Ep. 487: Ivy League Game Processing, Backyard Deer Feeding, and a Wolf-Hunter Bounty

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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cow’s Week in Review with Ryan cow Callahan. Here’s cal Thirty two year old David Tofaldy was hiking up Granite Peak on July twenty when he took tumble. Afterward, he saw one of his trekking poles, but not the other. Then it struck him, quote, this thing is sticking out of me. Hey, we’ve all been there fall. These missing trekking pole had fully impaled him, and it was jutting out from his torso to his back. But he wasn’t in pain, bleeding, or struggling to Breathe Faldys occupation as a wound nurse in buildings and was quote pretty confident the pole hadn’t punctured his chest or lungs. He walked around a little bit without getting dizzy or out of breath, So to avoid a pricey helicopter rescue, he and his friends I actually walked ten miles down the train. Along the way. One of the friends went ahead to warn hikers of the gruesome looking injury they’d soon see. An ambulance met Faldy at the trailhead. He was transferred back to the hospital in Billings, where he was asked to wait two hours before undergoing surgery, but he was reportedly pretty tired of having a pole sticking through him and convinced the doctors to consciously sedate him and remove the pole sooner. Only then did the wound start hurting. Faldy told The New York Times that the injury didn’t cause any lasting damage except for sorenas. He also feels bad his fall prevented his buddies from summoning Granite Peak. They planned to go back and beg the peak next year without anyone impaling themselves on a hiking pole. Knock on wood. So some of my favorite trekking poles out there are the z lights from Black Diamond. Fantastic trekking pole, but on those downhill descents, if he got a big old mule deer on your back, there are many many times where you’re using too much trekking pole to hit breaks and you watch those suckers bow out. And this nightmare scenario that this fellow went through is something I think has gone through many of our brains during late night packouts. Scary for sure. Glad this one ended up okay. This week we’ve got bait stations, cranes, wolves, bears, and where it’s okay to clean your meat. College Edition. But first, I’m going to tell you about my week. And my week has been spent in smokey old Missoula, Montana at back Country Hunters and Anglers HQ, first trip away from the baby Boy, and I wish I could say I soaked in all the sleep I could guiltily get, but we were packing in some much needed overtime staff hours. If any of you listeners have purchased or I should say, attempted to purchase t shirts or stickers or hats, or have been doing awesome things like donating memberships multi year memberships to people, and you’re trying to go through our system, which is not good right now over at Backcountry Hunters dot Org, then you know that we needed to spend some time there. There’s been some issues getting that gear out the door in a timely fashion. The system was and is broken, but now we have a plan and are executing towards that plan, which should alleviate a lot of this until we get a new and much more efficient system online. This fall, we kept the home fires burning. Trey Curtis was making Elk Carneaitis in the office, keep everybody fed and moving, and then brand manager and editor of the Backcountry Journal Zach Williams, hosted everybody at his house and we did a Elk and Grizzly Bear kebabs out on the barbecue, which is pretty darn fun and a lot of people haven’t eaten Grizzly Bear and it’s good stuff. So just a little insight into what was going on with the org. And this is an interesting subject right in the nonprofit space. It’s like, why the hell are wasting your time with merchandise anyway, Well, oddly enough, part of the mission here is to build community, empower people to speak on behalf of their public lands and public waters in public wildlife. And a snappy looking T shirt, good looking hat, cool sticker can really help build that community. And the reason we weren’t getting these things out the door. Part of the reason is that, you know, while orders were stacking up, we were working to remove the legal gray area that blocks some eight hundred and seventy one thousand corner locked acres of public land corner crossing. We’re educating and providing comments and testimony on behalf of our membership. Hopefully you for wetland conservation easements, OHB Expansion, Roadless Decision, Wilderness review, and those are just the top of the federal pile for the most part, so you lump in all the stuff that’s happened at the state level. None of this is an excuse for poor merch execution, but it is just some context as to where the mission motion was flowing. We need to be sharing the love of our public lands with our land managers and political employees and with each other, so don’t hesitate to get that merged, guys. And if it’s a little slow, it’s not because moss grows around a BHA staffer. It does not. Last thing I’ll leave you with on this subject is public comment period over a Department of the Interior for the Wilderness review is August fourteenth, so you need to get on a lot of speculation is as to why this review is happening. Could it lead to weakening protections around designated wilderness, wilderness study areas, lands with wilderness characteristics and recommended wilderness It could for sure, which is why you need to chime in and say, hey, I just heard old cal talking about eating grizzly bear. I can’t afford to go up to Alaska. I like the idea of one day being able to hunt grizzly bears in the lower forty eight, and we will never ever get there if we don’t have designated wilderness and wilderness study areas, and in fact we should have more. You’ll come up with the right thing to say. I trust you. Also, this week, I’ve been camping along the Old Blackfoot River and working the puppy and Snort together in the early mornings and late evenings. The adventure is a big Snort and little Carp started this week. So far, I’ve found that a little travel and a new routine has really made the old dog bond with the puppy. Karp is doing some really impressive retrieves on dry ground. She’s starting to use her nose and she’s marking those bumpers really well. She doesn’t have the confidence to follow her mark all the time, but it’s coming along. We’ve been working on her river knowledge too. We hunt a lot of moving water, and a major mistake a lot of folks make is training on still water and introducing puppies to river currents too late. In life. I like to get those little ones in the moving water early, and I think it pays off in pursuit angles and birds in the bag. Even with crippled birds on land. That drifting bumper in the water just gets their brains thinking along the lines of moving targets, where it will be, not where it is, where it could be if it’s not there, that sort of thing. You know, All that education adds up pretty darn cool to see they’re getting along way, way better. The puppy has no problem honoring snorts retrieve, But now Snort is reciprocating and being like, Okay, it’s her turn, so, you know, steps in the right direction. I’m not sure. I don’t know. It’s gonna be tough saying whether I’m gonna be hunting these two together early on or not. You know, due to the constrictions of baby life and long work hours, might not have a choice. Only so much hours in the day. Jeez, Hunting seasons right around the corner. What are we gonna do? Anxiety mounting up sounded a gun moving on to the legislative desk. A new law in Michigan is causing a stir in the local deer hunting community d In late July, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a bipartisan bill that permits citizens to put out two gallons or less of feed for deer or elk in their backyards. The feeding must take place within three hundred feet of a residence and can only be done for the purpose of wildlife viewing and winter feeding, not hunting. Okay. The law generally expands the areas where backyard feeding is permitted, though Michigan dn R officials say that some restrictions will remain in place in parts of the state where the transmission risk for diseases like CWD and bovine tuberculosis as high as baiting and feeding are known to congregate deer and elk. Increasing the spread of infectious disease is not good for anybody, and artificial bait sites are proven to do that. Some hunters are upset that local officials use this rationale to prohibit baiting for hunting in the past, and see the new regulation as a double standard. I do not blame you there. Here’s Steve for Michigan Outdoor Obsession on the development for years since twenty nineteen to be exact. We’ve been told that you couldn’t bait because it caused artificial grouping of deer and intern that caused CWD to spread. Well, now, apparently CWD doesn’t spread if you’re within three hundred feet of your house and you’re just watching them from afar. But if you hunt them, then having deer around a bait pile causes CWD to spread. That’s my issue with this. It’s not the fact of the actual law itself, it’s the consistency. This is the most contradictive law coming to play for the Michigan hunting community. Ever, it’s worth noting that the law was passed by politicians, not the DNR, which is usually not a great way to do wildlife management. If you got thoughts on this one, you know where to find us, right in askcl that’s Ascal at the meteater dot com or leave us a voicemail at four h six two two zero six four four one. We’ve got some good news coming out of Louisiana, where officials are reporting historically strong breeding success for the states recovering whooping crane population. In episode four to sixty nine back in May, we talked a bit about Louisiana’s whooping crane recovery program after two endangered cranes were poached. At the time, those two cranes represented two and a half percent of the state’s wild whooping crane population, which put a dent in the species recovery effort. Brief background here, whooping cranes were nearly wiped out by nineteen thirty seven, when fewer than twenty birds remained. The decline was largely due to habitat loss and change, and it spurred an extensive recovery effort, which involved reintroductions from captive bred birds. Louisiana is a key site where a non migratory flock was introduced in twenty eleven. This summer, the state reported that there had been ten chicks fledged or fully reared to adulthood in the wild, bumping the flock’s overall population to eighty four quote. Not just is it a record for Louisiana, it’s a new record for any previous or ongoing whooping crane reintroduction, So we’re really excited about the success that the birds had this year, said Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries biologist Sarah Zemorski. She added that the birds are becoming more experienced at breeding and have locked in at rearing young. It’s a good sign for the broader recovery effort, and let’s hope more good news is on the horizon for that insanely cool and rare species. Moving on to two brief stories from the crime desk, a Michigan man faces fifty counts of wildlife and firearm violations. Thomas House of Elsie had been reported in an anonymous tip for shooting deer from a vehicle with a suppressed semi automatic rifle. Last October, conservation wardens investigated and found that he was allegedly driving around at night and poaching deer, then leaving the animal’s bodies to waste. He also reportedly recorded videos and photos of his illegal deer killings with a cell phone. He’s facing a slew of charges, including five counts of felony weapons offenses and twenty nine wildlife conservation order violations. Officials say the anonymous tip line was critical for stopping this appalling behavior. Over an Idaho, a judge has sentenced Joseph Jenkins for the unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted fellon felony possession of wildlife taken, unlawfully guiding without a license, and a bare bait site violation in Teton County. He had originally been charged in twenty twenty four. After Warden’s uncovered an unlawful guiding scheme in which Jenkins ran an illegitimate hunting sweepstakes advertised on an Oklahoma radio show. He then assisted folks who won the sweepstakes in taking bears and elk while lacking a guiding permit, profiting over fifty five thousand dollars in the process. He will now serve four years in prison, paid nine seven hundred and fifty dollars in restitution, and receive a lifetime hunting ban. Remember, if it seems too good, it probably is always good to ask a lot of questions about who you’re gonna be hunting with ahead of time. Jumping over to the college desk. Has reported last week in the Cornell University student newspaper, the processing of game animals in the schools shared dorm kitchens is now prohibited. You might remember the controversy from last fall when two students who had legally hunted a black bear in region four of New York State processed that bear on the table in a communal kitchen on campus. The students had diligently checked their eggs at every level, from the season dates and the legal hunting zones all the way down to the school handbook, and everything they did was above board. That, of course, didn’t prevent the Internet from getting a hold of the story after another student called the police. The incident was covered in outlets big and small, and of course the discourse you found there did not display a deep understanding of the issue or lack thereof. Thankfully, everyone who had any real authority over the matter, the University of administration and local police were actually supportive of the student’s hunting practice and diligent handling of the meet and high. One of the hunters, Aaron Chin, came on the Mediator podcast tell the whole story. Scroll back in your feed to episode seven to seventy if you want to feel good about the young whipper snappers these days. But even though Cornell took the incident in stride, they clearly didn’t want a repeat of the brew haha this season. The student handbook now reads quote processing wild game animals in community kitchens is strictly prohibited. Unquote. I suppose I could get up in arms about the Ivory Tower elites bowing to online outrage and persecuting hunters, et cetera, et cetera. But frankly, well, I still think you should. I mean, university can’t provide a designated kitchen for people who want to do this. I think their efforts should be cracking down on those folks who use kitchens and then don’t clean them up, encouraging cooking, not discouraging. Chin did say he wasn’t blatantly trying to do this. His private kitchen ended up falling through at the last minute, and the dorm kitchen was the last resort, and good for them for doing it. Put the meat processing the responsibility of harvesting wildlife and taking care of it ahead of the social backlash there on the college campus. One historical insight you may enjoy. The dorm where Chin and his hunting partner butchered the bear is named Ganata Goon Hall because that’s the name the indigenous people of the area gave to their homeland. Those indigenous people are the Kayakono, also known as the Cayuga nation of the Hodnasene or Iroquois confederacy. These folks historically were some of the most bear hunting folks out there. You can imagine Hodenasine hunters traditionally sang reverential songs to bears as they pursued them, then killed them by hitting them in the skull with a specialized club. Careful ceremonial attention was paid to the bear as it was butchered and eaten, and the head in particular was set in an elevated position, and elaborately decorated masks made of bear skulls and ceremonial costumes made of the skins were central to traditional dance and religious ceremony. Personal adornments made of beare teeth and clay pipes carved in the form of the bear are common in archaeological sites. If we’re really going to honor the people who lived in this part of the world before Europeans got here, and we should, then I think it makes sense to remember this description of a feast held in sixteen fifty five by the Onondaga. Our men killed thirty bears, one man killing ten as his share. One of the ceremonies of the feast that followed this great slaughter was the drinking of bears fat after the meal. Then they all rubbed themselves from head to toe with that oil. For in truth, bears fat when melted resembles oil. This is worth emphasizing in twenty twenty six, Hunting and eating bears has been a form of respect and veneration for a long time and continues to be today. If you’re interested in more of this kind of info about bears, their biology, traditional veneration, near extirpation, and roaring come back to the present day, keep your eyes peeled for Clay Newcomb’s book titled American Bear, which is set to come out early next year. I guarantee it’ll be worth a read. Jumping over the wolf desk and speaking of online controversies displaying deep under standing and respectful tone, last week, the dog trainer in social media influencer Jonas Black offered a ten thousand dollars bounty to anyone who identifies the hunter responsible for killing a wolf from the so called Molly’s Pack in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which I suppose would be like target somebody so you can what do they call it, dox them socially harassed these lawful hunters. Wyoming, in Montana, and Idaho all have laws shielding the identities of wolf hunters to prevent exactly this kind of stocking and abuse. Hunter harassment is also illegal, so you have to wonder whether how far that ten thousand dollars reward will go toward paying fines and legal fees. According to Cowboys State Daily, Jonas Black became an anti wolf hunting activist in twenty twenty four after seeing news reports of Wyoming man Cody Roberts capturing, torturing, and killing a gray wolf, including bringing the animal into a bar and pretending to kiss it. Cody Roberts was convicted of animal cruelty in April, with a sentence of probation and eighteen to twenty four months in prison time if that probation is violated. Black claims not to be against hunting or wildlife management in general, but instead against hunter cruelty in particular. He believes that the Molly’s pack has been so habituated to people from living in the park that hunting them doesn’t count as fair chase, which is just like his opinion, man, the park’s got to end somewhere, and wolves they understand humans hunting them very well. Regardless of that, wolf hunt objectives in the area’s adjacent to Yellowstone Park have already been cut in half for this season due to an outbreak of canine distemper that has severely impacted wolf numbers in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. This August, a federal judge in Montana also vacated the twenty twenty four ruling by US Fish and Wildlife refusing to relist the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act, So in a few years, Jonas Black might not see a need to post this kind of bounty anymore to keep people from hunting wolves. Will keep you up to date, jumping over to Maine, where the town of Tremont has approved a deer hunt within town limits, which would be the first deer season on Mount Desert Island, the location of the beautiful Acadian National Park in almost one hundred years. Thanks to listener Christy Holmes for sending this one in. In nineteen thirty one, the main legislature closed deer hunting on Mount Desert Island. It was pretty much the low point of servid populations across the country. Now However, more than twenty percent of all vehicle accidents on the island involve deer, and tick numbers are skyrocketing. Last year, bill was introduced in the state legislature to open deer hunting on the island again, because it’s illegal to hunt all other game species there according to Maine lot but the bill died in committee, and so the Town of Tremont decided to take matters into their own hands. According to the main Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the State Game Commissioner can allow deer hunting within the limits of a town if the town agrees, and May of this year the town did agree with the voute of three hundred and fourteen to two. Before any listeners out there book a trip to the island planning on a sweet hunt before camping out in Acadia, you should know that this is limited to property owners and residents of the Town of Tremont only. You can only take antler list deer, and because this will be essentially a very local depredation season, any deer killed won’t count against a person state bag limit. This wouldn’t be a story about a new hunt somewhere in the US without a protest movement, and so of course a Tremont resident has started a petition for a one year moratorium on the town’s hunt. The petitioner seems to want to just gum up the works in any way she can, but she’s also calling for increased data collection on the deer heard on the island. Hunter harvest is an excellent source of data. So let’s hope this limited hunt will help lead to a general season. There. This little situation right here is one of those good examples of hunting is conservation. All right, gang, that’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember too, write into askcl let’s ask cal at the meat eater dot com, and of course call in four oh six two two zero six four four one. Hit those BHA action alerts. As we move into the fall, and some would say this is by design, We’re gonna see a lot of action at the House and Senate regarding land management and wildlife management that will affect you. We’re gonna keep you informed, We’re gonna make it easy so you can still go out and hunt what you need to do so you can advocate for our public lands, waters and wildlife if you’re not gonna do it, somebody else will, and you may not like what they have to say. That’s all I got. Talk to you next week.