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Speaker 1: It seems like just yesterday, but on April the seventh,

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, almost three years ago, we released the

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Speaker 1: first episode of the bear Grease podcast titled The Myth

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Speaker 1: of the Southern Mountain Lion. You may remember it. Today,

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Speaker 1: we're going to go back to that inaugural episode to celebrate, analyze,

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Speaker 1: and if you've got a minute, I'd like to give

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Speaker 1: you some backstory on the bear Grease podcast. It's been

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Speaker 1: a surprising journey for me, and honestly, I didn't think

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Speaker 1: a mainstream audience would be interested in the kind of

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Speaker 1: stories I was interested in telling. From the very beginning,

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Speaker 1: I viewed my interests as niche or fringy, not mainstream stuff.

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Speaker 1: But I seem to be wrong. We've told stories of

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Speaker 1: gritty Americans who've lived their lives close to the land

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Speaker 1: of frontiersmen and hillbillies, Native Americans and outlaws, houndsmen and

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Speaker 1: snake handlers, anthropologists and biologists, stories of big rivers and

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Speaker 1: the complexity of soils and deep dives. With nerdy historical authors.

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Speaker 1: We've told some dark stories of enslavement, murder, racism, and

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Speaker 1: lives Asa Carter. Remember that bear Grease has been an

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Speaker 1: experiment and celebration of the American storyteller. And through it

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Speaker 1: we've all learned a lot, or I've learned a lot.

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Speaker 1: But I'm not sure that it's been a mainstream audience

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Speaker 1: that has enjoyed these I'm not sure that you bear

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Speaker 1: Greasers are a mainstream audience at all. I think that

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Speaker 1: you're something pretty unique in regardless of if you is

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Speaker 1: or isn't. I'm shocked at the response to these stories.

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Speaker 1: Telling them has been a great joy of mine, and

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Speaker 1: I don't take it for granted that you, your families,

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Speaker 1: and your people follow along. I want to go back

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Speaker 1: to the beginning for a minute to kind of give

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Speaker 1: you a peak behind the veil, to the genesis of

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Speaker 1: the Bear Grease podcast, when the grease was still solid fat,

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Speaker 1: so to speak. When the idea of me doing a

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Speaker 1: podcast for Meat Eater came up, Stephen Ornella said something

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Speaker 1: to me to the effect of Clay, I'd like to

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Speaker 1: hear you interview people, but afterwards, I'd like to hear

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Speaker 1: your thoughts. It needs to be an efficient listen, kind

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Speaker 1: of like a Terry Gross NPR interview. That was basically

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Speaker 1: what he said. He was suggesting a documentary style podcast

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Speaker 1: which sounded difficult to pull off, and at first I

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Speaker 1: thought I was opposed to it. Interestingly, though, years before that,

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Speaker 1: I had the thought somebody should do a really well

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Speaker 1: thought out and highly produced documentary style hunting podcast that

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Speaker 1: somebody isn't me. I had no interest in it. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know how to make one. I didn't think I

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Speaker 1: could find enough content. But mainly I wanted to do

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Speaker 1: full length, bust interviews with people, and my past experiences

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Speaker 1: the kind of people that I was interested in talking

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Speaker 1: to didn't warm up too quickly sometimes, and I knew

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't get the good stuff quickly. I had to

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Speaker 1: work to get that, and so that meant long form conversations,

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Speaker 1: and I felt like the documentary style interviews were short

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Speaker 1: and personal and clinical. But turns out I was kind

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Speaker 1: of wrong. After some time and some conversations with others

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Speaker 1: on the team, I realized I could still have those

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Speaker 1: long form conversations, but I cherry picked the relevant stuff,

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Speaker 1: creating a polished, efficient listen. It was actually the best

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Speaker 1: of both worlds. I remember where I was sitting in

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Speaker 1: Montana in the back country when I said to somebody,

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Speaker 1: this podcast needs to be called Bear Grease, Bear grease

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Speaker 1: is a metaphor for things forgotten but relevant. At one time,

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Speaker 1: everybody in America knew what bear grease was and what

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Speaker 1: it was you. But today probably one percent knows what

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Speaker 1: beargrease is today, and that's you. There's a lot of

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Speaker 1: stuff that our culture has forgotten, left by the wayside

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Speaker 1: that I think is really valuable, and I'm interested in

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Speaker 1: that stuff. To go back to the nitty gritty of

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Speaker 1: the beginnings of this podcast, which I really never shared originally,

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Speaker 1: I was commissioned to make three mock episodes, and I

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Speaker 1: quickly put together two. When they were mixed with music

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Speaker 1: and audio mastered, myself and a team listened to them,

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Speaker 1: and frankly, they were flat. I lacked passion and confidence

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Speaker 1: as a host, Flow and momentum were absent. They were

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Speaker 1: a solid four out of ten. But for the third one,

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Speaker 1: I had a wild idea to interview a bunch of

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Speaker 1: different people, some that you'd never expect on an outdoor podcast.

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Speaker 1: I was going to interview a psychologist, a biologist, a

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Speaker 1: guy who sold hunting licenses, and some first hand witness

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Speaker 1: to the elusive and mythical Southern Mountain lion. I do

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Speaker 1: some impromptu interviews and some formal ones. I just have

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Speaker 1: fun and say things the way I was thinking them.

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Speaker 1: I'd forget about any templates that I'd seen, and I'd

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Speaker 1: just tell the story the way it made sense. After

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Speaker 1: Phil Taylor mixed the episode the Myth of the Southern

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Speaker 1: Mountain Lion, I literally clenched my fists and yelled. I

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Speaker 1: was listening to it while I was on a walk

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Speaker 1: in my front yard, and I yelled, that's it. That's

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Speaker 1: the bear Grease podcast. I wasn't sure if I could

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Speaker 1: replicate it, though, or find enough stories that were intriguing,

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Speaker 1: or even another story ever that was as intriguing as

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Speaker 1: this one about mountain lions, but I was gonna try.

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Speaker 1: I mentioned his name before, but one guy that does

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Speaker 1: not get enough credit is Phil Taylor for the actual

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Speaker 1: production of the Bear Grease podcast. He's Meet Eater's chief

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Speaker 1: audio man. He works extremely hard to put the audio

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Speaker 1: magic in each other episode. Thank you, Phil, And in

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Speaker 1: celebration of almost three years of making Bear Grease, I

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Speaker 1: want to go back and replay that episode, the first

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Speaker 1: one about mountain lions. To this day, I get more

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Speaker 1: interaction around this first episode than any other topic that

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Speaker 1: we've covered. My online life has basically become a service

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Speaker 1: for people to forward pictures and stories about mountain lions

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Speaker 1: and particularly black panthers. I speculate with great certainty that

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Speaker 1: I have filtered more black panther images than anyone in

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Speaker 1: America in the last three years, elevating me to a

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Speaker 1: self titled, but unashamed and humble position of the black

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Speaker 1: panther tzar of America. That's right, you heard correctly. I

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Speaker 1: have an automated response to everyone that sends me a

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Speaker 1: picture of this said black panther, and it goes like this,

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Speaker 1: thank you, sir or Adam for your interest in the

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Speaker 1: North American black panther. I'm very interested in your submission. However,

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Speaker 1: upon further review from our team of one me, I

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Speaker 1: have concluded that your image is number one not from

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Speaker 1: North America. Or number two is a black cat that

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Speaker 1: you've completely misjudged the scale of it in the photo.

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Speaker 1: Number three it's a black dog with an odd tale.

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Speaker 1: Number four, you've fallen prey to an Internet photoshop black

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Speaker 1: panther scheme. Or lastly, number five confirmation bias has eaten

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Speaker 1: your lunch. Your granddaddy didn't see a black panther. I'm

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Speaker 1: sorry to crush your dreams. What you're a grown man

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Speaker 1: and you should have known better that ain't no North

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Speaker 1: American black panther. If you've listened to this episode yet,

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Speaker 1: this will all make more sense to you. So, without

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Speaker 1: further ado, here is episode one of bear Grease, originally

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Speaker 1: played on April seventh, twenty twenty one. How certain are

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Speaker 1: you that you saw two mountain lions?

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Speaker 2: One percent? No doubt.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the lion mountain lion in Arkansas?

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Speaker 3: No, I think there's panther. I think there's black mountain

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Speaker 3: lions myself.

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Speaker 1: On this episode of the bear Grease podcast, we'll be

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Speaker 1: exploring the myth of the Southern mountain lion and how

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Speaker 1: the lore or maybe the hard science, we don't know

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Speaker 1: which one has forever an inextricably connected itself to Southern culture.

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Speaker 1: We're going to talk to some mountain lion believers, a biologist,

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Speaker 1: and even a psychologist to get some answers about lions

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Speaker 1: and about human nature.

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I don't have any proof of it.

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Speaker 3: I just always have heard that. You've heard so you've heard.

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Speaker 4: Of cognitive I mean, I've just believed the propaganda my.

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Speaker 1: Name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast,

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Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight

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Speaker 1: and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of

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Speaker 1: Americans who live their lives close to the land, presented

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Speaker 1: by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing

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Speaker 1: gear as designed to be as rugged as the places

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Speaker 1: we explore. There are two kinds of people in the South,

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Speaker 1: those that have seen mountain lions in those that haven't.

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Speaker 1: Both of these groups carry their own unique stigmas, perhaps

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Speaker 1: both equally as wrought with irony as the other. They

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Speaker 1: seem to huddle tightly in cult like clans of believers

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Speaker 1: and unbelievers. But to understand the tension between those who've

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Speaker 1: seen mountain lions and those who haven't, and yes, there

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Speaker 1: is tension, you'll have to understand a bit of history.

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Speaker 1: The mountain lion Puma con color is a large, tan

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Speaker 1: colored feline weighing up to two hundred pounds or more. It,

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Speaker 1: along with the jaguar, which are extremely rare and primarily

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Speaker 1: live south of the US border in Mexico, are the

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Speaker 1: only large cats in North America since the extinction of

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Speaker 1: the giant cats of the Pleistocene, which basically was an

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Speaker 1: epoch of time that ended about ten thousand years ago.

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Speaker 1: These Pleistocene cats included saber tooth cats, American lions, American jaguars,

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Speaker 1: the American cheetah. This place used to be crawling with giant,

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Speaker 1: purring predators. However, today eight we've pretty much got one

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Speaker 1: large cat in the United States. In Canada, the old

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Speaker 1: mountain lion or puma or panther or the painter or

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Speaker 1: the catamount all the same animal, but they have different

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Speaker 1: names in different regions. You might recognize one of these.

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Speaker 1: But the mountain lion's native range extends from the Canadian

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Speaker 1: Yukon all the way down to the Andes Mountains of

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Speaker 1: South America, and from the east and west its range

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Speaker 1: goes from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This

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Speaker 1: is fascinating. They are the most widespread terrestrial mammal in

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Speaker 1: the Western Hemisphere. To bring it home simply to North America.

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Speaker 1: Prior to European settlement, they had the widest geographic spread

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Speaker 1: of any large mammal, more than white tailed deer, more

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Speaker 1: than elk, more than buffalo, more than anything. And herein

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Speaker 1: lies our issue in twenty twenty one. They use to

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Speaker 1: be here, but by the turn of the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: mountain lions were extirpated from almost one hundred percent of

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Speaker 1: their eastern range in the entire Eastern Deciduous Forest. The

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Speaker 1: word extirpated means that they didn't go extinct, but they

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Speaker 1: were removed from a specific region. The Eastern Deciduous Forest

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Speaker 1: basically extends from east Texas all the way to Maine,

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Speaker 1: and from Wisconsin all the way down to Florida. Basically,

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Speaker 1: it's the eastern one third of the United States. It's

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Speaker 1: worth noting that mountain lions in southern Florida held on

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Speaker 1: and were never entirely gone, perhaps making them the only

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Speaker 1: mountain lions east of the Mississippi for a very long time.

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Speaker 1: Or were they have they been in much of the

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Speaker 1: Eastern Deciduous Forest all this time, just right under our noses.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people think so, but for sure, throughout

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century, mountain lion populations only survived, according to

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Speaker 1: science anyway, in the rugged mountainous regions of the western

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Speaker 1: US and Canada. Those lions haven't been in the South

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Speaker 1: for the last hundred years or at least that's what

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Speaker 1: the government biologists tell us. Lots of people still see them.

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Speaker 1: In fact, I know some of these hillbillies that aren't

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Speaker 1: afraid to stand up against the statistics and against the

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Speaker 1: science and boldly proclaim their eyewitness convictions. Some might even

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Speaker 1: call it conservation slander. The myth of the Southern mountain

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Speaker 1: lion is so strongly embedded into our culture they might

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Speaker 1: as well actually be here. Or maybe they are here,

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Speaker 1: maybe they've been here all along. The only way that

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Speaker 1: I know how to get to the bottom of this

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Speaker 1: is to hear some of these stories for myself. And

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Speaker 1: some of these stories are pretty close to home. Just

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Speaker 1: for the record, I've never seen a mountain lion in

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Speaker 1: the South, but my dear sweet dad, Gary Nucomb has,

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Speaker 1: And here's his story.

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Speaker 5: When was it?

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Speaker 3: Tell me when it was? Oh, I would say twenty

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Speaker 3: years ago, fifteen twenty years ago to say late nineties, Well, yeah,

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Speaker 3: probably probably. And I was in one of my favorite

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Speaker 3: hunting areas, driving on the Warehouse A road. But then

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Speaker 3: I looked to my left, and when I turned my

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Speaker 3: truck in the middle of the road to make that turn,

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Speaker 3: I looked up there and there was what I thought

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Speaker 3: was a bobcat. I thought, that's a big old bobcat.

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Speaker 3: Is it daytime? Yeah, yeah, it's later in the afternoon,

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Speaker 3: but it's still real clear light. I mean, it wasn't

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Speaker 3: like dusty or anything. And I thought big bobcat. And

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Speaker 3: then I saw the tail and I go, holy Ki,

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Speaker 3: it's a mountainline. And you know it was one hundred

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Speaker 3: yards you know, it was pretty good ways off that.

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Speaker 4: You saw a distinctive, distinctive, no question about it.

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Speaker 3: So what color was it? I want to say blue?

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Speaker 5: Yeah it was.

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Speaker 3: It was just a tan colored animal. Really yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean like, okay, so you're my dad, and I

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Speaker 1: inherently trust your judgment.

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Speaker 3: You've been around seventy two years.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, how certain are you if you if if there

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Speaker 6: was a way to tell, I mean like, if there

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Speaker 6: was really a way to know whether it was a

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Speaker 6: mountain lion or not, and your life depended on, how

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Speaker 6: certain are.

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Speaker 5: You that it was a mountain lion?

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Speaker 3: It would be Oh yeah, I mean I don't know

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Speaker 3: what has a tail that was as long as the body.

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Speaker 3: It seemed to me, like, what did it do?

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Speaker 1: Was just standing on the road and ran.

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Speaker 3: On It took his time, came across the road. By

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Speaker 3: the time I saw it was pretty close to the ditch,

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Speaker 3: and if if I remember correctly, it looked at me.

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Speaker 3: So it didn't just dark, no, no, no, it was

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Speaker 3: moving slow, so you got to look at it. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: and so, but I didn't catch it from over here

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Speaker 3: to hear. I caught it towards the you know, just

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Speaker 3: maybe two or three steps from the ditch, and then

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Speaker 3: it just eased off of the ditch and then went

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Speaker 3: into the cutover you know, ten year old cut. And

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Speaker 3: when I saw the tail, you know, a city, it's

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Speaker 3: just thinking mountain lion, you know, I mean, it's just

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Speaker 3: I mean, what has its head? Simple? Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Brent Reeves would be considered a hillbilly if he didn't

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Speaker 1: live in the Arkansas Delta or the swamp country. Regardless

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Speaker 1: of semantics. He's a close friend of mine, a veteran outdoorsman,

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Speaker 1: and he's been in law enforcement for the last thirty years.

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Speaker 1: I've only known him to stretch the truth on occasion,

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Speaker 1: and he claims to not just have seen one mountain lion,

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Speaker 1: but two. I'll let you judge his story. So Brent,

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Speaker 1: tell me about not one mountain line, but two mountain lines.

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Speaker 1: That you've seen in Arkansas.

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Speaker 2: I will gladly relate the following. The first one was

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Speaker 2: probably in nineteen I'm going to say it was an

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Speaker 2: eighty eight. Me and three other guys were working for

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Speaker 2: a private timber management company and we were in Ashley County, Arkansas,

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Speaker 2: which is in right next to two counties away from

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Speaker 2: Mississippi and Southeast Arkansas. We were driving down timber Company

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Speaker 2: Road going to manage September is probably nine o'clock in

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Speaker 2: the morning, good daylight, and a panther, mountain lion, cougar,

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Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it, jumped out in front

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Speaker 2: of our truck at about thirty yards and loped down

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Speaker 2: the road in front of us for twenty thirty seconds,

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Speaker 2: and we're right behind it, and it ran off into

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Speaker 2: a section of timber that we drove down another quarter

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Speaker 2: of a mile and went in ourselves to the cruise

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Speaker 2: to timber to see how much timber was in there.

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Speaker 2: That was the first one I'd ever seen. Now we

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Speaker 2: got back that afternoon. There was no cell phones or

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Speaker 2: anything back during that time. So when we got back

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Speaker 2: to the office that afternoon, I called a friend and

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Speaker 2: we then reported to the Game and Fish and we

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Speaker 2: got a call back, I think the next day that

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Speaker 2: they had had reports to that in the area and

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Speaker 2: actually attributed it to one that had escaped captivity. So

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Speaker 2: it was it was known that in that area to

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Speaker 2: to be rambling around.

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Speaker 1: And so that wasn't the only mountain lion you've seen,

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Speaker 1: You've seen another one.

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Speaker 5: How did that go down?

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Speaker 2: My friend David Boudra and I were going coon hunting

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Speaker 2: one evening and.

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Speaker 1: This would have been a real name.

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Speaker 2: It is.

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Speaker 1: It is getting fisher and fishier.

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Speaker 5: It is.

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Speaker 2: It is a real name, and he can attest to it.

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Speaker 2: But but David and I were going coon hunting one

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Speaker 2: evening in Cleveland County where I grew up, and it's

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Speaker 2: dusky dark, you don't have to drive with your lights on.

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Speaker 2: And we were driving next to this big clearcut, fresh

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Speaker 2: clear cut, and there was two or three big trees

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Speaker 2: that weren't merchantable for logs or anything, so the timber

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Speaker 2: company left them out there. And this tree was probably

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Speaker 2: it was a big white oak tree. It was probably

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Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty two hundred yards away from the

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Speaker 2: timber access road and we're driving down through there. It's

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Speaker 2: in the fall of the year so the leaves are

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Speaker 2: coming off pretty good, and I look out there and

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Speaker 2: I can see a silhouette of what I thought was

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Speaker 2: a turkey, and I told David, I said, David, looked

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Speaker 2: at that big old turkey sitting on the limb out there,

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Speaker 2: and he said, yeah, I see it. Well, I had

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Speaker 2: my coon hunting light on. I just turned my light

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Speaker 2: on see if I could see if it was a

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Speaker 2: gobbler or a hen. And when I turned it on,

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Speaker 2: the eyes were glowing back at me, which turkey's eyes

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Speaker 2: don't normally do that. And we slowed down and David said, man,

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Speaker 2: that's a that's not a turkey. And we slowed down

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Speaker 2: to look at it, and it turned started walking down

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Speaker 2: that limb and you could plainly see that big long

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Speaker 2: tail out from out behind it. That thing walked down

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Speaker 2: towards the trunk of the tree, got to where the

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Speaker 2: limb leaves the trunk of the tree, put his feet down,

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Speaker 2: their paws and just drop down into that clear cut.

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Speaker 2: And then we turned around and went back the other

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Speaker 2: direction and turned their dogs loose.

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Speaker 1: Let me ask you this on both of these sightings now,

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Speaker 1: thirty years later, if your life depended on it, and

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Speaker 1: there was a way to know the absolute truth, and

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Speaker 1: they said they're going to burn your house down if

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Speaker 1: you're wrong. How certain are you that you saw two

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Speaker 1: mountain lions.

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Speaker 2: One, no doubt? And the thing about it is both

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Speaker 2: times I had a witness with me. Of course, one

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Speaker 2: of them was a coon.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to need their phone numbers.

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Speaker 2: One of them is a cook, I say, was one

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Speaker 2: of them is a coon hunter? Didn't they? You know

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Speaker 2: he's not vaccinated against lyon, But no doubt about it.

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Speaker 1: I'll let you be the judge of whether you believe

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Speaker 1: these two stories or not. But I've got somebody that

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Speaker 1: has the credentials to validate them or take away all

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Speaker 1: their credibility. I'm not sure which one it'll be. Myron

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Speaker 1: Means is the statewide large carnivore program coordinator for the

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Speaker 1: Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. If there's an expert on

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Speaker 1: mountain lions around these parts, it's my Iron Means. I

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Speaker 1: think you can give us some insight into the facts

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Speaker 1: of whether the mythical mountain lions of the South are

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Speaker 1: real or if they're just a farcical relic of folklore

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Speaker 1: passed on from a time when they were actually here. Myron.

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Speaker 1: When I first met you ten eleven years ago, you

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Speaker 1: were the Arkansas bear Coordinator.

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Speaker 5: Black bear biologist, that's right.

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Speaker 3: And.

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Speaker 1: Now you're not. Your title has changed. What's your new

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Speaker 1: title with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

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Speaker 5: My new title is Statewide Large Carnivore Program Coordinator for

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Speaker 5: Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Okay, that's a mouthful.

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Speaker 1: So something happened because at one time there was just

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Speaker 1: one large carnivore acknowledged by the game And that's right.

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Speaker 1: And your title change, which indicates what happened.

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Speaker 5: Well long about ten years ago, right after I took

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Speaker 5: the bear program coordinator position, we started seeing mountalines in

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Speaker 5: the state. And it's not that they weren't seen prior

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Speaker 5: to that, it's just that, you know, we didn't have

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Speaker 5: there were very very few ways to document a sighting.

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Speaker 5: I mean, you know, if you think back historically, people

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Speaker 5: didn't have game cameras back much in the eighties, you know,

371
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Speaker 5: and that's something that's kind of come along in the

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Speaker 5: past fifteen years or so. But anyway, what basically what

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Speaker 5: happened was mountain lion ste is showing up in the

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Speaker 5: state from time to time, and Game and Fish recognized that,

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Speaker 5: you know, you need to have someone that's kind of

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Speaker 5: coordinating the sightings, coordinating the verifications, and just kind of

377
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Speaker 5: packaging mountainline stuff.

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Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily that now there are lines here

379
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Speaker 1: and there weren't before, but we're we just know about them.

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Speaker 1: Is that what I'm hearing you say?

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Speaker 5: That's right, that's right.

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Speaker 1: You know for a lot game camera.

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Speaker 5: Primarily because of game cameras or you know, if someone

384
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Speaker 5: has one like on a phone video or something like that,

385
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:40,280
Speaker 5: but it's primarily been the game cameras. That's really what

386
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Speaker 5: has helped us, you know, document the occurrence and mountalines

387
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Speaker 5: in the States.

388
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Speaker 1: So here's here's the question. Where did they come from?

389
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Speaker 1: Because bears mountain lions, this would be historic mountain line

390
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Speaker 1: range here in Arkansas and in all of the eastern

391
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Speaker 1: United States. So where did our lines come from?

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Speaker 5: Well, that's that's a million dollar question. Who knows. The

393
00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 5: only evidence that we have currently was from a mountain

394
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Speaker 5: lion that was shot by a deer hunter back into

395
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen. Now that was harvested or shot in Bradley

396
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:20,400
Speaker 5: County by a deer hunter. That mountain lion was also

397
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:25,520
Speaker 5: previously documented on a cash in Marion County about two

398
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:29,000
Speaker 5: months prior to that, so that would have been in

399
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:34,840
Speaker 5: that was in twenty fourteen. I'm sorry. So the DNA

400
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 5: evidence that we collected from that cat in both instances

401
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:42,640
Speaker 5: told us that number one, it's the same cat, told

402
00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:46,720
Speaker 5: us that number two, that cat had origins from the

403
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 5: South Dakota population. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that cat

404
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:55,600
Speaker 5: was born in South Dakota. It just means that it's

405
00:24:55,760 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 5: DNA origins came from that South Dakota population. Now, if

406
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 5: you think of it in terms of where would it

407
00:25:04,359 --> 00:25:08,720
Speaker 5: most likely come from, Well, there's established mountain lion populations

408
00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:11,040
Speaker 5: in the Dakotas, South Dakota.

409
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:15,440
Speaker 1: Which would be north and west of US, slightly primarily north,

410
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 1: but still in the Mississippi River drainage for the most part.

411
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Speaker 5: Well, it'd be kind of it'd be probably closer tied

412
00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:27,199
Speaker 5: to the Missouri River drainage. Gotcha, There's an established population

413
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:33,000
Speaker 5: in northwest Nebraska. There's an established population out in the

414
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 5: Panhandle of Oklahoma. There's an established population of lines in

415
00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:42,080
Speaker 5: the Panhandle of Texas and in southern Texas. So I mean,

416
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:45,240
Speaker 5: and of course you have the Florida panthers in Florida.

417
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Speaker 5: So those are really the closest quote established.

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Speaker 1: That would be five hundred miles from here.

419
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Speaker 5: You know, the closest population would probably be the Panhandle

420
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:58,439
Speaker 5: of Oklahoma, you know, out in the Black Hills area.

421
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:03,120
Speaker 5: But is it likely that those caps would move all

422
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 5: the way across Oklahoma? Probably not, because the travel corridors

423
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:11,639
Speaker 5: and the habitat just isn't there. Is it likely that

424
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 5: a cat could move out of the Dakotas across northern

425
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:20,399
Speaker 5: Nebraska into eastern Nebraska and hit the Missouri River drainage

426
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 5: and follow the Missouri River down through the ozarks of

427
00:26:23,640 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 5: Missouri and then into the ozarks of Arkansas and then

428
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:31,440
Speaker 5: go who knows where else. That's probably the most likely.

429
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Speaker 1: So it's almost like highways like habitat highways, like you

430
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 1: could you could track good lying habitat all the way

431
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 1: back to the Dakotas and Nebraska.

432
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 5: Sure you could. I mean, you know, there's gonna be

433
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:48,399
Speaker 5: some spances of maybe one hundred, one hundred and fifty

434
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:52,199
Speaker 5: mile maybe even two hundred mile gaps, But you have

435
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:55,560
Speaker 5: to think in travel terms. You know, that's something that

436
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 5: a mountain lion could do in a day. Or two.

437
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:01,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, Myron, what about captive lions getting out? Because I

438
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 1: remember growing up in western Arkansas, you'd hear the odd

439
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:08,439
Speaker 1: person say they saw a lion and it was always

440
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:12,200
Speaker 1: thrown back up on they said, somebody had a captive

441
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:13,960
Speaker 1: line and they let it loose. What do you think

442
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:14,240
Speaker 1: of that?

443
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, as matter of fact, you know, that was really

444
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:20,240
Speaker 5: kind of the official, I guess position of the agency

445
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:24,080
Speaker 5: through the eighties and nineties that more than likely if

446
00:27:24,119 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 5: someone saw a mountain lion, more than likely it was

447
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 5: the result of an escaped cat or some a cat

448
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:34,440
Speaker 5: that someone couldn't care for anymore. They were moving, maybe

449
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 5: the owner died, maybe something, and so what are they

450
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 5: going to do? Just turn it out? So that was

451
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 5: really kind of the official position of the agency for

452
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:47,679
Speaker 5: a couple of decades, that more than likely if you

453
00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 5: saw cat, it was probably a release cat or an

454
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:51,360
Speaker 5: escape cat.

455
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:52,920
Speaker 1: You know, that takes all the fun out u seeing

456
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 1: the mountain lion.

457
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:57,520
Speaker 5: Well, it certainly presented a lot of gotcha opportunities, you know,

458
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 5: for the agency for a long time. Back in the

459
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 5: early two thousands is probably when the agency started turning

460
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 5: around saying well, more than likely rather than being a

461
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 5: scape cat because a lot of those captive breeders kind

462
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:14,600
Speaker 5: of fell out, you know, when I was a caulation.

463
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:19,120
Speaker 5: It's got more reculations. Yeah, and it just wasn't the thing.

464
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 5: I mean, I could remember, believe it or not, when

465
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 5: I was a kid, I knew two people that I

466
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 5: went to a grade school with that had pet mountain lions.

467
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:31,920
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, so yeah, so, I mean back

468
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 5: in the seventies, you know, it wasn't that ought of

469
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 5: a deal for someone to have a mountain lion as

470
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 5: a pet. You know, we still have no proof. A

471
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 5: lot of people try to play gotcha all the time

472
00:28:42,200 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 5: with us and say, well, gaming Fish says that you know,

473
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,880
Speaker 5: we don't have mountain liones. Well, you know, we've never

474
00:28:47,920 --> 00:28:50,800
Speaker 5: said we don't have mountainines. What we've said for the

475
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 5: past forty years or plus years is that we don't

476
00:28:55,120 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 5: have any evidence of an established, reproducing population mountain lions.

477
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 1: And has that changed.

478
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:04,040
Speaker 5: No, still has not changed.

479
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,480
Speaker 1: We still don't have evidence of a breeding population of

480
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 1: mountain lions here.

481
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 5: We do not.

482
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you this, do you feel like

483
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 1: today in Arkansas there are mountain lions that are living

484
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:15,760
Speaker 1: here year round?

485
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 5: I think there are mountain lions that live here year round.

486
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 5: I think virtually all of the mountain lions that we

487
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 5: have documented sightings of over the past wells in twenty ten,

488
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 5: I feel like they're all males, you know, either young

489
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 5: males or older males. A lot of the picture evidence

490
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 5: translates to them being older males. I'm not talking really

491
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 5: old males, but mature males.

492
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: And that would be very characteristic of an expanding population

493
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 1: of large carnivores, whether it be bears or would be

494
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: or lions. You would start to see these fringe areas

495
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: that would start to get satellite males.

496
00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 5: And you know, a lot of people don't realize with

497
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 5: mountain lions is that you know, you're you're talking about

498
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 5: a young animal that gets pushed out of the population,

499
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 5: a young male that basically gets kicked out on the streets.

500
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 5: You know, that's not something that they're just going to

501
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 5: travel another fifty miles down the road and establish, you know,

502
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 5: a territory of their own. I mean, you're talking about

503
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:22,800
Speaker 5: animals that have no qualms about traveling hundreds of miles

504
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 5: in order to find a suitable territory that has food

505
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 5: cover and females well, in the absence of females, they're

506
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 5: not going to establish a territory. I mean, it's just

507
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 5: that simple. So when you think of the behavior that

508
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 5: takes place in these animals they move in to say,

509
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 5: if they did come from the dakotas they move into

510
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 5: the Missouri they go down the Missouri drainage, they're starting

511
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,720
Speaker 5: to mature. They're no longer six months old, they're a

512
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 5: year old. They're a mature male. So there are a

513
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 5: couple of things that are driving that young mountain lion

514
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:05,160
Speaker 5: to exist. One of them is food and the other

515
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 5: one is reproduction. And until he finds both of those,

516
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 5: he's not going to set up shop.

517
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: So he's looping down into Missouri and going back.

518
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 5: Probably he might be going back. He might just continue

519
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:21,840
Speaker 5: to keep going until he does find a female. And

520
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 5: whether that means he has to cross four or five

521
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 5: six states to do it, they'll do it. Wow.

522
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:32,840
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties movie Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey,

523
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: when he's confronted with the fact that his girlfriend is

524
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: leaving him forever and she gives him an inkling of

525
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 1: hope that perhaps she'll come back to him, He says.

526
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 5: So you're telling me there's a chance.

527
00:31:46,280 --> 00:31:49,560
Speaker 1: I feel like what Myron just said and talking about

528
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: the dispersal of mountain lions and their ability to travel

529
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: such long distances gives some credibility to the lore of

530
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,480
Speaker 1: the Southern mountain lion because we have an established population

531
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: of lions in southern Florida and then in the West,

532
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:09,680
Speaker 1: and it would not be unheard of for lions to

533
00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: travel that distance. So maybe there is something to all

534
00:32:15,360 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 1: these mountain lion sightings, regardless of the fact that many

535
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 1: of these sightings could have and very well may have

536
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 1: been captive lions released that people were seen. So do

537
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:36,720
Speaker 1: you do you foresee a time like with so with that,

538
00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: with the habitat structure that we currently have between here

539
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:45,520
Speaker 1: and these populations, do you forecast a time It might

540
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,000
Speaker 1: be twenty years from now, fifty years from now, five

541
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 1: years from now. I don't know, will we have an

542
00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: established breeding populations line, because what would typically happen, as

543
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: I understand, disperse all of these large carnivores is like

544
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 1: the males making these satellite loops and then at some

545
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 1: point females, you know, like, at some point we're going

546
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: to get a picture of a female in Arkansas.

547
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 5: Well, you know, Missouri came up about four I believe

548
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 5: it was about four years ago and they collected some

549
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,320
Speaker 5: hair off of a confirmed sighting. They confirmed that it

550
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 5: was a female. The experts that I have talked to

551
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:26,480
Speaker 5: about mountain lions, all of them have been pretty consistent

552
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 5: and saying that if you do have a female in

553
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 5: a geographic area, a male will finder. It's just a

554
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 5: matter of time. When you do have a female show up,

555
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 5: you will have a breeding population.

556
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 1: What I want to kind of talk to you about

557
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 1: now is like mountain lion folklore essentially in places where

558
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 1: there historically haven't been lyons in the last hundred years.

559
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:53,360
Speaker 1: So in Arkansas we have ozarks and washtaws, which would

560
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:57,200
Speaker 1: have these big, vast sections of public land that would

561
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: be for all of our deer. Popular would be less

562
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: dense populations of deer than on private land. There's less

563
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:09,360
Speaker 1: deer in the mountains than there are in these agricultural areas.

564
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: And civilizers, well, it seems to me that there is

565
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 1: an unorthodox shift in mountain lion folklore in these like

566
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: backwoods places, And I'm like, well, there's not enough deer there,

567
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:23,239
Speaker 1: Like there's not enough game for these animals to be

568
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:26,879
Speaker 1: living like I think people would have this idea that

569
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 1: a mountain lion, if he was living here, he'd be

570
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 1: living way out and you know XX mountain, which is

571
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 1: far back in there. But what we're seeing with these

572
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: lion sightings that you guys are confirming is that they're

573
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:41,840
Speaker 1: not necessarily in the backwoods. They're in places with higher

574
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 1: deer density. Is that true.

575
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:46,839
Speaker 5: I think that would be the natural place to set

576
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 5: up a territory. Yeah, exactly, along the lines of what

577
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 5: you're speaking of. I'll give you an example. Custer, South Dakota,

578
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 5: is a very very small mountain town. And if you

579
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 5: look a lot of the mountain towns in the Black Hills,

580
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 5: you know, they're very small communities in the lower portions

581
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:07,759
Speaker 5: of these valleys with road highways running through them. And

582
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 5: when you drive through them, you can see the edge

583
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:11,960
Speaker 5: of town, you know, up on the side of the

584
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:13,879
Speaker 5: mountain over there. You can see it to the left

585
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:15,839
Speaker 5: and right. And when we were driving through there, one

586
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,319
Speaker 5: of the houndsmen that I was spent some time with,

587
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 5: it'd be like, oh, yeah, you know, mountain lion took

588
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:24,319
Speaker 5: a labrador from that guy's house right over there. And

589
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 5: we go down the road and well, that guy was

590
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,400
Speaker 5: had his truck parked up at this you know, this

591
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 5: bar or whatever it was sitting on the edge of

592
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:33,640
Speaker 5: town that you could see up there, but it's on

593
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 5: the edge of town. Well, they came down and drug

594
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 5: a deer out of that guy's truck, you know. And

595
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 5: he's telling me all these stories, and uh, you know,

596
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:46,279
Speaker 5: mountain lions just don't have that secretiveness to them that

597
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:48,839
Speaker 5: I really thought they did. I mean, I thought they

598
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 5: would stay, you know, one hundred miles away from a

599
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:55,880
Speaker 5: civilization or whatever, and really they're not. It kind of

600
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 5: cues back into what you were saying. They're gonna they're

601
00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:01,680
Speaker 5: gonna go, and they're gonna set up shop where food

602
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:04,759
Speaker 5: is available, where it's the easiest, and where there's the

603
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:08,040
Speaker 5: most of it. Would it be more natural for a

604
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 5: mountain lion to set up an area that they're going

605
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:14,719
Speaker 5: to stay in a territory in the heart of the

606
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 5: Ozark National Forest, or would it be more likely that

607
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 5: he's set up in a territory on the fringes of

608
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 5: national forest. Probably more likely to set up a territory

609
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:26,680
Speaker 5: on the fringes of national forests. But you're still talking

610
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 5: about an animal even in prime mountain lion habitat, you're

611
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:33,920
Speaker 5: talking about an animal that has home ranges of you know,

612
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 5: one hundred plus square miles.

613
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 1: So let's talk about where lines have been seen in

614
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 1: Arkansas and how you guys determine that one is a

615
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:45,279
Speaker 1: sighting is valid described it.

616
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 5: We get to probably one hundred and fifty plus sightings

617
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 5: that people contact us a year now. Of those sightings

618
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 5: that we're able to have physical evidence of, whether it

619
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:01,840
Speaker 5: be a track, whether it be a game camera photo,

620
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:05,720
Speaker 5: whether it be a phone photo video, whatever else, something

621
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 5: that we have physical evidence that we can go out,

622
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:11,759
Speaker 5: we take a field investigation form. We go out on

623
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 5: any sighting that has physical evidence and will record it.

624
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 5: If it's a game camera photo, we're going to record

625
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 5: where the picture was, you know, whether it was yes,

626
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:24,760
Speaker 5: verify that it was taken from this camera at this spot.

627
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 5: You have background. Yeah, you're doing everything now you're doing

628
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 5: an investigation to verify that A, you know it was

629
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 5: a mountain line. B it was taken at this location.

630
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:39,879
Speaker 5: Because there's a lot of internet hoax is going out there.

631
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 5: You know this this mountain line was taken at a

632
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:46,960
Speaker 5: friend of mine's friends, uncles, you know, best cousins. Whatever

633
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:50,239
Speaker 5: camera last week comes out that's been floating around the

634
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 5: internet for six years, and it was you know.

635
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:55,000
Speaker 1: I was going to say that if the game fish

636
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: gets one hundred and fifty sightings per year, I know

637
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 1: about fifty of those guys, and I can tell you

638
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: they're full of it.

639
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:06,360
Speaker 5: But uh what it boils right down to it. For

640
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 5: the last decade or so, the amount of sightings that

641
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 5: we have been able to verify and hold onto your seat,

642
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 5: the amount of sightings that we have been able to

643
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 5: verify per year averages to about one wow, one to

644
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 5: two sightings per year that we're able to verify and

645
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:28,240
Speaker 5: say yes, that's without a doubt a mountain line.

646
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:33,680
Speaker 1: What is your personal feeling on all these other sightings?

647
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: And just because someone can't verify sighting doesn't mean that

648
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:39,200
Speaker 1: it's not legit. It just means that they.

649
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 5: Well, it just means that us as a as a

650
00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 5: conservation agency or a scientific agency. I mean, you know,

651
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,560
Speaker 5: we can't. I can't go out there and say, well,

652
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,240
Speaker 5: we've got one hundred mountain lines in the state because

653
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:52,759
Speaker 5: we've had this many sightings. I mean, I can't got

654
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 5: to have evidence I gotta have evidence of it. I

655
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:57,319
Speaker 5: gotta have proof of it. I mean, you know, we

656
00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 5: don't just go out there and on a whim and

657
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:03,439
Speaker 5: say we've got this many bear, this many deer.

658
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: So what's your gut about all these other sightings? Are

659
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:11,080
Speaker 1: people wrong or are people right? And it's just not verifiable.

660
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 5: I think about ninety eight percent of the sightings that

661
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 5: we get our misidentification, what are they seeing? You'd be

662
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:26,239
Speaker 5: surprised at the amount of video or picture sightings that

663
00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:28,879
Speaker 5: are sent to me every year. And I'm not talking

664
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 5: about three or four I'm talking about tens, fifty sixty,

665
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 5: you know, maybe more pictures or videos that are sent

666
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:39,840
Speaker 5: to me every year that are housecats.

667
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:43,799
Speaker 1: House cats? You mean to tell me that people are

668
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:49,280
Speaker 1: mistaken housecats for mountain lions. A fifteen pound cat versus

669
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:51,280
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty pound cat.

670
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:52,520
Speaker 5: Believe it.

671
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 1: Feral housecats are estimated to number seventy million, maybe even

672
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 1: more everywhere, and people don't understand scale. Often when they

673
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:06,319
Speaker 1: see an animal and get a picture of it.

674
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 5: The biggest misidentification is by far and away, domestic housecats

675
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 5: or just feral house cats. Housecats in general. I do

676
00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:19,840
Speaker 5: have a lot of bobcat pictures that are sent to me,

677
00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:24,240
Speaker 5: even videos of bobcats. And you know, there's some anatomical

678
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 5: features that bobcats possessed that housecats or mountain lions don't possess.

679
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:31,960
Speaker 5: One of them, of course, is the obvious, the bobtail.

680
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 5: But I've seen a lot of pictures where a hind

681
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:38,560
Speaker 5: foot actually looks like a continuation of a tail, and

682
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 5: then you look up at the head of it and

683
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:44,240
Speaker 5: you see these big, huge white dots on the backs

684
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:48,920
Speaker 5: of the ears, which are specific to bobcats, not mountain lions.

685
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 5: Mountain lions don't have white patches on the back of

686
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 5: size ears.

687
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:56,880
Speaker 1: Okay, here's the question of the hour. Okakay, I've found

688
00:40:56,960 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: living in the South, living in Arkansas, there's two kinds

689
00:40:59,960 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 1: of people. There's people that have seen mountain lions and

690
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 1: there are people that have not. So Myron means, taken

691
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,800
Speaker 1: out of his position at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission,

692
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:12,600
Speaker 1: have you ever seen the lion mountain lion in Arkansas?

693
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 2: No?

694
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:16,520
Speaker 1: I have good thank goodness firing I wish I.

695
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 5: Had, But you know, I mean, you know, I tell

696
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:22,400
Speaker 5: people this all the time. The amount of people that

697
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:25,080
Speaker 5: have seen mountain lions and everything else. I mean, if

698
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 5: you think about that, it's a lot of people. A

699
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 5: lot of people claimed to have seen them, and I'm

700
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:35,439
Speaker 5: not here to tell anybody that they didn't see what

701
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:39,919
Speaker 5: they thought they saw. Were up to like since twenty ten,

702
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 5: were up to nineteenth.

703
00:41:42,200 --> 00:41:48,160
Speaker 1: Nineteen verified sightings in the last ten years in Arkansas.

704
00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 1: To understand why people so badly want to believe in

705
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 1: mountain lions, we're gonna have to understand a bit about

706
00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: human nature. Doctor Richard Back has been a clinical psycho

707
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: since nineteen seventy nine, and he has some unique insight

708
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:11,359
Speaker 1: into why humans act the way they do. Doctor Back,

709
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:16,360
Speaker 1: of the of the hundreds, if not thousands, of mountain

710
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:19,880
Speaker 1: lion sightings that people would have claimed over the years

711
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 1: to have happened here in Arkansas, and the actual number

712
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:30,120
Speaker 1: of verified sightings being so small, why do people Why

713
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:33,720
Speaker 1: do people believe that they've seen a lion when statistically

714
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:35,880
Speaker 1: they probably actually didn't.

715
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:40,399
Speaker 7: Well, there's probably two things going on there. One is

716
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:44,360
Speaker 7: that it's kind of an exciting thing to think as possible.

717
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 7: And if people have any sort of belief established already,

718
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 7: you know, whether they've read articles on mountain lions, or

719
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:57,760
Speaker 7: they had an uncle or grandfather talked about the mountain lions.

720
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:03,400
Speaker 7: If there's some connection somewhere and the person probably can't

721
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 7: even identify where it was. But if it's an established

722
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:12,359
Speaker 7: fact that there are mountain lines, then when they see

723
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 7: something that can be fit into that perception, they'll they'll

724
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 7: they'll tend to do it, and then you can't talk

725
00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 7: them out of it no matter what you show them,

726
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 7: and they are really confirming what they already believe. Are

727
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 7: picked up somewhere.

728
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 1: Is there a psychological term that would describe somebody that

729
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: had a belief that may not even be true, and

730
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 1: then something happened and they slotted that event that happened

731
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:43,359
Speaker 1: into a belief that wasn't real. Is there is there

732
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: a psychological term for that.

733
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:50,440
Speaker 7: Yes, it's called confirmation bias, and it's just practically every

734
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 7: person has it but is unaware of it and would

735
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:56,480
Speaker 7: certainly deny it if you ask them.

736
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:58,360
Speaker 1: It's all over our lives.

737
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 5: I guess, yeah, it's all all over our lives.

738
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:04,080
Speaker 7: We end up believing things not even knowing where that

739
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:06,240
Speaker 7: comes from. In terms of what we think is the

740
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 7: best model car, or the best football team or the

741
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:13,279
Speaker 7: best state to live in. We end up believing that,

742
00:44:13,880 --> 00:44:18,359
Speaker 7: and we couldn't really even probably voice reasons why we

743
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 7: just like that, and then cherry pick any sort of evidence,

744
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 7: whether it's from newspapers or sports announcers or neighbors. But

745
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 7: we cherry pick in terms of selecting information that supports

746
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:38,480
Speaker 7: what we already believe.

747
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:42,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it would be like really reasonable if you

748
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:45,440
Speaker 1: were a young child growing up in somebody that you

749
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 1: respected or maybe some of you didn't respect, told you

750
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,279
Speaker 1: that there were mountain lions here, regardless of that was

751
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: like patently false, you would probably go through your life

752
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:58,920
Speaker 1: with a slot in your mind that there are potentially

753
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:01,880
Speaker 1: mountain lions here. So if you saw a flash of

754
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:05,800
Speaker 1: brown fur across the road, that might just easily slot

755
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 1: into that place and it just be fact inside of

756
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: your mind.

757
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:11,520
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, that would happen.

758
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about naive realism what that means.

759
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:18,480
Speaker 7: Yeah, Naive realism is, I guess, in a sense, the

760
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:23,880
Speaker 7: foundation of confirmation bias. Naive realism is really kind of

761
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:27,760
Speaker 7: a fancy term for what I think we've probably all noticed,

762
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 7: and that is almost everyone else we deal with thinks

763
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 7: that they're right. And that's because most people do think

764
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 7: and believe that their way of perceiving the world and

765
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 7: interpreting data and selecting and making decisions, we all believe

766
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 7: that we've come upon the right way of living life.

767
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:54,439
Speaker 1: So it's like you could be living just you could

768
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:56,040
Speaker 1: just kind of have this false reality.

769
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,400
Speaker 7: Yeah, well yeah, lots of people do. And if anyone

770
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 7: tries to can bens them that they have a false reality,

771
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:06,520
Speaker 7: then they fall back on confirmation bias to really ignore

772
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 7: anything they're saying that disputes what they believe, but they'll

773
00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 7: select all sorts.

774
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:17,240
Speaker 1: Of data that confirms their by it that confirms their bias.

775
00:46:20,680 --> 00:46:23,799
Speaker 1: This is a great place to hear a story that

776
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:28,879
Speaker 1: actually happened. Scott Brown is my longtime good friend. He's

777
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 1: a veteran woodsman, and I trust whatever the guy says.

778
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: You're going to get a kick out of this story.

779
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,960
Speaker 1: But I want you to ask yourself, which character in

780
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:39,400
Speaker 1: this story are you?

781
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:47,839
Speaker 8: So you know, where I work, we sell hunting licenses,

782
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:52,759
Speaker 8: and usually the first the week right before Modern gun

783
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 8: Deer season opens, it just gets really busy. So I'm

784
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 8: back there one night, I'm helping out and just trying

785
00:46:58,080 --> 00:47:00,439
Speaker 8: to help them sell licenses, and I got I walks

786
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:02,200
Speaker 8: up and he says, hey, I need to buy a license.

787
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:05,320
Speaker 8: And I said, okay, no problem. I said what license

788
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 8: you need and he said, well, I just need the

789
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:09,680
Speaker 8: Big Game license, the annual Big Game license. And I said, okay,

790
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:13,440
Speaker 8: no problem. And so I asked for his driver's license

791
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 8: and I'm plugging his information. He says, well, that license

792
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:20,600
Speaker 8: allowed me to kill one of these, and I said,

793
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 8: what is it? And he shows me his phone. He's

794
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:25,320
Speaker 8: got this picture on his phone and when he shows

795
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:29,200
Speaker 8: it to me, it is, without question a bobcat. I

796
00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 8: mean it's it's, without question a bobcat. I've seen a

797
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:35,000
Speaker 8: lot of bobcats, and I'm one hundred percent certain it

798
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:37,080
Speaker 8: was a bobcat. It had speckles on its belly. I

799
00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 8: mean it was He's a bobcat, no question. And I said, yeah,

800
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 8: trail came. Yeah, it's it's a trail camera picture. Something

801
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 8: he had on his trail camera there around his house somewhere.

802
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 3: And I said, yeah, yeah, you.

803
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 8: Shoot bobcats, coyotes, it'll allow you shoot all that stuff.

804
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 8: And when I said that, he was just I mean,

805
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:57,279
Speaker 8: he just snapped at me. He just said, that's not

806
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 8: a bobcat. And I said, oh, it wasn't and he

807
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 8: said no, and he kind of hands the phone back

808
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 8: over to me.

809
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 7: Again.

810
00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:08,279
Speaker 8: I'm thinking, maybe I made a mistake. So I look

811
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:10,680
Speaker 8: at it again and I come to the same conclusion.

812
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:13,440
Speaker 8: It is a bobcat. I mean, there's just no question

813
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:18,280
Speaker 8: about it. And of course, you know, I didn't say anything.

814
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:21,120
Speaker 8: I just said, yeah, yeah, sure enough, you know, just

815
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:23,799
Speaker 8: kind of blew him off, you know, is if he

816
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:25,760
Speaker 8: wants to believe that, he can believe that, I suppose.

817
00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 8: Well it gets better. So as he tells me that

818
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:32,920
Speaker 8: there's three or four guys waiting and they're they're just

819
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 8: standing around, just there, waiting on us, you know, so

820
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:36,759
Speaker 8: they can get a license, and a guy goes, did

821
00:48:36,800 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 8: you say you a mountain lion on camera?

822
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 3: The guy said yeah, yeah.

823
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 8: So he kind of turns his phone around and shows

824
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:45,440
Speaker 8: this other guy and it kind of draws a crowd,

825
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:47,280
Speaker 8: and there's three or four guys there and they're.

826
00:48:47,120 --> 00:48:49,920
Speaker 3: All like, oh, man, sure enough, you know it's a

827
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:51,640
Speaker 3: big mountain lion. Look at that thing. And they're all

828
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:52,600
Speaker 3: just handing around there.

829
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 8: So in a span of about one minute, he had

830
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:01,200
Speaker 8: convinced five people standing back there that he had a

831
00:49:01,239 --> 00:49:03,880
Speaker 8: mountain lion on camera, and every one of them believed

832
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 8: it and had no trouble believing. The only person back

833
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 8: there that thought otherwise was me, and it was because

834
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:13,560
Speaker 8: it was clearly a Bob Katamy.

835
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 3: This is how it starts.

836
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:19,160
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I thought, man, this is how the legends

837
00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:21,200
Speaker 8: and the myths and all these things you hear about

838
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:24,799
Speaker 8: people seeing mountain lions gets started. It just takes one

839
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:26,880
Speaker 8: person to see one. Now, all those five guys they

840
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:29,279
Speaker 8: left went wherever they went for the rest of the

841
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 8: day and told how many people they saw a mountain

842
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 8: lion on some guys game camera, and then thus there's

843
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:37,280
Speaker 8: a mountain lying around and everybody's seen it, when actually

844
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:39,439
Speaker 8: only one guy saw it. It wasn't even a mountain lion.

845
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:47,359
Speaker 5: Now back to Myron, do you want to delve into

846
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:48,520
Speaker 5: the black panther myth?

847
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: Absolutely yes. I meant to say that. In the South,

848
00:49:54,680 --> 00:49:58,680
Speaker 1: particularly Myron, you hear this. You hear people talking about

849
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:03,480
Speaker 1: black panthers like I with my own ears have heard

850
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: countless grown men that I believe to be like rational

851
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:13,240
Speaker 1: thinking people tell me that they've seen black panthers.

852
00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:17,200
Speaker 5: What's the deal with that? Well, I'll speak in scientific

853
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:19,360
Speaker 5: terms of black panthers.

854
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:24,440
Speaker 1: We can't have this discussion without talking about black panthers.

855
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:29,600
Speaker 1: My oh my, what a topic. Before we start, let

856
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:33,080
Speaker 1: me ask you a question. Do you believe in black

857
00:50:33,120 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: panthers in North America? If you do or you don't,

858
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 1: I gay wron t you. You know some people that do,

859
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:46,359
Speaker 1: and they're probably normal, maybe even successful humans. I want

860
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:48,840
Speaker 1: you to think about that for a minute. I was

861
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:53,160
Speaker 1: shocked when my own father told me this story.

862
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:58,839
Speaker 3: When I was a kid, we'd go to Bucksnord ain't

863
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 3: Ali and an't Ali. They weren't ant they were ain't

864
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:05,600
Speaker 3: ain't Ali and ain't Ally. And then you'd go down

865
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 3: to Oli's house and she had the dog trot and

866
00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:11,640
Speaker 3: you'd spend a night down there, and you'd hear a

867
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:12,920
Speaker 3: panther scream every.

868
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:13,200
Speaker 7: Now and then.

869
00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 3: Now, I don't, to be honest with you, I would

870
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:20,880
Speaker 3: be afraid that it was this cognitive disconnect where Lewin

871
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:23,359
Speaker 3: had talked about it so much, and they talked about

872
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:24,080
Speaker 3: it so much.

873
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:26,040
Speaker 1: When you, I mean, when you were there, it was

874
00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:30,440
Speaker 1: like in this place you can hear panthers scream, oh man.

875
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:35,279
Speaker 3: And when you drove you when you drove into Bucksnord

876
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 3: it was like if you were a city boy and

877
00:51:39,520 --> 00:51:41,480
Speaker 3: the guys like you and I that have a heart

878
00:51:41,719 --> 00:51:44,879
Speaker 3: for the outdoors even as a little kid. I mean,

879
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 3: it would just be so exciting. The trees were over

880
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:51,280
Speaker 3: the road, and when you pulled up in ain't Alley's house,

881
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 3: the yard was all sandy dirt, with doodle bugs everywhere

882
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:58,160
Speaker 3: in this big old dog trot down the middle and

883
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:01,640
Speaker 3: a big old porch across the front, and june bugs

884
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:04,720
Speaker 3: would always catch june bugs and fly those june bugs,

885
00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:08,279
Speaker 3: and we'd doodle bug and then a dark you know

886
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:11,680
Speaker 3: in case of these stinking panthers would scream, or you know,

887
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:15,320
Speaker 3: mountain lions. I think there's panther. I think there's black

888
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:19,239
Speaker 3: mountain lions myself. Do you really well, I mean, I

889
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:21,279
Speaker 3: don't have any proof of it. I just always have

890
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:24,879
Speaker 3: heard that. You've heard so you've heard of cognitive disc

891
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:26,960
Speaker 3: I mean, I've just believed the propaganda.

892
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:30,479
Speaker 9: You so you you have like you're seventy two years old,

893
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:33,239
Speaker 9: living in Arkansas your whole life, and you believe it

894
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:38,879
Speaker 9: is this thing. Yeah, I'm not worried about you believing that.

895
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:41,400
Speaker 9: I'm just trying to get to the root of where

896
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:43,879
Speaker 9: that comes from hey, who told me.

897
00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:46,120
Speaker 3: Hey, hey, when when I when I was a kid,

898
00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:49,360
Speaker 3: when when you'd have a group of kids around and

899
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:52,440
Speaker 3: your favorite aunt would be there and she would it

900
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:55,960
Speaker 3: would say, hey, tell us the story. And they'd go, well,

901
00:52:56,880 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 3: you know, there's this little family and when they were

902
00:52:59,360 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 3: you know, they were walking home one night and all

903
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:03,800
Speaker 3: of a sudden they looked around. There as a black

904
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 3: panther and they take the booty off the baby. And

905
00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:09,799
Speaker 3: you know those stories that just was all through my job.

906
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 3: They're just always there. Yeah, you know, throw a booty off,

907
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:14,759
Speaker 3: and then the diaper, and then the shirt, and then

908
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:18,759
Speaker 3: all of a sudden he pitch the baby back. Yeah.

909
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:23,840
Speaker 3: So anyway, but i'd hear adults talking about black panthers.

910
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 1: Now back to Myron.

911
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:42,560
Speaker 5: People for generations have called panthers mountain lions, catamounts, cougars, lions.

912
00:53:42,840 --> 00:53:45,880
Speaker 5: They're all the same animal, you know. They have a

913
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 5: whole litany of common localized names that people have called them,

914
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 5: but when it comes right down to it, they're all

915
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:55,920
Speaker 5: mountain lions. They're all the same animals.

916
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: There's no other species in North America of big cat,

917
00:53:58,920 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 1: no currently the land.

918
00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:03,919
Speaker 5: Well not in the United States. Anyway, Well, jaguars down

919
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:09,520
Speaker 5: inside are the only animal large cat that has known

920
00:54:09,680 --> 00:54:13,840
Speaker 5: to exist or have occurrence for a melanistic color face,

921
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:18,800
Speaker 5: which is a quote black color phase. Are two of

922
00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:25,439
Speaker 5: the large cats jaguars and leopards. Okay, So there has

923
00:54:25,719 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 5: never been a documented melanistic color phase of a mountain

924
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:40,440
Speaker 5: lion in history. Okay, so heartspiring, not even in the

925
00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:45,960
Speaker 5: Smithsonian Institute. So if you think in terms of black panthers,

926
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:50,120
Speaker 5: what most people are calling black panthers are black mountain lions,

927
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 5: and uh, scientifically the animals never existed. I think a

928
00:54:56,880 --> 00:54:59,279
Speaker 5: lot of it is folklore. I think a lot of

929
00:54:59,320 --> 00:55:05,800
Speaker 5: it is misidentification, folklore, you know, things of that nature.

930
00:55:07,080 --> 00:55:11,719
Speaker 5: And uh, I mean, is it is it plausible that

931
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:16,239
Speaker 5: a large black cat, a jaguar or leopard could never

932
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:21,479
Speaker 5: occur in Arkansas? It could if one of two things happen.

933
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:26,560
Speaker 5: Either a it escaped from someone's cage somewhere and it

934
00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:30,839
Speaker 5: was a jaguar or a leopard, or b you had

935
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 5: maybe a jaguar move up from Central America into.

936
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 1: Arkansas, which is just not plausible.

937
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:40,359
Speaker 5: You'd probably have just as good a chance of seeing

938
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 5: an ostrich as you would have black you know, jaguar.

939
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:46,440
Speaker 5: I have a lot of people, you know that that

940
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 5: get mad at me. Well, you're trying to tell me

941
00:55:48,640 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 5: I didn't see it. No, I don't try to tell

942
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 5: anybody they didn't see what they think they saw, or

943
00:55:54,160 --> 00:55:56,480
Speaker 5: someone they know didn't see what they think they saw.

944
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:59,600
Speaker 5: I just stand on the on the scientific facts of

945
00:55:59,640 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 5: the issue you and the scientific fact behind the whole

946
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:10,399
Speaker 5: black panther deal. It's just that that particular animal does

947
00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:13,160
Speaker 5: not exist or it's never been documented to occur in

948
00:56:13,239 --> 00:56:15,960
Speaker 5: a melanistic color face, a black color face.

949
00:56:20,360 --> 00:56:24,120
Speaker 1: Believing and trusting people is part of the community structure

950
00:56:24,160 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 1: of humankind. It's part of what separates us from the

951
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:31,759
Speaker 1: animals and what's made us biologically successful as a species.

952
00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:36,480
Speaker 1: If we doubted everything people said and demanded proof of everything,

953
00:56:36,920 --> 00:56:39,759
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have made it past the difficulty of our

954
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:44,360
Speaker 1: archaic past of slinging rocks and stuff and huddling in caves.

955
00:56:45,080 --> 00:56:48,759
Speaker 1: Blind trust in our fellow man is evidence of our humanity,

956
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 1: and deep down I believe that we want to believe people.

957
00:56:54,239 --> 00:56:57,840
Speaker 1: Deep down, we want to trust our brother or sister

958
00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:01,360
Speaker 1: if there is any good and the folklore the mountain

959
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:05,080
Speaker 1: lion in the Black Panther. It's found in the social

960
00:57:05,160 --> 00:57:09,160
Speaker 1: mechanics of wanting to believe the best of your neighbor,

961
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 1: in taking your friend at his word. Perhaps we need

962
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:17,000
Speaker 1: some more of that in today's time. Though mountain lions

963
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:19,800
Speaker 1: were certainly gone for the large part of the last

964
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 1: hundred years in the South, wouldn't you know it? The

965
00:57:23,240 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: truth has swung back around and found us still sitting

966
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: here believing mountain lions are back. And this is a

967
00:57:31,640 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 1: conservation's success story, but it's also a story of how

968
00:57:35,440 --> 00:57:39,960
Speaker 1: the truth, though temporarily labeled as folklore and it was,

969
00:57:40,760 --> 00:57:46,360
Speaker 1: has once again been found as truthful. Mountain lions are here,

970
00:57:46,840 --> 00:57:51,520
Speaker 1: and maybe they always have been. And if anybody ever

971
00:57:51,760 --> 00:57:57,160
Speaker 1: doubts that Gary Nukeomb or Brent Reeves did not see

972
00:57:57,160 --> 00:58:01,320
Speaker 1: a mountain lion, I'll punch him in the teeth, because

973
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:06,560
Speaker 1: I'll believe those two until the day I die. Long

974
00:58:06,680 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 1: live the beast, and long live the good word of

975
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 1: our brother and sister