The MeatEater

Well, you don’t see this every day: A woman in California was recently nabbed for two wildlife infractions after attempting to conceal illegally taken shellfish in her pants.

The incident took place at Van Damme State Park, along the Mendocino Coast, during the weekend of January 31-February 1, according to a Facebook post by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). A game warden watched a male and female duo taking purple sea urchins in the intertidal zone—as well as something suspicious. The warden “observed the female discreetly conceal what appeared to be an abalone down her pants, an unconventional storage method, to say the least.”

The CDFW officer waited to contact the pair until they returned to the parking lot. He asked the woman what she had concealed, and she soon “produced a small abalone from inside her pants.”

The laughably poor behavior didn’t end there, however. The CDFW remained suspicious that the woman was keeping additional abalone hidden in her pants. He “requested assistance from a female wildlife officer to conduct a search” and explained this to the woman, which prompted her to voluntarily remove yet another abalone from inside of her pants.

No other abalone were found, and the male subject was considered to be in compliance with wildlife regulations. The woman was cited for the illegal take of two abalone. In California, red abalone—a species of marine snail—was long considered a culinary delicacy, popularly harvested along the coast. However, low abalone populations prompted the CDFW to close the recreational harvest of the species in 2018. In December 2025, the closure was extended through at least 2036.

That hasn’t stopped bad actors from poaching abalone, however, though most poachers haven’t been hiding the invertebrates in their pants. In December, for instance, CDFW confiscated 15 poached red abalone from an individual at Ocean Cove on the Sonoma Coast. According to California law, abalone poaching can carry penalties of up to $40,000 and one year in jail.

Feature images both from CDFW. Left image of woman caught smuggling abalone in her pants, the right image is of 15 poached red abalone in the December instance.

In Colorado, beetles are on the move—and it could have big impacts on mule deer habitat. The insects, mountain pine beetles, are the same ones that destroyed many of the state’s lodgepole forests over the last decade, and they’re now moving into ponderosa stands along the Front Range. The US Forest Service estimates that nearly all adult ponderosa pine trees in the area could die from the beetles in the next several years. A map of the predicted outbreak is equally as grim.

Ecologists point to mild, dry winters as the main driver behind the spread. The beetles are native to the state, but drought conditions in recent years have increased their lethality to ponderosas. Ordinarily, the trees would increase sap production as a natural defense mechanism against the insects; however, a lack of water from several successive years of low moisture has compromised their defense systems, making the trees vulnerable.

Once a single beetle finds a weak tree, it sends out a chemical signal that can draw thousands of other beetles to the tree. The critters burrow in and lay eggs, essentially destroying the ponderosa’s water and sap circulation system. Once the eggs hatch, the larvae continue to carve out more channels, eventually killing the tree and leaving the telltale Swiss-cheese-like markings in their wake.

The beetles can target many species of trees, and they first hit Colorado’s lodgepole forests hard in the early 2000s, wiping out an estimated 3 million acres. Hunters, especially in the north-central part of the state near Rocky Mountain National Park, are used to seeing entire mountainsides full of dead trees as a result—most still standing.

Many of those dead forests also burned in 2020 in the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires, the two largest in the state’s history. Both fires burned well into the fall, resulting in hunting closures and refunds of nearly 3,000 elk and deer tags in the affected units. About 700,000 acres in total burned that year.

Now, the beetles appear to have shifted focus to ponderosas. Already, the Forest Service has documented growing patches of dead trees on the Front Range, especially on the I-70 corridor and along Hwy 285—and it might be too late to stymie the outbreak.

“This is not just a forest health issue,” says Matthew McCombs, director of the Colorado State Forest Service. “It’s a public safety issue, a water quality issue, and a recreation and economic issue. And it is a challenge that demands action before impacts accelerate.”

While the state is primarily concerned about the increased threat of wildfire from dead trees along the densely populated Front Range, the forests are also important for mule deer and elk. Ponderosa stands provide winter range and cover for elk coming off the continental divide, and mule deer live in the dry, low-elevation forests year-round. The trees provide important shade for the animals, and the beetle outbreak could impact ungulate populations depending on the severity.

To combat the spread, the state is focusing on private lands and helping landowners with forest management along the wildland-urban interface. To eradicate beetles, sick trees must be felled and burned, or debarked, then covered with plastic and allowed to bake in the sun for several months in the summer. Those are both extraordinary, labor-intensive processes, neither practical on large swaths of public land. Several insecticides are available to protect live, uninfected trees, but their efficacies are a mixed bag. Thus, the state’s pessimistic outlook for ponderosa forest health over the next decade, while the beetles run their course.

Even so, “this is not a time to panic,” says McCombs. “It’s a time to ramp up and take action to reduce the impacts of this outbreak and ensure we never allow our forests to become this vulnerable ever again.”

Looking down the road, the area could look awfully different in the next several years—and the quality of hunting could be impacted as a result.

Steven Rinella talks with author Jamie Holmes, Randall Williams, Brody Henderson, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. 

Topics discussed: Jamie's new book, The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America's Forgotten War is out; deep archival research like a treasure hunt; the evidence base and when the notes section of the book is almost as long as the book itself; the complexity of stories about the Seminole Wars; turning what you know on its head; the environment of interior Florida; what enslavement meant to the tribes; who were the black Seminole people?; the relationship between Osceola and Abraham; and more.  

Feel free to donate to the recovery effort here: https://critfc.org/donate/

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This week Cal talks about good bills, bad bills, and the Rainy River watershed.

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Last week, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife approved a plan to eradicate mule deer on Catalina Island, located about 23 miles off the southern California coast. Behind the plan is a nonprofit called the Catalina Island Conservancy, which owns 42,000 acres on Catalina—about 80% of the total island.

According to the Conservancy, mule deer are non-native to the island and pose a threat to native plant and wildlife species. The plan outlines a strategy to remove the estimated 800 to 2,000 animals on the island over the next six years, beginning this fall with “professional sharpshooters” killing deer over bait and watering holes.

Mule deer were originally introduced to Catalina for hunting in the 1920s, and in the time since, they’ve provided many successful hunts, including on the Conservancy’s private lands. In 2024, 1,000 deer tags were made available to California residents. Hunters only shot 397 deer that year, and the Conservancy called the hunt a failure. Yet then in 2025, the Conservancy lowered tag quotas to 200, and limited them exclusively to Catalina Island residents—a decision that raised eyebrows with hunters, in light of the Conservancy’s deer-management goals.

Even with some public hunting opportunities, however, the nonprofit argues that recreational hunting has been ineffective in controlling deer populations. “Because of Catalina’s rugged terrain, recreational hunters have never been and are unlikely ever to be able to take a high proportion of Catalina’s deer population,” the plan states. “Additionally, deer have learned to avoid hunters throughout the hunting season by going to Avalon, making many deer inaccessible to hunting.” Avalon is the one city on the island—and apparently a good one for deer to take refuge in.

While hunting opportunity is part of the issue, the overall eradication goal represents a shifting of priorities toward the preservation of native vegetation on the island. The Conservancy says that deer have eaten down native plants and prevented seedlings from establishing over the last century. As a result, about 35% of the island is now dominated by highly flammable, invasive grasses—similar to those that fueled the LA wildfires last year, just two dozen miles away on the mainland. The change has also negatively impacted the island’s smaller fauna species like the Catalina Island fox and the Catalina Island ground squirrel—both of which are only found on their namesake piece of ground.

According to the Conservancy, the island’s natural ecosystem and the presence of deer are mutually exclusive—meaning they can’t co-exist. Thus, the no-holds-barred approach to eradication.

The plan authorizes the use of dogs, thermal imaging, helicopters, and drones in locating deer. The only thing off-limits is aerial gunning. All shooting will be done with boots-on-the-ground by hunters contracted through a company called White Buffalo Inc. According to White Buffalo’s website, the organization has conducted similar operations, culling or capturing deer near cities in Virginia and South Carolina. Their extermination work costs between $200 and $400 per deer, although that number will likely be much higher on Catalina once helicopters are added to the mix.

Once the bulk of the deer have been killed by sharpshooters, the Conservancy will employ some unique strategies to track down the stragglers. The plan outlines an operation to live-capture a handful of deer, fit them with GPS collars, and then use them as “sentinels” to track down other holdouts. In the town of Avalon itself, contracted killers will set bait, then shoot the deer with tranquilizer darts from air rifles, and later kill or sterilize them

Deer carcasses will be left to decompose in the island’s hills, though meat from animals shot near public areas or in highly visible spots will be donated to the California Condor Recovery Program or given to local native tribes. If all goes according to plan, mule deer will be completely eradicated from the island by January of 2032.

Unsurprisingly, the eradication is not without controversy. Online petitions against the culling have been circulating for several years, since the idea first gained serious steam in 2023. Animal rights groups have also taken issue with the culling and “waste” of the deer carcasses. A group called Howl for Wildlife even released an hour-and-twenty-minute film, “Killing Catalina,” decrying the culling.

But despite the opposition, the path forward appears relatively clear with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s stamp of approval now in pocket. It’s unclear what opportunities will be available to hunters over the next several years as the culling unfolds, but hopefully, some of the island’s deer will end up in chest freezers, rather than rotting in the hills.

From a listener's story about passing down the appreciation for wild things to Brent's first solo squirrel hunt, this week's This Country Life is sure to be one of your favorites. As a bonus, the recipe of how Brent's mama fried all the squirrels she nor his dad would eat is in here along with the reason why neither one would partake. Get the grease hot! We've got squirrels to fry.

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Hosts Janis Putelis, Randall Williams, and Seth Morris interview Olympic biathlete Paul Schommer and his coach, Matt Emmons, about competing in the upcoming Winter Olympic Games, look back 20 years in another edition of Throwback Thursday, and chat with Wildlife Officer Deme Wright about life as a game warden and her work around the Fort Carson poaching investigation.

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The Hawai’i Department of Natural of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) is currently accepting applications from landowners and lessees to participate in a unique “incentive program” that encourages the removal of invasive axis deer on the island of Maui.

The program, dubbed the Landowner Incentive Program, was initially launched in 2024 to reduce axis deer numbers to manageable levels. It is essentially a bounty program, offering compensation of up to $50 for each deer tail submitted. The number of tails each landowner can submit in the program is calculated using a deer-to-acreage ratio, and the axis deer are required to be hunted in accordance with state regulations. The DLNR is accepting applications for the next round of the program until February 15.

Maui, as with other Hawaiian islands, has struggled to manage invasive axis deer populations. According to the DLNR, the deer, which are native to India and Nepal, were first introduced to Maui when ten were released there in 1959. The population exploded to over 26,000 animals “due to a lack of natural predators and natural environmental controls such as extreme weather or population-culling diseases, as well as the limited capacity to control population size through hunting.”

The invasive population has significantly impacted the local ecosystem and agriculture industry, as well as threatening human health and safety. They have been known to cause over $1 million in crop damage annually.

The Landowner Incentive Program plays an important role in mitigating the impact of the deer. “With a large portion of the Axis deer congregating on private land, the support of landowners will be vital to the success of any population management program,” explains the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation in a press release. “This [program] is somewhat similar, in practice, to big game landowner vouchers that are issued in other western states to encourage public access and sustainable hunter harvest.”

So far, the program appears to be working. “Recent harvest rates suggest a promising trend toward minimizing environmental and economic damage to property and land and reducing the overall deer population,” said a DLNR spokesperson.

While the program appears to be effective so far, it remains controversial among some local hunters, who say that it would be just as effective—and perhaps less costly—to develop better systems for hunters to access private land. “You actually don't need a bounty,” wrote Brandon Napaepae Soong, of Waimea, Hawaii, in a Facebook comment. “You just need organized access and safety rules enforced.”

“Axis deer is considered some of the best wild game meat in the world,” echoed Erik Kucera. “If the private landowners could be freed from their liability worries somehow, they could allow heavy hunting pressure to eliminate the problem.”

Feature image from Jordan Budd’s axis deer hunt in Lanai. Click here to watch the hunt.

Roger Maes knows he’ll recognize his grandfather’s nearly century-old trophy buck whether it’s in online photo lineups, hanging in a Northwoods tavern, or fully restored and displayed at a giant hunting/fishing store.

But the Madison, Wisconsin, resident hasn't seen the buck for over 30 years, not since his grandfather sold it shortly before dying in 1993. Maes is just going off his childhood memories and an old photograph whose top-left corner is peppered with thumb-tack holes. The photo shows the buck’s decrepit shoulder mount and 18-point, coffee-colored rack flanked by two old snowshoes on his grandfather’s basement wall in Niagara, Wisconsin.

Maes hopes to find someone who’s seen the antlers so he can get them replicated for his family’s posterity. He also hopes a $500 reward might produce the needed video or photographs showing the rack’s unique traits.

Maes’ grandfather, Theodore “Ted” Maes, was a serious hunter and trapper, and worked at a nearby paper mill. He shot the old “swamp buck” at age 21 on Nov. 21, 1932, roughly 7 miles east of Pembine in Marinette County, not far from the Kremlin mine and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

And that’s about all Maes knows about his grandfather’s hunt that day. Roger Maes isn’t even certain his grandfather shot the buck with the .300 Savage Model 99 lever-action rifle that Roger’s brother now owns. And he definitely doesn’t know if his grandfather shot the buck from a stand, while taking part in a drive, or still-hunting alone through a cedar swamp.

All Ted Maes ever said was that he killed nearly 70 bucks in his life, but only one — that lone buck on his wall — had venison too tough to chew. He did, however, eat its heart and liver. And he figured the buck was at least 10 years old because it lost all but a couple of its teeth.

“Of course, my grandfather might have been embellishing all that,” Roger Maes said.

Whatever the case, Ted Maes knew his buck’s antlers were exceptional. Forty-six years ago, on Jan. 25, 1980, at age 69, he took his buck mount to Duaine K. Wenzel in Crystal Falls, Michigan, to have it officially scored. He then paid the $20 registration fee to enter it in the Boone and Crockett Club’s record book. Wenzel scored the rack as a 202-7/8 “nontypical,” and listed its gross score as 208-4/8 before deductions.

Wenzel judged the rack as nontypical because its 10-point main frame also had eight abnormal points totaling 38 inches, including a distinctive 7-inch drop tine beneath its left beam. In addition, the “G2” tines on both beams carried forked 9-inch tines jutting up from their bases, the right G2 measuring 10-5/8 inches and the left measuring 10 inches.

The rack also measures 23-7/8 inches between its main beams and 19-5/8 inches between its tips. It currently ranks 203 of 618 nontypical Wisconsin whitetails in B&C’s records.

Roger Maes thinks his grandfather sold the old mount for $200 to an antler collector who often stopped to visit.

“Late in his life, I don’t think my grandfather really knew how unusual or valuable those antlers were,” Maes said. “Around Christmas, he would put a red ornament on its nose and stick it in the snow out front. He didn’t even worry that someone might steal it.”

Maes wants everyone to know he and his family aren’t seeking to own the rack. They simply need a better look at it so they can make an exact replica. The old photo from Ted Maes’ basement doesn’t clearly show the rack’s abnormal points. Maes contacted the Boone and Crockett Club, but learned he can’t get the club’s file photos of the antlers unless he’s listed as the owner, or the owner grants him access. The B&C Club’s files still list his grandfather as the owner.

Kyle Lehr, B&C’s director of big-game records, said the club can’t release anything that’s not listed in its (public) records unless the owner requests the files or provides written consent to share them.

“Situations like this are tough; they’re unfortunate,” Lehr told MeatEater. “We get requests like this from time to time, where family or friends know about a rack but no longer have it. It’s not a spot we enjoy being in. We hope Mr. Maes can find the current owner, and if we learn it’s OK, we’ll provide whatever help we can.”

Roger Maes, 59, said the original photo of the buck in his grandfather’s basement stirs many memories. “My grandfather had a barber’s chair down there,” he said. “Every time we got our haircuts, we’d sit in that barber’s chair, looking at the mount with its cracked nose and hair shedding from its left ear. It was an amazing buck, but I was too young to appreciate what I was looking at.

“My dad often reminded (my grandfather) to never sell the buck,” Maes continued. “Dad knew an antler collector was pestering my grandfather every time he passed through town, but Dad didn’t learn my grandfather had sold it until after he died. My father never had time to track down the collector because (Dad) died just four months after my grandfather passed.”

Roger Maes, meanwhile, had moved to California for work, but moved back to Wisconsin in 2001 and settled in Madison. He soon got into bowhunting, which rekindled his interest in his grandfather’s big buck. He attended a few deer shows to look at all the buck mounts, and contacted the son of an antler collector who might have known about the missing buck, but nothing came of it.

“I kind of dropped the ball on it for a while,” Maes said. “But as time went on, I’d find myself scrolling through thousands of photos every deer season, knowing I’d recognize it if I saw it. And then, cut to this year, I recommitted to finding it so I could get an exact replica made. With social media and all the advances in online searches, I figured it would be worth offering a $500 reward to help find the antlers.”

Maes asks anyone with information to contact him at [email protected].

He’s optimistic because each deer antler is unique, and the deer-hunting universe features countless geeks who never forget an antler.

“It won’t matter if the mount is still battered and cracked, and sitting in some bar in the middle of nowhere, or if it’s been restored to its full glory and on display with lots of other big heads,” Maes said. “The more people who see that old photo, the better the chances that someone will recognize it.”

Photo via Roger Maes.