00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediator's World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's We Can Review with Ryan kel Kell and now Here's Kel. Four black bears with brain inflammation or encephalitis have shown up in California's Humboldt County. In two thousand nineteen, a young bear with an odd head tilt made headlines and social media feeds by approaching people at North Star Ski area. Seemingly habituated to people, showing no signs of fear. The bear was an Instagram star as he stepped on a kid's snowboard. California Department of Fish and Wildlife captured the bear and eventually moved it to a rehab facility. More recently, another young cub appeared in the Tahoe Basin, again letting people approach, taking food from people's hands, jumping into an open our trunk, and even being pet This bear appeared underweight and lethargic. Under observation by trained veterinarians, the bear proved to be substantially underweight for a one year old, displayed a slight head tilt and head tremors. Eventually, the decision was made to euthanize the young female. The Following the cropsy confirmed and inflammation of the brain, Nevada Wildlife officials have found cases in that state that match the CDFW bears, leading wildlife officials in bull states to ask is four bears enough to have an outbreak of encephalitis? Why are they contracting encephalitis? And of course how. Four new viruses that cause brain swelling have been discovered through the necropsies of some of the affected bears. The first bear, the North Star Bear, was eventually placed in a long term care facility where he requires continued veterinary treatment at the San Diego Humane Society campus and another at the Orange County Zoo. If Yogi coaches you this spring with a slight head tilt in a seemingly casual, maybe friendly manner, stay away, call your local wildlife division and remember this is not Disney. It's not normal, not good. It's not the bond you have with quote all animals, which may be the number one thing dog bite victims say before they are bit. It's not any of those things, but it may just be encephalitis. Die. See what I'm in booboo. This week, we've got Houndsman social media call to action and the NSW. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week and my week as well as This podcast is sponsored by the fine folks at Steel Power Equipment. Steel makes a pruning shear that can slice through the cape of a Louisiana boarhog as easily as anything I've ever used. I'm also flying to Tennessee with my electric chainsaw. Throw the batteries in a carry on bag, drain the bar and chain oil, and check the saw until your final destination. Have saw a will travel type of deal. New episode of cal in the Field coming up on Tuesday. It's the last episode of season two, which is just the weekend review this podcast in visual form. Check that out on the meat Eater YouTube channel. We'll be featuring main bird dogs Woodcock Grouse and Brent West of the High Peaks Alliance, which is amazing timing because if you recall the meat Eater land Access initiative, we wrapped that sucker up last year by directing all of our funds and by our I see our funds at meat Eater and your funds from everybody who jumped in on auctions and whatnot to closing the funding gap on Shiloh Pond, a really pretty spot and up until now private. Now, however, just now, like last week, Shiloh is officially signed, sealed, delivered public land managed by Kingsfield, Maine. There are even funds in place for the future management of the site. Brent West of the High Peaks Alliance started the Shiloh Pond acquisition in two thousand and eighteen, which, as far as the speed of conservation is concerned, is lightning pace to closing. The Trust for public Lands was also instrumental in structuring the deal and making sure all the eyes were dotted and teas were crossed. Pretty cool thing anyway. Check out the Last Cow in the Field episode at the Mediator YouTube channel. As for anyone asking about the Louisiana episode, Gallon Yule, which is that funky Marshham and also a rail, is very similar to the coote in the same family. It is very tasty. You don't have to get fancy with it at all, treated like chicken and you'll be very happy. I noticed one person comment on the fact that he'd rather get a limit of fifteen gallon ule than a limited ducks. And if you have an abundant red meat collection in your freezer. This is not a crazy line of thinking. Galanule is white meat, and again you can fry it, serve it like chicken and nobody will be the wiser. Moving on, but sticking with white meat, Idaho houndsman are baying themselves horse over in Idaho Fishing Game announcement stating that Mountain lion harvest quotas on female lions in the thirty one management units that currently have them will be lifted for at a minimum the two thousand two season. Idaho Fishing Game initially placed quotas in thirty one of the one hundred management units to prevent over harvest, particularly in areas with easy access, which typically means lots of roads. The more roads, the more efficient hound hunting is. For example, wilderness areas can have a ton of lions, but you do not see a ton of houndsman, because you can't rip around in front of your pack of dogs in the truck or a TV can't cover as much ground. And areas with large pop pulation centers that have that big urban fringe that we're always talking about can create havens for lions and you don't see a lot of hound hunters running in those areas either, because if you're running hounds after cats through that urban fringe, it's a good way to make the paper, and not in a favorable way. So quick recap. If we were to stop this topic here, it would be a great one for the greater media consuming world. Right, there are hunters opposing more hunting opportunities, increased bag limits, so to speak. Right, that's not how it works. You give a hunter more, he's gonna take more. Right, So I want you to consider these two quotes from the Eastern Idaho Houndsman Association. To me, even one year is too long. If I get together with ten or fifteen houndsman and we went to a game management unit with good access and good snow, and we separated out, within just a couple of days, we could kill eight of the cats up there. The tables can earned so quickly. It's basically declaring all out war on the species. And it just makes no sense to me that Fish and Game wouldn't propose raising the quotas before outright eliminating them. Here's the next one. President of the Eastern Idaho Houndsman Association, Jesse Van Louven described houndsman as people that utilize hound dogs, including blue Tick, Redbone and treeing walker coon hounds to help chase the animals they're hunting, in this case, mountain lions. He added that most houndsmen choose not to harvest or kill the mountain lions they hunt because they are more interested in the sport for the relationship between the hounds and the thrill of the chase. I was taken from j H News. So which is it, We could kill them all or we really don't kill any Could it be that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Right here on this podcast, I've often stated when the subject of hound hunting comes up, their dirty secret, which is how people are dog people. They love watching their dogs do the thing that they were born to do, which is strike, track and tree animals. Look at meat eaters only honest Patelus and his pound puppy mingus. They are infected with that hound dog fever, and the only cure is more running. Baby. The more cats you kill, the fewer cats you get to run. When quotas are set low. In this case, we're talking about female lion quota, which let's say is three in a game management unit, no matter if it's the first day of a sixty day long season, if three female lions are reported as killed, that whole game management unit is shut down. Not to the running of cats, but to the killing of cats. When you consider the fact that when a cat is perched on a tree limb high above you, you get a pretty good look at its underside. I'm talking about sex organs kids. There is seldom the circumstance of thinking you are killing a male lion, but you end up with the dead female lion on the ground. A houndsman that is interested in preserving cats near them, let's say, for fuel economy purposes, could in theory, quickly track and kill the quota of female allions in his game management unit or in their game management unit rather and close the kill season, which is great for cats, great for the person who just wants to run their dogs, but potentially bad for the management of the area, which is exactly what Idaho Fish and Game is saying. Mule deer predation is up in areas where mule deer and elk have been hit hard by winners. The mule deer and elk populations are having a hard time coming back, so we need to give them a break people factors, as in tag allocation has been reduced. Dough tags both in general pool and youth pools have been reduced and eliminated in some areas. Now we need to look at other factors because that's not helping, and those other factors are addressed the other predator populations, which leads us to Idaho fishing game saying hounds folk need to kill more cats instead of just running them. This is a gamble. Of course, Idaho could perceivably see some crazy influx of cat hunters who do in fact kill cats on a routine basis that are let's say, coming from out of state, right, But the reason they haven't shown up prior to this is that before they make that long trek to Idaho from wherever they're coming from, the units get shut down because the quotas have been met, so they're afraid to commit. These folks could show up and kill a whole bunch of cats, and maybe the in state hound hunters will broaden their friends circles and start taking more folks out that do want to take that delicious pork of the trees home, and it could have a serious effect on cats in the long term. But this is active management. Mule beer opportunity is going down, so we're going to see an increase in mountain lion opportunity as a consequence. If lion kills go up, we hope we see less muleteer mortality. As for the hound hunting opportunity, you can still run bears and bobcats as well as raccoons in Idaho, so there's still something to chase, just not as many mountain lions. Some folks might be uncomfortable with me saying that this is a gamble, but this is wildlife management, and wildlife management includes this crazy variable, which is the human factor. So like if we jump way back and we talk about the wolf fish you in Wisconsin, right, that was a terrible argument, really made on both sides, because it comes down to like this idea that game management is a perfect science. There's always room for error. You're dealing with wild animals and wild people. Absolutes happen in the lab, they don't happen in the field. As for me, we're just gonna have to wait and see what happens in Idaho. I shures, heck want to come down and run some cats and put some of that meat in the freezer. It's fantastic. Any you houndsman down there who need a buddy, you want to actually pull the trigger, give me a shout. Moving on to the I really don't want to go here desk. Social media folks started sending me a black bear attacking a hog video, asking what do you think? We even ran this video on the meat eater dot com. My reaction is, yeah, look at that. Without some actual facts, it's just animal fight porn. I guess it's like a Shark Week trailer that is nothing but Great whites flipping half eaten seals in the air. Visually, it's something for sure, power of nature, I guess. But if we don't learn about the great white they're migrations the Farallon Islands, what type of seals they're eating, how long seal can hold its brass, how fast they can go? Well, what's the point? By the way, young elephant seals are the most likely to be eaten at the fair Long Islands. They can swim from three to six miles per hour and hold their breath underwater for an astonishing two hours, while a great white shark can swim thirty five miles per hour and if I had to guess, they're no good at being out of the water for more than a few minutes, and holding their breath is not an actual thing with gills and all. I'm not saying this evens the playing field, but it's great info, right, something the noodle on while you're watching those half eaten seals get flipped in the air. Anyway, the YouTube video and question, there's a wild hog on the side of the road, likely hit by a car. Black bear attempting to drag it up a steep embankment to eat it in peace. Thinking about it, One good takeaway from this video, if that's all you had was just the visual, would be that this is what bare behavior is like, minus encephalitis or swelling of the brain. Remember that you Tahoe Basin bear watchers. All the bear facts presented here from Outdoor Alabama Alabama Department Conservation Natural Resources aside from this one. Did you know that Back in two thousand six, Governor Bob Riley signed a lawmaking the black bear the official state animal of Alabama. The current estimated black bear population the state is under five hundred bears, making it an animal of concern. Historically, Alabama's black bears were found in every county, but due to habitat loss and unregulated hunting, the only modern reproducing population was found in Mobile County, but has now expanded to encompass neighboring counties in the southern portion of the state. This population comprises a single recognized subspecies, the Florida black bear Ursus americanas floridanus. In recent years, black bears from Georgia, which are Ursus americanas americanas the American black bear, have been walking themselves across the border from northwest Georgia into northeastern Alabama. If Alabama ever were to open a black bear hunting season, a hunter could conceivably get two different subspecies of black bear without leaving the state, which is pretty cool specifically regarding this bear pig encounter. Alabama black bears are omnivores just like anywhere else, but according to the former Alabama Large Carnivore coordinator Thomas Harms, Alabama bears have a nine percent vegetarian diet. I've also seen this printed as for sure over eighty percent vegetarian diet, so take it with a grain of salt. They're also smaller than bears found in many other states. Females average between a hundred thirty and hundred fifty pounds, and males may get as large as the three hundred pound mark. When you consider the video that we're discussing here bear attacking hog, you have to consider the fact wild hogs have routinely been killed in Alabama that far outweigh the largest of the state's black bears. You may remember the legend of hog Zilla, the controversial one thousand, fifty one pound bore killed by a seven year old and two thousand seven Well that's an Alabama legend. If you do not remember that one, that's fine. A less controversial but still incredibly large bore was killed by a Mr. Seago with a thirty eight caliber revolver as he stood on his front porch on a night in two thousand seventeen. That hog weighed in at a vetted eight hundred and twenty pounds plus the three rounds from his thirty eight, taking in some reason for error. That's like two adult male black bears, meaning that this roadside encounter with a pig, which oddly enough we call invasive, but has been continuously in the state of Alabama nearly as long as the black bear and in much higher numbers was a statistically rare event. Side note old the DeSoto dropped hogs in Florida in fifteen thirty nine. Okay, that's where I'm getting that the bear in the video is almost certainly a mature bore based on size and it's blatant aggressive behavior. sALS, especially in the spring, can be plenty aggressive. But considering the time of year, the size of sALS in the state Alabama, and the size of the pig in this video, as well as the fact that in my experience, stals with cubs are not typically going to publicly expose cubs to this type of commotion as it can bring in other big bores that could eat those cubs. My money is that the bear on this video is a boar bear. It's got pretty good noggin on it too. Further, when you consider that this quote attack was documented via shaky cell phone footage complete with color commentary, and that had occurred in Satsuma, Alabama, which is part of the Southeast Florida black bear population, it is no surprise that this is a Florida bear. Certainly explains that statistically strange behavior spring break was last week, Buddy, not the last adventure of Florida Bear will see moving on to the international desk all the way to New South Wales. If you are currently stateside but want to maybe have an interesting retirement, consider New South Wales or the NSW. Intense rains hammered the NSW coastline, causing massive flooding the other week. As human residents moved to escape the flood, so did millions of spiders, skinks, crickets, snakes, anything that lives on the ground. Those ground dwelling animals took refuge on anything standing clear of the water, including fence lines, houses and people. Any port and storm. As they say, if you recall New South Wales was largely on fire from two thousand nineteen to two thousand twenty, the water is a bit late for that, as over forty six million acres burned during that time. If all that wasn't enough, I have failed in past podcast to cover the mouse plague. If you want to look up some videos way more impressive than a bear dragging a pig, look up mouse plague videos that will impress you and get your skin crawling at the same time. To further set the tone, here's a quote for you. At least three people have been bitten in hospitals while being treated for non mouse related issues. Kind of a thinker. One farmer reported killing on average one d mice per day inside the home. I want to go back to that. Okay, one mice per day inside your house. We've all run some mouse trap lines in our day, right a lot. But killing mice isn't the real nasty business. Sheds full of hay have been lost. Total crop loss in the field has been documented, and once crops are harvested, due to infestation of both mice and feces, they cannot be sold. Well. You might be thinking this torrential rain could help mice, but the NSW is a big place and storm water is not evenly dispersed throughout. It is helping in some areas with the mouse plague, but it is also pushing a lot more mice into homes and vehicles and others. Although this sounds bizarre, this is a natural occurrence in the NSW and can occur every ten years. In this instance, a long dry spell followed by good rain meant good crops, which means lots of food, and the mice that had not been reproducing at full capacity, went into superbreeding mode. That's a litter of six to ten pups every nineteen to twenty one days. One estimate at one farm figured two mice per square meter inside their crop paddocks for a total of twenty million mice. That's one farm, big one, but one farm. It's like I say, if you believe variety is the spice of life, something new every day in the NSW. For those of you listening that are current residents, kill the mice, they'll die anyway. Be careful with the spiders. They have a good role to play in your future. When the fires and the floods and the mouse plagues, you know, figure themselves out what a fires before a raft of the earthquake. They were after the earthquake. I would never before the flood to plague a locust. Good luck to you down there, and thanks for listening. I got one more for you on the Australia desk, which is kind of a fun one. A new species of climbing kangaroo has been discovered. This is fossilized. To keep in mind, it's not like it just showed up somewhere in between the floods, and the plagues. The recent find indicates that the tree climbing ability of kangaroos and wallabies evolved more than once throughout Australia's history. Additionally, these specialized climbing kangaroo fossils with longer necks for browsing branches, longer arms and clause for holding and climbing come from a completely treeless area of Australia. Proofs in the dirt and so to speak. Moving on, quick call to action for you Texicans or folks who like to visit East Texas. If you're listening to this on April fourth, which is the day this releases, you have a tiny window to go to this link and comment and ask for a little more time in a public meeting on behalf of the citizens of Minneola, Texas and Mineola Nature Preserve. It's not a big gask. This is the Texas Center for Environmental Quality, which is w W W one four dot tc e Q dot Texas dot gov. Forward slash epic, forward slash e comment. So here's the deal. There's a a concrete batch plant in the works down there, probably some good jobs with it too. However, the project may have some underlying effects on neighbors, visitors, and citizens of Maneola, the Miniola Nature Preserve, the dirt equestrian ground, and others in the path of prevailing winds in and around the proposed side of this concrete batch plant. And what they're asking for is a public comment period and this to be considered, which seems very fair to me. If any board anthropologist wants to do any testing on my old bones, you know, at some point in the distant future they will likely find a good mix of leftover construction materials, including concrete dust. East Texas has a lot of great stuff and great people, but it does not have a lot of public places for wildlife. If you are getting this on Sunday, stop what you're doing and right in w w W one four dot tc e Q dot Texas dot gov forward slash epic, forward slash e comment ask that they consider this before moving along with the permitting of their concrete batch plant. Moving on. When bees are on the move, be sure to keep your car windows closed. Los Cruises, New Mexico quick stop for groceries was all it took for a swarm of bees estimated at fifteen thousand individuals to stake claim to a man's rear car seat. The best part is he must have been so fixated on what was for dinner that he actually made it down the street before noticing the swarm of bees in his back seat. How that works, I don't know either. It was. However, the driver's lucky day has an off duty Lost Cruses firefighter is also an amateur beekeeper that showed up with the equipment necessary to transport a hive on the move, and the firefighter got to claim the bees, which makes me wonder if the grocery shopper and driver got paid or did they just call it even Stephen, bees are where some cash, you know? I mean, that's the buzz on the streets anyway. Next up, Capuchin monkeys are not native to the US, and if you have ever seen the movie Outbreak, kind of freaky in their cuddliness, like they're hiding something. Anyway, it released or escaped capuchin ended up on a backyard porch in Kentucky, where exactly like the movie Outbreak, which was a really great Dustin Hoffman performance, I thought the monkey was slowly coaxed into the grasp of Kentucky wildlife and taken to a care facility where the original mutaba strain of a bolo was extracted, which is a joke. The reality is something much worse. It's just flat out illegal to privately own quote inherently dangerous animals, which the sneaky little capuchin is classified as in Kentucky. The age of the monkey was one year old. This captive capuchin will now remain locked up and paid for by the state of Kentucky for possibly as long as forty four more years, which is the max captive life expectancy of capuchins in the wild. They have a life expectancy of fifteen to twenty five years. Odds are the person who let it go read the same Wikipedia article I did and thought, my god, I'm not that committed to being a monkey owner, which is exactly what you should be thinking and the conclusion you should come to. But the order should be reversed. Have these thoughts, but don't already be in possession of a monkey. Or maybe start small with an ad out of a comic book see monkeys. Remember those those are more your style. Whole aquarium full of life for a couple of bucks, plus shipping and handling, then maybe graduate to a goldfish than maybe an older like retiree type dog from the pound. That's all I've got for you this week. Thanks so much for listening. If you are loving what you're hearing, tell a friend or two, and most importantly, let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods by writing in to A S K, C A L. That's ask Cal at the meat eater dot com. Thanks again, and I'll talk to you next week often. Fat as P.

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