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

Summary

Podcast Summary: The MeatEater Podcast Ep. 847

Episode Title: Neanderthal Love, Mule Deer Eradication, and Mink Eyelashes
Host: Steven Rinella
Air Date: March 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The MeatEater Podcast delivers a wide-ranging discussion blending quirky headlines, science news, conservation controversies, and classic outdoor personalities. Steven Rinella leads the panel (including Giannis Patelis, Dr. Randall, Spencer Newharth, Brody Henderson, and others) through three primary news stories: newly understood dynamics of Neanderthal/human interbreeding, the heated debate over Catalina Island's mule deer eradication program, and the surprising saga of illegal mink-fur eyelashes. True to MeatEater style, the tone is irreverent, informed, humorous, and occasionally biting, giving listeners a thorough but entertaining survey of the natural world’s unexpected corners.

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Segment Breakdown and Key Discussion Points

1. Panel Catch-up & News Roundtable (04:35–16:00)

• Seasonal Hunting Woes
  Giannis reflects on a slow lion season, mentioning weather and bad luck as key culprits.

  • “This would probably be the fourth year... he had a year where he caught like 16 lions... So to go now to this year, to have none…” (07:19, Giannis)
  • The group jokes about canine psychology and the personal ups and downs of tracking big cats.

• Cat vs. Bobcat Bragging Rights

  • Bobcat captures are presented as more meaningful to some hunters than multiple mountain lions, sparking a spirited debate.
  • “Many people literally will not cut loose on a bobcat track because they're like, it's not worth my time... We're just going to end up on this long chase and end up in a pile of rocks.” (10:25, Giannis)

• Changing Trends in Tattoos

  • Rinella’s anecdote about tricking his family into thinking he got his first tattoo sparks a discussion about shifting cultural attitudes among teens and declining tattoo “cool factor.”
  • “In him and his buddies minds, I gather it is the dorkiest thing a person could do.” (12:46, Steve)
  • Data presented shows tattoos are still on the rise (15:04), but Steve predicts a coming decline based on generational attitudes.

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2. America the Beautiful Pass Controversy (16:15–22:24)

• Redesign Sparks Outrage

  • The long-standing tradition of wildlife/landscape pass imagery is broken; the 2026 “America the Beautiful” park pass instead features George Washington and Donald Trump, aligned with a shift towards more "patriotic" themes and away from established free days like Juneteenth and MLK Day.
  • “He got to the porta potty at the park... he opened the door and he's like, someone's going to pay. That is the vibe I'm getting.” (19:06, Steve)
  • Attempts to cover Trump's image with stickers void the pass, leading to a cottage industry in Etsy-bought wildlife cover-up stickers and surging protest.
  • “She made $16,000 in the first month just doing this.” (20:59, Spencer)

• Discussion of Outdoor Political Identity

  • Mention of an op-ed arguing today's Republican leaders are less associated with outdoor pursuits, setting up a debate on the politicization of public lands.
  • “We’ve moved away from the old style of, like, outdoor Republican... What we see out of the administration is golfing in Florida.” (22:24, Steve)

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3. Corrections Segment: News & Audience Participation (29:08–43:12)

• Grammar and Fact Corrections (Minor/Comic Relief)

  • Corrections crowdsource errors and humorous nitpicks from earlier episodes—ranging from word usage (“on accident” vs. “by accident”) to the fallout from Denmark’s COVID-era mink cull (zombie mink!) and Columbia River salmon math errors.
  • Notable Correction: The zombie mink story wins the heart of the panel—“The cull resulted in millions of mink being buried... some started to decompose and bloat and push their way out of the ground. Which media dubbed zombie mink.” (34:07, Listener Doug).

• Calls for Guest Suggestions

  • The panel seeks experts on “draw odds,” zoo SWAT teams, and Neanderthals—a recurring theme that drives audience engagement.

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4. Deep Dive: Neanderthal and Homo sapien Interbreeding (46:43–59:28)

• Latest Science on Ancient Love Affairs

  • Dr. Randall explains new research: most Homo sapien/Neanderthal interbreeding events were between male Neanderthals and female sapiens—evidence gleaned from X-chromosome patterns called “Neanderthal deserts.”
  • “There’s a term called the Neanderthal desert, referring to the fact that in human X chromosomes, they show much less Neanderthal DNA than the rest of the genome.” (47:25, Dr. Randall)
  • Potential explanations range from social/behavioral (attraction, coercion) to strictly genetic/natural selection.

• Big Picture Implications & Social Controversies

  • Rinella points out that populations in Africa (where Neanderthals didn’t range) have virtually no Neanderthal DNA, a subject research often treats cautiously due to its loaded social implications.
  • “This is a very hot, loaded subject... been a reluctance to talk about what populations have a lot of Neanderthal DNA because it would be viewed as disparaging...” (53:49, Steve)

• Fun Fact

  • Injuries found on Neanderthal skeletons closely resemble those of modern bull riders, suggesting “a confrontational style of hunting.”
  • “The types of injuries I'm seeing are very representative of what I see on bull riders.” (55:54, Steve)

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5. Catalina Island Mule Deer Eradication Controversy (65:08–88:55)

• Background: Forced Restoration vs. Iconic Wildlife

  • Catalina Island, managed mostly by a private conservancy, is home to about 2,000 non-native mule deer; prior attempts to use hunting to reduce population failed to restore historic vegetation.
  • “They want to make it be as it was before contact. They’re... island purists.” (69:09, Giannis)
  • The conservancy seeks to eradicate deer via large-scale government sharpshooter culls. Controversy erupts around transparency, process, and the balance of ecological purity vs. public/hunting interest.

• Legal and Social Backlash

  • Conservation, hunting, and even animal rights groups (e.g., Humane Society) unite in opposition, citing procedural overreach and the loss of hunting opportunities.
  • “It's a bad way to manage wildlife. And mostly because they didn't go through the proper channels, processes, steps to get this permit.” (75:31, Giannis)
  • Ongoing lawsuits spotlight the lack of a reliable population survey and the unclear fate of deer carcasses.

• Heavyweight Ethical Debate

  • The hosts debate native vs. introduced status, the proximity of Catalina to mainland deer populations, and conflicts of biogeography and conservation priorities.
  • “We have a lot of areas where mule deer are not doing good… It’s more valuable to have reassurance about the long term ability of mule deer.” (87:46, Steve)

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6. Quick Reports: Rattlesnake Roundup & Mink Eyelash Mysteries (93:07–115:00)

• Rattlesnake Roundup: Sweetwater, Texas

  • Annual event draws national attention, harvesting up to 25,000 lbs of snakes in peak years, with a $20/lb bounty and pageantry: parades, food contests, and snake-skinning lines.
  • “Andy Lee has won five of the last nine contests... He owns a pest control business in Texas. He is double dipping…” (96:12–96:41, Spencer)

• Illegal Mink Eyelash Imports

  • Brian Olin, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service inspector in Anchorage, joins to discuss the regular seizure of undeclared mink-fur eyelashes.
  • Key Tip: “If you have a pair...just take a match and burn part of that...if it smells like burned hair...that’ll tell you right off the bat if it’s a natural product or a synthetic product.” (106:56, Brian)
  • He notes that most violations are paperwork- or declaration-related, not necessarily absolute bans.
  • Other intercepted wildlife products include shells, turtle parts, and occasionally live animals (“we had a viper come in a Pringles can...” 110:02, Brian)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Zombie Mink Culling:
  “They started to decompose and bloat and push their way out of the ground. Which media dubbed zombie mink.” (34:07, Listener Doug)

• On Changing Rebellion:
  “In him and his buddies minds, I gather it is the dorkiest thing a person could do. Not rebellious, not rebellious. It's like oh my God.” (12:46, Steve)

• On Park Pass Redesign:
  “He got to the porta potty at the park...he opened the door and he's like, someone's going to pay. That is the vibe I'm getting.” (19:06, Steve)

• On Animal-Human Hybridization:
  “Their offspring don't do well. But...typically a whitetail buck breeding a mule deer doe...” (51:25, Steve)

• On Wild Product Enforcement:
  “If you have a pair that maybe you took off and you already wore once or twice, you can just take a match and burn part...If it smells like burned hair...that’ll tell you right off the bat if it's a natural product or a synthetic product.” (106:56, Brian)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro, jokes, and tattoo reflections — 04:35–16:00
• Park pass controversy — 16:15–22:24
• Corrections segment (“Zombie mink!”) — 29:08–43:12
• Neanderthal DNA news and debate — 46:43–59:28
• Catalina Island mule deer culling — 65:08–88:55
• Rattlesnake roundup report — 93:07–99:08
• Mink eyelash import interview — 101:58–115:40

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Tone and Style

The episode is classic MeatEater: deeply knowledgeable but never self-serious, with plenty of personal anecdotes, laughs, and good-natured ribbing. The panel mixes legitimate scientific debate and policy critique with playful skepticism, encouraging corrections from the audience and introducing topics that push against both government and activist orthodoxy.

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For Future Reference

Suggested Guests Sought:

• Draw odds mathematician
• Zoo “SWAT team” (emergency containment) member
• Neanderthal geneticist

Things to Watch

• Lawsuit over Trump’s America the Beautiful pass
• Ongoing battle over Catalina mule deer fate
• Changing attitudes among younger generations towards tattoos and outdoors pursuits

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This episode is a trip through forgotten corners and ethical crossroads of wildlife management and the outdoor life, blending gravitas and goofiness with genuine reporting. You’ll walk away knowing something new—maybe even how to check if your fake eyelashes are animal in origin.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Why is it known as because you

[A]

haven't caught a lion? How do you report on that?

[C]

In this case, no news is not good news.

[B]

I don't know. I'm always the optimist. You know, my dog and I are still getting out there on plenty of nice hikes in the mountains, enjoying ourselves, practicing what we're trying to do.

[A]

He's trying to put a positive spin on this.

[C]

You think if Mingus could talk, he'd say, yeah, this is fun?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Do you think the dog isn't bummed that you guys haven't caught one yet this year?

[B]

I don't know if he knows. I have no idea of sort of what his sense of time is.

[A]

I venture to guess the dog doesn't think of it as being that he's in this season.

[B]

No.

[A]

And then there'll be another season next year.

[B]

And I don't know that he can. He knows that it's been a long time since he saw a lion. Right.

[D]

But I would venture to guess that if you had two bowls of kibble.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And you could metaphorically put chasing a lion and catching it into one bowl and then just sort of aimlessly chasing sense through the woods in the other bowl, never catching the line. I think he would go for that bull first.

[B]

You think he would?

[D]

I think so.

[B]

I mean, he.

[A]

You don't know what mental trip he's on. No, no. He could be like.

[D]

He's a real process oriented guy.

[A]

He could be like. When he's laying there sleeping, you think like, oh, look at him sleeping. He could be there being like, I'm a loser. I always knew, you know, I came from the kennel, I came from the dog pound. I'll never live it down.

[C]

Or it could be the opposite.

[A]

My first owner abandoned me.

[C]

When he's on a line, he could be like, God, I hate this, but I know he likes it a lot.

[D]

Or he's like. He's like, if we caught one two months ago, I wouldn't be in the best shape of my life right now.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

You know?

[A]

Or he's like, I don't see the point in harassing these poor things. I'm not gonna chase it up a tree.

[E]

Oh, rebelling. Maybe he's disappointed in you.

[A]

Yanni, what do you think about this? Giannis?

[B]

That could be too. You know, it's been humbling. That's what I think about it. Because he's five this year. So really, we've been hard at it for. This would probably be the fourth year.

[E]

Right.

[B]

We've had three years. One of those years was cut very short by that accident that we had together with Mingus. So really, he had, like, two good years. And in those two good years, he had a year where he caught, like, 16 lions, and then a 13 year. A 13 lion year. So to go now to this year, to have none, it's like, oh, were

[A]

those flukes or is it lost the. Well, no, I don't think 16 and 13, that doesn't.

[E]

You don't lock in.

[A]

That's. That's not like if. If it was like two and one.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And zero, I'd be like, well, maybe zero is normal, but 16, 13, zero. Something happened.

[C]

Yeah, the weather happened.

[E]

Are you blaming the snow? Is that the problem?

[B]

For sure. But I've also just had a string of bad luck where on the good snow days, we found tracks. And one day, the tracks literally filled in with snow in front of our eyes. Like, it was snowing so hard. Multiple days, I've had tracks that just took a left when they should have kept going right and they went on to private land. So I just called Mingus back one day. I felt like we were within hundreds of yards, less than a Thousand yards of pair of lions, and it literally was getting dark on us. I'm like, ah, you just gotta. At some point, you just gotta call it because it's getting. You know, it gets dangerous when it gets dark. Right. I don't want to leave him out all night long. So there's been a string of that kind of stuff also, but the fact that, yeah, we've had, like, the worst snow winter in a long time has definitely played into it.

[A]

Understood. Thank you, Giannis.

[B]

You're welcome.

[D]

How many numbers of days in the field.

[A]

Oh, sorry, back to it.

[B]

You know, I wish I had a.

[D]

I just had a burning question.

[B]

No, that's a good question, because I feel like I've been hunting roughly the same amount.

[D]

Oh, it's even more trouble between the,

[B]

you know, over the last four or five years. But, yeah, I don't have a number for you, but if I had to guess, we've been out maybe 20 days. But, you know, thank you. I've talked about this before. I think I talked about this on a previous podcast. The one silver lining of this year, not catching anything. We caught a bobcat.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Which I know you're real frustrated about that, but catch and release. Catch and release.

[A]

The bob hat.

[E]

I know.

[B]

No, but that's huge for. For me as a. As a hound owner.

[A]

Oh, that's a triumph.

[B]

Yeah. For him to be able to do that all by himself, it was. It was a big day. So all. All is not lost. Like, if that's the only thing that happens this. This hound season, there'll be a pretty good season because we accomplished that one thing.

[A]

Yeah. I would just say you caught one and leave it at that.

[E]

One cat.

[A]

One cat.

[B]

One cat.

[A]

Did you get any cats? Yep.

[B]

Yeah. But if you talk to, like, our good buddy Jake Gribb, he'll tell you that that one Bobcat is worth 10 to 20 lines.

[A]

So then he does. Oh, say 10. 20.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Then you're right on. You're right on average here.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

It's not over for you yet. Anyway, you got, what, Good time.

[D]

Another.

[B]

Yeah, I got a big. I got a big month.

[A]

Big, hot, big, hot, snowless month ahead of you.

[B]

70 degrees next week, they're saying it's coming.

[E]

I can't believe the conversion rate is 10 to 20 mountain lions for one bobcat.

[A]

I don't believe that. I think that's an exaggeration.

[B]

It is so hard.

[D]

Many people literally.

[B]

Many people literally will not cut loose on a bobcat track because they're like, it's not worth my time. We're not going to catch it. We're just going to end up on this long chase and end up in a pile of rocks and I won't get to see a bobcat.

[D]

I'll take the blame for this.

[E]

Maybe it's even higher.

[A]

Lot of ground to cover.

[E]

50 mountain lions.

[F]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean it's so special that

[D]

going

[C]

to happen with this.

[B]

Listen, Steve, it's so special that would consider like getting a tattoo to. To honor now I believe the word I'm looking for.

[A]

To memorialize.

[B]

Yeah, memorialize.

[A]

I would have it be a tattoo. No tattoo and be like this blank spot on my skin is the year nothing happened.

[C]

No, he should get a lion tattoo to be like, oh, that's what they look like.

[B]

Didn't you just do an indefensible law, Steve, where people should memorialize places where things didn't happen?

[A]

Well, I, yeah, I did one where I. Where you would put signs where people almost got killed.

[B]

Yeah, that's good.

[A]

On the subject, tattoos the radio Live finale. A tattoo artist came in and did he in the office. He did 13 tattoos that day.

[E]

Oh, wow, that's efficient.

[A]

Brody got his first tattoo ever, which my wife thought was cool. When he gets all done. When he gets all done. This is my news here. He gets all done and me and him get the BSing. And I'm like, hey, act like you're giving me one. Get it all set up. Act like you're giving me one. And I'm gonna send it to. We have a family group text chat called the free Trappers. So cute. I I'm like, act like you give me one and I'm going to send it to my family and be like, I finally broke down. I can't believe I did it, by God. Tattoo. I send it, no reply. My little ones later told me they knew it wasn't true. My wife had already talked to Brody so she knew it wasn't true. My 15 year old going on 16. This is why I know that tattoos are in trouble. The tattoo industry is in trouble.

[E]

Okay.

[A]

15 year old, he says that is so blank. I can't say what he said because he'd get in trouble with his mom. Later he so he thinks it's true. Later he says to me, dude, don't ever comment on my haircut again. Like coming from a guy with a tattoo and they're like in him and his buddies minds, I gather it is the dorkiest thing a person could do. Not rebellious, not rebellious. It's like oh my God.

[G]

Times have changed.

[A]

Oh my God.

[C]

I don't think so. Tattoos have been around for thousands of years.

[A]

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

[C]

I'm not because my kid said I want to get the same one as you.

[D]

I was wondering if you had data to back up your argument.

[B]

Well, I'm looking at data right now actually.

[A]

Spencer went and got his truck the his Trump themed America the Beautiful pass.

[C]

Hold on.

[B]

Phil has data on this right now. Can I hear it? I'm looking at it. Percentage of Americans with tattoos over time. In the year 1936, it looks like 10% of the American population had tattoos. If we jump and then 2003, that's a long jump.

[A]

It was 16%.

[B]

But then we have from 2003 to 2012, 21% of Americans had tattoos. From 2012 to 2015, that number jumped from 21 to 29. And from 2015 to 2023, that number jumped to 32%. So it's been a steady increase.

[A]

Steve is talking about the future looking over the cliff. Ok. That's why Phil should do a better job of listening. So you're so your argument right now, the future.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I'm just saying the trends disagree.

[E]

We're in the tattoo.

[A]

The trend doesn't show the future because it's not no future. That's why I'm telling you he's forecasting

[D]

a sharp decline based on reaction.

[A]

I have detected an attitudinal shift. I have detected an attitudinal shift and I looked data and so if I'm going to go on to a prediction market, I want to make a Bet that in 20 years there has been a cataclysmic drop off in tattoo rates because I've had a glimpse into the future by talking to my kids buddies.

[B]

Yeah, you could be very, very right.

[A]

Based on what they're doing in the

[B]

alcohol industry and how they don't like sex in movies.

[E]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Bunch of prudes.

[A]

Yeah. Spencer got a new pass. Explain this this is very interesting. This is. This is legit news.

[E]

I went to Yellowstone a couple weekends ago, and my winter trip there is usually when we get our new pass for the year. It's called the America the Beautiful pass.

[A]

How long has that existed?

[E]

Since 2004, I believe. Some version of it has existed.

[A]

Oh, here, Phil's got them pulled up.

[E]

The America the Beautiful Pass. It's $80. It grants you entry to national parks, national wildlife refuges. Also covers your day use fees if you're a national forest. Grasslands, blm, Army Corps land. A place where you're required to pay a day use fee. You typically don't need to. If you have.

[C]

It's like a good deal if you do these things a lot, right?

[E]

Certainly. Yeah.

[A]

Yep.

[E]

But I think, although there's like, so many places it gives you access to, these are primarily just used in national parks. That's what people buy them for, is to get in and out of national parks for a year.

[A]

And you and you and the Mrs. Buy one every year.

[E]

Every year since we moved to Montana, this. So this is our seventh pass that we've had. I've got three of them here now.

[A]

Why didn't you buy it in South Dakota?

[E]

Just didn't attend national parks the same way we do now. Didn't live as close.

[D]

It's seen Rushmore.

[A]

Yeah, but that'd get you into Rushmore.

[E]

It would get you into Rushmore, Yeah. National park, Rushmore, I believe so. America the Beautiful pass. It's like the size of your credit card or driver's license. It's a laminated card. Now, traditionally, these have a photo on them of wildlife or landscape. And I've got past examples here that you can see.

[A]

Phil, can you go back to that. That shot you had up?

[E]

And that's. That's showing you, like, the last decade of it.

[A]

That's a roseated spoon, Bill.

[E]

That is a spoon, yes. Correct. From the Everglades.

[A]

So what year is that?

[E]

That is last year.

[A]

Everglades National Park. Roseated spoonbill. And then what year is this?

[E]

2024. That's an Eastern Collared Lizard.

[A]

Okay. Lizard. 2024. Pass.

[E]

2023. It was a landscape picture from Kings Canyon National Park. So that's. You get an idea of what they look like.

[A]

A polar bear. From what park would that be from?

[E]

I don't know. Denali does. Denali. I also don't think it has to be international. It's just like federal land. And it's.

[C]

You did say it's got to be.

[A]

It's it's like, by law, I don't think it pulls.

[E]

Since 2004, it's been a federal law that the way these are chosen is there is a picture contest done by. What is it? The National Parks foundation. And the winning photo from that is on the pass for the following year.

[A]

Okay.

[E]

So this year you can see what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be Glacier national park in Montana. That was what the winning photo was from last year. But the Trump administration has changed this. They are breaking this 2004 federal law. And instead it is a picture of George Washington and Donald Trump on the pass.

[B]

Can you see that bill?

[A]

It's on the tv.

[E]

This has made some folks very mad. It's, it's made folks very mad.

[A]

He doesn't look like he's at the park.

[B]

No, it has.

[E]

You wouldn't look at that and think, you know, why?

[A]

You know, it looks like, it looks like he got to the outhouse at the park. He got to the porta potty at the park and it was. And it's in there's. And it's overflowed, it's locked. And he opened the door and he's like, someone's going to pay. That is the vibe I'm getting.

[E]

Yes. And you can see these, these photos on our YouTube channel.

[A]

And I mean, in all fairness, this is 250th first president, current president, 250 years of presidents. I think that's what this is going for here.

[E]

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

[A]

Italy, I support that.

[E]

And I, I agree. That's, I think that's the other stuff I don't get. That's a North American thing that we're like, if you want to go recreate in Colorado as a non resident, you pay a higher fee.

[D]

And part of it, they've also removed like indigenous perspectives from like, that's, yeah, totally different.

[C]

What happens if you put a piece of tape over Trump's face?

[E]

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

[A]

Has that always been true?

[E]

Yes, but I don't think anyone's ever tested it. It hasn't been a problem, but it's always been, it's always been true. Yes. And like, for example, of how, how much drama this is made, there's an Etsy shop seller who has started making stickers for these and she said that she would, like, give that money to public lands for what she would sell. It's a sticker that would go over Trump's face. She made $16,000 in the first month just, just doing this.

[A]

What is the sticker?

[E]

I don't remember.

[D]

I think it's, it's like a wildlife, I think a wild pika.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

Maybe pika. I, I, We've looked this up on trivia. You can say it. Pika or pika.

[A]

Who can, Anyone can. I can't.

[B]

You can have that on a future.

[E]

We did this on, we addressed that on trivia.

[A]

Okay. What, what, what's next year's, Are they going to revert next year's pass to the winner?

[E]

I don't know.

[A]

This would be like if the duck stamp, you know, like the whole duck stamp competition.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If all of a sudden the duck stamp is like a duck with like Trump's face on it.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

And he's like, no, no, no, that's the, that's the duck stamp. Well, yeah.

[E]

So the Trump administration has not been great to the national parks. You know, Doge cut a thousand employees last year.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

They tried to slash the budget by 38% this year. The Senate rejected that. So Trump, not exactly a mascot for the national parks. I was trying to think of an analogy. It would be like if we had a meat eater Radio Live listening pass and then Steve put his face on it.

[A]

Yeah, that's great. I totally understand.

[E]

That's what it would be like.

[C]

Or if he let Elon Musk take an ax to Radio Live.

[E]

Yeah. And this, this drama is going to get bigger. The national parks get 40% of their visitation between June and August. So there's a lot of folks who are going to be buying their pass in a few months. It's already, it's already been a big deal, but it's, it's going to become probably a bigger deal.

[A]

On a related note, someone just shared with me this, this article is a little bit older now. I've been kind of hanging on to it. Someone shared with me an article, an op ed that came out. It was a guest essay called MAGA Elites who live on their Phones are Ruining the Outdoors. And it point. That's a hyperbolic headline. But what it points out is we've kind of like, we've moved away. We're currently moved away from the old style of, like, outdoor Republican. And, you know, like, you think about the Bushes were anglers, right? They would vacation at, like, Kenny Bunkport and go fishing. Anyways, this article lays out this idea that, that rather than, rather than trips to Wyoming to fly fish and stuff, what we see out of the administration is golfing in Florida. And this individual argues that there's then been this, like, perspective shift away from this, like, tradition of outdoor Republicans into, like, indoor Republicans. The guy is a research. So the guy that wrote it. You should go, go check it out. Listeners should check it out. It'll like, it'll. It'll. It'll do one of two things. It'll either make you so mad because you're disagreeing. You'll be like, so mad you'd be mad that we mentioned it, or you'll be so happy we mentioned it because it already aligns with what you think. So you can go. No matter who you are, just think about this. No matter who you are, you can go read this and reinforce your opinions and be happy or sad.

[D]

If you ever read something that everybody agrees on, everybody, it's probably not worth reading.

[A]

It'd be like reading a park pass. Yeah, that's a joke. The guy that wrote it, you get a little suspicious when you read what he does. So he. Dr. Lazak is a researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the politics of climate change. So guess what? His biases might be. Another piece of news we got. We're doing this. We're doing a. A new series called the Time Machine. So every month we're taking artwork like, see this one here? This goes back the farthest. This is a time machine. Artwork of Clovis points, archaeological drawings of Clovis points. That's. This month we're gonna hit the Custer battle, the Battle of the Greasy Grass, or the Battle of the Little Bighorn, depending on what side you're on. Pittman, Robertson Act. Every month you can come check it out. T shirts, hoodies, time capsule. We go back in time. That's the Clovis shirt right there. They're all limited run tees and hoodies. Find them at the meat eater store website. Hey, as outdoorsmen, we always spend a lot of time thinking about how we interact with the land, how we care for the land. But then yard care, like your lawn care, defaults to chemical, heavy routines. The tree Every yard the same. Well, Sunday offers a different model. They begin by understanding your soil and local climate, then build a customized yard plan designed specifically for your environment. Their products rely on nutrient dense ingredients like seaweed, molasses and iron, rather than harsh synthetic chemicals. Everything arrives at your door and connects to a hose, simplifying what has traditionally been a complicated trial and error process. It's a more targeted, more thoughtful approach to caring for the space just outside your home. Less guesswork, less excess. Fewer unnecessary treatments. If you're curious what your yard actually needs and prefer a smarter way to support it, Sunday makes that process remarkably straightforward. Go to getsunday.com to get your free custom yard analysis. That's getsunday.com when you're in the back country, don't forget your own backcountry. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by bringing along wet extra large dude wipes. I'm I'm glad to be doing dude wipe ads because I buy dude wipes anyways. I've been a long time dude wipe. I'm a dude wipe dude all the time. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild soaking your butt. You never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean your butt with dry toilet paper? Wetter cleans better so ditch the itch and switch from TP to wet extra large dude wipes. Love them. Like going on a 10 day moose hunt. I just bring a pack along. Not only that, so they're extra large. Okay. If you're a little baby, you get little baby wipes. If you're a man, you get extra large dude wipes. And when you're out in nature, it's going to inevitably call. So make sure you bring along wet dude wipes and three adventure sizes. Like day hike single wipes, 18 pack weekend wipers or you know for long trips you got a 48 count pack. And it's not just that. Like when you're out camping just sleeping in a sleeping bag, let's say you're gone for 10 days, whatever. I use them just to clean up at night. Like you know, scrub the old pit, scrub your arms if it's all dusty, just kind of get your neck and everything cleaned up. I love having them with me. Dude wipes. It is the best clean. Pants down. They're available at Amazon. That's where I usually order mine from is on Amazon. But you can get Them at Walmart nationwide. Fantastic product. Proud to be doing ads for these boys at Dude Wipes. You've heard About T Mobile 5G Home Internet Mostly for how easy it is to set up and then the value that you get. But there's some more big news you should know about. They now have the fastest 5G home Internet speeds. That's right. T Mobile now has the fastest 5G home Internet according to the experts at Ookla Speed Test. That makes backing up photos from your latest hunt, streaming a new documentary or pulling up a wild game recipe super quick. And yeah, it's a great value backed by a solid five year price guarantee. And setting it up is still as easy as it gets. You just plug it in and go. So if you want the fastest 5G home Internet with a simple setup at a great price with savings that stick around, Get T Mobile 5G Home Internet. Head over to t-mobile.com home Internet to check availability. Price guarantee exclusions like taxes and fees apply fastest based on Ookla Speed Test intelligence Data over the second half of 2025. All rights reserved. Okay, moving on to corrections.

[B]

Corrections, Corrections.

[A]

That's from Fiddler on the Roof. This is our inaugural segment, inaugural segment of Corrections where we have a correction of the week contest sponsored by TO Covas. So corrections are like this. If you're sitting around like normally into in today's political climate. And I mean this is, this is one. I'm sticking it to both sides on this. People just say stuff that's just wrong and they don't and they know it's wrong. It's like a flex to say stuff that's just wrong because it's kind of like, it's like I know it's wrong, you know it's wrong and now you're going to have to live with it. But we try to invite corrections. So if we say something that's screwed up or we make a mistake or omit the truth or whatever, we invite your corrections. We want your corrections so bad about things we're wrong about that. If you get the correction of the week, you win a pair of to cova's boots. You send your corrections to the meat eater podcast@the meater.com we got three to choose from to who wins the taco's boots. Okay, going in the future we'll only be accepting corrections from the news show, but we're, we're accepting corrections otherwise. Right now, episode 838, someone writes and this is his correction. Episode 838 Steve is talking about a hen turkey making bad calls and uses the term on accident. The corrector goes on to say, as a writer and someone who makes a living speaking, he should know it is by accident. He goes on to say, fewer things annoy me more than this. If he could please correct this going forward, it would make my listening experience much better. You don't do something on accident.

[C]

Are we voting at the end?

[E]

I'm not voting for this guy.

[B]

Can I. I mean, maybe my grammar's off, but shouldn't those quotes be outside of that period?

[D]

I was about right.

[A]

Back in his face. Back in his face. In your face.

[F]

Yep.

[A]

I got Steve. This guy's name. Steve, I got a little suggestion for you. Learn how to put your quotes in the right place, buddy.

[C]

I think this guy's already lost his pair of boots.

[A]

He's out. Close call, but no, no, no, no.

[B]

I'm sure that he placed those periods there by accident.

[G]

So on accident. I'm looking this up and I see that it's like colloquial, but I don't. Is it a grammar thing? I've.

[A]

I've heard you say colloquial often means wrong.

[D]

Yeah, okay.

[G]

Okay.

[A]

Because I. Yeah, but I. I don't think he's gonna win because. Because he got it. He got, like, back at him. Back at him. Okay. On mink coals and bad smells. Here's a contender. Here's a real contender. He's referencing Back to episode 838. Okay. Around the 31 minute mark in the episode, Steve referenced the 2020 Coalition of Mink in Denmark. We were talking about during the. The COVID pandemic. They found out that mink were harbingers of COVID and they started killing all ranch mink in Denver in Denmark. And I said that the mink all went to market. My understanding was when I first heard about the coal, I thought it would cause mink prices to skyrocket because there's no more make. But someone said the inverse was true. It was a massive influx of mink pelts because they had to go pelt all the mink, and so it flooded the market with mink and tanked it. So I said they were all pelted out. This guy says the coal was so hasty and disorganized that it didn't give the opportunity for many of the affected mink farmers to pelt out, meaning to skin them all. Given that just before the discussion of the mink coal, there was a discussion of various bad smells, you may also be Interested in the fact that the coal resulted in millions of mink being buried in mass burial sites. And the fact that they hadn't been skinned meant that some of them started to decompose and bloat and push their way out of the ground. Which media dubbed zombie mink.

[D]

I like that.

[A]

That was from Doug.

[D]

That's. That's a correction of a correction you received. Right. Because your initial impression was that they wouldn't be skinned. Your initial assumption.

[A]

Yeah, but that was an internal. Yeah, this is. That was a legit.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Now here's like a great correction that's going to compete with the mink correction. Episode 829 at the 14 minute mark. We're talking about. Okay, we're talking about salmon leaving their natal spawning streams and going back out to the ocean. Are we talking about ones coming up?

[C]

Coming up?

[A]

Oh, okay.

[C]

Pretty sure.

[A]

Either way, we're talking about fish loss at dams in the Columbia system.

[C]

Oh, no. Were we talking about smolt going out?

[A]

I think it's. I think it's small going out, smoke going out.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. And we're saying that they're losing that at every dam these fish encounter, they're losing 7 to 15% of the population at every dam. Brody, in all of his ignorance,

[D]

I

[A]

say I can't even do that math. Brody does, and he says that's over a hundred percent him being dumb. Jeez.

[D]

Yeah, that's not how the math works.

[A]

Not how the math works. This guy writes in. It's actually like this. If 200,000 salmon attempt to make it past the first dam with a 15% mortality rate, there will be 170,000 that make it through to attempt the next dam. After dam number two. At 15% mortality rate, there are 144, 500 smelt left. If you continue this trend through all eight dams, you are left with 54,500 salmon. This is a total loss of about 73% at the high end. If you use the 7% mortality rate with this method, you end up with 111,900 fish after the eighth dam. So the total mortality rate range is from 44 to 73%. Not as what I did in my head, more than all of them.

[D]

Yeah, this is, this is probably going to get a correction too. But it's like, it's like the reverse of compound interest. If you have money invested, as it

[A]

grows, it grows more.

[D]

As it shrinks, it shrinks less in each iteration.

[A]

Understood the way. Well, that does.

[C]

Okay, you got a minor in math.

[A]

You got A doctor.

[D]

I was actually just thinking we should at some point just have a podcast episode with a statistician about draw odds and just probabilities. Probabilities for the Joe Blow outdoorsman. We can explain things like this. We can explain draw odds.

[A]

That's a great idea. Because that's another thing is there's a lot of confusion about draw odds. That'd be a good idea.

[G]

Yeah.

[A]

A hunter.

[D]

It might not be.

[A]

Mathematician.

[D]

It might not. Might not be a two hour podcast, but it could be a flop.

[G]

If you want to buy, please write in.

[A]

Yeah.

[G]

Podcast@the mediator.com.

[A]

i also need someone from the. Did you know that there's a. Did you know that there's a discipline that zoos have zoo SWAT teams? Okay. And there's like a leading figure in the zoo swat team area and she made a YouTube video one time about her industry and her training, tactical zookeeper training. And in this video they're like shooting, shot shooting slug guns through woven wire fences. She does her interview in front of a bear with a bullet with a bullseye on his brain.

[C]

Yeah. You need to clarify what these SWAT teams do. It's for not after people.

[A]

It's for if. If monkeys get loose, it's for the Harambe or lions get loose.

[D]

The Harambe contingency.

[F]

Or someone.

[B]

They had.

[A]

They had a kid fall into his. Into a gorilla container and they killed the gorilla. What zoo was that at?

[D]

Cincinnati.

[E]

Cincinnati.

[A]

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

[B]

That does sound like a good one.

[A]

Oh, it'd be a great one. Yeah. But they're like, they don't want zoos have to have a zookeeper SWAT team.

[D]

I do know someone.

[A]

Well, I know, but I didn't pan out like.

[E]

No, no.

[C]

Or they call people.

[A]

No, I think they got. They got tactical trained people who are ready for a lion to get out.

[E]

I would also guess that they're wearing multiple hats at the zoo.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like the.

[A]

But they. In their mind, it's a dirty secret.

[G]

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

[A]

But I don't think that's a dirty secret.

[E]

Right.

[A]

Someone out there works in this field. I would like to have a serious conversation on the podcast about that field. Like, like, what is the training? What is the probability? What are some examples where this has occurred? Why does this go on? I don't feel like it's a thing that they're like, hush, hush. Can't talk about that. It just seems weird to me. Some more audience emails.

[B]

Wait, wait.

[C]

We got to pick a winner.

[E]

We're voting between millions of mink and thousands of salmon.

[G]

Gosh, it's tough. Like, okay, number three did a lot of math.

[A]

So number one, the guy that can't use his quotes. Right? Any votes?

[E]

Here's.

[D]

Well, here's one. One way that I'm thinking about this. If a good correction I would think is one that you would deliver to someone to their face if they're a stranger at a bar and they'd walk away going,

[A]

if you were at a

[D]

bar with a stranger and they said, it's not on accident, it's by accident, then I would like that guy.

[A]

You would? Yeah, Just from the. Like, Nate Mason would hit me with that. That's true. It sounds obnoxious like Nate, but he's kind of obnoxious.

[D]

I like, but it's not really opening your.

[A]

He'd tell you that.

[D]

It's not really opening your eyes. You know, you wouldn't go home and be like, you know what I learned today?

[A]

No. I would tell my wife that I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I stand correctly.

[D]

I stand corrected.

[A]

I can't sleep.

[E]

I don't think guy number one would even vote for guy number one in this one.

[A]

Okay, so he knows. Any votes? We got seven voters in the room. Guy number one.

[B]

No. Okay.

[A]

Guy number two, not all mink were discard. Not all mink were pelted out. That's.

[C]

I'm voting for that guy.

[A]

Well, you know why you're voting for him? Because the other guy's goofing on you.

[C]

I'm voting for him because it's like he's. He's bringing the, like, receipts. He's got an article.

[G]

It's like he's bringing information. Articles.

[D]

I will say, typically in the news, when somebody calls something a zombie. So something like a zombie deer. I don't like it. I like this use of zombie.

[E]

Okay.

[A]

I'M voting for him. So for the mink guy, don't we

[G]

all need to be, like, closing our eyes here?

[A]

Okay, the math. The math guy. Goof, not Brody. He win some Jacob boots. We had some people to abstain from.

[B]

Didn't even vote.

[C]

Not saying anything that he's making fun of.

[B]

Oh, you voted for the mint guy.

[A]

We got a miscount.

[B]

That means way over here, dude. Oh, I'm like Florida. Okay. A lot of hanging chats.

[A]

No mink.

[B]

Sorry.

[A]

Okay, the mink guy. How many times are you going to change your vote? This is election fraud here. This is some hanging chads, dude. Final. Final vote. Final vote. This is serious this time. Okay, the mink guy. Two votes for the mink guy. The math guy.

[F]

Oh.

[E]

Steve convinced himself to change his mind.

[G]

Max Allen is the winner.

[A]

Because he's goofing on Brody. That's why he got my vote. Max Allen, you get a free pair of boots. You can tell us what size and style and all that. Someone will take care of boots, Max. Okay, quick audience email. We're running behind time. We gotta hustle. No one even comment on this.

[E]

I feel like we're right on.

[A]

Yeah, I think we're actually doing pretty good. No one even comment on this. Okay. Guy writes in and the Screw Worm, episode 835, you guys relate a story from Kevin Murphy's childhood about p. About putting an altered bull to work for breeding purposes. What I was talking about is Kevin Murphy. I was driving along with Kevin Murphy and he's telling me about working at a ranch. I said, what kind of work you doing at the ranch? And he just relayed to me a story that they would be able. That they. In the old days, they would surgically redirect a bull's penis so that it was coming out backward. You would make this bull wear a big ink blotter on his neck and you'd turn him out with your cows. He would detect that a cow was in heat and he would mount the cow. But his pecker being misoriented would not result in fertilization. But the ink blot would mark the cow as being receptive. At which point a farm boy or whoever would like Kevin, you would then rush out and artificially inseminate that cow. I thought that was very, very, very interesting.

[D]

That's great.

[A]

In my. This writer writes in and this listener writes in. In my time spent cowboy and out west we have come to call these heat seeking missiles. He's being metaphoric. He's being poetic. There Gomer. Bowls G O M E R Gomer, perhaps from Gomer Pyle. I don't know. Gomer bulls or teaser bulls. And he says that phrase is commonly used in the equine industry as well. Gomer bulls are often selected because they won't cut it as a good breeder bull genetically, but are generally easy to work and be around. Advances in animal husbandry have made vasectomy the primary method for sterilizing these bulls. I could relate. And for the cows, we often use paint patches that work like a scratch off. Huh. Rather than lots of ink and paint. The patches can rip off and do a good job showing who's been getting ridden by the gomer bull. If he sees someone with a cowboy hat on backwards at the airport, he points out he calls them a gomer. He wonders, does Kevin Murphy consider himself livestock adjacent enough to wear a cowboy hat? His hat's not quite a cowboy hat, but Kevin Murphy entered cowboy hat validity through an entirely different path. In my view, he could have never looked at an equine or bovine animal and wear a cowboy hat. Switching to the news. The news. Dr. Randall.

[D]

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

[A]

This is showing because they can track, like, mitochondrial DNA and yada, yada, yada, bunch of stuff I don't understand.

[D]

I found a term called the Neanderthal desert, okay. Which refers to the fact that in human X chromosomes, they show much less Neanderthal DNA than the rest of the genome. Okay.

[F]

And.

[D]

And I. If you're a specialist in this area, I'm going to misuse a lot of these terms.

[A]

Oh. So get your corrections ready.

[D]

But if I use, say, 60 to 70% of them correctly, write in and say, you did a good job, because that's what I'm aiming for. So there, there was. There are a bunch of theories about why this might be. It could have been the, like, the, the Neanderthal DNA could have been missing from the X chromosomes because there's some sort of, like, health risk or something that would just sort of be weeded out through natural selection. Like it. If. Whatever that, that Neanderthal DNA made Humans more. Made the offspring more susceptible to certain diseases. Right. But what they did is they went and looked at Neanderthal DNA and they found that Neanderthal DNA on their X chromosomes. They actually have, like, a much higher percentage of human DNA in them. Right. Because there's. There's DNA from both sides. So they kind of reverse engineer.

[A]

I never even thought to look at that.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

You could take an old Neanderthal dead guy.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Bones. And be like, well, he's got some Homo sapien lurking in him.

[F]

Yeah.

[E]

Huh.

[D]

And so that's. So that essentially that's the. The explanation now. And. And there are some. There are other reasons that could sort of account for it other than just like, sexual preference.

[A]

This has nothing to do with sexual. They're trying to make it like that.

[D]

Oh, no, no. I'm. I don't. Like, there's. There are some theories. There are some theories about, like, like, you can have whatever sex bias in breeding because of, like, distribution. Like, whatever. Neanderthal males travel more. Something like that. But they've. So. But basically they've ruled it down to the fact that for whatever reason, Neanderthal males and Neanderthal female and human females were the most likely, like, overwhelmingly more likely to couple than, say, human male and a Neanderthal female.

[A]

In the, the pieces that I read about this. And I can't remember where I read about the pieces I read, it was like they were sort of getting into the suggestion of, like, attraction. Yeah. Was there an attraction component? I. I don't. I don't know. Earlier, I told you what would happen in the future.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

I can. And here I could tell you what happened in the past if you'd like. Yeah.

[D]

I mean, I, like I read another. I read another article that was very much leaning in the opposite direction of the attraction to be provocative. It was just like, you know, for most of human history, mating resembled what we see in animals. And that there's no consent.

[A]

Right.

[D]

And it's, you know, it's like when you watch a duck with a duck, it's sometimes ugly.

[A]

But in any event, they.

[D]

They went the opposite direction to be more provocative.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Right.

[A]

But that. There was a. There was a coercion element.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's where I'm going.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

In understanding this. And I don't know that maybe you guys know this. Mule deer and white tailed deer will not infrequently interbreed. And I believe that when they do that, like, they'll. They'll have a. Their offspring don't do well. But I've read that and I don't know why this is true. I've read that it is typically a white tail buck breeding a mule deer doe, but I've never read why. Is it because the other. I don't know if it's that the other couplings don't produce offspring or is it that that's just how it goes and, and, and that's just how it goes?

[D]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the other really interesting thing that I, I pulled up when I was doing my deep dive on Neanderthals was like the. There's another human species, the Denisovans, or Denisovans, who are more of. They're sort of like the Asiatic version of a Neanderthal. And they split off like around the same time as Neanderthals. Neanderthals sort of went north and west and the Denisovans went east. And this is one case where they just found, I think like a finger bone in a cave in Russia. And they discovered that, hey, this is a different type of human. And they sort of done what Heffelfinger is doing with the, the Miriam's elk.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

So they're going back to older fossils that they assumed were just either just normal Homo sapiens and they're identifying them retroactively as Denisovans or Denisovans that have been miscategorized. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I was reading a book on human genetics. I want to say, like, if I'm wrong, it's still an interesting book. I want to say that. It was in this book. No, it wasn't in that book. I was going to say it was in the Seven Daughters of Eve. I can't remember what the hell book. I was reading a book about human genetics. In the book they were talking about that, you know, as the human diaspora, as humans spread around the world. There are pockets of the world that have much higher Neanderthal DNA concentrations. There are pockets of the world that have no. Yeah, like in Africa,

[D]

like, like sub Saharan Africa.

[A]

Yes, like in, in. In Africa, like down into the African continent. Neanderthals weren't down there. They were a European, predominantly European, Asian, Middle Eastern species. So people that remained and that remained in Africa, they don't have introgression from Neanderthals. He points out that this is a very, this is a very hot, loaded subject. And he said that there's even been a reluctance. He claims in this book, and I can't remember the guy's damn name. He claims that there's been a reluctance to talk about what populations around the world have a lot of Neanderthal because it would be viewed as disparaging these people.

[F]

Yeah.

[A]

And so he said it's like it's become like a sort of hush, hush subject because. Because it's, It's. People would review it, view it as derogatory.

[D]

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

[A]

bad Covid restrictions in their communities. Authorities are like, no going outside of your cave. All their Amazon boxes are laying around unopened. Yeah. I'll tell you what happened. You ready?

[D]

Yes.

[A]

I think that Neanderthal groups would now and then overpower Homo sapien groups. They would kill the. They would kill the males and they would keep the females as concubines. That's exactly what happened.

[D]

I can't dispute that.

[A]

You ready to move on?

[B]

I think it's a plausible explanation.

[D]

I don't know. These guys are not Neanderthal guys.

[E]

That's good news.

[A]

All right. Can I tell you my favorite Neanderthal little thing? Sure. I was reading a book about Neanderthals. It had a lot to do with Neanderthals. And this guy was talking about when they exhume all these remain Neanderthal remains, they see a, like a predictable suite of injuries on the bones. They were showing them to physicians, and there was a physician who had treated a lot of bull riders in his career, and he pointed out that, wow. The, the types of injuries I'm seeing are very representative of what I see on bull riders. Out of this came this idea and this guy wrote about it. That they practiced a confrontational style of hunting. Yeah. That they mixed it up.

[B]

You're not, you're not saying that bull riders are like Neanderthals?

[A]

No, I'm saying that he was like the kinds of breaks and lesions he saw reminded him of what he sees from bull riders getting trampled gourd.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

But you have to have a little bit of a Neanderthal mindset to get on a 2,000 pound animal and ride. They should ride it around.

[C]

They should research the genetics there. What I would like to know is if it went the other way, did Homo sapiens do the same thing?

[D]

Well, that's it.

[A]

That a bunch of lady. That a bunch of female Homo sapiens raided a Neanderthal, killed all the women

[C]

and brought the guys do that to Neanderthal.

[D]

I mean that's, that is one theory as far as.

[C]

Because it's only like a one way path that Randall's talking about, right? Like neither.

[A]

Oh yeah. Understood. Yeah. I'm not that good. I can't tell you.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. I mean there, there is like at some point human behavior changed because

[A]

that,

[D]

that's one of the explanations, at least for the extinction of the Neanderthals is there's no like discernible physical change in humans over that period of time. So whatever. When we went from cohabitation to one species being left, there's a change in culture. Yep, that explains it. We can move on from Neanderthals or I can offer one more factoid, please. The old man of La Chapelle. Famous Neanderthal remains that was used for a long time to sort of imagine what they looked like. For a while they thought that this is like the best model of a Neanderthal. And then at some point someone pointed out this is like an old guy with some serious back injuries and a lot of arthritis from. He probably had a more upright posture, if you can imagine. Like.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

If we discovered some, you know, if we're aliens and we came in, this is the way it was put on. One thing. It's like if we're aliens and we arrived on Earth and we found Joe Biden, Shaquille o' Neals or. Yeah, or like. And we're like, my God, they're all

[A]

7ft tall and 300 pounds O' Neill's remains.

[D]

Or if we found like some, some decrepit, you know, old person who watch walks all hunched over. Understood, you jump to some conclusions. So that's one of the sort of changes in our thinking as we recognize this is probably not the guy we should go on for a benchmark.

[A]

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[G]

We have a bunch of emails in. I found some and they are too busy or have declined. So it's a whole. We have to find the best.

[A]

If I had a zookeeper SWAT team person standing here and a Neanderthal person standing here, I would go Neanderthal.

[G]

Maybe. Maybe don't get like a bunch in a row like now. Like if we, if we get multiple ones, like we have one and then the next week we have another Neanderthal guy.

[A]

When I was on Theo von Show, he's got a huge show.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

On Theo Von Show, I said, hey, I'm looking for a Neanderthal expert. So I thought, well, I'll reach new people because like there's like the hosers that listen to our thing and that wasn't working. So I thought I'll talk to. I'll talk to the hosers to listen to Theo Vaughn. Still nothing.

[G]

That was a big jk.

[D]

Phil, can you pull up my assets really quick?

[B]

Oh yeah, sure.

[D]

Sorry, I forgot this.

[A]

This is why did you not use this the whole time?

[D]

Well, I forgot about it just until now. This is a recreation of a Neanderthal. And then if you go home with that guy.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

If you go to the Natural History Museum in Vienna, they have a thing that scans your face and renders you into any number of hominid species. So, Phil, if you'll continue to my next slide. That's what I look like as a Neanderthal. Sort of spread my eyes apart and added a more prominent brow ridge. But you can see my mustache on the bottom is still red.

[C]

I'm not seeing the resemblance.

[A]

Yeah, they need to update their program, dude. Yeah, I'm sure, like, you're bug eyed.

[B]

Yeah, no, I can't see right now.

[E]

AI is going to upgrade.

[G]

He's like, still got, you know.

[C]

Didn't you say there was a, like a red hair?

[A]

I believe so.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Moving on, Yanni's gonna bring us now about. Yana's gonna talk to us now about Catalina Island Mule deer eradication program, which we've touched on periodically over the years. Just as a. As a recap, we're going to find out where things stand. Now, as a recap, there's an island off the coast of California called Catalina Island. It has.

[B]

Can you put up the. Pick the map there?

[A]

It is hosted. It has hosted a number of non native species over the years. There was a. There was a herd of American buffalo that were brought out there for a film. They are there, but. But there is a large population of mule deer on Catalina Island. They were not historically on Catalina island, but they were historically just inshore from Catalina Island. So brings up this question, are they native? Are they not? People want to get rid of them. They don't want to get rid of them. So over the years, we've often mentioned various things about their expanding hunting opportunities for mule deer on Catalina Island. They are retracting hunting opportunities for mule deer on Catalina Island. I've never even fully understood it. Giannis is here to tell us where it stands now because there's been significant buzz.

[B]

Yes. And to cut to the chase, when we're all done here in the next five or 10 minutes, I will still not fully understand it. No one, probably else in this room will fully understand it. Yeah, I signed up to cover this little. This little story Yesterday, less than 24 hours ago, and I thought, oh, this will be easy. Well, once I dove in, I see that this is one of those that Steve likes to say makes its own gravy. So I'll try to give like a. An overview of what's happened and really just state facts. And then I, I'm hoping you guys can sort of start then, you know, asking questions. We might be able to get into the stuff that is. Doesn't seem so factual about this story. Like Steve said, it's Catalina island. It's about 75 square miles. Some important things you need to know. It's 88, roughly, private land, and that land is managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy, which is pretty much an organization, a non profit private conservation org that is made by and made up of the people that own the land.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Does that make sense?

[A]

Yeah. The Wrigley family.

[B]

The Wrigley family, yeah. They. They definitely have a lot of influence. They basically, if you. They also own, like, most of the businesses that operate on that island. I think there's. It said there's like 4 to 5,000 people that live on that island. If you live there and work there, you most likely work for them in some way or another.

[A]

In rent from them, maybe.

[B]

Probably. You know, so that in itself gets tricky because people want to protect their livelihoods. Right. And then talking and saying things that, you know, might cause problems. You may or may not want to do that.

[F]

Yeah.

[A]

You're living in a company town. Yeah. You don't trash the company.

[B]

Yeah. So we have this conservancy, this Catalina Island Conservancy. They want to restore the island. I think that their motto is basically to like, like keep the. Do the best they can, be the best stewards of that land through recreation, habitat management. One other thing. But there they want to make it be as though, as it was before contact. They're sort of like what I. What I would call island purists.

[A]

Yep. Like restore the native vegetation. So you're looking at it. You're looking like what it looked like a long time ago.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Before the deer, they had, like you mentioned, all these other animals. Feral goats were a big one. There were also cattle that were once run on Catalina island by the Wrigley family. Like it was a business. Right. They've kind of gotten rid of all these other grazers and animals. But the thing left are these deer that are still. And you can see there's. There's pictures online where you can see enclosures and you can see the. The line. Like often we see in Mexico when we're hunting coos, deer. Right. Where the cattle have been on one side of the fence and they haven't been on the other side of the fence. And one side looks scorched earth and the other side looks pretty lush and green. Right. And tall grass. You can see images like that online. If you look for them, it's where

[A]

they got deer fenced out or in.

[B]

Exactly. So the conservancy believes is saying that at this point, like they've had a hunting program on the island for 20 some years. And again, this hunting program is run through the Wrigley family or the. Or. Or this Catalina Island Conservancy.

[F]

Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They believe that it's not doing enough to suppress the deer numbers to make a difference in letting the habitat rebound. They want to see more of these sort of lush Forbes brush living there and less of that cheatgrass non native landscape going there. And they believe that the. The deer browsing is causing that. Right. They're eating the stuff, that they're preferring that stuff and they're letting this other stuff grow more of. They have for years been trying to get a permit that basically allows them to do massive calling efforts and take out as many as these deer as they want. Because again, they feel like the hunting program is not doing. Doing the trick.

[A]

Can I wedge? Because you're trying to go just facts. Can I wedge it? A not just fact thing.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Do you mind? Can I do that? Could I be the guy that does not. Want to choose my words carefully here? A common refrain among people who have attempted to do a mule deer hunt on Catalina island is that they do their best to make it impossible.

[B]

Who's they?

[A]

The conservancy likes to like. This is just a viewpoint that is expressed to me is that they pay lip service to a hunting program but make the hunting program. They set it up to fail. Is a common refrain among friends of mine who've tried to participate in the mule deer hunt is they set it up to not work.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

It's disingenuous and it's been all.

[B]

It's been all over the place place as far as who can hunt there, how much they can hunt there. They have. They've had years where it's only been a couple hundred tags. They've had years where it's been a thousand tags. They've had years where only locals can hunt, only Californians can hunt. And then other years where you. They. You can't have non residents coming in and hunting.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

When they had that, it wasn't very well publicized. So a lot of people didn't know. And then those that knew were sort of keeping it hush hush because it's like oh, we got a good thing going. Like we're not going to tell all of our friends about this great hunting opportunity.

[A]

A spot burn on the eradication program, which is expected.

[B]

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

[A]

Like a helicopter program.

[B]

Not a helicopter program. That was the first thing that was put out there. That's how they got rid of the goats in the past. And there was a lot of public outcry against doing that because they had supposedly, you know, three legged goats, wounded goats walking around and it didn't look.

[A]

So they couldn't sharpshoot them as well.

[B]

Exactly. So now the idea is that you would bring in government sharpshooters and do the killing. The locals and a lot of hunters, conservation orgs, and interestingly, people like the Humane Society of California have bonded together.

[A]

Strange bedfellows.

[B]

Yes, yes. To oppose this. And actually as of I think yesterday, there's a press release release today that I can just give you the, the real high look at it here is that a coalition of hunting, conservation, sportsman's advocacy organizations filed a lawsuit challenging the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's approval of a plan to exterminate the up to 2,000 mule deer on Catalina Island. So like Safari Club International is a part of that. A bunch of California's, you know, smaller orgs. Are there hell for wildlife?

[C]

Can I ask like.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What? It's obvious why someone like group like the Humane Society would be against it. What are are these hunting groups against it? Because they're about to lose hunting opportunity. Like what are they like what it,

[B]

I think that they're against it because. And from what I gather is because it's a, it's a, in their mind, it's a bad way to manage wildlife. And mostly because they didn't go through the proper channels, processes, steps to get this permit. Some stuff was fast tracked. There was like a bill introduced last year that got through and lo and behold, sponsors of this bill are related and interconnected with this Catalina Island Conservancy. And so some things happened to help make this permit kind of smooth. Right. Through which from what I research is that they've been trying to get this permit for 15 years.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

And California Department of Fish and Wildlife has been like, no, you guys don't have the science to prove that you guys need to be doing this. Because that's where it gets tricky is that they basically have a private island. They control it, but they don't control the animals.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Because the animals are owned by the people of California.

[C]

How do the locals feel about the deer?

[B]

They.

[A]

And what by locals, what do you mean though?

[C]

Well, there's people that live on the island, right?

[A]

Yeah, but they, but they like, they live on the property of the people that want to kill the deer.

[F]

Sure.

[B]

But interestingly yet they're opposed to the killing of the people that are renting

[A]

from the family that owns the thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Huh.

[G]

It's so year round, population of about 4,000.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So there's, there's two of them for each deer.

[B]

They actually passed in the last year. I don't know if you'd call it legislation or a zoning thing that. But basically within the town of Avalon, which must be like incorporated and so.

[A]

Yeah, I've been there.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. It's, it's the other 20 of the island that isn't controlled by the Cali 9 Island Conservancy, they basically passed a law where you cannot shoot or discharge firearms any within those limits. And of course that is where most of these deer live or that's where

[A]

all the people are though. Like when you come in there, it's like a beautiful little bay and a port and.

[B]

Yeah, it's beautiful.

[A]

Real like the real like walk around, get an ice cream cone kind of vibe.

[B]

Yeah. But they, they made it so that they're not going to be able to kill every single deer off the island because basically the ones now that are in town cannot be eradicated.

[A]

Has anyone. Are there any real studs? I'm not talking about the towns. Got to be. Are there any studs on this island or the Dinks.

[B]

You know, just the few images that I saw, nothing that would fall. Fall into like nice Colorado mule I looked at.

[C]

It's not like a destination mule. Dudes aren't like se.

[A]

It's not like Antelope Island.

[C]

Yeah, no, nothing like that.

[B]

No, no.

[A]

Here, I mean, I'm going to state the real obvious on this one. It brings up an interesting question of how far from the native source do you need to be? Where it becomes like irrefutably an exotic. So like take something like Nilgai in South Texas, right? The Indian, like, I think. I think they're predominantly from like the Indian subcontinent. Am I right about that? Yeah, no, no. Yeah, I think so. To Texas. When I look at it, when I spin the old globe, I'm like, that is a non native from way far away. Like, that has nothing. Yeah, that has nothing to do with that. Do you know? I mean, nothing to do with that. That's its own little thing. Their fate, the fate of the nil guy in South Texas is not related to sort of like the fate of nil guy as a wild species in general, when you get to a situation like this where you can look and see, you can look and see where they're from.

[E]

It's 22 miles from Los Angeles is the Catalina Island.

[A]

You can look and see where they're native.

[B]

Yeah. It wouldn't be impossible for a deer to make that swim.

[C]

Oh, look at southeast Alaska. You see those blacktails swimming around all over.

[A]

Hell yeah. So it's like, it does bring up. Interesting question. I'd be like, okay, they came in with people, but I mean, dude, it's just right. Their, their native range is like right there. You can't rule out that one hasn't made the swim.

[C]

But it is an island which, like, island ecosystems operate differently than a mainland.

[A]

I'd like to refer. I'd like to refer listeners to. I can't remember the name of it. David Quammen's book on island biogeography, which explains all this kind of stuff, why islands are so special. Why do mammals shrink and lizards get huge? All that kind of stuff on islands. I don't know, man. I'm a real fence sitter on this one. I'm kind of on the side of the. Here's why I'm on the side of the mule deer. Do you. I don't know. Go ahead. I don't know.

[B]

Something else just to plop in there, right? There's this buffalo herd, I think the highest number ever. Got was like up to 1600 or something like that. Okay. It's been there roughly the same amount of time as these mule deer came

[A]

in to film a movie.

[B]

Yeah, they're right now approximately 100 there. They think there's roughly 2,000 of these deer, or at least that's what the Catalina Island Conservancy, the outfitter, and a lot of the locals and people that have hunted there think there's a lot less than 2,000 deer.

[A]

Could someone do the math? If you go, how many. How many buffalo?

[B]

100.

[A]

So 100 at let's say 1200 pounds. And how many deer?

[B]

2000.

[A]

2000 at let's say 120 pounds.

[G]

Oh, wait, hold on. 100 at what?

[A]

One. 100 at 1200. Someone's gonna write into correction about this. Yeah, I was gonna say we're getting

[D]

on dangerous ground here.

[A]

100 at 1200.

[C]

Especially since Buffalo are grazers and.

[B]

Or.

[C]

Yeah. And mule deer are browsers.

[E]

With those numbers, it'd be a hundred twenty thousand pounds of biomass for the bison versus two hundred forty thousand for the mule deer.

[A]

So mule deer is double twice as much biomass. And mule deer. Okay, double. Going by those numbers, correction. I don't think that's going to get

[B]

corrected because it's correct. The buffalo are just a little less sort of iconic of the island than the. Or sorry, a little bit more than the deer. The deer are like, very much a part of it. Locals love them. People love to go there and see them. But the buffalo are just a little bit cooler. There's, you know, murals of buffalo. There's weather, veins of buffalo. Like, that's. It's very much a part of them.

[A]

When I went. When I went there, it was for this reason to check the buffalo out. But when I'm not writing about it, but I went there to write about it, but I never got to it.

[B]

Yeah, didn't I? Was I researching us going to do a hunt there at some point. But anyways, they've all been sterilized. So you would think that you couldn't keep these buffalo going. Right. Or they. They wouldn't. If they. If they're all sterilized and they're not going to reproduce, they're gonna blink out. They're eventually gonna blink out, but you're

[A]

not gonna sterilize 2,000 deer.

[B]

When that question was posed to the. The main scientists of the conservancy, she had a very lackluster, vague answer as to what's going to happen to those bison where it just at that moment you really feel like she's a mouthpiece for this other, you know, thing that's going on. She's, you know, not necessarily in control. Because if you're gonna take out 2, 000 deer, take out the hundred bison too, Right. And just like don't have any of that kind of grazing going on on the landscape.

[F]

Right.

[B]

But because the locals and the tourists and everything, there's even that much more, you know, probably comes down to money and, you know, attached to it, they're like, well, maybe we'll keep them around kinda a little bit. Somehow we're not gonna get rid of them completely. Like I said, it's just, it's just thick with, with sort of all these just like little ideas of what's going on, who's thinking what.

[C]

Why did you talk about what they're gonna do? Like they're just gonna let the deer lay after they. Like they're not gonna get used.

[B]

No. Yeah. There's no plan for it. It's not like they're gonna donate it all to a food bank. No.

[A]

That's so crystal ball it for me. Based on your re. You're based on your 24 hours of non stop research. Johnny's been up all night. Crystal ball for me. If you had to take. Just say if we're gonna go, if we're gonna go market thing and make a bet.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I said the. In, in, in, in five years, you know, in five years, Catalina island will have no mule deer. Like, whatever. How are you going to bet on it?

[B]

I think that they will have mule deer. I, I think the, the main thing that's like a, a big sticking point to anybody that sort of tries to figure the story out is that it looks like they don't actually have a good survey of how many deer on the island. Some people are like, there's 500. Some people are saying there's 2200. No one really knows. And so you can't really go anywhere. You can't extrapolate from there if you don't know exactly how many deer on this island. Right. You think they could be able to figure that out? I'm imagining that because it's getting so much press that this lawsuit was filed. The California Division of Wildlife is going to Fish and Game, whatever they call

[A]

themselves, they're going to walk back there.

[B]

Yeah. They're going to walk back that permit and going to say, hey, hold on. We need to do this the right way. We're like, we're here to manage wildlife let's do it the right way. And so I think that it's probably going to come back to a private lands management permit, which is what they're operating under now to have a hunting program.

[A]

What they need to do is they need to go get. Take one of them big jets

[B]

with

[A]

a lot of seats in it, go to Cazenovia, Wisconsin, put everybody from Casanovia, Wisconsin on that jet and fly them out to Catalina for a big mooch.

[B]

A big old.

[A]

Yeah, I'm talking a big mooch.

[D]

Feel like lemmings getting pushed into the ocean.

[C]

They'd all just run into town where they're safe.

[A]

Doug's in charge. Doug Duran gets a map of the island. He gets his laser pointer. You sit here, you sit here. At 10, you do this. At 10:22, you get out of your blind and do this big mooch. Sounds like fun little whittle them down. But here's my final take on it. Not that it matters. My final take on it is since like a thing I would factor in. You have so many areas you can point to where mule deer are not doing good. The island is so close to native mule deer range. I would take these two things and I would say we have a lot of areas where mule deer are not doing good. This is sort of like honorary native mule deer range because it's so close. It's a bright spot for mule deer. They're doing well there. It's more valuable to have. It's more valuable to have reassurance about the long term ability of mule deer. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe it could be a potential source location for future reintroductions. I don't know. If I was emperor of the planet, I would say lower the numbers through greater public hunting opportunities, get lower the numbers down. But let's set aside talk of eradication.

[C]

It's also a population that's more than likely pretty safe from cwd, you know what I mean? If they were careful.

[B]

What if I said, though it came at the cost of losing several, you know, native endemic species that only are. What are the species, floral species that are only found on that island and

[A]

they're still there after a hundred years of grazing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And have they done as everything they could do to reseed and like, I'd have to know more. I'm just spitballing here. Yeah, we got to move on.

[B]

I'm just saying, if I'm just throwing that in there, like, would you still say, hey, we really need this little little micro.

[A]

No, I would factor that in if there was a chance that there was an endemic plant species that was going to blink out and go extinct. And by and by having no mule deer, I knew that I could save that endemic plant species. And it was that binary that would make my decision much more complicated, and I would probably tip toward the endemic plant species. Keep an eye on the story for us, Giannis.

[B]

I will.

[A]

Hey, as outdoorsmen, we always spend a lot of time thinking about how we interact with the land, how we care for the land. But then yard care, like your lawn care, defaults to chemical heavy routines. The tree Every yard the same? Well, Sunday offers a different model. They begin by understanding your soil and local climate, then build a customized yard plan designed specifically for your environment. Their products rely on nutrient dense ingredients like seaweed, molasses and iron rather than harsh synthetic chemicals. Everything arrives at your door and connects to a hose, simplifying what has traditionally been a complicated trial and error process. It's a more targeted, more thoughtful approach to caring for the space just outside your home. Less guesswork, less excess. Fewer unnecessary treatments. If you're curious what your yard actually needs and prefer a smarter way to support it, Sunday makes that process remarkably straightforward. Go to getsunday.com to get your free custom yard analysis. That's get Sunday.com when you're in the back country, don't forget your own backcountry. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by bringing along wet extra large dude wipes. I'm I'm glad to be doing dude wipe ads because I buy dude wipes anyways. I've been a long time dude wipe. I'm a dude wipe dude all the time. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild soaking your butt. You never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean your butt with dry toilet paper? Wetter cleans better. So ditch the itch and switch from TP to wet extra large dude wipes. Love them. Like going on a 10 day moose hunt, I just bring a pack along. Not only that, so they're extra large. Okay, if you're a little baby, you get little baby wipes. If you're a man, you get extra large dude wipes. And when you're out in nature, it's going to inevitably call. So make sure you bring along wet dude wipes and three adventure sizes like day hike single wipes, 18 pack weekend wipers, or you know for long trips you got a 48 count pack. And it's not just that. Like when you're out camping, just sleeping in a sleeping bag. Let's say you're gone for 10 days. Whatever. I use them just to clean up at night, like, you know, scrub the old pit, scrub your arms if it's all dusty. Just kind of get your neck and everything cleaned up. I love having them with me. Dude Wipes. It is the best clean. Pants down. They're available at Amazon. That's where I usually order mine from. It's out of Amazon, but you can get them at Walmart nationwide. Fantastic product. Proud to be doing ads for these boys at Dude Wipes. You've heard about t mobile 5G home Internet. Mostly for how easy it is to set up and then the value that you get. But there's some more big news you should know about. They now have the fastest 5G home Internet speeds. That's right. T Mobile now has the fastest 5G home Internet. According to the experts at Ookla Speed Test. That makes backing up photos from your latest hunt, streaming a new documentary or pulling up a wild game recipe super quick. And yeah, it's a great value backed by a solid five year price guarantee. And setting it up is still as easy as it gets. You just plug it in and go. So if you want the fastest 5G home Internet with a simple setup at a great price, with savings that stick around, get T Mobile 5G Home Internet. Head over to t-mobile.com home Internet to check availability. Price guarantee exclusions like taxes and fees apply. Fastest based on Ookla Speed Test intelligence Data over the second half of 2025. All rights reserved. There'll be plenty for reporting. News store yachty would win a pair of boots. Boots.

[E]

Well, I haven't got to go yet.

[D]

Well, you only. I'm the only point of comparison you have, so I'm trying to take that personally.

[A]

Well, you know who's gonna be out, bro. What are you gonna. We're gonna have to hold. The Coloradans can't embarrass themselves anymore. Until they did.

[C]

Story we running out of time.

[A]

We're gonna punt out of here.

[E]

See you over.

[A]

Dispenser for Rattlesnake Roundup. Roundup.

[E]

This weekend, March 13th through the 15th, is the 68th annual world's largest Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas. It's been going on since 1958. Not even Covid stopped them from having a couple of their festivals.

[A]

That's great.

[E]

There's a parade, a carnival, a gun and coin show, dance, guided rattlesnake hunts that you can sign up for those. Cost $75 to go catch one cooking competition with categories such as brisket, ribs, chili beans, Bloody Marys and of course rattlesnake. But the big attraction is the rattlesnake hunting contest and hunters, they'll spend weeks or months catching rattlesnakes that will then get entered into the contest.

[A]

You can stock them up ahead of

[E]

time, far in advance.

[A]

They don't let you do that with bass fishing.

[E]

No, it's. It's unclear to me. It seems as though you need to keep them alive to enter that but I, I couldn't confirm that with anything. But you need to keep these snakes alive.

[C]

Are they managed in any way? Like some states rattlesnakes, like there's a limit. They're managed as some kind of like

[E]

they tell you on game species on the website. You need to have a permit from the state of Texas, whatever, you know like a small game permit, whatever their equivalent is a collection permit of some sort. And. And for the first 3,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in, the Sweetwater JCS will pay $20 per pound for those rattlesnakes.

[A]

What do they want them for?

[E]

Get to it. We'll get to it. But anyways, $20 a pound. It was $5 per pound in 2006, so that's a $15 increase. And if you were doing inflation that $5 would be about $9 today. So they've doubled even if you account for inflation. And what they're paying for the next £5,000 they pay $15 per pound and then they stop paying altogether. If they have more than 8,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in.

[A]

Is that. Is that. Phil just put up a photo. Is that guy so confident in his snake chaps that he's just standing in among those rattlesnakes?

[E]

Seems as though he is.

[A]

There's.

[E]

There's rattlesnakes on top of rattlesnakes and he is within center and he's like

[A]

my chaps are good.

[D]

Well it looks like he's just flicking one off his boot there.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

How many different.

[G]

We should go there. One year.

[D]

No thank you.

[E]

It's just terrible.

[A]

Not a big snake guy.

[E]

It is just the western diamondback that you look Spencer.

[C]

Looks like there's different species in there now.

[E]

First prize. First prize for bringing in the most pounds of snakes is $11,000. The longest snake gets $500. Their all time record is an 81 1/2 inch rattlesnake.

[A]

What's that come out to in feet

[C]

it's like a teenage almost 7 7.

[E]

Little less than correction.

[G]

We are looking at it.

[E]

Their website has results from the last decade. And from looking at these, it's clear that there is a Sweetwater rattlesnake hunting goat. Andy Lee has won five of the last nine contests, including in 2024 and 2025.

[A]

Why don't we get that guy on the show? What's his name?

[E]

Andy Lee.

[A]

Can you get him on the show?

[E]

I've got some more details for you on Andy. Last year he brought in 651 pounds of rattlesnakes, which beat second place by 39 pounds. Here's some good journalism, Steve. When I googled Andy's name, I learned that he owns a pest control business in Texas.

[A]

He's got a hot line.

[E]

He is double dipping. First someone pays him to come remove a snake from under their porch and then he goes and enters it in this contest.

[A]

This does not dissuade me from wanting him on the show.

[E]

No, I'm with you. But last year, last year, with that winning weight, if he would have entered it in the first 3,000 pounds, he would have made $14,000.

[C]

How many snake does it say how many snakes? 50.

[E]

It's. It doesn't say it's you. It's always measured in pounds on their website.

[A]

There he is, right there. There.

[E]

There he is.

[B]

That's his.

[E]

The business he owns. Andy Lee.

[A]

Who's Dee Dee? Dee must be his wife.

[E]

Then they. They own the business together. Now. Steve asked what happens to these snakes. They're registered, then they're skinned, battered, deep fried and sold at the concession stands.

[A]

You're not eating up that many snakes. Give me a break.

[E]

Phil's got a picture of that. They said they're eating them there.

[A]

They're going through that whole batch of snakes.

[E]

I don't know.

[C]

And the skins go into a separate market.

[E]

It doesn't say what they do with the skins. Phil's got a picture of how all them skinning in a line there. Look at that.

[G]

Oh, yeah, they're making some very fishy leather product on.

[E]

On average, there are 4,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in each year. The record was set in 2016 when 25, 000 pounds of Diamondbacks were captured. There must have been something with the weather that year that just made a boom. Rattlesnakes. Now here's the most amazing part. I think I found a quote from Texas A M in 2006 that said they estimate the roundup captures 1% of the state's entire western diamondback population every year. Every year.

[A]

But they have. I wonder, have you. Have you encountered what sort of harvest rate like. Like a state would have deer harvest and they're going to kill 10, 11, 12 of the state's deer. So I don't know about the fecundity of rattlesnakes, But I'm guessing 1% is well within recovery.

[E]

I imagine if this is the world's largest version of this and it still exists, then yeah, they're not worried about hurting the western diamondback population in Texas if it continues on now. It's very popular in the community. They expect 25000 visitors this year. Again, it's this weekend. That pumps in $8 million to the local economy. So go check it out. If you live in central Texas, what's

[C]

up with the bloody handprints on the wall?

[A]

Well, I think they're taking them hands that are all bloody and pressing them on that wall.

[C]

Yeah, well, I gathered that part. It's interesting.

[D]

It's amazing.

[E]

Beautiful.

[A]

Yeah, it's like little cave paintings.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh yeah. I'll save it.

[E]

68th annual World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup up.

[B]

What town?

[E]

Sweetwater, Texas. Sweetwater, Central Texas.

[A]

Excellent reporting.

[E]

Thank you. Did it Bestiani or no?

[A]

No, I think. I mean the, the quality of the reporting and the delivery, but it just didn't make as much gravy. Okay, I'm still.

[D]

I'm still third.

[B]

It's.

[A]

What, what is it when you just don't even get mentioned. Like picture the. At the Olympics. Like at the Olympics you got the gold, gold, silver, bronze, you know, but they don't even let a guy get on the.

[C]

Randall, at least you got to compete.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Oh no, Randall, I'm just joking, man. I thought. I thought you did a great job.

[E]

Maybe I could tilt the scales a little more. So back to the. The Trump America the Beautiful card.

[A]

Okay.

[E]

The center of biological. What is it? The center for Biological Diversity.

[A]

The anti hunting organization.

[E]

They are suing him for doing that. They started that lawsuit in December. I reached out to them for an update on the lawsuit.

[C]

Funny, I was going to talk about those folks in my section.

[E]

Their update is. They don't have an update yet but they're working on it behind the scenes. So we. We don't know what the fate of. By the time they wrap it up, this card will no longer even be good. So.

[B]

Oh should.

[E]

Although they do a lot.

[A]

They do a lot of like, posture.

[E]

Understood. I understand they do a lot of

[A]

the day you buy it.

[E]

Right.

[F]

But what.

[E]

What would happen say best case scenario for them happens and they win this lawsuit against the Trump administration, then what? We're going to reissue thousand cards?

[D]

Well, maybe someone who chooses to buy their pass in December of this year,

[A]

they have a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals esque wing.

[E]

They do.

[A]

Center for Biological. They use some of the same type of people.

[E]

Yes.

[A]

To think up campaigns that they're like, oh, no, no, no, it's not that we'll win. It's just that it'll be reported on.

[E]

This is right in their wheelhouse for what they would do is. Is have a lawsuit like this.

[A]

All right, Brody, I'm down. Real sorry, buddy.

[C]

No, but you did say they do things to posture.

[A]

They.

[C]

The center for Biologic Biological Diversity. Like they got something done in Colorado which is not good next week.

[A]

It's not done done.

[C]

It's not done done.

[A]

But you think it's going to pass?

[C]

It already passed.

[A]

No, but you think it's gonna become law. But it already.

[C]

They're just in the rulemaking process now.

[A]

Yeah, but I thought the rulemaking process would get so like that it wouldn't go. Or people were thinking it wouldn't go.

[E]

We'll see.

[C]

We'll report on it next week.

[A]

That one needs time.

[D]

Couldn't have scripted it any better.

[A]

Yeah, that one needs time.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Going over for our final story. This is our final story. Yeah. Right.

[F]

Yeah.

[G]

If you're gonna. Yeah.

[A]

Going over for our final story. I heard a very interesting thing recently. My brother Danny up in Alaska has a buddy. My brother Danny works for the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service. He has a colleague who is a. He'll. He'll explain what he does. I was hearing about learning about that when imports come into the country. Right. There's a customs process around processing imports. And here's where you would look for illegal wildlife imports, meaning things you could imagine. Like someone opens up a crate and they're like, good Lord, it's full of rhino horns. That's going to be a problem. But there are other things that you might not know about that, that, that customs officials look at and U.S. fish and Wildlife Service, when it comes to wildlife issues, that is their. That is their turf. Okay. And I was learning about a thing, I had no idea that it even existed is that people make fake eyelashes out of mink fur. And since it's a wildlife product, it needs to be imported in a certain way. And I was learning about how wildlife officials will detect, find, and seize Incoming. Fake eyelashes made of mink, which I feel are being worn by people who have no idea what they're wearing.

[B]

Definitely not.

[A]

Over to our guests. Ready, Phil?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

God, you didn't see that coming.

[B]

Well, I thought there will be a little bit more to do before we bring him in. But hey, he's here.

[G]

Yeah, like, you know, women and fake eyelashes. History of that, but that's okay.

[A]

Brian Olin, how's it going?

[F]

Good morning. Yeah, it's going well. I guess I should have worn some, some eyelashes today so I could have demonstrated that for you, but I didn't, didn't include that in my morning routine, so you're forgiven.

[A]

Lay this out for us like, like lay out for us what form these things take, how you know about them, where they come from, whatever you got for us.

[F]

Gotcha. So, yeah, I didn't know about him, not surprisingly, before I started this job about five years ago. We all know about fake eyelashes, but there is a pretty significant quantity of them being made from mink. Certainly also made from like silk and other synthetic materials. But they, they look like just like a half moon or crescent moon shape, like adhesive strip with individual pieces of mink hair, I guess just attached or glued on there. They're. When you like do some research on them and say that they're more fluttery looking, a little more naturally looking the, the mink hair ones versus the synthetic ones. So there's, there's some ways you can kind of, once you look at five or six hundred of these things, you can kind of tell them, tell them apart pretty easily. But the mink hair kind of tapers to a point. Whereas like the synthetic materials are more like truncated and chopped. You can kind of tell that with the naked eye. But so yeah, we're inspecting these kind of, you know, it comes and goes in waves, but daily across the US and we're here in Anchorage, Alaska. So most of our imports are coming from, from Southeast Asia. So yeah, we're, we're looking at air cargo coming in and trying to, trying to stop these and make sure they're imported in the correct manner.

[A]

What would be the correct manner? Like they're not like a mink eyelash isn't necessarily illegal. It's just that the way they're bringing them in, they're not declaring them as a wildlife product. Is that the problem?

[F]

Yeah, yeah. So mink aren't particularly highly protected. Like you mentioned rhino horn, obviously they're not in the same level. Most of these are farmed mink. And so they just need to have a few things done. If you're commercially importing, you gotta have an import permit from us. And then, yeah, you have to declare every shipment as it arrives, declare it to the genus and species so we know what, what, what animal you're using and the quantity. So that's, that's the biggest like violation for the mink eyelashes is they're just failing to declare or failure to, to obtain a license.

[A]

So do this for people. You told me how this works. But let's say someone's sitting at home right now and they're just curious if their fake eyelashes are made of mink or not. Tell them the little test you do to find out what exactly you're looking at.

[F]

Sure. Yeah. So if you have a pair that maybe you took off and you already wore once or twice, you can just take a match and burn part of that and give, get a good whiff and see what it smells like. And if it smells like burned hair or like, or like petroleum plastic, that'll tell you right off the bat if it's, if it's a natural product or a synthetic product.

[B]

Huh.

[A]

How many times, if you had to get like you've been there five years, how many different times have you encountered mink eyelashes coming into your porch?

[F]

Hundreds.

[A]

Oh yeah, hundreds.

[F]

It's not every day anymore. But that these things kind of come and go in waves. So much of it is driven by like the fashion industry and what's popular. And I think right now we're kind of at like a lull, at least in our port of, of what we're seeing. So maybe there's some, you know, people are starting to realize that, that they are made of mink and they don't want that. But it seems like it's on, on a downward trend right now. But you know, like 10, 10 years ago, it was probably tenfold amount of products coming in.

[A]

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

[F]

Oh yeah. Like on flutterly flutteriness. That's either they're up there and the amount of flutter they have.

[A]

Oh, so it's an exaggerated eyelash. It's like a big eyelash.

[F]

Well, at times it is, yes. But, like, there's so many variations that you'll see the smaller, more kind of petite ones and then, okay, ones that are just comically large, but.

[A]

God. So you could be still be wearing mink. You could be classy in mink or you could be not in mink. Sounds like.

[F]

I think you'd be classy.

[A]

Now, here's another question, if you don't mind adding in on this. Are you able to share with us a handful of other wildlife products that. That you've seen show up in your area of jurisdiction over your career there? Are you able to share some other examples of things that you might. That your agency might find coming into port in Anchorage, Alaska?

[F]

Sure. A lot of what we see is products. We don't see too many live. Live animals. A lot of those are, you know, they don't want their live animals to sit on the. The tarmac when it's like, negative 20 out.

[E]

Got it.

[F]

They just don't survive.

[A]

So you're not a good port of entry for live.

[F]

No, not typically. Although we just had some yesterday. Can't talk about those too much. But in the past, past years, like, we had a. A viper come in. In a Pringles can from Southeast Asia. And that was, that was a. Yeah, that was an eye opener. So that's, you know, like, one of the more surprising.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[F]

You're like, hey. But most of what we see is parts and products. Feathers, shells, turtle products, turtle shell products.

[A]

Got it.

[F]

And occasionally live. Live animals, like birds.

[B]

Randall has a question. Steve.

[A]

Oh, go ahead.

[D]

Of all those products, how many of those are, like, banned outright versus how many of those are simply trying to slide in undeclared?

[F]

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

[A]

So are you often involved in the work of, let's say, someone's importing shell jewelry? Does it fall on your agency to. To try to determine what is the genus and species? Because I imagine it could be like, Very hard to figure out if it's polished shell.

[F]

Right.

[A]

How you'd ever begin to understand, like, is it, what is it from, you know, where did it come from and what, what did they make it with?

[F]

Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's upon the importer to declare it to the genus and species level and they would rely on their exporter quite a bit for that.

[A]

Okay.

[F]

So it's not like it's not our position to determine that, but we do have to spend a lot of time trying to ID things because the importers, you know, in illegal cases, they, they don't want to do that anyway. So we need to be able to, to do that, to, to know that may. This might be a protected species or it may not be.

[A]

Yeah. Meaning someone could, someone could try to bring in a thing that, that could be, that they could be declaring it as something permissible, but you'd have the obligation of, of, of verifying that it was what they're saying it is.

[F]

Exactly.

[A]

Whether that was intention, a mistake or intentional, it could be a thing that would happen.

[F]

Yep. I like snake skins. You know, there's, there's protected snakes and there's, there's non protected skates. So if you were wanting to try to sneak something in without permits, you might call it, you know, a water snake versus a ball python or something.

[A]

Understood. Understood. You know what I didn't do a good job of when I, when I started out. Brian, can you, can you tell everybody what your, you know, your agency, but also what your specific job title would be like? What is your, what is your, what is your. I don't know, you know, what's on your badge?

[F]

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a wildlife inspector. I work for the office of law enforcement, which is a law enforcement division of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And so we work at all the ports of entry across the US and we combat the legal wildlife trafficking trade and then like I said, facilitate the legal trade.

[A]

Got it. And, and then you are, you are based within, are you within the Anchorage Airport? Like where do you, where do you sit right now?

[F]

Yeah, so me, I'm at the Anchorage airport. We have a, an international side. So I'm at the office here today. We also have people over at sorting facility for like the air cargo. So we get. Most of our, most of our cargo is coming in from Southeast Asia. On the, on the air side of things, we also have outports that we cover for like the, the, the highways between Canada and the US like al can we'll we'll cover that as well.

[A]

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

[F]

Yeah, yeah. Just yesterday, I was inspecting a shipment from South Africa. So, yeah, even non commercial personal shipments have to be declared. So, okay, they'll arrive on cargo and we'll go over there and make sure what they're declaring is accurate. If there's permits to collect, we'll collect those and stamp them and help them fill out paperwork and. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of a fun thing of our job is to kind of see that. That exotic stuff coming in.

[A]

You know what I'm realizing? He might be a very good trivia contestant on wildlife questions.

[E]

A lot of knowledge.

[A]

Wildlife questions. Brian, thanks for coming on the show and explaining all that to us, man. I want to go get me a set of these eyelashes and put them on. We should have done that today.

[D]

I thought about doing that.

[G]

Yeah, there's some pictures in there.

[F]

I don't know if I can't pull

[B]

them up while Brian's on the.

[A]

Oh, that's why he's not showing.

[G]

That's right. Yep.

[A]

All right, thank you very much, officer. Appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. I'm gonna start going up to people lighting their eyelashes on fire and smelling.

[F]

All right, let me know what you think.

[A]

Thanks for what I'm looking at. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining the new show. Come on next week, and you're gonna hear Brody talk all about a thing that I don't understand. Well, because I thought it was something different.

[E]

Okay, good point.

[B]

Brody's guys weren't cut out for him.

[A]

I thought the rule making process would prove so impossible that it was like some kind of problem.

[C]

Let's hope that was. That's what happens. But it's not officially law yet. They gotta go through some stuff.

[A]

But stay tuned. Just when you thought Colorado, the. The. The animal rights community in Colorado could not embarrass their state anymore, they do next week on the news show. When you flew out the window and

[B]

into the sunset, I thought I would never stop screaming.

[A]

I thought I would never stop screaming your name. But I ran out of breath. So I took in some more, and I started to scream even louder. Hey. As outdoorsmen, we always spend a lot of time thinking about how we interact with the land, how we care for the land. But then yard care, like your lawn care, defaults to chemical, heavy routines. The tree Every yard the same well, Sunday offers a different model. They begin by understanding your soil and local climate, then build a customized yard plan designed specifically for your environment. Their products rely on nutrient dense ingredients like seaweed, molasses and iron rather than harsh synthetic chemicals. Everything arrives at your door and connects to a hose, simplifying what has traditionally been a complicated trial and error process. It's a more targeted, more thoughtful approach to caring for the space just outside your home. Less guesswork, less excess. Fewer unnecessary treatments. If you're curious what your yard actually needs and prefer a smarter way to support it, Sunday makes that process remarkably straightforward. Go to getsunday.com to get your free custom yard analysis. That's getsunday.com you ever get that feeling? The walls closing in the concrete jungle suffocating you? You crave some wide open spaces, the chance to connect with nature. Maybe in a spot all your own? Well, head over to land.com they've got ranches, forest, mountains, streams, you name it. Search by acreage. You can search by location. You can search by the kind of hunting and fishing you're dreaming of. Land.com it is where the adventure begins. Man, I'm telling you what. When I need auto parts, I go to O'Reilly Auto Parts here in my hometown of Bozeman, Montana. Love those guys. Always nice, always helpful. They are in the business of keeping your car on the road. O'Reilly Auto Parts offers friendly, helpful service and the parts knowledge you need for all your maintenance and repairs. They've got thousands of parts and accessories in stock, in store or online so you never have to worry if you're in a jam. Need your battery tested, windshield wipers replaced, a brake light fixed, or a quick service? They'll help you find the right part or point you to the nearest local repair shop for help. Last time I was in there, it was for wiper blades and a brake light bulb. Whether you're a car aficionado or an auto novice, you'll find the employees at O'Reilly Auto Parts are knowledgeable, helpful and best of all, friendly. The professional parts people at O'Reilly Auto Parts are your one stop shop for all things auto. Do it yourself and you can find what you need in store or online. Stop by O'Reilly Auto Parts today or visit O'ReillyAuto.com me eater that's O'ReillyAuto.com meater this is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.