these distinct populations. So we thought about, well, northern Great Lakes. So the walls in northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota, we've toyed with, do we de list that little clump or not? And then we had this big conversation. Do we de list in? Well, they did de list. They had a name. But I'm saying we used to talk about the wolf habitat as chunks. Yep. So we've had this long argument about the northern Great Lakes. Yep. List or de list. Northern rock. Or say, sorry, de list or not. And then the northern Rockies, de list or not. And it's been a ping pong. They were in the northern Great Lakes. They were de listed. Then they were re listed in the northern Rockies. They were de listed. So you could still be fighting about like what about this little chunk of ground? What about this little chunk of ground? Now they're saying, you know what, bro, we're done talking about little chunks. We're talking about the country and not argue anymore about the northern Great Lakes or whatever, just like they're like done with it now. And it's like this is one of the things. This is one of the things where people in wildlife politics, this is one of the things where people go wrong is, you know, Maduro, the president of Venezuela, I've heard of him. And he's not run right now. Now a few days ago, he had a great offer. Not if you did. Prior to him getting detained, he was like, here, listen, you, your cronies, your family, your henchmen can go, will drop sanctions and you can leave the country. And you can go and do be an exile in Turkey. Take it or leave it. He didn't take it. I'm not getting the legality. All of this I'm saying they laid it out. He said, no, not doing it. Now he's sitting in jail in Brooklyn or Manhattan, wherever hell you. My message, my message to my message to people in wildlife politics. You screwed up by fighting the northern Great Lakes. You screwed up by fighting those agencies and not delisting in the northern Great Lakes. You're screwing up by not delisting grizzly bears in the northern continental divide ecosystem and in the Yellowstone, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Because what's going to happen next is you're going to, you have a good offer on the table. You didn't take it. And what's going to happen next is you're going to wind up in a jail in Brooklyn. Yep. Because they're going to be like, I'm done dealing with you guys. No wolves are just blanket, blanket because you shoot yourself in the foot by being unreasonable all the time. I don't know who I'm talking to. Man, there's so many. Do you follow me? Oh, I definitely follow. It's just like you should have never. They should have never blocked the delisting. We're not going to get into the league out. Right. We talked about this already. No, no, the reality. Here's deal about what I meant by that. The reality meeting like my kid was like, Hey, it's what they didn't Venezuela illegal. And I'm like, anything that happens outside of the country, any conversation about being illegal or legal is like, by what mechanism? Right. Right. By what mechanism? Like, as far as I know, Putin's not incarcerated, right? People like the invasion of Ukraine was illegal. It's like, okay. Well, I guess there's what do you do? We have our own who's not in jail. Trump's not in jail. We have our own procedure for generally how we enter into our jurisdiction. Our what I the point I was making, I said the legality of it is like, within the US, we have a system. When when you start talking about global leaders, we're like, Oh, what what they did in North Korea was illegal. It's kind of like it's just it's academic. It's academic. Well, we have international governing bodies. Tell that to slob it on Milosevic. Okay. Tell that to Maduro. What I'm saying is when you're talking about constitutional law, I know, but when you're talking about barring concentration, when you're talking about global actions, when you're talking about global actions that like nation states that take global actions and then pundits start talking about, I don't even know if this was legal. I just tune it out because I'm like, it's inconsequential. This isn't partisan. I would say it's inconsequential. I would say no, not to make it, I'm not partisan, but I would say like a nation that is sanctioned by international bodies and they can't feed people. They suffer consequences for doing things that are illegal, under international law. That's right. There are there are. It's when the big guy on the block does it and there are consequences, it might still be illegal, but you get away with it. Yeah, but we, but international bodies enforce international law all the time. When Saudi Arabia, whoever in Saudi Arabia, when they killed the journalist, Qashoggi, people loved pointing out, boy, that's illegal. Do you think, do you think they care? Whether something is illegal. I don't remember people saying that was illegal. It was. But I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember. No, but I don't remember the main talking point being that this is illegal. Go ahead, send your corrections. No, no, no. No one listens to this show for international. I don't know. I'm not good at international news. I'm good at wildlife news. I was trying to, here's the deal. I just made a mistake. I was trying to draw some parallels and I tiptoed out of my area of expertise by drawing some parallels. The comment I made about legality is that whether or not like the legality of us nabbing someone that we have under indictment, who happens to lead another country. Like I wasn't getting into that. What I was getting at was I was trying to draw parallels between when you, when people, and this, this cut list is like a widespread issue, you have a sweet deal going and you don't take it, then you wind up getting stung. My message to people who wolf preservationists and grizzly bear preservationists is. You've had some very reasonable efforts from your own agency. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has moved to D list wolves in the northern Great Lakes. And for US Fish and Wildlife Service has moved the agency, the federal agency in that's responsible for the management of the species has moved to D list for very good reason. Like because it because they met the recovery of giant. They were only deleted animal rights organizations through legal action block those delistings. That generates an enormous amount of hostility. And what you will then find is that people in the political world people in leadership are going to say I'm now done playing around. I'm going around and I'm doing it this way because I'm sick of these little petty isolated instance arguments. I agree to agree to do a lot of it. Yeah. You make a great one. I know we still had creative names for podcast tips. That could be it. Leave me a direct that's going to be good for the other one. And anybody wanting to know about wolf dealisting could obviously type in leave material. Because here's the deal, man. Yeah, because here's the deal. I am I am a very avid reader of the news. But there's news that I understand and news that I try to understand. I understand wildlife news in America. But I don't understand. I just read it. Like I like to follow along, but I don't have informed opinion about it. So when I start talking about Venezuela, I would advise you to just tune out. Don't change. Don't listen to something different, but just turn it down. When I start talking about football, we're on. Now football. Yeah. Turn it down. No, football turned it up. You were like you were on a roll earlier today talking about over time. Yeah, I tiptoed into some areas. I should we should believe it all out. I tiptoed into some areas right on Belon. I was trying to be helpful. I was trying to be helpful. So people would understand. I love you, Steve. I was trying to be helpful. It works. Is that it for news today? Yeah, we got to stay tuned for all these things. These are continuing ongoing issues. Let's make a plan. Then people can listen in on the plan making. How are we going to really tackle the whole soup to nuts on federal subsistence program? Go back in history. We need to do a whole episode on it. Yep. And you got plenty of people we could be talking to from Alaska. Like I didn't bring up an acronym, an Ilka. But an Ilka ties into this. We're going to tackle it because the reason why this isn't just for people. Here's why I want to tackle this. A lot of the stuff we talk about on the show is like there's the thing. And then there's the sort of context of the thing. And so all these issues and endangered species, act stuff, wolf, de-listing, you know, federal subsistence, Florida bear hunting. They're all these little, they're interesting news stories or interesting events and occurrences that had happened. But by learning about them, you learn about how the hunting regulations that you live under, like maybe you live in Indiana, which we haven't talked about today. You'll start to go like, oh, that's why stuff is the way it is where I live by watching these things come up. And so it's more than just voyeurism of looking in at what's happening in other states. But I feel that it helps you better understand wildlife management where you live or where you go. Like the mechanisms at play, the terminology at play, the way that the feds rub against the states, and they rub against the non-governmental organizations, and they rub against the animal rights lobbying arms, right? It all helps you put together a national picture of, you know, when you go down to a river and you cast a bait and air in the fish bites and you pull the fish in, you go like, oh, that's why that fish is there. Or that's why I can't keep that fish. Yeah. And some of these things, like the Florida bear hunt, like, might not seem like it's a national issue, but it is. Like after what's happened in New Jersey and Washington and other places with bear hunting, like I consider it a national thing. National news, buddy. All right, everybody. You know what else we didn't get into? The whole shootout and Michigan over. Oh, yeah, we did. They do a deep dive in the whole shootout and Michigan over wild boars. The next are rich story. Kyle buddy deadly, deadly. Yeah, text about it. But we text a lot about CWD, and he knows that he and I don't agree on CWD. So he likes to inundate me with things arguing his perspective. But he, because he's like, um, he, yeah, we don't see eye to eye on it. Is there any other, is there any hog news coming out of other states? I've been looked into that, yeah, like populations. No, I don't know. Nothing super hot that I'm aware of, but the Michigan, the meat, we're going to tell the Michigan story. Something happened up in Canada. We're not still recording. Are we filming? You should probably turn it off, Phil. You turn it off. Yeah. Okay, bye. See, I don't know if no one has their head set on. I have no idea. Welcome to meat eaters 12 and 26 presented by mulch remobile and on X maps. 12 of meat eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long form episodes so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on meat eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Hunts the GC here. I'm whispering because as the queen queen of social media is about time for my ASGM all series. So I'm recording this on my phone and then I'm going to use Canva to edit and upload it. Oh sorry babes. I'll make that whisper when I edit it. Anyways Canva makes social media edits so easy. I'll upload this in a minute. Canva, make everything iconic. How do I stop recording, Darren? This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.