Speaker 1: If this is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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Speaker 1: dot com. F I R S T l I t
Speaker 1: e dot com. Joined today by Dusty Lassiter, former Wyoming
Speaker 1: game and fish bear management specialists, the keyword there being former.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the agency guys. But the problem with having
Speaker 1: agency guys on to talk about wildlife management is they
Speaker 1: got to worry about them getting in trouble. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't have to worry about getting in trouble anymore.
Speaker 1: Real, there's no trouble. Nothing can do it to you.
Speaker 1: Let the air out of your tires.
Speaker 4: Yeah, write me a ticket.
Speaker 1: I guess no. Again, I have nothing, But you know,
Speaker 1: I have like a lot of respect and the admiration
Speaker 1: for agency biologists and game wardens Like you know, I
Speaker 1: love it. So many of them are driven by passion
Speaker 1: and a desire to do good. But when talking about
Speaker 1: policy just gets tricky for him because you know, they
Speaker 1: they get reprimanded.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you get muzzled a little bit, and you know
Speaker 4: you're trying to walk the party line a little bit,
Speaker 4: you know, the department line.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, give everybody a run through of what you've
Speaker 1: done in your career around grizzly bears and wolves.
Speaker 4: And oh man, So I started in twenty ten and
Speaker 4: I was just supposed to be on for one fall.
Speaker 4: In one spring, I got hired on because one of
Speaker 4: my coworkers was going back to college. And that was
Speaker 4: the busiest year that we'd ever had. We caught sixty
Speaker 4: seven grizzly bears in Wyoming outside of Yellstowe National Park.
Speaker 4: And then in that year, so damn man. Yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 1: Was all in barrel traps.
Speaker 4: Yeah. We we call them culvert traps, but they're really
Speaker 4: big square box traps. Now the Montana guys still use
Speaker 4: those culverts, but it's a pain in the butt to
Speaker 4: pull a bear in and out of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah remember that round, Remember that video Callahan climbing in there,
Speaker 1: climbing one of them tubes of that bearris basically like
Speaker 1: laid out on it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so we we I think we dealt with
Speaker 4: enough bears. We came up with a better trap design. Honestly,
Speaker 4: what do you what were you guys?
Speaker 1: Man? I got so many questions go on. I just
Speaker 1: remember that later. I want to ask you about what
Speaker 1: kind of how you like, what your favorite bait and
Speaker 1: stuff is. But keep going. Yeah, so you got on.
Speaker 1: You guys started just hammering bears.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was just call after call. I would try
Speaker 4: to go home just to take a nap, and I
Speaker 4: would get flagged down on the road somebody being like,
Speaker 4: I got a I got a bear. Actually, one of
Speaker 4: those guys was Jim Zumbo. You know. He flagged me
Speaker 4: down on the road and he's like, yeah, I just
Speaker 4: got back from Alaska. I'd killed my twentieth black bear,
Speaker 4: and he was he was smoking some salmon and a
Speaker 4: grizzly bear came by and smashed his salmon smoker.
Speaker 1: Oh I got it, so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I started.
Speaker 1: Jim Zumbo, Yeah, came home from Alaska, was smoking salmon
Speaker 1: that he brought home from Alaska, and a grizzly showed
Speaker 1: up and smashed Jim zumbole smoker.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, yep, yep, so pretty legit kind of funny.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I wanted one up with my George Bush
Speaker 1: story h joke.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So that was just a really busy season and
Speaker 4: there was a need for more help, so they hired
Speaker 4: me on another season.
Speaker 1: And because you were a big game guide, yeah I was.
Speaker 4: You know, I went to the University Wyoming, got finance degree,
Speaker 4: came home and just loved where I lived. And when
Speaker 4: I came home, I was working on the thoroughfare as
Speaker 4: a guide, and you know, just doing construction, trying to
Speaker 4: make ends meet, and.
Speaker 3: Home as Cody, Home as Cody.
Speaker 4: That's where I grew up. And I was just wrong place,
Speaker 4: wrong time, honestly, because there weren't a lot of people
Speaker 4: that went to college and came back and I had
Speaker 4: a lot of knowledge and skill about horses in the
Speaker 4: back country, and you know, my life was immersed in
Speaker 4: wildlife and bears growing up, and my parents worked for
Speaker 4: outfitters and you know, they were stopping in at the
Speaker 4: house and telling crazy stories and I was just sucked in.
Speaker 4: So that's why I came home. And I wasn't intending
Speaker 4: to get into bear work, and I just fell into
Speaker 4: it and the timing was right, and yeah, they hired
Speaker 4: me on and you know, that first year I saw
Speaker 4: twenty five bears, and then that next season I was
Speaker 4: in on another twenty five Grizzly captures and had fifty
Speaker 4: under my belt and a pretty quick, you know amount
Speaker 4: of time.
Speaker 1: So were you doing all the were you doing all
Speaker 1: the relocations on those two? Like how many are euthanized
Speaker 1: and how many are relocated?
Speaker 4: So at the time, my boss was a guy named
Speaker 4: Mark Persino, and we were really still in the recovery
Speaker 4: phase with these bears, and we probably only euthanized one
Speaker 4: out of five when I started, and they were in
Speaker 4: really bad shape. You know, they'd been repeat offenders. Never
Speaker 4: it's never the three strikes and you're out. People say
Speaker 4: that all the time, and I get so sick of that.
Speaker 1: That's not true.
Speaker 4: No, that's not true. It's not California. So but yeah,
Speaker 4: there were some bears that, you know, I'd been in
Speaker 4: multiple livestock conflicts that were removing or I caught a
Speaker 4: female that year that her back leg was broke and
Speaker 4: it was six inches shorter than her other back leg,
Speaker 4: and I had the bone in my office and it's
Speaker 4: just a you know, melded piece of calcium.
Speaker 1: How do you think she broke her leg, No idea.
Speaker 4: I always wondered that.
Speaker 1: You know, on a bear like that, on a grizzy
Speaker 1: like that, it's in heart, it's in bad shape, it's desperate,
Speaker 1: and it's not gonna You're not gonna you know what
Speaker 1: the word to use. You're not going to rehabilitate it.
Speaker 4: No, it just wasn't going to be successful relocating that
Speaker 4: kind of bear. And she was emaciated, and she actually
Speaker 4: had a yearling that we didn't know about at the time.
Speaker 4: You know, she was she was trying to orphan a
Speaker 4: yearling bear because she was not even producing milk. She
Speaker 4: was in such poor physical shape.
Speaker 1: Got it. You say she was trying to orphan it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was. It was following her around,
Speaker 4: but she's not providing for it at all. And we
Speaker 4: ended up catching that bear too, and and we relocated
Speaker 4: that bear, but she just wasn't a good candidate for relocation.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And when you relocate the grizzlies, how do you
Speaker 1: how do you figure out where to try because you
Speaker 1: got to put him so far away from you got
Speaker 1: to put them so far away, Yeah, to reduce the
Speaker 1: temptation you're going to get in trouble again. And that's
Speaker 1: and that's got to be like very time consuming.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it definitely takes some man power, but you're trying
Speaker 4: to take it as far away from the conflict as possible.
Speaker 4: And there's really about six relocation sites in Wyoming that
Speaker 4: we use, you know, And that kind of had changed
Speaker 4: over the time that I'd been at the department. We
Speaker 4: started doing some relocation that weren't as.
Speaker 1: Far and use helicopters to dump them off.
Speaker 4: We don't. We had one bear trap that you could
Speaker 4: take off the wheels and haul with the helicopter, But
Speaker 4: and the time that I was there, the eleven years
Speaker 4: I was there, we never did that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now tell me how you catch one.
Speaker 4: So most of the time you're using a culvert trap,
Speaker 4: and you want to get that thing as low to
Speaker 4: the ground as possible. You want to set it as
Speaker 4: close to the conflict as possible, and you just put
Speaker 4: a piece of bait in the front of that thing,
Speaker 4: usually a road killed deer with a string that goes
Speaker 4: up up the front wall around the top, and then
Speaker 4: it's sitting on a pair of ice scripts and the
Speaker 4: door is sitting on those vice scripts. So bear comes
Speaker 4: in pulls that bait springs, the vice grip springs the
Speaker 4: vice script and the door shuts and there's a pin
Speaker 4: that shoots. Yeah, a lot of times we use beaver
Speaker 4: caster is always my favorite thing to use. A little lure, Yeah,
Speaker 4: a little bit of lure in there. If it's ket
Speaker 4: in on fruit, we'd use apples and watermelon things like that.
Speaker 1: Stick that back of the trap.
Speaker 4: Yeah, even like a trail into it a lot of times.
Speaker 4: A lot of times you make a drag and they'll
Speaker 4: follow a drag for a.
Speaker 1: Long long ways, like drag a road kill deer, right, yep?
Speaker 1: How far might you drag that deer to make a
Speaker 1: cent trail?
Speaker 4: I mean, my old boss had done it a couple
Speaker 4: of miles and cock bears running a couple miles on them. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and they're finding now with these GPS callers, that a
Speaker 4: bear can smell a carcass ten to fifteen miles away,
Speaker 4: and we'll just start blining it for a carcass.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I followed a grizzly bear track and the bob wants
Speaker 6: nine miles to a I don't know how far he started,
Speaker 6: but I followed the tracks for nine miles in front
Speaker 6: of me to a moose carcass.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was impressive. Yeah, they got a pretty good sniffer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've told the story to anyone that'll listen to it.
Speaker 1: But we're one time camped up on the Arctic slope
Speaker 1: and you know of the off the north slope of
Speaker 1: the Brooks Range. Yeah, and we were camped where a
Speaker 1: creek came into a bigger river. And one morning we
Speaker 1: got up and walked three miles up that tributary and
Speaker 1: killed caribou okay, spent the day up there, carried it
Speaker 1: down that tributary to our camp. That night, we're sitting
Speaker 1: in our camp and here comes a grizzly down the
Speaker 1: gravel bar, digging roots. You see him move in, digging,
Speaker 1: move and digging. He gets to the mouth of that tributary.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a slight little canyon. He gets
Speaker 1: in the mouth of that tributary and stands up like
Speaker 1: someone shocked him wow, waves his nose in the air,
Speaker 1: and took off at a full run. So I don't
Speaker 1: I can't tell you for sure, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: But it was like there was no discussing it. It was
Speaker 1: like that sound of a bit smells that cariboo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, coming down that coming down that creek, and that's
Speaker 1: only three miles and you're talking about.
Speaker 4: How far GPS colors are saying in ten to fifteen.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you see on a GPS
Speaker 1: collar that suggests to you that a grizzly is onto something?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's meandering and then all of a sudden it's
Speaker 4: a straight line.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like, just like you're talking about, there wasn't any
Speaker 4: second thoughts in that bear's mind.
Speaker 1: Got it? And then he's just going there, he's going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot of bruh on
Speaker 1: the news right now. There's always been a bear, there's
Speaker 1: always been a very polarizing bear. Yeah, in the polarizing
Speaker 1: bear in the Yellowstone National Park area. Yeah, goes by
Speaker 1: the handle three nine nine, which I always like because
Speaker 1: I like it when they you know, when they give
Speaker 1: the animals like a name like pedals or something, then
Speaker 1: you know it's trouble. So if it has its research number.
Speaker 3: There's some clinical detachment there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. A research number allows the citizens at large to
Speaker 1: stay a little usually allows citizens at large to stay
Speaker 1: a little chilled out aboutelebrity animals. But three nine nine
Speaker 1: it was. It might as well have been named cookie, right.
Speaker 1: It just got really famous. And the American public, particularly
Speaker 1: those who are very unfamiliar with wildlife, will have this
Speaker 1: view that they look at an individual animal and they
Speaker 1: see it with like like crystalline clarity, that one, and
Speaker 1: they cease to view it as in context of its
Speaker 1: like species at large, meaning you could have eight hundred
Speaker 1: grizzlies in the area and it's kind of whatever, but
Speaker 1: that one, nothing better happened to, right, right, They're not
Speaker 1: it's not like it. They don't have an awareness of
Speaker 1: the population at large. They have an awareness of that one.
Speaker 1: I'm not lecturing you. I'm just trying to update listeners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when making an analogy about it, I'll make the analogy
Speaker 1: of that someone like a hunter, some one in the concert,
Speaker 1: like someone in the wildlife hunter based wildlife conservation might
Speaker 1: view habitat as an apple tree. And if this apple
Speaker 1: tree is taken care of, it will continuously produce apples,
Speaker 1: and the apples are someone expendable, some get eaten, some
Speaker 1: dying rot take care of the tree in perpetuity, it'll
Speaker 1: put apples out animal rights people and preservation minded preservationist
Speaker 1: minded people aren't that interested in the apple tree. But
Speaker 1: now and then there's an apple that really catches their eye. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they are very concerned about what happens to that apple.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good analogy.
Speaker 1: I guess this bear became that apple. Yeah, bear three
Speaker 1: nine nine.
Speaker 3: It's usually an apple that photographs well and it's pretty dependable.
Speaker 3: It's an apple that shows up again and again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, or it would be like a moose
Speaker 1: that's piebald. So because moose, you know, generally, people aren't
Speaker 1: able to distinguish one from the other. Then you get
Speaker 1: a moose in some neighborhood that as a white splotch
Speaker 1: on it, and then people are able to put individuality
Speaker 1: to it. And then someone gets that moose and it
Speaker 1: causes a whole shit show. Three ninety nine. The bear's
Speaker 1: had books written about it. It just got hit by
Speaker 1: a car. Yeah, And our little preamble chat I brought
Speaker 1: up to you that it's that bear now is getting
Speaker 1: its final it's being put to rest with much fanfare
Speaker 1: and consternation. Yeah. I mentioned it to you, and you
Speaker 1: had a comment about your view on on this particular bear.
Speaker 1: You didn't deal with it professionally.
Speaker 4: Correct, No, I know her type though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about that bear. What that like? You
Speaker 1: mentioned a thing about management.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think that's poor wildlife management. And we
Speaker 4: learned this lesson early on with a bear named one
Speaker 4: oh four. So before three ninety nine, there was a
Speaker 4: bear named the number was.
Speaker 1: One O four.
Speaker 4: It was a celebrity bear, celebrity bear, another shiny apple,
Speaker 4: if you will. And my predecessors tried to relocate that
Speaker 4: bear mover she got so not trap shy, but trap savvy,
Speaker 4: not savvy like she enjoyed traps. You could you could
Speaker 4: drive down the road with the door open and she'd
Speaker 4: come running down the road and jump in the trap
Speaker 4: and you would catch her.
Speaker 1: You know. She was that kind of freaking like I
Speaker 1: was just associated it with food.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because there was so many positive experiences jumping in
Speaker 4: traps and.
Speaker 1: You eat the whole damn deer and then some guy
Speaker 1: that's yeat yeah exactly, and you walk back home. I
Speaker 1: get it, I get it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So we just learned early on that those habituated
Speaker 4: bears aren't successful. And she also got hit by a
Speaker 4: vehicle one oh four and you know, I always thought
Speaker 4: that was gonna happen to three ninety nine. It took
Speaker 4: longer than I would have guessed.
Speaker 1: You pictured to getting struck by a car.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and one of her cubs got hit by a car,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: And really.
Speaker 4: The park Service could talk about more. They probably know
Speaker 4: all the individual cubs that she had, but as far
Speaker 4: as I'm aware, there's only one of her cubs that's
Speaker 4: still alive in existing because they just get so habituated
Speaker 4: to people, they don't learn normal bear manners is what
Speaker 4: I call it. So, you know, one of her cubs
Speaker 4: got shot by a guy who he was he was
Speaker 4: hunting and he's in his camper and this bears walk
Speaker 4: and ride at him like it's coming to eat him,
Speaker 4: you know, but that bear's used to getting its picture
Speaker 4: taken and that guy's scared for his life because he
Speaker 4: thinks this bear is gonna hurt him.
Speaker 1: And you don't think it was.
Speaker 4: It was so used to people, it was smiling the
Speaker 4: whole way it was coming in. I'm sure, you know.
Speaker 4: So I just don't think it sets bears up for success.
Speaker 4: And three ninety nine was really polarizing. I mean, some
Speaker 4: people loved her. Some people hated her. I think people
Speaker 4: forget that she mauled a guy years ago, so I
Speaker 4: mean she was still a grizzly bear.
Speaker 1: And what do you say people hated that bear? Do
Speaker 1: you mean that they hated that bear because what it
Speaker 1: Because it was a symbol for something.
Speaker 4: I think. So I think I think people would make
Speaker 4: comments that I would see and it would really ruffle
Speaker 4: feathers where you know, if they would say things like
Speaker 4: if they dealist grizzly bears and I can hunt, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna shoot that bear, and that just that really affected
Speaker 4: people negatively.
Speaker 3: So well that Shane Shane who got scratched off by
Speaker 3: the bear.
Speaker 1: He said right in his chair, Yeah, and he had.
Speaker 3: Good reason to believe that it was three ninety nine.
Speaker 1: That's what he had said. Well they well, how would
Speaker 1: they not know for certain, sorry that he was scratched
Speaker 1: up by Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's that was one of the things that he said.
Speaker 4: And she was in the vicinity.
Speaker 3: She was in the vicinity. But it was like if
Speaker 3: three ninety nine was the one that did this to you,
Speaker 3: we don't want to know about it. Was that kind
Speaker 3: of a thing. So it's I mean, that was that
Speaker 3: was one of the things that he mentioned sort of
Speaker 3: off handedly, and he's like, if it was three ninety nine,
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody would come out and declare to
Speaker 3: the world that three ninety nine had done this and
Speaker 3: needs to get destroyed, because it would just cause such
Speaker 3: an uproar. So it was kind of like there were
Speaker 3: there's like a buffer zone built around this bear to
Speaker 3: protect it from the consequences of its bad behavior once
Speaker 3: people get so attached to it. Yeah, I got you,
Speaker 3: but he he post I think when three ninety nine
Speaker 3: died too. He posted something again to the effect of
Speaker 3: like there's a good chance that this was the bear
Speaker 3: that did it.
Speaker 1: Wow, let me ask you another one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was that was a hard question. I'm sure
Speaker 4: people are gonna cry over that. So three was just
Speaker 4: touched a lot of heart strings.
Speaker 1: Rip yep.
Speaker 3: Three nine was never going to die, you know, in
Speaker 3: a warm bed with a roaring fire, surrounded by loved ones, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I was sick. That's the the craziest part is like,
Speaker 3: getting whacked by cars not the worst way to go.
Speaker 1: Wild Animal Cal went out, Cal did there's a col
Speaker 1: in the field about this on YouTube type and Cal
Speaker 1: in the Field grizzly Barry, you'll see this one. But
Speaker 1: there's a col in the field where he goes out
Speaker 1: with some Idaho guys and they work and they they
Speaker 1: colvert trap a grizzly and work up the grizzly. So
Speaker 1: they colvert trap a grizzly and it's got a lip tattoo,
Speaker 1: so they like an identifying marker, right, they call in
Speaker 1: the lip tattoo and and they're like, oh, we know
Speaker 1: that bear. They had had a collared female grizzly in
Speaker 1: the park. She found a carcass. She found a buffalo
Speaker 1: carcass and was on it. And they get a mortality
Speaker 1: signal and they go there and there's their sow with
Speaker 1: the collar dead on top of the buffalo carcass, and
Speaker 1: standing on top of the both of them is this
Speaker 1: male bear. Yeah right, but man, you could explain that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff all day long, like that the number
Speaker 1: one cause of death of Yellowstone wolves as wolves. Like
Speaker 1: you could explain that stuff all day long, but it
Speaker 1: is never gonna It just doesn't resonate. You know. People
Speaker 1: will look at certain causes of death, like if three
Speaker 1: ninety nine had been killed by a male grizzly, I
Speaker 1: don't think people would be upset, you know what I mean? Yeah, people,
Speaker 1: it's it's that they're upset because it's human caused.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people put different values on different animals, and and
Speaker 4: they even yeah, even at the individual level, put values
Speaker 4: on animals. And yeah, people just really valued that bear.
Speaker 1: So let me hte you with another easier to answer one.
Speaker 1: But you'll get this will make other people mad. Good,
Speaker 1: Now you're gonna, Now you're gonna. We have we know,
Speaker 1: we have a full spectrum of listeners. Sure, we got
Speaker 1: we got the horseshoe, you got, we got, we got
Speaker 1: left we got righty's lefties, and then we got where
Speaker 1: the rights and the lefties meet, which is crazy redneck hippies.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So no matter what you say, your eyes and
Speaker 1: get someone that's gonna get mad. And this will be
Speaker 1: a thing where where the the the the right bottom
Speaker 1: of the horseshoe get will get very irritated no matter
Speaker 1: what you say, uh, bear spray or pistols like when
Speaker 1: you're out. Yeah, no one, what you know, having dealt
Speaker 1: with as many grizzlies as you we dealt with and
Speaker 1: been to as many conflict sights as you've been to,
Speaker 1: and touched as many of them as he touched to
Speaker 1: and talked to as many people has been messed up
Speaker 1: by grizzlies as you've talked to bear spray or pistol.
Speaker 4: Without a doubt bear spray really, yeah, and.
Speaker 1: Tell me more now I'm mad. You promise he's a
Speaker 1: gun grabber. The other day Yanni was talking about them
Speaker 1: needing to ban the Red Rider. I was like, now,
Speaker 1: you're a gun grabber trying to take away people's Red Rider.
Speaker 3: What was his?
Speaker 1: Uh, he's got some cockamami theory that cheating a kid
Speaker 1: to shoot on a Red Rider to get used to
Speaker 1: a heavy trigger pull. My little kids, Yeah, my little
Speaker 1: kids shooting Red Riders. I remember they used to shoo
Speaker 1: him with two fingers because you cannot get that go off.
Speaker 3: I thought it was going to be like he was
Speaker 3: anti BB gun fights.
Speaker 1: He's he thinks he thinks of Red Rider. He just
Speaker 1: form And I think that's a very Unamerican statement. You
Speaker 1: shoot your eye out Bear spray unequivocally.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I have one caveat to that. If you're really
Speaker 4: well experienced with with handguns, then by all means carry
Speaker 4: a handgun. But a lot of people just aren't and
Speaker 4: I investigated so many cases of self defense defensive life shootings,
Speaker 4: and people are just really bad shots with pistols and
Speaker 4: a lot of times they would even hit the bear,
Speaker 4: but they don't hit it lethally. And bear spray. The
Speaker 4: beauty of it is it makes a four foot cloud,
Speaker 4: so you don't have to be accurate.
Speaker 1: And how much do they hate that bear spray?
Speaker 4: I've never seen it not work.
Speaker 1: So do you know that? Red a statistic and I
Speaker 1: didn't really spend a lot of time.
Speaker 4: If you spray it on the ground, they'll come sniff
Speaker 4: it though. It becomes an attractant.
Speaker 1: Oh oh yeah, I got I'll tell you a good
Speaker 1: one about that. But I read a statistic and I
Speaker 1: never really spent much time on it, but it seemed
Speaker 1: like it seemed significant that twenty five percent of the
Speaker 1: time a pistol or sorry, twenty five percent of the
Speaker 1: time when a firearm is discharged in a bear attack,
Speaker 1: it hits a human.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the other reason.
Speaker 1: Have you heard that?
Speaker 4: No, I haven't heard that statistic. That seems high. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of not shoot not there.
Speaker 1: But listen, man, like I know, yeah, I know a
Speaker 1: bunch of cases where that's happened, and I haven't looked
Speaker 1: into it. I just read it.
Speaker 4: You know, there was a case on the Montana Idaho border.
Speaker 4: It ended up being in Montana where the guy was
Speaker 4: getting mauled and his buddy tried to shoot the bear
Speaker 4: off him and actually killed his friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had shot that that bear. They were black
Speaker 1: bear hunting. They mistook it for a black bear, so
Speaker 1: they shot it and the bear runs into the into
Speaker 1: the brush. He thinks he hit a black bear, so
Speaker 1: he goes trailing in there after it and boom.
Speaker 4: I just remember it was so close on the border,
Speaker 4: they didn't know who had jurisdiction about it. So yeah,
Speaker 4: so that's that's why I carry bear spray. And you know,
Speaker 4: ultimately it's up to people. I know there's gun lovers
Speaker 4: they want to carry guns and that's fine, but a
Speaker 4: lot of people just don't practice shooting pistols enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think it does say a lot about
Speaker 1: your The choice might say more about your mind frame
Speaker 1: than it does your like your strat your sense of strategy. Right.
Speaker 3: I remember being like up at Sportsman's Warehouse and Anchorage
Speaker 3: and seeing people that just got off a plane and
Speaker 3: they're going to buy a pistol for their Alaska vacation
Speaker 3: and then you know, pawn it off or whatever at
Speaker 3: the end of the vacation. Like, I think there's like
Speaker 3: a there's an assumption that if you, if you believe
Speaker 3: in the handgun, like you just go get when you
Speaker 3: get a box ammo, and you keep it near you,
Speaker 3: and like that's just a recipe for disaster. But I
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of overconfident and I'm i myself,
Speaker 3: I have no confidence in my handgun shooting ability, and
Speaker 3: I shoot one pretty regularly.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you, my little my I'll walk you
Speaker 1: through my irrational thoughts on it. If there's slight risk
Speaker 1: of First off, I I condemn and yell at and
Speaker 1: harrass and tease anyone that carries bear spray where there's
Speaker 1: no grizzlies, indefensible it works on lions.
Speaker 7: What if it's just on your by hardness teas worthy
Speaker 7: in her as.
Speaker 1: Bear spray is not nice to get shot with, and
Speaker 1: they and it like they go off. I've been in
Speaker 1: two I've been never mauled by a bear, been charged
Speaker 1: by them, but never mauled. But twice I've been hosed
Speaker 1: by people's bear spray.
Speaker 4: Mine doesn't come off that.
Speaker 1: They trust it every two years, Yes, trust me, it's
Speaker 1: like it happens. Those are not those The plastic nozzles
Speaker 1: on those cans are not invulnerable. One time, on just
Speaker 1: standing around a car unloading backpacks, someone stepped on the
Speaker 1: plastic nozzle everything. And one time I got pickpocketed in
Speaker 1: the thick in the like a willow choked hell hole.
Speaker 1: And also I was like, what is that noise going?
Speaker 1: All your ship's done, all your gear is gone, You
Speaker 1: cannot get it out.
Speaker 5: Wait?
Speaker 7: Is it bad to keep your bear spray.
Speaker 1: In your car?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Keep itature It'll total your car.
Speaker 1: Know, I know people whose car has been told your car.
Speaker 1: When that goes off your car, it will total your car.
Speaker 4: Temperatures are dropping. I had a friend who did that
Speaker 4: and he's still driving his vehicle giving yeah all the time.
Speaker 1: Put get a small amimal can. There's one right outside
Speaker 1: the door of the of the studio. Get a small
Speaker 1: animal can and put it in the ammal can. And
Speaker 1: then when you're using it, Carrie, when you're done using it,
Speaker 1: put in an animal can. I was gonna I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you my irrational logic. Let me tell my funny story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had the Ranella family. We had we went into
Speaker 1: the summer with two bear sprays, and we have like
Speaker 1: a little camping spot where there's grizzlies. So when we
Speaker 1: get there, before I get a sense of what's going on,
Speaker 1: I'll like tell my kids, like, take the spray if
Speaker 1: you're gonna go fish, or take the spray and bring
Speaker 1: the dog. And then once we kind of get a
Speaker 1: sense of what's up, everybody relaxes about it. But at
Speaker 1: first it's thick, you know, at first I'll take the
Speaker 1: bear spray. So the end of the summer we only have.
Speaker 1: Now there's one bear spray, and of course no one
Speaker 1: knows what happened to the other bear spray. Well, me
Speaker 1: and my wife are up shutting our little camping area down.
Speaker 1: And here right outside of our little composting outhouse toilet, Yeah,
Speaker 1: right outside the door is the can of bear spray,
Speaker 1: empty with four holes in it. It got at by
Speaker 1: a bear.
Speaker 4: Got yep, got eaten by a bear. Seen that before?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Uh, here's my irrational logic. Okay, slight risk of grizzlies,
Speaker 1: I use spray. High risk of grizzlies. I bring my
Speaker 1: ten milimeters pistol ultra high risk of grizzlies. I bring
Speaker 1: my sawd off pump twelve gage with slugs in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've found this spray and pray.
Speaker 1: And I always look at it, and I always look
Speaker 1: at all three of them. I'm like, hey, man, like,
Speaker 1: what are you thinking here?
Speaker 4: That's a that's a myth I can dispel too. Is people, Uh,
Speaker 4: people take shotguns and they alternate buckshot and slugs.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because you know, I know that. No, I
Speaker 1: think it's supposed to. Brody told me you're supposed to
Speaker 1: run two bird shots. Yeah. Then you start going. Then
Speaker 1: you start going slug but shots, because it's like you
Speaker 1: warn it, boom, you warn it boom. Then like it's
Speaker 1: getting closer. Now you hit it with the slug boom.
Speaker 1: Then it's so close and everything's so chaotic. Then you
Speaker 1: start going buckshot.
Speaker 3: And most bears are aware of this choreography, this elaborate
Speaker 3: choreography before.
Speaker 6: They Yeah, all the time, there's.
Speaker 3: The warning shot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's warning.
Speaker 1: He tells his bite. Listen when you're coming in, he's
Speaker 1: gonna hit you two bird shots. Yeah, then you got
Speaker 1: to dodge the slug. Watch out for the buckshot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a zig and then a zag.
Speaker 6: Here's my scenario that I find myself in all the time.
Speaker 6: As most hunters, we don't get to pick our weather,
Speaker 6: but we do get to pick which direction.
Speaker 1: We walk when we're out hunting.
Speaker 6: And most of the time the winds in my face,
Speaker 6: and a lot of times the winds honking. I don't
Speaker 6: trust bear spray when the wind's blowing.
Speaker 4: Okay, So I've had that question a bunch over the years.
Speaker 4: And I had a really good friend who was horn
Speaker 4: hunting in the spring. It was super windy out. A
Speaker 4: sow with cubs, real little cubs, charges him, and you know,
Speaker 4: the winds in his face. He spray's bear spray. Half
Speaker 4: of it goes in her face, half of it gets
Speaker 4: in his face. They both ran off trying so it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the propellant still gets out there, but not as far
Speaker 4: as it normally would.
Speaker 6: I'd love to practice in the wind, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Want to get a case of those inert cans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that'd be interesting.
Speaker 1: I should get a case of those inert cans. I
Speaker 1: just like shoot each other around, like laser tag around.
Speaker 1: That would be fun.
Speaker 3: I tried to shoot a sow and cubs with a
Speaker 3: can of bear spray out of a window.
Speaker 1: And the when I was.
Speaker 3: Working Yellowstone, they were coming in and tearing up our cat.
Speaker 3: When I was working up in Alaska, they'd come in
Speaker 3: and tear up stuff on the portrait and trying to
Speaker 3: give a bad and like they would come in, they'd
Speaker 3: get into the fish shack to get into the tool
Speaker 3: shed that eat rubber boots that do all this stuff.
Speaker 3: And like so I was, I stayed in the main
Speaker 3: lodge that they kept coming into and open the window
Speaker 3: and they were walking past, and I sprayed, and it
Speaker 3: might have been just outside of the range, but all
Speaker 3: that bear spray went along the building and they like
Speaker 3: went ten feet back and stood up and then kind
Speaker 3: of circled around and came right back in.
Speaker 1: Killed you shut the window real quick. And then actually
Speaker 1: we sat around. I was with this kid.
Speaker 3: We just like we were sitting in the cabin like
Speaker 3: later on, like forty five minutes later, and we were
Speaker 3: both kind of like does it smell weird? And then
Speaker 3: we started getting like you know, like licking your cheeks
Speaker 3: and like your lips and stuff, and and we'd gotten
Speaker 3: like a trace amount inside and it had been swirling
Speaker 3: and swirling, and we spent like the rest of the
Speaker 3: night just like kind of licking our lips and rubbing
Speaker 3: our noses and stuff. Yeah, that was my one experience
Speaker 3: actually discharging.
Speaker 4: A can can't tell you a story.
Speaker 1: Yep, please sory here. I'm jealousy. I was. I was
Speaker 1: impressed that Randall got to shoot at one with a spray,
Speaker 1: But go on to have video of it somewhere.
Speaker 4: I actually never did get at a spray a bear
Speaker 4: with one. But I was deer hunting one fall and
Speaker 4: I was going in some really heavy dark timber and
Speaker 4: my dad always taught me to load around in my gun.
Speaker 4: So I'm going through the timber and I walk under
Speaker 4: this tree and there's a magpie sitting in the tree
Speaker 4: and he's just staring at me. He's just looking right
Speaker 4: down at me, and I'm looking up at him, and
Speaker 4: I'm thinking, boy, that's weird that magpie.
Speaker 1: Why is he hanging out?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Why is he hang out? Or just staring at
Speaker 4: each other? And I go another i don't know, thirty
Speaker 4: yards and I hear something and I turn around and
Speaker 4: there's this bore coming down the hill at me. He's
Speaker 4: coming right at me and.
Speaker 1: How many yards way?
Speaker 4: Maybe twenty? Guy, I mean, he's coming for me. And
Speaker 4: I was thinking myself, I got one shot with this rifle,
Speaker 4: you know, I got one chance to kill this thing,
Speaker 4: and it's going to be on top of me. And
Speaker 4: I realized what my dad was trying to teach me
Speaker 4: was just to be prepared, you know, And I would
Speaker 4: have been way better off with a can of bear
Speaker 4: spray in my hand, just walking through the woods and
Speaker 4: as a guide. I do that sometimes, you know, if
Speaker 4: it's real tight quarters, I don't have a problem walking
Speaker 4: around with the cann of bear spray. Even if you
Speaker 4: spray yourself, you're gonna live to talk about it.
Speaker 1: So what happened?
Speaker 4: He Yeah, I sprayed him and he didn't care.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I started yelling at him and he was coming down
Speaker 4: the hill at me, and he just kind of did
Speaker 4: a quarter pass, which is like a classic bear move,
Speaker 4: you know. It was it was a bluff, but I
Speaker 4: thought it was the real deal. And I just remember thinking, like,
Speaker 4: I gotta wait until this thing is right on top
Speaker 4: of me before I shoot, because I only got one chance.
Speaker 1: So what is after all those bears you worked up,
Speaker 1: what is a big bear in the rockies.
Speaker 4: A big bear is five hundred pounds. The biggest bear
Speaker 4: ever caught was six twenty four in the spring, would
Speaker 4: have been a true seven hundred pound bear in the fall.
Speaker 4: When people come.
Speaker 1: Into big bear, that's a huge bear because every bear
Speaker 1: is like I just cut.
Speaker 4: People's number in half immediately, you know, whatever it is,
Speaker 4: I cut it in half.
Speaker 1: They tell you how big the bear was, Yeah, yep.
Speaker 4: And you know, all those bears I worked up. The
Speaker 4: sows are almost always right around three hundred pounds two
Speaker 4: seventy five, three twenty five. They stop growing when they're
Speaker 4: about seven to eight years old, where the males just
Speaker 4: keep putting on weight, keep getting bigger. So a five
Speaker 4: hundred pounds adult male is a huge bear in the
Speaker 4: alstone ecosystem.
Speaker 1: That's a huge bear. Yeah. And what's a more typical
Speaker 1: male like, like, what is like a four or five
Speaker 1: year old male two fifty?
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know, three hundred.
Speaker 1: God, they seem so much bigger, badder, Yeah, and they're bad,
Speaker 1: but they seem so much bigger. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And people overestimate wolves too, and really, you know, lions
Speaker 4: are way bigger than wolves. But people because of the hair,
Speaker 4: especially the fall bears, animolves, but bears especially they get
Speaker 4: that that winner code on and people just think they're
Speaker 4: way bigger than they are. You know, they're like, it's
Speaker 4: a sow with a two full drown cubs, and it's like, no,
Speaker 4: that thing weighs one hundred and fifty pounds, but it's
Speaker 4: got so much hair it looks like as big as her.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: You were with the agency when the delisting looked like
Speaker 1: it was going to go through.
Speaker 4: Yeah, ok, it did go through.
Speaker 1: Well, sorry, when it looked like they were no, well
Speaker 1: it didn't an undid they were delisted yeah multiple times? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So help me with the timeline here, just to give
Speaker 1: people rough sense what will happen is Well, first off,
Speaker 1: I'm me saying this is not surprise. This is surprisingly
Speaker 1: not a partisan like Democrat versus Republican issue generally grizzly bears. Well,
Speaker 1: hear me out, because because I'm going to top of
Speaker 1: all the dlistings. Okay, yeah, so you can, you can.
Speaker 1: You can give that because there's definitely a tendency and
Speaker 1: a tendency. But just I just think that people have
Speaker 1: the opinion, they have their erroneous idea that somehow like
Speaker 1: a governor or whatever can just declare right right that
Speaker 1: something would happen right, that you would that that it's
Speaker 1: that it's a simple that doing this is a simple process.
Speaker 1: It just takes the right political figure to do it.
Speaker 1: It's I'm going to explain how it's a little bit
Speaker 1: more complicated in that right. In seventy four seventy nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, nineteen seventy five, grizzly bears and the lower
Speaker 1: forty eight were listed as an endangered They're listed as
Speaker 1: a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, so they're
Speaker 1: given Federal and Endangered Species Act Species Act protection under
Speaker 1: the EESA. And seventy four seventy five Richard Nixon, Dick Nixon.
Speaker 4: Don't remember him, heard of.
Speaker 1: Republican signed in the e s A signed Ina signed in.
Speaker 1: Then he established the EPA.
Speaker 3: That's that's the National Environmental Protection Act.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about the
Speaker 1: native milk.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Oh yeah, Richard Nixon CRAS and Endangered Species Act.
Speaker 1: And one of the first like marquee species to get
Speaker 1: protection under that is grizzy bears and lower forty eight.
Speaker 1: All kinds of years go by and wildlife managers kind
Speaker 1: of look and say, well, the saying the lower forty
Speaker 1: eight is not a great way of looking at this.
Speaker 1: For instance, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco once upon
Speaker 1: a time had grizzly bears, and I don't we don't
Speaker 1: view that Golden Gate Park is going to recover that
Speaker 1: San Francisco is going to recover it's grizzly bear population, right,
Speaker 1: is never gonna work. So over time they establish they
Speaker 1: take a look and they go like, where really could
Speaker 1: we have grizzly bears? Like where is the right food resources,
Speaker 1: low enough human population, proper habitat where you could feasibly
Speaker 1: have a population of grizzly bears? And they come up
Speaker 1: with six. One is in the Northern Casque what they
Speaker 1: call the Northern Cascade ecosystem. So one is like basically
Speaker 1: the Northern Cascades in Washington where you're kind of rolling
Speaker 1: into BC.
Speaker 4: Zero bears, sometimes one, sometimes one.
Speaker 1: It depends on what side of the Yeah, it depends
Speaker 1: on what side of the border.
Speaker 3: If you're from Wyoming, it looks a lot like zero bears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, they if they have it bears
Speaker 1: because one walked over there for a minute. Moving eastward,
Speaker 1: you have the bitter Root cell Kirk cell Way none.
Speaker 4: None, sell Kirks have bears, the bitter bitter Root does.
Speaker 1: The Bitterot side. That's one. Oh, I forgot. They gave
Speaker 1: a name to these things that already say the name
Speaker 1: they call the distinct distinct population segments. So they say, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna say that there's a grizzly bear population or
Speaker 1: the possibility of a grizzy bear population in the Lower Cascades.
Speaker 4: Uh, there's another one in Cabinet Yacks.
Speaker 1: That's right, Cabinet Yack has bears. Bitter Root sell Kirk,
Speaker 1: Bitter cell Way, Selway. Sorry, sell Kirks are in BC
Speaker 1: Bitterroot cell Way, Northern Continental Divide, which is Bob Marshall
Speaker 1: Glacier National Park, in some other areas up there, all
Speaker 1: the way out to the front Range. Uh. Then the
Speaker 1: g y E did I do them all? Am I
Speaker 1: missing any?
Speaker 3: I think that's it?
Speaker 1: Okay Uh, And they go like, so let's stop talking
Speaker 1: about the lower forty eight writ large and let's talk
Speaker 1: about let's get real okay right and talk about where
Speaker 1: could we actually have these bears. And then they looked
Speaker 1: at like Okay, So instead of saying that we're going
Speaker 1: to recover them across their range in the lower forty eight,
Speaker 1: which basically was the one hundredth meridian westward New Mexico, Arizona,
Speaker 1: Utah into northern Old Mexico coastal California. Right Like, let's
Speaker 1: just look at this. And so they say, let's say
Speaker 1: that we're going to try to recover and manage these
Speaker 1: as distinct population segments. And they look and say, if
Speaker 1: we're going to do that, there's two places, the Northern
Speaker 1: Continial Divide ecosystem in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which is
Speaker 1: a chunk of ground about the size of Indiana. And
Speaker 1: they're like, those are recovered. The rest of the Lower
Speaker 1: forty eight not, but these areas I recovered, and so
Speaker 1: let's move those out of the e Let's move those
Speaker 1: out of endangered species at protection. The US Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service has management has management authority. The US Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service has to come forward and they do this.
Speaker 1: The US This has happened with Democrats in the White House.
Speaker 1: This has happened with the Republicans in the White House.
Speaker 1: They'll come forward and say the US Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 1: Service says, we propose that we propose that we delist
Speaker 1: the grizzly. Then you have preservations like three ninety nine
Speaker 1: type people. Preservations organizations will go like, well, Jesus, that
Speaker 1: could mean that three ninety nine could get hunted. So
Speaker 1: then they will sue in federal court to block the dlisting.
Speaker 1: So they'll delist, and then there's a lawsuit and they'll
Speaker 1: they'll never sue on basis they don't sue on how
Speaker 1: many bears there are. They sue on uh, well, we
Speaker 1: don't think the DPS thing was fair, Yeah, right, because
Speaker 1: you can't treat them as distinct because because a bear
Speaker 1: could move from one to the others. So we we're
Speaker 1: going to attack the logic of the of the DPS.
Speaker 1: Or you'll say, well, have you considered white bark pine
Speaker 1: blister rust and how there's a fungus that's killing white
Speaker 1: bark pines and grizzlies like the eat white bark pines,
Speaker 1: and since we don't know what will really happen in
Speaker 1: the long term to white bark pines, we're suing to
Speaker 1: block the listing. Or well, what if cutthroat trout don't
Speaker 1: do that? Well in the future, and ten percent of
Speaker 1: bears might eat a cutthroat trout at some point in
Speaker 1: their life. So we're going to sue to block the
Speaker 1: delisting because we don't really know how well cutthroats are doing.
Speaker 3: The risks because then the Fish and Wildlife Service is
Speaker 3: required as part of that review process to consider all factors,
Speaker 3: and they kind of have an impossible job, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: like there's they basically are saying, we did a comprehensive review,
Speaker 3: our conclusions are x, Y, and Z, and the litigators
Speaker 3: are saying, it's not that comprehensive. You missed this, you
Speaker 3: miss that, And they're kind of poking holes in the
Speaker 3: bigger picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it will be It will come from anti
Speaker 1: hunting organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity, Humane Society,
Speaker 1: United States, Greater y Elson Coalition. Who else is a common
Speaker 1: player here? Center H And they'll they'll do these delistings
Speaker 1: or they'll they'll sue to block the delistings.
Speaker 4: Last one was the crow the Crow tribe tribe.
Speaker 1: What was the argument there, Uh.
Speaker 4: That we shouldn't be delisting.
Speaker 1: You know that's interesting. That was a long That was
Speaker 1: a long preamble to my question yeah, you were around
Speaker 1: for all this, yes, now, both of them. Okay, what
Speaker 1: I remember being really interesting about this is the three
Speaker 1: the three states that have chunks of ground and what
Speaker 1: we call the Greater Yellstone Ecosystem, a name that I
Speaker 1: resent because it call they should call it the Greater
Speaker 1: Cody ecosystem.
Speaker 4: They should call Wyoming bears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they should call it the Greater Cody ecosystem.
Speaker 4: Most simmar in Wyoming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Wyoming ecosystem. Yeah, there's three states. The bulk
Speaker 1: of it's in Wyholming. But the three states take an
Speaker 1: attitude where they're like, uh, okay, if d listing goes
Speaker 1: through and we take what that means is the states
Speaker 1: now manage it as a wild as wildlife under their jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: Idaho says, this is twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Is this when it's happened last seventeen?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Earlier?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Idaho says we're going to give out one grizzly tag.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Montana chicken shits out right and they say, not going
Speaker 1: to play this game. We're not doing any grizzly tags.
Speaker 4: Montana actually had to give part of their quota to
Speaker 4: Idaho so the Ida Idaho could have one.
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Yeah, Wyoming just lays all on
Speaker 1: the table. Yeah, and they're gonna give out twenty four tags, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Guys like me who really want who really think that
Speaker 1: the grizzies should be delisted, and I think that state
Speaker 1: management and I'm very open and enthusiastic about a very
Speaker 1: limited grizzly bear hunting season. Guys like me. As part
Speaker 1: of our rhetoric, if we were being unscrupulous, we would
Speaker 1: say that by opening up a hunting season, it'll reduce
Speaker 1: conflict because bears will learn to be scared of people.
Speaker 4: Not true.
Speaker 1: That's why I stopped saying it, because it was intellectually dishonest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: talk about that. I just spent like an hour setting
Speaker 1: up the question. But give me your feelings on all
Speaker 1: of this, all of this whole deal, all of this hunt,
Speaker 1: don't hunt, the bears need to learn to be scared
Speaker 1: and respect humans, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know where you can start. He opened
Speaker 4: up so many holes there I beight shops.
Speaker 6: Do you think grizzlies would be nervous of people if
Speaker 6: we started hunting them again?
Speaker 1: I got one?
Speaker 4: If I got one?
Speaker 1: Did you hear about bear four twenty two.
Speaker 4: I mean maybe at some level. I don't know personally
Speaker 4: because I haven't been there, but they talk about bears
Speaker 4: on Kodiak Island being like really weary of human scent
Speaker 4: because they're heavily hunted and always have been and always
Speaker 4: have been, and same with Sweden. So maybe at some level,
Speaker 4: But the reality is, you know, you have black bear
Speaker 4: populations all over America that are hunted and there's still
Speaker 4: black bear conflicts, so you're still gonna have conflicts with bears.
Speaker 4: Bears do learn on experience with humans. If they have
Speaker 4: a negative encounter, then they're more likely to run away
Speaker 4: from a human. But I just don't think you'll hunt
Speaker 4: them at a level that would be that would change
Speaker 4: their being behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So you know, they delisted in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 4: and that delisting went from two thousand and seven to
Speaker 4: two thousand and nine when a judge put him back
Speaker 4: on the list.
Speaker 1: Because it's always the same judge in Missoula.
Speaker 4: Wow, this was a different judge. I was, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: there was Molloy and then Dana Christiansen, and we knew
Speaker 4: we were in trouble when when Dana Christiansen had said
Speaker 4: My spirit animal is the wolverine. You know any judge with.
Speaker 1: That, that's cultural appropriation anyways.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know any judge with a spirit animal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they should have gotten him. They should have attacked
Speaker 1: him from the woke spectrum and said that that's cultural
Speaker 1: appropriation and you should be fired. That was before wokens.
Speaker 1: I believe man be freaking out. Man, I just don't coffee.
Speaker 1: It just died.
Speaker 4: Get some more coffee on that.
Speaker 3: For anyone listening. Steve spilled a large cup of coffee
Speaker 3: on his computer moments before we began recording Field.
Speaker 1: Do you have the tech capabilities to plug that clip in?
Speaker 1: Which clip? Well, because I was kind of talking about
Speaker 1: I was talking to Oh, absolutely, yeah, we can do it.
Speaker 1: Cut out me saying that bad stuff about that actor
Speaker 1: though it doesn't really inspire. Oh shit, one of those
Speaker 1: dudes that doesn't really inspire, like it, guys. I was
Speaker 1: observing that there's an actor that's in a lot of movies,
Speaker 1: but no one cares about him, and I don't want
Speaker 1: that to get out. I feel like that's that's the
Speaker 1: definition of a great character actor. No one cares about him,
Speaker 1: but you're you're happy to see him right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: He always brings it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so so yeah, so back back to this and
Speaker 1: and and pardon me for not know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I thought it was the same judge both times.
Speaker 4: But anyways, No, you're right that they do go judge shopping.
Speaker 4: That that's part of this whole thing. But yeah, two
Speaker 4: thousand and seven, two thousand and nine, Wyoming didn't have
Speaker 4: a hunting season even though the population was recovered. We
Speaker 4: could to use hunting as management tool, and when they
Speaker 4: got relisted, I think the state's opinion was, the next
Speaker 4: time they get delisted, we're gonna hunt these things, and
Speaker 4: we're it's not to control the population, it's to create
Speaker 4: a social pattern of hunting.
Speaker 1: That's what see, that's that's a good way of putting it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I want the states to do it because
Speaker 1: I want them to quickly exercise the management authority.
Speaker 4: And Montana checking out chickening out was a bad move
Speaker 4: in my opinion, because you're setting a precedent that that
Speaker 4: you're not hunting them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I remember they were going to chicken out
Speaker 1: for five years or something like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's true this time around too. They've
Speaker 4: said that recently in recent history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know that they would make that choice now,
Speaker 1: but at the time they were they had a plan
Speaker 1: to like formally chicken out for five years.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh. You know what's interesting about that when I say,
Speaker 1: like even the Idaho play, as weird as it was
Speaker 1: to do one on the Idaho play of the social
Speaker 1: maneuver of doing the hunt. I remember I was talking
Speaker 1: to these guys that were really involved in the elk
Speaker 1: reintroduction in Kentucky and they were nervous about this. So
Speaker 1: they ever since when when they started working on the
Speaker 1: elk reintroduction, which was state agency Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation,
Speaker 1: it was like, because of hunting, and will hunt them,
Speaker 1: and we'll hunt them, even though those years in the future,
Speaker 1: they baked it into every conversation to not then down
Speaker 1: the road go like, oh, hey, now that we got
Speaker 1: all these elk, how about we have a hunting season.
Speaker 1: It was like they were they were deliberate about setting
Speaker 1: an expectation that that's where this would go. And you
Speaker 1: see when you see signs around any anyway you go
Speaker 1: around in this area, you'll see signs delisting means hunting
Speaker 1: and it's it's meant to be delisting means hunting, and
Speaker 1: it's meant to be like an anti delisting. They're coming
Speaker 1: right out and saying, we're not gonna we're not looking
Speaker 1: to argue about how many bears they are, because no
Speaker 1: one's gonna argue that bears are stable. They're looking to
Speaker 1: be like they're using the ESA, they're using any Endangered
Speaker 1: Species Act not as a management tool. They're using it
Speaker 1: as a way that they can prevent something from happening
Speaker 1: that they don't want to happen. It's like, it's my
Speaker 1: favorite Animal Protection Act. It is not the Endangered Species Act,
Speaker 1: and they even know it, and their rhetoric mirrors it.
Speaker 1: But when I look and I see that sign delisting
Speaker 1: means hunting, I always think, I sure hope they're right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're rooting for that.
Speaker 1: And they'll always show a sow with cubs, the one
Speaker 1: they use around here. Sure, they show a saw with
Speaker 1: cubs with a crosshair. Yeah. I'm like, but you can't
Speaker 1: shoot cells with cubs. Yeah, so that's a poacher. They
Speaker 1: should arrest that person.
Speaker 4: We actually had, like I remember having five heights talking
Speaker 4: about how many bears we were going to harvest and
Speaker 4: a game warden in a district that has a lot
Speaker 4: of bears thought that twenty four was like not nearly
Speaker 4: enough and and was upset about it. And it's like,
Speaker 4: we're not trying to manage the population totally through hunting.
Speaker 4: We're trying to create a social standard for hunting. You know,
Speaker 4: I say we, But that was past.
Speaker 1: Years when we first started this podcast, million years ago
Speaker 1: in an office where me and my wife, Me and
Speaker 1: my wife had dinner not a great one either, across
Speaker 1: the road from our original old office last night on
Speaker 1: our little date night. Anyways, in that office upstairs, we
Speaker 1: and one of our early early podcasts we first launched
Speaker 1: a podcast. We had a guy from the USGS, Frank
Speaker 1: mcmahonan man. What is his name, Van Man? We had
Speaker 1: him on talk about He yeah, he does demographics on Grizzy.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 1: So the USGS is a it's a federal organization, and
Speaker 1: the USGS doesn't do policy. The USGS doesn't manage land, Okay,
Speaker 1: like the US Forest Service, the Usdaight manages land, US
Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service manages refuges, the National Park Service
Speaker 1: manages parks. You have a bunch of land management federal agencies.
Speaker 1: The USGS doesn't do land management, they don't do policy.
Speaker 1: Their mandate is information. Sure, they provide information. So this
Speaker 1: this guest we had, it's a great podcast. We want
Speaker 1: to go back and listen. Love it's still relevant today.
Speaker 1: This guest we had explained we got to talk about demographics,
Speaker 1: grizzy bear demographics. And there's the number. At that time,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the number is now. The number
Speaker 1: at that time was something like it was like fixed.
Speaker 1: It was like carved in stone, seven hundred okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it will And he explained that. I was like,
Speaker 1: where does that number come from? What they had looked
Speaker 1: at is at a time they looked at, Okay, in
Speaker 1: this ecosystem, how much space does a breeding age female use?
Speaker 4: Thirty square kilometers was the estimate.
Speaker 1: That okayep And they would draw what's that little shape
Speaker 1: you draw on them at an octagon or polygon?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was actually a grid. Okay, but yeah, and
Speaker 4: that was called the chow To model.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Explain, yeah, okay, so you know about the shit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: explain how the number was arrived at. And then and
Speaker 1: then I'm going to share with you something he told
Speaker 1: me about the number that I was like we spent
Speaker 1: an hour talking about yeah, because he would say at
Speaker 1: least I'd go, how many at least seven forty? Well,
Speaker 1: how many at least seven forty? Yeah, well how many
Speaker 1: at least seven forty?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that model has been updated twice since then.
Speaker 1: Okay, but explain how it's like, it's really fascinating how
Speaker 1: you make a model like this.
Speaker 4: Okay, So bears are really hard to count because they're
Speaker 4: solitary nature. They're not territory. Their home ranges overlap, so just.
Speaker 1: Say solitary but not territorial, right.
Speaker 4: They like to be in visialistic, but they don't have territories,
Speaker 4: not like a mountain lion. Solitary nature has a territory.
Speaker 4: It's keeping other cats out of there. So if there's
Speaker 4: food availability, their home ranges overlap.
Speaker 1: Oh, I've never even thought about that term. That's a
Speaker 1: great term. Solitary but not territorial.
Speaker 4: Right, And that's what happened with the model. That's what
Speaker 4: makes them really difficult to count. So the early research
Speaker 4: showed that a grizzly bear sal's home range was thirty
Speaker 4: square kilometers, so when they were counting, if you're counting
Speaker 4: bears and there's you break the system, the ecosystem up
Speaker 4: into a grid, and there's a sow with cubs in
Speaker 4: one of those squares. You cross off that grid because
Speaker 4: you don't want to you want to lean conservative, you
Speaker 4: don't want to overestimate the population. One with that model
Speaker 4: is as the population gets higher in density, your model
Speaker 4: gets more and more biased because of those home ranges overlapping.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: So that model maxed out at seven forty, Like I
Speaker 4: can't remember seven fifty. Maybe you couldn't get it. You
Speaker 4: couldn't shove any more grizzly bears into the ecosystem in
Speaker 4: that model. They went back and they looked at color
Speaker 4: data and they found out that SAO's home range was
Speaker 4: more like fourteen square kilometers.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta this is great, but I want
Speaker 1: to add in a thing here. Yeah. That he'd explained
Speaker 1: is be that when they make the model, you're just
Speaker 1: you count you're trying to count breeding age females, and
Speaker 1: then you look.
Speaker 4: At what with cubs of the year, okay, and then to.
Speaker 1: Look at what you know about the demographics, meaning that
Speaker 1: you could go into a let's say you could go
Speaker 1: into a country perhaps and count how many how many
Speaker 1: females with children are in this country, and then probably
Speaker 1: go like, okay, so we know human males and human
Speaker 1: females are born at a one to one ratio. We
Speaker 1: know that like a female is most active reproductively between
Speaker 1: twenty four and thirty eight, and that they have on
Speaker 1: average two point two kids, and so we can just
Speaker 1: look at how many moms there are and make a
Speaker 1: guess at what the human population is in that country.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what you're doing with grizzies, right, You're like,
Speaker 1: we know that that you got males, you got cubs,
Speaker 1: but if we can know this one number, we can
Speaker 1: extrapolate outward to get a sense of how many are there,
Speaker 1: rather than mechanically counting them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have. You know that they're the driver of
Speaker 4: the population. But what you're describing is actually more like
Speaker 4: a census, and that's closer to what the model is now.
Speaker 4: It's an integrated population model. But you know, yeah, the
Speaker 4: ratio of bears in the ecosystem you have, however many
Speaker 4: adult males you have, however many subadult bears and females
Speaker 4: with cubs are driving your population. So it's just a
Speaker 4: multiplier understood essentially, so it got changed to fourteen square
Speaker 4: kilometers and that made the estimate more like twelve hundred bears.
Speaker 4: And then what you just described is now what they're
Speaker 4: doing is an integrated population model, and it's more of
Speaker 4: a census and you can plug in other factors.
Speaker 1: I got it.
Speaker 4: So what's the number now, ten oneenty thirty.
Speaker 1: How good you think that number is?
Speaker 4: I think that's pretty accurate. I think there's definitely parts
Speaker 4: of the ecosystem where there's higher densities than other parts.
Speaker 4: And growing up in Cody, I just assumed everywhere had
Speaker 4: really high densities, and you go to other parts and
Speaker 4: they're just not. And this new modeling system is going
Speaker 4: to incorporate some of that and show you where where
Speaker 4: there's more density of bears. And that's only in the
Speaker 4: demographic monitoring monitoring area. So there's bears that live outside
Speaker 4: where they're even looking for bears. So that is a
Speaker 4: minimum because they're not counting bears that aren't in suitable habitat.
Speaker 4: Oh really, yeah, they might be living years.
Speaker 1: They're not counting bears that don't count.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if a bear moves out into like if
Speaker 1: a bear moves out of and moves out into like
Speaker 1: Fort Benton, out of out of the Shouldo area and
Speaker 1: just keeps going east. He leaves the counting.
Speaker 4: Area if he's there year round, if he's outside of
Speaker 4: their their demographic monitoring area. And I don't know about
Speaker 4: the NCDE, but that's how they did it with the
Speaker 4: g ye got it. Yeah, you got to be in
Speaker 4: a bear place to be a bear. Yeah, stract don't
Speaker 4: count outliers.
Speaker 1: So there's about So tell me the number again, you think, oney? Thirty?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was as high as twelve hundred was
Speaker 4: estimate a couple of years ago before they changed to
Speaker 4: this other model. But it has a lot more factors.
Speaker 4: It's a lot more accurate. God, it's my understanding.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 4: No, I still thought it was that old seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't know that anyone moved beyond that number.
Speaker 4: That was laughable. People in my hometown never believe that.
Speaker 1: Why do they Why do they seem to congregate in
Speaker 1: these little micro areas so much. There's just some like
Speaker 1: valleys that are like such hot spots, and you go
Speaker 1: to another valley and you could go to another value
Speaker 1: and hang out there over the years, ten ten years
Speaker 1: and never lay eyes on one. But then there's like,
Speaker 1: you can't it just doesn't. You can't really tell the
Speaker 1: difference from looking at them.
Speaker 4: It's just food availability, food sources, and some of it's
Speaker 4: learned behavior. And my part of the woods, we have
Speaker 4: what are called moth sites, and there's these bears on
Speaker 4: moth sites, and you know, I've done flights where I've
Speaker 4: counted forty bears on moss sites. So there's a high
Speaker 4: concentration of food, and that's one of the highest caloric
Speaker 4: value foods in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: He explain what that means.
Speaker 4: Cloric value?
Speaker 1: No, what a moth? I know about it? Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know a little bit, but just tell people what
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 4: So there's these army cutworm moths that migrate from the
Speaker 4: Midwest and they come up in the mountains at night
Speaker 4: pollinate flowers, and then in the daytime they get in
Speaker 4: these talus slopes and they use that as a heat refugia,
Speaker 4: and bears come along and they flip over those rocks
Speaker 4: and eat those bugs. And they're probably eating twenty to
Speaker 4: forty thousand of.
Speaker 1: Those moths a day, licking them up.
Speaker 4: Licking them up, yep. And it's just a really rich
Speaker 4: food source for bears in ecosystem. But what I was
Speaker 4: going to say is there's places in the ecosystem where
Speaker 4: there's moss sites and there's not bears utilizing them, So
Speaker 4: they think it's a learned behavior, like.
Speaker 1: They know about it, right yep. Huh, Like if you
Speaker 1: took all the bears out and put new ones back in,
Speaker 1: they might not find those.
Speaker 4: Moths maybe not for a while, or they use different ones,
Speaker 4: or they could use different ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, huh. What are some of the other main foods,
Speaker 1: Like everybody likes to think of them just you know,
Speaker 1: eating elk calves, But when you had a list like
Speaker 1: their main grub sources, what do you think it is?
Speaker 4: Uh, vegetation. You know, bears eat a lot of different
Speaker 4: roots and tubers and corns, and that's a big one.
Speaker 4: In the spring, elk calves is a big food source.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's kind of undeniable. These moths sites. There
Speaker 4: are a few places in the ecosystem where they eat
Speaker 4: those cutthroat trout that are spawning white bark pine. But
Speaker 4: they did a food synthesis analysis on bears and found
Speaker 4: that they eat over two hundred and sixty different plants
Speaker 4: and animals so kid. Yeah, in the Yellstone ecosystem, they
Speaker 4: have the most diverse diet.
Speaker 1: Two hundred and sixty species. Yep.
Speaker 4: That bear that I caught there was six twenty four.
Speaker 4: I figured that he was probably eating meat year round.
Speaker 4: You know, that bear was going from winter kill carcasses
Speaker 4: to elk calves, to moths, to killing cattle in the
Speaker 4: fall because we'd caught him before killing cattle, to eating
Speaker 4: gut piles. You know, he was eating probably nothing but meat.
Speaker 4: How old was that bear?
Speaker 2: Mmm?
Speaker 4: I don't remember. I caught another bear that was five
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty pounds in the spring, same exact location,
Speaker 4: and I caught him eight years later and he was
Speaker 4: twenty eight years old.
Speaker 1: Wow, Holy cow man.
Speaker 4: So that other bear could be thirty I think. I think, well,
Speaker 4: when he was twenty eight, that bear was past his prime.
Speaker 4: Maybe when other bear was probably between fifteen and twenty.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, Yeah, man, it's twenty eight.
Speaker 4: Zach Turnbull caught one that was thirty two in the
Speaker 4: Upper Green.
Speaker 1: And that's got to be getting close to mass.
Speaker 4: That's the oldest bear they've caught in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. In your mind, what is the what
Speaker 1: is the most common sort of way things play out
Speaker 1: when people get scratched up by a bear.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, what do you mean, like, how.
Speaker 1: If you were if you were no, no, no, no, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: if you were going to look at from all the
Speaker 1: things you've heard and seen, when someone gets mauled by
Speaker 1: a bear, what is the normal.
Speaker 4: Scenario surprise encounter?
Speaker 1: Probably like you're spooking it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and probably sounds with cubs more than anything else.
Speaker 4: You know, I see a big adult mail track, I'm
Speaker 4: not nervous. I see a little tiny cub track, and
Speaker 4: I'm like really looking around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's that you like jump it at close range.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the majority of them. You know, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of cases every year where guys get elk down
Speaker 4: and and there's bears coming into those dead elk or
Speaker 4: they're going back to retrieve a bear or excuse me
Speaker 4: an elk carcass and and they jump a bear. That's
Speaker 4: pretty common too. I mean it's it's food, cubs and
Speaker 4: personal space, And a lot of times you're getting cubs
Speaker 4: and personal space at the same time.
Speaker 1: Got it, that's trouble. Yeah, do you believe you know,
Speaker 1: there's like a thing I don't know if it's a
Speaker 1: if it's a what's the opposite of an urban legend,
Speaker 1: rural legend?
Speaker 4: Rural myth?
Speaker 1: Okay, like my brother redneck talk my brother Danny, he
Speaker 1: now and then goes in, uh hunts kodyac but after
Speaker 1: you know, he hunts in the winter for black tail deer. Right,
Speaker 1: and he'll swear when the bears are down, he'll swear
Speaker 1: to red fox. No, a gunshot. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: red fox there. He's like, you shoot a deer and
Speaker 1: they're just there. Yeah, and he's like, you know, they're
Speaker 1: smelling it whatever. But it's so fast you can't help.
Speaker 1: But wonder like, are they're like, oh, they're like and they're.
Speaker 4: Like, ooh yeah, go that way.
Speaker 1: You hear people say this about grizzlies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all the time.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's true?
Speaker 4: No, not at all.
Speaker 1: You don't think they can't do a gunshot.
Speaker 4: No. I'll tell you why, because I have friends that
Speaker 4: are really poor shots, have guided hunters. They're really poor shots.
Speaker 4: And you sit there for fifteen twenty minutes and no
Speaker 4: bears show shows up. We have a shooting range outside
Speaker 4: of Cody.
Speaker 1: It's not full bears.
Speaker 4: It's not full of bears, even though I've caught bears
Speaker 4: adjacent to it, but they're not running to that thing,
Speaker 4: you know, got it. So it's really when you get
Speaker 4: an animal down that blood, that room and smell that guts.
Speaker 4: As soon as that hits the air, you gotta clock
Speaker 4: on you. And what I like to do as a
Speaker 4: guide is start a fire, you know, as long as
Speaker 4: there's not a fireband if I'm in a good location,
Speaker 4: you know, and started upwind because that kind of masks
Speaker 4: that scent and fire. The real reason is it calms
Speaker 4: your hunter down because as soon as they kill something,
Speaker 4: they're like super bear scared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do that fire thing caughtting up moose in
Speaker 1: alask especially when it's real thick, I'll get a fire gone.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's like my owne I just have.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I like to have the idea that
Speaker 1: it somehow broadcasts the human presence more might be total horseshit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so. I don't think bears want to
Speaker 4: come into a fire. So that's just something I've learned
Speaker 4: since after the game and fish.
Speaker 1: You know, have you handled bears that had killed people?
Speaker 4: Hmmm, No, I've handled there's that have mall people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: after the mall and yeah.
Speaker 7: Didn't you tell me that story about how.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the first yeah, one of my yeah, one
Speaker 4: of my first conflicts that I came on. I wasn't
Speaker 4: even hired on full time yet. I came in the office.
Speaker 4: I was just volunteering on my days off. And my
Speaker 4: boss was on the phone and he said, I remember
Speaker 4: him saying, three maybe four people mauled. I'm on the
Speaker 4: way to the hospital. And he got off the phone
Speaker 4: and he said, hey, can you help us for a
Speaker 4: couple of days, And I said yeah. And there was
Speaker 4: a mauling at by cook City, a campground called Soda Butte.
Speaker 4: There was a human fatality there. And ran up there
Speaker 4: with the trap and you know that was obviously in Montana,
Speaker 4: but we assisted Montana and trying to catch those bears
Speaker 4: and they set the traps. They caught those bears, I
Speaker 4: you know, set but we didn't catch anything. And then
Speaker 4: I was shuttling samples to our vet lab and layer
Speaker 4: me what kind of samples, well, tissue samples from the
Speaker 4: bear to make sure that it was a match. Okay,
Speaker 4: but she had mauled three people and the first tint
Speaker 4: was a young kid and his girlfriend and a dog,
Speaker 4: and she tried to Sorry, she didn't maul, but she
Speaker 4: she tried to attack three different people. She tried to
Speaker 4: come into that tent and the dog started barking, and
Speaker 4: she left it, and that kid got so afraid. I
Speaker 4: call him a kid. He's probably like eighteen nineteen. He
Speaker 4: packed up all his stuff and left, and that Soo
Speaker 4: went further down the campground and there was a couple
Speaker 4: who slept in separate tents because the husband snored and
Speaker 4: maybe maybe they're in a fight, and that Soo ripped
Speaker 4: into a tent and tried to grab that and she
Speaker 4: fought it off, and it actually broke a tooth out
Speaker 4: of the bear's head in her arm.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, it's weird, like all the shit he bit
Speaker 1: in his life that that would break his tooth off.
Speaker 4: It was It was a sow, but she was so
Speaker 4: malnourished that she was desperate, and that was Those are
Speaker 4: predatory attacks, obviously, which is different than your defensive aggressive attacks.
Speaker 4: So then she, yeah, she went further down the campground
Speaker 4: and she got in another tent and she killed and
Speaker 4: ate a guy, and there was three other yearling bears
Speaker 4: with her through those attacks. So I didn't work up
Speaker 4: that bear personally, but yeah, I've worked up other bears
Speaker 4: of mald people.
Speaker 1: Does that give you a creepy feeling?
Speaker 5: Mmm?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I will never forget the look in
Speaker 4: that bear's eyes. It's so to bete. I mean, she
Speaker 4: was so demoralized, and yeah, I'll just never forget the
Speaker 4: way she had her head on her paws and just
Speaker 4: look completely demoralized.
Speaker 1: Like what do you mean demoralized? M just.
Speaker 4: There was like a sadness in her eyes. I don't
Speaker 4: know how else is that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: And you catch a lot of bears and see a
Speaker 4: lot of bears and traps and they avoid eye contact.
Speaker 4: That's really normal, but there was just like a feeling
Speaker 4: about it. I don't know how else to describe it.
Speaker 1: Hum, when they're avoiding eye contact, what do you think.
Speaker 4: That is in the bear world? You know, that's aggressive posturing.
Speaker 1: When I was teaching, eye contact is aggressive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when I was teaching kids, i'd say, you know,
Speaker 4: especially middle school girls, you know, when you see somebody
Speaker 4: in the hallways and you kind of stare them down,
Speaker 4: that's aggressive posturing. You know you're being mean, right, And
Speaker 4: they all understand that and that's the same with bears,
Speaker 4: is they pretty much avoid eye contact until they're raid
Speaker 4: to rumble the rate to fight.
Speaker 1: M so they'll look away from one another.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, those big adult males, when you see them fight,
Speaker 4: they'll circle each other and they'll be avoiding eye contact,
Speaker 4: and when they finally get the nerve to lock eyes,
Speaker 4: that's when they're you know, trying to fight each other.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's a tell if a bear is
Speaker 1: gonna falls charge or charge charge? Do you think there's
Speaker 1: a physical tell? Ye?
Speaker 4: Head posture, Okay, if they're really intent on hurting you,
Speaker 4: their head is as low to the ground as possible.
Speaker 4: They're trying to get there. And you see that with
Speaker 4: self defense shootings. A lot of times guys aim center mass.
Speaker 4: Center mass is the hump, you know, and it doesn't
Speaker 4: kill them. When they're shooting bears. If it's a bluff charge,
Speaker 4: a lot of times their head is high. You know,
Speaker 4: they're kind of high on their front legs and they're
Speaker 4: not coming as fast as they could head down, head down, Yep,
Speaker 4: aim low.
Speaker 8: With your spray, yeah, shot, yeah, with your yeah at
Speaker 8: what let's say, once coming you got prayer spray at
Speaker 8: what distance?
Speaker 1: For you personally, Like, at what distance are you touching
Speaker 1: that spray off?
Speaker 4: Oh, thirty yards?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're just letting it rip. Let it rip,
Speaker 1: don't be like trying to don't try to conserve.
Speaker 4: I would, I'd hold it down for a second and spray,
Speaker 4: and you know, if it kept coming, I'm going to
Speaker 4: keep spraying. But yeah, about a second's all it takes.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the wolverine situation, the wolverine
Speaker 1: delisting m or sorry, the wolverine listing? Do you think
Speaker 1: the wolverine listing is warranted?
Speaker 4: I think we're living in a time and age where
Speaker 4: a lot wildlife habitats just getting chopped up, and wolverines
Speaker 4: need a really big home range. And there were links
Speaker 4: in Wyoming and they just kind of blinked out and
Speaker 4: nobody ever noticed. So I don't know a ton about wolverines,
Speaker 4: but I think you probably gotta do everything you can
Speaker 4: to protect their habitat at this point, you think, so, yeah,
Speaker 4: and I you know, they just have such a huge
Speaker 4: home range and this was probably for the south extent
Speaker 4: of their habitat anyways, Yeah, right well down into Colorado. Yeah,
Speaker 4: historically they're probably so far down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that they're using two they use two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty.
Speaker 4: Square miles five hundred five hundred square that's wild, it's more.
Speaker 4: But same thing with links, you know. They they went
Speaker 4: really far south. And I had a friend that was
Speaker 4: a trapper and he'd always say, it's not like the
Speaker 4: Canadians are excited every time a bobcat crosses into Canada.
Speaker 1: You know, a good point.
Speaker 4: It's just we have a different mentality because they're coming south.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 4: What do you think about wolverines?
Speaker 1: Man? Uh, I think that they I think that we
Speaker 1: lack any kind of historic reference. So when someone goes
Speaker 1: and looks and they think that there's a low number
Speaker 1: of wolverines that no one's ever looked at it in
Speaker 1: a sophisticated sense before. One way you could look at
Speaker 1: the research they did is you'd say, man, there's wolvernes
Speaker 1: all over the place, right because they go out and
Speaker 1: do the they hang the carcasses and do the trail
Speaker 1: camp stuff and catch hairs.
Speaker 4: Yeah I actually did that one, did you?
Speaker 1: And so you'd look and be like wow. Like one interpretation,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, huh, that's cool. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: wolverines out there because no one knew. But instead you
Speaker 1: take that you you realize there aren't many, but you
Speaker 1: don't know how many there ever were, right, and then
Speaker 1: you point to an area, you know, you point to
Speaker 1: an area and cannon they had seen a decline, but
Speaker 1: it's not the same kind of area. You're on the
Speaker 1: southern edge, and you just go like, there aren't many,
Speaker 1: therefore they must be endangered. I feel like, without being
Speaker 1: able to have it, demons like a demonstrated decline over time.
Speaker 1: I'm a little suspect, and I also I'm a little
Speaker 1: suspect because I think that they are a I think
Speaker 1: that it's a little bit of a red herring. I
Speaker 1: think that they're being used, that they're being used as
Speaker 1: a tool to get at something that, to get at
Speaker 1: something different.
Speaker 4: Sure that's probably saving habitat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And it's like it's like, we want to
Speaker 1: save habitat, which I totally understand. We want to save habitat,
Speaker 1: we want to slow certain development. The way to do
Speaker 1: that is to do the wolverine and get the wolverine listed.
Speaker 1: But then the wolverine will get listed and it'll wind
Speaker 1: up being that you'll see that you can't go and
Speaker 1: snow and beyond certain areas, and you can't trap in
Speaker 1: certain areas. And you'd be like, but but running a
Speaker 1: snowmobil and trapping aren't have it. Don't do habitat destruction.
Speaker 1: If this is all about habitat destruction, why do we
Speaker 1: do it this way? Well, this is very personal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Steve still collecting his thoughts on this subject.
Speaker 4: You know, back to the point I made earlier about
Speaker 4: links linking out in Wyoming, there's a chance that part
Speaker 4: of that was because of snowmobiles and and what that
Speaker 4: does is creates a path for coyotes to go kill
Speaker 4: snowshoe hairs, which obviously links are dependent on. Got it,
Speaker 4: And so you know, it doesn't seem like snowmobiling has
Speaker 4: an impact, but it.
Speaker 1: May, you know, one of the weirdest ones of those God.
Speaker 4: I don't want to be like a making make me
Speaker 4: sound very green here. That's great.
Speaker 1: Listen that that's that's that's great for me. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I like it's a it's good things to
Speaker 1: beerious about. Yeah, uh, think about this. One time we
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time years ago on when there
Speaker 1: was still some caribou that were living in the Idaho Panhandle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the efforts to try to save those caribou in
Speaker 1: the in the Selkirk Range, and they would come into
Speaker 1: Idaho Panhandle. Sure, right now there's no caribou in the
Speaker 1: lower forty.
Speaker 4: Eight Yeah, super sad.
Speaker 1: When they looked at that. An interesting thing was that
Speaker 1: they were seeing so much wolf predation on caribou, and
Speaker 1: it was like, why wasn't there, Like, that's nothing new.
Speaker 1: You've had wolves on the landscape right in BC. The
Speaker 1: caribou there, why wasn't it. It was like white tailed
Speaker 1: deer numbers, like like certain certain timber harvest practices created
Speaker 1: a lot of white tailed deer and elk and moose habitat.
Speaker 1: As you brought up that number of ungulates this is
Speaker 1: theory obviously, as you brought up that number of ungulates
Speaker 1: at the edge of caribou habitat, it created an incentive
Speaker 1: for wolves to hunt in the area. And once wolves
Speaker 1: had taken the habit of hunting in that area, because
Speaker 1: they're killing deerd or killing moose, they're getting some caribou. Historically,
Speaker 1: there hadn't been enough like bio mass on the landscape
Speaker 1: to warrant them hunting the area and they would just
Speaker 1: be elsewhere. It's a theory, but it's interesting and you
Speaker 1: think of like like you do this and kylet's now
Speaker 1: push up on snowbill trails and hunt and they got
Speaker 1: a way to get from spot to spot and it
Speaker 1: right right, it's a human cause. It's a human cause,
Speaker 1: very like step by step, kind of hard to track.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the corequence of events, the correlations probably
Speaker 4: when snowmobiles got souped up. I'd be curious if that
Speaker 4: was like the years when when those animal's behavior started
Speaker 4: to change.
Speaker 1: Got it when high marking became a thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because when I was growing up, you know, you
Speaker 4: were about a foot off the ground and that thing
Speaker 4: didn't go very fast. Yeah, but now you can, you
Speaker 4: can go anywhere with a snowmobile.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I picked up a wolverine on a trail camera
Speaker 1: last year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's cool.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was I felt like I was
Speaker 1: real excited. I sent it to everybody.
Speaker 4: It was like trapping, Yeah, yeah, it was like trapping
Speaker 4: to get one.
Speaker 1: Yeah on a camera.
Speaker 4: No, We've had some game fish guys get some on cameras,
Speaker 4: but it's really rare. And when they were doing that
Speaker 4: population estimate, you know, it was I want to say,
Speaker 4: not more than five in the whole state, And they
Speaker 4: put a lot of effort into trying to identify wolverines.
Speaker 4: Something that was really cool, though, is they had a
Speaker 4: wolverine that had a white arm with a black spot,
Speaker 4: so really unique. And she'd actually been caught in the
Speaker 4: northern part of Yellowstone and had a had a number
Speaker 4: and I think for a while had a transmitter in
Speaker 4: her I'm not sure if that's true, but she was
Speaker 4: fourteen years old. I want to say, wow, r really yep,
Speaker 4: because they're so identifiable.
Speaker 1: They knew about how many and Wyoming.
Speaker 4: Well through all the you know, I think the population
Speaker 4: estenate is probably twenty Is it that low?
Speaker 1: Is that low? Yeah?
Speaker 4: She's really God I might be miss speaking twenty to
Speaker 4: fifty one hundred, No more than.
Speaker 1: We got a lot better to tabitat though. Here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the northwest part of the states.
Speaker 3: So how far away was she she said she was
Speaker 3: She had been caught in the northern part of Elstone.
Speaker 3: Do you know where she was then reidentified?
Speaker 1: How far away?
Speaker 4: Fish hawks? Probably eighty miles away? Wow, twenty one and
Speaker 4: twenty two.
Speaker 6: Wyoming game and fish set approximately twenty four wolverinesh.
Speaker 1: Look at this guy.
Speaker 4: It's been a while since I thought about that.
Speaker 1: Man. It makes my cameras things seem even cooler.
Speaker 4: You know who you know who? Osborne Russell is sure man.
Speaker 1: He calls them common.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he talks about him in by Salt Lake,
Speaker 4: So yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of he calls them common.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of carkajew references in the Mountain Man journals.
Speaker 1: Ye know that oral history stuff does because I would
Speaker 1: not call them common.
Speaker 4: Right, So there's gotta be more than there is now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Osborne Russell, we covered this very We're working on
Speaker 1: a thing called the Mountain Men. Yeah, sure, part of
Speaker 1: our American History series. And the other thing that you
Speaker 1: just wouldn't believe is, uh, the number of big horns.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah in the early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like not elk, right.
Speaker 1: Big horns. Hundreds, like hundreds of big horns.
Speaker 4: I've talked horns, yeah, big horns and deer. I've talked
Speaker 4: to Larry Todd about this, and there's only two Indian
Speaker 4: camps in Wyoming that have elk parts in them. So
Speaker 4: what I don't understand is there's a really big elk
Speaker 4: migration that comes from Yellowstone and it goes to south
Speaker 4: of Kody, and you know, I imagine it's been going on
Speaker 4: for thousands of years. But you think maybe there weren't
Speaker 4: that many elk back then, or you know, it's more
Speaker 4: buffalo than elk.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Osborne Russell would run into people who were
Speaker 1: like sheep specialists.
Speaker 4: Sheep eaters, sheep. Yeah, we have a bunch of artifacts
Speaker 4: around us that were sheep eater artifacts. They're they're part
Speaker 4: of the Shoshown tribe. But we just learned.
Speaker 3: That's why I scratched it.
Speaker 1: I asked, I actually asked as a person.
Speaker 4: Yea, well I've never known, only preferred. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 4: river that flows through Cody.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's that's what got Yeah, you're sitting in Okay.
Speaker 3: Well he would know the rivers and the places go
Speaker 3: by Shoshone, but the people go by Shoshone is sort.
Speaker 1: Of what he was. He was a rapp a hole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he lives with Yeah, lives. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: The conclusion we collectively arrived at.
Speaker 4: Have you ever seen the bows that those sheep eaters make?
Speaker 1: No? But I read Osborne Russell's description of the bows.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're pretty cool. There's a guy named Bob Lucas
Speaker 4: that there's a video of him making one. But they
Speaker 4: take a big horn, sheep horn, and they reverse the
Speaker 4: curl and then they glue it and tie it together
Speaker 4: and it's basically a recurved bow.
Speaker 1: They steam it, reverse it right yep.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: Osborne Russell figures very heavily into our into the thing
Speaker 1: we're working on because he did such.
Speaker 4: A good job of documenting stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, such a phenomenal job of making a journal. Uh.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your guide in business? Who do you
Speaker 1: guide for?
Speaker 4: I've guided for a bunch of different outfitters, to be honest,
Speaker 4: and I took this season pretty much off because I
Speaker 4: just had a kid. But I've worked for Yellowstone Country Outfitters,
Speaker 4: three oh seven Outfitters, ran Crick Outfitters, Livingstone Outfitters. So
Speaker 4: I've got to see a lot of country.
Speaker 1: And your specialty these horseback trips.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everything's horseback, horseback and mule sawbucks or deckers sawbuck guy. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I've never understood that though. Montana guys. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 4: take a toothbrush if they don't man yet.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've always thought the same thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we always laugh at Sawbucks. Yeah, you'll have to
Speaker 4: teach me, so all right, Yeah, trade seems pretty easy.
Speaker 4: So there's two style of pack saddles. One is what
Speaker 4: you call sawbook, which is seems self explanatory. You hang
Speaker 4: paniards and then you have a lash rope where you
Speaker 4: tie a hitch so keep everything pinned down. And Montana
Speaker 4: guys run what's called decker pack saddles, and they have
Speaker 4: ropes hanging off the bars on their packs and then
Speaker 4: they tie a hitch, usually with something that's man eat up,
Speaker 4: so they pack all their camping stuff in a in
Speaker 4: a canvas manny and fold it up real nice, like yeah, manny,
Speaker 4: petty sort, you're tracking, you're tracking? Help me out here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, that's accurate.
Speaker 4: I don't know what you don't know.
Speaker 6: My theory is decker like when you lash down at
Speaker 6: decker saddle, say with a YETI cool, And then you
Speaker 6: can crow's foot it to really lash it down. You
Speaker 6: can bump into a lot more trees and have it
Speaker 6: stays stay set. Compared to Sawbucks, addles might move around
Speaker 6: a little bit more or get loose.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I've never some pretty steep country.
Speaker 6: Well steep maybe how thick is it?
Speaker 4: It's pretty thick. Well, it sounds like.
Speaker 3: I guess whatever style floats your boat.
Speaker 4: I know that you can pack real awkward loads with deckers.
Speaker 4: They're a lot more versatile.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we would pack raft frames sixteen foot raft rames
Speaker 6: them on the uphill side.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, we just don't take that stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 4: very awkward?
Speaker 1: Are you mostly deer? Mostly elk?
Speaker 4: I've done it all sheep, mountain goat deer elk, not
Speaker 4: grizzly bear, but everything else. Uh no, never have a
Speaker 4: guated black bears. Actually kind of got burned out on
Speaker 4: the bear thing, so.
Speaker 1: Oh, messing with bears like a person gets a job
Speaker 1: to ice cream shop, then.
Speaker 4: I don't like ice cream no more, exactly exactly the
Speaker 4: same reason I don't eat Mexican FID.
Speaker 1: And you're and you're looking for your ear between careers.
Speaker 4: Now you know I'm doing construction, but I'm definitely open
Speaker 4: to doing something that benefits wildlife. I don't want the
Speaker 4: best thing that I've done for wildlife to be catching
Speaker 4: and killing bears.
Speaker 1: So what drove you to do? You mind saying why
Speaker 1: did you leave the state agency in Wyoming fishing game.
Speaker 4: I was just really personally conflicted with some of the
Speaker 4: management decisions that were being made. You know, So there
Speaker 4: were a lot of reasons I was. I was super burnout.
Speaker 4: If I had to give one more bear safety talk,
Speaker 4: I was gonna suck start a forty four? God what
Speaker 4: or bear spray?
Speaker 1: What would be at what would be an area of management? Like,
Speaker 1: what would be like an area of management that you
Speaker 1: would find conflict. You don't need to tell me the
Speaker 1: exact conflict, but when you say that, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 4: What do you mean? Like?
Speaker 1: Do you mean the way they sat harvest objectives?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: The way they where I had conflict? Or was it
Speaker 1: like administrative issues? You know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was leadership and it I just didn't feel
Speaker 4: like relocation and removal decisions were really consistent.
Speaker 3: So god, oh on the bear question, yeah, it's like
Speaker 3: how you're handling individual bears.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you know, I'd had a certain standard with
Speaker 4: my old boss, and I just felt like it wasn't
Speaker 4: the same.
Speaker 1: Do you is my last question for you? Do you
Speaker 1: give me your personal take? I like, like came in
Speaker 1: so hot and heavy on delisting. What's your personal take?
Speaker 1: On delisting.
Speaker 4: Hmmm. I think it's the best thing to keep states
Speaker 4: into managing bears, which is probably the best thing for
Speaker 4: the people on the landscape. And I also think hunting
Speaker 4: is a positive because it creates its advocates for wildlife,
Speaker 4: creates advocates for bears. People right now say there's too
Speaker 4: many bears on the landscape, but as soon as you
Speaker 4: start hunting them, they'll be like, I don't know where
Speaker 4: all the big bears have gone. These guys are hunting
Speaker 4: too many. It's a non residence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll just be some other boogeyman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 4: Man. So, but they continue to expand. And a big
Speaker 4: issue that the court see is that genetic connectivity between
Speaker 4: the GYE and the NCDE, and right now they're only
Speaker 4: thirty six miles apart. And I think that whether you
Speaker 4: delist or not, I think they eventually make that connectivity.
Speaker 4: But there was a bear that showed up in the
Speaker 4: Big Horns two years ago actually, and you know that
Speaker 4: bear was removed ethanized right away. And I think they're
Speaker 4: going to continue to expand whether you try to contain
Speaker 4: them or not.
Speaker 1: Oh, was that a containment decision?
Speaker 4: Social acceptance, you know, but we've caught and killed a
Speaker 4: lot of bears over the years, and you're just trying
Speaker 4: to contain them into the absorcos. This year, they'll hit
Speaker 4: seventy bears have died in the Elstone ecosystem, and probably
Speaker 4: forty of those will be management removals. And you got
Speaker 4: everything from bears getting killed in irrigation canals, there were
Speaker 4: bears electrocuted. There's bears that get hit by vehicles, like
Speaker 4: three ninety nine obviously, so.
Speaker 1: Seventy to one calendar year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it'll be a record year this year.
Speaker 6: Montana's at twenty eight right now.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's over yet. There's still bears out.
Speaker 1: One of the uh one of the arguments I heard
Speaker 1: from when I talked about I was joking and I
Speaker 1: half joking about Montana chickening out on the bear hunt.
Speaker 1: But one of the things they brought up is they
Speaker 1: had no They felt that their quota would get hit
Speaker 1: by non hunting purposes and if they did a hunt.
Speaker 4: This is kind of like the logic, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: If they did a hunt and killed a couple bears,
Speaker 1: they would burn up their quota and then they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to do bear management on problem bears because
Speaker 1: they would have already hit their human Cause quota.
Speaker 3: Doesn't sound unreasonable.
Speaker 1: Fee feels more across that bridge when you come to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think again, it's what you what the number
Speaker 4: you believe is in the ecosystem. And the reason Wyoming
Speaker 4: was going to be so high is because twelve of
Speaker 4: those bears were going to be outside the demographic monitoring area,
Speaker 4: so they weren't even counted towards the population.
Speaker 1: Got it, got.
Speaker 4: It, you know. And the DMA is about twenty thousand
Speaker 4: square miles and bear distribution right now is about fifty
Speaker 4: thousand square miles.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a grizzly coming to a neighborhood near you.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So everywhere I would go, people go, there's kids
Speaker 4: in the neighborhood. You got to get this bear out
Speaker 4: of here, you know. And then one lady called me
Speaker 4: and she goes, there's old people in this neighborhood. You
Speaker 4: got to get this bear out of here. I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 4: there's no appropriate age to live with a bear.
Speaker 1: There's two things that are going to happen. I like
Speaker 1: to joke about golfers and Montana is uniquely created a
Speaker 1: golfer Gophers. No, I believe that someday Montana will have
Speaker 1: a golfer get mall about golfing, oh in Whitefish.
Speaker 6: Yeah, probably at Meadow Lake Resort, Columbia Fall the big
Speaker 6: scot they.
Speaker 3: Called one on a golf course down the bitter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will have. It'll be like it'll be I
Speaker 1: hope he doesn't get it bad. If he gets a
Speaker 1: bad I'll feel bad. But I I uh, it'll be
Speaker 1: an interesting day when we have a golfer get malb
Speaker 1: digging through the rough looking.
Speaker 3: It's probably not gonna be a good golfer because he's
Speaker 3: gonna be sticking to the fairways.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he's gonna be down to the dick. He's
Speaker 1: gonna be down to the creek bottom looking for his
Speaker 1: golf ball.
Speaker 4: Another good reason to work on your backswing.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have a golfer, get Mall, and that's going
Speaker 1: to change public opinion. And then for whatever reason, like
Speaker 1: we have a little.
Speaker 4: Mountain range right here in town Bridgers, Uh, you know,
Speaker 4: not right here.
Speaker 1: I mean it's way bigger than that. But it toes
Speaker 1: off like this, you know, toes off into town and man,
Speaker 1: there's grizzlies right.
Speaker 4: Across the highway, I know, thirty six miles.
Speaker 1: And it's like, at some point in time, this is
Speaker 1: we have this real popular hiking trail called the m Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not out of the it's not out of it's
Speaker 1: like a reasonable thing that someone's gonna get scratch on
Speaker 1: the m Hill. I feel like that'll impact public opinion
Speaker 1: when a golf forgets it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean there is in Missoula the Rattlesnake Wilderness right there.
Speaker 3: You know, you can take a city bus to it,
Speaker 3: and they had a sow and cubs that set up
Speaker 3: in one of the first gulches there. That's like a
Speaker 3: really popular mountain biking area. But I remember going to
Speaker 3: an event and there's a bear biologist there talking about
Speaker 3: grizzlies coming into the Missoula area, and he's like, you know,
Speaker 3: they're in Gold Creek, they're down on the golf courses
Speaker 3: in the bitter Root, they're in the Rattlesnake. And he said,
Speaker 3: I would be surprised if in five years there aren't
Speaker 3: sort of resident known bear families, you know, population groups
Speaker 3: here and there in the city around the city.
Speaker 1: I should say, I don't want people to think I'm
Speaker 1: bringing that up like a golfer getting scratched. I'm not
Speaker 1: bringing this up as a thing that I'm worried about,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's a negative. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not the golfer get scratched. I'm not saying I want,
Speaker 1: I don't want. I think I'd love it if we
Speaker 1: had bears. I'd like if there's grizzlies all over town,
Speaker 1: like go to Anchorage. Yeah for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like them. Yeah, I'm not an anti bear guy whatsoever. Right,
Speaker 1: I love the bears. I like seeing them. I get
Speaker 1: excited I see him anyway. You never I never meet
Speaker 1: anybody who's bummed out that they saw a grizzly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love them.
Speaker 4: As soon as you get mauled, people's attitude sure changes.
Speaker 1: I love them. I just want it to go. I
Speaker 1: want to be that there's a bunch of bears, and
Speaker 1: I want it to be that there's there's a state
Speaker 1: managed and there's a tag draw. That's what I want.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody thinks about their self interest, right, especially me. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it's the story that you that you portray
Speaker 4: into the future. Here how people paint bears. So three
Speaker 4: ninety nine is a great example, Like you could paint
Speaker 4: her as a bear that mould people, or you could
Speaker 4: paint her as the biggest advocate for bears in the
Speaker 4: mm hmm in the world. So yeah, future bears is
Speaker 4: up to the public.
Speaker 1: Really. Yeah, and my you know, you mentioned like everybody
Speaker 1: wants what their own self interest is. I should clarify that. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna draw a Grizzly bear tag. I live
Speaker 1: in a state that one had they done, I don't
Speaker 1: know that. I orn't even put in for the tag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh we didn't do it. If we did one, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna draw it. I mean, what are the odds
Speaker 1: you're gonna draw it? You know. It's like I've been
Speaker 1: applying for big horn sheep tag for decades, haven't drawn
Speaker 1: one yet.
Speaker 7: I a lot.
Speaker 1: No, not not like, yeah, you get you're not gonna draw,
Speaker 1: Like the draws are gonna be slim. So it's not
Speaker 1: like it's not like I feel that this is my pathway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I hunt the last every year. This isn't
Speaker 1: my like, I'm not pursuing this as because it's my
Speaker 1: personal pathway to getting a Grizzly. It's like it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. I'm not going to get a grizzly in Montana.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get a grizzy in Idahol. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna get a grizzy in Wyoming. This isn't all me,
Speaker 1: you know, with some like Machiavellian plan by which I'll
Speaker 1: be able to hunt grizzlies in my neighborhood. It's like,
Speaker 1: just as an advocate four hunters, and as an advocate
Speaker 1: for state management, and as an advocate for responsible use
Speaker 1: of renewable resources, here's an animal that that people, that
Speaker 1: has was historically a game animal that has people that
Speaker 1: there's people that hunt them in other places, there's a
Speaker 1: desire to hunt them. Hunting them is not incompatible with
Speaker 1: having a stable population, as we've demonstrated with mountain lions,
Speaker 1: black bears, white tailed deer, mule deer, elk moose, big
Speaker 1: orange sheep, mountain goats. I could go on and on.
Speaker 1: It's not incompatible. I don't know why there should be
Speaker 1: any different.
Speaker 4: This guy's put in.
Speaker 1: You know what I'll do right now? You know what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do right now now, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm gonna tell you something right now, just
Speaker 1: because you said that, I promise I won't put in. Okay,
Speaker 1: for how long ever, I won't.
Speaker 2: Put it in.
Speaker 1: I won't put in.
Speaker 4: It's a true advocate.
Speaker 1: And you go scroll the records and see if you
Speaker 1: ever see me put in, I won't put in.
Speaker 4: I got friends I'll call.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to put it. I said one time before,
Speaker 1: like to talk about in drilling an ant war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And people are like, oh yeah, just because you hunt
Speaker 1: up there all the time. I'm like, okay, if I
Speaker 1: could sign a contract that said they won't drill an
Speaker 1: war but I can't ever go there, I would sign.
Speaker 4: The contract right me too, I'm not going there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like okay, fine, I need to go there,
Speaker 1: just whatever. That's fine. And if I had to sign
Speaker 1: a contract, we'll dlist and turn over to State management
Speaker 1: and create a hunting season tomorrow, but you have to
Speaker 1: agree that you'll never apply for a tag. I'd be like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: that's not what it is for me.
Speaker 4: I think the real question here is can you get
Speaker 4: bears off the list? Can you have state management without
Speaker 4: people continuing to sue and and tear down the ESA,
Speaker 4: or do you have to change the ESA in order
Speaker 4: to get animals delisted, and I think that would be
Speaker 4: horrible if if you don't get bears off the list.
Speaker 1: You know, That's why my advice to people who support
Speaker 1: the ESA is to stop effing around with the essay,
Speaker 1: what weaponizing it, because you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna
Speaker 1: do You're gonna do to the essay what they did
Speaker 1: to the spot at owl. Like the spot at Owl
Speaker 1: used to be an owl, yeah, and then it became
Speaker 1: a symbol of overreach. Right, you're gonna now create You're
Speaker 1: gonna be like you have here. You sit like let's
Speaker 1: say you were like Joey ESA, Right, you're like the
Speaker 1: diehard defender of the ESA. My advice to you stop
Speaker 1: weaponizing the ESA. Then delist that bear which is a
Speaker 1: hit recovery, which which hit recovery objectives twenty five years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but and move on to what's next.
Speaker 4: The reason I brought up that bear in the Big
Speaker 4: Horns is that's in the DPS and that's unoccupied habitat.
Speaker 4: So you know, in theory, the ESA calls for bears
Speaker 4: moving into that suitable habitat.
Speaker 1: But they mapped out when they listed them. They mapped
Speaker 1: out recovery objectives and they hit recovery objectives twenty some
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, So why bother, why bother having an Endangered
Speaker 1: Species Act? Why bother making recovery objectives if it's just bullshit? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't mean it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it erodes public trust, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: Two percent of the things that go on the ESA
Speaker 1: come off because of recovery. Okay, things will come off
Speaker 1: because they realize it wasn't warranted. Things will come off
Speaker 1: because they'll go extinct. Two percent of the things that
Speaker 1: go on the ESA come off because recovery. Here, you
Speaker 1: have a recovered thing. Why is it not celebrated?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: They didn't bitch Like eagles came off, no problem, peregrine fault.
Speaker 1: But this one they just got to hold it tight
Speaker 1: to their chest, yep. Because it's not about the ESSA.
Speaker 4: It's a money maker, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So forget me saying I'm coming at it from
Speaker 1: a perspective of one hundred. I'm coming at it from
Speaker 1: a perspective of someone that wants to get on with
Speaker 1: UH to like salvage the ESA and not make it
Speaker 1: that it just is a thing of derision.
Speaker 4: Glad I bolstered your argument.
Speaker 1: No, thank you cut all that out, feel so I
Speaker 1: can just start saying that like I thought of it.
Speaker 1: Well man, thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me appreciate it. It's good to meet
Speaker 4: you guys.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that I that you wish you got
Speaker 1: to talk about that I asked about.
Speaker 4: I meant to talk about snaring bears.
Speaker 1: That's something I didn't talk tell me about that.
Speaker 4: So another way we catch them is with foot snares,
Speaker 4: and you use what's called an aldrewe spring, and you
Speaker 4: put the spring and a snare loop and you dig
Speaker 4: a hole and then you recreate the surfaces though it's
Speaker 4: just ground, and you try to get a bear to
Speaker 4: step in that. And that's a fun part of trapping.
Speaker 1: So how do you get him step in there? Hanging
Speaker 1: a bait?
Speaker 4: A lot of times you have a cubby set and
Speaker 4: you're trying to direct them into your set, but you're
Speaker 4: putting sticks, and bears don't like to step on sticks
Speaker 4: and hurt their feet, so you can kind of control
Speaker 4: their foot movement with those.
Speaker 1: When you're doing that, so he actually thinks he's putting
Speaker 1: his foot on the ground and his foot breaks through
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it hits this Yeah, it's a pit trap,
Speaker 4: but it hits this trigger and that trigger flings a
Speaker 4: spring and that pulls that snare cable tight. And the
Speaker 4: snare cable just has a little bracket that only slides
Speaker 4: one way, you know. And you caught a bear.
Speaker 1: And can you is he too messed up? Or can
Speaker 1: you release him? Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, you you release those bears.
Speaker 1: He's gotta be pissed.
Speaker 3: Do you get him on video when you do that?
Speaker 3: I got some sounds like a fun visual mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Got some pictures somewhere, I think. But he's pissed a
Speaker 4: lot of times they're trying to run off and they
Speaker 4: hit the end of that snare cable and they roll over.
Speaker 4: And sometimes they are pissed and they try to charge you.
Speaker 1: Yep, in regular trap.
Speaker 4: And you call that blocking, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. A bobcat trapper was explaining one time that people
Speaker 1: would use blocking for bobcats, but they don't realize this.
Speaker 1: Bobcats want to stand on little things, so they'd put
Speaker 1: little rocks to block, or put a log to block,
Speaker 1: But he wants to be on that. Yeah, so this guy,
Speaker 1: you know, you know to sycamore, you know, a sycamore ball.
Speaker 1: They don't live around here, but it's like that little
Speaker 1: poky little it's like a poky little seed pod. There's
Speaker 1: this trapper to he doesn't even live in that area,
Speaker 1: but he gets big things of those sycamore things because
Speaker 1: it's real spiky, and the cat don't want to put
Speaker 1: his foot on it. So then you can actually control
Speaker 1: his foot placement. But you put a stick there and
Speaker 1: that cat's like, oh sweet things. And missus the pants
Speaker 1: you're standing on, your blocking you know, the stuff that's
Speaker 1: supposed to keep them from wanting to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you want stuff that looks like uncomfortable for his foot. Interesting,
Speaker 1: keep that in mind. I might just go trap bears
Speaker 1: on my own, just for fun. Bear trapping.
Speaker 4: Yeah, whose ear tag is this?
Speaker 1: Well, dude, thanks thanks for coming out, man, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me, and good luck on your
Speaker 4: job hunt. Thanks appreciate that name.
Speaker 1: Name what line of work you want, because maybe someoneill
Speaker 1: call you and give you a job.
Speaker 4: Land conservation I think could be up my alley. I
Speaker 4: think that would be beneficial to wildlife. So should I
Speaker 4: throw out my email. Can I do that?
Speaker 7: They you can throw out your email if you want
Speaker 7: a bajillion people messaging you, or they can email loss
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah that's.
Speaker 4: Mine Wor they can also take through.
Speaker 1: His own job.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's true.
Speaker 4: My email is just Dusty dot Lassiter L A S
Speaker 4: S E T E R ten at Gmail. Looking for work,
Speaker 4: looking for work. I got a great job. I have
Speaker 4: a great boss, but I still want to do something
Speaker 4: that benefits wildlife.
Speaker 1: I got a construction project I might lay out in
Speaker 1: front of you.
Speaker 4: To I can handle it.
Speaker 1: It's in grizzly country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm a mediocre carpenter.
Speaker 1: But that's what that's kind. I'm looking for.
Speaker 4: More of a painter.
Speaker 1: All right, man, thanks so much than.
Speaker 5: The fingers are told so cold that they burn. Were
Speaker 5: standing in the creek in our Burney.
Speaker 2: Just for me in a warm bomb. And then back to.
Speaker 5: The pros chasing cotton tail High. I was just ten,
Speaker 5: but High got to join his Carol protested Grandpa's firm.
Speaker 2: I've had him shooting since he was me. High. He
Speaker 2: sees tayd him.
Speaker 5: Then an apro close with the ball on the wind
Speaker 5: hot home tray and bring it in her round moved
Speaker 5: up ahead, just into the lane where case colored Steve
Speaker 5: has put two on the ground. Morning turn high and
Speaker 5: he was singing, came about to spill as a shot
Speaker 5: shell off Lou at its ord home, and I couldn't
Speaker 5: have off. We're in in fingers on the ema, lips
Speaker 5: turning blue.
Speaker 2: Ever, at the end.
Speaker 5: Of Novegeber, the memories all showver me, bitter sleep, goness,
Speaker 5: early morn, cotton tail hunting, afternoon targets, esteemed dinner feeds,
Speaker 5: forty hot people with cousins, and of those who have
Speaker 5: half forgotten, and all all harried, rarely so happy.
Speaker 2: House spoke first in me in the.
Speaker 5: Bond that was away back in my you. I watched
Speaker 5: it all changed through the heat. It's time we roll
Speaker 5: both bedrock.
Speaker 2: And bone and old age wilts. Even the most pierced.
Speaker 5: Grandpa we lost in the cold of Dember Carol. Few
Speaker 5: turns before, how bout farm when they couldn't remember. Nothing's
Speaker 5: the same anymore, Born God.
Speaker 2: Leave the old home lost.
Speaker 5: It shee You can hear the wind a whistle at too.
Speaker 5: She creaks, and she bones and all over chrown. But
Speaker 5: we'll get her looking brand new.
Speaker 2: Here at the end.
Speaker 5: Of November, memories all show over me bitter sweet, go
Speaker 5: his early morn cotton sail, hunting after new targets and skins, feeds,
Speaker 5: forty hot people, dozins, and of those who have half forgotten,
Speaker 5: brand all harriet, rarely so happy. Their housefold burst in
Speaker 5: and fed in the pond, swear ris up.
Speaker 2: A few kids on my own, maybe one day grandson to.
Speaker 5: How want the same hells with the hand on each
Speaker 5: shoulder open maybe week kick.
Speaker 2: Up, few ran over. They feel this place.
Speaker 5: Every at the end of November. Memory and all show
Speaker 5: over media, bitter sweet.
Speaker 2: As early morn, cant and tale afternoons.
Speaker 5: Targets speak, two feeds, forty hot people, cousins and of
Speaker 5: coles who have half forgotten, and all harried, rarely so happy.
Speaker 5: House foolhursted and made in the part