Looks like we’ve survived another week of cyclospora, despite a broadening of the potential source of the scourge of the salad bar. Yesterday, federal officials said the outbreak had spread to nine states, and they’ve added two more suspects: cilantro and parsley. At this point, the CDC has identified the outbreak in Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. As cyclospora explodes across the states, officials say it’s helping them see how items move through the food supply. If you’ve suffered already, you know the contaminated food moves quickly.
Officials are recalling more than 1.6 million eggs over salmonella concerns. The eggs fromMidwest Poultry Services we sold in Kroger, Simple Truth, Brookshire’s, Country Morning, and Sunups cartons sold in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Mississippi. Questionable eggs carry plant code P-1950 or 840962, with sell-by dates of July 20 to August 17. Toss ‘em or return ‘em, but do not scramble or fry them. And clean any surface they’ve touched.
New tariffs up to 12.5 percent went into place yesterday on 60 U.S. trading partners. Officials say the administration are to combat the use of forced labor, not only a human rights issue, but one that makes it more difficult for the U.S. to compete due to the use of low cost/no cost labor. Those new tariffs went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday…the same time the earlier tariffs expired.
Speaking of expired…the heat dome that has suffocated part of the country this summer shows no sign of going away anytime soon. Forecasters are calling for elevated temperatures across the midwest…and Tropical Storm Bertha may finally be weakening, having brought 2-4 inches of rain across coastal Texas and hill country.
Meanwhile, Comic-Con International gets underway today in San Diego. More than 135,000 people are expected to attend before it ends tomorrow. Comic-Con started in 1970 with 100 comic book fans in a hotel basement. Today, it’s 500,000 square feet of exhibit space, more than 1,000 exhibitors and about 2,000 hours of programming.
The economy isn’t getting better. Oil prices topped $100 barrel last week, tariffs will keep prices on imported goods elevated, and we’re watching to see what Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will be doing about interest rates. Betting folks (that’s Wall Street) say there’s more than a slight chance the Fed will hike interest rates. If you’re a homebuyer, you already know rates are rising…as always,we’ll keep you posted.
The Great Red Snapper Count, utilizing new sampling gear and methods, estimated that far more iconic red snapper are in the Gulf of America than traditional assessment methods had indicated. A team of marine scientists used the same methodology to conduct the recent Greater Amberjack Count that produced similar results.
Dr. Sean Powers, Director of the Stokes School of Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of South Alabama (USA), headed up the study that involves a dozen research entities from the south Atlantic and across the Gulf. On a break from his judging duties at the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo (ADSFR) on Dauphin Island, Powers shared the findings of the multi-year study.
The Kwazar Fishing Team caught this huge amberjack during the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo, took a photo and released it.
“For the last four years, we’ve been working on this project from North Carolina all the way to Texas to get an independent estimate on greater amberjack, similar to what we did for the Great Red Snapper Count,” Powers said. “The reason we focused on greater amberjack, especially in the Gulf, it is a stock that has supposedly been overfished and overfishing is occurring for decades.
“That really never made sense to us that it (overfished condition) could persist for so long. The (NOAA Fisheries) stock assessment has very little other data except for catch data.”
What Powers and his team wanted to do was gather fisheries independent data without the catch data. Congress appropriated $5 million to NOAA Fisheries and $5 million to the National Sea Grant College Program to conduct the amberjack study.
“We went out and measured population sizes on different reefs and different habitats where amberjack would occur,” he said. “We had 11 different institutions involved doing that for two years. The south Atlantic portion (North Carolina to Key West, Florida) of the stock that we found agreed with the stock assessment. We estimated there were 2.2 million greater amberjack 1-plus years old, and their estimate was 2.1.
“But when we moved to the Gulf, the latest stock assessment by the feds says there are 1.5 million greater amberjack. What we found was 3.2 million, so roughly double what the stock assessment says. Our estimates were what was matching up with the fishermen. Fishermen in the south Atlantic really didn’t have many concerns and it was open all year.”
However, it is a completely different story in the Gulf of America. Currently, no greater amberjack season has been set for 2026, and the previous seasons were set so that anglers would have something to catch when for-hire (charters) red snapper season is closed. The ADSFR, which is held on the third full weekend in July each year, hasn’t had an amberjack category in more than 15 years.
“In the Gulf, we’ve had shorter and shorter seasons, and the fishermen are asking why are we doing that because they are abundant,” Powers said. “Now there are some differences in the stocks in the Western Gulf, where they have really big amberjack, where ours are just above the legal limit (34 inches fork length).
“We hope our study will get reconciled with the stock assessment, because we don’t even have an amberjack season scheduled yet.”
The average size amberjack off the Alabama coast is 20 to 40 pounds with an occasional large one.
Kevin Anson, Director of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ (ADCNR) Marine Resources Division (MRD), said the results of the study are promising.
“Over the last ten to twelve years there have been significant changes in Gulf of America greater amberjack size and bag limits, commercial daily trip limits and season lengths, but the fishery just hasn’t responded as anticipated,” Anson said. “This research may provide managers better information on important biological or behavioral factors that could help with identifying more impactful management options.”
Powers said the research team tries to keep its methodology as simple as possible when conducting these abundance studies.
“The way stock assessments are done now is you measure the catch, which is very difficult to do, particularly for the recreational sector.” he said. “Then you make a series of assumptions about how big the population has to be to produce that catch.
“My career has focused on an alternative – let’s just get out on the water and get more observations and actually count the number of fish at selected sites and randomly selected sites.”
Powers said Alabama, through USA and MRD, have pioneered the way the study was conducted.
“Senator (Katie) Britt and Senator (Richard) Shelby before her were intrigued that we had to make so many assumptions and that we just needed to be out there counting fish,” Powers said. “We do that with underwater video. The water in the western Gulf is too cloudy, so we use acoustic cameras that use sound. As long as you have a sample size, and you do enough samples in enough different areas, then you can produce the estimate. For example, you take the number of fish on an artificial reef multiplied by the number of artificial reefs, plus the number of amberjack on natural hard bottom multiplied by the amount of natural hard bottom.
“It takes a whole lot of work. Obviously, it’s not as simple as that, but I prefer those models because if nobody believes us, we can go back through our videos and recount.”
An amberjack this size will give the angler a fight they will never forget.
ADCNR Commissioner Chris Blankenship is appreciative of the work of Senator Britt and the Congressional funding support of the research.
“Congressional support was needed to help us find out more about this species,” Commissioner Blankenship said. “The information may lead to more access to amberjack for Alabama anglers and throughout the Gulf which would be beneficial to coastal communities.”
Powers said the obvious question is how to resolve the differences between the NOAA Fisheries amberjack assessment and the Greater Amberjack Count.
“We have two different numbers, especially in the Gulf, and we’re working with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) to try to figure out which parts of each study we can take to produce a better estimate,” he said. “This was two years of fieldwork and four years for the total project.
"If we can do these studies on the important species or the economically viable species like red snapper, amberjack and triggerfish, we can get independent estimates and check that with what the stock assessment is telling us.”
Powers said greater amberjack is considered a reef fish, but it does travel more than species like red snapper.
“Amberjack are also pretty migratory,” he said. “They’ll be here (northern Gulf) most of the summer around our reefs. One of the really cool other things we’ve found is that amberjack in our area will stay on a reef for 30, 60 or 90 days, a long time. On the south Atlantic side, those fish are on a site for three or four days. We also did a lot of tagging to make sure that the south Atlantic and Gulf fish are really different stocks. They may meet up around Key West at certain times of the year, but they are really separate stocks.
“We also found that the fish caught off Alabama and Florida don’t get that big, but off Louisiana and Texas, around those oil platforms, they get gigantic. It’s not unusual for our colleagues to catch amberjack from 60 to 100 pounds. In our neck of the woods, it’s more like 20 to 30 pounds with an occasional big one. I think that is because of less fishing pressure in the western Gulf.”
Powers hopes the Gulf Council will come up with a solution to provide some sort of amberjack season in the Gulf for 2026.
“We went over the amount we were supposed to harvest last year, so the season has been delayed, and no season has been set,” he said. “We’re hoping the Gulf Council will reconsider it, especially when the fishermen are saying they are abundant. I think that’s what they’re going to look at under an emergency rule.”
Every few years, America stages one of its favorite political rituals. Someone adjusts the boundary of a national monument in Utah, and within minutes press releases begin flying through cyberspace declaring that civilization has officially ended. The desert will be strip-mined into oblivion by Tuesday. Every petroglyph will vanish by Thursday. Democracy itself may not survive the weekend.
It's a remarkably efficient system. No sooner had the Trump administration once again modified the limits of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante than the usual collection of environmental and sportsmen’s decoy groups, political advocacy organizations and self-appointed guardians of public virtue rushed to their keyboards to inform the country that the republic was collapsing under the burden of common-sense land management.
One almost has to admire the consistency.
After all, Utah is hardly suffering from a shortage of federally managed land. Roughly two-thirds of the entire state is already owned or controlled by the federal government. Nationwide, about one-third of America's landmass is in public ownership. Upkeeping those lands isn't free, either. Taxpayers fund an enormous network of agencies, infrastructure, wildfire suppression, law enforcement, recreation management, habitat restoration, archaeological protection and deferred maintenance that runs into the billions of dollars every year.
Yet judging from some of the rhetoric, you'd think the administration had auctioned Zion National Park on eBay with free Prime shipping.
Let's review how we arrived here. In 1996, during the closing months of his presidency, Bill Clinton designated approximately 1.7 million acres as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Two decades later, in the final weeks of his own administration, Barack Obama created Bears Ears National Monument, protecting roughly 1.35 million acres under the Antiquities Act after congressional negotiations failed. Both actions generated fierce opposition from Utah's governor, congressional delegation and many local officials, who argued that decisions affecting areas of that size should come through Congress rather than unilateral presidential proclamation.
Imagine that. Elected officials representing Utah wanted a meaningful voice in how Utah is managed.
The nerve.
Fast forward through a decade of political ping-pong. Trump reduced the monuments in 2017. Biden restored them in 2021. Trump has now modified them again, arguing that the Antiquities Act requires monuments to encompass the "smallest area compatible" with protecting the historic and scientific resources they were created to preserve. Whether the courts ultimately agree remains to be seen, but pretending this debate appeared out of nowhere last Tuesday ignores thirty years of legal and political history.
None of this means Bears Ears lacks extraordinary value. It plainly does. Its archaeological sites, Indigenous cultural meaning, spectacular scenery and scientific resources deserve serious stewardship. Grand Staircase-Escalante is equally remarkable. Reasonable people can disagree over where monument boundaries should be drawn while agreeing that the resources themselves deserve protection.
Apparently nuance, however, has been declared endangered.
Instead, every boundary adjustment becomes another opportunity for what increasingly resembles the Conservation Theater Company, in which every performance ends with Republicans cast as cartoon villains twirling imaginary mustaches while bulldozers idle beside thousand-year-old cliff dwellings.
Curiously, many of the same organizations displaying Olympic-level outrage today become strangely unavailable whenever Republican administrations expand hunting and fishing access on federal lands, support active wildlife management or challenge firearms restrictions that sportsmen argue infringe upon Second Amendment rights. Those announcements rarely produce breathless fundraising emails warning that democracy has been saved.
That's an interesting pattern.
If an organization markets itself as representing hunters, anglers and conservationists, consistency ought to matter. Celebrate expanded public access for hunting and fishing with the same enthusiasm used to condemn monument reductions. Defend sportsmen when they believe constitutional rights are threatened with the same energy devoted to opposing energy development. Praise conservation victories regardless of which party occupies the White House.
Otherwise, people begin asking uncomfortable questions.
Is the mission truly conservation? Or is conservation simply the branding wrapped around a wider political agenda?
Many of these organizations insist they are proudly nonpartisan. Yet their public communications increasingly resemble opposition research from the Democratic National Committee, interrupted occasionally by photographs of trout streams and bugling elk. Every Republican initiative is portrayed as ecological apocalypse. Every Democratic proclamation is treated as enlightened statesmanship. At some point, even loyal members begin noticing the script never changes.
Conservation deserves better than partisan reflexes.
America's public lands have always succeeded because of balance, not absolutes. Theodore Roosevelt understood that. Gifford Pinchot understood it. They advocated stewardship, sustainable use and responsible management—not the notion that every disagreement over land policy requires declaring the end of civilization before lunch.
The truth is considerably less dramatic. Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will remain inspiring visitors. Archaeological treasures will continue deserving protection. Utah's elected leaders will continue arguing that states should have greater influence over lands within their borders.
Environmental organizations will continue filing lawsuits. And somewhere, an email consultant is already drafting another fundraising appeal explaining that this latest policy dispute is literally unlike anything humanity has ever experienced.
Until the next administration redraws another line on the map.
Then, as always, we'll declare the sky is falling all over again.
– Chris Dorsey
Chris Dorsey is a 30-year media veteran and conservation thought leader who is the founding partner of Dorsey Pictures, a Global 100 Production Studio, and Mission Partners Entertainment Group, a leading IMAX/giant screen natural history producer.
UHE brings together hunters of all skill levels in a dynamic, educational environment. Through engaging, real-world-inspired scenarios, participants test their equipment, refine their abilities, and master the art of precision with both firearms and bows. Every event is built to foster camaraderie, promote safe and ethical hunting practices, and strengthen connections within the hunting community.
In an era where hunters have more information than ever before, genuine experience remains the greatest teacher. The trouble with hunting experience is it often comes at the expense of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
If only there was a way to simulate those opportunities with all of the stress, challenges, and opportunity without the use of that once-in-a-lifetime moment.
There is, The Ultimate Hunting Experience, a cradle to grave hunting practical experience where the prey is inexperience and the trophy is success.
What is it? How does it work, and why does it exist? Great questions.
We spoke with The Ultimate Hunting Experience about the partnership, the importance of practical training, and what attendees can expect.
The Hunting Wire: Your training focuses heavily on real-world hunting scenarios instead of controlled benchrest environments. Why is that so important?
The Ultimate Hunting Experience: Our philosophy is simple: train as you hunt and hunt as you train.
Many of our founders have competitive shooting backgrounds, and several have spent years teaching hunters and shooters. We’ve learned that perfect groups from a bench don’t necessarily prepare someone for a steep hillside, an awkward shooting position, changing weather, or the adrenaline that comes with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Our goal is to replicate those conditions as closely as possible. We want hunters learning how to build stable field positions, manage time, make ethical decisions, understand their equipment, and execute under realistic pressure. That’s where confidence is developed, and ultimately where more ethical harvests begin.
The Hunting Wire: Where does Hornady fit into that philosophy?
The Ultimate Hunting Experience: Hornady has built an unparalleled reputation around practical ballistic performance, and I know firsthand how important that reliability is. I’ve harvested a wide variety of game animals with Hornady ammunition because I trust it to perform exactly when it matters most.
At The Ultimate Hunting Experience, we’re integrating that trusted performance directly into our events alongside an outstanding lineup of rifle partners, including Seekins, Steyr, Daniel Defense, Q, Bergara, CVA, and custom builds from MDT and Defiance Machine.
Unlike traditional events where a rifle simply sits untouched on a prize table, attendees actually get behind these rifles in realistic field scenarios while shooting Hornady ammunition. They experience firsthand how a premium hunting rifle and premium ammunition perform together under practical conditions.
Hunters don’t simply hear about ballistic performance; they experience it, understand it, and leave with greater confidence in their equipment.
The Hunting Wire: This partnership feels deeper than a traditional sponsorship. What did Hornady see in The Ultimate Hunting Experience that made this collaboration the right fit?
The Ultimate Hunting Experience: That’s exactly the distinction we pride ourselves on.
Traditional sponsorships often amount to a logo on a banner and a transactional checklist. When we approached Hornady, we weren’t asking them to simply support an event; we invited them to help build an ecosystem.
They recognized that The Ultimate Hunting Experience is focused on long-term impact rather than short-term impressions. Our goal is to create meaningful experiences that make hunters more capable and confident in the field. Hornady saw a partner committed to year-round collaboration and continuous improvement, and those values aligned naturally with their own commitment to performance and innovation.
The Hunting Wire: Why is it important for hunters to actually shoot these rifles rather than simply see them displayed?
The Ultimate Hunting Experience: Because confidence can’t be borrowed; it has to be earned.
Reading specifications or watching videos only goes so far. When someone shoots from kneeling, sitting, standing, or improvised field positions, they immediately begin understanding how rifle fit, recoil management, trigger control, optics, and ammunition all work together.
That experience builds knowledge far more effectively than any brochure ever could. Our attendees leave with practical skills they can apply on their very next hunt.
The Hunting Wire: What separates your events from many other outdoor events?
The Ultimate Hunting Experience: We aren’t trying to build another trade show.
Everything we do is centered on education, mentorship, and experience. Every partner contributes to the learning environment. Whether it’s rifles, ammunition, optics, suppressors, tripods, or other gear, participants aren’t simply looking at products; they’re using them under the guidance of experienced instructors.
That’s a fundamentally different approach because it puts the hunter, not the product, at the center of the experience.
The Hunting Wire: What do you hope attendees take home after completing an event?
The Ultimate Hunting Experience: We certainly hope they leave impressed by the equipment, but that’s really secondary.
The real goal is for hunters to leave more capable than when they arrived. Better shooting skills. Better decision-making. Better understanding of ballistics. Greater confidence. And ultimately, greater respect for the responsibility that comes with taking an ethical shot.
If someone walks away feeling more prepared for their next hunt and more committed to making every shot count, then we’ve accomplished exactly what we set out to do.
Politicians call it a predictable tragedy. A quarrel in Tucson between two groups erupted in gunfire. Nine people were injured. Politicians immediately called for strict gun control.
Then the facts started to become known.
The suspect is 21-year-old David Leroy French. He was arrested and faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault with serious physical injury and discharging a firearm at a structure. The Tucson Police Department said more charges are pending as the investigation continues.
French allegedly attempted to flee police before he was shot by a police officer.
Here’s what was predictable. Tucson Mayor Regina Romero immediately blamed a lack of gun control for the violent crime.
“Easy access to guns and Arizona’s weak gun safety laws have continued to put all of us at risk,” Mayor Romero said, according to Fox News. “From requiring universal background checks to extreme risk laws to funding violence prevention there is more lawmakers can and should do.”
Mayor Romero’s hot take for more gun control was just in time for media to publish. The facts of the case, however, are slowly being revealed. It turns out the violent crime wasn’t as random as the mayor portrayed. Local Tucson media reported that police later confirmed that a confrontation took place between two groups known to one another.
“It was like one guy being an aggressor and the other two kind of pulling him back, not wanting their friend to get in a fight,” witness Anais Camacho said, according to a Fox 10 report.
Camacho was in front of Empire Pizza in the early morning hours of July 19 when the confrontation escalated.
“He reached, lifted his shirt up, and I didn’t even see the gun, but I knew what that meant, so I yelled at everybody to run away,” Camacho said. She ran for her life, saying, “I grabbed my cousin, and we dipped, and as soon as we bent the corner, shots fired.”
Lock. Him. Up.
It was also later revealed that the suspect, French, was previously convicted of a violent crime involving...criminal misuse of a firearm.
Pima County Attorney Laura Conover noted in an emailed statement that French was previously charged for firing a weapon during an altercation, according to Arizona Family News. KOLD reported that in October 2024, police said French fired a gun at a man and missed.
He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, Conover said. While French could have faced up to nine years in prison, he didn't serve any jail time.
“The court’s probation department assessed the individual and found him to meet the criteria for a sentence of intensive probation, and the judge ordered standard probation,” Conover said. She also confirmed that French was still on probation when he allegedly committed this recent crime.
Let’s get the facts straight. A criminal misused a firearm in 2024 and the court sentenced him to probation instead of locking him up for nine years. Two years later, he’s charged with again criminally misusing a firearm, this time injuring nine people. And he did it while still on probation. And French is a prohibited individual because of his first violent crime in 2024.
A Bloomberg-Funded Gun Control Mayor
But Mayor Romero wants stricter gun control for Arizonans who obey the law. French, apparently, didn’t care about gun control laws in 2024 or again in 2026. There’s no reason to think he'd care about them in the future. No information is available on how French obtained the firearm, which could only be through illicit means, since he could not pass an FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System verification.
Mayor Romero believes the problem is that law-abiding citizens have too much freedom and more obstacles must be put into place to exercise Second Amendment rights. Meanwhile, she’s got nothing to say about criminals being turned out onto the streets with a slap on the wrist, only to commit the same crimes -- or worse -- later.
Tucson’s mayor serves up platitudes that are sure to satisfy her gun control donors. Mayor Romero is a co-chair of antigun-billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. But Bloomberg’s MAIG has a history of being soft on criminals, including terrorists.
Real Solutions
While Mayor Romero postures for cameras, NSSF is working for Real Solutions. Safer Communities. That includes FixNICS, a campaign to ensure the background check system works as intended by submitting all disqualifying records. NSSF’s “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy” works with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to warn the public that lying on a background check to illegally straw purchase a firearm for someone who can’t pass a background check, or won’t submit to one, is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. NSSF and ATF conducted this campaign in Tucson in 2024. NSSF also works with ATF for Operation Secure Store® to improve security and deter firearm robberies and burglaries from firearm retailers. When firearms are stolen, NSSF matches ATF reward offers up $5,000 for information leading to the recovery of the firearms and conviction of those suspects.
Mayor Romero wants more gun control laws. NSSF thinks there’s a better way. That starts with locking up criminals who commit these violent crimes.
