February 12, 2025 • 28 mins
Bart Schleyer, legendary bow hunter and conservationist, was lost in the Yukon wilderness during a solo grizzly bear hunting trip in 2004. Known for his expertise in tracking grizzly bears and Siberian tigers, Bart Schleyer's disappearance has baffled investigators for years. Bart's disappearance was also mentioned in David Paulides' Missing 411 book series.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
Strange mysteries, unexplained phenomena.
And the shadows in between.
This is The InBetween Official Podcastwith your host,
Carol Ann!
In 1965 during a hunting safariin Mozambique,
(00:36):
a ten year old boy takes aim at an Impalaand pulls the trigger.
And The result of that shotwould ultimately change the lives of
countless grizzly bears, Siberian tigers
and just about every one he meetsand send him down a path
that would eventually lead to his ownstrange and mysterious disappearance.
(01:00):
I'm CarolAnn and Welcome to The InBetween.
Stick with me today,as I connect all of these random dots
to create a picture of the legendary life
and completely inexplicablevanishing of Bart
Schleyer.
(01:20):
On September 14th, 2004,
Bart Schleyer hires a floatplane to drop him and his supplies
at the largest of the ReidLakes right in the middle
of the Yukon Territory of Canada.
After unloading his supplies,including a tent,
a boat, three Action Packer cratescontaining two weeks worth of food,
(01:43):
clothes,a radio and his hunting bow and arrows,
he tells the floatplanepilot to meet him back here in two weeks.
As the plane takes off, Bartpicks his camp spot, sets up his tent,
inflates his boat, grabs something to eat,
relaxes for a bit, and heads to bed.
(02:04):
The next dayhe gathers a few things into a dry bag,
throws the dry bag into the boat,takes the boat a ways down
shore on the lake, picks a nice spotthat seems pretty perfect
for calling in some moose,which is what he's there to hunt.
sets his dry bag on the groundfor a cushion, props his boat
and arrows up on the treenext to him, sits down and waits.
(02:29):
Then...
he vanishes.
The question that no one's been ableto figure out for the last 20 years
is, “What happened?” Now, at this point,some of you might be thinking, “Well,
what do you expect goinghunting alone in the middle of the Yukon?”
That's a dangerous place for anyone,especially some dude
going out therepretending to be some kind of Survivorman.
(02:51):
And I get it.
If it were me out there, I would get eatenby something the first day.
But Bart is a different storybecause Bart is not just a hunter.
He is the hunter, the alpha of hunters.
By the time I get donetelling you the story, I guarantee
(03:12):
that you too, will be asking,“What happened?”
Bart Schleyer is born in 1955 in Cheyenne,Wyoming, to Dr.
Otis Schleyer and his wife, Lula Rose.
And Bart loves animals.
According to his sister, Claudia.
When it comes to animals,he didn't just like them.
(03:32):
He wanted to know everythingabout them, study
where they lived and how they lived.
His dad, Dr.
Otis, loves to hunt and takes Bart outhunting for the first time
when Bart is only four years old.
And it's that experience, that marriageof his obsession with animals
and the thrill of the hunt that formsthe trajectory of the rest of Bart's life.
(03:58):
When he's ten, his dadtakes him on a safari in Mozambique,
where he gets to see and experienceanimals that most people only read about.
Bart actually takes a shot at an Impala
but misses and starts crying.
His dad immediatelysays Stop and tells him
hunting isn't about bagging something.
(04:20):
It's about enjoying the land,the animals and the people.
And in that instant, that thoughtset the standard
by which his lovefor animals, his love for hunting,
and how he would livehis life would forever be judged.
Bart goes on two more African safaris,where he shoots
(04:43):
Impala Gazelles, Sables, IBEX,
wildebeest, warthogs and lions.
Shortly after his return from his lastsafari at age 17,
Bart is introduced to his sister'snew boyfriend, a guy named Jim Downey.
Jim is a hunter, too, and the two boysbecome as thick as thieves.
(05:06):
Jim introduces Bart to the art of though
acting in Bartnever hunts with a gun again.
Lucky for Bart, Claudia marries Jim.
Permanent hunting partner.
And it's not just animals that Bartimmerses himself in.
He's the kind of guy who puts everythinginto anything he does.
(05:29):
Zero or 100. There's nothing in between.
In high school,he's on the wrestling team.
He goes to state twice, winning
once and coming in second the other time.
He graduates high school with academichonors and gets a scholarship to college.
After two years at Sheridan Collegeas an art student,
(05:50):
because he has a talent for art too,he transfers to Montana State University,
where he receives his master'sdegree in wildlife biology in 1979.
One of the undergraduate classeshe takes is called Man
and the Environment,taught for more than 20 years by Dr.
Don Collins,who says out of the 42,000 students
(06:13):
who took that class, Bart was a standout.
He was knowledgeable in everythingwild from animals and birds
to flowers, trees and shrubs.
Bart spent a lot of timealone in the mountains
while working on his master's thesis,
which is on the activity patternsof grizzly bears in Yosemite Park.
(06:35):
And to get the data that he needs, Bartcaptures the bears and then puts telemetry
radio collars on them to monitorwhere they go and what they do.
It's around this timethat Bart meets a guy named Paul Shaffer,
who not only becomes one of his bestfriends and hunting partners,
but also teaches himhow to make his own bows and arrows.
(06:57):
What doesn't this guy do?
After college, Bart stays in Montanaand takes a job with Montana Fish and Game
and the InteragencyGrizzly Bear Study Team.
The team's job is to determinethe reactions of grizzly bears
after encountering a human, as wellas figuring out their habitat requirements
and their birth and death rates, as wellas any other information they can collect.
(07:22):
And even at this relatively young age,
Bart has so much experiencein backpacking and mountaineering
from his years of bowhunting tripsthat the research work is a breeze.
He hikes into the mountainswith heavy packs full of meat for bait
and heavy cables for foot snaresand stays out there for months at a shot.
(07:47):
The harder the job, the more Bart thrives.
And his sense of humor is no exception
to Bart's “bigger than life” life.
Glenn Garton, a longtime friend of Bart's,says that Bart
once spent nearly an entire day
fabricating a miniature telemetry collarand putting it on a bumblebee.
(08:10):
Not to mention his longestrunning gag his cat, Sparky.
He loved Sparky and would bring themeverywhere - in the car, to parties.
You name it.
He would even dress them upand hats and ties and glasses.
So why is a guy loving his cat so funny?
Because Sparky is dead.
(08:30):
Bart had found him mummified and perfectly
preserved behind the furnaceof his apartment building.
And unlike most hunterswho will break their toothbrushes
in half to spare themselvesthe extra weight in their packs,
Bart would add the extraweight of costumes and props to his pack
so that when the time camefor a picture of himself next to his kill,
(08:54):
he could wear a clown wig or
a Jason Voorhees hockey mask.
And those pictures were frequent.
Sitka deer, elk, moose, Stone sheep,
Bighorn sheep, caribou, bison,
brown bears, grizzly bears - you name it!
If it lived in the wilderness, chancesare he hunted it.
(09:17):
The only known exception to Bart's goall in attitude is his humility.
he is humble to a fault.
After working on the Grizzly BearRecovery project
in Yellowstone National Park in the 1980sand becoming known
as one of the country's foremost expertsin live
grizzly tracking and tagging,he moves to Alaska in 1993.
(09:42):
Bart is contacted by Maurice Hornocker,a renowned wildlife researcher
at the University of Idaho and founderof the Hornocker Wildlife Institute,
who wants to build a team to studythe Siberian tiger
in the same waythat Bart had been studying the Grizzlies.
And just like that, Bartfinds himself in Russia
(10:04):
as a capture specialiston the Siberian Tiger Project.
He becomes one of the world'sforemost experts at capturing,
radio collaring and trackingtigers, and spends nine years in Russia
working to help save endangeredSiberian tigers,
in much the same way he had workedwith the Grizzlies.
(10:27):
It turns out the Tigersare not the only thing that Bart captures.
While in Russia,he meets and falls in love with a girl.
Tatiana Perova, the deputy director
of the Wildlife ConservationSociety in Russia.
And a shortwhile later, they have a son, Artyom.
Bart became
(10:48):
so well-known as being the bestin the Tiger business
that he was involved in capturingthe first tiger in Thailand and was called
in to catch a man eating tiger in Nepal,
which he caught in just seven days.
He's even in a National Geographicdocumentary
called Tigers of the Snow, BartSchleyer and Dr.
(11:11):
Hornick, are prepared to sedate the tigerwhich is all about the work
that he and his teamare doing with the tigers in Russia.
But he's so humbleand he never told anybody about it.
And after almost a decade stalkingtigers in Russia,
Bart decideshe needs another change of scenery
and moves to Whitehorse in the CanadianYukon in 2002.
(11:34):
He then gets his licenseto guide other hunters in 2003.
And he's so good at that jobthat on his very first guiding trip,
he leads his client to a large bear
that his client is able to take down.
It is noted that the hide of the bear“squared ten feet,
(11:55):
six inches.” I'm not even going to pretendto know what that means.
But I can tell you that in 2016,a bowhunter named Chris Stewart
took down a bear so big thatit was in contention as the world record
holder for the largest bearbrought down by an arrow.
And the hideonthat bear also “squared over ten feet six
(12:19):
inches.” Bart'sclient is so happy that he offers BART
a $1,000 tip, which Bart
being Bart, he tries to refuse.
So this is the 20th century Grizzly Adams,
that on September 14th, 2004,goes to an area called the Reid Lakes,
(12:42):
less than 200 miles northwestfrom where he lives in Whitehorse.
And even though the lakes are only sixmiles off, the Klondike Highway,
you can't get in that waybecause the Stewart River is in the way.
Or you can hike in from Stewart Crossing,
but that is a rugged 15 mile hike.
So Bart charters a float plane out ofPelly Crossing to take him there instead.
(13:07):
The plane drops him offon the 14th of September with instructions
to pick him up in the same spot two weeks
later on Monday, September 27th.
But when the plane returnstwo weeks later,
Bart is not there to greet him.
The pilot's spidey sensesgo off right away because he could tell
when he dropped him offthat Bart wasn't some suburban schmo
(13:30):
coming up to the Canadian backwoodsto stave off some kind of midlife crisis.
So he immediately calls the Royal CanadianMounted Police,
the RCMP, or also known as the Mounties.
The RCMP sent up six officers
and trackers on Wednesday the 29th.
They find his camplook around and can see that
(13:54):
he had a meal there without a fire,but they don't see him anywhere.
So they think, “Well,maybe he hiked out to the highway.”
And with deteriorating weather,light snow, they call it a day.
In all fairness to the RCMP,
they do send out a plane to do a flyover.
(14:15):
But the area is known as being
one of the most denselywooded places around.
So the plane never had a chanceof finding him anyway.
Dib Williams,a friend of Bart's from Whitehorse, is,
let's just say, a little disappointed
with the efforts of the RCMPand calls his friend Wayne Curry
(14:37):
to fly them both up to Bart's campso they can take a look for themselves.
his tent is knocked down,but all of his equipment is there.
They searched the area around the tentand find his backpack,
bear spray, a knife and his VHF radio.
Well, now they know there is a problembecause Bart wouldn't
(14:58):
hike out and leavethat kind of gear behind.
They go home for the night,
come back again the next day and decideto search the area by Bart's boat,
which they find on the lake about a halfa mile down the shore.
About 60 yardsback in the woods from the boat,
they find Bart's bow and find his arrowsin a handmade buckskin quiver,
(15:20):
leaning up against a treenext to a dry bag.
A dry bag is just a waterproof bagthat you can put your gear in
if you're around waterto make sure it doesn't get wet.
The dry bag is full of gearand some food and still has a butt indent.
So it's pretty obvious that at some pointhe had been sitting right here.
(15:42):
Wayne Currie is also a moose hunterand says it looks like the perfect place
for a boat hunter to set up to trycalling a moose into range.
They search a little furtherand find a camouflage
face mask with blood and hair on it.
They stop right there and call the RCMP
(16:03):
to tell them, “Youguys better get back out here right now.”
The following Sunday, October 3rd,
so almost a week after Bart is a no show,
the Mounties, Yukon conservationofficers and civilian volunteers
fly back to the areato start a real grid search.
(16:23):
At first they don't find muchexcept bear and wolf tracks.
Until about 60 yardsfrom the bow and arrows and the dry bag,
one of the searchersfinds a baseball hat in perfect condition.
Then camouflage pants in a bushslightly torn up, but mostly intact.
A camera, a few small random bones
(16:44):
and part of a human skull.
The few teeth left in the skull fragmentare enough for a positive identification
of the remainsas being those of Bart Schleyer.
But there isn't muchmore of his body found.
Since there'sa lot of grizzly poop in the area,
the investigators are thinking, “Well,he must have been killed and eaten
(17:05):
by a bear.” Makes senseconsidering where he's hunting.
But the scene investigators are looking at
just doesn't seem to fitthat ready made theory.
Typical bear attacksusually go more like the attack
just a yearearlier in southern Alaska on a man named
Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend,Amy Huguenard.
(17:28):
Treadwell had a fixation on getting up
close and personal with grizzly bears,and thought of himself
as kind of a “bear whisperer.”But apparently he got a little too close,
and he and Amy were both mauledand eaten alive.
When bears attack, they go for the head,and when their prey is down,
(17:50):
they just start eatingwhether the prey is dead or not.
In the Timothy Treadwell attack,he and Amy
had been documentingtheir adventures on videotape.
When their attack starts,the camera is still rolling.
There is no video,but the audio of the attack
goes on for over six horrific minutes
(18:11):
as the bear just starts chomping away.
And bears eat everything,including clothing.
Whatever they don't finish,they bury in a shallow
hole called a cache and cover it up.
With Timothy and Amy,their remains are found in a cache,
and evidently that bear was still hungrybecause it came back to their camp,
(18:35):
probably to get the cache,
and attack the investigators,who shot and killed it.
The bear was autopsied.
And not only were human remainsfound in its stomach,
but large amountsof their clothing as well.
But in Bart's case,no cache is ever found.
And while bear scat from the areais found to contain
(18:58):
some of Bart's remains,it doesn't contain any clothing.
In fact, other than his pantsfound in the bush, a little torn up,
but not as much as you would expectto see for a bear attack,
the rest of Bart's clothes,including his boots, are never found.
But some searchers are very skepticalthat it was a bear attack.
(19:21):
And Bart's family, flat out says no way.
First,there were no signs of a death struggle.
No vegetation or ground disturbed,even though his remains
are found in an areawhere the ground is covered with moss,
which would definitely showsigns of a fight.
so maybe it was a surprise attack.
But for a guy like Bart,that seems highly unlikely.
(19:45):
Almost everyone who knew Bart believeshe was just too
good of a woodsman to have a bearcatch him by surprise.
An 800 pound grizzlycan't be all that stealthy.
But even for an experienced woodsman,some people believe that
Bear could have snuck up on himand delivered a fatal bite.
(20:07):
But for there to beno signs of a struggle,
that bite would have had to have been
to the head - an instant takedown.
But the pathologistwho examined Bart's remains
found no tooth punctures in his skullor any scratch marks from teeth.
And if that was the caseand it went for the head first,
(20:29):
why does the face maskonly have a little blood and hair on it?
And even less on his pants?
They should both be shreddedand soaked in blood.
There was some rain in the areaover the two weeks
between when Bart diedand when his remains were found,
but not enough to wash awaythat amount of blood.
(20:51):
And bears have a fantastic sense of smell.
If a bear were anywhere in the area, it'shighly likely
that it would have found the foodhe had in his dry bag,
as well as the food he had inthe plastic containers back in his camp.
But nothing touched the foodin either place.
So bear expertssay there was no bear in that area,
(21:13):
except we know that there wasbecause there was bear poop.
So none of that makes any sense.
But given the lack ofany evidence of a fight,
that makes the existing evidence look morelike the the aftermath of a scavenger.
So then what killed them?
Well, maybe he died
(21:34):
a natural death, like from a heart attackor an aneurysm,
and was later taken apartby scavenging animals.
It's possible, but not likely.
He was only 49 years oldwith an exercise routine
that would have sentmost of us to the hospital.
It's also possible
that it was a wolf attack since wolfscat was also found in the area.
(21:57):
But, wolf attacks are even more rarethan bear attacks,
and wolves should have been even easierfor Bart to defend himself against.
But again, no signs of a struggle.
Now, if there is still a butt imprinton the dry bag,
but no blood anywhere around it,he must have gotten up for some reason.
(22:18):
And if he left his bowand arrows by the tree,
he must nothave felt like he was in any danger.
Maybe he was answering the call of nature.
No pun intended.
He certainly wouldn't have been as alert.
But that just takes me backto the question,
how stealthy can an 800 pound bear be?
(22:39):
David Paulides coveredBart's case in his book
“Missing 411,Western United States & Canada.”
And he spoke with a guy named Rick Fernel,who had been a wildlife biologist
for the Yukon Territory for 25 yearsbefore he retired,
Just to get an ideaof what that area is like.
The first thing that Rick saysis that he has no idea
(23:02):
why anyone would want to huntthe Reid Lakes area to begin with.
The hunting their sucks.
And there are far better places to gonot that far away.
The second thing he saysis that usually in Canada,
when Mounties find outthey have a man eating bear
on their hands,they will hunt and kill it.
(23:22):
In Timothy Treadwell'scase, (remember the bear whisperer?)
they didn't have tobecause the bear came back for them.
But in Bart's case,no such hunt or any other follow up
investigation is ever done.
If they thought he was attacked by a maneating bear, why didn't they go get it?
(23:43):
Or dothey not think that is really the case?
And if they know it wasn't a bear,what was it?
Some other large predator?
Well, remember,the ground over there is covered in moss.
So even the most “wet behind the ears”
tracker can see if a struggle took place.
(24:04):
But the moss is perfect.
And keep in mindthat they are looking at the scene
only two weeksafter whatever happened to Bart, happened.
So it's not like anythingwould have had a chance to grow back.
So that pretty much rules outan animal attack at all.
Because if we know anything about Bart,we know
(24:26):
he would have put up one hell of a fight.
But what does that leave us with? People?
I guess it's possible,but no one but the floatplane pilot knew
exactly where Bart was,and even if they did,
they would have to eithercross a 600 foot wide river
from the highway or hike 15 ruggedmiles from Stewart Crossing.
(24:50):
That's a pretty tough slogjust to stir up some trouble.
Maybe there's another hunter in the areawho didn't like Bart's intrusion
on his territory. Possible.
But with the vastness of the wildernessand the fact that locals are pretty
much knew the Reid Lakes were no goodfor hunting or fishing,
(25:11):
the chances of Bart landing ontop of another hunter are pretty slim.
And in this case, even the supernaturalexplanations don't go very far.
Maybe the moose callsthat Bart is most likely using
to bring a moose into his area,brought in something a little bigger.
Human, like 8 to 10 feet tall, hairy,all over.
(25:33):
And we've heard stories of Bigfootmoving along in total stealth mode.
Maybe a Bigfoot followsthe moose calls to Bart,
figures out he's been punked,and takes his anger out on Bart.
But it's pretty rare to heara story of a Bigfoot attacking for
anything less than an actionthat it perceives as life threatening.
(25:54):
It may get angry, may get vocal,
but they still usuallykeep their distance.
Dogman?
Not likely.All the stories I've ever heard
about dogman attacksis that they're pretty messy.
And we can't even fall back on my ownparanormal explanation of choice,
(26:14):
at the moment, for some of thesemissing persons cases, the portal.
Because Bart didn't just disappear.
There are remains found on the groundand we know that
various scavengersconsumed at least part of his body.
So he was there.
But it's like somethingjust plucked him up off the ground,
(26:35):
killed him, ate him, and then gentlyset their leftovers back down again.
So what happened to Bart in that quietcorner of the Yukon Territory?
We will probably never know.
The one thing we do knowis that Bart Schleyer,
legendary bull hunter and conservationist,
(26:56):
will never be forgotten.
According to Bart's professor, Dr.
Collins, there is a saying in Montanato describe people like Bart.
“He was a man to ride the river with.”
And he “was the epitome
of every thing good in in humans.”
(27:18):
No one should lose a loved one this way.
And the shroud of mystery surroundingthe entire case is heartbreaking.
Our thoughts and our prayers certainlygo out to Bart's family and friends.
So are you ready to continue down
the path of even more strangeand mysterious disappearances?
(27:38):
If so, make sure you click on this videoright here.
Or risk missing out.
Be careful out there
and I will see youhere again on The InBetween.
Thanks for tuning into The InBetween Podcast.
Enjoy the full visual experiencewith me over on YouTube.
(28:01):
Just search for @TheInBetweentales.
I'm Carol Ann,and until next time, be careful
out there.
Strange mysteries, unexplained phenomena.
And the shadows in between.
This is The InBetween Official Podcastwith your host,
Carol Ann!
In 1965 during a hunting safariin Mozambique,
(00:36):
a ten year old boy takes aim at an Impalaand pulls the trigger.
And The result of that shotwould ultimately change the lives of
countless grizzly bears, Siberian tigers
and just about every one he meetsand send him down a path
that would eventually lead to his ownstrange and mysterious disappearance.
(01:00):
I'm CarolAnn and Welcome to The InBetween.
Stick with me today,as I connect all of these random dots
to create a picture of the legendary life
and completely inexplicablevanishing of Bart
Schleyer.
(01:20):
On September 14th, 2004,
Bart Schleyer hires a floatplane to drop him and his supplies
at the largest of the ReidLakes right in the middle
of the Yukon Territory of Canada.
After unloading his supplies,including a tent,
a boat, three Action Packer cratescontaining two weeks worth of food,
(01:43):
clothes,a radio and his hunting bow and arrows,
he tells the floatplanepilot to meet him back here in two weeks.
As the plane takes off, Bartpicks his camp spot, sets up his tent,
inflates his boat, grabs something to eat,
relaxes for a bit, and heads to bed.
(02:04):
The next dayhe gathers a few things into a dry bag,
throws the dry bag into the boat,takes the boat a ways down
shore on the lake, picks a nice spotthat seems pretty perfect
for calling in some moose,which is what he's there to hunt.
sets his dry bag on the groundfor a cushion, props his boat
and arrows up on the treenext to him, sits down and waits.
(02:29):
Then...
he vanishes.
The question that no one's been ableto figure out for the last 20 years
is, “What happened?” Now, at this point,some of you might be thinking, “Well,
what do you expect goinghunting alone in the middle of the Yukon?”
That's a dangerous place for anyone,especially some dude
going out therepretending to be some kind of Survivorman.
(02:51):
And I get it.
If it were me out there, I would get eatenby something the first day.
But Bart is a different storybecause Bart is not just a hunter.
He is the hunter, the alpha of hunters.
By the time I get donetelling you the story, I guarantee
(03:12):
that you too, will be asking,“What happened?”
Bart Schleyer is born in 1955 in Cheyenne,Wyoming, to Dr.
Otis Schleyer and his wife, Lula Rose.
And Bart loves animals.
According to his sister, Claudia.
When it comes to animals,he didn't just like them.
(03:32):
He wanted to know everythingabout them, study
where they lived and how they lived.
His dad, Dr.
Otis, loves to hunt and takes Bart outhunting for the first time
when Bart is only four years old.
And it's that experience, that marriageof his obsession with animals
and the thrill of the hunt that formsthe trajectory of the rest of Bart's life.
(03:58):
When he's ten, his dadtakes him on a safari in Mozambique,
where he gets to see and experienceanimals that most people only read about.
Bart actually takes a shot at an Impala
but misses and starts crying.
His dad immediatelysays Stop and tells him
hunting isn't about bagging something.
(04:20):
It's about enjoying the land,the animals and the people.
And in that instant, that thoughtset the standard
by which his lovefor animals, his love for hunting,
and how he would livehis life would forever be judged.
Bart goes on two more African safaris,where he shoots
(04:43):
Impala Gazelles, Sables, IBEX,
wildebeest, warthogs and lions.
Shortly after his return from his lastsafari at age 17,
Bart is introduced to his sister'snew boyfriend, a guy named Jim Downey.
Jim is a hunter, too, and the two boysbecome as thick as thieves.
(05:06):
Jim introduces Bart to the art of though
acting in Bartnever hunts with a gun again.
Lucky for Bart, Claudia marries Jim.
Permanent hunting partner.
And it's not just animals that Bartimmerses himself in.
He's the kind of guy who puts everythinginto anything he does.
(05:29):
Zero or 100. There's nothing in between.
In high school,he's on the wrestling team.
He goes to state twice, winning
once and coming in second the other time.
He graduates high school with academichonors and gets a scholarship to college.
After two years at Sheridan Collegeas an art student,
(05:50):
because he has a talent for art too,he transfers to Montana State University,
where he receives his master'sdegree in wildlife biology in 1979.
One of the undergraduate classeshe takes is called Man
and the Environment,taught for more than 20 years by Dr.
Don Collins,who says out of the 42,000 students
(06:13):
who took that class, Bart was a standout.
He was knowledgeable in everythingwild from animals and birds
to flowers, trees and shrubs.
Bart spent a lot of timealone in the mountains
while working on his master's thesis,
which is on the activity patternsof grizzly bears in Yosemite Park.
(06:35):
And to get the data that he needs, Bartcaptures the bears and then puts telemetry
radio collars on them to monitorwhere they go and what they do.
It's around this timethat Bart meets a guy named Paul Shaffer,
who not only becomes one of his bestfriends and hunting partners,
but also teaches himhow to make his own bows and arrows.
(06:57):
What doesn't this guy do?
After college, Bart stays in Montanaand takes a job with Montana Fish and Game
and the InteragencyGrizzly Bear Study Team.
The team's job is to determinethe reactions of grizzly bears
after encountering a human, as wellas figuring out their habitat requirements
and their birth and death rates, as wellas any other information they can collect.
(07:22):
And even at this relatively young age,
Bart has so much experiencein backpacking and mountaineering
from his years of bowhunting tripsthat the research work is a breeze.
He hikes into the mountainswith heavy packs full of meat for bait
and heavy cables for foot snaresand stays out there for months at a shot.
(07:47):
The harder the job, the more Bart thrives.
And his sense of humor is no exception
to Bart's “bigger than life” life.
Glenn Garton, a longtime friend of Bart's,says that Bart
once spent nearly an entire day
fabricating a miniature telemetry collarand putting it on a bumblebee.
(08:10):
Not to mention his longestrunning gag his cat, Sparky.
He loved Sparky and would bring themeverywhere - in the car, to parties.
You name it.
He would even dress them upand hats and ties and glasses.
So why is a guy loving his cat so funny?
Because Sparky is dead.
(08:30):
Bart had found him mummified and perfectly
preserved behind the furnaceof his apartment building.
And unlike most hunterswho will break their toothbrushes
in half to spare themselvesthe extra weight in their packs,
Bart would add the extraweight of costumes and props to his pack
so that when the time camefor a picture of himself next to his kill,
(08:54):
he could wear a clown wig or
a Jason Voorhees hockey mask.
And those pictures were frequent.
Sitka deer, elk, moose, Stone sheep,
Bighorn sheep, caribou, bison,
brown bears, grizzly bears - you name it!
If it lived in the wilderness, chancesare he hunted it.
(09:17):
The only known exception to Bart's goall in attitude is his humility.
he is humble to a fault.
After working on the Grizzly BearRecovery project
in Yellowstone National Park in the 1980sand becoming known
as one of the country's foremost expertsin live
grizzly tracking and tagging,he moves to Alaska in 1993.
(09:42):
Bart is contacted by Maurice Hornocker,a renowned wildlife researcher
at the University of Idaho and founderof the Hornocker Wildlife Institute,
who wants to build a team to studythe Siberian tiger
in the same waythat Bart had been studying the Grizzlies.
And just like that, Bartfinds himself in Russia
(10:04):
as a capture specialiston the Siberian Tiger Project.
He becomes one of the world'sforemost experts at capturing,
radio collaring and trackingtigers, and spends nine years in Russia
working to help save endangeredSiberian tigers,
in much the same way he had workedwith the Grizzlies.
(10:27):
It turns out the Tigersare not the only thing that Bart captures.
While in Russia,he meets and falls in love with a girl.
Tatiana Perova, the deputy director
of the Wildlife ConservationSociety in Russia.
And a shortwhile later, they have a son, Artyom.
Bart became
(10:48):
so well-known as being the bestin the Tiger business
that he was involved in capturingthe first tiger in Thailand and was called
in to catch a man eating tiger in Nepal,
which he caught in just seven days.
He's even in a National Geographicdocumentary
called Tigers of the Snow, BartSchleyer and Dr.
(11:11):
Hornick, are prepared to sedate the tigerwhich is all about the work
that he and his teamare doing with the tigers in Russia.
But he's so humbleand he never told anybody about it.
And after almost a decade stalkingtigers in Russia,
Bart decideshe needs another change of scenery
and moves to Whitehorse in the CanadianYukon in 2002.
(11:34):
He then gets his licenseto guide other hunters in 2003.
And he's so good at that jobthat on his very first guiding trip,
he leads his client to a large bear
that his client is able to take down.
It is noted that the hide of the bear“squared ten feet,
(11:55):
six inches.” I'm not even going to pretendto know what that means.
But I can tell you that in 2016,a bowhunter named Chris Stewart
took down a bear so big thatit was in contention as the world record
holder for the largest bearbrought down by an arrow.
And the hideonthat bear also “squared over ten feet six
(12:19):
inches.” Bart'sclient is so happy that he offers BART
a $1,000 tip, which Bart
being Bart, he tries to refuse.
So this is the 20th century Grizzly Adams,
that on September 14th, 2004,goes to an area called the Reid Lakes,
(12:42):
less than 200 miles northwestfrom where he lives in Whitehorse.
And even though the lakes are only sixmiles off, the Klondike Highway,
you can't get in that waybecause the Stewart River is in the way.
Or you can hike in from Stewart Crossing,
but that is a rugged 15 mile hike.
So Bart charters a float plane out ofPelly Crossing to take him there instead.
(13:07):
The plane drops him offon the 14th of September with instructions
to pick him up in the same spot two weeks
later on Monday, September 27th.
But when the plane returnstwo weeks later,
Bart is not there to greet him.
The pilot's spidey sensesgo off right away because he could tell
when he dropped him offthat Bart wasn't some suburban schmo
(13:30):
coming up to the Canadian backwoodsto stave off some kind of midlife crisis.
So he immediately calls the Royal CanadianMounted Police,
the RCMP, or also known as the Mounties.
The RCMP sent up six officers
and trackers on Wednesday the 29th.
They find his camplook around and can see that
(13:54):
he had a meal there without a fire,but they don't see him anywhere.
So they think, “Well,maybe he hiked out to the highway.”
And with deteriorating weather,light snow, they call it a day.
In all fairness to the RCMP,
they do send out a plane to do a flyover.
(14:15):
But the area is known as being
one of the most denselywooded places around.
So the plane never had a chanceof finding him anyway.
Dib Williams,a friend of Bart's from Whitehorse, is,
let's just say, a little disappointed
with the efforts of the RCMPand calls his friend Wayne Curry
(14:37):
to fly them both up to Bart's campso they can take a look for themselves.
his tent is knocked down,but all of his equipment is there.
They searched the area around the tentand find his backpack,
bear spray, a knife and his VHF radio.
Well, now they know there is a problembecause Bart wouldn't
(14:58):
hike out and leavethat kind of gear behind.
They go home for the night,
come back again the next day and decideto search the area by Bart's boat,
which they find on the lake about a halfa mile down the shore.
About 60 yardsback in the woods from the boat,
they find Bart's bow and find his arrowsin a handmade buckskin quiver,
(15:20):
leaning up against a treenext to a dry bag.
A dry bag is just a waterproof bagthat you can put your gear in
if you're around waterto make sure it doesn't get wet.
The dry bag is full of gearand some food and still has a butt indent.
So it's pretty obvious that at some pointhe had been sitting right here.
(15:42):
Wayne Currie is also a moose hunterand says it looks like the perfect place
for a boat hunter to set up to trycalling a moose into range.
They search a little furtherand find a camouflage
face mask with blood and hair on it.
They stop right there and call the RCMP
(16:03):
to tell them, “Youguys better get back out here right now.”
The following Sunday, October 3rd,
so almost a week after Bart is a no show,
the Mounties, Yukon conservationofficers and civilian volunteers
fly back to the areato start a real grid search.
(16:23):
At first they don't find muchexcept bear and wolf tracks.
Until about 60 yardsfrom the bow and arrows and the dry bag,
one of the searchersfinds a baseball hat in perfect condition.
Then camouflage pants in a bushslightly torn up, but mostly intact.
A camera, a few small random bones
(16:44):
and part of a human skull.
The few teeth left in the skull fragmentare enough for a positive identification
of the remainsas being those of Bart Schleyer.
But there isn't muchmore of his body found.
Since there'sa lot of grizzly poop in the area,
the investigators are thinking, “Well,he must have been killed and eaten
(17:05):
by a bear.” Makes senseconsidering where he's hunting.
But the scene investigators are looking at
just doesn't seem to fitthat ready made theory.
Typical bear attacksusually go more like the attack
just a yearearlier in southern Alaska on a man named
Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend,Amy Huguenard.
(17:28):
Treadwell had a fixation on getting up
close and personal with grizzly bears,and thought of himself
as kind of a “bear whisperer.”But apparently he got a little too close,
and he and Amy were both mauledand eaten alive.
When bears attack, they go for the head,and when their prey is down,
(17:50):
they just start eatingwhether the prey is dead or not.
In the Timothy Treadwell attack,he and Amy
had been documentingtheir adventures on videotape.
When their attack starts,the camera is still rolling.
There is no video,but the audio of the attack
goes on for over six horrific minutes
(18:11):
as the bear just starts chomping away.
And bears eat everything,including clothing.
Whatever they don't finish,they bury in a shallow
hole called a cache and cover it up.
With Timothy and Amy,their remains are found in a cache,
and evidently that bear was still hungrybecause it came back to their camp,
(18:35):
probably to get the cache,
and attack the investigators,who shot and killed it.
The bear was autopsied.
And not only were human remainsfound in its stomach,
but large amountsof their clothing as well.
But in Bart's case,no cache is ever found.
And while bear scat from the areais found to contain
(18:58):
some of Bart's remains,it doesn't contain any clothing.
In fact, other than his pantsfound in the bush, a little torn up,
but not as much as you would expectto see for a bear attack,
the rest of Bart's clothes,including his boots, are never found.
But some searchers are very skepticalthat it was a bear attack.
(19:21):
And Bart's family, flat out says no way.
First,there were no signs of a death struggle.
No vegetation or ground disturbed,even though his remains
are found in an areawhere the ground is covered with moss,
which would definitely showsigns of a fight.
so maybe it was a surprise attack.
But for a guy like Bart,that seems highly unlikely.
(19:45):
Almost everyone who knew Bart believeshe was just too
good of a woodsman to have a bearcatch him by surprise.
An 800 pound grizzlycan't be all that stealthy.
But even for an experienced woodsman,some people believe that
Bear could have snuck up on himand delivered a fatal bite.
(20:07):
But for there to beno signs of a struggle,
that bite would have had to have been
to the head - an instant takedown.
But the pathologistwho examined Bart's remains
found no tooth punctures in his skullor any scratch marks from teeth.
And if that was the caseand it went for the head first,
(20:29):
why does the face maskonly have a little blood and hair on it?
And even less on his pants?
They should both be shreddedand soaked in blood.
There was some rain in the areaover the two weeks
between when Bart diedand when his remains were found,
but not enough to wash awaythat amount of blood.
(20:51):
And bears have a fantastic sense of smell.
If a bear were anywhere in the area, it'shighly likely
that it would have found the foodhe had in his dry bag,
as well as the food he had inthe plastic containers back in his camp.
But nothing touched the foodin either place.
So bear expertssay there was no bear in that area,
(21:13):
except we know that there wasbecause there was bear poop.
So none of that makes any sense.
But given the lack ofany evidence of a fight,
that makes the existing evidence look morelike the the aftermath of a scavenger.
So then what killed them?
Well, maybe he died
(21:34):
a natural death, like from a heart attackor an aneurysm,
and was later taken apartby scavenging animals.
It's possible, but not likely.
He was only 49 years oldwith an exercise routine
that would have sentmost of us to the hospital.
It's also possible
that it was a wolf attack since wolfscat was also found in the area.
(21:57):
But, wolf attacks are even more rarethan bear attacks,
and wolves should have been even easierfor Bart to defend himself against.
But again, no signs of a struggle.
Now, if there is still a butt imprinton the dry bag,
but no blood anywhere around it,he must have gotten up for some reason.
(22:18):
And if he left his bowand arrows by the tree,
he must nothave felt like he was in any danger.
Maybe he was answering the call of nature.
No pun intended.
He certainly wouldn't have been as alert.
But that just takes me backto the question,
how stealthy can an 800 pound bear be?
(22:39):
David Paulides coveredBart's case in his book
“Missing 411,Western United States & Canada.”
And he spoke with a guy named Rick Fernel,who had been a wildlife biologist
for the Yukon Territory for 25 yearsbefore he retired,
Just to get an ideaof what that area is like.
The first thing that Rick saysis that he has no idea
(23:02):
why anyone would want to huntthe Reid Lakes area to begin with.
The hunting their sucks.
And there are far better places to gonot that far away.
The second thing he saysis that usually in Canada,
when Mounties find outthey have a man eating bear
on their hands,they will hunt and kill it.
(23:22):
In Timothy Treadwell'scase, (remember the bear whisperer?)
they didn't have tobecause the bear came back for them.
But in Bart's case,no such hunt or any other follow up
investigation is ever done.
If they thought he was attacked by a maneating bear, why didn't they go get it?
(23:43):
Or dothey not think that is really the case?
And if they know it wasn't a bear,what was it?
Some other large predator?
Well, remember,the ground over there is covered in moss.
So even the most “wet behind the ears”
tracker can see if a struggle took place.
(24:04):
But the moss is perfect.
And keep in mindthat they are looking at the scene
only two weeksafter whatever happened to Bart, happened.
So it's not like anythingwould have had a chance to grow back.
So that pretty much rules outan animal attack at all.
Because if we know anything about Bart,we know
(24:26):
he would have put up one hell of a fight.
But what does that leave us with? People?
I guess it's possible,but no one but the floatplane pilot knew
exactly where Bart was,and even if they did,
they would have to eithercross a 600 foot wide river
from the highway or hike 15 ruggedmiles from Stewart Crossing.
(24:50):
That's a pretty tough slogjust to stir up some trouble.
Maybe there's another hunter in the areawho didn't like Bart's intrusion
on his territory. Possible.
But with the vastness of the wildernessand the fact that locals are pretty
much knew the Reid Lakes were no goodfor hunting or fishing,
(25:11):
the chances of Bart landing ontop of another hunter are pretty slim.
And in this case, even the supernaturalexplanations don't go very far.
Maybe the moose callsthat Bart is most likely using
to bring a moose into his area,brought in something a little bigger.
Human, like 8 to 10 feet tall, hairy,all over.
(25:33):
And we've heard stories of Bigfootmoving along in total stealth mode.
Maybe a Bigfoot followsthe moose calls to Bart,
figures out he's been punked,and takes his anger out on Bart.
But it's pretty rare to heara story of a Bigfoot attacking for
anything less than an actionthat it perceives as life threatening.
(25:54):
It may get angry, may get vocal,
but they still usuallykeep their distance.
Dogman?
Not likely.All the stories I've ever heard
about dogman attacksis that they're pretty messy.
And we can't even fall back on my ownparanormal explanation of choice,
(26:14):
at the moment, for some of thesemissing persons cases, the portal.
Because Bart didn't just disappear.
There are remains found on the groundand we know that
various scavengersconsumed at least part of his body.
So he was there.
But it's like somethingjust plucked him up off the ground,
(26:35):
killed him, ate him, and then gentlyset their leftovers back down again.
So what happened to Bart in that quietcorner of the Yukon Territory?
We will probably never know.
The one thing we do knowis that Bart Schleyer,
legendary bull hunter and conservationist,
(26:56):
will never be forgotten.
According to Bart's professor, Dr.
Collins, there is a saying in Montanato describe people like Bart.
“He was a man to ride the river with.”
And he “was the epitome
of every thing good in in humans.”
(27:18):
No one should lose a loved one this way.
And the shroud of mystery surroundingthe entire case is heartbreaking.
Our thoughts and our prayers certainlygo out to Bart's family and friends.
So are you ready to continue down
the path of even more strangeand mysterious disappearances?
(27:38):
If so, make sure you click on this videoright here.
Or risk missing out.
Be careful out there
and I will see youhere again on The InBetween.
Thanks for tuning into The InBetween Podcast.
Enjoy the full visual experiencewith me over on YouTube.
(28:01):
Just search for @TheInBetweentales.
I'm Carol Ann,and until next time, be careful
out there.
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