00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana, this is Cal's Week in Review with Ryan Cal Callahan, presented by First Light. Here's Cal. The world's oldest living land animal is still bringing us new insights. This year, Jonathan, the Aldabra giant tortoise, turned 194. and scientists at Vanderbilt University recently sequenced his genome to discover the secrets of his success. Before you get into the fancy science, keep in mind, Jonathan's lifestyle, where he takes things real slow on a tropical island, would probably help most of us right now. Also, when you're deep into your second hundred-year run, I think you probably benefit greatly from perspective. Anyway, the researchers swabbed Jonathan's cheek and compared his genetic material to that of several other Aldabra tortoises, including a 36-year-old named Tank. Here I'll quote the results of the study, which revealed, quote, unique gene variants in most aging pathways, including DNA repair, insulin regulation, mitochondrial function, and low entropy methylation, unquote. That last item on the list is particularly significant. Jonathan's mitochondrial methylome, which is a system that controls gene transcription, probably pronounced methylome, looked as fresh as a five-year-old tortoise. The study's authors write that understanding this particular system better could let humans live longer and healthier lives. When Jonathan was born in 1832, Charles Darwin had just arrived in South America for the first time, and the Civil War was still 21 years in the future. The United States Civil War. But even if modern medicine can bring us some of the benefits of his longevity, we'll have to fight the next battle, which is figuring out how not to get lichen growing on your face, which is what Jonathan has going on. It's a pretty cool mustache of its own. This week, we've got poachers, the Brooks Range, white tails and wolves, plus so much more. But first, I'm going to tell you about my week, and my week has been packed. We flew into Newark. New Jersey on Tuesday. Currently sitting in a Hilton Garden Inn hotel room overlooking the Staten Island Ferry and the bay and the blockhouse and Governor's Island and really, really cool way to record this podcast. Staring out on a low ceiling gloomy day. You may hear the boy grunting after a big breakfast next to me. Yeah. He's been quite the New York City traveler. And just like, man, what a way to meet people, having an infant strapped to your chest, cruising around the city. Everybody's very, very nice to you. You do kind of get tired of the joke of saying, hey, my eyes are up here. That's not true. I don't get tired of that. Big highlights, aside from the people here in New York, we did our storytelling event at Filson. That was great. Had a bunch of wonderful people in the room. Very talented writers came out for that event. Great food from, well, Get Sauced, New Jersey. How to Ruin Venison on the Gram, Chef Sean Johnson came out, made some tasty bites. Super cool. Great to see him again. Got to meet his wife. And then we did a neat little event at the New York City Angling Club, which was great, too. Really neat, neat place to check out. and almost like right underneath where I'm sitting. But we went to the New York City Museum of Natural History, which I've only been to once prior, and just need to go again, because you just can't see everything in that place. This was a really special tour hosted by Brant McDuff, author of The Shotgun Conservationist. He's a taxidermy historian and teacher of taxidermy, and... a bunch of other titles and accolades. You'll have to look him up, and you can go do one of these tours with him, and I highly recommend it. It's a great way to see the New York City Natural History Museum, and we had folks who go there all the time, and they were super impressed with going there again with Brant because he's got all this history under his belt, and it's a fast-paced tour, and you will never look at a diorama the same way ever again after a tour with Brant. We were only able to accomplish a three-hour walkabout of the Africa and North America halls, stopping at only examples Brant selected. I'd love to return and do a few more sessions. The positions of the mounts and why and how they were built, the shapes and the spaces of the dioramas, directing where your eye goes and And why? And the painting that creates the backgrounds and the depth to the scenes and the goal of drawing the viewer into the scene in a way that gives some context as to how and where the animals lived and how they functioned in that landscape without the aid of a sign telling you how to think or what to think or how to view it or how to grasp the concept. How many of these scenes are the painstaking recreations of exact locations reassembled from photographs and paintings and miniature dioramas built from the exact site? So the Timberwolves racing across the frozen Gunflint Lake under the moonlight in the Northern Lights has an actual lat and long and date and time of day or night, early morning in this case, associated with it. as does the African waterhole scene, and so on and so on and so on. It was all very impressive, as was the idea that this was something important enough to devote lifetimes and fortunes to accomplish. A painstaking detail. A natural history museum. Who'd have thunk it? Early displays opened in 1877. The earliest dioramas date back to 1907. It's a testament to people with wild ideas and the drive to see them through. Enormous resources and enormous dedication to the concept that people need to have exposure to nature, the natural world. A glimpse of what is out there brought to you right here at 77th and Central Park West. The New York City lap is not quite over. We got our fishing event over in Brooklyn this evening. I'm also going to go check out a couple more sporting clubs here in the city today. And one thing that always impresses me here, there's a lot of water. New York's a water city. Being an angler here definitely has its challenges, but it is, you know, it's relatively accessible. The confines of space make it really hard to have like that arsenal of tackle and rods for every occasion. You got to kind of like pick your specialty and stick with it. And then on the hunting side of things, like the legality of owning and storing and transporting a long gun in the city, Alex Tilney covered that for all of us in episode 150, which seems like a long time ago, titled Long Road to a Long Gun. What it's like to be a hunter in the five burrows. The hoops that you all have to jump through To do something that we love would turn many Western hunters and anglers into golfers. Just wouldn't be worth it. We are so used to the convenience of hunting and fishing out West. Makes you city folks a special breed, for sure. I appreciate you. And I'll let you know how the fishing goes on the next episode. All right, better get on with the news here. For the last few months at the Bear Desk, we've been focusing on Ursus americanus, the good old black bear, as they've been in the headlines a whole lot. Flooding mountain towns like Lake Tahoe after a catastrophic failure of mast and berry crops this year, the bears are searching for other sustenance. But this week, we've got tough news on the grizzly beet where four brown bears have been poached and left to rot in three different locations up in Alberta, Canada. Back in June, two grizzlies were found shot by a road in rural Sundry, north of Calgary. Well, I guess if it was outside of Calgary, we wouldn't call it a brown bear. It'd just be a grizz. According to a police report, after one of the shootings, an eyewitness heard a gunshot and then saw, quote, a black 2003 to 2006 Chevy Crew Cab Duramax diesel truck with tinted windows and a loud exhaust traveling at high speed, unquote. Although that would seem to narrow things down a whole lot, No one has apprehended the suspect in that case. Probably because that Duramax costs too much to have on the road right now at diesel fuel prices. On September 30, about 230 miles north near the Swan River, outside of Edmonton, another grizz was found dead along a road. Then, the following day, about 70 miles due east, near Little Smoky, Alberta, another bear was found dead. This time with all four paws removed. Bear paws are unfortunately a hot commodity on the black market. In this last case, the perpetrator had tried to conceal the crime by dragging the bear off the trail where it had apparently been shot. All the cases seem unrelated, which is almost more disturbing. There are several people out there making very bad choices when it comes to these awesome animals, and these are just the ones we know about. These discoveries were made in very remote areas, and the biologist Gordon Stenhouse told the CBC, quote, I think there's lots of bears that are never found. Not only is it appalling to leave any animal to waste, but grizzlies have also been off-limits to hunting in Alberta since 2006. All these killings took place way back in the woods, far away from farms or homes where bear conflict can be a significant problem. Even still, back in 2024, the provincial government of Alberta announced a $ 700, 000 fund to keep bears away from exactly those places, offering assistance to install electric fences, secure grain bins, and remove dead livestock before they could attract more bears. If any of you out there have any info about these cases, Visit Alberta's Report a Poacher website at alberta.ca forward slash reporter poacher and let them know what you know, bro. Continuing our journey up north to the Brooks Range, last month the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened public comment on the environmental impact statement for a project in the Ambler Mining District, which would be an open pit mine in the Brooks Range. Quoting from the explainer put out by Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, The project would, quote, process approximately 11,000 short tons of ore per day to produce copper, zinc, and lead concentrates, with commercial quantities of gold and silver also expected. Because the project would impact wetlands and other waters of the United States, which is an official designation under the Clean Water Act, the Corps must officially authorize it. You will likely remember us talking about Ambler Road, which is all the transportation infrastructure necessary to get equipment and workers into this area and the commodities out. This mining project is one of the justifications for putting all that man-made stuff into this landscape. That road project is a separate federal process, but if this mine gets approved, it makes the Ambler Road in general seem more justified. This is a very important review because the Army Corps is an autonomous branch of the government tasked with administering key parts of the Clean Water Act. We need to speak up and request that the Corps do a thorough analysis of the effects of the project on fisheries, wildlife and game populations, wetlands, surface water and groundwater, subsistence, resources, habitat connectivity, and, of course, backcountry recreation. And even though the mine is one part of the larger picture in this area, we should be demanding that they consider that overall impact in their analysis of this particular mine. As we say again and again, speaking up is an essential part of the process. Public comment is a large part of how the Corps decides which issues, impacts, options, and mitigation the Environmental Impact Statement will focus on. BHA has set up an action page for this one and will include it in the show notes. Make sure to get involved here. The Brooks Range is simply one-of-a-kind information You know, there's no rolling back or road like this. That landscape will be altered forever. And at minimum, we should be pushing for the absolute highest standards of extraction. We just don't have that many untrammeled places. And this place has been trammeled, right? There's air traffic and snow machine traffic and All sorts of ways to access this place. Packraft and raft and jet boat and all the things. But that is all a far cry from what is proposed here with this 211 mile road through it all. Now jumping over to New York State, which I am currently sitting in. A major microchip factory now under construction might be cutting corners on its environmental protections, and several groups, including local hunters, are asking the state to pause construction for a more careful review. The California-based chip manufacturer Micron broke ground on the facility earlier this year, but a lawsuit now before the Albany Supreme Court alleges that approval of the factory's environmental impact was hasty. going through the county industrial development agency rather than the more rigorous State Department of Environmental Conservation. The company did not release detailed information about the possibility of releasing PFAS and other harmful chemicals, and the community groups also argue that the period for public input was too short for a meaningful public response. Importantly, this isn't just a knee-jerk, not-in-my-backyard response. The parties pursuing the suit want the factory to go forward and bring jobs and resources to the area to grow American manufacturing. They just want to make sure that the rush for those things don't come at the cost of permanent damage to the landscape. Similar factories have implemented safety measures like closed-loop systems to contain pollutants. So why wouldn't they do it here? Right now we're waiting for the Albany Supreme Court to issue a ruling on pausing construction. But Empire Staters, contact your state reps to have them pay attention to this one. We can have economic growth and clean air and water at the same time. We just have to insist that both are possible and then demand that they happen. Quick hit from out in Colorado. Last week, we covered the right to hunt amendment on the ballot in November and how it could protect us from moves like the recent attempted fur trapping ban. Although the outright ban was defeated, animal rights groups were able to push through an extremely restrictive trapping bag limit of just two animals per day per person. Now, Safari Club International and the Sportsman Alliance Foundation have sued the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission, arguing that the change in statute was made without the required public notice period and opportunity for comment. The suit asks the court to state that the Parks and Wildlife Commission violated Colorado law to cancel the two-per-day bag limit and required the commission to begin a new process to set a bag limit that includes the legally required notice period and an opportunity for public participation. We will be sure to keep you updated on this one. Moving over to the obituary desk. Colonel Tom Kelly passed away earlier in October. His passing was announced by his daughter, Laura Kelly Bates. 00:16:53 Speaker 2: This weekend, we lost one of the greatest of the greatest generation, Tom Kelly, the colonel, daddy to me, and old Tom to his grandchildren. No words can express what he has meant to me, to our family and friends, to his troops, and his loyal legion of followers in the turkey hunting community. He was 99. That sounds old for a man, but for Tom Kelly, You could almost believe he would live forever. 00:17:23 Speaker 1: Colonel Kelly was a veteran of the U.S. Navy and Army and fought in World War II and the Korean War before retiring. Back in the southern U.S., he penned a book of his escapades in the turkey hunting woods called Tenth Legion, which went on to become considered the Bible of turkey hunting. I do not hunt turkeys because I want to. I hunt them because I have to, he wrote. I would really rather not do it, but I am helpless in the grip of my compulsion. Kelly's writings went on to grace the pages of Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, and Sports Illustrated. He was not just a turkey hunter, however, but a conservation advocate who connected the pursuit of spring gobblers with the ongoing restoration of the native birds. It's a message that certainly remains relevant today. RIP Colonel Tom Swinging over to the whitetail desk in the state of Vermont, where firearm hunters will be allowed to kill doe whitetail deer, antlerless whitetail deer, this year for the first time in nearly 40 years. Last time gun hunters in the Green Mountain State could legally shoot antlerless deer was in 1987. What followed was an incredibly unusual statewide doe ban for firearm hunters, though bow hunters and muzzleloaders still had some opportunities to kill antlerless whitetail during that span. The backstory is interesting. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department initially took over deer season and licensed setting responsibilities in 1978. A series of really harsh winters followed, which hammered the state's deer population by the mid-1980s. However, many hunters blamed liberal Vermont Fish and Wildlife regulations for the decline. Liberal, not like in the inflammatory political sense, but liberal as in you got a lot of hunting opportunity in Vermont. So in response, Vermont lawmakers took back over-management responsibilities and forbid the agency from issuing firearm doe tags. They handed full management powers back to the agency in 2015, but the doe harvest ban remained. In the meantime, though, mild winters have boosted the state's deer herds, while license sales steadily declined and doe harvest goals weren't being met. This prompted the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board to consider reinstating limited doe permits for firearm hunters. The resolution narrowly passed with a 7-5 vote. Most of our board members saw the old system not working the past few years, and that message is getting through, said a deer and moose program manager, Nick Fortin. It's been a long, slow process changing the program, but we think we can better apply hunting pressure where it's most needed by issuing antlerless tags to gun hunters. Going forward, Fortin says his agency will be conservative about how many doe permits to issue, while doe harvest is common elsewhere in the country. It remains somewhat controversial in Vermont. Vermont hunters, we'd love to hear from you. Askcal at TheMeatEater.com. That's AskCal at TheMeatEater.com. Swinging over to South Dakota. Wildlife officials are offering to refund deer hunting tags. Epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD, is reportedly impacting deer, mostly whitetails along the Missouri River Corridor. EHD is spreading by biting midges along muddy shorelines. That part of the state has reportedly faced bad EHD outbreaks for several years in a row now, with this year's outbreak having been exacerbated by a warm September that has fluctuated between long dry periods and heavy rains, a combination that unfortunately leads to the muddy areas where the biting midges thrive. The South Dakota Game and Fish and Parks Department is taking steps to limit deer hunting in response, including the voluntary tag refund opportunity in 16 counties, where the agency has also nixed mentored and youth licenses and scrapped some unsold licenses. Additionally, the state recently changed its archery tag from any deer to buck only, in large part because of recent EHD outbreaks. Switching gears to the wolf desk, talking about Colorado. Quick context setting, Colorado voters narrowly, and I mean a 50.1 to 49.9 narrowly, passed a resolution mandating the state's Fish and Game Agency to reintroduce and recover a gray wolf population in 2020. Colorado Parks and Wildlife did so, and the results so far have been mixed. The agency has translocated 25 wolves to the state, and the population was at 45 as of September 26th. But there have been issues both with depredation of livestock and adult wolves just having a relatively low survival rate of just 61%, while biologists would expect it to be at 75% for unhunted wolf populations. So why are the wolves dying? There are likely some biological factors, including a potential infectious parasite impacting some individuals. But another cause is that the agency has euthanized wolves that have been chronically predating on livestock, including five between April 1st, 2026 through the present. Now, the agency has announced that it is suspending its chronic depredation directive and will evaluate any future removals of wolves on a case-by-case basis, using a very conservative approach to address the concern that population growth may not occur this biological year. The decision was immediately panned by ag groups who said that Colorado Parks and Wildlife is contradicting stakeholder input that was painstakingly gathered when creating the depredation directive in the first place. Colorado's livestock producers have worked in good faith, invested in non-lethal tools, and done what this administration has asked of them. In return, we expect this administration to uphold its commitment to act when wolves repeatedly kill livestock. said Mark LaValle, president of the Colorado Cattlemen's Association. In contrast, CPW officials say that the species recovery is at a critical moment and that the decision is necessary for its long-term viability. What are your thoughts on this one? Leave a voicemail. 406-220-6441. You can call me about anything, really, but leave us a message on this wolf issue here. 00:23:37 Speaker 2: 406-220-6441. 00:23:38 Speaker 1: That's all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening, and remember to write in to askcal, that's askcal at themeateater.com. Let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. You know, we appreciate you. Thanks again. We'll talk to you next week.

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