00:00:02 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cal's weekend review, presented by Steel Steel products are available only at authorized dealers. For more, go to Steel Dealers dot com. Now here's your host, Ryan cal Callahan. Four hunters have been charged with criminal trustpass, a violation of Wyoming State Code annotated six dash three dash three zero three in Carbon County, Wyoming, of which Rawlins is the county seat. Corner crossing is the act of stepping from one piece of public land to another piece of public land by stepping over the intersection where four corners of land meet. Corner crossing in Wyoming, just like anywhere in the West, is a contentious issue, with the exception of an opinion written to the then Wyoming Director of Fishing Game by the then state Attorney in June of two thousand four, which ends with no, bro corner crossing is totally legal. You're just stepping from public land to public land hunt on. I'm totally kidding. Of course, this is Wyoming, for gosh sakes. The opinion ends with quote corner crossing from one parcel of public land to another in order to hunt on that other public parcel, depending on the factual situation involved may not be violative of Wyoming State annotated twenty three dash three dash three zero five because to be convicted, the statute requires a person hunt or intend to hunt on private property without permission quote corner crossing. However, maybe a criminal trustpass under Wyoming State annotated six dash three dash three zero three. Once again, the factual circumstances would have to be examined to determine if a violation of Wyoming State annotated six dash three dash three zero three had occurred. In case you haven't guessed, these four hunters who have been charged with criminal trust bass were indeed corner crossing. Now, to go back to this conclusion I just read. My understanding is this. What this opinion did was removed Wyoming Fishing Game's ability to cite someone for corner crossing because even if they wanted to, they didn't technically have the power to cite someone for criminal trustpass. Only trustpass. This opinion and a following memorandum stating the above went out to the Wyoming County Attorneys, the Wyoming Sheriff's Department, and the Wyoming Department of Agriculture. This was in regards to a case that had recently been tried called State versus Kearney, which is very, very similar to the current situation in Carbon County. An individual current stepped across a section marker pin at the intersection of four sections of land from public land to public land, and the intent was to only hunt public land. The then head of Wyoming Fishing Game reached out to the state Attorney General's office and said, Hey, if this guy, Kearnie couldn't be prosecuted for trustpass, why would we, as game wardens cite someone for trustpass when they corner cross Please clear this up. The state Attorney General went so far as to say, I understand how this could lead people to think that corner crossing is legal. Probably about now, I'm sure a lot of you folks, who may not be quite as near to corner crossing as a lot of folks in the West are are thinking like, uh, cripes, can we move on? What's the big deal? Why do you keep explaining that someone stepped from public land to public land. Of course they can't be charged, that's just common sense. They went from public to public. Well, let me tell you this strange situation of whether a person can, in the act of stepping trust pass on private property even though they're starting footstep was on public land and their ending footstep was on public land. This weird dilemma currently has about six point three five million public land acres landlocked from the general public use. I'll pause for effect there. If you, like many folks in the West, just did, ended your big game hunting season a little frustrated by seeing a lot of other hunters on public land, well, you know, at least you know there's another six point three five million acres out there. Right this week, we've got underwater tusk, the white tail rut, and so much more. At first, I'm gonna tell you about my week, and my week happens to be written from Kansas. In fact, I'm sitting in a rental suburban of sorts talking to you outside of a stinky duck house full of dudes have been basically skunked hunting ducks. If you don't know much about Kansas, no this It is the state with the world's largest ball of cecil twine. Cecil twine is a plant fiber twine used for a lot of stuff, in this case agricultural cordage. How big is this ball of twine? You may ask, Only eight million, five hundred and seven four hundred thirty ft long, weighs about twenty seven thousand, seventeen pounds. And of course, anytime you see something like this you must reference the greatest road trip comedy of all time. Personally, I'd rather see a giant ball of twine than your cousin Eddie. That's Vacation, which is a classic. Again, and I don't believe that's a direct quote, but you'll get the gist. Just watch it again. I don't know what they call this stuff, hamburger helper, it does. Just find myself. The other thing I wanted to talk about was starting December six, we at the Meat Eater Store are running a big promotion. And listen up. This is where it gets interesting. If you enter the promo code cal that's c a L at check out, a portion of every sale will go to Wyoming backcountry hunters and anglers, who will put those funds towards the legal fees of the four hunters who are being charged with criminal trustpass because they stepped from public land to public land. I want to be clear here, I don't think these four folks are heroes. I don't think the private property owners are villains, but I do think public land should be accessible, especially by those willing to walk to get there. Any excess funds raised above and beyond the necessary legal fees will go to the Wyoming Access Yes program, the program that provides public access to private ground by paying willing landowners who choose to participate. Here's a quote from Wyoming Backcountry Hunters and anglers. Access to quality habitat on public lands is critical to sustaining our hunting heritage. As such, it's imperative that hunters fight for access and defend our public trust when necessary. If you'd like to join the fight, please consider supporting these four hunters by donating to the Wyoming b H. A go fund me page at www dot go fund me dot com. Forward slash f forward slash corner crossing legal fee fundraiser quick Google will get you there. I promise these funds will be used to cover the legal expense of these hunters, and the remaining balance will be donated to Access Yes, a program assisting private landowners to provide hunters and anglers places to hunt and fish. It is Wyoming b h S understanding that these hunters corner crossed legally and we're cited in error. It would have been easier and much cheaper for these hunters to pay the fines and allow a precedent to be set. This fundraiser is specifically aimed at balancing the scales of justice while supporting legal access to public lands. All funds not used for legal proceedings will be donated to the Wyoming Game and Fish Access Yes program. What do you think about them? Apples? So here's the deal. Buy some stuff associated with me. I got a wish list on the meat eater dot com. Whatever you do, whatever you buy, type in cal as your promo code, and a chunk at change will go to providing access and making sure that folks know that you can legally corner cross, which again is stepping from public land to public land. God bless and Merry Christmas. Moving on and very appropriate to our conversation. Everyone knows that digital mapping has been a game changer for public land hunting and fishing. Apps like on x let hunters and Angler Scout from miles away stay oriented in the wilderness, avoid being in places where they shouldn't be. These mapping tools also help hunters overcome the single greatest barrier to getting out in the woods, which is access. As I just mentioned, millions of acres of public land are inaccessible to the general public, commonly referred to as landlocked. These tracts of public BLM, State Forest Service, even wilderness are surrounded by private property that prohibits you and I from accessing the land we all own. Many of these private properties contain ease months negotiated with the landowner when the property was sold. The government agreed to sell the land, but required the landowner to allow the public to travel across the property to access the land beyond it. I'm generalizing here, but that's the idea. There's just one problem. Many of these easements were negotiated before electronic filing was invented, and the easement roads and trails are often unmarked or almost totally obliterated. If you want to find out whether there's an easement across a particular piece of private property, you'd have to dig through some dusty old government filing cabinet. Fortunately for US, the Bureau of Land Management in the US Forest Service are beginning to do this hard work. They are combing through old land deeds finding easements to landlocked public land and digitizing that information so it can be viewed on an interactive map. Even better, they're sharing that data with folks at on X, so millions of hunters can see and take it advantage of these newly discovered ease months. In two thousand nineteen, the BLM launched a pilot project to digitize road and trail access ease months in the Montana Dakota District. In two thousand twenty, the Forest Service got in on the game, and so far the agencies have identified additional access points to over four hundred and fifty unique tracts of public land in Montana and Idaho. That is a huge deal. That includes more than twenty nine thousand, six hundred acres of land that was previously identified as landlocked. Of course, there's a lot more work to be done. BLM officials told the Buildings Gazette that they wanted to do the same work in all Western states, and they estimate that there are five thousand ease months and twelve thousand patent reservations stored in BLM file cabinets. As you can imagine, digitizing all those files is time consuming and grueling work. Congress right now is considering a bill that would give us exactly what we need, which is more manpower to get this digitizing done. The Modernization Access to Our Public Land Act, also known as the map Land Act, which we've spoken about several times, would secure funds from the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and the Army to digitize all ease months and make them available to the public within three years. If this sounds familiar, it's because we hit it. Yeah, think about that, within three years we'd have a clear path to access showing every federal public land easeman in the country. I don't know exactly how much landlocked public land that would give us access to, but more is better. Right Montana alone contains over three million acres of inaccessible public land, as does Wyoming. In total, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership identified nearly ten million acres of landlocked public land in western States. The map Land Act could help solve that problem. And to clarify, it's not acquiring any additional public land. It's simply giving us access to the land we already own. To me, that sounds pretty darned good. Now, before you open up on AX and go charging down these new ease months. You should know a few things. First, be respectful of private property. These ease months are for access, not for outdoor wreck. In other words, don't stop to hunt, fish or look at wildlife. Keep moving until you reach public land. I recently went to a cabin that is deep into public lands but on deeded ground. The ease month to that cabin does not allow you to stop cut firewood, glass for big game, hunt fish, whatever on a closed section of road. It only allows you access to your dated property, which I think is perfectly fine. Second, if you find a new easement, it's important to remember that some of these haven't been maintained for decades. Roads may be unmarked or even nonexistent. The landowner might not know about them and be very surprised to find you trapesing across the property. As always, be courteous. If you think there are potential issues, knock on a door, make the necessary phone calls. Even with these qualifications, this is exciting stuff. Knowing about these ease monts will give us more opportunities to hunt and fish and expand the acreage available in many Western states. The only downside is some of us who have done our homework may find an extra person or two in our extra secret spot. Moving on to the religion desk, A white tail buck in Michigan crashed into a local church on the first day of the state's rifle season. When pastors Amanda and Luke Acre arrived at Church and Sturgis, Michigan, on Monday, November fifteen, they thought they'd been robbed, but when they opened the door to the sanctuary, they found a ten point whitetail buck perusing the donation cards in the back of the pews. There was some damage to the building and our pastors are a little traumatized, but the buck left strengthened in the Lord to go face his battles, the church wrote on its Facebook page. Believe it or not, white tail frequently find themselves trapped in buildings, especially during breeding season. Chad Stewart from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources told us they've encountered deer in churches, houses, grocery stores, department stores, and on top of ski lifts. In fact, on the same day this deer broke into a church in southern Michigan. Another deer in Louisiana made its way inside Baton Rouge's largest hospital. That deer had apparently been hit by a car before ran through the main entrance of the hospital and up an escalator. It was captured within just a few minutes and euthanized later that day. That deer was obviously trying to get some medical attention, but probably not the Cavorkian type. Rest in peace. It's possible the Michigan buck wanted to confess a few nagging sins. This is the rut time of year, after all, or the more likely explanation, this buck mistook his reflection in the window for arrival. Pastor Amanda Aker agreed. She told us the deer had been hanging around the church since the previous Sunday, and she believes he spotted a rival in the reflection of the window. Since white tail bucks only have a few weeks in the entire year to breed their keyed up and ready to fight during that period in late October and November, if this buck thought another buck had the audacity to wander into his territory, he was going to do something about it. Unfortunately for him, he broke through his rival found himself in the middle of an empty sanctuary and in a video posted on the church's Facebook page, the buck can be seen climbing the stairs to the balcony and suddenly jumping up the wall. It's an impressive leap. One could say it was a leap that took faith on the leap from the lion's head. Sturgis pastors told local media that they had already barricaded the doors to the sanctuary, but they were afraid the deer would damage the sound equipment on the balcony. No damage was done beyond the broken window, and the bucks soon walked back down the stairs and jumped back out through the broken frame. If you ever find yourself in this situation, Stewart has a few tips. First, make sure you stay safe. If it looks like the deer might injure you or anyone else, dear clear if you think you can safely coax it through a window or gate. Keep in mind that deer usually move along a wall or fence. If you're a white tail hunter, you know this. A deer isn't going to cross a feel older a room from one side to the other. He's going to creep along the edge. The same apparently goes for a rectory emergency room or living room. Knowing this might help you develop a strategy for encouraging the animal to clear the area, or maybe you make sure of your target and beyond then you know, take care of the situation. After all, they don't often walk that close to your freezer on their own, do they. Moving on to the legislation desk, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchon and Wyoming Senator John Barrasso recently introduced a new piece of legislation they're calling the Outdoor Recreation Act. This bill, according to a press release, is designated to quote increase and improve outdoor recreation opportunities across the nation, while improving infrastructure and driving economic growth in rural communities. The authors have already published the bill's entire text online so you can read it yourself at Energy dot Senate dot gov. The bill is divided into directives related to three categories, increasing recreation opportunities, improving those recreation opportunities, and investing in recreation infrastructure and rural communities. For example, the bill would require the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to consider recreation resources when developing or revising land management plans. Agencies would have to assess the costs and benefits of current recreation use and consider how they might expand or enhance recreation in the future. The bill would also require the Forest Service and the BLM to ensure that each National Forest and BLM district has at least one designated shooting range. It would modernize campsites by installing broadband internet and certain locations, and direct the Forest Service and BLM to finalize their trail and road maps. Trails and road maps are a plus, broadband internet near to the trailhead is a bit of a bummer in my opinion. Part of the reason folks head outside is to disconnect, which is great, and part of the reason they head back to the city is to get reconnected to the internet, which in turn leaves some vacancies at campsites, which is great too. But in general, I was pleased to see the agencies responsible for managing much of the federal public land in the US would be required to consider recreation when developing land management plans, but in my opinion, they typically do right now. I think the real benefits to hunting and fishing up here in the third section of the bill, not so much in the policies themselves, but in the larger ideas behind those policies. The third section of the legislation acknowledges that many states, recreation is a big part of local and rural economies. Thousands of Americans make a living running the restaurants, hotels, outfitter services, and transportation businesses that serve hunters, anglers, high kers, and campers. In total, outdoor wreck accounted for three D seventy four billion dollars with the bee of the nation's gross domestic product that's in two thousand twenty. That's one point eight percent of the entire national economy, or about the same percentage as the mining or utilities industries. The general undecided public may not care so much about how much the hunting or fishing communities spend, but we know politicians do even better. As the TRCP points out, lawmakers will be more likely to spend wisely on conservation priorities since the outdoor recreation industry relies on healthy habitats and animal populations to survive. The bill highlights the economic benefits of outdoor recreation by directing federal agencies to provide financial and technical assistance to businesses and communities adjacent to recreation destinations. Maybe the hamburger joint you love in the town below your favor trailhead needs an updated checkout system. They'll run more efficiently and stay in business longer. This bill might be able to help with that. In turn, maybe that business owner will hang a sign in the window that says something like, uh, where Hunter's Orange get a free milkshake? Who knows? This bill also directs the Forest Service to better understand visitor trends and how seasonal closures of federal land impact adjacent businesses. Where those closures harm those businesses, the Department of the Interior would be required to look for opportunities to extend the period of time federal land is open to the public, which is interesting. I was thinking about this a lot today. If you haven't heard, the dam at Hebgen Lake, which controls the Madison River, a river that is heavily recreated upon and many, many, many businesses have staked their sole reason for being on this river and the folks that create on it. That damn had a malfunction and the river dropped too perilously low levels for fish life, causing undoubtedly an economic impact to these recreational businesses. If this bill were to pass in its current form, would these entities have to somehow reimburse these businesses that have staked their claim on one particular river that is controlled by a dam. I don't know. Does the already giant bloated beyond belief fire budget have to now include funding that would pay folks who can't go out in the woods. I don't know. There's only so much time on the calendar year, right, so if you get locked out of the woods during fire season, does the Forest Service have to then remove the seasonal closures on let's say, calving areas for elk because they'll be obligated to with this bill. I don't know. This bill isn't the kind of generational investment we've seen with the Great American Outdoors Act or the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, But as with Folsburg of the TRCP told us, it's a good bill that makes incremental steps in the right direction. He even pointed out that it could become a vehicle for other conservation and access bills, like the map Land Act and the Ruby Mountains Protection Act. It's unclear right now whether this bill stands a good chance of passing through Congress. It's being introduced by a Democrat and a Republican, which is a good sign. Just know it's out there and we'll keep you posted on any movement. Moving on to the sunken treasure Desk, scientists searching for new deep sea species off the coast of Monterey, California made unexpected discovery during an expedition in two thousand nineteen. Lying right there on the ocean floor, ten thousand feet below the surface, they spotted the tusk of a young female mammoth. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute doesn't employ many mammoth experts, but they knew a tusk when they saw one. They also knew that if they didn't try to pick it up, they'd regret it they probably could never find it again. Unfortunately, it was fragile and they were only able to recover a fragment, But that fragment was enough to confirm that they had found a mammoth tusk, and in July of this year, a team went back to recover the entire prehistoric tooth. Ancient mammal remains have never been found in water so deep, but mammoth remains have been found in Western Europe's North Sea. These artifacts end up in the bottom of the ocean for the same reason people keep finding human feet on the beaches of Washington State. When animals die, there remains sometimes wind up in the ocean. Their body parts float out to sea, and as long as they aren't wearing shoes, slowly sank to the bottom. That's what scientists believe happened to this mammoth. How this tusk survived for hundreds of thousands of years in ocean water is even more interesting. According to the research on this project, the three foot long tusk was covered in a thick iron manganese crust. That crust formed a shell around the tusk that kept it intact for obviously a very long time. Scientists are still trying to determine exactly how long it's been there, but unpublished research suggests that this specimen may have come from the Lower Paleolithic era, which lasted from two point seven million years ago through about two hundred thousand years ago. Mammoth remains from this period are extremely rare. Because of that, we don't really know what's going on during this time period. Usually, saltwater environments aren't great for preserving ancient mammal specimens, but in this case, thanks to that mineral shell, the darkness and low temperature actually helped preserve the DNA within this tusk. Scientists will be able to analyze the DNA to determine the species of mammoth as well as its lineage. That information could help solve an ongoing mammoth riddle that's been dogging researchers for decades. The first mammoths in North America were known as step mammoths, and it's believed that they came across from Eurasia about one point five million years ago. Hundreds of thousands of years later, the wooly mammoth arrived on the continent and began breeding with the step mammoth. Those hybridized animals became known as Colombian mammoth. The trouble is, no one knows exactly when that hybridization event occurred. According to scientists who spoke with The Times, this tusk could help determine exactly when these massive mammals began to hybridize. Scientists can learn even more about this mammoth from her tusk. Tusk grow like tree rings, which gives scientists a clear timetable for life events like giving birth. These layers also contain isotopes that can be traced back to the kinds of food the animals eating and where that food came from. Understand Ending simple things like that could have far reaching effects, especially as their planet changes. This is a glimpse into the past, a window back in time, and it makes you wonder what else is lying preserved on the ocean floor, just waiting to be found. That's all I've got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. As per usual, 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 asked cal at the Meat Eater dot com. I want to hear what's going on. And if you're looking desperately for that item that the person who has everything really and truly needs, don't forget to check out www dot steal Dealers dot com and find a local, knowledgeable, friendly steal u s A dealer near you. They're him. Get you squared away with what you need and not with what you don't. Thanks again, and I'll talk to you next week.