00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediator's World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's We Can Review with Ryan kel Kell and now Here's kel Drama and the Deer Stand. Two Michigan brothers had to lean on the assistance of a Newego County conservation officer. Newego County is located kind of on the first knuckle of your ring finger if you adhere to the Mitten State reference of Michigan, just north of Grand Rapids, if you don't acquiring to Michigan Live. Conservation Officer Mike Well started to investigate the family dispute after he received a hunter harassment complaint. Hunter harassment is described by the State of Michigan as Michigan law prohibits individuals from obstructing or interfering with the lawful taking of animals. The Department of Natural Resources supports hunting as a legitimate form of recreation and as a useful tool in the management of the wildlife resource. Michigan conservation officers are committed to protecting hunters from the intentional disruption of the hunting experience. Hunter harassment is a misdemeanor offense in Michigan. When conservation officer Wells spoke with the accusing brother prior to Michigan's deer Opener. Officer Wells was given evidence of the other brother, the accused trying to well, I'll use the legally's provided by the State of Michigan. He was attempting to obstruct or interfere with the lawful taking of wildlife by using a backpack sprayer like you see people use for weeds to spray what was later determined to be a product called liquid Fence deer and rabbit repellent. You know liquid Fence, the brand with such slogans as hit them in the nose and they won't come back, uh, invisible barrier, clear results, and my personal favorite, give no admittance no matter how cute. Slogan like that could get you a government contract on South anyway, the accusing brother identified the backpack sprayer as his brother and identified the location of the stand on us for a service ground next to the family deer camp. The accused brother was interviewed by a conservation officer Wells as he was attempting to illegally hunt over bait on the morning of Michigan's firearms Opener. Probably not a good start. The accused brother admitted that he had sprayed his brother's blinds, but only because his brother was quote intentionally cutting off the deer by hunting the public land next to camp. He also admitted that he let his emotions get the best of him and apologized, not entirely clear if he apologized to the brother or the conservation officer. Either way, a warrant request has been submitted for both hunter harassment and baiting deer when prohibited. Hopefully that's the last uncomfortable family situation Conservation Officer Welles has to deal with anytime soon, Probably not the last for the brothers and their deer camp as well. Come into Christmas this week, We've got a bunch more on Michigan, the current status of Campbell Lake, and maybe why you shouldn't to come. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. I actually helped out a first time hunter on the back forty property we have in the state of Michigan. As Mark Kenyon would say, the back forty is stingy with its deer. Going out with someone who has never hunted before is great even when you aren't seeing deer. If you're doing it right, there's so much learning to be done that you really need some time in the woods before deer actually get involved. Time in the woods is always a win in my opinion. You can see all this first time perspective as well as where we ended up on the Back forty for the entirety of the season. Check it out on episode eight, only found on our meat eat or YouTube channel. I just watched episode six and seven. It's really good stuff. I even got to use a brand new Steel Firm Boss model chainsaw and help Mark buck up a bunch of firewood for his house thing rips. Just like all my awesome steel power equipment. Get a chance, you get a hanker and do some work on your own. Check out steal dot com s t I h L dot com and check out their amazing line of power tools that cut clean, quick and easy to help you out. Whether you consider yourself a FIM boss or not, I don't, but I still used it and it worked great. Looking at the Back forty property and placing it in the context of what I know, which is Montana or Idaho white tail, it would be the most overrun white tail spot you could imagine. There wasn't much feed in late December but the property has an overwhelming white tail feel to it. For this Montana kid a swamp runs through the middle lots of tall cover and fallow fields and get a mix of young and old hardwoods, even some brush. Despite this, very few deer, which was perplexing until I looked at the back forty in the context of a white tail state. Every property around our project piece has been managing for white tail for a while, and it appeared post strut those neighbor deer didn't have much need to move on to our chunk, which of course starts you to think, what do we need. We have cover and water, so maybe we need a ton of food sources. But the neighbors have that and it's already been established, so maybe we need higher quality food sources and better stuff and more of it. And my mind kind of kept going on from there until I thought of what Eisenhower said, beware the military industrial complex, in this case, the white tail industrial complex, where each property is its own nation, creating buying, stacking up arms in the form of specialty feeds and food plots, altering their landscapes in a way that could funnel dear channel, dear deter dear from doing whatever they don't want to do or hide deer, attracting supplements, and above all serious white tail business, leading me to ask where does it all end? Although the back forty was again stingy with its deer, a few of the neighbors we ran into were not stingy with their dear. They offered to let us all come out and shoot white tailed does, which was very generous but again got me to thinking, likely is not. Since Mark is a trusted guy, we got the invite, we had an end, so to speak. It was for white tail does, which are more plentiful than bucks. These folks typically don't divert a ton of time, energy and money into these properties without having bucks on their mind and big ones. The natural flow of generosity would likely be that the owner and the owner's immediate family would probably have the DIBs on the bucks on the property, then maybe some close friends and possibly once in a while a special case, which I totally get. That's how it goes again. I've seen the work that gets put into these properties firsthand, and people naturally want to reap what they sell. But what if eventually these properties build and build and the price of things go up. One could foresee that eventually only the inner circle would be able to hunt, kill, and harvest antlerd animals. Not a big deal at all if you are truly just interested in meat, and again in you have the access to get that meat. This theoretical situation I just spun up a kind of white tail vending machine of sorts, would be a transactional hunting experience. Show up, get your deer, which, to be clear, I have done on the uncle's alfalfa field many times after fruitless or frustrating seasons. Show up, get a door, two, getting the groceries, so to speak, and I'm on my way. The benefit to hunting both antlers and meat is it forces a hunter to be more selective. By being selective, you could call yourself a trophy hunter. If you want waiting and passing animals up until that animal meets whatever criteria you've come up with and you intersect with that animal, you ultimately will not be as successful. Being selective is for those with the luxury of time. In order to be successful, you have to spend more time in the woods, which is a phenomenally awesome benefit to being quote unsuccessful. Anyway, that type of thinking sure makes me appreciate and value the public land opportunities we have and the failures and successes that can be found on them. I am not aiming to offend anyone currently managing for deer on their properties. This is just an honest bit of pondering I was doing on our chunk of private property there in Michigan, thinking where does this all go? What's the end game? Moving on to our baiting desk with an update, I've been talking about Michigan, so of course I need to talk about baiting in Michigan, as some Weekend review listeners love the topic. Uh, here we go. I asked a couple of Native Michiganders as to their thoughts in the bating band. Before we get into their quote, it's all lay of the situation out in very simple terms. People who are probating or not averse debating seemed to fall on the argument that deer have so much natural contact with each other that laying out a bait pile will not spread disease any more than dear interaction without baiting. People who do not like baiting point to the fact that the U S D A, U S G S and a bunch of other state agencies state that at baiting helps spread diseases like bovine TB, c w D, and brucellosis. Each state management agency has their own position on where, when, and if you can feed wildlife. Meat Eater's resident white tail addict, Mark Kenyon has this to say, quote, I have nothing against legal baiting, but I'll always air on the side of caution and science when it comes to disease concerns. Yes, dear come into contact with each other all the time, presenting ample opportunity for the spread of disease like c w D, But studies have shown that baiting can speed disease transmission even further. If the regulation or banning of baiting can help negate that to any degree, it seems worthwhile. In my eyes the way I see it, the long term health and viability of the resource is ultimately more important than any hunting tool, tactic, or tradition. Stephen Ronella has this to say, at the time of me writing this, I don't have any particular gripe with dear baiting. What would change my mind is research demonstrating that baiting does in fact initiate contact between deer that would otherwise not intermingle, either directly or through immediate chains of association, not through sharing betting areas or playing grab bass during the rut, or hanging around scrapes are coming and going from corn fields down the same trail, or yarding up in cedar swamps during the winter, or hanging around the farmer's haystacks and the deep snow. That seems like it would be an easy study to design. Who knows, Maybe it's being done right now. But I'll bring up a different thing about baiting that doesn't get talked about much. When I was a kid growing up in Michigan, our reliance on deer bait during archery season prevented us from becoming good bow hunters. Instead of learning beautiful intricacies of natural deer patterns and movements, we just learned that they'll come and eat carrots if you dump them into the woods. In the end, I think we would have killed more deer and bigger deer if we hadn't been so damn lazy and unimaginative at the time. I wouldn't have liked the state telling me not to use bait, but I would have appreciated hearing about it from someone with a little common sense. Now, as many listeners keyed into my position, certainly leads towards the do not bait in areas with disease or suspected disease side of things. But I don't have a dog in this fight. When I just hunted in Michigan, I didn't use bait. I likely will not go use bait anywhere else. It's just not my style. But I'm not condemning you if you do. I just think, you know, you should think about the whole picture. I rely on the people we call experts, and disease transmission work is in fact thoroughly researched from what I have read, primarily from the Bacterial Diseases of Livestock Research Unit, National Animal Disease Center, Agricultural Research Service U s d A. Additionally, the Alabama Wildlife Federation has a great paper where they have compiled an incredible amount of peer review. You would work from biologists, zoologists, episoologists, all the folks that went to school much longer than I did, complete with all of their sources on the subject. It is beyond doubt that deer can and do transmit disease in shared feed situations, Whether that is in a captive facility, a feed lot, a backyard feeder with no hunting in mind, or a bait pile intended to attract dear for the purposes of hunting. However, I'm not found a study that says baiting initiates contact between deer that would have not otherwise intermingled. I think that one would be tough to prove in a natural setting. But again, I'm just trying to let you know where I'm getting my information. Now for the update currently in the state of Michigan, and this from the d NR website. D n R offices around the state continue to field questions from people confused about the status of the Baiting and Feeding Band for deer and elk in the Lower Peninsula and the core c w D surveillance area in the Upper Peninsula. The DNR wants to let all hunters know that the band has not changed and remains fully in effect. Now, a much modified baiting bill aimed at lifting the band has been approved by the Senate in the House and it's currently sitting on the Governor's desk. The governor has promised to veto the legislation should it come to her desk. It's on her desk now, which means for all of you who want to bait or don't want to bait, you have to make the governor's phone ring and let her staff know your thoughts. If you have to borrow phone. Make sure you wash your hands frequently and cover your mouths before you cough. It is Christmas and you'll be mixing it up with a lot of people and social feeding situations. Moving with an update on the tricky issue of Campbell Lake and Anchorage. As previously discussed here on the Weekend Review episode twenty three, Evil h o A S steelhead closures and bear spray. The question was is Campbell Lake public and can it be accessed by the public? Sure an answer yes, which has caused for applause. The real and more complicated answer is and this is a quote directly from the Alaska Landmine that first covered this story. Although the state and the municipality of Anchorage have now confirmed the legality of public access and use of Campbell Lake, existing access is clearly deficient for routine public use. The easeman on the south side of the lake remains undeveloped and encumbered by a private floatplane dock, while the eastman on the north side of the lake appears to be blocked by a house. According to the joint statement, if you are interested, you can access Campbell Lake by boating or skiing into it via Campbell Creek, landing in an aircraft, accessing the lake via an easeman on the south side of the lake, or accessing the lake via an easement on the north side of the lake. The document states that the Department of Natural Resources, which manages section line ease months, has never authorized private obstructions of these ease months. That's the latest on Campbell Lake. I'll get you up to date as soon as I hear more. I'm sure we will again. You can see the entirety of this story by looking up the Alaska Landmine dot com, well journalism, and the home to Explosive Alaska News. The reason I feel it is so necessary to cover easman issues is because so much of our easy access to public resources like Campbell Lake, for an example, U S Forest Service ground BLM, rivers and streams in the US is through established ease months. We need to pay attention to these issues when they arise. Wherever they arise, it could happen in your backyard next, or I guess, in the case of Campbell Lake, through your backyard if you've chosen to ignore an easeman. Moving on to our anthropology desk, this one will make you think about all that gum stuck on the bottom of park benches in college deaths. Fifty seven hundred year old piece of chewed birch tar has been analyzed, revealing a bunch of cool stuff about the chew or the so called gum, which was found in the construction side of the Pherremon Belt fixed linked tunnel which will connect the Danish island of Lowland with the German island of Fairmont. The birch gum perfectly preserved that yours DNA, revealing that she was a she with quote a striking combination of dark hair, dark skin, and blue eyes. Researchers have named her Lola. Lola likely came from hunter gatherers from continental Europe, and she likely could not process milk. This combination apparently has been documented before with other European hunter gatherers, including a ten thousand year old British skeleton called cheddar Man. When one group refers to their specimen as both striking and names her Lola and the other as cheddar man. That may say more about the researchers than their specimens or best woman in the case we're talking about right now again. Through the analysis of the birch gum, Lola had been eating duck and hazel nuts, which sounds like pretty good diet to me. However, if you are a gum chewer when perhaps you should be brushing instead, it may dismay you to hear that the Danish team identified bacteria similar to plaque in ginge alice. Additionally, they found strepped caucus pneumonia and epstein bar virus, which brings the weekend review back to herpies. Epstein Bar is one of the most common forms of herpes and is often associated with mono and a host of other things that do not sound like any fun anyway. Birch sap was used as an adhesive of sorts or a bonding agent for the building and fixing of all sorts of things, and this practice of chewing sap has been documented all over the world. It didn't just start with demons chewing gum, meaning all over the world we could potentially have these little chewed up time capsules that give us this very clear window into individual peoples. This could lead to a bunch of cool things, but of course it will also bring up a bunch of questions. The question you may be asking yourself right now, and maybe you should, is what will people find out about you if you're leaving your gum around? So to you on that, This episode, which is episode thirty four of Col's Weekend Review, is coming out just before the Christmas week, which is too late for all the current call to actions we need from all of you as Christmas gifts. Before this even comes out, I'm gonna hit those really hard on other formats, so pay attention, as this won't be an irregular thing down the road. What you need to do when you do here this is go out and enjoy our public lands and wildlife. Breathe that clean air, and be thankful we haven't. Additionally, I have a great surprise for all of you in high school and college classes that deal with history, ecology, civics. I have many teachers, professors and professors that have written in saying that they are giving various forms of extra credit to those of you listening to Col's We can review on your own time. I'm not gonna name these people individually, suffice it to say they're all over the country. It's you may want to bring this up. Don't take this stuff for granted. Fact check me and let me know what I messed up, what's going on in your neck of the woods, what I got right, what I got wrong? Just interesting stuff. I appreciate it. And what's more is I appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening on behalf of everyone here at meat Eater, Mary Christmas, happy holidays, whatever you celebrate, whether it's just time off for time with family, get those family members outside, appreciate nature and maybe share Cow's we can review, Tell them to give it a listen and download, and if you are appreciating me, leave me a review. Hit that furthest right hand star and right in at a s K C A L at the meat eater dot com. That's asked cow at the meat eater dot com.