Cal in the Field: Elk on the Prairie | S1E01 | MeatEater

there are bulls everywhere this could be like a version of hell this is like nothing I've ever seen there's just eyeballed everywhere getting to the point in the day of a bad decision does it happen candy god I'm starving [Music] [Music] the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve is a 37,000 acre swath of land owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy a nonprofit conservation organization that does one heck of a lot of good work but doesn't immediately come to mind when we think about honey I have the invite to use one of their landowner tags and get a better understanding of their land management practices Chad Dotson is one of two land stewards for the Zumwalt preserve his job entails managing the grass resource as well as hunting and other conservation based programs at any one time there are numerous projects going on here from rotational grazing to documenting how mammals use water resources Chad's job is as multi-dimensional as this landscape his knowledge of this place is going to be invaluable on this hunt the Zumwalt is is really interesting just in the fact that it's it's one of the largest intact bunch grass prairies left in the lower 48 chad was pointing out like a really prime example of really bunch grass a native species fighting the good fight against a bunch of non-native species and a healthy bunch grass ecosystem like this one provides an excellent forage for herd animals only the problem is without any reason to move the elk herds here will over graze their habitat and since they're so well fed procreate numbers well beyond their carrying capacity posing problems for other native mammals such as the mule deer and this gets to why I'm here with such large numbers of elk the Nature Conservancy utilizes hunting as a tool to both manage the numbers within this herd and move them around so in terms of grazing management helps us move these big populations of elk around the Prairie keeps them from just hammering on certain forbs certain grasses but then there's that social cultural aspect where where folks have been utilizing this this ground to hunt to fish to gather for a long long time long Zumwalt is surrounded by ranch land and cattle grazing is part of its management plan the grass here has been grazed for nearly 250 years beginning with the Nez Perce horse herds in the 1730's and at this point domestic grazing is part of the ecology the true way to have a preserve in my mind is to have that people aspect you know have an area that is denuded of people and call that natural just isn't that natural even though a lot of us kind of get in this mindset of like oh what would it be like before people well nobody knows because that just didn't exist like out here if you don't have somebody running livestock cattle horses of some sort it's just not natural it's hard to overstate how unique this hunting scenario is after all it's beautifully managed private land larger than some national parks the Zumwalt does have a public access program but right now I am the only hunter with a bolt a I've essentially got the place to myself we got held up by a few hundred elk on the flats I finally got back in here theory being we're trying to have to deal with it Feuer outlook and there's there were so many bowls in here it's hard to ignore anyway yeah that we've been seeing the ball though even seeing man have to be incredibly healthy these elk are fat I really want to put one in the freezer however the open terrain and how bunched up the elk are won't make this a gimme those ball just bugle the direction we're heading also the direction that we're heading is like giant massive Hell's Canyon basically so that's not really surprising to me I think no matter what happens all our roads are probably gonna lead into a big nasty [ __ ] it's pretty good looking balls out there I feel like we definitely saw him last night there he is Darius [Music] as hard as it is to leave a bowl screaming I just don't have time on my side in this situation I'll have to try again in the morning this doesn't guarantee another close encounter but it eliminates the possibility of losing a blood trail in the dark instead of gutting this thing out don't dark-dark slide out of here right now and hopefully not look at this place up too much [Music] there's an old Rancher saying that good grass makes fat cattle if the grass does well cattle do well well true that's not the whole picture pollinators insects amphibians and songbirds benefit from healthy grass as well here on the zum wohl management choices are made by keeping all of this in mind while not focusing on an individual species small like swarming flying ants it could be a lot worse definitely annoying sounds gross but you want to lick this or you want me to lick this I think it's a little early in the relationship for me to lick your fingers so go for it all right already just like that yeah we don't need to tell anybody about that right [Music] this is pretty neat seen a lot of folks don't associate with the prairie bear has come in here and dug this whole area probably sounds like a pickup truck I'd love to know what the bear was looking for but it could have been canvas roots or biscuit root or possibly even moth larvae again it's not something you'd associated with a bunch grass prairie but it's pretty darn neat to see he's got a lot of digging done and really hard rocky ground and it's exactly what those bears are made to do no matter what happens this place is absolutely amazing people have got to come check this thing out yeah it's unreal it's real diverse Perry up on top is really neat and then you break off in the canyons and it's just something else hard hiking in the heat of the day over dry rocky terrain results in elk encounters but no elk shots as the Sun drops elk began to appear from everywhere this time using tina the world's smallest elf decoy we find ourselves surrounded agam by bolts while i'm playing with this ball there's two balls fighting down here and four balls feeding there's two more bowls walking up the drainage over here there's another bit of this boy there's two balls walking across the hillside literally too much to do it's definitely seen the decoy and it definitely looks like he is really looking around to make sure that this situation is as good as he thinks it could be he's definitely coming you know I gives you big balls that don't cooperate go find small balls who do take away yes make the lady noises not the man loses more time they can get out of here without blowing this place up let's see what tomorrow brings very cool I mean I would have been absolutely ecstatic if I didn't have a bow oh yeah like I mean yeah it's just wild man just wow certainly like take Pauline for me in here find the right spot to cut him off so ideally I gotta get down slide him just above where these bowls were hanging out and just just sit [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he was only thirty yards that's an opt-in heroine charge them doesn't make for effective shooting in my case that's the way it goes there are so many bowls stacked in these canyons that if you make a mistake it clears the can you know so bumps basically one Bowl he took five out of here and then another five came out of this draw it is really discouraged when you screw up as badly as I have today just just normal terms just like a regular old public lab highly discouraging but it's like it's kind of an interesting and special type of discouraging we're on a place like the zum wohl Prairie preserve that has bowls like this running everywhere they shouldn't be running they're running cuz of me there are moments in any long hunt when you begin to have doubts when you've screwed up a couple of times then a few more and all of the sudden the terminus of the trip begins to make itself known it's not like you want to fail but that possibility starts to sneak into your subconscious you start to brace yourself it's a third wheel a friend one who you like but who just so happens to sit between you and your date a little distracting a little irritating but not the end of the world I'll just say walking tired not paying attention spike in a ball chat spotted had already spotted us I said that interesting enough but now a nice tall wrapped ball is coming up and we're a little bit late that the winds good I don't know if we can get from here into the head of this whale without seeing us cut off by open terrain all Chad and I can do is put the wind in our face call and hope for the best [Applause] [Music] if I have to end this this way both screaming all around me and you know one just not lining up there are far worse way has Dan this these are really incredible I can see that Bolan out by the way it's just getting really dark and last second late night shots are no fun if I were you I would strongly suggest applying for one of these Nature Conservancy tags like a million acres across the US lots of different opportunities and this is like active hunting management and you get to be part of it it's it's a really cool opportunity is now we all know caution is the better part of valor but sometimes a bowl just gets too close [Music] this isn't what I want to see it's not a lot of penetration and clean fleshing so obviously I was hoping for more than [Music] okay that's just unbelievable my motto is the evidence never gets better make the Johnny Cash song one piece at a time [Music] the evidence strongly suggests that he just kept tumbling and fell through the chute down here breaking himself to pieces I I'm not gonna take that for granted this I just can't breaking bone off that's just cliff I'm trying to be media idiot like shooting the ball at the very last light I'm aware very last day that type of idiot I hope he's piled up at the bottom of this thing buddy let's say you got whacked with a shotgun the bull elk that's now cooling in my freezer is a byproduct of the hardy and tough bunch grass as are the mule deer as are the cattle and as were the Nez Perce ponies that grazed here before them this is a complicated and changing landscape the binary terms we use public or private profit or preservation do not fit here zum wohl Prairie Preserve is anything but binary a place where cattle wildlife and hunting private land and public access all exist not at the expense of one or the other but to the benefit

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 906,078

Keywords: steven rinella, meateater, meat eater, Steve rinella, Ryan callaghan, elk hunting, hunting, elk, rifle hunting, bow hunting, nature conservancy, cals week in review, Season 1 Episode 1, S1E01, Cal in the Field, Cal's Week in Review, Elk, Prairie, Director of Conservation, Ryan Callaghan, Zumwalt Preserve

Id: EEotntF5b3A

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 23 2020