Ep. 903: Stranded Whales, Cattle-Killing Wolves, and Maine Cleans Up Its Act

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast – Ep. 903: Stranded Whales, Cattle-Killing Wolves, and Maine Cleans Up Its Act

Release Date: July 14, 2026
Host: Steven Rinella
Panelists: Yannis “Yanni” Guillen, Ethan, Derek Wolf, Max, and other regulars
Special Guest: John Jersick (retired Michigan Conservation Officer)

---

Episode Overview

In this engaging, wide-ranging news episode, Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew tackle a slate of timely outdoor issues: the resurgence of Maine’s alewife run after dam removals, the ecological and political fight over buffalo in Montana, a record number of gray whale strandings on the Pacific coast, new deer regulations (“earn a second buck”) in New York, and the surprising diet of California’s newly-returned wolves. The episode’s tone is informal, humorous, and candid, with regular “hunters’ table” banter—plus a special segment reminiscing about the host’s illicit trapping past with a conservation officer.

---

Segment Summaries & Key Insights

---

1. Steven's Confession to a Conservation Officer

Guest: John Jersick, Retired Michigan Conservation Officer
[00:24–15:21]

Key Points & Insights

• Steven opens by confessing to a decades-old trapping violation, revealing he once illegally set snares as a teen and was checked by Officer Jersick.
• Jersick admits he didn’t actually know Steven was using snares—he “just threw a dart” during his trap inspection.
• They reminisce about Michigan trapping culture: trappers often self-policed, sometimes favoring “settling things on the creekbank” over reporting violations to wardens.
• Discussion of the “smoke and mirrors” element of game warden work:

  “The whole nature of the job is quite a bit of smoke and mirrors… Try and make everybody feel that you’re everywhere at once.”
  —John Jersick [14:29]

• Steven and the panel use the encounter to comment on law enforcement psychology—how paranoia and game warden’s questions can deter poaching.
• Notable moment: Steven admits his wariness of the officer led him to temporarily quit setting snares, showing the efficacy of game warden tactics.

Notable Quotes

• “I was like, how does he know I have snares out?” —Steven [05:55]
• “Paranoia is a mighty powerful tool, isn’t it?” —Jersick [11:53]

Tone

Remorseful, humorous confessional; insight into rural trapping and enforcement culture.

---

2. Ducks, Drakes, and the Quack Debate

[16:31–20:36]

Key Points

• Banter over whether drake mallards “quack.” Max adamantly contends that drakes whistle rather than quack, even threatening to make a T-shirt about it.
• Sound demonstration via recorded and live duck calls for panel adjudication.
• Discussion on ornithological nitpicking contrasted with hunter experience and terminology.
• Humorous parallel: discussion of hen turkeys “gobbling” (i.e., making a gobble-like sound but not a true gobble).

Notable Quotes

• “Drake mallards do not quack. Simple as that. And I’ll take that to my grave.” —Max [17:37]
• “I’m gonna make a T-shirt that says ‘Drakes Don’t Quack.’” —Max [19:47]

Tone

Lighthearted, insider debate; typical of the show’s trademark irreverent banter.

---

3. MeatEater Auction House and Fossil Stories

[20:39–28:45]

Key Points

• Update on the annual MeatEater Auction House of Oddities: rare gear, a used Honda outboard, and Spencer’s “box of rocks” (fossils and minerals).
• Ethan spotlights his five favorite auction rocks, including obsidian, Wonderstone, a 15-million-year-old leaf fossil, a Green River fossil fish, and a Montana dino bone found with Jack Horner.
• Backstory: How Ethan secured a dino dig invite by cornering paleontologist Jack Horner live on the podcast.
• Serious and comedic interplay: fossil science and the (infamous) connections of dig personalities are discussed with candor.

Notable Quotes

• “People don’t bid this up, they can go to hell.” —Steve (about the fossil collection) [26:19]
• “That’s the fossil you’re getting—from a type of dinosaur [Jack Horner] discovered back in the 70s.” —Ethan [28:32]

Tone

Playful, geeky, and a bit of “show-and-tell”.

---

4. Listener Q&A: Beaver Pelts and Marital Diplomacy

[32:13–39:08]

Key Points

• Listener writes in: he bought two beaver pelts at an estate sale but doesn’t know what to do with them (and suspects his wife won’t abide them as decor).
• The crew brainstorms uses: hats, ottomans, leather-backed pillows (“You’re going to become a household hero…” —Steven [38:26]), or simply as conversation pieces.
• Panel shares their own relationships' approaches to taxidermy/home decor.
• Some general marriage life humor woven in.

Notable Quotes

• “How does a guy make something like [a beaver fur ottoman]? … I wrapped the beaver hide around the pad and took a staple gun.” —Steven [34:07]
• “Turn this into a win for your wife…leather-backed pillow. Your wife will be praising you.” —Steven [38:26]

Tone

Practical, tongue-in-cheek advice with relationship and hunting-culture jokes.

---

5. Regulatory News: New York’s “Earn a Second Buck” Rule

[39:08–51:38]

Key Points

• New statewide rule: New York hunters must harvest and report an antlerless deer before taking a second antlered deer (“Earn-a-Second-Buck”).
• Context: State whitetail deer numbers are far above management goals; too few does are being harvested, impacting habitat and increasing issues (crop damage, collisions, tick-borne disease).
• “Earn-a-buck” programs reduce deer overpopulation but are unpopular with hunters. Wisconsin’s ran for a decade with biological success but political backlash; Michigan is piloting a similar program.
• Panel’s strategic suggestion: offer an extra buck only if a hunter takes multiple does, so it’s seen as a benefit, not a punitive hurdle.
• Long-term concern: How chronic wasting disease (CWD) and overpopulation crises in deer will converge—two “irreconcilable” narratives facing deer management.

Notable Quotes

• “Of the two conversations… One is that there’s too many white-tailed deer. The other: CWD is going to have catastrophic population impacts. These two narratives are not in sync.” —Steven [48:13]
• “If you control populations by shooting does… there’s proof that [‘earn-a-buck’] does work.” —Host/panelist [45:41]

Tone

Analytical, occasionally sarcastic; a frank look at hunter psychology, biology, and policy.

---

6. Big Conservation Politics: American Prairie Reserve’s Buffalo Fights

[53:52–73:01]

Key Points

• Deep dive into the American Prairie (AP) conservation initiative in Montana: AP buys/rents land for bison rewilding and ecosystem restoration—controversial with ranchers and some hunters.
• They operate over 160,000 deeded acres; lease or graze cattle/bison on a cumulative ~500,000 acres, all of which remains open to public access.
• Controversy:
  • Local opposition centers on “Save the Cowboy” rhetoric—fear that land not producing cattle threatens ranching culture and livelihoods.
  • State and federal agencies (BLM, Dept. of Interior, Montana legislature) are restricting AP’s grazing leases for their conservation (not production) buffalo herd—after years of permit delays, denied renewals, and legal wrangling.
  • AP forced to cancel its public and veteran buffalo hunts due to the legal uncertainty.
• Steven’s take: He would support AP more if they were “more open, less restrictive” with public hunting.
• Irony highlighted: While politicians celebrate TR's legacy at the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, they fight rewilding bison—despite TR’s lifelong, tireless efforts to preserve buffalo.
• History rundown: Year-by-year TR’s actions to establish bison reserves, framing the present-day debate as fundamentally conservation-oriented.

Notable Quotes

• “All of a sudden, now it’s just deer and elk—people see it as an existential threat to cowboys…” —Steven [55:00]
• “Their commitment to public hunting is…tepid.” —Steven [57:26]
• “When these people tie themselves to the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt at the same time trying to attack restoration of the [bison] animal… what are they tying themselves to?” — Steven [72:11]

Tone

In-depth, sometimes indignant; mixes policy analysis with wry commentary on political posturing.

---

7. Maine’s Alewife Comeback: Dam Removal & River Restoration

[75:11–86:19]

Key Points

• Reporting on Inside Climate News: since the removal of old dams (and construction of fish ladders/elevators), Maine’s alewife runs have surged—e.g., in Benton, the run went from ~800 fish (35 years ago) to 9 million in 2025.
• Alewives: An anadromous herring, not a prized game fish but essential as a keystone forage for larger fish, birds, mammals, and lobstermen (bait).
• Panel delves into the Great Lakes alewife invasion, extirpation of native fish, and the etymology (“alewife” as a reference to portly women running medieval alehouses).
• The restoration’s importance: underscores the resilience of natural systems if habitat is restored and migration is allowed.
• Ongoing debates: Some resistance remains about dam removal, often tied to the loss of reservoir-based recreation.

Notable Quotes

• “The number of migrating fish in Benton, Maine jumped from fewer than 800 thirty-five years ago…to 9 million last year.” —Yanni [80:47]
• “It points to the resiliency of nature, if you give it room to do what it needs to do.” —Steven [84:59]

Tone

Upbeat, educational, slightly self-deprecating (“I should be embarrassed as a Michigander not to know…”).

---

8. Pacific Gray Whale Strandings: A Climate Warning

[88:30–100:18]

Key Points

• In 2026, Pacific gray whales washing up dead in record numbers: 30 already (record is 34 for a full year).
• Marine biologist John Calambokidis explains: While past mortality events (1990, ’99, ’19) were cyclical “booms and busts,” this year’s event is different—nearly all dead whales are malnourished, with most showing ship strike injuries.
• Cause: Collapsed food chains in the Arctic (where 95% of gray whales summer), linked to sea ice loss and warming, drastically reducing the worms/shrimp whales feed on.
• Panel points to shifting funding politics: mentioning “climate change” now hurts research-grant applications, whereas a few years ago it was mandatory.
• Notable aside: The Makah tribe’s struggle for legally sanctioned whaling. Biologist supports honoring their treaty rights, citing responsible management and unique legal standing.

Notable Quotes

• “A starving whale is a delirious whale. So it’s more likely to swim in front of a cargo ship.” —Summarizing John Calambokidis [89:47]
• “If your funding ask mentions climate change, that’s just got no chance of getting off the ground.” —Ethan summarizing John C [94:48]

Tone

Somber, analytical, with notes of frustration at political obstacles to conservation science.

---

9. Wolves Eat Cows: The Complicated Truth in California

[100:18–115:24]

Key Points

• New scat-DNA analysis shows that up to 86% of wolf scat from California’s Lassen and Harvey packs contained cattle DNA—suggesting significant predation or scavenging on cows, especially calves (300–600 lbs).
• Study used detailed genetic methods to estimate not just presence but biomass of food consumed.
• Nationwide/global context: Wolves prefer wild ungulates when available, but when deer/elk numbers plummet (as in CA), they turn to livestock.
• Panel’s debate: Is there such a thing as “cow-eater” wolf packs (learned behavior)? Research suggests it’s mostly opportunism, though controversies continue.
• Cascade of impacts: Wolves’ mere presence increases stress hormones (cortisol) in cattle, lowering productivity even without depredation.
• Ag compensation schemes for wolf depredation vary (India, Wisconsin, Colorado), but verifying losses is always difficult.
• Steven cautions against reducing causes to “wolves = dead cows”—ranchers lose animals to myriad causes, and compensation is a thorny issue.

Notable Quotes

• “They’re going to eat what’s convenient…they seem to have a preference for wild game.” —Derek Wolf [106:29]
• “Living among wolves for cattle is a chronically stressful experience, and that could ultimately have production-related impacts…” —Summary of study [111:07]
• “No one. There’s a thing that leads to fighting: wolves.” —Steven [115:18]

Tone

Nuanced, sometimes skeptical; driven by data but acknowledging the strong social/cultural emotions.

---

10. Quick Hits, Riffs, and “What We Didn’t Cover”

[116:00–end]

• Brief mention (with a wink) of a California pier banning shark fishing due to swimmer safety fears.
• Closing reminders to check the online auction and bid on “oddities”—including a ‘cow-killer’ rifle.
• Humorous banter about dinner-table taboos, including “wolves, politics, and religion.”

---

Notable Quotes (Collected, Speaker Attributed, Time-Stamped)

• “Paranoia is a mighty powerful tool, isn’t it?” —John Jersick [11:53]
• “Drake mallards do not quack. Simple as that. And I’ll take that to my grave.” —Max [17:37]
• “Their commitment to public hunting is tepid.” —Steven Rinella [57:26]
• “The number of migrating fish in Benton, Maine jumped from fewer than 800 thirty-five years ago…to 9 million last year.” —Yanni Guillen [80:47]
• “A starving whale is a delirious whale. So it’s more likely to swim in front of a cargo ship.” —(Summarizing) John Calambokidis [89:47]
• “They’re going to eat what’s convenient…they seem to have a preference for wild game.” —Derek Wolf [106:29]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamps | |-------------------------------------------|------------------| | Officer Jersick trapping story | 00:24–15:21 | | Drake mallards (“do drakes quack?”) | 16:31–20:36 | | Auction house + rock/fossil tales | 20:39–28:45 | | Beaver pelts Q&A | 32:13–39:08 | | NY “Earn-a-Second-Buck” rule | 39:08–51:38 | | American Prairie buffalo controversy | 53:52–73:01 | | Maine alewives return | 75:11–86:19 | | Gray whale strandings | 88:30–100:18 | | California wolves/livestock conflict | 100:18–115:24 | | Wrap-up/”not covering” and auction plug | 116:00–end |

---

Closing Thoughts

This episode is hallmark MeatEater: witty, opinionated, and knee-deep in the real-world messiness of wildlife conservation. Listeners get a thorough, sometimes irreverent education on classics (trapping, regulation, ecology) and emerging flashpoints (climate effects on whales, wolves' impacts on cattle, dam removals). The roster’s blend of firsthand stories and outside expert input makes even dense topics accessible and memorable—full of sidebars, quotable barbs, and just a little procedural paranoia.

---

Transcript

[Steven Rinella]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. When you're heading into the back country, you don't need a truck that's trying to be the latest trend. You need one that's built to work. That's what people like about the Nissan Frontier. It comes standard with a 310 horsepower V6, the most powerful naturally aspirated V6 in its class. No tricks, no trendy, no unproven turbo or hybrid fad. Just dependable truck power that's ready for early mornings, muddy roads or whatever else the day throws your way. Check out the Nissan Frontier today. Auto Pacific segmentation 2026 Frontier vs latest in market competitors in the midsize truck class. Base models compared based on manufacturers websites. Did you hear? Phelps has teamed up with a bunch of other high end brands to do the ultimate elk giveaway. Anyone who is 18 or older can sign up to win an amazing gear package that includes a new rifle or bow along with great supporting gear. The winner will pick their rifle package or archery package. For every $25 spent, you get 10 additional entries. The signups end July 26th at phelps.game calls.com. Welcome to the news show everybody. Today we've got news about unfortunate, regrettable, criminal past dam removals in Maine, stranded whales on the Pacific coast. Anti buffalo politicians are generally winning, but they suffered a minor setback. And you've heard of earn a buck. Well, welcome to earn a second buck. And you won't believe this one, Wolves eat cows. But first, our news. And to open up our news, we have a special guest here. The special guest name is John Jersick. He is a retired Michigan conservation officer. Some folks call them game wardens, but in Michigan they call them conservation officers. And I got to give some background here. We're going back in time to around 93, or my guess would be 93 or 1994. I was parked in my truck

[John Jersick]

on

[Steven Rinella]

Manistee National Forest where Cedar Creek crosses underneath M120 checking mink traps. In behind me pulls a game warden, a conservation officer. He gets out, we're talking. He asked me, have you been setting snares? Which alarmed me because I had and they were illegal in that area. And it wasn't my fault. I'll explain how it wasn't my fault. I'll explain right now. There was a game. There was a fur buyer named Abe Salicina and I would sell some fur to Abe Salicina and Abe Salicina would always be pushing snares on you. When the snow got deep, Abe would be you Know what guys do in other areas is they set these snares and fur keeps coming in all winter. So it wasn't my fault, but it was very alarming to me, and I lied. I lied. This is all terrible. This is all terrible. I'm just being upfront about my behavior. I lied. And then the game warden, the conservation officer, goes to my annoyance, goes through every trap in my truck, checking the tags. You're legally obligated to have a tag on there. Checks them all. We converse, he leaves. Now, I have written about this. I've talked about it. I told the story a couple weeks ago. My good friend from back home, Ronnie Boehm, is talking to a retired conservation officer. The retired conservation officer, knowing where Ronnie's from, he's from the same twin lake, asked him, do you know a guy, Steve Rinella, who I checked for whatever back in 1994. And I thought to myself, why in the world is this on this man's mind? Now, Ronnie suggested I ask him. Here he is. Thank you for coming on the show. 30 years later.

[John Jersick]

Well, well, I'm glad we've had this chance to sit down and talk. And I'll tell you, you know, even though it's been a long time, you're going to feel a lot better getting us off your chest.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, I've gotten it off my chest. I just need to hear it from your perspective, because at the time, I didn't ask you what you're thinking and what you're doing. Walk me through your recollection of this.

[John Jersick]

Well, it's interesting that, you know how you get caught with a snapshot in your brain of a spot, you know, in an incident or a time. I can see that. I can picture, you know, that was always a good spot. You know, there was a sand trap there, and you could work trout fish right along that piece of ground. And, you know, we get trapped a little bit, too, right?

[Steven Rinella]

Everybody. Everybody set mink traps there, right?

[John Jersick]

Right. Real common spot, and it's right along a busy road. Yeah. So anyways, and, you know, I've been there, of course, dozens and dozens of times in my career when I worked around here, and I can't remember, you know, what. You know, I think we approached this incident from two different perspectives. I may have simply just, hey, here's a guy trapping, right? I'm going to check him. And then going through traps and mentioning about snaring the bottom line. The, the, the end to this whole story is I, I was clueless that you had any snares oh, you were.

[Steven Rinella]

I was like, how does he know I have snares out,

[Yanni Guillen]

John? Did you know that? Did you know that this fur buyer was out there pushing young trappers to use snares? Did you know this guy?

[John Jersick]

That's the. The name. Oh, yeah, know the name. Know who that was. Didn't know it was being pushed, so to speak. But. But here. Here was. And this is probably why I threw a dart and asked the question, right? That was at a time when it was be. It was growing in interest locally, snaring and, you know, and I knew for sure it was going on, but it wasn't at the time legal. It is today, but at the time, it wasn't legal. So, you know, just like any other, you know, game warden on a fishing expedition, I'm gonna ask a few questions and see what he says, you know, But.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, but you started right out with that question.

[John Jersick]

I don't. So I don't know if it was this part. I don't honestly remember. Did I. Was. Was. Did I have some knowledge that maybe you, as a local guy were doing it? I don't remember that part one. Let me add this. When I was cleaning out paperwork when I retired back in 19, you know, remember we had the old report, all poaching complaints, the rap complaints. I had found one from you. And it was. The best I can recall, again, is it was Cedar Creek.

[Steven Rinella]

No, it was Bear Creek.

[John Jersick]

Bear Creek. Okay. And somebody had come across, or you had come across, maybe untagged traps or something like that.

[Derek Wolf]

Nope.

[John Jersick]

And I. Go ahead. Well, I don't.

[Steven Rinella]

I got in huge trouble with this from Abe Salicina.

[John Jersick]

Okay?

[Steven Rinella]

I had found where a guy was trapping before season, okay? And even though. Even though I was, you know, as innocent as it was, even though I was a violator, I didn't want anyone else violating, and I thought that that violation was a bad violation, so I called and reported a guy for trapping before season. Some informant told Abe Salicina. Oh, Abe Salicina ripped into me that you would ever report a trapper for anything. And where do you get off? And you take that man to man, you do not call the state.

[Ethan]

Wow.

[John Jersick]

Okay, well, so hold on. That's a good. That's a good story, right, in among itself that in the trapper world, things do get settled out on the road. You know, if. If people are stealing traps, if they're stealing fur from traps, if they're trespassing or even, you know, if. If one guy gets on another guy's turf that little war usually gets settled somewhere out there along the stream bank or in the woods or wherever. And of course, we never heard about it. There was a number of local trappers, though, that I got to be pretty decent friends with and that, you know, they were pretty good. Yeah, I don't even want to call them informants. They. They just tended to do the right thing and. And wanted to see things done right. We're getting about four stories down the road now, but on that rap complaint, it looked like. I kind of remember the. The verbiage on it is I ended up finding a. A young kid, you know, a teen or something like that, and I had gotten back a hold of you, and you wondered if I could just handle it with a warning, which I did.

[Ethan]

Oh.

[John Jersick]

And that's how that ended.

[Steven Rinella]

That's probably after I got in trouble with Abe Salicino, and it could well be.

[John Jersick]

But the. Yeah, that was the whole deal. And then going back to our Cedar Creek contact, I don't know. You know, I don't. I don't recall that I specifically remembered I was after you, or I had solid information that you were doing it. But the whole thing about snares at the time is kind of everybody was starting to do it. You know, it was something that people were doing, wasn't legal yet. It was so easy. You could cover a lot of ground, you could trespass. Easy. What people were doing. It was even using it along the 31 corridor on the highways, like in the fences, doing stuff like that. And we probably didn't have the number of coyotes at that time that we do now. But, you know, they were growing in numbers, too, and people were working it. And, you know, as a trapper, anytime fur starts going higher than normal, right. The incentive to cheat ends up there, whether it be trespass, another guy's turf, stealing some traps. And I know I recovered quite a few stolen traps for area trappers, you know, either out of the Whitehall marsh or Muskegon marsh. Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

I'll tell you why it always stuck with me. What I was doing is I was snaring red fox down in the thickets, right. And when you said that, I knew you knew, but I thought, why did he not take it? Why did he not take it? Or why did he not just stake one out or do some kind of stuff to catch me?

[John Jersick]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And then I was paranoid and quit for a while.

[John Jersick]

Oh, one time. One time on another local trapper. I won't use a name, though, but it was out at the wastewater.

[Yanni Guillen]

Okay.

[John Jersick]

Real Real common wastewater trapper out there.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, can I take a stand? Did his first name start with a B and his last name start with a F?

[John Jersick]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

Was it B, C?

[John Jersick]

We should have this conversation.

[Steven Rinella]

It was BC

[John Jersick]

So anyways, the point was, is he had a few words with me out on the dirt road in the middle of the wastewater, like, you know, why are you eyes after me? And all that. I concluded the conversation by turning around, getting back in my truck and said, you know, paranoia is a mighty powerful tool, isn't it? And I just drove away. So,

[Steven Rinella]

man. All right, my last question for you, John, and I appreciate you doing this. My last question for you is, since it was a nothing thing and you didn't give me a ticket and you were just throwing that out there as a fishing expedition, why did it stick in your mind? Because I wasn't like a known figure at all. I was. I had never been in trouble, you know.

[John Jersick]

Right, right, right. Yeah. Let's clarify to the audience, you weren't anybody that I. I had on the radar or was following around or anything like that, or had, as best I can recall, any specific information, you know, on. On you doing anything.

[Steven Rinella]

So.

[John Jersick]

So I don't know. Why does it stick in my mind? You got me. You know, I know I dealt with a number of local trappers over the years, good and bad. I don't know, some of them, you know, you were just around for so long, you sort of got to know these guys.

[Derek Wolf]

Guys.

[John Jersick]

And, you know, it's. It. Nothing. Nothing real specific. Nothing evil. I. I don't remember. Again, I think this was just a. A chance meeting out. Out on the side M120. And I thought, hey, I'll throw a dart, see if the guys got snares, you know, and, you know, is. Is as a trapper, finding people's snares and that sort of thing. Not an easy task.

[Derek Wolf]

No.

[John Jersick]

And find your own snares. Well, yeah, and that's one of the things. If you talk to people that run a lot of snares, I don't think they recover them all every year, you know, because how do you simply remember if you got out a hundred of them, you know, where are they all? But, yeah, they were also. Snaring was also starting to gain in popularity, like in those, you know, sort of the edge of Muskegon, Grand Haven, Grand Rapids. Those edges, like the fringe urban areas. Yep. You know, you know, places where you might have fox and stuff like that down in there. Yeah. So there you go, man.

[Steven Rinella]

I sure appreciate you coming on this is going to add significant color to the story. It's going to. It's a hot tip for game wardens just to throw out wild stuff. Just throw wild accusations just to see if somewhat. If it hits. And also to induce paranoia in poachers.

[John Jersick]

Well, you know, the whole nature of the job is quite a bit of smoke and mirrors. You know, a lot of times you're covering a county by yourself or more, you know, and vast areas, you know, you might be an hour to the other side of the area you cover or more. So, like I say, it's smoke and mirrors. Try and make everybody feel that you're everywhere at once. 24 7. Right. Which is impossible. So to chum the waters with a little bit of information out there, you know, and ask some questions. You never know. Sometimes you get lucky and they say something.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, it worked on me. I'd formed the opinion of you that you knew all things, that you were, like. You had, like, godlike omniscience about the woods. So thank you. Thank you very much for coming on, John. I appreciate it, man. Enjoy. Enjoy the rest of your retirement.

[John Jersick]

All right. Thank you much for having me.

[Steven Rinella]

All right, buddy, take it easy.

[Yanni Guillen]

Thanks, John.

[John Jersick]

Bye.

[Ethan]

It's great.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, Nate, pull up where it all happened.

[Derek Wolf]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

For you people watching on YouTube, here's where it all went down.

[Ethan]

What other game wardens can we interview that you've ran into in the past?

[Steven Rinella]

You know, it's a great story. We were one time here in Montana. We're hunting ducks, and we had our decoys in the canoe. We weren't in the canoe. We were using the canoe to drag our decoys. Opening day, I get a ticket for no life jackets. I tried a 75 ticket. I try to explain, but we're not in the canoe. He's like, come on. I'm like, I'm serious, man. It's just. We're just using drag decoys. Still a ticket the next year. I'm not kidding you. A year later, opening day, same boat launch, same canoe full of decoys. Different game warden pulls in, writes me a citation.

[Auction House Announcer]

Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm like, but we're not in the canoe. Me and the same buddy, $75 ticket again.

[Ethan]

You could have bought a lot of life jackets.

[Yanni Guillen]

Think you would have learned.

[Steven Rinella]

You think I would learn, but that's not as good of a story. All right, what's next?

[Derek Wolf]

Max is right in.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, this is more our news. This is more our news here.

[Yanni Guillen]

Oh, I'd like to preface this with, well, the Text chain started at 4:57am

[Steven Rinella]

he's got a new baby.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah. But it also must have got him fired up to be texting another guy at 4:57am It's a little bit early. I feel like.

[Steven Rinella]

I think he's up all night with that new baby. So he's probably got nothing to do changing diapers.

[Yanni Guillen]

Think about it. He says, drake's don't quack like a hen, and I'll stand by that till I die. I said, yeah. The Cornell lab proved that, but also proved that they do quack like a drake. What I'm calling a quack is pretty specific. I think ducks make a lot of sounds. I said, depending on how discerning the ear is. And since in quotes, Max, they make a lot of sounds, you can see how the two could be conflated. Ha ha ha. But a drake doesn't quack. Even Rocky knows that that is not the nickname or name of his new son. But okay, so that's just. Just pumping the tires up here a little bit because I'm excited to see what Max came up with.

[Steven Rinella]

You roll it.

[Max]

All right. Clearing the air here a little bit. Drake mallards do not quack. Simple as that. And I'll take that to my grave. They don't quack. Yes, they make a sound out of their mouth, but it's more of a buzz or a whistle. Just not a quack. I pulled up the same website yawning. Steve, we're listening to. That is a drake whistle. That is a hen quack.

[Steven Rinella]

He is splitting hairs a little bit.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Max]

Whistle, quack. Just two different things. Sort of like music. There is different pitches and I think in duck calls there's different pitches as well. A hand mallard can do a high pitch and a low pitch quack. A drake can also do a high pitch whistle and a low pitch whistle. What I think Yanni is getting confused is that low end whistle. It's not a pure. It's just like a. It's a little more sharper, little more crisp.

[Yanni Guillen]

I'll pull up my sounds a lot like a quag.

[Steven Rinella]

No, hear him out, hear him out. He's getting his calls out.

[Max]

Ladies and gentlemen, Drake whistle standard. This is going to be my high pitched. At the end. You can almost hear like a T. And then this is going to be my low end. Nowhere near a quack. Simple as that. I am so confident. In my opinion, I'm gonna make a T shirt that says Drakes don't quack.

[Yanni Guillen]

That's confidence.

[Ethan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Max]

So There you have it. There's my opinion. There's my stance on it. Drakes don't quack. They don't quack.

[Yanni Guillen]

I think he just wanted to show off his turkey fan collection.

[Steven Rinella]

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[Ethan]

Yanni, wasn't there somebody on the crew who saw a hen turkey gobble?

[Steven Rinella]

But that happens. But they don't gobble gobble.

[Ethan]

Right. But like, I, I mean, if. If you were to say they kind of gobble but not really gobble, could you not apply the same thing here? Did like a. A drake will quack but not really quack. Just kind of a quack.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, it's not a quack.

[Yanni Guillen]

And I think. I wish that Max would have been able to do a better drake whistle that sounded like that drake quack that we heard from the Cornell lab Ornithology drake quack.

[Steven Rinella]

All right, Spencer, tell us about the auction house bodies.

[Ethan]

Auction house has one week left. Everything has been bid on. We. We appreciate everyone throwing their money at this. There's one item, though, that does not have a bid yet. That is the boat motor. It's a Honda One50 VTech outboard. Outboard motor. You got to pick it up in Bozeman. We have it listed at 8k right now. That's. That's like the first bid that's going to be made.

[Steven Rinella]

Can I talk about that? Why that is.

[Ethan]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

This. All this money all go. This is a fun. This is a fundraiser, like a nonprofit venture. All this money goes to Land Access Fund. We know that we can take that 150 outboard. Honda Marketplace.

[Ethan]

We'd get 10 to 15k because it's

[Steven Rinella]

worth twice what we're. It's got. It's got. The only hours it has is the hours that we used to film DOS Boat. One season of DOS Boat, which is filmed over the course of a few days.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah, the episode I was involved in, we floated that boat with no engine. Then we put the engine on and fished for four hours. So my episode only had four hours.

[Steven Rinella]

And so it's. It's worth twice. If you went and bought it new, which it is, it's worth twice that. So we put the minimum at eight grand because we could just go sell it on Facebook Marketplace, or probably just take it to Townsend and bring it to an outboard dealer and sell it to him for 8,000 bucks.

[Ethan]

This is the rare example in our auction house where you could get something at a good deal and no one's

[Steven Rinella]

bidding out the damn.

[Ethan]

It's only been a Day, but so you get. We got the auction house going for another week. We also have listed my box rocks. I don't feel like that description does it justice, though. So I want to tell you about my five favorite rocks. There's 17 different rocks I have in here that I've collected over the years. I'm gonna give you my five favorite ones. First one here is Wonderstone from Nevada. We had the Media live tour in 2024. We spent the night in Reno. I got up at 5am I went and got a rental car, drove out into the desert about 90 minutes to a place called, remember Rainbow Mountain.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Was everyone like, Spencer, go, Steve threatening, come with me.

[Ethan]

Y. Steve threatened to come with me. And I was like, I'll get you up at 5am and you're like, yeah, maybe not.

[Steven Rinella]

I was already up.

[Ethan]

So that. That was formed by layers of volcanic ash. It's a popular rock among artists who do mosaics because, you know, it's got a bunch of layers of color. It's one of the prettiest rocks I own. So that is Wonderstone, also known as rhyolite. There you go. This one's kind of an eyeball shape.

[Yanni Guillen]

You must own a few of these then.

[Ethan]

I have. I have a few pieces.

[John Jersick]

Yeah.

[Ethan]

There it is when I found it on the mountain. And then the next picture is my suitcase going home. I took home plenty, plenty of Rio Light Wonderstone with me. The tour bus got heavier after that day.

[Derek Wolf]

That's a big one.

[Ethan]

Next one, Obsidian from Oregon. I found this at the Glass Buttes in Oregon. That's one of the biggest obsidian deposits in the world. Ancient humans were spreading this stuff all across the continent. Obsidian trace back to here has been found in Ohio that ancient peoples carried their traded their way there. So we got a big old piece of obsidian. You could keep it raw just like that. Or you. If you're a flint napper, you could turn into something dangerous.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

That's what I was gonna do. You ever just get the urge to break some of the rocks?

[Steven Rinella]

I got some of this, and I did bust it all up. Yeah, it's so nice. You hit that with a hammer, dude.

[Ethan]

Yes. This is a raw. Raw piece. You do whatever you like. If you're gonna break it up, like put a towel around it and then smash that thing with a hammer and

[Steven Rinella]

then watch your ass, because that stuff is sharp. It's the sharpest natural substance.

[Ethan]

Yeah, it's. It's very sharp. This is a raw piece. It's about the size of a softball. All Right. Number three is a leaf fossil from Idaho. There's this landowner there who was building a dirt bike track back in the 70s. And as he's building this dirt bike track, he, he starts excavating the side of a mountain and he uncovers a 15 million year old lake bed. And that lake formed when there was a volcano nearby. That went off and it dammed up this river and just like in the blink of an eye it totally flooded this valley and it put all these trees and plant life under some really deep cold water. And so this is one of those leaves looks like probably from an elm.

[Steven Rinella]

How old is that?

[Ethan]

15 million years old. Likely from an elm tree. Really delicate rock. When you go to this guy's place and you find him just on his property somewhere, like I found him driving his tractor around. He's like, you here for the dirt bikes or the fossils? And then you pay them like 10 bucks or I don't remember what the,

[Steven Rinella]

what the fee was that.

[John Jersick]

Right.

[Ethan]

Real cheap. It was like $10.

[Steven Rinella]

And you found all that and you

[Yanni Guillen]

can for 10 bucks. That's. You pick which one you want.

[Ethan]

I don't remember what the dirt bike fee. My, my rock hounding fee was real cheap. It was only me and my wife. And then there was one other group there. It was somebody from China who was doing a research project.

[Steven Rinella]

He let you haul away all that?

[Ethan]

Didn't ask any questions. He just said knock yourself out. And the $10 fee. So this is one of those fossils that I found there.

[Steven Rinella]

Damn. Yeah.

[Ethan]

I don't know, probably like 6 inches long. Looks like it's probably from an elm. From an elm tree number two. This is a fish fossil from Wyoming. It's from the world famous Green river formation. It's a really amazing place called American Fossil. You book your dig like way in advance and then you get to go there. This is a video of what a successful one of these would look like.

[Steven Rinella]

Wow.

[Ethan]

This is a nightia that you. That's me. That's the state fossil of Wyoming. It's an extinct type of herring. It's like one of the coolest places on planet earth. I think you get to go to this giant quarry. You take home anything you find there. It can be absolutely anything. Fish is the most common, but there's mammals, insects, birds. There's been like a three toed horse that was discovered there and you could find something worth millions of dollars you get to take home. So this is one of those fish that I found that day.

[Steven Rinella]

People don't bid this up they can go to hell.

[Ethan]

And then the last one here is a dino bone that I found in Montana with the famous and infamous Jack Horner.

[Steven Rinella]

I've been on the show, put him.

[Ethan]

Yeah, I put him in a real tough spot when he was on that show. And I asked him if I could come with on a dino dig. And how does he say no? You know, when there's microphone.

[Steven Rinella]

That's what happened.

[Ethan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really on the show, huh? And he's.

[Steven Rinella]

That's how you got in?

[Ethan]

Yeah, I guess so. So I'm like, okay. And I emailed him the next day, and like, jack, when. When can I join you? And so, like, three months later, I was on a dino dig with Jack in northern Montana. And this is a duckbill dino, a type of duck bill that Jack actually discovered. And if we were doing this news show back in February, we might have talked about Jack because he was in the Epstein files. So that's why I say the infamous. Also infamous for other reasons. I never told this story, but I feel like it adds something to this.

[Steven Rinella]

Now, just to be clear, being in the Epstein files, doesn't in and of itself mean anything?

[Ethan]

Yeah. To add context for Jack's involvement, he went to Epstein's ranch in New Mexico to look for dino bones. And then I think they talked about him joining the ranch in Wyoming to also do some excavating.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. It's just important to.

[Ethan]

Yes, right. There's some more Jack Horner background about one of his wives that he had.

[Max]

Yes.

[Ethan]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

So, yes, he married a student.

[Ethan]

When I go to this dino dig, this was 2022, I believe. As a volunteer, I'm teamed up with a paleontologist. And then you're, like, given a job and a paleontologist to work with. Our job was prospecting. Meaning we got to just, like, wander around the Badlands and look for possible fossils or, like, big, big deposits of fossils. And I'm asking this woman some questions, and I all of a sudden, I elbow my wife. I'm like, I think this might be Jack's, like, wife that. The student that he married. And then it comes out a little bit later that it was. So I found this rock with Jack's famous ex wife. And Jack, they got.

[Steven Rinella]

They split up.

[Ethan]

The case. They split up. Yeah. But they're still friends. They're great friends. And she's like, I love Jack. Jack's one of the most important people in my life. We're great friends. We still work together. So, like, the only people have touched this bone are Jack Horner. Jack Horner's ex wife. Me. My wife. That's. That's the fossil you're getting from a type of dinosaur that he discovered back in the 70s. That put Jack on the map.

[Steven Rinella]

Duck Bill D. God, what a box of fossils.

[Ethan]

17 of them. Those are five of my.

[Steven Rinella]

That's just five. That's the worst five.

[Ethan]

Yeah. We got petrified wood in here. Clam fossils, snail fossils, agates, all kinds of stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

Ingot of gold.

[Ethan]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

Damn. Love it. Outdoorsman know dependable gear earns its reputation over time. Whether it's a trusted pair of boots, reliable optics or a capable truck, performance matters most when conditions get tough. The Nissan Frontier is built with that same mindset. Instead of chasing trends, the Frontier focuses on proven capability. Every Frontier comes standard with a 310 horsepower V6, the most powerful naturally aspirated V6 in its class. Combined with a smooth nine speed automatic transmission, it delivers confident, dependable power for hauling gear, reaching campsites and tackling the road ahead. No tricks, no trendy, no unproven turbo or hybrid fad. Just real truck power built to get the job done. Discover what the Nissan Frontier is built for. Auto Pacific segmentation 2026 Frontier vs latest in market competitors in the mid sized truck class. Base models compared based on manufacturers websites. We have a blast every summer. Fishing, swimming, camping out, shooting bows, sitting around the fire. Last weekend we were floating a creek and then doing some metal detecting and we found what I believe to be a very old horseshoe. It's all the best. And if you're looking for the perfect companion to your summer adventures, try the refreshing citrus kick of Mountain Dew. From its beginnings in the foothills of Tennessee, invented by two brothers back in 1948, Mountain Dew has been a constant. And they've got proud American roots. It's an American original of citrusy goodness. You can celebrate summer and America's 250th birthday with mountain Dew. Whether you're at the grill on the beach or right in your living room, sipping on a Mountain Dew is a great way to start a damn good time. Enjoy the refreshing citrus kick of Mountain Dew, An American original tasting great since 48. Look for mountain Dew in stores near you@mountain Dew.com. that's Mountain Dew.com.

[Auction House Announcer]

well, it's here, folks. The 2026 Meat Eater Auction house of oddities is back and open for bids now. This year's auction features eyebrow raising outdoor gear donated by the Meat Eater crew, employees and friends of the brand, including Steve's dad's shitty old Truck full of badass hunting gear, the Honda outboard motor from DOS Boat Season 3, Clay Newcombe's Alaskan wetsuit, bear hide, fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty crate and more. The auction house kicks off July 8 and runs for two weeks with 100% of proceeds going to our land access initiative, which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions such as the recent 200 acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 328 acre Wildcat Bend acquisition in Montana, and the 215 acre Shiloh Pond project in Maine. Visit Themeateater.com auction to place your bids. Now get your hands on some meat eater history and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, onto your news now. Your news today is brought to you by banished suppressors, which I'm holding in my hand here. What I'm holding my hand specifically is the meat eater banish collab suppressor, which has the equivalent of like a little adjustable muzzle brake apparatus on the end. It's 30 cal. Can you can run on anything. I run one of these on my 22 Creedmoor on up. Brought to you by that. Okay, the your news is a guy that wrote in today, he comes in looking for life advice and he's gonna get it. He says he was at a. What was he at?

[Derek Wolf]

Estate sale.

[Steven Rinella]

He's at an estate sale. I don't know how he got there and Randall wasn't there, but he was at a state an estate sale. And he sees that there's a beaver pelt for sale, winds up that there's two beaver pelts. Once he gets to asking about it, the old lady wants 25 bucks for both of them. He somehow gets her down to 20 bucks. So he gets two beaver pelts for 20 bucks. He bought them because they seemed cool. He didn't want them to get thrown away. And he bought them because, quote, you guys have talked a lot about fur as such an interesting and high quality material. He goes on to say, but having them. I don't really know what to do with them. Have a hat made, but it's not that cold here. I wouldn't get to use it hardly ever. My wife. Okay, it's hard for me to say this without crying. He says my wife is unlikely to allow them as decor.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I. I feel like he should have gone a little further here and like, act like he hasn't even asked her yet. You know what I mean?

[Ethan]

We should.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I know.

[John Jersick]

We.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

We need that.

[Steven Rinella]

I sometimes need to ask my wife about something for Three months just waiting for the right moment.

[Yanni Guillen]

I am.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm petrified. Anyway, I thought you guys might have some suggestions. Happy, if you want to discuss on the pod or even drop me a line or email, thanks in advance. I got a ton of suggestions. There's all kinds of stuff you could do with it. Nate pulled a picture here where my feet are resting on a beaver fur ottoman. How does a guy like this. How does a guy make something like this? I'll tell you. We had an ottoman and it had a little pad. I went and got some super thin. So scrap a super thin plywood wrapped, put the plywood on the bottom, wrapped the beaver hide around the pad and took a staple gun. And there you have still started making my back too sweaty. There was always a beaver pelt over this chair I'm leaning on. You could take your two beaver pelts and have a hat made and send it to a person that lives in a cold place. You could just have it laying over a piece of furniture. And when people come over, you go, see that. That's a beaver pelt.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Well, he's got his wife to contend with.

[Steven Rinella]

The biggest problem he's got. The biggest problem he's got is. What do you mean your wife won't let you? Like, what is. It's not even her. None of her business. When I'm talking about not asking my wife something for two weeks, it's not about something like that.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Right. You would just lay it across the couch and be done with it.

[Yanni Guillen]

100.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Oh, yeah. So, I mean, that's what I would be.

[Steven Rinella]

Nothing else is there? What, you don't want to be in a happy marriage?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

No, I would do the same thing.

[Steven Rinella]

And it was like I was at my dentist the other day. Yesterday I was at my dentist.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Those dentists are problems.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, he was telling me his wife's out of town. He hung a bunch of taxidermy up in a certain place in the living room. His wife comes back out of town, doesn't like it, he said, but she can't even climb up there.

[Derek Wolf]

Dude, I got. My wife just built these shelves and there's 24 nooks. Guess how many nooks I am allocated.

[Yanni Guillen]

12.

[Derek Wolf]

One.

[Steven Rinella]

No, it should be 12.

[Derek Wolf]

That's what I said.

[Yanni Guillen]

And you're not?

[Steven Rinella]

No.

[Yanni Guillen]

You're gonna let it slide?

[Derek Wolf]

I'm trying my best, but, dudes, all

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

you do is you build your own thing with 30 nooks. Put that where you want and give her one.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, man. There's all kinds of bad Stuff about my wife. But the one thing like she never. There's certain things she just does not mess with me about. She would never mess with me about something like this. About home decor, about skulls and all that kind of stuff. Never messes with me about it.

[Derek Wolf]

That's gift.

[Steven Rinella]

And like never messes with me about doing stuff in the kitchen. I could take a roadkill moose and put it on that counter and she is not going to mention it.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I feel like unless someone was like a vegan or seriously anti hunting or something. Like a beaver pelt's not offensive in any way.

[Steven Rinella]

No. My wife is always mad at me. But like she doesn't mess with me about some things. She's perpetually mad about some stuff. But this is just not an issue I have to deal with. So it's hard for me to even empathize.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Can we make that a regular segment? Like things that she's mad at you about?

[Steven Rinella]

Oh yeah. She could host it.

[Yanni Guillen]

How's it working your house, Spencer? Around home decor?

[Ethan]

I have a pretty good guess by now as to like what my wife would approve of and not approve of. And so I don't. I don't get that one wrong too often. But also if there's something I really want and she doesn't, I'll be like, this is really important to me. I really want this buck up in here that I killed.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Ethan]

And then I. That. That usually wins it for me. And I think that. But that's also like a powerful sentence to say. Like this is important to me. So I don't use that one often either.

[Max]

Yeah.

[Ethan]

I think you could tell your wife that these beaver pelts from this estate sale are very important to email her. Yeah, that might just do it.

[Steven Rinella]

If not time to get a new one. I'll call her onto the news.

[Yanni Guillen]

You didn't even mention getting them turned into a pillow. Those are some of my favorite things. I love your house.

[Steven Rinella]

Why didn't I think of that? You're gonna turn this into a win for your wife. Hadn't thought of that. I'm going to give you a hot tip. Sowing by Somai. Should we even say that? Should we bleep that out?

[Yanni Guillen]

I'm sure she'd love the business.

[Derek Wolf]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm going to give you a hot tip. Sewing by Somai.

[Yanni Guillen]

How do you spell so my S

[Steven Rinella]

O A M I. That's your hot tip? Say you want a pillow. Leather backed pillow. Your wife, Your wife will be praising you. This is going to turn all your marriage around, you're going to become a household hero. When she gets.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

She'll ask you to start trapping beavers.

[Steven Rinella]

When you get that leather back beaver fur throw pillow in that house, she's not going to get off it. You're not going to see her in your bedroom anymore because she's going to be sleeping with her head on that couch pillow. On to the news.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Earn a buck is back, except now it's earn a second buck.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I like the sounds of that.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I like it.

[Steven Rinella]

That's got more of a. That's got more of a ring to it.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah, yeah, we'll give you the first one. You got to earn the second one in New York State this time. Beginning this year, New York hunters must harvest and report an antlerless deer, doe or antlerless buck before becoming eligible to shoot a second antlered buck or antlered deer. It's a statewide rule. It replaces the previous system that allowed many hunters to harvest two bucks without taking an antlerless deer. Every licensed hunter will still receive an antler deer tag and they'll earn that second antler deer tag Only after legally harvesting and reporting an antlerless deer.

[Steven Rinella]

Can you back up minute?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

And explain to people why. Why is this even a thing?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

That's, that's all next. So New York state's got a million whitetails, 500,000 hunters, deer hunters. Annual harvest is around 225,000 deer, but only 100,000 of those are does. So in a lot of wildlife management units, the deer population is greatly exceeding objectives. And they're starting to see that excessive browsing is creating poor habitat nutritional stress on the deer that are there, and it slows down forestry regeneration. They're also seeing crop damage, more deer vehicle collisions. So the doe harvest is. The rate is too low. And in fact, only about 13% of New York deer hunters harvest one antlerless deer. Only 3% are harvesting two or more.

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah, I, I don't, it's a, I don't get it personally. Like, it was never a big. Like we always were all about harvesting does, you know, I don't know why it's a big deal these days, but dec. Department of Environmental Conservation. Can you look that up?

[Steven Rinella]

A Department of Environmental Conservation.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Environmental Conservation, yeah. So they did like focus groups and surveys and things. And they had input from biologists all over the state before they came to this. Like this idea for harvesting more does. And actually something that came out in that same, those same surveys is a lot of hunters preferred going back to A one buck limit. But DEC concluded, you know, that's not going to do anything to increase antlerless harvest. So there was no reason to do that.

[Steven Rinella]

But at its inception, the earn a buck concept was you. They were going into, to try to control deer numbers and particularly around cwd.

[Ethan]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

They were going to places where you traditionally would just get a buck tag.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And they were going to hunters and saying, no longer can you just get a bus.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

You gotta, you have to kill a

[Steven Rinella]

dough to get a buck. And that wound up being, in some areas, exceedingly unpopular. Wisconsin did it.

[Auction House Announcer]

And.

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Undid it.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah, we'll get. Well, I'm gonna get to all that stuff. So the regular season deer tag is now called the antler deer tag. And you, and you qualify for that second buck by using, you know, just a rifle, doe tag, a bow, muzzle loader, whatever you get the dough with, it doesn't matter. You'll get that second buck tag after you prove that you've killed that doe. And this was, this was some interesting stuff here. The state's going to implement verification measures to prove, to make sure hunters prove that they actually kill the deer. Because there was some concern around people just like filling out a tag and saying, you know, I killed one. And then they get straight to that second buck. They were never interested in shooting a doe, so they're, they're going to do field checks. Hunters may be required to sign an attestation verifying the report. They, if, if requested, hunters must provide proof of the harvest within a week. And that could be a photograph, it could be a, like a receipt from a deer processor. They're just trying to like, dissuade people from faking it. And if they do get caught Faking it, it's 2,$250 per offense, up to 2 grand and possibly one year in jail.

[Steven Rinella]

Imagine that. What are you in for?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah, but this.

[Steven Rinella]

What do you mean? I'm in for murder. What are you in for? He's like, well, you know the Earn a Buck program.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah. Like New York's going big on proving this. Michigan also, just like, they just came out with a new proposal for a similar Earn a second buck program. They're looking to do a pilot program in five counties in southern Michigan. And their proof is just like the tag. They're just like. We kind of looked at the proving it all these different ways. It was too expensive. So a tag's good enough. So Michigan's going a much different direction.

[Yanni Guillen]

A tag as in I bought a tag?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

No, like you like, like, you know, validated. Yeah, exactly.

[Ethan]

Some blood on it.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

They just looked at like dealing with photos and, and like game check stations, all that. And it was just too much money.

[Steven Rinella]

But that was the, that was the accusation I heard in Wisconsin. When Wisconsin did earn a buck. I would hear from guys saying that a group of guys that get a dough and everybody use it, right?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah, for sure.

[Steven Rinella]

To go get their buck tape.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Now like this, like whitetail populations are like going through the roof in a lot of places. Like Steve mentions, there's concerns with cwd, but still like it's, it hasn't. This program has not been popular in the past. Like hunters feel like it delays their opportunity to kill a buck. If you're a hunter who can only, you know, maybe hunt one day on the weekend or two days on the weekend, it's, it's like limited time. Trophy hunters that aren't interested in shooting dose at all aren't interested in it. And this, this last one makes some sense. The regulation can tend to treat low density and high density deer areas the same. For example, in New York, this northern zone, the Adirondacks, like that's an area with really low deer densities. So you know it's going to make it harder to, to get that doe and then get that second buck. The DC DC says it's to incentivize, not punish hunters. If they do want a second buck, they can travel to one of the wildlife management units where there's a lot of does and do it that way. For those hunters that like don't like it, maybe question whether it works. Like there's proof that it does work. You control populations by shooting does. Wisconsin pioneered the earn a buck program in the late, in the 1990s. It ran a little more than a decade before it got shut down just because of hunter dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction with the program. But it increased dough harvest rates by 20 to 40%, reduced deer densities and it helped improve forest regeneration. The wildlife manager in Wisconsin, like they concluded it was like a very successful program, but it was just like the hunters didn't like it. Doug Dern will tell you, is the most effective whitetail herd management strategy ever created. There's a few other states that have experimented with it, not like on a statewide level. Iowa and some other midwestern states have, have run like localized earn a buck regulations with the same results like higher doe harvest and faster population reductions. So like it does work. We'll see if the New York hunters embrace it or not. I'm not sure how it's going to go like, I'm all for it, but I've never like really done it or experienced it.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yep.

[Derek Wolf]

Dude. Sorry.

[Steven Rinella]

I would say if you were a state and you had a rigid. You like in a rigid one buck state.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. We're in a, like we live in a one buck state. Rigidly one buck.

[Ethan]

And New York is a two buck state. They're not going from one to two. I'm staying at two.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Saying. But let's say Pennsylvania, two buck state or a one buck state. Yep. I think the way to do it is you got to. You'd be like, let's say you're a one buck state. You say you still get your one buck same as normal. You got to kill two does. And then you earn an unprecedented.

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Second buck opportunity.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

What an opportunity that would be.

[Steven Rinella]

People feel like they're getting more.

[Ethan]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Not like they got to jump through hoops to get what they've always had because that's when you wind up with discontent.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah. But I mean, it's like falling dough harvest is like a problem all over the country these days.

[Steven Rinella]

Yes. People don't. Yeah. Because people are pansies. They don't want to eat deer meat.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Here's the. Like in 20 years this will become more clear. Maybe it'll be 50 years to become more clear. Of the two conversations, there's two conversations happening about whitetail deer in America. Conversation one, there's too many whitetail deer over vast portions of the range. There's too many whitetail deer. By someone's measure.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Landscaping, ticks, agriculture, highway collisions. By someone's measure, there's too many deer. The other major conversation happening on white tailed deer in America is that we have that chronic wasting disease is spreading. And ultimately chronic wasting disease is going to have population level impacts. Some people project it's going to have catastrophic population level impact.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

And they're seeing falling populations in places already.

[Steven Rinella]

I know, but these two stories. You're right. Well, yes. You can argue it.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

These two stories at some point are going to need to reconcile with each other.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

These two narratives are not in sync.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Nope.

[Steven Rinella]

And like, I don't know, is it 20 years, is it 50 years when it becomes clear where one of the narratives was wrong or. Or something. Or they come together and all of a sudden we're talking about there are no deer anymore.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah. Hopefully it's not that hopefully it's like a management strategy that everyone agrees works. You know, like here in Montana, they have special CWD hunts Like late in the season where it's, you know, doesn't matter if you've already shot a buck. You can get these CWD tags and go in and kill a buck or a doe. You just got to be prepared to deal with a deer that might be CWD positive, you know.

[Derek Wolf]

In the same season, I hunted two different earn a buck programs in two different states. One was you could shoot a buck. It was exactly like this. You could shoot a buck, and then you had to shoot a doe in order to shoot a second buck. In the other one, you had to shoot a doe before you were allowed to shoot your one buck. I shot, I was way more motivated to go out and kill that first doe. I traveled. I traveled probably eight hours to go hunt over Halloween weekend, shoot a doe, came back home, then went two weeks later to shoot a buck. The other program where it was shoot a buck, shoot a doe, shoot a second buck was my home state. I shot a buck peak rut and I was like, cool, I'm good. I didn't go out and shoot another doe. And I wanted to. It's not like I was like, oh, screw these guys. I wanted to go shoot out another doe. It was not a high enough priority for me to get out there and do it.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah, I don't get that, like not wanting to go hunt and shoot a deer and eat a deer. Like you're eating something, you're hunting too, and learning and.

[Yanni Guillen]

But I still hear there's still people out there. And it might have something to do with just the, you know, high density, low density areas. Yeah, but there's people that have memories of years where there were more deer in their area and they long for those times when they would see 20 deer a sit instead of just two.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

And, well, I mean, that was me when I was a kid. We'd see 40 deer and one was a spike, you know.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah, but people miss those days. You know, they like target rich environment.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah, sure.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Outdoorsmen know dependable gear earns its reputation over time. Whether it's a trusted pair of boots, reliable optics, or a capable truck, performance matters most when conditions get tough. The Nissan Frontier is built with that same mindset. Instead of chasing trends, the Frontier focuses on proven capability. Every frontier comes standard with a 310 horsepower V6, the most powerful naturally aspirated V6 in its class. Combined with a smooth nine speed automatic transmission, it delivers confident, dependable power for hauling gear, reaching campsites, and tackling the road ahead. No tricks, no trendy, no unproven turbo or hybrid fad. Just real truck power built to get the job done. Discover what the Nissan Frontier is built for Auto Pacific segmentation 2026 Frontier vs latest in market competitors in the mid size truck class Base models compared based on manufacturers websites well, it's here folks.

[Auction House Announcer]

The 2026 Meat Eater Auction House of Oddities is back and open for bids now. This year's auction features eyebrow raising outdoor gear donated by the Meat Eater crew, employees and friends of the brand, including Steve's dad's shitty old truck full of badass hunting gear, the Honda outboard motor from DOS Boat Season 3, Clay Newcomb's Alaskan wetsuit, bear hide, fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Crate and more. The auction house kicks off July 8 and runs for two weeks with 100% of proceeds going to our Land Access Initiative, which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions such as the recent 200 acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 328 acre Wildcat Bend acquisition in Montana, and the 215 acre Shiloh Pond project in in Maine. Visit Themeater.com auction to place your bids. Now get your hands on some Meat Eater history and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign.

[Steven Rinella]

All right, moving on to the to the Wild Buffalo Reporting desk story about American Prairie. Some of you might know it as American Prairie Reserve. It's now American Prairie for reference sake. If you want to go back into our library, we recently did an episode with the CEO of American Prairie about their mission. To summarize real quick, before we get into the nitty gritty on this one, American Prairie is a conservation land preservation organization that operates out of North Central Montana. Their objective is to buy land on the open market. Okay, willing seller, willing buyer. They just bid and buy land on the open market and then try to restore it to as pristine as possible of a landscape. They own outright deeded land. They own about 167,000 acres of deeded land. They sit on grazing leases. They sit on more grazing lease land than they sit on deeded land.

[Ethan]

So?

[Steven Rinella]

So to the tune of it, they have grazing rights either because they own it or they lease it on about a half million acres. Okay, I'm throwing out some big numbers and some people maybe not be able to picture this. All right, American Prairie again, they own 167,000 acres. All right, the biggest ranch in the state of Montana, 400,000 acres, is owned by Rupert Murdoch. AP American Prairie owns more acreage than Ted Turner's Flying D. So this is a Big ranch, very controversial. I'll get into that in a minute, but I'm on before saying this. Very controversial. I'll clarify. All of that land is all public. So the 167,000 acres they own is open to the public. You can walk across it, you can walk your dog on it. You can go around looking around. The deeded land is state and federal public land. So the fact that they lease grazing rights on it does not make it that you can't hunt it. It's totally open in public. They just have the right to run cattle, buffalo, whatever, to graze the grass. All right. Part of the controversy of ap, there's a rallying cry to the opposition to ap, which is Save the Cowboy, Stop American Prairie. It's this idea that if you buy up ranch land and just use it for wildlife, you are creating an existential threat to the American cowboy because he's supposed to be out roping cattle, and all of a sudden now it's just deer and elk.

[Ethan]

It's a popular sign. You see, the way you'd see a politician sign someone's driveway.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

And I'll point out that on a lot of AP's property, they're still grazing cattle.

[Steven Rinella]

A lot of them I'll point out, too. AP owns, as I'm going to get into, they own about 970 buffalo. There are 2 million cattle in Montana. So the existential threat that these animals provide is a little bit. You got to take it with, you know, you got to think of the numbers here. Okay, I find American Prairie to be controversial. Why do I think they're controversial? My concern with American Prairie, as I've told everybody I know that works there or runs the place or is on the board, my concern is that their commitment to public hunting is tepid. And when I put that in my notes, realized I don't think anyone's ever said the word tepid on this show.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I don't recall.

[Steven Rinella]

Means lukewarm.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I was just gonna say.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I bet. You're certain that their commitment to public hunting is lukewarm.

[Ethan]

What do they say to you?

[Steven Rinella]

They could do a lot on that. They say, of course not. We have this and this and this. But they put restrictions, they put hunting restrictions above and beyond what the state puts. And they basically, not. Basically, they put a mule deer hunting moratorium on their land. But the state is not eye to eye on that. Right. And then even, like you go ask, like deer researchers, like a limited buck harvest. Limited mule deer buck harvest has zero impact on mule deer Populations. Right. It doesn't matter.

[Derek Wolf]

But.

[Steven Rinella]

And that's what it would be. So that's, that's why they're controversial to me. But I'll try to look at things in this case, I look at the good and the bad. This is just the story of what's

[Ethan]

going on on the hunting thing. Like, I'd point out that Montana's block management, which is like private land, open to public.

[Max]

Yeah.

[Ethan]

It's not uncommon for those pieces to be open to hunting, but have restrictions. Right. Like you can't kill an elk here.

[Steven Rinella]

Correct.

[Ethan]

You can't duck hunt.

[Steven Rinella]

It's their right.

[Ethan]

You can't drive these roads. So like we, we see that in other parts of the state.

[Derek Wolf]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

But they have a lot of acreage. Again, I would say this, I did say this. I would say this with them sitting right here because I'm like, sympathetic to the mission. I support the buffalo part of the mission. I think that they would be doing themselves a strategic favor by being more open, putting more lands open to hunting, less restrictions, more acreage, hunting. Because then you're going to create. All the hunters are going to be your allies, but instead you're creating an impression in people's minds they don't want me around. And if they buy up more land, it's more land that I'm not welcome on. It's just, it's. This is way beyond what I want to talk about here. So what I want to talk about here is politics. Their buffalo, they run their buffalo as what's called a conservation herd. It's not a production herd. They're not running buffalo in order to produce hide, leather, meat. Right. They're running it as a restoration project.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Can I ask.

[Steven Rinella]

It's the native.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

They're categorized as livestock, aren't they?

[Steven Rinella]

They have to be in the state.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

These are ear tagged counted animals.

[John Jersick]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Not because they necessarily want them to be, but they're not regard. Even though they're a native land mammal, they're not regarded as wildlife in Montana. They have to be regarded as livestock. So, yes, out of necessity.

[John Jersick]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

They have to like, count them, manage them like livestock. But the objective is this is the dominant native land mammal on that landscape historically. And they're trying to put them back on the landscape. So they're doing this by buying ranch land and letting the buffalo roam on it. And they're doing it by doing leases, paying the lease fees, and letting their buffalo run on state and federal grazing leases. All right. What's a grazing lease? Well, a grazing lease is the west is full of it. A grazing lease is, you got a chunk of land, let's say, let's just say for easy sake, it's a thousand acres. You strike a deal with. If it's Bureau of Land Management, federally managed public land, Bureau of Land Management, they open up a grazing lease for a thousand acres. They will tell you you can graze blank number, blank cow care cow calf pears for blank months. And that's how it's like measured in animal units.

[Ethan]

And if you're in a very lush place, that'll be a high number. And if you're in the badlands where it's all brown for, you know, 10 months of the year, it's going to be a really low number.

[Steven Rinella]

Exactly. It's tweaked according to the, an assessment of the productivity of the land. And you, you get a deal. You sign a lease, you pay a fee. America Prairie has. This is a quote from ap. There's pointing this out in terms of this grazing lease debate that I'm going to explain. As American Prairie says, America Prairie has lawfully grazed bison on BLM lands for more than 20 years, complying with every rule, regulation and permit requirement. There have been no grazing violations and the administrative record contains objective evidence showing that range land conditions have improved over the last two decades with bison on the landscape. However, right now, after 20 years, for reasons I'll get into the state of Montana and the feds are tag teaming American Prairie. They're coming at American Prairie on state leases. They're coming at American Prairie on federal leases. Under the direction of Secretary of Interior Burgum, the Department of Interior is pulling American Prairie's federal leases. That's, that's one fight. It warrants a ton of discussion, but since this is a news show, the news right now in this moment is about the state leases that American Prairie has. Okay. America Prairie is aiming to Graze Bison on 5,000 acres of lands owned by the state of Montana. They already have the permit. They're just looking to put the animals out there. The state manages 1.4 million acres of grazing leases. So to put this another way, America Prairie is asking to graze buffalo on.011% of the state's grazing acreage. A tenth of a percent. Okay. In seeking permission from the state to do this, the state slow walked them for seven years, would not process the request. Eventually the state supreme court steps in and says, that's just bad government. You gotta process their request. So what happens now? The state now is saying, we're not gonna let permits out to people that want to graze buffalo in a conservation herd. One of the perspectives on this is a stock grower, stock growers organization opposed to them putting buffalo out. A discussion is they're saying grazing leases were intended for what they call production livestock grazing, meaning grazing leases were intended to be used to produce a food product. And if you have a conservation herd, it's. That's outside of the intention of grazing leases. However, this intention was never adequately codified by law. It's an interpretation of past intention. So the state fought them by just slow walking their permits. Okay, While all this is going on, they've had all these different debates. At one point the state says, while we can't do it right now because our state land order borders BLM land and we need to hear from the BLM what they think about these dastardly buffalo grazing BLM land. BLM comes back at the time they come back and says, well, nothing bad happens. It's kind of a non issue. So rather than the state then saying, okay, we've heard from the blm, they say it's not a problem, we'll accept that. No, they go, we're going to appeal your decision that it's not a big problem. Then the state gets into this kind of goofy debate. They start obfuscating what their objectives are. They get into this goofy debate about whether one bison actually equals one cow, okay? Now Montana State University has research suggesting that you can fewer an equivalency if you put a buffalo on the grass. It's the same as putting a cow on the grass, okay? And since the state sets the stocking ratios anyways, they can say how many are permitted to be out there, but that's not what they're after. They just don't want them out there. And then they put out this thing like, hey, we're not trying to obstruct buffalo being on the ground. It's just, we're just trying to protect the grasslands. And it's kind of gets in this thing like home.

[Derek Wolf]

It's.

[Steven Rinella]

So you're trying to prevent the west from turning back into that real dump that it was back when 30 million buffalo were grazing around and vast herds of elk occupied the American Great Plains. And like Lewis and Clark were staggered by the abundance of wildlife and whole cultures were existing off this wildlife for 10,000 years. Like, let's not revisit that shit show, right? That's, that's the argument. Finally the Supreme Court says, you gotta deal with these people's permit. So then the state Land board comes and directs the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation saying don't renew buffalo leases. Don't give out buffalo leases. Just they change the rules. Okay? They're saying it has to be production agriculture. So America Prairie takes them to court and a judge just puts in an injunction. No, you think I forgot to mention. Meanwhile, America Prairie canceled all their public hunts. They do public raffle hunts. They had to cancel all their hunts because of this whole show going on.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Four bison.

[Steven Rinella]

They canceled their public buffalo hunts. They do buffalo hunts for veterans. They canceled it because of all this uncertainty about their herd. They want an injunction. But to me it feels very tenuous. Their argument is that the, that the land board and the DRN DNRC didn't do the normal rulemaking process before changing the rule. So they're saying you didn't, you know, you didn't open it up for public comment and all that. And so the judge put an injunction and says they don't need to clear their animals out yet. It's a, it's a very minor victory. But like I said, it has a very tenuous appeal. A very tenuous feel to me is not like a conclusive finding. It's just an injunction on something while something else gets sorted out. The federal land thing, which still lingers, that all hinges on the intent and definition of something called the Taylor Grazing Act. But again, the federal BLM part of this is a whole other story. The state and the feds are tag teaming this organization around their buffalo herd. What's funny about this, the irony of

[Derek Wolf]

this

[Steven Rinella]

is a lot of this is taking place against the backdrop of all this hoopla about the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opening up in Medora, North Dakota. And they timed the opening of the library for the July 4th celebrations of our 250th anniversary. All these political figures converge on North Dakota for the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt presidential library over July 4th weekend. Because the political figures all want to align themselves with the vision and mission of President Theodore Roosevelt. What is that legacy? TR is a. It's like TR just is a conservation president. People that, that when people think of TR today, they don't think, they, they don't think about him storming San Juan Hill. They don't think about him being an advocate of Panama Canal. He's a conservation president. I'm on the board of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. When people hear that, they don't think I'm talking about conserving Panama. The guy is a conservation president.

[Ethan]

The conservation president.

[Steven Rinella]

The just let me do like a little year by year run through on an issue. In December 1904, President Roosevelt urged Congress to authorize that the government set aside portions of forest reserves as refuges for bison. 1905 in his annual message to Congress, Theodore Roosevelt described the buffalo as the most characteristic animal of the western plains and addressed the importance of the remaining small herds. He also acknowledged the economic advantages associated with the value of the buffalo herd. He recognized Wichita Reserve in Oklahoma as a forest reserve that could aid in buffalo preservation. The next year, he becomes the honorary president of the American Bison Society. The next year. We're now in 1906, Roosevelt congratulated Senator John F. Lacey of the. Of Lacey Act. Infamousy of Lacey act fame. Not infamous fame. Congratulated Lacey for getting the Senate Committee on Agriculture to order an amendment to an appropriation bill that approved money for the Wichita reserve, which would house buffalo. The next year. 1907, Roosevelt supported reintroductions of buffalo, Wind Cave national park, the National Bison Range, Wichita Mountain Reserve. The next year, 1908, the American Bison Society, of which Theodore Roosevelt is the honorary president, successfully petitioned, petitioned Congress to pass a bill that would establish a permanent bison range in Montana. So there's 1904-1905-1906-1907, 1908. I could go on and on. So when. When these people are coming there and like. And like, tying themselves to the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, at the same time trying to attack the restoration of the animal, like, what are you tying yourself to? It's because so much stuff. So much stuff is just like perform. You could get the same people in the same room and they acting like they're talking about the same thing, but they're not talking about the same thing. Like, what are they talking about?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

It looks good to stand in front of a portrait of tr.

[Steven Rinella]

That's what I always say. Every politician in America would like to be favorably compared to Theodore Roosevelt. But what the guy wanted is so damn clear.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

And they don't. It's just maddening. Over to you, Yanni.

[Yanni Guillen]

He's kind of an environmentalist by today's terms.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, he was a radical.

[Yanni Guillen]

Radical.

[Steven Rinella]

That's the other thing people don't realize is how much people hated that guy for doing all this stuff. They hated him.

[Ethan]

Steve would have hated him because he liked national parks so much.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Yes.

[Ethan]

You'd have disagreed with him back.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

The guy that shot at him, hit that little booklet in his chest. He likes parks. No, I'm joking.

[John Jersick]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I would have disagreed with him on that. I would have done a new show all about that. I'd been like, teddy, you're misguided.

[Ethan]

You know, the, the like journey for that. It was his folded up speech that saved his life. When he was shot. It was, it was said that that can trace all the way back to his early years when he was a president and he was really into boxing to the point where those in his cabinet were like, teddy, you can't be boxing with the interns anymore. Like, it's just a bad look when you show up in some public space and you've got a black eye. So he like kind of started secretly boxing with people in his universe.

[Steven Rinella]

One of Clinton ran with that, but he wasn't boxing.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yes.

[Ethan]

Yeah. Other bad physical contact. Teddy gets lit up one day, he gets knocked in the side of the head. That messes with his vision. He has to start wearing glasses. So when he goes to give speeches now, the font is so big that he like has to have more paper physically to do his speeches. So for that speech, he had a lot more pieces of paper. It was wadded up in his pocket where he was shot. And so, like, you can go back and say his little underground boxing ring saved his life because he had more paper in his pocket.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Giannis, don't you do a thing called mediator experiments.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, it's a great idea.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He finished the speech.

[Max]

He did.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Put a speech in your pocket and we'll start cutting loose at you.

[Steven Rinella]

He finished speech now.

[John Jersick]

It was.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, it was badass. Listen, it was. It was badass that Trump had the wherewithal to raise his fist. Imagine how bad ass it was to finish your speech.

[Ethan]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

After a dude shot at you.

[Ethan]

Teddy definitely knew that. He's like, oh, look at all the points I'm going to win here by doing this speech after just getting sh.

[Yanni Guillen]

That, you know, we'd have to really do some historical digging on, you know, like powder loads, bullet, you know, because you can't use a nice accubond and try that thing.

[Steven Rinella]

A couple years ago, there was a story. I think it was a boyfriend, girlfriend were messing around with that and I think one of them killed the other one. Holding books up.

[Derek Wolf]

We just used like those beanbag rounds.

[Steven Rinella]

Shooting books.

[Ethan]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Let's talk about Maine.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah, we'll. We'll get into it.

[Steven Rinella]

Not Platter, but me, because I'm not gonna talk about that. No name dams.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah, here's a. Here's a conservation win story. Inside Climate News. I need to get. Since we're doing the show all the time. I gotta get up on my subscriptions. You boys must have a lot of subscriptions to all these different news sources. Is that right?

[Steven Rinella]

That's got a lot of people that send me stuff.

[Yanni Guillen]

Oh, I need more of those people.

[Derek Wolf]

Barge will cover a couple of them. Just a couple.

[Yanni Guillen]

Inside Climate News reported that because of dam removal, Maine's alewives are making a significant comeback. And like me 24 hours ago, you might be like what's an alewife?

[Steven Rinella]

Which is really humiliating for you.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yanni, you're from Michigan. How could you not go with it? How did you pronounce it?

[Steven Rinella]

Alewives.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah. Wives. Okay. I thought you said something different early. Earlier. Well, I'll get to why I should know about it. As a Michigander. It's an anadromous herring averaging 12 inches but can be as big as 16. Not considered a game fish although some folks smoke them and eat them. Alewives are most famous. This is why I should be embarrassed as a Michigander for using.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm embarrassed for not knowing this.

[Yanni Guillen]

The Welland Canal to bypass Niagara Falls and invade the Great Lakes. Causing the extinct extinction of several cisco species. They've also had negative impacts on yellow perch and whitefish populations in the Great Lakes. How they do that that they either out compete them for the zooplankton or they eat the fry of the yellow perch and cod and other fish like that. But this isn't about how they got famous. Maybe they're going to get famous because of this conservation. When. Because for their native range which is like South Carolina up to Nova Scotia in the western Atlantic, they are not doing as well. Do you have a picture of that? Ly. I just. I had it on the. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Nearly that big.

[Yanni Guillen]

What's that?

[Steven Rinella]

The Great Lakes ones were small.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah.

[Yanni Guillen]

Oh they were.

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I think it's like a food thing, you know. Plankton. Yeah, stuff like that.

[John Jersick]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

There were no 12 inches man.

[Ethan]

And those. Those Great Lakes one they do not get back to the ocean. Right. They're just staying there.

[Yanni Guillen]

No. Yep. Yeah. There's both populations that just are fresh water and then the salt water they

[Steven Rinella]

exploded there to the point where they would like their. The. How many would die during temperature changes that. That beaches would be uninhabited. Like people would go to the beach.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Listen to this. Old time, old time Southsiders still call the little 10 inch herrings all wives. For those summer days in 1967 when a billion pounds of the dead fish wash up ashore. Beachgoers, you know, lots of them Anyways.

[Yanni Guillen]

Sounds Stinky. Why are alewives important? Or what do they do with them? I guess the most common use, which was interesting, I thought, is for bait for lobster fishing.

[Derek Wolf]

Okay.

[Yanni Guillen]

That's why people are like. To commercially harvest them. Like I said earlier, people do smoke them for human consumption, but really, most importantly, I think for all. All of us and this story is that it's a keystone species that provides food, you know, all along through the food chain and, you know, prides food for the bigger fish that we like to catch, like striped bass and cod. Did you change my font size, Nate?

[Derek Wolf]

I don't think so.

[Yanni Guillen]

Oh, gosh. I'm like, teddy, man. I can't. I can't be having this smaller font size. I need. I need my readers. Now.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

You can.

[Yanni Guillen]

You can zoom in on your own. I know, I know.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

This is all staying in while Giannis is doing that. You know why they're called alewives? Yes, I let her rip.

[Yanni Guillen]

Well, they have a. They're. They got a big old belly on them, and so they were. They were. They were compared to an alewife, which is basically a. Which is a portly.

[Steven Rinella]

Like a lady drinking too much beer.

[Yanni Guillen]

No, one. That one. That one. That would run a. A. Alex, I don't know what you call tavern.

[Ethan]

Just a bartender at a tavern.

[Yanni Guillen]

Well, no more than that. Back in the. I can go Way, way Deeper tavern

[Steven Rinella]

gave you a little belly.

[Yanni Guillen]

You don't say.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm asking.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah, I would think so. Anybody who's around. So this goes so far back. This goes like the first mention of L Wife, I think, was, like, 1300 something.

[Derek Wolf]

Okay.

[Yanni Guillen]

Back when ale was more commonly consumed than water in a lot of places because it was safer to drink it.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Yanni Guillen]

People consume, like, a liter a day on average. Right. Pilgrims were scared.

[Steven Rinella]

The pilgrims were scared of American water.

[Yanni Guillen]

They drank ale for, like, every 140 people. You had to have a place that made ale. And back then, it was a. It was a. A thing that women did, and if

[Steven Rinella]

a dude owned that and his wife worked there, she would develop a beer belly.

[Yanni Guillen]

That's the thing. It was run by women, and they were called alewives, and they tended to be rotund.

[Steven Rinella]

Golly, man, I didn't know that.

[Ethan]

Tough nomenclature.

[Yanni Guillen]

Okay. Huge.

[Steven Rinella]

Someday they'll get around to changing that one. Man, huge.

[Yanni Guillen]

Conservation.

[Steven Rinella]

They'll call them like Betsy Ross. Or they'll call them like the. Who's the suffrage person

[Derek Wolf]

on the. Oh,

[Steven Rinella]

Anthony.

[Derek Wolf]

Susan B. Anthony.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, they'll call him like the Susan B. Anthony because they'll rebrand them because that's kind of. That's mean, I think. Go on.

[Yanni Guillen]

Unprecedented population recovery. The number of migrating fish in Benton, Maine jumped from fewer than 800, 80035 years ago.

[Steven Rinella]

800 fish?

[Yanni Guillen]

Yes. To 9 million last year. That's pretty sweet.

[Steven Rinella]

And that's just better math. I try to figure out what percent increase that was when they're real low like that.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

They were just cut off from their spawning grounds by dams.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yes, exactly. And so they've done all kinds of things to. To help them get back. Back up in there. Which I'll tell you about in just a second. Like I was saying, it brings, you know, nutrients up into the. The mainland. Kind of like salmon in Alaska. Right. These alewives bring. It's a vital food source for eagles, seals, otters and. Yeah, just makes the place nutrient rich.

[Steven Rinella]

Let me hit you with something, please. It's a 1,000,124, 900 increase.

[Yanni Guillen]

It's a lot.

[Ethan]

It's like going from the people in these buildings connected to New York City.

[Yanni Guillen]

Starting in the 1700s, the construction of industrial dams blocked the fish from swimming upstream to spawn, trapping them downstream and causing populations to plummet. Intensive commercial fishing in mid 20th century farther decimated populations. And by 1994, harvest collapsed to a fraction of their historical highs. Where the federal commercial fishing. The feds basically put a moratorium on them on fishing from in 2012. So the population rebound is driven by removing aging dams or building bypass systems. The systems that they do are inch. They do a bunch of different things. One is high tech fish elevators, where literally they basically have just like a channel that kind of comes out off the dam and at the end of it, there's a bucket. And when that bucket goes down into the water, it creates a current, as you can imagine, sucks it in. And those l wives are literally attracted to it. And they swim right in there. The bucket picks them up, puts them into the raceway, and then on they go.

[Max]

Yeah.

[Yanni Guillen]

Then they also do on smaller creeks, they basically just build little, you know, steps. Fish. Yeah. Where a fish can just jump up and go up through the rocks and get on up there. Let's see. 20, 25 Maine saw a booming migration of over 20 million alewives. Unfortunately, in contrast, states south of Maine continue to experience declining or depleted populations. Internet says likely due to warming oceans and different ocean fishing pressures. Maine is one of only five states with federal approval for sustainable river herring fisheries. And as of last year, 25 Maine municipalities have regained the right to harvest locally under strict state limits. They actually have to Right now, a lot of people don't like this, but right now they have to monitor their fish returns for 10 years and produce that. They have the stocks in these ponds where they're. Where they do the reproduction.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Like an average return over.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah. Until they can start a commercial harvest. My big takeaway here was I just thought it was so cool. We've heard this over and over on these shows that we do and we hear. I think it was. We recently had some tribal members from the northwest on that just talked about the. The wonder that achieve from nature. When you see like, I think we were talking about the size of some giant chinooks. That was the conversation we were having. And I think the same thing here. There was a lot of locals that were interviewed that can remember, like, seeing some of these fish swimming up, you know, these small creeks in Maine as kids. And then they went through a period where there were literally none. And they have, you know, put their own hard work and effort into it. And now they're seeing them return, and it's pretty cool. And now they're getting to pass that on to the next generation. And people just say it's like one. It's an amazing thing to stand there at a small little creek and literally see so many fish swing along where you can just stick your hand in and pull fish out if you want.

[Steven Rinella]

It points to the resiliency of my nature. If you like, give it room to do what it needs to do.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah. There's something about Maine, though, like that state compared to a lot of other states when it comes to knocking down dams, like they're all about it. I feel like they tend to do it at a higher rate than a lot of other states.

[Yanni Guillen]

I was talking about this on a run recently with the fella and I was telling where I was researching for today and he was saying that this is a big thing topic in northern Michigan. We're gonna have to probably discuss that at some point.

[Steven Rinella]

Get some dams out.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah. Because there's a lot of people that are enjoying like the pontoon boat lake life culture. And when you take that dam out.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yep.

[Yanni Guillen]

That little reservoir you've been putting around on might not be around anymore. And it's a. It's a real trick right now to try to sell people on saying, hey, the river version of this might be as good or better than the. Than the reservoir.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. We used to pound salmon and steelhead where they'd all get backed up on the 6th Street Dam on the Grand River. And if that wasn't There. It'd be great. But then everybody'd have to figure out how to catch them when they're not on a roadblock.

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah. Did we cover that?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

How?

[Yanni Guillen]

They're putting the rocks back in in Grand Rapids. To. To bring the rapids. Put the rapids back in Grand Rapids.

[Steven Rinella]

Are they tearing the dams out?

[Yanni Guillen]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, good for them.

[Yanni Guillen]

Pretty cool.

[Steven Rinella]

Outdoorsmen know dependable gear earns its reputation over time. Whether it's a trusted pair of boots, reliable optics or a capable truck, performance matters most when conditions get tough. The Nissan Frontier is built with that same mindset. Instead of chasing trends, the Frontier focuses on proven capability. Every Frontier comes standard with a 310 horsepower V6, the most powerful naturally aspirated V6 in its class. Combined with a smooth nine speed automatic transmission, it delivers confident, dependable power for hauling gear, reaching campsites and tackling the road ahead. No tricks, no trendy, no unproven turbo or hybrid fad. Just real truck power built to get the job done. Discover what the Nissan Frontier is built for for Auto Pacific segmentation 2026 Frontier vs latest in market competitors in the midsize truck class. Base models compared based on manufacturers websites.

[Auction House Announcer]

Well, it's here, folks. The 2026 Meat Eater Auction house of oddities is back and open for bids now. This year's auction features eyebrow raising outdoor gear donated by the meat eater crew, employees and friends of the brand, including Steve's dad's shitty old truck full of badass hunting gear, the Honda outboard motor from DOS Boat Season 3, Clay Newcombe's Alaskan wetsuit, bear hide, fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Crate and more. The auction house kicks off July 8 and runs for two weeks with 100% of proceeds going to our land access initiative, which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions such as the recent 200 acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 328 acre Wildcat Bend acquisition in Montana, and the 215 acre Shiloh Pond project in Maine. Visit themateater.com auction to place your bids. Now get your hands on some meat eater history and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign.

[John Jersick]

Whales.

[Yanni Guillen]

Whales.

[Ethan]

Whale strandings have been tracked for over 50 years. In Washington, the record for gray whales was set in 2019 when 34 of them washed up dead. We are only halfway through 2026 and we already have 30 of them this year. So the record was 34 six months in. We have 30 of them this year. I talked to John Callum Bokides. He's the Founder of the Cascadia Research Collective in Washington. To find out why, first I asked him about 2019, what caused that mass mortality and how did biologists react. Then John said that the 2019 event felt normal and it really didn't raise any cause for alarm. Biologists had seen this before in 99 and 1990, and in all three of those cases, 1990, 1999, 2019, they felt as though gray whales had approached their global carrying capacity. And so this was just a natural cycle where they, you know, self reduced. And the biologists just said like, this is what a gray whale boom and bust cycle is.

[Steven Rinella]

Can I, can I comment on your graph? He's got a graph up one line is strandings. Is that strandings?

[Ethan]

Nope. Oh, that's the global population.

[Steven Rinella]

I read it wrong. Nevermind, sorry.

[Ethan]

We've got a chart looking at the global population and then, and the calf recruitment. But anyway, he said in 1990, 1999, 2019, they're like, this is actually a good thing. You know, the, the oceans have plenty of gray whales and so they're just like naturally having some, some reduction. As for 2026, biologists don't think this is a normal mortality event like the other ones. Sixteen of the whales that have had necropsies done, all 16 were determined to be malnourished. And of those 16, 10 of them had blunt force trauma from vessel strikes. So 100% of the necropsy said the whales were starving and 63% said that the whales were starving plus struck by a ship. John said that a starving whale is a delirious whale. So it's just more likely to swim in front of a cargo ship. It's a lot like when we talk about CWD with deer. The CWD doesn't kill them, it's that, that they don't have their mental faculties anymore. To the point where they wander in front of a semi, they walk out in front of a hunter, they don't smell a coyote anymore. And that's what kills a CWD positive deer, not the CWD itself. It's a similar thing. That's why all these starving whales are getting struck. So what's going on to cause the whales to starve? John's direct quote was this. There has been a profound change in the Arctic. Here's why he says that about 95% of the world's gray whales migrate to the Arctic. The other 5% are these unique populations that wind up in Russian waters or they stay on the Pacific coast or they go into the Puget Sound. Those ones are called Sounders. That 5% gray whale population is not currently experiencing the mass die off. The biologists who observe that 5% say that they're doing just fine. It's the 95% that are going to the Arctic waters that are struggling. John said clearly there's been some sort of collapse in the food in the Arctic. The gray whales, they feed by rolling around on the bottom and they scoop up a bunch of mud and they filter out the tiny shrimp and the worms. And he pointed out it's a statistical fact that the Arctic is heating up faster than any place else in the world, loses 10% of its floating sea ice every decade. So obviously there's been an impact to the microscopic food that the gray whales are feeding on in the Arctic. And now it's like shine some new light maybe on the 2019 population to collapse. Maybe this is, you know, a whole decade long thing that that's happening. Here's some other tidbits from, from the interview with John. It's believed that about 15% of dead whales wash up on the shore. The rest of them sink to the bottom. Whale strandings for humpbacks and orcas have been totally normal this year. I asked him what happens to a dead whale that washes up on shore. He said there's three common solutions. It's buried nearby, it's towed out to see where it sinks or it's just left to decompose. I found a juvenile dead humpback last year in California. This one was just left there to decompose. The smell was so intense on the thing. You can smell it from like a mile away. I wish I could have just like showed people that smell like here to take the, take a whiff of this thing.

[Steven Rinella]

You want to talk some maggots?

[Yanni Guillen]

Well, why don't you just get a little ball jar and take a chunk.

[Ethan]

I don't think I'd be in jail.

[Steven Rinella]

That auction house of oddities.

[Ethan]

Yeah, smelly whale air. I also, I noticed that 81% of the dead whales have been male. And I asked him if that's normal. He said no, that that's a new phenomenon they're noticing. Asked if he had a theory as to why, here is his hypothesis which has not been tested. Calf reproduction has been very low in recent years and John thinks that maybe some of the females are foregoing reproduction due to a lack of resources. Therefore, the feels the females are more resilient to the current conditions because they're not spending that extra energy breeding and carrying a baby. And caring for a calf. So that's just his, his initial guess, you know, as to why they've been seeing this for the last six months. Something else John brought up, the 34 dead gray whales in 2019 was a lot less concerning because at that time we were just coming off at an all time high for their population. So 34 dead whales out of a population of 27,000 is very different than if this year, if this pace continues, that'd be 60 dead. 60 dead gray whales out of a population of 17,000. So just like some really problematic numbers there. I asked him what he thinks the short, long term solution is. Short term, he said to prevent vessel strikes and entanglement of fishing gear, because those are often happening closer to shore. Just feels like we have more control of that thing long term. Just like helping the gray whales in the Arctic, that, that probably just means with research right now. And John said this. I don't know if it's something John has been told from, you know, the federal government or if it's just like a known thing among biologists, but he said that if your like funding ask mentions climate change, that it's just like got no chance of getting off the ground.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. What's funny though is four years ago, if it didn't mention climate change, it had no chance.

[Ethan]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So John said four years ago you had to take your research and make it climate change or else you'd never get your research done.

[Ethan]

So for this and people would just,

[Steven Rinella]

and I know many researchers, you would take what you're doing. Yeah. And just impose a climate spin on it, even to the point of, let's say you were just trying to work in public lands acquisition. You would need to say, as the Earth warms.

[John Jersick]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And as stress from climate change increases, people will need more outlets. Yeah. How will they find relaxation on public lands?

[John Jersick]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Therefore, as a climate mitigation plan, we would like to create more public lands. You had to play this dumb game. Now you just go back in and take it out and just keep doing the work you're doing.

[John Jersick]

Yeah.

[Ethan]

The problem is, John says if you want to study gray whales in the Arctic, it's impossible. Not to mention climate change. I'd find a way for the next two years, you know, probably just not happening for them. Last thing I asked, what do you think of the Maka's tribe request to hunt gray whales? Here's a brief timeline so you're up to speed. The 1920s, the Maa tribe quits whaling because populations are so low. 1970 gray was low. I couldn't find that number. I don't know if they even have one that exists. It's not just like a guess. 1970, gray whales are put on the endangered species list. 1994, what population? I don't have the answer for you there. 1994, gray whales are removed from the endangered species list. 1995, don't have the population. 1990. Well, actually the chart probably does. 1995. So this is one year after they're off the endangered species list. The Makah tribe notifies the government that they want to start whaling again.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, whale.

[Ethan]

I don't know if that was the number we get to. 1999, the tribe kills one gray whale on an approved hunt. This is a picture of one of the harpoonists pursuing a whale at the time. So they do kill one that year. That brings us to today. The tribe has not been given the green light since. And the case has sat in limbo for 26 years. So they killed one gray whale in 1999. Have not killed one since.

[Derek Wolf]

The, the, at that point, they're, Historically the carrying capacity was about 2,500 gray whales. And they sit now a thousand. 2,500. Okay. And then the optimum sustainable population is about 1300.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I think you're missing a zero.

[Steven Rinella]

No, something's missing.

[Ethan]

Or it's like a specific gray whale population.

[Derek Wolf]

Eastern versus Western gray whales.

[Ethan]

Global one.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, we have some Makah coming on the show to talk about their whale. They're coming out up on an upcoming show to talk about whaling. How many have stranded?

[Ethan]

34. No, 30 this year.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So far this tribe killing a whale doesn't matter.

[Ethan]

So I, I, that's what I'm asking John about. They've killed one since 1999. The government has not given the them the green light sense. John is fully on board with the Maah tribe hunting. He cited this. It's the only treaty between the United States and a native tribe that specifically mentions the right to hunt whales and seals. And it was signed back in 1855. Therefore, John feels we should honor that as the only treaty that has that specific language. Here's a direct quote from Article 4 of the treaty. The right of taking fish and of whaling or sealing at usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians. So John said he's also seen the management plan that the Makah tribe has for the gray whales. He said he feels as though it's responsible and it makes reasonable requests regarding harvest. So if they Want to go kill one tomorrow? He's cool with it.

[Steven Rinella]

The only thing I'd have to know here, I would want to see. I would love to see a century's worth of population dynamic information.

[Ethan]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

Because what I don't know, and I don't know if anybody knows this is if you look at over 100 years, how dynamic is this population and how unusual is the trough?

[Ethan]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And if they're in a population trough right now, are they in this trough every 30 years? Are they in this trough every century? Have they never been in this trough?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

What I'm seeing is Pacific gray whale population, lowest population, 13,000 whales, lowest population level since the early 1970s.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, so we'll see in.

[Ethan]

In the 50 years of tracking, he feels as though this is like, the most serious it's gotten for. For the gray whales.

[Steven Rinella]

Not good news.

[Derek Wolf]

What's interesting is, like, in 99, when they did this, it was huge public backlash. It was insane. It's become so much more tolerated, which is the only thing I can think of in the hunting world that people are now more excited about today than they were 25 years ago.

[Ethan]

Yeah, the gray whale strandings, they could stop and like, you know, maybe 30 is the number they sit on for the rest of the year. And then all of a sudden, it's not so alarming, but doesn't seem likely. If that trend continues, this is going to be like a real, like, global topic. Politicians are going to talk about this.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, they'll be. They'll be back to being the next time there's the next Democratic administration comes in, and they'll be reconsidering them for Endangered Species act protections. Ain't gonna happen now. Tell you that.

[Yanni Guillen]

Thanks, Spencer.

[Steven Rinella]

So wolves eat cows.

[Derek Wolf]

Crazy.

[Steven Rinella]

Can't be true.

[Derek Wolf]

It is.

[Yanni Guillen]

Little baby cows or big cows?

[Derek Wolf]

Primarily baby cows. On average between 300 and 600 pounds. Okay, so for almost 100 years, there were no wild wolves in California. Today there's about 90 individuals in 12 packs. And new genetic testing that came out just the other day shows exactly what they're eating. And it's mostly cows.

[Ethan]

Hmm.

[Derek Wolf]

If you want to pull up that map, Phil, this just gives an idea of where the study's going on. We're going to talk about the Lassen pack as well as the Harvey pack.

[Steven Rinella]

What pins are we looking at here?

[Derek Wolf]

Just that. Just that wolf one.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, not the 10.

[Derek Wolf]

Steve wants to know about the 10. That's where I camped for sheep show last year.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, yeah, I'm with you.

[Derek Wolf]

Anyhow, so Lassen pack trickled in in 2011 naturally from Oregon, formally identified in 2016 as the first breeding pair. At the time of the study here in 2023 and 2024, there's 50 individuals and about six packs. And as I've become the scat study guy around these parts. This study is a scat pickup. It covers, like I said last night, Harvey packs, which cover is about 20 wolves through the summers of 2022 and 2023, which is defined by June through October because of the overlap with grazing on public land. And in this study, there were 86% of the scat samples picked up had cattle in them, compared to in the teens and twenties for mule deer or any other wild prey.

[Steven Rinella]

Man, but I got so many questions, but keep going.

[Derek Wolf]

No late mommy. We'll keep going.

[Steven Rinella]

Is it embryo? Like, are they not. Is it after birth?

[Ethan]

No.

[Derek Wolf]

We'll talk. Yeah, we'll talk about it.

[Yanni Guillen]

Okay.

[Derek Wolf]

This scat pickup method, as opposed to the iguana method that was just purely counting, they did a very, very rigorous, extremely scientific methods. The first being mitochondrial sequencing to confirm the species that was eaten. Micro satellite genotyping, which confirms the identity of individual wolves, and DNA metabolcoding to identify the prey DNA in that scat. And then the researchers, through those methods were able to measure the exact. The biomass of what was actually eaten. So they could tell in this scat, 80% of that is cattle. Even though there might be seven different things that are, that are in that. And so it's not just how often a prey showed up, it's relatively how much that prey was eaten and then through that.

[Yanni Guillen]

So they can tell like how many pounds of meat roughly.

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah, it's pretty insane. And I could not get into the specifics of how it works, but there is a long section about that. And so when you, when you look into the biomass, which is, which is kind of what we're talking about, cattle averaged 55% of the biomass consumed versus 12% of mule deer and 15% of small mammals. So they're just chowing on cattle.

[Steven Rinella]

The.

[Derek Wolf]

You cannot determine what's distinguished from predation versus scavenging, which, which makes the data kind of interesting. But range free range cow calf operations traditionally have mortality around 1 or 2%. So researchers say it's reasonable to think that a meaningful share of this cattle biomass reflects actual kills, not just scavenging. And there are a few that were confirmed to be actual kills. But generally it's so remote and so dispersed, you can't figure out what's what's a scavenge and what's. What's killed. Then I looked at a meta analysis of this of like how does this compare in California to wolves worldwide and how they're predating on things and you see that livestock are hit the hardest where herds are grazing unattended and small dispersed groups. When, when you look at the occurrence of this compared to natural game or I should say the game species, there actually seems to be a preference towards game species as a pro as opposed to livestock. But the, the higher those higher rates don't. It's not the same when those cattle are dispersed and when the prey goes down proportionally.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Was it. Did you come across anything about like whether like introduce populations of wolves or like new emerging populations of wolves? Like do they prey on livestock more than like established population?

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah. This idea that like maybe there's these cow eaters that were brought in that have been been talked like or it's

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

just like they go for the easy stuff because they're like in a new environment.

[Derek Wolf]

No, I didn't find that specifically. There's definitely a learning curve associated with, with like prey and a new species. It seems that the prey have the learning curve rather than the predators. But this, this meta analysis you look at, it looks like 200 different packs across the world. And there's so, so some of them are going to be introduced, some have been there for a long time. And this is India, Europe, US and there's really not a preference for cattle across the board. But when you compare that to what's going on in California, they have no other forms of ungulates. They have small populations of elk that currently their ranges don't overlap a whole ton. And their mule deer are in significant decline. So from a peak of about a million in 1970 to about 500,000 today. What it shows is that as prey species thin, free ranging cattle specifically get targeted by these wolves.

[Steven Rinella]

A problem with that.

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Is that there weren't wolves there in 1970 for the Mule deer. Yeah. I mean the wolves are just there now.

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So for someone to say that wolves have switched from deer to cattle in California, they weren't there when there was a million deer.

[Derek Wolf]

But in other places there's been. There's like in, in. There's. There's a study in India where there's plenty of different species.

[Steven Rinella]

I see where you see ungulate declines, they pick up on cattle.

[Derek Wolf]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, that makes sense to me. And if there was no cattle there, they'd pick up on Whatever's next. Dogs.

[Derek Wolf]

Exactly. Exactly. And so it's like, so what? You know, I think the big thing I came out of here with is there really isn't a thing of cow eaters. You know, that was a big. That was a big narrative in the. In the Colorado introduction. They're going to eat what's convenient. You know, they're going to eat. They seem to have a preference for wild game.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Wait a minute.

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

There's not a thing. There's not packs that just like, over time it becomes a learned behavior that the pack leaders teach the rest of the pack, and then it becomes a.

[Derek Wolf]

At larger scale. It only seems to happen when prey species are at. Are significantly lower than what they could be, like the low carrying capacity. So, I mean, they'll go hit the cows. They'll go hit the cattle, but only when prey species are herding.

[Steven Rinella]

A little bit of that feels off to me, but only kind of off.

[Derek Wolf]

How so?

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Well, like, I'll give you an example. Like the wolves that were introduced in north. In the north park area of Colorado, that kept hitting cows and cows and cows. There's shitloads of elk around there. There's moose around there. There's like. They're not in a game horror environment.

[Derek Wolf]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, they're.

[Derek Wolf]

So that's a good thing that you'll hear all the time. And I talked to someone who is intimately involved with that reintroduction effort, and a lot of that report, from his perspective, was that there were individual landowners who were intentionally causing conflict because they didn't.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Like. That's a big accusation statement.

[Derek Wolf]

I know, man. I know.

[Steven Rinella]

It's a bold statement.

[Derek Wolf]

And so there's. There's two things at play is that there's one, the reimbursement portion of it, which in Colorado's management system was very generous. Like it. You know, it's kind of like your climate change things like, oh, my cow died.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

No one's gonna. They're not gonna go kill their own calf to be like, give me.

[John Jersick]

But a cow.

[Derek Wolf]

A calf might have died. And they said wolf did that.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Well, but they have investigators that come out.

[Derek Wolf]

But then you can't. You. It's hard to split between what.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I don't want to distract.

[John Jersick]

No, no.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

It's too.

[Steven Rinella]

I do.

[Max]

Yeah.

[Derek Wolf]

No, let's do it.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't have a total problem with. I have a. Because there's. There's. There's inverse questions.

[Derek Wolf]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

There's this thing that wolves. When you have. When you have a. Earlier we were talking about Buffalo. When you have a buffalo population on the ground, there's kind of this magic number at which wolves will start to pay attention to it. I can't remember what it is. You got to have a thousand of them or you got to have 2,000 of them. that point the packs will start. It's sort of somehow something clicks and it becomes worthwhile in their mind to learn to kill it.

[Derek Wolf]

It.

[Steven Rinella]

And once they'd learned to kill it and develop the techniques to kill it, that's what the pack likes to hunt.

[Derek Wolf]

It would seem again based on a couple studies. But these studies are globally. It seems that that data is not borne out. It seems that they'll eat what's there. It's not like they learn to attack a certain thing. Maybe in like localized populations that could happen. But across the board you're not seeing it.

[Steven Rinella]

Have a debate about this. Not you and me.

[Derek Wolf]

We should not.

[Steven Rinella]

We should get all the wolves. Me, but like other people versus other people.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

I've also heard something that the larger a pack gets, the more likely it is to turn to livestock because it's

[Steven Rinella]

big and hard to kill. Big packs of coyotes hunt deer.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

They got a lot of mouse to feed.

[Steven Rinella]

Singles hunt rodents. Sure, go on. Just know I'm sitting over here skeptical.

[Derek Wolf]

Okay, well you'll, you'll like this. Then there's a companion study that's happening at the same time with basically the same wolf herd in 2022. And they're measuring the stress response of cattle in this area. Okay. And so this is getting at the. The landscape of fear idea.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Now I'm getting interested again.

[John Jersick]

Yep.

[Derek Wolf]

And basically, if wolves are present, whether or not they're actually killing an individual cow, are they impacting the ranchers operations? Because they're less. Because there's aborted cattle. Because they don't lactate as well because of all the other things that cortisol can lead to.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Derek Wolf]

So you'll see in as you compare these two herds, traditionally cortisol levels drop as summer temperatures rise. You know, it's like a more favorable growing season and the stress goes down. In wolf exposed herds, that drop is 58% weaker.

[Yanni Guillen]

Huh.

[Derek Wolf]

So basically the cattle, when wolves are around, they stay stressed out whether they're

[Steven Rinella]

getting eaten or not.

[Derek Wolf]

Whether they're getting eaten or not.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like if you went to your own house and scared the hell out of your dog and chased it all around, but never killed it. The dog's gonna suffer.

[Ethan]

Won't taste as good either.

[Derek Wolf]

No. You'll have A red cutter. And so that that raised cortisol is linked tenuously at this point to lower fertility, weakened immunity, disrupted milk or colostrum transfer. And the takeaway from this researcher is living among wolves for cattle is a chronically stressful experience and that could ultimately have production related impacts on both the short and long term. However, it's, it's not proven yet. This is an idea that people like to talk about. It makes sense just when you think about it. But more research is needed to see how much that's going to happen. Which gets back to the Colorado thing because you look at compensation and how do you prove compensation that my cattle are not producing as much? Because there's a general air of fear in this area and different, different, different regions, different countries, different places have, have looked at that problem in different ways. Because ultimately this conversation, like wolves are going to come back web through ballot box biology or just walking around like wolves are going to enter landscapes that traditionally have had cows that don't have large predators.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep.

[Derek Wolf]

And so you look at three different types, three different methods. There is a Solapur India, which I'm sure I pronounced wrong. Wisconsin and then Colorado had basically three different ways of compensating these ranchers in India. And they're pretty similar, like they're pretty similar agricultural economies and whatnot. Growing cattle or growing livestock, I should say. In India the wolves have always been there. Like people get it, they've been there, they're cool with them and claims are managed by the government. They have very low rates of claims of livestock predation claims in that area.

[Steven Rinella]

What are they running goats and sheep?

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah, because they're not slaughtering cattle in India. I think it's all goats and sheep. In Wisconsin. The original funding mechanism was donations from pro wolf advocates given to ranchers who, or I should say agricultural folks who had claims of wolf predation. That method lasted not long. It is not the way they do it anymore. And then in Colorado as they've introduced wolves, they pull from the general fund and they have a very generous scheme of paying out basically predation permits. But it's tough. It's like how do you go about doing this? How do you determine did that die by, you know, whatever Covid or something and it got eaten by a wolf.

[Steven Rinella]

Let me save someone at home a mean letter. I'm just going to express their opinion now so they don't have to write you a mean letter. If you turn out a thousand cows on range, okay. And they're up doing their thing and then the fall comes and you go to pull them off range and you count them up and you got 990. You're never gonna know what happened to them. So someone's gonna come and tell you, like, oh, the wolf mitigation thing. Just show us. Like, I don't know. I don't know where they went. They're just. They're gone. Right. You can't then go like, hey, I'm missing 10 and someone's going to cut you a check.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Yeah, I don't.

[Steven Rinella]

So that's part of the frustration is you got to be there and do like, you got to be there. Here it is. It's got this tooth mark pattern on it, and it leads to. I'm not saying it's undoable. They lose cows for all kinds of reasons. Like, cows die. They got a way of dying. I'm not saying this is the lead cause of death. But that is a frustration, is the. The. It's like, it's on you. The burden's on you to show what happened to get the compensation. So that's one of the pain points around. Compensation for sure. So someone doesn't need to write you that letter.

[Derek Wolf]

Thank you, you guys.

[Yanni Guillen]

So that no one has to write this letter as well. Common livestock in India includes cattle, buffaloes, goats, sheep, and poultry. And India has one of the world's largest cattle populations. But according to just quick AI search here is that. It's. That's. That's mostly for the milk. Everything else, the buffaloes, the goats, sheep, poultry, pigs, they eat those.

[John Jersick]

Ariel.

[Derek Wolf]

Tough, tough nut. I started this thinking I was going to hear all about how wolves are evil and they're cow eaters. It's so complicated.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, you got in over your waiters on that.

[Derek Wolf]

So, dude, it's deep.

[Steven Rinella]

Because, listen, there's a thing. No one. There's a thing that just leads to fighting wolves.

[Ethan]

Wolves?

[Derek Wolf]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, they say, never talk about politics or religion at dinner. Don't talk about

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

water rights is another one.

[Ethan]

We should just stock more elk. Where these wolves live.

[Derek Wolf]

That's what I'm. Dude, we need a healthy, ungulate population. That's the name of the game.

[Steven Rinella]

At dinner, when you go like, no, I don't want to get political,

[Max]

you

[Steven Rinella]

know, Then you say something real political like, now I don't want to talk about wolves, but let me tell you something about wolves,

[Max]

huh?

[Yanni Guillen]

That it? I think that's all we got for today.

[Derek Wolf]

That's right.

[Steven Rinella]

Because we're gonna talk about one thing. We're not gonna talk about anymore. It's about how in California. Here's one we were gonna cover, but we're not gonna In California, there's an area where they ban dudes from the pier fishing sharks for fear that they'd hook a shark and then swim over and bite someone who's swimming.

[Ethan]

That's what they say.

[Steven Rinella]

If I was the mayor, I'd be like, no swimming. Because if a guy's fishing sharks and his shark gets tangled up on you, he might lose it. You could Read more the meat eater.com

[Yanni Guillen]

we'll see you next week. Better than the Mayor and jaws.

[Ethan]

The meat eater.com auction go buy some something.

[Yanni Guillen]

Oh that's right.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Check out that model 94 cow killers.

[John Jersick]

Come on.

[Max]

Foreign.

[Steven Rinella]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you think about discovering small brands,

[Yanni Guillen]

what store pops into your mind? Well, it should be Walmart.

[Host or Panelist (possibly Spencer)]

Seriously, Walmart has thousands of small brands

[Steven Rinella]

and they're all in one place. Just go online or in store, discover and shop. It could not be easier. Every one of these brands has a real story and real people behind it. They're true American success stories and you can find them all at Walmart. Discover thousands of small [e-mail] today the

[Ethan]

official language of football is trash talk, late night group chats, memes and unbelievable highlight clips. That's why Boost Mobile brings you you

[Steven Rinella]

our new global connection plan.

[Ethan]

The first plan ever made for WhatsApp. Get unlimited data, talk and text, international roaming and calls to over 100 countries for just $40 a month. $40 price includes $5 a month autopay discount after 40gb of premium high speed data speeds will be lowered. Coverage not available everywhere. Visit store or boost mobile.com for details.

[Steven Rinella]

Did you hear? Phelps has teamed up with a bunch of other high end brands to do the ultimate Elk giveaway. Anyone who is 18 or older can sign up to win an amazing gear package that includes a new rifle or bow along with great supporting gear. The winner will pick their rifle package or archery package. For every 25 spent you get 10 additional entries. The signups end July 26th at phelpsgamecalls.com this is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.