Ep. 732: Predator Management, California Style

Summary

Episode Summary: Predator Management, California Style (Ep. 732)

Release Date: July 14, 2025

In Episode 732 of The MeatEater Podcast, host Steven Rinella engages in an in-depth discussion with Devin O'Day, the Western Policy and Conservation Manager at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA). The episode delves into the complexities of black bear management in California, exploring historical contexts, recent policy changes, and future strategies to balance bear populations with human activities.

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1. Introduction and Personal Anecdotes

The episode begins with a light-hearted exchange among the hosts about personal experiences, including a humorous story about an ice cream outing with Rinella's children. While these anecdotes set a casual tone, the conversation swiftly transitions to the main topic of black bear management in California.

Notable Quote:

"We have two little ones... we went to the playground and found our stuff mixed in with others." – Steve Rinella [02:14]

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2. Background on Black Bear Populations in California

Devin O'Day provides a historical overview of black bear populations in California. In 1980, estimates placed the black bear population between 10,000 to 15,000. By 1998, the population had grown to approximately 17,000 to 23,000 bears, with notable expansions along the central coast and southern regions.

Notable Quote:

"In 1980, the population was around 10 to 15,000 bears... by 1998, it increased to 17 to 23,000." – Devin O'Day [48:31]

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3. Legislative Changes and Hunting Regulations

A pivotal moment in California's black bear management occurred in 2012 when the legislature successfully banned hunting bears with dogs. This change led to a significant drop in harvest rates, with the quota for bear hunting remaining unmet since the ban.

Notable Quote:

"After the ban on hunting with dogs, the harvest rate drops significantly. We haven't hit the quota since then." – Devin O'Day [54:33]

The reduction in hunting efficacy not only affected bear populations but also had cascading effects on other species. For instance, increased bear numbers led to higher rates of kleptoparasitism, where bears steal kills from mountain lions, forcing the predators to hunt more frequently to compensate.

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4. Impact on Ecosystems and Other Species

The episode highlights studies indicating that areas with higher bear populations experience increased predation pressures on mule deer due to bear interference with mountain lions. This interaction underscores the intricate balance within ecosystems and the unintended consequences of altering predator management policies.

Notable Quote:

"Black bears are opportunistic—they smell a dead deer and push the mountain lion off the kill. This has led mountain lions to kill six times the normal amount of deer." – Devin O'Day [58:00]

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5. New Management Plans and Population Models

In response to declining harvest rates and rising bear conflicts, California initiated an updated Black Bear Management Plan. Investing over $2 million, the plan employs an Integrated Population Model (IPM) that incorporates hunter harvest data, collar tracking, camera traps, and hair snares to provide a more accurate assessment of bear populations.

Devin O'Day shares that current estimates place the black bear population between 59,000 to 80,000, making California home to one of the highest densities of black bears globally.

Notable Quote:

"According to the new IPM, we have between 59,000 to 80,000 black bears in California—the highest density in the world." – Devin O'Day [88:41]

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6. Political Challenges and Humane Society Influence

The episode discusses the Humane Society's (HSUS) involvement in bear management policies. In 2021, HSUS filed a petition to the California Fish and Wildlife Commission advocating for a complete ban on bear hunting, citing erroneous population decline models influenced by reduced harvest rates.

Devin O'Day criticizes the HSUS for misrepresenting data and using climate change as a catch-all explanation without robust scientific backing. BHA countered by compiling extensive scientific research to demonstrate that bear populations are not collapsing but are instead thriving beyond previous estimates.

Notable Quote:

"The Humane Society petitioned the commission claiming bear populations are collapsing based on flawed hunter harvest data, which isn't a solid argument." – Devin O'Day [72:17]

Despite the petition being ultimately rejected, the episode underscores the ongoing tension between conservation groups and hunting organizations regarding predator management.

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7. Future Directions and Management Strategies

Looking ahead, Devin O'Day remains optimistic about improving bear management in California. Strategies discussed include:

• Increasing Bear Hunting Quotas: Proposing additional bear tags to better align harvest rates with sustainable population levels.

• Expanding Hunting Zones: Opening new areas for bear hunting, particularly in northeastern California and the Modoc Plateau, where bear populations have recently expanded.

• Enhancing Hunting Regulations: Considering the reintroduction of hunting with dogs to improve harvest efficacy and mitigate bear-human conflicts.

Notable Quote:

"This year we'll see a second bear tag, expanded hunting zones into northeastern California, and possibly tweaks to the hunting season." – Devin O'Day [83:16]

Additionally, O'Day emphasizes the importance of continuous scientific research and community engagement to support informed decision-making in wildlife management.

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8. Conclusion

The episode wraps up with the hosts reiterating the significance of sustainable hunting practices and the role of scientific data in shaping effective predator management policies. Steven Rinella urges listeners to support organizations like BHA that advocate for balanced and science-based wildlife conservation.

Notable Quote:

"We have a renewable resource... allowing those who want to utilize it to do so without imperiling the integrity of the species." – Steve Rinella [98:13]

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Key Takeaways:

• Black Bear Populations in California: Historically underestimated, with recent estimates indicating a thriving population.

• Hunting Regulations Impact: The 2012 ban on hunting with dogs led to reduced harvest rates and increased bear-human conflicts.

• Integrated Population Models: Enhanced scientific methods provide more accurate bear population data, informing better management strategies.

• Political and Conservation Tensions: Conflicts between hunting organizations and groups like the Humane Society influence wildlife policies.

• Future Management Strategies: Proposals to increase hunting quotas, expand hunting zones, and possibly reinstate hunting with dogs to maintain balanced ecosystems.

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of predator management in California, highlighting the challenges and opportunities in maintaining sustainable black bear populations while addressing ecological and societal concerns.

Transcript

[Steve Rinella]

This is an iHeart podcast. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light.com f I r s t l I t e dot com okay, everybody, joined today by. Let me tell something real quick, so just hang tight. Devin, just a lot of things going on. I can't tell my main story, which I just told, but I'm going to tell my other story. So you don't have. You have little kids, right?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, two little girls.

[Steve Rinella]

Devin o', Day, od. Od. Sorry, Devin OD is here from bha. We've met. We're like phone friends, but we haven't met in person till now. We were. He's the. He's the Western Policy and conservation. I am doing the intro. He's the Western Policy and Conservation manager at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Devin and I met when I was doing a little article for the LA Times about the black. Black bear management in California, which we're going to speak to today because it's sort of emblematic and indicative of things that happen all around the country. So even if you're not from California, you should listen in. I was telling my favorite story in the world, which I don't want to tell just out of respect for the town, but I'll tell this story.

[Randall]

So respect for the town.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, out of respect. Cancer is everything. Here's a weird deal though, man. Like a weird. Like, listen to what happens to me last night on. What was last night? Thursday. Yes. Okay. On Monday we're gonna take our little. Our two little ones to ice cream. But then we changed our mind and, man, they had a fit. A fit.

[Evan]

You still call them little ones.

[Steve Rinella]

There's the older one. They'll always be the younger ones. I don't tell you call them. There's like an older one.

[Evan]

Little ones are like.

[Steve Rinella]

The younger ones. There's a 10, a 12 and a 15.

[Evan]

I know, I've met him.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't know what the 15 was doing. He's got like a girlfriend now and everything. But the 10 and 12, what was he doing? I don't know what he's doing. The 10 and 12 somehow was like, we're going to go to ice cream. And then we Reneged, which just pissed him off. I mean, that's a great way to piss a kid off. So my wife is going out with her friend to dinner the next night. So she just then says, your dad will take you tomorrow. So now I'm into that. I go down there and they're like. Like, when you take little. If you don't have kids. If you take kids, the ice cream you're gonna argue about, like, what all cone everybody's gonna have. And I'm going. And I make a joke. Like, there's like the little shitting cone. Like, I don't know what they call it. Like, baby cone. Yeah. And I make a joke, like, do you have. They didn't know I was joking, but I'm like, what do you have? Just to mess with my kids. I said, what do you have? That's like a step down from that baby cone. They didn't get the joke. So anyhow, we agree that we're all gonna get the. The. The. They're the. Not that word. We're gonna get the waffle. We're gonna get the waffle cone.

[Devin O'Day]

Okay?

[Steve Rinella]

And like, so my two little ones, I think it was just them. Yeah, they get. They get the waffle cone, and I'm like, I'll have the same thing. They then tell me, we're out. Oh, so I now get stuck with the old kind. When I was a kid.

[Randall]

Yeah, yeah.

[Corinne]

Oh, that wafer thing, that's like.

[Randall]

I would have bought coffee filter, two of those just to make a point that you can have whatever you want.

[Steve Rinella]

Check this. That's the pre story. Last night, we go down to the ice cream place. This time it's the two little ones. The other one was getting his head shaved at a party. The older one, the two younger one, it's me, my wife, my two younger ones, my daughter's two friends, my buddy Matt Cook, we're in line. Rosemary, her two buddies. Matthew, my wife, all get that cone. The waffle cone. I'm not kidding you. I ordered. She goes, we're out of those. I'm like, you don't say. I said, I was here the other night and that happened. My daughter's like, she thinks you're being mean. So something's going on at that ice cream place that I don't understand. I need to get to the bottom of it. What I need to do is find someone to come down later and order that cone.

[Devin O'Day]

See if they're just hiding it from you.

[Steve Rinella]

There's something fishy at. What's that?

[Corinne]

Place called Genuine, probably.

[Steve Rinella]

It's right by the elementary school.

[Devin O'Day]

They got a Polaroid with your picture on there that says no cone. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

There's no walls.

[Devin O'Day]

Don't ca.

[Corinne]

Genuine.

[Steve Rinella]

I love it.

[Devin O'Day]

Sweet peaks.

[Steve Rinella]

Genuine. Genuine's, too. Like, you go there, it's tons of people that aren't even in the right demographic to be out for ice cream.

[Corinne]

Yeah, everybody likes ice cream.

[Steve Rinella]

No, no, no.

[Devin O'Day]

Or la.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean, I'm in the demo because I have children. If you go to Genuine, it's people in their, like, late 20s, early 30s lined up for ice cream. Should you people all be lined up for a drink?

[Devin O'Day]

That.

[Corinne]

But that goes back to what I mean. Everybody loves ice cream.

[Devin O'Day]

It's really good.

[Randall]

And drinking culture is endangered.

[Steve Rinella]

It's like, if I go to yoga with my wife and there's a, like a dude there, like 35, whatever, there by himself. I'm always like, you, you. Come on, come on, come on.

[Evan]

I don't think the ice cream.

[Steve Rinella]

Let's talk straight.

[Evan]

There's no. Let's talk cream demographic.

[Steve Rinella]

There's an ice cream demographic.

[Evan]

There is not.

[Steve Rinella]

Dude, there is. And, like, who's not in it? Randall. If I see Randall down getting ice cream, I'm going to think, like, I don't want to say what I'm going to think. Yeah, but it.

[Randall]

There's also things when you look at me, you'd be like, that guy's squarely in the ice cream demographic. So walking around wearing basketball shoes.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Doesn't really fit in his jeans.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm not a big government guy, but I don't think. I don't think there should be like a. Like a little card that you get from the government that, like, says you have business at the ice cream place. And it would be like, like, how old are you?

[Devin O'Day]

You should be eating a pint in shame above your sink.

[Randall]

I actually, when I walk into the ice cream place, I like to think that the people behind the counter are thinking, good, finally, somebody who knows what they want. They'll look me in the eye.

[Devin O'Day]

They'll.

[Randall]

They're not going to fight with the people they came in with.

[Steve Rinella]

They're not on their tippy toes trying to look over the counter.

[Randall]

They don't want a taste of everything.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Actually, I'm the one who wants a taste of everything.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah. My wife embarrassed me last night. She sampled two things before she made the order, and I was getting embarrassed about it. Oh, yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

I can't stand that she.

[Steve Rinella]

Two samples. I was like, you're. I'm Gonna have to ask you, was.

[Randall]

The order one of those two or did she order something different? That's the really embarrass.

[Corinne]

Oh, yeah, no, I'm embarrassed.

[Steve Rinella]

I was embarrassed about it.

[Devin O'Day]

That's when you should have slipped in.

[Randall]

There and ordered yours.

[Devin O'Day]

You would have got a cone.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, she walked out with a waffle. Right? But the funny part, this isn't even the main part of the story. Like at the elementary school is right there at the end of the year, they wheel all the junk, all the kids leave. They just, they wheel it outside. I'm not kidding you. Like all the lost and found, when they're done, they're done.

[Randall]

Like a bad breakup.

[Steve Rinella]

So the, the playground, like if you want, if you need to outfit a kid, the day school ends, go to the playground. It's all out there.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, there's some nice clothes in this town too.

[Steve Rinella]

Real nice clothes. Yeah, we go down there and my kids like, we're gonna go to the playground. I'm like, nah, man, don't go to the playground. But my wife overrode me. And so we go down to the playground and walk in through the open gate. There's kids all over playing and all the clothes. And the first thing my wife lays eyes on is our boys clothes. We retrieve three hoodies and I pick up a pair of muck boots and I, I know my own work. There was like a pair of muck boots that had an L shape, cutting them and I had sewed them and put neoprene patch. I pick up these muck boots and I'm like, that's my work. He doesn't even have a recollection of owning these muck boots. So we walk out of there and then everybody's probably thinking like all the other people are probably thinking. We're like shopping off the free rack. I wanted to yell out like, this is actually our stuff. Hands off. Yeah. Like we're not just taking. This is our kid. Like, this is our stuff in this playground. Yeah. Good. Very eventful evening. Very eventful evening. Devin o' Day is here from Backcountry Hunters and Angers Western policy and conservation manager to talk about black bears. Can we talk about black bears outside of California for a minute?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, of course.

[Steve Rinella]

Is this your picture of the giant black bear?

[Devin O'Day]

No, that's not me. That's my buddy Ned.

[Steve Rinella]

But I'm saying you, you, you gave us the picture.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Phil, pull that picture up. That's a nice black bear. That's got to make REI proud. Yeah. Today, you know because they might wonder if anyone ever does anything legitimate in those packs. And there it is right there.

[Randall]

I wonder how they'd react if you came into the store and asked them if they had tips for washing blood out of their backpacks.

[Steve Rinella]

You know the hydrogen peroxide tip? Do you know that someone was saying that? For you folks that don't know, if you. If you have a bloody pack and put. Put hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle. Anything you got blood on. My God. Does it come out?

[Evan]

Not that you don't want to use the heavy duty.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Evan]

Peroxide.

[Steve Rinella]

Blood hates. Yeah. Don't use, like, the stuff you use the bleach a school, which is what, percent 45.

[Evan]

Yeah, so 40 or something like that.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Dude, we could do a whole show on hydrogen peroxide.

[Devin O'Day]

I could have used this, like, three.

[Steve Rinella]

Days in our time.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Something. Or do you have a skull you're cleaning?

[Devin O'Day]

I got a. I couldn't find my normal pack that I put my laptop in, so I just brought my hunting pack on the airplane, and when I got to the airport, I noticed there's just blood all over it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

And I thought for sure I was gonna get pulled to the side.

[Steve Rinella]

Sure, man.

[Devin O'Day]

I'm gonna use that trick next time.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. I got pulled to the side the other day, and before I got pulled over, I had a big tongue, a buffalo's tongue, frozen. And the guy used the term, like, we need to look at your pack. And he used the term organic mass. So the other day in catch can, I had, like, a chunk of deer meat roast that was left over. And he's like, I need to check your pack. And I said, I think there's an organic mass in there. And he goes, you know that term? Oh, my God. I learned it from you people. I don't know that. Naturally. Yeah, 3%. So if you're gonna bleach a skull, you brush on the paint, the gel stuff, which is, like, heavy duty. It's what. It's what people skin. Yeah. It's what people use when they're to bleach hair. And it also, when you go look on Amazon and you're trying to buy the really heavy duty hydrogen peroxide that'll bleach a skull. It's. You know what they have it listed as is to sanitize greenhouse equipment.

[Evan]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Steve Rinella]

I didn't know that either. It must kill, like, molds and funguses and stuff on greenhouse equipment. On your backpack. This is a Yanni trick. You put hydrogen, 3% hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle and spray it, let it sit a minute and turn a hose out on it. I don't know. Blood hates hydrogen peroxide. Hates it. If you're on blood thinners, just drink hydrogen peroxide, save money. But here's the catch. Is someone. Before you do that, someone told me that it, I think it can degrade the stitching. Yeah.

[Evan]

Yeah, definitely.

[Steve Rinella]

That's what I was told. Yeah.

[Randall]

I think like a lot of pack companies will tell you just to use water, do like a long cold soak.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Because they don't want to be responsible for their stitching falling apart.

[Steve Rinella]

A thing that I'll do when I can. I did it there. In fact, I did the other day in Alaska is I'll put rocks, I'll just put some big rocks in my backpack and throw it in the river.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Or throw it in a fast flowing creek if the blood's still fresh. And when you come back a few hours later, it's just the cold blood, the cold water running cold water, carefree. So, Devin, you're doing the opposite of spot burning. Like you're like, come to my state.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, no, we got, we got plenty.

[Steve Rinella]

Of bears, so come to your state.

[Devin O'Day]

That's what the department's talking about too, is figuring out how to get more people to come. You know, how do we entice these out of state hunters? Because California, I mean, let's face it's not exactly the, the out of state dream destination of most people on their, their wish list. Unless you're trying to get that like 30 year sheep tag.

[Evan]

What's a non resident bear tag cost in California?

[Devin O'Day]

Non resident bear tag is a great question. I could pull that up for you. I think it's a couple hundred bucks.

[Evan]

That's not bad.

[Steve Rinella]

I know. You know what, I know what the problem is, why they won't go there and they don't know. And I don't think you know, you want to know what it is. I want to know that the primary vegetation is poison oak. Me and Yanis, me and Giannis have like conscious. When we're thinking about hunting in California, the number one thing on our mind is like, but do I really want to have poison oat for three months? Because we're all very, we are very susceptible.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, I am too.

[Randall]

387 for a black bear tag, non resident.

[Steve Rinella]

I bet you in this picture, if you look carefully, everything you're looking at is poison. You gotta be rugged. Like that's the thing that people don't think about. If you're susceptible, you got to be prepared to be miserable. I'm like a. I got. I have the skin of a little baby when it comes to poison oak. Oh, Kids podcast is out. Came out on January 30, which hasn't happened yet.

[Corinne]

January.

[Devin O'Day]

January.

[Steve Rinella]

No, what am I saying? What's the other J month?

[Randall]

June, July.

[Devin O'Day]

There's a few of them.

[Steve Rinella]

September.

[Corinne]

Yeah. So today in the future, when you're listening to this, episode two is out. And importantly, it's on its own feed, just like last season. You can't listen to it in the Mediator podcast feed. You have to please go and listen to the kids. Subscribe.

[Steve Rinella]

Exactly how old are your daughters, Devin?

[Devin O'Day]

2 and 5.

[Steve Rinella]

Have they ever listened to the Meter to Kids podcast? Just lie and say they have.

[Devin O'Day]

It's their favorite podcast. They love it. Yeah, they beg me to listen to it every week.

[Corinne]

Phil's masterpiece.

[Steve Rinella]

They like the cheese. Don't be being a smart ass. It's a good podcast for kids. You should play it for them.

[Devin O'Day]

All right. You know, part of their education.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

I am going to have to get them the. The crayfish book, though.

[Steve Rinella]

Sure, I'll sign it for you. Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

When you. When you called me. Talk about black bears. Whatever. Last year, the year before, I was actually at a kiddie pool filled with crayfish.

[Steve Rinella]

We talked about that.

[Devin O'Day]

A couple hundred of them. I got a. I got a good story there, too. We had one of them actually escape. And then we found him the next day. And my wife, we had eaten all. And we boiled all the crayfish and that last crayfish. And so then we were like, you know, we had the whole neighborhood over. Which is funny too, because this is San Diego. And everyone's like, where'd you get the baby lobsters.

[Steve Rinella]

With claws?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Mud bugs.

[Randall]

They're mud bugs.

[Devin O'Day]

But we had one escape. And then my wife's like, well, you know, we gotta keep him now. And so he became Stowie. Stowie. The stowaway, huh? We lived in a little flower vase for a couple weeks. And I was like, well, this isn't cool. We got to get them in an aquarium. At least. You know, we're going to eat them or we're going to give them a aquarium.

[Steve Rinella]

Sure.

[Devin O'Day]

And then ended up going out catching more crayfish with. We're doing, like, removals with the Forest Service where they have some endangered species habitat and did a whole nother boil. Got another one, gave him a little friend. They mated, had a bunch of little baby Crayfish. Then my neighbor, we had a shitty little aquarium. Then my neighbor gave me this amazing tank. And so we had this, like, mansion. And so Stowe went from, you know, hot in this little flower vase to an aquarium to a mansion. He's got a wife. He's a family, bunch of kids. Then, you know, this is like the American dream. This is where it goes off the rails.

[Randall]

Aquaculture.

[Steve Rinella]

Wow. But you know what I wonder, though? Him having witnessed the carnage that he witnessed. I wonder if he still hates you.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, I mean, certainly. Well, there was, like, if I came.

[Steve Rinella]

In here, I come in here, and I kill everybody in here in this room, but I take you, and I'm like, now I'm gonna set you up with a sweet house and a wife. Are you like, man, this guy's great? Are you, like, this guy's a monster?

[Evan]

Because he did. You did kidnap him originally.

[Randall]

And then if you have children, do you stare at them and. And know in the back of your mind something's gonna happen someday? I've seen it before. I don't want to let you in on the secret. But he has to live with that. That guilt. No, that foreknowledge of what awaits.

[Steve Rinella]

Too bad you can't interview that crayfish.

[Devin O'Day]

He just died.

[Steve Rinella]

This is.

[Devin O'Day]

This is. He just died, like, three days ago. No, this is the eulogy. Because this is like the American. The American dream of a crayfish. But, you know. You know, things got really sour when, you know, he. And, you know, his. His mate, they got into a tizzy. She ripped off his arm.

[Steve Rinella]

What?

[Devin O'Day]

And then somehow she escaped, which blows my mind. Our babysitter found the female walking across the kitchen floor, put it back in the tank. And, you know, this was too much for Stowe. He couldn't handle it, so he killed her. And then it was just him with the kids. And then one of the kids got revenge on him once the kid got big enough and killed him just like, five minutes ago.

[Steve Rinella]

This is the script story of Oedipus.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, it really is.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Life and death on the farm. But, like, if you guys. If. If people out there, if you hear someone say, like, Oedipus or the Oedipal complex, it's that. Like, that you'll. That you want to kill your dad and marry your mom. Oedipus didn't know he was adopted. And someone comes to him, like a soothsayer, says, hey, heads up. You're going to kill your dad and marry your ma? He's like, to Hell, I am. And takes off and goes to a new town because he thinks his parents are the wrong people. So he shows up in the new town, promptly kills a guy, marries a lady. His real mom, dad, just. That's just a little bit of background.

[Randall]

And then doesn't he take his eyes out? Doesn't he take his own eyes out.

[Steve Rinella]

Rather than look at the. What he's done? Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a. That's a terrible story. I mean, that's a lot of ups and downs in that story. So where are you at now? You have just the babies.

[Devin O'Day]

I mean, they're not babies anymore. Now we got the new. You know, there's a. There's a power struggle going on. It's kind of.

[Steve Rinella]

How many are in there?

[Devin O'Day]

There's six. And we got a bunch of fish, too, Except I thought the crayfish would eat the fish, but they're just not interested.

[Steve Rinella]

Years ago, I did something real similar. We gotta get to the show in a minute here.

[Devin O'Day]

But.

[Steve Rinella]

We went out. This was a. I want. We went out and chopped a huge hole in the ice in a river where we knew that there was a lot of crayfish in the summer and flipped all the rock, like, chopped. You could get in with waders and walk around in this hole, and we catch a ton of crayfish that are comatose under the rocks, like, out of it. The water's so cold. Bring them in, put them in a washtub, and the minute they warm up, they're all just super energetic. Like, instantly had a crawfish boil. Took one little dinker that was too small and put it in an aquarium with my roommate's little baby. He had this crazy little white. Some kind of sinking frog, like a little white aquarium frog that would live at the bottom of the aquarium. He was worried about it, so we took the crayfish's pincers away from him and put him in there. He gradually grows back a little mini claw. And one day, my roommate peers in there, and here's that son of a. Laying in the bottom of the aquarium holding that dead frog.

[Evan]

Like he caught it the whole time he was growing that claw back.

[Steve Rinella]

Eyeballing that frog, he's like, one of these days. One of these days, you know, the liquor. I'm gonna have my claw back. Anywhere worth going is worth going in good boots. You can find your perfect pair with the copas. My. My. My beloved friend Clay Newcomb agrees with me on this, and my beloved friend Ronnie Bama agree on this. That like man, if you don't got a good pair of leather boots on, you just like don't have that good ready feeling that the three of us like to have. If you ever wondered if you can pull off boots with your perfect style, you owe it to your feet to pull on a pair of tacobas. Being confident is about being different. It's about being yourself. Find comfort in the traditions of the west and confidence from making it your own. Honor the west by leaving your own boot print to Kova's crafts quality western boots for everyone from generational ranchers and lifelong cowboys down to first time boot buyers. Every one of Taco's boots are handcrafted with over 200 meticulous steps for broken in comfort right out of the box right now. Get 10 off at the covas.commeater when you sign up for email and text. That's 10 off at t-e c o v a s.commeater to covas.commeater see the site details to Covas. Point your toes west here. If Clay Newcomb's listening, here's a story that has everything that Clay would like. A Kentucky man. Kentucky man arrested for releasing a raccoon into a business months after fleeing police on a mule. Only in Kentucky I know that Tom. Murray, Kentucky. A man from Murray. I've spent a bunch of time there. A man from Murray, Kentucky was arrested last week after police say he released a raccoon inside of business. This is the same man just months after the same man was arrested for attempting to evade police officers on a mule. Why can't we have him on the show?

[Devin O'Day]

Maybe good for.

[Corinne]

I can maybe think of a few reasons.

[Devin O'Day]

Radio Live.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, guy wrote in they're having a baby and they got it narrowed down to two names, Giannis and Callahan.

[Corinne]

I mean, this must be a super fan.

[Evan]

Well.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, it's not. He's half. He's like Giannis because of Giannis. Callahan is just coincidence because it's after Dirty Harry, Dirty Hair Callahan. So it's like Cal is like just caught the crossfire.

[Devin O'Day]

We don't sell them that.

[Steve Rinella]

Anyhow, this is the guy writing in Brad. Anyhow, I was telling a person I help out at an auction in Coldwater, Michigan, that we were between Giannis and Callahan. He's. So this, this individual Brad is explaining to someone, hey, we're gonna name it Callahanrianis. This. He's talking to a gal. The gal then informs him back to the letter. She then informed me that she knew Ayannis and said his name is Giannis Putellas. She said he was a real estate appraiser in Michigan who she worked with as an attorney. A couple things. If you meant a building inspector, is that the same thing? No, if you meant the building inspector. Giannis's dad, also named Giannis, is a building inspector in Michigan. But what you're overlooking is that all Latvians are named Giannis. They all are named Giannis. So there are some hundreds of Giannis Putelis running around.

[Corinne]

So it may or may not be Yannis Dad.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Devin O'Day]

Papa Yanni.

[Evan]

Or it could be one of his.

[Randall]

I think that it's. He's a building inspector. This woman calls him a real. I feel like that's.

[Steve Rinella]

Rather than just being like, too many Giannis is running around.

[Randall]

Yeah. I mean, there still could be too many, but I feel like this checks out. I'm not going to disagree with you on the point that there are too many. Honest.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Very confusing.

[Devin O'Day]

So is Brad hoping we come up with an answer for him here?

[Steve Rinella]

I would name it Steve.

[Devin O'Day]

Wait for that.

[Steve Rinella]

Which dudes name Steve are a dying breed, man.

[Randall]

I would say just know that if you name it Giannis, you're also naming the child Janice as well.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, well, yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

And Siri won't know how to spell it.

[Randall]

And you're gonna. You're gonna condemn him to a life of explaining how to spell his name to every like. Like restaurant host or hostess, every DMV person.

[Steve Rinella]

No one believes him.

[Randall]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Anyone. If he goes into a coffee shop and he tells one person, like, they're like, what's the name for your order? He'll be like, giannis. And then they'll be like, how do you spell it? He'll spell it for him. And then it goes to the next person who yells out when their order's ready. There's no way it's not going to be Janice. I was staying there with Janice one time, and we're weighing bags to get on a charter plane, and there's a guy there taking everybody's weight. So he. Look, he's saying people's names, and he goes, janice. And Giannis steps forward, and he goes, it's Giannis. And stands on the scale. And the guy looks at Giannis and looks at the guy next to him and says, Janice 172. He's like, don't bullshit me, buddy. I know what your name is. Yeah, I don't know what to name that kid Doug. During doubling down on something here. I was goofing on Doug when I was with When I last I was with Doug, he was telling my kids a story. He was. He was trying to convince my kids that you should always back in, like your car. Apparently in the oil field, they call it first move forward. Like Doug always back. No matter how much hassle he has to go through, he always backs in. He always claimed, like he says, that his dad got attacked by his own chainsaw. And Doug's telling my kids, like, my. If my dad hadn't backed in, he wouldn't be alive, even though he's dead. He died of old age, but he would have died that day had he not backed in. And I'm telling my kids, like, listen, Doug wants you to back in. That didn't make the difference between Doug's dad dying or not that day because he drove down the road, Doug rode in, doubling down. I do. Here's Doug. I do want to correct you about something with my dad's chainsaw story. He didn't drive himself to the hospital. He was barely able to get to town. So literally every second was important. Had there not been an EMT in downtown Cass at that moment when he pulled in and fell out of the truck and had the ambulance not been just down the road, he would have died. Maybe we should reenact it sometime when you are here.

[Evan]

I'm not sure what that means.

[Steve Rinella]

Like.

[Devin O'Day]

Like actually.

[Steve Rinella]

When he does our meteor sheds shoot, he's going to take you to. He's going to take the. The viewer to the spot where Doug's dad was attacked by the chainsaw. I had turned Doug on to a book, one of the best I've read in a long time called the Landbreakers. It's an old book. Holy cow. Is it good? It's about. It's like the first. It's kind of after the long hunters, but it's like the first farmers to begin moving into the Appalachian valleys. And it's like the story of farmers trickling into this valley in Appalachia and establishing corn patches. It's. They're hunting bears all the time. It's a phenomenal novel. Doug is surprised I like that book. He's delighted that I liked it and says the surprise comes from the amount of personal reflections, human condition, and even romance. Wonderful book. Have you read it?

[Randall]

I haven't.

[Steve Rinella]

I sent to Doug because the. The knowledge about trees that the author has that he then gives to, like the author is very knowledgeable purposes for wood. A guy wrote in about something that I don't really understand.

[Evan]

Yeah. Randall and I were trying to figure this out earlier.

[Steve Rinella]

Basically, someone has submitted a formal petition to the epa. It's kind of an interesting concept, but you can see where it's going. Someone submitted a formal petition to the epa, which probably happens every day, but requesting that humans become wildlife.

[Evan]

Officially categorized.

[Steve Rinella]

Be like, why are humans not officially considered as wildlife? Because he the play would hear would be for regulatory effects, meaning that you wouldn't be able, like there's certain things you can't do that would be damaging to wildlife and you wouldn't be able to do certain things to human habitats because it would be like you'd be affecting wildlife. I gather that's the play. It's a very interesting concept.

[Devin O'Day]

As if NEPA is in long enough already, man, that's gonna really, really throw a wrench in the system.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I see a thousand ways this isn't going to go down because then are they going to do lethal control in overpopulated areas? You know, I mean, like there's a lot. It's just an interesting concept. Yeah. Probably not.

[Devin O'Day]

Not sure I want to back hunting as a management strategy.

[Randall]

It's more like a bar room conversation than a. Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I as a parent especially my kids were younger, I always tried to like over accentuate to them that we were an animal. Do you know what I mean? I would be like a lot of animals, like bears, like us humans. Right. I would always do that to sort of get them in that frame of considering us as animals. But that's not gonna fly. There's a move to how far. Who knows this story? Well, guy says. I was gonna read what the guy says because this is a fascinating topic and it bleeds into what we are going to talk about today. Reinstatement of black bear hunting in Florida. Longtime listener, first time caller. Is that from Rush Limbaugh's show? Long time listener, first time caller.

[Randall]

I don't know if it's Rush specifically. I thought it was just sort of a convention of talk radio.

[Steve Rinella]

I remember Limbaugh would have. You would call in and say dittos. And it meant all that stuff because every caller's like, long time listener, first time caller, love the show. So then it would become you just call and go like dittos and then just get to the point. Florida has been in the process of evaluating and getting public input about reinstatement of a quota black bear hunt. It has been a wildly controversial topic and has been gaining huge traction in the media lately. He's attached the proposal from the Black Bear Commission. He's going on talking about More and more bear interactions in Florida. Bear interactions and bear sightings in places where they didn't historically have them. Beach visitors, tourists. The other day he took his first bear attack call two weeks ago. Made national news. He says, I know the meat eater crew normally handle more Midwest and northern issues. That is completely untrue.

[Evan]

Go all over the place.

[Steve Rinella]

Dude, that hurts.

[Randall]

I think that hurts my heart unintentionally.

[Steve Rinella]

That hurts my heart. We talk about Florida more than any other state. We do.

[Devin O'Day]

I'm sure they have ice cream down there.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh yeah, but people with kids only. Yeah, like dudes like Randall down there. Lock you up. I had a person in Florida one time tell me like cold, stone cold. She's probably like 23, 24 year old woman. Tell me stone cold. Like she's telling me a fact. She told me Florida is the free estate. I was wondering how you calibrate that, like how you measure that. Yeah, man, I. This is like a little, this is a little bit Machiavellian. But like if you want, if you were a bear hunter in Florida and you wanted to take like a Machiavellian approach to pursuing your interests, you would almost hope not for bear attacks. You would hope for, for more.

[Evan]

Conflict.

[Steve Rinella]

Bear conflict. Because this is what happened in New Jersey.

[Evan]

It's a. Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

[Steve Rinella]

It's just like a rerun in New Jersey. New Jersey had historically had bear hunting. Through poor management, bear numbers were greatly reduced. They did a pause on bear hunting and some other moves. They rebuilt bears to where they had the highest density in the country. Did a bear hunt. The anti hunters had a shit fit. Their governor, what's his. Murphy's first.

[Evan]

Murphy, Phil Murphy.

[Steve Rinella]

Phil Murphy campaigns on an anti bear hunting plank in his platform, gets elected, they shut down the bear hunt. New Jersey first. Like they closed public land.

[Evan]

Yeah. State, state owned land. And then he just let the bear management plan expire which essentially just outlawed all bear hunting.

[Steve Rinella]

One of the things they did in New Jersey to just totally screw hunters to. You had to do a check, mandatory check. They would publicize. Like you would need to pull into a rest area that was known to the public and they like publicly openly seal everybody's bears so that all the protesters can stand there heckling you, taking pictures of you while you check your bear. Any other state, when you go to check your bear, you go in, talk to someone at the desk and then you go to a little whatever garage, back room, you meet with a biologist, they check your bear. They don't turn it into like a public spectacle of subjecting people to that kind of exposure. Murphy. Then all of a sudden what happens? Bear conflicts shoot through the roof so much that Murphy comes back and says. It pains me to say it, but I was wrong. We have to have the bear hunt. So if you were like. Like I said, the Machiavellian approach to bear hunting in Florida is hoping for bear conflict because that's your clearest path. The same day. In fact, this is kind of weird. The same day in the same place where the girl told me that Florida is the freest state in the nation. That same day, in that same place, I met a Florida game commissioner who told me he opposed the bear hunt only because of not wanting to deal with the public blowback that would come his way. He told me that. Well, I don't want to say his name because he's kind of telling me in confidentiality. He told me I didn't want to deal with the antis. They like swayed his vote. What happened on that hunt? What do they have 48 hours?

[Randall]

Well, so they.

[Steve Rinella]

Randall's going to do a little report.

[Randall]

They had. Florida had a black bear season from like the 30s up until 1994, and then it was closed from 94 to 2015. They reopened a fall hunt in 2015 and they shut it down within two days because they had. They were. I don't think they actually went over.

[Steve Rinella]

The quota, but they were speeding towards.

[Randall]

They were killing so many that like another day of hunting probably would have taken them well over the quota. So they killed 300 bears in two days.

[Steve Rinella]

You're ruining the story. Nope. You're not getting it right. Nope. I ask you one thing to do here.

[Randall]

Well, you. Then you said Randall's gonna give a little account of.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, but you're not. Your account's not right. My understanding, your professional research.

[Randall]

I've got my research right in front of me.

[Steve Rinella]

I thought it went like this, that like they build a buffer in when. When they close. There's a 48 hour window or 20 in Florida. I think it was a 24 hour window. Do you have a PhD or not?

[Randall]

I mean, I'm just going by what I. I do. I'm just going by what I read.

[Corinne]

Waiting for that.

[Evan]

Yeah. I don't think you could just close it because you're not going to re.

[Steve Rinella]

Like you have to my recollection. My recollection is they were speeding toward the quota.

[Randall]

Yes. And so they called it closed.

[Steve Rinella]

But it. They can't immediately close it because how Are people supposed to get the word? Like let's say you're like waiting for one to step out. You know, you got a shot, but he's not quite clear. And they go like, hey, season's over, but you're not looking at your phone. And then the bear steps clear. You're not in violation.

[Randall]

Well, they did that makes sense to me. That's how we run our, our unlimited hunts here. But they shut down central and east panhandle regions after the first day on Saturday. They shut. They said, but. But what?

[Steve Rinella]

There was a 24 hour window. They were speeding toward it. But by the end of the 24 hours they had overshot it. And then everybody had a conniption. The antis had a conniption.

[Randall]

Oh, I, I see. Now in the panhandle they did go into Sunday and killed triple the quota. And so they killed. The Overall quota was 320. And they shut it down on Sunday night with 295 bears killed.

[Steve Rinella]

But then by the time it wrapped, what was it?

[Randall]

Oh, geez. See, this is the, the real issue with hastily assembled research here. Actual harvest. 304.

[Steve Rinella]

And the quota was what panhandle?

[Randall]

320. Well, for the overall state the quota was, was 320. But they, the one, the, the area where they met the quota on the first day, it ended up that they went. They tripled the quota. And so I think they just shut the whole thing down before the rest of the state. That's generally speaking. But yeah, they killed 300 bears in two days. 38 of them were sows with cubs. And it, they haven't had a hunt since then.

[Steve Rinella]

Because it was treated in the, you know, with all due respect, I didn't give Randall much time. Do you notice like this group of rant. There's like a fan group about Randall. Yes. I wonder what they're thinking right now.

[Randall]

Well, I think this, their support.

[Corinne]

They're all those dedicated and loyal randomals.

[Steve Rinella]

Randomals.

[Corinne]

They are, I'm sure.

[Randall]

I think they understand the constraints of what I was asked to do here.

[Devin O'Day]

They're reasonable people.

[Corinne]

Shout out to the random.

[Steve Rinella]

But.

[Randall]

Yeah, I, I mean I, I've, I've pieced it together.

[Steve Rinella]

I feel like I thought you did. Well, I want to know more stories.

[Randall]

Ted Nugent bought a Florida bear tag.

[Steve Rinella]

Good for him.

[Randall]

2015.

[Steve Rinella]

We were gonna, we don't have time anymore. We were gonna spend a bunch of time goofing on this thing in California where they got an orphan bear cub and they're trying and they're raising it up. And it's a bunch of, like, furries who are all dressed as, like. Like, that's the problem to not have it to that. Like, that's the problem. That's the way to keep it from not acclimating to people.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, those bears are doomed.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, like, the bear is gonna, like, get out and be like, I'm just another w. Hey, those. There's some things, but they're not like.

[Randall]

The bears I'm used to.

[Steve Rinella]

We're not a time that would have been funny had we goofed on that for a long time. We're not going to.

[Devin O'Day]

All right.

[Steve Rinella]

The story of the California black bear. It's taken us a long time to get here. Devin usually does.

[Devin O'Day]

I see you. You're an avid listener.

[Randall]

Longtime listener, first time guest.

[Steve Rinella]

Dittos. Just a couple quick points on that. We thought about killing that whole part of the show, but we're not gonna. Good. But what I am gonna do is I'm looking to, in the near future, split the shows and just do interviews and just do. This is something we've considered for a long time. Very clean interviews. So you'd be, like, on as a clean interview and then a different thing, which is just talking about dumb stuff.

[Corinne]

So audience, feel free to let us know your thoughts on that.

[Steve Rinella]

Thinking about doing that, I'm against it. It's part of my professional development.

[Devin O'Day]

It might be a little too serious. I don't know. Not sure how I feel about it.

[Steve Rinella]

1948, did you supply this timeline? Like, you know, this stuff Inside now, in 1948, black bears get classified as a game animal in California. Like, what does that mean? Right. What does that mean for people to hear that they're classified as a game animal?

[Devin O'Day]

They're regulated by the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

[Steve Rinella]

So prior to that, it was like, have at them.

[Devin O'Day]

Prior to that, we're just killing grizzlies till he extirpated them. And people are just, you know, kind of run around hunting. I mean, we had. Our commission was established prior to that, but I don't think they were formally classified as a game animal until, like you said.

[Steve Rinella]

Got it. So that's kind of the state at which the. You know, a way to think about that, too, is that if sandhill cranes, like, this is a pet. Little pet subject of mine that I'm interested in. If my home state of Michigan were to enact a sandhill crane season, which they should. It would require them declaring. Would require them doing this. It's classified as one thing now, which makes it not like, subject to being listed with a season. The first step is to go like, we hereby declare the sandhill crane to be a game animal. And that's like part of the pathway.

[Devin O'Day]

That usually triggers like a management plan too. Okay, I know, like, we'll go on tangents, but, you know, recently there's a proposal in California to classify coyotes as a game animal. And so that would trigger a management plan. And everyone's like, you know, I don't think that's going anywhere. Hopefully not. But that's part of the process. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

That's coming from people who don't want that. That's coming from people that don't want them to be a game animal. They want to be able to curb. Right.

[Devin O'Day]

They want to be like that.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. That it won't be year round, unlimited, whatever. Yeah.

[Evan]

Classifyment them as a game animal allows you to protect them. It's not like, oh, here's an open season. It's a game animal now.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It's not dudes that hate coyotes doing that. Students love coyotes.

[Devin O'Day]

Correct.

[Steve Rinella]

In that case, this is an ad by BetterHelp. There's always been a stigma against guys seeking therapy for any kind of help. I think that's starting to change a lot as people realize that that like, seeking out therapy for problems you have can be pretty productive. Take something like this, like workplace stress. Like workplace stress can be enorm. And if you don't have anybody to talk to you about it and you don't feel like burdening your own family with your thoughts or anxieties about that kind of stuff, go talk to someone else. Right. To hear you out and give you a good, rational, dispassionate, objective view on what you're thinking and how you're dealing with it. Okay? BetterHelp has over 30,000 therapists, the world's largest online therapy platform. It works too, because it's got an App store rating of 4.9 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Better helps convenient too. You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus, you switch anytime. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Our listeners get 10% off their first [e-mail] me eater. That's betterhelp. H E L P.com meater okay, we're gonna jump up the. We're gonna jump up to 1980 where we have a sort of Black bear benchmark. This is all deep history. Hit me with like in 1980, what was the status? So Reagan. Reagan comes in. Right, 80.

[Randall]

Well, he was elected in 80 and then took office in January.

[Steve Rinella]

81. Okay. So just for you people to remember this, it's Carter. There's that PhD on his way out. Reagan on his. Carter on his way out. Reagan, what's going on in California? Hit me with what? What's the status of black bears in California? 1980.

[Devin O'Day]

So 1980, I think they've got the population around 10 to 15,000 bears. That's the estimate. Started getting a little bit more restrictive as far as management goes. So that's when they took prohibited trapping. No killing cows, no killing of cubs and sows. And then they reduced the bag limit from two to one.

[Randall]

And if I can. If I can jump in because I didn't know what 10 to 15,000 bears meant. I'm looking here that Montana has between 13,000 and 17,000 black bears.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

So it's. Yeah, so, like, that's a fairly robust population.

[Steve Rinella]

Not like it is now.

[Devin O'Day]

And just wait.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, just wait. Not like it is now. And counting bears, I think it's gotten a little more refined. Yeah, I think it used to be like a little bit tougher to. To count bears back in those days. But I mean, it's a guideline, right? Right. It's a general sense. But of course, if you're saying 10 to 15,000, you're opening yourself up to a wide gap. Right. There's a lot of numbers right between those still, like.

[Randall]

Yeah, but still it's. It's in the. It's in the vicinity of where, like, what we think of as black bear numbers in Montana, where we obviously don't have a shortage.

[Steve Rinella]

Was Reagan the Gipper or the Kipper? The Gipper. Gipper. As much as he is, like, celebrated among traditional conservative, like, as much as he is celebrated among, like, pre Trump Republicans, the old kind of Republicans from a couple years ago, he wound up not being the hunter's best friend when it came to black bear management. Isn't that correct? Like, wasn't it. Didn't Reagan sign.

[Devin O'Day]

He was about. That was mountain lions. I don't know.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. He signed the ban on Mount Dogs for mountain lions. Right.

[Randall]

He also signed the ban on nope. And carry in California.

[Steve Rinella]

Did he?

[Randall]

Because he didn't. I mean, basically. So the Black Panthers couldn't.

[Steve Rinella]

So you had to start wearing your pistol in your pants, not out of your pants. You had to start hiding it in your pants instead of exposing.

[Randall]

Reagan's a big Hollywood guy, you know, he's full of all sorts of contradictions.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Okay, then we're gonna, this is gonna, we're gonna start narrowing in on much more just for you listeners. We're just laying a little groundwork here. We're just laying some background before we start getting into like how bear management works in our most populous state and how bear management might work in a state near you. Coming soon, 1998. So now we're getting closer. I'm a young buck, I'm kind of an older buck, six years out of high school. Go on.

[Devin O'Day]

1998, that, that was when the previous. We'll do this presidentially. That was when the management plan, the previous management plan was established.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Devin O'Day]

And so that was the framework that we operated on in California just up until this year when we updated the new management plan.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So in 1998, they're like, here's how we're going to handle bears. And then 20 some years goes by and it's how we're managing bears.

[Devin O'Day]

Correct.

[Evan]

And in 98, the population had.

[Devin O'Day]

That had increased. Yeah, increased. And all this data is just coming from Hunter Harvest. So they're using, you know, age, sex ratio and just Hunter harvest from premolars. That's it. I mean, they're not doing like a ton of. They don't have the current integrated population model that we have now that gives you a much more accurate representation of.

[Steve Rinella]

So they're able to determine, they're able to make a stab. Back in 1998, they're able to make a stab. How many bears are there Based strictly on what they're seeing hunters bring in.

[Devin O'Day]

I'm sure there's some scientific stuff, but that is the core of the model. It's just Hunter Harvest data.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. And in 98. So again that, that population estimate, 1980, we're going to get into some wild numbers now. But coming up here in 80, 10 to 15,000 bears, estimated jump ahead almost 20 years. The estimate, 17 to 23,000 thousand bears. Notably, the plan indicated an increase in the bear population and documented an expansion of black bears along the central coast in Southern California. So bears moving into new places. Right.

[Devin O'Day]

And that's because historically they were grizzlies. And you know, that's a good point. Grizzlies are extirpated and black bears are now like filling the void. And they're like, oh, hey, there's nothing killing us down here.

[Randall]

That's fast.

[Steve Rinella]

I would. Yeah, that's, that's funny. How slow some of that stuff takes place, right, that you're still seeing adjustments, do you know? I mean, like, even today, you're still. You're probably seeing adjustments from extirpations of wolves in the early 2000. Or not the early 2000. What am I saying? In the early 20th century, you're still seeing wildlife adjust. But it takes, like 100 years, right, for things to get used or how long it takes wildlife to get used to people. It takes generations of mountain lions, generations of bears to get, like, used to people and figure it out and raise their offspring to be like, no, no, no, no. Like, you can do this, but you can't do that. You gotta. Like, when you get to a road, here's how I like to do it. Do you know what I mean? And they, like, gradually learned. They're like, oh, no, no, no. You can, like, totally go into a neighborhood. Man and trash cans. But Right. Not that neighborhood. Like, not that neighborhood. Yeah, they, like. They figure it out somehow, you know? Okay, 2012, this is when. This is when the story starts getting kind of juicy and interesting. So hit us with 2012.

[Devin O'Day]

So up until this point, you could hunt dog. You can hunt bears with dogs. And that was, you know, we were hitting the quota every once in a while, right. Like, pretty regularly that.

[Evan]

Can I stop you for a second? Before this, like, was there spring and fall? Was there baiting?

[Devin O'Day]

No, none of that. All that was back in, like, I think around the 80s, a lot of that stuff got. They. They went pretty.

[Evan]

That had already been taken away.

[Devin O'Day]

So we had dogs, but no baiting, no spring season, just one. And we're hitting the quota, you know, not every year, but around that, like, 1700 bears.

[Steve Rinella]

We're with fall hunting with dogs hitting the quota of how many bears?

[Devin O'Day]

1700.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. Out of an estimated say, they did.

[Devin O'Day]

Change that by, like 100 or so. So I think it maybe, like, was 1600 and went up to 1700, but it's been. It's hovered around there. It hasn't changed dramatically over time.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. And they got this quote, and periodically, people. Periodically hunters are, like, capping it and hitting a closed season. Yep. Primarily with the use of hounds.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, it was instrumental to people being successful, for sure.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. And then 2012, how. What. How. What goes on and how does that happen?

[Devin O'Day]

Well, the legislature, you know, that story of legislature gets involved. There's an effort to ban hunting with dogs. They're successful, and immediately following that, the harvest rate drops significantly. So we don't hit the quota after that legislative session. After that bill was passed, we do not hit the quota. Until today, we still haven't hit the quota. And that is. Is really like, why everything got so sideways with the petition from the Humane Society and all the efforts to ban bear hunting is because the population model, when you just take it strictly on hunter harvest data, everyone went, oh, no, the bear population is collapsing. Look, they're not killing as many bears. Look, they're only killing half as many bears. There must be half as many bears on the landscape.

[Steve Rinella]

That's the great irony and perversity in this story that gets to me is like the same people that push to end dog hunting for bears then trumpet the reduction in harvest as a way of showing that bear numbers are collapsing. When you know that they know you know that they know what happened.

[Evan]

But it's an argument people will buy if they don't think about it, they don't understand it.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, if you wanted to see bear numbers in California really collapse, you'd end all bear hunting. Like, no one's checking a bear anymore. There's none left, you know.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, interesting. In the new management plan, they actually have an interesting little snippet that says that in some areas where there isn't bear hunting, you know, where bear hunting is not allowed, you get higher rates of, like, infanticide and like, starvation and inter competition because there's just so many bears that, like, some of the younger bears aren't making it. Their mortality rate increases. I thought that was kind of fascinating.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you have some of those stats in here about, like, black bear predation on mule deer and stuff?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, yeah, there's some crazy ones. So that new management plan, you know, I think it was. I think they put a couple million dollars, like, into all the work that went into that. They built out an entirely new integrated population model which utilizes hunter harvest data. But it also. They collared a bunch of bears. They have a bunch of hair snares, they have a bunch of camera traps and data that's all building out this.

[Steve Rinella]

Plan to give you a much more robust picture of what's going on.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, and regionally specific, too. But, you know, some of those crazy stats that they include in that they did a study on mountain lions and kleptoparasitism up in Northwest California.

[Steve Rinella]

Explain that term.

[Devin O'Day]

So that's where you have a mountain lion that typically, let's say, kills a black tail a week up there. And there are so many black bears that black bears are opportunistic. They, you know, smell a dead deer, like, oh, breakfast so they come in, push the mountain lion off the kill. And of all the. The mountain lions that they had collared and were studying, I think only one of them was willing to defend her. Her kills. All the rest of them were like, it's not worth it. I'm not fighting this bear. So then the mountain lions go out and kill another deer.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Cause wasn't it that over 50% of the deer that mountain lions killed were stolen from them by black bears.

[Devin O'Day]

They ended up killing six times the normal amount of deer that they would because of kleptoparasitism.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, man. Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

So you, I mean the whole coming back to spot burning, you know, if you're a deer hunter. Yeah, we want a lot more people to kill bears. And in that region where they did that study, it's the presumed to be from the data is the densest concentration of black bears in the world. No, in the world. Four bears. Over four bears per square mile. And a lot of poison oak, though.

[Steve Rinella]

That's an overlooked thing. That's why they're there. You know, kleptoparasitism. You could do a study on that. Like if, if I'm in my kitchen with my kids and I make a quesadilla, they'd be like, this individual winds up making four times as many cases as you normally would have made because of kleptoparis parasitism. That's pretty fascinating that they had always met the quota that when you banned hound hunting. So from 2012 to 2021, with the ban of hound hunting, the quota never gets met. So then you just, you've taken away people's primary way of get. Or you take away one of the most effective ways to get bears. And then you have it that you're just going to have more bears. More bears, More bears. More bears. Because they're not even able to hit the number that they've regarded to be a very safe number anyway.

[Devin O'Day]

Very safe. I mean, that's like the harvest rates in California are well below what would be considered the threshold for sustainable. They estimated about 15% take would be like a sustainable level for the population in California at least recently. We're not over 5% for the entire state. 5% for more than one zone and 3% for the entire state. So I mean, the harvest rates are incredibly low. And there's some estimates that say you can go up to 20%. I think Pennsylvania and a couple other states have even higher harvest rates and they have no issues because they got.

[Steve Rinella]

Sows with a lot of Food and they're dropping three cubs, four cubs, whatever. You see videos of, you know, in the east, you know, some bear goes across the road and five cubs come running after it. Right. Stuff that you just don't see around here.

[Evan]

When, when those quotas or when they stopped meeting those quotas did. Was there a correlation between an increase in bear conflict and an increase in the number of bears that were getting, whatever they like to say, euthanized, but, you know, just shot by management officials, whatever?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

Bear conflict generally from that time period up until today has kind of steadily increased, like human bear conflict. And the department actually, prior to the release of the management plan, they updated their sort of depredation strategy and their human bear conflict strategy. And after that there's been a lot less euthanasia of bears, but a lot more conflict as well. So it's just a little bit more difficult for the department to go in there and approve for bear to get.

[Evan]

Taken because of like social pressure or.

[Devin O'Day]

Pretty much, yeah. I mean it's, it follows what the depredation strategy is for mountain lions, which is, you know, previously there is, you know, procedures, but you could kind of, I think my understanding is that wardens could make, you know, a determination like kind of on the fly, like, yes, this is a problem bear. We need to like go in and take care of this now. There needs to be, you know, a lot. There needs to be a record of documentation of attempts to haze the bear. You need to have a number of steps that go through before that depredation tag is issued and before the department will consider actually going in.

[Steve Rinella]

Interesting.

[Randall]

I have a question about not hitting that quota. Is that is the success rate for black bear hunters in Cal? Obviously, like the success rate goes down when they do away with dogs.

[Devin O'Day]

Right.

[Randall]

And you're just doing spot and stock.

[Steve Rinella]

It dropped 50% or no, sorry, not the success rate. Harvest dropped 50%.

[Randall]

Yeah. So success. But yeah, I mean, hound hunting is, has, is higher efficacy. So I'm wondering, like, in the time that the quota hasn't been met, in the time that the quota has not been met, are success rates among hunters on par with fall bear non hound seasons in other states? Like, is it a question of there not enough people buying bear tags? No, there's a question that success rates are much lower in California compared to a similar season in, say, Washington.

[Devin O'Day]

My understanding is that they're like some of the lowest of the states that have bears. And I think part of that is cultural. I think in California people, I mean, there's like something like 25,000 bear tags that get bought every year. It's a good amount of revenue for the department, but there's only about a thousand to thirteen hundred bears that are actually getting harvested every year. And I think a lot of that is cultural, and it's just like it's smoking, dope, surfing.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

I mean, that's. That's my problem. But.

[Steve Rinella]

It'S people that.

[Devin O'Day]

That are going deer hunting and are just buying a bear tag opportunity. It's opportunistic. And, you know, if. If you don't run into one. All right, whatever.

[Steve Rinella]

It's like me and my wolf tag. Yeah. Oh. Maybe carried around. Yeah. Hate to get caught without it, you know?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, exactly. And it's not, you know, a super expensive tag. So it's. People just kind of buy one and they do a bear. Great. But that, I think, skews some of the data, too, of, like, how much are hunters really trying and how does that success ratio factor in?

[Randall]

Yeah, I guess that that was. That was sort of rather than how many people are buying tags, it's like, how many people are actually hunting them. And it sounds like that's where the sort of.

[Evan]

Yeah, you probably lost a ton of hunters once hounds went away. Like, people are like, well, I'm not gonna.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Evan]

I'm not gonna hunt them a different way.

[Devin O'Day]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

In 2021, they put forth what they. Humane Society, right? Yep. Do we need to, once again, explain the Humane Society? There's hsus. I answered my own question. If you're sitting there and you get and you're buying something, and there's like, a little roundup thing, do you want to round up for the Humane Society? Right. You're thinking, oh, it's the local puppies. Like, HSUS is an anti hunting organization. You can have a local Humane Society shelter. But HSUS is an anti hunting organization. There's tons of confusion about this, that people have the difference between a Humane Society writ large, like, as a big umbrella, and then, like, Humane Society shelters don't do anything to ever help hsus. Ever.

[Devin O'Day]

I got a question, too, because I was having this debate just two days ago in California, and I'm curious for you guys if you know the answer to this. If it's outside of California, but in California, the Humane Society has police powers where they can actually write you a ticket, and it's enforceable as if it were a police officer. And if you, like, run from them, it's like you're running from the cops.

[Steve Rinella]

That can't be true.

[Devin O'Day]

They can write you a ticket. 100%.

[Steve Rinella]

Yelling at your dog pretty much.

[Devin O'Day]

For having your dog off leash at the beach. No, a hundred percent. I've seen it happen, and it blew my mind. And so I did a bunch of research, and I was like, is this just California where they have this police power, or is it elsewhere? Because it's. It's definitely problematic, man.

[Evan]

Corinne be getting a lot of tickets.

[Steve Rinella]

They got all worked up about the National Guard. Meanwhile, they got the HSUs running around writing tickets.

[Randall]

Here's a. Here's a journal article from 1998 in the.

[Steve Rinella]

What?

[Randall]

The Proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference. And the title of the paper is Humane Society. Good Guys or Gestapo? Very provocative.

[Steve Rinella]

That is a great title.

[Randall]

I'm jealous of that title, but it does sound like. Yeah. Societies are private organizations that have no inherent power, but derive all their powers and authority to enforce animal laws from the state. As in most states in California, the counties can choose to operate their own animal control services or to hire the society to perform animal control services for the county. And they can serve search warrants.

[Steve Rinella]

What?

[Randall]

At the time of this. They can serve search warrants. They can carry firearms and may even use reasonable force and deadly force to prevent the perpetration of any act of cruelty upon an animal.

[Steve Rinella]

Wow. Deadly force.

[Randall]

So I guess they're like, kind of put your dog on a leash like a county. A county that has to provide animal control services can sort of rent a copy. The Humane Society. And.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, we were talking about the other day with our camera guy, Rick Smith. He was working on this dog. This documentary about dogs in Mexico, street dogs. And he's talking about, like. He's like, psychologically, a street dog in Mexico is a way healthier dog. Psychologically. They. They wake up. They hang out with our dogs. They're in a pack form. People look at him like, oh, that dog has an infected eye. And they think the dog's hating life, but he's like, they have total autonomy. They have dynamics. They hang out. The dogs they want to hang out with, they travel where they want. And we're talking about this concept that Americans have, people around the world. But, like, you take a dog, you remove its reproductive organs, you lock it in the house all day, and you act like you're doing the dog a favor. And I think that all those dogs have. What's that syndrome when you get caught?

[Corinne]

Stockholm syndrome.

[Randall]

Stockholm.

[Steve Rinella]

All dogs have. I think dogs are very susceptible to Stockholm syndrome, and they empathize with their captors. I think that they're like a highly susceptible species. And that's why when you come home and your dog's happy. Your dog has Stockholm syndrome. He has come to empathize with his captor.

[Devin O'Day]

You ever seen the way dogs in Mexico will try to attack a car?

[Steve Rinella]

Like, because they got chutzpah? It's Yiddish.

[Devin O'Day]

It's their only natural predator. Like an urban dog. Urban pack of dogs. I swear, there's a pecking order and.

[Steve Rinella]

Great point.

[Devin O'Day]

The biggest one will go after, like, cars, and they'll come in and they'll try to bite the wheel because it's a natural predator and they're, like, showing their dominance. It's. It's a wild thing. I was. I did a study abroad in Santiago.

[Steve Rinella]

Great point, man.

[Devin O'Day]

And I was on a skateboard. And if you're on a skateboard, you'll get like, 20 stray dogs that will just come in like they're. They're trying to kill you. And then second you hop off the board, they're like, yeah, that's a great.

[Steve Rinella]

Cats. I got signed out of my thing.

[Randall]

Oh, I thought you were looking for videos of dogs chasing cars.

[Steve Rinella]

No, but. No. Can you pull that up? Cats are remarkably less susceptible to Stockholm syndrome. But dogs, for whatever reason, weirdly, are, like, highly susceptible to empathizing with their captors. People that restrain them, don't let them do what they want to do. Don't let them hang out with who they want to hang out with. Make them eat what they want them to eat when they want them to eat it. No autonomy. No autonomy. Like, you get to go to the yard. It's like prison.

[Evan]

You could say that about.

[Steve Rinella]

They even call the same thing. Let them out in the yard. Let the prisoners out in the yard. I love that this is your new crusade.

[Devin O'Day]

I hope you chase this.

[Evan]

Yeah, but you'd have to, like, because you could say, say same thing about horses.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't know about that. Well, sure, let me think about it for a minute. I want to get back to talking about these bears. The Bear Protection Act. Here's a move where the hsus. Correct. HSUS comes out and says, hey, I got an idea. How about you can't hunt bears at all anymore in California.

[Devin O'Day]

SB 252 as a senator Wiener's bill.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. What happens with the Bear Protection Act?

[Devin O'Day]

It got squashed. It was a. A big uprising from a lot of different organizations, and it got pulled back very quickly.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, that's 2021, 2022. They. There's a different approach made through the commission okay, explain this.

[Devin O'Day]

Now, the Humane Society filed a petition to the Fish and Game Commission, which honestly, you know, HSUs, HSUs, respectfully, like, that is the process. Right. The legislature had no business taking that on. And so at least they're going through the proper channel now, right, the commission, but they failed in the legislature.

[Steve Rinella]

So, like, people complain about ballot biology or whatever, but this is like, hey, okay, we'll play by the rules, we'll go to the commission.

[Devin O'Day]

Yep. So they, they bring forward this petition and the, the whole argument is based off of this population model and the collapse of bears. So they're saying, according to their science, they're saying there's only 10,000 bears left in California. And this is a, you know, we need a moratorium on bear hunting until we can update the management plan and until we have a better population model so that we can. And they're citing, you know, mega fires and climate change. This is causing a catastrophic drop in the bear population.

[Evan]

And they're going back to that, like evidence by decline.

[Devin O'Day]

And that's what they sell off. Everything is built around that hunter harvest model, which is when you look, when you break down the science, I mean, it's not, it's not a solid argument at all. It doesn't take an expert to look at that and go, okay, well this doesn't, you know, this clearly doesn't really, you know, pass the smell test here.

[Steve Rinella]

And it being 2022, they just throw in climate change for a zinger.

[Devin O'Day]

And we'd had some huge fires in California. Massive fires, right. And so I think that's, that was the, the topic of the time, right. Is like, you know, what could these giant fires be doing to our bear populations and what are the impacts? And, you know, that's something I think a lot of people are genuinely curious about. And we actually used chapter money and funded a study on pre and post fire population status of black bears in California, in Lassen national park. Just because at this time, you know, we're saying, okay, well, Humane Society, like, if, if you want to talk about this, well, let's put your money where your mouth is. Let's, let's fund some research. Right? Let's get to the answer. And so as a part of like BHA and wanting to be an organization that stands for science Based Management of Wildlife, we had this opportunity from one of the old carnivore biologists in the state, who's a great guy, came out to like one of our bear camps and talked to people about bear hunting. He mentioned this study and so we put some money towards it and it's ongoing. But you know, I think this is like where we want to be as hunters, like, you know, making sure that we have good data and good science and that's.

[Steve Rinella]

Look, but I would think just, just intuitively I would think that the, that the fire outside of mega fires, I would think that the fires are basically generating more and more black hair habitat.

[Devin O'Day]

That's the assumption.

[Steve Rinella]

I think most people successional vegetation. So it might, it's cooked for a couple years, but then it goes through a very productive bunch of years with a lot of berry production.

[Devin O'Day]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

I think that's through the successional process. So you're right that you'd like if you have. What, What's a big. In acreage. What's a big fire in California? In acreage? I mean, I mean, tens of thousands.

[Devin O'Day]

Of acres, Hundreds of thousands. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So you do when you, I mean like, you can't deny it. If you go into a place and you burn 100,000 acres of ground in a catastrophic wildfire, that is 100,000 acres of ground that for a period of time is not going to be used by black bears for the most part, but then it'll become a patch of ground that is very well used by black bears for a pretty long period of time. But I could see that, like, I could kind of see the argument, but I kind of don't see the argument.

[Devin O'Day]

And I think there's, it's one of those examples also where like, do you have. Can the bears move somewhere else? Right. Is there habitat for them to move into or not? Yeah, and, and I think even following like some of the especially like low to mid severity fires, I think bears probably move in like right after the fire too. Maybe the habitat and value isn't as good, but they're not. It's not like it's gone forever, is my understanding. Right. There's going to be some bears that come right back and you know, if.

[Steve Rinella]

Anyone'S listening that knows about this, I'd love to know this answer. Has anyone ever had the opportunity to look at collared black bears, collared mountain lions and, and see how they behave with a fire? How, how, how far ahead of the fire are they? Do you ever get mortality on collared stuff for getting caught in fires? Like, I'd love to understand that. Like when you watch a giant fire cooking across a mountainside, I always say to my kids, I'm like, like, can you imagine how many pine squirrels died in that thing? They're not Getting, you know what I mean? Yeah. You're cooking thousands and thousands and thousands of pine squirrels. But like, what are bears doing? You know, some of them, presumably they gotta get burned up. But I wonder, like when they move, like how well do they get it? What, how good are they at going the right direction? That'd be fascinating if you could ever have a good sample size of like, what is it? At what point did it start to shift its, you know, what point did it demonstrate any kind of awareness? I would love to see some of that if it's out there. A couple years ago you could have gotten it funded as climate change research, but now you won't yet think of a different thing. You have to think of a different buzzword to get your money, to get your research money. At the same time that they're saying 10,000 bears using hunter harvest data, the California department, as they're saying now, we think we got 20 to 30,000. This is in 2022 and that's their.

[Devin O'Day]

Number they'd stuck with for a while and there'd been some studies that had pushed that up to 35. But generally speaking, in the, the documents that they'd had out there, they said, you know, we're thinking it's around 20 to 30.

[Steve Rinella]

That petition doesn't go anywhere. Right.

[Devin O'Day]

I mean, stuck around for a little while. It was a big, a big deal right there. All the anti hunters came out, all the hunters came out. We actually put together a huge, just all the available literature and science that we could. One of our former board members was a black bear biologist and he California. So just like the perfect person to compile all this evidence. And what came of the petition was it was ultimately rejected, but it led to, it lit a fire under the part, under the department to update their black bear management plan, which was something that the Hunting and Conservation Coalition in California, something that BHA participates in prior to all this had as one of the top priorities is like, we need a new management plan. Because previously when the management plan gets outdated, anti hunters will come in and say, you don't have good science, we can't hunt it. And so we knew that was like square one. Having a defensible position is having good.

[Steve Rinella]

Good science because they'll use it against you and be like, you haven't updated your management plan since 1998.

[Devin O'Day]

Correct.

[Steve Rinella]

You have no idea what's going on out there. Right?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, exactly.

[Steve Rinella]

So they start the process of doing the new management plan and it goes up for like public opinion, public comment. What was your General vibe on the proposed management plan or your general take on it?

[Devin O'Day]

A general take was it was ambitious because the director said they were going to do it in a year. And everyone went like, you could tell. All the scientists and the department staff were like, did he say a year? Because I mean, we don't do anything fast. The sheet plan just wrapped up and that, that's been going on for over a decade. You know, these things take a long time and they, I mean, credit to the department, they got it done in a couple years, but they got a draft out in about a year and then followed up with the final, you know, just this year. And you know, generally speaking there's a lot of information in there, but there's a lot of good data. Like some of those nuggets that I pulled out about kleptoparasitism they talk about.

[Steve Rinella]

I read like, I rarely read those whole things. I read that whole damn thing. It was, I thought it was like, I mean, I give huge credit to whoever put it together. Yeah, I mean it was phenomenal.

[Devin O'Day]

There's some really good research that went into that. And just to back up a tiny bit too, our commission, like I got to give a lot of credit to them because they really pushed back against this whole notion that just because hunters are the minority in the state that we should just ban bear hunting. And so the commission really like came out in favor of black bear hunting, in favor of hunters, but with the caveat of like, let's get, let's get all the data and research that we can to make an informed decision.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I think it was like what I got from it when I read it was like a number of recognitions. Like there's a sort of recognition that there's shifting social values in the state. There's a recognition that there are a ton of black bears in more places. It was a recognition that we have historically used bear hunters as a management tool. It recognized bear hunters contribution to bear research. Right. It was like, it was very even, you know, and then had like, you know, just like the whole state history and all their measurement stuff. I thought it was like super informative.

[Devin O'Day]

One of the cool things in there too to check out is the, the range map that they updated because you can see some of those areas where black bears have expanded and they updated that map and it was kind of surprising to me. Even it goes all the way down to the border to Mexico. And we don't have black bears in San Diego, although we did have one that ran down into like Ramona. I think it was last year. So, like, it's not a. Not a common freak occurrence, but you could imagine if things stay on the same trajectory, that those bears will probably move down there.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

If they continue to. To move out. I mean, we've been. We've had bears pouring into Nevada for years and years now. Like, their bear population is bolstered by all these bears that are just leaving California because the taxes are too high or whatever.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You know, with the, with that black bear management plan they put out, which is like a proposal. Right. I mean, they have a proposal part of it.

[Devin O'Day]

Well, they had the draft management plan and then they finalized it just this year.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. So that. That I'm not. That. That I'm less schooled on, but I remember there they were saying, like, there's things that you could do or people were asking for certain things like, like Californians are limited to one bear.

[Devin O'Day]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

And since the quote is not being met and you have more bears, like, categorically more bears than you did when they established the quota and the quota is not being met, they were like, we could do X, Y and Z. We could give everybody two bear tags, which I don't think is going to make a huge difference. Probably it's the low.

[Devin O'Day]

It's the lowest hanging fruit. But. And I, And I agree, I don't necessarily know that's even going to get us to the quota, but it's. It's a very logical first step. And that's actually what BHA does. We filed a petition to the commission right after the management plan was finalized, and we reviewed it as the, like, easy slam dunk, lowest hanging fruit. Everybody could buy two bear tags because then, you know, one is just more revenue for the department. If some people are like, oh, well, I'm gonna go deer hunting and maybe I'll see two bears. You never know. Like. So that for us was just like an easy win. But there's other. Other proposals that the department are gonna bring forward that we're aware of, including expanding some of the bear hunting zones. So, like northeastern California and the Modoc Plateau that has been closed to bear hunting. It's because it's not historically occupied bear habitat, but the bears have moved in there. There's, you know, good genetic diversity. There's. There's good bear hunting up there. So it seems like a logical place to. Yeah, let's open that up. There's no reason not to hunt bears there. You know, they're going to potentially talk about season timing. It's A pretty wide open season right now around when deer season starts and it goes like to the end of the year in most zones. So they may look at that as well as if there's any improvements there or additional opportunities. I think those are the big first things that the department's going to try to address this year. I don't think spring bear baiting dogs, that's not coming from the department.

[Evan]

It's hard to bring that stuff back. Once you.

[Steve Rinella]

What does it take to bring it back? Like I appreciate, I appreciate the efforts, I appreciate your guys efforts on this. I appreciate the efforts. To me like these are all wins. They're all, they're battles, they're little wins. Right? They're battles that you win the war. To me, like to win the war it would be that we would, we would be able to go in and revert. We would have success in going in and reverting. Some of the major management, the historic major management decisions like hunters look at winning oftentimes that defeating. We look at winning, we didn't lose as defeating losses. Meaning Colorado's like, okay, we're going to ban bobcat hunting, mountain lion hunting, hunters come together, fight it and the victory is that you didn't lose the bay.

[Evan]

You maintain the status quo.

[Steve Rinella]

You maintain the status quo. I would love to see like that somehow we would pull off that trapping came back to Colorado, that. Right. That hound hunting came back to California, that the mountain lion season came back to California. What does that take in California? Like is that just not. I mean like give me the realistic. Is that just not gonna happen?

[Devin O'Day]

I mean when you talk about mountain lion, it's not gonna happen because of when that legislation was passed the way it was passed. It will require a 4/5 vote majority in the legislature to bring mountain lion hunting back in California.

[Steve Rinella]

Are you serious?

[Devin O'Day]

Four fifths. So I mean mountain lion, as much as we would like to see it, I. That is not the threshold. Yeah. For bears it's a different story.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, hit me with bears.

[Devin O'Day]

Bears. We had a bill this year, AB 1038 that almost made it out of committee. It actually, you know, there was a lot, a lot of work done by a lot of great organizations to bring that forward. You know this is like a houndsman bill primarily as a sponsor and it's. It was before the management plan was finalized and now it's a two year bill. So in California the legislative session spans two years. So this is basically just kind of going to get recycled into next year, but doesn't have to Necessarily start from square zero. In order to bring hound hunting back, it will require the legislature's approval. And so what this bill tried to do is this bill tried to allow for the use of hounds for basically tree and free from like a perspective of human bear conflict. But it also, the reason why it.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't mean to roll my position. That's great, that's great. But it's not what I'm talking about.

[Devin O'Day]

Right, but, but what it did also is that it allowed for the, it delegated the authority, as it should be to the commission to determine whether or not there should be a hound hunting season.

[Steve Rinella]

Got it.

[Devin O'Day]

So it took it out of the legislature's hands, put it in the commission's hands where it belongs and that was too much for the anti hunters in the state. But I think that it's not, it's not something that's out of the question. It just, I think these things have to happen in their stages. And now that we have the management plan, let's say we get a second bear tag, we expand the zones, we do everything we can and we still don't hit the quota. And we can show the negative impacts to other species. Mule deer, you know, which is big charismatic megafauna like mountain lions. I mean if you want to like really make the argument bears are negatively impacting mountain lions. Right. Like we need to manage them to an extent where we can actually be successful.

[Steve Rinella]

Now you're getting back into that Machiavellian stuff. Man, I just feel bad for the mountain lions. We need to be able to hunt more bears.

[Randall]

So I don't know if you've. The one thing that sticks out to me about this new plan and I don't know if we've touched on it, I missed it. But it's got a new population model which again is like one of these little steps that leads towards reframing the whole conversation. Right. So the, the current statewide black bear population is what? Now according to the, according to the best available science, according to the new.

[Devin O'Day]

IPM, the Integrated Population Model, it's 59,000 with. But, but, but it could be up to 80.

[Steve Rinella]

Let me scroll back up.

[Devin O'Day]

And 59 is concerned.

[Steve Rinella]

1980. 10 to 15,000 bears in color. Best, best scientific guess. 10 to 15,000 in California. Hit me again now.

[Devin O'Day]

59,000 up to 80,000. Wow. The most bears in the lower 48. The highest density of bears, black bears in the world in northwest California.

[Steve Rinella]

And that's, I mean there's too many places claiming to have the highest density of Black bears, this.

[Devin O'Day]

It's in the management. They take it. They, like, put their flag in the ground. They're like anyone else come challenge us. But this is the data that we.

[Randall]

Have and, like, getting stuff like that.

[Steve Rinella]

Another good thing for ATLAS is the different places that compete. The different places.

[Evan]

New Jersey and California, dense as well.

[Steve Rinella]

And then portions of southeast Alaska also claim to have the highest density. Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

This is also per 100 square kilometers. So it's like 156 bears per 100 square kilometers is their metric, which is like just over four bears a square mile. So I don't know if someone else. That's a lot. Someone else is like, we got the most bears in this quadrant or whatever. But I think a square mile is a pretty.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, no, I see. Yeah. And then it depends on how big the area. Like, if I put a bunch of bears on this table, could I say, like, that's the densest population of black bears in North America? Yeah, this table. So it's gotta be like, how much air are you talking about? Yeah, it's a sizable chunk of ground, though.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, yeah, it's huge. I mean, there's a ton of public land that you can hunt in California for black bears.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you do some fall. Do you. Some specific fall black bear hunting?

[Devin O'Day]

I'm. I'm excited to do some. Some more fall black bear hunting. I've been living in San Diego for 10 years. Been hunting for 13 years. My wife and I got into it. We've been trying to kill our San Diego deer, which is. Might as well be the, you know, unicorn of the woods.

[Steve Rinella]

Good.

[Devin O'Day]

She was successful. She killed one with her bow.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, seriously?

[Devin O'Day]

That's cool. And we've been hunting together for a long time now. We have a couple kids.

[Steve Rinella]

It's.

[Devin O'Day]

It's trickier to, like, get out together and do that.

[Steve Rinella]

You focus on crayfish.

[Devin O'Day]

Exactly. You know, where. Where I can really make the bang for my buck. Stowy. Rest in peace. But I've, you know, I've. I've gotten to do a little bit of BlackBerry hunting mostly when I'm, like, traveling for work, like we did. We've been doing this big restoration project up in Northeast California. And so when I go up there, I always have my deer tag and shot a deer a couple years ago and almost shot a bear, but a little out of range. Usually bow hunting. But my friend who shared that picture, Ned, who does some guiding in the Eastern Sierra, he. He's been trying to get me to come up with them. So I'm pretty excited to get up. And I got like, 10 points for deer. So I'm going to cash in next year. I'm going to scout my deer zone and. And go, hopefully kill a bear this fall.

[Steve Rinella]

I was hanging out the guy in California this winter, and one this weirdest thing, man. Like, he. He manages a ski area, okay. I'm not gonna tell you what ski area. I don't want all hellfire to come down out of respect for the town, out of respect for the individual. It's not like my story, my crime and punishment story. So check this out, though. It's January. This is January in the mountains, okay? At a ski hill, I pull in to meet him. There is a bear standing under. Like, you park in a parking lot and you walk up this zigzag, old rickety stairs to get in to enter the bar at the ski area. There's a bear standing under the porch, standing there, and his buddy, another bear, is standing off to the side of the stairs. I can't, like.

[Devin O'Day]

I'm like, forgot his ID or what?

[Steve Rinella]

It's like. Yeah. You know when you read, like. Like people seeing things they can't comprehend. I, like, I'm stuck in the moment. I mean, the snow is. You can't walk through the woods, okay. You. We're using snow cats to get around. You cannot walk around without snowshoes. I'm like, feeling like home. Did I come through a. A fence? And this is like a. Like, I. I couldn't comprehend what I'm seeing. He's like, oh, no, man. These are like the town bears. He says they don't even hibernate anymore. They live in town, they walk around. He had a couple years earlier, got one, and he's like. He's like, dude, man, I kept that under wraps. Well, it's. It's funny you said there's no way I could have told anybody about that. And it was on his property. He tagged it. Well.

[Randall]

So this is the thing with the two tags. Is they. In Montana, in the last legislative session, they're trying to pass a bill through the Fish and Wildlife Committee or in the House, whatever, to let hunters buy two lion tags in areas that had really low success rates.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And there's this question of, like, well, if people aren't killing lions there now, what's them having an extra tag going to do? And the point was made was that a lot of these areas are places where there's not great access, and so some. Or there's like, considerations about hunting around city limits. Things like that. And a lot of hunters wouldn't be like, are pretty conservative when it comes to like, butting up against private property or whatever. And so in the case of like these town bears, if there are some guys that hunt and have properties where they can hunt, like, having that person buy a second tag could. It's not going to tip the scale, but it, it increases harvest in these places where it's tricky to address it.

[Steve Rinella]

I got me a permission on the spot.

[Evan]

For a town bear.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't know if I can deal with the heat. That's what I told them. They got property. He said, man, you have no problem. I was like, I don't know, dude. That seems like a good way to get in the argument with the old.

[Randall]

Lady near, near wine country.

[Steve Rinella]

The old lady with a cat or a dog on a leash.

[Devin O'Day]

There's an interesting tidbit too. I think it's from the management plan. But bears that get accustomed to human food and are like your town bears, they reproduce earlier and more often. And so like you're saying they stop hibernating. I think it's just like those bears and it's like two whole separate conversations, right? Like, how do you deal with the bears in Tahoe and Mammoth and like the human bear conflicts that are there? Because some of those places, you know, there's little pockets here and there that you can hunt. But the, the vast majority of those bears are not necessarily like the huntable population. Right. That's just like an education campaign for people to stop being idiots and start locking up their food. And you know, that's where that whole like h, you know, human bear conflict conversation comes in. But, you know, hunting will improve human bear conflict, but it's not the like, end all solution. Right. Some of these places like require education, require people being smart.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. I don't, you know, I keep talking about that, that approach of like, I need to be clear about what I'm after here. I see people that are on my. I'm making a mess of this argument. Let me back up. I often see people use a rhetorical strategy in these conversations that I'm uncomfortable with. They would say, don't. We can't ban mountain lion hunting in Colorado because mountain lions are going to kill all of our children if we do that. Like, it's so tempting to do that because it helps you get what you want. Yeah.

[Evan]

To scare people into.

[Steve Rinella]

It's so tempting to vilify, to be like grizzlies. Like, here's the thing, I believe it's time to delist grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone and northern Rocky Mountain ecosystems. Those, those, those deep, distinct, popular DPSS is time. But I can't then go it's time because grizzlies are going to kill us all. Which is how you get there. Because then you make it an issue that moms, hikers, whatever, you make it their problem by intimidating them. And I see people do it and very well intentioned people do it and I'm always like, man, I can't personally traffic in this argument that I'm so afraid of a bear because we have bears all over our yard in the fall. I'm so afraid of a bear in my yard that we have to hunt more bears. They're going to kill us all. But I wish I could. Earlier I used like being like the Machiavellian approach. It's like anything to win, right? And I just don't like it. You know, I think it's worthwhile to point out, I think it's worthwhile to point out bare human conflict. But I can't put it that my motivation, that I'm motivated first and foremost by preventing bare human conflict. You don't want to get out the.

[Randall]

Pitchforks and torches for the scary monsters.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm motivated by. Here's a renewable resource. There are people that want to use and utilize and enjoy this renewable resource and it will not be a detriment to the species. Therefore, since the species is fine, they'll continue to occupy the landscape in California. Let those people who would choose to exercise their historic privilege of utilizing the resource for food, skin, whatever, allow them to continue to do so because it doesn't imperil the integrity of the species. If you got to get there by talking about bears eating your dog's food, I do it. But I'd rather not.

[Devin O'Day]

I think an interesting take on that too is that when you talk about like problem bears, right, and depredations and relocations and this goes for like large carnivores in California we have an interesting perspective for a lot of mountain lions and we relocate a lot of these. In these depredation instances we relocate. And I know particularly for mountain lions in the Sierra Nevadas, in the eastern Sierra, where we have an endangered subspecies of bighorn sheep, there are problem cats. When the sheep come down low enough, there's like a big snow year, the sheep come down low and they just get massacred by these mountain lions. And particular mountain lions will kill a bunch of sheep. So they'll take that Take there's you know, instances where they've taken that cat and moved them 150 miles away, comes right back and starts killing sheep again. And they do it again 300 miles away, comes right back and keeps killing sheep. And so it's like, okay, at what point are we spending resources? Like you know, if we can, you know, if we don't have to kill it. Sure, if we can, if it can be a huntable, you know, animal, great. But you know, at what point are we spending resources to basically just put a band aid on something that's going to come right back in. So I think that's the question there of like you can't, yeah, you can't be fear mongering that, you know, the, the bears are going to kill us all. But also like, we have to be smart about our strategies and how we're using hunting as a management tool and how we're employing depredation to you know, like prevent problem bears from coming in and killing. Like the lady in Downieville. Right. Like yeah. Which was I think part of that like catalyst of that story.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, that was like very emblematic story where here's a person complaining about a bear. The bear eventually comes in her house and kills her. And it was like, ye, right, I.

[Devin O'Day]

Might have seen that bear too because my friend lives like a mile or two down the road.

[Steve Rinella]

Was that right?

[Devin O'Day]

And, and I've seen bears at his place. I've hunted deer up there and you know, I couple looks at bears. So after that I was thinking like, I wonder if I saw that bear.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, man, I wish I got closer.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Here. Because grizzlies are ESA animals. They'll go to great ends to move a problem grizzly bear for the most part. When you tattle tail on a black bear for doing something bad, I'm always telling people not to tattle tail on the ones around town. Like if enough people tattletail on a black bear, he's dead. Because think about it like this. You got to move it 250 miles to get out of where it's not, you know, I mean, where he's not just going to show back up. So here you have an understaffed agency with, you know, budget constraints like any wildlife management agency is going to deal with. You got a very healthy population of black bears, a growing population of black bears. A black bear starts killing some chickens, are you really going to send a guy out, he's going to catch it, you're going to pay him the whatever days it takes to bring that thing 250 miles away, come back. Right. It's just. They just. This is not the time and money.

[Devin O'Day]

He's going to use dogs to do it. That, you know, dog teams are like, how they'll get a contract houndsman to come in and catch those bears off knives. I mean, they'll do traps, but.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep, culvert traps, dogs, whatever. But it's like they're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna spend the time and money on it. It's just. It's burdensome. And then at any given time, like, September comes, and I had a guy tell me one time, like, in this town, September comes, they were. They were monitoring like 11 or 12 in town that people are calling up, complaining about. So I don't know what that has to do with anything, but it's just interesting about how they view it. Then you got these guys here dressing up like. Dressing up like bears.

[Devin O'Day]

That's just another day at the office.

[Steve Rinella]

So what do you think is going to wind up happening?

[Devin O'Day]

I think I can say with somewhat, you know, confidently that I think this year we'll see a second bear tag. We'll see expanded hunting zones into northeastern California. Maybe a little tweaks to the season, but nothing substantial there.

[Steve Rinella]

More generous tweaks.

[Devin O'Day]

I don't. I don't know as much here. This is where we start to get into, like, a little bit more uncertainty. The San Luis Obispo is a lot of people that are calling for bear hunting down there. There was an effort maybe about like 10 years ago to establish a bear hunt there because it's been historically closed. And the department had said there, there's a thousand bears and we should hunt them. And then there was a big effort to block that, saying, you know, you don't have enough data, you don't have enough research. They did a study in 2014-2015 is pretty short. It's pretty small sample size. But the study indicated they thought there was only like 100 bears there. And so that was kind of like the proof of the pudding that, no, we're not going to do a bear hunt here. There's not enough. And so I think San Luis Obispo still is like a wild card. The genetic diversity down there is not the same as it is in all the other areas, even though it doesn't warrant any concern or management action. So I think if there were to be maybe another study or some more research that could be done into the population there, I think we could definitely see hunting established there. But I don't know that that's going to happen this year. Spring season.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. What's that going to take?

[Devin O'Day]

I think that's going to take. I think it's going to be a walk before you run. So I think we need to, like, lay this foundation where we're at.

[Steve Rinella]

Show.

[Devin O'Day]

I mean, hopefully we hit the quota. I don't think we will necessarily show that, like, there's still more management that needs to happen.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

And then we start looking at, you know, what's next. Right. Is it spring season? Is it dogs? You know, is it dogs before spring season so that you can have a better opportunity to, you know, you know, sex the bear when you got it up in a tree and make sure it doesn't have any cubs? Like, those are the types of arguments that I think the community is a little bit more split, but that we need to have as we move forward. But it, you know, in order to, like, not provoke that substantial backlash and another bill in the legislature, I think we got to take these wins, like, and just chip away. But we are on the, you know, we're moving forward. Right. We're not on the defensive anymore, which is. Is promising. Right. It's like, it's a really. It's a great time to have our department and our commission using the science. We have new, like, updated, robust science to advocate for, like, better management and better hunting opportunity. And so I'm. I'm really optimistic in California, where we're going to go, hopefully, we just keep chipping away.

[Steve Rinella]

Let's do a quick roundtable. If you could have. If you're the king of California, you're Reagan. You're the king of California, and you could. Someone said, okay, you can have. You can have back spring. You can have back spring bear hunting, or you can have back hound hunting in the fall.

[Evan]

I'd do hounds.

[Steve Rinella]

Brody's on hounds.

[Devin O'Day]

With that number of bears. Yeah. Hounds.

[Corinne]

Corinne, I feel like I'm not qualified to speak.

[Randall]

Are we talking about this as a management tool or just what I want to do?

[Steve Rinella]

What do you want to do? Oh, not what you want to do. Oh, just for the betterment of hunters. Oh, someone said, okay, I can't do both. I can do one.

[Randall]

I'd.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean, I'd.

[Randall]

I'd restore Houghton hunting, because that's. That was the traditional use up till the 80s. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

How bad is poison oak in the spring?

[Evan]

Plus, like, I got questions.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, it's terrible. That's when I got it. The worst turkey hunt.

[Devin O'Day]

You just got the dogs Go through the poison oak and you stand on the outside.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm not to going. Going in there.

[Evan]

It seems like in a lot of California, a spring season would be a lot different than like a spring season in Montana. Just based on like, climate, weather.

[Devin O'Day]

Right.

[Evan]

Like when the bears are all popping out in May. Like, I don't know that that, like.

[Steve Rinella]

No, this is a mountainy.

[Evan]

I know in. In places. Yeah. But there's like a lot of country where it might not be like.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, it might not be as. They might not be as concentrated.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, yeah. It'll vary, I think, by geography for sure.

[Evan]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Even without the poison oak question. I would say. I would say as well, hounds just to have that. Just to have that win for houndsmen who get beat up on all the time.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, I agree.

[Steve Rinella]

Hmm. Anything else you want to tell us about?

[Devin O'Day]

Just the 3 million acres of public lands for sale.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, but that's the show.

[Devin O'Day]

It's off topic.

[Steve Rinella]

It's not off topic. It's also out of time because it's the release schedule. We can't just put these up when we want.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, no, I know.

[Steve Rinella]

So just cut that out. By the time you say that, it'll be something different tomorrow.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, exactly.

[Steve Rinella]

If it wasn't, that's what we'd be talking about.

[Corinne]

Bullfrogs.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah. When you guys gonna come. Come kill some bullfrogs with me?

[Steve Rinella]

How many you getting?

[Devin O'Day]

Like, our good nights are like 30. 20 to 30.

[Steve Rinella]

What?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, big one. Big, big bullfrog.

[Steve Rinella]

Can you 22 em or how are you getting them?

[Devin O'Day]

We're shooting them with pole spears mostly. Like wine slings?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

Spearfishing stuff.

[Steve Rinella]

Are you allowed to 22em?

[Devin O'Day]

Nope. Do they.

[Steve Rinella]

We couldn't do that where I grew up either.

[Evan]

Do they treat them like an invasive species there? Like you're just allowed to get as many as you want?

[Devin O'Day]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

No, no season invasive species, and I'm doing it with the forest service because they've got a population of endangered arroyo toads that the bullfrogs are just hammering, eating them. And so we go in, shoot the bullfrogs, eat them. It's my wife's favorite food. And yeah, it's. It's a good time. Oh, I could also tell you guys about that.

[Steve Rinella]

What kind of ground. What kind of ground are you on? Where are you doing this at?

[Devin O'Day]

It's like, you know, riparian little. Little creeks and things that, you know, kind of spread out into sort of marshiness.

[Steve Rinella]

Are you hearing them in there, Jerome?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, if it's Jug of rum. If it's like, you know, what was it May. It depends on when it gets warm enough. But then when they're breeding and you hear them doing the like.

[Steve Rinella]

Are you lighting them up or hitting them in the daytime?

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, we're lighting them up. Yeah. We're going at night. This. I mean, as a. We're my friend who's the biologist. I mean, we both have. He's got three kids that are little. I got two. Right. We don't have time. And so kids go to bed. We're like, wives don't care. The kids are asleep. You know, we don't have to work. I'll have to take a day off. And we just go out there for.

[Steve Rinella]

Hours shooting frogs, you know, in Michigan. It's one of the dumbest. The dumbest game laws in Michigan that I'll never understand is you cannot hunt bullfrogs with artificial light in Michigan. And this is a place where exactly zero people hunt bullfrogs since I left. Like how that even came to be on anyone's mind, I'll never understand. Understand. You cannot use the artificial light to spear a bullfrog. Like. Like, I'll never. Like how that even was like on the radar of somebody.

[Devin O'Day]

Fair chase.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Which means there's no bullfrog culture.

[Randall]

Yeah, it's like that's no bullfrog culture.

[Devin O'Day]

That's sad.

[Steve Rinella]

You pole spear them? Yep. Have you just tried getting a big gig with like a 12 foot handle on it?

[Devin O'Day]

We've. I mean, I don't have one, but I've taken. I have a long pole spear. I've got like a nine foot pole spear and I'm putting some. I put some weird things on the end of it that I've been able to find. So it's basically a gig. Right. But then you've got the sling so you can get, you get some range on it, right?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

Shoot that thing out in the middle of a little pond.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. And then big old fatties.

[Devin O'Day]

Big fatty.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, show me the legs. Up with your hands. How far the legs from the tip of his toes to his hips to his pelvis.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, I mean, they're like that fat around. Yeah, they're like chicken legs. I mean, they're from the dude.

[Steve Rinella]

Really?

[Devin O'Day]

Just some good legs.

[Steve Rinella]

California, Steve, what's peak month out there?

[Devin O'Day]

We just kind of. We're just kind of coming out of it, probably.

[Steve Rinella]

What's poison ivy situation like?

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, it's chill down. Southern California is not so bad. Poison ivy's poison oak's really more like.

[Steve Rinella]

I'll just stay in the water. Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

There's. There's no.

[Steve Rinella]

That would be fun, man. 20 to 30 at night and you're.

[Devin O'Day]

And it's good for conservation. Right. Like.

[Steve Rinella]

Can I be square with you though?

[Devin O'Day]

No.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you really think does. Does like there are. So when you look at wildlife management, invasive species management, with the exception of nutrias in Chesapeake Bay and maybe some other examples, are there really any case studies in which something was mechanically removed?

[Devin O'Day]

We're never getting rid of these bullfrogs.

[Steve Rinella]

We're not living under any straight with each other.

[Devin O'Day]

We're not living under any false.

[Steve Rinella]

But yeah, it's like people like lionfish is like you're gonna get them all.

[Devin O'Day]

Huh?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

But in this area, like we are hammering them to the extent that they're not. They're. It's allowing more arroyo toads to, to reproduce. So from a conservation perspective, like it's, it's having an impact while if we were to stop doing this in five years, be a bazillion more.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Like so it's. Yeah, you're, you're. It's like any kind of control. Yeah. It's like it's targeted, helpful control but it's. It winds up being that that toad will remain basically conservation dependent on some amount of mechanical removing.

[Devin O'Day]

Likely. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But I mean I'll travel for a good bullfrog hunt no matter what because those are good numbers for big fatties. Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

And. And you get the spearfishing combo. You know, shoot some, shoot some frogs at night and some fish during the day.

[Steve Rinella]

Really? Oh yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

You want to go spearfish?

[Steve Rinella]

What would we go for? Calicos and like, like sheep's head or.

[Devin O'Day]

What if it's the summertime like right now, depending on what you wanted, like definitely could find some calicos. You might find halibut. If we went out into the kelp bed, good chance you find a yellow tail or white sea bass. But if you want like I don't.

[Steve Rinella]

Believe in white sea bass. I don't think they're. I don't believe. If you want to.

[Devin O'Day]

If you want a sure fire guarantee, like I will put you on a fish. It's the corbina.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh really?

[Devin O'Day]

100% because they are. They're in 5ft of water. Less. Yeah, I mean they're right there feeding on sand crabs in the shore. And so I've taken people that have never spearfished before in their lives and just dragged him out and they. You have to be somewhat comfortable in the water. Because every once in a while a wave will just toss you on the sand.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Devin O'Day]

Because you're in there at like this much water trying to get in and shoot these things. But you can shoot a lot. It's a lot of fun.

[Steve Rinella]

I got a lucky there. I got a. Not San Diego, but I got a lucky yellow tail.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, nice.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Doing a bunch of other stuff and then lucked into yellow, which is the only yellow tail I've ever gotten.

[Devin O'Day]

I got one on my kayak and then had a hammerhead come in try to get it.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really?

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

That's cool.

[Devin O'Day]

I was three miles out and.

[Steve Rinella]

Did you save the fish?

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, I didn't. I wasn't.

[Steve Rinella]

I.

[Devin O'Day]

After I got in, it was like an hour paddle back in or. You know, I had one of those pedal kayaks my neighbor let me borrow, and this thing circled us and bumped my boat for an hour. We got into shore, we have GoPro.

[Steve Rinella]

Videos, one of that fish.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, yeah. Just smell the blood. The blood from the gaff was just coming in the water. And I was holding the tail like this in between my legs as I was pedaling. And I got to shore. Well, right before I got to shore, went through the surf break and I was like the ten foot hammerhead behind me. Sorry, dudes. Might want to get out of the water.

[Steve Rinella]

And then I got into shore and.

[Devin O'Day]

I tried to like open my hand because I had so much adrenaline. I had to like pry my fingers off this fish because it was just like I was not gonna get it.

[Steve Rinella]

That frog hunt sounds fun. Big fatties.

[Devin O'Day]

Big fatties.

[Steve Rinella]

Around here, all you hear is bang. You know what that is? Bing.

[Devin O'Day]

Someone shooting and missing.

[Steve Rinella]

No, that's people thinking they hear a bullfrog. But it's. It's a green frog.

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, yeah.

[Evan]

Some right out back here.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, you want that?

[Devin O'Day]

Oh, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. That's. My dad said about the smell of German cigarettes, man. Made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Thanks for coming on the show, man.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Steve Rinella]

I appreciate it. I hope you get like, let's get. Let's get some bear hunting in California back on the thing.

[Devin O'Day]

Come on down.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, because you know, you guys gotta. People like to hack on California, but if you guys get some big wins like that, people start being like, I love that place.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah. I mean, there's.

[Steve Rinella]

That's.

[Devin O'Day]

It's a sportsman's paradise for if you know the right species to go after or if you draw that tag that, you know, you save up your points. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, this is my final thought on it, and it's something I bring up a lot. Like, everywhere you go in the country, everywhere you go, there's two people next door to each other. There's the guy that, like, there's too many people now. Fishing game did this. The wolves did that, and they sit in their house and. And neck always, like, somewhere right around his house is the dude who's like, dude, you can't even scratch the surface. There's so much to do. Do you know what I mean? They're neighbors. Everywhere you go in the country, you will find those two people in very close proximity to each other. I always try to be with the dude who's like, you can't scratch the surface, you know, so keep getting after it.

[Devin O'Day]

Yeah, just looking in the wrong place, man.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, you sound like you can't scratch the surface kind of guy. Love it.

[Devin O'Day]

As long as I can do it after my kids go to bed.

[Steve Rinella]

All right, man. Thank you.

[F]

This podcast is supported by BetterHelp, offering licensed therapists you can connect with via video phone or chat. Here's BetterHelp head of clinical operations, Hes Yu Jo discussing who can benefit from therapy. I think a lot of people think that you're supposed to be going to therapy once you're, like, having panic attacks every day. But before you get to that point, I think once you start even noticing that you feel a little bit off and you can't maintain this harmony that you once had in relationships, that could be a sign that maybe you want to go talk to somebody. There's always a benefit in talking to someone because we can all benefit from improved insight about ourselves and who we are and how we behave with other people. So if you're human, that's, like, a good indicator that you could benefit from talking to somebody. Find out if therapy is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com today. That's betterhelp.com.

[Steve Rinella]

This is an I Heart podcast.