00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cal's we Can Review with Ryan cal Callahan. Now Here's Cal. Residents of a New Jersey town are outraged after the city council voted to round up the local Canada geese and kill them with gas. Thanks to listener Ray Bunyard for sending us this story. The town in question is called Pea Pack Gladstone, about twenty five miles west of Newark. Like a lot of small towns, it has a man made pond in the center, designed to give residents a natural haven from the hustle and bustle the heavily populated state. The pond attracts geese, and geese do what geese do? They poop, in this case, right along main street. The city council says their efforts to deal with the problem have been unsuccessful, so back in March they signed an agreement with the United States Department of Agriculture that will allow the FEDS to come in and deal with the problem. The USDA doesn't offer much in regards to specific information about their lethal control methods, but based on similar stories from other towns, gassing the geese sounds like a relatively common technique. The geese are rounded up when they have goslings and are less likely to fly away. They're in their molting stage right, so they actually can't fly away. They're somehow put into containers and then killed with carbon dioxide. As you can imagine, some residents are upset. A petition has been created that, as of this recording, has nearly thirty four hundred signatures calling for a stop to lethal control. The petitioners claim that other non lethal methods should be used, and they say they have volunteers who are willing to pick up after the geese and reduce the chance that those feces will spread disease or contaminate the local drinking water. Canada geese are migratory birds, but some live in the same area year round. Many of these birds are descended from the captive bred geese the US government really east in the nineteen sixties to help restore dwindling flocks. Captive birds haven't learned from their parents to migrate, and why would they when they have all the food, water, and shelter they need the local golf course. The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that there are three point two million resident Canada geese in the lower forty eight, and that population has increased significantly over the past few decades. It's an interesting issue because while Canada geese are native to North America, this isn't how they're supposed to act. Some call these resident geese invasive, and I can see where they're coming from. It's hard to justify supporting the big, messy, sometimes aggressive birds when they shouldn't even be there for most of the year. If you are a parent with a big, messy, sometimes aggressive kid still living in your basement, you can probably relate. Fly away, little bird, fly away. This week, we've got land swaps, the DoD BP yeah you know me is, and so much more. But first, I'm gonna tell you about my week. In My week was a ton of fun. Hauled the camper east to Turkey Camp. We found sheds, morels and lots of turkeys. The very first recipe I'll be making is Regu Dave regaegili. I still can't say it right. It's from the Turkey Book by Jesse Griffiths. Hearts, livers, gizzards combined to make a wonderful, savory warming regu. You can see that on the meat Eater YouTube channel. Also, you know, old Chef Jesse was on the Meat Eater podcast. You gotta check that one out in regards to you know, making good food. Ol Brad Leoni is joining me in the Meat Eater kitchen as well. That'll be dropping here real quick, so head over to the meat Eater YouTube channel and check out some standing and stirring as we like to call it with a couple of my favorite folks. Anyway, I'm gonna be taking all this ragu with me to the final Turkey camp of the season, looking forward to more absurdly early mornings. It's getting real light, real early these days. One thing I just have got to share with you is the Montana Mule Deer Special statewide tag. This year was raffled off by Montana BHA. The raffle outperformed the previous all time dollars raised at auction by thirty eight percent. BHA's raffle brought in a whopping fifty six six and twenty dollars, which is a new record. So to recap, Montana, like a lot of other states, has a few tags set aside to fundraise with. These tags are yanked from the hands of applicants and put most typically on the auction block for those with either deep pockets or no financial sense or both, I suppose to bid on and a lot of money can be raised by just a couple of people willing to spend big. What Montana Bha did was take a gamble on wildlife for the people versus only a few of the people. Raffles traditionally have a lower cost of entry, so more people can participate. But the question remained, would enough people step up and throw in on a twenty dollars chance to at least match what one individual was willing to pay in a previous year. After all, all of the funds go to the animal. So if you're auctioning off a sheep tag, the money raised goes to sheep. In this case, raffling off a mule deer tag, the money goes to mule deer and mule deer habitat in the state of Montana. Well, the previous Montane mule deer tag at auction was also the last record right. It raised the most funds to date, and that was forty one thousand dollars. As I said earlier, the raffle, which everybody had the opportunity to participate in for twenty bucks raised fifty six thousand, six hundred and twenty dollars. And I know what you're saying. We're just splitting hairs here, right. You could buy all the tickets you want and skew the odds your way, and you're still kind of buying an animal. And you're right, we are kind of splitting the hairs here, but the Royal we gets to split the hair, right, all of us can participate, And at least this time, the mean purchase at the auction website was forty three dollars, meaning on average, just a couple of tickets were purchased per person. So even with the ability to buy an unlimited number of tickets, the Raffle, unlike an auction, drew in a lot more money for mule Deer and allowed a lot more hunters to participate and have a chance at drawing that tag versus you know, sitting in another banquet watching a couple of people bid back and forth while you're sipping your beer, and you're expected to be like super happy about it. You know, I'm not, if you can tell. So the Raffle being a success greatly excites me, let's step it up. Let's raffle off the sheep. Let's raffle off the goat. Let's raffle off the mule deer tag again next year and crack this idea of governor's tags, although only available for a very small percentage of hunters, being so necessary because of the dollars they bring in for conservation, the necessary evil argument, and let's let all hunters have a chance at the people's wildlife. All the hunters can have a chance to throw in on something special and at least have a chance at the hunt itself, wildlife for the people. Way to go, Montana Pha. Moving on to the conservation desk, listener Roger McFarlane sent me a story from his neck of the woods, which in this case is northern Utah. Their Summit County has just finalized a deal that will conserve the eighty five hundred acre nine to ten cattle ranch for wildlife and some kinds of outdoor recreation. It cost fifty five million dollars, but it's the largest open space purchase in county history and will connect a fifty two thousand acre corridor that includes conservation easement, state parks, and national forests. The owner had originally wanted to sell it to a developer who would have no doubt filled it with golf courses and condos, but a change to the Summit County Development Code reduced the number of potential housing units on the property, so the owner decided to change course. Summit County taxpayers footed fifteen million dollars of the purchase price, and a US Forest Service grant covered the rest. Unfortunately, it's not all good news for local hunters. While the property may eventually be used for running, hiking, camping, grazing, and timber harvesting, a foundational condition of the deal prohibits hunting on the property. I don't see why that has to be the case if the property can sustain it, but some worry that allowing even hiking and biking might not be a good IDEA listener and resident hunter Dakota Wright wrote in and said quote, my concern is that the purchase of the nine ten ranch under the guise of keeping open land open is just another excuse by the county to add more biking and hiking trails and in turn open the space to the public, putting unneeded stress on the land. He's not opposed to the hunting band, but he worries that the additional recreation will put undue pressure on the elk herd that's already close to a major metro area. Dakota reports that a different conservation project in Summit County has already added four hiking trails and large parking areas. He worries that the same as in store for the nine ten cattle ranch, and he wants to know the best way to get involved right now. I think the best place to start would be to contact Summit County officials, specifically a woman named Jess Kirby who serves as the Summit County Lands and Natural Reas Sources Director. She may or may not have the authority to decide the future of the nine to ten, but she'll definitely be able to point you in the right direction. You can check out the contact info at the meat eater dot com forward slash cal also would be real curious to know if there's a way to leverage the fact that federal dollars dollars for the people and that US for Service grant may be able to be leveraged to say like huntings of traditional use. I don't know listener Levi Baldwin Hart wrote in about another sticky conservation issue. Three power companies in the Midwest are in the middle of building a one hundred and two mile electric line linking Iowa's Dubuque County to Wisconsin's Dane County. That doesn't sound very controversial until you learn that a mile long section of the line would cross the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge near Cassville, Wisconsin. The deal was made possible by a landswap where the utilities would give the refuge thirty six acres in exchange for ten acres within the refuge to put the line. Conservation groups claim that this deal was improperly reached, but a federal apple at court issued a ruling last week that will allow the construction to continue. Hunters and anglers can hope that the power line won't be too disruptive once it's installed, but for now, it looks like it's going through. Speaking of federal property, the US Department of Defense announced plans to conserve twelve million acres of property surrounding military bases. The lands are to be designated as sentinel properties, which allows government agencies and nonprofit groups to pay landowners to keep farms, forests, and wildlife habitats in their current states. The properties are located in California, Hawaiian, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Utah. As you can imagine, the Pentagon isn't only concerned about protecting native wildlife. Prohibiting development of these lands supports training and operations and bolster's security around these military installations. Still, when it comes to conservation, we should take what we can get. The mule deer don't care whether we can serve their habitat because we love wildlife, or to prevent spies from hacking into Air Force servers. They're just happy to still have somewhere to eat, mate, and migrate. I call that a win. Last one for you, Lister Grant Bent sent me a study claiming that the osprey population in the Chesapeake Bay has dropped to the lowest level since DDT was banned in nineteen seventy two. Researchers working in the Mobjack Bay, a sub estuary of the Chesapeake Bay, are calling this year's osprey chick season a catastrophic failure. They told the Audubon Society that out of one hundred and sixty seven nests they visited in Mobjack Bay and two nearby rivers, only seventeen held live chicks. This is bad news because the Chesapeak Bay is home to the world's largest osprey population, ten to twelve thousand breeding pairs called the Chesapeake Bay home, and it would be a real shame to see those numbers decline. Ospreys are awesome birds and expert fishermen. They are the only raptors that dive talons first into the water to collect a meal, and this unique talent makes them incredibly efficient anglers. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology reports that osprays catch fish on one out of every four dives, with success rates sometimes as high as seventy percent. They only spend about twelve minutes fishing before making a catch, which is better than pretty much every human angler I've ever known. Part of that success is due to a reversible outer toe that allows them to grasp with two toes in front and two behind. Barbed pads on the soles of their bird's feet also help them grip slippery fish, and they've even been known to fly holding fish headfirst, which reduces wind resistance anyway. Osprays are cool. Scientists think they know why the population in the chest Peak is struggling. A big part of the bird's diet is composed of small fish called men Hayden. If you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know that men Hayden or bunka are heavily fished by commercial operations and turned into fish meat and fish oil. These researchers believe that the men Hayden stocks are being depleted by these commercial outfits, and so the osprey don't have enough food to feed their chicks. For their part, the men Hayden fishermen, all of whom work for a company called Omega Protein, point to a twenty nineteen report from the Marine Stewardship Council that said the men Hayden fishery is sustainable. They also note that there are many other potential causes for the osprey decline and that they haven't fished Mobjack Bay in several years. Whatever the reason for the osprey struggles, I think I can speak for everyone when I say that I hope they figure it out soon. That's cool bird to see. Go to work. Moving on to a special edition of the Legislative Desk, Legislation to wildlife management. Policy can come from state legislatures, but it more often comes from wildlife commissions. Most states have some kind of governing body that is charged with dictating hunting and fishing policies the state. These commissioners are appointed in different ways, but almost all of them hold significant power in crafting the rules and regulations we all have to live under. In Kentucky, for example, the Wildlife Commission voted back in December to ban wild hog hunting. They voted for the new policy and then task the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources to work out the specifics. Now, it looks like the department has finalized the new hunting ban. I haven't seen a copy of the rule, but officials are telling local media that all pig hunting will be banned in the state moving forward. Previously, pig hunting was discouraged, but it was an outlawed. This new rule will still allow landowners to shoot pigs if they are damaging property, but no recreational take will be allowed, and even in cases of property damaged, landowners will be encouraged to call in trappers from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. The agency justifies the ban in several ways, some of which make more sense than others. They say that hunting pigs alone isn't enough to reduce or control pig populations is true by all accounts. The Department says that hunters only take about thirty percent of the population every year, but it takes a seventy percent annual take to keep population steady. That can only be achieved through trapping, which is what the agency has been doing. Of course, if you're really trying to control pig numbers, it seems like you'd want to use every method available. If hunters take thirty percent a year, then the agency trappers would only have to take forty percent. But the Department claims that hunters push pigs to be more wary and nocturnal. I'm not sure why nocturnal pigs would be harder to trap than diurnal pigs, but I'm not a pig trapper. I do, however, think that a lot of the reasoning behind this, the Commission's reasoning and the Apartment banning pig hunting, is to avoid the growth of pig hunting culture and industry. Some landowners want to eradicate pigs, but others like having them around. Producer Jordan Sillers tells me that some towns in Texas and I'm sure in other states, host festivals in honor of wild big There's a big outfitting industry around pig hunting, not to mention all the thermal and night vision products that hit the market because of pig hunting. This makes things more difficult for biologists who understand the environmental harm posed by the swine, and for landowners who'd rather not have their ground torn up. I can see why Kentucky wants to avoid that controversy, which I think is the real reason for the band. For their part, I haven't seen much pushback from Kentucky hunters. Right now, pigs can only be found in a few counties, and I think most conservation minded hunters understand why they don't want to add pigs to the state's list of big game. In other Commission news, listener James Ormond wrote in to tell me about a few changes being considered by the Mississippi Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. The early deer season that launched last year is being proposed again this year to take place from September thirteenth to the fifteenth. This hunt is archery only, but it gives hunters a chance to take a buck still involvement. It was only allowed on private land last year, but another proposal would expand it to state and federal public land as well. Another new policy would raise the bag limit in the Southeast Deer Management Unit from two antlerless deer to three, and yet another proposal would allow hunters to wear pink along with orange. The Commission voted for each of these proposals, but the public can still weigh in for the next thirty days. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has also been busy. They voted in favor of several significant changes at their April meeting after receiving what they say was a record number of comments. First, like Mississippi, they're establishing a buck only archery deer hunt season for the first week of September to give hunters a chance at a buck still in velvet. They're also allowing straight walled cartridges to be used during muzzleloader season. The rifles cannot be semi automatic and they have to be thirty caliber or larger, but that's still a big jump forward in terms of rifle technology. Frankly, given the ballistics of some straight wall cartridges. They've basically just extended general rifle season, but the agency says they've received strong public support for the measure, so they went along with it. The black bear quota and Zone one has been increased from four hundred to four hundred and fifty bears. Duck hunters can now use motorized decoys in state owned wildlife Management areas, and there is now a twenty five shot shell limit on all WMAs. Lastly, in some great news for upland bird hunters, more WMAs are being open for quail hunting due to an increase in that species population. One proposal that did not pass due to public opposition was a requirement that all hunting dogs be outfitted with GPS callers. The proposal was made due to complaints about trespassing by hunting dogs, and the commission says they're still interested in resolving this issue quote without the need for more stringent regulations. If you love these changes, write to your commissioners and thank them. If you don't like these changes, also let the commissioners know it's too late to lodge an official comment, but it never hurts to let your representatives know how you feel. CONTACTAGFC dot com for more info. Moving on to the cross country desk, a new study from researchers in Canada claims that humans evolved our ability to run long distances as a technique for chasing down prey. The study, published last week in the journal Nature Human Behavior, claims to have found hundreds of historical accounts of people hunting animals by chasing them over very long distances. These accounts span the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries and could explain why humans are unique among primates in our ability to keep running and running and running. In fact, this ability is unique among the whole of the animal kingdom. While some animals like dogs and horses can also run long distances, humans can outpace them if given enough time. This is due to several factors. First, we're able to keep our bodies cool better than most other critters. We sweat ten times the density of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, which allows us to stay cool even in high tempts. Our lack of fur helps with that as well, and our skeletal muscles are mostly made out of fatigue resistant fibers. And you can add to that are long lower limbs, large posteriors and the rocky soundtrack. Combine all those and you got an animal tailor made for high endurance hunting. The historical records back this up. Researchers found over four hundred accounts of hunters chasing prey over long distances, including an eighteen fifty text in which Native Americans spoke of their ancestors hunting moose by running them down while wearing snowshoes. Another account from the early fifteen hundreds described another Native American tribe chasing down deer and elk in what is now California, and it's not just a historical phenomenon. Researchers also point out that these sand people in Botswana can chase down antelopes until the animals collapse of exhaustion. You may have heard of this theory before. It's actually been around for about forty years, and it really took off in two thousand and nine with the publication of the Ultra Marathon book Born to Run. As with most theories about the mists of ancient time, it has its critics. Some scientists say that our unique physique isn't due to long distance hunting, because that technique would have used too many calories. There are more efficient ways to hunt, and our ancestors would have preferred those methods to running a marathon to chase down their next meal. Others say that if long distance hunting was a commonplace, as theories suggest, we would see it more often in hunter gatherers societies. This study found eight thousand recently digitized hunting accounts, and only four hundred of those described chasing down prey over long distances. That's only about five percent of cases, which may not be enough to change the course of human evolution. Still, the fact that there are some accounts of people running down moose and elk should put most modern hunters to shame. The next time you're a tempted to complain about summoning the next ridge, just be thankful you're chasing that animal with a bow or a rifle and not just a pair of running shoes. That's all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write in to ask c A l. That's Ascal at themeateater dot com and let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. Thanks again, and I'll talk to you next week.

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