00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. 00:00:13 Speaker 2: This is Cal's We Can Review with Ryan cal Callahan. 00:00:17 Speaker 1: Now Here's Cal. A black bear is believed to have pulled a crash victim from his car after he smashed through a guardrail in Massachusetts last week. That headline might sound like a feel good story, but the truth is more Nature is Metal than Walt Disney. Thanks to listener Jeffrey Chang for sending us this story. Officials say thirty one year old Daniel Ducharme was killed in the crash after being either fully or partially ejected from his twenty sixteen Honda Civic. Police arrived at the scene sometime later and found the victim's body outside his car and noticed a bear in the woods nearby. The bruin was likely motivated by more than just curiosity. Officials haven't offered many details, but they say there is evidence that quote the bear at some point had made contact with the victim's body. That evidence, whatever it was, was enough to motivate environmental police to euthanize the bear out of an abundance of caution. End quote. Bears in Massachusetts emerged from hibernation back in March, but they're still trying to put on as many calories as they can. While it's unusual for a bear to feast on a dead human, there is reason to believe that they'd do it more often if they had the chance. In January of last year, a sun bear in Malaysia reportedly broke into a graveyard, dug up a freshly buried body, and ate part of it. Back in twenty twelve, a bear ate and stashed the body of a car crash victim in southern British Columbia. Authorities found pop prints around the driver's side window and then discovered a partially eaten corpse about one hundred and thirty yards from where the car had crashed. Bears may not be scavengers like vultures or buzzards, which specialize in eating dead things, but like us, they're omnivores an opportunists. They'll eat any kind of plant or animal that tastes good and won't make them sick. That's good news for bears, but bad news for any human corpse that happens to be lying around the woods in the springtime. On a slightly lighter but macob note, rest in peace, Honda Civic twenty sixteen. Honda Civic. I mean, if this guy not crashed, that car would have run forever. What about an ad that says, Honda Civic, It'll run as long as you can bear to drive it. 00:02:22 Speaker 2: Oh bother, this guy stinks. 00:02:26 Speaker 1: Anyway. This week we've got the fishing report, legislation, wildlife crime, and so much more. But first I'm going to tell you about my week, and there's so much to talk about. We finally got out in the old Black series camper, which took a little bit of wrenching for Turkey season. Embarrassingly, this is just the start of my spring hunting, but as you all know, we got to keep that job. Found birds right away, nowhere near the numbers I was hunting in the same area last year, but super Fun definitely had been hunted very Cagey. Had a couple of close calls, one of which ended up being on the private public property boundary, and after successfully ticking off the yelping hens, they finally came to check us out. By doing so, they drugged two toms with them, and even though they were at thirty yards, I just could not tell if those boys were on my side of the barb wire or not, so I didn't shoot, and that, my friends, is just a great reason not to hunt property boundaries. But as you all know, despite best of intentions, that just happened sometimes. Other cool thing from this recent trip is we had a mountain lion come in and check us out, which is always awesome to see a cat doing its thing and be in the situation where the stealthy predator that is seldom seen is all of a sudden out in the open, not seeing me, my girlfriend and the two dogs that we always hunt with. I'd personally love to see the lion hunting season overlap with spring turkey season, as they're both white meat and that's what I'm chasing. But from a biological perspective, it's a heck of a lot easier to sex a cat when you can look directly up a tree at their undersides, like they do with hound hunting in the fall. If you're going off of my field judging skills, I would guess that the lion that we saw was a female, just a little smaller, a little slighter, just looked a little feminine. Outside of that, we found some morals, a couple of big fresh puffball mushrooms, only a couple of ticks and averaged just under ten miles of hiking a day, which feels real, real good after being on the old meat eater tour bus. One last thing, I finally drew a Wyoming elk tag, just a plain old general season elk after five years of applying. So that's exciting. Love Wyoming. Looking forward to having the excuse to go check out more of it. Moving on to the suburban fishing desk. Last week I told you about a Florida ha president who used a firearm to chase away a group of young anglers from a neighborhood lake. Incredibly, he wasn't the only Florida man in the last few weeks to take a swing at a group of kids with a deadly weapon. In another incident reported just a few days later, a different Florida man, this one near Tampa Bay, ran off a pair of young anglers with a knife. Local media reports that a fellow named Edward Cullum this is the skin of the Killer Bill, pulled out a pocket knife and brandished it at the youngsters as they were leaving the Starkey Ranch subdivision with their fishing poles. One of the teens had the presence of mind to film the encounter, which tells you how fast they were being chased. Cardio matters kids, well you got a knife. Yeah. We also covered this courtesy of Jordan Siller's on the Meat Eater podcast. So take a listen over there, and you know, you guys already know from last week episode I feel about this. It's fishing. These kids are fishing. We're not talking about drugs, not talking about trash. We're talking about fishing, not a game. We're talking about phishing. Tell you what HOA, Presidents, there's always things to be done around at HOA. How about the next article that we review here on the weekend review is HOA president approaches kids who are illegally fishing, gives them summer job in exchange for fishing rights. That's kind of a world we could live in. It's just a choice, jackasses. Moving on to the legislation desk, quick update for you on the Oklahoma CWD bill we've been following. As I mentioned last week, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed the bill, which makes the Sooner state the first in the nation to allow supposedly CWD resistant captive bread deer to be released into the wild. This plan is being put in motion, but I'm told there will still be an opportunity to weigh in. The Department of Agriculture will have to publish rules that outline the specifics of this plan, and those rules will be open to public comment. So if you live in Oklahoma or a neighboring state, or you plan to hunt in Oklahoma, be looking for those rules and how to weigh in. If you want to deep dive into this topic, check out our interview with Kip Adams of the National Deer Association in episode two seventy three. Here's another update. It looks like a controversial bill that would have overhauled wildlife management in Vermont has stalled in the state House. Chris Borgatti of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers tells me that this bill would have done away with the Fish and Wildlife Board as it has existed and given sole rulemaking authority to the Fish and Wildlife Commissioner. This is a problem because the commissioner is a political appointee, and we know how it usually goes when we mix politics and wildlife management. The bill had passed the state Senate, but it died in the House Committee on Environment and Energy. Numerous Vermonors testified against the bill in that committee hearing, including PHA President Patrick Berry, who we interviewed in episode two sixty seven. Barry's testimony was especially crucial because he'd previously served as the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Commissioner. Well done, everyone, and keep up the good work. Your voice matters. You just got to get to the table. Moving on, the Pennsylvania legislature is considering a bill that would give the Game Commission full authority to make rules about hunting on Sundays. Right now, state statute says that hunting on Sundays is prohibited in the Commonwealth, except on three Sundays during deer rifle deer archery, and one additional Sunday. These dates are determined by the Game Commission, but they don't have much latitude to make rules beyond that. Senate Bill sixty seven would legalize Sunday hunting during any open season and give the Commission full authority to regulate hunting seven days a week. This bill was referred to the Game and Fisheries Committee back in February, but it hasn't gone beyond that so far. The twenty twenty four session ends at the end of June, so if you live in PA, there's still time to weigh in staying in Pennsylvania. House Bill twenty one oh eight would add an additional seat to the nine seat Board of Game Commissioners. The nine Game commissioners are to be quote knowledgeable in wildlife conservation and restoration. This new seat, however, would be designated to at least one individual who is knowledgeable in wildlife conservation and actively involved in normal agricultural operation. This might not sound like such a bad thing, but listener Ryan Smith wrote in with some concerns. Specifically, he pointed me to a legislative testimony from BHA Chapter Chair Adam Eckley. Eckley told the Game in Fisheries Committee that this bill would have some unintended consequences. Eckley isn't opposed to members of the commission having a background in agriculture, and some of them already do, so it already exists on the committee. This bill as being part of a nationwide movement to install special interest groups on wildlife commissions. Here's Ecley. 00:10:07 Speaker 2: While the intent of House Built twenty one oh eight may not be a direct attack on our public wildlife resource. Passage of such a bill, creating what is essentially an assigned seat on the board of Commissioners sets a precedent that opens the door to nefarious organizations who wish to infiltrate our wildlife management system with purposes that directly oppose the principles outlined in the North American Model of conservation. 00:10:29 Speaker 1: If you want my opinion on this gang, it's pretty darn simple. The purpose of a commission or a committee or a board is to bring a lot of diverse interest together around a set of common goals, right, and so for a wildlife commission, those common goals are to ensure that wildlife is being managed in a sustainable way. Sometimes that means growing populations. Sometimes that means taking measures to reduce populations by changing harvest rates or season dates, or tags allocated or methods of take, et cetera. You guys all know this stuff. Those people typically don't have a full time job of being a wildlife manager, so they come from a bunch of different backgrounds. I would say, without a doubt, agriculture is represented on the majority of boards without setting aside a specific seat for agriculture. The stupid, slippery slope argument, which unfortunately can be true, could be that, well, if agriculture gets a seat, what about outdoor recreation, what about bird watchers? What about you know? And here we go and here we go. I think if you can avoid special seats and stick with people who are dedicated and proven to the pursuit of that mission, statement, that's all you need are ed wasn't too long winded anyway. From the state to the national level, a new bill in the US Congress would restore hunting access to the Castle Mountains National Monument In California. Hunting is prohibited on public lands managed by the National Park Service except when authorized by Congress. When the Castle Mountains National Monument was designated, those lands previously managed by the Bureau of Land Management were transferred to the jurisdiction of the National Park Service and hunting opportunities were lost. The Mojave National Preserve Boundary Adjustment Act S. Four one three two would transfer over twenty thousand acres of the Castle Mountains Monument to the adjacent Mojave National Preserve. This would restore public hunting access while maintaining the conservation of habitat for species such as desert bighorn sheep, mule, deer, and quail. If you want to see this happen, get in touch with your US senators. A few weeks ago, we covered a bill in the United Kingdom that would ban the import of elephant trophy. Now the US Fish and Wildlife Service has taken their own action to make it more difficult to import legally hunted elephant parts. A new rule finalized back in March, will require African countries that export elephant trophies to the US to provide the Service with an annual certification on the current management and status of their elephants and the hunting programs in their country. It's unclear how many countries this would exclude from exporting elephant trophies, but I doubt the Service would have passed a new rule if it wasn't going to have some sort of impact. This could also, if it works properly, be seen as a good thing by saying, oh, that elephant over there is certified from a sustainable, well managed herd. As you know, elephant hunting's highly controversial because there's a lot of question marks as to where the money goes. Last one for you, conservation groups are applauding the US Senate for unanimously passing the America's Conservation Enhancement Reauthorization Act of twenty twenty four. The act was sponsored by Senators Tom Carper, Democrat out of Delaware, and Shelley Moore Carpedo, a Republican out of West Virginia, and would reauthorize multiple programs that benefit hunting and angling. These include the National Fish Habitat Partnership, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, the Chesapeake Bay Program, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The bill also helps address threats like chronic wasting disease and provides technical improvements, administrative streamlining, and increased authorized funds to improve these programs. Getting the US Senate to pass anything unanimously tells you something about how much good these programs do. They can't operate without funding, and that's exactly what this legislation gives them. If you get a minute, send a note to your US senators and thank them for their support. Moving on to the crime desk, Canadians don't like anyone stealing their moose, but they especially don't like it when the poachers are Americans. At least that's the impression I'm getting from all you Canucks who wrote to tell me about this story. The government of Ontario announced last week that it had fined twenty defendants more than two hundred thousand dollars for a variety of moose hunting violations. These included killing swimming moose from a boat, hunting during a close season, hunting without a license, and obstructing conservation officers. To add insult to injury. The courts also issued a total of fifty nine years of hunting licensed suspensions for the parties involved. The poaching conspiracy centered around a fly in outfitting business operated by Robert A. Green and Robert W. Green, hereafter referred to as the Bobs. Provincial officials say the Bobs guided clients and wildlife management units where the clients were not licensed. Once they found a moose, they told clients to shoot moose from motor boats and help them retrieve the dead animal. Then, to cover up their crimes, they falsified mandatory tourist industry moose hunter reports and directed clients to make false statements and abstract conservation officers. In total, proximately twelve moose were taken illegally by the Bobs and twelve clients, seven Americans and five Ontario residents. Of the seven Americans, five hailed from Indiana, one was from Alabama, and one was from Oklahoma. Finds four clients range between eight hundred dollars and sixteen thousand, two hundred dollars, with license suspensions ranging from twelve years to one year. Chad Dunham of Mitchell, Indiana, received the most significant penalty of the clients involved. He pled guilty to unlawfully hunting a swimming bowl and cow moose while using a motor boat, hunting moose during a closed season, and hunting a bowl moose without a license. The judge saved the biggest penalties for the outfitters themselves. Bob Green was hit with a thirty thousand dollars fine, five year hunting license suspension, and is prohibited from guiding big game hunters for two years. Bob W. Green received twelve thousand, five hundred and fines, a five year hunting suspension, and is prohibited from guiding big game hunters for two years. This isn't the first time this year a group of hunters has been busted for poaching moose in Ontario. Just a few weeks ago, three Ontario residents pled guilty to poaching a bull moose. Zachary McMillan claimed to have shot the bull under the authority of his indigenous harvest rights, but DNA evidence and trail cam photos revealed the actual shooter was another man named Gord McMillan. Old Gord was fined six thousand dollars and received a one year suspension from all hunting activities, while Zachary was fined two thousand dollars. Moving on to the director's desk Oregon as a new Director of Fish and Wildlife, The Fish and Wildlife Commission voted unanimously last week to select doctor Debbie Colbert as the new ODFW director. Colbert is the first woman to ever be appointed to the permanent director position since the agency was founded over one hundred and twenty five years ago. Colbert as a PhD in interdisciplinary oceanography and she's worked for the Department of Fish and Wildlife as Deputy Director for Administration and Deputy Director for Fish and Wildlife Programs. She's also done field work as a fish sampler for the Pacific State's Marine Fisheries Commission. As a researcher at sea for several months in studying nutrient cycling in Tillmook Bay. Some of you who sent me this story are skeptical of Colbert, but it's worth noting that she seems to have been the preferred candidate of the state's hunting and fishing orgs. According to The Northwest Sportsman, she was backed by the Northwest Sport Fishing Industry Association, Oregon Hunters Association, Northwest Guides and Anglers Association, and Oregon BHA. At a Q and a session with ODFW employees, she encouraged residents to talk to the hunters and hunting orgs she's worked with. Quote. I think they would tell you that I respect that hunting brings a connection for so many people to the Oregon outdoors and frankly to their family. It's a very deep connection, and I would say that from my perspective, I don't think that we should ever discount the impact hunters have had on conservation of species and habitat in our country and in our state historically and today. The proof, as they say, will be in the directing, but I'd say that's a solid statement. Plus, Colbert appears to be a far better choice than the other finalists for the position. Who, and I'm not making this up, is a vegetarian from Portland. No offense to all my Portland listeners, but I'm frankly not sure which is a bigger red flag, not eating meat or and this is just for you folks that attended the Meat Eater Live show being from Portland. We had a great time in Portland. I gotta say, walking around that city, we found a lot of great stuff and a lot of distressing things. You know, there's some rough scenes for you know, are I would say, ignorant eyeballs when you're coming from more rural parts of America, open drug use, an unhoused population situation, stuff like that. You know, it's just kind of sad. It's tough, tough watching. On the other hand, we found a super cool brewery that allowed dogs. There are dogs walking everywhere. There's really good food everywhere. Went to Phil Taylor's most favorite tiki bar in that town. That was a heckman experience. And there's a lot of folks who hunt an angle in the Portland area. And I just want to say this to you. I want to let everybody know that this is a perspective deal, right. So when we were at the Portland Show and the Tacoma Show and other places, Portland was like a real, real buzzword where people would we'd get a big reaction from the crowd. Okay, And I wanted to say it there, but I didn't. I should have, so I'm saying it here. You just got to understand that that same reaction people have to Portland is the same reaction a lot of my family has to Bozeman, Montana. It's the same reaction a lot of Montana in rural Montana has to Bozeman, Montana. Same reaction. It's no different, right. It's all about perspective, all about context. Anyway, Moving on to the pandemic desk, Wildlife officials in California announced last week that for the first time in the state's history, chronic wasting disease has been detected in deer to mule deer tested positive for the disease. One was found dead of unknown causes in Madera County in the central portion of the state, and the other was killed by a vehicle in Inyo County farther south and east. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has been monitoring California elk and deer populations for CWD since two thousand. They've tested over sixty five hundred deer in elk and have been working to increase surveillance efforts with the help of hunters, taxidermis, and meat processors since twenty eighteen. They point out that the disparate locations of these two detections indicate that CWD has probably been present in California for some time. As with virtually every state, California already has a CWD surveillance system and mitigation plan in place. Hunters can have their deer tested at a sampling station or participating meat processor taxidermist, and importing deer and deer parts is strictly regulated. The state's CWD task Force is also charged with crafting a plan to combat the disease. The surveillance portion of that plan has been implemented and the task force is working to finalize the management component. If you look at a map of where CWD has spread, you'll notice that, prior to this announcement, the illness hasn't gone west of New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho. But now that we have a positive case in California. It's almost certain that CWD has spread through Arizona and Nevada, and likely is in Washington and Oregon as well. Moving on to the wolf desk, a Wyoming hunter is pushing for changes to state animal cruelty laws after a wolf was tortured and killed earlier this year in the town of Daniel. Back in episode two sixty six, I told you about a Wyoming man who ran down a wolf with a snowmobile, taped its mouth shut, took it to a bar, and then killed it in the alley behind the bar the store. He gained international attention in the weeks that followed, and animal rights activists have used the incident to claim that Wyoming isn't capable of managing its wolf population. The man who killed the wolf fellaw named Cody Roberts, who's fined two hundred and fifty dollars for his actions, which many said was too light a penalty. Now, a Wyoming hunter named Jim Laborne is vowing not to purchase any more hunting tags until the legislature acts. Specifically, he's asking the legislature to outlaw the use of motorized vehicles to chase down and run over predators, and change animal cruelty statutes to include wildlife. He told The Cowboys State Daily that he wants Wyoming to solve its own problems rather than have outside organizations pressure the federal government to do it for them. He says he's not against predator hunting, but he thinks law enforcement needs more tools to address quote extreme acts of torture. Labourn has launched the Wyoming Wildlife Coalition to lobby the legislature when it convenes again early next year. The coalition just launched a few weeks ago, and so it hasn't released any specific legislator proposal. Some worry that changing animal cruelty laws could have unintended consequences. State Senator Larry Hicks told The Cowboys State Daily that the laws labour And is proposing would have to be written carefully so as not to criminalize innocent behavior. Outlawing running down an animal with a vehicle, for example, would have to make clear exceptions for roadkill. Applying animal cruelty laws to wildlife would also have to make clear exceptions for hunters who accidentally wound an animal. All of these things will need to be taken into consideration for any of these proposals to have a chance of passing the Wyoming legislature. For now, wyomingites should keep their eyes peeled for this legislation when it's proposed later this year, or you can keep tuning in to Cal's Week in Review, where we'll keep you covered on this and so much more. Another little side note here, this little mailbag point that was brought up. This is a great email that was sent into the Ask cal email and it brings up a simple but great point. Even in hunting regulations that outline the penalties for poaching, and we can all agree here that poaching is not hunting. Hunting is this big legal bureaucratic system right that kicks ass. The poaching side of things is theft, it's cheating. It's the thing that puts a black eye on the awesome stuff that hunting represents. And when you get into the rules and regulations, like we covered in the moose story right now, hunting from a moving vehicle, hunting moose while swimming, it should be poaching from a moving vehicle, poaching moose while swimming, and so on and so on and so on. I apologize for not remembering your name, but thank you very much for writing in. I'll dig it up and we'll properly honor you on next week's episode. So the Nuanced Points Gang, thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for writing in. I'm glad you're liking the special episodes. We're gonna keep working on that stuff. It's more work, but it's more information and that's why you're here, right. So also, hey, tune in mediator YouTube channel. Old Brad Leoni and I were supposed to hunt turkeys, but instead we cooked turkeys and a surprise meat that you'll you'll love on the media YouTube channel, so check that out. Anyway, I gotta get back in the woods here. I got no no turkeys in the freezer. We got to fix that. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for writing in, and remember you can always write in at as CA C A L. That's ask how at themeeteater dot com. Let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. I appreciate them. Thanks again, I'll talk to you next week.

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