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 in now Here's cal. If you've been following Col's Week in Review, you know all about the cat native to Hollywood, the famous Mountain Lion p. Twenty two, Well p. Twenty two almost had a new competitor. Last week, Hollywood Animal Control was called by concerned citizens to wrangle a servile cap The servile, spelled s E r v A l is native to Africa. Typically a golden coat with black spots and stripes, stands about two ft at the shoulder and can weigh in anywhere from fifteen to forty pounds. This cat has been gaining in popularity as an exotic pet, despite the fact that it is considered wild and therefore subject to several layers of regulation in most states, not Texas. Of course, the serval is not a species of concern population wise, but considering its natural hunting ability, it would be a major concern to just about any bird, mammal, or reptile. It ran into the servile in relation to its body size, as the longest legs of any cat, making it an excellent jumper. They've been observed taking birds from nine feet out of the air, as well as being proficient diggers. The Spruce Pets dot Com has this to say, exercise needs HI playfulness, HI energy, high intelligence, HI friendliness, w kid friendly, WHOA pet friendly? WHOA? Sounds like a perfect Christmas gift for someone you hate. Honestly, the descriptions of these cats as pets should start out with do not buy, which is probably why it was found in the area that some referred to as holly weird. In fact, with the exception of their ability to jump and hunt, their habits sound similar to human Hollywood residents that make the news very attractive. They sleep during the day, primarily active at night, urinate on everything, not necessarily picky eaters, but they puke a lot. Despite all of these complications, people going all the way back to the Egyptians like to keep the servile as pets. In this case, most likely they had just attempted to keep it as a pet. Breeders are found in the US, but the cats themselves are not considered domestic. At risk of sounding like a broken record, we know what cats that we call domestic due to wildlife, So let's leave their hyped up cousins alone and preferably in Africa. This week we're talking policy update, It's Lake Trout corrections and God's Grizzly Bears. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. Oh Steve Ronnell and myself hit the road once again, this time to Bmidgey, Minnesota, home of the Midgey Lumberjacks and lumber Jails, the Bmidgee State Beavers, and most importantly, one of the best College Ducks Unlimited chapters in the entire U s of A. But Midji State is only about six students, and these college chapter volunteers are consistently a top college du chapter. I noticed in two thousand eighteen they beat out Ole Miss Texas A and M and Georgia. Southern Texas A and M had an enrollment of just under seventy thousand and two thousand eighteen. We're talking some motivated students and it was a really cool thing to see and be a part of. If you are currently in school, go volunteer. Many conservation organizations like Ducks Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the Wildlife Society, National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever, and Trout Unlimited have college chapters. Just like with the non college versions, you can meet new people who have common interests and hopefully different hunting and fishing spots, all while doing some good for habitat, wildlife and access. But Midgi Minnesota was impressive in the fact that the area has a ton of hunting and fishing opportunity, very outdoorsy place, which in my mind coincides with the roughly graduation rate at Bemidjee State University, at least it would have for me anyway. Aside from talking conservation with a bunch of interesting, dedicated folks, I got to get out on the ice for some fishing, which is much different than hard water fishing here in Montana. Major difference in this neck of the woods is it is very, very common to drive your full sized vehicle out onto the ice. In fact, to jump back to b s U info, when Midgee Lake freezes over, students park on the ice in order to bypass the parking fees on campus. Communal roads are plowed out on the ice. Ice shacks that range from your insulated quick to set up Eskimo pop up shelters to full blown cabins complete with showers, ovens, TVs, and a convenient hole in the Florida fish through are deposited off of these roads and basically lived in for the season. Walleye is the king fish us around those pirates, But being as whalley were just barely out of season, we did some fishing for the fish of many names, The bourbon laying lawyer, cusk or as they call them, consistently around bomidgee, eel, pout or pouts, as in we're gonna go pound some pout tonight. The consistent bite is often at dusk and into the night. The crew I was with said they rarely are on the ice longer than eleven thirty PM, But just so you know, the two recent state record bourbon were caught at four thirty am and eleven thirty am. As I remember, I guess the pout like to hit on the half hour as well. The pout has a single chin whisker or barba, which is where it gets the name Bourbon. Cold water is key for the pout. In fact, some estimates say that for juvenile fish, temperatures above fifty four degrees are intolerable. Bourbon liver is huge in comparison to the size of the fish. Roughly ten percent of the fishes masses liver. It is tasty and full of fat, so if you're into catching these good looking fish, don't throw that delicious bit away. The world record rod and real bourbott comes out of a lake called different Boker, but some call it Defend Baker in Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan bourbott came in at twenty five pounds two ounces. The biggest I have ever personally seen was a little under seven pounds, so I've got a ways to go, but a seven pounder is nothing to pout about. In other fishing news, we're going to release the first ever Col's Weekend review video series. We're calling Field Reports. It could be the last ever if you don't watch it, So watch it. This series is going to be live shortly on the meat Eater YouTube channel. Be on the lookout and let me know what you think. I like going to check out conservation stories and access stories, and I love telling you all about it. So help me out and subscribe to the meat Eater YouTube channel so this three episode series doesn't pass you by. One of the episodes is in Tennessee, where I joined up with the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency to look at their invasive Asian carp situation. I came home from that trip with a pile of silver and big head carp filets. I was working on a wan Town recipe using this extremely neutral fish flesh, and as I do from time to time, made a mistake in my description on the old cal four oh six Instagram account. I described the two invasive carp I dealt with, which are again the big head and silver carp as zo plankton eaters spelled z o o plankton, which they are, but I went on to say that the plants, which they do. But Katie dot Kobayashi and aquatic zoologist has the correction and you should listen to it. Zoo plankton are actually animals, mostly tiny crustaceans. By contrast, phyto plankton are tiny plants in the sense that they produce their own energy. Both are plankton because they are small, pelagic, free floating organisms. The roots Zoe zoo and phyto p h y t o distinguished between animal and plant respectively. Thank you to Katie for sending me straight. And you should eat asian kurp as a tasty side note, do anything you want to it, knowing that you are eating an invasive species that can consume five of its own body weight every day according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Also a fun side note, I got a lot of feedback on my carp cooking playlist instead of answering a bunch of messages. You can find that playlist on Spotify. It is called Storytellers, and as far as I know, my account name is Ryan Michael Callaghan and telling you that I have just erased all hopes of anonymity, so appreciate it. And last on the Public Service Announcement Update list, John writes in with a really cool veterans and veterans dependence program and well timed as sign up closes March fifteen. It is called Heroes and Hives, which teaches bee keeping you can help out the great Big food Web by proliferating pollinators. Heroes and Hives is conducted by Michigan State University. Being as I was brought up a Notre Dame fan, I'll say, if you can't find this program at Notre Dame, the second best thing would be to check out the program at m s U. Onto the news the new Hampshire state record lake trout was recently hauled out of the ice, shattering a sixty two year old record. The fish itself is estimated to have been fifty to sixty years old, which, believe it or not, isn't entirely uncommon. I do find it interesting that this new state record was possibly swimming around when the last state record was caught. Lake trout aren't actually trout. They are a char, just like the other char we call trout, such as brookies and bull trout. Why we do this We like simplicity, I guess, and char sounds like a fish pirate would catch char. Lake trout are long lived fish that only hits sexual maturity between six and eight years old, and they regularly lived past the twenty five year mark. Lake trout and habit high oxygen cold water lakes and are mainly piciverous, as in they eat fish. However, some lakers or mackinaw can survive on plankton in areas where a fishy prey bas is not abundant. The largest lakers on record was net caught and weighed a hundred and two pounds. The largest rotten real record was out of Great Bear lake. That fish came in at seventy two pounds and just shy of sixty inches in length. But back to New Hampshire. Thomas Knight of Meredith, New Hampshire has quote the biggest fish in all of New England, which, if you combine that with Thomas Knight's last name, sounds more like a royal decree or proclamation as opposed to a fishing record. The fish measured at twenty seven inch girth, forty inches in length, and weighed on an official scale verified by a biologist thirty seven point six five pounds, shattering the sixty two year old record by a full nine plus pound In an interesting twist to me. Anyway, the fish will be taxidermied and rented to one of knights friends who owns a restaurant on a two year lease. I'll follow up in March of in case anyone wants to drop in on this lease. If the restaurant tour doesn't choose to renew, hopefully the lease fee goes back to New Hampshire fishing game. That's potentially sixty years worth of management on the wall, onto the policy desk and over the state of Missouri to ease on into this one. I had a plumber buddy from the state of Missouri when I was living in Idaho. He would say things like flapping my trap jack and my jaw and talking out of school. But he would also talk about how great the state of Missouri was in regards to hunting, fishing, opportunity, and conservation. Even though we resided in the state Idaho. He kept his subscription to Missouri Conservationist magazine, which he gave his lifetime collection to me on short term loan just so I could read for myself all the things that he was telling me about. Anyway, that state pride and the fact that Missouri Conservation Magazine is actually free to any resident of the state of Missouri stuck with me. Currently, Missouri Department of Conservation is being attacked with House Joint Resolution one hundred, which would impose legislative authority onto the currently independent Department of Conservation, exposing conservation dollars to the potential winds of politics. The MDC is extremely well funded, something that the voters of Missouri have continually ensured is the case, and it is that funding that is being so coveted. So if you recreate in the state of Missouri. Let's not rob Peter to pay Paul. Call your state rep and tell them to vote no on h j R. One. Jumping over to the state Idaho to pretty much the exact same issue. The independent Idaho Fishing Game is also being threatened by Proposal HB five fourteen, which would eliminate the bipartisan requirement that currently exists, as in the Idaho Fish and Game Council cannot be dominated by one political party. You can see, depending on how you vote, that this could be a good thing when your party is in power than a really bad thing when it isn't. Idaho's political majority has flipped fifteen times. If you recreate in the state Idaho or intend to call right in email and tell state reps in the districts in which you spend your hard earned cash to keep politics out of wildlife management, vote no on HB last on the policy front, and stick with me here because it's just getting good. The Land and Water Conservation Fund or l w CF needs your help. If you're sick of hearing about this one, let's get it over the hump with permanent funding so we can worry about other things. This bipartisan idea was to take out attacks on offshore oil and gas revenues and put it back into conservation conservation in the form of land and access for the outdoors available in all fifty states. This has provided bike paths and parks, and fishing access sites and shooting ranges. Chances are you right now use some form of green space or access or easemant to recreation that has been partially funded by l w CF. We just had a little rally here in Bozeman, Montana, to show support for Land and Water Conservation Fund. The problem is everyone likes ll WCF. The money is there, but it needs to be appropriated. So every time a budget comes up, we have to harass our congressional representatives to put the money in the bucket where it can then go to the states to do some good. This happens with every single budget and every single administration. We posted a group photo to the Mediator Instagram account encouraging Rep. Greg g and Forte of Montana to fund l WCF, and the conspiracy theorists came out of the woodwork because Greg g and today is a Republican and apparently, according to some you can't ask a Republican to do their job on behalf of people who like clean water, air, access, hunting, and fishing. Well, good news. We skipped Representative Gene Fote and went straight to the tippy top. President Donald Trump immediately tweeted his support of the Land and Water Conservation Fund for full and permanent funding. His tweet read, I am calling on Congress to send me a bill that fully and permanently funds the LWCF and restores our national parks. When I sign it into law, it will be historic for our beautiful public lands, all thanks to Senator Corey Gardner and Steve Dan's, two great conservative leaders. He uh must have run out of tweet space for meat eater, But we are in it for the access, not the accolades. Pour the heat on your congressional representatives right now, be a pain in the butt and tell them you want full and permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Thank you, Mr President of the Twitter. Love moving on. This next one is a special edition by that fantastic conservation writer Ben Long. God's own Bear Attack. The Good Lord works in mysterious ways, but one mystery caught my eye lately. When God wishes to smite sinners with a bear attack. What sort of bear will he deploy? Grizzly? Of course, the Bible and biology say so. Crack open the Good Book and you will find the obscure and enigmatic case of God's own bear mulling at two kings to dash. Despite my status as a retired Sunday school teacher and the author of scores of articles in a book about bear attacks, this story slipped my awareness entirely, and a small wonder. It's just two little sentences, but is also perhaps the bloodiest bear attack in written record. Let me recap. The hero of the story is the prophet Elijah. Elijah is a major player in the Old Testament, a prophet so renowned he also shows up in the Koran and the Book of Mormon. The setting is nine b C. We're nearly three thousand years ago. Elijah is walking near the town of Bethel, north of Jerusalem. Elijah was mobbed and taunted by a large group of boys. In particular, they tease Elijah for being bald. Elijah was taking no guff that day. According to the New International Bible. He turned around, looked at them, and called down a curse on them, and the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty two of the boys. As a journalist, I am left hungry for more information. I have reported on maulings where more than one person is hurt, usually when a panic bear ping pongs down a trail between two groups of hikers, swatting them around in turn. But this attack is downright, dare I say, biblical imagine a mama bear and a cub mall half a school bus full of rats. Seems a little harsh, but hey, I'm not God. It's mad to ning to not know the extent of the injuries. As one biblical scholar wrote, were there forty two funerals, there's no way to know theology aside. I was left wondering what manner of bear roam the eastern shore of the Mediterranean back in the day. After all, there are eight species of bear worldwide to choose from. Answer is the Syrian brown bear, a relatively small and light colored subspecies of urusos arc dos Syriacus arctos, or as we call them in North America, brown or grizzly bears. This subspecies tops out around five fifty pounds. Historically brown bears roam from Turkey to Turkmenistan, but have extirpated from Jordan's, Israel and Palestine. You may be surprised to learn that brown bears still roam rugged and remote corners of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The story, as so much of scripture, is subject to interpretation, but let me offer this beware when you tease a bald man or a MoMA Griz, nothing good can come from. When Ben says the largest bear attack on record, he's referring to the fact that there has not been a recorded bear attack in modern history of more than seven people. This attack from three thousand years ago would be uh three and a half times that. That's all I've got for you this week. Let me know what I'm missing, how I'm doing, and what I got wrong by emailing me at ask cal that's a s k C a L at the Meat Eater dot com. If you're loving what you're hearing, please tell some friends and leave me a review by hitting that for this right hand start. Thanks again. I'll talk to you next week.

Save this episode