00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediator's World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we can review with Ryan kel Kelly and now here's kel Hey. Why does a male apossum have a forked penis because the female apossum has a bifurcated vagina. Of course, I honestly don't know why apossums are built this way, but it does sound fitting if you think about it. The apossum is the largest marsupial found in the Western hemisphere, and it is the only marsupial found north of Mexico. Mexico, on the other hand, has seven marsupials to North America's one. Apossums are known for a defense mechanism brought on by stress. They emit a foul odor from their anal glands and appere comatose. To play possum is, of course, to play dead. Everybody knows that one, So here a couple of apossum facts that you may not know. The possum or a possum has a total of fifty teeth, which is a lot likely. The first European description of the apossum was in sixteen eleven by the brief Jamestown inhabitant William strakey strike, he said, and quote beast in bigness of a pig and in taste alike, they must have produced a big possum in Jamestown. The gestation period of a joey, which is a generic baby marsupial name, in this case a joey a possum, is only thirteen or fourteen days. The newborn crawls into the pouch, and if the youngster finds a tea, it will be wean as in not relying on mother's milk, between seventy and a hundred and twenty five days, which, when you consider the life expectancy of a wild possum, which is less than two years, is a lot of time dedicated of carrying and feeding young. Roughly one six of the female allopossums life for one litter. Apossums have surprisingly wide diets, but what makes them a pretty darned good neighbor is that they will eat an estimated five thousand ticks per season. Considering my history with ticks and tickbourn illness, I wouldn't mind having a few apossums around in the spring. One more apossum fact for you. Apossums have a particular molecule or peptide in their blood that can neutralize snake venom. When tested, the North American possum peptide worked against both the western diamondbacked rattlesnake and the Russell vipers venom, a poisonous snake native to India. Another interesting bit of possum history, the folks from Peta People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals lobby to take down the loftiest of apossum festivities, the Possum Drop in Andrew's, North Carolina. Brasstown, North Carolina, as everyone knows, is the typical center of possum events, Brasstown being the unofficial possum capital of the US and the original site of the Possum Drop. The event was started by Clay logan local proprietor of Clay's Corner Store, who quote wanted to draw some attention that wouldn't get him thrown in jail anyway. In this region of North Carolina, New Year's is rung in by partying under a possum hoisted high above the crowd in a plexiglass box, just like the ball in Times Square. The possum is lowered to a countdown at the stroke of midnight. Now you may be defensive, thinking what's wrong with people raising a little cane on New Year's And the answer is nothing. But here, in this case, people are raising a live possum to the top of the Cane Law Firm building, so you know it's different. Peter obtained a video of the event and pasted it to their YouTube page, garnering such comments as I was preparing for this possum to be hurled out of the cage above the crowd, but they literally raised it up and down and I was dropped from a forty story building once in a device they call an elevator, and I thought they would actually drop the possum. They just lowered it down. And misleading title and anticlimactic and you get the gist kind of telling of the people that tune into the PA YouTube channel, It's like they want to see something bad, and you know, this probably isn't the way a possum wants to spend a day, be it New Year's or not. But this is oddly the only congressionally endorsed possum event in the United States. You can thank North Carolina's former Congressman Keith Shooler for that. You can find more on the former congressman under an article titled years Ago, the Redskins picked the wrong QB. That one's in the Washington Post. The most disturbing part of this situation, aside from just messing with wildlife, is that the state of North Carolina actually passed a series of bills around two thousand thirteen, including the quote a Possum Right to Work Act or SP sixty and the Clay County of Awesome Exclusion Law that apparently briefly suspended trapping laws and wildlife protection surrounding the event, which gang I just have to say, North Carolina is a big state. I find it hard to believe lawmakers in that state don't have anything better to do. Aside from that, you North Carolinians, look at all the awesome facts I just rattled off about a possums prehensile tails naturally containing anti venom, are only marsupial, tastes like a pig, and takes care of five thousand ticks that could be sucking on your blood. Not to mention again the ever popular uh you know, bifurcated genitalia. If you think about it, we should be raising these creatures up in celebration. Let's just make sure they're comfortable when we do it. You may be saying at this point, geez cal, what is with all the possum facts? Where did this come from? The answer is A listener sent in a video of an apossum picking ticks off of the head of a white tailed deer and asked the question is this tool use The answer is, of course no. The apostum is not a tool. It is an animal, and therefore a deer letting the apossum pick the ticks off of its head is an example of symbiotic relationship mutual is um. The apossum gets a meal delivered in the form of ticks, and the deer gets rid of annoying parasites. Then I, you know, found the rest of this stuff digging around. So you're welcome this week Australia lawbreakers, mountain goats and so much more. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. My week is powered by Steel Power Equipment, the maker of all fantastic things that cut, spray, snap, sheer, and occasionally blow your yard and lawn clean. That's just in addition to their line of both gas and battery powered chainsaws. Give him look, I sure like them. As it is still waterfowl season, I rolled out to my ma's place outside of Billings still just an incredible amount of geese flying around, none of which wanted to come sit in the field, But through a combination of calling and flagging, I managed to persuade a few to come check out my dozen decoys. Which man dozen decoys does not look like a lot of birds. Maybe been a little undergunned anyway. Flagging, which is waving a black flag or a black flag in the shape of a goose in order to get the attention of passing birds, is a technique. I find it's gone a little out of style. I don't see it that often, but that may be because the folks I see with giant goose spreads is and lots of decoys also have spots that the birds actually won't be in and find it unnecessary. Anyway, A morning of laying in the field under a pile of old grass hay resulting in three geese, one of which was a lesser as in a smaller goose for our purposes, and two were quite large. I cleaned the geese like I do a lot of my ducks. I plucked breast and thigh and filet the meat off the bone, leaving the skin on. I wrapped and froze a couple of breasts and the thighs are currently in the suvie, making a comb feet. There's a great way to do suvie as you can either leave the skin on the birds and cook them in their own fat, or if you want to skin the thighs and legs, you can add only a couple of spoonfuls of the fat of your choice. Either way of cooking in the bag is much cleaner and way more hands off than simmering a vat of fat for hours in the oven around the stove top. The whole fatty pouch of goose, legs and thighs can be thrown directly in the freezer as is. Then when you want them, it's nice to put them on a cookie sheet on top of a cooling rack and heat them up until the fat drips off. Then you can use the pulled meat on anything, and being as it's cooked in fat, it will not disappoint anyone. I also cooked a whole breast skin on by salting and scoring the skin so the fat would melt off in order to melt the fat, I placed the breast skin side down in a cold pan and brought it up too hot. Then flip the breast and seared the skin less side. Then I threw this in a bag in the suvie. I guess if you're not hip to suvie, look it up. It's a French word for crock pot, I believe. Anyway, brought the breast up two d thirty four degrees over the course of about two hours, then took it out of the bag, browned it so it looked real pretty in the leftover goose fat, and served at like a gorgeous piece of beef. Eating this was a mental treat. Your tongue said beef, but the mind knew that this medium rare, delicious, nous previously honked, not mood. You can find Danielle pruett steakhouse goose recipe at the meat eater dot com. I think it's worth a shot. One piece of critical information before we get down to more news. The new Meat Eater off air live tour tickets are now available at the meat eater dot com. Pick a location and come visit. Stephen Ronnella Joannas Patellis and myself and a bunch of special guests along the way. This year, the events will not be broadcasting anyway, and there will only be sixt V I P tickets sold per venue. These events are in incredibly fun. I hope we hope to see you in San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, d C, Pittsburgh. Come out, get loud, and have some fun. Moving on to the tippy top of Grand Teton National Park, many of you have written in very concerned with the lethal removal of mountain goats from the central portion of Grand Teton National Park. An area closure began January twelve, starting on the south side of the south middle Grand Teton mount owen t wanat Mountain Peaks, on the west by the park boundary, on the east by the western shores of Jackson Lee, String and Jenny Lakes, and on the north by Rolling Thunder Mountain and Eagle Rest Peaks. In between all that stuff, it's all closed. No public access will be allowed in the area during this time, the park said in a news release. And if you won't listen to Cal's weeken review, there's gonna be signs posted at the big access points. The issue here is rocky mountain bighorn sheep. Although iconic or kind of sissies, they're very susceptible to disease. They like beating each other up, but they kind of get pushed around by other critters, such as the mountain goat. Now, the mountain goat is native to North America, but it's not native to the Teton Range. The goats apparently migrated into the Teton Range from the neighboring Snake River Range. We transplanted mountain goats into the Snake River Range because a they're fun to check out and be their incredible animals to hunt and eat. At this point, the mountain goats do overlap with the sheep, meaning they're competing for food and posing a potential risk of disease. M ov or restrain thereof is incredibly crippling to sheep. Oftentimes, this disease is incredibly hard to eradicate from a sheep herd and the effects can be irree versible. Nobody wants to see these goats killed. Costs a lot of money to capture and transport the goats elsewhere, and this is the option the park has at its disposal. Now it costs money to leafy remove goats from a helicopter or shoot goats from helicopters as well. Many people in the hunting community have voiced their frustrations over the fact that hunters pay money, sometimes lots of money, just for the opportunity to hunt and hopefully harvest a mountain goat, and here are the Feds using our money to kill them. Well, there's a difference. Ay, this is a national park gets lots of visitors, which is why they're using helicopters at this time of year where the goats have retreated up to their winter range. Is extremely difficult, extremely dangerous to go find goats in their winter range. That's why a lot of goat tags don't get filled. Even in November. There's a lot of traffic in Grand Teton National Park. So the odds of having a controlled hunting season for the general public even in the fall, all when all the other interest groups out there are overlapping, is very very low, And in my opinion, it's just a bad pr situation for hunting if that were to be allowed. Because the main point here is this is not a hunt. This is an eradication, and there's a big difference between hunting and eradicating. So what has been determined to be the best for the native wildlife and habitat is eradication of a non native species, not the hunting of a non native species. Keep in mind, I love mountain goats. I've been on several hunts, and I encourage anyone to go have that experience. But hunting and eradication, again, are not one and the same. To quote First Light founder Kent Caruth, eradication maybe a job, but it's not my job. Moving on to the law enforcement desk, Texas Parks and Wildlife makes a whopper of a fine stick. A North Padre Island recreational boat captain was issued seventeen citations for going over the limit on red snapper last worth of July. An additional thirty citations were later issued for failing to complete wildlife resource documents after a tip was received regarding the captain in question, suggesting that he was going over the daily bag limit of four red snapper per person per day. Game wardens located the vessel near North Padre Island was seven anglers on board when the boat was searched. They discovered forty five red snapper in possession. The captain was convicted and find more than twenty six thousand dollars that's five and seventy eight dollars per fish, moving over to Kansas and sticking with the crime beat. Apparently, the state of Kansas and a landowner have been in a feud over the ownership of a deer Shoulder Mountain. The fourteen point o Sage County buck is the second largest typical white tailed deer in the state. The buck was killed in two thousand eleven on Tim Nadow's property illegally a poacher who apparently shot it out the window of his vehicle with a nine millimeter handgun at fifty yards, which is see shooting the pistol packing. Poacher eventually had to show off as stolen buck, and did so by placing it in a big buck contest in Topeka, where it was seized by wildlife officials in two thousand twelve, who must have gotten a tip. At this point, the landowner sought out a salvage permit for the buck, and, apparently being denied, appealed to the governor sometime in two thousand thirteen for the deer Then, in two thousand fourteen, the Kansas state legislature passed a bill granting landowners the ability to claim animal parts taken illegally from their land. However, this bill was not retroactive, meaning that what was in the past did not apply. Further, Department of Parks and Wildlife found more reason to deny and to do when they found that the property in which the buck was illegally taken actually belonged to Nadu's mother, who was not making the claim. Now at this point, I'm just gonna give you my opinion. Keep in mind this as an ownership of property rights type of situation. I get very at odds when situations like this arise with wild animals being argued as property. My altruistic view of wildlife in North America is that states managed the animals by collecting accurate data for health and population. Then they say how many animals can be proactively taken as in not killed by accident or winter kill. I'm talking hunting, of course. The buck was killed fifty yards from a road on the corner of th Street and Wanta Maker Road during what I think is possibly the best day of the rut November eleven taking a look at on X and landownership. If indeed this is where the deer was taken, this corner has several property owners around it, and if you think about how much a deer moves a buck deer moves during the rut, they put on a lot of miles. It would be hard to say that this buck spent any more time on nadus property or Nadu's mother's property than any of the other landowner's property if you just take into consideration where the buck was killed. So based off that, what constitutes legal claimer ownership If it's just a finder's keeper scenario. The state found the illegally killed deer at the big Buck contest in Topeka, no matter if you think the buck belongs to the landowner or the State of Kansas. Here's what happened, a possible happy ending if you believe in the free market. The landowner outbid a representative of Bass pro Shops in a closed auction consisting of two bidders. The price sixteen thousand and one dollars. Proceeds go to wildlife in the State of Kansas. Right or wrong, I do not know, but that is what happened. Congrats tim to do moving on but sticking with crime only this time. The crime may be in progress as of this recording. As previously mentioned here on the Weekend Review, the State of Minnesota Department of Matural Resources issued a temporary moratorium on the transport of farmed deer in the state after the most recent discovery of a dead captive white tailed dough and confirmation of cause of death is c w D or chronic wasting disease. The temporary order was imposed on December twenty three, two thousand nineteen, and is scheduled to expire January. Minnesota Department and Natural Resources is currently working with the Minnesota Board of Animal Health to track pass movements of deer in and out of the farm facility where the eight year old dough was found dead and confirmed with c w D. These measures are being taken in order to prevent the further spread of the disease. Keep in mind, a deer on a truck moves a heck of a lot faster than a deer on the hoof. Now for the crime, a captive servant farmer who raises selectively bred monster white tail bucks has broken the transportation moratorium, insisting that his contractual obligation to the Minnesota Sportsman Show is more important than the transportation band. His business is based on producing deer lure attractants and selling the experience of shooting is farmed deer. Because this gets confusing, I'm gonna get refer to these farm deer as live stock for the rest of this report. I don't want people thinking that these deer are just deer that we're found on a farm. This is a farm with high fences where captive deer raised as you would live stock. Clear clear. Part of this operation is allowing individuals who would like to shoot the live stock to come out and do so for fee. This next part is directly from the operation's website. Each hunt takes place in our hundred and forty acre hunting preserve that consists of tall oaks, poplar trees, thick underbrush, diamond willows, and food plots. Are prices are now better than ever. When we first started our hunting preserve, it took us four to five years to grow a hundred buck. Now, with better genetics through artificial insemination, our two year old bucks are routinely over two hundred inches. Then there is a list of prices. Final price determined upon the total score of the deer. For quick reference, these deer are measured by the size of the antler they grow. You can go check out the Boone and Crockett Club website and there will be a full diagram as to how to measure antler's or horns. A hundred eighty inch whitetail buck for your average hunter wandering around the woods is kind of like seeing a celebrity in the locals gas station. You may have heard of it, but it hasn't happened to you or anyone you know personally, but you hear the stories. That's the small end of the spectrum of this particular dear operation. The big end of the spectrum, which they state they grow to two hundred and seventy five plus inches. For your average hunter wandering around the woods, that would be the equivalent of um, not trying to be blasphemous here, but like seeing Jesus in the woods shaking his hand, and then before parting, he stops you and says, hey, you look like you could use a cold beer. My friends Johnny Cash, Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, and Bill Murray are having some really cool folks overlay it. Why don't you come by and uh, go ahead and bring some friends. Oh, and uh, I saw a really nice buck right over the hill. In other words, it ain't gonna happen again. These animals are livestock, and there's no difference between you or I going out to the nearest rancher and saying, hey, I would like to go shoot one of your calves or lambs for dinner. How much and the rancher responding with, well, here's the going price per pound to go shoot. One will weigh it and I'll charge you appropriately. The difference we should be focusing on here is the part of the story where the crime is committed. For whatever reason, this livestock grower has decided to go directly against a state agency trying to control the spread of fatal and infectious disease. The regulatory body in Minnesota for captive servants like these white tails is the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, who was asked by Minnesota d n R to enact a temporary captive dear shipment closure, which they declined. This flies right in the face of anything I have read from the U. S d A regarding disease transmit. The d n R states that they are trying to protect the state's wild deer population. The dear farmer states that his business has maintained a c w D free facility. Fifteen years ago, he stopped shipping outside deer to his farm, and the transportation of his dear to sportsman shows are what keeps him in business. The deer do not leave the trailer, They do not come in contact with any dear, what is the problem. This is a misdemeanor violation of which this farmer is guilty. It's punishable by a thousand dollar fine and ninety days in jail. One last interesting thing about this is the deer farmer apparently spent thirty years as law enforcement, which he references here in a statement provided by the Star Tribune. Quote almost thirty years protecting victims of crime. And now I'm raising livestock, dear, and they say they are going to make me into a criminal. Now, I'm no legal expert, but I did like to raise little cane in my youth, not like the apostle. Folks in North Carolina have just been a law a bit. And this defense of the law made me into a criminal. Uh, and my experience. I don't think that's gonna work out for you, at least it never did for me. You see, Officer, if Law didn't say, then I wouldn't. I mean, you get it right last, but not least. And I'll be honest because I have not wrapped my head around this one yet, and it will be a while before I do. Australia is burning currently over twenty six million acres roughly forty thousand square miles have burned. That's the entire state of Tennessee on fire, all at once. From Afar, it seems the country hit a critical mass this fire season when a long drought combined with the record breaking heat, arson and yes, the evermore noticeable effects of climate change. We still aren't out of the woods yet. Fire season traditionally peaks in late January, but this year has been odd, to say the least asked mets in terms of wildlife impact are very hard to know, but loss of over a billion animals, ranging from kangaroos to fruit bats and amphibians is already likely, if not certain. It is difficult to know how to help. But fires like this leave lasting scars and reclamation, and more importantly, future prevention of fire on this scale will be critical not to mention the habitat left. If anyone listening, haw's a good way to help, please let me know I did see that. That big badass of a rugby player and seemingly all around good guy, David Pocock of the Australian national team is matching donations through his Instagram page. He is a friend of Meat Eater, but that's just one small source I trust, and we're looking for a lot more good luck over there. Thanks, That's all I've got for you, and as per usual, let me know how I'm doing by writing in to ask Cal that's a s k C a L at the Meat eater dot com. If you like what you're hearing, tell some friends and leave me a review by hitting that furthest right hand star. I'll talk to you next week.

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