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. 00:00:22 Speaker 2: If you live in South Carolina and you see a giant black and white lizard that looks like it might have salmonella, don't panic. It's a South American tagu lizard and the Department of Natural Resources wants to know about it. Like most exotic reptiles that invade natural habitats in North America, giant tagu lizards are brought to the US as pets by people who don't know how to use Google. There's also a not talked about enough industry of raising these potentially catastrophically harmful species here on American soil in states like you guessed at Florida. Now, when individuals realize as their new pet can grow to be four feet long in way more than your average house cat, they dump them in the woods. Tag you. Lizards eat other reptiles and the eggs of ground nesting birds like turkeys and quail, crocodiles, alligators, which means hunters should be especially keen to nip this invasive in the bud. Tagu lizards also carry salmonella in their feces, so you know, don't go eating lizard poop. The DNR has received over one hundred reported sightings of these gnarly looking lizards in fourteen different counties all across South Carolina. Officials have created an online reporting system and they're asking for the public to submit a report whenever they see one. Big thanks to listener Jonathan Lawllas for sending us this story, and if any of our South Carolina listeners have spotted a tago lizard, let me know by sending me a note at ask cl at the meat eater dot com. Let's ask cal. This week we're knocking the dust off Christmas, break with the crime desk, legislation, and so much more. But first I'm going to tell you about my week, and just to get right to the point here, I'm trying to wrap up a really great project on elk hoof disease in Washington State. If you're listening and are holding depredation tags and onen't mind myself and the crew tagging along for the harvest of an infected elk A diseased elk. Please rite in let me know as soon as possible whether you're a landowner with a transferable permit or you yourself have a permit in your hand and are willing to subject yourself to me right in to askcl that's Ascal at the meat eater dot com. Outside of that, I'm so darned excited to get snort back out in the field for ducks and geese. We've not had a real deal hunt for months, so I'm planning it to be a have weather be will travel type a end to the bird season. If you want to see a great hunt from last season, please head over to the meat Eater YouTube channel and take a look. Also, don't miss the Alua fishing episode on the Big Island. It is a beautiful show. You'll love it. And to plant the seed early. We've been working hard on the twenty twenty four BHA Rendezvous, which takes place April eighteen through twenty twenty twenty four at the Minnesota State Fair Rounds Saint Paul, Minnesota, Line up Minnesota Turkey Trip and hit up the Ronde. I'll see you there. 00:03:19 Speaker 1: Don't miss it, don't even be late. 00:03:24 Speaker 2: My goodness, we got a lot of ground to cover, so moving on to the crime desk. A drone operator in Pennsylvania has issued four citations last month for what game warden said was an illegal use of a drone, but he claims he was doing it to help a hunter recover a wounded buck. Joshua Wingaroth operates Wingy drone services, and one of those services is deer recovery. According to report in Lancaster Farming, wing Garoth was called out to the Welsh Mountain Nature Preserved by a hunter who claimed to have shot and wounded a deer. The game wardens rolled up a short time later and slapped him with two counts of unlawful devices and methods and one count each of disturbance of game and spotlighting. Ordens say wind Garth disturbed an antler deer while operating the drone and used an artificial light from the drone to locate deer, which is illegal during her general rifle season. If convicted of all charges, wind Garoth is looking at a maximum fine of twenty five hundred dollars and three months in jail. States have different laws when it comes to drones and deer recovery. Some allow it explicitly, while others just don't prohibit it. Pennsylvania law states that it is illegal to use electronic devices while hunting, including while trying to recover game, but as we covered in episode two twenty eight, some say this prohibition should be lifted. They say that drones can be a valuable tool when hunters are looking for a wounded animal, and that fishing game agencies should make an exception to the no electronics rule, just as they do with predator calls and trail cameras. Will see how this legal case plays out, but it wouldn't be at all surprised to see a bill in the Pennsylvania legislature this year that addresses this issue specifically. Right in and let me know what you think. You've probably picked up on the fact that I personally don't find that we need more technology and hunting for the sake of our actual hunting skills, but I am wide open to other opinions, and if you got a strong one, well articulated one, please write in let me know what you think. We'll get her up here on the podcast. Missouri game wardens say they are shell shocked after finding fifteen white tailed deer with their heads cut off and bodies left to rot. The deer were found this year in Wayne and Reynolds Counties, and wardens have arrested two suspects. These yahoos haven't been named, and it's unclear exactly how they managed to kill so many deer, but we can draw a few conclusions based on their charges. We know, for example, that they're being charged with spotlighting deer at night and shooting them from the roadway. They've also been charged with trespassing and wanton waste. The Missouri Department of Conservation posted an image on Facebook showing nine of the fifteen buckheads, and any hunter would have been happy to take one of them home. And that's what poaching is. It's stealing from hunters. I don't believe that poachers are hunters, but you know, that's a whole different argument. Thanks to the two people in custody, hunters won't have the chance to harvest any of these fifteen bucks in the upcoming season. Moving on to Virginia, the Department of Natural Resources is looking for someone who shot and wounded a bald eagle on Christmas Eve. The Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center took in a juvenile eagle that had sustained a gunshot wound to its wing. The bird had evaded capture for over a week and had been living on deer carcasses. As a side note, most people don't know that scavenging forms a significant portion of even a healthy bald eagles diet. They hunt fish in small mammals, but the Smithsonian reports that they eat carry in willingly and are notorious for robbing osprey of their catches. That's no excuse for shooting one, but it does kind of make you wish we'd chosen a different national symbol. I don't necessarily, you know, agree with that. Everybody likes a good janitor or anyway, When wildlife doctors x rayed the eagle's wing, they concluded that the break was too severe and they euthanized it. It's no wonder it didn't want to be captured. If you know someone who took a pot shot at an eagle on late December in er around why the County Virginia, give your local game ward and a call. It'd be great to give this story a happier ending. An Ohio man who shot what could be the world's third biggest typical white tail is now under investigation for poaching. Details are still scarce, but the Ohio Department of Natural Resources put out at press release saying that they've seized the antlers in cape of a giant deer shot by Christopher CJ. Alexander. Outdoor Life reported that the buck was green scored at two hundred and six and seven eighths inches. Green scoring, if you're not familiar, is just scoring the antlers, taping the length of the bone, and accordance with the Boone crocket measuring system before it's gone through an official drying period. If you are like me and have never harvested something worth making it official, I guess they're all official anyway. Big issues with scoring systems, I digress antlers have to drive for sixty days before they are scored because they will shrink slightly after the deer is killed. Anyway, Alexander told Outdoor Life that he shot the deer within the boundaries of a thirty acre property owned by his sister, but he was strangely hesitant to have the deer officially scored by Boon and Crockett scorers. Now the DNR has a reason to question his story. Their press release says they have launched an investigation because they got a tip that Alexander failed to obtain the lawfully required written permission prior to hunting on private property. It's possible Alexander's own sister is narking him out, but I think it's more likely straight across the property boundaries chasing this deer. As Pat Dirkin says, big bucks make stupid people. Of course, we don't know yet how this investigation will conclude. Maybe a jealous neighbor is trying to make Alexander's life difficult. Let's hope that's the case. Most up to date update on this thing is the buck has been confiscated. The statement that goes along with it says that it is confiscated until the investigation is done, so we'll come back to that one. Moving on to the legislative desk, New York Governor Cafe Hochel signed a bill last month that banned so called wildlife killing contests. The bill prohibits anyone from organizing or participating in a hunting contest quote with the objective of taking or hunting wildlife for prizes or other inducement, or for entertainment. The bill provides an exception for deer, turkey, and bear. But your local big buck contest wasn't the target of the activists behind this legislation. As the Humane Society makes clear in their gleeful press release, this is mostly about kyo contest. The Animal rights group has sent undercover videographers to expose these contests at least twice in New York. Of course, they aren't really exposing anything since the contest were legal at the time and they were open to the public, but they did manage to get images of dead coyotes, which was apparently enough to get kyot calling contest banned. The Empire State is now the tenth state to ban these contests, since California became the first to do so in twenty fourteen. We covered this bill all the way back in episode two nineteen when the legislature passed it, but it's been sitting on the governor's desk for months. Hunters had hoped she might veto it, but instead she decided to sign it three days before Christmas. For those of you living in the forty other states where kyoke contests are still illegal, get ready. The animal rights crowd isn't shy about their intentions. They want to see kyoke contest banned in all fifty states, so you can bet you'll see similar legislation in your neck of the woods. Keep tuning in, We'll keep you posting now. On the other end of the spectrum, New Hampshire State legislature is considering a bill that would remove gray squirrels from the list of game animals. Current law allows squirrel hunting from the beginning of September to the end of January, and hunters must obtain a license before going after their daily bag limit of five squirrels. Under this new bill, hunters could go after squirrel's year round with no daily bag limit. I'm always skeptical when politicians start messing around with game regulations, even when they want to expand hunting opportunities. Many states have a year round open season on squirrels, so it's not totally unreasonable for New Hampshire to do the same. But I haven't seen anything for the bills sponsors about the state of New Hampshire's gray squirrel population, so it's unclear exactly why they chose to introduce this bill now. But there is one animal rights activist who thinks she knows according to local media, Christina Schneider thinks this bill was written with revenge in mind. One of the bill's sponsors, guy by the names of James Splane, was infamously removed from the House Fish and Game Committee in twenty nineteen. He got the boot because he responded to a vegan animal rights activist by posting a photo of a squirrel he shot off his bird feeder with a fifty caliber muzzleloader. You can imagine what the image looks like. To make matters worse, he shot the animal outside of squirrel season and then claimed to have done it because the squirrel was invading his chicken coop. Now, animal rights activists say that Spilane is trying to eliminate squirrel season altogether, presumably so he can obliterate his neighborhood squirrels in peace. He carried away in on this one. The bill is SB five four to eight dah FN and we'll post a link at the media dot com forward slash col Now, we've been hammering on Colorado a lot recently, but I can't stress enough how important it is for Coloradoms to pay attention to what Governor Poulos is doing. Listener Casey Martin sent me an article published in The Fence Post, an outlet that covers agricultural news. The author claims to have obtained a document that outlines Governor Polis's priorities for Colorado parks and wildlife. He wants to introduce wolverines to the state within the next two years, and to add bag limits on fur bears and curtail trapping. In fact, according to this document quote, the governor is also a supportive of ending fur trapping altogether. It is unclear exactly how the wolverine reintroduction and the trapping banner related, but it's easy to imagine how the former might lead to the latter. Between the wolf reintroduction, the wolverine reintroduction, and the proposed ban on mountain lion hunting, it's easy to see why elk hunters and fur trappers in Colorado are getting extremely nervous, and it's easy to see why this whole guard the gate bs is not going to cut it in this instance. Okay, you have got to be proactive. If you are a trapper, if you are someone who likes to hunt mountain lions, you have got to start writing well written, well thought out op ads and getting them consistently printed in newspapers in your state. This is about affecting the voting non hunting crowd, the folks in the middle, not the anti people, not the pro people, but the folks in the middle. And you got to tell them why hunting and trapping is important to you. Odds are it's not important to you because you just like killing and hurting shit. Okay. Tell them about the food, Tell them about the sustainability of the practice. Tell them why it matters to you and your family, the bonds that you forage out there in the woods, all the good things that people just don't get to hear about. Moving on to the conservation desk, the Biden administration announced a plan last month to help conserve America's old growth forests. The administration is directing the US Department of Agriculture to amend all one hundred and twenty eight forest land management plans across the country to conserve and restore old growth forests in the National Forest System. According to a press release, this will provide consistent direction across the Forest Service on how to conserve and restore old growth forest conditions across the nation and marks the first time that the Forest Service has adopted a nationwide Forest Plan amendment to guide new management direction on all national forests at once. Defining what is and is not an old growth forest is difficult. Old forests in New Jersey look a lot different from old forests in Oregon, just like old trees at ten thousand feet look a lot different than old trees at three thousand feet. Regional forest management agencies have adopted a variety of definitions, but the Department of Agriculture recently released a report that offers guidelines that can be used anywhere in the country. The report explains that old forests are in the later stages of stand development and include large trees, the accumulation of large dead woody material, a high number of canopy layers, and complex ecosystems. These are forests that have been around for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. The USDA also says that old growth forests are distinguished by their ecosystem services and social, cultural, and economic values. The people living in the area have imparted cultural and even spiritual significance to these forests. Local economies rely on the ecosystem for things like recreation, and it plays a central role in the area's heritage. Some of this is a little too mushy for you scientific types, but I think it's good to acknowledge the many different ways we rely on forests and why we love to visit them. Old growth for uts have gotten a lot of coverage recently for their ability to capture carbon dioxide and help with climate change, but that's only one of the many reasons to protect them. They provide a habitat for thousands of species of plants and animals, and they hold clean water. Plus they're just too cool to have on the landscape. Some of the sequoias in California have been around since before Socrates was annoying people with weird questions, where Alexander the Great was conquering the then known world. It's amazing to see something so old, and I'm glad the USDA is spending time and resources to make sure these ecosystems are protected. This will also be an opportunity for you to get involved. Amending all one hundred and twenty eight forest land management plans is no small task, and government agencies will be required to seek public comment. When they do, be sure to weigh in. Kentucky residents received an early Christmas present this year when the Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the largest conservation easement in the state's history. Working in partnership with the Nature Conservancy and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the state is permanently protecting fifty five thousand acres for conservation and public access. The expansive plot builds on the ongoing Cumberland Forest Project, a two hundred and fifty three thousand acre conservation project meant to protect Appleatch's diverse to ecosystems. In a two part venture, the easement permanently protects the acreage and Bell, Knox and Leslie Counties from any commercial development, securing its place as an ecological hotspot and securing its place in the future as an outdoor destination. Kentucky has the largest elk herd east of the Mississippi. In this plot, in the southeastern part of the state is right in the heart of where those elk are living. In one hundred years, we may look back on this as the beginning of the Kentucky elk hunting mecca. The Bluegrass State is off to a good start. Moving on to the recycling desk. Christmas is coming gone, but some of you are still holding on to that dry needle shedding tree. I get it, it's tough to let go of the holiday magic, but we're already a week into the new year and this is getting embarrassing for you. 00:18:05 Speaker 1: The good news is that you can dispose of your Christmas tree and help local wildlife at the same time. 00:18:10 Speaker 2: Many state game agencies offer tree drop off programs. You bring your old tree to a drop off location, and biologists use those trees for fish habitat. They tie a bunch of them together, weigh them down, and sink them in the bottom of a lake or pond. That creates excellent cover for fish and other animals like snakes, turtles, and frogs. When the trees are placed in shallow water, they also offer places for birds to perch and look for food. State agencies will also sometimes mark the locations of their underwater Christmas trees, and if you ask nicely, they may tell you where those are. For the next two or three years. It'll be a great place to go after crappie, perch and other tasty fish. So there's a hot tip get your new year off to a great start. You can contribute to a state Fish attracting device. Only donate your natural trees. You don't want a plastic tree floating around in your local lake for the next ten thousand years. On that note, also be sure to remove all ornaments, tinsel, and other decorations. As much as you enjoy that Santa Claus ornament you got from your great aunt Betty, the fish won't feel the same. Donating your tree to wildlife takes more effort than leaving it out on the curb, But the holiday season generates too much trash already. As your final act of Christmas charity, why don't you do something that will help the environment rather than pollute it. Plus, you might someday catch a fish that was living around the tree you donated. Now that's what I call a Christmas miracle. 00:19:29 Speaker 1: Kevin, what did you do to my room? 00:19:32 Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. Remember to write in to ask c Al that's Askcal at themeateater dot com and let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. You know you appreciate it. On top of that, remember to track down your local steel dealer by going to www dot steel dealers dot com to find a local, knowledgeable steel dealer near you. They'll get you set up with what you need, and they won't try to send you home with what you don't. Thanks again, I'll talk to you next week. Dan had been in m A m A. 00:20:04 Speaker 1: The Danser

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