The MeatEater

In this episode of the Bear Grease Render, host Clay Newcomb is joined by Moe Shepherd, Bear Newcomb, Isaac Neale, and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker. In the thick of deer season, the crew shares their favorite Bear Grease deer stories and swaps updates on their own recent and upcoming hunts—including Bear’s annual friends-and-family deer camp.

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This week on Rut Fresh, Jake is joined by Phil Lincoln of Indiana, Kevin Vistisen of Michigan, Ben Mosley of Wisconsin, and Jared Larsen of OnX to break down what they've been seeing for activity and key intel for the upcoming week.

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This week, Tony chats with Pheasants Forever's, Bob St. Pierre, about his GSPs, his love or roosters, and the idea that bird hunting adventures await everyone who is willing to look for them.

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Spencer Neuharth hosts MeatEater Trivia with Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Randall Williams, Brody Henderson, Nate Mason, Sarah Delany, Alex Plachta, and Anthony Finissi.

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This fall, officials have moved to change regulations regarding the commercial menhaden fishing industry on both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast. The actions have highlighted serious and ongoing strains between the menhaden fishing companies and recreational anglers, who worry about the impacts that the fishery has on sport fish populations.

Menhaden, or pogy, is a baitfish similar to herring, shad, and sardines. While sport anglers do not pursue the fish, the species is a foundational forage item for some of the most popular saltwater gamefish in the world: redfish in the Gulf Coast and stripers in the East Coast and Chesapeake Bay.

Meanwhile, the menhaden industry is an extractive commercial fishery that historically hasn’t been well-regulated compared to other commercial fisheries. Menhaden businesses, some of which are foreign-controlled, harvest hundreds of millions of pounds of the fish each year. According to the NOAA, the bulk of that catch is used to produce “fertilizers, animal feed, and bait,” as well as omega-3 supplements.

Beyond the direct impact of the reduction of menhaden, scientists and conservation groups worry about the impacts of bycatch on other fish species because of the use of purse seines, which involve using nets to capture schools of fish. Furthermore, menhaden boats can push anglers off of their favored spots and have been known to accidentally spill millions of dead fish into the water.

In Louisiana, amid an ongoing decline of redfish numbers, recent research has shown that the menhaden industry kills over 22,000 mature redfish each year as bycatch. The state’s recreational anglers and captains have pushed for restrictions on the menhaden industry. Particularly, conservation groups and anglers advocated for a “buffer zone” for menhaden boats to prevent near-shore fish spills, limit any potential impact of purse seines on shallow-water seafloors, and reduce conflicts with recreational anglers. In 2024, a compromise was reached, and the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission (LWFC) instituted a half-mile buffer for menhaden boats, less than the 1-mile buffer conservationists pushed for but still significant.

“The buffer has been in place for two fishing seasons,” Chris Macaluso, director of fisheries for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, told MeatEater. He notes that while the regulation didn’t impose a cap on menhaden harvest, which many conservationists consider necessary, it has made a difference. “As our organization has noted, the buffer has resulted in a 74% decrease in fish spills winding up on our beaches. It isn’t a perfect situation, but it did relieve some of the user conflicts between recreational boats trying to fish near the beach and pogie boats coming right on top of them.”

However, at a meeting last week, the LWFC moved to reduce the buffer zone in half at the behest of the menhaden industry. The proposed policy, which narrowly passed the commission’s vote, would reduce the buffer zone to ¼ mile for much of the state’s coastline.

“This did not come from the department’s staff—from the biologists and fisheries managers,” Macaluso said. “It came from the governor's office. It came from political appointments on the LWFC. They were heavily influenced by the menhaden industry to make this decision.”

Macaluso and other opponents of the regulation change argue that the menhaden industry has continued to do well with the current buffer zone and don’t see the need to reduce it. “In 2024, their catch rate was down,” he said. “But they were also hampered by a lot of hurricanes and bad weather. This year, they’re going to catch a hundred million pounds more fish and nothing changed other than the weather improving. But they claim they’re not doing as well as they could be doing—making as much money as they could be making.”

“You are giving this industry a billion fish a year, and the message here today is: ‘That’s not enough,’” said Charlie Caplinger, CEO of the Coastal Conservation Association of Louisiana, at the recent LWCF meeting, as reported by the Louisiana Illuminator.

The proposed regulation change is subject to a 35-day public comment period, which will extend from December 19 to January 23. Following that period, the LWFC will decide on the proposal’s fate. The Louisiana Legislature’s Natural Resources Committee could also intervene.

“Sportsmen overwhelmingly commented in support of the original buffer zone, and I think they’re ready to comment again,” Macaluso said. “I would encourage sportsmen and people concerned about this to also talk to their legislators.”

The menhaden industry on the East Coast is also facing a regulatory shakeup. On October 28, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board voted to reduce the number of fish that menhaden boats are allowed to take by 20%, or 86,840 metric tons. Unlike in Louisiana, the harvest of Atlantic Menhaden has been capped since the mid-2000s. Subsequently, any changes to the cap have been met with fierce conflict between the menhaden industry and conservation groups.

This year, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board is responding to a 2025 Atlantic Menhaden Stock Assessment showing that while the species is not technically being overfished, its reproduction thresholds aren’t being met. The report indicated that the take of the species may need to be reduced by over 50% to limit the impact on striped bass populations. Proposals were put forward both to immediately cut the quota by 50% and to start with a 20% cut in 2026 before gradually increasing it.

Instead, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board instituted a 20% cap for 2026 and plans to revisit the issue next year. The cut is slightly more than the menhaden industry proposed and significantly less than many conservation groups pushed for. “We recognize that taking a 20% cut is a step in the right direction,” says Macaluso. “But it was still a disappointing decision for a lot of people because they believed the best science showed a 50% cut was needed.”

“Our understanding of menhaden as a species and of the ecosystem suggests that we need to take a reduction, not just a small reduction, a significant reduction,” Caitlin Craig, of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said, as reported by The Virginia Mercury. “I would encourage this board to think, just as we were confident in increasing the total allowable catch when the science says we should, that we need to be as willing to take reductions when the science indicates that that’s warranted as well.”

The recent proposed and enacted regulatory changes on the Gulf and East coasts underscore the ongoing divide between commercial menhaden companies, conservation groups, and recreational anglers. While some of the changes may be disheartening for striped bass and redfish anglers, Macaluso says that it’s not cause for despair—yet.

“In the grand scheme of the fishery as a whole—if you look back 30, 40, 50 years—we’re in a better place now than we were then,” he says. “We know much more about this fishery scientifically…These are slight setbacks, but we’re going to continue to move forward in advocating for conservation- and science-based management of the fishery.”

Want to learn more about menhaden? Check out these recent episodes of Backwoods University: Pogie Boats and Menhaden Fishery Representative.

There have been more than 220 bear attacks and 13 deaths so far this fiscal year across Japan, by far the most in recorded history. In the last month alone, a 70-year-old man gathering mushrooms was decapitated, a 78-year-old woman was mauled to death while taking out her trash, and a former women’s professional wrestling referee who had retired to work at a rural spa was pulled into the forest and killed while cleaning an outdoor bath. Three people died in the span of a single week.

Non-fatal attacks are happening at a rate of almost one every other day, including a New Zealand-born marathon runner who had both bones of his forearm broken clean through, and an 85-year-old woman who was attacked while washing radishes at a tap outside her farmhouse. One bear, after mauling a man in the city of Yuzawa late last month, holed up in a house for six whole days before it was finally captured by a hunting association. Home and business invasions have become commonplace, with one bear in northwest Tokyo entering a supermarket and clearing out the sushi section.

“Japan likely has the highest number of bear-human incidents in the world,” Koji Yamazaki, a professor of animal ecology at Tokyo University of Agriculture, told The Japan Times.

Since 2008, the number of fatal bear attacks in Japan has averaged about three per year. In the United States, that figure is under 1.5 per year looking at the Lower 48 and around two annually when Alaska is included. The dense populations of both humans and bears and the close proximity of developed areas to bear habitats are likely to blame for the increased number of violent encounters.

The attacks are affecting all parts of Japanese society. A forthcoming movie entitled “Higuma!” or “Brown Bear!” about workers in the gig economy was scheduled to be released this month but is now being pushed back to early next year due to the crisis.

With bear hibernation unlikely to occur until late December, officials are growing increasingly desperate. The governor of Akita Prefecture recently traveled to Tokyo to meet with the Japanese military, known as the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), to get help with the problem. Several news outlets reported that the army would be coming in to help with a bear cull, but to the disappointment of 9-year-old boys everywhere, there will be no tanks rolling in to do battle with swarms of angry brown bears.

SDF interventions will be strictly non-lethal, and forces have now been deployed to Akita to plan for more systematic bear control measures and protection of local bear hunters. This isn’t the first time the Japanese military has scrambled to respond to wildlife threats. Starting in 2011, SDF troops traveled to the northern island of Hokkaido to reduce the overpopulation of sika deer, conducting helicopter reconnaissance missions and transporting deer killed by local hunting associations.

This time around, the SDF will assist in setting up bear traps and will lend other logistical support, but those same licensed hunting associations will be pulling the trigger.

The licensed hunters are also getting a significant bump in pay. The town of Biei [bee-AY] in Hokkaido is now paying bear hunters an hourly rate of 4,000 yen or 26 dollars per hour, up from just 10 dollars an hour in 2011. Hunters who bag a bear in Biei will now earn 60,000 yen or just under 400 dollars per bear, versus about 125 dollars for a bear in 2011. Towns across northern Japan are now offering similar rates, but are struggling to attract hunting associations and are asking for assistance from the national government to cover the costs.

“The underlying issue is that Japan has never really invested the money or effort into wildlife management,” said Shinsuke Koike, head of the Japan Bear Network and a professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. “Up until now, we’ve somehow managed to get by with that approach. But not anymore.”

Interestingly, Japan has some serious bear hunting heritage. The Ainu people of Northern Japan built their entire culture around a yearly bear festival that celebrated successful hunts. Bears were so central to Ainu culture that if hunters killed a sow with cubs, those cubs were often taken from the den and raised in captivity. There are several documented cases of Ainu women nursing bear cubs who were too young to eat solid food.

You also may have pricked up your ears at the name “Akita,” the prefecture in the north of Japan. That name was given to the Akita dog, the famous bear-hunting breed of the Matagi people, who still hunt bears in the protected beech forests of the region. The number of traditional Matagi hunters has been in steep decline over the past several decades, but several of them are now offering their services across Japan.

Who knows, maybe this growing problem will revive some of those hunting practices. And maybe instead of paying professional hunters, Japan might look across the ocean to a place where hunters gladly pay into a system of regulated hunting, and feed themselves in the process.

This week Reid and Dan host a God's Country "Artist to Watch" and Sony Nashville recording artist, McCoy Moore. The episode kicks off with a story of how Dan *hopefully* is protected by the statute of limitations and how Reid has a motorcycle somewhere out there he still has yet to ride. The three of them bond over the outdoors, Nashville, and end the episode with a top-notch gravorite.

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This week, Tony explains why get-rich-quick rut hunting products can work, but you need to understand when and how to use them to get positive responses out of cruising bucks.

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This week, Cal tackles a positive development out of our nation's capital, a controversial wolf cull, the world's dumbest salmon poachers, and a voicemail message you won't want to miss.

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To learn more and get involved with any Cal to Action, click here.

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