Speaker 1: Mm and so this is what they found. Like mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, will journey
Speaker 1: into the realm of the most mysterious and rarest of
Speaker 1: beasts in the United States, like a ghost. Sometimes he's
Speaker 1: here and sometimes he isn't. We'll talk with a man
Speaker 1: who documented the first live one in the United States
Speaker 1: and see how it uprooted the conservation world and how
Speaker 1: the story rose to prominence in national media. You might
Speaker 1: recognize his voice when you hear him. We'll do a
Speaker 1: classic bear Grease nerd out with Arizona biologist Jim Heffelfinger
Speaker 1: to understand how this animal makes a living. And we'll
Speaker 1: meet yet another legendary man of the Southwest, though he's
Speaker 1: been gone for over thirty years. You'll hear his voice
Speaker 1: and receive an impartation from his passion. What we're talking
Speaker 1: about is panthera Anca, the eater of us, the Borderland's jaguar.
Speaker 1: I doubt you're gonna want to miss this one, But
Speaker 1: before we start, I've got a question for you. Before
Speaker 1: this intro, would you have known that there are jaguars
Speaker 1: in the United States? Well, the answer is kind of complicated.
Speaker 1: You would think like an orangeish cat with black spots
Speaker 1: would be so obvious, but very much not so. Those
Speaker 1: spots are there for a purpose, to hide them for
Speaker 1: a couple of months until they get big enough. This
Speaker 1: doesn't sound fair chase to me, Jim. They gotta give
Speaker 1: these coups deer and have Elena's and jaggerundi's a chance.
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 1: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 1: story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land.
Speaker 1: Presented by f HF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting
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Speaker 1: It's easier and more accessible than a backpack and it
Speaker 1: doesn't get in the way when I'm riding my mule.
Speaker 1: For a limited time, you can head over to f
Speaker 1: h F Gear dot com. Forward slash bear Grease and
Speaker 1: listeners to this here podcast get a discount on purchases
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Speaker 1: f h F gear dot com Forward slash bear grease
Speaker 1: for a special code. If you're buying stuff from f
Speaker 1: h F Gear, check it out Fish Hunt Fight f
Speaker 1: h F Gear. The topic at hand is a rare
Speaker 1: thing in modern times. I absolutely love it when the
Speaker 1: natural world jolts us back to a healthy posture of
Speaker 1: awe and mystery by revealing something we didn't think was possible.
Speaker 1: Jaguars are a jungle cat heavily mythologized by the indigenous
Speaker 1: people of Central and South America for millennia. The English
Speaker 1: word jaguar is derived from the Tupi Guarani language of Amazonia.
Speaker 1: Their word is ya guaria, and it means either of us.
Speaker 1: It's easy to understand why humans have been entranced by
Speaker 1: these beasts from the very beginning. A giant, yellow spotted
Speaker 1: cat with an oversized head and the mystical rosette pattern
Speaker 1: of his spotting makes him almost like a ghost. In Mexico,
Speaker 1: he's known as LT Gray and The Brazilian layman's term
Speaker 1: for the jaguar is Ownsa, but in science textbooks he's
Speaker 1: known as Panthera anca. The genus Panthera is the order
Speaker 1: of roaring cats. Yep I said, roaring, not purring. That's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. The tiger, lion, leopard, and jaguar are the
Speaker 1: only cat species anatomically outfitted to roar. For the record,
Speaker 1: don't let my perceived enthusiasm for felines be mistaken for
Speaker 1: having any love in my heart for domestic cats. I
Speaker 1: only like the big main ones that work for a
Speaker 1: living and put the or a god in every living
Speaker 1: thing in the jungle or the desert, I reckon. Jaguars
Speaker 1: are celebrated throughout their territory, which ranges from northern Argentina
Speaker 1: into Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, and then the cats continue
Speaker 1: up into Central America all the way into Mexico. In
Speaker 1: southern Mexico, jaguars are still very much at home in
Speaker 1: the dense, tropical like region. But as you had north,
Speaker 1: something very interesting begins to happen. The distribution of Panthera
Speaker 1: anca begins to hug the east and west coasts. The
Speaker 1: further north you go into Mexico. By the time you
Speaker 1: reach the geopolitical barrier of the US and Mexican border,
Speaker 1: jaguars are at the very fringe of their range, and
Speaker 1: I mean fringe in natural systems. Fringe habitat creates interesting
Speaker 1: populations of an alimos that are quite different than their
Speaker 1: ken at the core of the range. They're the outliers
Speaker 1: who utilize their survival strategies to the fullest point of
Speaker 1: leverage to make a living. You see, these jungle cats
Speaker 1: don't seem to particularly like living in arid regions, but
Speaker 1: it's just tolerable enough for some of them. I like
Speaker 1: to think of these fringe populations as special, almost like
Speaker 1: the frontiersman of the species testing the northern boundaries. It's
Speaker 1: a mystery, but in their travels they must perceive the
Speaker 1: nuanced limitations of the land as they head north, and
Speaker 1: perhaps their own limitations and the magnetism of the south
Speaker 1: overrides their wanderlust. And there is a point when they
Speaker 1: go no further, and that point is just barely inside
Speaker 1: the boundaries of the United States, and here these big
Speaker 1: cats are known as the borderland's jaguars. I want to
Speaker 1: understand these Borderlands, jaguars, their biology, and the overlap of
Speaker 1: how humans have interacted with the eater of us in
Speaker 1: the Southwest. But first we've got to hear a story
Speaker 1: that became a foundational piece of the jaguars modern North
Speaker 1: American story. It involves none other than our friend Warrener Glenn.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a head start to understanding the significance
Speaker 1: of what you're about to hear, because Mr Warner kind
Speaker 1: of plays it off like it's no big deal. But
Speaker 1: before this, we didn't think they came here anymore. This
Speaker 1: story took place in extreme southwest New Mexico. That was
Speaker 1: a completely new express So let me go back to
Speaker 1: a little bit. But Dad and I went to Mexico
Speaker 1: twice trying to catch the jaguar. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: their beautiful cat, and they're very hard to get, very
Speaker 1: hard to trail, little catch and uh dangerous for the
Speaker 1: Mexican jaguars down here or known for killing dogs. And
Speaker 1: we never had any luck, so Daddy never got to
Speaker 1: see a jaguary. Now, in nine Kelly and I were
Speaker 1: hunting in the telling Cia Mountains right east others, and
Speaker 1: we split up that morning and she actually took one
Speaker 1: dog with her maple, and she hit that track. She
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was, she thought she but she
Speaker 1: knew it was a cat. She knew it was either
Speaker 1: a line that line, and that's what we are, a
Speaker 1: bump cat that But the way it was pulling out,
Speaker 1: she figure was a line. So she told me which
Speaker 1: the way it was going, and I cut ahead of it,
Speaker 1: and and I finally got to where I could hear maple,
Speaker 1: and of course my dogs heard it and went tour.
Speaker 1: And what happened the track I read in the book.
Speaker 1: The track was very big, and you thought it was
Speaker 1: a big mountain, big old and so that when they
Speaker 1: all got with her, that thing evidently had heard my
Speaker 1: dogs and turned around and went back the other way,
Speaker 1: and it went along. We trailed that from that point on.
Speaker 1: We trailed in well, actually there was a junk track
Speaker 1: from then on, and we trapped probably another four miles
Speaker 1: before they had finally bade it. And of course I
Speaker 1: was trying to keep up on the mule. Kelly had
Speaker 1: gone back to get our client, and I was trying
Speaker 1: to keep the dogs in here, and we didn't have
Speaker 1: tracking callers in on the bull. And when I first
Speaker 1: I finally caught up to where I could see him
Speaker 1: baying off in a across a big basin with the
Speaker 1: head of a canyon there on the other side, and
Speaker 1: I could tell they had it bade on top of
Speaker 1: this big boulder was kind of a small bluff cliff there,
Speaker 1: and it looked to me I could just see it
Speaker 1: crouched there is that it was probably I was looking
Speaker 1: a half a mile across and I couldn't really tell.
Speaker 1: I thought it's big old tom Land. So I told Kelly,
Speaker 1: I said, they've got that thing bade, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get over there to it so I can get with
Speaker 1: those dogs while you're bringing the client. So when I
Speaker 1: call over there, I tied my mule and I walked
Speaker 1: down about forty yards. It was really rough, steep mountain there,
Speaker 1: and I looked around the opinion tree there and I
Speaker 1: can see that thing right, And then that's the first
Speaker 1: time I realized it was Jaguar and it was crowd
Speaker 1: just on top of that, and I it looked over
Speaker 1: and saw me about the same time, and that's when
Speaker 1: I took the first I ran back up to my
Speaker 1: mule and got a camera out of my saddle horned pouch.
Speaker 1: And ran back down there where I wasn't. I took
Speaker 1: a picture. I took three of it there, and then
Speaker 1: the jaguars stood up and looked around, and then he
Speaker 1: went over this rock out of the side of me,
Speaker 1: and I thought that sudden. He was gonna jump off
Speaker 1: of there, and the dogs were all around the base
Speaker 1: of this cliff, but it was too far for him
Speaker 1: to jump. It would have been like a forty ft
Speaker 1: straight off jump. So he came back over. So I
Speaker 1: got pictures of him coming back over the rock, and
Speaker 1: then he jumped off the uphill side and took off,
Speaker 1: and the dogs camera had got on his track, so
Speaker 1: the chase was on. So I ran back, got the
Speaker 1: mule and went off of them, and I told Kelly
Speaker 1: what was going on. I said, Jelly to Jaguar, and
Speaker 1: he said, I've got to get those dogs stopped and
Speaker 1: and get before I get something hurt. Well, they bade
Speaker 1: it again off in a big canyon there, and when
Speaker 1: I caught up, and when I got I tied my
Speaker 1: mule bag. I could hear that thing. It was really mad.
Speaker 1: It was roaring at those dogs. And I tied the
Speaker 1: mule back of ways, and then I slipped down their
Speaker 1: foot was the camera and it was trying to get
Speaker 1: those dogs back. And that thing looked up and saw
Speaker 1: me and one day to word word could go back
Speaker 1: in to crevice, sir, and boy, here he came, but
Speaker 1: right his eyes locked onto mine, and here he came.
Speaker 1: He knew that I was a problem, and how I
Speaker 1: don't know, And those dogs made him head on. There
Speaker 1: was a billion I've got pictures of that meeting. And
Speaker 1: and then they all fell off back into that crevice
Speaker 1: and I went in there and he had one dog
Speaker 1: by the hind leg and he broke the It was Maple,
Speaker 1: and it ran in there on top of the shelf,
Speaker 1: and they kicked a bunch of loose gravel and stuff
Speaker 1: that oh, and it hit that that stuff. He hit
Speaker 1: the jaguar on the rear in and he whipped around.
Speaker 1: And I got back and got the dogs on top.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I got the dogs back, then
Speaker 1: he went ahead and left. And I tied four of
Speaker 1: those dogs to the only and Maple was hurt. She
Speaker 1: couldn't go. He had a broken leg. So two of
Speaker 1: the young dogs left with it, and I thought, boy,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do. I just went in
Speaker 1: and made sure if they and they came back before
Speaker 1: I got ready to go try to catch up thed
Speaker 1: I think it ran ran them back all sous and
Speaker 1: I was glad. I was glad for it to get
Speaker 1: out of there. But that was that was the first one.
Speaker 1: That was the that was the first documented jaguar in
Speaker 1: the first picture of a jaguar in the United States.
Speaker 1: It was the first picture of a live jaguar in
Speaker 1: the wild in the United States. That's why it got
Speaker 1: gained a little bit of notorat or whatever you call it,
Speaker 1: I don't know what, just because and really at that
Speaker 1: time they weren't on the endangered species list, but they
Speaker 1: were on the proposed endangered list, and so it wasn't
Speaker 1: of course they were protected state law and all side
Speaker 1: by the federal law, but but it was they weren't
Speaker 1: on the endangered species But I still I still didn't
Speaker 1: know for sure whether to make it come out in
Speaker 1: public with that picture, because I had some good pictures
Speaker 1: of that thing, and I just didn't know what the
Speaker 1: reaction would be. So I had a little meeting with
Speaker 1: some of the renters around in the Maltpipe Borderlands Group,
Speaker 1: and we decided to do that's a neat thing to have.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this win. Yeah, we thought it was a
Speaker 1: need and it's not gonna come up here and put
Speaker 1: some rentro out of business. I mean, they're just a
Speaker 1: few of the come through. Yeah, And so I went
Speaker 1: in and public with the pictures. The history of jaguars
Speaker 1: in the Southwest United States goes back a long ways,
Speaker 1: like to the plis to see kind of long ways,
Speaker 1: and it's a complex story. At this point, all you
Speaker 1: need to know is that this was the first live
Speaker 1: jaguar documented in the United States, and it started a
Speaker 1: tidal wave of interest in the Borderland jaguar. It was
Speaker 1: essentially like someone showing up with a legitimate photo of Bigfoot.
Speaker 1: The major news outlets in the country featured the old
Speaker 1: Cowboys jaguar story. The eyes of the global conservation world,
Speaker 1: We're on Mr Warner in the series of beautiful photos
Speaker 1: he took of the Borderland's jaguar, and it came with
Speaker 1: a flurry of research to feed America's new fascination. Jim
Speaker 1: Heffelfinger is the Wildlife Science Coordinator for the Arizona Department
Speaker 1: of Game and Fish. He's an author and a full
Speaker 1: research scientists at the University of Arizona. More than that,
Speaker 1: he's a wealth of information on all things wild. He's
Speaker 1: been stomping around the jaguar fringe habitat of Arizona and
Speaker 1: New Mexico for most of his life. And I want
Speaker 1: to understand jaguar biology. I think Jim can help us.
Speaker 1: I want to start off with Jim in some deep history,
Speaker 1: like way deep. The Pleistocene is a term used to
Speaker 1: describe a time period on Earth. It started roughly two
Speaker 1: point five million years ago and ended about ten thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, which was just like yesterday. This roughly corresponds
Speaker 1: with the glaciers of North America retreating, the climate warming
Speaker 1: in a bunch of species going extinct and Homo sapiens arriving.
Speaker 1: It truly was a fantastical period of North American biological history,
Speaker 1: the likes of which Marvel Studios couldn't rival. With a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar budget and the world's most creative digital animators,
Speaker 1: the place was wild. When you see a jaguar today,
Speaker 1: know that he's got some deep history. Here's Jim, as
Speaker 1: I understand it. The jaguar used to be I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a different species of jaguar that's now extinct.
Speaker 1: But it was a very large jaguar, like like most
Speaker 1: things during that time period and what is now North America,
Speaker 1: they were giant. It's fascinating because I believe it was
Speaker 1: Panthera Augusta was the was the big like pleist to
Speaker 1: see jaguar, and then over time it got smaller and
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller and smaller, as as the big animals
Speaker 1: as eating got smaller. I thought it was interesting that
Speaker 1: it out competed and survived all the big cats except
Speaker 1: for the Mountain lion, and those are the two big
Speaker 1: ones that we have left. Sure, we had a North
Speaker 1: American chea, we had North American lion, We had a
Speaker 1: North American smilet on fatalis the big savor tooth cats,
Speaker 1: and everything was bigger. We had ninety pound beavers in
Speaker 1: the places seen. We had bison that has a very
Speaker 1: clearly demonstrated reduction in size through time to the to
Speaker 1: the bison we know from the eighteen hundreds and so
Speaker 1: a lot of things got smaller. So that was a
Speaker 1: pretty pretty typical kind of relationship. We had dire wolves,
Speaker 1: which were giant wolves in the place has seen. Why
Speaker 1: did things get smaller? I think it's probably just a
Speaker 1: change in productivity when in that glacial environment you had
Speaker 1: so much disturbance and you just had a lot of productivity,
Speaker 1: and you've got abundance of prey animals. We had so
Speaker 1: many different hooved animals in North America, many of them
Speaker 1: that evolved here and became extinct and and never never
Speaker 1: survived to anything else. What we have in North America's
Speaker 1: day is just the remnants of what it used to be.
Speaker 1: Even with the big cats. I mean, we have two
Speaker 1: big cats. The closest relative of the jaguar, as I
Speaker 1: understand it, is the African leopard. They kind of came
Speaker 1: from the same place, diverged from each other in the
Speaker 1: African leopard is still in Africa, but they're similar species.
Speaker 1: And I've read where they can breathe. They've read them
Speaker 1: in captivity and I actually produced fertile offspring, which is
Speaker 1: kind of wild, right, So the cats are prone to
Speaker 1: do that. You can you can cross tigers and um
Speaker 1: and lions. The Lager of Napoleon dynamite fame is actually
Speaker 1: a real thing. They can do that in captivity. So
Speaker 1: cats will sometimes cross, But the jaguars is from that
Speaker 1: group of panther, which is a roaring cats that are
Speaker 1: vocal and they roar like that. And so you're write
Speaker 1: there related to those old world cats that evolved over there,
Speaker 1: as a jaguar came over here. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: the roaring cats. Yeah, that's uh, just some class of cats,
Speaker 1: those big cats that they call roaring cats, and they
Speaker 1: make a vocalization, a lot of different vocalizations, and the
Speaker 1: jaguar kind of has an ug ug ug that it
Speaker 1: will repeat an increasing frequency and then fade off like that.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a breeding call, is that what
Speaker 1: it would be, right? It's mostly a locating breeding call
Speaker 1: to breed because they're solitary animals and they will get
Speaker 1: together and and pair up just for the breeding season.
Speaker 1: But that's it. They don't they don't have male and
Speaker 1: female groups walking around together just hunting together. They just
Speaker 1: get together and breathe and it's about a one day
Speaker 1: affair and then they're separate again. So how big are jaguars? Yeah,
Speaker 1: in South America and what we say is the real
Speaker 1: jungle habitat, they're much bigger, more diversity of prey, a
Speaker 1: lot more bigger items, at a higher density. It's so
Speaker 1: jaguars down there would be two hundred, two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds for males. A hundred twenty five pounds for
Speaker 1: females is an average. But up in this northern what
Speaker 1: we call the borderland jaguars, they're much smaller than than
Speaker 1: you would find out at Central and South America. And
Speaker 1: they're not a whole lot actually not a whole lot
Speaker 1: bigger than that our mountain lions are here, and so
Speaker 1: some of the there's there's not a lot of figures,
Speaker 1: of course, because we don't have a huge sample size
Speaker 1: of jaguar weights from Arizona, New Mexico and the northern
Speaker 1: Mexico border lands. But some of the weights that we
Speaker 1: do have seemed to average around for males eighty pounds,
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds for for females, and so considerably smaller
Speaker 1: than Central, well in South American jaguars. Some indication that
Speaker 1: some of these at the northern end are a little
Speaker 1: bit heavier than those in Central Mexico. But again you're
Speaker 1: dealing with a sample size problem. And if you weigh
Speaker 1: a dead jaguar, does it have forty pounds of deer
Speaker 1: or elk inside its belly or has it maybe not
Speaker 1: eaten for two weeks. That can make a huge difference.
Speaker 1: I read that Dale Lee recorded his biggest male jaguars
Speaker 1: away a hundred and sixty two pounds. I think that's
Speaker 1: the record too. I just dropped a name that will
Speaker 1: need to know if we want to understand the robust
Speaker 1: swath of jaguar history. Dale Lee was from Arizona. He
Speaker 1: was a legendary mountain lion and jaguar hunter in the Southwest.
Speaker 1: We're going to learn more about dale and just a bit,
Speaker 1: but first I want to ask Jim about some fundamental
Speaker 1: jaguar biology. Talk to me about jaguar biology. Where do
Speaker 1: they live, what are they eating? What do they do
Speaker 1: to make a living? Yeah, so jaguar the epicenter of
Speaker 1: jaguar distribution is South America. If you look at their
Speaker 1: map that their core areas South America and Central America,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll be in little lower densities going down all
Speaker 1: the way to Argentina. So they're adapted to this several
Speaker 1: different tropical forest types down there. But that's that's really
Speaker 1: the core of where they live. But they're so adaptable
Speaker 1: they've been able to adapt northward and there's a if
Speaker 1: you look at the distribution. There's this long finger from
Speaker 1: South America that goes up the east coast of Mexico
Speaker 1: and goes into South Texas historically, and then there's another
Speaker 1: long finger that goes up the west coast of Mexico
Speaker 1: into just the southern part of Arizona and New Mexico.
Speaker 1: And it's really incredible that you've got an animal that
Speaker 1: is typically kind of a jungle animal that has adapted
Speaker 1: to some of these more arid forest types all the
Speaker 1: way up the east and west coast of Mexico and
Speaker 1: dipping into dipping into Arizona and New Mexico and dipping
Speaker 1: into Texas historically. So they're made prey because of that.
Speaker 1: That center of distribution is tapers and peckery is what
Speaker 1: we call have elena in the in the southwest, coatis armadillos,
Speaker 1: some of those things that you see kind of in
Speaker 1: a jungle environment. These northern borderline jaguars of course, are
Speaker 1: feeding mostly on Kyle's whitetail deer, the small version of
Speaker 1: white tail deer we have in the Southwest. We've got
Speaker 1: collared peckery that we call have alena that are up
Speaker 1: here in these mountain ranges, So those things probably make
Speaker 1: up a vast majority of their diets. For the borderline jaguars, interestingly,
Speaker 1: they're eating skunks, they're eating little coatis, they're eating basically
Speaker 1: anything they can get their hands on. And and I
Speaker 1: remember hearing that even UH warners jaguar encounter in NIX
Speaker 1: that he mentioned that that smelt like skunk described the
Speaker 1: morphology of jaguar, like what does he look like as
Speaker 1: compared to the mountain lion? Most people would be pretty
Speaker 1: familiar with the mountain lion. Proportion of that, the jaguar's
Speaker 1: head is going to be huge, and the proportion of
Speaker 1: the tail is going to be shorter actually than a
Speaker 1: mountain lion. So uh, a jaguars tail is it to
Speaker 1: be not longer than half of the body length of
Speaker 1: the head. If you take the head and the body together,
Speaker 1: and they have those those um the spotting which they
Speaker 1: call rosettes, which because they look like a flower, so
Speaker 1: they're kind of an open, broken rosette, but they have
Speaker 1: black dots on the inside, as opposed to a leopard
Speaker 1: would have those open rosettes but no spots on the inside.
Speaker 1: And so that that body pattern too is like a fingerprint.
Speaker 1: And that's why when we get trail camp pictures of
Speaker 1: a jaguar, and and and oftentimes they're setting up trail
Speaker 1: cam on both sides of where they think of jaguar
Speaker 1: might walk through because they want pictures of both sides
Speaker 1: of the cat to get a recording of that fingerprint
Speaker 1: of those spots, so those are with they'll pick out.
Speaker 1: They'll look at the side of a jaguar from a
Speaker 1: trail camp picture and they'll pick out a couple really
Speaker 1: unique spots. One particular jaguar had a spot they called
Speaker 1: the Pinocchio spot because it looked like two eyes and
Speaker 1: then this long nose coming off it. So they'll have
Speaker 1: some unique spots like that, and then um, whenever there's
Speaker 1: a photograph of the jaguar, they'll look for some of
Speaker 1: those unique markings to keep track of individual jaguars just
Speaker 1: from photographs. A rosette is a circular pattern of black spots.
Speaker 1: This could be a combination of four to six spots.
Speaker 1: A jaguar has a black spot in the middle of
Speaker 1: its rosettes. An African leopard has rosettes too, but not
Speaker 1: a black spot in the middle of the rosette. It
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like much difference, but standing side by side,
Speaker 1: a jaguar and a leopard look different. Google a picture
Speaker 1: of a jaguar and a leopard and you'll see what
Speaker 1: I mean. I've read that the spotting of a jaguar,
Speaker 1: specifically with these rosettes, is designed for dappled light, which
Speaker 1: is just incredible because having been down there with Warner,
Speaker 1: the sun is all. It's very rarely overcast down there.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of rainfall, and so with direct
Speaker 1: sunlight and when you have vegetation, what you get is
Speaker 1: dappled light. And uh man, I bet they're just invisible
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, you can picture them on the forest
Speaker 1: floor with all that dappled on an already kind of
Speaker 1: mosaic of brown leaves. You would think like an orange
Speaker 1: ish cat with black spots would be so obvious, but
Speaker 1: very much not. So. It's just like the fun like
Speaker 1: you get a fallen deer. Those spots are there for
Speaker 1: a for a purpose, to hide them for a couple
Speaker 1: of months until they get big enough that they can
Speaker 1: get away from predators. So, Jim, this, this doesn't sound
Speaker 1: fair chase to me. Jim, I think I'm calling bull
Speaker 1: on these jaguars. Many they got to give these cous
Speaker 1: deer and have Elena's and Jaggerundi's a chance we should
Speaker 1: make them wear bells when they walked through the wood. No,
Speaker 1: I was fascinated with that. It amazes me. With the
Speaker 1: greatest possible human technology and reasoning, us using our minds
Speaker 1: to try to develop camouflage, we really can't replicate the
Speaker 1: simplicity of nature. When I look at whitetail deer here
Speaker 1: by my house in Arkansas where I live, like, I'm
Speaker 1: amazed how they how they just they just disappear in
Speaker 1: the color tones are just right, and the color tones vary.
Speaker 1: You know, from Arkansas up in Canada, where a hunt
Speaker 1: the other deer, it looked just a little bit different.
Speaker 1: It just blows my mind. And then when you see
Speaker 1: something as complex as the coloring of a predator that
Speaker 1: makes his living not only by hiding from other stuff
Speaker 1: that my harmon, but hiding from prey, you kind of
Speaker 1: see the full gamut of nature doing its best work.
Speaker 1: I feel like, I know there's a burning question in
Speaker 1: your mind right now. You're saying, Clay, ask Jim about
Speaker 1: black panthers. In episode one of the Bear Grease podcasts,
Speaker 1: we established that the only large black cat documented by
Speaker 1: science that wouldn't have to swim an ocean to get
Speaker 1: to the United States would be a melanistic jaguar. So
Speaker 1: here's what Jim had to say, Gary Nucom, I hope
Speaker 1: you're listening. No offense to aunt Ali and the residents
Speaker 1: of Buck Snort, Arkansas, the black panther capital of the
Speaker 1: United States. Okay, I've got to bring this up. Melanistic jaguars. Okay, Jim,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much you much time you spend
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, all these places, but you
Speaker 1: know there's all this talk of black panthers on the
Speaker 1: previous Barregheras podcast. We've established with biologists that there's no
Speaker 1: science has never documented a melanistic mountain lion, but everybody
Speaker 1: in their brother has seen a black one. Jim, the
Speaker 1: only possible wild large cat that could be black that
Speaker 1: would be within two thousand miles of Arkansas would be
Speaker 1: a melanistic jaguar. To increase that distance, it's not two
Speaker 1: thousand miles that jaguars do have a black face. Even
Speaker 1: the black jaguars have spots. You can see the spots
Speaker 1: when the sun hits the right even on the black
Speaker 1: face jaguar. But there has never been a black phase
Speaker 1: jaguar sited north of Chiapas, which is southern the very
Speaker 1: southern tip of Mexico, right where it touches Central America.
Speaker 1: So north of of right where Mexico runs into Central America.
Speaker 1: North of that, there has never been a black jaguar documented.
Speaker 1: It's been confirmed to be a wild jaguar. Now, I
Speaker 1: have seen there was a local sports and the warehouse
Speaker 1: that had a pure black mountain lion, full body mount
Speaker 1: and I knew the taxidervice had has played on there
Speaker 1: and I called. I called the tax service right away
Speaker 1: when I saw that, and I said, what is the
Speaker 1: deal with this black mountainlin because this is the first
Speaker 1: melanistic mountain lion I've ever seen documented at all. And
Speaker 1: he said, no, we just died the felt black just
Speaker 1: for a conversation. Peace. Oh man, he's stoke in the fire.
Speaker 1: Stoke in the fire. Now, I'm absolutely amazed at at
Speaker 1: the power of folklore and the power of people's imagination,
Speaker 1: and I think desire to believe people well. I worked
Speaker 1: as a wildlife research technician at Mississippi State university for
Speaker 1: a about a year and a half starting up a
Speaker 1: buck mortality to study around the whole state and spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time in the delta with a lot
Speaker 1: of good a lot of good folks, And so I'm
Speaker 1: no stranger. There's a black panther. How many black panthers
Speaker 1: did you see down there? Now that that's settled, we
Speaker 1: can move on to other pertinent jaguar biology questions. How
Speaker 1: does a jaguar hunt. There's certainly ambush predators, and they
Speaker 1: do seem to be focused, like we're talking around water
Speaker 1: because probvious reading the praise coming into water, especially in
Speaker 1: a narrowed ecosystem like this, and so they will ambush
Speaker 1: um certainly near water. But that's where the camouflage comes
Speaker 1: into play. They're hiding their ambushing a single animal. They're
Speaker 1: not a coursing predator like a wolf that would run
Speaker 1: and run and run. They're just gonna sneak out and
Speaker 1: and leap on the animal and then they're gonna deliver
Speaker 1: crushing bite, usually on the back of the neck. And
Speaker 1: the more experience of jaguar is, the better it is
Speaker 1: at at clipping that and incapacitate ing the prey. Well
Speaker 1: it holds onto it with the five switchblades that has
Speaker 1: in each front ball. Jim brought up the issue of water.
Speaker 1: Jaguars are considered the world's most aquatic big cat. Despite
Speaker 1: feline's reputation for hating water, jaguars are competent swimming and
Speaker 1: hunting in water. Of note two is that jaguars are
Speaker 1: the most nocturnal of the big cats. They just don't
Speaker 1: move much in the daytime, making them even more elusive
Speaker 1: and mysterious to humans. If you want to see some
Speaker 1: wild video, go search for jaguars hunting Cayman little alligator
Speaker 1: like things in South America. It's some of the wildest
Speaker 1: nature kill seeing stuff you'll ever see. Another interesting thing
Speaker 1: of note, when inspecting a livestock kill, it is possible
Speaker 1: to distinguish a jaguar from a mountain lion kill. Jaguar
Speaker 1: kills typically have the first and second vertebrae of the
Speaker 1: neck broke, and they eat in a different order than
Speaker 1: a mountain lion. Jaguars start at the head and show
Speaker 1: an unusual preference for the tongue, ears, and nose. Mountain
Speaker 1: lions usually start eating a carcass just behind the rib
Speaker 1: cage and they prefer the internal organs to each his own.
Speaker 1: I guess. So they have a very big jaw structure
Speaker 1: that's bigger than a bigger than a mountain lion. That
Speaker 1: huge head is not fat, that's all muscle massiter muscle,
Speaker 1: and that's all those huge muscles that worked that jaw
Speaker 1: and and create that crushing power. There was an account
Speaker 1: of veterinarian that had what's called speculum, a thing that
Speaker 1: you put in an animal's mouth to hold his mouth
Speaker 1: open in order to get a tube in there take
Speaker 1: a sample, And he had a speculum in of jaguar's
Speaker 1: mouth that was a half inch steel, and the jaguar
Speaker 1: crushed that half inch steel. So I don't know what
Speaker 1: the bite strength is, but it's pretty amazing when you've
Speaker 1: got a head full of muscle that big like jaguars.
Speaker 1: A lot of people would understand what a mountain lion
Speaker 1: print would look like. How how would a jaguar print
Speaker 1: be different. Yeah, just to an experience mountaine hunter, jaguar
Speaker 1: print is gonna look different right away. And so they're
Speaker 1: they're larger overall, but that's that's not the only thing. Proportionately,
Speaker 1: they're different. The jaguar heel pad makes up a greater
Speaker 1: proportion of the overall print on the ground. And also
Speaker 1: the toes of the jaguar are are more roundish and
Speaker 1: also kind of larger in proportion to the print, where
Speaker 1: supposed to the mountain light toes might look a little
Speaker 1: more almond shaped, a little more oval shaped, and jaguars
Speaker 1: toe pads be a little bit a little bit rounder.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the the range of jaguars. So pre
Speaker 1: European settlement, there would have been jaguars in Texas, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: in Arizona, and I want to talk about how far
Speaker 1: they naturally would have come up into the United States
Speaker 1: and kind of what records do we have and and
Speaker 1: and how do we know they were here? I did
Speaker 1: read that in the eighteen fifties jaguars would have been
Speaker 1: fairly common quote unquote common in Texas and that there
Speaker 1: were six jaguars killed in Texas in the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: How far north did these jaguars go? Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think there are. All the evidence I've seen indicates they
Speaker 1: weren't common at any time. Even when the first European
Speaker 1: explorers were coming in and contacting you would have you
Speaker 1: would have a jaguar was killed, and it was it
Speaker 1: was often reported in the newspaper as the first one
Speaker 1: ever in the country, and sometimes it wasn't. It was
Speaker 1: just they were so far and few and far between
Speaker 1: that people weren't even aware of any other jaguars ever
Speaker 1: being killed in the country, and when one was cited
Speaker 1: or one was killed, it was big fanfare and people
Speaker 1: made a big deal out of it, which is which
Speaker 1: is evidence even in the eighteen fifties that there just
Speaker 1: wasn't um This wasn't a common animal that was a
Speaker 1: commonly part of our natural fauna. But there's evidence in
Speaker 1: Arizona all the way up to the Grand Canyon, which
Speaker 1: is the northern part of the state. And we have
Speaker 1: to clarify too, we're not talking about places scene distribution
Speaker 1: where they were all over the country. If we just
Speaker 1: talked about, say that eighteen hundreds or so on, when
Speaker 1: when Europeans were coming in and more importantly, when some
Speaker 1: of the stuff was being documented in writing, when we
Speaker 1: actually start getting records of what kind of things were killed.
Speaker 1: But we've got records all the way up to uh
Speaker 1: Actually it was a Hopie Native Americans that killed jaguar
Speaker 1: up by the Grand Canyon, and records from there south
Speaker 1: but extremely sparse and almost entirely male in in Arizona.
Speaker 1: We haven't the last female that was killed in Arizona
Speaker 1: was There's never been a documented female killed in in
Speaker 1: New Mexico in our in our written record. When you
Speaker 1: look at the distribution of jaguars and you see these
Speaker 1: little fingers coming way up through Mexico on the east
Speaker 1: and west coast and just touching the US, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty strong indication that we didn't have a big, robust
Speaker 1: breeding population of jaguars. We had just the fringe were
Speaker 1: feathered out as it got across the US border. We
Speaker 1: did have some females that were documented in the US
Speaker 1: near the border, and and actually that one by the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, and we did have some records of a
Speaker 1: few young and so there were females that probably bred
Speaker 1: in the US, but it would be a stretch to
Speaker 1: say that we had a breeding population of jaguars. We
Speaker 1: had a few that were feathering out into Arizona, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: and some of those happened to be females, and there
Speaker 1: were some kittens that were their their prime habitat is
Speaker 1: not this arid, open country habitat that you see in Arizona,
Speaker 1: New Mexico. I mean, they're a jungle cat, primarily a
Speaker 1: jungle cat. They've adapted to these uh, these mountain ranges
Speaker 1: up here, and so they'll live in small, isolated, usually
Speaker 1: fragmented populations and and they're persisting. Some people probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to argue that it's not their habitat because they're
Speaker 1: living here and they're doing okay. But boy, they're just
Speaker 1: they're just the jaguar distribution is reaching up on the
Speaker 1: tippy toes and just touching the United States that the
Speaker 1: at the very southern border. And and that was historically
Speaker 1: when you think of there's reports in the eighteen fifties
Speaker 1: where people make a complete scientists make a complete list
Speaker 1: of the carnivores and they don't list jaguars, and and
Speaker 1: then one one does show up. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: really big deal. And if you look at the Native
Speaker 1: American cultures in the Southwest, there's really not much jaguar motif.
Speaker 1: There's nothing much jaguar symbolism at all. That tells you
Speaker 1: that if the Native Americans, that's such a powerful animal.
Speaker 1: And in in Central American South America, it figures prominently
Speaker 1: in all of their culture and all of their stories.
Speaker 1: And you have some of the Native American tribes that
Speaker 1: have no stories that include the jaguar and really no
Speaker 1: symbolism that has a jaguar. Once in a while, there
Speaker 1: there are a few pictures of spotted cats, and so
Speaker 1: probably just like today, once in a while there would
Speaker 1: be a spotted cat that someone would kill or someone
Speaker 1: would see, and and that that was of course a
Speaker 1: big deal to them, and they would talk about it.
Speaker 1: They may make some symbolism. You know. It's kind of
Speaker 1: surprising to me that the indigenous cultures that region didn't
Speaker 1: make a bigger deal about it for the very reason
Speaker 1: that it was rare. Presumably they would have encountered them
Speaker 1: at different times. I've got a theory though, I think
Speaker 1: that they just said all the guys that saw them
Speaker 1: were liars, and so, just like we do today to
Speaker 1: people say I saw a jaguar down there, and you go, no,
Speaker 1: you didn't, you saw a mountain lion. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: was some some warrior braves around the campfire mocking some
Speaker 1: guy that said he saw the podcat. Yeah. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: absence of jaguar symbolism in the southwest United States is peculiar,
Speaker 1: but only as it's contrasted with the indigenous people more
Speaker 1: central to the range of Panthera anca in Central America.
Speaker 1: The Old Amec people adopted the jaguar as their principal totem.
Speaker 1: Totem means a natural item of spiritual significance. They dressed
Speaker 1: their nobles and warriors in jaguar skins. They made art
Speaker 1: that depicted half human half jaguar deities. They named temples
Speaker 1: after jaguars. They believed that jaguars could impart hunting prowess
Speaker 1: to humans when humans dreamed about them, and they had
Speaker 1: rights involving sacrificing jaguars and humans. There is evidence that
Speaker 1: they raise captive jaguars just for this purpose. That's some
Speaker 1: wild stuff right there. But you know what they say,
Speaker 1: when in jaguar country do what they do in jaguar country,
Speaker 1: that's a joke. But the point is that where there
Speaker 1: are a lot of jaguars, they dominate the culture, and
Speaker 1: then the tribal cultures of the southwest US they don't.
Speaker 1: I think now is an appropriate time to try to
Speaker 1: understand how humans are interacting with jaguars in modern times.
Speaker 1: Here's what Jim said, Talk to me about the greatest
Speaker 1: threats to jaguars today. The jaguars range wide, Um, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter where they are. One of the greatest
Speaker 1: threats is loss of habitat, especially in the rainforest. UM.
Speaker 1: That's that's not new news, the rainforest destruction, but also
Speaker 1: other stresses on their habitat and in other places that
Speaker 1: fragment their habitat, even the north. But the second really
Speaker 1: big issue is just retaliatory killings for livestock depredation. You
Speaker 1: have people living very close to the land, living on
Speaker 1: the landscape. Their entire bank account is that little herd
Speaker 1: of cattle that they have, and you get a jaguar
Speaker 1: coming and start killing and it's just like removing money
Speaker 1: out of their bank account, and so they they're they're
Speaker 1: just trying to make a living. You're talking about Mexico, right,
Speaker 1: not in not in the US, but Mexico and Central
Speaker 1: America and South America. You have these people living with
Speaker 1: small groups of cattle and that's their entire income, and
Speaker 1: when a jaguar comes in and just start taking all
Speaker 1: their money away, UM, that doesn't go over very well.
Speaker 1: And it's a retaliatory killing. That is, there's a drain
Speaker 1: on the local population. Now, there's a lot of really
Speaker 1: good conservation groups that are working hard and working with
Speaker 1: local landowners to increase tolerance and to compensate. But in
Speaker 1: some of these countries, they don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: money for compensation. They don't have a lot of money
Speaker 1: for some of these programs, and so it's it's difficult.
Speaker 1: And that's that's really where the rubber meets a road
Speaker 1: in conservation these days, is is finding innovative solutions to
Speaker 1: allow people to coexist with large carnivores that are impacting
Speaker 1: natively impacting their their existence. Here's the bottom line for conservation.
Speaker 1: The fate of jaguars in the United States is dependent
Speaker 1: upon the population in Sonora, Mexico, where they're way more jaguars.
Speaker 1: All our jaguars come from there, and they all return
Speaker 1: there at some point. There's a lot of good conservation
Speaker 1: work going on in Mexico for the jaguars. However, a
Speaker 1: big consideration on the migration pattern is the border wall
Speaker 1: between the United States and Mexico. Here's the low down. Currently,
Speaker 1: there's about six hundred and fifty miles of the two
Speaker 1: thousand mile long border that is fenced. Of the six
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty fenced miles, three hundred of it is
Speaker 1: just a vehicle barrier, meaning wildlife can pass through it. More,
Speaker 1: that means that three d and fifty miles of the
Speaker 1: border wall has a wall meant to keep out people.
Speaker 1: This type of wall is definitely difficult for wildlife to cross. However,
Speaker 1: I saw it with my own eyes creek crossings on
Speaker 1: the border wall while I was down there in Arizona
Speaker 1: that a bullout could have walked through. It is a
Speaker 1: complex issue, no doubt. Do you think we really have
Speaker 1: a bead on if there's lions here right now? We
Speaker 1: have all of these mountain ranges completely full of cameras.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of cameras out there, and people have
Speaker 1: come to understand how jaguars use the landscape and how
Speaker 1: they move through and they and they can most efficiently
Speaker 1: place some cameras where they can. Is this the agency
Speaker 1: that's got cameras? I mean, like like Arizona Game and Fish, Well,
Speaker 1: the agency has some. Of the University of Arizona has some.
Speaker 1: There's a whole bunch of different entities that all have
Speaker 1: UM cameras out there, and then you have a lot
Speaker 1: of um sportsmen out there with with their cameras. So
Speaker 1: do we think there are jaguars? They're here right now.
Speaker 1: There's one that I know of that has been here
Speaker 1: a while and last photographed in December, so that jaguar
Speaker 1: may still be there. But the last one I knew
Speaker 1: about was up to photographed up to December, so it
Speaker 1: could be as few as like one jaguar in the
Speaker 1: United States. Because of the way that the cameras are
Speaker 1: canvassed in all of these mountain ranges along the border,
Speaker 1: and a lot in Sonora in Chihuahua on the southern
Speaker 1: part of the border, I feel pretty confident that if
Speaker 1: there's a jag we're walking around these these mountain ranges,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get some photos of it. Jim, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you the only way I'll believe that there's no jaguars
Speaker 1: in Arizona if Warner Glenn tells me he went down
Speaker 1: there hunting and didn't tree one. I know. I don't
Speaker 1: buy into your fancy camera stuff. Jim, Warner is better
Speaker 1: than any camera, but hey, we need to go back
Speaker 1: further and map out the regulatory history of jaguar ours
Speaker 1: in the United States and Mexico. If we want to
Speaker 1: make sense of all this, here's the short version. There's
Speaker 1: been a fair bit of legal jaguar hunting in semi
Speaker 1: modern times. Until nineteen sixty six, jaguars were game animals
Speaker 1: in Mexico and could be hunted from November one through
Speaker 1: December thirty one, and the limit was one per person.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty seven, the season was closed except for
Speaker 1: depredation purposes by farmers or those with livestock. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty the jaguar was classified as an endangered species in In
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty seven, all legal methods of jaguar hunting
Speaker 1: were banned in Mexico. Here's Arizona's history. In nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: jags were classified as a fur bearing animal, meaning it
Speaker 1: could be hunted. Between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: they were classified as predators and could be killed by
Speaker 1: anyone at any time. In nineteen sixty nine, how over,
Speaker 1: they were protected by the state. The last legally killed
Speaker 1: jaguar was in the Patagonia Mountains of Arizona in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. Federally, in nineteen seventy two, the jaguar was
Speaker 1: listed on the endangered species list, so it got federal protection.
Speaker 1: Now for New Mexico's history, stay with me. The last
Speaker 1: known jaguar killed here was in nineteen o nine, and
Speaker 1: they were officially protected by the law starting in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine. There just weren't that many there, so they
Speaker 1: didn't have much reason to make regulations about them. And
Speaker 1: what I haven't told you yet is that Mr Warner
Speaker 1: actually caught two jaguars. We heard his first story from
Speaker 1: nineteen but he caught another jaguar in New Mexico in
Speaker 1: two thousand six, ten years later. That's a big deal.
Speaker 1: I want to hear Mr Warner's opinion regarding the intersection
Speaker 1: of conservation and government regulation. He has something to say.
Speaker 1: We're going a little further on the jaguar deal. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of after the one. About two years later,
Speaker 1: they put him on the danger species list. So far,
Speaker 1: they haven't declared critical habitat. I tell you the endangered species.
Speaker 1: That didn't bother me. If that's okay, critical habit that
Speaker 1: bothers me, because what they do when they declared critical habitat,
Speaker 1: then they penalize anything else, like the hunters or the renters,
Speaker 1: or the whatever they start, or the log and guys,
Speaker 1: they stopped that all that activity just for this one animal.
Speaker 1: And that's the worst thing that you can do for
Speaker 1: the animal, because that makes the people there want to shoot,
Speaker 1: shovel and shut up. I mean, why should they say
Speaker 1: they got one if they're going to get penalized for
Speaker 1: having it. If we're looking at a global overview of
Speaker 1: wildlife management across the planet, a unique part of the
Speaker 1: North American model of wildlife conservation has been the system's
Speaker 1: ability to incentivize the average person to value wildlife because
Speaker 1: they've got stake in its well being. The stakeholders personal
Speaker 1: well being benefits from the animal's presence. That has been
Speaker 1: a valuable cog in our model. What Mr Warner is
Speaker 1: saying that by penalizing landowners with overbearing quote critical habitat regulation,
Speaker 1: you de incentivize people's willingness to cooperate. There's a strong
Speaker 1: argument by biologist the experts that Arizona and New Mexico
Speaker 1: aren't critical habitat and never were there simply have never
Speaker 1: been very many jaguars here. So let's do a little
Speaker 1: inventory and I'll tell you what we're gonna do. We
Speaker 1: heard Mr Warner's story of baying a jaguar, and we
Speaker 1: learned that he actually caught another one in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: Jim has given us the lowdown on jaguar biology and
Speaker 1: their current status, and we've explored the regulatory history of
Speaker 1: jaguar hunting. I think we've now built a platform that
Speaker 1: will allow us to go back in time a bit.
Speaker 1: We couldn't do a podcast on Borderland's jaguars without talking
Speaker 1: about Dale Lee. Remember his name. Dale was from Tucson, Arizona,
Speaker 1: and died at age seventy nine in nine. I wanted
Speaker 1: to learn a thing or two about Dale so I
Speaker 1: connected with my friend Brett Vaughan. He's a dry ground
Speaker 1: lion hunter himself from New Mexico. Here's what Brett had
Speaker 1: to say about Dale Lee. There was like seven of
Speaker 1: those brothers, those Lee brothers, and I guess at one
Speaker 1: time or another they all hunted Dell. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was the one who took it serious, and he was
Speaker 1: the one who went on and and made a living
Speaker 1: doing it. And they started out catching lions. They were
Speaker 1: right there by Warner, you know. They were on the
Speaker 1: east side of the Cherich Howa's shoot. I think they
Speaker 1: caught their first lion, or what they call tied up
Speaker 1: their first lion when when Dale was really young and
Speaker 1: and and they had a brother named Ernest, and Ernest
Speaker 1: was the one who kind of took care of the business.
Speaker 1: They started guiding hunters and taking hunters, and one thing
Speaker 1: led to another. They caught lots lots of lions and
Speaker 1: lots of bears, and uh then they started going down
Speaker 1: in Mexico and catching jaguars. It was a totally different deal.
Speaker 1: The way they hunted down there. You know, they had
Speaker 1: canoe or they called them canoes with their flat bottom boats,
Speaker 1: and they had a gourd that they and I guess
Speaker 1: they learned this from the natives down there, and it
Speaker 1: was a gourd, and they had a raw hide thong
Speaker 1: and they would pull that. They would they'd float down
Speaker 1: this swampy country and on the rivers, and they pulled
Speaker 1: that thong through the gourd and it would make a
Speaker 1: roar or a sound like a jaguar, and these these
Speaker 1: jaguars would answer it, and that's how they would locate them.
Speaker 1: And then after they located them, they would they would
Speaker 1: go out and uh from talking to several people that
Speaker 1: had hunted with them. They would go out and keep
Speaker 1: the dogs on the leash until they got the jaguars started,
Speaker 1: and then they let the dogs loose. And they had
Speaker 1: some natives guys down there that were just phenomenal endurance athletes.
Speaker 1: Those guys would more or less go with the dogs
Speaker 1: and and dale them. I think would stay with the
Speaker 1: hunters for they quit going I think in about nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two due to regulations. They said the regulations just
Speaker 1: got too tough for them to go down there. But
Speaker 1: in that period of time they've caught and harvested I
Speaker 1: think over a hundred and twenty four jaguars, and their
Speaker 1: best year was I think they caught thirteen or fourteen
Speaker 1: jaguars one year. That was their best year. The Lee
Speaker 1: Brothers were commercial outfitters for jaguars, mountain lions, and bears.
Speaker 1: They hunted jaguars from the nineteen forties into the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties in Mexico and bears and lions through the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties in the United States. I asked Brett about
Speaker 1: the difference between hunting mountain lions and jaguars. He talked
Speaker 1: about how jaguars typically don't but will pay on the ground,
Speaker 1: and how they're much more dangerous for the dogs. And
Speaker 1: then he said this, So I think that is probably
Speaker 1: one of the main differences. And then the conditions of
Speaker 1: the area where they hunted. I'm sure it was terrible.
Speaker 1: I hunted with a man one time that hunted some
Speaker 1: jaguar down there. He's an older man, Mr Fletcher, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I was pretty young, and I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, man, I'd love to go down there and
Speaker 1: hunt jaguars one of these days. And he just looked
Speaker 1: at me and he said, man, you're not tough enough.
Speaker 1: He just straight up told you that, straight up told me,
Speaker 1: he said you're not tough enough. And I probably believe him.
Speaker 1: Why is Deli and name that we still talk about.
Speaker 1: What was he known for? Just being an a houndsman,
Speaker 1: I mean being ahounsement and a lion hunter mainly. I
Speaker 1: mean he caught a lot of bears. I read somewhere
Speaker 1: where they caught he had caught over a thousand bears
Speaker 1: and cut over a thousand lions. He just devoted his
Speaker 1: life to it, you know. And and and I listened
Speaker 1: to a story told about you know, they had to
Speaker 1: learn the heart. They just had to learn on their own.
Speaker 1: They have nobody to teach him, and Dale devoted his
Speaker 1: life to it. And he was also real instrumental in
Speaker 1: developing the blue Tech breed as lion Hounds. Daily hasn't
Speaker 1: been around to chase lions or jaguars for over thirty years,
Speaker 1: but we're in for a treat. Brett hooked us up
Speaker 1: with something really special. We're about to meet Dale Lee.
Speaker 1: For those of you who did not know Dale, these
Speaker 1: tapes are in Dale's own voice. For those of you
Speaker 1: that were fortunate enough to have met Dale, you will
Speaker 1: recognize his distinctive voice and his unique way of telling
Speaker 1: these true stories. I can still visualized Dale even now
Speaker 1: around the campfire telling these stories. So please enjoy these
Speaker 1: true stories and realize they were told by the greatest
Speaker 1: lion hunter ever lived. Daily. Well, now, this is about
Speaker 1: a hunt that took place somewhere around fifty six fifty seven,
Speaker 1: and it was in the swamps of Nowyarit, Mexico. And
Speaker 1: our guests were two our farmers. Now, one of them
Speaker 1: was a man that was around sixty five years old,
Speaker 1: and he was tall and slim and wasn't carrying any
Speaker 1: extra weight, and his partner was a man that was
Speaker 1: probably around maybe forty five, and he was tall and
Speaker 1: firety slender, but he was carrying a lot more extra
Speaker 1: weight than the older man. And so then I was
Speaker 1: a talking to him about the hunt, and I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, well, now here is the procedures of the hunt,
Speaker 1: and about how we would call at night and then
Speaker 1: if we didn't get an answer, we would take our
Speaker 1: dogs and make a circle from our main camp. We
Speaker 1: went down about two hours by boat. Now we had
Speaker 1: our men and all in one boat, and then two
Speaker 1: Mexican boys and our dogs and another one. And these
Speaker 1: were kind of flat bottomed canoes that I had had
Speaker 1: special made out of a special kind of flywood with
Speaker 1: plastic glass. While we went down and we call that
Speaker 1: night from about two o'clock until daylight, and didn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: So we the next morning it just as it started
Speaker 1: breaking day. We took our dogs and started out well
Speaker 1: within them an hour or less time we hit the
Speaker 1: tracks of a big mail jag work and it was
Speaker 1: a winning track and it went into one of the
Speaker 1: worst parts of the swamps in that area. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: when they went down into there, they they went at
Speaker 1: least two miles right straight away, and they were going fast.
Speaker 1: And I was coming along with one old Mexican fella
Speaker 1: and Marseille and these two hunters is fast I could go.
Speaker 1: And I had charteris settle from over Tennessee and and uh,
Speaker 1: Mexican are running the dogs to protect them. Always sent
Speaker 1: some fleet footed people with those dogs to keep them
Speaker 1: from all getting killed and losing them. And I had
Speaker 1: the little curt had six hounds and a curd dog.
Speaker 1: And this curd dog was a friend of Spaniel and shepherd,
Speaker 1: real long hard, and he was a jagguer dog, but
Speaker 1: he didn't bark on anything but a jump track. Now
Speaker 1: in a minute, they just went right straight away and
Speaker 1: they were running, and this little old curd dog was saying, yef, yef, yef,
Speaker 1: And I said, boys, they're jumped, let's go. And that
Speaker 1: thing running in front of them for at least i'd
Speaker 1: say at least three quarters of a model before they
Speaker 1: stopped him, and uh, they treating them, and he was
Speaker 1: a good specimen. And we came up and walked right
Speaker 1: up to the within pointy feet at the foot of
Speaker 1: the tree and up about i'd say thirty ft twenty
Speaker 1: five to thirty to this jag where right broadside. Well,
Speaker 1: he raised old gun up and gorge it would just
Speaker 1: be shaken in the shimmering is it? Put it up
Speaker 1: to his shoulders, and he pulled that trigger, and that
Speaker 1: jagg were just died out that three and hit right
Speaker 1: in front of Charteris settled, And Old Charlie shot at
Speaker 1: him and missed him right right in front of him,
Speaker 1: and away the dog and the jaggers went went, and
Speaker 1: they did go down into an awful bad place. Why
Speaker 1: you're going through that mud up to your waist and
Speaker 1: if you wasn't careful, it's a lot deeper. And they
Speaker 1: but they didn't go. We're about seventy five yards and
Speaker 1: they stopped him, and old that jagger was a growling
Speaker 1: in them dogs with a hollering and the balling and
Speaker 1: the screaming. Now that the noise was something terrible. And
Speaker 1: now the minute I heard the shot down there, Old
Speaker 1: Dale seems like a well put together man with a
Speaker 1: mind like a steel trap. He tells a hunting story
Speaker 1: like he's calling a horse race. This was a very
Speaker 1: condensed version of this single story. I mainly just wanted
Speaker 1: us to hear Dale's voice and sample his passion. This man,
Speaker 1: like Mr Warner, was a no doubt lion and jaguar
Speaker 1: hunting legend. Mr Warner actually knew Dale e. These recordings
Speaker 1: were put together by Dale's nephew Mike actually in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. They're a real treasure and they're over fifteen
Speaker 1: hours of his recordings. I'll tell you how to get
Speaker 1: those at the end. In this final recording, Mr Dale
Speaker 1: uses a gourd and a piece of leather to make
Speaker 1: a jaguar call. It's a pretty amazing clip. Now this
Speaker 1: is supposed to be another jaguar, and that's what they
Speaker 1: think it is. And they will not all the time.
Speaker 1: They will laughter. But I'll call up watch government. I've
Speaker 1: had other men call them up and it al really work.
Speaker 1: And yet when you're hunting them, but you can call
Speaker 1: them up and have a good break track to put
Speaker 1: your dogs on them. And so this is what they
Speaker 1: sound like. Mm hmmm mm hmmm mmm mm hmmm. Well,
Speaker 1: now this is the way that they go when you're
Speaker 1: calling them trying to get them up. In one there's
Speaker 1: a massive celebration going on in the hearts of those
Speaker 1: who love wild places. And it's because the mysterious visitors
Speaker 1: from the South still roam into the American Southwest. Though
Speaker 1: the beasts are few in number, like we believe they've
Speaker 1: always been, the rarity of the Borderland's jack wuire makes
Speaker 1: it the most unique large mammal on our continent. In
Speaker 1: my opinion. I'll never see one, and I doubt you
Speaker 1: will either, but my dreams will be ripe with the
Speaker 1: possibility of a fantastical encounter when I close my eyes
Speaker 1: because of the knowledge that they're here. Maybe in the
Speaker 1: night watches, I'll find myself a jaguar hunter with the
Speaker 1: Olamech people or Mr Dale, And like the dream of
Speaker 1: a jaguar imparting hunting prowess to the sleeper. My hope
Speaker 1: is that our jaguar dreams would make us stronger as
Speaker 1: we seek to protect the wild places of North America
Speaker 1: and fortify the life ways of the American hunter. Hunting
Speaker 1: is such a complex thing that can't be understood at
Speaker 1: a glance. It's nuanced and layered. Part of me longs
Speaker 1: to be a jaguar hunter, but I know that I
Speaker 1: would never take one even if I could. I also
Speaker 1: know they'll never ever be legally hunted again in the
Speaker 1: United States, and that is a great thing. As hunters,
Speaker 1: we value wildlife and will be the first to say
Speaker 1: we're done. That. Mr Warner let two jaguars go that
Speaker 1: he bade is no small thing. He didn't shoot, shovel
Speaker 1: and shut up, but rather use the encounter to fuel conservation.
Speaker 1: This is the template for the modern American hunter. But
Speaker 1: in the same breath, we can look back and celebrate
Speaker 1: the life of a great hunter like Dale Lee, who
Speaker 1: traveled down into Mexico and lived an incredibly adventurous life.
Speaker 1: The dedication toughness both mental and physical, the planning of
Speaker 1: such a hunt, and the spirit of adventure of men
Speaker 1: like all the lead brothers is admirable, and I know
Speaker 1: that they have character traits in their lives that we
Speaker 1: do well to adapt into our own. This is the
Speaker 1: final podcast that will have Mr Warner on, and I
Speaker 1: hope that you've enjoyed them as much as I have.
Speaker 1: Mr Warner and Kelly will be people that I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: My hope is that these discussions will garner a deeper
Speaker 1: appreciation in us for wild places and beasts, and that
Speaker 1: will become smarter and wiser and more inspired to help
Speaker 1: them thrive. My hope also is that will find deeper
Speaker 1: value in the human relationships that we have in our lives,
Speaker 1: because they are of great value. Long live the beast,
Speaker 1: the chief of which on this continent is the mighty
Speaker 1: Borderland's jaguar, And long live the great men and women
Speaker 1: who seek to partake an impartation from the wildness of
Speaker 1: that sucker's life. Thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 1: Bear Grease. Please leave us a review on iTunes and
Speaker 1: tell a buddy about this podcast. This week, I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of housekeeping items. You can buy Mr Warner's
Speaker 1: book Eyes of Fire at this website www dot Roots
Speaker 1: Run Deep a z dot com. That's Roots Run Deep
Speaker 1: a z dot com. Secondly, check out my friend Brett
Speaker 1: Vaughn's YouTube channel called Born one hundred Years Too Late. Lastly,
Speaker 1: you can buy the recordings of Mr Dalles Stories, which
Speaker 1: encompasses at least fifteen hours of content, but you'll need
Speaker 1: to contact Brett through Facebook or Instagram at Born a
Speaker 1: hundred Years Too Late. So check out the book from
Speaker 1: Mr Warner and check out Born a hundred Years Too
Speaker 1: Late with old Brett Vaughn