Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening, you can't
Speaker 1: predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting
Speaker 1: apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt,
Speaker 1: First Light Go farther, stay longer. This is gonna embarrass you, Jim,
Speaker 1: But you know how I'm gonna introduce him. Can a
Speaker 1: man I'm gonna say, Joined today by the smartest man
Speaker 1: in the woods, by the smartest man in the woods,
Speaker 1: Jim Hefflefinger. You're lying right off the bat, You're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: how about this, Joined today by the most well informed
Speaker 1: man in the woods. Okay, Jim heffle Finger, thank you
Speaker 1: for coming in. It's great to be here. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: listeners of the show know that rarely does an episode
Speaker 1: go by when someone doesn't say Hefflefinger was telling me,
Speaker 1: or Hefflefinger wrote in to explain, or Hefflefinger is mad
Speaker 1: about blank because he, like I said, he's the he's
Speaker 1: the smartest, most well informed man in the woods. And
Speaker 1: when we're talking about stuff, he likes to tell us
Speaker 1: where we where we hit and where we miss and
Speaker 1: Jim comes on. You've been on I don't know how
Speaker 1: many times, this maybe your third fourth time podcast, yea.
Speaker 1: And what we do is we work up a bunch
Speaker 1: of things that we're gonna talk about, and we agree
Speaker 1: that and we agree on what we're gonna cover, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna cover a bunch of those today. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about We're gonna talk about Jim's thoughts and current
Speaker 1: research on a thing that we've brought up in the
Speaker 1: past is like, if you eat wild gamey, is the
Speaker 1: lead gonna get you? Is the lead gonna kill you?
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about this thing that pops up now
Speaker 1: and then if that the argument that by having more
Speaker 1: predators on the landscape we would see a decline in
Speaker 1: chronic wasting disease, We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about a thing you might see pop up in
Speaker 1: the news now and then trophic cascades, particularly in the
Speaker 1: context of when wolves came back to Yellowstone National Park.
Speaker 1: People came up with all these sort of fantastical ideas
Speaker 1: about the trophic cascades that occurred in the park thanks
Speaker 1: to wolves. We're gonna talk about have Aleena getting their due.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about some ungulate stuff, but the first
Speaker 1: thing we're going to talk about is the Rompola buck. Now,
Speaker 1: first I want to clarify a thing I and I
Speaker 1: grew up near where I grew up, south of mitch
Speaker 1: But but my father had my father had met him,
Speaker 1: had known him, had handled some of the deer he
Speaker 1: had killed in the past. He used to measure bucks
Speaker 1: for like commemoraive bucks to Michigan. And somehow I had
Speaker 1: in my head I for years have said Rampaula. But
Speaker 1: that's a that's a lure rapella. Yeah, it's cast and
Speaker 1: cast Paula's Rompola. We're working on a project. Jordan Sillers,
Speaker 1: who you might know from Blood Trails, is working on
Speaker 1: a podcast about We're doing a series along along Away,
Speaker 1: this series that I've been talking about for a million
Speaker 1: years on the Rompola buck. And for those of you
Speaker 1: that just tune in for the first time, I'll try
Speaker 1: to keep it brief. But officially, officially, the biggest buck
Speaker 1: ever killed by the hands of man was killed by
Speaker 1: in Canada by a guy named Milo Hansson. But shortly
Speaker 1: after that buck was killed a buck that would have
Speaker 1: beat Milo Hansson's buck to become the all time world
Speaker 1: reck typical whitetail was air road by a guy named
Speaker 1: Mitch Rompola and then withdrawn from consideration. So we're doing
Speaker 1: a mystery series on is the buck real or not?
Speaker 1: Which side are you on? Right? And so I've been
Speaker 1: we've been wanting to interview We've been wanting to interview
Speaker 1: half a finger about this buck because you have you
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time on antlers and antler growth
Speaker 1: and deer and everything. And one of the questions I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about, and this will be included
Speaker 1: in the series, but just to kick it around is
Speaker 1: one of the things that people point out is that
Speaker 1: where this buck got killed in northern Lower Peninsula, Michigan
Speaker 1: is a place that does not make big bucks. They
Speaker 1: don't have they don't make Boone and crocodile like God
Speaker 1: does not make Boone and Crockett bucks in the Grand
Speaker 1: Traverse Bay area of Michigan. What do you make of
Speaker 1: something like that?
Speaker 2: I've heard that, and I'm not an expert on the
Speaker 2: whole Mitch from Paula Buck, I remember when it came
Speaker 2: out around the Midwest. I grew up in Wisconsin, so
Speaker 2: right next door, and and remember all the chatter about that,
Speaker 2: and never paid much attention to it. Came back to
Speaker 2: it more recently and helped Jordan out with the with
Speaker 2: that series. And just from a basic standpoint of can
Speaker 2: a monster buck like that come out of nowhere? And
Speaker 2: and I I think it can. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: matter of it's a matter of likelihood always when you're
Speaker 2: when you're thinking about that sort of thing. But I've
Speaker 2: seen cases in Sonora in the desert southwest where you
Speaker 2: get you get a drop condition where all of the
Speaker 2: antlers are a little stunted that year from nutritional restrictions,
Speaker 2: and then out of nowhere there's this giant desert mule
Speaker 2: here and you just wonder, how did he do that.
Speaker 2: Antlers are secondary sex characteristics. They only get the extra
Speaker 2: nutrition after the body gets what it needs, and then
Speaker 2: it can throw off some extra nutrition to antler growth,
Speaker 2: and so when they're nutritionally stressed, they don't throw that out.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you'll get a buck that who knows why,
Speaker 2: I found some good nutrition or has some kind of
Speaker 2: genetics that is able to better deal with kind of
Speaker 2: the environment, and you can get a monster out of
Speaker 2: nowhere that that's not a reason to discount it when
Speaker 2: you're talking about this case.
Speaker 1: Another thing we're looking into in this series, and it's
Speaker 1: an observation that another whitetail freak had made. And I
Speaker 1: can't remember the number, but this whitetail enthusiast was saying
Speaker 1: that one problem with the round pole of buck, it's
Speaker 1: too perfect. And I can't remember the number, but let's
Speaker 1: just say I don't remember. Let's just say at one
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety inches, I say one hundred ninety inch tail.
Speaker 1: He's like, once a deer gets that big, go find
Speaker 1: me an example of a perfectly symmetrical buck that's that
Speaker 1: big that doesn't have kickers.
Speaker 2: They're there, I mean, examples are there. I looked at
Speaker 2: the because it was Michigan. I looked at the Michigan
Speaker 2: state records, and the number two and the number seven
Speaker 2: buck in the Michigan state records is actually this was
Speaker 2: not Michigan state records. It was a Bunoncracker records, but
Speaker 2: only from Michigan. Boonecracker records from Michigan. Number two in Michigan,
Speaker 2: number seven in Michigan are in the one eighty one
Speaker 2: ninety Boone Crockett range, and one has one inch and
Speaker 2: five ace deductions and the other one has two inch
Speaker 2: and change deductions. So you can get these bucks in
Speaker 2: that range that are almost perfectly symmetrical. So again it's
Speaker 2: not a reason to discount the buck just because it'symmetrical. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So what's your gut on the whole thing? I for
Speaker 2: a while thought he probably just wants his privacy. He doesn't,
Speaker 2: he doesn't, sure, he doesn't want the fame, but having
Speaker 2: the world record shot with an arrow, that's a tough
Speaker 2: thing to overcome. That He would tell everybody about it,
Speaker 2: show people in the back of his truck, talk to
Speaker 2: some media, and then within a day or two shut
Speaker 2: up for three decades. There's something something strange. And one
Speaker 2: thing I don't know if you want any spoiler alerts,
Speaker 2: but one thing I talked to Jordan about was the
Speaker 2: way the bases the pedicles. They come out an unusually
Speaker 2: wide angle. Sure, so you can have wide bucks where
Speaker 2: the antlers come straight out, you see them in South
Speaker 2: Texas all the time, but those pedicles really seem to
Speaker 2: come out like on the side of the head.
Speaker 1: Kind of odd to me.
Speaker 2: And one of them actually in the photo, and there's
Speaker 2: not many photos. One of them actually looks a little
Speaker 2: like a little different orientation than the other one. And
Speaker 2: I wondered aloud to Jordan whether in past years something
Speaker 2: could have happened to that skull and cracked it a
Speaker 2: little and healed it and made those pedicles orient a
Speaker 2: little more. Now, if he had done something with the
Speaker 2: skull and cracked it, those antler times wouldn't be straight up.
Speaker 2: They would be out because he bent it out.
Speaker 1: But they're not.
Speaker 2: They're straight up in that buck. But if that something
Speaker 2: happened to that skull in the past that widened those
Speaker 2: pedicles out, cracked it and rehealed, which there's cases of that,
Speaker 2: and then subsequent antlers, the times would grow straight up
Speaker 2: no matter what the orientation.
Speaker 1: Repull up and put on his screen up here shot
Speaker 1: of the round polar buck.
Speaker 2: So I've just wondered, And this is all speculation because
Speaker 2: we don't know. There isn't any evidence that it's a
Speaker 2: legitimate buck, and there's no evidence that it's not a
Speaker 2: legitimate book.
Speaker 1: So we're all speculating. It's just all speculation.
Speaker 2: So as long as we're speculating, those pedacles, if that
Speaker 2: skull was damaged somehow and the pedicles were wider, and
Speaker 2: then subsequent antler development made those times go straight up.
Speaker 2: It would account for that. I mean, it's a theory,
Speaker 2: but it would account for kind of the unusually wide
Speaker 2: pedicles coming out of the skull. And I find it
Speaker 2: strange that he talked to the media for a day.
Speaker 2: He showed people the buck. It was apparently solid antlers.
Speaker 2: Other people saw it in the battle.
Speaker 1: There's guys, there's yeah, there's a lot. There's there's a
Speaker 1: lot to the solidness of the end. Are you able
Speaker 1: to do that or no? Go on?
Speaker 2: So so then I wonder why was he talking to
Speaker 2: the media and talking to everyone and then got home
Speaker 2: and skinned the buck.
Speaker 1: And shut up for three days. It is.
Speaker 2: Now when I look at that the deer's left pedicle,
Speaker 2: uh right, when you're looking at it, but the deer's
Speaker 2: left side, it looks like that that base is coming
Speaker 2: out a little lower to me. It could be the
Speaker 2: angle of the camera, could be anything, but it comes
Speaker 2: out kind of in the back of the eye, like
Speaker 2: the eyes lined up with it, where on the other
Speaker 2: side the eyes below the pedacle.
Speaker 1: I was looking at that that.
Speaker 2: Asymmetry in that and wondering if something didn't happen to
Speaker 2: the skull. There's even kind of a divot in the
Speaker 2: middle of that skull. Wonder if something didn't happen and
Speaker 2: then it regrew normal antlers, but would account for that
Speaker 2: wide with It's funny that he showed everybody, he talked
Speaker 2: to the local media and then got home and skinned
Speaker 2: it and shut up for three decades.
Speaker 1: Why was that? And then when they went back to
Speaker 1: the I mean you're familiar with all the like wild theories, yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the wild theories being and I've sat on
Speaker 1: both sides of this thing, and I and I don't
Speaker 1: want to do too much like we're we're really we're
Speaker 1: doing a lot on this, okay. But one of the
Speaker 1: wild theories is people have looked at the ears, the
Speaker 1: difference between the way the ears lay, the difference between
Speaker 1: the positioning of the eyes. You can see it all here.
Speaker 1: We got it pulled up coloration issues, right, And a theory,
Speaker 1: a theory is that he skinned that head back and
Speaker 1: put that rack on. He had made that rack and
Speaker 1: he installed that rack on that buck. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't well, I don't think he could have fabricated
Speaker 2: he didn't. There's no evidence he has any experience in
Speaker 2: doing any that sort of thing, and he's shot a
Speaker 2: lot of big bucks. It wasn't unusual that he would
Speaker 2: shoot a big buck. So I'm leaning more towards that
Speaker 2: it possibly being a legal harvest, but maybe not eligible,
Speaker 2: and he knew that, and so he would rather just
Speaker 2: be quiet and have it be a missisis now eligible
Speaker 2: because the skullplate was cracked, Possibly that's the theory. But
Speaker 2: he came home and then you know, he was somewhat
Speaker 2: of a taxidermist, and when they came to measure the buck,
Speaker 2: he had it almost fully mounted on a shoulder mount,
Speaker 2: he had the cape on it, he had the if
Speaker 2: you look at the pictures of them actually measuring it
Speaker 2: that day, the skull plates covered by fur, and he
Speaker 2: left Apparently he left the back open. There's no photo
Speaker 2: of the back that I've seen. He left the back
Speaker 2: open so that they could inspect the skull plate. But
Speaker 2: from the photo that I look at, the whole skullplates covered,
Speaker 2: they could only I would guess, see the back of
Speaker 2: the skull plate. So how would they be able to
Speaker 2: evaluate if something was funny with that middle suture where
Speaker 2: the bones come together.
Speaker 1: That would be covered. From what I see in the photos,
Speaker 1: it would be covered. Yeah, well, stay tuned, folks, this
Speaker 1: it's gonna be good. Man. I'm excited about it. Theories
Speaker 1: is all I'm doing. No, that's great, it's great. Keep
Speaker 1: keep coming. And then again, we've done, We've done people
Speaker 1: like we've called out looking for people that have any
Speaker 1: kind of information, and of course that that offer always stands.
Speaker 1: Let's jump to the next thing. No, man, is that
Speaker 1: our hunter's all going to die from lead poisoning. I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think they have been lead poisoning. I mean,
Speaker 2: you don't ever hear in the medical profession about one
Speaker 2: of the dangers of lead exposure is eating game meat
Speaker 2: shot with lead ammunition. The medical profession doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: know about this, apparently because all of the bird, all
Speaker 2: of the bird enthusiasts, are all concerned about hunter's health
Speaker 2: and what they're feeding their children. Yeah, let me let
Speaker 2: me set this up a little bit. You probably remember
Speaker 2: when this has happened. It was some years ago.
Speaker 1: Scattered around on the internet, all these photos where they
Speaker 1: were doing like X rays of deer carcasses that have
Speaker 1: been shot by rifles. Okay, and you look at these
Speaker 1: carcasses and you see that that that those bullet fragments
Speaker 1: really scatter and travel around. They do, and so you'd see,
Speaker 1: you know, let's say it's an X ray of a
Speaker 1: deer's rib cage scapula, and you can see the area
Speaker 1: where the bullet hit. But then you see all these
Speaker 1: little bright spots and they're metallic fragments that were I
Speaker 1: guess they could get in the vascular system and move
Speaker 1: a little bit. They kind of explode outward and move
Speaker 1: a little bit. And it and and that, among other things,
Speaker 1: really got people talking about the impacts of lead consumption because,
Speaker 1: as you know, there's all this stuff about child development
Speaker 1: and like you hear about like whatever, kids eating lead paint,
Speaker 1: lead pipes, leeching water into lead, and is very staunch
Speaker 1: position on you know, all the lead warnings. You can't
Speaker 1: buy anything that doesn't come with some lead warning. For California,
Speaker 1: you buy a lead headed jig, and it's got a
Speaker 1: warning about how the lead headed jig is gonna kill you.
Speaker 1: So there's definitely like an alarm, a sense of alarm
Speaker 1: about consumption of lead. But it carried over into this
Speaker 1: idea that that there's all this lead contamination out there
Speaker 1: and gamey and you even now will see instances where
Speaker 1: a state might say we're no longer accepting venison donations
Speaker 1: because of the risk of lead. It's well documented that, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you'll counter this, but it's well documented that raptors,
Speaker 1: the most commonly excited example being California condors can get
Speaker 1: lead poisoning from eating game meat killed by lead bullets.
Speaker 1: That seems to be scientifically accepted. Yep, And so it
Speaker 1: jumped to, well, it must be bad for us too, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Let let's let me let me ask you like a
Speaker 1: series of questions. Okay, what's your take on your personal
Speaker 1: take the scientific understanding of like raptors? Okay, do raptors?
Speaker 1: Is it accepted in your mind? Is it accepted that
Speaker 1: raptors die from lead exposure from eating hunter killed deer carcasses. Yep?
Speaker 2: At the individual level, lead can be really, really toxic
Speaker 2: to raptors. They have a different and birds in general,
Speaker 2: they have a different digestive system, and so raptors are
Speaker 2: very susceptible. They can get even a small fragment of
Speaker 2: lead when they're feeding on an animal that was a
Speaker 2: carcass left in the field, or an animal that was wounded,
Speaker 2: a coil that was hit with a lead shot and
Speaker 2: then it wasn't retrieved. If they get a little bit
Speaker 2: of lead in them, it can make them sick and
Speaker 2: it certainly can kill them. So at an individual level,
Speaker 2: it's very dangerous. The problem is when you scale this
Speaker 2: up and say, is this really a conservation issue that
Speaker 2: should force hunters to switch to a non lead ammunition,
Speaker 2: And you look at the data that we have available,
Speaker 2: there is a population level effect of accidental secondary lead
Speaker 2: ingestion by raptors from ammunition. But what I encourage people
Speaker 2: to look at is not just the fact that there's
Speaker 2: a population level effect, but what is the magnitude of
Speaker 2: that effect? Is it a serious issue from the population level?
Speaker 2: And when you look at research that's been done, there
Speaker 2: were seven Northeastern states, they looked at eagles ingestion, They
Speaker 2: did some modeling, and they determined that the having using
Speaker 2: lead ammunition on the landscape dampened the bald egal population
Speaker 2: growth rate by four to six percent. So bald eagles
Speaker 2: all over the country are just rocketing up. They're doing
Speaker 2: really well. Record numbers, trajectories going up their models showed
Speaker 2: that that trajectory upward would be dampened four to six
Speaker 2: percent if we use lead ammunition in those seven Northeastern states.
Speaker 2: So I encourage people to think, is that a serious
Speaker 2: conservation concern that everybody in those Northeastern states should switch
Speaker 2: the kind of ammo they use so that ball eagles
Speaker 2: can increase four to six percent faster than they already are.
Speaker 2: Golden eagles, it was less than one percent. In fact,
Speaker 2: another research in another completely different project in the West
Speaker 2: looked and found that golden eagle population growth rate was
Speaker 2: dampened by zero point eight percent, so less than one
Speaker 2: percent effect on golden egle population growth rate. And so
Speaker 2: when you look in Europe, they did studies on twenty
Speaker 2: two different raptor species. If you average the effect on
Speaker 2: twenty two different raptor species in Europe, which had just
Speaker 2: announced a ban in Europe on lead ammunition, was right.
Speaker 2: Just yesterday I saw that home like an EU ban.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's I don't know, that's what I asked.
Speaker 2: I actually asked, is this EU or what? And I
Speaker 2: don't know. I didn't get the answer. But in twenty
Speaker 2: two different raptor species in Europe, the average effect on
Speaker 2: the population was that it increased using lead ammunition on
Speaker 2: the landscape for big game hunting, increased mortality rates by
Speaker 2: a half a percent using lead. So if you banned
Speaker 2: all lead in Europe, the mortality rates would be a
Speaker 2: half a percent lower for twenty two raptor species. So
Speaker 2: to me, I'm wondering, where is this giant conservation concern
Speaker 2: that everybody would need to change ammo. So it's a
Speaker 2: long answer to the individual question, but I think it's important.
Speaker 2: It is lethal to individuals. It's the number one thing
Speaker 2: that's inhibiting condor recovery condor and endangered species, so every
Speaker 2: mortality counts, and they're very susceptual lead poisoning, so it's
Speaker 2: a serious issue within condor range. Arizona has a voluntary
Speaker 2: program where hunters can voluntarily switch to non lead ammunition
Speaker 2: or take their gut piles out of the field completely
Speaker 2: so they're not leaving anything for the condors, and that
Speaker 2: has been adopted by eighty eight to ninety one percent
Speaker 2: of the hunters in Arizona, so it's very successful voluntary
Speaker 2: program compared to other states like California that just have
Speaker 2: a top down Dracconian ban on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so but I hear that. Is that explain to
Speaker 1: me the idea that like lead going through a condor's
Speaker 1: digestive tract is different than lead going through a human
Speaker 1: beings digestive tract? Yes?
Speaker 2: Is it something to do with the pH they it's
Speaker 2: it's pH with the acidic digestive tract. And it's also
Speaker 2: the they don't have just a stomach like like we do.
Speaker 2: They have other organs that the lead pellets and the
Speaker 2: meat that they eat sit in there a long time
Speaker 2: to dissolve in that that acidic environment, and it's the
Speaker 2: length of time that that metallic lead sits in there.
Speaker 2: So I hope we talk about different kinds of lead.
Speaker 2: That's an important part.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what is are you aware of cases? And
Speaker 1: I feel like I've read these, but I can't remember
Speaker 1: what happened. Where they'd go in and look at people
Speaker 1: that have been consuming game meet their whole life, and
Speaker 1: then go try to see like, well how much this person,
Speaker 1: how much lead is in this person's system.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's been several studies like that, and it started
Speaker 2: in North Dakota in two thousand and seven. A dermatologist
Speaker 2: who happened to be on the board of directors of
Speaker 2: a major, major raptor organization. He went into a food
Speaker 2: bank in North Dakota, grabbed ninety three packages x ray
Speaker 2: them and about half of those had lead fragments in there.
Speaker 2: So he sounded the alarm. And people have questioned the
Speaker 2: motives being on the board of directors for a raptor organization,
Speaker 2: but he sounded the alarm. And so the Department of
Speaker 2: Health in North Dakota tested blood samples for North Dakota
Speaker 2: people all over the state. Had seven hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: six samples, I think, and they found that those that
Speaker 2: said they hunted had twice the lead level as those
Speaker 2: that didn't, and that spread like wildfire. Everybody picked that
Speaker 2: up and that hunters are poisoning themselves. They have twice
Speaker 2: the lead level. What wasn't reported was that level of
Speaker 2: hunters twice the lead level was about the national average
Speaker 2: of lead for everybody at that time. It was one
Speaker 2: point twenty seven micrograms were DESCO leader and the national
Speaker 2: average was one point twenty five at the time, and
Speaker 2: so it was twice a level of non hunters, but
Speaker 2: it was still below any level that any medical science
Speaker 2: has shown lead problems in humans, and in fact, the
Speaker 2: reality was that those that didn't hunt, because it's probably
Speaker 2: sparsely populated North Dakota, the ones that didn't hunt had
Speaker 2: below average lead levels because the hunters had about the
Speaker 2: national average lead levels.
Speaker 1: There's been that study.
Speaker 2: I think one of the most important studies on human
Speaker 2: effects of eating game meat with lead comes from a
Speaker 2: First Nations up in Ontario where they looked at people
Speaker 2: during the waterfall season. These communities were eating a lot
Speaker 2: of ducks killed with lead shot, so they tested lead
Speaker 2: levels before the waterfall season, they tested them after the
Speaker 2: waterfall season.
Speaker 1: They found that.
Speaker 2: People that people that hunted ducks had a higher blood
Speaker 2: lead level at the end of the duck season because
Speaker 2: they were eating a lot of ducks and so they
Speaker 2: were getting lead pretty frequently in their diet. But what
Speaker 2: they found out in that study was that those that
Speaker 2: were sitting at the supper table eating the same meals
Speaker 2: but didn't go out on the hunt had normal They
Speaker 2: did not have an increase in blood lead levels. So
Speaker 2: it was something about actually being on the hunt that
Speaker 2: seemed to increase the lead levels, not eating the meals
Speaker 2: because these other people are eating the same meals at
Speaker 2: the same table.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: That the primers in shot shells and in pistol rounds
Speaker 2: and rifle rounds the primers And here's where we're getting
Speaker 2: in different kinds of lead. The primers have a different
Speaker 2: kind of lead that's highly absorbable. It's organic lead compound
Speaker 2: in the primers of cartridges. And that lead compound can
Speaker 2: be absorbed through the skin. It can be absorbed through
Speaker 2: your lung tissue by breathing. By breathing it that these
Speaker 2: organic lead compounds that are used in strengthening plastics, clutch
Speaker 2: shoes and break shoes and all kinds of different product
Speaker 2: waterproofing products. They use these organic lead compounds because it
Speaker 2: improves the product in some way. But that organic lead
Speaker 2: compound is different than the metallic the inorganic metallic lead,
Speaker 2: and so those compounds can be absorbed through the skin.
Speaker 2: If you get me your digestive track, you eat something
Speaker 2: with it on there that goes right into your bloodstream.
Speaker 2: Metallic lead like what might be in a quail, a
Speaker 2: number eight pellet, or a little fragment of bullet that
Speaker 2: ends up in your burger. That's metallic lead that goes
Speaker 2: through the human digestive system twenty four to forty eight
Speaker 2: hours and passes through so quickly it doesn't have time
Speaker 2: to dissolve. It's not sitting in there and dissolving, and
Speaker 2: so that metallic lead Occasionally hunters don't get lead in
Speaker 2: their system. Very often, but very occasionally. Lead coming through
Speaker 2: the system and then leaving the system is not going
Speaker 2: to elevate blood lead levels like an organic compound lead compound,
Speaker 2: and so handling shotgun shells, breathing the gun smoke that
Speaker 2: has some aerosolized primer residue, picking up your shot shells,
Speaker 2: I shoot pistols competitively, and I'm concerned about when I
Speaker 2: pick up all my pistol brass reload it. I'm careful
Speaker 2: not to touch my face because I know that that
Speaker 2: has prim lead primer residue. But I'll hold lead bullets
Speaker 2: reloading all day long. That metallic lead's not going to
Speaker 2: come through my skin, but that primer residue with organic
Speaker 2: lead compounds can. So when you have these people talk
Speaker 2: about lead is obviously a toxin. They're talking about these
Speaker 2: organic lead compounds that were in leaded paint, organic lead
Speaker 2: compounds that were in leaded gasoline. All of that stuff
Speaker 2: that causes these human health issues was a different form
Speaker 2: of lead. You don't have doctors talking about eating game
Speaker 2: meat shot with lead ammunition as being a problem, because
Speaker 2: if you look on the websites for like the CDC,
Speaker 2: the FDA, the EPA, the American Academy of Pediatricians, you
Speaker 2: look on their websites, they have page after page of
Speaker 2: things that you should be careful of so you don't
Speaker 2: increase your lead exposure, what kind of ways you can
Speaker 2: increase your lead exposure. None of those websites say anything
Speaker 2: about eating game meat shot with lad ammunition. It's just
Speaker 2: not an issue in the medical profession. With one exception,
Speaker 2: the CDC has added one sentence a couple of years
Speaker 2: ago that said, if you're breastfeeding, you may want to
Speaker 2: limit your eating of game meat shot with ammunition. So
Speaker 2: why is it that the entire medical profession is not
Speaker 2: warning people about this. But there's a lot of bird
Speaker 2: groups that are warning people about it because it's the ulterior.
Speaker 2: It's their ulterior motive just to try to save bird mortalities.
Speaker 2: But I think we should talk about bird mortalities and
Speaker 2: not try to use this red herring to as a
Speaker 2: hammer to try to get laws changed, and I've seen
Speaker 2: in Maryland, New Jersey the full court press to band
Speaker 2: let ammunitions statewide in some of these states. Is this
Speaker 2: human health aspect which is not really an issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're thinking about one thing and talk about a
Speaker 1: different thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: They know that human health and children and lead poisoning
Speaker 2: will resonate with people, and they're getting laws passed with
Speaker 2: misinformation like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, it wouldn't be hard to find it. Just
Speaker 1: shoot all the time, but never eat gained me. It'd
Speaker 1: be interesting to look at their lead. Yeah. Well, use
Speaker 1: me for an example.
Speaker 2: If you look at a bar chart of different studies
Speaker 2: have been done with people that eat a lot of
Speaker 2: game meat with lead, and the more they like. There
Speaker 2: was an Inuit community that ate sea ducks shot with lead.
Speaker 2: It was a different study than the other one, and
Speaker 2: they asked people how often they eat sea ducks, so
Speaker 2: how often they might be exposed to lead shot. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't until you got to the people who ate
Speaker 2: sea ducks daily or almost daily, that their lead levels
Speaker 2: were up to a point where over a doctor ten
Speaker 2: micrograms per desolator, where a doctor normally says where you're
Speaker 2: getting this lead exposure from if you had to eat
Speaker 2: sea ducks almost daily.
Speaker 1: For that.
Speaker 2: My lead levels are higher than that from my pistol shooting,
Speaker 2: from breathing that smoke that has some of the primer
Speaker 2: aerosolized in it, from handling shells. Mine was at eighteen
Speaker 2: at one point and it's been at twelve micrograms per
Speaker 2: desolat CDC used to use ten for the safe level.
Speaker 1: They don't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: But mine was at eighteen twelve, and then I started
Speaker 2: religiously washing my hands after a pistol match and washing
Speaker 2: my hands really good after I reloaded and handle all that,
Speaker 2: and it came right down to five and six.
Speaker 1: Oh you didn't.
Speaker 2: So that's where my lead exposure was obviously coming from.
Speaker 2: And throughout all that high blood levels when I was
Speaker 2: at eighteen, our family has been using nothing but copper
Speaker 2: bullets since two thousand and nine, so I had these
Speaker 2: high blood lead levels. I've been using nothing but copper
Speaker 2: ammo at that time for fifteen years, So it's not
Speaker 2: the lead fragments, and we eat game meat all the time,
Speaker 2: but it's shot with copper bullets. And then I'm over
Speaker 2: here reloading, getting my lead exposure. So when they survey
Speaker 2: hunters versus non hunters, those hunters are they're making fishing sinkers,
Speaker 2: they're reloading, they're shooting, they're doing a lot of other
Speaker 2: things that are exposing them to the real dangerous sources
Speaker 2: of lead, and the game meat eating is probably not
Speaker 2: registering that at all. There's some very rare exceptions if
Speaker 2: you eat if you eat game meat every day and
Speaker 2: you shoot lead and you're you've got Burgers is more
Speaker 2: of an issue. Burgers can have twenty around twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five percent of the packages might have one lead fragment
Speaker 2: in it according to some studies, and hole cuts like
Speaker 2: steaks and roasts it's only two or three percent have
Speaker 2: even one lead fragment. So burger is more of an
Speaker 2: issue if you're eating burger like daily, if you think
Speaker 2: you might be getting lead fragments more days than not.
Speaker 2: And there was one guy in New Zealand that was
Speaker 2: eating meat shot with lead every day and he had
Speaker 2: super high lead levels. So there's there's extreme cases of
Speaker 2: individuals like that that you see. Another strange case is
Speaker 2: everybody has an appendix unless they've had it taken out,
Speaker 2: and that's like a blind sack and the adjustive system.
Speaker 2: And if you're a quail hunter and you're eating a
Speaker 2: lot of birds duve and quail number eight shot. There's
Speaker 2: been cases where a couple number eight pellets have dropped
Speaker 2: into that blind appendix and then been trapped in there.
Speaker 2: It may stay in there for years, and then if
Speaker 2: it's in there for years, then it's going to start
Speaker 2: absorbing some of that metallic lead just because of the
Speaker 2: length of exposure. Gunshot victims have been shown too, especially
Speaker 2: for some reason if it's near a joint, maybe it's
Speaker 2: an emphatic system or something. A gunshot victim where they
Speaker 2: leave a lead bulletin can have dangerously high blood levels
Speaker 2: in a future years. So if it's metallic lead, passing
Speaker 2: through your system in a day or two is not
Speaker 2: an issue. If it's a metallic lead that stays in
Speaker 2: your system a long time, it can be.
Speaker 1: Man. When we were kids, we had the stuff to
Speaker 1: pour our own split shot, you know, and we go
Speaker 1: down to the gun range, sift the berms out, get
Speaker 1: the shot out, melt it, separate the garbage from the lead,
Speaker 1: pour the lead into the molds, making sinkers, no respirators
Speaker 1: or nothing. Just doing right in the garage and then
Speaker 1: you spend all day with those sinkers packed in your
Speaker 1: lip like a jaw. Always kind of wanted to get
Speaker 1: my LED tests, but I've never gotten to test again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always encourage competitive shooters, a lot of them
Speaker 2: aren't aware of it, to get it tested because if
Speaker 2: you're not being careful, like I started to washing my hands,
Speaker 2: it can be an issue. But the whole issue of
Speaker 2: eating game meat. When you look at packages like commercially produced,
Speaker 2: commercially ground venison, burger has a higher level people that
Speaker 2: grind it themselves. They keep all those bloody scraps out
Speaker 2: of their burger pile. You know, they're more careful about
Speaker 2: what you're hurting in the burger pile personally until the
Speaker 2: number of fragments and personally ground venison is a lot lower.
Speaker 2: If you do the math and how many meals of
Speaker 2: venison a family has, a family of four has, and
Speaker 2: what percentage those packages might have one fragment that only
Speaker 2: one person at the table gets. You do the math
Speaker 2: on it, It's like someone might get a fragment once
Speaker 2: a month. I did the math for Arizona using some
Speaker 2: data that we had and maybe once a month, you
Speaker 2: get an occasional fragment that passes through your system. If
Speaker 2: you look at the reality and the science that's there,
Speaker 2: it's not an issue. But politicians are not looking at
Speaker 2: any of that. They're not interested in that. Someone tells
Speaker 2: them that hunters are poisoning their kids, and they feel
Speaker 2: like they got to do something. Yeah, get into trouble
Speaker 2: with laws that don't make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, CWD and predators. Yeah, this is another example
Speaker 1: of people. In my mind, this is another example of
Speaker 1: people thinking one thing and talking about another. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you will have I'm going to color this. I'm going
Speaker 1: to color this heavily with personal opinion. Okay, and you
Speaker 1: can walk it back if you choose predator advocates, of
Speaker 1: which I sort of count myself as one. But like like,
Speaker 1: I like living on a predator environment. I like having
Speaker 1: the animals, all the native wildlife present. I get excited
Speaker 1: when I see mountain lions, get excited when I see wolves.
Speaker 1: I get a kick out of seeing kyotes and bobcats.
Speaker 1: I'm not like an anti predator guy, but I also
Speaker 1: am a predator management advocate and I try it. We
Speaker 1: hunt predators, we use for products Okay, so I have
Speaker 1: a nuanced relationship with predators. But I notice that people
Speaker 1: that have a view that know that are absolutists that like,
Speaker 1: predators should not be managed, predators should not be killed,
Speaker 1: predator shouldn't be hunted. They probably never think for a
Speaker 1: minute about CWD, oftentimes because most of them are not
Speaker 1: educated on wildlife issues. They don't follow wildlife issues. They're like,
Speaker 1: they're like predator saviors first and foremost, and they divorce
Speaker 1: their love for predators from any conversation about wildlife management,
Speaker 1: about issues of biodiversity. They are pro predator and that's it.
Speaker 1: It seems like that group, that group of people is
Speaker 1: all of a sudden now interested in chronic wasting disease.
Speaker 1: Why because they're now saying, oh, you know how I
Speaker 1: always felt that no one should hurt a predator, Well,
Speaker 1: check this out. This is why if there was more
Speaker 1: predators on the landscape, they'd take care of chronic wasting disease,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't have any chronic wasting disease because everybody
Speaker 1: who's seen never cry wolf knows that they always pick
Speaker 1: the sick animal and eat it. Therefore, we shouldn't have
Speaker 1: any predator management any predator control because I all of
Speaker 1: a sudden care a ton about CWD, and I would
Speaker 1: like these predators to eliminate CWD, right right.
Speaker 2: So that's so that's exactly what happened. People are laser
Speaker 2: focused on their favorite toothy animal, and they're always hungry
Speaker 2: for and always promoting any notion of little information that
Speaker 2: might indicate that these things are are renovating whole ecosystems,
Speaker 2: they're changed the course of rivers, they're managing CWD for us,
Speaker 2: they're curbing climate change, and they're just generally saving the planet.
Speaker 2: I mean, if they if they can latch onto a
Speaker 2: piece of information that supports that kind of idea.
Speaker 1: They run with it.
Speaker 2: And there's and there's a ton of reporters in big
Speaker 2: cities that have no exposure to wildlife that that don't
Speaker 2: really understand hunting culture, don't really understand wildlife management at all,
Speaker 2: and they're and they're very eager to grab those kinds
Speaker 2: of stories and say, yeah, predators are great. The predators
Speaker 2: are just going to manage the the ecosystem and the.
Speaker 1: It's the urban journalist's wet dream, dude, Yeah, to see
Speaker 1: they pop up, you know, And that's what happens like
Speaker 1: spreads like wildfire.
Speaker 2: Well, what what happened was a number of years ago,
Speaker 2: quite a few years ago, people doing research found out
Speaker 2: that mountain lions were killing a disproportionate number of CWD
Speaker 2: positive meal deer, more so disproportionate from healthy meal.
Speaker 1: Sure, And so that, which I have zero problem believing,
Speaker 1: exactly makes sense, especially in the later stages of CWD.
Speaker 1: Animals just are unaware. Even in the.
Speaker 2: Earlier stages, there's probably cues that prayers pick up on
Speaker 2: that we don't even notice.
Speaker 1: But animals a little.
Speaker 2: Less strifty, a little less able to get away, like
Speaker 2: a mountain lion's hiding in the bushes and charges a
Speaker 2: group of meal there. If you've got the CWD animal
Speaker 2: might be a little slower in detecting that flash of
Speaker 2: fur coming out of the brush. And so there's a
Speaker 2: lot of reasons why they can be disproportioned. If he's
Speaker 2: ten percent less observant, Yeah, and it's going to come out.
Speaker 2: And so people found that these urban writers and carnivore
Speaker 2: cheerleaders grabbed onto this and just they ran with it.
Speaker 2: And so you heard this everywhere, and that was just
Speaker 2: the first little bit of information and then later on.
Speaker 1: But that within that and I don't have the time
Speaker 1: to do this, but someone that studies the media, it
Speaker 1: would have been interesting to go look and say, how
Speaker 1: interested has this person been in CWD? Yeah, or a
Speaker 1: number Are they historically interested in CWD or are they
Speaker 1: just interested today?
Speaker 2: Because they just saw this, and so that bit of
Speaker 2: information like started spreading like wildfire, and everybody started thinking
Speaker 2: about hey, and they're just making bold statements about not
Speaker 2: only like mountain lions are going to control CWD and
Speaker 2: meal there, but carnivores are going to control.
Speaker 1: CWD in all the whole deer family.
Speaker 2: And so that chugged along and then people started people
Speaker 2: started doing some research on that to look into it
Speaker 2: a little further because that was a number of years ago,
Speaker 2: and there was some modeling that was done. And if
Speaker 2: you build a population model and you say, okay, we're
Speaker 2: going to keep everything consistent except we're going to have
Speaker 2: mountain lions kill CWD positive meal there at a higher rate, Well,
Speaker 2: guess what happens. They're going to control CWD. It's just
Speaker 2: a mathematical certainty if you just build a simple model.
Speaker 2: There's some people that build a built a real complex
Speaker 2: model and took a lot of things into consideration. They
Speaker 2: ran a whole bunch of different modeling scenarios. Some of
Speaker 2: the scenarios they varied where the predators killed CWD positive
Speaker 2: animals at a higher rate or at a one to
Speaker 2: one rate with healthy animals. Other things they varied in
Speaker 2: the model is like, as CWD progressed in an individual
Speaker 2: deer or else, does as soon as it gets infected
Speaker 2: with CWD, do predators start praying right away at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the phase of infection or does it ramp
Speaker 2: up and they pray a lot more higher predation when
Speaker 2: the animal gets sicker and sicker. And they could model
Speaker 2: that into the model, and they did that. They varied that,
Speaker 2: and they varied the overall level of predation on the animals,
Speaker 2: and they ran these They ran thousands and thousands of
Speaker 2: these scenarios. And it wasn't to see if carnivores we
Speaker 2: were controlling CWD, but it was to look at under
Speaker 2: what conditions would they possibly control CWD.
Speaker 1: And the paper of the research, I just want to
Speaker 1: explain a thing real quick that That's why I make
Speaker 1: sure people are getting when you're talking about this is
Speaker 1: is imagine that Okay, imagine you have a white tailed
Speaker 1: deer and he's it's a terrible winner and he's starving
Speaker 1: to death and he's depleted, but he gets killed by coyote,
Speaker 1: but he's probably doomed anyway. What do you call that? Right?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that winter or kill? Or is that predation? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you follow me? So I get the point you're
Speaker 1: making is is as they get like as an infected
Speaker 1: animal gets near death, does it wind up being that
Speaker 1: almost like that almost the predation event would almost be
Speaker 1: a symptom, right, like a symptom of the disease being
Speaker 1: being predated.
Speaker 2: Yep, there's there's They call it approximate and alternate causes
Speaker 2: of mortality. Some of the more recent research is actually
Speaker 2: assigning probabilities to the different causes of mortality like that was,
Speaker 2: and and through modeling that was like seventy five mountain
Speaker 2: lion predation twenty five percent CWD. They're actually starting to
Speaker 2: do things like that. But that's true when you get
Speaker 2: to the later stages. The animal is probably going to
Speaker 2: die in the next six months from CWD anyway, because
Speaker 2: the only last two years once they get infected, and
Speaker 2: so an animal takes it out that's somewhat compensatory between
Speaker 2: those two mortality sources. But they did a model that
Speaker 2: varied all these different things. Some of the model outputs
Speaker 2: and the research paper will say predators can control CWD.
Speaker 2: That would be the result, But then you read the
Speaker 2: paper itself, and those scenarios where predators did control CWD
Speaker 2: and kept it at a low level, the deer and
Speaker 2: elk populations were cut in half, and so that may
Speaker 2: not be an ideal situation for people that like robust
Speaker 2: deer and elk populations. You know, maybe that's not a
Speaker 2: great thing to have that situation. They had other modeling
Speaker 2: scenarios where predators actually eradicated or almost eradicated the CWD
Speaker 2: in that population. But the deer and elk population they
Speaker 2: were gone in thirty years. They were gone, like nowhere
Speaker 2: dear in elk. So they controlled c to D because
Speaker 2: there's no deer and elk left in the model run.
Speaker 2: This is and when you run a model, when you
Speaker 2: run a model right right then, So the models are valuable.
Speaker 2: You know, they say all models are wrong, some are valuable,
Speaker 2: And they say that because models are valuable because you
Speaker 2: can look at different relationships of different scenarios, and the
Speaker 2: first result they got from that modeling was that predators
Speaker 2: could control CWD into population, but under certain conditions. But
Speaker 2: those conditions weren't operating in Yellowstone National Park.
Speaker 1: And what that.
Speaker 2: Was was predators in the model that showed that if
Speaker 2: predators preyed on prime age animals primarily and primarily on
Speaker 2: infected prime animals, they could control CWD, But predators aren't
Speaker 2: in Yellowstone. Wolves and mountain lions are preying on young
Speaker 2: and they're praying on old individuals. They're praying on the
Speaker 2: wrong classes of animals to actually control c to WD.
Speaker 2: So they in their in their report, in their in
Speaker 2: their paper, they will say predators could control CWD. But
Speaker 2: people will quote that. People will cite that and say,
Speaker 2: see they can. But you read the paper and they say,
Speaker 2: but they're killing the wrong classes of animals to do it.
Speaker 2: And so you have to nuance that, you have to
Speaker 2: all take into account.
Speaker 1: But people don't.
Speaker 2: They'll grab what nugget they want and they'll cite it,
Speaker 2: and you have to go to that paper, which most
Speaker 2: people don't do, and and read in the entire paper,
Speaker 2: like they can eradicate CWD. But that means there's no
Speaker 2: deer and elk left, So is that valuable?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Do you feel whatever the models reveal? I mean,
Speaker 1: do you feel that it's helped. Like would you argue like,
Speaker 1: let's say you were a man, you were a state
Speaker 1: agency manager and you were tasked with or you like
Speaker 1: the CWD ZR for an animal for a for a
Speaker 1: state agency. You're the CWD guy, and like a lever
Speaker 1: you can pull is how many kyotes around the landscape
Speaker 1: and you're looking at all the things you have available
Speaker 1: to you, would you go and be like, one of
Speaker 1: the things I'm going to do is I'm going to
Speaker 1: turn up that I'm going to turn up the coyote dial.
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn up the lion dial as part
Speaker 1: of my management strategy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, because there isn't any evidence that shows that making
Speaker 2: those pulling those levers will improve CWD. I'm interested in
Speaker 2: population level effects, not whether mountain lions kill disproportionately kill
Speaker 2: positive animals.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at big picture.
Speaker 2: Having carnivores on the landscape, does that make a difference
Speaker 2: from having maybe also robust, healthy population in the carnivores,
Speaker 2: but sustainably hunted a small percentage of the population or
Speaker 2: compared to having no carnivores. There isn't any evidence yet
Speaker 2: that chose at a population level that changing the management
Speaker 2: or being the harvest of coyotes and wolves and mountain
Speaker 2: lions is going to change the CWD trajectory.
Speaker 1: Where do you sit on CWD these days? It's such
Speaker 1: a constantly evolving thing. My own opinions, my own fears,
Speaker 1: morph and mature, and you know, all the time, where
Speaker 1: are you at, like just in a very general way,
Speaker 1: where you at? I don't know. I'm not solidly on
Speaker 1: one side or the other.
Speaker 2: What I think about is is and we've talked about
Speaker 2: it before. I think forty fifty years of people in
Speaker 2: the Rocky Mountain States eating CWD positive venison. And they've
Speaker 2: done a lot of studies to see if there's an
Speaker 2: increase in cruise yakov disease or any other variant that
Speaker 2: might be related to that. In nothing, they've done intensive research, nothing,
Speaker 2: no evidence that it's crossed over into humans at all.
Speaker 2: But when I talk to my wildlife my disease expert friends,
Speaker 2: they say, you know, mad cow disease created a variant
Speaker 2: that went into humans in England, and so yes, we
Speaker 2: we have this decades and decades of proof that it
Speaker 2: doesn't cross into humans, but it would only take once,
Speaker 2: and so that's why they CDC and most of the
Speaker 2: disease experts will recommend not eating animals you know are
Speaker 2: a CWD positive. And so I'm I'm I'm not on
Speaker 2: one side or the other. It gives me great comfort
Speaker 2: to know that we've tested this and it's not crossing
Speaker 2: aman barrier. Yeah, a lot of testing.
Speaker 1: I know. I've always known. I ate a boatload of
Speaker 1: it without knowing it, and now I ate it not
Speaker 1: knowing it. But I found out after the fact. So
Speaker 1: now I've two hundred percent No I've eaten infected me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I didn't lose the sleep. And in fact, a
Speaker 1: buddy of mine was there too. I think I told
Speaker 1: I don't know if I told you this. I'm at
Speaker 1: my buddy's house. I'm with a buddy of mine. I
Speaker 1: take a buddy mind to another buddy's house. This is
Speaker 1: this is a doctor lawyer couple, and I got a
Speaker 1: buddy of mine. We go there and he, the lawyer
Speaker 1: of the upple says to his doctor wife, not to me,
Speaker 1: but to his doctor wife says, heads up, I haven't
Speaker 1: gotten the results back on this deer, Like he discloses
Speaker 1: to her, she doesn't do anything, she just eats. So
Speaker 1: we're all eating it, eat a pile of it. While
Speaker 1: later he calls me, He's like, man, I got I
Speaker 1: just called you to tell you I got the results
Speaker 1: back and it was you know, it's infected. And so
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna call my buddy now and
Speaker 1: tell my buddy. But I kind of forgot, not kind
Speaker 1: of I forgot forgot. One day. Months go by and
Speaker 1: this dude calls me and no text me, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why it's even on his mind, but he says,
Speaker 1: have you knowingly eaten CWD positive meat? And I said,
Speaker 1: I forgot to tell you. We both have, not only
Speaker 1: that I have, not only have I And I expected
Speaker 1: my phone to ring, no call. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's not alarmed. He's not alarmed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think it has I mean as
Speaker 2: an individual choice, obviously, but it might have a lot
Speaker 2: to do with how much venison you have in a freezer.
Speaker 2: And I go to Texas and if kill three or
Speaker 2: four deer just as a shopping trip to fill the
Speaker 2: freezer full of venison. It's a little harder to get
Speaker 2: a deer in Arizona, and there has been some CDBD
Speaker 2: positive cases near where we harvests and we haven't been
Speaker 2: getting them tested. Maybe that tells you something. I haven't
Speaker 2: getting them tested at all. Now it's different too.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: One thing that worries me is when you look at kurru,
Speaker 2: which is another form of this kind of disease TSC
Speaker 2: disease like scrapie and sheep CWD and deer crusei, yakubs
Speaker 2: and humans. There's another human form called Kuu that was
Speaker 2: found in some tribes.
Speaker 1: In Pampa, New Guinea.
Speaker 2: They're eating the brains of their elders as a cultural thing,
Speaker 2: and they were getting these infectious prions because they were
Speaker 2: eating brains. They were infecting themselves with this cannibal cannibalism action.
Speaker 2: And so some of the anthropologists then figure that out
Speaker 2: and a disease expert they got to stop doing that,
Speaker 2: and then kuru went away. But if you read the
Speaker 2: scientific papers, there were kuru cases that were like thirty
Speaker 2: and forty years after the person ate the curu that
Speaker 2: worries me a little bit. So so it's your choice
Speaker 2: whether you want to feed your kids. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: not too worried about it, but if I had kids
Speaker 2: around the table, that's a that's a different, different equation.
Speaker 1: It's too late for mine. Man. They're brought up on
Speaker 1: deer meat. I mean, last night we ate quite a
Speaker 1: pile of it. Okay, never mind the health human health,
Speaker 1: population level, they were going to move on population level
Speaker 1: impacts on deer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, they wedocumented all over now they were not
Speaker 2: in question.
Speaker 1: Hasn't been in question for big buck impacts, you think. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One thing that was interesting is one of the studies
Speaker 2: in table Mesa, Colorado, which I should talk about more,
Speaker 2: but one of the results they said in there they
Speaker 2: had they had about forty three percent of the deer
Speaker 2: head CWD, and they were studying them a couple times
Speaker 2: through a couple of decades, and after probably twenty years
Speaker 2: of fairly high prevalence rates like twenty five to forty percent,
Speaker 2: they couldn't in all of the sixty four deer I
Speaker 2: think they captured, they not one of them was over
Speaker 2: five years old. They couldn't find a buck over five
Speaker 2: years old. And I thought they didn't even talk about
Speaker 2: that much. But that's a symptom of what happens when
Speaker 2: an animal doesn't live more than two years after they've
Speaker 2: been infected, and they're getting infected early, you're not going
Speaker 2: to have an older age structure. Saskatchewan's got some game
Speaker 2: management units that are seventy percent positive for seed. And
Speaker 2: when you reach that level and you've got animal dying
Speaker 2: after two years, you have to affect the population.
Speaker 1: There's no way you couldn't. Yeah, got it, got it?
Speaker 1: You know. It gave me a lot of hope if
Speaker 1: that's the right word, This idea that, yeah, that you're
Speaker 1: going to have that animals get infected, they're always going
Speaker 1: to die within a couple of years. The precinct. You
Speaker 1: won't have old bucks. You're not going to have six
Speaker 1: year old bucks, seven year old bucks, but early. We
Speaker 1: mentioned the Hansen buck, yeah, right, and four years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was a sketchbomb.
Speaker 2: But four years old, right, and this buck ever killed
Speaker 2: was four Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another thing about the another study that was done in Colorado,
Speaker 2: the table Masa study area done by a number of
Speaker 2: people in two thousand and five. They went in there
Speaker 2: and they studied prevalence rates of CWD, what percent had CWD.
Speaker 2: They looked at predation rates on the deer population, they
Speaker 2: looked at causes of mortality, how the deer were dying,
Speaker 2: and studied a couple of years, and they said, throughout
Speaker 2: this period CWD was going up and up, and there
Speaker 2: was a heavy predation on meal deer mountain lions on
Speaker 2: meal deer. Not only heavy predation, but almost four CWD
Speaker 2: positive deer were preyed upon for every one healthy deer
Speaker 2: by mountain lions. So there's a differential predation on CWD
Speaker 2: sick animals, a heavy predation overall, and throughout all CWD
Speaker 2: levels kept going up and up and up, and so
Speaker 2: they concluded in two thousand and eight when they published,
Speaker 2: they concluded, even with a heavy predation by mountain lions,
Speaker 2: there's still the mountain lions are not able to control CWD.
Speaker 2: But then thirteen years later, some of those same people
Speaker 2: came back into the same population, collected the same kind
Speaker 2: of information, and they found that after thirteen more years,
Speaker 2: now mountain lions were killing four and a half infected
Speaker 2: deer for every one healthy deer. So still high predation,
Speaker 2: differential predation on CWD positive animals, and the CWD the
Speaker 2: percent that had CWD went from from twenty eight percent
Speaker 2: to from thirty eight percent from to forty two So
Speaker 2: CWD still increased with that heavy predation for thirteen more years.
Speaker 2: But their conclusion in that paper was, we think, among
Speaker 2: other things, predators might be assisting in controlling CWD. And
Speaker 2: so people can cite that paper. But the reason they still.
Speaker 1: Thought maybe it would have been even worse, That's exactly it.
Speaker 1: So that was like with with with lions killing four
Speaker 1: and a half sick deer to every healthy deer CWD,
Speaker 1: but they hold out that, well, maybe it would be
Speaker 1: even worse.
Speaker 2: It would that was their speculation, even worse. So I think,
Speaker 2: you know, an alternate and alternate conclusion would be even
Speaker 2: in that condition, they still weren't able to manage c TOBD.
Speaker 2: It still went up. Now, the people doing that research,
Speaker 2: some of them are friends of mine. They're good, they're
Speaker 2: solid researchers. That was just their conclusion, and you know,
Speaker 2: we don't all agree sometimes when we look at the
Speaker 2: same data, and I'm not willing to take that speculative
Speaker 2: step and say, yeah, they were probably controlling CDBD because
Speaker 2: it probably would have been higher.
Speaker 1: It's too many, probably yeah, let's move on to another one, another,
Speaker 1: another subject. If you follow wildnife, follow wildlife news, wildlife
Speaker 1: politics and conservation news, you know that the Trophy cascade thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: so wolves are returned to to release sites. You got
Speaker 1: Yellowslow National Park, Frank Church ninety seven, ninety six, somewhere there,
Speaker 1: And in a while later outcomes like that they have
Speaker 1: transformed riparian ecosystems, and now like the rivers are returned,
Speaker 1: the beavers are back, there's willows everywhere. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a unbeknownst to us, it was a sick landscape
Speaker 1: that is now healthy, all thanks to hand this handful
Speaker 1: of wolves that are that are running around people doing ted.
Speaker 1: It's the perfect right ted talk thing. It's very inspiring.
Speaker 1: And then over time you see pieces of research coming
Speaker 1: out that sort of have this, well, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: that tidy, maybe that's not quite quite right. The last
Speaker 1: one of these I read was the authors the trophic
Speaker 1: cascade theory relied on some work done by some willows,
Speaker 1: some people doing research on willows, and even the people
Speaker 1: that did the research that is cited in the trophic
Speaker 1: cascade thing part started saying, you kind of got our
Speaker 1: numbers wrong. I'll correct that a little bit, please, that's
Speaker 1: what you're here for. Yep.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, trophic cascades, if people don't understand that, basically,
Speaker 2: a trophic level is like the grass is one trophic level,
Speaker 2: the grass eaters and the herbivores are another trophic level,
Speaker 2: and then the protors are another trophic level. And the
Speaker 2: idea is you can you can take the predators away,
Speaker 2: or you can add predators. And if you add predators,
Speaker 2: there's less grass eaters and so there's more grass. So
Speaker 2: it causes this this cascading effect through these trophic levels.
Speaker 2: That's what trophic cascade is. And so and so we
Speaker 2: brought wolves back in Yellowstone and ninety five ninety six,
Speaker 2: ninety seven wolves were released. I think at total of
Speaker 2: forty one wolves were released, and then just a couple
Speaker 2: just about so ninety seven.
Speaker 1: In ninety eight.
Speaker 2: Already there was a couple of researchers from the Pacific
Speaker 2: Northwest that were in their measuring the tallest aspens in retrospect.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of scientific paper showing that their
Speaker 2: methodology was biased. They weren't trying to be biased, but
Speaker 2: it just was not randomly distributed sampling. It wasn't very
Speaker 2: good sampling, but regardless, they measured the tallest aspen in
Speaker 2: a bunch of these aspen stands. And this is just
Speaker 2: they started in ninety eight. It was a year after
Speaker 2: the third wave of release. The wolves came in and
Speaker 2: they published in two thousand and one and they said
Speaker 2: in that publication two thousand and one, aspens are recovering
Speaker 2: in the Riparian areas and it's probably we're probably seeing
Speaker 2: the beginning of wolves triggering a trophic cascade.
Speaker 1: So they didn't have any data on that.
Speaker 2: They just measured some palst aspens, which wasn't a very
Speaker 2: good method of measuring aspens anyway, and they made this comment,
Speaker 2: and once again the media picked it up and it
Speaker 2: was a wonderful story.
Speaker 1: Wolves were coming.
Speaker 2: Back, brought walls back to the Yellowstone and now the stream
Speaker 2: side vegetation. The aspens were recovering and doing great, and
Speaker 2: that spread like wildfire for a number of years. And
Speaker 2: then the first paper I saw with Matt Kaufman. Remember
Speaker 2: you had Matt Coffman on the podcast with Monteeth. Matt
Speaker 2: Coffin went and did some research in the two thousands.
Speaker 2: He published in twenty ten with some people, and they said,
Speaker 2: and they did a very good, scientifically robust measuring of
Speaker 2: aspen throughout the park in a more robust way than
Speaker 2: the original.
Speaker 1: Can I wedge in here that just just make the connection.
Speaker 1: The idea was that elk ungulates were over like we're overgrazing,
Speaker 1: and so now that there's more predation on the landscape,
Speaker 1: more animal predation on the landscape, it was giving it
Speaker 1: was giving a break to the vegetation regime from elk grazing. Therefore,
Speaker 1: the it's coming back.
Speaker 2: And recalling, and I need to clarify something I should
Speaker 2: have started with that there's two different kinds of trophic
Speaker 2: cascades that people have talked about in Yellowstone. One is
Speaker 2: the behavior one is the density mediated trophic cascade. And
Speaker 2: that just means there's fewer elk, so there's more vegetation.
Speaker 2: That's just a real simple kind of relationship. And so
Speaker 2: people will say, look, we brought wolves back, there's fewer elk.
Speaker 2: We had nineteen thousand elk and Yellowstone two years before
Speaker 2: the wolves came. They started declining before the wolves were released.
Speaker 2: Actually for two years we had nineteen thousand and eight
Speaker 2: elk two years before the.
Speaker 1: Wolves back the days man and that dropped to a
Speaker 1: low of four thousand.
Speaker 2: So nineteen thousand and four thousand, you're definitely going to
Speaker 2: have more vegetation growing in Yellowstone, so that's the density
Speaker 2: mediated That just means there's fewer elk, so there's more vegetation.
Speaker 2: But the problem is people wanted to give wolves all
Speaker 2: the credit for that. But at the same time, we
Speaker 2: had a little handful of wolves at that time, but
Speaker 2: we have grizzly bear populations increased to the that their
Speaker 2: predation on elk calves was three times what it was
Speaker 2: prior to that earlier increased three times. Mountain lion population
Speaker 2: doubled in Yellowstone. Fires burned thirty six percent of Yellowstone
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty eight. That had huge effect on the
Speaker 2: ecology of that We had one of the worst droughts
Speaker 2: during that time. Shortly after wolves were released. We had
Speaker 2: one of the most severe winners at that time. And
Speaker 2: then we were hunting cow elk off the park in
Speaker 2: Montana to help try to manage the Yellowstone population, and
Speaker 2: we kept cow elk tags too long and too high,
Speaker 2: and so hunters contributed to the population declined. Because all
Speaker 2: this stuff was happening at once, and the people managing
Speaker 2: the elk tags didn't really at the time, didn't know
Speaker 2: that all this stuff was going to affect the population.
Speaker 1: So you're burst in the bubble of everyone that just
Speaker 1: wants to blame wolves.
Speaker 2: Right, and so you hear, I mean wolves are precipitating
Speaker 2: this Trovi cascade.
Speaker 1: So that's the first one.
Speaker 2: I think we can dismiss that wolves did not cause
Speaker 2: that decline of nineteen thousand to three thousand. All those
Speaker 2: factors did, so we can't give wolves credit for trophic
Speaker 2: cascades because of density reductions in elk. So then they
Speaker 2: very quickly switched to the behaviorally mediated trophic cascade, which
Speaker 2: means that elk liked to hang out along the streams,
Speaker 2: and wolves were hunting along the streams and they were
Speaker 2: scaring the elk out away from the streams, and so
Speaker 2: that stream side vegetation could respond because the elk were
Speaker 2: scaring them out of there. They call that the landscape
Speaker 2: of fear. But that first study that kind of talked
Speaker 2: about that, which was actually part of the two thousand
Speaker 2: and one study. First study that talked about that didn't
Speaker 2: mention the fact other researchers have later that you know,
Speaker 2: if you're comparing aspen that grow along the stream and
Speaker 2: aspen that grow in the dryer uplands, the aspen along
Speaker 2: the stream, we're going to grow a lot more than
Speaker 2: the uplands.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't ever.
Speaker 2: Mentioned in the original discussion of that, but other people
Speaker 2: like Kaufman came by later.
Speaker 1: In twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Not only did he measure the aspen in a more
Speaker 2: randomly and more scientifically robust way throughout the park, but
Speaker 2: he took the last ten years of locations of where
Speaker 2: a wolf killed in Elk and took all those spots
Speaker 2: and he mapped the landscape of fear. He mapped for
Speaker 2: the first time because people talking about the landscape of
Speaker 2: fear were using other metrics that weren't very direct, but
Speaker 2: Kaufman map kill locations and then related that too close
Speaker 2: to stream, not close to stream other effects and actually
Speaker 2: had a map of very risky places for wolves to
Speaker 2: be and not risky waste places world for l to
Speaker 2: be for Elk to be right because of wolf predation,
Speaker 2: and and there was when they did the analysis of
Speaker 2: high risk areas and low risk areas for Elk to
Speaker 2: be preyed on by wolves. They found no difference in
Speaker 2: aspen regeneration in riskier areas versus areas that weren't risky,
Speaker 2: and so he published that paper in twenty ten. That
Speaker 2: was the first one I saw that said, hold the boat.
Speaker 2: You know aspen the title aspens are not recovering in
Speaker 2: Yellowstone because they weren't. And at the time there was
Speaker 2: a sixty percent reduction in the Yellowstone elk population and
Speaker 2: still there was no evidence of aspens recovering. And so
Speaker 2: that really that was the first one I saw, and
Speaker 2: I think it.
Speaker 1: Is, yeah, but that wasn't the trophic cast. The trophic
Speaker 1: cascade Heyday came after that.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the trophic Cascate Heyday were the where everybody
Speaker 2: was talking about it. They were all talking about this
Speaker 2: behaviorally mediated They're all talking about wolves are redistributing elk
Speaker 2: away from some of these areas, and then those those
Speaker 2: streamside vegetations recovering. And then another researcher, Thomas Hobbs, came
Speaker 2: in and he focused on willows, not aspen, and he
Speaker 2: measured willows and where they grew and where the wolves were.
Speaker 2: In his conclusion was wolves aspen are recovering. But wolves
Speaker 2: have nothing to do with the willow recovery. The interesting
Speaker 2: thing is you hear there's a the YouTube video that's
Speaker 2: got forty four million views now about how wolves are
Speaker 2: restoring the Yellowstone ecosystem and changing the course of rivers,
Speaker 2: changed the hydrology, and bringing the beavers back was one
Speaker 2: of the things that was peak trophic. Yes, that, but
Speaker 2: the biologists brought the beavers back, not the wolves. Biologists
Speaker 2: released beavers in seven drainages in the Gallaxon National Force
Speaker 2: right on the edge of Yellowstone, about one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty beavers, and those beavers then dammed up the tributaries.
Speaker 2: Changes the hydrology made habitat for willows to now return.
Speaker 2: So beavers probably should get more credit than wolves for
Speaker 2: trophic cascades in Yellowstone because of their changes in hydrology.
Speaker 2: But beavers don't have the big public relations campaign that
Speaker 2: wolves do.
Speaker 1: Another funny thing that I made the same point earlier,
Speaker 1: This is about public perception. This is a common about
Speaker 1: public perception about media, and not a comment about wildlife.
Speaker 1: But the people that were so happy it's cynical to
Speaker 1: point this out, but the people that were suddenly so
Speaker 1: happy about willow regeneration. If you studied the media, I
Speaker 1: would ask you, can you go find me situations in
Speaker 1: the past where they were expressing their concern about willow
Speaker 1: regeneration and can you show me where that they were
Speaker 1: aware of.
Speaker 2: This or beaver's you know, they weren't concerned about beaver
Speaker 2: as not being on the landscape.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's like it's it drives They're going through life.
Speaker 1: They're not aware that there's an aspen issue. They're not
Speaker 1: aware that there's a willow issue. They don't care that
Speaker 1: there's an aspen issue. They don't care that there's a
Speaker 1: willow issue. They've never heard the word riparian, but sudden
Speaker 1: they hear that wolves have made it better. Therefore, I
Speaker 1: now believe that it was a problem. But it was
Speaker 1: the discovery day for them. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting that the first two people that published
Speaker 2: that paper in two thousand and one, they've been on
Speaker 2: a campaign to convince everyone that wolves have been the
Speaker 2: drivers or the triggers of a major trophic cascade. Just
Speaker 2: they've published a paper almost every year in the last
Speaker 2: twenty five years talking about wolves initiating a trophic cascade.
Speaker 2: And they're unrelenting even with all of this mounting body
Speaker 2: of scientific evidence that shows that that's really not true,
Speaker 2: that the story is not like that at all, And because.
Speaker 1: It doesn't suffice, it somehow doesn't suffice just to be
Speaker 1: like they're cool to have around, right, it's cool to
Speaker 1: see them, they're cool to have around. They're like, I
Speaker 1: need something more.
Speaker 2: We have to just the of my landscape, and we
Speaker 2: don't need to justify large prayers on the landscape.
Speaker 1: They were part of the native fauna.
Speaker 2: We recovered almost all of the native other animals, and
Speaker 2: we've got a couple more, and they happen to be carnivores.
Speaker 1: To finish up, Yeah, I think it's like the best
Speaker 1: word I can think of it. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: give it like a religious aspect, but the best word
Speaker 1: I can think of it is I think of it
Speaker 1: like it's a sin. I think it's immoral or whatever
Speaker 1: to eliminate, to intentionally eliminate native wildlife. I think of
Speaker 1: as like a sin against God and man. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like I don't think it's right. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I think. It's. It's human. It's it's hubris, you know,
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, there's this thing that's lived here,
Speaker 1: it's always lived here. But I'm deciding that I that
Speaker 1: it didn't needs to go away. I was like, we
Speaker 1: can't be making that decision. Yeah.
Speaker 2: David meach El David Meaches is the leading wolf guy
Speaker 2: really in the world. He's been researching wolves for more
Speaker 2: than six decades, researching wolves for more than six decades,
Speaker 2: and he came and taught, uh gave a talk at
Speaker 2: the University Arizona.
Speaker 1: One time. I picked him up the airport.
Speaker 2: We were at breakfast and he he said something to me,
Speaker 2: and he said it later in his talk. He said
Speaker 2: that the people that think returning this is the like
Speaker 2: the largest wolf avocate, well maybe not a wolf fabricate,
Speaker 2: largest wolf scientist in the world. He says people think
Speaker 2: that returning wolves to Yellowstone created the situation, but brought
Speaker 2: back the birds and the bees and the butterflies.
Speaker 1: He said that's more really religion that it is science.
Speaker 2: But he is quick to add that those people that
Speaker 2: say that bringing wolves back is going to decimate all
Speaker 2: of our big game herds in the state, he said,
Speaker 2: that's more religion than it is science. The truth is
Speaker 2: really in the middle. They're not going to be destructive
Speaker 2: and they're not saints. And he wrote another paper that said,
Speaker 2: and you've probably heard this before, but that wolves are
Speaker 2: neither saints nor sinners except to people who make them.
Speaker 2: So people want to make them out to be saints
Speaker 2: and sinners and they're not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they within that they have an impact. Uh huh,
Speaker 1: they have an impact.
Speaker 2: They sure and certainly and locally they can have an impact,
Speaker 2: and we can manage that. We should be able to
Speaker 2: manage that impact. But the two that have been publishing
Speaker 2: trophic cascade papers almost every year, I think they have
Speaker 2: twenty five papers I've read since that two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: They just published one last year and in the abstract
Speaker 2: it says that wolves trigger the strongest trop trophic cascade
Speaker 2: in the world. This is just last year. They're still
Speaker 2: saying this. And that was followed by a rebuttal this
Speaker 2: year by some Yellowstone researchers people are making their living
Speaker 2: researching the Yellowstone ecosystem. And it was a rebuttal and
Speaker 2: the title of the rebuttal was flawed analysis invalidates the
Speaker 2: idea of a strong trophic cascade in Yellowstone. I mean,
Speaker 2: if he a heavy hitting title, that's like, that's as
Speaker 2: clear as you can possibly make it. And I think
Speaker 2: you in an email once said, let's talk about this
Speaker 2: latest um. There's some kind of news article that said
Speaker 2: that the trophic cascade stuff doesn't have scientific support. But
Speaker 2: this has been happening since Kaufman wrote that paper in
Speaker 2: twenty ten. I mean, this is sixteen years people have
Speaker 2: been saying things aren't happening, Like the media is telling
Speaker 2: you it's happening, and they're using good, solid science, but
Speaker 2: nobody wants to hear that story. I mean, the original
Speaker 2: story is so beautiful. I know it's not true, and
Speaker 2: it makes me feel warm and fuzzy, and so there's
Speaker 2: just no getting rid of that. I constantly see on
Speaker 2: social media how wolves have changed the ecosystem in Yellowstone,
Speaker 2: and then once in a while someone publishes a paper
Speaker 2: that says, you know, a lot of that's not true,
Speaker 2: that the science just doesn't support that. And I've been
Speaker 2: seeing that for fifteen years, but nobody people are still
Speaker 2: telling the original story. No, there's no getting out in
Speaker 2: front of that. It's too late. It's like a freight
Speaker 2: train that left.
Speaker 1: As a writer who like as a writer that deals
Speaker 1: in history and wildlifeishues and other things I will sometimes
Speaker 1: hear a thing. Oh, hear a thing, and I'll get
Speaker 1: really excited because it's going to be great for the
Speaker 1: thing I'm writing. Yeah yeah, okay, and I'm like, that
Speaker 1: is great. But then when I look into it and
Speaker 1: I learned that it's not true, I feel a disappointment.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been there before too, Like this is really
Speaker 2: going to support what I'm writing.
Speaker 1: You're like, really, that's a lie or that's like you know,
Speaker 1: this thing that everyone knows is now I know is
Speaker 1: not true. And I'm disappointed, okay, because I wanted the
Speaker 1: truth to be other than it was. I will say
Speaker 1: to wildlife researchers, which I have many friends that do that,
Speaker 1: that they're in that line of work, and they'll be
Speaker 1: talking about something they're doing, and I'll say, what do
Speaker 1: you hope happens? Yeah? Right, And they're like, I can't
Speaker 1: do that. What do you mean what do I hope happens?
Speaker 1: Except but I'm like, because you're a human being, there's
Speaker 1: got to be like, let's just be honest, there's got
Speaker 1: to be some thing. I'm not saying. You'd ben the truth, right,
Speaker 1: you're a person of integrity, but in your head there's
Speaker 1: got to be I hope that this something happens. That
Speaker 1: would be like of note, right, because you're you're only human.
Speaker 1: And so the question I would ask is, if you
Speaker 1: look at the people that started from year one trophic
Speaker 1: cascades trophic cascades, would they have had it in them?
Speaker 1: Would they have had in them to publish a piece
Speaker 1: that said turns out there isn't one.
Speaker 2: A lot of scientists do that, and that's just a
Speaker 2: matter of being a good scientist, because you're right, every
Speaker 2: single scientist has bias, has things that they would love
Speaker 2: if the results were this, because that would be that
Speaker 2: would be great, especially if it's going to make big news.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's how people get tenure and that's how
Speaker 2: they get promotions in the university setting, is to make
Speaker 2: a lot of big splashes in the news. And that's
Speaker 2: what drives a lot of people in academia unfortunately. But
Speaker 2: everybody has a bias, but a good scientist curbs that
Speaker 2: and packs it away and just lets the results speak
Speaker 2: for themselves. And in scientific papers a lot of times
Speaker 2: you'll see here's our study area, here's our methods, here's
Speaker 2: our results, and then we get to the last discussion section,
Speaker 2: there's some leeway to discuss what you think the results mean.
Speaker 2: So the results are the results, but the discussion section
Speaker 2: there's a lot of leeway for researchers to weave their
Speaker 2: personal biases in and interpret the results for you see it.
Speaker 1: That's what you have to be careful of as thease.
Speaker 2: And that's where people peel quotes out of the discussion
Speaker 2: section that are just speculation and attribute it to that
Speaker 2: previewed scientific paper. But it's not something they researched. It's
Speaker 2: not something in the results, not something they found. It's
Speaker 2: something they think, which is not really science. Let's jump
Speaker 2: to have Helena's.
Speaker 1: Uh this this is something that some people might be like,
Speaker 1: why why does this matter? But it matters exactly. It
Speaker 1: matters to me. Everyone knows like you have Boone and
Speaker 1: Crockett record books. Okay, how how was it an oversight?
Speaker 1: How was it you couldn't shoot like you couldn't get
Speaker 1: a record book? Have Alina? Yeah, I found this out
Speaker 1: the hard way many years ago. I got a big
Speaker 1: Have Alena. Okay, I shot a big Have Alena, and
Speaker 1: people were pointing out like, damn, that's a huge Havelna,
Speaker 1: that's a huge Haveleena? And I gone look and I
Speaker 1: had no idea. I had no idea. I'd never entered
Speaker 1: anything before. But I go and look, I'm like, what
Speaker 1: it's not in here? But then I found like Safari
Speaker 1: Club had it, and it was like, and admit to
Speaker 1: hit though whatever the minimums for Safari Club. But I
Speaker 1: was like, how could this noble little, this noble little
Speaker 1: desert creature not being the Boonukracker record books? Good question?
Speaker 2: Arizona has had Arizona record Books since nineteen seventy one
Speaker 2: has had Haveleena in there. But I thought the same
Speaker 2: thing probably twenty years ago. And I'm good friends with
Speaker 2: Buck Buckner, who is the vice president for North American
Speaker 2: Records for Boona Crockett at the time, and I asked
Speaker 2: him why is Havevelena not in there? And he just said, I,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know this. No one's kind of
Speaker 2: made a run for it, no one's made a proposal
Speaker 2: for it. And I started a file. And I had
Speaker 2: a file Halina Boona Crockett early in my career, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to do this is going to be my project.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get I'm gonna get them in Boona
Speaker 2: Crockett and then had a family and got busy, and
Speaker 2: the file folder went farther and farther back into my file.
Speaker 1: What was in that? Okay, what was it? What were
Speaker 1: you putting in your folder?
Speaker 2: Some of the Arizona like the Arizona records that We've
Speaker 2: got a big data set of Arizona records like to
Speaker 2: help inform what the minimum might be. And then and
Speaker 2: then copies of what the Boone Crockett needs in order
Speaker 2: to establish a new category, and those sorts of things.
Speaker 2: So I'm just starting to have a file and think
Speaker 2: about that, and then I and then I just it
Speaker 2: just got away from me.
Speaker 1: I never got back to it.
Speaker 2: And then Nicole Tapman from New Mexico called me just
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, and she said, would you
Speaker 2: write a letter of support from your agency?
Speaker 1: That was one thing that was.
Speaker 2: Required to get them a new category, because she said,
Speaker 2: I'd like to see we can get Boon and Crockett
Speaker 2: to accept have Alina and she's on the records committee
Speaker 2: and I'm on the records committee now too, and.
Speaker 1: I said write a letter. I said, I will clear
Speaker 1: my calendar next week. Let's do this.
Speaker 2: Let's and so we got two people from Texas, two
Speaker 2: people from Mexico. Nicole's from New Mexico, and me from Arizona,
Speaker 2: and we put together a proposal that talked about how
Speaker 2: these populations are signed typically managed by these state agencies.
Speaker 2: They have a long history of records in some states
Speaker 2: how popular they were. We've got fifty eight thousand havelina
Speaker 2: hunters every year in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas harvesting
Speaker 2: thirty three thousand havelina. This is a significant big game animal.
Speaker 2: I mean, some people in Boonda Crockett initially said, is
Speaker 2: that even a big game animal.
Speaker 1: It's a big game animal. It's got hooves.
Speaker 2: What other hooved big game animal do you mount with
Speaker 2: this mouth open and this big, ferocious roar. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're cool, they're cool animals, and they're really popular in
Speaker 2: the Southwest. They're really popular for non residents to come down.
Speaker 2: So we put together this really robust proposal.
Speaker 1: You can call them in. I mean I could name so,
Speaker 1: I can name reasons all day long.
Speaker 2: They're they're cool, and they're they're not invasive like Farrell hogs.
Speaker 2: They had two young a year, once a year, not
Speaker 2: like Farrell hogs, or they have a litter of ten.
Speaker 2: Twice a year they'll have a litter of eight and
Speaker 2: only ten survive. That's a joke among the Faral hogs people.
Speaker 2: So we went to the proposal. We went to a
Speaker 2: records book committee meeting and we said, here's but you
Speaker 2: know where were talking about biases earlier, I'm bias for Helena. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: but did you have because you've got a couple of
Speaker 2: hogs that you thought, actually, no, that you didn't have
Speaker 2: told thirty years of honey, have Alena and all the
Speaker 2: skulls I've measured that I cleaned. I don't have any
Speaker 2: that make the book, so I don't have that.
Speaker 1: I got a booker. I need to go dig that
Speaker 1: sucker out. Yeah you should.
Speaker 2: And actually, this year, entering in the Buona Crocket is free.
Speaker 2: There's been a benefactor that will cover all entry fees
Speaker 2: for all species until the end of December. So if
Speaker 2: you've got a headline around that you haven't got into
Speaker 2: the books, this is the year to do it because
Speaker 2: it's free for you. You're not injured, no, so you're
Speaker 2: just doing this out of the goodness of love. Have
Speaker 2: Alena and I think especially in Mexico. Our Mexican colleagues
Speaker 2: are really have more at stake of giving the havelina
Speaker 2: a little more respect as a big game animal. I
Speaker 2: think that's a big thing. Sometimes they're not given that
Speaker 2: kind of respect.
Speaker 1: No, I even hear man like people I like, you know,
Speaker 1: people people that I count as friends. Man, I'll hear
Speaker 1: people really denigrate them and like, you know, talk about
Speaker 1: all you know, whatever we shot a couple, left them
Speaker 1: lane or something. I hate that kind of stuff. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: So we went to the records committee and we said,
Speaker 2: this was before we did that proposal, and we said,
Speaker 2: we argued our case, why have Alena ought to be part?
Speaker 2: And some people are like, then we got to add alligators,
Speaker 2: and then we got to add but there's reasons why
Speaker 2: some of these other species aren't ready to make the book.
Speaker 1: And so we said, what's the logic there.
Speaker 2: Like, there's some other animals that aren't in the book
Speaker 2: that are still harvested. That was what they were thinking.
Speaker 1: Like what about like you were setting up that you
Speaker 1: were setting up a you were setting up a set
Speaker 1: of parameters that other things would be there, would other
Speaker 1: things would reach.
Speaker 2: Nope, just have Alena just focus on have Alena, but
Speaker 2: some people in Bunda Crockett said, well, if we do
Speaker 2: have Alena, then we're going to get pressured to do
Speaker 2: all these other animals.
Speaker 1: It's going to cascade. But it's not. There's there's not
Speaker 1: the other animals that for inclusion be a trophy cascade.
Speaker 1: Did you get that joke? That is a good one.
Speaker 1: That was a good one.
Speaker 2: So we asked the Records Committee, we're not asking you
Speaker 2: to decide now, but let us come back with a proposal.
Speaker 2: We came back with a proposal. They were pretty impressed.
Speaker 2: The proposal was pretty extensive and covered everything, and they
Speaker 2: had some board meetings they talked about it. They agreed
Speaker 2: to include it, but they didn't have the minimum entry yet.
Speaker 2: But we have over We have hundreds of Havelina skulls
Speaker 2: that have been measured in the state record books and
Speaker 2: sci to use as a baseline for what should the
Speaker 2: minimum be. And so we use those those records. Roy
Speaker 2: Grace from Pope and Young Club did a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of legwork on analyzing that those data, and then Boone
Speaker 2: Crockett Club then made the decision what the minimum would be.
Speaker 2: And the minimum for Boone Crockett for and then Pope
Speaker 2: and Young followed suit right after that. Because there's a
Speaker 2: close relationship between two clubs. So Pope and Young accept
Speaker 2: up to them, which is great because they're perfect for archery.
Speaker 2: And so Pop and Young then decided they approved them, decided.
Speaker 1: On a minimum.
Speaker 2: Pop and Young minimum is thirteen and fourteen sixteenth, and
Speaker 2: then Bunda Crockett minimum is fourteen and five sixteen. And
Speaker 2: it's length and width. It's it's simply just like bears
Speaker 2: and lions. It's length and with no kind of toss,
Speaker 2: no tell me or anything. No, they want to make
Speaker 2: it simple on measures. Already know how to do that measurement.
Speaker 2: They have the equipment. What's minimum again, minimum for buond
Speaker 2: to Crocket. Yeah, you'll have to remember that and go
Speaker 2: back and measure it measure tonight.
Speaker 1: So Hune to.
Speaker 2: Crocket is fourteen and five sixteenths Man fourteen five sixteen.
Speaker 2: I wish my wife is more handy at that.
Speaker 1: Kind of I mean, just what if I called it
Speaker 1: right now and.
Speaker 2: To go measure measure that. Yeah, but it's not going
Speaker 2: to go over use what's called the boss square that
Speaker 2: they use I think for muskox or or I think,
Speaker 2: But it's a square. It's a steel square because the
Speaker 2: back of the Havelina skull has a why. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you can't it's not measured in the bottom of that Why,
Speaker 2: it's measured absolute total length. So you have to have
Speaker 2: something square across the back and square across the front,
Speaker 2: and then the width is just the zygomatic arches here.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pretty excited that that that now gets the
Speaker 2: respect that that it's always deserved.
Speaker 1: That's great. Uh. I was just gonna ask you about
Speaker 1: status of black tailed deer and meal. Let me ask
Speaker 1: you about status of have alnas. Yeah. You don't really
Speaker 1: hear about this ever. Is it just like our Haveleena
Speaker 1: is just sort of always there at the same you
Speaker 1: never hear about that it's a great year, it's a
Speaker 1: bad year, ups and downs.
Speaker 2: Are they just sort of like just they are very
Speaker 2: stable overall and and and part of it is they're
Speaker 2: they're so adapted to their desert. They're eating a lot
Speaker 2: of prickly pear, which not like forbes are coming and
Speaker 2: going and wet here and dry. See, prickly pear is
Speaker 2: always there. They eat a lot of root tubers. So
Speaker 2: some of those plants are more abundant with the rainfall,
Speaker 2: but they're still there. They're pretty drought resistant, little very
Speaker 2: very drought resistant, just kind of chug along. They do
Speaker 2: a pretty good job of chugging along and not having
Speaker 2: these violent swings up and downs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, got it. So with that, let's about black tail
Speaker 1: deer and meal deer. Is there reason to be Let's
Speaker 1: let's start with milder. Is there any reason to be
Speaker 1: not pessimistic about the future of meal deer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I'm I'm not pessimistic at all.
Speaker 1: Really, Yeah, tell me more. I feel like it's like
Speaker 1: always bad, but I hope you feel better by the
Speaker 1: time you leave.
Speaker 2: Then it is always bad news, and some of the
Speaker 2: bad news comes from just a desire to advocate for
Speaker 2: meal there, which I'm one hundred percent on board with.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stresses affecting meal deer in the West,
Speaker 2: but meal deer. I chair a meal deer Working Group,
Speaker 2: which is for the last twenty years I've been the
Speaker 2: chairman of this group that's sponsored by the Western Association
Speaker 2: of Fish while Agencies. It's twenty four Western wildlife agencies
Speaker 2: in western North America provinces and states, and we have
Speaker 2: one meal deer or black tail deer expert from each
Speaker 2: of those twenty four jurisdictions, and that's the Mealder Working
Speaker 2: Group Committee, So it's the West leading meal deer experts
Speaker 2: And every year we put together for the eleventh year
Speaker 2: now this year Status of milder and black tail deer
Speaker 2: in North America. And you can't just write one paragraph
Speaker 2: about how milder and black tail deer are doing, because
Speaker 2: they're doing differently all over and for different reasons, and
Speaker 2: so we take a page or two for each jurisdiction,
Speaker 2: so you can read about Saskatchewan, you can read about Arizona,
Speaker 2: you can read about Montana written by the meal deer
Speaker 2: expert in that state, and then we do some summary
Speaker 2: stuff at the beginning of that, and that gives you
Speaker 2: a snapshot of how deer populations are doing. And more
Speaker 2: than half of the milder populations are stable or increasing
Speaker 2: right now. Some of the rocky Mountain states had a
Speaker 2: bad winner of twenty twenty three and then they're recovering
Speaker 2: from that. Southwestern states, New Mexico, Arizona are suffering from
Speaker 2: multi year drought. But we had we had to decline
Speaker 2: in the nineteen ninety. It had several declines in meal
Speaker 2: deer through time, and the latest one was in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety and that's when the Meal Deer Working Group was established.
Speaker 2: Decline Holistic West Wide Decline. Yeah, and that's happened a
Speaker 2: couple times. And when you when you look at it
Speaker 2: in retrospect, when it happened in the nineties, we were like,
Speaker 2: what's happening in meal deer? Something is affecting meal there everywhere.
Speaker 2: That's what it seemed like, because it seemed to be
Speaker 2: declining everywhere. When you look back now at the history,
Speaker 2: it's obvious that when you have really wet years in
Speaker 2: the desert Southwest, that means a lot of rain, a
Speaker 2: lot of forbes in the winter really nutritious, and deer
Speaker 2: do really well. Reproduction rates go up. But that same
Speaker 2: wet winter in the Rocky Mountains might be heavy snowpack
Speaker 2: and a harsh winter in the Rocky Mountains. So the
Speaker 2: same kind of wet year can make deer population in
Speaker 2: the Rocky Mountain states decline and increase in the Southwest.
Speaker 1: That's interesting that that same weather pattern can do something.
Speaker 1: This is a good one place and bad out of place.
Speaker 2: So you have these different things happening in different regions
Speaker 2: of good their range all the time, and then periodically
Speaker 2: every couple decades they synchronize. Just by chance, really, they
Speaker 2: synchronize where you might have a harsh winter and you've
Speaker 2: also have a drought in the southwest and deer population decline,
Speaker 2: and so looking back, it looks like just once in
Speaker 2: a while, all those regional differences synchronize, and everybody says,
Speaker 2: oh my god, there's a deer decline in the West,
Speaker 2: and that happened in the nineties, and then populations recovered
Speaker 2: from that decline, and probably no state or province would
Speaker 2: say not many of them would say they have all
Speaker 2: the melder they want, they're all below population objective. But
Speaker 2: there's no West wide melder decline like you see some
Speaker 2: people talking about right now, like it's going down. Arizona
Speaker 2: after the nineteen nineties declined because the drought had fifteen
Speaker 2: years of deady growth, population growth up, and it's just
Speaker 2: the last six years or so drop that has caused
Speaker 2: that to hook down.
Speaker 1: What made what made the mule deer glory days? Yeah,
Speaker 1: good question. That was the weather you called it. That
Speaker 1: was like the late sixties, late seventies whatever. Sometime a
Speaker 1: long time ago. It was the dear glory days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: was that that everything aligned and lifted instead of everything
Speaker 1: aligned and declined.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of other things going on at
Speaker 2: the time. You know, our deer population, like everything else,
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds or early nineteen twenties declined just because over
Speaker 2: exploitation and no management. Then from the twenties to sixties,
Speaker 2: West wide deer population generally increased. And during that period
Speaker 2: we had now restrictions on harvest, not killing does in
Speaker 2: some places or limiting the killing a dose, limiting the harvest.
Speaker 2: We had ten eighty predator poison and predator control everywhere.
Speaker 2: Dropping poison baits everywhere reduced the predation pressure. We had
Speaker 2: some wet years in there all and then there was
Speaker 2: a lot of logging going on, so we're removing the overstory.
Speaker 2: Shrubs are coming up, forbes are growing. It was great
Speaker 2: for meal deer. So all of that stuff combined was
Speaker 2: happening from the twenties and thirties and then into the
Speaker 2: fifties and early sixties. So fifties and sixties was like
Speaker 2: the heyday of meal deer. We had a lot of
Speaker 2: meal there. But that was the result of conditions and
Speaker 2: activities that we will never repeat. We can't go back
Speaker 2: and do that. We're not going to do that wholesale logging.
Speaker 2: We're not going to drop ten eighty baits one every
Speaker 2: square mile across the West.
Speaker 1: We're not going to do those things.
Speaker 2: So looking at milder populations in the fifties and sixties
Speaker 2: is not the benchmark to compare today's meal there that
Speaker 2: was an unusual bubble because of all those things happening.
Speaker 2: And then in the seventies we had a mealder decline
Speaker 2: coming off of that bubble, and we even had there
Speaker 2: was a symposium in Utah in nineteen seventy six that
Speaker 2: was about mealder decline in the West, and it was
Speaker 2: a whole symposium concerned about this decline in the seventies,
Speaker 2: then we got rainfall generally in the eighties was a
Speaker 2: pretty lush year, and deer populations throughout the West increased
Speaker 2: in the eighties. And then if you remember late eighties
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eighties, when Yellowstone burned, there was barges running
Speaker 2: around in the Mississippi River because it was so low.
Speaker 2: We had a really really bad drought throughout a lot
Speaker 2: of the West that precipitated this late eighties nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: decline that initiated the Meal Deer Working Group at that time.
Speaker 2: And so we've gone through these swings for different reasons,
Speaker 2: and we've recovered a lot from that nineteen nineties decline,
Speaker 2: and now more than half of the jurisdictions are stable,
Speaker 2: are increasing, some of them are certainly declining, all of
Speaker 2: them below objective, but all below objective, i'd say all
Speaker 2: of them. I don't know if you'd find many meal
Speaker 2: your biologists that say we don't want any more meal there.
Speaker 2: We've got enough. You know, the habitat's full. You know,
Speaker 2: we're still we're still need to build deer herds almost everywhere,
Speaker 2: even though I think Colorado half of the units I
Speaker 2: read from that biologists are at population objectives. So there's
Speaker 2: places where they are, but we're not in dire straits.
Speaker 2: There's no West wide mulder decline right now. We're chugging
Speaker 2: along in weather conditions, whether it's drought or harsh winners
Speaker 2: is causing these annual fluctuations against a backdrop of long
Speaker 2: term habitat change. You know, the West looks a little
Speaker 2: bit different now than it did in nineteen fifty as
Speaker 2: far as urban development, urban sprawl, communities, roads, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: We're not going back to the nineteen fifties, So we
Speaker 2: should not be saying, well, deer populations are such and
Speaker 2: such lower than the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: It's not fair. It's not fair to do that.
Speaker 2: But i'm i'm as long as we keep working on
Speaker 2: preserving migration corridors, improving habitat on large scales, I think
Speaker 2: the future meal there is bright. We're going to keep
Speaker 2: chugging along with good mulder herds if we keep paying
Speaker 2: attention and doing everything we can.
Speaker 1: If if every area is below objective, what do you
Speaker 1: think of a what do you think of someone says,
Speaker 1: And before I say this, I'll recognize you're arguing for
Speaker 1: like a nuanced approach where you have twenty four different
Speaker 1: regions and every region has its own story and various factors.
Speaker 1: But let's say I come to you and say, generally,
Speaker 1: should it be that we're not killing female meal deer anymore?
Speaker 2: We shouldn't be killing dough milder. And see that's on
Speaker 2: a unit by unit basis. There's some areas like like
Speaker 2: if half of the units in Colorado are at population objective.
Speaker 2: Then that's the case where you need to maintain that
Speaker 2: population at that in that population objective range. So I
Speaker 2: would not I would not outlaw dough hunting throughout the West.
Speaker 2: In Arizona when populations got really low, then then dough
Speaker 2: hunts were removed and so and you see in units,
Speaker 2: even within a single state, certain units will have doe
Speaker 2: harvest and other units won't. And that's the biologist doing
Speaker 2: what they do and managing those populations based on where
Speaker 2: they are in relation to objectives.
Speaker 1: And where they need to be.
Speaker 2: God, So I wouldn't broadbrush and say we shouldn't be
Speaker 2: killing females. It depends on the area. What about black
Speaker 2: tail deer? Black tail deer are harder to survey. They're
Speaker 2: doing they're doing pellet counts historically they do they're looking
Speaker 2: for sticks yet right, and they use dogs. They'll use
Speaker 2: sniffing dogs to find pellets and they'll record all that
Speaker 2: they collect. In Alaska they've done a lot of pellet
Speaker 2: collecting where they they do genetics and they look at
Speaker 2: how many individual minimum number of individual deer they have
Speaker 2: per square mile based on genetic fingerprints. So they're hard
Speaker 2: to they're hard to monitor. They're very susceptible, especially Southeast Alaska,
Speaker 2: very susceptible to heavy snow winters. You get those islands,
Speaker 2: Prince of Whale, all those islands, you get a heavy,
Speaker 2: heavy snow winter and you can lose fifty to sixty
Speaker 2: percent of the black population. But then in the years
Speaker 2: after that they come roaring back. Once the population is down,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of food for the remaining animals. Those
Speaker 2: populations bounce right back. So they dip and they grow
Speaker 2: based on mostly on weather conditions. But then again I
Speaker 2: said weather conditions in the forefront, and the background is
Speaker 2: long term habitat changes. And one of the things in
Speaker 2: Sitka Blacktail Range is the logging that was done in
Speaker 2: the past that has now all grown up into second growth,
Speaker 2: really thick, not very easily marketed for anything commercially. So
Speaker 2: we've got it's called stem exclusion or stand exclusion, where
Speaker 2: the sunlight's not reaching the ground to make forbes and
Speaker 2: shrubs that the deer eat. It's just blocking out the light.
Speaker 2: So you have all the secondary growth that needs to
Speaker 2: be cut. But other than maybe cutting it and making
Speaker 2: wood pellets is a possibility, someone needs to commercialize something
Speaker 2: to get in there and open up some of that,
Speaker 2: But it doesn't mean that the old growth forests in
Speaker 2: southeast Alaska need to be logged. The old growth forest
Speaker 2: is really important for the same reason those big old
Speaker 2: trees they stop the snowfall, and in heavy snowfall events,
Speaker 2: the deer that have to have that mature old growth
Speaker 2: force to go in and move around and feed a
Speaker 2: little bit until the snow melts enough that they can
Speaker 2: go back out into clear cuts in some of the
Speaker 2: places with more food. So the old growth forest is
Speaker 2: really important. And then that stem exclusion is keeping that
Speaker 2: habitat from having more food than it could have if
Speaker 2: it was if it was managed better. So that stuff's
Speaker 2: going on in the background of these annual blacktail fluctuations.
Speaker 1: You know those clear cuts there, they're so good for
Speaker 1: ten years or whatever in that country. They're so good
Speaker 1: for deer for ten years, and then they're so terrible
Speaker 1: for deer. Yeah when they grow for thirty or forty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for forty when there's a new one, you're like, that's
Speaker 1: cool now, but man, then it's just gonna suck. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And even if they leave, if they go in and
Speaker 2: leave a lot of slash and horizon of logs, it
Speaker 2: becomes an issue of deer not being able to move
Speaker 2: around as well either in some of those clear cuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's is total obstacle. Course. Yeah. So Chairmanship of
Speaker 1: the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Meal Deer
Speaker 1: Working Group.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how long a you been doing that? Twenty eight years?
Speaker 2: I was one of the original I'm the only remaining
Speaker 2: original member that was approved by the Western directors in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven. Our first meeting was in ninety eight
Speaker 2: and Jackson, Wyoming. About eight years later, the chairman retired
Speaker 2: and passed the torch to me. So I've been chairman
Speaker 2: for twenty years. And if you go on to see
Speaker 2: what we've been up to for twenty years or twenty
Speaker 2: eight years, We've got a a website Meal Deerworkinggroup dot com.
Speaker 2: It's just all one word Meal Deer Working Group, and
Speaker 2: you see a lot of publications on there. And what
Speaker 2: we put together is like we established we'd established seven
Speaker 2: ecoregions in North America that were related to meal deer
Speaker 2: management and meal deir ecology, and we produce habitat guidelines
Speaker 2: for each one of those seven ecoregions.
Speaker 1: So a practitioner on the ground.
Speaker 2: A BLM biologists in the Southwest deserts can pull out
Speaker 2: the Southwest deserts to have that guidelines and read about
Speaker 2: what deer need to thrive in the Southwest desert or
Speaker 2: the coastal rainforest.
Speaker 1: We've done that.
Speaker 2: We produced other documents about disease concerns translocating wildlife. We
Speaker 2: produce the North American Milder Conservation Plan, which which guided
Speaker 2: conservation in a very general way throughout the West. And
Speaker 2: with that plan, we wrote an MoU and we had
Speaker 2: the Chief of the Force Service, the director of the BLM,
Speaker 2: and about seven agency heads signed this MoU saying that
Speaker 2: their documents, their forest management plans, their BLM resource management
Speaker 2: plans would incorporate these things and be consistent with the
Speaker 2: North American Milder Conservation Plan. So if anybody, any local biologists,
Speaker 2: said we're not going to do that, we said, well,
Speaker 2: your director says that you're going to do things that
Speaker 2: are consistent with what milder need and blacktail deer need,
Speaker 2: and we're revamping that now. But we've got a guidance
Speaker 2: document on if you're monitoring milder populations, here's some of
Speaker 2: them metrics you should monitor and here's some advantages and
Speaker 2: disadvantages of monitoring them different ways, kind of for biologists.
Speaker 2: We did something on movements and migration barriers to a movement,
Speaker 2: and that website has all of these documents as a
Speaker 2: PDF and a lot of the meal there Working group
Speaker 2: members then contributed to our latest mealder book, that big
Speaker 2: one that you have, the black one that you have,
Speaker 2: where there's eighty two chapters and each eighty two co authors,
Speaker 2: twenty three chapters, and each chapter is written by the
Speaker 2: national expert for that particular topic with a team of writers.
Speaker 2: It's all the latest mealder and black tailed deer information.
Speaker 2: And the meal Deer Working Group had us and a
Speaker 2: lot of our friends that are working on meal deer
Speaker 2: work on that book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want to be the guy in your
Speaker 1: circle that knows the most about mule deer black tails,
Speaker 1: you should get that book and memorize it.
Speaker 2: It's got to beat everybody. It's comprehensive. Yeah, sure you.
Speaker 2: So this is a funny one.
Speaker 1: You recently went into to New Zealand to speak about
Speaker 1: servid conservation. But they're I mean, I feel like they
Speaker 1: spend more energy trying to get rid of wildlife. They absolutely.
Speaker 1: Do they spend more energy trying to get rid of
Speaker 1: wild not wildlife, but more than you trying to get
Speaker 1: rid of hooved animals. Yeah, there's no No one talks
Speaker 1: in New Zealand about conservation. I know, it's like gloves
Speaker 1: off as it should be. Yeah, like the helicopter goun them,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, It's like they're not they're
Speaker 1: not They're not trying to make robust populations for hunters
Speaker 1: to be able to go out and do this meeting
Speaker 1: was It happens every four years somewhere around the world.
Speaker 2: So it's been in China, been in Peru. I'm in
Speaker 2: the Czech Republic. I helped organize the one in twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen in ss Park, Colorado. We had it in the US,
Speaker 2: and this year I rotated. It was in Croatia four
Speaker 2: years ago, in New Zealand this time. And I don't
Speaker 2: get I got to go to the Colorado one because
Speaker 2: I helped organize it and it was in a neighboring state.
Speaker 2: My department's not going to send me to China and
Speaker 2: to Peru, and so I didn't think I was gonna
Speaker 2: be able to the New Zealand one.
Speaker 1: And they asked me.
Speaker 2: It's called the International Deer Biology Congress, and they asked
Speaker 2: me to be a keynote speaker with the expenses paid.
Speaker 2: So I was able to finally get to an international
Speaker 2: version of that, and I went there and I talked
Speaker 2: about how we manage deer and elk all service in
Speaker 2: North America amid the mosaic of BLM land, forest land,
Speaker 2: private land, National Park Service land, and you have biologists
Speaker 2: for all those different agencies and around that, and then
Speaker 2: you have funding, all these different funding sources for conservation,
Speaker 2: and among this mess that we have in North America,
Speaker 2: we somehow have this beautiful, well functioning system that works
Speaker 2: really really well. So that was my keynote address in
Speaker 2: New Zealand at that talk. But it was interesting because
Speaker 2: that conference sponsored by the New Zealanders. That conference, the title,
Speaker 2: the theme of that conference was your deer here, and
Speaker 2: it was about New Zealand didn't have any deer. It
Speaker 2: was all of our deer that were in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: It just said our deer, your deer here. And And
Speaker 2: so there was talks about trying to raty they're they're
Speaker 2: poisoning brushtail possums, they're poisoning white tails in some areas
Speaker 2: with poisons to control them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's like when.
Speaker 2: You go there, you don't need you don't need a
Speaker 2: hunting license on public land they're poisoning, which it makes
Speaker 2: me feel kind of strange, but they're talking about endangered
Speaker 2: plants and trying to save what eco, what native ecosystem
Speaker 2: they had. They had they had three there's reports between
Speaker 2: one and three mammals that were native to New Zealand.
Speaker 1: And there were bats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was one bat that was there and there
Speaker 2: was another I think the other ones were fossils of
Speaker 2: bat species. So they had no mammals, basically no predators
Speaker 2: at all. And they had they had nine different species
Speaker 2: of moa, these nine foot the largest one with nine
Speaker 2: foot flightless birds running around the island. Anesians got there
Speaker 2: I think eight hundred years ago and it only took
Speaker 2: them about one hundred years ago, one hundred years to
Speaker 2: wipe out.
Speaker 1: All of the MOA's on the island.
Speaker 2: And the only thing big You imagine you're on an
Speaker 2: island and you've got nine foot chickens running around. I
Speaker 2: mean they used them.
Speaker 1: They they had been egg harvest too. Man, Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: I bet yeah, because that's like to do.
Speaker 2: So there was eight or nine different species of servants
Speaker 2: that were brought to New Zealand from different places in
Speaker 2: the world, and they still have most of them. I
Speaker 2: was surprised to hear at the meeting they brought moose
Speaker 2: one hundred years ago. Teddy Roosevelt was involved in some
Speaker 2: of the trains locations they brought moose, and I was
Speaker 2: surprised to hear some people talking about maybe there being
Speaker 2: a couple of moose.
Speaker 1: Still that I've heard that there's rumors of that.
Speaker 2: It seems kind of like their Bigfoot, their version of
Speaker 2: Bigfoot is what it seems like.
Speaker 1: It's never any proof, but there's there's reports. Well, like
Speaker 1: it's got to be. And I hunted there, you know,
Speaker 1: in the sense I got from the guys in that
Speaker 1: community is the same when I get when I'm hanging
Speaker 1: out with Hawaiians. Is uh. They've built the whole culture
Speaker 1: and lifestyle around big game hunt. Yeah, right, And so
Speaker 1: a lot of the people it's it's funny because you
Speaker 1: get this idea here that you know, you get this
Speaker 1: idea here that that you know, like like whatever that
Speaker 1: the tree huggers want to save the deer. You know
Speaker 1: or something, but at hiss like the tree huggers want
Speaker 1: the tree huggers want to be dead. Dude.
Speaker 2: We have a We have a representative on the Milder
Speaker 2: Working Group from Hawaii, and that's because in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: one they brought some Columbian blacktail from Oregon and put
Speaker 2: them on Kawai in the Island of Kawai, and they're
Speaker 2: still there and they're hunted and the locals that like
Speaker 2: the deer hunt like them, so they're not eradicating them.
Speaker 2: But like the We had a meeting in Hawaii once
Speaker 2: and I asked the Hawaiian representative for the Mealier Working Group.
Speaker 2: I said, do you finally get to go to a
Speaker 2: meeting because we're here in Hawaii And he said, no,
Speaker 2: I've gotten an endangered plant meeting I got to be at.
Speaker 2: He said, Honestly, we're not looking to conserve and increase
Speaker 2: our deer. He said, like, like, there's fifty different species
Speaker 2: in their diet and almost all of them are in
Speaker 2: dangered plant species. We don't want more. We don't want
Speaker 2: more of them. It's an interesting different perspective.
Speaker 1: One of the conversations that sticks to me most wasn't
Speaker 1: new Zealand, but it was in Hawaii. But it was
Speaker 1: around the same issue as I was talking to a
Speaker 1: native Hawaiian, Okay, like an ancestral Hawaiian or like an
Speaker 1: ethnic I don't know what you call it, like a Hawaiian,
Speaker 1: not a guy who lives in Hawaii, but a but
Speaker 1: a native Hawaiian. And you know, historically, the idea is
Speaker 1: that when when the Polynesians, when the Polynesians arrived in
Speaker 1: Hawaii sometime around eleven hundred years ago, they brought they
Speaker 1: brought this menagerie of things with them and including pigs. Right,
Speaker 1: the pigs have been there a long time. And he
Speaker 1: was sharing with me and goes, how can I be native?
Speaker 1: I am native, but the pigs that my people brought
Speaker 1: in the same connection, they gotta go but I'm native. Wow.
Speaker 1: And his take was he didn't want His take was
Speaker 1: he didn't need outsiders, you know, he didn't need howleies
Speaker 1: coming and telling him what animals belonged on the island.
Speaker 2: That's such an important part of their culture. It's not
Speaker 2: just like an animal, whether it needs to be there
Speaker 2: or not. It's part of the culture. It's part of them.
Speaker 1: Was it was just so offensive to him. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: conversation that like, oh no, no, your native mad respect,
Speaker 1: but your pigs. Yeah, gotta go get him out of here.
Speaker 1: Ye did you hunt New Zealand last?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I have Yeah, I have friend Pete Caldwell. I
Speaker 2: met in a few years prior to that, and he
Speaker 2: said he knew about the New Zealand Deer meeting. He said,
Speaker 2: if you get to that meeting, he said, let's go
Speaker 2: out and do something fun. And so the meeting was
Speaker 2: over and my son Levi and I and Pete took
Speaker 2: us out along with another guy, pa Ellen from Sweden,
Speaker 2: big Swedish guy.
Speaker 1: We went out and.
Speaker 2: We did a little blitzkrieg about two days of hunting,
Speaker 2: staying out there, staying in one of the old hunting
Speaker 2: shacks that was more than one hundred years old probably,
Speaker 2: and we shot red deer and we shot tar. We
Speaker 2: shot brush tailed possum shot. I got a European hair,
Speaker 2: European rabbit, which excites jack rabbit gym. Be able to
Speaker 2: get some European European hairs. Almost got a feral house cat,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't couldn't get my sights fast enough. They
Speaker 2: Bete was with me and he's like He's like, get
Speaker 2: get in a position, Get in a position, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what what what is it?
Speaker 1: What's over there? It's a cat? Hurry up.
Speaker 2: He was like really excited about getting the cane. It's
Speaker 2: slunk away away right, that would have been interesting. Gripp
Speaker 2: and grin o SunShot of Wallaby. Wallaby's are hated. I
Speaker 2: mean the yeah, they're cute. My wife says, you're not
Speaker 2: shooting wallaby and I didn't, but LEVI didn't have but
Speaker 2: they're on the extermination list. Oh yeah, big time, big
Speaker 2: time there. The brows line when we were up in
Speaker 2: those mountains, the brows line was just tremendous, like everything
Speaker 2: gone from from three and a half feet down, just
Speaker 2: like dirt, everything eating with tars up there and the
Speaker 2: wallaby's feat didn't even want us shooting at a wallaby
Speaker 2: because he was afraid we'd miss. He wanted to make
Speaker 2: sure that that thing hit the ground.
Speaker 1: It was in a new.
Speaker 2: Area, that it was a really nice area and they're
Speaker 2: starting to pioneer into that area and so like every
Speaker 2: pioneer needs to go.
Speaker 1: He was adamant a lot of hutting.
Speaker 2: Me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I had fun there man hunting there, But
Speaker 1: the reason I couldn't get into it for like I
Speaker 1: couldn't get into like to consider going back or anything.
Speaker 1: Is that the non native aspect of it. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: it's not it's not like a heritage thing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a giant. They came in on a boat. There's
Speaker 1: not like a human hunting heritage there. It was just
Speaker 1: it was it was hunting without hunting without cultural history,
Speaker 1: hunting without wildlife history, and it just like I had fun,
Speaker 1: but there was just something gone. And another thing that
Speaker 1: really struck me is the no predators on the landscape. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: there was something about it. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: hack like like you know, I mean, this isn't meant
Speaker 1: to disparage dudes in New Zealand's just an observation from
Speaker 1: a guy fire away. That doesn't matter. But I just
Speaker 1: there's certain things that were missing that I didn't know
Speaker 1: meant so much to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And sheep raising is such a huge part of
Speaker 2: New Zealand culture. Sheep raising, so you can imagine how
Speaker 2: interested they are bringing a compliment of predators over to control.
Speaker 1: There's not gonna happen. Whenever I'm in Hawaii, I always
Speaker 1: think like some parts of Hawaii, the dry side like Kona.
Speaker 1: You know, I was like, dude, if you turn a
Speaker 1: rattlesnake out here, he'd love it. Not that I would
Speaker 1: do that, but you know, you think about like there's
Speaker 1: certain predators who just love New Zealand. Ye, but it's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. Well, Jim Heffelfinger, thanks for joining, man.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it. I always enjoy coming back. Appreciate all
Speaker 1: your work on behalf of American wildlife and also just
Speaker 1: the effort you take as a as a as a scientist,
Speaker 1: the effort you take to come and talk to just
Speaker 1: Joe blow outdoor people, Joe Blow hunters and anglers and
Speaker 1: try to help them ask the right questions understand what
Speaker 1: they're reading. I think that's see you through the noise
Speaker 1: and follow wildlife and be like a concerned be a
Speaker 1: concerned resource user. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've written a lot of magazine articles and I enjoy
Speaker 2: and I think I've honed the skill of taking complex
Speaker 2: scientific stuff and just explaining it so that anybody can
Speaker 2: understand it.
Speaker 1: And I think that's valuable.
Speaker 2: So I'm driven by the desire to provide reliable, unbiased
Speaker 2: information and let people just learn from that.
Speaker 1: Yep, well till next time. Thank you, yeah, thanks