00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we Can Review with Ryan kel Kell and now here's kel. New Mexico's Attorney General, Hector Balderas, called on the New Mexico Fish and Game Commission to immediately strengthen its regulations to address waterway access in compliance with state law. As we have reported numerous times here on the Weekend Review, the New Mexico State Constitution says that New Mexico's waterways belonged to the people of New Mexico. Specifically, and I'm quoting here, unappropriated water of every natural stream, perennial or torrential within the State of New Mexico is hereby declared to belong to the public and to be subject to appropriation for beneficial use. Despite that very specific language in the New Mexico State constitut tuition, in two thousand fifteen, and this was counter to serious public outcry, a rule passed through the New Mexico House to add the additional language of non navigable waters. And then two years ago the previous Fishing Game Commission passed a rule that would allow landowners to petition to have waters that ran through their property deemed non navigable and therefore non public, non walkable, non fishable, non floatable, non publicly enjoyable. You get it. And I'm paraphrasing this whole thing because I've hit this topic like three times on the weekendview. As someone who uses waterways as a legal means of access to lots of land in this country, I need to remind you that this is not just an issue of keeping people from fishing or floating through a stretch of water. This could potentially deny access to everyone, not just New Mexicans, to state and federal lands, of which five hundred and fifty four thousand eight ers are currently landlocked and blocked from public use in New Mexico. Already, Senators, you do all. Heinrich and State Rep. Deb Halan sent a letter earlier this month to New Mexico State Game Commission Chairwoman prow Cup thanking the Game Commission for moratorium the Commission placed on the non navigable water rule, and further encouraging the Commission to reassert the rights of New Mexico citizens to access our public lands, rivers and streams. If you like to hunt, fish and explore, that's the kind of politicking we like to see. Typically, when we lose access, we never get a chance to get it back. It seems that in this case in New Mexico, we have a chance to tread back up the slippery slope of access loss to public lands and waters. So you know the drill. If you currently recreate in where you dream of going to the land of Enchantment someday to fish hunt, eat the amazing New Mexican food, look at the stars, or maybe go down to the lightning fields, call the office of the Governor Michelle Louhan and tell her or her staff as much that there is no point to go to state where that natural beauty us outdoorsy folks who are willing to spend our time and money to go see, is you know, non navigable so to speak. This week we've got dear tuberculosis, first time hunters for bands, sea urchins, and so much more. But first I'm gonna tell you that this podcast is powered by steel power equipment to make all sorts of good stuff from hand shears that I keep in my truck and used to break down game birds like turkeys and pheasants, to ripping little chainsaws that make buttery smooth cuts, which is actually really important to me now about my week every year I tried to take out a first time hunter. It may be surprising, but we actually have a lot of folks in the Meat Eater office that have not hunted before. If you fancy yourself of a hunter of any stripe, you need to consider taking out a first timer. Will it diminish your personal success in notching your tag on a bowl or a buck? Well? Quite possibly, But who cares an already successful hunter having another successful hunt? You know I've heard that story. Anyway, as I've been doing this for a long time, I thought I would share a few thoughts of mine own on the subject of teaching and taking a first time hunter out in the field. One do not utter the phrase I got them their first deer or first fish or whatever. If that is your attitude, you are doing it wrong and you may need to wait another season to be an mentor. The point of this whole thing is to facilitate the first time hunter getting their own animal, their own successes and failures. For that matter, you are just facilitating those little peaks and valleys as well as ensuring that these experiences happened safely. The goal is of course an animal in the case of hunting, but it is also more than that. Is to lay the foundation for the first tim or to be able to build toward hunting on their own. So set goals to help them do this thing you love on their own. Goals like finding animals, sneaking over ridges, wind control, best times of day, what is happening at the given time of year, animal behavior, And be clear about what you know and what you just presume to know. What you carry in your pack or pockets or having the truck, and why and why not? And it's important to keep asking yourself along the way. Is this repeatable? Is the first timer going to be able to repeat this on their own? In order to do this, make sure that the type of hunt allows for open communication. You need as the mentor to be providing an experience where questions can be asked and answered at any time. The mentor needs stacks of patience and the ability to follow through. A mentor is signing up to be a trusted resource for a long time. Do not underestimate the amount of knowledge it takes to be confident and safe around firearms and confident and safe in the outdoors, limit the input into digestible and retainable chunks of information. I firmly believe and strongly recommend one on one mentorship as the one on one scenario is the best for clear, direct communication. And finally, you're dealing with life and death. Take this seriously. Acknowledge the fun, the greatness of the outdoors, but at the end of the day around that shouldn't have been chambered a stick on a trigger plus poor barrel control or awareness, and the experience alters lives forever. It's serious stuff. I'll tell you one screw up I made this past week. I put us in a situation where the first timer was not able to fully participate in field dressing and feel butchering of the deer. Yes, they were extenuating circum stances. Not only was it the last day of the hunt, but it was potentially the last day of the hunting season for the hunter. That knowledge of the last day, stacked on top of all the successes and failures that we've had to that point, led me to kind of put us in this position of being too far from the truck, too close to dark, impending wet, cold sleet, storm coming in, and you know that's my big regret. Lots of learning on all sides, which is so fulfilling for you know, the first time around the mentor, there's a great shot under pressure, all sorts of winds. But cutting open your first animal is so pivotal. It's hard to say, but I wish I could get a do over on that part. So again, as a mentor, you need to pick a spot that allows you to provide the whole learning Enchilada and I have failed at that. I would love to tell you about the whole story, but that's her story, not mine. All I can tell you is what I just did. I will tell you one more thing. The mule deer buck that this first timer killed had actually been shot the year previous, as near as I could tell. Anyway high shot. The bullet passed through the top of the back above the spine. When I was parting up the buck, there was a hole through those tall finbones kind of on your cervical to thoracic vertebrae there above the spine, creating a hole about the size of a fifty cent piece. The buck moved fine, had no visible signs of injury. He was chasing the ladies around just looked like any old healthy deer. So if anyone out there was agonizing over a buck shot high in eastern Montana last year, he made it until this year. Moving on, I think everyone is aware that the state of California has officially banned the production and sale of furs effective January one, two thousand twenty three. As previously reported here on the Weekend Review, in order to trap animals at perspective, trapper must buy a license. Those license fees help pay for wildlife habitat and management, which the effects of this band you know that will be felt, especially as the burden to trap has placed solely on the State of California and US fish and wildlife, which means we'll all be paying for it. Another interesting economic impact consider is the fact that much of the fur in use is actually farmed. Mink farmers, for instance, raised the small weasels for their pelts. Wisconsin happens to be the mink producing capital of the US, but you didn't know that, and bands of fur could kill the mink farmers way of life. Mink farmers, according to Wisconsin Public Radio, aren't concerned necessarily with a warm weather state like California, but they are concerned that if animal rights activists can shut down fur, then they will be able to shut down anything related to animal goods piece by piece. The thought of raising an animal just for the fur, I'll admit to me, isn't that appealing. But is it that different than raising animals just for the meat. We do have uses for just about everything that comes off a chicken or a hog or a beef, but the bulk of what I'm typically in it for is the meat. As I sit on a leather couch and tell you this, it's a complex issue, but I don't think it matters to the animal, and I like my meats and my leather goods and whatnot. On top of that, I look forward to one of my pals, Stephen Ronella's famous beaver pelt hats just in time for ice fishing season. One thing I do know is a good friend of mine, one of my mentors, actually put himself through college by supplying jack rabbits to a mink farm outside of Greeley, Colorado. He had himself a pretty good gig going as jack rabbit populations operate on a boom bust cycle, as then they go from lean years of very very few rabbits to ultra fat years of way too many. And this friend of mine happened to be going to the University of Northern Colorado when the land was booming with jack's. He would drive all night collecting jack rabbits, then dropped them off in the morning to the mink farmer and had the class. Everything went well until it was discovered that the mink farmer had also been selling the would be mink food to the university food service. Once that news broke, my friend was out of a job. I had always wondered what would have happened if he could have cut the farmer out of the deal. Onto the health desk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning that deer carrying tuberculosis can transmit TB to humans. A seventy seven year old hunter who had no exposure to people or countries with TB was diagnosed with the disease in two thousand seventeen. The hunter had been exposed to mico Bacterium bovis, which can be found in deer, bison, elk, and cattle. This bacteria can cause TB when spread to humans and it was likely inhaled during the process of gutting an infected deer. According to Purdue University, the clinical signs of bovine TB recognizable to hunters would be small to large white, tan or yellow lesions kind of look like big pustules on the lungs, rib cage or in the chest cavity, but lesions are not always visible or present. Bovine TB makes up less than two percent of tuberculosis cases in the US, and prior to this Michigan case, there had only been one confirmed dear to human transmission. In that case, it was thought that the hunter had an open wound when field dressing the infected animal. Bovine TB has economic effects on state it's cattle industry and due to the white tailed deer's ability to move freely from pasture to pasture while potentially carrying the communicable disease from cattle herd, cattle herd either through direct contact or shared feeding, could have serious repercussions, as the U s d A label states TV free Perdue University suggests that eliminating baiting and supplemental feeding of wildlife is a necessary step, and stopping bovine TB Michigan. It is obviously going to be hard to detect bovine TB if lesions are not visible, but it could be a good idea to wear gloves. I recommend the three millimeter painters latex gloves, not like the food specific latex gloves for field dressing. I also call them like my Serial Killer gloves, because you know that series Dexter. I think that's what he's wearing. And if you're aware of bovine TB being present in the area that you hunt, you may want to take the extra precaution of wearing a face mask. Bovine TB is curable in humans, although the treatment includes the possible twelve months of antibiotics. And on top of that, we all remember Val Kilmer's character of Doc Holiday, who was infected with tuberculosis and the epic Western Tombstone. Johnny Ringo calls him a longer nobody wants that. I'm the Hunckle. There good news coming out of the House. The North American Wetlands Conservation Extension I Act passed through the House Natural Resources Committee. This would reauthorize the program up to sixty million dollars annually through the Wetlands Conservation Extension Act provides matching funds for wetlands habitat that have been used in all fifty states, granting more than one point seven three billion dollars since nine. That's three point five seven billion counting the matching funds. This is a great if you're into things like clean water or tasty things like fat mallard ducks. So once again, call your congressmen and women and tell them to see the North American Wetlands Conservation Act or HR nine to five through the Senate. And don't forget to thank those folks on the House Natural Resources Committee and let them know that they have a lot more work to do as well. The repeal of Clean Water Act protections for intermittent streams and wetlands makes acts like this one that much more critical. And buy your dang duck stamp. Apparently we're moving on here. It has been very tough to find pure bred alpine dingos. Dingoes are a wild dog and they appear in the fossil record only to about thirty years ago. The first European accounts of dingos in Australia include them living seemingly with their aborigines, not necessarily as pets or companions, but as mutualistic campers. Of the three species of dingos in Australia, the ol pine dingo is the most rare and is currently in danger of extinction. So it was pretty surprising when a genetically pure alpine dingo apparently fell from the sky, or that's the theory anyway. A stray puppy suddenly appeared in a backyard in one dilagon a town in the Australian state of Victoria, with what appeared to be claw marks on its back. The puppy that first thought to be a stray dog, was eventually taken to a local vet and apparently DNA tested. One of the main threats the existence of alpine dingos is interbreeding with domestic dogs. Apparently it is rare to find dingos of any kind that don't have domestic dog DNA, although life in the wild I am sure is preferable to any animal. This male dingo, who escaped the talents of a raptor survived some sort of a fall, will apparently land safely in the alpine dingo breeding program, which, you know, if you're going to be captive, that can't be the worst situation to be in. Moving over to the Californi in your desk, the purple sea urchin is proliferating at an alarming rate. This is not your typical uny sea urchin, as they tend to be less meaty, but I'll get to that in a minute. Purple sea urchins thrive on bul kelp, which is one of the fastest growing plants on earth, but the kelp is being decimated by the seemingly faster growing urchins. Quick side note, bul kelp is really tasty stuff. One matt Ronella pickled the stocks of the bull kelp and we used it like you would pickles and tuna salad, except for it was salmon. But anyway, it was great. I always thought that the bull kelp, which has this big hollow light bulb type end to the stock, would win over some friends if you pickled that bulb in its entirety and used it as the vessel for like a seafood dip or a caesar a bloody mary. But you may never get the chance to steal my idea if we can't figure out purple sea urchin. Kelp for us of all types support a huge swath of biological to birsty. With the loss of nearly of California's bul kelp along two hundred and seventeen miles of coast, many other species, including humans, are feeling the hit. Abalone fishermen, for instance, faced closed season last year. That fishery alone was valued at forty four million dollars. Kelp forests are safety zones for many fish species to hang out in your spear. Fishermen are losing their habitat to hunt. The canopies of the kelp forest blocks sunlight, creating shade, and they break up wave action. Actually, it's somewhat inhibiting the effects of erosion on some coastlines. This important stuff, is what I'm saying. Don't think this is just a California problem either. The purple urchins are crawling their way north. One Oregon reef count last year reported three d fifty million of the spiny invaders, a ten thousand percent increase since two thousand fourteen. This scenario is a perfect storm of swords. Warm waters have inhibited the normal growth of the bull kilt. Sea stars, the purple urchin's natural o predator, have mysteriously declined due to an unknown disease, and the purple urchins were off to the races filling the void. Reports from the associated press relay the fact that the purple urchin maybe their own enemy, as they are now competing with each other for a very limited food source. But the impact on the ecosystem is becoming severe. Some restaurants have started utilizing this resource, and if I were looking to harvest in those waters, I would too. To be clear, human consumption likely will not have an impact on this urchin. Again, three fifty million on one reef. But if you, like so many folks love the catching part of fishing, the purple urchin fishery maybe just the thing for you. Speaking with renowned California chef Joshua Skeins of the three That's three Michelin Stars says On and his other San Francisco restaurant venture, the Hangler Seafood Restaurant, chef Skene recommends this preparation for the prickly kelp eater. So get your pen and pencil out, chuck the purple sea urchin, serve the meat on the shell on ice, enjoy. Just about anybody can follow that one. That's all I got for you this week, I hope you've enjoyed Col's weekend review. Remember to tell a friend and leave me a review by hitting that furthest right hand star. If you think I screwed up or have missed anything, or need to go tell somebody about something else right in at ask cal a s K C A L. At the Meat eater dot com. I'll talk to you next week.

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