00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey everyone, it's another episode the Hunt Collective. This happens to be number eighty one. We're here in beautiful Bowsman as we turn into October thinking about all types of things. We're definitely thinking about waterfowl moving in flying south. So that's why you should pick up Black Cloud from Federal Ammunition, especially their f S steel stuff. He's got a flight control flex wad. It's pretty cool thing. Has these rear deploying pedals side mount events. Um, that's stimulate the payload and uh, kill more ducks for you. So go to Federal Premium dot com to check that out. On first Light last week, we asked you to go to first leg dot com on September and round up for conservation. Basically, double your donation to your favorite conservation organization. We're living in the world right now where we can't just fall back on our license sales. We can't fall back on Pittman Robertson dollars. We have to do more. We have to give more financially the conservation. I think we all know that, but it's something that we're happy that First Light stepped up and they had a huge day on Saturday. It made a lot of money for very important causes. So thank you the first Light for being so bold enough to round up for conservation. Thanked all of you who went to first light dot com and donated and rounded up. It's it's a huge thing for all of us in conservation and apparel and hunting and all those things. So first Light dot com, first light dot com excited about episode eighty one. We're gonna bring all Ryan cal callahan on here in a minute, and then after that our interview portion of the show is Greg, Emily and Jennifer from f w P here in Montana. That's Montana Fish wildlife from parks, and we're gonna talk about wildlife diseases. It's gonna be interesting. Al herpies, the plague, all kinds of stuff, interesting stuff. It's one of my favorite conversations. I hope you enjoy it. Before we get to all that, we get a very special and very important announcement, right Phil, That's right, yes, and you to to introduce this, you have created a jingle I did. I had some spare time. I thought I would. It would be fun and it is awesome. It is one of my favorite things that's ever been created by any human that I've ever met. Wow, I am serious. It's been in my head for days at this point. So maybe eventually I'll be mad at you about it, but for now, I think it's a catchy. So can we play it really quick, work sharp, not to sharp moment so you don't have to there it is. That's Phils, that's Phil, that's his voice, that's your voice. I did it. I wrote a jingle I was trying to. I went, I went on YouTube and looked at old like fifties, four years and fifties like just just for some inspiration, and I laid that down. Did you auto to any part of that? Now? That's just we're playing that for you for a lot of reasons, but one of them is you guys have been sending in your not so sharp moments over the last couple of weeks. Thank you very much for that. We have an inbox full of very good and funny stories to read later on in our podcast lives. But we're so excited about this not so Sharp Moment segment that we're going to add a little something to it. Our friends at work Sharp, who are bringing this segment to you. Thank you for for joining us as a partner Work Sharp. They're gonna give everyone that we select to read your story on the air a field sharpener. Phil, They're going to give them a field sharpener. You are you and work Sharper, giving twelve field sharpeners away. Unbelievable. Yeah, you'd be dumb not to write in. You need to. Yeah, this is now. It would be a not so sharp moment if you didn't write it, and then and then you could write in after we end, after after the segments over, say yeah, and it was not so sharp that I didn't write in. Of all the contests in the world, of all the things that you can get for free, this is the easiest one. And it's good odds too, because there's like maybe eighteen or nineteen people that listen, and so you're gonna I'm feeling good for you. You You got a really really good chance. Here's what you do. If you don't know already know, you go you go to your computer or your phone whatever, th h C at the Mediator dot com, th h C at the Mediator dot com, and then you write us your very best pros, your very best storytelling. Sit down and think about it. Make us laugh, make us cry, just make us a mote in some way, tell us you're not so sharp moments something. It could be outdoors, could be indoors. It doesn't really matter, as long as it makes us feel something. Right, Phil, concise, concise, not too long, don't go too don't go too short, do it perfectly, the perfect length. I'm not gonna tell you what that is. You just gotta feel it out. That's part of the contest. It's part of the skill it takes to win and be a not so sharp moment person, if that's what we'll call it. So thanks to work sharp. Thanks to Phil for that fancy little jingle. Yeah it was fun. You're welcome. Well, it's we're a team here. We're all a family. We're a family, so right in. Make us laugh and we're gonna have fun with it. Will be running those in the weeks to come. Until then, we look forward to reading your emails. Now on to the show, Ryan calling here. I guess I grew up on an older road, a batle to the meadows. I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new closed a game second hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up baths. I guess I grew up. I mean, there are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen. And now I just wanted to a real bad dream or being and like I'm coming a part of the seams. But thank you Jack Daniel listening, Hi, everybody. Uncollected Episode one, I've been O'Brien. I'm here with Brian cal callahan and Phil the engineer. Brian cal Callahan is eating some god that is a pungent aroma. I can smell that. It smells very It was being in that tupperware in there's a tiny room that we know it has no ventilation. So I made some I posted it on the on Instagram, so if you're on there you'll see it. But I made smoked elk topped round and I put, I think, I put, I must have just put. Do you feel like I guess too much? Rub? Is it? Two? Garlic? It's good? And then I got my this new Western slicer. I've never sliced meat with a slicer before, and it's the most satisfying thing ever ever to see that meat just like like this glide out of the back end of that slicer. Phil, Yeah, I like going to a Jersey Jersey mix sometimes because they they'll do it right in front of your face, your sandwich. Why is it so cal Why is it so satisfying to watch? Because I mean, you're just like you're it's another transformative meat experience, right, Yeah. You take it from the feet from this screaming forest horse into this sliced thin goodness in life, and you like doctored up the meat. You took care of the meat and the smoker, and then you Yeah. I found it to be incredibly satisfying. Not you know, you know, not in a sexual way. Phil, Are you sure about that? I have a whole antelope neck in the souvied right now, and uh, I'm got a home Mediterranean style. I got got a little bit of yogurt and red wine and rosemary in there, and I'm making your rose out of it. Yeah, that's yeah. I don't. I just want to say that. Nobody's paying me to say anything about Western slicers, but gosh, dang, that was good. Last night I was living in living the dream, made myself a little sandwich. I doctored up half a dozen roast I think this weekends, the weekend, I'm gonna do it is to just stock by a lunch meat because I've really especially on this last trip to New Mexico, it's just like what are we doing? Like every hunting trip, the meteor crew has gotten so much better about it, but you know, it always like starts with this trip to whatever store you know, and the feet a crew of five six guys is just an insane amount of processed crap. And uh so, like the Oregon hunt, I had all my leftover mountain lion pulled pulled meat and then um, I brought all the rest of my tamalis from Sonora, all the cues dear tomales, and so we ate mountain lion and and tomales and is a great backpack meal. Well, if you're you know, if you're looking for. For me, it was a replacement thing because I'm at home, like I got all this beautiful meat and then I'm staring in the fridge and there's a pack of lunch meeting there. I'm like, what am I doing? This is the most this makes no sense. And so then it was like, well, okay, pastrami elk, pastronomy deer whatever, pastromy venison. He's like smoke a turkey slice it up. It's perfect, man, vaccine and it's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, this one is so garlic it's burning my eyes. So maybe next time I'm going to back the garlic off. Phil. I don't think there's anything wrong with too much garlic. Yeah, what if you encounter bland bread though, I know, white bread or a vampire? Yeah, I know. My kid, my son loved it. My wife loved it, and it would It's the perfect It's the perfect thing to do if you have if you kill an elk, you got plenty of meat. Yeah. You take one, take one hand, take the top round, the bottom round, take the eye around, duper STRAMI smoke it like I did um and make lunch meat out of it. Man, It's it's just perfect. So I'm glad you were able to taste that there cat still rolling through your teeth. I'm sure I wouldn't. I wouldn't mess around at that. All right, Well, we got a lot to do, uh. Today on the show, we have some folks from the Montana f w P on. Greg Lemon, who works in the next communication Department's bringing over Jennifer and Emily. Jennifer we talked, I talked last week in this room, we weren't recording it. She's a veterinarian for f w P here in Montana, and she's works. She has a top ten list of diseases of wildlife based diseases that and one of them phil is al herpies. Big problem, big problem, cal al herpes. And is it's nothing to be ashamed of owls. Yeah, but you know there's there's there's more of you out there than you think. Al Treks would that be? Is that a funny joke? Oh, like the medication like val Trek's but al Treks al Trek's Yeah that's good. Is that good? Yeah? I like it. It's like a dad joke kind of situation. I had this ex girlfriend that I had followed all the way out to Vermont and she was still is and not I was real smart gal um and she had gotten basically a very very strong invite to extend her East Coast education and go to the Yale School of Forestry, oldest school of forestry in the US. And she's like, yeah, so you know more East Coast time, and uh, I was like, hey, I'll let me do some digging on the Yale School of Forestry, and um, I think Yale graduate programs at that time had the highest prevalence rate of her pies, and so I just kind of slid the laptop over to her, and I was like, yeah, I'll be going back to Monte and New Haven is a pretty small town and you made you made it out though. You're fun, right, you're cleaning. I heard her like I heard somebody say s t I the other day, like, apparently they've changed what it's not STD and infection. It's not it's not all diseases. It's a modern thing. I just felt old that we're like, I'm not up in the vernacular or the venereal or the venarial vernacular, any of those things. So moving on from herpes, here's a question. Kyle came in from a listener, Eric Maud, and I thought about you for some reason. I don't know why. He said. Um first he said, I listened to your podcast all the time, and acent admit that you put me on White Claw this summer. You're welcome white Claw. White Claw continues to not want to sponsor the podcast because they don't need to do any quote unquote advertising because they're so popular. But I'm a but I'm a legit influencer for their company. So they need to come get out of the shadows. Yeah. I feel like White Claw is going to go the way of vaping. Yeah, so they need to capitalize on me right now. Money, Yeah for the podcast anyway. The vaping thing is just hilarious too. It's like these people that they're like putting out in front everybody are like, I had no idea, Like, come on, it's not great for you. So here's one of these things said that they were pulling their vape pen to check the wind before going on the stock. I thought, I thought that was very modern. That was very modern, very modern. The old outfitter, um uh. He used to constantly he could roll a cigarette with one hand and the constantly have that thing burning, and he just you know, you'd communicate with just hand motions and he'd just like stopped and stick his gnar old old hand out there, the sig burning on the end, and you just like stare at the smoke curling off and then we just like keep moving. That's a great image. The gnarled hand, my hands, let me see your hands fill mine. I lotion my hands a lot, and they're like like, baby, I'm a horrible nail biter. So I've got some like my hands. The palms themselves are all right, but don't don't look around the cuticles of the nails. As Tom mcgwain said that he moved to Montana to not have the hands of a writer. I have the hands of a writer that doesn't do much writing. They're soft and supple, so gentle, gentle to the touch. Those are nice hands. Yeah, these are nice. They're small, dainty alright, packed the eric Eric maud Um. He said, some friends and I were recently having a discussion about bear hunting. I was wondering if you had any input on this. If you hunt it in an area with a bear that is known for man killing, killing man humans, and by chance killed said bear and discovered that it was the bear who had killed humans and eating human flood, would you eat the meat of that bear? Yes, Phil, I would. Yeah. I think it's gone through enough. I got no problem. We're talking about the details. That sounds bad. I'm like it's been digested, Like what kind of humans was it eating? Put through the ringer? Was it eating healthy humans? Well? I mean the question for me is just like what do you do? I uh, like, to walk away from that meat would be very, very very different. It would be worse. You've already done it. It It would be worse to walk away from the bear meat than it would be to think about the question. To me, it would have been like would you have shot at It's like, yes, that is the man killing bear. I'm a man, and I'd be like, well, he's probably his continued existence would probably keep more people out of this area, so I'll just let him walk. Well, here's a here's another thing to think of. If you were would you be rude going on? I mean, if if I had been eaten by the bear, m I would want you to eat the bear? Yeah, yeah, exactly, I'd be like it it ate me, do it to it. Yeah, you're gonna get a little piece of me in that bear. We had Brodie Brodie Henderson was in here and he cooked up some tasty gator the other day and I was enjoying it, and Steve came in and he started snacking on it, and then he just sat down and started listing all the things this gator probably ate in its lifetime and just kept going and going, and I I wanted to go in for a second. Piece. But after Steve's like a little list of all this stuff. The gator, I honestly, I was like it was good, but I think I'm gonna go. We'll finish my yogurt upstairs now. So I maybe maybe I wouldn't. I say I would eat this bear, but maybe I wouldn't. It's funny because like that long list of intakes, the outtake still tastes like chicken. That's true, because I just gets turned into chick if you fry it up. Oh it ate a boot, that doesn't matter. It still it tastes fine. So there's some truth and some some untruth to that. Like whatever it eats, that's what it tastes like. I like how the gator or crocodile for that matter, or tiger shark like there their brains are just like, oh well that's not meat, but it's in our mouth, so just swallow it. I have all these teeth for some reason, and I'm gonna eat I'm gonna eat this, eat this tire, eat this hub cap? Whatever? Why not? Why not? Cow? Have you ever? Yeah? You have a dog grown up? Yeah? Yeah, um had a series of yellow labs. Uh, can you tell me what their names? Were nugget, oh scout, all right, good fisher? Fisher? Yeah, but fisher was it just like fish fish? Yeah, the big fish. Who's a big girl, big fish? Yep. Were you involved in the naming of those and what? Like what was the strategy just look at the dog and say a name or what what? How did you get there? Um? The first one, I was very young, and the registered name read so all these puppies that yet um if they're coming from a you know, a registered kennel, those dogs get named and registered before they they're sold, and then you can change that name if you want to. But typically it's like that is their registered name, and it's always something that like, you know, it's like, well the sire was this, and so there's some sort of pull off of that. So the first one was Mission Valley Nugget Hunter M and so I got short and iages I had a nugget and eventually called their nug nu. Of course, of course, growing up in Missoula, Montana, you know, people are like, oh, nug and I was like, no, no, um about weed people. And then um, it took me a long time to name the second to um. But you know, I have always like loved both the book and the movie of To Kill a Mockingbird. Um, and Scout is the daughter. And I always loved that name for a girl. And she was she was real hardheaded and missed, mischievous. And this dog that I had, Scout was like that to a t and she was. She was great. And then her sister actually belonged my dad and my step mom was like, oh, you just show up with a dog like this isn't gonna work. Um. And so like a week later, I get a second dog. It's like, hey, can you just hang on to this dog for like a week. I'll pay for the food and vet or whatever. It's like, I gotta get this figured out at home. And then you know, years later, I'm burying that dog. So goodbye fish. Yes, yep, one time I got a pit bull that way. Um, Phil, you're gonna just tell cal what you named your dog. Yes, the name of my dog is Mango. Oh like the SNL character I was thinking more about more like the fruit. I uh, the mango? I am? I am I too young for this sexually dancer? No? Not not. This would be the sexually ambiguous um dancer played by like or entertainer played by like Chris something Chris Gittan was. He was like a diva. Yeah, that was slightly before my SNL watching time. But it was so funny because they'd have, like I very much remember that Garth Brooks having to fall in love with the mango. Here it is. Here's Will Ferrell and Mango. Here Look that's mango in the pink for you? Can you do this for me? Can you? Okay? That's mango? Got it? Uh? Not exactly the personality. Watch the Mango Dance. Watch the Mango Dance, Phil, He's in a video with j Lo is that and everybody falls in love with the mango. You want the mango, but you cannot have the mango. Phil. Now you're gonna be looking at your dog. And that's a little different. Now I think, Yeah, my god, I either forgot how funny that was. Holy moly, So was it? So now you're aware of the old mango? Yeah, I'm aware of a christ. A lot of people wrote in we talked about Mango last week in the podcast cow and Um. A lot of people wrote in, with lots of lots of lots of critiques. Is playing rude honestly? Just like Mango is a dumb name only because I said it, and I think they were just felt comfortable. Um my rule my my fatherly wisdom too, because I have had enough very well trained dogs to where I feel like I can pass down some fatherly wisdom. Is only have a dog name that you feel comfortable screaming at the top of your lungs amongst strangers in a crowded park. And I have done. Yes, you can have a two syllable dog name, but it either has to be very short or be able to be short tended to a single call her mangs is. This is the funniest email I got this week. This Mark Cfort wrote in and said, I wouldn't name I wouldn't want a dog named Mango. My dog's name is Phil. And there's a picture that's a good looking the dog bone Colorando just says Phil. I do like it, So thanks Mark C for that made me giggle, Yeah, like a schoolgirl or a giggle like mango. Another person Yeah, another person wrote in his name is his first name is t R. E C. Trace, trek trees, trees. We'll go with that, oh, t R e C. Yeah, I think that that might be Trace Trace. Maybe I don't think it's trek, it's just missing the key. Yeah, I don't know. Well, Uh, producer Samantha, her dog's name is Trace. How does she spell that? I don't know. We'll have to ask. T r ec is his first name. His last name is Read. He wrote in and about dog names, and of course was complimenting the name mango. Um. I was thinking about some other names, he said. I had a couple of dog name ideas I didn't end up using. Here's one of them. It's naked. You're probably wondering why anyone in their right mind would want to name their dog naked. Just think of how much fun it would be to say I got naked in my truck and went hunting, or after work, I'm gonna get naked and walk around the block, or honey, do you want to get naked and play out in the yard. The possibilities are endless. But in the end I decided the few laughs I would get we're not worth having to yell come here naked every time I needed my dog. Yeah. I can imagine that the laughs would be good for the first maybe week or two, and then yeah, and then you'd have to deal with the dog named Naked. For the rest of life, would always refer to the the sister dogs, the two dogs that I had as a pair. Um as ladies, ladies come here, and um. I was working on a cabin up on Flathead Lake and UM doing like some little remodel stuff, lots of like stand decks, uh the kind of landscaping project, a bunch of stuff and and uh the you know as early spring or late spring, early summer, and I had a bunch of raft guides that needed work. And um these two uh young ladies that were very uh good friends. They travel all over the place, Madison and Libby. Um they I was like, hey, if you guys want to come paint, you know, I'll pay you ten bucks an hour. But we got a haul house on this thing, and I was down working on the landscape project. They were all up supposed to be painting on the cabin and I had just kind of realized that my dogs were not with me, so you know, I just couldn't make sure they stayed out of trouble. So I looked up the cabin, I yelled, ladies out of the cabin, and my dogs came bursting out the door on the deck and the two gals that were supposed to be painting went bursting out the side door, and I was like, did you make him think it was on fire? I can't wait for the emails after this podcast of all the things you've named your dogs that are inappropriate to yell in public. So please, I gotta give old trek Trace Trees another. He has another pretty good one in here. He So. The other name has to do with an extremely annoying relative on my wife's side. Everybody has one of those, right or is it just me? No? We all have that. We all have credibly annoying in laws. They were about to have their first son, and we're telling everyone they were going to name him River. No offense anyone named River. But I thought that sounded like more of a name for a dog. Being the smartest that I am. I wanted to name my pup River two months before their kid was to be born and pretend I had no idea that that was the name they wanted. I figured that would be too big of a dick thing to do. Mountains have been moved out of spite. Ultimately, I decided on the name Crew for the vast majority of the time I work alone on my job, but I am lucky enough to bring my dog with me, so he's my closest coworker and makes up my work crew. I like it. I like it. It's good. Ah. At least it was only a dog name, and Phil didn't name his son Mango. Keep up the great work. Uh, That dog scouted him. I used to could tell her to go grab my tool belt through my framing hammer, stuff like that, and she just loved to retrieve everything so and I've always thought that was super fun. But then she bit down on my framing hammer too hard when her sister tried to come take it from her, and then I had to sand down the handle on my framing hammer. So that was the end of that. One dog stores with Cal had a bunch of other I printed out. You see, as you can see Phil and Cal, I printed out a bunch like print it out, you guys. Here, the printed out a bunch of emails. Yeah, this is a professional operation. Yeah, printed them out. Why did that? I don't know the right here on my computer, but harkening back to the olden days, the olden days, I printed things out. We'll go through one more here we go, We'll go one more. We got time for one more film? I think, so, yeah, it doesn't know how long we have. You've got about ten minutes. Well, I like it. This that was always my favorite radio thing. We got time for one more? Got time for one more? Uh? This one, I don't know. This one isn't really about what I'm gonna read, but it's something that I think, uh, we should talk about. This was from I'm not gonna read it, but this guy, Clay Sauncy. It lives in Austin, where I used to live, and was asking me what should he do to get in touch with landowners. He said, legend has that landowers exist that actually want hunters on their land to help with coaling populations. I hope to find one. I'm in the Austin area. What do I do? And on and on it goes. I think, maybe cal you're good for this. Myce I rode back to him, was like, man, you gotta you can't just think that they're landowners out there. There's no Craigslist for landowners. You gotta not. Like it's one of the few things in the modern Internet age where you kind of just have to knock on doors man like yeah, or to go to a b h A chapter meeting or ducks on admitted or ARMF and and trying to meet people there that that are landowners. But other than that, it's kind of one of the few things where it ain't out there on the internet. There's so many big operations down there though. I mean, you could definitely use use the internet and I just build yourself a little resume. I've seen it done many many times. You know, if you have UM any sort of certifications, certainly references UM and then just kind of lay out your situation like listen, I would be very very happy with you know, does whatever needs to be taken off like here are the way is to contact me. I can be ready at in very short notice at the end of the year, in between hunts or whatever. And then certainly you know what you know you're willing to. I mean, you gotta keep in mind, like high fence operations down there, which there are many, like those animals are they definitely have a price on their head. Doesn't matter if they're male or female, UM, because there they are managed much more like livestock than wild wildlife. So UM, you know, if if you're serious about getting the meat. I would certainly recognize the fact that that those animals cost those folks money, which is something you sign up for when you big build, big tall fans, and um, you know, if you don't have the cash to part with or don't want to, I would certainly say, you know, these are the dates I'm I'm available to, you know, help with that fence or feed or halls stuff around or do whatever. Um and uh, make sure they know that you'll sign a liability waiver as well. And then all that ship might might accumulate to an opportunity. And if you can get one opportunity of d you know, make sure you do it right, and I promise you that'll grow into more opportunities. Yeah, just like any privilege, right, you gotta earn it, you know, by reaching out and getting that hunting privilege, and then you gotta continue to earn it. And then I'm sure you know a lot of places in Texas for land owners talk, man, they got somebody that's willing to work and get a few hunting privileges, and the neighbors to say, you know, you might get those those folks talking, you might get a bunch of other opportunities just out of your hard work and your communication. Where where did you and I hunt access to her? Oh? Man, Like, what was the town around there? Uh? I want to say, Valdi, I don't think I'm wrong, No, I'm wrong. It was I know we went through that Fredericksburg or it was close to Fredericksburg. We can just say a couple of hours, yeah, butt into the hill country. There was just there are a lot of access to your dead on the road, um, you know on and I always look at that and and uh, I'm I'm sure the land owners are the land manager looking at that too. And I mean that could be a situation where um, you know, I turn that into an opportunity and say like, hey, pick up all the trash that's collected on your three strand barbed wire fans here, and I'd love to, you know, just be able to shoot ad Yeah access here, it's straight, Yeah, it's straights. Strike me as I was reading this and thinking of like, hey, there's not a lot of good you live in Austin, which I did for four years, there's just not a lot of good public land hunting opportunities. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. There's some, but it's a drive away, um directly around town. There's a few w m as that I won't mention, but there it's not great. I mean, it's not great hunting. You're probably better off doing what Kyle saying what I would suggest and did suggest to Clay, which is go out there and knock on doors. And it just struck me that it is one of those few things that still requires person to person communication. Really, that's the best way to do it. You can write an email. The best way to do it is to walk up and knock on somebody's door, flag them down when they're on their tractor. Go find the ranch hand and specifically in Texas, and just talk to him and say, hey, man, looking for looking for this. This is my goal and see what you get. That's one of those few things that just requires some Yeah, so that personal vetting is always going to be part of the process for sure. So if you're in that situation, go go and do that, right right Phil? Yeah? Thanks? All right, Now we're going to interview segment with our folks from f w P talking wild life diseases. I guess I grew up on an all the road We are we're here in the podcast studio we have We usually have one person or maybe two and feels always like looming in the background looking creepily at people. Look at them, look at uh. We had a whole group today. We'll start in front of me with with Greg Lemon. Greg introduce yourself. M. Greg Lemon. I'm the Communication and Education Division Administrator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Mostly they say, spokesman, spoke spokesman. Well, we're gonna we're gonna work on that. Let see, we see how you do. Emily introduce yourself. Sure. My name is Emily Almenberg. I'm the disease ecologist with the Wildlife Health Program here in Bozeman. Jennifer, Hello, I'm Jennifer Ramsay and I'm the wildlife veterinarian for the Wildlife Health Program based here in Bozeman. Yeah. Look, we're gonna jump right into it because last time you guys are here, we were talking about lots of things. Jennifer, and you brought up something which I've already prepped the listeners on because it is very important to me and Greg knows what I'm about to say. I feel it's two words, two very interesting words. Al herpies. Oh, because because what I mean, let's just just tell the listeners about al herpies because it's a problem, right, it's a big deal. Well, yeah, it's so. So every year we get a few owls that are found dead, usually under a tree somewhere, um, and we knee cropsy those to try to confirm the cause of death. And when we open them up, their liver has little white spots throughout. UM. And it's a herpes virus called Columbia herpes virus, and it's fatal to these owls. So it's we've we founded around Bozeman for sure, that's where we first found it, and we find it every year. UM. And then we've also recently, well I guess a year or so ago, we got some cases from over by Dylan at the university. So where people are looking for it, seems like they're finding cases. How are they How are they contracting owl herpies? They're probably getting it by eating um, you know, the columbid species, So those birds are probably asymptomatic carriers UM. And as the owls are predators and consuming these other birds, they're getting exposed to that virus. And that's you were telling me you have like a ranking of the topped and wildlife based diseases. Where does al herpes rank on You know that one doesn't make the top. We have a list of twelve priority diseases. That one doesn't make the top twelve m those priority diseases are based on their potential for wildlife impact, domestic animal impact, human health impact, and economic impact. So that's those are the reasons why this one doesn't quite make that cut. But it's definitely something that we um we're looking for. We have a healthy olt population near Montana. I would I would presume, yeah, I mean as far as I know. Um, we could get a non game biologist the guinea numbers, but I see them a lot where I live. It's all right here on the Huntcliffe. We're not We're not opposed to like really drumming something up, you know, like really make it it seems serious when it's kind of there's a few ales with herpes. But we can if you want, we can make it. We can add it to the list of like we could send out like some alerts. I wouldn't go that far. So does the the columbion species, what are those so pigeons. Colored doves are probably one of the ones we've had some interest in, um, morning doves. Morning doves, yeah, UM, so yeah, so those are common. UM we haven't you know, done any testing on those species yet, but UM, we would expect that it's probably endemic there. Yeah, well, let's we should tell people what you guys do now that we've covered off on uh probably that this will probably be in the title of the podcast. So I felt like I had what I was thinking about recording this. I was thinking about recording this like alert owls, promiscuous owls flying through the air and what was the joke al treksh Yeah, from the medication, So I thought maybe I thought, maybe yeah, dad joke to a longer segment. But I'm going to lead the show open with that. UM, Jennifer, tell us what you do well. UM. As I mentioned, I'm a veterinarian by training and education, So I was in private practice for a while after at school UM, and then went back to school UM to get a focus more on population health UM, and then started working for Fishing Game almost eleven years ago now, UM, and basically my role is to oversee the wildlife health program. So that's me and Emily. We have a technical a couple of technicians now UM and we focus on those twelve priority diseases that have those important impacts or potential for those important impacts UM more. On a kind of day to day basis, it's it's UM responding to sick and dead animal calls, UM, doing new cropsies, trying to make sure we're collecting all the health information that we need to be to keep kind of an eye on what's going on with populations health wise across the state. Yeah, and I'm sure you know in that line of work you do not there's not for lack of of interesting calls that you get fortely, not at all a daily basis. Pretty much there's something interesting in our lab. Yeah. Do you guys have a just a particular story that kind of paints the picture for folks of what you deal with on a daily basis. I know, I hate when people ask questions like what's your favorite Like, uh, what's your favorite song? Nick Jagger? I think similar similarly poor question on my part, but like there is there something that paints a picture for for what kind of things you deal with? We get a lot of UM Yeah, just to be blunt. We get a lot of really disgusting, old rotten things to look at to try to figure out why they died. UM, so that's probably the I mean, the thing that stands out about our new cropsy lab is that it's often smelly, and people like to comment and complain about that. It's not a glamorous job at all, I would say. So you're digging around in them for those who are not uh, don't have the stomach. The safest places under the air vent you go. Maybe yeh, family, tell us what you do within the f WP. So I work with Jennifer and help design the state's health surveillance and monitoring programs. So UM help lead and organize the CDBD surveillance program. UM helped organize program to study big worn, cheap and Mountain goat health. And we're working on some BAT proposals to do some stuff with white nose syndrome as it moves across the western US. So it's a mix, but sort of thinking at the population scale, UM designing programs to track the spread of the disease, the prevalence, and then match it how the population does overall. I think that's something it's something poor for us to touch on, just you know, for you, Greg, why does FWP get invaulved in these kind of in these kind of sciences and biologies, and like why is this an important thing to have? It seems like a simple and obvious answer, but it's worth addressing. Well. Yeah, I mean, you know, our responsibility as a department is to manage the while I've in Montana and and um, part of that is understanding you know, their health and you know why maybe some populations are doing well and why maybe others are not. Um, you know, I think some that have really besides CWD, which has been an obvious impact for hunters, but some other ones are like um, the pneumonia you know, issue with big orange sheep and um, you know that's been and you know, and so like uh Jennifer and Emily. Uh, it's part of its lab work, but there's a lot of field work too, and getting out in the field and testing animals, capturing animals, testing animals. You know, that's all part of the monitoring program. And then you know the other piece of it is that the public uh, you know, they see sick animals all the time, and so having the resources so that the public can get some of their questions answered. So if they see a dead owl, I mean, they're not gonna they listen to They're not gonna first right off the bat. I mean they will now they're not gonna suspect purps. But you know, and I mean those sorts of things. It's important um for people. We want people to you know, be passionate and engage about wildlife, and so we want to provide them answers and and assurance that we're on the ball and and keep monitoring things. And so that's the reason I think there's two angles at that that I look at it when we talk last time. It's just like the hunters and outdoorsmen and folks and outdoors women in this state and then any other state, understanding that there's that you guys are working for them and vice versa. You know, they can work for you. There's things they can do to help you. So that was one of the things that I thought about after our original chat that I think it's important for people to know and to understand that that it can go both ways. You know, you can come and ask questions, you can present a situation and get help from the FWP but you can also be very helpful in what you see in reporting it into folks like Jennifer and Emily. When it comes to those diseases. UM, so I think we should probably just go through those twelve diseases and it'll take us. We'll be here the rest of the day. We'll get a break and then it we'll take a quick interlude to take a breath. We may get through all twelve. We make it through five. We've already covered number thirteen, which is would you call it was a number thirteen if it wasn't twelve, maybe not quite number thirteen, but it's yeah, it's an interesting it's an interesting twenty. What's that? What's number one? UM? I think number one was probably chronic wasasting disease or bruthulosis. I don't have that list in front of me, but UM and in the top twelve are not ranked in order, so right, it's not this is at a listical people, No, this is Yeah. I think those two were kind of the big guns UM that we spend a lot of time and resources and effort working working on UM and obviously you know there there are so many different facets to both of those populate wildlife population impacts you know, landowners, landowners are impacted, hunters, um so, and you know it's it's ah, those are They got a lot of a lot of reasons why those are at the top of the list. Yeah, I think that this is the way I was also thinking about going through this conversation is kind of what is it? Because I think we say things and assume people know exactly we say TSC and we assume people know what that is, um, you know, and why eyes it matter for wildlife? And then and then that the I think maybe the most important question, maybe even for Greg there's somebody that's looking from the outside, is like, what what's the impact on wanted? Politically, Like a lot of these CWD is a very political thing. Brucellosis is very politically. We can't really It's almost seems like you can't touch one of these wildlife diseases that doesn't have some sort of push and pull from a political and even from the communications angle. They all seem to have some some issue. Yeah. Well, I mean when you're in a in a state that one you know has a like Montana with such a robust outdoor recreation economy for one too, with a really um generational and important um ranching and livestock economy and culture like those things. Uh So wildlife diseases really really impact those discussions. And so you know, whether it's brucellosis or c w D. Yeah, I mean, there's just when you know about it and you learn about it, and if you hunt or you care about wildlife, you're going to be interested, and if you make a living off the land, you're going to be interested. Yeah. So that's what strikes me for for everyone, just to understand as you talk about these things that they they have such deep impact not only like economically but culturally when these diseases shift our wildlife management policies dramatically when they get entered into a UM. So let's start with c w D. That's something we definitely want to cover. UM. We got a couple of other things like action items for you as listeners too, that you can do to help these folks. UM, but Emily, you want to try to just tackle explaining c w D. Sure, it's a chronic wasting disease is a fatal neurologic disease. Members of the dear families, so dear elk, moose and caribou UM, and it's caused by an infectious pre on proteins. This is a misfolded protein UM. We have prem proteins throughout our bodies. Mammals do UM and but this missfolded version when it comes in contact with the healthy form, causes the healthy form to missfold. We're gonna Phil, can you be I want you to listen to this and then let us know that you understand. Okay, we're going to use you as a every man. So you have this little protein that missfolding with another protein, and it causes it to miss fold, and suddenly you get a whole bunch of these that don't work the way they're intended to, and it causes tissue death and eventually causes the death of the animal UM. The nearly thing is that it's not one of your traditional infectious agents. It's not a bacteria, not a virus UM, and so it's it is UM difficult. Uh. It doesn't have genetic materials, so we can't track it the way we can viruses and bacteria UM. And it causes Yeah, in the end, it causes death UM over about a two year period, and it's transmiss bowl through a whole range of avenues. So it's shed through feces and um, urine and through saliva. So during the animal's course infection, they can contact one another and transmit it that way through through close contact nose nose contact, But then it's also being shed through these feces and urine and then upon um death through the bodily tissues. And those preons are remarkably resistant to degradation, and it's thought that they can remain infectious for at least two years in the environment. So there's an environmental transmission component too. If an elk comes along and graze or a deer comes along and graze is a spot where UM an infected animal had recently urinated or had died, you know, potentially they could become infected that way. Yeah. There, we've we talked about last time a little bit. Greg even there being we say CDWD and have become there becomes some issue fatigued. People were always here at this company. I think in a lot of UM conservation organizations. I know UM for example, q DMA is always talking about CWD, and there's always a CDWD conference that se like a bunch of old, stuffy people talking about this disease, and it just seems like there could be some fatigue around the way that we treat it UM. And so I'm I'm sensitive to that because I don't I don't want that to because it's an important thing, UM for us. So first fill do you you're getting us? UM? I think I gotta C minus in biology in high school and didn't do my homework. But it sounds like a disease. It basically just wants that doesn't want to explain it back to us, explain it said, I have to. Can I excuse myself to you the restroom? UM. So c w D is something that's that is prevalent. It's not prevalent maybe not the right term. In Montana, it exists. We're still trying to determine prevalence in some places. So we're um a full distribution. Yeah, yeah, So that's that's our part of our surveillance. The Emilies designed YEA and so quickly to touch on what hunters can do or not do to help UM. Prior to what we're gonna talk about with LIMP nodes. Well, there's a lot about I had somebody right in about they didn't understand why that they had to put their deer carcass in a dumpster, Like what does that mean? Why? Why does that matter? So can you guys walk walk folks through that. Yeah, So one of the one of the things folks will notice we have these management zones. Now, one of the one of the key components of a management zone is a transport restriction. As Emily just described, you know that a carcass of an infected animal contains prions which can then deserve as a source of infection to another animal. So what we don't want to do is bring an infected animal, especially to an area that's doesn't have CDBD, and dump that thing there and introduce the disease. And that's and this is this isn't a disease that can move around really any other way. I mean, we will talk about captive servants here in a minute, but that's as far as what a hunter can do. If you're kill a deer in Iowa and drive it across the Pennsylvania, you've now taken those preons on a ride to a lot of different places. And so that's it. States like Wisconsin that others have introduced these carcass dumpsters where you can go and dispose of that carcass without moving it to any other to any other place, spreading this pons around. And you guys, we don't need to get in again to the political part of captive service. But how do the captive service industry contribute to the spread of c w D. I mean, nationally and even internationally, there have been cases um where they think they can link infections and wild populations to initially, you know, a captive facility. UM. The captive conditions means that lots of animals in close contact and you can get high prevalence in a fairly short window of time. And if there's any any contact with wild servits across a fence line, for example, you know that presents an opportunity for transmission and spread. UM. The captive SERVIID industry is well aware of C two beuty and there are a lot of checks in place to try and keep herds healthy and you know keep CTBT free certified herds. So there, I mean, I think there are many people doing due diligence on that point. But UM, it has probably been linked to a number of cases across The first time it showed up in Montana was in a captive facility in UH in nineties, in the late nineties around Phillipsburg. Yeah, So there's generally the idea is that in a breeder population of books that you're you're gonna put, you know, put a deer in a trailer and drive it from here to there. If you're selling it or you're moving it around to breed, or you're using these deer to to propagate captive populations, you got to move them around just like you do cattle, the same kind of idea, And so that's what generally the argument is against these things. Yeah, I mean, the Department of Livestock has a program where animals have to be monitored for a period of time if they're gonna be moved around UH, and they have to be sort of in this C two B D certified UM programs C to be sort of a free certified program UM. So there are there are checks and if if you did find up finding C to be on in a facility, the Department Livestock would immediately start looking at all the records for animals being brought in and where they where do they come from, and what was the history to try and to find out exactly where it came from UM. So, yeah, they're not moving animals, Willy nilly, I mean there has to be. And it's gotten much much better, you know, over the last decade. Yeah, it's very much improved, Greg, And you just quickly touched on from your perspective from from f WP. You know what, what's what's the political issue here? You know what, what are the forces at work? Kind of you know, there's a lot of funding that that needs done with CBD that's being halted. Are what are the forces at work in your mind? We don't need to get too deep into these things, but it's worth addressing. Yeah. Well, uh so, I think the UM for us right now, the reality is is, uh, we have our system legislature. They meet every other year and in the interim we uh interact a lot with the Environmental Quality Council, which is an interim committee that looks at a lot of natural resource issues and particularly you know, a lot of wildlife issues, and they're interested. Uh, their interest is peaked on cwd UM primarily because of the surprise that the discovery and Libby was UM for them. For us, UM, you we weren't doing any UM targeted surveillance and Libby um and it and and we found a symptomatic animal that was positive. And so they're they're coming at it um as sort of, well, what can we do, like, how can we we collectively as a as a state and as a wildlife agency? I mean, what are we doing? What? What can we do? What can hunters do? And so there's there's some um political pressure there. That's not really a surprise. I mean it's it's you know, we've been really concerned about it too and been trying to spread the word. UM. So you know, there's that there's that probably the most acute right now. UM. And I think that let Libby, You're we were talking about the situation and Libby explain to folks kind of it's a it's a unique way that that mule deer kind of inhabit Libby. Well, yeah, so Libby's population is white tail. And and in Montana, we've got a lot of a lot of towns have deer that are even if they're not resident, populations are in and out of town. Um, you know, a lot of I mean, dare dare I say? All of our communities in Montana were built and we're developed in deer habitat and so, um so Libby has a has a resident white tail population. There's no real certainty on how c w D got there. Um but uh it it showed up in uh you know, in a white tail dough is that right? And then you know, we we had started looking at it more. We we worked with the Libby Police Department and citizens to you know, we set up a hotline. They call us when they saw symptomatic deer. Which symptomatic deer are you know skinny uh lethargic, disoriented? You know? Yeah, you quite often here zombie deer. Yeah, roll every time you read like something in the New York Times or some sort of like non endemic publication like zombie deer can pass the disease onto humans. Yeah. So it turns out there there was you know, we were able to get a lot more uh do some quite a few more samples of animals and Libby. I think to date we're close to a hundred and thirty animals that we've sampled and we've had ten positives. Thus far from right around Libby. Um but uh so, so Libby had it has a pretty robust uh local deer population of White Hills and it is sort of the textbook definition of artificial aggregation of of deer um. You know, they find they find food and shelter and security in town, and and so they their their population grew and and a lot of those animals are in Libby like they are in other towns were we're born, raised and died in town. In town, yeah, yeah, that's when you go there. It's like there's other towns around the west where they're elk walking around town, and you'll be walking around town. But it's still to me, I'm an East Coast guy, so I'm like, I'd like to live in that town. I can really get into the habits of white tail deer if I lived there. But Libby was a place where we weren't, so we are are. Surveillance has been focused on areas in Montana that are neighboring provinces or states where they're c w D positive. So when this program started UM a couple of years ago, that was our focus, and Libby doesn't doesn't fit into that UM, So it wasn't a place where we are doing priority of surveillance. But but we have been in Emily and Jeffer can speak more of this We've been testing symptomatic animals all along, so if somebody sees it, somebody we get a deer, like a awarden comes in with a deer that that somebody has called about or something, and we test it for it looks like it's c w D, or it could be we test it for c w D. We've been doing that all along, and that's how that's how this one got picked up. Yeah. I imagine as if you're looking to as the best way to have a resource a deer live in town, people can easily call you, like there's some advantage to identifying disease in that environment, right because the wildlife people. Yeah, well it's kind of always visible. Yeah that way. Um, Jennifer, you want to kind of tackle what f WP is doing to I guess let's take first, um, combat the disease, and then we'll talk about how to tackle awareness and things after. But yeah, what's the what's the plan to to tackle CWG. Yeah? I I should probably pass that on too, Emily because she has been to more of these large group meetings with other states on management plans and help to help to actually draft some of those UM management strategies. Yeah. Sure, so there the this disease takes a long time to progress to the point where we see population decline, and it takes a long time to turn it around if we are able in fact to do so. UM. So, there have been a number of attempts that suggests there might be some tools out there that work, and those are the ones we're trying to replicate now at a much larger scale across the western US. UM. And those things include UM targeting bucks, so, particularly for mule deer, bucks are typically two to three times as likely to be positive and females, and so if we are trying to knock down the most prevalent portion of the population, UM, you know, that's one way to do it. Is there a reason for that? We think it's behavioral. UM Bucks during the rut are contacting one another and they're contacting does quite a bit. And yeah, presumably that's that's how they're getting infected through intense contact during that time. It's not that they're more gregarious, but during the RUD they're more aggressive they're making contact with I mean, it could be that they're more gregarious during certain times the year. I'm not I'm not exactly sure. UM when I mean they could be picking it up at any time during the year, visiting rub sites, you know, and rubbing on the site. So in any case, we think it's probably behavioral UM and because of that, if we can bring down the buck to do ratio, that's thought to be one one possible tool UM. The other tools that folks talk about include things like reducing overall population density UM, and that has been in some cases linked to UM to to maybe the suggestion that that the prevalence can be dropped. But the problem is that if there's really social animals, even if you drop prevalence, they might still seek each other out and contact one another. So UM really trying to find that high, highly infected portion of the population and knocking it down is key. So density reduction targeting bucks, and then the other options are to do targeted removal. So if you knew, for example, Libby was one hot spot on a much larger landscape, we could really try and harvest deer intensively in Libby and knocked down the sort of the larger areas prevalence UM. So that's another way to do it. That's something that FWP would do as a calling mechanism or would be hunter. We'd be trying to use hunters to do it first and foremost it's Libby presents some challenges because it's an urban situation. So there there is an urban deer reduction program that's underway and they're trying to trap and euthanized deer, bring those those deer to the food bank. And if they're in fact test negative, well we should you say that we should cover off on the question that Greg I think mentioned last time, and I think a lot of people the reason when we've had other folks on here talking about cwdan the question is always if I eat it, Like my wife is pregnant currently, you know, if I kill a deer and I don't get a test and she eats it, can she contract the disease? And then just like general food safety around you know, possible c w D areas or CW affected animals. Yeah, so the science says there's no known risk um, there's no evidence that humans have contracted ct b D and come down with a disease um, but it is related to things like crut Folds disease and mad cow um And because of that historic link between mad cow infecting humans and causing krut fold and they're all like under the TSC transmissible spongeform and cephalopathies, says, because I couldn't say that, I'd be like transform sponge, right, So that's why I says, to set you up to help me out. Thanks. Yeah. So, uh, there's no known risk and there have been a there's a couple of lines of evidence that back that up. So one of them is that there have been a number of lab studies where they have genetically engineered mice to express the human prem protein different animals. Animals have different types of PREAM proteins. They vary in their amino acid composition and structure, and so you can genetically engineer your mouse to express the human pre am protein and then challenge them, feed them CED two BED infected meat, or even inoculate them directly into the brain, which is considered them more potent challenge. And those UM by and large suggestors are there's a really strong species barrier. It's not easy to get human preom proteins to convert um so that's probably the best line of evidence. The other line of evidence that there have been a number of longitudinal studies UM where they go out to these populations of hunters that have been eating um game, you know, deer and elk in in CTWOB depositive areas for for decades, and they look to see whether there's any elevated risk of of crust fold yakums disease, which is how we think it would present any human. And that's there's been cases, and i'd sometimes I just try to act like an Internet common or when I ask questions, like I'll say like, hey, didn't a dude eat squirrel brains and get us? And that's what something you can get like a YouTube comment. But that's that happened. We got a lot of people sending us this like, look, look, this is a this is basically mad col disease from any score brains. So if I eat deer brains of like a CTVD positive deer, I'm going to get Yeah, so the squirrel, the squirrel examples different. These are all different, right, They're all a little different. And the ability for one form of the preon to convert another animals prem protein, they're they're all different. Um. And so yeah, there's doesn't seem to be an elevated risk for hunters that have been eating game in these positive areas for a long time. So um. I think the prudent thing though, is to avoid eating known CTBD positive animals. So if you are hunting in an area where CTBD exists, get your animal tested prior to consumption and if it, if it comes back positive, don't eat it. And but again, if if you've you know, if you're only finding out about this now and you've been hunting down in the Bridge area for generations, I wouldn't were. We had our friend Randy Newberg in and he said he just eats them, he said, rolling the dice. I don't. I'm old, I've had a good run. Um. If I'm that guy, I'm that guy. But I think a lot of people we had that was like a fifty fifty split on you know, whether they agreed with that or not. A lot of people that wrote in like, you know, why not get it tested, why not just just be proodent about how you approach it, And other people like, hey, I'm like I said, I've been living in this area for my whole life, and I've been eating dear my whole life. Why would I know? Why would I change now? And I think one of the confusing things about c w D as it repertains to sort of the human concern is that there's it's really hard to understand, uh, just how different this disease is from a normal virus or a bacterial disease. I mean, we're talking about you know, proteins, there's there's there. It's it's beyond me to comprehend. But but but you're you're you have to have have the way it works in between uh, animals, you know, dear is there there Uh, these proteins are so similar in construction that when the missfolded one comes in contact with the right one, it folds. Now, I mean, I think the confusion confusing part is is that doesn't that obviously doesn't mean that if a missfolded protein from a deer comes into contact with a human protein, there's that that obviously means that. It doesn't mean that it's gonna fold and doesn't mean that it's gonna get It's just not that kind of disease. And I think that's one of the things that's confusing to people is you hear infectious disease, you hear the word disease, you know it's transmissible, blah blah blah, it's it's just the biology behind c w D and t SCS in general is just really different than normal infectious diseases. Is that Do you feel like that's cover off on that top, because we really just need to come a lot of people right in my bone in necroast I'll never eat another bone in neck roast um, And these are some of the comments that we get, and it's just hard sometimes to relate these things. Um. So I feel like we've covered all that, We'll never get there. But I mean, what what don't we know about the disease that we need to know? That's a good question. I mean, how do we we really would love to know how to control it effect get rid of it. Um. Yeah, I mean there's there's going to continue to be research and that you know, in the likelihood of it jumping a species barrier, I mean, I think there's enough concern and interest in that. But um but yeah, figuring out how we manage it long term and how you know, what's what what will this mean for our populations on the landscape? And now there's plenty of evidence that suggests we could see big declines. Um that's been predicted for a while. But now we have herds that we can point to. Is there modeling for that that? Yeah, there's been lots of modeling that suggests um over many decades, you'd see it to client. So as prevalence increases to a certain threshold, then the population can't produce enough young to compensate for the increased mortality rate and you just start seeing a decline um. But you know, yeah, we'll see. So, as I was saying, all these different management tools that we've got, we're now trying to replicate this on a large scale across the West, and we're working with Canadian partners and other states and we're trying to implement them in a similar fashion and monitor them in a similar fashion so that collectively we can try and figure out what works, what's good. And part of the impetus for this conversation is like what is Montana doing right now? You know, what are the things that hunters can do to help help this research, help this information because we are really the boots on the ground and in so many ways. Um So I think that's a real important point to know, Like you can be an agent. We're not going to be They're going to hire you, repay you you could be a bit of an agent for the fish wildlife parks if if you, if you so desire, and it's something that I think is a responsibility. I I feel, at least myself are responsibly not only if I see an empty water bottle lane on the trail and in the national forest, I'm gonna pick it up. At the same time, if I kill a deer in a c w D area, or if I can just easily as well, we'll talk about here in a second pop out a lymph node. Um. I feel it's a responsibility to do it, just because it's there's all of these things are happening at once, and I can't just say I want to hunt but not worry about the transmission of these diseases or what they do to wildlife. So um, Jennifer, you want to try to just talk a little bit about what you guys are doing. Yeah, so, yeah, So we're as as you've heard, We've got some surveillance that will be um going on this hunting season. We've got priorities surveillance areas identified where we'll have check stations set up and hunters harvest animals in those areas will come through the check station and they'll get their lymph nodes collected and those will be sent off for testing. Yeah, why why lymph nodes? So, limp noodes are one those retrofringeal lymph nodes up in the neck at the base of the jaw the head there are one of the early places where we can detect it and they're easy to remove, they're easy to preserve. Um, so it's something that canna be done. It's not super invasive. So um, we'll we'll collect those limp notes. The preons are mostly found in the nervous system two shoes in and the limp limpoid tissues. So um, those are a good easy sample to collect. Yeah, it's like you said, it's a very easy thing to remove. We'll have some content on the mediator here it's at some point showing exactly how to do that. But it's it's a very very simple thing to do, and you're you're basically doing it anyway if you're processing a deer in the way that I do. And so it's it's something that it's not even an extra step as it were. Maybe yeah, maybe you maybe you gotta have a plastic bag and baggy but if yeah, if you don't don't have a bagg your hand, let us let us know here at th HC will get your baggy. FI I feel feel going to his kitchen that that I can do. I will get a baggy for you, and I won't make you try to explain what's going on us folded proteins and I can I can use the language. I just can't tell you what a misfolded protein that's right after it's a just straight arrow folds. Okay, back to the information. Yeah, So in addition to that effort, UM, this year, we're gonna be UM accepting samples from Hunter's statewide. So if they harvest an animal outside of our surveillance areas, they can also have their animals tested by collecting those lymph notes, putting them in their baggy, downloading a form off our website that gives us all the information that we need that location information is critical, UM, and then sending that to us here in Bozeman, and we'll get those those samples tested for them. UM. If that doesn't work, UM, then the other option would be to bring their animals the head or carcass to a regional office. After a regional office. Not don't bring the head, don't bring the just bring the lymphnodes. Come on, yeah, can we just we were talking about it them for you guys. The FVP regional officers do not like to accept the bloody heads. Okay, we're preparing saying it for you, Greg, you don't have us say it, thank you. They would they prefer that you just bring him a nice little bag from Phil's kitchen of lymph notes. Yeah. So yeah, I mean we're trying to be you know, accommodate, and we are preparing to do that. So we're hiring technicians to staff those regional offices so that when hunters show up they can have those staples collected. But it is easy. There's a video on our website. Um, there's a form to download and fill that out and ship it in, so it's it's not hard. But not everybody has access to all those parts. So if they do need additional assistance, then they can they can get it. Yeah, ask questions. You go to the regional office and just ask what you can do to help or what you need to do. Sure the folks they will will direct them. We'll be ready, folks in the right in the right direction. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, So the and I think you know, the the thing you know that we're all talking about, you know, it's from a management standpoint and a testing standpoint is really important to emphasize like this is gonna be something that we're gonna whatever we do with with c w D. Our plan is to you utilize hunters, the people that are in the field of harvesting animals to help with management. So if we if we change like deer management strategies in a c w D area, you know, we're that's gonna be you know, that's that will be how we do season structure, So it'll be how hunters harvest animals. This is this is something that these are these resources are in the public trust, and we are trust managers, you know, doing our best to be able to to identify the problem, come up with solutions, and then use the public to help us manage it. Yeah. I think that's it's just key and it's something that has it hits home in a state like Montana that has so many different species of wildlife to deal with, so many different types of habitat, to deal with so many different uh as. We we've talked about our top twelve here. Uh, so many different you know, political pushes and pools and so many just you know, different diseases that impact the way we do things and impact the way that we hunt fish, whatever it might be. So the original conversations just gotta be fired up about that. But I do, um, I just encourage you, Like I said here at the mediator, we want you guys to understand one, how to get the limp nose out of there, which which is very easy, but too what to do with them, which we've covered here, but how important it is is important? Um, Like I said, is this if you see a pile of trash, it's just it's the same type of care and maintenance to our wildlife resource. Yeah you know, and um, so things are CTWD is going to change the way we do things, not just as a department, is it as it pertains to management, but also as hunters. Um and so you know, I just you know, and I want to tell people is if you're concerned, if you haven't, if you have, you know, you have a pregnant wife at home and she's like, why don't we get this tested? Then just take the lymph nodes and get them tested. It's it's really simple and and you know, and there's lots of tools, and you know, are lots of sort of things to consider, you know, beyond that. So you've got an animal that's been you know, you're you want to get tested, but you have the carcass while the tests is getting done, you know. And I'll tell you what I'm gonna do this year is is if I'm fortunate enough to get a deer or or an elk, I'm gonna get the lymph notes tested, butcher the animal like I normally would, and just you know, by the time I'm done and get everything wrapped up the sample in a couple of weeks, we'll be back and everything will be clear. There will be no question. That was our our Brody Henderson was that he was telling me that the other day. So it's perfect. It's Anso's perfect timing. By the time by the time I get a deer fully butchered and fully frozen and ready to kind of like get into the old meal rotation is by the time I've got that that notification that is CTWD free or or not whatever whatever it might be. So it's not you know, it's not big of a hurdle. Certainly, it's a hurdle, is something that you have to keep in your mind and keep in the process of field the table and all those types of things. Um, but it's not it's just not that much. And generally the odds of you getting a positive deer extremely low. So like, yeah, like you said, and you'd probably be pretty safe to go ahead and but your animal hope, you know, by the time the test result comes back, that all that hard work. Yeah, And of course we're just talking about Montana people here listening in Canada, listening all these other places. You know, it's easy to go to your dn OUR website or your f WP website or whatever it might be and just take a look at what their CWD program is. Yeah, but you know, anywhere, not just in Montana, anywhere. And that's this sort of gets back to that, I mean kind of the just our three stuff with hunting and everything else is anywhere. If you're if you're worried, just take the limph notes and then some I mean you'll be you'll there'll be some way to get them tested. Yes, Yeah, there's always like said, any regional office, any place you can go and ask and say Hey, there's a concern here. How do I deal with it? I imagine someone will be there and be more than helpful based on the based on the serious nature of what this could do in the future. I mean, all the heretics and all like the folks saying it's gonna transfer, it's gonna transmit to humans next year, we promise, all that stuff, all the zombie headlines and stuff, all that aside. It's that that aside. This still is a very serious issue that uh that we Whether you're montane or not, you just need to understand it, right. For sure. We covered that off pretty good, I think. So. Yeah, we got eleven more to go. Okay, we've been going minutes. Oh yeah, man on another another six hours, Jennifer Jennifer is looking at me like a really I am getting paid, but until five I'm supposed to go elk, Yeah, we got what do you want to hear about next film? What disease? Well, it's what's on the list. Yeah, what do we got? We'll let Phil pick? Well, so let's see Emily help me that we've got him or magic disease, which is blue tongue. H We've got bovine TB bovine TB. We've got tularemia, plague, white syndrome, I'm got more. This is like this. People are just going to be like what, Oh my god, we don't even have all of these diseases. But I'm kind of fine. I don't know if this pertains to hunters as much, but I'm interested in in white nose syndrome. That was just at luc and Clark Caverns recently, so let's let's go there. So white nose syndrome. We don't know that we have that here in Montana yet, but it's a priority disease because of its potential to have significant impacts on wildlife populations. UM and Emily has been working on a really recently working on a surveillance plan for that. UM and it's it's an emanation wide effort. I was sat in on a on a conference call the other day and got an update from some other states on what they're doing. But some of these diseases are more like, are grosser than others, So like, well, well, I want to we have to cover high dada disease because Dr Vlarious guys scared the entire world for the last podcast about this two podcasts ago in fact um. I've got a lot of emails about disease. Yeah, I'm sure that one always gets a lot of attention. Yeah, so white nosease can be nowhere near? Is that one? If you're in the back, if you and if you don't like insects, it's not a good if you're bad and you're listening to podcast dang. Yeah, okay, give us white notes. It's a fungal infection caused by the fungus um pseudo gym no ascas destructtions phil What was that right, let's hear it at the abbreviation the accurate. It's pete pseudo semnias destructive close Jim ask on one syllable off of nineteen syllables in that word. Yeah, so it's a it's a fungal infection um that will eventually cause the death of of of many bat species. Not all bat species die from it, but it's a sort of a disease. But when the animal, when the bat gets first infected, it can take a period of time for them to build up enough of the fungus to cause problems. But it particularly affects hybridating bats, so an infected bat will rouse more frequently in the winter UM probably because they're thirsty UM, and because they're having to wake up, they're having to burn fat reserves, and so instead of the fungus actually killing the bat, it's ultimately starvation. The bat has to continually roused utill they sitting up starving to death. Before the start of the summer. And in the East they've lost like ninety five plus percent of their bat certain bat populations UM and it's you know, accelerated the listing and the concern over listing certain species, and it's now been moving westward. We have detections of the fungus in Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Texas. There just was a detection in California, and it's been in um Washington, So it's sort of closing in now on all sides. We haven't found in Montana. We're part of a national surveillance program to be looking. Montana's bats are a little different than those out east, and that most of our bats we can't account for in hybernaculate in caves. Most of them are are using other forms of roost sites like rock talus slopes or you know, in the summer trees but yeah, we can't account for all the bats, so we've got um and so it's really hard to monitor the vast majority of our population. So we're sort of restricted currently to to working in some of the larger known caves. And we've started some spring missnetting where we go out at night and set up these big nets and and catchas and then swab them and send those in for testing. So we're looking for it hard. Have you've been catching bats? Are you like? Are you netting them? Are you using like a netgun not a netgun? Was picturing like because I used to catch turkeys back in the day, so I was picturing that you were just like other animals and net guns, But no, I'm not. Make sure make sure you've got a full mount on that netgun when the bat flies by. If you've ever seen a bird missnet, it's very similar. So it's just, yeah, the same thing, really fine netting, and you set them up on these big poles and you'll usually put them right over water or near water. Um, and then just as bats emerge at night, they're coming in and they don't have time to recognize it's there, and they get tangled and so then you've got to pull them out and we take a bunch of measurements, um collect guano samples, and yeah, have you you've seen that two? I think it is. I think I know it's seen. You're referring to you didn't know about mango earlier, so checking checking the sea. But yeah, it has the potential to really impact our bats. And as Jennifer said, if you don't like insects, it's a concern because bats consume. That's there's a there's a lot of ecosystem services that bats provoked, much like pollinators and things like that. We start to lose them that you're gonna seems well, and the and the other thing with this and and what Phil is talking about at the Caverns Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, you know, are guides there give people a spiel about white no syndrome. And and if you're wearing clothes that you wore into another cave, you're not going into caverns um And that's a that's an important sort of piece that that we can tell hunters and people who might be out and you're out in the woods, you stumble onto a cave or something. I mean that's how the fungus can get transmitted is is cave hopping. And so we, unbeknownst to me until I started to learn about this, we have quite a caving community in Montana of people that that are really active in recreating in caves, and they're taking this really seriously and they're part of of not just our surveillance, but also you know, kind of a defense against um against transmission of this fungus. So it's it's an interesting, interesting disease. What's it's close to Halloween. These are going to be very I know we have bad week every like right before Yeah, like shark week. Yeah, bad week though a week oh that I'm glad to hear that. Actually, just like bats, they're misunderstood. But yeah, we do lots of kids programs and I'll reach in schools and um, yeah, it's exciting and I think, you know, the big question is what do we do when we find it? Why I go through all the trouble looking, I'm I think that's a question. It's like and it's like all diseases, all wildlife diseases. It's they're hard to manage. They present unique challenges when you've got a free living mobile population UM. But you know, I think knowing that it's arrived and documenting those impacts are really important for understanding how much more we have to do to conserve bats in other ways, So mitigating the other sources of mortality, and those things, you know, include maybe poor forest management, trying to improve management of forests to preserve bat habitat, UM, mitigating wind farm mortality because that is a significant source of mortality. So right now, I mean, there are a lot of experimental approaches to trying to you know, spray bats with probiotics and and there might be some some viable options down the line. But again, because we don't have a way of accessing our bats like in giant caves where hundreds of thousands of bats are all roosting. Um, those seem like they're going to be more challenging to implement on our Lucky enough, it's closing in on us. But we're safe for now. Yeah, I bet you it's here. We can take that. What are we gonna be, Phil be our data collector on this one? Now? I mean we could be so close. I mean, it's been the Dakotas and Wyoming. It's here. It was just haven't found it yet, and I want to make one just small observation is that our our ballots that are out collecting bats and scientists are out collecting bats, they're inoculated against rabies, and so we don't want people if you see a bat. Yeah, this is different than the lymph note situation. Don't be out with netting baths. We don't. Don't go do your own recon on this. Just this is when the communications director kicks in, like, yeah, right, as much as I want to see a bunch of people in a field with nets at night, how funny that would be, don't do it well. And this is the time of year where people see we get lots of reports of bats because bats are I'm not sure what they're doing this time of year, but they're more visible and so they'll like you'll see them on a on a shady side of a brick building. They'll just be like kind of all of a sudden, you'll see it's a little tiny brown mass where they're just roosting in in spots are more visible. So if you if somebody sees a bat laying on the ground, and even if you think it's noses white because it's why you no syndrome. Just don't call us, don't don't touch it, don't touch it. All right, Well, I want to hear about the plague. About the plague so UM. Plague is a bacterial infection UM and we don't see document cases of this in our lab per se. I'm trying to think if we ever have. But it does cause significant UM die offs for you know, prairie dogs, UM, ground squirrels and and those kinds of things. And that's important because of the blackfooted fair being an issue UM. So that's something that UM and and there's also some potential for human transmission of that disease as well, so that's why it's a priority disease UM. And you know, we haven't done a lot of work on plague, but our lab has not, but UM partners a bunch so it I think it was actually introduced to southwestern US UM through ships maybe a long time ago. UM, and it's spread and it's caused huge impacts and wiping out prairie dog populations. It can just decimate entire colony UM. And there are colonies even in UM in Montana that blink on and off because of plague or blink off rather and right, the concern is is ferrets, and so a bunch of our partners with US Fish and Wildlife Service UM, some of the academic institutions have been doing work trying to UM figure out how to manage this, and a lot of it revolves around managing the fleas UM. If you can keep the fleet population down, you can try and a minute minimized transmission UM and hopefully prevent the collapse of the prairie dog colonies. For UM ferret conservation. Believe it or not, we do get people who bring us ground squirrels. Absolutely do bring us things like that that they find, and believe it or not, once in a while I'll get a call and someone will say, you know, we usually have a lot of ground squirrels and this year we don't have any, and they're concerned about it. UM. So that happens, and a lot of those probably are those big outbreaks could be plag related UM and and there are other diseases that rodents carry that are of concern too, So we want to make sure we know about those because so we can advise people not to be handling them. But there are people who kind of watch that and let us know when they see something. Yes, so again, if you come across like a big pile of dead rodents, rabbit, don't touch just give us a call. You have that, Phil, If you're just walking down the street and you're like a big pilot ground squirrels, don't don't touch it. I don't have to rearrange my weekend plans. Make sure make sure Mango, make sure you talk to Mango about this, because actually a good point. Don't let your dog. Same thing with bats. Mag is gonna want over that bat. You keep Mango out of those situations. Okay, thanks, poor, dear dear Mango, sweet my sweet sweet boys a boy girl girl again, you've never met her. I love you, Mango, and I've never met you. We saw moose out here and I was sure that was Mango. You thought, no, mangoes a little shorter legs, right, kind of like, oh, yeah, she's a lot smaller than smaller. Yeah. We got some pictures of Mango, but Phil has been very sketchy. But I'm trying to get some pictures for social media, and he's very sketchy about giving me pictures of Mango. It's hard to it's hard to she's she's just a little ball entered. It's hard to lock her down. Well, can you can you envision like a meat eater free Mango T shirt? Oh yeah, free Mango. Get Mango out into the world. Okay, make it happen. She came from a shelter in living and she was astray on the Fort pack reservation. Yeah, and it was very sad. Last time you guys probably didn't list the packets, but we we played in the arms of the angel If I started my blockline and Phil told the story about Mango. It was very emotional. I actually legitimately shed a tear because it was thinking about the bonds that Mango and Phil have. I will keep her away from the rabbits dead rabbit bas yes, and the bats and the deer, anything that's dead. I have a lot of. I've got two house cats though that hunt mice every night. Is there anything that could happen? Okay? Do you when you just look at every animal, you're like, what does it have? Pretty much plasmosis? Yes? Yeah. When my wife was pregnant, I kept her away from the litter box and every one one day I was skimping on my duties and I came home. When I caught her cleaning in, I got really upset, Like I got really paranoid about the toxoplasmas. Yeah, you guys got to be looking at like see an alcohol crosses a kind of like abal ecosystem. Just walking around spread stuff from the whole mango thing gets me thinking about hi data disease. Oh yeah, this one is you know, love me some Val guys send me a wonderful human and rolls his rs in a way that can you roll your rs? Bill, ladies, like a like a spasm, some sort of spasm. Phil could do it. He's married, ladies, Um, Phil, Poor Phil. Um. But Val came in and we were talking about wolves, and he went into high data disease. And I had had not even heard the term until he brought it up, which I imagine based on well, I imagine that to be the case for most people, and based on the feedback that we got from listeners, that is the case. Most people did not understand that a lot of people were positing that he was bringing that up as some scare tactick it around wolves to make people think negatively about about wolves in their neck of the woods. That our ecosystem UM. So it's it's important. I think it's on everyone's mind that listened to that podcast. A lot of people did. So we should go through it and explain it and and either we can either back up vow or not. Either way it doesn't matter to me. But let's we should cover off on high data disease. Yeah, So high data disease is UM. It's it's caused by a parasite and the parasite is kind of cocketscranulosis. It's a type of tape worm UM. This this tapeworm is a two host cycle, so with high dadded disease in an elk per se, that's the one we see see it in mostly um. This parasite UM is an adult actually in the intestine of the of the canine. So in a wolf and elk system, the wolf would carry the adult tapeworms, which actually are really really tiny, little millimeters long, tiny little tapeworms, but they're in the intestine and they lay thousands of eggs UM and those eggs are shedding the feces this is very common of a tapeworm, any tapeworm LFE cycle. But those eggs are shedding the feces um, and of course when that wolf deficates contamination of the environment, they also are you know, sticky, so they can stick to the wolves fur and things like that. You guys deal a lot of tapeworm type situations, Yeah, I do. I can't. I can't just like poop, a lot of poop well fair bit and these other diseases on and I was fine, I can get past that. But a tape worm, well, parasites in general pretty pretty amazing and disgusting. So so elk comes along right grazing and just a bunch of these eggs, and that's how the elk gets infected. What we see um and a lot of it's because hunters see it and call us um. When they're fiel dressed in their elk, they see these large cysts. Usually it's in the lung m They can be in other organs, but primarily we see see it reported in the lung and they're kind of big, their golf ball size oftentimes, and firm and round, and so they're white. They're kind of white, and they can be embedded within the lung tissues. So sometimes you can't even see them, but you can feel them if you start feeling the lungs UM. So hunters do start seeing those um and call and ask what they are. If they cut into them, they'd see, you know, a lot of clear fluid and little grains it looks like little grains of sand in there. But so anyway, the cycle continues. If that if a wolf then or or that animal died in the field and all came along and scavenged and ate those cysts in the lungs, then the wolf gets reinfected and starts the cycle over and over again. So that's how that's how it plays out in the elk wolf system. UM. And that's what we primarily are seeing in our in our day to day, especially during hunting season. And Dr Geist took it a little bit further further, scaring lots of folks to say that, uh, this might happen with a domestic dog might come across the wolf feces or the elk more likely. Yeah, So we do try to make sure people are aware when they call us and and say they've seen this in their elk lung or um. You know, we do tell them don't feed these raw scraps to your dog, because the dog is you know, related to the wolf, the dog could ingest those and the dog could get infected just like the wolf can and then shed eggs in their feces. Uh, I believe if if correct me, If I'm wrong, Phil, do you remember that? I think Dr Guys said that, then your dogs in your house and your babies calling around and there's so yeah. So human exposure, if it's going to happen, right, is going to happen by either handling a wolf that's shedding eggs in the feces, or handling feces or a dog that's shedding eggs in their feces. So historically, if you look back at the old literature, this this disease um was not uncommon in sheep hurting operations back in the day because the sheep would get this parasite and they would allow dogs to consume that the dogs will get infected and then occasionally a person would get infected. So it has that potential being an issue if someone's dog is effective from feeding on these that those eggs could be shed. There's some there's some evidence that those are slightly they're slight differences in the ability of a human to be infected with this particular one that's in the wolf elk cycle. Maybe only could shed some more light on that versus the one that the sheep and dog cycle. Um. But anyway, that's that's why we don't want people feeding those ross scraps to their dogs, because there are other tapeworms that invent meat and we don't want dogs getting those either. Gosh, yeah, I mean there's so there's different strains and and they have, um, you know, they seem to vary a little bit in how severe they are for humans. Um, you don't want to get the infection. Um. I think it's pretty nasty infection. In some cases it can be treatable, but yeah, you know, I think again the take home is you see scat, don't we'll scat, don't touch it, and wash your hands, wear gloves or wash your hands after, and don't feed your dogs. Don't feed your dogs scraps. All those things are good because yeah, again, the way Dr I described it was very, um, very dramatic. And when you ingest that, like if if a human were to get high out of the disease, you can have those cysts and those those parasites inside you for some time, maybe dormant. Exactly, It could be a while before they were detected and then um, and they can be an any organ um anything from long to delivered to brain to bone. So but yeah, as Jennifer sent, I mean, it's traditionally been associated with people who have dogs, sled dogs or hurting dogs, and um, yeah, I think you know, another another sort of anecdotal line of evidence is there's lots of wolf biologists that have handled wolves for many years, and uh, there was sort of an informal informal um survey. A bunch of them got tested to look if they've got antibodies for kind of cacuscranulosis, and none of them came back positive. And you think those we might be the highest risk segment of the population. We're always they are actively handling feces and handling wolves, and so I think just common sense it goes a long way. Yeah, it's fairly it's not common for human transmission of this, right, I mean, you know, it's like it's not once a year's it's just not common, right, So you don't want it to be you, But again, you know you'd be pragmatic. Pragmatism goes along the way in a lot of these situations about Tom Hopefull, You'll leave this podcast scared. You're gonna you're not gonna know what to do when you're outside, dogs, babies, bats, plague, plague. You see a ground squirrel, you'renna run the other way like it's a grizzly bear. That's nothing you can do. Uh, you don't run away from grizzly bears. We all have a whole I gotta tell you guys that story about the about that guy the other day. Oh boy, um, I think we should cover off on there's a couple of things that are interesting me. But there's just two things we mentioned, which is brucellosis and then themmony and sheep um. Both of those I think is important to know what they are, of course, but there's some uh, there's some issues with managing them that we've talked about before. I think we should just cover off on that. Is it just an example of how managing a wildlife disease is not as simple as it might seem. You know, there are different mitigating factors, and are different interests involved, and and how these things get made. It so um and I think if I'm am I right in saying that you know, the situation is fairly similar with pneumonia cheap and brucellosis kind of a similar concept. I don't want to connect those in a way that doesn't make sense for you guys. Yeah, I know, Yeah, I think it's it's similar in that the um for sure, and that the groups, the interest groups involved our livestock and wildlife. So that's really the similarity um or one of the key similarities. Yeah, if you if you will. Stakeholder groups are kind of you know, livestock owners and wildlife bologists, wildlife scientists and those things have to come together in a way. Yeah, and hunters hunters of course. So brucellosis, let's start with that one. We've covered that on this podcast a few times, but it be good to just run through it quickly. Um, let's see where to start with rucellosis. So, brucellosis, we're talking about resell aboard ust here um, and it's a disease that we we know cattle are our primary host um, but now we know that it's endemic in some areas in wild elk um and bison. Yeah. Sorry, I forget about the bison because they're park but yeah, so we know it's there. UM. You know, we've had livestock cases show up historically in Montana where we've had spillover back from these elk to to cattle UM, and that's a big problem. UM. So lots of effort going into trying to prevent that from happening. And the folks that Department Livestock have a program just for that purpose to try to prevent that from happening. And we work very closely with the Department Livestock on this issue. We meet with them every year to plan our surveillance. UM. They help us kind of go through what their priorities are for looking at where this disease is and UM. So that's that's a constant communication, a really regular communication with them and the folks, and they're diagnostic lab. So our kind of our role at the lab here is UM to figure out the surveillance piece. So where do we want to look this year? So this winter, every winter for a long time now, we've been catching elk and and testing them for brucellosis and then UM providing that information and that helps, you know, it helps the Department Livestock and in the ranchers to kind of estimate their risk UM and kind of follow these herd plans that they've gotten place. So, um, that's our role. Um. And yeah, it's a big collaboration. Yeah. Yeah, it's an important one for this state and many others where there's you know a lot of most of these are private lands, but it's also publicly and grazing site where this this is happening. So it's a it's something I we hear of a lot when you talk about you know, like we said, wildlife and livestock and what this all means and where they interact. Yeah, and we care about brucellosis because it both because it's a zoo not a confection, so it can cause disease and humans. Um. And that's historically why we were so concerned about it and livestock. Um. Their opportunities for spill over to people that way um and uh. And then it also causes abortions and so you you lose offspring that way. UM. But yeah, there's a huge commitment from the Department to try and know exactly where it is and to work with Departmental live Stock on mitigation. You know, we've got the Department does have programs for UM offering resources defense haystacks or to hold dispersal hunts on private there's hazing done in some of these areas, and we have actually our research biologist is working on a project now to try to evaluate those management strategies and see if they're you know, what kind of impacts they're having. Yeah, yeah, what what are you dealing with? Greg? On your side when trying to communicate this, you know, from f w P two hunters to landowners to ranchers, how is it being communicated the best best way possible? Well, you know, this is it's got quite a long history and so um, a lot of what we're doing on the I mean, it's really it's it's not something that spills out in our communication with hunters a ton, but it but it does in our communication with the livestock industry and working with them, and so you know, and and Jennifer and Emily you can jump in. But one of the key concern is having that separation between livestock and elk uh during the calving, during the when the elk are dropping calves and so um, you know, sometimes there's we have you know, the there's like they said, hazing and things like that. Um that can can happen. We can work with producers to um you know, make sure that if you know they're there, their operation is is away from where maybe some elk calving is having is concentrated. And so some of the tests, some of the research we do is not just UM testing for the brucellosis, but also radio coloring now because we know, you know, have some idea where what elt movement is and that sort of thing, and so you know, broadly for us on that communication into things, it's it's really with the livestock industry and in back and forth on what we're doing, what we're seeing, what we're finding out, and you know, answering their questions and concerns that sort of thing. Do you guys have any programs where you're encouraging, you know, a landowner hunter permission relationship that can help this at all? You know that could you know, let a hunter on shoot an elk? You know that's something I've heard positive about brucellosis and I just don't know. Yeah, well, I think so we have areas where where um uh, we know that where we've been looking for and we know that brucellosis exists in the elk population and so when when elk like if it if it's on a haystack or an al foul fi field or some or where elks are coming into contact to in the same ground as the as a cattle operation, to where we can do game damage hunts and things like that. Um. So there are those sorts of programs that we work with UH landowners on and you know, there's there's a there's a lot to that. It's not just like, oh, I've I've got elk on my place, I need a game damage hunt. Um. You know, there's there's some there's some some um parameters around that, but um but yeah, that's one of them are sort of direct programs that we've got. And it's similar with with our issue with wild sheep, like they're coming into contact with domestic sheep and and disease that are being passed along. So can we I know we talked about pneumonia, but can we just cover that one real quick because I know, you know, when we work at the Wild Chief Foundation, that's a huge thing that they're talking about. They are always um asking us to to look at information documentation on on these types of things and how we can how hunters can help how we can help get the word out. So I know it's a big for those guys. Yeah. So, so we have a big horn, cheap and mountain goat herd health program that we've been working on for Boy, how how many years now? Is this four? Or five? Um so? How many big horns in Montan? You know in general? I'd have to look. I have to look it up. I don't know, do you know, either of you? I want to I'm not positive. I'm not positive. Fewer than there were when Lewis and Clark came crew, unfortunately. Um So, So we've got this program anyway, and and we've been catching big horn, cheap and mountain goats the past several winters to get baseline health information because there were herds that we just didn't really know much about, you know, what what path engines might be present or um So we've been doing that, um collecting some good information and uh, you know, we had a big outbreak over in you know, the kind of the the East Fork of the Bitter Rude area in two thousand ten. Um And you know, I've got a lot of information out of that. Um So we've learned I think over the past four years quite a bit about what UM what what our herds health status is UM five thousand sheep and have it distinct populations. That's a lot, a lot of populations. And yeah, it's it's it's difficult. We're finding that these little, these small herds that are um, you know, they've just got a few sheep. We really want to know what's going on in those herds, but those ones are the hardest ones to catch and get information from. Yeah, I like, can you describe how the you know, how this transmission is occurring from you know, domestic sheep. So it's it's not just domestics, but domestics were important part of the original story. So we think that microplasma of ammonia, which we think is the primary cause of agent for restoire disease, was brought over by domestic sheep and that quickly spilled over to our wild sheep populations and probably contributed to the widespread decline UM at the turn of the century and late eighteen hunters and uh they have since we've since, through huge efforts, recovered quite a few sheep across the west, but we've sort of hit this uh plateau. We can't seem to rise back up, and there are plenty of places where it would be great to have more sheep, but we've either got chronically infected bighorn sheepherds that just sort of they are sort of stagnant. They just won't grow. I mean, they do okay, but lamb recruitment is pretty low. Um year after year. Is that generally what it is? Lamb recruitment when they we're looking at the moment. Yeah, So initially when the disease comes, when the pathogen comes into the herd, the classic pattern is that you get a die off, and it can vary in size, but on average it's like six of the herd dies off, and then those that recover. You get a portion of the herd that recovers and presumably as immune to the bacteria UM. But there's usually a couple of carriers, so a couple of the typhoid mary's that continued shed the bacteria at low levels and during lambing UM, if that infected dam has a has a UM lamb, she will transmit and then that lamb gets together with all of its little buddies in the nursery heard and suddenly you get a you know, a lamb outbreak. And you see high land mortality sounds like when school opens exactly same kind of idea. It's classic. I mean, after that initial die off, it's like a childhood infection sort of UM. And the unfortunate thing is that uh domestics do carry Domestics sheep do carry this at higher rates than wild sheep, so sort of a standing number of carriers in a domestic blox seems to be quite a bit higher than wild sheep, and they have a high diversity of this bacteria UM and so it seems like there's no cross immunity to different strains. So you can have a herd that's been infected WI simaply has a whole bunch of individuals that are UM the wild sheep that are immune to their local strain. But if they do come in contact with domestic sheep, they could get another spill over event that triggers another all h die off. UM. We think, you know, we we think there are still cases occasionally of domestic spillover UM T wild sheep, and that's always a concern that sort of guides our separation strategy. We want to keep wild and domestic sheep apart from one another, but we know that that bighorn sheep are perfectly capable of spreading it across populations. I mean, those rams can move long distances and if they are infected or a carrier, they can contribute onward transmission. And for me, and it's certainly bringing it up in that way, it wasn't my intention and kind of like, but I think that's prevailing, right, and it it is important to maintain that separation. And you know, we do ask the public if they do see a commingling event that they let the agency know because unfortunately, in those situations, we try and remove the wild sheep that's commingled to just reduce that risk. You'll see. And there's been a lot of content in hunting world about translocation and absolutely, I think partly because it's a very compelling thing to film, like just it's a compelling thing to do in film, but I think it's an important management tool as well, especially yeah, it's done properly, I guess. You know, that's part of the reason we started doing this health program because you know, we're hoping to get information on these herds before we mix them together. Um it, it's we're trying that challenging we're we've been really cautious. I think in in recent recent years, recently we've been cautious, but we you know, if we we've I've seen a map that showed historically where sheep have been moved across the state. And it's extensive. I mean it's like if you've put a line from where the sheep, the herd, the sheep sheeper translicated from one herd to another. It's like a pile of spaghetti on top of the state. I mean, they're just they've moved everywhere. And that's true across the West. Yeah. Well, I think I think all these things. One thing I was thinking when we're talking about CWD, I think all these things, it's important to say, um, you just hey, Greg, who funds all this stuff? Uh? Well thanks for asking. You know, Uh, as with a lot of almost all of our work hunters and anglers through licensed dollars excise taxes. Um, you know we do a lot of our research is funded through the Pittman Robertson grant and so yeah, I mean that's that that's as everybody listening knows, that's the excise tax. And uh, it's a really cool system that we have that the folks that care about wildlife, care about healthy herds, healthy populations, put their money where their heart is, and yeah, we're funding it. Yeah. I mean that's as I think about this, and I think about c w D. Even if you're if you're you're not a lymph node puller and you're like, I'll just take money to the butcher, you're still just by buying that hunting license, or buying that shotgun, or buying this that m O, or buying your fishing tackle with Thinkle Johnson, you're you're contributing to this. So there's we've set up not an infallible system but a damn a damn good one to address these things, as scary as some of them can. Me. Yeah, maybe, but you know it's it's the and i'd throw in this. You know, it comes up with white nose syndrome because there isn't a license for We don't sell hunting licenses for bats, and so I don't get any ideas out there people bats are Bats are one of our non game species as as we classify them in this STATEPI. They're they're critical to the ecosystem, they're critical to the economy, and so I mean, I think I speak for the majority hunters. It's say, uh, we're I'm interested in a healthy population. Yeah, yeah, we've got a program we're working on here now called back forty. We bought a farm in Michigan. We looked at bees, we looked at the songbirds. We're going to look at bats. Like just looking at you know, what's all here and what does it all mean. That's something that has really been been great for me to be a part of and been inspiring for me to see, Like it's empowering to to see all that and to know, you know, this type of native plant life does this for pollinators, this type of and even to understand the diseases that affect these animals is in some way empowering to someone who let's go outside and understand, hey, maybe don't stick your hand in that wolf poop. And I know, I know you'd like to do that, but let we just don't do that. Well, and that's the thing to to you know, I mean, it's important to know about our lab is is we are a wildlife health lab. It is not a game animal lab. It is a wildlife health lab. And and so uh, you know, I know we're thinking about kind of kind of book ending this with a c w D conversation, but let's do it with al al herpies because another bring it back to al herpies. Greg, you' that's what that's what gets you to recurring guest status, non game issue that you know people are concerned about and and that we you know, until we look at all wildlife and whether it's owls or all owls matter, damn it always get in that trap. Um. But yeah, al herpies. Let's let's just say it's not prevalent, but we don't want to become prevalent, right And the thing too is, you know, you find an owl dead, Um, we don't know that it's al harpies. It could be our first highly pathogenic avian influenza which could affect or the bird flu But you know that there are a lot of possibilities there and some of those may not seem to affect everyone at first glance, but they may be more important than we realize unless we take a look. We don't know, So don't we should come up with something? You know, how they had like they'll have like sayings you know, don't drink and drives one of those don't touch the owls or something like that. We gotta come up with some like you're a communications we gotta come up with some like some sayings. Feel you guys hang on that like don't Well, I hopefully it's something better than don't touch the else. Well, that's just a starting point here. I think that maybe yeah, don't Yeah, I don't know. I'm stuck on dead don't touch its head. I'm stuck on co mingling event oh yeah, report co mingling, don't don't co mingle. Well, don't be a dingle and co. All right, man, that's gonna get my dad jokes. I'm like, I'm only I'm thirty three. I can't even making dad jokes. Phil. We'll just think how good you're gonna be when your forty three. That's true, I'm gonna be. So anyway, we'll work on our al herpes anti al herpes u pr lines we got. We gotta come up with one good one. Phil. You're always you always come through. Get the wheels turning. But it's taken longer than I was hoping. So that's lunchtime on a Friday. Man, you gotta get out of here. Well and four wheel drive. Yeah, well, don't touch the dead owls. That's the best we got for you. Thing, Emily, you feel like I feel like you might have something about owls. We need we need a pr line about not touching dead animals. Don't touch Yeah, just report animals, you know with c Now we're asking folks, especially now too, if they see something, say something, if it looks sick, don't be now, don't go there, don't be a mean person. All right, that's gotta be. Thank you guys for your service, thank you for looking into the feces and the carcasses, and somebody's got to do it. I'm gonna we're gonna send Phil over to to be with you, and the next time you get a call from a from a dead animal, he'll he's gonna put on the rubber gloves and get to it, right Phil, that's right, and then he'll report back to me what he finds. All right. This is about well, thanks for coming in, UM and everybody out there. We are going to book the end of c w D. If you're out there this season pulling your left noes and be sending those in for testing UM, even if you're not in an affected area, um in a monsitoring area. So go do it and do it every time. Yeah, give me like a we got a rallying cry for the close. This as something intellectual, Greg geez f WP dot mt dot com, slash c w D. There's a lot of information there. Even if you aren't from Montana, you'ld there's a lot of information to learn. Go there, all right, see you. I guess that's it. That's all another episode of the hunting Collective in the books. Thank you to Emily, to Jennifer, and to Greg for coming in. For what you do for wild life and for what you do for hunters. Um, it's a very interesting conversation, some of it very scary, very gross, but all of it very necessary. So please this fall, consider cutting the olympnos out of one of your deer species that you're killing and sending it in or bringing it to a check station. Now. I think that's it's something that we can all do, just a very easy thing to do that can make a difference in our own small way, which I think is important to remember all the time. UM, We've we're definitely into October. We've got a lot to talk about. But I think, UM, one of the coolest things that we've seen lately is the love from Mango the dog Phil. Yeah, it's been it's been great. Yeah. Yeah, we got some love from from our our guests today as well. Team Mango is Free, Mango Free, Free, Mango is forming. Uh Mango, we need to get Mango on into the podcast. Yeah, it's gonna go. Well, if if I were to sit here in the podcast room for recording, um, she would probably get get tangled up in the mess of cables at our underneath. So we'll we'll see how Freemano turns out. All right, Well, I'm gonna go lcom What are you gonna do this weekend? Oh man, I don't know. Might go to the farm, take some uh you have a farm or just a farm with someone else. It's a farm, you actually told me Rocky Creek here, Rocky Creek Farm. As soon as I went there, I'm like, that looks like you've got an apple press. You can pick your apples and press them in their giants. Took my kid there and I like, my wife made like apple strudel thing. It was, yeah, it's great. For as soon as I went there, I'm like, hey, you allow people to hunt here first thing right by the apple trees, that's where I'd like to go. I didn't get it, didn't get the permission. Sorry. Shout out to Rock Creek Farm. Please go there. And then when you go there, if you live in Bosman, go there and ask them if ben can hunt their property because it's a lot of big, good white tailed but so let's put a lot of pressure on them. That's good, that's a nice place. Well, I'm going out. I'm going to the mountains. I want you won'tly hear from me for a while, um, but you will help for me next week here on the hunting collective see that piece, you know, Because I can't go a week without doing run without absolute rug, drinking out right wrong, drinking in and don't sitting at the bostil. It starts to grow roots being the aging hold on out bar roush shoes down.

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