Ep. 847: Neanderthal Love, Mule Deer Eradication, and Mink Eyelashes

Welcome to Meet Eater's 12 and 26 presented by Multi-Mobile and On-X Maps. 12 of Meet Eater's biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 2026. These are long-form episodes, so you get more of what you love.

The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba.

If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree.

Check it out now on Meet Eater's YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Welcome to the new show on this week's episode. We're covering new research on how Neanderthals,

“Neanderthals, if you want to be more official.”

How Neanderthals got it on. The controversial Catalina island deer annihilation program is your wife or daughter, or you, wearing illegally imported fake eyelashes made of mink fur. Our tattoos are going to be totally screwed in the future.

And, just when you thought Colorado and animal rights people couldn't embarrass their state anymore than they already have, they do. Bring in you this news. We've got me, Steven Renella, long with Janice Putella's Dr. Randall William Spencer Newhart, Brody Henderson.

The show is broken into three segments. Our news, your news, and the news. Starting us out with our news, we've got Janice with no news. Why is it known as? Because you haven't caught a line.

How do you report on that? In this case, no news is not good news.

I don't know, I'm always the optimist, my dog and I are still getting out

there on plenty of nice hikes in the mountains and join ourselves, practicing what we're trying to do. Trying to put a positive spin on this. Do you think if Mingus could talk, he'd say, "Yeah, this is fun." Oh, yeah.

“Do you think the dog is a bum that you guys have caught one this year?”

I don't know if he knows. I have no idea of sort of what his sense of time is. I'm venture to guess, the dog doesn't think of it as being that he's in this season. No. And then there'll be another season next year.

And I don't know that he knows that it's been a long time since he saw a line. But I would venture to guess that if you had two bowls of cable, and you could metaphorically put chasing a lion and catching it into one bowl.

And then just sort of aimlessly chasing sense to the woods in the other bowl and never

catching a lion. I think you'd go for that bowl first. You and you wouldn't. I think so. I mean, you don't know what mental trip he's on.

No. He could be like, just a real process or anything. He could be like, when he's laying there sleeping, you think, oh, look at him sleeping. He could be there being like, I'm a loser, I always knew, you know, I came from the kennel, I came from the dog pound, I'll never live it down or it could be the opposite.

He's just owner abandoned me. When he's on a line, he could be like, kind of hate this, but I know he likes it a lot. Or he's like, if we caught one two months ago, I wouldn't be in the best shape of my life right now.

Or he's like, I don't see the point in her ass and he's poor things. I'm not going to chase it up a tree. Oh, we're barely, maybe he's disappointed in you, Yani. What are you talking about this, Yana? That could be, too.

You know, it's been, it's been humbling.

“That's what I think about it because he's five this year.”

So really, we've been hard at it for this would probably be the fourth year, right? We've had three years, one of those years was cut very short by that accident that we had together with me and guess. So really, he had like two good years and in those two good years, he had a year where he caught like 16 lions and then a 13 year, a 13 lion year.

So to go now to this year, to have none, it's like, oh, were those flukes? Where's the one? No. I don't think 16 and 13, that doesn't. You're lucky.

That's that, like, if it was like two and one and zero, I'd be like, well, maybe zero was normal. But 16, 13, zero, something happened, yeah, the weather happened. Yeah. Are you blaming the snow?

Is that the problem? First, sure. But I've also just had a string of bad luck, where on the good snow days, we've found

It was snowing so hard.

Multiple days, I've had tracks that just took a left when they should have kept going

right and they went on to private land. So I just called Ming as back. One day, I felt like we were within hundreds of yards, less than a thousand yards of pair of lions and it literally was getting dark on us. I'm like, you just got to, you know, at some point, you just got to call it because it's

“getting, you know, it gets dangerous when it gets dark, right?”

And I don't leave him out all night long. So there's been a string of that kind of stuff also. But the fact that, yeah, we've had, like, the worst snow winter in a long time is definitely played into it. Understood.

Thank you, y'all. You're welcome. How many numbers of days in the field? Oh, sorry, bye. To it.

You know, I wish I had, I just had a burning question.

No, that's a good question, because I feel like I've been hunting roughly the same amount. Oh, that's even more, between the, you know, over the last four or five years. Uh, but yeah, I don't have a number for you, but if I had to guess we've been out maybe 20 days, but, you know, I'm talking about this before, I think I talked about this on

the previous podcast, the, the one silver lining of this year is not catching anything. We caught a bobcat. Oh, yeah. Which I know you're real frustrated about that, but catching release, catching release. But that's huge for me as a, uh, as a hound owner.

Oh, that's a triumph. Yeah. For him to be able to do that all by himself, it was a, it was a big day. So all, all is not lost.

“Like if that's the only thing that happens, this, this, uh, hound season, they'll be a”

pretty good season because we accomplished that one thing. Yeah, I would just say you caught one and leave it at that one cat, one cat, one cat. Yup. Yeah, but I mean, if you talk to like our good buddy, Jake Grimm, he'll tell you that

that one bobcat is worth 10 to 20 lines. So then you say that, say 10, 20, then you're right on your right on average. Yeah. Yeah. It's not over for you yet anyway.

You got one. Another, yeah. I got a big, I got a big month. Big hot, get big hot, snowle this month. Yeah.

I can't believe it's next week. They're saying it's common. Like conversion rate is 10 to 20 mountain lines for one bobcat, I don't believe that. I got some exaggeration. It is so hard.

Living. Many people are literally, many people literally will not cut loose on a bobcat track because they're like, it's not worth my time. We're not going to catch it. We're just going to end up on this long chase and end up in a pile of rocks and I won't

get to see a bobcat. I'll take the blame for this. Maybe it's even high. A lot of ground to cover. Yeah.

I mean, it's so special that I made what I think they should happen with this item. It's so special. That would consider like getting a tattoo to debt to honor now I believe. What's the word I'm looking for? To memorialize.

Yeah. Memorialize. I haven't been a tattoo. No tattoo. And be like, this blank spot on my skin is the year.

Nothing happened.

“Did you get a line tattoo to be like, oh, that's what they look like.”

Didn't you just do an indefensible loss to where people should memorialize places where things didn't happen? Well, yeah, I did one where you would put signs where people almost got killed. Yeah, that's good. On the subject tattoos.

The radio live finale. Two artists came in and did he in the office, he did 13 tattoos that day? Oh, wow.

It's the first tattoo I ever wished my wife thought was cool.

When he gets all done, when he gets all done, this is my news here. He gets all done and me and him get the BS and I'm like, hey, act like you're giving me one. Get it all set up. Act like you're giving me one.

And I'm going to send it to we have a family group text chat called The Free Trappers. So I'm like, I'm like, act like you're giving me one and I'm going to send it to my family and be like, I finally broke down. I can't believe I did it. I got to tattoo.

I send it no reply. My little ones later told me they knew it wasn't true. My wife had already talked to Brody, so she knew it wasn't true. My 15 year old going on 16. This is why I know that tattoos are in trouble.

The tattoo industry isn't trouble. Okay.

He says that is so blank.

I can't say what he said. He'd get trouble as Mom. Later. So he thinks it's true. Later he says to me, dude, don't.

Ever comment on my haircut again, like come in from a guy with a tattoo. And they're like, and him and his buddies minds, I gather. It is the dorkiest thing a person could do. Not rebellious. Not rebellious.

It's like, oh my god. Times of change. Oh my god. I don't think so. Tattoo.

I don't think I want to do my hair.

“Here's why I think that his social circle is interesting.”

They have a foot in two worlds.

He's been brought up around all kind of red next stuff. No, it's all kind of red next. He just went and pulled calves at his buddies ranch, but he also knows all about rich people. He knows about rich urban people and ski people. So here's this kind of interesting mix of red neck stuff and rich people stuff.

And from either side of that, he's not getting tattooed cool factor from either side. So I just am worried about the tattoo market. I'm not, because my kid said, I want to get the same one as you. I was wondering if you had dated a back up here. I'm looking at Derek right now, actually.

That's where when God has struck the his Trump themed America, the beauty. I don't want Phil has data on this right now. Okay. I am looking at percentage of Americans with tattoos over time. In the year 1936, it looks like 10% of the American population had tattoos.

And then 2003, that's a long jump. See, it was 16% but then we have from 2003 to 2012, 21% of Americans had tattoos.

From 2012 to 2015, that number jumped from 21 to 29 and from 2015 to 2023.

That number jumped to 32%. So your boo is been standing in the sea to touch that beach. Okay.

“That's why Phil should do a better job of listening.”

So you're, so you're, I think, right now, the future, the future. Okay, I'm just saying the trends disagree. We're in the tent, you're a trend. Does it show the future? Because none of us, I can run future.

That's why I'm telling you. He's forecasting a sharp decline based on the direction I have detected. I have detected an additudinal shift. I have detected the additudinal shift. And I look at data.

And so if I'm going to go on to a prediction market, I want to make a bet that in 20 years, there has been a cataclysmic drop-off in tattoo rates, because I've had a glimpse into the future by talking to my kids' bodies. Yeah, you could be very, very right. That's what I'm saying.

Based on what they're doing in the alcohol industry and how they don't like sex and movies. Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of prudes.

Yeah. Sponsor got a new pass. Explained this. This is very interesting. This is legit news.

I went to Yellowstone a couple of weekends ago, and my winter trip there is usually when we get our new pass for the year. It's called the America, the Beautiful Pass. How long has that existed since 2004?

“I believe some version of it has existed.”

Oh, here it feels got to pull it up. The America, the Beautiful Pass, it's $80. It grants you entry to national parks, national wildlife refuges. Also covers your day use fees. If you're a national forest, grasslands, BLM, Army Corps land, a place where you're

not required to pay a day use fee. You typically don't need to if you have a good deal if you do these things a lot, right? Certainly. Yep. But I think although there's so many places it gives you access to, these are primarily

just using national parks. That's what they'll buy them for. To get in and out of national parks for a year. And you're in the misses by one over here. Every year since we moved to Montana, this is our seventh pass that we've had.

I've got three of them here now. Why didn't you buy it in South Dakota? We just didn't attend national parks the same way we do now, didn't lose close. It's seen in Russia more. Yeah.

But that would get you into Rushmore. It would get you into Rushmore. Yeah. Next week in Rushmore. And believe.

So the America, the Beautiful Pass, it's like the size of your credit card or driver's license. It's a laminated card. Now, traditionally, these have a photo on them, a wild life for landscape. And I've got past examples here that you can see and you go back to that shot you had

up. And that's showing you like the last decade of it. That's a rosyated spoon bill that is a split yes, correct from the Everglades. So what year is that? That is last year.

Everglades National Park, rosy and spoon bill.

2024.

That's an Eastern, colored lizard.

Okay. Lizard, 2024 pass. 2023.

“It was a landscape picture from King's Canyon National Park.”

So that's you get an idea of what they look like. A pool of hair from what park would that be from? Uh, I don't know. Denali. There's Denali.

It's the Arctic. There they are. It has to be in a National Park, just like federal land. And if you did say it's got to be, it's, it's, like, by a lot. I don't like it.

Since 2004, it's been a federal law that the way these are chosen is there is a picture contest done by what is it the National Park's foundation and the winning photo from that is on the pass for the following year. Okay. So this year, you can see what it was supposed to be.

You're supposed to be Glacier National Park in Montana. That was what the winning photo was from last year. Uh, but the, the Trump administration has changed this, they are breaking this 2004 federal law. And instead, it is a picture of George Washington and Donald Trump on the pass.

You see that bill and, and this is, this is made, um, some folks very mad. It's just watching. It's, it's made folks very mad too. It doesn't look like he's at the park. No, it has, you wouldn't look at that and think, you know, while it looks like it looks

like he got to the outhouse at the park, he got to the port of party at the park and it was and it's, and it's, and it's, and it's overflowed. It's lying over the door and he's like, someone's going to pay. Mm. That is the five on get.

Yes. And you can see these, these photos on our YouTube channel. Yeah.

Um, well, I mean, in all fairness, this is 250 first president current president, 250 years

of presidents.

“I think that's what this is going for here.”

Yes. I mean, he, he made a lot of changes with national park. Related stuff this year that is supposed to be more patriotic. Um, for example, he got rid of Juneteenth and MLK day as free days, and he's made flagged day, which is his birthday and then president stay as, as free days and statinists all patriotic

theme. He's also, this is a good one. He, he bumped up the fee for non-residents. If you're from Canada, if you're from Italy, I've, I support that. And I, I agree.

That's, I think that's the other stuff. I don't get that. That's a North American thing that we're, like, if you want to go recreation in Colorado as a non-reson, you pay a higher fee. That's a part of it.

They've also removed, like, indigenous perspectives from, um, like, that's, yeah, totally different. Yeah. They're talking about what happens. If you put a piece of tape over Trump's yeah, so, uh, within within days of the new year,

when these went into effect, the national park service had to release a statement saying that your pass will be voided if you alter it by putting a sticker over it by drawing on it's buy. Has it always been true? Yes, but I don't think anyone's ever tested it.

It hasn't been a problem. But it's always been. It's always been true. Yes. And, like, for example, of how much drama this is made, there's an Etsy shop seller who

is started making stickers for these, um, and she said that she would, like, give that money to, uh, public lands for what she would sell. It's a sticker that would go over Trump's face.

She made $16,000 in the first month.

Hmm. Just, just doing this. What is a sticker? I don't remember. I think it's like a wildlife.

It's like a wildlife. It's like a wildlife. Yeah. Maybe. I've, we've looked this up on trivia.

You can say a peek at Orpica. Who can? Anyone can. (laughing) I feel like go, I can't.

I can't. That can happen. Can you check it out? I, I, I, I, we did this on, we addressed that on trivia. Hmm.

It's, uh, okay.

“What, what's next year's, are they going to revert next year's pass to the winner?”

I don't know. This is like, if the Duck Stamp, you know, like the whole Duck Stamp competition? Yeah. If also the Duck Stamp was like, the Duck with, like, Trump's face on it. Yeah.

Hmm. And he's like, no, no, that's the, that's the Duck Stamp competition. Well, yeah. So the, the Trump administration has not been great to the National Parks, uh, you know, Doge, cut a thousand employees last year.

Yeah. They tried to slash the budget by 38% this year, the Senate rejected that. So Trump, not exactly a mascot for the National Parks. I was trying to think of an analogy. It would be like if we had a meeting or radio live listening pass, and then Steve put his

face on it. Yeah. It's written on it. (laughing) I totally understand.

That's what it would be like. Or if you let Elon Musk take an axe to radio line, and this, this drama is going to get bigger. The National Parks get 40% of their visitation between June and August. So there's a lot of folks who are going to be buying their pass in a few months.

Um, it's already, it's already been a big deal, but it's, it's going to become, uh, probably a bigger deal. Uh, on a related note, someone just shared with me, this, this article's a little bit older and I've been kind of hanging down to it, um, someone shared with me an article, an op-ed. That came out.

It was a guest essay called "Mega Elite" who live on their phones or ruining the outdoors. And it point, that's, it's a hyperbolic headline, but what it points out is, we've, kind of like, we've moved away, we're currently moved away from the old style of like outdoor

And, you know, like you think about, uh, the Bushes were anglers, right?

They would vacation at like Kenny Bunkport and go fishing. Anyways, this article lays out this idea that rather than, rather than trips to Wyoming, to fly fish and stuff, what we see out of the administration is golfing in Florida. And this individual argues that there's then, then this like, perspective shift away from

this like tradition of outdoor Republicans into like indoor Republicans.

“Um, the guy is a research, so the guy that wrote it, you should go, go check it out, let's”

just check it out. It'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll either make you so mad. Um, because you disagree and you'll be like so mad to be mad that we mentioned it. Or you'll be so happy we mentioned it because they already aligns with what you think. So you can go no matter who you are, just think about this. No matter who you are, you can go read this and reinforce your opinions and be happy or sad. If you ever read something that everybody agrees on, everybody, it's probably not worth reading.

It'd be like reading a park pass. Yeah. That's Joe. The guy that wrote it, you get a little suspicious when you read what he does.

So he, he, doctor, Lazac is a researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the politics of climate change. So guess what his biases might be. Another piece of news.

“We got, we're doing this, we're doing a, a new series called the time machine.”

So every month, we're taking artwork, like see this one here, this goes back the farthest. This is a time machine artwork of closed points, archaeological drawings of closed points. That's this month. We're going to hit the custer battle, the battle of the greasy grass or the battle of the little big horn, depending on what side you're on. We've been hitman Roberts and act every month. You can come check it out. T shirts, hoodies, time capsule. We go back and time. That's the club is shirt right there.

They're all limited to run. T's and hoodies. Find them at the meat eater store website. Welcome to meat eater's 12 and 26 presented by multimobile and on X maps. 12 of meat eater's biggest and baddest hunts from the last year, released throughout 2026.

“These are long form episodes, so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba.”

If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on meat eater's YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Okay. Moving on to Corrections. Corrections. Corrections. That's from Fiddler on the roof. This is our inaugural segment in inaugural segment of Corrections, where we have a correction of the week contest sponsored by Tacobas.

So Corrections are like this. If you're sitting around like normally in today's political climate, and I mean this is what I'm sticking it to both sides on this. People just say stuff that's just wrong, and they know it's wrong. It's like a flex to say stuff that's just wrong. Because it's kind of like, it's like, I know it's wrong. You know it's wrong, and now you're going to have to live with it. But we try to invite Corrections. So if we say something that's screwed up or we make a mistake or omit the truth or whatever, we invite your Corrections.

Your Corrections. We want your Corrections so bad about things we're wrong about that if you get the correction of the week, you win a pair of Tacobas boots. You send your Corrections to the meat eater podcast at the meat eater.com. We got three. The juice from to who wins the Tacobas boots. Okay. Going in the future, we'll only be accepting Corrections from the news show, but we're accepting Corrections, otherwise right now. 838 someone writes in this is his correction. Episode 838 Steve is talking about a hen turkey making bad calls and uses the term unaccident.

The character goes on to say as a writer and someone who makes a living speaking, he should know it is by accident.

We don't do something unaccident. Are we voting at the end?

Yeah, I'm not going for this guy. Can I? I mean, maybe my grammar is off, but shouldn't those quotes be outside of.

“And you're face. Yeah. I got Steve. I got a little suggestion for you. Learn how to put your quotes in the right place, buddy. I think this guy's already lost his house in a pair of boots.”

He's out. Close call, but no, no, no, no. I'm sure that he placed those periods there by accident. So on accident, I'm looking this up and I see that it's like colloquial, but I don't know, is it a grammar thing? I've heard you say. It's a lot more often means wrong. But I don't think he's going when because he got it, he got like back at him back at him. Okay, on mink, coals and bad smells. Here's a contender. Here's a real contender. He's referencing back to episode 838.

“Okay, around the 31 minute mark in the episode Steve reference the 2020 coal of mink and Denmark. We were talking about during the the COVID pandemic.”

They found out that mink were carbongers of COVID and they started killing all ranch mink and Denver in Denmark.

And I said that the mink all went to market my understanding was when I first heard about the coal, I thought it would cause mink prices to skyrocket because there's no more mink.

But someone said the inverse was true. It was a massive influx of mink pellets because they had to go pell all the mink and so it flooded the market with mink and tanked it. So I said they were all pelleted out. This guy says, the coal was so hasty and disorganized that it didn't give the opportunity for many of the affected mink farmers to pelt out, meaning to skin them all. Given that just before the discussion of the mink coal, there was a discussion of various bad smells. You may also be interested in the fact that the coal resulted in millions of mink being buried and mass burial sites.

And the fact that they hadn't been skinned meant that some of them started to decompose and bloat and push their way out of the ground, which media dubbed zombie mink. I like that. That's from Doug. That's a correction of a correction you received, right? Because your initial impression was that they wouldn't be skinned. Your initial assumption. Yeah, but that was an internal. Yeah. This is a little bit silly action. Yeah. Now here's like a great correction that's going to compete with the mink correction.

Episode 829 at the 14 minute mark. We're talking about that. Okay. We're talking about salmon, leaving their natal spawning streams and going back out to the ocean. Or we talk about ones coming up coming up. Oh, okay. Very sure. Either way, we're talking about fish loss at dams in the Columbia system.

“Oh, no. Where are we talking about smoke going out? I think it's, I think it's more going out. Smoke going out. Yeah. Okay. And we're saying that they're losing that every dam.”

These fish and counter, they're losing 7 to 15% of the population at every dam. Brody in all his ignorance. I say, I can't even do that math. Brody does. And he says, that's over 100% him being dumb. Cheese. Yeah. That's not how the math works. Now the math works. This guy writes in.

It's actually like this. If 200,000 salmon attempt to make it pass the first dam with a 15% mortality rate.

There will be 170,000 that make it through to attempt the next dam. After dam number two at 15% mortality rate, there are 144,500 smell left.

This is a total loss of about 73% at the high end.

If you use the 7% mortality rate with this method, you end up with 111,900 fish after the eighth dam. So the total mortality rate range is from 44 to 73% not as what I did in my head more than all of them. This is probably going to get a correction too, but it's like the reverse of compound interest. If you have money invested as it grows more as it shrinks, it shrinks less than each iteration understood the way that goes. Okay. You got a minor in math. You got a doctor.

I was actually just saying we should at some point just have a podcast episode with a statistician. And just probabilities for the Joe blow out doors, men. We can explain things like this. We can explain draws. You know, because that's another thing is, there's a lot of confusion about draws. I think it idea. A hunter, it might not be a two hour podcast, but it could be a flop.

If you will buy, please write in the media podcast at themedia.com.

You also need someone from the, did you know that there's a, that you know that there's a discipline that zoos have zoo swap teams.

And there's like a leading figure in the zoo swap team area. And she made a YouTube video one time about her industry and her training, tactical zookeeper training. And in this video, they're like shoot and shot, shoot and slug guns through woven wire fences. She does her interview in front of a bear with a bullet with a bullseye on his brain.

“Yeah, you need to clarify what these swap teams do.”

It's for if monkey's get loose. It's for her lion's get loose. They had, they had a kid fall into a gorilla container and they killed the gorilla. What's he was that up since that he's ready. So we reached out to people within this zoo swap team community.

And they're like, no one will talk to you.

This is a very tight knit community.

No one will speak. If if X person won't speak, no one will speak. But X person has spoken weirdly. But won't. If you were in the zookeeper swap team business, we would love to talk to you on the podcast.

That does sound like a good one. Oh, if you great one. Yeah. But they're like, they don't want zoos. Have to have a zookeeper swap team.

I do know someone. Well, I know, but I didn't pan out. Like no, I don't think they called people.

“No, I think they got, they got tactical trained people who are ready for a lion to get out.”

I would also guess that they're wearing multiple hats at the zoo. Yeah, it's like it's like the, but they, in their mind, it's a dirty secret. I think it's more that nobody wants to see animals harmed at the zoo. But if something happens, where it's between an animal and a human being, and they'll do what they need to do. So I think that there are people at zoos who are trained less something get out of control.

Yeah, but I don't think that's a dirty secret. Right. Someone out there works in this field. I would like to have a serious conversation on the podcast about that field. Like, like, what is the training?

What is the probability? What are some examples where this is occurred? Why does this go on? I don't feel like it's a thing that they're like, "Hush, hush. Can't talk about that."

It just seems weird to me. Um, some more audience emails. Wait, wait, wait. We got a letter. We're voting between millions of mink in thousands of salmon.

It's tough. Okay. Number three did a lot of men.

“So number one, the guy that can't use his quotes, right?”

Any votes? Here's one, one way that I'm thinking about this. If a good correction I would think is one that you would deliver to someone to their face if they're a stranger at a bar and they'd walk away going. Huh. Yeah.

If you were at a bar with a stranger and they said, "It's not on accident. It's by accident." Then I would like that guy.

Yeah.

“Just from the, like, Nate Mason would hit me with that.”

That's true. Sounds like it actually. I would like Nate.

But he's kind of a notch.

I like, but it's not really opening your, he's telling you that. It's not really opening your eyes. You know, you wouldn't go home and be like, "You know what I learned today?" No, I would tell my wife that. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

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I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

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I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

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I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

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I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

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I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

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I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

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I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

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I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I'd wake her up in the middle of night.

I'd wake her up in the middle of night. I can't dispute that. You ready to move on? I need to pause the last one. I don't know.

These guys are not Neanderthal guys. You guys need to chop it up? That's good news. All right. Can I tell you my favorite Neanderthal?

A little thing? Sure.

“I was reading a book about Neanderthals.”

They had a lot to do with Neanderthals. And this guy was talking about when they exume all these

They see a predictable suite of injuries on the bones.

They were showing them to physicians. And there was a physician who had treated a lot of bullwriters in his career. And he pointed out that, wow, the types of injuries I'm seeing are very representative of what I see on bullwriters. Out of this came this idea, and this got wrote about that they practiced a

confrontational style of hunting. Yeah. The day makes it up. You're not saying that bullwriters are like Neanderthals. I'm saying that he was like the kinds of breaks and lesions.

He saw reminded him of what he sees from bullwriters getting trampled.

Goard. Yeah.

“But you have to have a little bit of a Neanderthal mindset to get on a”

2000 pound animal and ride it around. They should research the genetics there. What I would like to know is if it went the other way. Did homo sapiens do the same thing. Well, that's a little bunch of lady.

The bunch of female homo sapiens rated that Neanderthal count. I mean, that is one theory as far as because it's only like a one way path that Randall's talking about, right? Like Neanderthal. Oh, yeah. Understood.

Yeah. I'm not that good. I can't tell you. Yeah.

“I mean, there is like at some point human behavior changed because that that's one of the explanations,”

at least for the extinction of the Andorthals. There's no like discernible physical change in humans over that period of time. So whatever when we went from cohabitation to one species being left. There's a change in culture. Yeah.

That explains it. We can move on from Neanderthals or I can offer one more fact. Please. The old man of Lashapel, famous Neanderthal remains that was used for a long time to sort of imagine what they looked like. For a while, they thought that this is like the best model of Neanderthal.

And then at some point someone pointed out this is like an old guy with some serious back injuries. And a lot of arthritis. Yeah.

“And he probably had a more upright posture.”

If you can imagine like, if we discovered some, you know, if we're aliens and we came in, this is the way it was put on one thing. It's like we're aliens and we arrived on earth and we found Joe by Kilo Neals or yeah. Or like, and we're like my god, they're all 7 people. Yeah. You jumped to some conclusion.

So that's one of the, the sort of changes in our thinking as we recognize this is probably not the guy we should go on for a benchmark. Welcome to meat eaters 12 and 26 presented by multimobile and on X maps. 12 of meat eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year. Release throughout 2026. These are long form episodes, so you get more of what you love.

The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba.

If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on meat eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. I don't know if there's any male-ville readers out there, her, male-ville readers, but a nander tall expert is this podcast white whale. We have a bunch of emails in.

I found some and they are too busy or have declined, so it's a whole we have to find the best. If I had a zookeeper SWAT team person standing here and a nander tall person standing here, I would go nander tall. Maybe maybe a bunch of nero. If we get multiple ones, we have one and then the next week we have another nander tall guy. When I was on Theo Vanshow, he's got a huge show on Theo Vanshow.

I said, hey, I'm looking for a nander tall expert. I thought, well, I'll reach new people because the whole is the list and the art thing and that wasn't working. So I thought, I'll talk to the whole is the list and the Theo bond. Still nothing. That was a big JK from.

Oh yeah, sure. Sorry, I forgot this. This is not uses the whole time. Well, I forgot about it just until now. This is a recreation of a nander tall and then if you go home with that guy, yeah. If you go to the Natural History Museum in Vienna, they have a thing that scans your face and renders you into any number of hominets BCs.

“So Phil, if you'll continue to my oxide, that's what I look like as a nander tall.”

Sort of spread my eyes apart and added a more prominent brow ridge. But you can see my mustache on the bottom is still red. I'm not seeing the resemblance. No, I need to update the program. It's, yeah, I'm sure.

Like your bug-eyed? Yeah. No, I can't. Yeah, I don't think. AI is going to upgrade that.

He's like, go look at, you know. You say there is like a red hair. I believe so. Yeah. Yeah.

Moving on. Yes, he's going to bring us now about. Yes, he's going to talk to us now about Catalina Island, Mildiria, eradication program. Which we've touched on periodically over the years.

“Just as a recap, we're going to find out where I think stand out.”

I was a recap. There's an island off the coast of California called Catalina Island. It has keep it up the map that it is hosted. It is hosted a number of non-native species over the years. There was a herd of American buffalo that were brought out there for a film.

They are there. But there is a large population of Mildiria on Catalina Island. They were not historically on Catalina Island, but they were historically just in shore from Catalina Island. So brings up this question. Are they native?

Are they not? People want to get rid of them. They don't want to get rid of them. So over the years we've often mentioned various things about their expanding, hunting opportunities for Mildiria on Catalina Island.

They are retracting hunting opportunities from Mildiria on Catalina Island.

I've never even fully understood it.

Janis is here to tell us where it stands now because there's been significant buzz. Yes. To cut to the chase, when we're all done here in the next five or ten minutes, I will still not fully understand it. No one probably else in this room will fully understand it.

I signed up to cover this little story yesterday, less than 24 hours ago. I thought this will be easy. Once I dove in, I see that this is one of those that Steve likes to say makes its own gravy. So I'll try to give like an overview of what's happened in really just state facts. And then I'm hoping you guys can sort of start then asking questions.

We might be able to get into the stuff that doesn't seem so factual about this story. Like Steve said, it's Catalina Island. It's about 75 square miles. Some important things you need to know. It's 88% roughly private land.

And that land is a managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy, which is pretty much an organization, a nonprofit, private conservation org, that is made by and made up of the people that own the land. Okay. Does that make sense?

Yeah. The rigly family. The rigly family. Yep. They definitely have a lot of influence.

They basically, if you, they also own like most of the businesses that operate on that island.

“I think there's, it's so there's like 4 to 5,000 people that live on that island.”

If you live there and work there, you most likely work for them in some way or another. And rent from them maybe. Probably. Yeah. So that, and that itself gets tricky because people want to protect their livelihoods.

Right? And then talking and saying things that, you know, might cause problems. You may or may not want to do that. Yeah. You're living in a company town.

Yeah. You don't trash the company. Yep. So we have this Conservancy, this Catalina Island Conservancy. They want to restore the island.

I think that their motto is basically to like, was like, keep the, do the best they can be the best

stewards of that land through recreation, habitat management, one other thing. But they want to make it be as those that was before contact. They're sort of like what I would call island purists. Yeah, like restore the native vegetation. So you're looking at it.

You're looking like what it looked like a long time ago. Exactly. Yeah. Before the deer, they had like, you mentioned all these other animals.

They were also cattle that were once run on Catalina Island by the, really family. Like it was a business. Right. They've kind of gotten rid of all these other grazers and animals.

But the thing left are these deer that are still, and you can see there's, there's pictures online where you can see enclosures and you can see the,

“the line, like often we see in Mexico when we're hunting clues deer, right?”

Where the cattle have been on one side of the fence and they haven't been on the other side of the fence and one side looks scorched earth and the other side looks pretty lush and green, right? And tall grass. You can see images like that online if you look for them. It's where they got deer fence dotter in exactly.

So the Conservancy believes is saying that at this point, like they've had a hunting program on the island for 20 some years. And again, this hunting program is run through the Rickley family, or this Catalina Island Conservancy. Yeah.

They believe that it's not doing enough to suppress the deer numbers to make a difference in letting the habitat rebound. They want to see more of these sort of lush, Forbes, brush, living there and less of that cheat grass, nonnative landscape going there.

They believe that the deer browsing is causing that, right? They're eating the stuff that they're preferring that stuff and they're letting this other stuff grow more of.

They have, for years, been trying to get a permit that basically allows them

to do massive calling efforts and take out as many of these deer as they want. Because again, they feel like the hunting program is not doing the trick.

“Can I wedge, because you're trying to go just facts?”

Can I wedge it or not just fact thing? Yeah. Do you mind, because I know that. Could I be the guy? Of course not fact.

Yeah. Um. I won't choose my words carefully here. A common refrain among people who have attempted to do a meal deer hunt on Catalina Island is that they do their best to make it impossible.

Who's they? The Conservancy. Okay. Like this is just a viewpoint that is expressed to me. Is that they pay lip service to a hunting program.

But make the hunting program they set it up to fail. Is a common refrain among friends of mine who've tried to participate in the meal deer hunt as they set it up to not work. Yeah. It's disingenuous.

And it's been all over the places far as who can hunt there, how much they can hunt there. They've had years where it's only been a couple hundred tags. They've had years where it's been a thousand tags. They've had years where only locals can hunt, only Californians can hunt. And then other years where you can't have non-residents coming in and hunting.

When they had that, it wasn't very well publicized. So a lot of people didn't know. And then those that knew were sort of keeping it harsh us because it was like, oh, we got a good thing going. Like we're not going to tell all of our friends about this great hunting opportunity. It was spot burned, which is the eradication program.

Which is expected. So kind of where we are now is that they have the, the Calingon Island Conservancy have gotten to a point where they, they got this permit. Okay.

To basically do the calling that they want to do.

And it's a five year program and they're like, they're allowed to do it. To this point, I talked to Charles Whitwell, Whitwell this morning. He does, he's the howl for wildlife guy. He sort of in a accidental wake ended up making a documentary called Killin Catalina. That's about this subject.

“And if you want to know more, go and watch it.”

It's very educational. You'll, you'll learn a lot about what's going on there. But he's the guy. I figured that kind of without talking to somebody that works for the Catalina Island. Conservancy.

He's the guy that's probably dove into this, the, the deepest, right? At this point, they haven't killed any deer that he knows of. But they're like, they're supposed to start sometimes soon. Like a helicopter program. Not a helicopter program.

That was the first thing that was put out there.

That's how they got rid of the goats in the past. And there was a lot of public outcry against doing that because they had supposedly, you know, three-legged goats, wounded goats, walking around and it didn't look like that. It couldn't sharp you to as well. Exactly.

So now the, the ideas that you would bring in government sharp sharpshooters and do the killing.

Humane Society of the, of California have bonded together.

Strange, but fellas. Yes. Yes. To oppose this. And actually as of, I think yesterday, there's a press release release today that I can just give you the,

the real high look at it here, is that a coalition of hunting, conservation, sports, and advocacy.

“That's how the law suit challenging the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is approval of a plan to exterminate”

the up to 2000 Mildir on Catalina Island. So like spark club international is a part of that a bunch of California's, you know, smaller, orcs are there home for wildlife. Can I ask it like, yeah, what? It's obvious why someone like group for like the Humane Society would be against it. What are these hunting groups against it because they're about to lose hunting opportunity, like, what are they?

Like what I think that they're against it because and from what I gather is because it's a, it's a, in their mind, it's a bad way to manage wildlife. And mostly because they didn't go through the proper channels, processes, steps to get this permit. Some stuff was fast tracked, there was like a bill introduced last year that got through and low and behold sponsors of this bill are related and interconnected with this, Catalina Island Conservancy. And so some things happened to help make this permit kind of smooth right through, which,

it's a, from what I research is that they've been trying to get this permit for 15 years and California Department of Fish and Wildlife has been like, no, you guys don't have the science to prove that you guys need to be doing this.

Because that's where it gets tricky is that they basically have a private island.

They control it, but they don't control the animals. Sure, because the animals are owned by the people of California. How do the locals feel about the deer? And what, by locals, what do you mean though?

“Well, there's people that live on the island, right?”

Yeah, they, but they, like, they live on the property of the people that want to kill the deer. Sure. But interestingly, yeah, they're opposed to, to the killing of the people that are written from the family that owns the thing. Yeah. It's so, it's the realization of about 4,000 people.

Yeah. So there's, there's two of them for each deer. They actually passed in the last year. Uh, I don't know if you'd call it legislation or a zoning thing.

But basically within the town of Avalon, which must be like incorporated.

Yeah, it's up in there. Yeah, it's, it's, it's the other 20% of the island that isn't controlled by the county of the conservancy. They basically passed a law where you cannot shoot or discharge firearms within those limits. And of course, that is where most of these deer live. Or that's where all people are though.

Like when you come in there, it's like beautiful little bay and a port. Yeah. It's beautiful. Real, like, walk around, get the ice cream cone kind of vibe. Yeah.

But they, they made it. So that they're not going to be able to kill every single deer off the island. Because the ones now that are in town cannot be eradicated. Has anyone, are there any real studs? I'm going to talk about the town's got to be.

Are there any studs on this island or the dinks? You know, just the few images that I saw. Nothing that would fall into like nice Colorado mule. I looked in, but it's not like a destination mule. Do so.

It's not like a little violent. Yeah. I don't like that. No. No.

I mean, I'm going to say the real obvious on this one. It brings up an interesting question of how far from the native sort.

“Do you need to be where it becomes like irrefutibly in exotic?”

Mm-hmm. So like, take something like nil guy in south Texas, right? Mm-hmm. The Indian, like, I think they're predominantly from like the Indian subcontinent. Am I right about that?

Yeah. No, no. Yeah. I think so. To Texas.

When I look at it, when I spin the old globe, I'm like, that is a non-native from way far away. Like that has nothing. Yeah. That has nothing to do with that. Mm-hmm.

Do you know what I mean? Nothing to do with that. That's its own little thing.

The fate of the nil guy in south Texas is not related to sort of like the fate of nil guy as a wild species in general.

“And you can do a situation like this where you can look and see, you can look and see where they're from.”

It's 22 miles from Los Angeles. That's the Catalan Island. You can look and see where they're native. Yeah. It wouldn't be impossible for a deer to make that swim.

No. Oh, look at southeast Alaska. You see those black tails swimming around there. Oh, where home? Yeah.

So it's like, it just bring up interesting question. Okay. They came in with people by mean dude. It's just right. They're native.

Grange is like, right there.

You can't rule out that one hasn't made the swim.

But it is an island, which like island ecosystems operate differently than a main land. I'd like to refer. I'd like to refer listeners to I can't remember the name of it. David Qualmins book. And the island, biogeography, which explains all this kind of stuff.

Why islands are so special. Why do mammals shrink and lizards get huge all that kind of stuff on islands? I don't know, man. I'm a real fence sitter on this one. I kind of on the side of them.

Here's why I'm on the side of the middle. Do you? I don't know. Go ahead. I don't know.

But something else just to plop in there, right? There's this buffalo herd.

I think the highest number I ever got was like up to 1600 or something like that.

It's been there roughly the same amount of time as these mule deer came in to film a movie. Yeah. They're right now approximately 100 there. Okay. They think there's roughly 2,000 of these deer.

“At least that's what the Caline Island Conservancy.”

The outfit are in a lot of locals and people that have hunted there. I think there's a lot less than 2,000 deer. And if someone do the math, if you go, how many, how many buffalo? 100. We'll say it.

So 100 at let's say 1200 pounds. And how many deer? 2000. 2000 at let's say 120 pounds. Wait, hold down.

100 at what? 100 at 1200. At 12. Someone's going to write an accraction about this. We're going to say we're getting on dangerous ground here.

100 at 1200. Especially since bum below our grazers. Yeah. And we'll hear our browsers with those numbers. It'd be 120,000 pounds of biomass for the bison versus 240,000 for the mule deer.

So it mule deer is double twice as much biomass as mule deer. Okay. Go on. Do my those numbers. Um.

Correction. I don't think that's going to get corrected. Because it's correct. The buffalo are just a little less sort of iconic of the island. Then the, or sorry, a little bit more than the deer.

The deer are like very much a part of it. Locals love them. People love to go there and see them. But the buffalo are just a little bit cooler. There's, you know, murals of buffalo.

There's weather veins of buffalo. Like that's, it's very much a part of them. When I went, when I went there, it was for this reason. Hmm. To check the buffalo.

But why I'm not writing about it. But I went there to write about it. But I never got to it.

“Yeah, did I, was I researching us going to do a hunt there at some point?”

But anyways, they've all been sterilized. So you would think that you couldn't keep these buffalo going. Right? Or they wouldn't. If they're all sterilized and they're not going to reproduce.

They're going to blink out. They're eventually going to blink out. But that can sterilize 2000 deer. When that question was posed to the main scientist of the conservancy. She had a very lackluster vague answer as to what's going to happen to those biases.

Where it just, at that moment, you really feel like she's a mouthpiece for this other thing that's going on. She's not necessarily in control. Because if you're going to take out 2000 deer, take out the 100 buys and two, right? And it's like don't have any of that kind of grazing going on on the landscape, right? But because the locals and the tourists and everything, there's even that much more, you know, probably comes down to money.

And you know, attach to it. They're like, well, maybe we'll keep them around. Kind of a little bit. I don't know. We're not going to get rid of them completely.

Like I said, it's just, it's just thick with sort of all these, just like little ideas of what's going on, who's thinking what, why are you talking about what they're going to do. Like they're just going to let the deer lay after they should, like, they're not going to get used.

Yeah, there's no plan for it.

It's not like they're going to donate it all to a food. So crystal ball it for me based on your base on your 24 hours of nonstop research. Yeah, he's been up all night. Crystal ball it for me. If you had to take, just say, if we're going to go, if we're going to go to a prediction market thing and make a bet.

Yeah. And I said, in five years, you know, in five years, Catalina Island will have no meal deer. Like whatever, how are you going to bet on it?

“I think that they will have a muel there.”

I think the main thing that's like a big sticking point to anybody that sort of tries to figure the story out is that it looks like they don't actually have a good survey of how many deer on the island. Okay. Some people are like, there's 500. Some people are saying there's 2,200.

No one really knows.

And so you can't really go anywhere.

You can't extrapolate from there if you don't know exactly how many deer on this island, right? Yeah, I think they can be able to figure that out. I'm imagining that because it's getting so much press that this lawsuit was filed. The California Division of Wildlife is going to fishing game, whatever they call themselves. They're going to walk back there.

Yeah, they're going to walk back that permit and going to say, hey, hold on. We need to do this the right way. We're like, we're here to manage wildlife. Let's do it the right way. And so I think that it's probably going to come back to a private lands management permit,

which is what they're operating under now had to have a hunting program.

“What they need to do is they need to go get.”

Take one of them big jets with a lot of seats in it. Go to Casanovia with Wisconsin. Everybody from Casanovia with Wisconsin on that jet and fly them out to Catalina for a big mooch. Yeah, I'm talking a big mooch like lemmings getting pushed to the Dutch. They don't just run into town where there's seats.

Dogs in charge. Doug Durant gets a map of the island. He gets his laser pointer. You sit here. You sit here at 10.

You do this at 10. 22. You get out of your blind and do this. Big mooch. Sounds like fun.

Little whittle and down. But here's my final take on it. Not that it matters.

“My final take on is since a meal like a thing I would factor in.”

You have so many areas you can point to where meal deer are not doing good. The island is so close to native meal deer range. I would take these two things and I would say we have a lot of areas where meal deer are not doing good. This is sort of like honorary native meal deer range because it's so close. It's a bright spot for meal deer.

They're doing well there. It's more valuable to have. It's more valuable to have reassurance about the long-term ability of meal deer. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about this.

Maybe it could be a potential source location for future re-introductions. I don't know. If I was emperor of the planet. I would say lower the numbers through greater public hunting opportunities. Get lower the numbers down.

But let's set aside. Talk of eradication. It's also a population that's more than likely pretty safe from CWD. You know what I mean? Hmm.

Hmm. If they were careful. What if I said it came at the cost of losing several, you know, in native and dynamic species that only are fat. Other species, floral species that are only found on that island. And they're still there after a hundred years of grazing.

Yeah. And have they done is everything they could do to. Re-seed and like I'd had no more. I'm just spit ball in here. Yeah.

We got to move on. I'm just saying. If I'm just throwing that in there. Like, would you still say, hey, we really need this. Well, little micro.

No, I would fact that in. I would fact that in. If there was a chance that there was an endemic plant species that was going to blink out and go extinct. And by and by having no milder, I knew that I could save that endemics plant species. And it was that binary that would make my decision much more complicated.

And I would probably tip toward the endemic plant species. Keep an eye on the story for us, Yannis. I will. Welcome to meat eaters 12 and 26 presented by multi-mobile and on-ex maps. 12 of meat eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout

2026. These are long-form episodes, so you get more of what you love.

The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba.

If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively

Check it out.

“Now on meat eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months.”

They'll be plenty.

They'll be poured for report on Easter.

Yannis went a pair of boots. Well, I haven't got to go yet. Well, you only, I'm the only point of comparison you have. I've tried it. Well, you know who's going to be out.

Brody, you're not. We're going to hold the collar rodents can't embarrass themselves anymore until they did story. We were on an out of town. We're going to punt over on my body here. See you.

Over dispenser for rattlesnake roundup roundup.

This weekend, March 13th through the 15th is the 68th annual world's largest rattlesnake roundup in sweet water Texas. It's been going on since 1958. Not even COVID stopped them from having a couple of their festivals. That's great.

There's a parade carnival, a gun and coin show. Dance guided rattlesnake hunts that you can sign up for. Those costs $75 to go catch one. Cooking competition with category such as brisket ribs, chili beans, bloody marries and of course rattlesnake.

But the big attraction is the rattlesnake hunting contest. And hunters will spend weeks or months catching rattlesnakes that will then get entered into the contest. You can stock them up ahead of the time. Far in advance.

They'll do that with fast vision. No. It's unclear to me.

“It seems as though you need to keep them alive to enter that.”

But I couldn't confirm that with anything. But you need to keep these snakes alive. Are they managed in any way? They are states for rattlesnakes. There's a limit.

They're managed as some kind of like. games, species. On the website, you need to have a permit from the state of Texas. Whatever, you know, like a small game permit, whatever they're equivalent is your collection permit of some sort. And for the first 3,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in the sweetwater jc's will pay $20 per pound for those rattlesnakes. What does it want them for? Go ahead to it. We'll get to it. But anyways, 20 dollars a pound. It was five dollars per pound in 2006. So that's a $15 increase.

And if you were doing inflation that $5 would be about $9 today, they doubled even a few account for inflation and what they're paying for the next 5,000 pounds, they pay $15 per pound. And then they start paying altogether if they have more than 8,000 pounds of rattlesnakes brought in. Is that, is that the filters put up a photo? Is that guy so confident in his snakechaps? He's just standing in among those rattlesnakes. He seems as though he is. There's rattlesnakes on top of rattlesnakes, and he is with incentives.

And he's like, my chaps are good. Well, it looks like he's just flicking one off his boot there. We should go there one year. No thank you. It's just terrible. Not a big snake. It is just the western diamond back. They look like it's Spencer. Looks like there's different species in it. Now first prize. First prize for bringing in the most pounds of snakes is $1,000. The longest snake gets $500. They're all time record is an 81.5 inch rattlesnake. We'll say that come out to infinity. Look at 10. Almost seven little less than correction. We're looking at it.

Their website has results from the last decade and from looking at these. It's clear that there is a sweetwater rattlesnake hunting goat. Andy Lee has won five of the last nine condoms in including in 2020 that's worth. Well, when is that guy on the show? What's his name? Andy Lee. Can you get him on the show? I've got some more details for you on Andy. Last year he brought in 651 pounds of rattlesnakes, which beat second place by 39 pounds. Here's some good journalism Steve. When I googled Andy's name, I learned that he owns a pest control business in Texas.

He's got a hot line. He is double dipping for someone pays him to come bring him a snake from under their porch. And then he goes and enters it in this contest. This does not dissuade me from wanting him on the show. No, I'm with you. But last year last year with that winning weight, if he would have entered it in the first 3,000 pounds, he would have made $14,000.

It doesn't say how many snakes it does 50. It doesn't say it's always measured in pounds on their website. There he is right there.

There he is. That's his, the business he owns. Andy Lee, who is Dee Dee Dee. That's his wife. Then they, they own the business together. Now Steve asked what happens to these snakes. They're registered, then they're skinned, battered, deep fried, and sold it to concession stands. And you're not eating up that many snakes. Give him a break. He's got a picture of that, they said they're eating them there. They're going through that whole batch of snakes.

“I don't know. I think it's going to happen. It doesn't say what they do with the skins.”

Oh, it's got a picture of how all them skinning in a line there. Look at that. Oh, yeah.

There must have been something with the weather that you then just made a boom, rattlesnakes.

“Now here's the most amazing part, I think. I found a quote from Texas A&M in 2006 that said they estimate the roundup captures 1% of the states entire Western diamond.”

There were three Western diamond bag population every year. But they have, I wonder, have you encountered what sort of harvest rate? Like a state would have deer harvest and they're going to kill 10%, 11%, 12% of the state's deer. So I don't know about the focundity of rattlesnakes, but I'm guessing 1% is well within recovery. I imagine if this is the world's largest version of this and it still exists, then yeah, they're not worried about her in the Western diamond bag. The Western diamond bag population in Texas, if it continues on.

Now it's very popular in the community, they expect 25,000 visitors this year again.

It's this weekend that pumps in 8 million dollars to the local economy. So go check it out if you live in central Texas.

What's number the bloody ham prints on the wall? Well, I think they're taking them hands that are all bloody and pressing them on that wall. Yeah, well, I get that part interesting. Yeah, it's like little cave paintings. Oh, yeah, I'll save it. 68th annual world's largest rattlesnake round up.

More town, sweet water taxes. Sweet water. That's not reporting. Thank you, did it best y'all in the year now? No, I think there's no.

I mean, the quality of the reporting, the delivery, but it just didn't make as much gravy. Yeah, I'm so, I'm so third.

“It's what is it when you just don't even get mentioned?”

Like pictures at the old. Like as you live, she got the gold silver bronze.

You know, but they don't even let a guy get on them.

Randall, at least you got to compete. Yeah. No, Randall, I'm just joking man. I thought you did a great job. Maybe I could tilt the scales a little more.

So back to the Trump, America, the beautiful card. The center of biological, what is it? The center for biological diversity. The anti-hunting organization. They are suing him for doing that.

They started that lawsuit in December. I reached out to them for an update on the lawsuit. Funny. I was going to talk about those folks in my section. Their update is they don't have an update yet, but they're working on it behind the scenes.

So we don't know what the fate of it.

By the time they wrap it up, this card will no longer even be good. So oh, should. They do a lot of like posture. They do a lot of posture. They do a lot of posture by it.

“But what would say best case scenario for them happens?”

And they win this lawsuit against the Trump administration. Yeah. We're going to reiss you. I don't know. Well, maybe someone who chooses to buy their pass in December of this year.

They have a people for the ethical treatment of animals. They have a lot of people for the legal treatment of animals. They have a lot of people for the legal treatment of animals. They have a lot of people for the legal treatment of animals. They have a lot of people for the legal treatment of animals.

They have a lot of people for the legal treatment of animals. They have a lot of people for the legal treatment of animals. They have a lot of people for the legal treatment of animals. They the Center for Biological Diversity like they got something done in Colorado. Which is not good.

Next week. It's not done. It's not done. But you think it's going to pass? It already passed.

No, but you think it's going to become law? But it already. They're just in the rulemaking process now. Yeah, but I thought the rulemaking process would get so it like that it wouldn't go. Or people were thinking it wouldn't go.

We'll see. We'll report on it next week. That one needs time. Couldn't have scripted it any better. Yeah.

That one needs time. Yeah. Okay. Going over for a final story. Is there a final story?

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Going over for a final story. I heard a very interesting thing recently.

My brother Danny up in Alaska has a body. My brother Danny works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He has a colleague who is a he'll explain what he does. I was hearing about learning about that one when imports come into the country. Right?

There's a customs process around processing imports. And here's where you would look for like illegal wildlife imports. Meaning things you could imagine, like someone opens up a crate and they're like,

Like that's going to be a problem.

Right?

“But there are other things that you might not know about that that customs officials look at.”

And U.S. Fish Wildlife Service, when it comes to wildlife issues that is there, that is their turf. Okay? And I was learning about a thing I had no idea that he even existed is that people make fake eyelashes. Out of mink fur. And since it's a wildlife product, it needs to be imported in a certain way.

And I was learning about how wildlife officials will detect, find, and seize incoming fake eyelashes made of mink. Which I feel are being worn by people who have no idea what they're wearing. Definitely not. Over to our guests. Ready, Phil?

Oh yeah, got you didn't see that coming?

Well, I thought there would be a little bit more to do before we bring him in, but hey, he's here. Yeah, like, you know, women and fake eyelashes. History of that, but that's okay. Brian Olin, how's it going? Good morning. Yeah, it's going well. I guess I should have worn some eyelashes a day, so I could have demonstrated that for you.

But I didn't include that in my morning routine. So you're forgiven. Lay this out for us. Lay out for us. What form these things take?

How you know about them? Where they come from? Whatever you got for us. Gotcha.

So yeah, I didn't know about them.

Not surprisingly, before I started this job about five years ago. We all know about fake eyelashes. But there is a pre-significant quantity of them being made from mink. Certainly also made from like silk and other synthetic materials. But they looked like just like a half moon or crescent moon shape.

And he's a strip with individual pieces of mink hair. Like it's just attached or glued on there. When you like do some research on them and say that they're more fluttery looking. Little more naturally looking. The mink hair ones versus the synthetic ones. So there's some ways you can kind of once you look at five or six hundred of these things.

You can kind of tell them to look part pretty easily. But the mink hair kind of tapers to a point. Whereas like the synthetic materials and we're like truncated and chopped. You can kind of tell that with the naked eye. But so yeah, we're inspecting these.

Kind of, you know, the company goes and waves, but daily across the US. And we're here in Anchorage, Alaska. So most of our imports are coming from from Southeast Asia. So yeah, we're we're looking at air cargo coming in and trying to stop these and make sure they're imported. And they're imported in the correct manner.

What would be the correct manner? Like they're not like a mink eyelash isn't necessarily illegal. It's just that the way they're bringing them in. They're not declaring them as a wildlife product. Is that the problem?

Yeah. Yeah. So mink art. Particularly highly protected. Like you mentioned, Ryan O'Horn. Obviously they're not in the same level. Most of these are farm to mink.

And so they just need to have a few things done. If you're commercially importing, you got to have an import permit from us.

“And then yeah, you have to declare every shipment as it arrives.”

Declare it to the genus and species. So we know what what animal you're using and the quantity. So that's that's the biggest like violation for the mink eyelashes. Is there just failing to declare or failure to obtain a license? So do this for people.

You told me how this works. But let's say someone's sitting at home right now. And they're just curious. If their fake eyelashes are made of mink or not. Tell them the little test you do to find out what exactly you're looking at.

Sure. Yeah. So if you have a pair that maybe took off and you already wore once or twice, you can just take a match and a burn part of that. And give you to get a good whiff and see what it smells like. And if it smells like burned hair or like petroleum plastic,

that'll tell you right off the bat if it's if it's a natural product or a synthetic product.

“Huh, how many times if you had to get like you've been there five years?”

How many different times have you encountered mink eyelashes coming into your port?

Oh. Yeah, hundreds.

It's not every day anymore.

But that these things kind of come and go in waves. So much of it is driven by like the fashion industry and what's popular. And I think right now we're kind of at like a low, at least in our port of what we're seeing in. So maybe there's some, you know, people are starting to realize that they're they are made of mink and they don't want that. But it seems like it's on a downward trend right now.

But, you know, like 10, 10 years ago it was probably 10 fold amount of products coming in. You know how fashion becomes self-parity, like meaning a thing becomes fashionable. And then it just tries to one up itself, right? Like a hole in your jeans, that's fashionable. So someone then eventually it's that the whole front of your jeans has gone or there's holes from top to bottom because it's self-parities itself.

Are mink eyelashes subtle?

Or are they like, you want to see big eyelashes? Check these out. Like how would you rank a mink eyelash? Oh, yeah, like on flutterly flutteriness.

“That's why they're up there and they amount of fluttered they have.”

So it's an exaggerated eyelash. It's like a big eyelash. Well, at times it is yes, but like there's so many variations that you'll see that smaller and more in kind of petite ones. Okay. One that are just comically large, but. So you could be clasping a little bit.

You could be classy and mink or you could be not mink sounds like.

I think you can be classy. Now here's another question if you don't mind adding in on this. Are you able to share with us a handful of. Other wildlife products that that you've seen show up in your area of jurisdiction over your career. There, are you able to share some other examples of things that you might.

That your agency might find coming in to port an anchorage Alaska. Sure. Um, a lot of what we see is products. We don't see too many live live animals. A lot of those are, you know, they don't want their live animals to sit on the the tarmac when it's like negative 20 out. God, it just don't survive. So you're not a good lot of entry for live.

No, not typically, although we just have some yesterday. Can't talk about those too much, but in the past. Past years like we had a, um, a Viper come in in a Pringles can from Southeast Asia. Hmm. And does that was, that was a, yeah, that's an eye opener.

So that's, you know, like one of the more surprising. Yeah, yeah. You're like, hey, but most of all we see is parts and products. Uh, feathers, shells, um, turtle products, uh, turtle shell products. God, um, occasionally live live animals like birds. Um, but it doesn't have a question, Steve.

Uh, go ahead.

“We have all those products. How many of those are, like, banned outright versus how many of those are simply trying to slide in undeclared?”

Yeah. So that's, that's part of our, our gig is to facilitate the legal trade. So we're there to find the real bad stuff, but also, you know, help people do it legally. Um, most, you know, like, the real bad stuff we don't see super often. Like, um, the rhino horn, the, um, elephant tusks.

Like we see that stuff, but it's, it's pretty rare compared to like, oh, you're, you're importing shell jewelry. Uh, yeah, it has to be declared. So that's, of course, more common. The more common the animal, the more common we're seeing the thing. So are, are you often involved in the work of let's say someone's importing shell jewelry? Does it fall on your agency, um, to, to try to determine what is the genus and species?

Because I imagine it could be like very hard to figure out if it's polished shell. Right. How you'd ever begin to understand like, is it, what is it from?

“You know, where did it come from and what, what did they make it with?”

Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's upon, uh, the importer to declare it to the genus and species level. Um, and they would rely on their exporter quite a bit for that. Okay. Um, so it's not like, it's not our position to determine that, but we do have to spend a lot of time. Um, trying to ID things, uh, because the importers, you know, in, in the legal cases, they, they don't want to do that anyway.

So we need to be able to, to do that to, to know that this might be a protective species or it may not be. Yeah. Um, meaning someone could, someone could try to bring in a thing that, that could be, that they could be declaring it as something permissible.

Exactly.

Whether that was intention, a mistake or intentional, it could be a thing that would happen.

Yeah. Like, uh, snake skins, um, you know, there's, there's protected snakes and there's, there's not protected snakes. So if you were wanting to try to sneak something in without permits, you might call it, you know, a water snake versus a ball python or something. Understood. Understood. You know what I didn't do a good job of when I, when I started out, Brian, can you, can you tell anybody what your, you know, your agency, but also what your specific job title would be like, what is your, what is your, what is your, I don't know, you know, what's on your badge.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a, I'm a wildlife inspector. I worked for the Office of Law Enforcement, which is a law enforcement division of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And so we work at all the ports of entry across the US. And we combat the legal wildlife trafficking trade and then, like I said, facilitate the legal trade.

“Got it. And then you are, you are based within, um, are you within the Anchorage Airport, like, where do you, where do you sit right now?”

Yeah. So me, I'm at the Anchorage Airport. We have an international side. So I'm at the office here today. We also have people over at, um, sorting facility for like the air cargo. So we get most of our, most of our cargo is coming in from Southeast Asia on the, on the air side of things. And we also have outports that, um, we cover for like the, the, um, the highways between Canada and, and the US, we'll cover that as well. Got one last question for you.

Say a fella went over to Africa and he did some hunting. And he lives in Anchorage.

And he waits a million years and finally the stuff he got in Africa arrives for him.

Do you get to take a peek? Yeah, yeah, just yesterday I was inspecting a shipment from South Africa. Um, so yeah, even, um, non-commercial personal shipments have to be declared. So okay. Um, they'll arrive on cargo and we'll go over there and make sure what they're declaring is accurate.

“If there's permits to collect, we'll collect those and stamp them and help them fill out paperwork.”

And, um, yeah, that's kind of a fun thing of our job is to kind of see that, that exotic stuff coming in. You know what I'm realizing, he might be a very good trivia contestant on wildlife questions, a lot of knowledge. Wildlife questions. Brian, thanks. Thanks for coming on, the show and explaining all that to us, man.

I want to go get me a set of these eyelash and put them on. We should have done that today. I thought about doing that. Yeah, there's some pictures in there. I can't pull on my ball brands on the wall.

Oh, that's right. That's right. Yep. All right. Thank you very much, officer. Appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Um, I'm going to start going up to people, lighten their eyelashes on fire and smelling. All right. I mean, I don't know.

Thanks for looking at that. Thank you very much. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining the new show. Come on. Next week and you're going to hear Brody talk all about a thing that I don't understand. Well, because I thought it was something different. Okay.

Brody's guys work cut out for him. I thought the rule making process would prove so impossible that it was like some kind of problem.

“Let's hope that was that's what happens.”

But it's not officially lie yet. They got to go through some stuff. Yeah, but. Stay with that. Why?

To be continued. Just what you thought Colorado. Hmm. The animal rights community in Colorado could not embarrass their state any more. They do.

Next week on the new show. When you flew out the window and into the sunset.

I thought I would never stop screaming.

I thought I would never stop screaming. But I ran out of breath. So I took in some more and I started screaming louder. Welcome to Meet Eater's 12 and 26 presented by multi-mobile and on-ex maps. 12 of Meet Eater's biggest and baddest hunts from the last year released throughout 26.

These are long form episodes so you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba.

you'll love this episode.

“My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get”

a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree.

Check it out now on Meet Eater's YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more

12 and 26 in the coming months.