00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Media Doors World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we Can Review with Ryan kel Kellan. Now Here's Kel. The Montana Grizzlies have been running up the score on bow hunters this September. I'm talking about actual bears, not the school mascot at the University of Montana. The Gravelly Range is located in the southwest portion of the state. It's historic grizzly country, but their numbers over that way we're pretty low up until the past decade or so. This year, however, four bow hunters have been mauled in two separate incidents in less than a ten day time period, more evidence that grizzlies around the rebound across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem or g y E, of which the Gravelly Range is apart. The grizz population totaled only a hundred and fifty animals throughout the g y E in the nine seventies, but it's now stim aid at over seven hundred. Grizzly encounters have gone from barroom bluster to a regular occurrence for outdoor enthusiasts during fall and spring in some areas of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. These bears are a part of life, and unless we screw things up again, they're not going away. Grizzlies are incredibly powerful animals that can cause serious damage to humans, livestock, and property. In short order, the bears were pushed and killed from the vast majority of their historic ranges because of their inherent destructiveness. Because of the general scarcity of bears during the relatively new phenomenon we call conservation, we were slow to realize the long term effects of killing off these animals, and even slower to decide if we actually wanted to have these amazing but fearsome predators around at all. That's right, A decision had to be made to save the grizzly, just like the bison or the passenger pigeon. Two out of three ain't bad, right. As history has proven, we like the big animals more than the smaller animals that fluent flocks containing billions of individuals capable of blanketing entire towns with fee season, deafening the inhabitants of those towns with their calls. John James Autobon, the namesake of the Autobon Society, had a first time account of a passenger pigeon flock that stretched continuously for over fifty miles as he traveled and continued for three days. He estimated at times three hundred million pigeons passed him each hour. We eradicated this species and only forty years down to the last bird, Martha, who lived outter days in the Cincinnati Zoo. Now nobody specifically calls out the fact that pigeon poop led to the extirpation of the passenger pigeon, but I'm sure it didn't help their case. People haven't changed that much. But back to grizzlies, I for one think that having these bears in the woods has enhanced my outdoor experience. Growing up in Montana, I spent a lot of time in the woods, and all that time has provided exactly three genuine close calls with exactly eight grizzlies and a handful of other run ins that were just a bit too close for comfort. But neither I nor anyone else in my party have been scratched up or stomped on by one. I imagine my opinion of bears might be different if something like that had happened, But then again, maybe not. In both of these recent instances, the hunters involved chose to use sidearms instead of bear spray as a self defense measure. Has previously reported here on The Weekend Review. Bear spray is not magic. There is no guarantee it will deter a bear, but studies have shown bear spray to be far more effective than handguns. Additionally, bear spray is much less likely to leave a wounded grizzly in the woods and a firearm. I'm not valuing bear life over human life as much as I'm saying a wounded bear is more likely to cause trouble out of desperation than a bear that got a snout full of burning, stinging capsation. You know that mouth tingling stuff that gets to you with any pepper. Additionally, most people are not trained in either the rapid deployment of a side arm or in the methods of what it takes to become accurate and proficient with one, Especially while several hundred pounds of menacing, imposing mama bear is coming at you. Most folks would call that a stressful city situation. As I am no firearm expert, I thought I would reach out to one friend of mine, a major Taylor United States Marine Corps retired. Just to touch on his bona fides, he was eight years as a Marine Special Operator a k A. Marine Raider and brief summary. He related to me that during Special operators basic training, they will spend one and a half months out of nine months just training on rifle and pistol two weeks rifle, two weeks pistol two weeks combined. To qualify and move on in the program, they must engage human targets at twenty five yards transitioning from rifle to pistol. That's draw put two pistol rounds in a six inch circle in two and a half seconds. Keep in mind that this is training you get before you get assigned to a team. Once you get assigned to a team, the training gets more frequent and more in depth. Now you may be thinking to yourself, well, what's that got to do with me these folks that go through that type of training or the pros. But isn't that how we like to think of ourselves in the woods. The transition between pistol and rifle is relatable to dropping your bow and rowing a pistol or bear spray. You may not think it would matter on a large bear to hit the target equivalent of a six inch spot. But as most hunters have experienced, accuracy is what stops things. These guys and gals are training to put two minuscule projectiles about the size of the last bone on your pinky finger distal phalangi on a target at about seventy ft. Most bear spread is propelling the deterrent in a cone shaped cloud that expands at distance, remaining effective out to a thirty or thirty five ft Looking only at the U d At brand bear spray, which this is not an endorsement of that type of bear spray, It's just that they had the site that had the chart. Ud Doubt states that at five ft, the diameter of the bear spray will be twenty nine inches by one inches. At thirty ft it will be ches by a hundred nineteen inches. That's roughly the size of a Boo boo size bear at five ft and a foot, taller than your average refrigerator and almost three times as wide. At thirty ft, that's bigger than your average bear. Based off of the side of the quote, projectile alone, what are you more likely to hit a target with? You can carry both for all I care, but I go with the math first, and the math says bear spray. One last thing on this I called Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and spoke with a very nice person named Laurie who told me that in extreme cases, when a bear has already attacked a person, the person has been able to spray bear spray when they would not be able to discharge a firearm. The spray would also cover themselves, but it had been effective at the turning the attack. Laurie also added, I would rather get bear sprayed than bear clod and LORI isn't talking about the pastry. As you know, this podcast is powered by steel the world leader in chainsaw sales and for something you do not know that is extra fun. If you want to check them out, you can go to steel col dot com. That's s t I H L C A L. You'll get a check out some awesome stuff and not even power equipment type stuff. They make a great pul saw that I've been using to cut through everything from tree branches to bend up a TV parts in a buttery, smooth and professional type way. This week we've got porpoises, birds and evil h o A s plus a bunch of other fun stuff. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week I've been following along. You know that I've been to the beautiful state of New Mexico and now I'm back. I will not take you through all the details of those travels. I'll just tell you to go and read them. Go check out the article love and Loss Cal's New Mexico Elk hunt at the mediator dot com. I tried my best to hold nothing back and give the real details of what can happen during a hunt the loss of an animal that's been hit. In addition to that narrative, you'll be able to find all the rest of the information that you'll need for the duck blind Elk Woods and your next long road trip. Since I brought it up already, I thought i'd tell you real succinctly about the first time I got charged by a grizzly bear. Just so, nobody in the Gravelly Range thanks, I'm picking on them without a leg to stand on. So way back when, after a few months and NonStop grinding, I have a day off, and being as it was spring and there had been a fire up on Mariah's Pass, I headed that direction with my two yellow labs to uh see about some mushroom picking. It was far too early for mushrooms, but that and the possibility of finding a move shed was the excuse I had to head in the woods. I had the normal stuff one goes into the woods with water backpack, the ability to make fire, some food, and I had a Springfield Arms Model nineteen eleven forty five caliber pistol on my hip. The Girls and I, the girls being my two yellow labs. They were sisters and almost never apart, headed up a random ridge off a skyland road on Mariah's Pass. The ground went from half frozen grass and mud to mostly solid snow, which would occasionally break and send a leg to post hole down about eighteen inches or so. My path took the Girls and Eye into a small patch of green timber about the size of a school bus. These dogs, mine, were phenomenal bird dogs, and I was always training them. Consequently, I had them staying steady at heel, Fish, the bigger the two, always on my left side, Scout the troublemaker, always on the right. I think it was ultimately very lucky that this was the case, and I had spent the time training these dogs as we stepped into this small oblong thick at a timber. As soon as we did, I caught movement, a fast flash of golden hair. Part of my brain said, bull elk. The other part said, you know, damn well, that's not a bull elk. What I saw flashing through the trees was a small I guessed first time Mama griz. Beyond her, I could see and hear two cubs of the year absolutely hauling their fuzzy weir ends as fast as they could go in the opposite direction, which was good. Maybe Mom would follow. What was bad, I guessed was that the cubs were screaming their heads off, as if like in that old Charley Daniels song Uneasy Writer, their heads were on fire and their asses was catching. Mom would ultimately charge the girls and I three times. Each time she would come a little bit closer. I don't know exactly how close she got, but I distinctly you remember thinking that if I had my flyer rod in hand, I could have reached out and poked her in the eye when she hit the brakes in front of us on the last charge. I also very distinctly remember thinking, Wow, this is it. This is really gonna happen. However, I had these two amazing, beautiful yellow labs that, as demonstrated by their ability to hold heal even in the face of a charging confused Mama Grizz. Obviously, these dogs had placed all of their faith in me, So in spite of the fact that I had one of the most successful, tried and true performing pistols on my hip, all I could think to do was to turn to the girls Fish on my left Scout on my right and say, along with the usual hand signal, WHOA. Then turned to the young Mama Grizz and say WHOA. I don't know why, but eventually, on her third charge, she just looked directly at the big dog Fish on the left, myself in the middle, and then Scout on the right, then turned and sprinted off in the direction her kids had gone. Had I just been by myself, who knows how I would have reacted. I sure don't. A recently produced analysis of bear attacks combined by Smith and Herrero of b y U and the University of Calgary. I'll let you guess which one of these guys is from b y U. That's a bad joke, because everybody knows Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, and uh the guy from b y U is named Smith. Moving on, these guys looked at documented bear attacks from eighteen eighty to two thousand fifteen. It's really great work and fascinating, not all the way through their findings, but as they pertain to the story I just told individual bears make up the majority of attacks, so the family group I encountered would be in the minority of attacks at thirty two percent. And as it turns out, when domestic dogs intervene, they managed to terminate the attack forty seven point five percent of the time, although they also found that domestic dogs instigated the attack twelve point five percent of the time. I'm not sure if this makes a case for dogs in the woods or not. If you're sick of my personal stories, that's too bad. This next one is really short, and I'll lead into one of my favorite topics, public access. I'm way back from New Mexico. I got a text from a neighbor telling me that I hoped I didn't need my truck when I got back from wherever I was. Along with the text was a picture of my truck parked in front of my place as I had left it, but now it was behind traffic cones and caution tape. It seemed that the parking lot had gotten repaved while I was away, and they just went ahead and repaved around my truck, which was fine, but it left the truck inaccessible until the asphalt curried up. When I eventually got home, the truck was still in quarantine and there was a note on my door informing me that this repay was going to happen and I should move my truck, which if I would have been home, would have been no big deal. But what got my hackles up is we all pay into a homeowners association or h o A. The idea being is that you collectively throw cash into a fun and folks get paid to take care of things like, you know, repaving the parking lot. I guess. So what irked me was that I get emails all the time telling me to pay my bill, but I never get any useful prior notice that my truck needed to be moved or else it would be paved in. Totally mundane boring, who really care stuff? But the telling you of my im menial situation allows me to tell you about some truly nefarious stuff. A few other h o as are involved in things that if you are a person who loves general freedom and access to public ground and water, need to know about, such as right now and Anchorage, Alaska, the story of Campbell Lake is unfolding. Campbell Lake is a lake which, according to Alaska state laws, public if you can access it. The State of Alaska, in order to make Alaska more appealing to potential new residents and taxpayers, has fantastic access laws that state free access to the navigable or public waters of the state, as desfined by the legislature, shall not be denied any citizen of the United States or resident of the state, except that the legislature made by a general law regulate and limit such access for other beneficial uses or public purposes. The legal definition of navigable waterways in Alaska, as adopted by the Legislature, navigable water in any water of the state forming a river, stream, lake, pond, slew, creek, bay, sound, estuary, inlet, straight passage, canal, sea, or ocean, or any other body of water or waterway within the territorial limits of the state or subject to its jurisdiction that is navigable in fact, in any season, whether in a frozen or liquid state, and for any useful public purpose, including water suitable for commercial navigation, floating of logs, landing and takeoff of aircraft, and public boating, trapping, hunting, waterfowl and aquatic animals, fishing, or other public recreational purposes. And furthermore that the section lines the giant Jeffersonian grid system that so much of the West is framed by are also public easements. A section line easement is a public right of way thirty three to one hundred feet wide that runs along a section line of the rectangular survey system. Section line easements in Alaska fall under reviased Statute to four seven seven, commonly referred to as r S to four seven seven. According to the Department of Natural Resources, all thirty three and sixty six foot wide section line ease months were acquired by the state under RS two four seven seven, regardless of whether trails have been developed along them. Also, fifty and a hundred foot wide ease months along section lines have narrow RS two four seven seven rights of way inside them, and r S two four seven seven right away is a type of public easement that the State of Alaska required under a longstanding federal law, which, if you like to hunt and fish, this is one heck of a pro access pro getting after it law. The rest of this story you can find at the Alaska Land Mine, home of Explosive Alaska News. It's a really fantastic piece of journalism, and I'll let the authors speak for themselves, So go check it out. If this access issue is just too darn far removed from the lower forty eight, as I've found most Askin's like to think of themselves anyway, take a look a little bit closer to home, my former home, to be exact, the Wood River Valley of south central Idaho. Right now, another h o A is fighting an easement that allows public access to the Big Wood River. The Big Wood is a famous river for a number of reasons, but mainly because it cuts its way through the original jet set ski destination for the rich and famous Sun Valley, and henning Way himself fished, hunted, and eventually killed himself just a stone's throw from its banks. The Aspen Lake Subdivision h o A is fighting a public easement that provides access to the Big Wood River in the State of Idaho navigable streams or public domain below the high water mark, which makes these types of ease months doubly important for freedom loving folks that love to go check out the outdoors and need access to them. This is not some horrible infringement of private property riots, as the entire subdivision would not have existed, as in it never would have been allowed without the easeman in question. While Aspen Lake Drive and the land around it are private, the public quote shall have access to the roads and river. According to a plat note written when the subdivision was established in nineteen seventy nine. As part of the agreement, the county maintains a fifteen foot easement parallel to the east bank of the Big Wood, with two public paths to get there, and it has access to an eighty foot right away along the street itself. Despite this, Aspen Lakes h o A is towing vehicles and doing its best to fight public access, just like the case of access to Campbell Link and Anchorage, and having nothing to do with my own h o A issues. The reason I bring this up is easements are incredibly important to public access to public lands, and as we can see, they're volatile things that can be fought in court, even when in the wrong, like in the Wood River Valley. This land belongs to all of us. Yet time and time again, the very few have proven that they are willing to fight these easements in order to make there are short times here on earth. Somehow, better conservation is making things better for the next generation. Something we all need to keep in mind, something Henyway did when he was in that valley, and something the state of Alaska try to ensure before it was even a state. So once again, if you like to do anything in the out of doors right nop ed, call state senator and let them know you demand that these easements or a reasonable replacement that provides the same or better amount of access are established or maintained. Any access issue being in your backyard or five states over, affects all of us. We need to behave that way. Moving on, we've got a lot to cover. Let's jump over to our ornithology desk. Do you feel like you're hearing fewer birds in the woods than you did when you were a kid, Well, according to a new study published in the journal Science, you probably are. Since nineteen seventy, the total number of breeding age birds in North America has dropped by nearly three billion. That's billion with a B. The researchers who worked on this study looked at numerous birds surveys. Then they cross reference those survey results with radar data from weather stations, which pick up flocks of birds while scanning for storms. Their results estimate that North America has lost thirty percent of its birds grassland birds, forest birds, shore birds, sparrows, warblers, blackbirds, and finches are disappearing in the largest numbers, averaging at loss. But it's not all bad news. Raptor numbers are up since we quit spraying DDT back in the sixties. One takeaway I find particularly interesting is that certain game birds increased. Turkey and grouse numbers are up overall, and waterfowl increased fifty six percent over the past fifty years, a testament to the power of engaged and motivated conservation on the part of hunters. The challenge now is getting people to care about songbirds, shore birds, and common birds with the same passion that water fowlers have for ducks and geese. I'm not going to be the one who suggests an open season on warblers and blackbirds, but maybe someone should. After all, in modern times, if you can hunt, it typically doesn't go away. It increases in population. We're gonna wrap up this episode at the Stuff That Swims Desk. Everyone is ecstatic about the return of porpoises to the Potomac River, a clear indication that the once near toxic watershed is cleaning up. The fact that all the other news outlets keep mentioning is the porpoises are making new porpoises in the Potomac watershed healthy enough to breed him. But still, do you want to drink it? That's a reference to an old joke that fishermen used to make on why they don't drink water fish have sex in there. We'll finish back in Idaho, where for the second time in Idaho fisheries history, the steel head season has been shut down. The first time the closing of the fishery happened was just last year. The Upper Salmon River region in Idaho represents one of the best long term cold water storage wrongholds in the US. High elevation peaks trap and store snow and ice that eventually runs downstream, ideally with a bunch of salmon and steel heads. Small to the Snake River. The snake runs into the Columbia and eventually out to the ocean, cooling the waters as it goes cool. Clean water is good for fish. I'm sure that is not a shock for you. What is not good for fish are the Lower Snake River dams, which have the effect of storing that cold water and warming it, as well as allowing a host of predators that range from sea lions and seals, too pike, minnows, and smallmouth bass to heavily predate upon the native steel head and salmon. The four Lower Snake River dams, which are administered by the Bonneville Power Association, are in need of serious repair. They do not supply the power they once did, nor the irrigation, and they are taking part of the killing off of what was once one of the greatest salmon and steel head runs in the world. So, instead of calling Idaho Fishing Game and asking about fishing, called Congressman creepoh Rish in a representative fulter's office and ask them if think hatcheries will be able to save this situation. This is also the first time that the hatchery at door Shack will not have enough returns to meet their broodstock requirements. Ever, living on a river with no fish just doesn't sound like any fun to me, and there are plenty of folks out there who make their living off of these incredible fish that tumble downstream from snow choked waters in the Upper Salmon and come back as big, tasty fish in numbers that used to be in the millions. Let's not forget the passenger pigeon. That's all I've got for you this week, as per usual, If you have anything to add to the conversation, like what I'm getting wrong or what you want more of, you can always reach out to me at ask cal that's a s k C a L at the Meat eater dot com. If you want more of this podcast, be sure to tell a friend or two and leave me a review by hitting that for this right hand start

Save this episode