Ep. 635: Working on Grizzly Bears

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
If this is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Listeningcast, you can't predict anything.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by first Light.
Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every
hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light
dot com. F I R S T l I t
e dot com. Joined today by Dusty Lassiter, former Wyoming

(00:43):
game and fish bear management specialists, the keyword there being former.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
I love the agency guys. But the problem with having
agency guys on to talk about wildlife management is they
got to worry about them getting in trouble. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:56):
I don't have to worry about getting in trouble anymore.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Real, there's no trouble. Nothing can do it to you.
Let the air out of your tires.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
Yeah, write me a ticket.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I guess no. Again, I have nothing, But you know,
I have like a lot of respect and the admiration
for agency biologists and game wardens Like you know, I
love it. So many of them are driven by passion
and a desire to do good. But when talking about
policy just gets tricky for him because you know, they

(01:25):
they get reprimanded.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah, you get muzzled a little bit, and you know
you're trying to walk the party line a little bit,
you know, the department line.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah. Uh, give everybody a run through of what you've
done in your career around grizzly bears and wolves.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
And oh man, So I started in twenty ten and
I was just supposed to be on for one fall.
In one spring, I got hired on because one of
my coworkers was going back to college. And that was
the busiest year that we'd ever had. We caught sixty

(02:02):
seven grizzly bears in Wyoming outside of Yellstowe National Park.
And then in that year, so damn man. Yeah, yeah, it.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Was all in barrel traps.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Yeah. We we call them culvert traps, but they're really
big square box traps. Now the Montana guys still use
those culverts, but it's a pain in the butt to
pull a bear in and out of them.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah remember that round, Remember that video Callahan climbing in there,
climbing one of them tubes of that bearris basically like
laid out on it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
Yeah, yeah, so we we I think we dealt with
enough bears. We came up with a better trap design. Honestly,
what do you what were you guys?

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Man? I got so many questions go on. I just
remember that later. I want to ask you about what
kind of how you like, what your favorite bait and
stuff is. But keep going. Yeah, so you got on.
You guys started just hammering bears.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
Yeah, it was just call after call. I would try
to go home just to take a nap, and I
would get flagged down on the road somebody being like,
I got a I got a bear. Actually, one of
those guys was Jim Zumbo. You know. He flagged me
down on the road and he's like, yeah, I just
got back from Alaska. I'd killed my twentieth black bear,

(03:14):
and he was he was smoking some salmon and a
grizzly bear came by and smashed his salmon smoker.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Oh I got it, so.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
Yeah, so I started.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Jim Zumbo, Yeah, came home from Alaska, was smoking salmon
that he brought home from Alaska, and a grizzly showed
up and smashed Jim zumbole smoker.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
Yeah exactly, yep, yep, so pretty legit kind of funny.

Speaker 5 (03:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yeah, and I wanted one up with my George Bush
story h joke.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
Yeah. So that was just a really busy season and
there was a need for more help, so they hired
me on another season.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
And because you were a big game guide, yeah I was.

Speaker 4 (04:05):
You know, I went to the University Wyoming, got finance degree,
came home and just loved where I lived. And when
I came home, I was working on the thoroughfare as
a guide, and you know, just doing construction, trying to
make ends meet, and.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
Home as Cody, Home as Cody.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
That's where I grew up. And I was just wrong place,
wrong time, honestly, because there weren't a lot of people
that went to college and came back and I had
a lot of knowledge and skill about horses in the
back country, and you know, my life was immersed in
wildlife and bears growing up, and my parents worked for

(04:42):
outfitters and you know, they were stopping in at the
house and telling crazy stories and I was just sucked in.
So that's why I came home. And I wasn't intending
to get into bear work, and I just fell into
it and the timing was right, and yeah, they hired

(05:02):
me on and you know, that first year I saw
twenty five bears, and then that next season I was
in on another twenty five Grizzly captures and had fifty
under my belt and a pretty quick, you know amount
of time.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
So were you doing all the were you doing all
the relocations on those two? Like how many are euthanized
and how many are relocated?

Speaker 4 (05:27):
So at the time, my boss was a guy named
Mark Persino, and we were really still in the recovery
phase with these bears, and we probably only euthanized one
out of five when I started, and they were in
really bad shape. You know, they'd been repeat offenders. Never

(05:50):
it's never the three strikes and you're out. People say
that all the time, and I get so sick of that.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
That's not true.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
No, that's not true. It's not California. So but yeah,
there were some bears that, you know, I'd been in
multiple livestock conflicts that were removing or I caught a
female that year that her back leg was broke and
it was six inches shorter than her other back leg,
and I had the bone in my office and it's
just a you know, melded piece of calcium.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
How do you think she broke her leg, No idea.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
I always wondered that.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
You know, on a bear like that, on a grizzy
like that, it's in heart, it's in bad shape, it's desperate,
and it's not gonna You're not gonna you know what
the word to use. You're not going to rehabilitate it.

Speaker 4 (06:36):
No, it just wasn't going to be successful relocating that
kind of bear. And she was emaciated, and she actually
had a yearling that we didn't know about at the time.
You know, she was she was trying to orphan a
yearling bear because she was not even producing milk. She
was in such poor physical shape.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Got it. You say she was trying to orphan it.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
Yeah, I mean it was. It was following her around,
but she's not providing for it at all. And we
ended up catching that bear too, and and we relocated
that bear, but she just wasn't a good candidate for relocation.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah. And when you relocate the grizzlies, how do you
how do you figure out where to try because you
got to put him so far away from you got
to put them so far away, Yeah, to reduce the
temptation you're going to get in trouble again. And that's
and that's got to be like very time consuming.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Yeah, it definitely takes some man power, but you're trying
to take it as far away from the conflict as possible.
And there's really about six relocation sites in Wyoming that
we use, you know, And that kind of had changed
over the time that I'd been at the department. We

(07:57):
started doing some relocation that weren't as.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Far and use helicopters to dump them off.

Speaker 4 (08:04):
We don't. We had one bear trap that you could
take off the wheels and haul with the helicopter, But
and the time that I was there, the eleven years
I was there, we never did that.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, now tell me how you catch one.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
So most of the time you're using a culvert trap,
and you want to get that thing as low to
the ground as possible. You want to set it as
close to the conflict as possible, and you just put
a piece of bait in the front of that thing,
usually a road killed deer with a string that goes
up up the front wall around the top, and then

(08:44):
it's sitting on a pair of ice scripts and the
door is sitting on those vice scripts. So bear comes
in pulls that bait springs, the vice grip springs the
vice script and the door shuts and there's a pin
that shoots. Yeah, a lot of times we use beaver
caster is always my favorite thing to use. A little lure, Yeah,

(09:04):
a little bit of lure in there. If it's ket
in on fruit, we'd use apples and watermelon things like that.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Stick that back of the trap.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yeah, even like a trail into it a lot of times.
A lot of times you make a drag and they'll
follow a drag for a.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Long long ways, like drag a road kill deer, right, yep?
How far might you drag that deer to make a
cent trail?

Speaker 4 (09:28):
I mean, my old boss had done it a couple
of miles and cock bears running a couple miles on them. Yeah,
and they're finding now with these GPS callers, that a
bear can smell a carcass ten to fifteen miles away,
and we'll just start blining it for a carcass.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (09:45):
I followed a grizzly bear track and the bob wants
nine miles to a I don't know how far he started,
but I followed the tracks for nine miles in front
of me to a moose carcass.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Yeah, that was impressive. Yeah, they got a pretty good sniffer.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah. I've told the story to anyone that'll listen to it.
But we're one time camped up on the Arctic slope
and you know of the off the north slope of
the Brooks Range. Yeah, and we were camped where a
creek came into a bigger river. And one morning we
got up and walked three miles up that tributary and
killed caribou okay, spent the day up there, carried it

(10:20):
down that tributary to our camp. That night, we're sitting
in our camp and here comes a grizzly down the
gravel bar, digging roots. You see him move in, digging,
move and digging. He gets to the mouth of that tributary.
It's kind of like a slight little canyon. He gets
in the mouth of that tributary and stands up like
someone shocked him wow, waves his nose in the air,

(10:41):
and took off at a full run. So I don't
I can't tell you for sure, you know what I mean,
But it was like there was no discussing it. It was
like that sound of a bit smells that cariboo.

Speaker 4 (10:51):
Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, coming down that coming down that creek, and that's
only three miles and you're talking about.

Speaker 4 (10:57):
How far GPS colors are saying in ten to fifteen.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
What do you what do you see on a GPS
collar that suggests to you that a grizzly is onto something?

Speaker 4 (11:05):
Oh, it's meandering and then all of a sudden it's
a straight line.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
You know.

Speaker 4 (11:09):
It's like, just like you're talking about, there wasn't any
second thoughts in that bear's mind.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Got it? And then he's just going there, he's going. Yeah,
there's a lot of there's a lot of bruh on
the news right now. There's always been a bear, there's
always been a very polarizing bear. Yeah, in the polarizing
bear in the Yellowstone National Park area. Yeah, goes by
the handle three nine nine, which I always like because

(11:38):
I like it when they you know, when they give
the animals like a name like pedals or something, then
you know it's trouble. So if it has its research number.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
There's some clinical detachment there.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah. A research number allows the citizens at large to
stay a little usually allows citizens at large to stay
a little chilled out aboutelebrity animals. But three nine nine
it was. It might as well have been named cookie, right.
It just got really famous. And the American public, particularly

(12:10):
those who are very unfamiliar with wildlife, will have this
view that they look at an individual animal and they
see it with like like crystalline clarity, that one, and
they cease to view it as in context of its
like species at large, meaning you could have eight hundred

(12:33):
grizzlies in the area and it's kind of whatever, but
that one, nothing better happened to, right, right, They're not
it's not like it. They don't have an awareness of
the population at large. They have an awareness of that one.
I'm not lecturing you. I'm just trying to update listeners. Yeah,
when making an analogy about it, I'll make the analogy

(12:56):
of that someone like a hunter, some one in the concert,
like someone in the wildlife hunter based wildlife conservation might
view habitat as an apple tree. And if this apple
tree is taken care of, it will continuously produce apples,
and the apples are someone expendable, some get eaten, some

(13:18):
dying rot take care of the tree in perpetuity, it'll
put apples out animal rights people and preservation minded preservationist
minded people aren't that interested in the apple tree. But
now and then there's an apple that really catches their eye. Yeah,

(13:39):
and they are very concerned about what happens to that apple.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
Yeah, it's a good analogy.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
I guess this bear became that apple. Yeah, bear three
nine nine.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
It's usually an apple that photographs well and it's pretty dependable.
It's an apple that shows up again and again.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, you know, or it would be like a moose
that's piebald. So because moose, you know, generally, people aren't
able to distinguish one from the other. Then you get
a moose in some neighborhood that as a white splotch
on it, and then people are able to put individuality
to it. And then someone gets that moose and it
causes a whole shit show. Three ninety nine. The bear's

(14:26):
had books written about it. It just got hit by
a car. Yeah, And our little preamble chat I brought
up to you that it's that bear now is getting
its final it's being put to rest with much fanfare
and consternation. Yeah. I mentioned it to you, and you
had a comment about your view on on this particular bear.

(14:48):
You didn't deal with it professionally.

Speaker 4 (14:50):
Correct, No, I know her type though.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, tell me about that bear. What that like? You
mentioned a thing about management.

Speaker 4 (14:59):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's poor wildlife management. And we
learned this lesson early on with a bear named one
oh four. So before three ninety nine, there was a
bear named the number was.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
One O four.

Speaker 4 (15:11):
It was a celebrity bear, celebrity bear, another shiny apple,
if you will. And my predecessors tried to relocate that
bear mover she got so not trap shy, but trap savvy,
not savvy like she enjoyed traps. You could you could

(15:33):
drive down the road with the door open and she'd
come running down the road and jump in the trap
and you would catch her.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
You know. She was that kind of freaking like I
was just associated it with food.

Speaker 4 (15:43):
Yeah, because there was so many positive experiences jumping in
traps and.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
You eat the whole damn deer and then some guy
that's yeat yeah exactly, and you walk back home. I
get it, I get it.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah. So we just learned early on that those habituated
bears aren't successful. And she also got hit by a
vehicle one oh four and you know, I always thought
that was gonna happen to three ninety nine. It took
longer than I would have guessed.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
You pictured to getting struck by a car.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
Yeah, and one of her cubs got hit by a car,
you know.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
And really.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
The park Service could talk about more. They probably know
all the individual cubs that she had, but as far
as I'm aware, there's only one of her cubs that's
still alive in existing because they just get so habituated
to people, they don't learn normal bear manners is what
I call it. So, you know, one of her cubs

(16:40):
got shot by a guy who he was he was
hunting and he's in his camper and this bears walk
and ride at him like it's coming to eat him,
you know, but that bear's used to getting its picture
taken and that guy's scared for his life because he
thinks this bear is gonna hurt him.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
And you don't think it was.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
It was so used to people, it was smiling the
whole way it was coming in. I'm sure, you know.
So I just don't think it sets bears up for success.
And three ninety nine was really polarizing. I mean, some
people loved her. Some people hated her. I think people
forget that she mauled a guy years ago, so I

(17:21):
mean she was still a grizzly bear.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
And what do you say people hated that bear? Do
you mean that they hated that bear because what it
Because it was a symbol for something.

Speaker 4 (17:30):
I think. So I think I think people would make
comments that I would see and it would really ruffle
feathers where you know, if they would say things like
if they dealist grizzly bears and I can hunt, I'm
gonna shoot that bear, and that just that really affected
people negatively.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
So well that Shane Shane who got scratched off by
the bear.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
He said right in his chair, Yeah, and he had.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Good reason to believe that it was three ninety nine.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
That's what he had said. Well they well, how would
they not know for certain, sorry that he was scratched
up by Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
That's that was one of the things that he said.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
And she was in the vicinity.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
She was in the vicinity. But it was like if
three ninety nine was the one that did this to you,
we don't want to know about it. Was that kind
of a thing. So it's I mean, that was that
was one of the things that he mentioned sort of
off handedly, and he's like, if it was three ninety nine,
I don't think anybody would come out and declare to
the world that three ninety nine had done this and

(18:35):
needs to get destroyed, because it would just cause such
an uproar. So it was kind of like there were
there's like a buffer zone built around this bear to
protect it from the consequences of its bad behavior once
people get so attached to it. Yeah, I got you,
but he he post I think when three ninety nine
died too. He posted something again to the effect of

(18:58):
like there's a good chance that this was the bear
that did it.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Wow, let me ask you another one.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, that was that was a hard question. I'm sure
people are gonna cry over that. So three was just
touched a lot of heart strings.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Rip yep.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
Three nine was never going to die, you know, in
a warm bed with a roaring fire, surrounded by loved ones, right, Like, yeah,
I was sick. That's the the craziest part is like,
getting whacked by cars not the worst way to go.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Wild Animal Cal went out, Cal did there's a col
in the field about this on YouTube type and Cal
in the Field grizzly Barry, you'll see this one. But
there's a col in the field where he goes out
with some Idaho guys and they work and they they
colvert trap a grizzly and work up the grizzly. So
they colvert trap a grizzly and it's got a lip tattoo,

(19:54):
so they like an identifying marker, right, they call in
the lip tattoo and and they're like, oh, we know
that bear. They had had a collared female grizzly in
the park. She found a carcass. She found a buffalo
carcass and was on it. And they get a mortality

(20:18):
signal and they go there and there's their sow with
the collar dead on top of the buffalo carcass, and
standing on top of the both of them is this
male bear. Yeah right, but man, you could explain that
kind of stuff all day long, like that the number
one cause of death of Yellowstone wolves as wolves. Like

(20:39):
you could explain that stuff all day long, but it
is never gonna It just doesn't resonate. You know. People
will look at certain causes of death, like if three
ninety nine had been killed by a male grizzly, I
don't think people would be upset, you know what I mean? Yeah, people,

(21:00):
it's it's that they're upset because it's human caused.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, people put different values on different animals, and and
they even yeah, even at the individual level, put values
on animals. And yeah, people just really valued that bear.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
So let me hte you with another easier to answer one.
But you'll get this will make other people mad. Good,
Now you're gonna, Now you're gonna. We have we know,
we have a full spectrum of listeners. Sure, we got
we got the horseshoe, you got, we got, we got
left we got righty's lefties, and then we got where

(21:38):
the rights and the lefties meet, which is crazy redneck hippies.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, So no matter what you say, your eyes and
get someone that's gonna get mad. And this will be
a thing where where the the the the right bottom
of the horseshoe get will get very irritated no matter
what you say, uh, bear spray or pistols like when
you're out. Yeah, no one, what you know, having dealt
with as many grizzlies as you we dealt with and

(22:03):
been to as many conflict sights as you've been to,
and touched as many of them as he touched to
and talked to as many people has been messed up
by grizzlies as you've talked to bear spray or pistol.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Without a doubt bear spray really, yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Tell me more now I'm mad. You promise he's a
gun grabber. The other day Yanni was talking about them
needing to ban the Red Rider. I was like, now,
you're a gun grabber trying to take away people's Red Rider.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
What was his?

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Uh, he's got some cockamami theory that cheating a kid
to shoot on a Red Rider to get used to
a heavy trigger pull. My little kids, Yeah, my little
kids shooting Red Riders. I remember they used to shoo
him with two fingers because you cannot get that go off.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
I thought it was going to be like he was
anti BB gun fights.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
He's he thinks he thinks of Red Rider. He just
form And I think that's a very Unamerican statement. You
shoot your eye out Bear spray unequivocally.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
Yeah. I have one caveat to that. If you're really
well experienced with with handguns, then by all means carry
a handgun. But a lot of people just aren't and
I investigated so many cases of self defense defensive life shootings,
and people are just really bad shots with pistols and

(23:31):
a lot of times they would even hit the bear,
but they don't hit it lethally. And bear spray. The
beauty of it is it makes a four foot cloud,
so you don't have to be accurate.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
And how much do they hate that bear spray?

Speaker 4 (23:46):
I've never seen it not work.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
So do you know that? Red a statistic and I
didn't really spend a lot of time.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
If you spray it on the ground, they'll come sniff
it though. It becomes an attractant.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Oh oh yeah, I got I'll tell you a good
one about that. But I read a statistic and I
never really spent much time on it, but it seemed
like it seemed significant that twenty five percent of the
time a pistol or sorry, twenty five percent of the
time when a firearm is discharged in a bear attack,

(24:16):
it hits a human.

Speaker 4 (24:18):
Yeah, that's the other reason.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Have you heard that?

Speaker 4 (24:21):
No, I haven't heard that statistic. That seems high. There's
a lot of not shoot not there.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
But listen, man, like I know, yeah, I know a
bunch of cases where that's happened, and I haven't looked
into it. I just read it.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
You know, there was a case on the Montana Idaho border.
It ended up being in Montana where the guy was
getting mauled and his buddy tried to shoot the bear
off him and actually killed his friend.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, they had shot that that bear. They were black
bear hunting. They mistook it for a black bear, so
they shot it and the bear runs into the into
the brush. He thinks he hit a black bear, so
he goes trailing in there after it and boom.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
I just remember it was so close on the border,
they didn't know who had jurisdiction about it. So yeah,
so that's that's why I carry bear spray. And you know,
ultimately it's up to people. I know there's gun lovers
they want to carry guns and that's fine, but a
lot of people just don't practice shooting pistols enough.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah. Yeah, I think it does say a lot about
your The choice might say more about your mind frame
than it does your like your strat your sense of strategy. Right.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
I remember being like up at Sportsman's Warehouse and Anchorage
and seeing people that just got off a plane and
they're going to buy a pistol for their Alaska vacation
and then you know, pawn it off or whatever at
the end of the vacation. Like, I think there's like
a there's an assumption that if you, if you believe

(25:54):
in the handgun, like you just go get when you
get a box ammo, and you keep it near you,
and like that's just a recipe for disaster. But I
think there's a lot of overconfident and I'm i myself,
I have no confidence in my handgun shooting ability, and
I shoot one pretty regularly.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
But I'll tell you, my little my I'll walk you
through my irrational thoughts on it. If there's slight risk
of First off, I I condemn and yell at and
harrass and tease anyone that carries bear spray where there's
no grizzlies, indefensible it works on lions.

Speaker 7 (26:29):
What if it's just on your by hardness teas worthy
in her as.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Bear spray is not nice to get shot with, and
they and it like they go off. I've been in
two I've been never mauled by a bear, been charged
by them, but never mauled. But twice I've been hosed
by people's bear spray.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
Mine doesn't come off that.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
They trust it every two years, Yes, trust me, it's
like it happens. Those are not those The plastic nozzles
on those cans are not invulnerable. One time, on just
standing around a car unloading backpacks, someone stepped on the
plastic nozzle everything. And one time I got pickpocketed in

(27:17):
the thick in the like a willow choked hell hole.
And also I was like, what is that noise going?
All your ship's done, all your gear is gone, You
cannot get it out.

Speaker 5 (27:29):
Wait?

Speaker 7 (27:29):
Is it bad to keep your bear spray.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
In your car?

Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (27:34):
Keep itature It'll total your car.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Know, I know people whose car has been told your car.
When that goes off your car, it will total your car.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
Temperatures are dropping. I had a friend who did that
and he's still driving his vehicle giving yeah all the time.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Put get a small amimal can. There's one right outside
the door of the of the studio. Get a small
animal can and put it in the ammal can. And
then when you're using it, Carrie, when you're done using it,
put in an animal can. I was gonna I'm gonna tell
you my irrational logic. Let me tell my funny story. Yeah,
we had the Ranella family. We had we went into
the summer with two bear sprays, and we have like

(28:13):
a little camping spot where there's grizzlies. So when we
get there, before I get a sense of what's going on,
I'll like tell my kids, like, take the spray if
you're gonna go fish, or take the spray and bring
the dog. And then once we kind of get a
sense of what's up, everybody relaxes about it. But at
first it's thick, you know, at first I'll take the
bear spray. So the end of the summer we only have.
Now there's one bear spray, and of course no one

(28:36):
knows what happened to the other bear spray. Well, me
and my wife are up shutting our little camping area down.
And here right outside of our little composting outhouse toilet, Yeah,
right outside the door is the can of bear spray,
empty with four holes in it. It got at by

(28:56):
a bear.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
Got yep, got eaten by a bear. Seen that before?

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, Uh, here's my irrational logic. Okay, slight risk of grizzlies,
I use spray. High risk of grizzlies. I bring my
ten milimeters pistol ultra high risk of grizzlies. I bring
my sawd off pump twelve gage with slugs in it.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
Yeah, I've found this spray and pray.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
And I always look at it, and I always look
at all three of them. I'm like, hey, man, like,
what are you thinking here?

Speaker 4 (29:28):
That's a that's a myth I can dispel too. Is people, Uh,
people take shotguns and they alternate buckshot and slugs.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Oh yeah, because you know, I know that. No, I
think it's supposed to. Brody told me you're supposed to
run two bird shots. Yeah. Then you start going. Then
you start going slug but shots, because it's like you
warn it, boom, you warn it boom. Then like it's
getting closer. Now you hit it with the slug boom.

(29:58):
Then it's so close and everything's so chaotic. Then you
start going buckshot.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
And most bears are aware of this choreography, this elaborate
choreography before.

Speaker 6 (30:06):
They Yeah, all the time, there's.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
The warning shot.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
Yeah, there's warning.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
He tells his bite. Listen when you're coming in, he's
gonna hit you two bird shots. Yeah, then you got
to dodge the slug. Watch out for the buckshot.

Speaker 4 (30:18):
Yeah, a zig and then a zag.

Speaker 6 (30:22):
Here's my scenario that I find myself in all the time.
As most hunters, we don't get to pick our weather,
but we do get to pick which direction.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
We walk when we're out hunting.

Speaker 6 (30:29):
And most of the time the winds in my face,
and a lot of times the winds honking. I don't
trust bear spray when the wind's blowing.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
Okay, So I've had that question a bunch over the years.
And I had a really good friend who was horn
hunting in the spring. It was super windy out. A
sow with cubs, real little cubs, charges him, and you know,
the winds in his face. He spray's bear spray. Half
of it goes in her face, half of it gets

(30:57):
in his face. They both ran off trying so it. Yeah,
the propellant still gets out there, but not as far
as it normally would.

Speaker 6 (31:07):
I'd love to practice in the wind, but I don't.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Want to get a case of those inert cans.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah, I think that'd be interesting.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
I should get a case of those inert cans. I
just like shoot each other around, like laser tag around.
That would be fun.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
I tried to shoot a sow and cubs with a
can of bear spray out of a window.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
And the when I was.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
Working Yellowstone, they were coming in and tearing up our cat.
When I was working up in Alaska, they'd come in
and tear up stuff on the portrait and trying to
give a bad and like they would come in, they'd
get into the fish shack to get into the tool
shed that eat rubber boots that do all this stuff.
And like so I was, I stayed in the main
lodge that they kept coming into and open the window

(31:50):
and they were walking past, and I sprayed, and it
might have been just outside of the range, but all
that bear spray went along the building and they like
went ten feet back and stood up and then kind
of circled around and came right back in.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Killed you shut the window real quick. And then actually
we sat around. I was with this kid.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
We just like we were sitting in the cabin like
later on, like forty five minutes later, and we were
both kind of like does it smell weird? And then
we started getting like you know, like licking your cheeks
and like your lips and stuff, and and we'd gotten
like a trace amount inside and it had been swirling
and swirling, and we spent like the rest of the
night just like kind of licking our lips and rubbing

(32:34):
our noses and stuff. Yeah, that was my one experience
actually discharging.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
A can can't tell you a story.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yep, please sory here. I'm jealousy. I was. I was
impressed that Randall got to shoot at one with a spray,
But go on to have video of it somewhere.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
I actually never did get at a spray a bear
with one. But I was deer hunting one fall and
I was going in some really heavy dark timber and
my dad always taught me to load around in my gun.
So I'm going through the timber and I walk under
this tree and there's a magpie sitting in the tree

(33:12):
and he's just staring at me. He's just looking right
down at me, and I'm looking up at him, and
I'm thinking, boy, that's weird that magpie.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
Why is he hanging out?

Speaker 4 (33:21):
Yeah? Why is he hang out? Or just staring at
each other? And I go another i don't know, thirty
yards and I hear something and I turn around and
there's this bore coming down the hill at me. He's
coming right at me and.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
How many yards way?

Speaker 4 (33:37):
Maybe twenty? Guy, I mean, he's coming for me. And
I was thinking myself, I got one shot with this rifle,
you know, I got one chance to kill this thing,
and it's going to be on top of me. And
I realized what my dad was trying to teach me
was just to be prepared, you know, And I would
have been way better off with a can of bear

(33:58):
spray in my hand, just walking through the woods and
as a guide. I do that sometimes, you know, if
it's real tight quarters, I don't have a problem walking
around with the cann of bear spray. Even if you
spray yourself, you're gonna live to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
So what happened?

Speaker 4 (34:14):
He Yeah, I sprayed him and he didn't care.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:20):
I started yelling at him and he was coming down
the hill at me, and he just kind of did
a quarter pass, which is like a classic bear move,
you know. It was it was a bluff, but I
thought it was the real deal. And I just remember thinking, like,
I gotta wait until this thing is right on top
of me before I shoot, because I only got one chance.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
So what is after all those bears you worked up,
what is a big bear in the rockies.

Speaker 4 (34:49):
A big bear is five hundred pounds. The biggest bear
ever caught was six twenty four in the spring, would
have been a true seven hundred pound bear in the fall.
When people come.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Into big bear, that's a huge bear because every bear
is like I just cut.

Speaker 4 (35:05):
People's number in half immediately, you know, whatever it is,
I cut it in half.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
They tell you how big the bear was, Yeah, yep.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
And you know, all those bears I worked up. The
sows are almost always right around three hundred pounds two
seventy five, three twenty five. They stop growing when they're
about seven to eight years old, where the males just
keep putting on weight, keep getting bigger. So a five
hundred pounds adult male is a huge bear in the

(35:34):
alstone ecosystem.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
That's a huge bear. Yeah. And what's a more typical
male like, like, what is like a four or five
year old male two fifty?

Speaker 4 (35:43):
You know, I don't know, three hundred.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
God, they seem so much bigger, badder, Yeah, and they're bad,
but they seem so much bigger. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:50):
And people overestimate wolves too, and really, you know, lions
are way bigger than wolves. But people because of the hair,
especially the fall bears, animolves, but bears especially they get
that that winner code on and people just think they're
way bigger than they are. You know, they're like, it's

(36:11):
a sow with a two full drown cubs, and it's like, no,
that thing weighs one hundred and fifty pounds, but it's
got so much hair it looks like as big as her.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (36:22):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
You were with the agency when the delisting looked like
it was going to go through.

Speaker 4 (36:29):
Yeah, ok, it did go through.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Well, sorry, when it looked like they were no, well
it didn't an undid they were delisted yeah multiple times? Yeah, okay,
So help me with the timeline here, just to give
people rough sense what will happen is Well, first off,
I'm me saying this is not surprise. This is surprisingly

(36:53):
not a partisan like Democrat versus Republican issue generally grizzly bears. Well,
hear me out, because because I'm going to top of
all the dlistings. Okay, yeah, so you can, you can.
You can give that because there's definitely a tendency and
a tendency. But just I just think that people have
the opinion, they have their erroneous idea that somehow like

(37:15):
a governor or whatever can just declare right right that
something would happen right, that you would that that it's
that it's a simple that doing this is a simple process.
It just takes the right political figure to do it.
It's I'm going to explain how it's a little bit
more complicated in that right. In seventy four seventy nineteen
seventy four, nineteen seventy five, grizzly bears and the lower

(37:37):
forty eight were listed as an endangered They're listed as
a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, so they're
given Federal and Endangered Species Act Species Act protection under
the EESA. And seventy four seventy five Richard Nixon, Dick Nixon.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
Don't remember him, heard of.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Republican signed in the e s A signed Ina signed in.
Then he established the EPA.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
That's that's the National Environmental Protection Act.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about the
native milk.

Speaker 4 (38:23):
No.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Sorry, Oh yeah, Richard Nixon CRAS and Endangered Species Act.
And one of the first like marquee species to get
protection under that is grizzy bears and lower forty eight.
All kinds of years go by and wildlife managers kind
of look and say, well, the saying the lower forty

(38:44):
eight is not a great way of looking at this.
For instance, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco once upon
a time had grizzly bears, and I don't we don't
view that Golden Gate Park is going to recover that
San Francisco is going to recover it's grizzly bear population, right,
is never gonna work. So over time they establish they

(39:08):
take a look and they go like, where really could
we have grizzly bears? Like where is the right food resources,
low enough human population, proper habitat where you could feasibly
have a population of grizzly bears? And they come up
with six. One is in the Northern Casque what they
call the Northern Cascade ecosystem. So one is like basically

(39:32):
the Northern Cascades in Washington where you're kind of rolling
into BC.

Speaker 4 (39:36):
Zero bears, sometimes one, sometimes one.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
It depends on what side of the Yeah, it depends
on what side of the border.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
If you're from Wyoming, it looks a lot like zero bears.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, they if they have it bears
because one walked over there for a minute. Moving eastward,
you have the bitter Root cell Kirk cell Way none.

Speaker 4 (40:06):
None, sell Kirks have bears, the bitter bitter Root does.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
The Bitterot side. That's one. Oh, I forgot. They gave
a name to these things that already say the name
they call the distinct distinct population segments. So they say, okay,
we're gonna say that there's a grizzly bear population or
the possibility of a grizzy bear population in the Lower Cascades.

Speaker 4 (40:25):
Uh, there's another one in Cabinet Yacks.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
That's right, Cabinet Yack has bears. Bitter Root sell Kirk,
Bitter cell Way, Selway. Sorry, sell Kirks are in BC
Bitterroot cell Way, Northern Continental Divide, which is Bob Marshall
Glacier National Park, in some other areas up there, all

(40:49):
the way out to the front Range. Uh. Then the
g y E did I do them all? Am I
missing any?

Speaker 3 (40:57):
I think that's it?

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Okay Uh, And they go like, so let's stop talking
about the lower forty eight writ large and let's talk
about let's get real okay right and talk about where
could we actually have these bears. And then they looked
at like Okay, So instead of saying that we're going
to recover them across their range in the lower forty eight,
which basically was the one hundredth meridian westward New Mexico, Arizona,

(41:23):
Utah into northern Old Mexico coastal California. Right Like, let's
just look at this. And so they say, let's say
that we're going to try to recover and manage these
as distinct population segments. And they look and say, if
we're going to do that, there's two places, the Northern
Continial Divide ecosystem in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which is

(41:48):
a chunk of ground about the size of Indiana. And
they're like, those are recovered. The rest of the Lower
forty eight not, but these areas I recovered, and so
let's move those out of the e Let's move those
out of endangered species at protection. The US Fish and
Wildlife Service has management has management authority. The US Fish

(42:08):
and Wildlife Service has to come forward and they do this.
The US This has happened with Democrats in the White House.
This has happened with the Republicans in the White House.
They'll come forward and say the US Fish and Wildlife
Service says, we propose that we propose that we delist
the grizzly. Then you have preservations like three ninety nine

(42:33):
type people. Preservations organizations will go like, well, Jesus, that
could mean that three ninety nine could get hunted. So
then they will sue in federal court to block the dlisting.
So they'll delist, and then there's a lawsuit and they'll
they'll never sue on basis they don't sue on how
many bears there are. They sue on uh, well, we

(42:58):
don't think the DPS thing was fair, Yeah, right, because
you can't treat them as distinct because because a bear
could move from one to the others. So we we're
going to attack the logic of the of the DPS.
Or you'll say, well, have you considered white bark pine
blister rust and how there's a fungus that's killing white

(43:21):
bark pines and grizzlies like the eat white bark pines,
and since we don't know what will really happen in
the long term to white bark pines, we're suing to
block the listing. Or well, what if cutthroat trout don't
do that? Well in the future, and ten percent of
bears might eat a cutthroat trout at some point in
their life. So we're going to sue to block the

(43:42):
delisting because we don't really know how well cutthroats are doing.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
The risks because then the Fish and Wildlife Service is
required as part of that review process to consider all factors,
and they kind of have an impossible job, right, I mean,
like there's they basically are saying, we did a comprehensive review,
our conclusions are x, Y, and Z, and the litigators

(44:07):
are saying, it's not that comprehensive. You missed this, you
miss that, And they're kind of poking holes in the
bigger picture.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Yeah, and it will be It will come from anti
hunting organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity, Humane Society,
United States, Greater y Elson Coalition. Who else is a common
player here? Center H And they'll they'll do these delistings

(44:34):
or they'll they'll sue to block the delistings.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
Last one was the crow the Crow tribe tribe.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
What was the argument there, Uh.

Speaker 4 (44:44):
That we shouldn't be delisting.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
You know that's interesting. That was a long That was
a long preamble to my question yeah, you were around
for all this, yes, now, both of them. Okay, what
I remember being really interesting about this is the three
the three states that have chunks of ground and what
we call the Greater Yellstone Ecosystem, a name that I

(45:08):
resent because it call they should call it the Greater
Cody ecosystem.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
They should call Wyoming bears.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Yeah, they should call it the Greater Cody ecosystem.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
Most simmar in Wyoming.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, the Wyoming ecosystem. Yeah, there's three states. The bulk
of it's in Wyholming. But the three states take an
attitude where they're like, uh, okay, if d listing goes
through and we take what that means is the states
now manage it as a wild as wildlife under their jurisdiction.
Idaho says, this is twenty twenty.

Speaker 4 (45:35):
Is this when it's happened last seventeen?

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Earlier?

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, Idaho says we're going to give out one grizzly tag.

Speaker 4 (45:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Montana chicken shits out right and they say, not going
to play this game. We're not doing any grizzly tags.

Speaker 4 (45:52):
Montana actually had to give part of their quota to
Idaho so the Ida Idaho could have one.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Oh is that right? Yeah, Wyoming just lays all on
the table. Yeah, and they're gonna give out twenty four tags, right. Yeah.
Guys like me who really want who really think that
the grizzies should be delisted, and I think that state
management and I'm very open and enthusiastic about a very

(46:20):
limited grizzly bear hunting season. Guys like me. As part
of our rhetoric, if we were being unscrupulous, we would
say that by opening up a hunting season, it'll reduce
conflict because bears will learn to be scared of people.

Speaker 4 (46:34):
Not true.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
That's why I stopped saying it, because it was intellectually dishonest. Yeah,
talk about that. I just spent like an hour setting
up the question. But give me your feelings on all
of this, all of this whole deal, all of this hunt,
don't hunt, the bears need to learn to be scared
and respect humans, and blah blah blah.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
Yeah, I don't know where you can start. He opened
up so many holes there I beight shops.

Speaker 6 (47:03):
Do you think grizzlies would be nervous of people if
we started hunting them again?

Speaker 1 (47:07):
I got one?

Speaker 4 (47:10):
If I got one?

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Did you hear about bear four twenty two.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
I mean maybe at some level. I don't know personally
because I haven't been there, but they talk about bears
on Kodiak Island being like really weary of human scent
because they're heavily hunted and always have been and always
have been, and same with Sweden. So maybe at some level,
But the reality is, you know, you have black bear

(47:35):
populations all over America that are hunted and there's still
black bear conflicts, so you're still gonna have conflicts with bears.
Bears do learn on experience with humans. If they have
a negative encounter, then they're more likely to run away
from a human. But I just don't think you'll hunt

(47:55):
them at a level that would be that would change
their being behavior.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
So you know, they delisted in two thousand and seven,
and that delisting went from two thousand and seven to
two thousand and nine when a judge put him back
on the list.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Because it's always the same judge in Missoula.

Speaker 4 (48:14):
Wow, this was a different judge. I was, Oh, yeah,
there was Molloy and then Dana Christiansen, and we knew
we were in trouble when when Dana Christiansen had said
My spirit animal is the wolverine. You know any judge with.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
That, that's cultural appropriation anyways.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
Yeah, I don't know any judge with a spirit animal.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, they should have gotten him. They should have attacked
him from the woke spectrum and said that that's cultural
appropriation and you should be fired. That was before wokens.
I believe man be freaking out. Man, I just don't coffee.
It just died.

Speaker 4 (48:48):
Get some more coffee on that.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
For anyone listening. Steve spilled a large cup of coffee
on his computer moments before we began recording Field.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
Do you have the tech capabilities to plug that clip in?
Which clip? Well, because I was kind of talking about
I was talking to Oh, absolutely, yeah, we can do it.
Cut out me saying that bad stuff about that actor
though it doesn't really inspire. Oh shit, one of those

(49:20):
dudes that doesn't really inspire, like it, guys. I was
observing that there's an actor that's in a lot of movies,
but no one cares about him, and I don't want
that to get out. I feel like that's that's the
definition of a great character actor. No one cares about him,
but you're you're happy to see him right, Yeah, I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
He always brings it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Uh so so yeah, so back back to this and
and and pardon me for not know what I'm talking about.
I thought it was the same judge both times.

Speaker 4 (49:47):
But anyways, No, you're right that they do go judge shopping.
That that's part of this whole thing. But yeah, two
thousand and seven, two thousand and nine, Wyoming didn't have
a hunting season even though the population was recovered. We
could to use hunting as management tool, and when they
got relisted, I think the state's opinion was, the next

(50:07):
time they get delisted, we're gonna hunt these things, and
we're it's not to control the population, it's to create
a social pattern of hunting.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
That's what see, that's that's a good way of putting it. Yeah,
that's what I want the states to do it because
I want them to quickly exercise the management authority.

Speaker 4 (50:26):
And Montana checking out chickening out was a bad move
in my opinion, because you're setting a precedent that that
you're not hunting them.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Yeah, and I remember they were going to chicken out
for five years or something like that.

Speaker 4 (50:39):
Yeah, I think that's true this time around too. They've
said that recently in recent history.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Yeah, I don't know that they would make that choice now,
but at the time they were they had a plan
to like formally chicken out for five years.

Speaker 4 (50:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Uh. You know what's interesting about that when I say,
like even the Idaho play, as weird as it was
to do one on the Idaho play of the social
maneuver of doing the hunt. I remember I was talking
to these guys that were really involved in the elk
reintroduction in Kentucky and they were nervous about this. So

(51:15):
they ever since when when they started working on the
elk reintroduction, which was state agency Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation,
it was like, because of hunting, and will hunt them,
and we'll hunt them, even though those years in the future,
they baked it into every conversation to not then down
the road go like, oh, hey, now that we got

(51:38):
all these elk, how about we have a hunting season.
It was like they were they were deliberate about setting
an expectation that that's where this would go. And you
see when you see signs around any anyway you go
around in this area, you'll see signs delisting means hunting
and it's it's meant to be delisting means hunting, and
it's meant to be like an anti delisting. They're coming

(52:01):
right out and saying, we're not gonna we're not looking
to argue about how many bears they are, because no
one's gonna argue that bears are stable. They're looking to
be like they're using the ESA, they're using any Endangered
Species Act not as a management tool. They're using it
as a way that they can prevent something from happening
that they don't want to happen. It's like, it's my

(52:24):
favorite Animal Protection Act. It is not the Endangered Species Act,
and they even know it, and their rhetoric mirrors it.
But when I look and I see that sign delisting
means hunting, I always think, I sure hope they're right.

Speaker 4 (52:36):
Yeah, you're rooting for that.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
And they'll always show a sow with cubs, the one
they use around here. Sure, they show a saw with
cubs with a crosshair. Yeah. I'm like, but you can't
shoot cells with cubs. Yeah, so that's a poacher. They
should arrest that person.

Speaker 4 (52:57):
We actually had, like I remember having five heights talking
about how many bears we were going to harvest and
a game warden in a district that has a lot
of bears thought that twenty four was like not nearly
enough and and was upset about it. And it's like,
we're not trying to manage the population totally through hunting.

(53:17):
We're trying to create a social standard for hunting. You know,
I say we, But that was past.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Years when we first started this podcast, million years ago
in an office where me and my wife, Me and
my wife had dinner not a great one either, across
the road from our original old office last night on
our little date night. Anyways, in that office upstairs, we
and one of our early early podcasts we first launched

(53:49):
a podcast. We had a guy from the USGS, Frank
mcmahonan man. What is his name, Van Man? We had
him on talk about He yeah, he does demographics on Grizzy.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
So the USGS is a it's a federal organization, and
the USGS doesn't do policy. The USGS doesn't manage land, Okay,
like the US Forest Service, the Usdaight manages land, US
Fish and Wildlife Service manages refuges, the National Park Service
manages parks. You have a bunch of land management federal agencies.

(54:21):
The USGS doesn't do land management, they don't do policy.
Their mandate is information. Sure, they provide information. So this
this guest we had, it's a great podcast. We want
to go back and listen. Love it's still relevant today.
This guest we had explained we got to talk about demographics,
grizzy bear demographics. And there's the number. At that time,

(54:43):
I don't know what the number is now. The number
at that time was something like it was like fixed.
It was like carved in stone, seven hundred okay, yeah,
and it will And he explained that. I was like,
where does that number come from? What they had looked
at is at a time they looked at, Okay, in
this ecosystem, how much space does a breeding age female use?

Speaker 4 (55:07):
Thirty square kilometers was the estimate.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
That okayep And they would draw what's that little shape
you draw on them at an octagon or polygon?

Speaker 4 (55:16):
Yeah, it was actually a grid. Okay, but yeah, and
that was called the chow To model.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Yeah. Explain, yeah, okay, so you know about the shit, Yeah,
explain how the number was arrived at. And then and
then I'm going to share with you something he told
me about the number that I was like we spent
an hour talking about yeah, because he would say at
least I'd go, how many at least seven forty? Well,
how many at least seven forty? Yeah, well how many

(55:46):
at least seven forty?

Speaker 4 (55:49):
Yeah, So that model has been updated twice since then.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Okay, but explain how it's like, it's really fascinating how
you make a model like this.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
Okay, So bears are really hard to count because they're
solitary nature. They're not territory. Their home ranges overlap, so just.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Say solitary but not territorial, right.

Speaker 4 (56:06):
They like to be in visialistic, but they don't have territories,
not like a mountain lion. Solitary nature has a territory.
It's keeping other cats out of there. So if there's
food availability, their home ranges overlap.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Oh, I've never even thought about that term. That's a
great term. Solitary but not territorial.

Speaker 4 (56:24):
Right, And that's what happened with the model. That's what
makes them really difficult to count. So the early research
showed that a grizzly bear sal's home range was thirty
square kilometers, so when they were counting, if you're counting
bears and there's you break the system, the ecosystem up

(56:46):
into a grid, and there's a sow with cubs in
one of those squares. You cross off that grid because
you don't want to you want to lean conservative, you
don't want to overestimate the population. One with that model
is as the population gets higher in density, your model
gets more and more biased because of those home ranges overlapping.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
So that model maxed out at seven forty, Like I
can't remember seven fifty. Maybe you couldn't get it. You
couldn't shove any more grizzly bears into the ecosystem in
that model. They went back and they looked at color
data and they found out that SAO's home range was
more like fourteen square kilometers.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
You know, I gotta this is great, but I want
to add in a thing here. Yeah. That he'd explained
is be that when they make the model, you're just
you count you're trying to count breeding age females, and
then you look.

Speaker 4 (57:46):
At what with cubs of the year, okay, and then to.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Look at what you know about the demographics, meaning that
you could go into a let's say you could go
into a country perhaps and count how many how many
females with children are in this country, and then probably
go like, okay, so we know human males and human
females are born at a one to one ratio. We

(58:11):
know that like a female is most active reproductively between
twenty four and thirty eight, and that they have on
average two point two kids, and so we can just
look at how many moms there are and make a
guess at what the human population is in that country.

(58:32):
That's kind of what you're doing with grizzies, right, You're like,
we know that that you got males, you got cubs,
but if we can know this one number, we can
extrapolate outward to get a sense of how many are there,
rather than mechanically counting them.

Speaker 4 (58:47):
Yeah, you have. You know that they're the driver of
the population. But what you're describing is actually more like
a census, and that's closer to what the model is now.
It's an integrated population model. But you know, yeah, the
ratio of bears in the ecosystem you have, however many

(59:09):
adult males you have, however many subadult bears and females
with cubs are driving your population. So it's just a
multiplier understood essentially, so it got changed to fourteen square
kilometers and that made the estimate more like twelve hundred bears.

(59:30):
And then what you just described is now what they're
doing is an integrated population model, and it's more of
a census and you can plug in other factors.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
I got it.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
So what's the number now, ten oneenty thirty.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
How good you think that number is?

Speaker 4 (59:51):
I think that's pretty accurate. I think there's definitely parts
of the ecosystem where there's higher densities than other parts.
And growing up in Cody, I just assumed everywhere had
really high densities, and you go to other parts and
they're just not. And this new modeling system is going
to incorporate some of that and show you where where
there's more density of bears. And that's only in the

(01:00:17):
demographic monitoring monitoring area. So there's bears that live outside
where they're even looking for bears. So that is a
minimum because they're not counting bears that aren't in suitable habitat.
Oh really, yeah, they might be living years.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
They're not counting bears that don't count.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Yeah, So if a bear moves out into like if
a bear moves out of and moves out into like
Fort Benton, out of out of the Shouldo area and
just keeps going east. He leaves the counting.

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
Area if he's there year round, if he's outside of
their their demographic monitoring area. And I don't know about
the NCDE, but that's how they did it with the
g ye got it. Yeah, you got to be in
a bear place to be a bear. Yeah, stract don't
count outliers.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
So there's about So tell me the number again, you think, oney? Thirty?

Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
Yeah, and it was as high as twelve hundred was
estimate a couple of years ago before they changed to
this other model. But it has a lot more factors.
It's a lot more accurate. God, it's my understanding.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
That's good.

Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
No, I still thought it was that old seven.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Yeah. I didn't know that anyone moved beyond that number.

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
That was laughable. People in my hometown never believe that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Why do they Why do they seem to congregate in
these little micro areas so much. There's just some like
valleys that are like such hot spots, and you go
to another valley and you could go to another value
and hang out there over the years, ten ten years
and never lay eyes on one. But then there's like,

(01:01:49):
you can't it just doesn't. You can't really tell the
difference from looking at them.

Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
It's just food availability, food sources, and some of it's
learned behavior. And my part of the woods, we have
what are called moth sites, and there's these bears on
moth sites, and you know, I've done flights where I've
counted forty bears on moss sites. So there's a high
concentration of food, and that's one of the highest caloric
value foods in the ecosystem.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
He explain what that means.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
Cloric value?

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
No, what a moth? I know about it? Oh, yeah,
I know a little bit, but just tell people what
that is.

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
So there's these army cutworm moths that migrate from the
Midwest and they come up in the mountains at night
pollinate flowers, and then in the daytime they get in
these talus slopes and they use that as a heat refugia,
and bears come along and they flip over those rocks
and eat those bugs. And they're probably eating twenty to

(01:02:44):
forty thousand of.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Those moths a day, licking them up.

Speaker 4 (01:02:47):
Licking them up, yep. And it's just a really rich
food source for bears in ecosystem. But what I was
going to say is there's places in the ecosystem where
there's moss sites and there's not bears utilizing them, So
they think it's a learned behavior, like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
They know about it, right yep. Huh, Like if you
took all the bears out and put new ones back in,
they might not find those.

Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
Moths maybe not for a while, or they use different ones,
or they could use different ones.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah, yeah, huh. What are some of the other main foods,
Like everybody likes to think of them just you know,
eating elk calves, But when you had a list like
their main grub sources, what do you think it is?

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
Uh, vegetation. You know, bears eat a lot of different
roots and tubers and corns, and that's a big one.
In the spring, elk calves is a big food source.
I mean, that's kind of undeniable. These moths sites. There
are a few places in the ecosystem where they eat
those cutthroat trout that are spawning white bark pine. But

(01:03:59):
they did a food synthesis analysis on bears and found
that they eat over two hundred and sixty different plants
and animals so kid. Yeah, in the Yellstone ecosystem, they
have the most diverse diet.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Two hundred and sixty species. Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:04:14):
That bear that I caught there was six twenty four.
I figured that he was probably eating meat year round.
You know, that bear was going from winter kill carcasses
to elk calves, to moths, to killing cattle in the
fall because we'd caught him before killing cattle, to eating

(01:04:35):
gut piles. You know, he was eating probably nothing but meat.
How old was that bear?

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Mmm?

Speaker 4 (01:04:42):
I don't remember. I caught another bear that was five
hundred and twenty pounds in the spring, same exact location,
and I caught him eight years later and he was
twenty eight years old.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Wow, Holy cow man.

Speaker 4 (01:04:58):
So that other bear could be thirty I think. I think, well,
when he was twenty eight, that bear was past his prime.
Maybe when other bear was probably between fifteen and twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Gotcha, Yeah, man, it's twenty eight.

Speaker 4 (01:05:12):
Zach Turnbull caught one that was thirty two in the
Upper Green.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
And that's got to be getting close to mass.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
That's the oldest bear they've caught in the ecosystem.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. In your mind, what is the what
is the most common sort of way things play out
when people get scratched up by a bear.

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
Hmmm, what do you mean, like, how.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
If you were if you were no, no, no, no, I'm sorry,
if you were going to look at from all the
things you've heard and seen, when someone gets mauled by
a bear, what is the normal.

Speaker 4 (01:05:48):
Scenario surprise encounter?

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Probably like you're spooking it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:53):
Yeah, and probably sounds with cubs more than anything else.
You know, I see a big adult mail track, I'm
not nervous. I see a little tiny cub track, and
I'm like really looking around.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Yeah, so it's that you like jump it at close range.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Yeah, that's the majority of them. You know, there's a
lot of cases every year where guys get elk down
and and there's bears coming into those dead elk or
they're going back to retrieve a bear or excuse me
an elk carcass and and they jump a bear. That's
pretty common too. I mean it's it's food, cubs and

(01:06:33):
personal space, And a lot of times you're getting cubs
and personal space at the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Got it, that's trouble. Yeah, do you believe you know,
there's like a thing I don't know if it's a
if it's a what's the opposite of an urban legend,
rural legend?

Speaker 4 (01:06:51):
Rural myth?

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
Okay, like my brother redneck talk my brother Danny, he
now and then goes in, uh hunts kodyac but after
you know, he hunts in the winter for black tail deer. Right,
and he'll swear when the bears are down, he'll swear
to red fox. No, a gunshot. There's a lot of

(01:07:14):
red fox there. He's like, you shoot a deer and
they're just there. Yeah, and he's like, you know, they're
smelling it whatever. But it's so fast you can't help.
But wonder like, are they're like, oh, they're like and they're.

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
Like, ooh yeah, go that way.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
You hear people say this about grizzlies.

Speaker 4 (01:07:30):
Yeah, all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Do you think that's true?

Speaker 4 (01:07:32):
No, not at all.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
You don't think they can't do a gunshot.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
No. I'll tell you why, because I have friends that
are really poor shots, have guided hunters. They're really poor shots.
And you sit there for fifteen twenty minutes and no
bears show shows up. We have a shooting range outside
of Cody.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
It's not full bears.

Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
It's not full of bears, even though I've caught bears
adjacent to it, but they're not running to that thing,
you know, got it. So it's really when you get
an animal down that blood, that room and smell that guts.
As soon as that hits the air, you gotta clock
on you. And what I like to do as a

(01:08:10):
guide is start a fire, you know, as long as
there's not a fireband if I'm in a good location,
you know, and started upwind because that kind of masks
that scent and fire. The real reason is it calms
your hunter down because as soon as they kill something,
they're like super bear scared.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
Yeah, we do that fire thing caughtting up moose in
alask especially when it's real thick, I'll get a fire gone.
I don't know if it's like my owne I just have.
I don't know. I like to have the idea that
it somehow broadcasts the human presence more might be total horseshit.

Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
Yeah, I think so. I don't think bears want to
come into a fire. So that's just something I've learned
since after the game and fish.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
You know, have you handled bears that had killed people?

Speaker 4 (01:08:58):
Hmmm, No, I've handled there's that have mall people. Yeah,
after the mall and yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:09:05):
Didn't you tell me that story about how.

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
Yeah, so the first yeah, one of my yeah, one
of my first conflicts that I came on. I wasn't
even hired on full time yet. I came in the office.
I was just volunteering on my days off. And my
boss was on the phone and he said, I remember
him saying, three maybe four people mauled. I'm on the

(01:09:28):
way to the hospital. And he got off the phone
and he said, hey, can you help us for a
couple of days, And I said yeah. And there was
a mauling at by cook City, a campground called Soda Butte.
There was a human fatality there. And ran up there
with the trap and you know that was obviously in Montana,

(01:09:50):
but we assisted Montana and trying to catch those bears
and they set the traps. They caught those bears, I
you know, set but we didn't catch anything. And then
I was shuttling samples to our vet lab and layer
me what kind of samples, well, tissue samples from the

(01:10:12):
bear to make sure that it was a match. Okay,
but she had mauled three people and the first tint
was a young kid and his girlfriend and a dog,
and she tried to Sorry, she didn't maul, but she
she tried to attack three different people. She tried to
come into that tent and the dog started barking, and

(01:10:32):
she left it, and that kid got so afraid. I
call him a kid. He's probably like eighteen nineteen. He
packed up all his stuff and left, and that Soo
went further down the campground and there was a couple
who slept in separate tents because the husband snored and

(01:10:54):
maybe maybe they're in a fight, and that Soo ripped
into a tent and tried to grab that and she
fought it off, and it actually broke a tooth out
of the bear's head in her arm.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Wow. Yeah, it's weird, like all the shit he bit
in his life that that would break his tooth off.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
It was It was a sow, but she was so
malnourished that she was desperate, and that was Those are
predatory attacks, obviously, which is different than your defensive aggressive attacks.
So then she, yeah, she went further down the campground
and she got in another tent and she killed and
ate a guy, and there was three other yearling bears

(01:11:35):
with her through those attacks. So I didn't work up
that bear personally, but yeah, I've worked up other bears
of mald people.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
Does that give you a creepy feeling?

Speaker 5 (01:11:48):
Mmm?

Speaker 4 (01:11:49):
Yeah, I mean I will never forget the look in
that bear's eyes. It's so to bete. I mean, she
was so demoralized, and yeah, I'll just never forget the
way she had her head on her paws and just
look completely demoralized.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
Like what do you mean demoralized? M just.

Speaker 4 (01:12:10):
There was like a sadness in her eyes. I don't
know how else is that?

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:12:14):
And you catch a lot of bears and see a
lot of bears and traps and they avoid eye contact.
That's really normal, but there was just like a feeling
about it. I don't know how else to describe it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
Hum, when they're avoiding eye contact, what do you think.

Speaker 4 (01:12:29):
That is in the bear world? You know, that's aggressive posturing.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
When I was teaching, eye contact is aggressive.

Speaker 4 (01:12:36):
Yeah, when I was teaching kids, i'd say, you know,
especially middle school girls, you know, when you see somebody
in the hallways and you kind of stare them down,
that's aggressive posturing. You know you're being mean, right, And
they all understand that and that's the same with bears,
is they pretty much avoid eye contact until they're raid
to rumble the rate to fight.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
M so they'll look away from one another.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
Yeah, yep, those big adult males, when you see them fight,
they'll circle each other and they'll be avoiding eye contact,
and when they finally get the nerve to lock eyes,
that's when they're you know, trying to fight each other.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Do you think there's a tell if a bear is
gonna falls charge or charge charge? Do you think there's
a physical tell? Ye?

Speaker 4 (01:13:20):
Head posture, Okay, if they're really intent on hurting you,
their head is as low to the ground as possible.
They're trying to get there. And you see that with
self defense shootings. A lot of times guys aim center mass.
Center mass is the hump, you know, and it doesn't
kill them. When they're shooting bears. If it's a bluff charge,

(01:13:42):
a lot of times their head is high. You know,
they're kind of high on their front legs and they're
not coming as fast as they could head down, head down, Yep,
aim low.

Speaker 8 (01:13:56):
With your spray, yeah, shot, yeah, with your yeah at
what let's say, once coming you got prayer spray at
what distance?

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
For you personally, Like, at what distance are you touching
that spray off?

Speaker 4 (01:14:10):
Oh, thirty yards?

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
Yeah, and you're just letting it rip. Let it rip,
don't be like trying to don't try to conserve.

Speaker 4 (01:14:17):
I would, I'd hold it down for a second and spray,
and you know, if it kept coming, I'm going to
keep spraying. But yeah, about a second's all it takes.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
What do you think about the wolverine situation, the wolverine
delisting m or sorry, the wolverine listing? Do you think
the wolverine listing is warranted?

Speaker 4 (01:14:41):
I think we're living in a time and age where
a lot wildlife habitats just getting chopped up, and wolverines
need a really big home range. And there were links
in Wyoming and they just kind of blinked out and
nobody ever noticed. So I don't know a ton about wolverines,

(01:15:02):
but I think you probably gotta do everything you can
to protect their habitat at this point, you think, so, yeah,
and I you know, they just have such a huge
home range and this was probably for the south extent
of their habitat anyways, Yeah, right well down into Colorado. Yeah,

(01:15:25):
historically they're probably so far down.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
Yeah, I think that they're using two they use two
hundred and fifty.

Speaker 4 (01:15:30):
Square miles five hundred five hundred square that's wild, it's more.
But same thing with links, you know. They they went
really far south. And I had a friend that was
a trapper and he'd always say, it's not like the
Canadians are excited every time a bobcat crosses into Canada.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
You know, a good point.

Speaker 4 (01:15:52):
It's just we have a different mentality because they're coming south.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 4 (01:15:57):
What do you think about wolverines?

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
Man? Uh, I think that they I think that we
lack any kind of historic reference. So when someone goes
and looks and they think that there's a low number
of wolverines that no one's ever looked at it in

(01:16:21):
a sophisticated sense before. One way you could look at
the research they did is you'd say, man, there's wolvernes
all over the place, right because they go out and
do the they hang the carcasses and do the trail
camp stuff and catch hairs.

Speaker 4 (01:16:34):
Yeah I actually did that one, did you?

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
And so you'd look and be like wow. Like one interpretation,
you'd be like, huh, that's cool. There's a lot of
wolverines out there because no one knew. But instead you
take that you you realize there aren't many, but you
don't know how many there ever were, right, and then
you point to an area, you know, you point to

(01:16:59):
an area and cannon they had seen a decline, but
it's not the same kind of area. You're on the
southern edge, and you just go like, there aren't many,
therefore they must be endangered. I feel like, without being
able to have it, demons like a demonstrated decline over time.
I'm a little suspect, and I also I'm a little

(01:17:20):
suspect because I think that they are a I think
that it's a little bit of a red herring. I
think that they're being used, that they're being used as
a tool to get at something that, to get at
something different.

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
Sure that's probably saving habitat.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
Yeah, yeah. And it's like it's like, we want to
save habitat, which I totally understand. We want to save habitat,
we want to slow certain development. The way to do
that is to do the wolverine and get the wolverine listed.
But then the wolverine will get listed and it'll wind
up being that you'll see that you can't go and

(01:17:58):
snow and beyond certain areas, and you can't trap in
certain areas. And you'd be like, but but running a
snowmobil and trapping aren't have it. Don't do habitat destruction.
If this is all about habitat destruction, why do we
do it this way? Well, this is very personal.

Speaker 3 (01:18:15):
Yeah, Steve still collecting his thoughts on this subject.

Speaker 4 (01:18:19):
You know, back to the point I made earlier about
links linking out in Wyoming, there's a chance that part
of that was because of snowmobiles and and what that
does is creates a path for coyotes to go kill
snowshoe hairs, which obviously links are dependent on. Got it,
And so you know, it doesn't seem like snowmobiling has

(01:18:41):
an impact, but it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
May, you know, one of the weirdest ones of those God.

Speaker 4 (01:18:47):
I don't want to be like a making make me
sound very green here. That's great.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
Listen that that's that's that's great for me. I mean, uh,
you know, I like it's a it's good things to
beerious about. Yeah, uh, think about this. One time we
spent a lot of time years ago on when there
was still some caribou that were living in the Idaho Panhandle. Yeah,
and the efforts to try to save those caribou in
the in the Selkirk Range, and they would come into

(01:19:15):
Idaho Panhandle. Sure, right now there's no caribou in the
lower forty.

Speaker 4 (01:19:19):
Eight Yeah, super sad.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
When they looked at that. An interesting thing was that
they were seeing so much wolf predation on caribou, and
it was like, why wasn't there, Like, that's nothing new.
You've had wolves on the landscape right in BC. The
caribou there, why wasn't it. It was like white tailed
deer numbers, like like certain certain timber harvest practices created

(01:19:49):
a lot of white tailed deer and elk and moose habitat.
As you brought up that number of ungulates this is
theory obviously, as you brought up that number of ungulates
at the edge of caribou habitat, it created an incentive
for wolves to hunt in the area. And once wolves

(01:20:14):
had taken the habit of hunting in that area, because
they're killing deerd or killing moose, they're getting some caribou. Historically,
there hadn't been enough like bio mass on the landscape
to warrant them hunting the area and they would just
be elsewhere. It's a theory, but it's interesting and you
think of like like you do this and kylet's now

(01:20:35):
push up on snowbill trails and hunt and they got
a way to get from spot to spot and it
right right, it's a human cause. It's a human cause,
very like step by step, kind of hard to track.

Speaker 4 (01:20:49):
Yeah, I think the corequence of events, the correlations probably
when snowmobiles got souped up. I'd be curious if that
was like the years when when those animal's behavior started
to change.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Got it when high marking became a thing.

Speaker 4 (01:21:05):
Yeah, because when I was growing up, you know, you
were about a foot off the ground and that thing
didn't go very fast. Yeah, but now you can, you
can go anywhere with a snowmobile.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
Yeah. I picked up a wolverine on a trail camera
last year.

Speaker 4 (01:21:21):
Yeah, and that's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
I felt like I was I felt like I was
real excited. I sent it to everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:21:28):
It was like trapping, Yeah, yeah, it was like trapping
to get one.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
Yeah on a camera.

Speaker 4 (01:21:36):
No, We've had some game fish guys get some on cameras,
but it's really rare. And when they were doing that
population estimate, you know, it was I want to say,
not more than five in the whole state, And they
put a lot of effort into trying to identify wolverines.
Something that was really cool, though, is they had a

(01:21:57):
wolverine that had a white arm with a black spot,
so really unique. And she'd actually been caught in the
northern part of Yellowstone and had a had a number
and I think for a while had a transmitter in
her I'm not sure if that's true, but she was
fourteen years old. I want to say, wow, r really yep,
because they're so identifiable.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
They knew about how many and Wyoming.

Speaker 4 (01:22:20):
Well through all the you know, I think the population
estenate is probably twenty Is it that low?

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
Is that low? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:22:29):
She's really God I might be miss speaking twenty to
fifty one hundred, No more than.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
We got a lot better to tabitat though. Here. Yeah,
in the northwest part of the states.

Speaker 3 (01:22:44):
So how far away was she she said she was
She had been caught in the northern part of Elstone.
Do you know where she was then reidentified?

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
How far away?

Speaker 4 (01:22:53):
Fish hawks? Probably eighty miles away? Wow, twenty one and
twenty two.

Speaker 6 (01:23:01):
Wyoming game and fish set approximately twenty four wolverinesh.

Speaker 1 (01:23:05):
Look at this guy.

Speaker 4 (01:23:06):
It's been a while since I thought about that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Man. It makes my cameras things seem even cooler.

Speaker 4 (01:23:11):
You know who you know who? Osborne Russell is sure man.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
He calls them common.

Speaker 4 (01:23:17):
Yeah, and he talks about him in by Salt Lake,
So yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
There's a lot of he calls them common.

Speaker 3 (01:23:23):
There's a lot of carkajew references in the Mountain Man journals.

Speaker 1 (01:23:28):
Ye know that oral history stuff does because I would
not call them common.

Speaker 4 (01:23:32):
Right, So there's gotta be more than there is now.

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
Yeah, Osborne Russell, we covered this very We're working on
a thing called the Mountain Men. Yeah, sure, part of
our American History series. And the other thing that you
just wouldn't believe is, uh, the number of big horns.
Oh yeah in the early eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 4 (01:23:53):
Yeah, like not elk, right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
Big horns. Hundreds, like hundreds of big horns.

Speaker 4 (01:24:01):
I've talked horns, yeah, big horns and deer. I've talked
to Larry Todd about this, and there's only two Indian
camps in Wyoming that have elk parts in them. So
what I don't understand is there's a really big elk
migration that comes from Yellowstone and it goes to south

(01:24:22):
of Kody, and you know, I imagine it's been going on
for thousands of years. But you think maybe there weren't
that many elk back then, or you know, it's more
buffalo than elk.

Speaker 1 (01:24:33):
And yeah, Osborne Russell would run into people who were
like sheep specialists.

Speaker 4 (01:24:40):
Sheep eaters, sheep. Yeah, we have a bunch of artifacts
around us that were sheep eater artifacts. They're they're part
of the Shoshown tribe. But we just learned.

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):
That's why I scratched it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
I asked, I actually asked as a person.

Speaker 4 (01:24:57):
Yea, well I've never known, only preferred. Yeah, that's the
river that flows through Cody.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
That's yeah, that's that's what got Yeah, you're sitting in Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:25:10):
Well he would know the rivers and the places go
by Shoshone, but the people go by Shoshone is sort.

Speaker 1 (01:25:17):
Of what he was. He was a rapp a hole. Yeah,
but he lives with Yeah, lives. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):
The conclusion we collectively arrived at.

Speaker 4 (01:25:28):
Have you ever seen the bows that those sheep eaters make?

Speaker 1 (01:25:30):
No? But I read Osborne Russell's description of the bows.

Speaker 4 (01:25:34):
Yeah, they're pretty cool. There's a guy named Bob Lucas
that there's a video of him making one. But they
take a big horn, sheep horn, and they reverse the
curl and then they glue it and tie it together
and it's basically a recurved bow.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
They steam it, reverse it right yep.

Speaker 7 (01:25:52):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
Osborne Russell figures very heavily into our into the thing
we're working on because he did such.

Speaker 4 (01:26:00):
A good job of documenting stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:26:02):
Yeah, such a phenomenal job of making a journal. Uh.
Tell me about your guide in business? Who do you
guide for?

Speaker 4 (01:26:12):
I've guided for a bunch of different outfitters, to be honest,
and I took this season pretty much off because I
just had a kid. But I've worked for Yellowstone Country Outfitters,
three oh seven Outfitters, ran Crick Outfitters, Livingstone Outfitters. So
I've got to see a lot of country.

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
And your specialty these horseback trips.

Speaker 4 (01:26:35):
Yeah, everything's horseback, horseback and mule sawbucks or deckers sawbuck guy. Yeah,
I've never understood that though. Montana guys. Yeah, I can't
take a toothbrush if they don't man yet.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:26:50):
Yeah, I've always thought the same thing.

Speaker 4 (01:26:53):
Yeah, we always laugh at Sawbucks. Yeah, you'll have to
teach me, so all right, Yeah, trade seems pretty easy.
So there's two style of pack saddles. One is what
you call sawbook, which is seems self explanatory. You hang
paniards and then you have a lash rope where you
tie a hitch so keep everything pinned down. And Montana

(01:27:17):
guys run what's called decker pack saddles, and they have
ropes hanging off the bars on their packs and then
they tie a hitch, usually with something that's man eat up,
so they pack all their camping stuff in a in

(01:27:38):
a canvas manny and fold it up real nice, like yeah, manny,
petty sort, you're tracking, you're tracking? Help me out here.

Speaker 6 (01:27:50):
Yeah, no, that's accurate.

Speaker 4 (01:27:52):
I don't know what you don't know.

Speaker 6 (01:27:53):
My theory is decker like when you lash down at
decker saddle, say with a YETI cool, And then you
can crow's foot it to really lash it down. You
can bump into a lot more trees and have it
stays stay set. Compared to Sawbucks, addles might move around
a little bit more or get loose.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:28:13):
I've never some pretty steep country.

Speaker 6 (01:28:15):
Well steep maybe how thick is it?

Speaker 4 (01:28:18):
It's pretty thick. Well, it sounds like.

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
I guess whatever style floats your boat.

Speaker 4 (01:28:26):
I know that you can pack real awkward loads with deckers.
They're a lot more versatile.

Speaker 6 (01:28:31):
Yeah, we would pack raft frames sixteen foot raft rames
them on the uphill side.

Speaker 4 (01:28:37):
Okay, yeah, we just don't take that stuff. So yeah,
very awkward?

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
Are you mostly deer? Mostly elk?

Speaker 4 (01:28:44):
I've done it all sheep, mountain goat deer elk, not
grizzly bear, but everything else. Uh no, never have a
guated black bears. Actually kind of got burned out on
the bear thing, so.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Oh, messing with bears like a person gets a job
to ice cream shop, then.

Speaker 4 (01:29:01):
I don't like ice cream no more, exactly exactly the
same reason I don't eat Mexican FID.

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
And you're and you're looking for your ear between careers.

Speaker 4 (01:29:10):
Now you know I'm doing construction, but I'm definitely open
to doing something that benefits wildlife. I don't want the
best thing that I've done for wildlife to be catching
and killing bears.

Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
So what drove you to do? You mind saying why
did you leave the state agency in Wyoming fishing game.

Speaker 4 (01:29:30):
I was just really personally conflicted with some of the
management decisions that were being made. You know, So there
were a lot of reasons I was. I was super burnout.
If I had to give one more bear safety talk,
I was gonna suck start a forty four? God what
or bear spray?

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
What would be at what would be an area of management? Like,
what would be like an area of management that you
would find conflict. You don't need to tell me the
exact conflict, but when you say that, what do you mean?
What do you mean?

Speaker 4 (01:29:59):
What do you mean? Like?

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
Do you mean the way they sat harvest objectives?

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
The way they where I had conflict? Or was it
like administrative issues? You know?

Speaker 4 (01:30:11):
Yeah, it was leadership and it I just didn't feel
like relocation and removal decisions were really consistent.

Speaker 3 (01:30:20):
So god, oh on the bear question, yeah, it's like
how you're handling individual bears.

Speaker 4 (01:30:24):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I'd had a certain standard with
my old boss, and I just felt like it wasn't
the same.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
Do you is my last question for you? Do you
give me your personal take? I like, like came in
so hot and heavy on delisting. What's your personal take?
On delisting.

Speaker 4 (01:30:45):
Hmmm. I think it's the best thing to keep states
into managing bears, which is probably the best thing for
the people on the landscape. And I also think hunting
is a positive because it creates its advocates for wildlife,
creates advocates for bears. People right now say there's too

(01:31:06):
many bears on the landscape, but as soon as you
start hunting them, they'll be like, I don't know where
all the big bears have gone. These guys are hunting
too many. It's a non residence.

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):
Yeah, it'll just be some other boogeyman.

Speaker 1 (01:31:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 4 (01:31:23):
Man. So, but they continue to expand. And a big
issue that the court see is that genetic connectivity between
the GYE and the NCDE, and right now they're only
thirty six miles apart. And I think that whether you
delist or not, I think they eventually make that connectivity.

(01:31:48):
But there was a bear that showed up in the
Big Horns two years ago actually, and you know that
bear was removed ethanized right away. And I think they're
going to continue to expand whether you try to contain
them or not.

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):
Oh, was that a containment decision?

Speaker 4 (01:32:08):
Social acceptance, you know, but we've caught and killed a
lot of bears over the years, and you're just trying
to contain them into the absorcos. This year, they'll hit
seventy bears have died in the Elstone ecosystem, and probably
forty of those will be management removals. And you got

(01:32:30):
everything from bears getting killed in irrigation canals, there were
bears electrocuted. There's bears that get hit by vehicles, like
three ninety nine obviously, so.

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
Seventy to one calendar year.

Speaker 4 (01:32:47):
Yeah, I think it'll be a record year this year.

Speaker 6 (01:32:49):
Montana's at twenty eight right now.

Speaker 4 (01:32:54):
I don't think it's over yet. There's still bears out.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
One of the uh one of the arguments I heard
from when I talked about I was joking and I
half joking about Montana chickening out on the bear hunt.
But one of the things they brought up is they
had no They felt that their quota would get hit
by non hunting purposes and if they did a hunt.

Speaker 4 (01:33:24):
This is kind of like the logic, right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:27):
If they did a hunt and killed a couple bears,
they would burn up their quota and then they wouldn't
be able to do bear management on problem bears because
they would have already hit their human Cause quota.

Speaker 3 (01:33:41):
Doesn't sound unreasonable.

Speaker 1 (01:33:43):
Fee feels more across that bridge when you come to it.

Speaker 4 (01:33:46):
Yeah, I think again, it's what you what the number
you believe is in the ecosystem. And the reason Wyoming
was going to be so high is because twelve of
those bears were going to be outside the demographic monitoring area,
so they weren't even counted towards the population.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
Got it, got.

Speaker 4 (01:34:05):
It, you know. And the DMA is about twenty thousand
square miles and bear distribution right now is about fifty
thousand square miles.

Speaker 1 (01:34:15):
Oh, it's a grizzly coming to a neighborhood near you.

Speaker 4 (01:34:22):
Yeah. So everywhere I would go, people go, there's kids
in the neighborhood. You got to get this bear out
of here, you know. And then one lady called me
and she goes, there's old people in this neighborhood. You
got to get this bear out of here. I'm like, Oh,
there's no appropriate age to live with a bear.

Speaker 1 (01:34:38):
There's two things that are going to happen. I like
to joke about golfers and Montana is uniquely created a
golfer Gophers. No, I believe that someday Montana will have
a golfer get mall about golfing, oh in Whitefish.

Speaker 6 (01:34:55):
Yeah, probably at Meadow Lake Resort, Columbia Fall the big
scot they.

Speaker 3 (01:34:58):
Called one on a golf course down the bitter.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
Yeah, we will have. It'll be like it'll be I
hope he doesn't get it bad. If he gets a
bad I'll feel bad. But I I uh, it'll be
an interesting day when we have a golfer get malb
digging through the rough looking.

Speaker 3 (01:35:16):
It's probably not gonna be a good golfer because he's
gonna be sticking to the fairways.

Speaker 1 (01:35:20):
And yeah, he's gonna be down to the dick. He's
gonna be down to the creek bottom looking for his
golf ball.

Speaker 4 (01:35:24):
Another good reason to work on your backswing.

Speaker 1 (01:35:26):
We're gonna have a golfer, get Mall, and that's going
to change public opinion. And then for whatever reason, like
we have a little.

Speaker 4 (01:35:32):
Mountain range right here in town Bridgers, Uh, you know,
not right here.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
I mean it's way bigger than that. But it toes
off like this, you know, toes off into town and man,
there's grizzlies right.

Speaker 4 (01:35:44):
Across the highway, I know, thirty six miles.

Speaker 1 (01:35:47):
And it's like, at some point in time, this is
we have this real popular hiking trail called the m Yeah,
it's not out of the it's not out of it's
like a reasonable thing that someone's gonna get scratch on
the m Hill. I feel like that'll impact public opinion
when a golf forgets it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:06):
I mean there is in Missoula the Rattlesnake Wilderness right there.
You know, you can take a city bus to it,
and they had a sow and cubs that set up
in one of the first gulches there. That's like a
really popular mountain biking area. But I remember going to
an event and there's a bear biologist there talking about
grizzlies coming into the Missoula area, and he's like, you know,

(01:36:27):
they're in Gold Creek, they're down on the golf courses
in the bitter Root, they're in the Rattlesnake. And he said,
I would be surprised if in five years there aren't
sort of resident known bear families, you know, population groups
here and there in the city around the city.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
I should say, I don't want people to think I'm
bringing that up like a golfer getting scratched. I'm not
bringing this up as a thing that I'm worried about,
and I don't think it's a negative. I mean, I'm
not the golfer get scratched. I'm not saying I want,
I don't want. I think I'd love it if we
had bears. I'd like if there's grizzlies all over town,

(01:37:08):
like go to Anchorage. Yeah for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I like them. Yeah, I'm not an anti bear guy whatsoever. Right,
I love the bears. I like seeing them. I get
excited I see him anyway. You never I never meet
anybody who's bummed out that they saw a grizzly. Yeah,
I love them.

Speaker 4 (01:37:25):
As soon as you get mauled, people's attitude sure changes.

Speaker 1 (01:37:28):
I love them. I just want it to go. I
want to be that there's a bunch of bears, and
I want it to be that there's there's a state
managed and there's a tag draw. That's what I want.

Speaker 4 (01:37:37):
Yeah, everybody thinks about their self interest, right, especially me. Yeah,
I think it's the story that you that you portray
into the future. Here how people paint bears. So three
ninety nine is a great example, Like you could paint
her as a bear that mould people, or you could
paint her as the biggest advocate for bears in the

(01:38:00):
mm hmm in the world. So yeah, future bears is
up to the public.

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):
Really. Yeah, and my you know, you mentioned like everybody
wants what their own self interest is. I should clarify that. Uh,
I'm not gonna draw a Grizzly bear tag. I live
in a state that one had they done, I don't
know that. I orn't even put in for the tag. Yeah,
uh we didn't do it. If we did one, you're

(01:38:26):
not gonna draw it. I mean, what are the odds
you're gonna draw it? You know. It's like I've been
applying for big horn sheep tag for decades, haven't drawn
one yet.

Speaker 7 (01:38:33):
I a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:38:36):
No, not not like, yeah, you get you're not gonna draw,
Like the draws are gonna be slim. So it's not
like it's not like I feel that this is my pathway. Yeah,
I mean I hunt the last every year. This isn't
my like, I'm not pursuing this as because it's my
personal pathway to getting a Grizzly. It's like it's not
gonna happen. I'm not going to get a grizzly in Montana.
I'm not gonna get a grizzy in Idahol. I'm not

(01:38:56):
gonna get a grizzy in Wyoming. This isn't all me,
you know, with some like Machiavellian plan by which I'll
be able to hunt grizzlies in my neighborhood. It's like,
just as an advocate four hunters, and as an advocate
for state management, and as an advocate for responsible use
of renewable resources, here's an animal that that people, that

(01:39:19):
has was historically a game animal that has people that
there's people that hunt them in other places, there's a
desire to hunt them. Hunting them is not incompatible with
having a stable population, as we've demonstrated with mountain lions,
black bears, white tailed deer, mule deer, elk moose, big
orange sheep, mountain goats. I could go on and on.

(01:39:41):
It's not incompatible. I don't know why there should be
any different.

Speaker 4 (01:39:45):
This guy's put in.

Speaker 1 (01:39:50):
You know what I'll do right now? You know what
I'm gonna do right now now, I'm gonna tell you something.
Right now, I'm gonna tell you something right now, just
because you said that, I promise I won't put in. Okay,
for how long ever, I won't.

Speaker 2 (01:40:04):
Put it in.

Speaker 1 (01:40:05):
I won't put in.

Speaker 4 (01:40:06):
It's a true advocate.

Speaker 1 (01:40:07):
And you go scroll the records and see if you
ever see me put in, I won't put in.

Speaker 4 (01:40:11):
I got friends I'll call.

Speaker 1 (01:40:13):
I'm not going to put it. I said one time before,
like to talk about in drilling an ant war. Yeah,
And people are like, oh yeah, just because you hunt
up there all the time. I'm like, okay, if I
could sign a contract that said they won't drill an
war but I can't ever go there, I would sign.

Speaker 4 (01:40:28):
The contract right me too, I'm not going there.

Speaker 1 (01:40:32):
Yeah, it's like okay, fine, I need to go there,
just whatever. That's fine. And if I had to sign
a contract, we'll dlist and turn over to State management
and create a hunting season tomorrow, but you have to
agree that you'll never apply for a tag. I'd be like, okay, cool,
that's not what it is for me.

Speaker 4 (01:40:49):
I think the real question here is can you get
bears off the list? Can you have state management without
people continuing to sue and and tear down the ESA,
or do you have to change the ESA in order
to get animals delisted, and I think that would be
horrible if if you don't get bears off the list.

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
You know, That's why my advice to people who support
the ESA is to stop effing around with the essay,
what weaponizing it, because you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna
do You're gonna do to the essay what they did
to the spot at owl. Like the spot at Owl
used to be an owl, yeah, and then it became

(01:41:34):
a symbol of overreach. Right, you're gonna now create You're
gonna be like you have here. You sit like let's
say you were like Joey ESA, Right, you're like the
diehard defender of the ESA. My advice to you stop
weaponizing the ESA. Then delist that bear which is a

(01:41:54):
hit recovery, which which hit recovery objectives twenty five years ago. Yeah,
but and move on to what's next.

Speaker 4 (01:42:03):
The reason I brought up that bear in the Big
Horns is that's in the DPS and that's unoccupied habitat.
So you know, in theory, the ESA calls for bears
moving into that suitable habitat.

Speaker 1 (01:42:16):
But they mapped out when they listed them. They mapped
out recovery objectives and they hit recovery objectives twenty some
years ago.

Speaker 4 (01:42:22):
Yeah that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
Yeah, Okay, So why bother, why bother having an Endangered
Species Act? Why bother making recovery objectives if it's just bullshit? Yeah,
if you don't mean it.

Speaker 4 (01:42:37):
Yeah, it erodes public trust, no doubt about it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:42):
Two percent of the things that go on the ESA
come off because of recovery. Okay, things will come off
because they realize it wasn't warranted. Things will come off
because they'll go extinct. Two percent of the things that
go on the ESA come off because recovery. Here, you
have a recovered thing. Why is it not celebrated?

Speaker 4 (01:43:00):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
They didn't bitch Like eagles came off, no problem, peregrine fault.
But this one they just got to hold it tight
to their chest, yep. Because it's not about the ESSA.

Speaker 4 (01:43:11):
It's a money maker, that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:43:13):
Yeah. So forget me saying I'm coming at it from
a perspective of one hundred. I'm coming at it from
a perspective of someone that wants to get on with
UH to like salvage the ESA and not make it
that it just is a thing of derision.

Speaker 4 (01:43:27):
Glad I bolstered your argument.

Speaker 1 (01:43:28):
No, thank you cut all that out, feel so I
can just start saying that like I thought of it.
Well man, thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 4 (01:43:38):
Thanks for having me appreciate it. It's good to meet
you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:43:40):
Is there anything that I that you wish you got
to talk about that I asked about.

Speaker 4 (01:43:43):
I meant to talk about snaring bears.

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):
That's something I didn't talk tell me about that.

Speaker 4 (01:43:48):
So another way we catch them is with foot snares,
and you use what's called an aldrewe spring, and you
put the spring and a snare loop and you dig
a hole and then you recreate the surfaces though it's
just ground, and you try to get a bear to
step in that. And that's a fun part of trapping.

Speaker 1 (01:44:10):
So how do you get him step in there? Hanging
a bait?

Speaker 4 (01:44:14):
A lot of times you have a cubby set and
you're trying to direct them into your set, but you're
putting sticks, and bears don't like to step on sticks
and hurt their feet, so you can kind of control
their foot movement with those.

Speaker 1 (01:44:32):
When you're doing that, so he actually thinks he's putting
his foot on the ground and his foot breaks through
the ground.

Speaker 4 (01:44:37):
Yeah, and it hits this Yeah, it's a pit trap,
but it hits this trigger and that trigger flings a
spring and that pulls that snare cable tight. And the
snare cable just has a little bracket that only slides
one way, you know. And you caught a bear.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
And can you is he too messed up? Or can
you release him? Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:44:56):
Yeah, no, you you release those bears.

Speaker 1 (01:44:58):
He's gotta be pissed.

Speaker 3 (01:44:59):
Do you get him on video when you do that?
I got some sounds like a fun visual mm hmm.

Speaker 4 (01:45:04):
Got some pictures somewhere, I think. But he's pissed a
lot of times they're trying to run off and they
hit the end of that snare cable and they roll over.
And sometimes they are pissed and they try to charge you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:15):
Yep, in regular trap.

Speaker 4 (01:45:17):
And you call that blocking, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
Yeah. A bobcat trapper was explaining one time that people
would use blocking for bobcats, but they don't realize this.
Bobcats want to stand on little things, so they'd put
little rocks to block, or put a log to block,
But he wants to be on that. Yeah, so this guy,
you know, you know to sycamore, you know, a sycamore ball.
They don't live around here, but it's like that little

(01:45:40):
poky little it's like a poky little seed pod. There's
this trapper to he doesn't even live in that area,
but he gets big things of those sycamore things because
it's real spiky, and the cat don't want to put
his foot on it. So then you can actually control
his foot placement. But you put a stick there and
that cat's like, oh sweet things. And missus the pants

(01:46:01):
you're standing on, your blocking you know, the stuff that's
supposed to keep them from wanting to do it. Yeah,
so you want stuff that looks like uncomfortable for his foot. Interesting,
keep that in mind. I might just go trap bears
on my own, just for fun. Bear trapping.

Speaker 4 (01:46:17):
Yeah, whose ear tag is this?

Speaker 1 (01:46:21):
Well, dude, thanks thanks for coming out, man, I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:46:24):
Yeah, thanks for having me, and good luck on your
job hunt. Thanks appreciate that name.

Speaker 1 (01:46:28):
Name what line of work you want, because maybe someoneill
call you and give you a job.

Speaker 4 (01:46:31):
Land conservation I think could be up my alley. I
think that would be beneficial to wildlife. So should I
throw out my email. Can I do that?

Speaker 7 (01:46:39):
They you can throw out your email if you want
a bajillion people messaging you, or they can email loss
Yeah yeah that's.

Speaker 4 (01:46:45):
Mine Wor they can also take through.

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
His own job.

Speaker 2 (01:46:48):
Yep, that's true.

Speaker 4 (01:46:50):
My email is just Dusty dot Lassiter L A S
S E T E R ten at Gmail. Looking for work,
looking for work. I got a great job. I have
a great boss, but I still want to do something
that benefits wildlife.

Speaker 1 (01:47:04):
I got a construction project I might lay out in
front of you.

Speaker 4 (01:47:07):
To I can handle it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:09):
It's in grizzly country.

Speaker 4 (01:47:10):
Yeah, I'm a mediocre carpenter.

Speaker 1 (01:47:13):
But that's what that's kind. I'm looking for.

Speaker 4 (01:47:18):
More of a painter.

Speaker 1 (01:47:20):
All right, man, thanks so much than.

Speaker 5 (01:47:23):
The fingers are told so cold that they burn. Were
standing in the creek in our Burney.

Speaker 2 (01:47:34):
Just for me in a warm bomb. And then back to.

Speaker 5 (01:47:40):
The pros chasing cotton tail High. I was just ten,

(01:48:06):
but High got to join his Carol protested Grandpa's firm.

Speaker 2 (01:48:15):
I've had him shooting since he was me. High. He
sees tayd him.

Speaker 5 (01:48:25):
Then an apro close with the ball on the wind
hot home tray and bring it in her round moved
up ahead, just into the lane where case colored Steve
has put two on the ground. Morning turn high and

(01:48:49):
he was singing, came about to spill as a shot
shell off Lou at its ord home, and I couldn't
have off. We're in in fingers on the ema, lips
turning blue.

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
Ever, at the end.

Speaker 5 (01:49:10):
Of Novegeber, the memories all showver me, bitter sleep, goness,
early morn, cotton tail hunting, afternoon targets, esteemed dinner feeds,

(01:49:30):
forty hot people with cousins, and of those who have
half forgotten, and all all harried, rarely so happy.

Speaker 2 (01:49:43):
House spoke first in me in the.

Speaker 5 (01:49:46):
Bond that was away back in my you. I watched
it all changed through the heat. It's time we roll
both bedrock.

Speaker 2 (01:50:06):
And bone and old age wilts. Even the most pierced.

Speaker 5 (01:50:13):
Grandpa we lost in the cold of Dember Carol. Few
turns before, how bout farm when they couldn't remember. Nothing's
the same anymore, Born God.

Speaker 2 (01:50:35):
Leave the old home lost.

Speaker 5 (01:50:37):
It shee You can hear the wind a whistle at too.
She creaks, and she bones and all over chrown. But
we'll get her looking brand new.

Speaker 2 (01:50:54):
Here at the end.

Speaker 5 (01:50:58):
Of November, memories all show over me bitter sweet, go
his early morn cotton sail, hunting after new targets and skins, feeds,

(01:51:18):
forty hot people, dozins, and of those who have half forgotten,
brand all harriet, rarely so happy. Their housefold burst in
and fed in the pond, swear ris up.

Speaker 2 (01:51:37):
A few kids on my own, maybe one day grandson to.

Speaker 5 (01:51:45):
How want the same hells with the hand on each
shoulder open maybe week kick.

Speaker 2 (01:51:53):
Up, few ran over. They feel this place.

Speaker 5 (01:52:01):
Every at the end of November. Memory and all show
over media, bitter sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:52:12):
As early morn, cant and tale afternoons.

Speaker 5 (01:52:18):
Targets speak, two feeds, forty hot people, cousins and of
coles who have half forgotten, and all harried, rarely so happy.
House foolhursted and made in the part

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Steven Rinella

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 635: Working on Grizzly Bears