August 4, 2025 • 21 mins
This week, Cal tackles a mountain lion attack on a 4-year-old, robot rabbits, crime, and why early humans ate maggots.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan cow Calahan. Here's cap.
A four year old boy in Washington State was attacked
by a mountain lion last month and saved by the
quick actions of his father. The young boy and his
parents were hiking a popular trail in Olympic National Park
(00:31):
when the attack occurred. Officials haven't released many details, so
we don't know whether the attack was unprompted or if
the animal had been approached, but witnesses who spoke to
local media say that the big cat grabbed the child
and tried to take him away. His father, chased after
the lion, was able to rescue his son from what
would have been a pretty horrible death. The boy was
(00:53):
flown to a trauma center for treatment but has since
been released. The offending cat had been fitted with a
tracking collar, so it wasn't difficult to locate the animal
and put it down. Mountain lion attacks are rare, but
this is the second high profile attack on a child
in less than a year. Last September, a five year
old was seriously injured after being attacked by a cougar
(01:13):
in Malibu Creek State Park. The kid was playing around
his family's picnic table when the cat pounced, apparently unprovoked.
The animal dropped the child and ran up a nearby
tree when confronted by an adult member of the child's family,
and the boy was treated for non life threatening injuries.
What's scary about these attacks is that they appear to
be predatory. Grizzly bears kill people every year, but it's
(01:36):
usually a mother protecting cubs or a bear that's been
surprised or frightened. These mountain lions appear to be hunting
their victims on purpose, which is quite a bit more
unsettling for those of us who live in Cougar Country.
I guess if there's a takeaway here, it's to fight
like hell. If you find yourself or loved ones in
the paws of a lion, hopefully they'll decide you're not
worth the effort and go after some less feisty prey.
(01:59):
This week the Crime Desk, Big Snake, Tech, Moose and maggots.
But first I'm going to tell you about my week.
In my week, well you know, it's interesting. As always.
I put my fly rod together, stood on a log
on a lake and caught one rainbow in cold clear water.
Then I put the rod away. The landlocked fresh water
(02:20):
mountain lake equivalent to being perched on the bow of
a flat's boat in the moment, standing on the tumbled
ponderosa log, staring through the reflective surface of this amazing
mountain lake looking for that green back of a hunting
trout would have been completely interchangeable for the turpin snaking
along the turtle grass. Same but different. And if you
(02:43):
only knew one of these experiences, not both, you'd be happy.
Dare I say fulfilled that, Friends and neighbors is the
first time I put the damn rod together all summer,
which is hard to admit. The river and fishing and
late evening bug hatches used to be a big part
of my life. Cracked feet, permanent sunburn, big old calluses
(03:04):
on my hands from rowing all day. Somehow all that
has turned into another large consumer of time. Sound familiar.
I'm telling myself that I am banking it all up
for hunting season, gonna box out other distractions, make my
days count. Now as a good time to tell you
folks as any I'm going after brown bear in Alaska.
(03:27):
Don't believe I mentioned this yet fall Hunt go up
the end of September, come back sometime in October. This
particular trip kind of happened in a spur of the
moment cancelation hunt sort of way. It's a once in
a lifetime serious spoiled kid type of trip. Not spoiled
like for the comfort and fancy food sort of way,
(03:48):
but in the fact that it's really freaking expensive. So
I'm going to milk every moment out of this and
I have a goal to turn a big, amazing brown
bear into fire roasted, crunchy Korean barbecue tacos with kimchi.
That's my best idea right now for turning fish flavored
(04:09):
bear into a delicacy. Let me know if you have
any suggestions. Then I'm hoping to get back just in
time for the opening days of Pheasants, where I'll say
my sorries to old SNORTI kiss sorry for being gone,
little girl. The boring big game is behind me for
a while, and for right now, it's all you do,
(04:31):
what you love, what you're built for, and I'll do
my best to keep up and not miss. If you
friends and neighbors listeners out there have any big adventures
that you're gearing up for. Right in to askcl that's
Ascal at themedia dot Com. Let me know if I
can help you in anyway if you're struggling to answer
(04:52):
any questions getting prepared. All of us do a fair
amount of traveling and get ready for trips. Feel free
to use me as a resource. Moving on to the
crime desk, the host of a white tail hunting show
has made himself famous, but for all the wrong reasons.
Matt Jennings, the host of a show called The Game,
(05:14):
pled guilty last week to poaching two bucks in Kansas
in twenty twenty two. Local media reports that the thirty
five year old killed a white tail buck in the
eastern part of the state, but he didn't have a
tag for that unit, so he took the carcass over
to Oklahoma and tried to register it in the Sooner state.
Not being satisfied with violating federal law by transporting poast
game over state lines, Jennings went back to Kansas eight
(05:36):
days later and killed another buck in the northwestern part
of the state. He had the proper tags for that animal,
but since he'd already shot a buck the week prior
that second kill violated the state's one buck limit. Federal
prosecutors say that both animals were featured in episodes of
his show. Jennings paid twenty five thousand dollars in fines
and restitution for his crimes and will never be allowed
(05:58):
to hunt in Kansas ever again. He is also banned
from hunting in eight other states during his five year probation.
Of course, the real penalty will be the end of
his career as a hunting influencer. That's a joke. Hard
to say if being a hunting influencer is what forced
this dude to cross the line so egregiously multiple times,
(06:22):
literally and figuratively. Just like with any pursuit, you know,
there's folks that can do it as per the letter
of the law, and there's folks that can't and don't
want to. In fact, Jerry's kind of out on this
feller anyway. Speaking Alasia Act violations, five Mississippi men were
sentenced last month in a federal court for poaching over
(06:43):
sixty white tail deer in Illinois. This poaching ring has
likely been operating for many years, but they were convicted
of poaching deer between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two. Apparently,
these five individuals would travel north from Mississippi through Tennessee
and Kentucky and into southern Illinois. There they would identify
a target buck and kill it at night with a
(07:05):
spotlight and a rifle. They would then bring the deer
back to Mississippi, where they would harvest the meat and
mount the antler's. Federal prosecutors hit them with laciac charges
for transporting poach deer over state lines, and they paid
nearly one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in fines and restitution.
The biggest penalty was levied against fifty four year old
Lee Johnson, the ring leader of the operation. He was
(07:27):
forced to pay seventy five thousand dollars in restitution and
a ten thousand dollars fine. Here in my neck of
the Woods, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has just charged
six people for poaching bull elk and mule deer bucks
in the Bowl Mountains between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four.
These six individuals were from Washington State and Montana, and
(07:49):
they allegedly killed several large bull elk in Hunting District
five ninety without the proper permets. While they were at it,
they also killed several large mule deer bucks without any
hunting licenses at all. Eleven mounts were seized during this investigation,
and the six suspects were hit with thirty four toll
charges and thirteen warnings. The names of these alleged poachers
(08:10):
have not yet been released, which tells me more charges
could be forthcoming. Usually when a law enforcement agency doesn't
release the names of the suspects, it means the investigation
is ongoing and more poachers could be added to the case.
In Idaho, man has been banned from hunting for life
after illegally killing a bull moose and leaving it to waste.
(08:30):
Prosecutors say Raymond Black shot the trophy class bowl without
a moose tag near Wolf Lodge Saddle in Cootney County,
but when he tried to load the animal into his truck,
he got stuck in the snow. He met two legal
hunters while hiking out to get help, which is when
his real troubles began. These two hunters immediately sent something
rotten in Denmark, and they reported their interaction to the
(08:50):
Citizens Against Poaching hotline. They also recorded Black's license plate number,
so it was easy for law enforcement to track him down. Meanwhile,
sensing the jig was up, Black high tailed it out
of there as soon as he got his truck out
of the snow. Ironically, this only added to his rap sheet.
Now not only had he illegally killed a bull moose,
he'd also left it to waste. Along with the lifetime
(09:12):
hunting band, he was forced to pay twelve thousand dollars
in fines and restitution and serve three years of supervised probation.
In Idaho, all moose tags are once in a lifetime.
They're also difficult to get, even for residents. The latest
data for twenty twenty four shows that indesirable units where
more than one hundred people applied, the draw odds are
(09:33):
always less than ten percent. The moose population is doing
well in Idaho, with between ten and twelve thousand individuals,
but Black's actions still stole an animal from someone who
may have been waiting their entire life to draw a
tag and have that opportunity. Game wardens don't always have
help from other law abiding hunters. Sometimes they have to
(09:55):
catch poachers all by themselves, and a new Dear decoy
is helping them stay one step ahead of the bad guys.
Big thanks to listener Bob Nielsen for bringing this to
my attention. Thermal scopes have allowed poachers to hunt at
night without a big flashlight, but they've also reduced the
efficacy of deer decoys. We've talked about this tactic before.
Game wardens set out a deer decoy along a road
(10:16):
at night and wait for a would be poacher to
take a shot. Problem is, these decoys don't give off
a heat signature. If the poacher has a thermal optic,
they can spot the fraud right away and just keep
on driving. That's where Brian Wolfsligo comes in. Wolsligel is
a Wisconsin taxidermist who specializes in crafting the most lifelike
deer decoys for law enforcement use. According to a recent
(10:39):
report in The Wall Street Journal, his decoys wiggle their ears,
move their legs, and in some cases, poop. He uses small,
remote controlled motors to allow game wardens to control the
animal's various body parts, and he substitutes deer pellets with
brown m and m's. Most recently, he has included heating
pads and coils within the deer's body to replicate the
animal's heat signature. His next models will emit vapor to
(11:02):
look like a deer breathing on cold mornings or nights.
Wolfslegel is doing important work for law enforcement, but if
he keeps going down this road, he may one day
have to ask himself when do his deer cross the
line and become more than just robots. I'm not saying
his deer become sentient and try to take over the
world I robot style, but I wouldn't want to see
(11:24):
any kind of joint chat GPTAI situation here, although it
would make a heck of a new Terminator series. Poachers
aren't the only ones being seduced by warm, frisky decoys
these days. Pythons down in the Florida Everglades are also
being targeted with the same approach. Thanks to John Sebarse
(11:46):
for sending this one in. We have covered a whole
bunch of efforts to control the catastrophic spread of Burmese
pythons in Florida. Train sniffing dogs an annual hunting competition
with a ten thousand dollars grand prize, even unlucky pos
wearing GPS collars, but not much seems to be making
a dent. However, scientists at the University of Florida showed
promising progress over the past decade by using live rabbits
(12:10):
as python bait. Unfortunately, keeping those rabbits alive took significant
time and effort, and so you of F Professor Robert
McCleary went and developed the next best thing, a solar
power to robot bunny decoy. McCleary and his colleagues hollowed
out forty toy stuffed bunnies and outfitted them with motors
that create realistic movements, as well as heating elements that
(12:33):
stimulate body warmth. Using warmth to fool these snakes is
especially important. Pythons have several heat sensing divots around their noses.
These pits are densely packed with blood vessels that conduct
the heat of a thermal stimulus away from the area's
nerve endings, returning them to their ready state almost instantly.
Impulses from those nerves are then fed directly into the
(12:54):
visual system of the snake's brain, allowing it to construct
a real time map of the warm bodies around it. Yikes.
Not for the first time, I feel grateful to not
be a floridian possum with a fifteen foot long heat
seeking snake missile on my tail. But back to the decoys.
After the motors and heat coils are installed, the robot
(13:15):
bunnies are waterproofed and set out in front of cameras
that use AI to discern python movement from all others
slithering that goes on in the everglades. Once the camera
detection system senses a python, it then alerts a local
snake hunter to come make the arrest. Seems pretty neat.
These forty decoys are just an initial test run. If
they are successful, then they'll be replicated throughout the everglades. However,
(13:39):
if they don't bring in the desired number of pythons,
the U of F scientists plan on adding rabbits scent
to the decoys as well. Seems a lot more cost
effective to use live rabbits, but you know, I get it.
Smell does not seem to have been the major motivating
factor for some of our early ancestors. Scientists at Purdue
University have recently proposed a new and challenging explanation for
(14:05):
a long standing question about early hominid diets. Tests of
the bone tissue of ancient Neanderthals and Homo sapiens have
consistently turned up extremely high levels of nitrogen, an element
that builds up in the tissue of carnivores. The nitrogen
levels in these early people are so high that they
often beat out so called hyper carnivorous animals, the wolves
(14:26):
and big cats that eat nothing but meat in enormous quantities.
But humans and neanderthals almost definitely didn't eat that much meat.
Not only do we know they depended on plant foods,
but hominid livers also just can't process such large amounts
of protein. So what exactly is going on here? Well,
you likely enjoy your cheese and beer and coffee, right,
(14:48):
Those are all the product of fermentation, letting your food
spoil in a controlled way, and the produced Scientists theorize
that our early ancestors took it one step further from
fermentation to intentional putrification, eating meat after it rots. More specifically,
they were likely eating the nitrogen rich maggots that developed
(15:09):
on the rotting meat. The study observed human cadavers undergoing
up to two years of putrification at the University of
Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center. They tested the rotting flesh for
its nitrogen content, and then gathered the fly larvae that
appeared on the flesh and tested those larvae as well.
Sure enough, the maggots contained sky high levels of nitrogen.
If those larvae were a regular part of early diets,
(15:32):
it would easily explain the amount of nitrogen in excavated
Neanderthal and Homo sapien bone. Now you might be saying
to yourself, col there's a bunch of nitrogen in the
miracle grow I put on my lawn, but you don't
see me eating handfuls of that. It's impossible that people
would be eating spoiled meat, let alone maggots. For pete's sake,
you might say, well, you might be surprised by what
(15:53):
is possible. The Purdue team got the idea to test
the maggot nitrogen levels after reading about the dozens of
traditional cultures that regularly ate intentionally putrefying meat and the
resulting insect larvae. Early anthropological accounts are full of references
to this practice, especially in far northern cultures that stored
hunted meat for weeks, months, in even entire seasons. Using
(16:17):
the digestion of the larvae is a form of food preparation.
For example, when an early anthropologists expressed the disgust they
had about the Netslect people of Northern Canada eating the
maggots on a cariboo carcass, a Netslect hunter said, quote,
you yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots
but live cariboo meat. They taste just the same as
(16:39):
the meat and are refreshing to the mouth. There you have.
When another anthropologist complained about the smell of the rotting
meat being eaten by the Yupik of Alaska, one of
the native diners responded simply, well, we don't eat the smell.
Another true statement. Even today, you can go to the
Italian island of Sardinia and enjoy the delicacy known as
kassu mars, a local cheese which is consumed with the
(17:02):
larvae of cheese flies living in it. So if modern
humans do it, why wouldn't the Neanderthals. Although the study
calls for further experiments with the kinds of meat that
early hominids would have been eating to confirm these findings,
early indications seem promising. So next time there's a power
outage and all that venison goes bad in your freezer.
(17:24):
Turn lemons into lemonade, you know what I mean. Your
bones will be stronger for it. Speaking of game meat,
that might mess you up if you handle it wrong.
An official report has concluded that the twenty twenty three
plane crash that killed the husband of an Alaskan US
Congress representative was caused by an overloaded cargo of moose
(17:45):
meat along with a set of antlers that were attached
to the outside of the plane. The National Transit Safety
Board recently issued its review of the crash, which took
place after the pilot, Eugene Peltola, had dropped off two
hunters in Yukon Delta National Wildlfe Refuge in southwest Alaska
and was taking off with over five hundred pounds of
moose that put the plane fully one hundred and seventeen
(18:09):
pounds over its takeoff weight. The report went on to
calculate that even once the plane had burned off all
the fuel on the way to its destination, it still
would have been a whopping one hundred and eighty pounds
over its max landing weight. To make matters worse, the
moose's antlers had been attached to the right wingstrut, compromising
the aircraft's aerodynamics. Although I have seen many properly loaded
(18:32):
bush planes that have antler's last the fuselage, you need
official Federal Aviation Administration approval to do so, which the
owners of the plane had not obtained. Weather conditions at
the takeoff location were also especially rough. Summing up the
factors of the overload, the antlers, and the weather, Clint Johnson,
Alaska Region chief for the NTSB, told local station KTUU, quote,
(18:54):
if you would have been able to take one of
those items out, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.
But those things, all in combination, led to this tragic accident.
The report also found that the piper cub involved in
the crash was more than seventy years old, which is
not uncommon, and many of the repairs made to it
over the years took place before the FAA issued guideline
(19:15):
stating how those repairs should be done. The pilot, Eugene Peltola,
certainly knew his way around the area. He was the
former manager of the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge and
former Alaska director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He
was husband to former US Representative Mary Peltola, the first
Alaska Native to be elected to Congress. This finding by
(19:35):
the NTSB will add ammunition to the lawsuit filed by
Mary Peltola against the owner of the transportation company that
owned the plane. The suit alleges that the company allowed
Eugene Quote to fly excessive hours, to fly without adequate
sleep or rest, to fly under unreasonably dangerous conditions, and
to carry an external load without the required permit. Now,
(19:57):
I have had my fair share of bush plane landings
and takeoffs and the part in between where you're flying
and thinking how freaking cool this is. Occasionally I've had
to kind of close my eyes and pucker my sphincter
because my fate is not in my own hands. But
the operators of those planes got me through every time.
(20:19):
Most of these individuals are extremely by the book. Accidents
like this one are a reminder why the scale next
to the plane is an important part of the aircraft.
But I want to push back a little bit here
on the fact that this is all on the pilot. Ultimately,
it's the pilot's responsibility for sure, it is, and they
(20:40):
are going off of years of experience when they make
decisions like this, but more than once I have seen
a passenger on a plane say I want to get
out of here right now. I'll make it worth your
while if we can do this in one trip instead
of going back for the rack later, or the meat later,
(21:01):
or whatever the deal is. Heart goes out to these people,
but it takes two to tango, you know what I mean. Anyway,
that's all I got for you this week. Thank you
so much for listening. Get outside and go do something,
do better than I have. This summer season's right around
the corner. Kids stoked. Thanks a ton. I'll talk to
you next week. Remember to write in ask c A L.
(21:23):
That's askcal at themeeteater dot com. Let us know what's
going on in your neck of the woods because we
sure appreciate it. Thanks again, talk to you soon.
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan cow Calahan. Here's cap.
A four year old boy in Washington State was attacked
by a mountain lion last month and saved by the
quick actions of his father. The young boy and his
parents were hiking a popular trail in Olympic National Park
(00:31):
when the attack occurred. Officials haven't released many details, so
we don't know whether the attack was unprompted or if
the animal had been approached, but witnesses who spoke to
local media say that the big cat grabbed the child
and tried to take him away. His father, chased after
the lion, was able to rescue his son from what
would have been a pretty horrible death. The boy was
(00:53):
flown to a trauma center for treatment but has since
been released. The offending cat had been fitted with a
tracking collar, so it wasn't difficult to locate the animal
and put it down. Mountain lion attacks are rare, but
this is the second high profile attack on a child
in less than a year. Last September, a five year
old was seriously injured after being attacked by a cougar
(01:13):
in Malibu Creek State Park. The kid was playing around
his family's picnic table when the cat pounced, apparently unprovoked.
The animal dropped the child and ran up a nearby
tree when confronted by an adult member of the child's family,
and the boy was treated for non life threatening injuries.
What's scary about these attacks is that they appear to
be predatory. Grizzly bears kill people every year, but it's
(01:36):
usually a mother protecting cubs or a bear that's been
surprised or frightened. These mountain lions appear to be hunting
their victims on purpose, which is quite a bit more
unsettling for those of us who live in Cougar Country.
I guess if there's a takeaway here, it's to fight
like hell. If you find yourself or loved ones in
the paws of a lion, hopefully they'll decide you're not
worth the effort and go after some less feisty prey.
(01:59):
This week the Crime Desk, Big Snake, Tech, Moose and maggots.
But first I'm going to tell you about my week.
In my week, well you know, it's interesting. As always.
I put my fly rod together, stood on a log
on a lake and caught one rainbow in cold clear water.
Then I put the rod away. The landlocked fresh water
(02:20):
mountain lake equivalent to being perched on the bow of
a flat's boat in the moment, standing on the tumbled
ponderosa log, staring through the reflective surface of this amazing
mountain lake looking for that green back of a hunting
trout would have been completely interchangeable for the turpin snaking
along the turtle grass. Same but different. And if you
(02:43):
only knew one of these experiences, not both, you'd be happy.
Dare I say fulfilled that, Friends and neighbors is the
first time I put the damn rod together all summer,
which is hard to admit. The river and fishing and
late evening bug hatches used to be a big part
of my life. Cracked feet, permanent sunburn, big old calluses
(03:04):
on my hands from rowing all day. Somehow all that
has turned into another large consumer of time. Sound familiar.
I'm telling myself that I am banking it all up
for hunting season, gonna box out other distractions, make my
days count. Now as a good time to tell you
folks as any I'm going after brown bear in Alaska.
(03:27):
Don't believe I mentioned this yet fall Hunt go up
the end of September, come back sometime in October. This
particular trip kind of happened in a spur of the
moment cancelation hunt sort of way. It's a once in
a lifetime serious spoiled kid type of trip. Not spoiled
like for the comfort and fancy food sort of way,
(03:48):
but in the fact that it's really freaking expensive. So
I'm going to milk every moment out of this and
I have a goal to turn a big, amazing brown
bear into fire roasted, crunchy Korean barbecue tacos with kimchi.
That's my best idea right now for turning fish flavored
(04:09):
bear into a delicacy. Let me know if you have
any suggestions. Then I'm hoping to get back just in
time for the opening days of Pheasants, where I'll say
my sorries to old SNORTI kiss sorry for being gone,
little girl. The boring big game is behind me for
a while, and for right now, it's all you do,
(04:31):
what you love, what you're built for, and I'll do
my best to keep up and not miss. If you
friends and neighbors listeners out there have any big adventures
that you're gearing up for. Right in to askcl that's
Ascal at themedia dot Com. Let me know if I
can help you in anyway if you're struggling to answer
(04:52):
any questions getting prepared. All of us do a fair
amount of traveling and get ready for trips. Feel free
to use me as a resource. Moving on to the
crime desk, the host of a white tail hunting show
has made himself famous, but for all the wrong reasons.
Matt Jennings, the host of a show called The Game,
(05:14):
pled guilty last week to poaching two bucks in Kansas
in twenty twenty two. Local media reports that the thirty
five year old killed a white tail buck in the
eastern part of the state, but he didn't have a
tag for that unit, so he took the carcass over
to Oklahoma and tried to register it in the Sooner state.
Not being satisfied with violating federal law by transporting poast
game over state lines, Jennings went back to Kansas eight
(05:36):
days later and killed another buck in the northwestern part
of the state. He had the proper tags for that animal,
but since he'd already shot a buck the week prior
that second kill violated the state's one buck limit. Federal
prosecutors say that both animals were featured in episodes of
his show. Jennings paid twenty five thousand dollars in fines
and restitution for his crimes and will never be allowed
(05:58):
to hunt in Kansas ever again. He is also banned
from hunting in eight other states during his five year probation.
Of course, the real penalty will be the end of
his career as a hunting influencer. That's a joke. Hard
to say if being a hunting influencer is what forced
this dude to cross the line so egregiously multiple times,
(06:22):
literally and figuratively. Just like with any pursuit, you know,
there's folks that can do it as per the letter
of the law, and there's folks that can't and don't
want to. In fact, Jerry's kind of out on this
feller anyway. Speaking Alasia Act violations, five Mississippi men were
sentenced last month in a federal court for poaching over
(06:43):
sixty white tail deer in Illinois. This poaching ring has
likely been operating for many years, but they were convicted
of poaching deer between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two. Apparently,
these five individuals would travel north from Mississippi through Tennessee
and Kentucky and into southern Illinois. There they would identify
a target buck and kill it at night with a
(07:05):
spotlight and a rifle. They would then bring the deer
back to Mississippi, where they would harvest the meat and
mount the antler's. Federal prosecutors hit them with laciac charges
for transporting poach deer over state lines, and they paid
nearly one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in fines and restitution.
The biggest penalty was levied against fifty four year old
Lee Johnson, the ring leader of the operation. He was
(07:27):
forced to pay seventy five thousand dollars in restitution and
a ten thousand dollars fine. Here in my neck of
the Woods, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has just charged
six people for poaching bull elk and mule deer bucks
in the Bowl Mountains between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four.
These six individuals were from Washington State and Montana, and
(07:49):
they allegedly killed several large bull elk in Hunting District
five ninety without the proper permets. While they were at it,
they also killed several large mule deer bucks without any
hunting licenses at all. Eleven mounts were seized during this investigation,
and the six suspects were hit with thirty four toll
charges and thirteen warnings. The names of these alleged poachers
(08:10):
have not yet been released, which tells me more charges
could be forthcoming. Usually when a law enforcement agency doesn't
release the names of the suspects, it means the investigation
is ongoing and more poachers could be added to the case.
In Idaho, man has been banned from hunting for life
after illegally killing a bull moose and leaving it to waste.
(08:30):
Prosecutors say Raymond Black shot the trophy class bowl without
a moose tag near Wolf Lodge Saddle in Cootney County,
but when he tried to load the animal into his truck,
he got stuck in the snow. He met two legal
hunters while hiking out to get help, which is when
his real troubles began. These two hunters immediately sent something
rotten in Denmark, and they reported their interaction to the
(08:50):
Citizens Against Poaching hotline. They also recorded Black's license plate number,
so it was easy for law enforcement to track him down. Meanwhile,
sensing the jig was up, Black high tailed it out
of there as soon as he got his truck out
of the snow. Ironically, this only added to his rap sheet.
Now not only had he illegally killed a bull moose,
he'd also left it to waste. Along with the lifetime
(09:12):
hunting band, he was forced to pay twelve thousand dollars
in fines and restitution and serve three years of supervised probation.
In Idaho, all moose tags are once in a lifetime.
They're also difficult to get, even for residents. The latest
data for twenty twenty four shows that indesirable units where
more than one hundred people applied, the draw odds are
(09:33):
always less than ten percent. The moose population is doing
well in Idaho, with between ten and twelve thousand individuals,
but Black's actions still stole an animal from someone who
may have been waiting their entire life to draw a
tag and have that opportunity. Game wardens don't always have
help from other law abiding hunters. Sometimes they have to
(09:55):
catch poachers all by themselves, and a new Dear decoy
is helping them stay one step ahead of the bad guys.
Big thanks to listener Bob Nielsen for bringing this to
my attention. Thermal scopes have allowed poachers to hunt at
night without a big flashlight, but they've also reduced the
efficacy of deer decoys. We've talked about this tactic before.
Game wardens set out a deer decoy along a road
(10:16):
at night and wait for a would be poacher to
take a shot. Problem is, these decoys don't give off
a heat signature. If the poacher has a thermal optic,
they can spot the fraud right away and just keep
on driving. That's where Brian Wolfsligo comes in. Wolsligel is
a Wisconsin taxidermist who specializes in crafting the most lifelike
deer decoys for law enforcement use. According to a recent
(10:39):
report in The Wall Street Journal, his decoys wiggle their ears,
move their legs, and in some cases, poop. He uses small,
remote controlled motors to allow game wardens to control the
animal's various body parts, and he substitutes deer pellets with
brown m and m's. Most recently, he has included heating
pads and coils within the deer's body to replicate the
animal's heat signature. His next models will emit vapor to
(11:02):
look like a deer breathing on cold mornings or nights.
Wolfslegel is doing important work for law enforcement, but if
he keeps going down this road, he may one day
have to ask himself when do his deer cross the
line and become more than just robots. I'm not saying
his deer become sentient and try to take over the
world I robot style, but I wouldn't want to see
(11:24):
any kind of joint chat GPTAI situation here, although it
would make a heck of a new Terminator series. Poachers
aren't the only ones being seduced by warm, frisky decoys
these days. Pythons down in the Florida Everglades are also
being targeted with the same approach. Thanks to John Sebarse
(11:46):
for sending this one in. We have covered a whole
bunch of efforts to control the catastrophic spread of Burmese
pythons in Florida. Train sniffing dogs an annual hunting competition
with a ten thousand dollars grand prize, even unlucky pos
wearing GPS collars, but not much seems to be making
a dent. However, scientists at the University of Florida showed
promising progress over the past decade by using live rabbits
(12:10):
as python bait. Unfortunately, keeping those rabbits alive took significant
time and effort, and so you of F Professor Robert
McCleary went and developed the next best thing, a solar
power to robot bunny decoy. McCleary and his colleagues hollowed
out forty toy stuffed bunnies and outfitted them with motors
that create realistic movements, as well as heating elements that
(12:33):
stimulate body warmth. Using warmth to fool these snakes is
especially important. Pythons have several heat sensing divots around their noses.
These pits are densely packed with blood vessels that conduct
the heat of a thermal stimulus away from the area's
nerve endings, returning them to their ready state almost instantly.
Impulses from those nerves are then fed directly into the
(12:54):
visual system of the snake's brain, allowing it to construct
a real time map of the warm bodies around it. Yikes.
Not for the first time, I feel grateful to not
be a floridian possum with a fifteen foot long heat
seeking snake missile on my tail. But back to the decoys.
After the motors and heat coils are installed, the robot
(13:15):
bunnies are waterproofed and set out in front of cameras
that use AI to discern python movement from all others
slithering that goes on in the everglades. Once the camera
detection system senses a python, it then alerts a local
snake hunter to come make the arrest. Seems pretty neat.
These forty decoys are just an initial test run. If
they are successful, then they'll be replicated throughout the everglades. However,
(13:39):
if they don't bring in the desired number of pythons,
the U of F scientists plan on adding rabbits scent
to the decoys as well. Seems a lot more cost
effective to use live rabbits, but you know, I get it.
Smell does not seem to have been the major motivating
factor for some of our early ancestors. Scientists at Purdue
University have recently proposed a new and challenging explanation for
(14:05):
a long standing question about early hominid diets. Tests of
the bone tissue of ancient Neanderthals and Homo sapiens have
consistently turned up extremely high levels of nitrogen, an element
that builds up in the tissue of carnivores. The nitrogen
levels in these early people are so high that they
often beat out so called hyper carnivorous animals, the wolves
(14:26):
and big cats that eat nothing but meat in enormous quantities.
But humans and neanderthals almost definitely didn't eat that much meat.
Not only do we know they depended on plant foods,
but hominid livers also just can't process such large amounts
of protein. So what exactly is going on here? Well,
you likely enjoy your cheese and beer and coffee, right,
(14:48):
Those are all the product of fermentation, letting your food
spoil in a controlled way, and the produced Scientists theorize
that our early ancestors took it one step further from
fermentation to intentional putrification, eating meat after it rots. More specifically,
they were likely eating the nitrogen rich maggots that developed
(15:09):
on the rotting meat. The study observed human cadavers undergoing
up to two years of putrification at the University of
Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center. They tested the rotting flesh for
its nitrogen content, and then gathered the fly larvae that
appeared on the flesh and tested those larvae as well.
Sure enough, the maggots contained sky high levels of nitrogen.
If those larvae were a regular part of early diets,
(15:32):
it would easily explain the amount of nitrogen in excavated
Neanderthal and Homo sapien bone. Now you might be saying
to yourself, col there's a bunch of nitrogen in the
miracle grow I put on my lawn, but you don't
see me eating handfuls of that. It's impossible that people
would be eating spoiled meat, let alone maggots. For pete's sake,
you might say, well, you might be surprised by what
(15:53):
is possible. The Purdue team got the idea to test
the maggot nitrogen levels after reading about the dozens of
traditional cultures that regularly ate intentionally putrefying meat and the
resulting insect larvae. Early anthropological accounts are full of references
to this practice, especially in far northern cultures that stored
hunted meat for weeks, months, in even entire seasons. Using
(16:17):
the digestion of the larvae is a form of food preparation.
For example, when an early anthropologists expressed the disgust they
had about the Netslect people of Northern Canada eating the
maggots on a cariboo carcass, a Netslect hunter said, quote,
you yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots
but live cariboo meat. They taste just the same as
(16:39):
the meat and are refreshing to the mouth. There you have.
When another anthropologist complained about the smell of the rotting
meat being eaten by the Yupik of Alaska, one of
the native diners responded simply, well, we don't eat the smell.
Another true statement. Even today, you can go to the
Italian island of Sardinia and enjoy the delicacy known as
kassu mars, a local cheese which is consumed with the
(17:02):
larvae of cheese flies living in it. So if modern
humans do it, why wouldn't the Neanderthals. Although the study
calls for further experiments with the kinds of meat that
early hominids would have been eating to confirm these findings,
early indications seem promising. So next time there's a power
outage and all that venison goes bad in your freezer.
(17:24):
Turn lemons into lemonade, you know what I mean. Your
bones will be stronger for it. Speaking of game meat,
that might mess you up if you handle it wrong.
An official report has concluded that the twenty twenty three
plane crash that killed the husband of an Alaskan US
Congress representative was caused by an overloaded cargo of moose
(17:45):
meat along with a set of antlers that were attached
to the outside of the plane. The National Transit Safety
Board recently issued its review of the crash, which took
place after the pilot, Eugene Peltola, had dropped off two
hunters in Yukon Delta National Wildlfe Refuge in southwest Alaska
and was taking off with over five hundred pounds of
moose that put the plane fully one hundred and seventeen
(18:09):
pounds over its takeoff weight. The report went on to
calculate that even once the plane had burned off all
the fuel on the way to its destination, it still
would have been a whopping one hundred and eighty pounds
over its max landing weight. To make matters worse, the
moose's antlers had been attached to the right wingstrut, compromising
the aircraft's aerodynamics. Although I have seen many properly loaded
(18:32):
bush planes that have antler's last the fuselage, you need
official Federal Aviation Administration approval to do so, which the
owners of the plane had not obtained. Weather conditions at
the takeoff location were also especially rough. Summing up the
factors of the overload, the antlers, and the weather, Clint Johnson,
Alaska Region chief for the NTSB, told local station KTUU, quote,
(18:54):
if you would have been able to take one of
those items out, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.
But those things, all in combination, led to this tragic accident.
The report also found that the piper cub involved in
the crash was more than seventy years old, which is
not uncommon, and many of the repairs made to it
over the years took place before the FAA issued guideline
(19:15):
stating how those repairs should be done. The pilot, Eugene Peltola,
certainly knew his way around the area. He was the
former manager of the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge and
former Alaska director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He
was husband to former US Representative Mary Peltola, the first
Alaska Native to be elected to Congress. This finding by
(19:35):
the NTSB will add ammunition to the lawsuit filed by
Mary Peltola against the owner of the transportation company that
owned the plane. The suit alleges that the company allowed
Eugene Quote to fly excessive hours, to fly without adequate
sleep or rest, to fly under unreasonably dangerous conditions, and
to carry an external load without the required permit. Now,
(19:57):
I have had my fair share of bush plane landings
and takeoffs and the part in between where you're flying
and thinking how freaking cool this is. Occasionally I've had
to kind of close my eyes and pucker my sphincter
because my fate is not in my own hands. But
the operators of those planes got me through every time.
(20:19):
Most of these individuals are extremely by the book. Accidents
like this one are a reminder why the scale next
to the plane is an important part of the aircraft.
But I want to push back a little bit here
on the fact that this is all on the pilot. Ultimately,
it's the pilot's responsibility for sure, it is, and they
(20:40):
are going off of years of experience when they make
decisions like this, but more than once I have seen
a passenger on a plane say I want to get
out of here right now. I'll make it worth your
while if we can do this in one trip instead
of going back for the rack later, or the meat later,
(21:01):
or whatever the deal is. Heart goes out to these people,
but it takes two to tango, you know what I mean. Anyway,
that's all I got for you this week. Thank you
so much for listening. Get outside and go do something,
do better than I have. This summer season's right around
the corner. Kids stoked. Thanks a ton. I'll talk to
you next week. Remember to write in ask c A L.
(21:23):
That's askcal at themeeteater dot com. Let us know what's
going on in your neck of the woods because we
sure appreciate it. Thanks again, talk to you soon.
Host
Cal Callaghan
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