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. Drivers along Highway three seventy one in Minnesota noticed something strange earlier this month near mile marker thirty six. Smiling down from an electronic billboard, the face of a forty something white man appeared next to the words this is Troy. He sucks at fishing. Troy is part of a group of anglers that takes a big ice fishing trip every year. According to one member of the group, David V. Troy has been quote less than successful. Apparently, Troy can go entire days without catching a fish, and his fishing buddies haven't been shy about giving him a hard time. But the constant trash talk didn't Troy from upping the antie. He commissioned a personalized message from actor Christopher McDonald, who you may remember as Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore. You're Big Trouble Dold Pal. I eat pieces like you for breakfast. You eat pieces for breakfast. No in that video, McDonald taunts the rest of the group, asking whether they really think they're gonna beat Troy on their annual trip. That's when V and his friends decided to let the world know that Troy sucks at fishing. They bought the billboard ad for just under three hundred bucks and it ran for five days. It also included an email address, Troy sucks too at gmail dot com, where folks could send even more trash talk Troy's way. V admitted that Troy is a fine fisherman, but their stunt sets a high bar. If you think you and your crew are good smack talkers, you have to ask yourself are you good enough to show the world via a three hundred dollar billboard on Minnesota three. This week we've got moose stream access and our first snort reported the fall. But first, I'm gonna tell you about my week. In my week, well man, a ton has happened to start off. Thanks to everyone for the dozens of responses to our Margarita query, more emails about that than almost any other topic as of recent Now, let's channel that passion and enthusiasm towards conservation, shall we, And let's not forget that we are moving into autumn, so it's time to sunset the marks and move into old fashioned time frames. And when I say old fashions, I mean the real stuff that doesn't contain any sort of club soda or bubbles and isn't too sweet. I'm sweet enough, see you know what. Anyway, I have returned from the land of enchantment, New Mexico, and as I was reminded, the enchantment in New Mexico is in the form of chiggers. Chiggers or trombicular day, are an evil creation. When in the larval form anyway, they're a six legged mite. After crawling onto their hosts, in this case me, they inject digestive enzymes into the skin that break down the skin cells. They don't actually bite, but instead form a hole in the skin called the style of stome and chew up tiny parts of the inner skin, thus causing severe irritation and swelling. The severe itching is accompanied by red pimple like bumps or papules that are rupp with pus. If this isn't bad enough, they really hit the friction areas of your body, the waistband, the hip belt, and the backpack straps. Outside of the chigger type of enchantment. We found a lot of the elk type of enchantment as well. Had some great opportunities on young bulls, but we were hunting a big bowl unit, which is really hard. I typically set my sights on broadside elk. Then I'm more free to look for antlers and deer and birds. Just relax and have fun. I had a seriously quartered away shot at twenty yards or so on a small five point bowl, which was tempting, but the arrows I throw are very heavy and slow, so I did not let go of the string. Awesome hiking hunting, in a great time with Jason Phelps. That guy really can call elk. Moving on to the Snort report, we are only three days into our Montana bird season. Snort has been a little slow out of the gate. I honestly wonder if she has some sort of a bug or ailment, as her endurance seems to be down. She's getting fatigued easily. It seems We've had a few opportunities, but managed a Hungarian partridge to dove and a sharp tail too sharp tails. Actually, despite the fatigue, snorts nose is in incredible shape and she marks birds and recognizes cover very well. She's still enjoyed a watch. Just don't know why she's moving so low, and honestly, your nose is so good, and I do believe she's smart. She may just be telling me that the birds aren't there. Of course she's correct. I feel like we need to find some new country to work. I run the tracking function of on X as well as a Garmin GPS caller, purely because I love the data, love seeing the amount of ground that we've covered. It also lets me enjoy the hunt even after we're back home, and suffice it to say that it's not for the lack of walking. Side note, we've only found two rattlesnakes so far. No bit ears more to come with the snort report. The season is just warming up and the temps are gonna start dropping, so goodbye snakes. Moving on to the moose desk. Climate change is a bad thing, there's no question about that. But as winters start later and and earlier, certain species will increase their range. The moose in western Alaska are a great example. Thanks to listener John Hanson for sending this one. In Shrubs are expanding across the tundra and a phenomenon. Scientists are calling, and I swear I'm not making this up. Shrubbification. I would have loved to have been in the room when they came up with that term. I imagine the guy responsible for naming things left his Latin dictionary at home, so they went with the intern suggestion shrubbification. Anyway, moose loves shrubs, especially the scrubby willows that shoot up at the edges of the frozen tundra. Shrubification is visible from space, and while moose don't have spaceships, they do have an excellent sense of smell. They've been loving the additional forage, and their numbers on the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge have increased four fold. According to report in High Country News, a good crop of summer vegetation means more moose twins are born and more calves survive as moose numbers increase. Rural Alaskans have historically survived on caribou meat turned to moose this fall, and winter bag limits for local hunters are more liberal than usual in parts of Bristol Bay and the Yukon Cusco them Delta hunters can harvest two moose each, including antlerless cows. Managers hope this will help be a boon to the people living in these areas and protect the moose heard from growing too large. Too many moose could over forage in area and lead to a population crash. As cariboo numbers drop and salmon runs become less predictable, wildlife managers want to make sure the moose remain on the landscape. It's worth noting that moose aren't expanding across the entire state. East of the Tojiak National Wildlife Refuge, numbers are dropping with the finger being pointed towards bears, which are predating on calves. Shrubification. There's just one factor among many, and not all moose are enjoying its effects. But it will be interesting to see how climate change impacts the species we love to hunt, and whether those changes will offer additional opportunities that weren't possible just a few decades ago. Be kind of like buying a house in Miami a block from the beach. It's uh just a matter of time. Moving on to the rewilding desk, Warmer weather is great for moose in Alaska, but it's not so great for the elephants. Giraffes and i Paula's in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean officials have begun moving more than twenty five hundred wild animals to other parts of the country to rescue them from drought. They're being shipped in crates and trucks from Zimbabwe's Save Valley Conservancy in the south to three conservancies in the north in one of Africa's biggest live animal capture and translocation exercises. This particular Noah's Ark includes four hundred elephants, two thousand Impaula's, seventy giraffes, fifty buffaloes, fifty will to beasts, and an assortment of lions, zebras and dogs. This isn't the first time the country has moved thousands of animals to save them from natural disasters. In the fifties and the sixties, over five thousand animals were moved in order to rescue them from rising water caused by the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam. This time, of officials are worried that the drought stricken landscape won't be able to support as many animals is currently live in the conservancy. A spokesman for the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management authority told the AP that they're afraid the animals will destroy their own habitat and search of scarce water and food. The critters are also encroaching on human settlements to find food, which is causing quote incessant conflict. Of course, wildlife officials could just call the animals, but as you can imagine, that's not the most popular idea. Culling has also been rejected because the folks in charge of the project want to use those animals to rewild another part of Zimbabwe. Rewilding is a conservation strategy that assumes humans should play a limited role in managing wild landscapes. Rewilding advocates say we should try to replicate natural ecosystems as best we can and then let those systems operate on their own. In Zimbabwe, elephants and zebras aren't just being moved to escape drought. They're being relocated to the zambi Zy River Valley to rebuild the wildlife populations there. The operation is called Project re Wild Zambezi, and advocates hope they can quote restore the wild back to what it once was. They're not the only ones in the UK and outfit called the Kent Wildlife Trust just introduced for European bison to a forest in southeast England. The European bison is not native to England, but project managers believe the European variety will mimic a native species of forest bison that was there during the Pleisto. See. The bison were released in a controlled environment and advocates hope that the animals will help woodland recovery and management. They say the bison or a keystone species that will increase biodiversity and habitat variety. Here's Tom Gibbs, one of the bison rangers, explaining what they hope is going to happen. What we're hyping is that he's bison are going to train an open space and but letting light come down to the ground and invigorate in the woods. Here, I'm ding that's gonna have a massive impact on biodiversity and creating more resilient site for future generations and in the face of things like climate change. Rewilding is based on the trophic cascade theory. You've probably heard this term used in relation to Yellowstone wolves, and we've covered it before on the podcast. According to this highly debatable theory, large predators and herbivores have an outsized impact on the landscape, and reintroducing these species will have positive downstream effects. Their impact will cascade up and down the food chain and restore ecosystems to what they once were. Moving on to the public land desk. For the first time in history, the Bureau of Land Management has approved an application to store carbon dioxide underground. Ex On Mobile will sequester the greenhouse gases deep underneath the earth on BLM land in Lincoln and Sweetwater Counties in Wyoming. Eggs On currently sells carbon dioxide for commercial uses, and excess carbon dioxide is vented into the atmosphere. Now they'll be able to pipe those gases eighteen thousand feet underground in the water leg of the Madison Formation. Every day, they'll send sixty million cubic feet of carbon dioxide into the storage area through a well padded pipeline, and the BLM says those gases will be stored there permanently. Carbon dioxide has been injected underground in the United States since the nineteen forties, but typically as a temporary measure to produce more oil. According to BLM, press release. This is the first time the agency has issued a policy to allow for the permanent underground storage of carbon dioxide. This is a type of carbon sequestration known as geologic sequestration. In this process, carbon dioxide is usually pressurized until it becomes a liquid, and then it is injected into porous rock formations in geologic basins. The other type of carbon sequestration, biologic sequestration, refers to storage of atmospheric carbon and vegetation soils, woody products, and aquatic environments. If injecting liquid carbon dioxide into our public lands makes you a little nervous, join the club. Public Land advocates usually worry about extractive activities public taking stuff out. Are we now going to have to worry about people putting stuff back in? Also, the fact that the BLM has never approved a project like this sounds like the beginning of a worldwide disaster movie. However, there is reason to believe things won't end quite that badly. Again been doing this since the nineteen forties. In two thousand twenty, the National Energy Technology Laboratory released a technical report explaining why geologic carbon sequestration is safe for both humans and the environment. In the past twenty years, the U. S Department of Energy has spent one billion dollars at the Billion with a B researching this kind of sequestration. Combined those twenty years of experience with the oil industries five decades of experience, and the BLMS decision doesn't sound like such an outlier. In two thousand nineteen, for example, more than twenty five million metric tons of c O two were injected into the earth, and the Department of Energy g is not observed any impacts to human health or the environment. Moving on to the public access desk, it looks like the stream access controversy in New Mexico might finally be winding down, at least for now. Earlier this month, the state Supreme Court issued their written opinion on this case, and it lands squarely in the favor of public access advocates and those that enjoy the f word. Of course, I'm talking freedom. The whole thing is worth a read, but here's the best bit. We hold that the public has the right to recreate and fish in public waters, and that this right includes the privilege to do such acts as are reasonably necessary to affect the enjoyment of such right. Walking and waiting on the privately owned beds beneath public water is reasonably necessary for the enjoyment of many forms of fishing and recreation. The court stress that angler can't trespass on private property in order to access a stream, and they can't trespass from the stream onto private property. But nobody's ever been asking for that. Anglers have every right to wade up or down a stream, even if it crosses through private property. If you haven't been following this case, here's the quick backstory. The New Mexico Game Commission had a process that they basically created by which a landowner could apply to designate a stream running through their property as non navigable. This was based on some poorly chosen words thrown out there and acted upon as an opportunity. If the state granted this designation, the landowner could prohibit access to the stream even if an angler access the water on public land and never set foot on either bank. This was clearly in violation of the state constitution. The Adobe Whitewater Club of New Mexico, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, and the New Mexico Chapter of back Country Hunters and Anglers challenged the regulations in lawsuit filed with the state Supreme Court. The court issued a verbal ruling when they heard the case, but a small minority of landowners were reportedly not complying with the ruling because the court had not yet issued a written opinion. Those landowners were from Texas. With this latest development, the issuing of the written opinion, New Mexico joins tons of other states like Montana, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and ironically, Texas in affirming the public ownership and use of water for recreational purposes. We can celebrate this victory, but it's not an excuse to act like a yahoo. Respect the landowners whose property you're fishing through. Most of them are happy to have you there, but some of them are understandably worried about strangers so near their property. I'm preaching to the choir here, but remembered to be respectful, don't cause any damage, and don't leave any trash. Moving on to the waterfoul desk. Several of you wrote in recently about the decision by the United States Department of Agriculture to ban all imports of hunter harvested waterfowl meat from Canada. The move was designed to prevent the spread of bird flu, but, as meat eater Shawn Weaver pointed out in an article on the meat eater dot Com, this decision put American waterfowl hunters in an impossible dilemma. They weren't allowed to bring their game meat across the border, and you can't just go up there and kill a bunch of birds and leave them well. I'm pleased to report that, thanks in part to the outcry from hunters, the u s d as Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has reversed their decision. Rather than bar all hunter harvested wild game bird carcasses, the USDA is requiring hunters to process their take according to a multi step process. First, hunters must remove the viscera, head, neck, feet, skin, and one wing from the bird. The remaining wing, as you likely know, has to have the feathers attached and is required by the US Fish and Wildlife Service for species identification. Carcasses must be chilled or frozen. They must be rinsed and fresh clean potable water prior to packaging, and they must not have visible evidence of contamination with dirt, blood, or feces. Carcasses must also be imported in leakproof plastic packaging and stored in a leakproof container or cooler for transport. Cooked or cured meat is still not allowed because that makes species identification impossible. Taxidermy trophies must either be fully finished or accompanied by a VS import permit, or consigned directly to a U s d A approved establishment. Karen Waldrop Ducks and Limited, Chief conservation officer told me she's grateful the U. S d A was willing to sit down with her and find an alternative solution. Well, first, I'd like to thank um U s d A aphists and their staff for sitting down and and being willing to talk to us and discuss the science behind this. What are some opportunities to maybe change this band, this full out band, to something to wear. Hunters can bring their birds back, their harvest back into the States. So I want to thank the senior leadership and also the staff that sat down and worked with us on on some of this and some of the information that we're able to provide to them to help inform their decision going forward. It isn't every day a big federal agency resolves a bad decision so quickly. The updated guidance was issued less than two weeks after the initial ban went into effect, which is lightning fast for government bureaucracy, Duck's Unlimited Delta Waterfowl, and the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation. We're all involved in making this happen, and they wouldn't have succeeded without support from hunters like you. Moving on to the legal desk. In Wyoming, the owner of Elk Mountain Ranches claiming over seven million dollars in damages after four Missouri hunters corner crossed into the air space of his property. According to a new report in Wild File, this is the same corner crossing case we've been tracking closely for nearly a year. Four hunters from Missouri used a ladder to cross between one block of public land to another. At the point where the corners touch. They were exon or aided of criminal trust pass charges, but a civil case is still before the U. S. District Court in Wyoming for that grave sin of bruising airspace on Elk Mountain Ranch. The owner, a North Carolina businessman named Frederick Eshelman, is claiming that the hunters damaged his property to the tune of as much as seven point seven five million dollars. The hunters never set foot on the property, so you might be asking yourself, where does Eshwyn get the nerve to ask for such a huge sum of money. Eshelman is claiming damages for several things, such as the time it took ranch employees to confront the legally hunting hunters that never should have been confronted. Then, the bulk of the seven million dollar figure is based on the supposed devaluation of the ranch in the event that the court rules in favor of the hunters. Eshelman is arguing that if the court decides that corner crossing is legal, his ranch will be worth ten to fifteen percent less than it currently is. Oh my god, He admitted he will no longer have exclusive access to those public blocks, which will bring his property value down from its current thirty one million dollar value. In other words, he's acknowledging that he has a monetary stake in excluding the public from public property. He's also admitting that he thinks that buying a property that was valued as he claims on a flimsy idea of people not being able to walk from public land to public land while only stepping on public land was a bad idea, but instead of admitting that that was a poor gamble to make, he wants somebody else to pay for it. Public land bro nobody is advocating that people get a step on your private property. The Wyoming Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers has been funding the hunter's case. Landtani, the president and CEO of b h A, called the filing the most egregious thing I've ever seen. He characterized the astronomical figure as a scare tactic meant to bully the Missouri hunters into backing down. If you'd like to stand with these fellows, show your support by donating to the Corner Crossing legal fee fundraiser on go fund me, or you can donate directly to Wyoming Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, which of course is a five oh one C three nonprofit. In another legal update, a judge has allowed a group of conservation organizations to intervene in the lawsuit that could impact the entire Montana Elk Herd. We've covered previously a lawsuit brought by the United Property Owners of Montana against Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The lawsuit asked the court to require Montana FWP to reduce the state's elk herd by about fifty thousand animals. It would also transfer power to set wildlife policy from the States Game Commission to the state legislature. A coalition of conservation and wildlife groups that includes the Montana Wildlife Federation, Montana back Country Hunters and anglers in the Montana bow Hunters Association, among others, filed a motion to intervene in the case. This would make them the official third parties in the suit, which gives them the right to have their own legal representation. While the judge did not grant their request as it relates to elk management criteria, she is allowing them to intervene regarding a law requiring landowners to allow public access to receive game damage assistance. This was a crucial part of the suit, and the judge ruled that has public land advocates these groups have standing to intervene. That's all I've got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write in to a s K C. A L. That's ask Cal at the Meat Eater dot com and let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. As we're getting closer to fall. You may find yourself in need of a clean, quiet, powerful chainsaw. Well, I'm here to remind you. Go to steel dealers dot com. You can find a local, knowledgeable your dealer near you. They'll get you set up with what you need and not try to send you home with what you don't. Thanks again and I'll talk to you next week

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