00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col's Week in Review with Ryan cow Kalahan. Here's Cal. A TikToker in Oregon is making waves on social media by pretending to be a girl on the dating app Hinge and then stealing phishing spots from unsuspecting would be lovers. It's actually I'm not even mad, that's amazing. The user, who goes by the handle at central dot Oregon dot fishing has posted dozens of videos on the social media app and racked up an impressive two hundred and twenty six thousand followers. His cat fishing technique is pretty simple. He creates a fake Hinge profile as an attractive woman and then messages with guys who think they've won the lottery a hot girl who wants me to take her fishing sign me up. He pumps them for information about their favorite fishing spots, information they probably don't share with their closest friends, and then makes videos about the fish he catches at those spots. I have no way of knowing whether or not his gambit is real, but if it is, I got to give him credit for being an astute observer of human nature. There's only one thing a dedicated angler cares about more than fishing, and this guy has figured it out. And if you're a single fisherman in Oregon, it's probably best to keep your date in suspense about where you plan to take her. This week, we've got wyworms and people don't mix, corner crossing rhinos, and so much more of it. First, I'm gonna tell you about my week, and my week has been tough. I'm trying to knock out all the responsibilities before my hunting season really starts up in Alaska at the end of the month. Knock off the travel, focus on the gear, replace the broken and abused stuff, and keep flinging arrows, a lot of them of that. I'm sitting here recording this as the comment period comes to an end for the USDA reorganization, which will shut down regional offices such as the one here in Missoula, Montana. Fear is that because the closest regional office will be in Salt Lake City, in my case, we're going to lose out on quick local input. For instance, what fires we should let burn, which Chief Schultz is not into right now, and what fires we should let run so you know hunters can be happy the coming fall and spring when that little burn zones an ecological hotspot. Then tomorrow the public comment period for the recision of the roadless rule opens. Fifty eight million acres of designated roadless areas across the West, the good stuff for a ton of hunters and anglers that want to get away from the crowds. I gotta tell you the reason the USDA is pushing this is not to increase timber production. No, nobody has announced a magical finance mechanism that pays crews to mechanically thin timber, which they always talk about. It's the type of timber cutting that somebody has to pay you to do, not the type of timber cutting you get paid to do. Rescinding. Roadless is about punching in roads for mineral extraction, which we very well may need in some areas. But here's the fun fact. If anyone tells you the only way to build roads in a couple of areas for any purpose is to throw out the entire roadless designation for fifty eight million acres, well, friends and neighbors, gotta tell you don't buy that. Bs. We need to make these people do the hard work. Fifty eight million acres is a lot of country, essentially, none of which is the exact same, So why do we want to treat it all the same. Let's not buy into the bs that the management of fifty eight million acres needs to be all one way or all the other. Hell, not that many lights switches operate that way anymore. Seems to be a dimmer switch on darn near anything. That's what I'm gonna write in and tell him at the USDA and my representative's office. This is lazy management. Let's act like we're dealing with extremely valuable public land that deserves unique management fitting of the uniqueness of the land itself. Moving on, I have an unfortunate update for you over at the screwworm desk. A man in Maryland has the honor of being the first confirmed human case of the New World screwworm since the most recent outbreak in Central America. The man has not been identified, but Reuter's reported last week that he had recently traveled to El Salvador. Initial reports were that he came from Guatemala, but the Department of Health and Human Services has since corrected the mistake. The threat to humans from the flesh eating parasite is pretty darn low. The worms are deposited when a New World screwworm fly lays its eggs in an exposed wound, and then those eggs hatch into maggots and burrow into the flesh. Once a person gets it, the maggots must be removed surgically, the wound is cleaned, and then the patient undergoes around to antibiotics. It's not the kind of thing that can spread from person to person, and the unfortunate Maryland mand is the first Homo sapien in the US to get it. In years since our last report, US Department of Agriculture Secretary Brook Rawlins announced plans to build a sterile fly facility in Texas as part of efforts to combat the pest. These sterile flies are released into the population, which slowly dwindles as it becomes unable to reproduce. Ranchers are pretty rattled as they fear the parasite coming north and infecting their herds, and wildlife biologists are also concerned, especially for white tailed deer. We'll let you know if there are any future updates, and for more information, you can read Eli Fournier's article over at the meateater dot com move it on to the crime desk. A hunting outfitter in Montana has been accused of shooting a grizzly bear and then failing to report the kill for two weeks. Court documents say that Bryant Mickelson of Timber Mountain Outfitters has been indicted for a misdemeanor. Officials say he shot at grizzly during the spring black bear hunt back in May. It's unclear if he did so intentionally. It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between a grizzly bear and a black bear, and most years we hear stories of hunters getting in trouble for mistaking one for the other. Experienced guides and outfitters shouldn't make this mistake, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. What's landed Mickelson in trouble is that instead of walking up to the bear, realizing his mistake and reporting it right away, he allegedly sent photos of himself with the bear to his buddies. Those messages allegedly indicate that he knew the bear was a grizzly, but he failed to report the kill for two full weeks. We don't know why he eventually decided to call it in, but you can probably guess. In any case, his tardiness could earn him a fine of ten thousand dollars and one year of probation. He's reportedly struck a deal with the prosecutors that will levy this penalty in exchange for a guin guilty PLEA speaking out fitters, behaving Badly and Arizona man was recently sentenced to a full year in prison for operating an illegal guiding service in Colorado, among many other violations. The investigation began when game wardens in Colorado became suspicious that fifty six year old Timothy Rawlings was guiding clients in the state without the proper licenses. He owned and operated Old West Guides and Outfitters in Lavigne, Arizona, but he was apparently leading hunts for deer, elk, mountain lions, and bears in Colorado. Unfortunately for Old Tim, the Feds got involved because his crimes crossed state lines. Most of his clients lived outside of Colorado, which meant that the animals they killed ran afoul of the Lasiact. This law originally passed all the way back in nineteen hundred, makes it a federal crime to take poached animals across state lines. Rawlins was also convicted of conspiracy to violate the Lasiact, which means he knew what he was doing and he took steps to give investigators the slip. And Rawlins didn't just fail to register as a guide in Colorado. He also bought and sold landowner vouchers, shot from vehicles, chased animals with vehicles, hunted in unlicensed in unpermitted lands, and failed to register animals taken, including mount lions. Along with his year in the federal Slammer, Rawlins will also have to serve three years of supervised release and pay forty five eight hundred dollars in restitution. This is the type of character that makes me want to remind you that we don't call them bad hunters. We call them poachers for a reason, because they're outlaws. You'll be unsurprised to hear that Rawlins wasn't the only fellow who got caught up in this scheme. Seventy one year old Howard Rodermrel was also sentenced and find for Lazy Act violations. But he didn't receive jail time. To add a little more meat to the bones, or received an email from a listener who says he's from the same town as Howard. Says Howard's crimes were local knowledge for years, but the game wardens weren't able to pin anything on him. Several of this listener's friends told him they stopped hunting in the area because quote Howard poaches anything good. Good on the Mortons and federal agents for giving this guy their just desserts. I hope they've learned their lesson. Moving even further west to California, the wildlife agency there announced that they'd recently busted illegal marijuana growers who had been diverting water from famous steelhead fisheries. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said they recently served twenty one search warrants on weed growing operations in Mendocino County, just north of San fran They eradicated forty six thousand cannabis plants and destroyed thirteen thousand, six hundred pounds of processed weed during the process. They also confiscated thirteen firearms, a stolen vehicle, and two poached blacktail deer, including a dough To make matters worse, they also realized that these cush cultivators had made nineteen illegal water diversions from local rivers. Two of those rivers, the Russian River and the El are some of the state's most famous steelhead fisheries. Riding over at the meat eater dot com, Age Marshall reports that the Russian River was once one of the more premier steelhead fishing rivers in the world, though impact from logging, dams, water diversions, and development have left it a remnant of its former self. The Yel River remains a decent wild steelhead fishery and will soon have two major dams removed, potentially improving the fishery's long term health. Moving to international wildlife crime, the world's most famous rhino breeder has been accused of selling rhino horns on the international market. Eighty three year old John Hume owns one of the world's biggest rhino ranches, a twenty thousand acre property near Johannesburg, South Africa that's home to over sixteen hundred white rhinos. Hume has styled himself as a conservationist and a savior of the species, but investigators say he also funnels rhino horns into illegal markets in Southeast Asia. In total, they believe Hume and five co conspirators smuggled nine hundred and sixty four rhino horns valued at fourteen point one million dollars. You can buy and sell rhino horns in South Africa with the proper permits, but it is illegal to ship them out of the country. For his part, Hume has denied any wrongdoing. He has also argued previously that allowing rhino ranches to profit from the horns will incentivize more operations like his own. That's right. You just let him sell the horns on the black market, then we can have more rhinos behind fences. This, he says, will result in more rhinos on the landscape, even if they're held as livestock within ranches. Opponents argue that tying monetary incentives to wildlife is always dangerous. There's a long history of that, and that's even more true when it comes to endangered and threatened species. We'll see how the legal process plays out. South African law enforcement says they've been conducting this investigation for seven years, so I imagine they have a fair amount of evidence to back up their accusations. I have two more for you, both involved hunters who helped solve crimes rather than commit them. In the first story, a pair of hunting guides in Maine helped police chase down a shooting suspect. Matt Yorke and Kyle Bodett told local media that they witnessed one man shoot another in broad daylight in the town of Wyndham last week. Investigators say there is no connection between the suspect and the victim, so the shooting appears to have been random. York and Bodett operate a guiding service for Bears, Deer and Bobcat, and they were picking up a U haul truck when they witnessed the shooting. They decided to go after the suspect, and they say they followed his car into a parking lot and rear ended him. They called police once the suspect turned back onto the main road and gave a description of the vehicle and the license plate, but they abandoned the chase after they turned a corner and saw the suspect pointing a gun at them, which I suppose is understandable. Plus, like, what type of insurance. Did they get on that U haul right. The suspect was found later with a self inflicted gunshot wound. Along similar line, a Minnesota angler may have helped solve a thirty year old cold case. Brody Locke told local media that he was fishing the Mississip when he noticed a large object appear on his sonar device. The object turned out to be a buick, and when officials pulled it out of the water, they realized it was connected to a man who went missing all the way back in nineteen sixty seven. Car belonged to Roy Ben, who, at age fifty nine, was reported missing to the Benton County Sheriff's office. He was never seen again, but officials at the time said he disappeared while carrying a large sum of money. What happened to Ben has been the cause of much speculation, but thanks to old Brody and his fish finder, they're one step closer to getting his family some answers. Officials haven't said whether Ben appears to have been injured prior to going in the river, but I'm sure they'll update the public as soon as they're able. Moving on to the public land desk, speaking of getting onto land we all own some new development On the Wyoming corner crossing case. First up, a coalition of ranchers, landowners, and advocacy groups have officially petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, which could overturn the earlier Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that made corner crossing legal in six Western states. The United Property Owners of Montana, the Wyoming Stock Growers and Woolgrowers' Associations, the Montana Stockgrower Association, and the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, submitted a brief to the Supreme Court laying out their arguments for why the higher court should resolve the issue. One of those arguments makes sense, but some of them will make you roll your eyes so hard that you might sprain your optic nerve. On the logical side, the group's brief states, quote, there is a need for a nationwide rule addressing corner crossing, and this case may be the only opportunity for the Court to consider the issue. They are correct that the limited jurisdiction of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals means that corner crossing has only been made legal in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas, which according to aex collectively have three point three million acres of corner locked public land that's not landlocked public land, but corner accessible public land. There are still about five million acres outside the tenth district that remain in a legal gray area across the West. If the Supreme Court takes the case, their decision would apply nationwide and resolve the question for all eight point three million acres across the country. But that's where the good sense of this group ends. The Claremont Institute lawyers cited English common law from the seventeen sixties. How many of you are English citizens? By the way, Well, if you are, this pertains to you. In my humble opinion. Your common law from seventeen sixty states the poorest man in the meanest hovel can deny entry to the king. That's right. The brief compares four Missouri Hunt to the King of England, the billionaire pharmaceutical exec Fred Eshlmann to the country's poorest man, and the airspace above a piece of ranch property to the inside of that poor man's home. That's the kind of reasoning that only law school can teach. The Montana Stockmen's Association also built arguments on shaky foundations when it argued that public access to public land quote can cause great stress to livestock unquote. Ranchers can, of course, choose to avoid that stress by not grazing their animals on public land. They also point to all the maintenance that private landowners would have to do on this land because state and federal agencies like the BLM wouldn't be able to get vehicles and equipment to this public land to maintain it. That point certainly makes sense if it didn't raise the question of how do the livestock growers access that land? And if these folks want to talk about a better system of granting easements into these parcels for land management agencies, I'm all for it. However, I believe in this case what they are talking about is locking the public out of the land that we all collectively own. These groups are filing this petition because they're betting that a conservative Supreme Court will come down in their favor. Legal analysts think it'll be very close, but not a sure thing for either side. However, the Tenth District ruling will stand if the Supreme Court declines to hear the case. They're set to make that decision early this fall, so stay tuned. Lots more to come on this. Believe me, us folks here at Meat Eater, and I know the good folks at Wyoming BHA and BHA in general are very invested as well. On the other end of the access issue, the Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee of the Wyoming Legislature has advanced a bill declaring that corner crossing is not an act of criminal trespass or violation of game and fish laws. This bill would essentially take the Tenth District decision, strip out all the legal lees, and make it a clear law on the books that would let law enforcement focus on other things than responding to disputed trespassing claims. The full Legislature will review the bill in November and consider any amendments. Wyoming Backcountry Hunters and Anglers has asked the legislature to go one step further, not just declaring that corner crossing isn't illegal, but also protecting it as an affirmative right. If the law says that we can use corner crossing as a legitimate way to reach the land, we own, then our right to do so is on much firmer footing. The BHA brief also recommends an amendment defining a corner as the point where two parcels meet, which would allow corner crossing even in places where a precise property line survey has not been carried out. This would prevent landowners from intentionally using ambiguity over the location of property lines to prosecute people for trespassing. A bill protecting corner crossing as an affirmative right was drafted in the Wyoming legislature in twenty eleven, but never made it out of committee. This one has, so we're further along than we ever have been before. But why don't we go even further? What if US Congress passed a law giving us an affirmative right to corner crossing everywhere in this great country. That's not likely until the Supreme Court makes it a decision, but it's not as impossible as it once seemed. For more on the history of the corner crossing issue, on X has a fantastic guide on its website and our own. Jordan Sillers and Sam Lungren explained the nitty gritty in a series of articles over at the mediator dot com. You should buff up. There's more common. Last, but not least, on this issue, it is imperative for folks who intend on corner crossing to use the narrowest definition of the law, which means crossing swiftly at the corner and only at the corner, and doing so only through foot traffic. In a sense, do as the Missouri four did, so out of your way, as ridiculous as it may seem to cross at the corner from public to public, pick up any trash that you see, don't spend any extra time there that is not absolutely necessary, and again only on foot. Don't let some bad examples help the other side's case here this fall all right, gang. Moving on to the rhino dog desk, a rare piece of good news from the world's rhinos came in last week from way Cambus National Park in the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The Sumatran rhino is one of the most endangered animals in the world, with fewer than fifty individuals remaining both in and out of captivity. Conservationists were convinced that there were none remaining in way Campus Park. Park rangers drones and camera traps had failed to turn up any of them for the past several years. Not only has the species been relentlessly poached, but they are also notoriously reclusive, even in many cases learning to avoid motion sensing cameras. The situation seemed so hopeless that Nina Facione possibly Nina Facione, executive director of the International Rhino Foundation, argued for bringing in specially trained sniffing dogs to prove there were no Sumatron rhinos left in the Way Canvas National Park so that she could dedicate resources to protecting rhinos elsewhere. She told the news outlet Mangabay that she thought, quote, let's get dogs in there. We'll say we've tried everything. But the two dogs, Yaggy and Quinn, did what dogs do best. After being trained on the scap of ten Sumatron rhinos currently in a captive breeding program, including specimens for males and females, mature animals, and juveniles, within two days they had identified piles of what researchers believe is rhino poop. And where there is rhino poop, well there must be rhinos. Locating even a few new rhinos could make an enormous difference for the overall population because any species with so few individuals is at risk for inbreeding depression, which happens when genetically related to animals mate with each other and give birth to offspring with birth defects and lower fertility. A classic example is the Florida panther, whose numbers went down to as few as twenty cats by the nineteen nineties. Inbreeding caused health problems and reduced reproductive success and gave rise to outward signs like kinktails and fur cowles. Conservationists then imported ten female cougars from Texas in ninety five, and just those few ladies improved genetic fitness so significantly that there are now as many as two hundred Florida panthers in the wild. Here's hoping that Sumatrin rhinos can find some similar love connections. Maybe Aggy and Quinn can lead researchers to some rhinos singles playing especially hard to get deep in the rainforest. Moving on to the mail bag listener Roy Matthewson wrote in with a question about lead ammunition, said, there there's a push in Colorado to band lead ammo and fishing tackle on state lance. He heard that ammo makers have come out against the ban and said, quote, while I do hunt poorly and fish some I do not have the experience or knowledge to understand why opposition from manufacturers exists other than for profit. Could you help me understand this better. I'd really appreciate it. So there's definitely a profit motive. Lead's pretty inexpensive and largely recycled as well. There's another argument here that price increase in ammunition will also push people out of not the shooting sports because probably always be able to use lead and shooting sports, but out of hunting, which is an interesting one. But outside of that, and we've covered this a ton on the podcast. Lead often has individual effects on animals, specifically if you shoot something with lead, but it rarely has population level effects on animal populations, and typically we talk about population health when we talk about wildlife. Now there's an intersection where lead and its individual effects on animals can have a population level effect by removing an animal from the population, think like California condor. Right in those areas, then yes, we need to have concerted efforts across the board, from the users, through the manufacturers, state and federal agencies. But outside of that, you know, it gets a little fuzzy, right. And when we talk about lead fishing tackle bands, that should, in my opinion, only apply to little tiny kids that lick their fingers all the time and carry around lead fishing tackle and lead weights. But hey, I'm still here and to fish in very shallow water where diving birds that go down to pick up gravel and grit in the bottom of these areas can and do what's been proven pick up lead shot and lead weights from fishing tackle. Again, like specific use case, Like I said at the beginning of the show, if you want to punch a road into a certain area for a certain specific thing, and your argument is that humanity needs it by God, then that's something we can talk about. But do we need to roll back protections that tons of people, tax paying Americans enjoy on fifty eight million acres for that very specific use case that may affect I don't know, five hundred acres, No, not in my opinion. Thanks for the question, Roy. We always like hearing from our audience, and I'm happy to announce another way to let us know what's going on in your neck of the woods. If you'd rather not type out your message on a computer. You can now call in and leave a message at this number four zero six. That's Montana by the way. Two two o six four four one four oh six two two oh six four four one. We'll play your message on the podcast and then I'll be able to answer your questions, respond to your objections, or just laugh along at your jokes. You can also take a voice memo and text it to that number if you're one of the cool kids who communicates by a text only again that number four oh six two two zero six four four one, Give me a ring. We'll chat about it. Thank you so much for listening. You know the email ask c Al. That's askcal at the meeteter dot com right in Let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods, or call thanks. Talk to you next week.