Ep. 732: Predator Management, California Style

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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(00:31):
out at first light dot com. F I R S
T L I T E dot com. Everybody joined today
by let me tell you something real quick, So just
hang tight, Devin. Just a lot of things going on.

(00:52):
I can't tell my main story, which I just told
I'm gonna tell my other stories. So, uh, you don't
have a look.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
You have kids, right, two little girls.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Dev od Od Sorry, devn Od's here from b h A.
We've met, we're like phone friends, but we haven't met
in person till now. He's the he's the Western Policy
and Conservation I am doing the intro. He's the Western
Policy and Conservation manager at back Country Hunters and Anglers.
Devon and I met when I was doing a little
article for the La Times about the black black bear

(01:23):
management in California, which we're going to speak to today
because it's sort of emblematic and indicative of things that
happen all around the country. So even if you're not
from California, she's listening. I was telling my favorite story
in the world, which I don't want to tell just
out of respect for the town, but I'll tell this
story so respect for the town. Yeah. Everything, here's a

(01:49):
weird deal though, man, like a weird like. Listen to
what happens to me last night on what was last night? Thursday? Yes, okay,
on Monday, we're gonna take our little our two little
ones to ice cream. But then we changed our mind,
and man, they had a fit, a fit.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
You still call them little ones.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
There's an older one. There'll always be the younger ones.
I can tell you call them. There's like an older one.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Little ones are like.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
The younger ones. There's a ten or twelve And the
thing I met him, I don't know what the fifteen
was doing. He's got like a girlfriend now and everything,
but the ten and twelve, what was he doing? I
don't know what he's doing. The ten and twelve. Somehow
it was like, we're gonna go to ice cream. Then

(02:41):
we renegged, which just pissed them off. I mean, it's
a bit. That's a great way to piss a kid off.
So my wife is going out with her friend at
dinner the next night, so she just then says, your
dad will take you tomorrow. So now I'm into that.
I go down there and they're like, like, when you
take a little if you don't have kids, if you

(03:01):
take kids the ice cream, you're gonna argue about, like
what all cone everybody's gonna have. And I'm going and
I make a joke like there's like the little ship
and cone, like I don't know what they call it, And
I make a joke like do you have They didn't
know I was joking, but I'm like, what do you have?

(03:22):
Just a mess of my kids? I said, what do
you have? That's like a step down from that baby coan.
They didn't get the joke. So anyhow, we agree that
we're all gonna get the fucking that they're the not
that word, We're gonna get the waffle and like so

(03:46):
by two little ones, it was just them. Yeah, they
get they get the waffle cone, and I'm like, I'll
have the same thing. They then tell me we're out. Oh,
so I now get stuck with the old kind when
I was a kid.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah, I would have bought two of those, just to
make a point that you can have whatever you want.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Check this that that's the pre story. Last night, we
go down to the ice cream place. This time it's
the two little ones. The other one was getting his
head shaved at a party, the older one, the two
younger ones, Me, my wife, my two younger ones, my
daughter's two friends, my buddy, matt Cook. We're in line.

(04:36):
Rosemary hurts you bodies, Matthew, my wife all get that cone,
the waffle cone. I'm not kidding you. I ordered. She goes,
we're out of those. I'm like, you don't say I
said I was here there night and that happened. And
my daughter's like, she thinks you're being mean. Something's going

(05:00):
on that ice cream place that I don't understand. I
need to get to the bottom of it. What I
need to do is find someone to come down later
and order that cone.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
See if they're just hiding it from you.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
There's something fishy at what's that place called Genuine Probably
it's right by the elementary school.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
They got a polaroid with your picture on there that
says no cone yee, I love it.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
It's sweet peas. Genuine Genuine's too. Like you go there,
it's tons of people that aren't even in the right
demographic to be out for ice cream.

Speaker 5 (05:36):
Yeah likes ice cream?

Speaker 1 (05:39):
No, no, no, I'm in the demo because I have children.
If you go to Genuine, it's people in their like
late twenties, early thirties lined up for ice cream. I'm like,
should you people all be lined up for a drink?

Speaker 5 (05:54):
But that goes back to what I mean. Everybody loves
ice cream.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
It's really good, and drinking culture is endangered.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
It's like if I go to yoga with my wife
and there's a like a dude there, like thirty five
whatever there by himself.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
I'm I was like, you come on, come on, I
don't think that.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Come on, let's talk straight.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Let's talk stream Demographic's an ice cream demographic is not
dude there is and like who's not in it?

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Randal? If I see Randall down getting the ice cream,
I'm gonna think, like I don't want to say what
I'm gonna think.

Speaker 4 (06:35):
Yeah, but there's also things When you look at me,
you'd be like, the guy's squarely in the ice.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Cream demographic.

Speaker 4 (06:42):
Walking around wearing basketball shoes. Yeah, it doesn't really fit
in his jeans.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
I'm not a big government guy, but I don't think
I don't think there should be like a like a
little card do you get from the government that like
says you have business at the ice cream place? And
it would be like, like, how old are you? You
should be eating a pint.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
I actually, actually, when I walk into the ice cream place,
I like to think that the people behind the counter
are thinking, good, finally somebody who knows what they want
to look me in the eye.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
They're not going to fight with the people they came
in with over the counter. They don't want to taste
of everything.

Speaker 5 (07:22):
Yeah, actually I'm the one who wants everything.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Oh yeah, my wife embarrassed me last night. She sampled
two things before she made an order, and I was
getting embarrassed by I can't stand that two samples. I
was like, I'm gonna have to ask you.

Speaker 4 (07:38):
Was the order one of those two or did she
order something different?

Speaker 1 (07:41):
That's settled. That's really embarrassing. Yeah, I was embarrassed.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
That's when you should have slipped in there and ordered yours.
You would have got a cone.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
She walked out with a waffle, right. But the funny part,
this is the main part of the story. Like at
the elementary school is right there. At the end of
the year, they wheel all the junk, all the kids leave,
They just they wheel it outside. I'm not kidding here,
like all the lost and found. When they're done, they're done,

(08:09):
like a bad breakout. So the playground, like if you want,
if you need to outfit a kid the day school ends,
go to the playground. It's all out there.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Oh, there's some nice clothes in this town, too, real
nice clothes.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
We go down there and my kids like, we're gonna
go to the playground. I'm like, nah, man, don't go
to the playground. But my wife overrode me, and so
we go down to the playground and walk in through
the open gate. There's kids all over playing and all
the clothes, and the first thing my wife lays eyes
on is our boys clothes. We retrieve three hoodies and

(08:47):
I pick up a pair of muck boots and I
know my own work. There was like a pair of
muckboots that had an L shape cutting them, and I
had sewed them and put the aprem patch. I pick
up these muck boots. I'm like, that's my work. She
doesn't even have a recollection of owning these muck boots.

(09:08):
So we walk out there and then everybody's probably thinking,
like all the other people are probably thinking, we're like
shopping off the free rack. I wanted to yell out,
like this is actually our stuff, hands off, Yeah, like
we're not just taking this is our kid, like, this
is our stuff in this playground. M m yeah. Good.
Very eventful evening, Very eventful evening. Devin o' days here

(09:35):
from Badcountry Hunters and Nangers, Western Policy and Conservation Manager
to talk about blackburs. Can we talk about blackbers outside
of California for a minute? Yeah, of course. Is this
your picture of the giant black bear?

Speaker 2 (09:45):
No, that's not me, that's my buddy Ned.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
But I'm saying you you you gave us the picture.
Oh yeah, Phil, pull that picture up. That's a nice
black bear. That's gotta make ari Ei proud. Yeah, you know,
because they might wonder if anyone ever does anything legitimate
in those packs and then there it is right there.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
I wonder how they'd react if you came into the
store and asked them if they had tips for washing
blood out of their backpack.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Uh, you know the hydrogen peroxide tip. Do you know
that someone was saying that for you folks who don't
know if if you, if you have a bloody pack
and put put hydrogen peroxide in the spray bottle anything
you got blood on? My god, does it come.

Speaker 6 (10:27):
Out that you don't want to use the heavy duty
peroxide blood hates.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, don't use like the stuff. Use the bleach of skull,
which is what percent forty five?

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, so forty or something like that.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, dude, we could do a whole show on hydrogen peroxide.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
I could have used it like that time.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Something, or do you have a skull you're cleaning?

Speaker 2 (10:47):
I gotta I couldn't find my normal pack that put
my laptop in, so I just brought my hunting pack
on the airplane. And when I got to the airport,
I noticed there's just blood all over it.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
I thought, I'm sure I was gonna get pulled to
the side. Sure, man, I'm gonna use that trick next time.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah. I got pulled to the side of their day.
And before I got pulled over, I had a big tongue,
a buffalo's tongue frozen and the guy used the term like,
we need to look at your pack, and he used
the term organic mass. So the other day in catch Can,

(11:22):
I had like a chunk of deer meat roast that
was left over, and he's like, I need to check
your pack and I said, I think there's an organic
mass in there, and he goes, you know that term.
I learned it from new people. I don't know that naturally.
Uh yeah, three percent. So if you're going to bleach
a skull, you brush on the pay the gel stuff,

(11:44):
which is like heavy duty. It's what it's what skin. Yeah,
it's what people use when they're to bleach hair. And
it also when you go look on Amazon and you're
trying to buy the really heavy duty hydrogen peroxide that'll
bleach a skull, it's you don't they have it as
is to sanitize greenhouse equipment. I don't know that either.

(12:07):
It must kill like molds and funguses and stuff on
greenhouse equipment on your backpack. This is a Yani trick.
You put hydrogen three percent hydrogen peroxide in a spray
bottle and spray it, let it sit a minute, and
turn a hose out on it. I don't know. Blood
hates hydrogen peroxide hates it. If you're on blood thinners,

(12:30):
just drink hydrogen peroxide. Save money. But here's the catches.
Someone before you do that, someone told me that it Uh,
I think it can degrade the stitching. Yeah, that's what
I was told you.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, I think like a lot of pack companies will
tell you just to use water, do like a long
cold soak, yeah, because they don't want to be responsible
for their stitching falling apart.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
A thing that I'll do when I can. I did
it there. In fact I did the other day in Alaska.
Is I'll put rocks. I'll just put some big rocks
in my backpack and throw it in the river. Yeah,
or throwing a fast flowing creek if the blood's so fresh,
and when you come back a few hours later, it's
just just the cold blood, the cold water running, cold water,

(13:20):
care free. So Devin, you're gonna do the opposite of
spot burning, Like you're like, come to my state.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, we got we got plenty of bears, so come
to your state. That's what the department is talking about too,
is figuring out how to get more people to come.
You know, how do we entice these out of state hunters,
because California, in most face, it's not exactly the the
out of state dream destination of most people on their
their wish list, unless you're trying to get that like
thirty year sheep tag.

Speaker 6 (13:47):
What's a non resident bear tag cost in California?

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Non resident bear tag is a great question. I gotta
pull that up for you. I think it's a couple
hundred bucks.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
That's not bad.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
I know, you know what. I know what the problem
is why they won't go there and they don't know
and I don't think you know, you want to know
what it is. I want to know that the primary
vegetation is poison oak. Me and Yannas have like conscious
when we're thinking about hunting in California. The number one

(14:15):
thing on our mind is like, but do I really
want to have poison oak for three months? Because we're
very we are very susceptible.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, I am too.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
Three eighty seven for a black bear tag non resident.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
I bet you in this picture if you look carefully,
everything you're looking at is poison. You gotta be rugged.
Like that's the thing that people don't think about. If
you're susceptible, you gotta be prepared to be miserable. I'm Michael,
I got I have the skin of a little baby

(14:51):
when it comes to poison. Oak Oh Kids podcast is out.
Came out on January thirty, which hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
January.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Now what am I saying? What was the other j month?
June July?

Speaker 5 (15:08):
Yeah, so in the future when you're listening to this,
episode two is out and importantly it's on its own feed,
just like last season. You can't listen to it in
the Meat Eater podcast feed. You have to please go
and listen to the subscribe Exactly how old are.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
Your daughters, Devin two and five? Have they ever listened
to the Media to Kids podcast? Just lying?

Speaker 2 (15:35):
So it's their favorite podcast? Yeah, they beg me to
listen to it every week.

Speaker 5 (15:40):
Phil's masterpiece.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Don't be being a smart ass. It's a good podcast
for kids. You should play it for.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Them, all right, you know, part of their education. I
am gonna have to get them the uh the Crayfish.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Book though, sure I'll sign it for you.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, when you when you called me talk about black
bears whatever. Last year of the year before I was
actually at a hittie pool filled with crayfish, a couple
hundred of them I got. I got a good story
there too. We had one of them actually escape, and
then we found him the next day and my wife
we had eaten all them. We boiled all the crayfish and.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
That last crafish and so them.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
We were like, you know, we had the whole neighborhood over,
which is funny too because this is San Diego, and
everyone's like, where'd you get the baby lobsters with claws?

Speaker 4 (16:25):
Yeah, mud bugs their mudbugs.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
But we had one escape and then my wife's like, well,
you know, we we got to keep him now, and
uh so he became Stowy Stowy the stowaway. He lived
in a little flower vase for a couple of weeks,
and I was like, well, this isn't cool. We got
to get him in an aquarium at least, you know,
we're gonna eat him or we're gonna give him an aquarium.
And then ended up going out catching more crayfish with
the we're doing like removals with the Forest Service where

(16:51):
they have some endangerous pecies' habitat, and did a whole
nother boil, got another one, gave him a little friend.
They made it a little baby crayfish. Then my neighbors
we had a shitty little aquarium. Then my neighbor gave
me this amazing tank, and so we had this like mansion.
And so Stowey went from you know, hot in this
little flower vase to an aquarium to a mansion. He's

(17:12):
got a white family, a bunch of kids. Then you know,
this is like the American dream.

Speaker 4 (17:16):
This is where it goes off the rails of aquaculture.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
But you know what, I wonder though him having witnessed
the carnage that he witnessed, I wonder if he still
hates you.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Oh, I mean certainly. Well, there was like like if I.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Came in here, I come in here and I kill everybody
in here in this room, but I take you and
I'm like, now I'm gonna set you up at a
sweet house and a wife. Are you like, uh, man,
this guy's great or you like this guy's a monster cause.

Speaker 6 (17:46):
He did you did kidnap him originally?

Speaker 4 (17:48):
And then if you have children, do you stare at
them and know in the back of your mind something's
gonna happen someday. I've seen it before. I don't want
to let you in on the secret. But he has
to live with that that guilt, you know that fore
knowledge of what it waits, You can't interview that crayfish.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
You just died.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
This is this is.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
It just died like three days ago. This is the
eulogy because this is like the American dream of a crayfish.
But you know, you know, things got really sour when
you know he and you know his his mate. They
got into a tizzy. She ripped off his arm and
then somehow she escaped, which blows my mind. Our babysitter

(18:30):
found the female walking across the kitchen floor, put it
back in the tank, and you know, this was too
much for Stowe. He couldn't handle it, so he killed
her and then it was just him with the kids.
And then one of the kids got revenge on him
once the kid got big enough and killed him.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Just like this is the story of.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
It really is life and death on the farm.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
But like if you guys, if if people out there,
if you hear someone say like Oedipus or the Oedipal complex,
it's that like that you'll did you want to kill
your dad and marry your mom? Oedipus didn't know he
was adopted, and someone comes to him like a soothsayer, says, hey,
heads up, you're gonna kill your dad and marry your ma.

(19:22):
He's like, to hell, I am and takes off and
goes to a new town because he thinks his parents
are the wrong people. So he shows up in the
new town, probably kills a guy, marries a lady. M's
real mind, dad, Just that's just a little bit of background.
And then doesn't he take his eyes out?

Speaker 4 (19:41):
Doesn't he take his own eyes out rather than.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Look at what he's done. That's that's a that's a
terrible story. I mean, that's a lot of ups and
downs in that story. So where are you at now?
You have just the babies?

Speaker 2 (19:53):
I mean they're not babies anymore. Now we got the
new you know, there's a there's a power struggle going on.
It's kind of you in there. There's a and we
got a bunch of fish too, except I thought the
crayfish would eat the fish, but they're just not interested.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Years ago I did something real similar. We gotta get
to the show in a minute here, but we went out.
This was a want. We went out and chopped a
huge hole in the ice in a river where we
knew that there was a lot of crayfish in the summer,
and flipped all the rock like chopped that you could

(20:29):
get in with waiters and walk around in this hole,
and we catch a ton of crayfish that are comatose under.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
The rocks, like out of it.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
The water is so cold, bring them in, put them
in a wash tub and the mint they warm up.
They're all just super energetic, like instantly had a crawfish boil.
Took one little dinker that was too small and put
it into a quane. With my roommate's little baby. He
had this crazy little white, some kind of sinking frog,

(21:00):
like a little white aquarium frog that would live at
the bottom of the aquarium. He was worried about it,
so we took the crayfishes pincers away from him and
put him in there. He gradually grows back a little
mini claw, and one day my roommate peers in there,
and here's that son of a bitch land in the

(21:20):
bobby of the aquarium, holding that dead frog.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Like you caught it the whole time. He has grown
that clawback.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Eyeball that one of these days, one of these days,
you know, the liquor. If Clay Newcomb's listen, here's a
story that has everything that Clay would like. The Kentucky
Man Kentucky man arrested for releasing a raccoon into a

(21:51):
business months after fleeing police on a mule. H only
in Kentucky. I know that Tom Murray, Kentucky. A man
from Murray can. I've spent a bunch of time there.
A man from Murray, Kentucky, was wrestled last week after
police say he released a raccoon inside of business. This

(22:13):
is the same man, just months after the same man
was arrested for attempting to evade police officers on a mule.
Why can we hear him on the show?

Speaker 5 (22:25):
I can think of a few reasons.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Radio Live.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, the guy wrote in Yeah, they're having a baby,
and they got it narrowed down to two names, Yannis
and Callahan. I mean this must be a super fan. Well,
well it's half he's half he's like Yannis because of

(22:54):
Yanna's Callahan is just coincidence because it's after Dirty Harry,
Dirty Harry. So it's like cal is like just caught
the crossfire. I'm still that anyhow, this is the guy
writing in Brad anyhow, I was telling the person I
help out add an auction in Coldwater, Michigan, that we

(23:15):
were between Yannis and Callahan's. So this this individual Brad
is explaining to someone, Hey, we're gonna name it Callahan
or Yiannis. He's talking to a gal. The gal then
informs him back to the letter. She then informed me
that she knew a Yannis and said his name is Janice.

(23:36):
Who tell us hmmm? She said he was a real
estate appraiser in Michigan who she worked with as an attorney.
A couple of things. If you meant a building inspector,
is that the same thing? No? No, if you meant
the building inspector. Jannis's dad, also named Janis, is a

(24:00):
building inspector in Michigan. But what you're overlooking is that
all Latvians are named Janus. Mm hmmm. They all are
named Giannis. So there are some hundreds of Giannis phutellos
is running around.

Speaker 5 (24:16):
So it may or may not be Yanni's dad.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
It could be wonderful.

Speaker 4 (24:21):
I think that it's he's a building inspector. This woman
calls him a realist. I feel like that's rather running around. Yeah,
I mean, there still could be too many, but I
feel like this checks out. I'm not going to disagree
with you on the point that there are too many.
Honest is very confusing, so.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Is Brad hoping we come up with an answer for
him here.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
I would name it Steve waiting for that which dude's
name Steve or dying breed man.

Speaker 4 (24:52):
I would say, just know that if you name it Giannis,
you're also naming the child Janice as well.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Well, and Siri won't know how to spell it.

Speaker 4 (25:00):
And you're gonna you're gonna condemn him to a life
of explaining how to spell his name to every uh
like like restaurant host or hostess, every d m V person.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
No one believes him anyone. If he goes into coffee
shop and he tells one person like they're like, what's
the name for your order, he'll be like, Yannis, and
then they'll be like, hi, I spell it. He'll spell
it for him, and then it goes to the next
person who yells out when their orders ready. There's no
way it's not going to be Janis. I was staying
there with Yannis one time, and we're weighing bags to
get on a charter plane and there's a guy there

(25:33):
taking everybody's weight. So he looks he's saying people's names,
and he goes Janis, and Yanna steps forward and he
goes it's Yannis and stands on the scale, and the
guy looks at Yannis and looks at the guy next
to him and says Janie one seventy two. He's like,

(25:55):
don't bullshit me, buddy, I know what your name is. Yeah,
I don't know what's name that kid Doug during uh
doubling down on something here, I was goofing on Doug
when I was when I last time I was with Doug,

(26:16):
he was telling my kids a story was he was
trying to convince my kids that you should always back in,
like your car. Apparently in the oil field they called
it first move forward. Like Doug always back no matter
how much hassle he has to go through, he always
backs in. He always claimed, like he says that his

(26:36):
dad got attacked by his own chainsaw. And Doug's telling
my kids like, if my dad hadn't backed in, he
wouldn't be alive. Even though he decks died old age,
but he would have died that day had he not
backed in, and I'm telling my kids, like listen, Doug
wants you to back in. That didn't make the difference
between Doug's dad dying or not that day, because he

(26:57):
drove down the road Doug rode in doubling down. I
do Here's Doug, I do want to crack you about
something with my dad's chainsaw story. He didn't drive himself
to the hospital. He was barely able to get to town,
so literally every second was important. Had there not been

(27:19):
an EMT in downtown kaz at that moment when he
pulled in and fell out of the truck, and had
the ambulance not been just down the road, he would
have died. Maybe we should reenact it sometime when you
are here.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
I'm not sure what that means.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Actually, when he does our meet it or sheds shoot,
he's going to take you to He's going to take
the viewer to the spot where Doug's dad was attacked
by the chainsaw. I had turned Doug onto a book,
one of the best I've read in a long time,
called The Land of Breakers. It's an old book. Holy cow,

(27:58):
is it good. It's about It's like the first it's
kind of after the long hunters. But it's like the
first farmers to begin moving into the Appalachian valleys, and
it's like the story of farmers trickling into this valley
in Appalachia and establishing corn patches. They're hunting bears all

(28:20):
the time. It's a phenomenal novel. Doug is surprised I
liked that book. He's delighted that I liked it and
says the surprise comes from the amount of personal reflections,
human condition and even romance. Wonderful book. Have you read it?

(28:41):
I haven't, I said to Doug. Because the knowledge about
trees that the author has that he then gives to
the author's very knowledge about purposes for wood. A guy
wrote in about something that I don't understand.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Yeah, Randall and I were trying to figure this out earlier.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Basically, someone has submitted a formal petition to the EPA.
It's kind of an interesting concept, but you can see
where it's going. Someone submitted a formal petition to the EPA,
which probably happens every day, but requesting that humans become

(29:22):
wildlife officially, be like, why are humans not officially considered
as wildlife? Because he the play, would hear it would
be for regulatory effects, meaning that you wouldn't be able,
like there's certain things you can't do that would be
damaging to wildlife, and you wouldn't be able to do

(29:48):
certain things to human habitats because it would be like
you'd be affecting wildlife. I gather that's the play. It's
a very interesting concept.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Is IFNA is in long enough already, Man, that's gonna
really a wrench in the system.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, I see a thousand ways this isn't gonna go
down because I know they're gonna do lethal control in
overpopulated areas, you know, I mean, like there's a lot.
It's just an interesting concept.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, I'm not sure I want to back hunting as
a management strategy.

Speaker 4 (30:16):
In it it's more like a barroom conversation than a
yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
I As a parent, especially when kids were younger, I
always tried to like over accentuate to them that we
were an animal. M M. I would be like a
lot of animals, like bears, like us humans, right. I
would always do that to sort of get them in

(30:43):
that frame of considering us as animals. But that's not
gonna fly. Uh. There's a move to how far who
knows this story well, guy says, I'll just gonae with
the guy says, because this is a fascinating topic and
it bleeds into what we are going to talk about today.

(31:03):
Reinstatement of black bear hunting in Florida. Longtime listener, first
time caller? Isn't it from Rush Limbaugh's show, longtime listener,
first time caller.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
I don't know if it's Rush specifically. I thought it
was just sort of a convention of talk radio.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
I remember limbaud have you would call in and say dittos,
and that meant all that stuff because every caller is
like a long time listen to your first time caller,
love the show, So then it would become you just
call and go like dittos and then just get to
the point. Florida has been in the process of evaluating

(31:40):
and getting public input about reinstatement of a quota black
bear hunt. It has been a wildly controversial topic and
has been gaining huge traction in the media. Lately. He's
attached the proposal from the Black Bear Commission, going on
talking about more and more bear interactions in Florida. Bear

(32:09):
interactions and bear sightings and places where they didn't historically
have them beach visitors, tourists. Uh. The other day he
took us first bear attack call two weeks ago made
national news. He says, I know the meat Eater crew
normally handle more Midwest and northern issues. That is completely untrue.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Go all over the.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Place that I think hurts unintentionally. That hurts my heart.
We talk about Florida more than any other state.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
We do.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
I'm sure they have ice cream down there.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Oh yeah, but people with kids, like dudes like Randle
down there, lock you up. I had a person Florida
one time tell me like cold, stone cold. She's probably
like twenty three, twenty four year old woman, tell me
stone cold, like she's telling me a fact. She told
me Florida is the free estate. That was just wondering

(33:11):
how you calibrate that, Like how you measure that? Yeah, man,
I this is like a little this is a little
bit Machiavelian. But like if you want, if you were
a bear hunter in Florida and you wanted to take
like a Machiavalian approach to pursuing your interests, you would
almost hope not for bear attacks. You would hope for more.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Conflict bear conflict because.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
This is what happened in New Jersey.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
It's yeah, that's what I was gonna say. It's just
like a.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Real run in New Jersey. New Jersey had historically had
bear hunting. Through poor management, bear numbers were greatly reduced.
They did a pause on bear hunting and some other moves.
They rebuilt bears to where they had the highest density
in the country, did a bear hunt. The anti hunters

(34:05):
had a shit fit. Their governor was.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
Murphy's first Murphy, Phil Murphy.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Phil Murphy campaigns on an anti bear hunting plank in
his platform. Gets elected. They shut down the bear hunt
New Jersey. First like they.

Speaker 6 (34:24):
Closed yeah state state owned land, and then he just
let the bear Management Plan expire, which essentially just outlied
all bear hunting.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
One of the things they did in New Jersey is
to just totally screw hunters too. You had to do
a check, mandatory check. They would publicize, like you would
need to pull into a rest area that was known
to the public, and they like publicly openly seal everybody's
bears so that all the protesters can stand there heckling you,

(35:00):
taking pictures of you while you check your bear. Any
other state when you go to check your bear. You
go in, talk to someone at the desk, and then
you go to a little whatever garage back room, you
meet with a biologist, They check your bear. They don't
turn it into like a public spectacle of subjecting people

(35:20):
to that kind of exposure. Murphy. Then all of a sudden,
what happens. Bear conflicts shoot through the roof so much
that Murphy comes back and says, it pains me to
say it, but I was wrong. We have to have
the bear hunt. So if you were like like I said,

(35:44):
the Machiavelian approach to bear hunting in Florida is hoping
for bear conflict because that's your clearest path. The same day,
in fact, this is kind of weird. The same day,
in the same place where the girl told me that
Florida is the free estate in the nation. That same day,
in that same place, I met a Florida Game commissioner

(36:04):
who told me he opposed the bear hunt only because
of not wanting to deal with the public blowback that
would come his way. He told me that I don't
want to say his names. He's kind of telling me
in confidentiality. He told me I didn't want to deal
with the antis, they like swayed his vote. What happened

(36:28):
on that hunt? What did they have forty eight hours? Well,
so they Randall's gonna do a little report.

Speaker 4 (36:38):
They had Florida had a black bear season from like
the thirties up until nineteen ninety four, and then it
was closed from ninety four to twenty fifteen. They reopened
a fall hunt in twenty fifteen, and they shut it
down within two days because they had they were I

(37:01):
don't think they actually went over the quota, but they
were speeding to They were killing so many that like
another day of hunting probably would have taken them well
over the quota. So they killed three hundred bears in
two days.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
You're ruining the story, Hope. You're not getting it right. Hope,
I asked you one thing to do here. Well then
you said, Randle's going to give a little account of Yeah,
but you're not Your count's not right, my understanding, your
professional research.

Speaker 4 (37:27):
I've got my research right in front of me.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
I thought it went like this that like they built
a buffer in when they close there's a forty eight
hour window, or in Florida, I think it was a
twenty four hour window. Do you have a PhD or not.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
I mean, I'm just going by what I h I do.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
I'm just going by what I.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Read waiting for that.

Speaker 6 (37:59):
Yeah, I don't think you could just close it because
you're not going to read like you have to recollection.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
I recollection is they were speeding towards the quota, yes,
and so they called it closed. But they can't immediately
close it because how are people supposed to get the
word Like, let's say you're like waiting for one to
step out. You know you got a shot, but he's
not quite clear, and they go like, hey, season's over,
but you're not looking at your phone, and then the

(38:26):
bear steps clear. You're not in violation. Well they did.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
That makes sense to me. That's how we run our
unlimited hunts here. But they shut down Central and East
Panhandle regions after the first day on Saturday, they said, but.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
But what there was a twenty four hour window. They
were speeding toward it. But by the end of the
twenty four hours they had overshot it, and then everybody
had a conniption. The antis had a conniption. Oh, I see.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
Now in the Panhandle they did go into Sunday and
killed triple the quota, and so they killed The overall
quota was three twenty, and they shut it down on
Sunday night with two hundred and ninety five bears killed.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
But then by the time it wrapped, what was it? Jeez?

Speaker 4 (39:33):
See this is the real uh issue with hastily assembled
research here, actual harvest.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Three h four and the quota was what painting three twenty.

Speaker 4 (39:48):
Well for the overall state, the quota was was three twenty,
but they the one the area where they met the
quota on the first day they'd ended up that they went,
they tripped the quota, and so I think they just
shut the whole thing down before the rest of the state,
that's generally speaking. But yeah, they killed three hundred bears
in two days. Thirty eight of them were soals with cubs,

(40:13):
and uh they haven't had a hunt since then.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Because it was treated in the you know, with all
due respect, I didn't give Random much time. Do you
notice like this group of there's like a fan group
about Randall. Yes, I wonder what they're thinking right now.

Speaker 5 (40:29):
Well, I think their support they're all those dedicated and
loyal randomals there.

Speaker 4 (40:36):
I think they understand the constraints of what I was
asked to do here.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
They're reasonable, but.

Speaker 4 (40:47):
Yeah, I mean I've pieced it together.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
I feel like I thought you did well.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
I want to know more stories. Ted Nugent bought a
Florida Bear tag. Good for him.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
Fifteen.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
Uh, we were gonna we don't have time anymore. We
were gonna spend a bunch of time goofing on this
thing in California where they got an orphan bear cub
and they're trying and they're raising it up, and it's
a bunch of like furries who are all dressed as
black bears, like like that's the problem to not have

(41:23):
it to that, Like that's the problem. That's the way
to keep it from not acclimating to people. Yeah, those
bears are doomed, like like the bear is gonna like
get out and be like, ah, I'm just another wild bear. Hey,
those there's some things, but.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
They're not like the bears I'm used to, right.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Talking about that. That would have been funny had a
goofed on that for a long time. We're not gonna,
all right, the story of the California Black where it's
taking us a long time to get here.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Devin usually does.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
I see you're here an a listener, longtime listeners. It
is just a couple of quick points on that. We
thought about killing that whole part of the show. But
we're not gonna good. But what I am gonna do
is I'm looking to in the near future split the

(42:26):
shows and just do interviews and just do this is
something we've considered for a long time, very clean interviews,
so you'd be like on as a clean interview and
then a different thing which is just talking about dumb stuff.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
So audience, feel free to let us know your thoughts
on that.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Thinking about doing that, I'm against it. It's part of
my professional development.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
It might be a little too serious. I don't know.
I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Nineteen forty eight, did you supply this timeline? You know
this stuff inside out? In nineteen forty eight, black bears
get classified as a game animal in California? Like, what
does that mean? Right? What does that mean for people
to hear that they're classified as a game animal.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
They're regulated by the Department Official Wildlife.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
So prior to that, it was like have at them.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Prior to that, we're just killing grizzlies until you extrapaid
them and you know, people are just you know, kind
of run around hunting. I mean, we had our commission
was established prior to that, but I don't think they
were formally classified as a game until god.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
So that's kind of the state at which the you know,
A way to think about that too, is that if
sand hill cranes, like this is a pet, little pet
subject of mind that I'm interested in. If my home
state of Michigan were to enact a sand hill crane season,
which they should, it would require them declaring it. It

(43:57):
would require them doing this. It's classified as one thing now,
which makes it not like subject to being listed with
a season. The first step is to go, like we
hereby declare the sandhill crane to be a game animal,
and that's like part of the pathway.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
And they usually triggers like a management plan too, I know,
like we'll go on tangents. But you know, recently there's
a proposal in California to classify coyotes as a game animal,
and so that would trigger a management plan and everyone's like,
you know, I don't think that's going anywhere, hopefully not,
but that's part of the process.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Right, And then that's coming from people who don't want that.
That's coming from people that don't want them to be
a game animal. They want to be able to curb, right,
is to be like that. Yeah that it won't be
year round, unlimited whatever.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (44:55):
Classifyment them as a game animal allows you to protect them.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
It's not like, oh, here's an open season. It's a
game animal that.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yeah, it's not dudes that hate coyotes doing that. Students
love kyotes. Correct in that case, Okay, we're gonna jump up.
We're gonna jump up to nineteen eighty where we have
a sort of black bear benchmark. This is all deep history.
Hit me with, like, in nineteen eighty, what was the

(45:23):
status so Reagan? Reagan comes in right, eighty Well, he
was elected in eighty.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
And then took office in January eighty one.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Okay, so just for you people to remember this, it's carter.
There's that PhD. Reagan on his carter on his way out.
Regular going on in California. Hit me with what what's
the status of black bears in California?

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Nineteen eighty So nineteen eighty, I think they've got the
population around ten to fifteen thousand bears. That's the estimate
started getting a little bit more restrictive as far as
management goes. So that's when they took prohibited trapping, no
killing cows, no killing of cubs and sows, and then

(46:15):
they reduced the bag limit from two to one.

Speaker 4 (46:18):
And if I can, if I can jump in, because
I didn't know what ten to fifteen thousand bears meant.
I'm looking here that Montana has between thirteen thousand and
seventeen thousand black bears. Yeah, so yeah, so like that's
a fairly robust population.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Not like it is now. And wait, yeah, just wait,
not like it is now, and counting bears I think
has gotten a little more refined. Yeah, I think it
used to be like a little bit tougher to count
bears back in those days. But I mean it's a guideline, right, right, right,
it's a general sense. But of course, if you're saying
ten to fifteen thousand, you're opening yourself up to a

(46:56):
wide gap, right, there's a lot of numbers right between.

Speaker 4 (46:59):
Still like yeah, but still it's it's in the it's
in the vicinity of where like what we think of
as black bear numbers in Montana, where we obviously don't
have a shortage, was Reagan the Gipper or the Kipper,
the Gipper gipper uh as much as he is like
celebrated among traditional concert like, as much as he has

(47:19):
celebrated among like pre Trump Republicans, the old kind of
Republicans from a couple of years ago, he wound up
not being the Hunter's best friend when it came to
black Bear management.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Isn't that correct? Like, wasn't it? Didn't Reagan sign.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
He was about I was Mountain Lions.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
I don't signed on mountains. Okay, he signed the band
on mount Dogs for Mountain Lions, right.

Speaker 4 (47:43):
He also signed the band on Uh Nope and carry
in California?

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Did he? Because?

Speaker 4 (47:52):
I mean, basically so the Black Panthers couldn't.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
So you had to start wearing your pistol in your pants,
not out of your pants. You had to start hiding
it in your fans instead of explan.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
Reagan's a big Hollywood guy, and I always full of
all sorts of contradictions.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
Okay, we're gonna, this is gonna We're gonna start narrowing
in on much more, just for you listeners. We're just
laying little groundwork here. We're just laying some background before
we start getting into like how bear management works in
our most populous state, and how bear management white work
in a state near you coming soon nineteen ninety eight,

(48:27):
So now we're getting closer. I'm a young buck. I'm
kind of an older buck, six years out of high school.
Go on. Nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
That was when the which is presidentially, that was when
the management plan, the previous management plan was established, and
so that was the framework that we operated on in
California just up until this year when we updated the
new management plan.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah. So nineteen ninety eight, they're like, here's how we're
gonna handle bears, and then twenty some years goes by
and it's how we're managing bears.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Correct, And in ninety eight the population had.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
At it increased, Yeah, it increased. And all this data
is just coming from hunter harvest. So they're using you know,
age sex ratio and just hunter harvest from premolars. That's it.
I mean, they're not doing like a ton of they
don't have the current integrated population model that we have
now that gives you a much more accurate representation of.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
So they're able to determine, they're able to make a stab.
Back in nineteen ninety eight, they're able to make a
stab how many bears are there based strictly on what
they're seeing hunters bring in.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
I'm sure there's some scientific stuff, but that is the
core of the model. It's just hunter harvest.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Data, okay. And in ninety eight, so again that that
population estimate. In nineteen eighty, we're gonna get into some
wild numbers now, but coming up here in eighty ten
to fifteen thousand bears estimated. Jump ahead almost twenty years,
there's the estimate seventeen to twenty three thousand bears. Notably,

(50:08):
the plan indicated an increase in the bear population and
documented an expansion of black bears along the central coast
in southern California. So bears moving into new places, right.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
And that's because historically they were grizzlies. And you know,
that's a good point. Grizzlies are extra paid, and black
bears are now like filling the void and they're like, oh, hey,
there's nothing killing us down here.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Right. No, that's fair. Take Yeah, that's that's funny. How
slow some of that stuff takes place, right that you're
still seeing adjustments, do you know, I mean, like even
today you're still you're probably seeing adjustments from extirpations of
wolves in the early two thousands or not the early
to the one I saying in the early twentieth century,

(50:50):
you're still seeing wildlife for just but it takes like
one hundred years, right for things that get used, or
how long it takes wildlife to get used to people.
It takes generations of mountain lions, generations of bears to
get like used to people and figure it out and
raise their offspring to be like no, no, no, no, like

(51:13):
you can do this, but you can't do that. You
gotta like when you get to a road, here's how
I like to do it, do you know what I mean?
And they like gradually learned. They're like, oh no, no, no,
you can like totally go into a neighborhood man and
trash cans, but not that neighborhood, like not that neighborhood. Yeah,

(51:34):
they like they figure it out somehow, you know, Uh okay,
twenty twelve. This is when this is when the story
starts getting kind of juicy and interesting. So hit this
with twenty twelve.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
So up until this point, you could hunt dog, you
can hunt bears with dogs, and that was you know,
we were hitting the quota every once in a while, right,
like pretty regularly that quote.

Speaker 6 (51:56):
Can I stop you for a second, before this, like
was there spring and fall?

Speaker 3 (52:00):
Was there baiting?

Speaker 2 (52:01):
No, none of that. All that was back in like
I think around the eighties a lot of that stuff
got They went pretty good. It's away so we had dogs,
but no baiting, no spring season, just one tech and
we're hitting the quota. You know, not every year, but
around that like seventeen hundred bears where with.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Fall hunting with dogs hitting the quota of how many
bears seventeen hundred okay out of an estimated say.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
They didn't change that by like a hundred or so,
so I think it maybe like was sixteen hundred and
went up to seventeen hundred. But it's been it's hovered
around there, hasn't changed dramatically over time.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
And they got this quote and periodically people periodically hunters
are like capping it and hitting a close season yep,
primarily with the use of hounds.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah, it was instrumental to people being successful for.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Sure, Okay. And then twenty twelve, what goes on and
how does that happen?

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Well, the legislature, you know that story of legislature gets involved,
there's an effort to ban hunting with dogs, they're successful,
and immediately following that the harvest rate drops significantly, so
we don't hit the quota. After that legislative session, after
that bill has passed, we do not hit the quota.

(53:18):
Until today, we still haven't hit the quota. And that
is really like, why everything got so sideways with the
petition from the Humane Society and all the efforts to
ban bear hunting is because the population model, when you
just take it strictly on hunter harvest data, everyone went, oh, no,

(53:39):
the bear population is collapsing. Look they're not killing as
many bears. Look they're only killing half as many bears.
There must be half as many bears on the landscape.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
That's the great irony and perversity in this story. That
gets to me is like the same people that push
to end dog hunting for bears then trumpet the reduction
in harvest as a way of showing that bear numbers
are collapsing. When you know that, they know you know that,
they know what happened.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
But it's an argument people will buy.

Speaker 6 (54:10):
If they don't think about it, they don't understand it.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
You know, if you wanted to see bear numbers in
California really collapse, you'd end all bear hunting, Like no
one's checking a bear anymore, there's none left, you know.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Interesting in the new management plan, they actually have an
interesting little snippet that says that in some areas where
there isn't bear hunting, you know, where bear hunting's not allowed,
you get higher rates of like infanticide and like starvation
and intercompetition because there's just so many bears that like
some of the younger bears aren't making it on their

(54:48):
mortality rate increases. I thought that was kind of fascinating.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Do you have some of those stats and hear about
like black bear predation on mule deer and stuff.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah, yeah, there's some crazy ones. So that new management plan,
you know, I think it was I think they put
a couple of million dollars like into all the work
that went into that. They built out an entirely new
integrated population model which utilizes hunter harvest data. But it
also they collared a bunch of bears. They have a
bunch of hair snares, they have a bunch of camera

(55:20):
traps and data that's all building out this plan there.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
To give you much more robust picture what's going on. Yeah,
and regionally specific too.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
But you know some of those crazy stats that they
include in that they did a study on mountain lions
and kleptoparasitism up in northwest California.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Explain that term.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
So that's where you have a mountain lion that typically,
let's say, kills a blacktail a week out there, and
there are so many black bears that black bears are opportunistic.
They you know, smell a dead deer, They're like, oh, breakfast,
So they come in, push the mountain lion off the kill.
And of all the mountain lions that they had collared

(55:57):
and were studying, I think only one of them was
willing to defend her her kills. All the rest of
them were like, it's not worth it. I'm not fighting
this bear. So then the mountain lions go out and
kill another deer.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Yeah, because wasn't it. The over fifty percent of the
deer that mountain lions killed were stolen from them by
black bears.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
They ended up killing six times the normal amount of
deer that they would because of kleptoparasitism. Oh man, So
I mean the whole coming back to spot burning, you know,
if you're a deer hunter, Yeah, we want a lot
more people to kill bears. And in that region where
they did that study, it's the presumed to be from
the datas the densest concentration of black bears in the world. No,

(56:43):
in the world four bears, over four bears per square
miles and had a lot of poison oak though.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
That's an overlooked thing. That's why, you know, klepto parasitism.
You could do a study on that. Like if I'm
in my kitchen with my kids and I make a
case DIA, they'd be like this individual ones that making
four times as many cases that's normally what it made
because of clefti perisity. That's pretty fascinating that they had

(57:17):
always met the quota. Then when you banned hound hunting,
so from twenty twelve to twenty twenty one, with the
band of hound hunting, the quota never gets met. So
then you just you've taken away people's primary way of
getting you take away one of the most effective ways
to get bears, and then you have it that you're
just gonna have more bears, more bears, more bears, more
bears because they're not even able to hit the number

(57:40):
that they've regarded to be a very safe number anyway,
very safe.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
I mean that's like the harvest rates in California are
well below what would be considered the threshold for sustainable.
They estimated about fifteen percent take would be like a
sustainable level for the population in California, at least recently.
We're not over five percent for the entire state, five

(58:07):
percent for more than one zone, and three percent for
the entire state. So, I mean, the harvest rates are
incredibly low, and there's some estimates that say you can
go up to twenty percent. I think Pennsylvania and a
couple other states have even higher harvest rates and they
have no issues.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Because they got styles with a lot of food and
they're dropping three cluck cubs, four cubs. Whatever. You see videos,
you know in the East. You know, some bear goes
across the world and five cubs come running after it, all, right,
stuff that you just don't see it round here.

Speaker 6 (58:35):
When those quotas are when they stopped meeting those quotas,
did was there a correlation between an increase and bear
conflict and an increase in the number of bears that
were getting what they like to say euthanized, but you know,
just shot by management officials whatever.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Yeah, bear conflict generally from that time period up until
today has kind of steadily increased, like human bear conflict,
and the department actually prior to the release of the
management plan, they updated their sort of depredation strategy and
their human bear conflict strategy, and after that there's been

(59:14):
a lot less euthanasia of bears, but a lot more
conflict as well. So it's just a little bit more
difficult for the department to go in there and approve
for a bear to get.

Speaker 6 (59:27):
Taken because of like social pressure or pretty much.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Yeah, I mean it follows what the depredation strategy is
for mountain lions, which is, you know previously there is
you know, procedures, but you could kind of I think
my understanding is that wardens could make you know, a determination,
like it's kind of on the fly, like, yes, this
is a problem bear, we need to like go in
and take care of this.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Now.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
There needs to be you know, a lot that there
needs to be a record of documentation of attempts to
haze the bear. You need to have a number of
staf that go through before that depredation tag is issued
and before the department will consider actually going in.

Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
Interesting, I have a question about not hitting that quota.
Is that is the success rate for black bear hunters
and cal obviously, like the success rate goes down when
they do away with dogs, right and you're just doing
spot in.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Stall drop fifty or no, sorry not the success rate
harvest drop fifty percent.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
Yeah, so success but yeah, I mean, hound hunting has
is higher efficacy. So I'm wondering, like, in the time
that the quota hasn't been met, in the time that
the quota has not been met, are success rates among
hunters on par with fall bear non hound seasons and
other states? Like is it a question of there's not

(01:00:48):
enough people buying bear tags?

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
Or is a question that success rates are much lower
in California compared to a similar season in say Washington.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Minunderstanding is it there like some of the lowest of
the states that have bears, And I think part of
that is cultural. I think in California people, I mean
there's like something like twenty five thousand bear tags that
get bought every year. It's a good amount of revenue
for the department. But there's only about a thousand to
thirteen hundred bears that are actually getting harvested every year.

(01:01:20):
And I think a lot of that is cultural and
it's just like it's.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Smart and dope surfing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's my problem. But it's people
that are going deer hunting and are just buying a
bear tag opportunity. It's opportunistic and you know, if if
you don't run into one, all right whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
It's like me and my wolf tag, yeah, oh maybe
carry Yeah, I hate to get caught without it, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Yeah exactly. And it's not you know, a super expensive tag.
So it's people just kind of buy one and they
get into a bear great. But that I think skews
some of the data too, of like how much are
hunter's really trying and how does that success ratio factory?

Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
Yeah, I guess that that was that was sort of
rather than how many people are buying tags, it's like
how many people are actually hunting them. And it sounds
like that's where the sort of.

Speaker 6 (01:02:08):
Yeah you probably lost a ton of hunters one sounds
went away like people are like, well, I'm not gonna yeah,
I'm not gonna hunt them a different way.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
In twenty twenty one, they put forth they Humane Society. Right, yep,
do we need to once again explain the Humane Society
there's hs US. I answered my own question. If you're
sitting there and you're getting you're at you're buying something,

(01:02:41):
and there's like a little round up thing, do you
want to round up for the Humane Society? Right, you're thinking, oh,
it's the local puppies. Like HSUS is an anti hunting organization.
You can have a local Humane Society shelter, but HSUS

(01:03:06):
is an anti hunting organization. There's tons of confusion about
this that people have the difference between the Humane Society
writ large like as a big umbrella, and then like
Humane Society shelters don't do anything to ever help HSUS.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Ever, I had a question too, because I was having
this debate just two days ago in California, and I'm
curious for you guys if you know the answer to this.
If it's outside of California, but in California, the Humane
Society has police powers where they can actually write you
a ticket and it's enforceable as if it were a

(01:03:43):
police officer, and if you like run from them, it's
like you're running from the cops.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
That can't be true.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
They can write you a ticket, yell night your dog
pretty much for having your dog on off leash at
the beach. No, one undred percent. I've seen it happen
and it blew my mind. And so I did a
bunch of research and I was like, is this just
California where they have this police power or is it elsewhere?
Because it's it's definitely problematic.

Speaker 6 (01:04:08):
Getting a lot of ticks.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
They got all worked out about the National Guard while
they got the HSUS run around right in ticket.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
Here's here's the Journal article from nineteen ninety eight and
the uh what the proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference
And the title of the paper is Humane Society, Good
guys or Gestapo.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Oh, very provocative. That is a great title. I'm jealous
of that.

Speaker 4 (01:04:35):
Toilet, but it does it does sound like yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:04:39):
Societies are private organizations that have no inherent power, but
drive all their powers and authority to enforce animal laws
from the state. As in most states, in California, the
counties can choose to operate their own animal control services
or to hire the society to perform animal control services
for the county, and they can serve search warrants. At

(01:05:00):
the time of this they can serve search warrants. They
can carry firearms and may even use reasonable force and
deadly force to prevent the perpetration of any act of cruelty.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Upon an animal deadly force. So I guess they're like
kind of put your dog on a leash, like a.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
County, a county that has to provide animal control services
can sort of rent to cop the Humane Society.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
And we're talking about the other day with our camera
guy Rick Smith. He was working on this dog, this
documentary about dogs in Mexico, street dogs, and he's talking
about like he's like, psychologically a street dog in Mexico
is a way healthier dog. Psychologically, they wake up, they

(01:05:47):
hang out with our dogs. They're in a pack form.
People look at him like, oh, that dog has an
infected eye, and they think the dogs hate in life.
But he's like, they have total autonomy, they have dynamics.
They hang out with the dogs they want to hang
out with. They travel where they want. And we're talking
about this concept that Americans have people around the world,

(01:06:09):
but like you take a dog, you remove its or
reproductive organs. You lock it in the house all day
and you act like you're doing the dog a favor.
And I think that all those dogs have what's that
syndrome when you.

Speaker 4 (01:06:28):
Get caught Stockholm all dogs have.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
I think dogs are very susceptible to Stockholm syndrome, and
they empathize with their captors. I think that they're like
a highly susceptible species. And that's why when you come
home and your dog's happy, your dog has Stockholm syndrome.
He has come to empathize with his captor.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
You ever seen the way dogs in Mexico will try
to attack a car, like because they're got huts. It's
it's their only natural predator, Like an urban dog, an
urban pack of dogs, I swear there's a pecking order
and great point, the biggest one will go after like cars,
and they'll come in and they'll try to bite the wheels.

(01:07:14):
Natural predator and they're like showing their dominance. It's it's
a wild thing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
I was.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
I did a study Broaden song point Man, and I
was on a skateboard, and if you're on a skateboard,
you'll get like twenty stray dogs that will just come
in like they're they're trying to kill you, and then
second you hop off the board, they're like.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Yeah, that's great. Hey cats, I got signed out of
my thing.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
Oh that you're looking for videos of dogs chasing cars.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
No, but cats are remarkably less susceptible to Stockholm syndrome.
But dogs, for whatever reason, weirdly are like highly susceptible
to empathizing with their captors people that restrain them. Don't
let them do what they want to do, don't let
them hang out with who they want to hang out with.

(01:08:03):
Make them eat what they want them to eat when
they want them to eat it. No autonomy, no autonomy,
Like you get to go to the yard, it's like prison.
You could say that it's the same thing. Let them
out in the yard, Let the prisoners out in the yard.
I love that this is your new crusade.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
I hope you chase this.

Speaker 6 (01:08:25):
Yeah, but you'd have to like cause you could say
say the same thing about horses.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
I don't know about that. Well, sure, let me think
about it for a minute. I want to get back
to Tom the Bear Protection Act. Here's a move where
the HSUS correct HSUS comes out and says, hey, I
got an idea, how about you can't hunt bears at

(01:08:52):
all anymore in California.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
SB two fifty two, as a Senator Wieners bill.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Okay, what happens with the Bear Protection Act?

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
It got squashed. There was a big uprising from a
lot of different organizations, and it got pulled back very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Okah, that's twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two. There's a
different approach made.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
Through the commission. Plain this now, the Humane Society filed
a petition to the Fishing Game Commission, which honestly, you
know HSUS, HSUS respectfully, Like that is the process, right,
the legislature had no business taking that on, and so
at least they're going through the proper channel now, right,
the commission that they failed in the legislature.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
So like people complain about ballot biology or whatever, but
this is like, hey, okay, we'll play by the rules,
we'll go to the commission. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
So they they bring forward this petition and the the
whole argument is based off of this population model and
the collapse of bears. So they're saying, according to their science,
they're saying and there's only ten thousand bears left in
California and this is a you know, we need a
moratorium on bear hunting until we can update the management

(01:10:08):
plan and until we have a better population model so
that we can And they're citing, you know, mega fires
and climate change, this is causing a catastrophic drop in
the bear population.

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):
And they're going back to that like evidence but to
climb and that's what.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Yeah, everything is built around that hunter harvest model, which
is when you look, when you break down the science,
I mean, it's not it's not a solid argument at all.
It doesn't take an expert to look at that and
go okay, well this doesn't you know, this clearly doesn't
really you know, pass the smell test here.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
And it being twenty twenty two, they just throw in
climate change for a zinger.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
And we'd had some huge fires in California, massive fires, right,
and so I think that's that was the topic of
the time, right, It is like, you know, what could
these giant fires be doing to our bear populations and
what are the impacts? And you know, that's something I
think a lot of people are genuinely curious about. And
we actually used a after money and funded a study

(01:11:03):
on pre and post fire population status of black bears
in California in last National Park, just because at this time,
you know, we're saying, okay, we'll come in society like
if if you want to talk about this, well, let's
put your money into your mouth is let's let's fund
some research, right, let's get to the answer. And so,
as a part of like BHA and wanting to be

(01:11:24):
an organization that stands for science based management and wildlife,
we had this opportunity from one of the old carnivore
biologists in the state, who's a great guy, came out
to like one of our bear camps and talk to
people about bear hunting. He mentioned this study and so
we put some money towards it and it's ongoing. But
you know, I think this is like where we want
to be as hunters, like, you know, making sure that

(01:11:44):
we have good data and good science.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
And that's look. But I would think, just just intuitively,
I would think that the that the fire outside of
mega fires, I would think that the fires are basically
generating more more and more black hair habitat.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
That's this I'm shuting just.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Successional successional vegetation. So it might it's cooked for a
couple of years, but then it goes through a very
productive bunch of years with a lot of berry production. Yep,
through the successional process. So you're right that you'd like
if you have what's a big an acreage, what's a
big fire in California and acreage, I mean, I mean

(01:12:25):
tens of thousands of acres, hundreds of thousands. Yeah, so
you do when you I mean, like, you can't deny
it if you go into a place and you burn
one hundred thousand acres of ground and a catastrophic wildfire,
that is one hundred thousand acres of ground that for
a period of time is not going to be used
by black bears for the most part, but then it'll

(01:12:46):
become a patch of ground that is very well used
by black bears for a pretty long period of time.
But I could see that, like I could kind of
see the argument, but I kind of don't see the argument.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
And I think there's it's one of those examples also
where like do you have can the bears move somewhere else?

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Is their habitat for them to move into or not?
And I think even following like some of the especially
like load to mid severity fires, I think bears probably
move in like right after the fire too. Maybe the
habitat and value isn't as good, but they're not. It's
not like it's gone forever. As my understanding, right, there's
going to be some bears that come right back in.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
You know, if anyone's listening that knows about this, I'd
love to know this answer. Has anyone ever had the
opportunity to look at collared black bears, collared mountain lions
and see how they behave with a fire? How far
ahead of the fire are they? Do you ever get
mortality on collared stuff for getting caught in fires? Like

(01:13:46):
I'd love to understand that. Like when you watch a
giant fire cooking across the mountainside. I always say to
my kids, I'm like, like, can you imagine how many
pine squirrels died in that thing? They're not getting you know,
I mean, yeah, you're cooking thousands and thousands and thousands
of pine squirrels, But like, what are bears doing? You know?

(01:14:10):
Some of them, presumably the guy get burned up. But
I wonder like when they move, like how well do
they get it? How good are they going in the
right direction? They'd be fascinating if you could ever have
a good sample size of like what is it? At
what point did it start to shift? It's you know,
what point did it demonstrate any kind of awareness? I
would love to see some of that if it's out there.

(01:14:34):
A couple of years ago you could have gotten it
funded as climate change research, but now you won't. You
have to think of a different thing, think of a
different buzzword to get your to get your research moneuent.
At the same time that they're saying ten thousand bears
using the hunter harvest data, the California Department is there

(01:15:01):
saying we think we got twenty to thirty thousand. This
is in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
And that's their number they'd stuck with for a while,
and there'd been some studies that had pushed that up
to thirty five, but generally speaking in the documents that
they'd had out there, they said, you know, we're think
it's around twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
To thirty c. That petition doesn't go anywhere, right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
I mean it, it stuck around for a little while.
It was a big, a big deal right there. All
the anti hunters came out, all the hunters came out.
We actually put together a huge just all the available
literature and science that we could. One of our former
board members was a black bear biologist in California, so
just like the perfect person to compile all this evidence.

(01:15:44):
And what came of the petition was it was ultimately rejected,
but it led to it lit a fire under the
department to update their black bear management plan, which was
something that the Hunting in Conservation Coalition in California, something
that BHA participates in. Prior to all this had as
one of the top priorities is like, we need a

(01:16:05):
new management plan because previously, when the management plan gets outdated,
anti hunters will come in and say, you don't have
good science, we can't hunt it. And so we knew
that was like square one. Having a defensible position is
having good good science.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Because they'll use it against you and be like, you
have an updated your management plan since nineteen ninety eight. Correct,
you have no idea what's going on out there? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
So they start the process of doing the new management
plan and it goes up for like public opinion public comment.
Was your general vibe on the proposed management plan or
your general take on it?

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
A general take was it was ambitious because the director
said they were going to do it in a year,
and everyone went like, all you could tell all the
scientists and the department staff are like, did he say
a year, because.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
I mean, we will do anything fast.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
The Sheep plan just wrapped up and that that's been
going on for over a decade. Know, these things take
a long time, and they I mean credit to the department.
They got it done in a couple of years. But
they got a draft out in about a year and
then followed up with the final you know, just this year.
And you know, generally speaking, there's a lot of information

(01:17:16):
in there, but there's a lot of good data, Like
some of those nuggets that I pulled out about klepto
parasitism they talk.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
I read like I rarely read those whole things. I
read that whole damn thing. It was. I thought it
was like, I mean, I get huge credit to whoever
put it together. Yeah, I mean it was phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
There's some really good research to win to that. And
just to back up a tiny bit too, our commission, Like,
I got to give a lot of credit to them
because they really pushed back against this whole notion that
just because hunters are the minority in the state that
we should just ban bear hunting. And so the commission
really like came out in favor of black bear hunting,

(01:17:54):
in favor of hunters, but with the caveat of like
let's get let's get all the data and research that
we can to make an informed decision.

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):
Yeah, I think it was like what I got from
when I read it was like a number of recognitions,
like there's a sort of recognition that those shifting social
values in the state. There's a recognition that there are
a ton of black bears in more places. There's a
recognition that we have historically used bear hunters as a

(01:18:22):
management tool. It recognized bear hunter's contribution to bear research. Right,
it was like it was very even, you know, and
then had like, you know, just like the whole state
history and all their measurements stuff. I thought I was
like super informative.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
One of the cool things in there too to check
out is the range map that they updated, because you
can see some of those areas where black bears have expanded,
and they updated that map and it's kind of surprising
to me even it goes all the way down to
the border to Mexico and we don't have black bears
in San Diego, although we did have one that ran
and down into like Ramona, I think it was last year.

(01:19:03):
So like it's not a not a common free occurrence,
but you can imagine if things stay on the same
trajectory that those bears will probably move down there. If
they continue to move out, I mean we've been We've
had bears porn into Nevada for years and years now,
Like their bear population is bolstered by all these bears
that are just leaving California because the taxes are too

(01:19:25):
high or whatever, you.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
Know, with the with that black bear management plan they
put out, which is like a proposal, right, I mean
they have a proposal part of it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
Well, they had the draft management plan and then they
finalized it just this year.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Okay, so that that I'm not that that I'm less
schooled down, but I remember now they were saying like
there's things that you could do, or people were asking
for certain things like like Californians are limited to one
bear yep, and since the quote is not being met
and you have more bears, like categorically more bears than

(01:20:02):
you did when they established the quota, and the quota
is not being met they were like, we could do X,
Y and Z. We could give everybody two bear tags,
which I don't think is going to make a huge difference.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
Probably it's the lowes it's the lowest hanging fruit, but
and I agree, I don't necessarily know that's even going
to get us to the quota, but it's it's a
very logical first step. And that's actually what bhad is.
We filed a petition to the Commission right after the
management plan was finalized, and we reviewed it as the
like easy slam dunk, lowest hanging fruit. Everybody could buy
two bear tags because then you know, one is just

(01:20:35):
more revenue for the department. If some people are like, oh,
well I'm going to go deer hunting and maybe I'll
see two bears, you never know. Like so that for
us was just like an easy win. But there's other
other proposals that the Department are going to bring forward
that we're aware of, including expanding some of the bear
hunting zones. So like in northeastern California and the Modoc
Plateau that has been closed to bear hunting. It's because

(01:20:59):
it's not historically occupied bear habitat, but the bears have
moved in there. There's you know, good genetic diversity, there's
good bear hunting up there, so it seems like a
logical place too. Yeah, let's open that up. There's no
reason not to hunt bears there. You know, they're gonna
potentially talk about season timing. It's a pretty wide open

(01:21:20):
season right now around when deer season starts and it
goes like to the end of the year in most zones,
so they may look at that as well as if
there's any improvements there or additional opportunities. I think those
are the big first things that the Department's going to
try to address this year. I don't think spring bear
baiting dogs, that's not coming from the department.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
Hard to bring that stuff back once you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
What does it take to bring it back? Like, I
appreciate I appreciate the efforts. I appreciate your guys' efforts
on this. I appreciate the efforts. To me, like, these
are all wins. They're all their battles, little wins, right,
their battles that you win the war. To me, like

(01:22:05):
to win the war, it would be that we would
we would be able to go in and revert, we
would have success in going in and reverting some of
the major management, the historic major management decisions. Like hunters

(01:22:26):
look at winning oftentimes at defeating, we look at winning
as defeating losses. Meaning Colorado's like, Okay, we're gonna ban
bobcat hunting, mountain lion hunting. Hunters come together, fight it,
and the victory is that you.

Speaker 3 (01:22:44):
Didn't maintain the status.

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
You maintain the status.

Speaker 5 (01:22:48):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
I would love to see like that somehow we would
pull off that trapping came back to Colorado, that right,
that hound hunting came back to California, that the mountain
lion season came back to California. What does that take

(01:23:10):
in California? Like, is that just not I mean, like,
give me the realistic. Is that just not gonna happen?

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
I mean when you talk about mountain lion is not
going to happen because of when that legislation was passed,
the way it was passed, it will require a four
fifths vote majority in the legislature to bring mountain line
unting back in California.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
Are you serious? Fifths?

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
So, I mean mountain lion as much as we would like,
really it, that is not the threshold. Yeah, for bears,
it's a different story. Oka bears. We had a bill
this year AB ten thirty eight that almost made it
out of committee. It actually, you know, there was a lot,
a lot of work done by a lot of great
organizations to bring that forward. Yeah, this is like a

(01:23:53):
houndsman bill primarily as a sponsor, and it's it was
before the management plan was finalized. And now it's a
two year bill. So in California, the legislative session spans
two years, so this was basically just kind of got
to get recycled into next year. But it doesn't have
to necessarily start from square zero in order to bring

(01:24:13):
hound hunting back. It will require the legislatures approval. And
so what this bill tried to do is this bill
tried to allow for the use of hounds for basically
tree and free from like a perspective of human bear conflict.
But it also the reason why it can't original possession.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
That's great, that's great, but it's not what I'm talking about, right.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):
But but what it did also is that it allowed
for the It delegated the authority as it should be,
to the Commission to determine whether or not there should
be a hound hunting season. Got it so it took
it out of the legislature's hands put it in the
Commission's hands where it belongs, and that was too much
for the anti hunters in the state. But I think
that it's not it's not something that's out of the question.

(01:24:59):
It just I think these things have to happen in
their stages. And now that we have the management plan,
let's say we get a second bear tag, we expand
the zones, we do everything we can, and we still
don't hit the quota, and we can show the negative
impacts to other species mule deer, you know which, big
charismatic megafauna like mountain lions. I mean, if you want to,

(01:25:19):
like really make the argument bears are negatively impacting mountain lions,
right like, we need to manage them to an extent
where we can actually be successful.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
Now you're getting back into that machiavellian stuff, man, So
I just feel bad for the mountain laps. We need
to be able to hunt more better.

Speaker 4 (01:25:36):
So I don't know if you've the one thing that
sticks out to me about this new plan, and I
don't know if we've touched on it and I missed it,
but it's got a new population model, which again is
like one of these little steps that leads towards reframing
the whole conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
Right, So, the current.

Speaker 4 (01:25:57):
Statewide black bear population is what now according to the
according to the best available science.

Speaker 2 (01:26:03):
According to the new IPM, the Integrated Population Model, it's
fifty nine thousand with but but it could.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
Be, but it could be scroll let me scroll back up.
And that's one of people where we are going nineteen
to eighty, ten to fifteen thousand bears and called best
best scientific gusts ten to fifteen thousand in California.

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
Hit me begin now, fifty nine thousand up to eighty thousand. Wow,
the most bears in the lower forty eight the highest
density of bears, black bears in the world in northwest California.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
And that's I mean, there's too many places claiming to
have the highest density of black bears.

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
It's in the management. They take it. They like put
their flag in the ground. They're like anyone else, come
challenge us. But this is the data that we have.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
And like getting stuff like that fucking thing for Atlas
is the different places we compete, the different.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
Places in New Jersey and California as well.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
And then portions of southeast. The last also claim to
have the highest densery.

Speaker 2 (01:27:04):
This is also per a hundred square kilometers, so it's
like one hundred fifty six bears per hundred square kilometers
is their metric, which is like just over four bears
a square mile. So I don't know if somebody that's
a lot. Someone else is like we got the most
bears in this quadrant or whatever, but I think a
square miles are pretty Yeah, no, I.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
See that true. Yeah, And then it depends on how
big the area. Like if I put a bunch of
bears on this table, could I say, like, that's the
densest population black bears in North America? Yeah, this table.
So it's gotta be like how much air you talking about? Yeah,
it's a sizable chunk of ground though.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
Oh yeah, it's huge. I mean there's a ton of
public land that you can hunt in California. Four black bears.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Do you do some fall? Do you do some specific
fall black bear hunting?

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
I'm I'm excited to do some more fall black bear hunting.
I've been living in San Diego for ten years, been
hunting for thirteen years. My wife and I got into it.
We've been trying to kill our San Diego deer, which
is might as well be the you know, unicorn of
the woods. She was successful, she killed one with her bow.

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
Oh seriously, Y's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
And we've been hunting together for a long time. Now
we have a couple of kids. It's it's trickier to
like get out together and do that. You folks on
crayfish exactly, you know where I can really make it
a way for my buck Stowe rest in peace. But
I've you know, I've I've gotten to do a little
bit of black bear hunting, mostly when I'm like traveling
for work like we did. Uh, We've been doing this
big restoration project up in northeast California, and so when

(01:28:31):
I go up there. I was at my deer tag
and shot a deer a couple of years ago and
almost shot a bear, but a little out of range.
Usually bow hunting. But my friend who shared that picture, Ned,
who does some guiding in the Eastern Sierra. He he's
been trying to get me to come up with them.
So I'm pretty excited to get up And I got
like ten points for deer, so I'm gonna cash in

(01:28:52):
next year. I'm gonna scout my deer zone and and
go hopefully kill a bear this fall.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
I was hanging out with the guy in California this
winter and one is weird just saying man like he uh,
he manages a ski area. Okay, I'm not gonna tell
you what ski area. And I'm a hell fire to
come down out of respect for the town, out of
respect for the individual. It's not like my story, my

(01:29:18):
crime and punishment story. So check this out. It was
January and this is January in the mountains, Okay. At
a ski hill, I pull in to meet him, there
is a bear standing under Like you park in a
parking lot and you walk up this zigzag old rickety

(01:29:40):
stairs to get to enter the bar. At the ski area,
there's a bear standing under the porch standing there and
his buddy. Another bear is standing off to the side
of the stairs.

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
I can't like, I'm like forgot his idea or what
it's like.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
Yeah, you know what you read like like people seeing
things they can't comprehend, Like I'm stuck in a moment.
I mean, the snow is so you can't walk through
the woods. Okay, we're using snow cats to get around you.
Cannot walk around without snowshoes. I'm like feeling like, oman,
did I come through a fence? And this is like

(01:30:16):
a like I couldn't comprehend what I'm seeing. He's like,
oh no, man, these are like the town bears. He says.
They don't even hibernate anymore. They live in town. They
walk around. He had a couple of years earlier got one,
and he's like, he's like, dude, man, I kept that underrat. Well,

(01:30:43):
it's funny, he said. There's no way I could have
told anybody about that. And it was on his property.
He tagged it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:51):
Well, So this is the thing with the two tags,
is they in Montana in the last legislative session, they're
trying to pass a bill through the Fish and Wildlife
Committee or in the House whatever to let hunters buy
two lion tags in areas that had really low success rates.

(01:31:13):
And there's this question of like, well, if people aren't
killing lions there, now, what's them having an extra tag
going to do? And the point was made was that
a lot of these areas are places where there's not
great access and so some or there's like considerations about
hunting around city limits things like that. And a lot
of hunters wouldn't be, like, are pretty conservative when it

(01:31:35):
comes to like butting up against private property or whatever.
And so in the case of like these town bears,
if there are some guys that hunt and have properties
where they can hunt, like having that person buy a
second tag, could It's not going to tip the scale,
but it increases harvest in these places where it's tricky
to address it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
I got me a permission on the spot for I
just don't know if I can deal with the heat.
That's what I told them. They got property, said, man,
you have no problem.

Speaker 2 (01:32:08):
Mmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
I was like, I don't know. That seems like a
good way to get in the argument with the old ladies.

Speaker 4 (01:32:13):
Near near Wine Country.

Speaker 1 (01:32:15):
The old lady cat or a dog on a leash.

Speaker 2 (01:32:21):
There's an interesting tidbit too. I think it's from the
management plan. But bears that get accustomed to human food
and are like your town bears, they reproduced earlier and
more often, and so like you're saying they stop hibernating,
I think it's just like those bears. And it's like
two whole separate conversations, right, like, how do you deal

(01:32:42):
with the bears in Tahoe and mammoth and like the
human bear conflicts that are there because some of those places,
you know, there's no little pockets here and there that
you can hut, but the vast majority of those bears
are not necessarily like the huntable population. Right, that's just
like an education campaign for people to stop being idiots
and start locking up their food. And you know that's

(01:33:03):
where that whole like h you know, human bear conflict
conversation comes in. But you know, hunting will improve human
bear conflict, but it's not the like end all solution.

Speaker 1 (01:33:14):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:33:14):
Some of these places like require education, require people being smart.

Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
Yeah, yeah, I don't you know, I keep talking about that,
that approach of like I need to be clear about
what I'm after here. I I see people that are
on my I'm making a mess of this argument. Let
me back up. I often see people use a rhetorical

(01:33:40):
strategy in these conversations that I'm uncomfortable with. They would say,
don't we can't ban mountain lion hunting in Colorado because
mountain lions are going to kill all of our children
if we do that. Like, it's so tempting to do

(01:34:00):
that because it helps you get what you want.

Speaker 3 (01:34:04):
Yeah, to scare people into it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
It's so tempting to vilify, to be like grizzlies. Like,
here's the thing. I believe it's time to delist grizzly
bears in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Rocky Mountain ecosystems,
those deep distinct pocket DPS's is time. But I can't
then go it's time because grizzlies are going to kill

(01:34:28):
us all, which is how you get there, because then
you make it an issue that moms, hikers, whatever, You
make it their problem by intimidating them. And I see
people do it, and very well intentioned people do it,
and I'm always like, man, I can't personally traffic in

(01:34:53):
this argument that I'm so afraid of a bear because
we have bears all over our yard and the fall,
I'm so afraid of a bear in my We have
to want more bears. They're gonna kill us all. But
I wish I could earlier. I used like being like
the Machiavelian approach. It's like anything to win right, and

(01:35:15):
I don't like it. You know, I think it's worthwhile
to point out I think it's worth while to point
out bear human conflict. But I can't put it that
my motivation that I'm motivated first and foremost by preventing
bear human conflict.

Speaker 4 (01:35:29):
You don't want to get out the pitchforks and torches
for the scary monsters.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
Yeah, I'm motivated by here's a renewable resource. There are
people that want to use and utilize and enjoy this
renewable resource, and it will not be a detriment to
the species. Therefore, since the species is fine, they'll continue
to occupy the landscape in California. Let those people who
would choose to exercise their historic privilege of utilizing the

(01:35:55):
resource for food, skin, whatever, allow them to continue to
do so because it doesn't imperil the integrity of the species.
If you got to get there by talking about bears
eating your dog's food, I'd do it, but rather not.

Speaker 2 (01:36:13):
I think an interesting take on that too is that
when you talk about like problem bears, right and depredations
and relocations, and this goes for like large carnivores in California,
we have an interesting perspective for a lot of mountain lions,
and we relocate a lot of these in these depredation instances.

(01:36:35):
We relocate and I know, particularly for mountain lions in
the Sierra Nevadas, in the eastern Sierra where we have
an endangered subspecies of bighorn sheet, there are problem cats.
When the sheep come down low enough, there's like a
big snow year, the sheep come down low and they
just get massacred by these mountain lions, and particular mountain

(01:36:58):
lions will kill sheep, so they'll take that take it.
There's you know, instances where they've taken that cat and
moved them one hundred and fifty miles away, comes right back,
it starts killing sheep again, and they do it again,
three hundred miles away, comes right back and keeps killing shit. Yeah,
And so it's like, Okay, at what point are we
spending resources, like, you know, if we can you know,
if we don't have to kill it, sure, if we can,

(01:37:20):
if it can be a hunterable you know animal, great,
But you know, at what point are we spending resources
to basically just put a band in on something that's
going to come right back in. So I think that's
the question there, Like you can't, yeah, you can't be
fear mongering that you know, the bears are going to
kill us all But also like we have to be
smart about our strategies and how we're using hunting as
a management tool, and how we're employing depredation to you know,

(01:37:44):
like prevent problem bears from coming in and killing like
the lady in Downeyville, right, Like, which was I think
part of that like catalyst of that story.

Speaker 1 (01:37:52):
Yeah, that was like a very emblematic story where here's
a person complaining about a bear, the bear bench comes
in her house and kills And it was like, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (01:38:04):
I've kind have seen that bear too, because my friend
lives like a mile or two down the road.

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
Was that right?

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
And I've seen bears in his face. I find a
deer up there, and you know, a couple of looks
at bears. So after that, I was thinking, like, I
wonder if I saw that bear.

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
Yeah, I wish I might have. Yeah here, because grizzlies
are esa animals. They'll go to great ends to move
a problem grizzly bear. For the most part, when you
tattletail on a black bear for doing something bad, I
was telling people not the tattletale on the ones around town,
Like if enough people tattletale on a black bear, he's dead.

(01:38:46):
Because think about like this, you got to move at
two hundred and fifty miles to get out of where
it's not you know, I mean where he's not just
going to show back up. So here you have an
understaffed agency with you know, budget constraints, like any while
they management agency's gonna deal with. You got a very
healthy population of black bears, a growing population of black bears.

(01:39:06):
A black bear starts killing some chickens. Are you really
gonna send a guy out he's gonna catch it. You're
gonna pay him the whatever days it takes to bring
that thing two hundred and fifty miles away come back, right.
It's just they just this not the time and money.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):
He's gonna use dogs to do it that.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:39:30):
Dog teams are like how they'll get a contract houndsman
to come in and catch those bears off times. I
mean they'll do traps, but in culvert traps, dogs whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:39:39):
But it's like they're not gonna, you know, they're not
gonna spend the time of money on it. It's just
it's burdensome. And then at any given time, like September
comes and I'd got to tell me one time, like
in this town September comes they were they were monitoring
like eleven or twelve in town that people are calling,

(01:40:00):
calling up complaining about. So I don't know what that
has to doing anything, but it's just interesting about how
they view it. Then you got these guys here dressing
up like dressing up like bears.

Speaker 2 (01:40:16):
That's just another day at the office.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
So what do you think he's gonna wind up happening?

Speaker 2 (01:40:22):
I think I can say with somewhat, you know, confidently
that I think this year we'll see a second bear tag,
we'll see expanded hunting zones into northeastern California. Maybe a
little tweaks to the season, but nothing substantial.

Speaker 1 (01:40:36):
They're more generous tweaks.

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):
I don't know as much here. This is where we
start to get into like a little bit more uncertainty.
The San Luis Obispo's a lot of people that are
calling for bear hunting down there. There was an effort
maybe about like ten years ago to establish a bear
hunt there because it's been historically closed and the department
had said there there's a thousand bears and we should

(01:41:00):
hunt them. And then there was a big effort to
block that, saying, you know, you don't have enough data,
you don't have enough research. They did a study in
twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen. It is pretty short, it's
a pretty small sample size, but the study indicated they
thought there was only like one hundred bears there, and
so that was kind of like the proof of the
pudding that no, we're not going to do a bear
hunt here, there's not enough. And so I think San

(01:41:23):
Luis Obispo still is like a wild card. The genetic
diversity down there is not the same as it is
in all the other areas. Even though it's it doesn't
warrant any concern or management action. So I think if
there were to be maybe another study or some more
research that could be done into the population there, I
think we could definitely see hunting established there. But I

(01:41:44):
don't know that that's going to happen this year spring season.

Speaker 1 (01:41:49):
Yeah, what was that going to take?

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
I think that's going to take. I think it's going
to be a walk before you run. So I think
we need to like lay this foundation where we're at show.
I mean, hopefully we hit the quota. I don't think
we will necessarily show that, Like, there's still more management
that needs to happen, and then we start looking at
you know what's next, right, is it spring season? Is

(01:42:12):
it dogs? You know, is it dogs before spring seasons
that you can have a better opportunity to you know,
you know, sex the bear and when you got it
up in a tree and make sure it doesn't have
any cubs. Like those are the types of arguments that
I think the community is a little bit more split,
but that we need to have as we move forward.
But it you know, in order to like not provoke

(01:42:33):
that substantial backlash and another bill in the legislature, I
think we got to take these wins like and just
chip away. But we are on the you know, we're
moving forward, right, We're not on the defensive anymore, which
is promising, right. It's like it's a really it's a
great time to have our department and our commission using
the science we have new like updated robust science to

(01:42:53):
advocate for like better management and better hunting opportunity. And
so I'm I'm really optimistic in California where we're going
to go. Hopefully we just keep chipping away.

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
Let's do a quick roundtable if you could have if
you're the King of you're Reagan you're the king of
cal uh and you could. Someone said, okay, you can
have you can have back spring. You can have back
spring bear hunting, or you can have back hound hunting
in the fall. I'd do hounds, brodys on hounds with

(01:43:24):
that number of bears, Yeah, hounds.

Speaker 5 (01:43:26):
I feel like I'm not qualified to speak.

Speaker 4 (01:43:29):
Are we talking about this as a management tool or
just what I want to do?

Speaker 1 (01:43:31):
What you want to do? Oh? Not what you want
to do, oh just for the betterment of hunters.

Speaker 3 (01:43:37):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:43:37):
Someone said, okay, I can't do both. I can do one.

Speaker 4 (01:43:40):
I mean i'd i'd restore house and hunting, because that's
that was the traditional use up till the eighties.

Speaker 1 (01:43:47):
Right, hmm, How bad's poison oak in the spring?

Speaker 3 (01:43:53):
Like, I got questions?

Speaker 1 (01:43:54):
It's terrible, That's what I got. The worst turkey hunt.

Speaker 2 (01:43:56):
Just let the dogs go through the poison. Can you
stand on the outside and I'm not going in there.

Speaker 6 (01:44:01):
It seems like in a lot of California a spring
season would be a lot different than like a spring
season in Montana, just based on like climate weather, right,
like when the bears are all popping out in May,
Like I don't know that that's like there's a mountain
I know in places, Yeah, but there's like a lot

(01:44:21):
of country where it might not be.

Speaker 1 (01:44:23):
It might not be as they might not be as concentrated.

Speaker 2 (01:44:25):
Yeah, yeah, had a very I think biography for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:44:29):
Even without the poison out question, I would say I
would say as well, hounds just to have that, just
to have that win for houndsman who get beat up
on all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
Yeah, I agree, mm hm hm.

Speaker 1 (01:44:44):
Anything else you want to tell us about?

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
Just the three million acres of public lands for sale?

Speaker 1 (01:44:52):
Yeah, but that's just show that's off topic, not off topic.
It's also out of time because it's the release sched
or we can't just put these up and we want Yeah, no,
I know, So I'll just cut that out by the
time you say that, it'll be something different tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:45:08):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:45:11):
If it wasn't, that's what we'd be talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:45:14):
Uh, bullfrogs, When are you guys gonna come come kill
some bullfrogs with me?

Speaker 1 (01:45:23):
How many you get we're.

Speaker 2 (01:45:25):
Getting like our good nights are like thirty twenty to
thirty yeah, big one, big.

Speaker 1 (01:45:31):
Big twenty two of them? Or how are you getting them?

Speaker 2 (01:45:34):
We're shooting them with pole spears mostly like wine slings, yeah,
spear fishing stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:45:38):
Are you allowed to twenty two of them?

Speaker 2 (01:45:40):
Nope?

Speaker 1 (01:45:41):
Do they We couldn't do that where I grew up either.

Speaker 6 (01:45:44):
Do they treat them like an invasive species there, like
you're just allowed to get as many as you want.

Speaker 2 (01:45:48):
Yep, yeah, no, no season invasive species. And I'm doing
it with the Forest Service because they've got a population
of endangered royo toads that the bullfrogs are just hammering
eating them, and so we go in and shoot the frogs.
Eat Them's my wife's favorite food. And yeah, it's it's
a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:46:05):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:46:05):
I could also tell you guys about that.

Speaker 1 (01:46:06):
What kind of ground? What kind of ground are you on?
Where are you doing is at.

Speaker 2 (01:46:09):
It's like you know, riperian little little creeks and things
that you know, kind of spread out into a sort
of marshiness.

Speaker 1 (01:46:17):
Are you hearing them? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:46:19):
If it if it's like you know, a what was it?
May it depends on like gets warm enough. But then
when they're breeding and you hear them doing, they're.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
Like, are you lighting them up or hitting them in
the daytime?

Speaker 2 (01:46:30):
Oh, we're lighting them up. Yeah, we're going at night.
This I mean as a where my friend who's the biologist,
I mean we both have he's got three kids that
are little. I got to right, we don't have time
and so kids go to bed. We're like wives don't
care that kids are asleep. You know, we don't have
to work. I don't have to take a day off,
and we just go out there for hours shooting frogs.

Speaker 1 (01:46:50):
You know, in Michigan, it's one of the dumbest, the
dumbest game laws in Michigan that I'll never understand is
you cannot hunt bullfrogs with artificial light in Michigan. And
this is a place where exactly zero people hunt bullfrogs
since I left. Like how that even came to be

(01:47:12):
on anyone's mind, I'll never understand. You cannot use the
artificial light to spare a bullfrog, Like, like, I'll never
like how that even was like on the radar of
somebody fair Chase. Yeah, which means there's no bullfrog culture,
no bullfrog culture. That's sad A pole spear them. Yeah.

(01:47:37):
Have you just tried getting a big gig with like
a twelve foot handle on it.

Speaker 2 (01:47:40):
We've I mean I don't have one, but I've taken
I have a long pole spear. I've got like a
nine foot pole spear, and I'm putting some I put
some weird things on the end of it that I've
been able to find. So it's basically a gig, right.
But then you've got the sling, so you can get
you can get some range on it, right, shoot that
thing out in the middle of a little pond.

Speaker 1 (01:47:58):
Yeah, and then big old fatties, big fatty like, show
me the legs up with your hands. How far the
legs from the tip of his toes to his hips
to his pelvis all that.

Speaker 2 (01:48:07):
I mean, they're like that fat around.

Speaker 1 (01:48:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:48:11):
Yeah, they're like chicken legs. I mean they're from the
just some good legs.

Speaker 4 (01:48:17):
California, Steve, what's peak month out there?

Speaker 2 (01:48:22):
We just kind of we're just kind of coming out
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:25):
Probably what's poison ivy situation, Like it's.

Speaker 2 (01:48:28):
Chilled sothern California's not so bad poison I poisons really
more like a stand in the water. Yeah, there's there's
no that would.

Speaker 1 (01:48:36):
Be fun man, twenty to thirty at night.

Speaker 2 (01:48:40):
And you're and it's good for conservation, right, Like.

Speaker 1 (01:48:43):
What can I be square with you? Though? No, do
you really think does that does like there are so
when you look at wildlife management, invasive species management, with
the exception of new tree in Chesapeake Bay and maybe
some other examples, are there really any case studies in

(01:49:07):
which something was mechanically removed.

Speaker 2 (01:49:10):
We're never getting rid of these bullfrogs.

Speaker 3 (01:49:13):
We're not living living.

Speaker 2 (01:49:15):
Under anti false.

Speaker 1 (01:49:16):
But yeah, it's like like lionfish is like you're gonna
get them all huh.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):
Yeah, but in this area, like we are hammering them
to the extent that they're not there. It's allowing more
to roo toads to reproduce. So from a conservation perspective,
like it's it's having an impact, while if we were
to stop doing this in five years, be a bazillion more.

Speaker 1 (01:49:37):
Yeah. Right, So it's yeah, you're you're it's like any
kind of control. Yeah, it's like it's targeted, helpful control,
but it's it winds up being that that toad will
remain basically conservation dependent on some amount of mechanical removing. Likely. Yeah,
but I mean I'll travel for a good bullfrog hunt
no matter what, because those are good numbers for big fatties.

Speaker 2 (01:50:01):
Yeah, and you get the spearfishing combo, you know, shoot,
some soup, some fogs at night, and some fish during
the day. Really, Oh yeah, you want to go spearfie.

Speaker 1 (01:50:10):
What would we go for calicos and like like sheepshead or.

Speaker 2 (01:50:14):
What if it's the summertime, like right now, depending on
what you wanted, Like, definitely could find some calicoes. You
might find a howl that if we went out into
the kelped, good chance you find a yellow tail or
white sea bass. But if you want, like I.

Speaker 1 (01:50:27):
Don't believe in white sea bass, I don't think they're
I don't believe.

Speaker 2 (01:50:31):
If you want to, if you want to surefire guarantee, like,
I will put you on a fish. It's the Corbina.
Oh really, because they are they're in five feet of
water less. I mean they're right there feeding on sand
crabs in the shore. And so I've taken people that
have never spearfished before in their lives and just dragged
them out. And you have to be somewhat comfortable in

(01:50:52):
the water because every once in a while wave I'll
just toss you on the sand because you're in there
like this much water trying to get in and shoot
these things. But you can cheat a lot. It's a
lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:51:01):
I got a lucky there. I got a not San Diego,
but I got a lucky yellow tail. Oh nice, doing
a bunch of other stuff. And then I lucked into yet,
which is the only yell tub I've ever got.

Speaker 2 (01:51:11):
I got one on my kayak and then I had
a hammerhead come in try to get it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:15):
Oh yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:51:17):
I was three miles out and you saved the fish.
Oh hell yeah, yeah I didn't. That wasn't after I
got in. It was like an hour paddle back in
or you know, I had one of those pedal kayaks
if my neighbor let me borrow, and this thing circled
us and bumped my boat for an hour. We got
into shore. We have goprovid of that fish. Oh yeah,
just smell the blood. The blood from the gas was

(01:51:37):
just coming in the water. And I was holding the
tail like this in between my legs as I was pedaling.
And I got to shore. Well right before I got
to shore, went through the surf break and I was
like the ten foot hammerhead behind me. Sorry dude. And
then I got into shore and I tried to like
open my hand because I had so much adrenaline. I
had to like fry my fingers off this fish because

(01:51:58):
it was just like, I gotta get it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:01):
That frog hunt sounds fun. Big fatties, big fatties. Broom
round here. All you hear is boom. You know what
that is?

Speaker 2 (01:52:11):
Bm someone shooting and missing.

Speaker 1 (01:52:13):
No, that's people thinking they hear a bullfrog. But it's
a green frog.

Speaker 3 (01:52:18):
Right out back.

Speaker 1 (01:52:20):
Yeah you want that broom? Oh yeah makes the hair
on the back of my next stand up. That's my
dad saying about the smell at German cigarettes. Man the
hair on the back of the next stand up. Thanks
for coming on the show man.

Speaker 2 (01:52:38):
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:52:38):
I appreciate it. I hope you get like, let's get
let's get some bear hunting in California back on the thing,
come on down, yeah, cause you know, you guys got
a people like the hack on California. But if you
guys get some big wins like that, people start being like,
I love that blaze.

Speaker 2 (01:53:00):
Yeah, I mean that's it's a sportsman's paradise for if
you know the right species to go after, or if
you draw that tag that you know you save up
your points right.

Speaker 1 (01:53:09):
Well, this is my final thought on it, and it
is something I bring up a lot like everywhere you
go in the country, everywhere you go, there's two people
next door to each other. There's the guy that like,
there's too many people now fishing game did this? The
wolves did that, the the the and they sit in

(01:53:33):
their house and bitch and neck always, Like somewhere right
around his house is the dude who's like, dude, you
can't even scratch the surface. There's so much to do.
I mean they're neighbors. Everywhere you go in the country,
you will find those two people in very close proximity

(01:53:55):
to each other. I always try to be with the
dude who's like, you can't scratch the surface. No, so
keeps getting after it.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):
Yeah, just looking in the wrong place.

Speaker 1 (01:54:06):
Man. Yeah, you sound like you can't scratch the surface
kind of guy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:09):
I love it as long as I can do it
after my kids go to bed.

Speaker 1 (01:54:15):
Ah man, thank you

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Steven Rinella

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 732: Predator Management, California Style