Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening to podcast
Speaker 1: you Can't Predict Anything, brought to you by first Light.
Speaker 1: This week, first Light is celebrating its annual White Tail Week,
Speaker 1: where you can tune in for tips, tricks and tactics,
Speaker 1: as well as incredible deals site wise. Check it out
Speaker 1: first light dot com, f I R S T L
Speaker 1: I t E dot com.
Speaker 2: You hunt Big Game two?
Speaker 3: I have?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, I've got a I haven't hunted big game
Speaker 4: in about four years now, but I've shot a lot
Speaker 4: of deer, antelope, elk, bighorn, sheep, you bears, and I
Speaker 4: just I train dogs and a bird hunt. That's what
Speaker 4: I do now.
Speaker 5: And so that's podcast. Yeah, earlier this about in the podcast, I.
Speaker 1: Might bring that pigeon down here in a couple of days.
Speaker 1: Let him walk around up here.
Speaker 5: At home, build a little roost for him in here.
Speaker 1: Pretty tame, extremely tame. Nice when you all it tries
Speaker 1: to do is get into the house. You're kidding me,
Speaker 1: because it knows people are in the house.
Speaker 4: Did you raise it?
Speaker 1: My kids did?
Speaker 4: It's not going to be a shooter then, right, No,
Speaker 4: you got to.
Speaker 6: Pass for forty of his uh roostmates went to bird
Speaker 6: dog trainers.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but this was so what's his name?
Speaker 1: Peanut butter? Peanut but because there was peanut butter and
Speaker 1: jelly but jelly, Uh, John had to get euthanized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a health had a congenital birth effect as
Speaker 1: far as we can tell.
Speaker 4: Come on, you really did euthanize it. You didn't train it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it had as it started passing its own intestine.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, real buzz kills. Yeah, yeah, Brody is over.
Speaker 5: Is peanut Butter aware of the windows outside and know where?
Speaker 1: But it knows where the door is. It goes to
Speaker 1: the door.
Speaker 4: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Does it live outside?
Speaker 1: Lives outside?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Nice, it's at a bird sitters house? Right now?
Speaker 5: Did he fly over there?
Speaker 1: You got the pigeon Gooso comes back home.
Speaker 2: This is the start of the show.
Speaker 1: We're already rolling. Give me your book. There you go, Phil,
Speaker 1: where's a good spot.
Speaker 2: That's a great spot.
Speaker 1: That looks good. Yeah, we're missing the bottom.
Speaker 3: Quarter of the book of the cover, but we've got
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: That's better. That's better. Joined today by Diane Boyd, who
Speaker 1: came on the you were on the show.
Speaker 4: A while ago, probably five years now.
Speaker 1: Five years ago, way back in episode one, six six days. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was a great episode.
Speaker 4: Thanks you made it great.
Speaker 1: We did an episode called Hunting with Teeth with Diane
Speaker 1: Boyd lay out your can Can you lay out your
Speaker 1: your an abbreviated form of your resume so people know
Speaker 1: what you're all about?
Speaker 4: Oh golly, yeah. I started working with wolves in Minnesota
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy six. I was just a child prodigy,
Speaker 4: Not really, I'm just old. And anyway, I picked up
Speaker 4: Minnesota wolves. I went worked in Wild the Wolves in
Speaker 4: Northern Minnesota, and then I worked as a for one
Speaker 4: summer before I came to Montana as a depredation control
Speaker 4: trapper and research collar northern Minnesota. And then I moved
Speaker 4: to Montana in seventy nine to pursue a couple of
Speaker 4: graduate degrees. And I basically started with the first wolf
Speaker 4: that walked down from Canada and have maintained wolf reintroduction,
Speaker 4: recolonization information, all those yeares so kind of from the
Speaker 4: first wolf to three thousand wolf. Now that's what we
Speaker 4: got in the West.
Speaker 1: Got it? And reason I like the reason I like
Speaker 1: Diane Boyd and reach he's back on the show. Is
Speaker 1: you caught a lot of the hysteria and a lot
Speaker 1: of the on each side. If I don't know it,
Speaker 1: it's not right, especially in today's climate of an election season.
Speaker 1: I don't want to put it as the left and
Speaker 1: the right. How do you put it the inn and
Speaker 1: the yang? Now? Okay, if this can you see the
Speaker 1: book and my hand film, if this is attitudes of wolves,
Speaker 1: and this is what this side is that they're going
Speaker 1: to kill your children, okay? And this side is that
Speaker 1: they snuggle fawns.
Speaker 6: They're going to save the planet, that they're gonna.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're gonna save the planet, and and and and
Speaker 1: reverse climate change. Diane Boyd is, I don't want to
Speaker 1: have you be the middle finger.
Speaker 4: That's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna move this finger over where the middle finger lives.
Speaker 5: Great because it's like diet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she gives the middle finger to the sides.
Speaker 7: I like that.
Speaker 2: Never that way.
Speaker 1: And she's got a new book coming out, A Woman
Speaker 1: among Wolves, My Journey through forty Years of Wolf Recovery.
Speaker 1: When is it available? Right?
Speaker 4: So it's coming out September tenth, it's being released and
Speaker 4: you can pre ordered on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles.
Speaker 4: It's up there now, got it.
Speaker 1: My mom's husband, my mom got married. After my dad died,
Speaker 1: my mom got remarried. Now that guy passed away. You
Speaker 1: know he called Barnes and Noble. He called it books
Speaker 1: and Nobles.
Speaker 2: Wow, makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was MacDonald's and it was Books and Nobles.
Speaker 2: Uh, case you forget later. I think you should ask Diane.
Speaker 2: She's gonna read her own audiobook.
Speaker 1: Oh listen, I'm gonna tell you the audiobook. Don't don't
Speaker 1: have them to do a person. Don't bring in a
Speaker 1: soap opera person. Who's going to do the audiobook.
Speaker 4: It's got to be you. Do you want to start
Speaker 4: a little bit? So my Graystone Publishing sold the audio
Speaker 4: rights to a media company.
Speaker 1: Ye, and that's how that's normal.
Speaker 4: They hired a professional actress to read.
Speaker 1: Did you really come in there and complain?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 4: I didn't know that, And then when I found out,
Speaker 4: I just said, well, you know, I know the story
Speaker 4: pretty well, and I do a lot of public speaking,
Speaker 4: and I think I've got an engaging voice, even with
Speaker 4: my Fargo accent. So they had me send an audio
Speaker 4: edition and they wrote me back and he said, well,
Speaker 4: if you want to do the reading, we're going to
Speaker 4: have to basically train you and it's going to take
Speaker 4: a lot of time and blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So you know why they're telling me that they got
Speaker 1: these holsers that do it all the time. Okay, and
Speaker 1: they come in they know they're going to get it
Speaker 1: done in two days whatever. Don't let that happen. I
Speaker 1: let that happen before, and I've mentioned bunch of times.
Speaker 1: I let that happen before. I got the thing in.
Speaker 1: I turned it on and I could not cross the
Speaker 1: room quick enough to turn it off the minute that
Speaker 1: person opened their mouth, Because like, you live your work,
Speaker 1: yeah right, and when you're writing it, you're it's you.
Speaker 1: You're it's you know what I mean. You're doing it,
Speaker 1: you're saying it, you're reading it to yourself, you're making
Speaker 1: it perfect, and then some other person picks it up
Speaker 1: and touches it. It's like watching It's like, are you married? No,
Speaker 1: If you were, it would be like watching someone handle
Speaker 1: your husband.
Speaker 4: That was an impossibility. I was married briefly, Okay, I
Speaker 4: get it.
Speaker 7: You get it.
Speaker 1: Picture that you were still married. You really liked him,
Speaker 1: and you had to watch someone else, right.
Speaker 4: No go. But anyway, I the other thing was they're
Speaker 4: doing this. They wanted to be done when the book
Speaker 4: is released in September tenth, and I'm going bird hunting.
Speaker 4: I mean, I got stuff to do, and I actually
Speaker 4: just don't. At this point, I just threw my hands
Speaker 4: upisode whatever. Yeah, I'm okay, thank you though.
Speaker 2: Next time, next time.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the advice.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I knew.
Speaker 1: Whitetail Week coming up here at me Eiter one week
Speaker 1: only nine to thirty to ten six. White Tail Week's
Speaker 1: the best time stock up on whitetail gear with deals
Speaker 1: from first like FHF Gear, Phelps, game calls, Dave Smith,
Speaker 1: Decoy's at the me Eater store, plus a full week
Speaker 1: of white tail content we've done he's in the past.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, there's a TV channel that has
Speaker 1: a they celebrate a fish all week every year. It's
Speaker 1: like that, but it's for people that like white tails.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, it's funny. I'm working on this new
Speaker 1: project and we got to do a bunch of scuba
Speaker 1: diving over the last week, and we had these underwater
Speaker 1: It's like an you can talk underwater. It's a special
Speaker 1: mask like you don't, you know, normally use a you
Speaker 1: have like a breathing apparatus and a regular mask. But
Speaker 1: it's this big contained things you can hold a button
Speaker 1: like talk underwater to people, it's hard to be heard
Speaker 1: and h it's just it's not a perfect system, as
Speaker 1: you can imagine talking underwater and someone so we rented
Speaker 1: this equipment from this place that rents this stuff out,
Speaker 1: and like, well, how in the world on Shark Week
Speaker 1: are they all talking to each other underwater? He goes, Oh,
Speaker 1: they dubed that all the uh mid uh this is
Speaker 1: you folks will appreciate this. Sometime between mid and end
Speaker 1: of September, The Fucked Up Bullshitters Calendar is out. It's
Speaker 1: the third in our ft up series. We the Deer
Speaker 1: Stands Taxidermy and now it shitters. Some of the world's
Speaker 1: best and worst worst not best, yeah, the best of
Speaker 1: the worst old shitters laying around out in the woods
Speaker 1: from the Arctic to the Midwest and probably points south.
Speaker 2: Did you do captions this time?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, great captions.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I don't know that I'd say that they're
Speaker 6: all the worst because some of them are just intriguing intriguing,
Speaker 6: like you you'd want to give them a run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, carved out a giant tree stumps. So like one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one is sort of I don't know what. It looks like,
Speaker 1: a giant redwood or a sequoia or something. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is, probably not. No, it's a cedar,
Speaker 1: a huge Western red seedar, that's what it is. And
Speaker 1: they carved a shitter out of a Western red seater.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. So in the caption process, we sit around
Speaker 1: thinking of what would be funny, and we're like, something
Speaker 1: to do with e walks would be funny, and then
Speaker 1: you work that into a caption. There's one that is
Speaker 1: very Southwest and when I looked at it, I thought
Speaker 1: of the Alamo. And so then you work up a
Speaker 1: caption that's like a joke about the Alamo. That's all
Speaker 1: that process.
Speaker 2: Are there any uh outhouses or ships that you wouldn't
Speaker 2: want to Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are. I'd say the one I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to do the want need of an upholstery job.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't touch that thing until someone's mm hmm.
Speaker 5: There was definitely something that made me lose my faith
Speaker 5: in humanity, like gross like stuff.
Speaker 1: That didn't make the cut. There's nothing gross about the count.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, we had some gross submissions, a lot.
Speaker 1: Of gross submissions. There was none of our submissions has
Speaker 1: none of the submissions are like poor etiquette. None of
Speaker 1: the submissions. There's no there's no fecal matter. There were a.
Speaker 5: Couple that you guys didn't see that.
Speaker 3: We're being used the people send in.
Speaker 1: Oh you cut those out. We have no people in it.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't think they'd make the cut, so I didn't
Speaker 3: send those alone.
Speaker 1: It's twelve months, that's how many months, or in a year,
Speaker 1: it's twelve months of beautiful photography of if you were
Speaker 1: wandering around out in the woods, or wandering around up
Speaker 1: in the Arctic, or wandering around wherever, and you came
Speaker 1: into a and you came across an old shitter, and
Speaker 1: you're like, gow the stories that old shitter could tell,
Speaker 1: that's what this calendar is all about.
Speaker 6: And they're all shitters you'd tell someone about. Oh, you're like,
Speaker 6: you wouldn't believe what I found.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, If you were hunting with your buddy or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you went off to go check on something and
Speaker 1: you encountered one of these shitters and you came back.
Speaker 1: I don't care. If you saw two booner bucks fighting
Speaker 1: and stuck together, you'd run back to your body and
Speaker 1: you'd be like, you would not believe the shitter. I
Speaker 1: just saw it.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Plus, there's two booner bucks stuck together over there. That's
Speaker 1: how that that's the quality of these shitters.
Speaker 2: Like recently, I was was last hunting season, I was
Speaker 2: up on the Rocky Mountain front, and that Augusta showedo zone.
Speaker 2: You've probably Randall. Seems like you've been to every bar
Speaker 2: in every small town in Montana's you've probably been to
Speaker 2: this one. But in their bathrooms they have pictures of
Speaker 2: uh some outhouses. And one of the favorite ones I've seen,
Speaker 2: it's like it's you can see the front, but the
Speaker 2: outhouses out in the flats and it's got these it
Speaker 2: looks like two telephone poles that are wedged like between
Speaker 2: it's like upper corners at the eve and the ground,
Speaker 2: just basically meaning that the wind blows so hard there
Speaker 2: that if this outhouse isn't supported with telephone poles, like
Speaker 2: you know at an angle.
Speaker 1: It's gonna lift it off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or at least that was brutalized by the wind.
Speaker 5: Pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just there's just you're looking down a hill and
Speaker 1: you can just see the the shitter blown off away.
Speaker 1: We also had a lot of tandems, and we only
Speaker 1: put one tandem in because I don't I don't really understand,
Speaker 1: like my when my little kids were littler, I could
Speaker 1: see them utilizing a tandem, but.
Speaker 5: You wouldn't park next to you on in the morning.
Speaker 1: They're not going to utilize the tandem, right.
Speaker 4: I know of a use for a tandem out house
Speaker 4: at the pace. So my first year up there in
Speaker 4: seventy nine, got Giardia and there was a two seater
Speaker 4: outhouse and there was a moment one day when I
Speaker 4: needed to use both holes at the same time, just saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you know what the next installment of ft UP.
Speaker 1: I want to do. It's a it's a photographic challenge.
Speaker 1: I want to do fish cleaning stations or just fucked
Speaker 1: up old fisher man. But I'd like to do fish
Speaker 1: cleaning stations, just the nastiest, grossest fish clean stations. But
Speaker 1: it's hard to capture the smell. Never scratch and sniff.
Speaker 1: When you were a kid, if you could scratch and
Speaker 1: sniff old fish cleaning stations.
Speaker 5: Hit too nice. Now after the fix up joke.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't even be good anymore. I know we got
Speaker 1: ruined for that. Yeah, I'm not sure, but this one is.
Speaker 1: This one is great if you know someone else appreciates
Speaker 1: an old out house. Oh one of these old out
Speaker 1: houses that got caught on fire and put out. And
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a taco bell joke
Speaker 1: fire too many flaming hot cheetos. But I think on
Speaker 1: that one, the joke landed around like it was from
Speaker 1: Southeast Alaska, and I think the joke was something about
Speaker 1: how hard it is to get anything to burn in
Speaker 1: southeast Alaska, but nothing wants to burn there, so how
Speaker 1: would you get, you know, some kind of joke like that.
Speaker 1: A couple thoughts from Helfelfinger on a past episode. It's
Speaker 1: a rebuttal, it's a retraction. It's actually not. It's a fortification.
Speaker 1: But half a Finger had a good quote. It's not
Speaker 1: his quote. He wrote it down. A retraction never gets
Speaker 1: the traction of the reaction to the original action. Once again,
Speaker 1: a retraction never gets the from the top. A retraction
Speaker 1: never gets the traction of the reaction to the original action.
Speaker 1: A great illustration of that would be when it came
Speaker 1: out two I can think of years ago, it came
Speaker 1: out that like a guy supposedly got died from eating
Speaker 1: squirrel brains, and then it was all that was everywhere.
Speaker 1: Every news agency picked this article up, and then it
Speaker 1: came out, well, actually, no, he just died of a
Speaker 1: brain disease. And in his past he had eaten a
Speaker 1: squirrel brain. So of the one hundred or two hundred
Speaker 1: people that die of this every year, he happened in
Speaker 1: his history had eaten a squirrel brain. And it just
Speaker 1: didn't quite get the traction of the reaction to the
Speaker 1: original action. I was commenting. I used to always tell people.
Speaker 1: I used to somehow, somehow, it was told to me
Speaker 1: that automobile insurance companies often pushed to reduce deer numbers
Speaker 1: so that to reduce their premium load from all the
Speaker 1: claims made from crashing and cars hitting things. So agricultural interests,
Speaker 1: and I would say, automobile interests, automobile insurance interests would
Speaker 1: like to suppressed dear numbers. Now helfle Finger, I don't
Speaker 1: know where he hangs out. He's saying automobile insurance companies
Speaker 1: plural have told Helfflefinger personally they have no interest in
Speaker 1: spending any money to reduce audio collisions because they just
Speaker 1: run the numbers and charge whatever premium they need to
Speaker 1: cover collisions with deer, while they want to spend time
Speaker 1: or money on something that might reduce deer collisions like overpasses,
Speaker 1: when they can just simply take it into consideration when
Speaker 1: they do all their math, they pass it along to
Speaker 1: the consumer also, so Hefflefinger commented on that. Hefflefinger commented
Speaker 1: on this. We were discussing a plan taking route in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma and elsewhere of taking this is a little bit complicated.
Speaker 1: Some white tailed deer farmers, white tail deer ranchers that
Speaker 1: hell you call them, that believe they have some deer
Speaker 1: that are resistant to CWD, meaning they'll have a population
Speaker 1: deer and some de just don't get it. And they're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we should take these deer that don't get it and
Speaker 1: seed wild populations with our resistant deer in the hopes
Speaker 1: of sort of speeding along or making you know, these
Speaker 1: deer have a g mutation that makes them not so susceptible.
Speaker 1: Let's put them out in the wild, and hopefully they'll
Speaker 1: breed with wild deer and eventually we will create this
Speaker 1: CWD resistant wild deer herds, which just strikes me as
Speaker 1: like incredibly dubious health. A finger says, deer with that
Speaker 1: genetic combo are not resistant to c w D. They
Speaker 1: just don't die as fast, and it's not a good
Speaker 1: thing to have CWD positive deer running around for a
Speaker 1: longer period of time in the environment shutting infectious prions.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if I decided on preons or prions.
Speaker 6: What do you say, primes?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm gonna stick with the Pandora's box is
Speaker 1: that when you intensively select for those CWD related genes
Speaker 1: in captivity, you are also selecting for other genes that
Speaker 1: are close to them on the same chromosome. Genes that
Speaker 1: are physically close to one another on the same chromosome
Speaker 1: are inherited together at a higher rate. We have no
Speaker 1: idea what those other nearby genes are. They might be
Speaker 1: genes that lower reproductive rate, produce smaller antlers, a higher
Speaker 1: susceptibility to other diseases. Tameness, who knows. It's just a
Speaker 1: bad idea to circumvent natural selection for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 1: and this would never move the needle on CWD spread
Speaker 1: or prevalence in the wild. These genes associated with deer
Speaker 1: surviving longer with CWD are in fact increasing in frequency
Speaker 1: in the wild populations through natural selection, but very slowly.
Speaker 1: Steve's point is right. Ha, that's my favorite part of
Speaker 1: the letter. I don't even know what I said. This
Speaker 1: makes me feel like when I once every five years
Speaker 1: and I go bowling, and I always get like at
Speaker 1: least one strike. Steve's point is right that releasing a
Speaker 1: few more of those animals from captivity is not going
Speaker 1: to change gene frequencies in a free ranging wild population
Speaker 1: and has the potential to do harm. He goes on
Speaker 1: to say, if you like Sonoran hot dogs, Guero, which
Speaker 1: I do, well, I think that's what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: Who's gonna take a stab at this?
Speaker 2: Guero Canelo?
Speaker 1: Guero Canelo very good, top ten and two sound number
Speaker 1: one in his opinion, But prices have gone up in
Speaker 1: a way that the exceeds the quality of the food.
Speaker 2: He says, no, no, no, no, Guero Canelo is where I
Speaker 2: always take you. He's giving you a another option.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we plugged Guero Canelo in a Trivia episode.
Speaker 1: Oh, and he's saying, las cerrita del roro, h is
Speaker 1: a better Mexican hot dog.
Speaker 2: I think it's La care delro but you're close. Is
Speaker 2: that as good? That's in Tucson as well, Yes, where
Speaker 2: the Snoran dogs are famous, and it looks way different.
Speaker 2: And I think he can didn't he read what goes
Speaker 2: on there and what is?
Speaker 1: Or he wrote sorry, but yep, Jim, if you Jim's
Speaker 1: got his eyes on a good Mexican hot dog. Another rebuttal.
Speaker 1: This is a rebuttal from Bubbly Doug.
Speaker 2: We're gonna eat him in January.
Speaker 1: Half a finger. Bubbly Doug are sort of the main
Speaker 1: rebuttal generators and clarification generators, but.
Speaker 8: This is from Doug's splash like a friend.
Speaker 1: Doug's friend you. Doug's friend is very annoyed about something
Speaker 1: I said about c w D. And I've said this,
Speaker 1: and I've said it before. I don't love if I'll
Speaker 1: say it again. But there's a there's a point I
Speaker 1: often make, and and all it always irritates some people,
Speaker 1: but I just I say it because it's just it's
Speaker 1: a true feeling that I have in discussing chronic waste
Speaker 1: and disease in deer, I often say the thing most scary.
Speaker 1: This is not what I say, but I'm trying to
Speaker 1: say it in cleaner terms. What's horrifying to me is
Speaker 1: that some hunter out there. It horrifies me that some
Speaker 1: hunter out there would contract CWD from a deer and
Speaker 1: it would jump the species barrier. And so because it
Speaker 1: because it's so alarming to me, it's so scary to me,
Speaker 1: I'll often say that that I'll put some statistic around
Speaker 1: it where I'll try to say, you know, I might
Speaker 1: say something to the effect of ninety percent of my
Speaker 1: concern about chronic waste and diseases, it's going to pass
Speaker 1: to some that some hunter is gonna get it. And
Speaker 1: if it were to jump the species barrier, just it
Speaker 1: would just change deer hunting. It would change deer management,
Speaker 1: it would change deer hunting, it would change the perception
Speaker 1: of deer, like we put a huge cultural value on
Speaker 1: deer if they were this thing that was causing you know,
Speaker 1: like like these sort of like horrible prolonged deaths from
Speaker 1: like prion diseases and humans. I mean, it's it's just
Speaker 1: disgusting to even think about. So when I track see
Speaker 1: when I when I follow news about CWD and try
Speaker 1: to advocate on behalf of research around CWD and trying
Speaker 1: to stop the spread of CWD. A huge part of
Speaker 1: my motivation is that, like, it just makes me sick
Speaker 1: to think about anyone, my kids, whatever, somehow doing this
Speaker 1: and the implication how it would affect my diet. That's
Speaker 1: kind of like the main thing I'd like to eat.
Speaker 1: Dear me, Uh, this does not go over well with
Speaker 1: some people, and don't Ug's friend who's a landowner farmer
Speaker 1: in the state of Washington. She says, if Steve's biggest
Speaker 1: concern with CWD is the potential risk to humans, it
Speaker 1: feels contradictory to the values he often expresses as a conservationist.
Speaker 1: You could be a humanist and a conservation at the
Speaker 1: same time. But back to the letter, it gives the
Speaker 1: impression that he values animal welfare less than he claims,
Speaker 1: which stands in contrast to his usual corn arguments against
Speaker 1: vegans that he likely cares more for animals and understands
Speaker 1: them better than they do. It's frustrating to hear him
Speaker 1: repeatedly say that his greatest worry is the disease jumping
Speaker 1: to humans when animal welfare is at stake right now,
Speaker 1: it's not just Doug who's upset about this, me too.
Speaker 1: And she goes on as well to counter my observation
Speaker 1: that if another thing I've said about CWD, then we'renna leave.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave the subject behind for a minute. Another
Speaker 1: thing I will frequently say about CWD is how can
Speaker 1: it be? Or why is it that I'm so afraid
Speaker 1: of it jumping the species barrier to humans. I would
Speaker 1: feel that livestock producers would be more afraid than I am, because,
Speaker 1: as I said, a cow in a sheep look a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot more like a deer than I do.
Speaker 5: All you gotta look at is like what happened with
Speaker 5: mad cow disease written right, they can imagine that across
Speaker 5: the entire United States.
Speaker 1: Correct what it would do to the cattle ustry. And
Speaker 1: this person is countering. She's saying, I don't think they're
Speaker 1: not worried about this. I can't really do a tit
Speaker 1: for tat on that issue. I understand what you're saying
Speaker 1: about animal welfare. I'm just telling you a thing that like, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, when my kids out playing in the road, okay,
Speaker 1: and I get nervous that they're chasing there, that they're
Speaker 1: that they go to chase their baseball across the highway
Speaker 1: without looking. And I'm like, man, the main thing that
Speaker 1: worries me about my kid chasing the ball across the
Speaker 1: highway is that my kid will get hit by a car.
Speaker 1: Someone would say like, well, that doesn't go with your
Speaker 1: view as a conservationist, because why are you not so
Speaker 1: worried about the deer that get hit on the road.
Speaker 1: Aren't you worried about animal welfare? I'm like, yes, not
Speaker 1: as worried any about my kid get hit on the road.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean I read this as like the only thing
Speaker 5: you're concerned about is humans. But what I said, I know,
Speaker 5: but that's what it kind of sounds like she's saying here,
Speaker 5: like you can be concerned about humans and worry about
Speaker 5: the deer herds too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When I see a deer run across the room,
Speaker 1: I was like the driver I freaked out on. I
Speaker 1: was in the pastor's seat and I freaked out on.
Speaker 1: The guy'd be like, slow down, dude, how do you
Speaker 1: know there's not more.
Speaker 2: I think that she's just I think it's a she.
Speaker 2: I don't know why it is because.
Speaker 1: And the fact that he says she.
Speaker 2: But I think she's pointing out that maybe there's a
Speaker 2: constant O middle when you talk about CWD, about that part,
Speaker 2: I always qualify that part.
Speaker 6: I also think it's hard to I mean, the CWD
Speaker 6: is going to be a lot worse for deer if
Speaker 6: people get it from deer, Like, if you're concerned about
Speaker 6: deer as a whole, if it jumps the species barrier,
Speaker 6: CWD is going to be a much worse outcome for
Speaker 6: our white tail populations as a whole.
Speaker 1: And if it jumps the species, yeah, if it jumps
Speaker 1: the species barrier into cattle, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we have to have the same conversations about deer and
Speaker 1: CWD as we do about free ranging buffalo and cattle
Speaker 1: because of brucellosis. And people are like, hey, man, if
Speaker 1: the state owns the deer, keep those deer away from
Speaker 1: my place.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a it's a much darker picture for not
Speaker 6: only people, but the health of deer as a whole
Speaker 6: if that were to happen.
Speaker 1: And I don't omit. The other thing I don't omit
Speaker 1: the other thing the same way. When I'm driving, or
Speaker 1: I'm right in the car and I see a deer
Speaker 1: cross and I see that the driver that I'm with
Speaker 1: isn't thinking about how there's probably some following it, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, so now come on. But if I
Speaker 1: saw a kid run across the road, my reaction is
Speaker 1: going to be even stronger. I'm gonna get out and
Speaker 1: yelled the kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's perfectly normal to be more worried about
Speaker 3: your kids than deer. Then you are worried about like
Speaker 3: the welfare of a deer, or deer is a population.
Speaker 1: I do worry.
Speaker 6: Yeah, let me ask you this.
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty valid.
Speaker 6: If I could guarantee you that it would not jump
Speaker 6: the species barrier, but you could get rid of it
Speaker 6: by snapping your fingers, would you still get rid of CWD?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I mean that's the course.
Speaker 6: And let's say it's like you can you can be
Speaker 6: worried about one thing more than the other, but still
Speaker 6: have concern for cw D as a problem for deer.
Speaker 1: If we could spend money and get rid of EHD
Speaker 1: in blue tongue, I'd be like, oh, let's go spend
Speaker 1: the money and get rid of HD. In blue tongue, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it upsets any It upsets equilibrium and causes
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble for deer hunters when their area
Speaker 1: gets wiped out. It's like rags the riches on deer populations,
Speaker 1: where you get a lot of deer and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you're like, well, we got a lot now, but
Speaker 1: now that we got this many, just wait for EHD
Speaker 1: to come through and then they'll be laying dead on
Speaker 1: the side of some pond. I would still think we
Speaker 1: should spend much money, and like, here's the thing too,
Speaker 1: from their perspective, that's the reason I'm always advocating on research, Like,
Speaker 1: knowing that there's that risk out there, study the hell
Speaker 1: out of it. I think they should be. I think
Speaker 1: there should be a lot of money getting pumped into
Speaker 1: studying it. It's not like that perspective is not adversarial
Speaker 1: to want to control what's going on. Who else to
Speaker 1: talk about?
Speaker 6: Wolves?
Speaker 8: Me?
Speaker 1: Where do we start? Let me ask you this question.
Speaker 1: Can I remind you of something you told me the
Speaker 1: last time?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, the last time you were on the show.
Speaker 1: And I want to pick this up and have you
Speaker 1: extend that logic. I want to see if you still
Speaker 1: feel that way, and if you would extend it to
Speaker 1: Colorado and just just run with this. You said something
Speaker 1: that surprised me when you were on the show before.
Speaker 1: You had said, had we never did we humans America's Americans? Whatever?
Speaker 1: Had we never conducted had we decided to not do
Speaker 1: a reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the
Speaker 1: frank Church Wilderness area, meaning have we not gone and
Speaker 1: live captured wolves elsewhere and brought them to turn them loose?
Speaker 1: We probably would have. I can't remember the exact way
Speaker 1: you put it. We probably would have eventually landed in
Speaker 1: the same spot we're at right now. From natural migration.
Speaker 4: Yes, I still feel that way. And the only so
Speaker 4: wolves are expanding globally in Canada. They're all over the
Speaker 4: Midwest here in our west Europe, and the only place
Speaker 4: where wolves have been reintroduced was Yellowstone and the frank
Speaker 4: Church Mexican wolves, red wolves. But wolves have globally expanded
Speaker 4: without any reintroduction. There's wolves in the Netherlands. Now, there's
Speaker 4: wolves in Denmark. Nobody put them there. Wolves have been
Speaker 4: getting there on their own and the wolves did get
Speaker 4: to Colorado. They've had the first reproduction I think it
Speaker 4: was twenty twenty or twenty twenty one from Wyoming wolves,
Speaker 4: and those wolves ended up boot them being killed, but
Speaker 4: they were getting there on their own. And I feel
Speaker 4: very strongly that where Colorado is at since twenty twenty
Speaker 4: is about where we were at in Montana in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy nine eighty when a few wolves started walking down
Speaker 4: on their own power from Canada and slowly got a
Speaker 4: toe hold, so to speak, and repopulated on their own.
Speaker 1: Can you mentioned the Great Lakes? Can you move over?
Speaker 1: Can we move over real quick to the Great Lakes?
Speaker 1: And you can touch on that real quick? Talk about
Speaker 1: that for a men like no reintroduction? Right, if we
Speaker 1: look at in the northern Great Lakes, we have Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan,
Speaker 1: anyone else have a stable viable population.
Speaker 4: No Ile Royal. There was a recent reintroduction to Ile
Speaker 4: Royal because the wolves are dying out other than that
Speaker 4: Michigan waters.
Speaker 1: Yes, can you give a little crash course on how
Speaker 1: were they ever gone gone?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 7: Good question.
Speaker 4: So when I left Minnesota in nineteen seventy nine working
Speaker 4: with wolves, there was just under a thousand wolves, nine
Speaker 4: hundred to one thousand wolves in Minnesota. There was a
Speaker 4: handful in Wisconsin, probably less than a dozen. There was
Speaker 4: maybe twenty five in Isle Royal that had gotten their
Speaker 4: late forties early fifties by crossing the frozen Lake Superior
Speaker 4: ice and that was it. And now there's I'm trying
Speaker 4: to think of the numbers of wolves in the Midwest.
Speaker 4: It's over a thousand, might be a couple thousand, three thousand.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to think, have.
Speaker 5: They been extirpated from Michigan.
Speaker 4: Yes, they're extirpated from Michigan and Wisconsin. They were never
Speaker 4: extirpated from Minnesota because the northern fourth or third of
Speaker 4: the state is too remote roadless, so there always was
Speaker 4: a stronghold. And I'm trying to think.
Speaker 1: You're not calling me a liar when I say that
Speaker 1: I saw a wolf track in the eastern up in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 4: Are no, no what I saw?
Speaker 1: I fight you?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I'm saying viable populations breading reproducing established packs.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 4: Because my friend Dick Theo was documenting wolves recovering to
Speaker 4: Wisconsin starting and I think I think he saw his
Speaker 4: first wolf track in like seventy two or seventy three,
Speaker 4: they were trying and Michigan same thing. And actually there
Speaker 4: was a reintroduction into Michigan in the up. It's nineteen seventy,
Speaker 4: seventy four to seventy eight, somewhere in there. Seventy four
Speaker 4: you can read about. It's in my book. And they
Speaker 4: took four wolves from Minnesota and they transplanted them, reintroduced
Speaker 4: them to northern Michigan. It was during just before deer seasons,
Speaker 4: were they really and they eventually all four were killed
Speaker 4: pretty quickly, So that.
Speaker 1: What people guns, animal rights people.
Speaker 4: Failing sorry for him in the Michigan winters. So that
Speaker 4: was actually the very first wolf for introduction that I'm
Speaker 4: aware of, and people don't.
Speaker 1: Often who did that reinduction. It was like the state
Speaker 1: was it real hot politically at the time.
Speaker 4: You you didn't know about it. I'd say, no, it
Speaker 4: wasn't right.
Speaker 1: It's no internet, right, no.
Speaker 4: Internet, no Facebook and on social media. So it was done.
Speaker 4: They were held a little while in a pen and
Speaker 4: then they were let go, and that was the model
Speaker 4: for how they were going to reintroduce to wolf seat
Speaker 4: to Yellowstone. So Yellowstone wasn't Yellowstone, Ido. Wasn't the first
Speaker 4: reintroduction Michigan.
Speaker 1: Was they took them from Minnesota and put them in Michigan. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm from Michigan. I didn't know that.
Speaker 10: Google it.
Speaker 4: Try it Michigan wolf for introduction if you're so, and
Speaker 4: look in the seventies, I think seventy four. So yeah,
Speaker 4: but none of them made it. And it wasn't that
Speaker 4: they didn't know how to hunter, didn't know how to
Speaker 4: find their way around because they're wild wolves, just that
Speaker 4: too many people with guns. So anyway, that was you asked.
Speaker 4: That was the first. And then of course our wolves
Speaker 4: were coming down into Montana from the North Country from
Speaker 4: Canada on their own.
Speaker 1: What year were they so in the Rockies? So let's
Speaker 1: leave the Upper Midwest out of it. Yeah, so we'll
Speaker 1: go from like the hundredths of Meridian west or whatever. Kay,
Speaker 1: in what year can you say with some certainty there
Speaker 1: were no wolves south of the Canadian border in the
Speaker 1: whole west in the Yeah, in the whole West?
Speaker 4: Well the statement so wolves have always trickled down, So
Speaker 4: I can't say there was never a wolf. But in
Speaker 4: terms of a viable breeding surviving.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I want to hear about that a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 4: Okay, So by they say generally by the nineteen thirties
Speaker 4: wolves were extirpated as a viable population in the West.
Speaker 4: But I know of individual people like what you just said,
Speaker 4: who saw wolves, wolf tracks a wolf. There was a
Speaker 4: wolf shot in Glacier Park in nineteen fifty three. There
Speaker 4: was another wolf shot outside of Bulbridge in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 4: There's individual shot, they get run over, they show up.
Speaker 4: But in terms of a viable, reproducing population, nineteen thirties
Speaker 4: is pretty well the date that they've chosen.
Speaker 1: Okay, But since from nineteen thirty up until they will
Speaker 1: come to focus on when a vible population came Yeah,
Speaker 1: at any time along that there could have been singles
Speaker 1: that would come down from camp.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I hearing from people who live over on
Speaker 4: the on the Rocky Mountain Front, the Blackfoot Indian Reservation,
Speaker 4: Glacier Park, it's pretty remote, inaccessible, badger to med and
Speaker 4: people have seen wolves there more commonly than other parts
Speaker 4: of Montana. And then of course they don't survive in
Speaker 4: eastern Montana because.
Speaker 7: They got nowhere to hide.
Speaker 4: They show up, boom, they're dead.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 4: So there's been a little bit, but not reproduction.
Speaker 1: Okay, And then when did they start coming down and
Speaker 1: getting a foothold? And how did that? How did that work?
Speaker 1: They keep using toll holding foothold, which.
Speaker 4: Is which is there's They don't forget legholds anyway, one
Speaker 4: of my better tools. Sorry, did you find it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Go ahead.
Speaker 5: A failed attempt by Northern Michigan University and the Michigan
Speaker 5: DNR to reintroduce four wolves to the Upper Peninsula occurred
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy four. See Eventually wolves move from Wisconsin
Speaker 5: to Upper Michigan following strong prey populations in the early nineties.
Speaker 5: When'd you see that wolf track?
Speaker 1: I saw a wolf track in nineteen ninety four?
Speaker 5: Eastern up that that corroborates your your story, Try and
Speaker 5: trap right again.
Speaker 1: That's not far from the final resting place of my dog, Duchess.
Speaker 5: Wolves got her?
Speaker 1: Huh Nope, two guys named Ben and Matt got her.
Speaker 1: Oh man, yep, well they were supposed to. Oh oh,
Speaker 1: I gotch she was crippled up. Oh god, sorry god,
Speaker 1: HER's not the right word.
Speaker 4: Thank you for the back job, Brody.
Speaker 5: Thanks.
Speaker 1: So the question was oh from nineteen so nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: there's around nineteen thirty, there's no viable population of wolves
Speaker 1: left in the lower in the American West.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They even went in the parks with poisons and traps
Speaker 4: and rifles and killed all the wolves inside Yellowstone and
Speaker 4: Glacier and all the parks. Yeah, they were pretty well gone.
Speaker 4: Coyotes didn't disappear, but wolves did.
Speaker 5: Why is that white coyotes stick around?
Speaker 4: I think because they're smaller, they have a higher reproductive capacity,
Speaker 4: they breed more often, they're breeding in smaller units, and
Speaker 4: people weren't so focused on eradicating coyotes. You know, you
Speaker 4: see a wolf, by god, we've got to kill every
Speaker 4: last one coyote like well whatever, it just not doesn't
Speaker 4: it generate the emotional impact of hatred?
Speaker 2: Gotcha?
Speaker 5: What about Mexican gray wolves?
Speaker 2: Were they always?
Speaker 5: Were there always some north of the border or had
Speaker 5: they been eliminated?
Speaker 1: Also?
Speaker 4: It's interesting, so the Mexican wolves were basically eliminated except
Speaker 4: in Mexico, and there were a few into the southwest,
Speaker 4: Arizona and New Mexico right at the border area. They
Speaker 4: captured every last one. Then they could fund find out
Speaker 4: of the wild. Roy McBride went there and I think
Speaker 4: the last wild capture was about nineteen seventy early ninety seventies,
Speaker 4: and they moved them into captive breeding facilities to help
Speaker 4: build up the species, but their founding population was seven.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of genetic concerns obviously with a bottleneck
Speaker 4: of seven. So they're always managing and manipulating them to
Speaker 4: try and maximize genetic diversity, including taking pups from captivity
Speaker 4: at a young age and then finding a den in
Speaker 4: the wild where the mothers got wild pups, and they'll
Speaker 4: go sneak a couple of the captive pups like ten
Speaker 4: days old. However, really and with a while once because
Speaker 4: that has the desirable genetics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what's that bird? Does that?
Speaker 4: A coward?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: They call them a parasite though, instead of an improvement.
Speaker 7: Okay, so yeah, So.
Speaker 4: The Mexican wolf, they were pretty well gone. And interestingly,
Speaker 4: one of my first years in the Northwark I think
Speaker 4: it was nineteen eighty, Chuck Johnkle brought up a Mexican
Speaker 4: carnivore biologist, Pepe Trevino, and he showed me a polar
Speaker 4: eight you know, photograph he brought up of a wolf.
Speaker 4: It was like in a barn or a shed, and
Speaker 4: he said, is that a wolf? Well, yeah, he says,
Speaker 4: and I know it's a wild one because this is
Speaker 4: a Mexican wolf from the Chiuaua area of Mexico and
Speaker 4: it was coming to a ranch and it was a
Speaker 4: male wolf and it was bringing deer legs and meat
Speaker 4: to the ranch dog, who was a female on spade
Speaker 4: because it was the last mate choice out there, and
Speaker 4: they ended up the rancher could have just killed it,
Speaker 4: everybody did, but he didn't. He called some authority said
Speaker 4: if you don't come take this wolf away, we're going
Speaker 4: to kill it. So they went and captured it and
Speaker 4: held it in his barn until they moved it to
Speaker 4: the zoo. But it's kind of a sad story, yeah,
Speaker 4: the very last one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But we played this on this podcast some time
Speaker 1: ago and it was some bird from was I think
Speaker 1: of some bird from Hawaii and it was the I
Speaker 1: can't remember some bird species and it was just down
Speaker 1: to one. It was down to a male or a
Speaker 1: female and this bird species with duet I heard it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so they have this recording of the last bird.
Speaker 1: Let's say it was a male, the last male of
Speaker 1: the species doing the duet without his without accompaniment, because
Speaker 1: he like does his part and you wait and the
Speaker 1: female supposed to Yeah, and it was gone.
Speaker 2: I heard that.
Speaker 4: It's kind of terrors at you a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard a guy named Frank Glazer.
Speaker 4: Old Pilot, different guy Don, that was Don Glazier, No,
Speaker 4: I haven't.
Speaker 1: He has a book called Alaska's Well, there's a book
Speaker 1: about him called Alaska's Wolfman, huh. And he had gone
Speaker 1: up to He gone out to Alaska very early and
Speaker 1: was a market hunter for people building roads and people
Speaker 1: building railroads and whatever, and eventually just became this very
Speaker 1: accomplished hunter. And at the time they were trying to
Speaker 1: get they were trying to do economic improvement for Eskimo
Speaker 1: groups in northwest Alaska, and part of this economic improvement
Speaker 1: plan was to introduce reindeer herding, which never never really
Speaker 1: took so as they were trying to go into Eskimo
Speaker 1: communities and the fads are trying to get Eskimo communities
Speaker 1: establish raindeer populations, but they're having the hell of the
Speaker 1: time with wolves, and so Frank Glazer, in addition to
Speaker 1: a lot of aerial gunning, was doing bait operations and
Speaker 1: he would go into an area and get them poison
Speaker 1: bait yep, strict nine. He'd be able to go get
Speaker 1: them all.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: In his book he talks a lot about all the
Speaker 1: other stuff that would turn up at the bait pile,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, but it was so affect that
Speaker 1: he doesn't talk about its effectiveness with pois in this way,
Speaker 1: but it was so effective. He has some anecdotes in
Speaker 1: there where he gets them all and then someone will say,
Speaker 1: there's this part of it where an Eskimo tells him
Speaker 1: that he saw it's like seven come across the ice
Speaker 1: and it was like six white wolves and a black wolf.
Speaker 1: And a couple days later he goes to his bait pile.
Speaker 1: There's six white wolves and a black wolf at the
Speaker 1: bait pile. Just very effective, yes, yeah, And even talked
Speaker 1: about you want to set it on a high knob
Speaker 1: like he's got like he took like a real approach
Speaker 1: to it, you know, like he was good at poison
Speaker 1: and wolves.
Speaker 7: He's a good predator, good at poison wolf.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean poisonous. How they wiped the
Speaker 4: wolves out of the West. It wasn't so much traps
Speaker 4: and guns it was poison. How else are you going
Speaker 4: to get every last one? That's it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when they started coming down, what eventually what factors
Speaker 1: eventually led them to you know what, what factors led
Speaker 1: them to kind of get a toe hold? Was it
Speaker 1: ESA protection where you were where people were more afraid
Speaker 1: to shoot them because they'd get in a bunch of trouble.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I mean Rachel Carson and you know,
Speaker 4: the whole wave of ecology and being environmentally a where
Speaker 4: it started in the late sixties, and then the ESA
Speaker 4: came about, the Act came out seventy three, I think
Speaker 4: the final version. Wolves were protected in seventy four, and
Speaker 4: there was just a little change of mindset. And the
Speaker 4: interesting thing was that they would find the north Fork
Speaker 4: of the Flathead, you know, right along glacier. Because back
Speaker 4: in the seventies, people like myself and other people, they
Speaker 4: just wanted to move to a quiet place where there
Speaker 4: were a few people and could enjoy wildlife and have
Speaker 4: a simpler life. They weren't laggers or hunters or ranchers. Well,
Speaker 4: there were some, there were some, but mostly just sort
Speaker 4: of go back to earthers and have a better quality life.
Speaker 4: So they didn't mind wolves, and these wolves happened to
Speaker 4: find that valley, that corridor of tolerance, and they that's
Speaker 4: how they found their way. They didn't work on the
Speaker 4: Rocky mount Front, it didn't work in eastern montann it
Speaker 4: didn't work.
Speaker 1: And I know because of cattle, yes.
Speaker 4: And so they found this little zone and they were
Speaker 4: able to one came, and then two years later her
Speaker 4: male came and they made it. And then more wolves
Speaker 4: come down. But it was the tolerance of the local
Speaker 4: community that found wolves interesting and novel versus dangerous and threatening.
Speaker 1: Where were you? Then?
Speaker 4: I came to that valley in nineteen seventy nine, the
Speaker 4: first wolf that survived that we got a radio collar
Speaker 4: on Kishnina. She arrived in nineteen the fall of seventy eight.
Speaker 4: We put a radio collar in April fourth, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 4: and I trapped there for forever, just trying to catch
Speaker 4: more wolves. And there weren't other wolves until about two
Speaker 4: years later when this male came down and joined her.
Speaker 4: But the meantime, you know, she wanted her out looking
Speaker 4: for a female like that poor bird in the wale. Yeah,
Speaker 4: looking for a male, right, And eventually found one and
Speaker 4: they made it and had the pops and so forth.
Speaker 4: So that process just they filtered on their own four
Speaker 4: paws without any assistance whatsoever, and no fanfare and no
Speaker 4: people from Washington, d C. Carrying crates and they just
Speaker 4: they just walk down. And I think that's why they
Speaker 4: made it there was just socially acceptable and tolerant because
Speaker 4: it wasn't forced on anybody.
Speaker 1: You tell that story in your book. Yeah, how did
Speaker 1: you get a collar on that? Or was it collers
Speaker 1: at the time or so.
Speaker 4: The British Columbia Barry researcher Bruce McLellan's been up doing embarrassed.
Speaker 4: He's now retired, but he saw the wolves and wolf
Speaker 4: tracks and he contacted Bob Riem at the university and
Speaker 4: Bob hired a wolf trapper from Minnesota, Joe Smith. Uncommon name,
Speaker 4: but it was Joe Smith. And he came out and
Speaker 4: set traps and caught that wolf. And then I came
Speaker 4: out in September to replace the crew that was there
Speaker 4: and follow her, and I was a trapper and to
Speaker 4: try and catch more wolves. And that's kind of how
Speaker 4: it started. So she was already collared, although I know
Speaker 4: some there had one neighbor who didn't really like wolves
Speaker 4: and said that I brought the wolf with me, which
Speaker 4: you know, or that a sled dog got loose but slid.
Speaker 4: You know, you don't see sled dogs that are three
Speaker 4: feet off the shoulder with yellow eyes.
Speaker 7: I mean, it's just all the stuff.
Speaker 4: But that was how they got there. They walked and
Speaker 4: she had to come along ways because they poisoned off
Speaker 4: wolves in southern BC and Alberta in the rockies, just
Speaker 4: like they did in the States, because they were afraid
Speaker 4: of rabies. And they started poisoning wolves in the sixties,
Speaker 4: late sixties, and so.
Speaker 1: There was a zone they were at it late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a.
Speaker 4: Zone when there weren't wolves along the border. There weren't
Speaker 4: wolves in Waterton and vanmf. So this first wolf, Chrishtina,
Speaker 4: may have come from as far as Josper, but she
Speaker 4: came quite a ways. We didn't have genetic resources back
Speaker 4: then to determine where she came from. Of course now
Speaker 4: we could if we'd had a sample, but we don't
Speaker 4: have a sample.
Speaker 1: Did you when you say you were a wolf trapper,
Speaker 1: then were you trapping problem wolves too?
Speaker 4: Yes? No, I don't mind at all when I.
Speaker 1: So or whatever word you want to.
Speaker 4: Do well, you'll enjoy the chapter north Holm in the book,
Speaker 4: but did you like the North Holme chapter? So I
Speaker 4: started working with wolves as a sty eyed, waistlink blonde
Speaker 4: haired hippie wolf hugging lady and I.
Speaker 1: Came from Niver want me through that descriptor now story.
Speaker 4: I was a bit enamored with wolves. I was a
Speaker 4: university college student Dave Meach, who's like the wolf god.
Speaker 4: He's still working full time at eighty six studying wolves.
Speaker 4: He's published more scientific papers than anybody I know. Anyway,
Speaker 4: I got to work on his captive project and then
Speaker 4: I got to go to northern Minnesota and work, and
Speaker 4: I learned how to catch and collar wolves and track them.
Speaker 4: And then I was hired as a year after this,
Speaker 4: so I'm pretty early in my career. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 4: I was hired as a livestock depredation control trapper and
Speaker 4: research trapper. So when there weren't wolves killing livestock, I
Speaker 4: went out and form and collared wolves that were just
Speaker 4: wild and added to the database for stie Fritz was
Speaker 4: post docking PhD stuff. So my job picture you live
Speaker 4: in North Holme. Picture, you're a conservative guy from Michigan
Speaker 4: with a few cows and you have a few acres
Speaker 4: and some young blonde galoy's going to come up and
Speaker 4: save you from.
Speaker 7: The wolves, right.
Speaker 4: I mean it was a hard roto. So that was
Speaker 4: my job and I learned so much that summer. It
Speaker 4: was so important to my career development and having me
Speaker 4: be in the middle finger as you described, of behavior
Speaker 4: of public wolves reaction on my part. So there were
Speaker 4: truly farmers, they don't call them Rochester farmers that had
Speaker 4: chronic depredation problems and there were some farmers that had none.
Speaker 4: I worked with both, but getting into that community was
Speaker 4: real challenging, and I could tell stories forever about that.
Speaker 1: How would you generally handle those situations?
Speaker 4: Okay, example, I try to use there's no point in
Speaker 4: feeding them a lot of scientific data. They don't care.
Speaker 4: You just have to work with them and develop a relationship.
Speaker 4: I use my sense of humor. There was like, for example,
Speaker 4: I was working in there and I kind of stayed
Speaker 4: on my own and I tried to stay away from people,
Speaker 4: just do my job because I was young in inexperience
Speaker 4: and I kind of didn't want them to know that.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 4: Well, one day I'm at the gas station that a
Speaker 4: guy pumping gas. They've actually pumped your gas back. Then says,
Speaker 4: you know, you got to pick up the local paper
Speaker 4: and see what Bing wrote about you. I said, well,
Speaker 4: who's Bing girl. He's what he's like close to God.
Speaker 4: He writes our local news column and the weekly paper,
Speaker 4: and he knows all the goings on. So I go
Speaker 4: buy the paper and I open it up and there's
Speaker 4: being being Elhard's column and he talks about who visited
Speaker 4: who and what they were having the church bazaar at
Speaker 4: and then he says, and by the way, we have
Speaker 4: a new community member. There's an attractive, young blonde lady
Speaker 4: wolf Trapper. And next exact quote and next to his words,
Speaker 4: he had a photograph of a six foot tall cardboard
Speaker 4: cut out wolf and he's got his arm around it
Speaker 4: and is sitting outside at his house and he says,
Speaker 4: Lady wolf Trapper, I have a problem. Wolf's like, what
Speaker 4: do you do?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 4: I'm twenty four years old. I'm like, oh my God,
Speaker 4: and knowing that how I deal with this guy is
Speaker 4: going to make or break my summer. So I thought
Speaker 4: about it really hard. I went home. I mate took
Speaker 4: out a bunch of cardboard and tools, and I built
Speaker 4: a perfect replica of a nun fourteen new house wolf trap,
Speaker 4: complete with double long springs made out of cardboard and
Speaker 4: a fake chain made like your kids make the Christmas
Speaker 4: loop chains. And I wrapped it in black electric tape
Speaker 4: so it looked like it had been dyed black like
Speaker 4: a real trap. And I got a jar of my
Speaker 4: stinkiest wolf bait and I crammed it full of cardboard.
Speaker 4: I drive to his house the next day and I
Speaker 4: pulled up in the government truck and he comes out
Speaker 4: in his porch and he kind of stands there it smirks,
Speaker 4: and he crosses his arm and says, well, you must
Speaker 4: be the lady wolf trapper. And I said, yes, sir,
Speaker 4: I am. Please meet you. I'm Diane Boyd. And he says,
Speaker 4: say you get to take care of my problem wolf.
Speaker 4: I said, I am. And I walk around the back
Speaker 4: of my truck and I pull out this cardboard trap
Speaker 4: and the corrugated cardboard stinky goo. And I walk over
Speaker 4: and I say, so this this trap, in this bait,
Speaker 4: will I guarantee we will catch yours particular subspecies of
Speaker 4: wolf that's causing you your problem. And I reach out
Speaker 4: with it like this, and he stands there and he
Speaker 4: looks at me like for Mediani five feet away, and
Speaker 4: he just kind of stands there, and then finally he breaks.
Speaker 4: Soon his granny comes over and he puts his hand
Speaker 4: on my shoulder, says, come on in. The wife just
Speaker 4: took a pie out of the oven, and I sat
Speaker 4: there and had blueberry pie with him and tea and coffee,
Speaker 4: and we chatted quite a bit. And the next week
Speaker 4: in his column put a photograph of my trap and
Speaker 4: he said, the lady Trapper come paid me a visit,
Speaker 4: and my problems taken care of. And you know what,
Speaker 4: he actually said some nice things about me in his column.
Speaker 4: With the rest of the summer, when I'd catch a wolf,
Speaker 4: he'd put it in the column. And so it's like,
Speaker 4: that's how I work in the community. You can't fight it.
Speaker 4: Just put your head down, think hard, and move forward
Speaker 4: and try and do something a little creative. Just you asked.
Speaker 4: That's just one of the stories.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's good career advice for everybody.
Speaker 4: Just be a pain in the neck.
Speaker 1: When that was happening and the wolves were coming down,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that scenario that you said. You know,
Speaker 1: we might have eventually landed where we landed. There's no
Speaker 1: way it would have been the same timeline.
Speaker 4: Right, Probably not, But you know, once so once we
Speaker 4: had our first wolf in seventy nine. By nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: five without any reintroductions, just simply not trapping, poisoning and
Speaker 4: shooting them. By nineteen ninety five, just before the post
Speaker 4: wolves in the Yellowstone in central Idol, we had seventy
Speaker 4: seventy five wolves in eight packs with nobody reintroducing them.
Speaker 4: Doc northwest Montana Marion nine mile callous spell all through
Speaker 4: northwestern and western Montana. The Marian wolves became famous because
Speaker 4: they started killing livestock in the It was about late
Speaker 4: late eighties, so they were there and because nobody forced
Speaker 4: them out, they were just kind of existing. In those
Speaker 4: wolves that cause problems, you know, shoot shovels shot up,
Speaker 4: and the other ones kind of left to be. So
Speaker 4: in the nineties there were wolves dispersing.
Speaker 1: One of my telling those numbers again, so the number
Speaker 1: of wolves, yeah, pre reintroduction.
Speaker 4: So by nineteen ninety five there were about seventy to
Speaker 4: seventy five wolves in Montana in eight packs. And if
Speaker 4: you go back to the old US fish and Wilife
Speaker 4: Service website. You can find the data there. It's published.
Speaker 4: I'm not making this up. I mean I don't. I
Speaker 4: only talk truth and my book is Stories of Truth.
Speaker 4: So they were there. They had collars on. Sometimes this
Speaker 4: one pack was giving a guy at livestock producer problems,
Speaker 4: but mostly they were just making a living. There were
Speaker 4: wolves on the Rocky Mountain front. They were moving down
Speaker 4: and they were as far as Missoula, the Nine Mile Wolves,
Speaker 4: I'm sure you heard of them. So the wolves before
Speaker 4: they were introduced them to Yellowstone, there were two wolves
Speaker 4: that had gotten there already pre nineteen ninety five. One
Speaker 4: was shot just south of Fox.
Speaker 1: Creek fire you had gotten a Yellowstone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and one was filmed, yes, So that was like
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety one ninety two. So it's just like Colorado.
Speaker 4: Those wolves came from Wyoming and Colorado now and they
Speaker 4: found their way down and they began reproducing, and then
Speaker 4: the reintroduction happed on top of it, which is what
Speaker 4: happened with Wyoming. With a Yellowstone in central Idahole. So
Speaker 4: the wolves were starting to get down and the reintroduction
Speaker 4: happened on top of them. But the two that were
Speaker 4: seeing didn't survive long enough to reproduce. They weren't viable,
Speaker 4: they didn't have packs. They were just sort of passing through,
Speaker 4: just like we saw in Montana a lot prior to
Speaker 4: Kishnina and the successful breeding.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's gonna sound like a dumb question because I
Speaker 1: know it's probably not too challenging, but uh, when they
Speaker 1: kill Kyle's what when they kill Kyle's how do they
Speaker 1: generally approach it?
Speaker 4: You mean domestic cattle, not Kyle.
Speaker 1: Sorry, yeah, kill cattle.
Speaker 4: It depends on how many wolves are, depends on the
Speaker 4: experience of the wolves. But in every kill is different.
Speaker 4: I just remember in Minnesota I had to go skin
Speaker 4: a lot of really disgusting, maggotty carcasses of cows and haffers.
Speaker 4: If it's a calf, they basically eat at all, so
Speaker 4: there's not much to fined. You might find an ear
Speaker 4: tag in a pile of scat or something, it's hard
Speaker 4: to prove they were there. But the big cole, you
Speaker 4: find bites. They're pretty effective predators. It again, the hind,
Speaker 4: the belly, the neck. Sometimes they're not. They're not efficient
Speaker 4: killers like lions. I mean lions live alone because they
Speaker 4: can kill an Alkalholm. A wolf pack needs other members
Speaker 4: because they don't have fit sabers on four pods to
Speaker 4: help them hold and contain their prey. They just have teeth.
Speaker 5: Do they key in on calving season for cattle?
Speaker 4: I have always wondered why they don't more? I mean
Speaker 4: they can, yeah, because.
Speaker 5: It seemed like those wolves that were reintroduced in Colorado. Yeah,
Speaker 5: just this past Calvia, they really that's when they really
Speaker 5: started to get in some trouble.
Speaker 4: Yes, and those wolves before they were transplanted, they were
Speaker 4: livestock killers. So yeah, if there's calves around and cattle wolves,
Speaker 4: you will know there are wolves there. If you know,
Speaker 4: if you're gonna have problems, you have them. But not
Speaker 4: every wolf is a livestock killer. And sometimes they might
Speaker 4: kill a calf or two and never have a problem.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they might come in and kill repeatedly until you
Speaker 4: remove the wolves. It really depends on the situation, and
Speaker 4: it kind of depends on how their ranchers managing their
Speaker 4: livestock herd. Do they ever heard or out there? Do
Speaker 4: they have guard dogs? Are they turned out in a
Speaker 4: national forest and a grazing lease in May and then
Speaker 4: they're not picked up till October nobody looks at them.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, it really depends on the management
Speaker 4: of the stock a lot.
Speaker 1: Uh. You just said something that I can't remember with
Speaker 1: the hell you're talking about, but it caught my attention. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, can can one I guess what I was
Speaker 1: kind of getting at. Can one do it effectively?
Speaker 4: Depends and if you're talking or can they kill it
Speaker 4: one adult? Coll effect?
Speaker 1: Can one wolf kill one adult kyle? Do you ever see?
Speaker 4: That'd be tough. The kyle would probably have to have
Speaker 4: something wrong with it, but it's usually more than one.
Speaker 1: And then you just get a hold of it and
Speaker 1: hang on to it.
Speaker 4: Basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, When did.
Speaker 1: You say that Colorado put in known livestock killers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: explain what that means. And if that's like you're not
Speaker 1: in your head that is that behavior? Do you feel
Speaker 1: like it's hard to unlearn that?
Speaker 4: What I would say is, if I wanted to reintroduce
Speaker 4: wolves with minimal problems, I would see wolves that have
Speaker 4: only had wild meat. It's like the wolves that were
Speaker 4: introduced to Yellowstone and Central Idaho were taken from Canada
Speaker 4: where they had never been exposed to livestock, but they
Speaker 4: had never been exposed to buffalo either. I mean, they're
Speaker 4: pretty good at killing bison now they had to learn
Speaker 4: it because they're very formidable. I wouldn't want to try
Speaker 4: and kill a bison with my teeth. But so I
Speaker 4: think I don't know all the background and why they
Speaker 4: chose those wolves. They probably had a shortage supplies and
Speaker 4: a shortage of time to get the job done, and
Speaker 4: they had this opportunity to get those wolves. They weren't
Speaker 4: all livestock killers, but the ones that are causing the
Speaker 4: problem now had a history before they were put there.
Speaker 1: What is the I'm a little I haven't followed it
Speaker 1: as closely. What is going on with the ones they
Speaker 1: put in Colorado? Like, how has that gone? How many
Speaker 1: and what are they doing?
Speaker 4: Oh boy, it's a big exact numbers. I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 4: I'm not that involved. But there's a male I forgot
Speaker 4: his number. They put him in and he's paired with
Speaker 4: a female. They had at least one pup, and I
Speaker 4: saw on my news fees this morning they've seen three,
Speaker 4: now three pups in this particular pack, but they had
Speaker 4: only documented one up until yesterday or whatever. And they
Speaker 4: were put in at the end of the year, like
Speaker 4: December or so, and they started killing livestock in April.
Speaker 4: I believe it was when the pups were born. And
Speaker 4: they're now debating how are they going to manage the situation.
Speaker 4: They no matter what CPW does, they aren't be a happy,
Speaker 4: winning outcome, because if they remove all the wolves and
Speaker 4: kill them all, you're gonna have the wolf protectionists screaming
Speaker 4: at him. If they don't do anything, they're gonna have
Speaker 4: the livestock growers scream at him if they take I
Speaker 4: actually had this conversation with the journalist yesterday. He says, well,
Speaker 4: how about if we just take one, say we know
Speaker 4: the male has been a livestock killer, can the female
Speaker 4: survive long and protect and feed those pups without help?
Speaker 4: And I said, well, I can give you two examples.
Speaker 4: In nineteen eighty two, when Kishnina had her first litter
Speaker 4: of pups in the Flathead in fifty years, her mate
Speaker 4: was killed in June and those pups were seven eight
Speaker 4: weeks old, and he was killed accidentally by the Grizzly
Speaker 4: bear trap people. She was caught in a Grizzly bersonaire
Speaker 4: and he subsequently died accidental death and still just as
Speaker 4: dead though, so the female had Yeah, so doesn't him.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like got your dog right. Anyway, the
Speaker 4: female had seven pups to deal with, and he raised kids,
Speaker 4: and you raised dogs. You know how much food they
Speaker 4: start to consume as they become teenagers. Oh my god,
Speaker 4: talk about a full time job trying to feed seven
Speaker 4: growing pups that are fifty sixty pounds by fall, and
Speaker 4: I thought they're not can never make it. They all
Speaker 4: made it through winter. We were seeing tracks of eight
Speaker 4: wolves in the snow. So there's one example. The other
Speaker 4: example was so that was keeping the female remaining. And
Speaker 4: then in the nine Mile in the early recolonization, those
Speaker 4: wolves got to nine Mile, Montana on their own near Missoula.
Speaker 4: The male and female had pups. The mother was poached
Speaker 4: over Memorial Day, which is pretty early. So those little
Speaker 4: guys were maybe four maybe five weeks old. They were
Speaker 4: probably still drinking milk from mom, but they already had
Speaker 4: getting regurgitated food certainly, so it only had the male
Speaker 4: to raise the whole litter of pops. And Mike and
Speaker 4: Mannis who was studying him at that time, and Barto,
Speaker 4: Gary University, do you know, bloody bart Barto Gary. He's
Speaker 4: passed now, but he was the most vary, the most
Speaker 4: voracious hunter right now.
Speaker 7: We loved him. He's a university exactly.
Speaker 4: We call him Bloody Bart.
Speaker 7: I can tell you stories.
Speaker 4: He whatever he shot, he would kill. So he had
Speaker 4: the had permission to go shoot deer or pick up
Speaker 4: roadkill to supplemently feed those pups because they were fully
Speaker 4: in danger. This would be like nineteen eighty eight or
Speaker 4: so to do anything fishing. Walley Service was mandated under
Speaker 4: the essay to do what they could to keep them
Speaker 4: alive as an endangered species. So they got these permits
Speaker 4: to go do that. That male raise those pups without
Speaker 4: a female, and they all survived. So yes, the wolves
Speaker 4: are incredibly resilient. So then this journalist asked me yesterday,
Speaker 4: so should they take the male or the female? I'm like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, you're asking me a Sophie's choice question.
Speaker 7: I can't tell you.
Speaker 4: And you know, we talked about it at length. And
Speaker 4: starting with two wolves adults that have both been killing livestock,
Speaker 4: and then you're going to take one wolf away to
Speaker 4: try and hopefully minimize it, you might be causing more
Speaker 4: of a problem because the remaining parent now has the
Speaker 4: burden solely of feeding hungry pops, and maybe it's going
Speaker 4: to kill more livestock because of that.
Speaker 5: And those pups are going to learn to do it too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the problem. So it's I just think
Speaker 4: maybe thinking ahead a little bit ahead of time may
Speaker 4: have headed this problem off. But it's amazing to me
Speaker 4: that all those wolves they put out, they only had
Speaker 4: one reproducing pack. You think they would have had more.
Speaker 4: But this is a problem.
Speaker 1: How many did they put down?
Speaker 5: Ten total? I think?
Speaker 1: And then are all ten still alive?
Speaker 5: One of them got killed by a mountain lion, which
Speaker 5: is kind of ironic. It's usually the.
Speaker 1: Other way around.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, but I'm not there may have been another
Speaker 5: one that died somehow.
Speaker 1: The mountain lion got one. I think I knew that.
Speaker 5: Maybe I forgot it, but I think most of them
Speaker 5: are still.
Speaker 1: There, and they formed one reproducing pack.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's surprising to me because they did it before
Speaker 4: breeding season and then they'll be reintroducing more wolves. And
Speaker 4: of course you heard Washington State is now refusing to
Speaker 4: give them more wolves. It's becoming this huge political.
Speaker 1: But they got I thought they got him from the
Speaker 1: nets person there.
Speaker 5: They got him from Oregon originally and one of the
Speaker 5: well not the state, might have been the nests person
Speaker 5: that originally said yes, we'll contribute to but that just
Speaker 5: got They just said we're not doing it right.
Speaker 4: One they had from Oregon, I think state in the state,
Speaker 4: but I wasn't the new ones. Weren't they going to
Speaker 4: get the next batch from Washington? Wasn't it was?
Speaker 5: I think it was it was a tribe where that
Speaker 5: whoever it was, just said Nope, we're out.
Speaker 1: We're not doing What is the argument to not let
Speaker 1: them have them?
Speaker 4: Politics?
Speaker 1: I'm sure explain the politics. You know it's politics, but
Speaker 1: you don't know what.
Speaker 2: She doesn't study politics.
Speaker 4: So I'm just saying every decision made about wolves is
Speaker 4: based on politics. It's not based on biology.
Speaker 1: So why of course, because biology is largely politics. When
Speaker 1: people say like I don't want to be political or everything's.
Speaker 4: Political, everything is political.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that's not political, right, I mean every decision
Speaker 1: is political. I know, creating national Force was intensely political. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: what's not political? I mean most actions are taken by
Speaker 1: elected representatives in this country or appointed appointed by elected.
Speaker 4: Everything is I know, we don't have to go there.
Speaker 1: No I mean, but it's like I don't like earlier,
Speaker 1: I had a headache and I took two ivy profen
Speaker 1: that are like two hundred and fifty milligram ibuprofene. The
Speaker 1: fact that you can go by two hundred fifty gram
Speaker 1: milligram ivy profen is I don't know the history on it.
Speaker 1: That's probably political, Oh, no, doubt.
Speaker 4: So I would guess because there's I would guess that
Speaker 4: because the Colorado reintroduction has had a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: The Native Americans say yeah, I'm sorry, and.
Speaker 4: The Native Americans are probably saying, you know, we just
Speaker 4: don't want to deal with it. So I wrote A
Speaker 4: I was telling you honest. I wrote A was asked
Speaker 4: to write a document for the National Walley Federation about
Speaker 4: Wolve's returning to Colorado. And it's basically called less and
Speaker 4: is learned from everywhere else for the Colorado can use
Speaker 4: as a base as a template for reintroductions, and sixty
Speaker 4: pages long. It's on It's on the Colorado Parks and
Speaker 4: Wildlife website.
Speaker 1: Is that in a in your book?
Speaker 4: No, No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's stabled into the end of your book.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 6: Maybe you can read the audio version of that when.
Speaker 4: God anyway, it laid out all of the problems that
Speaker 4: challenges people have had elsewhere where the wolves are coming
Speaker 4: back on their own or reintroduced, How agencies federal and
Speaker 4: state dealt with them, how local communities dealt with them,
Speaker 4: how conservation groups and and uh a DC or animal
Speaker 4: it's no longer that. Now it's wildlife services work together
Speaker 4: sometimes or not. Just all these things. There's a template.
Speaker 4: There's nothing that needs to be reinvented about wolves being
Speaker 4: on the landscape. It's it's old hat.
Speaker 5: So this is pretty interesting. The Colorado things, Yeah, the
Speaker 5: they were going to get them from the Colville Nation
Speaker 5: fifteen of the moment, that's Washington, Washington. The Colville Nation
Speaker 5: said no because Colorado Parks and Wildlife wouldn't agree to
Speaker 5: give the Southern You Tribe like management over wolves on
Speaker 5: the Southern You tribes.
Speaker 1: Oh, political out of tribal solid area.
Speaker 4: That that's an interesting point. Thank you for clear that clarification.
Speaker 4: I knew it had something to do with people, and
Speaker 4: I knew it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet it had something to do always. I
Speaker 1: want to get back into some of this. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you another question that that Karin highlighted, it's
Speaker 1: a good one. Uh, you're familiar with the like with
Speaker 1: grizzly bears, you're from with the distinct population segments. Okay,
Speaker 1: that there's so they it's kind of like looking at
Speaker 1: part of this whole idea is with grizzly bears is
Speaker 1: being like, Okay, when we're talking about grizzly bears being
Speaker 1: on the landscape, where could they actually be? Like what
Speaker 1: areas could actually support bears? Right?
Speaker 4: I mean ecologically?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a handful of everythings. But
Speaker 1: I was gonna bring up that there's a there's a
Speaker 1: distinct population segment that doesn't have bears, but it could
Speaker 1: where it's.
Speaker 4: The bitter Well they've taken getting there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they're getting there.
Speaker 1: And there was at a time there's talk of putting
Speaker 1: them there. Yes, Okay, so if you were gonna maybe
Speaker 1: I set that up the wrong way. Let me just
Speaker 1: let me skip all that crap about the DPS. Okay,
Speaker 1: if if you were going to make a map, if
Speaker 1: you were going to make a map of the United States,
Speaker 1: all of it, Okay, and and I said, uh, Diane,
Speaker 1: go in and and and color in the areas where
Speaker 1: you think there's a chance of having viable wolf populations,
Speaker 1: meaning there's enough habitat, enough wild food, low enough chance
Speaker 1: of intense friction. Right, how would you start to color
Speaker 1: that map?
Speaker 4: Well, the last qualifier just put on is the deciding
Speaker 4: factor for everything. I mean there's oh god, yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean so historically wolves had the widest distribution of any
Speaker 4: mammal in the world except for humans. I mean they
Speaker 4: live from the Arctic to the desert. They live in
Speaker 4: every biome, every habitat. They can eat anything their habitat. Journalists,
Speaker 4: they're food generalists. They're like a you know, one hundred
Speaker 4: pound kayah that way. So they can live anywhere, I
Speaker 4: mean they did. I mean they covered the entire United States,
Speaker 4: so where could they live. They would live anywhere where
Speaker 4: us humans will tolerate them. And they're trying to get back.
Speaker 4: I mean wolves are showing up in Illinois and Missouri
Speaker 4: and you know they just get shot, and but they
Speaker 4: would be there. I mean they would. They would find
Speaker 4: a way to live in Central Park if we didn't
Speaker 4: kill them. They'd be eating poodles and whatever out there.
Speaker 4: But there's not who knows, so squirrels RFK.
Speaker 1: You have to lay it dead one of those, yeah,
Speaker 1: on the trail.
Speaker 4: So that's a hard question because they would live everywhere,
Speaker 4: So we don't have to color in a map because
Speaker 4: they just color and everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, I get to that last qualifier.
Speaker 4: Yeah, then then you have to constrict it. So the
Speaker 4: wolves has shown us now in Montana. Anyway, Let's pick
Speaker 4: Montana because they're all sitting here and thinking about Montana.
Speaker 4: So wolves basically live in the western one third or
Speaker 4: one quarter, and they've been doing this for decades now
Speaker 4: because that's where we tolerate them. But they keep showing
Speaker 4: up at Miles City and I Galaca and they get
Speaker 4: shot and they don't make it. That's not an ecological
Speaker 4: issue at all. They would live there. They did, so
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well they did under different circumstances. Okay, let me let
Speaker 1: me requalify. Okay, let me requalify, because it's going to
Speaker 1: throw out. Did you say Cleveland earlier? Did I make
Speaker 1: that up?
Speaker 6: I didn't hear Cleveland.
Speaker 1: You said something Missouri, she said, Let me let me read.
Speaker 1: Let me read you my qualification and not live on that.
Speaker 1: Somehow we make this deal. Humans can't kill them, but
Speaker 1: they can't eat any human generated food sources. Cool, now.
Speaker 4: Hit me, there would be nowhere. No, I'm serious, because
Speaker 4: the only pack that I'm aware in Montana that has
Speaker 4: never come into contact with livestock is the one up
Speaker 4: in northwest corner Glacia National Park. And there is livestock
Speaker 4: in his southern portion of the Norfolk or there was
Speaker 4: Ladenburg sold this stuff. But other than that, the can
Speaker 4: always come into contact with people who are raising sled dugs,
Speaker 4: people of lama farms, people of livestock, chickens, whatever. Just
Speaker 4: because we've taken over all the while life.
Speaker 5: Happened at could they make a go of it without
Speaker 5: causing too much trouble? And like Maine New Hamps, like
Speaker 5: the Upper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not going to give up on this map idea.
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 5: It seems like main they could. There's certainly plenty of white.
Speaker 4: Tails there, right, they'd have to get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, stop being so obstructionist. Somebody you understand what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to ask.
Speaker 4: No, I don't. Actually, I'm not.
Speaker 5: Steve coming semi full of wolves loose and Maine where
Speaker 5: can moose?
Speaker 1: Okay, let me let me say this. Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to I'm trying to color in the country of
Speaker 1: where however you want to put it? Man, where could
Speaker 1: you visualize? Where do you think when the dust is
Speaker 1: settled in a hundred years, And don't don't hit me
Speaker 1: with like, well, you know, is there a zombie apocalypse
Speaker 1: or in a hundred years? Where are wolves?
Speaker 4: If they lived where there weren't human conflicts?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, forget all those, OK, meaning new direction? Yeah,
Speaker 1: meaning it appears that it wound up being that northwest
Speaker 1: Montana was a suitable place for wolves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is right.
Speaker 1: It wound up being that the northern Great Lakes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the northern third of Minnesota, the northern third of Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: the northern third of Michigan wound up being like a
Speaker 1: pretty good like it is from the wolves perspective, a
Speaker 1: good place for wolves.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What are the chunks that are probably like that that
Speaker 1: don't yet but could.
Speaker 4: It's it's hard to answer because I'm not Anvoidum. I'm
Speaker 4: just saying they go everywhere, and they get shot, they
Speaker 4: go to eastern Montana, So I would color in eastern Montana.
Speaker 4: They don't make one hundred years from out, They're not
Speaker 4: going to make it either.
Speaker 7: So I met him.
Speaker 4: I'm at a lost kind. I'm not trying to avoid.
Speaker 4: I'm at a loss how to answer. They would live
Speaker 4: in Illinois, they would live in Missouri because there's plenty
Speaker 4: of places where there's enough habitat for them. They just
Speaker 4: for habitat all. They needed someplace where they find large hooftungulates,
Speaker 4: they don't get shot by people, and they have a
Speaker 4: secure place to raise pups. There's plenty of places throughout
Speaker 4: the country like that.
Speaker 5: Do you think we've reached, like we've filled in the
Speaker 5: areas that people well, that people are going to tolerate,
Speaker 5: Like they're where they are now, and they're probably not
Speaker 5: going to be in a lot of new places.
Speaker 1: I disagree.
Speaker 5: No, I'm asking like, like will there like are they
Speaker 5: where they are now? And that's probably all the space.
Speaker 4: I think there would be more wolves expanding across Montana, certainly.
Speaker 4: I mean they're showing up in the Snowy's and they're
Speaker 4: showing up all over and if they can get a
Speaker 4: foothold and have a pack, then at some point, if
Speaker 4: you're hunting and trapping them, there always be a few remaining.
Speaker 4: But this stronghold is the western portion because it's mountainous,
Speaker 4: because they're not seen because there's less road access, because
Speaker 4: there's the Bob, the Glacier Park, to scapegoat wilderness. Those
Speaker 4: are all those things that these wolves need to live.
Speaker 4: I don't see that. There's a lot of places that
Speaker 4: are very wild across the eastern Montana bird hunt, an
Speaker 4: lo hunt. But there's always a conflict there. There just
Speaker 4: always is with livestock, with hunters, with whatever goes on.
Speaker 4: And I'd love to hear what you think. So in
Speaker 4: terms of mapping, right now, wolves are all the way
Speaker 4: through Minnesota. You got wolves around the Twin Cities. Now
Speaker 4: you don't know maybe you don't know that, but they're
Speaker 4: filling into southern Wisconsin. They are moving south. It's a
Speaker 4: really slow wave. Nobody's reintroducing them. I got to point
Speaker 4: that out. It's on their own and they have been
Speaker 4: making it to the other states but get killed. So
Speaker 4: what because I don't kind of totally maybe get your question,
Speaker 4: or maybe I'm less optimistic than you, where do you
Speaker 4: see them going where they aren't? Oh, Utah would be
Speaker 4: a place about it.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that. It's funny you say Utah
Speaker 1: because I was at an event. I was at an
Speaker 1: event this winter and Utah's governor spoke at the event,
Speaker 1: and Utah's governor made a pledge to the audience that
Speaker 1: there would be no wolves in Utah. And I remember thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's your call.
Speaker 6: What he mean that he means.
Speaker 1: He was saying and addressing the audience, which was an
Speaker 1: audience of of uh people that do a lot of
Speaker 1: work for big game habitat improvement, right, big horns, sheet
Speaker 1: mule deer or whatever, putting it, putting ungulates on the ground,
Speaker 1: putting game animals on the ground. He made a pledge
Speaker 1: that there will be no wolves in Utah, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking.
Speaker 8: Like, don't worry hunters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I remember thinking, well, the way it sits
Speaker 1: now with federal protection, that's not really your call. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what. I appreciate the sentiment, but I
Speaker 1: don't know what tools you have at your disposal.
Speaker 4: So I get that what you're saying, but that agrees
Speaker 4: with what I say, because wolves have made it to Utah.
Speaker 4: And we had a wolf go from Yellowstone, go all
Speaker 4: the way to the Grand Canyon and started on its
Speaker 4: way back, a colored wolf from Wyoming from Yellowstone and
Speaker 4: they got shot on the way home. They get shot.
Speaker 4: I don't know how to better tell you, but they
Speaker 4: just get So maybe.
Speaker 1: He said that he was just saying if they come,
Speaker 1: we can. Wasn't that he's going to do something, that's
Speaker 1: just someone's going to shoot.
Speaker 7: But I think that's what he's writing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people will kill them.
Speaker 6: I think what you're saying too, though, is that I
Speaker 6: mean there are areas of the country that have other
Speaker 6: than Northwest Montana, that have sufficient habitat security, like you
Speaker 6: in a hundred years, you know, I would imagine all
Speaker 6: the way down the spine of.
Speaker 1: The Rockies right.
Speaker 6: Over maybe the Cascades down I don't know that they
Speaker 6: go down the Sierras, you know, like they have Like
Speaker 6: that's what.
Speaker 2: I question is California. Yeah, California would be maybe a
Speaker 2: little more tolerant. They have they have six packs or something.
Speaker 1: And if I asked you my question twenty years ago
Speaker 1: that you're trying to like dodge and obfuscate, I'm not
Speaker 1: if I had asked that question twenty years ago, would
Speaker 1: you have said, would you have said Lake Tahoe.
Speaker 4: I think wolves have a good chance of being in
Speaker 4: Utah except people kill them. So I don't know if
Speaker 4: that's a yes or no, that's a yes, okay, And
Speaker 4: I'm really trying to it's not I'm not squirming, I'm
Speaker 4: not uncomfortable. I'm just saying I have lived with wolf
Speaker 4: killing for so long, and where they're going to be
Speaker 4: tolerated is where they're at. And wolves getting in California's great,
Speaker 4: but they're going to start killing people's pets and they're
Speaker 4: going to be not tolerated as well.
Speaker 5: What about like the wolves? If the Colorado plan goes,
Speaker 5: is they some people would like it to go. They're
Speaker 5: they're gonna push into New Mexico, Arizonah. Yeah, So my
Speaker 5: question is what happens to those Mexican wolves then?
Speaker 4: So I love this question and half a finger and
Speaker 4: I will disagree on this.
Speaker 1: So okay, can you guys, can one of you make
Speaker 1: the question really clear for people? Because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people aren't to understand.
Speaker 5: What they're I think she's probably the better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you mind, like why we're even asking that?
Speaker 1: Like what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: As I explained about the Mexican wolves there, they are
Speaker 4: a unique subspecies. It's the only population really that's got
Speaker 4: its separate subspecies classification for protection other than the red wolves,
Speaker 4: which are a different animal. So they come from a
Speaker 4: very unique gene pool of seven founding members. They're trying
Speaker 4: to protect that gene pool. So if you read I
Speaker 4: mean every time a Mexican wolf starts to go north,
Speaker 4: it disperses like a wolf is gonna do. They live
Speaker 4: by their feet and they go north, they go and
Speaker 4: catch them and bring them back. They don't allow them.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, they don't allow them to travel out of
Speaker 4: the recovery area. What you could google the on, but
Speaker 4: they don't allow it because that if.
Speaker 1: One of the Mexican wolves out of Mexican Wolf area,
Speaker 1: they fetch it and bring it home.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a defined zone and so and so because
Speaker 4: number one, that was the promise early on with the plan.
Speaker 4: But they've expanded the Mexican Wolf Recovery area slightly, but
Speaker 4: they don't want those wolves to mix with other gene pools.
Speaker 4: And those Colorado wolves will eventually make it down to
Speaker 4: four corners and come down and they will approach and
Speaker 4: get in. I would soon get to the Mexican wolf population.
Speaker 4: And then what are people going to do. They're going
Speaker 4: to start killing one wolf species subspecies to protect the
Speaker 4: other one. I think I mean, you've had some really
Speaker 4: good genetic people on your programs. I've so enjoyed their discussions.
Speaker 4: If you were trying to preserve a rare species with
Speaker 4: a unique genetic pool that was highly inbred, like the
Speaker 4: iroil ones were, and then they all went to extinction
Speaker 4: because they were two in bread, wouldn't you want to
Speaker 4: have some gene flow from the most similar population adjoining
Speaker 4: and bringing new genes.
Speaker 5: Because historically the.
Speaker 7: Right but it was it.
Speaker 4: But even though there was all connected all the way
Speaker 4: to Mexico to Central Mexico, they were still had unique
Speaker 4: genetic markers because they have a different habitat than the
Speaker 4: rest of the wolves. It's a different habitat, so they're
Speaker 4: been isolated on their own way. But that's my humble opinion.
Speaker 4: I'm a lumper, not a splitter, and I think it
Speaker 4: would behoove Mexican wolves to have some new gene flow.
Speaker 4: And I am not in a maybe a majority opinion,
Speaker 4: but I think people who have genetics background would agree
Speaker 4: it's going to happen. They won't be able to stop.
Speaker 1: It, well, sounds like they will maybe try.
Speaker 4: They will try, They're already trying. They do move all
Speaker 4: these wolves back every time they go out of the.
Speaker 1: Rescoveries are they getting them?
Speaker 4: They catch them everyone, everyone of them collared.
Speaker 1: Just about so they have no idea.
Speaker 4: And also when a wolf is in an area, you do.
Speaker 1: A little baby and like you put the baby in
Speaker 1: the mill of room the while it crawls away and
Speaker 1: you go get it and set it back. And they
Speaker 1: thought about it. Get an invisible.
Speaker 6: Fence, right, I mean, that's how we deal with dogs wondering.
Speaker 4: I don't think that would work for them, but anyway,
Speaker 4: And when wolves go to an area, they leave scatt
Speaker 4: they kill things. People see them. Everybody's got trail gameras
Speaker 4: everybody and the brothers all looking for the biggest delcor water.
Speaker 4: You see them, You see him, right, you know they're there.
Speaker 4: They're not small and sneaky like lions. They're just not.
Speaker 4: They instead of sneaking around and hiding in a rock crevices,
Speaker 4: they come into town in Harley's I mean wolves animals.
Speaker 1: That's a T shirt. That's a T shirt. There's two
Speaker 1: I want to talk about, just to give you a
Speaker 1: little taste of what's common. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: mountain lions, Okay, difference mountains and wolves. Yep, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about why wolves don't kill people.
Speaker 4: That's a good one, But first I.
Speaker 1: Want to talk a little bit more about Colorado. Okay,
Speaker 1: crystal Ball for me, and you're totally excused, like like
Speaker 1: this is just crystal Ball land. This is if you
Speaker 1: had to make a guess. Yeah, what is Give me
Speaker 1: a timeframe. What's going on in twenty years in Colorado?
Speaker 1: Just take a wild stab. I'm gonna known. Diane Boyd
Speaker 1: is taking a wild stab. This is not an academic exercise.
Speaker 1: She's taking a wild stab. Twenty years what's the wolf land?
Speaker 1: What's the landscape in Colorado? What's going on?
Speaker 4: People will still be fighting where their wolves should be
Speaker 4: or should not be there, And despite our human intentions,
Speaker 4: they will continue to expand their populations and fill up
Speaker 4: appropriate habitat in Colorado, and they will have to kill
Speaker 4: some for killing livestock, and the other ones that aren't
Speaker 4: killing livestock will continue to find habitat and reproduce. And
Speaker 4: I think there'll be more wolves.
Speaker 6: So it'll be Montana twenty years after nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 5: What about the hunting season? You see that happen eventually
Speaker 5: hunting for wolves?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that when you get enough wolves to
Speaker 4: create social tolerance. Season is a good idea. It's probably
Speaker 4: not such a good idea for individual wolves, but in
Speaker 4: terms of creating tolerance on the landscape, and I think
Speaker 4: you have to give the tools to livestock producers that
Speaker 4: they can take care problems themselves. I mean, that's what
Speaker 4: they did in Montana early on. I just say follow
Speaker 4: the model that worked in Montana. It's worked pretty well.
Speaker 4: I mean we went from one wolf to you know,
Speaker 4: thousand wolves pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: And then in your crystal Ball can you extend that
Speaker 1: crystal Ball scenario to the Mexican gray wolf. They're all
Speaker 1: making love and they're just mixed in together.
Speaker 4: Should have hefelfinger here too?
Speaker 1: So well, yeah, but this isn't what you want to have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just your guess work.
Speaker 4: People will still be fighting over Mexican wolves, and Mexican
Speaker 4: wolves may hit I'm just trying to think, they may
Speaker 4: hit a critical mass where they're not all colored, and
Speaker 4: then some of them will escape beyond the the geo
Speaker 4: fencing of their their loud recovery zone and began going elsewhere.
Speaker 4: But if they continue to heavily, heavily handle and manage
Speaker 4: the wolves and collar everyone that well, they're not all collared,
Speaker 4: but manage its a significant portion population. It's going to
Speaker 4: be really hard for those wolves to sneak through, but
Speaker 4: that's going to be And I just think the wolves
Speaker 4: from the north will come down and start integrating. I'm
Speaker 4: hoping they will. And I think Mike Phillips would disagree
Speaker 4: with that too. But the other people I know, biologists,
Speaker 4: we talk about this. It's like, yeah, let them, let
Speaker 4: them blend, Let's see what happens. It's sort of like
Speaker 4: this this animal of the northeast, the Koi wolf dog thing.
Speaker 4: Nobody really knows what it is, but that animal has
Speaker 4: made a really successful living. It's found a niche that
Speaker 4: was partially formed but what we tolerate and how we
Speaker 4: modified the landscape, so this animal that lives there now
Speaker 4: is doing really well well. Mexican wolf gray wolf mix
Speaker 4: probably be the same way. At least they'll have more
Speaker 4: genetic variation. They probably won't go extinct due to inbreeding.
Speaker 4: Who knows, but you asked my crystal ball. I think
Speaker 4: there would be more wolves. I think they will fill
Speaker 4: in more places and there will always be the battles
Speaker 4: to have them on the landscape always.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know how there's sports betting. I
Speaker 1: think there should be a way that you could like
Speaker 1: that we could run like a bookie thing and have
Speaker 1: uh Colorado wolf betting. H I mean you got them.
Speaker 6: You can bet on anything though, Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 6: wouldn't be surprised if you could get odds on Colorado's
Speaker 6: wolf population in ten years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people could make like bets and you could
Speaker 1: win money and lose money.
Speaker 4: I think to the more the more radical people get,
Speaker 4: I think it will cause more people to feel sort
Speaker 4: of moved towards the metal. Like this fellow over in
Speaker 4: where was it Daniel Wyoming who ran over the wolf
Speaker 4: with the snowmobile this winter? You must have And he
Speaker 4: crippled it so couldn't get away, and then he ties
Speaker 4: it up and brings it into a b All of
Speaker 4: this is illegal, which is a minor thing, but it's
Speaker 4: really immoral. And he brings into a bar and people
Speaker 4: are laughing with it and getting their pictures taken in
Speaker 4: and finally hauls it out back and shoots it. Well,
Speaker 4: that's just one animal, but it had huge ripples throughout
Speaker 4: the country, and that's affecting wolf policy because of one
Speaker 4: guy's action. And I think those people that maybe didn't
Speaker 4: really care about wolves or maybe dislike them somewhat moderately,
Speaker 4: see that is that is not fair, Chase, that is
Speaker 4: not acceptable to me as a hunter or a human being,
Speaker 4: and we have to put brakes on that. I kind
Speaker 4: of see the more radical people get. I'm hoping that
Speaker 4: people come to the middle more. That's my hope.
Speaker 1: Why don't wolves kill people? Because they do it Romania,
Speaker 1: I've wondered that for a long time.
Speaker 4: Well, sometimes come on, So it's not more common there, No,
Speaker 4: But there's all those like crazy old stories about.
Speaker 1: That's not None of that's true.
Speaker 4: So in my book, I could read you a little
Speaker 4: paragraph about statistics, but do you want me to find it.
Speaker 4: I'll have to look for it for a moment when
Speaker 4: you're talking. I'll look for it. But wolves have occasionally
Speaker 4: killed people in modern times. Documented Kenton Carnegie was killed
Speaker 4: up in northern Saskatchewan and in the eighties early nineties
Speaker 4: by He was at a remote camp and these wolves
Speaker 4: were coming into the dump. So think of think dump
Speaker 4: bear not afraid of people. And he went out one
Speaker 4: evening alone with his camera and he was found the
Speaker 4: next morning, I believe, and he had been killed and
Speaker 4: partially consumed, and it appeared to be wolves. There was
Speaker 4: wolves and bears both feeding on him, but it looked
Speaker 4: like the wounds were wolf probably, So that's one guy.
Speaker 4: And then there was a woman jogger in Alaska who
Speaker 4: was jogging and she was attacked members killed. I don't
Speaker 4: think she was consumed. I don't remember on that, but
Speaker 4: it was definitely predation they killed her. And there's been
Speaker 4: a few, I guess attacks encounters of wolves that have
Speaker 4: been habituated, especially like on some of the islands off
Speaker 4: of British Columbia and Washington where people kayak and they're
Speaker 4: feeding wolves out on the beaches and wolves get friendly
Speaker 4: and they come in and bite somebody in their sleeping bag.
Speaker 4: Because they don't stuff like that Algonquin Park habituated wolves
Speaker 4: that becomes a problem. So those are the cases that
Speaker 4: I know of. And then Mark mcnae wrote a really
Speaker 4: long document published you could google his name, Mark McNee
Speaker 4: of all the wolf encounters that he could find that
Speaker 4: were verifiable olden days. A lot of wolves were rabid.
Speaker 4: I mean a lot. I shouldn't say that. A lot
Speaker 4: of the encounters with wolves that had bitten were rabbid. Okay,
Speaker 4: that happens with every species, bats, foxes, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: But if you look at what other predators attack humans,
Speaker 4: people are killed every year by black bears, grizzly bears,
Speaker 4: some deer, some elk, mountain lions, coyotes. That's not true
Speaker 4: with wolves. And so you say, why don't why don't
Speaker 4: people kill wolves more often? Oh? My, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, right.
Speaker 2: That's what I mean.
Speaker 1: And there I think it's an interesting question because they could.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely. I look at any of us in this room.
Speaker 4: If one of us was out in the woods by
Speaker 4: ourselves and a pack of eight wolves came along, we'd
Speaker 4: be toast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could handle three, but eight probably.
Speaker 5: Domestic dogs kill all kinds of people, Yes, but they could.
Speaker 2: Right, So what what is your hypothesis as to why not?
Speaker 4: My thought about that is, well, we, first of all,
Speaker 4: when we domesticated dogs, we changed the gene pool. They
Speaker 4: have the dogs here, but he's on my foot right now, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'll make sure doesn't pull any cables. Over the course
Speaker 4: of time we have When we started domesticating livestock about
Speaker 4: eleven thousand years ago, we changed our relationship with wolves.
Speaker 4: Prior to that, it wasn't much. There was no reason
Speaker 4: I have conflict. As a matter of fact, I talk
Speaker 4: about some archaeologists, some ancient people study wolves, and anciently
Speaker 4: they their theory was that humans in primitive times would
Speaker 4: watch wolves haunt successfully. So wolves and humans live in
Speaker 4: the same family structure group of animals that are related.
Speaker 4: Usually they would watch them hunt and they end up
Speaker 4: learning that if they could follow the wolves, they could
Speaker 4: steal meet from them. So they would watch the wolves,
Speaker 4: and when wolves picked out something, then the wolves humans
Speaker 4: really humans could go over there with their adladdles or spears,
Speaker 4: drive the wolves away, take the meat they wanted, and
Speaker 4: then leave, and then the wolves clean up the scraps.
Speaker 4: This was their hypothesis, so they actually it was no
Speaker 4: way a synergetic or altruistic relationship. It's brutes arrival, but
Speaker 4: they sort of collaborated and out of that, eventually we
Speaker 4: learned that we could make dogs, I guess, but I
Speaker 4: think over time, once we started to desticate animals, especially livestock,
Speaker 4: those wolves that were aggressive towards people were weeded out
Speaker 4: and killed. And I think that gene pool has been
Speaker 4: so heavily selected against. I think the behavior is still there.
Speaker 4: That's the only thing I can think of, because how
Speaker 4: many people have successfully domesticated allions made a different animal
Speaker 4: out of it, or bears or coiotes, right, these other
Speaker 4: things that kill us people haven't And we've spent so
Speaker 4: much time competing with wolves of their livestock and killing
Speaker 4: them that I just think that aggression towards people is
Speaker 4: no longer there. And maybe with the crystal ball, maybe
Speaker 4: three hundred yards from now and we haven't been killing wolves,
Speaker 4: maybe that'll change. I don't know. I don't know, but
Speaker 4: it is an interesting question.
Speaker 8: I was gonna just wanted to weigh. In episode four
Speaker 8: sixty six Dire Wolves and Ancient Hunting Dogs, we touch
Speaker 8: on some of what you just mentioned Kith Angela Perry
Speaker 8: and what does she say that same thing we talked
Speaker 8: about that?
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm gonna have to look that one up. I
Speaker 4: didn't hear it.
Speaker 5: Whe do they fall? Like maybe this is a weird question,
Speaker 5: but where do they fall on the intelligent scale scale
Speaker 5: compared to like a bear or a mountain lion or
Speaker 5: like like would that play a role and they're like
Speaker 5: understanding of how to interact with humans, like, are they
Speaker 5: smarter than.
Speaker 4: A bear or Ah, the bear researchers would say hell no, right,
Speaker 4: but I can tell you. I mean I've trapped a
Speaker 4: lot of animals in my life, everything from weasels to grizzlies,
Speaker 4: and the wolves are the hardest animal to catch. Bears
Speaker 4: are not hard at all because they don't need to be.
Speaker 4: They're the top thing and they eat everything. Wolves have
Speaker 4: had to learn to sneaker on strict nine baits guns,
Speaker 4: and because they're a social species, they have to communicate well,
Speaker 4: they have to collaborate. They're different. I mean, none of
Speaker 4: these other predators that we've been talking about are social
Speaker 4: and living groups. And I believe that gives wolves a
Speaker 4: need evolutionarily to be high intelligence. They have to work,
Speaker 4: I do they I mean you can look at your dog,
Speaker 4: which is kind of a challenged version of a wolf.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're not that good at anything, and they're
Speaker 4: incredibly bright. I'm trying to use the right political term here,
Speaker 4: but they're incredibly brilliant. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 4: what you can train a Melania or a border Collie
Speaker 4: to do, and the wolves are much smarter than that.
Speaker 4: They just are so that's my humble opinion. But again
Speaker 4: the Baar researchers would argue that, and case you have to.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're looking at a human lens to value intelligence.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting, man. That's to say that a wolf
Speaker 1: is smarter than your pet dog.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, they don't have to be smart. We feed them,
Speaker 4: we house them.
Speaker 10: They don't need.
Speaker 4: To be smart.
Speaker 3: They don't have to kill an elk every couple of days, right,
Speaker 3: and yeah, it's.
Speaker 6: Like a wolf with a restrict plate or something.
Speaker 1: Our dog is not an exceptional dog. It's totally fine
Speaker 1: that everybody lif loves it, but it's not exceptional anyway,
Speaker 1: used to for whatever reason, would like to chew on
Speaker 1: rose bushes and chew on raspberry bushes. It like the
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, the thorniness of it. And I have
Speaker 1: one time just took my kids out and we put
Speaker 1: a bunch of cayenne in the dirt around a rose
Speaker 1: bush and she went up to it and got a
Speaker 1: nose full of that. Right, has never ever gone.
Speaker 4: Near same thing with you know e callers and training
Speaker 4: and no dogs are.
Speaker 1: Sorry when you think about how getting hard to catch
Speaker 1: the dog's like, dude, you know, to make that connection, right,
Speaker 1: So you think it's something being hard to trap, like
Speaker 1: you sting its toe one time, and there's just something
Speaker 1: about that situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the old timers when they're read the books,
Speaker 4: the Last of the Loaners and the last renegade wolves
Speaker 4: and guys trying to catch them, the stuff they did
Speaker 4: to try not smart these wolves. Sometimes. Well, one of
Speaker 4: the worst things I read was they've been trapping this this,
Speaker 4: this couple of wolves, the last ones in the Southwest,
Speaker 4: and they just couldn't catch the male, and so they
Speaker 4: ended up catching the female and then they took her
Speaker 4: and used her for bait, and the wolf went in
Speaker 4: the next day. That was it. He was done and
Speaker 4: they spent. Yeah, kind of sad.
Speaker 1: And Cormick McCarthy's the Crossing. He's trying to catch a
Speaker 1: Mexican gray wolf, which he then brings back across the border,
Speaker 1: but he winds up he can't catch it, and eventually
Speaker 1: makes a set in his fire pit because he would
Speaker 1: see that a wolf now and then come and sniff around.
Speaker 1: So instead of making sets normal sets, he made a
Speaker 1: set in his fire, let this fire burn down, cool off,
Speaker 1: and then made a set in there. I think that's
Speaker 1: how he catches it. That's how he gets it, gets it,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Then he brings it back to Mexico
Speaker 1: because he can't bring himself to kill it, Like he's
Speaker 1: supposed to catch it and kill it, but can't. He
Speaker 1: brings it back to Mexican and it quickly dies. Anyways,
Speaker 1: that's how Corny McCarthy soone kills it. Anyways.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's a cheerful story. Well, I mean, when it
Speaker 4: comes to wolves, there's no good ends for any large
Speaker 4: carnivore in the wild, you know. I mean, they don't
Speaker 4: end isn't good for them, no matter what it is.
Speaker 4: But they try and live a really full life, and
Speaker 4: most importantly they dry and leave their jeans behind. If
Speaker 4: they can do that, they've succeeded.
Speaker 6: But you're saying they don't move to a golf course.
Speaker 6: Watch a lot of network telling there.
Speaker 4: Was Okay, this is not in my book, but we
Speaker 4: my last couple of years of working, we got a
Speaker 4: call from somebody living in a gated community between Whitefish
Speaker 4: and Callous Spell and called up said we've got some
Speaker 4: wolf pups in our driveway. And it's like, oh, okay, great, thanks,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking it's got to be skyotes. Yeah, they're living
Speaker 4: in this gated community in an urban area. So anyway,
Speaker 4: I said, I said, we took some videos. I said, great,
Speaker 4: can you send me the video? So they email me
Speaker 4: the video. It's like, oh my god, those are wolf pups,
Speaker 4: no kidding, in their driveway next to their mailbox and
Speaker 4: they're playing in the culvert that goes under their driveway.
Speaker 4: It's like wow. So we go out there and talk
Speaker 4: to other neighbors and several people had seen them. And
Speaker 4: so this is a gated community with people with huge houses.
Speaker 4: They're all realthy. They love wildlife. That's where they live there.
Speaker 4: There's huge amounts of green space in the community. There's
Speaker 4: white tails everywhere because no hunting is allowed. Talk about
Speaker 4: Nirvana for wolves. They're protected, they got endless food resources.
Speaker 4: No one's going to hurt them. So we tried to
Speaker 4: catch the adults through a male and female. Had no luck.
Speaker 1: These are what reasons did you want to catch put
Speaker 1: a collar on it?
Speaker 4: Oh, I want to know what happened at the end
Speaker 4: of the summer. Okay, So what happens what's going to
Speaker 4: happen when they leave this? You know, ten square mile
Speaker 4: gated community. We couldn't catch them. They were so smart
Speaker 4: about people. We had them on trail cameras, couldn't get
Speaker 4: them to step on the magic pan the size you
Speaker 4: know of an oreo cookie. Literally. And then after summer
Speaker 4: came and the wolves went on and they left and
Speaker 4: they have to disperse the bigger happy hunting grounds square
Speaker 4: miles on average for a pack they just won by
Speaker 4: one got shot gone, So but they can't live in
Speaker 4: ten square miles. They have to move on. But it
Speaker 4: was so interesting to me that those wolves set up
Speaker 4: in that community. Yeah, so, I mean they will try
Speaker 4: to live.
Speaker 2: That wasn't by accident.
Speaker 4: I don't know how smart is a wolf.
Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, smarter than Can you contextualize that
Speaker 2: a little bit more about how there's no good ending
Speaker 2: for a wolf because I think we all in this
Speaker 2: room understand what that means when you say that, but
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of people out there are
Speaker 2: When you say that, it almost sounds like you're saying, oh,
Speaker 2: they're all going to end up getting shot. But that's
Speaker 2: not what you're saying.
Speaker 4: No, I mean, a wolf is an apex predator, top predator.
Speaker 4: It's always hunting to hunt. It's always having to compete
Speaker 4: for food, so they get In Yellowstone Park, the largest
Speaker 4: cause immortality is wolves killing other wolves protecting their territory.
Speaker 4: They trespass and they get killed outside of the park,
Speaker 4: even when I was doing my work when they were
Speaker 4: still protected. Eighty five percent of mortality is caused by humans.
Speaker 4: They don't live very long. Take a guess and how long.
Speaker 4: So if we put together the data from Yellowstone Park
Speaker 4: in Minnesota and Montana, take a guess in the average
Speaker 4: longevity of a wolf from the time they're detected, because
Speaker 4: some die in the den young, so by the time
Speaker 4: they're four or five weeks old in their scene until
Speaker 4: they die, take a guess annual mortality. Take an average
Speaker 4: average age at which they die.
Speaker 1: Four eighteen months.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go six months, four point.
Speaker 4: Three, four point three.
Speaker 1: Did you read that? No? I didn't.
Speaker 4: You're right on the money four point three.
Speaker 6: I was gonna go with four point six, but then
Speaker 6: I hedged my bets and you thought you were going
Speaker 6: to surprise us.
Speaker 4: Randall for the four he gets the trip four point
Speaker 4: three years.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's years years.
Speaker 4: So they most of them don't live long enough to
Speaker 4: reproduce what is the like to randal ding ding ding.
Speaker 1: A doctrine he does, and are you out? Like so
Speaker 1: do I?
Speaker 5: Not including Yellowstone perhaps, but like, what is the survival
Speaker 5: rate of say a litter of six pups, how many
Speaker 5: of them will reach sexual maturity? Is that a pretty
Speaker 5: high survival rate if.
Speaker 4: They make it to the till like the second year,
Speaker 4: they do pretty well. The first year when they go
Speaker 4: between a year and two years, when they're starting to
Speaker 4: dispersal and they're starting to look around them, the pups themselves,
Speaker 4: like they pups generally make it. Generally when the time
Speaker 4: they're little till their first year, they do really well
Speaker 4: because they're all protected, their fed until they get trapped
Speaker 4: or shot during hunting seasons or or if they get
Speaker 4: Sometimes humans have introduced parbo virus in distemper in an environment,
Speaker 4: and if that gets into the litter, mortality is very high.
Speaker 5: Do they ever do that thing that bears sometimes do
Speaker 5: where a male come in and kill No, they don't
Speaker 5: do that.
Speaker 2: Nope. Yeah, I was gonna ask other than humans, what's
Speaker 2: killing wolves?
Speaker 4: Deer elk avalanches? The first wolves? The wolves kill each other? Yeah,
Speaker 4: I just said that in Yellowstone, So like the first mortality,
Speaker 4: Recorded Mortality and Yellowstone Park I was told was a
Speaker 4: UPS driver killing a wolf when he ran it over.
Speaker 4: I thought, could you imagine being that ups? Turf's like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I just killed the national icon about it.
Speaker 1: I hope is hiring.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and they get killed by lions, they starve.
Speaker 4: I did have one wolf dining an avalanche.
Speaker 2: What about bears? The bears get after him.
Speaker 4: They can if it's one on one, but when you
Speaker 4: had a whole wolf pack. Yeah, wolves kill, wolves kill
Speaker 4: black bears. Wolves will kill a grizzly cub if they can,
Speaker 4: but usually they can't. But one on one, I think, Well,
Speaker 4: wolves are pretty fast.
Speaker 1: Do they go way out of their way to kill
Speaker 1: coyotes in places?
Speaker 4: They do? Yeah? In Yellowstone Park they filled them digging
Speaker 4: up coyote dens and killing the pups. Pretty gruesome.
Speaker 1: Do they got it in for Red Fox too?
Speaker 4: No? So there's this yeah in the book, so trophic
Speaker 4: cascades we're going to get in a little bit. And
Speaker 4: I just want you to know that before I wrote
Speaker 4: this book, or while I was writing this book, I
Speaker 4: ended up working with Jim Hafflefinger, Dave oz Been. I mean,
Speaker 4: it was really a hell of a good team. I
Speaker 4: was asked to be the senior author for the latest.
Speaker 4: We did an update on everything known about wolves in
Speaker 4: North America. We ended up being forty thousand words long
Speaker 4: and an eight hundred reference bibliography. It was a scientific work.
Speaker 4: It was grueling, it was interesting, difficult. This was my
Speaker 4: anecdote for writing that this book, so because this was
Speaker 4: more fun and personal. But the science is in that book.
Speaker 4: It's a major chapter. You can get it online. But
Speaker 4: I learned a lot. We had Dean Cloth from Canada.
Speaker 4: We had Joey yet And who does the Red wolves.
Speaker 4: We had Brent Patterson who does the Algonquin wolves. We
Speaker 4: had Adrian Wineban who does the Midwestern wolves. People from
Speaker 4: every social I mean every segment of the population. I
Speaker 4: learned a lot. So in terms of getting back, we
Speaker 4: all wonder why don't wolves kill people more often? But
Speaker 4: what was the question? I'm sorry, I'm rambling. Foxes. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so Tofa Cascades. So they documented Yellowstone like ooh, this
Speaker 4: is big earthshaking information that coyotes had kind of taken
Speaker 4: over the cana and niche in Yellowstone and kept the
Speaker 4: foxes population subdued, and then wolves came back and killed
Speaker 4: lots of coyotes, and then the fox population responded by
Speaker 4: increasing because wolves don't really care about fox they're not
Speaker 4: really a competitor, and foxes benefit from wolves they clean
Speaker 4: up kills. We documented that earlier in the North Fork years,
Speaker 4: because when I arrived in the North Fork there was
Speaker 4: we never saw fox anywhere up there. The first fifteen
Speaker 4: years we had people out all winter tracking on the snow.
Speaker 4: We never saw a fox track. I never caught a
Speaker 4: fox in a trap. And then when the wolves started
Speaker 4: building up populations, I was collaring and studying coyotes at
Speaker 4: the same time, and the coyote population. As the wolves
Speaker 4: went up, the coyotes went down, and then we started
Speaker 4: seeing fox. I got fox standing on my property. Now
Speaker 4: fox are everywhere, Wolves are everywhere, Coyotes not so much so.
Speaker 1: He's a wolf sees that kyote and he just recognizes
Speaker 1: it as a competitor.
Speaker 4: You think something to get rid of, and.
Speaker 1: He sees a fox and he just doesn't get too
Speaker 1: worked out.
Speaker 7: It's kind of a nuisance.
Speaker 4: It's a difference.
Speaker 6: That's funny because I've I feel like I've heard people
Speaker 6: make that observation just in different parts of the West,
Speaker 6: like in Idaho specifically, people say, the coyotes have really
Speaker 6: dropped in numbers and we're seeing foxes now and we
Speaker 6: never really saw him before.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's that's interesting too, because in Michigan where
Speaker 1: I grew up, it was always fox like, you know,
Speaker 1: trappers targeted red fox. That's just when coyotes came in
Speaker 1: in the early nineties when they really exploded in that area.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fox vanished.
Speaker 4: Man, do you need more wolves?
Speaker 1: What's sounds like.
Speaker 2: A mutual friend of ours likes to use that as
Speaker 2: an analogy to humans, where he's like a wolf likes
Speaker 2: to go around the landscape and go that ain't good
Speaker 2: for me and mine getting rid of it. And we're
Speaker 2: on a landscape going, oh no, let's bring in more wolves.
Speaker 2: We might have less elk or less this or that,
Speaker 2: but let's keep them around. And he's saying, like, why
Speaker 2: are we the only sort of apex predator that would
Speaker 2: tolerate or even think of having competition as like a
Speaker 2: good thing, instead of saying, let's just get rid of
Speaker 2: all of them like a wolf might do, so that
Speaker 2: there's it's better for it for it's its species.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a good point, like like wolf a
Speaker 1: it's wolf lovers love all these things about wolves, but
Speaker 1: they don't like to see it in people.
Speaker 4: M M.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're like man, that could be a
Speaker 1: lot of competition. I don't want that here, just thinking
Speaker 1: like a.
Speaker 4: Wearable I have a question for you. So when Krinn
Speaker 4: called me, she said, you have experienced increased enthusiasmic excitement, hatred,
Speaker 4: whatever wolf issue has been building still, like we see
Speaker 4: it all the time in Montana.
Speaker 1: I've seen this.
Speaker 8: Well, well we talk about this, we talk about right
Speaker 8: now and then on the podcast and then yeah, people right,
Speaker 8: I mean the feelings.
Speaker 4: Are feelings are running higher about wolves now than they
Speaker 4: were twenty years old.
Speaker 1: Well, no, no, no, I would say that. I would say
Speaker 1: that feelings, whatever high running feelings there are are high
Speaker 1: running only because of what's going on in Colorado. And
Speaker 1: then that reignited the entire debate. But I would not
Speaker 1: say generally, well, okay, there's a there's another hot area.
Speaker 1: Another hot area is in Minnesota, Wisconsin, my home state
Speaker 1: of Michigan. I just came from and got a lot
Speaker 1: of earfolds about this. Hunters are really disappointed in the
Speaker 1: collapse of deer numbers and then not and then the
Speaker 1: states not having any authority to come in and do
Speaker 1: any kind of wolf control. And there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a question of like how bad does it have
Speaker 1: to get and do we really need to like trade
Speaker 1: our deer hunting for wolves, and we can't seek a
Speaker 1: compromise and more of a balance them being like I
Speaker 1: don't want to be apologetic about liking the deer hunt.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to deer hunt and have success.
Speaker 4: So what are what are this? I mean, Wisconsin had
Speaker 4: a huge wolf season and they really kill a lot
Speaker 4: of wolves, And what is the wolf season in Michigan?
Speaker 1: And well there's none because they got put back on the.
Speaker 5: Sea to protect them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so an their back.
Speaker 5: They've closed it. They've had it, they've closed it.
Speaker 4: So we've had this discussion about should should wolves be
Speaker 4: listed or not? Right everywhere where they've come back, all
Speaker 4: of them in Western states, Midwestern states, some of the
Speaker 4: western states, they have exceeded way beyond expectations of delisting criteria. Yes,
Speaker 4: four years on end. So what is the value of
Speaker 4: the Endangered Species Act if you don't follow the rules
Speaker 4: of the criteria.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I can tell you what it is.
Speaker 1: It's not anymore. It is my favorite animal protection Act.
Speaker 5: It's very valuable to the people who that's how, you know,
Speaker 5: create lawsuits.
Speaker 1: They don't want to talk about the numbers. They don't
Speaker 1: care about the numbers.
Speaker 4: I've had lots of people ask me when I do
Speaker 4: public texts, do you feel wolf should be relisted? And
Speaker 4: I say relisted like in Montana? Do you feel wolf
Speaker 4: should be realisted? They're delisted in Montana? Yeah, And I
Speaker 4: say then I say, okay, geographically which area Montana? And
Speaker 4: I say, well, you know, I don't like to see dead,
Speaker 4: bleeding wolves hanging off of tailgates, but they have exceeded
Speaker 4: recovery standards. There are approximately a quarter million of wolves worldwide.
Speaker 4: There are how many whooping cranes, how many blackfooted ferrets?
Speaker 4: And I can't say biologically that we have any reason
Speaker 4: to have Montana wolves or Midwestern wolves on the endangered
Speaker 4: species lifts where they're connected to Canadian populations that go
Speaker 4: into tens of thousands. On the other hand, do I
Speaker 4: like what I see going on with the management of
Speaker 4: wolves in Montana in particular, and the very strong anti
Speaker 4: wolve sentiments. No, But does it mean that they should
Speaker 4: go back on the list. No, so can people through
Speaker 4: increased harvest intentsive harvest knock wolves down to from the
Speaker 4: spout a thousand now or nine hundred two one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty, which is the trigger point at which the
Speaker 4: ESA says, ooh, you've now endangered this population and we're
Speaker 4: going to put them back on the endangered species list.
Speaker 4: It would be really difficult because right now people can
Speaker 4: hunt trap night shoot predator called dig dens. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can do almost anything with wolves for half the year.
Speaker 5: We've talked about this before, like in the case of
Speaker 5: Montana or Wyoming or Idaho, like it would never be
Speaker 5: in the state's best interest to knock them back to
Speaker 5: that point because then the FEDS would come back in
Speaker 5: and exactly.
Speaker 4: But what I'm saying is people are the pro wolf public.
Speaker 4: I sit in the middle, but I'm obviously passionate about wolves.
Speaker 4: So the pro wolf public thinks that by increasing all
Speaker 4: of these parameters to allow more take I don't like
Speaker 4: the word harvests more kill, that we're going to put
Speaker 4: them down one hundred and fifty. I think you can't
Speaker 4: do that without poison.
Speaker 2: Because you're right that's the point you're is it. Even
Speaker 2: as liberal as it is here for six months out
Speaker 2: of the year, we're still not able to knock them
Speaker 2: back that much.
Speaker 4: Right, We've caught them back some, and I mean, like
Speaker 4: this guy in Daniel's Montaneo, Dianuel Wyoming, it just is disgusting.
Speaker 4: I just you shouldn't do that with an elk, with
Speaker 4: a bear. With a wolf, should just behave like that
Speaker 4: with a wild animal. But with the liberal seasons we've got,
Speaker 4: and this year they did increase, their harvest is up
Speaker 4: to I think two hundred and eighty six for the
Speaker 4: last license year, which is a little more than the
Speaker 4: year before. But we've had years where there's been three hundred.
Speaker 4: The population isn't changing a lot. But on the other hand,
Speaker 4: using the method they used to estimate wolf populations through palm,
Speaker 4: I think patch occupancy model, it's an integrated patchcy model.
Speaker 4: Occupancy models are designed to estimate occupancy where they are.
Speaker 4: They're not designed to estimate abundance or numbers, so they're
Speaker 4: using a model for not what is designed to do.
Speaker 4: So I don't know that it's a real good representative.
Speaker 4: What I would say is I'm sorry, no go ahead.
Speaker 4: There's other factors to look at, like go to the
Speaker 4: Livestock Loss Board website. It's public information for Montana or
Speaker 4: any agency or the USDA, you know, Wildlife services, and
Speaker 4: you can look at the number of livestock losses by predator.
Speaker 4: They list them by predator or by death cause, and
Speaker 4: you will see, especially in Montana, the number of livestock
Speaker 4: depredations in Montana is getting was less in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: three than it was for the previous years. The number
Speaker 4: of complaints was less, the number of wolves taken for
Speaker 4: killing livestock was less. If there are wolves on the
Speaker 4: landscape Montana and there's livestock, they will kill them occasionally.
Speaker 4: So I would say these other indices should be incorporated
Speaker 4: into the model because I think when you see less
Speaker 4: and less and less depredation, it's because there's less wolves.
Speaker 4: Even though people are killed more this year, and if
Speaker 4: you look at the percentage statistically, it's probably not real significant.
Speaker 4: But maybe more people were out hunting last year to
Speaker 4: hind kill wolves because it was a milder winter. We
Speaker 4: don't know, We can't.
Speaker 5: Did you say it was to eighty six that were
Speaker 5: killed or it was two eighty six was the quota.
Speaker 4: No, that was what was killed between shooting and trapping. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think that's the current number. You can look it
Speaker 4: up and it just that was just released. But there's
Speaker 4: many things to look at. But what I can say
Speaker 4: is there's there's adequate wolves, and I'd say there's adequate prey.
Speaker 4: And I was looking, did you see that chidge who
Speaker 4: Just in Fergus County near Lewistown, several several large landowners
Speaker 4: got together and wanted the state to kill fifty thousand
Speaker 4: elk because the elk are taking over the private large
Speaker 4: landowner's habitat and they don't allow people to come in
Speaker 4: and shoot them. So they're all these elk and they
Speaker 4: wanted to have this power to kill fifty thousand elk
Speaker 4: extra outside of normal hunting season.
Speaker 1: Fifty thousand five.
Speaker 5: That was that United Property Owners thing.
Speaker 7: Right back, BHA YAH and BHA.
Speaker 4: And Montana Sportsman's Alliance and all these hunting groups said no,
Speaker 4: you have to create access. And I think if people
Speaker 4: are really concerned about elk numbers, because if you look
Speaker 4: at the tables the statistics, there are more elk in
Speaker 4: Montana now then there's been in a long time. And
Speaker 4: in Wyoming they're issuing unlimited number of elk takes in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, I believe, or twenty twenty four. It
Speaker 4: seems from my perspective, you would know more you guys
Speaker 4: deal with your hunting company. It seems to be more
Speaker 4: of an access issue than it does a predator issue.
Speaker 4: And if I were a hunting big part of a
Speaker 4: hunting conservation promotion group, I would be working on the
Speaker 4: access issue more and working with our legislators more and
Speaker 4: our governors more. Know you know what these rich out
Speaker 4: of state guys or whoever own these ranches said, they're
Speaker 4: not letting us on. I would I would be really
Speaker 4: concerned about it. What do you guys feel about that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's the in some areas that's
Speaker 1: the biggest conversation around elk numbers is you have just
Speaker 1: you have elk that are learning over time. Elk are
Speaker 1: learning safe zones. There are big acreages where hunting's not allowed,
Speaker 1: and there are big acreages where people have an objective
Speaker 1: of getting a couple of big bulls and they don't
Speaker 1: want something to mess up those big bulls. They don't
Speaker 1: want people to push them off. They kind of like
Speaker 1: them during hunting season. They don't like them when they're
Speaker 1: doing crop damage, and they're reluctant to have Joe Blow
Speaker 1: running around on their place. And they kind of want
Speaker 1: the best of both worlds. They want they want individual access,
Speaker 1: then they want state help. And what they don't want
Speaker 1: is a sign saying come one call right.
Speaker 4: They need more wolves.
Speaker 7: Just kidding, I'm just kidding on that.
Speaker 4: But you see the problem again, it's always humans. But
Speaker 4: if you look at the species keep responsible for killing
Speaker 4: sheep and cattle, it's number one. Grizzly bears kill almost
Speaker 4: three times as many livestock animals as both lions and wolves,
Speaker 4: and lions generally kill a few more than wolves, but
Speaker 4: it's hard to confirm totally.
Speaker 1: Because lions kill more livestock than wolves.
Speaker 4: The confirmed kills. The hard thing is when a wolf
Speaker 4: kills a cattle or a calf or whatever, there's six
Speaker 4: or eight them feeding on it, so there's often not
Speaker 4: enough evidence less to determine which predator responsible. So there's
Speaker 4: a lot more probables for wolves than there are lions,
Speaker 4: but confirmed it's more lions and wolves.
Speaker 1: Where you got wolves and mountain lion overlapping, what's killing most.
Speaker 4: Of the game lions. Do you look at the Bitter
Speaker 4: at Elk study. Yeah, so it's surprising to me. So
Speaker 4: there's been three studies that Fish, Wildlife and Parks has done.
Speaker 4: And this is an agency that's not real pro wolf, right,
Speaker 4: let's just say so, they do these studies. And when
Speaker 4: I was looking at the research study plan and the results,
Speaker 4: I was shocked because I thought wolves would be the
Speaker 4: primary predator. But you can go on the FWP website
Speaker 4: google the data. They did three studies that were long term,
Speaker 4: multi region studies, one for moose, one for mule deer,
Speaker 4: and one for elk. And they looked at the populations
Speaker 4: of this the game animals three different areas over multiple years,
Speaker 4: and they put a lot of callers out and they
Speaker 4: looked at mortality. So and the bitter at Elk study,
Speaker 4: probably all familiar lions killed more. And when they increased
Speaker 4: the harvest on black bears and wolves lions still.
Speaker 7: That had no effect.
Speaker 4: And the more they were just lions killing everything.
Speaker 1: They thought the same thing in Idaho. Wives your way out.
Speaker 4: Killing wolves, yes, and when So when they did the
Speaker 4: moose study, what do you think the number one killer
Speaker 4: of moose was it was grompy.
Speaker 2: What you think lions?
Speaker 5: No, black, No, it was tis.
Speaker 4: It was climate and habitat exactly they killed like it
Speaker 4: was fifty six percent of the most mortalities documented. The
Speaker 4: rerelated to climate. That would be ticks, uh, mostly probably
Speaker 4: ticks and things related. Predation was a very small section
Speaker 4: of the pie, and I was surprised of the predation section.
Speaker 4: So you beans killed almost the same percentage almost as
Speaker 4: the predators a little less of the predation section. It
Speaker 4: was wolves first, I think bear a second, lions there,
Speaker 4: but wolves was slightly more. But yeah, the environment changing.
Speaker 1: The habitat Milder's got way lions was lions.
Speaker 4: So why do people want to keep increasing.
Speaker 1: Wolf because the lions were because the lions were always here.
Speaker 1: That was kind of the thing that we talked about
Speaker 1: with Idaho. Is you had you had? I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna butcher not. These are not the right numbers, but
Speaker 1: it paints a somewhat accurate portrait. It'd be like prior
Speaker 1: to wolves coming into the Idaho Panhandle. I don't. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not the exact number, but it's not crazy.
Speaker 1: It'd be that lines are killing thirty out of one
Speaker 1: hundred elk calves. Let's say, yeah, okay, something like that.
Speaker 1: But that had always been true, and everything about elk
Speaker 1: abundance and everything about what like what statically normal, right,
Speaker 1: just normal life that was going on, and then something
Speaker 1: comes in and it adds ten. Okay, So now forty
Speaker 1: out of one hundred elk calves are dying from predation
Speaker 1: because there's this new additive thing, and socially and otherwise
Speaker 1: with the population, it winds up being that ten percent
Speaker 1: tips of balance that we'd become used to. And so
Speaker 1: you know, people had seen it's always been normal, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then now it's not normal no more. What happened different?
Speaker 1: This new thing that the baseline had always burned? Right,
Speaker 1: You'd always lost those thirty yepp and you had an
Speaker 1: elk population that reflected that level of predation, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, now you have an elk population that
Speaker 1: doesn't reflect that. It reflects something new, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be lower.
Speaker 4: So you're saying, all the wolf coming back is the additive,
Speaker 4: none of its compensatory mortality.
Speaker 1: Man, I know the terms you're using, but I can't
Speaker 1: answer that.
Speaker 4: So you're not seeing lion populations diminishing down to twenty
Speaker 4: percent of the elk caves say instead that the oh
Speaker 4: that the wolves are now taking ten percent that the
Speaker 4: lions would.
Speaker 1: Take it must have been additive, because how else can
Speaker 1: you explain the map. I mean, like, this is the
Speaker 1: thing that that people have to accept, Like the really
Speaker 1: pro wolf people have to accept that this is true.
Speaker 1: And when they're when they're kind of being honest, they
Speaker 1: acknowledge it. Meaning on one hand, they like think hunters
Speaker 1: blow it out, everything out of proportion, and hunters are like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna lose all of our dear and l right,
Speaker 1: and they criticize hunters for that. At the same time,
Speaker 1: they'll say, oh, if CWD is from having two dens
Speaker 1: of populations, wolves will help. And you're like, well, I
Speaker 1: thought that you're saying that hunters are wrong and that
Speaker 1: wolves don't lower game numbers. Now you're saying they do.
Speaker 1: Or they'll say deer and elk are over browsing, right,
Speaker 1: wolves will help. It's like, homet let's back up, because
Speaker 1: earlier you told me it doesn't matter the ways, that
Speaker 1: doesn't matter for deering out numbers, so it does matter
Speaker 1: for deering out numbers. Right. It's like you can't argue,
Speaker 1: and you know this better than me, but you can't argue.
Speaker 1: Like in the Greater Yellstone ecosystem, when wolves came in
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, there's no other word for it.
Speaker 1: Elk numbers collapsed.
Speaker 4: They collapsed.
Speaker 3: But and the.
Speaker 1: Panhandle Idaho elk numbers just like there's no other word
Speaker 1: for what happened. They collapsed.
Speaker 4: But do you know about the winters that the wolves
Speaker 4: came into. Idoh is the heaviest winters ever recorded. The
Speaker 4: wolves came into Yells and twenty thousand elk on the
Speaker 4: northern range of Lamar is not a normal range of
Speaker 4: numbers of animals that should be there anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean you know all that.
Speaker 4: I think we talked about this last time. But the
Speaker 4: winters of ninety six ninety seven, that was the second
Speaker 4: winter they put in. I thought that you can sit there,
Speaker 4: maybe you can, but tell me that thirty wolves are
Speaker 4: going to kill ten thousand outs.
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. I don't think that it was. I
Speaker 1: think that it was very long term. Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that year. It wasn't like the ones they
Speaker 1: brought in. Yeah, yeah, I mean, but correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. Like you know it better than me. But
Speaker 1: is it not fair? Is it not fair to say that,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the Idaho Panhandle.
Speaker 4: I don't know about the idol Pana. I can talk
Speaker 4: about the lamar pretty.
Speaker 1: Good, Okay. Wherever the lamar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yellowstone, Northern Herd.
Speaker 1: Okay, bad winners or not? I mean, come on, that
Speaker 1: had unless I'm wrong, that had the incoming wolves and
Speaker 1: the expansion of wolf populations. Elk had a big change
Speaker 1: on elk because that's also if we remember, we're all
Speaker 1: supposed to celebrate them for bringing the beavers back, which
Speaker 1: has now been walked back and not true. So it
Speaker 1: did something to elk, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you could pull up the table. But the elk,
Speaker 4: the alk numbers fell off really fast in that hard winter.
Speaker 4: And like in Montana in ninety six ninety seven, Carolyn
Speaker 4: sim was doing white tail deer study in northwest Montana
Speaker 4: and forty percent of the white tail died win or
Speaker 4: die off and had nothing to do without Okay. So
Speaker 4: I'm just saying with wolves.
Speaker 5: It couldn't like And in the case of the bitter,
Speaker 5: the way someone described it to me, I can't remember
Speaker 5: who was Like the elk, there could sustain like some
Speaker 5: certain level of predation and maintain a certain r number.
Speaker 5: But when you put it the wolf on top of it,
Speaker 5: that was like just enough to be a tipping point
Speaker 5: to push.
Speaker 4: Them over the edge or push them on a private
Speaker 4: land where people don't allow them. You're hunted. That's what's
Speaker 4: happening in.
Speaker 5: The bitter But like in the case of like a
Speaker 5: bad winner, you stack wolves on top of that, maybe
Speaker 5: the elk, yeah could have you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like it's just one more thing they've got to deal with.
Speaker 4: So I mean, I just read the scientific literature and
Speaker 4: I'm a hunter too, But in Yellowstone there are so
Speaker 4: many factories. It's really I would say it's unfair to
Speaker 4: say one is to blame. It's a huge puzzle with
Speaker 4: many factors. And since the wolves come back, the olk
Speaker 4: numbers have definitely decreased. But I think they're actually had
Speaker 4: a better sustainable lever. I mean, do you know in
Speaker 4: the sixties they're in their gunning and killing elk because
Speaker 4: there were too many elk and there were not enough predators.
Speaker 4: They were shooting them like a thousand a year or whatever.
Speaker 4: They don't have to do that anymore. There's what six
Speaker 4: sixty five hundred elk in the northern herd now versus
Speaker 4: twenty thousand, and it's kind of stabilized at that. And
Speaker 4: the wolves have stabilized at about one hundred, and they've
Speaker 4: switched to bison. They a lot of their food value
Speaker 4: now is bison, which I must mind modeling me. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying they can't limiting. I'm just saying there's a
Speaker 4: lot of things going on, and I think the humans
Speaker 4: really got used. I've been on one of those late
Speaker 4: gardener hunts and.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, what is zoo in the eighties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because there were too many elk they had to
Speaker 4: do that. Well, they don't do it anymore, and people
Speaker 4: are pissed off about it because I want to go
Speaker 4: down there and get my late gardener hunt. Well, that
Speaker 4: is not a sustainable population to have to have people
Speaker 4: go in and kill starving elk in February. I mean,
Speaker 4: we can look at it anywhere you want.
Speaker 1: Can we go back to our crystal ball in Colorado?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: God, yes, was it a twenty year? We were talking
Speaker 1: about ten ten twenty years. Okay, let me hit you
Speaker 1: with this. Yeah, let's say there are one hundred deer
Speaker 1: in elk in Colorado today? How many deer in elk
Speaker 1: are there in twenty years.
Speaker 4: Due too?
Speaker 1: Because of wolves?
Speaker 4: Oh, because of wolf.
Speaker 1: There's one hundred now, Yeah, one hundred deer elk are
Speaker 1: in Colorado now. And you do your twenty year crystal ball.
Speaker 1: Where has that population settled out?
Speaker 4: Eighty or ninety maybe might be one hundred. The other
Speaker 4: is people population. We keep growing in and building. Well,
Speaker 4: it is part of it because people build an elk
Speaker 4: winter range. Look at the Paradise Valley, for God's sakes,
Speaker 4: they've destroyed a lot of elk wind arrange where they
Speaker 4: elk used to doing.
Speaker 5: Well, that's where the wolves could do that tipping point there. Yeah,
Speaker 5: get because like Colorado's elk or like in places, their
Speaker 5: numbers are already crashing because of black bear predation and
Speaker 5: elk calves. And then you get like development of winter
Speaker 5: range and then a huge amount of recreation like hiking
Speaker 5: and biking, and then you throw wolves on top of that,
Speaker 5: and it's like you could look at it that way,
Speaker 5: you know what's going to happen.
Speaker 4: I just look at what's going on in Montana, where
Speaker 4: we had wolves for forty years. In Wyoming they've had
Speaker 4: wolves for years, and elk numbers are higher than they've
Speaker 4: ever been, So I don't know how. I mean, you
Speaker 4: could look at whatever end of the scale you want
Speaker 4: to look at. I'd like to kind of come to
Speaker 4: the middle. There'll be places where wolves can impact populations.
Speaker 4: Lions certainly have, bears have people have Because we're building
Speaker 4: holding up into habitat that is absolutely critical. For those
Speaker 4: on gillets in the winter, they don't have it anymore.
Speaker 4: So where do they go They become victims to prey
Speaker 4: animals or they get hit on the roadway. My god,
Speaker 4: driving down from Livingston to Gardner and the winters like
Speaker 4: slaloming through white tail and elk everywhere. It's awful. So
Speaker 4: we could pick whatever data set you want to use.
Speaker 4: But they've co existed long before we were ever in
Speaker 4: the landscape, That's all I'm going to say. And before
Speaker 4: when Lewis and Clark came to this country on the
Speaker 4: with the West, wolves a lot of wolves and grizzlies,
Speaker 4: and there was never more wildlife than there's ever been.
Speaker 4: Because we've changed everything and we have an expectation to
Speaker 4: have it perfect, you're never going to have that.
Speaker 1: When I when I encounter rapidly anti wolf people. Yeah, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they'll tell me how they want to go
Speaker 1: hunt in Alaska. Yeah, but you wouldn't like.
Speaker 6: It, buddy, because.
Speaker 1: Because it's ninety seven percent of historic wolf habitat is
Speaker 1: occupied by wolves, you wouldn't like it. There's no hunting
Speaker 1: there wolves. What's the hunt in Alaska?
Speaker 4: Does that what you tell them?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Is that true?
Speaker 1: No, of course it's not true. Okay, I'm demonstrating absurdity
Speaker 1: by being absurd. Thank you, Steve.
Speaker 7: I'm shocked. Okay.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite. I mean, I love it. It's my
Speaker 1: favorite place to go. But I'm just saying I point
Speaker 1: out to them, like, don't lay it on me that
Speaker 1: they're incompatible, because tell that to right, That's that everybody
Speaker 1: dreams of going on hunting Alaska. It's like, well, let
Speaker 1: me tell you something wolves while something moves there. A
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, we'd watched how many do we
Speaker 1: see one night? Fifteen pretty much every evening fifteen to
Speaker 1: come through.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Right, So I'm just saying it that that perspective, and
Speaker 1: every time, like every time we talk about predators and
Speaker 1: every time we talk about wolves, I always feel the
Speaker 1: need to clarify like my perspective on it, I think
Speaker 1: it is. I think it's immoral to remove native species
Speaker 1: from native habitat. I just think it's like playing God
Speaker 1: in a way that, however you want to conceive of God,
Speaker 1: it's playing God in the way that God would not
Speaker 1: agree with. Right, It's like it's immoral, I think to
Speaker 1: eliminate species from Earth. I like seeing the tracks. I
Speaker 1: like hearing them. I like seeing them. I do not
Speaker 1: think they should be eradicated. I like to try to
Speaker 1: achieve a balance of holding a bunch of different people's
Speaker 1: interests in mind, because it's the only way we're going
Speaker 1: to survive and live as humans. I think that what
Speaker 1: as you said, I think that what's been achieved here
Speaker 1: in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. It's not perfect, but it's working,
Speaker 1: and I think you would alleviate a ton of the
Speaker 1: social stress in the Upper Great Lakes if they were
Speaker 1: allowed to pursue a similar path with regulated hunting. I
Speaker 1: don't know anybody when when wolves walked into Colorado, of
Speaker 1: the people I hang out with and associate with, and
Speaker 1: hunt with and talk with all the time, when wolves
Speaker 1: showed up in Colorado, I don't know anybody who said
Speaker 1: to me they ought to get down there with helicopters
Speaker 1: right now and find those wolves and kill them. No
Speaker 1: one said that to me, right h With the reintroduction,
Speaker 1: I've had people basically say that if they could do that,
Speaker 1: they would do that. It was like there's something about
Speaker 1: it that just burns people. Of course you don't want
Speaker 1: to there's something about it that they don't want to
Speaker 1: them because it's like it's like there's a way that
Speaker 1: we accept things that we perceive to be natural, and
Speaker 1: there's a way we accept people accept things that perceive
Speaker 1: to be something getting shoved down their throat, uh and
Speaker 1: wolves walking into Colorado. People kind of had a huh oh.
Speaker 2: They they had like a doctorate degree and pushing that
Speaker 2: ship down their throats down there. I couldn't believe when
Speaker 2: I read that stat of like Grant County is where
Speaker 2: they released the first group, right, and I think that
Speaker 2: was one of the few counties that overwhelmingly voted against it.
Speaker 2: It was like a sixties high sixties, maybe seventy percent
Speaker 2: against it, and that was the county they chose to
Speaker 2: here you go, But they couldn't.
Speaker 4: Reintroduce him into Boulder and Denver.
Speaker 2: I mean that's where the boat was while we're on
Speaker 2: Colorado again. I think it'd be great. It'd be great
Speaker 2: to get your thoughts, as you know, a biologist with
Speaker 2: so much experience on the ballot box biology that they're
Speaker 2: proposing down there, and just I guess in general, what
Speaker 2: your thoughts are on ballot box biology and if you
Speaker 2: think that's going to be a and even you can
Speaker 2: leave the Mountain lion ban alone, hunting band alone, but
Speaker 2: just in general that if you think that that works
Speaker 2: as a way to manage wildlife in our country, well.
Speaker 4: Obviously you feel strongly one way. That's a quite loaded question,
Speaker 4: but I the way you put it, I you'll read
Speaker 4: in my book.
Speaker 2: Well, the reason I'm interested is because I feel like
Speaker 2: you do sit in the middle and you connect with
Speaker 2: a lot of people that I would like to connect to,
Speaker 2: and I feel that we would probably land somewhere on
Speaker 2: the on the same end of the spectrum and want
Speaker 2: the same outcome. So I'd like to hear how you
Speaker 2: talk to people about this.
Speaker 4: So I I've never been in favor of wolf for
Speaker 4: introductions anywhere because they come back on their own and
Speaker 4: there I feel strongly we can never now test it
Speaker 4: because it's too late. But I feel strongly that there's
Speaker 4: a better social tolerance just what you're saying if they
Speaker 4: come back on their own, like they have done most
Speaker 4: places in the world and in the Midwest. But now
Speaker 4: that they're here, you can't go backwards. And wolves got
Speaker 4: to Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, California, it's through dispersal, but
Speaker 4: they were dispersed animals from a reintroduced population, so they
Speaker 4: will never be thought is native either, which I think
Speaker 4: that's a shame. If we would have let natural recovery
Speaker 4: happens just like three you did in Montana, like it
Speaker 4: started doing Colorado, like it's done in the Midwest, I
Speaker 4: think we would be further ahead politically, but we'd have
Speaker 4: less wolves by this point in time. But how many
Speaker 4: years I mean, they were introduced those wolves almost twenty
Speaker 4: thirty years ago. Now would we be at the level
Speaker 4: we're at now? Probably pretty close, because once wolves hit
Speaker 4: critical mass, they take off without the social baggage. That's
Speaker 4: how I feel. You asked, That's how I feel, So
Speaker 4: I don't know if I answered your question or not.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess as someone that's worked with wolves, like
Speaker 2: did you like having in your toolbox. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Did you ever consider yourself a manager of wolves?
Speaker 4: I'm not, was never up at the top level I've managed.
Speaker 4: I've done some going out and putting out propane cannons
Speaker 4: and hanging flattery. Yeah, I've done some of that.
Speaker 2: But you advise people that sort of set management strategy.
Speaker 4: Yes, And I've come and asked to be a anonymous
Speaker 4: commentator on various federal plans.
Speaker 2: Yes. So is it nice to have in your toolbox
Speaker 2: hunting as a way to manage these animals?
Speaker 4: I think socially you have to have it. I'm not
Speaker 4: a wolf hunter. I have no desire to ever have
Speaker 4: to kill a wolf. I don't It's just not who
Speaker 4: I am. Is it a socially acceptable tool? Does it
Speaker 4: creation social tolerance? That's that's what people are pushing and believing,
Speaker 4: And I think with reintroductions that may be true. It's
Speaker 4: a tough one. Like I said, I don't want to
Speaker 4: shoot wolves, and I take lots of dead wolves on tailgates.
Speaker 4: When I was working for fishwallfe parks, they come in.
Speaker 4: I tagged lions and otters and martins and wolves, and
Speaker 4: I always ask the people the story how did you
Speaker 4: get the wolf? Tell me the story of how you
Speaker 4: hunted it. That made a difference to me when I
Speaker 4: looked at it dead wolves, a dead wolf. But when
Speaker 4: I heard some he said it was amazing. I had
Speaker 4: an Elk tagnose out and I heard the wolves howling,
Speaker 4: and this wolf walked out, and I thought, my god,
Speaker 4: that's a magnificent animal. I really want to I really
Speaker 4: want to have it. I want to have a pelt
Speaker 4: or whatever. I could understand that. And then people come
Speaker 4: and say, these hate, these bastards, we should shoot everyone
Speaker 4: them in the state. That really was difficult. And when
Speaker 4: I think of that kind of management that I feel
Speaker 4: doesn't do justice to us as hunters or biologists or
Speaker 4: to the wildlife itself. And I really think a big
Speaker 4: push we should have is working with the public on
Speaker 4: educating I hate that term, on exchanging ideas with people
Speaker 4: what wolves are and are not. I think there's not
Speaker 4: enough information out there for average person who wonders, well,
Speaker 4: how many yolk does a wolf coiller? Or are the
Speaker 4: impacting game? Put out all the information unbiased in a
Speaker 4: format that people can use. I don't care if it's
Speaker 4: a rock amount on Elk Foundation Google or Outdoor Life
Speaker 4: or whatever. Montana magazine put put it in a format
Speaker 4: that's available for people to read and understand. They better
Speaker 4: at ELK study.
Speaker 2: They did.
Speaker 4: They put quite a bit of information out, but that's
Speaker 4: fade ay. The wolves are still killing all the Elk.
Speaker 4: It's like, way, did you.
Speaker 5: Read the article?
Speaker 4: But people are biased because of their culture, so I
Speaker 4: but I just think enough information helps helps calm down
Speaker 4: the flames on both ends. I am a believer in that,
Speaker 4: and I hate the term edgy. I hate it say
Speaker 4: we need to educate so and so about that. It's like,
Speaker 4: oh God, can.
Speaker 1: We know what that means? That means I need to
Speaker 1: tell that person what I think.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's right, but to exchange information, that's what well,
Speaker 4: the public needs to be educated.
Speaker 7: No, I don't.
Speaker 4: I hate that term, and I heard agencies promote that
Speaker 4: all the time. But anyway, cuts of your book, my book,
Speaker 4: I want to hold it up, doctor Diane boy I'm
Speaker 4: teasing about randall.
Speaker 1: Have PhD written out there?
Speaker 4: Of course not, but it's in the back under the
Speaker 4: bio because I don't want I don't want people to
Speaker 4: see doctor Dian Boyd and not buy it because they
Speaker 4: their biases. They just see it's diyanboid. There you go,
Speaker 4: that's a bias. Definitely.
Speaker 1: They'd be like, oh.
Speaker 4: That one.
Speaker 1: They'd be like some Berkeley egg ahead.
Speaker 7: Telling me about please exactly, Diane K.
Speaker 1: Boyd not a doctor. There you go, she's a doctor
Speaker 1: back here, Yeah, Diane K. Boyd, a woman among wolves.
Speaker 1: My journey through forty years of wolf covery. I haven't
Speaker 1: read it. Uh, I will read it.
Speaker 4: I'll give you a personal copy.
Speaker 1: I will read it, read it and again.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: When we talked before and I loved it. It's so
Speaker 1: good to hear your perspective on these things. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of what you're saying, I think you're gonna
Speaker 1: what you're saying is going to be is going to
Speaker 1: be very challenging. Two people, no matter what how they
Speaker 1: look at wolves. You you offer a very challenging perspective
Speaker 1: because it doesn't fall in line. It doesn't fall in
Speaker 1: line with the narratives that you would get depending on
Speaker 1: your culture. It's like you're you're offering a really educated,
Speaker 1: nuanced view of things that have come from being in
Speaker 1: the room for a lot of discussions over the year.
Speaker 1: I'm not like, I can't say that you know. I
Speaker 1: can't say that someone would be able to go and
Speaker 1: determine that everything you've said is exactly true or right.
Speaker 1: But it's a challenging, like you're offering a challenging, pretty gracious,
Speaker 1: highly educated perspective on how to think about predators, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming with us and doing that.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 7: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Help people find your book and read it.
Speaker 4: Thanks. When I wrote it, I was not allowed to
Speaker 4: put in scientific references or footnotes. I have my list
Speaker 4: at the end of suggested readings. But I wrote it
Speaker 4: so that anybody can pick it up, whether you like
Speaker 4: wolves or don't like wolves, or don't care, regardless of
Speaker 4: your outdoor experience. Anybody can pick that up and get
Speaker 4: something from it. And I don't preach. I tell through
Speaker 4: stories and I wave science and let the reader come
Speaker 4: to their own conclusions about certain aspects of wolves being
Speaker 4: on the landscape. So it's a different kind of a book.
Speaker 4: And I lived it. I lived these wolves. This is
Speaker 4: my story, and then it morphs into present time in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three. And if you just like a good
Speaker 4: adventure story, there's a lot of stories. I could read
Speaker 4: you a short thirty second paragraph if you want. Hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's close with that.
Speaker 4: Close it the opening introduction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to close with this. So she's gonna
Speaker 1: get done. You're gonna go buy the book. We're just
Speaker 1: going to end the show. Phil's gonna turn the machine
Speaker 1: off when it's done. But this will give you a
Speaker 1: taste of how it's written, and I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 4: This is probably thirty five years ago. My pickup banged
Speaker 4: and rattled along the potholed inside road in the northwest
Speaker 4: corner of Glacier National Park. Boxes of wolf trap and
Speaker 4: jars of bait slid across the truck bed. I was
Speaker 4: in a hurry, my mind focused on the wolf cotton
Speaker 4: a trap somewhere ahead in the Lodgepole Pine Forest. Out
Speaker 4: of the corner of my eye, I noticed motion in
Speaker 4: my rear view mirror. I looked up to catch the
Speaker 4: glassy reflection of vivid yellow eyes framed by a wolf's
Speaker 4: black face looking over my shoulder from the back seat.
Speaker 4: How did I get here? Opening paragraph, Diane, You you
Speaker 4: got to come back. Appreciate it, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Honest.
Speaker 5: You got to keep your shoes on during this podcast,
Speaker 5: I'm still recorded.
Speaker 11: The koyas away wone shooting start with shut swell being
Speaker 11: sign of breakfast, and we laid down the bed it's
Speaker 11: been on day and nin.
Speaker 10: Windyll them cotting with trees lost step lesly every breeze.
Speaker 11: Master footsteps that I took.
Speaker 1: You on.
Speaker 2: The noise was wide like a live Brian.
Speaker 1: Learn more from namn trees before.
Speaker 9: Everybod than ever made shiver shoot swept.
Speaker 1: Waves up in.
Speaker 9: My reading up here. Sometimes you're burning up. Sometimes you're
Speaker 9: going with because you mean you're the fever.
Speaker 1: Ragon, don't you Mainer.
Speaker 9: The fur Bagon.
Speaker 12: Go on through the plain still called Basbley in greens.
Speaker 7: Gets there all out in them wield.
Speaker 9: You smileings the you rye all and your minds be surprised.
Speaker 2: That old river.
Speaker 12: Minyl fever makes you shiver, That fever makes you sweet, wakes.
Speaker 9: You up in babing permade of you. Sometimes you're burning up.
Speaker 9: Sometimes they're gold man with because you Mainer fever w
Speaker 9: only you anger the fer bging that fear macey shiver,
Speaker 9: that fere amazing sweat wis you have and min be
Speaker 9: pernain unjust. Sometimes you're burning up. Sometimes you're colding w because.
Speaker 1: You made yourr feeder cry.
Speaker 10: You may you may CA, You ain't time.
Speaker 8: You wait.
Speaker 9: Turded favor, domag wait fav