00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything. The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for ELK. First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I T E dot com. Everybody joined today by let me tell you something real quick, So just hang tight, Devin. Just a lot of things going on. I can't tell my main story, which I just told I'm gonna tell my other stories. So, uh, you don't have a look. 00:00:59 Speaker 2: You have kids, right, two little girls. 00:01:01 Speaker 1: Dev od Od Sorry, devn Od's here from b h A. We've met, we're like phone friends, but we haven't met in person till now. He's the he's the Western Policy and Conservation I am doing the intro. He's the Western Policy and Conservation manager at back Country Hunters and Anglers. Devon and I met when I was doing a little article for the La Times about the black black bear management in California, which we're going to speak to today because it's sort of emblematic and indicative of things that happen all around the country. So even if you're not from California, she's listening. I was telling my favorite story in the world, which I don't want to tell just out of respect for the town, but I'll tell this story so respect for the town. Yeah. Everything, here's a weird deal though, man, like a weird like. Listen to what happens to me last night on what was last night? Thursday? Yes, okay, on Monday, we're gonna take our little our two little ones to ice cream. But then we changed our mind, and man, they had a fit, a fit. 00:02:10 Speaker 3: You still call them little ones. 00:02:12 Speaker 1: There's an older one. There'll always be the younger ones. I can tell you call them. There's like an older one. 00:02:17 Speaker 3: Little ones are like. 00:02:20 Speaker 1: The younger ones. There's a ten or twelve And the thing I met him, I don't know what the fifteen was doing. He's got like a girlfriend now and everything, but the ten and twelve, what was he doing? I don't know what he's doing. The ten and twelve. Somehow it was like, we're gonna go to ice cream. Then we renegged, which just pissed them off. I mean, it's a bit. That's a great way to piss a kid off. So my wife is going out with her friend at dinner the next night, so she just then says, your dad will take you tomorrow. So now I'm into that. I go down there and they're like, like, when you take a little if you don't have kids, if you take kids the ice cream, you're gonna argue about, like what all cone everybody's gonna have. And I'm going and I make a joke like there's like the little ship and cone, like I don't know what they call it, And I make a joke like do you have They didn't know I was joking, but I'm like, what do you have? Just a mess of my kids? I said, what do you have? That's like a step down from that baby coan. They didn't get the joke. So anyhow, we agree that we're all gonna get the fucking that they're the not that word, We're gonna get the waffle and like so by two little ones, it was just them. Yeah, they get they get the waffle cone, and I'm like, I'll have the same thing. They then tell me we're out. Oh, so I now get stuck with the old kind when I was a kid. 00:04:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, I would have bought two of those, just to make a point that you can have whatever you want. 00:04:09 Speaker 1: Check this that that's the pre story. Last night, we go down to the ice cream place. This time it's the two little ones. The other one was getting his head shaved at a party, the older one, the two younger ones, Me, my wife, my two younger ones, my daughter's two friends, my buddy, matt Cook. We're in line. Rosemary hurts you bodies, Matthew, my wife all get that cone, the waffle cone. I'm not kidding you. I ordered. She goes, we're out of those. I'm like, you don't say I said I was here there night and that happened. And my daughter's like, she thinks you're being mean. Something's going on that ice cream place that I don't understand. I need to get to the bottom of it. What I need to do is find someone to come down later and order that cone. 00:05:10 Speaker 2: See if they're just hiding it from you. 00:05:11 Speaker 1: There's something fishy at what's that place called Genuine Probably it's right by the elementary school. 00:05:18 Speaker 2: They got a polaroid with your picture on there that says no cone yee, I love it. 00:05:26 Speaker 1: It's sweet peas. Genuine Genuine's too. Like you go there, it's tons of people that aren't even in the right demographic to be out for ice cream. 00:05:36 Speaker 5: Yeah likes ice cream? 00:05:39 Speaker 1: No, no, no, I'm in the demo because I have children. If you go to Genuine, it's people in their like late twenties, early thirties lined up for ice cream. I'm like, should you people all be lined up for a drink? 00:05:54 Speaker 5: But that goes back to what I mean. Everybody loves ice cream. 00:05:58 Speaker 4: It's really good, and drinking culture is endangered. 00:06:04 Speaker 1: It's like if I go to yoga with my wife and there's a like a dude there, like thirty five whatever there by himself. 00:06:12 Speaker 3: I'm I was like, you come on, come on, I don't think that. 00:06:17 Speaker 1: Come on, let's talk straight. 00:06:19 Speaker 2: Let's talk stream Demographic's an ice cream demographic is not dude there is and like who's not in it? 00:06:28 Speaker 1: Randal? If I see Randall down getting the ice cream, I'm gonna think, like I don't want to say what I'm gonna think. 00:06:35 Speaker 4: Yeah, but there's also things When you look at me, you'd be like, the guy's squarely in the ice. 00:06:40 Speaker 1: Cream demographic. 00:06:42 Speaker 4: Walking around wearing basketball shoes. Yeah, it doesn't really fit in his jeans. 00:06:47 Speaker 1: I'm not a big government guy, but I don't think I don't think there should be like a like a little card do you get from the government that like says you have business at the ice cream place? And it would be like, like, how old are you? You should be eating a pint. 00:07:05 Speaker 4: I actually, actually, when I walk into the ice cream place, I like to think that the people behind the counter are thinking, good, finally somebody who knows what they want to look me in the eye. 00:07:15 Speaker 1: They're not going to fight with the people they came in with over the counter. They don't want to taste of everything. 00:07:22 Speaker 5: Yeah, actually I'm the one who wants everything. 00:07:25 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my wife embarrassed me last night. She sampled two things before she made an order, and I was getting embarrassed by I can't stand that two samples. I was like, I'm gonna have to ask you. 00:07:38 Speaker 4: Was the order one of those two or did she order something different? 00:07:41 Speaker 1: That's settled. That's really embarrassing. Yeah, I was embarrassed. 00:07:46 Speaker 2: That's when you should have slipped in there and ordered yours. You would have got a cone. 00:07:49 Speaker 1: She walked out with a waffle, right. But the funny part, this is the main part of the story. Like at the elementary school is right there. At the end of the year, they wheel all the junk, all the kids leave, They just they wheel it outside. I'm not kidding here, like all the lost and found. When they're done, they're done, like a bad breakout. So the playground, like if you want, if you need to outfit a kid the day school ends, go to the playground. It's all out there. 00:08:20 Speaker 2: Oh, there's some nice clothes in this town, too, real nice clothes. 00:08:24 Speaker 1: We go down there and my kids like, we're gonna go to the playground. I'm like, nah, man, don't go to the playground. But my wife overrode me, and so we go down to the playground and walk in through the open gate. There's kids all over playing and all the clothes, and the first thing my wife lays eyes on is our boys clothes. We retrieve three hoodies and I pick up a pair of muck boots and I know my own work. There was like a pair of muckboots that had an L shape cutting them, and I had sewed them and put the aprem patch. I pick up these muck boots. I'm like, that's my work. She doesn't even have a recollection of owning these muck boots. So we walk out there and then everybody's probably thinking, like all the other people are probably thinking, we're like shopping off the free rack. I wanted to yell out, like this is actually our stuff, hands off, Yeah, like we're not just taking this is our kid, like, this is our stuff in this playground. M m yeah. Good. Very eventful evening, Very eventful evening. Devin o' days here from Badcountry Hunters and Nangers, Western Policy and Conservation Manager to talk about blackburs. Can we talk about blackbers outside of California for a minute? Yeah, of course. Is this your picture of the giant black bear? 00:09:45 Speaker 2: No, that's not me, that's my buddy Ned. 00:09:47 Speaker 1: But I'm saying you you you gave us the picture. Oh yeah, Phil, pull that picture up. That's a nice black bear. That's gotta make ari Ei proud. Yeah, you know, because they might wonder if anyone ever does anything legitimate in those packs and then there it is right there. 00:10:05 Speaker 4: I wonder how they'd react if you came into the store and asked them if they had tips for washing blood out of their backpack. 00:10:13 Speaker 1: Uh, you know the hydrogen peroxide tip. Do you know that someone was saying that for you folks who don't know if if you, if you have a bloody pack and put put hydrogen peroxide in the spray bottle anything you got blood on? My god, does it come. 00:10:27 Speaker 6: Out that you don't want to use the heavy duty peroxide blood hates. 00:10:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, don't use like the stuff. Use the bleach of skull, which is what percent forty five? 00:10:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, so forty or something like that. 00:10:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, we could do a whole show on hydrogen peroxide. 00:10:41 Speaker 2: I could have used it like that time. 00:10:45 Speaker 1: Something, or do you have a skull you're cleaning? 00:10:47 Speaker 2: I gotta I couldn't find my normal pack that put my laptop in, so I just brought my hunting pack on the airplane. And when I got to the airport, I noticed there's just blood all over it. 00:10:56 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:10:56 Speaker 2: I thought, I'm sure I was gonna get pulled to the side. Sure, man, I'm gonna use that trick next time. 00:11:00 Speaker 1: Yeah. I got pulled to the side of their day. And before I got pulled over, I had a big tongue, a buffalo's tongue frozen and the guy used the term like, we need to look at your pack, and he used the term organic mass. So the other day in catch Can, I had like a chunk of deer meat roast that was left over, and he's like, I need to check your pack and I said, I think there's an organic mass in there, and he goes, you know that term. I learned it from new people. I don't know that naturally. Uh yeah, three percent. So if you're going to bleach a skull, you brush on the pay the gel stuff, which is like heavy duty. It's what it's what skin. Yeah, it's what people use when they're to bleach hair. And it also when you go look on Amazon and you're trying to buy the really heavy duty hydrogen peroxide that'll bleach a skull, it's you don't they have it as is to sanitize greenhouse equipment. I don't know that either. It must kill like molds and funguses and stuff on greenhouse equipment on your backpack. This is a Yani trick. You put hydrogen three percent hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle and spray it, let it sit a minute, and turn a hose out on it. I don't know. Blood hates hydrogen peroxide hates it. If you're on blood thinners, just drink hydrogen peroxide. Save money. But here's the catches. Someone before you do that, someone told me that it Uh, I think it can degrade the stitching. Yeah, that's what I was told you. 00:12:47 Speaker 4: Yeah, I think like a lot of pack companies will tell you just to use water, do like a long cold soak, yeah, because they don't want to be responsible for their stitching falling apart. 00:12:58 Speaker 1: A thing that I'll do when I can. I did it there. In fact I did the other day in Alaska. Is I'll put rocks. I'll just put some big rocks in my backpack and throw it in the river. Yeah, or throwing a fast flowing creek if the blood's so fresh, and when you come back a few hours later, it's just just the cold blood, the cold water running, cold water, care free. So Devin, you're gonna do the opposite of spot burning, Like you're like, come to my state. 00:13:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, we got we got plenty of bears, so come to your state. That's what the department is talking about too, is figuring out how to get more people to come. You know, how do we entice these out of state hunters, because California, in most face, it's not exactly the the out of state dream destination of most people on their their wish list, unless you're trying to get that like thirty year sheep tag. 00:13:47 Speaker 6: What's a non resident bear tag cost in California? 00:13:49 Speaker 2: Non resident bear tag is a great question. I gotta pull that up for you. I think it's a couple hundred bucks. 00:13:53 Speaker 3: That's not bad. 00:13:54 Speaker 1: I know, you know what. I know what the problem is why they won't go there and they don't know and I don't think you know, you want to know what it is. I want to know that the primary vegetation is poison oak. Me and Yannas have like conscious when we're thinking about hunting in California. The number one thing on our mind is like, but do I really want to have poison oak for three months? Because we're very we are very susceptible. 00:14:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, I am too. 00:14:25 Speaker 4: Three eighty seven for a black bear tag non resident. 00:14:30 Speaker 1: I bet you in this picture if you look carefully, everything you're looking at is poison. You gotta be rugged. Like that's the thing that people don't think about. If you're susceptible, you gotta be prepared to be miserable. I'm Michael, I got I have the skin of a little baby when it comes to poison. Oak Oh Kids podcast is out. Came out on January thirty, which hasn't happened yet. 00:15:01 Speaker 3: January. 00:15:02 Speaker 1: Now what am I saying? What was the other j month? June July? 00:15:08 Speaker 5: Yeah, so in the future when you're listening to this, episode two is out and importantly it's on its own feed, just like last season. You can't listen to it in the Meat Eater podcast feed. You have to please go and listen to the subscribe Exactly how old are. 00:15:30 Speaker 1: Your daughters, Devin two and five? Have they ever listened to the Media to Kids podcast? Just lying? 00:15:35 Speaker 2: So it's their favorite podcast? Yeah, they beg me to listen to it every week. 00:15:40 Speaker 5: Phil's masterpiece. 00:15:42 Speaker 1: Don't be being a smart ass. It's a good podcast for kids. You should play it for. 00:15:46 Speaker 2: Them, all right, you know, part of their education. I am gonna have to get them the uh the Crayfish. 00:15:51 Speaker 1: Book though, sure I'll sign it for you. 00:15:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, when you when you called me talk about black bears whatever. Last year of the year before I was actually at a hittie pool filled with crayfish, a couple hundred of them I got. I got a good story there too. We had one of them actually escape, and then we found him the next day and my wife we had eaten all them. We boiled all the crayfish and. 00:16:14 Speaker 1: That last crafish and so them. 00:16:17 Speaker 2: We were like, you know, we had the whole neighborhood over, which is funny too because this is San Diego, and everyone's like, where'd you get the baby lobsters with claws? 00:16:25 Speaker 4: Yeah, mud bugs their mudbugs. 00:16:28 Speaker 2: But we had one escape and then my wife's like, well, you know, we we got to keep him now, and uh so he became Stowy Stowy the stowaway. He lived in a little flower vase for a couple of weeks, and I was like, well, this isn't cool. We got to get him in an aquarium at least, you know, we're gonna eat him or we're gonna give him an aquarium. And then ended up going out catching more crayfish with the we're doing like removals with the Forest Service where they have some endangerous pecies' habitat, and did a whole nother boil, got another one, gave him a little friend. They made it a little baby crayfish. Then my neighbors we had a shitty little aquarium. Then my neighbor gave me this amazing tank, and so we had this like mansion. And so Stowey went from you know, hot in this little flower vase to an aquarium to a mansion. He's got a white family, a bunch of kids. Then you know, this is like the American dream. 00:17:16 Speaker 4: This is where it goes off the rails of aquaculture. 00:17:19 Speaker 1: But you know what, I wonder though him having witnessed the carnage that he witnessed, I wonder if he still hates you. 00:17:27 Speaker 2: Oh, I mean certainly. Well, there was like like if I. 00:17:30 Speaker 1: Came in here, I come in here and I kill everybody in here in this room, but I take you and I'm like, now I'm gonna set you up at a sweet house and a wife. Are you like, uh, man, this guy's great or you like this guy's a monster cause. 00:17:46 Speaker 6: He did you did kidnap him originally? 00:17:48 Speaker 4: And then if you have children, do you stare at them and know in the back of your mind something's gonna happen someday. I've seen it before. I don't want to let you in on the secret. But he has to live with that that guilt, you know that fore knowledge of what it waits, You can't interview that crayfish. 00:18:07 Speaker 2: You just died. 00:18:08 Speaker 1: This is this is. 00:18:10 Speaker 2: It just died like three days ago. This is the eulogy because this is like the American dream of a crayfish. But you know, you know, things got really sour when you know he and you know his his mate. They got into a tizzy. She ripped off his arm and then somehow she escaped, which blows my mind. Our babysitter found the female walking across the kitchen floor, put it back in the tank, and you know, this was too much for Stowe. He couldn't handle it, so he killed her and then it was just him with the kids. And then one of the kids got revenge on him once the kid got big enough and killed him. 00:18:46 Speaker 1: Just like this is the story of. 00:18:52 Speaker 2: It really is life and death on the farm. 00:18:58 Speaker 1: But like if you guys, if if people out there, if you hear someone say like Oedipus or the Oedipal complex, it's that like that you'll did you want to kill your dad and marry your mom? Oedipus didn't know he was adopted, and someone comes to him like a soothsayer, says, hey, heads up, you're gonna kill your dad and marry your ma. He's like, to hell, I am and takes off and goes to a new town because he thinks his parents are the wrong people. So he shows up in the new town, probably kills a guy, marries a lady. M's real mind, dad, Just that's just a little bit of background. And then doesn't he take his eyes out? 00:19:41 Speaker 4: Doesn't he take his own eyes out rather than. 00:19:43 Speaker 1: Look at what he's done. That's that's a that's a terrible story. I mean, that's a lot of ups and downs in that story. So where are you at now? You have just the babies? 00:19:53 Speaker 2: I mean they're not babies anymore. Now we got the new you know, there's a there's a power struggle going on. It's kind of you in there. There's a and we got a bunch of fish too, except I thought the crayfish would eat the fish, but they're just not interested. 00:20:08 Speaker 1: Years ago I did something real similar. We gotta get to the show in a minute here, but we went out. This was a want. We went out and chopped a huge hole in the ice in a river where we knew that there was a lot of crayfish in the summer, and flipped all the rock like chopped that you could get in with waiters and walk around in this hole, and we catch a ton of crayfish that are comatose under. 00:20:34 Speaker 2: The rocks, like out of it. 00:20:37 Speaker 1: The water is so cold, bring them in, put them in a wash tub and the mint they warm up. They're all just super energetic, like instantly had a crawfish boil. Took one little dinker that was too small and put it into a quane. With my roommate's little baby. He had this crazy little white, some kind of sinking frog, like a little white aquarium frog that would live at the bottom of the aquarium. He was worried about it, so we took the crayfishes pincers away from him and put him in there. He gradually grows back a little mini claw, and one day my roommate peers in there, and here's that son of a bitch land in the bobby of the aquarium, holding that dead frog. 00:21:25 Speaker 3: Like you caught it the whole time. He has grown that clawback. 00:21:28 Speaker 1: Eyeball that one of these days, one of these days, you know, the liquor. If Clay Newcomb's listen, here's a story that has everything that Clay would like. The Kentucky Man Kentucky man arrested for releasing a raccoon into a business months after fleeing police on a mule. H only in Kentucky. I know that Tom Murray, Kentucky. A man from Murray can. I've spent a bunch of time there. A man from Murray, Kentucky, was wrestled last week after police say he released a raccoon inside of business. This is the same man, just months after the same man was arrested for attempting to evade police officers on a mule. Why can we hear him on the show? 00:22:25 Speaker 5: I can think of a few reasons. 00:22:28 Speaker 2: Radio Live. 00:22:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy wrote in Yeah, they're having a baby, and they got it narrowed down to two names, Yannis and Callahan. I mean this must be a super fan. Well, well it's half he's half he's like Yannis because of Yanna's Callahan is just coincidence because it's after Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry. So it's like cal is like just caught the crossfire. I'm still that anyhow, this is the guy writing in Brad anyhow, I was telling the person I help out add an auction in Coldwater, Michigan, that we were between Yannis and Callahan's. So this this individual Brad is explaining to someone, Hey, we're gonna name it Callahan or Yiannis. He's talking to a gal. The gal then informs him back to the letter. She then informed me that she knew a Yannis and said his name is Janice. Who tell us hmmm? She said he was a real estate appraiser in Michigan who she worked with as an attorney. A couple of things. If you meant a building inspector, is that the same thing? No? No, if you meant the building inspector. Jannis's dad, also named Janis, is a building inspector in Michigan. But what you're overlooking is that all Latvians are named Janus. Mm hmmm. They all are named Giannis. So there are some hundreds of Giannis phutellos is running around. 00:24:16 Speaker 5: So it may or may not be Yanni's dad. 00:24:21 Speaker 3: It could be wonderful. 00:24:21 Speaker 4: I think that it's he's a building inspector. This woman calls him a realist. I feel like that's rather running around. Yeah, I mean, there still could be too many, but I feel like this checks out. I'm not going to disagree with you on the point that there are too many. Honest is very confusing, so. 00:24:42 Speaker 2: Is Brad hoping we come up with an answer for him here. 00:24:45 Speaker 1: I would name it Steve waiting for that which dude's name Steve or dying breed man. 00:24:52 Speaker 4: I would say, just know that if you name it Giannis, you're also naming the child Janice as well. 00:24:57 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:24:57 Speaker 2: Well, and Siri won't know how to spell it. 00:25:00 Speaker 4: And you're gonna you're gonna condemn him to a life of explaining how to spell his name to every uh like like restaurant host or hostess, every d m V person. 00:25:11 Speaker 1: No one believes him anyone. If he goes into coffee shop and he tells one person like they're like, what's the name for your order, he'll be like, Yannis, and then they'll be like, hi, I spell it. He'll spell it for him, and then it goes to the next person who yells out when their orders ready. There's no way it's not going to be Janis. I was staying there with Yannis one time, and we're weighing bags to get on a charter plane and there's a guy there taking everybody's weight. So he looks he's saying people's names, and he goes Janis, and Yanna steps forward and he goes it's Yannis and stands on the scale, and the guy looks at Yannis and looks at the guy next to him and says Janie one seventy two. He's like, don't bullshit me, buddy, I know what your name is. Yeah, I don't know what's name that kid Doug during uh doubling down on something here, I was goofing on Doug when I was when I last time I was with Doug, he was telling my kids a story was he was trying to convince my kids that you should always back in, like your car. Apparently in the oil field they called it first move forward. Like Doug always back no matter how much hassle he has to go through, he always backs in. He always claimed, like he says that his dad got attacked by his own chainsaw. And Doug's telling my kids like, if my dad hadn't backed in, he wouldn't be alive. Even though he decks died old age, but he would have died that day had he not backed in, and I'm telling my kids, like listen, Doug wants you to back in. That didn't make the difference between Doug's dad dying or not that day, because he drove down the road Doug rode in doubling down. I do Here's Doug, I do want to crack you about something with my dad's chainsaw story. He didn't drive himself to the hospital. He was barely able to get to town, so literally every second was important. Had there not been an EMT in downtown kaz at that moment when he pulled in and fell out of the truck, and had the ambulance not been just down the road, he would have died. Maybe we should reenact it sometime when you are here. 00:27:34 Speaker 3: I'm not sure what that means. 00:27:36 Speaker 1: Actually, when he does our meet it or sheds shoot, he's going to take you to He's going to take the viewer to the spot where Doug's dad was attacked by the chainsaw. I had turned Doug onto a book, one of the best I've read in a long time, called The Land of Breakers. It's an old book. Holy cow, is it good. It's about It's like the first it's kind of after the long hunters. But it's like the first farmers to begin moving into the Appalachian valleys, and it's like the story of farmers trickling into this valley in Appalachia and establishing corn patches. They're hunting bears all the time. It's a phenomenal novel. Doug is surprised I liked that book. He's delighted that I liked it and says the surprise comes from the amount of personal reflections, human condition and even romance. Wonderful book. Have you read it? I haven't, I said to Doug. Because the knowledge about trees that the author has that he then gives to the author's very knowledge about purposes for wood. A guy wrote in about something that I don't understand. 00:28:57 Speaker 3: Yeah, Randall and I were trying to figure this out earlier. 00:29:00 Speaker 1: Basically, someone has submitted a formal petition to the EPA. It's kind of an interesting concept, but you can see where it's going. Someone submitted a formal petition to the EPA, which probably happens every day, but requesting that humans become wildlife officially, be like, why are humans not officially considered as wildlife? Because he the play, would hear it would be for regulatory effects, meaning that you wouldn't be able, like there's certain things you can't do that would be damaging to wildlife, and you wouldn't be able to do certain things to human habitats because it would be like you'd be affecting wildlife. I gather that's the play. It's a very interesting concept. 00:29:55 Speaker 2: Is IFNA is in long enough already, Man, that's gonna really a wrench in the system. 00:30:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, I see a thousand ways this isn't gonna go down because I know they're gonna do lethal control in overpopulated areas, you know, I mean, like there's a lot. It's just an interesting concept. 00:30:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure I want to back hunting as a management strategy. 00:30:16 Speaker 4: In it it's more like a barroom conversation than a yeah yeah. 00:30:21 Speaker 1: I As a parent, especially when kids were younger, I always tried to like over accentuate to them that we were an animal. M M. I would be like a lot of animals, like bears, like us humans, right. I would always do that to sort of get them in that frame of considering us as animals. But that's not gonna fly. Uh. There's a move to how far who knows this story well, guy says, I'll just gonae with the guy says, because this is a fascinating topic and it bleeds into what we are going to talk about today. Reinstatement of black bear hunting in Florida. Longtime listener, first time caller? Isn't it from Rush Limbaugh's show, longtime listener, first time caller. 00:31:14 Speaker 4: I don't know if it's Rush specifically. I thought it was just sort of a convention of talk radio. 00:31:20 Speaker 1: I remember limbaud have you would call in and say dittos, and that meant all that stuff because every caller is like a long time listen to your first time caller, love the show, So then it would become you just call and go like dittos and then just get to the point. Florida has been in the process of evaluating and getting public input about reinstatement of a quota black bear hunt. It has been a wildly controversial topic and has been gaining huge traction in the media. Lately. He's attached the proposal from the Black Bear Commission, going on talking about more and more bear interactions in Florida. Bear interactions and bear sightings and places where they didn't historically have them beach visitors, tourists. Uh. The other day he took us first bear attack call two weeks ago made national news. He says, I know the meat Eater crew normally handle more Midwest and northern issues. That is completely untrue. 00:32:33 Speaker 3: Go all over the. 00:32:33 Speaker 1: Place that I think hurts unintentionally. That hurts my heart. We talk about Florida more than any other state. 00:32:45 Speaker 3: We do. 00:32:45 Speaker 2: I'm sure they have ice cream down there. 00:32:48 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but people with kids, like dudes like Randle down there, lock you up. I had a person Florida one time tell me like cold, stone cold. She's probably like twenty three, twenty four year old woman, tell me stone cold, like she's telling me a fact. She told me Florida is the free estate. That was just wondering how you calibrate that, Like how you measure that? Yeah, man, I this is like a little this is a little bit Machiavelian. But like if you want, if you were a bear hunter in Florida and you wanted to take like a Machiavalian approach to pursuing your interests, you would almost hope not for bear attacks. You would hope for more. 00:33:35 Speaker 3: Conflict bear conflict because. 00:33:37 Speaker 1: This is what happened in New Jersey. 00:33:39 Speaker 3: It's yeah, that's what I was gonna say. It's just like a. 00:33:42 Speaker 1: Real run in New Jersey. New Jersey had historically had bear hunting. Through poor management, bear numbers were greatly reduced. They did a pause on bear hunting and some other moves. They rebuilt bears to where they had the highest density in the country, did a bear hunt. The anti hunters had a shit fit. Their governor was. 00:34:09 Speaker 3: Murphy's first Murphy, Phil Murphy. 00:34:11 Speaker 1: Phil Murphy campaigns on an anti bear hunting plank in his platform. Gets elected. They shut down the bear hunt New Jersey. First like they. 00:34:24 Speaker 6: Closed yeah state state owned land, and then he just let the bear Management Plan expire, which essentially just outlied all bear hunting. 00:34:36 Speaker 1: One of the things they did in New Jersey is to just totally screw hunters too. You had to do a check, mandatory check. They would publicize, like you would need to pull into a rest area that was known to the public, and they like publicly openly seal everybody's bears so that all the protesters can stand there heckling you, taking pictures of you while you check your bear. Any other state when you go to check your bear. You go in, talk to someone at the desk, and then you go to a little whatever garage back room, you meet with a biologist, They check your bear. They don't turn it into like a public spectacle of subjecting people to that kind of exposure. Murphy. Then all of a sudden, what happens. Bear conflicts shoot through the roof so much that Murphy comes back and says, it pains me to say it, but I was wrong. We have to have the bear hunt. So if you were like like I said, the Machiavelian approach to bear hunting in Florida is hoping for bear conflict because that's your clearest path. The same day, in fact, this is kind of weird. The same day, in the same place where the girl told me that Florida is the free estate in the nation. That same day, in that same place, I met a Florida Game commissioner who told me he opposed the bear hunt only because of not wanting to deal with the public blowback that would come his way. He told me that I don't want to say his names. He's kind of telling me in confidentiality. He told me I didn't want to deal with the antis, they like swayed his vote. What happened on that hunt? What did they have forty eight hours? Well, so they Randall's gonna do a little report. 00:36:38 Speaker 4: They had Florida had a black bear season from like the thirties up until nineteen ninety four, and then it was closed from ninety four to twenty fifteen. They reopened a fall hunt in twenty fifteen, and they shut it down within two days because they had they were I don't think they actually went over the quota, but they were speeding to They were killing so many that like another day of hunting probably would have taken them well over the quota. So they killed three hundred bears in two days. 00:37:12 Speaker 1: You're ruining the story, Hope. You're not getting it right. Hope, I asked you one thing to do here. Well then you said, Randle's going to give a little account of Yeah, but you're not Your count's not right, my understanding, your professional research. 00:37:27 Speaker 4: I've got my research right in front of me. 00:37:31 Speaker 1: I thought it went like this that like they built a buffer in when they close there's a forty eight hour window, or in Florida, I think it was a twenty four hour window. Do you have a PhD or not. 00:37:53 Speaker 4: I mean, I'm just going by what I h I do. 00:37:56 Speaker 1: I'm just going by what I. 00:37:57 Speaker 2: Read waiting for that. 00:37:59 Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't think you could just close it because you're not going to read like you have to recollection. 00:38:05 Speaker 1: I recollection is they were speeding towards the quota, yes, and so they called it closed. But they can't immediately close it because how are people supposed to get the word Like, let's say you're like waiting for one to step out. You know you got a shot, but he's not quite clear, and they go like, hey, season's over, but you're not looking at your phone, and then the bear steps clear. You're not in violation. Well they did. 00:38:30 Speaker 4: That makes sense to me. That's how we run our unlimited hunts here. But they shut down Central and East Panhandle regions after the first day on Saturday, they said, but. 00:38:46 Speaker 1: But what there was a twenty four hour window. They were speeding toward it. But by the end of the twenty four hours they had overshot it, and then everybody had a conniption. The antis had a conniption. Oh, I see. 00:39:02 Speaker 4: Now in the Panhandle they did go into Sunday and killed triple the quota, and so they killed The overall quota was three twenty, and they shut it down on Sunday night with two hundred and ninety five bears killed. 00:39:22 Speaker 1: But then by the time it wrapped, what was it? Jeez? 00:39:33 Speaker 4: See this is the real uh issue with hastily assembled research here, actual harvest. 00:39:44 Speaker 1: Three h four and the quota was what painting three twenty. 00:39:48 Speaker 4: Well for the overall state, the quota was was three twenty, but they the one the area where they met the quota on the first day they'd ended up that they went, they tripped the quota, and so I think they just shut the whole thing down before the rest of the state, that's generally speaking. But yeah, they killed three hundred bears in two days. Thirty eight of them were soals with cubs, and uh they haven't had a hunt since then. 00:40:17 Speaker 1: Because it was treated in the you know, with all due respect, I didn't give Random much time. Do you notice like this group of there's like a fan group about Randall. Yes, I wonder what they're thinking right now. 00:40:29 Speaker 5: Well, I think their support they're all those dedicated and loyal randomals there. 00:40:36 Speaker 4: I think they understand the constraints of what I was asked to do here. 00:40:41 Speaker 2: They're reasonable, but. 00:40:47 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I've pieced it together. 00:40:52 Speaker 2: I feel like I thought you did well. 00:40:54 Speaker 1: I want to know more stories. Ted Nugent bought a Florida Bear tag. Good for him. 00:41:01 Speaker 4: Fifteen. 00:41:03 Speaker 1: Uh, we were gonna we don't have time anymore. We were gonna spend a bunch of time goofing on this thing in California where they got an orphan bear cub and they're trying and they're raising it up, and it's a bunch of like furries who are all dressed as black bears, like like that's the problem to not have it to that, Like that's the problem. That's the way to keep it from not acclimating to people. Yeah, those bears are doomed, like like the bear is gonna like get out and be like, ah, I'm just another wild bear. Hey, those there's some things, but. 00:41:45 Speaker 4: They're not like the bears I'm used to, right. 00:41:49 Speaker 1: Talking about that. That would have been funny had a goofed on that for a long time. We're not gonna, all right, the story of the California Black where it's taking us a long time to get here. 00:42:02 Speaker 2: Devin usually does. 00:42:06 Speaker 1: I see you're here an a listener, longtime listeners. It is just a couple of quick points on that. We thought about killing that whole part of the show. But we're not gonna good. But what I am gonna do is I'm looking to in the near future split the shows and just do interviews and just do this is something we've considered for a long time, very clean interviews, so you'd be like on as a clean interview and then a different thing which is just talking about dumb stuff. 00:42:44 Speaker 5: So audience, feel free to let us know your thoughts on that. 00:42:48 Speaker 1: Thinking about doing that, I'm against it. It's part of my professional development. 00:42:51 Speaker 2: It might be a little too serious. I don't know. I'm not sure how I feel about it. 00:42:56 Speaker 1: Nineteen forty eight, did you supply this timeline? You know this stuff inside out? In nineteen forty eight, black bears get classified as a game animal in California? Like, what does that mean? Right? What does that mean for people to hear that they're classified as a game animal. 00:43:12 Speaker 2: They're regulated by the Department Official Wildlife. 00:43:15 Speaker 1: So prior to that, it was like have at them. 00:43:19 Speaker 2: Prior to that, we're just killing grizzlies until you extrapaid them and you know, people are just you know, kind of run around hunting. I mean, we had our commission was established prior to that, but I don't think they were formally classified as a game until god. 00:43:33 Speaker 1: So that's kind of the state at which the you know, A way to think about that too, is that if sand hill cranes, like this is a pet, little pet subject of mind that I'm interested in. If my home state of Michigan were to enact a sand hill crane season, which they should, it would require them declaring it. It would require them doing this. It's classified as one thing now, which makes it not like subject to being listed with a season. The first step is to go, like we hereby declare the sandhill crane to be a game animal, and that's like part of the pathway. 00:44:18 Speaker 2: And they usually triggers like a management plan too, I know, like we'll go on tangents. But you know, recently there's a proposal in California to classify coyotes as a game animal, and so that would trigger a management plan and everyone's like, you know, I don't think that's going anywhere, hopefully not, but that's part of the process. 00:44:37 Speaker 1: Right, And then that's coming from people who don't want that. That's coming from people that don't want them to be a game animal. They want to be able to curb, right, is to be like that. Yeah that it won't be year round, unlimited whatever. 00:44:55 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:44:55 Speaker 6: Classifyment them as a game animal allows you to protect them. 00:44:59 Speaker 3: It's not like, oh, here's an open season. It's a game animal that. 00:45:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not dudes that hate coyotes doing that. Students love kyotes. Correct in that case, Okay, we're gonna jump up. We're gonna jump up to nineteen eighty where we have a sort of black bear benchmark. This is all deep history. Hit me with, like, in nineteen eighty, what was the status so Reagan? Reagan comes in right, eighty Well, he was elected in eighty. 00:45:34 Speaker 4: And then took office in January eighty one. 00:45:36 Speaker 1: Okay, so just for you people to remember this, it's carter. There's that PhD. Reagan on his carter on his way out. Regular going on in California. Hit me with what what's the status of black bears in California? 00:45:53 Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty So nineteen eighty, I think they've got the population around ten to fifteen thousand bears. That's the estimate started getting a little bit more restrictive as far as management goes. So that's when they took prohibited trapping, no killing cows, no killing of cubs and sows, and then they reduced the bag limit from two to one. 00:46:18 Speaker 4: And if I can, if I can jump in, because I didn't know what ten to fifteen thousand bears meant. I'm looking here that Montana has between thirteen thousand and seventeen thousand black bears. Yeah, so yeah, so like that's a fairly robust population. 00:46:34 Speaker 1: Not like it is now. And wait, yeah, just wait, not like it is now, and counting bears I think has gotten a little more refined. Yeah, I think it used to be like a little bit tougher to count bears back in those days. But I mean it's a guideline, right, right, right, it's a general sense. But of course, if you're saying ten to fifteen thousand, you're opening yourself up to a wide gap, right, there's a lot of numbers right between. 00:46:59 Speaker 4: Still like yeah, but still it's it's in the it's in the vicinity of where like what we think of as black bear numbers in Montana, where we obviously don't have a shortage, was Reagan the Gipper or the Kipper, the Gipper gipper uh as much as he is like celebrated among traditional concert like, as much as he has celebrated among like pre Trump Republicans, the old kind of Republicans from a couple of years ago, he wound up not being the Hunter's best friend when it came to black Bear management. 00:47:33 Speaker 1: Isn't that correct? Like, wasn't it? Didn't Reagan sign. 00:47:37 Speaker 2: He was about I was Mountain Lions. 00:47:39 Speaker 1: I don't signed on mountains. Okay, he signed the band on mount Dogs for Mountain Lions, right. 00:47:43 Speaker 4: He also signed the band on Uh Nope and carry in California? 00:47:48 Speaker 1: Did he? Because? 00:47:52 Speaker 4: I mean, basically so the Black Panthers couldn't. 00:47:54 Speaker 1: So you had to start wearing your pistol in your pants, not out of your pants. You had to start hiding it in your fans instead of explan. 00:48:01 Speaker 4: Reagan's a big Hollywood guy, and I always full of all sorts of contradictions. 00:48:07 Speaker 1: Okay, we're gonna, this is gonna We're gonna start narrowing in on much more, just for you listeners. We're just laying little groundwork here. We're just laying some background before we start getting into like how bear management works in our most populous state, and how bear management white work in a state near you coming soon nineteen ninety eight, So now we're getting closer. I'm a young buck. I'm kind of an older buck, six years out of high school. Go on. Nineteen ninety eight. 00:48:40 Speaker 2: That was when the which is presidentially, that was when the management plan, the previous management plan was established, and so that was the framework that we operated on in California just up until this year when we updated the new management plan. 00:48:57 Speaker 1: Yeah. So nineteen ninety eight, they're like, here's how we're gonna handle bears, and then twenty some years goes by and it's how we're managing bears. 00:49:05 Speaker 3: Correct, And in ninety eight the population had. 00:49:08 Speaker 2: At it increased, Yeah, it increased. And all this data is just coming from hunter harvest. So they're using you know, age sex ratio and just hunter harvest from premolars. That's it. I mean, they're not doing like a ton of they don't have the current integrated population model that we have now that gives you a much more accurate representation of. 00:49:29 Speaker 1: So they're able to determine, they're able to make a stab. Back in nineteen ninety eight, they're able to make a stab how many bears are there based strictly on what they're seeing hunters bring in. 00:49:38 Speaker 2: I'm sure there's some scientific stuff, but that is the core of the model. It's just hunter harvest. 00:49:43 Speaker 1: Data, okay. And in ninety eight, so again that that population estimate. In nineteen eighty, we're gonna get into some wild numbers now, but coming up here in eighty ten to fifteen thousand bears estimated. Jump ahead almost twenty years, there's the estimate seventeen to twenty three thousand bears. Notably, the plan indicated an increase in the bear population and documented an expansion of black bears along the central coast in southern California. So bears moving into new places, right. 00:50:19 Speaker 2: And that's because historically they were grizzlies. And you know, that's a good point. Grizzlies are extra paid, and black bears are now like filling the void and they're like, oh, hey, there's nothing killing us down here. 00:50:30 Speaker 1: Right. No, that's fair. Take Yeah, that's that's funny. How slow some of that stuff takes place, right that you're still seeing adjustments, do you know, I mean, like even today you're still you're probably seeing adjustments from extirpations of wolves in the early two thousands or not the early to the one I saying in the early twentieth century, you're still seeing wildlife for just but it takes like one hundred years, right for things that get used, or how long it takes wildlife to get used to people. It takes generations of mountain lions, generations of bears to get like used to people and figure it out and raise their offspring to be like no, no, no, no, like you can do this, but you can't do that. You gotta like when you get to a road, here's how I like to do it, do you know what I mean? And they like gradually learned. They're like, oh no, no, no, you can like totally go into a neighborhood man and trash cans, but not that neighborhood, like not that neighborhood. Yeah, they like they figure it out somehow, you know, Uh okay, twenty twelve. This is when this is when the story starts getting kind of juicy and interesting. So hit this with twenty twelve. 00:51:46 Speaker 2: So up until this point, you could hunt dog, you can hunt bears with dogs, and that was you know, we were hitting the quota every once in a while, right, like pretty regularly that quote. 00:51:56 Speaker 6: Can I stop you for a second, before this, like was there spring and fall? 00:52:00 Speaker 3: Was there baiting? 00:52:01 Speaker 2: No, none of that. All that was back in like I think around the eighties a lot of that stuff got They went pretty good. It's away so we had dogs, but no baiting, no spring season, just one tech and we're hitting the quota. You know, not every year, but around that like seventeen hundred bears where with. 00:52:19 Speaker 1: Fall hunting with dogs hitting the quota of how many bears seventeen hundred okay out of an estimated say. 00:52:25 Speaker 2: They didn't change that by like a hundred or so, so I think it maybe like was sixteen hundred and went up to seventeen hundred. But it's been it's hovered around there, hasn't changed dramatically over time. 00:52:36 Speaker 1: And they got this quote and periodically people periodically hunters are like capping it and hitting a close season yep, primarily with the use of hounds. 00:52:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was instrumental to people being successful for. 00:52:50 Speaker 1: Sure, Okay. And then twenty twelve, what goes on and how does that happen? 00:52:57 Speaker 2: Well, the legislature, you know that story of legislature gets involved, there's an effort to ban hunting with dogs, they're successful, and immediately following that the harvest rate drops significantly, so we don't hit the quota. After that legislative session, after that bill has passed, we do not hit the quota. Until today, we still haven't hit the quota. And that is really like, why everything got so sideways with the petition from the Humane Society and all the efforts to ban bear hunting is because the population model, when you just take it strictly on hunter harvest data, everyone went, oh, no, the bear population is collapsing. Look they're not killing as many bears. Look they're only killing half as many bears. There must be half as many bears on the landscape. 00:53:48 Speaker 1: That's the great irony and perversity in this story. That gets to me is like the same people that push to end dog hunting for bears then trumpet the reduction in harvest as a way of showing that bear numbers are collapsing. When you know that, they know you know that, they know what happened. 00:54:08 Speaker 3: But it's an argument people will buy. 00:54:10 Speaker 6: If they don't think about it, they don't understand it. 00:54:13 Speaker 1: You know, if you wanted to see bear numbers in California really collapse, you'd end all bear hunting, Like no one's checking a bear anymore, there's none left, you know. 00:54:26 Speaker 2: Interesting in the new management plan, they actually have an interesting little snippet that says that in some areas where there isn't bear hunting, you know, where bear hunting's not allowed, you get higher rates of like infanticide and like starvation and intercompetition because there's just so many bears that like some of the younger bears aren't making it on their mortality rate increases. I thought that was kind of fascinating. 00:54:54 Speaker 1: Do you have some of those stats and hear about like black bear predation on mule deer and stuff. 00:54:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's some crazy ones. So that new management plan, you know, I think it was I think they put a couple of million dollars like into all the work that went into that. They built out an entirely new integrated population model which utilizes hunter harvest data. But it also they collared a bunch of bears. They have a bunch of hair snares, they have a bunch of camera traps and data that's all building out this plan there. 00:55:23 Speaker 1: To give you much more robust picture what's going on. Yeah, and regionally specific too. 00:55:27 Speaker 2: But you know some of those crazy stats that they include in that they did a study on mountain lions and kleptoparasitism up in northwest California. 00:55:36 Speaker 1: Explain that term. 00:55:37 Speaker 2: So that's where you have a mountain lion that typically, let's say, kills a blacktail a week out there, and there are so many black bears that black bears are opportunistic. They you know, smell a dead deer, They're like, oh, breakfast, So they come in, push the mountain lion off the kill. And of all the mountain lions that they had collared and were studying, I think only one of them was willing to defend her her kills. All the rest of them were like, it's not worth it. I'm not fighting this bear. So then the mountain lions go out and kill another deer. 00:56:10 Speaker 1: Yeah, because wasn't it. The over fifty percent of the deer that mountain lions killed were stolen from them by black bears. 00:56:19 Speaker 2: They ended up killing six times the normal amount of deer that they would because of kleptoparasitism. Oh man, So I mean the whole coming back to spot burning, you know, if you're a deer hunter, Yeah, we want a lot more people to kill bears. And in that region where they did that study, it's the presumed to be from the datas the densest concentration of black bears in the world. No, in the world four bears, over four bears per square miles and had a lot of poison oak though. 00:56:53 Speaker 1: That's an overlooked thing. That's why, you know, klepto parasitism. You could do a study on that. Like if I'm in my kitchen with my kids and I make a case DIA, they'd be like this individual ones that making four times as many cases that's normally what it made because of clefti perisity. That's pretty fascinating that they had always met the quota. Then when you banned hound hunting, so from twenty twelve to twenty twenty one, with the band of hound hunting, the quota never gets met. So then you just you've taken away people's primary way of getting you take away one of the most effective ways to get bears, and then you have it that you're just gonna have more bears, more bears, more bears, more bears because they're not even able to hit the number that they've regarded to be a very safe number anyway, very safe. 00:57:45 Speaker 2: I mean that's like the harvest rates in California are well below what would be considered the threshold for sustainable. They estimated about fifteen percent take would be like a sustainable level for the population in California, at least recently. We're not over five percent for the entire state, five percent for more than one zone, and three percent for the entire state. So, I mean, the harvest rates are incredibly low, and there's some estimates that say you can go up to twenty percent. I think Pennsylvania and a couple other states have even higher harvest rates and they have no issues. 00:58:21 Speaker 1: Because they got styles with a lot of food and they're dropping three cluck cubs, four cubs. Whatever. You see videos, you know in the East. You know, some bear goes across the world and five cubs come running after it, all, right, stuff that you just don't see it round here. 00:58:35 Speaker 6: When those quotas are when they stopped meeting those quotas, did was there a correlation between an increase and bear conflict and an increase in the number of bears that were getting what they like to say euthanized, but you know, just shot by management officials whatever. 00:58:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, bear conflict generally from that time period up until today has kind of steadily increased, like human bear conflict, and the department actually prior to the release of the management plan, they updated their sort of depredation strategy and their human bear conflict strategy, and after that there's been a lot less euthanasia of bears, but a lot more conflict as well. So it's just a little bit more difficult for the department to go in there and approve for a bear to get. 00:59:27 Speaker 6: Taken because of like social pressure or pretty much. 00:59:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it follows what the depredation strategy is for mountain lions, which is, you know previously there is you know, procedures, but you could kind of I think my understanding is that wardens could make you know, a determination, like it's kind of on the fly, like, yes, this is a problem bear, we need to like go in and take care of this. 00:59:51 Speaker 1: Now. 00:59:51 Speaker 2: There needs to be you know, a lot that there needs to be a record of documentation of attempts to haze the bear. You need to have a number of staf that go through before that depredation tag is issued and before the department will consider actually going in. 01:00:06 Speaker 4: Interesting, I have a question about not hitting that quota. Is that is the success rate for black bear hunters and cal obviously, like the success rate goes down when they do away with dogs, right and you're just doing spot in. 01:00:21 Speaker 1: Stall drop fifty or no, sorry not the success rate harvest drop fifty percent. 01:00:26 Speaker 4: Yeah, so success but yeah, I mean, hound hunting has is higher efficacy. So I'm wondering, like, in the time that the quota hasn't been met, in the time that the quota has not been met, are success rates among hunters on par with fall bear non hound seasons and other states? Like is it a question of there's not enough people buying bear tags? 01:00:49 Speaker 1: No? 01:00:50 Speaker 4: Or is a question that success rates are much lower in California compared to a similar season in say Washington. 01:00:58 Speaker 2: Minunderstanding is it there like some of the lowest of the states that have bears, And I think part of that is cultural. I think in California people, I mean there's like something like twenty five thousand bear tags that get bought every year. It's a good amount of revenue for the department. But there's only about a thousand to thirteen hundred bears that are actually getting harvested every year. And I think a lot of that is cultural and it's just like it's. 01:01:24 Speaker 1: Smart and dope surfing. 01:01:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's that's my problem. But it's people that are going deer hunting and are just buying a bear tag opportunity. It's opportunistic and you know, if if you don't run into one, all right whatever. 01:01:39 Speaker 1: It's like me and my wolf tag, yeah, oh maybe carry Yeah, I hate to get caught without it, you know. 01:01:47 Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. And it's not you know, a super expensive tag. So it's people just kind of buy one and they get into a bear great. But that I think skews some of the data too, of like how much are hunter's really trying and how does that success ratio factory? 01:02:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess that that was that was sort of rather than how many people are buying tags, it's like how many people are actually hunting them. And it sounds like that's where the sort of. 01:02:08 Speaker 6: Yeah you probably lost a ton of hunters one sounds went away like people are like, well, I'm not gonna yeah, I'm not gonna hunt them a different way. 01:02:20 Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, they put forth they Humane Society. Right, yep, do we need to once again explain the Humane Society there's hs US. I answered my own question. If you're sitting there and you're getting you're at you're buying something, and there's like a little round up thing, do you want to round up for the Humane Society? Right, you're thinking, oh, it's the local puppies. Like HSUS is an anti hunting organization. You can have a local Humane Society shelter, but HSUS is an anti hunting organization. There's tons of confusion about this that people have the difference between the Humane Society writ large like as a big umbrella, and then like Humane Society shelters don't do anything to ever help HSUS. 01:03:23 Speaker 2: Ever, I had a question too, because I was having this debate just two days ago in California, and I'm curious for you guys if you know the answer to this. If it's outside of California, but in California, the Humane Society has police powers where they can actually write you a ticket and it's enforceable as if it were a police officer, and if you like run from them, it's like you're running from the cops. 01:03:47 Speaker 1: That can't be true. 01:03:48 Speaker 2: They can write you a ticket, yell night your dog pretty much for having your dog on off leash at the beach. No, one undred percent. I've seen it happen and it blew my mind. And so I did a bunch of research and I was like, is this just California where they have this police power or is it elsewhere? Because it's it's definitely problematic. 01:04:08 Speaker 6: Getting a lot of ticks. 01:04:12 Speaker 1: They got all worked out about the National Guard while they got the HSUS run around right in ticket. 01:04:17 Speaker 4: Here's here's the Journal article from nineteen ninety eight and the uh what the proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference And the title of the paper is Humane Society, Good guys or Gestapo. 01:04:32 Speaker 1: Oh, very provocative. That is a great title. I'm jealous of that. 01:04:35 Speaker 4: Toilet, but it does it does sound like yeah. 01:04:38 Speaker 1: Uh. 01:04:39 Speaker 4: Societies are private organizations that have no inherent power, but drive all their powers and authority to enforce animal laws from the state. As in most states, in California, the counties can choose to operate their own animal control services or to hire the society to perform animal control services for the county, and they can serve search warrants. At the time of this they can serve search warrants. They can carry firearms and may even use reasonable force and deadly force to prevent the perpetration of any act of cruelty. 01:05:12 Speaker 1: Upon an animal deadly force. So I guess they're like kind of put your dog on a leash, like a. 01:05:18 Speaker 4: County, a county that has to provide animal control services can sort of rent to cop the Humane Society. 01:05:24 Speaker 1: And we're talking about the other day with our camera guy Rick Smith. He was working on this dog, this documentary about dogs in Mexico, street dogs, and he's talking about like he's like, psychologically a street dog in Mexico is a way healthier dog. Psychologically, they wake up, they hang out with our dogs. They're in a pack form. People look at him like, oh, that dog has an infected eye, and they think the dogs hate in life. But he's like, they have total autonomy, they have dynamics. They hang out with the dogs they want to hang out with. They travel where they want. And we're talking about this concept that Americans have people around the world, but like you take a dog, you remove its or reproductive organs. You lock it in the house all day and you act like you're doing the dog a favor. And I think that all those dogs have what's that syndrome when you. 01:06:28 Speaker 4: Get caught Stockholm all dogs have. 01:06:32 Speaker 1: I think dogs are very susceptible to Stockholm syndrome, and they empathize with their captors. I think that they're like a highly susceptible species. And that's why when you come home and your dog's happy, your dog has Stockholm syndrome. He has come to empathize with his captor. 01:06:53 Speaker 2: You ever seen the way dogs in Mexico will try to attack a car, like because they're got huts. It's it's their only natural predator, Like an urban dog, an urban pack of dogs, I swear there's a pecking order and great point, the biggest one will go after like cars, and they'll come in and they'll try to bite the wheels. Natural predator and they're like showing their dominance. It's it's a wild thing. 01:07:17 Speaker 1: I was. 01:07:18 Speaker 2: I did a study Broaden song point Man, and I was on a skateboard, and if you're on a skateboard, you'll get like twenty stray dogs that will just come in like they're they're trying to kill you, and then second you hop off the board, they're like. 01:07:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. Hey cats, I got signed out of my thing. 01:07:38 Speaker 4: Oh that you're looking for videos of dogs chasing cars. 01:07:41 Speaker 1: No, but cats are remarkably less susceptible to Stockholm syndrome. But dogs, for whatever reason, weirdly are like highly susceptible to empathizing with their captors people that restrain them. Don't let them do what they want to do, don't let them hang out with who they want to hang out with. Make them eat what they want them to eat when they want them to eat it. No autonomy, no autonomy, Like you get to go to the yard, it's like prison. You could say that it's the same thing. Let them out in the yard, Let the prisoners out in the yard. I love that this is your new crusade. 01:08:24 Speaker 2: I hope you chase this. 01:08:25 Speaker 6: Yeah, but you'd have to like cause you could say say the same thing about horses. 01:08:30 Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Well, sure, let me think about it for a minute. I want to get back to Tom the Bear Protection Act. Here's a move where the HSUS correct HSUS comes out and says, hey, I got an idea, how about you can't hunt bears at all anymore in California. 01:08:55 Speaker 2: SB two fifty two, as a Senator Wieners bill. 01:08:57 Speaker 1: Okay, what happens with the Bear Protection Act? 01:09:02 Speaker 2: It got squashed. There was a big uprising from a lot of different organizations, and it got pulled back very quickly. 01:09:10 Speaker 1: Okah, that's twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two. There's a different approach made. 01:09:19 Speaker 2: Through the commission. Plain this now, the Humane Society filed a petition to the Fishing Game Commission, which honestly, you know HSUS, HSUS respectfully, Like that is the process, right, the legislature had no business taking that on, and so at least they're going through the proper channel now, right, the commission that they failed in the legislature. 01:09:40 Speaker 1: So like people complain about ballot biology or whatever, but this is like, hey, okay, we'll play by the rules, we'll go to the commission. Yeah. 01:09:47 Speaker 2: So they they bring forward this petition and the the whole argument is based off of this population model and the collapse of bears. So they're saying, according to their science, they're saying and there's only ten thousand bears left in California and this is a you know, we need a moratorium on bear hunting until we can update the management plan and until we have a better population model so that we can And they're citing, you know, mega fires and climate change, this is causing a catastrophic drop in the bear population. 01:10:17 Speaker 3: And they're going back to that like evidence but to climb and that's what. 01:10:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, everything is built around that hunter harvest model, which is when you look, when you break down the science, I mean, it's not it's not a solid argument at all. It doesn't take an expert to look at that and go okay, well this doesn't you know, this clearly doesn't really you know, pass the smell test here. 01:10:38 Speaker 1: And it being twenty twenty two, they just throw in climate change for a zinger. 01:10:42 Speaker 2: And we'd had some huge fires in California, massive fires, right, and so I think that's that was the topic of the time, right, It is like, you know, what could these giant fires be doing to our bear populations and what are the impacts? And you know, that's something I think a lot of people are genuinely curious about. And we actually used a after money and funded a study on pre and post fire population status of black bears in California in last National Park, just because at this time, you know, we're saying, okay, we'll come in society like if if you want to talk about this, well, let's put your money into your mouth is let's let's fund some research, right, let's get to the answer. And so, as a part of like BHA and wanting to be an organization that stands for science based management and wildlife, we had this opportunity from one of the old carnivore biologists in the state, who's a great guy, came out to like one of our bear camps and talk to people about bear hunting. He mentioned this study and so we put some money towards it and it's ongoing. But you know, I think this is like where we want to be as hunters, like, you know, making sure that we have good data and good science. 01:11:46 Speaker 1: And that's look. But I would think, just just intuitively, I would think that the that the fire outside of mega fires, I would think that the fires are basically generating more more and more black hair habitat. 01:12:02 Speaker 2: That's this I'm shuting just. 01:12:03 Speaker 1: Successional successional vegetation. So it might it's cooked for a couple of years, but then it goes through a very productive bunch of years with a lot of berry production. Yep, through the successional process. So you're right that you'd like if you have what's a big an acreage, what's a big fire in California and acreage, I mean, I mean tens of thousands of acres, hundreds of thousands. Yeah, so you do when you I mean, like, you can't deny it if you go into a place and you burn one hundred thousand acres of ground and a catastrophic wildfire, that is one hundred thousand acres of ground that for a period of time is not going to be used by black bears for the most part, but then it'll become a patch of ground that is very well used by black bears for a pretty long period of time. But I could see that, like I could kind of see the argument, but I kind of don't see the argument. 01:13:00 Speaker 2: And I think there's it's one of those examples also where like do you have can the bears move somewhere else? 01:13:05 Speaker 1: Right? 01:13:05 Speaker 2: Is their habitat for them to move into or not? And I think even following like some of the especially like load to mid severity fires, I think bears probably move in like right after the fire too. Maybe the habitat and value isn't as good, but they're not. It's not like it's gone forever. As my understanding, right, there's going to be some bears that come right back in. 01:13:24 Speaker 1: You know, if anyone's listening that knows about this, I'd love to know this answer. Has anyone ever had the opportunity to look at collared black bears, collared mountain lions and see how they behave with a fire? How far ahead of the fire are they? Do you ever get mortality on collared stuff for getting caught in fires? Like I'd love to understand that. Like when you watch a giant fire cooking across the mountainside. I always say to my kids, I'm like, like, can you imagine how many pine squirrels died in that thing? They're not getting you know, I mean, yeah, you're cooking thousands and thousands and thousands of pine squirrels, But like, what are bears doing? You know? Some of them, presumably the guy get burned up. But I wonder like when they move, like how well do they get it? How good are they going in the right direction? They'd be fascinating if you could ever have a good sample size of like what is it? At what point did it start to shift? It's you know, what point did it demonstrate any kind of awareness? I would love to see some of that if it's out there. A couple of years ago you could have gotten it funded as climate change research, but now you won't. You have to think of a different thing, think of a different buzzword to get your to get your research moneuent. At the same time that they're saying ten thousand bears using the hunter harvest data, the California Department is there saying we think we got twenty to thirty thousand. This is in twenty twenty two. 01:15:06 Speaker 2: And that's their number they'd stuck with for a while, and there'd been some studies that had pushed that up to thirty five, but generally speaking in the documents that they'd had out there, they said, you know, we're think it's around twenty. 01:15:17 Speaker 1: To thirty c. That petition doesn't go anywhere, right. 01:15:22 Speaker 2: I mean it, it stuck around for a little while. It was a big, a big deal right there. All the anti hunters came out, all the hunters came out. We actually put together a huge just all the available literature and science that we could. One of our former board members was a black bear biologist in California, so just like the perfect person to compile all this evidence. And what came of the petition was it was ultimately rejected, but it led to it lit a fire under the department to update their black bear management plan, which was something that the Hunting in Conservation Coalition in California, something that BHA participates in. Prior to all this had as one of the top priorities is like, we need a new management plan because previously, when the management plan gets outdated, anti hunters will come in and say, you don't have good science, we can't hunt it. And so we knew that was like square one. Having a defensible position is having good good science. 01:16:20 Speaker 1: Because they'll use it against you and be like, you have an updated your management plan since nineteen ninety eight. Correct, you have no idea what's going on out there? Right? 01:16:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. 01:16:29 Speaker 1: So they start the process of doing the new management plan and it goes up for like public opinion public comment. Was your general vibe on the proposed management plan or your general take on it? 01:16:40 Speaker 2: A general take was it was ambitious because the director said they were going to do it in a year, and everyone went like, all you could tell all the scientists and the department staff are like, did he say a year, because. 01:16:54 Speaker 1: I mean, we will do anything fast. 01:16:55 Speaker 2: The Sheep plan just wrapped up and that that's been going on for over a decade. Know, these things take a long time, and they I mean credit to the department. They got it done in a couple of years. But they got a draft out in about a year and then followed up with the final you know, just this year. And you know, generally speaking, there's a lot of information in there, but there's a lot of good data, Like some of those nuggets that I pulled out about klepto parasitism they talk. 01:17:21 Speaker 1: I read like I rarely read those whole things. I read that whole damn thing. It was. I thought it was like, I mean, I get huge credit to whoever put it together. Yeah, I mean it was phenomenal. 01:17:33 Speaker 2: There's some really good research to win to that. And just to back up a tiny bit too, our commission, Like, I got to give a lot of credit to them because they really pushed back against this whole notion that just because hunters are the minority in the state that we should just ban bear hunting. And so the commission really like came out in favor of black bear hunting, in favor of hunters, but with the caveat of like let's get let's get all the data and research that we can to make an informed decision. 01:18:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was like what I got from when I read it was like a number of recognitions, like there's a sort of recognition that those shifting social values in the state. There's a recognition that there are a ton of black bears in more places. There's a recognition that we have historically used bear hunters as a management tool. It recognized bear hunter's contribution to bear research. Right, it was like it was very even, you know, and then had like, you know, just like the whole state history and all their measurements stuff. I thought I was like super informative. 01:18:40 Speaker 2: One of the cool things in there too to check out is the range map that they updated, because you can see some of those areas where black bears have expanded, and they updated that map and it's kind of surprising to me even it goes all the way down to the border to Mexico and we don't have black bears in San Diego, although we did have one that ran and down into like Ramona, I think it was last year. So like it's not a not a common free occurrence, but you can imagine if things stay on the same trajectory that those bears will probably move down there. If they continue to move out, I mean we've been We've had bears porn into Nevada for years and years now, Like their bear population is bolstered by all these bears that are just leaving California because the taxes are too high or whatever, you. 01:19:28 Speaker 1: Know, with the with that black bear management plan they put out, which is like a proposal, right, I mean they have a proposal part of it. 01:19:36 Speaker 2: Well, they had the draft management plan and then they finalized it just this year. 01:19:40 Speaker 1: Okay, so that that I'm not that that I'm less schooled down, but I remember now they were saying like there's things that you could do, or people were asking for certain things like like Californians are limited to one bear yep, and since the quote is not being met and you have more bears, like categorically more bears than you did when they established the quota, and the quota is not being met they were like, we could do X, Y and Z. We could give everybody two bear tags, which I don't think is going to make a huge difference. 01:20:13 Speaker 2: Probably it's the lowes it's the lowest hanging fruit, but and I agree, I don't necessarily know that's even going to get us to the quota, but it's it's a very logical first step. And that's actually what bhad is. We filed a petition to the Commission right after the management plan was finalized, and we reviewed it as the like easy slam dunk, lowest hanging fruit. Everybody could buy two bear tags because then you know, one is just more revenue for the department. If some people are like, oh, well I'm going to go deer hunting and maybe I'll see two bears, you never know. Like so that for us was just like an easy win. But there's other other proposals that the Department are going to bring forward that we're aware of, including expanding some of the bear hunting zones. So like in northeastern California and the Modoc Plateau that has been closed to bear hunting. It's because it's not historically occupied bear habitat, but the bears have moved in there. There's you know, good genetic diversity, there's good bear hunting up there, so it seems like a logical place too. Yeah, let's open that up. There's no reason not to hunt bears there. You know, they're gonna potentially talk about season timing. It's a pretty wide open season right now around when deer season starts and it goes like to the end of the year in most zones, so they may look at that as well as if there's any improvements there or additional opportunities. I think those are the big first things that the Department's going to try to address this year. I don't think spring bear baiting dogs, that's not coming from the department. 01:21:40 Speaker 3: Hard to bring that stuff back once you. 01:21:42 Speaker 1: What does it take to bring it back? Like, I appreciate I appreciate the efforts. I appreciate your guys' efforts on this. I appreciate the efforts. To me, like, these are all wins. They're all their battles, little wins, right, their battles that you win the war. To me, like to win the war, it would be that we would we would be able to go in and revert, we would have success in going in and reverting some of the major management, the historic major management decisions. Like hunters look at winning oftentimes at defeating, we look at winning as defeating losses. Meaning Colorado's like, Okay, we're gonna ban bobcat hunting, mountain lion hunting. Hunters come together, fight it, and the victory is that you. 01:22:44 Speaker 3: Didn't maintain the status. 01:22:47 Speaker 1: You maintain the status. 01:22:48 Speaker 5: Quote. 01:22:50 Speaker 1: I would love to see like that somehow we would pull off that trapping came back to Colorado, that right, that hound hunting came back to California, that the mountain lion season came back to California. What does that take in California? Like, is that just not I mean, like, give me the realistic. Is that just not gonna happen? 01:23:16 Speaker 2: I mean when you talk about mountain lion is not going to happen because of when that legislation was passed, the way it was passed, it will require a four fifths vote majority in the legislature to bring mountain line unting back in California. 01:23:30 Speaker 1: Are you serious? Fifths? 01:23:33 Speaker 2: So, I mean mountain lion as much as we would like, really it, that is not the threshold. Yeah, for bears, it's a different story. Oka bears. We had a bill this year AB ten thirty eight that almost made it out of committee. It actually, you know, there was a lot, a lot of work done by a lot of great organizations to bring that forward. Yeah, this is like a houndsman bill primarily as a sponsor, and it's it was before the management plan was finalized. And now it's a two year bill. So in California, the legislative session spans two years, so this was basically just kind of got to get recycled into next year. But it doesn't have to necessarily start from square zero in order to bring hound hunting back. It will require the legislatures approval. And so what this bill tried to do is this bill tried to allow for the use of hounds for basically tree and free from like a perspective of human bear conflict. But it also the reason why it can't original possession. 01:24:32 Speaker 1: That's great, that's great, but it's not what I'm talking about, right. 01:24:35 Speaker 2: But but what it did also is that it allowed for the It delegated the authority as it should be, to the Commission to determine whether or not there should be a hound hunting season. Got it so it took it out of the legislature's hands put it in the Commission's hands where it belongs, and that was too much for the anti hunters in the state. But I think that it's not it's not something that's out of the question. It just I think these things have to happen in their stages. And now that we have the management plan, let's say we get a second bear tag, we expand the zones, we do everything we can, and we still don't hit the quota, and we can show the negative impacts to other species mule deer, you know which, big charismatic megafauna like mountain lions. I mean, if you want to, like really make the argument bears are negatively impacting mountain lions, right like, we need to manage them to an extent where we can actually be successful. 01:25:27 Speaker 1: Now you're getting back into that machiavellian stuff, man, So I just feel bad for the mountain laps. We need to be able to hunt more better. 01:25:36 Speaker 4: So I don't know if you've the one thing that sticks out to me about this new plan, and I don't know if we've touched on it and I missed it, but it's got a new population model, which again is like one of these little steps that leads towards reframing the whole conversation. 01:25:53 Speaker 1: Right, So, the current. 01:25:57 Speaker 4: Statewide black bear population is what now according to the according to the best available science. 01:26:03 Speaker 2: According to the new IPM, the Integrated Population Model, it's fifty nine thousand with but but it could. 01:26:10 Speaker 1: Be, but it could be scroll let me scroll back up. And that's one of people where we are going nineteen to eighty, ten to fifteen thousand bears and called best best scientific gusts ten to fifteen thousand in California. 01:26:25 Speaker 2: Hit me begin now, fifty nine thousand up to eighty thousand. Wow, the most bears in the lower forty eight the highest density of bears, black bears in the world in northwest California. 01:26:41 Speaker 1: And that's I mean, there's too many places claiming to have the highest density of black bears. 01:26:46 Speaker 2: It's in the management. They take it. They like put their flag in the ground. They're like anyone else, come challenge us. But this is the data that we have. 01:26:52 Speaker 1: And like getting stuff like that fucking thing for Atlas is the different places we compete, the different. 01:26:58 Speaker 3: Places in New Jersey and California as well. 01:27:00 Speaker 1: And then portions of southeast. The last also claim to have the highest densery. 01:27:04 Speaker 2: This is also per a hundred square kilometers, so it's like one hundred fifty six bears per hundred square kilometers is their metric, which is like just over four bears a square mile. So I don't know if somebody that's a lot. Someone else is like we got the most bears in this quadrant or whatever, but I think a square miles are pretty Yeah, no, I. 01:27:19 Speaker 1: See that true. Yeah, And then it depends on how big the area. Like if I put a bunch of bears on this table, could I say, like, that's the densest population black bears in North America? Yeah, this table. So it's gotta be like how much air you talking about? Yeah, it's a sizable chunk of ground though. 01:27:34 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's huge. I mean there's a ton of public land that you can hunt in California. Four black bears. 01:27:42 Speaker 1: Do you do some fall? Do you do some specific fall black bear hunting? 01:27:45 Speaker 2: I'm I'm excited to do some more fall black bear hunting. I've been living in San Diego for ten years, been hunting for thirteen years. My wife and I got into it. We've been trying to kill our San Diego deer, which is might as well be the you know, unicorn of the woods. She was successful, she killed one with her bow. 01:28:07 Speaker 1: Oh seriously, Y's cool. 01:28:09 Speaker 2: And we've been hunting together for a long time. Now we have a couple of kids. It's it's trickier to like get out together and do that. You folks on crayfish exactly, you know where I can really make it a way for my buck Stowe rest in peace. But I've you know, I've I've gotten to do a little bit of black bear hunting, mostly when I'm like traveling for work like we did. Uh, We've been doing this big restoration project up in northeast California, and so when I go up there. I was at my deer tag and shot a deer a couple of years ago and almost shot a bear, but a little out of range. Usually bow hunting. But my friend who shared that picture, Ned, who does some guiding in the Eastern Sierra. He he's been trying to get me to come up with them. So I'm pretty excited to get up And I got like ten points for deer, so I'm gonna cash in next year. I'm gonna scout my deer zone and and go hopefully kill a bear this fall. 01:28:56 Speaker 1: I was hanging out with the guy in California this winter and one is weird just saying man like he uh, he manages a ski area. Okay, I'm not gonna tell you what ski area. And I'm a hell fire to come down out of respect for the town, out of respect for the individual. It's not like my story, my crime and punishment story. So check this out. It was January and this is January in the mountains, Okay. At a ski hill, I pull in to meet him, there is a bear standing under Like you park in a parking lot and you walk up this zigzag old rickety stairs to get to enter the bar. At the ski area, there's a bear standing under the porch standing there and his buddy. Another bear is standing off to the side of the stairs. 01:29:53 Speaker 2: I can't like, I'm like forgot his idea or what it's like. 01:29:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what you read like like people seeing things they can't comprehend, Like I'm stuck in a moment. I mean, the snow is so you can't walk through the woods. Okay, we're using snow cats to get around you. Cannot walk around without snowshoes. I'm like feeling like, oman, did I come through a fence? And this is like a like I couldn't comprehend what I'm seeing. He's like, oh no, man, these are like the town bears. He says. They don't even hibernate anymore. They live in town. They walk around. He had a couple of years earlier got one, and he's like, he's like, dude, man, I kept that underrat. Well, it's funny, he said. There's no way I could have told anybody about that. And it was on his property. He tagged it. 01:30:51 Speaker 4: Well, So this is the thing with the two tags, is they in Montana in the last legislative session, they're trying to pass a bill through the Fish and Wildlife Committee or in the House whatever to let hunters buy two lion tags in areas that had really low success rates. And there's this question of like, well, if people aren't killing lions there, now, what's them having an extra tag going to do? And the point was made was that a lot of these areas are places where there's not great access and so some or there's like considerations about hunting around city limits things like that. And a lot of hunters wouldn't be, like, are pretty conservative when it comes to like butting up against private property or whatever. And so in the case of like these town bears, if there are some guys that hunt and have properties where they can hunt, like having that person buy a second tag, could It's not going to tip the scale, but it increases harvest in these places where it's tricky to address it. 01:31:56 Speaker 1: I got me a permission on the spot for I just don't know if I can deal with the heat. That's what I told them. They got property, said, man, you have no problem. 01:32:08 Speaker 2: Mmmm. 01:32:09 Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know. That seems like a good way to get in the argument with the old ladies. 01:32:13 Speaker 4: Near near Wine Country. 01:32:15 Speaker 1: The old lady cat or a dog on a leash. 01:32:21 Speaker 2: There's an interesting tidbit too. I think it's from the management plan. But bears that get accustomed to human food and are like your town bears, they reproduced earlier and more often, and so like you're saying they stop hibernating, I think it's just like those bears. And it's like two whole separate conversations, right, like, how do you deal with the bears in Tahoe and mammoth and like the human bear conflicts that are there because some of those places, you know, there's no little pockets here and there that you can hut, but the vast majority of those bears are not necessarily like the huntable population. Right, that's just like an education campaign for people to stop being idiots and start locking up their food. And you know that's where that whole like h you know, human bear conflict conversation comes in. But you know, hunting will improve human bear conflict, but it's not the like end all solution. 01:33:14 Speaker 1: Right. 01:33:14 Speaker 2: Some of these places like require education, require people being smart. 01:33:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't you know, I keep talking about that, that approach of like I need to be clear about what I'm after here. I I see people that are on my I'm making a mess of this argument. Let me back up. I often see people use a rhetorical strategy in these conversations that I'm uncomfortable with. They would say, don't we can't ban mountain lion hunting in Colorado because mountain lions are going to kill all of our children if we do that. Like, it's so tempting to do that because it helps you get what you want. 01:34:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, to scare people into it. 01:34:06 Speaker 1: It's so tempting to vilify, to be like grizzlies. Like, here's the thing. I believe it's time to delist grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Rocky Mountain ecosystems, those deep distinct pocket DPS's is time. But I can't then go it's time because grizzlies are going to kill us all, which is how you get there, because then you make it an issue that moms, hikers, whatever, You make it their problem by intimidating them. And I see people do it, and very well intentioned people do it, and I'm always like, man, I can't personally traffic in this argument that I'm so afraid of a bear because we have bears all over our yard and the fall, I'm so afraid of a bear in my We have to want more bears. They're gonna kill us all. But I wish I could earlier. I used like being like the Machiavelian approach. It's like anything to win right, and I don't like it. You know, I think it's worthwhile to point out I think it's worth while to point out bear human conflict. But I can't put it that my motivation that I'm motivated first and foremost by preventing bear human conflict. 01:35:29 Speaker 4: You don't want to get out the pitchforks and torches for the scary monsters. 01:35:34 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm motivated by here's a renewable resource. There are people that want to use and utilize and enjoy this renewable resource, and it will not be a detriment to the species. Therefore, since the species is fine, they'll continue to occupy the landscape in California. Let those people who would choose to exercise their historic privilege of utilizing the resource for food, skin, whatever, allow them to continue to do so because it doesn't imperil the integrity of the species. If you got to get there by talking about bears eating your dog's food, I'd do it, but rather not. 01:36:13 Speaker 2: I think an interesting take on that too is that when you talk about like problem bears, right and depredations and relocations, and this goes for like large carnivores in California, we have an interesting perspective for a lot of mountain lions, and we relocate a lot of these in these depredation instances. We relocate and I know, particularly for mountain lions in the Sierra Nevadas, in the eastern Sierra where we have an endangered subspecies of bighorn sheet, there are problem cats. When the sheep come down low enough, there's like a big snow year, the sheep come down low and they just get massacred by these mountain lions, and particular mountain lions will kill sheep, so they'll take that take it. There's you know, instances where they've taken that cat and moved them one hundred and fifty miles away, comes right back, it starts killing sheep again, and they do it again, three hundred miles away, comes right back and keeps killing shit. Yeah, And so it's like, Okay, at what point are we spending resources, like, you know, if we can you know, if we don't have to kill it, sure, if we can, if it can be a hunterable you know animal, great, But you know, at what point are we spending resources to basically just put a band in on something that's going to come right back in. So I think that's the question there, Like you can't, yeah, you can't be fear mongering that you know, the bears are going to kill us all But also like we have to be smart about our strategies and how we're using hunting as a management tool, and how we're employing depredation to you know, like prevent problem bears from coming in and killing like the lady in Downeyville, right, Like, which was I think part of that like catalyst of that story. 01:37:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, that was like a very emblematic story where here's a person complaining about a bear, the bear bench comes in her house and kills And it was like, yeah, right. 01:38:04 Speaker 2: I've kind have seen that bear too, because my friend lives like a mile or two down the road. 01:38:09 Speaker 1: Was that right? 01:38:10 Speaker 2: And I've seen bears in his face. I find a deer up there, and you know, a couple of looks at bears. So after that, I was thinking, like, I wonder if I saw that bear. 01:38:20 Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish I might have. Yeah here, because grizzlies are esa animals. They'll go to great ends to move a problem grizzly bear. For the most part, when you tattletail on a black bear for doing something bad, I was telling people not the tattletale on the ones around town, Like if enough people tattletale on a black bear, he's dead. Because think about like this, you got to move at two hundred and fifty miles to get out of where it's not you know, I mean where he's not just going to show back up. So here you have an understaffed agency with you know, budget constraints, like any while they management agency's gonna deal with. You got a very healthy population of black bears, a growing population of black bears. A black bear starts killing some chickens. Are you really gonna send a guy out he's gonna catch it. You're gonna pay him the whatever days it takes to bring that thing two hundred and fifty miles away come back, right. It's just they just this not the time and money. 01:39:28 Speaker 2: He's gonna use dogs to do it that. 01:39:29 Speaker 1: You know. 01:39:30 Speaker 2: Dog teams are like how they'll get a contract houndsman to come in and catch those bears off times. I mean they'll do traps, but in culvert traps, dogs whatever. 01:39:39 Speaker 1: But it's like they're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna spend the time of money on it. It's just it's burdensome. And then at any given time, like September comes and I'd got to tell me one time, like in this town September comes they were they were monitoring like eleven or twelve in town that people are calling, calling up complaining about. So I don't know what that has to doing anything, but it's just interesting about how they view it. Then you got these guys here dressing up like dressing up like bears. 01:40:16 Speaker 2: That's just another day at the office. 01:40:19 Speaker 1: So what do you think he's gonna wind up happening? 01:40:22 Speaker 2: I think I can say with somewhat, you know, confidently that I think this year we'll see a second bear tag, we'll see expanded hunting zones into northeastern California. Maybe a little tweaks to the season, but nothing substantial. 01:40:36 Speaker 1: They're more generous tweaks. 01:40:38 Speaker 2: I don't know as much here. This is where we start to get into like a little bit more uncertainty. The San Luis Obispo's a lot of people that are calling for bear hunting down there. There was an effort maybe about like ten years ago to establish a bear hunt there because it's been historically closed and the department had said there there's a thousand bears and we should hunt them. And then there was a big effort to block that, saying, you know, you don't have enough data, you don't have enough research. They did a study in twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen. It is pretty short, it's a pretty small sample size, but the study indicated they thought there was only like one hundred bears there, and so that was kind of like the proof of the pudding that no, we're not going to do a bear hunt here, there's not enough. And so I think San Luis Obispo still is like a wild card. The genetic diversity down there is not the same as it is in all the other areas. Even though it's it doesn't warrant any concern or management action. So I think if there were to be maybe another study or some more research that could be done into the population there, I think we could definitely see hunting established there. But I don't know that that's going to happen this year spring season. 01:41:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, what was that going to take? 01:41:52 Speaker 2: I think that's going to take. I think it's going to be a walk before you run. So I think we need to like lay this foundation where we're at show. I mean, hopefully we hit the quota. I don't think we will necessarily show that, Like, there's still more management that needs to happen, and then we start looking at you know what's next, right, is it spring season? Is it dogs? You know, is it dogs before spring seasons that you can have a better opportunity to you know, you know, sex the bear and when you got it up in a tree and make sure it doesn't have any cubs. Like those are the types of arguments that I think the community is a little bit more split, but that we need to have as we move forward. But it you know, in order to like not provoke that substantial backlash and another bill in the legislature, I think we got to take these wins like and just chip away. But we are on the you know, we're moving forward, right, We're not on the defensive anymore, which is promising, right. It's like it's a really it's a great time to have our department and our commission using the science we have new like updated robust science to advocate for like better management and better hunting opportunity. And so I'm I'm really optimistic in California where we're going to go. Hopefully we just keep chipping away. 01:43:03 Speaker 1: Let's do a quick roundtable if you could have if you're the King of you're Reagan you're the king of cal uh and you could. Someone said, okay, you can have you can have back spring. You can have back spring bear hunting, or you can have back hound hunting in the fall. I'd do hounds, brodys on hounds with that number of bears, Yeah, hounds. 01:43:26 Speaker 5: I feel like I'm not qualified to speak. 01:43:29 Speaker 4: Are we talking about this as a management tool or just what I want to do? 01:43:31 Speaker 1: What you want to do? Oh? Not what you want to do, oh just for the betterment of hunters. 01:43:37 Speaker 3: Oh. 01:43:37 Speaker 1: Someone said, okay, I can't do both. I can do one. 01:43:40 Speaker 4: I mean i'd i'd restore house and hunting, because that's that was the traditional use up till the eighties. 01:43:47 Speaker 1: Right, hmm, How bad's poison oak in the spring? 01:43:53 Speaker 3: Like, I got questions? 01:43:54 Speaker 1: It's terrible, That's what I got. The worst turkey hunt. 01:43:56 Speaker 2: Just let the dogs go through the poison. Can you stand on the outside and I'm not going in there. 01:44:01 Speaker 6: It seems like in a lot of California a spring season would be a lot different than like a spring season in Montana, just based on like climate weather, right, like when the bears are all popping out in May, Like I don't know that that's like there's a mountain I know in places, Yeah, but there's like a lot of country where it might not be. 01:44:23 Speaker 1: It might not be as they might not be as concentrated. 01:44:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, had a very I think biography for sure. 01:44:29 Speaker 1: Even without the poison out question, I would say I would say as well, hounds just to have that, just to have that win for houndsman who get beat up on all the time. 01:44:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, mm hm hm. 01:44:44 Speaker 1: Anything else you want to tell us about? 01:44:48 Speaker 2: Just the three million acres of public lands for sale? 01:44:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's just show that's off topic, not off topic. It's also out of time because it's the release sched or we can't just put these up and we want Yeah, no, I know, So I'll just cut that out by the time you say that, it'll be something different tomorrow. 01:45:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. 01:45:11 Speaker 1: If it wasn't, that's what we'd be talking about. 01:45:14 Speaker 2: Uh, bullfrogs, When are you guys gonna come come kill some bullfrogs with me? 01:45:23 Speaker 1: How many you get we're. 01:45:25 Speaker 2: Getting like our good nights are like thirty twenty to thirty yeah, big one, big. 01:45:31 Speaker 1: Big twenty two of them? Or how are you getting them? 01:45:34 Speaker 2: We're shooting them with pole spears mostly like wine slings, yeah, spear fishing stuff. 01:45:38 Speaker 1: Are you allowed to twenty two of them? 01:45:40 Speaker 2: Nope? 01:45:41 Speaker 1: Do they We couldn't do that where I grew up either. 01:45:44 Speaker 6: Do they treat them like an invasive species there, like you're just allowed to get as many as you want. 01:45:48 Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, no, no season invasive species. And I'm doing it with the Forest Service because they've got a population of endangered royo toads that the bullfrogs are just hammering eating them, and so we go in and shoot the frogs. Eat Them's my wife's favorite food. And yeah, it's it's a good time. 01:46:05 Speaker 1: Oh. 01:46:05 Speaker 2: I could also tell you guys about that. 01:46:06 Speaker 1: What kind of ground? What kind of ground are you on? Where are you doing is at. 01:46:09 Speaker 2: It's like you know, riperian little little creeks and things that you know, kind of spread out into a sort of marshiness. 01:46:17 Speaker 1: Are you hearing them? Yeah? 01:46:19 Speaker 2: If it if it's like you know, a what was it? May it depends on like gets warm enough. But then when they're breeding and you hear them doing, they're. 01:46:27 Speaker 1: Like, are you lighting them up or hitting them in the daytime? 01:46:30 Speaker 2: Oh, we're lighting them up. Yeah, we're going at night. This I mean as a where my friend who's the biologist, I mean we both have he's got three kids that are little. I got to right, we don't have time and so kids go to bed. We're like wives don't care that kids are asleep. You know, we don't have to work. I don't have to take a day off, and we just go out there for hours shooting frogs. 01:46:50 Speaker 1: You know, in Michigan, it's one of the dumbest, the dumbest game laws in Michigan that I'll never understand is you cannot hunt bullfrogs with artificial light in Michigan. And this is a place where exactly zero people hunt bullfrogs since I left. Like how that even came to be on anyone's mind, I'll never understand. You cannot use the artificial light to spare a bullfrog, Like, like, I'll never like how that even was like on the radar of somebody fair Chase. Yeah, which means there's no bullfrog culture, no bullfrog culture. That's sad A pole spear them. Yeah. Have you just tried getting a big gig with like a twelve foot handle on it. 01:47:40 Speaker 2: We've I mean I don't have one, but I've taken I have a long pole spear. I've got like a nine foot pole spear, and I'm putting some I put some weird things on the end of it that I've been able to find. So it's basically a gig, right. But then you've got the sling, so you can get you can get some range on it, right, shoot that thing out in the middle of a little pond. 01:47:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, and then big old fatties, big fatty like, show me the legs up with your hands. How far the legs from the tip of his toes to his hips to his pelvis all that. 01:48:07 Speaker 2: I mean, they're like that fat around. 01:48:10 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:48:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like chicken legs. I mean they're from the just some good legs. 01:48:17 Speaker 4: California, Steve, what's peak month out there? 01:48:22 Speaker 2: We just kind of we're just kind of coming out of it. 01:48:25 Speaker 1: Probably what's poison ivy situation, Like it's. 01:48:28 Speaker 2: Chilled sothern California's not so bad poison I poisons really more like a stand in the water. Yeah, there's there's no that would. 01:48:36 Speaker 1: Be fun man, twenty to thirty at night. 01:48:40 Speaker 2: And you're and it's good for conservation, right, Like. 01:48:43 Speaker 1: What can I be square with you? Though? No, do you really think does that does like there are so when you look at wildlife management, invasive species management, with the exception of new tree in Chesapeake Bay and maybe some other examples, are there really any case studies in which something was mechanically removed. 01:49:10 Speaker 2: We're never getting rid of these bullfrogs. 01:49:13 Speaker 3: We're not living living. 01:49:15 Speaker 2: Under anti false. 01:49:16 Speaker 1: But yeah, it's like like lionfish is like you're gonna get them all huh. 01:49:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, but in this area, like we are hammering them to the extent that they're not there. It's allowing more to roo toads to reproduce. So from a conservation perspective, like it's it's having an impact, while if we were to stop doing this in five years, be a bazillion more. 01:49:37 Speaker 1: Yeah. Right, So it's yeah, you're you're it's like any kind of control. Yeah, it's like it's targeted, helpful control, but it's it winds up being that that toad will remain basically conservation dependent on some amount of mechanical removing. Likely. Yeah, but I mean I'll travel for a good bullfrog hunt no matter what, because those are good numbers for big fatties. 01:50:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, and you get the spearfishing combo, you know, shoot, some soup, some fogs at night, and some fish during the day. Really, Oh yeah, you want to go spearfie. 01:50:10 Speaker 1: What would we go for calicos and like like sheepshead or. 01:50:14 Speaker 2: What if it's the summertime, like right now, depending on what you wanted, Like, definitely could find some calicoes. You might find a howl that if we went out into the kelped, good chance you find a yellow tail or white sea bass. But if you want, like I. 01:50:27 Speaker 1: Don't believe in white sea bass, I don't think they're I don't believe. 01:50:31 Speaker 2: If you want to, if you want to surefire guarantee, like, I will put you on a fish. It's the Corbina. Oh really, because they are they're in five feet of water less. I mean they're right there feeding on sand crabs in the shore. And so I've taken people that have never spearfished before in their lives and just dragged them out. And you have to be somewhat comfortable in the water because every once in a while wave I'll just toss you on the sand because you're in there like this much water trying to get in and shoot these things. But you can cheat a lot. It's a lot of fun. 01:51:01 Speaker 1: I got a lucky there. I got a not San Diego, but I got a lucky yellow tail. Oh nice, doing a bunch of other stuff. And then I lucked into yet, which is the only yell tub I've ever got. 01:51:11 Speaker 2: I got one on my kayak and then I had a hammerhead come in try to get it. 01:51:15 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's cool. 01:51:17 Speaker 2: I was three miles out and you saved the fish. Oh hell yeah, yeah I didn't. That wasn't after I got in. It was like an hour paddle back in or you know, I had one of those pedal kayaks if my neighbor let me borrow, and this thing circled us and bumped my boat for an hour. We got into shore. We have goprovid of that fish. Oh yeah, just smell the blood. The blood from the gas was just coming in the water. And I was holding the tail like this in between my legs as I was pedaling. And I got to shore. Well right before I got to shore, went through the surf break and I was like the ten foot hammerhead behind me. Sorry dude. And then I got into shore and I tried to like open my hand because I had so much adrenaline. I had to like fry my fingers off this fish because it was just like, I gotta get it. 01:52:01 Speaker 1: That frog hunt sounds fun. Big fatties, big fatties. Broom round here. All you hear is boom. You know what that is? 01:52:11 Speaker 2: Bm someone shooting and missing. 01:52:13 Speaker 1: No, that's people thinking they hear a bullfrog. But it's a green frog. 01:52:18 Speaker 3: Right out back. 01:52:20 Speaker 1: Yeah you want that broom? Oh yeah makes the hair on the back of my next stand up. That's my dad saying about the smell at German cigarettes. Man the hair on the back of the next stand up. Thanks for coming on the show man. 01:52:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me. 01:52:38 Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I hope you get like, let's get let's get some bear hunting in California back on the thing, come on down, yeah, cause you know, you guys got a people like the hack on California. But if you guys get some big wins like that, people start being like, I love that blaze. 01:53:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's it's a sportsman's paradise for if you know the right species to go after, or if you draw that tag that you know you save up your points right. 01:53:09 Speaker 1: Well, this is my final thought on it, and it is something I bring up a lot like everywhere you go in the country, everywhere you go, there's two people next door to each other. There's the guy that like, there's too many people now fishing game did this? The wolves did that, the the the and they sit in their house and bitch and neck always, Like somewhere right around his house is the dude who's like, dude, you can't even scratch the surface. There's so much to do. I mean they're neighbors. Everywhere you go in the country, you will find those two people in very close proximity to each other. I always try to be with the dude who's like, you can't scratch the surface. No, so keeps getting after it. 01:54:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, just looking in the wrong place. 01:54:06 Speaker 1: Man. Yeah, you sound like you can't scratch the surface kind of guy. Yeah. 01:54:09 Speaker 2: I love it as long as I can do it after my kids go to bed. 01:54:15 Speaker 1: Ah man, thank you