Missouri Bow Hunters

If spotting a black bear is on your bucket list, you might not have to travel far. Missouri's bear population keeps growing, and there are 7 counties where sightings are more common than others these days. Ever had a bear encounter around here?

Did you know there is a network of anti-hunters working with game agencies, and hunter money is paying for it?

The Wildlife Management Institute, run by Tony Wasley, received $216,338 under grant F23AP00507 to create a national network of “Relevancy Coaches” to help game agencies implement the Fish and Wildlife Relevancy Roadmap. That Roadmap says game-agency staff are currently 68% Traditionalist (approve of hunting) and only 8% mutualist (anti hunters), while the general public is 34% Mutualist. Then it tells agencies to “recruit and retain diverse values and perspectives within the agency workforce.”

Here is what that means in plain English. They think game agencies have too many people who believe in hunting, trapping, fishing, and using wildlife, and not enough people who oppose that worldview. They call it “relevancy.” I call it using hunter money to train agencies how to bring anti-hunting values into the departments that control our seasons, tags, rules, and future. This is not hunter recruitment. This is a roadmap for taking over game agencies from the inside. And it’s all paid for with Pitman Roberts money.

— Stephen Ziegler
Outdoor writer | Rack Junkies Podcast

The country’s top CWD genetics researcher says CWD is “by far the most corrupt area of scientific concern” he has encountered in his career. Dr. Christopher Seabury, a tenured Texas A&M professor who has spent more than 20 years researching prion diseases and has worked with USDA on CWD genetics, recently pointed to Wisconsin as the real-world example people don’t want to discuss. After years of aggressive management, including efforts to drastically reduce deer numbers, CWD continued spreading. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin population data he cited shows the deer herd grew by more than 82% between 2008 and 2024, reaching an estimated 1.825 million deer.

Seabury’s argument is that natural selection is already be accomplishing what government management has failed to do. Favoring deer that are more tolerant or resistant to CWD, allowing infected animals to survive and reproduce. He wrote that “mother nature has already done the experiment for us, and she won in the battle against CWD,” and called the CWD field the most corrupt area of science he has encountered, warning states to follow actual evidence instead of “ideological talking points.” That is an incredible statement coming from a PhD researcher who has spent his career studying prion disease.

Funny how state game agencies talk about “follow the science” until that science shows how badly they screwed up.

— Stephen Ziegler
Outdoor Writer | Rack Junkies Podcast