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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cow’s Week in Review with Ryan cow Calaian. Here’s cap. A family of three found themselves stranded and cold in the National Forest near West Yellowstone, Montana, last week when their e bikes ran out of battery. It’s unclear exactly where they were or how far it would have been to walk out, but local media reports they were approximately twelve miles west of town near the two top trails. They called nine to one one to reports that they were cold and needed help, and local search and rescue responded, along with members of the Hebgen Basin Rural Fire District, Custer Gallatin National Forest law enforcement, and deputies from the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office. For those counting, that’s four different agencies that were forced to use time and resources on this quote rescue effort. They used side by sides to drive up the trail and pick up the family along with their bikes, and carry them back to safety and civilizations. It seems like you can’t throw a rock on a public hiking trail without hitting someone on an e bike these days. I’m not saying you should throw rocks at e bikers, by the way, but for some reason, that’s just the first expression that comes to mind. Anyway, e bikes are popular because they make it easier to access back country locations. You’ll get there faster. But there’s also a downside a lot of people don’t know about, and I’m talking about short battery life. Unlike dirt bike riders and ATV aficionados, e bikers don’t pay back into the system. That’s because even though e bikes are motorized bikes, they have a motor motorbike. Most regulations don’t require e bike riders to get an off highway vehicle sticker. That means they’re out there clogging up the trails and getting themselves stranded without throwing in a couple of bucks to the old trail maintenance pot. They aren’t willing to do that. Let me suggest that they keep their e bike where they belong, on the streets and sidewalks around town. And that especially goes for folks who can’t pedal when the batteries quit. Let me know if that sounds harsh to you, Ask c Al. That’s Askcal at the meeteater dot com. This week, we’ve got Neanderthals, cats, drones and pipes. But first I’m going to tell you about my week. And my week was spent right here in the Montana heat. Well, I suppose I started in Connecticut with my buddy Brent Reeves and the good folks at can Am. We got spoiled driving around the brand spanking new Defenders, which I really have got to admit are very impressive. Biggest thing I can say, and this is a serious compliment. Can Am listened to the customer made this new version high performance while at the same time more user friendly, as in, you can take it apart and modify it at home and put it back together. It’s wrenchable. Some of us like to get a long way from the dealership, don’t you know. Other fun thing about Connecticut was I did a super fun round on the trails through this chunk of woods owned by a boarding school. I explained to the guy who drove me that in Montana we have boarding schools, but they are the type that you either picked to go to that school or go to jail. These ones, from what I hear, are a little different. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen scent of a woman, but that’s the type I’m talking about who. The woods were awesome. High humidity, stifling hot deciduous forests are pretty darn cool for a Montana kid. The path went down to a lake, so I stripped down to my shorts and jumped in for a swim. Was really getting the exercise in great little solo trip. On the way back, I thought it would be best to keep my shirt in my hand and let the old beer gut swing, mostly because I brought it with me and putting a shirt on when you’re all wet is a real pain in the butt. So there I am in Parts Unknown, huffing and puffing up the rolling hillsides and the creek bottoms, and for the first time I see a person who looks like they’re ducking down under a bridge. I’m about to cross this bridge, but it’s on the other side of this little crest of a hill. And as I cress that little hill and pop out onto the bridge, I see there’s about thirty women in their bathing suits, all hanging out in the creek bottom, completely out of sight. Now I was only guessing that this piece of property was friendly to trespassers. I did not confirm with anyone that it was, so I wasn’t gonna stop half naked to find out. Instead, I picked up the pace, crossed that little bridge lickety split, and made her back into the woods, just in time to hear a lady yell, hey, there’s a guy. After that, I hopped on a plane, made her home just in time to make the typically six hour drive out to Glendive, Montana, but with Montana road construction, it was about I don’t know seven and a half for a friend’s wedding and Glendive Dinosaur capital of Montana. Go Red Devils. Congrats Jana and Nick. Over to the Neanderthal desk. Researchers have long known about the ability of ice age humans to render essential fat from the bones of the animals they hunted. They split the bones into pieces, boiled them, most likely in hide bags filled with heated rocks, then skimmed the fat off the surface of the cooled liquid. This helped them stave off so called rabbit starvation, which sets in when people only have protein to eat After about three hundred grams a day of the human liver can’t process additional calories from protein, so without carbohydrates or fat, even a person with all the backstrap in the world is in trouble. But scientists had never been able to document intensive fat rendering operations any earlier than twenty eight thousand years ago, leading some researchers to conclude that Neanderthals, who went extinct about forty thousand years ago, didn’t have to know how to harvest calories this way. However, a site recently uncovered in eastern Germany now shows evidence of a fat rendering operation from one hundred and twenty five thousand years ago, well before anatomically modern heath humans even reached Europe. Scientists at the Newmark Nord archaeological site recovered over one hundred thousand bone fragments from one hundred and twenty seven different animal species, all of which had been crushed to access fat rich marrow inside them, as well as the evidence of the fires used for the rendering. The list of species show that the Neanderthals were extremely impressive all purpose hunters, bringing in critters like bears, foxes, deer, horses, and wolves, but also ancient two horned rhinos, giant cattle known as oros, and even several straight tust forest elephants. The largest terrestrial mammal of the era at thirteen tons. The site’s shattered bones all became covered in sediment very soon after they were used, which told researchers that the animals had been brought to the location all at once for the purpose of large scale fat rendering, rather than ending up the site over a long period of time. The team also found five stone anvils and fifty eight hammerstones, which which together are known in the archaeological biz as a quote unquote percussive toolkit. This supports the theory that led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham was in fact a Neanderthal. Now, I’m not going to give up buttering my toast anytime soon, and I’ve certainly used a heck a lot of bone marrow on toast points and shoot my finger from time to time. But I wudn’t mind trying to pi acrest made with some rendered or rock lard. That would certainly set your pecan pie apart this upcoming Thanksgiving. Moving on to the feral cat desk, this week, we have another strike against the domestic cat as possibly the worst invasive species in North America, making spotted lantern flies and zebra muscles look like bison and prairie grass. This time, the evidence comes from Fire Island, a roughly one thousand foot wide barrier island running thirty miles along the south side of Long Island in New York State. Fire Island has the only federally designated wilderness area in New York and is extremely important habitat for the piping plover, a sparrow sized shorebird that’s threatened up and down the Atlantic coast despite intensive conservation efforts. Plovers aren’t your typical threatened native species, as they actually thrive in disrupted habitat. They are, in fact, quote unquote disturbance dependent. Plovers have to lay their nests in open sand that must nevertheless be far enough away from the ocean to stay dry year round. The only places that fit the bill are recently flooded zones where lots of sand has washed inland. This means that, ironically, as coastal regions have been putting more and more effort into flood resistance and response to climate change, plovers have lost the disturbance habitat they need. Anyway, the wide, regularly flooded beaches of Fire Island are perfect plover habitat. Which also makes them perfect habitat for plover predators. One of the most fearsome has historically been the red fox, which ten years ago had reduced Fire Eye Island’s population of piping plovers to only around twenty mating pairs. But twenty fifteen brought a bit of relief in the form of sarcoptic mange, a highly contagious infestation of skin mites that’s fatal for wild cannids and knocked back the Fire Island foxes significantly. As the foxes died off, the plovers thrived, but a vacuum was left at the top of the food chain, which, wouldn’t you know, it has now been filled by feral cats who are doing a better job eating plovers than the foxes ever did. Longtime listeners to this show may be able to predict that trap newter release programs have been tried in the area to very limited success. Those efforts are even less useful because trap neuter release is actually prohibited on federally protected parkland. Scientists who have been documenting the transformation over the past ten years have even been calling for the cats to be removed, but I’m not confident we’ll see a regulated cat hunt anytime soon. I’ll admit that I do have a glimmer of compassion for the feral cats. It’s on Fire Island. It’s impossible to see a piping plover chick and not want to eat it. They look like little fuzzy dumplings, complete with tooth pick legs for you to pick them up with. And remember, trap new to release does not work, because, as the old joke goes, the cats aren’t trying to have sex with the plovers to death. They’re trying to eat them over at the drone desk, A federal Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s ruling against a company seeking to use drones to recover wounded deer in Michigan. Mike Yoder, owner of Ohio based Drone Deer Recovery LLC, filed the original suit in US District Court against the Michigan Department of Natural Resources after the DNR advised him that he was violating the state’s ban on using drones in the take of wild game. Yoder argued that the ban was in fact violating his First Amendment rights, preventing him from communicating the location of a dead deer to his client. Michigan won that round when Judge Paul Maloney wrote in his twenty twenty five ruling, quote, Plaintiffs are free to track down to deer in a different manner and relay their findings. Plaintiff’s ability to relay location information is not regulated by the drone statute just flying the drone. Yoder then appealed his decision to the Federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The higher court took Yoda’s side on the speech issue, disagreeing with the lower court that using a drone and communicating about down deer had nothing to do with each other. The Court of Appeals wrote, quote, the availability of other ways of creating and sharing location information does not negate plaintiff’s First Amendment interest in using drones to do so. Translation, because a drone collects information about where dead deer is in a completely different way than blood tracking or using dogs, that distinct kind of information could be considered speech as defined in the First Amendment. That win is likely cold comfort to Yoder. However, because that appeals court went on to write, it is enough for the Michigan Department of Matter Resources to show that prohibiting the use of drones to take game furthers Michigan stated important interests. Essentially, if Michigan wants to protect fairchase by banning drones, they are within their rights to do so. Even if drone information can be called speech, Shouting fire in a crowded theater is also speech, but the government can say you just can’t do that. These might seem like technicalities, but if Yoder decides to take this case further, another court could decide that his drone speech is more important than the effect of drone recovery on fair chase. The advocacy group behind Yoder’s case, the Pacific Legal Foundation, called the Michigan dn r’s policy quote unquote government overreach, but that term is often thrown around when the government does something that someone just doesn’t like. Part of the government’s job is to protect our shared resources, which we have to remember the public at large has a hell of a track record of taking whatever the hell they want, especially if they think somebody else is going to get it first, which is how we end up with quote unquote government overreach. In a lot of circumstances, it is absolutely the right call to keep more tech out of the back country. When possible, especially tech that has so much potential for abuse. Yoder’s company requires hunters to sign a document stating that they believe a lost deer to be dead. It’s not hard to imagine hunters and other for profit companies getting very loose with those definitions. Once drones are tracking animals. Even if there are regulations in place, it would be extremely difficult for law enforcement to determine who was doing it ethically and who was bending the rules. You can imagine how it would go. I wasn’t using the drone to scout Officer. I was just looking for this deer I wounded further. Sometimes the risk of fair chase hunting is losing an animal because you took a bad shot. You might not get the meat, but the scavengers definitely will. If you want a different take on them, head over to the meadeater dot com and check out Eli Fournie’s excellent twenty twenty three article on Yoder’s suit or. Tony Peterson, a guy who before I read this seemed like an ethical person to me, comes down in favor of drone recovery. This is something that we’re going to be hearing more and more about, for sure, to me, this is an example of one person’s feeling about their high and mighty rights could lead to no more deer in the woods, or for people like me, no interest in hunting deer anymore, because everybody else thinks it’s a computer game. If you want to hunt deer with drones, you don’t even have to leave your couch. That doesn’t sound like hunting to me. Moving on to the paranormal deer desk, Texas wildlife officials have named the suspects at the center of a massive smuggling operation to illegally trans that’sport whitetail deer across the state, and one of the alleged smugglers is on the board of the Texas Deer Association. These ghost deer, as they’ve come to be called, were allegedly transported between breeding facilities in an attempt to skirt the rules designed to limit the spread of chronic wasting disease. They’re called ghost deer because the smugglers tried to make them disappear, at least in the eyes of wildlife officials. You may remember a few months ago when Texas Game wardens announced that twenty two suspects had been charged with a total of twelve hundred charges in connection to this scheme, but none of the suspects were named, which indicated that the investigation was still ongoing. Then last week, the agency revealed that the investigation had reached a possible conclusion after two additional suspects turned themselves in on felony charges. Ken Schlout, the owner of four deer breeding facilities and one release site, along with facility manager Bill Bauers, surrendered to the Travis County District Attorney’s office on charges of felony tampering with a government record. Schlout is a prominent deer breeder and had until yesterday been listed as a board member of the Texas Deer Association. They have been accused of entering false information into the Texas Wildlife Information Management System to facilitate illegal smuggling of white tail breeding deer. They also face more than one hundred misdemeanor charges related to unlawful breeder deer activities in tom Green County. You can read all the details in an article by Jordan Sillers over at the meeater dot com, but I’ll give you the spark notes. Basically, the Texas Deer Association is the advocacy arm of deer breeders in Texas. They lobby the state legislature to ease back on restrictions for breeders and allow them to more easily transport deer across the state. Slout was a board member for this organization, though his name has since been removed from the website. For his part, Slout believes this investigation is an effort to target TDA board members and others who have lobbied against Texas Parks and Wildlife on the captive deer issue. He told us they haven’t run wild deer on their ranches in nearly ten years. He’s confused as to why he was included in the investigation. Of course, Texas game wardens aren’t claiming that these twenty four suspects only smuggled wild deer. They also smuggled captive deer, and Schlouts Ranch has those in spades. Rockinness Ranch in San Angelo, Texas bills itself as a prime location for hunting, sight seeing, and premium exotics and whitetail genetics. They say they breed for big, typical deer, but the sires they brag about are anything but typical. These grotesque bruisers have been dubbed Gunslinger, Freeze Frame, high Heat, triple Crown, and max Bow. And keep in mind, they’re deer. These are not characters in the Running Man. They’re white tail deer. We’ll keep following the story as it progresses. Game wardens say this is one of the largest deer smuggling operations in Texas history, so hopefully they’ll be able to bring some of these yahoos to justice when deer breeders flout the rules for their own profit and endangers the entire white tail population and all the hunt that rely on that population to chase deer year round and eat tasty meals. Moving on to the plumbing desk. An entire lake dried up in Minnesota last week after a valve and the dam malfunction, leaving thousands of dead fish on a drying out lake bed. Big thanks to listener read Carlson for sending us this story. Alice Lake is or I guess, was a nine foot deep, twenty six acre lake northeast of the Twin Cities. It’s a popular fishing destination in Minnesota’s William O’Brien State Park, and it used to be home to bluegil black croppie, largemouth bass, northern pike, and walleye, among others. It’s a man made lake filled by groundwater, but recent rains had caused elevated lake levels. Water was beginning to overflow from the lake into the Saint Croix River, which raised erosion concerns. So park staff did what I’m sure they’ve done many times before. They opened the valve to lower the lake level. Problem was, when they went back to close the valve, it got stuck. We discovered the closure mechanism had failed and the valve was stuck open. This resulted in a near total water level draw dout. Enterprising anglers rushed to the scene and tried to save as many fish as possible. The New York Times published a photo of two fellas and waiters waste deep in the mud, scooping up fish with nets. I’m sure locals were able to harvest some fish and move others to nearby Saint Croix River, but the DNAR says that most of the fish in the lake died. The agency is responding to the issue, but it will take at least four to six weeks to fill the lake back up. After that, I anticipate it will take another several years before it becomes a decent fishery again. The good news is that Minnesota is still the land of ten thousand Lakes, so there are plenty of alternatives to choose from moving on to the legislative desk, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation has released its Wildlife Action Plan and agency officials are looking for public input. Thanks to listener Tom Levy for bringing this to my attention. Wildlife Action Plans are created by every state. These plans identify speed and habitats of concern, and then they lay out a strategy for conserving them. The idea is to be proactive about threatened species before they get placed on the endangered Species list. At that point it takes way more time and resources to address the problem. In New York, the plan identifies five hundred and seventy species of greatest conservation need, but it also removes fifty species from the previous list. Some of these animals, like the common loon or the red shouldered hawk, have recovered or stabilized, while others no longer have breeding or wintering populations in New York. New York deer hunters will also be pleased to see that, despite rumblings about reintroducing wolves to the state, the proposed plan does not prioritize reintroducing predators anytime soon. Residents have until September twenty to comment on the environmental strategies planned in the draft. Will post a link to the proposal over at the meat eater dot com forward slash col and you can send comments two and why swap twenty twenty five. You better be careful with how you type this into the Google machine. Kids and y swap twenty twenty five at DC dot NY dot gov. Just down the interstate, in Pennsylvania, state legislators are introducing bills that would allow residents to hunt big game with semi automatic rifles. Semi auto rimfire rifles are already allowed for small game, but hunters can’t bring similar firearms into the woods for deer, bear, and other large critters. One bill would allow semi automatic weapons to be used as long as a hunter does not load more than three cartridges. Another would do the same, but up that limit to six. These legislators say the proposals are meant to align with rules about hunting with semi automatic shotguns and follow pretty much every other state besides Delaware that allows semi autos in the deer woods. The Pennsylvania legislature doesn’t convene until next month, so we’ll keep track of these bills as they make their way through. Last on the list and out in the Great Stata, Idaho, the state legislature is working on a constitutional amendment that would restrict public land sales. Senator Ben Adams says he plans to propose the amendment at the beginning of the twenty twenty six session of the Idaho Legislature, which begins in January. The amendment is a fine idea, but it’s not quite as good as it could be. It doesn’t prohibit the sale of currently held state land in Idaho, which numbers about two and a half million acres. Instead, it requires all new and future lands acquired from the federal government to be placed in a trust. The land in that trust would never be sold, and unlike current state property, there would be no provision for maximum financial return on those parcels. Instead, they would be managed for multiple uses. Any revenue generated from grazing or timber harvest would go to support rural schools in communities that are surrounded by public lands. The Idaho Constitution can be amended if two thirds of both chambers of the legislature vote for a proposal, then a majority of voters must agreed to it, which would be done during the general elections in twenty twenty six. While I would have liked to have seen protections for currently held public land, I’m glad that politicians are beginning to think about ways to protect future acquisitions. Now if only the United States Congress would consider something similar about federal land, the good type of federal overreach. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write into ask cl that’s Ascal at the meteater dot com. Let me know what’s going on in your neck of the woods. You know I appreciate it. Thanks again, talk to you next week.
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