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. If you live in New Mexico and see a tiger cub wandering around your neighborhood, don't worry. You didn't wake up in Texas, but you should probably call your conservation officer. They'd appreciate it. The state of New Mexico is on the hunt for a thirty two sixty pound tiger. They believe the tiger is being held illegally somewhere in the state. Back in August, conservation officers with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish obtained search warrants for two residences in Albuquerque South Valley. They had reason to believe that a tiger was being kept as a pet, and while they found drugs, cash, guns, and an alligator, the tiger had already been moved. Tigers and alligators are listed as Group four prohibited species, which means only a permitted zoo is allowed to possess them. Private individuals are not allowed to have them for any reason, but investigators suspect the tiger remains in private hands in New Mexico or a nearby state. Local officials have this to say, ride the tiger. If you can see his stripes, then you know he's clean. Oh, don't you know what I mean? The cub is less than a year old right now, and it's not any larger than a golden retriever, but that won't last long. Tigers can grow up to six hundred pounds and their tail is there only appendage that isn't sharp. If you have any info, give New Mexico Operation Game Thief a call. This week we've got big fish, bigger birds, crime and access. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. In My week was spent walking. I've been hitting a bunch a new bird hunting country, trying to find a spot with a more dense bird population, which I have not found this season. Is hard on the legs, hard on the gas budget, and easy on the shotgun shells. I'm averaging about seven a half miles a hunt and getting an opportunity per hunt, which is definitely better than a lot of walking without opportunities at all. It's hard on snort, though, she's a little beat up. She just weighed in at fifty eight pounds. She's light on her feet. But if I'm covering seven miles on average per hunt, then what's she covering twice that? Three times that? This is just like a for instance of a hunt. Okay. We started out on a place that looked really good from the on X satellite imagery. On that first spot, we covered two point seven miles and flushed one lone sharp tail grouse, no shots. Then we shifted to a new location. We covered four point eight miles. I killed three doves and two sharp tails in the first one point three miles. Then we moved to a third location where we walked one point eight miles and killed three Hungarian partridge. Then at our final location, we walked point six miles and killed one dove. Which sounds like a good day, but the day before we did one point six miles no birds, two point three miles no birds, one point two miles no birds, four point three miles one covey of huns. We put three of those in the bag, and then to finish out the day, we did another two point one miles and no birds. So Day one recap eleven and a half miles. Three birds are about a third of a bird per mile, and day two was almost a mile per bird at nine point nine miles for eight birds total, or eight tenths of a bird per mile walked. And keep in mind some of those birds were dubs, which, as their friends at PETA recently pointed out in a Texas op ed, an ounce of lead shot for roughly three ounces of bird does not make a lot of sense. Moving on to the fishing desk. When you think world class spear fishing destination, northwest Arkansas probably doesn't come to mind, but don't tell that to Chris Cantrell of Berryville, Arkansas. Earlier this month, Cantrell was spear fishing for stripe bass near the dam On Beaver Lake when a much larger fish caught his eye. Cantrell was fifteen to twenty ft underwater, and at first he thought it was a car, but when he swam closer, he realized it was a huge paddlefish as long as he was tall. He shot it with his spear and dropped the gun so the fish wouldn't pull him under. By the time he got back to the surface, the fish had already pulled out all the line from the gun, as well as fifty feet of his floating line. It took about fifteen minutes to get the fish on the boat, and when he did, he realized he had some special The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission was closed for the holiday weekend, so he took the fish to the certified scales at his local UPS store. Kudos to that UPS employee. At least it was not an average day at work. The ninety pound twelve ounce fish beats the previous international spear fishing paddle fish record of seventy one point eight pounds set in two thousand nineteen. The Arkansas hook and line record is eighteen pounds, so Contrail isn't too far behind that either. Fossil records indicate that paddle fish or spoonbill as they're called in the South, are older than dinosaurs. In fact, they're the oldest surviving animal species in North America. Their native to the Mississippi River basin, but the population in Beaver Lake is a remnant of a stocking program that took place between and two thousand. According to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the fish were stocked in Beaver Lake as a backup in case the populations in nearby rivers took a downturn. Congrats, Ris, that's a cool fish and an even cooler story. Moving on to the crime desk, a pair of Wyoming men were charged with wildlife violations after two severed antelope heads were found outside a hotel and Campbell County, which, as you know, Campbell County is home of the Camel's Campbell County Campbell's, at least it is to me. I know there's another high school in Gillette these days, but come on, as far as high school mascots go, a camel and Cowboy Country is a fun one to beat. According to local media, and as far as we know, the heads were not discovered in a bed and had nothing to do with cor Leoni's Cannolis or Frank Sinatra, which is Godfather reference. Little movie that you know won a couple of awards. Kids, look it up. It's not going to be on TikTok anyway. Jeremiah A. Beeson and David Hernandez have both been charged with knowingly taking horned big game animals without a proper license and during a close season. They allegedly shot the two buck antelope from inside at a truck with a rifle chambered in three hundred blackout, which is a really interesting round. Uh. Not a long distance shooter, big arc A lot of power upfront, you could say, but you know, when you're poaching, you're probably not shooting too far. Anyway. They cut off the heads and for reasons that remain unclear, stashed them in some bushes near the dumpsters at the Candlewood Suites and Gillette, Wyoming. Wildlife officials were tipped off to the crimes by a witness at the hotel. Down in Texas, the Coastguard snagged fourteen poachers who were illegally fishing in federal waters off the southern portion of the state. The three boats seized were filled with approximately four hundred and forty pounds of shark two thousand four pounds of red snapper, according to a Coastguard press release. The Mexican men were using boats known as a launches. These slender boats are between twenty and thirty ft long with small outboard motors. Launches are frequently used to transport illegal narcotics to the US and illegal fish into the United States. This happened in the Exclusive Economic Zone near the US Mexico border in the Gulf of Mexico. The fishermen were detained and have been sent to border enforcement agents for processing. Jumping across the pond to the International Desk. Poachers have been killing wildlife and damaging crops on a nightly basis in North Yorkshire, England. According to a report in The Yorkshire Post, gangs of poachers run their dogs across private property, killing deer hairs and anything else they can find. They also drive their vehicles across crop fields and use angle grinders to cut through gates. As you can probably guess, these aren't your stereotypical English poachers just looking for a bird or some venicon for supper, or you know, like that book Danny Champion of the World. It's been a while, but I remember that being a good one. These guys are organized, armed and reportedly run betting rings to see which dog can kill the most game. A report from September of last year called poaching the number one rural crime issue in the area, and police set up a s Actual Rural Task Force to address the growing problem. As with poaching around the world, landowners must often decide between allowing poachers to escape and putting themselves in harm's way. The poachers have reportedly threatened farmers with arson and assault if they try to stop them. If any listeners out there from North Yorkshire, send me an email, give me an update A s K C. A. L. At the Meat eater dot com. Moving on to the bird desk, you probably know that the ostrich is the world's largest bird. Ostriches can grow up to nine ft tall in way as much as two hundred and eighty seven pounds. That's a big bird, but it's not the biggest bird this planet has ever seen, not by a long shot. That honor goes to a long extinct species of flightless Australian bird known locally as thunderbirds. Scientists, however, called them dramm and thorne. If it's we're gonna go with the locals. The largest of the thunderbirdsdra Mornis steer Tony, lived about seven million years ago. They were about as tall as an ostrich, but they weighed in astonishing pounds. That's over four times larger than an ostrich and twice as large as you like your typical Montana grizzly bear. Thunderbirds looked a bit like an emu, but their beaks were rounder and larger, sort of like a puffin. If you found yourself face to face with one of these giant critters, scientists aren't sure whether it would try to eat you or leave you alone. Many paleontologists believe thunderbirds were herbivorous, but others think at least some may have eaten meat. Based on the shape and size of their skulls and beaks, and just their overall size, they probably had a wider diet anyway. A new paper published in a scientific journal called The Anatomical Record tells us more about why thunderbirds didn't stick around in Australia long enough for humans to get a better look. According to the paper, the birds took too long to grow up and become sexually mature. The largest thunderbirds took fifteen years to become sexually mature, while the smallest did it in about two years. That wasn't fast enough to compete with modern birds, which reached their full size in a year and can start breeding at two. As we've covered several times on the podcast, a slow growth and breeding cycle means that a species is less able to adapt to changing conditions, As the climate became warmer and drier, thunderbirds were out competed by other birds like the emu, and they went extinct about forty thousand years ago. The papers authors developed this hypothesis by observing thin sections of fossilized bone under a microscope. One of the researchers told fizz dot org that the microscopic structure of the bones can tell them how long thunderbirds took to reach adult size, when they reached sexual maturity, and even when the females were ovulating. That's a lot of information from an old bone. Next time he's in ostrich at the zoo, you can imagine how much more intimidating that bird would be if it were a foot taller and six times larger. And next time you meet someone new, consider asking them, you know, for a thin cross section of bone. Then you're going to know what they're really like. Moving on to the science desk, whenever wildlife biologists talk about the population of a species in a particular area, they're talking about population estimates. With few exceptions Yellowstone wolves, for example, it's virtually impossible for scientists to lay eyes on every individual animal. Instead, they rely on in the field surveys and mathematical models to estimate population sizes and compare those numbers zero over a year, as we talked about the wolf situation over in Idaho, Idaho Fishing Game has implemented camera traps and they're doing a lot of population modeling off of those in conjunction with aerial surveys. I bring this up because a listener wrote in with some great questions about the hog and turkey study we talked about an episode. The study was conducted by the Auburn University Deer Lab and suggested that eliminating hogs can increase turkey abundance in a particular location. This listener, who also happens to be a biologist, pointed out that the study has not yet been published in a scientific journal, which means it hasn't been peer reviewed. That doesn't mean the study is wrong, but I should have mentioned that important context on the show. He also wondered how the studies author estimated turkey populations. Counting turkeys on trail camp photos sounds like a good strategy, but it's not perfect. Turkeys might still be in an area even if they aren't appearing at bait sites, especially if hogs are out competing turkeys at those sites. To help me answer these questions, I reached out to the studies author Matthew mcdonnaugh. Mcdonna explained that after reviewing the trail cam footage in each area, he used in exture models to estimate turkey abundance based on the detection probability of turkeys appearing at those sites. The model can account for pigs out competing turkeys, so while it's not as precise as fitting all the turkeys with GPS collars, it's more sophisticated than just adding up all the birds and trail camp photos. Mcdonna also pointed out that he set the feeders to keep bait on the ground at all times, so even if turkeys avoided bait sites in the presence of pigs, they still had an incentive to feed as soon as the pigs moved off the site. Mcdonna said he also plans to submit his studies to scientific journals in the near future. If it withstands scientific scrutiny from other biologists, it will be another important data point in our understanding of wild turkeys. If it doesn't, that just means the scientific process is working as it should At the very least McDonald's estimates are better than those for the Australian buff breasted button quail, which is another study going on right now. Steve Murphy, a wildlife biologists at the University of Queensland, wrote in to tell me about an unfortunate discovery made by one of his students in a nutshell. Birdwatchers in Australia have been misidentifying the buff breasted button quail for over forty years, which has had serious conservation implications. Contrary to popular belief among Australian birders, the rare buff breasted button quail is similar in size to the much more common painted button quail. To make matters worse, during the wet season, female painted button quail molded into a much brighter plumage, which makes them look like the rare buff breasted quail. This understandable mistake has meant that scientists weren't aware of the buff breasted quails decline until recently. According to Murphy, the most recent confirmed evidence of the bird's existence was collected. Everything since then has probably been a case of mistaken identity. The buff breasted quail has been listed as critically endangered but Murphy says it's likely the species has gone extinct right under everyone's nose. Animal conspiracy theorists obviously point towards the painted button quail for having pulled off the perfect crime impersonate your foe while out competing them. It's clever and it may have just worked. We do have some very positive examples of birdwatchers finding species that we thought were extinct. Hopefully the bird watchers in Australia can pull another one out of their hat and this time be you know, accurate about it. Moving on to the legislative desk, the Wyoming State legislature is gearing up for a big fight over trustpassing laws, and public land users in the state are going to pay attention right the corner crossing controversy. We've been tracking as garnered nationwide interest, and five trustpass related bills have already been introduced, according to the Sheridan Press. Thanks to Gabriees for sending me this story. Not all the bills are likely to affect hunters, anglers, and other recreationists. One of the bills, for example, prohibits people from using drones to take photographs of prisons and other penal institutions. Free speech advocates are worried about that one, but you know, I've seen Shawshank redemption. Imagine how faster Tim Robbins could have busted out if he had intel from drone footage. Anyway, Another one of the bills would amand Wyoming law to make it illegal to travel through private property to hunt or collect antlers. Current law prohibits anyone from quote entering upon private property of any person, but this new bill would add the words travel through. This is supposedly intended to clarify that entering private property is illegal even if the hunter never hunts or collects antlers on that property, which is a strange thing to clarify, unless, of course, you're trying to be kind of a weak spind person and address owner crossing for like some of your cronies that want corner crossing to be illegal. While this bill might affect the corner crossing issue, it appears it's authors are intentionally avoiding the topic. There was a version of this bill last year, it failed to pass. This year's draft has a section that reads, quote for purposes of this sub section, travel through requires physically touching or driving on the surface of the private property. Now, that sub section would make it not apply to corner crossing, so it would be very very important to make sure if you are pro this current version of the bill that that sub section stays intact. Another bill to watch would prohibit drones from entering quote the immediate reaches of the airspace over the private property of a landowner in a manner that quote substantially interferes with the landowner's use and enjoyment of the land. The bill doesn't find immediate reaches, but that could quickly have serious implications for the corner crossing issue. As I believe, and please right in to help me, this bill would define immediate reaches of private airspace and private air is a big question mark in corner crossing. Keep an eye out for amendments on that one as well. Moving over to Oregon, archery, elk hunters in the northeast part of the state are dealing with tag limits for the first time this year. In previous years, archery hunters could depend on getting a tag nearly anywhere in the state. Now, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has placed limits in thirteen units in a bid to allow more bowl elk to reach breeding maturity. Officials who spoke with Oregon Public Broadcasting say the change was necessary after so many elk hunters switched to archery after similar limits were placed on rifle hunters. Some bow hunters argue that the Department of Fish and Wildlife should do more to restrict nonresident hunt rather than limit archers staying out West. Colorado's also gearing up for a big fight, this one over hunting license allocations. In two thousand twenty one, the Colorado legislature considered a bill that would have restructured license allocations to prioritize Colorado residents over non residents. Colorado's understandably believe that they should get priority when the state dolls out big game hunting licenses, but non residents account for a larger percentage of revenue. In fiscal year two thousand nineteen two twenty, for example, licensed sales to non residents made up the majority of the state's wildlife cash fund. These sales only represented about thirty one point six percent of all licenses sold, but over sixty five point eight percent of total revenue. Colorado Senate Bill WON fifty, dubbed the Reserve big Game Hunting licenses for residents bill failed in the legislature last year. Now, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission is planning to consider the issue, which is exactly where the decision should have been made in the first place. Hopefully the Commission will take the perspectives of all stakeholders into account to resolve this issue without cutting off crucial funding for wildlife conservation. But the only way that's going to happen is if they hear from US hunters. So Colorado's read up on the issue, form an educated opinion, something more than Hey, I like it or I don't like it, and write your Parks and Wildlife commissioners. And here's another big one to pay attention to. Minnesota Supreme Court is considering a case that would close many access points to public waters. This gets into some pretty complex property law, but I'll give you a thirty thousand foot overview and tell you what the Minnesota d n R told me about this case. Thanks to listener Todd for bringing this to our attention. All the way back in nineteen eleven, a fella named Healy C. A. Kley dedicated a parcel of land quote to the public forever sounds like a great fella. This parcel changed hands over the years, but it was eventually whittled down to a thirty foot wide strip of land abutting Trout Lake in Itasca County. Residents in the area still rely on this strip of land to access the lake. However, in two thousand eight, Timothy Muratska purchased three parcels that included the disputed thirty foot strip. Murratska argued that because no government entity has claimed a public interest in that property in the last forty years, a ninety three law known as the Minnesota Marketable Title Act allows him to close public access. Basically, this ruling would allow private landowners to petition to remove public access roads if local governments haven't submitted the correct paperwork within the last forty years. You heard that right, even though the public is actively using it, because the county has not put in the paperwork, it could be taken by a private individual and closed off to the public that is actually using the property. I reached out to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to get their take, and here's what they said. If the Supreme Court upholds this ruling, many streets throughout the state that were dedicated to the public and intended to provide access to public waters may no longer be available for this use. Various parties filing amaricust briefs to the Supreme Court provided many examples of streets that are widely used by the public to access public waters. County cities and outdoor recreation, hunting, fishing, and other groups have expressed concern over the potential loss of public access to numerous public waters if this decision is affirmed. This case has flown largely under the radar, but could have serious implications all over the state. Contacting the Minnesota Supreme Court won't help here, since judges are supposed to operate without regard for public opinion. However, it's still worth contacting your state legislators. Even if this case doesn't go our way. State legislators can pass a law that amends or clarifies the Marketable Title Act. If you have a public access road in mind, you should also get in touch with your local government officials. They can file the paperwork to declare public interest in those roads, which should head off any future lawsuits along these lines. And to Tim Muratska, who is attempting to pe on the grave of Healy C. Aikley who decided to provide land to the public forever. Please get in touch with us and give us the story from your side of the private fence. That's all I've got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. As per usual, please write in to A s K C. A L. That's a cal at the Meat Eater dot com and let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. Keep in mind the leaves are starting to fall. You can start seeing those dead branches. You may want to trim up those lanes along that public access road. If so, go to www dot steel Dealers dot com and find a local, knowledgeable steel dealer near you. They're gonna get you set up with what you need and they won't try to send you home with what you don't. Thanks again and I'll talk to you next week.

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