Ep. 882: Cyanide Bombs, New CWD Research, and F%ck Data Centers

Summary

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The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 882:

"Cyanide Bombs, New CWD Research, and F%ck Data Centers"

Host: Steven Rinella
Date: May 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into a variety of wildlife and conservation topics, weaving together hunting stories, new scientific research, data center environmental impacts, and controversial wildlife management techniques—all delivered in the classic MeatEater style: irreverent, informed, and often pretty funny. The main focus points are new research into Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), the ongoing debate about the use of bear spray versus firearms, the realities behind so-called "cyanide bombs," and the environmental cost of new data center construction. The episode features a compelling interview with CWD researcher Dr. Catherine Hag of the National Institutes of Health, as well as lively banter among the MeatEater crew.

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Episode Highlights & Key Segments

1. Bear Hunt Recap and Family Hunting (03:02–10:23)

• Steven shares the story of his daughter's first black bear hunt in Alaska, highlighting the mental and emotional challenges young hunters face.
  • Notable quote:
    “She likes to run through all things that could go bad. Before she shoots, she likes to do a final run-through of all the things that could go bad.”
    – Steven (05:58)
  • Discussion of hunting styles, impatience, and the difficulty of hunting with kids.

2. Fishing Updates and Changing Reservoirs (10:23–14:24)

• The group discusses walleye fishing at Canyon Ferry and ecological shifts in fish populations due to non-native species.
  • Notable quote:
    “In my lifetime...the biomass in that lake seems to be carp.”
    – Steven (13:29)

3. Spencer’s Home Orchard and Native Fruits (14:24–21:10)

• Spencer describes establishing a fruit orchard with 60 trees and numerous native and non-native fruit varieties.
  • Banter about the merits of various fruits: “Why are you rolling rhubarb into that?” – Steven (15:28)
• Discussion of home management, relabeling perennials, and food self-sufficiency.

4. Audience Emails: Shotgun vs. Rifle Zones in Hunting (24:49–33:06)

• Pat Durkin challenges Steven’s support for opening Michigan’s southern hunting zone to rifles, presenting data from Wisconsin's similar policy shift, which showed a decrease in accidents.
  • Notable quote:
    “All it shows is that when you switch to rifles, you don't necessarily see an increase in overall accidental shootings.” – Mike (30:44)
  • The crew discusses nuances around hunting safety statistics.

5. Duck & Geese Legal Battles: ‘Flock Around and Find Out’ (33:06–36:12)

• A listener email highlights a woman being ticketed for feeding geese and how she argues it’s a First Amendment issue.
  • Memorable Moment:
    The formation of a goose advocacy group called "FAFO: Flock Around, Find Out."
    • “I like those so much. We should…do a collab with these guys.” – Steven (35:33)

6. Turkey Predation Conspiracy Theories (36:12–41:46)

• Listener questions whether turkeys are the cause of grouse declines in Wisconsin.
  • The team debunks the idea but admits that “things happen” in wild diets.
  • Notable quote:
    “You can throw a mouse to a backyard chicken. It'll eat the mouse.” – Steven (40:26)
  • Main takeaway: Habitat loss is the real culprit, not turkeys.

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7. INTERVIEW: Dr. Catherine Hag on New CWD Research (45:15–69:05)

Segment Start: 45:15
Key Timestamps Within Segment:

• Cerebral Organoid Disease Modeling (47:06)
• Testing CWD Transmission to Humans (49:44–51:43)
• Species Jump Risks & Mad Cow Comparisons (51:43–54:16)
• Long-Term Risk for Hunters (55:37–57:11)
• Genetic Resistance in Deer (61:34–63:16)
• Final Takeaways and Hunter Safety (65:10–66:14)

Key Insights:

• Dr. Hag explains using human organoid (mini-brain) models to test if CWD prions can infect human brain tissue.
  • Quote:
    “We literally put the mini brains into a deer brain homogenate … it’s a massive exposure and it’s a prolonged exposure. And the good news for that study was that we did not find any evidence of infection of the human organoids.” – Dr. Catherine Hag (51:17)
• The model, while powerful, isn’t perfect—represents ~90% of the population, cannot totally exclude risk for everyone.
• No increase in human prion disease (CJD) cases has appeared in line with widespread CWD, suggesting little if any transmission to humans so far.
  • Quote:
    “At this point, I don’t believe there’s any evidence to support a tick up in cases or a different disease emerging.” – Dr. Hag (57:03)
• Discussed the emergence of potential genetic resistance in deer and local historical prion diseases like Kuru.
• Advice for Hunters:
  • Don't be blasé—continue testing venison for CWD if possible, but “don’t lose sleep over it.”
    • “Every model is flawed... I think I would still recommend to people that they get their meat tested if they can. I also feel a bit like this isn’t something to be losing sleep over.” – Dr. Hag (65:10)
• Steven’s classic CWD “burger bet” joke—he’d only listen to CWD skeptics if they ate burgers from infected deer (67:35).
• Crew lauds her as "favorite guest of all time" for her calm, scientific clarity.

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8. Bear Spray vs. Pistol Debate Intensifies (72:27–87:14)

• Review of fatal bear attack in Glacier NP where the victim used bear spray.
  • Debunks idea that bear spray (or pistols) guarantees survival—both can fail.
  • “There's nothing on a can of bear spray that says guaranteed to stop a grizzly from killing.” – Phil (81:56)
• National Park “syndrome”—frustration that bear incidents inside park borders are treated as unique.
  • “I would much rather speak about these things at an ecosystem layer.” – Steven (75:57)
• Personal experiences and logic behind when to use spray versus pistol—ultimately, neither method is foolproof.

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9. Data Centers: Environmental Nightmare? (87:46–102:20)

• Rant and reporting on the environmental impact of huge new data centers, particularly regarding water use, power grid stress, and habitat loss.
  • Quote:
    “Meta’s building one in Louisiana, that will draw twice the power of the entire city of New Orleans.” – Mike (92:09)
  • Concerns about the North Slope Alaska AI data center, Potomac River water use, national issues.
• Group discusses complexities around how water is used/recycled/can impact local climate and river systems.
  • Steven: “I’m a NIMK—not in my country. I just want it to go away.”

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10. Cyanide Bombs: Sensationalism vs. Reality (103:08–114:21)

• Debunks media use of “cyanide bombs” (M44 predator control devices)—they’re not explosive, nor do they create dangerous clouds of poison.
  • “Cyanide bombs are not cyanide bombs. They are canine pest ejectors.” – Steven (103:33)
  • Discusses the policy reversal allowing use on federal lands, distinctions between state and federal law, and traumatic dog incident that led to nationwide attention.
• Balanced look: acknowledges the ugly history of wildlife poisoning but calls for accurate, non-hysterical debate based on actual risk and impacts.

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11. Wyoming Wolf Hunting Quotas Shrink After Disease Outbreak (114:28–121:20)

• Canine distemper causes 25%+ drop in Wyoming wolf populations.
  • “It's especially lethal to puppies. Highly contagious, incurable…” – Phil (114:52)
• State halves wolf hunting quotas to stave off federal intervention (ESA listing); distinguishes “trophy” management area from rest of state where wolves have no special protection.
  • “So right now, it’s below that target of 160 wolves.” – Phil (117:28)
• The segment underscores the complexity and balancing act of modern predator management.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Steven on his daughter hunting:
  “She’s into the like, ‘Can it be done?’ kind of hunting.” (03:38)
• On honeyberries:
  “No one likes them. I give them to my kids and they’re like, ‘That’s not a berry.’” – Steven (18:28)
• Dr. Hag on CWD:
  “While it’s not impossible, at this point I don’t believe there’s any evidence to support a tick up in cases or a different disease emerging.” (57:03)
• On data centers:
  “It's one of those things… I kind of roll my eyes, but it’s not stopping. We just need to be clear-eyed about the potential risks for habitat and wildlife.” – Mike (101:46)
• Steven on sensationalism:
  “Let’s just be honest about what it is and stop talking about them [M44s] in some way.” (106:07)

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Episode Timeline (Approximate)

| Time | Segment | |-------------|----------------------------------------| | 03:02–10:23 | Bear hunt, youth hunting stories | | 10:23–14:24 | Fishing and lake management banter | | 14:24–21:10 | Home orchards, native fruits | | 24:49–33:06 | Shotgun vs. rifle zone hunting debate | | 33:06–36:12 | Audience story: ‘Flock Around and Find Out’ geese | | 36:12–41:46 | Turkey–grouse predation conspiracy | | 45:15–69:05 | CWD research with Dr. Catherine Hag | | 72:27–87:14 | Bear spray vs. firearm debate | | 87:46–102:20| Data center environmental impacts | |103:08–114:21| Cyanide bombs (M44 devices) controversy| |114:28–121:20| Wolf quotas in Wyoming drop post-disease| |121:20–End | Wrap-up, preview of next week |

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Closing Thoughts

This episode is densely packed with anecdotes, listener emails, scientific insight, and robust debate—perfect for hunters, conservationists, or anyone wanting a grounded look at the realities behind wildlife headlines.

For future episodes:

• Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast YouTube or wherever you listen for more science, lore, and conservation news wrapped in honest, sometimes irreverent, discussion.

Stay tuned: Next week: Fishing records, computer charged, and more wild news.

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Transcript

[Steven Rinella]

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[Mike]

That's good.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm not looking around for that. I'm just saying, like. But first.

[Phil]

You're waiting for someone to jump in first.

[Steven Rinella]

Our news. Yeah, Steve. Well, no, I'm up. Yeah. My daughter got her first black bear.

[Mike]

Nice.

[Steven Rinella]

She's a very competitive hunter. Is not interested in. Doesn't like. Is not interested in any kind of duck hunting. Nothing. It's got to be a turkey or bigger. It's got to be where you set your mind on getting a thing. There's got to be a question of whether you'll get it. Like going duck hunt and be like, man, it's gonna be a lot of ducks.

[Phil]

Could.

[Steven Rinella]

Doesn't care. Doesn't care. She's into the like. She's into the like, can it be done? Kind of hunting. And you have to be cruising all around. She's not going to sit somewhere. Doesn't want to sit nowhere.

[Mike]

It lends itself well to.

[Phil]

You know, she doesn't. She won't sit in glass during youth.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, no. Like that.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But she's. If you said, hey, we're gonna go sit in the tree stand for a long time. That's not what she wants to do.

[Phil]

Gotcha.

[Steven Rinella]

She likes to be mobile. She likes to be looking around on the ground for rocks and whatnot. But got. So we had four. We had kind of like four full days to hunt bears. And then we had a day that we could kind of hunt a little bit if need be. And by the end of the third day, she was getting real antsy because

[Phil]

you weren't seeing bears or you weren't seeing, like, nice bears.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, I mean, she's not listening. She'll listen to the show. Little slower. The trigger.

[Phil]

Yeah, that happens.

[Steven Rinella]

So it's.

[Phil]

That's a hard thing to get over when you're a parent, man.

[Steven Rinella]

And, yeah, real slow to the not. Not a little slow to the trigger.

[Phil]

Because he can't get mad at him.

[Steven Rinella]

Bless her heart.

[Mike]

No, just yell, shoot.

[Steven Rinella]

Mad at my boys. I'll get mad at my daughter. I might get mad at her now and then, but I'm, like, way nicer to her than anybody else.

[Catherine Hag]

Shoot him now.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Like, I would be. My boys. I'd be smacking them inside of the head, back of my hand, shoot, shoot. But no her. I'm like, go. It's okay.

[Mike]

When you're ready.

[Steven Rinella]

When you're ready, sweetie. So, like, one time we. We went after a bear, and it's just sitting there playing his day, you know, and it's facing toward us. And, you know, you had gotten out

[Phil]

of, like, you were in the process of trying to kill it. You were out of the boat.

[Steven Rinella]

We got out of the boat way a few hundred yards downwind, worked up. I'm like, once we get to that, there's sort of a tree laying there. Like, once we get to that tree, we get to the tree, we get her set up on the tripod. It's just sitting there. Meanwhile, I would have put a box of shells into it, but it's like. But, you know, I mean, it's just different. And then I talked all about, like, she likes to run through all weeks leading up to going hunting. She likes to run through all things that would go bad. And then before she shoots, she likes to do a final run through of all the things that could go bad.

[Phil]

Like, what do I do if.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, like, what if the. I'm like, just at. At a point where there's a element of this that is a roll of the dice. How. As much as we try to rule all that out, there's an element to it that there's a dice roll. Right. And we try to weight the dice and all that, but, like, there's a dice roll and she doesn't like the dice roll part. She wants to be that when she touches that trigger, she wants it to be that. It's like God strikes it with a

[Phil]

bullet, you know, up there.

[Steven Rinella]

She wants it to go up there

[Phil]

because, like, if you wound one, you're done up there. Correct?

[Steven Rinella]

That's right. So, yep, in this region. In this region, Alaska, if you nick one, you scratch your tag. So that. And if they get. When they go into the rainforest, it's difficult. Stick. Anyway, she likes to do a quick run through of all possible scenarios that could go wrong? And then we kept talking about, like, broadside, broadside, broadside, and it's not broadside. And. And I'm like, do I really want to, like, open up this whole can of worms and introduce the idea that one could feasibly. Yeah. You know, and it's just not the moment for it.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Not the moment to be like, you know, I hadn't mentioned this, but in a scenario like this, I could see a pathway toward. Anyways, it went from facing us just walking into the woods. She was bummed, bumped. But we persevered. Yeah, persevered.

[Spencer]

It's great.

[Steven Rinella]

It was great.

[Spencer]

Competitive.

[Phil]

That rug put in her room.

[Steven Rinella]

She will.

[Spencer]

Competitive bear hunter. Like, competitive with the bears, competitive with her brothers. Competitive with.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, no, it. Competitive. Yes, a little bit competitive with her brothers, but mostly it's competitive. Maybe that's not the right word, but it's. She has a. A, A challenge accepted.

[Phil]

Yeah. She's got a tag. She wants to fill that pack.

[Steven Rinella]

It's. It's. We're doing this and it's like, okay, she's motivated. Let's go.

[Mike]

What was her, you know, on the, on the ride home, was she like, I can't wait to do that again

[Steven Rinella]

or she didn't come up. Very happy with. Very happy with the results. Very happy with the results. And it's this bear. Had. We saw some ones that were a little rubbed. This bear has almost like an electric blue. It's not. I wouldn't call it a glacier bear. Not that area, but it has almost. When it was just laying there, has almost like an electric blue black color to it. Gorgeous.

[Mike]

Cool.

[Steven Rinella]

We're having John Hayes. John Hayes is going to do it. Bear man.

[Mike]

Rugged.

[Phil]

He's going to rug it, make a bunch of sausage with it.

[Steven Rinella]

Hot Italian and sweet Italian.

[Phil]

Go.

[Steven Rinella]

And I kept the back straps for regular eating, but mostly sausage.

[Mike]

Going to do the Clay Newcomb heavily salt and throw it in a wood stove for 25 to 30 seconds. Treatment.

[Steven Rinella]

No, not his. Not Clay's recipe. The funniest thing. We'll move on. But the funniest thing that came out of that meal you're referring to was Clay was telling us how he doesn't like. He doesn't like fresh ground pepper.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, he says, I like pepper. Never heard that out of those tins. He says, I like it. So when you. He says, I like it to work like a wind.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Mike]

He likes.

[Steven Rinella]

He does not like a grainy, stale old, powdery pepper. Stale old powdered pepper. He does not like any kind of like, yeah, fresh ground, crunchy pepper between your teeth. He likes those McCormick tins. And when you turn it upside down, it, like, blows away like charcoal dust.

[Phil]

The restaurant pepper, like the diner pepper.

[Steven Rinella]

It's so funny that he's got, like an opinion on that.

[Spencer]

It's just the essence of pepper at that point. You're not actually getting pepper.

[Mike]

Yeah, Like, I wouldn't. I wouldn't blink twice if someone handed me his favorite pepper. You know, like, it's not like I'm just kind of.

[Steven Rinella]

It's pepper.

[Mike]

But he had his very strong, very strong opinion on it.

[Steven Rinella]

Brody been walleye fishing? Wally dogs?

[Phil]

Yeah, it's late start for. Normally I'd have had boat out by now, but it's the first time this

[Steven Rinella]

past weekend because of all this running. BS Jogging.

[Phil]

Yep. That takes up a lot of time on the weekends. But yeah, we got out there on Saturday. We went to Canyon Ferry close by here. And normally this time of year, the south end of that lake where the river dumps in would just be chocolate milk and mud. But there's no run, no snow runoff this year. So it's clear. Yeah, we tore up the little, little walleye. Little walleyes dragging crankbaits around like 8 or 10ft of water.

[Steven Rinella]

But it's like perch that lake right now, and that's like, that's a dynamic lake. It's always changing. Always changing.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Right now it's like perch fishing for walleyes.

[Phil]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Because it's a bunch of walleyes the size of big perch.

[Phil]

Yeah. There's not a good like forage base of like minnows or whatever for those walleyes. So they, they eat a lot of insects and so there's a whole bunch of small ones and a few really big ones that eat other walleyes.

[Steven Rinella]

But there's a lot of age classes missing.

[Phil]

Yep. Yeah. But they've, they've changed the management strategy so people are keeping more of those small ones and there's a cut off. You can only keep one over 15 inches, I think to get those, those bigger age classes coming back. But we had, we had a great, you know, we caught enough for a fish fry. It was fun.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, it's a weird deal. It's almost like some more elves gotta get. I don't know.

[Phil]

But dude, like we put the boat in and it's like, where do we go? And then you look to the south lake and there's like a cluster of 30 boats, like kind of in one

[Steven Rinella]

corner fishing wally dogs.

[Phil]

Yeah. And it's like, well, we'll go check there.

[Steven Rinella]

And sure enough, they were all catching those 12 inches.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Huh. Yep.

[Mike]

Huh.

[Steven Rinella]

So, yeah, dynamic lake.

[Phil]

Yeah. I like. It's not my favorite one. I. We usually hit another lake in the summer, which, when we'll start hitting that one too. But it's close by, so it was

[Steven Rinella]

fun in, in my lifetime. Like, I remember I started fishing that lake in the mid-90s.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And at that time you could get A mountain.

[Phil]

Well, I remember you saying you and your brothers used to catch a couple hundred in one morning.

[Steven Rinella]

8, 9, 10 inch yellow perch. Now there's a couple perch in there

[Phil]

that are bigger than the walleye.

[Steven Rinella]

That are bigger than the walleyes.

[Spencer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

So it went for being that you went from being swarms of 8, 9, 10 inch perch, no walleye to speak of, except for like a normal walleye fishery, to being that the small perch are gone. It's giant perch and perch sized walleyes.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But this is the, this is what happens in reservoirs and this is what happens when you have a fishery dominated by non natives.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah. It's just hard to control what happens.

[Steven Rinella]

And yeah, there's no equilibrium.

[Phil]

The walleye blew up, but they ate all the perch. So, you know, that's what it is there. That lake also has like, in my eyes, it's a problem. Like the, the, the large percentage of the biomass in that lake seems to be carp.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Now my boy and his buddy put on wetsuits and took spear guns.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And he said without going under, I gave him a couple pins and I'm like, you want to dive down to the drop? He said we never went underwater. And he said we laid on the surface and shot.34.

[Phil]

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. I don't know what you do about it.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, nothing.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He thinks he's helping. You ain't helping when you get up to 34,000. I'm like, he's like, hey, we're going carp spearfishing. What do you do with all this carp? I'm going to flame. Not my freezer. Get him. It helps the lake. I'm like, okay, yeah. I'll tell you, like, let's agree on this. It doesn't hurt the lake, right? Yeah, it doesn't hurt the lake. Yeah. Spencer. Gardening.

[Spencer]

Gardening, but not gardening.

[Steven Rinella]

You're an orchardist. Is that a word?

[Spencer]

I. I don't know if I. That's probably a word. I think like the gardening version of an orchard though is orchardy. Orchardy. Something like that. It's like orchard. R Y. So I've been orcharding.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Phil]

No, I bet you.

[Spencer]

I think that's like the gardening equivalent. It doesn't matter. I've spent my spring digging holes. I'm trying to start an orchard where I live. I'm now up to 60 fruit bearing trees, dwarf trees and shrubs on my property from 16 different types of fruit. Phil has a graphic for us there. I've got.

[Steven Rinella]

Wow, who made that graph go To a Cracker barrel. That's good.

[Mike]

It's personalized.

[Steven Rinella]

Did you make generic?

[Spencer]

No, I asked data center to make it for me.

[Steven Rinella]

Right next to.

[Mike]

Yeah, Live, laugh, love people.

[Phil]

Like, my grandma had this wallpaper. Five gallon bucket of water down the

[Spencer]

Apples, blackberries, buffalo berries, chokeberries, choked cherries, currants, crab apples, cherries, plums, pears, peaches, raspberries, rhubarb, Saskatoon thimbleberries and honey berries.

[Steven Rinella]

Why are you rolling rhubarb into that?

[Spencer]

I didn't know where to put that at. It's a perennial fruit bearing asparagus and rhubarb.

[Steven Rinella]

Perennials? Yes. Gardening.

[Spencer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Peel, peel away rhubarb.

[Mike]

You make a pie with it. Listen, you make a pie and a

[Steven Rinella]

crisp, you might as well put spinach on there.

[Spencer]

Take, take rhubarb off. Ignore rhubarb, please. I have, I have two rhubarb.

[Steven Rinella]

You're shooting another gallon of water by removing rhubarb.

[Spencer]

And then I've got a 16 foot asparagus trench that I've got going as well.

[Steven Rinella]

But that didn't make the list.

[Spencer]

That, you know, that didn't feel like it was.

[Steven Rinella]

But why didn't rhubarb make the list?

[Spencer]

Yeah, that felt like a fruit bearing thing.

[Phil]

What are you most excited to eat on that list?

[Spencer]

Most exciting.

[Steven Rinella]

I like to focus on the negative.

[Spencer]

You?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

Okay. What the most good to be self aware, probably.

[Phil]

Is anything producing yet? Are you still years away?

[Spencer]

Well, rhubarb, I made a. I made a cake with my rhubarb this last week, but that doesn't count.

[Phil]

Not a fruit. No.

[Spencer]

The thing I'm probably most excited for is peaches because that's the one that they tell you not to grow here. They're like peaches. They don't grow in regions.

[Phil]

You're like, I can do it, I'm trying it.

[Spencer]

Well, if we had this winter, we had this last winter, you could grow coconuts in the valley here. So the peaches I'm very bullish on. And I now have some peaches forming.

[Mike]

Throw them on the grill with some oversized pork chops.

[Spencer]

Those, those. I'm excited.

[Phil]

Like, bring on that global warming.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. I like what you got going for the most part.

[Spencer]

Okay, what, what, what don't we like besides rhubarb?

[Steven Rinella]

Your current. I think your currents are going to tear it a new one.

[Spencer]

They're doing good. I only planted two of those. Why choke cherries?

[Steven Rinella]

Choke cherries will tear out a new one.

[Spencer]

Crab apples. Well, one that they're native Which I really like. 12 of my 16 things are native to North America. The other one is they are a phenomenal pollinator for your other apples. Apples are one of those trees that you need to have multiple varieties. And crab apples are one of the strongest for helping pollinate your apples.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, you know what you might enjoy?

[Spencer]

Wanted to have a crab apple.

[Steven Rinella]

We have the author of a new book about Johnny Appleseed.

[Spencer]

Oh, I would love that.

[Steven Rinella]

He's coming on. Not only is about Johnny Appleseed, but he. He goes and does Johnny Chapman. Yeah. Goes and does his route and talks to people and Johnny Appleseed got any

[Phil]

scandal in his life?

[Steven Rinella]

I don't know. We'll find out. You should join.

[Spencer]

Yeah. Johnny Appleseed not. Wouldn't be scandalous to us to maybe his religion. He was like a very conservative, like Quaker.

[Steven Rinella]

Can you tell back to that? Because I got.

[Spencer]

Yeah. Anyway, he had the trees that he was planting were largely called spitters, which you don't eat those fresh. You make them into hard cider. And so he's sort of betraying his religion by planting all these hard cider brewing trees.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like if you went around just throwing beers in people's yard.

[Spencer]

Yes, it's exactly.

[Phil]

You're gonna have to get real good at canning, Spencer.

[Spencer]

I plan to. Yeah. What else you got, Steve?

[Steven Rinella]

Honeyberries. Honeyberries, Please. Dig them up. Try something new.

[Spencer]

Are you familiar with honeyberries?

[Steven Rinella]

Listen, I got some honeyberry bushes the likes of which would stagger the mind.

[Spencer]

So why don't you like them?

[Steven Rinella]

Because kids don't like them. They don't. They're not. I don't have any kids. They eat them, you know, no one likes them. I give them my kids and they're like, that's not a berry here.

[Spencer]

I think your problem is with honeyberries, you don't eat those until like the day they turn ripe. Anytime up until that moment, you have a very poor experience eating a honeyberry. So if you were eating ones that weren't ripe, I understand why someone would spit them out and be like, I'm never having.

[Steven Rinella]

Don't come tell me that I was doing it wrong. I'm just saying I would yank your honeyberries out. Uh huh.

[Spencer]

It's too late.

[Steven Rinella]

I would yank your blackberries out.

[Phil]

Saskatoons.

[Spencer]

Why would you take away blackberries?

[Steven Rinella]

I think I would double down on raspberries. Lose the blackberries.

[Phil]

Have you dealt with saskatoons or serviceberries before?

[Spencer]

Yeah, I've already got. I've had two of those in my.

[Phil]

They're real seedy and Mealy. They're not like a pick off the bush and eat again.

[Steven Rinella]

What the hell are you going to do with a crab apple?

[Spencer]

I just explained to Brody those are a phenomenal pollinator. And I'm even. I'm even going to double down on that next year. I've got some aspirational things I want to add yet. An apricot tree. It was too late for me this year to get an apricot tree in the ground, so I'm going to do that. I want to do an apple crab, which is a crab apple apple hybrid, so that it, like, makes a cute

[Mike]

little pollinator and it tastes okay.

[Spencer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

I grow. I grow currents. So last year I took all my current, spread them out on cookie sheets and set them out in the yard and made my own little current. Dried currents.

[Spencer]

Great.

[Steven Rinella]

Mrs. The Mrs. Was promising that she was going to make me something with all those dried currents. And them sons of are still in the pantry. Oh, I got to remind she. She's pretty reliable about b. I'm gonna

[Spencer]

be up to at some point here. I'm gonna have a harvest six months out of the year from May to October. I'm gonna constantly have my perennials pushing out fruit. And then I'm also gonna grow enough that I don't have to be mad at the bunnies and the birds and the bugs when they take some. I can just let them have it. Cause I'm like, look at all this delicious fruit I have. Take your share, bugs.

[Steven Rinella]

Not like Randall.

[Spencer]

No, I'm not gonna compete with.

[Phil]

Wakes up when Randall's out there.

[Steven Rinella]

Wakes up just enraged about chickens. The other thing, chicken depredations.

[Spencer]

Brody was worried about my time management, that I'm just going to spend my time doing nothing but mowing around trees. But I planted these in a no mo zone. So I have now converted 40% of my yard to an area that I. So that I'm just saving. Saving time there. Saving water.

[Phil]

I just hope you don't run a foul of the. The homeowners association.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, I was. I was. The other day I was asked Spencer, like, Spencer doesn't come to the office a lot of days. And he says, oh, I do my best work at home. Now I know what he's talking about.

[Phil]

He's a farmer now.

[Spencer]

His orchard, it's in my blood farming.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Oh, check this out. Mark Kenyon got a new podcast called Future wild, launched yesterday May 27. Drops every second Wednesday. Every second Wednesday. Wednesday, like every other Wednesday.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, so we've taken. You'll see like Cal's Week Cal's Week in Review that stuff. We had to do a little more shuffling on our on our feed so you'll find a feed called Meat Eater Conservation Cal's Week in Review Lives Meteor Conservation Mark Kenyon's Future Wild Lives Meat Eater Conservation so if you when you're when you're listening to the shows you want it was formerly the Cal of the Wild podcast feed, but it's now getting filled out with additional shows so you'll see a name switch there.

[Public Investing Ad Voice]

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[Steven Rinella]

Auto Parts can help take the guesswork out of check engine, ABS or maintenance lights in your vehicle with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. O'Reilly Veriscan can identify the most likely problem with just one scan. If you need help, O'Reilly Auto Parts can recommend a shop for you. Don't ignore a check engine, ABS or maintenance light. Ask for O'Reilly VeriScan today, a free service exclusively at O'Reilly Auto Parts. Service opens doors and at American Military University it can open doors for the whole family. If you have a loved one who served in the military, you may qualify for reduced tuition. AMU offers flexible online programs designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward wherever life takes you. Learn [e-mail] edu military Open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. Okay. Audience emails. Durkin wrote in. We were talking about how Michigan, Michigan has sort of three main game management areas. The Upper Peninsula, the Northern Lower Peninsula, the Southern Lower Peninsula. The Southern Lower Peninsula had always been ever since I was a child and probably before that had always been shotgun only. And there was like what we call the shotgun line. Below the shotgun line. You can't hunt with a rifle. Bless their hearts. They just undid that. It's just rifle through and through whole state. Now I was saying how I think that's a great idea and really liked all that. And I was sort of, this is not a word I use often, but I was poo, pooing the idea that it would lead to an increased number of accidents. Pat Durkin, America's last outdoor columnist, wrote in to say that he disagrees. And he thinks that he's got data showing that he disagrees. Okay, so Wisconsin, Right. Wisconsin, he says they went through the same debate 15 years ago. Okay. So in 2013, Wisconsin got rid of their shotgun zone. The county, they had counties that were shotgun only. The thinking is primarily that, you know, shotgun slug doesn't go as far. So it's safer, less likely to hit a home, less likely to hit a person.

[Phil]

Yeah. And like areas of higher population density, higher home density or whatever.

[Steven Rinella]

Because when you touch off, you know, grandpa's old 30 06. Right. It just can wind up somewhere you don't anticipate. And when you touch off your shotgun, it's going to burrow into the other side of the field. I'm exaggerating, but you get the point. Center fire. You know, tapered rifle cartridges fly farther. Wisconsin went through this. Durkin made a chart that he compiled last fall for his weekly outdoors column. And he looks into what happened in Wisconsin when they did this. And okay, he says this in brief. I almost hesitate to say this because it makes Gunton seem like a not good idea, but I'm just gonna, in all fairness, in brief, Wisconsin had 203 shooting accidents. We're not talking about hitting someone's storage shed. Accidents, human accidents. Wisconsin had 203 shooting accidents during November's main gun deer season from 2000 to 2025. So four a year is my math, right? No, eight a year. Is that possibly true? Durkin would know.

[Phil]

There's a lot of hunters in Wisconsin. And an accident, I mean, it doesn't

[Steven Rinella]

define what accident is.203 shooting accidents in 25 years.

[Phil]

What I would want to know is how many of those were like self inflicted wound. Like, you know, there's like.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I know.

[Phil]

All encompassing.

[Steven Rinella]

That's when I start tearing Dirk and down. Yeah, that's one of the things I'm going to use to tear him apart.

[Mike]

Right.

[Spencer]

There are 800 down, 800,000 deer tags in Wisconsin. So that's, you know, one accident per 100,000 tags.

[Phil]

Yeah, I'll take the sides.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't. I've just. I almost want to abort right now because there's parts of this I'm just not feeling.

[Phil]

I think you got to keep going.

[Steven Rinella]

I'll keep going. But please, if you're a Wisconsin night who's handy with numbers and good on the Internet, feel free to write in. Dirk goes on to say this. So then they got rid of the shotgun. Only counties went rifle statewide from 2000 to 200 2012. No, hold on. I'm giving this wrong son of. I should have never gotten into this.

[Phil]

Well, we screw like.

[Steven Rinella]

I should have never gotten into this. Let me put my glasses on.

[Phil]

Initially, you said myself, the numbers we just quoted you said were from 2000 to 2000. 2025. It was actually 2000 to 2012. Those, those.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, who put down 25?

[Mike]

No, no, no, no. This is.

[Steven Rinella]

May I. Never mind. May I pull it out?

[Mike]

May I?

[Steven Rinella]

Stories not ready.

[Mike]

So big picture, there's a 25 year span.

[Steven Rinella]

I.

[Mike]

And halfway through that, it goes to rifles only. So in the first half of this 25 year span, there were 139 of the 203 shootings took place in the. In the second half of it, there have been 64.

[Steven Rinella]

I respect that. Steve. I'm pulling out.

[Phil]

You're not falling into the sunk cost fallacy.

[Mike]

No, he.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I'm just. I'm pulling.

[Mike]

He should have. He should have just cut this sentence.

[Spencer]

There's a 54% decline when they switch

[Steven Rinella]

to I am not I. You remember when cbs, I think it's pretty straight.

[Mike]

The numbers all add up.

[Steven Rinella]

Remember Barry Weiss took over CBS News and they had that big story prepared about the El Salvadoran super prison. And they pulled the story and everybody got all mad. And then she said, it's not that we're pulling it because they were like, oh, you just. You're afraid to be critical of the administration. And she said, that's not it. The reporting's not ready. And then lo and behold, the story came out. That's us right now.

[Mike]

I think this is pretty straightforward reporting's not ready. Steve, just ignore the sentence that says in brief and then just read the last two sentences. Sentences of the paragraph.

[Catherine Hag]

Yes.

[Mike]

From 2000 to 2012, 139 shootings. From 2013 to 2025, 64 shootings. A 54% decline.

[Steven Rinella]

But I'm still going to tear dirty down when I'm ready because how many of these are self inflicted?

[Spencer]

Do you think that changes the rifle versus shotgun?

[Steven Rinella]

Because I don't know. I don't. What I, I need to parse this out. Like, I don't. The 54, I don't know that you could attribute. It's just not deep.

[Mike]

No, but I think all it shows is that when you switch to rifles, you don't necessarily see an increase in overall accidental shootings.

[Steven Rinella]

No, he's, that's, that's what he's saying. You do see an increase.

[Mike]

No, no, he's saying you see a decrease.

[Spencer]

Oh, I think the problem is you didn't read this.

[Steven Rinella]

I read it.

[Spencer]

Oh, you didn't comprehend it.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So I didn't comprehend they switched to

[Mike]

rifles and in fact they've had a decline in accidental shootings.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Mike]

So there's something else that explains the decline, but clearly you don't see an increase.

[Spencer]

The bucks got bigger, the sky got bluer, birds music got sweeter. Everything improved when they switched to rifles.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, Durkin does make a good point. Maybe he's right. What he does make a good point about is he's like, here's the other deal. Yeah. I miss. So. So it's like my fault a little bit. I was, I didn't.

[Mike]

No one said that.

[Spencer]

Okay, Weiss.

[Steven Rinella]

I screwed up. I shouldn't have pulled it. I was going to tear Durkin apart, but I don't think we've sold it yet. What Durkin does point out is this. He's doing a little bit of what I wanted him to do more of. He's pointing out that deer drives are kind of going extinct.

[Phil]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

And he's pointing out that people are using more elevated blinds, which is helping to reduce the accidents. But until you pluck out self inflicted. Shootings where a guy is like getting his gun out of his truck. Right. Shoots himself in the knee or whatever. I would need to like, I would need to parse it out to see what is the result of like bullets flying and what is the result of. Of just malfeasance. What do they say in the military? There is no accidental discharge. Yeah. They don't allow you to say accidental discharge. The military is a Negligent. Negligent discharge. I would need to see negligent discharges pulled out of this for me to start having any idea about it. That's all.

[Phil]

I think it shows a trend. Give him a little credit.

[Steven Rinella]

Moving on. A lawyer wrote in, we covered some people. We covered some crazy North Carolina waterfowl people who have taken it upon themselves to sort of migrate these little ducks and geese around a lake to put them where they feel they're safe. And they're sort of loading up wild waterfowl into dog crates and moving it where they want it to be. And this guy was asking, is that even legal? And we were pointing out that's definitely not legal. Well, a lawyer wrote in about a community in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, and Spencer's going to share some. In some insights about this community.

[Spencer]

This person says, those crazy North Carolina folks have nothing on this lady. She's a few cans short of a 12 pack. She is suing Surfside beach for infringing on her First Amendment rights by ticketing her for feeding geese. This lady will stop traffic on the highway to let geese walk across the road. Now, that doesn't seem that damning to me. Like, what, you're gonna just drive through the flock of geese if they're crossing the road?

[Steven Rinella]

No, that doesn't seem damning to me. That you would get cited for feeding. Illegally feeding migratory waterfowl and then say it's a violation of your First Amendment rights is goofy.

[Spencer]

The. The article that he links explains it a little more that this woman is a part of a group that's called fifo. F A F O. Flock around. Find out.

[Steven Rinella]

That's the only reason this is in this script. Because I like, flock around and find out a lot.

[Spencer]

Yeah. And these. These people, I don't think they call themselves this, but the article did. It calls them geese influencers who are sort of speaking up on behalf of the geese.

[Steven Rinella]

They have custom hoodies and.

[Spencer]

Yeah. And T shirts, and they show up in public wearing them. It sounds like this woman is. Is filming other residents and their treatment of the geese, which I assume is just like sort of hazing them to get them to move on.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Spencer]

And then she is then, you know, spreading those videos, and people are saying, you can't do that. You can't film these folks. And she's saying, yes, I can. And that's where the First Amendment thing comes in. Oh, it takes like four seconds.

[Steven Rinella]

Why would the lawyer that wrote in have gotten that wrong? Is he supposed to be law dogging?

[Spencer]

Yeah, I. I don't know that he got it wrong. He just, like, skipped, like, four steps to say she's protecting. She's protecting geese, and she has now turned it into a First Amendment thing.

[Steven Rinella]

I said they had hoodies. They, in fact have T shirts.

[Phil]

You know, I like those things.

[Steven Rinella]

Flock around, find out.

[Phil]

I like those so much. We should. Media should do a collab with these guys.

[Steven Rinella]

Be great. I'd like a flock around, find out.

[Spencer]

Dead goose instead. Instead of.

[Steven Rinella]

This is then riled up at a town hall meeting.

[Spencer]

Apparently it appears that way. Yeah. And so now it's now turned into a First Amendment thing.

[Mike]

Her attorney says the witch hunt of Maria and the Canadian geese is over. We'll put an end to this.

[Spencer]

And that the town is not in her favor. They say that feeding these things is causing issues for their public spaces and the residents. So it's the. The FAFO group versus the town.

[Steven Rinella]

It's a great story. Guy wrote in. Oh, Brody's gonna talk about a guy that wrote in.

[Phil]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I've been hearing this lately. I've been hearing this.

[Phil]

I've been hearing it for a lot. This is near and dear to my heart, this conspiracy theory.

[Steven Rinella]

It's not a conspiracy.

[Phil]

Listen, it is. It is. I think it is. You don't think it is. Anyway, let's. Let's.

[Spencer]

Let me hear it.

[Phil]

We got. We got an email from a listener. I listened to your last interview with podcast with Mike Bodenchuk. That. I say it.

[Steven Rinella]

That's correct.

[Phil]

On predation, you never mentioned turkeys predating on grouse chicks and eggs. They planted turkeys in northern Wisconsin, where they are invasive species. Okay, we'll get to that. People have witnessed turkeys killing and eating grouse chicks. 30 turkeys will go through the woods, making it look like pigs went through, scratching up and eating everything. Turkeys are everywhere now, and grouse populations are suffering. Every single person living in once fantastic grouse areas that have been taken over by turkeys say the same thing. Grouse are suffering. This seems to be a taboo subject. I would like to hear your thoughts. Go ahead. I got thoughts.

[Steven Rinella]

I was just hunting in Oklahoma. Yeah, turkeys hunting in Oklahoma. And like, every time you go turkey hunting, there's a lot of birds on the neighbor's place, which is a common problem. So we went and spoke to the neighbors.

[Phil]

Huh?

[Steven Rinella]

He said, kill them all. They're eating all my quail.

[Phil]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

And then we were. We were talking amongst ourselves. Do we dispel him of that belief

[Phil]

or let him just.

[Steven Rinella]

Or do we Just take the permission.

[Phil]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

We just decided to take the permission.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And resist. Like every part of me, Every part of me wanted to say, well, yeah, I don't know about that.

[Spencer]

Right. But I've never corrected a landowner who said something, you know, tell me black is white, I'd be like, of course it is.

[Steven Rinella]

Yes.

[Phil]

This is a thing that's been coming up for years, like in ruffed grouse country. And, you know, the whole, like, people have witnessed turkeys killing and eating grouse chicks. Maybe. I don't know.

[Steven Rinella]

I'd have to see where. There's got to be trail cam footage if this is such a problem.

[Phil]

Right. But like, he's right. That nor turkeys were introduced into northern Wisconsin in 1970s. Prior to that, there were not turkeys that far north. They, they planted them, they took off. They did. Well, I don't think you can call them an invasive species. That's my opinion. During that same time frame, like throughout ruffed grouse country, since the late 70s, early 80s, Rough Grouse have been on a serious decline. The fact that these two things happened at the same time, like, correlation is not causation. Right. Just because the turkeys are there doesn't mean they're the reason grouse are around. Are. Are hurting. We did a podcast with our buddy Carl Malcolm from the Rough Grouse Society and touched on this a little bit. Carl would tell you it's exclusively. Not exclusively.

[Steven Rinella]

It's.

[Phil]

It's mostly a habitat problem where grouse are hurting. It's because the habitat isn't ideal for them. Like, I can't say this guy is, is completely wrong and what he's seeing didn't happen. But yeah, I think it's a. It's along the lines of a conspiracy theory. It's something I tell my buddy in, in Pennsylvania that's a hardcore grouse hunter. I say it all the time as a joke, like, turkeys ate all the grouse, but it's a joke.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Well, I would invite this person and I would never want to hack on a guy that's just curious about what's going on.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I would invite him to reach out to places that do turkey research.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

Reach out to nwtf, Reach out to Carl too, and start looking into something called crop surveys. There have been in a lot of areas, extensive crop surveys.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Where they. Hunters submit, in some cases, thousands of samples of turkey crops. And you can see, you can research about what turns up in turkey crops.

[Phil]

They eat some odd things.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Like, and, and I can't rule out that it never happens.

[Phil]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Because you can throw a mouse to a backyard chicken.

[Phil]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

It'll eat the mouse.

[Mike]

Now we're talking.

[Steven Rinella]

There is, there is trail cam footage of a white tailed deer.

[Phil]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Going up to a robin nest, pulling a hatchling out of the nest and eating it.

[Phil]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Things happen.

[Phil]

They do.

[Steven Rinella]

But is it having a population level impact?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And like, I can't tell you that no turkey has never eaten a grouse.

[Phil]

Sure. I'm sure it's happened, but I would think if this was a major problem that, that an organization like the Ruff Grouse Society might have like addressed this at this point.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

And it does not seem to be a bit of a concern.

[Spencer]

Is the idea that they enjoy eating those eggs or are they just trying to eliminate competition from the.

[Phil]

Oh, no, I think it's like just keep whatever they can.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't know.

[Spencer]

I'm not familiar with this theory.

[Phil]

Yeah, I think it's just a, just.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. The turkeys aren't doing like, they're not, not doing like what a wolf does when it kills a coyote.

[Phil]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, I don't, I mean I've never interviewed a turkey, but I don't buy. That's just as my guess on it.

[Phil]

So yeah, sorry man, I, I can't. I'm not buying it, but good luck.

[Public Investing Ad Voice]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you backtest it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures O'Reilly

[Steven Rinella]

Auto Parts can help take the guesswork out of check engine, ABS or maintenance lights in your vehicle with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. O'Reilly Veriscan can identify the most likely problem with just one scan. If you need help, O'Reilly Auto Parts can recommend a shop for you. Don't ignore a check engine, ABS or maintenance light. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan Today, a free service exclusively at O'Reilly Auto Parts. Service opens doors and at American Military University, it can open doors for the whole family. If you have a loved one who served in the military, you may qualify for reduced tuition. AMU offers flexible online programs designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward. Wherever life is, life takes you. Learn more at AMU Apus Edu Military open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. In the news, we have a special guest coming on right now from the National Institute of Health. Let me give you a little background, okay? The guy I used to be buddies with, we didn't have a fallen out. We just don't talk as much as we once did. The journalist Jim Robbins did a piece in the New York Times about chronic wasting disease and what's worked, what's not worked. Just, just kind of your like typical piece that comes up every few years where there's a survey of what's going on in chronic waste and disease research, chronic wasting, disease management, attitudes toward chronic wasting disease. It was, it was a well reported piece. And Jim Robbins is, is pretty great at his, when he does wildlife work, he's pretty great at really getting a disparate collection of voices together on an issue. I always like reading Jim Robbins journalism and he does a lot of great pieces in the Times and brings a very level headed look to complex wildlife issues. In this piece, I read about the work of Catherine. Catherine, can you help me with your, how you pronounce your last name?

[Catherine Hag]

It's Hay Hag.

[Steven Rinella]

In the work, Jim mentioned Catherine Hag from the National Institute of Health and that they were, she'll do a much better job of explaining it than me, but they were looking into the likelihood or the probability or what would need to happen for chronic wasting disease to do a species jump. So just as a quick background, chronic wasting disease is a, is a cervid disease, moose, deer, whitetail deer, mule deer, elk, caribou, members of the deer family. It's a prion disease that afflicts members of the deer family and there's this fear that I'm speaking of me personally. I've eaten accidentally, I've eaten CWD positive meat. I worry. My primary concern around CWD remains that a person would get it, and I. And I. It would be devastating for that individual. It'd be devastating for the culture of deer hunting. It would be terrible that you would look at a deer not as this great source of renewable resource of and source of nutrition and all these family values baked up around hunting and eating wild game and sharing that experience, and you'd look at a deer and think, man, that thing's not safe to eat. It would just be devastating. So with all that said, Catherine, can you tell us a little bit about what you do at work and what you did at work around your CWD project?

[Catherine Hag]

Thank you very much for inviting me on. Yeah. I am a prion biologist. My work has generally focused on the human forms of these diseases. So in humans, most of the diseases, they're a bit more like Alzheimer's. They arise for no known reason. They're not all, by any means due to infection. That's a very, very small amount. Yeah, there are a very small number that are genetic as well. So in the focus on human diseases, what we developed was what we call a human cerebral organoid model of disease. What that is, is we take a little snip of skin cells from a consenting donor and we reprogram them like you would a computer to make them stem cells. From those stem cells, we then tell them to grow into brain cells, and we create these little balls of brain cells. Once we've done that, we can expose them to those infectious prions from a human that died of these diseases, and we can have them infected to model the development of disease in a petri dish.

[Steven Rinella]

So I want to ask a question, a clarifying question on that. When you say a human that died from those diseases, give me an example of one of the diseases that that might. Because, you know, like we said, like, no human has. As far as we know, no human has ever contracted cwd. So what. What human disease did you. Would you use in your work?

[Catherine Hag]

We use Creutzfeldt Jakob disease.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

So that's the most common form of human disease. It's still really rare. It's an incidence of about one to three per million. So not common by any stretch. But the people who die of it, the prions that are within their brain are infectious to other human tissue.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

So that's what we use.

[Steven Rinella]

And you've been. And you with the technology you're describing, you have been able to take the, these prions from a donor and you've been able to infect the cells in your petri dish. Like you can, you can successfully infect the cells?

[Catherine Hag]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

Yeah. And we've monitored them for the disease progression, what's changing in them, and the deposition of the misfolded protein that is that causative prion. So we see all of that within the human organoids.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Okay. So. So then walk me through what happened when you started looking at CWD or give me other, any other relevant steps along the way here.

[Catherine Hag]

Well, like you said, the big, the big question, what worries everyone is the potential for a jump from the observance to humans of this disease. And that's a really legitimate worry. I don't know if you have covered mad cow disease on this show, but these diseases are in that same group, that same family. So mad cow disease did jump from cattle to humans. It was thought to be through eating contaminated meat. So it's, it's a real genuine concern. So for us, we now have a model of human infection and we thought we could use this to try and test that species barrier. Our model is somewhat artificial. To be fair. We literally put the mini brains into a deer brain homogeneous. So those little mini brain organoid cultures swim in the CWD infectious prions. It's a massive exposure and it's a prolonged exposure. So it's far more than we would ever expect any human to really meet. And certainly no human brain would be expected to be in that environment. So we give them this massive dose of infectious prions and then we monitor them over time to see if they develop disease. Because the cwd, the deer prions are just a little bit different to the human. We can detect the difference between what was the original deer prion and if a human prion starts to emerge. And the good news for that study was that we did not find any evidence of infection of the human organoids.

[Steven Rinella]

Have you been able to run the same experiment using, let's say, run it with cattle. Okay. Or run it with horse, or have you done that?

[Catherine Hag]

We have been doing that. Our difficulty with the BSC has been getting hold of good quality tissues to use. We've had tissues with very low titers that really would be too low for infection anyway. Okay, so we, we are doing that. We are trying to do that. We have an abundance of CWD tissue.

[Steven Rinella]

So, yeah, I got my, my, I was, my question was confusing. I'm sorry, What I meant was so the livestock industry, Right. Is, is rightfully, has been rightfully concerned about cwd that we have CWD infected deer and elk grazing with, coming into contact with cattle or sheep.

[Mike]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And so imagine from, imagine from our America's beef producing industry, the impacts. Right? Yes, that would happen should we find that CWD had somehow infected the nation's beef herds. So would you be able to, like, would your experiment work to bathe cattle brain cells in CWD to see if that's a possible jump?

[Catherine Hag]

Yes, it would. So I am aware that the CDC has tissues of CWD that has transmitted to cattle, and we do actually want to look and see if that would be infectious to organoids. There are some difficulties with these experiments because I think people worry that they borderline on gain of function, which obviously you don't want to cross into that area.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

Really? We just want to screen. Is this infectious to the human brain organoids?

[Steven Rinella]

Yep.

[Catherine Hag]

But I personally think that's a really critical experiment. I think it's far more likely that a CWD that's gone into cow could be a problem. And I think we do need to know that.

[Steven Rinella]

Got it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you a question that we didn't tee up with you. It's not like a controversial question. Don't feel uncomfortable. But, but a lot of times when I'm talking about cwd, you know, with other deer hunters and people that eat a lot of deer and elk, and we have CWD in what's 30 some states now. So most people live in a CWD state. It's better understood on the county level. But, but, you know, millions of Americans hunt deer in areas where CWD is in their county. And a question that comes up or an idea that comes up is maybe we don't have known instances of humans contracting CWD because these things take so much time. Right. And maybe it's just a myth. But, but, but you hear people say, well, I don't know, in 10 years, in 20 years, maybe there will be many. We just don't know yet how, as a professional, what are your thoughts on this idea that it would, would that you would eat infected meat in, in, in, in 20 years, it would emerge. Is this based on anything realistic or is this just kind of a urban, like a, like a, not an urban, but a rural legend?

[Catherine Hag]

It's not impossible. These are diseases with very long incubation periods. So one comparison you can draw is with the BSE epidemic.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

Now that emerged in the mid-1980s and we were seeing the first cases in the mid-1990s, I think it transpired that it's about an eight year median incubation. So what we might expect, you know, CWD we've known about since, I think it's been published since the 60s.

[Steven Rinella]

That's correct, yeah.

[Catherine Hag]

So what we might expect is that if that really was the case, that we'd start seeing a tick up in the number of cases of cjd and that just hasn't happened.

[Steven Rinella]

Got it.

[Catherine Hag]

So I think that is very unlikely. I mean, if the incubation period is so long that it's longer than a human lifespan, that would be irrelevant anyway. But we would be on the lookout for a tick up in cases or more likely like bsc. The form of CJD that it caused was completely different to the forms that we see through natural sporadic disease. The biochemical signature of the protein was distinct. So we were able to tell whether someone died of the variant CJD from eating BSC versus an unfortunate case of the normal disease.

[Steven Rinella]

I understand.

[Catherine Hag]

So while it's not impossible at this point, I don't believe there's any evidence to support a tick up in cases or a different disease emerging.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Now you're welcome to just to, to just take a wild guess here, but I'm going to ask you another question. When CWD was identified, it was identified in a, I believe it was a captive mule deer in Colorado in the late 60s. Where do you think that came from? I mean, if we had done the amount of testing, let's say the amount of testing we're doing now across the country, if we were doing that amount of testing in 1900, would we have found CWD if we were doing that amount of testing in 1900? Or do you think it spontaneously generated somehow in the North American cervid population?

[Catherine Hag]

It's hard to tell. It may have been around for much, much longer than we know. I believe that there is a isolated herd in one of the northern European countries where it spontaneously appeared. So it seems most likely that it could have been a spontaneous disease, that maybe if the deer weren't in such close proximity, maybe that one deer would have died and it wouldn't have been a particular problem. But I don't know, it could have been just the odd case here and there for a very long time.

[Steven Rinella]

And there's no, you know how you can go look at ice, you can go look at an organism and you could tell from mitochondrial DNA that it went through a bottleneck, or you can get some idea of, I don't know the longevity of it, like how. But by the rate of mutations, whatever the hell, you can tell how long something had been around. But these things, you can't really look at that way. Right? I mean, you can't look at them and sort of date or look at how they morphed over time or where populations emerged and spread to. Because it's a. It's a protein and not. Not a cell. I mean, am I, you know, is what I'm saying making any sense? Like you can't track its history, or am I wrong?

[Catherine Hag]

There's a little. A little bit you can. So over millennia of evolution, that gene has persisted in most mammalian species and avian species, I think, even in turtles. And you can track how the gene evolved by the differences between each species. Okay, so one of the things we do when we're looking at sort of the risk of transmission is where those changes have occurred in the sequence. We can look at whether that would prohibit the two prions binding. So if a sequence has changed too much, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. It's just not going to fit. We can look at that a little bit. And there is quite a lot of work going on in the field to try and look at those structures to determine whether there is a risk of particularly a given strain maybe moving across rather than.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep, understood.

[Catherine Hag]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, in all honesty, I mostly understand what you're saying, but I get the gist of what you're saying. Can I ask you one last question?

[Catherine Hag]

Of course.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Have you followed and apologies, but we're getting into. We. We didn't like, like pre hit you with these, so if you don't want to answer, don't answer it. Have you followed this conversation and some action being taken place around this idea that there's some deer that seem to. Be less. Less susceptible to cwd or CWD behaves in them differently and it's. It. It lingers longer or whatever. But they're like. They're being billed as a resistant. A CWD resistant deer. Do you. Do you have any. Do you have any professional awareness of this, Of. Of this idea?

[Catherine Hag]

Yes. It's not. It's not crazy. This mostly comes from the genetics again. So within our own genes, you can have what's called a polymorphism.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

Which can just be a single change in the gene. It doesn't cause disease. It's there. It's normal for everyone. It's, you know, just inherited. But those little changes can change your susceptibility to disease in the world of scrapy. They found that there's a specific, specific set of these polymorphisms. Like, I think it's three for the scrapy resistance. But when they have those polymorphisms, they are very unlikely to contract disease.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

So that herd becomes protected. And this is of huge interest for CWD as well, because if you could breed a herd that simply can't get the disease, then it is no longer a problem.

[Steven Rinella]

I little bit beg to differ, because. I guess I don't beg to differ on what you're saying where I wind up having a hard time. And this is for. This is a different conversation because this is like population modeling and population dynamics is how. I mean, when you have tens of millions of deer out on the landscape and we have servants in 50 states, you know, how would you. Let's say you found it. How would you ever have meaningful genetic input into a population without starting basically from zero all over again?

[Catherine Hag]

It'll take a long time, Julie.

[Mike]

So

[Catherine Hag]

this has also happened naturally.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

I don't know if you've heard of Kuru. It was a disease of the foreign tribe of Papua New Guinea. So they actually, they. They were cannibals. They were eating the corpse as part of a funeral rite and of course, becoming infected. But they actually evolved a new polymorphism to protect them against disease. And I think at the point that they were persuaded to change their funeral rights, it was about 50% of the population that may have this new polymorphism.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Catherine Hag]

So it happened naturally that they were evolving this effectively to survive. So with a few deer, with those polymorphisms out there, they may simply out compete the ones that get disease.

[Steven Rinella]

Got it, man.

[Catherine Hag]

Over time.

[Phil]

I got a question, please.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, this is. She's great. If you ever. You should come do a residency here.

[Phil]

Catherine. What. What would you say to a hunter who sees the result of your test is like, see, there was nothing to worry about. Like, I can eat the CWD positive meat and it's not like I have no. Nothing to worry about as far as getting infected. Like, what would you say now you're

[Steven Rinella]

putting her in a tough spot?

[Phil]

I don't, but I think there's an answer, like, because I'm guessing, like, there's no such thing as a negative result.

[Spencer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, you want to see a scientist choose her words carefully.

[Phil]

Yeah. Get ready, because there are going to be hunters who are like, see?

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, I feel that way.

[Phil]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Catherine Hag]

Every model is flawed. So that's the first thing to bear in mind in science. Nothing is perfect. So we we have to always take our results with a grain of salt. In our model, we have tested the human polymorphisms that represent only 90ish percent of the population. So there's still a subset of people. We haven't been able to test whether they would be vulnerable. We are working on that now and keeping fingers crossed. So I don't think I would be blase and say, yeah, you'll be fine, eat as much as you want. I think I would still recommend to people that they get their meat tested if they can. I also feel a bit like this isn't something to be losing sleep over.

[Steven Rinella]

H. This is the kind of CWD research I like, man.

[Phil]

Don't lose any sleep over.

[Steven Rinella]

No, no. Just dispassionate that she's dispassionate.

[Phil]

Yeah, I mean, no, I like that answer. Keep it in mind, but don't lose any sleep over it.

[Steven Rinella]

Katherine, you come on the show anytime, man.

[Mike]

This is great.

[Steven Rinella]

This is my favorite guest of all time. Thank you very much.

[Catherine Hag]

Well, thank you for the invite.

[Steven Rinella]

You come any time. We'll get you, you can have Brody seat.

[Phil]

We'll get you some of our deer meat to eat.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, we'll cook you some deer meat.

[Mike]

Thank you.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, you know, I gotta tell you one last thing. I'm just telling you this just to enter, just to be entertaining, to give you a little concept to think about when I used to have an idea that, like, I love to talk about CWD to a fault. It's my favorite subject. And I'm open to people's opinions about who. Who. I'm very open to people who want to say, don't worry about cwd or they're like, CWD is a hoax or CW doesn't matter. It's a conspiracy theory. And my thing is I used to want to make a burger. I wanted to get a bunch of CWD infected deer, like a dozen of them. Them and make a batch of burger with all that meat. And then when someone was coming to tell me that it was a hoax and didn't matter, I would cook them that a patty of that burger. And if they ate the burger, then I would listen to everything they said. If they declined the burger, then I would say, you see, it's concerning. But I would only believe the hoaxers after they ate my burger. But I haven't made it because I feel like I would be criticized for having that burger around. Yeah, like I'd write like, don't eat on the pack.

[Catherine Hag]

It was the famous clip in the UK of The politician giving his little daughter a burger right in the heart of the BSC epidemic was there. Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Wow. That's my guy right there. Yeah.

[Mike]

And put your mouth where your money is.

[Steven Rinella]

And as much as I recently ate CWD infected meat without knowing it and then had like an uncomfortable text message from my friend telling me, and then I had to text my buddy who was with me at his house, Right. If someone made me the burger I'm talking about still today after hearing your news, still today, I would be like, man, I don't want. I just don't want that burger. Huh? All right. Thank you very much for coming on. I appreciate the work you're doing. I'm sure you have all kinds of motivations to do your work, but. But on behalf of hunters and on behalf of consumers of deer meat, thank you for looking into this. This is just the kind of information we need to make responsible decisions. So I appreciate it.

[Catherine Hag]

Thank you for having me.

[Spencer]

Great.

[Steven Rinella]

Thanks, Catherine.

[Mike]

Thank you.

[Public Investing Ad Voice]

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[Steven Rinella]

Auto Parts can help take the guesswork out of check engine, ABS or maintenance lights in your vehicle with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. O'Reilly Veriscan can identify the most likely problem with just one scan. If you need help, O'Reilly Auto Parts can recommend a shop for you don't ignore a check engine, ABS or maintenance light. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan Today, a free service exclusively at O'Reilly Auto Parts Service opens doors. And at American Military University, it can open doors for the whole family. If you have a loved one who served in the military, you may qualify for reduced tuition. AMU offers flexible online programs designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward wherever life takes you. Learn more at amu Apus Edu Military open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. Play the clip, Phil.

[Phil]

Oh, goodness.

[Mike]

Oh, we're just gonna, I feel like I need to sit with that.

[Steven Rinella]

Listen, I've been sitting with it. I read Jim Robbins article.

[Mike]

There's a lot of, there's a lot of subjects where you, you, you, you know, they pop up in the news every now and then and you're like, I've never, I have, I've seen this before. I've seen this before. And then you get that and it's like a, it's like a drug. It's like, oh, yeah, a new, a new information.

[Phil]

Well, that's truly the new, like, yeah, you don't get new information on cwd.

[Mike]

No.

[Phil]

Ever. And we just got some.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, that's like the least full of lady on the planet. That's the vibe I'm getting.

[Mike]

That was electric.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Clip time.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, if you put me, like, if I was going to rate people full of shit, like, I would be like up there, you know, I mean, she's like down there, man. Yeah. Play the clip. This guy. Now this, just watch this guy for his hosting abilities. I'm, I'm not joking. This guy is mesmerizing to me. Play the clip, Phil.

[Phil]

Haunting aspect of the recent bear killing of Anthony Polio in Glacier national park

[Steven Rinella]

is that he did deploy bear spray,

[Phil]

but it still killed him. I've heard that yesterday from a customer who read an article and today a member of that actually works for Glacier national park came by and said the same thing. Now, I have made on James Willow's YouTube and I released it here on Facebook five times.

[Steven Rinella]

When bear spray won't help you.

[Phil]

And it would be helpful if you viewed that video. The guy who worked for the park

[Steven Rinella]

service came in today and said that

[Phil]

when they were searching for Anthony polio,

[Steven Rinella]

even though it was two or three

[Mike]

days later, part of the way that

[Phil]

they found him is that they smelled the bear spray and went over to where the incident occurred and found his body.

[Steven Rinella]

Great. So as promised, the pistol V Bear spray debate rages on a little more background. As you know, we got that gentleman covered it pretty well. But a young man named Anthony Polio from Florida, he lives in central Florida now. I think he's from south Florida originally. I was reading he works as a church deacon. He was killed on the. This spring. He was killed on the way up to the Mount Brown fire lookout in Glacier National Park. Right before he killed, he left his dad a phone message. It's kind of haunting idea. He was killed 2.5 miles from the trailhead. A couple little tidbits here that are worth pointing out before I get into the bear spray idea. When that happened first is just an ax to grind. When that happened, it was pointed out the first in the park in 25 years. Like, it's like, it's so rare. It hasn't happened in the park in 25 years. But that is a demonstration of what I think of as national park syndrome, which is thinking like taking Yellowstone, Glacier, whatever, Yosemite, and, and drawing it off as though that this is a world unto itself and what happens within these arbitrary borders somehow is different than what happens outside of these borders. So when you're pointing out first in the park in 25 years, okay, but not the first in a while. So you have, you know, a bear killed someone in Montana in 23. A bear killed someone in Montana in 2022. Bears, grizzly bears killed two people in Montana in 2021. Just last year, August of 25, a guy was killed in British Columbia, 48 miles from the border. So by pointing out these things like in the park, as though the park is something that exists in and of itself is. Is a little like just misleading and goofy. I would much rather speak about these things at an ecosystem layer. Yeah, the like. And. And I hate the word. I hate the fact that Yellowstone is in this. But it's the best servable op. Serviceable words like the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, right? Which is a chunk of ground the size of Indiana.

[Phil]

There's definitely probably tourists out there that like, feel much different about walking around in Yellowstone than a solo elk hunter might feel about walking around Sol in Paradise Valley. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, it could never happen

[Steven Rinella]

to me because they create this idea. They create this idea that that somehow is a distinct place, right? This gentleman that was killed, his father even suggested like, just to kind of give you, like if you think of national park syndrome. And I don't mean this to be critical. Him, he just lost his son, but he suggested in speaking to a journalist from the New York Times, he suggested that all of the grizzlies in Glacier should be fitted with a GPS chip. And had they done that, this would have never happened because they would have been able to notify people where the bear was. And like, the. That someone would have. The idea that that was even possible comes from this idea of. Of that these parks are these distinct things with hard edges rather than the fact that the animals have no idea they move in and out. I'm not that soft boundaries. Because you're a big park guy.

[Spencer]

Yeah, but like, Glacier has over 3 million visitors a year. Those people aren't messing around out on national forests for the most part, maybe a few of them. But like, those 3 million go to Glacier and they recreate in Glacier. This is just like a statistic that they're keeping and be like, we had a shooting in Bozeman recently.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Spencer]

You wouldn't like, assign that to Belgrade, you know, the town a few miles away, even though you're like, it's all the same community or whatever.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. So does the guy that got killed by a grizzly just north of Yellowstone Park. So then when someone gets attacked in the park, they're like, no one's been attacked in this park for blinking the blank years. You're like, what guy just got killed six miles from the park?

[Spencer]

Yeah, that's just like the statistic for Yellowstone. Like, I'm not. I'm not that bothered by it. Like, could. I don't know again, 3 million people.

[Steven Rinella]

National Park Syndrome.

[Spencer]

3 million people visit. I think you have national park syndrome.

[Phil]

Oh, it's like national park derangement syndrome.

[Steven Rinella]

Yes. I think they should be wilderness areas. Guilty. I have derangement syndrome.

[Spencer]

Great.

[Steven Rinella]

I had some kind of analogy I thought of this morning, but I can't remember what it was. Okay, allow me to think about it for a minute. It.

[Spencer]

I'm just not that bothered by, like, the stat being, like, it's the first fatal grizzly attack in Glacier in, What was it, 30 years?

[Steven Rinella]

I would say the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem. When you say, like, oh, it has been happening. Glacier. Okay. But a grizzly killed someone in Ovando. Oh, here's my analogy. Yeah. A woman was killed. A bike. A bicyclist on a long bicycle track journey stopped and set up a tent near the post office in Ovando. A grizzly dragged her out and killed her. So would I say within the last few years. Right. Would I go and say, this is the first ever grizzly bear attack? In Ovando, which is like a couple miles wide.

[Public Investing Ad Voice]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

Or would I say a Northern Continental Divide ecosystem attack?

[Spencer]

I don't.

[Steven Rinella]

Because of course in Ovando, next to the post office, sure. It's the first one in a long time. In fact, I don't know when the last person got killed at the post office in Ovando was.

[Spencer]

But who are you specifically mad about? Because like I'm looking at an article right now and they give you all that context. They talk about the Ovando thing in here. They talk about like other attacks that have happened in Canada. So just like, who. Who is the person?

[Steven Rinella]

I believe we should talk about grisly attacks. This is relevant to very few small number of people. I would say going forward, if I was the emperor of the world on wildlife issues, a role I would like. I would say from now on we will speak of these bears in their DPS terminology, Distinct population segment terminology, which would be the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, the Cabinet Yak Ecosystem, Northern Cascade ecosystem, etc. That is how I would catalog attacks. That is how I would speak about it. That's not the point I'm trying to get to. Okay? The point I'm trying to get to is now it has real livened. Like even a friend of mine, a friend of mine text me, I will never trust bear spray ever. Because this guy discharged the spray. If you look, this kid that was killed, polio. There were accounts that his spray was found nearby and there were accounts that his spray was found still clutched in his hand. His pepper spray. He definitely discharged the spray. His father, who might have additional information that hasn't been released to the public because the person from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks who's investigating this incident isn't talking yet. The kid's father might have more information. The kid's father said to a journalist he thinks his kid hosed the bear and then ran and the bear caught up with him. I don't know where he's getting that, but the idea so people like it doesn't work. But here's the point. Part of the point. The guy that was killed 48 miles from the USBC border, 48 miles north of the USBC border. Shot the bear that killed him. Yeah, shot it in the hip. It killed the bear. It killed the bear, but the bear killed him.

[Phil]

There's nothing on a cannon.

[Steven Rinella]

In the words of Hatchet Jack, it killed the bar that killed me.

[Phil]

There's nothing on a can of bear spray that says guaranteed to stop a grizzly from killing.

[Steven Rinella]

But that's the way people are treating.

[Phil]

I know.

[Steven Rinella]

And I like. I have. I carry a Sig 10 millimeter when I think there's high likelihood of grizzly action. And I carry spray. This is my own little stupid math problem.

[Phil]

I don't know.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't know why I can't defend it. I carry spray when I think there's a casual chance of bear action. I don't know why. It's just dumb. This is what I do. It just works in my mind.

[Phil]

Do you remember when that bear was walking up the hill towards us on the moose hunt and Cook was holding the rifle in one hand and bear spray. And I said, you better pick one or the other.

[Steven Rinella]

This is so funny. We're sitting there on a hill, we're looking out. There's this grizzly coming across this flat and it gets into the willows right below us. And I'm like, that bear is going to be here in a second in our laps. Sure enough. So this, this thing that comes out where it's like reinforcing this idea. But this cuts both ways. Neither of these things are perfect.

[Mike]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

There was a case, a couple. There was just a few years ago, there's a guy that. Two guys are bear hunt, black bear hunting. They miss. They misidentify a grizzly bear. A guy shoots the grizzly bear thinking it's a black bear. The bear runs into the brush. They go in there after it. The wounded grizzly now attacks one of the hunters. The other hunter goes to kill the grizzly off his buddy, but instead mortally wounds the buddy.

[Mike]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

The buddy dies of a gunshot wound, not a bear attack. That's why if you go look at bear attack fatalities, he's not on the list. So do you then go, ha, guns don't work. No. Because it's like everything. None of this is perfect. None of this is perfect. But the fact that this guy discharged spray doesn't. You can't draw a conclusion from this because you go even to other attack. There was another attack in Montana, in Yellowstone Park. Well, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The woman was scratched up by a bear. Well, why did this, why did the mauling stop? Because her buddy hosed the bear. We've had two people on this show who were mauled by grizzly bears. And the mauling stopped when. When they hosed it. One hosed it on purpose. It was mauling the back of her neck and she stuck it it in her face over her shoulder without even looking at it. And Hosed it over her shoulder and it ran off. Another person that sat right in the studio, he didn't hose it. The bear, it was in his hand. The bear went to bite his hand, bit through the can and blew it up in its face. And the, the attack stopped.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, all these things are imperfect.

[Phil]

They're saying that he deployed it. It doesn't mean he hit the bear.

[Steven Rinella]

It doesn't. It doesn't mean he hit in the face.

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He could have deployed it with the wind in his face.

[Mike]

Right.

[Phil]

He could have been rolling around on the ground with bear spray, shooting that

[Steven Rinella]

all over the place.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Or he's sitting there in 10 mile an hour wind and, and the window sends it right back to him. It could be, I don't know, it could be that he hosed himself.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

We'll probably know later.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't know. But to draw big conclusions from this about the efficacy of spray or to draw big conclusions about the efficacy of guns from other incidents, they're all imperfect.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Mike]

I think you show me someone who has a very strong opinion, airtight opinion, one way or the other. I could find a one example to support that and I could find another example that would disprove your strategy.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

The dismissiveness from the video we watched be like if someone died in horrific car accident, you're like, well, seat belts and airbags.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep. Oh, yeah.

[Spencer]

They're not cutting it.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep. And that happens last time. I trust those things.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Or, oh, well, you could go on all day with this. You could run all day with these now. Yeah, yeah, I'm done talking about that. That's all.

[Mike]

There's people that, I mean, I have people every now and then ask me, do you carry a gun or do you carry bear spray? And I say both. And I say both at all times. And I say no, Sometimes they carry one, sometimes I can't. I can't really explain one way or the other. But I don't feel I'm worse off for having a can of bear spray and my gun. I, I, you know, like, I don't always want to carry my gun. And if I'm in a place where I don't think it's going to be, you know, we're gonna have a shootout, I'm not gonna bring it. But. And it's not full.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, if I'm in grizz country and I got a elk or a moose or something half butchered.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And I'm going back in the next day.

[Mike]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Spooky Pistol drawn, buddy. Pistol drawn, not spray. If I only had spray, I'd have the spray. But again, I can't tell you. It's all like, it's all. There's a big amount of mental masturbation in all this. It just makes me feel better.

[Phil]

The only one who knows what happens to the bear, right?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. And you can't interview them.

[Phil]

Nope.

[Mike]

If we could get a. If we could get a. Some sort of a powder. Pistol powder that also made a big cloud of.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, when you shoot it. Yeah, it's a bullet and a bunch of spray.

[Mike]

Both worlds.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That's good. I'm gonna work on that then get residue all. Haven't never invented anything. I'm gonna try to invent that. I've got a notebook full of ideas of inventions. I'm done. That's all I wanted to say.

[Mike]

Well, there's a lot of data centers in the news lately and never a

[Steven Rinella]

truer statement was spoken.

[Mike]

And it's not, it's not because they're, you know, like there's all this hysteria about it. Like there's just a lot of data centers and a huge rush of data cent constructed. So two headlines that are pertinent at the moment to our audience. One is that the Potomac river was named the number one most endangered river of 2026. There was a big sewage spill. Sewage spill. But American Rivers said it would have been number one anyway because of how intensely data centers are operating and being constructed in the Potomac watershed. There are 300 data centers in the Potomac watershed. Nine. They use 9% of the water annually, including 12% of like water used 12% in the summer. Luton County, I'm probably butchering the pronunciation. Has the highest concentration of data centers in the world, 199 currently operating and 13% of the global data center capacity in just one county in Virginia. And so the Potomac being the number one most endangered river is one headline. The other headline is folks have probably seen the state of Alaska is moving Forward with a 50 year lease for a proposed AI data center on Alaska's north slope. And this would BE I think 20 some miles south of a lot of the oil infrastructure. So it's, it's very far north in Alaska. It's a $500 million development and it will consume twice as much natural gas as is used for electricity and heating across Alaska's entire urban grid.

[Steven Rinella]

What

[Mike]

they haven't. So one, one thing to note about that the gas, they don't pump natural gas in large quantities or you know, in Any amount off the North Slope. So a lot of that gas wouldn't be used if this thing didn't go in up there and burn the gas.

[Steven Rinella]

It's a byproduct.

[Mike]

Yeah, so.

[Steven Rinella]

So that's not the part that bothers me.

[Mike]

This is a huge, I mean, basically, like this is the North Slope. One is, is sort of an interesting case because given the latitude, it's going to use a lot less water than the industry standard. There's some estimates saying 90% less.

[Steven Rinella]

Because it's just cold.

[Mike]

Because it's cold. And so the three concerns that, you know, if you're reading about data centers, the three interrelated concerns are water usage, electricity consumption, and the, the actual footprint of the facility. The electricity consumption is huge because they're powering all these machines, then they need to cool those machines because they're using so much energy and that's where the water comes in and then the footprint, just for efficiency sake, like they have to site all of this stuff in a condensed area.

[Phil]

But there's also like industrial pollution concerns is.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, there's, there's also that.

[Mike]

There's also that. So big picture, I guess I read something recently and it's that, you know, there, there have been data centers for a long time that store like the videos you're watching or your Google Drive documents and all that stuff. But AI requires exponentially more computer power. And all of these companies, the, you know, the metas of the world, the Googles of the world, they're dumping all of their chips in the, the AI game.

[Steven Rinella]

And so Meta gave. He gave up on his metaverse.

[Mike]

Yeah, but they're, but it was so cool.

[Steven Rinella]

It was so cool. That was the dorkiest thing in the world.

[Mike]

And the growth of these things is just crazy. They're saying that this is the largest growth in power demand since post World War II era. In terms of demand on the grid, AI data centers can use as much power as 100,000 homes or more. Meta's building one in Louisiana, that will draw twice the power of the entire city of New Orleans.

[Steven Rinella]

My God.

[Mike]

Another META facility in Wyoming will draw more power than every residential property in the state combined. And we're expected to double or triple energy use in the very near future. So. So like there's. Even if you get beyond the facilities themselves, like the demand that they're putting on for new power plants to come online, nuclear reactors seem to be sort of the. What folks are hoping will solve this problem. But in the meantime, a lot of it's Natural gas. China is, it's obviously a race with China. Their advantage is in power. They have, they have a lot more power than us and our, you know, we see all these headlines like basically every headline that you've seen in the past few years about our grid being outdated or drought. All this stuff, like it all ties into this question of, of data centers and they can exacerbate drought, obviously. Like there's a huge one going up in Utah that Mr. Wonderful Kevin O' Leary is behind. It's going to occupy. Speaking of that footprint, it's going to occupy 40,000 acres and Mike will release the equivalent of, of 23 atomic bombs worth of thermal energy in a single day. A physics professor at Utah State estimates it'll warm daytime temperatures by 2 to 5 degrees and nighttime temperatures between 8 to 12 degrees. Some estimates think within home it went. It's putting off so much energy that making a microclimate. It's making a microclimate in the area around it.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, in the area around it.

[Mike]

So daytime. I mean like pretty expansive area. Not just like, so I guess like

[Steven Rinella]

you know the term nimby? Not my backyard. I'm a nimk. I just invented that. A nymph. Not in my country. It's like I just don't. I just want it to go away. Yeah, I was fine. I was fine. I hate this stuff.

[Mike]

I said about.

[Steven Rinella]

Hate all the environmental destruction for this.

[Mike]

I said about looking into these two headlines and it's like an onion. The more layers you peel back, there's even more stuff to untangle. Right. Not that you untangle parts of an onion.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm an environmental nationalist.

[Mike]

But yeah. So there's another story in Georgia, residents in a subdivision complained about low water pressure. The county revealed that two industrial scale water hookups had been connected to the water supply, connected to a data center. One had been installed without informing the water utility and the other one hadn't been billed. So collectively that drained 30 million gallons in less than a year out of this water supply without paying for it.

[Steven Rinella]

Here's why I want.

[Mike]

It's just this unbelievably sprawling concern that that like will affect habitat and water and all these things.

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[Steven Rinella]

Auto Parts can help take the guesswork out of check engine, ABS or maintenance lights in your vehicle with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. O'Reilly Veriscan can identify the most likely problem with just one scan. If you need help, O'Reilly Auto Parts can recommend a shop for you. Don't ignore a check engine, ABS or maintenance light. Ask for O'Reilly VeriScan today, a free service exclusively at O'Reilly Auto Parts. Service opens doors and at American Military University it can open doors for the whole family. If you have a loved one who served in the military, you may qualify for reduced tuition. AMU offers flexible online programs designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward wherever life takes you. Learn more at AMU Apus Edu Military open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. But I got a question that maybe you can answer this, but this is why I want to get a really good good like a really good. You know that CWD scientist. I want to get her. Sure. On data centers, sure we talk about using water, but see if you're just using water for cooling, you have a discharge. This is one of the problems with like coal fire, generator plants or nuclear plants. You're using tons of water for cooling and then the prop. The often the environmental problem is you're putting it right back where it came from, right? But you're putting it back where it came from hot, right? So you have a hot water discharge or a warm water discharge, which can lead to all kinds of problems. Rough fish like it, sometimes good fish like it, but it can lead to problems because you're changing water temperatures so the water's not vanishing.

[Phil]

But it could be polluted also.

[Mike]

Yeah, it could be. I mean, anybody.

[Steven Rinella]

But is that true?

[Mike]

Well, yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Is it polluted?

[Mike]

There are case. I mean, any sort of concern that you have, I guarantee you could find a headline in the past two months where there's some instance of this just because of the scale of change that's happening right now. Some of them have closed systems.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Mike]

Like they're circulating water through a closed system. I believe the one that they're talking about doing in the North Slope would be a closed system.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Mike]

But not all of them.

[Steven Rinella]

But why are you not. And I'm not asking you to answer this for me, but picture that you're drawing from an aquifer.

[Mike]

Aquifer.

[Steven Rinella]

Do we have the technical capabilities to pull it up, cool. And put it back in the aquifer?

[Mike]

I can't answer that. I mean, I know there's concerns about contaminating the water that's going through all this piping, leaching, but the water that

[Steven Rinella]

you drink went through your pipes. That's true. So. So I don't know. I'm not trying to make a point. No. I would love to have someone explain this better to me because I just need to understand.

[Mike]

I also think, like, one of the concerns with them is that the same time that they need to be cooled the most intensively is during the summer. And that's also a time when water levels are low in rivers and there's also just, you know, irrigation demands and all this stuff. So they sort of have this compounding effects on existing water shortages.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep. And when you're using water to cool, what's happening is you're putting the heat into the water.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

How? If water's coming in into a data center, it's coming in at. And I'll just pull a number I can picture. It's coming in at 50 degrees.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Is it leaving at 52? Is it leaving at 102?

[Mike]

I couldn't tell you that. This.

[Steven Rinella]

I know. I'm not trying to bust your balls.

[Mike]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

This is one of the things I wonder about.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That's why I want to get. I need to get someone on the show. On the interview show. I need to get someone that's real solid on this.

[Phil]

Well, the, The NIMBY thing that you talked about is. Well, I'm saying NIMBY with these things, like you mentioned in Georgia, where there was, like, low water pressure, like, that's kind of what scares me. Because when people get sick of these things being in their backyard, like a logical step trap could be with the right like people behind it in Washington saying like, well, let's put these things on public land right away. Away from where people are going to be pissed about it.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, like Zuckerberg bought that island in Hawaii. He goes out there, surfs around in those goofy glasses and stuff. Do you. I bet he's not putting one on that island.

[Phil]

No, no.

[Steven Rinella]

It'll be like, these are the dudes. These are the dudes that they will never even see one of these.

[Phil]

Yes, right.

[Steven Rinella]

It's not going to be in their backyard.

[Mike]

I mean, with something like this too. Ideally, like the problem is the best place to put massive facilities like this from a habitat standpoint is on landscapes that are already developed or already disturbed. You know, like the best place to do any sort of development is where development has already occurred. So you're not chewing up farmland and you're not chewing up forests.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like whatever neighborhood in the Bay area these hosers live in.

[Mike]

Yeah, exactly. So I like walking away from my, my limited research on this. It's one of those things when I see it in the news, I kind of roll my eyes and I'm like, God, I'm sick of hearing about data centers, but I'm not. The more you, the more you read about them, you sort of come to the realization that it's not stopping. So we just need to be clear eyed about the potential risks for habitat and wildlife, you know, because it's just going to be an ongoing conversation that's probably going to get bigger and bigger in the years ahead.

[Steven Rinella]

We gotta do two quick hits.

[Phil]

Yep,

[Steven Rinella]

we're gonna do two quick hits because then we got to get into fishing records, which is what we're all here to hear about.

[Spencer]

My computer died. So we should just punt that segment to next week since we're already.

[Steven Rinella]

See they, they took all this power. The data center.

[Spencer]

Yep, they did.

[Steven Rinella]

First cat, I drink your milkshake. This is when it gets real. This is when it gets real. Okay, so we'll put on that. Can't plug it in.

[Spencer]

I don't see a charger in this room.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, you're really gonna quit because your computer died?

[Spencer]

Well, no, I, I. Before my computer even died. I wrote in the script that I think we should.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, that was you the wrote.

[Spencer]

That was me. Well, I said my parentheses.

[Phil]

He's just hoping there's another record. I've got a charge next week.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, but you're A Delman not somewhat quick hit. Try to presume if you're a fellow that reads the news and you're always seeing like data centers, blah, blah, blah,

[Spencer]

off

[Steven Rinella]

lately you've been seeing nothing but cyanide bombs. They're putting cyanide bombs out on public land.

[Phil]

Phil's going to pull up a picture.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Spencer's guilty of this.

[Spencer]

I am.

[Steven Rinella]

They. If you're seeing stuff about the Trump administration's putting cyanide bombs on public land, it's like. Hold on a minute. Hold on a minute.

[Catherine Hag]

It.

[Steven Rinella]

A cyanide bomb. It's, it's the same mentality is calling CWD the zombie deer disease. It's the same mentality. You're taking a term in a. Okay, it's like, let's say you oppose the inheritance tax. What do you go? What do you do? I'll tell you what you do.

[Mike]

Well, the death.

[Steven Rinella]

You say a death tax. They're even going to tax you when you're dead because you want to rebrand it. Cyanide bombs are not cyanide bombs. They are canine pest ejectors. Rolls off the tongue. It's just, let's just at least be honest about what we're talking about. There's a, there's a very fine debate to be had about whether they should, they're called M44. Whether you should use it. Whether they should be using M44 devices out on public land. I got a lot to say about it. But please stop with the cyanide bomb thing.

[Spencer]

Yeah. There's, there's two, like parts of the language you should avoid when talking about. One is calling them a bomb. There's no explosion. It's. It's a spring loaded ejector that sends the cyanide into whatever it's, it's hitting crystallized.

[Steven Rinella]

Crystallized force.

[Spencer]

Yeah. The other one is calling it a cloud of cyanide. That's another thing you don't do. There's no cloud of gas. It's not just like spreading this across the landscape. It is a solid capsule that is then ejecting the, the. I assume it's like a powder form.

[Steven Rinella]

Like if you took a granular. It's a granular form that mixes with saliva.

[Spencer]

Yeah. And that, that goes directly into the coyote's mouth. There is no like haphazard green fumes coming from one of these things. So you don't call it a bomb and you don't say it's a cloud of gas.

[Mike]

Our diagram does show gas.

[Steven Rinella]

No crystals.

[Mike]

It says hydrogen Cyanide gas.

[Steven Rinella]

That's what it makes when it mixes with saliva powder first. It's like what it makes when it mixes with saliva.

[Mike]

Did I say anything wrong? Did I say anything wrong?

[Steven Rinella]

When you open up a box of

[Mike]

cyanide sugar gas in the diagram, when it mixes.

[Steven Rinella]

If I put powdered sugar in your mouth.

[Mike]

Mouth.

[Steven Rinella]

What's gonna happen to that powdered sugar?

[Mike]

Is it going to turn into cyanide?

[Steven Rinella]

It's going to form a liquid.

[Mike]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

So do you go, that's not powdered sugar, that's a liquid? No, it's powdered sugar. Once it's in your mouth, it's a liquid. Once it comes in contact with your saliva, it liquefies.

[Mike]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

You could. You could dislike M44s all you want, but let's just be clear about what they are and stop talking about them in some way.

[Mike]

I didn't say anything other than there is cyanide gas. Gas at some point in this process. Because it's in our diagram.

[Steven Rinella]

Yes. Once the crystals come in contact with a liquid, there's a gas produced that is inhaled by the animal and it kills it. I'm not trying to sugarcoat back to powdered sugar. I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It's just stop calling it that. Because when you're calling that. Not you people. America. I know. Because when they're calling it that, they're trying to vilify something in a way that's dishonest. Yeah.

[Phil]

These things are also supposed to be reporting this. These things are also not new. Right. Like, they've been around forever.

[Steven Rinella]

Ever. Not ever. They were.

[Phil]

They're banned during. Late in the Biden administration. So they're. Whatever. A couple years. They've been banned.

[Steven Rinella]

But.

[Phil]

But they've been a use for years.

[Steven Rinella]

But that's a. That's a. That's. That's part of the problem with headline writing in America. They've. They were legal for decades.

[Phil]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

They had a directive under the Biden administration that they wouldn't be able to use them. And these aren't public. These aren't like Joe Blow. Don't use these. Like.

[Phil]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Like Wildlife Services or APHIS is able to use these. They're not. Like, you don't just buy them at the. You know, you don't go out of the hardware store and buy an M44. It's a professional tool for protecting livestock from predators, which you could be for or against. But let's just be honest about what it is, is it's a Tool like that, that was always legal. And then under the Biden administration, they put a moratorium on it, and the moratorium has been lifted. So whenever this happens, what happens is you then report. Trump wants the cyanide bombs.

[Phil]

There was, there was an incident, I think, that kind of spurred the banning. Like there was a kid in Idaho was out with his dog. Somehow they were both inspecting this thing or looking at it. The dog ended up dying.

[Steven Rinella]

The kid did the dog. It killed the dog?

[Phil]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

He got a settlement of 150 some thousand dollars.

[Phil]

So like, sure, there's a possibility that something bad.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. But here's the deal on this. Here's the deal on this. What kills more dogs? This is like another case of intellectual dishonesty. What kills more dogs? Coyotes or M44s.

[Phil]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

So all of these, all of these organizations, Project Coyote, center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, all these organizations that petition against M44s and they always like to go to the dead dog. But when dogs kill coyotes, where are they? If they are so interested in dead dogs, where are they?

[Phil]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

They don't have a thing to say about that because they don't actually care about that dog. They just don't care about the dog. They leverage it. They leverage it because they care about predator control. So just be more honest.

[Phil]

What, what's pretty interesting is there, there's. I've got an article here from the Casper newspaper in Wyoming and a woman from the Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, which I'm assuming is, is not a pro M44 group. They're indiscriminate. They kill anything that, that comes across them. There's no way that anybody needs that to protect their livestock. There are other ways to do it. It's cyanide. That's a tool of war, not something that needs to be used to protect livestock. And here's the interesting part, because she's trying to get hunters on her side, they're just asking for sporting dogs to get killed. Like, you know, hitting up the, the guys that are out there with bird dogs.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Now by. Yeah, yeah. This, this directive, the, the, the, the Interior Department's being a little coy cuz they're sort of saying, no, no, no, no, we're not saying go use them.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

There still has to be NEPA and all these other steps, but they're basically undoing the restriction. They're not mandating that they be used. They're eliminating a barrier to using them. So it's safe to assume that on a case by case basis, they may start using M44s on BLM to protect property. They're supposed to be somewhat canine specific because there's like a bite and pull. There's a bite and pull function that needs to happen to trigger them.

[Spencer]

Another detail, if you, when you're talking about Biden outlawing them or Trump allowing them, that's specific to federal lands. Like there's still states that throughout the ban were using these things that I don't think were impacted by on state land being outlawed or being allowed.

[Steven Rinella]

And there are states that have state laws that they can't be used in the state.

[Spencer]

Yeah, exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

So it's, and again, man, I think, you know, not that I'm the arbiter of what should be a, a, an allowable debate. It, there's a lot to debate here. It's just the, gets piled on so thick around this subject that people can't even see clearly anymore.

[Spencer]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Like the rhetoric gets so, so, so ridiculous and the posturing gets so ridiculous that people aren't having a sane conversation about it.

[Spencer]

Yeah, I, I, I've also heard that in some of these instances where a human deploys one accidentally that there's like some missing context there about the person was trespassing or they are required by certain laws to have two signs within

[Steven Rinella]

15ft of used to be 25ft. Now it's 15ft.

[Spencer]

And they have to be bilingual. And, and when you hear about these going off accidentally in something that's not a coyote's mouth, like the signs weren't there or someone was walking in a place that they weren't allowed to be. Yeah, that's, that's like a common element in this story.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. If you see the setup, I mean this, it's, they're marked with a big sign.

[Mike]

They're bilingual. I assume in German for the attack dogs that.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. The other thing you got to look at is you wind up in this kind of stuff. You, you always look and you say like, is it a popular, is it a population level impact? So when you build, let's say you build a data set center and you're putting up a ton of, you're putting a bunch of concrete on the ground. You are absolutely killing wildlife and you're destroying wildlife habitat. The question would be, is it a population level impact? When you put up wind turbines. So wind power generating turbines, they kill birds. But that industry will say, but it's not a population level impact. Cars kill raccoons, but it's not a population level impact. So from a wildlife management View you would say, yes, it's killing some, but it's not a population level impact. And when you're looking at the M44 stuff, you'll see, oh, wolves could get it or whatever could get it. They're not having population level impacts. So that's another thing to keep in mind. And I keep paying one side of the story, but I'll play the other side for a story. We have a terrible legacy of poisoning wildlife and we poison wildlife for over a century and wiped out a lot of species and extirpated a lot of species across native range through poisoning. So pun intended, it leaves a bad taste in people's mouth poisoning. There's a reasonable, there's reason to recoil at the idea of poisoning predators because our legacy of poisoning predators is bad. We did a lot of damage with indiscriminate use of poisons. And so even when it's a discriminate use of poisons, it can rile folks up. I don't know.

[Mike]

Especially if they're not getting the full story from the news coverage.

[Phil]

We moving on.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm done.

[Phil]

Here's a headline I thought I'd never hear. Wyoming reducing wolf quotas for 2026. If you're familiar with Wyoming and and their relationship with wolves that that might seem surprising.

[Mike]

Is it to preserve the age class? Yeah, the trophy.

[Phil]

Wyoming wildlife managers are proposing major reductions to the state's 2026 wolf hunting quotas. A widespread canine distemper outbreak caused one of the sharpest wolf population declines in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem this job since they were introduced there in the mid-1990s. If you're not familiar, canine distemper is a viral disease affecting all kinds of canine species. Wolves, coyotes, foxes, domestic dogs. And it's especially lethal to puppies. Highly contagious, incurable, affects the respiratory, gastrointestinal and nervous systems. Most dog, if a dog's infected with it, it's going to die within two to four weeks. Dogs can survive it, but they generally will suffer from permanent neurological damage like seizures, paralysis. Canine December is not new in the Yellowstone area. There's been several distemper outbreaks in the region in the past 20 years. But there are smaller flare ups that didn't cause like major mortality events like this this past winter. And according to state and federal monitoring of Wyoming's wolf population, it declined from roughly 330 wolves in 2024 to 253. Entering 2026. Breeding pairs dropped from 24 to 14. And the the Wyoming has two different like wolf hunting zones. One's called the Trojans. Explain this more but can you pull up that map, Phil? There's what they call the trophy area in northwestern Wyoming that declined to 130 wolves. And that area in the northwest part of the state is where they have to maintain a target of approximately 160 wolves or they get in trouble with the feds and wolves going back on the esa. So that's why this is very concerning to Wyoming's wildlife managers. It's not necessarily that they're worried about this wolf decline in general. It's that if there's not enough wolves in that area around Yellowstone, which you, you'll also hear that called the recovery area back when the wolves were managed federally rather than than by the state of Wyoming. So right now it's below that target of 160 wolves.

[Mike]

Wolves.

[Phil]

Distemper exposure was detected in 64, 64% of wolves catch captured during monitoring work. Wolf pup survival dropped dramatically which affected recruitment into the adult population. An estimated 31 to 34 pups out of 87 documented pups statewide survived. So less than half.

[Steven Rinella]

Man. You'd think that the people that are so hysterical all the time about a wolf getting killed by a hunter, they gotta be shitting their pants.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah. And this is the first time they've seen like a population event like level event like this.

[Steven Rinella]

It be like really with all the consternation about managed wolf hunting somehow putting wolves back, back on the ESA list as much as that was like pushed and pushed and pushed. Yep. It'd really be something if it wound up being a, a naturally occurring wildlife disease.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Put them back on the list.

[Phil]

Exactly. And that like they, in the research I was doing they make a point to say that like hunting is not causing population level declines. Like it's in that they're highly managed in that, that, that trophy zone.

[Spencer]

How many get killed there each year?

[Phil]

Well it was, the quota was 20, was 44 and they didn't even, they only killed 31 out of 44 last year. So they didn't even meet the quota. They're proposing to drop that quota to 22. So they want to cut it in half.

[Steven Rinella]

Are they fixing to keep the rest of the state as basically like a vermin?

[Phil]

Kyle, they don't like, they don't need to manage them for a minimum in the rest. It's only that that recovery area. Trophy game management.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So if you're not able to look at the graphic Phil has pulled up here, basically the top eighth so the, the, the top left or northwest corner of the state comprising about an eighth of the state of wyoming, which is pretty damn rectangular, is wolf trophy game management area. And the rest of the state is just predatory management area or the predator zone where the wolves are open all the time. Yeah, they're managed like a coyote in 7/8 of Wyoming. Roughly 7/8 of Wyoming excluding the corner of the state which touches on yellowstone national park and grand teton national park.

[Phil]

National park. Yep. And the state of Wyoming has an agreement with the u. S. Fish and wildlife service to maintain those minimum number of wolves and minimum number of breeding pairs inside that, that trophy zone. So, yeah, they took pretty drastic action to make sure that wolves don't end up becoming federally managed in, in the state of Wyoming. Wyoming, which, which might seem like counterintuitive for a state like wyoming, it might seem like they don't want any wolves, but they're doing what they need to do to maintain them as a managed state managed game animal, which is pretty cool.

[Spencer]

Yeah, everybody's fulfilling their role there. Yeah, like the state is doing their part and the feds are like doing their thing about saying we expect this many animals. All the numbers you said though are like half as big as I thought they would be.

[Phil]

As far as the total numbers, total

[Spencer]

number that are killed, the total number that live there, what the quota is, I assumed I would have put 2x on all those if I was just guessing.

[Phil]

Yep. So there you go. If you're looking to kill a wolf in the trophy zone and Wyoming this year, it's going to be a little harder.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, everybody, stay tuned next next week for Spencer's fishing records report and a charged computer. He's gonna charge up. He's gonna be ready.

[Phil]

They might get another record between now and then.

[Steven Rinella]

Do me a favor as you're wrapping up listening, go go subscribe to the meat eater podcast YouTube channel, please. Or wherever you listen. Go follow wherever you listen so you can stay up on the news with the news show me eaters news show. So subscribe on the podcast YouTube channel and follow follow wherever you listen. And stay tuned for more on Spencer's breaking fishing records coming soon.

[Mike]

Foreign.

[Steven Rinella]

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