00:00:02 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cal's weekend review, presented by Steele. Steel products are available only at authorized dealers. For more, go to Steel Dealers dot com. Now here's your host. Ryan cal Callahan, a Chicago man, has become the first hunter in one and fifty years to legally harvest a white tale within Windy City limits. Around seven am on October two, Jose Guzman, not the ball player I believe, set up his twenty ft portable tree stand in the William Power State Recreation Area and took a white tailed dough with a crossbow. According to Chicago historians, the last deer taken within city limits was an eighteen sixty five by first Ward Alderman William Cox. Be willing to bet this is the first dear ever to be taken with a crossbow inside city limits. Guzman was selected as one of eight among thirty seven applicants to be given a deer tag in the State Recreation Area. It surrounds Wolf Lake and is located in the southeastern part of the city. If you look at a map, you can see that the recreation area as well within city limits. It's only about nineteen miles from the heart of the cold, cold city, and there are houses within fifty yards of where Guzman took his shot. This was the first year the Illinois Department of Natural Resources offered deer tags in Chicago. They opened the season because they've seen poaching, trespassing, and other undesirable activities within the park. They want to increase the number of legal recreators in the area in the hopes that it will discourage illicit activity. Hunters apparently were part of that equation. Good Anya Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Guzman told local media he plans to continue hunting through the season and the hopes of taking a buck. But even if he doesn't, I'd say this is a season for the history books. This week we've got the fishy business of wall light tournaments, wotas, and the Snort Report. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. In My week has been spent doing my all time favorite thing, antelope hunting. Even though I am currently antelopelus, I've been having an absolute blast. The wind has been blowing bent nite clay particles at thirty miles an hour for four days. Old Snort and I have been tearing it up and sleeping very well inside the Black Series camper, which is currently rocking back and forth ever so subtly as I record this week's podcast. I was joined this week by the international man of mystery, Dirt Myth, who until this weekend had never killed a pheasant, which brings me to the Snort report. Old snort Akus is beat up, nose, raw and swollen calloused eyes. The exposed skin patch from a rattlesnake bite on her ear has been rubbed raw. She's got tender feet from prickly pair cactus attacks. But just this morning found three roosters, four sharp tail and one lone Hungarian partridge, all before thirty am. That's my first ever double limit of upland birds over one of my own dogs. It's been a very special trip. We've managed to get multiple limits of roosters while in camp. We ate a bunch of them too. But back to Snort. Her nose is amazing, but so is her confidence in it. I'm not seeing a lot of brush busting with this girl. In regards to hands signals. We've fully regressed on this one and we need to get some training time back in before we really get into duck season snorts at a point where she listens to her instincts first than me second. But regardless, no lost birds this trip, which is exactly what you want. Lots of snort reports ahead. I'll let you know how we go onto the South Dakota as an opener next week. It's gonna be a heck of a road trip by the time we're done. Here's a non sequitur for you. I'm working remotely in super remote Montana via a Starlink satellite full WiFi network out of the Black Series Camper. I love it for the fact that I could not make this trip happen without it. I don't have to go ripping two hours back into a town to get full cell coverage to upload stuff or whatever. And I think it's just hilarious to have a fully functioning satellite dish that provides seamless WiFi while still going out and like digging a hole to take a crap in. But here's my question for you. We know what remote work has done for rural America, but what would it do for game populations here? Like I'm feeling a little dirty about the felt like if you can be connected anywhere you can do more stuff outside in theory, which could put more pressure on game populations. Tangle web, we weave, I don't know, moll that over a s K C A l at the Meat eater dot Com. Moving on to the fishing desk. It's not every day of a walleye tournament in Ohio gets coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post, but that's exactly what happened after a pair of anglers got caught stuffing their fish with lead weights. Jacob Runyan and Chase Kaminski were due to win the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Fishing Tournament earlier this month and cash a check for nearly twenty nine grand. This wasn't the first time they had had success. Just before they got caught, tournament director Jason Fisher predicted that they'd also win the Team of the Year award, But Fisher told media outlets that something didn't smell right, and it wasn't the walleye. The seven pound fish the pair turned in looked suspiciously like four pound fish, and Fisher could feel something hard in the fish's stomachs. When he cut one of them open, he discovered an egg size twelve ounce lead weight. The stomachs of the other fish also contained lead weights, along with weirdly enough, wall filets. Several cameras were rolling when Fisher began cutting the fish open. I'd play you the audio, but this is a family friendly show and I don't want to make our podcast engineers bleep out all the f words. Suffice it to say that Midwest walleye anglers take their tournaments seriously, and they were none too happy. Runyon and Kaminski were disqualified from the tournament, and they're probably lucky they escaped with all their fingers and toes. The New York Times reports that they've won each of the three previous Lake Erie Walleye Trail events this year, along with other tournaments elsewhere. Yahoo Sports estimates their total earnings have netted over four hundred thousand dollars. Other competitors have been suspicious for about a year now, according to fellow walleye angler Ross Robertson. Robertson said in an article for the Meat Eater dot Com that Runyon and Kaminski all of a sudden started winning tournaments. Quote like Tom Brady playing in Friday nights at your local high school. Formal complaints had been filed, and one of the anglers ailed a light detector test at a previous event, but there wasn't enough evidence to prove that they've been cheating until Fisher started cutting into their fish. I don't know whether these two have cheated before, but it sure does look suspicious. They loaded their fish with eight extra pounds of weight, which isn't something you do if this is your first time cheating in a big tournament. That's something you do when you've done it before and you're high on your own fumes. You've never been caught before. What's a few extra led weights? Also, you won't be surprised to learn that this isn't their first run in with the law. Local media reports that Runyon pleaded not guilty on July to one count of domestic violence and one count of unlawful restraint, so you know, Fishy is right. Fisher said on Facebook that he sent all the evidence to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the DNR has opened an investigation. The Kiahoga County Prosecutor has said that he plans to charge Kaminsky and Runyon with felony theft, depending on the degree of felony theft. These two could face some serious fines and even prison time. Moving on to the Woe Woe WoT us desk, the U. S. Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in a case that could end up weakening wetland protections under the Clean Water Act. The case is called sack It v. E. P A, and the Court will decide whether to change the standards by which streams and wetlands are considered waters of the United States, or WoT us for short. We covered wotas and the Clean Water Act in more detail and episode, but here's how the situation currently stands. A two thousand six Supreme Court ruling determined that a wetland counts as WoT us and qualifies for federal protection if it has a quote significant nexus to another large navigable body of water. The ruling has been criticized for being too broad and too vague, but it's given the Environmental Protection Agency a wide latitude to protect wetlands in our country. In this case, the justices will decide whether to scrap the significant nexus test and replace it with something else. The petitioners in this case, a family called the Sackets, want the court to use a strict standard that would make it much more difficult for wetlands to qualify for protections. The standard, according to a great article by Joshua hire Over at South Dakota Public Broadcasting, would be based on a two part test. First, the wetland would have to have relatively permanent, continuous surface water connection to adjacent water. Second, that adjacent water must be commercially navigable. I don't have exact numbers, but it's safe to say that such a test would remove protections for thousands, if not millions, of acres of wetlands, wetlands that ducks and geese rely on every year to feed, breed, and thrive. The judges have heard oral arguments for this case, and there's reason to hope and reason to be concerned. Based on the judges questions, both conservative and liberal justices seem to think the old significant nexus test is unworkable. It's likely that they'll replace that test with something else, but that something else might not end up being as bad as the sack At suggestion. Bloomberg Law reports that even the more conservative justices felt that the adjacency definition did not require a surface connection. In other words, they believe that a wetland deserves protection under the Clean Water Act even if it doesn't connect on the surface to a navigable waterway, which makes total sense, right. That's like saying that a three inch deep invertebrate producing super honey hole for migratory birds would not be protectable, no matter how big it is, if it didn't connect to something where you could run a rip and jet boat, which seems a little silly. The Court won't announce its ruling until next year, but this is one case we'll be watching very closely. Moving on to the elk desk, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers published a bombshell report earlier this month slamming the state's Department of Game and Fish for quote privatizing elk hunting opportunities. They claim that the state is favoring landowners, outfitters, and nonresident hunters in how it hands out licenses, and resident public land hunters are getting left out to dry. The report outlines detailed license allocation data obtained from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish through a public records request. According to the report, the department stone walled the request until the state's attorney General ordered the records to be made public. The department claims that delay was due to a conflict in state law between the Inspection of State Records Act and the Public Records Act. Whatever the reason for the delay, both sides agree on the top line number. Over thirty five percent of the state's ELK licenses end up in the hands of nonresident hunters. The state officially sets aside only six percent of its licenses for nonresidents, but it also runs a program by which landowners can obtain licenses and then sell them to hunters. Over of those landowner licenses go to non residents, which is how out of state folks end up with over one third of all ELK licenses in the state. What's more, of those landowner licenses are unit wide. These tags allow hunters to move outside of landowner's property and onto public land, where they compete with hunters who have drawn public land tags. Non residents pay more for licenses, which is why almost every state sets society certain percentage of their tags for out of state hunters. States make more money selling nonresident licenses, and that money is used for conservation purposes. Also, as someone who frequently hunts outside of Montana. I've benefited from this system. I'm not opposed to out of state hunters. However, the Wildlife Federation and b H argue that New Mexico is an outlier among Western states. New Mexico gives more licenses to nonresident and landowning hunters, and those licenses are more lucrative both for the state and the landowner. That's why they claim that New Mexico is privatizing elk in the state. Ryan Dharr, a spokesman for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, took issue with the claim that New Mexico as an outlier among Western states. He points out that while Arizona limits nonresident licenses to ten percent, Colorado's overall license allocation closely aligns with New Mexico's. A Colorado Parks and Wildlife bulletin from April of this year reports that for the majority of hunt codes, the proportion of elk and deer licenses allocated to residents is sixty with thirty five percent allocated to non residents. Of course, that doesn't mean that issued licenses, as opposed to allocated licenses, adhere to that ratio. But it does demonstrate that at least one other state is content with shoeing about thirty of its ELK licenses to nonresidents. Jesse do Bell, the executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, emphasized that he's not opposed to nonresident hunters or to landowners, but as it currently stands, the system favors those who have the means to pay top dollar for those landowner tags. Most importantly, I'd say it's not even a resident nonresident issue. It's a wealthy versus non wealthy issue. People of average means don't have the ability to enjoy this activity at the same rate that wealthy people do. And you know, in Europe, hunting is a rich person's sport and it shouldn't be that in New Mexico. Do Bell says he would like to see the state distribute all licenses through the lottery system. Of those tags would be set aside for residents, while ten percent would be set aside for non residents. Everyone, including landowners, would put in for the same pool of tags, and those would be distributed the same way to everyone. Land Owners would then charge for access to hunt their property rather than for licenses you can't sell something that you don't own. So if we had a system that allowed landowners to sell the access to their property, but the tag was distributed through the appropriate democratic process that it's supposed to be in the North American model of wildlife conservation, then I think we would have a system that would truly be win win win win for the public, win for the landowners, and win for the wildlife. It's tempting make this landowner versus hunter issue, but do Belle was quick to acknowledge that landowners do critical habitat conservation work and they need to be rewarded for maintaining elk herds on their properties. They can charge way more for licenses than they can for access, so they're simply responding to that incentive structure. But while they own the land, they don't own the elk. Right now, they're selling licenses for animals that the public owns. Changing that system will require compromise and a lot of hard work, but do Bell and others are hoping this report will get the ball rolling. Ryan dhar of the Game and Fish Department voiced a similar sentiment. He encouraged New Mexicans to remember that this report represents only one perspective. The department has to juggle a variety of stakeholders and quote. Not all stakeholders will like the outcome. However, he said, he hopes the report quote generates conversations among all interests that result in a practical solutions to this complex challenge. If you live in New Mexico and would like to get involved in those conversations, visit take back your Elk dot Com. That's take back your elk dot Com For the rest of us. It's important to remain vigilant do Bell pointed out that their system wasn't put in place overnight. It was implemented gradually by small changes over many years. If you want to make sure your state doesn't privatize its wildlife, stay on top of proposed changes to your license allocations system and make sure your voice is heard. Moving on to the mule deer desk. A few weeks ago, we talked about how difficult it can be for biologists to estimate the population of any given species. They can't count each individual, so they rely on surveys and models to make those predictions. Well, the same is true for migration pathways. Biologists can't follow every animal across the landscape, and while GPS callers offer amazing insight, these devices are expensive and can't be attached to every herd. In fact, even after collering thousands of animals, wildlife biologists have only positively identified a fraction of the migration roots used throughout the West. Mule beer make two migrations each year between their winter and summer ranges. In the winter, they moved to lower elevations to avoid colder temps and high snow drifts. In the summer, they moved back to higher elevations to take advantage of quality summer forage. Migration roots can be well over one hundred miles, and longest documented migration was a two forty mile trek through Wyoming and Idaho. It is believed that mule deer learned migration roots from their mothers and follow those roots their entire life. You can imagine their difficulty if they're following their usual route and they come across a new road or subdivision. These structures fragment their migration corridor and make it more difficult for the herd to thrive. That's why knowing about and protecting these corridors is so important. It helps the deer access the food they need to breed, raise healthy fonds, and ensure the continued survival of the species as a whole. That's why I was intrigued to read a recent study published by the University of Wyoming and Idaho Department of Fishing Game. Rather than attached GPS colors to every animal, the team of researchers developed a mathematical model that predicted the migration roots of one thirty mule deer in Idaho and Wyoming. What they found is that rather than taking the shortest or most direct path, mule deer travel according to a predictable set of barrier The most accurate versions of the model predicted migration routes by taking into account for factors terrain, snow melt, intensity of human development, and new grass growth. The predicted roots took the deer through areas with hilly terrain, shrebby vegetation, and less human development, and the deer closely followed those predictions. This model will be freely available to wildlife managers across the country and will allow them to predict likely migration corridors of herds that haven't been GPS collared. That information can save wildlife departments thousands of dollars and man hours which can be used instead to protect those likely corridors. Of course, if protecting any particular corridor becomes controversial, biologists can still use GPS collars to prove that their models are correct. But protecting migration corridors is one of the most important things we can be doing to improve habitat, and this model will make it cheaper and easier to do. Moving on to the international desk, a listener from Australia wrote in recently to tell me about a new proposal that would ban archery hunting in a huge portion of the continent. The leaders of the state government of South Australia have promised a ban bow hunting throughout the entire one million square kilometer region. Susan Close, the state's Deputy premier, told a local radio station that she's exploring all options to make the ban a reality. This has come from a deep concern held by people who understand the impact hunting of the welfare of animals. They have not died immediately. They tend to linger in a lot of pain, blood loss. Now that's not to say it's impossible to give a claim tonel with with the bow, but you are far more likely to be able to end an animal's life humanely and quickly. If you're using a gun, then you are using bow and arrow, as you can probably tell from closest comments. The move to ban bow hunting in the state has been led by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. They've been pushing for a ban across the continent, but right now the island of Tasmania is the only region to ban bow hunting completely. A spokesperson said that they want to ban all types of bow hunting because quote, there is no way that any kind of bow can humanely kill an animal. It always bugs me when somebody says humanely kill. It takes the emphasis off the animal in a way, right, It's like we're humans. They are animals. I guarantee they don't want to die. But I've seen many, many die instantly. I've seen bow kills happen in ways that seem as peaceful as you could possibly imagine. Animals who literally don't understand that they've been hit, and they go about grazing or bugling or whatever. But at the end of the day, will never know what those animals are feeling. Feelings are still reserved for humans. Zach Williams, the listener who told me about this issue, said that a bow hunting band would be devastating for him and his family. He says he can't imagine being barred from participating in the sport and he enjoys taking his kids out in the field. He also uses bow hunting to put meat in the freezer and control introduced animals on properties he can't rifle hunt. He called bow hunting quote a way of life, and I know more than a few American bow hunters who would agree. Premier Close wants to institute the band through unilateral regulation rather than the state legislature, but that doesn't mean elected officials are immune from public pressure. The Conservation and Hunting Alliance of South Australia has launched a letter writing campaign urging hunters and anyone who cares about preserving traditional hunting practices to write to the representatives. So if you live in South Australia, now is the time to send a clear message to your local MP. If you don't, this should be a reminder to stay vigilant and be on the lookout for similar bands in your neck of the woods. That's all I've got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. As per usual, please right in and let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods at a s K C A L. That's asked cal at the Meat Eater dot com. And remember, if you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat every time you hear the wind, how just knowing that those branches are gonna drop down, maybe on your yard home or across your road to your favorite hunting spot. There's an easy solution for you. 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 won't send you home with what you don't. Thanks again and I'll talk to you next week.

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